Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

okay thank you good morning el dorado county today is june 9th uh 2026 and this is a regularly scheduled meeting of the board of supervisors for el dorado county so good morning to everybody good morning el dorado county today is june 9th uh 2026. This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Supervisors for El Dorado County. So good morning to everybody.

Good morning, El Dorado County.

Today is June 9th, 2026. And we can adjourn now. We're done. All right, are we good? Try it again. Test, test, test. Okay, sounds good. We had a little playback into the room there, so we paused for just a moment. I would like to ask if Pastor Chris Scott would please come forward and lead us in today's invocation. Good morning. Good morning.

I'm so glad it was your voice on repeat and not mine. Yours sounds much better than mine. So thankful for that. Thankful.

Please join me in prayer this morning.

Lord, thank you for this opportunity for us to gather with the concerns and the challenges and the opportunities that are here in El Dorado County. We consecrate today's Board of Supervisors meeting to you. We pray for your wisdom and your guidance and your discernment in all of the decisions that have to be made today. We pray for calm tongues and for clear minds and for open ears as we interact and engage with each other and taking comment and listening to what is going on here in our county so that we can hear and discern what it is that you are doing and what is best for all of the people here in El Dorado County. Thank you for this time. Thank you for this people. And we pray for your blessing over every aspect today. It's in your holy name we get to pray these things. Amen.

Amen. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you, Pastor. Supervisor Vierkamp, would you lead us in the pledge, please? Yes, please.

Everybody stand. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Supervisor.

Let's go ahead and move on to the approval of the consent calendar. Are there any items that my colleagues wish to comment on or pull for discussion? I'll start to my right, Supervisor Ferraro.

No, thank you.

Supervisor Parlin. Yeah, huge apologies. I usually do this stuff on Monday. And this one, I had a note and I didn't follow up. So just on item five, the letters regarding the May revise and everything, great letters, not a problem with it. But in the section about the HHAP funding in there, we actually have some really good data to show the success that we've had. you know, currently with those funds. And I thought maybe it'd be good, you know, good to just throw some of our successes into the letter to show why that funding is so critical and why we want to continue receiving it. So and again, I apologize, I usually do this on Monday. And I don't know how this one slipped me. But if you guys are okay with that, it might be nice to add some data, because I think our county has been very successful with our homeless and services. So

Yeah, that's a good point. Madam CAO, are you okay with that? Sure, we can do that. Okay, great. Good comment. Anything else?

I don't think so. Oh, we did get an email question from Ruth Carter on item eight. Did anyone get that back to her, a response? Just...

Well, we we generally Don't at the staff level respond back to the question or email to the board.

We certainly can do that Okay, I mean I know I saw the response if you want all I can get it back to her just so she knows that we got it and there was a response so I'll follow up if you want if you want me to I Can do that. I just didn't know

I think that would be great, especially because it was addressed to the board. Right, okay. That would be appropriate. Are you okay with that? I'm on it. Sounds great. All right, great. Supervisor Vierkamp.

No changes, ma'am.

Okay. I just want to comment on item number seven. And that's an agreement with regards to PG&E and specifically Four Bay Park and Gale Drive. And I just want to thank and congratulate the staff for going back and renegotiating some wins for the residents. And I think it's a great example of... We just don't have to give PG&E full reigns to just do whatever they want, whenever they want. I've seen that have negative results. So thank you for going back and reworking this. Thank you to you and your team, Laura.

All right, if there's no other comments, we'll go ahead. I believe Laura has just one minor correction to read into the record.

Sorry, I have a correction on item six. Thank you, Supervisor Carlin, for noting that. We have a date error in regards to Legistar File 25-1899. That wasn't approved in the future in November of 2026. It was actually December 9th, 2025. So both in the... discussion background and the prior board actions. That will need to be corrected. Thank you. Thanks, Laura.

If only we could predict the future.

I know, I was reading it and my brain kept tripping on it going, wait, what's happening? Crystal ball.

Excellent. Okay. We'll go ahead and now take public comment on all matters on the consent calendar. including closed session items. So to be specific, we'll now hear public comment on closed items number one, two, and three, and consent items numbers four through 28. Please identify which item number or numbers you will be addressing today. Ms. Dawson.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We'll begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments. Welcome.

Chris Payne, Diamond Springs. I was just calculating seven years that I've been doing the Board of Supervisors agendas for the taxpayers of El Dorado County, and that's the Taxpayers Association. I figured out it was like All these years, all these agenda items, add them all up and something over 12,000. People say sometimes that I say a lot at the podium because I take this responsibility on. I took it on now for seven years and I continue to be opinionated, but at the same time, hopefully respectful. My items today are item 20. Well, first of all, I appreciate what you commented on a forebay. That's a critical area for that community. And anything that we can do to make things better there in terms of their recreational opportunities, it makes a lot of sense. Specifically, item 22, since I used to work for DOT, I always pick up on their items. It's the Mount Murphy Bridge Project. And they're asking for an increase in compensation and an extension of the time for the contract of four years. But no comment about why. Why was it necessary? Why did it go beyond the original term? Why is it now four years? Should it be six? It would have been nice to have something in the agenda that would explain that. The other one is kind of similar, item 25. It's the planning and building department. And this has to do with a demolition of a structure. I believe if we're talking about a project that I listened in on discussion a few months ago, it's in El Dorado Hills. It's one the community wanted to... be taken care of, but it doesn't say. It doesn't say the address. It doesn't say what the item is. It just says that you need a four-fifths vote for this item, $100,000. I just thought I'd mention those two just because I think we should strive to do a little better job explaining and how we can tie in prior items to the current item. Respectfully, that's my comments.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public here in the room that would like to address the board on consent items or closed session? Please come forward. Good morning. Are you wanting to address this on the budget or something? That's next.

Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay.

That's okay. That's all right. So any items on the consent agenda or closed session, we'll take public comment from anyone in the room. Seeing none, may we go online?

Not taking public comment from online participants. Not taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Good morning, everyone. Linda Campbell, El Dorado Hills. This is on consent agenda item 14. I want to share some concerns regarding AB 1087-3. based on the text provided in attachment C. Primarily on page four, it allows an exemption from CEQA environmental impact report. This is understandable for timing and efficiency. However, there's a requirements text struck through related to conducting enhanced public outreach on the plans and strategies being proposed by the lead agency. I disagree with any legislation that removes activities which could be significant impacts on our community public view and input. We have no idea how El Dorado County will be planned or impacted by a regional agency, and including the incorporation of a state-mandated local program is not a replacement for local input. Anything produced specific to our area should have full public view for initial input, as well as ongoing planning. We already see how land use changes negatively impact other areas of our planning, so this will add yet another layer to that, which should be part of every future consideration of land use. There should initially be no conflicts with our general plan. After public review for finalization, the sustainable community strategy and any related financial elements should become part of all project reviews and reporting on a regular basis for the public to see. I also have concerns about the reimbursement reference on page five, see item eight. It says that with regard to certain mandates, no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. Although right below it, it says that the commission on state mandates could determine that reimbursement will be there. So are they on the hook to reimburse or not? In item five today, you're sending letters to the state about the lack of reimbursement and funding. So why would we allow any opportunity for the state not to provide us funding? The letter of support mentions we think there will be funding, but the actual text of the bill is not clear on that. Based on the items above, I recommend we do not support this legislation. as long as public engagement is not required or until there's full confirmation of state reimbursement for items they have mandated us to fulfill. Thank you. Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Sue.

I want to thank Linda Campbell for bringing up number 14. I just caught that myself. And, you know, it's sad that I don't have a supervisor that represents me on that board. My district person doesn't even like talking to the people in his own district, unless it's perhaps the developers, which don't live there. But I would deny this. Sustainability is part of the Agenda 21, which is another word for socialistic. So if you support this, you're all socialists, which is really sad that that's where our county is going. This is SACOG's blueprint plan to change the demographics of these different communities. And that my supervisor supports this is pretty disgusting. And any of you that vote to approve that we align ourselves, our county, with the state of California that is totally in a downturn. You know, we've got the worst of everything. And these projects don't care about drainage. They don't care about communities. They don't care about the public. They're invasive. And it's just disgusting that... our conservative so-called county is supporting a socialistic agenda you're cramming these into my district that you don't listen to the people that is impacting these projects you know you say that you've given your planning director full control over these projects that are being done behind doors without meeting objective standards you don't you go beyond what the state requires the state says you cannot approve these projects if they don't meet objective standards an objective standard is when any agency has to make a decision but you let your planning director approve those projects behind doors so my other thing on here um is the bridge on number 22 It's really sad that we're one of the most historic counties or historic places in the whole world. We changed the world when we discovered gold right there in Coloma where this bridge is being done. And your Department of Transportation is so abusive. They don't care about how they do these projects. They just want the biggest bang for their projects that do the most destruction. And here's the most historic site that you're going to create scorched earth. You couldn't do a project how they do these projects. that rips out all the trees, rips out the historic structures that are there for what? I mean, why can't you design things that fit within our community and aren't so invasive? And it's really sad that you're going through this imminent domain case after you tortured a widow for 14 years and you can't even pay her compensation for the damage you've done to her. I really think this board is disgusting. Thank you.

Thank you. Just for transparency, the sound with the timer does not seem to be working. So I don't know if at three minutes, you want me just to make that announcement just to, okay.

Yeah, as opposed to like a 30 second.

I think it's more disruptive doing that. Yeah, yeah. Not taking public comment from Kim Beal.

Hi, Kim Beal, Government Affairs Director for the El Dorado County Association of Realtors. I'm speaking on item 30. I am opposed to the current public comment procedure that you've been practicing for a while now.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Kim, but we're going to take public comment on that item next. Right now, we're just taking...

I appreciate that. That's perfect.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Kim.

Now taking public comment from iPhone.

Yes, hi. Good morning, board. Kelly Nella via Eldorado Hills. I wasn't going to call on the consent, but I was really moved by the last two callers on item 14, especially Linda Campbell. Thank you. I don't necessarily have the sentiment I think you're not disgusting people. You're good people. But what we're doing in this item, the more and more we give control to regional or states, what's the point of having y'all representing us? Because what I'm seeing over and over happen when we put in items like this and we're relinquishing to the state is then every time something comes up, we hear the same thing over and over. Oh, I wish we could restrict this, or I wish we didn't have to do this, but the state's making us do this. What is the point of local control if we, once again, surrender it to the state? The state is a must. We're seeing that. It is corrupt. It is dishonest. It doesn't care about you or me, to be honest. um so i would really ask you to think carefully before you are consent item things that are going to take away what we voted you to do we want you to be in control not the state thanks so much thank you there's no additional public comments

okay thank you for that i'll bring this item back to the board and i see that madam cao has a comment thank you madam chair i was just going to note in item 22 that it kind of sets out reasons for the delays and the extension and time in that project among those are environmental and then the need to do additional project management um have additional project management throughout the duration of the contract but i see director martinez here if you wanted more detail on that And on item number 25, this is in the body of the board item, it explains that this is referring back to an action you took on May 19th, which was to approve a contract for the demolition of the Whitehall structure on Highway 50. This is just the budget transfer referring back to that item.

Perfect. Thank you. I'll bring this back to the board for any further comment or deliberation or motion.

Supervisor Verkamp, would you be okay with us putting off the item 14 letter to look at it a little more carefully, see if there's other concerns by other agencies, just delaying it until next week?

You mean county government agencies? Yes. I believe they're all on board. Again, it is a COG driven across the state to try to assimilate the best way to receive the funding through processes. Right. And again, it's not totally there yet, but in its current form, that's what we're supporting.

Yeah.

There was a couple things I didn't like. The carb control is still there, but we're not going to get that away. Again, we're in California, but it does give our local SACOG the ability to work with us, and Rafael's sitting there as well, to distribute the funding the best that we can get. I think there's been some votes as of late as it's moved along and SACOG has supported those. I've worked my best to support them. Is it perfect? Nope.

Yeah.

We're certainly a little far from perfect in California, but this gets us what we need. So I would like to keep it going so we don't delay, but that's up to the will of the board.

Okay. Further comment or deliberation? I'm going to vote no on item number 14. I tried to read the text, the 1087. It's very technical. I do not believe that our transit MPOs which are distinctly called out in that bill have been brought into this conversation. I don't think TRPA is aware of it. I'm not sure you both sit on the El Dorado Transit Agency. I'm not sure that they have chimed in on it. And I'm just, in general, really concerned about the county constantly writing letters of support or non-support on these issues that I don't think we always have all the facts, so.

Transportation has, yeah. TRPA hasn't seen it. It's part of El Dorado County.

TRPA, my understanding, is out of the Transportation Commission mix.

Well, it's an MPO, and it's specifically spelled out in that bill that MPOs have to realign.

We'll tell you what, I'll vote no today also, and then if we want to bring it back next week with some changes or requesting an amendment or, you know, support if amended or something like that you can bring it back how's that just so we can bring it back okay because county council is looking at us like going you guys you're talking pull it or yeah so we'll just um i'm gonna be a no on it okay i'll accept a motion at this time

Oh, I'll just recap for you.

So to recap, you're approving the consent calendar with the changes as far as item number five, directing staff to include the data success and the support letters regarding homelessness. In item number six, the date, the correction to the date to December 9th, 2025. In item number three, excuse me, a comment on item number seven, Supervisor Lane thanks staff. And regarding item number 14, Supervisor Lane and Parlin will both be voting no for Supervisor Vierkamp to bring the item back next week. Thank you.

I will move consent then with that.

with that.

Second.

Motion and a second. Any further comments?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

Thank you. All right, we will now take public comment on all other agenda items, excluding the public hearings, of which there are five on our agenda for today. So we are not taking public comment right now on items 31 through 35. but we are taking public comment on items number 29 and 30. Madam Clerk of the Board.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Good morning. Good morning, Ruth Michelson. I'm here to speak about item 30. And I just have to say, sitting in the audience, it's really been a pleasure to hear all of these calls this morning. It feels so American, so wonderful to have this participation from the public. And in other countries, you can go to jail. You can be killed if you speak up against the government. And here we have the freedom to have the checks and balances to speak freely how we feel. I don't agree with all the callers, but I respect that they're taking the time to call in and say what they need to say. So about 30, I read the staff report, and I have a feeling where it might be going. But I have to say that this is an example of how I'm at a disadvantage to speak on this issue before I hear you all speak on it, because I'm going to have to guess how your conversation may go. So this is why I'd really much prefer speaking at the end of your discussion, so it can be more relevant. I'm going to guess that the staff report talks about how the average of most comments is two minutes. And so my guess is if you reinstate the old system, if you should, my guess is you're probably going to limit the comments to two minutes because that's where it seems to be going. The end of the staff report said, let's discuss, but it doesn't take a lot to figure where it might be going. Um, Let's see. Efficiency. I know you brought into this into effect because of efficiency. And I was thinking another possible way for you to truly have efficiency would be to be stricter about what people talk about that should be within the purview of what you all have control over. I think that you should be stopping people who come in and read to you from the Bible scriptures or people who read to you a book that's very interesting and could be pertinent, but it's really not within your purview. I think also for efficiency, you all could work on your efficiency. It's really evident to those of us in the audience who has read the packet and those who haven't by the questions that are asked. And so many of you do come in very prepared, but some not as much at times. So you all could be more efficient. Let's see. I was also going to point out that there's two types of budget item, I mean agenda items, where you have a big interest in the public comes and packs the room. And I think that for those kinds of items, you might say there's a time limit of, I don't know, 30 minutes for comments. For the other items, you've got the same group of people, those of us who really care about government and how it works. We take an interest in it. It's the same group. It's not really a huge deal, right? How many of us are really going to come and call in or show up? Not that many. But I do think that the checks and balances of government is really the most important aspect of all of this, that we get to speak to you on a timely basis at the time of the agenda item. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning.

Chris Payne, Devon Springs. Item 30. Item 30 is listed on the agenda as time specific nine o'clock. Just so happens it's 9.25 and we're having to speak about an item that is gonna be heard shortly, very shortly, without hearing any of the discussions. In my mind, it is, as I've said numerous times since this policy has been put into place and the policy has to do with the structure that we're doing today. I put a question into the browser this morning when I woke up at 430. Couldn't go back to sleep because I was thinking about this thing today. And I said to the browser, what is the standard of fairness and participatory involvement for public comment at a board of supervisors meeting? And it said to me, Chris, but it didn't say Chris. The standard of fairness and participatory involvement for public comment at a board of supervisors meeting is anchored in the constitutional rights of free speech and statutory open meeting laws. In California, these standards are explicitly governed by the Ralph M. Brown Act. The core legal standards that ensure fairness and participation include viewpoint neutrality, the board cannot restrict or prohibit public criticism of its policies, procedures, programs, services, or the actions of its members. The public has the right to express harsh, personal, or critical opinions. Second point, agenda item rights. Members of the public must be provided the opportunity to address the board on specific agenda items either before or during the board's consideration of the item. And I believe that has to do also with open forum. That seems to be, realistic open forum items that are not on the agenda limiting them to three minutes and therefore you have to be careful the board does in not restricting their rights based on what i've just said to you at this point um general public comments time must be set aside on the agenda For public comments on any matter, that's, excuse me, I got ahead of myself. This was related to the open forum time. Reasonable regulations. Board can adopt reasonable regulations on the conduct of the people and hold them to certain time limits, in this case, three minutes. Some places have signup approval. You have to get a card and it goes in to the secretary. I believe we ought to go back to the old system. I believe that just earlier this year, there was a gentleman who couldn't speak on an item where his name, and it was in the afternoon, his name was on the item and he couldn't speak to it. I couldn't believe that.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. I'm Jim Abram. Is this on?

Yes.

Red light's on. Yeah. Okay. I'm here on 30 also. I'm not, I'm in another item, but I'm here for 30 at the moment. I just like the comment that, you know, each Department matter item is discussed and I think that the public comment should be able to be applied to each department matter because if you lump every public comment in the beginning of the meeting if a department matter is in the afternoon and you've already heard all the public comments in the morning and It can get lost. The public's comments can get lost by the time an afternoon matter rolls around. And I think that a procedure where you have the matter at hand, discussed by the Board of Supervisors, and then public comment on each item to follow would allow the public to weigh in and what they're hearing at the meeting being discussed by the supervisors to enable them to make public comments specific to what's really happening at the meeting. That's my comments. The Behavioral Health Commission has the item. We have a commission discussion after a presentation. then we hold public comment and then we go back to the commission for final discussion of the item. And I think that's a proper procedure. I'd like to see it reinstated within the Board of Supervisors procedure to allow the public to be more active and heard in a better way. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning, Paul Gilchrist on behalf of Lee Tannenbaum. I'm gonna read a letter that I was asked to read. So on January 6th of this year, the board implemented a revised public comment procedure requiring residents to consolidate comments on multiple agenda items into a single, public comment period at the beginning of the meeting. At the time the board committed to a six month trial period to determine whether the change would improve efficiency and maintain transparency and short meetings. The results are now in and the experiment has failed. The revised format has failed to save time, failed to short meetings and has artificially suppressed meaningful public engagement with taxpaying community. On behalf of the Taxpayers Association, I urge this board to follow the data, acknowledge the results of this trial, and restore the historical practice of taking public comment as individual agenda items are called. The primary justification for restricting when and how public can speak was to streamline meetings. However, the data presented by staff refutes the idea and the efficiencies were achieved. A comparison of 12 regularly scheduled meetings before and after under the new procedure shows meeting lengths actually increase. Meetings are longer, not shorter. Consolidating public testimony did not save any administrative time. In short, the policy imposes new instructions on public participation without delivering any measurable operational benefit. The data also demonstrates that the taxpaying public has never the source of the meeting bloat. Most residents only... or only use a fraction of their allotted time, the overwhelming majority of the citizens are respectful and concise, yet the public is a group being burdened by the policy. While the procedural change failed to deliver a measurable and time savings, it succeeded in damaging the relationship between the board and the public, forcing residents who wish to comment on multiple agenda items, compress all of those thoughts into a single three minute block. at the beginning of the meeting with both logistical, it's become both a logistical and democratic failure. It creates disjointed testimony, discourages participation and completely separates public input from the very moment when the board discusses debates and votes on a particular issue. Public comment should occur when the issue is before the board, not hours earlier when the public nor the board knows how the discussion will unfold. The board agreed to a six month trial. The results are clear. The policy did not achieve the stated goals and good governance requires a willingness to change course when data supports it. It's not a sign of weakness to admit that something didn't go the way it was expected. Changing it is strong leadership. On behalf of the Taxpayers Association, I respectfully urge the board to abandon the bundled public comment framework and restore the traditional item by item public comment. Doing so will improve transparency, strengthen public participation, and rebuild public trust. Lee Tanamon.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Good morning. Good morning.

Excuse me. Good morning, Lauren Hernandez, Shingle Springs resident, District 4. I'm here also to comment on item 30 and going to reference my notes so I stay on track here. Many of you know me from my career in public service, so I understand, you know, public governance is incredibly difficult. It's demanding, and it's also rarely efficient. But that's what democracy is. And we can't lose sight of, it's ultimately the public's work. When we sacrifice the community's ability to engage just to keep a meeting moving quickly, we have to ask ourselves what our priorities really are. Look around this room on any given Tuesday morning. It rarely ever represents the full breadth of El Dorado County. The decisions made here directly affect people's daily lives. And that's an incredible responsibility that should be handled with deep care. But are we treating the public's engagement as a problem to solve rather than an opportunity to harness? Leaning into public participation doesn't make your job harder. It makes you more successful. Inviting the community in changes the dynamic from confrontational to conversational, diffuses tension, and gives you the real world perspective that you need to do your job. But that participation also shouldn't start in this room either. We have a significant issue locally with residents actually understanding what the process is or where the status of the public's work stands. This board should be doing far more outside these chambers to make the work accessible, but currently we are doing neither. That is directly detrimental to our civic health, our culture, and ultimately your work. Our current meeting format that you implemented earlier this year just has not been productive. Agendas don't give the full picture, forcing business owners, residents, or a farmer, such as recently on ag lodging, to comment before hearing the staff presentation or your initial dialogues, and you're asking them to speak in the dark, depriving you of meaningful input. We also need to expand access by diversifying the meeting schedule. Committing to an evening or a weekend meeting just once a quarter would allow working families to actually show up and expand the voices informing the work that you're doing, ensuring your policy decisions are directly informed by the realities and the needs of the people that you represent. This is about ensuring you have the community partnership from regular constituents to local stakeholders that you need to do this job well. And structuring these meetings so the public can actually show up is the best way to honor the work you are elected to do. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public that would like to address the board? Please come forward.

Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair, Board of Supervisors, Rafael Martinez, Director of Transportation for El Dorado County. I wasn't planning on speaking on this topic here today, but I just thought I'd give staff's perspective. And I think I can speak for other departments as well as the Department of Transportation. My staff, as well as the CAO, County Council, We were countless, countless hours preparing these staff items to make sure that they have all the details possible. And then it is at times frustrating because at the end of the day, the public would come in, they'd only see the title. and then ask questions that were clearly spelled out in the board item that just needed to be read. As a matter of fact, item 22 clearly spelled out the justification as to why we were requesting for additional funding and contract for Mount Murphy. And so then what we would have to do is then on top of that, make sure that the time schedules were appropriate that we had staff here and due to delays we'd have to then postpone from either the morning uh department matters into the afternoon staff would have to then go back come back and it was a huge imposition on taxpayers fundings for staff not to be doing work but instead waiting for the discussion to be held here at the board instead of hearing the questions outright first and then having answers for them um and It is a and I can sympathize with the public in terms of the discussion and providing them additional information. I know that for my department, we are always more than. willing to answer any questions or issues that any residents might have ahead of time or after the fact as a matter, just to make sure that we are clearly getting our point across. And so the efficiencies that have been felt Staff have informed me and told me that they are appreciative of it because we are not having to spend taxpayer money just sitting here at the board waiting for questions that were clearly spelled out in a board item. So is there a compromise? There maybe could be one. I don't know what that would be. But I just wanted to give you kind of staff's perspective as to the way we see it and how it's worked for us over the course of the last few months with this new system.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning, Shannon Starr, OA3. I wasn't going to comment on this one, but something Mr. Martinez just said about optional options. I think the board should consider allowing those that want to speak in the morning prior to the session or the item being heard in a hearing, allow them to speak. And those that wish to hear the hearing item and then speak, be allowed to speak. And that would solve the solution.

Thank you. Other members of the public here in the room that would like to speak on either item number 29 or 30?

OK, seeing none, may we go online, please? Now taking public comment from online participants. Now taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Hi, everyone. Linda Campbell, El Dorado Hills. This is on item 30. First, I want to say it's interesting to see that most of the agenda items today are hearings except for this item. It's a welcome change from prior agendas over the last six months after we were restricted. However, it really would have been helpful for this item to be a public hearing so that we could engage directly in discussions based on your thoughts about something that has been regularly requested to return to prior procedures. I sent an email last Friday, which hopefully everyone had time to read and consider in your discussion today, that included more thoughts on the staff presentation metrics. Related to my first point in the email, I'm still very interested to know if you have considered what your top priority is in determining what to do with this item. Is it public engagement, transparency, or efficiency? I think that's important since the presentation itself provides no solid support related to any of those items, but particularly excludes much in the way of supporting data related to public engagement. I'm hopeful that in your discussion, you will ensure that public engagement is seen as the top priority for you as an elected representative for the people of your district and our county. I understand Raphael's perspective, but we also regularly see that information is not complete. I understand some people miss some things, but there's also some things that we bring up that is a different perspective that we contribute. Additionally, there are new and updated items that come up in discussion with staff that we should be able to speak to as well. When the main method for public engagement tends to be sending an email, The gap is that there's no confirmation that each supervisor really reads it, primarily because we do not receive responses. By speaking directly to an item in this forum, we can be assured that all of you hear what is said. As noted in my email conclusion, my recommendation is to reinstate the prior method of verbal common engagement per regular agenda item. Having the opportunity to speak with real-time information from supervisor and staff discussion is critical if real public engagement is a priority objective. We are hopeful you will consider us relevant to the conversation again. Thank you. Thank you.

Now taking public comment from iPhone.

Good morning, Kelly Nelovaya, District 1, El Dorado Hills. Echoing everyone, and that's what we do in respect in public comment. Hopefully people... realize that we can simply say, I support what I've heard. But Raphael brought something up and maybe he's going to realize kind of some of the stuff he said actually is kind of making our point even more valid because he used the term, if we can hear their questions before we do our presentation, that's actually not what we're asking for. We're asking to be part of the dialogue, right? The people, the voters, the people that you represent and work for. And thus, if you look at that pyramid, that lovely pyramid that talks about the people and then the board and then the staff, it's almost like you have to do like the food pyramid and turn it upside down. So I really think that that was kind of an important thing to think about is, are you looking for us just to make blinded statements because you don't want us to be part of the dialogue? This morning was such a beautiful example about the dialogue and bringing new perspective and thoughts that, hey, you know what? Maybe we do need to engage in this more. And maybe we need to take our time. This is not a race to the finish line as fast as we can. And yes, we want to be efficient and we want to use taxpayers' dollars. But again, I really feel like that's missing the point. This room where you are right now, is where it all happens. It's the most important place in our county because what affects all of our lives and our lives are getting a little bit more desperate feeling every single day. And How do we maintain, you know, staying in our county and staying in this state? And if we're not part of the process together, as I said earlier, what is the point of a board of supervisors representing me if my voice can't be heard or part of the dialogue? Not just part of asking questions, but part of also giving you opinion and my thoughts and maybe a new angle. So... I look forward to the discussion and hope next time that will be part of the dialogue. Thank you. Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Kathy Lishman.

Good morning, board. Kathy Lishman. I think the old system serves the public, the board, and the county better. I think the presentation before the public makes comments is important. The public doesn't only ask questions that are in the staff report, but the public makes suggestions also. And sometimes questions are asked because the public needs clarification. Things can be very complicated and please, please respect the public and their questions. perhaps the issue that staff is complaining about could be fixed by changing the way you schedule the items or making sure that the time is accurate on this item. And so I think there's a lot of things that can be done internally, but I think the old system works much better. And as a former elected official, I can't imagine getting public comment early on and then hours later getting to that item um and and not having the public comment at that time so i just think it it serves everybody better maybe not staff but maybe there are things that can be done that can help it work better for staff too thank you thank you now taking public comment from kim beal

Good morning again. This is Kim Beal, Government Affairs Director for the Association of Realtors. We are opposed to the current public comment procedure that you adopted in January this year, and instead want you to revert back to your prior standard, which was to allow the public to speak following the agenda items staff presentation and even to and from comments with your board between you and the staff. Then opening it up to the public so that we can speak then. And I'm not going to say anything more. I agree with every one of the people from the public that spoke very articulately. Thank you.

Thank you.

Not taking public comment from Sue.

So those few of us that have taken the time to do the research, there are very few of us. But now we don't even, we have zero access to the thought process of the board when you make your decisions the way you've done this. And I say, one of the issues is I'm pretty sure you have serial meetings with your staff on Mondays to go over these agenda items, which I think is a violation of the Brown Act. And that's why you don't hardly communicate during the hearings or the meeting on Tuesdays because you've already gone over all this, which those things should be done in front of the public. The other part is Raphael threw me off of what I was going to talk about because, you know, it's interesting that I attended a meeting with my supervisor to discuss a project in a DOT project with staff and, that was there that stood there and lied to the property owner. And I showed how that staff had lied in front of our supervisor. And then the county spent 10 years digging in to totally destroy that property owner. And rather than work with the public, Um, and that person, and I had to threaten the DOT to get the final set of plans for that project while the project had already started. So yes, we need more public, um, access. We need more public, um, decision-making and I, um, you know, As much as Supervisor Sweeney, I hated the things that he did to the county. He never suppressed public from being involved. He actually created the agenda where he took care of all the trivial stuff in the mornings. They let us speak at 9 o'clock in the morning that we could do public comment. We would go until 10 o'clock at night sometimes to make sure all these things were covered. And they didn't have these pre-meetings with staff before the public meeting. I mean, we actually had the dialogue and the information in front of the public at the same time. And I respected that. I would challenge you to go back and look at the agendas during that time when anybody could pull anything off the closed session. And like I said, it was all discussed in public. I think what you're doing violates the Brown Act. I think the way you put everything on the consent calendar is a violation of the Brown Act. And I think you're missing what your job is to the constituents. I mean, it's sad that you hate talking to the public so much that you've almost eliminated it. And it keeps spending time on finding more ways to eliminate the public, I think is kind of sad. And I would really like to go back to the way that this used to be done in the past. So, I would say that you need to change the way you're doing this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from five to five.

Hi, this is Leo Bennett. I agree with everything that's been said, including Raphael. So I would offer that I've gone to other meetings where staff doesn't have to be physically present. There's a big, like you have the video screen. And when it's time for them to talk, there they are visual, but they're doing work while they're waiting to something to think about procedurally. I really hope that you don't make the decision today in terms of good governance. You have now six months and obviously heard all the frustrations from the public. And I hope you just hear what we said and just go back to the old way, because you need to experience that a while and then give the staff time to take all these comments and bring this back, hopefully in a workshop manner so that we can dialogue as someone said about this most important function of engaging the public during the meetings in this most important room. Trying to decide all of this today without re-experiencing what you've changed, to me, doesn't fit what I understand in the context of making a good governance decision about something really significant. You had multiple meetings last year as you tried to address the changing economics.

I urge you to have more than one meeting to address this very important issue.

All I would like to add is to reference all the statements that are out there that establish our values. The Brown Act clearly states that you exist, I'm reading from it, to aid in the conduct of the people's business. Ultimately, you're a public servant. We thank you for taking on such a hard job. But obviously, the public is not feeling served with this experiment in restricting our comments. You have a vision statement that says this county is committed to a strong sense of community. Again, I can share personally, there's a lot less community in this last six months because we're all so frustrated by this. And that you have a governance handbook that states that you want all members of the public to be feeling welcome to speak or telling you we feel stifled. And finally, from the League of the... California cities, they say, you have a big challenge here in balancing it, that there's the full participation of the public, preserving the integrity or decision-making process, not stifling anybody, but also keeping us all involved because it's our business. Thank you for taking my comment.

Thank you. There's no additional public comment.

okay well thank you for all of that public comment we'll now move to our department matter time certain uh 9 a.m this is item number 30 public comment practice discussion and sb 707 may the clerk of the board please read this item into the record

Item number 30 comes from the chief administrative office and clerk of the board recommending the board one, receive a presentation evaluating the effectiveness of the board's revised public comment procedure after nearly six months of implementation. Two, discuss potential adjustments to the public comment procedure and direct staff to implement the changes if necessary. Three, direct staff to make necessary changes to board policy H1, communications to the board from a member of the public and board policy H2, communications from a member of the public for the public record based on the board's direction on public comment procedure and to align with our current practice. Four, approve and adopt board policy H4 teleconference disruption response policy as required by Senate bill 707 for addressing remote access interruptions during public meetings. Written public comments received by 4 p.m. on a day prior to today's meeting were distributed to all board members and included with this agenda item.

Thank you. I'd like to welcome Mr. Weber, who is a principal management analyst in the CAO's office. Welcome.

Good morning. Grant Weber, chief administrative office. So yeah, today's item is the six month review of the revised public comment procedure. So just a little history and background on today's item. At the board's good governance workshop back in September, the board directed staff to return with a discussion evaluating the current structure and identifying opportunities to enhance efficiency, transparency, and public engagement at regular board meetings. Staff returned to the board in November to have that discussion where we explored many options that targeted either efficiency, transparency, or public engagement. And specifically regarding creating efficiencies, the board decided to implement public comment related procedural changes at regular board meetings. The changes the board implemented at that time were to begin in calendar year 2026 with the first meeting being January 6th. And the board wanted to allow a roughly six month trial period for the new procedures before making further adjustments. And this item is being presented within that six month evaluation window. So I tried to create a visual here of exactly what that change in procedure looks like. As you can see, the separate comment periods for consent calendar items and closed session items were merged into one three minute comment period for the public to address all items in both areas of the agenda. This change was intended to allow the board to more easily recess into closed session throughout the day. In addition, public comment on all agenda items excluding public hearings were merged into one three-minute comment period when previously there was a comment period following each separate non-hearing item. There were no changes in procedure or timing for public hearing items or open forum as both of these comment periods still allow three minutes per speaker, meaning three minutes per speaker following each public hearing and three minutes for open forum. And as always, the public is encouraged to submit written public comments of any length regarding any item on the agenda and it will be included with the public record. So onto the data. So staff have collected data from 12 regular board meetings between January 6th and May 12th of this year. During that time, there were 374 public comments made with about half of those being from remote participants and a half in person. The average meeting length during that time was six hours, 53 minutes. This is 10 minutes or about two and a half percent longer when compared to the meeting length from the 12 board meetings prior to the change in procedure. It's important to note, however, that the board also reduced its number of annual meetings from 33 in 2025, which ends up being an average of 2.75 meetings per month to 28 meetings in 2026, which ends up being an average of 2.33 meetings per month. And this reduction is about 15%. Because the board reduced its total number of meetings by 15%, individual meetings were expected to become longer as agenda items were consolidated into fewer meetings. So when looking at the total time utilized for commenters across all categories, the average public comment length was two minutes, six seconds, with 25.1% of commenters utilizing the full time, which we characterized as coming in within five seconds of the full three minute time period. And from there, 23.3% utilized between two minutes, 30 seconds and two minutes, 54 seconds. Another 11 and a half percent came in in the 30 seconds below that. And so on with 14.2% of commenters utilizing under a minute of the three minute time limit. So when looking at the areas that we actually consolidated, the average commenter for the combined consent calendar and closed session comment period commented on 1.8 items for an average of two minutes, seven seconds, with 22% of speakers reaching the full three minute mark. And again, we characterize that by coming within five seconds of the full time period. And for the consolidated comment period for all non-hearing items, the average commenter commented on 1.3 items for an average of two minutes, 19 seconds, with 29% of speakers utilizing the full time. And before we get into our discussion on public comment procedure, I just wanted to touch on policies really quick because the revised public comment procedure is still in its trial phase. Staff have not made minor updates to board policy H1, which is communications to the board from a member of the public and board policy H2, which is communications from a member of the public for the public record. So depending on the board's direction regarding public comment procedures, staff recommend receiving direction from the board today to return with minor policy revisions to align these policies with current practice, whatever that may be by the end of our discussion. And in addition, staff recommend that the board adopt policy H4 titled teleconference disruption response policy to be in compliance with Senate bill 707. This policy outlines the procedures that the board will follow in the event of a remote access disruption. Under SB 707, if a disruption occurs that prevents the public from participating remotely, the board must recess the meeting for at least one hour, make a good faith effort to restore the disrupted service and resume the meeting without remote participation only after the board votes that sufficient efforts were made and that resuming the meeting without remote participation is in the public's best interest. And we are required to have a policy in place to address all of this by July 1st of this year. All right, so let's discuss and I'll be here trying to kind of capture everybody's ideas to incorporate into the board's action. I do want to say that if the board decides to make any changes to the meeting format that we implement those changes effective July 1st to allow us enough time to rebuild the agenda template and implement the changes.

Excellent. Thank you for that presentation. I will look to my colleagues to see who wants to start off. Discussion, questions, comments? Do you want to go?

Yeah, sure.

First of all, I just want to I truly appreciate the public's comment. And I actually prefer the old format. We're hearing the comment after the presentation. But I also think that there's a responsibility for the public to keep your comments concise to the agenda item. I don't think we need to be told what's on the agenda item. I don't think we need to know a weather forecast, where you're skiing. So, and that's a responsibility of the public to keep your comments concise to what's on the agenda. but I do prefer the old format. I do think the current format is more efficient with staff time, but personally, the old format serves me better. I kind of put together some ideas that I would, you know, I can even put this in a motion after discussion, but I would be fine with continuing the combining the closed session with consent items. I would like to go back to having public comment after the presentation of all non-hearing items, but I think we can reduce that time to two minutes. Allow three minutes for each hearing as we currently do. Allow three minutes for open forum. And then I asked Ms. Dawson last week if she reads the rules for public comment. at the beginning of each public comment and it's timely. And I asked her if that was required by law and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not.

You are correct. I think the practice really started during COVID and many of our constituents weren't very familiar with Zoom, but I think as we've progressed, so have our constituents evolved in their abilities. So agreed.

Yeah, I mean, most people that call in are pretty familiar with the process. Again, I would ask the public, if you're calling in, make sure you're unmuted and just keep the process moving. But I think that regarding the directions that the clerk gives, we don't have to do that with every item. Do it once in the morning and maybe once in the afternoon at open forum. So those are my thoughts.

just want to make sure i captured that so um continue to take public comment on closed session and consent combine them like we do like we do suggestion on length of time did you have uh three minutes as we currently yeah okay and then public comment after presentations on non-hearing items two minutes two minutes and public

comment for hearing items no change no three minutes and three minutes three minutes for open form and reduce or reduce the time or the amount of time kim uh reads the directions okay for public comment great other comments any questions yeah there's a lot here

And thank you for your thoughts on that, Supervisor Ferraro. I've given this a way lot of thought because I've been on both sides of the dais over the years. And I think Well, I'm gonna tackle the one easy thing first. So I had a suggestion for the new policy H4 that's required that we have to do. So on page two of that at the top, it talks about our process, if there's a disruption for the remote access, And then one of the paragraphs, and then it says, during an open session recess required due to remote access disruption, the board may opt to meet in closed session for any item properly agendized for closed session discussion at that meeting. And I thought it would be appropriate, and I did check with county council to put a comma there and just say, as long as the public has had an opportunity to make comment on the closed session items. And I know it's obvious that we would have to do that, but if somebody were to point to the policy and those words weren't in there, and my thought was like, what if first thing in the morning, which we almost had today, you know, we had... technical issue and we couldn't do the meeting we could not have gone into closed session so I just think that putting that phrase in there would be good and clarifying so that it's all incorporated so and I sent that text to our clerk so she has that and county council thought it was just a clarifying thing so I think that'd be an easy to do then as far as the public comment itself this is big So having been on the board, so Supervisor Vierkamp and I think were the only people that had been on the board prior to COVID. And so a lot's changed since then. And I think that's why the legislators decided to require counties and cities and jurisdictions to have and keep the virtual participation by the public. I heard a lot of folks making comments about, well, we need to go back to the way we used to do it back in the day. They didn't have the virtual capability that we have now. And it has changed things tremendously. And I can tell you other counties, are struggling with the same thing. I'm sure you guys talked to other supervisors and other counties that are meetings and they're all going, what are you guys doing with this? There were some counties that they, as soon as COVID was over and the requirement was done, they stopped the virtual participation by the public because it wasn't required. I recognize that I heard Last year, there was a little bit of chatter here at El Dorado County about also discontinuing that. Because to Supervisor Ferraro's point, it feels like there are folks that just call in kind of the chit chat, to be honest. And I know I'm saying things that aren't popular, but I'm going to say it, because I think folks need to hear it. And so where do you balance that? I remember about 10, 12 years ago, so we're going back in time, and I was very, I think you all know that, participatory as a member of the public. The county was doing the general plan update. It was a big deal. And at that time, the county broadcast the meetings out. And you can listen anywhere. although the internet wasn't as good as it is now, but we could listen anywhere. And I remember an item came up and I went, oh no, I didn't catch it on the agenda. And I talked to my supervisor later on and said, is there any way we can call in to make comments on items? And it was like, no, absolutely not. That's never gonna happen. But it has, and it's changed things So much and I don't feel like we've had time to really look and consider you know how that's impacting the board meetings. Personally. To tell us that we can't listen to comments in the morning and then recall them later in the day. I'm sorry. I find that almost insulting. And I know there's going to be a meme about me today for saying that. I don't care. You know. It's like we all take notes. There's five of us listening, plus staff. I think staff is an extraordinary job of listening to the public during comments and, um, I know when I was chair, the year that I was chair, I actually liked to lead the meetings as a team, and I asked my vice chair if she would help me actually write lists of all the comments that were made so that we made sure that we addressed them all. Because I remember Supervisor Santiago used to do that. I clearly remember that, distinctly remember that. So that's how I chose to chair the meetings. But... I feel that several folks have done really well of the public, have done really well with how the new format is. I'm going to call out specifically Linda Campbell. She does a great job of sending in her emails ahead, often on Friday, so that when I'm reading my agenda over the weekend, I can look at it, staff has a chance to look at it, and then we address them here. Linda made a comment this morning about the consent calendar, and I hadn't seen it the way she did. I totally heard her ticket to heart, and my vote coming in changed based on that. So to say that we don't hear and we don't listen, I don't agree with that at all. I really thought our board meetings this year were going to be extremely long, extremely long because the board decided to cut down the number. I think that the changing the way we're doing the comment has helped streamline that. To Supervisor Ferrer, to your point, I feel that because the public has less time, they are being more efficient with their time. I mean, the comments are more concise. I'll be honest, when somebody rambles on for three minutes, and I'm trying to listen, you guys, you see me taking notes, I'm ready. But if somebody's going on for three minutes, it's hard to dig out that nugget that actually pertains to what we're talking about. And we can't force the public to stay on topic. We have tried that in the past, and the chair ends up getting in arguments with people. County council says, you know what? It's not worth our time to try to stop people and redirect them to get on point. Because kind of, sort of, you could make almost anything be about anything we're talking about. It just, it doesn't work. I appreciate you bringing that up, Ruth. But trying to redirect people, people have the right to speak on things. And I'd rather... listen to their full comment even if it goes sideways a little bit then trying to argue about hey you're not on topic it just unless it's blatant and that rarely ever happens so um I know that I mentioned this I was at RCRC last week I mentioned that we were going to have this agenda item today to some of my um fellow county supervisors and they are all intrigued because they are struggling too um The state legislators now requires that we have to have the virtual online. I don't think a single legislator came to us and said, how are you guys doing with that? Can you give us some guidance on how it's going and all that? And I don't know. I was a little bit also not to say that everything is done here in the boardroom. I am out in the community, oh my gosh, so much. My residents know where to find me at what events that I go to regularly. I'm invited to special events. So, and I think all of us are. So to say that we're only here in the boardroom on Tuesdays doing our work, that is so inaccurate. I got a huge thank you yesterday from one of my constituents for the work we're doing here at the county at a breakfast. So I don't know. I am actually liking the way this is going. I never thought I would say that. You know that, Supervisor Lane, when you brought it up the first time I went, that sounds insane. I feel it's working. It's forcing all of us, and I rambled on for how long now, and you can't stop me. So it's nice to be on this side of the dais for a little bit longer. But no, really, I think it has gone well. I think it's made... the public not go on and tell us about the weather, wherever they are, or quite honestly, I'm going to say it, mansplain what we're doing. That is just not helpful. So I suggest we stick with this a little bit longer, see if we can help, you know, get everybody on board with why it's working. If anybody, you know, wants to send us emails with their comments, truly that is the easiest way. Paul, you came and read, you read us an email that Lee Tenenbaum sent us. I read it last week or whenever he sent it, you know, it's like, I don't know what to say. It would have been cooler if you had said, did you see this? And asked us a question so we could respond to it. I don't know. I just, it's super frustrating. I think on both sides right now, the online has changed everything. And to say we need to go back to the way that Supervisor Sweeney did it, good. Let's not have the virtual then. Because that's what you're saying to me. Done.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Vierkamp.

