Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to the Tuesday, May 26, 2026 Board of Supervisors. We will call the order and I will turn it over to the clerk to report out a closed session from the last meeting and to read out the two closed session agenda items we will be going into this morning.

Closed session from May 12th item 1 pursuant to government code 54957.6 conference accounting designated labor negotiators Teresa Hitchcock and Judy Hawkins regarding the following employee organizations Calaveras County Public Safety Employees Association Calaveras Management Union Calaveras Supervisors Union Deputy Sheriff's Association Service Employees International Union Local 1021, Sheriff's Management Unit, Unrepresented Employees, Board Action, No Reportable Action Taken. Closed session for today, May 26th. Item 1, pursuant to Government Code 54957.6, Conference of County Designated Labor Negotiators Teresa Hitchcock, Judy Hawkins, and Shea Johnson, regarding the following employee organization. Service Employees International Local 1021. Item 2, pursuant to government code 54957B, consider the disability retirement of a safety employee.

Are there any public comments on either item 1 or 2 for closed session? Seeing none in the room, any online? We have no online. Okay. With that, we will convene into closed session and be back here at 9 a.m. for open. Thank you.

We're ready chair.

Thank you. Welcome to the Calvary County Board of Supervisors May 26, 2026 regular meeting. Uh, we, everyone please stand for the flesh.

Uh, I want you to provide the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands. One Christian, and I'm not going to get into this at all. Report out from closed session. Yes.

Report out for closed session for today, May 26. Item 1, pursuant to Government Code 54957.6, Conference of County Designated Labor Negotiators, Teresa Hitchcock, Judy Hawkins, and Shea Johnson, regarding the following employee organization, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, Board Action, No Reportable Action Taken. Item two, pursuant to government code 54957B, consider the disability retirement of a safety employee. Board action, no reportable action taken.

Thank you. Now we'll move on to staff announcements. Lisa, good morning. You got an audience today.

Yes, we do. Full house. That just means more opportunities to take this pup home with one of you today. Lisa Medina, Environmental Management Agency.

This is Sister and Dolores.

Dolores is one of our wonderful volunteers that we couldn't do without. So sister is a spayed female Belgian Melinois mix, and she's about two years old, and she's probably about 50 pounds by now. So she was part of a large group of pups and adult dogs that we rescued and seized from up the hill, probably about 15 dogs in total, Dolores, about 15 dogs. So quite a significant amount of animals. So unfortunately, when we retrieved the animals, they were kept in kennels and crates for most of their lives. They lacked appropriate developmental and also healthy living experiences, so they didn't have really good humans that were taking care of them. It was just bare minimum. They were also a bit malnourished and undernourished and came to us very skinny. Yet although they were initially fearful in the shelter, they have proved to be quite sweet-tempered, as you can see. They're easy to handle, very friendly, and they allow the volunteers, such as Dolores herself, to coax them, to take them on walks. They're really good with multiple new humans in their lives, and they've become more comfortable at the shelter because of that. So I can't stress enough how important it is for that human reaction to take place at our shelter. And we do that every day in and every day out with our many multiple husbandry duties and responsibilities. And they also get along with other dogs. And her personality has really come out. She's very affectionate. She checks in frequently with her handlers and she accepts treats. She had several treats right when we were standing. so now that she's a little bit more confident she enjoys walks a little bit more frequently and she's good with meeting other dogs of course as always i always say we don't know what her disposition is when she meets cats because we don't test the cats with the dogs so we're very mindful of that so if you're interested in sister she also has several brothers and little babies please call 754-6509 and as always a meet and greet is required if there is another pup or pups in the household CCAS, the Calabrese County Animal Services would like to thank our volunteers, our partners with focus and the Humane Society for everything they do day in and day out for our shelter animals and shelter needs. We truly appreciate everything that they do for us. The next free rabies and microchip clinic will be held here at the Government Center on Saturday, June 13th from nine to 1.30, excuse me, 11.30. Dr. Kathy Gatlin will be the attending veterinarian. And with that, do you have any questions? this is a good deal for her yeah she spent she general thank you lisa thank you sister further staff announcements sheriff wything good morning everyone

First, I just want to say thank you to all the Calaveras County staff, including this board that participated in the law enforcement torch run last week. We raised awareness and funds for Special Olympics. So I just want to say thank you to all the county staff. Secondly, I'm just going to give a really quick Memorial Day holiday weekend recap from our Marine Safety Division. They were staffed up with extra deputies in anticipation of the increased activity on our waterways, so I just wanted to let you know how it went. They made 67 educational vessel stops or contacts, wrote 63 citations, made four arrests, one for domestic violence that occurred on a boat, two arrests of subjects in the campgrounds that were adjacent to our lakes, and one arrest for boating under the influence. We conducted six evictions for people who were unable to follow the rules in the campgrounds. That was a command sheet. we assisted with towing two vessels and i'm really happy to report that we only took one report of a boat accident and that was on hogan uh our deputy assigned to the hogan lake contract has begun that schedule and will work throughout the summer um so all in all very proactive work by our deputies on the water and the surrounding properties on our lakes and this the statistics included hogan tullock comanche and maloney's thank you

Thank you.

Further staff announcements?

With that, we'll go on to recognitions and acknowledgements. Number three, Ms. Simpson.

Item three, proclamation. Clerk of the Board of Supervisors, adopt a proclamation recognizing the 2026 valedictorians from Calaveras High School.

Autumn, I'll share this with you if you could get it started.

whereas each year an elite group of students meets the academic standard necessary to be declared valedictorians of their graduating high school class and whereas the coursework completed is difficult and the competition for such an honor is competitive and Whereas these students serve as role models for their classmates and underclassmen through exemplifying critical thinking, effective communication, problem solving, and organizational skills, and

whereas in addition to achieving a cumulative grade point average of 4.0 or higher these students have demonstrated many admiral qualities such as integrity hard work determination and a commitment to excellence throughout their four years in high school and whereas these students are honored at their high school graduation ceremony but because the achievement is so significant and worthy

of commendation, the Calverse Board of Supervisors wishes to recognize them as well. And.

Whereas the Calverse High School Ballot Victorians for 2026 in order of class rank are, hopefully I can get all your names right. Skye Ripley, 4.24. Awesome. Angelina Maria Kiriakopoulos. I think I got it close. 4.213. Rhea Three, 4.167. Zachary Adams, 4.125. Avery Adams, 4.104. Declan Heff, 4.1. Jessica Buescher, 4.099. Kira Powell, 4.091. Marian James, 4.041. Tristan Costello, 4.039. Haley Lowry, 4.022, and Anna Schell, 4.00. And we'll bring it to public comment or any of you students that would like to stand up and explain to us what you're doing in life after this. All right. Give me a lesson on how to pronounce last names, right?

Or any parents or faculty.

Excellent.

Hi, thank you Board of Supervisors. I'm Heather James, principal of Calaveras High School. And I just want to say that we are so proud of the 2026 Calaveras High School valedictorians. Their academic achievement is undeniable, but they represent grit, right? They have a lot of resilience to maintain a 4.0 all four years of high school. So we're very proud of them. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any further public comment, staff, anyone? All right. Autumn, would you like to call the vote or?

Yeah, any board comments?

I want to, you guys, all of you, great job. It's not easy to do. It takes a lot of time and you have to be dedicated to your work that's given to you. And when you go home, you do your studies and maintain that average. I think two of you are brothers and sisters. Is it competition against each other? Is that what's going on with that one? So, but great job. And how many are going to college? All of them. Fantastic. No vocational?

I'd like to say when I graduated high school, there was a teacher named Mr. Phipps. And you've all put in hard work and had determination to be successful this far. And he said that anything you can put your head to, you put your head to, and you work hard for it so you can be successful and do in life, except for Ben Stopper and Artie Jewell. But I'm not going to say what he said about us, but, uh, you know, you, you, you're already put in the hard work and. maybe one day you might be in washington dc or you know across across those shouldn't work in somewhere else but congratulations you started off right i just want to say congratulations shout out to avery and come back we need smart young people in this county

I would just say, as you move into this next chapter, you know, recognize your strengths and your talents and, you know, build your future around them. You know, I think it will naturally make a successful, fulfilling life if you build upon that. And wherever your journey takes you, I also encourage you to, you know, come back to Calaveras County someday if you feel inclined. Communities definitely grow stronger when talented people such as yourselves return and invest in the community where you started. Thank you for all you've done.

Maybe some purples would like to support our class with a motion.

I'll second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed, the Calabasas County Board of Supervisors commends these students named as valvictorians for 2026 on their impressive accomplishments passed and adopted by the calaveras county board of supervisors on this 14th day of may 2026.

Proclamations.

I'll be front and center.

What?

After we get done here, we can maybe give you a picture. I didn't hear. Oh, okay.

Good work. That's awesome.

Yeah. This is amazing. We're going to see some of them. All of them. Are you going to hold it?

I'm going to hold it up here. I'm going to come down.

Do you want to get one which is them? No.

There we go.

Oh, I thought.

You can have this young lady hold on also.

Oh. OK, ready? 1, 2, 3, 2, 1.

And who is Jessica?

Jessica. Behind you. Oh, just so you have your advice. okay um do parents want to come up to take a photo with your students My phone or your phone?

Either way, whichever you like.

If you wouldn't mind, I appreciate it. Thank you. Of course. Do I just leave it with you or do we go in a row? Oh, we'll have everybody come in.

Okay. Everybody.

All parents. All parents.

Karen, can I just take your picture for now? Yes, of course. Thank you. And I'll email the one I did to as well. There we go okay facing here. This way ready 123 I have everybody in here.

OK, perfect.

So she said quiet. There we go. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. Still many more. There are involved with clients. Ray Sherriff.

Ray Sherriff is smart. Ray Sherriff. hey that's good because i'm not telling you oh boy Back when I used to play football, which I didn't play. Actually, the European. Okay, Stacey. Ready. We go for item number four for Mr. Martin, poverty.

Item four, Proclamation Sheriff. Adopt the proclamation recognizing Robin Berwick for over 20 years of outstanding volunteer service to the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Team.

Stacy, I believe Robin is on.

Yes. I'm going to promote her to a panelist so she can turn on her camera. There she is. Okay. Okay. She is. Yes, she is on and she is on our panel so she can turn her camera on as she likes.

Okay. Can you hear, can you hear us Robin?

There she is.

There she is.

We can see you. Yes, I can.

Whereas, did you read the article? You read it. Thank you. Whereas, since joining the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Team in September of 2005, Robin Berwick has devoted more than two decades to safeguarding the residents and visitors of Calaveras County through committed volunteer service. And whereas throughout her distinguished career, Robin Berwick has responded to hundreds of calls for assistance, contributing to a documented total of 324 canine deployments, including operations in severe weather, rugged terrain, and complex search environments. And whereas Robin Berwick has served as a highly skilled canine handler, training and deployed several certified search and rescue canine partners over the years, each woven into the success of her service. Among them, Balan, Taz, Jackson, and Valhalla, whose combined efforts have directly aided in the rescue, recovery, and closure of numerous cases. And whereas her K-9 partners under her guidance have achieved notable successes, including documented confirmed fines, seven by K-9 TAS and five by K-9 Jackson, efforts that have contributed to resolving missing person cases, both within Calaveras County and in regional mutual aid assignments. And whereas Robin Berwick has participated in many of the region's most challenging operations, including helicopter and certain missions during winter storms, Lake Tahoe area rescues in which her canine partner alerted on a missing subject and guided them towards safety and the Santa Cruz County drowning investigations where she assisted on water recovery operations as a Caliverse-based CARTA handler. And whereas Robin Berwick has provided essential support in Calaveras County cold case investigations, strengthened by specialized human remains detection, training, and participation in advanced forensic instruction, including the human bone identification course. And whereas Robin Berwick has contributed immeasurably to the development, mentoring, and readiness of the Calaveras County Search and Rescue Canine Program, including during periods in which she assisted in coordinating or supporting, at one point, seven active working canines within the county. And whereas she has represented Calaveras County through regional mutual aid deployments, including many surrounding counties and CARTA operations. And whereas the professionalism, dedication, and compassion demonstrated by Robin Berwick over more than 20 years reflects the highest standard of volunteer service and have made a lasting and positive impact on the safety and well-being of the public. And with that, I'll open it for public comment. Robin, would you like to say something?

not right now thank you good morning chair members of the board thank you for giving me a moment to speak um i'm lieutenant portinga with the sheriff's office first and foremost i want to thank the search and rescue volunteers robin and the members that you see in the audience here today the service that they provide this community is invaluable Robin, I wish you were here. This is a little awkward for me to be able to look at the screen here, but I wish you were here in front of me to be able to present this to you personally. I know you weren't able to, but I appreciate you being here via Zoom for us. I've worked with you for almost my entire time in search and rescue. I want to say that you're someone that we could always count on. You understood the dogs, the terrain, the conditions, and you always gave solid and dependable advice. But what stood out the most was your heart. You cared about every person that we searched for, every teammate that you worked beside, and that kind of genuine care is rare today. Your dogs, Ballin, Taz, Jackson, and Valhalla, were great because you trained them. Together, you made a real difference for families who needed answers. Robin, I want to thank you for your service, your dependability, and your friendship. You've left a mark on this team that will last for years. You'll always be a part of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chad.

Hey, Robin. I talked about it a little bit when we recognized your last dog with the resolution after he passed, but you are absolutely one of the most kind-hearted, dedicated people that we have for one of our volunteers. And the SAR team is not going to be the same without you. uh when i lost my house in butte fire robin called and offered to move out of her house um so that my family could move in there we didn't do it of course but just the fact that she called immediately and wanted to do that um so i'm extremely happy and really mad at the reality market that you moved so fast that uh jeff and i didn't didn't be able to give you a hug i mean i've never seen someone flee california so fast but uh we'll miss you and hopefully we'll see you soon to give you hugs thank you thank you thank you sorry any other public comment

I'll bring it back to the board.

Oh, I'm sorry. I just have one final thing here for Robin. I wanted to give this to you in person. This is from the search and rescue volunteer team. They've got a plaque here. I don't know how well you can see this, but we'll get it to you one way or another. But I'll just read it here so everybody can understand what it says here. A legacy of service. Robin Berwick. Your 20-plus years of exemplary service and K-9 leadership have left an A mark. Through every trail, every scent, you brought hope to the lost, the injured, and the imperiled. The Calvary County Search and Rescue Team, so that others may live.

Sir? Okay, with that, I'll bring it back to the board.

Search and rescue integral. Um, you know, we have all seasons and we have a lot of acreage that's just opened up and Cal Calverse County. So Robin, thank, thank you for all the good work you've done for the people. Um, it goes beyond appreciated with that. I'll make a motion.

