City Council - Regular Meeting

So good morning, I would like to welcome you all. Thank you for joining us this morning. I would also like to welcome and acknowledge our High Desert and Joshua Tree video conferencing sites. And before we begin, if there are any property owners wishing to file written protests on items number 122, 123, and 124, please see the special district staff who are available in the rotunda out those doors. And this morning our pledge and invocation will be led by Supervisor Cook and the First District.

Thank you very much. Today I'm going to introduce Pastor Ted Whitford with the Wrightwood Community United Methodist Church. who graduated from Washington Bible College in Lanham, Maryland, attended Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, and Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina. God, that's more schools than I went to. He worked in retail and restaurants for many years. then went into pest control, where he is currently an entomologist with Rollins, providing food safety audits to about 200 customers each year. He became pastor of the Wrightwood Community United Methodist Church last year and will continue there as pastor until June 30th, 2027, when he will retire and move back to Washington State, God willing. He's too young to retire, but I don't have a vote in this thing. And I think that's it, right? Pastor.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for being with us. And thank all of you supervisors for the invitation. Would you please bow your heads and pray with me? Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beautiful day. Lord, we ask your blessing on those gathered here this morning and ask that you guide their work. Father, we know that you hear and answer our prayers. To that end, we ask that you bring peace, not only here in San Bernardino, but around the world where wars and conflicts abound. Lord, we ask for your protection and comfort to those in military service to our nation. Again, Father, we seek your blessing on the work that will be done this session of the five districts of the Board of Supervisors of San Bernardino. Lord, in your mercy, Hear our prayer. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you very much, sir. We will now move on to our memorial adjournments. Vice Chair Baca? No. Supervisor Cook? No. Supervisor Armendariz? No. Supervisor Hagman?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to adjourn today's meeting in memory of Ralph Berger. Ralph was a retired Chino fire captain and a 60-plus year resident of Chino. He was known for his sense of humor, ability to make friends, and love of classic cars. And most people knew Ralph as Chino Hills Santa Claus for close to three decades. He helped in the Chino Hills Boat Parade every year, as well as my open house event He took over that job from his father, who's also a retired firefighter. And so he had a long legacy of portraying Santa in our city. He was survived by his son Eric, three grandchildren, and three grandchildren. Thank you.

Thank you very much. This morning, I would like to adjourn in memory of Mick Hill, who was a longtime resident from the Crestline area. He passed away on May 27th. He was an advocate for Lake Gregory and the entire mountain community, dedicated countless hours to community service and local improvement efforts. He played a pivotal role in the completion of the Lake Gregory Dam Project, and our hearts go out to Mick Hill's family. We were also very sad to hear of the loss of Michelle Chastain, who was a county employee. She began her career with Information Services Department in 2007 and later transferred to Land Use Services, where she worked as a Land Use Services technician. Michelle is remembered by her colleagues as a source of encouragement, kindness, and dedication. We are keeping her friends and family in our thoughts at this difficult time. And finally, I would like to adjourn in memory of another county employee, Robert B.J. Myers. B.J. was a county fire engineer and served on the department's community outreach support team known as COAST, which works closely with various cities, paramedics, mental health professionals, and law enforcement agencies to address the needs of the community. He passed away while off duty with his family and friends and members of the county fire family and his COAST dog scout by his side. We are keeping everyone in his family in our prayers, and we thank BJ for the service that he provided to our county. And with that, we have three special presentations. If my colleagues will please join me up in front. Could we ask Carol Lombard to join us, please? Good morning. This morning we would like to present this special resolution to Carol Lombard, who is retiring after 31 years with the county. Carol began her career with the Transitional Assistance Department and is retiring with the Innovation and Technology Department. She is recognized for her dedication and significant contributions to county cybersecurity and operational effectiveness. We wish you a very long and happy retirement, and we're going to miss you. Thank you.

It was an interesting 31 years. There was a lot of good times. I learned a lot. I met some amazing people, some of whom are with me here today. And through it all, without fail, Jesus provided for me. Amen.

Would you like to invite any family up? Can the ITD family please join us up here for a photo?

In any room. I took a shower last night.

This morning, on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, I would like to recognize the Equity Element Group for the contributions towards advancing community dialogue and engagement in the countywide vision. Thank you for your help in fostering relationships between county government and community organizations and encouraging constructive collaboration throughout the region. Do we have anyone here today who we can ask to join us? Anybody and everybody? Come on up.

Oh, George, hey. Hi, come on up. I know. Here, George, I'm going to hand this over to you. Thank you. How are you? Do I get a hug?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you want to say a few words or do the photo first? You make the call.

This is your house. Let's do a few words first and then the photo. Okay.

As you all can see, we know each other. We're honored to partner with this leadership and to move the initiatives forward that are going to impact the lives of our communities. Very intentional about measuring what matters. We understand that data is what drives decision making. And so we're committed to making meaningful impact that's going to be measurable. We're excited about this opportunity to partner and to move forward with this great initiative. Thank you.

All right.

Thank you all for the tremendous work on this.

Thank you, thank you. I feel like we're off center now.

The board would now like to recognize the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials who are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. Over the past century, the association has grown from a small California-based group of inspectors into a global team of experts dedicated to advancing public health and access to safe water and sanitation. We thank you for the work that you do to improve the lives for our entire community and helping people around the world. If we have a representative to join us, please.

Would you like to say a few words? Sure. Good morning, and thank you, the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials, global but headquartered nearby in Ontario, and we just want to thank you for the recognition and for the leadership the county has demonstrated for public health and safety. Thank you.

Thank you. Congratulations. We will now move on to reports from County Council. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have nothing to report. And... I have had a computer glitch, so I'm gonna take just a moment. All right, we will now move on to our individual board member comments. Vice Chair Baca.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I just want to congratulate Supervisor Armendariz and Supervisor Hagman on their election. Welcome them back to the county family. Thank you for the great work that you're doing here. Looking forward to the continued work on the board. The other thing we had the opportunity to do is what we did with County Public Works is we actually put up Honorary street signs for our Valley Victorians and Salutatorians and all our schools that were either in and unincorporated or butt up against unincorporated communities. I want to thank Public Works for their great work. And just to let you know, the school districts, Rialto, Colton, and San Bernardino City Unified School District were so grateful, but more importantly, the families that got recognized. So these street signs will be up from June all the way through the end of August. And then in August, each family member will actually get the street sign. So congratulations to all our students who did great work in our community. attended Memorial Day events at Rialto, Colton, and San Bernardino. I want to thank our cities for doing great work and recognizing Memorial Day. Also with CFS, I want to thank Jeannie and her team for doing a great work on a couple of events we attended. One was the senior celebration. This is for all the seniors that were in the foster care system that all graduated from high school. I want to thank Jeannie for, one, recognizing them, but also making them feel good and feel proud. I think that's important to keep in mind. You know, some of these foster kids have had many, many challenges, but the fact that they were being recognized and honored, I want to thank the CFS team for doing a great event. So it was a tremendous event. Also, this past weekend at Etiwanda High School, they had the Children and Family Service Sports Fair. Had about 150 participants with CFS. County Probation and other county departments provided a day of activity for all of our students. I want to thank Alex Madison, the former NFL player, for coming out and all the staff that did a great job to make this interactive day for all of our foster care and probation kids. Thank you so much for doing that. Just, you know, many of my colleagues, we all attended the Valley Communication Grand Opening. This was 125 million people. dollar investment from the county to make sure that we have better communications for emergencies for many of our departments, with our sheriffs, with CONFIRE and OES. And it's just going to be better for our residents, the many residents that we represent. So hats off and congratulations to the team for putting that together. Uh, this Wednesday we're having a flip the switch event at elementary, which is located in the Rosina ranch community. This is a 1.1Million dollar investments for lights. Um, the soccer community requested lights or able to put lights. So we worked in conjunction with. the San Bernardino City Unified School District, and the Rosina Ranch HOA to make sure that this project got done. So hats off to the team. I just want to give everyone an update. I know if you noticed the construction off the Waterman 210 exit. This is a project that's been in the works for five years. We work closely with Assemblyman Ramos, SBCTA, and Caltrans to make sure that off-ramp is widened. And shortly this summer, they're going to begin doing road work from the 210 exit on Waterman all the way up to Waterman Canyon. Just want to thank CalTrans for the great work that they're doing. And the last thing just want to highlight some board items item 37. This is an investment that we made in Spiker Park in the city of San Bernardino. This will be continued improvements. We invested 950,000 in ARPA dollars. Also want to congratulate preschool services for the renovations they're doing to the Arrowhead Grove early head start renovations of one point six million dollar investment. And the reason why this is so critical that. You know, also our housing authority has invested, you know. you know, several millions of dollars to add 90 additional affordable housing units there. So this will also Arrowhead Grove will also benefit those new residents that will be coming in in the future. And the last thing, which is item 78, which is a victory, not just for, you know, the fifth district, but all of our County board offices that have one in corporate areas. It's, Safer Outs to Schools grant. I want to thank staff for doing that. The two particular areas I want to highlight in the fifth that are going after grant dollars are Pacific High School and Bloomington High School. And that concludes my comments, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Supervisor Cook.

Yes, I also want to congratulate my colleagues that were successful in their elections. Sometimes you never know with elections and sometimes you never know about the people that you serve with. I think we have a certain chemistry on this board We get along, we get things done, you have different political parties and what have you. So I don't like to see change, particularly if everything is running smoothly and everything because then you... Well, enough said on that. But it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. It's rough on everybody. And once again, I think that I am delighted to have our colleagues. They're much smarter than I am. The only problem about that is they know it. And we're going to go forward and keep doing great things. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Supervisor Armendariz.

Yes, thank you. Lots of activity this past couple of weeks. We attended graduations in the city of Fontana, Summit High School, Fontana High School, Kaiser High School, Birch High School, and my alma mater, A.B. Miller High School. Glad to be able to sit there and participate in those graduations. I want to thank Fontana Unified for being so gracious and allowing me up there. We also hosted some of our pop-up hours. We had a pop-up hour in Rancho Cucamonga at Café Sita. We also had a pop-up hour in the city of Fontana at Coffee Port Specialty Roast on Foothill. I want to thank DBH for setting up the tour for us to see and thank also Valley Star Behavioral Health. We were able to tour the stay and we were also able to tour VARP's Veteran Alcohol Rehabilitation Program, which we were able to get some insight on some of the detriments we have in our programs and how we could be more effective. Also attended the Fontana Police Explorers Bowling Tournament. Also attended for four days the Fontana Days Fair, where I want to thank the Exchange Club and also thank all of our county staff who participated in that, giving out information, everyone from, I think we adopted three or four dogs out there. Anyone's here from there? I think it was three, four, anyone? But it was pretty cool to see the interaction, how we're bringing our resources from the county back to the community so they can see all that we have. Also participated in the 5K Fontana run, Fontana Days run, and my son, my 10-year-old son did it in 30 minutes. So that was pretty impressive for a 10-year-old. We're not going to talk about that. We got through it, we finished, okay, we finished. Also spoke at the Wellness Ranch Ribbon Cutting, which is a animal facility for rehabilitation for people whether they're suffering from special needs or PTSD or anything like that. Great program, we were able to support it from a county level and I'm just glad to see that they're growing and they're prospering. Also was at the ribbon cutting at the San Bernardino County Valley Communications Center, which in my mind is awesome. And if you haven't been there to see what we have to offer, this is the state of the art communications for the future of the county. Want to highlight a couple noted things that are on the agenda. We had a $25,000 grant for purchasing of 13 book vendors in collaboration with the fourth district who contributed slightly more, $30,000. to us where we're gonna be working with Upland Unified School District and 13 book vending machines placed throughout the city of Upland. We are collaborating with the city of Rancho Cucamonga for $900,000 through our discretionary to assist them with the Family Resource Center. $100,000, which is something that's really close to my heart. We're gonna be working collaboratively with Lifeline Mobile Screening for Alzheimer's disease risk screening for our seniors. To me, this is a big deal because if we can catch it early enough, there's lots of programs that can help our seniors and those who are suffering from Alzheimer's, and we're giving them a tool so that they could actually catch it early. We're also working with the West End Young Men's Christian Association, and we're going to be working for a two-year safe water. Now, see, the summer's approaching. Safe water classes to teach those who can't swim, our young ones, to swim. It'll be basic fundamentals, but at the end of the day, we want to save lives. 25,000 to the Chamber of Commerce for their programs to implement new workforce development systems. 10,000 to Rise the Grind Foundation in supporting and we're getting ready for our back to school program. So we're gonna be reaching out to a lot of other nonprofits, finding out how we can work with them to make sure our kids, when they get back to school next year, have the resources they need to be productive and successful. Also, we approved, I actually want to highlight the same thing that my counterpart, Baca, did with our Safe Routes to School program, and this is going to affect Sequoia Medical School, so hopefully we can get that approved. They definitely need it in that unincorporated area. And lastly, hopefully we approved the with Department of Rehabilitation, a $29 million co-location workspace for Department of America's job center for California's West Valley location. This is a rehabilitation center for our community, so I'm hoping that this will actually work out and help those who need it the most. And that concludes my comments.

