Board of Health - Regular Meeting

Okay. So, we will now officially uh call this meeting to order of the uh April 28th 25 uh board of health meeting and uh roll call vote please. Uh Supervisor Leco here. President Osborne here. Vice President McMillan present. Catelyn here. Dr. Farber here. Cynthia Hardy is absent. Veronica Oros here. Mary Shraven. Dr. for Stephanie Schroeder. And so Sierra Stephanie Schroeder, I apologize. Okay. Big accident on 24th in Camel. Glad you made it, but you do acknowledge your presence for voting purposes. Present. Do we have a quorum? And we have established a quorum. I'll turn the meeting back over to you. Thank you very much. And I believe we have a phone number that we're not exactly sure who is online with. It is Scott Aisham from Supervisor Leco's office. All right, Scott. Thank you very much. Want to make you aware earlier in the meeting there was a call to the public David. David Bennett yeah item seven just thank you very much okay I appreciate it now so you did do well well we haven't

started a meeting so uh an additional call to the public or any other items okay thank you very much so let's start with introductions and uh we would like to have you do that thank you uh would like to invite uh introduce a few new members to our board. Uh Chuck Catelyn is our new newest board member. Uh Chuck, could you just take a minute and introduce yourself? Sure, I'm Chuck Catlin. Um I've been in different sides of public health for my career. I I actually been with different local health departments and then with private industry, garden restaurants, Google Fox. I've been been around the issues for quite some time. Um on we're all on the same side of the fence with public health and I'm looking forward to contributing to this body and Maropa County. Thank you. And I'd also uh want to introduce I had sent you all an email. Uh Dr. Sun and Shine retired with us March and Dr. Nick Stab has taken the position as our new chief medical officer. So, just give Nick a minute to introduce himself. Good afternoon. Um, my first stint with Maroba County Public Health was in 200 uh 2003 um as an intern. Um, and I've shown up over the years um in different roles uh most recently in 2020 um the end of 2020 uh back to a role as a medical epidemiologist here. long uh was mentored by uh Dr. Sun and Shine um you have worked in the last couple of years with her um and I'm excited to be in this position. So, and Supervisor Leco, I know this is your first meeting, so just wanted to give

you if you wanted to offer any words. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the meeting. Um for those of you that don't know me, I was elected Maricopa County Supervisor for District 4, which is basically the West Valley. Um, and I was sworn in on January 6. Prior to that, I served in the US House of Representatives, and prior to that, I served in the Arizona State Legislature. Glad to be part of the group. Thank you. All right. Well, welcome everyone. We're thrilled to have uh you on our team and uh looking forward to uh everything you input. Thank you very much. Hello. How are you? Yeah, I tell you what, that gorilla on the 10 and on the 24, they making us all a little late today, isn't it? All right, okay, so moving on. We have everyone should have received their minutes. Um, is there any changes or any discussion? If not, I would ask for a motion for approval. So move. Thank you, Dr. Barbber. A second. Second. We have a second. All in favor say I. I opposed. Have it. All right. Moving on. We will now go to item number four, public health finance. And uh our discussion and action on this item. Ray and Mallet. Just as background, uh per Arizona statute, uh we're required to come to the board once a year budget. So that is what we're doing today. You'll hear a budget um outlined from public health, also from environmental services, also from air

quality. So button up. Um excuse me. Um Madame President, uh can you guys identify who's speaking because I can't see who's speaking. Thank you. Sure. Yes, we have um Ray Ferish. Ray, it's just you today. Yes. Okay. All right. Um on the agenda, it also says another person, but here she's sorry. There you are. Okay. So, Mlette Miller and Ray Ferish will be um part of this discussion. And Renee is with the fi is the finance manager for public health. Uh, and that's who is just talking, Renee. No, it is a it's my my bad. It's Ray Ferris, right? And he's the finance manager of PE. Understood. I was just trying to understand who spoke be just before you like there was a woman speaking before me. Oh, that was me. Uh, supervisor Lasco Janine Fowler, director for public. Okay, thank you. All right. Thank you, Ray. Go ahead. All right. Good afternoon. Uh I'm here today or the public health to ask for your u board of health recommendation to the board of supervisors to approve the public health fiscal year 2526 budget request as recommended by the Maricopa County Budget Office. Uh my apologies first, but I like to highlight something on the first page. The first sentence actually is a typo. Uh where we have our department's total base budget request for this year is 143 million. It should be 16323649. So I want to note that for the minutes and once again my apologies for that. Um but I'm going to read this

first paragraph. Uh the department's total base budget request for this year is 163,23,649 representing a 17.45% decrease from the FY25 revised budget. The general fund budget is on target while there is a 5.63% increase in the special revenue fee fund budget. Justice Reinvestment Fund budget matches the FY25 revised budget, indicating a 41.67% decrease in the ARPA fund budget and a 14.31% decrease fund budget. At this time, if if it's okay, I would like to skip ahead about five slides. Okay. To our actual, it says FY26 budget request April 2025. Nicole, uh, one more, one more. Perfect. Thank you. So on this slide, we are identifying all of our different funding sources and and we have our 25 adopted budget of 192 million, our 25 revised budget of 193 million and our FY26 request of 163 million. Uh the biggest differences or decreases there are in our grant funds where we had a 14% decrease and in ARPA where we had a 42% decrease. Uh going back to grants and and I'll highlight each of these funds a little bit more in the following slides. But in the grants, our primary decrease was our COVID nonoperating grants we've received that we are spending down and they are going

away. So that's the primary in grants also in ARPA as we have spent ARPA money and completed projects those funds have decreased. Okay. Madam Madame Chair I'm I'm sorry I don't know I can't see what's going on so I apologize for interrupting but I do have a question if it's appropriate time for me to ask a question. Would you like to go ahead and and take questions or do you That's fine. Okay, go ahead, supervisor. Thank Thank you, Ray. Uh, my question is on the ARPA funds. Uh, are we guaranteed to have the funds that you are requesting or is there a possibility that the federal government could take away those funds? Supervisor Lesco, I can This is Janine, uh, director for public health. I can address that question. Uh while it's always a potential possibility for the federal government to take back that ARPA money, what we can say is we have all of those dollars in hand. It's not a a pull down, which is what a lot of our grants have been at the federal level. Um and um to date, all our money is obligated, which is the rules basically the Treasury have set up for us. All monies had to be obligated as you know by December. We have till till December of 2026 to spend that down. We have not heard anything otherwise. So that's as much as we know at the moment. Thank you. Is that all? Okay. Yes. Continue. Uh next slide, please. All right. You'll see here a three-year cycle where we have our all of our primary funding sources,

uh, general fund, fee fund, grant funds, special revenue, and ARPA funds. We have 24 actuals, fiscical year 24 actuals highlighted in blue. Our FY25 adopted budget highlighted in orange. our FY25 revised budget, it looks like a teal color, and our FY26 budget in white. So, uh it's just a a timeline of all of our funding requests there. Next slide. Uh if you see here for our 26 uh budget request of 163 million, this is a breakdown of how it um how it's allocated per percentage. I'm going to start with the highest one first, which is grant funding, which represents 51% of our budget. uh going around counterclock actually clockwise to special revenue which is 14%. ARPA funding which is 15% our general funds are 13% and our fee funds are 7%. Uh next slide. So for our FY26 budget request, our general our request remains flat and on target from currently uh general fund supports public health programs that provide statutoily mandated services such as disease investigation, immunization, tuberculosis treatment, and STI and HIV services. Next slide. Greg, can I stop you right here? I have a a couple of questions. Um, so first of all, especially with the grant

funding, back to the the federal government side and everything going on with the concern and question surrounding Medicaid. I don't know what if any impact that would have on the county itself. And that's why I was thinking grants especially. Um, can you help me out with that? Sure. Uh, President Osborne. Um kind of a complex question. So Medicaid specifically uh while it doesn't have a direct impact on public health of course as people lose health insurance it puts more pressure on the safety net program and on public to be able to provide those services to the public. So while um we do bill for immunization services now we do bill Medicaid um we know that there'll be um the way it's looking now if Medicaid expansion does go away that will impact childless adults and that could impact adults wanting or needing vaccines that we may or may not be able to provide depending on. So those are some well sort of indirect impacts um due to to grants. The the other impact of grants on our bottom line is that a lot of our um we just don't know the future of ours right now. We don't have a good sense of um what will be saved, what might be cut, and so right now we we're doing our best to plan for what we can, but it's it's really hard to know to be honest. Okay. and the grants that um and I might be getting my acronyms messed up, but I know that um there was a a reduction in the grants for STDs, correct? And aren't we we just had in our last quarterly update how high our county and state has a problem with