I'll second. Thank you, Robin, for all your service, 20 years. Thank you very much.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors hereby recognizes and honors Robin Berwick for over 20 years of volunteer service, expresses its deep appreciation for her commitment to search and rescue operation, and extends its sincere gratitude for the immeasurable hours she has devoted to protecting and serving the residents of Calaveras County. and be it further proclaimed that this Board wishes Robin Berwick success and fulfillment in all future endeavors and records in appreciation for her extraordinary contributions to public safety, passed and adopted by the Board of Supervisors of the County of Calaveras, State of California, this 26th of May, 2026.

Thank you, Robin.

Thank you. Rochelle, Who do we want to hold? Oh, the search and rescue team.

Is there any way, Susan, can we just put her picture on the screen and then we can stand by the screen? And then we have the search and rescue team here. And then we can all stand and at least get her in the picture. Right, yeah. Perfect.

Yeah. Excellent idea, Bill.

you can't see what we're doing robin so make funny faces

Some of the best people I know.

I should talk to Lisa and see if we could send you sister as a fun way to train her. Yeah.

You got us all six? Does that work? As you're here, I'm right here. Everyone here? One, two, three, two.

Stacey Freedman, Stacey.

Robin would you like to say something yeah um I just want to say that I work besides some of the greatest people I know um and selfless and um just just fantastic people and I thank them all for my time and my years in the sheriff's departments and just Yeah, they're the ones who made me as good as I was. So thank you all so much.

Thank you. Maybe we can get a visit. All right, Stacey.

item five proclamation clerk of the board of supervisors adopt a proclamation recognizing and celebrating the 100th anniversary of san andreas town hall and its enduring role as a center as a center of civic life community engagement and local history mr toffanelli thank you supervisor stopper um that's the proclamation

recognizing and celebrating the 100th anniversary of the San Andreas Town Hall. And again, if you don't know, get this, June 7, from 12 to 5, there'll be a celebration at the town hall here at San Andreas. This town hall, as I read the resolution here, or the proclamation, It has hosted so many different things over the course of the police since I've been around. Not only community, has it been a community hall, a Rotary Club meets there once a week, but it has hosted government events. different government things that happened there. So it's hosted a whole lot of different things over the course of the years. And I'm very proud to be reading this and I will be attending on the 7th. Whereas the San Andreas Town Hall, constructed in 1926, has stood for 100 years as a symbol of civic pride, community spirit, and local governance, and whereas the town hall has served as a central gathering place for public meetings, cultural events, celebrations, and civic engagement playing a vital role in the social and political life of the community. And whereas generations of residents, leaders, and community organizations have contributed to the preservation and continued use of the San Andreas Town Hall, ensuring its legacy for future generations. And whereas the building represents an important link to the community's history and heritage, reflecting the values, traditions and resilience of those who have called San Andreas home. And whereas the 100th anniversary of the San Andreas Town Hall provides an opportunity to honor its historical significance and recognize its ongoing role as a hub for community connection and for public service. Are there any public comments?

Marty Crane, District 5. Ditto everything, but I just wanted to say that when the Charming Husband passed, they made it possible and easy for us to do a celebration of life and community because it had to be in community. And we put up these letters on the wall that said, when community comes together, magic happens. We say that all the time. And we were so pleasantly surprised to find that they left it on the wall as a reminder to the community that absolutely, when community comes together, magic happens. We have a much shared vision. And everybody, remember that. Come together. Make a little magic. Thank you.

Any other public comments?

Just going to be a good party. If you're not doing anything, June 7th, between 12 and 5, we've got a lot of stuff going on. Everything's free except the food and beverage. Magic Show, Carriage Rides.

Can you come up to the microphone? Sure. Thank you. So we get you on camera and people can see you.

Okay, Magic Show. We got the community players. You're going to put on a little skit from 1926. The community band is going to play this medley of music from 1926. Again, Carriage Rides, Free Carriage Rides. A car show on Main Street. What else we got, Don? We got trivia, free trivia, free raffle with good prizes. So anyway, June 7th, Sunday, 12 to 5, if you're not doing, come on to San Andreas and help us celebrate. It is a great community center. i'm happy to i've been part of it for 17 years and i just really enjoy living in a small community where that building is just it's it's a focus it's a center point for not only just for san andreas community but for the county so yeah can people sometimes they have volunteers you betcha you betcha Oh, yeah, if anybody wants to volunteer to help, we're going to be setting up Sunday or Saturday starting at 10 a.m. And if you want to hang around at 5 o'clock when it's over, we'll appreciate some help too. But anyway, thank you. Thank you, supervisors, for letting us be part of your community.

Any other public comments? Seeing none, is there any online?

We have no online public comment.

I'll bring it back to the board board comments board comments.

I'll just say, thank you to Sandra Park and recreation district for all your work on that town hall and beyond. Um, it does not go unnoticed. I know that you all put in hours. Of your time, and we all have fond memories of events at the town hall and it is definitely a centerpiece of the community. Thank you.

We will have a lot of history and we'll accept more history.

we're at the board right now hold on we've already had public comments we're at the board level sorry all right supervisor stopper you have something to say it's just just a century i don't know if i'll be around that long so um impressive building and it is a center point for the center of our county and uh you know A lot of great events there and some hard ones also. All right. Can I hear a motion?

So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes 5-0. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors has hereby celebrates the 100th anniversary of San Andreas Town Hall and extends its appreciation to all of those who have contributed to its preservation and vitality. further proclaim that the community is encouraged to recognize and participate in commemorative activities honoring this historic milestone and to continue supporting the preservation of local landmarks. Mark and Rhett, want to come up and get in the picture? One of you want to take the proclamation? Donna? You? Come on up.

Thank you, Donna. Go ahead, Jeff. Thank you. How are you?

How are you today?

Thanks all. All right. Okay, ready? One, two, three. And this way? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

She's in charge.

My daughter's in charge. Thank you very, very much. It means a lot. Absolutely. Everyone's invited.

Yeah, both the street folks are on Sunday. We'll wait for the coach to come.

Okay. Okay.

Stacy, can we have one of our favorite times of the day, public comment?

Yes. Any item of interest to the public that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board and is not posted on the consent or regular agendas may be addressed during the public comment period. California law prohibits the board from taking action on any matter which is not posted on the agenda unless it is determined to be an emergency of the board of supervisors. If public comment is completed before the 30-minute allotted time period, the board may immediately move to the next order of business. If public comment is not completed during the allotted time period, it will be continued as the last item of business in order to provide an opportunity for the remainder of comments to be heard.

Ms. Kate Allen?

Good morning, board, chair, county staff. My name is Kate Allen. I'm here from the San Andreas Merchants Association. I'm here today to invite you all to the Hubbardy Building mural ribbon cutting ceremony. Did bring a couple Flyers for you. This event is going to be Sunday, June 7th at 11 a.m. It will take place directly before the celebration of the 100th birthday of the San Andreas Town Hall. And I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the board once again for your support of this community beautification project in San Andreas. We're very happy that it's coming to its completion and that we'll be able to cut the ribbon with the honor of Supervisor Topinelli aiding in that duty for us on that day. I also wanted to thank county administration staff for helping put all the contract and paperwork together for this project as well as our corporate sponsors, Dignity Health and Cal Waste Recovery Systems as well. It's a beautiful beautification project for San Andreas. hopefully highlighting the history of Main Street in San Andreas and inviting visitors to visit our historic district in San Andreas. So thank you all very much for your support. We hope we see you on June 7th at 11 a.m.

Thank you, Kate.

Thank you.

Can I meet these here?

Of course, please do.

Ms. Vardy Crane.

Good morning. This is such a happy morning, but there is a piece of business that I have to take care of. So, my name is Marty Crane. I live in District 5. I was recently made aware that I am listed on the Bend Stopper website endorsement page, a website unchanged or updated since 2018. Supervisor Stopper, I sent you a text. left left or tried to leave you a voicemail on two telephone numbers one said the mailbox is full the other one says not receiving calls at this time i tried to send an email through the county website and we received an error message finally i asked our elections director to send my message via an email to you and stacy our clerk to the board no response no change to the website you have forced my hand so here i am publicly calling you out and demanding that you remove my name from your website endorsement page in my opinion you have once again Confirm the public experience that you continue to be non-responsive and disconnected from the public that you are supposed to be representing. Please remove my name from your website. Do it now. No excuses. Thank you. Let's get on with the happy stuff.

My name is Christopher Butner, publisher of Calaveras Watchdog. Supervisor Stopper, California Government Code Section 25041 addresses the residency requirement of a county supervisor mandating residency in the district in which they were elected to serve. There are credible allegations you resided outside of District 5 in Moke Hill in Supervisor Ann Dahl's District 2 for extended periods during your current term in office. That is not permissible. District 5 is your declared legal residency and you are required to continuously reside in your supervisory district. If you resided in any other supervisory district other than District 5 during your current term, it may realistically be claimed that further investigated that your right authority and public trust to represent District 5 are disqualified. I provided you multiple opportunities to rebut credible allegations that you have intermittently resided outside of your district. You chose silence. That choice in your continuing silence has substantial legal and political consequences for you. Your pattern of concealment, nondisclosure, and defiance is well documented, time stamped, and in the permanent public state record. Was the formal warning letter you received in 2019 from the FPPC Enforcement Division insufficient to compel your respect for the law? was the fppc enforcement division revealing 12 probable cause findings against you as a campaign non-filer for violations of the political reform act spanning several years as a serial violator insufficient to compel your respect for the law you are on the ballot for the primary election as a district 5 resident you have allegedly not continually resided in your supervisory district i allege you are potentially violating california elections code section 18203, which addresses false statements in nomination documents or declarations of candidacy. You are also potentially committing felony election fraud under California Elections Code Section 18500, the consequences of which may include criminal prosecution. Your silence, your defiance, your noncompliance, you chose this path. The legal machinery of criminal accountability moves deliberately but does not stop. designed from the calaveras county government today ben now to calaveras county elections registrar rebecca turner rebecca you certified candidate ben stopper whose eligibility for candidacy has credibly been publicly questioned for months you are a public servant the citizens and voters of calaveras county and in this instance supervisory district 5 deserve much more and expect more diligence and integrity from your office sarah edwards calaveras county council when this county needed its legal counsel to act to ensure the integrity of the district 5 election the records reveal you refused your record will be examined and you will explain yourself in the appropriate form and appropriate time my name is christopher butner publisher of calaveraswatchdog.com i apologize i don't know your name but go ahead and come up to the podium

Thank you to the chair. Thank you to the board for the opportunity to address you. My name is Jessica Piper. I moved to West Point 4 years ago. We have a daughter in kindergarten at the West Point elementary school and a baby who hopefully will be there in a few years. And one of the things that drew us to West Point was the small town feel is amazing. So within walking distance of my house, there's the school, a cafe, a post office, the youth center, the community garden, and the subject of why I'm here today, the library. So like a lot of West Point residents, I was very distressed to hear at the end of April that the library was going to close. And we had a community meeting on, I think it was around May 4th. Autumn came to it. Thank you for attending. And it became clear from the community meeting that the library that maintaining a physical branch in West Point is very important to the residents of West Point. And so I'm here to thank Autumn for working so closely with us for the last three weeks to try to find solutions and to our library situation. And we have a major victory, which is that we were able to save the summer lunch at the library program and the summer reading program. So working with Autumn, with people at the library itself, with Jesse Sprague, the head librarian, health and human services and the Blue Mountain Center for Youth and Families, those programs are moving to the BMCYF. So that is a huge win, which everyone in the community is very grateful for. And I just want to say, finally, you know, We require community involvement, so I understand the challenging times with the budgets that the board is facing, especially with the cuts to library funding over the last few years at the state level. These are very challenging times and so. In West point, we're grateful to the board for, and to our executive officer, Teresa Hitchcock. Also, thank you. For working collaboratively with the community to find solutions, because the way that we're going to be able to keep a library in West point is through public and private partnership to get the funding in place and the location in place. and so um and sorry the last thing i want to mention is also a very integral component of our community is our local branch um attendant uh she works at our school and she also you know worked at the library in the afternoons she's a really important part of our community west point is a very small community very close-knit And so we also thank you for working with us to try to maintain her role and her position in our community, which is very important as we transition to a different location. So, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

Well, spoken for the public comment online.

Yes, we do. Elise Powers, if you can please go ahead and unmute yourself. Just a reminder, you have three minutes.

Elise?

Members of the board, hello. Thank you for hearing my thoughts today. I wanted to speak out in support of funding the archive. I'm Elise Powers, and the Powers name has resided in these hills for generations. I want to focus on the human element of the archives. I am an amateur historian of sorts. I have spent a lot of time digging into the history of our county, and I believe the archive is a priceless gift to our community. A large part of the records in there are not digitized. Therefore, the community does not have access to them. The building itself was built by Joseph Swinger in 1853. You might recognize that name as Zwinge, but I learned of his preferred pronunciation in the archive. His grandson, who shared his name, served as the sheriff of Calaveras County for 28 years. I want to tell you about his great grandson, also named Joe. At the age of 20, Joe died in England in a tragic air accident while serving in World War II. He was brought home and buried in People's Cemetery. I learned about Joe in the archive. From birth to death, he is recorded there. Joe lives on in the archive. And then here is a familiar name to you, John Huberty. I would like to tell you about his grandson, Elvin. The building was sold to John Huberty. Elvin went by Buddy, and he was among the first to be drafted into World War II. He tragically died of a drowning in New Guinea at the age of 21. It was five years before his family was able to get him home to be buried at St. Andrew's Catholic Cemetery. I learned of Buddy's story in the archive. From birth to death, he is recorded there. Buddy lives on in the archive. I want to tell you of my personal hero, Rienzi Hopkins. He was a senator representing Calaveras County. He walked Main Street when it was just dirt. He began his career as a lawyer out of an office in the same building where the Historical Society Museum now stands. He was a man ahead of his time who truly wanted liberty and justice for all. His life was cut short in 1879 at the age of 39. He is buried in People's Cemetery. His voice lives on in the archive. His story is kept there. The archive is an asset to preserving the rich history of our area, and it should stand ready for the next generation of historians to dig. It holds the stories of the people who lived here before us. Cavanaro, Raggio, Onito, Treat, Swinger, Huberty, Hopkins, Powers, and more. These people are buried here in our dirt, and their stories should stay here with us. And it is a small price to pay for the priceless ability to carry on the legacy of those who stood here before us.

thank you for hearing my thoughts we have no further online public comment I turned it off so I didn't talk

So we'll move on to the consent agenda. Is there any members of the board that would like to pull an item for them from the consent agenda?

Ms. Volendorf?

No? Anybody from the audience? Public? Or staff? With that, I'll bring it back to the board. motion by Supervisor Bullendorf. Second. A second by Supervisor Tafanelli. All those in favor? Aye. Passes on 5-0 vote of the board. Let's take a 10-minute break. If you're okay with that.

Absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our regular agenda. Ms. Simpson.

Item 17, Resolution. Human Resources adopt a resolution establishing a retirement incentive program offering eligibility employees with at least 25 years of county service a financial incentive of $25,000 to $35,000 in exchange for voluntary retirement.

Good morning, Chair Stopper, members of the Board, Judy Hawkins, Human Resources and Risk Management Director, and I am bringing before you today for your consideration a retirement incentive for those employees that are eligible for retirement and have been with the county um 25 plus years and this year we have um put the incentive for those 25 to 29 years the incentive would be 25 000 for 30 to 34 years 30 000 and 35 plus 35 000 um we do have um so for those that are over 35 plus years with the county we have two employees that would um qualify for that. And then for 30 years to 34, we have four employees. And for 25 to 29, we have 11 employees. And the purpose of the incentive is for those that are ready for retirement, that are ready to pass the baton, this gives them an incentive to enter the retirement world. It can be a scary place. And do I have any questions from the board?

Board members?

I do have a question. Thank you, Chair. Judy, what about part-time employees?

So this is only eligible to full-time employees. So the idea is then those that are taking their place, their longevity is a little bit different. There's a little bit more savings because this is also to help with what we expect to be another difficult budget year. And so it's full-time employees that can work part-time.

Could you imagine part-time adding up to 25 years, Martin? No. Well, there are.

Correct me if I'm wrong. We do have part-time people that have been on the payroll for that long. Yeah.

Yes.

But they aren't FTEs. Right.

I'm just seeing if we can, you know, incentivize more people.

Oh. I want to keep them around. Further board comment. We'll go public comment.

We have no online public comment.

Bring it back to the board. Any further questions?

No questions, but I'll move.

I'll second.

We got a motion by Supervisor Fullendorf, a second by Supervisor Hubbardy. All those in favor? Aye. Passes on a 5-0 vote of the board. That was quick and easy.

Thank you.

18, Ms. Simpson.

Item 18, informational item, economic and community development, received an update and presentation on the Calaveras Visitors Bureau tourism and promotion activities.

Good morning, Chair Stauffer, Honorable Board, Kathy Galino, Economic and Community Development. And today I have Jessica Johnson, Tiffany, and Jordan is in support. Happy to see her again. And they're going to talk about the Visitors Bureau annual work that they've done, the outreach that they've done, the amazing work they've done for our tourism and visitor industry. And they're going to come up and do the presentations.

Ms. Simpson, looks like you got it. I'm rolling.

I'm going to recuse myself as I am in the plea of the Visitor's Bureau. I will let them go to it.

Thank you, Mr. Huberty. We'll see you soon afterwards.

Good morning. Good morning, board. Good morning, CEO Hitchcock and County Council. Thank you very much for the time. Just wanted to let you know California remains the top travel destination in the nation. And however, overall, California visitation was down in 25 compared to 24. And despite fewer visitors overall, California still saw tourism spending remain strong because travelers spent more money per trip. Visitors spent $266 million in Calaveras in 25, which was up 2.7% from 24. And after some adjustment for inflation, it was a little over 1% growth. Our TOT for 2025 was just over 2.7 million. which is more than the anticipated budgeted county amount of 2,650,000. The CVB greeted visitors face-to-face, fielded phone calls. We continue to invite travel writers and influencers into the county. We promoted Calaveras through NPR radio, limited print ads, and of course, we supported our local events. But our biggest shift in 25 and going into the 26-27 fiscal year will be towards digital marketing, which we will hear about a little bit later. So according to Visit California and Dean Runyon Associate's report on the economic impact of travel in California, the direct travel spending, like I said, was up 2.7% here in Calaveras, and our tax revenue is continuing to grow.

What'd I do?

Yeah, Dean Brown?

TOT was 2.7 million in 25, which was more than the 2.65 anticipated in 24. Yes.

Okay.

Okay. So how does the CVB spend the TOT we receive? The overhead is 12%, payroll 25%, and marketing is about 63%. And of that, We spend it on the social media, we spend it on the data tracking, travel writers and influencers, that's the media fam trips, the website, the print ads and the visitors guide. So now I'd like to introduce Kelly Fritzpatrick from Zardigo. When we talk about the data tracking, this is what she does in April of this year's, I think when we started with Zardigo and she'll just give us a visitor impact snapshot.

Yeah, good morning, everybody. We're going to be taking a look at visitor behavior once they were in market for all of 2025. When we are talking about a visitor, we use the US travel definition of someone who travels more than 50 miles to the destination. So when we're looking at those folks, for all of 2025 compared to 2024, we did see a little bit of a decrease in the percentage of visitors as well as the percentage of all spend in the destination from visitors this doesn't necessarily mean that there was a smaller dollar amount of spend from visitors it just means that of the pie of everybody spending in the destination visitors from more than 50 miles just made up a smaller piece of that pie than they did the year before. This is incredibly normal. We saw a lot of destinations see a decline in both visitation share and in spend share from visitors last summer into last winter. So this is actually a pretty negligible difference compared to a lot of destinations that we have seen. However, I do want to call out that there was a 5% increase in out-of-state visitors. And we'll take a look at your origin markets. in a little bit. But the majority of your visitation is from California, but we are starting to see some increased interest from outside of the state. So that's a good thing that I want to keep an eye on. And we can go ahead. Now when we're looking at all visitors, so there are also folks that are not residents of your county, but they don't meet that 50 mile definition, but they're still making economic impact in your destination. They're still bringing in new money and helping to offset some of the taxes that your residents have to pay. So when we combine those visitor types, again, we still do see a little bit of a decrease, but when those visitor types are combined, we're looking at almost 50% of all observations as well as spend in the destination coming from visitors. So even though we saw a little bit of a decrease, I just want to call out how important visitors are in the destination. And again, that same out-of-state visitation metric. So we can go ahead. Just looking at some of the impact on the local economy, almost 40% of visitor spend went toward local businesses. So this filters out things like Walmart, Costco, chain restaurants, gas stations, and just looks at your individual small businesses. locally owned businesses. So we're seeing a lot of visitor spend actually go toward those, which is great. That's something that we want to see. Of all restaurant spend that took place in the destination, 29% of that came from visitors, 34% of retail spend came from visitors, and then over half of all attraction spend came from visitors. And again, this is looking at those folks from more than 50 miles away. So they're making pretty significant economic impact in the destination. And you can skip ahead. When we're looking at some of your demographics, we see almost a quarter of your visitors at least 65 years old. We're seeing almost 70% of those folks with an average household income over $100,000 and 60% do not have children in their household. So these are some things to keep in mind when working on marketing content and identifying your target markets and your ideal traveler profile. You can skip ahead. Looking at origin markets, we are seeing 84% of visitors to Calaveras County from in-state. San Francisco was the top origin market in 2025 at 30% of visitation and 62% of visitor spend. So that is amazing. We love to see a market that has a higher percentage of spend than they do percentage of visitation, because that means a higher spend per visitor out of that market. They're a really quality visitor. When they're in market, they're doing the things we want them to do. So that's a really powerful market for Calaveras County. And then Sacramento and Fresno were the other top markets, rounding out our top three. So taking it a step further, looking at our top 10, we don't have to go through every single one of these. But again, I just want to call out the majority of our origin markets are from California. But with that increase in out-of-state visitation, I want to call attention to both Reno and Phoenix. So these could be some markets to maybe keep an eye on, maybe invest some marketing dollars in. if you do want to continue to draw that out of state visitation. But something that I really want to call attention to here is your top 10 markets are making up 87% of all of your visitation and almost 90% of all visitor spend. So your top 10 are really reliable, really consistent, and they're making a lot of impact when they're in market. So these are your tried and true visitors. When we're looking at what visitors are doing when they're in the destination, we saw the majority of folks at outdoor recreation and food and beverage businesses. And then when we're looking at where they're actually allocating most of their wallet share, the majority of that went to food and beverage with an increase year over year, as well as gas and service stations. This makes sense when we look back at those origin markets, we are seeing a lot of folks that are probably drive markets more than fly markets. So maybe coming in just for the day, maybe for a long weekend. filling up on their way back out. I want to call attention to those local visitors that I mentioned before. So these are the folks that are not residents of the county, but they don't travel more than 50 miles, but they still make up a lot of economic impact. So looking at 2025, those visitors made up 24% of accommodation spend, 20% of all restaurant spend in the destination, and 18% of all retail spend in the destination. So definitely still a market worth engaging and still trying to target more. You can go ahead. So just to summarize a couple takeaways, out-of-state visitation is on the rise. We did see that 5% increase year over year, so this could be opening the door to some new origin market opportunities. Again, I want to call out San Francisco. This is a really powerful market for you, making up over half of all visitor spend and significantly outpacing their own percentage of visitation. And then visitors are investing in experiences. This is also very normal right now that we're seeing a lot of activity at things like outdoor recreation. But then 53% of all of those attraction transactions did come from visitors as well. So they are looking for nature based and experience driven opportunities in the destination. And that is everything from me. If anyone does have any questions, I can hang on for a little bit longer.

I see none from the board. We'll put them back to you.

All right, so in 2025, that's when we shifted into going more towards digital marketing. And on our website, we increased our clicks by 430% compared to 2024. And we calculated that if we had paid for those Google ads, we would have cost us about $32,000 a month compared to the $2,000 a month that we spend with big behavior um who's shifting this digital marketing and what we found was we had almost 230 000 organic clicks on the calaveras website over 12 million total impressions 170 000 new users and total engagement was over 1 million um that's 360 000 in savings you're talking about yeah that we could have to get the same exact results that's what it would have cost us So shift pragmatic.

Yeah. Yes. Shifting to this new. I heard. Yes.

Okay. So the most notable, though, is the 190. Well, not most, but anyway, the 190 keywords that are now ranking on page one in Google and including 52 keywords in that number one position. These results reflect the strong SEO performance and demonstrate that the CVB's website is building increased authority. broader search presence and greater potential for the qualified organic traffic and lead generation. Achieving so many number one rankings is especially impactful as top positions drive that highest visibility traffic and credibility with the users searching for Calaveras. So the 24 strategy, as I said, on the site relied on SEM, which is explained to me as similar to renting our visibility. So once the payments and the contract expires, that visibility stops immediately in contrast to the 25 strategy, which focused on the SEO, which is more like owning our visibility. And this approach builds long-term digital equity and that continues to grow and compound over time. Our regional and national growth, so we solidified the visibility with San Francisco, Sacramento, as you saw, but we also successfully expanded into Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, and then we captured the broad interest through search terms like California festivals, Gold Rush towns, outdoor recreation. Internationally, we achieved high-value tourism traffic through countries without previous visibility, Canada, Germany, Ireland, UK, Sweden, and China. And our search brand presence is strong now across all modern search sources like Google and Bing, et cetera. So now I would like to introduce Tiffany with Diamond Digital Marketing.

Good morning. Can you guys hear me? I'm going to try and talk as loud as I can. I apologize for my raspy voice. My name is Tiffany. Thank you so much for having me this morning. I'm going to talk about how we're turning this visibility that we're getting online into actual visitation. Jessica, would you mind going? Thank you. I want to start by talking about how different the way that people plan travel is. Do you remember the days of travel agents? They're still around, they're still there, but the majority of people are planning travel digitally. For the sake of time, over 50 percent are planning travel on social, they're looking things up on Google. There's dozens of touch points at this point. um and looking at how people are planning and the bottom line is most of it is digital what's really changed here is how social um has really taken a big piece of the pie here uh social media is now a search engine and and search and social are really uh working together in the past if we look at the way that social media kind of has worked is people passively scroll they consume content uh they see something that may resonate uh

Just move the microphone a little farther from your face. Farther? Okay. You don't have to speak directly.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But what's different now is that people are actually intentionally searching on social. And this is an evolving social behavior that we now have to cater to in our digital marketing strategies. 86% of Gen Z are searching on TikTok weekly, looking for things intentionally, places to go, things to do, businesses to engage with. And so I'm working with CBB to make sure that we're showing up when people are searching online. And the bottom line is that a strong marketing and content strategy is going to support both SEO, which they've got big behaviors doing a wonderful, wonderful job. I cannot say that enough. But it is going to take a much more robust social strategy. The digital landscape is more competitive than ever. Feeds and minds are oversaturated. We're constantly scrolling all day. It is harder to stop the scroll than ever. You've got less than two seconds. I mean, less than two seconds to stop the scroll on social media. It's costing more to be seen. CPMs are rising. And in order to show up competitively, we have to show up with strategy and intention. So I've worked with CVB and I'm about to be working with them as part of their team now. And I've identified a few key opportunities in where we can increase and improve our digital presence, especially pertaining to social media. The three main points that I want to drive home here are content quality, organic strategy, and paid strategy. When it comes to the content quality, we're working on creating more consistent high visual content, we're increasing our video presence, we're incorporating more storytelling, things that are catering to current social behaviors and what's driving engagement. When it comes to the organic strategy, it's learning how to optimize for search and discoverability, something that we've never had to do in social media before, but something that is more important than ever. We're also working on improving engagement and relationship building to create those loyal visitors that come back year after year after year. And we're also establishing some great robust content systems to create consistency among their social channels. When it comes to the paid strategy, this is something that I'm really excited about. And I'll talk about the work that we're doing in a second. But the gap, the main gap that I'm seeing right now is the lack of meta advertising, especially pertaining to our target market. And so we've got this data right from Zartico. We've got traffic from from big behavior. And what we're going to be doing is creating a very robust paid strategy. It's created. We're implementing it now. to use strategic meta-targeting in addition to retargeting both website traffic and social engagement. And this is helping us bridge the gap and the missed opportunity to convert website traffic into actual visitors.

With that targeting, are you planning on opening up, like we see 10 specific areas where we get a majority of our business Tourism-prone.

Correct.

Are we going to open that up to more than 10 areas?