Supervisor Hagman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My colleagues told a lot of my thunder already. Myself also. I would say the Valley Communications Center is beautiful, so congratulations to all. Really going to help support our public safety and support of our residents. On the budget, our agenda also includes $30,000, my colleague, to go for the Upland Unified School District book vending machines, which is an expansion of what we did for our county libraries. It seems like the program's really taken off and the kids love it, so congratulations. Thank you for that. Other items include the sewer management plans for Prado Park and Chino Airport. We're also putting a little bit of money away for a potential soccer stadium on the West End for major league soccer, minor league team, and two million to support disaster preparedness and animal care operations. Thank you everyone attending our summer open house. We had over 450 attendees there. That was really, it keeps growing. And also we had another successful shredding event on Saturday. We had 355 attendees for that. And thank you for the Qantas, Chino Qantas, Chino Valley Real Estate Professionals Group, La Verne University, American Legion Post, where I recently had the opportunity to speak at those. And congratulations to Montclair for recently celebrating the 70th anniversary of incorporation. On the subcommittees on SCAG, I was recently appointed to sit on the SCAG's Regional Housing Element Needs Assessment Subcommittee, which all our cities know as RHNA. We'll be working on that as we work on housing for our region. Ontario International Airport had its 5K at the runway and recently raised 83,000 for the local USO at the airport. And the airport's also recently launched an environmental review process for a big, we call it the bold expansion of Ontario Airport. We're starting to do the environmentals on Terminal 3, which will be our new international terminal and two parking structures. So it's exciting times for Ontario International Airport. And lastly, congratulations to the Financial Department for receiving the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. All three independent reviews gave the highest possible score for strategic goals and strategies. Thank you.

Madam Chair, I have one more thing I wanted to add, if you don't mind. Please. I am actually looking forward to, on June 23rd's board meeting, we are going to be having a CFS, we'll be hosting a workshop to discuss the work that's underway with CFS to support our children and families. The ad hoc committee has asked CFS to make a public presentation, and we think that it will be important to discuss the work that has been done and the work that is underway by Of the ad hoc committee and that is all very good.

Thank you. Thank you. Um, I too want to congratulate everybody on the valley communication center. It is a fantastic building that will house those three entities. Um, if you haven't had a chance to get over there and take a look at it, it is tremendous. So very state of the art and exciting to have. in our county. And I would also like to give a shout out to County Flood Control. Thank you very much for all the work that you are doing on item number 113, which is the ratification of a submission to a grant for USDA for the Natural Resources Conservation Service that we refer to as the NRCS. and that will provide funding if the grant comes through for K-rails and debris removal for our storm flooded areas, specifically in Forest Falls, Oakland, Seven Oaks area from fires and debris flows after. So thank you very much Flood Control for your work on that. And then I wanna give a special shout out today to Matthew Erickson and the SBCERA trustees. I see you two sitting there together. I sit on SBCERA as a trustee with another hat that I wear, And this past week, we had an interesting, stressful meeting on what to do with our assumed rate of return. And every three years, and by the way, this meant nothing to me before I became a trustee, so I did not understand it, but it's an awful lot of stress. And what it means is the trustees over there are working to invest your county retirement to make sure it's there for you when you need it. And based on the investments over there and the return that they provide, determines how much we contribute out of our paychecks into that. And so Matthew Erickson is a fierce advocate for trying to keep your contributions as low as possible as county employees and doing his due diligence over there with trustee newcomer and the rest of us to make sure that we keep that portfolio healthy and sound. And I'll tell you, it is a lot of stress and a lot of sleepless nights. Matthew, thank you for everything that you do and the other trustees as well. So with that, Lynette, do we have any changes or revisions to today's agenda?

Good morning, Madam Chair. Yes, today we have two changes. Item number two is being revised to remove the adopt and present resolution for canine investigator, Dinty. And item number 125 on the discussion calendar, that item is being continued to August 4th, 2026. Those are all the changes I have. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'm going to take item number 125 up front. Excuse me.

I'm sorry. That was 125. Yeah.

I'm going to take it up front before consent calendar and before conflicts of the board because we have a number of people that have come down the past to speak on this item. I want to make sure that we hear your comments. before we vote to continue the item so you can get back up the pass before traffic. And so that item is an appeal of the Planning Commission approval of Maverick Convenience Store and Gas Station project. We are going to continue it to August 4th. And the public hearing was officially opened on May 19th. I do have a variety of requests to speak on that. Oh, I guess I have one. Oh, they withdrew their request. Okay, so Barbara Fredette. Good morning. That little light will flash yellow when you have 30 seconds left and then red at the end of your three minutes. And whenever you're ready.

Good morning. My name is Barbara Fredette, and I'm a Pinyon Hills resident who owns a home within a mile of the proposed Maverick truck stop. I oppose the project, not because it's a commercial entity, but because it will cater to big rig trucks. This project proposes to build a truck stop on land that is zoned for general commercial use. This is illegal. Maverick representatives argue that they are not building a truck stop because showers and overnight parking are not provided by the station. But those services are not required to meet the county's definition of a truck stop. The county's zoning code defines a truck stop as a facility that provides convenient services primarily for the trucking community. These services include but are not limited to food, beverage, gasoline, and retail services. So this Maverick project fits this description. Truck stops are not allowed in general commercial zones. Not only is this project illegal, which should be enough to persuade the board to reject it, but the project also presents unsafe traffic conditions on the roads that will be used to access the station. Caltrans has rejected construction of a direct access from Route 138 to the station, and instead trucks will use the small rural Oasis Road as access. Oasis Road is also used by 1,880 Pinyon Hills households to access their mail at the post office. Because the Maverick Corporation has avoided calling this a truck stop, they have avoided doing a necessary traffic study of Oasis Road. Instead, Maverick representatives argue that traffic will run smoothly and safely on Oasis Road because the post office will alter their traffic flow and because Caltrans will provide directional signage on Oasis. However, neither the post office nor Caltrans has agreed to meet these accommodations. Furthermore, Oasis Road is not a county-designated truck route, and large commercial truck traffic is prohibited here, according to AB 98. This is another reason why this project is likely illegal and should be rejected. Finally, according to the countywide plan for land use, this project is not suited for rural residential desert communities. The project is not a local business, it is not locally owned, and will not locally serve the community since it is a truck stop that services mostly commercial trucks that transport material through the area. I say this because about half of the project's land area, five fueling stations, and two of the three entrances are specifically designed for large commercial truck use. In addition, the community surrounding this commercial zone contains sensitive receptors that will be impacted by a truck stop. A commercial enterprise that is safe and serves the community should be sought as an alternative to occupy this property instead of a truck stop. And I urge the Board of Supervisors to protect the residential county area and reject this project. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Do I have a motion to continue the item? Thank you, Supervisor Hagman, for the motion, and Vice Chair for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Thank you, Madam Chair, with that item number 125. Oh, excuse me.

Supervisor Cook?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With that, item 125 is being continued to August 4th, 2026, with the noted abstention from Supervisor Cook. Very good.

Thank you very much. With that, we move on to our board member conflicts of interest. If we have anyone wishing to disclose a conflict on today's agenda, please do so now.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do have a conflict on item number seven on the consent calendar. I did receive two contributions from the Valley Obstetrics and Gynecology Medical Group, Inc., which is owned by Dr. Guillermo Valenzuela. On April 4th, 2025, I received a contribution for $10,000. And on April 16th, 2026, I received a contribution for $500. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. With that, our consent item today consists of the items through through 121. I have four requests to speak. First up, we have Carlo followed by Marlene and then Francisco. We have podiums on either side up in the back. And again, when the light flashes yellow, it is the remainder of your 30 seconds of the three minutes. Good morning, Carlo.

Morning, everybody. How you doing? I'm a veteran. I rose my hand three times for the Constitution. And the item I want to speak on today is the money and the millions of dollars that go on to pay for these services, specifically child abuse services that the county has so graciously offered these kids through CFS programs. Now, I'm in contact with some teenagers that got sexually abused and physically abused in the group homes. And sadly enough to say that CFS did not pull them out of those homes. We had one mom been promised for months that she was going to get her child back. He's been in the system for over 10 years. So as these child abuse services and these programs continue to be funded, I just want to ask, is there an NGO problem that we have here in the county? Are these incentives to keep these kids on? Because we have kids that get adopted out. Parents get terminated at six months. Then we have a year, a year and a half. But then we have parents languishing for over 10 years. Yet again, I still scratch my head and say, okay, so we're paying for these services, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to what end? We have false allegations, filings not being given to the parents with due process, but yet we're paying millions of dollars for these services. What is our return? If we look at the foster youth that end up being homeless, thousands of kids end up being homeless. They say sometimes about the 30 to 40 percentile when you're talking about certain populations as they go through the system at age 26, they end up being homeless. But yet we're spending millions of dollars out of Social Security Title IV-E funds to pay for this. What's really going on then? What's the true aim of this system at CFS? To falsify allegations against parents? To run through the courts like a kangaroo court? Hello, San Bernardino, North Korea. That's what we're running here. Dependency Court has not only just abandoned the Constitution, but it's a laughing stock in regards to the legal profession as I go ahead and interview lawyers to come and try to support these families as they go through. Yet the county pays a lot of services in child abuse. Legal funds. And for these lawyers not to go ahead and actually abide by their legal ethic to defend the rights of the families and the Constitution. But yet what do we do? More money out. More homeless kids as a result. More money out of the system and more drug addicts because there is a pill farm going on as well. making up that kids are all of a sudden autistic when they're not. Gives a kid, a family, a foster family, $4,500 on top of that, per month, just because they're autistic. Let's investigate this. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Marlene, followed by Francisco.

Hello, good morning. My name is Francisco. Today I would like to speak about the concerns regarding child and family services, child abuse investigations, and the system and the contracts that influence these services. One of the most important questions the public should ask is, what incentives drive the child welfare system? Child welfare services involve contracts with hundreds of millions of dollars across investigations, foster care, behavioral health programs, service providers, and administrative operations. Taxpayers and families have a right to know whether these services or resources are producing better outcomes for children, or whether the system has become focused on procedures, contracts, and bureaucracy, rather than the families and services transparency and accountability, wherever large amounts of public money are being involved. Everyone agrees that protecting the children from abuse is one of the most important responsibilities of government. Children deserve safety, protection, and support. At the same time, families deserve fairness, due process, and decisions based on accurate information. One of the most concerning issues raised by parents and advocates is the failure to properly recognize or document the completion of required services. Parents are often directed to complete parenting classes, counseling, treatment programs, evaluations, and other court order services. Yet some families report that other Now some families report that after fulfilling these requirements, their completion is not accurately reflected in the case files or presented in a timely manner. When completed services are overlooked, ignored, or delayed in the reporting process, the consequences can be severe. Reunification may be delayed, court cases may be prolonged, and families may remain separated longer than necessary. There are also concerns regarding communication, documentation and transparency during child abuse investigations. Families often struggle to obtain clear information about case requirements, evidence and decision-making processes. When communication breaks down and records are incomplete or inaccurate, confidence in the system suffers. While parents complete the services required of them, those accomplishments should be recognized. When records are submitted, They should be received accurately and promptly. When constitutional rights are implicated, agencies should be held at the highest standards of fairness, accountability, and professionalism. The goal should not be more paperwork or more bureaucracy or large contracts. The goal should be safe children, strong families, transparent government, and child welfare system that earns public trust through integrity, competence, and accountability. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Marlene, followed by Pauline, and then Kresha.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Marlene and I'm here today to speak about transparency and accountability in the service provided to the children and families in San Bernardino County. Our county receives funding to prevent child abuse and neglect and to support families in crisis. As a community member, I want to know how those resources are being used to strengthen the families before they reach a breaking point. Protecting children means more than responding to emergencies. It means investigating and prevention through parenting support, mental health services, substance abuse treatments, housing assistance, language access, and community programs that help families succeed. I also ask that we ensure our front line workers have the staffing, the training, and resources that they need to do this difficult work effectively. Strong families and safe children depend on a strong system. I'm asking the board to pull three items for separate discussion under deferred items. Item 22, family resources center service. Item 32, the children and family service social workers training contract. And item 33, child abuse prevention and treatment services. These are decisions about children and foster youth. and the public deserves to hear them explained and on the record rather than approved in a single botched motion. On item 22, this amend nearly doubles Family Resources Center's funding from $10.2 million to $17.85 million and extends the contract 18 months, all without a new competitive socialization. My question for the record, what performances or outcomes data justifies a 7.6% 65 million increase and why was this done by amendment instead of putting the work out to bid? On item 32, the contract with the San Diego State University Research Foundation for training children and family service social workers increased by nearly six million, about a 72% jump. while the staff report also revises the definition, scope of work, and general requirements. My question, what specific change is the scope that drove a 72% increase? What measures delivered does the county get for it and why an amend rather than a re-bid? On item 33, The child abuse prevention and treatment service contract with 15 providers are extended only three months to September 30, with no change in funding, but a revised maximum fee schedule. My question, is there a three-month succession, a stopgap before resolicitation? What change in the fee schedule and how is the county guaranteeing continuity of care of the children currently being served by these agencies during that transition? The presenters direct Gasol, and I'm not saying if I'm pronouncing it right, G-L-A-S-G-O-W, on 32 and on 33, and Acting Director Dugas on 22 are here. If these items are pulled, they can answer these questions directly in public today. If they are not pulled, I'm asking that these questions be entered into the written record and answered in writing right away. I encourage the county to continue prioritizing transparency, prevention, and accountability so every child is safe and every family has access to the tools and support they need to thrive. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Pauline, followed by Cresha.

Hi, my name is Pauline, and I'm a grandmother with grandchildren involved in the dependency system. I am here today to ask serious questions about how Title IV e-funding and other public funds are being used in child welfare cases. Federal Title IV e-funds reimburse states and counties for foster care, administration services, supervision, transportation, And contracts, significant taxpayer dollars are spent every year on these programs. My concern is that while substantial funding is provided for services and contracts, many grandparents and other relatives feel excluded from the process and struggle to maintain meaningful relationships with their grandchildren. Family members who are willing to provide love, support, stability, and continuity are often left without adequate communication, involvement, and consideration. I have personally experienced limited communication and difficulty obtaining information regarding my grandchildren. It is frustrating to see so many resources devoted to programs and services while family connections are weakened or lost. I believe children benefit from knowing their family, their history, and the people who love them. When safe and appropriate relatives are available, preserving those relationships should be a priority, not an afterthought. I respectfully ask for greater transparency, better communication with family members, a stronger commitment to keeping families connected, whether it can be done safely and in the best interests of the children. The question is not simply how much money is being spent. The question whether that spending is helping children maintain healthy family relationships and achieve lasting stability. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Before we move on to the last speaker, I'd like to ask Supervisor Armendariz to repeat something that he mentioned in his board member comments before everybody leaves chambers on this topic.

