City Council - Special Meeting

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call to order our Alameda County Board of Supervisors special meeting for Tuesday, July 28th. We will start our meeting with a roll call by our clerk to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez. Present. Supervisor Tam. Present. Supervisor Miley is excused. Supervisor Fortunato-Boss.

Present.

President Halbert.

Present. We have a quorum. Thank you very much. Before we get started, I will note that we have a meeting scheduled for 10 o'clock. It includes a packed agenda, as everyone can see. We have closed session, we have open session, we have a set matter at three o'clock. There's also another meeting scheduled and it shows a one o'clock start time with a similar item to item 2B, and this is a meeting that is scheduled to convene today at 1 o'clock with a very similar item, but with more specificity in its description. That is meant to replace item 2B, and it is scheduled to start at 1 o'clock, and we will do our best to coincide with that. It cannot start until 1 o'clock, It may start after one o'clock, depending on how the rest of our schedule goes, but we will not start that before one o'clock. And likewise, we will not have our 3 p.m. set matter until at least 3 p.m. It won't be before 3 p.m. I don't know if it will be exactly at 3 p.m., but as close as possible. So that's a little bit of agenda management and information for the public. With that said, we're going to now proceed with public comment on closed session items. This is a chance for members of the public to participate and give comment either in person in the room or online. Now would be the time to raise your hand if you're online to make public comment just on closed session items. The other items on our agenda in open session We will take public comment at that time as listed on the agenda. If anyone would like to make comment on a closed session item, I'll ask the clerk to call speakers in the room first, three, and then online alternating accordingly. Do we have any public comment, Madam Clerk, on closed session items?

Yes, President Halbert, we do. I will provide the brief instructions before I call on that speaker. Detailed instructions are provided in the teleconferencing guidelines. A link to the document is included in today's agenda. To view an automated translated transcript or listen to an automated translate audio of the meeting from English into multiple other languages, please utilize the wordly link in today's agenda or the QR codes posted throughout the room and select your preferred language from the drop-down menu. If you're joining the meeting using a computer, use the button at the bottom of your screen to raise your hand to request to speak. When called to speak, please unmute your microphone and state your name. If you're calling in, please dial star nine to raise your hand to speak. When you're called to speak, the host will enable you to speak. If you decide not to speak, please notify the clerk when your call is unmuted, or you may simply hang up and dial back into the meeting. When called, you will have two minutes to speak. Please limit your remarks to the time allocated. Public comment will generally alternate between in-person and online speakers as determined by the president of the board and subject to overall time limits. In the event that technical difficulties disrupt the Zoom webinar, this meeting may be recessed and reconvened via Microsoft Teams. Detailed instructions are provided in the teleconferencing guidelines. Thank you. We do have one speaker for closed session calling on Kelly A. You may unmute and begin your comments, Kelly.

Members of the board, I am speaking today to point out ongoing Brown Act violations that degrade public trust. First, you posted today's 1 o'clock PM special meeting agenda with only 23 hours notice, while the Brown Act requires 24 hour advanced posting. Second, You scheduled consecutive morning and afternoon meetings with duplicate decoy items in the closed sessions, but these items are often removed at the last minute, and also decoy items in the regular session. You routinely post these decoys without any serious intent to discuss them, and this appears to be an effort to distract and confuse the public. Third, you routinely start your board meetings 15 to 20 minutes late. Today it was 14 or 15 minutes late. You routinely have members of your board show up late. I'd like to welcome. Supervisor for District 4, Supervisor Nate Miley to the meeting who arrived late. And I'd like to note for the record that he has arrived and he is not excused any longer. Thank you, Supervisor Miley. And posting inaccurate start times annoys the public and wastes their time. And these diversionary tactics are flagrant. They are disrespectful. They do form a pattern of repeated behavior that leaves members of the public uncertain of when the items will actually be discussed. I'm requesting your board to stop using these procedural tricks to dodge Brown Act agenda requirements.

This item is not on our closed session. Thank you. With that said, any other public comments?

No president, that was our only speaker for closed session items.

We're going to now recess into closed session. We're in recess. All right, we're going to reconvene from our closed session at three o'clock. I'll ask the clerk to call roll and reestablish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez. Present. Supervisor Tam. Present. Supervisor Miley. Present. Supervisor Fortunato-Vas. Present. President Halbert.

Present. We have a quorum. County Council, is there any reportable action from closed session at this time?

Yes, Mr. President. I have one item to report from closed session. In the matter of Chu v. County of Alameda, Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, case number... 24C-097781. In closed session on June the 2nd, your board approved a settlement in the amount of $250,000. The vote was unanimous with supervisors, Albert Tam, Miley Marquez, and Fortunato Boss voting yes. There was no other reportable action to be announced today.

Congratulations on concluding that.

We are going to just, just for point of order that we will be returning to closed session for completion of additional business.

Yes, we will be returning to closed session. I note that we are running behind schedule. We also have a three o'clock set matter for which we have guests and we will Therefore, proceed to item four, for which we will have, I'm told, a 10-minute informational presentation on Alameda County Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs, an implementation study. And I'll note that we will need to pause this item around 345 if we're not done. because we have another item that we will have to take up. But for now, we will proceed with this item. So is there an informational presentation? Or Supervisor Marquez, why don't you introduce this?

Yes, thank you, Board President. I think the audio is coming in clearly. So thank you everyone for your interest today. Really excited to introduce this item. This is a set matter. I'm really excited to introduce our consultants, Sangeeta Kumar and Alex Deschentel. They've been working tirelessly since I believe December. The presentation you're going to see today is very similar to the one that the Act Committee received on April 30th. And I just also want to note for the supervisors reference, we did receive a memo from our director of social services this past week. That memo will be included as an appendix to this implementation study that you will be hearing high level, the outcomes of this study and recommendations. And our goal is to send that study to all of the supervisors by next week. If we could do it sooner, we will be wanting to make sure that that memo, that appendix is also included. But just to introduce the item, you're going to be learning about the implementation study to launch the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. Myself and Supervisor Fortunato-Bass have been very vocal about the need to strengthen infrastructure and services for immigrant and refugee community members. We are piggybacking on the legacy work of the late supervisor, Richard Vaya and Wilma Chan. Supervisor Vaya specifically the former supervisor in district two commissioned a report that was published in 2021 and launching an office of immigrant and refugee affairs was one of the key findings and recommendations. You know that our community is made up of one in three community members are immigrants. So it's really important that we strengthen the infrastructure. So I'm excited to introduce this item and also want to acknowledge the work of philanthropy. We would not be here if it wasn't for the Zellerbach Foundation and Akonadi and San Francisco Family Foundation that seeded the money to launch this implementation study, along with the community advisory body, and it was instrumental to get community input. So I will now kick it off to our presenters and thank you so much for being here. And I think within 10 to 15 minutes, I think is kind of what we calculated for the presentation. but welcome feedback from our colleagues. I hope that you find our goals to be as comprehensive as possible, taking input from each and every one of you, your comments that you made in the last two years, as well as your role in recommending a community member to serve on the CAB. So all of that information together has been included in the implementation study. This is a preview of what the study will cover and all of you will be receiving that report Thank you so much and welcome to our amazing presenters. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much. Okay, can you guys hear me? Well, thank you for having us. My name is Sangeeta Kumar. I'm one of the consultants that got to work on this project. And it was such an honor to get to think about how Alameda County furthers its commitment to supporting the infrastructure that will support immigrants and refugees in our backyard. So as Supervisor Marquez said, one in three residents of Alameda County are immigrants, like much of America. And so we're excited to see how we support them. So in this project... Thank you. We, this, this is a timeline of activities that we engaged in. So as you can see, it's a, it's a long road that started in 2016. There was an ad hoc committee that was established. There was a landmark report that was published that supervisor Marquez reference. Thank you. We, there was a readdressing the county's efforts to safeguard immigrant and refugee rights in 2024. In 2025, there was a, the act for all committee was formed, which created a new body that allowed for more specific study of activities, events, you know, as the threats to immigrant communities have increased from the federal government, there was a space, right, to think specifically about these issues. Then can you advance? In February of 2025, oops, too much, let's go back. The county invested over 800,000 to stabilize the refugee provider community. So a series of activities happened that... I know we can go backwards one. A series of activities happened that... allowed emergency services to get launched so that the immediate threats, the people who were experiencing immediate harm, got some form of relief. And so what we are looking to do now, and so since February 2025, there's been this idea of a permanent office, more stabilized funding, language access commitments, ice-free zones. So a series of ad hoc activities have taken place. to meet the moment. And what we know we need is less, well, what we are hoping to shift from now is from these ad hoc moments into a dedicated office that can hold this work and bring more strategy and coordination to the amazing efforts that are already taking place. So we can advance. There we go. So here's what we did. We engaged in a peer jurisdiction scan. So it started with a comparative analysis of other immigrant protection offices that are seated across the country. So we looked at both small ones, large ones, ones that felt very similar to Alameda County, ones that have been established for much longer, to learn both what they did, what they did first, what their challenges were, how they structured themselves. So we brought some of those lessons and then added to that county stakeholder interviews. So we talked to almost all of the departments in Alameda County to understand both what they do now to support immigrants and refugees and what supports they have would recommend or suggest. We held a series of community focus groups, which allowed, you know, both people with lived experience and providers to come together and share what, how they define the problem and what they see as strategies to create better infrastructure. And then we built two things. There was a steering committee that county stakeholders, Fortunato Bass and Supervisor Marquez were part of that group. And that group helped to sort of guide and support the structure and the process. And then we had a community advisory board. And this community advisory board, we'll refer to them as the CAB, they really supported the thinking, the analysis, and the building of the proposals. So every idea that you're going to hear that we're going to bring to you now is centered in the voices of the members of the CAB. So that was the process. And then we'll share with you the vision and the mission that our group came up with. So we created a vision statement of To be a county where strong public infrastructure partnerships and data informed policies, programs and strategies ensure immigrant and refugee communities are supported, protected from harm and able to fully participate in the social, civic and economic life of the region. And so this is our this this vision and mission statement. It's suggestions for the two year pilot phase. And this is. really designed, both of these statements are designed to meet the moment and not kind of extend past. So you could see this could be, we looked at statements that had more teeth to it, that felt more like advocacy driven. And we were like, The work right now we feel in the pilot phase is to stabilize these communities. So that's the vision statement. The mission statement is to build and sustain the infrastructure that supports immigrant communities by convening partners, coordinating programs and services, analyzing data to identify gaps, and advancing policies and investments that strengthen outcomes for immigrant and refugee residents. From there, from that mission and vision statement, we are proposing, the CAB is proposing eight core functions that this office would hold. community partnerships and engagement, a population needs assessment, a planning and evaluation, to be a clearinghouse and navigation hub, to support the public-private partnerships, to support county coordination, compliance and capacity building, policy development and advocacy, communications and intergovernmental affairs, learning and innovation. So that's a lot of functions for a brand new department. And so we also then built partnerships This is where we think the whole office goes. And then we built a work plan for how to set this up step by step. So it's not like we do everything all at once. Okay. So we talked a lot about where the office placement should go, and I'll just hit this briefly, which is that we were really with the cab envisioning an office that was an independent entity within the County. So since the, and you can see our rationale and some ideas for that, where it should go since this presentation, the County has, furthered the thinking. And the placement is for now at least going to be in social security, social services, the social services agency. So we are hoping, we're still hoping that the office ultimately will become an independent space so that it has its own footprint and its own thinking. It can elevate the needs of immigrant and refugee communities. But for now, the office will be nested within SSA. Okay. And we have this pilot phase staffing model that one of the things that was, what was originally approved or what we were thinking about was that this would be an office that had two staff. And we want to really see this office hold more services, more capacity. And so we think it needs a bigger staff. And so starting with a director, And then a deputy director for community and ecosystem. So oversight of that. And then another deputy director in policy and planning. And then four staff in these pink boxes. What is happening now is we know that there has been one staff that has already been identified. There's hiring that has started. So this model is like to be, it's aspirational. We're going to grow into it. I'll pause there. I'll turn it to Alex.

