Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors 3/23/21

– [All] To the flag of
United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty
and justice for all. – We have consideration of
late additions to the agenda and additions or deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Mr. Palacios. – Yes, we have a few corrections on the regular agenda item number 11. Staff requests that this item be deleted. This is packet pages 96 through 103. And then on the consent agenda, item 33, there's additional materials, a revised memo, replacement
packet pages 214 through 216. There's also a revised attachment A, replacement packet pages 217 through 219. That concludes the corrections chair. – Okay, thank you. Are there any announcements
by board members of items removed from the consent to the regular agenda? Think so. – Yeah, I would like to
add that we remove item 25 to the regular agenda
concerning the conduct of our meetings digitally
just liked ultimately to propose one small change to that.

And I'd also like to ask
that we remove item 54 from the consent to the regular agenda. That's concerning the
spending of $8 million on rapid rehousing using
state and federal grants that we have, are accepting today. – Okay, so then you just
wanted to comment on 25. Did you say, excuse me? – Yes, just had a small
amendment to propose to 25. – Okay, I think we can do that in the consent agenda
probably on number item 54.

We should have that become number, item number 13A, that'd be great. So item number 54 of the consent agenda will become item number 13A, the last item on our regular agenda. And do you want to make a
brief comment on the other at this point? – I'm sure, happy to do that. The item number 25 concerning
virtual board meetings, it says that we would continue to conduct all board of
supervisors public meetings using the all virtual model
until the governor lifts the Brown Act exemptions due
to the COVID-19 pandemic. I just believe that that
triggering time might be a little bit late in reviewing
Executive Order N2920, which does change which relieves us of these Brown Act obligations.

It says that those will be in place until social social distancing, so long as social distancing is recommended even not simply required. I do think that we could be
recommending social distancing for some time. So I would like to propose an amendment that we changed that to until such time as the County of Santa Cruz
meets all health metrics so has to be better than
the state defined a minimal or yellow tier risk level. – Okay. Any comments by board
members on Mr. Palacios? – Just a point of order real
quick from County council, given that we haven't
actually taken public comment on this thing, I don't know
that we could really be amending an item at this point. So I don't feel it proper for me to be providing additional
comments on this item until we've gone to the public.

I respect the fact that that's how it was directed towards
supervisor Coonerty, but I think that there should
be at a different time. Is that a correct? – Yeah, I appreciate that
point of order right now is just for pulling items from consent to the regular agenda
if we want to do that. And then we could make
this item either 13B, or not remove it, or the
board could decide not to remove it to the consent,
to the regular agenda. – And I don't think it
needs to be removed. I think that somebody
could make an amendment as we are always due to consent
as the chair was saying.

And obviously supervisor Coonerty will be making that amendment. I just, I will have comments
on that amendment at the time. I just wanted to be sure
that we had an opportunity for the community to address
it before we formally tried to amend an item.
– Okay. That's right, so what
we could do right now is just postponed further
comment on the item until the board is giving
comments on the consent agenda. – Very well, okay. So we will, okay, so for number four, is there any other items to be removed from the consent or regular agenda? Any board members. Saying that we will go to public comment and then address that issue, we just were commented on. This is the time for public
comment at any person. I may address the board and one straight, a public comment period,
not exceeding two minutes. Comments must be directed
to items on today's consent or closed session agendas yet to be heard items on the regular agenda, or on a topic not on today's agenda, but within jurisdiction of the board.

We'll take the comments
now for up to 30 minutes. And if necessary additional
time for public comments will be allowed after the last item on today's regular agenda. Do we have any comments from the public? – Yes chair we do, we
currently have seven members of the public with their hand raised hand. For those joining us via the Zoom link, a reminder that hand raising feature is that the bottom of your screen.

If you're dialing in, please press star nine to raise your hand to be placed in the queue. As the chair said, you will
have two minutes to speak and you will be muted automatically at the end of this time. Caller 3256, your microphone
is available, please unmute. – [Ellie] Good morning,
this is Ellie Black. I'm I being heard? – [McPherson] Yes. – [Ellie] Thank you. Good morning, everyone? First off, I would like to thank you for mentioning the instructions for the public to contact
during public comment. I would like to make a small
request that the phone number be repeated during the announcement, and also that at the time of the phone number being mentioned, that also the codes to raise the hand and the codes to unmute are
also mentioned at that time.

We do need to remember that
many of the people of the public who are trying to make
public comment are people who are the elders and wise people in our community for a large part. And many of them do not have computers and may not have a lot of
the technical experience that others use every day. And I think it's only fair
to accommodate everyone as much as possible in that way. And because really the folks
who don't have computers, but still are paying attention
to everything that's going on and have seen the history of this county, through the years and through the decades, their input is some of the
most valuable that we can hear.

So thank you for everything you're doing. Hopefully we will be able to
see you all face-to-face again. I'd like to thank Supervisor Coonerty for mentioning item number
25 on the consent agenda. This is something that
obviously to me anyway, should be something that is
pulled off the consent agenda so that it can be discussed further in all of the month during
this pandemic situation. As far as I know, no one
became ill or infected as a result of the public
meetings to my knowledge. If that's different, let me know but I believe that there has
been no super spreader event of any type resulting from those meetings. So those in-person meetings
really should be resumed. – [Stephanie] Thank you, caller user one, your microphone is available. – [Diana] Good morning board. My name is Diana Nicole
and as you may know, the cellular industry has
planned to install 5G antennas in residential neighborhoods, every five to seven houses
over the next few years.

Cities, including Mill Valley, California, have successfully passed
laws to ban installation from residential neighborhoods. I'd like this board to
pass that law, same law. Here's Dr. Martin Paul. He is a professor
emeritus of biochemistry, and basic medical science at Washington State
University discussing 5G. – [Martin] What I've
been doing most recently in my talks, I first of all, start talking about eight different types of facts, which are extraordinarily
well-documented based on anywhere from 13 to 35 different published reviews, that show that they're occurring
following the exposures. Those include widespread neurological, whether they're on psychiatric effects, which are becoming increasingly common in all of the technologically
advanced countries on earth.

They include reproductive effects, lowered male and female reproduction, increased spontaneous abortion, decreased levels of each of
the three types of sex hormones and lowered libido. And all of those things are going on in terms of male fertility,
there are multiple types of effects that impact male fertility. So we have those, we
have oxidative stress, which is involved in essentially
every chronic disease you've been named as a
major causal element. We have attacks of the cellular DNA. The DNA of ourselves of
three different types of which are involved in producing the most important types of mutations that we have in human genetics, but also in terms of the
most important changes that occur to improve cancer.

And we have also increased levels of what's called apoptosis often also pronounced the apoptosis, which is programmed cell death,
which is something that's. – [Stephanie] Caller 1999,
your microphone is unmuted. – [McPherson] Caller 1999 unmute please. Just go on to the next caller. – [Stephanie] Caller 1192,
your microphone is unmuted. Muted. – [Coonerty] Caller 1192. I think we can hear you trying to speak. – Okay, good morning,
my name is James Uri. – [Coonerty] We lost your Mr. Uri. – [Stephanie] Okay,
we've lost this caller. Caller 1192, you're
microphone is available. – [Voice Over] Caller 1192,
you're microphone is unmuted. – [Gail] Hi, this is Gail Mcnon. And I wanted to just say that
this 5G is going to be very unwelcome in people's communities. It's very dense coverage of radiation and the health effects are
going to be disastrous.

So I really recommend against that. Also the waving the Brown Act because someone recommends
it, medical or not is legislating by medical
people, authorities. You may not legislate away our rights just because it's recommended by somebody who's unaccountable. It's not approving why is going to lead to more secrecy of our government. The Brown Act is to prevent secrecy, and to prevent people being excluded from the legislative process
and the decisions being made. We need less secrecy. Thanks, have a great day. – Shirely your microphone is unmuted. – [Shirley] I'd like to speak on item 25. Also, I want to thank Supervisor Coonerty for this amendment. I would also support removing it from the consent agenda and voting on it.

The Orange County Board of
Supervisors is meeting in person. I'm not sure why our
county board of supervisors is not meeting in person. And the population of Orange
County is more than 3 million. And our population is
quite a bit less than that. I think the risk of any contraction of any infectious disease
is quite low in our county. So I would support going back to a hybrid model of
in-person and virtual. As we can see two the people
who've tried to call in today, can't even get in and speak. So I think that that point shows itself that we needed to have in-person meetings. And I hope you'll please
take all that into account. Next I'd like to speak about
the homeless encampment in the Gulch along North Rodeo Gulch. This encampment is on county owned land. The people who live along
North Rodeo Gulch have called the sheriff to report drug use and other criminal activity
occurring in this encampment.

However, the Sheriff's
office has failed to act, allowing this criminal activity to continue in this encampment puts the law abiding people who live along North Rodeo Gulch at risk. Indeed, the people in this
encampment started a fire on Sunday, which resulted
in firetrucks being called and North Rodeo Gulch was closed. Further, the people who started this fire violated Santa
Cruz County Code 7.92.305.4, which reads deliberate
or negligent burning. It shall be unlawful to deliberately or through negligence set fire, or cause the burning
of combustible material in such a manner as to endanger the safety of persons or property.

Please conduct a thorough investigation of this criminal activity
and prosecute these people to the fullest extent of the law. – [Stephanie] Caller 2915,
your microphone is unmuted. – [Becky] Good morning,
this is Becky Stein Bruno. Can you hear me? – [Coonerty] Yes. – [Becky] Thank you. Good morning. And I also want to second the sentiments that are for do supervisor
meetings need to return to the hybrid model item number 25. It is not true in the staff report that that no other meetings
are being held in person with a hybrid central fire is and always has throughout this and there've been no problems. There are many people such as myself that can only participate via telephone. We are not able to see the presentations that your board receives via slides, that is critical and be imperative that we do see during budget season.

I would like to ask that you, and I did submit a letter to you. I would like to ask that you
install some sort of screen or something in the basement or someplace within the county building such that a small group of people could with masks, socially distancing, see those screens. You're omitting a lot of
information for the public view and I'd like that changed.

I also want to speak to number 24, waterproofing 701 Ocean Street. I hope that there is
landscaping provided when that waterproofing is done, many large and very
beautiful trees were cut down and the building sorely needs landscaping. So I hope that's part of item 24. I'm sorry, that's item 27. I have been participating in
the board of forestry meetings and I'm happy to hear that
Santa Cruz County officials have too. I heard JAM Brown yesterday. The board did a vote to put that through to the administrative law
office with a 45 day comment. I'm very concerned about that. – [Stephanie] Gamnuel. – [Gamnuel] Good morning
board of supervisors, others in attendance. I want to speak to the proclamation proclaiming April five to 11, 2021 as National Public Health
Week at the next meeting, a board of supervisors meeting, there will be a presentation from the Public Health Division.

But in the meantime, I'd like to say a few words about National Public Health Week. During the first full
week of April each year, the American Public Health Association brings together communities
across the United States to observe National Public
Health Week as a time to recognize the
contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our nation's health. I want to thank supervisor McPherson for the signed proclamation and for all of the board of supervisors recognizing
National Public Health Week for the county of Santa Cruz, And the proclamation itself, I hope everyone has a chance to read it.

It highlights many of our accomplishments in the past year not just COVID, but those around racism
as a public health crisis, about the response to the CCU fire, and about addressing social
determinants of health, acknowledging housing is health
and establishing the housing for health office this past year. I want to remind you as well that during our Save Lives Campaign, we've slowed the spread,
we've adapted to a new normal, we vaccinated. And now we're on the EAN
elevate the readiness for saving lives in Santa Cruz County.

This means that during a
vibrant public health division, and in reinvesting and
stopping the disinvestment in public health as has
been the case every year for the past decade
until the COVID crisis. – [Stephanie] Serge Cogno,
your microphone is available. – [Serge] Who is this? Hi, my name is Serge Cogno. I do a lot of work for the homeless and I am on the county
mental health advisory board. I'm only speaking for myself though. I'm referring to number 53, which is the salvation army contract. A very specific little piece within that. The salvation army is the only nonprofit that I know in Santa Cruz that does not have unemployment insurance. We're now at a pandemic. A lot of people are losing their jobs. This contract specifically
is probably going to be a temporary thing. So a lot of people are
going to be laid off at the end of this. I would just ask the board
to look into the possibility of requiring unemployment
insurance as part of the contract. The salvation army actually
does have unemployment in other states where
they're required to do that.

It's just California and Santa Cruz where they are (dog growls). So, sorry about that. That's my puppy. And yeah, I would just, I appreciate the contract and appreciate the service they give. And the living wage ordinance is something new that
signed for nonprofits. I hadn't noticed that before
and I appreciate that. But just that one piece
of unemployment insurance with the challenges that we're having of trying to keep people housed and specifically not people
who work in nonprofits, the Human Care Alliance is nonprofit wage and benefits survey showed that people who are working
at the homeless shelters are among the lowest paid
within our nonprofits. So this is just trying to
take care of the people that take care of our
most vulnerable people. Okay, hey, thank you very much. Bye. – [Stephanie] Caller 1965,
your microphone is available. Caller 1965, you have unmuted yourself. – [Female Caller] Hello, good morning. Can you hear me? – [Stephanie] Yes. – [Female Caller] Okay, thank you. I also would like to address
item number 25 this morning. I would like to thank Supervisor Koenig for bringing this up, to pull
it off of the consent agenda. And I echo all of the sentiments that were brought up by
all the other callers and Zoom participants.

My other concern with this
that hasn't been mentioned is that since we spent all virtual, the web comments, the ability for folks to participate via the web
has been taken away with no, there hasn't even been
any comments to that, or hasn't been spoken to by any
of the supervisors involved. There's folks that are not able
to join the meetings period, but would like to have
their comments heard. I also would like to say, as I'm waiting on hold
or listening on hold, I would like to ask that
if there was comments by public officials that be
put on the agenda officially, so that those of us that
are at work and waiting to speak aren't pushed
further down the line. Thank you. – [Stephanie] Mickey Matthew Weisman. your microphone is available. – [Mathew] Thank you very much. And good morning to the
board of supervisors and others in attendance.

My name is Matthew Weisman. I'm the directing attorney at the Community Action Boards, Santa Cruz Immigration Project. And I just wanted to join
today to introduce myself and thank the board for their deliberate and thoughtful response
to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the efforts to
prioritize public health and support vaccination rollout. And I just wanted to also remind the board and the public that our agency, the Community Action
Board of Santa Cruz County has continued to assist the public throughout this pandemic
and the various shutdowns, we've been providing hybrid and remote services when necessary. And our program in particular, the immigration project has continued to provide services
throughout all these phases, including naturalization,
family-based petitions, DACA, and applications for permanent residency among other legal services. So we are continuing to do our work and we serve residents of the county and beyond in pro bono services. And with that I just want to thank you for your continued prioritization and support of the public
health and vaccine rollout that will hopefully get us back to providing in person services soon.

– [Stephanie] Caller 1401,
your microphone is available. – [Marilyn] Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett. And there are different
public health threats. And a big one is the radiation from all the wireless
microwave technology. But also I want to quote from a program called "Toward
a Vaccine Disaster." It was on the highwire.com, and this is from international
vaccine developer, Gert Vanden Bosch who's from Belgium, works with the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, interviewed by Dr. Phyllis McMillan. Here are some quotes, "These vaccines don't prevent infections, these vaccines to out
compete our natural antibody. We have nonspecific antibodies. These are long lived
vaccine induce antibodies. Basically everyone getting a
vaccine that is a COVID shot is having their innate
immune system destroyed. This is a very, very serious problem. A steep incline in severe
illness is inevitable. Check out the highwire.com
about an hour and 20 minutes. And then do you want to
play this a few more quotes from Dr. Martin Paul on the
adverse documented effects from 5G and wireless exposure. – [Martin] So the reproductive
as we talked about before. Then there are also many
different hormonal effects.

And then we have 35 published
reviews telling the- – [Stephanie] Caller 1999. – [James] Good morning,
my name is James Whitman. It is March 23rd. I am addressing the Board of Supervisors in Santa Cruz, California. Can I be heard? – [Coonerty] Yes, yes. – [James] Excellent, I don't know what happened before. A question you know, I was listening to the Pledge of Allegiance. I was thinking about it, which American flag is
the Pledge of Allegiance being stated in front of. The American flag before 1871, or the American flag with a gold fringe that represents USA incorporated? Where Washington DC is the
military branch of the triad, including the Vatican red shields
Rothschild bank in London, but actually in Switzerland. I don't do zoom so I can't see which flag. It would be great to be
able to meet in person, do the social distancing. I don't know what's
really going to change. I help provide some events
for social connecting and social distancing. You know, we're really thinking about doing an exploratory
recall committee, certainly this Thursday evening at "Twin Lakes Speech," March 25th, we will be broadcasting
part of these procedures and other things as well.

If people want a social distance, they will probably be
able to sit in their cars and from 200 yards away, be able to clearly see
what is being spoken here. What's going on with what the previous callers have talked about. You know, there's a book
called "The Five Chimneys" that a woman wrote who was the surgical assistant of her husband. She was an Auschwitz. She talked about what was going on with experimenting on human beings. Which was really determined to be illegal, but what's going on right
now at these vaccinations. Changing the subject slightly. I found a very short
three page reduced down to three page article. – [Stephanie] And to check
there are no other speakers or public comment. – Okay, thank you. Thank you for the input
from the general public. Just want to go back to
items number 25 and 54, which had been requested to
be put on the regular agenda. We previously said I54, B13A, Mr. Coonerty Counsa, can we
make 25, 13A, and 54, 13B? – Yes, you can do that. – Okay, then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent
agenda with the recognition that item 25 regarding virtual meetings, become 13A at the end
of our regular agenda.

And item 54, regarding emergency
payment program services become 13B at the end
of our regular agenda. I would entertain a motion to that effect. – Well, Mr. Chair also perhaps- – I will get comments from the
board members too, I'm sorry. We'll go ahead and get, are there any comments
from the board members? – I'll speak briefly to just an item on, and I appreciate that
Mr.

Chair, on item 59, just like to thank public works on their work on the plus
to mirror system projects at the system project. And also I look forward to
their continued partnership with the community out there. There still are a lot
of outstanding questions that I know I really do
appreciate Mr. Adler, and Beatrice's work on this to ensure that all those questions are addressed. But again, thanks to public
works for their work out there. And I appreciate their
continued outreach on that item. I also like to thank my
colleagues Supervisor Coonerty on bringing forward item 33. I'll let him speak more to it, but clearly we're dealing
with a hate crime epidemic within our country right now.

And I appreciate the work
of supervisor Coonerty bringing this item to my attention and also bringing this
to the board's attention. Thank you, Mr. Chair. – Thank you. Any other board members who want to have comments on the consent agenda? – Yes, Mr- – Go ahead John Nial- – Caput, go ahead Mr.
Coonerty, Supervisor Coonerty. – All right, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple items to comment on, first is a Supervisor Friend mentioned he and I brought an item on 33, recognizing the increase
in anti-Asian both rhetoric and violence in this country. And you know, we're seeing more hate and more conspiracies and
then, and then more victims. And so this is, we wanted to make a statement recognizing the significant Asian population and history in our community. That we recognize this moment and we'll take steps to combat it. I should also note both in the violence last week in Atlanta, then the violence yesterday
in Boulder, Colorado. The continuing gun violence
that hits this country. That's hit our community. That's hit many people
we know in our families. It's senseless and painful, and we continue to need real action to address gun violence in this country.