that? So, um can you elaborate? We have seen a reduction in our STI grant as well as our TB grants coming in from the federal government. Um I don't think uh do you happen to know off your top of your head the STI um grant dollar? You don't. I can get you exactly what the dollars look like for STI. Um well what's the I guess knowing that there's going to be a potential reduction here what's the plan of action to battle this issue when we already know how high we are well I can tell you what some of the things that we're doing is a we are u right now undergoing a billing project u what we would like to do is um in the future right now we're not billing Medicaid or private insurance for SDI testing at our clinics so as another revenue screen stream. We want to look at look at um how much it would benefit us to stop pulling and uh so we're hoping that that helps a little bit. We're also trying to strengthen partnerships of other people out in the community who are able to so so that people have other places to go to access care. Yeah, that's that is a turn, I guess. Um, all right. I will one last question I had regarding ARPA and that funding and I and I understand totally understand um that you're doing the proper course of action to you know with the money and all but I I am curious and it for the future meeting something um if there are are places that you have found um with using those ARPA dollars I mean, I'm just let's just say childare, even though it's not that's not what you do, but child care. Um, if

you were to come back and say, you know what, we really saw a positive impact that the ARP dollars were used in XYZ category. Um, and that's something that in the future we really feel should have funding, you know, in the future. And I I think that that would be beneficial for us to hear, you know, because sometimes until you have money to really invest in something, do you see that there was a true positive outcome that is worthy of continuing on not level but you know in a different way. So I would love to hear that you know in the future. Happy to to bring that future board meeting. All right. Thank you. Any other questions by anybody? I do have a question. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Um, Madame President, uh, the I I don't know what slide we're on if we went too far already or not, but mine was on the general fund. There was a creation of a chief science officer position pending further analysis by HR. And earlier in the information I had, it said it would add $88,000 to the budget. I that that doesn't seem like a very high salary. Is that the normal going rate for a chief science officer? Uh, Supervisor Leco, this is Janine again with uh public health. We are currently working with HR to create this position. it would um we're we're still working out a market range for what that would look like and the way we're going to fund that is through um vacant some vacant positions that we already have in our epidemiology team. So, uh it won't be new money. And supervisor, just so you know, we haven't hit that spot yet. We're getting

Okay. Sorry. That's okay. It's all right. Thank you. Okay. Right. Thank you. All right, moving on. Uh 265, our special revenue fee fund, which our fee funds are for like vital records, birth uh certificates, uh death certificates that we charge a fee for. So there our operating budget is higher by 336,380 due to increased revenue experience by the vital registration program which is responsible for the birth and death certificates. Uh the non-recurring budget increased to 1 million up from about I think it was about 687,000 uh due to capital improvements and renovation costs to house up to 36 staff members from the recently closed or soon to be closed OVR location and also purchase vehicles for new OVR facilities to support transporting confidential records while maintaining compliance with state regulations. questions. Uh, next slide, please. Uh, funds 293 and 297, which is our justice reinvestment and opioid settlement funds. Uh, this request aligns with our baseline amount. Uh, funds will be issued through contracts supporting community services and organizations with a portion reserve to expand reentry initiatives. Uh we are working with a contracted agency to provide fiscal agent services and capacity building for smaller community-based organizations applying for these funds. Hey copy there. So on the opioid settlement funds and you're you're you're hitting on it a bit but is there a is there a

grant process for some of these organizations and when does that open? I mean, how do you market, I guess, for that? So, um, members of the board, we, um, have the LA, uh, it's this is we're going into year three of our strategic plan for our subst for of our substance use plan. Years one and years two, we did put out, um, substantial amount of money in community- based RFP. So, we just awarded that second round in March for an April one start date. And uh we're trying if the community based agencies are able to show us positive outcomes, we're able to um continue their grants for up to five years. So they're renewable each year for up to five years. So, we have roughly uh a couple of dozen agencies right now and we don't we're this year we're not planning on putting out another big community-based RFP simply because it is a lot of oversight to make sure that all these agencies are doing what we need them to do and we're evaluating them properly. So, what we're doing for our next round of money is looking at very specific community needs. For example, we we have an RFP out right now for um just work with businesses to help them um with um internal services to help those that might be using um recovery in recovery in the business in your business. So that we're we're going to hire someone to create toolkits and to figure out ways we can better support businesses that are affected by the opioid issue. So, it's very narrowly focused on businesses. We may we're looking at other populations such as um homeless and others where we can do very specific RS RFPs whereas in the past we've made them a little broader um to support what

um work that's going on in the community. So, it's not the time. I'm thinking teenagers and so yeah, I think some of some of the people here know my passion for that and the the things that we've done and I appreciate you telling me about uh the teen mental health. Um what was that a hotline you're getting or explain a little bit about? So, we have an RFP out currently um and that we're actually using jewel settlement funds to pay for that RFP and that will be for um teleaalth mental health in the school system. So, we'll be partnering with schools. It's a um we're hoping that the vendor that we hire will be able to bill insurance for those kids that have insurance and for those kids that don't have insurance, they will still be able to access services. Very good. All right. Any other questions? Anyone? Thank you. Thank only a few more slides. Uh fund 296 American Rescue Plan Act. Uh the decrease in this budget request is a result of completion of targeted spending during the last few years in alignment with the board of supervisors approved strategies. uh of 23 ARPA programs in public health, 14 have successfully successfully concluded while nine remain active. 87% of the ARPA grant has been expended year-to- date and the remaining funds are are fully obligated through December 2026 in accordance with the US Treasury obligation fund 532 which is our grant fund uh request increased by 4.25 25 million due to new grants for epidemiology and lab capacity uh public

health infrastructure and other smaller grant increases. But this was offset by the nonrecurring budget COVID grants which decreased as many COVID related grants with multi-year budget periods began to phase out in FY24 and extended into FY25 due to a shift towards community recovery efforts. And finally, our last slide, uh we are showing we're just taking our grants budget and showing how it is allocated. Uh starting at the top, uh our regional grants make up 7% of the grant budget. State funded grants make up 7% of the grant budget. Rec federal uh comprise 40% whereas federal pass through which is comes through ADHS the state represents 43% and finally jewels settlement represents 3% of the grant budget that is all that I have all right thank you very much so I guess kind of uh my la I have one last question board members have any questions or comments? So, one one statement within this and when we're talking about the the general fund operating budget, there is there is the statement of while the general fund request remains flat and on target, it is not intended to imply that all service levels are being fully maxed. What is what ex what is the service levels not being met? or is that just a general kind of a specific

um I'm gathering the writer of this uh President Osbor members of the board um although we do our best to and we are meeting all of our or impacting all of our mandates I would say there are times like let's take syphilis for example um where we are not able to investigate every case of syphilis or um do all the contact investigations. Some of the the mandates are simply so large in our community that we would not be able to there isn't enough staff to be able to to do what we would need to do in a community as large as ours. So what we do is we prioritize we make sure those those highest risk taken advant or that are working with but um I think that it would probably what they're getting at here is that we are not touching every person who are who is in that list of the 90 diseases that we're to investigate. So it's kind of just a broad statement. Well, when you do budgets, and I've done plenty of them, that you always do tend to get a list of things that aren't being met and categories, and so since we don't have that, that's why I asked the question. Okay. All right. Anything else? Just wanted to note that Lorenzo is here. All right. Hello, Lorenzo. Okay. So at our presentation and I do believe that uh we have to approve this action do we not? Yes. Okay. Or this discussion. So it has been rec recommended to us and so I'll ask for a motion to

