Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome to this budget hearing for Monday, June 15th, 2026, and it is 1.30. Can we have a roll call, please? Oh, and this is the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. Roll call.

Thank you, Chair. Supervisor Arroyo? Here. Supervisor Bone? Here. Supervisor Bushnell. Here. Supervisor Madrone.

Here.

Chair Wilson.

Present.

All are here.

Great. All right. Let's stand for the flag salute, please. And Supervisor Arroyo, you want to lead us today? Thanks. Do we have any modifications to this one thing agenda?

Good afternoon, Chair Wilson. There are no modifications today.

All right, because if we did, it would be a different day. All right, do we have any public comments on non-agenda items? Going to Zoom, do you see any hands up for non-agenda items?

I do not.

All right, anyone in the room that wanna speak to things that we are not talking about, or speak to things that we, other than what we're gonna talk about today? Which is kind of almost everything. You ready? All right, well then here we go. We are convening now as the board of directors for the special, excuse me, is that what we're doing first or?

Yep.

Okay, am I getting this right?

Yep.

All right, here we go. So it is the public hearing for the proposed county budget, but the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna convene as the board of directors for the special districts governed by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.

Kaylee, can you bring out my presentation?

Chair Wilson, we will need you to formally open the public hearing as well.

Oh, okay then. And open. Let's do it. Public hearing now open.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Wilson and members of the board. I am Jessica Maciel, Assistant County Administrative Officer and Chief Financial Officer. And we are first going to receive public input on the fiscal year 26-27 special district budgets.

Skip that one and go here.

your board convened as the board of directors for the special districts the auditor controller prepares annual budgets for the special districts governed by the humboldt county board of supervisors pursuant to chapter one of division three of title three of the california government code The California government code requires each special district to adopt a balanced budget on an annual basis and hold a public hearing. They are presented with the attached proposed fiscal year 2627 budget. The total special district budgets before your board are $1,664,457. which is a decrease of $332,515 over the prior year. This decrease is primarily attributed to expenditure reductions in Fortuna Fire Protection District. And with that, I will turn it back over, receive public comment.

Okay, do we have any public comment online for this item?

Yes.

All right.

Caller 8435, I will unmute you, and you will have three minutes.

And just as a reminder, anyone who wants to speak to this item that's online, please raise your hand as soon as possible so that we know you're there.

Hi there. My name's Brant. I'm an intern at Epic. I raised my hand earlier for non agenda items. So I just want to real quick make an announcement for everyone that there's going to be a public meeting about the proposed offshore wind heavy lips marine terminal on June 24 at 530pm at the Arcata Community Center. And it's just a great opportunity for everyone to come out, ask questions and learn more about the project. Thank you.

All right, is there anyone that has any comments on what's on the agenda at this moment?

That is all.

Okay, anyone in the room? This is your time. And again, this is on items related to the special districts portion of this.

I guess I have a question. Is this the public hearing on the proposed budget? Yes.

Yes, but.

Today as they first do the, this specific part is for the special district budget. We will get to the proposed budget. Thank you.

It's not straightforward to me either, so we're good. All right. Absolutely, this is the time for board members to ask questions.

Thank you. Can you reiterate again why the reduction, it was 14 of fire? Can you?

Yes, in the prior year, Fortuna Fire had more expenditures than use of fund balance in 25-26. This year, the reduction is primarily due to Fortuna Fire.

Reducing their spending? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Okay.

You may close the public hearing.

This is where I close it. We received the testimony and now we're closing the public hearing and then, go ahead.

Your board may approve or you may make a motion to approve the fiscal year 26-27 budget for the special districts governed by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.

Okay, so what I'm looking for is a motion to approve the fiscal year 26-27 budgets for special districts governed by Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, including final modifications on attachment one. Is there a motion to do that?

I'll make a motion for staff recommendations to approve the 26-27 special district budget.

I'll second. And set June 18th as the date of adoption.

And set June 18th as the day of adoption.

Agreed. Great. Anybody else? Seeing none, we have a motion and a second. We've had some discussion. Is there any objection to unanimous consent? Seeing none, that budget has been, those budgets have been approved.

All right.

And now we are adjourning and reconvening as the Board of Supervisors. Ta-da. All right. Now, we're gonna open the public hearing, and we're gonna receive the presentation on Humboldt's legislative program. Correct. Right, let's do it.

I am going to have Deputy County Administrative Officer Shawn Quincy come up, and we also have our firm Shaw Yoder on line.

Good morning, Chair Wilson, members of the board. Sean Quincy, Deputy County Administrative Officer. Each year when your board receives a public hearing for the budget, we look for a state legislative update as the state legislative actions have much bearing on the county's budget. In particular this year, because of the HR1 impacts, that is a significant portion of the budget issues that we're tracking and our state lobbyists Karen Lang at Shaw Yoder and Thuy Schmelzer and Lang is on zoom here to provide an update as you'll know from some of the updates you've received via email the Senate and Assembly proposed some plans on Friday and I believe today is the date that they need to vote on the budget. And so with that, I think Karen will have some more detail.

Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting me to be with you virtually today. I don't think I've ever experienced a time when you are doing your budget on the very day that the legislature has their constitutional obligation to pass a state budget. So I will try to make this as functional for you as I can because it's there's a lot happening in Sacramento that may or may not stick so where we are uh from like a point in time perspective for the public that's watching this uh june 15th is the deadline for the constitutional uh requirement for the legislature to pass a budget and send it to the governor uh that's that change with uh it gets done more regularly uh now the proposition 25 is passed and it's a simple majority vote it used to require two-thirds vote but it really doesn't, it's not as meaningful in some ways as you might think because what they're gonna do today is send the governor a budget and it's really only a part of the budget And then over the next three weeks, there will be a significant amount of negotiation over the final details of that budget. But if they don't get the budget to him by the end of today, they forfeit their pay until such time as they do get it to him and they don't get the back pay for not getting it done sooner. So it's a pretty powerful motivator because we do have a lot of citizen legislators that actually this is their full-time job and they are not independently wealthy. So they get the job done. What they're gonna send over today is the main bill. It'll be AB 109 or SB 109. And then they are slated to approve the MCO tax, which you may have seen some billboards about. There's a representation made by some groups that it will increase the cost of health insurance for folks that have insurance already. And they also have scheduled to approve the governor's proposal on the sales and use tax. expansion to software and software systems that may or may not be like tangibly purchased by the county or the city or any business in the state. They have tended to be not subject to tax. The governor proposed to extend sales and use tax to those systems and software, which should generate about a billion dollars a year. That seems to be where the governor is comfortable going as far as a revenue increase above and beyond what he proposed related to the managed care tax. But there's a lot left to do. There's a significant disagreement between the governor and the legislature and really even between the two houses a little bit about how the legislature is going to deal with the fallout from HR1 and the governor's office is going to deal with the fallout of HR1. for the public's benefit, for people that have lost their subsidy or will lose their subsidy as a result of HR1 passing, they are going to be unable to afford or be ineligible to purchase health insurance through the exchange. and they may not be eligible to stay on Medi-Cal depending on whether or not they meet work requirements. Counties have to care about this an awful lot because if those folks can't access health insurance through the exchange or remain on Medi-Cal, they become what's called medically indigent, meaning they don't have health insurance but they're still alive and living in our communities and if something bad were to happen to them and they need medical care in an emergency fashion, They're showing up to your emergency rooms and living in a rural area as you do, you know that the hospital systems are already strained. Hospitals are really having a hard time keeping above water financially. There was even an emergency piece of legislation passed a couple of weeks ago that was designed to get cash into the system of a very few distressed hospitals that were in danger of closing. And so there's a lot of concern here in Sacramento about the network of care in the state and how it will remain solvent if a significant portion of the population is accessing their healthcare only in an emergency and through emergency room departments. And the issue with that is that in addition to that straining the hospital's capacity, at the end of the day, medically indigent Californians who walk into hospitals and don't have health insurance, they fall to the responsibility of counties due to the welfare and institutions code section 17,000, which means that you're as a county responsible for picking up that tab. And that is why over the course of the last eight months or so, you've seen a lot of communication back and forth between our office and your county, and then also participating in legislative briefings with your legislators, walking through the county's system of care. And you are enrolled in CMSP, you're an active participant. Your county administrator is on the board of that. CMSP is the entity that the rural counties have formed the contracts for healthcare insurance. or healthcare coverage for the medically indigent adult population, and it was really a very lean and mean entity, because the Affordable Care Act had migrated so many folks off of county roles over to the exchange with the help of the subsidies that were made available, but CMSP has persisted, unlike the networks in a couple of counties that don't that are not members of CMSP who may have to come up whole cloth with a way to help manage the population that's coming back. Around April, the State Association of Counties put in a budget ask that reflected the county families budget ask related to all this. There's a little less than three billion for fiscal year 26-27 and nearly six billion going forward and that was the estimated total impact between the medical cuts, the reduction in subsidy, the lack of access to certain types of care. And then the additional workload burden on your Health and Human Services eligibility workers because folks now have to qualify twice a year to stay on Medi-Cal and that's literally doubling the workload. But HR1 actually cut the administrative funds that are sent to counties to do that work. So you have twice the work and less money to do it. So there's a lot of concerning in the world that I work in right now. The budget that's going to the governor today includes funding for what, it's not a pretty name, but emergency scope Medi-Cal, which means that folks that do lose their insurance through the exchange or are unable to access it would be put on emergency scope if they get into a hospital situation. The great thing about that approach is that it keeps them from falling onto the county's rules. But it's nothing that could be considered a comprehensive health benefit for folks that may need something like that. It's a way to keep them in the state system so that should there be changes again at the federal level that would help folks migrate back onto the exchange or other subsidized care, it would be much easier to move them back onto the state roles or the health insurance company's roles. as opposed to 58 counties trying to keep track of folks individually so there's a win there we're not sure exactly how far the money is going to go that the state is investing in this approach which has been named the path approach the amount of funding that has been proposed is 125 million and when the county started this ask you know the whole ask was close to three so three billion so not really sure exactly how far the money will go but we have we have until the end of august to really fine-tune before they adjourn the session for the two-year session. So I would anticipate that you'll be continued, you will continuously be asked by CSAC, by RCRC to reach out to your legislators. You do have a very effective set of legislators and they're very engaged in York. community needs. We've had great conversations with Senator McGuire and Assemblymember Rogers. Both are acutely aware of the impacts of HR1 in the North Coast and how many folks participate in CMSP. Their entire districts are involved in CMSP and making sure that those entities remain solvent and able to keep folks covered in some form so that you're not overwhelming your emergency departments. I know that's a huge concern for those of you, some of you on the Board of Supervisors worried about the network of care up there. So want to make sure we emphasize that. There are other parts of the budget that are still kind of coming into focus. There's a lot of disagreement over what the governor proposed with respect to GGRF, the greenhouse gas reduction fund, which is funded by our cap and trade auctions. And the governor wanted to really shift a lot of that funding to rebates for power consumers and we certainly know your power costs are high there so that became a big source of disagreement between the legislature and the governor, a lot of the transit. and other folks that rely on GGRF for their programmatic operations are quite upset about what was being proposed there. So I think you'll see some skirmishes. And there will be continued refining of what will be spent out of the Prop 4 money that has passed. And in the middle of all of this, with all the budget talk trying to get landed, 10 days from today is when the legislature is supposed to be finalizing what will appear on the November ballot from an initiative perspective. there are two really big ticket items that are the subject of major negotiation even right now, even today, it'll be that way for the next nine days. The first of it is the billionaire's tax. As you have probably read, the governor is not supportive of it. The Service Employees International Union is in very strong support of a billionaire's tax. It's a one-time 5% tax on California billionaires. The concern that has been expressed over and over is that the way that our budget works, is that a significant portion of capital gains and personal income tax is derived from a very small number of Californians. And so if you take one of them off the table, it has a pretty enormous hit in our general fund. and we have already seen some high earners leave the state and some of the folks would be subject to that tax have been very clear with the administration if that qualifies for the November ballot, they will change their state of residency and to make matters worse or more consequential, I should say three major California companies are planning to go to an initial public offering in the next fiscal year. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic have all started the process to go public. And those one-time events have the capacity to generate billions of dollars to the state's general fund benefit. If you could recall when the Facebook corporation, or whatever, yeah, I think it was just Facebook, When it went public, there was literally a line item in the state general fund budget showing $1 billion to the state general fund because Facebook went public. Now imagine how much the stock market's grown since then, and times three, there's a lot of sensitivity to not chasing the billionaires out of the state. So the governor is actively, his office is actively trying to figure out how to keep it from getting on the ballot. And in addition to that, and more directly of interest to you, there is an initiative that is qualified for the ballot that is being pushed by the California Business Roundtable. So you maybe see it referred to by its acronym CBRT. That proposal would make pretty much every local tax or fee that you want to approve locally subject to a two-thirds vote of the people. And it also eliminates what's called the transfer tax. There are some cities in the state that have a transfer tax on property valued over a certain amount. Nowhere is it more of a sore subject than NLA. It's the mansion tax down there. The administration is also trying to sort out a way to keep that proposal from staying on the November ballot. And for the public that's watching it, there may be some question as to why anybody would ever cut a deal after they went to the trouble and expense of qualifying something for the ballot. It is a very common occurrence that interest groups can go file an initiative put it into circulation for signature gathering to see how much that scares the legislature into working something out in a legislative deal. And that happens all the time. Workers' compensation is a place where that happens on the regular basis. But I'm not sure how interested the Business Roundtable is in negotiating a deal to keep their item off the ballot. As of right now, it seems like there's a real stalemate between the proponents of the billionaire's tax and seemingly everyone else. There's been a lot of union opposition that's been generated in the last few days. So that's another big one that's That big issue is being negotiated right now in the middle of also the last three weeks of policy committee hearings for the regular bills that we are regularly communicating with the CEO's office about. They have until July 2nd for every bill that was introduced in the assembly that made it over to the Senate. the next three weeks to hear all those bills and the same for the assembly to hear all of the Senate bills that came over and then they'll go on a nice long break for the month of July. And then when they come back, uh, they will do the fine, uh, the fine tuning on the state budget. Probably some of the bigger ticket items that needed more time over the break will get worked out in August. And there's always a few surprises, uh, that the governor may be waiting to spring on the legislature. That's a pretty common occurrence, and we'll see those towards the end of August. They cannot introduce bills and pass them the same day anymore unless there's a declared emergency, so we have to wait 72 hours. That is why we can't start voting on things. The legislature won't be voting on certain things until after 5 p.m. tonight because they weren't able to get it into print until late Friday afternoon. So we'll be here for a while this evening, but there's much more to come on the state budget and also as far as the November ballot. So you're gonna have an interesting couple of weeks when you read the news from Sacramento. I'm happy to answer any questions. I know I didn't get into too much detail on any one particular thing, but I'm happy to try if there are specific issues you wanna get deeper into.

