Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning everyone and welcome to our regularly scheduled meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Today is happy Tuesday, 04/07/2026, and we take note that a quorum of the board is present. The acting chief executive officer, county council, and executive officer, and the sergeant at arms are all here to assist us. Before we begin with our regularly scheduled items, I would like to turn it over to Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to lead us in a chant celebrating UCLA Women's Basket ball team after their historic NCAA National Championship win. Turn it right over to you.

Well, we do we do know that UCLA is the crown jewel of 3rd District, and I am grateful to be leading this cheer as the recipient of the most school spirit in my senior superlatives. But I I welcome anyone who knows how to do the eight clap to do it with us. So u c a. U c LA, fight, fight. Way to go girls.

That wasn't so bad. Oh my. Thank you. That really woke us all up here, including our guests in the audience. So with that, we will now start the county's land acknowledgment on a somber note.

The county of Los Angeles recognizes that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Quiche, and Chumash peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants, past, present, and emerging, as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. We acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma. This acknowledgment demonstrates our responsibility and commitment to truth, healing, and reconciliation, and to elevating the stories, culture, and community of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles County. We are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these ancestral lands.

We are dedicated to growing and sustaining relationships with native peoples and local tribal governments, including in no particular order. Fernandeno Tataviam, band of mission Indians, Gabriolino Tongva, Indians of California tribal council, Gabrioleno Tongva, San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, Gabrioleno Band of Mission Indians, Quiche Nation, Yahavyatam of San Manuel Nation, San Fernando Band of Mission Indians, Coastal Band of Chumash Nation, Gabriolino Tongva nation, Gabrielino Tongva tribe. To learn more about the First Peoples of Los Angeles County, please visit the Los Angeles City County Native American Indian Commission website at lanaic.lacounty.gov. Thank you. Members, the invocation this morning will be led by pastor Sam Pullen, Woodland Hills Community Church representing the 3rd District, followed by the pledge of allegiance which will be led by Frankie Hogan, United States Navy veteran from the 4th District.

If you can, please stand and join us.

Good morning and welcome to all who are gathered today. My name is Reverend Sam Pullen and I serve as pastor at Woodland Hills Community Church. Spirit of life and love, source that all that of all that is, we gather in your presence this morning, mindful that this hall, these seats, these streets and skies belong to a living, breathing planet. When our decisions or lack of decisions hurt the planet, all living things suffer. We give thanks for this community and for the calling of public service today.

We pray that all deliberations may be done in the best interests of earth and of future generations. We also today acknowledge that many who work and dedicate their lives to past policies and do things that will help and preserve our environment see that sometimes those same policies are buried or reversed or you feel despair. And my message for us today is to remember that even when they try to bury anything that you've worked for, it can grow. I have a gift today for the supervisor to take with them remembering that everything that we plant, sometimes when they try to bury what we've passed, we'll eventually grow and sprout again. We remember that we are all seeds and that the spirit of life will help us grow and flourish and that this can be passed on to future generations.

As we work, remind us that our decisions will ripple outward from neighborhood to nation to the trees and to the ocean tides. May we act with humility, with mindfulness, and with hope. In the spirit of justice and harmony, we pray. Amen. Good

morning. Please face the flag. Place your right hand over your heart. If you're

a veteran, you may render a hand salute and join me in the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Advisor Horvath.

Thank you very much Madam Chair. Good morning everyone. Please join me in thanking Pastor Sam Polin of Woodland Hills Community Church for leading us in our invocation today and what a way to kick off Earth Month. The Woodland Hills Community Church is a United Church of Christ congregation and there are three essential parts to their identity. They are a just peace congregation, a progressive church, and they are open and affirming of the LGBTQ plus community.

They put these three essential elements together and proclaim that no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here. Pastor Sam embodies these essential values. Since his teenage years, Pastor Sam has put his faith in action by seeking justice as a student activist, labor and community organizer, and minister. After a successful yet stressful career as a labor and community organizer, Sam made the decision to prioritize his spiritual development by attending retreats, practicing centering prayer, and working the 12 steps in multiple recovery programs. He started listening to the spirit and asking for guidance from the higher power, which led him to enroll in seminary at Claremont School of Theology.

His ministry celebrates the intersection of spiritual community, soulful music, seeking justice, and cultivating future generations. In addition to his ministry, one of the greatest blessings in his life is being married to his wife Elizabeth Gonzales who works as a dual language teacher at a public school in Culver City. Together, they are raising their spirited daughter who currently loves fairies, elves, and all things princess related, and don't we all? Thank you very much for being here with us and for your wonderful invocation this morning and I think now as we look at the earth around us we'll have a renewed sense of commitment to our planet and what it means to all of us. Please join me in thanking pastor Sam for leading us in our invocation today and for all he does to promote love, acceptance and faith in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair. And it's my pleasure to welcome here today Frankie Pogan who led us in our pledge of allegiance. He currently works for Veterans Stand Together, an organization dedicated to supporting our veteran communities in Southgate. As a peer support specialist, he advocates for veterans goals and needs as well as empowers them succeed. Frankie served as a member of the United States Navy from August 2013 to 2017 as an aviation boat swaying mate and was responsible for operating and maintaining critical aircraft launch and recovery equipment on aircraft carriers.

Frankie deployed in The Middle East and took part in the battle of Operation Inherent Resolve where he received the Global War on Terrorism expeditionary medal. Frank enjoys helping the veteran community, spending time with his dog, and spending time with his veteran friends. Thank you so much, Frankie, for joining us here today. Thank you for your service. God bless our men and women in the military, and we love the navy. My dad was a navy man. He was a captain of a ship in World War two, so congratulations.

II.

Thank you. Thanks.

Supervisor Barger, our pet presentation.

Thank you madam chair. Before we get started with our pet presentation, I'd like to present a video in celebration of National Pet Day this week honoring the amazing work of our Department of Animal Care and Control and its partners. Hi everyone. I'm Supervisor Kathryn Barger. At our board meeting this week, I'm proud to coauthor a motion with Chair Solis to declare April 11 as National Pet Day.

Each and every day, the highest priority of our committed and talented Department of Animal Care and Control staff is the safety, well-being, and compassionate care of our animals across our county. That's why at all our board meetings, we feature an adoptable pet to help them find a loving home and to encourage residents to consider adoption when looking for a furry friend. The determined work of the department also extends to emergency situations, rescuing animals in the time of their greatest need. Just two weeks ago, the department conducted a large scale rescue of more than 300 animals in the Antelope Valley. These animals, who were living in horrible conditions, are now receiving the medical care, grooming, and love they deserve.

In efforts large and small, the department leans on its partnership with other agencies to lend a helping hand. I'd like to give a special thank you to the Pasadena Humane, SPCALA, Kern County Animal Services, our district attorney, and our county departments of public work, public health, and regional planning who helped with this massive undertaking to rescue and care for these pets. This collaboration illustrates the impact of agencies working together to save pets' lives. In the weeks that followed the operation, Animal Care and Control has partnered with West Coast Grooming Academy and Homeboy Industries Puppy Fades who are providing urgent grooming services to alleviate pain, discomfort and infection and give these pets the attention, relief and care that they deserve. I would also like to acknowledge the Los Angeles County Animal Care Foundation and Greater Good Charities whose generosity and investments make all the work possible.

I know there are a lot of compassionate residents across our county who want to do their part to help animals in need too. If you're looking to get involved, there are many important ways you can make a difference. From now until April 30, the Department of Animal Care and Control is partnering with the Bissell Foundation to offer an empty the shelters promotion. Adoption fees will be waived for cats and dogs at all seven care centers to help more pets get adopted. While the animals rescued from the operation last month aren't yet ready for adoption, we need to create room in our animal care centers to accommodate the influx of new pets by helping other animals in our care find homes.

Adoptions are the most tangible, long lasting way to do your part. As someone who has adopted many of my own pets from our county care centers over the years, I can attest how much it's had an impact on my life. In addition to adoption, there are a lot of other ways to get involved. Our care centers are always looking for volunteers. Whether you temporarily become a foster parent to a pet, help at community events, provide grooming or medical care, promote adoptions or assist the daily operations at our care centers, there are opportunities for everyone.

You can get all the details about adoption, volunteering or donating at animalcare.lacounty.gov. Thank you for your investment in the well-being of animals across our county. I am wishing you and your furry friends a very happy National Pet Day. Yeah. Thank you.

Now I would like you to meet Olivia. This is a four year old Siberian Husky and she is as sweet as she is fluffy. Though she was shy when we first met and when came into the animal care center, she has really started to find her own footing. She is a happy, happy dog, and she loves spending time with other dogs and plays very gently. She enjoys time outdoors when she can roam and explore.

She warms up to people very quickly and loves being pet and receiving affection. And she loves to sniff everything, so be careful over there as she heads over to the right. If you'd like to give Olivia the love that she deserves, call the Agoura Care Center at (818) 991-0071 to make Olivia yours. Yep, Supervisor Mitchell. Yeah.

Alright, with that, so this is Olivia. And if you'll look at the screen behind me, this is from our Palmdale Care Center. If you're looking for royalty, look no further than Princess. This two year old is that a German Shepherd? Yes, it is. I thought it was a Chihuahua. Wow. This two year old German Shepherd is an amazing dog. She's sweet and she's docile and loves to get her tummy rubbed. You can call the Palmdale Care Center at (661) 575-2888 to make Princess the Queen of your castle.

So we've got Olivia here and Princess up there. And as you heard, we've got a special promotion. From now until April 30, Department of Animal Care and Control is partnering with the Bissell Foundation to offer an empty the shelters promotion to help make room for all the dogs that were recently rescued up in the Antelope Valley. Adoption fees will be waived for cats and dogs at all seven care centers to help more pets get adopted. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you. Very good. Very well. With that, executive officer, please call today's agenda.

Good morning, madam chair, members of the board. Today's agenda will begin on page two, set matter one. On set matter one, this is a report by the acting chief executive officer and the director of personnel on the plan developed to support represented Los Angeles Housing Services Authority workers to access employment opportunities at county departments. This item will be helpful report. On page three, consent calendar, Board of Supervisors, items two through 27.

On item two, this includes an addition and a refer back as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On item 10, this includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On item 11, Supervisor Solees requests that this item be held. On item 17, supervisor Solis requests that this item be held. Also on item 17, this includes a revision as indicated on a supplemental agenda. On item 18, supervisor Solis would like to revise her motion to add supervisor Horfath as co author. On item 19, this includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On items twenty and twenty two, supervisor Horvath requests that these items be held. These items will be held together. On item 24, supervisor Barger requests that this item be held.

Also on item 24, this includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On item 27, supervisor Mitchell requests that this item be held. On page 28, administrative matters, items 28 through 76. On item 28, supervisor Han requests that this item be continued to 05/05/2026. On item 50, the director of children and family services requests that this item be continued to 10/06/2026.

On item 53, supervisor Han requests that this item be held. On item 59, Supervisor Mitchell request that this item be held. On page 55, this includes miscellaneous additions to the agenda which were posted more than seventy two hours in advance of the meeting as indicated on the supplemental agenda, item 74 A. On page 56, ordinance for introduction, item 77. On page 57, separate matter, item 78.

On item 78, it's a recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of up to 300,000,000 in tax exempt revenue bonds to be issued in multiple series to finance the final year of construction for the San Gabriel Reservoir Post Fire Emergency Restoration Project Part II in 2026, as well as the start of the San Gabriel Reservoir Restoration project in 2027. The first series, the Series 2026 A bonds shall not exceed a principal amount of $100,000,000 This includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On page 58, special district agendas. This is the agenda for the meeting of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, items 1D through two d. On item two d, Supervisor Horvath requests that this item be held.

On page 60, special district agenda, the board is acting as a public works financing authority. On item 1F. It's a recommendation authorizing the issuance and sale of up to $300,000,000 in tax exempt revenue bonds to be issued in multiple series to finance the final year of construction for the San Gabriel Reservoir Post Fire Emergency Restoration Project Part two in 2026 as well as the start of the San Gabriel Reservoir Project in 2027. The first series, the Series 2026 A bonds shall not exceed the principal amount of $100,000,000 This includes a revision as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On Page 61, notices of closed session items CS1 to CS3.

On CS1, County Council requested this item be continued one week to 04/14/2026 as indicated on the supplemental agenda. On CS3, the Acting Chief Executive Officer requests that this item be continued one week to 04/14/2026. On Page 64, items continued from previous meetings for further discussion and action by the Board. On Item A1, this includes a correction as indicated on the supplemental agenda. The request for continuances and refer back through CS3 are before you. That completes the reading of the agenda, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Moved by Supervisor Horvath, seconded by Supervisor Mitchell to approve these items. That will be the order. Executive Officer, please play the code of conduct.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention. The meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is about to commence. A code of conduct will now be read and we request that you comply with it to ensure the efficient administration of the meeting. Members of the public, it is your right to participate in today's board hearing and the board encourages such participation. However, the right of the public to address the board must be balanced with the need to ensure that public comment does not interfere with the orderly course of the Board's business.

All are reminded to abide by the following rules. Speakers must cease speaking immediately when their time has ended. Public comment on agenda items must relate to the subject matter of that item. General public comment is limited to subjects within the jurisdiction of the Board. Public comment does not include the right to engage in a dialogue with board members or staff.

Please remain respectful of the forum and refrain from uttering, writing, or displaying profane, personal, threatening, derogatory, demeaning, or other abusive statements toward the board, any member thereof, staff, or any other person. Members of the audience should be respectful of the views expressed by speakers, staff, and board members and may not clap, cheer, whistle, or otherwise disrupt the orderly conduct of the meeting. Any person engaging in conduct that disrupts the meeting is subject to being removed from the board meeting. And finally, if you witness conduct or behavior by other members of the public that disrupts your ability to remain engaged or participate in this meeting, please notify the sergeant at arms or other county staff. Thank you for your cooperation.

Thank you. Today's meeting order will be the following, public comment on items not held for discussion by the board, including the closed session matters. Then we'll turn to item seventeen and eleven, followed by set matter one, then items twenty, twenty two, which will be taken up together, followed by items 24, 27, 53, 59, and two d, then general public comment, and finishing up with closed session matters. Before we begin, executive officer, please read the call in information and explain the speaking rules.

Good morning members of the public. If you wish to participate in public comment, you may do so in person or remotely. To participate remotely, please visit our website at www.bos.lacounty.gov to register and join a meeting or you may call (213) 306-3065 and use the access code (253) 212-0402 and meeting password 2672026. You will have the opportunity to address the board throughout the meeting. For items not held by the board, you will receive one minute for one item and up to two minutes for two or more items.

For items held by supervisors, you will have one minute to address the board, one minute to address the board on general public comment for a total of up to six minutes. When it is your turn to speak, if registered on a computer or device, you will hear a beep and your name will be called. Or if joining by telephone, you will hear your line is unmuted, your area code and the first three digits of your phone number will be called. To ensure we hear from both in person and remote speakers, we will alternate between the two speaking queues. Members of the public who are in attendance, when you hear or see your name displayed on the screen, please come down to the front of the boardroom and staff will assist you.

Please do not approach the podium until directed to do so. For members of the public in attendance, please note that we have a constituent assistance team that includes representatives from the Departments of Mental Health, Public Social Services, Children and Family Services, LA Homeless Services Authority, and Parks and Recreation in the audience should you need assistance from them. At this time, we will hear from members of the board wishing to address the board on all items not held for discussion by supervisors, including closed session matters, the consent items will be acted upon with one motion. For members of the public joining us remotely to comment on these items, please use the raise hand feature if you are online or press 3 if on the telephone. Please indicate the agenda item numbers that you wish to address in the beginning of your comment for us to allocate the appropriate amount of time.

We will now call in in person speakers and while they're coming forward, we will take remote speakers. This will be for all items not held by the board for discussion and closed session items. Will the following individuals please come forward and staff will assist you? Christine Parker, Paloma Bustos and Claudia Jerez. Byron, your line is open. Please state the agenda items you're addressing and begin. Byron, your line is open.

Item 23.

Please continue.

Oh, yes. We're glad that the board is moving or supervisor Hahn's team was able to address some of these, initiatives specifically to our TTI community members, held inside 6 J Unit and Men's Central Jail. While we cannot wait for six months to hold staff accountable or to make sure that the department is following policies and procedures, we're glad that there's movement. We're glad that the sheriff's department was able to meet with stakeholders and discuss some of the programming that is coming, for the for the unit. And, we wanna make sure that as we work towards the care first budget, we are working to ensure there's programming, there's education and resources, but more importantly, that we begin to depopulate and diverse some of our community members, specifically black trans women and Latina trans women.

So we look forward to this board also allocating budget towards that as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Roy Humphreys, your line is open. Please state the agenda items you're addressing and begin.

