Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Shyammy. Doctor. Karim. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call this Stanislaus County Board of Supervisor meeting to order. The time is 09:04AM on March 31. If I could ask everyone to please stand for the pledge of allegiance and then remain standing for the invocation by pastor Lonnie Scouse from Big Valley Grace.

Thank you for this opportunity. I'm gonna read a short passage of scripture. It's in Micah chapter six. And this question is asked with what shall I come to the lord and how myself before the lord on high and bow myself before the god on high? Shall I come to him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the lord take delight in thousands of rams and 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, o man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of us? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

Let's pray. Father, I'm so grateful, lord, that you are the king of kings. You are the lord of lords. You are above all things, and all things, lord, are in your hands. Every good thing flows from you, and we're so grateful, father, for your provision in our community. We thank you for these men who are public servants that we have elected to represent us on critical issues. I thank you for their businesses, for the men and women that they influence, as employers and as employees. Thank I you, Lord, for the group that is here today, the many men and women are making sacrifices of time to be here. And all of these things, Lord, we recognize and see your handiprint, and we say, Lord, thank you. Thank you for your goodness.

Thank you for being the shepherd of our lives. Thank you that you have plans for us, for calamity, but for a future and a hope. We're grateful, Lord, that when we seek you, we will find you, and grateful that you are near. So, Lord, we give you praise for this day. I ask, Lord, you give these men wisdom at the matters at hand. Would you help them to lead carefully and to serve well, not themselves, but for this community. Thank you for the peace of our community and our county. Lord, we pray your richest blessing upon it. Lord, help us to seek you with all of our hearts. Thank you for this season and as remembering remembrance that you are the king of kings, lord of lords who's coming again. And we bless you and thank you in your precious name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. And

lord bless you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, pastor. Okay. Today, we have two presentations. The first presentation, will be by Carmen Morad, and it's declaring Assyrian Heritage Month in Stanislaus County. Welcome, Carmen. Good

morning, Chairman Keza, supervisors, CEO, Jody Hayes, county council, and madam clerk. My name is Carmen Morad, and I am honored to present today in recognition of the Assyrian Heritage Month in Stanislaus County, April 2026. I would like to recognize and welcome leaders of the Assyrian community, including members of the clergy and representatives from the following organizations, the Assyrian Wellness Collaborative, the Assyrian National Council of Sanislaus County, the Assyrian AIDS Society of America Central Valley Chapter, and Vote Assyrian. We also have a very special guest visiting us all the way from University of Salamanca in Spain. Doctor Efraim Yaldis is professor and founder of the NINVA academic chair at the University of Salamanca.

Welcome, Doctor Yaldis. As we celebrate the Assyrian New Year 6776, we affirm the importance of heritage, culture, and service in our community. We remember and are inspired by the late supervisor Josh Paul who served honorably and represented District 2 on this board. We also remember the late Paul Warda who served on the Modesto Irrigation District and was a visionary leader. But last but not least, we remember and honor the late Hank Adams, a World War II bombardier and the son of the late Reverend Doctor.

Isaac Adams. Today, the Assyrian community continues to be inspired by leaders such as the former City Of Turlock Chief of Police Nino Amir Far, and Lazar Piro of the UC Merced Board of Directors. It is my distinct privilege to recognize the following individuals for their outstanding contributions and excellence in public service, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and education. I will call your names. Please come up.

John Lazar, Marian Cannon, Alice Ishu Pollard, John Malek Ismail, and Francis Sargas who is not here today. I will briefly read some of the highlights and believe me it's brief. There's so much that they have done. John Lazar served as mayor of the city of Turlock from 2006 to 2014 and previously served four terms on the Turlock City Council from 1992 to 2006. He has served on numerous boards and commissions and remains on an active active member of the community through his service with the Turlock Historical Society and the Rotary Club of Turlock since 1985.

Marion Cannon is the president and CEO of the Stanislaus Community Foundation, A first generation Assyrian American born in Iraq, Marion immigrated with her family to Canada at age seven and later moved to The United States as a high school student. After completing her education, she joined the Stanislaus Community Foundation as CEO in the late twenty twelve. Since that time, the organization has invested over $63,000,000 in local nonprofits and more than $3,400,000 in scholarships for students. During Marian's tenure, the foundation has quadrupled its assets under management and tripled its grant making. The foundation continues to lead initiatives supporting education, economic opportunity, and civic engagement.

In 2015, Marion was named outstanding woman of Santa Claus County. In 2017, she was named distinguished alumna of the year by Modesto Junior College. In 2018, she received the Modesto Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Service Award. In 2012, she received the champion of the American Dream Award from Stanislaus State University. Alice Ishu Pollard was born in Turlock and graduated from Turlock High School and Stanislaus State University with a bachelor's degree in political science.

She taught government, economics, US history, and student government at Turlock High until 2000, when she was promoted to assistant principal in charge of student activities and curriculum. In 2008, she became principal of the career Technical Education for all secondary schools in the Turlock Unified School District, while also serving as principal of the largest adult education program in the county. In 2013, Alice was elected to the Stanislaus County Board of Education where she currently serves as chair. John Malek Ismail is a respected Assyrian community leader and business owner who has contributed greatly to the vitality of Santa Claus County. He serves on the Santa Claus County Economic Development Board where he contributes his experience and leadership to initiatives that support business growth, job creation, and economic opportunity throughout the county.

Throughout his career, John has been recognized for his support of educational initiatives, Assyrian cultural preservation, and community development. In recognition of his family's contributions to education and heritage, California State University Stanislaus honored the Ismail family by naming the Malek Yako Malek Ismail section of the university library after John's grandfather. Last but not least, we proudly recognize Francis Sargas for his outstanding leadership, scholarship, and lifelong commitment to preserving and promoting the history, culture, and identity of the Assyrian people. Throughout his generosity and vision, he helped establish the Francis Sargus Modern Assyrian Heritage Collection at Stanislaus State University, creating an enduring academic resource dedicated to documenting the modern Assyrian experience for future generations. Accepting on his behalf are Doctor.

Aaron Hughes, Doctor. Jim Tudio, Doctor. Ron Rodriguez, and Mary Wepler. Thank you all for your attention, and thank you to the honorees for your contributions and happy Assyrian New Year.

So we're gonna do one by one. Come on up here, Mary. Okay. Right here. So everyone just heard how the community foundation has grown under miss Cannon's leadership, but it doesn't tell you the whole story when you when you talk about Stanislaus 2030, which is our lead economic development. We put ARPA money into it. It was kind of an idea. She was one of the people who had the idea through Fresno Drive, who did had done something different, and she asked the question, if we had a billion dollars tomorrow, if someone gave us a billion dollars, how do we spend that money to make our community better? And it's really taken the county along with the foundation, but it's taken us down a path to really lift people up in this community and she's been largely responsible for that. She could talk you out of your shoes.

She's got the she's got that gift for sure, but but charm for sure. But I so much appreciate and what what Carmen and I were talking about or she had the idea of honoring local series, there are so many, and it was a very difficult process to decide how we were gonna do it, or how she was going to do it this year. But again, on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, and so I'm gonna give you each your certificate, and then we're all gonna stay up here as I read the proclamation, and I'm not sure where it is, could you? Is it? Should've been more organized.

There we go. So again, on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, again, you've done so much for the Ascension community, but you've really done so much for the community as a whole, and I think that's where you really stand out. Congratulations. Alright. Love John. So John Lazar, everyone knows he was the mayor of Turlock, that, he runs a successful real estate business with his wife. Can you imagine working day in and day out with your wife? He does it. It was. That's for sure.

But that's not, again, he cut his teeth on the council and then as mayor. And when I just became a board of supervisor member, I leaned on John, and he's been truly instrumental in my success, showing me what it means to be a, you know, an ombudsman for the community. He's completely ingratiated himself not only within the community of Turlock, he used to work for a congressman and where he got a start. So but he's been really helpful for me, trying to get through to the Turlock community because it's not always easy, when you're you're jumping around to Waterford, Houston, and La Grange, and Diner. And he was I I can't say more than you've just been the most wonderful person to me your entire life.

It's it's the truth for sure. And I appreciate it. Again, you've done more than just for the Assyrian community. You've helped the whole community excel in everything they do, and I so much appreciate you. Congratulations. Thank you. Alice. So Alice and I are shirttail relatives. You wouldn't know that since I'm Italian and she's a Syrian, but she was she was once married to a Martella. Bruce had passed away some years ago.

My brother's married to a Martella, so that's the Shurtele relative. And then her now husband, Dale Pollard, who's right there, I used to give him rides home from Cal Poly, so he could come meet his friend. So it was totally awesome. Alice has been really actually, she spent so much time in Houston that I thought she was Italian, I think, the first time I ever met her, and it's close. But she stepped up at the community college level and has been just a north star, true north star.

I know I use that term so often, but there's people I look at and I listen to when they speak. It's time for me to be quiet and figure out what I'm missing if I have a different opinion. Very opinionated, which I love. That is you got the beautiful daughter, Annalise, who is traveling the world like my kids. She should be here with us. Right? I say that. But Alice, thank you so much for all you do for the community. You are wonderful, and I love you. John.

So can anyone see my little name tag up there? Yeah. That was from last night, and it has my name in Assyrian, and then Cuneiform. Cuneiform. Cuneiform, which is the old pre 10,000 years ago, and on scribes that that they use a language, and my name also in cuneiform, which was amazing.

So last night we had a dinner over at John's house, where they're trying to collaborate, again, you've heard the collaboration with Efraim, and to get into the schools as a language program at Pittman High School, and and and scholarships and and other things. And it was was about a 10 course meal. I said I went for a walk this morning and I'm still hazy. And I I'm not sure I drank, but it was such good food that I kept eating. But a business leader, so you've got, you know, you've got people who've been in elected office, now you have a business leader who puts his money where his mouth is to continue to keep people focused on Assyrian culture, which is truly amazing.

I have said to Carmen many times, the Assyrian people are the most proud people I've ever met in my entire life. But when you don't have a country and you're constantly being persecuted, you you tend to get together whereas my dad immigrated here. He just didn't wanna be in Italy anymore. He came to America. So it it's a different mindset and they continue truly to this day, they continue to push the culture, the dance, the music, the traditional, making sure that the younger generation speaks the language. And I'm always in awe that it wasn't for people like John really pushing behind the scenes. I'm not sure that that would continue as people become more Americanized for lack of a better word. So John, on behalf of the board, you're a good man.

Appreciate

it. And I appreciate you.

Thank you.

For sure. Let me get you. This is for Francis who couldn't be here today. Who do we got here?

This is Ari.

Hey Ari, how are doing? Alright, say that again, was

that? Good. Good.

Alright, so cool. And Jim is here to represent, we were together last night too. Again, do you have the same haze I have? It was fantastic. But Francis has done so much, and I'm sorry he couldn't be here, he was a little under the weather to say it.

You can say something more if you'd like, but it was great last night. Stanislaus, CSU Stan has been such a good partner in everything they do with the Assyrian community. It's really amazing. You have a couple of department heads here for a reason because they realize how important this is to the community, especially down in the Turlock area, which is about the first or second highest concentration of Assyrian population in The United States. And And so I'm lucky enough to represent.

So that's why my love. So on behalf of the board again, this is just I'm proud as heck. And I'm sorry Francis couldn't be here today, but please accept this on his behalf. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay. Now I'm gonna quickly go over since I'm probably over my time. Come on up here, Carmen. And then Carmen, nothing happens. She Everyone knows Betty Bell Smith or new Betty Bell Smith. This is the Betty Bell Smith of the Assyrian community. When she asks, I I answer. Right? Whatever it is. So she got the heartbeat.

Okay. The proclamation. Maybe I should read the actual proclamation. Wear them glasses when you need them. Whereas today, Assyrians and descendants of the indigenous people of Mesopotamia in a region in the Middle East between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, encompassing parts of the present day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran, whereas the Assyrian identify as Assyrian.

They remained united in a shared Mesopotamian ancestry. And whereas some major events in ancient Mesopotamia include the rise of the world's first empire and the development of city states, the inventions of writing and the wheel. The world's first library established by King Ashurbanipa. And the first recorded legal code enacted by Hammarabi. I you see, I would I would sound it out if I could actually read it.

I again, Hammarami. Mesopotamia is often described as the cradle of mankind because it is one of the places where civilization begins began. So remember, this is 06/07/1976 Yes. Year. June.

So we're 02/1950 here in The United States, which means we were born about three minutes ago in the Syrian parlance. Whereas educating the community about Assyrian heritage is vital to preserving and passing on Syrian heritage, language, and culture to future generations. Whereas Stanislaus County is home to a large and active Syrian community, it is home to several Syrian American clubs, churches, entrepreneurs, community members, media platforms, and students pursuing higher education. So I'm gonna I'm gonna stop right there because if I keep reading, I'm gonna be in trouble. So therefore be it resolved that Stanislaus County Board of Supervisor hereby proclaims April 2026 as Assyrian Heritage Month in honor of the Assyrian community in recognition of Assyrians, New Year 6776.

The board extends the best wishes to a joyful and prosperous New Year. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Board members, back to the desk.

Okay. Our next presentation is going to be proclaiming April 2026 as volunteer month in Stanislaus County. And Jeff Fishney with Love Stanislaus County will be presenting.

So April is Volunteer Appreciation Month. And so we are here to appreciate the many, many thousands of volunteers in our community, in our county that help make this community a better place. Without volunteers, we'd be in big trouble, won't we? I mean, in all of our cities contribute so much to give back. So Lost Dance Lost County was birthed out of this vision to inspire and mobilize a volunteer force in our community.

And it was during that two thousand and seven year, do you guys remember then? 2007, those are tough days. Those are recession days. And those were not a lot of, there was a lot of hope and a lot of challenges. I remember home foreclosures and crime and whatever.

So out of that time, I remember being in these conversations with maybe not you particularly, but those are in your chairs back then that were like, man, we can complain about what we're doing. We can just come up with ideas or we can do something about it. And we're the kind of doing something about it kind of people. And so I remember around that time we go, Hey, let's just go to our local park. It was Kewan Park, not too far from here.

And let's just, let's beautify that park. It was a mess. And let's try to bless people that come walk through or even are sleeping nearby and encourage them with some water and snacks and get in conversation. And we thought we were there to help them, but you know what happened? They helped us. And sometimes we think that, man, people need us. No, we need more than them than maybe they need us. And so from there, we're like, hey, we should do this again. We should invite others to come on board. And little by little, it kind of grew. And then we came up with this idea of let's call this thing something, and let's have a big day. Let's just try to get as many people out. Let's have eight projects. Let's volunteer with Hap to Hap for Humanity. Let's go to retirement homes.

Beautify local parks, and let's see if people will come out. We're open for a 100 people to come. This was in 2009, in March, 2009. Last time done in March because of the rain. April's better, by the way.

