Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

and get this meeting started. Welcome to the board meeting for Tuesday, June 23rd. Can I please start with a roll call?

Yes. Supervisor Madrone.

Present.

Supervisor Arroyo. Here. Supervisor Bone. Good morning. Supervisor Bushnell and Supervisor Wilson are absent.

Great.

And we will go ahead and start with our salute to the flag. All right. CAO Hayes, are there any modifications to the agenda today? Good morning, Vice Chair Arroyo. There are no modifications today. All right. Well, with that, just a quick reminder. We have some time set items, which means they will happen as close as we can to the time at which they're listed on the agenda. So at 10 a.m., we have a presentation from our county about the wildfire coordinator grant program. And then at 11.30, we have three closed session items. And so we're going to move through the other items, but we may have to adjust if we get to a time set time. With that, we'll go ahead and get into our consent calendar. We do have a couple of retirements and we're just going to go in the order they are on the agenda. We'll start with the retirement resolution for Correctional Sergeant Adam Roster. Do we have Sergeant Roster here? Good morning.

Good morning.

All right, I'll go ahead and read this into the record. It's two pages.

Oh goodness. I'm sorry?

Thank you. I have been saying Rossiter. I'm just bad at enunciating. All right. Thank you for that update. All right. Whereas Adam Rossiter began his law enforcement career with the Napa County Sheriff's Office, then was hired as a full-time correctional officer, too, for the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office on May 14, 2002, by Sheriff Dennis Lewis. And whereas on November 20, 2005, Adam Rossiter was promoted to the rank of senior correctional officer, And whereas on May 20th, 2018, Adam Rossiter was selected to be an acting correctional sergeant until September 22nd, 2018. And whereas on November 14th, 2018, Adam Rossiter was promoted to his current rank of correctional sergeant. And whereas throughout Adam Rossiter's distinguished career of over 24 years with the Sheriff's Office, he has received several commendations and exceptional evaluations for his steadfast approach to working in the challenging field of corrections. and whereas Adam Rossiter has held many appointments and specialty positions such as program sergeant, transportation officer, background investigator, peer support member, and ethics PREA instructor, and whereas Adam Rossiter has exceptionally represented the Sheriff's Office at several community events to engage the public by showcasing various Sheriff's Office programs, and whereas Adam Rossiter has received A letter of appreciation from Shasta County undersheriff Gene Randall for allowing him and his team to witness the sheriff's office reentry fair, which has community partners visit the jail and show those incarcerated what services they can provide. And whereas Adam Rossiter is known for his deep voice, calming presence, and always being that person people can come to when they need someone to listen and give them sage advice. Now therefore be it resolved that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the staff of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office hereby commend and thank Correctional Sergeant Adam Rossiter for his dedicated 24 plus years of selfless service to the citizens of Humboldt County and the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office. We wish him well in his retirement. We're going to take a real quick photo and then you can have the mic.

Congratulations. Thank you.

We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Here's your resolution.

Well, let me start off and then I'll turn the mic over to Adam. We're really, really proud of Adam for his retirement. This is what we work for. When you're in the public service, you're working nights, holidays, weekends, and you're dealing with some really challenging situations in the jail. You get to a day where you go, okay, I can retire. Technically, we can work way past 30 years, and so he's only doing 24. So you know what? Gosh darn, I thought I had six more years for him. So anyway, we're sad to see him go, but we're very happy that he is going into retirement. He does have his health, mostly. He does have a little leg issue that he's nursing right now, but let me just tell you, Adam is kind, caring, he is compassionate, and he wears his compassion on his sleeve. He really loves his job, loves the people, and so that is going to be difficult to replace. I really got to know Adam over the years because he was our background investigator. He was really instrumental in helping our backgrounds process get streamlined and hiring correctional deputies, deputy sheriffs, and all employees for the sheriff's office. He really did a fantastic job there. And then that ultimately became trainee officer as well as supervisor. So we're really proud of him, and we wish him nothing but the best in retirement. I know we'll look at him getting better and one day hopefully running again. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. But anyway, congratulations, Adam.

Really appreciate it.

We were promised a deep voice.

You know, I really just want to say thank you. Everyone's been great, and I've had a great career and so many opportunities, and I am very grateful. So thank you.

Thank you.

We can go ahead and take any other comments about this retirement right now. I see you have a lot of colleagues here, and so please go ahead and come on up if you have comments about Adam's retirement.

Yeah, thank you board. I'd just like to thank you guys for appreciating the long body of work that Adam's put in. Again, he and I started around the same time, so I'm asking myself why am I still here, but I'm very, very happy for him. He's been a great employee. He's been a great friend. He's a great father. He's a great son, and I think what the sheriff said is the number one thing that I would say to take away from this is compassion. Just like the sheriff said, anyone that ever had contact with him that he interacted with knew they had a friend. He always asked how you were doing. wanted to make sure your day was going okay, see if there was anything he could do to make your day better. And that's really what we leave behind. It's not all the work we do. It's the people that we touch and the impact we have on each other's lives. So if that's what the job is, then he's done an amazing job. So thank you guys.

Wonderful. Go ahead, Undersheriff.

Good morning, thank you. Adam and I started really, I think, right around the same time and then I left to go to EPD after a while. I came back and he did my background, which was kind of funny, and I remember he asked me, why are you coming back? And I remember thinking, he was asking me in such a way that it was as if he was expecting some revelatory answer. And I didn't really have one. It was just right for me at the time. But we got to talking, and he was really big into running at the time. And I was looking for additional exploits in my personal life and got into running and didn't really follow through with it. And now I see that. Probably made the right decision because that all that running didn't exactly work out for him, but all jokes aside All jokes aside Adams a great guy and you know I've been through a lot of training on supervision management leadership and and the key factor in all those is caring about your people genuinely and you can't teach that and I've always admired how much he genuinely cares for people to the point where it almost, he carries the burden that you don't want to do because there's only so much we can put in our stress cup each day but he truly cares about his people and advocates for them and I've always admired that and try to learn and emulate his behavior. So thank you Adam, appreciate all you did.

Would anyone else like to say anything. You all are a quiet and you know caring bunch. I know you always come out for each other and just seeing the representation from your team here Adam must mean a lot. All right.

Would any board member like to make a comment on this retirement resolution.

Please go ahead. Thank you Vice Chair. Sergeant, thank you so much for your service. You know, I think some people take this stuff for granted, but it's clear that you have had an impact with your care and concern for people, and I just want to thank you for that dedication to service and wish you all the best health and healing with your life here. So thank you.

Well, Adam and I go back a ways. And you can always tell when you guys get back there about how much somebody, there's two reasons you're back there. You're back there saying, I can't wait till it's me. And then the other thing is you're happy for the person that's retiring. And he's been a great example. It's kind of funny. We had three people that come up and they says, we all started about the same time. And I think the last wave, I remember, so that would have been about 2000, 2001 too. was in the Mike Downey one night. They all started about, all those guys started about the same time. I think they swore in eight deputies. Yesterday we swore in four correction officers yesterday, and Marco was all excited that there were, we're down to single digits on shortages, which I appreciate everybody hanging in there, and it's people like, you know, we get people in there that get to work for somebody like the sheriff and the sheriff, but, you know, people like Adam and stuff that makes people want to stay. I mean, nobody leaves for the money. Nobody leaves for anything else. They leave because they're working someplace that isn't good. And so if we can improve that working relations and have the right people at the top to do that, we get to keep people. So I know you're going to be up. I don't know about running. You may jog slowly there for a while and stuff. But congratulations. It's right where you want to be right now. And you can come back as soon as you're healed up too. Hell no. But anyway. Anyway, thanks, buddy. Appreciate it, man.

Great, well, thank you, Sergeant Rossiter. I hope you have a very wonderful retirement, and it's just great to hear about your long career with us. Thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

All right, we will move on to our next retirement resolution. We have Jamie Lee Evans. Please go ahead and come forward. Awesome.

All right.

Whereas after 18 years with the Humboldt County Transition Age Youth Collaboration, HCTC, Jamie Lee Evans is moving on from her role as founding HCTC collaborator and youth trainer, and whereas Jamie helped launch HCTC in 2008 with the goal of empowering young people with lived experience to transform the foster care, juvenile justice, mental health, and homelessness services systems, And whereas Jamie brought her connections to state and national youth empowerment organizations to build the collaboration and its first team of staff and volunteers. And whereas over nearly two decades, Jamie has connected Humboldt County youth to numerous leadership opportunities, growing HC Tacey into a powerful award-winning voice for systems change. And whereas, as Jamie likes to say, she comes alive when working with the sassiest of young people, those who have been forgotten and overlooked. and whereas jamie leaves a lasting legacy in humboldt county having coached trained and developed countless local youth leaders who have gone on and will go on to lead extraordinary positive change in the world now therefore be it resolved that the humboldt county board of supervisors hereby thanks jamie lee evans for her years of service helping h.c tacy and humboldt county youth thrive Don't worry, you stay here.

Thank you so much.

Please go ahead.