22, 23, 27, twenty eight and thirty four and a host of others. Have with the these agenda items are 15 fair housing. Come on. Get get off of that. Anything fair. It's called economics. That's what it's all about, which you haven't got the money to handle. And the vision for the youth development, money spent on the illegals and the the Latino revolution. Come on. Let's get off there.

Where's the money? Hospice and fraud. Get Trump and Nick out here, which they are out here, and they're gonna bring this county and California into a point of recognition for the their abject negligence and irresponsibility and governance and management. And so the anti poverty makes look like a a brain dead on that particularly. Come up with these silly situation just for your political appeasement.

Then we have men's central jail. This board should be in jail and along with your governor for what has gone on for that. That is a disgrace. And we remember the the gang of four Democrats who put down the 1.7 to be done. Yeah. You people need to get with the real world program. And then we have where where is this? Our supervisor, Solis, who told Phelan of a new Roland Heights about the data center and it should be in a moratorium and unincorporated area. Where is that? Why is that on it?

And then it's pathetic that this state and county fails to manage the power grid and where our governor is going to bring up nuclear facilities for that. And it's time to end this left wing Marxist Democrat, governance that have tanked California and this nation. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with phone number 323513, your line is open. Please state your name and the agenda items you're addressing and begin.

Hello. My name is Jackie Rodriguez, and I'm representing on behalf of the LA. I want to thank Supervisor Solis for her decade of leadership advancing arts, culture, and equity in Los Angeles County, and to recognize the CEII co chairs and advisory committee members whose guidance and expertise made much of this work possible. Through their cultural equity and inclusion initiative, the arts internship program was expanded to provide more opportunities for students, including community college students, the creative strategist program was launched to artists in county departments and the diversity equity and inclusion requirement was implemented for county grantees ensuring equity and inclusion are central to county supported arts. Supervisor Solis also led the county wide cultural policy and initiatives like the public art and private development ordinance and the countywide land acknowledgment, advancing cultural equity and honoring indigenous communities, all stemming from the collaborative

work Marjorie of Gilbert, your line is open. Please begin.

Evan, my name is Marjorie Gilbert. I am the CEO of NCJWLA. For more than a hundred and fifteen years, NCJWLA has worked to address economic disparity for Angelenos regardless of their race, gender, or religion. Daily, we see the economic impact on single parents struggling to make ends meet despite working hard and doing the best can for themselves and their families. We strongly support the adoption of supervisor Horvath and Mitchell's anti poverty pledge and the expansion of efforts to ensure access to vital safety net benefits that increase claims for tax credits that help keep families from sinking deeper into poverty.

NCJWLA looks forward to partnering with the county's poverty alleviation team, the jurisdictions, and other nonprofits to thoughtfully and collaboratively work to disrupt poverty in LA County. Thank you.

Thank you. Danny Gonzalez, your line is open. Please begin.

Danny Gonzalez. I'm with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, speaking on item 23. We wanted to voice our strong support around this motion to reduce harm for transgender, gender diverse, and intersex people in county jails. These are not abstract policy changes. They're basic long due measures that ensure safety, dignity, and access to care.

Access to razors, affirming clothing, and inclusive commissary options are essential to personal autonomy and mental health. Equally critical are trauma informed programming, clear pathways to appropriate housing, and meaningful accountability when harms occur. We especially commend the emphasis on transparency, community engagement, and regular reporting, but the timelines need to be treated as urgent commitments, not just as aspirational goals. TGI people in custody deserve to be treated with respect and humanity. We urge full adoption and swift implement information of this motion. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with phone number 626513, please state your name and begin.

Hello. My name is Jessica Peral and I'm an advocate at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I want to provide general public comment. I want to express gratitude to the county for your work on taking

steps

This is not protect general public comment. This is comment on items not held by the board or closed session. We'll have general public comment towards the end of the meeting.

Okay, will do. Thank you.

Jennifer Chao, your line is open. Please begin.

This is Jennifer

Chao also with the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I'm commenting in strong support for agenda item 26, by supervisors Mitchell and Solis to direct the county to prepare for immediate implementation of the Essential Services Restoration Act should the voters approve the measure in June 2026. We applaud the motion's emphasis on proactive program design in partnership with the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County, and we thank supervisors Mitchell and Solis for their leadership to prioritize access to essential health services for low income uninsured residents by building on the proven success of programs like My Health LA. Thank you.

Thank you. Jorni Preese, your line is open. Please begin.

Doctor. Preese commenting on agenda item 26. On behalf of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County and our 68 nonprofit community health center member organizations, I would like to thank Mitchell and Solis for agenda item 26, preparing to immediately implement the essential services restoration act upon voter approval. Health centers in LA County provide care to more than 2,000,000 patients annually and have partnered with the county for through programs like Healthy Way LA and My Health LA to ensure access for low income uninsured county residents. We applaud the motion's emphasis on proactive program design and partnership between county departments, CCLA C, our member health centers, including an open and transparent process and collaboration with external partners and stakeholders.

We strongly support this item, which will ensure the county is fully prepared to quickly and effectively deliver essential health services to those most in need if measure ER is approved by voters June. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam chair, there are no other remote speakers to address the board. Remote participation for these items is now concluded. We will go to in person speakers. Please begin.

Go ahead.

Good morning, Christine Parker with the ACLU of Southern California speaking in favor of item number 23. I'd like to thank Supervisor Han for this motion. While we at ACLU SOCAL firmly believe that the only real solution here is decarceration, we do recognize the need for harm reduction measures in the short term. Through ACLU So Cal's role monitoring LASD compliance in the LA County jails, I hear concerns about the issues addressed in this motion virtually every time I meet with TGI incarcerated folks, including as recently as two weeks ago. The trans woman I met with at that time was not able to access a razor, even supervised, couldn't order from the female side of the commissary list, didn't have access to bra or panties, reported that upon intake, LASD told her she had to pick either straight or trans, that she couldn't be both.

Stories like this are not unique and they highlight the need for Supervisor's Han's motion while the county must continue pursuing meaningful to incarceration. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

My

name is Paloma Bustos and I'm with the Sunita Jane at the Traffic Initiative at Loyola Law School, I'm speaking on number nine in support of the county's commitment to support crime victims. This year calls on us to listen, act, and advocate. Listening starts with recognizing that justice doesn't look the same for everyone. For some, it may mean prosecution. For others, it may mean safety, stability, healing, or simply being heard and believed.

We must also be honest that not all survivors have had equal access to justice. Communities of colors, immigrant, and those most marginalized have faced systemic barriers that prevent them from accessing the support and outcomes they seek. Survivors deserve a voice in defining what justice means for them. This is especially true for survivors of human trafficking who often navigate complex systems, fear retaliation, and carry deep mistrust due to past harms. If we truly are committed to supporting crime victims, we must act by making our systems access and equitable and advocate to ensure that they are responsive to the lived experience and realities of all survivors. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes our time for public comment on these items.

With that, these items will be moved by Supervisor Hahn, seconded by Supervisor Barger to approve these items with the exceptions noted by the executive officer. Executive officer, please call the roll.

So the following items are before you, two through ten, twelve through sixteen, eighteen as revised, 1921, 23, twenty five and twenty six, 29 through 49, fifty one and fifty two, 54 through 58, 60 through 73, 74 a, 77, one F, these items are before you.

Call the roll.

We will need a motion and a second. Did. Okay.

Han and Barger.

Supervisor Mitchell. Aye. Supervisor Mitchell, aye. Supervisor Horfath. Aye. Supervisor Horfath. Aye. Supervisor Han. Aye. Supervisor Barger. Aye. Supervisor Barger, aye. Supervisor Solis?

Aye.

Supervisor Solis, aye. Motion carries. Madam Chair, we also have a separate vote to be taken for the issuance and sale of Los Angeles County Public Works Financing Authority bonds. We will need a motion and a second for that.

I will move that, seconded by Supervisor Horvath.

Okay, Supervisor Mitchell? Aye. Supervisor Mitchell, aye. Supervisor Horfath? Aye. Supervisor Horfath, aye. Supervisor Hahn?

Aye.

Supervisor Hahn, aye. Supervisor Barker? Aye. Supervisor Barker, aye. Supervisor Solis?

Aye.

Supervisor Solis, aye. Motion carries. We will now also have an item one f, that's also part of the Public Works Financing Authority of the County of Los Angeles, issuance and sale of Los Angeles County Public Works Financing Authority Revenue Bonds Series 2026A. We'll need a motion and a second.

Moved by Supervisor Barger, seconded by Supervisor Han.

Supervisor Mitchell. Aye. Supervisor Mitchell, aye. Supervisor Horfath. Aye. Supervisor Horfath. Aye. Supervisor Han. Aye. Supervisor Barger.

Aye.

Supervisor Barger. Aye. Supervisor Solis.

Aye.

Supervisor Solis. Motion carries, five to zero. We will now move on to item 17, motion to proclaim 04/11/2026 as National Pet Day and Dog Therapy Appreciation Day, which was held by Supervisor Solis. For members of the public joining us remotely to comment on this item, please use the raise hand feature if you're online or press 3 if on the telephone. Marsha Meheda, Director of Animal Care and Control is available for questions. For the departmental speakers, please state your name and title for the record when you address the board.

Thank you. Members, the motion before us was requested again this year by many community residents that brought this to our attention. And it particularly centers around therapy dogs. Therapy dogs, as you know, provide comfort and emotional outlet for many of our patients across varying ages and diagnosis in our hospitals and nursing homes. Therapy dogs can also be found providing support to survivors following disasters and in special education classrooms providing a sense of calm to children learning to read.

Dogs are thought of as our best friends and part of our families. They comfort us, they console us, they are partners in the various roles in different industries. They help individuals and communities flourish through their loyal partnerships as police dogs, search and rescue dogs, military dogs, and so much more, and yet, they also rely on us. They depend on their humans for guidance, support, survival, and love. Despite this symbiotic relationship, our shelters persist in overflowing with owner surrenders, lost family pets, and abandoned animals and strays.

There are varying issues as to why pets are surrendered. And according to data collected by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, the prominent reasons we continue to see an overflow of animals in our shelters are backyard breeding, housing issues, and affordability. Adoption is incredibly important over buying a pet from a breeder. Mass events such as the fires last year, the ongoing immigration raids, and economic issues stimulated by rising gas prices, tariffs, and more recent federal action are all factors that add to more animals in our care centers. What impacts humans has a trickle down effect, and it impacts our pets.

They rely on us for survival. Because pets are family, the Department of Animal Care and Control provides a program with the same name that can help folks hold on to their pets with vouchers towards discounted veterinary care and services. They also hold pets at the park, services that provide free microchips, veterinary exams, food, and vaccinations for dogs and cats. Reduced costs and fee spay neuter events are also frequently offered, and I have seen those firsthand in my own district. A pet pantry program is also now available at the Baldwin Park Animal Care Center and other LA animal care centers.

And by proclaiming April 11 as the National Pet Day in Los Angeles County, we can help promote these services further by delivering more direct communication with our residents explaining the health benefits that spay and neutering provides to pets. There is a common misconception that spaying or neutering on one's pets can lead to medical or behavioral complications, when in reality, it helps eliminate certain cancers that can appear as our pets age. Additionally, proclaiming April 11 as Dog Therapy Appreciation Day also serves to recognize the extraordinary role that pets and therapy dogs and service animals provide. To mark the proclamation of April 11 as the National Pet Day and Dog Therapy Appreciation Day, we have some human canine teams in the audience with us today. And when I call your names, I'd like you to please stand and be recognized.

To start off, I would like to thank the Los Angeles County Fire Department's search and rescue team for their courageous service they provide to our community. We have today the team here in the audience, fire captain Michael Toffer and his canine partner Deacon from Search and Rescue Team. Please acknowledge him. Next, I would like to uplift the Los Angeles County Fire Department's peer support team. They provide support for first responders and survivors that see and endure so much during disasters.

We also have here today with us Fire Captain Ben Sheen and his K9 partner, Tiller, from the peer support team. Thank you. In addition, we'd like to recognize law enforcement technician, Jennifer Scott, and her canine partner, Willowbrook, and law enforcement technician Kelly Walper with her canine partner, Charger. Both are representing the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Therapy Dog Program, which serves emotional support to residents during some of the hardest times in their lives. And I also would like to thank a community partner known as Love on Four Paws, who tirelessly provides emotional support at hospitals, nursing homes, and schools in my district and around the county.

Please recognize them. Thank you. This organization is run primarily by volunteers who have their own dogs and trained to provide this service to the community. Here today from LOVE on Four Paws is our volunteer Tom Kavanaugh and dog Ziggy. Okay, Ziggy, you have the floor.

Beautiful dog. And finally, before we begin, I would like to thank the Department of Animal Care and Control for their tireless efforts in not only addressing animal cruelty in the unincorporated and contract cities, but also working to ensure that abandoned and surrendered pets find a forever home. As shown in the video clip earlier that Supervisor Barger shared, the Department of Animal Care and Control's efforts combined with those of partner agencies saved over 300 animals that were living in very poor conditions. I wanna thank the entire community for being with us today and I now would like to turn it over to Supervisor Barger who is a co author on this item.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And Chief Maroni, I know that there are two others. I know Toby and I can't think of introductions on the other two therapy dogs that are out there. But Supervisor Solis, thank you for letting me be a co author on this motion. Supervisor Hahn asked me why I was in a good mood.

I've come in contact with 16 dogs before I came down to this board meeting today. There is something about dogs which is why I really do appreciate the work the men and women are doing both in the sheriff's department as well as LA County fire, to help, during difficult times. It is very relaxing, very calming, and I know, that, chief Maroni told me that after the the horrible accident that occurred last week regarding a public works employee, fire went up and was dispatched up there to come in contact with the public works employee. So I want to publicly thank you for the team that you put together and the teamwork that you've shown helping the county families. So let's give them a round of applause for that.

So I come at it from not only the therapy because I know how important it is to have these therapy dogs, but about adopting pets. It's no secret that adopting pets makes you one of my favorite people. I've been glad to see that many of the board dogs that Animal Care and Control has brought to the board each week have been adopted, usually by someone in our county family. As we recognize these days, it's important to acknowledge that pets are not just companions, right Winston? That's Winston over there by the way, who is being very good.

I think that haircut did wonders for Winston. But they are not just companions, they also play a powerful role in supporting our well-being. Therapy dogs provide comfort and healing in some of life's most challenging moments to residents in hospitals, schools and care facilities throughout this county. Pets deserve a loving home and we should continue to do all we can to promote compassionate care of animals across our county. With the support of the Bissell Foundation, Animal Care and Control is currently hosting the Empty the Shelter adoption promotion until April 30, where adoption, spay, neuter and microchip fees are waived for cats and dogs.

While adoption day brings so much joy in many ways, it's our own form of therapy. Vital that pets can remain in safe and responsible homes. So it's important to me that this motion highlights the pet retention resources offered by the Department of Animal Care and Control including pet pantries and the Pets Our Family program because our goal is to give them everything, every resource they need to keep that pet in a safe environment and out of our shelters. Thank you to animal care and control employees, our therapy dog teams at both the county and sheriff's department and all of our partners for the care and compassion that you bring to this work each and every day. And I know we've got some team members from the Sheriff's Department as well.

Actually one that I ran into in Heathrow Airport of all places when I was flying back from a vacation. I know, what are the odds? But with that, again, thank you Madam Chair and we'll give you an opportunity to stand up and introduce yourselves as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for co authoring Supervisor Barger. We know you are such a great advocate on this issue and I department and all the good work with the other partners that you provide. I know how important and very essential it is during these hard economic times. I've seen firsthand where we have seniors and young people bringing their pets in as early as 05:30 in the morning to line up to get these free services. And I can tell you, it is heartfelt and the need is so great. So we to continue this opportunity for our residents. So thank you again. With that, members, I will go to our board members who would like to speak on the item starting with Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you and Supervisor Barker for this motion. Winston and are both very happy about it. And I certainly wanna congratulate the fifth district on the wonderful action that was taken in your district and with the department to rescue so many animals from, as you highlighted earlier in our meeting, from just terrible conditions. We wanna thank you, for all the work that this motion reflects and all of the work that you do each and every day.

We can speak personally that, animal companions are truly companions. They are family. They are not simply pets. And, Winston has been part of my family for almost six years now, and he even has his own page on the third district website, which is dedicated to helping, our furry friends find a place that they can call home. We know, right now that, there are so many circumstances that are creating a very difficult reality for animals, and our animal care system is under strain.

Too many animals are in our care centers each year, and many families are forced to surrender their beloved pets, due to housing instability and, to financial hardship. Issues that seem to become all too common for far too many families. So we need to continue to help, find loving homes, to reduce the number of animals who are living in our care centers to the extent that we can find them loving homes, and to support families who would otherwise be able to care of those animals. But it's it's a struggle to provide food and all of the care that our, animal companions require. So engaging our communities is centered to this work.