I also want to talk about item number 41. This is about The
Neighborhood Courts program. I think this is a great program. I attended one of the
virtual town halls about it, and I want to thank probation and the DA and the sheriff for their work on this. I'd like to add direction. The board received a
report back on the program in one year detailing
the number of cases heard in the neighborhood courts. The types of crimes heard if
the defendants re-offended, and whether the victims and defendants were
satisfied with the process. I think we can learn a
lot from this program and it'd be great to get a report back and hear how it's going. And then finally, I remember 49, which is just support for kids and youth who are either currently in foster care or out of foster care.

Just want to recognize the efforts that this county continues to take to help this exceptionally
vulnerable population. And I appreciate the efforts of HSD to build support for these
foster kids and their families. – Supervisor Caput. – Thank you, chairman McPherson. I just wanted to comment
on item number 61, and that's increasing
the amount for $32,000 for additional engineering
of the East Lake Avenue, which is state road 152 on Houlihan road, college road project. Were about a million dollars, $970, 000 short of being
able to complete the work that needs to be done there. And hopefully we'll get some
grant money and hopefully, we'll be able to get that project
started and then finished. Thank you. – Welcome. Mr. Koenig you had made a comment already about one of the items. And do you have any further comments about the consent agenda? – Yes, chair. Some few other comments. On item 26, the agenda
injustice commission. I would like ultimately to
propose an amendment to that in that I see it in the bylaws, the purpose and charter of that
commission is not included.

And I know for the folks that
the chairs of commissions, so it's helpful to be
able to return to that when directing meetings so that everyone stays on task. I'm happy to propose that in a motion but on item 27, waterproofing of 701. Yeah, excited to see this as well. During the recent rainstorms, we saw water leaking in
through the bolts in my office. So that's definitely needed. Item 33, I also want
to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. Whan Alf, the analyst in my office is her mother-in-law is Asian-American and recently someone threw
a large rock at her house. So it's very real issue in our community and you know, divided
we fall, United we stand and I'm excited and happy
to support this item. Item 58, 3212 mission drive.

I'm looking forward to the public hearing at our next meeting on this
exciting infill project from everything I've seen so far it's a well-designed project. And it integrates the provision of free transit passes for residents. So it's really progressive and
addressing traffic impacts. And then finally, item 63 on, I'm just excited to see that we're putting improvements to rural road outbid. We've had a lot of constituent
input on the site asking when this would be done. So happy to see it moving
forward, that's all. – I'll make a couple of comments too. I just want to let you know that my office did make a comment before the California Board of Forestry as was mentioned earlier,
that's a really critical item for the future of those who would rebuild in the mountainous areas that
were impacted by the fires.

On item number 39, the East
side area road repairs. This is an ongoing effort by
our Public Works Department. I want to thank the
department for continue to work on storm damage repairs. We appreciate this in my
district of District 5, and some others have mentioned
that they had improvements in their districts as well. So with that, I think I will entertain a
motion to approve the agenda. – Pardon me chair. I do have a speaker to the consent agenda. – Oh, excuse me. Go ahead. – I thought, excuse me. – [McPherson] I'm sorry. – We did take public
comment that it's supposed to include the consent
agenda and public comment that we had, we've combined both. But if we miss somebody, I guess we can go ahead
and make an exception. But in the future, what we've done is we've
combined all public comment in general and on the consent agenda and that one public comment item.

And we haven't had public
comments separately on consent. – [COB User] Thank you
for the clarification. – So I think if we do
have somebody who didn't, we didn't clarify that too. I guess we should go
ahead and let them speak. I'm assuming chair person, yes sir, pleasure. – Are you sure is there anybody else who does want to speak at this point? Is that what your point is? – [COB User] Okay, I have one caller. – Okay, is that what you're
referring to Mr. Blasio's? – Yeah, normally we don't have a separate public comment on consent. Remember we've changed that where we've combined all public comment with consent in that one item. But if there was a confusion, we can certainly make an
exception for this one speaker, if that's what you'd prefer, Chair. – Yeah, okay.

Let's have, we'll have Mr. Speaker to make a comment at this point. – [Stephanie] Okay,
(indistinct) your microphone is available. Last call for Elbergham. – [Caller] I'm (indistinct). – [McPherson] Okay go
ahead please, go ahead. – [Caller] I have nothing to say. I don't know why they're
asking me to talk. I'm just tuned in. – And we do have an item coming up on, I think you might want to address. Okay, thank you both. Okay, then we'll go back
to entertain a motion as amended for the consent agenda. – I'll move the consent agenda
as amended, this is Coonerty. – Point of information for county council. If the charter were to
be added to the bylaws for the Gender and Justice
Commission would have to come back before the
board in order to be approved or could we prove it? – Well, Supervisor Koenig there's a motion on the floor right now to
accept the consent agenda without anything related to the Justice and Gender Commission. So traditionally, if there's
a second to that motion, then the motion would be reviewed and passed on to your point.

One could make a motion
right now to amend the bylaws to the Justice and Gender Commission. If you had a very specific
thing that you wanted to amend it to state, and the board could entertain that motion. And it would not have to
come back in other words. However, I will go on to
add that if it's something that the Justice and Gender Commission has not reviewed previously. Traditionally, the board would want the Justice and Gender Commission to review any suggested change. So one idea might be
for you to add language to send this back to the
Justice and Gender Commission to review a change to their bylaws to include whatever it is that
you're thinking of right now. – [McPherson] Thank you all. – I'll second, the motion chair. – Okay, so the motion is to
accept the consent agenda as amended, please call the role.

– [Stephanie] Thank you, I'll start with- – One moment I wanna- – Oh, excuse me, go ahead. – I'd like to move to amend
that we edit the bylaws for item 26 to include the
charter that send it back to the Gender and Justice
Commission for review, and I'll review it again at
our next regular meeting. – I'll treat that as a friendly amendment to be included in my motion. – Okay, is it okay with the second? – [Coonerty] It is. – Okay so we have three items that we are addressing
on the consent agenda. Please call the roll
to approve as amended. – Thank you for clarification
item 25 will move to 13.1, and item 54 will move to 13.2, and the consent agenda is
being approved as amended. Supervisor Koenig. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Friend.
– [Friend] Hi. – Coonerty.
– [Coonerty] Hi. – Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – [Stephanie] McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi. – Thank you motion passes unanimously. – Okay, you now go to the regular agenda, item number seven to consider plan for transition of
indigent defense services to a County Public Defender's
Office by July 1st, 2022.

Approve addition of one full-time equivalent public defender
to be funded in fiscal year, 2021, 22 direct the County
Administrative Office to return no later than August 24th, 2021, with an update and take
related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the
county administrative officer. We have an executive summary attachment A and attachment B as a transition plan. The due role was, Mr.
Blaseus was it you or- – [Nicole] Take care
McPherson, the whole cover- – [McPherson] The whole
cover, go on sure, thank you. – [Nicole] Thank you, good morning chair, members of the board.

So I am Nicole Coburn, assistant CEO. I'm joined today by principal
administrative Analysts, Spence Stafford. Who's been working with me on the public defender transition plan. Also with us as a Geeta
Patel, our director personnel. We've been collaborating closely with the personnel department on the various personnel
aspects of the plan. So she's with us in case
there are questions. So today we're going to give you an update on the public defender transition plan.

And I will turn to the agenda. Spence, you might need to put it in a presenter mode showing them. There you go. So this is our agenda for
this morning's presentation. We're going to revisit our efforts to engage our stakeholders
and tell you more about what's taken place today. Then we're going to go into some detail on the public defender transition plan, and what that contains, and we will also summarize
our recommendations and next steps for you.

So before we begin on the transition plan, I just want to briefly summarize actions that have been taken today and some of the board
direction we've received. So last November, the
board took the first step and adopted an ordinance
creating in the county code. The public defender's office and the position of public defender. That ordinance subsequently
took effect in December. And we worked closely
with personnel to develop a classification for the public
defender position itself. This past February, the board adopted that classification and the salary range for the
public defender position. Also on this morning's agenda
was the classifications and salary ranges for the
public defender attorneys. One through four. The board as a part of
the consent agenda adopted those classifications and salaries. When we were here last fall, we had some conversations with the board and presented various materials, and we received direction from the board to continue to meet
with our local partners, and to bring back a
detailed transition plan. We were also asked to
establish a clear policy for retaining the staff at the main firm of Begum,
Christianson ammends law. And we've made some great
progress on all of these, in all of these areas.

And we'll be discussing
where we're at with you. So in terms of stakeholder engagement, we've held many meetings
with local partners. You can see the partners listed there. We were holding a regular weekly meetings with many of these individuals. Today we've met at least 10
times with our local partners to get their feedback
on our transition plan and to work through
various elements of that. I think all of our partners
agreed that moving forward with the public models
in the best interest of our indigent clients and
for the long-term health and sustainability of
indigent defense system.

We've also had the opportunity to consult with various experts on our transition. That includes the State
Public Defender, Mary McComb, Santa Cruz County Public
Defender, Molly O'Neill. Contra Costa County Public
Defender Robin Lipetzky. And Marin County Public
Defender Jose Varela. And Nevada County Public
Defender, Keri Klein. We've been able to have some
fruitful discussions with them about our case management system, and staffing, transition and
other aspects of our plan. I think at this point there
was widespread support for the transition plan
being considered today. And so we're pleased
to present that to you. We've had over 20 formal
and many informal meetings with the individuals I just mentioned that have led to the
creation of this plan. And this section we're
going to highlight for you the process for transitioning staff with the main firm to the county, as well we'll discuss the
public defender recruitment and our plans for that.

And we're going to also briefly touch on other areas of the plan. So with that, I'm going to pass it to Spense who's going to
go into some more detail. – [Spense] Thanks, Nicole. Good morning board. And so we'll start with staff retention. The most important piece of
the new public defender office is going to be the staff that constitutes that we've been working with the staff, with the main law firm, met with them three times already to go over the new process and how we're going to try
to bring them on board. That includes that they'll have the right of first opportunity for positions within the new public defender's office. We expect to provide them
with conditional job offers by September first of this year, that'll provide the certainty
of employment for them and also provide contract stability and stability of work for the main firm. We anticipated having
those conditional offers, having a start date of July 1st, 2022, which leads into us having a
more turnkey transition model.

The personnel department has been working on a simplified application process for staff that will ensure that staff who meet minimum qualifications
are moved forward to a hiring list. They'll then move forward to interviews. That'll be you know, based
on years of experience and the desire of candidates
for specific positions within the public defender's office. And that'll be conducted
by with each attorney and staff member on a panel
that's assembled, you know, in coordination with the main law firm and other local stakeholders. Personnel is also working,
as Nicole mentioned on new classifications, the
attorney classifications are on.

Today's agenda we're also
going to be bringing forward with personnel investigator
classifications and then other support staff from the firms such as legal
secretaries, paralegals, and other administrative
positions already exist within the county structure. And personnel is making every effort to simplify that recruitment process while maintaining compliance
with civil service rules. And then we're continuing
to do monthly outreach with staff at the main firm. And then in terms of
organizational structure and other management positions, those will largely be decided after a public defender is retained. And so in terms of recruiting
the public defender, this obviously will be a new partner within our criminal justice system.

Personnel will be coming to the board and recommending that recruitment for this position begin
next month in April, 2021. And then in terms of
the recruitment process, personnel will be
recommending screening tools, mainly an advisory panel to
provide additional guidance on selection of the public defender. The process is particularly important because several counties
that we've talked to have had to go out two or even three times because of lack of good processes in their initial recruitments. And so it's important
that we select members for the advisory panel that lack any conflicts of interest and that they possess awareness
of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the
public defender position. In terms of a timeline, we believe that the public defender could reasonably be
positioned by the fall. So October or so of this year, there is a risk of having
to do multiple recruitments, which is why we're recommending
to start the recruitment now and other county partners
that we've talked to as Nicole mentioned is
Santa Clara and Marin, and other places have
really reinforced the idea that it's important to
give back public defender as much time as possible to
establish those relationships and be able to build the office.

And so we've created a, tried to create a clear
sort of set of rules and responsibilities for the transition. We've worked on this with our partners, both at the main law firm
and the superior court. The main of the main
law firm will continue to provide indigent defense services through June 30th of 2022, that they'll continue to provide
guidance to county staff. And so we do really
appreciate their partnership over the last four months
and helping us work through this process. They'll help us co-develop
a case transition plan, so that can happen as
smoothly as possible, and clients can retain their
continuity of representation. And then the contract, they'll maintain their existing requirements
and the contract. The new county public defender won't do any direct handling of cases prior to July 1, 2022, they'll
mainly focus on building and strengthening relationships within our local criminal justice system. They'll also be working on
the case transition plan, and then they'll be developing
the team and office.

And yeah, and while we're doing this, we're taking it many
steps as we reasonably can to take care of the items
in terms of conflicts and administration that we need to, to enable a smooth transition. So we're working currently
with the conflicts firms to extend those contracts
for at least one year, that'll give us an opportunity
to smoothly transition the main public defense service, give the public defender
a time to get acclimated and then make a decision based on their professional experience and local conditions
on what the best fit is for conflict services moving forward. In terms of the administration
transition plan, we're currently working on a
case management system, RFP, and that should be coming
before your board in April.

We're working and collaborating with the district attorney on that system. We've also been collaborating with the superior court probation and we'll be reaching out
to the sheriff as well to make sure that we have as
many integrations as we can. For that case management system, we've been working with
our real property division on identifying a space for the office. We've been working with our
internal services departments, obviously personnel, general services and others to make sure
that all of the things that we need to have in place are in place for the office to be successful. And then, because we will be operating a little bit of an office next year along with paying for the contracts through June of next year
there will be a couple a one-time costs and we'll be bringing that in a supplemental budget in June for the board to consider that'll include salary for the public defender and some additional costs
for limited staffing, as we start up the office and then some other one-time
costs in terms of equipment.

And we're looking at rolling over costs from this year's budget and identifying other one-time sources of revenue to offset
any general fund impact. So I'll pass it back to Nicole. – [Nicole] So today we're asking the board to approve the plan to transition
indigent defense services to a County Public Defender's
Office by July 1st of 2022, as well as to approve the
addition of the public defender, which we plan to fund next
fiscal year in 21, 22. And if the transition plan is approved, the CAO in partnership with
the personnel department, will be bringing several items to the board over the course of the spring and the summer related
to the transition plan. The first, the two of
which Spense mentioned, the public defender recruitment, and the case management RFP next month.

These also include classifications of other new positions for
the Public Defender's Office, as well as the supplemental budget for one-time startup costs. And we'll of course are going to continue to collaborate with the current firms, the superior court and other partners as we implement the transition. And lastly, we're asking that
the board direct our office to return with an update no
later than the end of August. At that time, we believe
we should know the status of the staff within the main firm and how that transition is looking over to our new public defender's office. So we would like to
provide an update on that, and any other elements of a transition that we might be able to provide some additional information on. And with that, we're happy to answer any
questions that you may have. – Thank you. Thank you for the presentation
and for your moving forward. I want to thank the CEO team
for leading this process really in collaboration with her
current public defender firm, our court system and other
partners that you mentioned.

I think it's a process
that's going to provide us with a smooth transition and our contract system
into a public system. I really do look forward
to receiving more details about the transition of case management. And I realized that may not come until after our August update, but I just wanted to highlight that as a critical component of the transition. I'm sure you know it,
and you've mentioned it. But thank you for this process and for working with the others that are so directly involved. It's been a great team
effort to get us here. And I look forward to the
transition come next year.

Are there any other
comments from the board? – Yeah, if I may thank you. Yeah thank you chairman. I'm gonna guess the whole
transition from the beginning, but at this point a salute point, and now we, I wanna make
sure we have the transition that is smooth, and that
does not impact cases where someone really needs
a public defender right now. We're in a time of great confusion with the COVID-19 and
court cases being delayed. So I think it's very important, especially for the people that are
facing a trial coming up or facing some kind of charges that are brought against them. That we do not have people
fall between the cracks. And so I'm for going forward. I think a lot is gonna depend on how we treat the big law firm in this whole transition. And as far as timelines hopefully if the COVID 19 is still going on, that we're able to extend the timelines. I'm just worried about if
we have a timeline and we, if we have to rush it in
order to try to fit that. But I think that's being considered.

Hopefully, we'll work this out, then make sure people
are defended according to the law, thank you. – Well, any other comments
from board members? – Mr. Chair, I'll make
some brief comments. I mean, first I just wanted to thank Ms. Coburn and Mr.
Stafford for their work, as well as the board
had very specific asks in conjunction with the
public defender's office and the community outreach
from some months back, every single one of those
issues were addressed. And I really do want to appreciate that when that comes back that way. The Supervisor Caput concerns, I think that all that's
actually been built into this timeline just seems to have an exceptionally long runway and very long transition process, a very smooth transition timeline. So I would share those concerns if this timeline were expedited, but from the beginning of those
process to where we are now to the continued timeline
in through next year, seems like a very
reasonable transition time.

The only potential hangup will be as Mr. Stafford had noted whether we are successful recruiting
an adequate candidate and how that will impact the timeline. But I think that the
goals that are set forth aren't actually that aggressive. I think they're very realistic
from a timeline perspective. And I'm very comfortable with that. I do look forward to hearing
some of the public comment on this, especially from
the current public defender who I know has been actively
involved in this process, but I do appreciate the
work of county staff on incorporating the board's concerns. – Thank you. Mr. Coonerty, Supervisor
Coonerty, you had a comment? – Yeah and I know I may wait to hear what the public comment is but in general, I want to appreciate staff's
efforts to work collaboratively and figure out a plan that works. And most importantly
it works for the people who are being represented
by our public defender, provides that continuity
and excellent service. I do think that bringing
on a public defender in advance will give us an opportunity to work on policy issues. I think, you know, this
board is very interested in specifically around pretrial, speeding up pretrial holds, or you know, to getting people through the adjudicated quickly, as well as some specialty
courts that have focused around the issues that we often see, a play out in the community and so.

Making sure that we have a
public defender who is committed to that kind of policy
implementation as well as operations, smooth operations, and obviously zealous advocacy will be important going forward. – Well on, thank you. Any other comments from supervisors? – Chair, I just also wanted
to echo the thanks express to Ms. Coburn and Mr. Ang
for their great presentation and all the work that
the CEO's office has done on this transition. It really is heartening to see
such a comprehensive effort, working with all the parties involved. And I also really appreciate
that an effort has been made to discuss the plan with
similar jurisdictions throughout California.

So I feel quite confident in
the proposal as it is today. – Thank you, okay. We've heard comments from the board, the comments from the public. – [Stephanie] Thank you caller, 2915, your microphone is unmuted. – [Becky] Good morning,
This is Becky Steinbrenner. Can you hear me? – [McPherson] Yes. – [Becky] Thank you. Good morning, I'm very
interested in this new program. I would like to know where the
new public defender's office would physically be. Would that be within
the 701 Ocean building, or would the county need to
find another satellite office possibly causing expense in
rentals or leases or whatever? I also am really amazed to see
that it will fit within this, the public defender's
office, $13 million budget. A $13 million budget is to me, staggering. But I'm very grateful that
this service is available to those who need it. I see that one full-time
position and in the future, other administrative
positions will be added.

