Agricultural Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

out my front window all right all right i will uh call the meeting to order at 605 604. um welcome to the july meeting our illustrious care is unfortunately remote today um and so are we filling it um so if we could do a call absolutely um

Here.

Member Campos is excused. Member Farhad? Here. Member Gosselin? Here. Member Harvey is excused. Member Hoppes? Here. Member Huntsinger is excused. Member Moore? Here. Member Quigley? Here. Member Sullivan? Here. Member Sweet?

Here. Member Warren?

Here. Member White? I believe he's on his way. And Vice Chair Roberts? Here. And Chair Norton online.

I'm here.

Hey, guys.

Hey, I'm sorry I can't be there in person. I had a second horrible accident. I broke my leg about a month ago, which is why I wasn't going to be able to attend last month. And I'm doing a lot better, but I'm still not quite ready to go sit in on a meeting in person.

Or drive. Jack, cut that out.

Or drive. That's a big part of it.

And Member White is online as well. We're also going to go ahead and promote you to panelist. You can just talk over and then you can unmute whenever you'd like.

There you go. Thanks, Ali. Present.

All right. I will move on to item three, approval of the minutes. Any discussion? Otherwise, I will entertain a motion. A couple of minutes.

Check. Wow.

Giving it up? All right, we'll do Bill Hoppings and Dick . And any public comment before we take a vote? I don't see any raised hands on this item.

All right, we'll take a vote. All right, Member B. Miller?

Aye.

And for a campus excuse, Member Farhat? Same. Member Goslin?

Yes.

Member Harvey's excused. Member Hoppe's?

Yes.

Member Hunsinger excused. Member Moore? Second. Member Quigley?

Aye.

Member Sullivan? Yes. Member Sweet? Yes. Member Warren?

Yes.

Member White? Yes. Vice Chair Roberts? Yes. Ann Chernow?

Yes.

All right, the motion carries. We'll close item three and open item four. Open forum. Diana. I'm so sorry. May I revisit the roll call in which I again forgot to call the Ex Officio members? Excellent. I'm so sorry about that. I do that every time. Sheila Berry. Not present. Dr. Ho maybe wants to introduce Paula, who's not here today, right? She's stepping in on a flight. Oh no! So we can, this item's agendized too, so you can talk a bit about it at that point. Okay, so Nan Ho is here, L.P. Rank is not here, Don McCune, here, and Veronica Rivera is not here, and Ali Abra is here, I'm so sorry.

on the agenda?

It probably should be. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I thought she was starting with this month. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

My mistake.

Yes, I know.

Carry on, sorry about that. Okay, going back to item four, open forum. Any member of the public may address the committee on matter not on the agenda. No discussion or action may be taken on these items, and we are going to do a two minute time limit. I'm not seeing anyone in the room.

Oh, sorry.

I'm seeing Larry Gosselin in the room. Go ahead.

Thank you. You know, I think we're going to need to address the issue of speaking for the Ag Advisory Committee. In the last month, I responded to a request to update the Altamont Land and Open Space Committee regarding east-west trails in Alameda County. I had to do that as a stakeholder as opposed to a member of the Alameda County Ag Advisory Committee. I chose to do that. Nobody stood there with a gun to my head, but I hadn't had my presentation approved. And so based on the standards that we've been exposed to so far, I thought it best to be cautious. Now, there's another opportunity for presentation next month to an organization with high esteem, and I'm facing the same issue. You know, we really don't have time to get the presentation approved, and so it has to be figured out how the message of the Ag Advisory Committee is going to get out there into the public when we're facing short-term issues.

How do you propose we figure that out? Maybe that's a future agenda item. We have a process.

I think we have a long process. Ally, do we have a process in place? I'm sorry, for? You know, the approval of our presentation.

I mean, it would just be through this committee at a regular meeting having something agendized and then bringing it through the committee and approving, you know, recommending, asking for it to be placed on an agenda.

Or something like this.

Or creating an ad hoc subcommittee. What was the last one? Creating an ad hoc subcommittee to take up the issue.

Is it something like issues that go to a subcommittee, the subcommittee reviews it, and it brings it back to a recommendation? Yeah, that could work.

So are you assuming we can't vote on creating a subcommittee today?

I don't believe we need to vote on creating a subcommittee. I think a subcommittee can be created at the chair's pleasure. Yes, we're all good.

There has to be an action item Voting on it's an action item on the agenda. What I'm saying is that if we're going to vote on something to support, it has to be agendized.

What I'm hearing is that possibly Diana is suggesting or some members of the Committee are suggesting that an ad hoc subcommittee be formed to explore this issue and then at a later point in time come before the Board so that the Board could possibly take action on the findings of that subcommittee. Does that sound accurate?

That's what I was hearing.

I think that's good. And speaking, you know, in the open forum, If that's the case, I'd like to speak with you about an ad hoc committee for the presentation next month and whether or not that would be feasible.

So I just want to caution that we are sort of wandering into the territory of a discussion. But the chair could certainly create an ad hoc committee.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. We want to have volunteers. Raise your hand for a second.

I want to. Also, please support that.

I see Larry Gosselin, Bill Poppins. Stick quickly and transfer it. Anybody raising their hand?

So just for my self-edification, are you just trying to expose on the how it affects agriculture, or what is it that you're trying to create in these presentations?

There's two presentations coming up. One regards 26 years worth of work in the equine industry, and we will be having the planning department speak for the Ag Advisory Committee. And as of yet, it's unclear to me how the Ag Advisory Committee will be speaking to these issues that have been dealt with for 26 years. 26 years. So that's one example. The other example is East Bay Regional Park District has asked for a presentation regarding trails. And in that being the case, we have to know whether or not that presentation will again be from a stakeholder or it'll be from the Ag Advisory Committee or some other jurisdiction. So we just need to get things worked out. And if we can get by with an ad hoc committee that's appointed by Jack, we've got the problem solved.

Well, right now, Diana is the acting chair. So she's making a committee. I think that's how it works at this meeting.

And can we clarify the bounds of this subcommittee? So it's very specific and time bound and...

subject matter bound purpose yeah yeah so so should should should this be ready by the next meeting is that diane does that sound appropriate would that be the appropriate boundary of time for my purposes it'll be too late for future future i'm confused where this is open forum

We're having a debate and a discussion about something that should be done. I just sit through hours and hours of Brown Act violations by what Brown Act rules are.

Yeah, so we could, the chair can create an ad hoc subcommittee without it being, doesn't need to be agendized previously. So that action could be taken.

But not in open forum.

I mean, I don't know if there's a specific time at which it would need to be taken. It could be taken at any time. But you do need to wrap up this open forum.

Yeah, I was going to propose that it just gets presented to us in open forum and that it get directed to another item to be that's on the agenda, perhaps, so that we can either take it up or the chair can have some form of disposition and either form a subcommittee or otherwise.

Any other items for open forum? I'd like to take this opportunity, since this is fair season, to let you all know that we have a celebrity in the room. And I would like her to brag about herself, not only has she been outshone a lot of other folks at the Junior Livestock Show here in Alameda. She's gone on to other things. So would you like to brag a little bit about you and your heifer? And you only got two minutes.

So I showed my heifer at County Starter Fair and then she won her class and didn't place a division but got third in showmanship. Then I went to market week at the end of fair, both my animals got second in their class, and then my lamb ended up sixth in this division, and my seer ended up reserve 4H, and then I won beef showmanship and went to masters, but I didn't win masters, that's all they place.

Explain what masters is.

It's where you have to, so you win your showmanship in beef, sheep, or whatever specie you represent and then you have to learn how to show all of them and you have like 10 minutes to show each specie and whoever's the best at all of them wins. And then like three days after fair I went to state fair and I showed my heifer again. She won her age division. She didn't place overall though. And then I got third in showmanship. And then I did the Champions Challenge, which is a written test. And then if you advance from that, there's stations and then more stations. And I ended up as the reserve beef exhibitor in the Champions Challenge. And then I'm going to Tulare tomorrow morning to show another steer at the State Youth Expo.

Wonderful. All right. Anything else for open forum? Anything online? No, raise hands. All right. Closed item four, item five, chair and vice chair discussion items. I will let Jack go first.

Yeah, I have item number eight, which is going to cover my discussion points for today. So I have nothing to share for item five.

I have no separate items so we can return to the discussion of the ad hoc subcommittee boundaries so in terms of being able to get something back to the committee for approval and what that something is we have suggestions on a time by the next meeting bracket next meeting and what are we getting back are we thinking like a presentation or a set of work that could be shown?

A PowerPoint for future use at other requested presentations. Okay.

So I thought I heard discussions that were parallel on two tracks. One was a general policy and the other was specific to specific

I don't think it would be too hard for the chair and the vice chair to come up with a policy prior to that for this one-off and the committee come back by the next meeting

Ali, to do what's being proposed, do we need to take any action, or can the chair and the vice chair give guidance on this one-off, and will that work? Or do we need to have a vote of the committee?