Yeah, well, I was not entirely in favor of the change and yet went along with it because I believe we can pilot anything and we can give it a try. I think it has streamlined the meetings. Every agenda is going to have different time requirements and how the outcomes and the participation goes. And our discussion is going to directly reflect how long that meeting goes. I think there's been efficiencies that have been created. But I also am probably 30 years of sitting on boards that we've always taken public comment when the item came up. And we did our best to manage the public comment so things were as efficient as possible. And I think we are attempting to do that here. You know, as Supervisor Novosel always used to state, our governance meetings are required to be in the public but are not required to be public hearing meetings. meetings uh you know obviously it's a public hearing we have to have public comment on but we're not required to do any of those things at this point virtually now we are my concern about 1087 being at the meals rather than being later when they pass the legislation that they always seem to pass We are getting quite a bit of public comment, obviously before the item at open forum. So, and we are listening. I too, I think all of you sit around and work around the county where we're interfacing with people all the time, but it seems to be the same handful that come here to complain about, I don't care what the issue is, as well as giving us the weather report on the ski slopes that are what the snow conditions are. And again, that's a waste and inefficient. I really have issue, too, with the Taxpayers Association talking about efficiencies and public input, and yet not one of them mentioned what it costs for the people to sit here, as we do, with staff people at at least $100 an hour salary and benefits for hours upon hours when those other type of comments are being made to have nothing to do with what the item may be. I'm willing... to try to go back to the old system. But I'm also willing to let this work a little longer. Six months data doesn't appear to be much to me. We did cut back the number of meetings. We've kept the total time in a reasonable fashion. So I'm willing to continue doing this because I think there's plenty of ample time. Send in your comment. Comment before the meeting. I, too, sit here and take notes, just like I watch all of you do. the item and we usually bring up and clarify or answer the question so I find that as a little bit of a slap in the face to myself as well that we're not paying attention so I like the old method because it's something we've done forever but again the world is changing as well as legislation is changing and mandating things on as to where we have to attempt to be more efficient and to manage the time element so There you go.

Okay. Thank you. Good comments. The one thing I kind of wanted to report out is how we are trying to manage the agenda. Well, recently with Vice Chair Ferraro, our Chief Administrative Officer, County Council, and the Clerk of the Board, we meet to discuss how the agenda is going to flow. And we've really spent a good amount of time trying to align things in such a way that it allows for the maximum participation by the public. There are rules that govern whether or not a hearing is considered a public hearing. And I heard the comment earlier this morning about We notice everything's a public hearing on this agenda with the exception of this one particular item. And I wanted to put County Council on the spot a little bit to just comment on what governs whether or not a hearing is considered a public hearing.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to address that. I anticipated that you might want a little bit of clarity on that. I heard the public comment about it. And I do think it's important to note that when an item is scheduled as a hearing on your agenda, it's not through some kind of arbitrary decision of staff or the chair in preparing the agenda. It's because there is either a state law or a local requirement that requires that we have to have that item heard as a hearing. I'm not really prepared to address all of them. Frankly, I'm not sure I could acknowledge all of the different ways, but for example, and some of the more common ones we see, so we've seen items where we're making amendments to the zoning code. Well, under the planning and zoning law, those actions can only be done after a notice of public hearing. Adoption or increase of fees under the mitigation fee act have to be done at a notice of public hearing. budget present presentation today is is a hearing as is the aqmd budget uh these are things that by statute are required to be done in a hearing as far as local requirements go we do have a resolution that when we're declaring um disposition of excess tax proceeds from a tax sale that that decision is made as part of a public hearing so um I just want to acknowledge that so that it's not as if there is discretionary decision made as this matter is important, we should give it a hearing so the public can have additional independent time to speak. It's simply because the statute or the local requirements would mandate that action.

excellent thank you for that um and you know the decision to make item number 30 the item we're talking about right now time specific right after public comment was to try to align that we knew that there would be a lot of public comment on it we wanted to align it as closely to to the one we actually discussed it. I mean, in agenda review, we could have made the decision to put item number 30 at the end and do all the public hearings first. So we're trying to be very cognizant on the agenda and aligning things in such a way that the public comment is as close to the matter as possible. I also concur that when I was first exposed to this way of taking public comment. I absolutely thought it was an effort to mute the public. And I, love hearing public comment. Just as you said earlier, Supervisor Parlin, Linda Campbell's comments on a specific item made us think, oh, wait a second. Okay, yeah, and we retooled. So public comment is important. And whether or not it's important to take it after the presentation, or not is something that we can decide. We routinely do not deliberate and have our public discussion until after public comment. So the idea that people want to know what we're thinking, we haven't even, you know, the old process was such that we had the presentation, maybe we had some clarifying questions, we took public comment, and then we deliberated. So You know, it's semantics, really. I need public comment. I pay attention to public comment. How we take the public comment and when is less concerning to me, but more concerning that it be allowed and that it be heard and that we take it seriously. And I don't think that this change has eliminated that at all. But I do understand the public's feeling that it's being done punitively. And I just wanted to say that that's really not true. We are trying to have more efficient meetings. We're trying to make things time certain so that there's certainty for staff and the public as to when an item might be heard. You can see we're well off. that at this point, but that's okay. That's part of the process. So Supervisor Ferrero, you made some comments on some tweaks. I've heard some comments that we think it's working pretty good. Maybe we just do it a little bit longer. It's the will of the board. So where would you like to go from here?

I'd like to continue on. and then you guys can figure it out next year when I'm gone. And I'll show up and give you my thoughts, how's that?

Supervisor Vierkamp, were you going to chime in? No. No, okay, Supervisor Ferreira.

It sounds like the three of you are kind of on the same page about continuing on. What are you talking about, maybe like for six more months or what's your thoughts?

Let's just finish out the year and you guys can hash it out next year. Honestly, you'll have a new board member who will have opinions too. So it's probably the right way to do it.

Yeah, I mean, listen to what the three of you said. I agree with almost all of it, right? This process is just my personal preference. I like to do it all the way. But if you're suggesting we have a grandstand and make a motion and vote no, But that's going to divide us. And what I don't want to happen is all over social media saying Ferrer is the only one that cares about us because, no, that's not true. And your reasons are very valid. So if you want to continue this process for a number of months or until the end of the year, I will support that.

Okay. Thank you for that. that you know we've worked really hard to try to build a team here that represents el dorado county to our very best ability collectively not just individually and and your comments right now um are actually pretty amazing that you would even think that way so thank you i'm not going to win and it's just like i said it's going to create problems with the board and um i don't want that to happen um

So, because this process, I think it is working. It's just, like I said, this is my preference.

Yeah. Gotcha. All right. Well, is there a motion?

Sure. And just to clarify, the motion would also include as far as board policy H4, the additional language, as long as the public has an opportunity to make comment on the closed session items. Okay.

Thank you, clerk of the board for that.

Thank you.

so i'll move that we um continue oh it's on our screen oh kim's got on our screen for us right the motion oh grant oh these are the thoughts okay so the motion would be to continue um the current public comment policy add the additional language to new board policy h4 and is there anything else we need to include in the motion then with the changes suggested Do we need to make any, yeah, the H, on our agenda, it's little item, you know, number three that says, do we need to make necessary changes to H1 and H2, or will staff bring those back?

All right, so I have, so make no changes to the public comment procedure, continue with the format implemented January 26 for the remainder of 2026, and then the necessary changes for policies H1 and H2, and then approve and adopt board policy H4 and incorporate the changes suggested by Supervisor Parlin.

There, thank you, Grant. Appreciate the motion on the screen.

Okay, move.

Second. Second.

Okay, there's a motion and a second. Further comments or deliberation? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

Thank you, we'll go ahead and move to our budget hearing. This is item number 31. I'd like to go ahead and open the public hearing and ask the clerk of the board to read this item into the record.

Item 31 is a hearing from the Chief Administrative Office recommending the board, one, open the budget hearing and receive a budget presentation on the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget. Two, approve the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget. Three, authorize the facilities division of the chief administrative office and the department of transportation to proceed with the capital projects and road work plans. Four, approve the fixed asset listings. Five, approve the fiscal year 26-27 risk general liability, retiree health and workers' compensation charges. Six, approve vehicles for permanent assignment and overnight retention. Seven, adopt and authorize the chairs to sign a resolution to A, approve the authorized personnel allocation for fiscal year 26-27. B, approve the expiration dates of the limited term allocations. C, authorize the Human Resources Department to initiate and process a reduction of force of four full-time equivalent filled and D approve the continuation of underfill arrangements and eight direct staff to return to the board on September 26, 2026 with proposed amendments for fiscal year 26, 27 budget for inclusion in the adopted budget and later adoption by resolution. Written public comments received by 4 p.m. on the day prior to today's meeting were distributed to all board members and included with this agenda item.

Thank you, Ms. Dawson. I'd like to welcome Ms. Owens at this time and her new title as the Chief Budget Officer in the CAO's office. Welcome.

Thank you. So before I jump into content, I first want to thank the department heads and their budget staff. This really is a collaborative document that we work really hard with department heads. over many months to to develop and department heads and their staff are so quick to answer questions to reach out to our cao analysts so it is our staff our little small and mighty six person team who develop and write the budget but we couldn't do it without the department heads So here we are at the budget hearing. Just as a reminder, I presented back on April 28th and got direction from the board on the budget. And then we furiously worked and published the budget on May 27th, which was 14 days ago. And here we are at the budget hearing on June 9th. So the budget that you're reviewing today actually doesn't go into place, doesn't start until July 1st, so a few weeks from now. After the financial records have closed for the current fiscal year, 25-26, we will update the budget and then return on September 22nd to present our adopted budget. And then we'll bring the resolution to actually formally adopt this budget on September 29th, just a few days before the October 2nd deadline where we have to adopt a budget.

So that's the sort of next steps.

Another few reminders that we always have about why we develop the budget the way we do is we develop the budget in compliance with the County Budget Act and has some pretty specific requirements. And that's about not just the general fund, but all of the budgets that the board has control over. And so the thing we always remind you is today you can make changes to the budget, but the County budget always has to balance. So if you want to increase an expense, you either need to increase a revenue or decrease an expense. If you make changes today, it only takes a three-fifths vote to approve the recommended budget at the hearing today. But after the hearing, any changes take a fourth-fifths vote, except removing money between services and supplies. And then a public hearing is required. As Dave mentioned, the County Budget Act says that we have to have a public hearing. Okay, jumping into the numbers. This slide shows the size of the budget. So total appropriations are $1.25 billion, and that is every single expense across every single fund that the board has control over. And so it's the biggest number, but the subset that we most often talk about is governmental funds. And so governmental funds excludes things like our proprietary funds, which is like airport risk, and some of the special districts that the board has control over. So really when we're talking about the whole budget and not just the general fund, we typically mention governmental funds. So governmental funds is a little over $1 billion and it's a $39 million decrease from the recommended budget. And this decrease really is because we had some really large projects in DOT, and we built most, and we're almost done with the Mosquito Bridge, so not as many of those appropriations are carrying over into this year. And so that change really is due to those large projects in DOT. Then if you look at a subset of governmental funds, you can see the general fund and the general fund is decreasing by 15 million, or no, it's a $15 million increase. And this is the entire general fund. So it's not the net county cost. When you look at the total general fund, there's discretionary revenues, but there's also state and federal revenues for specific services like social services and child support services. So the board doesn't have total discretion over everything that's in the general fund. And the increase in the general fund is primarily due to the Office of Wildfire Preparedness and Resilience. We have some grant projects that have large state and federal funding. And so that's why that general fund appropriations are increasing. the smallest subset which we talk about the most is net county cost and that is each department's use of this each department's use of discretionary revenues so that's saying when they don't have revenues within their own department we have general discretionary revenues that need to cover those costs and that's the one that we talk about the most in the county and we're looking at net county cost it is increasing by seven million in the recommended budget And that's primarily due to board-approved compensation increases, the increase in health insurance that we've talked about a few times this year, and then also the impacts of HR1 that we talked about back in April. So it's contributing to that $7.64 million increase. So that's the overall size of the budget, but I just want to pivot to revenues for just a couple slides. So the billion dollar... Quick question.

Do you want questions as you go? Yes. Okay. This is the part I always struggle with, just understanding in my mind. So the general fund, when you say the general fund has $486 million in it, and then you say the net county cost is a little over $200 million. If you do the math, does that mean we have like $250 million in general fund that is Discretionary? I don't know how to use the word.

So yeah, we have about 216. That's purely department's net county costs that's funded by discretionary revenues. The other half of it, a little more than half of it, is funded by kind of restricted funds. So child support's a great example. They're in the general fund. Their whole budget is in a general fund appropriation, but their entire budget, but $1,000 is covered by state and federal funding as a reimbursement for their costs.

So it's part of that remaining 250 million. So my better question might be of the 250 million that is not part of net county cost, what amount of that 250 million is not being regulated in some other way? What amount is just really a safety net there?

I would say most of it is from some funds that are restricted in some way. So a lot of that is we pull in a transfer from a restricted fund, but we actually expend the expenses in the general fund. So an example would be in EMS, some of our ambulance billing staff, those expenses for that staff is in the general fund, but their time spent is pulled from the county service areas that fund that system.

So is there any...

discretionary the 216 million is is really the board's discretion in the general fund yeah okay thank you Okay, so moving to revenues. I wanted to just show revenues by type across governmental funds. So this is looking at all governmental funds. And the $1 billion number is a big number. But when you look at it, 368, so about a third of it, is from intergovernmental revenue. That's about a third of the time at least because they also there's also fund balance associated with those, which is the next largest category residual equity and fund balance. And it's a lot of times where the county is mandated to provide a service and we get state and federal funding to provide that service. And so I just wanted to show that we have that big number. But really, a lot of it is where the county is operating as an arm of the state and federal government and providing a service we have to do so we get revenue to provide that service. So looking at fund balance, switching to the general fund, this slide shows just general fund fund balance. And this is funding from the current year, 25-26, that we're anticipating not to be spent in the current year. And it rolls over into the next year to be that we need to rebudget as fund balance in the current recommended budget. So back in February, we had all departments submit to us their estimates on how much fund balance they would be. And we presented our mid-year budget report with what we were thinking fund balance would be then. And the mid-year report, we were estimating 16 million. Today, we have $21.8 million in fund balance. And this is still a really conservative estimate because the year hasn't ended. And so maybe a car that the department was thinking was going to be delivered today next week doesn't get delivered and so we actually have more balance because we're not paying that car till next year so right now fund balance on the recommended budget will always be an estimate and as far as i've ever seen in the county it always been significantly less than what it ends up being at the end of the year excluding maybe 2000, the financial crisis. So what's changed since mid-year? Contingency hasn't changed since mid-year. Our carry forward projects have increased a little bit, and that's primarily due to the HHSA carrying over their indirect cost rate plan designation funding from the general fund. They were able to shift some expenses and not spend it in the current year, and so they're anticipating to carry it over into next year. And then there's also some projects that we are carrying over from transportation, American Rescue Plan Act, lost revenue projects that are being carried over into the next year that increase that amount. revenues that increase. So back in April, I talked a lot about increases to sales and use tax that we were projecting and PILT revenue that we were projecting. So those haven't changed in the recommended budget. But there also is a little more fund balance due to interest revenue, which we're projecting at $4.75 million in the current year. So that added $750,000 to this fund balance number. And then departmental savings are only projected to increase about $800,000 in the recommended budget. And that's primarily due to... HHSA giving up some of their public health lost revenue ARPA in order to cover some of that HR1 gap, and then a transportation project had a little bit of savings. So that's the changes in fund balance. This is a new slide that I haven't showed before because we talk a lot about general fund revenues and I thought it would be good to put them side by side so you can kind of see the proportions here. And because we talk about property tax a lot and that's because property tax is a lot of our discretionary revenue. You can see it's 134 million in the recommended budget. That's all taxes related to property taxes. And that's 67% of all of these revenues. So property taxes more than all the other revenues combined. After property taxes, sales and use tax. And that's the same assumption I showed you back in April. And then there is the countywide cost allocation plan. So we recoup the cost of centralized services like developing the budget in the cost plan. And so departments with outside funding pay for those services back through the cost plan. So that's 17 million. And then it goes to TOT and the smaller ones. But I really wanted to show you how much We depend on property taxes for our discretionary revenues.

What's the total on this slide, Emma? Oh, my goodness. Well, I think because it speaks to what Supervisor Lane was asking earlier about what's discretionary, and this is it.

That's about it. There's a couple maybe littler things, but this is about it, yeah. Okay. And I don't have that note in my notes.

It's like upwards of 189 million. Okay. Roughly adding the numbers.

And it doesn't have fund balance on it. So fund balance added into there.

Okay.

Okay, switching from revenues back to appropriations. This is a slide we have every year. This is total appropriations by functional group. So this is all of the governmental fund expenses in that functional group, not just their net county cost. And so here you can see that overall things are increasing by 5.3 million. In the general government group, it's increasing by 23 million. Again, that is that Office of Wildfire Preparedness and Resilience grant. And because it has outside funding, it still shows here as an increased expense because we're not looking at net county cost. Law and justice is increasing by 9 million. That's primarily due to compensation increases from 504 and from the criminal attorneys increases. And then land use and development is increasing or decreasing by 37 million. And again, that's because of those really large projects that they're completing. So the mosquito bridge project doesn't have as many appropriations in the recommended budget as it does in the current year's budget because they're almost done. And then also the end of the ice house road pavement project. And then the Health and Human Services Functional Group is increasing by 9 million, and that's primarily due to the Behavioral Health Division kind of adapting things to BHSA, and then also that opioid settlement funding that we had that is increasing those appropriations. So in contrast to total appropriations, here's net county cost by functional group. And so here you can see that across all the functional groups, the use of discretionary resources is increasing by 7.6 million, which is a 4% increase, and that's compared to adopted budget. And so the general government increase is 1.5 million, and that's primarily due to board-approved compensation increases and health insurance premiums. The law and justice group is increasing by $5 million, and that's the same as the prior slide. It's compensation increases. Land use and development is reduced by $1.1 million, and that's primarily because we haven't quite met our road maintenance goal, but we're really hoping in adoptive budget, as we do every year when we hit those, we usually adopt those goals in adoptive budget, because we'll be able to get that one back up to meet that goal. And then the Health and Human Services Functional Group is increasing by 2.1 million, and that's due to the additional support required from HR1, and it's also due to compensation and cost-applied increases in animal services and our adult and aging continuum of care. Oh, I switched it. Aging and adult continuum of care. There we go.

So just quick question. Just comparing this the prior slide of this slide with Health and Human Services. I think that helps if you can see there was a slide that showed their increase of like 9 million.

Yes, so their total appropriations are 9 million.

So the 2.1 that's coming out of general fund 2.1 is purely net county cost grant funded. And yeah, okay. All right. Thanks.

So when we compare the two, I like to put them side by side. You can see kind of what the difference is between total appropriations on the top and net county costs on the bottom. So when you're looking at land use and development and health and human services, there's 60%, 7% of total appropriations. But then when you look down at net county costs, they're only 16% of the net county costs part. And that's because they have large sources of funding outside discretionary resources. which isn't quite the case for general government and law and justice, which is just how the services have been built over time. So now I'm just going to highlight a few of the major changes in each functional group. So we are making... Sorry. Okay. We have an ACO work plan of $65 million that we're investing in county facilities, which includes the end of the jail expansion project and the 24 million behavioral health SOAR project, which is moving our psychiatric health facility over to the government center. Across the general government departments, there's a net deletion of five FTE, and this includes a 2.0 FTE filled position deletion in the chief administrative office. We have the 1.1 million four bay park improvement project, and so we didn't discuss this back in april because in may the city of placerville requested that the county fund 35 000 for the placerville pool we had already finalized the budget by the time that we saw their agenda item so we didn't include it in the recommended budget because we'd already finalized everything but i wanted to mention it here because they did the council did pass that thing requesting 35 000 and i do want to note that we didn't fund the pool in the current fiscal year say that we did not fund the pool in the current fiscal year there's also 24.5 million in state and federal funding for a whopper which i've already mentioned a couple times and then following your direction in april the recommended budget designates 7.87 million for projects that benefit the mosquito fire footprint area it's a brand new general fund designation In the law and justice functional group, we have the RISE pilot project in probation that's funded with Prop 47 grant funding. There is the addition, as I mentioned in April, of two FTE probation assistance to increase compliance monitoring for pretrial services. And then there's also the addition of staff in the public defender and district attorney's office that is funded with opioid settlement funding.

So that's kind of the highlights for law and justice. That's one-time money, the opioid settlement money, right? So if we fund positions on using those funds, is there a stipulation that when the funding dries up that those positions might change?