Yes, so I would like to personally invite all of you to come out on 6-23 where we will be discussing all of these issues with CFS and going over what we are doing currently and what we are in the works making the changes that we believe are necessary to move forward with CFS. So we encourage them all to come back and hear that presentation at that time.

Thank you very much. And our last request to speak is Cresha.

Is my mic on? It is now. Okay, I didn't see the light. So, hello, everybody. My name is Cresha Hill, and I want to address what everybody's been coming up here and saying, and I want to say nobody's reached out to me personally. I know there was an announcement last time that... We're being addressed, and that's not the case. And if we are being addressed, it's at minimum efforts to just say that someone spoke to us. But there's been no real change. My case has been open for three years. My son wasn't abused. He wasn't neglected. He wasn't hospitalized. He wasn't starved. And yet, I have no potential of getting him back. My report was based off of false allegations where a social worker took my son out of somebody's arms and said that he did not have supervision and then charged me with abandonment, a case that the DA never picked up at all. Never, because it never happened. I want to talk about the Title E funding a little bit while I have the time. I think we should change the narrative. No one wants to take money from the state, right? But if we can change the incentive from where California has to adopt out 5,000 kids every year to receive an incentive, then at that point, families might be reunified. If the county and the state is not relying on kids to be adopted out to receive funds more than they are to return those kids home, then we can lesser the issue. This is not about taking money out of California, but it's about putting kids back in the home where they deserve to be. And with all of that being said, we can't really expect too much to happen from this committee. Like I said, I've been coming here for some time, right? And we can't expect something to change by people who condone and commit fraud. And if we don't know about it, I encourage you all to come back after lunch because we're all going to talk about it. We're all going to talk about it. I'm going to pass them out, and we're all going to talk about the fraud that's being committed by the actual Board of Supervisors and why we can't talk about them doing something to change what's going on and change their narrative. You can't expect a criminal to fix a crime, right? That don't make sense. And I just want to encourage everybody to take the time to register to vote. You know, elections are coming up. The DA is part of this fraud. Paul Cook deals with them just to stay in the seat that he's in. Don, you knew about it the whole time. You knew where Paul lived. You know he's not living, still to this day, he's not living in District 1. and we continue to allow fraud by our candidacies, you can expect that same fraud to trickle down to our departments, the departments that they're supposed to supervise, and they don't. If they did, we wouldn't be here every single meeting. These parents, when you lose your kids, you're ashamed, you're embarrassed, because God forbid, what did you do wrong to lose your kid, right? But that's not the case anymore. The consequence don't weigh the crime. My son is loved and he is precious to me. And before someone sells him off and changes his name, everybody's gonna know mine. I'm Cresha Kell and Adon Kell is my son.

Thank you very much. That is the last request to speak that I have. Do I have any members of the board wishing to pull an item for discussion? I have a motion from Vice Chair Baca and a second from Supervisor Hagman. All those in favor? Aye. Any abstentions? Thank you. And any opposition? Thank you, Madam Chair. With that, the consent calendar is approved with a noted abstention from Supervisor Wilk on item seven. With that, we will move on to our discussion calendar, which today begins with item number 122, which is a public hearing on a proposed water and sanitation service charge adjustment for board-governed county service areas and their zones being presented this morning by Noel Castillo. Before I open the public hearing, are there any property owners or persons registered to vote in the county service areas and zones who wish to file written protests? If so, they must be filed with the clerk now. So I will open the public hearing. Good morning, Noel.

Good morning.

Welcome up for a series of complicated agenda items.

Yes, thank you. And I thank you for your patience in advance. So I will have three items that we'll be presenting out. And we'll start out with item 122. So good morning, chair and board members. This public hearing concerns the proposition to 18 majority protest proceedings, and the introduction of an ordinance setting water and sanitation rates for services in board governed county service areas and zones.

Next slide.

County service areas or CSAs are local utility enterprises created to serve specific communities with essential water and sewer services. These systems are customer funded, meaning customers and property owners who receive the services fund the operations. Revenue collected with each CSA or zone remains within that district and is used for operations, maintenance, regulatory compliance, reserves, and capital needs. Rates are based on each district's costs and financial needs, supporting community-owned, customer-funded, and self-sustaining systems. Next slide. The proposed rate adjustments apply to 10 county service areas and zones that provide water, sewer, or both water and sewer services. These districts include areas are CSA 42 Oro Grande, CSA 53B Fonskin, CSA 64 Spring Valley Lake, CSA 70 BL Bloomington, CSA 70 J Oak Hills, CSA 70F Morango Valley. CSA 70 GH Glen Helen, CSA 70 W-3 Hacienda, CSA 70 W-4 Pioneer Town, and CSA 82 Trona. Two districts, CSA 42 Oro Grande and CSA 64 Spring Valley Lake, provide both water and sewer services, while the others offer either water or sewer services in the community needs. Next slide. To ensure objectivity, special districts retained NBS consulting to conduct comprehensive rate studies addressing operational and capital needs, reserve requirements, and revenue stability. The proposed rates were developed in accordance with the cost of service principles of Proposition 218 requirements. For context, the Board previously approved a 3.5% increase for 2023, 24, and 25. Prior to that action, most customers' rates have remained unchanged since 2013, resulting in a prolonged period without inflationary alignment or cost of service updates. Next slide. The proposed adjustments are driven by sustained inflationary pressures, including increases in county workforce and contract labor, and a 49% rise in California prevailing wage since 2016. Materials, equipment, and chemical costs have escalated. Steel, PVC piping, hoses, fittings, and treatment chemicals have increased by approximately 35% since 2017. Utilities and third-party waste water treatment costs continue to rise. Infrastructure is aging, regulatory compliance obligations are increasing, and small systems face limited economies of scale. Next slide. The adjustments are intended to maintain operational solvency and appropriately preserve emergency and operations reserves. They reduce deferred maintenance risks, support long-term capital planning, and ensure the reliability of customer service. Next slide. Staff executed a comprehensive outreach program, including a rate meeting flyers mailed during February through March of 2026, and Proposition 218 notices mailed in April 8, 2026. Ten in-person community workshops were conducted between March and April, and two webinar presentations were held in April, with district-specific infrastructure and financial information provided, and a staff-facilitated question-and-answer session. Next slide. On April 7, 2026, the Board approved the resolution of intent to initiate proceedings under Proposition 218 and AB 2257 for the proposed rate adjustments. Under Proposition 218, rates must be based on the actual cost of service. Property owners and customers of record must be afforded written notice and the opportunity to protest, and revenue must be utilized within each district. AB 2257 clarifies procedures for written objections and strengthens the county's legal precision by creating a more robust administrative record to defend against any future legal challenges. Staff has adhered to all required noticing and public hearing procedures. The studies employ industry standard methodologies and comply with Proposition 218, recent case law requiring cost base rates and uniform usage structures. Next slide. The summary table presents annual proposed adjustments, current fixed charges and proposed rates for fiscal year 26-27 and fiscal year 20-30-31 across the affected districts. Proposed rates adjustments range from 1.74% to 7.5 per year. For water service, the proposed adjustments incorporated a fixed meter charge and a transition from tiered usage rates to a single usage rate. Overall, water service costs will vary by individual customer consumption. All right, and then finally, no majority protests have been submitted for various CSAs presented to you today. This concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We have a variety of speakers for item 122. Before we go to our public comment, do we have any board questions? All right, we'll move on to public comment. Each speaker will have three minutes. We will start with Andrea Tolber, followed by Billene Flynn, and then Rick McCloud.

Nothing.

Oh, okay. My name is Andrea Tover. I live in Oak Hills on the west side. I oppose the potential rate increase. While collecting opposition letters for the CSA 70J Oak Hills customers, neighbors, and friends, I always asked if they were aware of the potential water rate increase that could begin August 1st, 2026. Some of them had heard something about it, but didn't know the details. Many did not know about the increase. Customers who have auto pay their water bills just expect their bills to be paid. It's a great service. Customers who receive their water bill and make the payment just send off the payment. Including a notice in the water bill for those who pay themselves would increase the likelihood of those customers reading about the proposed increase. Sending out a separate notice to everyone or those who have auto pay in an envelope marked on the front, important information, enclosed, potential rate increase coming, or something of that nature, will reach everyone in the CSA 70J service area. I understand that increases will happen. Cost of living increases are expected, but such a large increase in a very short period is not easy to plan for, especially for residents living on a fixed income. My ask is to extend the five-year increase period to seven to 10 years. We're told that five years is the standard period. This could be the proposal that sets the precedence for accommodating future increases. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Belene Flynn followed by Rick McCloud.

Say it again. Say it again. Belene Flynn's turn. I'll say two of them. We're going to call them again.

Go ahead.

Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Yeah, I just want to iterate what she said, you know, especially about being on fixed incomes. You know, a lot of people in Oak Hills, everybody thinks it's the Hollywood of the high desert, but it's not. And we have a lot of people that are on fixed incomes and such a quick spike in prices is really going to put a damper on them. And that's about all I have to say.

Thank you very much. Rick McCloud, followed by Daryl Barron.

Hello. My name is Billine Flynn, and I'm a CSA 70-J rate payer. I'm opposed to the proposed water rate increase of 62.5%, with some estimates approaching 96% over the next five years. Everyone understands that maintaining a safe and reliable water system costs money. However, an increase of this magnitude requires extraordinary justification, and many residents still have unanswered questions. First, if the district knew that chromium-6 treatment requirements and infrastructure needs were coming, why were rates not adjusted gradually over the last few years? Why are residents now being asked to absorb such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time? Second, I would like a detailed accounting of how much of the proposed increases are directly attributable to Chromium 6 compliance. How much is for operations and maintenance, and how much is for capital projects, wages, and how much is for reserves. Third, California's chromium-6 drinking water standard is 10 parts per billion, while federal standards for the chromium remains 100 parts per billion. Why must CSA 70-J ratepayers bear such an enormous cost to meet a state requirement that is 10 times stricter than the federal requirement? Fourth, who has challenged California's Chromium 6 regulations? What were their concerns and what alternatives were considered before passing these costs on to residents? We'd also like to know what grants, state funding opportunities, federal funding sources, and low-interest financing options have been pursued to reduce the burden on rate payers. Residents deserve to know that every possible outside funding source has been exhausted before rates are increased nearly doubled. Water is an essential service. Many families, seniors on fixed incomes, and working households in Oak Hills are already struggling with rising costs. Before approving increases of this magnitude, the board should provide complete transparency, explore all alternatives, and demonstrate that these increases are truly unavoidable. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Catherine Arch followed by Bob Hartunian.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Kathy Arch, and I'm a Zone J customer. Over the past several weeks, a group of volunteers and I have been working throughout Oak Hills to inform residents about the proposed water rate increase and to collect protest letters. What we discovered is troubling. Again and again, residents told us they never received the Prop 218 notice or the notice regarding the public meeting for Zone J customers. We ultimately collected 557 protest letters, which I delivered to the clerk of the board this morning, and among those residents, fewer than 10 recalled ever receiving either notice. The goal of Prop 218 is not simply to mail notices. The goal is to ensure customers have an opportunity to be informed and participate. Based on the hundreds of residents we contacted who were unaware of this proposal, I do not believe that goal was achieved. I have received conflicting information regarding attendance at the public meeting held by special districts. I've been told attendance was three residents, and I've been told it was seven residents. If only three to seven residents attended that meeting, but more than 500 customers submitted written protests after learning of the proposal, doesn't that suggest the public outreach process failed to effectively inform the community? More than 3,800 Prop 218 notices were reportedly mailed to Zone J customers. Yet after contacting hundreds of residents and collecting 557 protest letters, we found very little awareness of this proposal. If so many of the customers we reached were unaware, how many of the thousands we didn't reach are unaware today? My second concern is the size of the proposed increase. Over the next five years, the rate for a significant portion of our water usage will increase by approximately 98%. That is not a routine adjustment. Today's rate of $2.32 per 100 cubic feet in five years will be $4.56. That is a 98% increase no matter how you do the math. It will be difficult for many households to absorb, and for particularly seniors who are on a fixed income. Most of us understand that rates must increase from time to time to maintain the system, and few of us are arguing the rate should never increase. However, many are asking why more gradual increases were not implemented over the years rather than proposing an increase of this magnitude all at once. When hundreds of residents tell us they were unaware of this proposal until volunteers began informing the community, that should concern all of us. Before imposing a rate increase of this magnitude, customers deserve a fair opportunity to know about it, understand it, and participate in the process. I respectfully ask that this proposal be postponed and that additional outreach be conducted before any final action is taken. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Bob Hartunian. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name.

Thank you very much. I didn't bring a prepared statement. I'll just speak off the top of my head. I live in Fonskin. I've been there for 29 years. I have paid many, many water bills, sewage bills, and they keep rising. The residents in Fonskin, we have 100 residents 90 homes that actually provides sewerage for the system that goes into Baldwin Lake for processing the cities of Big Bear City and Big Bear Lake both send their sewage all to the same site however The residents of Fonskin have to pay twice as much for the same sewage processing as the people in Big Bear City and Big Bear Lake. Something is wrong with that setup. We should be paying exactly the same. And this increase, which is proposed at 7.5%, is a total ripoff for the citizens of Fonskin. I would like to see this defeated or at least reduced back to the 3.5% that we have been paying. I think that's only fair. That's about all I have. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. I did have one last request to speak come in, and the name is Tim Dobbs. Good morning, sir.