I want to ensure that there
will be no other costs that are going to be
added on to the budget that is already in trouble. As we know, and to that end, I would also like to put in a plug that your board better fund
the County Law Library, where people can go and research things and represent themselves. That's another option. And the hours have been severely limited to only three or four
hours a day in the morning, but that is a fantastic resource and we need to fund it better.

That concludes my comments, thank you. – [McPherson] Thank you. – [Stephanie] There are no
other speakers to this item. – There are no other speaker? – [Stephanie] Oh, sorry
J. Hardin and El Bergham, also raise your hands. – [McPherson] Oh, excuse
me, you can go ahead. – [Stephanie] Okay, J. Hardin
your microphone is unmuted. – [Hardin] I'm I unmuted? – [Stephanie] Yes. – [Hardin] Thank you. I don't know if the board
heard my earlier comment. No, I am here to speak in support of the transition plan presented
to the board by the CEO. First, I believe the
board and the county owe an enormous debt of gratitude to begin Christensen amends law and the conflict firms for their service over the past 30 years. In addition, their gracious engagement with the transition
process assists us all. Particularly thanks to Ms.
Coburn and Mr. Stafford for their efforts in putting
together the transition plan.

They've taken care to
meet with stakeholders and address a number of concerns raised by the defense and other communities. I support the plan and my
additional comments really look forward to the coming year and
some issues that may come up over the course of the coming year. On page eight, the plan
notes that there is an assumption that the $13
million budget covering the contract will translate
to a county agency. I think that's going to
require a close second look.

The plan appropriately built
in time for the public defender to come on board and prepare a budget to present to the board in spring 2022. But the board should
be aware that the scope of the budget may be a significant issue. I understand that the
CAO has and will continue to explore funding from the state, grants and other sources to supplement the budget from the general fund,
and the public defender will be a significant function
of the public defender to seek supplemental
funding outside the county to reduce the cost to the general fund. However, the key figure
in any defender budget is the cost per case. The money actually spent on the clients. The greater the operating costs, the fewer funds available for client. And in order to assure the
highest quality of representation as provided by the Begum Firm, we maintained the operating
cost of the office must be known and the total proposed budget evaluated to ensure that the office
has the resources necessary to provide effective representation. At the moment, we are unsure
of the true cost per case and variables such as the office space, benefit package and conflict
terms could affect this.

– [McPherson] Thank you. We will read the complete
comments, thank you. – [Stephanie] El Bergham,
you're microphone is unmuted. Chair McPherson, callers
intending to speak. They keep raising and
lowering their hands. – [McPherson] Mr. Bergham,
would you like to speak? – [Bergham] Yeah, can you hear me now? – [McPherson] Yes.
– [Bergham] Okay. I just want to thank
Jay for the kind remarks about our officer's performance
over the past 45 years. I want to say that the communication between our office and the
CIO's office has improved, we've met with them frequently
and we'll continue to do so. I think we've done a good job. Keeping the lawyers down on the firm, so to speak and continuing working on their cases through this transition. We need to focus now on the other people, the administrative staff
and the investigative staff, because the transition has
triggered so many anxiety and job insecurity. I've addressed this
with Friend and Nicole, and we're going to work on that next. I can't lose people during this transition because it will be very difficult to backfill those positions
for obvious reasons. But we are communicating and we're trying to be as client centered as
we can through the process.

So I think all in all, at least as far as today is concerned, they've done a good job and we're working with them in a collaborative manner. Thank you. – [McPherson] Thank you. – [Stephanie] Mandy Tovare,
your microphone is available. – [Mandy] Good morning, I'm I? – [McPherson] We can hear you. – [Mandy] Can hear me, okay great. Good morning, my name is Mandy Tovare. And I am an attorney at the
Public Defender's Office. I've been at Megan Christensen
amends law for 16 years, and I just wanted to encourage the board to take a good look at our
local community opportunities.

We have a lot of very talented, diverse attorneys in our office who have worked all over the state. And we are very much interested as a group in having somebody who
knows our community, who knows our clients, who knows this county in a way that we do. We've all been very much
dedicated to this work. And we are very much like Larry said, we're a little nervous about
the transition given all the talk about possibly opening
it up to people outside of this community. So I just wanted to say
that on behalf of everyone on my office while we
understand that it's going to be a wide range of applicants. We feel like this community
has a very diverse and very talented pool to choose from. Thankyou. – [Stephanie] Thank you, chair
there are no other speakers. – Okay, I just want to say that and emphasize re-emphasize again. This is no indication that we are unhappy with the offers of Begum and Christensen who had been providing nothing
short of outstanding service as in their public defender's office.

For us this is just a time for
the public defender's office to become included in the county envelope. And so I just want to repeat. And I know every other board
member wants to say too, that the office of Begum and Christiansen for the public defender services through the years has been
nothing short of fantastic and very much appreciated. And I do really do appreciate
the cooperative effort and the open discussion that
has taken place to date. With that we do have some
recommendations to approve. There were three, I believe. I would entertain a motion to approve the
recommendations as presented. – Supervisor Koenig please go ahead. – I'll move the recommended actions. – I'll second. Okay, no other comments from the board. Please call the roll. – [Stephanie] Thank
you, Supervisor Koenig. – I. – [Stephanie] Friend. – I. – Coonerty.
– [Coonerty] I. – Caput.
– [Caput] I. – [Stephanie] McPherson. – [McPherson] I. – [Stephanie] Thank you,
motion passes unanimously. – Thank you, we'll move
to item number eight. To consider report and
presentation on a pretrial program. A number of people held in jail free trial as outlined in the Memorandum of the
Chief Probation officer, Mr. Durham. Fernando Durham, we're going to be, you're all going to be presenting.

– [Stephanie] Yes they should
be rejoining now as panelists. – [McPherson] Okay. – Thank you. Good morning, chairman McPherson,
and board of supervisors. Fernando Giraldo Chief Probation here. And with me also is Sarah Fletcher, who is our adult services
director who should be, I hope in just a moment
showing our presentation that we have for you. So wait for you to do that. This morning we'll
provide you with an update on our important pretrial
services program. And I also believe that
heart and Alex Calvore are also here in case
there are questions related to their roles in pretrial services. So thank you, Sarah.

On August 22nd, 2017, the board directed the
probation department to convene a meeting between
the Sheriff's probation and courts to develop recommendations for reducing the number of
people held in jail before trial. This has been an ongoing
issue, not just in Santa Cruz, but throughout California
and throughout the country. And we've been making many
efforts since I've been here and throughout the 2000's to
address jail overcrowding. And of course it became evermore important during this pandemic as we
wanted to create the opportunity for space in quarantining
units in the jail. So a pretrial Arjuna became probably our most important unit at
the start of the pandemic and continues to be
very busy in that time. In recent years, nearly
two thirds statewide, the county jail inmates
have been pretrial detainees in large part due to their inability to post cash bail.

Individuals of communities
of color are usually the populations that are
most negatively impacted by cash money bail. There is also a renewed effort in 2019, the sheriff convened a jail
overcrowding task force of which probation was part of. And we provide our partners
with information and education about our role in the system
with pretrial services, which we'll go into greater detail. So next slide please, Sarah. Thank you. That tutorial authority for
pretrial services program can be found in California
penal code section 1318.

While the main purpose
of pretrial programs is to ensure due process as
outlined in the 14th amendment, a robust pretrial program
can add the added benefit of assisting in jail overcrowding
again so very important. Throughout the state pretrial programs are run by a number of different agencies, including the probation departments, public defender's office,
Sheriff's and non-profits , or standalones, and very in
their targeted population. In recent years with a focus on cash bail, there have been a number of
other probation departments that have come online and created pretrial services programs. And at that we've hosted many of them throughout the last decade. We've come to learn and
observe the work that we do. Here's the mission I'm
not gonna read that, but I'll talk about what
the goal of pretrial is. It's to assess all
individuals that are booked into the county jail, utilizing
a validated risk assessment, should they not be eligible for
other release opportunities, such as cite and release, and when they're arrested
or a release from jail.

The results from the risk
assessments in conjunction with a decision decision-making
framework are utilized to inform release
recommendations to the court when possible
recommendations are also made for the court for pre
arraignment releases. Why does it matter? Why should we have a pretrial program when there is a lot of data that shows that pretrial decisions
impact whether or not a defendant gets sentenced
to jail or prison and for how long? So we know similarly situated individuals, one who remains incarcerated pretrial and one who might be released. The one who remains
incarcerated is more likely to get sentenced to jail and go and go to prison for
longer periods of time. And increased length of
pretrial detention for low and moderate risk defendants is associated with increase in likelihood
that they'll re-offend. So there is evidence that
they more are more likely to recidivate. So that experience of incarceration, removal from the community,
their support, and so on.

Pretrial supervision. And we have the evidence and
we'll show that in a second. May I reduce failure to appear rates and for done for 100 or more
days, new criminal activity. So we implemented or made renewed efforts. Actually we've had pretrial
services for some time, but back in, I believe in 2003 or 2004, in response to a Grand Jury Report, we reconvened and made renewed efforts and put some resources
into the pretrial program. So going back to 2006, we once again renewed these
efforts and it was a response to jail overcrowding, how do
we increase public safety? There has been a historical commitment in this community to avoid
unnecessary pretrial detention for juveniles and adults. And we know that many individuals in pretrial detention did not present a substantial public
safety or flight risk. So we want to know how
can we better identify those individuals without
compromising public safety. And lastly we know building a new jail or jail beds are very, very costly. Next slide please. Just a little bit on the
historical perspective and some of the shares we made, and the instruments that we used.

The validated risk assessment instrument, as well as the increase in the
number of individuals served on a daily basis at pretrial and the amount of work it's
demands from our staff. So in 2006, we implemented the pretrial unit program
as I said earlier. And we were at first using the Virginia Pretrial Risk
Assessment Instrument. In 13, we had consultants come and work with our department
and also the courts as we really looked at
new ways and perhaps a new tool that would allow us to increase safely increased
pretrial inmates held in pretrial by using a different tool that required less of an interview type, but relied more on
indicators, nine indicators that really were valid
predictors of risks. So removing all of the
length of time it took to interview clients really helped us increase the assessments. As you see there from 500 in 2006, to just less than 10 years later, we were doing 2000 risk
assessments increasing the population to the 40's and 60's until where we are today. We're in 2020, we did 1500 assessments and have an average
daily population of 176.

Now you'll see that the number
of assessments decreased and that has a lot to
do with the zero bail and other things that were put into place. So you know, the system
that we work in today, and as a result of COVID looks a lot different than it has historically because of certain things
that were put in place to keep individuals safe,
our staff safe and the jails, and of course inmates safe. Next slide please. Just want to talk about
our staffing levels. So in 2006, we had five probation officers in a unit supervisor and one support staff in pretrial services, 2009, during that most recent economic crisis or preceding the current one, we lost a probation officer
due to budget reductions.

We were back before the board and we were approved two additional probation officer's staff. But essentially, currently
we basically remain the same. We have the same number of
staff as we did in 2006, when we had a daily
population of 40 individuals. Where today and pretrial, we
have about 180 individuals. So currently we have five
deputy probation officers, two probation aides, and one support staff that are operating a seven
day a week operation. And of course, really too, we believe that we could
probably release safely, released more people if we actually had a better coverage and
actually longer shifts that we could do work different hours to provide quicker releases. Next slide please. So Sarah Fletcher will now go
into a little bit more detail about how pretrial program
works and release types. Take it away, Sarah. – [Sarah] Good morning. I apologize in advance for how I sound. I've been a bit under the weather so I will do my best to get through this. When we are, when we talk about
looking at pretrial release, we're really looking at about
four different release types.

In addition to of course, cash money bail. There are a couple of release types that are pretrial program. If your probation is not involved with, and that is an individual's
promise to appear on their own work cognizance or conditions released with conditions. And then the, those are for
the lowest level individuals. And then we have two levels
of monitoring supervised OR, and intensive supervised OR that our department is involved with.

And this can include use of
different electronic devices as well, such as alcohol
detection devices and GPS. The main difference between
our supervised release and our intensive supervised released is that the intensive
supervised release includes a type of home confinement. Some may refer to it as a house arrest where individuals schedules
and restrictions are, schedules and movements
are more restricted. And when we look at pretrial monitoring, it is different than
probation supervision. In that our goal with pretrial
is to best support appearance in court and to remain crime
free until a case resolution versus our post-conviction
supervision case management which is focusing on longer
term behavior change. Now with both of course, we want to really stay away
from a blanket conditions across all individuals. We want to look for court reminders, excuse me (clears throat). We want to look for ways
to support appearance and remaining crime-free
which include court reminders, and we track the data for
cases that we override for release or detention recommendations. I don't want to go too
far into the wings here, but I wanted to provide a visual.

Here it's a very basic
visual of our system to really understand
the layers of complexity and the importance of collaboration and the many opportunities
for reviewing cases at the pretrial stage. At the top left you'll
see the box outlined in blue is really the beginning, the arrest or citation stage. And for individuals who may be cited and released eventually
will appear in court. But for individuals that go
downward and get booked in jail, they have the opportunity
to post cash bail, or they may have the
opportunity to be screened by the Sheriff's Correction Staff and released with a promise to appear for those offenses that are appropriate based on statute. And for those cases that have
not provided an opportunity to release at that point, they will be screened by pretrial staff.

And during that process our staff reviews an individual's criminal history, as well as a variety of other systems such as the court system, our probation case management system, and the jail system to look at the full picture of the individual. And we provide a report to the
court either at arraignment for release decision or when possible at the prearrangement stage. For many years our justice system partners have been working together to adjust jail overcrowding
and pretrial detention. Probation has worked with
the Sheriff's corrections and the courts closely. And initially our focus was on the looking for excuse me, I'm just, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to mute for just a moment. I apologize, I'm trying not to cough in everyone's ear or so. During our collaboration, initially our focus was on
the misdemeanor population. Who often score higher on
their risk to re-offend or fail to appear.

However it's often largely due to their substance use disorder. And there are often no
recent crimes of violence. During the pretrial release, we also tried to engage
individuals in voluntary services through the probation service
center when appropriate. During 2020, our
collaborative efforts expanded to include creative solutions for those individuals
pending lower level felony, offenses yet without immediate or significant public safety concerns. The image before you depicts
and nearly 184% increase for the number of individuals monitored by the pretrial unit during
the last four years alone. In January of 2019, the
pretrial unit implemented a new case management
module as new technology, not only provided a direct link to our supervision case management system, but it afforded an opportunity
to share information with our law enforcement
partners and dispatch services in ways that we had not
been able to do before.

Added benefits included the addition of an automated phone reporting option to enhance direct staff communication, as well as automated reminders for court and other activities. For the health and safety
of individuals incarcerated as well as County staff
and the jail capacity was significantly reduced
during the pandemic to allow for quarantine
and containment units, creating spaces for various screenings and telehealth appointments
and virtual attorney visits. The court process was
significantly impacted as well, such as staggered or reduced calendars and limited physical
appearances and transports. In March, 2020, the court went live with their new text reminder system to assist in notifications as we all navigated the ongoing changes, The Judicial Council of California
took steps in early 2020 to implement an emergency bail schedule, which significantly reduced the number of individuals requiring cash
bail to secure their release.

Even after the statewide
order was recalled, many jurisdictions including
Santa Cruz County continued to function under similar orders. New opportunities and considerations in light of public health guidelines led to unprecedented efforts to mitigate risks upon release rather than utilizing detention. Saving vital jail bed
space for the most serious and violent crimes. Emergency housing and
hotel voucher programs through the County
Utilizing Cares Act Funding, and through the probation
department have also been utilized to reduce the jail sentences. Providing short-term stability to support court appearance
and service engagement. Leveraging technology
and creative solutions has been key for all partners. The implementation of virtual
solutions did take some time and aging facilities has presented some logistical challenges. We look forward to exploring whether that by leveraging new technologies, we continue to see sustained improvements. As we have observed the overall decision to expand release
opportunities has not resulted in a significant risk to public safety. – [Fernando] And Sarah, I can
take on the next few slides to give you a little bit of a break here.

– [Sarah] Okay, I apologize (coughs). – [Fernando] I tried to
before and I was muted. So I'll do the next slide, go ahead. I want to talk about pretrial
outcomes, data and outcomes, which is key to this
program to and important to the community as well as
individuals are released to may have been incarcerated in the past. But it's key to know that
very few of the individuals that are in pretrial supervision, even as our numbers
have increased re-offend that it's committed new offenses and the majority of them do make it to their court appearance. That's those are the two public
safety measures of pretrial, re-offending while they are
on pretrial service services and making it to court. In 2020, our staff completed 1,550 Public Safety Assessments. That's the tool that we use
locally known as the PSA.

And again, it was down
considerably from previous years, but that has a lot to do
with the emergency zero bail. A lot of people weren't
even brought to the jail. We weren't booked into the jail. So there were fewer cases
and many were eligible just to be released because there was no bail associated
with their charges. The nearly 500 individuals
whose pretrial case was closed in 2020, approximately half completed
all requirements successfully. One quarter were close
to technical violations. That's not new offenses, but
that's failure to appear, failure to report as directed, or failure to comply with
the electronic monitoring.

The failure to appear accounted
for 15% of the closures, but that's or 76 individuals we had and 55 or 10 to 11% of the individuals, their case was closed due
to new criminal activity. So 10% of the individuals
committed a new criminal activity. We've done deeper dives
into analyzing that. And those are crimes generally
are misdemeanor crimes. A crime is a crime. But they are tend to be misdemeanor or substance use disorder type
related related activities. Those are the usually
what folks we offend for. I'll show you the next, some of the trends that we see in data.

These are seven year trends. And really we haven't seen any spikes as we've expanded release opportunities. So we have, we establish
a goal in the industry, pretrial industry of for
instance, safety rate, which is the rate of which
individuals reoffend. Obviously the goal stair
would be no one reoffense, but our goal has been a 95% safety rate. We've gotten close in
2020, we were 90% close. So that's 10% of the individuals
had new criminal activity, but consistently the
numbers have been high and we will continue to work towards that 95% or better goal. Next slide please, Sarah. Appearance rate, that's
very, very critical. That means that defendants do
make their court appearances when they are released
on pretrial supervision. Our goal is 85% appearance rate. And in 2020 as you can
see we met that goal. Even as numbers increased,
even with the same number of staff without increasing our staff. So again, I want to give a big shout out to the staff in the pretrial unit who are, they actually have an office next to mine, and they're then the busiest unit, since COVID started with
individuals coming here to get help assistance putting on their electronic monitoring equipment, recharging their batteries,
taking phone calls, and getting in and out of the jail to expedite those releases.

So I just want to thank my pretrial unit. Next slide please. So there's some new
opportunities we've seen in the last couple of years. One of the biggest has been
our probation service center, which is here at 303 Water Street. Being able to use that for
individuals who are amenable to maybe enhanced services or assistance during that pretrial period, which is monitoring, not supervision, but offering them some opportunities to start engaging in substance
use disorder programs, classes, such as anger management, employment programs and so on. Our Prop 47 the CAFES Program, which is a Coordinated Access for
Effective Treatment Program has allowed for some expanded services. And we could not, we would not be true
to the commitment here at probation of continuous
quality improvement. If we didn't evaluate our work and we are actually doing
a couple of studies. One, we were about to
begin as a pretrial study to determine how our
pretrial programming works, how our supervision actually is impactful. And ultimately we're
also looking for ways, could we in fact, safely
release more individuals? And presently, we are also doing a probation revocation
challenge that's funded by the Arnold Ventures.