We had that conversation with both of those departments. It isn't quite one-time money, so it's settlement that we'll have for a few years. So there is a few years before we need to kind of reevaluate that, but we will continue to watch that and reevaluate it. So land use and development. The first one is the very exciting announcement that there's $9 million in appropriations for the completion of the Mosquito Bridge. That's a $100 million project. And we just have the last $9 million in this budget. There's the completion of the Union Mine Wastewater Headworks Project. And then, due to a reorganization resulting from changes in operational needs there's a reduction force of one FTE position in the surveyors office and then lastly there's 1.5 million of state emergency funding for the eradication of the glassy winged sharpshooter. Last functional group is Health and Human Services. Overall, there's $125 million in intergovernmental revenue for HHSA programs. So again, that's programs that HHSA has to provide that are mandated programs from the state and federal government. There is the change from the Mental Health Services Act to the Behavioral Health Services Act in this budget. So this is the first year. This is when everything gets put into place. into place and then there is 853 000 in discretionary funding for hr1 impacts as we discussed back in april there's the addition of an agency compliance officer in hhsa but overall in hhsa there's a net decrease of 0.4 fte and then lastly there's 16 000 in appropriations for the library to absorb from central services all their weekly book and media deliveries between el dorado county library locations And if you read in the budget book, we have program summaries describing each program and library. Their circulation numbers are quite impressive. If people want to go take a look in there and how much books and materials the libraries are moving every day.

Can I ask a question about the middle slide here, the $853,000 in discretionary funding? Mm-hmm. How do you define discretionary funding comes out of the general fund and it's either leftover property tax, sales tax, discretionary TOT, whatever that looks like. So it's nearly a million dollars that we are supplementing because of the HR1 impacts.

Yeah, we have some real slight glimmers of hope from the states that we might get a little bit of funding to address some of this, but there's no way that we're going to get enough funding to address all the impacts of HR1. Okay, and so... And nothing's finalized, so we would have included it, but nothing's finalized in the state budget yet.

Gotcha, and it will be by the time we get to September. That discretionary funding, like, that's the piece I keep trying to drill down to, like, How much discretionary funding do we have that is not being allocated to something?

Oh, well, right now, because the budget is balanced, everything has been allocated to something. So it's either been allocated to contingency, which is basically us holding that discretionary funding in case there's an emergency, or we've put it to a reserve or a designation. But because the budget is balanced, everything has been allocated to something.

There's no allocation of just discretionary money not allocated to something. Contingency.

Contingency.

And how much is in contingency? Is that the 250?

No, contingency is eight point something. Okay.

I'm going to get it one of these days. Keep going.

Back to the HR1 fundings. Is this a worst case scenario for this year if the state doesn't contribute any more money? This is the worst case scenario?

This is assuming the state gives us no additional funding to cover HR1 impacts. It also does not include the impacts of HR1 on eligibility staff, as we discussed in April. For this year. Yeah, we're seeing how this is actually going to play out for our staff time, and then we can better incorporate it into the budget. And I'm looking up contingency because it's going to bother me for the rest of the presentation. It is $8.2 million.

Thank you.

Emma, do we have a breakdown on the HR1 social services programs that this 853 covers?

That is purely the CalFresh administrative cost shift.

CalFresh administrative costs, okay.

So that's the eligibility worker increases that we're gonna need to?

So that is the administrative, sorry, the CalFresh administrative costs for CalFresh. so before there was a formula where the count the state and the counties were paying less in hr1 the federal government reduced how much they contribute so then our share of what's left of the cal fresh administrative costs increased right what i've been reading says that we're going to need more eligibility workers because people have to be processed through for eligibility twice a year and there's gonna be more to it so

That's why the administrative increase is there. It's not going to be enough.

We have not included any of that increase in the budget. So we have not increased staff to that because we need to see more on what the processes could be and how much it will actually increase staff. This is purely based on the current rates of what our CalFresh administrative costs are. by hr1 decreased how much the federal government it's based on the current rate it's just that formula and so we haven't even accounted for that increase in the eligibility workers that we know is coming um okay so and we don't know if that's going to come with extra funding either there's some small glimmers of hope that there might be some funding the may revised included a recommendation for a little bit of funding for eligibility staff but that hasn't been finalized at the state yet

So we might be having to add more to this effort then, right?

Right, so as Emma's saying, there's two things at play. What we've accounted for is basically a direct reduction in reimbursement for administrative costs, but we haven't accounted for potential additional needed staff based on the workload. We're gonna see how that goes. And then as Supervisor Lane pointed out, hopefully by the adopted budget, we have a better idea of what the state is willing to help with on these impacts. We may not fully understand the workload impacts yet. So that'll be a little bit of a work in progress for the department to work through. But we'll have a little bit more certainty about if the state is going to provide any relief based on the direct reimbursement issues that we're experiencing.

Okay. And with the HR1 and that increase of eligibility requirements and how often and all, there was no funding with that either, correct?

So I've been talking about the things that are in the budget, but as we've been sort of having the slide and many iterations over the past two years, this really is a restricted growth budget. We asked departments to restrict their growth as much as they can in the use of discretionary resources. Departments really did answer that call where they could, but these cost pressures continue, and that includes cost increases like health insurance increasing 13% in 2026, General inflation in April was 3.8% compared to the prior year. As we were just discussing with HR1, there are state and federal budget and policy changes that are really impacting our budgets and our workloads for departments. And then we just have slowing growth in discretionary resources. we were able to balance the budget without reducing service levels for the vast, you know, departments really came through and were able to work within their discretionary resource they had where they could, and we were able to balance the budget. but there are a lot of jurisdictions that are not having as easy of a task or conversation today or this week and we just wanted to highlight that due to our restraint and department's cooperation this year due to some really tough challenges and choices we made last year we were able to balance this budget but it's not alone in el dorado county statewide counties and cities are grappling grappling with these same budget pressures And this is just my last reminder that we will be coming back in September once we have actual fund balance. And so typically we have more because we're conservative in how we estimate fund balance. And that's where we'll hopefully meet the rest of our board budget policies. And then we hopefully will have more information from the state budget on the impacts of state budgets and federal budgets. Probably won't have much more on federal budgets in September, but definitely state budgets in September. And so this is the action that we're asking you to take today, but we can pause for public comment and then come back to board discussion and action.

Thank you for that presentation. Are there any clarifying questions that you wanna ask at this time before we take public comment? Okay, seeing none, then let's go ahead and open this up to public comment and do wanna remind us that we did receive a couple written comments as the clerk of the board already pointed out. Those are part of our packet. Madam Clerk, will you please open public comment?

We are now taking public comment specifically on item 31, For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments. Good morning.

Chris Payne, Diamond Springs. Just a few comments. Thank you, Emma. Excellent presentation. There's no category that I can see that's easily looked at by the public where it describes investments that gets us a return on investment, meaning money goes in, let's say a million dollars, but we get let's say 10 million return on investment. If we had those, if we had a block of those types, then the board could say, hey, I think this one, we ought to include it this year. Maybe we can't include all of them, but we could start including some of them because we're gonna get money in return. Does that make sense? Makes sense to me. Obviously. That notion of what the economic impacts of how we operate in the county, it brings up something that said to me, somebody told me that this county, El Dorado County, is not doing as much on economic incentive as we ought to be. Yeah. Is that true or not true? I guess if I could look at it year over year from last year to this year, and it shows that we are not doing what I just said to you, making investments which will lead to return on investments, then you, it's more difficult then for you to know whether we're doing well or not. And what do you tell your constituents if they ask you that question? I would like to think that we are investing in our future, even though we've had some rough times. Emma, obviously last year when she made her presentation, it was a little bit, I guess I took it and maybe the public did as we're really cutting back, dramatically so, in all of the discussions we had here at the Board of Supervisors related to that. As you know, I'm interested in history. So I'm always looking at those things that's gonna make some future better related to preservation of history. In this case, I'm also involved with the railroad and I know that we're doing a phenomenal job. Tickets are sold out. But then we have constraint based on what money we have available to make the improvements necessary in order to get more people to come to El Dorado County. But if they do come, they spend. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public?

Good morning. Good morning, supervisors. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Diane Rabinowitz. I'm president of the board of NAMI El Dorado County. I would like to thank Sue Phillips and county staff for their work developing a balanced budget that meets both state requirements and county fiscal goals. However, I am concerned that balancing the budget has come at the expense of at least one important service, Clubhouse El Dorado. For more than 30 years, NAMI El Dorado County provided support and education to individuals and families affected by mental illness at no cost to the county. In 2024, after two years of planning and collaboration, county awarded NAMI a contract to establish Clubhouse El Dorado. In less than two years, Clubhouse membership has grown to 330 members. These are individuals who are moving away from the downward spiral of mental illness and toward employment, education, stable housing, improved health, meaningful relationships, and productive participation in our community. This is not only a life-changing service, it's a fiscally responsible investment. An annual investment of $300,000 has enabled Clubhouse El Dorado to serve approximately 300 members at a cost of just $1,000 per person per year. Without ongoing funding, however, this vital program will be forced to close its doors, leaving hundreds of individuals without the support and community that are helping them achieve recovery and stability. By comparison, publicly available county documents estimate that a single mobile crisis response costs approximately 1,750 per person served. If an individual's situation escalates into a law enforcement encounter, the public costs can range from $15,000 to $35,000 per incident when arrest, incarceration, mental health services, psychiatric hospitalization, and court proceedings are included. So the county could spend a thousand per person per year to help prevent outcomes that can cost many times more. There's also an opportunity to reduce administrative costs through the state's BH Connect Clubhouse Benefit. Reimbursement can be provided through a bundled rate rather than a detailed invoice reviews, reducing staff time and administrative burden. For these reasons, I respectfully urge the board to continue to ask the Department of Behavioral Health to reconsider utilizing BH Connect to fund Clubhouse El Dorado and any other funding sources that you can provide will welcome. Clubhouse El Dorado is delivering measurable results, reducing reliance on costly crisis systems, and providing a strong return on investment for both the county and taxpayers. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning.

Madam Chair and honorable supervisors, my name is Bob Landry. I'm the treasurer and a board member for Nami El Dorado County. In a former life, I was a chief deputy for the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, and I oversaw the preparation and execution of a general fund budget exceeding $283 million. I would ask the board to view Clubhouse not as an expense, but as an investment that helps us reduce the more expensive utilization and lessens the impact on the general fund. The individuals we serve are often the same residents who are at risk of repeated psychiatric hospitalizations, homelessness, incarceration, crisis services, and emergency department use. Those interventions are necessary when people are in crisis, but they are also among the most expensive of the services of the behavioral health system. The clubhouse model exists to help prevent those crises by providing something traditional treatment alone does not often do, daily connection, meaningful activity, employment support, housing support, and a community that keeps people engaged in recovery. Since opening less than two years ago, Clubhouse El Dorado has grown to more than 330 members. Our members have secured more than 90 jobs, obtained housing, pursued educational goals, and built the social supports that help keep them stable and engaged in the community. At a relatively modest cost, the clubhouse served hundreds of residents throughout the year. The cost of supporting a member through the clubhouse is a fraction of the cost of psychiatric hospitalization, incarceration, homelessness services, or repeated crisis intervention. The county is investing significant resources in housing and treatment. The clubhouse helps protect that investment by giving people the support they need to maintain housing, stay connected to services, and continue moving towards independence. We are asking the county to preserve this highly cost-effective program and pursue all available funding options, including BH Connect. We are prepared to do whatever is necessary to meet county requirements and ensure that the service remains available to El Dorado County residents. Without sustainable funding solution, Clubhouse El Dorado will exhaust its remaining resources and be close to close its doors in October. From a budget perspective, Clubhouse El Dorado is not a cost. It's an investment that pays dividends for the county and the people that they serve. Simply put, Clubhouse doesn't cost the county money. It saves the county money. I appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Hello again.

Shannon Starr, Operating Engineers, Local 3. I have actually just two things. One is a question, probably more for Emma, but the slide mentioned $4 million in interest earned. But anybody who's been to the forums for the treasurer or tax collector heard Sean say that they're on track for $38 million in interest earned. So I'm just wondering where the other $34 million is going. um and then the other part um i just think it's important to note um oe3 did a um an audit of the county over a five-year period from 2020 to 2025 and a pattern emerged and i see that pattern coming up again and the pattern is that every year the county says it doesn't meet its revenue projections because the county overestimates its revenues by approximately 20 million dollars The county also comes in every year with approximately $20 million that it's able to roll over into the next year's budget. So there's kind of a $40 million gap there that I'm kind of just wondering. It seems to be a pattern. When we looked historically, we saw that the revenues were over-projected by about $20 million, and the expenses seemed to come in $20 million under $20 million. Which are 40 million under which left a 20 million rollover. So I just think that's something That the board should be looking at.

Thank you. Thank you Are there other members of the public that wish to address the board on the budget Good morning

Donna Mullins-Becker from the Veterans Affairs Commission. I am currently a alternate for District 2. I'm here just to request that the board continue to support our group. in the full amount of 175,000. There's been a reduction of about 20,000 in proposed budget. And I just wanted to share with you that we have as per your direction, when we met with you, I believe back in August, I think it was of last year, you requested that we spend down our balance. And we have done so. Recently, we just awarded $160,000 in mini grants to nonprofits throughout our county. And we also did a one-time funding for those that were desperately in need right now. And that was 75,000. So that left us with 10,000 in the foundation. And of that 10,000, 5,000 will go towards the administration fee, which is part of the contract for the county. So we're hoping that you will reconsider and go ahead and fund us the full amount of 175 so that we can continue to support our veterans here in El Dorado County, which we all know that there are many out there that desperately need our help. And I understand there's a lot of other people that need help as well, but our veterans are some of the most vulnerable, if you will, given the current times that we have. So again, we respectfully request that you increase that to 175,000. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning again. I am Jim Abram, chairman of the El Dorado County Behavioral Health Commission. Behavioral Health Commission's duty is to review and evaluate the county's behavioral health needs services and special problems and advise the Board of Supervisors on any aspect of behavioral health programs. That's within the bylaws of the Commission also. On April 15, 2026, the Commission held a public hearing on the Behavioral Health Service Act IP 26, 27, 2, 28, 29. three-year program during the public hearing we received a couple public comments regarding clubhouse el dorado following the public hearing and closing that hearing the commission held its regular monthly meeting agenda 5 on the commission's meetings report was a report out by the commission's bhsa integrated plan ad hoc committee and a discussion and a vote on substantive recommendations to be made to the Board of Supervisors. There was a clarifying, informative, lengthy discussion regarding BH Connect, which is the California initiative designed to expand Medi-Cal coverage for evidence-based behavioral health services. The discussion included using BH Connect as a source in funding Clubhouse El Dorado. And what would the requirements impacts would be if the county chose to opt in to BH Connect? After a lengthy discussion, the Commission made an informed decision not to recommend or add a substantive comment recommending the Board of Supervisors opt in to BH Connect. There was a 4-1 to vote, a 4-2-1 vote by the commission to not recommend opting in. The commission did not advise the BOS to opt in. The BHS HSA IP submitted to DHS for review was returned for several revisions They were made, and the IP has been received and approval received to move forward to the Board of Supervisors. The BHD has done their job. It's ready for you to read. I think it's on the 23rd and approved. And regarding the clubhouse, it's a good program. But the funding guidelines for BHSA did not include a discretionary program, which the clubhouse was under the MHSA plan. And because of, however, the county is now working with, and the HHSA, BHD department is working with the clubhouse on another funding source for outreach and engagement to allow them some funding to try to continue moving on.

Thank you.

There's a lot of other details. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Jim. Okay. Good morning.

My name is Seth Culver. I am commander of the VFW Post 2680. I also sit on the Veterans Affairs Commission for representing Supervisor Vierkamp. I would just like to reiterate what Donna Becker said about funding, the total funding, the $175,000 for the TOT grants. The VAC, we distribute the money through mini-grants. We distribute it down to the various organizations that are within the federal charter, so there are other VFW posts, the American Legion posts. We work with other service officers, and a lot of that funding that we use is duplicated through other sources in, such as we assist veterans with mental health issues. We get a lot of calls directly to our organizations asking for assistance, asking for assistance with medications, We paid property taxes for veterans. We help out veterans who are homeless. We have provided temporary housing while they're transitioning down to the VA centers in Mather and in Sacramento. We also help out with a lot of veterans who are starving for food through our food bank program, military family support group passes out food twice a month, if I'm not mistaken, for veterans that are homeless. We also provide transportation. We provide personal transportation for veterans that are in need of getting down to a appointment at Mather at the VA, or even helping them get to and from for grocery shopping. So I would like to, again, to reiterate that the 175,000 that we received from the board is used basically as much as we possibly can. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Horne.

Good morning. Joe Horne, County Auditor. Your board is stuck with dealing with the reality of scarcity. And I just want to remind your board And I'm not really commenting on the chief executives of either organization. But the state and federal government are very unreliable partners at this time. And I know there's always a temptation to add stuff back to the budget. And if I was in charge, I'd love to add a few things back to this budget. There's an incredible amount of uncertainty of where we're headed. Just gas prices, the fact that the state's spending so much of the cap and trade gas tax on the bullet train, It would not shock me, the fact that our national debt now exceeds one year's gross domestic product. We're headed in El Dorado County, I believe, for some rocky times in the very near future. So I'm asking you to be as frugal as you can as you make your decision today. Thank you.

Thank you. Other members of the public in the room wishing to address the board on the budget? Seeing none, may we go online, please, Ms. Dawson?

Not taking public comment from online participants. Not taking public comment from Ruth Michelson. Ruth, can you unmute yourself?

Trying. Sorry, I hit the wrong button. You know, thanks for taking my call. And I do want to go along with the clubhouse, all those people's comments, because as you know, you're going to be without a navigation center in 2027. I mean, I'm sorry, in March of 27 with a gap. And I heard a presentation yesterday by our Sheriff Lykoff about the HEAT team and resources and he said that if people don't want to accept resources and they need to not live in our County, which I thought was pretty gruff, but, um, yeah, you need resources to provide them. So one would hope for both the veterans who spoke and the, uh, clubhouse, you would continue to fully fund them. So folks do have resources. The other thing, and I have to admit, haven't read the staff report. Haven't heard the whole presentation today because I do have a life outside of the board. Um, But I did want to make a comment about, again, back to the sheriff's budget. And I think we should be able to talk about that without being labeled as anti-law enforcement because I'm very pro-law enforcement. But yet, when I went to the meeting about the military-like equipment that was coming on board for this coming year, it was a $500,000 robot. $300,000 for ammunition and, oh, about $40,000 for firearms. I asked the sheriff yesterday, was that robot put out to competitive bid? And his response is, well, it should have been. Well, I want to know if it was. And I want to know how many other robots we have. That's a big chunk of change, 500,000. And I also want to know why ammunition is doubled. The ammunition request of 300,000 is double what it's been in previous years. So I think we should be able to look at the sheriff's budget freely without being worried that we're going to be labeled as anti-law enforcement. I'm repeating myself, but I think it's important because I think the board has been reluctant to really look at that part of the budget, which is more than half of your annual budget. And I think we should look at it like any other part of the budget. Oh, the other thing, too, is I asked the sheriff, you know, on their report of non-military or military-style equipment, it's a 24-page report. And it gives the longevity of each of these pieces of equipment. So when we can expect they're going to need to be replaced, but doesn't say the purchase date. So it's really meaningless if we don't know how long they've had that piece of equipment. So anyway, I hope you all will look at that part of the budget as well too thoroughly. Thank you. Thank you.

Not taking public comment from iPhone.

Hi, good afternoon. What a conversation. Kelly Melovaya, District 1, El Dorado Hills. One of the things that I would really like to see us do better, and I know departments like HHS and many others, but them especially rely on these grants. And earlier I heard the keyword opioid settlement fund. And one of the things about that fund money is they come with conditions and they come with expectations of what we have to do to get the money and one of those conditions was the harm reduction um that our sheriff's department and maybe others i'm not sure you know have been very concerned about so i would really hope that as we're taking these grants that we're asking those questions what are the conditions what do we have to fulfill in order to get this money because once we take it we can't go back after passing out in the park but took the money secondly in terms of these organizations I have gone down the rabbit hole and I'm calling 990 for various groups that we have given grants or we participate in their services. I'm not gonna put anybody under the bus right now, but I'm always alarmed when I see that more than 60% of their revenue is going towards operational costs. I'm seeing some that are even higher than that. Some of them, we gave them a million dollars and their model is to provide what is basically AA meetings and those are free. So I hope that we do a better job in these discretionary times where you know, we want to get food to people, we want to get help to people, but exactly who are we serving and are we questioning each individual organization as we're, you know, taking these grants and giving out all this money because I'm just not seeing a lot of it make sense from my interviewing people that are, you know, in these situations and don't even qualify for the services, which is, you know, your middle class on up, there's nothing for us in any of these services. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from 525.

Hi, Leo Bennett, Coach Sean. My professional training is public administration, and then I operationalize that primarily in government entities. So I'm making this comment from that perspective. You know, they boil it down to that if you really want to know an organization's values, look at the budget. A vision statement, all that's great. Budget tells you what happens. And this is a billion-dollar budget. If you're hearing concerns today, I urge you again to use some of the time you have. Don't approve it today. Give direction. Ask for stuff to come back. In my training, it's important to have standards, and I'm repeating a request I've made in prior years that you direct staff to consider, as other counties do, meeting the criteria of the Government Financial Officers Association and I look forward to joining San Bernardino and other counties who win awards for following those standards. It may be in the budget, but I cannot find a clear statement of actual numbers, not estimates, for the prior two years. That's the recommended way of doing things. Otherwise, you're just dealing with what's called the fog of the budget, and Part of that's natural, as somebody pointed out, and you have all these state and federal and different estimates. But prior years are closed budgets, and you can look at your trend lines, as was pointed out to you by one of your union leadership. And then secondly, this county has lots of reserves. They're facing a difficult scenario in that, as was pointed out in previous years, We've had 10 years of increasing funding for, unfortunately, COVID and lots of stuff. Now we're having to deal with the downturn, which is part of it. But a conservative county like this county has done a good job of building up those reserves. And you're looking at basically operating costs on estimates without looking, at least in a way that's transparent and clear to the public, what are our, in lay terms, savings accounts. That's why you saved some of these money so you could keep something like the clubhouse going, something like the festival going, and have a slow glide path as an astute member of your board shared last year.