Yeah, I'll just say on this that... One of the quotes from a community advisory board member was, you know, there was recognition of the financial constraints that the county is facing right now. And a question of, do we, does the cab put forward a recommendation that feels the most feasible right in this moment, or does it put forward its best thinking about what, what, what should happen? And I think the quote was something to the effect of we should put forward what we believe we deserve. And so that's kind of what's put forward here as the best thinking about from these community members who have dedicated their selves to working in immigrant refugee communities in Alameda County about what would serve the community for your consideration. Okay, so this actually kind of leads to the next one. We just wanna, there were some questions about what, sorry. The next slide, which just lifting up that there are three community service providers that were supported through some of the funding that Sangeeta mentioned earlier in the presentation. And these are the primary service providers that have brought forward activities related to organizing and engaging in the community. Another that is around more like know your rights and hotline and making sure that there's trusted information in the community about potential raids and so forth. And then, and then representation, we're almost at 10 minutes. So, and then representing people who are being detained. So that is, and the representatives from each of these coalitions or service providers were part of the community advisory board, along with the, the, uh, Asian Pacific Islander legal outreach, and then community members that were appointed by each board of supervisors office. Um, moving forward, one of the recommendations is related to community accountability structures. The community advisory board considered whether or not it would make sense to suggest something like an ongoing commission to oversee the work of this office. The advisory board did not recommend a standing permanent committee, but did recommend some continuity between the planning phase and the implementation phase. And so came forward with a recommendation to continue to convene and work with this community advisory board with some recognition that it might need to have additional people brought on to ensure effective representation across the county. And during that next phase to think, to really establish the office, to really establish relationships with other existing community bodies that would serve as like the ongoing touch points and partners in the community going forward. So that wouldn't be an ongoing new advisory body. This just kind of goes a little bit into a little, thank you, a little bit more detail about what I just covered, but basically In addition to a community advisory board, there was other recommendations that the community advisory board put forward regarding accountability to the community. So I already mentioned extending and expanding and extending the formal board for at least the pilot implementation. Another was to look at just a systematic mapping of coalitions and other spaces where service providers and community organizations are coming together so that it's really clear where all of that work is already happening and that office can, rather than creating anything new, really interface and create relationships across the county using the existing organizations. The other is to convene County contractors regularly. One of the issues that the community advisory board brought up was that there are a lot of interest in just being able to hear from each other. What are the challenges they're facing? In addition to kind of more technical information around just like the RFPs and stuff like that, just being able to come together and hear from each other, what are you working on and just have more space to build relationships. And that was just with the contractor specifically, there was also a recommendation for the office to support, you know, convenings where there's information shared, for instance, information around language access, information around know your rights, these different kinds of information sharing spaces that also serve to strengthen the relationships among all of the organizations and leaders who are working so hard in Alameda County. And a lot of kind of pointing to more of this happening during COVID when things went virtual and that they're really missing some of that. Another part that was lifted up was the way that the contracts are currently structured. It is hard to build into the budget that is funded by the county, any kind of flexibility just for partnership and relationship building. So A lot of those organizations that you saw in the previous slide, they're coalitions. The organizations are funded to provide the services but are not actually funded to do the kind of work they need to do to have strong relationship engagement together. So is there a way to build some of that partnership building activities into the contracts as they're renewed? And that rather than building a advisory body, like a new commission or something like that down the road, to really just continue to work in partnership with existing bodies, don't create something new. Okay, so coming back to that statement that I said a few minutes ago about asking for what they deserve versus maybe what was felt feasible in the moment, the budget that the CAB put together was around $10 million. The biggest line item on here is really to renew the existing contracts, and that was the most important. These are all up this year, and they're really strongly recommending that to extension at minimum through June, 2028. We already talked about the staffing. This number here assumes seven staff at an average salary and benefit rate. The next is the operating budget and the kind of back of the envelope estimate was around $450,000. And in a minute, I'll give you some, ideas of why that is when we talk about what were some of the initial kind of implementation priorities. And then this last one is a call to philanthropy to continue to support this work through philanthropic giving. So put out a number for philanthropy to try and continue to fund this work in parallel and in partnership with the county. So in terms of the pilot phase priorities and why we have that budget for operating beyond the staffing, there were five priorities that were outlined in great detail in the final report you'll see to your work plan that really boiled down to five specific priorities. The first one is the build the foundation for long-term county integration. So this is, and we'll talk about this in a second, but this is really about building the leadership body that has high enough authority in order to direct integration of some of the activities across the county. The next is to assess needs, identify vulnerabilities, and stabilize the CBO ecosystem. One of the things that we found as we did interviews in the county is that depending on who you talk to, different people thought there were very different needs and priorities. And so going through a process that aligns some kind of like, here's how we understand the current needs of this population in our County. And here's the data behind that. And then having those conversations be data driven versus kind of anecdotally driven, which is part of what we found in the, in the process. And that would include both internal cross County collaboration, as well as working with community partners to identify what are those needs that we're really elevating and tracking over time, and then using that information to drive some of the funding priorities. Then the next is a countywide hub for resource navigation and warm referrals. This came up a lot, and this is something that is one of the core functions that most other offices across the country take on, right? People talk about, like, you can't figure out how to get connected into all of the wonderful services that already exist in Alameda County. And so there are some very specific recommendations about how to build off of some great work that already exists and build a stronger resource navigation and warm referral system without making this office into a case management office, which if that's what it was going to be, the staffing numbers would be much, much higher. The next is coordinate implementation of existing countywide policies. This board and all of the staff have done an incredible job in really putting forward some important policies regarding language access, regarding ice-free zones, and then a lot of the departments report kind of trying to struggle individually on how to implement them. And so this is really about creating a centralized technical assistance resource to all departments so that each department's not trying to figure out on its own how to take some of this really important work and implement it. And then finally, the priority around community accountability, and that relates to some of those examples that I gave under the community accountability structures. Almost done here. So these are some of the recommendations that will inform the scope development. This is somewhat of a restatement, but again, underscoring the need to maintain continuity of rapid response legal and community engagement services through at least June 2028. Establish an office placement that enables real authority. So as Sangeeta said, the office will continue to be built out at least in this initial phase within June. social services agency. And at the same time, the CAB is recommending to make sure that that office and the staff there are given the kind of formal authority they need to really drive and lead integration across the different departments. Recommended a launch for a director. So it's really, the hires today have been really great. And there was a recognition among the CAB that the need for a leader, the director level leader of an office like this Again, fund the full seven person staff team, grant the office explicit cross departmental authority, and then allocate an operating budget so that it can implement the priorities as kind of lifted up by the community advisory board. And then finally here's the enabling conditions for the board to continue to think about as you move from this implementation kind of feasibility study into impact the actual implementation phase. The office must have real authority so as you walk through really monitoring and tracking does it have authority to kind of carry through some of this cross departmental work, thinking about the hiring sequence. The contract continuity, if there's a lack of continuity with the community organizations that have been really instrumental in kind of setting this up, that would undermine some of the efficacy of the office. There needs to be a real perspective on community safety and how that shows up in the cross-county collaboration, shared accountability, and authentic partnership.

So I don't know if you want to add the last word on this part. Great.

So in summary, the county has the will, the community has the knowledge. What comes next is the hard, essential work of building. And with that, we conclude our presentation. Thank you for having us.

Thank you. Before we go to the board, I'll see if there's any public comment. Do we have any in-person speakers with a speaker slip, or do we have anybody with their hands raised to speak on this item?

President, however, we're not showing any hands in Zoom and noting that we have not received any in-person speakers for this item.

Very good. I'll go to comments from my fellow board members, Supervisor Marquez, then Fortunato Bass.

Thank you. As mentioned earlier, the full report is forthcoming, which will include the memo from SSA. Just want to thank our consultants for working so intimately. Did you share how many interviews you conducted? Because you interviewed nearly every department head focus groups, if you don't mind just capturing the level of detail. And then again, I apologize, but I believe I left someone out earlier in my comments. Just want to make sure that we thank philanthropy that made this possible, which was East Bay Community Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, and the Akunyadi Foundation. So thank you to all of them. for their investment for the ability to fast track this and have a meaningful community engagement. Also just really excited that in October, we received information from SSA about an interim process, but really this implementation study is intended to drive that decision-making so that way we can implement The launch the actual office with true authority and also this will flag the gaps we this body responded quickly to the urgency with trump coming back into office we've done many things right, but this is also an opportunity to pause and address some of the gaps. and making sure we're being as comprehensive as possible with addressing the language needs, the diversity and the ethnic needs of our very diverse district, not district, but entire county. So I'm looking forward to those ongoing discussions and really just want to hear feedback from my colleagues. You will have a chance to review the full report and I'm sure more questions will come when you have an opportunity, but this presentation is intended to give high level to hear your feedback. I truly want this to be a collaborative experience. Many of you are approaching this topic from a different lens. So this is our opportunity to hear from you. Are we getting it right? What's missing? And just want to hear feedback from all of you so that way we can continue to implement this office. And thank you to everyone who's worked so hard to get us to this point, but there is more work to be done. Thank you, President. Supervisor Fortunato-Bass.

Thank you so much for this incredible work. Supervisor Marquez and your team really appreciate your leadership and also our consultant team. I definitely appreciated the update back in April to our Alameda County Together for All Act for All committee. And even this presentation has evolved a bit since then. So I think it's, a very, very good reflection of the engagement we had with community, the engagement that you had with some of us as board members, including through our representatives on the community advisory board. So I really appreciate how thoughtful and thorough everything is. I just have a few comments that I'll share right now. I'm trying to organize my thoughts. Let's see in turn, I definitely agree with doing some type of community landscape before building. I wanted to mention that in district five, there are at least two task forces that I think are important for us to engage in. So we're not duplicating efforts and we can be as collaborative as possible. So that includes the city of Oakland protect the town task force, which merely has initiated, which has a lot of overlap with our community partners. And it also includes the Berkeley Sanctuary Task Force, which Mayor Adina Ishii and her team also engage in. And my team is engaging in both. So those are two in my district. I'm sure there's others across the county, but it's a good opportunity to really think about collaboration, not only with our community-based organizations and also with our cities. I really appreciate, especially at our last act for all meeting, how we heard presentations from the three coalition partners that we are supporting and how they're hearing feedback, especially in terms of serving the diversity of our immigrant and refugee community, and a number of them are taking action. So wanted to appreciate that APILO, API Legal Outreach. They were actually funded by my office, not by the full board, but by my office discretionary funds. And I'm really glad to know that they are now a part of ACCORD, which is the Legal Services Coalition. Similarly, my office made a discretionary grant of $100,000 to SIRI, the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, and I know they're engaging quite a bit. with a number of the coalitions as well, and I think they're formally a member of ACUD or the Community Engagement Coalition. So really good to see that there's ongoing feedback as well as action on that feedback. And I did want to say that one of the things that stood out for me and my team after the ACT meeting is that you know, language access is incredibly important and I appreciate supervisors Tam and Marquez for their work on that topic. And for immigration enforcement in particular, one of the things that we've been engaging around is access to due process, including support to our public defenders immigration units. So I would be very interested in seeing information around, you know, deportations and country of origin and really focusing on the members of our community who are targeted, who are detained, who are in deportation proceedings or deported, so that we're really honing in on the particular impacts and really looking at, in addition to language access, really also focusing in on access to due process because that's one of the main threats of this particular wave of immigration enforcement under this administration. And then would love to hear any information from our staff when appropriate about how the board as a whole can share any input we have on the hiring for the director and the additional staff that's being hired. And I know Supervisor Marquez referenced The memo that the board received, which will be added as an addendum to this agenda. I thought that memo was very well organized and well-written. I would just add some friendly feedback, which is to also include in that memo, the information that was in the presentation about the public defender's immigration unit and the board's engagement and support of that. as well as if possible linking to board letters and resolutions so that since it will be a public document, we can go further and see some of the detail that's referenced there.

Thank you. Supervisor, can I just clarify? We were intended, we were intending for the memo to be an appendix to the implementation study, the report. But that that's good that you're giving that feedback. Cause maybe we could add that to the memo so that we can be captured in the report and we will, my office will be responsible. We will send you the digital version once that appendix has been added, and then we will print hard copies. So you'll get the digital copy first, as soon as it's available and, and then we'll make sure every office gets a hard copy. But that's great feedback to be comprehensive. It was important to go back to 2025 because this county has been working really hard. So thank you to SSA and everyone for, and public defender for playing a role.

Right. I was given by the clerk notice that we do have three public cards for speaking. It's important that we hear from the public. We'll take these three speakers as public comment. and then close public comment. If you could call all three speakers, if you come to the front and line up by the microphone, do we have a microphone up there? We will replace one. Thank you. And speak one after the other.

Thank you. Thank you. We do have a total of four in person. And we also, through the chair, we do have a Spanish interpreter available virtually. If there are any Spanish-speaking members of the public who wish to provide public comment in Spanish, interpretation services are available, and our interpreter is online to assist you. We have Dindin Temea, sorry if I mispronounced your name, Desmond Jeffries, Alma or Almiguel Delgejo, sorry if I mispronounced your name as well, and Jane Pack. Please approach the podium and please state your name for the record.

Ladies first, I see. Is that what we're doing? Making her go first. Welcome and thank you for joining us.

Yeah, good evening. My name is Alma Cidego. I'm the founder and executive director of Global Communication, Education and Art, the African Resource Center. Previously, last time when I heard the presentation from the S-Lab, Accord and all these groups. So my concern is about immigration issues. So we are African immigrants being like very much isolated excluded from a lot of stuff. So my request is like to include the African immigrant population in a lot of funding resources, because as the GCA, we serve only on legal services. We serve over 500 people. There's a lot of, you know, Africans, like also we do deportation defense, representation in courts, There's a lot going on right now. And then we've been doing also immigrant know your rights education. We have 23 houses. It's like we did it in our own without nobody's support. There's a lot of mental health issues in the community with GCA and then the African communities been working together to take care of all these problems. And right now, I know you give money to a lot of other organizations, like I was in here on the supervisors meeting last time. When I see the presentation from the SLAB or other groups, I just what we do with our organization is equivalent to what they are doing, because we also do rapid response from presence from the community around the whole Alameda County. We answer calls like over 20 to 25 or to 30 calls a day. And then we have a walk in communities coming to our center at least between 11 to 15 and a day. Is this a time limit?

Thank you for your comments.

Oh, it's a timer. I can speak all night about the issues, but we definitely need support for our community. Thank you so much.

Hi, my name is Desmond Jeffries, also a member of GCA, and this is Dende right next to me. He's going to succeed this time.

Through the chair, there are no seating time.

