Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

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Good morning, everyone. Welcome to San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors meeting. August 18, 2026, time is 9.03. Meeting is called to order. We will now have a moment of silence in the loving memory of Bishop Dwight Williams, who passed away over the weekend. Bishop Williams was serving on the San Joaquin County Commission on Aging and was a committed member of our community through his nonprofit work. Please keep him and his grieving family in your prayers. Thank you. Thank you so much. Vice Chair Deng, would you lead the pledge, sir?

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.

Roll call, please.

Supervisor Gardea.

Present.

Supervisor Canepa. Here. Supervisor Ding. Here. Supervisor Rickman. Here. And Chair Daliwa.

Here.

Next, we have a recognition.

Board of members, please join me.

Thank you, Chair. Our first recognition is brought forward by Supervisor Rickman of the 5th Supervisorial District. And this is the recognition of Raymond McCray for his years of service on the San Joaquin County Employee Retirement Association. And I'd like to invite Mr. McCray to the podium as we read this recognition, which states. In recognition of your 36 years of service on the San Joaquin County Employees Retirement Association, first appointed to the S.J. Serra Board of Retirement in 1990, you served 12 successive terms through June 30, 2026. Throughout your distinguished tenure, you demonstrated thoughtful leadership, sound judgment, extensive knowledge, and an unwavering commitment to your fiduciary responsibilities. Your commitment to education, excellence, and retirement administration funding and investment further reflected your dedication to the employees, retirees, and beneficiaries of San Joaquin County. The Board of Supervisors recognizes your leadership beyond SJSERA, including your service as President of the State Association of County Retirement Systems and recipient of the SACRS Lifetime Achievement Award for your contributions to public retirement systems throughout California. With sincere appreciation, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors honors your 36 years of distinguished public service, leadership, and lasting contributions to San Joaquin County and its employees and retirees. Thank you for your dedicated service. Presented this 18th day of August, 2026. Chair Dollywell and Supervisor Rickman.

Thank you, Michelle. Mr. McRae, thank you, sir. Thank you for your service and your contributions. And I'm so glad that I had the honor and privilege to serve alongside you for almost a year. Thank you, sir. Enjoy the retirement. We're going to miss you. So, President Rickman. Thank you, Chairman.

Before I say my words, I'm going to turn it over to you. Give you an opportunity to say a few words.

Thank you. I have a few prepared comments that I wanted to make and after 36 years I wanted to give you a little bit of timeline of what happened and thank you for the reading of the resolution. That was excellent. But I did have some prepared comments and hopefully they're short enough. But I want to thank the board. for the recognition today, I appreciate that. And as everybody here knows, the pension that we have here that we've overseen is a lifetime benefit for members and it's in excellent shape. During my 36 years with our retirement board, I had a unique opportunity in the development basically of the retirement system. And it was structured in such a way that It was way different when I got on the board. And initially, the trustees did not have any kind of independent vote. The treasurer had all the say. In the early 1990s, there was a resolution, proposition from the state of California, Prop 162 that gave rights to all the board members so each supervisor each retiree representative from different departments other places all had one vote so we had nine votes together and that was the deal as it changed everything from one vote by the treasurer to nine votes that meant we had to go get some education and that's what we did the during my term the county first started to look at equities. We did not hardly have any public equities of stocks. So we started that, we hired an administrator, and we started looking at different types of investments, which of course meant that we needed to find an administrator, somebody that could also look at the investments, the consultants we brought in introduced us to equity investing and we first started with early investments in the early 1990s. And that has been a big change to the portfolio because in the past when it was all fixed income, it had a lot of liability in it and nobody really realized how bad it was. but time heals all things, but at the time, the plan was relatively young, and so you had mostly active employees and not retirees. Today it's a lot different, and you have to fund for a long period of time. So we looked at hiring a global custodian, which we did. We have benefits, global custody, legal, other activities. We oversaw all of that. And over these decades, we created a very good portfolio. And we currently, as I understand from Renee and others, that we're very well funded. And we are using a very efficient investment strategy to be under a lot of risk control. And I think that's good. We believe we're well positioned and to meet all the future obligations that we have. My services on the board also included, and you mentioned it, it went on beyond county borders. I was a member of the, well, San Joaquin County is a member of the 37 Act, which is made up of 20 California counties that run similar retirement systems to us. And under my leadership, the State Association of County Retirement Systems, also known as SACRS, and many of you have seen that or been to it, formed a team of pension professionals to modernize the bylaws and develop the processes that we would use going forward. We also focused on financial education for trustees and are now considered, honestly, by many in the in the industry to be one of the premier fiduciary educational organizations in the entire United States. Exceptionally well attended, over 600 people, people actually lining up years ahead to come to the conferences. And we were privileged to have a number, well, as well as serving as its president, I was also a board member for many, many years. And under that leadership, we developed the process for just one of the highlights of my career. The retirement board responsibility has changed in both size and complexity. As you all know, you see the bills. And as of today, I would appreciate that the trust you placed in me over the last many years, we are able to have this system thrive. The attention requires, ongoing attention is required, and I think the board has been its most successful when we've had a variety of opinions and we engage in healthy dialogue. before each decision. There's a lot of tough decisions coming up ahead, lots of things that come on the plate, and unfortunately, I won't be there to see them, but I'm gonna be watching and make sure that we do a pretty good job, particularly when it comes to some of the private equity and other issues that are very complex. And I think we have good staff, good I.O., and we are pretty well prepared to move into the future. So I want to thank this board, and I do want to thank all previous boards that appointed me for their support, thank you.

Thank you, Ray. Hey, 36 years is a long time. So thank you very much for your service. And I just want to introduce you to you have your beautiful wife here and your son David here too. And it's important. Yeah. and like um our chairman i think my first term i served on sj sarah with you and you know so i got to see firsthand your knowledge and experience and hey you're one of the you know folks that i looked at you know look to when we had to make some of these you know financial decisions because you do have so much um experience and also that people that may not know you you're also the treasurer For the city of Tracy for how long you been 32 years 32 years so you're still doing that you're getting your public service, but thank you for all you do, and all you continue to do and all you did on that board and. You know the greatest thing is San Joaquin county a retirement system, we are very, very good hands, you know financially for our employees. and that has to do with you and you know members of the board and passport so thank you very much god bless you and god bless your family i'm gonna turn it back over to the chair i don't know if you

Could I just say one thing quickly? It wasn't on this, but this is actually my 50th year as being part of San Joaquin County. I had the honor of working for the Board of Supervisors way, way back with Carmen Perino, Adrienne Fonzi, and some of the others. So it's 50 years since it's been great, and I don't know if Lois Suyun's here or not, but I worked with her at the Board of Supervisors at that time.

So please join us. We have a certificate for you. Renee and Jesse, please join us. Jesse, please. Renee, can you invite Jesse?

Yeah, yeah. Come on, Jesse. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we've got some trustees. We've got a few trustees that came to celebrate again. Just a little smile.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next, we have presentation of the University of California Cooperative Extension Functions, Programs, and Highlights.

Thank you. Good. Sure.