Can you hear me? I can. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm also a resident in Fonskin, like Bob. In fact, he's my neighbor. But our community is small. We have about 600 homes total. And so about six years ago, we went through the same thing. rate increase presentation and you all turned it down. And so I wanna thank you for that. So our sewer service has continued without interruption, no problem, even without rate increase. And so now they wanna increase our rates over the next five years 44%. About probably, I'd say at least 70% of our residents are retired people. on retirement income, and about the only thing that goes up with cost of living is social security. Everything else is stable. So we're in a pinch as far as our cost of living. And I noticed that they hired a consulting company and paid them $50,000 to study our sewer system for 600 homes, which seems exorbitant. All we want is to have the county operate our sewer system so we can drain our sinks and flush our toilets and take showers and so on. And so... So we request that you would turn this rate increase down to help us out with our cost of living. All we want is somebody to operate our sewer. We don't want a business. We don't want $50,000 consultants studying what we do. So we're asking you to turn this huge rate increase down for us. Again, we're on fixed incomes. The only thing that goes up is Social Security. So that's about it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Bring it back to the board for comments.

Excuse me, Madam Chair. We did have one additional speaker that came in. Zale Harris. Zale Harris.

Good morning. My name is Zale Harris. I'm a resident of Oak Hills 70J. I'm asking the board to continue item 122, CSA 70J, not to reject the rate increase, but to give Oak Hills community time to meaningfully participate Here is why a continuance is legally warranted. Prop 218 notice was not posted on any county website. Government code section 53759 requires continuous posting from the date of mailing through the close of this hearing today. I verified this morning the notice of the hearing is not there, the rate study is. That is a deficiency of the statutory alone and is ground for continuing this item. Two, Spanish notices were never mailed. Proven by the county's own records, mail service work order 23593 shows 15,296 sheets of folded paper into 3,824 envelopes, exactly four sheets per envelope. The English notice, and this is in the English notice only, if Spanish had been included, the full count would have been 30,592. The county did charge Oak Hill rate payers $1,434.97 for 3,827 Spanish notices that were never mailed delivered. That affects who can protest. The mailings list, The mailing list contains 108 duplicate addresses, 160 extra entries. After duplication, there are 3,573 unique addresses, but 3,827 notices were printed. This is 254 unaccounted for notices. The majority protest threshold depends on the accurate parcel count. This board cannot certify the tabulation built on an uncertified list. Four. There are no financial emergencies here in CSA 70J. CSA 70J holds 8.34 million in cash, over 273% of the annual revenue. Both major reserve funds are growing. The district only debt is 885,000 at a 3.9 interest rate loan, which will be paid off in 2033. Revenue is already recovering without rate increase, And this agenda tells the board increase range from 3.5 to 10%. The actual one year increase for Oak Hills is approximately 19%. Conflicting. Continue in my request is to continue CSA 70 J 60 days Posting notices at a verifiable UFR the actual notices that were sent out are three pages not four as I indicated earlier Which means there's even more issues with that also the website on this same notice.

That's time does not work Thank you very much bring it back to the board for questions I Supervisor Armendariz and then Supervisor Hagman.

Yeah, you know, understanding we know that these are required, right? Like this is just for, there's no making money here. This is what we need that we believe to substantiate reliable services. I guess this is really more of a question, like I was trying to do some quick math for myself, but is there a way that we should or could we start creating some sort of policies where we do have a cap on the percentage, kind of like what we did with our services earlier with county services in general. But when we're doing water, this is affecting people's lives. Understand this is a drinking water sewer. This is not something that we can stop and understand that we have to provide these services. But is there a way to create some sort of cap that can be an ongoing cap that maybe forever, they know that it has to be a maximum of 4% and we just gotta figure out how to budget. Is that even possible or is this something that there is severe deferred maintenance in some of these ones that are 7% annually, 7.5% annually, which is double increases on some of these. Is that something we could or should be looking at? Yes, thank you for the question.

So I wanted to clarify. the 2.18 process allows us to come forth and state what our recommendation is on what will be sustainable, right? So the rates that we are asking for to keep the system in good condition. So they're not required per se, but it's our recommendation based on the studies and working together as a team to keep the system sustainable. That being said, if I'm not mistaking, the study that was created actually states that the rates should be increased much more. But since we're aware of how times are tough and that we don't want to be Increasing all of a sudden, we're trying to take a measured approach that does provide some increases so we can keep a sustainable system without necessarily spiking the rates immediately. We understand that in the past, as we continue to try to meet the needs, we did not increase the rates as far as many years ago. We started doing some increases in the recent years. times to keep up with the cost of living, right, for all the expenses. But this was a detailed comprehensive study that states for each individual districts what is their challenges, what is their system current infrastructure age, what the capital improvement projects need to be to keep the system sustainable, as well as what is the current reserves, and then we're projecting out when are we going to then be in the negative and solvent if we don't take these increases now, right? So we're doing a measured approach, looking at the trend lines of where we will be five, 10 years from now.

With that being said, if there were actions taken where it was capped at four, is there a way to let the community know that if we didn't attach that extra 7.5% a year, this is what you stand to lose? I mean, I feel like a lot of this is kind of getting out there, knowing what they are gonna give up if they choose not to take these rates, because it's gonna be accumulative, right? Like, it's not gonna stop. Is there, have we had those conversations, I guess, is really the question?

Yes, part of the community meetings is to talk about that, right? And we do try to make sure that we make decisions with eyes wide open as far as if we don't put these increases in, what's going to happen? So it's not going to be an immediate failure, right? It'll just be a gradual reduction in services and options of what we can do to keep the system sustainable, right? So as our reserves dwindle, because we are not meeting the needs with the current revenues, Again, our options will be revenue, will be limited. And then at the end of the day, the math is going to force a decision, right? Because we're going to be coming back to you guys, letting you know that we're even more underwater, and excuse the pun, but on these services and what our options will be, it'll just end up being that if we kick the can down the road, these increases will only be more exponential in the future.

Thank you.

Supervisor Hagman.

Thank you. Thank you, Noel, for your presentation. I do hear the residents who came out and spoke. Being here for a while, I've seen this on multiple special districts. We do probably not the greatest job because it's not our primary focus is on our special districts as far as the financing behind it. We seem to get far behind. I see road districts that haven't been adjusted for decades, and then all of a sudden it's a huge up crease. And if you look at it, it's like, wow, you're changing the fees by 100% in three years. Well, it should have been done 3% over the last, 3.5% over the last 20 years. We just never got around to it. The problem with that is if we don't, keep up with the actual expense he's supposed to be separate budgeted entities to take care of themselves if we don't do it you'll be doing it yourself as residents keeping up your own water septic but we take on your you voted to have a special district to do this the problem is we don't get around to these and i've been stressed this every time we have this up when it's been five, 10, 15 years before we made adjustments, and all of a sudden we're so far behind that. When you start using general fund money to backfill these, then you're taking away from something else. You're taking away from other residents' resources or other county programs that could be using those dollars. And I understand from your presentation, this is not the full cost assessment. This is a compromise. We're still backfilling, or we'll still be required to backfill the special district's even at these increases for a period of time because we didn't probably do it soon enough. We didn't be more aggressive enough. And I support the full transparency of you showing where those dollars go. And the one thing that wasn't really stressed, there's also continued legislative changes to what we must do as a sewer, as a water body, with the change to the legislature, when you have to go for more testing, you have to do more filtration, stuff like that. That's not something we add. That's what the state of California's add. And every one of it, when that's a county special district a completely separate water agency is going through that. I've seen my rates for my residents go quite a bit higher than this in the last few years based on some of those legislative changes. So as hard as this is to the go, it's actually been less than what it should have been over a long period of time to get to the points where it's at. Thank you.

I have a question. The gentleman from Fonskin, I can appreciate and understand their sentiment. If they don't, Do residents have a choice in any CSA if they choose not to contract with special districts? Can they go to the City of Big Bear Lake and say, can we have our sewer provided by someone else?

So speaking of Fonsken, the unique and charm of that area is that it is secluded and it's a small community. But with that comes that challenge of the sewer system is secluded and does not have a connection where you can then contract out to have your sewer done by somebody else. being that it's such a small community, then those costs, the economy scales are not there. So I would agree that it would be wonderful if we can make this part of a larger sewer system, so that way you would see the economy scales and the savings on those sewer rates. But unfortunately, as mentioned, the charm of being in a secluded small community then comes with that challenge of then having a system that needs to be built and maintained just for them. And so that's why a bit of a higher rate for them.

I will share, I understand and share your frustration. I feel that one of the biggest challenges that Luther and I have dealt with this week is a small water district that is in the third district that is subject to failure because they haven't invested in it. And it is not a district that's owned and operated by the county, but they're now looking, the residents are looking to the county to figure out how are we gonna flush our toilets? How will we have potable water? and we don't have answers for them we're trying to work with the public utilities commission with the epa on it and prior to this issue coming to us this week really i didn't understand um i knew it was an annoyance i knew that it was something that i don't even like to pay the prop 218 things that come i don't love the protest idea of anything at all i don't think it's it's my personal opinion i don't think it's a way we ought to vote on things but The investment in infrastructure is needed. I understand it. I wish people did have a choice so that they could go outside because sometimes the county costs are higher. And I understand Fonskin being isolated. It's even more so. So I just want to say that we are living sort of a nightmare right now of what happens when a water system fails and what those residents will do. So likely move because they have to have services. So that's an unfortunate thing. that we're working through, Supervisor Armendariz.

Yeah, someone said something interesting right now, and I don't know if it's been considered, but are we looking at all of these and seeing where some of them may be able to come together or maybe connect to like Big Bear, like what they said, and what that cost would be in lieu of continuing to manage their own sewer system, maybe combining sewer systems at a different, you know, I know in, I think it's Rialto in the unincorporated area of Fontana, they actually connect to Viola even though it's, technically IEUA's district, but it was more cost effective to do that. Have we looked at those type of things, how we can bring things together for economies of scale?

So yes, part of when we meet with the community that we're there as stewards of the system, right? So we're looking at anything that we can do to try to make the system more sustainable. This is something that we continue to look at as far as is there someone that would be willing to absorb them into their system, and there is a process for that. And I think we'll continue to work with each of the facilities for each of the districts to see if there is a plausible way to do that that is achievable without necessarily a lot of investment. Similar to annexation of an area into a city, we're going to be looking at what additional infrastructure needs to be built in order to tie into it. And what does that... adopting agency going to be asking for in order for them to adopt a good working system, right? So again, if we delay any of the maintenance, any of the capital improvements, when they come and assess what they're going to be buying into, right, because they'll be taking that liability, they're going to be telling us we need you to do X, Y, and Z before we even consider taking you in. So then the choices, again, become very limited if we don't continue to keep the system in good working order because it makes it more challenging for someone to come in and say, like, I'm willing to absorb this because they're going to know there's liabilities there.

If I may, consolidation has been a directive from the state for some time, looking at the smaller water districts, smaller sewer districts, and how they can consolidate them into larger systems. Those economies of scale tend to reduce rates, they're more sustainable, and they're less volatile to swings from the standpoint of you could have a reservoir in a small system that fails, and that's such a massive cost investment. It puts a huge strain on a community However, if it's part of a larger system, those costs are spread more broadly and less impactful. So, in fact, two of these districts, these CSAs, we've been working on consolidation now since I was in special districts in 2018. that has been a dialogue with the state and another water agency to try to consolidate. So that would be the solution in Fonskin if there was a way to consolidate there and bring that into a larger system if the other parties were willing and if the investment would be reasonable to make that connection. It's something we can certainly look at as a longer-term initiative because that does make sense. These districts were founded in order for people to make investment and feel good about making those investments, building a home, and investing into those properties. Looking at the long-term viability of our systems is important, and that's why we're bringing these rate increases forward, but also looking at it from the perspective of, are there opportunities to consolidate longer-term, make it more stable, and ultimately, hopefully, more cost-effective long-term?

Thank you. Vice Chair?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. No, I appreciate Mr. Snoke's comments and all of my colleagues' comments. I think it's very difficult for any of us to bear rate increases. I mean, it's a challenge, and we look at all the different rates and You know, I'll speak at least for the fifth district, CSA 70 for Bloomington actually has the highest rates. One of the challenges for us, and the CEO kind of alluded to it, is we're connected to Rialto sewer. And sewer at Rialto charges a huge markup, and we don't like that. And I know I've had conversation with the CEO and our public works staff about potentially having a sewer service master plan with Rialto so we can try to stabilize these rates and not pay the exorbitant fees. And I think, you know, bigger term, I think right now the action we're potentially taking is just to address the current problems that we have now, but I think long term we have to look at longer solutions on maybe we can connect those. For example, in unincorporated Colton, you know, it was the water system and everything was taken over by the city of Colton. And maybe there's options here, maybe there's not. I don't know these areas, but a lot of it has to do, and I'm sure Our director here can attest a lot of it's just infrastructure issues. I mean, that's the biggest thing is as systems get old, they wear down, they become a big challenge. And we dealt with this in the city of Rialto where we just had not improved infrastructure for 20 years. And it becomes a challenge. Things get old, things get used. As Supervisor Hagman mentioned, water quality treatment changes over time. But I think as we look at bigger picture, I think right now the action is to try to keep it, sustain it as is, and maintain it the best we can to make sure we have potable water, good sewer service, but we ought to at some point in time to look at a bigger investment or ways to consolidate and have a better plan for some of these small sewer and water districts. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Supervisor Cook?