Thank you for taking my comments.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay, thank you. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring this item back to the board for further deliberation and or action. I want to ask also Ms. Owens or our CAO if you have any comments you'd like to make for some of the questions that we heard. Sure, one of the questions.

I'm sorry, just as a matter of procedural clarity, I don't think you should technically close the hearing until the board has taken its action as that does as a trigger point for the voting threshold.

Okay, no problem. So at what point would we close it at the conclusion?

Once the board has taken its action to either approve the budget or as been suggested, if there's a desire to continue the hearing to a later date, I just want to make sure that you have all your options prepared for you.

Thank you for that. I'll make that adjustment. Thank you. Ms. Owens?

sure one of the question is why is our general fund interest four million when the treasurer tax collector's pool is a lot higher and so the treasurer tax collector collects interest on the entire county treasury which includes all funds and funds that aren't under the purview of the board fire districts and other governmental organizations that bank with the county so that's why the whole pool's interest is much higher than just the general fund portion of 4.75 million and then a couple other questions

Yeah, I had a couple of things. There was a statement made that the sheriff's budget is over 50% of our budget. I just want to correct that. I think if you're looking at the slide that shows the net county cost or appropriations by functional group, that is the entire law and justice functional group. So it includes more than the sheriff. I think Emma in a minute can clear up the questions about the veterans allocation. There is a total of 175 allocated for the current year. It just does include some rollover funds, so we can clarify that as well in a moment. If there are questions about how the opioid settlement funding is distributed, there is a process that we follow at the county, and we try to make sure that that process kind of follows our values here locally. So yes, there are requirements on that funding, but we have some latitude within those requirements to make sure that we are closely following our values and potentially not funding things that wouldn't align with our values. But Mr. Deal, who is our chief assistant of HHSA, can speak to you further if you'd like details on that. And with regard to the budget format and what we show in our tables, we follow the state controller's requirements for the years that we include. So we generally include the prior year actual, the current recommended, or the current year adopted, and then the recommended that we're looking at going forward. So we are required to follow that format by the state controller. If the board would like us to include at some point any additional tables or additional years, we're open to looking at that. But I just do want to point out that the state controller does prescribe that.

And I do want to add in that every year after the board adopts the budget in the fall, I post an Excel pivot table spreadsheet that has the actuals back eight years. Well, in the current one, it was eight years of actuals back with budget and actuals for the prior eight-year period. So there's a very extensive document that I attach every year for people to use if they want to go looking in the budget. Yeah.

And then finally, on the BH Connect issue, that is a complicated issue. I know that Mr. Deal has also provided the board with a lot of information on that. So if you desire to go into that again further today, then Mr. Deal, as I said, is here to speak with you.

Excellent. Okay, thank you. I'll bring it back to the board. Additional questions, comments, or actions?

I'll start if it's okay. I'm gonna agree with our auditor controller here. There's certainly a lot of unknowns. I don't think our state and federal government are aligned at all. And I don't know where that's gonna end up. Obviously, all of the groups we participate in are advocating for our counties and our cities. But again, I just don't know where that's gonna end up. my fear is there are going to be continued, um, uh, determination of fraud in some degree that may hurt programs that are truly doing good for our people. Um, although some of the fraud as well, in my own opinion, uh, is, is, uh, I'm careful. It is something that's been abused, and we've got to correct that. Until things settle, we may be talking about hospital closures in our rural areas and other things because it's really going to affect their ability to stay open. So I think we got to be very, very careful. I totally support and get our vets. I think it's very important that we have the funding available for them. But I believe right now with the way we've got the budget set up, we're okay. And we do have contingency if we need to go there. I continue to be concerned also about the $35,000 for the city. They're in major shortfall. I think all of our cities are going to be going forward, and yet we've got residents in in districts two, three, four, and partially five that utilize that aquatic center. And that's the only one, you know, this side of the eastern slope and then out of El Dorado Hills for our CSD. So I still will always advocate to try to help out with that situation because we're having our residents that utilize it. When I look at our take-home vehicle list, I still think it's way excessive. There is a lot on there that's theft protection. Well, if we can't put it in an enclosed area and keep it and we're utilizing that as an excuse, I disagree. So, I mean, it may be splitting hairs, but I think we're getting to a time of splitting hairs until we can get some stabilization from our federal and state government, at least some alignment. Budget ad hoc committee is pretty well aligned with this at this point. Again, it's not the final budget. I don't think there's a lot of room to make a whole lot of changes or moves here. I'll leave it at that.

Other comments? Yeah. So thank you for clarifying the interest, the four versus three. And we're on a lot of committees and stuff where they do include in their budget and appreciate how well our treasurer tax collector does invest. I think all of our committees and commissions were on appreciate that. Thank you for that clarification. But then the pattern that Shannon mentioned of the gap and everything, I didn't fully understand. CAO, did you get where she was going with that? I didn't.

So I'm not sure the statement about overestimating revenues, because we really haven't had situations where our revenues have come in short. What there is a clear pattern of is when we look at our recommended budget and we compare as required by the state controller's office to compare to the current year's adopted budget, We are more conservative in the recommended budget. So you're going to see projected carry forward fund balance that is lower. You're going to see potentially revenue projections that are lower than they end up being in the adopted budget once the books close. So typically, yes, we do. As you can see in the charts and the tables, our recommended budget in many areas is a reduction compared to the adopted budget due to those conservative assumptions that we have to make in the recommended budget. We don't want to overestimate revenues in the recommended budget. Then the books close and we don't have the funding to cover all the staff that we have or to make all the investments into our facilities that we need. So we are conservative now there will likely be more funding available once the books close, and that will be reflected in the adopted budget. But the specific statement about the overestimation of revenues, I'm not sure. I'm happy to sit down with Ms. Starr. And generally, annually, we do kind of go in and present to the labor groups the budget and have an opportunity for them to ask questions and explain things. So we're also happy to do that, too, if that would be helpful.

Okay, that helps a lot. And I do recall conversation, I think it was on the budget ad hoc committee where we talked about how we are very conservative because let's, for example, I think Supervisor Vierkamp, you had a really great example of our school districts where they just hand out pink slips every every spring to their teachers and there's so much uncertainty with that and we definitely don't want to get in that type of situation so um okay that makes more sense to me now that we are conservative so that with our staffing and our resolution that says how many staff we're going to have um and i was out at an event and they asked me to you know give an update on what's going on at the county and you know i explained that our the budget constraints are really getting hard right now for counties and cities And yet our county, we've strived really, I think we've tried super hard for our residents, not for them to see a reduction in level of service. And props to all of our staff that has stepped up to help us do that. I think it really reflects well on our county. And then the other thing that we didn't talk about today, but we've talked about it in past conversations, and I just wanted to double check on it. So we have our budget policy about where we wanna put money for, saving up for future things. And my recollection is we didn't fulfill all of those this year like we normally have. I mean, we're trying to save for facilities where we house our employees to provide services and IT equipment. So can you do a quick rundown of those? Because this notion that we have put money everywhere But we haven't put it everywhere that we've been wanting to per our policies to save up for future needs. Does that make sense?

Yes. I talked about this in April a lot. I think I went through every single policy and not a lot has changed. We have not met our goal for road maintenance. We still need $2.5 million to meet that goal. And we need $6 million to meet our capital goal. And so those are the two goals that we haven't met. I do want to caveat that we'll have our new CalPERS actuarial reports by the time we have adopted budget. So we might need to adjust that goal as well after we have more information there. But that is our typical process. So typically we don't meet both of those goals in the recommended budget due to how conservative we project the recommended budget. Typically we meet those goals in the adopted budget when we have the actual fund balance amounts. Okay, perfect.

I just want to add on to that. When we say that we're not meeting our road maintenance goal, I want to be very clear. We adopted a new policy a few years ago to add discretionary funding to the road fund. Historically, that had never been done. So that goal is just kind of above and beyond. I don't want anyone getting the impression that we don't have a fully funded road maintenance program for this year. This is extra funding that we have. The board decided to begin to try to allocate every year. And again, they're stated as goals. due to declining gas tax and other reasons why the road funding is declining. So you decided to get ahead of that and allocate discretionary resources when we can. Because I want to be clear, all those policies also say, after we've met our requirements for our general reserves and our contingencies, and if resources allow, we have the goal of funding these other needs. So Typically, we do make the road maintenance one in recommended budget. I think we have in the past. Generally, the capital project is in the adopted budget, and we have met the IT goal.

We did meet the IT. Okay, good. I wasn't sure about that. Right at 1.25 or something.

Okay. Thank you for that. Good questions. Other questions, comments?

No questions, comments. I appreciate the conservative atmosphere of the budget. I commend your office for putting this together. It's a monumental task, I'm sure. I guess I'm pleasantly surprised that the HR impacts are lower than I actually thought they were going to be. But I do think, you know, to Supervisor Vierkamp's point, we haven't seen the worst yet from the state and the feds. And we're going to have to hang on to that.

i think down the road we're going to have to make some much tougher decisions than we are right now absolutely i have one follow-up question and again and really keep trying to wrap my brain around this so contingency that's currently at 8.2 million is that the requirement of our policy of three percent that that's it right there yes and so Under what circumstances would we tap into that?

So if a department, so we often say when we reach agreement with bargaining units, for example, we're going to not do budget transfers right away. We are going to see if departments might be able to absorb some of these costs. If they can't throughout the year, we might come back with a budget transfer, and likely that would come out of contingency to cover those through the end of that fiscal year, and then we build those increases into the following year. Then we build it back up. something like a department having potentially a major breakdown in a piece of equipment that is critical, a remittance processor for the treasure tax collector's office, for example, we might need to tap into contingency to purchase that throughout the year because we just didn't budget it because we didn't know about it at the time.

Okay. Um, I think it's important, at least for me to say, um, how important I think the clubhouse is for all the reasons that were presented, seeing it as an investment and not necessarily an expense. And I'm curious if my colleagues would support the notion that when we come back with the September recommended final budget, that if those funds that we normally seek get finalized if we would consider an appropriation for the clubhouse at least for one year to try to just buy them some more time to figure out how to do some better funding. An imminent closure in October of this year is really disturbing to me because I do think it's an incredible service. They have a lot of members and they they They delineated all the reasons why it's important and I just agree with them so not sure if that's. How staff feels about that what my colleagues think about that, but it's something i'm concerned about.

Well, I think it might be a good idea for Mr. Deal to come up and talk about what is included in the budget this year for the clubhouse, because it's my understanding there is an allocation. So to better understand for your discussion what that shortfall might be and what would be needed would be a good idea if Mr. Deal could.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Still morning. Good morning.

Turn it on.

There you go, now you're on.

All right, I'm live. Chair Lane, members of the board. So I want to be clear that we agree that Clubhouse provides valuable service in the community. We've been working with them on the financial changes imposed by Proposition 1, Senate Bill 326, which are the basis of where we don't have discretionary state funding in a category that supports the Clubhouse Which we've historically used the Mental Health Services Act Category has been changed now I guess the Vision of the state is that those sorts of prevention activities are now managed by the State Department of Public Health and the dollar amount has been reduced significantly like Probably below $200,000 is the estimate for the entire county that is really the basis for the change in our historic funding approach. The BH Connect thing that has been brought up, that is a new discretionary state initiative for a Medi-Cal benefit expansion. So what that means is should we pursue that, we do not have funding for that, for the management or administration of it. It is a brand new benefit. While there have been comments made that this would reduce staff impact because it is a bundled service. It is a new bundled service. So while it may be less administratively burdensome for the provider, we must build our medical record out. We must build our claiming out. We must collaborate with other county departments. We must participate in state meetings related to this. We have to develop the new administrative components. It is a very heavy lift. Um, if we were to do this, we would have to come back to the board talking about what the costs associated with that are in terms of staff, in terms of county match, all of those things. It is not a simple matter of flipping a switch and we can pull down money. We're also concurrently engaged in multiple historically significant projects through the behavioral health division at the same time. And I would remind the board, we're talking about the navigation center redesign, that's behavioral health through the funding sustainability. The new psychiatric health facility project, the SOAR project is a behavioral health related project. We're getting support from the CAOs because we're at the limit there. We have mobile crisis and other new benefits. We have all of the new reporting requirements for Proposition 1 and Senate Bill 326. We have new state reporting and administrative obligations. And then we have the financial uncertainty of H.R. 1, and the state has redirected 30% of our historically locally discretionary funding, so we have less local discretion. All of that is the context for... the recommendation we made. We felt it was irresponsible of us to say we really like this program. Let's just stay the course given the climate that we're dealing with and all of the multiple navigations. This is also a discretionary state initiative. There were a lot of comments from the public today about discretionary state initiatives. We are not required to do this. is a thing that the county can choose to do or choose not to do. If we opt in, we're all in. That is the way that that works. And so that is the nature of the recommendation we brought forward related to not proceeding with BH Connect. If the board wants to designate general fund for the purpose of supporting the clubhouse, obviously the board can certainly do whatever they feel is appropriate. Does that?

Yeah, I guess the only other question would be specifically what is the clubhouse currently being appropriated?

So they were discussing the historic contract for it ends June 30th. I believe that's, was that 300,000? Yeah, 300,000 a year. We are unable to fund them in that category through BHSA because the option exists to opt into the Medi-Cal benefit and do it the way the state prefers. We must do that if we choose to do it. We are fans of NAMI as an organization. We are currently engaged with them, trying to come up with a different kind of contract for outreach and engagement. We're in negotiations around that, so I can't get into the weeds on it. But I just want to be clear, that shift is happening as a result of Proposition 1, Senate Bill 326, our board opposed that. It passed statewide by like 20,000 votes. So that is the law, and we are adhering to it.

And Jim, they are a nonprofit. NAMI is a nonprofit that is eligible for grants.

They're a local nonprofit. Okay. Yeah. And I totally concur.

And I think the work that they do is very worthwhile and probably way better than what we can get done. And well, not being derogatory, and maybe I should state can get done. But when I look at other things that we're doing that, providing that type of help will save us in other areas. And I'll talk about that in just a minute, but I think it's very important as well, and the work is good. And a lot of times nonprofits can do a heck of a lot better than we can, and they're eligible for other grants and so forth. So it's probably more of a state issue, obviously, than local, but now it's in our lap.

So I... Go ahead.

In this budget, we are... Are we allocating the $175,000? Did I read that? Okay. So it's going from $300,000 to $175,000?

It's going from $300,000 to zero for the current contract, and we're seeking to put a new contract that we are proposing currently.

Okay. On a negotiation. Okay. Okay.

Right, it is a different activity because we are not allowed to fund the clubhouse with behavioral health funding in the same way. The encouragement by the state of California is that either we opt into a new Medi-Cal benefit with all the required elements of that, or that either the managed care plans for the mild to moderate population because they're the responsible entity for that. So that'd be Anthem, Mountain Valley Health Plan, and Kaiser are the entities responsible for that population, not the County Behavioral Health Division. That is a decision the state made, not the county. Or there are some public health dollars coming, the details of which have not been provided by the state yet, not fully.

So I apologize. I think I misspoke. I was thinking of the funding that we are working to get NAMI, that it's not necessarily for the clubhouse. So I apologize if I cause confusion.

It's a separate funding source, but that we're really limited in what we can use behavioral health dollars for.

I think that when I spoke with both you and Olivia on this item, just one-on-one, I mentioned and I want to reiterate it here that I'm so impressed by HHSA as a department, how big you are and how much you do. And I do respect when you say this is not within our bandwidth. I totally get that. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, is there a Band-Aid? Is there an option for some type of Band-Aid that we can put on this to allow for some more time? That's kind of what I'm looking for. But I appreciate all your information. Understand it's new. It's complicated. It's got a lot of reporting elements to it. It's not like just put in an application, get a clearance, and you can start billing. It's more complicated than that.

And one of the things I would, there's a timeline to opting in a new Medi-Cal benefit. I do not believe it would be possible for us to have that online before October. I mean, that would be an extraordinary accomplishment. I've never heard of that. I just want to caution that around the BH Connect thing. It will take time to implement that, even if the board were to direct us to do that.

And I think, Jim, you would concur, as we sort through this Medi-Cal funding issue with the state and feds, Again, our local hospital, our local services that people need daily are at jeopardy. And it's going to be interesting to see where this settles up.

And we have many historic partners who have been negatively impacted by the changes from Prop 1. It is not limited to NAMI. The student wellness centers you have heard about, those were impacted. CASA, many other valuable programs that we really care about.

Thank you, Mr. Deal. Are there any other questions of Mr. Deal while he's here?

Well, I was trying to understand. I thought there was an option. Yeah, don't go away, Jim. Sorry. For the clubhouse or NAMI to fit under another organization that is able to do all that billing or something, or is that not? No. It just doesn't exist yet because it's all so new, or it's Medi-Cal. Right.

It would be a mechanism for Medi-Cal claiming. They could operate under the auspices of a certified entity. It changes nothing for the county requirements for them to do that. We're talking about whether it would be easier for NAMI to implement it, not the county. Oh, okay. That is a whole different conversation. Our capacity is one of the limits on this. It would take... we don't have the existing organizational capacity to carry that at this time.

Okay. Thank you. Not the answers we wanted, but thank you. Yeah.

Would you like Emma to further clarify the question about the veteran funding?

Oh, yes, please.

Yeah. So we brought an item to the board earlier this year talking where you approve the allocation of the Veterans Affairs Commission's allocation of general fund. And in that item, we noted that they did have some fund balance in their community foundation fund. We're not talking about that. And I'm so excited to hear that you've found a plan, a spending plan for that, because we really wanted those funds to get expended. So that's exciting news. Outside of the Community Foundation Fund, there was part of their funding in their special revenue fund within the county that had been unallocated. And so what we're recommending in this budget is that instead of giving them 175,000 on top of what wasn't allocated, we give them enough so that between the unallocated funding and the new general funding, they have 175,000 to allocate this year. And so that's what we're recommending in this budget. It's like they still have 175 this year. So some of it is rollover funding just to keep that fund from accumulating fund balance. Got it. Perfect. Okay.

Board, what would you like to do?

I'll take a stab at it. I would move we'll close public hearing now, I guess we can, right? Go ahead and take the action. I would move items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 and ask that we take another look at item 6. I think there's a lot of vehicles there that are going home for either 24-hour emergency response or death protection or whatever. Coming from the fire service, I could probably count up the number of vehicles that are assigned based on who needs to be on call. Not everybody gets to be on call at the same time and take a vehicle home and the cost of fuel and everything else. I would advocate we take another look at that and see if we can whittle that down and ask our department heads and electeds to get real about how many of those vehicles need to be taken home.

Okay, so let me see if I can get a second. You didn't mention number eight.

I said, and eight.

Okay. So one through five, seven and eight. Yes. And there's a second to that. Is there discussion on that particular motion? Just one final without, we're not dealing with six yet. We're just one through five, seven and eight.

And I would just say one other thing. We are. Got open contracts and we're in negotiations. And again, I go back to the state and federal not being aligned. We have very important things to keep our people going here that we have to take care of. So we've got to be very, very careful.

Okay, if there's no further comments on the motion, we're moving approval of items one through five, seven, and eight. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay.

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. We'll go, what is your desire on item number six, Supervisor Vierkamp?

That I would direct staff to go back and talk with all of our department heads about trying to get a little bit more aligned with what truly needs to be done with assignments and who's responsible for take home or on call. Because there's a long list and they're all on call. Now, okay, we assigned a duty officer weekly. So I think that can be done, even facility maintenance. There's 15 vehicles that are all on call. Assign two of them that are on call and the rest of them come back and get a vehicle if we have a major emergency. So anyway. Okay.

Is that clear? Happy to work on that, yep. Okay, perfect. And then would that come back on September 22nd, do you think, or sooner?

Well, it's up to Supervisor Vierkamp. We could bring it back with the adopted budget. I know some of this will involve work with our represented groups. So I know some of it we have already started to work on. But even if it's just an update, we can bring an update to you back as soon as you would like.

Trying to get to some resolve by the September final, yeah.

Sounds good.

Yep. Okay, so that will be a motion.

And a second. Motion and a second, okay.

Supervisor Parlin? Yep. Thank you. Clerk of the board, are you clear with that? Okay. Any questions on the motion? Any other comments? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

And then I will go ahead and officially close the public hearing. All right. Thank you all for your input. Yes, thank you. It's noon. We had one other public hearing identified to be heard no sooner than 11 a.m. It's about a 15, 20-minute presentation. It's air quality information. management would you are you okay with taking it now yeah yeah i'm just gonna use restroom but i read it so go ahead and start okay we'll go ahead and get started then we're going to start with item number 32 the initial fiscal year 2627 budget hearing i'd like to open this public hearing and ask the clerk of the board to read the item into the record

Item number 32 is a hearing from Air Quality Management District recommending the board acting as the AQMD Board of Directors hold a hearing on the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget.

Excuse me, if you're having a conversation in the room, would you please step out?

We're trying to go on to the Eldorado County AQMD and consider final adoption on June 23, 2026. All right.

Good morning. Well, now good afternoon. I know.

I'm right. Exactly. It's past 12. Thank you for your patience. No, of course. Thank you for having us today. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Honorable Board of Supervisors, Rania Sariya, APCO with AQMD, Scott Wilson, our AQMD Program Manager, and I will be presenting to you this program. proposed 2026-27 budget for your consideration today. Directions from you today will be incorporated into a final proposed budget on June 23rd. Next, Kim, sorry, thank you. So as per California Health and Safety Code, this district budget is being conducted separately from the county budget process. All current permit holders were notified by mail of this proposed budget and the proposed fee increase. To date, we haven't received any feedback or inquiries from any of our permit holders. Next, please. So as of May, 2026, AQMD has 939 active stationary source permits. The district conduct annual inspection for these permits and also conduct inspection for all portable permitted equipment and construction sites. Annual permits fees are collected for stationary sources And one time fee is collected for dust plan revenues from these stationary source permits and dust plant represent around 23% of the proposed total budget revenue. We also, the district also implement residential and prescribed burning through the county. No fees are collected for these two programs, burn programs. Next. In 2025, AQMD launched EldoradoBurnPermits.org. This website received approximately 128,000 visits in its first year. Since September 2025, AQMD issued 63 residential burn permits and 29 prescribed burn permits. With only 121, roughly 4% of the total burn permits. This aligns with AQMD's ongoing effort to facilitate permitting process for the public. AQMD approved 100% requested prescribed burning in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Differences between the actual burning and the approved requested burn acreage do mainly to the requester limited resources or weather conditions. At this point, I'm going to hand it over to Scott to go over the grants, funding sources, and our budget.