approve. Uh any other questions or comments? Excuse me. President Osborne. Yes. If I may ask, um I believe uh public health needs a recommendation uh specifically from um for them to move forward with this act. The wording is just a little bit different, but it's a recommendation. So approve versus approval versus approval. We are So we're not actually voting on this. It is a vote, but um I'm sorry. It is a vote, but um the board of supervisors requires uh specifically for the recommendation to be carried from the board of health um in order for them to have it presented on the board of supervisors next meeting agenda without the board of health's recommendation. Technically, they can't move forward. And so that's why the wording is specific in the way that it is. It' be the same way for environmental services. So it's a recommendation as opposed to just a motion, if that makes sense. I understand. Okay. So, would someone like to make the recommendation? I move that we recommend moving forward to the board of supervisors. Okay. Thank you very much. And do we have a second? Second. Second. All in favor say I. I. I. I. Have it. Okay. Thank you very much. We will now move on to environmental services finance. Thank you. Thank you. Sylvia Donaldson, welcome. President Osborne, member of the board. Um, I'm Sylvia Donaldson. I'm the administrator for the environmental services and today I'm going to give you our budget presentation for our recommendated recommended budget from the board of budget office. you guys then recommend, which we're just talking about, to the board of supervisors for

them to approve. And I do have a memo there. I'll go through it. Um, but feel free to ask any questions. I didn't do a big PowerPoint to go into lots of detail, but I do have it up here. So, if you do have questions, just let me know. Um, we do have three funds. Our first fund is fund 100, which is the general fund for fund 100 operating revenue. We bring in a little over 463,000. Obviously, it's not very much compared to our expenditures of 11 million $169,043, which is a slight increase from the current fiscal year of $112,397 or 1.02% increase is just based on some adjustments done to base some compensation for staff and then the benefits for employee. Environmental services collects enforcement revenue from non-permitted activities. These are fines that are associated with violations that either individuals or businesses have that are not subject to having to obtain a operation. In addition, we also receive revenue from waste resources and recycling is fees for dumping garbage at some of our transfer stations are out for. Then for non-reoccurring, which is onetime money, we have $410,000 that we um asked for for some improvements landfill. We have 10 landfills that are in postclosure care that don't accept garbage, but we maintain them. And so when we need to do work on them, erosion, that's what that's for. And then the FOGO fund, that's an acronym that we gave it, but fund 100 FOGO is specifically for purchasing fogers, which is for the vector control. So that increased by 37,900. And the reason for the increase is just because the cost of fogers go up every year. Um, and we try to replace

six every year. We have obviously way more than six operating on a yearly basis, but we try to replace some every single year. And then fund 290 which is our tire fund. We expect to bring in revenue of 6,663,987. That revenue comes in from the state. And then we have expenditures projected to be at [Music] 5,647,36. Then our big fund which is our fund 506 which is our fee fund. So 506 operating revenue and expenditures is 26,48,341 which is just a slight increase of 0003%. The increase in spending authority also includes a potential pay for performance raise of 3%. Obviously some other administrative adjustments because it didn't go up by 3% so we lowered some other things to try and stay within our revenue. And then fund 506, we asked for some non-reoccurring expenditures. Um 2.9 million that covers contractual services, some part-time employees and overtime so that we can make sure that we meet delegation deadlines. Also for replacements of computers, software and vehicles. We do have a lot of vehicles that need to be replaced on a consistent basis. And then um continued cost with the permitting software that is new to the county. And that's all I have, but if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. I have one. Um, I noticed the model, this is great information. So, the model of your presentation is slightly different than the It's a lot different. I noticed that. Yes. As a reviewer, this model, but was easier to review. You look back at different ones where if you look at this, it's, you know, you're shorter. Yeah. Yes. So, this is almost identical to what I presented last year. That doesn't mean

that I can't change. So, I wasn't asked to do a big PowerPoint and I have zero issues doing a big PowerPoint next year. Feel bad because it's a lot less information than what was what he gave. So, we'll answer any questions if you do have them. Okay. No, we can also bring back information for you at a later date if you want. That's not necessarily just as a reviewer, it's just easier to review the other one versus this, you know, it does save us time. I get what you You're fine. Veronica, did you have a question? Oh, okay. Any other questions or comments, concerns? Okay. So just like the previous one, we made a recommendation uh to the board of supervisors to approve the medical services fiscal year budget. I have a re a recommendation that we recommend to the board of supervisors moving the environment service request. Budget request. Budget request. Thank you. Have a motion. Well, recommendation. I have a second. Second. Thank you. All in favor say I. I. Hi. Eyes have it. Right. Moving on. Thank you, Sie. Yes. All right. The fee waiver applications. All right. Afternoon, Madame President, members of the board. My name is Robert Straman. I'm the deputy director for environmental services. Uh and today we'll be reviewing this last quarter's fee waiver applications. And as a reminder, as also we have two agenda

items under this category. We have one carryover application um from last time. Uh if it pleases the board, I would like to start with part A on that which are the new siminals for this. Uh this quarter we reviewed 26 fee waiver applications. Of the applications reviewed, staff determined that all meet the criteria outlined in the Maropa County Environmental Health Code. As a reminder, only an operator of a charitable nonprofit establishment which operates to provide relief predominantly for the poor, distressed, or underprivileged may apply to the board of health for a waiver of a permanent fee. Waiver of a permit fee may be granted only to the operator of an establishment which maintains a current 501c3 tax exempt designation from the Internal Revenue Service and who demonstrates to the board of health that payment of said fee will cause financial hardship. Applications for waiverss of temporary food establishment fees will be processed on a first come first-s served basis in accordance with chapter 1 regulation 5A of the health code. The department shall only present a maximum of 25 of such applications per event to the board of health. In addition, a waiver of a fee associated with the administering and issuance of a food employee certificate in compliance with ARS 411080 may be granted to the operator of an establishment which maintains a current 501c3 taxexempt designation from the Internal Revenue Service or to a current student enrolled in a K through2 culinary arts school program or similar curriculum-based program requiring food employee certificates. The organization or sponsoring school district must demonstrate to the board of health that payment of said fee will cause financial hardship. Again, all fee applications reviewed this quarter appear to meet the criteria. I'm happy to answer any questions or if the board has no questions, I respectfully request the approval of the applications on the fee

waiver application summary sheet labeled P1 through P23 and C1 through C3. Any questions? So, uh, supervisor and our new board members, just so you know, uh, we review these quarterly. This is some one of the one things that we do have to approve every quarter. And for the most part, there's rarely been any questions except for the next one that you're going to bring up. That was first time we've seemed, at least while I've been here, that that's been a question. Uh so if there's no comments or concerns, I would uh ask for a motion on this subject item. I'll jump up once. Thank you. Second. Second. Thank you. All in favor state. I I opposed. The eyes have it. All right. Now, tell us about the one we want to hear about. Yes. Well, I can fill you in. There's not a lot to share, but uh after to uh refresh the board, uh the last time we had uh one applicant had uh requested a fee waiver for a temporary food permit associated with the an event. Um and as per the discussion with the board, there were questions about the services provided, um the location of the services provided and whether they were provided in Maricopa County or the state of Arizona. Um so what the board requested of environmental services is to is to engage with the applicant uh which we did. We sent an email requesting additional information targeting the questions that the board did asked. We sent that the day after uh the January meeting. We received no reply. The subsequent month, a month later, we uh tried to forward the email and initiate

another response from the applicant and again received no clarification. Uh so from that standpoint I can't offer any clarity from the applicant standpoint. Um but uh in terms of the decision that the board can make on whether they want to approve or deny this application as a carryover is still on the table for this body to decide. Wow that's very interesting. Wow that's eye opening. So, just uh a little background, the reason it kind of got a lot of questions was because it was an out ofstate entity that came in for an event that wanted to have their fee waved. Um, they were raising, we took it as maybe they were trying to raise funds for fire barbecues or something, I don't know, first responders. First responders. And it was like, well, okay, that's a great mission. How do we know that it's money they're raising is staying here in Arizona? They're an out ofstate entity. So that's why we asked questions and you got no response twice. Very interesting. Well, thank you. So I would request if there's no other questions or comments, I would request either a motion of approval or denial. I would accept one of them. Question. Yes, sir. Now in this case um how long does the application remain active? somebody applies for a waiver uh a regulation on that or it in terms of well what I can read u madam president and uh members of the board it's I can read if you give me one second I'll I'll pull up in much of what I read I have already it is directly from the code but I will read it says application for a permit fee waiver shall be made oh where was here it was