And we're looking at the
rate at which individuals on probation are reincarcerated
for technical violations or may in fact be sent to
prison and looking for ways to improve in that area. That's an area of
concern across California and across the country. And a lot of individuals are, we know probation supposed to be an opportunity to avoid going to prison and it shouldn't be a net wider. So we're making serious
efforts to look at that data and see what we're doing. Next slide, please. So if you remember Bail
Reform in Senate Bill 10, which was Bail Reform was signed
by governor Brown in 2018, and that would have eliminated cash bail, which some states have in fact done, some jurisdictions have done. And that's largely related to really individuals actually
only sitting in custody because they can't afford to post bail. And this could be for low-level
offenses and very costly.

And of course sitting in custody, we there's many stories of people who've lost their
employment, lost housing, lost custody of their children and so on. So cash bail has had harmful impacts. Proposition 25, the bail
industry actually probably I think it has access
to billions of dollars. They were able to get enough signatures to put Proposition 25 on
the ballot in last November which the voters actually ultimately did not approve SB 10 implementation. So cash bail still remains as
a result of Proposition 25. Since then, though new
bills have been introduced. And an example here as SB Senate Bill 262, which was just introduced in January, it would maintain a
statewide zero bail scheduled for many lower level offenses. And there's always exceptions
to those violent felonies, domestic violence, sex
offenders, and DUIs as well. So there is a, and I've been in conversation
with some of the individuals, Senator Hertzberg that put together the original SB 10 implementation bills. And there's a lot of
talk at the state level to see what other things
legislatively could be done to really make this more an
inequitable and just system for individuals who are
arrested in pretrial detention.

Next slide, Sarah. That may be it. So that concludes our presentation. And so now I have time for questions. – Thank you, thank you for this effort. It's really helpful to
understand in greater detail how the program works and
how success is measured. And as we worked through
the stages of the pandemic, I'd like to ask a couple questions about how we define success. I know we've had some, you know, bail on again, off again an issue. But I'm interested in
knowing if we anticipate our pretrial case load
staying as high as it has as we hopefully exit the worst of COVID. No, not go ahead. – Sure we've, it's remained
relatively stable at around 180.

There's been occasions where
we've seen an access 200, but I believe that the
numbers will stay the same. We saw an increase as the
state began exploring SB 10, and there was talk about
elimination of cash bail. It seems like that you shine a light on an issue people paid attention
and we suddenly saw a spike. An increases in our pretrial release is actually even more so than before. But recently we we've seen the average be around 170 to 180 individuals on that.

So Sarah, unless you have any other ideas about what that may look
like or projections. – Well, I would anticipate that we would likely not see our numbers go down anytime soon given the delays in the court processing, hopefully as we move out
of our pandemic times, and more cases can be
processed through the court and calendars are run more efficiently.

I know they've been, the court has been working very, very hard to be as efficient as
possible to resolve cases and move things forward. But it is difficult when
we're limited by capacity. And so I would anticipate
that we could see a reduction over time as
those cases get resolved, but we haven't seen any indicators yet that the numbers are going down. – Than you. Any other questions from the board? – Chair. – [McPherson] Yes, Supervisor Koenig. – Tank you chair and
thank you Officer Geraldo, and Ms. Fletcher for
the enlightening report. I mean, it's pretty shocking
that nearly two thirds or three times more in our
jail population are pretrial. And the report really highlights
some of the great work that you're doing. Just one question, which
is on the appearance rates. And I saw that in 2016 to 2017, it dropped from 88.2% to 79%, pretty significant nearly 10 points there. We've recovered a little bit up to 85%, which I know is the goal in 2020. I'm just wondering, first of all, what accounted for that drop back up between 16,17 and whether
2020 is an anomaly or we've actually taken
some action to improve that? – Well, when we first implemented the PSA court assessment, we mentioned that there's
a decision making framework that goes along with that.

We have an assessment tool
that gives us a score. And then we have a
decision-making framework that helps us balance
that risk management. And when we first implemented the process, we had a more conservative
decision making framework, which was in line with other
areas across the country. We were more in the middle, but we weren't the most conservative. We weren't the most liberal
decision-making framework.

But over time when we saw
such high success rates, and such low reoffense
rates and particularly, low reoffense rates with violence, that indicated to us that we
could release more people. We really don't need to
hold people in custody. If there's such a small
population that is creating a public safety concern. And so we looked for ways
to open that up more, and that's what we've done
working with the courts and our partners is
getting that confidence in the pretrial monitoring
so that we could open up the opportunity for pretrial
release to more individuals. And so we did anticipate that we would see a decline in appearance particularly with our populations who I
think I mentioned earlier, they may risk high as
far as risk to reoffend and fail to appear.

But a lot of it is due to
their substance use disorder. And homelessness is a
big challenge as well. But we have implemented some
additional measures such as we've tried to shorten the duration between their release
and court appearance, implementing the court in text reminders, both in our system and
the court implemented their own text reminder system. So we're looking for creative solutions for individuals to get
those dental nudges, to appear just like we all, I think appear at our dentist appointments because we get those texts reminders and our doctor's appointments
we get those reminders. And so we wanted to take that
success from other avenues and look to improve this, the criminal justice system outcomes. – And quite frankly given
the, just the increase in our caseload sizes, we are impressed with the success. 'Cause as those numbers continue to climb, we kept looking at FTA
and new criminal activity, and we're a bit concerned. But however, we shouldn't be surprised that given the level of monitoring their staff can provide to that.

So they maintain well and
will consistently work to maintain that at or above our goal. Thank you for the question. – Thank you. Yeah, that's
really great to hear that those results are from a process of continuous improvement. So thank you, – Mr. Chair you're on mute. – Thank you we have a
scheduled item for 10 45, but we're going to
complete discussion on this and then go immediately
to that schedule item on the Zoom Board. Zoom Five Board of Directors Meeting. Mr. Friend do you have a comment? – I have, I have a couple brief questions.

Thank you, cheers for Ms. Fletcher. I apologize Ms. Fletcher,
you're not feeling well, but thank you for your
dedication to this presentation. This, I didn't see this information in either the visual report
or the agenda report, but please forgive me if I was mistaken. You had mentioned chief, I think in the agenda report
about the quarterly meetings with judiciary and concurrence. Is there a percentage of concurrence? Do we have a sense of where the courts are in regards to the percentage
of agreement they are with the pretrial decisions that are made? – Yes. We have been tracking that
the 2020 was an anomaly given that everything was turned upside down. And so it's right now. And I think Sarah has
some of that information. I don't have it before me,
what the concurrence rate. Our goal overall has been
75% concurrence rate overall. And, but Sarah, could
you, do you have that the rates right there, what it was?
– [Sarah] Yes. – But again, just to caution that 2020 is like comparing apples
and oranges to before, because everything is just so different.

– Yes, we do. We saw an overall concurrence
rate of about 60%, with concurrence with release
recommendations at about 48%, and concurrence with detention
recommendations at 75%. – Okay, that's for 2020. But so, I mean, do we have
a sort of a rolling average over the last, I assume
you've been tracking it the same way you've been
tracking the recidivism rates. So is there you have a goal of 75, but are we meeting that or is
it generally lower than that? – It has generally been lower.

I think our highest year
might've been close to 70%, but we've not hit the goal
of 75% with concurrence. So when the-
– Okay. I mean, you center having
these quarterly meetings are they providing feedback as to what the general rationale is? – Well, 2020, we have not
had significant meetings like the Jail Crowding Task Force. Really since COVID we had our, the committee that was
convened by our sheriff in 2019 sort of, kind of, I
wouldn't say abruptly ended, but COVID came right after that. And so we haven't had
discussions other than how could we really just safely release as many people as we can. And how do we bring in
more troops into pretrial to expedite those releases? And, so that's sort of in the focus really is releasing as many more people. And a lot of those releases have been outside of the framework of
the pretrial assessment tool. So again, I think that's
what I'm going back to the data for we're for
right now for 2021 is a little, and 2020s is little unique.

But we'll keep tracking that and keep working with our partners. – I think it's also important
to consider that over time, we have legislative changes
in how those impact the, our processes and cases. And we also provide information at the earliest stage possible when someone comes into custody. And by the time someone appears in court, there's often additional information that is a consideration
for release or detention, particularly where there may
be person victims related to that particular offense.

And so this, our release
recommendation is made at the earliest stage. And we know that it's not, it's very complex as far as
new information coming in from the DA's office
and the defense attorney by the time the individual gets to court. So there, because there
are opportunities also some of our pretrial population, they even if they haven't
been released at arraignment, which is our goal if it's safely possible. Sometimes later on down the road during the adjudication process,
if more information comes to light that we can
mitigate the risk of release, then some individuals are
released on pretrial monitoring during their period of the processing of the case even if it
didn't happen at arraignment.

So it's very complex situation that concurrence doesn't really articulate all of those layers. – Okay. Now I understand that
complexity but I mean it also, I suppose that presents the risk of the early assessment tool in general. So my final question, and
again, if this was covered, I mean, but I don't think it was. Which is, do we have an
actual number of those that are in pretrial detention and the average length
of their an essence stay before a case is adjudicated? – We don't have that at the
moment, that information. Unless I'm incorrect Sarah,
I know we don't have that. And I've had a little
some challenges accessing that information.

– Okay, I mean I don't know. Obviously we can, I don't know that there's
anything we can particularly do to help that along but it would, I think it would be useful information because I can see the
number of assessments. I can see the amount of recidivism, but if I've got somebody sitting in there for three years or five years, I mean, that's also an issue right? On a pretrial detention scenario and how many people they
are sort of like the state. I think those would be useful information. Thank you, chair. – Welcome, any other
comments from the board? – Yeah, just very quickly. First, I want to say, I want to congratulate you on good work. We're obviously in a, we're
in a changing environment, pre-COVID and then COVID accelerated, ruined and chaosed many things. And I think your team
has responded very well and done their best to
continue to hit the metrics.

It's frustrating that
the state through these, some of these reforms just move increased your case loads significantly but hasn't increased the resources to provide the kind of oversight that I think the community would expect and that you all need for success. And so it's a it's a
frustrating situation, but given your limited resources, I think you've done a good job. A couple quick questions. When you say people reoffend and it's primarily drug-related offenses, does that mean that they're reoffending by violating maybe terms
probation on their drug tests? Or does that mean that they're engaging in offenses that are normally
correlated to drug crimes? – So the technical violations
would be considered where we've found out that for instance, around alcohol monitor,
or they, we do a UA test. That's the technical violation side which may not be necessarily
a new criminal charge. The criminal activity that
we're reporting out is actually when they are a new criminal activity.

So it's an arrest or a site for being under the influence
or being in possession or something like that. – Something like that but it's not like they were stealing bikes
to pay for a drug habit that you wouldn't consider
that a drug related crime. – We also have, we
don't have it for today, but we can get it. We do have statistics and I
think we've shown it before for what a breakdown of what
that 10% of what it was.

And it is a combination we've
seen substance use disorder and property crimes, you know,
misdemeanor property crimes, just as you say, someone doing, you know, stealing a bike for take
to get their fix basically. – It'd be great if you could just- – [Fernando] Yeah. – Move over those when you get a chance. – Thank you yeah. It's always a little bit labor-intensive, but we do have that. And it's important for
us to know, you know, what kind of crimes that are occurring? So we can get that.
– Okay.

And two other questions. One is, it said of the
nearly 500 individuals, his pretrial cases were closed in 2020, nearly half completed all the
requirements successfully. Okay, then it goes on to
say 85% appear for court. And on and on and on. So what's the half the half that are not meeting the requirements. What are those requirements
that they're not meeting. – That's a great question. And I know that charts can be misleading because there are two primary
public safety measures are reoffending new criminal
activity which is at 10%. And then the FTA rate, failure
to appear rate, which is 15%. However, when we look
at the whole population, there are individuals who actually do not come
successfully complete pretrial and maybe remanded back into custody for technical violations.

So not that they didn't make it to court, and it's not that they
committed a new offense, but they had, they were out of range. They cut their monitor off,
which does happen on occasion. They had a positive UA. So those are technical violations, which our response has to
be a public safety response. It's not that they're always on the first violation brought in, but we do have cases where
they have to stay away from victims and we discover that they're in close
proximity, recalling, those would be technical violations. And we would generally
bring those individuals back in the custody.

That is that 50% population. Sarah, did I explain that right? – Yeah, we were looking
those statistics are based on when we've closed out cases
over the course of the year, as a case is closed out. We look at it as
successful or unsuccessful. And if it sounds successful, what are those types of what's
leading to those challenges? And that's where the unsuccessful clients, that's the breakdown of. We've seen improvements
in our appearance rate, but we have seen some increase
in technical violations.

Although, you know, we
do work with individuals on a case-by-case basis
and we contact the judge and sometimes there's
a technical violation and we continue to work
with that individual. And other times, if there's a significant
public safety risk, then that individual be
brought back into custody. And there are also times where
someone may be brought back into custody and then if their
case continues for a while, they may be released again at some point, if they do not present a
safety risk down the road, – These are generally not
person to person type crimes where the individuals themselves are harming themselves
when it's around drug use, those of things. But those that 50% doesn't
involve an assault, or theft or those types
of things, necessarily.

If we don't react or respond
appropriately it could. But yeah. – Yeah, I mean I think that's to me if you sort of a much more open to that, because maybe a technical
violation prevents, gets people back aligned
with services or treatment or whatever and then
you avoid the broader, a more impactful issue where it's hurting somebody else as well. So I guess that that's good, 'cause it makes me less concerned. Finally my last question was, it looked like we had a dip in 2019 in both the safety rate
and the appearance rate. And then I understand what you're saying about 2020 being apples and oranges. But I guess I'm wondering
when we moved back to normal, it's that dip in 2019 a
result of under-staffing and a challenging changing nature, or is that just an anomaly? And we're going to bounce back to sort of the 2017, 2018 rates? – Well, we've had discussions around, that without going into like
really in-depth research. But sometimes we also consider that the individuals we've been a little more flexible
loosen the parameters around who is released.

As we said, if you have too much success in your instrument tool, then they would say, "You know what? These are all, there's
always a risk involved in the criminal justice system." So I think part of that,
might've been loosening up our decision-making framework and releasing a few folks that weren't in terms of public safety, like
gonna assault, arm somebody. But we're those types that
the chronic recidivist, the folks that are coming
in and out of our doors, mental health, struggling
with mental health and substance use disorder. And those are a lot of those folks that reoffended on that we release were in the past perhaps they
would've stayed in custody, but they were released
and quickly reoffended. And Sarah, if you can confirm or add to that, that'd be great. – Okay, I think looking
forward, we've learned a lot.

We actually learn more
from failure than success in a lot of ways when we have to. But success, as you said we're likely holding too many people. And so by looking at the challenges for those that are not successful, we've been able to
implement new technology. We've been able to, with
the Prop 47 CAFES grant, we've been able to work with
the district attorney's office and community partners to
increase diversion opportunities and enhance services across the community and training for our partners. And so I think when we look forward, we will not necessarily be able to compare the future years
exactly to prior years because we're taking lessons
from the challenge areas and implementing new strategies. So hopefully those new strategies
that we're implementing, we'll actually see some greater
success and outcomes for- – I think something else that I forgot to add around these rates is that we are as more and more people
with zero bail put in place. So lots of folks are that
perhaps would've come to pretrial that were lower risk and maybe
had higher success rates.

They're not, we're not seeing that. We're seeing generally more and more individuals that are you
know, have a higher risk to reoffend because I
guess skimmed off the top because of all the
changes that are happening and folks aren't even
being booked in many cases for certain types of crimes. We are getting more challenging cases so that's kind of the, our
sharp talk in trying to analyze what led to
that little decrease and those are the things we think are playing a role in that. – Right, and I appreciate. I think it's good to experiment,
and it's good to learn and iterate and adjust you
know, I think we'd like to see that 95% hit. And so it's a balancing act
I understand for you all, but I just was curious. Thank you all. – [Fernando] Thank you. – Supervisor Caput do
you have any comments? Thank you.

– You know what? Fernando you've answered all my questions with the other board members. I just want to tell you that
you're doing a great job. Appreciate everything you're doing. I just want to make sure I
tell you that, thank you. – Well, thank you. And I will be sure to
share that with my staff, because they're the ones
out there every single day throughout COVID we
never closed their doors and I've been very busy. So I appreciate that the recognition, but that goes to my staff. Thank you. – I agree with you without a good staff. We'd all look pretty poor. So you're right your staff
makes you look real good. Thanks. – Yeah, and it be commanded
the efficiency too of the staff to what you
still have and maintain, and the increased workload and so forth, and getting now these,
implementing these new directions, they're on again, off, again, some of them from the state but very well done.

Doing it quickly and tried to do it as understandably under the same
context or the same criteria. So thank you very much. Are there any questions from the public? – I have no speakers, from the public for this item. – Okay, very good. So we will consider the, I don't think we need any motion on this. We just really appreciate the report. And now we will move on to- – Supervisor MacPherson,
we do need a motion. – For which aspect of that? Just to accept the report? – That's right, accept
and file the report. – Okay.
– [Koenig] Or move the recommended action.
– Okay, I have a motion to consider there,
except the report.

Okay? Please call the roll. – Right, and who is the second? – [Koenig] I'll second. – Thank you, Supervisor Koenig? – I. – [Stephanie] Friend? – [Friend] I. – Coonerty? – [Coonerty] I. – Caput? – I. – [Stephanie] McPherson? – [McPherson] I. – Thank you, motion passes unanimously. – Thank you, (indistinct)
passed unanimously. We will now go to the
scheduled item at 1045. It's number 14 on our agenda, the Zone Five Board of
Directors Regular Meeting.

Supervisor Friend would you, who would be taking this. The board, we're going to
recess in order to permit the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation
District, Zone Five to convene and carry out
regularly scheduled meeting. The Zone Five agenda of March
23rd, 2021 is on the agenda. – Yeah chair, McPherson
Zone Five is actually run by the chair of the board of supervisors.

And since we haven't actually
selected a new chair, technically that would
mean that supervisor Caput is still the chair of Zone Five. Unless we move item seven
up to make a decision on the chairperson and vice chairperson as our first item of business. But actually Supervisor
Caput is technically the chair of Zone Five until- – Thank you for that clarification. – [Friend] Sure. – I was wondering at that
Zone Seven, Zone Five, whatever, okay. Mr. Caput, do you have the agenda? – [Greg] No, everything's fine. I don't believe I'm the Zone Five- – Technically you're not. – I guess-
– [Greg] Yeah. – Maybe I should ask the council. Should we elect a chair, which would be the existing chair of the board of supervisors I presume? And I don't have the agenda
in front of me as well. – Yes, Chairman McPherson. I believe you could take item seven first, which is the regular agenda. Item seven is the board of directors to consider election of the chairperson and vice chairperson of the
zone five board for 2021.