I know our department is doing that. And by raising awareness of adoption and promoting critical support programs, we can help keep all family members together and give more animals the homes that they deserve. So thank you very much for this motion.

Thank you. Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm very proud to support this motion. I did want to give a shout out, first off, to our first responder dogs, whether they're responding in their search and rescue role or responding to those who have experienced a trauma when sometimes only a dog is the one that can break through their grief and trauma. So thank you to that. Welcome, Winston.

We always like it when you're here on the board. I read Winston's Corner all the time. I'm not so sure I read your mom's, the rest of her journal, but I do scroll straight to Winston's corner. I really appreciate that we're recognizing the therapy dogs. I know that they can make a big difference in our hospitals, in recovery situations, and in our schools.

After a traumatic medical event or a difficult diagnosis, the presence of a calm, trained dog can lower stress, provide comfort, and help people feel grounded in a moment that can otherwise feel overwhelming. I've seen the impact of programs like Paws for Life in our juvenile camps. This program not only helps train difficult to adopt shelter dogs, but also gives young people in our care the opportunity to build responsibility, empathy, and a sense of purpose. It's a powerful example of how animals can support rehabilitation, not just for dogs but for our youth as well. At the same time, this motion rightly reminds us that too many animals in our county shelters are still waiting for homes.

And with that, I do also wanna add my praise to supervisor Barger and give you a huge shout out for your commitment to our shelter animals. Almost every Tuesday, you bring an adorable dog, sometimes a cat, to our board meeting, and many of them get adopted before we vote on our first item. So thank you for your commitment. I don't think anyone is as committed as you are to making sure that our shelter, animals find homes. And, as we recognize the value of therapy animals, the role, pets play in our lives, we always want to remind everybody to adopt, don't shop.

Thank you to the Department of Animal Care and Control for all you do to help find forever homes for the animals in our care, and for the resources you provide to pet owners and to our trusted adoption partners. I'm happy to support this motion, Madam Chair.

Great, thank you. Supervisor Holly Mitchell.

Thank you very much and thank you to my colleagues who brought the motion forward. It creates a wonderful opportunity for us to thank all of those who are here today. I wanna thank our volunteers that show up every day in our Department of Animal Care and Control facilities. I wanna thank the street vets who provide service to the pets that our unhoused residents have. They have a right to have pets and as we talk about being a pet grandma as I am these days, it's very expensive and so I really want to acknowledge them as well.

My office regularly receives emails, hundreds recently about instances of neglect occurring and it's challenging because many of the emails I get and videos are documenting neglect and abuse in the city of Los Angeles and so we've spent a great deal of time as this board trying to distinguish, and you've come and talked about what we're doing as a county. The fact that the county does not have jurisdiction to enforce animal welfare laws within any city's boundaries. It's important that we're clear about that. And sometimes when you send videos, we don't know specifically where that location is, so that becomes challenging. I understand the Lake Hughes operation has put kind of a strain on the system.

But I wanna talk about population and what we can do to control that. Yes, adoption is important and I think we are doing more than our fair share to encourage adoption. But I really wanted to spend a little bit of time to get some clarity around how we can actually work to manage populations, particularly when I saw some data from your department. While the total animal population in our care system is substantially more manageable than it was fifteen years ago, your department's data shows that admissions have steadily increased by over 10,000 animals since 2021. So I began to ask questions.

I know I recently had to renew Rook's license. I live within the city of LA. When we adopted Rook from the Carson Care Center, he was already neutered, which I very much appreciated. And it's required to license your pet, your dog in LA City that they be spayed or neutered. I understand that a number of our neighboring cities don't have that same requirement.

And so I wanted to really understand our standard service agreements because they do not currently require contract cities to adopt a mandatory spayneuter ordinance. Based on a recent list, it appears that 16 of our contract cities have not adopted an ordinance that applies to all dogs and cats. Cats. So my question is how much does the absence of a mandatory spay neuter ordinance impact animal population levels in our communities and care centers?

Thank you, supervisors. Marsha Maietta, director of Animal Care and Control. It has a great impact on us. Spang and neutering is probably the best thing we can do to reduce pet overpopulation. Of course, it stops the litters from being born, and then also it stops intact animals from roaming to look for mates. So they may be out on the streets getting hit by a car, getting lost, the families may never get them back. So that's really important. And as you look at the stats that you were referring to, we passed mandatory spayneuter, I think it was around 2012.

In the County Unincorporated.

In the County Unincorporated, and little by little we got our contract cities. We have 45 contract cities out of 88 in the county of Los Angeles. Actually one of our contract cities is in Ventura County. But we've gotten a number to adopt mandatory spay neuter. 28 have already.

Two only require it for dogs. One only requires it for pit bulls and Rottweilers. But it's made a tremendous difference throughout the county getting the numbers down, and that's why we've seen the numbers go down every year. We do see increases when economic times are difficult. Either people surrender their pets because they can't afford it or they're losing their housing, they can't afford the vet costs.

There was an unusual low of incoming animals during COVID. So when you refer back to 2021, that was an all time low. A lot of people were seeking pets. They were getting pets through networking and so forth, so there were fewer coming in. And our adoptions really went up because people said, now I can adopt a pet.

I think Winston was a COVID pet. Yeah, I have one too. So that's really an anomaly, that low dip. We're starting to see an increase now, I think basically because a lot of pets that were obtained during COVID did not get spayed and neutered because veterinarians were not allowed to perform elective surgeries. All their resources were going to human medicine.

They could only do emergencies. Then since then, there's been a tremendous shortage of veterinarians nationwide, and the costs have gone way up. So now people, we're seeing puppies like we never saw before, and that's what's driving the increase because it's the number of animals. So we try to offer as much low cost spay neuter as possible. I know several of your offices have supported programs like that. There just needs to be a lot more beyond the reach of just the county. You know, it just needs to be addressed that way. And then we could start turning the tide on that.

I appreciate that. It's clear to me that there's got to be multiple strategies. Adoption, of course, is important. Making sure that we are providing people with resources they need if they can keep their pets, if it's a matter of help with vet bills or food, doing that. Of course, abuse and neglect is unacceptable, and continuing to support our law enforcement as they investigate those cases is critically important.

And I think it's really important that we all lock arms, if you will, to really deal with the population. So I would strongly encourage, I'm not sure why we haven't considered making it a requirement in contracts with the cities who don't have it, but I'll just put that out there. You can pick up what I'm putting down. But to strongly encourage the cities that haven't done so because we see the ripple effect. The Lake Hughes discovery has had an impact on care centers across the county, and so any city within the county that isn't leaning in with all of their policy effort to try to limit population puts a strain on the county and our neighboring areas as well.

So clearly it's a multi strategy approach, adoption, controlling population, combating abuse and neglect, and supporting those with resources so we can try to keep families together, if you will. Thank you very much for answering my questions and thank you all for bringing the motion forward.

Thank you very much. With that, EO, I'd like to request that we start with our live speakers for public comment.

Will the following individuals please come forward and staff will assist you? Tom Cavanagh, Jennifer Stott, Kelly Walper, Michael Toffer, and Claudia

We will start with in person speakers.

Go ahead and come forward, thank you.

Morning, my name is Conrad.

Let's turn up the mic. Pull up the mic a bit so we can hear you.

Good morning. My name is Tom Kavanaugh and I'm with Love on Four Paws. First of all, thank you very much for this proclamation today and recognition. Madam Supervisor Barger and Supervisor Horvath, shout out from Sherman Oaks and UCLA Law, class of 'ninety. We're here on behalf of Love on Four Paws, which is an animal therapy group that serves all of Los Angeles County.

I'm here with my best buddy Ziggy, a white Siberian Husky and an alumni of the Bakersfield Animal Shelter. Our organization is dedicated to the belief that anyone's day can be improved by getting to pet a dog, whatever pain, anxiety or grief that person is going through. A fuzzy nuzzle from a loving canine can provide a sense of relief and respite from whatever troubles they may be going through. In this past year, we've been to Alsadena, we've been to The Palisades. My time is up. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Stott. I'm with Blue Line Dogs which helps to manage and run the program for the Sheriff's Department. This is a free partnership that we offer. We're all volunteer handlers. We really like to support our first responders out there. We have been as Palisades and the Eaton Fire as well. And we've seen a huge difference with the first responders we show up. So we really thank you guys for putting this motion through.

Thank you, next speaker please.

My name is Kelly Walper and I'm also with the LA County Sheriff's Department. And I just wanna thank you all for doing this. I think it's so important like Jennifer said that we see such a big difference just in the difference the dogs make with people. You.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Hello, I'm Mike Tofer with LA County Fire and our search and rescue team with my partner Deacon. I just want to thank the board and the fire department for all the support for all of our canines, our peer support, our search and rescue. It makes a huge difference, all your love and support that you give. And then the initiative to help support the citizens and the shelter system. We thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Claudia Harris, DWC DPSS. I am all for animal pet day. I believe animals are part of the family and can bring a great relief to provide support for disabled individuals and those that need companionship. Animals are loving for the most part. And some of them are dangerous but for the most part I worked with people from there are they have some mental kind of like a diagnosis of maybe anxiety and I believe that dogs have been very instrumental in helping them cope with their anxiety, with their panic attacks.

And so for the most part, animals are very loving and there are some dangerous ones but they are very loving.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Yes, my name is Gilles Contreras. I'm the president and founder of Blue Line Dogs, which is the training and certification agency for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, Vernon Police Department, as well as Burbank Police Department. In our five years of existence, we have serviced well over seventy five thousand first responders with care, comfort, control with the dogs as such. Important that agencies understand that our first responders do require and need a lot more of attention for their wellness programs. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to remote callers. Roy Humphries, your line is open. Please begin.

Thank you. This is a two sided coin, pleasure and pain. You note the pleasure side with your demonstration state, but the flip side, failure of not implementing sufficient pain to those animal violators at a level as to stop the dark sided practices will perpetuate the problem in perpetuity while we have human animal crisis to confront. Cities must be held accountable. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller, your line is open. Please state your name and begin.

Yes. Hi. Good morning. My name is Emile Bailey. I am I'm in District 2, and I'm I'm glad this is on the agenda item. While I'm not necessarily a pet owner, I do support it because over here, we have a in our gated community, there's a couple of cats. There are a couple of cats that have been roaming around. And the kids there are some kids that are mistreating them. And I've, you know, basically abusing them, but I haven't been able to find anyone to help, you know, either rescue the cats because you can't just take them. But they are being mistreated, so I'm glad to see that you all are taking some steps to help.

And if if someone could help me help them, that would be helpful as well. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Vanessa Bautista, your line is open. Please begin.

Thank you so much. Vanessa Bautista with Best Friends Animal Society here in Los Angeles. Thank you so much for bringing this item forward. Pets are family. And as we've seen across LA County, so many animals enter shelters due to housing and financial challenges. But investing in spay, neuter, and supportive services helps reduce shelter overcrowding and keeps families and pets together. This is this ensures more animals stay in homes where they belong with their families, much like I'm sure all their pets are at home, especially Winston. Shout out to Winston. But thank you so much for bringing this and highlighting this important conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair and members of the board, that concludes public comment on this item.

Item 17 is before you.

I will move seconded by Supervisor Barger to approve the item. Executive Officer, please call the roll.

Supervisor Mitchell? Supervisor Mitchell, aye. Supervisor Horfath? Aye. Supervisor Horfath? Aye. Supervisor Hahn? Aye. Supervisor Barger? Aye. Supervisor Barger, aye. Supervisor Solis?

Aye.

Supervisor Solis, aye. Motion carries, five to zero.

Thank you. We will now take a group photo with the board members in front of the dais with all members and the K-nine teams here with us today, followed by a photo with the coauthors. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And then I just wanted Ben Shear, peer support dog Tiller and Deshaun Roman, canine fire dog Toby. Those two were the ones. It's no longer herding cats.

Yes, go ahead. Item 11.

We will now move on to item 11, motion to proclaim 2026 as Arts Month which was held by Supervisor Solis for members of the public joining us remotely. To comment on this item, please use the raise hand feature if you are online or press 3 if on the telephone.

Colleagues, ten years ago, Los Angeles County made a commitment to lead with intention, ensuring that arts and culture in our region truly reflected and served all of our communities. At that time, I authored a motion to establish what became the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative or CEII, and directed our Arts Commission, now the Department of Arts and Culture, to engage in a county wide conversation. A conversation about how to access the arts and who represented those individuals and who benefits from that work. That process was very extensive and deeply community driven. And over eighteen months, we worked alongside artists, cultural organizations, and residents to better understand the barriers across our arts ecosystem.

What emerged was a clear framework for change, focus on representation in staffing and in leadership, access for our audiences, support for artists, and more inclusive programming throughout the county. In 2017, this board began implementing that vision. We expanded the arts internship program to open the doors for more young people, including students from community colleges. We launched the Creative Strategist Program, embedding artists directly into county departments to help solve complex civic challenges. And we established diversity, equity and inclusion and access requirements to ensure that county funded organizations reflect the communities that they serve.

We strengthened investment in community based organizations through programs like the Organizational Grant Program and created new pathways for young people to pursue careers in the creative economy. Beyond funding, we advanced policies that recognize culture as a central point for civic life, expanding civic art requirements through private development, recognizing indigenous people's day as an official county holiday, advancing a county wide cultural policy that embeds arts and culture across departments, and developing a county land acknowledgment program in participation with native leaders, recognizing the history of the land and taking meaningful steps steps toward inclusion and healing. Today, ten years later, we are seeing the impact of these efforts across Los Angeles County, impacting more than 10,000,000 people. People. LACMA is preparing to open the new David Geffen Galleries, a major building that will house its permanent collection in expansive, unified gallery space designed to welcome visitors and reimagine how art is displayed and experienced.

The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles Angeles County recently unveiled the NHM Commons, creating dynamic indoor and outdoor spaces that connect science, nature, and culture while expanding public access for all. The Music Center and the Los Angeles Philharmonic continue to bring free and low cost programming to many of our communities that hadn't had the opportunity to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform. These are the outcomes of a decade of intentional policy and sustained investment in cultural equity. But even as Los Angeles County has advanced cultural equity and expanded access, the arts and humanities at the federal level has faced increasing challenges as we all know. During his first term, Trump threatened to eliminate NEA and NEH, cut budgets, dissolved advisory bodies, and shifted grant priorities away from community based and inclusive programs.

These attacks have intensified with federal arts grants cut, staff reductions imposed, and policies undermining diversity, equity, and inclusion. In contrast, here in Los Angeles County, we remain committed to support creativity, cultural expression, and access to the arts for all. That is why today we recognize this ten years of CEII, and we also proudly proclaim April 2026 as Arts Month in Los Angeles County. This is, I believe, an opportunity to celebrate the artists, cultural workers, and organizations who make vibrant. It's also a moment to reaffirm our commitment to this work, to continue building a county where the arts are accessible, inclusive, and reflective of all Angelenos.

Because when we invest in the arts, we invest in the future of Los Angeles County. And I want to take a moment to recognize the CEII co chairs who are here, two of them are here. And I'll ask them to please stand. Doctor. Maria Rosario Jackson, who recently served as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts under President Obama.

Thank you for being here. Helen Hernandez, who continues to serve as my Arts Commissioner and President and CEO of Imagen. Thank you. And Tim Dang, who also serves as Arts Commissioner and provided invaluable guidance. He is a prominent artist, but he is out on tour at this time.

I also wanna thank the former members of CEII, the advisory committee, and ask if they would please stand, and all the arts commissioners that represent the county of Los Angeles to please join us because all of you embrace the vision of CEII, and we wanna thank you for your tireless work on behalf of the Board of Supervisors. And again, over the past decade, this work has been deeply personal for so many of us and especially for myself, reflecting my commitment and all of us to expanding opportunities and making the arts meaningful for every Angelino. CEII has transformed how the county approaches arts and culture, providing a framework that continues to guide the commission and the Department of Arts and Culture today. Together, systems. We opened doors.

We provided opportunity. We inspired many, many people, and we're gonna continue to see that moving forward in the coming years. Thank you to all of you for your service and your hard work. Thank you. With that, I recognize my colleagues here at the dais. Supervisor Holly Mitchell, I'll start with you.

Madam Chair, thank you so much and thank you for not only bringing the motion forward today, but really your commitment to this work over your entire career, particularly since your service here on the board. Thank you for recognizing all the committee members and commissioners today. And it was clear that the county needed a systemic assessment of who was being funded, who was being seen and who was being left out creation of the committee helped us. We've really made meaningful progress in elevating cultural equity as a priority investment and that's to be recognized and applauded. I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk about I think some of the challenging work that still lies ahead of us.