it talks about expiration give me one second I will find it this section up on purpose. Um, it talked about and I'll see if I can find it here. While you're looking there, the reason I bring up the question is know as far as accepting or denying the application, I don't know if the right legal move would be to just make no action on it. is if the if the group calls back tomorrow and offers up information that make that an acceptable application, then possibly it should have been accepted. So by do we have grounds to excuse me to deny it right now or do you just have grounds not to really accept it? That's kind of the the question I'd have from a legal perspective with this application. Thank you for that question. Can we have a legal response to that? Yes, it would be considered legal advice. So, if you want to break out to executive session and make a motion for that and move to another room and I can share legal advice with you. I see. Thank you. She said we would go into uh executive session to receive uh legal advice otherwise it would not be attorney planning privileged. So I I just have my questions of whether there's grounds to to actually deny the application because we don't have enough information right now. It seems to me that would be prudent not to accept or deny just to let the application sit because no motion leaves it sitting there as an application. Motion to accept means it goes forward. Motion to deny means it's rejected. So I don't know if we have the information to accept or deny. Okay. Um and uh what I did discover here is uh the reference to the expiration was not on the application itself. It

was referring to the grant the the fee waiver granting that expires for your year. In in other words, our code is saying that it's uh because those permits are good for the duration they they expire that your your fee waiver permit. It doesn't carry over indefinitely. So that's why we require applicants to reapply every single year. So it's based on the expiration of the permit. So their fee waiver application, the code does not make reference to a time frame or an expiration date on the application. Because what I was kind of thinking here is if there was an expiration date, then it would sort of expire itself. No expiration date leaves a little bit of a a little bit of an issue over what happens to the application over time. Does it have to remain in your files as a active application or not? Should probably be an administrative challenge for you on your end. I would I would guess. Uh yeah, Madam President, members of the board, uh we could definitely hold the application. Uh un uh my experience that we haven't had one that has just gone on indefinitely. Um but it could be where we could hold it. Uh I don't see any and I could go back to our council to see if there is any or any limitations to holding an application. Um we have not received any again after multiple months any reply from this applicant. I I don't believe we will hear from this applicant again. So, madame Madame President, I have a question. Yes. Uh thank you, uh Mr. Stratman. Um can you guide me into what did did the Operation Barbecue Relief already do their function? Uh uh Supervisor Lasco, yes. uh this particular estimate. Yeah, the event is it's for a refund of paid fees. Okay. So, they paid the $85 and now we're they're asking to get it refunded.

Is that correct? Yeah, Supervisor Lester, that is correct. We ask the board of health to make a recommendation of a waiver and then we come to the board of supervisors for Yes, that is correct. Thank you, Madame President. I make a motion that we deny the waiver. Second. We have a second. Uh so the recommendation is to deny this uh application for refund. All in favor state I I opposed. Eyes have it. Thank you very much. Okay. And thank you for that question. Hello Andy. How are you? Good. All right. Um, okay. Uh, clarification. Teachers, when we have uh someone that would request to speak, do we allow for presentation for this? First time I've had someone want to speak. uh presentation first and then allow for public statement. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Go ahead. Thank you. Floor is yours. And thank you, President Osborne. Uh members of the board, my name is Andy Linton. I'm the director of the Environmental Services Department for Maropa County. Uh we are proposing a change to the Maricopa County Environmental Health Code uh regarding the frequency of refuge collection. Um, whenever we propose a change to the code, uh, we run those changes through the county's enhanced regulatory

outreach program and through that program, it creates transparency and an opportunity for stakeholders to provide comments and participate in changes. And so what we're proposing today is an and the acronym is E-ROP that you might hear over and over. It's our enhanced regulatory outreach program. Uh so we're proposing an EROP case for refugees collection frequency in Maricopa County. Uh just to give you a little bit of an idea of where we're at uh currently. The Maricopa County Environmental Health Code requires that garbage and refu be picked up twice weekly. And if you're asking yourself uh my or if you're wondering why your trash isn't picked up twice weekly, which mine isn't as as as a resident of the city of Mesa, uh the code allows uh these entities to request a variance to that requirement that would allow them to do trash pickup once weekly. And as part of that variance, they have to put together a proposal as to how they're going to prevent public health nuisances that could occur through collecting the uh trash once weekly. One common proposals that the cities and different entities will put forward is to divert some of the trash into recycling containers. So the county, we don't have a requirement that they have recycling bins, but as part of their proposal to obtain this variance, uh they can propose to divert trash using recycle bins. Uh another part of the variance proposal is to is that the trash bins a percentage of their trash bins would be subject to inspection by environmental services so that we could go out and ensure that the containers are in good condition that there aren't public health nuisances being created uh by having once a week trash collection. Uh currently we have 18 uh trash collection entities across Maricopa County that have this uh refuge collection variance. There is a fee associated with having this variance and these variances have to be renewed once a year. Uh for the larger cities that have a lot of uh trash collection

containers, that fee ranges from anywhere from 15,000 to $30,000 a year to have this variance to do once a week trash collection. Uh the reason that we're proposing the change today is we operate under a delegation agreement with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and ADQ has revised this rule in the Arizona Administrative Code. So now the rule instead of requiring twice weekly pickup only requires once weekly pickup. So the effort that we're making here with this is to align with that state requirement. um it's no longer a mandate from the state and we try to align our code with uh the mandated functions from our from our state partners. Um that was adopted by ADQ um earlier this year on February 4th. It went into effect. Um the effect of us changing our code um will now require trash uh waste collection entities uh refugees uh once weekly. Um if they chose to do this, they could apply for a variance to do it less frequently than once a week and uh new variance for less than once weekly pickup could be established. Um, we're not sure exactly what that would look like on routinely, but we would would be open per the new requirement to looking at proposals from the cities and and entities on on how to do that. And the uh, excuse me, ma madam uh, president, I have a question. Um, you had said that each of the cities pay a fee uh, for this waiver that's currently there. you I think you mentioned about $15,000 a city. Um and is that per year? Madam President, Supervisor Leco. Yeah, it's based on the number of trash containers that that waste collection

entity has. So for the large cities, it's 15,000 to 30,000 a year depending on how many containers they have and that would be a once once yearly fee. And um Madame President and um Mr. from Lipton, I think it is. Uh, so are you going to have a um a budget problem since you're not going to get this money now or is that a countywide? Does the count is it your department that takes the hit on this or is it the countywide countywide? Madame President, Supervisor Leco, this would be a hit to environmental services uh budget. It's a fee fee for service uh program that we have. Uh right now we collect about $150,000 in fees through this program. Um so we've evaluated that it wouldn't result in us losing any staff. Uh those resources that are currently doing that function would be allocated to other areas where there's where there's need. Thank you. Thank you. One other question just for cl clarification. Are we speaking of residential and commercial? Madam President, that's correct. residential and commercial. And I I should also add that um this doesn't preclude environmental services from addressing public health nuisances should they occur. So um we just wouldn't be doing it under the refuge collection variance or under a specific permit, but we could go out and address citizen complaints regardless uh should a public health occur. Yes. Um Stephanie Schroed, a board member. I can you clarify trash in the recycle bin. What happens to that? Is it going in the trash or is it go recycle? Uh madame president, uh members of the board, uh that would be a question for the cities to answer. I'm glad that we have city of Scottsdale here. They can probably speak to that. Um again we

don't have a requirement that it be recycled or that they recycle at all. Um the usually they're they propose to do recycling as a method of diverting trash so that they can do the once weekly pickup under this variance but recycle in the recycle bin would be incentive you know trash goes. Anything else to add? No, the remainder of the slides are about the crossout specific to the code and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have a good biased. Okay. All right. Bennett, a statement. Madame President, uh members of the board, Supervisor Leco, my name's Dave Bennett. I'm the hallway services director for the city of Scottsdale. Uh been there uh in that capacity the last five years. has been with the city uh for 30 years uh when this actually when we started recycling in Scottsdale in 1996. So, let me just step back and tell you how we got here. There's a company called Envision Holdings that petitioned the state to make this change. Not sure if you're aware of that, Steve Vinnie. Um their idea is to have everything go in one container, trash and recycling. It would then go to a state-of-the-art facility, get recycled. They claim they could uh uh divert 90% of that material. It would be on a 500 acre campus and they would make carbon fiber material out of the stuff that goes in that container. Um as of today, there are no plans to build this type of uh plant in Maricopa County. They have a letter of intent to build it in Maricopa, but at that at this point in time, that's where they're at. So, do we still need uh twice uh weekly garbage