Better weather here. We're hoping for

a 100 people to show up and over 1,200 people came. People in our community want to give back. We just got to make it easy for them to get involved and make it fun. I think that's been our secret sauce is making it fun and making it easy to sign up. Making easy to give them options where people, where their interests are, where they can give back. We did it again, more people came. And then what was interesting was people from cities in our county was like, hey, can we do this too? I remember this cranky lady from series. Anybody from series here? Go series. And she was like, man, I don't want to put that love Modesto thing in my yard. I live in series. I have pride in series, my hometown. I want to do a love series. Can we do that?

Never thought about it, but like, yeah, let's do it. So year three, we had Love series, Love Riverbank, and Love Esquelon from cities that came. Year four, more and more cities came. Year five, more and more cities came. And then we start dreaming about, it's not just about a volunteer day. What are the other needs in our community? When we talked about, let's do, talking about love our kids and working with our county and our social services and love our neighbors and love our seniors, love our schools. So it's more than just a volunteer one time off experience. That doesn't solve everything, does it? One day does not solve it, but it's a great way to start.

It's a great way to get someone off maybe the couch on that Saturday that wouldn't go out, but then I'll come out for one day. And when you go out for one day, you're like, man, I need to do this more often. This is good for me. This is good for my family. This is good for our community.

So the one day is not the end goal. It's just the beginning of ongoing continual pride and involvement and love for where we live. Love where you live. And so coming up here in just three weeks, April 25 is love, you name your city in our county, 15 cities in our county and towns, almost every city and any of any size of town or city is loving their community on April 25, except Paterson's the week before because they got a big event on April 25. And so I wanna invite you and everyone listening, go to your city, love, whatever your city name is, .com.

Or just go to lovestanselesscounty.org. You'll see all the cities going on. And not only you volunteer, but inspire your neighbors, your coworkers, people maybe in your congregation, or whoever you're with. Let's volunteer together. Let's be that kind of community that cares about each other, that loves each other, and that gives back. And again, we made it easy for you to sign up, and it's going be super fun on that day as well. So let's appreciate the thousand last year we had over 7,000 volunteers that came out. And I'm open this year we have more. And so let's appreciate all the volunteers in our community that not just come out on that day, but come out all year round to make this community the best place it can be. So thank you so much.

There's a saying, judge a leader by his followers, and you have 7,000 followers. So I'd say you're doing a darn good job of being a leader in the community. And I think back around 02/2015, I highlighted the love Modesto and yourself at the state of the county address because we shouldn't volunteerism shouldn't be unique, right? It shouldn't be a unique deal, but someone getting getting people together to do projects and having it be easy, like you talked about, or easier for people to to complete something on a volunteer basis is all because of you. And I I again, you started it.

You were the impetus and it has been so successful ever since. So, congratulations. So Got your glasses. I got my glasses today. So the proclamation, of April 2026 is Stanislaus County Volunteer Month in conjunction with the National Volunteer Month. Whereas in 1991, George H. W. Bush launched a thousand points of light campaign and established April as National Volunteer Month. Whereas over the past few years, we have seen that our community spirit and commitment to serving is thriving. This commitment to serving others illustrates the best of who we are as a community.

And whereas during national volunteer month, we recognize the contributions that our county's volunteers make every day and encourage all residents to give back and to make a difference in the community. And whereas the community, the commitment to service reflects our understanding that we best meet our challenges when we join together. When we step forward to serve, it strengthens our sense of community by helping others volunteers also help themselves. They develop valuable skills, meaning create a meaningful connection with their communities and service organizations and experience the joy of contributing to an important cause. Volunteering can provide a pathway to employment, education, and other career building opportunities.

Whereas together working, whereas by working together with nonprofits, community organizations, and the private sector, we can make our community stronger, more successful, and flourishing. And whereas LOVE, Stanislaus County has been instrumental in spearheading volunteerism locally, leading the charge through its annual April events that unite residents, businesses, and organizations in meaningful acts of service. Those events beautify neighborhoods, support local nonprofits, and foster a spirit of unity and compassion that exemplifies the purpose of National Volunteer Month. And whereas during National Volunteer Month, we celebrate those who volunteer and encourage more to follow that path. Everyone can have an impact through service.

Therefore be it resolved that the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim April 2026 as Stanislaus County Volunteer Month in conjunction with the national volunteer month It encourages all residents to join others in our community to volunteer and serve on behalf of the Board of Supervisors on this day. And thank you so much, Jeff. Volunteers, come on up. Volunteers? So

we got Gabby's our Love Our Neighbors director, and David is our Love Our Schools director, and Greg Aronan is our board chair, and Jim Vidalgo is our board secretary.

Okay, we're gonna move on to item number four, the public comment period. Acknowledge any written comments, which we don't have any. Open public comment period is the time for those in attendance to speak on items not already on today's posted agenda. Please state your name for the record. Direct all comments towards the dais. And so it's fair for every speaker, please keep your comments limited to five minutes. Our first public comment is going to be Brian Evette. Good morning, Brian.

Brian Evette. How are you

guys doing this morning? Good.

Everybody happy? Hey. That was pretty cool. Well, in the old days, we had that same thing in our fire departments. We used to get together and get all the kids from the high school and get them together, and then we'd have, like, a barbecue and hot dogs and stuff. And then they'd go out and they'd clean up the neighborhoods and the streets and everything. It was kinda cool, but we don't seem to see that much these days. Maybe that is a good change. Maybe we should start thinking about that and get our fire department in, get them involved, but I'm not really here for that today. Today, I'm here for our $128,000,000 that we're gonna spend on an overpass on Beckwith.

Right? And I just wanna see that that overpass gets finished. It's about forty years behind as it is, you know, since when they built the mall, maybe a little longer than that. But I wanna see them attach the slide of Boulevard, which used to be the old Golden State, and and tie it into that overpass. And then the same way the Finch Road on the end of north, it needs to be tied in. That way it can curve over, and we have plans later on that we could cut over to the one thirty two bypass if we bring it that way. So I'd like to see that happen since we got a $128,000,000, and we're planning that right now. Second of all is the city of Salida. It needs to be a general law city. It should have been a general law city already.

And you guys gotta work together to try to get this passed because it's a growing little city. It's a diamond in the rough. It's a little gold mine for this county. And if you guys could see it, give them their two mile sphere of city and let them let them go. And second of all, the opening of crisis.

Now we kinda created that in ourselves because we don't police our doctors, and we had to open things, and people write in prescriptions, everything, and now we're gonna spend $53,000,000 here. And it just seems kinda ridiculous what we should be policing the problem, and that's where it comes from, how these people get their prescriptions. And those doctors are the ones that need to turn around and be policed. And if we don't start doing that through our hospitals, we're just gonna have more of them, especially since the cancer rate is raised so highly in this area. Now we're spending 400,000,000 on Memorial.

We've got another 400,000,000 that they're spending all on these cancer days because we do have a problem. But we can't keep them give them opium, and we can't keep on doing it and creating generations of it because they generate $6,000. We have two prescriptions per residence. I'm not counting that we have six of those 10. Six out of 10 is fentanyl that's running around here. So we really didn't decrease the amount of prescriptions that we had because we were at 578,000. We said we lowered them down. We gave the older people Tremenol. Great. They lost their minds, they wound up in hospice.

Well, we gave money hospice. Houston's gonna become a general law city because they have hospice there. But in our country, we've found that hospice has been a lot of the fraud. We gotta stop this too because this just gets to be wild spending, and we just find ourselves going in a circle. So let's figure out how we're gonna police the drug use, how we police the prescriptions, and how we monitor what they do.

I mean, if there's the hospitals have been one man on a cancer turned around and bulked Medi Cal and Medicare out of a half $1,000,000,000. And you think that we're opening these units on all these hospitals, 400,000,000 here, 500,000,000 here, 200,000,000 over here doctors, even though doctors is a d rating for a hospital, and that's probably where most of them come from. But we gotta take control of this and our control of our money that we're spending because these are the tax payers money. It doesn't matter if it's funded by grants. That grant money still comes from the tax payers, which is us.

I know I spend $10,000 a year in taxes, property tax alone. Oh, I might see 2% of it. And as every other property owner around here, that's about all we get out of the total budget to protect our streets, to protect us. It all winds up going everywhere else. Let's put it back to the community that's building this community. The ones that live in these houses, the ones that support us. You know? We can't just keep on spreading this money out. Boom. Boom.

Till there is nothing, and we're always in a constant deficit. Let's structure it and build smart. The whole thing, we have to build smart, and we have to build fast to keep up with it. And smart's gonna keep us under control, and it's gonna make things right. But if we just let everybody go wild, well, this is what we got happening right now, And then the money just gets spent, and we don't really see any progress. And the progress is if we stop the drugs, we'll stop the homeless, we'll stop all that money that's being fed out because it's ridiculous to spend a $120 a square foot to put one person in per month. 120 my time's up. But thanks, guys. Thanks, Maybe I got something through.

Carolyn Newman's up next. It will be followed by Wanda Newbert.

Good morning, Carolyn. Good morning. My name is Carolyn Newman, and I was on the twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five civil grand jury last year. And it is my regret to let you know that one of my fellow jurors, Ernie Garcia, has passed away last week. He was also on the jury this year, but dropped out due to ill health.

He was an attorney and then found a love for teaching and became an educator. He had this quiet, peaceful, sweet, loving demeanor. It was hard to feel bad because you know you always had him in your corner in any room. Working with him was a pleasure. One year was not enough.

And, yeah, his services for him will be at the Universal Unitarian Church in Stockton this Friday. And, yeah, I can't understate I can't overstate what a wonderful impact he's had on the communities that he's been a part of, especially here in Modesto and Stanislaus County. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing that to our attention, Carolyn. Okay. Next up is Wanda Newbert.

Hi everybody.

Hi.

I have a problem with my zip code. I am on Medicare and Medi Cal and my son is on both. We get money on our food cards, but this ad that's going around that says all Californians, all senior citizens get this food allowance card because of my zip code, we don't qualify for any of this. What is wrong with my zip code? We live in the county outside the city limits in the county.

So is it because I live in the county? I don't live in the city limits? And when I talk to these guys on the phone, I've called them about six times, and they all say, well you don't qualify. And I found out that San Joaquin County is the same way because of their zip code. What is wrong with my ZIP code? How come I can't qualify? I don't understand.

Good morning. Thank you for being here and sharing your story with I'm not I I think we're gonna need to learn a little bit more information about your particular issue. So if you wouldn't mind stopping at that table in the back on your way out, and we'll collect a little more information from you, and then we'll have somebody contact you to share, I I think, whatever information would be available to make sure that, you're fully understanding how these benefits work in our community particularly, and whether or not there's anything we can do to, support increasing those benefits for you.

Okay. Because he eats constantly. He was born with this thing where he eats constantly, and then by the end of the month, I mean, by the middle of the month, we've run out of food. So I just wanna know what's wrong with my zip code.

Okay. Christine McGallum or green sweater. Okay.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Okay. Anyone else for public comment? Oh, yeah. Okay. So now I'm going to call you in order because I have lots of speaker cards. And so the next person can get up on deck. I'll call a person up and the next person can be right behind him. Jeff Salgado will be first up, and Jasmine Thomas will be next. Good morning. Good morning.

My name is Jeff Salgado and I've been a part of

this

community for most of my life since I was a baby. And I love Modesto and I know Modesto loves its people. And I went through a breakdown a couple of years back and I found myself with mental health disorder. And so I went to the streets and I came a product of them streets Like the brother said, sleeping in the alley, sleeping in the parks, homeless. Not because of anything else that we didn't have, I didn't have no opportunity.

I didn't have no place. The Gospel Mission couldn't understand me and what I was going through. The shelters didn't wanna deal with me. So I was able to get ahold of BH and RS. And through them, was blessed to be a part of Legacy Alliance.

And with Legacy Alliance, I have now found that I am worth to be a part of this community. And I could help this community. And I could reach out to those that are struggling and going through the same things I am. That way we could, like you said, better our community and bring our people back out of these streets and help them. And Legacy Alliance has helped me just have a big transformation in my life.

Know, I just, I'm so thankful for them and I want to know why they're being attacked? Why are they being supported by our community? When they are reaching out, I know a lot of people that have have went through there, have homes now, are out of drugs, are not in, you know what mean? Are not on the streets no more. And it's because of them that I feel we should support this Legacy Alliance in our community because that gives me the opportunity to reach back out there and pull other people back out, you know, and have them become a part of community.

I just feel that it's very important to me in seeking a place to understand me. You know, I've been lost and I've been found now through Legacy Alliance. That I do matter as a man. That I have been a part of this community all my life. And now I believe because of this program and Mike Bowen, made it come true.

He helped me to understand not just my mental health disability and how I can take control of it, but other other parts of my life and how I could become a a part of this community and better serve our community. And no matter what, with this county support in helping him to help us, it really matters. It really it really truly matters. You know, I got I got sons and I I got daughters and I want to be a part of their lives. And I want to show them what they could do in our community.

And I'm just hoping that you guys take the time to realize that Legacy Alliance is helping people. Even though they're a non profit organization, even though they're not receiving any money from the county or they're not being funded, they're still reaching out to us and they're still helping us, you know. And I feel that one day, you know, I'll be able to reach down and pick up another kid. I'll reach down and pick up another part of our community, you know, through this. And with them support, I'll succeed and have a better life and become a part, you know, of this community that I feel the person that has been through prison, I've been through all these all these things in my life because I've not been given the opportunity like Legacy Alliance has now helped me to find a home, to understand my my addictions, to overcome them.

And I feel I have a future and a dream and goals with them behind And I just ask that you guys reach down in your heart with understanding with God, with true wisdom, you know, and and see a way that we could bring this to a prosperity, you know, and I thank you guys.

Thank you, Jeff. Next up, Jasmine Thomas and Martin Juan will be next. And Martin, if I could have you come over to the the edge. Hello. Good morning.

Good morning. I just have something that I wrote for you guys. I'm also speaking on behalf of Legacy Alliance. My name is Jasmine. I am a survivor of domestic violence. Because of what I went through, I became homeless and fell into addiction. When many doors closed on me, Legacy Alliance opened theirs. This program hasn't just given me a place to stay, it has given me support, safety, and a chance to rebuild my life. This program has also helped me reunify with my son, Samuel. Through Legacy of Lions, I've started to heal, understand myself, and move in a positive direction.

This program has given me help when I had none. So the question that I will leave with you guys today is if something is truly helping people survive and heal and change our lives. Why would you take that away? Thank you.

Thank you, Jasmine. Martin followed by Joseph Slane. Morning, gentlemen. Morning. My name

is Martin Wong. I'm currently a client at Legacy Alliance Outreach. I'd like to go over a little bit on myself first. In June 2025, after successfully completing Nirvana drug and alcohol treatment, I was denied housing on medical grounds of medical ineligibility, while I was attending truck driving school after exploring every option available through services, including Stanislaus County Probation, the Department of Behavioral Health, and various other sober living environments, I was told homelessness was my only option. I was referred to Legacy Alliance by a schoolmate that was also a client.

And after an assessment, I was given the opportunity to finish school and maintain my sobriety. As a formerly incarcerated individual and heavy former drug user, that wouldn't have been able I wouldn't have been able to maintain my sobriety and successfully get my class a license and reenter society and be given the chance and place necessary to achieve those goals. Stanislaus County could not provide the solution necessary to meet my needs. My options were limited to either homelessness or going back to treatment and starting all over from scratch, which would have caused me to lose my ability to get my class a license. My question I would like to pose to you is that if there are no available options for an individual in my situation, why would there be any question of availability on a resource like Legacy Alliance?