Yeah, this is like deja vu all over for me. Back east, my father... had the pleasure or misfortune of running the water department. And you want to talk, and this was Meriden, Connecticut, this is about 50,000, but as you had development, it spread out very hilly, a lot of it, and you had things like a filtration plant, by the way, filtration filtration plants are astronomical for a lot of variety. And it's even worse now because of the environmental concerns that are built into it. There's part of me that obviously we've got to address that. But we're talking about an area where you have a lot of retirees. They have limited incomes. And for them to accept that, I think is very, very difficult. I don't envy you. I don't envy anybody here on how we're gonna solve this problem. But it kind of highlights how water is such a precious commodity. I do think that consolidating, if you had any neighbors in terms of at least water, It's gonna help. How you can make that happen, I don't know. Then I think you ought to get on the board here and you can change water into wine or even better, whiskey, but that's another story. I don't know. I'm torn between this because these are most of us senior citizens. They're on limited incomes. And stretching it, most people in this room, they could stretch it out, but it's tough on these people. And these are the concerns that I hear. And of course, I'm now in the stage, I'm in that stage, excuse me, where I'm in that age bracket And I'm so old, I don't want to tell you my age because I can't remember what it is. Actually, I do because my wife tells me every day. And so I don't know. I want to support you, but the senior citizens don't have many options. And before... I vote on this. I almost want to see is there any way we can help some of these people that they can't afford it. I don't know what they're going to do. And so right now, I obviously am talking too long, but that's just to prove I'm a senior citizen. But I'm conflicted in that I have an obligation, a sworn obligation to take care of my family. my constituents, as we all do, that are on this board here. And I don't know. I almost want you to say, you don't have any more options? This is water. This, you know, this is...

In the spirit of that, could you speak to the Prop 218 that these are residents that are voting in protest?

Yes, so the 218 protest process allows folks to let us know that if we have a majority, which is half plus one, of folks that are saying, we don't want these rate increases, they're making that decision with eyes wide open, hopefully with us having educated them of what it'll mean if you vote no again, which is we're going to have less funds to move forward. But the process allows them to say, if they meet the criteria of half of the folks that have the ability to vote plus one, then we would not do a rate increase.

So why does this even come to the Board of Supervisors?

These are governed by the Board of Supervisors. So legally, the ultimate version.

So we're accepting their vote. They're voting yes, they're voting no, and we accept their vote.

sort of so these are board governed county service areas so they though they are an independent special district they are governed by the board of supervisors so the protest process and this is hopefully our laura will correct me if i say something legally incorrect here but That protest process that the state has in place under Prop 218, it allows for the community to protest and thus influence directly whether or not the rate increase would happen. It still requires a vote of the Board of Supervisors to determine what the actual rate would be in absence of a protest. So it is still the Board's prerogative to vote and determine what that rate would be.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to close the public hearing. I'll move it. Thank you for the motion, Supervisor Hagman. The second, Supervisor Baca. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Thank you, Madam Chair, with that. Item 122 passes unanimously.

That is for recommendations one through four.

Actually, in this case, because none of the districts reached a majority protest, then it is for the full recommendation. All of them? Correct. Very good. Thank you very much.

So now we move on to agenda item number 123. Okay. It's a public hearing on proposed water service charge adjustment to county service area 70 zone CG, Cedar Glen, also being presented by Noel Castillo. Before I open the public hearing, if there are any property owners or persons registered to vote in the county service areas who wish to file a written protest, if so, they must do so now with the clerk of the board. I will open the public hearing.

Thank you, Chair. This public hearing concerns the Proposition 218 Majority Protest Proceedings and the Introduction of Ordinance Setting Water Rates for Services in Board-Governed County Service Area 70CG Cedar Glen.

Thank you. Now, slides two through five echo the first presentation.

So, summarizing of the role of special districts, the MBS rate study, and the inflation-driven labor material and infrastructure costs behind the proposed rate adjustment. So, we'll go ahead and move to slide six. Staff executed a comprehensive outreach program including rate meeting flyers mailed in March 2026 and Proposition 218 notices mailed in April 8th, 2026. An in-person community workshop was conducted on March 18th, 2026 and a webinar presentation was held on April 16th, 2026 with district specific infrastructure and financial information provided and a staff facilitated question and answer session. Next slide. This information is regarding the Proposition 218 and AB 2257, which we also presented earlier, so we'll go ahead and skip this slide. The table presents annual proposed adjustments, current fixed charges, and proposed rates for fiscal year 26, 27, and fiscal year 20, 30, 31. The proposed rate adjustment starts with a 30% increase in year one, a 10% per year for years two through five. For water service, the proposed adjustments incorporate a fixed meter charge and a transition from tiered usage rates to a single usage rate. Overall water service costs will vary by individual customer consumptions. And finally, only 21 protests have been received and confirmed by staff. Therefore, there is no majority protest for this particular district. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much. I do not believe that I have any request to speak on this item. Do I have any board member comments or questions? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion. Thank you for the motion, Supervisor Hagman. And the second, Supervisor Baca. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With that, item number 123 passes unanimously.

Thank you. And again, much like the last one, we move right on to the next agenda item. Correct. Thank you. Item 124 is a public hearing proposed adjustment, sanitation service charge adjustments for county service area 70, zone S3, which is Lytle Creek, also being presented by Noel. Before I open the public hearing, if we have property owners or persons registered to vote in the county service area who wish to file a written protest, if so, they must do so now with the clerk of the board. We'll open the public hearing.

Thank you, Chair. This is my final presentation. We'll go ahead and move to slide two. Now, similarly to the other presentation, again, slides two through five echo the first presentation, so we'll go ahead and skip to slide six. Staff executed a comprehensive outreach program, included rate meeting flyers, and mailed in February 2026, and Proposition 2018 notices were mailed in April 8th, 2026. An in-person community workshop was conducted on March 31st, 2026, with district-specific infrastructure and financial information provided, and a staff-facilitated question and answer session. Next slide. And again, this slide is presenting the information on the Prop 218 and AB 2257, so we'll go ahead and skip this slide and we'll move on to the next slide. The table presents the annual proposed adjustments, current fixed charges, and proposed rates for fiscal year 26-27 and fiscal year 2030-31. The proposed rate adjustment starts with a 10% increase in year one and 7.5% per year for years two through five. For water service, the proposed adjustments incorporated a fixed meter charge and a transition from tiered usage rates to a single usage rate. Overall water service costs will vary by individual customer consumption. Now for this particular one, protests were received for as late as yesterday and totaling of 220 of the 392. So they have actually met their minimum requirement for majority protests with a 56.1%. Next slide. A majority protest blocks new rates, existing rates stay, and a financial strain will continue. Without approval, revenue shortfalls may trigger deferred maintenance, reduce reserve emergency repairs, and compliance risks. District may propose revised rates, seek grants, defer projects, engage with LAFCO for consolidation or reorganization that requires annexation over boundary changes. And eventually the state may appoint an administrator receivership if applicable over district. So the bottom line is reliable service needs sustainable funding. So at this time, this concludes my presentation.

I'm going to jump right in. I love Lytle Creek. I'm super excited that they are passionate and coming out and voting and good for them. Holy smokes. I hope people understand what it means to be taken over through a receivership for the deferred maintenance, but I support their ability through the Prop 218 to not vote the increase in. So I love the little community and they are very resilient and they take care of themselves often and I hope that this will not have negative impacts for them down the road in the future that they have not contemplated. So I know we have a variety of requests to speak. Luther, you want to jump in?

Yeah, I would just say I don't think today is the end of this. I really would encourage staff to go back out into the community We need to make sure that they have a sustainable long-term system. And I understand hitting the Prop 218 protest level kills this rate proposal. But we really need to continue dialogue there because we want to make sure that the system remains solid.

Supervisor Armendariz has a suggestion.

Maybe we talk to them about getting into IUA system, because it's gotten pretty far up there by now with the industrial buildings that are in the city of Fontana, north of the 15 freeway. Maybe that could be a. They're gonna be looking at economies of scale, I don't know.

Yeah, I think we'll explore all options. We need to do something. And the interesting thing about Lido Creek, they have their own sewer treatment facility there. So it's an asset that the community has. I remember going out to it and I've seen it with my own eyes. it'll need to be maintained and taken care of. I don't know that failure tomorrow is the concern. This is what the next few years would look like if service needs to be pulled back or changed. But again, going back to consolidation, always something we should be looking at to find a way for long-term stability and economic balance.

Very good. We'll move on to public comment. I have Jane Doche followed by Cheryl Anaya and then David Williamson.

Excuse me, Madam Chair, can we hold on Jane Doche for just a moment? We have a question with council pending. Okay. Thank you.

I don't know what the question is. Sorry, what was the question?

Ms. Doche had actually intended to speak to item 123, but had inadvertently signed up for item 124. But that action. Fortunately, that hearing has closed.

The board can choose to reopen the hearing. We would have to redo all of the processes. Or we're just going to have to. She signed up for the wrong hearing. She can comment in public comment.

Public comment if you would like to comment in public comment So at the end of today's agenda we can move her for items not on today's agenda then Can I take her out?

That's chair discretion.

Can I take her out of order to comment on 123 now you can But the hearing is closed. We understand obviously let her know. Okay Jane if you are here and would like to speak on item 123 will take you first and then we'll follow by Cheryl and then David I Do we know if she's opting not to speak?

My understanding is she was out speaking with one of our staff.

I believe she does not want to speak now.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Sorry for the- Good morning, Cheryl. Welcome. It's nice to see you.

Good morning. I learned so much during this meeting, and usually I have to sleep on things before I speak, and I'm just in awe. I'm also against a government like California coming and telling us what... we have to do because i know our county takes good care of this but uh... this to eighteen really helped us out because we did go to the meeting the county presented in the community center we did speak to the officials and we wanted to be included we had ideas we want to go see the sewer plant it didn't happen so maybe now this can happen so praise the lord on this one uh... Also, I learned other things. Other districts paid $50,000 for a study to increase their rates, but Lytle Creek had to pay $100,000. That's a lot of money. But thinking about this, don't you have people that work in the sewer that could have done that? I know I could have if I was working there. So you're going to have to look deeper into your government positions and what they do. From what I understand, too, you want to digitalize or computerize the system. You're going to have to hire more people, but you can't get rid of the labor, so the costs go up. There has to be a better solution. And thank you for letting us do this. And praise our county and praise America. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. And David Williamson.

Hey, good morning, Chair and Supervisors. My name is Dave Williamson, and I'm a resident and rate payer in Lido Creek. I want to make something very clear. Our community wants to be part of the solution. Over the past several weeks, a few residents have come together, including myself, who have backgrounds in manufacturing, plant construction, industrial maintenance, machining, and equipment repair. We have some captains of industry in Lytle Creek. We stand ready to walk the sewer treatment facility alongside county staff, inspect the equipment, understand the operational challenges, and help identify practical cost-effective solutions. Many of us have spent our careers building, operating, maintaining, and improving industrial facilities, myself included. We believe there may be opportunities to reduce costs, improve reliability, and prioritize repairs without placing such a large burden on ratepayers. What is disappointing is that before spending more than 100,000 on consultants to determine how much residents should be charged, the county never came to the community and asked, how can you help? Or what expertise exists within Lytle Creek to help? Our community contains talented people with decades of real world experience. We believe that collaboration should come before rate increases. Today, I asked the county begin a new conversation with residents. One focused not only on what we should pay, but on how we can work together to solve problems. We are ready to contribute our expertise, ready to participate in evaluating the facility, and ready to help ensure the long-term success of our sewer system. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Luther. I would love to have our residents get out there and see what they would like to see. Is that possible?

I believe it's absolutely possible. So we'll work with Noel and his team in Public Works to arrange that.

Make sure we get it noticed to the public. They have a monthly meeting up at the community center and get that out so that everybody that has the opportunity can do that without making it rushed. And then can somebody speak to the consulting fees where we've heard different amounts?

Yes, if I may. I think someone, there was some confusion because someone mentioned a $50,000 number. That was incorrect. The total number is $100,000, but that is divided over all the districts. So it wasn't one district paying $100,000. It was a total for the entire consulting contract that studied all of the districts.

Okay.

Madam Chair, if I may, if staff are going to go back and work with the Lytle Creek community, I'd also ask staff for Oak Hills and Fonskin as well, since the speakers came out and spoke. Just because the rates were approved doesn't mean dialogue can't or shouldn't continue, so I'd ask staff to work with those communities as well.

Very well. All right, so now... because my passionate community has thrown me a twist. I have to figure out how we take this vote. So we have a majority of the protest. So I will close the public hearing and entertain a motion on recommendations one through four. Correct. Okay. I have a motion from Supervisor Hagman and before I ask for the second, a question from Supervisor Armendariz.

So if we are gonna reengage this community because we vote today, how long will it take before we can reengage them again?

I think obviously we need to make sure that we sit down and they feel comfortable that we've been transparent enough and they understand why this is a requirement, right? I think we heard today that they would love to visit the site so they can see for themselves what are some of the capital improvement projects that we may need to do so they feel that they have put eyes on the facility to make sure that we're not doing something that is onerous or just not justified, right? So I think that'll be some of the steps that we need to take. And then I think once we have a better feeling that we've met some of their concerns or all of their concerns, that we feel confident we can come back and not deal with the same protest level where we would be basically where we're at today. I guess I'm saying legally. We have to get that sense of buy-in from the community.

I'm asking legally how long do we have to wait, because I know there was different votes that we had before.

I don't think there is necessarily. I mean, we could come back in a couple of months if we needed to.

We can? Okay. Dialogue could start immediately. I would say probably before you guys drive back today, we'll have staff chat with you.

I'm sensing that that is enthusiastically received. All right, thank you, Vice Chair, for the second. All those in favor of recommendations one through four? Aye. Any abstentions? Any no votes?

Madam Chair, that recommendations one through four pass unanimously.

Thank you very much. Because a written majority protest has been submitted by the property owners of the district, I shall entertain a motion on recommendation number five, that a majority protest does exist. Thank you for the motion, Supervisor Hagman, and the second, Vice Chair Baca. All those in favor, aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Recommendation five passes unanimously.