Just to be clear, would this result in a presentation being delivered in the name of the Agricultural Advisory Committee? including the name of the Ag Advisory Committee. Say that louder, please. Including what? This would result in a presentation to East Bay Regional Parks, invoking the name and the opinions of the Ag Advisory Committee. In my opinion, I do think that that would be something that the entire committee would want to vote on. The content of meant or to vote to appoint the chair and the vice chair to do that work.

As a committee member, I do not want to review every potential proposal. I think there's enough bring power and judgment in one or two members that can take that over.

Thanks, Bill. But it does sound like, in Ali's point of view at least, that we need to take an action to at least permit that action to happen. Does that sound accurate, Ali?

That's my take, for what it's worth. But yeah, open to hearing.

I guess my question is, for Larry to be OK to give his presentation by the 18th of August, what does he need to have?

I mean, I think we probably should have agendized it on this action item.

That's not going to happen. So barring that. What needs to happen within three weeks for Larry to speak for us?

I don't know if that's possible.

Unless you pull a special meeting.

That's what I'm following. It sounds like you almost need a special meeting because there's no action items on this agenda.

Yeah, exactly. I recommend Larry just does the presentation as himself and no mention of the AAC and then we just bring it back to the next AAC meeting as a policy and having had reviewed PowerPoint for future presentations. Would it be possible to get on a future agenda?

We were requested by the president.

Specifically, okay.

I would love it if we could move more nimbly, but it just doesn't seem like that's prudent at this time. And we need to rectify this situation for the future moving forward. But just to be here at the last, in a kind of last minute situation, what are we gonna do where our hands seem to be tied? I think that's something we learned in June.

yeah I agree with that completely and yeah referencing I mentioned there were two opportunities this the second we just learned about when I say we use that in the Royal sense. But it was just learned about a few days ago, and it has to do with permitting equine facilities remarkably important to the horse industry in Alameda county. And again, we just learned about this present, uh, about the agenda item a few days ago. And so obviously I can present as a stakeholder, uh, but 26 years of work by the Ag Advisory Committee, uh, deserves to be referenced. And I start to walk kind of a, uh, a wide gray line when I start referencing the Ag Advisory Committee and, you know, speaking as a member of the Ag Advisory Committee and other equestrian groups. So again, I am in agreement that we need to get a policy going and policy needs to cover different issues and we should probably bring Allie in and start receiving some input on how herd time can be requested in the future.

So what's the deadline for the equine meeting?

It's the 3rd of August. It's the 3rd of August. Yeah, we just found out a few days ago. Now, I am participating in an ad hoc committee that was formed by somebody and the three of us on that committee. I don't believe any of us know who formed the committee. We were just informed of it by the planning staff. And so I can speak in that regard, but, you know, we have to format that working with staff. I'd prefer to be representing the Ag Advisory Committee.

Well, Larry, as a member of the Ag Advisory and as a committee, as a member of that ad hoc subcommittee you're referring to, and as a stakeholder, You have a lot of rights to speak at this meeting. And perhaps you can't convey novel opinions of this committee because the committee has not agreed upon them. But you can you could certainly discuss the historical findings and actions of this committee because those are just a matter of fact.

Yep.

All right. If that's helpful.

Yeah, and there may have been actions. I was thinking about this, like maybe there were actions in the past. There have been actions in the past.

That you could point to, yep.

Okay. Yeah, you can opine to those. And Measure D has pointed out in 2022 that those opines can be broadly construed.

So, okay. Larry, there was another issue there, I think. that we wanted a Friends of Trails group that kind of morphed from a subcommittee to a friends group that meets regularly with subject matter experts. And we wanted to invite the RCD and the Tri-Valley Conservancy and others interested in the species crossing issue for the valley and look at some because we have been told that they want to exclude people from their overpasses for critters and we'd like to look at some of our causeways that have been on the maps, like Larry says, for 30 years, and see if we can hold hands and find common ground. All right.

So go ahead, Jay. Good question.

On some committees, as long as Brown Act training Usually, the county council said those had to be current. Relatively current. And they had to be, members had to be broken out of the full board. Because I tried appointing a couple, and they said, oh no, you have to get the full board to, you can make a recommendation.

Would you like to be on the subcommittee? Yes, I would. Good. Is everybody OK with that? Yes.

That's the way the training has gone with us in the Brown Act. And we've had a couple of sessions already. But the county's kind of cracking down, getting whipped into shape on some other issues of the Brown Act.

So they're making sure all the committees and all the agencies that operate like us

or following product rules. And I try to remember right, committees were one of the things that had to be appointed and voted on. We could certainly ask, but just know that it was a part of the work.

Yeah, I'm actually trying to. So my understanding was that an ad hoc chair could create and appoint an ad hoc subcommittee.

That was my understanding as well.

And then any actions that that subcommittee were to recommend in the future would need to come back to the full board. So that subcommittee can go off and do its work, but then any actions that it would take would have to be agreed upon by the full board as an agendized item. That's my understanding. It sounds like Jack understood the same. Well, let's take that action today and then

Allie, if you could check in with the council. And then if that is avoided action, then that's what it is.

But if it's not, then we at least have a .. And that could be something specific to the Castro Valley MACs bylaws, too. So that's another thing for us to check on.

I just wanted a couple of people. And then a couple of them wanted to show up. So I was going to say, you're off. And they said, oh, no, no, no. Your new rules are? At the end of the meeting, make a recommendation, and you can vote on it. But you had to put it on the agenda, and you had to take public comment on it. I mean, it just wouldn't work for us.

So in summary, there's no action taken if Larry will be speaking as a stakeholder in these two opportunities.

Correct. It's just whether we are forming a subcommittee

creative policy on the creative policy future creation of presentations so that's your action item subcommittee that's ad hoc yeah if the chair wishes to create a subcommittee to address this task or if Larry just want to go forward with sort of the information that you have as a member of the public and in all of your other capacities.

Yeah, what I'll do is reach out to Jack and we'll get it sorted out as best we can.

And I would ask an ad hoc subcommittee to include in their considerations that when our members go outside to represent us, that they are expected to report back. Yeah, yeah.

That's a great point too. Yes, on the creation of a subcommittee and the creation of a policy or a draft policy.

The appointment or the creation of a subcommittee to discuss that potential policy around communications and presentations such as the one that Larry is presenting.

I would personally like if a subcommittee came back with a potential action that we were able to vote on.

Yeah. And that would be their, that would be their purpose is to come back with an action in September. Um, and, and I see this as separate from what Larry's talking about. Yes. Right. Like Larry has his time bound and can't wait for the subcommittee, but this could set your committee up to take advantage of opportunities like this in the future. Yes. Okay. So I'll put it on the agenda for September for a report back from the subcommittee on how it recommends creating a policy or a presentation to share more broadly. Okay. So they will provide a recommendation and they will not provide anything substantive for the committee to vote on? They would provide a recommendation for your committee to potentially vote on. Okay. So they will be creating a draft policy?

or a ground presentation.

I would think, in one time, a subcommittee should easily be able to prepare a draft policy on presentations by members of the public. We could probably do it in five minutes after this meeting.

Well, wonderful. And that is the expectation of the subcommittee, that is to bring back a draft policy for the committee to vote on. OK. OK.

I want to be clear about my role. I will be presenting as a stakeholder with the best storehouse of knowledge and .

Yes.

All righty. Any public comment on item five?

I see no reach hands online.

Wonderful. Move to close item five, open item six, ADC membership.

Parents, would you like to take it away? Well, I'm looking forward to meeting Paula next month. And in an email exchange, she seemed like she was pretty anxious and interested. And we'll hope to learn more about her and her programs next month. But also, if you weren't aware last month, that Jeff Anderson is needing to resign from the committee. And he didn't resign. He's elected not to renew his position. So we have an opening now for the floriculture and horticulture position. And we're glad Nan is here tonight to represent Las Positas College. No pending appointments, but I did send out an application for participation to someone who has a recreation interest. And so we may get that application in by next month. If so, that would be on the agenda. And so we'll let that see what happens. And the rest is as normal.

Rangeland Ecology, though?

Rangeland Ecology is a position.

Is that currently filled with that?

That's been vacant. And the Wente family is working along with others to try and find us someone from enology and grape growing.

All right.

Isn't that fish and wildlife?

Yeah. That's an ex-officio position that we've never had anybody sit here for.

I know, but I'm just saying, isn't it called fish for our life now?

Well, it is fish for our life now. I think that's fishing game in our bylaws because that's what we like to do.

I like fishing game. Exactly. All right. May I? Yeah, I just want to say thank you. It's been my pleasure to serve with you all for the last three years. It's been incredibly wonderful to see how powerful ag is in our county. And I want to thank Larry in particular, who kind of like somehow we connected and then just we could see so much potential with the college. And Karen, you were really wonderful in onboarding. And all of you have been just wonderful professionals. And I learned so much from each of you. And I want to thank many of you for coming to the college when we opened our horticulture enology building. And the person who's gonna step into my role here is Paula Chucky, she's the Dean of STEM, so that was my, former physician a few years ago. And I kept wanting to keep coming to these meetings, and I said, I've got to give it up because she's actually overseeing the ag programs. And so I think she'll be able to bring a nice voice and be able to connect our college to all of the needs of our advisory committee and all of the work that we do. So thank you all. And I'm sad to leave you all, but I know I will hear much from Paula when she gets here. Thank you for those updates. And I will open the floor for open comment for item six.