And it would recommend
that the current chair of the board serve as
the chair of Zone Five. 'cause I believe you could do that. – Mr. Chair, what I would
recommend is that we just do a call to order in a
roll call on this item. Once we complete the roll call, I believe we can move on to moving item seven up as
the first item of business, then you'll become the
official chair to the item. – Okay. We will do so, we will call that, to item seven? When you're referring to item seven. – So item one on this agenda is a call to order and the roll call. So we can. – We'll call the Zone
Board of Directors Meeting of March 23rd, 2021 to order. And then please call the roll. – Thank you, director Koenig? – Here. – [Stephanie] Friend? – [Friend] Here. – Conerty? – [Coonerty] Here. – Caput? – [Caput] I, here.

– [Stephanie] McPherson?
– [McPherson] Here. – Chair, directors Jass and
Boyfriend are not on the call. – Okay, so now we will, can
we move to elect a chair. That would be needed at this point. – So yes, Mr. Well, Mr. Chair, the item seven, which I believe we will move up to the beginning of the agenda. This is the board of
directors for Zone Five to consider the election of a chairperson and vice chairperson
of the Zone Five Board for 2021 as outlined in the Memo of the District Engineer.

We've traditionally just
had the chair of the board and vice chair of the board. Obviously we can move to
public comment after this item, but I would then nominate chair
McPherson to be the chair. And vice chair Koenig to
be the vice chairperson of the Zone Five Board for 2021. – [Caput] Second. – We've got motion is second. Is there any public comment? – There is no public
comment for this item. – Okay, then I will move,
call the roll please. – Thank you, director Koenig? – [Koenig] I. – Friend? – I.
[Stephanie] Coonerty? – [Coonerty] I.
– [Stephanie] Caput? – [Caput] I.
– [Stephanie] McPherson? – [McPherson] I. – Thank you, motion passes unanimously. – [McPherson] Okay. – And Chair McPherson, are you still without the agenda? – Yes, I am. – Okay, that's okay. I think Madam Clerk if it's okay, then I'll just read some of the
items on behalf of the chair and then the chair can
actually direct the motions as they see fit. The second item on the agenda
is to consider any additions or deletions that consent
on regular agendas.

Are there any items from staff on that? – There are no items on this. – Okay, so Mr. Chair, the next
item is oral communications. If you wouldn't mind calling
for oral communication. – Are there any oral communications on for schedule item number 14? With the Zone Five Board of Directors, any public comment? – There are no speakers to this item. – [McPherson] Okay. – All right Mr. Chair, the following is the approval of the minutes. – A motion to approve the minutes? – [Caput] Samuel Coonerty.

– I'll second the minutes, assuming there's no public
comment on the item. – There's no public comment
on the site of either. – Okay, call the roll, please. – Thank you, director Koenig? – I.
– [Stephanie] Friend? – [Friend] I.
– Coonerty? – [Coonerty] I.
– Caput? – I.
– [Stephanie] McPherson? – [McPherson] I. – Thank you, motion passes. – And the final item since we
took the regular agenda item, as the first item of the agenda
is just simply item five, which is the action on the consent agenda. And there's one item
on the consent agenda. Mr. Chair if you would
direct the consent agenda for comments and emotion. – Okay, are there any
comments from the board? Zone Five Board? Any comments from the public? – There are no comments from the public. – [Koenig] I'll move approval. – [Caput] Second. – Moved and seconded, please call. – Thank you. Director Koenig? – [Koenig] I.
– Friend? – I.
– [Stephanie] Coonerty? – [Coonerty] I.
– [Stephanie] Caput? – I.
– [Stephanie] McPherson? – [McPherson] I.

– Thank you, motion
passes with attendance. – Okay, motion passes unanimously. Then I will say that there's
no other items on the agenda. We'll adjourn the meeting of the Zone Five Board of Directors. We will go back to item number nine on the regular agenda of
the board of supervisors. A public hearing to consider the 2020 general plan annual report. Accept and file two related annual reports and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of
the planning director.

We have the general plan, the 2020 General Plan Annual Report. And the 2021 Housing Successor
Agency Annual Report. Is our Planning director, Ms. Malloy, is she going to be presenting? – I have met Tisha Williams
and Suzanne Ise on the line. – Okay. We're just waiting. Maybe they need to be notified. – They have been promoted. Let's see. – This is Suzanne Williams, right? And Netisha? – Yes, Netisha Williams.

– [Suzanne] Good morning board? I believe Netasha is going
to start our presentation. Netisha, are you there? Okay. Yes, can you hear me now? – [Netisha] Yes.
(voice echoing) – If you can please mute
one of your devices. – [Netisha] All right, is this one okay? – Yes we hear you now. – [Netisha] Okay, and
I believe I'm supposed to share my screen but I
don't actually know how to, Oh, there we go, share screen.

There we go. Okay, can you see the presentation? – [Friend] Yes, we see it. – [Netisha] Great, okay. Good morning supervisors? My name is Netisha
Williams and I'm here today to present the 2020
General Plan Annual Report. And I'm here with Suzanne
Isa who will be discussing the Housing Successor
Agency Annual Report later in the presentation. So first we're going to take a look at the General Plan Annual Report. State law and county code
require that each year we prepare a general plan and report and a housing element annual
progress report or APR , for public hearing and review
by the planning commission and the board of supervisors.

This report is submitted
by April 1st of each year to the governor's office
of planning research and the state department of housing and community development. The General Plan Annual
Report summarizes the number and status of general plan
amendments processed in 2020. The status of major programs
and the general plans such as commercial agricultural land, classification reviews,
proxy acquisitions, and changes to the urban services line. And it also reviews potential
future general plan, amendments and updates. It also includes the housing
element annual progress report, which presents data and information
on the county's progress and meeting our regional, our share of regional housing needs as well as housing element programs that are all presented using
spreadsheets formed by the HCD.

So flipping at next slide. Okay, the board approved
three general plan amendments in 2020, related to the
second part of updates to safety and hazard protection policies, including updated air quality policies and addressing climate change, hazards and environmental justice. It also approved the
permanent room housing, combining district, including
modifications proposed by the coastal commission as well as the public facility, school employee and
farmworker housing amendments facilitating a variety of
workforce housing projects. General plan amendments that are currently in progress include the
sustainability policy and regulatory update. Which includes revisions
to several elements of the general plan and code modernization that will incorporate
sustainability principles articulated in the vision of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. Also in process is the medical
office building proposed on Soquel Avenue in Live Oak, which requires a general
plan amendment and a rezone to allow professional and
administrative office uses. This project is currently
in this project is currently an environmental review. Okay. The housing element
progress report is included in the general plan annual report. This section summarizes
applications and permits for new housing units in 2020, and data tables provided by the state.

In your packet, we've included… Sorry about that. in your packet we've included table B, table D and summary tables, and the original forms provided by HCD. overall progress and meeting our regional housing
needs allocation or RHNA, is summarized in table B. 142 housing units were issued
building permits in 2020 and applied towards RHNA. Information on the status
and progress of housing on their programs and policy
implementation intended to meet our housing goals
is summarized in table D. And the summary tables provided include applications received
during the calendar year 2020. The county received, excuse me. The county received 84
housing applications, proposing a total of 106 units. Approximately 85% of the
applications were still in process at the end of 2020 and are expected to be approved in 2021 or have already been approved in the first months of this year. Some of the state reporting forms are not included as
attachments to this report, but will be submitted to HCD and OPR. This includes table A, which includes the housing development
applications submitted in 2020. And table A too, which includes all housing
permits approved in 2020. These tables are very
detailed and very large, so they're difficult to reproduce as attachments to the report.

But some of the information
is provided here in table B as well as the summary tables. So we're going to get a
closer look at table B. Table B places the 142 new housing units into affordability
categories that demonstrate the county's progress and meeting the allocated share of
regional housing need. Under California law, all
local governments are required to adequately plan to
meet the housing needs of everyone in the community.

A housing element must
ensure that land is zoned and available to accommodate our share of the projected regional housing need. And by (indistinct)
the RHNA for this area. And the current RHNA plan
for the Monterey Bay region was adopted in June of 2014. It allocates a goal of
1,314 new housing units to the unincorporated area of the county for the nine year planning period starting in January 1st, 2014 and
ending December 31st, 2023. These units are distributed between four and (indistinct) categories. Very low, low, moderate,
and above moderate income. Santa Cruz County
completed its seventh year of the current RHNA cycle and 2020.

Within the first seven years of this nine-year planning period, the county has permitted a
total of 645 housing units. These units were issued at the following affordability levels. 72, very low. 85, low. 250, moderate. And 238 above moderate income. A total of 679 units
remain for this RHNA cycle. I showed in this table the 142 new units that applied towards our
RHNA cycle for the year 2020. We nearly double the number
of units from the year before. 64 of these units are just under half of all the units counted
towards RHNA for this past year. Were PRH units. So we're going to take a
closer look at these PRH units. In 2020, the county approved
the PRH combining district to recognize the conversion of obsolete visitor accommodations to housing units that are
considered affordable by design.

Meaning that due to their small size, lower than average friends, they may generally be
charged at a lower rate. Oh, sorry, lower than average rents may generally be charged. Usually jurisdictions count
new issue building permits towards meeting the RHNA, but jurisdictions may also
count adaptive reuse units towards RHNA. Which are units that are now
considered housing units, but were not previously
considered housing units when they were first constructed. PRH units are therefore recorded in the housing element APR as new
adaptive reuse housing units and apply towards RHNA progress. Towards our progress in meeting the regional housing needs allocation. The table shown details. Eight PRH progress
projects approved in 2020 . Of the 64 total units created, 61 are estimated to be affordable, ranging from very low to moderate income affordability levels. As you can see the periods
units approved last year have made a substantial contribution towards the county's RHNA.

And with that I believe we're moving on to Suzanne's portion of the presentation. – [Suzanne] Thank you Netisha. Good morning chair and board? So some of you may be
familiar with this report from prior years. This is the report on the housing assets that we have originated when former redevelopment
(indistinct) was in place. As you may know, in 2011, the state decided to dissolve
redevelopment entities and created a sort of
new type of entity called a housing successor. In most cases, the
county government itself, or in the case of cities, the city government becomes
the housing successor.

So that's the general rule. And that is in fact the
case in this county. And so as the county now manage
the former housing assets of the redevelopment agency. The state also at the time shortly after the dissolution laws were passed, passed some additional legislation to require these new
housing successor entities to report on the uses
of those housing assets.

So that's what this report is about. The state in that
legislation also directed that these reports be submitted to these eight housing
community development department at the same time that the
eight or the progress reports they should just present. When that is presented, the state departments
every year by April 1st, we have clued this
housing successor entity over the same time. This report primarily
focuses on physical matters. So uses of the funds, the bulk of the assets held
by the housing successor are actually the fund balance that was left over with
the redevelopment agency when it was dissolved in the, what was called at the time, the housing set-aside fund.

Now that (indistinct) fund is called the low mode housing
successor agency fund, which is kind of a large damn, but that's basically what
this L-M-I-H-A-F means. So basically the state is
tracking with this report, you know, are we using the funds for the purpose that is
required in state law? The main (indistinct)
sort of related state law, really focuses on the use of these funds on development of new
affordable rental housing that is affordable primarily to a very low and low-income households. There's increased requirements for a certain percentage of
the units that are assisted with these funds to be affordable to extremely low income households. And there's no (indistinct) actually way to provide things like home buyer programs and assistance for moderate income, and as there was back in the (indistinct) and prior to the solution
of the redevelopment agency. So we are following all
of those requirements for use of the funds, into some of the significant commitments that have been made in
the last several years, that you may recall in the
commitment of a $5 million, going to be housing development that is (indistinct) starting from
the 17th and capitalist site, where we have the
(indistinct) project approved with the two health clinics, and the Mid Penn housing 57 units.

We have (indistinct) in dollar commitment to that project from this fund. We will be closing Escrow
on that disposition and cluster on that low (indistinct). That obviously is not
going to be reflected in this fiscal year to report
because this is recording on fiscal year 1920. So although the funds have
been committed in 1920, expenditure doesn't show up until we do the report next year
for the year that we're in. So we report on when the
funds are actually expended from the fund, not just when emitted. Yeah, there's significant. Or I should say (indistinct)
was made last year. Was the acquire some loan
to assess the purchase of a site in South (indistinct). We're currently calling that project the Pippin Two Project. That loan was actually closed to enable that land
purchase to occur last year. So the majority of the
funds for that loan were on and are reflected in the
expenditures in this report. But a portion of the funds
are still yet to be dispersed.

So there'll be a little
bit more drawn on that loan in the fiscal year. So you will see in this current report that does reflect what we
have an excess of 1.2 million. For those who may not understand
some of this state jargon. What is unnecessary (indistinct), surplus simply means formula
(distinct) the state law. If you have unencumbered
fund balance on hand, then the total of the
revenues into the fund that you received in the last four years, and that amount is (indistinct) surplus.

And we do have an excess
surplus by that def 1.10, but as soon as we close on that, that loan for the (indistinct) next month will essentially eliminate
that excess surplus. So we will be back in mixed good graces by the time we've submitted
this report this year. That concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions. – [McPherson] Thank you,
any comments from the board? Supervisor Koenig? – [Koenig] Thank you, chair. And thank you staff for
that great presentation. I did just have a couple
comments and some questions. I also wanted to thank
staff for providing table A, which was not included
in our agenda packet. It did include a potential amount of data that will ultimately be
submitted with this report.

I just wanted to point out that the, of the 2020 density bonus projects, all of them are in the first district. And I will say, I find that exciting as we've seen with the sustainable Santa Cruz plan. We really need to focus on
creating workable communities and infill projects. And so I'm honestly quite excited that so many of these projects are in the first district
today and welcome those. And also look forward to
navigating the construction of the medical office
building, namely Kaiser. I just wanted to point out that, you know, we've built just 23% of
the very low income units that we're supposed to
according to the RHNA goals.

So that's less than one quarter. If we adjust for the fact that there are three years
remaining in this cycle, we've still only built 33 or
34%, according to the schedule. And I guess a question for staff would be if there's any suggestions on ways that we can accelerate that. – [Suzanne] Yes. Commissioner Koenig. So I will say that we will have some substantial improvements in those numbers once the building permits (indistinct)
projects I mentioned. For those include that 17th and cap, and also the project Pippin too. So both of those projects
will be significant and they're not a hundred
percent very low income, but they will include significant numbers of very low income units. Additionally, I mean we will
also the product (indistinct) in the density bonus projects. I believe to the three
very low income units. Now for the purpose of RHNA reports, those units are not actually counted until the applicant pulls
the building permits those.

So hopefully they will before
the RHNA cycle is done. And when that occurs, those very low income units
will also be added to the table. Right now they are in the overall package that we send to this as
approved (indistinct) their entitlements. But the actual units don't go on that, that key table that sort of
tracks our RHNA performance and the applicant close
the building permit. And we do understand that the pandemic has made some of these projects a little harder get off the ground. The economy (indistinct) certain, particularly because they
were mixed use projects. And so that commercial
component to get a little against the projects, but we are optimistic as we
come out of the pandemic.

I believe those applicants will be able to get those projects off
the ground will help as well. Addition to the extent that
(indistinct) other come through that density bonus, (indistinct) whenever somebody proposes a rental project with the density bonus, sort of the most strategic thing to do include very low
income rates in the proposal because you (indistinct) bonus per unit. If you do that, that's how it's set up
the program specifically to incentivize very low unit production. And that seems to work. The developers accept that. So you know, we do, it's a paid that we will probably have
some other projects come through the pipeline before
the end of this cycle that also access that (indistinct).

And so we are optimistic that
we will get substantially up to the level of that requirement. – [Koenig] That's very
encouraging news, thank you. One other question, I noticed
there's a lot of programs that you guys are managing over there. And just in general, how do
you prioritize those programs that you're running in
the planning department? – [Suzanne] That is a
good question (laughs). We have to be very strategic and our staff has been
shrinking step by step. As the (indistinct) agency
has been dissolved now for 10 years. So they have a significantly larger, and drinking and you know,
now we're four, (laughs). It kind of reminds me of somebody
Agatha Christie (laughs). (indistinct) then you know,
hopefully we won't get down that low, but it is a challenge
time on this with you and with these two
disasters (indistinct) year.

We've had to triage and
prioritize absolute must do priorities, much of which
appeared having disaster response, you know, there was housing
(indistinct) cyclical. So when there's a disaster, when there's economic recession, you tend to get a response from the state or a level of a lot of
sort of emergency funding and other types of programs. And that all means that
staff, housing staff at the local level have to
administer those programs and figure out how to roll them out. So that is a lot of what we've been doing in the past year or so, both with the fire response
and the pandemic response. And so we have had as time (indistinct). A lot of the things we thought
(indistinct) this year, in 2020 you know if you
had asked us last year, what our priorities were, they were very different than the way the year actually rolled out. So we are trying to do the best we can, you know, we're public
servants like everybody else, and we're trying (indistinct)
and keep our ball in the air and keep the programs we have to afloat.

The priority projects to
be opportunistic extend of you know, when we have capital projects that need to close, we need to get those
things off the ground. So (indistinct) priorities right now are the 17th in cap
project getting that closed and often running and
the Pippin Two project, which will be coming to your
board in the next several weeks for a design review. And then that'll create
(indistinct) back office work for us in the housing sector,
once that is on its way, (indistinct) rolling out the
emergency rental program, COVID relief program, which has taken up a lot of
our bandwidth since January. That's a long answer
to your short question. – [Koenig] Thank you, I
know you're juggling a lot and you know, I just wanna reiterate that me and my office are
happy to help however we can.

Or you know, for example, I noticed with the ADU
loan program with 300 K and initial budget that as you stated in response to some of my questions, I'd email 260 K is still available. So we're happy to help publicize that and get greater
participation in the program. That's all my questions, thank you. – [McPherson] Supervisor Friend, question? – [Friend] No, thank you Mr. Chair, I don't have any questions, but I appreciate this presentation. I appreciate the questions
from my colleagues.

– [McPherson] Thank you,
Supervisor Coonerty? – [Coonerty] I agree Mr. Chair, I appreciate all the information. I appreciate the work being
done at this critical time. I don't have any questions. – [McPherson] Okay, thank you. Supervisor Caput? – [Caput] Thank you, thank
you very much for the report. I'm looking at all the proposals and what's happened in
the last couple of years has been balancing of
each district contributing and trying to get more low-income and moderate income housing assets. The concern a few years
back was the amount that has been put on the South County. And that includes District Two, the Aptos area and the Watsonville area. And I'm looking at
specifically different projects that the city of Watsonville
is approved also, and the Atkinson lane, which would be considered
now Pippin number two.

Where 174 possible units can be built. My only concern is that
we balance this out, that all the districts contribute. I know in the Live Oak area, they've been building affordable housing for low-income and also senior income where a lot of seniors
are on a fixed income, which is really important to consider. But I'd like to see more
in the other districts, also contributing to the low income, and very low income you know, housing. So if we can keep them
balanced that'd be great. And also considering that when
we're building more housing, that we have to consider
the traffic problems that are going to be
impacting that whole area. And that's the big concern
I have for Atkinson Lane. Right now it says 174
possible units total. But, and also parks. We needed more park space for kids, so they don't have to travel
all the way across a city or whatever to get to the nearest park. So considerations for possible schools and also consideration
for parks and traffic.

I know the Atkinson Lane part of this is at the county and part of
it's going to be in the city and public safety would have to be the Watsonville Police
Department, of course. And also the Watsonville
Fire Department would have to cover that area. It only makes sense. And the big concern is the traffic that would be totally impact
the Brewington Avenue, access to Atkinson Lane.