Good morning, supervisors, county colleagues, and audience members. My name is Michelle Leinfolder-Miles, and I'm the Director of Cooperative Extension here in San Joaquin County. I'm also the Delta Crops Resource Management Advisor, which is a long-winded academic title, and I simply refer to myself most of the time as a farm advisor. I want to thank you for the opportunity to present the great work that we're delivering through UC Cooperative Extension here in the county and to address the county's strategic priorities. By way of introduction, Cooperative Extension is a nationwide system of community-based education that is linked with land-grant universities. Land-grant universities were established under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln when federal funding was allocated for post-secondary education in agriculture and mechanical arts. In California, the land-grant university is the University of California, and Cooperative Extension is administered by a statewide division called Agriculture and Natural Resources. We operate here in San Joaquin County according to a 1960 Memorandum of Understanding between the county and the University of California. The word cooperative in our name describes how these three levels of government, federal, state, and local, come together to help us deliver our mission in partnership with our community. In San Joaquin County, Cooperative Extension is 112 years old. Our history dates back to 1914 when the Federal Smith Lever Act established the framework for Cooperative Extension services. San Joaquin County was the second county to have a cooperative extension office in California, and we were the first county to have a resident farm advisor. Farm advisors were placed in counties that formed a farm bureau that could help guide their programming. Of note, when the Smith-Lever Act was signed, more than 50% of the national population lived in rural areas, and 30% of the workforce worked in agriculture. We know that our society has changed a lot since then, and cooperative extension has adapted too. In a few moments, I'll explain how our programming reaches our diverse communities here in the county. This coming January will mark 15 years since I became a farm advisor, so I'll briefly describe my journey. I grew up on a farm in San Joaquin County, and perhaps like many farm kids, I thought I would grow up and do something very different from my parents. However, eventually I realized that agriculture was not just part of my upbringing, it was my passion. In college, I interned for farm advisors here in San Joaquin County, and I gained so much appreciation for their work in research, extension and service. I decided to continue my educational journey in agriculture with the specific intent of coming back here to San Joaquin County to become a farm advisor. Last year, I accepted the role of director because I believe in our mission of bringing science-based information to San Joaquin County communities. Despite living in other places for part of my life, this is the place I've always called home, and I truly believe that we can improve lives through research, extension, and service. Of these three mission-critical objectives, extension is probably the least understood, but the way I describe it is making information relevant to the people who can put it to use. Cooperative Extension is the bridge between local communities and UC research in the disciplines of youth development, community nutrition and health, natural resource management, and agriculture. The logos of our programs are shown at the bottom of this slide, and I hope that at least some of them are already familiar to you. Our programming is delivered by university professionals and also by dedicated volunteers. Our programs align well with the county's strategic priorities to support healthy lifestyles, water management that protects the Delta, and economic development that promotes agriculture. Next, I'll describe the programs that address these strategic goals. When people think about 4-H, they often imagine the kids dressed in white and green showing livestock at AgFest. And while animal husbandry is a keen interest for many of our youth, 4-H promotes many other lifelong skills, including outdoor education, science, technology, engineering, and math, and of course, leadership and civic engagement. We have 11 active 4-H clubs in the county, and they deliver youth programming to kids aged five to 19. We have roughly 500 youth and 100 adult volunteers, and those adult volunteers donate a staggering 16,000 hours of their time to the 4-H program annually. Our 130 master gardeners and master food preservers volunteer over 7,000 hours annually and reach over 1,400 members of our community. They reach out to them on topics related to edible gardening, pollinators, drought-tolerant landscaping, water conservation, pest management, food preservation, and safe food handling practices. Our Master Gardener program is a partnership with San Joaquin County Public Works, providing community education on composting and green waste diversion to support the county's regulatory compliance with greenhouse gas mitigation. Over the last year, the Master Gardener Program Coordinator has partnered on the garden design for the Be Well Campus. And our Master Food Preserver Program pioneered programming in Spanish and partnered with the Office of Emergency Services on food preservation trainings for emergency preparedness. This part of the presentation is a little bit bittersweet. As you know, the last year's federal budget cuts to SNAP and SNAP-Ed will result in the sunsetting of the CalFresh Nutrition Education Program, which has been delivered through Cooperative Extension and other entities. Cooperative Extension CalFresh educators reached over 3,000 youth and adults last year on topics related to healthy eating and lifestyle choices in English, Spanish, and Hmong languages. I want to thank our Cooperative Extension CalFresh staff, Lorena Hoyos, Joyce Bishop, Hua Li Lo, Mari Carmen Anaya Rodriguez, Raquel Fernandez, Annabel Factura, and Christy Loren, whose combined years of service exceeds 90 years. Despite the sunsetting of CalFresh, Cooperative Extension remains committed to nutrition education programming, which will be spearheaded by our community nutrition and health advisor and by the expanded food and nutrition education program, which last year reached over 300 families with their programming. Moving on to the county's strategic priority on water management, I'm proud to say that my own research and extension program is helping to address this goal. Research projects on climate smart farming practices like cover cropping, compost amendment, crop rotations, and flooded agriculture support soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation on over 12,000 acres of Delta farmland. These projects are conducted on commercial farms to help ensure that the information we learn is directly relevant to local farmers. These projects allow farmers to see firsthand how innovative practices will work on their farms. Finally, Cooperative Extension Farm Advisors are supporting the county's $3 billion agricultural industry, conducting over 60 research projects and 165 educational events annually on grains and forages, vegetables, tree and vine crops, dairy, and livestock. Farm advisors reach agricultural producers, consultants, and industry members with guidance on production practices and problem diagnosis related to pest and nutrient management, irrigation, and soil and water quality. And we couldn't do it without our partners. So I want to thank all of you, the county, our departments in the county, a number of partners who are shown on the slides, and of course, all of the staff at Cooperative Extension and our dedicated volunteers who help us extend our reach to our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Board members, any questions or comments? Anybody? Thank you so much. next we have public comments now is the time for public comment on matters that are on the closed session agenda on the consent calendar or within the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors but not listed on the agenda member of the public attending in person who wish to speak are requested to complete a speaker card and provide it to the clerk if you are participating remotely and wish to speak Please raise your hand now by pressing star five. Please address your comments to the board. No personal attacks, please. First speaker is Ronald Hoffman. Rishal is

Hi, my name is Ronald Hefner. I live in Escalon and I'm here about public works on my road, Bureau Lane. I have it right down here. It shows that I own the property to where Bureau Lane ends and they've, on the map here, what they've done is they've extended it where it says private. It was put in as a private road, road A, private drive from where it ends. And here is where it shows where it ends. And the county says, they said, you're the only ones that can put a bath like it was. I donated 25 feet. in 1988 went 20 feet to put Bureau Lane into Campbell Road when they hook it to Magnolia and to Lone Tree. It'll make a thorough way. But as it is right now, I can't even take anybody to court to keep them off of it or anything else. And they keep, I've been there 54 years and I've kept it up myself. But as you can see, it says the road ends in 500 feet. Here's the signs, it's showing where it ends. I posted it all the time. And this is what we're talking about. Here, this road right here, this is the end of it we're talking about this piece right here i can't oh i'm sorry i just need to have you guys put it back the way it was on the original map stating that it's road a private drive it's in district seven and you can see they just paved it and this um i i've got a the maps here showing where i don't get it and it shows here's where he ends and it says right here that is a private that is a private lane It doesn't hook up to Campbell Road because it's not there. And they got this down as a public throwaway since I donated 25 feet and it was for public access and stuff, but it doesn't exist until they put in, you know, connect it all together. I'd just like to have it put back from where it ends back into my property saying it's road A, private drive or private road. And it only goes to two residents back here. Nobody else uses it. So I don't know exactly where, and I have a title deeds that I've paid for showing that my property, that is my property. And on the road, okay.

Mr. Huffner, time is up, sir. Sir, time is up, but staff will meet you offline. Jenny, can you please help?

It says here that Escalon's Lone Tree Estates wanted to give 20 feet of their property to extend that out and the county refused it, didn't want it. And it says here that it should remain road A as is in the Magnolia map showing what it is here.

We'll help you with this. Okay. Hey, Ronald.

Ronald.

Yeah, I'll put it back for you. No worries. Supervisor Rickman would like to.

Because I know they're busy.

No, no. Ronald. Not too busy for this. We spoke to Public Works. I just talked to my staff, and once we're done here, my staff will meet you outside, and we can discuss, and I know we've already talked to Public Works, and we can discuss. we'll discuss offline here what they've asked me to do is to get an engineer to read right but um we have we only have so much time for public comment you know we have to be fair to everybody so that's why we have maria here thank you you know so hey thank you very much for coming and bringing to our attention you giving me the time to talk no absolutely thank you for coming all the way over here from eskron

Thank you, Maria.

Hi, good morning. So on behalf of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce, I would like to personally invite our elected officials, business leaders, community partners, and residents to join us on Thursday, September 3rd at 8.30 a.m. at JSD Trucking in Acampo, California to join us for a special START trailer unveiling, community workshop, and celebration of the two-year anniversary of the START app. I'd also like to thank Supervisor Rickman for attending our South County unveiling in Tracy. Over the past two years, START has grown from an innovative approach to combating retail theft into an award-winning community engagement, economic development, and public safety initiative built around a simple but powerful principle, businesses and residents taking ownership of their community and becoming part of the solution. During this event, we will unveil the newly branded START trailer and provide information on the START program, including information about the free security camera grants for eligible businesses and merchant accounts that help businesses receive and utilize incident information submitted through the START app. Our workshop will also focus on two important areas of community education. Dr. Troy Stein, executive director of Stop Human Trafficking, a Manteca-based nonprofit organization, will provide a presentation on human exploitation, including recognizing potential warning signs and understanding how an informed community can help protect vulnerable individuals. We will also hear from Lawrence Borgens, president of Delta Protective Services, who will present How to Be a Good Witness. His presentation will provide practical guidance on how residents, employees, and business owners can safely observe an incident, identify important details, document what they see, and provide useful information without unnecessarily placing themselves in harm's way. These presentations reinforce an important part of the START model, education and empowerment. A community force multiplier is most effective when people understand what to look for, how to respond safely, and how the information they provide can assist businesses, law enforcement, and community organizations. For two years, START has demonstrated what can happen when the private sector, residents, law enforcement, local government, and nonprofit organizations work together. We invite you to celebrate this milestone with us and learn about the next phase of START. START will also have available our two-year proof-of-concept review report. Please join us on Thursday, September 3rd at 8.30 a.m. at JSG Trucking in Acampo for the START Truck Unveiling Community Workshop and two-year anniversary celebration. The community is watching, and we are the force multipliers. It's time to start. Thank you.

Michael Strenson. That's fine. Judy Graham. Jody, sorry. My apologies.