Raise hands online.

Item 6 and open Item 7. Update on the status of the Aggregatory Committee's recommendation that the Board of Supervisors adopt a proclamation to recognize the International Year of Rage Line and Pastoralism.

That's a lot of words. Well, I want to appreciate that Allie helped us kind of schedule this opportunity to go to the Board of Supervisors. It is agendized to accept this recommendation from us. And I'll be there. I will go be there. I will be there to, evidently, express something. So I'm looking forward to that. And another, it's always a challenge for me to think about how do I cross the county early in the morning to get to Oakville. But I will do so and let you know what happens.

Wonderful. I just want to say that this is such a great opportunity. And I'm so glad that we could get it through. Almost through. And, yeah, I feel like we should keep our eyes out.

And I'm only going to speak as a member of the committee accepting. I won't give any speeches because you haven't approved them.

You can do a speech on behalf of yourself as a pastoralist. That's what I am.

Wonderful. Any comments from the committee? I just knew that that agenda should be up by Thursday or Friday. I don't see it posted yet. Thank you.

And then public comments? Oh.

I don't see any raised hands online.

In front of the room. Okay, wonderful. I will close item seven, open item eight, which will be presentified.

Great. Thank you, Diana. Everybody can hear me fine, right? Okay, great. Thank you. So, as everybody knows, on November 18th of last year, AAC voted to send a letter to the Board of Supervisors requesting that the Board communicate to state parks about identifying a route for a multi-use East-West Trail through the Alameda-Tesla property, and that it should be a high priority for Alameda County. On June 1st, I presented to the Transportation and Planning Committee regarding this letter. Let's see, it was kind of an all-day affair. got there about 8 or 9 in the morning and didn't get a chance to present until about 12 or 1. Somebody even pulled a fire alarm at some point, which cost everybody an extra hour. We all had to evacuate the building, wait for the building to be cleared and declared to be safe, and then go back in. So it was quite an event. But as everybody remembers, this wasn't – This wasn't a unanimous vote when we voted to send the letter to the Board of Supervisors. But we had a lively debate about it. And we came up with a clear direction from a majority of the board. And so I presented that letter in my best attempt to be faithful to the desires of the board. to the BOS, to the TMP subcommittee. I talked about why the AAC cares about trails, really about kind of just reiterating the contents of the letter mainly, but I talked about what we were proposing, how that fit within the regional vision. I had done some research to find that What we were proposing wasn't in conflict with previous positions that the board or the agency had taken in the past. And so gave that presentation and. You know, there was some hard there was then where there was public comment. I think the county had just switched to a new, maybe they went from Zoom to Teams or something. I'm not exactly sure, but they had a new piece of software and it really had made it quite difficult for folks to comment. There was a lot of trouble online, but it was very clear that from the public, there was a lot more opposition to the letter than support of the people who were able to speak. A couple of folks from the AAC came down in support and a couple of folks from the AAC also came down and spoke opposed. Thank you all for coming out and voicing your opinions. The TNP, the supervisors, Miley and Halbert, it was clear that they were impressed by the amount of members of the public that came out to speak against the issue. And I would say it was about three to one or four to one in terms of public speakers. And so what happened was i mean essentially the request to forward the trails letter which was i was making that that died there was no motion to to moving forward um the the some of the questions that tnp that the supervisors asked me were along the lines of uh whether Um, what a multi use trail meant the letter we wrote, it recommended multi use trails and multi use trails has a specific definition within the state park system. Which essentially means horses, pedestrians and bicyclists. And so, being that that was the language we approved, that's the language that I needed to stick with and, um. It was very from the public's point of view. It seemed like the biggest 1 of the greatest points of condition they raised about what we were proposing. Was the idea that bicyclists could be on this trail and in particular that. E bikes would could run unrestrained and that there was a lot of. Animosity or dislike of the idea of e, bikes and that maybe e, bikes took advantage of trails and went off road on trails. And damage trails and maybe scared animals. This was a lot of what I was gathering. From the public comment, and, um. So, letter died from lack of motion. And, uh. What really impressed upon me was that what we can do when we make a recommendation to TMP and to the board, the correct pathway that we've discovered through this process is for that to come before TMP and the chair or another party possibly from representing the committee come and speak Is in favor of what we have approved what we have recommended. But if we don't have public support, majority public support. We're not going to get any farther than that. And so anything that we bring to TNP has to be backed up by majority public support at the meeting. How we get there, that's an open question. In the case of this issue, we could have gotten there either by, in my mind, by more representation from trails enthusiasts to counter the no trails group or more collaboration with the no trails group so that uh maybe we did not have that opposition in effect in the first place and so that uh but however we get there we have to have majority public comment support when we get to tnp that that's that was my field um just our our opinion as a board of experts is not going to get us too far except for to get us on the agenda at tmp um There was also, on top of that, I also asked a secondary question at the meeting, which was really, essentially it came down to, can we send letters like this? Are we allowed to just send these letters or do we have to come to you every time? And the board made it clear, the supervisors made it clear that we do need to come to them to send a letter. They don't want us, sending a letter of opinion without their approval. And they did apologize for the amount of time it took, because if you think about it, November to June, it took over a half a year for us to get to TNP. And part of that was just because we never actually, it's been a long, not never, I don't wanna say never, but it's been a while since we've taken that route of our official capacity. And so it was a little confusion of how to get it done. And so the board did. They did say that they would tighten that loop and get. We could get before them much faster than this initial instance. But that we do need to come before them before sending a letter. Like, the 1 that we shared the 1 that we approve. So that's my report on that action. It was a great learning experience for me. It was quite a lift. Like I said, it took a whole day to get this thing done, but I enjoyed it. I only want to caution the committee that when we get to that step, we need to make sure we have majority public support as we come before the committee. I think that's the linchpin to move things forward from that step. but I also commend us all for getting to that step because I think it's been a while since we've actually exercised that official capacity of our committee. So I'll open it up now. Thank you.

Jack Amos. And first, thanks for a very thorough and detailed report, especially with your sentiments on the reactions you got, that is highly informative for me and I think hopefully for the committee as well. My question specifically with one of your last points you made about if we are to propose policy recommendations moving forward in the form of a letter or other, whether TMP or other, that we reach out more and get more of a bellwether of the broader public. That's a challenge for us in terms of outreach and how we want to be more representative other than just a, quote, committee of experts. is the first thing. The second point is, of that no trails group, as impressive as it sounds they were in organizing and in people to come to express their voices, was it nuanced or was it just a blanketed objection to what we were proposing? In other words, was it really a, quote, no bicycle group or, uh, I'm wrong, wrong. I don't know. Bicycle, a, um, e-bikes or, you know, was it an e-bike alliance group? You know what I mean? In terms of, was it coming from a particular sector or whatnot, or was it just generic overall, not particularly organized people who objected to what we were proposing?

I understood. Well, I would say that opposition was very organized. I do recall them focusing on bicycles and e-bikes, not exclusively, but very heavily as one of the largest points of contention. Also, another thing I didn't mention was the, and if any other members of the committee And say this better than me, please speak up, but the, um. The park needs to be classified in 1 of 3 groups and the most, uh. The, the, the loosest classification is state park. It allows for the most camping. The strictest classification is state reserve. It doesn't allow for any overnight stays. And, um. ensuring that the group that these the park was a state reserve was another large point of the no trails group and i think that um i think one of the points they may have brought up was that maybe bicycles and reserve were in conflict like they're mutually exclusive i i'm not positive on that but i think that might have been a counter argument as well um but you know the Our letter said multi-use trails, which has a meaning that includes bicycles. So I didn't feel like I could pivot from what the committee had approved or anything. I do believe that they were very organized and those were the points that they were most contentious to them. But I'm not positive because I haven't had a dialogue with this party directly about it, I would say. I'm not positive that if we solved those issues, there wouldn't be more issues, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I hear you on that. It's not necessarily solving the issues. It's about listening. It's about... knowing we're in touch and that what we're discussing and how we're discussing it is relevant from a diversity of voices and opinions. And we went through this about, I want to say a year ago, around horses or something with the Max, and I forget what it was. But I'm just trying to listen to what you're saying to see this as an opportunity for us, perhaps, like you're saying, to reach out to this group and maybe anticipating, as we develop recommendations moving forward, that we really try to look at our potential blind spots. Not that, which we may have over, or not have necessarily considered, not necessarily thinking that we are the sole committee of experts. Not that we're experts, but that there might be other opinions that we haven't really sought to include. And how can we best go about that in the future? So just to make that point, I really do appreciate your report.

Yeah, thank you, Amos. I think that's a great point.