Thank you very much. Thank you to Lytle Creek for coming down. So as a result of the majority of protest determination, the proposed fee increase for the district shall not be imposed. The proposed rate changes in the ordinance for Lytle Creek will be removed and the current rate will remain in place. The clerk of the board is directed to make these changes to the proposed ordinance as allowed under recommendation number seven. The clerk will read the alterations to the ordinance.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The ordinance is revised to read for Section 2, Sanitation Rates, Subsection 2E, CSA 70, Zone S3, Lytle Creek. The proposed increased charges for all customers will be stricken. and the rate for CSA 70 Zone S3 Lytle Creek shall remain at the current rate of $66.03 per EDU per month. Accordingly, the all-customers row for CSA 70 Zone S3 Lytle Creek shall read $66.03 per EDU per month for fiscal years 2026, 27, 2027, 28, 2028, 29, 2029-30, and 2030 to 2031. All other rates and provisions of the proposed ordinance remain unchanged. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I will now entertain a motion on recommendations number six through nine, which includes the alteration of the proposed ordinance. Thank you, Supervisor Hagman for the motion and Vice Chair Baca for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With that recommendation, six through nine are passed with Supervisor Armendariz absent.

Very well. And as a reminder, we continue to item number 125 to the August 4th meeting. So that brings us to item number 126, which is our 2026-2027 County Budget being presented this morning by Matthew Erickson. Thank you very much, Noelle. We will receive one presentation for items number 126 through 133 and then vote on each budget hearing item separately. So I will open the main budget hearing public hearing.

All right. All right, good morning, Chair Rao, members of the board, Matthew Erickson, CFO for the county. Today with me, I have Diana Atkinson, who's the assistant CFO of the county as well. She's gonna tag team this with me. Wanted to start off first by thanking some folks because this really is the culmination of a ton of work. We're gonna actually go through some slides showing the amount of work that we've gone into to prepare this budget for you. But I did wanna thank Diana she's put a lot of work into this in addition to that deo paloma hernandez barker she puts a ton of work into this and abigail grant really works hard along with back there i've got my entire team who also is working tirelessly and we i think have all the department heads basically here which have their staff working really hard on this so thank you um let's make sure i got slider What we wanted to do, we have about 11 slides for you today. I wanted to walk through a couple of things we've already walked through with you so far. If you recall, we met on May 5th, did a budget workshop. We walked through it through things that we wanted to really reiterate with you, which is our county fiscal strategy, some of the budget process that we've been through and that are going through right now, along with our funding priorities, and then Diana is gonna go over a recommended budget overview where we talk about the $10.9 billion budget. So, our fiscal strategy. Last time around, Luther talked a little bit about this, and I wanted to just reiterate it, because it's so important to what we do as an organization. Prudent budgeting for us. For us, prudent budgeting means never underestimating our revenues, right? We always wanna plan for the revenues that we think are gonna come in, but not, excuse me, overestimating those. On the flip side, We want to never underestimate our expenditures. We want to plan for every possible expenditure that comes through. That's what we mean by prudent budgeting, and what that allows us to do by doing this consistently is it positions ourselves for slow growth environments. We've talked a lot about so far where we're at as a county. We've talked a lot about property tax with you and how we're seeing some slower growth. And what we find is because we've been prudent over the last many years, we are really quite positioned for that slow growth environment, which is a positive thing for our residents. That really does lead to stable community services over a long period of time. where we could handle recessionary type events, not recessionary, but like slower growth environments, we could handle those pretty well. And so it is not rocket science at all. It's actually quite simple. But as I was thinking about this, it really takes a lot of discipline as an organization to do that. It takes everybody's buy-in, whether it's departments, staff, finance staff, all the way, of course, up to you, the board, who sets these policies for us and makes sure that we are in a position as a county to continue to provide services to the residents that we serve. As mentioned, it's quite a budget process that we have. It says we start in February, but it's really quite a bit before that that we do start preparing a lot of the financial aspects, including our forecast. But we start in February with opening up our budget system to our departments. Department staffs begin by putting together a requested budget that makes its way to my office. While that's happening, we begin our public engagement. And the way that we work on public engagement for the county is we have a few different meetings that we have where we go over the budget. You'll recall that we met in March and did a budget overview presentation. Then in addition to that, we went through our five-year forecast with you and sort of our projections on May 5th. Then what we do is three weeks prior to this hearing and adoption, we publish our budget book documents, which is quite a document. It's a good 400 plus pages that we have available to you as well as members of the public to review and put together any comments that you or they may have. And then lastly, today, we have the budget hearing. The budget hearing, we are looking for adoption as well, and this is an opportunity to ask any questions that you may have over the overarching budget. As Chair Rao mentioned, we do have just this one presentation for you, so hopefully at the end of this presentation, if you have any questions or comments, we do have department heads available to help answer those questions as well. Jumping into our county priorities, and when I talk about our county priorities, this is new investments that we have using primarily general fund dollars that we are looking to spend over the upcoming year. We've talked about a bit slow growth, but we are excited to say that we are looking at $273.7 million of new investments in the county. What that is primarily is one-time funds. About 250 or so of that is one-time funding that we have available to do investments with the rest being ongoing that we're looking to do. I talked about these last time, but I did wanna talk just a little bit about a few of them again. The county really looks to support vulnerable populations. That is something we are continuously focused on. A couple of highlighted items that we have this year is we are putting a couple million dollars into the West End Regional Navigation Center. That's focused on homeless services out on the Fontana area along with numerous cities that are participating in that. Along with, we are looking at a new beginnings campus on Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center, setting aside $5 million for that. That's looking at helping our reentry population, inmates that are looking to reenter the community and helping with homeless services in that area. In addition to that, we are excited about the Bloomington Animal Shelter. We're setting aside $2 million ongoing towards the operations of that facility when it opens later in early 2027. And we continue to look at development assistance. We've had quite a permit backlog that we've had over the years, and the Department of Land Use has really been looking to take care of that backlog, and they're continuing to do that as well. In addition to that, we're excited about some of the capital projects that we're doing. We have $77.2 million of capital projects that we're looking to take care of in the upcoming year using general fund resources. A lot of that is going towards different public safety departments, whether it be a DA high desert building that we're looking to acquire at some point. We're setting aside money for that. We are also looking at some sheriff departments, capital projects, including station remodels, as well as specialized enforcement division buildings that we're looking to build. In addition to that, we are always, as a county, looking at financial security, making sure that we are set up for the future. We are continuing to set aside what is required under our policy. We have two main financial policies that we have. We want to have a 20% set aside for what's called locally funded appropriation. It's basically our general fund dollars that we like to have 20% set aside in reserves along with a 5% contingencies that set aside. And so we're excited about that. With that, that is my piece. It's kind of an overview of what we have. And I'm going to turn it over to Diana Atkinson to talk about the budget.

Thank you, Matthew, Chair Rao, members of the board. I'm happy to walk you through the budget overview today. This section provides a high-level picture of what is included in the recommended budget. This budget includes the county's core services while also making targeted investments in the priorities the board has discussed throughout the budget process. This is not just about funding one year of operations, it is about making sure we are positioned responsibly for what may be a slower growth or more uncertain fiscal environment ahead. With that, I'll start with the overall size and major components of the recommended budget. The recommended budget includes 10.9 billion, you heard right, 10.9 billion in total requirements across all county entities. This is the full spending plan for the county operations, programs, capital projects, reserves, and other financial commitments. As Matthew mentioned earlier, the recommended budget includes $273.7 million in new county priorities. These are targeted investments, not across the board spending increases. The budget also includes a net increase of 94 budgeted positions that reflects targeted staffing, additions in areas where there are operational needs, services, or mandated needs. Most importantly, this budget is designed to help the county manage potential fiscal and economic headwinds while continuing to protect long-term stability. The next slide summarizes the budget highlights in a simple snapshot. Well, simple to me. Hopefully, it's simple to you. The budget reflects the county's continued commitment to serving our most vulnerable residents. As you can see, together, human services and ARMC represent approximately $4.3 billion, over 40% of the total recommended budget. These resources support services such as health care, public assistance, behavioral health, child and family services, and other essential supports. Also, law and justice represents another 15% of the budget supporting public safety and justice-related services across the county. So when we look at the budget by major service area, over half is directed toward services that protect, support, and stabilize residents and communities. Compared to the 2025-26 modified budget, the recommended budget is slightly lower with a net increase of $26.1 million or about 0.24%. In practical terms, that is a flat budget. The slight decrease is mainly due to capital project timing and one-time funding from prior year that is not continuing at the same level. This is an important distinction. This does not reflect a broad reduction in county services. It is largely the result of temporary funding rolling off and capital project spending changing from year to year. Within the overall flat budget, there are a few notable changes. One of the larger decreases is another funding, as you can see, which has a recommended budget of $1 billion and is down $94.5 million. This is mainly due to one-time funding from the prior year, including contributions to reserves, countywide discretionary funding, and ARPA funding. The decreases are largely offset by increases in operation and community services and law and justice. the largest increase in operations and community service with a recommended budget of $908 million, up $118.6 million, or about 15%. This group includes both internal county support, such as facilities, utilities, real estate, capital projects, as well as public-facing services like libraries, parks, land use services, elections, agriculture, ways and measures, and the county museum. The increase is mainly driven by infrastructure and capital needs, including landfill expansion projects, road bridge projects, higher facility and utility costs, and targeted service improvements. The next highest increase is law and justice, which the recommended budget is $1.7 billion, up 86.7. The increase is mainly due to MOU-related costs, along with the programmatic changes that Matthew highlighted earlier. Importantly, the recommended budget also includes $27,592 budgeted position, which is a net increase of 94 positions, less than half a percent. That means we're only adding positions in targeted areas while still keeping overall position growth modest. The key takeaways is that this is a steady budget. It keeps core services going, funds priority needs, and maintains our focus on long-term stability. That concludes the recommended budget overview. Matthew and I are available for questions and also the budget head departments. I also want to appreciate the CEO and the Board of Supervisors throughout the budget process for your direction and support.

Thank you very much for the presentation and all the work. It feels like it's almost a year-round effort. By the time we get through with this, we're into mid-year budget review before we know it. Any comments, questions? I will close the public hearing. Oh, I do have one request to speak. Pauline Pisano?

Good afternoon. Afternoon.

Hi, everyone. My name is Pauline Pisano. I'm a resident of Flamingo Heights, California. And I'm here because budgets are moral documents. And I'm here to oppose any funding in this budget for surveillance tech, including flock camera safety apparatuses. Cities across the nation are opting out of camera surveillance networks like flock's camera system. They are initially sold as public safety enhancement, but flock cameras are in practice deeply flawed, easily hacked, and 60-plus cities across the country have decided to cancel their contracts with flock, and San Bernardino should and could be the next on that list. Communities in the high desert have organized two petitions that have garnered over 1,000 signatures of concerned members who understand that their human rights are being sold to big tech. Today, we are asking the county to cancel its contract, cease any funding for ALPRs or surveillance systems, and stop any new plans for more ALPRs and surveillance cameras. Here's the truth about Flock in California. El Cerrito City Council voted not to renew its contract with Flock, and the cameras were turned off June 7th. Santa Cruz ended its contract in January of 2026 after reports that city data was accessed by out-of-state agencies, violating state law SB 34. Mountain View voted to permanently cancel its contract in February of 2026 after discovering that federal agencies had unauthorized access to their cameras in 2024. Santa Clarita County, the Board of Supervisors voted to stop using flock as a vendor, impacting cameras in Saratoga, Cupertino, and Los Altos Hills, which are managed by the Sheriff's Office. South Pasadena canceled its contract in March of 2026, following concerns about data sharing with federal immigration agents. Oxnard suspended use after discovering data was accessed by federal law enforcement through a nationwide query setting. It is deeply urgent that we cancel our contract. Is it a waste of our county's funds? And there is something else. Dr. King once said the prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease. Surveillance and incarceration are not the answer. They are false prescriptions to creating safer communities. I was an advocate and crisis counselor in emergency rooms for survivors of violent emergencies. And during that time, it was made clear to me that we need to radically evolve our justice system. So I come here today as a concerned resident and also as a moral witness to those I have been a crisis counselor for. Surveillance cameras are a move in the opposite direction of what we need. It criminalizes the working class while filling the pockets and consolidating power of the very rich and wealthy. The existence of these cameras is a failure of public policy and any funding in this budget should be removed from it and the cameras should be turned off.

Thank you very much. That is the last request to speak that I have. I will close the public hearing. Do I have a motion? Thank you. Supervisor Hagman for the motion.

Sure. I've been through this, my 12th budget. I want to say it gets smoother, smoother, more transparent every time. Thank you for all the work that you do, Matthew, and the whole team for putting that in there. The reason why these budget meetings go fairly quick here is because of the four months of prep and exposure you've done throughout the meetings we have before. I just couldn't pass it up. Sorry.

And as a point of clarification too, we have taken public comment for months on all of the individual things as we've gotten to this point. So thank you very much for giving the public that opportunity to come and speak. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank Matt and the team for doing a great job with the budget, making sure that this budget continues to remain fiscally sound. But at the same time, we've made several investments throughout the county, many, many capital improvements. As you mentioned, the investments in the vulnerable population, especially those that are formerly incarcerated and the homeless population, but a lot of good investments. So So hats off to the team. And you look at other governmental agencies throughout the state, other counties, other cities that are struggling, and the fact that this county continues to do a great job. Hats off to my colleagues and the finance staff. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And Vice Chair also made the second on that motion. But Supervisor Armendariz has one comment to make before I call for the vote.

I wanna say, I feel like I'm just regurgitating the same thing, but thank you for all you guys do. Not only for allowing the public to see what we do and how we do it and being so transparent, but also working with us. This is only my third budget, but every time I get a little better understanding and go deeper into the budgets. You know, it's complicated. It's a lot of work, and thank you guys for taking the time to help me understand it better and to know where the benefits for the second district are in play and where they're working. So I just commend a great job to you guys in knowing that, you know, we are moving on the right track. Thank you for all you do. Thank you.