As we know, as funding becomes tighter, many of our unincorporated areas remain especially vulnerable to being left behind. And so to prevent this, I hope that we ensure that revenue generated from the development in our unincorporated areas is reinvested back into those very communities. The percent of art in private development ordinance is one tool that if implemented equitably can ensure that growth in our unincorporated areas yields a meaningful cultural dividend. Without intentional investment, there's a real risk that the stories and heritage of our unincorporated communities will be lost development and displacement. I think it's also important to talk about helping to build the infrastructure in our unincorporated communities.

It's not enough to simply rely on existing grantees to help invest our grant dollars. Our highest need unincorporated areas are sometimes challenged by a lack of nonprofit organizations or fiscal sponsorships that would allow them to receive and spend this kind of funding. This makes some organizations servicing our unincorporated areas not only ineligible for Department of Arts and Culture funding, but also unable to access most governmental and philanthropic dollars in general. So this puts some of our highest seed unincorporated areas at a permanent disadvantage in terms of accessing art funding. So I would hope the department could do all it can to help build out infrastructure and capacity for cultural organizations within unincorporated areas.

A real concerted effort is needed to really identify and build the capacity in those areas. But again, I wanna thank arts and cultural leaders whose commitment to this work has elevated cultural equity across the county and I look forward to the next decade of working together to ensure that every Angelino can fully access the benefits of our county's vibrant cultural life, whether you live in a city or in unincorporated areas. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Supervisor Mitch. I couldn't agree with you more. I think about the cultural diversity in the 1st District, East Los Angeles, and what that means for so many Angelenos. So thank you for your comments. Next, I'll turn to Supervisor Barger.

Thank you. And I wanna give a shout out to Leslie Ito with the Pastina Armory. Does remarkable work and I'm so grateful for everything that you do to highlight the incredible arts that we have in this county. I want to thank you both for bringing this motion forward. Arts Month reminds us just how many opportunities there are to celebrate and explore creativity and culture all over Los Angeles County.

I know the Department of Arts and Culture just launched a new resource on their website that maps out every civic artwork in their expansive collection. For residents who want to learn more about the art at their county park, library, health clinic, fire station or courthouse. They now have access to the stories behind each artistic and artwork. And I know in my district, especially the firehouses, it's really fascinating to see how they came up with the themes that they have. So I would encourage you all to take a look at that.

I also encourage residents to make a scavenger hunt out of collection and explore all the amazing works in their neighborhood and across the county. This is also a good reminder to support the amazing local non profits who are bringing arts and culture to our communities each and every day. There are so many places to enjoy plays, concerts, museums and more in every corner of this county. So this April, let's celebrate Arts Month by supporting and exploring all the arts opportunities in our community. And again, Supervisor Solis, thank you very much for bringing this forward with Supervisor Mitchell.

I think it's important for us to really recognize, especially during COVID as you'll remember, Supervisor Solis, hit that the arts took and the impact that it had on our arts community. And so now more than ever it's important for us to uplift and make sure we provide all the support necessary throughout the county. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Supervisor Hahn. Thank you, Madam Chair,

and thank you for bringing forth this motion. It's amazing that we're celebrating a decade of cultural equity and inclusion for the arts in Los Angeles County. Congratulations to everyone who has worked in this past decade to actually make this a reality. It's great that we are proclaiming April 2026 as Arts Month here in the County Of Los Angeles. It's a good way for us to honor all those that contribute and make the arts accessible.

Art brings people together. It fuels local economies through jobs and tourism. It preserves culture. It strengthens community pride. And most of all, it supports mental and emotional well-being.

And like you, Supervisor Solis, I have really enjoyed when both the LA Opera and the LA Phil leave Downtown Los Angeles and go beyond to many communities who otherwise would never have the opportunity to participate with listening them, both the opera and the LA Phil. They came to Downey And Whittier, and it's just such a great community event. The artists are coming right to the community, giving more of our residents access to these experiences. My office has also allocated a significant number, significant contribution in funding to preserve 10 paid intern positions for the arts internship program to help young people access paid arts career pathways. And before I finish, of course I want to give Kristen Sokota a big shout out.

Thank you for your leadership in making sure that all residents in LA County can have that experience enjoying arts and culture. We thank you for your commitment and your passion and your leadership. And I wanted to give a shout out to my arts commissioners, Anita Ortiz, Eric Eisenberg, and Sandra Hahn for all the work they 've done to ensure that the residents of the 4th District continue to have access to the arts. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you very much. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Thank you, madam chair, for introducing this motion to proclaim April as arts month in Los Angeles County and to celebrate cultural equity and inclusion in Los Angeles County. This month, we're taking a moment to celebrate the joy and vibrancy that the arts and creative sector bring to our county. And I wanna thank the incredible team at our department of arts and culture who drive positive child and youth development through arts education and work with emerging artists and communities to create public art throughout Los Angeles. I'm grateful to our arts commission for their commitment to an LA that provides accessible cultural services and opportunities for all, particularly through the variety of grant programs that the county offers. That it's this creative ecosystem that is essential to who we are as Angelenos.

Arts and culture help tell our stories. They preserve our rich and diverse history and give voice to perspectives that might otherwise go unheard. Here in LA County, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to experience a performance, to visit an exhibit, or to discover their own creative voice. That's why I'm proud of LACMA's NextGen free membership for county residents 17 years and younger, the Natural History Museum's free admission for LA County residents Monday through Friday from three to 5PM, and to EBT cardholders, our LA Phil's $1 ticket program which provides Angelenos the opportunity to see world class music at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, and so many other ways we bring people closer to the arts. When we expand access, we open doors to inspiration, to understanding, and to possibility.

So I wanna wish everyone a happy Arts Month and thank you for your leadership.

Thank you. With that, Executive Officer, can we go to public speakers?

Individuals please come forward and staff will assist you. DJ Kurse, Doctor. Maria Rosario Jackson, Helen Hernandez, Leticia Buckley, Andrea Fuentes, Angela Johnson, Leticia Evans Fernandez, Karen Mack, Charmaine Jefferson and Claudia Harris.

We will go with in person speakers first. Go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome.

Hello. Good morning. My name is DJ Kurz. I'm the artistic director of DEFTEST West Theatre. I'm honored to be here in support of this motion. Deaf West has called Los Angeles home for thirty five years, and I wanna say something, I mean without qualification. What we have built here, becoming the leading sign language performing arts organization in the nation, could only have happened in this city, in this county. Los Angeles has a generosity of spirit that is not an accident. It is the result of intentional investment in communities, in artists, in the radical idea that culture belongs to everyone. CEII is part of that.

Supervisor Solis's leadership is part of that. The people in this room are part of that. When you build equity into grant making, when you put artists inside county departments, when you acknowledge the land and the people who are here first, you are building the kind of ecosystem where a theater company founded by and for deaf people doesn't just survive, it thrives. It goes to Broadway and tours the world. It collaborates with the LA Philharmonic. It trains the next generation of deaf artists.

Thank you.

That doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens because of the culture this county has chosen cultivate. So, urge the board to declare April Arts Month to honor this work and to keep investing in what makes Los Angeles singular. Thank you, supervisor Solis. This city made us possible.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Good morning. I'm Maria Rosario Jackson, a former co chair of the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative which we recognize today. Thank you to Supervisor and Chair Solis for your leadership in launching CEII ten years ago and your continued passionate support. Thank you to Supervisor Mitchell for her support of the arts in the 2nd District where I reside. And thank you to the Department of Arts and Culture for your tireless work and stewardship.

The work of CEII is more important now than ever. The arts are core to our democracy, to our health and well-being, to our economy and to our community resilience. Equitable and inclusive access to a wide range of arts experiences in all facets of our lives is essential. At their core, the arts allow express our humanity and see that of others who are preconditioned for building a county where all people can reach their full potential. It's imperative that we take a moment to acknowledge the Thank you.

Next speaker please.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Helen Hernandez and it's always a pleasure to come before this esteemed group, the leadership of LA County who happen to all be women. So I'm very proud of all of you. I wanted to say that it's been ten years and it certainly seems as if it was yesterday when we started down this journey, supervisor Solis. We are also grateful to you for your vision and and acknowledging that there was a void in LA County that needed to be rectified.

Earlier today, we had a meeting with Supervisor Solis, and I want to read you a plaque that we presented to her on behalf of the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative Committee. Supervisor Hildel Solis, with deep appreciation for being our steward and champion of our rich cultures, which are the heartbeat of LA County. Thank you again, and I will miss being an LA Arts Commissioner, and we will miss you next year. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Good morning, my name is Angela Johnson. Nine years ago, 45 advocates and community members sat in this very chamber and encouraged you to adopt the 13 recommendations from the CEII report. And you Board of Supervisors made history and voted unanimously to approve all 13 of those recommendations. And here we are, nine years later, encouraging you and celebrating your leadership in leading cultural equity in LA County. I also encourage you when you're talking about art in community that you involve community based organizations and not just operas and symphonies, although they are just wonderful as well.

So thank you for your support and we encourage you because we do still have a lot of work to do and we also, I also wanna applaud your continued commitment in making the county a better place through art and culture. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Good morning. My name is Leticia Buckley. I'm a mom, wife, daughter of immigrants born and raised in Los Angeles and I'm a proud cultural worker who knows that arts are civic power. Ten years ago when I was a staff member for the Arts Commission, now department, I learned supervisor Solis was preparing a motion on equity, inclusion, and access. At a time when those words were not widely widely used or protected, she understood the stakes, fought to get it right and the landscape shifted.

The Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative was never just a report, it was a collective act of courage. Cultural workers and community members from across the region came together to build something bold, centering equity and we didn't apologize for it. Over eighteen months, we shaped the shared vision and recommendations that changed how this county approaches cultural policy. The progress that followed didn't happen by accident. It happened because community pushed and refused to let the work stall. And none of it would have been possible without the artists, organizers and cultural bearers who show up every day often underpaid, under resourced and still unwilling to walk away.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Yes, go ahead. Good morning

supervisors. I'm Karen Mack, Executive Director and Founder of LA Commons. We're really all about leveraging the power of the arts to bring people together, engage them, and making their communities better places. And I want to commend Supervisor Solis for her leadership, vision, and actually prescience at this moment as we think about where our country is and the work to actually devalue culture. And so the CEII is really a model and enables Los Angeles, has enabled, enables Los Angeles to really stand as a beacon for society should look like.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Good morning. My name is Charmaine Jefferson. I am a Mid City 2nd District resident, former original member of CEII and current trustee board chair for the California Institute of the Arts, a college of international stature located in Santa Clarita in the District 5, and Redcat housed in Music Center in District 1. In all those capacities, I appreciate your support for proclaiming April 2026 as Art Month. I applaud your past and present ongoing work recognizing the human need for the arts and undeniable cultural and historical significance that education and resource of the arts play in our world.

We do not promote cultural equity and inclusion simply because it is a nice thing to do. Rather, it is essential and it provides economic value and that's something you already know in the work that you do managing this huge budget. I thank you for recognizing it in all of its forms and know that it

Thank you. Next speaker please.

My name is Leticia Fernandez Ivins and I work with the Music Center. Thank you Madam Chair Solis, Supervisors and CEII Co chairs for leading this landmark effort, CEII. Many of us former advisory committee members agree it was an effort. The work is courageous, nonlinear, humbling, and ongoing. CEII spurred rigorous examination, critique, and strategy around strengthening equity in the field of arts and culture.

Through a consensus based process that itself modeled equity, we did the foundational work of establishing a shared definition of cultural equity led by the pursuit of racial equity, offering tools that LA arts organizations could use to adopt an authentic, accountable equity agenda, and setting goals that led to the cultural equity policy, a critical driver of the county's cross sector work today. I'm proud of what we've done together, grateful to the county and the Department of Arts and Culture's leadership, and continue to be committed with the Music Center to the practices that undergird.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Andrea Fuentes. On behalf of LA Opera, I want to thank Supervisor Solis and her sustained leadership in advancing arts, culture, and equity across Los Angeles County and to recognize the CEII co chairs and advisory committee members whose guidance has been instrumental in shaping this work. Arts and culture are vital to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of our communities. They foster imagination, critical thinking, and civic engagement while reflecting the rich diversity and stories of all Angelenos.

Through the county's leadership and expanding cultural access and advancing equity, these values are being realized in meaningful and tangible ways. At LA Opera, our priorities have been shaped by this leadership. With this clarity and support, we've expanded our own reach serving more students in Title I schools, bringing performances into community spaces, partnering with healthcare providers and collaborating with community based organizations to broaden access through trusted local networks across LA. I urge the board to continue investing in arts and culture.

Thank you. Next speaker please.

Claudia Herres, DPSS, DWC. I support art month on April. Art is a necessary form of expression. Without it, we would be left a bit limited and handicapped. It will be a little bit left handicapped in a way because all forms of expressions are necessary to be healthy and whole. So it brings wholeness to us. It's a form of power that is very effective and I'm very glad that equity has been a considered component to be added as a considered component. Thank you.

We will now go to remote speakers. Caller with phone number 323513, your line is open. Please state your name and begin.

Hello, my name is Jackie Rodriguez and I'm here on behalf of LA Philharmonic to support April. As a former YOLO student and now full time employee of LA Phil, I've experienced firsthand the benefits of increased access to the arts and internships dedicated to preparing young professionals for careers the arts. Declaring our April as arts month honors the contributions of artists, cultural leaders, and educators and reaffirms the county's commitment to creativity, equity, and inclusion. I urge the board to continue investing in arts and culture as essential to building stronger, more connected and equitable communities. I thank Supervisor Solis and the entire board of supervisors for their decade of leadership advancing arts, culture and equity in LA County and recognize the CEII over the decade, who've made this work possible.

Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with phone number 323356, your line is open. Please state your name and begin.

Hello. My name is Mark Edwards. I'm calling on behalf of Arch for LA, I wish I could be there for this amazing event. I want to thank Supervisor Hills Solis and express deep appreciation for acknowledging April's Arts Month and for a decade of leadership advancing arts, culture, and equity across LA County. I also thank the full Board of Supervisors for your continued commitment to strengthening our region's creative Supervisor Solis leadership has been transformative.

The cultural equity and inclusion initiative didn't just set a vision, it delivered results, funding key recommendations and laying the foundation for the countywide cultural policy. That impact is real, and it's being felt in communities across the county, declaring our April as Arts Month as a powerful measure that artists, cultural workers are central to the health, identity, and economy of LA County, but recognition alone is not enough. At a time when our creative workforce faces ongoing instability, we must match that recognition with sustained

Roy Humphries, your line is open. Please begin.

Thank you. Roy Humphries, Roland Heights. Having watched the Godfather of Harlem with, Forrest Whitaker, I appreciate inclusion in the arts. But the exclusion has been part of local county history in the for decades, long before president Trump. Given the criminal and treasonous acts towards illegal immigration by this county and defrauding the federal government for decades, you reap what you sow. God bless and protect president Trump.

Thank you. Madam chair, members of the board, that concludes public comment for this item.

Item 11 is before you.

I will move the item seconded by Supervisor Mitchell to approve. Executive officer, please call the roll.

Supervisor Mitchell. Aye. Supervisor Mitchell. Horfath? Aye. Supervisor Horfath? Aye. Supervisor Hahn? Aye. Supervisor Barger?

Aye.

Supervisor Barger, aye. Supervisor Solis? Aye. Supervisor Solis, aye. Motion carries, five to zero. We will now move on to set matter one, report on the plan developed to support represented Los Angeles Housing Services Authority workers, which was held for report. For members of the public joining us remotely to comment on this item, please use the raise hand feature if you are online or press 3 if on the telephone. Lisa Garrett, director of personnel Rodney Collins, chief deputy director and Johan Julen, assistant director, department of human resources and Molly Gonzalez, project manager, chief executive office will make a presentation. For the departmental speakers, please state your name and title for the record when you address the board.

CEO, you're recognized.

Good morning, madam chair, members of the board. As you know, since November 2025, we've been working diligently on board directed efforts to create pathways for represented county funded workers at LASA to join the county family. This is a good opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the progress we've made and speak to the challenges and opportunities that remain on the horizon. For our discussion this morning, I think it's helpful if we think about the county funded representative staff at LASA in two groups. So the first group are the outreach workers and the second group are the remaining represented workers in administrative, programmatic, clerical, IT and similar roles.

So with respect to the first group, the outreach workers, we've shared with the board in prior meetings that we have committed to bringing all county funded outreach workers at LASA into the county family in the departments of homeless services and housing, mental health, health services, and probation. And we're doing this while both protecting their existing salaries and ensuring no gap in insurance coverage as these workers transition to county jobs. And I'm I'm really pleased to report that many of these workers are actually starting in their county roles this week and many more will transition over in the coming days. So we're working to finalize hiring placements for a few more outreach workers, but overall our efforts to secure pathways of employment for these lowest paid workers have been successful and reflect the collaborative work we undertook with both SEIU seven twenty one and with LASA. Okay, so creating pathways to county employment for the second group of county funded represented workers, the admin, the program, the clerical, the IT, etcetera, is a bit more logistically complicated, but our commitment to these workers remains the same.