You know, I occasionally speak to the team is particularly with TMP if you meet with one of the supervisors ahead of time and it's always the meeting before the meeting and you kind of bring them up to speed and educate them on what's going on and what you're trying to accomplish so because they get a stack of data this thick to deal with for meetings and they kind of skim through it and their staff tells them explain some of the things that are going on, because they'll delegate it to them to do. I always found that you'll have a greater success, particularly with T&P, when you take Nate or Supervisor Miley and Supervisor Hauber and one of them aside and say, look, have a few minutes of your time and explain to them what you're trying to do and why you're trying to do it and what you're But your army behind you of experts is willing to support. You'll find that you'll have a whole lot more success in these meetings, particularly when you go into TMP. And these are very open to discussion prior to meetings.

Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

I'll chime in. I was on the call, and I was one of the people who couldn't get my comments heard. I don't know how many people. I know that there was a number. So for sure. Second, I was a little bit surprised that Nate seemed to hijack the e-bike situation. and concern. And the group against chimed in and rallied behind that. So I learned a lot. And so the Friends of Trails group, we were invited by the state to kind of write the letter, as I recall. And it's still one of our high priority Things to look at, because if we can, it's our opportunity to get to the next county. Which the supervisors seem to want to go for with the trail. I think that's Larry, would you agree with me there?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's desired that we go to the next county. That's been described as an objective for quite some time and but that being said. That isn't how the letter was construed or represented by the people in opposition to the letter. Their focus was on a bigger picture that we hadn't presented to them. And so, you know, we didn't. We weren't there to argue with them. You know, we represented the letter and that was the extent of it. And again, I think Jack did a good job. Yeah. A great job.

There was another one that wasn't able to put my comments in. I want to commend Jack. I thought he represented the committee very well at the hearing. Friends of Tesla, I have seldom seen a more focused, organized, and more unreaching organization in 50 years of environmental work. They are laser focused. And they can call up their supervisor and say, I want a meeting with you and your staff. they say when, because they represent the broadest scope of environmental interest that I have run across. So again, the two main issues that they were concerned about was one, the definition of multi-use trail, the potential use of e-bikes, or as some people are calling them, electric motorcycles, and how that would be regulated, and the impact to the biotic cultural and historical resource of Tesla. And secondly, whether the development of a multi-use trio would make it incompatible with the most strict definition for Tesla, the nature reserve. They're concerned that taking this action, if it precluded that Those are the two arguments that people alternated back and forth. So you guys are representing, this committee was represented very well, but Tesla is a flashpoint, and the Tesla Prince of Chelsea is well organized.

Yeah, I think something to consider for any of our discussions is public opinion, public support groups, and I think members have already talked about doing a little bit more outreach before sending out letters and getting a good pulse.

I don't know, Larry. I have four comments.

Four?

I can go through them quick.

All right, you've got until 7.01.

So first of all, I'd like to respond to the comment regarding our expertise. And so that's determined by the Board of Supervisors. Board of Supervisors have determined that each of us is an expert. And so that's a foundation that exists. Can't be challenged. Where we failed with this particular effort is that long ago, the Ag Advisory Committee learned to be policy focused as opposed to project focused. And I think in this particular case, it could have been and potentially not by a letter, certainly, because a letter isn't broad enough to consider policy. So we learned a valuable lesson, I think, in that regard. Policy focus versus project focus, there's overlap between the two, and the Ag Advisory Committee has dealt with that well. I think regardless of the Board of Supervisors appointing us as experts, they see us as a stakeholder. One of the reasons for that is that We haven't developed a chain of communication with them. Chuck's referenced how that can be developed, but that's one tool available to us. We need to be before the Board of Supervisors, transportation, all the other organizations that are part of the governance of the County of Alameda to affirm what we are doing here that may help us with our communication strategy that we develop, and it will help plant our expertise, and as a PA, we're not doing that. And then something I'd like to add, and this is something that I've experienced throughout Alameda County since I became involved with politics as an appointed official or a stakeholder in 1998, and that is Hagerty and Miley did a remarkable job of tutoring everybody from the Ag Advisory Committee or anybody on that committee that wanted to listen. And That was remarkably valuable. And I won't go through all the messages, but they laid it out. And what that says to me is they want us to be educated as to how their system works and how the system of governance works so that we can come in better prepared to assert the policy that we believe is appropriate for the county. That's it.

Wonderful. Four excellent points. All right.

I'm writing 701.

Man, you're killing it.

They have a limit. I can't do it.

All right. Any other comments before we close?

Public.

Well, yes. Sorry. Any other committee comments before? All right. I will move on to public comment.

We have two. Who would like to speak?

Three minutes. Three minutes?

Please, three minutes. The chair says three minutes.

Huh?

The chair says yes, three.

OK. Coming back from that meeting, this board could have taken two approaches. One was to be sad and to be disappointed that the work that you had done and the vote that you had taken didn't make it and was sent back. But what I want to say as a member of the public is that I'm delighted to hear the way that Jack reported on this. I also want to go around the table and say that Amos was absolutely spot on, that Jack was well prepared. He did an excellent job. I'm an orator, and he did better than me in terms of his preparation. I appreciate Chuck's analysis that you really do need to have the meetings before the meeting. Any time that you want to influence something, visit. The public meeting is not the place to do it. You've got to do it before. Going around the table, thank you, William, for your analysis, teasing out where the real issue is. As a horseman, you know, I'm concerned about e-bikes and whether, I mean, my horse is trained to have a motorcycle ride by, but most horse people aren't yet. That can be an issue. And indeed, that group is very, very well organized. As for the speaking to each one of you, your groups can be more powerful if you have alignment with who are your constituencies. Do you have a distribution list for what you represent so that if you have a point that you want to advance to this group, that you're prepared to get some support? Because back to what Amos so eloquently said was, being prepared and reaching out to your constituencies, making sure that you have some public support because we could have been sad. We worked hard. We waited a long time. We're frustrated by the process. We felt like we weren't being listened to. But the fact is, this group just took a better approach. You've taken a continuous improvement. You've said, What can we learn from it? What is the process? And I applaud you for each of you caring about what this committee can do on behalf of ag in Alameda County.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angela. Any other comments? Raise your hands.

OK. three lessons learned all right i'm going to close item eight and open item nine report from the advisory committee members who attended supervisor david halbert's june 22nd business leaders meeting larry and i were both there wonderful jerry do you want to as well as uh derrick eddie is that his name eric denny purple work it in derrick eddie derrick eddie thank you

He was there, and Representative Tri-Valley Conservancy was there. And so the rural community was well represented. The entire size of the group, I think, was about maybe 35 people. That being said, there were at least four working landscape people there. There may have been one or two more. And the people from the working landscape spoke up quite a bit. So I think we made a good presentation. And I think it's fairly reflective of our participation in general. We are the stewards of the landscape. uh we've watched over decades and decades that preceded us the continued decline of agriculture in the community and uh the fact that um a lot of that is related to the fact that we have such a difficult time having our recommendations be accepted by the public so anyway we we conveyed that we are always eager to help and uh and i think that was

Yeah, I didn't think anything particularly profound came out of the meeting. It was more of a, you know, like a team building event than it was anything else. But I thought they, Howard did a nice job of, you know, facilitating the whole thing. Everybody participated to some degree. Yeah, it represented. It was more of a team building event than it was. anything profound coming out of it.

There was a representative from Las Positas College here, and I was pleased to hear him represent the students and opportunities that could be made available to students in the rural landscape. And so I can't remember his name, but I remember Ruby's name, and supposedly Ruby can connect us.

So were there any specific acts that came out of

And not that I saw. It was a get to know each other type of meeting.

It was a one time event?

Yeah. He doesn't really. Doesn't he?

Yeah, I think it's hand your way. And there were a lot of nonprofits there as well. Right. So he was trying to just build community with the nonprofits, the business owners. And it was a kumbaya kind of session. mean do we feel like this is an opportunity for next year like do we want to prep something in april or it was worth attending i just i'm not sure that there was anything agendized that was you know voted on or hey do we want to do this it's nothing like that in the meeting

Yeah, and on the other hand, I think that if somebody suggested to Supervisor Halbert that there be a preparation that was oriented towards the working landscape, I think he'd be open to it. I mean, there's no doubt there wasn't a dogmatic sort of theme to the get-together. It was, in fact, a get-together. So he had a structure that he'd put together for the meeting. He's remarkably adaptive. I'm sure he'd be capable of restructuring in the future if he saw a need to do it and potentially even use that format. I mean, at our last meeting, Karen mentioned the importance of getting the agricultural community together. I've seen him do that with the horse industry a couple of times. And so that's something for us to know. And there may be linkage towards our previous discussion regarding failure of presenting to the Transportation Planning Committee.

Any other questions from people or thoughts or feelings of opportunity? Thank you for going. I know, yeah, I appreciate you guys both showing up and representing the ag community. I agree, let's go next year.

We thought they needed some experts.

Yes. All right, I will open it for public comment.

Can you raise your hands? Oh, there's a raised hand.