Supervisor Cook?

Yeah, I also want to just say thank you to everybody concerned with this. I do have a suggestion, and that is based on my past life. I was eight years in Congress. And I don't want to say that that was the most frustrating time of my life, but particularly when it came to the damn budget. And it's almost like I'm afraid you would take my advice and actually do what I suggest, and that is go back to Washington and show them how to do that. And it's never going to happen. And instead, I don't know. Obviously, I'm venting or whatever you call it after all those years. that maybe diplomatically we might say, hey, we got a team out here in the West that can really show you how you can do it in X amount of time and still not kill anybody, and not break up any marriages. Well, maybe a few. But it's a difficult process. It's horrible. I could never do it. Well, I did have to do it, but I was on the bottom line. And I am no longer an alcoholic because I'm back here. But thank you, thank you, thank you so much for doing the most difficult job. I think this body performs. Thank you.

We appreciate that. Thank you, guys. Luther.

I told Matthew and Diane I wouldn't speak and just let them do it since they earned it. But I do have to jump in. Thank you to the entire team. It can't be overstated, frankly, all of the work, the great work, the quality work, the professional work that goes into it. I lived as an analyst when I came into this county 12 and a half years ago. I was an analyst with the team building the budget. I lived the hell that is part of that. And the benefits, that feeling of relief when it goes well. So kudos to the whole team. And I do want to say kudos to our board of supervisors as well. Matthew and I have spent much time talking about the budget, talking about the financial state of our county. You have heard us say multiple times slower growth. You have not heard us say hiring freezes, wage cuts.

Digging into reserves.

Use of reserves to balance. Those are not things that we speak about. Those aren't things that we have to do. And instead, as Matthew mentioned, we are continuing to grow. It's slower. It's more measured. You saw only 94 new positions added this budget year. Since COVID, I believe we've added close to 3,500 positions. We are slowing that way down. We are being measured, but we are not freezing. We are not cutting. We are being responsible. Kudos to the board for allowing us to budget the way we have recommended in supporting that. We continue to grow. We continue to make incredible investment for our communities, for our residents, for our great county. and we do it in a way that is responsible respectful and professional and it's because you allow us to and that should not be overstated either that is incredible um thank you for that all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions thank you madam chair with that item 126 passes unanimously

Thank you very much. That brings us to item number 127, which is our 2026-2027 budget for Big Bear Valley Recreation and Park District. I will open the public hearing. I do not believe I have any requests to speak. Any board member comments? All right. Close the public hearing and entertain a motion. Thank you, Vice Chair, for the motion. And the second, Supervisor Hagman. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With that, item number 127 passes unanimously.

128 is our 2026-2027 budget for Bloomington Recreation and Park District. I'll open the public hearing. I do not have any requests to speak. Do I have any board member comments? Seeing none, I'll entertain the motion. Thank you, Supervisor Hagman. And after I close the public hearing, I appreciate that motion. And the second vice chair, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? I'll go quick. Item number 129 is the 2026-2027 budget for board governance services areas. I will open the public hearing. I do not have any requests to speak.

Close the public hearing. Thank you, Vice Chair, for the motion.

Supervisor Hagman, second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

127.9 and 128 both passed unanimously.

Thank you. 130 is our 2026-2027 budget for in-home supportive services. Public authority, I will open the public hearing. I do not have any requests to speak. I'll close the public hearing. So second. Thank you, Vice Chair, for the motion. Supervisor Hagman for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

130 passes unanimously.

131 is our 2026-2027 budget for the Inland County Emergency Medical Agency. I will open the public hearing. I do not have any requests to speak.

So I'll close the public hearing.

So moved.

Thank you. The motion is second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Can I clarify, did everybody, did I get a vote from all supervisors? Affirmative. Okay.

Okay, thank you.

That passes unanimously. Item number 132 is our 2026-2027 budget for San Bernardino County Fire Protection District. I will open the public hearing. I do not have any requests to speak, so I will close the public hearing. Thank you, Supervisor Hagman for the motion and Vice Chair Baca for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Any abstentions? Any nos? 132 passes unanimously.

Very well.

Item 133 is our 2026-2027 budget for San Bernardino County Flood Control District. I will open the public hearing. Do not have any requests to speak. I will close the public hearing. Have a motion from the Vice Chair and a second from Supervisor Armendariz to keep you on your toes. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

133 passes unanimously.

All right. Thank you all very much. Item 134 is Behavioral Health Services Act 2026 through 2029 integrated plan being presented this morning by Josh Dukas. Good morning, Josh.

Good morning and thank you. I see from the mass exodus not everyone was here to hear my presentation.

We're just excited to see you. Good afternoon.

Good morning, Chair and Vice Chair and fellow members of the Board. My name is Josh Dugas, and I'm the Acting Director for the Department of Behavioral Health. I appreciate your time in letting us present the Behavioral Health Services Act 2026 to 2029 integrated plan to you today. I have eight slides. I know I'm standing between you and lunch, so I will move quickly, but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. This plan represents our roadmap for investing behavioral health resources over the next three years to improve outcomes for residents across San Bernardino County. And it reflects extensive community engagement, state requirements, and our commitment to addressing mental health, substance use disorder, and homelessness through an integrated approach with our partners. This is the biggest behavioral health transformation in California in nearly 20 years. In March of 2024, Proposition 1 was passed by California voters. It transformed the Mental Health Services Act into the Behavioral Health Services Act. The change recognized that behavioral health services include both mental health and substance use disorders. It authorizes significant statewide investments in housing and treatment infrastructure. The goal is simple, connect people to treatment sooner, reduce homelessness, and improve access to care. The transition allows us to deliver more integrated outcomes focused behavioral health services than ever before. This is not just a name change, it represents a shift towards integrated care and stronger accountability. The funding structure and expectations have changed also. BHSA changes how we must allocate funding. A larger percentage of funding must be directed towards housing interventions and full service partnerships. And substance use disorder services are now formally integrated into the funding framework. While this transition does not provide new funding, it creates an opportunity to strategically align resources with our highest priorities, strengthen accountability, and focus investments on achieving measurable outcomes. I'd like to highlight a few other things. As you can see from the slide, the state has been kind enough to increase the amount they were withholding from 5% to 10%. We're excited about some of the opportunities in the housing intervention section, which allow us to use a portion of those funds for infrastructure, and we're actively working with the Office of Homeless Services and Community Development and Housing Agency to develop a plan to maximize that impact. And lastly, there are a few providers that may not meet the new requirements under the BHSA. and we're working with them to transition them to a fee-for-service model, change their operations to meet those requirements, or sunset them if appropriate. We are committed to maximizing every resource entrusted to us and working closely with our partners to improve outcomes and expand our impact. Simply put, we want to help more people and help people more.

If I could just make one comment, can you go back one slide? I think I just want to highlight something Josh said. The board has been very generous about allocating funding in past years for a housing development fund that we had administered by Community Development and Housing. One of the shifts, as Josh mentions, in BHSA is that there are now funds coming from the state through behavioral health to house folks. That is a new thing. It is a great thing, and it allows behavioral health dollars to be used to make investments. So that's something our board members are passionate about. It's a great thing for us. It's a requirement of behavioral health, I don't know why I can't say that, to make those housing investments. So that's new, that's something to pay attention to, and something Josh and his team are gonna be focused on. Thank you, Josh.

Thank you, Luther. So the priorities in this plan align directly with what our residents are asking for. BHSA focuses on four major priorities, housing stability, access to care, whole person treatment, and accountability. The state goals also include reducing homelessness, untreated behavioral health conditions, justice involvement, and institutionalization. Locally, we added two priorities that emerged from our community feedback, and that's reducing suicides and reducing overdoses. The goals established by BHSA mirror the concerns we hear from our residents on a regular basis. The 2026-2029 integrated plan reflects approximately $2.34 billion in behavioral health investment over three years, bringing together all behavioral funding into one comprehensive strategy. It represents the county's existing investments and funding sources consolidated to support greater transparency, coordination, and accountability. It ensures linkages between BHSA funding and other federal, state, and local revenue sources to allow for maximum impact to our community. The integrated plan serves as the county's roadmap for delivering coordinated behavioral health services, aligning mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, housing, crisis response, and supportive services to support individuals who need it the most. Most importantly, it creates more opportunities for early intervention, long-term recovery, and an improved quality of life. This plan reflects our commitment to improving lives, strengthening communities, and building a more connected and responsive behavioral health system for all residents. The community helped us develop this plan. Community engagement started in 2024 after the passage of Proposition 1 and continued through 2025 and 2026. We conducted meetings, engagement events, community forums, focus groups, public hearings, pop-up events, both in person and online to reach as many residents as possible. Some of the top priorities identified were access to care, homelessness, suicide prevention, and substance use treatment. These priorities directly influenced the plan. We had a defined 30-day comment period as required by the state and presented this to our Behavioral Health Commission, but we view the comment period as always open and we will continue to solicit and receive feedback to help improve operations and inform future plans. I'm also excited to announce that we received word last week that the state has officially approved this plan. This plan was not developed in isolation. It was shaped by thousands of voices from every region of San Bernardino County. Approval of this plan is the beginning of implementation, not the end of planning. If the Board is kind enough to approve this plan, implementation will officially begin July 1st, 2026. We'll focus on contract monitoring, outcome measurement, continuous stakeholder engagement, and ongoing reporting and accountability. We will continue evaluating community needs and make updates as necessary through annual or intermittent updates. We are committed to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement throughout this implementation. In closing, I wanna thank you for your time. The Behavioral Health Services Act provides us with an opportunity to rethink how we support residents facing behavioral health challenges. The plan is about more than funding allocations. It is about helping individuals obtain treatment before a crisis occurs, helping families stay together, helping people experiencing homelessness find stability, and creating pathways to recovery for those living with serious mental illness or substance use disorders. We have heard from our community, and their message was clear. They want greater access to care, stronger support systems, and meaningful solutions to homelessness and behavioral health challenges. With your approval today, San Bernardino County will continue advancing a behavioral health system that is compassionate, accountable, and focused on measurable outcomes that improve lives. We respectfully request your approval of the 2026-2029 Behavioral Health Services Act Integrated Plan, and I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. Vice Chair?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. No questions, just comments. First of all, I want to thank Josh for pinch-hitting going from public health over to behavioral health and taking on a very, very complex department that has a lot of overlapping agencies they deal with. I appreciate the CEO, Luther Snoke, talking about some of the investments that behavioral health has been able to make in capital projects when it comes to housing, homelessness, substance use disorder. I know this is a big part of our Pacific Village Project, which phase two and phase three are underway and moving expeditiously, will get individuals help, especially when it comes to substance abuse disorder. And also the fact that we're able to get BCHIP dollars from the state of California, which is a tremendous investment in our community and our county. But I think the important thing to keep in mind is that also this department supports many other agencies throughout the county, whether it's our school district supporting kids, getting many, many help. also with our law enforcement, Department of Adult Aging Services, Office of Homeless Services, and multiple other departments within the county that really, really is a good support group, and especially with behavioral health being such a challenging and complex issue, we appreciate the fact that you've addressed some of these issues, But not only you're looking to make investments, which is very important, but also to improve internally our system. So some of these systems can move more expeditiously to get individuals to help they need immediately, not having to wait a lot of time. So thank you for the great work and I'm glad you're able to get this approved by the state of California. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Supervisor Armendariz.

Yeah, my comment, I mean, I think everybody who knows me knows my passions, and this is like one of the probably biggest passions I have is what we're doing here and how we can make effective change. And really, I just want to commend you for all you have done. I've had a lot of concerns being on the Behavioral Health Commission, including with everything I'm doing here and how we connect all the dots. And you've been, I must say, instrumental in kind of putting all these dots together. And I want to personally just commend you for a great job that you're doing and how I can actually see tangible change. and dedication to wanting to see the change here and fix the brokenness that we have in the system. Because if we're 100% honest, we have a lot of brokenness in the system. But your commitment to ensure that we are going to get back on the right track is very commendable. And thank you for bringing this forward to us. I look forward to working with you and helping guide this in any way I can. Thank you very much.

Supervisor Hagman. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Josh, kudos. We all have worked for a long time in different roles, and you bring the compassion and focus and the organization skills needed. This is a tremendous investment by our residents and by the taxpayers in close to $3 billion over three years, investment to a wide sort of, needs out in our community. But I really like the part you brought up with having the measurable outcomes. I think it's behoove us to really document where this money goes and make sure that we're getting our return on investment for those folks we invest into and the services we provide. And so incorporate dashboards and hopefully see very noticeable outcomes in the amount of resources going out for this. And thank you for all the skill sets and the compassion you bring to it. Thank you.

All right, I appreciate that. This is not a public hearing. So we do not have any requests to speak. So I will entertain a motion. Thank you, Supervisor Hagman for the motion and Supervisor Armendariz for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Josh.

134 passes unanimously.

Item number 135 is an update to our county policy manual being presented by Lina.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Your approval, I will present from here rather than going over there. Good morning, Chair and board members. I'm Linda Monell, clerk of the board. I have a brief five-slide presentation to provide information regarding the policy item before you today. Senate Bill 707 was approved in 2025, which in part required counties with populations of 30,000 or more to provide the public the ability to attend and provide comments during the board meetings remotely. An item was presented at the May 5th board meeting providing information regarding implementation of remote public participation in San Bernardino County. In addition to requiring a remote public participation 707 further required counties to adopt a policy on the discussion calendar outlining the procedures to recess and or reconvene a meeting and state what efforts were taken to restore if services for the remote participation should not be available. Should there be a service disruption, the proposed policy outlines the following actions. The chair will pause the proceedings. If services cannot be restored quickly, the chair will recess the public session until service can be restored or efforts to restore the service exceed one hour. During the recess, the county shall make good faith efforts to restore the service, including but not limited to restarting the services and systems used to facilitate remote participation, use backup computers, and check physical networks and network connections. In the event that services cannot be restored, the chair will announce that remote participation was not able to be restored and also announce those efforts that were taken to restore the services. The meeting may continue if a majority of the board approves two findings. Good faith efforts were made to restore remote participation services and that the public interest in continuing the meeting outweighs remote public access. That is the end of my presentation. I'm open to questions. Should the board have any? All right.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And this is a receiving file?