I would just like to read the Republican Party of San Joaquin County's posting from this morning. It is with a heavy heart that we share the passing of our immediate past chairman and District 2 Caucus Chair, Reverend Dwight Earl Williams. Reverend Williams was an impactful leader who was beloved by countless individuals in the community. A lifelong resident of Stockton, he served his community through many roles, including as founder and pastor, president, of New Genesis Outreach Ministries of Stockton, Commissioner of the San Joaquin County Commission on Aging, and an ambassador with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Over the last decade, Dwight served in numerous roles in the San Joaquin County and California Republican Party, including as a District Caucus Chair, Chairman of the San Joaquin County Republican Party, and Chairman of the County Chairman's Association for the California GOP. Dwight's passing is a major loss for our party and our community. All who knew him can testify to his warm personality and immense love for others. He leaves behind a treasured legacy and a void that will never truly be filled. Thank you, Dwight, for your years as a faithful service to our party and our community. May you rest in peace and rejoice in the loving arms of our creator. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Nallis.

Good morning, Chair and Board of Supervisors. My name is Anisa Barney, and I'm a current student at UC Berkeley.

Good morning. My name is Jessica Villamor-Nelas, and I'm also a current student at University of California, Berkeley.

Hi, my name is Andres Vivanco, and I'm a student at Delta.

Good morning, my name is Millie. I am a student at UC Berkeley and a Stripe intern in the Office of Mayor. I am speaking today on behalf of our interns team and including Yacelyn Bezera, who is from Ventures Academy, and Eric Florentino, who is from Health Careers Academy, respectively, who cannot join us today because of their high school duties. Over the course of our internship, our team has developed initiative packets for the mayor's 10 initiative policies, and including workforce roundtables for the Port of Stockton, economic development over brownfields, and a youth advisory committee in which Eric and Jocelyn are members of. We have standardized office working materials, our team built reusable templates, agendas, invitations, and sign-in sheets, and met with the department's leads who are generously dedicating their time to educate us and help us in this endeavor, using our knowledge to advocate for these policy initiatives in data and method-driven ways. The goal was that for any staff members, partners, and future interns who could pick up and understand our work can understand what we're doing and why the need exists. We want to humbly thank you and stand in front of you as the fruits of the county and the city's endeavor in education. I want to say thank you for the city and the generous sponsor from PG&E for this program and providing such an invaluable opportunity for us students of Stockton and currently are in Stockton, not only for us to serve the city we love, but also simultaneously learn from it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else from public? Rochelle, anybody waiting remotely?

We do not have anybody waiting online to speak at this time.

Thank you. The meeting minutes for regular meeting April 14th, 2026 and regular meeting August 4th, 2026 will be on the agenda for approval on September 1st. Next is consent calendar. Board, any item needs to be pulled? Anybody else? Anybody else on my left? No. And item number 10 will be pulled and continue to September 1st per HR request.

Supervisor Gurdia. I'd like to invite friends outside to the podium.

Good morning, Chair Dhaliwal, Supervisors, County Administrator, and Clerk. My name is Michael Sorenson. I'm the Executive Director at Friends Outside, and I'm joined by my colleague, Susan Thieme. I'm here to express my gratitude for your support of a new service that we're building in collaboration with other homeless-serving nonprofits here in San Joaquin County. It's called the San Joaquin Furniture Bank. Uh, the San Joaquin furniture bank is an emergent program that friends outside has. Has started to address the critical gap and transition from homelessness to permanent housing in partnership with local nonprofits and community organizations. Our furniture bank will provide essential furniture to families moving into stable housing, creating safe, comfortable homes while promoting dignity and long-term stability. Through donations of furniture and financial support from business and general community, the furniture bank will furnish homes at no cost to the clients. Operating with a model similar to the food bank, the San Joaquin Furniture Bank will serve as a centralized hub for receiving and redistributing donated furniture. Access to the furniture bank will be managed through a referral system with partner agencies who will pay an annual membership fee and associated fees for delivery and so forth. A key strength of this model is the dual impact of supporting families in need while reducing waste by reusing and recycling furniture. We're already underway with a rented warehouse and a truck donated by the Housing Authority. Our first donor of furniture is also present today, Chair Dhaliwal. I'm grateful today for Supervisor Gardea's first dollar commitment and for the other supervisors who are considering support. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate the presentation that you had brought forward to me and I'm honored to be part of this. You know, my prior career, you know, we responded from the fire department and responded to these households that some of these families, you know, kids are sleeping on the ground, you know, and there's nothing in their apartments and it's heartbreaking. So to see that there's an outlet and there's opportunity to help out is heartwarming. So I just want to say thank you.

Six going to be pulled or worse the status.

Are you referring to CSA 46 that'll come later during the public works public hearing that's not on consent so only consent item number 10 is pulled from consideration today.

Board members do you have a motion.

You have one more.

Oh, 18, sorry. Yeah, go ahead, please.

My bad.

We got the director of the hospital here. All right. Yep, he's here. Okay, where are we now? 18. 18.

Good afternoon. Yep, so I pulled this.

How about now?

Perfect. All right. So I pulled this item. It's pretty obvious. You know, I pull items, especially when you look at, you know, what the budgets are, you know, the amount of monies. And one of the things that caught my eye on this is that we're already a month into this contract. without getting approval for staffing. And I understand and I appreciate that some of the questions that I had got answered. And I like the idea that, you know, on the graph, you know, like our nurses, our staffing levels have caught up to the need. But, you know, I look at, and maybe you can explain it a little bit more in person, but, you know, I'm looking at budgeted positions I feel like this county has given direction to get in front of retention and recruitment and so I kind of want to hear from you from you from your perspective is how are you identifying some of the issues when it comes to recruitment and at what point are we going to make these full-time positions so so a couple things and first of all good morning everyone good morning supervisor dolly wall and the team um

When I got here, one of the big glaring issues was the nurse supplemental funding, and we had 320 registered nurses all at somewhere close to $300 an hour, costing us a fortune, and so we addressed that through both the union contract, through better recognition of our nurses, through all the things that it takes to keep employees, and you see the dramatic improvement of going from wherever we were to where we are now. I think we went from 17 million to as low as 12 million. When you look at the other issues that are significant to San Joaquin General Hospital, I'll give you on the lower side of the pay scale, our EVS, our dietary, our nursing assistants, all of our competing hospitals, all of our competing hospitals, were given the mandate of a $25 minimum wage. We thought we were blessed by getting an exception, but the problem is our people are so far behind the curve in their pay scale, and the challenge on the other side when you look at the supplemental funding for those positions, it's really not at the same level it was for nursing. For example, if you're looking at $300 an hour for a nurse, and our regular pay is about 70, even with the benefit expense of 60 plus percent, it was still a significant cost. When you look at the lower end of our pay scale, and you look at supplemental funding teams like Bolt, there really isn't a challenge in the cost is almost similar, the cost is similar. So we have to address these one by one in regards to getting our employees competitive. The one area on the professional side where we're significantly out of the market, is in the advanced imaging and in our speech OT and physical therapy department, so we're forced to use supplemental funding because we can't get them to the level that they need to get to, or we're working on getting them to the level that they need to, but all of these come with the challenges of union contracts and everything else. so we do the best that we can to manage them. We try to convert as many people as we can to full-time because full-time is usually an opportunity for retention. We talk about the blessings of being able to serve the underserved at the same level that they would get anywhere else trying to Reach their you know their emotional motivation So we took the highest opportunity and dealt with it first And we continue to deal with these other ones as we work our way down through union contracts yeah, and so Example like speech therapy.

I mean we don't have any allocated. It's there's no full-time positions budgeted for that so but you have that listed as one of the needs and

Well, speech therapy is 100% travelers. I believe 100% travelers because our salaries are not competitive.

Yeah, and I will say, you know, I'm not making any excuses, but, you know, we get the agenda on Friday. I came in the office on Sunday to work on it, and, you know, I was able to do the agenda review yesterday and got the information, you know. in a timely matter, but this is why I brought you up to ask questions because it's more of an education piece, not for me, but it's also for my colleagues and other people in the audience. The other thing is that why do we wait to bring this to us a month into the- Again, I'll take full responsibility for that.

A lot of things go on in the hospital right now. We're working through a significant integration process with the other healthcare entities. It's very important. No excuse. My responsibility to make sure these things get turned in on time. I will tell you that coming from the outside in, the board letter process is extremely laborious, is extremely expensive, goes back and forth multiple, multiple times. Again, no excuse. We've got to start earlier. We've got to get these board letters in. There's a ton of them. all of these you know the the thing that i would challenge you all on is these are really approved through the budget and then we basically got to go you know have to go back and and ask again to spend the money that we were already approved to spend but i take full responsibility on the timeliness and we'll make sure we do a better job on that

And then my last question would be, when was the last time this went out for some type of like bidding process, like RFP?