and refuge collection? Yes. Uh why? Uh because nothing has changed. Uh right now there's more and more res re uh trash going into the residential waist stream into our trash containers. More and more people are living in one single family uh household than ever before. Um currently uh cities and towns located in Maricopa County are not advocating for this. This is something that we were going through the the process of ADQ raising fees up to 250% 500%. This was I wouldn't say slipped into there but it was put in there. Didn't face much opposition but we were looking at okay this is a state level not versus basically a county level item. So, um, city, uh, counties, excuse me, still need this variance to protect the the twice a week minimum collection. Uh, we still need that variance to protect uh, human health. Uh, basically, in closing, this is a Maricopa County issue, not a state issue. Uh, there is no one container solution high-tech recycling facility that's going to be built in Maricopa County. If such a plant is ever built, then we can look at possibly changing this uh variance. But until then, we duly you respectfully ask you not to change the current uh language in our variance. Thank you for that statement, Madame President. Just a moment. Um thank you. U would you like to respond, Mr. and then um supervisor I would ask that he respond and you ask your question if that's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, madam president. I should have mentioned this in part of my presentation. Uh we did participate in ADQ's rule making process when they changed this at the state level. We didn't learn of any opposition

to the change during the course of those meetings. Um we did receive operation from city of Scottsdale when we had our first stakeholder meeting. Uh so we have had one stakeholder meeting. uh the other cities were present uh in those meet most of the other cities were present in that meeting and they didn't express any opposition. It was just from the city of Scottsdale that we had. Well, did they have the same information of understanding that there was no facility made yet to this or the connection that's being spoken of? All I can speak to is that they I know they were involved involved in the rule making process. uh that wasn't part of our presentation uh to stakeholders when we presented this to stakeholders that there was an entity the background that Mr. Bennett provided. Okay. Can I respond to that? I think what he's saying is accurate. However, the main focus, the 95% of the focus of that of the ADAQ meeting, stakeholder meetings was primarily, and if you look at their meeting minutes and their their presentation, I would say 99% of their focus was on raising rates and fees. Is that accurate? Uh, would you like to respond? Yeah, I I you know, our our focus it it was clear to us that it was about the frequency refuge collection because that's what was going to have an impact on on our code potentially um because it would no longer be uh a mandate on our end. And our recommendation and in speaking with staff that do this work and because our mission is to protect public health, protect disease from spreading in the environment and the recommendation from our staff as well is that they don't see potential for this to create additional public health or risk in the community if we did go to once we trash collection as the standard. Again, it's it's occurring in practice right now under a variance. This simply would make the variance no longer be required. So, it would continue to be once weekly trash collection, but without the variance requirement.

It's almost in a sense language cleanup for something a practice that's already occurring. Is that how you describe it in a sense? Correct. What what the difference is now is that a variance is required for once weekly pickup. And in that variance there are parameters and they're subject to inspection under that variance that those inspections and those parameters would no longer be a requirement for once weekly trash pickup. Supervisor. Thank you, Madame President and U. Mr. Linton. uh what is the ramification if we don't if Maricopa County does not uh align with ADQ administrative code since that changed on February 4th of this year. Madame President, Supervisor Leco, um this requirement is in our local environmental health code. So by statute we are allowed to have a local code that can be more restrictive than the the state requirements but it has been our practice to take on um unmandated functions and requirements that are more restrictive than the state. We usually try to align with state requirements because that also creates consistency statewide. Well and thank you Madame President and Mr. Linton. Um so I have a a question. I think you said when you when we currently have this variance uh thing and one of the things that the city can uh show to say why they need a variance is by having a regular trash pickup and then a recycle trash pickup. So my question is if we change our code to say okay you don't need a variance to have uh you know um just one trash pickup will then the cities be given the green light to not even have a recycle

recyclable uh pickup and president supervisor Leco. Yeah correct that decision would be made at the city level as it is currently under a variance. Our variance does not require they do recycling but that's a that's a common proposal that they will make to us as as a means of diverting waste to prevent public health nuisances. Right. But um m Madame President and Mr. Linton is the reason that you give the cities the variance right now is because they provide a trash pickup and a recyclable pickup. Is that in your decisions to give them a variance? That's m Madam President Supervisor Leco. Yes, that's correct. That would be a means of preventing public health nuisances by diverting that trash to to uh recycle containers. Right. So then if I'm listening to you, if I'm correct, if we change it to say you don't need a variance, you can just do it once a week. Then the cities could say they no longer need to do the recyclable because they don't have to explain it. They don't need a variance. Is that correct? Madam President, Supervisor Leco. Yes, that's correct. Well, okay. And so my next question then is if we change it if if we decide not to change it to um align with ADQ, then could some of these cities sue the county for not aligning with the state by charging them the $15,000 to $30,000 variance fee. U Madam President, Supervisor Leco, we do have statute statutory authority to have our own ordinance and our ordinance can be more restrictive than the state rules and so we are in line with state statute with by having our own ordinance that is more restrictive currently. Well, Madame President, I'm just going

to make a statement. I'm kind of conflicted on this one because on the one hand, I usually like aligning with state um the you know what the state does uh because we're kind of a subdivision of the state. However, I don't want the cities to then say, "Oh, we're only going to do we're not even going to do recycling anymore because the recycling pickup costs more usually, right?" And so I you know, I have to admit I'm kind of conflicted on this issue. And so I don't know, Mr. Linton, if you have or any other staff members have any response to my concern about the cities then saying, "Okay, um, you know, recycling uh costs too much, so therefore we're not going to do it and we're just going to do it, you know, once a week uh period." Do you see I guess my question is do you see any health concerns by just uh having a pickup once a week if you don't have recycling as well? Madame President, Supervisor Leco, uh in speaking with our staff, they don't see potential for additional public health nuisance to occur and we can still address those public health nuisances should they occur in the community. We don't they don't have to have a permit for us to be able to inspect and address those nuisances if they if they do happen. All right. Thank you. Okay. So, thank you, Supervisor, and uh my own comment. I can I'm conflicted myself and living in a city that has both recycling and regular trash. I I don't think we're in a position to change that. I don't feel good about that myself. Um, and if there's really no difference that the county is still protected by

having its own ability to decide whether or not they want to go with what is stated by ADUQ, then there's not a concern for that either at this point. U so for the any other questions or comments? Yes, we have a question. Yes. I think also it boils down to how much of the recycling currently being picked up is actually being recycled. Where is that going? Where is it being processed? Yeah. And and again, we don't require we don't regulate the recycling portion. Other we don't say it has to be recycled or it has to go to a certain place to be recycled. But uh Mr. Bennett runs a service in Scottdale. You might be able to speak more to that, Madam President. M. Bennett, would you like to offer statement on that? Sure, Madame President, members of the board, supervisor, Lasco. Yeah. Uh there's currently uh currently, I think, five uh material recycling facilities in uh Maricopa County. It might be four, might stand corrected. I don't know where Waste Connections is, but all of the items that in your certain city, whatever city you live in, they'll have an acceptable items list. Whether it's paper, plastic, aluminum, metals, they'll have all it all that is on your list that MURF or material recycling facility does take in. They process it, goes on a belt, it's then marketed, you know, it's bailed and then marketed and and sold. So, everything that you're putting in your recycling can does get recycled. Uh, and currently, uh, you know, with regards to cost, I think somebody had the questions on there. Commodity markets are strong right now. They're they're favorable. So, it is a net win for the cities to have recycling. Uh currently for Scottsdale, we pay $3250 15 cents to the Salt River landfill to bury trash. Right now, uh to