Okay, I'm gonna bring it back to the board, or if the staff has any clarifications. Karen, I just, my question has to do with HR1 and its impacts, not just Humboldt County, but is, I mean, wouldn't this be sort of nationwide, the impacts to our medical systems, particularly rural systems, and eligibility around these, you know, LGB workers and all that stuff, is that all, That's nationwide, right? It's not specific to California.

You're right. You're right, Mr. Chair. It's not specific to California. However, California has done a really good job of trying to maximize federal dollars coming into the state with flexibility and programs like CalAIM. And so, for example, a challenge for counties has been when folks leave the jail and leave there's a period of time when they don't have health insurance, right? And so we have a waiver to allow California sheriffs to enroll inmates onto medical before they leave the jail that got changed. So there's things like that where we have special permission to do things that draw more money into the state than other states might have been interested in doing. And so it's not a one for one all across the United States. California has done things that are getting sort of defunded, and there's just more of those things in California than there might be in other states. And furthermore, in certain parts of the state, particularly the Central Valley, you're talking about 35, 40% of the population being enrolled. in Medi-Cal, which is the Medicaid program. I'm not sure if that looks that way in other states, so from a population perspective, we may have more folks relying on Medi-Cal, and even that is, to some extent, geographically based.

Yeah, yes, that's true. I appreciate that. Yeah, as you know, we were at CSAC this last... a few months ago and there was this subject came up and just from my perspective is HR1 is not a natural disaster. It's completely manmade. It was made through the decision of the current federal administration to do this and the party in power. This was the choice and was set in motion by a vote of the people of the United States. I will just have to say this is and so we have to that our voting matters and this is an outcome of that election. And we're gonna be feeling it for a long time. So with that, we're gonna go into, unless there's more questions on this, Supervisor Arroyo?

Thank you. I appreciate it, Karen. Nice to see you. And I did have a couple. So, I mean, it looks like from what you're saying that, and I know this has continued to evolve minute by minute, but I'm trying to stay really caught up. It looks like the $125 million that you're referring to is that emergency only medical care, do you know what happened to the, and then there was the separate funding for public hospitals that were at imminent risk of closure before the end of this fiscal year, but was there any movement or discussion around the eligibility workers, CalFresh, and the other public hospital funding?

Yes, there, and thank you for asking the path slash medical emergency only scope or emergency scope only that's 125 million they are there is a proposal to direct funds to the public hospitals. depending on which version, it was about 500 million or 250 million, that I think is still subject to change. And then the third bucket was the Medi-Cal eligibility work and the SNAP CalFresh funding, and there was specific funding I don't believe it was as high as what had initially been requested, but the governor's office included funding for that in his May revision at a lesser amount than had been requested. And both houses also saw fit to direct funding into that particular area. So the holistic county ask was about 3 billion for 26, 27, but there were discrete parts of that. So the public hospitals had an ask. Sort of the health side of things for medically indigent adults, there was an ask, and then there was the Medi-Cal eligibility work. And there was an ask, and that one, frankly, I think was the easiest sell, and I don't mean to say that in a derogatory way at all. I think every member of the legislature understood that you literally now have double the work in the health and human services space to keep people enrolled, and you have every incentive in the world. to keep folks enrolled and on those benefits to keep them healthy and covered and so that was the governor's office seemed more interested and supportive of going there it's been a tough slog with the medically indigent adult piece of it uh so i don't know that's a long way to answer the question there were some yes there was some money for the eligibility work i don't think the final number is reflected in what's going to the governor tonight But nobody was arguing that there needed to be resources dedicated to that. So that was the one sort of bright spot before we saw the budget deal come together on Friday, which funded the emergency scope only. So it's been a kind of a tough slog, honestly.

Thank you. I just have one more. That's really helpful. I think the other one is just a little bit more about your opinion as someone who spends a lot of time working with these legislators, including ours, who you've mentioned are really awesome. And sometimes it feels like there's all these organizations including ones we're members of, asking for us to quick make a call to so-and-so and push for this. When I do that with our assembly member and senator, I get this, we already know and we're already going to bat for you the best we can message. Do you have any other advice on what's effective during this next few weeks?

I as much as it might feel repetitive and I don't want to put myself out of the job. So please don't read it that way. You know, we try to we talk to your legislative representative staff all the time. And when we know you're going to reach out, or if we, if we know the CSAC is going to ask you to reach out, we try to connect with the staff first so that when your communication goes in, the staff is ready and they've already flagged for the legislator that you're going to reach out because nobody likes to be caught flat footed. And, um, with the number of issues that they are dealing with every day, um, it can be kind of overwhelming, but I do have to say it is effective. The only thing that you might, for the North Coast legislators and for members representing a lot of rural areas, you know, there are legislators that have 10 or 12 counties in their district, and they're all getting that, and all of the boards of supervisors get those asks from RCRC and CSAC to please reach out. So your members are hearing it from five or seven boards of supervisors, not just one. But, you know, it's, your legislative delegation already is like, positioned to be very influential and effective. And so it's helpful that they feel like the wind is at their back when they turn around and go to leadership and say, this is really important for my district. So I know it feels like maybe it's just, you're in a, in a chorus of voices, but, uh, I sincerely don't know of two legislators who are more tuned to what's going on in their counties and how much it matters what you all are saying matters. than the two you have. Both of them came out of local government, one from city council, one from city council and a county board, and they know what you're up against. So it is really effective. The challenge that we were experiencing at points during the spring, and hopefully I'm not gonna offend anybody, but because it matters so much what you think and what you say and what you're willing to advocate for, There's interest groups that want you to contact your legislators because your opinion matters a lot. So sometimes you want to sort of filter what are our highest priorities and make sure that just because someone got to you first and you made the ask, how does that reflect as far as the overall priorities that the county has for legislators? You want to be... not necessarily selective, but always cohesive about when you're communicating with your legislators about what your budget priorities are. And frankly, the medically indigent adult Population coming back to you financially is an enormous risk, even with the MSP in place in between, and so. But that's like the hardest one to lobby on that I found this year because it's not about direct services necessarily on the front end keeping people enrolled. it's about after everything has gone wrong and people have lost their insurance and they can't afford it, and they still need to go to the emergency room. You guys have to pay for it. That's a harder sell to get money for that than it was for the other things. And but it's still the biggest financial risk to the county, I would say. So it's it's you want to have a full understanding of what all is at risk when you do it. But I but it's my interest. I mean, you none of you have misunderstood any of that. So. The continued echoes are good. I'm sorry if it feels like it's not as effective, but it really is, because we're seeing them really advocate and advance it. And the PATH proposal got included, and that was something we had to pivot to after May. And for that many legislators to know what it is and how it works so quickly afterward is directly attributable to county engagement. I mean, pat yourself on the back, if nothing else, because that message got outlined and delivered very quickly. Garen, thanks for breaking it down so simple.

even the bad news and and and a lot of this is as supervisor Wilson said our current administration but it's also a distinct part of our economic times right now if we have enough money we'd have enough money and we are We are the fourth largest economy in the world that I keep hearing from our wannabe president, and it seems to me we should be able to be picking up some of this locally just as much as we do elsewhere. So nobody's been our friend lately, and that is the nature of the beast of rural living I have learned after 14 years.