Okay, let your three minutes begin now. I wanna thank the Board of Supervisors for taking the time out of your busy schedule to acknowledge my work in Humboldt County. The origin story of H.C. Tacey, the Humboldt County Transition Age Youth Collaboration is a really good one, and it is a story that the Board of Supervisors helped to make real. I wanna thank you for your support of HCTC over the years. People who do this work do not do it for acknowledgement, but it is important and meaningful when we get acknowledged. And I think it is a message to the folks that will come after us that the work is valued and appreciated. So thank you for this opportunity. And I wanna urge you to support the award-winning work of HCTC as it comes forward, the whole country, is in budget challenges, and HCTC has certainly been impacted by that. And so when you have the opportunity to continue to support HCTC, I hope you will, it is a very powerful organization that has done beautiful things, not only in Humboldt County, but beyond. has made a difference not only in the individual lives of young people, many of whom are here today, which is so lovely, but it also has made an impact beyond Humboldt County, winning awards across the country, really, just being a model for the amazing program that it is. I want to just quickly acknowledge Barbara Leahy, Barbara and Phil Crandall started this project. It was their desire to have Humboldt County be a county that hears the voice of young people and makes it really clear. I remember the very first meetings where every single director in Health and Human Services came to the meeting to hear the voices of transition age youth. and have continued to do so. Barbara Leahy and Phil Kendall were instrumental in this project. I want to acknowledge Emmy Bolzer-Rogers. I want to acknowledge Connie Beck, who is now our Director of Health and Human Services. I want to acknowledge Sonya Levy-Boyd, the policy brilliance of Nancy Stark. I want to thank my sister, Ipulani Ma'e, who used to work for H.C. Tacey and who is flying in flown in from Molokai to attend this ceremony and then also to work, volunteer with us this week in the work we're gonna continue to do. I wanna acknowledge Rosemary Schultz and all of the peer coaches and young people who are here today that I've had the pleasure to work with for the last 20 years. It's been an honor. Thank you so much.

I know that you got the three minutes total memo for other speakers, but since we did let some other folks come up, we can have a little flexibility with that. So please go ahead.

All right, thank you. So Humboldt County's DHHS vision statement is people helping people live better lives. I can't think of anyone more apt for this motto than Jamie Lee Evans. I met and began working with Jamie about seven years ago when I began my position as a youth organizer for HCTC. In our time together, Jamie has shown me and the youth of Humboldt County so much about big love, finding joy in the hard work, and the power of leadership. She has created many opportunities for youth to gain skills and to have experiences that will increase their wellness and capabilities for their life beyond their time at TAY. Organizing and executing our programming, I say it's a lot of work to have fun, and Jamie, we've had so much fun. From the power of storytelling for advocacy, how to facilitate a world cafe, and many sessions of pumping each other up and beyond, it's been such a joy working with Jamie. This isn't goodbye, it's see you later.

I think you had some other speakers in mind. Is there anyone else?

. . . . . .

. . .

Hi, Barbara.

It's really hard to go after that. But I just wanted to say thank you to Jamie. She's a true trailblazer. She taught us so much. And Humboldt County youth are in a better place because of your vision. She really challenged a lot of the way that we were doing things in Humboldt County and shook things up. And I will forever be honored to work with you and appreciate the change you made for our community. So thank you.

Would you like to come up?

So I was just thinking this entire time, like some of you guys might recognize me, but four years ago I would sit wherever I was and look at places like Behavioral Health Board or people getting recognition or doing good in school and I'd be like, oh man, that's not for me. I've been too many places, done too many silly things. But being able to have somebody recognize you and your innate desire to overcome the dark things that life throws at you and then being celebrated for the things that you've been through that keep you down, it's something that I can never replace or find anywhere again. And this woman has her own museum, so I don't know. I don't know anybody who has their own museum, and that's...

Hi, everyone. I just wanted to say thank you, Jamie, for all of the work that you've done for HCTC and all of the mentorship that you've provided for me. Thank you to the board and DHS administration for supporting HCTC and the work of Jamie. I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that Jamie's last trip here is not only for this, but it's also for one big last hurrah of a retreat with nine youth we have coming in tomorrow to work on a photography retreat. and a pop-up museum that we have on Friday. So I put some flyers up for you all to look at. And I hope everyone can stop by in Old Town. Thank you.

Wonderful. Well, it seems you are extremely loved and have made a huge influence on many people's lives. And it's cool to see the folks here today. And I know there's countless more. Any board members have comments? Go ahead, Steve.

Well, Jamie Lee, thank you for all your dedication and work over the years and all of you with HCTC. You know, I have always been so impressed by your engagement in the community. the times that I sat on the Behavioral Health Board, my favorite meetings were when H.T. Tacey was there and challenging our board to really consider how we were operating and whether or not we were being inclusive of youth or not. And a lot of times we may have been well-intentioned to do that, but there was a lot of room for improvement. And so I very much appreciate the engagement of all of you in that effort. We are all better for it, so thank you so much.

Thank you. I've been around for a lot of it, and I think you have new offices now, or new to you offices, and I think that's been a positive move, and I think that what you're doing is work that needs to be done in so many different ways. It's just not what you do. Anybody that works with youth, I mean, you're... You're dealing with a bowl of jello a lot of the times, and you're trying to keep it in the bowl and get them all. And so you could use your life resources to help them, and I think your group does a good job on that. So I appreciate that.

I love the bowl of jello, mental image. Well, it has been a pleasure to see all of the cool events that HCTC puts on and hear about it through the lives of so many people I've met over the years, people who've worked there and people who have gone there to participate in all the programs and been on the Youth Advocacy Board. It's also been really cool to serve on the Behavioral Health Board and continually have the advocacy for young people to serve on the Behavioral Health Board as well as other boards and commissions of the county like the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission. So I see a couple of my fellow commissioners and board members respectively here. Hi, you all. And just cool to have that connection to strengthening youth voices. So thank you for all you've done, and I hope you have a delightful retirement. Let's do one more round of applause. All right. Thank you. For the remainder of our agenda, this is... We don't... So for the celebrations of retirements, things like that, we do applaud. And so for the remainder of the agenda, to try to encourage all voices to be heard and for people not to feel... a little bit intimidated or anything like that by the audience, we will not have clapping for the remainder of items, but do encourage public comment. right so we will move on to the rest of our consent calendar um is there any other we do have a few um reappointments i just want to thank all of the folks who are serving on our various boards and commissions we have quite a few reappointments um today so excited to see that um is there any other item that any board member would like to comment on yeah steve go ahead yeah um

Thank you to all those that are stepping up to be reappointed, but I wanted to in particular thank James Abel and Mark Andre for their reappointment and their willingness to continue to serve. on our Humboldt County Forestry Review Committee. Two very long standing members of that committee that bring some great perspectives and tremendous depth of experience to that process. So thank you James and Mark for that. And then also Jack Rice, Mark Moore, and Dean Hunt. Also for long decades of service on the Williamson Act Committee. Without these folks stepping up and helping us with this we wouldn't have functional committees in this regard. So thank you Jack, Mark, and Dean.

Rex, go ahead.

I want to thank Emmy Rogers and Connie Beck. I have a question.

People are always asking, what are you doing about this?

What are you doing about that? Today we have, I mean, 3% of our budget on two consent items. if we use it all. But close to 14 and a half million dollars for Nightingale and Dr. Milan for behavioral health nursing for our center and for psychiatric assistance both for children and adults. And it's so important, but when I see those numbers, I kind of freak out. Ms. Rogers sent me a whole list of we don't use all that money, or hopefully we're not gonna use all that money, but just in case it's there. None of it affects our general fund, but we all pay into it in a roundabout way, so I always have to explain that. I mean, it does come from the federal and the state, but we all pay federal and state taxes. But I like it to be used. It's being used to help people in Humboldt. So if you're asking, what the hell are you guys doing? This is what we're doing. We're trying to apply for these grants. And some of these grants are running out. and I know we, and some of the reasons they're running out is because other states, counties and stuff have taken advantage of some of these things, and now we're all under scrutiny for a couple bad apples, so we're all under scrutiny, and that's becoming a huge issue. It's one that had to be addressed, but I really appreciate, short notice, Emmy, you're getting back to me right away and explaining all of this to me. Connie, thank you guys, you guys do a great job over there.

Wonderful. So we have a person in the room, at least one, and some folks online. Let's go ahead and do the folks in the room first. Come on up, Joanne. Good to see you. This is on non-agenda items. I'm sorry, consent calendar.

Consent calendar, yes, thanks. My name's Joanne McGarry, and I rode the bus just so Supervisor Bushnell would get the report. Bet she's not here. Item 25 is about a grant that the Sheriff's Department is seeking of $100,000. for the animal control services for a generator in emergencies, I think. And I just applaud that effort to seek grant monies for animal control. And I want to share that in my 16 years in the last century in animal control and welfare at the San Francisco SPCA, there's a lot of money available to help animals in our community, our state, our country, and that the ASPCA in New York has this opportunity for shelters around the country. I think it's a really wonderful concept. Apparently it's the first time the Sheriff's Department has applied for such monies. I do think a generator for animal control for the kennels if there's a need for it. I share an experience in 1989 with the San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake and I was at the San Francisco SPCA Ended up spending the night there with the executive director and the shelter director so the three of us could monitor the animals in the kennels where there was no air filtration happening because we didn't have a generator and I gotta say the importance of having Energy to filtrate the air in a kennel situation is really a good idea. And I will be speaking more on the animal welfare topic on non-agenda items. But I just applaud that we're starting this. And I think we've got to continue finding money to help the animals in Humboldt County.

Thank you. This is for public comment on the consent calendar which includes the retirement resolution. So if anyone else in the room wants to make public comment, now is the time. I thought that might be the case.