We need more pump. We have to have them in person later on when this COVID eases up, where people can voice
their concerns on how access to Atkinson Lane
will impact Brewington. And that whole area opening
that up to a lot of traffic. So I just want more
public input on the areas in South County and also
consideration for parks and possibly another elementary school if we have to have one in that area.

Do you have any comments on that? – [McPherson] Anyway
that's a direct question or how you might answer that. – Basically the Atkinson Lane one is the, I'm for it, but I want to make sure that we have more public input. We actually listened to people that we don't have fixed numbers. And then we have public comment
and people come and say, "Hey, I have a problem with this." And then we say, "Well,
thank you for coming, and thank you for commenting." But then we have a fixed
number and we ignore what the public has to say. – Well we just have to
change that process I guess. In terms to how, maybe some
things can't be changed. I don't know how to answer it. I'm not the one to answer it. – Supervisor Caput, this Carlos Palacios County
Administrative Officer. I can assure you that we will
have a very robust public process with regard to Pippin number two, as it gets developed.

So there it's a very, it's
still in the early stages and there will be a lot of public input and opportunities for the public
to comment on the proposal. – Yeah and I know that
that's going to happen. I guess the only concern I have is that when we go through that process, are these numbers fixed in stone that even though people
are gonna make comments, we can actually lessen or somehow work out all the numbers. Are we approving the numbers right now? – [Suzanne] Should I respond or- – Go ahead please if you can. I don't think so but it's all right. – [Suzanne] I just want to note that I want to be very general because the agenda item
we're discussing currently is the annual report and not the Pippin project specifically. But I will say that it will be coming before your board in several weeks.

And so there'd be an opportunity for public comment at that time. And I will just by way of bound that the project say you're referring to was actually entitled
the number of units and a planned development
permit was up in 2009. So the only matter coming to the board, as I mentioned in several
weeks is the design review of the proposal for the first
80 units in that project. There is no proposal at this time to build the full project was entitled, just the first 80 units. However, it has been
entitled for a year now. So I believe that's what commissioner, I mean, Supervisor Caput is referring to in terms of the numbers being fixed. That entitlement as well (indistinct). – Right, and the final comment, it's not really a question. The city of Watsonville
is looking at approving about a hundred units also
off of Maloney Parkway. And that's a silly one also. So when we have allocations
with the State of California, if we build, let's say we
build a 200 units somewhere in one specific locale
that counts for money from the State of California
for the entire county, not just the district where
all the housing is going in.

And so I just want to make
sure we balanced this out. We don't have everything. Well we're, doing a lot
better in the last few years. I asked to say, when you count why York and
you count also (indistinct), we're balancing it out. So I just want to see more
balance and the other districts of the County for our state allocation. – Okay, thank you. I think that and your
comments and Mr. (indistinct). – Yeah, I just wanted (indistinct). – Yeah, I don't want to be confident, but there are some limitations I know in my particular districts, the sewage and water limitations, it's really difficult to keep
up with those communities. I understand what you're saying. We want to spread this
out as much as we can throughout the County, but there are limitations
in some areas of the County. And my Santa Rosa Valley has
one of them because of water and sewage or septic issues in particular, but that's not to be confrontational, but I think each district
should play its part to the best of its ability in meeting this
housing need that we have.

I'd like to thank the planning
department and the housing division in particular for the report. There's a lot of good
information here about our work in recent years, and that we've broadened our housing base and we reduce some barriers
too within our code center, our application approval system. So I want to thank them for their efforts, their ongoing efforts, and as usual the regional
housing needs allocation or arena numbers are difficult to meet in many circumstances, but in particular in Santa
Clara County, historically, but we're gaining on it. We're almost halfway there to
what the state would like us to accomplish. And I'm hoping with the
sustainable County plan that we'll continue to increase our affordable housing through more densed and mixed use housing, wherever that is going to be located. And it's going to retire. It's gonna be require a
commitment by the entire community throughout the County
to really address that. And there's two additional
processes that I think are going to be very important though.

And that's, as soon as possible, we need to create, what's been discussed for some time, a one-stop permitting center
that we've been discussing for a couple of years and I think we can learn
from our fire permitting, Fire Recovery Permitting Center, about how to quickly evaluate
applications for building. And then secondly, identifying our County owned
land and using our land use authority to develop affordable housing.

And I think we're going to
be assisted in that very much by the facilities plan that
we were just heard about more about a month ago or so. So I think those are two
issues that we need to address those additional processes
that we need to complete and get done so we can serve
the public as best we can to help us meet our housing needs. And yes. – This is Brian Kennedy. And I just, I mean, I don't wanna belabor the point, but it's important to make sure
we're all on the same page. The city of Santa Cruz is
probing far more housing projects than any other jurisdiction in
the County, both in the city and then you'd recently had
the CSE building 3000 more units up on campus. So just it is, I think
I understand the point and I also think everyone
is doing much more than they've ever done and in fact, the North end of the County is building far more housing right now than any other part of the County.

Thank you. – You're welcome. Thank you. I just wanted to add
one more point beginning on page 49 of the packet. There's a mention of land
use and zoning corrections being undertaken by the
planning department. Do we anticipate any of these going to be going to result in a higher
number of persons eligible for residential development like in light of the facilities plan that we recently discussed
that I mentioned. Do we anticipate any of those
will result in higher number of persons eligible for
residential development? – Right, so our staff has
taken a look at a number of these inconsistencies and
like we said in the report, we will be where possible
incorporating them in our updates with the sustainability update project. Most of those are just, reflecting what's
currently on the property. So, it's not necessarily
anything that would create opportunity for additional housing, unless there were projects
that were coming to those specific sites for additional units.

Really what it's doing is
reflecting the current uses on those properties. – Thank you, thank you. And on the sustainable
Santa Cruz County plan, what parts of that update do
we anticipate will lead to more housing development,
especially affordable housing? Is there a timeline for completion of that the sustainable of Santa Cruz County plan? And what impact it would might
have in housing development. – Right. The sustainable Santa Cruz. – You were locked up then. – [Suzanne] I can chime
in if we're waiting for Netisha wifi to cooperate. I will just note that we
have a number of different, sometimes they have similar names. So I just want to make sure
I understand the question. We did have a plan that was
more of a conceptual plan and not a rezoning or any
kind of formal general plan. And that was called the
Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan.

I believe that was approved
by your board some years, I think maybe five or
six years ago, possibly. However, the project that staff has is currently working on in our department is what we call this signability update, major update of the land use
element of (indistinct) plan. And perhaps is that what
Sarah was referring to? – Yes. – Yes, okay. So, yes, that plan, I guess the main answer to
your question is yes and no. So the overall goal of the plan is yes, that it will have the effect of increasing the number of sites that we
would have for our future housing element update,
which will be coming through and you know, shortly in several years, but the actual rezonings
necessary to bring the zoning map into compliance with
that updated general plan will be a second step.

So it will be sort of a two step process and Stephanie Hanson who leads
up our sustainability section could talk to you in a lot more detail than I can about that effort, because her section is
leading that effort. I do collaborate with them on that, but I'm not fully up to speed
on all the procedural details as far as their plan is it currently. But that is the overall goal and just to elaborate
on that a little bit, we anticipate receiving our
new Rena Alec and FedExed housing elements within
the next relievers, within the next year.

And when we will need to accommodate that what we anticipate will be a significantly larger allegation than we got look at the current cycle. And so it is likely that we
will need to make some changes to our land use plan or
zoning map to accommodate that higher number of units. So we'll be coming back to
the board over the next year or two year to recommend
changes necessary to do things. – Okay. Thank you. Understood. Yeah, thank you. Are there any questions from the public? – [Stephanie] During our
public speakers to this item. chair you're muted. – Yeah so, I'm going to
return this to the board, excuse if there's some
of you, I hear some noise you hear some noise that we
would take the related actions to a report to the
governor's office of planning and research and housing
and community development, and accept and filed this report. – Chair.
– Yes Mr. Coonerty. – Just want to point out
one small thing to staff on the report on packet page 55. 17th and capital or road, it says units built 57.

I understand we're making
great progress on the housing, but I don't believe those units have actually been built yet. So let me just check that
before submitting this report and with that, I would be willing to move the recommended actions. – [Zach] I second. – We have a motion to second
with that correction identified by Mr. Coonerty, please call the roll. – Thank you. Supervisor, Koenig. – [Koenig] Hi. – Friend. – [Friend] Hi. – Coonerty. – [Coonerty] Hi. – Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi. – Thank you unanimously – Okay, I like to continue with through our regular
agenda of items 10, 11 has been deleted and 12 and 13, and then we'll go into close session. Well, we'll try to get everything done before we go to close session, as well as the agenda at the, consent agenda items.

So we'll go ahead with
number 10 at this point. Public hearing to consider
the proposed formation of six rule 20A underground
utility districts, adopt resolution declaring
the six rule 28 project size a separate utility districts
and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum to the deputy chair or
director of public works that is Matt Machado. We have a resolution underground
utility districts 2025 exhibit A proposed
underground utility districts, eight and a half by 11. Exhibit A proposed
underground utility districts full-size online and on file, on a resolution number 280-2020 adopted in December 8th of 2020.

I believe Mr. Machado
will be presenting this. We all know that undergrounding
is a very accessed, expensive process. So Mr. Machado going to present. – [Stephanie] I have
Greg Jones on the line to present for this department. – Yeah, good morning, almost afternoon Chair
and members of the board. My name is Greg Jones and
I'm the senior civil engineer overseeing the survey
section in public works. And I'm also your County surveyor. We are here today to open up
public hearing regarding the creation of six new
undergrounding utility districts per the California Public
Utilities Commission Rule 20A program. The Rule 20A program was established by the California Public
Utility Commission to require utility companies
throughout California to perform requested undergrounding
projects by the cities and counties of our state.

Rule 20A specifically
focused on the undergrounding of utilities in the
areas directly affecting the general public. In Santa Cruz County, utility
undergrounding districts have historically been
formed in the town core areas for aesthetic purposes. However, due to disaster
events like the recent CCU fire and this devastating
storms in 2016 and 17, we see an increasing need
to underground utilities for safety purposes along the counties, major evacuation and commuter routes. Public works proposed
14 different locations to the board in August, 2020. Public works then returned to the board in December 8th, 2020 with a proposal for six of these locations to be formed into utility undergrounding districts and a resolution for this public hearing. The six locations are
chosen based on evacuation, route planning and roads
that have historical problems with downed power lines and
utility lines interrupting both utility service and the road network. So the six proposed utility
districts in order priority are three locations on Soquel San Jose road, the first Laurel Glen road
to Olive Springs road, the second Olive Springs
road to Hoover road, the third, Hoover road
to Amaya Ridge Road, and then Bear Creek road between Harmon, Goltz
road and Star Creek road, and then Empire Grade
between Pine Flat road and Albert road, and last Trout Gulch
and Valencia road area between Quail Run road and Martha's way.

Based on the information
I presented to you. Public work recommends that the board take the following actions. Conduct a public hearing on the creation of these six said underground
districts pursuant to the County code, adopt they attached
resolution of intention to declare property of the
proposed six project sites as being individual underground
utility districts pursuant to the County code and
to direct public works to work with the County clerk to notify all affected utility companies and property owners within the proposed undergrounding
districts in adoption of the resolution within 10 days after the passage of the
resolution in accordance with the County code.

I thank you very much and
I'm here to answer any of your questions. – Greg thank you very much. Supervisor Koeing, do
you have any comments? – Yes. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Jones. I'm just curious how the various segments or utility districts were determined on Soquel San Jose road. – On Soquel San Jose road. Well, we worked with PG&E
and ask them for a record of areas in which multiple
power lines had been damaged, pulls down, and they gave us a PDF showing the areas of most damage. So we looked at those swaths of the road and they were basically from,
like I said, Laurel Glen, and then up to, I think it was Amaya Ridge road. That's where the PG&E line
heads off onto private property. So that's how we determine them. – Correct and is there any
prioritization as far as, you know, how those various sections- – Those three sections? – Repeated one.

– Not really, but starting
from Laurel Glen road where there's the most dense population is probably the most
ideal where we would start and then head up the Hill from there, because once you get to Amaya Ridge Road, there's fewer, fewer parcels, bigger parcels of land up there. – Okay. So sounds like
it's not determined yet. I've just had a number of
constituents comment that, you know, they think it would
make more sense to begin from the top and work
down and that's based on their impression of the risk level.

So maybe looking at- – Yeah excuse me, sorry. – That's fine. Yeah but go, maybe assessing which segment
to start with based on risks, or as you said to me, it sounds like you've already
done some of the analysis in terms of the number
of down utility lines in those different areas. So- – Yes, and also a lot of
this is based on evacuation. So we wanna make sure
that we can get people off the mountain coming down
into Santa Cruz and Soquel area in a fast manner. So, having those lines
underground in the areas that PG&E has identified multiple times,
that lines have come down. That's how we decided that. – Right. That makes sense. So currently there would
be no plan to underground the section North of the
Amaya Ridge road up to summit. Simply because- – According to these six sites, this is what we're proposing. There are other sites that we
could propose in the future. The only thing is the limited
amount of funding of course. Right. – Okay.

Thank you. That's all my questions.
– Okay. – Now supervisor Friend.
– Yeah thank you, Mr chair. Thank you Mr. Jones for the presentation. I just want to make sure
that I've got something clear because I didn't recollect
in the original presentation in August, nor did I see
it in those board memo, that there was prioritization
within the districts I mean the underground districts, not the Supervisorial districts. And the way I just
understood your presentation was that there was, is that correct? – The priority in the
Supervisorial districts? – No, no, I didn't mean that, what I meant was within
the utility districts.

I'm sorry so. So for you outlined a six
or so utility districts based on the feedback
with priority in August in conjunction with you
and PG&E they appeared to just be six that would get done, not six that would be done in
a particular priority order. I interpreted your presentation now to just say something differently. I just want to make sure
I'm understanding correctly. – Yeah. This priority that I have, we have written down and starting
with Soquel San Jose Road and then working on
Bear Creek, Empire Grade and Tranquility Valencia. That was the priority that
we worked out together in public works based on
the history from PG&E. – Okay and perhaps I missed
that during the presentation of six months ago, but I remember being presented options and providing feedback on locations, but not that there would be
a priority within that list. Also, you didn't say that
within the agenda report today. And I mean, from a matter
of just transparency, I think that that would be helpful.

It's not, it's not a criticism. It's just that, that surprised me and generally speaking the surprises, aren't always a great thing in
these kinds of environments. I do definitely agree with the
trickles funds for location. I said the same thing in August. It's a very important thing. I just was surprised to hear
that it's in essence on the bottom of this list,
although arguably on the top of a list of many other roads
that weren't selected during this time. So I appreciate that as well. So do we have then a realistic timeframe of when at least that
one would be addressed? – These projects take
between five to 10 years to get through design through
PG&E and to completion, and we'll be pushing
PG&E as fast as we can. We don't want to be taking
this up to 50 years of course. So I suspect there'll be
some overlap between projects as we have the design
pretty much worked out for the first one.

And if I may go back to your
first question, the priority, we have a list of 19 different
districts in the past, and just kind of an order of priority for everybody else's sake. The last one we worked
on as for public works with PG&E utility companies
was Sea Cliff area. And the one before that was
Davenport and the one before that was Ben Lomond. So that kind of gives you a general idea of how these have rolled
out in the past 20 years. Okay. – Yeah, no, I appreciate the
locations and I didn't mean to imply that actual
Supervisorial District wasn't taking precedent. I just, again, I couldn't be wrong. I didn't recommend any recollect
any August presentation. And I definitely didn't see
it in today's agenda report that these had an order. So I just think that that
would be useful going forward so that the community also
knows that was (indistinct) from your own presentation.

But I do appreciate Mr. Jones. Thank you. – Okay. Supervisor Coonerty any questions? – No questions. Thanks Mr chair. – Supervisor Caput. – [Caput] I just want to say thanks. I have no questions, but
thank you for the report. – Okay. This is a public hearing, is there any other
comments from the public? – [Stephanie] I did to have two speakers I also saw that the director, Matt Machado has his hand raised,
he's now on panelists. – Okay. Let's hear it from Mr. Machado he might have further
explanation of something before we go to the two public comments. – Thank you Chairman Matt Machado here a public works director. Little, I just want to chime in with supervisor Friend's comments and how we came up with the six priorities to Mr. Jones's point. We did get some great
information from PG&E, but we also tried to develop
a list that we could afford. And so in the board item, it talks about the fund balance
that we carry with PG&E.

And so the hope is that
we can afford these six, these six are prioritized
based upon PG&E needs in terms of damage. And this list was actually
shared on December 8th as part of the board item. And that's where we first
started talking about the prioritization. And that was, it was a bit
based upon district boundary as Mr. Jones described. But I just want to point
out that the six districts we're proposing today, we are optimistically thinking
that fits within our fund balance that we carry with PG&E. And so even though they
are in priority lists, our hope is that we can start
design and implement all of them with the funds available. So thank you for the opportunity to share a little
additional clarification. – Okay, we're going to the, I think there's two public comments. – Yes I have two speakers. Speakers you'll have two minutes
once microphone is unmuted and you'll be muted automatically
at the end of your time. Caller user four, your
microphone is unmuted. – [Caller 4] Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett, and I have several
questions as I'm listening. One is why doesn't PG&E fix their lines? I understand there's a device, they can be put on the
lines when they fall down so that they interrupt
the surge of electricity, thereby the brush doesn't catch on fire and or you know, it's like, it seems like we're
paying over and over again for what is PG&E responsibility
and caused problems.

That's one question and another is, I recall in Santa Cruz near the university Noble Street area up
there by a highest rate, it was underground lines and
there was some light there to supervise the streetlights, and Verizon came along
and has put antennas that they got approved like
they get re approved continually on this light standards. So my question is that type
of proposal in this scenario. And the last question is I understand, well, I think that and
who is paying for this? See I wish who you say at
least we hope we can afford why is the county paying all what seems to me PG&E's responsibility and I'll listen for your responses. Thank you. – [Stephanie] Caller 1999,
your microphone is unmuted. – [Chair] You know well,
maybe we'll have I don't know if Mr. Jones or Mr. Machado
might wanna answer couple those questions directly? – [Jones] Yeah, I'll go back to the, how much can we afford part
first, currently the County, we received a letter
from PG&E in 2020 stating that we had $17 million a
little more than that credit, which is dollars basically.

And that's what we can work with. And also we can borrow up
to five years from PG&E on this type of a loan. We, do about $500,000 a year
PG&E collects through tariffs. That's how this Rule
20A program was set up to collect tariffs through
everybody who pays PG&E in their bills. And that money goes to the
underground throughout the state.

And each city and County has their credit. And ours right now is about
$18 million all together today. As far as the Verizon clients with the utility poles up
on with antennas on poles, I can't speak to Verizon on that. I really don't know a cell tower design. And then also with PG&E,
when a pole comes down, the most important thing
is to shut that thing down as quickly as possible. And everybody needs to
stand back and let PG&E do their work and that's
the reason we want to get these lines on the ground. And so we don't have to do that anymore.