Primary challenge we encountered initially includes developing specialty requirements that allow departments to identify skilled loss of workers among a pool of general applicants. Now as directed by your board, we have consulted with the union on all specialty requirements and we are 90% done. We only have specialty requirements remaining for two more classifications. And we anticipate completing these final two specialty requirements by mid April. And at that point, we will have finished the meet and consult process, which will open the door fully to the hiring process.

But by the way, I just wanna share, although we have two specialty requirements left to discuss with labor, we haven't waited to do recruitments on the ones where we have finished. So we've already started recruiting for the classifications where the specialty requirements have been set. And we should have about, I believe, '29 total recruitments across 13 departments open in the next two weeks. So that is very good news. I'm also happy to report that county departments have really stepped up collectively.

They've identified sufficient vacancies for all county funded represented LASA FTEs in group two. And I really wanna thank the department heads who provided that commitment. It is many of them across the entire county and so we couldn't do that without them. So I wanna make sure that I give them a little shout out. In terms of challenges, as you'll see in the presentation, there's an imperfect alignment between the job specs at LASA and county vacancies.

So this means that some LASA employees will have to agree to do a different type of job in order to transition to the county service. This may not be an issue for some, but there may be others who decline to accept an unlike position. And we, of course, will do our very best to match people to like classifications and we've committed to special step placements to protect salaries as well. We also understand that LAHSA will begin to issue sixty day layoff notices at the April in anticipation of the end of the fiscal year. I understand that these layoff notices are broader than just the county funded items and may encompass city funded items as well because the city budget for next fiscal year is not set and is not anticipated to be set by the April.

We expect that will cause a lot of consternation. Our goal is to ensure that all loss of workers who will transition to county service understand our process for onboarding loss of workers well before the April and we are conducting direct outreach those individuals. And then have certainty about their offer and start date before the June. So it's not perfect in terms of timing because people are gonna get this layoff notice at the April. But we wanna make sure that they understand how the process is going to move forward and certainly by the end of that fiscal year they will know when their onboarding date is with the county. I will now hand it over to the Director of Personnel, Lisa Garrett, to kick off a brief PowerPoint presentation.

Good morning, Supervisors. Lisa Garrett, Director of Personnel. I'd just like to reiterate some of the things that Joe has stated and say that DHR is, dedicated to, prioritizing pathways into the county for the loss of workers. We have at least three of our teams, and our small, mighty team, working on this effort, and we're working, of course, with CEO, with mental health, DHS, and all of the departments in order to facilitate the transition of the loss of workers. We have held, as you know, information sessions for these individuals to talk about potential positions within the county of Los Angeles and positions for which they would qualify.

We've had the hiring fair, which we talked about the last time, which resulted in 60 individuals receiving offers of county employment. We've opened other recruitments, and Johann will talk about that, the other recruitments for the noncommunity health worker positions. And we've sent notices to the department heads asking for commitments to bring in the second group, if you will, of LASA employees into the county. So we have some good numbers to show you. We're not finished yet. This is a heavy lift, but I want you to know that all of the departments are working diligently to make this happen. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Johan and he'll talk about the specifics of what we're doing.

Good morning, supervisors. Johan Yulin, Chief Strategist DHR. As Lisa said, I'll be providing a little bit of an update on where we are in transitioning LASA staff into county employment. We've been making a ton of progress on two major fronts. One is the outreach workers, which I'll provide a very quick update on, and then I'd like to focus most of my time on pretty much everyone else.

We have been pretty successful with the outreach workers, which as well I'll spend a little less time on that, but I still would like to give you an update on that. One thing to note before I get going here is that these slides were prepared last week, but as you might guess, this is a moving target. We're moving very quickly. The numbers change even day to day, sometimes hour to hour. So what I'll do is I'll try to update you with the latest information I have.

So as we go, I'll try to update those numbers so you have the numbers as I see them. So if I could start with the outreach workers. Next slide, please. So 65 offers have been made. As Lisa had mentioned, that does represent 78% of the LASA staff who were targeted.

This would be targeted for the county's community health worker position. Of the 65, 64 have accepted the offer. None have started yet, but we anticipate that 29 of them will start this week. So those folks are gonna get going into their positions very, very shortly. We are trying to get as many as possible into the seat by April 10, and that's for benefits reasons to make sure that we have enough time to ensure that they get onto our benefits system. In the meantime, there's

kind of

an elaborate system of COBRA that's been set up to ensure that they have seamless coverage of benefits. We do have it says pending offers up there. I want to clarify what that means. It's a little bit of a misnomer. It's actually folks who have applied and or interviewed with us but have not yet received an offer.

That's what the pending offers refers to. We've heard back from hiring departments that some of these may not be getting an offer right away, so we'll be working with those candidates, and with departments to try to find them placements where we can. Also, the number there, it says 18. That number is actually 22 now as it turns out. Some of the folks who were going into the probation department in particular did not pass their background process.

And as you might be aware, the probation department has stricter standards than a lot of our other departments, and as a result of that, those folks fell out. That does not mean they fell out of the process altogether. They go back into the pool, of course, and will be considered by other departments. There are 12 folks who didn't apply or withdrew from our process. Of those, nine had not submitted any applications at all, and that is despite our attempts at outreach, our attempts at providing guidance.

And it's not just our attempts. We also ask the union to contact these folks to try to reach them and encourage them to apply, but we have not received those applications from those folks. Next slide please. So I'd like to switch gears a little bit over to the non outreach workers, which is basically everybody else. There's 159 of those folks who are represented and county funded.

It does exclude 16 staff who we will be leaving at LASA, at least for the short term, to ensure that LASA has some staff that will be continuing to provide services through that agency. As a reminder, and as Lisa had briefly mentioned, we had sent out a request, a memo, to departments to identify vacancies where the departments could identify those vacancies and commit to trying to fill those vacancies using LASA staff members. There are a few things that I want to mention about that. One is that a commitment does not mean that there will be a hire against that commitment. It does mean that the department has agreed to see these LASA candidates and to interview these candidates and give them serious consideration for the position.

I also wanna say that we are committed to finding pathways for placing people, but as Joe had mentioned, there may not always be a perfect match between the skills that the Lhasa folks bring versus the commitments and the needs on the county side. And I'll show you a graph in a minute that kind of speaks to that and how we're planning to address that. The fit might not always be perfect for everyone, I guess is what I'm saying there. The good news is that we actually have 171 commitments from our county departments to see these loss of folks. And keep in mind that there's 159 folks who are awaiting placement, right?

So that number is good. I feel really good about that. We've been working really hard to make sure that these county departments understand the importance of bringing the LASA folks on. And I think our colleagues in the county departments understand some of the criticality of that. There are only four departments who did not respond to our requests, so we've got very, very broad agreement from the departments that this is important.

We will be working with the four. I see your face, supervisor. Yes, we'll be working with the four.

We are coordinating with CEO on a number of efforts to get people placed into departments that have raised their hand. There are a few items on the page here that list some of the things that we're doing. At DHR, we'll be implementing two approaches, kind of depending on the roles that we are seeking to fill. One is that we will lead some recruitments centrally, and we'll run those centrally through DHR. That is for jobs that exist in multiple departments.

It's much easier to coordinate that centrally, so we'll be leading that effort. There are four such classifications, and they include things like generic managers, accounting positions, and clerical positions. We will be opening those on April 22. There are also some department led recruitments. As Joe had mentioned, those might be very, very broad in nature and more specific departmental functions.

We will be using a temporary emergency authority to bring people in quickly so that we can ensure that those folks are brought on in time before June 30. As a function of doing all of that, we will share our job postings and bulletins with both labor and with LASA to ensure that there is enough awareness of these opportunities as well as encouraging departments to reach out to the candidates that have been identified. They will be provided with resumes where we have them so they know who's available for those opportunities. We're going to encourage departments to reach out to those folks to encourage them to apply the opportunities that are available. As you probably know, DHR also has a concierge service where we will be sending up follow-up emails, calling LASA candidates to ensure that they apply to the opportunities that are available.

We'll also continue to monitor how we're doing on all of this, ensure that the hiring process remains on track, that people are being onboarded in a timely way, all for the purpose of trying to maximize the number of folks that we are placing. We'll work with the candidates on the one side to ensure that they get their applications in, and then we'll work with departments on the other side to ensure that we can try to remove as many obstacles as we can, including things like getting hiring freeze exemptions where it's appropriate, getting salary placements where we can, and so forth. Next slide please. As I mentioned, we now have a total of 171 commitments from departments, and this is for the 159 loss of staff to be placed that are non outreach workers. Just in the last few days, we have gotten a flurry of new commitments, so the chart that you see on the page is actually a little bit outdated, and I'll go over the numbers here, in a minute.

But, in addition to what you see on this chart, we have commitments from a few additional departments, for those 159 folks that are gonna be available. That includes the homeless services and housing department that have eight more commitments, DPW with 15 more, and JCOD with two more. And those are on top of the ones that you see on the page there. As I mentioned earlier, we're pretty happy with the response thus far. We're going to continue to work with departments to see if we can rustle up a few more, and we're really looking forward to departments executing against these commitments they've made to see these folks.

Next slide, please. As I mentioned earlier, we're doing what we can to ensure that there are pathways forward for employment, but as I mentioned, there could also potentially be some mismatches between what the LASA candidates bring and the jobs that we have available, and that's what this graph is showing. We've looked at the jobs that the LASA staffers currently hold and put them into some broad job categories, and then matched that up with the commitments made by county departments. So the red bars that you see up on the page are the number of LASA staff with jobs category, and the blue bars are the jobs that we have. So basically, if the blue is higher than the red, then we're in pretty good shape.

If the red is higher than blue, that means that there are fewer job commitments than there are candidates. So just to give you I want to quickly update the numbers here. The outreach workers, I'm not going to pay as much attention to, but the rest of the jobs there, admin program, we have 92 commitments from departments rather than 81. For clerical, we have 45 rather than 41. For accounting jobs, we have 12 commitments rather than eight.

For IT, we've got 11 rather than seven. And for other commitments, we have two. The outreach workers on the left are basically being taken care of based on our current efforts, and we're doing pretty well there, so I'll leave that alone. I feel like general, we're doing pretty well, but where the biggest challenge obviously will be will be in that administrative and programmatic roles category where there are lots and lots of staffers and not as many available candidate jobs. A lot of those jobs are generic in nature.

So for example, it's administrative services managers. Every department hires those. Analyst positions that could go into a lot of different departments. So we'll be working to try to find additional opportunities there where we can and where it suits the skills that are offered by the loss of workers. Obviously, there's also tons of clerical positions available, so while that's not ideal, of course it still represents an opportunity for someone to get their foot in the door with a county job, and then they might be able to transfer or apply to other jobs that areoften our recruitments are only open to county employees.

So once they come in the door, then they might have that opportunity. But we'll continue to work with them to try to find more suitable opportunities wherever we can. Next slide, please. We have a lot of stuff planned this month, as a matter of fact, and we're very excited about that. There's gonna be a flurry of activity that we've got, coming up. One thing that was mentioned is that we're gonna complete those consultation with labor. As Joe mentioned, there are, two major series of classifications. One is in the IT, jobs and the other is in admin jobs. So we'll complete those. We expect that to happen very shortly.

We'll also complete the outreach worker prioritization. This is what I discussed at the very beginning of the discussion today. We expect to complete that shortly. I'm excited about that third bullet, launching recruitments targeting those remaining county workers. We've got a lot going on. We already have opened nine IT and accounting recruitments. Those have been open for a minute, and we are closing those today, and I can update you in the next go around on what we got through that. We are opening five more recruitments today. Those are mostly in the accounting space. DHR will be running four more recruitments centrally.

That will be opened on or before April 22. And then also by April 22, we will be working with departments to open as many as 29 additional recruitments in departments. That's across 13 different departments that have raised their hand to bring those folks on. Those will be specific with desirable qualifications for LAHSA employees. Then lastly, we are scheduling some meet and greet meetings both virtually and in person.

Those will be informational sessions to start, providing information to LAASA candidates as to where they need to go to apply, how they go about applying, the kinds of opportunities that might be available to them. We're planning an in person session with the department's presence so that the departments have the opportunity to meet these candidates, encourage them to apply if they haven't already done so. We've launched a website where folks can go, Los Angeles candidates can go, to see what's available, what's open currently, and walk them through the process of applying. And then of course in May and June, we'll be supporting departments through this process. We'll also be supporting candidates as they seek to apply to the various recruitments that we'll have open at the time.

So that's what I have for you today. I did want to turn it over to my colleague, Molly Gonzalez, who had a bit of information that she wanted to share with you as well.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the Board. Gonzalez, project manager with the Chief Executive Office. We wanted to update you regarding our findings that we shared with you back in March. On March 2, SEIU Local seven twenty one notified inconsistencies between the FTE totals LASA provided to the county on February 9 and the totals shared with labor on February 19. We met with LASA to review methodology.

Through that process, we reached a shared understanding of the issues and confirmed the correct count of two sixty seven county funded represented positions as of March '17. The county will continue to fund 16 represented FTEs for homeless count and data related activities at LASA. Therefore, two fifty one FTEs will serve as the current number used to determine the county funded represented positions to be transitioned to the county. We memorialized these findings in a memo to LASA and shared that with labor so all parties can work from the same dataset moving forward. With that, we now turn it over to you for any questions you may have.

Thank you. I want to just start with some comments. First of all, you for the presentation. I know this is on our mind right now and especially with the April and trying to make sure that we get as many people in the queue. And I'm looking at your chart, the one where you have, I think it's page, what is it, slide five or six, where you pointed out yourself administration and clerical and the inversion there, right?

So how can we try to bridge that? If our goal is to try to bring people into the county and you're telling us that one way is to take a job, but does this job pay a lot less than what they currently make? Or are there ways of us trying to adjust and address this?

So a couple of things. One is that we will work with CEO on salary placements for these folks so that they're not harmed in that way or at least try to minimize any of disparity might be. So, with respect to step placements, I think that part will at least be taken care of. With respect to opportunities, though, that's going to be the bigger challenge. We'll work with departments to try to open as many recruit ments as we possibly can to ensure that those folks will have jobs in similar roles and a similar function to what they've performed in the past.

We'll also look at one thing I think that been really closely looked at yet, but we'll start, is what the skills that these folks bring beyond the payroll title that they currently hold. And we'll start to do an analysis of that because they may very well have other experiences beyond the simple payroll title that they hold at LASA that would help them qualify for additional roles in the county. We'll ask our concierge team to take a look at that, to make sure that we are not missing any unturned stones there.

So when you say referral to the concierge, hasn't that already taken place? Because in your presentations to us, you're saying that that is something that seems like it's almost parallel, but I'm not sure that we're actually getting to assessing the actual skill sets of these individuals. And is that just more of a pro form a, check-in, talk to someone, but we really didn't do an assessment.

I hope not. I think it's going to be more in-depth than that. But the idea, but right now, we don't have resumes for everyone. We do have them for community health workers, for the folks that were outreach workers, but we're now focusing on those 159 remaining, and we're soliciting their resumes now. In fact, we're

asking Okay, so it's a step by step process. And when do you think that will, I mean, starting now, it's starting now? What is your timeline?

It's starting now. We're gonna do as much as we can prior to April 30. We are

That's a lot. That's very ambitious.

Yeah, well, we're gonna do whatever

we know most can prior sounds unrealistic, because of the numbers you're already showing and placement. So I'm just wondering, will these people be harmed because they don't have a continuation? You're also sending out letters, right, for layoffs or what have you? Is that correct? LASA? Maybe LASA needs

to LASA

is There's representative in the audience, but the letter is a requirement that does not necessarily mean that they are going to lose their employment. It is just notice. And so the employment

So what does that

mean in English Well,

the law requires that when layoff is being contemplated that individuals receive sixty days notice. So April 30 would be that sixtieth day, and this is all Q2 July 1. And so that is the official notice that employees will receive. And as has been mentioned by our CEO, is they will also receive the individuals who are funded by the city of Los Angeles will also receive notices, because as of today, they have not made a decision as to which direction they're gonna go. So for us, the notices don't stop the work that we'll be doing.

And you're reaching out to these individuals those notices go? Because obviously if I got something in the mail like that, I would

And supervisor, we're not waiting until the notices go out. We have a list of the individuals that we will be reaching out to. Some we've already started the process, but now it will be a drill down of the skill sets of these individuals, looking at their resumes and what they've actually the work they've actually performed at LASA to see how we can match them up, with other county departments here. So we are doing that work. And we say concierge, it's not where someone is going to be thrown to the side.