Yeah, I'll just toss them in. One of the things I do for volunteering is my wife is on the board of directors of the Equestrian Center of Walnut Creek. And I'm the ambassador to the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce. Walnut Creek, despite the fact having an equestrian center of Walnut Creek for 55 years straight, most people in Walnut Creek didn't know. And so what I did was I showed up wearing my buckle, wearing my jeans, wearing my cowboy hat, and I showed up handing out slides or little handouts that said the Equestrian Center Walnut Creek has been there for 55 years and we were a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Let me tell you what, being the only guy in the room with a cowboy hat, nobody in that room was confused by the end of the night that there was an Equestrian Center Walnut Creek. And I bring that up because ag I mean, you guys are, you heard me make the speech earlier. Congratulations to you for pressing on. I've been watching with, on your behalf, a general frustration for how do you get anything done as a committee. But when you show up to these community events, it matters. Show up looking like you are ag and let them know that ag matters here in Alameda County. And by the way, horses are ag everywhere that old glory flies. Thank you.

Any other comments? You are a good orator.

What's that?

You are a good orator.

Oh, thank you. I'd just compliment Andrew and say horses need trails.

Thank you.

You're here. May the horse be with you.

All right. I will close item 9 and open item 10, update from the ad hoc subcommittees for limited subdivision of large parcel.

So interestingly enough, there was a presentation that was being made on the recent survey at the what board meeting? Just an ad hoc meeting. So when I came in, I didn't see it or hear what the presentation was, but I did get on a little bit of a Zoom call with Sean Wilson yesterday and talked a little bit about the data. It's an interesting survey. I don't have anything to bring with me, but they'll be coming to this meeting to present the data. They mentioned in the meeting that we were listening to, we'll be going to the Ag Board meeting to present the data. Some of the highlights that I garnered from just looking at the responses was it feels to me that there's pretty good support for smaller family, smaller parcels for family farms. So when they looked at, when they polled these people, that was something that polled well, that folks thought, yeah, should be able to do that if you want to. The other thing that polled really well is farm worker housing. That folks in the county think, yeah, there should be some provisions for that. So those were the two highest polling positive things in the survey. What polled particularly poorly was allowing the Board of Supervisors more discretion. And I think what I hear in that is that There's just a general distrust for politicians that is rising among us, whether it be the local board of supervisors, Congress, the White House, you name it. School board. So that is, so there was a question asked, you know, would it be okay with you, with a super majority of the board of supervisors, four out of five, that they could make some minor changes and measure these? And the polling said no. The citizens want to make every decision about this. They want there to be a ballot measure for everything, which I find kind of disheartening. I just don't think it's a way to govern. But that's more or less what the polling has shown. And they'll be here, and we can talk more about it when they're here. You're just hearing me. call with Sean Wilson. But I am heartened by the fact that there is a good feeling for 20-acre parcels, family farms, that sort of thing, that that could be potentially a ballot measure for 2028. And along with some more lenient way to provide farm worker housing could possibly be a part of that. So the agenda is to put something on the ballot in 2028 because nothing's going to make it for this year, August 7th is the deadline. And to try to build a community consensus around whatever it is so that it's just not us ag folks saying what we want, but rather the you know, a broader coalition of people that go, yeah, that's a good idea. Because that seems to be the only way to get things done is that you've got to try to build that consensus beforehand. Otherwise, folks will be coming out of the woodwork, like on the trails thing, because there are always small groups of very vocal people that will make themselves heard.

That's the plan.

We got two years to do something and build consensus around.

A couple of things I learned from the survey and from talking to a variety of people.

There are a lot of things that are permitted in Measure D that are unacceptable to most of us. Huge solar farms, battery out storage places, all those kind of things are there.

And when you present the options of maybe more family farms versus solar farms, then the content changes or the answer changes. They start to say, oh, we'd rather have 520 acre parcels in that 100 acre section. So those are the kind of things I think that the supervisors learned out of this is that there's not a lot of trust. in government, period, to make the right decisions. And you'll sell or sold a development and there'll be a million houses. So that's pretty clear when you listen to the things that came back and when you talk to different folks in there. But one thing that's very clear was a lot of the options that are things that are allowed in Measure D, like graveyards, and even my brother's building a giant golf range off of North Livermore. And, you know, those are the kind of things that are permitted. And all of a sudden people start saying, well, geez, how do we look at it differently? And families leave in the Bay Area because there's no inheritance ways of doing it. So I think you're finding that what I learned out of the thing was people are pretty compassionate.

not trustworthy enough to give the power to the supervisor of the county to make those decisions.

That's what I've learned out of it.

Yeah, it's saddening because it's going to be a ballot initiative for every little stupid thing you can think of.

It's like last time. We had a ballot initiative for the F.A.R. and it was a challenge, but it took us a few years to get there, but it got there. You know, I think it When more people understand the options that are going to be out there for some of those ag properties, there are going to be some significant changes of willing to not see those big solar farms. They haven't even got into the data storage units and things like that. I can't imagine, with all the pressure from the federal government, with the state rolls

I'd like to add, I think in looking at a broader constituency, I think the people who are not considered even in ag zones but who are rural residents are on 5, 10, 15 acre plots, parcels, that might just really, they may not be calling themselves farmers, but they have to do something with the lands. Maybe there's even a constituency there that that we could kind of draw on. But I'd like to share something with you. I've been filing a lot of stuff recently. And I ran across something from a staff analysis from the Planning Commission in December 16th, 1996. And it was to the Board of Supervisors referral to the Planning Commission on consideration of an ag programs. And this one particularly, I'm going to read because it's really hard for me to synthesize really fast. On December 7, 1995, the Board of Supervisors formed an ad hoc committee of ranchers and environmentalists to negotiate a solution on the parcel size issue that would be acceptable to both interests. So the Ag Parcel Size Negotiated Committee consisted of Supervisors Steele and Campbell, who were highly effective in this arena of ag and land use, in my opinion, four representatives of the Ag Committee and four representatives of the Environmental Committee, and held nine meetings. So out of their staff analysis came a couple of programs. One was, let's establish an easement purchase program Well, the purpose being, I skipped. Committee members agreed that providing ranchers with alternative ways to raise capital and make wine growers do. To raise capital is important to the continuation of ranching in each county. Based on their knowledge of the financial needs of ranch families and other families requiring assistance in recent years, Um, the ranchers estimated two to $3 million a year would be adequate to provide assistance as needed to keep ranch families, um, in business. The committees generally agreed that there's two programs. One was to establish an ESOP program. So this was, when was Tri-Valley Conservancy established? 94. 94. So it was just, just in its beginning stages at that point. And a program to allow the temporary creation of a home site parcel for financing purposes.

Yeah, you sent me this.

Yeah, I just sent it to you this afternoon. So that was a workshop held with interested citizens, and they gathered information from the San Joaquin County program, but the discussion was that San Joaquin County had established, because the ordinance is here, it allows for the creation of a five-acre home site parcel for use as collateral for financing purposes generally for the construction of a home on the site, but potentially for other purposes such as ranching or land growing. And that they put some limitations on it, some restrictions, so that you, as long as the loan is active, you can't sell the property, or the risk of foreclosure if you don't, and then you default, lose that capacity. But I thought there was a lot of really interesting thoughts that kind of dovetail into the whole reason that we kind of started this conversation, which is how do we keep people on the land? We're part of the family and the operation. And this is all, so San Joaquin has it as an ordinance, is the way that they dealt with it. So I just thought it was interesting heritage for us to think about. I would be really curious to know what happened when the Planning Commission got this. Did it go any places? No, I don't see any ordinances, obviously, that we found. But it would be interesting to kind of look at that again as a way to have a temporary home site built on the bigger parcel to allow the family member to get a loan to build their house. But by the time it went through public works, the main house would have to have new septic system, new windows, and a wider driveway. So there's a lot of things that could happen with that. But I thought, this has been an ongoing question for a long time.

I could find out what happened with it.

That's what happens.

And if you could distribute. So Karen, Dick, and I were involved with an effort at the turn of the century, which was a long time ago.

the people that were charging the progressive agricultural practices were highly respected. They were the generation ahead of us and what they were trying to do was to come up with alternative strategies to allow their families to stay in agriculture. That effort moved through after Measure D was passed and it lost support, lost traction. It was Tri-Valley Business Council's working landscape plan And so what's significant about that is that this plan was put together after Measure D had been passed. It had recommended implementation strategies that could have enhanced agriculture. Those implementation strategies just weren't moved through Alameda County's departments.

And the grant money went away to keep planning.

They languished. And what happened is that that concept of the working landscape with money going to land stewards who are working agriculturists was replaced by a new industry and not casting aspersions at the Tri-Valley Conservancy. But what's happened is an economy has developed, a remarkably powerful economy that uses trust to acquire land from the private sector, specifically for mitigation and that is what the property is used for. So the most recent example is the Dolan Preserve in which 8,000 acres of trust land has been brought together. Of that 8,000 acres of trust land, only about two and a half miles of a single trail is going to be allocated for public access. All of those properties have been taken out of the private domain. Their purpose now is for mitigation, and it actually creates a block of property that's obstructing to public access to the rural landscape. So it represents a whole system that went askew and is being supported right now by, again, an economy that doesn't have So as we move forward with these concepts, we'll be facing that economy already being in place. And park district officials who say, sorry, we can't provide public access. So it's tough.