Okay. Okay, no problem. So... Board of Supervisors, I live in your district, Nate Miley. African immigrants are part of Oakland's story. We are business owners, workers, parents, students, taxpayers, and community leaders. Yet when we review the county's investments, we saw no African immigrants serving organization represented and no dedicated investments in our communities. We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for equitable treatment. We request a three-year African immigrant community stabilization initiative funded at 450,000 annually to support housing stabilization case management, mental health services, and community healing for African immigrants. GCA responds to these needs every day through legal navigation, medical enrollment, CalFresh assistance, workforce support, civic engagement, and housing stabilization services. Last year alone, GCA served more than 1,700 individuals, reached over 25,000 community members, housed 84 individuals, and helped more than 700 people access Medi-Cal enrollment. to the county's website, even on today, looking at this meeting. These are the groups we see language assistance for Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Khmer, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. No African languages are listed here, but we are one of the biggest and largest immigration groups that is rising these last five years. So we would like your assistance. We would like to partner. We support the establishment of this department. We would like to partner with Alameda County. Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Jane Pack. I'm a co-executive director at Refugee and Immigrant Transitions, and I'm stalling as I start my timer. I just want to thank the Board of Supervisors for this really important, full effort to establish ACOIRA. I think it's very forward-thinking, and I know Supervisors Marquez and Fortunata Boss, whose district our community newcomer hub is in, has been doing her Herculean effort. So thank you so much for that I just want to note a few things. One is I really want to uplift the comments from our previous speakers. It was actually part of the reason why I came is to uplift the various diverse communities within our communities that are not being represented. So I want to thank Sangeeta for also meeting with our groups and including refugees in these conversations. Just as a point of note, just to lift up again the previous speakers, we're a distribution partner for the Stand Together Bay Area Fund, which I know that your two offices also supported. In the last few days, we've approved about 10 relief fund requests for Eritrean men who have been recently released from detention. So these are people in our communities that are vital as part of our communities and not being seen. We work with folks from all over the world on staff. We have staff members who speak 20-plus languages collectively, also not always included in that list. So just wanted to uplift that. The other thing I wanted to say was... Much of the efforts I'm seeing at the county and state levels, and I sit on the State Advisory Council of the Refugee Program Bureau at the CDSS, and foundations and so forth, doing really beautiful work on the defense level. We were in emergency mode, and we still are in emergency mode as things get heightened by this administration at the federal level. However, I really want to urge you to think beyond that. These coalitions listed, absolutely. I mean, if you could double down and double the figures, absolutely, and increase funding for new members, I think that's absolutely essential. But we also need to think about the future we're trying to build in Oakland. I think about this as livability. So this administration is trying to drive out people by self-deporting, by making life so bad that people self-deport. But there's an idea that with refugee communities, there isn't a home to go home to. So we have to think about how people may live in these communities. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry, we have a time limit. We can pause and move to our next item.

Yeah. Yeah.

because we have a time limit with our consultants. We said we would stop this at 3.45, or we can finish up comments. I think Supervisor Miley and Tam, we can finish up our comments. Supervisor Miley, then Tam.

Thank you, President Halbert. I want to thank the committee members for the work they've done in the presentation today. It's hard to follow the presentation. We didn't get the PowerPoint. So I'm working from memory. I'm not sure if I support $10 million. I need to get a sense of what the allocation would be for. And I think they said another 450,000 per year on top of the 10 million. I'm not sure if we need, and I do appreciate the fact that this would be a pilot phase for the next two years. I do think that is very prudently smart to pursue this from where Supervisor Valle and Supervisor Chan left off so we can advance this through a pilot phase. I do think it's appropriate that it's in the social services agency as well. I would need to understand the director would be under the auspices of the director of the social services agency. I'm assuming on that point. I don't know if, and I do appreciate the fact that it's aspirational because I think at this point in time, having an office with, I think it was seven personnel might be beyond our capacity at this point in time, but getting an office in place in social services, I think it would be appropriate. I do think I'd like to see what services the county's providing already to the immigrant community throughout the county. What, monetary figure can we put on that, not just in social services, but in health care, public protection, general government, et cetera? Because I do think there's a lot of services that are already being provided that add up to a monetary significant amount of money. But I do think an office of two, maybe three people at the most, could help better coordinate the delivery of those services comprehensively. across county agencies and departments, as well as external county agencies and departments that work with the county, like First Five, for instance, Alameda Health Systems, for instance. So we do have other entities that work with us that are not necessarily directly part of the county government, but are tangentially associated with the county government. Let me think here if there's anything else So bottom line is I do appreciate the aspirational aspect of this, that it is a step forward from where we were to where we want to go. It's a pilot. And I just also need to understand today is just an informational report, I'm assuming. So what would be the next steps as well to bring this to a board meeting in terms of some approvals to move forward on an aspect of the pilot in an aspirational sort of context. But once again, I'd like to get a better sense of what are we doing in the county financially to provide services to the immigrant and refugee community. And also, I was assuming that when we fund the community-based organizations, they're providing services to the totality of immigrants and refugees and not just one segment of the population. And this isn't based on Oakland, this is Alameda County. Those are some of my thoughts at the moment. I do appreciate getting the PowerPoint finally, thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Tam.

Thank you, President Halbert and thank you Supervisor Fortunato-Bass and Marquez for spearheading this effort especially now to meet the activities at the moment. Um, I agree with a lot of the, um, I think conclusions in the memo that, uh, director Ford had put out as well as what was in this report. Um, which as I think supervisor Miley mentioned, we just got the PowerPoint actually, I'm borrowing supervisor Marquez's PowerPoint. I think the need to strengthen the county wide and the coordination of services is really important because the model that we typically have worked with in social service since I joined the board was we rely very heavily on nonprofits and community-based organizations to provide those services. And so if there are gaps, which I think this report is helping to identify whether it's to the African American or African immigrants or to some of the Asian groups or certain groups, I think that needs to be clearly identified and we need to make sure that the appropriate coordination happens among the different community-based organizations And I agree that a lot of these services have been done through the social services department, because I mean, we've been hearing from at least five different groups that they want to be in the CAO's office, whether it's reparations, unincorporated services, care first, jail class. And I think there's just sort of a limit, as you mentioned, certain organizations are better at case management when it comes to individual immigrant issues than it would be from a County wide perspective. So I look forward to seeing the final report and also getting a more robust discussion at our board retreat about how this can best be organized.

Thank you. I also would like to thank the private organizations that contributed funds to this. I'd like to thank my colleagues, Fortunato Bass and Marquez for bringing us to this point. I would echo comments made by Supervisor Miley and Tam that indeed we already provide a lot of resources. Where are there gaps? And I remember when We had refugees coming here in mass from Afghanistan. And for me to understand a day in the life of a refugee that comes to us from a foreign country, literally ripped from their country with the clothes on their back, coming here and put in a hotel somewhere with some amount of food and sustenance that quickly runs out, that need medical attention, that need education for their kids. I mean, they are at an extremely vulnerable point in their life. And how we treat them versus how other counties treat them versus what the law says we need to treat them and where those gaps exist I'm all for looking into that. That's just the refugee side of things. And I just remember that because many of them came to Fremont, which is in my district and Supervisor Marquez's district. And we were inundated with, and learned a lot about what happens and what needs to happen with our refugee population. That's just refugees, let alone immigrants who are here and under other pressures from the administration. And so I appreciate know your rights. I appreciate what do we do with people that are here when their benefits run out and how do we help them up until the point their benefits run out to make sure that they can assimilate into our community. At the same time, I'm also very, I get calls to my office all the time about How much are we spending? Are we monitoring the cost to serve? Are we funding things? At what rate are we funding things? How many people are here from Africa versus Afghanistan versus Ukraine and other places where we're bringing in refugees and what is it costing us to serve? I'm acutely concerned about reports that we hear about fraud in this space of nonprofit organizations that have received money fraudulently. And so how do we guard against all of that? And so while I remain cautiously optimistic, indeed, I think that we have to absorb this, talk about it at our retreat, bring it to a future board meeting. Can we afford $10 million? What would we not be able to do services-wise if we do fund this? Because money comes from somewhere. So I've said the certain segments of our population are the most vulnerable. In my opinion, that's things like the severely physically challenged and mentally challenged. That's things like foster youth. That's things like infirm seniors. And that's things like refugees. So they're a high point, high on the list in my mind, immigrants and refugees, of being vulnerable, of being people that we need to support. The question is exactly how. So I thank you for the report. We will get... we can get a copy of the PowerPoint sent our way. I'll ask Supervisor Marquez to close us out. I will note that after this, we will have to suspend this meeting and reopen the Zoom link for our other meeting. But Supervisor Marquez, you want to close us out?

Yes, I just want to thank our consultants. They've been incredible. Really just appreciate their genuineness around this, their love and their care for our community. It shines through once everyone reads the full report. they will see how they brought their full selves to this process and welcomed all feedback. Again, want to thank the philanthropy partners that made this possible. Also want to acknowledge my chief of staff, Alex Boscovich. None of this would have been possible without her support. She's been the backbone of this work and just really appreciate everyone's comments and engagement. And I'm really proud to say we're off to a great start. We've already funded three of the positions. So, we're heading in the right direction. And the goal, thank you to the public commenters who not only came today, they've come to other meetings to highlight their gaps. We are aware of the gaps. This is why it is so important that we do extend the current services, but also open an RFP to expand. The goal is to sustain and expand. We know that we're not getting everything right. So the goal is to continue to provide those services that are desperately needed, but also address the unmet needs and gaps. I look forward to discussing this further with my colleagues at the retreat. Hopefully you will have gotten through at least the first half of the report before the retreat. But again, this PowerPoint presentation is high level, but just really I'm excited for everyone's support and willingness to pursue this office with true authority, because we know that our community members deserve it and desperately need this coordination. Also want to acknowledge Charles Sanchez. He's our first hire, no pressure, but he's hit the ground running. I don't know if he's still in here, but he's also been very dedicated to coordinating and continuing the conversation with the cab. So we don't lose that community voice. So thank you, president.

Thank you. With that, we're going to recess for five minutes as we make a technical adjustment in our meetings. Supervisor Fortunato-Vez, would you like to close out?

Yes, I can. I'm sorry. It's harder to get attention when we can't see each other. Maybe just a couple of clarifying questions. I appreciate the comments that we received. Just wanted to share for the record that we did recognize needing to have more participation and engagement from the African immigrant community. And we heard at our last ACK meeting that the African Advocacy Network is now part of ACUDIR. And of course, I'm happy to have my office be supporting GCEA. So thanks for your work. um just two clarifications in terms of extension of the contracts i know that there's been some talk about nine months the report references through june 28 and i think the memo references coming back to the board in october i just wanted to get a sense of what that process will look like in terms of the contract extensions and rfp Either for director Ford, unless supervisor Marquez has something to add. And then the other clarification is just that I heard that there's more public speakers online. So I just wanted to make sure the chair was aware of that.

Okay. I'll start. I'm Andrea Ford agency director for social services. The current contracts for the three principles expire in September of 2027. There's a recommendation to extend those contracts for nine months while we run an RFP process.

September 27, meaning next year or September this year?

September of this year, the current contracts will expire. So we're recommending to extend that for nine months while we run a formal RFP process.

And that will come to the board in October?

For the extension, yes.

I see.

So to clarify, you're going to tell us now that you're going to bring an approval that we will make in October to extend people that will have expired in September?

No, this is not an action item. It's an informational item, but we will be coming to the board before the current contracts expire in September for an extension for nine months.

So the contracts expire in September, You're going to come to us before they expire. And the date you're going to come to us is in October. Two different things.

Okay. So the September 30 expiration date, those contracts will be extended for nine.

For nine months while we run a formal procurement process. Okay.

The procurement will then start in October. Is that.

It'll start next year in 2027. Okay. But the. RFP process will run concurrently with the extension.

So what starts in October? I thought I heard something will come to us in October.

That was referenced in the report, I believe. Okay.

All right. So before the contract expires in September, we will have approval by our board to extend.

I would just, I believe it was in the memo from SSA. I would just really urge our staff working on this topic to engage with the three coalitions so that we are fully aware of operationally what that means. And I'm just trying to reconcile the feedback from the community advisory board, which includes the coalitions and others is different from the staff recommendation. So I don't know if there's time to talk about that at our board retreat, but.

I don't know that this is a topic as agendized on our board retreat.

That's the first I heard about it. So I don't know how that's going to happen in a board retreat, but that's not a topic of discussion right now.

It's a request to add to the board retreat. Then I will receive that request and get back to you before the board retreat, but the agenda.

Right. I know this is informational, so I'm sharing my position as a point of information.

Yeah, thank you. We're going to now, this item, I'm looking at our council and our, do we need to recess so that we can change to the one o'clock meeting?

It's my understanding from a technology standpoint that we will need to recess this meeting to reconvene the other.

We're going to recess this meeting for now. Thank you.

Supervisor Marquez. Excuse. Supervisor Tan. Present. Supervisor Miley. Supervisor Fortunato-Bas. Present. President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much. We have then the next item is item 1A, a budget financial update. This is a federal, state, and county budget update, after which we will have public comment.

Thank you, President Halbert. As you know, your board adopted a balanced final budget at the end of June. We wanted to give you a brief overview and also an update about current status of federal and state funding. I'm turning over to Melanie and Amy.

This is a snapshot of our current state and federal outlook. So the final state budget deal was signed on June 29th, and it does provide some certainty for the year ahead, but there are still some unknowns for us. The final budget does preserve some of the funding that we had advocated for that is important to us, particularly around expansion of continuation of HAP and additional resources to support counties for eligibility and enrollment and things like that. But there are unknowns in how the allocation to support public hospitals will be divided up throughout the state. So we still have unknowns. Then looking forward to November, 2026 ballot initiatives. There are five that are highlighted here as being impactful for counties. They address affordable housing, CEQA reform, the state's borrowing authority, education and healthcare funding, as well as our ability to raise local taxes. All of those will have an impact on how the county does business. So we are keeping an eye on those and CSAC started their committee meetings today to be able to weigh in on these initiatives. At the federal level, there is a lot of uncertainty. Congress has a temporary continuing resolution right now. They're embarking on another budget reconciliation process. And the Republican Congress has indicated they're looking to substantially reduce funding for healthcare and social services and other safety net programs as they look to try to fund their other priorities. As you all know, we have a new federal program legislative advocate who we've been working with the Picard group and they've continued to provide us detailed up-to-date information about what's going on in Washington. But as the state is coming back from their recess, the feds are going out on their recess. So we'll be having more stuff coming out from the state in the month of August as they wrap up their final bill hearings and send things to the governor for signature. And we as a county need to just keep paying attention to what's happening in Sacramento and in Washington, continue to advocate for our priorities with our legislative advocates while we look towards maintaining our fiscal prudence so that we can have long-term sustainability. Just a reminder of our pressure wheels as we operate under these multiple simultaneous pressures that require balancing stakeholder expectations fiscal realities policy mandates your priorities and an accelerating pace of organizational change. We have made some additions to these wheels based on your feedback since we first presented them. And we've added some overarching pressures such as AI and our Vision 2036. So all of this operates in the context of those simultaneous things happening. In order to fit them all on one slide, they are a bit small, but we'll share this with you so you can see the details.