Without them, I wouldn't most likely be another statistic of recidivism as well as homelessness and addiction. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Martin? Next up is Joseph Slane followed by Wesley Blueford.

Hello. My name is Joseph. Excuse me. This is kinda new to me. I'm a little little nervous, but I feel a little underdressed. I am also a representative of Legacy Alliance. I'm a client there. I'm gonna give a little background. He's I've been a part of this community like my brothers and sisters for quite a while. You know, I have grew up here between Series Turlock, Houston.

I've worked in the culinary industry out here for over a decade, you know, and I became homeless at the age of 14, you know, so I mean, I've I've gone a big portion of my life running around out here, you know, just struggling to survive. And I know how the the resources are very they're they're there, but they're very scarce out here, you know. And just recently, I did nine months in another program, you know, and that kind of fell through. And then I went back to the streets, you know. And then from there, I was lost. You know, I thought I could do it. And I was like, I'm gonna get a job. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. But then, you know, the temptations got real.

You know, I started using again. And I found Legacy Alliance, you know, and they they opened me with welcome arms, you know, and let's

see.

These past three or four weeks that I've been here, you know, it's I've done more than I've done in the nine months of the other programs that I've that I've been in. You know, they have helped me become who I am, be or discover, you know, more of myself and become showing me basically, giving me more clarity, you know, of my life. But I you know, being out here, I have seen I have lost friends, you know, to incarceration, to overdose, to suicide, and it's because of our lack of lack of resources. You know, we need programs like Legacy Alliance that will help regardless of your situation, regardless of who you are. You know, it's, I've seen a lot of, how how do you say it, distaste in our community out here.

And, you know, we have people out here that are very talented, very good people, and they're not getting the help that they need. You know? So why is there such a hatred for our homeless community? We need more resources like Legacy Alliance to help these people get better their lives and become the people that they need to be. You know? Yeah. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next up is Wesley Wolf Blueford and then followed by Anthony Valdez.

Good day,

Wesley. Good day, everyone. My name is Wesley Blueford. I'm a representative of Legacy Alliance Outreach. And my question to you guys is, why try to destroy a program that works, that's helping people in this community, that's helped me with my anger problems, that's helped me with my addiction, gave me a job, even gave me the opportunity to meet a few of you guys that we supported in the beginning.

And now I don't have a job anymore, sadly going on unemployment, because you took that position away from me even though I still volunteer because I'm a supporter of something that's giving me a purpose, making me a better person.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Leslie. Next up is Anthony Valdez followed by Luis Perez.

Hello. Good morning.

Good morning.

I'm also a product of Legacy Alliance, you know. So tell me anything, I I came from the streets too. I had no sense of direction. I was homeless. Until I I ran into Legacy Alliance, and they reached out to me to help me. Now I have a place to stay. I'm looking at other things and getting job, things to look forward to. Gave me a sense of direction now. So for that, I'm grateful for Legacy Alliance, And all I'm asking that you guys continue Legacy Alliance for it is helping people. You can see it as me. I'm a product of it. And if it wasn't for Legacy Alliance, I'll still be on the streets today. So I just ask that you guys open up and see Legacy Alliance for what it is. Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony. So Luis Perez followed by Teresa Blackwood.

Hi. My name is Luis. I'm a client at Legacy Alliance Outreach and Recovery Program. I've I've been through a lot of my life since the youngsters all the all the way up to my age now to 25. Having been through stuff like that, I I never had direction in my life, no place to go.

Now that I have this program in my life, there's I have a place to live. I have something to do with my time. I mentor youth, and we we teach the youth certain qualifications to be able to navigate through life and through hard times, especially the at risk youth. And there was a time when we didn't we weren't able to do that, and it was it was really rough for the program. What I gotta say about that is that's that's unfair because the people who need the program like this or any any sort of situation that they they need help.

Where are they supposed to turn to? They can't they can't turn to somebody who's down in the dumps below them. You know what I mean? We need a helping hand from someone that's up there. We can't we can't help each other if we don't wanna help each other. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Teresa Blackwood followed by Clifton Williams.

Good morning. My name is Theresa Blackwood, and I am a volunteer at Legacy Alliance Outreach. I had come from nothing, and now I have my life back. I am stable in every aspect of my life and I am sure you don't care nothing about that because if you did, you wouldn't listen to hearsay. I also wanted to share that Michael Baldwin is the founder, not the owner of Legacy Alliance Outreach. I have watched people try to tarnish his name and his character. He's like a father to me and many others. We will continue to serve the men and women in our community with or without the help. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Clifton Williams followed by Vincent. Oh, Hoheis Hoheisel.

Good morning. Good morning. I've been in San Jose County all my life, and I know that this county helps people. It's it's it's obvious that you guys make a lot of resources available for all of us. Anybody that's homeless, you can get food. If you need somewhere to go, you guys provide shelter. Now, a lot of people are going to convince you guys that programs work, but you're not on this side. They're

going to tell

you that this program's working. It ain't working. They just want to fill the bed. We need to be in programs that really transforms lives, where people really change. How are you going to change the community or how's the community going to get better if the person doesn't get better? If you send me to a program where I'm not recovering because you want to fill the bed, how does that help the community? How does that help my family? You see, this program works and lies only become the truth when a person chooses to believe them. If I say something to you or I tell you something, it's very important to truly investigate. But when you're on this side and you're going through the things that we've been through, I've been in prison thirty years of my life.

Stanislaus County has not been able to rehabilitate me. Prison has not been able to rehabilitate me. I'm off probation and parole and I've been on probation and parole since I'm at 13. I am actually thriving in the community. People that I know in the community, thousands asked me, how do you do it? I tell them the truth through Legacy Alliance. And that's just the truth. You guys can put forth all the money you want to towards programs that you think are working, but I'm telling you from this side, they ain't working. Because the people in that program, they wanna fill that debt. And they're worried about one thing and one thing only.

The program thriving, not people thriving. Legacy Alliance wants people to thrive. Because if you change, you can go and fix the parks. You can go fix the communities. That's just throwing a rug over it. You gotta change the people. I can go anywhere I want in the world and think that I'm gonna change, but everywhere I go, there I am. Change the people. And this program changes people's lives. The ones that you think can't change, Legacy Alliance has given them the opportunity and we're changing for the better of a community.

Just look into it. It doesn't matter what the system says because we sit in the courthouses, you got BHRS, behavioral health, you got all these things telling you guys, you guys are the board, that these programs work. No, they don't. They're trying to get out of those programs to get in these program. I promise you that. And every time somebody asks me about a program, how did you do it Clifton? I'm gonna tell them the truth. Legacy Alliance, really, really, really, if the community is gonna change, if you guys are really gonna help people, do it towards a program that works. Don't waste your time and money listening to people who don't have addictions, who never been there. Listen to the people who've been there.

Take the time to really, really, really focus on programs that work. Right now, we know Legacy Alliance work. Before there was an incident, it was the biggest program in Modesto. So we know it works. Why take away something that works? When you shoot one person down, you're shooting all of us. Nobody thought about that. You know what? We're gonna target this guy right over here, but who cares about the casualties? So then you just push us all back to the streets, knocking us all back down in our addictions. We can't do that. Michael Baldwin is nobody is providing us. Nobody's taking care of us. Nobody's helping us. Nobody's paying for us.

That man does it on his own. Legacy Alliance truly helps people. Please. I know you guys help people. I've been in the I've had so many complaints that I've put in front of the board and they've went through because they were legit claim. They were legit claims. So I know you guys really investigate. Please spend the money, help the programs that really work. Thank you.

Thank you, Clifton. Next up, Vincent Cohisel followed by Miguel Santa Cruz.

I just wanted to speak on behalf of myself with Legacy Alliance. My family is going through a hard time right now and they're really they're really helping me out and it means a lot to me. Thank you.

Thanks, Vincent. Miguel Santa Cruz followed by Joseph Tremaine. Good morning, Miguel.

How are all doing?

So my name is Miguel Santa Cruz. I am a formerly incarcerated individual that has been with Legacy Alliance for about three years now. Since being with LAO, I've been placed into a home. I was previously homeless, Been homeless on and off since I was about 19 years old. And Legacy has not only provided me with a home, they've helped me to find work, helped me to remain sober minded and vigilant.

And overall, they've assisted me in becoming a productive member of society. I'm I'm now off of probation and parole. I've been on probation since I was 14 years old. I'm now off. I work as a prison peer support assisting previously incarcerated inmates to reestablish themselves back into the community as well as corresponding with the inmates that are looking forward to coming home.

Legacy Alliance outreach is definitely vital to the community, and we are committed to serving the community and helping to make this community a better and safer community in which we all live. Legacy Alliance is not just one person. We are a body that comprises of a group of people, all shapes and sizes and ethnicities that are dedicated to helping this community. And I I I would like to know what would cause anybody to withhold funding or break down such an organization. And I just ask that you would take I thank you for your time and consideration, and I just ask that you would look look into it and and see that that not only Mike, but there's been multiple individuals here that, since my father's been gone, that I that I look up to as as as a father figure that have guided me in a a a positive direction, that have, given me not only, the tools needed to to know more about myself, to understand my mistakes in the past, and to also fix those mistakes and and and and assist others in in in finding what it was in them that caused them to go to criminal activity, to gang lifestyle, to things of that nature that that caused us to be incarcerated and help to to break those chains and to make us a productive member of society.

And we just ask that you just look look look at us as what we are, and that's, people that have made mistakes in the past but have, bettered ourselves, and and and we continue to do so in the community. I thank you for your time.

Thank you, Miguel. Next up is Joseph Tremaine followed by Rebecca Sanchez.

Morning, gentlemen.

Good morning.

My name is Joseph Traumann.

Traumann. I'm sorry.

Formerly incarcerated inmate, California State Prison. In, '12, twenty two thousand twenty four, I paroled after thirty eight years of being incarcerated in state prison. I never thought I'd ever see the light of day again because at one time the governor said that he was never gonna let any lifers out of prison. And I'm a success story, basically. I reformed my life.

I found out about Legacy Alliance a couple of years before I paroled, and they started writing letters for me for the parole board to try to help me. Some of the people that were working there were actually formerly incarcerated inmates. They had reformed their lives and had gotten out and were staying in contact with me because I have become a substance use disorder counselor. I'm a registered substance use disorder counselor that's doing my intern hours. I'll be certified once I get to two thousand eighty hours and I'm still working on that. But I met these guys when they were going through that program with me. And, so I paroled to Modesto. I never lived in Modesto. I used to live in the top of California. I'm Native American.

I lived on a reservation. I came to Modesto with the sole understanding that I knew that there were good things happening in this program that I could further help people, which I was doing in in while I was incarcerated before I got out, and to help better my life. So since I've gotten out, I paroled to Legacy Alliance program. I met with Michael Baldwin and their board of they are the board for the Legacy Alliance program, And, they set me up with a parole plan, and they got ahold of my parole officer and stayed in contact with him, made sure that I took, drug testing. I met with my parole officer.

They gave me rides. They have alcohol substance use disorder program, drug programs, food. They had clothing closets. They had and it wasn't just for me. It was for homeless people. You could go right through the front door and be a homeless person. They just show up all the time. They had a big huge building. Right? And at some point, one of the people that were working there got disgruntled and left the program and made some allegations against the program.

Now to this date, as far as I know, nobody's ever been arrested for anything. Right? And whatever they thought about the program or individuals that worked at that program, right, I haven't seen any of that myself. Right? I've been a part of this program since I paroled. Now since then, I graduated the program. I'm alumni. Every morning, I still go down at, 08:15 and stay there until nine, which I did this morning after I worked out. I went down there, and I found out that we were gonna come down here today and talk to you. And I'm just here to give you some insight about this program and how it's helped me.

Now I've seen it help many, many people. I've personally saved three lives since I've been out fentanyl overdoses. And I had to call 911, and it was a good thing I had, Narcan at the time, right, or else I'd be dead. Right? Now what I'd like to see happen if it was possible is people to reconsider what they think about this program.

I mean, you just heard testimony. There are a lot of other people that go to this program. They're a part of this program. They have housing, but it's kind of dwindling. And the fact that they were able to have on the community to help people has been kind of strained because Michael Baldwin is the sole person that's really I mean, there are other people too, but he's the founder of this program and he's really like went out there and like had to give up his home just to keep this program going for other people, right?

And so I would like you to reconsider and think about like the grants that were taken because of people that had things to say but nothing has ever really been proven or else people would be arrested by now. And I would like to see that you will try to see that this is a program that has a board and that that program is helping people. Right? And try to help that program because it's helping these people. You've heard the testimony. It helped me. I'm I have a home now. I have two trucks, three motorcycles, two cats. I'm doing very well. Like, I volunteer in the like, I go down to the mission at birthday parties for the homeless children in there.

Once a month, I go to church. I volunteer to make food baskets. I do a lot of things in this community. I say three lives. I'm substance use disorder, I mean, goes on. Right? I wouldn't be able to do that if I wouldn't want to do the program. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Joseph. Next up is Rebecca Sanchez followed by Christopher Villalobos.

Hi. Good morning, everybody. Nice to meet you. My name is Rebecca. My program is Legacy Alliance. I am very happy for be here and share. Legacy Alliance always help people no matter who are you. I want I feel very grateful for the help. Thank you, Mike. My name is Rebecca Sanchez.

I am Hispana. My first language is Spanish. I wanna speak in Spanish. I don't know. It's okay?

Yeah. It's okay if you'd like. Hold on one second. We're gonna have Patty grab the mic.

Okay. Thank you. I am 21 years old. Homeless.

Six months ago, I was homeless. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I was scared. I felt I was in harm. I don't have family in this country.

God put legacy alliance in my pathway. They brought me back to life. Being honest, I felt lost without hope.

Legacy Alliance Since

the first day, Legacy Alliance has been my, support. They gave me, love, hope. They helped me and Good choices. Made me take good choices. Yeah.

Thank you. Legacy Alliance

Legacy Alliance has never given up on me. The program met me without understanding or knowing any English. I am, working on, bettering myself. I have six months in this program.

So,

throughout these six months, I have been, able to speak and understand more English now and it's all thanks to this program. I have a lot of, dreams. And that is why I work on them every day.

Peer support in Spanish?

I have my peer support program certificate at the

moment. I

am going to school to work on my

I love the language. My passion is The languages. I am studying English. Banjabi. Banyavi. And Indy. And Indy. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations.

Thank you, Rebecca. And next up is Christopher Villalobos will be followed by Esther Narango.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Christopher Villalobos. I'm 34 years old. I'm a resident from Odessa, California. I'm part of Legacy Alliance as well, and I would like to say that I hit rock bottom in my life and the program revived me.

Like, it helped me up, you know. I didn't think I was gonna get emotional up here, but it really, like, changed my life around. I was just lost in the lifestyle, the gang lifestyle mostly. And they're here and part of their classes, like, just opened my eyes to the world. Like, it's not just just I have to be mindful.