Diana? I'll share for my equestrian friends that this coming weekend, it's the granddaddy, one of the granddaddy endurance rides The Tevis, which goes from Auburn to Reno. My dream for years was to do it. I never got to. It's hard. Runners also use that trail. It goes through a number of counties. It's 100 miles. That's this weekend. And it will help. It's a big money-making event. Lots of sponsors. I give that to you because I'll Last weekend, I was at my family's homestead on the Scott River in Aetna, California, at my family cemetery for a family outing, a memorial, in the Aetna Community Park. What I had forgotten, and I've done the Pacific Crest Trail between Marble Mountains and Trinity Heights many times. That's where my family grew up. What I didn't know when I came back, because at the campground we had the family memorial at the campground, it's the campground for the Pacific Crest Trail. The Pacific Crest Trail, you go on their website, I didn't know this, 2,460 miles between Canada border, Canadian border, and Mexico. We are trying, the trails group, spurred on by David and Albert, are trying to find a way to get toward that trail and the network of trails in the Bay Area, which are complete. One is around the They rim trail around the Hetch Hetchy Rasset Reservoir as San Francisco has chimed in years ago and done that. So that's my story. And for 2,460 miles of the city crest, I know as the,

The Tevis Trail goes through easements and land trusts.

I know in Marincas, that was one of my favorite riding places, we go through Ag land, dairy farmers. Alameda County and this group needs to help find a way to do that. Because property owners, I believe, can make money. Businesses can sponsor events and make lots of money. It's a win-win. And my equestrian friends, I was one for a long time and had to give my horses away because I got too old. And equestrians spend dumb amounts of money. Because I was one of them. That's all I got.

I was just going to add to Larry's comment that sometimes properties are bought up by the public or other private interests and remove whatever interest was there and may or may not be interested in trails and may or may not be interested in the cattle or goats to take care of the weeds and the grass that also grows there. And one of the survey, when you ask cattlemen as a group, one of your biggest challenges are to stay in business, it's losing access to grass. And so when public agencies buy a little piece of property on the edge of a development for a park, that little piece of property could have been enough for a cow for a few months, for example. So if you gradually kind of whittle away, maybe that's what you were even going to comment about, lack of grass.

No, it is. Land trusts had a good idea and a good place. But, you know, the mitigation property, the money is drying up because there's no more development going on in Elmgate County that needs mitigation. Caltrans at one time was the biggest buyer of the mitigation property. They're not doing that right now. So in this watershed here, and that's how the mitigation works, is they assign you a watershed based on where your project is. Have you heard of any of that property being tied up for mitigation? 8,000 acres of dual and preserved. Yeah, but that's tied up by the mitigation group. That's not sold off. What they do is a big mitigation group will come in and buy the property, and then they will sell off acres of it.

As credits or acreage?

Yeah, depending on what you need. the model or one model that's going on and I haven't heard I know what I can say is it's competitive industry because all those contracts aren't owned by the same companies so there's oh no and it's now the market is way out in the last but it could be but again you know we have this remarkable potentially a public resource in the center of the Tri-Valley that has had a promise of accessibility that's traveled with it over the decades, and now that's being taken away. And so now another example is the solar project, agrivoltaics project in North Livermore. I believe, and I might be wrong, but what comes into my mind was about $17 million of mitigation funding associated with that. The applicant was interested in having that mitigation funding stay in the area. It was taken out of the area. traveled to the southeast corner of alameda county and it's preserving ranch land that would have never been challenged by. Development and and so you know it would have been nice to see some of that income staying in the working landscape, especially considering the you know horrible condition. of the riparian creeks and riparian habitat area that exists in North Baltimore. Hard Canyon Road, Doolin Road, all the arroyos that are up there have all been poorly managed, and as a result, there's a remarkable amount of mitigation potential that was lost. It could have been visible to the public and provided benefit to the public. That mitigation strategy that was laid out in Measure D's North Livermore Intensive Agriculture District Plan included trails with habitat. I mean, so it was relatively forward-thinking and, you know, it represented a connection between the agricultural community and the proponents of Measure D as somewhat of a surprise. It actually advocated for 20-acre parcels as well as part of the process. That project, an EIR was done for it. That EIR was put up on the shelves with the claim that there isn't adequate water for agriculture. Well, all of us in the dry land environment know that the water that falls from the sky is adequate for agriculture. You just have to consider the type of agriculture that is appropriate for it.

very well. There's five or six ranches out there that are doing well in 20-acre parcels and 10-acre parcels. So you're starting to see an example of more agriculture in that 20-acre range. So I think the 20-acre range would be a really nice target to look at because it's going to generate a significant amount of revenue for the county. Even though they only get 15% of your gross tax dollars, you're still going to get some money. The next thing is you're going to see more agriculture because you'll see a person that can manage 20 acres of olives or something like that, a hell of a lot better than somebody that has 100 acres of it out there. It just don't, it financially doesn't work. So basically the farms are going to be hobby farms. That's what you're seeing right now. Nobody in the Couch Valley area has a,

Thanks. And then the Williamson Act comes into that if they're too small for Williamson Act benefits, and maybe too small for some people to finance. So there's lots of issues with small. Yeah.

Well, one thing about the Williamson Act, it's not supported by the city department. It's all supported by the county. So that's one other thing that the county could look at.

Right, and the subversion.

Subversion, yeah.

Yeah, and they can approve properties as sparse 20 acres for Williams NAC contracts if they're of special interest.

And irrigated.

Well, they don't have to be irrigated if they're of special interest.

Oh, they did? Okay, good. What was that?

The county's changed that, their definition of a special property. Well, but that's the point. It can be changed.

Yeah, that's kind of my point.

Right.

Some rules that can be written.

Yeah.

So we've talked about a lot of kind of things related to changes to make ag more viable. We've mentioned several topics that might be worth, if we had subcommittees anymore, to come up with potential, a change to the Williamson Act that would be beneficial perhaps, or get in with the EX. implementation process with mitigation projects in the county.

I agree a thousand percent. I think as this thing gets closer, the committee here has to come up with a fact sheet because that's what we're dealing with a lot of people, environmental groups. They don't deal in facts.

So facts or an FAQ sheet. Facts or fact?

Both.

Both. OK. I believe the three-letter acronym represents F-A-C-T-S, right, in theory.

No, it just answers questions. That's what I thought you were .

Yeah, I mean, but I think we do have to put fact. This is not going to cause, I mean, no matter what, for development, you still need water and sewer. OK. And you can't build a house without water and sewer. And you're not going to get 1,000 homes without it. There's properties out in Blackhawk that are approved maps that are sitting, not built, because they can't get in the water district. And they've been approved for 10 years or 12 years or more, 20. And same thing. You're seeing this all over the state. is big projects are being scrapped because they can't get water. It used to be they'd let the big developers buy a water district.

No more. I think maybe something like we'll put on an agenda a selection of an ad hoc committee to work on this. What would be the most ideal farms successful today?

What size are they?

They vary quite a bit, Chuck. When I was a kid, late teens, the concept of microgreens was just becoming popular. There were large urban parcels in the East Bay in Berkeley and Oakland that were raising microgreens, and the urban farmers were making reasonable withings doing it. Now, that market was taken over by the good folks in Salinas who really knew how how to farm. But the fact is, it's a combination of finding the product that's right for your community, developing the infrastructure, and developing the marketing. Now, getting back to the concept of the working landscape, having the public pay for those ecosystem services that they so greatly desire is something that's also talked about but never implemented. And so we are to provide scenic view shed. And our families have to bear the burden of providing that scenic view shed. But we don't get compensated for that.

I looked at this year and last year at the fairgrounds and watched the number of steers coming through. It's down significantly.

Yeah.

Two families, they don't have the space to do it. Matter of fact, we have a building, a simple building there. there are less and less opportunities for these children in the ag industry. And if we were to re-look what real agriculture that could be successful is, I think we would have a lot more children and young people coming up in the ag community and doing agriculture. And if we could work with the environmentalists to where we have a reasonable size parcels

When you start looking at the kids coming through, you said to yourself, this is a short fuse here. Very soon it's going to be gone.

So these were exactly the conversations we had 30 years ago. Exactly the same, except Karen, Dick, and I We're quite a bit younger. And there were people who represented where we are now that were greatly engaged with the conversation and we were aligned.

The business community and the outreach community. So would it behoove us to

the process of following this?

I mean, I would say that we already have it, and that's what the item is, right? Like, this is an ad hoc subcommittee to explore limited subdivision of large agricultural parcels. Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like the action wants to be what that ideal size is, and I feel like that sits within that.

And we've sort of been waiting for this county stuff to finish up.

I think the key moving forward, though, is to bring some real stakeholders into that group because I'm getting a little long in the tooth, so it's got to be like my son Griffin who's a part of it because he's the one who's got the best interest in it since then. And there's not enough sitting at this table of those people from 30 years ago. And we need a few of those to be a part of it. I think that's an important criteria. Well, and I'll bet you half those people from 30 years moved out. No, there's still people. I can't do anything about that.

I'm talking about right now, today. Half of them died. Half are still here. They're going to be dying pretty soon.