All right. Just a last note, I would say that again with all of this talk about cutting the red tape to double the bureaucracy of our of our eligibility workers just seems really crazy. And then cutting their budgets, that's just, it's kind of cruel. It actually just is, it is. And what wasn't even mentioned is the cuts to our housing subsidies as well, which is really the key, easiest, and most effective way to keep people off the streets, which is what we hear so much about. So again, it's not our state government that's cutting taxes for the wealthy to make these cuts, it's our federal government that did that through HR1. It's astounding, but we will do our best. And it's also a reminder that our budget, the vast majority of our budget, is basically non-discretionary, meaning the programs, we are told what to do, the money, we're told what to spend. And so this is why it is really important to lock in on what is happening at the federal government and what's happening at the state government, because we are essentially representation and an arm of our state government. So with that, we're gonna move on to the next part of this is to receive the staff report for the budget itself. Yeah, looking forward.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. Kaylie, if you can bring up my presentation. And thank you to Deputy CAO Quincy and Karen Lang for their presentation. all right let me back this up a little bit all right we are here today for your board to receive public input on the fiscal year 26-27 budget and special district budgets which we have already handled and to provide any final direction to staff to include in the fiscal year 26-27 budget that is planned to come to your board on thursday june 18th for potential adoption Today your board will have the opportunity to provide direction on the additional request for general fund allocation, the CAO operational funding recommendations, and local assistance and tribal consistency funds, or LHECF. Additionally, your board may choose to provide direction on any other portion of the proposed budget to give staff sufficient direction to make final edits for adoption of the budget. And I just wanted to go over sort of the government code around this. The government code that drives today's hearings and the entire budget process is the County Budget Act. Pursuant to government code 29003 of the County Budget Act, except as otherwise specifically provided by law, a majority vote of the total membership of the board is required for the board to take action pursuant to this chapter. This means that the budget is intended to be adopted by a majority vote. In our county, we have traditionally adopted with a four-fifths vote due to the following, Government Code 29088 of the County Budget Act, which states, after the conclusion of the hearing, and not later than October 2nd of each year, and after making any revisions of, deductions from, or increases or additions to the recommended budget, it deems advisable during or after the public hearing, the board shall by resolution adopt the budget as finally determined. Increases or additions shall not be made after the public hearing unless the items were proposed in writing and filed with the clerk of the board before the close of the public hearing or unless approved by the board by a forfeits vote. in our county though we have traditionally verbally reviewed the final changes at the public hearings we have not typically documented them in writing at the public hearing and therefore this is why we have adopted the budget with a forfeits vote all right wrong direction I'm just going to quickly touch on a couple of slides that we reviewed last week at the presentation of the proposed budget. The total proposed budget or spending plan for fiscal year 26-27 is $657.8 million, an increase of $28 million in expenditures or 4.4% more than the budget your board adopted for the current year. As presented, this increase is higher primarily due to the recommended additional requests for general fund appropriation, CAO operational funding recommendations, and most significantly, an increase in behavioral health due to additional grant funds secured for the new Sempervirens building and for additional programs, as well as a few additional capital projects in the facilities and roads divisions. For the general fund, to quickly recap, the projected expenditures for fiscal year 26-27 are $165.47 million, which is an increase of $7.6 million, or 4.8% from the current year. This increase is attributed, as I previously mentioned, to the additional request for general fund appropriation, or as we call them, ARCFAs. of $3.2 million and the CAO countywide operational funding recommendations of $5.4 million. The use of general fund fund balance in the proposed budget is $25.5 million of fund balance from the general fund of which 11.6 million is due to the one-time expenditures for ARGFAs. CAO operational funding recommendations, contributions to the general reserve and deferred maintenance and additional contingencies for labor negotiations and HR1. Additionally, as mentioned, the 1.9 million for the, as mentioned last week, the 1.9 million for the establishment of alternate council is not anticipated to be a fully ongoing expenditure, and it will reduce some costs in the indigent defense budget. Though it is unlikely to provide overall savings, it will provide more stabilization and predictability of costs. The fiscal year 26-27 recommended use of fund balance less those contributions or what we would typically call a structural deficit is just under $12 million, which is a nominal reduction of just over $11,000 from the structural deficit in the prior year. The ARGFAs, departments submitted 17 ARGFAs for a total of just over $3.2 million in one-time requests. Your board limited requests to one-time expenditures of up to $250,000 per request. Some departments did not submit an ARGFA, other departments submitted multiple. There was no limit set to the number of allowable ARGFA submittals per department. All department requests before your board today meet the requirements set by your board. As all of the submitted requests have merit and there are sufficient one-time resources in the general fund to support the submitted requests, the CAO has recommended all 17 requests in the 26-27 proposed budget. These are available as an attachment to the staff report and we will go through them later. And your board will be able to provide input. The CAO operational funding recommendations, the 26-27 proposed budget includes the following adjustments to general fund allocations as recommended by the CAO. As these are operational and structural recommendations, these are not included in the ARGFAs. These are recommended by the CAO to implement your board's policies, strategic plan, and to prepare for future economic and fiscal impacts. The total adjustments to the general fund allocations totals for $5.4 million of which 2.2 are one time adjustments, 1.3 are ongoing adjustments and 1.9 is for the establishment of alternate council which is ongoing but as previously mentioned is anticipated to have offsetting costs or offsetting cost reductions and improve predictability of those costs. And these are the lists of the one-time funding recommendations and the ongoing funding recommendations, which we'll have these to reference when we go through them at the end of the presentation. Just to recap Measure Z, your board reviewed the fiscal year 26-27 list of Measure Z applications on April 21st, 2026. The Committee had, the Measure Z Citizens Advisory Committee had 1.65 million available to allocate in the fiscal year 26-27 process. They funded the first five ranked projects with $1,334 remaining. CURE Board accepted those recommendations and directed staff to also include the Boys and Girls Club of the Redwoods Teen Court Project, allocating an additional $18,666 from reserves with direction to replenish the reserves prior to the next application process. As far as the estimated ending fund balance, any estimated expenditure savings or additional revenues in the current year will be available for the fiscal year 27-28 application process. and as a reminder this is the last year of the current three-year spending plan and staff will be coming back to your board in july to present the committee's recommendations for a new three-year spending plan and to quickly recap measure o i In April 2025, your board approved that based on $24 million a year in revenue, revenue will be allocated as 85% of that revenue to Humboldt County Public Works for Roads and 15% to Humboldt Transit Authority for Transit Service annually. And any excess revenue will go towards the negative fund balance and half will go towards the negative fund balance and roads until brought to a positive position. And half will go to a contingencies account until reaching 16% of annual projected revenue. And after those benchmarks are hit, revenue will be split based on the 85-15 split. Based on fiscal year 24-25 revenue, the overage was just over $80,000. So just over $40,000 is allocated each to contingencies and Rhodes negative fund balance. And as a reminder, any overages from the current year will be allocated to those per the split in fiscal year 27-28. In addition, Public Works Roads had to carry forward a $4 million of unanticipated spending in the current year, so their allocation is 28.1 million rather than the 20, or sorry, the total expenditure budget is 28.1 million rather than the 24 million. Just a final recap on, and to clarify, we're recapping the discretionary funding sources for your board, so those are, The next one is the opioid settlement funds. Staff have continued to work with the opioid work group, including the sheriff's office, probation, public defender, and DHHS to consider how to allocate these funds. The CAO and county council facilitate and advise that work group. For fiscal year 26-27, the work group received a one-time proposal from the district attorney, which the group voted to bring forward in the proposed budget based on this group's recommendation and in accordance with the requirements set forth by DHCS. Department of Health Care Services. The fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget reflects utilizing just over $4 million. The transient occupancy tax, including Measure J, Your board received a marketing asset inventory analysis and countywide travel and tourism marketing strategy and approved staff recommendations for the fiscal year 26-27 transient occupancy tax or TOT allocations on April 28, 2026. Staff recommended to maintain the existing funding allocations for one year while the tourism advisory board is formed and the destination strategy organization is secured through a request for proposal process. The economic development division in coordination with the CAO management and budget team have been maintaining the existing marketing assets in the interim period. and your board approved the proposed allocation that reflects the additional costs associated with those assets, replacing the prior year's allocation for Project Trellis administration. The total budgeted expenditures are 1.32 million. quickly recap ARPA the are all American Rescue Plan Act funds were required to be obligated by December 31st 2024 and are required to be spent by December 31st 2026 twenty four point five million dollars in ARPA funds have been expended and is estimated that An additional 11,700 will be expended prior to the end of the current year for a total of 24.5 million expended of the original 26.3. The remaining 1.8 million are obligated to three remaining projects as listed here and budgeted to be expended in fiscal year 26-27. The LATCF funds, which we are requesting your board's direction on, are recommended to be held for future needs pending stabilization of the general fund and have been for a number of years. However, your board may provide staff direction on a different alternative. Currently, $500,000 have been expended for earthquake response, and $118,103 has been expended pending 100% reimbursement from the state for earthquake sheltering. It does not seem likely that that amount is going to be reimbursed, so these numbers are moving forward as such. 2.58 million remains unexpended of the original, 3.2 million received, and 250,000 remains obligated to Habitat for Humanity, though the contract does expire at the end of June. 2.2 million is unobligated, and 131,897 is available to be re-obligated for a total of the 2.33 million you see here from the earthquake response. So your board may provide direction on those funds today. Just to recap, these are the three, these are the main areas that we are looking for your board direction on today. The ARGFAs, the CAO funding recommendations, LATCF, and then your board will also have the opportunity to provide direction to staff on any other part of the proposed budget. And with that, I am available for questions.

And I think this is the time when we can bring in public comment, is this appropriate? So I'm gonna do that first and then we'll get into it. So do we have any public comment from folks online?

No.

All right, do we have public comment from anyone in the room?

Good afternoon. I don't envy you your job at this moment. These are pretty tough times. My name's Elizabeth Murgia. I'm at 3471 California Street in Eureka. I'm here today representing the Humboldt Library Foundation. Our president, Alison Talbot, could not be here today and so asked me to present some comments we have about the library budget. As many of you know, as I've been here before you, The foundation was formed in 1996 to enhance services at all of our branch libraries. Since then, we've donated well over $3 million to ensure our library system is vibrant, modern, and welcoming to our neighbors. We were pleased and a bit surprised to see official recognition of our unique partnership with the county as reflected under the library department summary program discussion. So we're there in paragraph four, part of the county budget now. The budget before you reflects our $265,000 commitment for the fiscal year. And by default, accounts for the $284,500 we raised last year specifically to replace the county bookmobile. We wish to continue this partnership with the county and we have every intention of continuing to raise funds in the community to support library services. However, we've been frustrated to learn that moving forward, there will be a reduction in hours at the Trinidad, McKinleyville, Arcata, Fortuna, Ferndale, and Garberville branches, plus a full day closure at the Eureka main branch, from 31 open hours a week down to 24. You know, this is wrenching.

Yeah.

I know that you are each aware of the importance of the libraries to a healthy and thriving community, and in times of economic uncertainty, the library becomes even a more vital service hub And with over 79,000 active library cardholders in the county, our libraries are busier than ever. And during challenging economic times and as belts tighten, it will increase the usage. We actually know that historically has happened in other big downturns. Usage goes up. So libraries provide primary source documents, books, and resources of all kinds, plus being one of the few free community gathering spaces. Our libraries also serve as a lifeline for families without internet service, providing a welcoming space for school children to complete homework assignments. Job seekers are found daily at the library's computers, and the library is also a resource during public emergencies. In fact, Just this past weekend, Humboldt Library served as a needed cooling center. I just have a bit more.

Thank you.

As they will throughout the summer months, and they have provided critical respite from the smoky air during wildfires in the past fire seasons. You and your staff have completed a lengthy and thorough budget process, and everyone is having to make difficult decisions and choices. Moving forward, the Humboldt Library and Foundation encourages you to prioritize restoring the hours we will lose this year. In fact, we'd like to see hours increase system-wide, but at the very least, please let's work together to keep this vital community infrastructure healthy and available to Humboldt County residents.

Thank you.

I have copies of my comments, if you'd like them for each of them.

All right, is there anyone else in the public that wants to speak on the budget item that's here in the room?

You don't have any questions for me? We're done?

We don't, yeah, we're not a, we don't have that sort of back and forth here. We ask staff questions at this point. All right, here you go. All right.

So I assume you're looking at me, Chair. Yes, through the chair. We can jump into general questions of the board and then we can go through the ARTFAs and.

We can, but at some point I wouldn't mind staff having some response to what we just heard about the library situation as well, so.

Yeah, I can give a little bit and then if CAO Hayes wants to jump in, absolutely. The library hit a bit of a snag with their revenues to expenditures. They've used fund balance for a number of years for some building improvements and other, to balance their budget. And this year they kind of ran out of that fund balance and so we were able to work with them and you are presented with a balanced budget here today. Thank you also to the Humboldt Library Foundation for their commitment. And so in the next year, there is a significant amount of one-time funds that are presenting a balanced budget to your board for the library. So it is likely that there will be a more significant budget gap to fill for the library in fiscal year 27, 28.

Yeah, by all means, Supervisor Bush, no.

Thank you. Around the library, I think we heard, and I've also heard from my community, the reduction in those hours, and with what you just said with a deficit pending, their answer to trying to close that gap was a reduction in staffing, well, reduced hours with staffing, is that correct?

Correct, the library has traditionally relied on a significant number of extra help staff to maintain these hours and that is somewhat unsustainable with the current budget scenario.

And do you guys anticipate, or does the library anticipate next year that it would be, how do they, what are their thoughts around reducing that deficit next year?

Right now, in the coming year, We worked with the library to establish budget units for each of the libraries so we could see where the funding gaps are as far as each library branch because some branches receive more revenue than other branches in addition to their property tax allocations that fund all of the libraries. So I would say we're in a bit of an information gathering stage at this point to get an idea of what recommendations might be able to be made.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Arroyo.

Thank you. And I think what you're speaking to is something that unfortunately we've had with many departments through general fund requests over the years and or cost savings within specific departments where they've sort of used that to balance the budget for a long time. And now we're getting to the end of that line. With the ARGFAs, the Additional Requests for General Fund Appropriations, I know there are, these are all recommended and make good sense as one-time expenses, but can you remind us how much we will have for the upcoming fiscal year if this budget goes forward as it's proposed today?

Yes. To speak to fund balance projections a little bit. The projected fund balance is based on fiscal year 25-26. The current budget year and departments provide estimates to our office. based on those estimates we are estimating using just over seven around seven million of fund balance um and then when we look to uh sorry i'm just pulling up my fund balance chart uh so it is Yeah, just over $7 million. And then when we are looking at 25-26, we are recommending $25.5 million of use of fund balance. And so that would leave us with just over $2 million in 27-28. That is based on adopted expenditures. And so that is if the budget is fully expended. As an example, on the $7 million, million anticipated in 2526. The budgeted use of fund balance in 2526 was around 20 million, 20.8 million. So we are only expending a fraction of what was in the budget. So it is anticipated there will be a similar savings, though the expenditure authority is there for there not to be.