The concierge group really is working, to help with these matches. We've assigned at least two to three individuals, two from DHR and one from, CEO, to go person by person, starting with, the outreach, getting these skill sets information, looking at when they're actually going to be interviewed, and going throughout the process. So someone will handholding the individuals throughout the entire process.

It just seems to me a bit complicated, but CEO, please

go I wanna add some additional context just in the overall scheme of what we're doing and why we have this slide. I think number one, we wanna be transparent. We want people to understand some of the barriers we face in doing something like this. And then two, I want to, in terms of context setting, really emphasize that what we're doing is extraordinary. Not in the sense that it's amazing, but in the sense that it's not been done before.

We have never, to my knowledge, tried to onboard this many people in this short amount of time while protecting their salary and while figuring out a way to pay for their COBRA benefits. So these are things that took a while to figure out so that we could do it in a way that was respectful of labor and respectful of the process. But there is a point, and you're looking at it on the screen well, now you're not anymore, but you were looking out on the screen a second ago where we actually do not have the same types of vacancies to bring people on from LASA that have we don't have the same types of jobs at the county that people have at LASA right now that are vacant and available. We have some constraints as well. We have a hiring freeze.

Right.

We've sustained some curtailments. And so I think that it like I said, it's an imperfect match, but our commitment and the commitment that this board has shown is very strong. And it is it is complicated. It sounds complicated because it is complicated, but I do wanna just note for the for the folks at LASA and for the board and the public, it is a lot of very focused work at the highest levels. I mean, know Johan and Lisa and Rodney are working on this day in and day out to do the best we can to protect salaries and and bring people in in an orderly way with as much notice as we can so they don't feel like they're left out in the lurch.

So I just wanted to add that context because if the expectation is I work at LASA and I should automatically work at the county, this is the type of data and information that shows that that doesn't really work that way. And that's why we're investing so much time and effort to figuring out a way to bring people into some position in the county to protect their to protect a job. It it will work out fantastic for some people. And others will have the choice of saying, do I wanna do something a little bit different?

I I understand, you know, understand the effort here and the direction that the board has put before you to see that we could make them whole, the employees whole. I guess what I'm also wondering about is the city of LA, you know, their portion payment and where that leads us. So that's something that I wanna hear more about because we're talking about maybe two dozen or more people that we still don't know where they're going to be placed because of I indecision or

can respond to that initially, then the team can jump in. But there's two dynamics. One is the city of LA and one is LASA itself. So on the LASA side, there's a timing issue. So LASA will have obligations to county through the end of the fiscal year. These are contractual obligations. And then some of that will actually extend into next fiscal year as invoices and stuff continue to get processed next year. So in speaking with LASA leadership, they were concerned about us onboarding employees too quickly because if we take

their fiscal team

before the end of the fiscal year, they're left with not enough employees. So that's the first issue. So there is going to be some time delay between April 30 and when they are onboarded because of Losses' operational needs, and we're working to make sure we clarify with everybody what our process looks like so they can feel more comfortable. The city of LA, my understanding is, and director Mann can can confirm this, is that the city tends to decide on their, fiscal contribution for LASA closer to June each year so that there is some unpredictability in Lhasa's, you know, what they're gonna be doing for the city in the next fiscal year as they approach the end of the current fiscal year. So it has happened in the past that they've sent out layoff notices as a precaution because they don't know what investment the city is going to make.

We think we think the same thing will happen this year. Now I know the city is is looking at a lot of different options for how to address, their homeless programming needs. I will say we're in April. It took us a substantial amount of time. It's been a year since we started to make this transition. So I don't think the city can turn on a dime. But I don't know what they're going to do. So if I'm reading the tea leaves, I think there's probably will be some investment by the city in Tallahassee again next year. But again, I can't speak fully for the city. I'm just judging that based on where we are in the calendar today. So those are the two dynamics I have not heard But I don't think it's

I think it behooves us to inquire at your level.

We have a meeting with them, is it every Monday?

Yes, I met with the CAO and CLA yesterday and we talked about this as well and they shared that the mayor's budget will be forthcoming and that will indicate some information, but it doesn't get approved by city council until the May or June. This is an annual challenge that LASA has to deal with.

Madam Chair, can I say we have asked several times this question? I know every time I get up here I say We are doing our best to bring the LASA employees over. However, we always ask, How many do you need to retain? And we have not gotten an answer to that question.

Okay, all right. I won't ask any more questions. Okay, Supervisor Horvath, I'll turn it over.

I think you really dug in, Madam Chair, and I appreciate that. And thanks to this team for all that you've done to help this transition. I would agree. I think this is a first for the county in terms of the level of detail and coordination that you've dug into. And I think it speaks volumes about your commitment to this work, that the county has the ability to do this when we really dig in.

And perhaps this can be a new way forward as we think about other opportunities that we explore as a county to bring jobs in house. I suspect there may be other opportunities for us to exercise what we've developed here and take these lessons learned. So I really wanna commend you for that work and sort of remind us all that we've now learned a lot and maybe there will be other applications for this going forward. With that said, how many more job fairs are going to be organized for loss of staff?

They're not job fairs per se. Think they're more like meet and greets is what I would characterize them as. So we're planning a virtual session that will happen this week or next. And that would be with possibly with departments, but it will be an informational session as to what's currently open and what folks can apply to.

I think I heard you mention April 10 as a date related to healthcare and potentially other benefits. So if it's next week, which would be after the tenth potentially, does that mean people will not have access to health care benefits?

No, because they would continue to work where they are in LASA, and they would continue to have LASA benefits. So the idea would be, I think for us, and others can correct mebut my understanding is that the idea is to try to bring people in by the tenth of every month. That ensures that their loss of benefits will continue for that month because contractually that's how the benefits work. It also gives us enough time to get them situated, ensure that we have the paperwork and the administrative pieces done so as to continue their benefits. There's thirty days waiting period.

That's what the COBRA is for. And then the county benefits will kick in the month after that. So for them, it is seamless and it's always paid for. They won't be out of pocket on any of it. But for us, the cutoff is the tenth of every month to ensure that there's coverage and that there's enough time to process folks.

Okay. And you've shared a lot of data with us. All of those opportunities, is this all coming out of your work through the concierge service, or is this comprehensive or do you have something specific to the concierge service, in terms of a dataset?

This is comprehensive, supervisors, so it's not just with the concierge. They might help us to bring the individuals to the table so that we can have the departments do interviews of the individuals for hiring purposes but it will be inclusive. It's not just meet and greet, hey how are you doing? It really is about how we can look at the skill sets of individuals so that we can make certain that the departments have a good match and the skill sets that they need for their departments and then make offers and have some interviews. So it's a little bit more than meet and greet, but all with the purpose of interviews and making contingent offers to the individuals.

Thank you. And I'm glad that there's been a lot of recognition about what the process is that's required for us, for LAHSA in particular, in advance of July 1. I suspect even though we've had a very full conversation and with acknowledgment today of what will likely happen on April 30 when it actually happens, all of our offices and county departments will get a lot of phone calls. So understanding LAHSA has communicated their intention, to issue termination notices, on April 30 in anticipation of the funding changes that we've been talking about, not only because of our change in relationship, from the county side, but also also as you indicated that the city of LA, may have changes in in their funding, as well. So can you confirm that all represented LASA staff currently assigned to county contracts who will be hired by the county can be onboarded before July 1?

I don't know that I can confirm that or promise that necessarily. Some folks, for example, in the outreach workers, workers, just to use that as an example, because we have some hard data there where we've already launched those recruitments and we're well into the process of getting them onboarded now. Some of those folks, despite repeated outreach, have simply not applied to our for our jobs. And so despite our efforts, it's not possible to bring everyone on if they resist those efforts. Efforts.

Okay, so that makes sense. If you've outreached and they haven't responded, that's one category of folks that you've identified. But there are people who are in the process who are very concerned, you know, that even though they're doing everything they're being told to do, given the timeline and the length of time it takes for the county to turn things around that they're not gonna be onboarded. So for those people who are working with you, can we make that commitment that they're gonna be okay by July 1?

We will do our very best to get as many people on as we can.

And that is our goal supervisor to have all of the individuals hired by July 1. We'll be working toward that end and trying to move the departments on any hires before that time so that we can meet the deadlines. As Johan and Joe had mentioned, sometimes eliminating barriers for the onboarding for the departments and we have individuals who are already assigned to look at the date of the interview, the date of the conditional offer, and push the folks through. Not let anyone sit in any bucket for a long period of time, but continue moving them through the hiring process so that we can get the butt and see.

Then I would ask anybody that you see who's not going to meet that time line as soon as you see it that you let us the candidates of course know because obviously they have to make preparations for themselves, their families and everybody who's impacted by that change. And I know it's our commitment to make sure that everybody who's been working with us can safely make that transition by July 1. But I think we need to understand if that's not going to happen, why.

I agree. And I think the operative word to their supervisor working with us.

Thank you.

You. Supervisor Barger.

Thank you. Now I'm going to be Debbie Downer. Joe, did we flat line all the vacant positions in departments? Like in other words, with the last cuts and submitting the budget, did we take away any vacant positions in departments for the most part.

During the curtailment, supervisor? Yes. Yes, we did cut vacant positions in departments.

And the only reason I'm asking and this is why I'm Debra Downer because I see here for example public health has two employees that they hired and we just got a report that public health is in dire financial situation. So what guarantees can we give to the loss of staff or even our staff that as we look at they're going to have a place to land.

So supervisor, we'd have to go and I haven't done this exercise but we can do it and we can report back on the next time. But looking at our major, this will be slide four if we can bring it Some of our major commitments are in areas where I'll look at child support for a second. They're not facing budget cuts like the other.

But I chose public health for a reason. I'm choosing departments like DHS, public health,

even DPSS to a degree. Right. Public health has some revenue stable programs, primarily SAPSI, so I'd have to go back and see where are they hiring these folks. I think when we look at the commitments and the opportunities for folks to move in, what I don't want to happen, and I completely agree with your sentiment here, is we hire somebody only to lay them off like a month or two months later. So that is not the purpose of this process, is to check a box. We want to bring them in on a stable position.

We still do cascading when we're going do layoffs, correct? You describe the cascading works in the county?

For a particular classification, there is a seniority list that is generated. Those who come in last are usually the first ones to be let go. And so if there are other persons in the classification with higher seniority than others and there is someone, if there is going to be a cascading because the department uses a particular classification for purposes of reducing the deficit, then that could impact, require others in that classification to move down. If that's the case, the individuals at the bottom of that classification, I should say the last hired, would be facing workforce reduction.

Okay, think it's important for us to acknowledge that's how the county works when it comes to budget curtailments and layoffs, is it's cascading and if I started in human resources and now I'm over at an item in executive office and they're laying off in executive office, I can go back to my position in your department, correct? And that bumps someone else to move someplace else. I mean I'm oversimplifying but I just think it's

Usually important the cascading happens in a particular department, but I can say this over the years, if someone is going to be laid off, we do try to assist those individuals to find positions in other county departments and the individuals who are going to be laid off are also placed on a rehire list. So before a department could try to fill the position, they must go to the rehire list first.

Okay, I only bring this up because listening to the line of questioning and we all made a commitment to do the job fair and open it up, but a lot has changed and continues to change as it relates to our budget. And I just want to make sure that we not putting ourselves in a position because I know that we did flat line for lack of better term, vacant positions within departments and made them eliminate those, which typically would have been our soft landing if you will for the budget constraints that we have. And I applaud the work you're doing. You're doing a phenomenal job. I think it's important for us to do it right and it sounds to me like you are looking at that issue as it relates to some of the financial challenges they're going be facing.

But I just kind of wanted to lay that out there and really highlight that there's no guarantee always as it relates to this county and the budget. I mean, gone are those days, at least from what I can see for the next couple of years. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Supervisor Mitchell?

Thank you very much. To Supervisor Barger's cascading question, help me understand. The cascading, as Supervisor Barger described it, wouldn't be relevant here because you couldn't return to an entity that we no longer have a financial vested interest in. So you

couldn't And I was return to wrong when I said DHR to the executive office. So that's not It's not interdepartmental but to your point, yeah.

Right, the cascading is within a particular department but if there are people that have been cascading and they're going to not have a job, then we would work with those individuals to find placement in the county.

And so for what will be a former LASA employee, their tenure will include their employment or just their LA County employment?

They will be treated as new hires. So they will credited with their tenure over at LASA. We had a lot of conversations about this, if you recall the fifty six and three quarter charter amendment. That was not our recommendation. At the end of the day, we move forward without doing that. So that's the reality of somebody coming in, is why I think it's important that if we make a commitment to hire somebody, we're hiring them on positions that have not shown funding instability. So I will take that to heart and make sure we go back and confirm that analysis looking at looking at the the list here. I don't have a ton of concerns, but but I will double check.

I just wanted to clarify, given the cascading example, just wanted to make sure I was clear. Secondly, another clarifying question. The comment has been made about the timing of the city of LA's budget and over recent years has gotten later and later. How has that impacted loss of employees prior to this year? Have employees been given, and the sixty day is the Warren Act Law, right? That's what I said. So have LAS employees been given a WARN Act notice in previous years because LASA wasn't sure of what their funding level was gonna be?

Let me respond to the first question about the budget timing and I'll turn it over to Director Mahan to answer the impact on LASA employees. But I don't know if I suggested that the timing was getting later and later. I don't know that to be true. I think this is part of the city's regular budget rhythm. But it impacts LASA because by deciding something late in the year, LASA has difficulty planning. In terms of the impact, would just ask Sarah to answer that.

Yes, my understanding and LASA leadership has said it in public meetings that they have had to issue those notices to employees before because of the timing of the city's budget.

Though this year's a little different, that's still not new to LASA employees that they've received Warren Act notices. There's some school districts. LAUSD issues Warren Acts every year. Think people kind of get used to understanding what it means that you get the notice in the mail. It doesn't mean mail you, doesn't mean you don't have a job, it means that there's risk.

I wondered with that comment about the city of LA budget if that was something they were used to. Statement was made about lessons learned and I'm hearing you very clearly that this is something new that the county has done and that it may be something that we do again. I would hope, from my perspective, we're working against the timeline that a board motion created. We were in control of that. And so I would hope that the next time that we do the reverse, that we set up the process first and let the process inform how long it takes before we can do something as drastic as defund one organization and stand up another.

We created the rush and our back's against the wall, so if we could not do that next time, if there is a next time. I hope it's documented in these lessons learned that we think through that a little differently, that if we're gonna make it a commitment to employees, that we make a commitment to employees and make them the priority and figure out the process so that's done well and thoughtfully and strategically and comprehensively before we create a deadline that we have full control over. One question, there's a, and my notes may be off based on your updates, so correct me if they are. I see that there's a commitment for 146 positions.

171.

171. So is there a plan for the remaining positions for, are there outreach workers that have not been scooped up?

Yeah, so that's those ones in that first slide, supervisor. One thing that I see is that departments that have community health workers, for example, that

There's a lateral.

There is. There's also turnover in that classification, so I think moving forward, there will continue to be some opportunities. And DMH, for example, runs its own recruitments for those. They are aware of the timing issues, so I think we can work with them to try to fill some of those additional vacancies that are created by outgoing folks.

Got it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Supervisor Horvath.

Thank you Madam Chair. I just wanted to acknowledge that our CEO acknowledged that this process I think happened in earnest probably back November in the fall. But the motion that came from this board was passed last April and it wasn't until you really got involved. So I just wanna acknowledge you for being very hands on in making this come together because I think if we had that additional time, if we had started taking action back in April, we might not find ourselves in the position that we're in at the present moment. And I also know that regardless of the timeline, we have ongoing issues with LAHSA, an agency that cannot pass an audit.

And I don't think that's a reason we want to continue to invest in an agency. We want to, of course, we want to make sure that we aren't in a situation like this to the extent that it's avoidable. But when we're in a situation where we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars in making change in our community that we're not seeing, we also have to be mindful of what does it take for us to responsibly care for those dollars and make sure that the positions that they fund are managed in an appropriate way. And I think our HR team and everyone who has been involved has worked to the best of their ability to move with the kind of speed and urgency that is required in this moment. So I agree that the circumstances currently are not ideal, but I also think that there are other circumstances that brought us to this point.

And hopefully we don't have agencies that we're working with and we have the same set of circumstances we're facing in this moment too. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, I wanna thank the panel. I know these have been really tough times for us and for you all seated right here in our CEO. But again, I just wanna reiterate, I think the more transparent, more information, especially to our offices and to those impacted, explanations of how this works maybe one on one more importantly is so important, I think.

We can just do that. Absolutely.

Thank you. Okay, with that, EO, let's go to our public comment.

Will the following individuals please come forward and staff will assist you? Claudia Herres, Katie Sheng, Keisha Douglas, and Heather Verdin. As a final reminder for remote participants, to be placed in the speaking queue to address set matter one, if you have not already done so, the raise hand feature on your device or press 3 on your telephone now. Caller with phone number 323380, your line is open. Please state your name and begin.