Okay, so moving on to a brief overview of the final fiscal year 26-27 budget. As your board may recall, we balanced or closed a $185 million maintenance of effort funding gap. We were able to close half of that gap with $93 million in retirement savings resulting from prepayments on pension liability. And the program areas collectively contributed nearly 60 million in reductions and efficiencies in addition to the countywide strategies. So as you can see here on this slide, we are highly reliant on one-time strategies. So this is going to be a challenge on a going forward basis because the one-time reductions essentially become the start to our gap as we start the next budget development cycle. Ideally, we would have or be heavier on and focused on ongoing reductions to address the county's structural funding gap. So this is the highest level summary of the fiscal year, 26, 27 final budget, which totals approximately 6.8 billion across all funds. That's roughly a 10% increase over the previous year. And the general fund budget totals approximately 4.3 billion. As always, there are pending factors that we continuously monitor. You heard about policy and budgetary decisions at both state and federal levels that can impact our programs for residents, as well as pending ballot initiatives at the state level that could significantly impact our ability to raise local revenue. So these other pending factors you are very familiar with, in addition to these ongoing pending factors that you've seen in our previous presentations, we're always monitoring global finances and the impact of macroeconomic factors such as climate change, natural disasters that result from climate change, global conflict, and the potential impact on our broader economy. The threat of a recession is always a looming concern for counties as these are times when services are needed most, yet also typically when we see a decrease in revenue to support those services. So all of these things we're going to, you know, continue to monitor for potential impacts on our budget. And finally, all of our budget work is always guided by your board's Vision 2036, as Amy had already referenced earlier.

Thank you for the update. I'll ask, is there any public comment on this item?

Showing no hands in Zoom, and we have not received any cards for this item.

So, if a colleague wants to ask any questions, comments, is that a hand raised? Supervisor Marquez.

Okay. Nope. Okay. Thank you for the update. I think it's important that we continue to track our budget landscape. I will do my best to be consistent in the comments I made through the budget process. Just a couple of high level things. Thank you for pointing out the one-time cost savings and reductions. Obviously this is something we have to tackle moving forward. We know just the cost of providing services to the public is going to continue to escalate with employee costs as well as medical. Those are just ongoing going to be increasing expenditures. So I would like us to continue to track this on a more frequent basis. And along with the comments I made during the budget season, it's really important that we look at where we could increase fees so we could bring in revenue. having a clear understanding of all of our reserve funds, what's exactly in them, what they are intended for. Also, we just received a presentation last Thursday at a joint public protection and health committee meeting. And I see that, Reimagine Adult Justice is flagged in here, but I would also call out Care First Jails Last. I know people tend to couple them within that initiative, but I think we need to look at the cost of having people at Santa Rita Jail. If we could invest in behavioral health, mental health, housing, more upfront services to prevent people from being at Santa Rita Jail, that's going to be key. Also want us to look at our settlements. I know this has been an ask of the board, you know, what we've paid out in the last, I think we need to have a board discussion, how far we want to go back and look at areas that need improvement so we could reduce our liability. I think that's another way to do cost saving measures. And I know there was discussion about the, effectiveness and potentially getting a consultant to see if there is any ways that we could be performing, um, more streamlined, more cost saving measures, just conducting that analysis as well. So I hope that we can kind of circle back to everyone's comments during the budget season and to continue to apply pressure specifically on the state for all the unfunded mandates that they keep on, um, requiring us to, to make these, uh, implement these provisions and policies without the funding support. So just want us to keep that in top of mind, as well as the fact that we have several measures that are going to expire within the next, I don't know that easier, the closest one is maybe six years, right? But there's some, I think sooner. There's measure WAC, that whole analysis. And we also had to do a better job in correcting the record. There's a lot of misinformation out in the public every day. I get an article. So I'm also going to strongly encourage us to look at hiring a PIO. We need to be setting the record straight on what this county is doing. There is a lot of work that we need to build upon and improve, but there's also a lot of great work coming from this county and we need to be telling our own story. in correcting the record. And that's gonna be incredibly important if we're gonna earn the confidence and support of the voters to renew many of these tax measures that we depend on. Thank you.

Anyone else? Supervisor Fortunato-Bass.

Just regarding state ballot measures, there's obviously a lot that will potentially impact us. I know I had brought forward and the board approved the so-called billionaire's tax that did qualify. It's on the ballot. I would like to bring that back to PAL so that we can officially approve it now that it's on the ballot. And it's, I think it's important to look at what will impact us first in terms of revenue, in terms of potentially impacting our ability to put our own measures on the ballot. So I do hope that we will be discussing that at PAL and we'll be looking at the measures and potentially bringing some recommendations forward to committee.

Well said. Indeed, I am skeptical that any future parcel tax, ballot measure, sales tax, revenue enhancements will be successful in the near future. Very skeptical. We have to really show that we're spending the money that we have effectively and efficiently. I know we haven't seen much opposition to tax measures yet, but I think that might change. With that said, we are concluded item 1A.

Absolutely, and appreciate the feedback and we'll continue to monitor and update the board. Part of the reason we wanted to present this again today was to set the stage for your five-year capital improvement plan that GSA is going to present. It's a $2.5 billion plan over the next five years. And Kimberly Gassaway and her staff Palin are going to present.

Did I ask if there were public comment on 1A? And there was none, yeah. So capital improvement plan, Kimberly Gassaway, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, Supervisors. Kimberly Yasaway, Director of General Services Agency. We're here to present the five-year capital plan. And then also on Palin Chen, we'll be doing that presentation. That includes GSA, Public Works, CDA, and Fire Department projects. In addition to that, following that, we have a few slides on Santa Rita because we often get many questions regarding that specific category of the plan. Thank you.

Good evening Board of Supervisors. My name is Palin Chen and I'm glad to be with you today to discuss the highlights of the five-year capital improvement plan. Just give the clerk a moment to pull up the PowerPoint, which should also be in the front cover of the binder that you just received.

Was that the correct presentation? That was the correct presentation. Yes. Thank you.

Yes, it's the PDF. There's a PowerPoint should be in there, your file. I cannot advance the PDF. If you want to advance it for me, that's fine.

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

Yes, they do. In the slides, so this is slide two. In slides ahead, I will walk you through the five-year capital plan, review the funding status and provide a preview of the work that we intend to do over the course of the next year. As you know, the CIP is a five-year plan for how the County will go about preserving and enhancing its facilities and infrastructure and outlines how the County intends to pay for it. CIP documents are typically presented on a five or 10 year timeframe because these projects are complex and take a long time to design and construct. The first year of the plan is the most important because it aligns with the current budget year and fiscal, the out years, the fiscal years 28 through 31 of the plan are placeholder estimates and meant to serve as a blueprint for the future. Before we dive into the numbers, I just want to provide a refresher on how our CIP is structured. There are essentially three departments that have capital projects, as Kimberly mentioned, GSA, PWA, and Tier 1 projects managed by CDA, but often in collaboration with PWA or GSA. Underneath each of these headings, there are different categories of projects, as you see in the list before you. Next, I'd like to provide the board some context at how we arrived at these numbers. We take the following into consideration when producing our cost estimates. And as you all know, the economy continues to shift as policies change, which affect construction pricing. Here's a snapshot of the five-year plan cost estimates by department by year. GSA has the largest portfolio of roughly 1.5 billion in costs, PWA at 972 million and tier one projects at 6 million. This brings the total cost estimates to 2.5 billion. This slide layers in the sources of funding into the financial picture. Total cost estimates over the five-year plan, as I said earlier, are 2.5 billion. We've identified 1.6 billion in revenue in the CIP, leaving an initial gap of 914 million. Once we layer in the cash on hand from the special capital construction fund approved by the board in August of 2023, cash on hand is 410 million, leaving a gap of 504 million. Here we have a visual representation of the table on the previous slide. The donut chart on the left shows the breakdown of cost estimates by department. You can see that GSA makes up 61% of the total. On the right hand side, the donut chart shows a breakdown of the 1.6 billion of revenue we've identified by source. Road and flood is exclusive to PWA projects only. Bond proceeds relate to the measure X. Despite the headway we've made with the long range capital financing plan, this bar chart illustrates that over time, the funding gap continues to grow as the identified revenue continues to shrink. And given the number and age of the assets in the county's portfolio, there will be an ongoing need to invest in major maintenance and future infrastructure. Now I'd like to highlight the cost estimates that fall under each department, starting with GSA. The donor chart shows GSA's portfolio by category. The work at Santa Rita jail and the facility conditions assessment represent two large active bodies of work. GSA's total cost estimate is approximately $1.5 billion, with a funding gap of $914 million, as I said initially. Then the Special Capital Construction Fund has cash on hand of $410 million. So under GSA, this category represents the projects approved and underway. This category has approximately $63 million in projects in the five-year plan and is comprised of large projects like the Fire Training Center and the African American Wellness Hub. It also includes a smaller subset of miscellaneous projects like large office remodels, fire life safety improvements at various county facilities, and underground storage tank removal projects. Please note measure X projects are included in category one, but they are not managed by GSA. Category 2 focuses on the capital projects located at our largest county facility, the Santa Rita Jail. Our five-year plan continues the capital improvement broken down into four major categories, ADA, network infrastructure, health programs and services, and facility operations, which includes critical operations and the kitchen remodel. Category three includes projects to address deferred maintenance, energy utilization. And in 2018, GSA completed a facility conditions assessment on the county's portfolio of buildings. This portfolio has been divided into the following major sections. Facility needs priority one projects of healthcare facilities and juvenile justice facilities. countywide solar and energy savings projects, including veterans buildings, major maintenance, which addresses deferred maintenance countywide. GSA is currently developing two bundles of projects for safety net facilities and the government center under major maintenance. And GSA's last category of work is the pipeline of potential projects that could come forward to your board in the future. Project final cost estimates will be refined as the projects are further along in the planning and development stages. Shifting now to the public works program, which focuses mainly on road and flood projects. The total cost estimate in the five-year plan for PWA is 972 million, 303 million for road projects and 669 million for flood projects. And finally, as a reminder that as a result of the state dissolution of redevelopment authorities in 2012, the board adopted policies and identified priority projects in the unincorporated parts of the county, which were called tier one projects. This slide highlights the remaining tier one funds originally set aside for Hillcrest Knowles, which will be reallocated to the law enforcement facility replacement project and will come to your board at a future date. So in conclusion, while we have some exciting projects to consider ahead, we also need to consider some pending factors. Again, I want to reiterate the large unfunded costs associated with the facility conditions assessment and point out that these numbers do not include seismic retrofit costs. And additionally, should the economy take a turn for the worst, the funds that we are expecting in the long range financing plan may come in lower than expected, and we'll have to find another source to close the gap. And lastly, future projects are in development with cost estimates and funding sources to be identified. So in closing, I'd like to thank all the departments who helped put this document together. And we're here to answer any questions you might have.

Very good. We'll ask, is there any public comment in the room or online?

No, we have not received any public comment for this item.

Very well, we'll close public comment, bring it back for discussion. I'll call on Supervisor Tam.

Supervisor, before we proceed, I do have a couple of slides specifically on Santa Rita. It might be helpful.

Okay. Couple couple slides.

Thank you so today we thought it would be important based on comments we received in the past around the capital plan to highlight Santa Rita. Few of the financial information specifically for that category two in the overall plan. So as you know, Santa Rita Jail is located in Dublin. It was built in 1988, 38 years ago. The campus includes a central core building, housing units, a service building, two educational facilities, and it's the county's largest 24 hour facility. Capital planning surrounding its upkeep and maintenance is extremely important. The jail is also subject to two consent decree projects resulting in development of various consent decree related capital improvements. And the Santa Rita Capital Program includes a multitude of projects both inside the jail and on the jail's campus, which are on various stages of development. As Palin had mentioned in the 2731 capital improvement programs, we have the accessibility project, the network infrastructure and security systems upgrade, health space programs and services, and facility operations. This next slide. I believe answers many of the questions that were posed in the past. So right now the board approved projects are listed on the left. These are projects that your board has already approved the budgets for, and many of them are already in contract. The second column is the approved broad budget for each that your board has approved for each of those projects totaling $428 million. And then we'd like to show you that as of May 4th, About the time we were putting the plan together, the total spend to date actuals was $92.5 million. In 26-27, we requested appropriations, even though your board may have approved the project the prior year, we have to ask again each year for the budget appropriations in order to pay the invoices and issue purchase orders. So that is $223.3 million. Then we're projecting the future years primarily in critical operations of roughly 56 million per year. I will point out that a couple of these projects as I go through are in design, which means while they may have appropriations this year and contracts award, they may shift which year the appropriations may have to be requested again each year. The next slide shows the same list of projects, but it shows you essentially the program schedule and where they are. Green represents that these are construction is complete and we will be coming to your board. You have to approve of notice of completion. So we're still in financial closeout. However, we have finished construction. The star items are the ones that are a matter of a subject to litigation. So the ADA project, that was a litigation that we had to remodel the entire jail to meet ADA code. The Santa Rita network infrastructure upgrade project was tied to Babu. It was not specifically called out. However, we had to upgrade the network in order to deal with the cameras that was for better monitoring at the property. The enhanced outdoor reconfiguration and recreation yards are part of the Babu compliance because they provide out of cell time for the inmates at the facility and the monitors, each of the items in blue, the monitors come out and check our progress. The enhanced outdoor rec project is mostly finished. We have received two change orders from the sheriff after construction, one to be for compliance with PREA and one for some shade for the sheriff deputies who are out there monitoring the program. Santa Rita safety enhancements projects was not part of Babu. We had previously completed cell softening in certain housing units that was part of Babu. So it's not listed here because it's already done. However, as a result of that and other incidents at the facility, the sheriff has requested that we perform safety enhancements throughout the facility, not just in the housing units that were called out. Then the Santa Rita Sheriff and Behavioral Health staff space treatment areas. As you remember, we were building a building to provide services and for staff, and then that was no longer moved forward. Instead, we began remodeling space within the jail to provide both the housing unit treatment pods and the staff space. Next is the Santa Rita kitchen renovation, the kitchen well beyond its useful life. So that right now is... under contract and we're in design. And then the critical operations is related to all the deferred maintenance at the facility. The next slide, as I mentioned, the interior accessibility upgrades or the ADA project, as we call it, you can see on the picture, all of the areas where we remodeled the facility.