That is the case, sorry. Calipel Tate Olson, there's construction happening outside of Ferndale, so apologies for being late, but I'm here to comment on the retirement resolution for Jamie Lee Evans. In the text of the resolution, it mentions that Jamie Lee has a significant gift for impacting and drawing in young people, particularly those sassy youth. I was one of those sassy young people. In 2010, as a 19-year-old individual struggling with behavioral health issues, housing marginalization, family rejection, substance dependency struggles, et cetera, I was invited to attend a youth center planning summit. At the time, I was a lost soul whose voice did not feel valued, heard, nor as a young transgender person in Humboldt County did I feel like my life mattered in any regard. By the end of that youth center planning summit day, Jamie Lee Evans had my phone number, my email address, and knew where to find me out in the community. After three months of relentless pursuit, she convinced me to join the Humboldt County Transition Age Youth Collaborations Youth Advisory Board and that single action dramatically transformed my life. Going from a period of time in which my peers were completing suicide and dying of overdoses and I myself was on the verge of doing similar, Jamie Lee gave me the skills and perspective to have hope to contribute to the transformation of our community, to create the Tay Center, to win the national awards that so many people talked about, and most importantly, to contribute to saving the lives of countless members of my community now that are alive to this day as a result of Jamie's advocacy, skill, and love. Without the impact of Jamie, without the work of HCTC, there are probably well over 100 young people in Humboldt County that would not be alive to this day. And so I thank you, Board of Supervisors, for your historical support of HCTC And please ask and urge you that with this transition, that the light that HCTC has to provide to our community is not lost. That in the process of this restructuring, the lesson my life and life of so many other young people in Humboldt County is not forgotten. Because when we support youth voice with material resources, we are able to make such profound differences. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Highly unusual but sure. Go ahead.

I just wanted you to know that you in particular and all of the voices at HCTC have always been very inspirational to me in particular at the behavioral health board meetings. Thank you for speaking out and staying with the program. And yes, Jamie Lee, what a mentor she's been. But I wanted you to know in particular that you have been inspirational to me personally, just watching you and the others at HCTAC come and present at various meetings and things. So thank you for all your efforts.

Very sweet, indeed. I echo that. All right, we will move to those online. So let's have the first caller.

Thank you. Caller 7454, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes. You can try to press star six to unmute yourself. It looks like there's some technical difficulties on their end of hopping on.

Okay. Can we move to the next caller? Caller, if you want to try to reconnect, now's the time to do that. So we'll move to the next person.

This is the only caller online.

Oh, this is the only caller. Okay. All right. Well, please feel free to reach out to us by email or phone, and we would like to hear from you.

I do have one more caller who just raised their hand. Okay. Caller 5288, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Hello, Ken Sawatsky. I've learned with technology these days to have a backup call in the waiting and that's what I'm exercising at this time. I was the other caller. I did wish to comment on item number D9, your new policy regarding technical disruptions. I strongly applaud that as, you know, we have much difficulty in such things as raising hands. Star six sometimes just doesn't work for some reason. Star nine does. But anyway, I want to really thank you for this. And I also wish to thank the current chair for taking the comments in the room first. That enables those of us to get on if we're trying to make comments. Sometimes it goes so fast when Chair Wilson's chairing that nobody can get their hands up and of course you get no comments at all. So anyway, I did wish to that. Then I noticed that we have a D16 where somebody donated $250 to DHHS. And it really doesn't matter the amount, but I really appreciate you acknowledging when people do donations because small ones are big ones. They're all important and they all add up as far as what the county work that needs to be done and how it needs to be funded. Thank you for being able to speak today on your consent items.

Thank you. That's all on Zoom.

All right. So we will go ahead and close public comment. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

Motion to approve consent calendar.

All right, I'll second it. Any objection to unanimous consent? Seeing none, we will move to our next item. So we have about 20 minutes. Oh, I'm sorry, we do need to go to public comment on non-agenda items. Thank you for bearing with me. Any public comment on non-agenda items in the room?

Thank you, my name's Joanne McGarry and I second what Kent says. It really is kind of nice to sit here and be seen and then heard while others can get online to make their comments. So three things, as I'm famous for having, but all of this with the umbrella covering of regional climate action plan and a little bit of animal welfare in there as well. This is the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation, so to speak. And I do understand people's desire to celebrate and nostalgically and historically, you know, a significant anniversary. And I hope that as we do so with the ancient tradition celebration technique of fireworks that we will move into the future in a climate changing future and really review other options for celebrating for things that are not so detrimental to the environment. They're not so expensive. They're harmful to the laborers who create those. whether it's the commercial firework companies or the backyard firework companies. And I know that some local groups are doing fundraisers by selling fireworks and I find that troublesome and hope that we can move into the future with healthier products to celebrate. It's too late for 2026, but San Francisco just exhibited a wonderful laser over their city hall, a laser light show, and we really need to start looking at alternatives. So thanks for always hearing me out on this. So animal welfare, as I mentioned earlier, I really do think with all that's coming out in the news and all that I'm learning about online and social media, Humboldt can do better, and there's a lot of interest and concern and emotion in the animal welfare world, and I really do think some of the suggestions I have placed before you in the past really should be looked at in terms of a separate entity out of the Sheriff's Department, an oversight committee of animal control and welfare, non-governmental agencies really stepping up beyond adoptions and spay-neuter to having state humane officers on their staff. And it could be a dual role. It doesn't have to be standalone. I was an executive secretary and a state humane officer at the San Francisco SPCA. So those are two things, and there was a third thing, but my brain has gone, so it'll have to come at another time. But thanks for always listening to me, and I appreciate this opportunity.

Thank you. Any other public comment in the room on non-agenda items? All right, seeing none, we will move to online. Is there any non-agenda comment?

Yes, caller 5288. I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Ken Sawatsky again. I did wish to make notice or put out there that Saturday the 27th, I believe between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., there will be at the courthouse, in front of the courthouse, a silent protest regarding the atrocities that took place at Miranda's rescue. Hopefully the sheriff in the near future will get something, enough evidence to bring charges forward, and that will be prosecuted. Very sad day. until that happens for me. All these animals that I feel are important being slaughtered. The other thing I did wish to make mention of was, you know, I've been tracking the budget and I did appreciate, you know, watching this. I one time tried to participate and technology wouldn't let me. I understand back on the 7th, July 7th, there's something that comes back before you I listened to your CAO who basically was making comment regarding the fact that we have a labor freeze for positions and things doing them, but 100% of your request to have those, or departments to have those positions continue has been granted. So it's a little, in my opinion, a little bit disingenuous to say we have a labor freeze or a position freeze and do that. The other thing is regarding the budget that I think there's, what, $3.2 million of one-time expenses. And you could put a cap on it, I think, of $250 million. A bunch of people came in at $250 million. Personally, I think that whole lot should be put into a reserve fund instead of being spent. There's no reason to continue to feel like we have to spend everything we have. I think it will become more and more apparent in the near future why it's necessary to be saving at this time. Even though it's not a good economic time, I believe it's going to get worse. I can't see any reason for it getting better, especially in Humboldt County. And so I recommend you put as many of those nuts away in the tree as you can for when the squirrel gets hungry during what I think will be a little bit more of a tough time. Thank you for my opportunity to speak on non-agenda items today.

Thank you. Caller 3053, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes. Yes.

Good morning, Thomas Mulder. I just want to confirm you can hear me there in the chambers?

Yes.

Sorry, I'm walking and working right now. A couple of things. First off, I'd continue to love to see a resolution or an agenda item where the board talks about, you know, no notice inspections, batch tagging, all those kind of things. I guess the DCC is just getting into a rulemaking process. It'd be great that one of the heritage counties come forward and actually put the letters supporting their farmers supporting their people we're in a huge downturn in the economy so let's not try to drive people out more and more uh it's 9 48 and i'm actually still working usually i'm gone by now uh got a little bit late to work but uh just something to be great great support uh we don't need people showing up at our gates unannounced um if you if that's the way you truly feel um it's just unfortunate you just outlaw us all um speaking as someone that's been held at gunpoint but for hours by law enforcement you know it's not great having un unnoticed neighbors or unnoticed people coming showing up so i'd love to see some sort of agenda item like that and then the other thing i just i'm noticing that if people come and comment enough eventually you can change the rules or reevaluate the way the rules are perceived so I know you're probably gonna have an appeal coming before you, but I beg you to watch the video of that hearing that took place last Thursday, because I do believe I heard someone say they came to a conclusion before the meeting started. And that breaks my heart for fair process and due process. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Caller 9299. I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Hello, this is Barbara Schultz. I have been involved in animal welfare in Humboldt County for over 26 years, including my radio show where Sheriff Gowney was my last guest in 2011. I've lobbied with the state assembly and state senate. I received the recognition award there from the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the Eureka City Council. So I'm chiming in on our previous I wanna reinforce the need for the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. Back in 2006, Bonnie Neely kindly put that on the agenda. Unfortunately, it was considered important at that time. When we look at animal welfare, it's had a significant impact in Humboldt County. The animal shelter itself is needing a lot of repairs. and a lot of support unfortunately we have an individual who should not even have a tax exempt status and has done horrific damage to the reputation of animal welfare here in Humboldt County and sadly enough to the thousands of animals that Miranda's rescue has impacted I want to bring attention to the North Coast Journal article, which was damning in itself and really showed Shannon Miranda's psychological state and what he thinks animal welfare should be, how things should be done. It was quite contradictory to Lieutenant Steve Knight, who I had, I guess. on my radio show back in 2004 which very he very made it clear that shooting animals was unacceptable and um that there's a protocol for it and he followed that and i had a lot of respect for him for that um unfortunately today we regressed um i really believe that prop 64 and the cannabis um priorities really misplaced community interventions and community involvement. So when looking at grants on my radio show, I had Maddie's Fund, I had the Doris Gay Foundation as guests. There's so much money out there. And I was hoping to bring that out on that Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, which never happened. So I have other things to say, but I just want to reinforce that thought process. And hopefully we'll be more progressive in how we deal with animal welfare and the pet overpopulation, which the state of California is number one in the euthanasia. We're spending $400 million a year in euthanizing animals. And it's just unacceptable. So thank you so much for listening.