Welcome, Mr. Wilson. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Board Chair and board members. I'm Scott Wilson, the program manager for AQMD. On this chart, there's just some examples of our district grants and incentive accomplishments for the current fiscal year. We were able to fund six agricultural equipment replacements and one electric school bus from Carl Moyer grants. We funded the installation of an electric bus charging infrastructure system for Black Oak Mine Union School District using community air protection grant funding to support their growing fleet of electric school buses. Additionally, through a federal targeted airshed grant, we provided funding to the El Dorado County Fire Safe Council to chip 114,000 cubic yards of residential vegetative material that would otherwise be burned through the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. And then we also provided that same funding to County DOT to double chip seal almost two miles of the previously gravel surface cable road. And that was a series of roadways that they have done with that TAG grant. And probably most importantly, through our incentive programs for the residents of the county, we've been able to incentivize the replacement of 259 items of gas-powered lawn equipment with cordless electric equipment. replacement of 59 non-EPA certified wood stoves, the purchase or lease of 31 electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, and the purchase of 40 residential EV chargers. Using subvention, Carl Moyer and community air protection grant funding from the state, federal EPA targeted air shed grant funding, and DMV surcharge AB 2766 funding. And this is just a quick view of some of the equipment that we've funded in the current fiscal year. through the various grant opportunities. All right, this slide, in addition to the completed and funded grants on the prior slides, we've also awarded these grants in the current fiscal year, but these projects have just started and they haven't closed out yet. The name of the grant, as well as the funding source is shown on the slide. As you'll see, many of these projects are being funded by the AB 2766 DMV surcharge, and they are approved by the board on February 3rd of this year. The projects include the El Dorado County fare shuttle that we've been funding for quite a few years. The funding was for 26 and 27. This has been a very popular service that AQMD has funded. In 2025 alone, 10,620 passengers utilize that fare shuttle program. The Emerald Bay Shuttle for 26 and 27 were also awarded. These will be the first years that AQMD has provided the funding for the shuttle service after their successful pilot project last year. The 2026 shuttle has the capacity to serve approximately 30,000 riders during the course of the season. And the coloma shuttle was funded for 26 and 27 we've funded this service for several years and it provides users of the South fork of the American river transportation for them. And the rafts or kayaks to various launch and take out sites in 2025 the coloma shuttle provided service to 5723 riders. And additionally, the county's Four Bay Park project was awarded some community air protection and AQMD discretionary funding to perform parking lot paving at the park as part of their larger project. And two Carl Moyer grants have been recently awarded for businesses inside the county to replace old polluting agricultural equipment. So for 26 and 27, AQMD's proposed budget, which is included in full detail in Legistar as attachment A, the total revenue is $8.63 million, of which $4.67 million is new revenue. We have a carryover from prior years of grant money received in the prior years that basically we haven't allocated to projects as of yet. So we carry that over. The 4.67 million of new revenue is made up of 2.14 million coming from state and federal grants, 1.06 million coming from the fees that Rania was talking about earlier that we charge for stationary sites, fugitive dust plans, and authority to construct permits. 1.23 million comes from the AB 2766 and AB 923 DMV surcharge, and about a quarter million from the state's subvention funds, earned interest, miscellaneous revenue, and penalties. Federal and state grants flow through the district and are used to fund local grants or incentives to improve air quality in our county. DMV surcharge provides administrative funding for the non-permit and non-grant related activities of our district. And it allows us to award grants through our AB 2766 program to fund projects like the shuttle programs that we mentioned in the last slide, as well as other projects to reduce motor vehicle emissions. Additionally, the AB 923 component of the surcharge funds school bus replacements, providing cleaner air for the county school children and residents along the bus route. Fees for operating permits, authority to construct permits and fugitive and dust plans that covers the administrative cost of that permitting process, including annual or one-time inspections, engineering costs, and complaint response. Subvention funds are used just to cover some of our miscellaneous district administration costs, but mainly fund our local wood stove replacement incentives. Miscellaneous funds that are on this chart are fees from the soon to be installed EV chargers here at the county facilities. And basically that will offset the cost of electricity And a portion of it will be going back to AQMD to offset the cost of the initial installation and ongoing maintenance costs that are amortized over seven years. Penalties. That are listed on here are used to fund administration for permitted sources in non-compliance And we only use them after the district works with the permitting to bring their equipment into compliance as usual a QMD we use no general fund and we have no general fund budgeted for the operation of the district this year and then on the expenditure side we propose a total expenditure budget of eight point six three million dollars and Our staff cost and other operations cost total about $2 million, which is about 23% of our total budget. The two phases of projects to replace the EV chargers here are budgeted to cost about half a million dollars. This cost is gonna be recovered, as I mentioned, per the kilowatt hour fee over a seven year period, ultimately resulting in a zero net cost to our DMV surcharge account. The majority of the proposed budget are for the district's various grants and incentive programs that have been mentioned in the earlier slides. The district proposes a contingency amount of 1.12 million, which is in essence a carryover of our unused grant funds into next year. As I mentioned before, these proposed expenditure figures are included in more detail in our Legislature Attachment A. And next slide, please. As I do every year, I give a plug to our grants and incentive website link, edccleanair.org. It's a one-stop location where county residents, businesses, and government agencies can find out about our current grant and incentive opportunities. That's the end of our planned presentation. Rania and I are here to answer any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Thank you. Questions? Anybody?

I said one, but you just answered it about how you advertise the incentives and grant programs. Is there anything you could possibly send us when you get these so we can advertise it to our districts?

Definitely. Yeah, we always update that web page if we have new grants coming in, but we can definitely send out an email. We also do quite a bit of advertising in like the Clipper and the... You know the the mountain democrats little add on paper we try and get the word out as many different ways, as we can all right, thank you, thank you have the questions.

So I I am I know I hear every time we talk about. AQD and Joe Harn shows up and talks about that $5 fee and how we're spending it and taking five bucks from little old ladies and spending it on incentives for cars that they'll never be able to afford. And I don't know if I'm getting cranky in my old age. Maybe today's the thing. I'm kind of agreeing with Mr. Harn. And coincidentally, one of my constituents reached out and kind of asked about the EV chargers at the government center. And I did send Rania some questions ahead. But I guess I'm getting to the point, and we keep talking about how expensive life is getting. We're all paying for gas, gas tax, and all that. And yet we're giving away free electricity out there out front at the government center. And I know that those are going to be replaced soon. Has it already happened?

No. The contract was approved by you in April. We signed a letter to proceed with a vendor on June 4th. So we have a kickoff meeting tomorrow. We're working with them. You cannot believe we need this to be done more than you for how many complaints and how many. But the deadline to finish the project is the replacement. The replacement is December 1st, but we'll work hard with them to finish it earlier. But it's starting now.

And we did start on it before.

We did start on it before. Unfortunately, the first bidder, we had to cancel the contract due to performance. They failed to perform as bidder contract. We had to go through, we have to work with the requirements and contract in a new request for a proposal process. And then we had some issues with concrete and state requirement for ADA, which caused more delays. But we finally brought it to you. You approve it again in last April, and it's moving forward. Yeah, we apologize, but it's something that we did not anticipate, like the ADA and the concrete base for the chargers and these state requirements that caused some delays.

And then will it ultimately actually generate...

Yeah, so what happens is we bid now because of the EDA and concrete base, we had to remove through the process of RFP, we had to remove five sites from the bidding this time. which are the El Dorado Health Park and Ride, El Dorado Health Library, Building C, and Child Support Services. There are five sites that currently have chargers wouldn't be covered in this phase of the project. So the one that you approved in April cover all sites except those. So we are in the process of starting this. The one that they will be replaced, they're going to have a $0.38 per kilowatt. So that cost will offset the electricity cost and the equipment amortized over seven years. Okay. If we, and then we will bring this fee, we will evaluate because we'll have data from how much usage they're going to be used and how much is the cost. And then we will be including this fee in our budget annually for you to review. Like we're going to include this, how much we spent on electricity, this how many user will use, and this is the revenue. until we recover the cost, we're going to keep doing that. And then after that, any AB 2766 freed up funding will be redirected again to similar project that we're using for that funding. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Of course. And for that charge, the residential home chargers that we give up to $300, it's also funded and approved by you back in August 2023. and we amended it in September 2025. It gives applicant residents up to $300 for purchasing electric vehicle chargers to be installed at home, which the idea also, because this is a DMV, it's motor vehicle funding. We found that it's appropriate to use it to incentivize electric vehicles, and the total we spent so far since 2023 was around $35,000. So it's average $11,000 only a year with a total 127 applicants. But if it's by your directions, if you decide that we don't need to keep this program going, we can terminate it. But for now, we believe that it's going well. And yeah. OK. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome.

Good question.

Please.

Go ahead. All right, great. Thank you for that information, Mr. Wilson.

I just want to say just one quick thing. On the AB 2766, like Rania was mentioning, we've spent about $30,000 on the chargers. Ultimately, the cost of the chargers here will be offset by the electricity over that seven years. But it's... The chargers and the drive clean are such a small part of what we spend on that money. We do spend that money on the fare shuttle, the Coloma shuttle, the Emerald Bay shuttle. So it's more, I mean, people countywide are benefiting from that amount we're getting. It's not just the people that buy electric cars.

Absolutely. And those are the programs I think that we like the most. So, yeah.

Other questions, comments? Okay, let's go ahead and open this up to public comment. Ms. Dawson?

We are now taking public comments specifically on item 32. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before you begin your comments.

Chris Bain, Diamond Springs. I've got a couple of questions. First of all, I'm a 45-year resident at 856 Tombstone Court in Diamond Springs. I did a passive solar home, but had a wood stove as my primary heat during the pandemic. I did take advantage of in the past, like 20 years ago, getting a new wood stove that was efficient, but it's 20 years old now and I need to replace it. I'm just wondering whether or not is that gonna be eligible in terms of this program that they're describing, the wood stove replacement program? And then the second question I have was, as I said before and has commented many times, I'm involved with the railroad group. And we have internal combustion engines, diesel in our locomotives and also in our maintenance cars, gasoline-powered vehicles. It's becoming prohibitively expensive. I'm wondering if this AQMD can help us in terms of getting some kind of incentive to change our engines. The whole fleet would be great, but it also is important because it's part of our economic development aspect that I talked about earlier. That's my comments. Thank you for the time.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public that wish to address the board on this item?

Seeing none, may we go online, please? Not taking public comment from online participants. There's no additional public comment.

Okay, I will bring this back to the board for further deliberation and or action. Ms. Rania, did you want to respond to any of that?

I will follow up with Mr. Bain. For the Woodstove, generally we are limited with the guidelines from where we get the funding source. If it's state or federal, they are limited. And usually, for our Woodstove, it has to be non-EPA certified in order to be eligible for the replacement. We will schedule an inspection and we'll talk to Mr. Bain and see if we can do that. At the same time, for the railroad, I think it's mobile and it's not under jurisdiction to replace it. It's not a stationary engine, but I will try to help and connect with the state. That would be great. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Comments, questions, action? Thank you.

Second. Second.

There's a move. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion on the motion?

Great job. Good presentation.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

Excellent. Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing, and I will ask my colleagues if a 35-minute lunch break is sufficient, and we come back at 1, or if you want to go a little longer. We've got a long afternoon.

I think we need to come back at 1 if you guys can do it. If we can do it? Yeah. Okay, 1 o'clock. We'll reconvene.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dawson. We'll bring this meeting back to order. We are on one o'clock time allocation for our open forum. We'll now take open forum comments. This is a time to comment on any item that is not on today's agenda. Ms. Dawson.

For public comment, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom, followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Are there any members in the room that would like to address the board on non-agenda items? Please come forward. Good afternoon.

Hi, um, I'm Jessica Albin. I've been here before you before and going to see some of you again. Um, I'm here about the planned closure of the county's only shelter and the decision not to replace it for 18 months. Um, I did some research on it and the research, it shows that other rural and midsize counties, um, across the board is fairly consistent when shelter capacity disappears, homelessness doesn't disappear and the county doesn't save any money. the costs simply move, usually into more expensive parts of the system. When there's no low barrier shelter, counties typically see increases in ambulance calls, jail bookings for low level offenses, encampment enforcement, sheriff overtime, and cleanup costs. When shelter access decreases, emergency room visits increase, especially for behavioral health crises, exposure-related illnesses, repeat emergency care, and primary care. Rural counties with hospitals like Marshall, they're especially vulnerable. An emergency room visit costs more than shelter services. A county jail bed costs more per night than a shelter bed. Repeated law enforcement contacts are far more expensive than stabilization and case management. This isn't a question of whether the county will continue paying for homelessness. The county will pay either way. The question is whether we pay proactively through a lower cost stabilization system or reactively through emergency medicine, law enforcement, and crisis response. I would urge the board to evaluate the impacts on emergency medical services, hospital systems, behavioral health, sanitation, sheriff overtime, EMS transports, court processing fees, cleanup contracts, public health response, hospital subsidies. In other words, shelters can function as cost containment in a county with minimal resources such as ours. So a few months ago when I shared my recovery story with you, I didn't share that I personally visited emergency rooms in Sacramento, Shasta, and El Dorado counties, easily numbering over 200 avoidable visits for primary care, for hunger, for loneliness, for suicidal ideation, fear. There was just for safety, so many reasons, right? How could that have been different if there was low barrier shelter care? please consider the positive impact a low barrier shelter could have on so many of our public systems that are already strained. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name's Tamara Brewer. In January of 2024, my boyfriend left me and, uh, We had been homeless a couple of years and he left me in the parking lot of, in the parking lot anyways, Walmart. So there I spent a couple of days, and I noticed, I looked up, and I saw what now I know is to be the hot team. They were going from car to car. And I got out of my car, and I said, I need help. I have nowhere to go. So they preceded me. Officer Hubert took me to the shelter. There, I got to shower. I got a wonderful case manager who has guided me through this far. I found out I had cancer in the shelter. Well, first, I was set up with a physician and mental health came on a van to the shelter and proceeded to see them on a weekly basis. I found out I had cancer, I had colon cancer, and they allowed me to stay there, and I had surgery and recovery in the shelter. I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, so I also got help. I was referred to WellSpace, I did a 90-day stay in well space. I was also directed to outpatient when I got out of there. And from there, I went into sober living in Cameron Park. And from there, because I had BABH, I was taken to get an apartment. I have 15 months drug-free, alcohol-free, and I'm getting ready to enter into college. And I'm waiting for my life scan to come back to get a job. And I would like to be a part of this community in the future. in the drugs and providing help for people in my situation. I thank you all for all the services I received. I don't think I'd be here today if I didn't. And I appreciate you, thank you.

Well, thank you, Ms. Brewer, for your courage. Yeah, and thank you for sharing your story. Congratulations is right. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Ruth Michaelson, District 4. I just want to talk about something kind of generic, which is process of the board. Are you with us or are you above us? It really feels like you act as though you're above us, us citizens. You know, we come and we pour our hearts out. We take a lot of time to prepare what we have to say. You know, we're not specialists. It's not our job. It's your job. You know, we do our best. We have opinions. We care about the community. We take time out of our day to come and make a comment. And I think we are so disregarded And I want to say that I have a business. Even before I had my business, I had two different careers. In all of my working years, I'm going to be 70 this year, so I started working at 15, so I've had 55 years of working. I have to listen to all kinds of things from all kinds of people in whatever work I did, even in my business today. That's just part and parcel of it. you know, I'm sorry that you don't like to listen to us or you don't put any weight on what we have to say, but you're the ones that we're supposed to be, we're supposed to be working together collaboratively. And I don't think you making decisions in a vacuum is the way government is supposed to work. And a lot of us are, so disturbed by your process? I mean, really, how much would it have hurt you to listen to us this morning? To me, it was a real power play. You made it really clear you have the power to make these decisions. Great. It's been made very clear. I guess while I have 32 seconds left, I am going to use all of my time because that is my right. I wanted to mention that the city of Placerville, for whom I go to their meetings as well because I have a business downtown, they have no prayer. And if you want to be efficient, why don't you get rid of that? Go to church for your prayer. Pray at home. Why are we spending time praying here? You don't even listen to what these people have to say anyway. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members that are in the room that would like to address the board on non-agenda items?

Okay.

You can give it to the clerk, please. Thank you. Madam Clerk of the Board, can we go online?

Not taking public comment from online participants. Not taking public comment from iPhone.

Good afternoon. Once again, I wasn't planning on calling. And I'm not going to say a lot. It's kind of an emotional day. Oh, Kelly Nullivaya, District 1. Thank you, Ruth, for what you just said. And I seem to think we probably aren't on the same side of the fence a lot. Feeling not heard has been a really big thing the last few months where I've spent more time in Placer County getting victim support, being heard, having grief support. In our county, And the story before the lady, congratulations, that is beautiful. And all the resources that people in that situation perhaps get. But when you're barely getting by, but you're middle class enough where you get nothing. All I got from COPE was a list of providers that I could potentially call for grief therapy. That is $170 an hour. Feeling unheard when we are the taxpayers, when we are the people paying the salaries, paying the taxes, watching our PG&E and water and things go up. And yet I have to go to Placer County. And then we have things like a lobbying day where every county was theirs. And I begged them. Through our DA and our department, because it was being put on by the DA's department in Sac County, Riverside, and Placer, we're joint putting on a lobbying day. And no one from El Dorado County came. There's another one going on tomorrow for all of the law enforcement. Is anyone from El Dorado County participating? No. And that's really sad to me when I'm told, oh, we reached out. We really tried to get them to help be a part of this event. But no one participated. wanted to be a part.

So we do feel very unheard and not engaging in the process.

And I said, it makes me really sad. So I hope that we will come back together and that we will far reach everyone who needs help sometimes and not just a small percentage. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from 525.

I apologize. Take 30 seconds off wrong buttons. Um, I really hope you take the provision that I stated before under the Brown act that you can briefly respond to what you're hearing or alternatively, you can give the staff the direction to respond. Comments have been made that the posts that call in, you know, we're just a small group. Well, that's true. but we're your starting group for public engagement. Each of us touch 20, 30 people. When you have somebody like Ruth, who I know and love, and somebody like Kelly, who I know and love, who have such divergent political perspectives speaking to you, each of you individually have incredible strength. You were chosen as our best to do the best you could. I urge you to have some sort of public workshops, forum where the five of you come. I've seen other boards do it. You are at the same level. We're trying to address maybe the things you've heard about our health and human services, the shakeup that's impacting your unhoused population, your veterans population, your folks surviving mental health challenges. Please, Give us back for what people have tried to give you today. Thank you for taking all of our comments.

Thank you. Now taking public comment from 390. Can you unmute yourself 390?

You bet. Yeah, Tim Greenwood here from the triple junction out in the middle of nowhere. Um, thank you, Ruth. Uh, thank you, Kelly. And thank you. I can't remember your name. Um, anyway, uh, yeah. Uh, who do you work for? That would be us. Um, who should you be listening to? Uh, that would be us and your staff, of course, since you pay them so very much. But as said earlier, we will often prepare and do a whole lot of stuff, and I'm sorry I missed out this morning trying to get my burning done, which looks like the end of which is today. Anyway, in fact, I took a break from doing so to speak with you. Anyway, I'm not sure what you're afraid of, and I don't get it. It's really a sad situation. Other items. Slide Park ditches and brush removal and all that. Going pretty good. And thank you. Hopefully this winter the ditches will have a better flow line than they have in the past. Yes, and public participation. It's a good thing. Keep it accessible. And, of course, no to town and country because we don't need that. It's a Trojan horse. It's a wolf in sheep clothing, et cetera, et cetera. It's basically a residential development disguised as a welcome center. Don't think that's going to make it accessible. So anyway, yeah, get back out. Oh, yeah, I've discovered that the fire safe ordinance does not address vertical clearance for roadway access, private road access to driveways. Driveways are covered, but not the roadways. I live on a private road with eight people. Most of them are negligent in their upkeep. Went to file a complaint. Discovered I had to submit myself to an inspection. We're working to get that all cleaned up, and I will submit the complaint. But anyway, the bottom line is, yeah, we need vertical clearance. The vertical clearance on my road up to my house is really good. Trust me. But, you know, on my house... Thank you.

Thank you. Now taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Everyone, Linda Campbell, I wasn't going to say anything, but now I want to say thank you to Ruth for being willing to get up in person and speak her thoughts. And I'm in total agreement with what she said. And I'm, always hopeful that we will start to see changes that show that we're, as the public, a relevant part of the conversations and that we're being listened to. And thank you to everybody else that also called in and seconded that, third and fourth. And I appreciate any time anyone is willing to speak or write in or anything else. And I just, if anybody's listening, I encourage you to continue to do so. Thank you. Have a good rest of your day.

Thank you. Now taking public comment from Kathy Lishman.

Good afternoon. I'm sorry I turned in late and didn't hear what Bruce said, but I want to say that I'm sorry that some of you felt offended and defensive by comments that were made this morning by the public. And that's about all I want to say right now. I want to send you a letter with my thoughts about what happened this morning. Thank you.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay, thank you for all of the people that took time to address us on this open forum. We'll move on to our hearings. One o'clock time certain, item number 33. I'll go ahead and open the public hearing and ask Ms. Dawson to read the item into the record.

Item 33 is a hearing from Human Resources Department recommending the board conduct a public hearing pursuant to government code section 3502.3 on the status of vacancies in El Dorado County and recruitment and retention efforts in calendar year 2025.