They taught me how to be mindful for everybody. It's, like, not just myself. It's the society as well. They taught me how to be part of society, and and I'm grateful for that. And and I would like to thank Michael Baldwin for as well too because by him pushing for us, it's like us pushing to help the next man and us help ourselves as well.

And, man, what else? Like, I'm grateful for all the classes that they teach you. We have a lot of variety of classes from bigger management to NA to AA to domestic violence to criminal gangs anonymous to a sound bath. We even have a a pet grooming class. That man, they like, we're learning a lot of stuff there, man, like, how to be part of society, and it'll be, like, it'll be nice if you guys were were were able to help out with or look into stuff, allegations that, like, they were saying that nobody was ever incarcerated, just all that blackballing and it's not cool, you know.

Don't fix what's not what don't fix what doesn't need what's not broken. That's so like I say, and thank you guys for your time.

Thank you, Christian. Good. Esther? Naraho? And that's the last speaker card that I have. If anyone else wants to speak, please come forward after. Esther?

Hi. My name is Esther Naranjo, and I'm a former employee of Legacy Alliance Outreach and a current volunteer. I wanted to yield my time to mister Nick Hill, if possible. And, with that being said, I just want you guys to know that, unfortunately, funders don't actually do the work or see what's going on, but, they like to take a lot of pictures and be in certain places in the community with those pictures. But if you guys actually see where the money is going, you'll see that we're doing the work.

Thank you. Esther.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Nickel Hill. Thank you, Esther, for yielding your time. Anyone with Legacy that's representing Legacy, I'd like you to stand up, please. What you see before you are success stories. This is what success stories look like. You've got

people Can that's formerly I just have you address us, please?

Yeah. You have people that were formerly incarcerated. You've got people that were homeless. You've got people that were on drugs. You know, you have people with no future. You know? But right now, what's standing before you are productive citizens. Productive citizens. This was all done through legacy alliance outreach. Michael Baldwin is the founder of Legacy Outreach Legacy Alliance Outreach.

I came to Legacy Alliance Outreach at the request of Michael Baldwin. I am the former two time president of the Kern County black chamber of commerce. I am the former president of the council of black chambers across the state of California. I have stayed on the workforce development program, BAC business advisory business advisory council for the California high speed rail and so on. But what I am saying today is that this parade that you see will continue will continue to see success stories.

And these are real people, you know, that have been affected positively by legacy alliance outreach. Now with Michael Baldwin, when you gave Legacy Alliance these contracts, there was no TA component that was in these contracts. There should have been a TA component in these contracts. Number one, because if you take someone that is fresh out of prison and you give them all of these funding, evidently there are going to be mistakes. There were mistakes.

It was nothing criminal but there were mistakes. When I came into Legacy, before I got here, I received a phone call and told me do not show up to Modesto. I still live in Bakersfield, California in Kern County. I was told do not show up to Modesto because Modesto is closing their doors. That was about a year ago. I am the CEO of Legacy Alliance Outreach. I get no pay. I receive no pay. I drive out here. You know, because I believe in this program.

I believe in these people. Any board that you deal with, there should always be, I would say, a care of duty component in anything that you do and any decisions that you make. And if you are doing these things from a care of duty standpoint, you would look at these people, you would recognize these people, you would recognize these programs, and you would also want to keep funding something that works. And let's talk about what happened with legacy. When I came, I saw a letter from BSCC saying that due to a completed audit from the county of Stanislaw, we are canceling your grant.

So I took the opportunity, I said, Mike, let's go to the county. Let's sit down with the county controller. So we did sit down with Mr. Dillon. I asked show me this completed audit.

There was no completed audit. I came here before and I addressed this counsel and I said it before and I am saying it again. There was no completed audit. When I responded to BSCC in regards to their allegation of a completed audit, they sent another letter with another reason. But when you send out correspondence to any grantee or anything else like that, it should be the truth.

It should be the truth. You know? But that truth was not given to Legacy.

Finish your thought, Nick, please. I'm sorry? Finish your thought.

Okay. My thought is that it created a domino effect with all the other funders with legacy because of this so called completed audit. It completed it made a domino effect with all the other funders. All the other funders took away the funding based on this completed audit that never occurred. The other thing was that Quickly.

Legacy has been damned without a hearing. There was no due process. There was no no opportunity to address issues. They were guilty without even proving guilty yet. You know, there's been an audit going on for about a year now, and we don't know what we would like to know what the end game is for this audit and everything else like that. You know, so

Thank you, Nick. I'm sorry, but I've gone past your time. I've given you extra time. Okay. Appreciate appreciate very much.

Alright.

Thank you. Alright. So anyone who hasn't spoke, wants to speak on something that is not on today's posted agenda, you can still step forward before I close the public comment period. Alright. I just want oh, Michael.

My name is Michael Baldwin. I like to yield my time to Nick Hill.

Yeah. He already had his chance to speak. Go ahead, Michael. And

I just want to yield my time.

That it doesn't work that way where you can give unlimited amounts of time. Thank you though.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Anyone else? Okay. Seeing none, we're going to close the public comment period and I'm going to say we're gonna stop for five minutes really quick for a quick bathroom break, water break, and we'll reconvene in five minutes.

God bless you and thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Board of supervisors back in order. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Thank you very much. Okay. So now we're I'll close the public comment period, and we're moving on to correspondent I mean, to consent calendar. Before we do, I just wanted to introduce former assembly member, former state senator Pat Johnston, who loves to come once in a while to participate and watch governance. So appreciate having you here.

Alright. I've had some requests for some items to comment on from the public, and so we're going to I'll go through the cards, but it's B5, b 14, b 18, b 24, and B29. Gonna be so any board member wanna pull any items? It says b five, b 14, b 18, b 24, and b 29. Any board member?

Seeing none, I'll take a motion minus those noted.

Second.

The motion is second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries five zero. B five is the first one, and we have Amber Scott, like to comment, followed by Teresa Pratt. It'd always be helpful. This is approval to proclaim March or April 12, Stanislaus County Public Safety Telecommunications Week in conjunction with National Public Safety Telecommunications Week. Welcome.

Good morning, chair and members of the board. My name is Amber Scott, and I am an emergency dispatcher two with Stanislaus Regional nine one one. There are moments on shift where you look up and realize how thin things really are. You're monitoring two radio channels that were never meant to be handled alone. You're answering questions from a trainee who is still learning. You're tracking units in the field knowing you cannot afford to miss anything. And at the same time, you already know there may not be relief coming. That's not occasional anymore. That's become routine. Right now, a single call out can change an entire shift, and there isn't always someone available to fill that gap.

Instead, shifts are extended, sometimes up to eighteen hours, just to maintain the adjusted minimum staffing. To be clear, minimum staffing is six. We have not been operating at six. In late, responsible for more radio traffic than those channels were designed for. In July 2024, staffing increased back to five where we have remained since, but five is still below minimum.

And in practice, we are still consolidating fire channels, meaning one dispatcher is doing the work of two. When voluntary overtime is filled, those channels can be separated and staffed as intended, but that coverage relied on the side letter that has now expired. Without it, those channels remain combined. At that time, we are hearing that we are fully staffed on paper, but fully staffed on paper does not reflect operational reality. Yes, we have trainees in the pipeline, but that does not represent a potential or but I'm sorry.

That does represent a potential path forward, but when the number of trainees nearly equals the number of fully deployable dispatchers, that is not stability. We are realistically looking at many more months close to a year before those trainees can independently relieve the workload. At the time at the same time, one of the few tools we had to bridge the gap, the side letter was allowed to expire. Without it, staffing shortages don't go away. They are absorbed by the people already working.

And as of March 27, management has advised that they will not be performing bargaining unit work, meaning they will no longer staff radio positions or provide operational relief, such as covering a position so a dispatcher can step away to use the restroom or get food unless there is a declared emergency or natural disaster. So the day to day impact of staffing shortages is not shared. It is carried by line level staff. From the outside, things may still appear to be functioning, but the current system is not a reflection of efficiency. It is a reflection of how much strain the people inside it are absorbing to keep from failing, and that distinction matters.

It looks like remaining at the council without the ability to step away. It looks like working without breaks because there is no one available to provide relief. It looks like taking on additional responsibilities to prevent a failure in coverage. That is not operational efficiency. It is sustained over extension, and that has consequences.

Currently, we are training new employees while managing this workload, balancing active emergency radio traffic, multiple channels, and training responsibilities, all while working on a new computer aided system that we are still learning. That is a high risk environment to learn in and to maintain. That is not just a staffing issue, that is a public safety issue. Fatigue affects focus, awareness, and response time, and overtime retention. When experienced dispatchers leave because the workload is not sustainable, the system becomes more fragile, not more efficient.

Make no mistake, we are committed to this work. It is our calling, but commitment should not be what holds our public safety system together. A reliable system must be sustainable for its people and the community it serves. When it's postponed its limits, the impact reaches every call, every response, and every person who depends on us. I close with this.

In an email dated 05/22/2023, it was stated, all our partner agencies know about our staffing issues and the challenges we will face throughout the summer. The consolidated emergency dispatch agency commission is aware of our challenges. The city of Modesto, the county board of supervisors, and county HR are all aware. Everyone is working toward a solution and it supports and in supports of our efforts to fix the problem. That was nearly three years ago. We're still waiting, and respectfully waiting is no longer a solution. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next up, Theresa Pratt.

Good morning, chair and members of the board. My name is Theresa Pratt. I'm a dispatcher three with Stanislaus Regional nine one one. I'm here today because while this board prepares to recognize National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, expiration of the side letter that helped us safely staff this center is creating a serious public safety risk. The removal of the side letter does not simply change overtime incentives.

It removes one of the few instruments we had to voluntarily fill critical radio positions and maintain minimum staffing. In practical terms, this means there will now be days with no on call coverage available. When people call out sick or staffing drops below minimums, the remaining dispatchers will be forced into eighteen hour shifts to keep emergency radio channel staff. At the same time, management stated they are no longer permitted to assist with radio channels except during declare emergencies or disasters. We are already operating under severe strain, and I've heard it said that our center is running efficiently.

On paper, perhaps it is. But I ask that you look deeper at what is creating that appearance of efficiency. What is being called efficiency is dispatchers having no lunch breaks during twelve hour shifts, eating at our consoles between calls and radio traffic, delaying restroom use because someone has to monitor the radio, and we repeatedly say yes to over 45 dispatcher positions while similar centers operate with staffing allocations closer to 60. It is not efficiency when the operation depends on exhaustion, personal sacrifice, and the goodwill of employees to compensate for chronic staffing shortages. It is dedication.

It is professionalism. But dedication should never be mistaken for a staffing model. Most squads are currently operating with roughly five dispatchers and one to two call takers while also training 12 trainees across four squads. In real terms, that often means a single fire dispatcher is covering two fire command channels that are designed to be staffed separately while usually simultaneously training someone. At the same time, the other dispatchers are balancing law channels and training responsibilities as well.

The day before the side letter expired, callouts dropped one squad to four dispatchers. Because of that shortage, one dispatcher had to cover two law backup channels while simultaneously training two call taker trainees while the fire dispatcher was separately managing two fire channels alone. And this is not an isolated example. Next month, under the current staffing model, I am scheduled to train two fire dispatch trainees at the same time while simultaneously monitoring both fire command channels by myself. That means one dispatcher will be responsible for active emergency radio traffic on two separate channels while also ensuring two trainees are learning correctly in a high risk environment.

This is the level of strain that is now being normalized. That is the reality behind what is being called efficiency. Fatigue at this level is not just a workforce issue, it's a public safety issue. It is also having a serious effect on morale. The sustained stress, extended shifts, lack of meaningful operational support, and expectation that employees continuously absorb shortages is causing people to question how long this can continue.

When veteran dispatchers begin looking elsewhere because the workload and lack of support are no longer sustainable, the staffing crisis deepens even further. What makes this even more concerning is that these operational risks remain unresolved while labor discussions continue without meaningful progress. The reality on the floor is changing faster than the support systems are being put in place, and the burden of that delay is being carried by the dispatcher still showing up every day. The citizens of this county and every first responder who depends on us deserve better than a system that survives only because its people are willing to push themselves beyond reasonable limits. We are proud of the work we do, and we will continue showing up for this community.

But recognition without action rings hollow. If this board truly values public safety telecommunicators, then that value must be reflected in decisions that support safe staffing, sustainable shifts, realistic operational support, and employee retention. When dispatch fails, every other public safety response fails with it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Teresa, anyone else to speak on B5? All right. I'm bringing it back to the board. We'll take B5.

Motion to approve B5.

We have a motion. Second. And second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries five-zero. On to B14. B14 is the approval to enter into agreement with EKI Environmental and Water for professional service pertaining to the hydrological support for the county's groundwater program. I have three speaker cards. First one is Anthony Ratto. Be followed by a Wrangler Wheeler and then Carolyn Newman.

Good morning, chairman, supervisor, staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I request that you table item 14 for two weeks so it can be discussed by the relevant parties, including the GSAs and member agencies. I'm under the impression that no one or at least not all of the Strugman member agencies were aware of this proposal until the board agenda was published Friday, March 27 at 04:35PM. Wednesday, March 25, there's there was a Strobe meeting in Oakdale.

Members of the public questioned the county about budgets and costs of third party consultants they planned on hiring. At one hour nineteen minute exchange, county staff staff said on record that you, the county, were not yet aware of consultant costs. Staff elaborated as they were looking for a consultant to address the multitude of sigma related issues. At the one hour forty five minute interval, county staff was explicitly asked about EKI being the potential consultant to work on behalf of the county for Strobeba related manners. The response was no.

The video is on the Stroba website. When I read through the scope of work being proposed and dated by EKI dated November 2025 by EKI to the county, I was surprised by task number eight, Modesto Subbasin GSP implementation. That's the Stroba. You can reference page 20 in the PDF. There's there are references to groundwater declines, non district East, county's data collection, management, validate monitoring data, draft policy ordinances, resolutions, and guidance documents.

At the meeting last week, there were at least two clear opportunities for DER staff to offer information and clarity about costs and consultants at the GSA. Those opportunities were missed. I don't understand why. EKI was contracted by a nondistrict East group of landowners, the Stanislaus East East Mutual Water Company. They engaged e k I EKI with the intention of poking holes or calling into question the work that Todd Todd Groundwater, the stroke book consultant, has done.

The NDE has found itself in a very difficult position, so I understand their desire for better outcomes. EKI has already been hired within the sub basin to help facilitate an outcome by a particular group. So it seems perplexing that the county would then consider hiring that said consultant at this time. At the least, public perception is the county is looking to chase a different outcome than the strobe consultants and that the GSA have already concluded. Hiring a second consultant to question your first consultant doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

My understanding is that the county has already been responsible and will continue to be responsible for one seventh of the Strobeba consultant expenses and ongoing costs. I don't believe this board would consider that financially responsible. In closing, I understand the county department of environmental resources and staff need help. I understand Sigma is complex. I understand the Strobe Basin has competing interests.