Thank you. That appears to be all of our commenters on non-agenda items. I do want to make a brief announcement that is in a way a public comment. Just about an event happening tomorrow night. The Harbor District has assembled a community advisory committee which I have been serving on related to their port development, their heavy lift marine terminal development. That project is entering a new phase under the California Environmental Quality Act process. And they'll be issuing a new notice of preparation for an environmental impact report in the near future. And that process is going through early next year. So I think this has been development that maybe isn't on too many people's radar, but the hope is that folks will learn about where we're at in the process through this meeting. So it's tomorrow night, Wednesday, June 24th, from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. at the Arcata Community Center in Arcata and there will be snacks and refreshments and I'll be there helping with receiving community input as part of that community advisory committee. So I encourage everyone to attend who's interested in learning about the project. I've seen some of the posters and slides and it looks like it'll be really engaging and educational. So I wanted to let folks know about that. All right, so we have just a few minutes before our 10 a.m. time set, and I don't think that we can squeeze the Behavioral Health Board presentation into that time, and I don't think we wanna hamper the time by doing that. So let's go ahead and take a very short break while we wait for our time set. So we'll do our time set right at 10 a.m., thank you. It is 10 on the nose. All right, so our next item is our time set item, a report on the implementation of Humboldt County's Wildfire County Coordinator Grant Program. So we have some wonderful folks here to present. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning members of the board. Thank you for having us. I want to thank Supervisor Wilson for sponsoring this item and recognize Supervisor Madrone for also being a part of the ad hoc that provides guidance to us and welcome Supervisor Bushnell who isn't here today who's a new member of that ad hoc committee. And we have a PowerPoint presentation that is going to pop up here. My name is Sabelle Emmett. I am a environmental program manager with Public Works Environmental Services. I also wear many hats, as is often the case in rural communities. I am the director of administration contracts for the North Coast Resource Partnership, a member of a fire services planning team that works with Fire Chiefs Association, as well as this ad hoc I just mentioned. and today I'm proudly wearing my county coordinator team member hat, and I'm here today with Jill, who I'll let introduce herself.

Hi, I'm Jill Demers. I'm the executive director of the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District. Also here wearing my county coordinator hat in partnership with Savelle and Public Works.

So we're here today to give the board and the members of the public who are witnessing this an update on our activities. So if you would go to the next slide, please. This program is funded by the state of California, by Cal Fire, and it's administered by the California Fire Safe Council, and it seeks to educate, encourage, and develop county-wide community collaboration and coordination among wildfire mitigation groups. So that is our primary target target audiences as groups that we work with as well as the general public and leaders within our communities. And we're very excited that the state has decided to fund this program with a nine point five million allocation to the California fires or to Cal Fire and then to the California Fire Safe Council and the participating counties are then sub grantees of the California Fire Safe Council. And that council is tracking the numbers of dollars that are leveraged with this program, the numbers of organizations that are now networking because of it, the number of people who are educated, the number of new fire safe councils and firewise communities, as well as events and educational opportunities. Next slide, please. So in Humboldt County, we were part of the initial group of 24 counties back in 2021 when they were establishing this new program. We received around two in 2024, which is when Jill and I presented to you last time about this group. And we were very uncertain about the future of the funding for the program. So we were happily soon after that update to receive a third award. and then very recently received an extension through October 15, 2027 with some additional funding. So we're excited that the program continues and looking to continually improve and adapt as the wildfire environment changes around us. So I want to introduce you to our team. So you met the two of us and then each one of us has two members of our staff who are primarily involved with this group. Although it's a very flexible program so we can pull in talent as needed depending on their skill set. This is our core team. And next slide please. We all work towards program goal categories, and that ranges from just general administration and supporting the Humboldt County Fire Safe Council, which is a committee of your board, into organizational coordination, overseeing the implementation and maintenance of the community wildfire protection plan. We're focused on capacity building and outreach and education, and I'll go into each one of those in a little more detail. So project administration sounds pretty straightforward and it is the reporting and invoicing and managing a professional services agreement with the RCD to be a member of our county team. But the California Fire Safe Council is really ramping up in this next year of the program on developing strategies for tracking our impact and working with us to develop some tools to do that. And they are also and have been convening groups of county coordinators from around the state so that we can cross-pollinate our ideas and learn from one another and learn from trainers and presenters that they provide for us. And then we meet with them monthly with other county coordinators from around the north state and learn from one another. And it's a very rich environment for cross-pollinating ideas. So that's just a picture of our most recent convening down in Sacramento and I'm in there somewhere but it's just fun to see that this is a very growing group of county coordinators throughout the state. There's over 50 counties who are now participating in the program and just building a lot of energy around working with our communities to become more wildfire resilient. So one of our focus areas is to provide support to your board-appointed committee, the Humboldt County Fire Safe Council, and interestingly, this is a recommended activity of the recent extension we received from the California Fire Safe Council, but you have always had a board-appointed Fire Safe Council, so I think it's something, and it's been a little bit unusual, and other counties to find board appointed committees that play this role. So it kind of seems like we may have been sort of trendsetters in that way. So we were kind of ahead of the game on that directive from the California Fire Safe Council. It does take time and energy to organize the quarterly meetings with that group and seek guidance from them on the community wildfire protection plan. update and project implementation. We provide meaningful feature presentations at each of those quarterly meetings so they take care of their business but it's also a learning opportunity for everyone. And then maintaining the membership, bringing new members to your board for appointment and we just generally keep them engaged in moving forward on our goals. So this is sort of representing some of the types of organizations that are represented on the Fire Safe Council. We just recently had a site visit from the California Fire Safe Council and they came to our last meeting and I was very proud of the diversity that we have in our group and sort of this is the group that is working to realize the vision that we've all set for ourselves for wildfire resiliency in Humboldt County. from the RCD to UC Extension, Cal Fire is very active in the group, Yurok Fire, Office of Emergency Services, Supervisor Arroyo, your member is Manny Mello with the insurance industry who always keeps us up to date on strategies to improve our insurance, keep our insurance active. So it's a very broad group that we're proud to be working with. Next slide please. Local capacity building is also a major focus. We really want to increase capacity countywide. So we do engage with a broad and diverse set of mitigation entities, as you saw represented by that committee, as well as their extensive networks and other organizations within the county. We want to establish and maintain firewise communities and local fire safe councils. building capacity through forums and wildfire resilience outreach. This is something we really want to ramp up this next year. The California Fire Safe Council is encouraging this kind of integrating the multidisciplinary perspectives, kind of teaching people what needs to be done, but also learning how to communicate those things in a way that people take it up and actually start inspiring more action. and we work with all of our partners to help them understand the community wildfire protection plan and how to use it as a tool to leverage funds and inspire action. This is an example of some of that capacity building. This is one of our new, the photograph is from one of our newer Jacobi Creek Watershed Firewise communities. The Arcata Fire Protection District has become more recently inspired to support more Firewise communities within their jurisdiction and so there's two new Firewise communities within the Arcata Fire Protection District. We maintain 14 of them in Humboldt County and assist them with their risk assessment and action plan development. They have to do an annual renewal process. We had our first summit of resident leaders this year beginning of this year to help them build skills, share tools with one another. They were very excited to come together and created a contact list so that they can talk amongst themselves and share ideas, and we'll definitely be convening more of those. And then one of the things that they were being trained on was tracking the volunteer hours, which is part of their renewal process. They have to meet a certain standard with the NFPA program. And so some of our members of our team have built tools that will help them more easily track those hours, and they are continually exceeding expectations by huge margins. This last year, over $650,000 more than what their targets were is what was collected in volunteer hours towards the work of these 14 Firewise communities. Inter-organizational coordination and collaboration is another goal area. I used this photo just to emphasize that, you know, St. Joseph's is not someone, an entity that is a big implementer of the plan, but has opportunities to share a living with Wildfire Magazine and other entities that you might not commonly work with. We want to increase that inter-organizational coordination, collaboration, and collaboration. So there's a few kind of prescribed activities from the California Fire Safe Council. We manage a networking portal. We work with over 100 organizations and maintain a contact list with them in a portal with California Fire Safe Council. We're going to be developing a plan in partnership with CAL FIRE to regularly engage and convene key community wildfire resilience stakeholders and just keep that inter-organizational coordination going. And outreach and education, just continually planning meetings, those feature presentations at those quarterly fire safe council meetings, presenting to your board so that you understand what we're doing. We look for your support. We welcome your participation as much as you're interested. And we have an extensive library of curated online resources. We do Facebook posts and e-blasts to several hundred entities who signed up to receive those and we received some funding recently to update our living with wildfire magazine which is one of our primary outreach tools And then this area collaborative CWPP this is our community wildfire protection plan implementation and tracking is where we're focusing a lot of our energy this past year and then this year to come with a update of our 2019 plan. But this plan has been and continues to be a very important tool that supports our project development and we've used it to leverage extensive funding into the county for project implementation, which Jill will go into in more detail as sort of a spotlight for how this plan is working for us. We maintain tools to track that community wildfire protection plan. We have a hub site, which is going to be the home of our CWPP update process, as well as our web GIS portal, which shows you the projects that have been proposed, projects that have completed. We received some technical assistance from the North Coast Resource Partnership through the Resource Conservation District to receive some Tuckman Geospatial TA to help us really improve that web GIS portal. So we're excited about that. That's really kicking off right now. We received another grant from the California Fire State Council. This is federally funding that'll really help us turn that plan into action through developing some tutorials and little videos that'll help people understand how they can use that web GIS portal and the hub site and how tools to develop projects and get them funded. Because it's a collective vision. a lot of different entities within this county are implementing this plan. This is not just a county plan. And one of our roles as the county coordinator team is to work to track that. So it's a lot of checking in with different entities who are implementing the plan. And before I go to the next slide, I just want to emphasize that while Jill is going to be spotlighting some of the work of the RCD in relationship to leveraging this plan, you know, there's other areas that we could have picked, like the lower Matole area with the Lower Matole Fire Safe Council, Matole Restoration Council, or up in the north with Mid-Klamath Watershed Council and the Orleans SOMS Bar Fire Safe Council. There's emerging capacity in the Van Dusen Watershed area. I feel like there's a lot of momentum building and it's very exciting, so I'm gonna hand it over to Jill to kind of give you a spotlight into an example of that throughout the county. Oh, wait, there's just a little bit more information about the update of the 2019 plan. are guided by the Humboldt County Fire Safe Council Board Committee. We have hired Dudek Consulting and local partners to help us with that update. The wildfire hazard assessment and community risk modeling is nearly complete. We just had our first kickoff community virtual workshop with Dudek where they presented their initial findings. and we're gonna be planning more workshops to come. One thing, we have a great plan, so we don't have to be rushed to update it. There's no hard deadline when that update needs to be complete. We have funding from CAL FIRE through 2030, although we do wanna be done within the next year, hopefully. So handing it over to Jill, thank you.