So Just so I'm crystal clear, the amount we would have is currently with our, you know, I think conservative projections, just two million to use next year to fill requests for additional funds should we choose to do that i don't want to get i guess pre-decisional but just to kind of have food for thought here

There's two factors there. Yes, requests for general fund, but we also have a structural deficit, which is where our operating revenues are not enough to pay for our operating expenditures, and that is right at 12 million, which is the same as it was in the current year. We have made significant progress. In 23, 24, it was over $18 million. So there is that piece, and we need that to be filled with fund balance. And then there is accepting additional general fund requests, which we would not recommend, obviously, in that scenario. So that is...

So we'll be negative 10 million is what we're hoping to avoid, but that would be if all were to be fully spent from this year, we would already be in the negative by 10 million next year. Okay, I think that's helpful context. I personally would be interested in holding on to those remaining unobligated local, the LATCF funds.

All right.

So is there, John, did you have anything?

Well, first of all, I just wanted to say thank you to staff and as well as all the departments. None of this is easy. There's just not enough money. It is nice that we're not spending all of our budget because without that, we'd be only two million left in reserves next year. I think that's pretty clear, but we have had a pattern of not spending all of our budgeted general fund. and that's allowed us to continue to kind of sort of creep forward with these additional requests and budget items. But I don't think it can be said enough how grateful I know this entire board is to all of the departments for the cuts they've made, for the positions they've left unstaffed, and all of that hard work to try and bring the budget into something better than it absolutely would have been in a big way, millions of way. But we can't keep doing that forever either, right? So the idea of possibly holding onto some of these funds is something I certainly would consider as well. And I've said this before, but I'll just say it again. I am not gonna be voting for this budget simply because it continues to have money in there for flock cameras. I don't support flock cameras and mass surveillance. I've asked the sheriff to consider removing that from the budget and from our properties, but he has refused to do so. So I am simply gonna be voting against the budget on that principle alone, nothing else, no disparaging of, departments or staff or anybody else, but it's an important issue and I've made that clear before, I'll just make it clear again right now. So that's it, thank you.

Hold on, Supervisor Bushnell.

Do you want to make a comment to Madrone's comment? And then I'll go, if that's okay, through the chair?

No, we got it in order here. Hold on, then we'll go.

Okay. Thank you. So there's oftentimes, and I came into your office earlier to clarify some things, but I think the general public sometimes, because I've gotten a lot of questions, is confused on general fund and reserves. Can you talk about that for a minute?

yeah thank you um so what we are talking about here is the general fund fund balance and that is accumulated based on either revenue overages or expenditure expenditure savings in prior years there is separately what we call the general reserve and your board makes targeted contributions to the general reserve and your board specifically has made that a priority over the last several years and we have built the general reserve balance it is anticipated in fiscal year 26 27 that it will be at 19.6 million dollars In comparison, in fiscal year 21-22, it was right around $5 million, so your board has made significant progress towards that. The general reserve is what most would consider kind of like our savings account, and that is what is available to your board at budget time. to increase or decrease. And other than budget time, the only other time it is available to your board is during a declared emergency. So while we are talking about using general fund fund balance like it is the savings account, the true savings account is the reserve and your board has made significant progress in building up the reserve account.

Can you talk about, thank you for that, and then can you talk about the general fund is kind of like your working checkbook, I think, is my distinction, and how do we receive monies into the general fund? Just like is it from,

Yeah, we receive a number of discretionary funding sources, the primary one being property tax, but also sales tax, transient occupancy tax. And then there are several non-discretionary sources, not as much as our health and human services funds, but There are grants that departments receive, and those are for specific purposes. Your board doesn't necessarily have a ton of discretion in how we spend those allocation or grant dollars.

Okay, thank you for that. And then how, when you say that departments are running with a structural deficit, can you describe what that is?

What we refer to as the structural deficit is when the ongoing revenues are less than the ongoing expenditures. As I mentioned, in fiscal year 23-24, we had a structural deficit of over $18 million. This budget presented to you, it's just under $12 million. We have made progress every year on that, but there is still significant ways to go.

So when this board became aware of the $18 million structural deficit a few years back, we did a number of things, including 10% vacancy rate, hiring freeze, et cetera, et cetera. We asked departments to tighten up. allow any requests for additional proposals. So with this $12 million, as Supervisor Arroyo said, $2 million next year is not going to cut this. What do departments need to do to cut this $12 million deficit?

at this point to make progress on the structural deficit my recommendation would be program reductions and can you explain what program reductions are that would be for your board to look at the lists of programs holistically like all of the costs associated with programs and choose to cut specific programs usually from a lens of mandated versus unmandated.

So that information, and we've talked about this in the past because we didn't want to hire consultants that cost money, that information you're relying on coming from the department heads, is that correct?

Correct. We would be relying on collecting that information in our office from departments.

And I know in the past we asked for the department heads to bring forward what they thought they could cut in their departments to try to close this deficit. And we still continue to run $12 million in a deficit. So what do you think this board needs to do to really make sure that we close that deficit this year? with that information from those department heads.

Your board could direct us to do a review of mandated versus unmandated programs. Oh, I really got stuck on that word. Yeah, your board could direct the CAO's office to collect that information and direct departments to provide that information to the CAO's office to bring you mandated versus unmandated programs for your consideration in the development of the fiscal year 27-28 budget?

Okay, I'm sure my boards, my colleagues have heard the same thing I've heard from community members about we continue to spend money that we don't have. We just purchased a Kmart building that we don't have money for, we're gonna use our finance for that. and I'll just know Supervisor Wilson will say we just built a six million dollar a facility in Garberville that we didn't have money for all of the things. And so the community and the taxpayer money, right. And they want accountability. And so I hope that before this discussion is over today, that we can talk about this $12 million deficit and how we're really going to close that gap by next year. Additionally, with our, uh, the one time, uh, expenditures, I know that they're one time, but they amount to $3.2 million, which is a lot and went through the list. I'm unsure with the list. I see a lot of things that probably could wait or wait until we have a healthier fund balance. So I'm not sure how I'm gonna vote that way. And just in general, I'm not feeling great about the situation that the county's in. I don't think my colleagues are either, and I do want to appreciate department heads for bringing you information, but I think a lot more is needed, and I also want to appreciate your work, Jessica. I know this has been a lot of heartburn for you, and I know you were panicked when I left your office, and I'm sorry for that, but I do feel pretty strongly about I don't like the situation of this budget.

All right, Supervisor Bone. Yeah, and I appreciate all the airports, you know, the matching funds. I mean, that's a great part to spend that money on. Some of the stuff, the consultant, to hire a consultant in economic development to use the land up near the airport, I'd love to wait on that just for the basic reason we have an industrial park across the street that can't even build a warehouse or is having trouble building a warehouse. If we're talking about building more warehouses or anything else, can't put housing there. It's too close because it's in the wrong zone. So it's going to have to be warehouses like all the other airports, but I think we need to look at that. And I'm just having a problem, and I appreciate Supervisor Madrone's passion about flock cameras, but we've had them for three years, and now we're going to have a special meeting Thursday to adjust for his $21,000 from the sheriffs, our elected sheriff, and I don't know what the costs are to bring everybody in on Thursday, have a special meeting, bring in Access, Humboldt, and everything else. It seems like a terrible waste of money. We've had them for three years, and all of a sudden, because we've got a petition, we're gonna have to act on it tomorrow. and i i'm just you know this this you know dollar wise and penny foolish or penny foolish dollar wise i don't know which way you want to go on this but to have a special meeting because there's a pro there's a possibility we won't have a four-fifths vote at our next meeting because one of our supervisors has a pre you know a pre-planned trip i just think it's don't know if I'm available Thursday so I just we've had them for three years why is it so important now and why can't we work with the sheriff I mean I'm just this isn't anybody's personal toy it's it's it's the people's money back to what we were talking about okay

I've got a few comments that I'll circulate through. I agree with Supervisor, bone on the leveraging of the grants and the capital investments in the ARCFOS for not just the airport, but the other things here. In some way, I would hope that maybe in future reports we're focused on that and really say, okay, is this just at least a line item on what the capital, returns are gonna be on those infrastructure investments that we've made based on these one-time expenditures, especially if we're calling them out of our general fund. It'd just be good for people to know that when you spend whatever it is, $250,000 on this capital grant that it's bringing in $12 million or whatever it is and so that we just understand that. So for me that's important. I do think that we, that we have been not doing our job on doing planning work with our infrastructure and not leveraging our infrastructure at the airport. And an airport business park is very different than what you do at airports in terms of how you leverage that infrastructure and that real estate. They are not the same thing. We would not be talking about hotels and other things. There's just much more commercial slash industrial activities that you see at airports, and they're revenue generating as well. I would consider maybe a bit of a cut on that. I'm not sure how to spend $250,000 in one year necessarily for a successful move to move that forward. But again, that's pretty small. I mean, that's kind of a detail in this. I did have a question on the $100,000. Again, it's a lot of money, but also in the grand scheme of things, not a ton on what was not what we thought would be reimbursed by the state and what didn't and why there. Can you give me a little bit of narrative around what was that about?

Yeah, we were told we were approved for, on the LATCF funds, we were told we were approved for 100% reimbursement on the sheltering for the earthquake response. That final reimbursement for the $118,103 has not come in. I know that the claim was submitted, OES has confirmed that the claim was submitted, but we did not receive the reimbursement, so does not seem like we're going to receive the reimbursement at this point, but staff continue to follow up on that.

When you say we're not going to receive the reimbursement, even though we, do we have something in writing that says that we should or there was an anticipation that we would get that reimbursement? I'm just a little unclear. We have someone from OES.

I did not have the official documentation that was relayed from OES. I don't know if we got the actual letter.

I can speak to that a little bit. Yes, we had submitted for 100% reimbursement. And I believe the OES letter that came back approved an 85% reimbursement, if I recall correctly. And I don't see anybody from OES on the line. So to Jessica's point earlier, it's very unlikely that we will be able to recoup that difference from them because they have made those determinations at this point that they weren't going to cover the 100%.

And so from that event that occurred, we spent... significant amount of money, but a lot of it was, had an anticipation of being reimbursed, but also some of it came kind of, they were COVID monies, right? So what do, are we done yet? I mean, I saw that there was still some things hanging out there. and unspent monies, is there an expectation that we will be spending more money on the response from an earthquake in the Rio Del area? Was there other areas besides that?

For the Habitat for Humanity contract, that one is still active and is coming up on expiration. So those dollars are held and allotted for Habitat. We actually came back at one point in time and modified the contract to provide some clarity around the final disbursement because we were releasing it in sort of tranches for them. So at this point those funds are obligated and as we close out that contract with Habitat, we'll be reconciling any remaining balances that are left unspent.

Is there a chance that there'll be any kind of clawback if we don't spend that money?

From the state?

Yes.

Not likely because these are LATCF funds. Those were the most discretionary for your board. There are very minimal requirements around how those funds can be allocated and we still have a significant amount of time to still spend those funds. ARPA funds which were the first tranche of COVID funds were much more particular and we are veering on the expiration quickly of those dollars. So we are not concerned at this point that those funds would be clawed back and we could very easily shift those into another use should they remain unspent.

I appreciate that. And my last question for now before we do another round robin here. Going back to the beginning of your description of our deliberative process for the budget, the difference between the two thirds, or excuse me, the three votes versus the four votes, and could you go into that a little bit? is every change that we propose today require four votes of this board? And I just want to make that really clear. With the understanding that I think folks have to understand, we talk about these budget issues all through the year. I mean, different sections of this come to us and we make budget amendments almost monthly, if not weekly. So... Tell me where that is. Because the way I understand it now is that basically a department head or a department makes a budget request. You guys negotiate with that, with them, in terms of how that works. But when it gets to us, really functionally, any sort of substantive changes within that require forfeits vote. So help me out.