We're going to be focusing on where we know the money is coming in in our target market. That's part of the marketing plan is to focus on the target markets that we know perform well. It's all about maximizing our time and maximizing our dollars, really. So here's what we've accomplished so far in the plans moving forward in the work that I'm doing with CVB. The main thing here is staff training. We've worked on content, strategy, education. teaching improved content capturing techniques. Content quality is key on social, just the bottom line. We're working on improving how to use our equipment that we have in-house, etc. Also, understanding audience behavior, being able to look at the analytics, it's super important. We are given so much data on all of these platforms and to be able to actually interpret that and improve our content strategy is huge. That's another thing that we're focusing on learning. In addition to overall best practices, because social media is changing consistently, I get three to five emails a day in my inbox on what's new in the world of social media, new features, new tests. It is constantly evolving and we've got to stay on top of it. So I'm proud to be a part of the team to help them do that. Content strategy improvements. We're incorporating evergreen tourism content that's going to stick around and be found month after month after month after month. This is also a huge change in social, seasonal campaign planning, short form video. The list goes on. Stronger storytelling. When it comes to paid strategy improvements, we'll be using the data that we have from Zardico to do some very effective cold targeting. We'll be doing retargeting campaigns with the current website traffic to re-engage those website visitors in addition to retargeting all social engagement to make sure that we are showing up in front of those trip planners throughout their trip planning process. And again, we're using a data-driven approach. I like numbers. I like data. And so do they, and so do you, right? And so we're really honing in on the data. You know, travel planning does have multiple touch points, again, many of which are digital. So we've got this great data from Zardico. We've got a strong presence online with the SEO work that's being done. And so we are working on recapturing all of that data. and keeping potential travelers engaged throughout their planning process. In addition to that, keeping them engaged as they're here visiting in real time and after. The other thing that's really important with social that we're working with, and that is a part of their strategy, is that social is not only important in getting in front of potential visitors as they plan their travel, but also as they're here in real time, in addition to getting in front of them and staying in touch with them and keeping connected with them after their visits. We want loyal visitors. We want people coming back. We want them to continue to come back and pour money into our local economy. and social media is the way to do that. We do have a strategy to keep people engaged and keep people emotionally connected and coming back to Calaveras County. The other part of our strategy that we've updated is making sure that we're balancing all geographic areas within Calaveras County and how we market the county as well. I also want to just make note that the staff is very mindful of public sentiment in tourism and making sure that We're keeping the locals and the residents happy and how visitors are coming and spending their dollars and not overcrowding swimming holes, for example, but also being able to represent all districts, not just heavily, leaning heavily into one. And we think that's very important in the strategy moving forward. The long-term impact for Caliverse Visitors Bureau and Caliverse as a whole is that the work that I'm doing with them is going to support stronger digital visibility, increased trip planning, longer visitor stays, which means to obviously increase visitor spending, stronger support for local businesses, super important, sustainable internal systems, being that they're managing most of these things in-house, and year-round tourism growth. This is not just a short-term posting strategy. This is long-term destination positioning. And my work with them really is to make them as efficient as possible, us as efficient as possible as we move forward in this new fiscal year and maintaining a strategy that is robust but efficient with both time and dollars.

Awesome.

Okay, the bottom line is that Calverse has the assets and the opportunity is visibility and that's our job here is to increase visibility and increase tourism, increase spending when they get here and make a positive impact on the economy.

All right, so the CDB is very proud of the continued partnering with local and regional organizations to showcase and promote the very best of Calaveras. We also maintain a strong partnership with the Calaveras County Fairgrounds, where for the past six years, The Visitors Bureau provided both financial support, greeted guests for all four days throughout the fair. And according to the CEO, attendance was up this year, 3,700. And we also helped launch the Painted Frog Hospital in a community effort to restore the beloved Calaveras frog statues with donated time and materials from local artists. And in 26, the CVB will also partner with the Calaveras Community Foundation, who will establish a dedicated fund to support ongoing community driven restoration of the additional frog statues, which will then be returned around the county. So as we build on this momentum, the CVB respectfully requests that our budget funding level remain consistent with last year's allocation. And the CVB sincerely appreciates the board's continued time, support, and collaboration in helping strengthening the tourism and economic growth in Calaveras.

Say $360,000. I got a couple of questions. Do we want to do public comment first? Public comment.

My name is Christopher Bundner, publisher of CalaverasWatchdog.com. I'm addressing this board regarding its anticipated funding allocation for the CVB, the Calaveras Visitors Bureau for fiscal year 2627. The facts before this board are no longer in dispute. They are established, documented in the hands of multiple enforcement authorities. The CVB is a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation. It has been registered as such with the California Secretary of State and the California Department of Justice since July 12, 2021. It is not a nonprofit association. It is not a public benefit nonprofit corporation. The CBB continues falsely representing itself contractually as both a nonprofit association and a public benefit nonprofit corporation to the City of Angels Camp and Calaveras County, respectively, in funding agreements worth approximately $1.8 million in transient occupancy taxes. This is alleged fraudulent misrepresentation, neither ambiguous nor an administrative oversight and this board and administration know it CBB executive director Martin poverty simultaneously occupying the office of district 3 supervisor filed official state and federal documents correctly identifying the CBB as a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation. since 2021 while simultaneously and personally benefiting from funding agreements falsely identifying it otherwise. That contradiction is deliberate, documented, and now the subject of active converging legal proceedings from which there is no retreat. Criminal Complaint 26-000946 naming Supervisor Hubbardy was initiated with the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office on March 16, 2026, alleging grant fraud and misuse of public funds. Sworn FPPC Enforcement Division Complaint 0308-2026-00663, active against Supervisor Hubbardy, carries consequences that include removal from public office and felony criminal exposure. escalation to the california attorney general's office and state controller's office is underway the cbb's 501 c6 irs tax exam status is being challenged for cause the issuer of calaveras county's government crime policy has been formally placed on notice this board has been cautioned without acknowledgement and then justifiably warned repeatedly for three years and yet has willfully declined to act in accordance with its fiduciary obligations Each supervisor who fails to support corrective action does so with full documented knowledge of the facts. That prolonged willful inaction has legal consequences. This administration and board approving any additional funding allocation for the CVB without first voiding the allegedly fraudulent executed tourism promotion agreement is not a routine budget decision. It is a deliberate knowing act and the law treats deliberate knowing acts accordingly. My name's Christopher Budner, publisher of CalaverasWatchdog.com. Thank you.

I thought in her house and want to get up because they did say beverages.

Actually, I anticipate speaking about this. So, but it's a good timing because. I just wanted to voice our support and thank the board for supporting visitors Bureau. The number of members that come to us who've searched your site, found things to do. It's, it's significant. um so so just really a thank you um we proudly make something called calaveras cast finished bourbon this is distributed throughout the state and the country it's won national and international awards people don't know what calaveras means and the first thing they do is google it and the first place they end up is here and the second place they end up is at our distillery spending money which then comes back to help all of us do the things we want to do to make this place we live wonderful. So just thank you to everyone for the work you do. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Yes, and we do have an online comment. And just a reminder, this is for comment only. No Q&A unless directed by the board. Dan, you can go ahead and speak. Dan?

Yes, can you hear me now?

Yes, thank you.

Yeah, hi. Dan Tulipani, owner of the Camp Connell General Store. I just want to thank the board for allowing me to speak here. And thank you, Stacy Simpson, for your fantastic support of the board. I'd like to also thank the citizens of Calaveras County and thank you to the population of Camp Connell, which I'm told is around 4,000. At least that's what it says on the sign as you're coming into Camp Connell. I think somebody carried a one too many times. One of the things I wanted to bring up, and also, by the way, thank you to the Visitors Bureau. We do get a lot of people coming in, grabbing your magazines, and Excuse me. They really like the way you've situated all that stuff. So thank you, guys. One of the things I wanted to bring up, and it's really important for a business owner like myself to know, and I didn't see it on any of the stats that we were scrolling through, was the Airbnbs, the hotels, the motels, the real estate management companies, what percentage of those are being occupied and vacancy rates, that kind of thing. And that kind of information would be fantastic if it could be communicated to us. Now, I don't know if the other business owners need that or not, but it's really important for somebody like myself because the fluctuations in the market are tremendous. You go one week, you sold out in a day. And then another week, you're tossing some stuff away. So I don't know if you guys have access to that. And obviously, this would probably fall into a Q&A. But if there's something you guys can do, it would be fantastic. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Further online, Collin?

We do not have any further online requests.

20 seconds in the future, but not yet.

11.

Bring it back to the board. Mr. Talvonelli.

Yeah, I just had a couple of questions about your social media that you brought up and the numbers. How often do you get the numbers? How often? like once a month, twice a month, once every six months.

You want me to answer that? Sure. Okay. So data's at our fingertips at any point. The way that we have been working on things is on a week-long basis, we're looking at a week-long snapshot of what's been posted, what's done well. We make note of that. We focus on that type of content. But really, it's a month long. At the end of every month, we're looking at our analytics. We have KPIs established for our socials in terms of follower growth, in terms of engagement rates, in terms of views, all of that. Views and reach are completely different. As the paid campaigns start, we've got benchmarks for cost per click, click-through rates, CPMs, all of that. And so we're looking at that. You know, really, we're keeping an eye on things all the time. But when it comes to actual reporting and big picture, we're looking at a month long, you know, for example, May's coming to an end. First week of June, we sit down, we look at our analytics and at what's going on. Within that, in looking at the analytics, we're also looking at top five pieces of content that have performed well. What type of content is it? What is the theme of the content? Those are the things that help us refine our content strategy. So to answer your question, the data is there all the time. We're looking at it about once a week, keeping an eye on it constantly if things are doing especially well, but also really reporting-wise, looking at it on a month-long snapshot. Does that answer your question?

I think you answered my question.

I'm happy to answer more.

Yeah. Ms. Fulberg?

Yeah, I have a couple questions. This week, the numbers look good, but going into the next year, this week it came out that tourism in the U.S. is going to be in a decline. They were saying a little over 5%. That's just now. We don't know what that's going to look like after the summer at the height of tourism season. How will that impact? Do you guys have a forecast on how that would, if the numbers stay true, to impact our local tourism numbers based on what we saw today? Or is that too soon to project?

To project for what 2026 is going to look like this summer? I mean, I would definitely confirm this with our executive director. But from the Outlook forum, the Visit California, they're looking for it to kind of pretty much stay the same. And so we're going to keep focusing on this digital marketing because that's going to put more eyes on Calaveras. And so we're going to focus on the San Francisco markets.

Rand conflict.

Can I ask the question? Go ahead.

So we're going to be focusing on our strong markets, which is obviously San Francisco, San Jose Bay Area. Those folks like to come up and visit and spend money with us. And then the out of state is increasing. So we'll be focusing on that too.

And that ties into my next question. I know we've got a county in between us, but is CBB going to focus on getting the Nevada side over the west side of California and bringing more of that?

Bringing more of Nevada over? That was a strong market from what Zydeco showed us. So there is a lot of interest and it's long enough. It's far enough away that we can maybe hopefully count on some of the hotel stays and overnight stays and as well as Arizona, which is also not just a day trip. They're not day trippers there.

Thank you.

That's somewhat connected to my question, which is the accommodations where you're spending by category and we only have 3% to 4%. Amy Nunez, Staying in our hotels, so you know I think that's an important area to focus on how do we keep people here overnight and then they're having breakfast the next day. Amy Nunez, And maybe this is already being done, is there any effort on like packages, you know when we travel we look for those packages like. Amy Nunez, The hotel and then you get you know 20% off at a certain restaurant maybe a discount at a breakfast place the next day, some like retail coupons like, how do we.

get somebody to want to stay a whole weekend and visit multiple businesses so some uh some businesses have have said that they're interested in something like that others um are either not interested or haven't responded um but i'll give an example i know that our executive director is working closely with new maloney's marina And there are several businesses in Angels Camp on 49 that are interested in doing kind of this Highway 49 little road trip, you know, between McCollumy Hill and Angels Camp down to the marina. So that's kind of in the works right now to hopefully get people to come and stay. Mm-hmm.

And then with Tiffany, how long has, have we been contracting your business?

Since April, March.

Yeah.

It's been since end of March.

Kind of the inception of this big social media push. So interesting to see how that goes. Yes. Thank you.

Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, Thank you miss phone or apologize good questions. Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, I went off on a bird walk. Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, The other questions. Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, So something like to close with.

Just thank you again for your support and your time, taking time to listen to us.

I just have one question. If you can save another $360,000 a year, we would appreciate it.

I could do it for free. I would.

I think that does put a little bottom line. Thank you. We appreciate the good work you've been doing. Thank you very much. We definitely see progress, and you've done it with a lot less. We appreciate the work you've done to help the other parts of the community.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, sir.

must want to visit one of the restaurant must be very, very. Very fast. It's.

It's. it's called the way the like reading them numbers the older the public works provider

Item 19, informational item, economic and community development. Receive a presentation from Calaveras County Economic and Community Development regarding 2025-26 activities.

Brett, Kathy?

Good morning, Chair Stockburn.

Can you stay on that side?

We've got a little presentation for you.

Okay. Step in. Come on, Brett.

Come on, Brett.

Okay. The magnet works.

That's.

That's something ours.

Or.

Good morning Kathy Galino Calaveras County Economic and Community Development here to give you my annual update of what I've been working on.

scroll down. And now go ahead and try to screen.