It was pretty extensive.

Oh, I haven't changed my slide.

There you go.

The next slide shows you where all the network infrastructure work has been happening in all of these housing units. This is both of these projects along with the others have required significant coordination with the sheriff or escorts, et cetera, throughout that jail to make sure we have to move inmates from one housing unit to another. We have to coordinate their staffing levels for construction. It's been quite an undertaking, but this is pretty much complete and it's in financial closeout. Here's a picture of where the outdoor rec yards are, the two cue yards or quasi yards, six small yards, large yards are done. As I mentioned, this is pretty much done where the, originally we were not going to put toilets in the larger yards, but then a decision was made to do that. They are operational at this time. As people can be taken inside the facility to use restrooms, however, the preference is to be able to allow them to use a restroom if needed. So we need to put an extra little gate around where the toilets are installed. Also, the deputies stand outside and monitor. And so they've requested some shade so that otherwise this project would be complete. As far as the Babu monitors are concerned, it is complete. Here's some pictures to give you an idea. Some housing units were converted for behavioral health staff and sheriff office spaces within there. We've remodeled the gym to provide training and employee wellness space and medical support space in the core building formally occupied by sheriff. All of those are complete. There are still some projects in planning. The sheriff has asked for the office space in the core building. housing unit treatment pods. So these pod conversions, as you may remember some time ago, we were talking about little phone booths instead, thankfully with the new sheriff, we have been given access to remodel some of the housing units because They were available and we've converted those into multi-purpose rooms and six housing units provide programming and therapeutic space, observation desks and three housing units. And the chapel was renovated to provide space for multi-denominational spiritual care and group meetings. We're still in planning on confidential interview rooms in the intake area. and confidential interview rooms and four housing units, additional observation desks. So the deputies have full site and renovation of space on the maximum security side to provide additional program and classroom type setting. The monitors have been very pleased with the work that we've done to date and the plans going forward. Safety enhancements and full function. As I mentioned, this is where the sheriff had asked for additional safety enhancements to remove literature points throughout the facility, including identified bunk beds, cell desks, stools, ladders, et cetera. And work will be coordinated with the progression of the critical operation project. At one point, we did have this in contract with a different contractor, but it became problematic and very expensive. So we pulled it out and we're going to move it forward when we do the major maintenance work. Full function is not a specifically called out project on the list. What this is when GSA, when a housing unit is completed on one of these other projects, they go in and any painting or additional routine maintenance that needs to be done, they do that before we turn the housing unit back over to the sheriff. Again, in order to coordinate and maximize efficiency of the work. There are projects in design right now. We have awarded a progressive design build a contract for the critical operations. And we've answered several times for your board about what the scope of that work is. We are progressive design build means the architect is in contract with the general contractor. And so we're designing and they have to at one point come up with a guaranteed maximum price before we move that project forward. So there'll be more coming forward to your board. This contract was awarded in June and we're expected to complete the work in 2030. The kitchen is being remodeled, new equipment upgrades to mechanical systems, electrical and plumbing infrastructure and security systems. And right now we're providing temporary food storage facilities during demolition and construction. This contract is also in design and it was awarded in 2025 and expected to be completed in 2027. Priorities this next year is to complete the close out activities. As I mentioned, financial for the ADA project, complete design of the critical operations and kitchen project and begin demolition and construction and brief the board of supervisors on development of operational plans and procurement for future projects. There has been some discussion about the electrical system and energy system at the jail, which is, need some upgrades and possible replacements of parts. So we're looking at that. That's in the future project. And I forgot the second. Oh yes. And the core building. So we are aware that the core building where the intake area is, is going to need some remodel. There's some issues the way programming is able to happen in that area. So we've been in discussions with the sheriff and behavioral health on that project. project, but none of those two projects have been brought forward to your board yet for approval. We're still in the planning phase. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Do we have any public comment?

No, sir, we don't.

Questions from the board, Supervisor Miley?

Yes. Thank you for the capital update. in its totality. Obviously, you know, we need to stay on top of our capital infrastructure needs because if we don't stay on top of them, it's not like it's going to get better. It's just going to deteriorate and get worse and probably end up costing more money. So what I want to get a recollection on, when we did the Q Tower, that was about a billion dollar project.

We bonded for that, right? Correct. We bonded for that and we're paying about $50 million a year in annual debt service.

Where are we in terms of paying that off?

Do you have a sense? I don't recall how many years we have left. That's the acute tower at Highland Alameda Health Center.

Yeah, it's about a billion dollars. So what's the likelihood of us going out for another bond in the future? You know,

Well, you certainly, I mean, that's obviously one of the reasons that we want to maintain our credit rating. So you do have that option and ability to.

You needed to remind us about that, right?

So, I mean, you certainly have the ability to do that. I think that's something we would need to evaluate. And, you know, your board had the foresight to set up the, long-term capital financing plan, which is helping us now. But I think if there's a significant project, that's something that the Board could certainly consider.

Yeah, I think we might need to consider that in the near future, not presently, but maybe two to four years out at the max. Okay.

Vice-Chair Fortunato-Bass, then Tam, then Marques.

Thank you for this information. I do hope this will be on the budget portal so that we can also reference it or point people to it. Just a couple of questions. When was the facility assessment done most recently?

The last one was done in 2018. We are considering doing some updates to that because it's not quite a bit of work has been done.

Okay. And can you remind us how funds are allocated to the capital improvement plan each year? I know when we do our December board letter, that lays a framework for the financial planning for the subsequent year. About how much have we been allocating year by year? And is there a chart that shows how much we've been allocating towards the CIP?

The amount that we are adding to our capital fund each year. So I believe the board's policy increased that up to, Up to seven and a half percent. And so this year, I know we put in an amount less than that, but we also added some for major maintenance. And that's up to, of our budget, general fund budget.

Up to 7%.

Actually our discretionary funding as our base amount.

Any.

Sure. So for that up to with, with the guidance under the up to seven and a half percent, what we have included in the final budget is 75 million in addition to 50 million that's appropriated for major maintenance.

Thank you. And then in terms of Santa Rita jail, are there any outstanding requirements that are required because of litigation or are all of those in process?

There will be as far as the core building where the intake area is, and some are still in design, but we are expecting a little bit more in the intake area, but we are in design as far as the individual interview areas.

Thank you. And just a clarification on that. Does that also include making sure there's confidentiality when those in the jail are talking with medical staff?

So I know you mentioned this to me previously, supervisor, and I did reach out to the sheriff about that issue in the intake area, but the individual confidential rooms are for behavioral health and mental health services. As far as medical, for the medical provider, I will need to find out. That's not any of the projects I'm working on.

Okay, that was something I heard about. I'm not sure if it's been resolved. I believe that labor partner is talking directly with the sheriff, but do you want to make sure that there's confidential spaces for wherever it's required, including.

Yes, I did send that over to the sheriff's department. So we'll talk to them some more about. Thank you.

Supervisor Tim.

Thank you, president Halbert. And thank you for the update. You know, we actually got to it this time in this work session. Um, Just following up on the question about the bonds, I know we enjoy a very favorable bond rating because of the work that the CEO's office and our predecessors have put in place in terms of our fund balance. But when I look at the bond proceeds as a proportion of your revenue sources, it's like 1%. It's $22 million.

That specific bond is for the measure X fire stations.

Okay. So did you say that the last time we floated bonds was 2018?

It's when we did the acute tower. And prior to that, it was the juvenile justice center.

So that was eight years ago. So you're trying to close a $914 million budget gap in your capital fund.

It's actually 500, isn't it? The remaining is 500 million and it's a five-year plan.

Yes, the initial gap was 914. And then when you layer in the special capital construction fund, it drops to 504.

504?

Yes.

And how are you planning on filling that gap again? I'm getting at the bonds. I mean, given that we've got great bond ratings, we might as well make use of it right now, but we should time it obviously when the bond rates are favorable to us.

And also that we have a viable project that we're going to, I mean, unless we're just going to issue general bonds for capital. So I think we need to look at it. The 500 million is over five years. And I think we need to look at it, you know, both on a project basis, as well as on an annual basis in terms of when it would be, you know, most prudent. If, And when the projects are going to be ready. I mean, I think, you know, that's a lot of it is because when, you know, when you issue bonds, you have to spend the money within a certain period of time. So I think we have to carefully look at that. And I think that's, you know, part of the analysis in terms of, you know, how we would meet our capital. We've made great progress because the board's discipline. And I think you've allowed us to commit funding on an annual basis. Obviously we have more needs than we have funding needs. you know, right now. But I think before we issue bonds, we'd have to do that analysis to determine whether it's the most prudent way to proceed and what's the appropriate timing, both in terms of the bond market, but also in terms of our projects. Because do we have shovel-ready projects that we can use those bond proceeds for?

We can only use it for new capital projects. We can't use it for like deferred maintenance projects.

we could issue bonds for a number of things. I think we need to look at that and what's, you know, what's the most prudent way to proceed.

And in alignment with what the CAO is expressing, I think it's important to understand as when she's talking about shovel ready, what it takes, even for large deferred maintenance projects right now, we are, um, With the resources we have, financial, staffing, contractors, we're spending 200 million up on the Fairmont campus. We're spending hundreds of millions at Santa Rita jail. We're gonna come forward next with the downtown government center deferred maintenance. Then we're coming also with the safety net facilities. You've given us a little bit of measure W money. to do the feasibility studies on those. It takes a lot. We bring in the soft costs, as I mentioned, the professional services to tell us what it takes. So this takes years for us to put the whole program together as she's mentioning and commit the resources to do the work. The other thing I mentioned to President Hover is at some point there are facilities we had been working towards this as real estate master planning around the government center. I think if you're talking about a major financial investment, there is a point where you need to move to build the new facilities, but that needs a significant planning effort to put that together. How many years, what is that gonna cost? Where's it gonna be? Excuse me. It totally is. And at the same time, so we have to invest in what we have just to hold the buildings up. But at the same time, we have to move forward on the plan for the future.

And so when are we going to do that? Because I mean, it was it needed to be done. The day I started here and I'm starting to feel dated. now. Well, okay. Don't say that.

We're also building a new, I mean, when we look at our buildings, I think that I've mentioned this all the time, the building that really needs replacement right away is the ETS substation. I know Supervisor Miley is going to get excited about that. It is in the plan right now as a future project. So we have to.

When are we going to bring the future into today.

That's correct. We can re-dust off the real estate master plan we were working on pre-COVID that included the government center, put the committee together, which includes... Do we have support for that?

This is a work-study session. It's a chance for us to dialogue. Do we have the support to ask GSA to dust off that facilities needs assessment, to come to us within a reasonable amount of time for an all inclusive, what the whole thing is gonna cost and come together with a plan for a bond measure, not to say that we're gonna issue it until it's time to ready to be the best time to issue it, not to issue it before we have shovel ready projects, but it's chicken and egg kind of a thing. We have shovel ready projects if we want to make them shovel ready, We have the ability to issue bonds. If we want to issue bonds, we may not be the right timing today, but unless we start that process, and I would just like to say, if we're not going to do it today, when? If we're not going to do it today, when do we plan for a 500 million, 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion for everything that we need to get done? And I hope that that when is not after Miley retires. I hope that it's in the next year or two.

I think he wants the Eden area substation built before he retires. We'd love that.

So, I mean, how do we, do we make a motion? Do we provide direction?

Do we get the head nods? Staff can come back with an update on the needs assessment and get more specific.

Sometime this year?

Okay, good.

So speaking about capital projects, there were just two that I'm particularly focused on. So I know the Alco garage is in native overhaul reconstruction, but short of that, are there things that we can do? For example, like, You know, on the Golden Gate Bridge, they built a netting because people were using it as a launching pad. And so if we've had issues in the past over that, can we put some safety rails that can be part of the capital plan, even though we're not going to replace the whole garage at this point?

We can do that.

And then the second question, because I'm still trying to struggle with A comment that Supervisor Miley made about the $36 million for Camp Sweeney or the revenue lease bond, lease revenue bond that we have access to, but we have to show a matching grant, which we're planning on doing with the Camp Sweeney fence. And I know there's been changes in terms of what the vision would be on that plan, but where are we? Because I think it's been what, 10 years And I understand that there are restrictions once we tap into those lease revenue bonds, but what exactly are we coalescing around in terms of what's going to happen at Juvenile Hall?