That communications can be kept current, even through storms and fires. – Okay, thank you. That answers all the question so, we have one more public comment. – [Stephanie] Yes caller 1999,
your microphone is unmuted. – [Caller 1999] Good after noon, and my name is James (indistinct), I have been listening to most
of the public proceedings though they all have to
step away from my phone 'cause I don't hold it. You know the utilities
underground and who's paying for stuff. I would like to think that
everybody's best interests and all this stuff is being
done for safety reasons. There's a great deal of
underground utility work that happened started happening
about a year ago, right? When the lockdown happened, but to help answer a
gentleman who couldn't answer the question about the
Verizon, putting power on the polls in 1996 and STC act in the several two years past, that made the only complaint that citizens or community members could make against the cell phone towers and
it'll be for how they look.

And I think there was a misstatement. Somebody implying that PG&E
has funds of like 500 million or maybe it was billion. This year is owned by the Rothschild and there are $500 trillion corporation. So I just wanna say that
I've been here listening, and I wanted to comment there are several consent
agenda items I would have liked to have commented on, but
I just didn't have time. So have a good day, everybody. Thank you. – [Stephanie] Thank you, there
are no other speakers chair. Chair you're unmuted. – Okay do we have a motion to adopt a resolution declaring the six
serve rule 20A project sites that separate utility districts. – That move Coonerty. – I second. – The move is seconded,
please call the roll. – Thank you. Supervisor Friend. – [Friend] Hi. That's I policy. Supervisor Koenig. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Thank you. Coonerty. – [Coonerty] Hi. – Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi.

– Thank you, motion passes unanimously. – Okay we go to number, I remember 11 has been
deleted from today's agenda. I remember to hours they
consider the final appointment of Ervyn, I hope that's way Ervyn Simpson to the Commission on Justice and Gender as a large representative of an organization representing the target population for a term to
expire April 1st, 2024. Is there any public comment? – There are no speakers to this item. – Any comments from the board? – I love to approve.
– I second. – Move the approve of Caput and Coonerty. Please call the roll. – Thank you supervisor Friend. – [Friend] Hi. Of cause it's not friend
it's Koenig I apologize. – It's all right thinking
all first but hi. – Coonerty. – [Coonerty] Hi. – Caput. 6- Hi. – McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi. – Thank you motion passes unanimously. item number 13 is to
consider final reappointments to add large positions on
the several commissions and committees here.

The childhood advisory council or Emergency Medical Care Commission. First five commission, Hazardous Materials Advisory Commission, In-Home Supportive Services
Advisory Commission, Latino Affairs Commission, Mental Health Advisory Board, Mobile and Manufactured Home Commission, Santa Cruz-Monterey-Merced
Managed Medical Care Commission, And the Water Advisory
Commission has outlined for terms to expire April 1st, 2025. And I would like to just
make a note that thank these individuals profusely for their commitment and dedication to serving
on these committees and commissions.

They're absolutely essential
for us to run business in the County is very much appreciated. So thank you for your service and for your continued service. Are there any comments from
board members or the public? – I have no speakers for this item. – Okay. Any comments
from the from the board from board members. – Move approval. – Okay. Do we second? – Second Koenig. – Second Koenig. – Please call the roll. – Thank you supervisor. Koenig. – [Koenig] Hi. – Friend. – [Friend] Hi. – Coonerty. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – McPherson – [McPherson] Hi. – Thank you motion passes unanimously. – Then I would like to go
back to the consent items before we go to the, to closed session, if we could, let's try
to address those there. Number 13A is item number 25. That is to accept and file report on the all-virtual board
of supervisors meeting and continued to conduct all board of supervisors public meetings, using the all virtual model
until the governor release the Brown Act exemptions due
to the COVID-19 pandemic, as recommended by the County
Administrative Officer.

We had some comments from the
public about their concerns. Those are on record, you
do not have to repeat them, but I think Mr. Coney wanted
to address this on number 25. – Yes, thank you, chair. My concern was, as I said in the with the second recommended action to continue virtual
meetings until such time as the governor removes the
Brown Act waiver in reviewing the order, which is N-29-20, it says that all of the
foregoing provisions which include the waivers mentioned. Concerning the conduct of public meetings shall apply only during
the period in which state or local public health
officials have imposed or recommended social distancing measures. And so my concern is that, you know, recommending
social distancing measures could continue for a great deal of time possibly indefinitely. So I don't know that the
governor would actually actively revoke this order so much as
let it expire at such time as it expires, because we're
no longer social distancing, but that could be a very long time indeed. So, you know, we've seen
throughout this meeting, chair your own challenges in connecting considerable
challenging delay in conducting the
all-virtual board meetings.

Members of the public have
as mentioned not been able to see slides and personally, I had trouble following
item nine a little bit when the presenters audio
was cutting in and out. So my proposed amendment
to item 25 would be is to, let me see here
as strike out the part of the second recommended action. To strike out the governor
list of Brown act exemptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and add the County of Santa Cruz to meets all health
metrics so as to be better than state defined minimal
or yellow tier risk level. So in layman's terms, once we have moved through the orange tier,
moved through the yellow tier either out of any tier
risk tier whatsoever or into a yet to be defined
green tier by the state at that time would move
back to hybrid meetings. – A lot of discussion on
this before any the comments from the board members. – Yes. Mr. Chair, Mr. Plasios, by the way, did you have any presentation of words on this before
board members continue to speak on this? – Yes, just very briefly. We did conduct in-person
meetings for nine months during during the period of the pandemic.

And we were the only
jurisdiction of the cities. All the cities went completely virtual, and we were the only one
that had those meetings and we were able to do it. We imposed a lot of safety regulations, unfortunately in the fall, we began to have people who were coming to the meeting who refused to
comply with the mask order. So we had people who were
taking off their masks during the meeting. We had people in the hallways, as many as 30 people in
the hallways at one meeting who refuse to put on masK. We started, we had one sheriff deputy. We started bringing in two
sheriff deputies at one meeting we had four sheriff deputies. So that was the only,
that's the only caution I would put is that that's
why I recommended in January. So we had been very in-person
from March all the way through the end of the calendar year.

But in again, in the fall, we were seeing systematic lay
people coming to the meeting with the intention of trying
to disrupt the meeting by removing their face
mask, unfortunately. And so that's why it began to
be too difficult to enforce. We were having to interrupt every meeting constantly telling people
to put their mask back on. So that's the only reason
that I recommended in January that we go to an awkward chill format. So anyway, I just wanted
to bring that background. And then I wanted to ask a
question supervisor kind of, just to be clear. So you're recommending that your amendment is that when we come
out of the yellow tier or when we enter yellow tier, out of a yellow tier. – What's the better, right. Not moving to orange, but
to be out of yellow tier that the state may have
defined a green tier by then we may just be
in the clear so to speak. – Okay, just wanted to
make understand. Thank you. – Mr chair, yeah. I mean, I have some brief comments. I understand actually what
supervisor Koenig is stating I don't share the same concerns.

I think that we should
maintain the language as it is. And for that matter the board
would have flexibility still to adjust that moving forward in advance of any sort of governor's action. This isn't an action
that precludes the board from ever taking a future action. We still would have that
kind of flexibility. I know that the
legislature is also looking at requiring local governments
to have a virtual element to their meetings. Anyway, it's unclear what the
exact language on that may be we may end up in a hybrid format due to some state legislation anyway. So I'm uncomfortable with
maintaining this as is and especially considering
the fact that it can be re-explored again at
a point moving forward while we are doing very well right now. And we're moving up toward the
tiers that you had mentioned supervisor Koenig we've also, while it is different now with vaccines, we have also been here
before and back slid before. So one of the concerns I would
have would be moving a little too swiftly into something we haven't seen as the staff report indicated.

And for that matter, serving on the board for almost nine years now I've seen this to be the case as well. I haven't seen any sort of
reduction in participation in the meetings and in fact I've actually seen a lot of new people
participating which is good. And so I haven't felt the
same reduction in access, but I do share that the overall sentiment that at some point. I mean this isn't an indefinite proposal at some point the board
and all local governments will move back to that format. I just think that that the
language that's presented here is actually the best language for us. So I won't, I respect
what you're presenting, but I won't be supporting an amendment to the regular motion.

I'll just be supporting
the recommended actions. – Do you want to make a
substitute motion at this point? Or do you want to wait to hear
comments from board members? – Well, since we pulled this item, we'll need an opportunity
for the community that hasn't already spoken on
the item to just speak again, at that point whenever
emotion isn't produced, I can introduce one or not. – Very good. Any other comments from board members? – Just this is supervisor
Coonerty very briefly, I appreciate supervisor
Koenig's statements and I think we will move back. There's one thing we
learned from COVID is that we don't always know what's gonna happen in the coming days, weeks, and months, and I'd rather not set
unrealistic expectations.

The second part is we
still have, you know, lots of County staff that
we need to participate in this meeting and so far, those who have kids
are only back in school a couple of days a week. And so them being, you know, they may need to be home for childcare. It's just a lot of uncertainty right now and before we start moving forward, I'd like to have things, to see where we are from
a health perspective and sort of from a return
to normalcy perspective and then and then make a decision. So I'd supervise support
the staff recommendation. – Any other comments, supervisor Caput? – No, the only comment I'd say is I think we're all looking
forward to the day when we're able to do all this in person.

My only concern is I hate
to say, yeah, let's go, we're going to be in person. And then we say stop and we're
going to go back to virtual. We've had a problem,
like in different areas of this whole crisis
where we say go ahead, we're opening up and then we say, Oh, no, we got to shut everything down. Then we say, go ahead. I'd rather see this through right now. And when we do actually go back
to in-person and everything that we're ready to go and stay with it.

– Okay. Okay. Any other questions? – Chair I'll just refer
briefly to Alex points. I will point out first of all, as far as the concerns
about moving too quickly or some kind of stop start action. I do you think that
tying it to getting out of the yellow tier and into
green tier or in the clear, as I said does basically
meet that qualification that we will have less than minimal risks as defined by the state,
less than minimal risks. And, you know, to the other point that supervise Friend made about possibly hybrid meetings coming and concerned about specific staff
members was also raised. I actually do think
that we should continue with a hybrid model going forward. It might be required by
our state legislature, but ultimately I think we've seen it's one of the benefits. One of the silver linings
of the entire pandemic is enabling more people to participate using a digital aspect.

And so part of the reason
that I think we should act a little bit more proactively
than waiting for whole this, social distancing to
end completely is that, you know, obviously it'll be
a little challenging really to move forward with that hybrid model. And, you know, I think
the sooner the better. – Thank you. Any comments from the public. – [Stephanie] Yes I have one speaker. Caller four, your microphone is unmuted. – [Caller 4] Hi, this is Marilyn Garrett. This should have been
on the regular agenda for full discussion. I see the lockdown and virtual meetings as basically antidemocratic. The public has becoming more
and more restricted and muted. And them that we've for years had meetings in public where we actually meet with our representatives who
are supposed to represent us. And I find this so very
disturbing and you're talking about disrupting the meetings
by not wearing masks. So since you're talking about mask, come on I refer you to the
highwire.com and the facts that viruses are an
essential part of life.

There are millions and trillions, they go through everything. And I saw a clip from people
making masks in a third world sweatshop, these blue
masks, all stacked up and on the floor. And pictures of nanoparticles
broken off they're made from melted plastic, highly unhealthy and dangerous to the lungs. We need meetings and persons, we need three minute
comments like we've had. This is going the way of
a totalitarian society under the cloak of COVID cover thank you. – [Stephanie] There are
no, sorry caller 1999.

Your microphone is unmuted. – [Caller 1999] Good afternoon,
Mr chairman, (indistinct). I liked what Marilyn said. It would be great if we
could meet every two weeks in person, whatever that
would mean what I have to say is dictating as far as
when that gonna happen, that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen. Oh, you know, that's just enough, it's just interesting to
see what's going on here. And what is all the things
that are not being discussed because wow there's a
tremendous amount of things that are not being discussed thank you. – There are no other
speakers to this item chair. – Okay. Return it to the board then we, well, we don't have it
formally emotion at this point. I don't mind supervisor Koenig suggestion, but I think that there's
been so much change in going back and forth. I'd like to just stick with
what we have is recommended by the CAO at this point, surely be open to revisit
this in the near future, if necessary. I think we're on the
right track as we speak, but I would go along with what
these recommended by the CAO.

– Well, it doesn't sound
like there's a second, but just for the sake of process, I would move the recommended actions with the amendment proposed to strike out the government was to Brown act exemption to the COVID-19 pandemic and add the kind of Santa Cruz
meets all health metrics to be better than the
state defined minimal or yellow to tier risk level.

– Okay. The motions on the
floor is there a second? Okay. It dies for lack of a second. So then we do need a motion to
approve number 25A presented. – Chair I'll move the
recommended actions for item 25. – And I'll also second that. – And the move is seconded. Please call the roll. – [Stephanie] Supervisor Koenig. – [Koenig] No – [Stephanie] Friend. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Coonerty. – [Coonerty] Hi. – [Stephanie] Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – [Stephanie] McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi. – [Stephanie] Thank you the
motion passes with majority. – Okay. 41. We will move to item number 54. And this is a long one
to approve amendment to agreement with community action board to increase the total multi-year amount to $2,485,190 for emergency
payment program services, approve agreements with
housing matters in the amount of $2,969,763 to provide
emergency rehousing services with abode services and
the amount of $3,228,251 to provide emergency rehousing services.

And with abode services
in the amount of 1,200,000 to help secure housing opportunities for rapid rehousing and scattered sites, permanent support of housing participants, adopt resolution accepting $6,198,014 and unanticipated revenue from the federal
Emergency Solutions Grant, Coronavirus Relief Act, adopt resolution accepting $1,900,000 from the State Homeless Housing assistance and prevention program to
fund rehousing services to take related actions as recommended by the director of human services. I just might say the people don't think we're doing a lot about housing. This is almost $10
million worth of programs to help those and other
emergency services. So it's quite a package who
would like to comment on this? To begin.

– Chair. – Supervisor is it Coonerty or Koenig? I think it was Coonerty. I'm not sure. – The supervisor Koenig
who pulled the item. – Yeah, I'm happy to
comment on the reasons why I thought the item should be pulled to your point chair it's, you know, over $80 million, it's a
significant amount of money. And I do want to point out that there was significant frustration
in our community. The last time we saw
amount of money this large with the heap and cash funding for homelessness back in 2019, and ultimately the way that
those funds were allocated. And so immediately upon
seeing the side them I was a little cautious to see that
we are accepting $8 million and then immediately allocating
it, in the same action. And specifically I'm hesitant to allocate all $8 million
to rapid rehousing, specifically because I'm deeply dubious that we'll be able to, they're just throwing
money at this problem into a housing navigators. It's going to actually
create the housing supply.

As we all know, our
community is by some measures the fourth most expensive in
the entire world at this point, other a deep housing shortage. You know, I recently
reviewed the housing survey that have CZU fire survey of unmet housing needs
from the 7th of January and a combined, there was
over 200 respondents to this. And we saw that of owners
who had lost their home, homeowners who lost their
home in the CZU fire. Only 12% are now renting
an apartment or house and of renters who would lost their home, only 9% have been able to
find a rental or apartment. So, you know, roughly 10% of people who lost their homes from
the CZU fires are now in another rental. And many are still, you
know, 30% living with family or friends or camping
without shelter, 16%.

So where where's the
housing gonna come from? I mean, just throwing money at the problem doesn't guarantee that
we're going to fix it. So I did dive into the requirements of this funding a little bit. And so looking at the
ESG-CV2 funding guidelines, it specifies that it's for rapid rehousing or emergency shelter. And while the state does place an emphasis on rapid rehousing, I would say, we know our community
the best we're the ones on the front lines and ultimately
it's our responsibility to make sure that these, this taxpayer money is
invested as wisely as possible.

I should say just that ideally
we invest some portion of it, not just spend it. Currently we're spending it. If you look at the budget proposals for these various contracts, only about half of the contracts are actually going to
helping people with housing. The other half is going to staffing lots or staffing up over 20 new positions. So I'm not trying to be
paying people who are building housing or for housing supply itself, rather than paying a bunch of
people, sitting behind desks, helping people look for housing
that simply doesn't exist. Now I do want to highlight
a couple of concerns, specific issues as well in the ESG-CV2 two funding documented
outlines that only 3.2% of a grant funding should
be spent on administration. Whereas if you total the amount
in these various contracts. So for example, I believe it's close to, here we go administrative expenses in a lists the housing
matters contract are 258,000 out of a 3.2 million.

So that's 8%. So I'm curious if these
contracts even meet the guidelines of the
grant funding itself, since we're spending 8%
on administrative expenses instead of 3%. I would just a couple more things. You know, some of the folks
receiving this funding have actually never
undertaken rehousing efforts of this size. So housing matters and has
done to my understanding some work are doing rapid rehousing with transition age youth, but never this many clients a boat has if I understand correctly, never
worked in our County before we offered them $600,000
of the heap cash funds, which they ultimately chose not to accept because it didn't figure
it's a sufficient amount of funding.

So, they don't have any
direct experience working in our County except they
might have experienced in other counties. But again, we're pretty much a leader as far as an affordable housing market. So those are some of my concerns. Ultimately I think that
we shared delay at least, or defer at least until the
next meeting a decision on, at least some of these
contracts I'd be open to moving forward with one or maybe two, but certainly not all of them. I would be very hesitant
or really don't think we should allocate all the
money to rapid rehousing. So the reasons outlined, I would much rather see
some allocation of spending on emergency shelter, which
as I said is allowable as far as my reading of the ESG-CV2 grant and just put it in perspective, I mean, let's say we
spent half of this money that we have 4 million out
of 8 million on shelters or some kind of emergency shelter.

We could literally go and buy
a 880 palate shelters, 880. I mean, granted, that's not the be all and end all of housing, but it's certainly a big
step up over nothing. We could house everyone who is out here in San Lorenzo park and in
one of these pallet shelters and work with other communities of people experiencing homelessness. And I would actually like
to call attention again to the speaker from Ms. Carol Bjorn spoken public comment this morning, calling out these fire that was started in North Rodeo Gulch just on Sunday. If this it's been a dryer time of year, that fire could have been catastrophic.

And we know that many camping
fires have caused problems. We spent Paradise park
fire not so long ago. And so I think as we
move into the dry season, you know, it's not just the
rapid rehousing of folks who are already in shelter. There is still a huge gap of folks that are sheltered at all. And I think that that's
an excellent justification for spending some of this
funding on emergency shelter. I would love to see us
have an alternative, alternative location where people can go so that the sheriff can affectively deal with homeless encampments
in North Rodeo Gulch. We can get people out
of those high fire zones and reduce fire risk.

– I think that's
everything I wanted to say. Oh, actually one more point. The SGC V2 funding does
also say that you can spend up to $2.5 million on some
kind of real estate purchase or acquisition. And so that $2.5 million could
be used for the acquisition. of along with project
home key the acquisition of some kind of hotel as well. So again, all this is to say, I believe we should be
investing some of this money rather than just spending it all that there's still a huge
gap in emergency shelter within our community. And I do not believe that simply spending as much money as possible
on rapid rehousing is going to yield the
results that we're after. Thank you. – Thank you. I don't know if anyone from
human services would like to comment on that or
any other board members. Any of the board members
who want to comment on this. – Chair my person. We have Robert Ratner and
Randy Morris available to respond whenever you would like. – Good, I think let's have them respond. I think there's some legitimate questions.