So thank you, Chair Wilson. So I will say the process that the County of Humboldt has traditionally used requires a four-fifths vote. The County Budget Act intends that the budget is adopted by majority, but because of the way that we have implemented the final adoption of the budget previously, it requires a four-fifths vote for any changes that your board makes to the recommended budget. today and that is because um that last section that i read that unless the items were proposed in writing and filed with the clerk of the board before the close of the public hearing or unless approved by the board by forfeits vote vote so we have not traditionally provided in writing the list of all the changes that your board has elected to make during this public hearing to the clerk of the board to be posted with the public hearing and so that is something we are looking into and can't change going forward but in the interest of not changing the traditional process that we've used here during this process we have not done that so as we are currently doing it any changes that your board directs today during this hearing will require a four-fifths vote at the budget adoption.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is we don't have necessarily a written policy, or do we? Or not just a written policy, but a voted on policy of the board, but what we have is a sort of a tradition of how we do this. And I mean, we see that in all kinds of bodies, governmental bodies where, especially right now, the federal government, just things are, tradition is seen to be throwing, just thrown to the side all the time. I'm not proposing that we do that here today. It seems like it would be fairly disruptive, but it seems like something within the next year, if we want to talk about amending or looking at different ways to do these budget processes, I think that's kind of a reasonable thing so that we don't get ourselves in a bind about where we have these sort of absolutist or things that are really kind of putting us in a place where we're having this sort of controversy kind of getting us down at the end. And I think we could probably do that and come up with some policy to get where we need to be. So with that, if there are other questions from board members, we'll go over there. So Supervisor Arroyo and then Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. I just have a couple of comments and then a question to ask of Jessica and the CAO and your team and see what your thoughts are. When we conducted strategic planning with all of our department heads and board a little over three years ago, one of the top priorities that came out of that was a focus on county facilities being a top priority. both to replace some very seriously aging facilities and to improve some of the day-to-day conditions of the workplace and then of course to move away from rented facilities. So I wanted to say that just to provide some context. Mike and I have sat on this facilities committee and I want to applaud the work that Public Works have done to try to build out or to work on building out that team and expanding it, expanding capacity there. And it has been a tough process in large part because of staffing and also because of a lack of available facilities to acquire that met our needs so that we can get out of those rented facilities. So I think longer term, what we're discussing related to facilities, especially acquisition of larger buildings for county purposes, is going to be to the benefit of our community, even though the optics of it are admittedly kind of challenging right now. But I think it's still the thing that we set out to do and focus the big amount of energy on in the last few years. so i appreciate that along with that the item related to the airport came up in part during our facilities discussions as a way to utilize county owned property to increase revenues and so the purpose of really evaluating the income potential for that property both you know leasing to potential airport related businesses and sales tax generation and other funding streams to improve our county budget outlook was the idea. So I do support and appreciate that we've discussed having this evaluation of how it could generate more funding through being developed further. So I'm very supportive of that. i wanted to ask you if you have thoughts about so you know from my back of the napkin math um and i'm seeing a the type of structural deficit that we're talking about being you know like one out of five one and a half to two percent of our overall budget across the board or seven ish percent of general fund um and i want to just put out there that I guess when I first got elected in Eureka, we had to make a 10 percent across the board cut to all departments and opted to do that. Not necessarily saying that's the best method, but rather than playing gladiator sports with every department coming in and deciding which one was more important because they are all important, that was an across the board decision. And I wondered, Jessica, if your team has talked about that type of across-the-board cut being an alternative and what folks' reaction has been to that.

We have talked about across the board cuts and have traditionally managed any increases or cuts in that manner. in the interests of not speaking for department heads, but just generally, the feedback is typically that I've cut everywhere that I can, and that's not fair. And so, I would say we did just give the 5% increases this year, which were mostly ate up by health insurance increases and property insurance increases for most departments. that's definitely an option and the feedback has not been super positive around that.

I'm sure it's not. I would not expect the feedback to be positive, but I will put on the record that I think it's the most fair approach personally, if and when it comes to that. I'm hopeful that we have a magical spike in revenue, and that we're able to continue to do some of the things that we've directed around, you know, minimizing cost increases to put us in better shape next year. Thank you.

Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you for process. I wanted to ask. So we're going to make some decisions right now, and then we're going to break and come back at 530. and you're gonna update us on those decisions and then we're gonna vote to approve a budget, correct? Correct. And then come back one last time on Thursday? Yes. To accept.

Correct. So we will run through, your board will give me direction and then at 5.30 we'll run through any direction you provided and go through the presentation in an abbreviated version and receive public comment again.

Okay, so... couple things so we need to go through these one-time requests and kind of see if how our board feels and I think the chair will probably help us along there and then we're gonna talk about the LA the local assistance and tribal consist contingency funds and then I'm hopeful that we'll talk about the structural deficit and how we fix that I know that or move closer to fixing that gap And I know around what my colleagues said, that the 10% cuts, we did talk about that a few years ago from this board. We asked four departments to bring that forward, what that would look like in their department and how to do that. I think we've asked them to bring forward the unmandated programs that they're doing that we could maybe alleviate. None of that is comfortable, and it also means possibly loss of services to our community, loss of maybe jobs that are in those departments and so it's not comfortable recommending that you've got your department and I understand that. I don't think either that hiring a consultant is where we want to go either because that's spending more money I recognize that the CAO having to do this work increases the work in the CAO's office, which I think you're going to be gone for a little bit. So that's difficult as well. But I'm still not comfortable without having direction on adopting this budget without having really strict parameters around how we're going to get there between now and one more fiscal year. And then I'm going to ask about spending more money. So around the local assistance and tribal contingency fund monies. So it's no secret that there has been in our county some uncomfortable conversations around animal shelters and what's been going on with some of the animal shelters. And really the root of the problem is that there are too many animals. animals throughout everywhere. And I've gotten a lot of requests about how can we help people spay and neuter their animals? It takes a lot of money. People can't do it. It's not... that's where you get a lot of increase in animals in counties is you have a litter of puppies and then they are turned, you know, you can't feed them or whatever the issue is. So I'm wondering if this county were to help with small time maybe like $10,000 for spay and neuter. There are two programs throughout Humboldt County that offer reductions in spay and neuter, but it is very expensive to spay and neuter dogs, and especially larger breeds of dogs. And while I understand people's thoughts around the animal shelters, if there is nowhere for animals to go, and those shelters are packed, which they are everywhere, then we have to really get to the root of the problem, which is that we have too many animals, too many dogs and cats, and there's nowhere for them to go. And so I would like for this board to think about with the local assistance tribal contingency funds I think there could be room in here that we think about that in the future because it really is a problem with the county it is something that we have to really think about and try to help deal with and I I Like without addressing throughout the county the overpopulation of those animals, we're going to continue to have the same problems of where to put them, how to house them. The sheriff's shelter is full. Miranda's is full. Regardless of what's going on there, they're full. The other counties are full. That's why they send animals up here. So I just am hopeful that this board can maybe talk about it during this budget process. And then I want to ask the chair as well, how do you want to do this?

Well, just hold on one second. First, I do want to ask the board, I mean, we heard one opinion about what is on the list for the ARCFAs, and so there was that. I don't feel like I want to have to go through every one of these individually. I just want to ask if there are ones that certain board members want to highlight. So as the bonus highlighted, one of those. I can't remember what number it is on here specifically. Sorry about that. But anyways, we know it's the planning one for ACB. Are there others on here that other board members would like to highlight or bring up for discussion? And then we can talk about the other funding sources. Is that the only one?

Can I ask a question?

Yeah, by all means. This is the time to ask a question.

So with the requests, like all the U.S.S.C. or U.C.C.E., the additional for the containers, and I understand the reason for, because the warehouse, I do understand all that, but do we not have any other containers that the county... public works or anybody has that we wouldn't have to purchase these and what do we do with them after we're not using them? We resell them, I guess. And do we ask those kinds of questions?

We did talk to, sorry, through the chair, we did discuss with Yana at the Cooperative Extension, and she may or may not be on still, because she's traveling today, about what to do with them afterwards. And they would be available to Public Works or another department after their storage needs are met, hopefully by a building at some point. but in the meantime, as you know, the current building is a bit of a safety issue, and they have lots of theft problems.

Yeah, I know it's a small amount, but I just hope that we're getting that information when the requests come in, and that we are making sure that we're not duplicating things, like if we have an empty container sitting somewhere in one of our facilities, that we know that, and that we, those things are not throwable, disposable. They're meant to be reused, and there are tons of them. Oh, and Yana has her hand up.

Okay, are we bringing it to Yana? Do you wanna speak to this?

i'm available to speak to it if you'd like yeah this is it well chair members of the board have i searched every nook and cranny in the county the answer is no but um you know we're in a very desperate situation where we keep losing our remaining equipment and between rats failing buildings safety hazards and no um obvious solution in sight. I mean, we're pretty desperate at this point. And we need several containers to be able to, what did I put, two, I think. And part of the thought was that they'd actually be customizable so that there could be doors for each of our team members. So, for example, 4-H would be able to go into their own space, which would be maybe a luxury but much more convenient to not have volunteers commixing with sensitive equipment, storage of sensitive items and such.

Thank you. All right.

And our plan is that should this building be recreated or other storage becomes available, that those containers could be repurposed within the county system if someone's in a similar situation. And I heard from Public Works that that might be a possibility down the line. But we've been waiting on that building for more than 15 years now. So I want to be optimistic about quick solutions.

Great. Supervisor Bone? Yeah. Were you, is that the end of your question? No, but go ahead and you can come back.

All right, well, then we'll bring it back to Supervisor Bush. Well, I'll just speak to the containers. Having had to buy quite a few and custom ones with roll-up doors and everything else, they have to put ventilation into them. They have to wire them for lighting and put everything else. So it's actually, I think they've underestimated what it's going to end up costing them. But I think they've cut costs, I see, in the right place. Putting them on railroad ties just gets them off the ground and stops that rust issue. But the other thing is they're going to have to coat the roofs of them, or they will rot through. I've had that happen with a couple of them. But you also have to understand they're not permitted to be used in the county, believe it or not. So you may want to check your local building.

Say that again?

They're not actually legal to use in parts of the county.

Well, I just wanted to make sure we weren't buying duplications. I understand the process. So yeah. And then the only other one I was asking about was the library's integration hardware that they want to buy. And is that something that goes into the cloud, which we heard everybody has a problem with stuff being stored in the cloud. And here we are buying software that does that. So I'm just curious about that. And with the deficit that the library has right now, even a one-time fund, I'm just wondering if this is something that we should really be doing.

OK. I'm just going to jump onto that question that I think is relevant, which is, I don't know what the difference is in the budget for the, um, for the library, uh, between, for the, for the service costs or for the, and so maybe we can compare those two things like this request versus that. And yeah, that's okay. I just want to know what, you know, the, they could be two very different numbers then. So,

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that. The current system at the library requires upgrade. And because of the server that it lives on, it's very difficult to get the upgrades done. We don't have anybody on IT staff that can manage those specific types of servers. This is me trying to do technical talk. So this going to the cloud would help us to not have that problem with the servers. In addition, we did ask the library, the library reports that the ongoing maintenance fees are anticipated to be probably a little bit less, if not right at the same level, because I would not consider it to be, software to be a one-time request if it were not.

Right. I mean, that makes a difference in terms of these requests because some requests, like when you're asking for money that's a match for a capital improvement, that's capital improvement. That actually helps our bottom line. It helps what we can leverage for borrowing in the future and those sorts of things. So is this an anticipated annual request? You're saying it's not.

It is not the request in front of you as the initial implementation costs. Um, the ongoing maintenance fees, it may include the first year of maintenance fees, but the ongoing maintenance fees are, uh, anticipated to reduce the exist, be around the same as the existing systems. I see.

Okay. So really it is just an upgrade. Um, But going back to how does that compare to the savings in terms of the hours that were reduced? What was that? I don't know if I know the number, and I'm just asking if we have that.

I do not have the hours that were reduced offhand.

What's the budget savings that was?

I'm sorry, it does say in the reduction, but it doesn't say the cost savings.

It talks about the reduction in service, not the reduction in budget from that reduction in service.

I do not have the budget reduction amount from the reduction in service.

I don't know that we specifically tied balancing their budget to just the reduction in service. It was a multifaceted approach because The library is, as Jessica said, in a tough spot this year and likely to be in a tougher spot next year. Karen is their liaison. I've got her three bubbles right now that she's typing to me, but I'm asking if she could speak a little bit more precisely to that. And Sean Hinman is also on Zoom as well. OK. And we could do further analysis if you would like a very precise number to what those savings equate to.

And maybe we get that in this evening when we come back. There might be a time to do that. But in essence, we're seeing a stress on the institution, the library system as it is, and this is an annual issue as opposed to most of these requests that we're getting in the ARFA are one-time requests. That's what you asked them to be, right? And so they are different. I also want to emphasize, too, programmatically, THE REQUESTS OR THE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT, AGAIN, GOING BACK TO OUR INVESTMENTS IN REAL ESTATE AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT GOES WITH THAT AND WHAT WE'RE BUILDING IN TERMS OF THAT ALSO IS DIFFERENT IN ITS FUNDING BECAUSE WE HAVE BASICALLY A DELEVELOPMENT FINANCING FUND THAT WE WORK OFF OF, WHICH HAS ITS OWN INTEREST RATE ASSOCIATED WITH IT, WHICH IS QUITE GOOD. AND SO IN MANY WAYS, At some point we're gonna use it or lose it in terms of the ability to have that, what is very reasonable and inexpensive financing to get these things done. So we really should be cognizant of that. Just the cost of borrowing changes and we have a lock on a decent interest rate. With that, are there any other questions about the ARCFA before we move on to? Yes, oh, Supervisor Bone, yes.