So Camp Sweeney is different than Juvenile Hall. So just to clarify a couple of things that were made, the fence is not being paid with the match funds for the grant. So those are, Two different things. Right now, we had an operational plan from probation, the current probation chief, and ideas that were presented to BSCC. And the issue was that it came in as an independent cost estimate of roughly $80 million with a $35 million grant. after conversation with Supervisor Miley and other conversations with the Chief Ford, his staff are updating their operational plan and we're looking at what can we do with the, because the match, I believe it's 15%, I have to double check, but it's about 50 million all in, not 80, 90 million. And so what can we do for 50 million? And so his staff are finalizing an updated operational plan and to submit to GSA so we can take a look at that. There are a number of constraints, which I will not belabor, but I will point out when you do lease revenue bonds, they put an encumbrance on your overall property. So that includes all the easements with PG&E. So if it's anywhere near any of our other properties, their encumbrance starts to spread to your property. This was one of the reasons we had looked years ago at the, well, the lease revenue bonds were looked at for Camp Sweeney. They were looked at for the mental health building. At one point in Santa Rita, we talked about wedging a unit into Santa Rita, but then they would encumber the entire property. They would require a seismic retrofit of the whole jail.

They're basically lending us their money. They take the asset once it's built. It's a lease back. Pay off their rent.

I was told that Supervisor Haggerty wanted that Supervisor Halpert organized a movement against it. moving it to Santa Rita?

That was when we were looking at options of where to build the Juvenile Justice Center.

That was a whole different... Different ones? Okay. So, I mean... We are working on figuring out what to do with those books. Okay. I mean, that lease revenue.

So, on Santa Rita Jail... Oh, gosh. So... The way you explained it is that every time, even though we made an approval for the appropriations, but every time there's been a lagging in terms of when the appropriations get spent, you have to come before the board.

Each fiscal year, so the appropriations do not roll. So unlike your general fund department, they've been allocated and encumbered, they roll into the next year. So departments don't have to re-ask. So if they're under contract for something, they don't have to re-ask for those appropriations. That is not true in the capital funds. We have to re-ask each time. It's an accounting thing. So you're not approving the same appropriations twice. We're just re-appropriating money you had appropriated previous year.

That's clear to me. It's just that, Every time you do that on our board agenda, even though it's part of the mass motion sometimes, there's always a lack of understanding of our prior appropriation that we're reappropriating the same amount of money and people think we're appropriating a new amount for Santa Maria jail that could be used for behavioral health or something else.

That's why I thought it was important to, in consultation, the CAO's office thought it was important to show that the budgets have not changed for those projects. So that's the first column. We're not double charging you for the same project.

What I'm suggesting is you might have to kind of re-explain that every time you come for a reappropriation. for the same amount of money. So the last question I had is over the behavioral health staff space and treatment area. Cause I know that's definitely needed. And that's something that I've also heard from our labor partners with respect to the medical side, having the privacy and making sure there's no HIPAA violations when we do intakes. But the question I had is I know there's this, belief at least from the care first jail last presentation that every time there's a decline in the population at the jail, there's staff savings that we can get that can be moved. And the sheriff explains to me that all these changes require some level of staffing. Like if you had a behavioral health client, they do need somebody from the sheriff's office at that location. So is this, is she considering all that? Because Miley keeps telling me there's no savings.

I certainly would defer to the sheriff on that. I do know they have to have escorts when people are taken to different areas in the same way we have to have escorts for construction because we have to coordinate those. There's only so many deputies to do that. In addition, I do know that because of what we had to learn about the way we were remodeling the housing units, that the classifications have changed. So the way people are put into different cells is significantly different than the way it was many years ago when the jail was first built. And a lot of that is driven by the monitors and the mental health and behavioral health. So they completely revamped classification. So I think the sheriff should answer the questions on our staffing and savings, but I do have some awareness.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you, Director Gassaway. And I'm sorry, I apologize. I don't recall your name, but thank you for the excellent presentation. Again, thank you for your patience. If people have been tracking, I think this presentation gets bumped the last two years. We rarely get to get this presentation. So thank you. And again, apologize to everyone for the long meeting and delays, but it is important that we have this information. I really appreciate the fact that you did a separate slide deck on Santa Rita jail. There's been a lot of engagement around that. And I echo supervisor Cham's comments. I do find often our board letters are light. We assume everyone recalls all the history. So if we could just, you know, who, what, where, when, I think we need to approach the board letters. If I have no knowledge of county operations, what do I need to know? just like high level. It doesn't need to be like expansive. I would repeat the same information cut and paste from previous reports, but we definitely are losing. We're not including some of the pertinent information, which then just creates more confusion in the community to piggyback on the comments about what are we going to do to address our building assessment needs? I fully support that as much as we can fast track that information I think is key. We are spending a significant amount of money to maintain across the street, the building, the status, electrical, elevator, you name it. There's just always an issue. So as much as we can get ahead of that as possible, I fully support that. I don't think it's aligned with the CIP, but also I know it's under your jurisdiction. Going back to our comments earlier about budget, I also want to know the status of we have so much property. We have so many leases. Are there cost savings in that area as well. I think that's something we need to track. And then with respect to the category one projects, what's the anticipated timeline for those to be completed?

So each project, there is a individual project more details in the back of the binder for each of the category projects. So some are in design and some are already in construction. So they're at different, so it starts design, feasibility, design, then construction. So they're at different stages. So I can mention, I don't have the exact dates on all of them, but we do track that information.

Okay. And then will these PowerPoint presentations be uploaded on the budget page or where can find this information and can it be uploaded to our website?

We will upload as with all of the presentations from today. And we intentionally did this at a work session to give you the binders so that you could review them. And our intent is to have a board letter on next week's agenda to ask you to approve the five-year CIP, knowing that you're amending it on an ongoing basis at your weekly board meetings.

Okay. Thank you. And then, um, adjacent related since you're the director of GSA and hot topic also has been contracts and procurements. Can we, I'm going to request that we in the fall, get a training work session to bring all board members up to speed in terms of what is the county's process when it comes to contracting and procurement RFPs. I just think we all have different information. So it'd be good to have a work session on that topic as well. Thank you.

Yeah, indeed, procurement is a tricky thing. GSA handles some of them. The divisions handle some of them. So this is a really detailed binder. It's got hundreds of projects. And, you know, we're not making a decision on this today. We're not even really reviewing these details today, but we can take this away and look through it. So this is really good, valuable information, but I think what we uncovered today is we're also wanting to hear more about the facilities assessment. So thank you for the report. It's not on the agenda, but I'll ask that we bring back the facilities assessment with the opportunity to make approval on proceeding with a future bond measure at some point and get that on our agenda. Supervisor Miley.

Yes, not to prolong this discussion conversation, but if the board is really looking at the administration building in downtown Oakland and the garage in downtown Oakland, of which we really need to deal with at some point. But if we're really sincerely looking at it, we'll need a transition plan because we'll need to move out of the building. So if we build a new building in Oakland, so maybe we can move to the zone building, whatever we do is going to cost us money. It's going to cost us money. So I'm not trying to put more stress on Kimberly, but We really need to think about that. And the other thing to think about is if... I don't want to... I'm not proposing this, but it has been suggested that maybe the county seat needs to be moved out of Oakland and moved elsewhere. But if we're going to keep the county seat in Oakland... That's where the administration building needs to be built. You're causing problems again. But if we're not going to keep the county seat in Oakland, Kimberly needs to know that so she can determine where we're going to have that capital project. This is all on capital council.

Miley wants to bring a charter amendment for the 2028 ballot. Nate, is that what I heard you say? Amend the charter? Because that's what it takes?

No, okay. So we can bring the needs assessment as well as some of the prior discussion that the board has had over time in terms of the government center options as well.

Have we had a specific item come to us just specifically focused on the government center? Have we ever...

It's yes, it was, has been some time ago. There was a real estate master plan that was done many years ago. We were working on an update to that master plan, which included a new government center, two buildings with parking, and it would replace the admin building, the Madison building, the training center, the Alco park. And it was pretty significant. We had a whole committee together. We reviewed, I think Andrea said on that committee as well as the former assistant, CAO Steve Manning was there and we had brought a consultant in and we were ready to bring it to your board to review. And we entered a major disaster, global disaster. And so it paused. Now what we have been focusing at GSA, why it is important to dust that off and regroup as a committee and look at what the plan is. So we have, there's a lot of work that went into that. Right. significant. In the meantime, we've had major investments needed at Santa Rita. It was important for GSA to focus on that. It didn't have good focus or strong leadership, and we have shored that up. I think we receive a lot of compliments from the sheriff, from behavioral health, and from the monitor. So Happy about that. Fairmont, we've invested a significant amount of time and effort on those properties as a number one priority for health facilities. So we can now, those are running. It's not that we aren't doing anything, but I think we can regroup with the county administrator's office and look at dusting off the real estate master plan and bring it back. That's a little bit different than a facilities maintenance work, which was the assessment. What we did was a facility assessment and real estate master plan. At the same time, we brought in different consultants because we believe those two things go together to inform you of where to invest your money.

Dust off doesn't mean recreate. It means dust off. We've already done the work. Update. That's correct.

We have a lot of information. I will also say I did mention to previously Carson and some of your board members, one of the things that shifted, which makes me really happy, is the way we work. What we were doing pre-COVID versus the way we work now. We've also looked at what a number of other counties are doing around their real estate master planning and their portfolio planning. and shrinking the size. We did have your board approve a rejection in space per FTE, which was significant. And we've been using that. So anyway, I could go on and on. I do talk about this and look at this issue regularly, but we will bring some information to your board.

Miley. Yes. And I just want to say for the benefit of my colleagues, you know, at one point, the property across from the post office, that was a vacant lot. And I propose that the county buy that vacant lot because that's where we could have built a new building, transitioned into a new building, tore down the garage. Because if we stay here, we've got to have some place to go. And we did. And it was going to be about $7 million or thereabouts, but we didn't pursue it. But the point is, if we don't pursue some of this stuff, it's not like it's going to get easier. And it's not like it's going to get less expensive.

So what about the zone building? You brought it up. Can we tenant improve the zone building?

I think it's important for us to come to you at a work session and talk about your options.

Can we buy back part of the Coliseum Stadium after we sell it to somebody?

You know, there's many options. The location is.

Yeah. And I think it's important to bring both things back because I do think we need to weigh the future investments with the, you know, maintenance costs as well. And I think, you know, part of it was shifting priorities in terms of where we put our attention. The board wanted us to focus on the Broadway properties at one time, which we had shifted, had kind of pivoted to invest some time and energy there.

I know let's create another committee called the real estate committee. That's been floated. Maybe we should have.

Well, we do have the surplus properties committee, so we could transition that into another committee.

Very good.

Are we done?

No, Supervisor Marquez, I'm sorry.

I'll be brief. I should have said this earlier, but I did want to compliment GSA's team. I spent a lot of time visiting individuals and programs at Santa Maria jail as well as juvenile hall. And it is impressive to see the investments And I do feel that it's improved overall conditions. I encourage everyone to watch the public protection meeting from last November to hear all the impressive updates from Santa Rita jail, as well as juvenile hall. Our census is nearly 1.7 million people. And our average census at juvenile hall is about 50, 55. And the population at Santa Rita jail continues to decrease. But while people are there, they deserve to get excellent care and being in an environment where that is supportive and focuses on rehabilitation. And every time I go there, I continue to see more and more improvements and investments being made. So I do want to acknowledge that hard work. I know that's very challenging to coordinate doing construction on that site, but you guys have been able to pull it off. So thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor. We also do want to have you come up and see the Fairmont campus. So we'll be coordinating that. A lot of work's being done up there. Anything else?

We didn't talk about the Nike missile facility enough for Nate.

All right. With that, we will finish.

We finished item 1B. We'll now move on to item 2A, a status of Russell City redress fund implementation. Who will be presenting this item?

Me. Elisa? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Did we not have a consultant for this?

No, this is just a brief update. So the item on today's agenda just wanted to give my colleagues and the community a brief update on the progress of Russell City Redress Fund, an important city-county partnership established to provide direct redress payments to former Russell City residents and eligible descendants. I wanna thank each member of the Board of Supervisors for their leadership and for contributing funds to make this historic effort possible. Your commitment has helped move this work from concept to implementation. We have an important and administrative update after careful consideration, Philatropic Ventures Foundation will no longer serve as the fiscal partner. I'd like to thank them for their deep engagement and support in these efforts. Instead County auditor controller, Melissa Wilk has agreed to partner with us to hold and distribute the redress fund payments consistent with the eligibility criteria and at the direction of the working group. This change benefits the fund by keeping 2% of the administrative fee that would have gone to an outside fiscal partner. allowing those dollars to remain in the fund and directly benefit Russell City residents and their families. Our immediate priority is to finalize the MOU, which will establish the governance structure for the working group and application subcommittee. I want to note that this was an item that was scheduled on our agenda on July 14th. I pulled the item and it will be heard next Tuesday, August 4th as a set matter at 3 p.m. on a regular board meeting. And when the agenda publishes this week, everyone will be able to review my updated board letter as well as the MOU. I also want to recognize the tremendous collaboration from the County Auditor Melissa Will, County Council, and county administrator's office and the members of the working group, all of whom have donated substantial time and energy to keep this effort moving forward. This fund represents more than a financial restitution. It acknowledges the historic injustice suffered by more than 1,400 residents of Russell City a vibrant multi-racial, multi-ethnic community displaced through eminent domain in the 1960s. It also creates a strong foundation for future philanthropic private sector contributions as we continue this work toward repair and reconciliation. Thank you all for your continued partnership and support as we move into this final implementation phase. I just wanted to provide that update in advance of next week's board meeting.

Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? Either in the room or online?

Showing no speakers.

No public comment. We will close public comment then and look forward to next Tuesday. I'll just ask and confirm, Supervisor Marquez, we'll have any attachments that we'll be reviewing on Tuesday will be made available on the posting this Friday?