But I might suggest, if you go onto our website, our committee's website, in the documents page, at the very bottom of the list, I think, is where I saw it. Blue Ribbon Task Force is published there. So if you want to read it on our recommendations, it's on our website.

Yeah, I looked for it. So I'll look for it again. But I think it may not be there. That website is?

ACGov.org, the Ag Advisory Committee. It's at the top of the agenda.

OK. Yeah, so we can go through. There were a few studies that came out of that effort.

But I think that since what started this conversation was the housing issue, it would be interesting to learn more about the San Joaquin ordinance and see if it's something that's viable and still active. And maybe there's something we could do kind of on an intermediate. Maybe there's some way we can wiggle it into our existing.

Yeah, I think we kind of, at our last meeting, authorize the RCD to take the lead on farm worker housing. I think we should be doing that. So I'd certainly support us getting involved with farm worker housing. Yeah.

Can you call your kids farm workers now? What? Is that what you would call the kids farm workers now?

Yeah.

Yeah, you can.

Yeah, there's no age restriction on the definition of farm worker. There's no work demands. There's no hours per week. Or genealogy. Yeah, it just is that they have to be engaged. I mean, you run the risk of being challenged if they're not engaged in . I thought it was up there.

It was there once.

Yeah, but.

Oh, sorry. Allie, are we presenting something specific?

I'm just sharing. I was talking about the documents page of the website, so I brought it up.

Perfect. How many documents do we have on it?

So there's the organizational documents project, including the housing project survey, and then various planning documents. We can amend this. We can make changes. I can add things.

I'll go find it and send it to you.

So it sounds like there's some items that we would like the parcel size ad hoc committee to add to or embellish on. So committee members have specific items for Jerry to address with him. And then I think there were some other items, Williamson Act mitigation items that we can maybe address

future agenda items in 13 so we can talk about those at those time I would like to move to public comment if we can can I ask a quick clarifying question just about the this ad hoc subcommittee um ad hoc subcommittee is meant to be time bound and specific so um is there a point at which this committee would like to come back now that the board has had this discussion that they had today about the survey or the poll. Is there like a time that your committee would like to, by which your committee would like to come back and wrap up its work and consider its next steps?

So I think this is going to be a monthly report for the next couple of years for sure. And I'd like to, personally, I'd like to target a ballot initiative for 2028 to make amendments to Measure D to make it more ag-friendly?

So I think what we're doing is defining a subcommittee. And so if that's going to be the case, you know, start thinking about the structure and your charter and, you know, the things that Carl guided us to. But also, you have a resource here that can be put to work. And so you defining what kind of work you can do, I think, is going to be pretty important. And I know the policy staff is thinly spread, just like all the staff. But welcome to agriculture. So that being the case, I think that is appropriate and actually you know we've been moved by legal into starting to look at utilizing committees rather than add-on committees as well and so if they're going to push that towards us uh the thing to do is to take advantage of that system so i encourage you to start considering yourself a committee and the best well we would need to vote of course Yeah, I mean, we don't have an action item on this, so I agree. Just going to need to come up.

Is that the general direction that this committee would like to for a future agenda item? I guess.

Just to note that if a subcommittee were to be established, it would need to be staffed. It would need to be noticed. It would need to have a Zoom link. So we can treat it essentially exactly the same as this meeting with all the public access and public comment. And that's a heavy lift staffing-wise. So are there any other ways to think about approaching it that wouldn't trigger those needs?

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Is a work group, which is ex-officio or outside of this committee's authority, is that a more appropriate body to just, per se on your own, meet and develop items underneath this topic of land use?

So what's evolving is the concept of the work group doesn't help when you're dealing with other organizations and you have to represent yourself as being a spokesman for the advisory committee.

We should build an appointment and a subcommittee to work on this. The supervisors have already opened the door with a survey.

Oh, I agree. I mean, this could be a supervisor's committee.

They didn't spend that money to open that.

Or it could be a planning department.

There's some interest to move forward with this. So I think for us not to take the ball and run with it would be a huge mistake.

I agree with you completely. Yeah. I think this should be a grown up committee.

No more let's play and have a

I think that the EPLINE subcommittee or the EPLINE committee that exists outside of the Ag Advisory Committee is sort of an example of how this could be approached.

It could be approached. In that case, the Planning Department is more the lead. But to be fairly objective, the equine participants have been left behind. And we're recognizing that there's services that could be provided with our expertise that we need to figure out somehow how to address. Now, we'll be approaching the planner regarding that specifically, see if we can go ahead and use the next few days to do a joint presentation or move information into the document. But already, you know, there's been material that's been filed. for the presentation. So we can certainly adjust the narrative, but we can't adjust the presentation.

Wouldn't we establish a subcommittee that could meet as often as it wants, as long as it has a direction, and report back to this board?

And as long as you don't have a quorum, you don't have to. You don't have to have public hearings or public meetings. Your subcommittee can meet. If you have five people on it, there's a 21-person board here. As long as you don't exceed, get up to 11, your board will have your meetings. I think we just need to get this jury subcommittee a couple more people on it and sort of grab the information from the supervisors that they just got from the survey, have a couple of meetings with a couple of supervisors and get their thoughts because they spent the money on this survey. They have some ideas and try to work something out. Once you get a direction with other groups, it's kind of how we did the FAR deal.

So I guess, Allie, I was under the impression that that constituted a step to something. Is that not true?

I mean, if it's a subcommittee for two years, yeah, that's a standing subcommittee. It would need to be subject to the Brown Act.

So maybe we should table this for another month, because I think we need to get a little guidance from the Board of Supervisors. Supervisors, that's two years. like us to proceed, because I think making it as public as possible is the way to build consensus to get something done. Because if we try to do it outside the Brown Act, then we're not going to get the consensus that we're looking for. So we've got to bring a lot of people to this group to build the consensus and get something done. So let me, let's table this, let me get a little guidance from Sean and from my side to how they would like to move forward. You could check with Miley and see what he thinks he'd like to do. And then we'll come back with a recommendation or I'll get ahold of Miley and have something for the agenda for next as a recommendation of what we would like to, how we'd like to proceed.

Okay. That sounds great.

I just have a question for Jerry. Did this survey, has it also been presented to the Planning Commission? I mean, where did this?

It first surfaced tonight at a meeting that was going on when we got here.

We were just watching it on my computer.

Yeah, I got a little preview of it yesterday.

Developing, okay.

Is it a draft survey, or are they just kind of working through the topics?

So the people who did the survey made the presentation. Oh, they've already done the survey? Yeah, it's completed. Oh, wow. And they're going to be coming here to this meeting to present it as well.

Just asking for the money to do the survey wasn't easy. Remember? Yeah, I remember that.

All right, so I am going to say that we've got our marching orders, which is Jerry, you're going to do some background work.

And I'll try to get something on the agenda for next month. Right.

Provide to Ally by September 10th, if not earlier than that.

And I'll do your ad hoc subcommittee on the agenda anyway, so just add it onto that item.

Okay.

And we'll just potentially make that into an action item with the recommendation as our next meeting is September 22nd.

But we don't have an August meeting. Okay.

All right, public comment.

Don't see any raised hands on the line. And it's getting in the room.

Okay. I am going to close item 10 and move us on to item 11, update on the process slash timeline for developing general plan and zoning ordinance amendments related to commercial solar and battery energy storage systems. So that is me.

I'm the average for the planning department. So as you know, the planning department is in the process of developing, drafting a general plan amendment and zoning ordinance amendment to address commercial solar and commercial battery storage in the county. And that's consistent with the policy board adopted back in 2022 that I know some of you were involved with. So where that stands right now, is that the draft ordinance and amendments, general plan amendments, are under review by county council. Once county council has okayed those for initial public review, the plan is that those will be released along with a request for proposals for a consultant that the planning department's going to engage to help us review those amendments for technical details that we may not know about, things we're not experts in solar and battery storage, and importantly to develop a CEQA approach for these amendments, these proposed amendments. So that RFP process can take six months or more. So during that time, that would be a really great opportunity to engage the Ag Advisory Committee or a subcommittee of the AAC or however you decide you want to handle it to review the drafts, talk about the drafts, make recommendations, et cetera, come on board. And I wanted to know, just based on something that somebody said earlier about amendments to the Williamson Act, it's also likely that these changes will require changes to the Williamson Act uniform rules as well.

I think we went through the Williamson Act with our prior work, and we found that agrivoltaics could be compliant with the Williamson Act. Hopefully that word, I mean, certainly it's still available. It's on the website. And I think reactivating the solar subcommittee will allow staff to move through this process pretty quickly. And so it turns out that Alameda County was a worldwide trend center with the Aramis project. And it's rarely referenced for the scale that it was as a project, as an agricultural tax project. But then certainly, you know, the community clean energy group, I can't remember their name, but they are interested in seeing social justice elements incorporated, if at all possible, as well as continuing with the Agri-World working landscape concepts. So there's a lot that exists that we can move forward with on this.

And I think it'll happen pretty quickly.

All right. Any other comments from the committee?

Data centers.