manage a ton of recycling, we're paying about $10. So, it's about a $20 win. M President, if I may. Yes. Um before the board votes, I I also should explain that uh this case in our enhanced regulatory outreach program started as an expedited case which means we come to the board of health we have one stakeholder meeting and we come to the board of health once before it goes to the board of supervisors because we received opposition. It now goes on our regular track. So this will still come we'll have a second stakeholder meeting following the board of health meeting and it will come back to the board of health meeting again before it goes to the board of supervisors. So certainly as part of the next stakeholder meeting um we can bring up the additional concerns that have been brought up here or if there's additional background we think we should start with stakeholders we're certainly happy happy to do that. Um I I will mention that that was one of the things that came up in the opposition that that our regulation helps justify resources for these programs and there's the potential for these resources to be pulled away if it was no longer a requirement in the code. um that doesn't exactly align with our mission which is to prevent public health nuisances although I certainly understand that um it it doesn't align with our mission to protect uh public health question for the yes thank you Mr. back. Yeah. Um, one of the things that you said that you were concerned about was that the amount of folks living in one home, having two pickup sort of mitigates that. Can't they just pay for two garbage cans and have one pickup per week? Yeah, Madame President, members of the board, Supervisor Leco, yes, they can do that. Um, however, we have out of our 85,000 rateayers, we have around 5,000 of them that do have a second container. So, they can order as many trash containers they want, but they do have to pay for that extra trash container. I I am wondering if certain cities only

allow so many. They may not offer to have second or third trash cans. I think it kind of depends on the city as well for that matter, but I'm not real sure on that. You know, I've never heard that if if you have the need, you have the if you have that need to get rid of that. Yeah. I've never heard a city saying you haven't. Madam Madam President, I'm sorry, just a moment. Unless they're afraid of the fact that a home base is taking commercial trash into their their other trash cans. So, yes, Supervisor. Thank you, Madame President and Mr. Linton. Can you please clarify what we're voting on today? Are we voting on just continuing with a process to discuss this? I I'm I'm unclear what we're voting on. Thank you for that question. Yes, Mr. Lyn. Madam President, Supervisor Leco. Yes, it is to proceed with the E-ROP case, make a recommendation to proceed with the E-ROP case. And that's why I wanted to clarify the process to let the board know that we will have if we proceed we'll have another stakeholder meeting and it will come back to the board of health again before it goes to the board of supervisors. So thank you then that that makes me feel uh better. We can continue talking about it. Thank you. So, so the action for today though would be a motion to approve or a motion to continue motion to proceed with the enhanced regulatory outreach case or not. Correct. Thank you. T but tableabling it would not do anything, right? I mean, that would be Yeah, Madam President, that would I'm just trying to I'm just trying to figure out what what motions we should be asking for of of approval of denial or

continuation. That's I believe that's I believe in the past over the years then if you accept this motion then it would continue down the process of stakeholder meetings etc. If you deny then it kind of kills the the issue I think. Is that right Mr. L? Yes. 5%. Okay, that's correct. Perfect. Um, madame president, I don't know if you're ready for a motion yet. I I'm sorry. We have one question on the table. Um, yes, Mr. Linton, question. Um, how many variances have you issued? How many are eligible for variance that haven't gotten a variance? You understand my question there? I think I do. We we have issued variances to 18 different trash collection entities. Um, I don't have it. It is the vast majority of trash collection entities. I don't have the total number. That would be the majority of all. Vast majority. Okay. Because I know like in the case of say Paradise Valley, you pay for your garbage there. Okay. And not everybody has a trash pickup of trash because you're paying for it. So do they with those private companies that service PV, but they have a variance? Madam President, Vice President, I I can find that out specifically for you and let you know. I don't have it. Because you pay and if you want more cans, you could have three cans. You just pay for them. So, in my case, I've got two, but I pay for it. And I I I get picked up weekly. Um I remember growing up, there used to be metal garbage cans that were 30 gallon or 40 gallon. Now, these garbage cans are I don't know 200 gallon. I'm not sure how big. Right. Right behind you there's one. Yeah. So that there may have been history of way that the regulations are written over how big the capacity was. Um also people used to pick up the cans and throw in the back of the trucks in the old days. So there may be some history here

driving old rules versus new technology and changes but um but I know in the face of PV been like that for years and some of the justification for having weekly pickup this became an issue in the town of PV is they had a big meeting in the in the in the town hall there's a lot of people there are talking about privatizing it I don't want to get out too far but it's it's relevant to this issue so some of the issues that came up of why they had weekly pickup. They didn't want more than one vendor in a neighborhood is they didn't want the vehicles driving the roads and and wrecking the roads and these having vehicles on on neighborhood streets. That was one of the the justifications for weekly pickup even more of a justification for having one vendor do it versus multiple vendors. these are issues that went on as a town and so you're but you're saying a majority of them are getting this variance that to your point president and madam president it's really just um putting into actuality what is for the most part is up they're paying a right fee variance to get so um do you know if they if the recycling uh scenario has changed with those those cities of the that you mentioned has recycling profile changed of those that that do that do you have any idea on that? Um, Madam President, Vice President McMillan, I'm not sure I understand the question about 18 that are variants. Do you know if their profile once they got the var do you know and if their profile changed of recycling? They do or don't. Uh, Madam President, Vice President McBillan, we don't we don't track what they collect and the rate that they collect out. We would just look for public health nuisance associated with the garbage. Any other questions or comments from the board?

Um, yes, supervisor. Madame Chair, yes, Madame Chair, I move that approval to proceed according to the enhanced regulatory outreach program standard process. Standard process versus the expedited process. Well, this is what's on my uh form. It's Am I not saying the motion correctly? I'm trying I'm I'm making a motion that we approve to proceed with the EROP process, you know, so that then there can be another stakeholder workshop and then it comes back to the health board before it goes to the board of supervisors. I I make a motion that we proceed as recommended by staff. Thank you for that. We have a motion on the table. Do we hear a second? Second. All in favor state I. I. Opposed. Okay, we have one. Nay. The eyes have it. Thank you. We will move forward. And as you know that this was not we will have a second bite at the south. Thank you. Thank you. President I had a cool question. When would is this like a month away, five months away? What's the timeline on that? It's uh going to be a little bit won't it Mr. L? So yeah madam president that the next second stakeholder workshop would be scheduled for is scheduled for May 13th then from there it would come to uh back to the board of health meeting which is scheduled quarterly meeting. So uh our next quarterly meeting is in July. So that'll be the next stakeholder meeting that that would that's the potential that it could come here July and if not July then October the

something like that. Yes. And one other thing, Madame President, uh, with regards to information, part of the variance each city uh, that has applied for this, and I believe most cities in in Maricopa County have, part of the variance requirement is to fill out a form that talks about how much trash we collect, how much recycling we collect, and so forth. And if it carries any weight, city of Scotsdale invented the garbage truck, 1969, 90 gallon container. So if that holds any weight here. So appreciate it next time. Okay. Right. Uh we have next uh number eight air quality department. President board members, I'm Philip McNeely, the director of air quality. Your agenda says uh Greg Thuramp. He's in the back, but I'm I'm sitting in his place. Okay. And we have Kim Butler, um our city manager for planning. Before I get started, I just wanted to um thank um Vice President Bob McMillan. He's been working with air quality for over 20 years. You work with him all the time and I I do value your insight of these rules. He reads read a letter and every word and he has good insight. So, thank you for all these years of service. Very true. Um so, today Kim's going to do a a slide presentation, but we're we're asking for approval to initiate the whole E-ROT process. So, just what environmental services to initiate the process. We're asking for for revising rule 230. That's what we're requesting.

So rule rule 230 is our um general permit rule. We have a few rules two few classifications of rule. We have these big facilities which is our major source title five rules. There's about 30 of them. That's APS, SRP, Honeywell, Intel. Those are the big ones. Then we have about a thousand non-title five permits which are individual permits. Not as big as the big ones, but they're not really small. And then we have about 2400 smaller facilities, and those would be gas stations, dry cleaners, things like that. Those are our general permits. It's a lot more efficient. We do one permit or like,00 gas stations, and they just get an operation, sort of operate. So, we're get trying to review revise this rule to get it approved by EPA and to revise it so maybe we can get some bigger facilities in here. And we're thinking data centers, landfills, things like that. Right now we're limited small but we're gonna explore maybe we can do bigger facilities that make it cheaper and quicker to do. So Kim has the presentation. Thank you. Hi. Thank you very much. Um yeah um like director was talking about we have we've this has been initiated as um to start to address some concerns the EPA had on our rule and then an opportunity to look at some other enhancements that we can do. So on on the chart here, you can see that there's five concerns that the EPA had on the rule, and we'll we'll talk about those individually as we go along, but availability information, the public notice process, um administrative procedures, facility operation changes, and then just some rule clarity issues that we've um and then expanding the program as far as general permit program, and and we'll talk about the impact of that as a potential enhancement to this rule as well. Uh next slide, please. Um, just a little bit of background. We've started a general per this rule was originally submitted in 2019 and then there have been some other