I don't know Mr. Morris or
Ratner who wants to speak first? – Supervisor McPherson
and members of the board. My name is Robert Ratner
and I'm happy to go first. I'm the new division director in the Housing for Health division and appreciate the dialogue
about the proposals. A few points of clarification. I'm not sure I'll address
all of the supervisor Koenig's concerns in this first round, but I'm happy to follow up
with additional questions from other board members. First, I want to clarify
that the emergency shelter grant coronavirus funds, we are using some of the
money that's been allocated to pay for emergency shelter and to cover some of the costs of our COVID-19 homeless
sheltering efforts. We've expanded with FEMA
funding, CARES Act funding and other dollars emergency
shelter tremendously.

During the COVID pandemic,
we've seen a growth of over 550 beds during the pandemic and the funding that we've used to expand those sheltering programs
will be coming to an end when the pandemic comes to an end, and we really need to work closely with our community partners,
folks who own property and that there is property available within Santa Cruz County
and neighboring communities to help folks get into
housing with right supports and rental assistance. So I guess point number
one is we are using some of this ESG CV funding to
pay for emergency shelter. We have to develop some
strategies to help folks who are in our temporary shelters to get into permanent homes. And from the perspective of our housing for healthy
Santa Cruz framework, which the board adopted recently, I think our definition
of housing is not one that includes pallet shelters
is the ultimate goal.

We're looking to help
people get into places that meets federal state and
local standards for housing. That includes having safe,
secure, physical locations with access to electricity,
water, and sewage. So I think we really need to reflect on our ultimate goal and kind of what kind of housing we're
trying to get people into. Rapid rehousing is one of the stated goals in the approved framework that
the board adopted recently, we proposed significantly increase in rapid rehousing programming. And this set of proposals will increase the number of slots by around 200, which actually still gives
us the gap of 190 slots that the board had previously approved. So I think if we're going to be consistent with the framework we adopted, we should be moving forward
to fill in some of those gaps. Emergency shelters are also a gap that we need to fill at this
particular funding source works well for rapid rehousing.

I also want to clarify
that all of the funds are not specifically for rapid rehousing the entire package contains
a lot of different elements that are part of a rehousing wave to make sure we're not
gonna return people back to the streets from our
COVID-19 sheltering efforts. Included in the packages,
some flexible funding with the community action
board to help people with things they need
to move into apartments or other types of living
situation, household items, furniture, et cetera. There's a contract to partner with folks who have real estate in the community to help individuals who
have housing vouchers or rapid rehousing
subsidies to gain access to housing the community. And there's plenty of
evidence from other counties in the state that have used this funding that rapid rehousing can and does work for many people experiencing homelessness even in high cost communities. And I believe that's the
case here in Santa Cruz.

And the item also refers
to a wonderful opportunity we have with the housing authority. They're providing us with 75
rental assistance subsidies, specifically for homeless households in our existing project room
key COVID-19 sheltering efforts to help them get into housing
with appropriate supports and services. And I would also say that many people
experiencing homelessness, particularly those in our
COVID-19 sheltering programs have significant health issues. We have people who are over 70 who are struggling with
daily living challenges like using the bathroom
and getting dressed and the supports that
supervisor Koenig refers to as not being necessary
actually are an important part of the work we do to address homelessness. One of the things that's
important to keep in mind in our framework is health care and providing wraparound supports to make sure people are able
to get and keep housing. And for many people
struggling with disabilities or functional impairments and
so services that help them to get and keep housing that
are a critical component in addition to reducing
the cost of the housing.

So I think I addressed many of the points that Supervisor Koenig raise
and I think it would end with, if we do not move forward
with this proposed package which is fairly consistent
with what federal and state technical assistance
providers have recommended to communities throughout California, we'll be in jeopardy of having
a large number of people who are staying in COVID
shelters without anywhere to go and we'll see a significant increase, I would anticipate in the
number of unsheltered people in the fall when we do
not have formal authority to continue our FEMA
supported sheltering efforts and the community that I worked in before coming to Santa Cruz, they got started with
a very similar effort, many months earlier than
we're getting started.

And they've already
helped 400 households get into permanent housing from their COVID-19 sheltering efforts. And it's Alameda County, which is also a very
expensive high cost community. – And I'm here as well, thank you Robert for covering all that. There was one comment
Supervisor Koenig made, and it's actually a question that I had. So it must be a question
on many people's minds that was a reference to abode, which is one of the contract agencies. They actually a yes and a no. The yes is Supervisor Koenig is correct. We did share with them that they applied for a grant in Santa Cruz
County and they stepped away from it. So that comment
supervisor Koenig made is correct, but I think it's important for the board and public to know they do
have an existing service that they do provide in Watsonville.

So they are existing provider
in Santa Cruz County. And this was a very carefully
thought out proposal to spread the dollars around,
to not just one provider. It's a huge lift for one organization. So indirect dialogue with housing matters and the board a North and
a South County provider and CAB we put this together. I do wanna share what we shared with supervisor Koenig yesterday. And I think it's important we figure out to have ongoing dialogue
as staff with board members in this public about the statement that this is throwing money away, which supervisor Koenig said, for those of us who work in the field, Robert for 30 years, me for 32 years, it's a comment we hear a lot, because it looks like
it's going to just people to do nothing. But for those of us who
work very, very closely with this type of
population on the ground, it's understandable
that it seems that way, but we are asking for
your board to consider it is the way with the
categorical each of this funding to help this population
and as Robert said, I think it's worth highlighting
just around the corner from us 400 people got
moved out of COVID shelters into housing, which is
not throwing money away.

So I would have to respectfully disagree with supervisor Koenig's comment, but I think it's important the board here is that and supervisor
Koenig you hear that as well. There's some disconnect in
our communication with you that you see it that way. So I hope we can keep working with you, keep answering your questions. And for the full board,
we feel very confident this is the best thing we can do and urge you to vote for this. Any delay, I think runs the
risk for all of us having to confront our horizon, where people are put on the streets because we are not
bringing these soft skills and supports forward that we
believe is the right package to help this population. – Any comments from board members? I don't see any. – Supervisor McPherson can you here me? – Yes I can yeah yes.

Supervisor Coonerty. – Yeah. So, first I think I
appreciate Supervisor Koenig, pulling this item. It's a big and important item and it warranted further discussion. So I think that's beneficial. I guess I'd say I agree
with Supervisor Koenig on the fundamentals in that we're extremely expensive
community with limited places for our people to go. One of my hope is that what this sort of case management housing navigation, well have an emphasis
on trying to get people to places where they will be successful and whether that's here
in Santa Cruz County, where they may have
connections and family, or whether it's other communities where they may have connections of family, or may have an opportunity to
get more affordable housing or section eight units sooner than they otherwise would have.

I think that's where these navigators and caseworkers can play
a really important role and going forward. Frankly, I liked the idea
of bringing in a news although I take the point
that they're operated in Watsonville, expanding the
number of service providers we have with these contracts as a way to see who can be successful
and what they can do. I think it's a very big lift. And I think that one of
the challenging things is that while we're
spending a lot of money, these are for the folks who
are currently sheltered. We still have a large
unsheltered population, which the community and the
people who are unsheltered are obviously suffering from.

And so we we'll need to see
if this works as a model, the thing can be applied to
our continuing crisis across this community. – Thank you Coonerty. Any other comments from board members? – Mr. Chair, I'll just briefly comment that I appreciate the work Dr. Ratner and director Morris had been doing and how open they've
been to answer questions for me and my staff in advance of meetings to get them out of these issues addressed. I have a lot of confidence
in what this proposal is.

I agree with supervisor Koenig. It is a lot of money and
this is a very complex, challenging issue. But the reason that we
brought in Dr. Ratner, and the reason I brought
in director Morris in large part was because of
their experiences addressing this in other locations. And we created a new
division for this purpose. I mean, this is an, in
some respects it feel like an intractable problem, but I think that some of
what they're proposing or what has been proposed
is exactly right. And also comports with the
legal components of the funding. Obviously all of these items are reviewed by a County council as well, I mean, is your questions
on the legal side, you can be assured that these
have been through that review. But I'm supportive of
the item and I'm prepared to move the recommended actions. – Okay. Let's see if there's any
other, that's a motion. – I'll second that motion. – Okay any other comments from the board? I'd like to just, I think these points
are well taken because, and especially I've looked
concerned about this.

If I could make a comment about the amount spent on administration, is that a concern at all? Or are we within the realm
what's specified in these grants? I guess that Mr. Morris or
Mr. Ratner would be able to answer that. – Yeah, I can answer
that Supervisor McPherson as a supervisor Friend
indicated this has been reviewed by County council. We also had a state funded
technical assistance provider Homebase that reviewed the contract and gave us guidance on what's
allowed and move through. We're within the bounds
of guidance from them and the funding authorities. – All right. – [Morris] Supervisor McPherson. – Yes. – I don't know technically
if this is correct, but I think sometimes admin
is a word it's a semantics. And what often gets missed
is contracts aren't allowed to have a certain amount
of administrative overhead, which is very different
than administrative cost to pay for staff.

So I'm imagining that that's the distance between supervisor Koenig's 8% figure in whatever it is and the restrictions. And but yes, every single
contract is reviewed by County council and back. Anything else. – Thank you for clarifying
that. I appreciate that. I would like to add, there's a
motion a second on the floor. I'd like to add that additional direction to have the housing for
health office report back to the board no later
than I think August, 2021 would be this next August with
an update about the status of the rehousing wave
they should call it that.

Specifically I'd be
interested in the number of people successfully
moved into stable housing as a result of the program. And maybe you are going
to be doing that anyway, but I'd like to make some, have that as a specific
recommendation or direction added to the motion. – Supervisor McPherson
for you and the board of this matters a previous board action and the study session when
Dr. Ratner and I presented, we had asked for directive
and you approved the director for us to return to you no later than the early August board
hearing to give an update on the entire three-year plan and the first six month work plan. And as is our practice, we
for big items like this meet with your offices before
big presentations. And whether you give directive today, or you give us some
recommendations as we meet with you in advance of that presentation, we can present anything that's of help to give you in the public and update on these contracts in particular
but it all we're doing.

– Okay, well, I'd like to say, I think it will be done,
but I'd like to specify that we get the report back in
August, as you've mentioned, it's great it's in the works. So I think that's
sufficient at this point. – Chair if I may address
close your comment as well as some of the comments by staff. First of all, I fully agree
we should be monitoring the progress of this
rehousing wave so to speak. My concern is that we
may monitor the progress, but if we've already
allocated all the money, what opportunities do we
have to actually, you know, adjust these contracts or do anything significantly different. If we see that things are not going well, if we see that we're not able
to successfully rehouse people as much as we'd like. I would also point out
something that staff mentioned, which is these contracts,
this $8 million we'll add best house about 200 people of
more than 500 currently in County shelter. So there's still the gap. And part of what I see spending additional or some of the funds on emergency services or shelter doing is
providing that fail safe.

If the money expires
for FEMA run shelters, we would still have a fallback
of some kind of shelter for people you know, of
course a palate shelter is not the be all and end all of housing. We all recognize that, but
it's a heck of a lot better than the streets. And I would also like to reiterate that, you know, something about the
housing for health department, it's in the name. It is really why we created a new division housing for health. The best form of healthcare is housing and while it's excellent and necessary to have wraparound
services, you have to start with the roof of someone's head. A place where they can lock their things. So, you know, I would say
one thing you didn't hear from staff is any reason
why we couldn't save some of this money for
emergency shelter, set aside. You know, looking at the
expenditure schedule, we need to spend 20% of
the funds by July 31st.

I think we can still do that by approving either one of these
contracts or two of them, but not necessarily allocating
all of the money today. I think we could also
do it relatively quickly but with an order for some kind of
emergency shelter as well, which I'm happy to bring back to the board at our next meeting. I would also, you know, book
some questions for staff, that the property has been identified as available properties for
people to rent, that's great. I'd love to know more
about where those are. It was mentioned that 75
units had been set aside by the housing authority. Well, great. That's 75 of 200, that sounds like pretty low hanging fruit. Why do we need to go spend
$3 million on case managers if you know if we're significantly
towards our goal already with just the allocation
that the housing authority has already set aside? So, those are my questions. What do we do if this doesn't work? What do we do about the other 300 people? Why should we not create
a fail, safe option? – Okay.

I don't know if I'm… Mr. Morris or Ratner or
me I think you hear about, you've spelled out your plan of attack. You've presented to us. I don't know if you want
to reiterate any part of that or if would further
answer the questions of supervisor Koenig. – Supervisor McPherson I can provide further
clarification if the board is interested in that, would you like me to
respond to some of them? – Yeah I think so.

Yes, please. – So I want to clarify
that the partnership with the housing authority has
75 rental assistance vouchers for people who are between
the ages of 18 and 61 who are disabled and the vouchers are for an entire household. So voucher doesn't mean
one person it's whoever's within that household
with that individual, they're not specific units,
it's rental assistance and the rental assistance can
be used in privately owned, either nonprofit or
private for-profit entity rental housing.

And so folks who are struggling with homelessness need
support to help find units in the community. There are, there are
units in the community we had in the community through the Whole Person Care
Program we have contracted with an agency to help
people with housing vouchers, to find housing units it's
been quite successful. Much more successful than asking people, experiencing homelessness, to try to navigate a government program and find housing on their own. Without that kind of support. The 75 vouchers are in addition to the 200 rapid rehousing slots. So that brings us closer
to 300 households. And of course we want to help as many households as
possible get into housing. I alluded to earlier that
some of the ESG VB funding is being used to pay
for emergency shelter. And there were other funding
sources that we are using to pay for emergency shelter. I am working with other
members of the board and city leaders to look at how we're gonna fund emergency
shelter after the pandemic. And I do think there is a legitimate issue for the community around how we fund and support emergency shelter long-term, most of the funding that
the County of Santa Cruz has been using to support emergency or temporary housing programs has been based on one-time state funding and we have, as we indicated
in our presentation to the board, a significant
funding gap in many areas, including emergency shelter and this particular funding source creates a great opportunity for us
to work on the long-term goal for folks experiencing homelessness which is helping people
move from the streets and shelter into permanent homes and not having shelter as the
aspiration for the community.

And I do want to say that
supervisor kind of alluded to some funding that the
community was involved with prior to these additional dollars. And that's the Homeless Emergency
Assistance Program Funds, which coincidentally was
also around $10 million. The bulk of that funding was used to pay for emergency shelter, programming, hygiene facilities outreach, and the preliminary results we have from the use of that finance. We did not help a lot of people
get into permanent housing and that funding is coming to an end. So we will be seeing some reductions in emergency shelter capacity that again was supported
with one time dollars.

So I think that for us in the division, our ultimate aim is helping people to get into long-term
stable, healthy housing. That's not shelter and we believe
that these recommendations are going to help us to
make a significant impact in the community. And we'll build out our system in a way that's consistent with what
we laid out for the board and other committee members
in the strategic framework. – And I would like to just
piggyback with a question back to you, Dr. Ratner, I might've misheard you supervisor Koenig but I heard you say why
money purpose towards what Robert just explained
is of interest rather than a fail safe. I'm not following what your
point is about fail safe, because we don't see if there
was a fail safe solution with these monies counties and communities wouldn't have homelessness.

The question I'm wondering
if it would be helpful to your board, Robert,
the comments are like all this money is being
thrown away and sent to staff, but I don't think I heard
you speak to how much of it is purposed to the side to help with rental assistance, to bridge the gap between
market rate costs, because that doesn't
require building housing or getting tiny homes or getting shelters. It is an immediate fix. And maybe we didn't
speak to that well enough in the board memo or in our
answers to the board questions. Cause that's a chunk of the
money that is the bridge. – Well, if I may clarify
what I meant by a fail safe is precisely that Dr.
Ratner's point just now, which is there's a legitimate
need for money for shelters, which is because of what
we have is going away. And so when I talk about an expenditure on emergency shelter,
I'm not talking about, you know, paying for a hotel room, I'm talking about an investment that counts as emergency shelter, something like a pallet
shelter or Conestoga hut.

You know one of the great
things about pallet shelters is they collapse, they
can be stored easily, they can be moved around. They could be used in a
emergency response in our County. and the future should say, I don't know, we see flooding in a low
lying area or another fire. So we have an opportunity
to build real capacity in our community to deal with sheltering and emergency situations. And so when I say a fail
safe, I mean, what happens if we don't successfully house
275 people or households, what happens when the
money runs out to keep them in rental housing? Because after all those
programs only tracking people for 20 years.

So what if they can't
successfully stay in the housing and we don't have money for that. And what happens when the rest of our shelter money dries up and we've made absolutely no investment. I mean, we're just simply saying we'll solve that problem in the future. – Why not make some
investment in solving it now? – Can I ask to sort of
maybe try to move us forward a little bit which is, it's my understanding that there is some of the housing support funds, if this program is not successful and doesn't find housing for
a percentages population, there will be housing
support funds leftover from this allocation that
then could be repurposed for a variety of strategies to help with either that
population or other populations.

And I'm wondering if between
approving this in our, you know, in future meetings,
and certainly before August, if we could have more
discussions about what, how we could repurpose those
if we don't hit the numbers that we need to hit. And I just want to confirm that's correct with Dr. Ratner or director Morris. – So the question supervisor
Koenig as I understand it is and Randy alluded to this as well. How much of the proposed
rapid rehousing contracts is actually for rental assistance? So in general the budgets for the programs are around $24,000 per
household to help be a bridge to help them land in an affordable place and increase their income over time. So they would be able
to sustain that project. I'm sorry, that housing
at the end of the term of the program and the
money would only be used to your question supervisor Coonerty, if people actually have
housing to move into.

So if it turns out that
there is not an opportunity that works for someone that
money would still be available and all of our contracts and
human services allow for us to terminates with
appropriate notification and communication with our providers, don't expect we will need to do that in this particular case, but
there is always that option. And we can update the board on
the status as you suggested, or actually supervisor McPherson in August and where we are with the projects once we're up and running. – Okay. Any other comments from the board? We have not received or opened
it for public comment yet. I need to do that.

Is there anybody that
would like to address this from the public? – I currently see no
speakers to this item. – Okay, I will return it to the board. There is a motion on
the floor in a second, and I think it's… you accepted the additional direction that they would get a report
back in August is that correct? – I will now only on the (indistinct). I'll add and so I'll move
the recommended action with the additional direction
then we report back. And I think supervisor
Coonerty had second it up. – Mmh-mmh correct? – Yes, okay. you're okay with that? We have a motion with
additional direction. Please call the roll. – Supervisor Koenig. – [Koenig] No. – Friend. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Coonerty. – Hi. – [Stephanie] Caput. – [Caput] Hi. – McPherson. – [McPherson] Hi. – Thank you motion passes with majority. – That completes our agenda. We have three closed session items. I don't know what the
pleasure of the board is. It is 1:15, just after 1:15, would you like to take an hour break and then come back for the closed session? Or do you want to take a 10 minute break and go into closed session.

– We should take a 10 minute
break and then get it done. – Okay. Does anybody object to that? That's what my preference would be. We'll take a 10 minute
break, get back at 1:30. Is there, are there any reportable items coming from the closed session? – No, there are no reportable items. – Okay. Then we will recess or close
the regular board meeting and go into closed session and return at 1:30 in about 15 minutes. Thank you..

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