Ah, here we go. All right, the mission and the goals of the Economic and Community Development Department are to retain and grow and attract business to our beautiful county, promote workforce housing development opportunities, provide development coordination services for commercial and industrial businesses and industry sectors, enhance our Gold Rush history, our agriculture, our recreation and rural ambiance, support economic vitality and sustainability in our individual communities, obtain and administer grants and funding to the county, also target market industries that maximize economic opportunity in Calaveras County, and also collaborate with other departments, agencies, and community organizations. So, I'm going to cover the grants and funding opportunities that I've been working on the 1st is the permanent local housing allocation. It's a straight allocation from the state of about 751,000 dollars. with 22,000 of that going for general administration. So that's my reporting, all the things that I do to administer the grant, to do outreach. This funding is for housing of workforce construction, pre-development. So that funding is available now and we'll be rolling that hopefully out. I've got about five developers that are interested in looking at that pre-development funding for permit fees, capacity fees for sewer and water. I'm also lucky enough to receive the PG&E economic development grant. It was $4,000 for 2026. That number goes up and down, but I've been very thankful to get between four and $7,000 a year from PG&E. We also have the REAP 2.0 grant, which you're well aware of, that will be closing out at the end of this year. It was a $1.7 million grant that the planning department received. And out of that, $87,000 was for general administration for me moving that grant through, doing the reporting, outreach, and then close out. Next, we have the recycling market development funding. This is an interesting one. We were given the opportunity to work with my zone incentive funds. So there are funds that are sent aside for each recycling market development zone, unincorporated Calaveras County border to border around, is all a recycling market development zone. This is a program that allows any business or industry that takes material from the waste stream, non-hazardous of course, and remanufactures it into another product to be eligible for low-interest loans, also for technical assistance, Feedstock analysis marketing it goes on and on so i've got two projects that i'm working on right now, one of them is the food bank here and extending their food life. Life terms for having freezer and refrigeration at their various. food bank facilities, because again, food waste is now an issue. That's one of the things we're not required to do yet, but it's one of the things in helping extend the life of those foods to get it to our community and our people. The other project I'm working on is the Arnold Green Waste and Forest Products Project. This really came about, especially after our disaster storms that hit us up Highway 4, a lot of wood debris down, trees down, branches down, trying to get that out of the community and to the facility to be repurposed into waddles for stormwater prevention, bricquetting for heating. Firewood and also decorative mulch. So I'm working on a grant through the recycling market development zone program to get the equipment necessary to do the decorative mulching project. And RJ is very, very thankful as is Tina at the food bank. Coming up this summer, we have the California Prop 4 funding. There's a lot of funding buckets under Prop 4. It's really complicated when you look at the metrics. But one of the things I really want to focus and I think is important in this county is our biomass, dealing with the dead and dying trees, pine needles, all the things that are up in the forest, and working with our biomass facility, which is Blue Mountain Energy and Phoenix Energy. and trying to get them to get their gap financing complete. They've started construction now with their wastewater recovery line. So they're using purple water instead of using fresh water, they're using reclaimed water. We've also got the California Statewide Parks Development Grant. Several of our parks and rec commissioners are very interested in really applying this to our parks master plan and our list of projects. So we've got several opportunities for not just creating new parks, but really strengthening the existing parks we have. Next, we have the Cal Recycle Farm and Ranch Solid Waste Cleanup Abatement Grant. This again is another opportunity that I would like to look at going forward for helping our farmers and ranchers deal with some of the solid waste implications that are now becoming a major issue. The latest 1, this is gone going right now, which is the California association of local economic developers. It's my association for the state. They received a grant from gopiz of 5Million dollars to help implement streamlined. Permitting opportunities. One of the things we're looking at is potentially upgrading or changing out our TrackIt system. I'm sure you guys know that TrackIt has had its challenges and that there might be opportunity to change to something that's a little more user friendly for both the permittee and the county departments that use TrackIt. So more to follow on that. um also coming up is the wildlife conservation board land acquisition and habitat house enhancement again this is a recreational and parks type grant that has the opportunity um let's see that one i believe has about a three million dollar cap And also things that could work with this program would be stream enhancement, Cosgrove Creek. It primarily does focus on wildlife habitat conservation, but also recreational access. And 15% of those indirect costs can be recovered by the county. Let me know if I'm going too fast. Am I? There's just a lot of opportunity right now is kind of where I'm going with this. A lot of opportunity. And yes, we have the one in Willsieville, but there's also an opportunity through California Jobs First of the project in Arnold. So being close to that feedstock is critical for cost recovery and also for really being where our greatest resources are. I also have on here, maybe I forgot to put it on here, but another opportunity is through the USDA Rural Development Grant. So they just released, actually, that's why it's not on here. They just released our Notice of Funding Opportunity. So it's for the Rural Business Development Grant Program. And this is $28 million, but it is national for such things as acquisition and development of land and easements for right-of-way for commercial, industrial businesses, things like construction, conversion, renovation of buildings, especially some buildings that may need some help that might be a little dilapidated, plants, machinery, equipment, also roads, public right-of-ways, parking areas and utilities. It's one to keep an eye on through USDA Rural Development. So on the business assistant side, I'm now part of the team that does technical pre-application meetings with the planning department. We've got building, public works, environmental health, Caltrans. We've got the whole team there when a lot of our folks come in and want to either expand a business, start a business, put in a new development. It's really helpful to have all the people in the room at the same time so questions get answered. and developers aren't frustrated later down the road. They know what's expected up front. We work with our fire districts and all of our team folks, and it's been a really, really successful venture. Also, participating in local business association meetings and workshops, everything from the Valley Springs Area Business Association to the Greater Arnold Business Association, the Chamber, SAM, the San Andreas Merchants, really tuning in with those people and spending time to find out what their needs are, what their challenges are, because we know each community is very, very different from one another. And then quarterly utility coordination meetings. This is hosted at CCWD with all the various utilities, sewer and water providers, as well as broadband, power, and cable. Those meetings really help identify what projects and programs are working on, their capital improvement projects, and places where they're seeing development growth opportunities. So business assistance side also provided 18 new businesses and 32 existing businesses with technical and permitting assistance. And I have some examples. I thought it was on this slide. It's down the bottom. So some of the businesses that I've worked with include like Gold Country Roasters doing their business expansion, Posterity Cider Works, they also expanded over into Arnold area, working right now with a winery to put in a tasting room. working with the battery storage facility, the Hollyoaks facility, to give them resources for their outreach and community discussions with the fire district, with the school district, helping them get through that process. I'm also working very closely with the Marriott Hotel folks in San Andreas, talking with them weekly, which they really appreciate. um finding out where they're at with things if they need assistance with things it does appear right now that things are moving forward they're trying to coordinate their sewer and water capacity improvements along with the caltrans complete streets project so we're not tearing up steep streets that are being repaved when caltrans comes through so it's kind of a it's very sensitive time management and trying to keep those lines of communication open. As I mentioned, the Blue Mountain Energy Biomass Facility in Willisville, weekly conversations with them trying to get that gap financing. On the workforce housing side, Valley Springs, we have Jamboree Housing, which is a nonprofit developer that's interested in a potential project off of Quail Oaks. We've got the Angels Camp Habitat for Humanity project that I'm working with Morgan Gatche with. In Murphy's, which is interesting, and Arnold, we're seeing where there's a need for mixed use housing, where there's retail in the downstairs and apartments upstairs for the local workforce there. So again, these are opportunities for sustainable growth in our county, as well as providing the resources for workforce for our businesses. Um, So a couple other community development projects I'm working on with Chief Weinhold with Central Fire. They're trying to build a new fire station on the property right across the street from them there in Mountain Ranch and working on trying to find some community development funds, potentially CDBG. I know I'd reached out to Marcos at HHSA on the CDBG opportunities there. This round is closed, but looking at that for the next year. Fourth Wall Entertainment, Cindy Clore moving her theater troupe from the Metropolitan over to the Mason's building. That was a fun project. She's still working on it. The Mills Act that was approved by the board last year, promoting historic and cultural preservation of our beautiful downtown historic districts and working with Mr. Hildreth as the first person to get through that process or starting that process. Other things to keep in mind are the new opportunity 2.0 zone designations. So right now we currently have one census tract in Calaveras County, which is up in Willisville area that is an opportunity zone. Opportunity zones provide investment opportunities for capital investors that are trying to defer capital gains tax implications. So they can invest their funds into a Opportunity Zone fund for improvements, capital improvements, housing opportunities in these Opportunity Zone census tracts. Right now, the state is looking at adding two more or actually three more census tracts in Calaveras County, which is huge. So the census tract around San Andreas, Angels Camp, and then touching all the way up to McCombie Hill. So it's pretty much the whole county that could be in this. And it'll be an action that the board will need to take when the governor releases those Opportunity Zone proposed census tracts. And then a little personal project of mine is the Rancho Calaveras Property Owners Association sign on Highway 26. This is a gateway into Valley Springs. And they approached me about helping them find a way to replace that sign. It's been there since I've been here, which is pretty old. It's held up by bailing wire. So that, again, is one of the projects that I'm working on. Also, on the community development side, working with the planning department on their general plan and zoning code amendments, housing element, workforce housing opportunities, special events and projects permits, grant writing assistance to nonprofit organizations, Parks and Recreation Commission liaison, broadband deployment. I kept thinking that I was done with broadband, and I don't think I'll ever be done with broadband. Every time I think I'm out, I'm in. And so right now, working with Comcast, as they were awarded quite a bit of the federal fund account dollars, helping them do their pre-development and their strategic planning as they're going to be putting in broadband throughout San Andreas and part of Moke Hill and up to Vallecito. So some of the areas that we had identified as our internal broadband team. Film permit liaison, fun to share that yes, filming is happening in Calaveras, not a whole lot, but at least two to three films a year. And being that liaison really helps helping connect the filmmakers to opportunities, to business settings, helping, you know, identify location shoots. And it's fun to be a liaison. So 2627 goals provided the board sees me to stay here. I want to continue the business assistance resources incentives permitting funding and opportunities for our business sectors. I want to continue applying and administering grants. promote infrastructure improvements for broadband and utilities such as sewer and water. As Supervisor Fallendorf pointed out, there's opportunity, I believe, to bring our utility providers together in a forum where we can discuss what their capital improvement needs are and try to identify ways to help them seek funding for that or somehow do a partnership. Collaborate with agencies and developers to increase workforce housing. It's the number 1 challenge that I hear from our small businesses. They have continual turnover of employees because they don't always have someplace to live that they can afford. And most folks can't afford 2500 dollars a month for rent. commercial and industrial development opportunities, implement the parks master plan, develop permitting fact sheets. This was something I was tasked with by the strategic strategic planning group. for the most common businesses such as retail, restaurants, you know, the top ones. Develop market opportunities for biomass. Still looking at having a meat processing facility, hopefully someplace in Calaveras County. Clean manufacturing, there's quite a bit going on there. Recreation and tourism are big money makers and commercial retail. And that's my presentation. Do you have some questions, comments, thoughts?

The very robust goals and action, Kathy, and I appreciate it. You nailed it with the workforce housing. We need that desperately to staff all of our tourism facilities.

there's a lot going on a lot of grants i want to follow up with you a couple of these items thank you thank you thank you thank you kathy um i would love to just follow up with a couple of things first of all when you talk about decorative mulch i just want to make sure everybody knows it's still fuel please don't put it around your house we're going to be looking at zone zero here shortly yeah you do put it on no no no no um also i'd love to talk to you about furlough and hope going into arnold and seeing how quickly we can get that done and also i also have what you brought up which is the residential and commercial grizzly plaza that apartment at grizzly plaza really needs to get rented too but i'll talk to you about that later thank you for the presentation

We have no online public comment.

I'll bring it back to the board. Very much so.

Mr. Topinelli. I just thank you for the presentation. It's very involved. It's very well, everything was covered, so thank you.

Kathy, as I said, at CACDD Biomass. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody. It looks like we've got some polls and possibilities, some bright future. Stacey?

Yes, Chair.

May we move on to the next regular agenda item, please?

Yes, item 20 action item behavioral health one receive an informational report on the proposed use of opioid settlement funds and path cited around for funding and to provide direction to staff on priorities or modifications to the proposed plan and three authorized staff to proceed with the development of a detailed implementation and procurement plan, including community engagement, legal review, and exploration of a long-term lease agreement with an option to purchase for a centralized wellness and substance use services.

Ms. Buendia?

Good morning, Board Chair. Yes, we're here to see if you are interested and would approve our plan to enter a long-term lease. with a building and or with the intent to purchase later on with our past cited funds that would either have to be spent by the end of this year or they would go back to the state. So that also includes funds to make it ADA compliant. And it is not for any placement. It is just to have extra space because even though we have a new building being built, we are almost at capacity at that new building already. So it would be to have staffing and rooms to provide services in. It's not to have housing. And so the plan is within the agenda packet. It is also includes some other funds that we have received to promote school based prevention, early intervention for our youth, mobile outreach, overdose prevention, enhanced care management, and all of that would be included at any space that we would be able to lease and provide those services at.

Board questions. Ms. Andal.

So, Wendy, yeah, I read through the board packet. You're recommending all of it, the lease or the space, as well as the youth outreach? Yes. Okay. And you have some space in mind?

We do not have a space yet. To explore. Yes.

Yes.

I appreciate that you were mentioned in there. I think as you well know, that is a huge feedback that people are seeing regularly, so thank you.

Thank you.

Ms. Huberty. Thank you. Quick question. Is there any space in there for continued training? I know I've done the Naloxone training, but I haven't. I mean, I had to look it up again because I don't remember how that works.

Yes. And we would do that also through public health because they continue to provide that. So we would work with them together.

Thank you. And is parental support in there as well?

Yes. Yes.

Super. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Robert. Ms. Follendorf? okay we got a never mind for the moment yes yes no miss mr tell no i don't i'm good she's got a recommendation um i no questions for me wendy it's pretty straightforward public comment bueller we have no online public comment thank you move this item seconded we have a motion by supervisor toffanelli second by supervisor and all those in favor i passes on we're all said i i thought i heard that correctly 50 vote of the board miss alt thank you you have yourself a wonderful day oh stacy you know there's another item

You have several, yes.

Several. We're on a roll.

Item 21, Resolution, Integrated Waste Management. Adopt a resolution authorizing the county executive officer to accept the California Department of Transportation Clean California Community Cleanup and Employment Pathways Grant on the amount of $299,608 to host six recycling events.

Good morning, board, Megan Osborne, IWM manager. I just am bringing this to you for your consideration to authorize the county CEO to accept the CalTrans Clean California grant opportunity. The Clean California initiative is a cleanup effort led by CalTrans to keep roads and waterways free of litter, create jobs, and transform state and local public spaces through beautification efforts. Through this grant opportunity, Calaveras IWM is collaborating with Caltrans, Greater Valley Conservation Corps, Gamby, and other haulers for materials to bring free recycling events to Calaveras County. The combined efforts of this multi-agency partnership will contribute to our goal of eliminating dangerous and slightly illegal dumping and bring convenience to the residents of the county by providing an opportunity to dispose of unwanted waste tires, appliances, mattresses, and we are also exploring some green waste amnesty days with this as well. So we do, as part of the grant submission, have scheduled six free recycling events that are coming up in some of our transitions. We do just need the formality of the grant acceptance at this point. So are there any questions pertaining to this?

Mr. Toffanelli. It gives the locations of the towns that they're going to do it in. It doesn't say where it's going to be within. I'm looking at Valley Springs and San Andreas. So I can let the people know where to go.

We do have some marketing materials printed and ready to go right now. The, I can just read through the 6 events, the copper opalus event will be in the parking lot of the armory armory in copper opalus. Valley springs will be held at the Jenny Lynn memorial park veterans memorial park in the parking lot of the ballpark. Yes. In Arnold, it will be Hazel Fisher school. In West point, it's West the parking lot of West point elementary San Andreas. We do it here at the government center and angels camp will be the fairgrounds.

And you're going to put that out there.

So people yes, we have all this ready to go to be put out. Um.

And the newspapers.

I'm hoping so. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Enterprise. Yes. Just so we can get it out there.

We'll do every effort we can in the next couple of weeks to get this out.

All right, because it's coming up fast. It is.

I don't want to piggyback off of what Gary just asked you. Is there any way to get it out with radio, too?

We can. Yes. Okay.

And then I can't speak for the other board members, but can I get copies of those flyers, please? I have some ready here, so I can... Like digital. Oh, digital.

Yes, and we will be... I was waiting for this, but we'll be putting it out right away on Facebook and some of our social media as well. But I will get that out to you, the documents. Thank you.

And when you put it out, the items that you can take, so they know exactly, they don't show up with something that you're not going to take.

Yes. And we have on this flyer the items that we do accept and the items we do not accept. Because of our hauling at these sites, we have to be very specific about what we cannot accept at these events.