So if you look at the staffing, they're always out there. We use a number of staffing facilities because we're always negotiating price. So every time, for example, if we're looking for physical therapy, we go through the spectrum of the different entities to see where we can get the best, the best price with the highest quality. When you do that year over year, you kind of learn the people that really have a knowledge about your hospital, know what we're all about, and that's important because when we're bringing travelers in, it's gotta be a fit for them as well. And so they know the hospital, they know the clientele out there, and so typically we tend to lend ourselves to certain vendors that we work with over time, but we always, we always look, especially in the nursing contracts when we're paying over 300, we looked at everywhere we could to find a better opportunity.

Well, I just want to say thank you and I appreciate you answering the questions and coming up and educating me and my colleagues on on this whole process.

No problem. Thanks. Any other questions?

I have a comment.

Supervisor Canepa, please. I was at the Deputy Sheriff's Association barbecue the other day and one of our deputies daughter is a nurse. Right. And she did it through reading. So you'll be getting her resume because I said, send me the resumes because we want you to stay local. So I think Genevieve's on the mail list. So how do we do that? Because she did her her stuff in reading. And so most of the time they apply in their area. And I'm thinking, well, you're from stock. I said, do you want to stay here? And so how do we do that?

I think the best way for, and I say this for anybody, it's not, with all due respect, I'm glad you're looking after us. And we take any opportunity we get to try to entice healthcare workers to be here. So the best thing to do is, and Supervisor Dhaliwal has done this a couple of times as well, is to reach out directly to me, to reach out directly to me, and then we will connect that connection to the right person to have those conversations as to how she can get her information in, what our job market looks like, and also how it works because it's kind of sporadic, right? We take applications at one point, don't for a while, then take them later. So once we identify quality people that are local because the chance of them staying longer is five times five times bigger so once we understand all the pieces to that we look very strongly at the local candidate as a positive because of the chance of them staying so that's the reason that we funnel them through with whether it be you guys or anybody in the audience or you know even and equally importantly our own staff they'll come to us with the same questions well that's the important thing because i mean we have dr ahad here from the clinics and dameron and st joseph's and the county and

all the clinics that we have in the community. So I'd love to just have those people not have to go move outside of our area. Absolutely. Yeah.

So have her reach out directly. Okay.

Yeah. It's getting sent today. So thank you. Sounds good. All right.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Well, since you're here, um, Last board meeting, we went through a list of the top paid county employees' salaries and I think it was a little shocking to a lot of constituents and I had to talk about competition and what it takes because we're competing county to county, not only in you know, positions of leadership in the county, but sheriff's department and and attorneys, everything else. And we have to be competitive. But there was a another list that came out and it's the top ten paid public employees in the entire state. And I'm hoping you can provide me a good answer because four of the top ten in the entire state are working at San Joaquin County General Hospital. So help me out here.

Well, I think the best thing that you can do for everybody's sake is take a look at what trauma surgeon salaries are, whether it's in the private sector or the not-for-profit sector.

Rick, you know I respect the heck out of you. I don't want to look it up. I want you to explain it to me.

So we're paying our physicians across the board because of the challenge sometimes of attracting physicians to San Joaquin. It's a beautiful place, don't get me wrong, but it's not Laguna Beach and it's not the Bay Area where a lot of physicians typically come from. So we are paying all of our physicians in the county are over the 50th percentile, which is a requirement to attract them here. The trauma surgeons are good examples of that. And in the private sector, I can promise you that their salaries are similar, if not higher, with the exception sometimes of the academic institutions because that prestige sometimes is what attracts people there. You know, our trauma services, even with those significantly high salaries, are very, very profitable to us, which is kind of important. But more importantly, the services they provide are top notch in the state, if not throughout the country. I mean, they have a 97% success rate. They deal with traumas like you would see in Cook County. And the other piece of it is that full compensation also includes the 60%, the 60% benefit costs that go along with it. And so when you look at that salary and you look at that total compensation and you take that 60% off the table, essentially, because I think when you do salary comparisons, a lot of times BENEFIT COSTS ARE NOT NEAR THAT HIGH FOR THE NOT-FOR-PROFITS AND THE FOR-PROFITS. SO I THINK IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF APPLES TO ORANGES BUT I'M VERY COMFORTABLE AND I CAN GET YOU SOME DATA FROM MGMA WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY KIND OF THE BIBLE OF PHYSICIAN COMPENSATION THAT WOULD SHOW THE RANGES OF WHAT THOSE SURGEONS SHOULD BE AT AND THEN IF YOU JUST KIND OF EXTRACT THE BENEFIT COSTS AND SAY ARE THEY IN THAT BALLPARK OR NOT, YOU'LL SEE THEY'RE IN THAT BALLPARK.

I appreciate that the other thing and it correct me if I'm wrong. And I told I told them I would find out, but I I also have. I think it has to do with. We're one of the few. County hospitals. I mean, there's not a lot to compare it to as far as county.

So there were 50, I think at the peak, there were 52 public hospitals. It's now down to 21. And if you take the academic centers away, if you take the USC county and the UCLA county, which is a different animal, those guys are different animals, I think we're down to eight.

Okay.

And with Watsonville, maybe seven.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Sandy.

I just wanted to address a couple of comments that were made by CEO Castro. I just in regards to the budget, not the well, the budget and the board agenda process. So, yes, I would say sometimes our departments probably think our board agenda process is long from the time that we have to do the draft agenda. That's about three weeks. But I think you were probably when you said the back and forth. So that's from our office with our analysts. They're all assigned to certain departments. And if an agenda item doesn't come in where it's worthy to just get placed on the agenda, there is a lot of back and forth. So I think I will work with our analysts to work with you, CEO Castro, and your staff to see if we can get a better first product so that that might eliminate some of that back and forth. And then just to answer the other question about the, or there wasn't a question, it was a comment made about the budget. Your board, you do approve the budget in June, but the purchasing agent only has authority of up to 200,000. These agreements are in the millions. And so these agreements have to come to the board. So that's why that. So I just wanted to clarify that.

And I appreciate that. And again, I do take responsibility for those not being here in time. That is my leadership responsibility. So we can do that sooner. We can look at them sooner.

Silver Rosa Canepa.

I just want to make a comment. And I want to thank our CAO because she's on it. I mean, because a couple of them and I was giving her a bad time. We get all these not to exceeds and not to exceed. And I said, there's three not to exceeds in three lines here. And she brings it back for that reason, because we have a not to cede amount and then it goes over the 200,000. That's why it comes back. So, I mean, some of that I get. But I mean, when we do that and some of the contracts are very, very long term. And I asked her those questions, too. So I wanted to commend you and your staff for what you do to make sure that everything's correct. The numbers are correct and all the stuff that comes back very thorough. So I want to thank them for that.

being thorough because then they catch everything so thank you and again i'm not complaining because it's really important that everybody sees the uh spin you know what we spend from their angle right it's it's important from a hospital perspective we just need to spend it from everybody else's perspective is there better ways is it so it's not a bad thing thank you sir all right you guys have a great day thank you likewise

Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve consent calendar minus 10, which was pulled. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Call for a vote, please. Motion passes 5-0. Next, we have public hearing to annex Assessor's Parcel Number 015-020-56 into the McClemmy Acres Maintenance District and Waterbridge Lighting District. Who's doing the staff report?

The Public Works Director Najee Zarif will be here to do the staff report. Nadja, if you could turn your mic on.

Is that better? Much better, all right. So yeah, I'll start over. Good morning, Chair Dhaliwal, members of the board. For the record, Nadja Zarif, your Director of Public Works. This is the time and the date that your board set for a public hearing regarding the transfer of one property into the McCullamy Acres Maintenance District and the Woodbridge Lighting District and approval of the associated service charges. With me is Mr. Cheyenne Raymond, our engineering services manager, who will provide a brief presentation regarding the proposed annexation, the service charges, and the Proposition 218 process. Following this presentation and any questions from your board, we recommend that you open and close each of the public hearings individually. And at this point, I'll turn it over to Cheyenne for his presentation.

Thank you, Director Zarif. Good morning, Chair and members of the board. The purpose of today's public hearing is to consider oral testimony regarding the annexation of one property into the McCollum Acres Maintenance District and the Woodbridge Lighting District and associate service charges for water, storm drainage, storm drainage treatment, and street lighting through the Proposition 218 process. On May 21, 2024, your Board approved the Redeeming Way major subdivision application for 27 lots located north of Woodbridge Road. As a condition of approval, the developer is required to secure public services for water, storm drainage, and street lighting. Mayor Mrakas, annexation into the mccollum the acres maintenance district and the woodbridge lighting district will satisfy these requirements. Mayor Mrakas, Additionally, the project is required to include stormwater treatment for trash collection, which will be provided by the mccollum the acres maintenance district to the establishment of a fee for this service. On June 30th, 2026, your board declared its intention to annex the proposed subdivision parcel into the McCollum Acres Maintenance District and the Woodbridge Lighting District for water, storm drainage, storm drainage treatment, and street lighting services. Following the board's declaration, a notice of public hearing and ballot were mailed to the affected property owner of record. The proposed service charges are based on the single family equivalent unit, or SFE, which is the level of benefit received by the average single family residential property. Additionally, there is a metered rate for every 1,000 gallons of water used. The current service charges for water storm drainage and street lighting are shown on the slide and are being proposed for the subdivision project. Additionally, a storm drainage treatment service charge of $230 per SFE is proposed to satisfy the project stormwater management requirements. This completes the presentation for the annexation into the districts and the associated service charges. I will now provide an overview of the Proposition 218 approval process. In accordance with Proposition 218, new or increased service charges for property-related services must be approved by the effective property owners. Streetlight services are subject to approval through a balloting process and a ballot was mailed to the effective property owner. At the end of the public hearing, staff will read the ballot result. If the property owner votes against the proposed service charge, this service cannot be implemented. Additionally, water, storm drainage, and storm drainage treatment services are subject to approval by the property owner through the majority protest process. If the property owner submits a valid written protest against the proposed service charge, these services cannot be implemented.