The board told us that motion impacted loss of employees would be prioritized for county jobs. The April 1 motion clearly states specialty requirements. But current job posting say loss experience as merely desirable. That is not the same thing, and the county CEO is reporting this out inaccurately. At the same time, HSH leadership is actively promoting these admin jobs on LinkedIn.

This right here is precisely why we advocated for charter fifty six and three quarters, but the CEO office said no. Many of us admin workers were outreach and also have lived experience. And now because of the board's actions, we are being laid off in Trump's job market. You made a commitment to motion impacted loss of workers to ensure a transition. Admin and outreach workers are all part of the same union. You have the power to honor that commitment. Right now, you are not.

Thank you. Roy Humphries, your line is open. Please begin.

Yes. Every time I hear the term Lasha, I want to vomit as you continue to fail prosecute. The county is robbing Peter to pay Paul and Peter is MIA. You continue refusing a countywide transient campsite program while 40% of the contacts return to the streets. See my YouTube channel for my weekend intervention intervention and the sheriff's response as Roland Heights considered to be a county ghetto. Also, STC management John Shu receive rescues Roland Heights deserving a statue in the park. Play the mission impossible theme at the beginning of these meetings. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam chair, there are no other remote speakers to address the board. Remote participation for this item is now concluded. We will go to in person speakers. Please begin.

Good morning counsel. My name is Keisha Douglas. I'm the deputy chief talent officer at LASA and I'm just here to highlight the collaboration that we've done with county DHR. I'm very thankful for them We have monthly meetings where we are jointly working collaboratively to ensure that our represented employees are transferred over into the county. So between our collaborations with them, we are also meeting with SEIU.

We will begin meet and confers with them this week and next week to start to discuss the actual layoffs that are gonna happen or the notices that we are going are required to give to staff. But I'm just really here to share the effective collaborations. I think we all have the same ultimate goal and that's job retention. And we will continue to work with county DHR, SEIU to ensure that that happens. Last week, we released somebody on the same day because probation wanted them to start Monday. They were actually off Thursday and Friday but we made it happen. We were able to

Thank you.

Next speaker please. Madam Chair, if I may, I just wanted to thank you for being here and highlight what I heard our Director of HR say that the more clarity we can get in terms of what LASA needs going forward, I think that will also help us in the process, but I'm glad to hear that you found this to be a collaborative process supportive as well for the people we're trying to transition.

You.

Thank for letting me interrupt.

Thank you. Let's go to the next speaker.

Hello supervisors, my name is Katie Sheng, I'm a LAS employee and union steward. You heard today only the county's side of this process. The union's last meeting with the CEO implementation team was March 2 over a month ago. We feel we're being shut out of this process. Even this presentation had information that was not shared with the union.

Week after week, we tell LASA staff that we have no visibility into what's happening. When communication with the union stops, it effectively stops communication with LASA staff. I'm not aware of any meeting the county has held with LASA staff since November 19 and have not been notified of upcoming ones. We have twelve weeks until hundreds are of until hundreds are laid off at LASA. You all committed to hire 315 LASA represented workers into the county. This cannot be done without us. Supervisors, we ask that you direct the CEO implementation team to schedule regular meetings with the union, share your employment updates and data in a timely manner, and in good faith, use our feedback to

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi. My name is Heather Varden. I work in homeless services and I'm here today as an SEIU seven twenty one union steward and member of their regional council. We are still in the meet and consult process yet these recruitments moved forward without prioritizing loss of representative workers. Other than HET at the job fair, some people started in DMH last week while represented loss of staff are still waiting for answers.

Communication has stalled, the information keeps changing, and we are not being kept in the loop as promised. The county has already moved away from its original promise of three fifteen hires. No information sessions have been held with LASA employees to explain where they align, what positions connect to their current work, or what the actual pathway is. SCIU should be on these panels with you answering these questions in real time, not pushed to public comment while decisions move forward without us. I personally have applied to over 17 county jobs without one single interview. That is not what prioritizing this workforce looks like. It is frustrating to hear statements that do not match what workers Next are

speaker please.

Claudia Herrez, DWC DPSS. Losing your job is definitely not an amazing process or anything that anybody with a level head wants to go through. Ascertaining the skills of these individuals is necessary to better understand the best placement for them. Perhaps some may not belong at Lhasa or at the county at all. Maybe they belong in perhaps in the entertainment industry where there's many, many options.

I believe the lessons learned must be evaluated and determined and come up with best practices to utilize in the event this situation occurs. I know it's something very new.

Thank you. Madam chair and members of the board, that concludes public comment on this item.

This report will be received and filed. We will now move on to item, oh.

Hearing no objection, that will be the order.

We will now move on implementing the county's vision for the Department of Youth Development, and item 22, strengthening services and aligning resources for probation and foster youth impacted by human trafficking, which were held by Supervisor Horvath. For members of the public joining us remotely to comment on these items, please use the raise hand feature if you're online or press 3 if on the telephone. Guillermo Villarosa, Chief Probation Officer, Brandon Nichols, Director of Children and Family Services, David Carroll, director of youth development, and doctor Janice Phelps, executive director of special program support and transformation, Los Angeles County Office of Education are available for questions. For the departmental speakers, please state your name and title for the record when you address the board.

Okay, let's get started. I'm gonna turn to Supervisor Horvath and then to

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I wanna thank Supervisor Han for joining me as a coauthor on item 20. I know that this work is about moving from vision to action and ensuring that Los Angeles County follows through on our commitment to have of Youth Development lead programming for young people in our juvenile justice facilities. I wanna recognize advocates, individuals with lived experience, and families who have pushed us to this point and who continue to challenge us to do better by our young people. Your voices have shaped this work and must continue to guide it.

This board adopted a youth justice reimagined vision for the county, one that calls on us to move away from carceral systems and toward care based community centered approaches, and I believe that DYD is central to making that vision real. But vision alone is not enough. We have to be intentional about implementation, about aligning our systems, our resources, and our accountability with the future we've committed to build. When we established DYD, we were clear about its role to lead with a youth development approach, and DYD has been doing the work to prepare for this responsibility. They built out youth development networks, expanded the RAY program, and cultivated strong partnerships with community based providers who are ready to show up for our young people with the care and support that they deserve.

And at the same time, this board has declared emergency tied to the conditions and care in our juvenile facilities. That urgency demands action, not delay. And that's, what this moment is to make good on our commitments and to continue moving forward with purpose. This motion is a step in that direction. It won't solve every challenge in our youth justice system, but it is a meaningful step towards putting our values into practice and building a system rooted in care, rehabilitation, and real opportunity for young people to thrive.

We are holding this item, which is focused implementing the county's vision for Department of Youth Development with agenda item 22. So I'll hold my comments on item 22 and turn first to my co author, if that's okay, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Supervisor Horvath, for bringing forward this very important motion. I really appreciate joining you as your co author on this. This motion aligns with what the Board has already envisioned and approved, which is our Department of Youth Development taking the lead on programming services in our juvenile probation facilities. And the timing is right. Our Probation Department is facing a chronic staffing crisis, challenges maintaining compliance with BSCC and DOJ, and the threat of potential receivership.

Amid these challenges, the department has struggled to provide consistent, high quality programs for the youth in our care. I've heard firsthand from our young people at Los Padrinos that they want more programs like vocational training, financial literacy, art, music. And I know so many of our young people who have entered these facilities have experienced severe trauma and are in need of mental health and life skills programs that will help them heal and succeed once they return home. We need probation and DYD to work well together along with involved stakeholders to achieve the goal we all want: to provide a safe and consistent environment for our youth so that they have access to robust programming that will keep them engaged and set them up for success. So I had a few questions.

Don't can I take the okay? So David, I'm gonna ask you some questions. What do you see as the current programming challenges as you understand them, and how do you plan to address them once you take over program administration?

Sure, and good afternoon Board of Supervisors. Thank you Supervisor Troibevath and Supervisor Hahn for bringing this motion. It's a complex question, but I certainly see the unique programming that different individuals and different units need that are very different depending on what population that you're serving. So for example, at Los Padrinos, most young people are only there for a short period of time, less than thirty days. But then there's a population that have been there for years, and those young people are quite a bit older.

They tend to need a different type of programming and additional programming than the other units. Likewise, you may have individuals with very unique interests and wants and needs, and having that real care coordination where you have an opportunity to learn about that young person, figure out what they're interested in, and find programming that fits their individual needs, I think is something that's one of the challenges. And quite frankly, it's tough for probation to be responsible for both the care and the security, I mean the custody and security, and be able to take the time to really get to know the young people and get into what they are interested in developmentally at the same time. So we're looking forward to addressing that challenge. Also logistically, we really want to help the CBOs as they enter and as they go to the units that they're serving, and as they exit to make sure that they've got all the support that they need.

And while giving that support, it gives us an opportunity to also provide some oversight and some evaluation to see if they're where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there, if they're serving the right number of people. So those are certainly some of the challenges. Underlining everything always is resources.

Certainly our probation department has some programming in place now at our facilities. Are you envisioning your department just taking over the programming from probation, or are you already beginning to envision expanding and enhancing?

Absolutely, so both. So we've been in strong communication with probation, actually for quite a period of time, but even more in the last several months. Taking over the developmentally appropriate programming that they offer now, expanding that, adding it to the mix of programming that DYD already offers, but making sure again that there is robust and plentiful programming available to all of the young people. Another area that I failed to mention was the girls and gender expansive youth at CVK oftentimes don't have access to the amount of programming that some the boys have had, right, at Barrie J for example. So in some cases just supporting what's already existing, but in other situations adding to and supplementing what's available.

Right, and you may have touched on this in terms of challenges, but I know we contract with a lot of organizations, and I've again seen with my own eyes that there are certain units that just don't have enough programs, especially, I think you touched on it, the young people who are older, and so they're not in school during the

day. Right.

So they have this enormous amount of free time that they're not in school. How do you think you could address that part of their day with important and specific need based programs?

Certainly, it's not hard because all you have to do is ask, right? And they will tell you what they're interested in. We got it in writing in multiple different ways. Art is at the top of the list in music, but also as you mentioned vocational training. So I think working in partnership with probation and education services to try to figure out what time slot that we can have access to to provide the things that the young people have asked for. They're pretty vocal about what it is they want, and they all, to a person, want access to more programming.

Right, I know. I hear that all the time. Again, our goal is we have these young people as our captive audience, no pun intended, and we have an opportunity to give them some hope, to give them a vision possibly of where they could see themselves going when they get released. And I I just feel like we've had a lot of missed opportunities, and I'm hoping that under your leadership, you we could really take this time that they're with us. And by the way, even in Los Padrinos, you know, it's not a short time as you mentioned.

They're there three or four years sometimes, and they're they're desperate, I think, to have something that can really give their life some meaning. And I think all those that you mentioned, those kinds of programs could certainly do that. Joe, I'm just gonna ask my last question is that it's obvious to me anyway that DYD cannot be expected to take on this enormous lift without the resources to do so. I really don't wanna set them up to fail by providing them with inadequate staffing or funding. Can you talk a little bit about your plan to help ensure that this is a successfully resourced transition?

Sure. Thank you, Supervisor. So first I'll say there's a lot of reporting that has to do before we can really get to the tangibles of what's being proposed. I can speak generally to how we would approach something like this. So if we have programs or programmatic functions moving from probation to DYD, my expectation is that the funding that supports programs and functions would move as well to DYD.

So that would kind of be the first thing we would look at to see if probation is not doing it anymore, then the funding should go to DYD. There's the substantial amount of state funding that we draw on each year to fund activities in the probation department. So that might be the next place we look to see what state resources we have that can be used to support these efforts at DYD. We have an obligated fund balance that we had set aside for Youth Justice Reimagine. That is still there.

It is I don't wanna say it's depleted, but it is not as robust as it used to be because we used it to stand up, DYD and support some of the current functions. After we're done with with those items, we'll know the gap, and we'll know what the NCC cost is. Of course, any new ongoing NCC allocation goes through the fiscal resilience protocol process. I do believe that there are some elements that are not just a drag and drop from probation to DYD, primarily care coordination, which I understand to be a new expanded role. So I expect there to be some cost and we'll understand that better once their report is finalized.

Yeah, thank you. And David, during our budget presentation, I believe your ask, you had a pretty significant ask in terms of staff and dollars. And was your ask related to this transition?

Yes, absolutely. So while the report back certainly will dig into the details and certainly refine the numbers that were presented, we've been working on this for a long time. So we have identified what we think the cost is going to be, and that includes both the programming, just the flat out opportunities for young people, but it also adds a component of care coordination, which would be folks with a social work background working directly with the young people to create a care plan and having that plan to follow them as they matriculate through the process, whether it's into a camp or a hall or SYTF or even as they return to community. So that is the component that CEO Nikita is mentioning. So the total cost of everything is about 21,800,000.0 for the first phase, which would be all the programming at all the facilities, again in our estimation.

Right, the staff is built into that amount. So 15,000,000 of that is roughly the flat out programming, and then there's the care coordination piece which is about 5,000,000.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you Madam Chair. Supervisor Barger?

May I speak on '22 as well? Thank you very much. I'm glad that there's an acknowledgement departments are working together in this, transition of effort to make sure that the resources are are going to be allocated in in the ways that were mentioned by our CEO, and and thank you for the work that you're doing to realize that. As it relates to item 22, I wanna turn to, this motion on services for youth impacted by human trafficking. I wanna start with something simple and unequivocal, that Los Angeles County will not tolerate human trafficking in our communities.

In recent years, the county has moved towards a public health approach focused on prevention, community based care, and equity. And that approach must guide all of our efforts including how we respond to the commercial sexual exploitation of children. This shift from reactive system driven responses to proactive community based care is the right one, but we have to make it real in practice. The recent report back from probation and DCFS makes clear we're not there. It highlights serious gaps between the resources we have and the services actually reaching our young people, especially when it comes to staffing, referral pathways, and the use of time limited state funding.

So I wanna emphasize that this is not a funding problem. This is a systems and accountability problem, and it is on us to fix it. It is unacceptable that vacancies in probation's child trafficking unit are limiting referrals for our young people who need help. It is unacceptable that trafficking survivors with no recent arrests are still under probation supervision and at risk of rearrest for technical violations. And it is unacceptable that millions of dollars intended for direct services went unspent on those services while young people went without support.

It is unacceptable that placement instability for trafficked youth and DCFS care continues to exceed national standards. So if we are going to, as a county family, all of us, be serious about a care first public health approach, we must ensure resources are actually reaching young people quickly, consistently, and in coordination with our community partners. We owe that to survivors and to their families, and we have more work to do to get there. So with that, I wanna get into some questions. First for probation.

Your report states that you have five vacancies in the child trafficking unit and that you're taking innovation an innovative approach with a global perspective to address these vacancies and the unit's needs. What does that mean and how will you ensure that young people in probation custody get the supportive services they need since probation is one of the primary parties making referrals?

Good afternoon, supervisors. Essentially, it means that we continue to look at how many of these services can be provided by non sworn staff. The truth of the matter is that we simply cannot support, don't have the number of peace officers to dedicate to this special unit or other special units while still trying to comply with, which we are, with the requirements for the staffing under the DOJ agreement at the facilities. So it's simply an acknowledgment that strategy has to be moving as much as we can from this unit to either non sworn through contracts or through different departments. The idea that in the near future we would be able to grow this unit back to having 15 or so officers, or even doubling what we have now, is impractical, and it would simply mean that I'd have to make a decision, am I going to comply with this unit functioning, or am I going to comply with court order for staffing the facilities?

And I think the answer has to be clear, is for those that we already have in custody, that has to be their priority. And that doesn't mean that we don't know how important it is to provide these other services, but in the near future, as much of it has to shift to non sworn work.

Some of the people, I hear you, and some of the people who are in your custody are there because they're not getting these services. So given the staffing challenges you rightly acknowledge, how are we getting referrals done today?

So there are still referrals happening, so there was still a director, there was still a supervisor, and so I don't want anybody to think that it's that we've gone down to zero and this isn't being provided. I think that the question at hand would be, if we had more staff dedicated, could our reach be further? It's simply prioritizing the fact that the ones that we have in custody, we certainly are getting those referrals. But there was also this component that was sort of reaching out and doing preventative work and the field work. That has suffered.

That portion of it has suffered because the prioritization for us is those that are in custody. Again, it's not ideal. If this was an area that I could make more robust again, I would. It's simply a public acknowledgement that even in specialized units like this, this is where we are today.

For DCFS, why are our referrals to advocacy organizations so low when we know we have kids in need of these supportive services? And why do the contracts consistently have unspent dollars allocated to direct services and how do you see our ability to change that?