enhancements and back and forth with with the EPA and most recently in July of last year they provided us some feedback and we've been benchmarking and researching them to that. Um, so next slide. Um, also a little bit of background on general permits. As uh, Director McNeely talked about, this is an opportunity to kind of create, for lack of a better term, a template. A gas station is a gas station is a gas station is kind of the idea. They all run about the same. So, if we create a permit for them to all operate under one permit for the whole county and then everybody gets an authority to op or excuse me, an an authority to operate under that permit. And so, they all have the same conditions. They all have the same inspection rates. They all have the same things that they have to do. So, it's very consistent. It's very simple. And so, that's the 2400 permits that we have. Uh, next slide. Um, on this one, it outlines the different permits that we already currently offer. And so we are obviously gas stations being the largest of these types of facilities but um a number of different places and it's been a very successful program for us. Next slide please. as we kind of go through the five concerns that the EPA had. Uh first one availability of information. The EPA wanted to make sure that we are um making it very clear where these facil facilities are who have these authority operates these ATO's and what information is currently available for the public to see on that. We have actually made that information the technical support documents for all of these are available publicly. They can just log in on our portal and really need a login, but they can get in on our portal and see all of this

information. And on that portal, they can also see a map of all the locations of all I think around 1,200 gas stations. So, they could, this has become very public. That's how we've addressed that one. Public notice requirements. Um, at this time, there isn't a public notice requirement for these because of the size of them. They are smaller, but we do notice the actual general permit every 5 years when it comes for renewal. So, with that, we are keeping um and that kind of flows to we're making this larger. We will have to address public notice on that. Um, next slide. There we go. Yep, that one. um administrative procedures. We will be putting in we don't have a timeline currently in there, but we will be putting in a timeline of 90 days for us to to complete a final application that's come in for an authority to operate. Then that being said, currently our permitting division runs at about two weeks to finish one. So it these are beneficial to both the industry and us because they're all basically the same. So if they fill it out completely, it makes it very quick process. Uh facility operational changes, want to clarify when they need to do a modification on these. If they change tank, if they change a generator, if they change things, we're going to clarify they should be notifying us and when it's okay to just make the change. So there'll be some clarifications in the rule for that. And also clarifying when that changes occur where they can no longer qualify for a general permit. So if they need do need to move into the larger permits for the non title fives if they've added additional equipment. Um and then we just want to clarify some um if they obtain an authority to operate under a general permit that they are not required to have any additional permit. In fact they can't have a separate permit one or the other. So we're going to go with that. Um so that's the those are the five issues the EPA brought up. Um just to clarify these and that's typical what

we're already doing anyway. The potential potential proposed is as director McNeely talked about, we want to look at expanding this program, expanding it to larger facilities. So the um like I said, data centers, and gravel operations, some of these types of places that really do operate very similarly, but they're larger, so they have to have notifications and other things that have to go out um in accordance with the new source review program. they um but we want to look into maybe can we simplify those and put them into larger general permits um with that there's a few obstacles that we're still researching on that and that's why we're here to initiate. We're not here to actually look at the recommendation to the board yet. Um is there is some modeling and things that will need to be done for larger facilities as far as air modeling. There will also be some monitoring, recordkeeping and things like that and then public noticing that has to be looked at. So, we're going to look at how we can fit those into the rule. Um, it means that they will take a little longer than a smaller general permit. Of course, there's not a way around that, but there is the opportunity to to streamline this a little bit for some of these places like these data centers and and such. And we have a lot of those in town right now. So, um, with that, so next slide, please. With this, the there's not going to be any economic impacts on this. The rule revisions won't change any regulatory requirements or anything and they aren't going to incre any monetary or regulatory costs on the industries. So from that aspect um so far and then I'm sorry next slide we have held one workshop and that was uh done on March 12th. We had 14 attendees on that and we've been consulting with a number of different agencies. Um you can see on there that Minnesota, Louisiana, Clark County, those are agencies that are already look either looking at themselves or already running uh general

permit programs for larger. So we're we're working with them to learn from what they've done. Um and then if we do need find we need a secondary second workshop, we that um next slide. Yeah, we had from the first workshop, we did have one one set of comments from that. When we have the full report in the next uh the next board meeting, we you'll see all those comments on that. We have already been in contact with them and have talked fine with what we they said mostly questions on procedural things. Um and last this is just kind of our timeline. So we've already had the the um county manager briefing to uh with the rules moratorum and then we also have done our stakeholder workshop today the board of health meeting to initiate and then timeline here down the line. We are hoping to be back in July for the July meeting. Um it depends on the public me you know how we get this laid out but either July or October and then after that we'll go to the board of supervisors and then it'll be sent to the uh to the EPA or to the state to submit to the EPA on our behalf to put into the state implementation plan. Okay, a lot fast. Thank you. And uh any questions or comments? Yes, Madame Chair. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Madam I mean Madame President. Sorry, Madame President. Um, and staff. Uh, I just want to confirm I know you you said something to the effect, but I want to confirm that any proposed rule changes your proposing will not have a negative effect there. It won't be more regulations on businesses. It's not going to cost businesses more. Is that correct?

President Osborne, Supervisor Leco, that's correct. General permits are much cheaper and much quicker than the other type of permit. So, we're trying to expand its program. So, there'll be no impact on businesses in terms of their economic impact. So, county is trying to be business friendly. Thank you very much. Yes. and and thank you. And um Madame President and staff, um I read through the reason that we're here and why the EPA hadn't approved rule our rule 230. It said on March 25th, 2021, the Arizona Center for Law and the Public Interest submitted comments to the EPA and then the EPA didn't um apparently approve our what we were doing. And so I guess my question is since we have a totally new EPA now, um, and that was under the former administration EPA, uh, do you know if the current, uh, ad EPA administration has any different thoughts on on this issue? Thank you for the question. Yes. Yeah, President Osborne and Supervisor Leco. Uh this is film mainly the director. Um a lot of the um what came from the EPA was a result of a lawsuit. So um and it was like there was some missing elements in our rule the public notice of information availability. So I think um currently it's not in front of the EPA to approve. Um so we'd have to initiate that and just the things that we're adding are really um pretty straightforward. This is where you can find this information on our website. So, um, I don't really have an answer if the current EPA would have approved this back in 2021. They might have, but the result of this was from a lawsuit. So, they're just responding to that lawsuit.

Well, okay. Thank you very much. No, I'm just going to leave it there. Thank you. You got a quick question. Yes. It sounds it sounds good on paper what's going on here and I think it will probably will be a positive thing. Okay. And the and the air quality has done a really great job for the years I've known since especially especially under your direction Director McNilly. Um the the concern would be just Oh, let me back up. Would this be for non-title five permits only or would it be non-title five then hopefully title five is what's the thought on that? um President Osborne and Vice President McMillan, we don't want to limit ourselves to initially we came up with this idea when we thought we might be moving up the ozone to serious and um and then even beyond that. So we started thinking rather than doing major source permits which are very expensive and they take a like a year to get done, we said maybe we can do um major source general permits, maybe we can figure that out. Um but the problem is our rule doesn't allow it. So, we said, let's take this opportunity to fix the rule to allow it. It's challenging to do because there are some technical um obstacles. We have to do the public notice and we have to do modeling at the property, things like that. So, but we're going to we're pretty um creative. We're thinking maybe there's some ways we can do that outside of the permit. You can do maybe modeling and stuff like that outside of the ATL permit before you apply. So, we're thinking it will be if we can figure it out with stakeholders because we'll need their help. it'll be a lot cheaper, a lot quicker, especially if we keep getting these major sources coming in like like data centers because tons of them are coming. So, because it's it's essential that there's some flexibility in how you write the permits because maybe to somebody who doesn't understand maybe even the service station business and I I don't know myself, but I've been I've been in manufacturing. In manufacturing, the methodologies are can