Thank you, Cheyenne. Chair Daly-Wall and members of the board, this concludes our presentation. Following any questions that you may have, it is our recommendation that, again, you open the public hearing in the order that was shown on the slide to receive testimony regarding annexation and to thank you. into each district and approval of those service charges. And after the chair closes the public hearings, Public Works staff will review the ballot and protest results and provide final recommendations. So at this time, we are available to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you, sir. Any questions? No.

You have more of a comment. I want to commend you guys on the work that you do. When we were out, you know, you guys come with all the professionalism and all the people that are involved. And I just want to thank you guys for the thorough job that you do. It's just great to see, you know, that your answer the questions. I mean, we did the one I was at Bear Creek and the people and answered all their questions. And these processes are not easy for people, but you always are there for them. So I just want to commend you on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else? i'm going to open the public hearing anybody from public want to speak on this item if you are participating remotely and wish to speak during public comment on this item please raise your hand now by pressing star five do we have anyone yeah no it does not appear that we have anybody on this

Just a matter, just to clarify, we will need to open the public hearing for each district separately. So there's two districts here that the property owner is looking to annex into.

Thank you. So the first public hearing is open.

And I'll just clarify, that's for the McClemmy Acres Maintenance District.

Correct, yes. Anybody want to speak on this item from public? I'm going to close it, bring it back. Board members, any questions, comments? Now I'll open public hearing for Woodbridge Lighting District. Anybody from public want to speak on this item? Do we have anybody waiting remotely?

No, we do not.

I'm going to close the public hearing, bring it back. Any questions?

All right. Excellent. Thank you. So for the McClellan Acres Maintenance District, we did not receive any protests. So that will pass. And then we're opening the ballot for the Woodbridge Lighting District.

The property owner has voted yes, affirming the street lighting assessment for the property.

Thank you. If there are no comments, questions, do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Do you need two separate motions or one for each district? Nazi?

I believe that one will work, but I'll defer to County Council.

Since we're having public hearing, separate public hearings, I'd recommend separate vote on each one.

Through the chair, we do only have one resolution in here, which would take one vote for both at the same time, if that's okay.

I can fly with it. Okay, we'll go with one.

Just one is fine. So we have a motion and second call for word, please. Motion passes 5-0. Next, we have a public hearing to increase service charges for Bear Creek Terrace, Moreland Manor, Morada Estates, Rancho San Joaquin, Spring Creek Estates, Maintenance Districts and County Service Areas 21, 25 and 46. Staff report, please.

And thank you again, Chair Dhaliwal, members of the board. Again, just for the record, Najee Zarif, your Director of Public Works. Similarly, this is the time and the date that your board set for the public hearings regarding proposed service charges for the special districts that are shown on the screen and as listed by Chair Dhaliwal. As previously communicated, this is an effort that we're taking to bring service charges proposed before you. to achieve or maintain financial sustainability in our special districts. Again, with me is Mr. Cheyenne Remond, who will provide a brief presentation regarding the proposed service charges. Following the presentation and any questions from your board, we recommend that you open and close each public hearing individually. Before Cheyenne begins, I would like to highlight, as was mentioned before, that we are proposing that the public hearing for the county service area, or CSA 46, be continued to a future meeting. Several of the constituents within CSA 46 reached out to request that we consider changes to the rates that we have proposed. And so we'd like to meet with them to listen to their proposal and then return back to the board for a separate public hearing to present any proposed rate changes for that specific district. And so with that said, I will turn over the presentation to Mr. Raymond.

Again, thank you, Director Zarif, and good morning, Chair and members of the board. The purpose of today's public hearing is to receive public testimony or written protest regarding the proposed service charges in several special districts. Special districts provide services only to properties within a defined boundary. The primary source of revenue for special districts comes from service charges paid by property owners. Some districts also receive a portion of their funding from property taxes or interest from reserves. By law, revenue derived from each district is used exclusively for that district, and each district in general is financially self-sustaining. There are eight service charges proposed today in seven special districts. Four of the service charges are for water services and four are for storm drain services. The rate structure for most of these services is an annual charge which is usually collected on the property tax roll and based on the single family equivalent or SFE. This is the level of benefit received by the average single family home. Every single family residential parcel is assigned one SFE. Multifamily and commercial properties are assigned SFE values based on their level of benefit or service received as compared to a single family home. Additionally, metered rates for water service charges per every 1,000 gallons of water used. The proposed service charges are either rate schedules or inflationary adjustments. Rate schedules are fixed rates for a five-year period. The proposed inflationary adjustments are also for a five-year period, but are based on the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, but not to exceed 5%. The CPI adjustments for fiscal year 2026 through 2027 is 2.18%. Annually, special districts with previously approved inflationary adjustments are evaluated to determine if an adjustment is warranted, and if so, staff will recommend inflationary adjustments up to the CPI, but not to exceed 5%. Now let's look at four districts with proposed inflationary adjustments. The first district county service area or CSA 21 Oak Creek is located in the Murata area in Supervisorial District 4. The boundary for CSA 21 is shown on the slide and serves approximately 85 parcels. The proposed service charge is for storm drain services. Rates for this service have not been adjusted since it was established. For the current fiscal year, a proposed inflationary adjustment would increase the annual storm drain service charge per SFE from $50 to $51.08. Next is CSA 25, Capewood Estates, located in the Murata area in Supervisorial District 4. The boundary for CSA 25 is shown on the slide and serves approximately 12 properties. The proposed service charges for storm drain service. Rates for this service have not been adjusted since the service charge was first established. For the current fiscal year, the proposed inflationary adjustment would increase the annual storm drain service charge per SFE from $40 to $40.86. Moving on to Bear Creek Terrace Maintenance District, located south of Lockford in Supervisorial District 4, The property, the boundary for this maintenance district is shown on the slide and serves approximately 323 properties. The proposed service charge for storm drain services. Rate increases for this service were last approved six years ago. For the current fiscal year, a proposed inflationary adjustment would increase the annual storm drain service charge per SFE from $15.12 to $15.44. The last inflationary adjustment is for marauder estates maintenance district located in the marauder area also in supervisory district for. The boundary for this maintenance district is shown on the slide and serves approximately 102 parcels. The proposed service charge is for storm drain services rates for this service have not been adjusted since the service was first established. For the current fiscal year, a proposed inflationary adjustment would increase the annual storm drainage service charge per SFE from $20 to $20.42. Murata Estates Maintenance District also provides water services that are recommended for inflationary adjustments. Rate increases for this service were approved six years ago. For the current fiscal year, a proposed inflationary adjustment would increase the annual service charge per SFE from $1,164.50 to $1,189.88. Now we will present the proposed rate schedules. Rancho San Joaquin Maintenance District is located in Stockton in Supervisorial District 2. The district consists of 53 parcels. The proposed service charge is for water service. Rate increases for this service were approved six years ago, but due to higher than anticipated operations and maintenance costs over the past several years, a rate increase is being proposed. This proposed five-year rate schedule would increase the annual charge from $1,511 to $2,134 in the first year and $2,768 in the fifth year. As mentioned previously by Director Zarif, CSA 46 is being proposed to be continued to December 8th. Moving on to Marlin Manor Maintenance District, which is located in Tracy in Supervisorial District 5. This district consists of 30 parcels. The proposed service charges for water service rate increases for this service were approved six years ago, but due to higher than anticipated operations and maintenance costs over the past several years, a rate increase is being proposed. This proposed five-year rate schedule would increase the annual charge from $1,123 to $1,576 in the first year and $2,271 in the fifth year. Lastly, Spring Creek Estates Maintenance District located in Ripon and Supervisorial District 5, This district consists of 37 parcels. The proposed service charge is for water service. Rate increases for this service were approved six years ago, but due to higher than anticipated operations and maintenance costs over the past several years, a rate increase is being proposed. This proposed five-year rate schedule would increase the annual service charge from $686 to $827 in the first year and $1,257 in the fifth year. Public Works conducted outreach efforts to each of the districts to inform effective property owners of the proposed service charges. Public Works mailed notices to property owners in CSA 21, CSA 25, Bear Creek Terrace, and Murata Estates Maintenance Districts that informational presentations would be available on each district's webpage regarding the proposed inflationary adjustments. During the presentation, public work staff explained the need for rate increases and provided the contact information for additional information or questions. Additionally, Public Works held community meetings for Marlin Manor, Rancho San Joaquin, and Spring Creek Estates Maintenance Districts. The meeting participants generally understood the need for the rate increases and were provided staff's contact information to address any follow-up questions. For property owners who were not able to attend the meeting, Public Works staff provided the presentation on each district's website. This completes the presentation for the proposal, this completes the presentation for the rate proposals for the districts. Now we will explain the Proposition 218 approval process. The proposed rates are subject to approval by the property owners through the majority protest process. The majority of property owners must consent to the rate increase for the board to take a final action. If a majority protest is submitted, against the rate increase the board cannot approve it all protests must be in writing and received prior to the close of today's public hearing in order to be tabulated one protest per parcel is allowed protests must contain the assessor parcel number assessor's parcel number or site address all protests must be signed by the property owner tenant or authorized representative to be considered valid