Megan, I just want to say thank you very much. I live on a road that some people mistake for the dump. And these programs really do make a difference.

you yeah i agree megan i was so excited to see this on the agenda this is desperately needed i think it's been quite a few years since we've all a couple years plus we did not have this level of funding too this is fantastic and yeah i would also like digital copies asap thank you thank you comments public we have no online public comment

Thank you.

I move.

We have a motion by Ms. Fuldorf. I'll second. We have a second by Mr. Hubbardy. All those in favor? Aye. Passes on five vote of the board. Thank you, Megan. We appreciate it. As they all said, I'm not going to repeat it. Stacey. Okay.

item 22 resolution integrated waste management adopt a resolution accepting cal waste proposed 3.35 rate increased for contract period of july 1 2026 through june 30th 2027. you're back megan i am back and i am going to with this item give a brief summary as much as i can on how the 2016 agreement um is this is to be handled through the agreement

The hauler CalWaste must submit an application for refuse rate index adjustment for the upcoming year on or before April 1st. The application must include calculations of annual percentage change, the total calculated cost for the next year with all supporting documentation. The resulting rate adjustment is to be applied to curbside collection rates for the upcoming year. The haulers rate application shall be reviewed by the county and the board of supervisors shall approve such rate adjustments by June 30th of the contract year. The adjusted rates shall not take effect until the board has approved such rates. If the county does not approve the proposed adjusted rates to be effective on or before July 1st. the 2016 contract would require the county to compensate CalWaste for the difference in the increase in revenue that would have been realized through the proposed rate adjustment. So CalWaste has submitted the rate adjustment application for the 26-27 year on March 25th, 2026, and IWM staff has reviewed the rate application and verified CalWaste's rate increase calculations were made in accordance with exhibit B of the 2016 contract, In accordance with the terms of the agreement, CalWaste is proposing a 3.35% rate increase for the period of July 1st through June 30th, 2027, or through the contract termination date. This increase is based on consumer price index adjustments in categories regarding labor costs, fuel, vehicle maintenance, and other roll-off and non-roll-off transfer charges, as well as disposal tonnage and equipment. Should the board adopt the 3.35 cow waste rate increase, the monthly consumer cost, and this is per cow waste, of a 35-gallon cart would increase by $1.06 to $32.83. A 65-gallon cart will increase by $2.30 to $70.90, and a 95-gallon cart will increase by $3.82 to 117.91 um so we do recommend um based on the contract and agreement language that the board does adopt this rate increase and we also have poway's representatives here today if you have any questions directly for them as well

You know, I don't see any questions.

I don't have a question. Maybe some of the public has questions.

I don't mean to make it easy, but I just want to touch on the program that we have here in Calvert County. It's grown immensely since we came up here in the county a little over 10 years ago. We're at about 7,200 customers. It's a subscription-based service. With that, there's a franchise fee. that we pay the county and on top of that there's a recycled revenue share that we pay with the county so last fiscal year or last past 12 months uh it was about 430 000 that was given back to the county from services provided by cal waste um been a been a a good uh year for us last year. You can see that our rate increases have stepped down over the past five years, four years. We've also really given back a lot to the county and we like being a good partner with the county as well.

Awesome. I just...

we'll go public comment oh i didn't i didn't already do it for this one at all no no no we if no one's going to speak up in here i'm going to ask if anybody did it online we um if there's no in-person comment we do have online public comment i do have a question i do have a question do you have public comment or public comment real quick first time i thought you said no no we do just we do for once

Dan, go ahead and make your comment, please. Dan? There he goes. Dan, go ahead.

Hi. Yeah, I was just curious, you know, with costs rising and stuff, I can certainly see an increase in expenses. Do you guys, like, lose money like everybody else last year, or are you guys making money, making more money? Um, I'd like to know that because, uh, I'm sure everybody that's thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we've here is another, uh, rate increase. We got a rate increase for our water and everybody went ballistic and I didn't hear anybody say anything about, you know, a trash increase. So, uh, just curious.

Um, I don't run the business, but I imagine that they do have a bottom line that they do surpass, but if. Uh, you would like to answer that. You may, if you wouldn't, if you're fine with it. Okay.

I would note that, um, in the calculations to the, the rate increase, um, you've seen, uh, fuel drop actually in the past 2 years. Um, you know, next year that that might look a little different, but my disposal costs have gone down too. So that's really kept the, the rate increase lower. Um, you know, something that we do do in angels campaigns, uh, the city of angels camp is there's a, uh. we we go through the star program of pg e where uh certain residents can apply through that star program and we take that and it's actually a 12 rate reduction and that's all administrated by the city of angels camp something that i think we've talked about installing here in calaveras county that we we still want to chase that down and be able to provide that discounts yeah yeah i know that's ex that's excellent so we do everything we can to keep the rates as low as possible

We appreciate that. Mr. Toffanello.

I just have a question because I've been asked the whole time. Everybody, you give us all the plastic bins, the blue ones, the gray ones, the green ones. If they get damaged, say you wheel them down to the end of your driveway and they get picked up and you go down and pick them up and there's like a wheel falling off or they're cracked or anything, is that something that we get charged to fix or just call you and say you need a new pin?

how does that work yeah um you just call us when you come replace the equipment um you know if we see uh habitual uh customers calling or mainly the there's a rate for replacing a cart but it's mainly for when it burns down so that's when you know someone's officially you know putting stuff in there that they shouldn't and it's breaking the cart but i don't think we've ever had a charge of that so okay anything's broken just cost numbers on the cart and on the lid and come replace it new them excellent okay excellent thank you i just have one thing to say now i'm gonna hold that for another time actually

And a quick question, Casey. Once you're coming to us today, then when does the messaging to the public begin?

What was that?

When do you message the public?

It would go out in the next billing statement. And I think there's a statement that we put out there. And everything gets updated in our system.

All right. Motion?

Move.

Moved by Ms. Fullendorf. Mr. Toffanelli, are you going to do it? Oh, you're going to let Huberty do it. Second by Mr. Huberty. And a calm Toffanelli moving in for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Passes on 5-0 vote of the board as opposed to 2017. Thank you. Can we take a five-minute break? Ms. Simpson?

Absolutely, yes. OK.

I'm going to make it a 10. Thank you, Ms. Simpson. Our next item from Public Works.

Item 23, action item, Public Works. One, receive your presentation from the Department of Public Works regarding storm events which occurred on February 16th through the 23rd, 2026, including the department's review of storm response procedures. Two, receive the Department of Public Works snow response plan. Three, direct staff to prepare and issue a request for proposals for on-call snow removal services, including evaluation, criteria, cost estimates, and operational expectations. And four, provide direction regarding other service model options presented.

Thank you, sis. Hi, Bob.

Good morning, Board Chair, Board of Supervisors, Michael Martin, Director of Public Works. I'm here today with my road superintendent, Scott Anderson, who helps us lead our effort with regards to road maintenance and winter operations. This item here before you is a follow up to our storm response from recent storm events from February 16th through the 23rd. We reported back to the board with an update. along with PG&E to talk about some of the challenges that we faced during that snow removal effort and some of the delays that were as a result. So at the February 24th board meeting we were asked to return back with an evaluation and update of our snow response program and along with some exploration that we've done with regards to other alternative options with regards to snow removal services and delivery. So with that I'm going to go through a quick presentation here and show you where we're at. So again, just as a quick background, we had severe winter storms from February 16th through the 23rd of this year. We had 95 inches of snow in Dorrington, which is a significant amount in a short period of time. That resulted in 300 plus downed trees, relating in 157 power line conflicts. There was over 3000 man hours logged for this event, and we utilized our full fleet of 27 snow units to redeployed. These are just a few pictures of the event. Some of the challenges that we were hindered with that delayed our snow response. These are mostly trees and power lines down. EG&E crews out working on the power lines. Disabled vehicles. More power lines. As part of the recovery efforts of that storm, once we were able to coordinate with PG&E and get those power lines cleared and focused on tree removal, 121 roads were cleared of arnold from this storm debris. This debris was stockpiled at White Pines Lake. And we partnered with IWM on using grinding equipment and operators to facilitate that effort. We utilize 74, 100 cubic yard trailers to haul the material resulting in over 7,000 cubic yards of chip debris delivered to our Rock Creek landfill. So there's an aerial photo of the debris pile. So it kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of magnitude of how many trees and how much debris was blocking the roadways during our snow response.

So that pile was also about how tall was it?

It was taller than me. It was probably about 10 feet tall. Yeah. 7,000 cubic feet. Cubic yards, yes. Cubic yards. Yes. Times three. And then we had a, uh, internal review of our storm effort as directed by the board. After we did that briefing, um, we attended an epoch meeting, Abbott's past property owners community. and we received a lot of input and feedback from those community members we were able to take that feedback and insight and we also met with local snow operators and service providers talked with them thoroughly about their level of response the impacts that our response has on their operation and a lot of good insights and feedback as to how we could do things differently moving forward The internal review findings, we found that there's a lot of focus on operations and communication and our resource use that could be improved. We identified improvements in planning and coordination, specifically with regards to utility companies and other entities that we partner with through these efforts. It highlighted a need for a snow response plan, which is a document, an internal document that we have presented here for you today as well. And we also identified some technology upgrades that could be performed. So the snow response plan, it's attached as an attachment to your staff report here. This plan is a written plan that we put together. We didn't have a plan like this. We had fragments of the plan and different sections of the plan on our website and different other places. We felt it best utilized to put it all together in one document and clarify a lot of the roles and responsibilities and what our procedures are, especially with route priorities and our action plan. We created a centralized node dispatch for improved communication, and it also includes reporting tools and safety requirements. Some of the operational changes. that were identified through this effort as well, where we identified that there can be improvements to outreach and communication to the public. So there's different ways that we could send information out to the public and communicate with them. And we've put that in our plan on how to improve that moving forward. We were also able to perform some radio communication upgrades. This was a small cost effort that we were able to do to increase the amperage of our tower that we used to communicate through our radio system up in the Arnold area. So there was a few thousand dollars that we were able to use within our budget to utilize that upgrade, and we've already performed that upgrade and are seeing benefits from that. We also identified that there's some seasonal staffing and recruitment adjustments that we could do to help better solicit and recruit qualified staff that could be available as part of our extra hire efforts in the snow season. And then we also added some budget units into our budget for improved budget tracking and reporting. One thing we realized it was hard to identify the amount of funding that was utilized for snow removal so by making new changes to the budget units we could charge to these units throughout the snow response effort and have a better picture of what our costs are related to that a few other additional operational options we explored the feasibility of doing an on-call contract snow removal This would be an RFP that we could put out. We've drafted a scope for work for that, and it's something we could potentially advertise for, should the board direct us. We looked at optional GPS fleet systems. These costs range from $28,000 to $60,000 a year to maintain that type of a system, not to mention the initial upfront cost of purchase and installation. We also looked at equipment rental and purchase options for additional graders or loaders to increase the size of our fleet. Rental and lease options range from $8,000 to $25,000 a month per rental. And it could be at least a three-year minimum obligation that they require of you. And then when it comes to purchasing, it's anywhere between $90,000 to $750,000, depending on if it's new or used equipment that we'd purchase and put into our fleet. Per unit? Per unit. So some next steps, we asked the board to receive this internal snow response plan, provide us direction on with regards to the development of the RFP or provide any other guidance regarding other service model options.

Thank you, Micah. It's good to see it all come together into a basically system operational procedure so that there's a roadmap in the future. But as Mr. Anderson, when you go into these events, there's no There's no way that you can know how every tree is going to fall on any storm event, navigating all those power lines. So a lot of it comes down to you and your crew and navigating through it.

Absolutely, yeah. Odds are they're going to fall on the road. Just our luck, you know what I mean? So yeah, you can't identify them and predict that.

But you can make the moves to have the extra subcontractors, extra help in place, and then work with the utilities to find your navigate because it's a tangled mess. We've been through it how many times in the last so many years, Scott? A lot.

Yeah. Yeah, the storms seem to be getting more and more intense, you know, for some reason. I don't know.

Snow's heavy. Yeah. It's California. Yeah.

yeah no we appreciate the work you do board mr hubbardy thank you um yes thank you very much for the snow response plan i see this as a living document something that we should be updating every year um i would like to see some rfps go out regarding equipment uh it's um But again, I go back to the storm itself and 1 of the things that. That we're saying Scott saying it's getting word. I mean, we have to expect the unexpected chief Johnson on the calls during that storm. He's always told me don't worry if we have an emergency, we can always get to these people. He actually said in this storm. That's no longer true. He wasn't sure that he was going to be able to get to those people. When PG&E says that this was as bad if not worse than the Butte fire as far as the wires down, I think we're looking at storms that we can't predict exactly what's going to happen. I think in talking to Jason, I said, what would help fix all of this? He walked to the wall and he pointed to a piece of equipment. I would know what that piece of equipment is, but I know it's a very expensive piece of equipment. I do think that a lot of our fleet is from the last century, and we really need to look. I mean, seriously, we need to look at being up to speed, up to date. We have a very short window. I know that in talking about D3, It's a huge tourist area. And I know Nate was talking about people in Alameda that were talking about what the hell's going on up there. If word gets out that you are going to get stuck for eight days in your cabin that you rented for a holiday season or what have you, and there's no power and et cetera, et cetera, we're going to start to lose business. And that's a huge time of year for us. The winter ski season and the summer season are obviously our two biggest seasons and we just need to make sure that we're maintaining services so that people continue to come. Thank you very much. I know we've had many long, very drawn out conversations regarding this and just really want to thank you for doing this and I would like to see Contracts with our local contractors up the hill. I think it's hugely important. It was incredibly frustrating to talk to people during the storm that had equipment. They couldn't use it because we didn't have contracts in place. And this. This administration is very willing to work and make those contracts happen. I think I worked very hard on the 1st year that I was on the board getting extra higher drivers in our district. I think it's very, very important that we have. Enough people locally, because I know that the times that the highway shuts down, people can't get up there. I know that that's some again. We had 3 years ago. They got stuck up on she branch road trying to get to work and they just couldn't do it. There are other ways, and I just look really forward to working with you going forward so that we're better prepared to deal with these big situations. And it seems to me in the last years. I mean, it's. it used to be a buildup of snow and and that was manageable and when we have years where you know when it's that deep we can deal with it when it's that deep we've got problems and these storms now just come and just zump us so again i just look forward to working with you this year so that by next year we've got really strong plans in place and um and uh help extra help when we need it thank you

Mr. Toffanelli. Yeah, I think it's fantastic that you put together snow response plan. I think all these years something should have been put together sooner. So at least have a plan that's going on. And I agree something like that happens. The power line and everything else is very difficult for us to get in there. We have to wait for PG&E. We don't know what's going on with them. So it's a very delicate situation going on to try and get those roads cleared and everything going on and get things fixed, get trees out of there. It's a big job, but at least with a response plan, you know where to go and what to do and this first, that first, second, whatever. So, you know, and part of that plan hopefully is maintaining good contacts with PG&E. um and working directly with them get things clear instead of you working over here and them working over there and so it doesn't work together so i think it's great and that being said i'm going to bring up and defend my district Cause grove creek got we've had many disastrous floods there, you know, and the last 1 was very devastating and it took down power lines and then flooded. So I'm asking for at least just to look at cause code free blood response. So if it happens again, we know what we're going to do, how we're going to ask, what's going to go. Of course, you can't predict it like the snow and anything else. But at least we have some response plan. When we see it's going to flood and it's flooding and it has flooded, then we're working together. And that plan says we need to do this, that, whatever. So I'm asking for that.