No, this is an approval policy.

You do need to have a motion from the vice chair and a second from Supervisor Hagman. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?

Thank you, Madam Chair. With that, item 135 passes unanimously.

Very good. We will now move on to public comment for items not on today's agenda. Jane Hunt-Ruble, would you like to start first? Okay, you've been so patient for so long. I'd love to have you start, and then Garth Pizant will go to you next, and then Maria Luisa Gamboa.

No, you're not breaking for lunch today.

I'm a slave driver today.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Yeah, I'm here to speak the usual thing about public community safety. And even though I live in Musqueam, I'm on San Bernardino city water. And I received this notice in my bill And it pertains, San Bernardino City on May 20th, 2026, San Bernardino County City Council adopted a social host ordinance for fireworks. That caught my attention. Under this ordinance, any homeowner, renter, or person in charge of a property where illegal fireworks are used will be held responsible for the fines and emergency response fees. So it says down here, what are the fines? I said, I wish the county would do this. $2,500 for the first offense, $5,000 for the second one, $10,000, bingo, for the third one. I thought, why can't the county? So I asked County Fire, because they're in San Bernardino City, but they told me, they're not in charge of enforcing it. It's San Bernardino PD. So I'd like to see the same thing happen out in Muscovy, the unincorporated area. I love both departments, the sheriff, but they're in charge of enforcement, and this will never ever, it's still going on all year round, and it's getting worse. This will never, when I saw this, I said, why can't San Bernardino County have more teeth to it and work in tandem with the fire department to actually enforce these laws. Otherwise people are gonna continue to do this and it's getting worse almost every day now. You know, it doesn't matter what time of the year or whatever, it's a surprise. And I'd really like to see the Sheriff Department get more funding. And they should have a special task force like the one Baca had out there for the speeders, you know, off-road vehicle. I'd like to see a special task force just pertaining to surveillance and catching these people doing fireworks. And I hope they get a drone also. So it'd be such a relief for our community to have that. I could finally sleep at night and not worry, oh, are they going to shoot off fireworks? So anyway, I'd like to present that before you guys. And please give the Sheriff Department more funding, because we need deputies out in Muscovy to catch these people. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jane.

Garth Pizant, followed by Maria Luisa Gamboa, and then Thomas Shinton.

Good afternoon. I give thanks to the honorable Board of Supervisors, to the California State Bar, By the time of the new system of things, you will lose your job. Nonetheless, you will attain the benefit of different professions. It is up to you to accept them or dissolve. Family law, the authority, Jehovah God. Family, a man inserted life in an incubator, a woman, through mutual agreement. Now the incubator, Judge Shannon Schuber, is calling the shots, telling man what he has to do with his wife and offspring. What does Judge Shannon Suber know about the supreme creator and authority of family? She hates men whom she has come out of. She is disqualified. Penal Code and California Civil Procedure 170.1. To the senior citizens of the city of San Bernardino, attorney firm Best Bets and Krieger out of Riverside in Ontario has protected Mayor Helen Tran in filming you for profit as you enter your community centers. You do not receive any of the funds. This fraudulent crime is supported by the County District Attorney Public Integrity Unit, budgeted by the state of California, owned by China, whom are sitting back laughing while they watch us kill each other. China has such a grip on the United States of America and that even China's own offspring does not have the courage to rise up against injustice. The end of this system of things is near to America and black America. Take what you want. See to it that you harm, not harm anyone. To the United States, if you want America back, take China, Spain, and Britain. I give you all the green light. Do you know who I am? Because I don't know who I am. Consult your demonic gods and ask who I am.

Maria Luisa Gamboa, followed by Thomas Shinton.

Good afternoon, my name is Maria Luisa Gamboa. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've had a contract with the CAPS program for about 15 years, and I'm here today to bring to your awareness an error that was on the ePro software for the CAPS open bid this time. On there it says opening date of the bid is May 19th. A few days after the 19th I called to get assistance because I couldn't upload my documents. They told me it is closed. And I said, but it says opening date. And I have the paper here. And they said, sorry, it's closed. So this is for the CAPS program, open bid. And I'm here today to get your assistance for the CAPS program to acknowledge their mistake, find a solution, maybe reopening the bid, give us another month so that I know I'm not the only one, but if something says opening date, how can that be a closing date?

I believe we have staff that can address it when you're done speaking.

Okay. Thank you. That's it. Thank you.

Thomas, and then after you, we'll have Marlene Ramirez.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Thomas Shinton. I'm a certified family law specialist. I'm here to talk about actually DCFS. There's been a change in regards to how DCFS is detaining children. At least within the last five years, there seems to be a drastic overreach of the government. And the reason I believe is that probably because some children got hurt out in LA and now there seems to be a little bit of an overreach going on. In one particular case, it took me a year and a half to get one of the judges here in San Bernardino reversed, where the appellate court returned to the mother her children. A year and a half, four children. I'm here to talk about particularly we need to have some type of reform for the protection of children and also for the protection of parents and prevent government overreach. There are cases that DCFS really are stepping in that they have no business stepping in on. I've got one case where it says a parent drank alcohol five years ago and they removed the children from that parent. It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd what's going on. I even got county council who I've been talking to saying something needs to be done about this because there seems to be Just either inadequate training, that's why it appears to be inadequate training. The social workers, they're not attorneys like I am. I practice criminal law, certified family law specialist, probate, and I'm an appellate attorney. We need more training for our social workers. I think one way to remedy this is actually when I worked with the DA's office and Rialto actually implemented body cameras. That was a huge benefit for everybody. These body cameras were able to assist in convictions and were also able to assist in disposition of cases. There needs to be some type of remedy with DCFS where we can actually look at maybe body cameras on these social workers and figure out what's going on here. Because right now there's just, I'm seeing an outcry from many, many parents, good parents, good people, medical doctors, professionals, and they're having their children taken away for really absurd reasons. And I don't know if you guys know, but I mean, you guys have videos of Judge Ponson here, and just recently, as of late April, the California Supreme Court reversed her, reversed the appellate court, and indicated that how DCFS here in San Bernardino is conducting business, it's not appropriate. They're expecting perfect parents to reunify. That's not the law. It's not perfect parents. And that's how DCFS has been handling itself. So I really encourage whether talk to Jeannie Glasgow or however we can, and I'm open to, again, certified family law specialists. There's ways to work with this where it's a balance on both sides. I think we're stretching one far to the other side. It's too much like a knee-jerk reaction because of what happened in L.A. and even those social workers being prosecuted. It's a knee-jerk reaction over here saying we're going to take in all the children out. That's not an appropriate way to handle it. We need better training for our social workers. Thank you.

I appreciate your comments. Thank you very much. Marlene Ramirez, followed by Stephen Castro. Stephen Castro, followed by Krisha Kale.

Good afternoon, board members. My name is Steven Castro. I am a student at Cal State San Bernardino in the social work program. I'm here to talk about the Title IV-E. The stipend that we were given has been taken away from us to not allow us to continue our education. We're currently in a shortage of social workers across the country in general, specifically and in San Bernardino as well. I'm part of the generation that has heard about the historical trauma social workers have caused in San Bernardino and across the country. We're here to change that. We're here to advocate for ourselves in receiving the funding that was taken away. It's super important that we implement restorative justice in the process of social work to help these families and social workers learn both sides of the coin, not just one. The biggest thing is that in a time where these children, the families, they need advocacy, right? They need people to help them in the process of getting their children back, creating a safe home, a safe environment, when caseworkers are dealing with up to 80 to 100 caseloads at a time. the need of social workers is so important so that we can, one, lower the caseloads, right, but be effective in the process of actually helping people, not hurting them. And I'll concede the rest of my time, thank you.

Thank you, sir. Krisha Cahill followed by Vaughn Great.

Okay, so I'm back again. And like I told you guys, I came up here to talk about the fraud that's being committed on our board right here, Board of Supervisors. Fraud being committed by Paul Cook, District 1. I live in District 1, and I'm affected by this. So Paul Cook has used his Chief of Staff Tim's address to run for his position that he's in. Don Rowe, the supervisor, knew about it because she was on his staff in Lucerne Valley before coming here. What did it say? Kurt Casman and the DA also. Everybody knew. Leonardo, Kurt, San Bernardino registered voters. Everybody knew that you committed this fraud. I don't know if it has nothing to do with the alcoholism that you mentioned earlier or what it was, but... At what point are we going to stand up and do what's right? Parents come up here all the time and ask you guys to do something about it, and you haven't done nothing. And I just want to use the rest of my time to kind of direct towards CFS. If you guys look over here in the blue shirt, this is Charles Flowers. He's directly responsible for me not having placement of my son. One of the supervisors who came in and I told that his staff tried to physically assault me, and he called me a liar. A liar. What do I have to lie for? when we see reports every day made by CFS workers that lie bluntly. Judge Ponson, who he was just talking about, said that my child was removed from me from abandonment, but the person who was in his care was on child support in the same county. Due diligence would have took that away right away, right? But no, instead I wasn't offered a contested JD hearing, and I was moved along. Almost three years later, my son has developed croup, RSV, anemic, but yet the reports say he's thriving. My visits are detrimental, not because anything happened bad in my visits, because a social worker didn't like my tone. Another social worker, like Charles Flowers, who tried to assault me, told me I'm belittling them outside of it because I said, do your job. That's all we've been saying. Play by the rules. You set the rules, play by them. All we're asking for is a fair shot to get our kids back. But instead, you guys are more focused on state funding. And we don't want to take that from you guys. We love that Paul Cooks get $250,000 a year, even though he's committing fraud to sit up there. Use your voters' rights, sign the petition, recall them if the Attorney General won't. Get a QR code for the fraud.

Vaughn Great followed by Shelly Bowman. Vaughn Great. Followed by Shelly Bowman. Okay, are you Shelly? Please.

Good afternoon Chair and members of the board. My name is Shelly Bowman and I am a Bachelor of Social Work student at California State University of San Bernardino. Today I am speaking not only for myself, but on behalf of Bachelor of Social Work and Master of Social Work students throughout California who participate in or hope to participate in the Title IV-E Stifling Program. I'm here to respectfully ask for your support in preserving the Title IV-E Stifling Program and ensuring its continuation for the 2026-27 academic year and on. For the past 30 years, the Title IV-E Stifling Program has played a critical role in preparing and strengthening California's child welfare workforce. The program provides financial support and specialized training to social work students who commit to serving in public child welfare agencies after they graduate. In return, California gains skilled professionals who are trained to protect children, support families, and respond to some of the most complex challenges facing our communities today. At this time, this successful workforce pipeline is at risk due to funding changes and a budget shortfall. No new Title IV-E stipend recipients are expected to be admitted for the 2026-27 academic year. For the first time in three decades, students who are committed to public child welfare may lose access to this opportunity. The impact extends far beyond students. Each year, the program helps prepare more than 200 qualified child welfare professionals who enter the workforce ready to serve vulnerable children and their families. These graduates remain in child welfare positions at higher rates than their peers, helping agencies maintain stability and reduce turnover. At a time when child welfare agencies are already facing staffing shortages, increased caseloads and workforce challenges, this is not the moment to weaken one of the state's most effective recruitment and retention programs. When positions remain vacant, social workers carry heavier caseloads, services can be delayed, and vulnerable children and families may not receive the support they need. Persistent workforce shortages increase the risk that critical safety concerns are missed and place additional strain on an already overburdened system. As students preparing to enter the profession, we want to serve California's children and families. We want to be part of the solution to workforce shortages facing child welfare agencies. Title IV-E program makes that possible by providing the training, support, and a pathway needed to enter and remain in this critical field. So on behalf of current and future BSW MSW students, I respectfully urge you to support.

Thank you. Thank you very much. That is the last request to speak that I have today for public comment. So we will move on to our reports from our CEO Luther.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Most of what I've wanted to say has been mentioned, but a couple of quick things. First of all, Joni's still here in the audience. I'd like to give Joni Finwall a shout out. This was her first major election leading the registrar voters. She did an incredible job. So kudos to Joni and her team a lot. That is, there is a lot involved in making that happen. She did incredible. I appreciate all the communication throughout it too. One other comment. It was mentioned earlier that the next meeting on the August 23rd agenda, we will be hosting, I'm sorry, June 23rd. I'm already looking ahead to... June 23rd board meeting, we will have at a scheduled time certain that'll be coming out with the posting of the agenda, a CFS workshop that I have been asked to have staff handle coming out of the ad hoc committee. It's going to cover a number of things, caseloads. the evaluation tool that the state requires CFS to use, the call volumes, how many reports do we get of abuse that come into our system, as well as how many of those actually turn into a case, funding, the court process, walking all the way through that. It will be a comprehensive report. Should plan on about an hour just related to that workshop alone. It will go into deep, as mentioned. Anyone who is interested in that, we look to have them come out, and they'll be given, obviously, an opportunity to comment. Just thank you to the to our CFS team. I know they've been here. Every meeting we have CFS social workers come in and engage with those who who make comment. We're here looking for support. I greatly appreciate them coming in. And they will continue to do that and come in and help. So that really concludes my comments. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Thank you very much. With that, our meeting is adjourned. Our next regularly scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting will be here at 10 a.m. on June 23rd. Thank you very much.