No whispering from the committee over here. All right. I will move this into public comment then. I don't see any raised hands.

all right um i'll close item 11 open item 12 member and or staff announcements um i hope everybody went to the fair of course yes um because we are an agricultural fairgrounds dedicated to agriculture donated by farmers and ranchers to the county for agriculture. So we have a grid fair. Roughly 400,000 people came through. Without horse racing. Without horse racing. Two years in a row, more than we had horse racing. Wow. But I will say that we are interested in horse racing still. We have the best one-mile racetrack and the oldest one-mile racetrack in the west of the Mississippi. We're interested in doing it. We're just trying to figure out. There's a big thing on horse racing. Horse racing relies on off-track betting. And it relies on off-track betting around the country to support it. You have roughly $130,000 a day in purses. So you need a lot of betting. And when the company that controls the off-track betting doesn't really want you to do horse racing, it has a hard time in California. There are some dates that next year we're going to be looking at trying to find a partner. And they don't make, because if you could do horse racing when you have the Prebys or the Belmont or the Kentucky Derby, there's a lot more betting goes on, and you have an opportunity to cover your costs. So somebody brought that up. I just wanted to let you know that's the reason why we're doing horse racing, because we lost $5 million trying to do it in the first place. But we had a great fair. We had real good attendance.

Everything was up. Food and beverage was up. Parking was up.

So we got a few more bucks in the bank this year. I don't know if you've noticed, been there and seen the farm? Everybody seen the farm? Pretty cool, huh? A lot of positive feedback. We're getting ready to start the second phase of the farm. If you don't know, the farm is going to be an all-year-round program with a classroom and everything. We're going to have row crops. We have animals in right now. We put up about $780,000 with barn retrofit already. I think we're a couple million dollars in the bank, and it's about a $10 million project. So we're looking for really rich donors to help out. And the farm is a... This will be a great experience for, particularly if you've been down to Orange County, they have one. They bring the inner city kids in from all over in bus loads, and they go through this milking stations, everything. And ours is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be more high tech. We're going to, like the cow will come in unattended, it'll go to the milking station, and it'll be all automatic. You know, just that vocational loan is like $50,000. But anyway, so we're going to be a very high-tech firm trying to encourage young people to either go to Davis and become veterinarians or whatever in the industry.

And we had a great auction this year.

I think we raised $100,000. The kids raised $180,000. I believe so did us, which was a record over last year. Anybody that didn't go to the auction and need to go, these kids work hard. Grace did a great job. She got a few bucks for her on steroids. She did real well in Atlanta. And she represented the ag community very, very well. And we need more kids like her doing it. And so I would encourage everybody to go. You pay a little bit more for a pig or something, you know. But the meat is great, and it's well worth the dollars, because most of these kids are using this money for college funds. So I just wanted to give everybody an update on the fair. I asked you if you didn't attend, if you need tickets, I will give you tickets.

Okay? So please go. I've seen him going around. He was buying an animal or two. So the fairgrounds much appreciates it if we need it.

So if you know anybody who wants to donate some money to the foundation for the farm, let me know. I'm also on the farm board. And I'd be more than happy to take your money or anybody's money or sell you a gate into one of the stalls or sell you a water tower or whatever. Get your name on it, OK? How much is a gate going for? Water tower? The gates. The gates are $25,000. Water tower is probably more than that. Water tower is going to be a lot more. Yes. But it is a great, we have, and the feedback, we had the number one fair in the state last year by the voting on it. So I'm very proud of it. Very clean, very well organized.

Early on in this project, we had the first hired person come and talk to us. It'd be good to do it again, have Carrie come and update after that. She gets all her cleanup done with data and that kind of thing, kind of give us a report, show us the pictures.

Yeah. Let me talk to Jerome and see if we can get that lined up.

Would it be possible for us to have a meeting out there one time? Yeah. I think that would be appropriate.

And look, it's still light if we hurried up in September. I don't know if there's AV and stuff out there.

See what we can do. Stable Gate Cafe. Sure. Well, yeah, we have enough tables in there.

We just remodeled that. It's very... Which one did you remodel? Stable Cafe. Stable Cafe. Yeah. But they're... I think they closed it too. But either way it goes... Oh, and then to Fairgrounds, the off-track bedding center, we're remodeling that right now. And that is going to become off-track bedding.

It'll be in the back where it was the high-end bedders. That's going to move into there.

And that's going to be... Concert Hall, where we're going to do concerts on a regular basis, indoors through the wintertime. Cool. You're right. That's awesome. Anyway, that's what's happening. Thank you. We bring it up except it's agriculture.

Well, fair and related, we help sponsor, in collaboration with the Bay Area host committee, the FIFA World Cup this year, and the fair had three viewing locations, which was wonderful. We handed out a lot of swag. And so we had some great viewing locations and got some good advertising on because everyone wants to get together and be fans. And the report out for the U.S. is that we are all very hospitable. So that's a good thing to have. That's a good thing. So we really enjoyed being part of that fair experience. My annual tourism luncheon event is going to be at the Bankhead Theater on September 16th. You're all invited. It's not free, but if you're willing to come, please let me know and we'll send you tickets. It's a luncheon event, and then we put on a nice little show and show you what kind of advertising and marketing we've been doing. And then the last thing I want to tell you about, because it's pretty exciting, I don't know if you've heard about it yet, but it's called The Great Elephant Migration. It is a public art exhibit of 30 life-size elephants that are calves and mamas and bulls. And they're coming to downtown Livermore in October. It will be for two months, October and November. And it's all about coexistence and how you can be together with animals as well as They're not real, they're made out of an invasive reed, but you can purchase an elephant afterwards, so if you want to talk about having some money to be able to purchase.

Is this the one that's coming as a wandering elephant? Is this coming from New York?

From where?

Was this in New York?

Yes, it was in New York, it was in Miami. We are the only West Coast location for the exhibit in all of 26. So it's going to be quite the draw. So just look at all the booths. And of course, they're still also looking for sponsorships as well. But we're helping to sponsor that because I think it's going to be a huge draw to marry art with the elephant, with the location.

november october november i don't know the exact dates yet because they're they're waiting that was a really just to give two cents on that i was in new york uh fall of 24. no yeah fall of 24 and um this what's this time of year september in september october october and just going down the street and okay part of what's called all the way down by the financial district off by the water. it was like set into where they had a lot of city trees and New Yorkers were really going crazy with the trees and bushes, so the landscaping was awesome. But it was one of the most impressive things of that visit, unplanned so to speak, to just stumble upon that. That's huge as Livermore is getting there. That's gonna be huge.

Yeah, it's gonna be a huge draw.

So kudos, yeah.

Almost ag. Almost.

Actually, elephants are working animals.

There you go. And I eat grass. And it's also during Diwali, so they're going to be working on some ceremonial opportunities, too.

Are they African elephants?

African elephants.

As opposed to, they're not agricultural.

Tracy, what would we know to use it for? What weed are they using?

I don't know. It's an invasive weed and that's how they make it, but it looks like skinny little slats. You can go on 333arts.org and you'll see it. Great elephant migration gem. So 333arts.org forward slash gem. There you have it.

That's my announcement.

Thank you, Diana.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Any staff announcements?

Okay.

I'll move us on to agenda item 13. I would like to propose what was mentioned before, which was a presentation from someone at the fair of how the Alameda County Fair went and also ways that we could engage in the future, because I think that's an extremely effective outlet for our committee as well. So that would be my recommendation. recommendations in the room earlier, so I don't know whether anyone wants to voice them now, things that we want to put on future agenda items, but obviously we're going to have them.

Maybe if I could set up the meeting, one of these meetings would be at the grounds, would that work?

Yeah, I think that would be great.

That would be exciting. It just needs to be agendized, and so the public can follow us there.

Popcorn included, elephant ears, and all the rest. Oh, yeah. Oh, great. Thank you. I'm in.

I've already reached out. I've already sent an email about how we might be able to have the meeting at the fairgrounds in 2027. So when we adopt your 2027 calendar, if it's adopted as part of that, then it doesn't have to be agendized as a special meeting. It's just part of our regular calendar.

Perfect.

Yeah, so we'll see how we can do that.

Yeah, I had kids 20 years straight showing animals at Stanislaus County Fair and between the three of them. And I was impressed with the Alameda Fair.

The 9-11? Yeah. Sorry? Did you see the 9-11 exhibit? I did.

That was super cool to be able to see that.

Very moving. Yeah, very moving. Did you see they brought it in with four helicopters?

I mean, they closed the Altamont all the way down, unless they had...

100 motorcycles. I mean, it was unbelievable. Fire trucks, they brought it in. And then Joel did a real nice job. Really buy a flower, and you can put it on. People's names, really well done.

So it was your time capsule.

Yeah, the time capsule. We did a time capsule, the show. And we pushed Livermore Wines. Did you notice our wines thing in there was the Vermont one, our Alabama County wines?

I would have to say that I still enjoy the fact that you got the farmer photos and the families involved in ag. I think that's really cool. It brings Well, I know half of them myself, but it's kind of fun to see that, but also just for people to recognize people in our community are ag, and it's just great.

All righty. I'm going to move to a chair. I will hit it nicer.

Thank you. Thank you all. Have a good evening. Jack, no more breaking limbs.