So my board letter and an attachment to the board letter is the MOU. That's the action we're asking of the board is to authorize you as board president to sign the MOU. And then subsequently the city of Hayward will be signing their MOU on Tuesday, August 18th. It's just an MOU. We've already appropriated the funds. And I will be doing a brief presentation, no more than 10 minutes next Tuesday as a step matter. And it is important that we have it be a set matter. I didn't state this, but I've said it publicly in the last month, we've lost two elders from Russell City, one being 104 years old. And that was Jose Cota. and Jesse May Johnson. They were both residents of Russell City. So that's the urgency of bringing this forward next Tuesday. And the set matter allows for predictability for public comment.

Very good. Just want to make sure we have all the data for us. With that, we've exhausted item 2A. The next item is item 3A. Report on County Operational Issues. This is an update on Social Services Agency Children and Family Services State Audit.

Thank you, Supervisor, President Halbert, Andrea Ford, Alameda County Social Services Agency Director. I'd like to introduce the next topic is Department of Children and Family Services Update Number 11. We had a fairly extensive presentation yesterday at the social services committee meeting. So this one will not be as extensive, but will be all inclusive to include an update about the audit, as well as some information about CDSS, the California department of social services, recent recommendations and findings report. I'll now turn it over to Michelle Love, assistant agency director for children and family services.

Good evening, supervisors. This evening, we'll look at a path forward, how we got here, progress, what comes next, including the external assessments, the audit report, the CDSS cap and timeline, and the status of implementation of recommendations, children and family services workforce updates, and transparency and accountability to the public. So just as a reminder of how we got to the status of all of our reviews, there was a grand jury report in July of 2023, 2022, 23, regarding the timelines of emergency response investigations. There was a board of supervisors, joint health and social services committee meeting held by supervisor Nate Miley in September of 2023. And as a result of that meeting at the time, president Miley requested a review of the coordination of services by CDSS. The review was conducted by CDSS and completed in July of 2024. There was a request by Senator Dr. Rahab on April 24th, 2024 to the joint legislative audit committee. As a result, there was the audit report 2024-108 in September, 2025. Subsequently, there was a request by the Senator Dr. Rahab for additional CDSS oversight and the CDSS onsite review report was released July of 2026. Upcoming things on our timelines for both the California Department of Social Services corrective action timeline, as well as the audit timeline. Upcoming, we received our audit findings and recommendations from CDSS in July of 2026. By next Friday, we will accept their recommendations formally. September 23rd, we have our 12-month assessment of 12-month report to the auditor's office regarding the status of the 2024-108 audit. Any items that are not completed will continue to be monitored by the California State Auditors. We have a corrective action plan due to CDSS by October 1st of this year, and that cap is anticipated to last for 18 months. The status of implementation of recommendations. We've completed seven of 15 recommendations. The ones that are still pending are listed below. They are the ensure timely supervisor review, reduce impediments to initiating and completing referrals timely, strategies to address impediments to initiating and completing referrals timely, the survey of staff regarding retention and recruitment, hiring of more bachelor's level CWW1s into ER, improve the MOU with our interagency partners, policies for the transitional shelter care facility and quarterly evaluation of our transitional shelter care facility. Since we haven't reported out since our six month review, some of those will automatically be checked off because there's no interim time that they can be completed for the auditor. Here's just a workforce update since September, 2025, our vacancy rate has declined from 32.8% to 21.2%. I want to highlight for you the last two classes we've hired, 26.3 and 26.4. The number of applications for bachelor level positions continues to far exceed those of master's level staff. However, they result in far fewer hires. There were 196 applications for child welfare worker ones in the 26.3 class, but only 61 of those met the minimum requirements and only six were hired. For our master's level staff at the same time period, we received 55 applications, but 34 met minimum requirements and we hired 15. And our last class, 26.4, which we anticipate will start August 31st, for our bachelor's level staff, we received 249 applications. Of those, only 81 met minimum qualifications. And 27, actually that number changed this afternoon, 34 are scheduled to be hired. For the master's level staff, we received 35 applications. 29 met the minimum qualifications. and seven are scheduled to start on August 31st. We currently employ 233 child welfare staff with 20 currently being on leave. This slide is here just so you can see our attrition over the years. This year we've lost 13 staff to a host of reasons, personal actions as well as retirement. Our next, we continue with continuous hiring. Our next hiring for child welfare workers will be September 15th. And following that, we will have interviews again on November 16th. Transparency and accountability to the public. Are the supervisors interested in seeing, we continue to have an audit dashboard that's available on the agency website that covers all the items that are in the audit and the corresponding data, as well as all presentations that have been presented to both the full board and at social services committee. Given the late time, I won't go to the links for the dashboard. Are there any questions?

Do we have any public comment on this item? either in person or online. Now is a chance to speak in person or online. Showing no speakers. We'll close public comment, bring it back for discussion. I note that we have our illustrious social services committee present. I'll start with Supervisor Tam. Perfect timing.

Thank you, President Hubbard. As Michelle mentioned, we did have an extensive and detailed discussion yesterday at our social services committee, including a deeper dive into the audit dashboard, looking at our backlogs and the efforts that are being made to comply with a lot of the recommendations and suggestions that came out of both the audit and from the meetings they've had with Senator Dr. Ayesha Wahab. And so this is a commitment that we as a board has made to bring it to the full board so that if there are other recommendations in terms of making sure that the public fully understands the corrective action plans that we have undertaken, I think it would be good to hear from the other board members as well. Supervisor Marquez.

I know I wasn't part of the social services meeting and I will go back and watch that video, but I haven't had a chance to do so. Can you just elaborate, spend a couple minutes of what the corrective action plan entails by CDSS and what, type of resources are we going to get to help strengthen our systems here in Alameda County?

So the corrective action plan follows most of the items that were present in the audit because that is what they reviewed. I'm sorry. Am I not right here? Sorry. My voice fades as the evening gets longer. Um, It covers most of the things that were in the original CSA audit. The only place where resources are mentioned are for the ombudsperson. They did say they would seek resources for that position, so we'll find out in our first meeting what that looks like. That is the one item in the recommendations that would be considered an unfunded mandate. It is not regulated to have it and child welfare departments cannot be mandated to do something without funds. And since they put it in the plan, there needs to be some type of resource that they provide to adhere to 2011 realignment. Okay.

And then I haven't had a chance to look at the dashboard, but how current is it?

It's current.

It's real time. How far back do we go?

We go back to 2019. I think we go back to the entire time of the audit.

Okay. And then with respect to challenges with recruitment, we are definitely consistently recruiting. What are next steps and what are we doing to perhaps get outside support on that? Can you kind of elaborate on recruitment effort?

We have hired a strategist to assist us with recruitment. We had our first meeting with him last week. to kind of give us an overview and level set of possibilities. We asked Casey Family Programs to do an outreach throughout the country with their other jurisdictions that they're in to see if there's anything we had missed in our own work. They gave us some suggestions for retention, but as far as recruitment, We are doing everything everyone else is doing. The strategists will hopefully give us some new ideas. We just completed our cards. I think Andrea may have some, if not, I have them that we can pass out to people that have the QR code where you can apply. I'm attending a meeting in September with the commissioner of administration and children and families. as part of the rest of the directors from the other 50 states as part of Casey family programs. And one of the items on our agenda with him was to discuss the workforce issue that the entire country is facing for child welfare.

And the corrective action plan, is it, will it or will it not focus on recruitment and retention?

It doesn't focus on recruitment and retention. I think because CDSS acknowledges this is a statewide issue. This is not an Alameda County issue. It does look at the impact of not having sufficient staff to do all of the work because that is the issue. I mean, you have to have staff to do the work. And I think they recognize that the issue Alameda County is facing is not unique to Alameda County.

And people that are retiring, resigning, separating, are we conducting exit interviews to have a better understanding of why?

We do exit interviews for all of our staff that leave with the exception of when it is a discipline matter.

Okay. And then any updates you could share with us with respect to retention and focusing on that and with our current workforce.

We have a retention work group that is starting up again, but it is just starting up. I think in the midst of rolling everything out for the audit recently, bandwidth to do the extra things. We are in the middle of our second survey from the safety assessment so that we'll get staff's input for what they think can impact retention. It'll also give us some ideas about people and their feelings of psychological safety, things of that measure. We released to our staff the plan based on their feedback and their requests for what they wanted to feel more secure in their daily work in the department.

Would it be possible on the website to attach near the dashboard? I know there's been multiple meetings on this topic to the full board, to the social service committee, but just like a document that just lists all of the meetings and maybe attaching the video or the agendas, just anyone that cares about this topic can just see chronological. There's probably been

Every presentation is uploaded. I think yesterday's isn't uploaded yet, but anyone that goes to our website can actually pull up the presentation.

It's easy to find under our website or under the county clerks?

Our department's website with the audit information. Okay. We also added an email address. So if anyone had questions about anything they were seeing about the audit, they could email us so that we could respond to what their questions were.

Have we gotten inquiries on that? Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Ford, Senator Bass, then Miley.

Thank you. Yes, we did have a very thorough update yesterday at the social services committee. You know, I think as a board, I do believe that we're really focused on our goal of ensuring child safety, welfare, wellbeing, connecting children with their families to the extent that we are able to do that. So I do appreciate my colleagues and our staff for really focusing on those goals of child welfare. We did not have a chance to talk a lot about the California Department of Social Services report. So I did want to ask, I know that we're supposed to respond by next week. What does that response actually entail?

Andrea and I haven't had a chance to fully go into it, but I anticipate that we'll just be accepting all the recommendations listed that they have. A lot of the recommendations are firming up policies for staff to clearly understand them. It's divided into two parts. There is one section that is listed firmly as these are corrective action items. And there's another section that's listed, these are longer term next steps that we could review to improve practice.

Okay. I am reading and digesting the report. I understand that it was, I believe a one day visit, is that right?

It was a one day visit with about 50 interviews and focus groups total with 50 total staff participated in interviews and focus groups. There was a review of a few cases and then the report was issued. So there's some things that are listed in the report that there was no secondary interview with supervisors or management. So like family finding and the lack of family finding wasn't mentioned. As you all know from the Social Services Committee, we do now have a contractor available with state funds to do family finding and engagement for us. So there are some things that we've begun to address. And based on what their recommendations and findings are, we've started to solicit that additional support. For instance, they mentioned structured decision making. We've reached out to Evident Change, who is the purveyor of structured decision-making. We will be asking them to do a case reading and emergency response so that we can hone in on what pieces staff are missing in that tool. And then we'll do training for our intake, our hotline staff, as well as our investigators. So we're just waiting for them to give us the total cost of that. And then we'll add that to our training contract. So there's pieces we've begun based on what's in here that we've already begun work on.

Okay. Um, maybe just, uh, going back to yesterday. So one of the things that, um, stood out when we were looking at the dashboard at the committee meeting yesterday is that at least for me, the data showing timely investigations and closures, um, that is trending in the wrong direction. So it really highlights the importance of timely, thorough, accurate investigations and making sure our emergency response unit is staffed up and strong. How does that sort of line up with this new state report and some of the findings and recommendations in that?

Well, I think that's one of the things that they intend to address. So the timeliness of investigations, both our immediate and 10 days, have been part of our system improvement plan. So in February, the board has approved that system improvement plan. We had already committed to the state that we would continue to address that. It's highlighted again because they had to put it in this corrective action as well. But this is work we've been doing with the state. for the last six or seven months. One of the things they suggested was looking at some of the work that was done in San Diego County to improve their timeliness and equity of distribution of cases. So I did reach out to San Diego State at the beginning of the audit. They have expressed interest in assisting us. So I will be meeting with them. They are interested. We are interested in having them evaluate our emergency response program. and giving us recommendations about areas that we may be missing that is creating this gap in timeliness. As part of the CAP, we will be meeting with the state twice a month for part of that work. So they'll be truly hands-on in the ground, at the ground level, trying to assist us in improving those rates.

That's all very, very helpful. I mean, for at least for social services committee, because we get to see this information twice, oftentimes twice a month, I think we're, and I know Supervisor Tam also meets regularly with you and is very engaged as our social services committee chair. We might know a little bit more about what's being done and the progress we're making since this process with the state audit started about a year ago. I would just say that we have to take all of this information incredibly seriously. I know we do. I'm just saying that to re-emphasize that it's really hard for us to know that some of these reports are saying that we don't, you know, I'm just looking at the state report right now. You know, it says that Collectively, the findings suggest that we collectively suggest that while foundational practice requirements are present in many cases, the documentation, agency infrastructure, tool compliance, and continuity of staff work do not consistently reflect the standards necessary to ensure child safety, permanency, and well-being. So we know we have a lot of work to do, even though we're making some progress, and I think we have to just be really, really clear what we are doing, maybe make it even more simple than all of the information that I know is on the website because we've requested it, maybe break it down by the recommendations, not only in the audit, but in this more recent state report. And we just have to do everything possible to work with our constituents, work with our labor partners and staff up because it seems like the staffing is really core to these issues as well as some of the processes and improving the processes. So, I know we've all said this, but child welfare is a huge part of what we are responsible for and we have to really make a strong commitment to it. Thank you.

Supervisor Miley.