Thank you, Supervisor. Brandon Nichols, Director of the Department of Children and Family Services. Appreciate your board's attention to this issue. Appreciate champions for our traffic youth. Honestly, need them. We need people lifting that up. So I appreciate this opportunity to talk publicly about this issue. Our referrals to advocacy services have remained fairly constant, about 17 a month. But the number of hotline calls coming in identifying trafficked youth has decreased significantly. It's down, I wanna say, almost 40%.

So people out in the community, law enforcement folks, are just not contacting and calling the hotline enough. So we've expanded the criteria we use to make a referral just to, make sure that we're, making services available to everybody, even those that are at risk now. But I think our focus on identification to DCFS needs to be strengthened so that we're finding the kids that are out there, we're getting them into loving arms and getting them serviced.

And do you think the reduced call volume is because it's not happening as often or because perhaps Unfortunately, law enforcement isn't

I worry that it's happening more than ever. Mhmm. I've been in personal conversations with some of the chiefs and the sheriff's department folks at one point. There have been changes in the law. They they were challenged by funding and staffing, and they've reallocated resources. And I don't want to drag them here without them present, I feel like there's been a little bit of a disengagement because they've had to focus on other things. But certainly on my side, at the side of the guy who answers the telephone call, the phone is ringing less. Even though I think the number of kids out there is as great as ever.

And so, for both probation and DCFS, can you talk about why we aren't spending SB $8.55 and SB $794 on services and supports instead of staffing, which is what they're currently being used for?

I can answer for the DCFS side. I don't know about the probation side as much. I guess I wanna start with, we wrote a report back. It was let's see how many pages? I think it was 19 pages. It's it's a little complicated and I think it confused folks to some degree. I apologize for that. These are technically difficult, issues. There's a lot of detail and sometimes we simplify. I wanna start by saying we claim and spend all the money that the state makes available to serve CSEC youth.

And in fact, your board through us, it almost doubles it. The state gives us about $34,000,000 a year and then we put another $34,000,000 on top of it. So all the money that the state gives us, we take full advantage of and then we make our own local investment. In terms of particular contracts, we've provisioned them large for large numbers of kids so that they're there to help kids when a kid is identified and referred over. The fact is not enough kids are going over to spend that entire amount.

So when it's underspent, then we take it back and spend it on other C Sec related activities, which could include our own staff. DCFS is pretty robustly staffed here. We have 41 dedicated items to CSEC. It helps underwrite some of that cost. We also spend it on other services, supporting Dream Court, housing, and advocacy services.

For probation?

Yeah, with respect to CSEC allocation, it's a fair question. Our work there isn't done, so I think that we'll make a correction on the next report back on here. I think that we had listed for the fiscal year maybe $425,000 had been unspent. I think that was a mistake. I think at least closer to $250,000 of that are already allocated for contracts through DYD, so we're really looking at that smaller number of $160,000 which we're working with CEO to make sure that we spend that down.

Okay, and the essence of the question, it's helpful to understand why we are where we are, and ideally we wanna be spending those dollars on services supports. It is my understanding that since 2024, only 73 referrals were made under the LASD MOU and only 43 under the LAPD MOU. And you touched on this a little bit in terms of perhaps some of the challenges our law enforcement partners are are facing. The contract amount and outreach strategy have not changed despite the low referrals, limited law enforcement capacity, and the county's shift to a public health approach. So how can we better evaluate these efforts and think through alternative recommendations so we're using these dollars in the ways that they're intended and really maximizing impact for our young people?

Either one. Yeah, I'll be

happy to talk about that, supervisor. I worry that on this program and other programs we become routine and stagnant. But the landscape around us changes and we need to keep tracking and adapting. That is my challenge to my staff. I've recently made some changes in staffing on my side.

And I'm gonna keep pushing them to think differently and think better. So for example, in the past, we only referred youth that were actually trafficked. But now and into the future, we're gonna refer youth that are at risk of being trafficked. We're gonna expand our net, cast a wider net, try to keep kids from falling into trafficking. Through the direction of your board and leadership of some of community, we've expanded to include economic trafficking. So there have been some changes, but we can't just rest on them. We can't say it's going great. It's not going great. You need to keep pushing us. We need to keep pushing ourselves to think new.

Supervisor Horvath, I think you're right. I think essentially we need to take a look at the model and see if maybe we're essentially answering yesterday's question and not today's. What I will tell you is that you're not alone. This is an area important to us. We acknowledge it. I've spent most of my career in this space. I'm a lifetime sexual assault investigator association member. I did most of my career not in narcotics, not in gangs, but in sexual assaults, high risk sex offenders, sexually violent predator. I was in the state sex offender management board. So this is important to me personally.

I wish we could use the old model, which is to throw resources in terms of people. Because when we send people to the problem, they figure it out. We, in probation, don't have that opportunity today, which is why I mention understanding that there's still unspent resources to really rely more on our partners to make sure that we're the liaison between the services person rather than provide the services ourself is probably the answer moving forward so that we can have broader reach.

I appreciate that acknowledgement because I think that's uniquely impacting this issue. I don't think this issue is the only issue that suffers from that problem. And I think that's why sort of our hopeful shift by including DYD in service provision can help us in that regard. I think we've acknowledged staffing challenges and we're trying to move in a different direction not only, from a vision standpoint, but also given the the challenges that we face. And we need to serve these kids.

We cannot leave these dollars unspent. We cannot leave them unhelped. Unhelped. So finally, I'll go to DYD. In your report back, you noted that, you would need 3,840,000 annually to build your capacity to support youth impacted by trafficking who are referred by DCFS and probation. This estimate as I understand it is based on initial projections by probation and DCFS of about 500 referred youth per year, which is a number as we've heard far greater than the number of young people, we 've ever served annually. So have you explored which, if any, of the unspent funds could be shifted to DYD to cover this work?

Supervisor, I am not prepared to answer that question. I am curious if Taylor who has been working directly on this can help me with that particular answer. Thank you.

Hello supervisor.

Hi.

We have started exploring but to Director Carroll's point don't have clarity on which the unspent funds could work for those staffing needs because they're ongoing cost needs but we'll continue to explore you know as we're exploring the need for capacity building for sure.

And I'm ending there because once again I want to restate on this particular issue, this is not a resource issue. We have the funding. And so among these three departments, we need to find solutions to make sure that those dollars are being invested, especially when some of them are time limited. They are given to us intentionally to address this specific issue. We cannot afford to leave resources on the table, when these young people you know, there may be opportunity to get them out of custody so they aren't people that need to be in your facilities and can instead be better served, by a different kind of program.

So I appreciate the collective focus on figuring out how we solve this problem, how we better use our resources, and as you say, address the problems that we're facing today because they are challenging, but they are funded and we need to make sure that we are using those funds accordingly. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Supervisor Barger.

Thank you and thank you for these questions. I know just from some of the work I've dealing with the sex traffic, they really are traumatized and it takes a long time for the healing. And it's important for us to invest in that support recognizing that oftentimes they go back, back to the street or back to the person that was trafficking them. And so it takes a while to really help these individuals. I hope that we will recognize that it's not a some people think you just pick them up the street and put them in a home and everything is fine.

And it's just not that simple. And I know Brandon, we've dealt with this with some of our group homes where we had young women that had been trafficked that had had a difficult time not going back onto the street. But with that, I have a question regarding the first motion. I don't have any concern aside from hoping there will be coordination between the departments to ensure a smooth transition during implementation. I I think it's important because we're all on the same team.

These are the same youth whether it be probation or DYD that's providing services. The bottom line is that we should all be working together on that. DYD has already established a presence inside the facilities, correct? Correct. So that should help guide this expanded role and hopefully will function as a practice moving forward. But David, I know this will come back as a report, but what do you anticipate needing and I know that it was asked by Supervisor Han, additional staff inside the facilities and what is the broader vision as it relates to just not even the staffing, just the vision moving forward?

Sure, so thank you for that question. There are really three pillars to the plan, the programming plan. One is to increase the access and the amount of programming and the diversity of the type of programming that's available. The next pillar is the program coordination, would be DYD staff assisting in helping people get to where they need to go, CBOs get to where they need to go, the appropriate units, making sure they had the resources they needed to perform whatever service they're performing. And then providing the oversight, the data, the accountability as part of that process.

And then the third pillar is the care coordination, which was that individualized planning that I was mentioning earlier to make sure that we were meeting the needs of the young people but also creating a portfolio that they could take with them as they exit the facility, and quite frankly when they go to court, to have something showing some of the wonderful productive things that they've done along the way. So those are the three pillars, and of course there would be staff that would go along with each one of those. We're still trying to determine, and part of the report back will determine the level. We've taken an approach and provided that in our budget request. But of course as we dig deeper into this that could change.

But you're gonna have benchmarks, outcomes so that we can see the data as it relates to what's going on?

That's absolutely important. Part of the report back also is looking at the baseline data that probation has now so that we can really determine whether we are improving the conditions for the young people and the amount of programming. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence where we say sometimes programs don't show up. I would much rather have a statistic that said 72% of the time programming CBOs show up on time or whatever that percentage happens to be.

And then Guillermo, I know that there is staff currently providing this service. I mean, how do you see this working as it relates to blending it and getting the transition?

Thank you for the opportunity. Essentially, my read on this is a reaffirmation of prior actions by this board and the creation of DYD and certainly expediting that transition. I think the only area where we'll have to continue to collaborate is that, certainly funding for providers and that move across the DYD is the easier component. I think that what I've heard is that there's gonna be an additional infrastructure sought at DYD to be able to do this, and that staff certainly wouldn't be coming from probation because we're not using additional staffing aside from our peace officers to do this work. So we don't have separate staff that's dedicated to do programming on the HR side or any of that.

So I would just say, I would like us to be very cautious in our conversations on the fact that this isn't an operation that you would simply lift up and take over with staffing, because that staffing plays double and triple duty when they're not simply dedicated to this. I think in part what I've heard is the fact that we use our peace officers to do this work, and what we're trying to do is go in a different direction. So naturally, I know that we wouldn't be expecting those PY to go over, but rather funding of some sort for them to be able to bring up their own infrastructure.

So that means the staff will be able to be transferred into a position that you need?

I don't think there is any. I think the peace officer staff that we have that is performing some of this work or being the coordinators have to stay with us to be able to do the custodial work.

That's my point. You can find work for them, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood that. My answer is yes.

Yeah, good. Keep it up. For item number 22, I understand the need to move the funding from probation to DYD given the upcoming expenditure deadline. At the same time, some of the directors included in here seem like items that would typically have gone through the cluster process. So I'd like to hear from David how DYD plans to ensure the remaining $166,000 in SB seven ninety four funding is fully spent?

Sure, and I know that in late twenty twenty five, DYD was approached by probation to set up purchase orders with five different organizations to try to expedite getting that money out to the organizations that we're supporting. My understanding is about 178,000 is what we're going to get out as part of that purchase order process. My understanding is that the motion, directive one, really just changes it to a contractual relationship as opposed to the purchase order situation that we've set up now. So we got the list of organizations that we've been working with that are actually boots on the ground, actually working directly with the victims of sex trafficking that are kind of dictating and asking for more resources to continue those activities. So that is my understanding.

Taylor, can feel free to

So you don't see a problem with expanding the 01/1966 with existing I

do not. Contracts in I don't see a problem at all. Again, the organizations have been approaching us for increasing and asking for more, but of course with the PO there's a limit to how far you can go. So I don't see a challenge there.

Is there a limit CEO?

There typically is a limit supervisor, yes. Now I'd have to no, you're asking me what the limits are? I'd have to get back to you on the specific limits. But I know that when I try to do something over 25,000 I'm told I can't do it. So I'd have to go back and check the numbers.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Brandon, I have long pushed for additional advocacy and housing contracts for the C Sec population. Item 22 asks about unspent funds and I know that there continues to be a need for housing for this population. Can or can DCFS think outside the box to add additional beds for this population using unspent funds? Is that possible? I know that I've been approached by non profits that want to receive funding to operate homes?

Sure. Not with unspent funds, because like I said, we're spending everything we get and then adding more. But I do think we need to continue to focus on housing. I will say we have a couple vendors who specialize in housing for this population, Zoe and Optimist. And Optimist recently partnered with another group, I can't remember their name, it's something Mentor Love to buy seven homes.

Love Mentor.

Love Mentor, thank you. To buy seven homes. Of those seven homes, we only have two beds under contract. There's four more beds available. If we could find money to get those four beds secured for these kids, that's four more kids who are living in good specialized housing. And I know there's at least one other vendor that we already work with on other issues that wants to expand their housing. So there's people interested in doing this work even though it's hard work. It's a matter of finding money and contracting with them, but I hear your call. If I could just take a You moment

said you're only paying for two beds but you want to purchase more beds?

They have two that we're under contract with. They have an additional, I want to say it's seven. We'd love to pay for them if we can find the money to do it. We're working on that. We did do study that was presented to your board several years ago. It was Nickel and Cal State LA, which looked at the housing needs of this population. What it came back with, just to refresh your recollection, is every kid needs a different kind of housing. There's not one we can buy. So I think we need to make sure that we continue to diversify the housing options so that they meet the needs of the kids that we have. But another thing I wanted to call out and just because it's relevant and this is probably the best place to fit it in in that study.

It said that our system is very disproportionate on this issue. While seven to eight percent of kids in the population are black, two thirds, sixty to seventy percent of the trafficked kids looked at by nickel were black. So I just want to remind everybody that as we make plans, make housing, develop programs, we need to keep that in mind because it is inequitable the way black kids are trafficked.

Do we have a percentage on how many are, what percentage are foster youth?

Total in the county? Probably, I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sorry. A fair number.

Yeah, I I just know that it's interesting how this works, interesting in a sick way. I know that we've had them go infiltrate our emergency shelters to try to

We have five fifty kids right now, I believe, under DCFS supervision that have been trafficked or almost being trafficked. There's a good number. And I'm sure we're still under counting. I'm sure there's that are still not identified.

Yeah, mean it's already a vulnerable population and they prey on their It's so sad. Yeah. Is there a healthier community, stronger families, thriving children, funds available for the human trafficking training?

Don't know. What I do know is that we have funds available right now today for all the training that is currently planned. If there was an additional training that folks, my team, or others wanted to identify, I probably could find money for it. I mean, are leftover amounts in the contracts at the end of each year that don't carry over. That's what we're using to spend on things like staff. We can look at that to see what might be available. But to commit to large scale housing projects, like that money is not certain enough for landlords entering the contracts and things.

So the HST funds, you're confident we're not leaving any money on the table as it relates to utilizing that?

There remains a small pool of HST funds which are local county flexible monies.

Right.

At the end of each year, they've been carrying over each year. Those don't go away. We try to maximize the use of state funds that are made available to us and would only dip into those HST funds if we had to. But there is some amount in that pot.

Okay. And then thank you for that. And in closing, Guillermo, I just have to publicly give you a shout out as it relates to the changes you made at Barry Neidorff. I've heard that while we've got a ways to go, the change in leadership has made a big difference in terms of accountability, even in terms of programming. So I want to thank you publicly for what you did because while I know that our facilities are in need of a lot.

Sometimes the people that are heading it up can make or break the quality of services that we provide. And by changing leadership at Barry Neidorff, the feedback I've gotten both at a state level but also among our advocates has been it's a difference between night and day. So I just want to thank you for that.

I appreciate that supervisor and folks know nobody is tougher on probation staff than I am. I thank you for the opportunity to acknowledge that the truth of the matter is this only works because we have dedicated staff. This is their vocation. They want to come to work to make a difference in people's lives. And I still believe that given the right opportunities and structure, those folks provide the best environment for change for young people that we have. I think that's the beginning of that. We're seeing that at Neidorff, but thank you for that acknowledgement of our staff and the hard work that they're doing.

Okay, great. Supervisor Mitchell?

Thank you very much Madam Chair. Before I start, didn't want the last point that Mr. Nichols made to get lost in translation. When you elevated the issue, the disproportionality of youth who are trafficked are black, I assumed your comment was to also suggest that we should be clear about the support services we put in place need to carry cultural competency, geographic competency as well. That the point you were making? Absolutely, if

it came across any other way, was just misspeaking.

I just didn't want it to be

lost. Percent.

Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation. Thank you to my colleagues who brought the motion forward. Supervisor Barker mentioned the fact that we're all on the same team. I think that's sometimes easy for us on this side of the dais to say but it's not often consistently operationalized.

So I hope that the departments here understand how critical it is that you perceive that you are on the same team in terms of making this transition seamless, effective, and for it to work. That's gonna be important. We talk about programming consistently as board members and the need. We are clear that it's essential to their healing, their rehabilitation, and their ability to return to their communities better prepared to be successful. I agree that it's important that we check-in with the young people about what programming they wanna engage in, but I think it's also important for departments departments like like DMH DMH and others to also be at the table providing program we know they need.