Yeah, so I'm here to talk a little bit about the RCD, or the Resource Conservation District. And like Sabelle said, we are part of the county coordinator team in helping to manage and leverage, manage the Fire Safe Council and then leverage the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, or the CWPP. We view ourselves and our board will say this quite a bit as facilitators. So while I'm speaking about this project, this is really not the RCD's project. I would say it's very much community projects that we're helping to bring their vision to fruition. So right now we are currently holding grants valued at about $30 million. That's just for the forest health and wildfire resilience program of the RCD. We do other work outside of that. And the projects that we work on within the forest health and wildfire resilience space really do focus on that CWPP and leveraging that. We also tend to focus on landscape scale projects that require multiple land ownerships, be it private land owners, public lands, Have that community driven aspect to it. Again, we don't really go and do work without being invited in by the community and that feels really rich. With that often comes capacity building support that we try to bring because the vision is ideally, if it's a community driven project, that means you have real leadership potential and real ability for them to be leveraging the CWPP and then doing this work and maintaining this work on their own. Most of the work we do is in high and very high fire severity zones, but also other areas that have high public use. And then we often work on the more complex projects that require environmental compliance, CEQA support. So what I'm going to talk about today is leveraging the Humboldt County CWPP for the Mail Ridge Forest Health and Wildfire Resilience Project. We were last before the board, I spoke more about Willow Creek and some of the work that's continuing on there, but I wanted to highlight another area of the county. Male Ridge is a 54-mile-long ridge running from the confluence of the South Fork of the Eel River and the Eel River main stem all the way through Mendocino County, connecting back with 101. And really, you can see the footprint. This map's a little busy, but there's a footprint of the August Complex Fire just to the east of Male Ridge and the main stem Eel. With that very large wildfire, it was very threatening for Southern Humboldt, and the community recognized, all the fire departments, CAL FIRE, the Fire Safe Council, how important some strategic defenses are in Southern Humboldt, which was born, the Mail Ridge Project was born The RCD has been leveraging several different grant sources, again, all from the seat of building upon projects identified in the CWPP. A series of planning grants from CAL FIRE, from the North Coast Resource Partnership, as well as the State Coastal Conservancy that not only had planning to visualize what a project of this scale would look like on a 54 mile long ridge, but also to seek environmental compliance. And then also work to develop the workforce on the ground to get this kind of scale of work done. And then we were able to then leverage several implementation grants, being the North Coast Resource Partnerships CAL FIRE forest health pilot for a little under a million dollars, and then a new forest health grant that was awarded not long ago of about $5.3 million. The planning grants we were able to leverage to get environmental compliance covering about 45,000 acres of land. Again, large project, large scale. And the implementation funding to date is really only treating about 3,000 acres of it. So you can see that the project need and the cost right now are really high. We are actively looking for ways to continue to work with the community to steward this kind of work and without having to bring in tens of millions of dollars. But again, we are happy to do so to get even more acres treated. This is a grant that is a US Forest Service grant, a community wildfire defense grant, and it requires an active CWPP. and it requires it to be active within the last, updated in the last 10 years. So while the timeline is a little flexible from the state level, it's still getting that 2019 plan done in the next couple of years will be really critical so that the county can keep on leveraging these kind of grant funds. this is just one award that we've received from this grant funding source for and this is a almost 10 million dollar award again for southern humboldt we've been able to leverage this funding award for willow creek in the past and then know several other like you mentioned mid-klamath watershed council metal restoration council yeah improvement district Yeah, Shelter Cove, they've been able to leverage this grant as well, just kind of speaking about the really critical importance of the Fire Safe Council, the CDWPP updates and that stewardship, and then we've seen probably $50 million brought in through that grant. Sure, go ahead.

Is there any chance, this always sends the CAO into tizzy, but is there a way we can do before and after and give a one-time property tax credit for people you're looking to save money so they do the work themselves? Because the long-term savings of somebody's house burning down and the loss of the full property tax and a lot of them aren't rebuilding, I mean, somewhere in your... in your travels, is there a way to do that and have one of you, part of this 9.8 million, monitor the work being done so somebody makes, we're paying to have 98 homes done, why don't we pay 300 homes to do the work themselves and then you run into a lot less.

You know, the tax break piece is beyond my pay grade. But I know the county public works, you've been able to leverage other grant funding to provide cost share for folks to be able to do this kind of work in defensible space. And then we have federal partners that can also help mostly on a landscape scale.

It's certainly something to look into for other models. I'm not aware of something like that, but certainly something to continue to look into, because we do want to find sustainable ways to support the continuation of this work. And we have received some funds in the past that we used as sort of a rebate program, so it sort of incentivized them, but they did have to meet. you know, they did cover more than 50% of the cost of that work and also learned how to do it and got it established so then they can do it themselves and maintain it themselves easier without as much assistance. So we can continue to look for more opportunities like that as well.

Well, Humboldt's known for its innovation. I mean, not, you know, we've never done it before, but we heard this morning again we've started programs that have never been done before that are successful. And I know you're doing... You've been doing great work, and I know the RCD does great work, so it just seems to be if we could work with the county for one-time tax credit, and I'm not extreme, but I'm just saying, I don't know if that can be done, but it's a way to get, because we're doing 98 homes. We have 7,700 homes or something like that.

Yeah, and that is just one example of one project from one organization. I understand. But I do think, too, with people needing to try to hold on to their insurance, and that is another incentive. It's more of a stick kind of incentive, but it is inspiring a lot of people to take care of the defensible space. But we do have a few more slides if it's possible to. I'm sorry. Thanks.

I'LL GIVE AN EXAMPLE, SUPERVISOR BONE, OF A LOT OF THE PROJECTS. WE'VE BEEN DOING THIS KIND OF LANDSCAPE SCALE FOREST HEALTH WORK AT THE RCD. WE'RE A RELATIVELY NEW KID ON THE BLOCK. WE'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR ABOUT SIX OR SEVEN YEARS. We've been able to leverage some of the public funds that we've been able to acquire for work on private lands and then get the landowner working more closely with NRCS, who's been able to help provide cost share funding through their conservation stewardship program. which provides small incentives for them to keep on doing the maintenance. So again, it doesn't cover 100 percent of the work, but we're finding the initial treatments are really expensive, and then trying to find mechanisms to help people maintain that, be it through something like the Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association, NRCS with their cost share programs. Yeah.

Another example is through some of the technical assistance from the North Coast Resource Partnership with foresters doing forest management planning so that some of these property owners can be looking at actually harvesting and receiving some revenue off of the byproduct of this resiliency work.

So this is the final grant I'll speak about in the southern Humboldt area. This is a community wildfire defense grant. Again, treatment of about 2,000 acres, about 100 homes, those roadside fuel reduction projects and shaded fuel breaks. Additionally, those prescribed fire projects, leveraging the PBA and other partnerships, those are really critical for long-term maintenance. ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AND FUTURE PLANNING SUPPORT, AS WELL AS EDUCATION AND OUTREACH. I'LL NOTE THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED WITH THIS. EVEN THOUGH THIS IS AN AWARD TO THE RCD, THIS GRANT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE OR REALLY ANY OF THE GRANTS WITHOUT THE SOUTHERN HUMBLE PARTNERS WHO ARE JUST very numerous, really active and engaged community, really a lot of folks that have offered access to their land for planning and implementation, and then a lot of folks with a lot of volunteer time, professional resources to make this work happen with Southern Humboldt and then also with the Fire Safe Council.

So we wanted to thank you and thank our funders, the California Fire Safe Council and Cal Fire for supporting this program and look forward to another update in a year or so with many more positive outcomes.

Great. That is a lot. Y'all are busy. And the amount of the grants is not an insignificant benefit, particularly to rural communities and some of the collaborating organizations and private companies that help to do this work. So that's amazing. Any questions from the board? Yeah, Steve, go ahead.