But what I don't understand is why the county would not offer more clarity, detail, and information when the opportunity arises. I believe this board needs better information that has to be vetted and understood by the interested parties before signing a $1,600,000 contract contract that Us taxpayers will be paying into. Thank you for the time.

Thank you very much. Wrangler Wheeler next, followed by Carolyn Newman. Who's got the coolest name?

Wheeler does. Hi. Good Thanks, guys. Hey. Just to follow-up on a few points that mister Rado made. He did a really great job at breaking down what is kind of a complex problem, but a very interesting one that you seem to come across. Again, I'm sitting here reading this and I just can't understand the concept of potentially paying for another look into something that you've already looked into. I understand the need to get a full picture and gather as much information as you can, but you've already placed that burden on taxpayers in which they have stepped up and that report has been done and completed. That's how we partially got together with our GSP. We used information from previous reports that was already paid for and done.

It seems that potentially there's a disconnect between board and staff. I ask that you guys give staff clear direction. Last Wednesday, March 25 at the Sturgis meeting and also at the WAC meeting that same morning, Questions were directly asked regarding this topic and either we were misinformed or staff had no direction on what to answer. We were clearly told that this was an ongoing interest and that there was no direct action going to be taken in any near time frame. They had no idea of any potential cost.

We directly asked them what kind of a budget this report would look like. They had no information to provide us. So I was quite shocked when I looked at the agenda and here we have a $1,600,000 allocation of taxpayer funds for something that we were just told is still in the works, maybe going be pushed off till next month. So I do ask that we can delay 14b until we have time to further look into it. Thank you.

Thank you, Wrangler. Carolyn?

Hi.

I learned a little bit just now, but I'm still going to read my notes as I prepared them for this today. I asked to have this item pulled from the consent calendar because there's the clashing information. And I'm having some questions about it that I'm I'm hoping this board or somebody can help me understand. So according to the staff report in today's packet, the RFP for this contract was finalized in December 2025. It was awarded to EKI, Environmental and Water, and the purpose seems to be to do further analysis on a different report that this body already approved of with a seven-zero vote.

That report did a study of the whole county, but there's a few areas of concern, including the eastern areas outside of MID's governance known as the Non District East. The original report is already in the state's hands for approval from what I understand. So there's that. However, at the Sturgba meeting on Wednesday, I was there and for those who don't know, Sturgba is like all the water and irrigation districts in the county get together, and Stanislaus County represents it as a steward for all the areas that aren't represented. At that meeting, the water manager for Stanislaus County told us that this report was either before or in the early stages of RFP, that she knows that EKI has done work advocating for the Nondistrict East, and that EKI would not be used for this analysis.

So you can see why today's insert has me confused. I guess I'm looking for your help so I can understand this. Do you know about this potential conflict with EKI in the Non District East? Does this count as a conflict? Does the GSA know about this contractor and the purposes here, including the ones that were added after the contract was awarded?

Does the GSA know about the potential conflict of interest with EKI in the Nondistrict East? Do the rules for GSA or Sturgis say that they get to know about this ahead of time? Because based on the conversations that were had at the Sturgis meeting, it seems like the other districts were taking it at their word that this process hadn't even really started yet. So approving it today would really put the other jurisdictions at a loss and kind of be a shock. I'm concerned that they haven't gotten a chance to see and understand what's happening here, especially since you're all partners together in this joint venture.

And last, I'm curious that you know that non district East has these concerns. They were over drafting. They were pumping too much water. I'm concerned that regular citizens throughout the county are going to be paying for this area that has very special niche interest and needs for which we already have information. So I think that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else on this item, item 14? If not, I'm going to ask staff if you want to come up and take a shot. There were lots of questions to unpack.

Good morning, honorable Board members, Chairman Keysa, Council Boes, and CEO Hayes.

I'm gonna drag that mic closer to you if you can. Sure. Good

morning. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to provide clarification on our board item, requesting consideration of authorization of the agreement with EKI Environmental. We put together

Oh, this one.

Thank you.

Thank you. Apologize for that interruption. We put together some additional information yesterday in hopes of providing some clarification with respect to the hydrological services needed by the Department of Environmental Resources Groundwater Program in the Groundwater Division. So there's essentially two different components in the county's groundwater division that require hydrological supports. One is support of our groundwater ordinance, which includes our groundwater ordinance program and then some additional, SIGMA compliance support with respect to being in compliance with the GSP regulations.

So, this March 2026 agreement is, requesting approval of services with EKI Environment and Water. And this agreement will replace an existing agreement with Tri Hydro Corporation that has been in effect since 2014. The other agreement is the agreement that we are still working on. We issued the RFP last month after the board approved the Modesto Subbasin Groundwater Use Management Program and provided the additional direction to hire a third party consultant and develop the action plan to implement the groundwater use management program.

So Christy Christy, just real quick, I just wanna emphasize that. We're So talking about two separate things. One is an agreement that basically has been in place since 2014 since back to when we passed our groundwater ordinance. And it was really there. The the these consultants were that have been on board since then, now we've we've put it up for RFP again.

But it has been in place since that time and it was really there to deal with our groundwater ordinance and really our well permitting process. Back at the time we were struggling with administrative administerial permits versus discretionary permits. And and so we brought on a consultant and I continued to have a consultant up until today. And we just finally put it out for RFP again for another consultant to help us with this issue back then versus what we've been talking about as stewards of the non District East, non District West areas. And we're looking to bring on a consultant to help us implement the GSP that has been approved by the GSA and approved by DWR.

That is pretty much correct. We sent the, this agreement for the groundwater program support services out last October. So that was before the work was finalized for the Non District East in the Modesto Sub Basin. We fully realized that EKI couldn't do the work because they wouldn't be a third party consultant. So therefore we put together an RAFP for a different project, which is developing the action plan for demand management implementation in the Non District E.

So these are two separate issues. Sigma and GSP development and implementation, as we know, is very complex. So our groundwater program hydrological support services contract with EKI does span some additional, more specified work needed in our department with respect to developing and implementing groundwater sustainability plans across our four sub basins. We haven't extended it to the Turlock Subbasin because that one's been up and running, but we are gonna need additional support with implementing our Delta Mendota Pumping Reduction Plan and then additional programs that will be coming on board for the Eastern San Joaquin Subbasin and then things that come as needed.

And again, so this isn't new money being spent. This is money that we have been spending since back in 2014, contracting previously with Tri Hydro for this work. Correct. And so it's not additional new money. This is money that we have planned for, budgeted for, and will continue to spend. We've just brought on we put it out for RFP and have brought on a new vendor versus who was doing it before. Is that correct?

That's almost correct. There's an additional increase of about 180 because 5,000 of the additional Since specified

2014, things go up.

Was going to wait until the end, but since we're already starting to have a conversation. Yeah. No. No. Then it's it lines in well with the question. So, I guess my biggest concern and I was is there's no duplicative of cost that is being, you know, because of this service that the that all the stuff that we're doing on the other management side, there's no duplicative or redundant costs that are being incurred by the ratepayers or by county residents.

That's a good question. I'm gonna move to my next slide so I can have some additional information that may help with addressing that question. So, specifically with the EKI contract, under the groundwater ordinance, EKI will be focusing on reviewing non exempt well applications and supporting our division with compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA in initial studies and determination support. In addition, I will be available to support groundwater ordinance or other ordinance and policy refinements and updates with respect to well permitting and other programs. And in addition to providing support to review very complex environmental documents for hydrological impacts.

What we're looking for EKI to help with, to support our Groundwater Sustainability Plan implementation and Sigma compliance support, is more specific to general GSP development and implementation. Focusing on the work that we've been completing in the Northern Delta Mendota Groundwater Sub Basin, specifically with implementation of the Pumping Reduction Plan, and well metering, monitoring and reporting program guidelines that were approved by the board in 2025. In addition to, in the Eastern San Joaquin Subbasin, the Groundwater Authority has approved work to begin with a consultant to put together the groundwater allocation framework for that sub basin. So we will need support from EKI as we move forward with implementation of that program. And then additional groundwater demand reduction programs for the out of district areas of that sub basin, in North of the Stanislaus River.

EKI will be available for Modesto Sub basin support as needed, but our department fully recognizes and will be very vigilant to make sure that any work is not duplicated, and that we don't have a conflict of interest. They won't be involved in contributing to the third party technical review of the two competing studies, or with the additional action plan development. But EKI will be available for additional GSP implementation services, such as helping to apply for and report for grants that could support building our dynamic reduction portfolio and help us partner to secure maybe water transfers and those other types of efforts. Supporting project planning and execution in the future.

So I think where the confusion is, is on January 27 when your board approved our groundwater use monitoring plan is where we were going to bring on that third party consultant. And there's consultants here, there's consultants over there, and it gets confusing. And when motions get raised, particularly in the livelihoods of all of our constituents. That confusion with contract when you start hearing one specific name being mentioned, you know, from the Non District East and then also from now that we're hiring that same consultant for the overall groundwater program assistance in our management, like from what we had from Tri Hydro. And that third party is completely independent from EKI.

They're not gonna have, like Christy said, any bias and it's gonna be independent.

So I have one more slide that provides some additional details about what this new request for proposal is soliciting for support for groundwater use management program, action plan for the Modesto Subbasin Non District Management Area. This consultant will be secured to complete the third party evaluation of the groundwater use management program, and the technical evaluation completed by EKI. In addition to developing of the action plan that's required, we're planning on getting our ad hoc work group to the table in later April to start working on the project because we're projecting to bring the action plan to the board at the October 20 meeting for consideration of approval before we take it to the Stirkbeck GSA to approve by our deadline of 11/01/2026. And then we will be responsible to begin implementation of that action plan 01/31/2027.

Okay.

I don't know if there's anybody else wants to have any, but I I

I just wanna make a comment that you see the perception. Right? Everyone understands that there's a perception and there's gotta be a big wall. I know it's two separate issues, but I think that's what gets is getting everyone loaded up that there's the potential for someone to put their finger on the scale on the non District East or for the non District East. So we have to be extremely careful if we move forward with this, that we don't allow that to cross.

Yeah. And this is a very hypersensitive issue. Obviously, we've been fighting this for probably a year, maybe two years now with what's going on. And so and and there's just a lot of false accusations and then something like this comes up and everybody, again, accuses it basically comes down to accusing this board of of not doing the right thing, of trying to tip the scales. And and I and I said it at a at a I wasn't able to make the GSA meeting on on Wednesday afternoon, but I said it at the at the Water Advisory Committee meeting that that's that's not what we do.

That's not how we do business here. That we would never do that. And this is about doing the right thing. And again, I understand it's hyper said that Anthony, you're gonna be one of the individuals who are on that ad hoc committee for the for the Non District East, non District West, you know, that was gonna help us pick a third party to help consultant to help us through all this stuff. So we're trying to include everybody in it that we can to be a part of this process to make this thing work.

And and there is no way, any intention for us to do to to make this lean one direction or the other. We're just, like you said, trying to do the right thing here. And I wish and maybe I wish just a phone call, you know, give me a phone call when you saw this agenda item come out and we could have talked about it. I mean, get it. I very much understand the hypersensitivity of it. And I know Manny got some phone calls, maybe two. I didn't get one phone call.

I mean,

you got one from me.

You got one from Manny. Yeah. But call and and say, like, what the hell is this? You know? If that's a concern, what's going on? And we could explain it. It's still good that we get to do it here in a public setting, and I'm glad we this opportunity, we had this opportunity to do this. But anyway, again, we're we wouldn't we are doing the right thing here, and we would always do the right thing, this board. And I'm letting Mandy go.

Well, just the perception issue that one of my colleagues just brought up. So we passed that motion in January of doing the kinda overseeing all the studies. Now now one of those studies happens to be EKI study. Right? Even that can be cause for a little bit of concern because it's their study still, even though that they're hands off, how are we looking to kinda alleviate any further concerns and creating that firewall of IKI doing this side of the work and not having any I don't wanna say any because it's already past tense. They already have because they did a study that also affects the things that we're looking at based on that approval.

So part of what the consultant is gonna look at is it's gonna do the evaluation of the EKI study, and it's also gonna do the evaluation of the Sturgis study. And they're going to formulate with that ad hoc committee the best management practice and they're going bring it in for your board for approval. And then once they bring it to your board for approval, then it goes back now with us to the Sturgis Sturgis they work together to try to find the the right way to implement it and and work with our with EKI to ensure that that what your direction was is gonna be implemented in there.

And then, it was brought up about the ad hoc committee. Can you just elaborate for the public's knowledge just to show that there's public participation from ad hoc members that will also be overseeing? So it wouldn't just be the responsibility of the board, but also an ad hoc committee and what that consists of, how many members who's representing. I don't know if that ad hoc committee has already been put in place. I know there's been some preliminary discussions, but if we can just get a general idea of how many people are on the committee, what type of people, you know, what type of industries and I guess even regions will be represented across the county.

Good question. So we have formulated an ad hoc committee composed of interested stakeholders and landowners, a variety of landowners. Four members of the non district east volunteered at our town hall meeting that we had in late February. Since then, Mr. Rado was recommended to be appointed to participate as a representative of the Non District West.

In addition to Stacy Call, City Council person for the City Of Riverbank. Since we've had our latest discussions, we've received additional interest in participating and are bringing mister Engel to the table and responding to additional request for participation. We also have received interest from our partner agencies who would like to attend sort of the meetings to be involved and our door is open.

How many members are are we limiting it to the amount of members or it's just anybody that

We haven't determined that we would be limiting it to any sort of number. Don't think that the numbers are so big that we would need to consider limiting them at this time. I think it's workable.

We had a list of names of individuals who wanted to participate as a result of that meeting. We asked them to sign up and they did. And then we've added the angle, was Brandon angle. And then I think there's potential for somebody else from city of Riverbank Stacy that might join join the committee too. So it kind of seems to be growing, which is a good thing. That's okay. We want everybody's input.

We had a meeting with the City of Riverbank on Friday and they are wanting to have one of their members as well as Stacy put on that.

Had we originally done this a while back also, like we had put together a committee in the for the same for the same goal of, transparency you and getting everybody, all the stakeholders and the landowners involved?

Well, we had a few meetings of trying to have everyone come in in the room together to find out what the overall and overarching issues are between the non district East and the West.

But we've never asked for participation in of this type in a previous ad hoc committee?

So we had a big we had a big larger meeting, which we brought a lot of individuals into, and then we and then we paired that off to to put a kind of a subcommittee of that which we met of some of the younger individuals, farmers and stuff in the area to to meet and talk about about how can we make this thing work. Then the the the GSP was passed by all the various agencies, including us. And then from there, we're asked to, our task is to be the stewards for the non District East, non District West to try to help implement what was called out in the GSP. And it is all specifically called out in the GSP, which has been approved again by this board and approved by DWR. And like I said, all members of the GSA, Sturgisman, were a part of that.