Excellent. Thank you, Cheyenne. Chair Daly-Wall, members of the board, as Cheyenne indicated, this concludes our presentation. Following any questions that the board may have, it is our recommendation that you open each public hearing separately and receive public testimony one district at a time. in the order that's shown on the slide in front of you. Public Works staff will then tabulate the written protest, if any, and report back the results and provide final recommendations regarding the proposed service charges for your consideration. And again, as mentioned previously, we are recommending that the public hearing for CSA 46 be continued to a future board meeting. And with respect to that special district, we are requesting that the date for that hearing be set for December 8th, which will allow us to meet with the property owners and properly notice any proposed rates for their and your consideration. So we are available now to answer any questions that the board may have.

Supervisor Canepa.

I just have a couple. And yesterday Sandy and I discussed it. Sometimes when you put the dollar amounts on the board agenda for whatever you're spending in the district, if you could put what's left in their reserve account, that way we could see kind of where they're at. The other thing is if these people don't do that, some of the increases just seem so nominal. So should we be automatically just doing the cost of living increases annually so that you could build some reserve? I know at the City of Stockton, their stormwater thing didn't pass. And so I'm just wondering, you know, because the costs don't go down. And some of that is so infinitesimal, it just doesn't seem You know, like a lot of money. I mean, and I get it. We don't want to keep increasing. But I mean, some of these are doubled and tripled in certain cases. So how do we do that so that they have the reserves to do this maintenance? I mean, that's why when I went, I didn't know. I thought it was on the last one that the one that we talked about, you know, those folks, it's for their water systems and they didn't understand how often you have to test the wells. and do all the maintenance and it's important because a pump or a well that goes dry i mean it's important you know that their water is protected and they whatever they can drink is healthy so i just wanted to address those

Yeah, sure. And so in terms of the inflationary adjustments, even with that process, because it's an increase, we do have to come back to the board and, you know, at least get approval to allow for the inflationary adjustments to occur over a certain period of time. But then once we have that approval, then we can make those adjustments as necessary up to the CPI. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Gurdia.

I just got a quick question. So like AB 2572 requires meters on all residential properties. Are all these properties have meters?

No, they do not.

Do they not fall under that requirement?

Well you want to take that one but some of them we don't have the funding to be able to some of them don't fall in the requirement but others that may do we don't have the funding to be able to put in meters and so we have to because we don't have the dollars we have to find the dollars to be able to implement that if I have that correctly.

Through the chair, it's also the district sizes. So our districts, the majority of them are relatively small. So the meter requirement, my understanding is further out for them.

Do you have an idea what the date would be on something like that?

I believe, I wanna provide you the accurate number. We can get back to you. Yeah, we can get back to you.

And I only bring this up because I mean, if you're a person practicing, you know, resilient, water usage at your house and then your next door neighbor's, you know, watering two acres, is it fair for each person to pay the same amount of money?

Sure, and ideally for us, we would like to see all of the properties metered because it does promote more responsible water usage, right, and folks pay their, you know, they're paying exactly what they use, right, their fair share, but there are some challenges to, you know, that infrastructure because it can be a significant cost. And we have some very, like you said, some very small districts. And so as you even see here, when you start to spread some of these costs to small districts, it can be pretty significant. But where we can get a grant to put it in, we'd be more than happy to put in.

Yeah, by no means am I suggesting anything. It's not my district. I know I've heard this because there's been other districts that have made mention of meter requirements. And I just want to I was curious with, you know, example, AB 2572 that was required by January 1st, 2025 to provide to have meters. And so I just was more of an education piece for me.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Oh, I told that.

OK. Nazih, you want the public hearing independently for each or you want the motion also?

Yes, so if we could begin with the public hearings for each of the special districts, one at a time where we open, receive any feedback from the public and then close those.

So one motion or do you want?

Well, at the end, we can entertain, I believe we can, since there is one resolution, we can entertain one motion to approve them all. But as we go through each district, we'll need to open and close them individually.

Got it. Okay, the public hearing is open for CSA 21. Anybody want to speak? Anybody from public? Do we have anybody remotely? No. Close it, bring it back. Any questions, comments? Public hearing is open for CSA 25. Anybody from public want to speak on this item? Anybody remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Any questions, comments?

No.

Public hearing is open for Bear Creek Terrace maintenance district. Anybody from public want to speak on this item? Anybody remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Public hearing is open for Moorland Manor Maintenance District. Anybody from public want to speak? Anybody remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Any comments, questions? No. Public hearing is open for Morada State's Maintenance District. Anybody want to speak on this item from public? Anybody waiting remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Any questions, comments? Public hearing is open for Rancho San Joaquin Maintenance District. Anybody from public want to speak on this item? Anybody waiting remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Any comments, questions? Public hearing is open for Spring Creek Estates Maintenance District. Anybody want to speak on this item? Anybody remotely?

No.

Public hearing is closed. Anybody?

Any comments? Any questions?

Public hearing is open for CSA 46. Anybody want to speak on it? This is the one we need to continue, right? Yes, right.

That's correct, sir.

To December 8th. December 8th, please, yes. Do we have a motion for CSA 46?

Correct. We would like two motions, one to continue CSA 46 and then another motion.

Let's deal with CSA 46 first. Motion to approve. Second, or move it.

Is that what you're motioning?

Move it to December 8th.

Through the chair? Yes, sir. So I interpret the motion to be to move the hearing on CSA 46 to December 8th and make the appropriate changes to the board order striking reference to CSA 46 wherever it appears in that board order. Is that the motion? That's correct. Yep. Second.

We have a motion and second. Call for a vote, please. Motion passes five zero. Do we have a motion for the remaining items? Chairman, can I have a quick comment?

Yes, please. Thank you. From Marlin Manor and Spring Creek. So you're looking at 40 percent to doubling and I know it's more than inflationary. So what's the reasoning? I mean, we run out of water. We have trucking in.

I mean, that's... Yeah, and Cheyenne has some numbers here that we can share, but primarily it's utility costs. So it's PG&E costs. I think for Marlin Manor, we saw a 65% increase just over the last... uh 65 percent increase from who in in utility costs from pg e costs yes just in the last from 2021 to 25 26 and so that's the most significant increase um that we've seen in that area but then there's also uh some labor costs that we weaving we've seen in terms of our labor costs to be able to maintain the district so what has changed i mean pg e i mean

I don't know what else more I can say. People that watch this board meeting know how I feel about PG&E and what this board has done to oppose probably all those rate increases, at least the majority of them, but labor costs. What's different?

So the primary thing is during the last, when we had the last labor agreement, there was essentially over four year period, there was an increase in rate in the wages. And so that was reflected directly to the districts in terms of our costs to maintain the infrastructure.

Anything else? besides our agreements? Are we replacing something?

There were some, yeah. And so like Cheyenne, there are also some repairs that have occurred to the infrastructure. And I think Cheyenne can speak to those a little bit more.

Through the Chair, so Marla Manor doesn't produce its own water. It purchased it from CSA 44. And so since it's purchasing it from CSA 44, whenever they have repair costs, Marla Manor pays its proportionate share based on water usage. So they've had repairs to water mains, to wells, et cetera. And so that those repair costs, there's the repair costs itself, and then also the associated staff time with those repairs. So it's partially due to increases in salaries, but also due to more time and effort to provide that water service.