Yes, thanks, President Albert. Well, I want to first at least thank the agency staff for the work they're doing. Because I think they're trying to make this type of progress that is necessary. I would thank the Social Services Committee, two colleagues for monitoring this and bird-dogging it. I do think it's going to be important that we look at the audit and the corrective action that needs to be taken. Everything that we're looking to do as an opportunity to improve, to move forward and to become the best child welfare department entity in the whole state. I think something important that the agency, both the director, the head of the department and the staff in the department both with Local 21 and SEIU 1021, look at what we can continue to do to ensure the best of service as possible and what we need to do to continue to provide adequate and professional staffing and coverage. I mean, this job, is a very challenging job based on what we've heard. And based on what we heard, we're not the only County facing these challenges. And I think you said it's a challenge with recruitment throughout the country as well. And, you know, I just want to say, I know when supervisor Steele was with us, she used to pay a lot of attention to this. And at the time, you know, being new to the board, and this wasn't one of my areas of, but officers on social services, I didn't really appreciate the work that Supervisor Steele was putting into it. Cause obviously this is a lot of work and a heavy lift. And I just want to acknowledge that and look upon, you know, the glasses being half full, not half empty, and we have a chance to do better. And I think we need to continue to work with our outside CBOs and stakeholders to move forward as well. So if there are things that, you know, you mentioned that we've, in the PowerPoint, we've improved, was it seven, seven out of 15, and we still get eight to go, eight are pending. Yeah. And I think if there's other things that need to happen, the smallest of things, we need to hear that from the rank and file, the people who are doing the work. I mean, I wouldn't want this job. I would not want this job. But obviously there are jobs in our society that we all need to have. And this is a job we need to have. So if there are things we need to do to try to ensure that we have and we have a competent staff and we have morale within those staff, we need to be doing that. So the recommendations, I'm not saying this is all that needs to take place, but I do think we need to listen to the staff that are delivering the services and we need to hold people accountable as well to ensure that professional services are being delivered. obviously has been pointed out. We are all concerned about child welfare. We know that the law frowns upon taking kids out of their homes. We know that, but we do know at times kids need to be taken out of homes and put in the foster care and other things. So if that needs to happen, that needs to happen, but we need the best of people working at this and we need to ensure that they have the support that they need to ensure that they're doing the job. Because the only person the board can hold accountable is the head of the agency. And at this point, that's Andrea Ford. In the past, it was Lori Cox. And before that, I guess it was Yolanda Montanvenous. And before that, was it Chet Hewitt? Yeah, it was Chet. And all of them I like. All of them are doing a great job. But those are the people we can hold accountable. And so, you know, but I know they don't do the frontline work. So we need to work with our staff who are doing the frontline work to ensure that we can do the best job possible and get this monkey off our back. That's all I want to say.

I'll echo my colleagues comments that indeed children are so important to us. They and their care when they're in our care is of highest priority as a County agency, I believe children under our care, whether it's in juvenile hall, whether it's in foster care, whether it's in any of the various spaces that we come across, children are vulnerable. They are just vulnerable. We have a lot of recommendations from, I think, the experts, the state audit, We have another onsite review report. Just to confirm, that came out in July. That's public now? This onsite review report, CDSS?

I would say that it's been released. The state does not typically release it to others unless it's asked for. I think the Senator has received it, but they will not- Have we received it? You received it. You guys got it when I got it.

Okay.

Is there anything new in there? I'm sorry? No, I think what they've tried to do is look at, because the audit was not done by experts. This report looked at our staff, the work, and these are the experts because these are the people that do the work, not someone they tried to learn it and then regurgitate it back. So they've highlighted the same things, but they've tried to put it in the framework of what's required, what's expected.

We've talked about how, indeed, our job is tough. And every county in the state is experiencing some of the same things, worker shortage and the like. We've also talked about how, Supervisor Miley mentioned it, in some respects, taking children out of the home is frowned upon. In other respects, leaving children in the home causes other problems. It's a balancing act. But what we've also talked about, Supervisor Smiley's right. We can only hold accountable our agency head, but I've also been told that we have state law that we have to follow and state law has changed over time and state law has made our job more difficult in some areas with all the good intentions, but listening to our frontline people, state law has tied our hands or prevented us from doing the job that people on the ground know that they need to do. Is that not accurate?

I think what state law does is that in the effort to improve the safety of children, it creates a bigger burden and workload for child welfare staff, which is sometimes an impediment in hiring staff, but it does increase their responsibilities every day, and it makes the job extremely difficult. State law makes our job extremely difficult. I think the work is hard. State law increases it, so yes. Do all of those state laws result in better care for our children? I think there is redundancy in some of the efforts. Does it come with extra funding to do the job? Child welfare was realigned in 2008. So anything since 2011, if there is a request that is made, we either have to opt in or there is funding provided to it. Typically, child welfare no longer has unfunded mandates. We get a portion of what we would need to do that work, and only a portion because what the state views as a child welfare salary doesn't keep up with actual child welfare salaries. that we have been asked to do since 2011 comes with some funding.

Does it come with the funding that's required to accomplish those things?

I think that varies, it depends.

So whether it's a, if it's a partially funded mandate, it's still an unfunded mandate. If it's a redundancy in state law, it makes our job more difficult. So in all of this process and in all of the dialogues with our state Senator, have we given feedback on the redundancies that they have imposed upon us? Have we given feedback on the extra burdens that they've imposed upon us that don't bring a fully funded program? Have we responded with how our job could be made better? Again, frontline people knowing how to do their job, because I don't believe anybody knows the frontline job better than the frontline people doing it. And we provided that feedback to our overlords that make up the state laws.

So I think we have given some suggestions at our task force meetings. I know she's in communication with both of our unions and I'm sure they've resulted in the, in the production of any state laws that could bills, maybe any Senate bill out there that has been able to help us do our job better.

There isn't, there isn't. I see maybe state Senate bills, ought to focus on things like that instead of our discretionary funding for things that are meaningless to helping children. But I would like to see that we push back at some of these meetings. First of all, I don't know how you get your job done when you're in all these meetings. You've got social service committee meetings. You've got other meetings with the senator. You've got where her press corps is there and everything. I don't know how you get your job done, but I would suggest that we push back and say, help us with the decisions that can be made at the state level, fully fund the mandates that you impose upon us, eliminate the redundancies and start listening to our frontline staff who know how to do their job and make state laws that help us do our job. That would be my hope if you continue to go forward to these meetings. And just so that I know, how many meetings have there been? Once a month, once every two weeks, something like that?

I couldn't give you, it's been roughly every two, there's roughly two meetings a month.

Two extra meetings a month, an hour, two hours, three hours?

They're an hour. Okay. And then how long do you take to prepare for those meetings? It goes a while. And what I would say, Supervisor Halbert, and I appreciate where you're going with this, But what happens just for the late hour in an effort of transparency, I think the push and pull between the Senator's office and our board is I answer these questions and I really want to answer them as fully and completely as possible to you. I do have frustrations with the task force, which I have shared with her, but the end result is I also have a Senator who becomes very angry. And so now on her website, There are videos of me looking like I'm on the first 48. And so unintentionally, I have been put in the position of wanting to defend the county. I don't speak to contract negotiations because I don't think that is my role. I am a manager in this county and I understand when staff are in contract negotiations, that people are going to sit at the table and come up with the best. But what the end result, and they're very frank about it, she gets very angry. If you look at her website at the bottom, there's all these videos of me with my voice sped up, with typing in the background, literally like in the first 48. So I appreciate your comments. I don't think the task force has been extremely helpful. I have shared my frustration with her. But given the late hour, and I generally go to bed by 830, so my filter may be just a little off. We might, but what it does, and I think I would say it then too, it leaves me as a target for Senator. And I know that's not your intention, but I am the one that gets the bulk of the questions and I am the one who becomes the target of the Senator and her staff.

And my colleagues all okay with all of that happening. What we hear one of our staff members say that, because I, for one, would prefer that we, I would prefer we direct you to not attend meetings that you don't feel are helpful to you doing your job, okay? And so we've mentioned that before, you've continued to engage at your own desire.

This is, I'm not an agency director. So, and I think unless the board were to take and vote. I'm very concerned when I hear you say that, and I'm very concerned that you,

Now, for the first time, I'm understanding there are videos of you posted online at these meetings where a state senator is getting visibly angry at you. That should be, I don't know how we're not going to come up with some kind of a employee complaint problem with this. I'm really disappointed that you are being put through that, to be honest. I'm sorry that you have to put up with that. Well, I would encourage us to push back on where The state can help us do our job better, reduce redundancies, fully fund mandates. And maybe listen to CDSS. They're the people that really know what's going on, not a senator's office. I'll get off my soapbox because it is late, and I apologize. You need to go to bed. We still got to go into closed session. Is there anything else to add? I have nothing else. Seeing none, we've exhausted item 3A. Sure, Supervisor Marquez.

I don't remember who made this comment. I apologize, but it's, I don't know, we're on eight or nine hours. I don't know how long we've been meeting, but I heard, I think it was Supervisor Miley, and I apologize if I got this wrong, you correct me, talking about sometimes there is unique circumstances where a child for their own safety and wellbeing does need to be removed from their home. I think you mentioned foster care. I would like to know what is the advocacy and what are we doing to have next of kin and or extended family? Because to me, I think this is because of the staffing crisis. This is truly all hands on deck. Children that are being harmed in our county People know that this is happening. Teachers, medical staff, relatives, neighbors, just pay attention, the signs are there. So I don't know all the rules, but I know the court system is complex, but are we advocating to streamline the ability for a family member to petition, even if it's on a temporary basis, just to remove the child from the home and assess the situation or provide additional supports? I hope that we're exhausting all viable options because I know if there was someone in my family I would bend over backwards to figure out if I can't do it, I would be partnering with other relatives, but we've got to streamline that process for other relatives to get involved. So what's the status of that being an option in terms of the court system? Can we petition? Does a family, like, can you explain that?

So our first efforts when children come into care are to place them with their siblings and with relatives. I think our first, I can't remember off the top of my head. We place in a relative's home about 58% of the time. And I can, 58% of the time, 58% of all kids in foster care are currently placed with their relatives. Our number is most of our siblings, most of our foster youth with siblings, 73% of them are placed with their one or all of their siblings. And I believe the number for the number of those siblings that are placed with the relatives is 54%. We are in the kinship accelerator with the state to improve that number. Where our goal is to have 75% of all youth placed with their relatives. So it is a high priority for us and has been, but I can send you, I don't have that data. Okay.

With this corrective action plan, are we going to be shoring up the mechanism to assess? Are we at that level? And there needs to be an intervention.

So that is part of our system improvement plan. to continue to raise that level and for the family finding and engagement contracts. So we've recently engaged with a contractor, Victor Community BCS Services. The goal is for them to, when we can't locate family, for them to go out and find family to help us engage with that family so they develop a connection for the child and ultimately, hopefully, place that child in the care of a relative.

Thank you. Supervisor Miley, and then Fort Sonata-Bass.

Yeah, sorry to prolong this, but as I said, I didn't appreciate when we had the Inter-Children's Policy Council, ICPC, and Supervisor Steele was very much involved with that. Looking back where we are now, I kind of appreciate it more than I did at the time when it was in place. And that's when we brought together the county appropriate entities, the courts, outside providers, and others, all to talk about child policy.

Is that correct? That's right. We recently had a convening, though, Supervisor Miley, with 100 of the stakeholders in Alameda County. to talk about child safety and well-being. It was really well attended. So I anticipate we'll have another.

Yeah, because as I said, I think that could be helpful. I'm not saying that's a best practice, but definitely that could be helpful. And I just want to acknowledge, looking back on it, I think I didn't appreciate it, but I can see the wisdom in that now. And I know when, I'm not speaking out of school because I know this stuff, But I know when Supervisor Wilma Chan came back to the county, we talked about ICPC and we wanted to say, let's move into all in. And we said, let's do it with ICPC. Maybe we made a calculated mistake. But I do want to stand by you, Michelle. And I think it's unfortunate that you have to take all this abuse. I'm going to back our agency director, and her work with you and all of your staff and support our frontline staff. And if our agency director working with our county administrator and her team, county council think there's more we need to do, then I'll step up and do that.

Thank you. I just want to say one more time because we do have members of the public who join our meetings or who watch them afterward that we are taking all of this seriously. You know, we've been spending several months making improvements. You know, the welfare of our children is just so monumental to our society. I did want to follow up more specifically. I know that our labor partners have asked about creating a recruitment and retention plan with financial incentives and measurable goals. That hasn't been asked or that has not been addressed very directly and it would be helpful for me just to get a more direct answer in terms of that request that they have made.

So we will be asking them to join us for a meeting with our strategist to look at recruitment and retention. in terms of financial goals or recruitment, things like that. I do believe that will happen at their contract negotiations. I don't think that'll happen at the recruitment table.

Okay. And remind us again, who is the strategist helping with recruitment? What is their name again?

Millennium Millennium Services.

The CEO is Anthony Tony Beeman, and the company's name is Millennium Consulting.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just wanted to offer one comment. Yesterday, we spent a lot of time responding to questions that Senator Wahab had put forth. And we want to make sure all children in our care are well taken care of, but in particular, her questions focused on children and placement and foster care. And I believe Michelle, when you were responding to some of the questions from both Supervisor Fortunato-Basso and myself, we were asking questions along the lines of how do we make sure They are put in a safe environment. You explain the limitations in terms of how many kids a foster parent can have and follow-up and check-ins. If they need behavioral health care, that's also provided. And a lot of these issues, I think, get at sibling reunification from Senator Wobb's office.

I think she, one of the audits, The audit mentioned that siblings who aren't placed together, the concern about their visitation level. So I think she was trying to gather more information about sibling connectedness.

We are resuming our meeting, which started at 10 o'clock this morning. 10.15, it's now 9.33. I'll ask the clerk to call roll.

Supervisor Marquez? Present. Supervisor Tam? Present. Supervisor Miley is excused. Supervisor Fortunato-Laz. President Halbert?

Present.

Showing we have a quorum.

I would like to ask county councilors any reportable action from our closed session discussion.

Mr. President, there was no further reportable action other than what we announced out earlier today. So that would be concluding the report.

Thank you very much. With that said, we have exhausted all the items before us today and therefore we are adjourned.