And so then as us being stewards helping implement that area, we wanted to put together individuals that could help us implement that and figure out ways to make that work. And so that's what this ad hoc committee is now. It's made, it's to help us as the stewards for that area. And correct me if I'm saying anything wrong here guys. It's to help us as stewards of that area, get the individuals who are part of that part of the basin to be a part of any decision making, which is to help us implement what has been passed already in the GSP. So

Well, knowing that now knowing that there's not a constrictive number of members, I would encourage people that have questions and we're getting interest to be on this ad hoc committee and it seems like it's starting to grow a little bit more, but I know there's people that have concerns and I would encourage. I know it's a time commitment, but if, you know, to in the spirit of making sure that you're holding the board accountable, obviously staff as well, I I would encourage all the people that have those questions to look into joining the ad hoc committee. For me personally, the biggest concern that I will always bring up is if this is a duplication or a redundancy of expenditures. I just feel that, you know, as county citizens, if if we're doing, I know this is a we're all in this together approach but we also don't want to be spending money inefficiently because these are the hard $1 of ratepayers, taxpayers, whether you're, you know, for MID or OID or you know, I know TID has their own basin but all the partner agencies, the cities, the territories that there shouldn't be any redundancy in expenses incurred because I think it's coming from the same source which is the residents of Stanislaus County.

Yeah. Would like to see a little bit more structure on that ad committee. How many meetings has occurred up to this point so far? We've had a handful.

Yeah. So the ad hoc committee is this ad hoc committee has not met yet. We're hoping it can get together at the April. We're working on that right now. We've got a very tight

Well, we're formalizing the ad hoc committee, up to this point, how many have we had unformally? Two.

We've had two.

Two? Okay. So if we can maybe weigh into Supervisor Graywall's point, you know, a cap of how many folks are going to be a part of this committee, how often they meet, just a certain involvement of the municipalities, that would be great. Because obviously, as the two gentlemen alluded to earlier, there's a communication breakdown here and we want to make sure that everybody of interest has a seat at the table. All the same information is being shared across the board because again to their point for whatever reason, lack or better, they were unaware of certain things that are possibly taking place and being considered.

And I understand that there's some overlap here and this is obviously a hot topic. But also just pointing that out and with, you know, some of the controversy that could arise from these types of issues, this type of item probably should not be on a consent calendar. This should probably be a discussion item because again, this is a very sensitive issue and it's very important to our livelihood in Stanislaus County. So, just moving forward, we may want to consider this being a discussion item, you know, just for for for further conversations.

And then on that ad hoc committee, we have two members from the board of supervisors. Yourself and supervisor. Buck Hunt?

Yeah. And again, I just want to stress that these are two separate issues. What we're talking about here today would have happened regardless of of what's going on with the the ad hoc committee and the and the Us being the stewards. This was a contract that was going to be renewed but goes back to 2014 that we've been incurring this part of our budget. Again, this is a separate, totally separate item. Just happens at the end of the the company that was chosen. It went through a process and RFP and the one that won was the CKI which is what I I understand causes concern of individuals. But again, I encourage everyone to please reach out to us as these concerns arise and we'll deal with them.

Okay. What's the will of the board?

I will make a motion to approve this contract.

Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you guys for those explanations and hopefully that helped you guys a little bit here. We can talk some more if we still have more concerns.

Did Ron leave? He did. Okay. Because he had two items. Okay. So the next item is B29. I'll get back to B24. 20. It's the approval to accept the satisfactory status of the property at 859 North Kenwood Avenue. And let's see. Let's see. Michael Ireland had taken off. Ron McMurtry had taken off. Cabrini Herrera. That is so wonderful for me. Okay. So I thought we did individual.

Yeah, we still have the proof 14 and 18.

14 was like you can wait till I.

Yes.

Yes.

Good afternoon. Good morning, Cabrini.

Hello. This concerns my property.

You pull the microphone down? Thank you. Thank you.

And now it's like right in my nose. Hello. This concerns my property of cleanup process of, trimming hedges are trimmed. Debris on the back part of my property. I don't know if you have the pictures from, I don't have the pictures, from the last I don't know what you call it.

Violation packet, I guess. I'm not sure what it's called. There's some pictures in there asking about debris in the backyard, and that has been taken down. All that's left back there is tires that need to be removed, paint cans, which I didn't know there was that many because I didn't see them, some big logs on the other side by Kenwood that need to be removed. But, basically, it's doesn't look anything like what you see in the pictures. And there was, a lady working with me, Marissa.

What's wrong with

I can't seem to find that notebook. She's from Stylus Laus and Stylus Laus Adult Services, and she came to help me out with getting things contained on my property. And I thought she would show up today, but I guess not. That's how it goes. And I had, my friend, Manuel, helping me with cutting the hedges and the trees, and we did a lot of that work and disposed of it.

But they all have the pictures. I don't have the pictures to show you the comp what's been done. Is there any way I can give you the pictures? Like, email them to Sure.

You can. If you hand them over there to the clerk. Do you have the pictures?

I can get them from them.

Oh. I don't think I don't think there's any need actually. Lane, you wanna come over here?

Oh, Laney has pictures from her? Because she was talking to them, trying to talk to environmental resources. Yeah.

I'll just have Lane explain where the, process is, which is positive. So go ahead.

Good morning. Hi. Yeah. This this process we went through, last time we went to the board, We requested that we give more time for the property in order to clean up the property. We went about twenty days into that thirty day process and there was really no improvement on the property. Through that time we asked if APS can go out and offer any kind of services. APS went out. There was some services they can provide. They had a cleanup crew come out, spent five days out in the property, multiple dumpsters, and spent their cap. They have maximum amount of money they can spend on the property.

This was $12,000 that they spent to clean it up. After it was cleaned up, we're about 90% or so cleaned up. There are some items left. So we're at the point right now to say that we're satisfactory to give the property owner opportunity to maintain her property from this point on. And if she can't maintain the property, then we might have to bring this back. Yep.

So there was I know I drove by there when they were cutting the hedges, maybe within the last ten days for sure. And I saw much improved. Yeah. And I just want the public

to It know never looks like that before in

my life.

But it's always about compliance. We're only looking for compliance with things. So we're willing to buy people time and effort because money doesn't grow on trees. We know that it's a hardship, but the fact that this came back, just what Lane explained that the improvement, there's 90% improvement, which is fantastic.

Yeah, it's not exactly what's supposed to be cleaned up. Obviously the owner says we'll be cleaning up other items. Both APS and myself will keep the case open monitor as we go along to see if there's any other assistance we can do in the future and or if we can have any other suggestions for the board. Yeah.

And and maybe we can just I don't know. Manny controls my speaking.

No.

But I just wanna thank APS for what they did. That was adult protective services. Correct. And we appreciate them coming out there, and that was great work. Yeah. Yeah.

She didn't have very much time to do what she she can accomplish. Accomplish. Yeah. She was like rushed into it.

Yeah. They went out very quick and did, like I said, five, almost six days of work out there. So, that's where we're at.

Good stuff.

Anything else for us, Kareem?

No. So this completes it or the violations stop or continue?

So the violations are essentially in a bands right now. Correct.

How about the financial part of it?

Yeah. We haven't issued any citations in quite a while since we've started this process up.

Since she'd been there

working Yeah. With Before that. When we went to the NAB meeting, we stopped, any kind of processes of administrative citations at that point while we're going through this negotiation.

Okay. I wasn't aware of that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, community. Peggy Silva also wants to speak.

So the pictures aren't necessary for you guys to see those?

I don't think so. Okay.

Because

I'll get them

for you.

Thank you.

Hello, Supervisor and all the members of the Board. Thank you very much. I want to say, I'm Peggy Silva. I'm a longtime friend of Cabrina. And I want to say thank you for all that you've done and having this lady come out and help the process along. And we are friends. We try to do what we can, but we can't do everything. And I'm like almost 73. So, but thank you very much for all of that and thank you for putting that in base. The main thing I want to say is that you understand the financial impact is that Sabrina does not have a job.

She has no way to pay a lien if say you should have work done and charge her for it. And that's my greatest concern that she not have any possibility of potentially losing her property. That's really so we appreciate all that you've done. Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. No other speakers on that. I'm gonna move on to the next item then we'll take all of the items that we didn't vote on together. The last item was B24. I'm actually pulling, I wanted to comment on this. I consider this kind of a unique situation. It's a utilization of $9,500 of community development funds, the discretionary funds that each district has. And because the uniqueness of this, because they don't utilize this very often, only in conjunction with departments. So you may or may not know up in La Grange, there is a parcel and we have the La Grange Off Road Park that parks and rec operates.

There's the old school house that they operate. And then there's a parcel that is right where Yosemite Boulevard makes a 90 degree turn at the end of the main street. If you keep driving in, there is a museum, some bathrooms and the old jail. I think it was the first jail in Stanislaus County that are maintained by our parks. We own the property.

There was the La Grange Improvement Association had originally built, not through county monies, but they had built a building that then housed the station thirty five of Stanislaus Consolidated Fire District up there for many years. I think it's been about a decade that they haven't operated it. But the La Grange Improvement Association doesn't have any function at this point. So the building has been uninhabited except for the old fire. I believe the old fire truck, the original fire truck up in La Grange just parked in one of the stalls.

So Stanislaus Consolidated Battalion Chief Scott Burkhead contacted me. There was a fire a few years back that came pretty close to the building because it's scrub brushes, actually Stanislaus County's property behind it. And they took a crew up there, volunteers, they cleaned everything out. And because it's on Stanislaus County's property, even though it's not being utilized currently by LGIA, I thought it was proper to maintain it. We're going to paint the the building because again, if the the way it's headed, it'll probably end up the Stanislaus County's property in the future.

But this is in conjunction with Stanislaus Consolidated Fire District who have done work keeping it clean. We're also going to utilize some of the base parks, leaves equipment up at the old schoolhouse outdoors. Now we'll put something inside. Also offered up at the sheriff's department for any river patrols, as well as, department of fish and games. So I just thought because of the uniqueness of that, I felt like I needed to explain why we're utilizing the money for for that purpose. So with yes. Okay, yeah, because I took 18 off. All right, so that was it. Does anyone want to speak on that item? Any questions?

Either. And then item B18 that was pulled by Ron McMurtry, who I'm gonna offer it up. Does anyone want to comment on this regarding the amended agreements with Oracle America for the public safety related systems? All right, seeing none, have, we're gonna lump them all together and we have 1824 and Kenwood was 29. I will entertain a motion for the three.

Motion to approve all remaining agenda items. Second.

Thank you. All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thanks for keeping me organized.

There's a lot going on there.

All right. We do have one public hearing, Public hearing to consider approval of the abandonment of the portion of the United Community Center and Park in Grayson, California. So, GSA, Parks Director. Have another public hearing after this. So don't run to your cars just yet.

Working?

It's up. Right.

Oh, you're looking at it.

Can you Steven, can you see up? Now it's gone everywhere. Can you see that from the TV?

There we go. Now I can see it there.

Alright. Okay.

Hold on. There we go. It's all

coming Alright.

You're good. Alright. Good morning, Chairman Chiesa, Supervisor, CEO Hayes, Council Bowes. I'm Tara Chiemle, Director of Parks and Recreation. And with me at the staff table is Cody Nelson, a real estate manager with the General Services Agency. We're here today to conduct a public hearing on the proposed abandonment of less than an acre portion of parkland at United Community Park in Grayson. And Cody will get us started.

Good morning, everybody. So I wanted to provide a brief update on the background and why we're here today. So the city of Modesto owns and operates the water system that serves the Grayson community and the city is currently upgrading that system to improve overall performance, reliability, and long term service capacity. As part of this improvement, the city constructed the new Grayson Well 69 and needs additional space for a drain basin, storage tank, and a water pump. To accommodate these upgrades, the city is seeking to purchase a small unimproved portion of the United Community Park located near Grayson Road in Mary Street in Grayson.

If we go to

the next slide, you'll see there outlined in red is the current location of Grayson Well 69. To the east is the county owned property outlined in blue that they're going to be seeking to purchase from us. And to the west, you'll notice the United Community Center in Park. All right. So there's quite a process when it comes to the sale of Parkland.

So bear with me. So government code section 25,580 outlines the required process for selling Parkland. On 01/27/2026, the Board of Supervisors took several actions to move us in the direction of complying with the Parkland sale process. These actions included declaring the property as exempt surplus land, approving a purchase and sale agreement with the city of Modesto, adopting the required resolutions, directing staff to post and publish all the required notices, and then setting today's public hearing. Since the board's prior approval, county and city staff have all completed all remaining procedural steps, including executing the PSA with the city, opening escrow.

Staff have published required resolutions in the Modesto Bee and posted notices in both English and Spanish throughout the park for three consecutive weeks. Staff from GSA, Parks and Recreation, and the City of Modesto also attended the March 12 Gracing Community Services District meeting where we talked about planned use of the proceeds, the sale, city services, and city services to the community. The final step in the process is holding today's public hearing.

I'm going

to pass it back to Tara.

So the total proceeds from the sale are estimated to be a little more than $91,000 and will be deposited into the Parks and Recreation Capital Project budget less the publishing costs that were estimated a little over 2,000 Staff are recommending that the remaining proceeds of approximately 89,000 be assigned for future park improvements at the United Community Park in Grayson. There are four staff recommendations for your consideration. Hold a public hearing to consider the abandonment of Parkland property located along Mary Street in Grayson. If unanimously approved, authorize the general services agency director purchasing agent to take all actions necessary to execute documents and close escrow in accordance with the purchase and sale agreement previously approved by the board on 01/27/2026. Approve the use of the proceeds for park improvements at the United Community Park in Grayson, and direct the auditor controller to make the necessary budget adjustments in Parks and Recreation budget and capital project budget unit.

That concludes our presentation, and staff are available to answer any questions you may have. And we request that the chair open the public hearing. Thank Any

questions of staff? Just real quick.

I know you had mentioned you met with the Grayson CSD. Could you just provide some of the feedback that they gave? And was it unanimously approved?

So, excuse me. There was no action for them to vote on at the time, but we did go there, City of Modesto, engineering staff, parks and rec staff, GSA, we all went. Everybody seemed very excited that they'd be improving the water reliant reliability to the community. They were made fully aware that this is an unimproved portion of the park. They knew that it wouldn't interrupt any services or programs. And overall, very positive. I'm actually surprised that they aren't here today. They all seem to want to come down here and show their support. Good. Happy to hear. Thank you again.

Yes. Thank you. And I know we've done something similar in Keys along the community center, helping improve the water. Okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and just know the comments. I'm gonna open the public hearing, acknowledge that we don't have any written comments and open the public comment period. Does anyone in the audience wish to provide any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'm gonna close the public comment period, bring it back to the board for action. Supervisor Kane.

Move to approve.

Move to approve. Second. Second. Perfect. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Motion carries five zero. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we're going to move on to our second public hearings. Public hearing to consider approval of capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2026 through 2030. And Andy Johnson will be presenting.

Good morning, Chairman Chiesa, members of the Board of Supervisors, CEO Hayes, and County Council votes. Appreciate this morning, Great presentation on the Grayson Community Center. But now we move to the capital improvement plan. And I have the great privilege of being with Al Valencia and Teresa Vanderveen today. Al's our assistant director over capital facilities and Teresa is our senior manager and probably the long term architect of the CIP.