And there's no way we can spread this out, these payments or these costs. I mean, it's insane. I understand it's out of our control, PG&E and whatever it may be, but I mean, it's just, it's crazy. I mean, my God, I mean, I don't know how much more worse than it can get in the state. I mean, just reading yesterday, now they're going to regulate car tires, you know? So God knows how much that's going to, you know, put on the cost of living. And that's, you guys know how I feel the cost of living and it's, I mean, everybody's feeling it. And then you look at stuff like this, I know it's out of our control, but instead of, you know, berating this, when we I'VE SAID THIS BEFORE, TO EDUCATE FOLKS, WHEN WE PUT OUT BILLING, BECAUSE THE FRUSTRATING THING FOR SITTING UP HERE IS NOBODY UP HERE LIKES TO RAISE RATES. I MEAN, I THINK WE'RE PRETTY FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE, I MEAN, AND YOU'VE SEEN IT IN OUR PREVIOUS BOARD MEETINGS OF US SENDING THINGS BACK AND GETTING penny by penny why rates are being increased, how much, and the reason being. But when we see things like this, PG&E, 65%, and the water districts and stuff, I know we have our meetings and stuff with folks. We have, like you were saying, community forums and stuff. But how many people show up to those things, to be honest? The majority of them don't. At least I haven't seen it. Why don't we send something out in the mail when we give people their bill? Yeah, your your rates are going up and it's going up this much because and this is the percentage of why PG&E, like you were saying, since 2021 has went up 65 percent. People need to know why these rates are going up, because people when they look at their bill, They look at local government and, you know, the politicians, local, they're raising our rates and it's not, I mean, we're not doing it, you know, willingly. We're doing it because we're up against the fence because of PG&E. If we don't do it, then we pay the bill and we're subsidizing. Is that something that we can do? And if so, how much, I mean, like some of these, they're not that much, you know, 30 parcels, 37 parcels. Can we send something out? with these bills at least for a certain amount of time?

So can we send something to the committee? Yes, we can share information. We do actually have a website for every single district. Yeah, but I mean, again, how many people look at the website? Sure, where I was going to go with that is that we could send them a notice so that they can, they have that information and then I also have the ability to look at the website if they elect to.

But I want to see it in their bill. I mean, we've done it in the city's before when I was there. If we have something going on, you shove something in their utility bill. So when somebody opens that bill, they see exactly where these fees are coming from.

So yes, we can send something out. Note that for this specific district, they're on an annual service charge that's included in their tax bill, right? So they don't get a monthly bill like you normally get with the city where you get an immediate rate where you get billed monthly. It's just part of their tax bill. But we can send information to them separate of that to kind of provide some information.

When they have that, and well they have an annual bill right i'm trying to get my head around this and i'm sorry to my colleagues here if i'm you know holding this up but do we do they they get an annual i mean i don't have it i mean i have i get my monthly from the city so you're saying they get it annually and it's something you know it's a separate utility bill no it's not so it's like a tax it's part of the it's part of their tax bill so when they get there when they pay their taxes it's included in their tax bill Okay, then, yeah, I mean, that's something that we should be doing. At least, I don't know, the board agrees with me, but anytime these rates are raising and it's beyond our control, like you said, PG&E, 65%, it needs to be in there, man. So we're cool with that? Something we can do?

It's something that we can send to the community.

All right, I'm going to turn it over to Supervisor Ding. I like your tie, Najee, and... I'll turn it over to you, Chairman. Supervisor Dean.

Yes, Supervisor Rickman, fabulous idea. And it's not just that you just said it's it's listed on everything on your property tax bill. Um, including the, I think 17 items on my property tax bill at the restaurant that doubles the property tax and a lot of people would want to know. I'd like to there's no action to take here, but I think it's a great idea to talk to. Uh, Steve best to Laredes about putting. You know, the Pio I'm sure has time to help us work on a notice that can go into people's property tax bills. that kind of explain all this. This is your bill. This is what you're being charged. Here's the increases, and this is why. So anyway, I just want to say thank you for bringing it up, but I think it's something we ought to explore.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else? Just one second. Supervisor Canepa?

Yeah, that's important. And that was the thing on the property tax bills, because we had one in Lincoln Unified School District with here over 62 years old, you get an exemption. But it's really hard because there's so many different tax bills. There's an area on the bottom that you can put text in there. But we looked into it to see how, you know, you get more information out to people. Fact sheet, whether it's a fact sheet to say what you're paying and where it's at. I mean, I agree with that. how you change it for every different area is going to be the challenge. But I think it's important that we do inform people what they're paying, because I mean, bonds and different taxes for different districts are all there. So it's a great idea, but I don't know how you get your hands around all of it because everyone's, you know, different property taxes in different areas, different assessment districts. But I do agree. People need to see where their money is going, because for the folks that don't come out and just get hammered and are not part of the process, it gets frustrating. So I agree with my fellow supervisors.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else? And Chairman, just real quick, if you would. And just to let everybody know, and I believe next year rates are going up again with PG&E. I think that's going to be another proposed rate. So I mean, folks that are tired of this, you know, our rate's going up every single year and need to get involved, need to voice your opinion. And I think people will realize, you know, the hit that everybody's taking from PG&E, if they see it, when they have to write that check and, you know, and we're notifying them, like 65% or, you know, whatever it may be, get involved. You know, talk your representatives up in Sacramento and have them do something about it.

Thank you, sir. Do we have a motion? Move to approve all 12 of them or how are we doing this? All remaining other than 46. Okay.

Make the motion to approve all of them and extending number 46 to CSA 46 to December 8th.

That's been already done. Just the remaining. Okay.

The remaining items I move to approve.

Do we have a second? We have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and second call for work, please Motion passes 5-0 Discussion items First one board discussion to coordinate a homeless forum on September 28 2026 at Robert Cabral Agriculture Center that involves participation from all eight cities within the county. Supervisor Canepa.

Yes. So this started, I forget what day Gina went to, they had a homeless outreach in Manteca and I wasn't able to attend. So then Gina came back and says, hey, We need to do this in the county. I mean, we did it a long time ago and I think United Way ran it. But I mean, just the way that we've been moving and decreasing homelessness in our community. I mean, the point in time counts huge. And it's just about collaboration. So the reason I wanted to have the meeting was that, you know, everyone's doing different practices in different cities. And you know what I mean? We all do different things. And how do we get together to share that? I mean, at the county, I mean, we moved the continuum of care and just the agencies, the human services agency. So Chris Woods, I want to thank, and Don McLeish have taken the COC to the next level and gotten more people involved. THE COORDINATION PART IS WHAT I THINK WE NEED TO HAVE. SO PROBATION, TOO, WE DID SJ CARES AND I WANT TO COMMEND STEVE JACKSON, EMILY HAMMOND AND JAMIE GRANT FOR THEIR LEADERSHIP, TOO, AND HOW WE CHANGED SJ CARES TO WHERE, YOU KNOW, THEY'RE GOING OUT TO THESE HOMELESS FOLKS AND AT FIRST EVERYONE THOUGHT, OH, GREAT, WE'RE GOING TO SEND A GUN AND A BADGE, BUT, I MEAN, THE WORK THAT THEY'RE DOING AND THE TOUCHES THAT THEY'RE HAVING IN THE HOMELESS COMMUNITY IS ABSOLUTELY Amazing. Public Health and our partners there, Dr. Senseri, Renee Senseri, and Dr. Parker, it's been amazing, the communication and, you know, getting everybody on the same page. Behavioral Health, obviously, Fabiera, Genevieve, and Matt Garber have changed that. We moved neighborhood preservation and all of that under human services. And that was, you know, a lot of it is grant based. So I want to commend everybody on that side of it and where we're going and how we're moving that forward. Neighborhood preservation, obviously, Jennifer Spruill. And then the other the other part of it, we did the COC outreach last week and Bob Highfield said, you know what I mean? It's coordination. And I think that's sometimes what we don't have. He was saying how we do outreach and every week they have meetings and the cities and the Caltrans getting together. And how do we do that? How do we get that information out there? And then obviously, you know, the city of Stockton and the challenges that we're having for funding a lot of these, Tina McCarthy and Lana Lozano, I want to thank them. And it's just how do we get the funding for all of these homeless folks? To make a long story short, how do we, you know, they're kicking it up in Lodi. They're kicking it up in Manteca. Tracy's got all the homeless things there. And so the reason for this is we want to have a forum. And I guess the ask, we wanted to have it at the Ag Center. And since we changed rules, we have to pay to use the Ag Center like everybody else. so that's why this came forward to ask possibly for up to fifteen hundred dollars to do that and then the second question and it was for an informational only item and that's why originally it started that way and then the concerns were brought up that if all five of us go that it needs to be a publicly agendized meeting so that was another question that came up so BASICALLY WE'RE HERE TO SEE HOW WE CAN HAVE EVERYBODY FROM ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES THAT ARE WILLING TO COME AND WANT TO PARTICIPATE TO COME AND SHOW THEIR BEST PRACTICES AND HOW THEY'RE DEALING WITH HOMELESSNESS. I THINK WE'RE TAKING STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION OBVIOUSLY WITH JUST OUR COUNTY FOLKS THAT I WANT TO APPLAUD FOR DOING THE WORK AND GETTING OUR POINT IN TIME COUNT NUMBERS DOWN AND GETTING PEOPLE AND PERMANENT HOUSING AND SHORT-TERM HOUSING AND treating people with dignity and respect. And I think we've come a long way and we've done it together. So I just want to have a day where everybody can share so. That's my two cents. So I don't know how, Ed, if we do that, if more people want to come, obviously, if we're all there or how we do that, if it's informational. I mean, I don't know if we're setting policy and procedure on that day, but I mean, it's going to be, you know what I mean? Just people coming and communicating one another and whoever wants to come from the cities. Obviously, we could have questions. I mean, to a certain extent, I was thinking, you know, people want to be involved, write them down and do it that way. So sure.