Yeah, not so much questions, but first just thank you for all the work you guys do. It's a amazing, the leverage you create with these programs and you know, the, the statistics are, are wonderful, but really like you said, it's a, it's the whole community helping to implement all this stuff. And, and that leverage is phenomenal. As was said, we have always been leaders with our community wildfire protection plan and other kinds of things being out in front of the curve there. And I absolutely agree with what Supervisor Bone was saying is, is there a way to engage more incentives? Because we'll never have enough grant money to do all the work we need to do. But there is a huge amount of money in the private sector, right? There's more money in the private sector than there is in the public sector, always will be. SO WHEN WE CAN LEVERAGE THE PRIVATE SECTOR INVESTMENT, NOW WE'RE REALLY STARTING TO EXPAND TREMENDOUSLY. AND I THINK THE WHOLE IDEA OF A PROPERTY TAX REDUCTION FOR DOING FUEL REDUCTION WORK OR EVEN ROADSIDE VEGETATION MAINTENANCE IS A VERY WORTHY CONCEPT. AND I APPLAUD SUPERVISOR BOEHN FOR SUGGESTING IT. I THINK IT OBVIOUSLY HAS TO HAPPEN AT THE STATE LEVEL. It's beyond all of our pay grades because property taxes are governed by the state. But we would be saving money hand over fist to put tax credits or property tax reductions out in front in the equation compared to the cost of the august complex or any number of other fires we can point to and the cost of that not only in you know loss of forest and and habitat and everything else but lives you know and property and all of that so i've long thought and have been talking with our public works director tom matson about trying to develop a pilot program for roadside vegetation maintenance. I spoke to both of you about this. Because most of our county roads are actually easements over private property, and the vegetation is actually on the private property. And if there's a commercial tree there, you know the landlord is like, oh, those are my trees. could we create a program where the landowners help maintain this roadside vegetation but get a tax write-off for the cost of doing it so it's not a financial burden to them and it would actually get done more quickly probably and they would probably love that because when we think about wildfire starts whether it's lightning or power lines going down or a cigarette or chains dragging along the road the thing we can actually do something about is that roadside vegetation maintenance that start of a fire we could absolutely have a huge positive effect on that through some sort of a property tax reduction program that leverages money way beyond whatever we could ever budget for our roads crews to do all of that work. So that's a big one, and I hope that we can work with CSAC and RCDC and all these other organizations, state organizations, to really ultimately get this kind of legislation happening. And with this Firewise organizations and all the other state activity, I would hope the task force would take something like this on and investigate it and bring it forward and push some legislation. And I'm sure Rogers and Connelly, more than likely, would be very happy to carry legislation in regards to that. Secondly, I wanted to offer that we don't talk about it a whole lot, but emergency evacuation routes. It's a whole nother piece to all of this and so many of our communities butt up against Green Diamond or against Humboldt Redwood Company And we are, uh, this week signing agreements with green diamond on our road, Fox farm road to establish a formal agreement for an evacuation route out of our neighborhood. Uh, it's a one way in one way out road. And if a fire starts below us, we're screwed. You know, we have no way out, but we actually do, but it's a road system that they wouldn't normally maintain. Right. To get to a road system. They do maintain called the a line or the CR one thousand road. down to Cornell, and so we as a neighborhood of 20-some parcels have agreed to pay $100 a year and sign a formal liability waiver agreement with Green Diamond to help pay for the costs of masticating that road to keep it open on an annual basis. A little grading every three or four years, that kind of thing. So we're paying the cost of that, although I will say it's not the whole cost. Green Diamond is absolutely contributing a significant amount of funding and effort to be a partner with us in our neighborhood. So I like to call it a nest or a neighborhood emergency support team, which is kind of underneath the search. You know, we've got the search, the community emergency response teams that's community wide. But then in the neighborhood and I know you guys are big on this as well, having those emergency support teams where we have an email list and a text list where we can send out emergency notices to our neighbors when there's a fire happening down the street or whatever and get that word out. But even more importantly, develop this emergency evacuation route. So I'm proud to say that we are literally signing the paperwork this week and it will be in place by July 1st. So another great example of something that could be replicated up and down the east side of of Humboldt County communities that butt up against fire lands. Lastly, I wanna say, after the big fires, the lightning complex out of Willow Creek, three years ago now, Caltrans did a massive clearing along Highway 299. But they didn't do a shaded fuel break. They did a clear, you know, they just clear scaped the entire 300 feet back from the road. And now they have a massive regrowth of brush and shrubs that you can't weed whip all that. It's a nightmare. And they themselves are now delving deeply into shaded fuel break approaches. And I'm sure they're working with you all. And I applaud them on that. They had that example of using a, what was it, a fire bot? on pampas grass up there by Blue Lake last year and other things. So it's neat to see that they too, as an agency, are starting to recognize that. And that was a great example where they could have done a shaded fuel break and kept the big trees to shade the land and reduce the amount of regrowth and brush. So anyway, I just wanted to mention those three things. IN ADDITION TO ALL THE INCREDIBLE WORK YOU ARE ALL DOING, WE'RE SO LUCKY TO HAVE YOU AND YOUR TEAM THAT HAVE COME OUT OF THESE COMMUNITIES. TANNER DOES AMAZING THINGS, AS WELL AS OLIVIA OUT IN WILLOW CREEK AND NOW WORKING WITH YOU ALL. SO APPLAUDS TO ALL OF THAT EFFORT. THANK YOU FOR COMING AND GIVING US AN UPDATE. APPRECIATE IT.

GREAT. SUPERVISOR BOEHN, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING?

DITTO.

All right. All right. It really is an incredible amount that you do. Okay. So we will take public comment in the room.

Is there anyone in the room who would like to comment on this item?

Seeing none, we will go ahead and move to online. I see we have one hand up.

Thank you. Caller 5288. I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Hello, Ken Sawatsky. I've had the pleasure for many years working with the Willow Creek Fire Safe Council. I have multiple properties in the area, 48 acres, which goes behind the elementary school in Willow Creek. Let's see, it has in there also major transformers. We've got high... high powerful power lines going across there and they've been wonderful to work with. They have a free hand on that. It does provide a fire safe thing between the school. To echo what Steve Madrone said, it was unbelievable watching Caltrans do the opposite of what those of us who know how to do this stuff would do. You limb the big trees up and now they're gonna have to wait 10, 15 years to start that process or just keep clear cutting that every single year. This is a very important thing for us in Humboldt County. So Steve had his neighborhood form something, I just call it a neighborhood fire watch or whatever term he had was great. But down on Susie Q Road, which is the same thing, it's just inside Trinity County a little bit, but a fine example, that was a one-way road in. Our only exit strategy was not to anybody else that you jump in the river. That was the only alternative. So anyway, I strongly support what these groups are doing. I believe the blackening will come eventually. In Susie Q, we used to get together and we'd, as a community, two or three of us or five, whoever wanted to, we'd rent the cherry picker rather than for a day or two, we'd rent it for a week or two. We'd get the large chipper in there. And if those kinds of things can be helped with different neighborhoods, And maybe the money that's there could actually buy these things to rent out to these areas. We're happy to pay some rent on these tools. We understand they have maintenance, but that enables us to put the sweat equity into making our areas fire safe and around our homes. For those of you who have lost your insurance, you may consider spending whatever it was, $2,000 a year or whatever, to actually make your houses in your areas and your neighborhoods fire safe and follow the recommendations of these councils. So they have my support, 100% have and always will. Thanks for the great work you go out doing and keep doing it. We're going to need it someday and it's going to be very important for the people who did it. Thank you for my opportunity to speak.

thank you caller 3053 i will unmute you and you will have three minutes hello thomas moulder here i just want to reiterate that i do support this type of thing these are great type of agenda items i like hearing the board talk about unlike many other items that come before you i would also like to point out we need to support forestry management fire being fire safe also is being uh appropriately managing the forest and supporting timber industries and sometimes i feel the policies before the board don't necessarily support that so if this is something you really support firewise i mean it protects everyone in the community because if The fire gets over a ridge, it risks more people's lives. So please continue to keep that in mind when you make policies and set rules and regulations. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

That is all on Zoom. All right, thank you. So on this item, we are just receiving the report. Is there anything else any board member would like to say or a motion?

Motion to receive and file, and thank you.

All right. I'll second that. Is there any objection to unanimous consent? Okay, seeing none. Again, thank you so much. You all do so much work, and this is a great report. All right, so next we will move on to our next agenda item, item H1. This is the Behavioral Health Services Act Integrated Plan and Budget for Fiscal Years 2026 through 2029. I believe Emmy and Oliver are gonna be here to present. Thank you.

Good morning, Emmy Bostler-Rogers, Behavioral Health Director for DHHS. I have with me today Oliver Gonzalez. He's our, well, previously Mental Health Services Act Coordinator, transitioning to Behavioral Health Services Act Coordinator, and he'll be talking today about that transition, our new integrated plan, which is replacing the three-year plan, and a bit about the budget. So let me hand it to Oliver.