Those of us who were fortunate to work under Patricia Hill Thomas, we learned a saying that says, plan your work and work your plan. This is also a great partnership with Public Works, and we are here to present the fiscal year '26 through 2030 plan. Go ahead and move to the next slides, Teresa. One more, thank you Al. Alright, so as we have come to know, the CIP is a planning tool.

It is not a direct approval of any project. It identifies projects for consideration. In the past, we utilized a plan where we asked departments to try to look out for the next 20. And the only book in the county that I am aware of that rivals it would be the in size was the budget book. And so we decided to move to a five year plan and we were in year three of it.

It lists dates that construction might start. It incorporates proposed method of financing and potential costs that we know today. What it is not is it is not the board's approval of any specific project or approval of plans and specifications or approval of any budgets. Those will come back to you in the normal tried and true process. The definition of a capital project is anything that exceeds $200,000 extends the life of the facility for more than five years or alters the use of facility space. And why that is important is there are many projects that come to us that don't meet that definition that are still important. Those projects are ultimately reviewed and transferred to a different list and still taken on as capacity allows. Allows. And with that, I'll turn it over to Theresa now.

Good morning. We're going to go through the CIP process and a little bit about what the book contains for this year. The process for building this capital improvement plan didn't change from last year, to but go through it quickly, the department submits projects that they request occur during the next five years. Hopefully they come from a master strategic plan. They're reviewed for consistency in content and evaluated by the CIP committee made multiple department members.

They're evaluated and scored and put in priority order, brought before senior leadership for their review, briefings if needed, and went to the planning commission on January 16 for, general consistency review of whether it's generally consistent with the county's, plan. And it was determined to be consistent with the county's, general plan. The project evaluation criteria that they are scored on, the highest, point value goes to those that have critical needs, whether health safety, emergency law or mandate. The second highest is whether it, spends down building community services investment funds. This is the last year that this will be a part of the scoring criteria as those funds expire.

And as well as we take into account whether they are planned for by the department, they're using external funding like grants and insurance proceeds, their impact to the county's overall budget, and their customer service level. Moving forward, we are looking at, we want to highlight several completed facilities this year. There are a total of 17 projects that were completed this year, eight by Public Works, nine by GSA. The GSA projects, facility projects are listed here. We've got the Bonita Pool, the top picture there at grand opening day.

On the left, the classroom new classroom for sheriff's Ray Simon Training Center. In the middle, the new recreation area, new playground at Leroy Fitzsimons Park. And finally on the right, the administration building for medical and program staff out at the Public Safety Center. The CIP this year contains a total of a 128 projects. 84 of those are public works as work on infrastructure, totaling about eight hundred, nine hundred million dollars facilities at 44 at a 177,000,000.

A total of a 128 projects, 1,808,000,000 about in this plan. The new projects this year, there are a total of 33 new projects. Public works is bringing forward 19 of those, summarized on the left side. And GSA for facilities bringing forward 14. There are electrical vehicle charging stations, roads, bridges, the Ag Center parking lot, two library improvements at Salida Library, the parking lot, and the new Waterford Library.

One major HVAC replacement at PSC Public Safety Center West, the oldest building out there. Canine Training Center, Clerk Recorder Division is looking for expanded space for their expanded staff. Workforce Development looking to centralize their staff, Fink Road to expand shop and five park improvements, the Bonita Playground, the Grange Electrical, Campground Electrical and several others. By board priority, when we put all a 128 projects in a donut, you can see that public works has the mass vast majority of the work in there on roads and bridges, and we'll hear from them shortly. And the way the rest of them fall in that donut.

In the next slide, we're gonna talk just about facility projects, the 44 facility projects. And you'll see that the largest portion of facility projects fall under supporting a strong and safe community at 68,000,000. A big chunk of that is that major HVAC replacement project that needs to happen at the Public Safety Center. The oldest facility out there, the West facility, we're earmarking about 28,000,000 to replace the entire mechanical system out there, 10 HVAC units. They are aging.

They're 30 plus years old. Also within there are the recreation yards that's ongoing right now that board has already looked at. The second biggest chunk there is delivering efficient public services. And in there, we have the community centers, this facility which is also aging. And the third biggest chunk is supporting a healthy community with HSA Northpointe, the 13,000,000 for that project within that.

If we moved at looking at the projects by lead department, you can see that the sheriff does have again a big chunk of that and that's due to that PSE West HVAC project of 28,000,000 and their rec yard improvement of 8,000,000. GSA has a big portion of that and that's due to the community centers, Keyes Community Center, which is currently under renovation And the projects that are anticipated for this building that's aging. And then third largest would be HSA with that North Point Towers. And fourth, the probation with their courtroom that's coming up and out to bid right now, and a vocational center that they would like to put out there at 10,000,000. So departments are asked to anticipate where funding could come from for their projects, And the majority of the funding is, I would say, mostly from department fund balance and some external external funding, whether they be grants or insurance proceeds.

BCSI, the building community services investment to enhance parks and to parks and libraries and to restore county facilities is the last year of that spending. We're trying to utilize public facility fees as much as possible to account for the expansion in community and the services that are needed. There is an unfunded portion of 30% that we're continuing to work on with the departments as we develop their projects with them. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Dave to present the public works portion of the CIP.

Good morning, board. Dave Lehman, public works director. For public works, the CIP process is really one leg of a three legged stool and is part of the regional transportation improvement program and is also part of our F tip, which is a federal improvement program. All important that they all align. And so the RTIIP is prepared by our friends at Stancock, just down the street.

It's a five year program for all transportation needs within the county, including our friends at the cities, identifies regional priorities, addresses congestion, improves connectivity and promotes sustainable transportation elements. And the FDIP is also prepared by STANCOG and it's a four year program of all surface transportation projects that will receive federal funding and establishes policies, allocates funding and supports state and regional initiatives. And the county CIP is all part of the other two programs. And so our major funding sources are funding not yet identified, so we're always looking for money. The highway bridge program, RMRA, ARPA, and Measure L Regional, and Measure L Streets and Roads, and then HBP, or the HUD funds also, are part of our funding matrix.

Next slide. And so the big ones. North County Corridor is currently under construction. 7th Street Bridge, yay, we're under construction also. Faith Home Road Bridge, we're working on getting the design team kicked off on that, and that will give us a bypass around Modesto on the East Side for the first time ever. We're super excited about that project. That won't be under construction until I'm off in La La Land, in retirement land, so got to leave something for the next person. Our ARPA project is about $56,000,000 Crow's Landing Industrial Business Park. Hills Ferry is almost done. We should be holding a ribbon cutting on that sometime in May, June.

And then Crabtree, Tim Bell and Kilburn Road bridge projects, so we about $450,000,000 worth of construction projects going on right now. Thank you.

Alright, I'm gonna go through the recommendations for today. We are recommending that the board conduct this scheduled public hearing to receive public content comment and input on this recommended capital improvement plan for fiscal years 2026 to 2030, and that the board approve the recommended capital improvement plan as well. With that, we open it up to your comments, questions, and public.

Are there any questions, Tara or Alan or Andy? Okay. Seeing none, we're going to acknowledge there are no public or written comments. We're going to open the public comment period. Does anyone in the audience wish to provide any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'm gonna close the public comment and bring it back to the board.

I just wanna say incredible work by all of our departments. A lot of these projects, obviously, are happening around the county, but a lot of them are in District 5. Outstanding job by everybody involved. Much appreciated. I know my constituents are are thrilled about a lot of these projects.

And then just for the capital improvements, I know me and Andy have spoken about Monterey Track Park, about their community building. It's not an official county building, but it's ran by the board out there. But I do think that there's a prospect out there that them possibly becoming a county building in the future with certain plans in place and a vision where that community center can be built out. And I would dare to say that it's probably the most dilapidated public building in Stanislaus County if you haven't been out to the Monterey Track Park Community Building. So just keep that in mind.

I know me and Andy are going to keep conversing about that and the prospects there. But again, excellent job by all the departments today. Thank you again for all your hard

District 2, the over crossing Keys Road over the Turlock, Maine opened this last week and Taylor Road over crossing Taylor and where not wearing. Quincy. Quincy just opened. So I always see that I don't I didn't have a cross them yet, but when something great like this happens, everyone on Facebook lets me know. So, all right, action.

Motion to approve. Second.

The motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion again carries five zero. Thank you very much, Tara Al. On to Item seven, discussion item number one, approval to accept a report on the pavement management system and approval of the Public Works multi year pavement maintenance program for calendar years twenty six-twenty seven. Andrew and Dave will be presenting.

I

think just cut to the chase on this one. Not enough.

Go ahead and start. We ready?

Yeah. We're ready.

Alright. Perfect. Again, Dave Levens, stencilscape of the works director, and with me is deputy director Andrew Malizia. Trader Slacker Sam Shrine is at his lunch right now that we're celebrating him. This is his last actual physical day at the county. So we wish him well in San Joaquin County. Anyway we're here to talk about the pavement update in a two year road list. And I'm a let Andrew take over presentation I'm going to run the power point.

Good afternoon board. Andrew Malizia, deputy director of public works. What we wanted to do here today is just give an update. I don't I don't know that we've actually done something like this or or quite to this extent, in the past. So we just wanted to bring to you what we've been doing over the last few years.

And then a little bit of a look forward. And so what we've done was we've prepared our next two years of road maintenance lists that we'll be asking you to accept. And as part of that, what we're gonna go through here today is first, we'll give you an overview of the of the county's network. We'll give you then a description of some of the treatments that we may or may not use, typically the ones that we're gonna use. And then we're going go just kind of into the some numbers and and details here for you.

So, the county maintains just over 1,500 miles, centerline miles of roadways. We don't have a whole lot of of multilane. So we we tend to use centerline miles. The more centerline miles we have, that's part of the Huda and SB one RMRA distribution formulas at the state. So typically, we are reducing in mileage through annexations.

We we don't add a whole lot along the way. Typically, new subdivisions, maybe a new development, commercial. We have 471 miles that are federally eligible roads. These are the larger roads, principal arterials, our minor arterials, and our major collectors. These are, you know, Clarabelle Road, Albers Road, Mitchell Road, the the typically the the high speed or wide roads that we do have multi lane. And we also have 224 bridges. We have the second oldest average age in the state of California. We are working on getting that up through some of our replacement projects as well. But this presentation will focus solely on the pavement. So we'll just go into the roadway life cycle.

As I mentioned with when it comes to new roads, typically it's a section of aggregate base and then hot mix asphalt laid on top of it. This is typically what you'll see when they're constructing new roads. And as I mentioned, we don't add a whole lot year to year. Typically, we are kind of losing mileage through annexations and other actions. There's a number of different types of treatments.

We have our general maintenance such as patching and crack sealing and then we go into our pavement preservation level which is ceiling roadways. Typically, is done with our county crews with the chip seal, and then we'd have an urban pavement preservation program, which are slurry seals throughout the more urbanized residential areas and our business areas. There's also methods for rehabilitation. That's where you're to see an overlay of hot mix asphalt typically or sometimes we'll we'll grind it down and put a little bit back. And then finally, you have reconstruction.

So, are, you know, new roads in place of the old road just right where they were. So, as I mentioned, kind of a reactive maintenance. These are our pothole you know, visible failures that we'll respond to as we go. This is just part of our normal kind of day to day action. Not not necessarily preventative.

It we're just trying to you know, keep the road from failing a little bit more than we want to as water gets into the roadway and into that base, the pavement tends to fail a lot quicker. Then we go into our preventative maintenance program, and that's really where we we center a lot of our pavement action and our projects. So what we're trying to do is keep our good roads good, keep our get our fair roads up to good. So as they get worse and worse, they just get more and more expensive to replace. And so in a typical life cycle of pavement, we're about a twenty year, thirty year life cycle.

We're really trying to keep the keep those roads in that higher kind of seventy seventy plus rating on a scale of a 100. The second we let them start dropping below 50, it just gets a little bit hard to keep to to catch up on. And so, as I mentioned, we do our chip seal programs in the rural areas. We do our slurry seal program in our residential areas. And it it may seem a little counterintuitive to to a lot of folks but even when we have a new road, we really want to get to those roads within the first five years after a new road is paved.

So, may see work being done to what looks like a perfectly good road but that oil that that's in the asphalt deteriorates over time through oxidation and and sun, the sun beating down on it and so, we really just want to protect that that asset. It's like changing your oil on your car. Shown here is our slurry seal program. This is what we do annually every year. We we are on a rotation program through all of our urban areas throughout the county.

I think this year will be just about finished up with most of most of the areas. This first cycle took a little bit longer than we would have hoped due to needing to do some ADA improvements along the way. The second time around, we won't have to do some of those improvements. So, we'll get back on kind of a seven year cycle for all the urban areas. And this, again, you kind of want to do it every five to seven years.

This helps keep the pavement in good condition. It just kind of rejuvenates the pavement and helps protect it from from further damage. And sometimes we do those in a multilayer system as well depending on the actual quality of the the roadway too. Next up is our chip seal. This is, work that our our road operations group does every year.

We do about a 100 plus. We try to hit about a 120, 130 miles most years throughout the county. They kind of rotate through in our program and you'll see that a little bit later. This, again, similar to a slurry seal, we're just trying to seal up the road, get some of those cracks filled, try to prevent any further damage from it, and just keep those roads operating as they are. And here's a quick little video just how the operation works.

It's just a oil truck spraying oil down, and then our chip spreader runs behind, dumps a bunch of rock on it. And then we'll have some rollers, which I don't think will be in the video, that follow it up and try to embed the rock into that oil. Next up is the starting to get into those more expensive treatments. This is a a asphalt overlay or kind of a rehabilitation. So as I mentioned, sometimes you go right over the top.

You can see here we went right over the top of this road, which is Barnhart. And and sometimes we'll also just grind down a little bit depending on the condition if it's a little bit too or we want to kind of level it out a bit. We'll we'll mill down the roadway and replace that asphalt. And this is costing right now at about $350,000 per mile for a two lane road in the county. And then the largest of them all is the reconstruction.

And so really these are for roads that are in complete failure. That you know they're below a twenty ten on our scale of a 100 and just kind of two main methods that we can do this. We can either completely remove the road, off all the material, bring new material in, and then pave over it just like you would a new road construction. Or we've been using a full depth reclamation process, which is a process in which a very, very large grinder will come through and will grind up the roadway and the asphalt the roadway asphalt and the base underneath, sometimes the native soil, and we'll actually mix in concrete or cement into it. And that will actually create a very nice hard base, strong base to put new asphalt on top and so we don't have nearly as but there's a little bit of off haul but not nearly as much.

So, it's a very good cost effective program. You can drive on that that ground up material for a few days while it's while it's kind of settling. So, it it helps instead of having a, you know, especially in an urban area or or busy street having a a big trough of where the road's been removed and having to detour vehicles but again, this is, you know, closer to about $750 0 per mile of roads.

And this is where we generally do this on our heavy truck routes. Can't can't make it work for for even collector roads really. It's roads that get beat up by trucks.