Yeah, and you guys, and I appreciate your work on the facilities. I got that job for a few years and everything else. And last week, I had talked to Rotary today, and I wanted to clarify something. Last week when I voted against the Kmart building, it was nothing against the Kmart. That's a great purchase. And I think I was kind of instrumental in keeping that on the table because I made quite a few phone calls on it. But with that being said, we have a couple buildings on the waterfront. Our public works, our planning and building is centrally located that are an asset that we can turn over to replenish some of those lost monies. The issue being is those buildings are going to be impossible to make fully ADA in the future. There's just nowhere. And if we did spend the millions to do it, I mean, we've got a lift down there that cost us $600,000 right now. We've done concrete work for $180,000. There is so much more work to be done. That skateboard ramp coming out the back door is the one I love, but I think it's a great idea to put all these places in one location just for the benefit and provide better working conditions for our people. What I am always going to be concerned about is maintaining those buildings. If it wouldn't have been for a lot of people making a lot of phone calls, the Ferndale vets would have ended up being the same way as the Garberville vets, ignored, not done, and then tearing it down because of mold and everything that came with it. So that was the only thing that I, and like I said last week, I still didn't get an answer, but I think the building, The facilities team is doing a great job on that fact, saying we need to have it. And Mike's exactly right. We can. For the last five years, we have not been able to get a very favorable interest rate. In fact, I think it was like three or four years ago, we went to borrow money, and they were told, you don't want to do that. And now that we have, our books are up to date, everything looks good, we're getting awards for it, we're able to secure that government interest rate to make these improvements that we have to make. And so I applaud the team for that. As far as nickel-diming this, and I think Michelle made a great point on the dogs. But adding to that problem is when you bring in five, 600 dogs a year from counties that are much bigger than we are. That's a problem. How are we going to die? So I've actually talked to our county council about looking into ways we can restrict the movement of dogs that aren't our dogs under certain conditions unless they're completely adoptable at the time of shipment. But this bringing wholesale packages of dogs up when, as it's stated, we have all our shelters, nonprofit shelters, and everything else full already. You can't bring that many dogs into Humboldt County. We've got 135,000 people, and a lot of them already have dogs. The spay and neuter is a big part of it. The spay and neuter clinic that they are running down there does give some pretty good discounts and does work with them really well. And the other problem with getting them spayed and neutered is the maintenance afterwards. People don't want to deal with, especially the large dogs, keeping them all bundled down, keeping them hooded so they don't dig on things and stuff. So I mean, we do have to address that. We need 10 more Bob Barkers is what we need. But as we move forward, now as far as what we're going on here, I heard if we don't change anything, we only need a three-fifths vote? Is that the way you explained it? But the way we meant, if there's any changes since we haven't turned it in to the clerk of the board, hasn't gone in the record, if we don't change anything, we can pass this with a three-fifths vote, right?

That is an option for your board to... to adopt the budget as recommended.

And with that being said, if we approve this as it sits, we don't have to spend $250,000 this year on a consultant economic development, planning a building, and having a bunch of meetings about what we can put at the airport that we've had since 1944 or 43, that's been up there. Because we haven't. We've tried to put things up there. It's been difficult. We had a guy that wanted to restore the Boy Scout building that just sits there, that big 2,000 square foot white hunk that sits out there in the middle. But never got an appropriation on that or any movement on that. So we need to look at what we can do. Because in all honesty, it's only been eight years since that was all public works. And it didn't, so we've just started this aviation department, so we can't put it all on the aviation department. It's been a lot of our faults throughout the time. But when you get out behind the airport, There's a lot of junk and mess back there that still needs to be cleaned up, and we need to focus on that. So it's the aviation departments, but it's our airport. So I think we need to look at that. But I think we're moving in the right direction. I just want to know, as Supervisor or Chair Wilson said, he didn't want to go through this one by one. a reason to push this when I think staff's got a pretty good idea of what we like, what we don't like, and unless they can make this work, you don't have to spend this money. I know we said we're gonna limit it, everybody's gonna be limited to $250,000, and it's funny how the ask got to be $250,000. I mean, we need 25, we need 25 computers for, and they asked for $100,000. I mean, that's $4,000 a laptop. Isn't that a lot for a laptop? I'm just, no? Okay. I would love to have my flip phone back, so I have no idea what, I don't have a laptop, I don't use a laptop, so. We would love you to use your laptop. I can't figure it out. How many times have you, how many times have you tried to make, you know, just, you know, I know you would, but it, you know, yeah. you guys replace it every once in a while. That's hardly, you can resell it. It's hardly used. I guarantee you that. So anyway, what I'm saying is before we go into this long discussion about, you know, can we save $50 here or 50,000 here and everything else? How much time and effort are we going to waste? And then maybe we can do away with the special meeting on Thursday.

I hear all of those concerns supervisor. Um, and, uh, I do think that the staff has done a wonderful job of getting things where we need them to be. I don't think and I do really believe that we are leaving money on the table by not having a good land use plan for that highly what can be very valuable property for us and so I'm skeptical that $250,000 will actually be spent in this next year on that and I think that'll probably come back to the back to us through the budget. But if we were actually really to be able to get a good product that actually is leverageable for funding, because again, you have to get somewhere close to, if you want infrastructure to be built in there to have all those improvements, then you need a plan to do it. There's been no plan to do it for all those years, and we see success in municipal airports across the nation. It's not just revenue generating for the county, but it's actually economic development opportunity in a very specialized space, and we're just, we're really behind. If you see what other places have done, I just think the time is, now, it's not later, to get moving on that. And so with that, Supervisor Arroyo, do you have anything left before we move forward with the recommendation to staff?

No, thanks. I think there are items we all have our perspectives on in here, and I think we communicated that this was an available option. Does not seem like it's gonna be available next year, most likely. And a lot of these are physical things to do work, systems, facilities improvements, grant match, mandated updates to planning documents, and then investments in what could be a viable economic driver in the future. So I'm supportive of just leaving these alone. And I do want to just make clear that I was not talking about a 10% reduction. That was what happened in Eureka. I'm not talking about that. I was talking about could we start moving towards 1.5% and start telegraphing that guidance now or something similar. And I realize this isn't that meeting, but I do think it's helpful if that's going to be on the table for our departments to hear that. fully knowing the consternation that that will cause. About the spay neuter costs, this is another throwback for me in Eureka where we went through the process of developing this very extensive change to our animal ordinance and one of the things was, One of the hot button issues was around spay and neuter programs and how I know that I don't doubt they can be effective and it's meaningful to spay and neuter. And in some rural places, the efficacy is variable. And because a lot of people just don't want to spay or neuter their pet. But for those who do, I think helping them get there is great, especially when it's a really high cost. And I would be interested in, I guess, hearing more about what that would look like with the input from our animal shelter folks and sheriff in conjunction with that. So maybe that's information y'all could talk about and bring back. I don't know whether there was a specific proposal in mind, just sort of meeting the moment. I can see how that would be beneficial and I know we're trying to reduce, not add, but that does feel timely, so thanks.

And if I could add on to that, bringing something back about on that issue I think is It's not going to happen today, but I appreciate, I don't think anyway, but I appreciate Supervisor Bushnell bringing this forward. For me, the issue is that what was kind of thrown out there would be programmatic, because once you do $10,000, it's an annual budget. Then the next one, and then the next one. We never really get there. And so I think it's important that if we're going to talk about something that could basically create uh something programmatic we should have a broader discussion about that um and i've yeah i mean i've i remember when i had a hard time affording you know picking up an animal and then like realizing oh my god it costs so much money to you know to to to have it fixed um I mean, we got it fixed and that we did the thing, but it was just very, you know, it was definitely a surprise for sure back at a time when we didn't have the resources necessarily. But I do, and also I think that conversation could coincide with what Supervisor Bone is speaking to. I mean... Part of what we're seeing, I feel like is or what we're understanding. And again, this is from just what we're hearing about animals being brought into our community through these arrangements. And I'm not speaking to what happened out of that, but. If we're having stress on our own system, maybe we should consider not, if we can say in some ordinance or something that this is not a county that receives those, or allows businesses to receive those animals, that's up for consideration. Not knowing enough about this subject, I don't, if I've just stepped in it with animal folks on this issue, I probably have because I don't know the details of that system necessarily, but by all means, let us know where we're right or wrong about that at some point, but I think This isn't a budget issue, this is a policy issue, so this is sort of messaging to staff that maybe there's something there for us to get to later in the year. I haven't heard any specific changes to the budget proposal as we have in front of us, and so is this a time when we, and Supervisor Madrone hasn't had a chance to speak too much, but I've been offering it, right? We're good, you want? Come back around, okay. So this is the time I'm gonna sort of the last round robin before we get a motion to move forward or not.

We do not need a specific motion for this action at this time. I just need a general consensus that the direction is to leave it as is.

Because we're going to close the hearing and reopen it at 5.30. For those of you who are out there who want to come into the chambers at 5.30, we're going to be open. Come on in. There will not be refreshments, but come on in. You never know. We have a water fountain. Supervisor Madrone.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm fine with the list of additional requests. And a lot of that is because I know that staff and departments have really vetted this a lot more than we're going to do here in a half hour or an hour. I mean, the details that people have gone through around all this, I'm sure, are very deep. And I trust that process. I mean, I think that's what we ask you to do. So just to be clear, I'm fine with the additional requests because I think that's one of the items we're trying to get at. I also want to thank Supervisor Bushnell for her comments on animals. Thank you. It's a conversation that's long overdue. Uh, I absolutely would support not allowing animals coming in from out of the county. We already have enough. We're overwhelmed, which is partly why a lot of things happened and it's not excusing it. It's not okay. But I like what you're talking about or getting to the root of the problem. And that is helping people spay and neuter. Not everybody's going to do it, but if we can get three fourths of it getting done because it's a money barrier. all for it and you know I hope we can try and have staff work with us to figure out a pathway forward for that so thank you for bringing that forward you know we've asked a lot of the departments we've asked a lot of our staff we're asking a lot of this board but it's the community also that helps us balance this budget and I'm gonna say it again I've said it many times shopping local has never been more important and it probably doesn't get said enough And I don't think a lot of people really understood the relationship between shopping online and the loss of the sales tax that that represented. Yes, Amazon would bring in property tax improvements to the airport business park, but it will not change the fact that we get none of those sales taxes. It doesn't qualify. It's not a fulfillment center. As far as jobs are concerned, robotics will take that over. So, okay, there's property tax, but I think the community is looking for more than that. We'll see. There's a planning commission hearing that will happen later this year and all that kind of stuff. THE OTHER THING ABOUT INCREASING, SO SHOPPING LOCAL INCREASES OUR REVENUES. YOU WANT TO HELP FILL OUT THE BUDGET, SO WE'RE NOT LOOKING AT A 10% ACROSS THE TABLE REDUCTIONS OR OTHER HORRIBLE THINGS IN SERVICE, YOU KNOW, REMOVAL AND STUFF, THEN SHOP LOCAL. FIGURE OUT A WAY TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN. I KNOW PEOPLE COMPLAIN, WELL, THERE AREN'T, YOU KNOW, OPTIONS TO GET A LOT OF THINGS, AND THAT'S TRUE, AND IT WILL BECOME EVEN MORE TRUE IF WE KEEP SHOPPING ONLINE. YOU WANT TO SEE THAT GET WORSE AND WORSE? Carry on. The other one is STRs. We've created an ordinance around our short-term rentals, but I'm getting calls on a regular basis from constituents who have gone through the permitting process. They went in, they got a permit to do their short-term rental, and they're paying annual transient occupancy taxes. It's collected by Airbnb or VRBO, and we get one check from them. We have no idea who's paying and who's not paying. And the only way that unpermitted STRs are even found out about is if a neighbor complains and then somebody digs in and figures that out. Otherwise, we have no idea. And there are hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost revenues, probably, if you recognize what one rental brings in in terms of money, and that there are many, many out there. I can't even put a number on it, but I know we know they exist and we're not getting that money. So we need to tighten that system up and get that revenue. So, you know, it's all about reducing expenses, but it's also about increasing revenues, right? A budget is both those things, so we need to do that. Lastly, and I'm not going to say any more about this today, about the flock cameras, I'm not trying to be an absolutist. I'm not. You know, if you look at what's going on, all I did was put an agenda item together with some help, and we had a community hearing on that, engagement, and the community spoke out very strongly. Yeah, maybe it was only 50 out of 150,000 people, but 50 coming to a hearing is a lot of people. And only two people spoke in favor of Flock, and 50 people, either by email or in comments, said, no, thank you. If we were a city, it would already be done. We would already say no to the flock cameras. Eureka did that. They never even went there. They stopped it before it happened. And the vast movement across this country to eliminate flock is from the cities. Why? Because the chief of police is an employee, and they can direct that. Whereas we have a constitutional sheriff, which we're reminded of a lot, and we can't direct that. And we're told, but you do control the budget. But even when we try to control that budget, we're told, well, if you did that, then I'll speak with my legal representatives. And I mean, really, we're going to spend 50 or 100 grand fighting over a $21,000 budget item and ruining public trust in the process, which is a very important tool, more important than flock cameras in my mind. So I just want to be clear. I don't think I'm trying to be absolutist. I do think the sheriff is being absolutist in his refusal to see public opinion on flock cameras and to respond to that. But regardless, it's a small amount of the budget. And it is a tool, but so are body-worn cameras, which were brought up that day. So are tasers and beanbag shotguns and batons and all these other things. They're all tools. But completing the process of protecting the public trust is the most important tool of all. So that's the last I'm gonna say about that. I just wanted to be clear, I do not, maybe some of you do, but I don't see myself as being absolutist on this. I have strong feelings on it, that's pretty clear. So that's really all I have. Look forward to how this process works its way out.