be very different for the same exact type of type of business. It can be very different. The processes are similar, but the way you do it, it could be different. So, it's essential that you allow flexibility in the general permits that allows for the way that you accomplish compliance is could be maybe several facets, not just one. Otherwise, I think it will be a problem. You follow me on that? Yes, President Osborne, Vice President McMillan. Yes, that's the intention to to add flexibility. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments? Okay. So, uh, sounds positive to the, uh, I need a motion to approve the initiation of the regulatory change or the rules. So, move. Thank you. I have a second. Thank you. All in favor state I. I. I. Post. The eyes have it. All right. We're coming to the end here. So, um our item number nine, proposal of our July, um board meeting, which uh No, yes, sir. We voted on just I think we voted on rule 230. Not not rule 240. It was rule 230. That's all that I have on here. Rule 240 gone from the agenda. Oh, gosh. Okay. Update. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh so uh July 28th is what we have scheduled for our summer quarterly meeting. Just making sure that we have quorum and that's why it's on the agenda. So we need to know anyone that may have good

you will not be here. Okay. And um obviously too if you needed to go online there is that option as well but you wouldn't be able to do that either. Okay. All right. Thank you for letting us know. But sounds like the majority of everybody will be okay. All right. So we will uh continue on with the July 28th date. Thank you Mr. Forever. I hope you and are going to be having a great time. All right. Uh let's see. So number 10, our public health updates and also any federal updates that could be impacting public health. All right. All right. Thank you um Madam President, members of the board. Um so I have a quick public health update for you here. Next slide. Um couple big things that you may be hearing about in the news and that we are responding to. Um one is the multi-state measles outbreak. Um the aven flu uh outbreak in commercial poultry and dairy cows going around the country. Um still following that. Um luckily as we're um getting hotter, we're seeing a decrease in respiratory virus activity. um but did have a record high influenza season. Um and then we are very busy uh getting ready later this week to announce the um initiation of our heat season and the heat relief network uh here on May 1st. I'll go over each of these a little more detail. Next slide. Um apologize this is a little old. We are now to over 800 cases of measles nationally. Um so definitely something we're watching very carefully especially in those areas of the country

that are experiencing um significant local outbreaks. Next slide. Um and again here just looking back over the years um certainly back in the 90s uh there were uh years of higher rates of um infection. Um but really we've enjoyed um several decades of low uh transmission. Um so this really is unprecedented what we're seeing um after eradicating or eliminating measles um here. Next slide. I'm sorry. Yes. You go back to the uh that previous slide somewhere there in what I don't know 2018 we see what's that blip compared to everything else. What would have caused that? Um the that was the out outbreak uh due to transmission at I'm sorry due to transmission at Disneyland that year. Um so there are a number of cases uh that were acquired um there and spread across the country. So um yeah, I mean I think it's a really good example of the different environments that these outbreaks can occur in and how you see spread from it. Um, one of the things we're seeing in this current outbreak is that it's been relatively limited or relatively insular and not traveling as much as what we saw in that outbreak. Sure. Thank you. Next slide. Um, so these are current measles cases. So I'm happy to announce that neither Maricopa County nor Arizona have any um current cases um connected to this outbreak. But as you can see, we're surrounded um including a pretty significant outbreak that's occurring in Mexico as well. Um and our vaccine rates um do put us at relatively high risk. So these are

Arizona rates that we are um in the bright orange, which is not where you want to be when you're talking about measles vaccination rates. We are aiming for a vaccination rate of 95% or higher um to have that herd immunity that would protect everyone um including those who either cannot get vaccinated or have not mounted a appropriate immune response to that vaccination. Next slide. Um and this is again looking at Arizona rates. Um you can see over the years um kind of where those rates have been and where we've fallen recently. It's always important to note that again you look at Arizona, it's not very homogeneous. We have different um communities that are much better vaccinated and others that have lower vaccination rates. Um even here in Maricopa County, we've got um communities we can look at it um by school. Um so that kind of gives you an insight really down to a granular level of where vaccination rates are higher and lower. Um but definitely something that we are working within our coalitions and with our healthcare partners to make sure that we are u getting messaging out there to to get up to date on vaccine question. So that chart why is it stop at 2022 then if you're that's old records now. So it's um it is so um those rates are um collected the be at the beginning of the school year. Um, so this was probably one of just the the quick images I could find to demonstrate if I wanted to show, which is Miss Klein over time, but I definitely could show you 23 and 24 school year numbers. Um, just yeah, not to surprise you, they haven't gotten, but yeah, this was just the I wanted to show that where we are both nationally and the impact where we've been over time. And it's definitely something locally that we're concerned

about. Next slide. Um I mentioned our respiratory season. So this is our influenza like illness in emergency departments um hospitals and cares. You can see that um in the black line there um you see our five season average. So you can see that both last year in the light blue and this year in the dark bars that we're significantly over what we typically see um in a respiratory season um and that this year we were even higher than last year. Um so it really was a record season. we saw less of an impact due to CO 19 infections. Um really high influenza rates um and RSV actually um lower than what we typically see but still um impacting this overall uh respiratory season. How excuse how about dtheria? Do you know where we stand with that? I mean we have sporadic cases of dtheria um but due to relatively high vaccination rates most of those are acquired overseas um and in individuals who are not vaccinated but I mean very rare isolated cases though dtheria the vaccination rate is higher than say with measles ms or bell um that's harder for me to say there has been um the recent efforts to um in recommendations to increase for pertasus coverage. So um so boosting individuals who either um pregnant uh women or um household members with with babies in the house. There's been a pretty good um effort to increase DTAP um and so then you get your theoria booster too. So, I think that's probably led to higher coverage um than MMR, which you get when you're a child, and if you don't, you kind of

forget about it. Tetness, too. Anytime you step on a go to the emergency department, they'll give you a booster. Um, again, this just separates out, as I was mentioning, COVID, flu, and RSV. You can kind of see there again the major impact this season was on influenza slide. Um our relatively good news um was a reversal of a trend. So we have seeing increasing heat related deaths in Maricopa County year after year um for the last decade. Last summer 2024 um was the first summer um that we saw a decline in those heat related deaths. Unfortunately, there were still over 600 deaths recorded and so we believe that there's still a lot of work to do there. Um, but we're hopeful that some of the operations that we conducted last summer were um led to this change. Um, and so we're lucky again this summer um to have similar funding to um extend the hours of the heat relief networks with um uh heat relief sites um in some of our um partnering cities. We are again supporting all of the heat relief network. Um we have support 211 so that folks can find out where they can go without needing to log on to the internet and they can also get transportation to those sites if they need it. So these are um all things that we knew from a survey that we did back in 2023 of how to increase access to that site and we actually were just um published in the CDC's MMWR last week um regarding that survey of cooling centers. So, we're all getting ready for another summer. Um, it's going to be hot, but um, we're relatively lucky and that we know it's going to be hot and we can prepare for it and actively doing that. Slide. There you go. Just an image. Um, this was from our preliminary report.

Um, our final report is due out um, either by the end of this week or sometime next week. Um and then once we hit um five heat related deaths, our our dashboard will go live. That was new last summer um and very well received by the community um to kind of follow along and and see what the impact is and where we're making um strides. Next slide. Um I did have a slide on or I mentioned um high path aven flu or bird flu. It's been in the news a lot. Um we have seen a decline um in those cases we believe tied to migratory bird patterns. So um I guess have flown north probably don't want to be around here anymore. So seeing decreased cases not just in um decreased activity not just in Maricopa County and Arizona but across the country. It's good news too. Questions? Thank you. All right. Um, I put this agenda item on uh because everything's changing so quickly at the federal level. Um, I don't have any new federal updates in the last four weeks that really have impacted us. We continue to plan ahead for any um cuts that may come our way, but um really have anything to share. Wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity should something have come up. you. Anything else? Okay. And and I would ask that um if something does change very impactfully that you would let us know before July 28th. I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. Okay. So, we have a a couple of announcements and I again I I would

really truly like to thank Bob for his time and I appreciate it. And I also wanted to send our condolences to our board member uh Cynthia Hardy of of the loss of her husband and and uh we we send her truly our our heartfelt concern for her. And um lastly, as an announcement after this meeting, we'll be having cake to thank uh Mr. McMillan for his service to this board. There may be a quorum present, but it will not be a meeting. No business will be discussed. Board members are reminded that they should not discuss anything related to board business after this meeting has adjourned. We'll just hear about Dr. Farber's vacation plans on July 28th. So, uh, with that, uh, I would ask for a motion to adjurnn. To adjourn a second. All in favor? I opposed. Too bad. Thank you. We shall see you in July. Thank you. Bye, Lorenzo.