So next, we'll just go into our overall payment health. What you see here is just a color coded chart. I know it's very high level, but of roadways in the county, and it goes from green to yellow to orange to red in terms of the better condition to worse condition. So this pie chart here shows our current row conditions by percentage and by the PCI score there. So our overall right now as the average is a PCI of 62.

This has been maintained over the last few years. We've been able to actually just keep a kind of status quo with existing funding levels with the treatment program that we've been doing. In order to actually improve and bring that up, it would take a significant amount of investment to start getting that number back up. This year, I think it's probably important to note with 2026 with the ARPA projects, we may see a little bit of a bump because there are some of those roads being reconstructed as part of those projects with all the utilities going in. So that those conditions of those roads are going to maybe bring up our our average a little bit but it is a still a small percentage of our total county roadway network.

And our total replacement cost here is estimated about $750,000,000. This is done through our system that we use called Street Saver and you know, it feels like a small number to me but this is the one that it gave me. So, I had to report on it but I've realized it's a very large number but just given our the amount of roads that we have and the cost that we know escalating costs, $750,000,000 seems on the low end of that. So here we were showing the PCIe classification again. On the left are there in blue are the urban roadways and in right are our rural roadways.

On the left side here, there's this chart and you can see how it starts to steepen over the life of the x axis going left to right is is time or life of the pavement and the condition is on the y axis. And so as we put in a new road, starts at a 100, it gradually declines and there's a point where it just really steepens and it just starts going down hole really fast. And so what we're really trying to do is keep, as I mentioned earlier, keep good roads good. So we want to keep those 70 fives and higher really in that green area as much as as much as we possibly can and and stop them from going into those next categories over their lifetime. This is a year over year kind of distribution of those.

And as you can see, we've done a pretty good job of keeping those numbers from even though some of those good roads are dropping into maybe the yellow that we haven't hit. Some of those yellows are coming back up into the good range. And we're trying to keep the bottom number from increasing in any significant way. And so we've had a slight reduction over the last few years. We hope to see that continue to go down, but you know, the that seven percent and that 17% is shown in orange and red there for 2025.

That those are very expensive to get to and so we found that it's just a better investment on our end to again really treat those yellow and and and green roads But we are going through every road in the county as part of our commitment. Showing here is our 2025 to 2027 treatments. I wanted to kind of report on what we did in 2025 first and then show you what is planned in 2026 and 2027. And I do apologize. I yell a little tough to see there for 2027, but the blue roads there shown are for 2026.

We plan on doing 100 and about 146 miles of roadway. Just under 10% of our our total network. And in 2027, we have a slight reduction down to one seventeen point two. We we may be able to do a little bit more especially if we get a little bit more federal funding as that comes in through the RCTP program. But right now, it's set at 117.

And you'll see the what we are generally doing is kind of rotating through the county as we go around. We would love to be able to kind of spread out and just do roads in in every area every year but we we like to stay local with our stockpiles and and we just get a better cost whenever we keep those kind of project footprints a little smaller. So, next year, we'll be in District 1 and District 3 And 4 a little bit between our projects. In 2025, we were in District 3 in green there in District 5 and in yellow there for 2027. We're going to be rotating down to District 5.

We had previously in 2024 not showing on there where you were in District 12 significantly. So, we'll just kind of keep that sort of clock clock like rotation throughout the county as part of our rotation.

And we're getting close now to being done with every county road once. So for the first cycle since measure L. And what we're left with though is our really expensive roads. And we're hoping that we're successful with the Stancog call for projects for SDBG, as Andrew mentioned. And so we have some applications in Beard and elsewhere on really heavy truck routes. We need some help on reconstructs because they are so expensive. Staff is available for questions.

So everyone is afraid to talk about the gas tax conversion and Houda, which is the main source that you receive for fixing roads. Cars are getting better gas mileage, which is fantastic. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Mhmm. But there's more vehicle miles traveled and there's fewer taxes.

And so we've hit the tipping point where we're collecting less now in gas tax. And I know there's been a couple of pushes that don't seem to gain any steam with either through a registration fee or vehicle miles traveled. But at some point and revenue neutral, I might add. That's the key because people hijack the conversation. They're trying to get to if we're collecting, you know, $6,000,000,000 a year in in gas tax, they wanna drop the gas tax off and convert it to registration that's worth $6,000,000,000.

But when they do the conversion, if we wait another five years or eight years or ten years, we're going to collect $4,500,000,000 and try and expect to cover the cost of a 6,000,000,000 or $7,000,000,000 need. So we we need to continue to have those conversations. I know that you were doing a part of the study, I think, Right. You you were being tracked around the the area with your Ford

Right.

F four fifty or whatever

it is.

And it would have actually saved me a little money. So Yeah. Just because diesel taxes in California are higher for everyone even though you're running a one ton pickup.

Yeah.

It's not doing damage to the road. Transportation California has done polling and increased registration fee on electric vehicles has polled really well with everyone. And so that would be a likely first step in kind of trying to wean ourselves off the gas tax for transportation.

Yeah. I think most people think with most taxes that they won't go away and it's going to be an additional tax and that that was never the intent. It was to do revenue neutral, so it's not declining revenue source that at least maintains the status quo, which, again, we're doing actually doing all right. I never hear positives about the road conditions, but yet the index has come up a couple of points since Mayor L. So I'm very impressed with the work you're doing. Anyways, that was a comment. Any questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dave, on the first page of the slides talks about the four seventy one miles of federal aid eligibility. And you have principal arterials and minor arterials.

Mhmm.

What what are the two definitions? What is it just pure traffic on the roadways? Mhmm.

So so these are federal, classifications. It's called a functional classification. It was built originally, I believe, in the seventies with the federal secondary system for defense. It used to be called the FAS, I believe. And so it it was just this hierarchy of roads. And really, the the principal arterials are are we only have I think eight miles total of these and they're really limited to the urban areas and for us, it's it's 9th Street. It's Golden State Boulevard. It's Salida Boulevard. So, it's it's the old Highway 99 corridor And then we have a small portion on Mitchell Road as well. And then I think we still have a little bit of Carpenter that was part of that that list. So, yeah, it's it's So it

has nothing to do with traffic count. How many vehicles are on there?

I think I think it does. There's there's no real definition of of what like it's it doesn't cross the threshold and then become one. Okay. It's just more of that kind of cascading network or that waterfall network of having your big roads and you kind of get smaller and it's just sort of the biggest road of them all that we have. Right above that would be expressways or interstates. So as you kind of branch off the those those highways, you would typically hit, you know, these larger roads and then kind of just dwindle your way down as you as you get places. Right.

Thank you. Thank you. I was just trying to figure out Mitchell Road, 9th Street. Yeah. We know they're busy. Gear Road, Albers, McHenry. No. They're busy too.

Right.

I was figuring it was just on a traffic count, but it has nothing to do with that.

Yeah. Well, I wanna say nothing to do with it. It's just there's not like a hard and fast rule on it. So we have kind of accessibility and mobility. So we're kind of our balance with roadways. So mobility meaning getting from point a to point b kind of as efficiently as possible, and accessibility meaning access to properties from the from those roadways. Okay.

And with all the work that's going to be done in District 1 this year, we all know that the PCI index for District 1 is lower than my colleagues here. With all the work that's being done, do we expect that PCI index to jump up

a little bit? Yeah. It'll jump up a little bit next year, in District 1, but you'll also see declines in, say, District 2 where we don't actually have a lot going on in this year.

I'll let Vito worry about that.

Yeah. So and that's just from the natural progression and all of these are just estimations based off of the life of the pavement and the timing we've been we've been doing these. We will be looking to do an actual physical inspection, field inspection of all these roadways in the next year or two as well to just kind of make sure that what we're predicting here and what we're showing is in fact ground truth.

We're asking to stand cog to lead that as a requirement by the Feds that we have to do a countywide the cities and the county need to do a payment survey. And so it's time again and so once things moderate a little down the street, we'll hopefully they pick that up and and get us county wide PCI payment condition index survey.

Okay. Thank you guys.

No, just real quick. So, Dave, you said we just about got through our first cycle of measure L and I know it was passed in 2016, I think. So, we're just we're close. We're a little, I know we were saying every eight years, we do it. So, I know we had trouble with staffing and everything like that to get things going. So, it sounds like we're not that far off here. It'll take off from here.

I, we're, we're pretty confident we're going to be able to do all the urban areas in the county where most of the people live. We'll get three cycles of that for sure. We're going be back in slide again and this year. What? This year? Okay. Yeah. For sure. Well, Parts

of it.

Yeah. Parts of it. Right. But we're gonna finish up what we actually missed last time and then it'll we'll come back again probably in '28 or '29. Depending on how we balance those kind of heavier roads.

Right. But then we should just redo all those neighborhoods that we've been trucking through with the urban pavement preservation and I think that for where most of the county residents reside, we'll be able to hit it three times. You know, whether we get service three times, I I'm not as confident and we're spending a lot on our really old bridge system. We've got 20 active bridge projects and when Andrew and I started, we

had

zero. So it's really a balance. Our bridges are in bad shape and there's only so much money for roads and bridges and so then maybe that's a future conversation balancing the needs of bridges versus roads.

Perfect. Thank you, guys. Good work.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Chance? Think Mr.

I got a couple of questions. Are you trying to mute him?

Nice to have a couple of questions. Not as much about the asphalt, but more about our actual individuals laying asphalt, some of our road crew workers who, you know, worked tirelessly for us, and we appreciate all their hard work throughout the county. So what are our current staffing levels of our roads crew?

So, we're we're hiring some road maintenance workers right now and come April, we'll be fully staffed. 57. Including the road superintendent, our supervisors, and lead men and all our road maintenance worker positions will be filled by the April. So that 57.

Now if you could give me a breakdown of that 57 and categorizing them based on the supervisors versus, you know, just the different categories and the different job titles, that would be very helpful. And how many members of a crew operate at a certain time? Like how many members per crew on on a job?

I guess it depends on what they're doing. You know, chip seals almost an all hands effort. I'd say there's probably two thirds of the roads crew are out doing chip seal. So, of 57, I would say about 40 are doing chip seal. When there's crack sealing, it might only be six or eight guys. General patching, we're running three or four patch trucks a day and that's between two and four guys or one sometimes with our one man patchers. We got all three one man patchers up and running right now. So, that thank you very much for that. We appreciate it. So, I guess it depends, you know, on what they're doing.

Bridge crew, if they're working on some heavy maintenance on a bridge, canal bridge in the off season, they might have eight, twelve guys out there. So it just really depends on the task and the road superintendent and his four supervisors divvy up their jobs, divide the crews, and off they go. And so they'll borrow from between crews.

And it is a lot of overtime being expended with these different jobs?

We we don't mind overtime, and it's really sometimes a matter of finding people who are willing to work overtime. A lot of the younger people really like their time off, and so it's a little harder than it used to be to to run overtime. It used to be if if the department had overtime, you you had all sorts of volunteers and now not as much as it used to be. So, and really for most county positions, our overtime winds up being costing us about what our fully loaded non overtime rate is because the benefits already paid for on hour forty one for the week and so we're just paying for the time and a half at that point and the benefits have already been paid. So, it winds up costing us about the same and we've usually got a little flex.

So, if there's something to be done, we can usually round up a few guys to be able to work some overtime.

Are we ever in a position of having excess revenue at all? No. Are we always kind of strapped and

On on Huda, I would say that we're pretty much in a balanced status quo right now. So that's that we're not accruing any. We did save some RMRA along the way for North County Corridor match. Purposely didn't do projects because we needed the RMRA for the grade separation part of that project. In general, we try to spend what we've got. You know, if you look at the measure L reports, the county is pretty good at spending our measure L and so we try to do things in the year that we get the money or shortly thereafter because so I always say, projects never cheaper than building it today.

Yeah. And if there is like the RMA or excess, that it just goes back to the general fund. Correct?

No. No.

No. It's It goes back to the

All the road funds are constitutionally locked down by the California constitution. So RMRA are locked down by the state constitution, so it just sits in the road fund, and then the measure L is protected by the measure.

And then we my understanding is we used to run run zones, four zones. Correct?

Right. And

did we get away from that? And if so, why?

We're we're actually so they're kicking it back off again. I know they're working on the one man patches rotating through four zones. And so they're Tracy and Bill Bill's our road superintendent. Tracy is the assistant director of ops. And then the four supervisors are working on a plan to rotate the three one man patchers in the four zones.

And then just to circle all the way back to my original question about the different categories and the breakdown of the 57. If you could give me a dollar figure attached to each one of those individual and also a surrounding county comparison because obviously as I've spoken with you and I believe that you have the similar interests, I would like to see our Rose Crew not only compete but exceed surrounding counties as far as pay and just obviously that's a budgetary item and that's something I'm going to advocate for. But I believe our roads crew is essential to our county operation. They're the boots on the ground as we all know. And I believe that the folks on this dais were solely based and judged on our road conditions.

So we obviously need to build them up as strong as we can and if we can compete with San Joaquin and compete with Merced County and not only compete but exceed as far as pay and trying to retain our roads crew workers, that would be my goal and my mission. So thank you so much for your presentation today.

Excellent. Thank you. You. Any other questions? All right, seeing none, we're gonna go out for public comment. We do not have any written comments on this item. Seeing none. Seeing none. I see someone.

To the board and everyone, I just want to say thank you for all that you guys are doing. It sounds very impressive. So just a word from the community here.

They're trying for sure. Right. And $750,000,000 deficit here, $750,000,000 on the county islands, I think was about the number. So if someone drops a billion dollars into our pocket, we know what we can fix.

Capital projects a billion dollars?

Yeah, capital projects. Big numbers, big numbers. All right, so bring it back to board for action. Motion to approve.

Drain it.

We have a motion. Second. And a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries five zero.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dave. Moving on to the second discussion item. It's approval of the opioid settlement funds or OSF, as they'll be known from here on, spending plan to support the expansion of substance use disorder services and other allowable opioid abatement activities, and then the salary and position allocation resolution to reflect related staffing impacts and other actions. Team BHRS. They're still here. They're just walking around, stretching.

You don't need to stand up for me. The behavioral health

director. So

my name is Ruben Imperial. I'm the county's behavioral health director, and I'm here with mister Grubbs. He's our chief financial officer. And we are here to present on the opioid settlement funds spending plan. It's focusing on our SUD treatment and allowable abatement activities and also includes some staffing and budget actions needed to implement the programs that we're talking about here today.

So

some background on the opioid settlement funds. These funds come from a national opioid litigation settlements settlements. In 2023, the board did allocate and designate these funds initially these initial funds to behavioral health and recovery services, and at that time directed the behavioral health director to put together an expenditure plan. Additional settlement funds have come in since May 2023. Actually $24,000,000 or 24,000,000 additional dollars came in from those original funds.

We're projecting for fiscal year up until fiscal year two thousand and thirty eight, we will receive at least $51,000,000 And these are pretty, pretty solid projections. Opioid settlement funds are restricted to a set of abatement activities. And this report outlines the initial, what we call phase one recommendations for the opioid settlement funds. I do want to share really quickly some information about opioid deaths and opioid data. In 2023, it pretty much was the highest, peak of, the tragedy in our community of these deaths, and we had about a little bit over, I believe, two hundred.