Thank you, Emmy. Good morning. My name is Oliver Gonzalez and today I will be presenting to you about our Behavioral Health Services Act background history about what it entails, how we are planning to utilize these funds for the next three years. I am going to be condensing hundreds of pages of regulation into 20 slides or so. So I totally understand if by the end maybe you may have some questions or additional comments. So first, let's start with some brief history. So the Mental Health Services Act is now being called the Behavioral Health Services Act, started through Proposition 63. It passed in 2004, and it placed a 1% state tax income on income earnings of more than $1 million annually. I want to really highlight too that this is actually a pretty rare thing to see in the U.S. Our closest neighbor that does something similar is the state of Washington that does a .1% sales tax to literally earmark funding for behavioral health services. So I wanted to really just emphasize that. You may have heard of the MHSA, the Mental Health Services Act, as the Millionaire's Tax, and that's kind of another name for it. And then funding is really intended to support behavioral health programs or services that would otherwise not be able to exist without that Medi-Cal billing. So really here we're providing, it's meant to provide the following. So funding personnel and other resources, best practices and innovative approaches, prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery, and community partnerships and stakeholder engagement. So that was the MHSA as we knew it. Then Proposition 1 came into play. Prop 1 passed during the March 5, 2024 primary election with a 52.2% margin. It provided two specific approaches here. One, we had Senate Bill 326, which is what we call now the reform of the MHSA, the Behavioral Health Services Act. And it also had Assembly Bill 531, which was a $6.38 billion initiative specifically for behavioral health infrastructure bonds. And it's meant to build mental health treatment facilities and permanent supportive housing. One call out I wanted to make here too is that through Assembly Bill 531, that's where some of those dollars came for the building of the new psychiatric hospital here in behavioral health. So as far as history goes and continuing, so this infographic that we have here in front of us, it's kind of mentioning a couple of things. It's one, summarizing what I just kind of mentioned in the last couple of slides, but it's also giving you a breakdown of how these dollars get distributed. So the millionaires tax, that 1% that I mentioned, gets collected by the state treasurer, and then it gets allocated into two separate categories. The first category is the 10% allocated to the state agencies for administrative support. So these agencies are, for instance, the Department of Healthcare Services, the California Behavioral Health Planning Commission, the Healthcare Access and Information Branch, the Behavioral Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission, and the California Department of Public Health. These are areas where, again, the funding goes to them, that 10%. In red, you're also seeing an additional percentage. That percentage shows what it used to be under the Mental Health Services Act. Under the MHSA, that allocation used to be 5%. So one emphasis I really wanted to call out here is the BHSA Prop 1 is not an expansion of dollars. If anything, it's a reduction of 5%, so to speak. The bigger bubble here, that 90%, which used to be 95% under MHSA, that gets allocated to all 58 counties using a formula that the state does that counts that population density. So again, just wanted to account how that money trail works. Ultimately, with these funds, we want to expand best practices and recovery-focused mental health programs. We want to reduce long-term negative impacts resulting from untreated mental illness, and we want to prevent mental illness from becoming severe and disabling. Additionally, there are some requirements we must follow. We need to complete an integrated plan every three years. Formerly, as Emmy mentioned, our integrated plan used to be called the three-year plan under MHSA. Our most recent three-year plan was passed in June 27th, 2023. So it's already been three years. And we also needed two annual updates for years in between. Additionally, this requires something called the community program planning process for integrated plans. And essentially, it's a way to solicit community feedback. So as far as those community meetings and that feedback, it's really a mechanism for transparency and community voice. It keeps community members informed about key BHSA updates, such as education on BHSA and what it can fund and what it funds locally. Fiscal updates, programmatic and regulatory changes, key priorities of BHSA expenditures, sharing performance outcomes of funded programs, and overall soliciting input on planning and needs assessment process. So here is kind of just like a really brief condensed summary of The type of outreach we did throughout the year, we hosted or were part of a total of 17 community meetings with overall 159 participants being engaged. Out of those 159 participants, we had 48 who completed a demographic survey. And we also hosted a community-wide survey of which we received 148 responses of. So as far as the BHSA goes and key changes, right, there are new funding categories, or buckets as we call them, with an emphasis on housing. There is added flexibility under the BHSA to fund standalone SUD services, which the MHSA didn't allow in the past. There is broader state oversight over all BH funding, including integrated plan approval. And then there's also increased data and outcome reporting, such as something that the state's rolling out as individual service level, ISL, and also statewide goals that we need to be reporting on. and accountability to new population health goals across all behavioral health services. So I really just want to make that emphasis that the integrated plan encompasses a lot. And our budget encompasses all of behavioral health spending. So that's a new pivot that I really wanted to call out because, again, it is a big change for us. One note that I also want to emphasize here is that counties must maximize Medi-Cal dollars or billing prior to use of BHSA funds when applicable. That's something that the state's really emphasizing as of late. So here we have two pie charts, kind of comparing the MHSA and the BHSA together. More specifically, the core components of each one of them. So under the MHSA, as we can see here, we have innovation, full service partnership, PEI, CSS, and those are kind of the core components. But under the BHSA section, those sections are in effect very different now. One of the changes that I wanna mention here is one, we have here our housing category, which in practice it may appear new, but in reality it is housing dollars that have already been utilized for our full service partners. So just wanted to mention that. And the other thing is that carve out of population-based prevention going to the state. So you might have noticed and seen in the earlier slide that additional 5% the state's taking from counties, In part, those funds are going so that the state can give it to the California Department of Public Health for population-based prevention. Here we have a breakdown of the three core categories of the Behavioral Health Services Act. This slide really shows two separate figures at once. We have the 90% allocation, so that's after the 10% state deduction going to counties. And then we have the percentages going to each individual bucket under the BHSA. And all of these percentages are dictated by state regulation, right? So we have that housing intervention, that full service partnership, and the behavioral health services and supports bucket. So here we have a breakdown of our fiscal year 26, 27 estimates for budget. We're looking at a little bit over $11.2 million. And according to those percentages that I just showed you, we have a breakdown of what each individual bucket is gonna be receiving. Okay, and here I'm going to give you like a more granular breakdown of what each individual bucket under the BHSA is. First we'll start with our 30% section of housing interventions. This section is meant to reduce homelessness among BHSA eligible individuals by transitioning people into permanent settings. It's meant to emphasize permanent supportive housing and housing first principles. There are requirements with county coordination with managed care plans. For us, that's our partnership for a benefit called transitional rent. And it can fund rental subsidies, operating subsidies, support development of new housing units, and outreach. Again, I really want to emphasize and stress that, again, even though this is a new section, quote unquote, under the BHSA, our full service partnership program has been leveraging these dollars to this effect already. So I just wanted to really highlight that because it can give folks the impression that these are new dollars allocated for a new initiative. And although for maybe some counties that could be the case, for here in Humboldt County it is not. So as far as eligible populations for this, it can have chronically homeless, experiencing homelessness, or at risk of homelessness, individuals exiting institutions or carceral settings who were homeless before entering, or those transitioning for the Medi-Cal transitional rent benefit, which is a new six month benefit for people that meet all criteria. Priority groups include children, youth in the juvenile system, child welfare, or at risk of institutionalization, and older adults in or at risk of justice system, conservatorship, or institutionalization. One note that the state really wants to highlight here is that housing intervention funds should not be limited to full service partnership clients, which poses a lot of challenges for us because, as I mentioned in the beginning, this isn't an expansion of dollars. It's quite the opposite, right? This is just opening up the dollars to be able to be used by a broader population. Up next, we have our second category, and that's called the Behavioral Health Services and Supports, known as BHSS. That's 35%. And really, the purpose is to serve children, youth, adults, and older adults. It focuses on early access stabilization and prevention of worsening conditions, prevents escalation of crisis, homelessness, or justice involvement, and as far as what it funds, it's quite a wide gamut of different programs, such as outpatient mental health and or substance use disorder services, outreach and engagement, workforce education and training, early intervention programs, and innovation programs. One note on early intervention that I really want to highlight here. One of the requirements we must follow is that at least 51% of behavioral health services and supports dollars needs to be allocated to early intervention. Out of that 51% carve out, we also need to have 51% of those funds going to populations of 25 years of age and younger. One definition that they added in Proposition 1 regulations is that moving forward, counties need to focus on a type of prevention known as indicated prevention. That's the type of prevention where it needs to be focused to BHSS early intervention participants. It needs to be targeted to people who have elevated risk, essentially. That is a really different pivot from what the MHSA would allow in the past, which would be known as universal prevention, which is no longer allowable under the BHSA. Universal prevention is defined as broad population-wide efforts not tied to individual risk. I wanted to call that out because for here in Humboldt County and many other counties, that affects a multitude of different programs such as our suicide prevention program that we've had a partnership with our public health department. That's a program that unfortunately fits under universal prevention and we cannot fund under the BHSA moving forward as a result. So just wanted to call that out. Under the Behavioral Health Services and Supports, there are multiple programs in here. There's actually quite a lot living here. A couple of ones I wanted to shout out are, for instance, the Hope Center, right? H.C. Tacey, that I know was here representing Jamie Lee Evans, Parent Partners, and a couple others. Additionally, we have our other programs that we're calling as other services that used to live under community services and support, such as our regional services, older adults, and our crisis residential treatment facility, as we call Hyperion, right? We have our innovation program known as Resident Engagement and Support Team, REST, and we also have our workforce education and training initiatives living in this section as well. So again, it encompasses a lot in this area. Lastly, we have another bucket here, and this is our full service partnership section. For Humboldt County, our full service partnership program is known as the Comprehensive Community Treatment, also known as CCT. It is our highest intensity behavioral health services for people with severe behavioral health needs. It is oftentimes described as the whatever it takes service delivery. So whatever you need to do to stabilize that individual and get them in a safe location, that's what you need to do, right? It focuses on individuals at risk of homelessness, hospitalization, or justice involvement. how it differs under the BHSA. So all housing normally done through our FSB will now go under the housing intervention section. So that's something I really just wanted to call out because again, that's how those dollars were used in the beginning. FSB programs can now serve individuals who have standalone SUD diagnosis and it incorporates the need to have low barrier access to medication assisted treatment, also known as MAT. And there also are requirements to implement evidence-based practices such as assertive or forensic community treatment, individual placement support, and high fidelity or wraparound services. Here in Humboldt County, because we are a small county and we don't have the capacity to send up all of these initiatives, we qualified and were approved for an exemption on incorporating some of those elements. So here I just want to kind of stress and highlight some of the challenges that we kind of have experienced as we transition to the Behavioral Health Services Act, right? One point that I've made throughout this presentation is that the BHSA is a major system redesign, and it's not a funding increase, right? It actually reduces overall funding by 5%. New requirements exceed current local capacity. So as I mentioned right the those evidence-based practices that we got an exemption for That is something that is a challenge for small and rural counties. So I just wanted to point that out Housing availability staffing levels and required service models all depend on one another So if we struggle in one element, it all has kind of a trickle-down effect as well.