I would like to welcome Joey Carrusco, our Director of Human Resources. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to be here. I'm joined today by Bill Edwards, the Assistant Director of Human Resources. And we're going to be talking today about AB2561, which is our recruitment and retention efforts and our current vacancies. We can go to the next slide. Actually, do I have to remote here? I can do it. So a bit of history as to why we're here. In September of 2024, Assembly Bill 2561 was signed by the governor, went into effect January 1st of 2025. The legislation, adds government code section 3502.3 to the Myers-Millius Brown Act or the MMBA, imposing new obligations on public agencies related to tracking and presenting information on job vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts And this shall be presented at a public hearing before the agency's governing body at least once per fiscal year. So this is our second time presenting this to you. And there are a few key points and obligations to consider here. Under that new government code section, this presentation must take place before adoption of the final budget. So we're good there. It also mandates that the employer provide an update on vacancies and recruitment and retention efforts. as well as barriers to filling vacancies. That's what we're doing today. And it offers the opportunity for labor groups to comment. And I can report that all recognized bargaining units have been informed of the vacancy rates for their respective bargaining units and notified of today's public hearing with the opportunity to present input and feedback to the board on the vacancy rates of their respective bargaining units. So let's dive right into some numbers here. On the upper right-hand side of the screen, you'll see that the county had approximately 2020 approved personnel allocations for full-time, part-time, and limited term positions as of December 31st of 2025. Of these allocations, 174 positions were vacant, resulting in an overall countywide vacancy rate of 8.6%. Um, last year, just as a note, it was 8.2%. It went up slightly as a December of last year is 8.6. That part of that can be attributed, I think, to our retirement incentive plan. We had quite a few people leave before the end of last calendar year. So I should note that the information you see on this slide represents board approved personnel allocations, full-time equivalents, does not include temporary or extra help positions. On the bottom right hand corner of the screen, you'll just see we listed the average monthly vacancy rate for 2025, which was 8.1%. Our highest month, the vacancy rate was 8.8 and the lowest monthly rate last year was 7.5%. So those are all pretty good numbers. 8.6% is an overall pretty good number compared to other agencies. So now let's look at our specific bargaining units and their respective vacancies as of December 31st of last year. So out of the 2020 total personnel allocations that I mentioned, 1,823 were represented and the remaining 197 are unrepresented. You'll see that the highest rate was for our local one supervisory group, along with the probation unit and both had vacancy rates of 13.3%. So that's a little bit higher than the other groups. Our lowest vacancy rate was the Deputy Sheriffs Association, which came in at 4.4% as of December 31st. So the DSA group is comprised mostly of sheriff's deputies, but it also includes DA investigators, supervising DA investigators, and sheriff's sergeants. So this is an important slide. It's a significant part of why we're here giving you this presentation today. So I should pause. Are there any questions so far? Okay. So next I'd like to show you our recruitment statistics for 2025. Human resources received almost 6,300 applications last year. And of those a little over 3,300 of them or 53% received were processed and approved, meaning that the applicant met the minimum qualifications and was approved to move forward in the recruitment process. In 2025, 385 vacancies were filled. And that again is full-time equivalencies, not extra help. 305 of those were filled through open recruitments 57 were filled through internal only recruitments. Those are typically promotional opportunities. And 23 were filled through continuous recruitments such as the mental health clinician. And I'm sure we have a couple other recruitments that we typically just keep open and we allow people to apply consistently so we can screen them and get those filled. They're usually harder to fill positions. And the pie chart on the right is just a breakdown of the percentages of the numbers that I just shared on the left. So most of our vacancies were filled through open recruitments, 79%. This slide provides a very high level overview of our recruitment and hiring process. El Dorado county utilizes a merit based system requiring a competitive recruitment process, the process is divided into phases, which requires coordination between HR and the hiring department, all of which is subject to civil service rules and regulations. So, starting with the requisition from the department to post a job, all the way to onboarding the new employee. There are quite a few nuances in each of the steps that you see here. For example, at the application and screening stage, my staff don't wait until the recruitment closes to start reviewing the applications. We review them as they come in to speed up the process. and to handle any appeals and that type of thing. So we don't wanna slow down the process for everyone else. The final bullet point of background and onboarding that you see includes employment history and education checks to confirm that the applicant provided accurate information. We live scan the applicant and in many of our jobs that we hire for, they have to go through a medical evaluation process. So all of these things can kind of impact how long it takes to get someone in the door. The recruitment process can take time and that time varies, but HR has worked very hard to streamline the process in order to get vacancies filled as soon as possible. On average, it takes about two months to bring on a new employee from the time they apply. Cuban Resources utilizes a wealth of online platforms to attract applicants such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, government jobs, and other recruitment related websites. For certain jobs that may be considered hard to fill, we also produce color brochures to offer additional facts about the appeal of El Dorado County and the type of candidate that we're seeking. And these are just a few of our actual examples of brochures that we put together to attract candidates. The one down the bottom right is our snow removal workers. And every year we... We go through this process with DOT. We have a really good working relationship with them. And we typically will announce it in June to get people on board well before the snow season starts. And I'm happy to say that this past year, we got more applicants than we needed. And we actually turned or shut down the recruitment process a little bit earlier than normal because transportation felt that they had enough staff to cover the snow season.

Yeah, but then it didn't snow.

Say again.

There's that little problem. I said, and then it didn't snow.

That's correct. Yeah. But we were prepared just in case. So my staff attends job fairs, both in El Dorado County and surrounding areas. These job fairs allow us to connect with job seekers and explain the application process directly to them in person. We've partnered with other departments and encourage them to send a representative to attend with us so that they can answer specific questions from interested job seekers. Also regional school partnerships and internships help high school students learn about public service careers and opportunities available after they graduate. Being able to make connections with job seekers in the community is a great way to attract candidates and encourage folks to work for El Dorado County. And here's some actual pictures of our job fairs and events that we attended. I think everyone who's smiling there must be human resources staff. Okay, let's talk about retention. As with any employment, particularly local government, there are different factors which create vacancies in El Dorado County. These include internal promotions, attrition, retirement, and voluntary separation. So retention information for calendar year 2025, total number of vacancies created last year was 381. 30% of the vacancies created last year were due to internal opportunities, which were promotions and transfers. 51 of the vacancies were created due to retirement. 41 were created due to involuntary separation. So that... Those two numbers equal 24% of vacancies resulting from attrition. And lastly, 142 vacancies were the result of voluntary separation or 30, excuse me, 37%. I should say that employees separate for different reasons. Attrition is viewed as a normal and anticipated process in organizations as employees transition into new phases of their lives and careers. We do exit interviews. Not everyone who leaves the county completes them. So we kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. But I can tell you in the ones I see that come through, you would think or maybe you've heard statements that people are leaving due to our salaries. That's quite a ways down on the list. People leave for other reasons. People leave for family reasons, health reasons. I'm not saying that's not significant to consider, but that's not the top reason. So hiring and engagement. What are we doing as an organization to retain staff? This process involves finding ways to engage employees in ways that matter to them. This slide shows some of the initiatives that my department has undertaken. Most of these points here are directly related to the county's strategic plan, specifically the workforce excellence section. Just to point out a few, we've worked to streamline the hiring process. We've created internal advancement opportunities through staff development, as well as wellness initiatives to engage employees. One of the tools we use to attract highly qualified candidates to county service is the ability to offer hiring incentives. This is something that many other agencies also do. Positions designated as hard to fill are eligible for hiring incentives of up to $6,000. Additional vacation leave and relocation reimbursement. As I briefly touched on before, one of the strategic plan focus areas is workforce excellence, which prioritizes enhancing employee hiring and retention with the action items that you see here. We also updated our survey market and compensation philosophy several years ago, 2023. We're in the process of looking at it again. And this was done to reflect a more relevant and effective group of comparator agencies to achieve the board's overall goal of maintaining a competitive and fiscally responsible pay and benefit structure. Our current five comparators are Yolo, Amador, Napa, Placer, and Sacramento. Some of the items that you see on this slide have already been implemented while a few of the items like employee surveys, engagement surveys and recognition programs are still in development. El Dorado County has greatly expanded its training and career development curriculum over the past few years due in large part to having a dedicated training and organizational development specialist in human resources. We offered 21 training sessions to employees last year with hundreds of attendees. These courses included our leadership academies, emotional intelligence training, staff motivation and engagement, conducting performance evaluations, and quite a few others. And these numbers that I gave you don't include all of the mandatory training that we facilitate, like ethics, harassment and discrimination, workplace violence reporting. So with that, I thank you all for your time. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that presentation. To my colleagues, questions, comments?

Very thorough. Thank you, Joey.

You're welcome.

Any other questions, comments?

I don't know if you know this, but how does our vacancy rate compare with our comparative counties or neighboring counties? Do you have any idea?

Last year... late last year i know plasters was closer to 11 percent i don't know what they are right now it may have changed um the norm and i'm not just focusing on our comparator but with government agencies is probably around 12 percent from what i hear anecdotally i don't yeah i don't have any data to support that but i i feel like we're we're doing pretty good thank you

My question would be with regards to the minimum qualifications. 53% of all the people that applied met those initially. Do we review those often? And do the department heads agree with what those minimum requirements should be? How does that work?

Well, I'll take the first question first. We do, uh, review our job specs constantly. We're always looking at them to make sure that they're one up to date, reflective of the kind of candidates that we're looking for. Jobs tend to change over time, technology and other things influence that. So we do go back and change MQs or minimum qualifications. Um, occasionally either we raise them or lower them. Um, But that number, it sounds like a lot. It sounds like a lot of people who apply don't meet the MQs. That's indisputable. Oftentimes, and this isn't consistent, but folks will apply for jobs maybe just based on the salary range and say, wow, that's a large salary. I'm going to apply for it when they don't meet the qualifications. That's not always the case. But, Bill, do you have any more information about... No, you hit it on the head.

Okay.

We do work with department heads all the time on updating job specs. And it depends. If they're a countywide classification like admin analyst, it is a little bit different of a process as compared to classifications that have only a couple incumbents that are specific to a certain department. It's easier to change those as needed. Yeah, to answer your question, we look at those constantly.

And could I piggyback on that really quick? Because I haven't looked specifically in a couple years, but I do know there was a time where some of the jobs would say they were entry-level jobs. But then they would require a bunch of experience. And so it's kind of like that kind of thing where, you know, and especially with kids getting out of college and stuff, they can't have both. It's very unusual for them to have both, you know. So have you looked at those specifically, the ones that are supposed to be entry-level to make sure they really truly do allow for folks that don't have the experience but may have gotten an education or, you know?

Yeah.

something like that because um i know some folks that got screened out and it didn't make sense so yes we we do look at those um so as a operating a merit-based system uh you do have to have some method of separating the better qualified candidates from the lesser qualified candidates and experience is the primary way to do that and so while we do ask for experience there are it's not necessarily work experience every time for every position you can actually acquire that experience in different ways, and so we encourage internships volunteer. volunteerism things like that, where you can gain that experience in different ways, but certainly the the. The more complex the job, the more that experience is going to come into play in and there's less wiggle room with those requirements.

All right, other questions, comments? Okay, let's go ahead.

Madam Chair, if I may, before you open it up for public comment, as Joey noted earlier, the statute does require that you provide an opportunity for recognized employee organizations to make a presentation on these issues as it relates to their bargaining unit. I do see Ms. Rimaldi in the room, so I didn't know if you wanted to. I think if you are to do that, yes, it should be done before general public comment. So you may want to invite Ms. Rimaldi or any other bargaining unit representatives up here to make their presentation.

Okay, let's go ahead and take your advice on that and ask if there's any bargaining units that would like to comment on this report. Ms. Romaldi, welcome.

I also sent it to Lauren.

I just didn't bring my computer over here.

Do you know when you sent it, Jen? An hour ago. Oh, an hour ago. OK. That's OK.

I can talk. That's OK. I'll send you guys my presentation. I wanted to touch on the classification thing also. There's also a good process we've worked out where employees, if they have concerns, can work through HR to correct those classifications and go through a process. So we actually do have a pretty good process on that that really benefits both sides. So I want to thank you guys for the opportunity to comment today. So I think that this is a good opportunity where we can take a step back and take a look at things that might need improvement within our processes. I think this is a great opportunity where we're not going to assign blame, but we're going to look for a teamwork approach where we can build on this and we can maybe catch problems before the next year when we're back here presenting this. So some of the things I want to talk on, you guys talked about the overall vacancy rate, which I do think is important. But I want to focus on the vacancy rates within Local 1 and what they tell us. So I stuck to our 2025 data to match your guys' presentation. And what I did with that is I looked at our 2025 new employee orientation rosters and the AB119 reports that show the hiring and all of the ins and outs. So I took all of that data and I looked at how it's impacting local one. And what this is going to tell us is not how many positions were open, but it's going to tell us which positions keep repeating. And it's going to allow us to find where we have problems so that we can then focus on those positions and not come up with an overall approach that may not fit all the exact problems. So out of the data, 57% of county positions are covered under local one. 65.5% of county vacancies are also within local one. So that's a really big number that we're dealing with. What was that second number you just gave? 65.5%. Okay. Okay. So local one does represent a larger share of County employees. Um, but this is a good spot to kind of take a step back and see, let's see where the averages and the vacancies are concentrated. And let's see if we can come up with some ideas as to why those are happening. And this is a great way to help reduce the recruiting costs, the retention costs, all of those things. Yes, there's normal turnover. We talked about it, but when we're seeing a pattern in positions that keep having to be refilled, that's where we really want to look. So one thing I did find with our data is that our top three positions that are constantly being filled are our office assistant one, our office assistant two, and our eligibility specialist. And so what does that mean? Let me take our eligibility specialist, for example. They have about a year long training program to get them ramped up to where they're a full employee producing at full speed and full production. So what does that mean? All the existing employees have to pick up the slack because they're not yet at this point where they're providing full service to the community. So last year we had about eight eligibility specialists that kept coming through, and I'm pretty sure this year we've already hit that number. So we've already recruited and onboarded an additional eight this year. That's a problem. That's a lot of turnover in that position when it takes a full year to get them trained. So that means they're not even going to be beneficial to us until next year. um why is that happening i don't know and that's something that i think you guys can look at is it management issues does management need some retraining on how to maybe mentor people a little better instead of using discipline first are there is it just happen to be a position that's always going to see that turnover and we're not going to worry about it but that's where we need to start focusing our efforts And I think that we could do a little bit better job of tracking how we're doing that. This is one of those things, you know, you hear everybody, we need to use AI, we need to use technology, we need to modernize. Well, there's safe and smart ways to do that. But this is one of those ways. Let's create a database that shows these positions that's automatically getting updated. And so it can alert us when there's a position that maybe has seen more turnover than what we're comfortable with. And so it's somebody doesn't have to sit there and constantly monitor it, but they can be alerted when there is a problem. And then we can dive into that. So that's what I wanted to share today. I do think that we need to look a little deeper into the Local 1 vacancies because I ultimately think we're spending too much money to keep people employed within Local 1. So thank you.

Thanks, Jen. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Are there other bargaining unit representatives either in the room or online that would like to comment on this report? And if not... We'll go ahead and open it up to public comment.

Ms. Dawson. We are now taking public comments specifically on item 33. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We'll begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Are there any members in the room that would like to address the board on this particular item? Seeing none, may we go online, please?

Now taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Hi, everyone. Linda Campbell, El Dorado Hills. Thank you, Supervisor Ferraro, for bringing up the question. I was curious, too, how this correlates with other counties. I think that would be helpful. but I guess on some of the comments that were made, how does this compare and correlate to the private sector? Because everybody has challenges like this, so what's acceptable and what's not? I can confirm that in the private sector, sometimes hiring can take multiple months, depending upon the types of roles and things like that. So it's not the same for every specific role that hiring could take a long time. So just to say that hiring could take two months, well, for what roles? Maybe there's some that require more activity. Curious to know at what step in the hiring process are most candidates determined not to progress? Maybe that would be something to look at in the process itself to say, are we actually totally disqualifying too many candidates where we could actually allow them to continue to the next round And possibly they're just the right person for the job. I noticed the comment about potentially hiring incentives. I highly recommend no hiring incentives because that ultimately could translate into lost money if we end up having a high turnover rate so we could get somebody in for a short period of time. They get trained up, they leave, they got their incentive bonus, and then they're gone. And then I guess I would say, what are the reasons for people leaving? Are there exit interviews that were done? Because that could kind of go into the mindset of the individuals as to why they didn't feel it was the right position for them or the right place. Those could be things to dig into deeper as far as the departments or management or, I mean, maybe they had a life change and that's why they left. And those are decisions they had to make. So anyways, just a few thoughts on this. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Not taking public comment from iPhone.

Hi, Kelly Nelovaya again, District 1, El Dorado Hills. Echo Linda, so I won't repeat myself to save time. I did have a question. When she mentioned the two most difficult, I believe it was Admin 1 or Office 1 or things like that, are we losing those people or are we also seeing where people are trying to get in the door and then they're applying up? That's definitely a common thing in state positions is you get your foot in the door and then you're moving up within different departments because let's face it, those salaries are very difficult. And as Linda said, when we're competing with the private market and we You know, we're considering bringing Costco, which has a lot of the starting positions at $24 an hour. In-N-Out Burger is advertising, you know, $22 an hour starting. We're competing against fast food with the new minimum wage requirement of $20, where they're upping that in so many situations. I'm sure it's a lot less stressful to work at Starbucks than in a highly stressful job within the county. So I was just, I think Linda's advice of comparing against private sector and also looking at are these people leaving or are they staying and moving up would also be helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from 390.

Hi there, Ken Greenwood from Triple Junction. Yes, ditto from Kelly and Linda. We need to find out why people are leaving. Exit interviews, I don't know if you do them, but I know back in the day you did not do them, and that was a bad thing. Also, back in the day, there was... a lot more open hostility from the board towards boards and management, towards people, working people, if you will, the people that make things actually happen. And I don't know how that is today. I don't know any people that work for the county right now. A couple years ago, my ex-wife, girlfriend she worked there it had its own issues and really wasn't worth what was being paid and the point made earlier of you know in it out and target and this and that and the other thing better stay up with those people because really we do a harder job so you know back in the day it was like, well, who would really want to work there? So hopefully that's not the case today, but if it is, you might want to ask some questions about it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Not taking public comment from 525.

Hi, Lyle Bennett, Coach Sean.

I remember a nugget way back when I was getting public administration credentials and all of that about the vacancy rate is one indicator to look at about your organization. And now that's being kind of adopted by the state of California, provide both you, the board and the public. I affirm everything everybody else just said. What I would like to add that is in my training below, That's not good. You're a stagnant organization. We all know the problems of too high. And I'd have to look at it again. But back in the day, somewhere between four to seven was the sweet spot. And that means that every bargaining unit that you're responsible for has an indicator that there's serious issues going on with retention and everything else. Big exceptions are your law and justice bargaining units. and your manager's association bargaining units, as well as the criminal attorney association. But they're the lowest, I think. Anyway, I just think you guys need to say something about what this indicator tells you about. It's not just here. Other places have these crises. It's the discrepancy between your various mental organizations. Thank you for taking my comment.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

Okay, thank you. I will bring this back to the board for further comments. If you like this, basically we're being asked to hold the public hearing, which we've done. And the report is basically a receiving file. So unless you have other comments that you'd like to make at this time.

I just had one. And I think that in my mind, you know, hearing from Jen and everything, I feel that what she was pointing out where we should focus things kind of is going along with our recent philosophy of looking at those hard to fill, difficult to keep retention kind of things. So I felt that that was a really good alignment on where we're trying to go as a board and a county. So thank you for, kind of um what's the right word i want to say validating that's probably not the right word but you know validating that we're i think we're on the right track and focusing on those specific ones that are just more difficult for what various reasons and that's the other part is why are they so hard to fill and that stuff but um yeah appreciated you being here

Excellent. Any other comments? No? Okay, then I'll go ahead and close the public hearing. We will move to item number 34, which is from our Planning and Building Department. This is the Wilson Rezone and Parcel Map.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Item 34 is a hearing to consider the recommendation of the Planning Commission on the Wilson Rezone and tentative parcel map. The project consists of the following. One, a rezone from residential estate, five acre minimum, to residential, one acre minimum. And two, a tentative parcel map to divide the 7.94 acre property into two parcels of approximately 6.43 acres and 1.5 acres. The planning commission recommending the board take the following actions. One, determine that pursuant to the California Equality Act guidelines, projects consistent with the general plan environmental view may be streamlined. Two, authorize a chair to sign an ordinance for the rezone. And three, approve tentative parcel map to create two parcels of approximately 6.43 acres and 1.5 acres based on the findings and subject to the conditions of approval.

Thank you, Ms. Dawson. I forgot to open the public hearing, so I'll go ahead and formally open the public hearing. And I'd like to welcome Mr. Flower and Ms. Shelley, who are planners with the Planning and Building Department. Welcome.

Thank you, supervisors. My name's Leila Shelley, project planner with El Dorado County. We're asking today for your consideration of the planning commission's recommendation for this project, which includes a rezone from residential estate, five acre minimum to residential one acre minimum, and a tentative parcel map dividing the properties into two parcels. At the April 23, 2026 public hearing, the Planning Commission approved with a 5-0 vote. The project parcel is located on the northeast side of Coon Hollow Road, approximately 600 feet east of the intersection with Excelsior Road in the Placerville Community Region, Supervisor District 3. This parcel is within the City of Placerville sphere of influence. Therefore, consultation transpired with the City's Director of Development and no concerns were expressed. The project parcel has a general plan designation of medium density residential and the surrounding parcels have a general plan density of medium or low density residential. The project parcel is currently zoned RE5. Parcels directly adjacent are zoned RE5, R1A, and RE10. This graphic shows the existing and proposed zoning designations and how the request relates to the adjacent zoning. The tentative parcel map shows the two existing residences, a main dwelling with an accessory dwelling unit closer to Coon Hollow, as well as an existing driveways, garage, and sheds. The proposed parcel lines create a parcel for each residence and proposed a driveway easement to be recorded providing access through the front parcel. This project qualifies for the streamlined environmental review according to California Environmental Quality Act section 15183. Projects consistent with the community plan, general plan or zoning. Although the project proposes a rezone, this exemption is appropriate because it remains consistent with the general plan. The land use designation of medium density residential allows for both RE5 and R1A. The Planning Commission recommends the Board of Supervisors take the following actions. One, determine that according to CEQA guidelines, find the project to be exempt pursuant to section 15183. Authorize the chair to sign the ordinance for rezone Z240007, adopting a change in the zoning designation from RE5 to R1A. and approved tentative parcel map P250001 based on the findings and subject to the conditions of approval as presented. That concludes staff's presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Ms. Shelley. Are there any questions on this item? Ms. Parlin?