Supervisor Bushnell.

um thank you can someone clear up are we uh three a majority or four-fifths voting today

Today is always a majority vote. It's the adopted budget that is for FIS if your board directs us to incorporate changes into the adopted budget. An option for your board should we not be able to obtain for FIS vote would be to just move forward with the recommended budget as is. Do I have that correct, Natalie?

So I wanna, so let me just put out a scenario for you because I, you know, I put myself in the camp in terms of like the, the request to remove that line item. I'm just gonna speak to the flock cameras right now. There's other things that were said that have all kinds of issues around it, but just on that. At that point, there was two votes to remove that line item from the budget. if a third vote just say another supervisor wants to join that vote to remove that we could do that with three fifths or with three-fifths vote but the final budget would have to come back with as a four-fifths majority correct correct okay all right so i'm going to put it forward that if anyone wants to do that today let us know because that may or may not impact how we move forward. Because I'm not gonna ask for another vote on it unless I know there's somebody else that's interested in taking that stand. So, Supervisor Bushnell.

I'm kind of unclear what you're saying.

I'm saying if I hear from another supervisor that you're willing to remove the $22,000 from the budget for FLOC and vote on that in this moment out of the budget, we can do that. I'm not gonna run us through that vote again unless I feel like there's a chance that it's actually gonna get over the line.

And then you're saying if you get a majority vote to remove that today, then on Thursday, you're hopeful to get a four-fifths, right?

Yeah.

And so the four-fifths vote on Thursday, if we get a vote to remove that $21,000, then I could say no, because we removed that $21,000. Is that correct? You could. OK. Just to be clear.

That's absolutely right. It works in all kinds of directions. Just this is what we're doing. We're legislating at the dais. That's how it works. Supervisor Arroyo.

Seeing the math here, I don't think the math will math. If we move forward with that, it seems apparent that we won't get a vote to pass our entire county budget. So I'm not going to entertain that today. And I think it's... I get that it's a statement of values and I also don't think it affects the desired outcome the way that other actions could.

Okay, well I just wanted to put it on the floor, make sure everyone knows our process. I am fine, even though I don't like that line item, I will join any four-fifths majority to move forward with this budget and we'll work on policy. Otherwise, I mean, it's just the way that it is, but we all have our differences on that, and I'm totally okay with that. Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. And I spoke with Jessica earlier about this. I'm not going to be voting for this budget as well if we do not address the deficit spending and have a plan between now and next fiscal year.

Okay, do you want that, you're not expecting that plan today, right? You're expecting some sort of instruction to staff to bring us back a plan, is that what you're asking? Okay, that seems, I'm sure, that seems not unreasonable. Plans are good, we like that. Supervisor, sorry, Supervisor Madron.

Well, Rex is over here making comments that he's not going to be here Thursday, and I just thought he might want to address the board.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, well, I just hear you saying it.

Well, I'm... My goodness. Okay, we're just trying to get through this budget as best we can. Yes, Jessica, sorry.

Through the chair. Yes. May we take a general consensus on the ARGFAs, and if you would generally like those to be moved forward as recommended at this time.

I'm okay with ARGFAs moving forward myself, and I know there was some questions about it, but we'll let the board, I'll kind of run down Supervisor Bushnell.

I understand the one-time funds and I also understand that they get, you know, some of them are matched grants and they get us down, they get a lot of things solved, but they are part of the big picture when they add up to $2, $3, $4 million. And when you said to departments that you had a $250,000 maximum and then they requested two hundred fifty thousand dollars individually three or four times I don't think that's what was intended but that's what we got so I don't and I do think that departments are trying to get things fixed and I understand that and I think one-time funds are one-time requests are better than ongoing requests obviously I have heartburn about them But I see the need. I just wish that we really keep pushing this down the road. We really need to address things in our budget crises.

Okay, Supervisor Boehme and then what I'm gonna ask is that we. I agree and I support and agree what Supervisor Bushnell is saying and I think staff has delivered what they can with what they have and they have worked tirelessly to get to this point with department heads and everything else. Knowing full well next year if it's lower, I think I heard a miraculous dump of funds into it maybe and who knows. If we allow someone to build something, then we'll get sales tax dollars and things like that. If not, you guys will have to adjust appropriately and you might see that 2%, we've talked about that, but then we do the hiring freeze and then we hire 20 people every week, it seems like, or 15 people every week. We do exceptions. But we have looked at doing across the board cuts. I know Mendocino did it 12 years ago and then 10% across the board and it was probably one of the biggest boondoggles you've ever seen through all the departments. But it's the hand we're dealt with. But I think what we're going to get is if we can ask staff to have something ready for us in two hours, we're going to get a very poor piece of legislation that we're needing to work with if we give the staff time to work on the budget going into next year with our input. It's our job too, you guys. It isn't our job just to approve what they do. We need to go in there and say, hey, how about this? How about this? How about this? But I think that's the beauty of our staff is they've always been able to do it. We've always been able to do it, especially, I mean, like I said, my original budget was $257 million and I slammed my door to door. I was gonna say, I'm gonna keep it at that. You see how well I've done, vote me out quick. But with that being said, that's just our expenses and what we're doing. So we need to work with staff more than two hours, more than next Tuesday, more than next Monday, more than anything else. We got 300 days to work with them and say, what about if we do this? What about if we do this? What's this piece of property worth once we get traveled down here so we have a better position of our long-term goal? Talk to our local commercial real estate guys. They'll talk to you for free. Are there any big warehousing, trucking, any type of structure, what you find, airport maintenance, anything? Is there people looking to build around our airport? Because we're gonna have to operate quick because we got 90 acres in Fortuna that they're trying to market just as anything they can. And they've gone to just go into retail to anything they can do up there and I applaud them for that and everything. so to think we're going to have something that's a a workable product done in a week about how we're going to fix this next year but i think giving them the time to do it we'll we'll face it next year and we may it may be worse next year we don't know that hopefully not we make the right cuts and we do the right hiring freezes and we do everything proper so

Good discussion. I mean, excuse me, CAO.

Yeah, I'm marinating on this idea. And I respectfully want to voice a little frustration. Because we've been working over this structural deficit for a number of years now, and we have brought some pretty significant items forward. We presented a very robust organizational analysis. which by and large was not adopted. We implemented a hiring freeze, which then came to your board when we had exceptions, which 100% were approved by your board. we have uh you know the the argfas in the budget today are one time and limited so that we can put a lid on that and we have really made a lot of progress towards the structural deficit we were at 18 million at one point we're holding 12 million from last year but that's after we have been able to give the departments a 5% increase just so they could absorb the costs that have increased over these past five, six years. I think departments are really looking for your board to tell them where you are comfortable cutting. We cannot cut without eliminating programs. and yet we have we're having this conversation right now while also proposing program expansion at the same time so i think from our perspective we're really struggling to know what the palette is for your board and where you are comfortable making cuts and so you know your board needs to give us better guidance on how to do that in a way that you can swallow it and implement it and stick by it. I think in, My recommendation would be to adopt the budget as recommended to you today and to give us instruction to continue working through this for the next budget cycle. And in doing that, I think some real robust workshops with your board where we call a special meeting that the intention is to just chew on this budget and get that direction for next year. would be very helpful for us because I think department heads would say they're left scratching their heads a little right now on what your board is willing and able to do. And then it turns political up here, and that is an area that we refuse to step in with you as much as possible. So all that to be said, I think that the best path forward might be some heavy time spent in some workshops with you all where we acquire public feedback and have robust participation that our sole purpose and intent is to really put some sidewalls around what we can move forward. And sorry if that was abrasive or not, but I felt like I needed to say it. Thank you for hearing me.

That's good. Supervisor Arroyo.

Thank you, point well taken. I appreciate that very much and I think everyone has submitted both the additional requests and their budget proposals as we have provided the sideboards and this is what we asked and instructed based on your recommendations kind of throughout the year. So I am perfectly content with that recommendation to, what's the requested motion? There's direction to continue onward. But I also agree with the idea of having some community engagement. I think at our last meeting I mentioned potentially and I know there's an expense associated with this, but potentially utilizing something like statistically significant polling or something to help get additional input from people that just can't make it to public meetings in the middle of the day to help us guide some of the difficult decisions ahead. But I agree that having some time dedicated to that And the reality is that it's hard to conceptualize abstract things for us. And then when we get these proposals and we're like, aha, $20,000, we think we could do that cheaper. Then we get into the details of what that might look like. And it's understandable. I feel like it's a very human response to seeing the real proposals versus the conceptual ideas. So I would be interested also in having another crack at that. set of recommendations that were the bigger ones that were made before so that we can take another look at those.

Okay, so I think we're getting close to where we can say that right now there's no substantive changes to the budget as proposed. We can then close, not close, what is it, suspend? Continue this hearing to 5.30. If everybody's okay with that, it's four o'clock now, so in an hour and a half we'll reconvene here at 5.30 and finish out this discussion. Does that seem reasonable? Anyone disagree with me on that? Seeing none, we are continuing. All right. Everybody okay over there? Ready to go? All right. We have continued the hearing for the budget. Tumult County Board of Supervisors, June 15th. It is 5.30, so we can receive an update or reports from the staff if needed, and this is the time to do that.

Thank you, Chair. We typically run through the slideshow in a very abbreviated fashion at 5.30. If you don't mind bringing that up, Kaylee.

Okay, and if there's any public online that wants to comment on this, that time will be pretty soon, so put your hands up now. so we don't miss you. Thank you.