So

counties must balance compliance with maintaining essential local services. So that is, again, a call out to not being able to fund our suicide prevention program through BHSA dollars moving forward because of the universal prevention element not being an allowable aspect moving forward. And lastly, tight timelines and evolving state guidances increase implementation challenges. To this day, there are still future guidance that the state will be releasing for future reporting that we still don't have. So there's still a lot of elements that we are kind of coordinating behind the scenes, which again makes some challenges for the coming future. So here I have just a slide with my information in case anybody in the public wants to send me an email or wants to reach out to me via phone after this meeting in case any other questions or comments come up. I just wanted to also take the time and really express a thank you to everybody who participated in our meetings, all of the community partners. The amazing help that came from our leadership team, like Emmy and Connie, Really, all of the staff involved, our physical team that's right behind us here, a lot had to come together to get this splinter to the finish line and to come here. And I just wanted to say that this victory is all because of you guys. So thank you.

Thank you, Oliver. It has been a pleasure to see how you've handled this process and the clarity and consistency with which you've presented to the Behavioral Health Board and community members and really sought input all over the county. So great work. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that suicide prevention piece? So it's not an allowable use under VHSA, but how are we anticipating kind of shifting to, I know suicide prevention is one of our community public health areas of focus. So yeah, could you say a little more about that?

I can just comment that the intention in part is that 5% doesn't come to us, and CDPH is able to use some of that to fund those activities through local public health jurisdictions. Whether or not that's sufficient I think is still being determined, but yes, it's meant to be diverted in a way that still funds those activities, but maybe at a lesser amount or in different ways.

So how are we envisioning continuing to support that suicide prevention work kind of while we wait to see how they manage to fund it?

We're not, through behavioral health, able to fund. I think we spent $300,000 per year about of MHSA funds. So that can no longer come to us to public health. Public health is aware and aware. There's conversations about whether or not funding from CDPH will support that, but it won't come directly from behavioral health at this time.

So since we, I mean, this is a very important area to all of us, I'm sure, but since we just passed our budget and I didn't get into the granularity of how we're funding suicide prevention in this next year's budget, given that we don't know exactly how CDPH is gonna distribute that 5%, what did we do?

I would have to ask public health about that.

Okay. It's okay if we need to get this answer a different time, but I see that Michelle looks eager to come up. Able and ready.

Great. CDPH took a lot of stakeholder feedback around what to do with that 5%. And so it not only did it fund public health departments, it also funded other CBOs and other entities too. And so part of what they want is a requirement there to have a suicide prevention plan with that funding. So every county health department has to have a suicide prevention plan in use of that funding in addition to whatever else it might fund. So they're doing an allocation formula for what counties might receive and that's part of the requirement. And it has to be related to your CHHA and your CHIP, your county health assessment, county health assessment and your improvement plan. So it's definitely on their radar around the suicide prevention work, and it's going to be a requirement for counties to have that too.

Thank you. I'm so concerned about it here because of our data around suicide. I'm sure you all care very deeply about this. I just don't want to let it go. And if there's a way that we need to, we as electeds need to show up for that more, I'd be eager to hear that. Yes.

Suicide is one of the priority areas in our community health improvement plan. And so we actually have a suicide prevention plan already. So we're already ahead of the game compared to a lot of other jurisdictions that don't have suicide as part of their chip. So they now have to create one with partners and community and whatnot. We have that and the next part will be implementing that. And behavioral health is part of that planning and all that work too.

I can also add that within behavioral health, over the last couple years, we've done really robust efforts around suicide screening and adopted tools and policy around doing that in ways that are very diligent. So behind the prevention piece, we are really addressing suicide as directly as possible.

Any other board questions or comments?

Thank you for the presentation and I have to say I'm always been incredibly impressed Oliver with your grasp of all of this and Emmy you know it's not easy to make these adjustments seems like every three to four years the state decides oh let's get rid of what we've been doing and do something new and it's it's maddening I'm sure for everybody because it just you know, throws so much good work in one direction out into the wind, and then you have to kind of reinvent yourself and come back again. But, you know, the presentation earlier by, you know, acknowledgement of some of the leaders at H.C. Tacey, I know you know this, but suicide prevention, H.C. Tacey, the Hope Center, I mean, which programs aren't worthy, you know, that we have? And that's the problem, is there's so many important roles here and stuff, but I would absolutely support Whatever we can do to continue to support HCTC, suicide prevention, and the Hope Center, I think those are three very important areas that, you know, the Hope Center's moved, I understand. It's not in the trailers anymore, is that correct, or is it still in the trailers? It's still in the trailers, yeah. It'd be nice to have more than one bathroom in a Hope Center, right, and things like that. There's so many things that we would love to see happen, but mostly I just wanna thank you, both of you, and all the staff at Behavioral Health, for hanging in there and trying to continue to apply these funds in the most effective way possible. So thank you for your efforts, appreciate it.

All right, we will go ahead and see if there's public comment on this. Not seeing anyone in the room yet. If anyone would like to make comment in the room, please come on up. All right, seeing none, we'll move to online. Is there any public comment on this item online? I'm not seeing any hands up. There's not. Okay, all right. Well, with that, so the items you need from us are to receive and file the presentation, to adopt the attached plan and budget for fiscal years 26 through 29, and to authorize signature of a certification form, and authorize the Behavioral Health Director to submit, make corrections, et cetera, directly to Department of Healthcare Services, as long as there's no additional material cost to the county. So do we have a motion for that?

Motion to approve all of the mentioned items.

All right.

Basically the staff recommendations.

All right, I will second that. Great, thank you so much, and any further comments? All right, seeing none, I think we should do a roll call vote for this.

Okay.

Oh, I realized we should be doing a roll call vote throughout because we're missing two people. I'm looking at our attorney. Do you think it's okay what we've done so far?

I would say that we should do this item by roll call vote.

Okay, okay, all right, thank you.

All right, thank you. Supervisor Madrone? Yes. Supervisor Bone? Yeah. Vice Chair Arroyo? Yes. Motion passes 3-2.

With two absences. Two absences. Okay, great. Thank you very much. All right. And are there any items that we passed as part of the consent calendar that you think we need to take another full roll call vote on? No. Okay. All right. Thank you so much to both of you. Great job. Culmination of a lot of hard work. And your fiscal team who you gave some shout outs to. All right, so our next items are closed session, which are scheduled for 11.30, so we have 25 minutes in between now and then. Can we read them in and take comment now? Nope, okay. So we will be on a break until 11.30 when we'll be back here to read those in. Thanks. All right, so it is 1130. We will go ahead and recommence here and I'll turn it over to county council to read our closed session items into the record.

Thank you, Vice Chair Arroyo. It is the intention of the board to meet in closed session pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 in order to discuss the initiation of litigation in two potential cases. It is also the intention of the board to meet in closed session pursuant to California Government Code section 54956.9 in order to discuss existing litigation in the cases of OB versus County of Humboldt, Humboldt County Superior Court case number CV2200748, and AK versus County of Humboldt, Humboldt County Superior Court case number 2 2 0 0 8 8 2. All right.

Thank you. I am not seeing any public commenters in the room but if anyone wants to make comment. Now's your time. All right. And we will move to online comments. I see there's a couple of hands right hands raised.

Thank you caller 3 0 5 3. I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Hello, Thomas Mulder again. Just calling about the litigation that isn't actually started yet. It's hard to know as someone following what it's about. I know all the time there's different things threatened or whatever. I am, as a community member, curious if this is litigation that may be happening because of slander that was allowed at the Board of Supervisors and also the Planning Commission, or if this was... you know, litigation, threatened litigation for an applicant that was not able to get a fair and impartial hearing due to members of a commission stating on the stand that their conclusion was made up before the hearing took place. I don't know. I'm just someone following along, but I really, really believe in the public process, and I really believe in fair and impartial hearings. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Caller 5288, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Hello, Ken Swarovski. The last two things, items three and four, are by initial, which most likely those are minors, something to do with child welfare services, possibly. you have some serious problems with your staff including minors council and other people and people that are supposed to be representing these people that are paid for by the county that are not doing their job um i believe douglas caber is one of them let's see we have the other one is initiation of a potential litigation again as the prior speaker had said we don't know what that is if i were to guess it could be or would be soon regarding what's happening out on the samoa peninsula out there the developer seven years ago or something went ahead and filed and did a map with a whole bunch of things that were supposed to be done was given the ability to split off and sell those houses a lot have been sold but did not do the required things to enable that to do such as sewer treatment systems, roads, community benefit project, making sure that the tsunami areas were usable by everybody, handicapped people included. This could be a major lawsuit if the county has to go against that particular person. They could lose their bond. It's a bonded project. And it'd be interesting to see what happens to Teflon Dan Danco out there on the Samoa Peninsula. His business partner is no longer here, who we referred to as the Holland Connection, and he was the money. He basically had foreclosure done on all of his properties, and Humboldt County is no longer here. It's interesting to see how karma plays out on these particular things. And I was out there at that. Maybe it has to do with the affordable housing project years ago, a couple years after it was done. It was substandard, falling apart at that time. I can only imagine what condition it's in at this time. It was not constructed correctly. It has seismic problems, as far as I can tell, and those just don't go away. So anyway, good luck on what you're doing. If that is the case, I definitely would consider filing that lawsuit. Thank you for my opportunity to speak on closed session.

That is all. All right. Thank you. So we will go into closed session. And County Council, do you have an estimated time that we will return?

I would say 30 to 45 minutes.

All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Perfect. We will get rolling again. All right, we are back from closed session. And County Council, can we please have a report out from closed session?

There was no reportable action taken with regard to items K-2 through K-4.

All right. And with that, we are adjourned. Take care, everyone.