Yeah, you know, I don't have a problem with the parcel split, not a big deal. But what I am concerned about, and I did reach out to DOT to try to get some clarification, is that I've had several instances in District 4 where these easements for access, because they're not roads that are designated, they're easements, I guess back in the day that these easements happened all the time and they were great and lovely when the people split the parcels and then over time one of them moves and then you get a new neighbor and then new neighbors don't get along and then there's a fight over the easement. One neighbor will fear the other, then they come to the county for resolution and it just gets ugly. And I asked, I don't think we have any way to do something different different than these easements. But I really think we need to see if there's anything we can do with an ordinance or something because I just don't like setting people up for future failure. And this will be fine for years and years. Don't get me wrong. But someday when one of these people moves and they don't get along, And I'm seeing it too many of these neighbor-neighbor things. So I'm just on principle going to vote no on this just so you know. I think that the county really needs to see if there's something we can do to change this so that we're not setting ourselves up for future failure. The parcel split does not, I don't have an issue with that at all. But something's got to give. I've just seen too many of these neighbor arguments over the years. And When one property owner seems to be at a disadvantage than the other and then they come to the county for help And we're really at a loss to help them then they have to go to court And I would like to see us figure out a better way.

So that's all I got This staff want to reply to that at all or We do have Adam Bain from DOT here.

That's who I was talking to you Turn it back to red, so the hot mic is red, yeah.

Strike two. Adam Bain with the Department of Transportation. Supervisor Parlin did ask about this issue. We had a very productive conversation, and her points are well taken. Neighbor-on-neighbor disputes are always the worst because they're generally... uh more emotional and heartfelt than over you know somebody ran out over the neighbor's bushes or somebody's dog getting out or any number of things that that all occur and the more clear we can have that the fewer disputes we'll have in the future and it's an excellent point we've looked at different ways of trying to do what you're asking And an easement is an easement, and it's really the technical tool to be used. The Subdivision Map Act recognizes that. Our subdivision ordinances recognize that. Our design standards are all set up that way. But I did have a conversation with the assistant surveyor yesterday, Justin Cisneros. He's aware of this particular project. He knows the surveyors, and he's working on the tentative map. And he did offer up a suggestion that On the final map, which is the instrument that finally records the underlying land rights, they have a little bit of discretion in their description of what actually goes on the map. And it's still a driveway easement, and it still runs with the land. And if the land gets sold, that right gets passed on to the next people or the next owner. But he did say that in the description they can put some thought into how they describe it and they can put it as an easement for the benefit of parcel B on parcel A to try and help add some clarity. I think most of the time when we get those disputes it's one neighbor over another neighbor and that easement was done in 1946 that used to be a dog kennel and now it's a road and all those types of things. So that was his suggestion as to still conform with the rules and regulations of the way the legislation is set up, but try and give us a fighting chance to make some clarity there. I think clarity is always everybody's friend. And by adding some description in there, that may be a way of trying to meet in the middle of what we're trying to do. So that was his suggestion. I think it's a great idea. And I think that might help ease the situation. It certainly won't. take it away from every case, but that was his thought and I concur with it.

Have we done that with others for that clarity or is this?

It's something we don't normally do. And normally there's a plat and legal description that says commencing here and setting forth. Yeah. Walking around the thing and easement and all the other things. But adding some of the description on the map itself helps a lot. You can take it out and show it to people and say, here's the map. Here's where it says this easement. It's not a document that was recorded somewhere else that doesn't apply to a map. And there's no exhibit, those types of things. So I think it's the best we can do, but I think we can put some more effort into that and try and kind of shift towards doing things that way.

Yeah, I would concur with that. I think it clarifies. Yeah. So when the neighbor do get in that dispute, well, it's clear it was right here and you should have paid attention to what you were buying. Good point. Because it's clearly pointed out. So I think that's a great idea.

Okay. I'll go ahead and support it then. Thank you for looking into that. I appreciate it.

You're suggested and they concurred that that's probably a better way of doing it. So I appreciate that. Awesome.

Good work. Okay. Other comments, questions?

No.

No.

Okay, seeing none, let's go ahead and open this up for public comment. Ms. Dawson.

We are now taking public comments specifically on item 34. A timer will alert you when 30 seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask you to voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments.

Good afternoon.

Yeah. Thank you. Isn't it supposed to be green? No, we don't. Red's hot, like a hot mic.

Yeah.

My name's Terry Ottens. I am a trustee of the Wilson Family Trust and representing my mother, Marilyn Wilson, who owned the property. I made similar comments that I'm gonna make today before the Planning Commission, so if you've heard them before, sorry for the repetition. You received a good summary from the Planning Department on the technical aspects of the application, but I wanted to fill you in a little bit on the human. of why we made this request. My parents have lived at this address since 1972 for the past 54 years. My sister and her husband moved in in 2003 to help take care of my parents and help them maintain the property. My dad passed away in 2016 and my mom is now 90 years old and she has come to the conclusion that the property is going to need to be sold either upon her death or if she ends up needing other care options. My mom would like to leave a portion of the property to my sister and her husband, but they are not interested, nor are they capable of continuing to maintain eight acres of property, particularly with your fire regulations and all the mowing and things that have to go on. My mom wants to do that so that my sister won't be forced out of her home when my mom passes away and we have to sell the property. We do have a mortgage on the property and so the property definitely would have to be sold on my mother's death. So I want to emphasize that we are proposing no new development. The two homes are already on the property. The septic tanks are there. The driveway's there. There is absolutely nothing going on here but putting a line on a map. um because of the configuration of the property there's an oak forest on the back four acres of the property and it would be uh really difficult to try and subdivide the property any further even though it's zoned for a higher density i'd also like to point out that when I think you're aware that each of those parcels would be eligible for AUD, yeah. ADU. ADU, which would put two more houses on the property. However, when we talked to the EID and the fire district, we were informed that any new dwellings on that water line would trigger an offsite improvement to the water system for fire flow purposes to the tune of $75,000. So I don't think anyone's gonna see that beneficial to try and further subdivide that property. With that information, I stand for questions or anything else, any more information you need from us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there other members of the public that would like to address the board on this item? Okay, may we go online, please?

Not taking public comment from online participants. Not taking public comment from Linda Campbell.

Hey everyone, Linda Campbell, El Dorado Hills. So thank you for the discussion on the easement. That was one of the kind of questions I had. But other than that, I'm curious as to why the whole parcel is being rezoned rather than instead potentially with that front portion that would be separated, just have that one go to R1A and the other one stay at RE5. And I asked that because even as the applicant stated, potentially in the future, it's going to be sold. So it offers more opportunity in the future, potentially for people to build different things. And that actually butts up against an RE10 parcel. So in the idea of consistency with trying to keep things like for like, and not disrupt neighbors. I'm curious why they don't just keep the RA5 on the 6.43 acre parcel and then do the rezoning on the 1.5 acre. So those are my thoughts thinking of partners. And I do realize that there are other RA1s above and below that, but I don't necessarily think that's a good excuse to do that across that whole side of the RE-10 parcel. So thank you.

Thank you. Now taking public comment from 390.

I'm glad you're taking note of the easement issues. Because as we speak, I am out here cleaning up after my neighbor on our shared easement. So there's always issues there, but there is a civil code. It should be included in all conditions of approval regarding private easements and your responsibilities under civil law. I don't recall the section right now, but it's there in routine maintenance. vegetation and such. It should be made very aware to the people who purchase these properties in the future and or deed restrictions and or whatever. Certainly conditions of approval of a discretionary event such as this. But easements are a pain in the ass, whatever. That's for sure. And we got a bunch of them out there. And yeah, it's just a problem waiting to be argued about. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

There's no additional public comment.

All right, then I will bring this back to the board for additional questions, deliberation or action. Does staff want to address the question regarding the RE5 versus the R1A?

You're on. No, you just turned it off. There you go.

Thank you, Chair Lane. Would you like me to share a graphic while I do so that we're all on the same page?

Okay.

So this is the graphic that shows both existing and proposed zoning. Oops. I'm not sure what just happened. It looks like you can see it. One more time.

There you go.

Yes, so you can see here that we have the R1A zoning both north and south of the subject parcel. So there would be a circumstance where we either have an island of R1A here or an island of RE5 here, typically as we process zoning changes, we do change the full parcel that is being requested for a rezone. It would be unusual, but not impossible if we were to bifurcate that single parcel into two parcels, each of a different zone, but that's not what was requested. So we processed it as it came before us.

Yeah, I kind of had that same question in the back of my head. I don't know what to say. I mean, if the applicant requested it this way, you know, then.

It is a weird one, though, because all that time that was spent on the TGPA ZOU was all about trying to align the parcel sizes with the zoning, and here we're making a new one that doesn't match, and it is a little mind-boggling, but... And there are other, my recollection is that during that process too, there's still parcels from that process that have mixed zoning. I don't think it fixed them all. And so I don't know if it makes sense, especially since we know the plan really is to sell one off. Why wouldn't we want to make it match? But I don't know.

I guess the question might be to our planners is, okay, we'll put aside the fact that this is how the applicant requested it. in your professional opinion, are we making, are we creating a problem or does this, do you feel that this will work?

I do feel that it will work. It allows for consistency for that new zone, both to the North and the South and, uh, If it doesn't end up getting either annexed by the city of Placerville or otherwise further subdivided, it can remain the same size that it is with that zoning that is different than the size of the lot.

Okay, well, that's helpful to me. Other questions or comments? Hold on just a moment, thank you. Other questions or comments?

If the new six-acre parcel is sold and the new owner wants to make one-acre parcels, is there access to that land or do they have to access through the easement? Or is there access to a road that, can you?

I think it's going to be more easement.

Yeah, I mean, you're going to have five houses, five properties driving through the easement.

If there was another project to come along in the future to further subdivide that, they would have to resolve that access issue. And we have limitations on the number of parcels that can access through a driveway. There's an entire protocol for all that. So it's certainly... an issue that would have to be addressed later and it may be very problematic and costly and those types of things and that's why a lot of projects don't develop or properties don't develop fully. But that's something they would have to deal with at that time and they'd have to abide by those conditions and take an entire full process just like this has taken.

Knowing that area, it might be difficult as well to get septic on those parcels being any smaller, full of lava cap there. And so there could be some really complicated factors in trying to do anything more than that.

i guess to prevent problems down the road i guess why can we ask the applicant why they want to rezone that as well that six acres to me but much seems like it'd be much simpler to leave it just leave it at five the re5 yeah five acres um i mean it's an exception to how we typically run our items but miss wilson indicated that she wanted to say something and

You're asking a question of her, so Ms. Wilson, if you'd like to just briefly address that question.

So I have a background in planning and zoning, and I've honestly never heard of just taking that portion of the property that you want rezoned. I can tell you that my mom and dad, for the last 30 years, have seen requests for a rezone all the way around them, and it's been granted. and they have houses behind their property. They have five or six houses when it used to be a field. So we didn't think that this was out of line considering the development that you all have allowed up till now. The second thing is, yeah, sure, we could have just asked for a rezone on the one parcel, but that involves us having to pay for a survey that we don't know is gonna get approved. ask for an amount of land that we don't know is gonna get approved. And what would happen if planning and zoning said, oh, we don't like the configuration, you need to add a quarter of an acre to it. And then we start all over again. I have never heard of when you want to do something like this with a parcel of land, dividing the land up and just breaking off a small parcel for a rezone. So it never occurred to me that that would be something that would even be considered.

And if it were to be considered, would you be Do you have an opinion one way or the other?

Do you prefer the way it's being? Considering that we just spent two years and $24,000 in fees to get this far, I think we might have, I mean, I'm not saying we object. It makes sense. Fine. But if I have to pay another $24,000 and start all over again, I'd be, my family would be pretty upset. Right, right. No, we wouldn't ask you to do that.

Okay, thank you. All right, I'll bring it to Mr. Livingston.

Yeah, I just wanted to maybe add a procedural note in case it helps to influence your decision. So as we've talked about in other contexts, there is a requirement on an item that's coming to you on recommendation from the Planning Commission that If you are proposing any revisions to that that have not been previously considered by the Planning Commission, that the matter must first be referred to the Planning Commission for review of that. So it would seem to me, if you were interested in pursuing the suggestion of only rezoning a portion of what's currently contemplated, that that is not something that had been considered by the Planning Commission. staff can correct me if I'm wrong there, such that it would then require referral to the planning commission before it could then be finally considered by your board. So I just wanted to make that procedural note, if that is something that you're interested in pursuing.

David, the assistant surveyor language, that's minor.

Correct yeah that's minor I believe that that if I had to identify I don't know if there was any clarifying language that's being proposed for the conditions I think it's been referenced to condition number eight which describes the access easement but no a matter as the relatively minor technical matter I don't believe would require review by the Commission.

Okay.

prepared to take madam chair i would uh move that we approve um the planning commission's approval of this rezone uh adding the clarifying language of some sort to the surveyor and it's fairly simple to the final map to the final map okay yeah thank you there's a motion a second and there's a second uh any further comments on the motion seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed

Motion passes 4-0 with Supervisor Turnbull being absent.

Thank you, Adam. I appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I will go ahead and close the public hearing. And we will move to our 145 hearing, which is item number 35, also coming from Planning and Building, the COOL appeal.

item number 35 hold on a second sorry i i just want to note my husband did some work on this project so i'm going to dismiss myself and um assistant cao laura gill laura schwartz will um come on in and cover thank you for that i'm sorry i forgot that and i'll go ahead and open the public hearing and call on the clerk of the board to read this item into the record thank you

Item 34 is a hearing to consider an appeal received from Nathaniel Wilson on behalf of appellant Michael Kuhl, appealing the planning commission September 25th, 2025 denial of conditional use permit for single use residential unit. Staff recommending the board take the following action. Uphold the planning commission's denial of conditional use permit based on findings of denial adopted by the planning commission written public comments received by 4 p.m on the day prior to today's meeting were distributed to all board members and included with this agenda item okay and i'll welcome a whole slew of people from planning and building over there council's office welcome to all of you you're on

But before we start, then, I don't know when we do, we always forget, and so I did meet with the applicant on this issue just so that we're supposed to disclose that, I think, right? Yep. At some point? Yep. Whenever? Perfect.

Yes, we don't have any formal policies or procedures on it, but this would be the appropriate time to disclose any ex-party communications you've had with the applicant or any other interested parties in this matter.

There you go. Anybody else?

No, ma'am.

Okay. Planning and building, take it from here.

Thank you, Chair Lane. Supervisors, my name is Andy Flower, Planning Manager for Discretionary Projects in El Dorado County. The project would allow a new single-family structure on a site-zoned TPZ, or Timber Preserve Zone, which would include a proposed private on-site septic system, fire hydrant, solar arrays, and future pad turnout for storage and parking. Prior to Planning Commission recommendation, the project was also required to receive a recommendation from the Agricultural Commission. The Ag Commission issued a two-phase motion to, number one, recommend denial due to the findings for General Plan Policy 8.4.2.1a that the proposed use would be detrimental to the parcel or to adjacent parcels for the long-term forest resource production value or conflict with forest resource production in the general area, and two, support the finding for zoning ordinance that the proposed use is compatible with and will not detract from the land's ability to produce timber. Included with hearing materials, the applicant submitted a memo from Fred Bullard, registered professional forester, stating that the proposed project will not detract from the land's ability to produce timber. Before the board today is an appeal to the September 25th, 2025 Planning Commission's denial of conditional use permit to allow a single family structure to be built within the timber preserved zone. With this aerial map, you can see that the project site would become the only residentially developed site on the shores of Union Valley Reservoir. The site has general plan designation of natural resources, timber production zone so sorry the site plan shows the existing well shed and driveway on the southern end of the site near the edge of the water the total area of disturbance or proposed development area would equal a little more than a half acre this project proposes a two-story house with a daylight basement for a total of 2538 square feet of living space Even with proposed grading, the house would still be constructed on a slope. The Planning Commission recommends the board, excuse me, I'm sorry, Staff recommends that the Board uphold the Planning Commission denial of conditional use permit CUP 240011, which is to deny the appeal CUPA 25002 based on the findings of denial adopted by the Planning Commission as may be modified by the Board. Alternative actions would include reversing the Planning Commission denial of conditional use permit with findings of approval based on the Board of Supervisors direction and find the project categorically exempt under section 15303 of the CEQA guidelines. The Board could additionally direct the staff to prepare CEQA analysis that would be initiated with an initial study and remand the project to the Planning Commission for reconsideration. This concludes staff's presentation. I would be happy to answer any questions. The applicant is also available for any questions if needed.

All right, thank you for that presentation. Questions, comments? Anybody? No? Okay. Then we'll go ahead and open this up to public comment.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

May I suggest before doing so, this is coming to you on appeal from the Planning Commission. And although in a somewhat unusual way, because typically there's both an appellant and an applicant, in this case, that is the same individual. But nevertheless, since it is coming to you on appeal, I would suggest giving The the appellant who also happens to be the applicant an opportunity to present to you before you do to open it up for public comment okay.

I understand that the cool someone representing cool is here. Would you like to come forward and talk to us.

Is there going to be a time limit on the presentation, no.

It's in your discretion, Madam Chair. I think that the board has typically allotted anywhere between 10 and 15 minutes to an appellant or an applicant.

So no timer?

Mr. Kuhl, you have prepared some comments. Would they fit within a 10-minute time limit?

More than fit.

More than fit? Okay. Let's do a 10-minute.

Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Let me first... say observe i have gone ahead my comments are very brief but i've prepared a written version of them if that would be of any help to anybody sure do you have copies of it or is it just one okay thank you

Thank you, Laurie.

You can go ahead and get started. OK.

Thank you so much. Again, my name is Michael Kuhl. I'm the current owner of the property for which the conditional use permit application has been filed. My project concerns property that has been occupied and used by my mother's family for generations. The parcel includes a structure that predates the original 1875 government land use survey. And my connection to the property dates to early childhood when my family spent summers there managing cattle. The history is relevant because it relates and reflects the longstanding continuous use of the land and its suitability for residential occupancy. The governing standards for this application are straightforward. I will summarize, but again, I have copies of them in case somebody would care to review them in more detail. State law contained in California code governing timberlands and their administration recognizes timber production zone property as land devoted to timber production and compatible uses, including residents. At the county level, the applicable General plan and zoning ordinances require findings that proposed residential use will not materially interfere with long-term timber production, public safety, access, or natural resources. The standards were applied during the certificate of compliance process back in 205 and 206. when my parcel and its proposed uses were reviewed through each level of county land use governance, including the Technical Advisory Committee, Agricultural Commission, Planning Commission, and Board of Supervisors. At every level the findings in favor was unanimous. The matter was also taken to the Board of Forestry for confirmation from that body that the applicable policies and procedures had been followed. My position is straightforward. The decision should be based on relevant facts and findings, not on generalized concerns or changing interpretations. Recent objections appear to rely on opinion rather than evidence that the project would materially reduce, the assumption that the project would materially reduce production or conflict with the purpose of TPZ designation. There has been no specific finding that the proposed residence would materially impact, impair the property's longstanding capacity for timber production. The principal concerns identified during this discussion during this project evaluation excuse me fire have identified these concerns fire prevention public access emergency egress and egress and water supply they've already these have been considered in detail in prior proceedings and in my feeling had been addressed and answered. But let me briefly just punch on them, starting with fire protection. Fire protection is supported more than adequately by nearby federal, state, and local resources. Access to the parcel is longstanding and the road in question is actively used and maintained by the relevant agencies and landowners. To include myself, emergency access was previously reviewed and established as part of the certificate of compliance process. And if anything today, it's much, much stronger where it was back then when everybody, your body included approved it. Water availability has been evaluated and confirmed by the agencies responsible for making that determination. As I said, I can be happy to discuss this in more high-level discussion. For these reasons, I respectfully submit for the record that the record supports approval of the project. The property has a long history of family use, the governing Standards expressly contemplate residential use that is compatible with TPZ zoning. And the relevant findings in support of my applications have been addressed through repeated review and examination and analysis. I therefore ask that the application be evaluated on the established facts and the applicable legal point. In conclusion, let me just briefly speak to something that just came in and was submitted to the record. Two points. One, many points, but two relevant points. One, you read it and it makes it sound like I am never, ever going to produce timber off of that property. My family always has. I will always do it. It's on a schedule, schedule based on continuing consultations with foresters and other people are concerning the land. The other makes a suggestion that my parcel is not a legal TPZ parcel. Folks, I'm sorry. This went through a process that went through all the levels that establish it as a TPZ parcel. What's more amazing about it, the individual who wrote this was part of that process. He made the motion before the Ag Commission to have it approved. Deep breath. My attorney, Nathaniel Wilson and I are available for any questions or comments you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Cool. Typically, we would then ask staff if you have any response or comments that you would like to make. And that's typically a five-minute response. It's not a requirement, it's just an opportunity.

Yeah, and Madam Chair, you could also open it up for comment. And I would suggest after public comment is given, again, because Mr. Kuhl is the appellant here, that he be given an opportunity to provide any closing remarks following any public comment, as well as staff can provide any responses to you at that time.

And so my thinking was, because we didn't plan this obviously very well to begin, so my thought was to offer staff an ability to respond to this exact testimony. Certainly. Open it up to public comment, and then give staff the next bite at the apple to kind of conclude it, and then Mr. Kuhl, a final response to conclude this. That sounds great. All right. Okay, so...

We appreciate the opportunity, but currently we don't have a response.

Okay. And then at what point will the board ask clarifying questions?

This would be a good opportunity, I think, typically in an appeal. You've asked those clarifying questions as part of these initial presentations, and of course... Before we take public. Correct.

Okay. All right. To my colleagues, do you have any questions, comments that you wish to make at this time?

You okay?

All right. I'm... I'm kind of the newbie with regards to this type of zoning, timber production zoning. So my question to you would be, well, first of all, is this parcel zoned TPZ? Because I heard the appellant say that maybe it wasn't, but what is it zoned?

It is zoned TPZ.

And timber production zone means it's not intended for residential usages?