All right, we are here for the second portion of the budget hearings today. Just quickly, as a reminder, this is to give staff sufficient direction to prepare the fiscal year 26-27 final budget. It does reference special district budgets. We do not have to do those again this afternoon. I did add a slide to the conversation from the 130 hearing. This is to show the combined balances of the general fund and the general reserve. In blue, at the bottom of the chart there is uh the general reserve and then the orange is the general fund fund balance and just to highlight the stability through 21 2021 through 25 26 um to highlight those savings and that your board has made those targeted investments in the general reserve which is a allowed us to maintain relatively stable balances. And while it looks like a steep decline in 26-27, it is estimated that there will be savings similar to what there has been in the prior years. And just to show the growth from your board's investments in the general reserve and how those help our overall picture in the general fund. Hopefully that brings some clarity there. And then just as a refresher, the proposed budget before your board is $657.8 million, which is a 4.4% increase over the adopted budget for the current year. The general fund budget before your board is $165.47 million. And as we have referenced, the ongoing structural deficit is just under $12 million, while the overall use of fund balance is $25.5 million. And again, your board receives 17 additional requests for general fund appropriation totaling $3.2 million of which all 17 are included in the recommended budget. And there are 12 recommendations put forth by the CAO for operational funding recommendations of $5.4 million, 2.2 million of which are one time, 1.3 million of ongoing, and the 1.9 million for the establishment of an alternate council. Those are just detailed out on these two slides. And measure C, your board previously provided direction to add the 20,000 to the Boys and Girls Club, which will use a small portion of reserves of which will be replenished in the following cycle. And measure O, again, the 85% to Public Works Roads, which has also requested a carry forward of 4.0 million, and the 15% to Humboldt Transit Authority of 3.6 million for a total spending plan of just over $28 million. Opioid settlement funds as put forth by the opioid settlement working group of just over $4 million. And the transient occupancy tax spending plan of just over $1.3 million. Again, the ARPA funds, this is the final year. They must all be spent by December 31st, or sorry, American Rescue Plan Act funds. That is about 1.84 million remaining to spend and fully obligated. And then the unobligated amount in LATCF is $2.33 million, and that is available for direction. The recommended budget includes holding on to those funds for a future year. Finally, these were the items we were looking for direction from your board on today, which was the additional request for general fund appropriations, the CAO operational funding recommendations, and the local and tribal consistency funds. And then, of course, anything your board wanted to provide direction on. And just to recap the direction we provided, we were provided at the earlier hearing today. You directed staff generally to bring it forward as recommended, the budget as recommended, and to direct staff to bring back a staff report for a series of budget workshops to address the structural deficit before the beginning of next year's budget cycle. And with that, I'm available for any questions.

All right, we're gonna take it to the public. Is there anyone online?

There's none on Zoom.

There's none on Zoom. Anyone in the room? All right. I'm bringing it back to the board, Supervisor Arroyo.

Earlier, I wasn't clear on what the consensus was around the LATCF funds. Was that to hold on to those or to transfer them into the reserve for emergencies? Was there a general direction on that?

They are currently in the recommended budget. They are currently just held in what is called the Emergency Response Fund, which held the American Rescue Plan Act funds and the local and tribal consistency. And so that would just be holding onto them in their existing fund, which does earn interest. But your board could choose to transfer them to the general reserve. not sure that that's a use. While they are very flexible, I don't think that stocking them away in savings is an eligible use.

Okay. Then with respect to the reserves that you showed in the new graphic today, I know that as there are always many competing demands for resources, sometimes folks look at that and think that's a really large amount. And could you speak to kind of what that would cover in case of an emergency? Like how many months of operating expenses, et cetera?

Yeah. The amount, if... If approved today with initial 3.3 million to contribute to the reserves would be roughly 19.6 million in next fiscal year of fund balance there. The general fund salaries are just under $100 million roughly in the 90s. million dollar range so that would be roughly 20 percent um which would only cover a few months and that's just the general fund that doesn't necessarily consider all of our other like health and human services funds and roads fund and all of the operating costs across the county Yes, and per your board's general fund policy, the target minimum balance is 10% of the ongoing revenues or... discretionary revenues in the general fund. This budget in the current year is the first time we've met that policy limit, as you can see. That is just the target balance. It has a goal balance of meeting the GFOA recommended target, which is roughly 16 percent. With the contribution of $3 million, we will be well in between the minimum balance and the goal balance. I believe to reach the goal, it would be somewhere around $25 million in our reserves. And that, again, does not address our other funds.

I think I forgot to close the public hearing. Is that what we do? Is this a spot where that happens after public comment?

Yes, you may close the public hearing.

Okay, I've done that just now. We can continue on to discuss the proposed spending plan and give any more direction we might have. Supervisor Bone.

There's no action to be taken here, but... but give you direction, and I think staff's recommendation and what they've brought forth, and I think Supervisor Madron said it best, you spent a hell of a lot more time on this than we are able to, and again, thanks for doing the job, because you make it pretty simple, especially for a simple guy, and I think that's important, because I think our people understand that, Um, I'm willing to accept this as the way you bring it forward. There's a lot of wishes. There's a lot of wants. There's a lot of things we need to do. And it's some of this stuff. We're gonna have to look at private suitors to do some of the dog stuff, the grants and things like that. We're gonna have to look at bringing less dogs in. And I appreciate Michelle, you know, bringing up the fact that, and I appreciate Scott miles into looking into that for me and, and Michelle, you bringing it up. I mean, it's, it's a mess. but there's a lot of things on there we'd sure like. A lot of things I'd like to see more money spent on youth instead of everybody else having to pick, but that's not in the cards anymore. So I think you've done a great job, and I'm willing to accept this the way it sits.

Is there a general consensus, or is there any more discussion? Supervisor Bushnell?

So do we just continue this until Thursday? Or do we vote? I do think we vote tonight, right?

You do vote on the final two items here to give direction to staff regarding any desired modifications to the proposed budget. So that would be no modifications. And to set June 18th as the date to adopt the budget. Okay.

Looking for a motion.

I'm not done.

All right.

Thank you. I wanted to ask about two things. So the budget workshop that you talked about that we would work that work on that between now and probably six months because it would be it would start around the budget time and that would include department heads I hope.

we talked about this on uh break if we would probably try to get something before your board in the early fall that details all the actions you have taken and a summary of that and then um schedule those workshops out with I'm going to air quote some direction to department heads for a level of mandatory attendance to those. I do think it'd be best to have as many folks in the room as possible. And then that would be a public participation that we could promote broadly.

OK. And then my last question is around if for the spay and neuter, if that was something that this board wanted to talk about, What does that look like? Could there be direction now? It could be from the local assistance and tribal contingency funds. So could you help me with that a little bit?

Yeah, your board could either give direction now to make an edit to the recommended budget or you could direct staff to research what that could look like and bring an item back to your board in the next fiscal year.

So I would like to add that we add an item that we look into that and look into some programs that could maybe accept some funds to help with the spay and neuter programs throughout Humboldt County. Also, around what Supervisor Bones said, and maybe he's already talked to council, it sounds like, around not having dogs come in from outside area or animals I should say not just dogs but animals come from outside areas into Humboldt Rex did you already you have Miles working on that I asked Scott to look in if we need an ordinance if you get about three weeks ago and I think all right and I said something to Alicia and that's not really this conversation but I just wanted to it's around money so okay

On that subject, I've had many requests about discussion around what commonly is referred to as a leash law. We have had folks attacked by dogs pretty severely on our beaches with really serious injury and also neighbor on neighbor as well in other situations in public spaces and so I think if we're gonna be talking about the spectrum of issues around pets and specifically domestic animals, I would add that to the list. Maybe not all at the same time, and also that's not particularly a budget issue, I understand that, but it is something we're hearing a lot about. Supervisor Madrone?

Yeah, I would third that, that I've actually started a little work on the dog ordinance with the help from Under Chef Bro and some other staff there. But we didn't get very far because there's a lot of different opinions. But the leash law is one that everybody seems to agree with, except for those that like to be able to go to the beach and let their dog run free because he's under their control. in trinidad we have three different ordinances governing dogs within 100 feet of each other you got the trinidad rancheria you got the city of trinidad and you've got blm and they all have different ordinances so we've been trying to see if we could bring those three together somehow i've always met with lots of different opinions and differences and have not made much progress but i do believe that something like not allowing animals to come in from outside that's a little broader than dogs obviously but It could be in the dog ordinance and the leash law type thing. And another one is sometimes when a dog does bite people, they get incarcerated for 10 days while they check rabies. And sometimes the dogs are released even before a hearing happens on that. So there's a number of areas within the dog ordinance that absolutely could use some improvements. And I would love to see direction to staff to come back with what's appropriate to deal with animals as a whole. and perhaps law coordinates as a specific. So I would absolutely support that kind of a motion or action.

Supervisor Arroyo.

Thank you. I do think it's important to distinguish that this is different from budget, but if we're gonna have a comprehensive discussion about animal ordinances, there's a lot of other things, too. So maybe someone can bring this back as an agenda item if they wanna delve into it. There's all kinds of, like, mandatory spay and neuter with certain exemptions that you have to specifically apply for. There's restrictions on, like, how many animals you can have in a small place. There's leash laws, there's mandatory vaccination programs, and there's a whole gamut of things that you can do around animal control if we wanna get pretty prescriptive about it. And I will just say it's been down this road before, and I'm willing to go down it again, but it is a hot button issue, and we gotta be prepared for many, many, many opinions and just to take our time with the process and there are reasons why we might not want to wholly limit animals coming into the community because sometimes it can get a little retaliatory where animals can't go out of the community as easily too and so it's just a whole it's a whole thing um i think it's a little separate from today's discussion but i appreciate that we're all passionate about it i just um I would say there's, if we're gonna be pretty comprehensive, then I think it's gonna be a longer effort.

Supervisor Bell. I don't want to get into the weeds. I don't want to be passionate about it or anything else. I just think what we, you can't say all animals because then you want to get all the cattle ranchers and everything else. That's an animal and we bring a lot of them into the county. We ship a lot out. What I said is unadoptable dogs or dogs that don't have an immediate home being brought in to the count of 30 and 40 at a time. We have people going to shelters and picking up 30 or 40 dogs at a time. Some for profit, some just pick them up. So I would just like to limit, and there are programs all over, but the problem is it's, all the programs, the one I'm thinking about is just, not bringing in dogs to shelters from other shelters unless, you know, somehow. But all these other programs, I mean, we could make sure that every animal is taken care of and everything else. I just don't know where we're gonna put them, how we're gonna staff it, or do anything else like that. So we reach for the stars, make sure you got a ladder long enough to get there, and we don't have that. But I just think bringing in dogs, and I'm sure they're not sending us dogs that are adoptable because they'd send them out into their own community if they were adoptable. So they are hard to handle type of dogs. A lot of them. A lot of them are sweet as the day is long. And I've seen both, but we don't. Let's take care of our own issues, our own animals, the dogs and stuff that have to be taken care of. And I specifically say dogs because I don't see a lot of cats coming in. I don't see a lot of the other stuff coming in. It's dogs that are the issue and the issue we're facing, so.

I apologize whatever role I had in expanding this conversation to this subject matter. Supervisor Bushnell, I think you're next. I think you would ask to speak next.

I was trying to clarify whether I was going to. I think that around the budgetary item of monies for spay-neuter, I think I'll bring an item back.

Great.

Does that sound right?

You could direct us to work with... you know, to develop what an appropriate budget allocation might look like for that. I have, you know, let the sheriff know this was a conversation we were having. Who best to allocate those funds to is another question. And I think concurrently hearing the feedback on animal restrictions or prohibitions, maybe bringing back an item that gives some talking points and then we can discuss how far we wanna go in one direction or the other before we delve into ordinance drafting. Because I sense there's probably gonna be some mixed feelings around how far we would want to go and what specific parameters we would want to cover.

Thank you. And from a budgetary perspective, some jurisdictions talk about license fees. but what those fees are and what they fund. So with that, is there any direction to staff at this point through a motion, please?

So I guess it would be to, is it to move it to the 18th with the direction of the two other items to continue it till the 18th? Sorry. I'm sorry, I already closed my agenda.

Nope, you're okay. To set June 18th as the date to adopt the budget and then whatever direction you would like to provide around bringing the budget workshops for the structural deficit and... whatever direction provided about the animal piece.

Okay so I'll make a motion that we move or adopt that we bring the budget back to on June 18th for adoption and that we incorporate budget workshops with mandatory attendance by department heads. to work on next year's structural deficit, and that we direct staff to work with, I guess it would be the animal shelter, or the sheriff's council, to what it would look like for some spay and neuter funds.

I'll second that, and I do have a question with respect to the 18th. Can we all be there? I think we all need to be at this budget to make it go. If we have to pick a new date, now would be a good time before we make a motion saying that that's the date to adopt the budget.

I think we're good. Okay.

Yeah. Great. I'm just asking because it came up before. All right. All good?

We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Yeah, then we will go to roll call vote.

I'm a little confused. There's been several times where you said we would be approving the budget tonight, but finalizing that approval on Thursday. I didn't hear anything in this motion about approving this budget. Maybe that's a separate motion. I don't know, but I thought that was one of the directions we were given.

To clarify, you have already approved the recommended budget at the proposed as recommended. This is just to- At the last meeting? Yeah, this is just to direct us to bring it back for final adoption of it as recommended. Will be a majority item since it is as recommended.

Okay. Great. With that, I'll have a roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Bone?

Sure.

Supervisor Arroyo? Yes. Supervisor Madrone?

No.

Supervisor Bushnell? Yes. Chair Wilson?

Yep.

Motion carries 4-1.

All right. We will see you all back here on Thursday. Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. Geez, right. Forgot about that.