Consider it done.

Okay.

An excavator to dig a bigger, deeper creek. That'll cost over $700.

Put a plow on it.

We're good to go. Sure. Can I add something to what I was saying before? Actually, go ahead. Sorry. No. Go ahead, Martin. I was just giving it a look. I just really wanted to what I had in my notes, but I didn't say anything was thank you to the public work staff. Scott, you give me the drive around when I 1st came on board and I just really wanted to give a shout out to Monica Remus. I also really appreciate you putting all the maps into the plan so that people can actually see exactly how many roads you guys do do. So, thank you. Sorry.

That GPS line item that you had in there, is that tracking for the public to see where the clouds are at? Or is that just mapping for you guys internally? And I'm asking because a couple of years ago, I don't know if you've seen yet.

Scott doesn't know yet.

you know, because a lot of people want to know what the clouds are. And I don't know how many people are familiar with South Lake Tahoe, but they have this amazing map and you can see where the snow clouds are. And then you can actually kind of, the public then get that answered rather than the compounding phone calls with the public. I know that is probably additionally expensive than what they just proposed, but I think if we're going to work we're going to improve. Maybe we need to work smarter with our investment in the communication to the public. And yeah, I know it's not my district.

No, no, that's fine. I was just going to ask you if you were going to sort of join me with the answer all the telephone calls of when people see that and say, why is my road not being plowed? That's the problem.

Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe that might help. I mean, maybe they can see you that they're stuck and then that mapping. Anyway, Carver has a really cool app.

When you get the GPS equipment.

A lot more, um, yeah so investments up there they've got more people, but maybe in the future that we can we look at that way, in addition to that GPS.

Yeah, and to answer your question, these options that we looked at cover all different vantage points of that, whether it's just internal tracking or tracking for the public. That's why the price range varies so much on what we provided, because you can be as sophisticated as having dash cams and all kinds of stuff, seeing exactly what's going on with that plow, where it is, letting the public see it. Or if you're looking to save costs and be a little bit more economical, then it'd be more of an internal tracking feature that our staff would utilize. So that's why that price range varies quite a bit, but it's certainly an option.

And then I will have to join Martin answering these phone calls. I have been there one year when Marita was gone and she was in Italy and it was not.

I got the calls also. I think I was chair that year.

Yes, I am. The other question, and I know this isn't part of this contract, we're solely focusing on the snow removal, which is great. But the three of us were at a conference, I don't know, has it been three months? And there's a local biomass facility. I'm looking at all the pictures of the slash that you had. Is there consideration to maybe work with one of those biomass to get rid of that type of slash? Because there is a company, I think, in Dreamtown. Tell us something. OK. What would that look like? What would that kind of agreement with them look like to lessen the burden on your staff to have someone else come in and take that? I know there is some considerations of them coming in, but if it's in a central location, and they're not going on property, can that lessen that liability and just have them come and take it for you guys on having to take care of it, getting the shipping and stuff?

I reached out to SBI and they are available to do that type of work. In the future, that's going to be used for sure.

Okay. I would love to see something like that formalized in agreement to help lessen that voting on staff so you guys can focus on

We're pretty grateful for the water district for allowing us to use that lay down yard for the materials to really helped us out.

Okay, thank you. That's all the question comments I had.

Yes, and all in this last round, I appreciate the communication. I think that a lot was learned. on kind of working with PG&E and different entities. And I also appreciate Monica so much. Dan Bruckner, communicated with him a lot up country. And in West Point, railroad flag, Glencoe, that area, you know, there is an unofficial assumption that they take care of themselves. But it was a doozy. There was people trapped. A couple people told me they're moving. They don't want to live out the back of Lily Gap anymore. They're terrified. So it was, it felt very real to a lot of the residents up there this year. And I wholeheartedly support your efforts for the RFP developments. I think there's a lot of people available, but it needs to be organized. There was frustrations in my area of people just going out and clearing roads and getting in the way of maybe the fire department. different things. So I think, you know, keeping the efforts moving forward of organizing everybody and having, you know, these working groups and communication and getting these guys on board because they have the equipment, you know, and in the off season, they're doing other jobs. So I think it's an easy, you know, easier route to establish that backup plan than, you know, us finding the money to buy brand new equipment and move in that direction. So definitely support that. I think as you are looking at the development of that, maybe pull one of them in and have them part of that conversation to build it to where they can be competitive and they can qualify, you know, with the barriers of working within government constraints. Thank you for looking at that.

Um, something that's been brought up, you know, like the view fire fires over the years and continuing amount of increases in storms, because we're seeing these 100 year storms every other year, if not every year. is it's not when or if, it's not if, but when it's gonna happen now. So I appreciate you being proactive in putting together this plan and looking at different ways so that we can react quicker. And as it was said earlier, it's definitely gotta be a fluid document because we always learn from every disaster. So with that, I'll move to public comment.

Me again. Nate Randall, my wife and I own Hinterhouse Distilling. We're based in Arnold. Distribution throughout California and the country. We proudly display Calaveras on all of our products. We love the area. We live in the area. We are fervent promoters of bringing people here to experience how wonderful it is. I want to thank the board for taking up this issue in a serious way, because I know it is easy to think that maybe we're up in the mountains and we're just a bunch of mountain folks. But trust me, we're not. And our visitors are the ones who pay all of our salaries, including mine. We account for a drastic percentage of the tourism dollars. That come back to this county supporting all of the departments. My ask is for everyone to consider at least. A temporary period where we funnel some of the tourism dollars that we're generating from the Murphy's. To the Dorrington area. back into supporting this i'm going to share a quick story of why it's not just about so i can get out so i am not afraid for my life literally with these trees above my house i can't leave because nobody's come to plow it's not that that's that's a very important thing but a few weeks after when we were finally able to get out my wife and i do a lot of events around the state And we were at a big whiskey tasting event in Alameda. Hundreds and hundreds of people coming through, tasting whiskey. There's dozens of distillers that are pouring their whiskey. It's a fun time, as you can imagine. I had at least a dozen separate groups and people ask me, what the heck happened? I know so and so that got trapped for eight days. Wow. I would never go to Arnold because of this. So these are real stories that have reverberations. And yes, the family next door that was visiting with the little kids. that we had to get food for is one thing. But the fact that the word is spreading that you might not wanna go visit this place, you'll get stuck is extremely concerning for our business but also for the tourism dollars that funnel back to all of us and allow us to do these things. So Public Works, thank you for putting this together. I really, really appreciate it. My hope is that if these folks are saying they need something in order to keep these roads safe and clear, we can all come together and figure out a way to financially make it happen. I know times are tough. But again, just temporarily, let's fix this problem and have some world-class snow removal so that people feel safe coming back to our area. Thank you again for hearing me out and taking on the issue. Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Botner.

Micah, Scott. Scott, you're doing the Lord's work. I'd hate to see you martyred for it.

Thanks, buddy.

I have 27 years of experience with snow up in Arnold, having lived in Dorrington for a year from 2012 to 2013, and I've been a permanent resident here in Calaveras County Murphy's since June 2015. My blog is called calaveraswatchdog.com, and I've always been concerned about Calaveras County's legacy of negligence of public and fire safety. systemic negligence of public and fire safety. In fact, I addressed this board of supervisors on January 7th, my blog post on the website you can google it it's called calaveras county's legacy of negligence of public and fire safety i have 50 blog posts about the big picture of the legacy of the negligence of public and fire safety on may 19th i attended the resilience resiliency initiative meeting about mitigation plan the 2026 mitigation plan they're putting together you know how many citizens showed up for that two myself and another gentleman for about six or seven employees you know who i didn't see you two guys for any of these people i'm going to read a very very quick Excerpt from my statement of January 27. The 2-7 fire of September 2, 2025 was stopped at the doorstep of Ironstone Vineyards. A wind increase of a mere one mile per hour would have surely resulted in Murphy's obliteration. responsive records to my public records request revealed that the county's emergency messaging system was not used and apparently no emergency warning message system exists across the collective of county government social media assets In another issue of negligence of public safety on September 16, 2025, the historic home at 206 main street Murphy's caught fire resulting in a 1.5Million dollar loss to the property owners. If that fire had spread to the properties, 10 acre unmanaged brush and over growth and ensuing configuration. Would have devastated Murphy's my 206 main street property fire hazard analysis report published to my website 3 weeks before on August 24th. or told this event three weeks before the fire. I am in touch with the resiliency initiative. They have all 50 of my negligence of public safety reports. They are reading that. I have deep concerned about a consultancy with offices in Reading and the project manager is based in Arkansas and the field representative is based in Nashville. I have very deep concerns about public safety here in Calabrese County. Scott, my pardon.

Yes, we have two public comments. Then you can go ahead and speak.

yes hi again uh dan tulipani cape connell general store i just want to thank first uh nate randall uh uh good discussion there and uh also martin huberty uh thank you both visitor fear is is a very very bad thing and very difficult to overcome and yeah uh our our uh our team here at public works i'm sorry hopefully i can give you thank yous in the future but not now uh As you know, because of prior contacts, Camp Connell General Store was inundated and people struggled to get to Camp Connell General Store because they didn't have any food when there was no road actually plowed out in front of Camp Connell General Store. My thanks to Greg Chess and Chess Mountain Services because he did actually make it through. You guys never showed up until after the storm. In terms of some of the failures, the main arterial routes, I don't know what your plan is in the future, but the main arterial routes were never ever even remotely able to be accessed. As far as contractor use, I've been talking about this for a while to Martin. And the real problem, too, is contractor use for people and their driveways. They wait. The contracts actually say after Public Works comes through. after the county comes through and plows then i will apply your driveway so that's how people get stuck they can't you know these services can't even do their job because you guys aren't doing your job in terms of the equipment updates yeah thank you for that but it would really be nice to see apples to apples you showed monthly costs for rentals but you showed the total cost for the actual purchases. It would be nice if you put the monthly cost for actually purchasing those two, because that's a possibility and that gives everybody a better indication of what the differences are. The rent versus buy analysis could be done a lot better. In terms of you explaining that you had touched base with some local snow power operators, who specifically did you talk with? Because again, I talked with Greg Chess and he said he had not been contacted. If it is Jessica Snyder, she said that she believed that she could take care of the entire contract. Yeah, that would be great, but I don't think it's good to put it into place for one contractor. They have also their own work to do. In terms of hiring these companies on a standby basis.

Dan, I'm sorry, that's time. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

One more? Yes.

Rosemary?

yeah good morning supervisors it's been a long time since i spoke to the board of supervisors maybe gary will remember me um i own a property in arnold and was indeed snowed in for a considerable period of time not only was there no power but after the power did come on, there was no internet, no phone, and no TV either, apart from my track phone, portable mobile phone. I'm glad that Public Works is talking about getting a plan for the county for snow and snow removal. It's not unknown that we have snow in Arnold and I feel that there really ought to have been more done for us in terms of getting the snow plowed initially. But I'm glad that you're putting the plan together and that you're having this public discussion at the moment. Thank you.

That would be all, Stacey?

Correct.

Okay. Before I bring it back to the board, I'm just going to say one more thing. Gentlemen, thank you. You're making solutions. You're being pragmatic. You're being strategic. You're moving forward on issues that you know you're not just sitting here saying here's all our problems you're providing solutions and that's what i appreciate about you so thank you with that i'll bring it back to the board oh first micah you had a list of things that you needed answered on this and how we want to move forward so can you pull out each one of those bullet points Real quick, to remind the board before we make a motion and we just forget about it and let it float away. I am correct, right? Yeah.

Mike, it would be easier.

Because we could make a yes vote and forget about all the bullet points. OK.

I'm bringing it up for you.

Thank you, Stacy. That's why you're in charge.

Yeah.

So that's there. What we're looking for direction from the board is to approve the response plan that we've drafted as a working document, provide direction if you'd like us to return back with RFP to advertise, and then also if there's any of the other options or service models that were presented that you'd like us to pursue further.

Personally, there's stuff From my perspective, the stuff that you see that works more in the future, bring it forward. You're the experts. I'm not going to sit here and micromanage your plan. We'll see if we can do our best to facilitate the tools for it. So I think that yes, yes, and yes is my perspective on both.

Yes, please. I'd like, I'd like to see the obviously adopt the snow response plan and see that it develops over the years. Please go out for everybody up the hill. I know we still need to talk to people at sky high. I know that that might not be a possibility just given that the highway closes down, what have you, but there Again, with other service models, I would love just to talk to Jason again and find out that piece of equipment that he was talking about in particular and exactly what that would cost, whether to rent it or buy it. And to Dan to upon his point, if we do buy something, what are those monthly costs? So that we could compare it versus.

Export that exactly.

I would support, too. It's a good plan. Again, though, a lot of it based on Caltrans. I mean, it'll get their job done. And, you know, they just opened Highway 4. The pass, not that long. So, but I think we're moving in the right direction for all those people that are affected by it. You don't know when it's going to happen again. It could be Five years from now, it could be next year. You don't know. But I think we're moving forward here.

You going to make a motion, sir?

I would say one more point. Yeah, sure. I do think that public, and this is probably more of an OES, but the messaging is I know that obviously the OES and the Sheriff's Office is putting out that messaging as well, but from Public Works as well. It was very complicated with trying to figure out who was going up when they did open the highway, who was going up to the ski resort, and then those people that were playing in the snow alongside getting in the way of the plows, as well as the PG&E workers, what have you. So I just, again, would love to see that in the plan. I don't remember if I did see it, that there's more communication as far as what the public in our conversations. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon.

So just to recap, make sure I'm clear. The snow response plan, the internal plan, we're going to finalize that. We'll make that available to the public. It'll be available on our website and we can communicate it through other channels. With regards to the RFP, we're going to draft a scope of work for that and get that advertised and hopefully come back with some options on how to award a contract and how to fund that contract. funding will be a challenge for us with regards to our budget. So we may be seeking alternative funding sources to help sustain an effort such as that. Along with rental or purchase of equipment, we would be seeking other funding options to support those costs as well. So we could certainly do that. So that's something we'll work on.

So I see an action item.

I'll move.

Mike could just relate to us. You know, that's the way I like it. So we have a motion. We have a second by Ms. Handel. All those in favor? Aye. Passed on 5-0 to the board. Excellent job, gentlemen. You got a lot of work ahead of you.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm not going to dare ask. We're going to go ahead and do item number 24, Miss Simpson.

Item 24 ordinance planning one conduct a public hearing to adopt a mitigated net negative declaration for soon to sequel re adopt in ordinance amending the zoning of APN 046016069. Oh, I lost my spot, sorry. Located directly northeast of the intersection of Highway 26 and Hogan Dam Road in Valley Springs from rural residential to general commercial with an environmental protection overlay, C2EP, for Curt Cosgrove and for authorized summary publication and a brief property description and map of the reclassified property.

Ben, Brett? I'll open the public hearing. Thank you, Ms. Simpson and Ms. Edwards.

Thanks.

Ben Diamond Planner 2 Presenting Zone Amendment 2024-52 for Kirk Cosgrove. This is a 15-acre parcel in Valley Springs, right east of the intersection of Hogan Dam Road and 26. the current designation for the parcel is commercial which as you can see from the surrounding area is pretty fitting lots of commercial in the nova plaza shopping center to the north and then industrial land as well as public service land and community center surrounding it Currently, the parcel is zoned rural residential, which, as you can see, makes it a bit of an island in its current zoning. So by rezoning this to commercial, that'll be fixing a bit of spot zoning. As you can see here, it matches up with the rest of it, leaving just the little island of the turn triangle left as rural residential. Currently, the parcel has been used, or historically rather, has been used to grow strawberries. And as you can see, some of the access roads on the aerial image here, you can see the Valley Springs mini storage to the north of it, and just generally undeveloped parcels surrounding it. Across the turn triangle, you have a lot with a soon to be, or former Deo, and soon to be a different coffee shop. as well as a fitness center and a lot that's been used by PG&E occasionally for staging some of their equipment. the proposal for this zoning amendment is to build a tire shop the proposed location is in the northwest corner of the parcel and in the next slide you will see why this parcel has a part of cosgrove creek running through the top of it as well as a culvert that outlets between those two undeveloped parcels to the north of it and this leads to a pretty significant flood zone on the parcel which leaves just that little corner for the tire shop. This is a photo from February of this year, looking at the current encroachment to the parcel. As you can see, it's just generally undeveloped, empty land at the moment, and the shack that was constructed to sell strawberries has since been demolished. This is looking south towards the current location of the Valley Springs Tire Shop. And this is looking past the former location of the shack. You can see all the access roads for the parcel have largely been overgrown. And this is looking towards the proposed location of the tire shop up against the mini storage. the project was routed pursuant to the department policies and procedures we received pretty standard comments from fire departments public works stuff like that the item went before the planning commission and during that hearing they expressed some concern regarding the proposed location of the shops uh proximity to hogan dam road and potential future road work that will be potentially happening in that area both as a result of CALTRANS PROJECTS AND OTHER DEVELOPMENTS THAT ARE PLANNED IN THE AREA AND OTHER CONCERN REGARDING THE FLOOD ZONE AS WELL AS POTENTIAL FUTURE DEVELOPMENT ON THAT PARCEL AND IT'S BEING IMPACTED BY THE FLOOD ZONE AND MAKING ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR THAT FUTURE DEVELOPMENT IF IT WERE TO OCCUR IN THAT OTHER PART OF THE PARCEL WHICH AS YOU SAW IS PRETTY SIGNIFICANTLY COVERED BY THE FLOOD ZONE. During the hearing, we also had three public commenters, two from MyValleySprings.com and one member of the public that owned property to the north of the parcel. All of them spoke in support of the project, but shared similar concerns, what with future development on the road, potentially impacting the tire shop if it's too close to the road, as well as not skimping on drainage infrastructure given the large potential for water on the parcel. and given that the potential for future commercial development on the parcel could impact the flood zone and potential environmental features on the other part of the parcel the plan commission thought it appropriate to recommend an environmental protection overlay also be added to the proposed zoning The project had an initial study and mitigated negative declaration prepared for it, which was circulated for 30 days pursuant to the CEQA guidelines. During this circulation period, received a comment from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommending a bolstering of our proposed biological mitigation measures, which we did. And since it's a increased mitigation that would further reduce potential impacts, it didn't require recirculation. We also received some comments from my Valley Springs regarding a lack of acknowledging the Valley Springs community plan, which was a miscommunication on staff's part. So language was added to specifically acknowledge the community plan as well. Just to sum it up, the requested zoning is consistent with the Calaveras County General Plan and the zoning code, as well as the neighboring land uses and zoning. The project complies with CEQA, and any site-specific impacts have been reduced to a level that is less than significant through the mitigated negative declaration that was prepared for this project. And as proposed, the project promotes the public health, safety, and general welfare of the county. That'll give it back to you.

Public comment. Online.

We do not have any online public comment.

Gary. Yes, I'm familiar, very familiar with this property and what's going on. And on the other side of this, there's a ranch property. This is a tire shop. It's down the road. They're wanting to move and be right up there on the highway. Actually, not on the highway because of the and the Hogan Dam Road goes off and merges into the highway there. My concern is, and I think it falls within what it needs to fall in with the guidelines, but I do have some concerns about when it comes up for construction and they provide plans. And specifically, as I brought up earlier, Cosco Creek, and I know this property, where they're trying to put it is outside of a floodplain, but that did flood one year back in like 2009 or 10 or 11. 2006, it did. That area did flood. Um, so I don't know if there's something, um, that. When we do this, that relieves the county from the responsibility of them complain, because we got a bunch of complaints from all kinds of people when the flooding a lot of commercials when the funny happened before and a lot of commercial properties is why, you know, allowing people to build, they shouldn't allow allows. Build here, I don't know if we can put something in there that says something about, hey, you're submitting these plans. You're asking for this rezoning, but commercial buildings in there. You know, it's in a floodplain. and it has flooded before just so that language is in there um so they're they can't say they were not not told they weren't aware of it and i know the sequel and identification but i'm trying to make sure that guy i'm trying to get it You know what I'm saying. And so I don't know if that's something that can or can't be done because the property, you have the right to do what you want on your property. But I'm just trying to protect all county in the future.

Julie Moss-Lewis, Assistant County Council, and definitely in developing the mitigation measures, we have to look at the floodplain for one. So the development potential of the property, I think, has been thoroughly analyzed with respect to the flood zone. Second, all discretionary approvals through planning require An identification agreement, which removes liability from the county to the extent there is any based on our giving an approval. And, you know, obviously we can't promise it's not going to flood. But, but I mean, to the best of our ability, we, we ask all applicants or require all applicants. We have an ordinance requiring all applicants and landowners to say. An identification agreement to cover us.

OK. I just wanted to make sure.

What we can't promise is that people won't still complain or say .. We can't protect the county from legal liability, but.

Believe me, I'm aware of that. I was just trying to look at that and the mitigation part of it is, I guess, what I was bringing up. And I don't know if the CEQA addresses the flood area there or not. I didn't read the whole document. I mean, I'm willing to approve this and go forward with it. I think it's probably a good project. And, you know, the Planning Commission felt so too. So, but I just wanted, that's the only thing that was really bothering me is once this thing gets built, I don't know if we can require them to raise it up, but that's whatever the plans come through to the building department.

They'll be required at the building permit stage and the grading permit stage to show current compliance with that flood zone.

Okay. Thank you. Julie, when you come up with a save all, catch all indemnification agreement or double service wage,

I think we have a pretty robust one that's borrowed from Tuolumne County after they learned the hard way about not having one that was adequate.

That's a good copy and paste. Thank you. Any other board members? I'll close the public hearing. If there's no more.

I will move this item as presented.

Oh, I never gave the applicants the opportunity. Did you want to say something? Sure. Keep it simple. All right. There we go. Gary? I will move this item as presented.

Second.

We have a motion by Supervisor Coffinelli and a second by Supervisor Volendorf. Excuse me. All those in favor? Aye. Passed on 5-0. Thank you. Thank you so much, board. we got one more right yes sir i mean usually doug doug it's been a while doug

Well, you'll see me again real soon. I know I'll be in there bugging yet. Chairman members board.

Sorry. Can I read the item 1st?

Oh, sorry.

Thank you.

Stacy.

Thank you item 25 action item building 1, find exempt from sequel to introduce and wave the 1st reading of an ordinance amending chapter 3.53 building department service fees of Calaveras county code and 3 authorize a summary publication of the ordinance.

chairman opening no no public hearing never mind i'm not doing anything on the side so i'm not doing that go ahead don't listen to me chairman members of the board doug oliver chief building official um

Arguably what I have here is fairly easy, but in order to make sure it's clear to anyone who's. Listening on public access, I have a small story to tell. June 9th will be bringing your board resolution to consider. Updating and amending our building department service fees. There's several reasons for that primarily while us have increased, but there's. Several other factors such as. you're bored to honoring me with additional things to do like the grading and erosion control programs and the cannabis program which have been firmly placed into our department and because we have a strategic plan that has several goals to streamline our building department has done a Excellent job of making the necessary changes to make all of these programs move faster and provide better service. So that does change the current fee structure. So what we do plan to bring are some fees will go down. Most of them will go up a little bit, but it's not going to be across the board. A fee increase, because while some things have increased, we've also reduced a lot of time we spend on these services. And and placed a lot of technology and other features in here to just. Make it flow a little better so. I told you that so I could tell you this, this is the 1st reading of an ordinance to repeal those same fees. And why are we doing that? Well, because an ordinance trumps a resolution and if your board adopts a resolution without me removing the ordinance, I can't use the new fees. So, this 1st reading specifically amends. 3.53 to remove the building department and fire prevention fees. From the ordinance and converts it from a building services ordinance to a code enforcement service fee ordinance. The reason why we have not done a fee study on the code enforcement services. Yes, because we. It was a general fund cost center versus a building services cost center and we did not budget for it in the in the code enforcement. Budget, and we really didn't propose it for this budget. It's a fairly stable fee. So we're planning on bringing that not this next. Fiscal year, but next fiscal year, in which case we will bring a resolution again. And you'll see the remainder of that ordinance. Removed through a 2 reading ordinance process like I'm doing right now. So, in essence, this is just stripping out. What we're going to be hopefully putting in as a revised fee. By resolution, starting on 60 days after you vote on June 9th. Now, this is once again, the 1st of 2 readings. So if your board decides not to adopt the resolution, we simply. Don't adopt a 2nd reading of this and everything stays in place as normal. Specifically what we're like, I said, we're removing the building permit fire prevention fees. You'll also notice that we removed the, the fee, the payment of fees and refunds section and the waiver of fees because those that identical language will be in the resolution. So there's no real reason to duplicate the. the the fee and fine process for code enforcement is established in 806 of of ordinance code so we don't have to repeat it here in 3.53 in order for the cannabis or sorry the code enforcement fees to be effective and that's what i've got for you questions public comment right online

We have no online public comment.

Any questions? Do you have any questions? I'll move this item. I'll second. We have a motion by Mr. Toffanelli, a second by Mr. Hoverty. All those in favor?

Aye.

Doug, thank you for keeping it short and sweet. staff oh at the beginning of the meeting supervisors announcements mr hubbard your lights on oh

um i'll start off with the fair it was just an excellent fair this year again the numbers were up from last year um i was going to ask teresa if i could hang on to the county frog for a little bit we've got some textiles ordered to fix him um what i'd love to do is we're getting the painted frogs back um lori's been working with us out of the fairgrounds um we want to refurbish them i mean some of them have been outside for 20 years they need a lot of love um And then I was thinking that next year we would do the same thing. They were really popular at the fair. People love to take their pictures with them, et cetera. I would love in 2028, which is the 100-year anniversary of the fair, to do a procession from the government center with all these frogs on backup pickup trucks or what have you and take them to the fairgrounds and then have them all on display for the fair for the 100th year. um how that's going to work at all sure yet but the calaveras community foundation is going to be working with us so hopefully we can get some funds put into it so that we can pay some of these artists they're not just volunteering all their time and we're paying for the paints and the textiles and the props that are used to to make them and then get them distributed back across the county so that we can put a scavenger hunt together for our visitors it's a it's a really win-win situation

Thank you, Martin. You say these frogs need a lot of love. Yeah, very good person gave me the love frog. So reach out to me and I'll give you the help you need.

That's awesome. Thank you. And just running down on the 14th, I was at the board meeting for the Area 12 Agency on Aging. 18th, I was on the Sierra Works Workshop Zoom call. On the 19th, I did attend the Special Olympics Torch Run. It was more of a waddle than a run. And then on the 22nd, with Supervisor Fallendorf, we met with Archives and the Historical Society.

Ms. Anball.

Yeah, Echoing Fair was fantastic and a huge success. Numbers were up in the barns. Numbers were up with total visitors. Very grateful for them. I did want to invite community members on Saturday, May 30th. Mountain Ranch has a music festival from 11 to 7 with a rib cook-off and all kinds of festivities. On Sunday, May 31st at 1 p.m., the McCollumy Hill Historical Society will be doing a presentation on the McCollumy Hill Reservoir that once inhabited the current Cobbs baseball field. So two great upcoming events in District 2.

Spoldorf. Yes, it was a great fair. myself and the underserved we won against the city and the police chief on the fog dump so once again the county holds the trophy um we need to figure out how to get this get those uh in grades um stone Yeah, right. I, too, attended with Supervisor Heppity, an archived meeting with the clerk's office and the Historical Society. And then just a reminder, Wednesday, June 10th, in the overflow from 6.30 to 8.30 p.m., the UC Extension will be hosting a livestock predator workshop.

Mr. Tafanelli.

It was a great fair. It was a wonderful fair. It was good. I enjoyed it. A lot of people were there. That's all I had to report.

It's a fair fair. CSAC. Tons of legislation moving forward. As always, It's not just one size doesn't fit all, or doesn't fit all, it's one size doesn't fit anybody when it comes to a lot of legislation, but we're, CSAC's talking in the rural caucus about working with RCRC, Amanda, and when legislation comes through, the stuff that doesn't necessarily fit for rural areas, um consideration of more exemptions for rural areas in such instances that it fits and everything else so with that um as always it's it's a pleasure working with the board at csac because you know everyone from different areas, it doesn't matter. It's a nonpartisan group. And we're working for the best California. And it's really positively receptive. So I enjoy it. Tristan. Sarah. Stacy.

Just to remind that June 2nd is their day to vote. So go to caliber or elections.caliberas.gov.us to see where the voting locations and drop boxes are available to our county residents.

That's our lady. I have to ask you about that sign language later. Susan.

Yes, I just want to make sure that every senior and every disabled person knows that in Caledonia County, you can go to our wildfire prevention council and they have help if you need help with fire clearing.

Awesome. That is fantastic. Thank you, Susan. With that, we'll adjourn.