Through the chair, I'll

gather some information and work with the clerk of the board to uh agendize it if necessary okay and we're shooting for september 28th at the ag center so um that's my my wish thank you sir vice chair thank you mr chairman i think it's a it's a wonderful idea um however

I don't think the you had mentioned so that we can get more grant funding to address the problem or look at it. I think we're both on the same page that the goal is to reduce homelessness. And I if we can play with the date A little bit and we can discuss that Genevieve Valentine and Nicole Gary and I were in Sacramento. Friday at the hosted by the chair of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and we had Doctor Marbet there again from the administration and it would be nice to get a presentation for the public. Uh, on best practices, the tool kit that we just put together, uh, championed by Director Valentine. Um as well. There were some absolutely stunning, surprising numbers that that came out of it. And I think it would give us a different perspective on on where we're going. I think after you hear from a doctor with what does he have, two doctorates, five masters, and he goes through all the stats and at the end of the presentation, he goes, let me simplify it for you folks. The more we spend, the higher the homeless count goes. It was, you know, the number one city in the state of California at reducing homelessness right now, San Francisco. I mean, stunning to hear this. And then to hear the reason for it is... It's a combination of a partnership with law enforcement. If you look at San Francisco and some of these cities, they've turned their law enforcement loose. Homeless have got a choice, go to jail, get treatment, period. So I think it's a fabulous idea. I'd like to work with you on the agenda and see if we might be able to get a guest to address this as well. But I applaud you for bringing this forward.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Gardea. I agree with my colleagues. I think it's a good opportunity for training and get that information out. My only suggestion is there or question would be is. I feel like this is the opportunity for the county to get some training and the information and the idea that we got to rent our own. I understand that we have a policy, but is there like anything in the policy that allows us to make exemptions for county sponsored Education pieces.

Through the chair. I don't think our AG commissioner is here, but that is our policy. I mean, to bring any exception, it would have to probably be an item that comes before the board. To approve an exemption, but all that were treated the same as all of the departments. Now it's a different rate for For others using it. I understand. What you're saying, there are other areas or rooms in even our building. I don't know how many people you're looking for, but that's something else that we could look in this building, how many we can accommodate and what the plan is. I would need to get more details of what the plan is, how many people, and we could see if there's other, we have other buildings that maybe we can look at at no cost.

That was my only suggestion, see if there's any other opportunities to come up with a compromise.

And through the Chair, I just want to point out the $1,500 is not the cost to rent the Ag Center. I think the cost to rent the Ag Center is maybe $30 to $50 per room. The additional amount is for refreshments, I believe, correct, Supervisor Campbell?

It was up to that amount. I mean, the reason, sorry, are you finished? Can I speak? We were just thinking for parking, I mean, and I love having stuff down here, but people and meters and things like that, and so it was kind of central to the whole area is why we kind of chose that.

So if I may, through the chair, it sounds like the costs are much less.

Yeah, it was up to, so that was the ask, I mean, so.

But to answer Supervisor Gardea, it's not for the rent of the facility so much.

Yeah, I don't know specifics. We could take the money out of the Dropbox money.

Thank you. And that was the thing. I mean, I was willing to do it out of discretionary funds if need be. I mean, that was the thing. So then Rochelle had mentioned that we could do it out of the supervisor's budget. So that's why there's an ask for that up to, and it won't be that much money, but just to cover anything that was incidentally incurred. So thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Chairman. It's being coordinated with the city of Manteca. Are they putting up any money or is it just us?

That was the thing that it was that they they hosted one. So that's why we thought we would bring everybody together. So it was just us and our idea. So she had the format set up for what they did. So we were just asking them for assistance and how to do it and then asking them what their best practices. So the invitation will be going out to offer everybody else the same opportunity to speak. So it was basically my doing.

And I had the same concern as Supervisor Gardea, but it sounds like that's a moot point. You know, because I mean, hey, we don't want to charge anybody or not charge anybody pay 30 bucks, I guess. I mean, we have this we're sitting in a building right now in this chamber that, you know, is a place that we can have it. Only concern I do have is that it's coming out of our supervisor clerk of the board budget. I mean, we don't have tons of money in that budget. And I mean, that's used when we go to Washington, D.C. and our advocacy trips and so on. And I just don't want to see this being another avenue for funding in which hasn't been traditionally used for things like this. And again, because this is one of the smallest budgets that we have. And so I can see it being, cause since I've been here, I don't, I don't recall. And I could, you know, I don't recall us dipping into our supervisor budget for things like that. I mean, I think it's a, um, a good, uh, you know, touch base with people. And I think people would love to hear from Genevieve and all the great things that she's doing and, you know, supervisor being in a 16 bed count that he's been having to advocating for, for NACO, but just more cautionary that remember, we only have a limited amount of funds.

Is there the ability to change it, though, and take it out of my district funds? Is that a doable expense? I mean, obviously, it's not that much. And we have increased that. And I am mindful of that because it is important for us to do advocacy. So every dollar that we do have in that, I understand.

No, it's just more of a I'm just putting out there more of a caution because we have been over budget before in this category.

and you know and since times are tight and you know we have cut funding in certain um areas you know this isn't going to be an avenue when we pull funds from for other things yeah i know this was the clerk's recommendation so i just was going with that but if there's an issue then i i i would be glad to bring it back and take it out of my district funds um so either way whatever whatever works the best and keeps peace

At the end of the day, like I said, it's $1,500. They're not going to bankrupt us by any means. But again, we just have to be, every little bit helps.

And I do want to clarify the recommendation to use board funding is simply because this was going to be a board hosted forum or a district two hosted forum but I think historically and to Rickman's point typically the board will direct a department to go do something like this because they see a need for it in the county and but usually a department that's already been assigned homelessness of some sort but I realize how this came about if it's going to be a district two item it then the board has to pay for it somehow BUT AGAIN, THAT MONEY WAS FOR REFRESHMENTS. LARGELY AS MY UNDERSTANDING, IF THIS BECOMES A PUBLIC MEETING THAT'S A SPECIAL MEETING, MAY WANT TO RECONSIDER THE REFRESHMENTS AND IT MAY ONLY END UP BEING A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING IT.

NEW SPEAKER ANYBODY FROM PUBLIC WANT TO SPEAK ON THIS ITEM? If you are participating remotely, please raise your hand by pressing star 5. Do we have anyone?

Nope.

Nope. Do we have a motion?

Motion to what?

For approval possibly to $1,500 or whatever the rental cost for the Ag Center and refreshments and if there's an issue or I can do it out of my discretionary funds, however you want to do it. Should we just do that now? AMENDED TO SAY THAT I WILL PAY OUT OF MY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS.

SO THE MOTION WOULD BE TO MOVE FORWARD WITH PLANNING THIS HOMELESS FORUM TO BE PAID FOR OUT OF YOUR DISCRETIONARY FUNDS. WOULD THAT BE THE MOTION? THAT WOULD BE PERFECT. THANK YOU.

THAT'S YOUR MOTION?

YES, SIR. THAT WAY THE SECOND.

WE HAVE A MOTION AND SECOND CALL FOR VOTE, PLEASE. Motion passes 5-0. Discussion item number two, approve the use of the state mandated drop box number for all elections following the 2026 general election.

No. What's your deal? Yeah, I'm sorry. I got two conversations. I'm a man. I can only do one thing at a time. Thank you. Chairman, so I made a mistake, and I submitted this for the agenda meeting ahead of time. It was supposed to be for the 18th. However, we have individuals here, I'm sure, in the audience that want to address it. Our register of voters is out of town this week, so we're going to move the action portion Two weeks from now, but but I thought this actually gives us a good time to get input from from the board, along with public comment. So if there's other data that you would like to see the register of voters bring forward in two weeks, we can do that. One of the problems we've got right now, as I see it, is we're spending dollars Even the 16 boxes, it's all the unfunded state mandates, what have you. But I really want to look at the access boxes. The state requires 16. We've got, what, 27 of them, something like that. And they're disproportionately put. I think I have six boxes in mine, eight. I have eight. I think Supervisor Gardea's got two. I mean, it just kind of, we've got some that are 50 feet from a post office box. There's questions about security cameras and stuff. SO FORTH. ANYWAY, I'D KIND OF LIKE TO HEAR FROM MY FELLOW BOARD MEMBERS ON THIS.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, SIR. ANYBODY ELSE?

NEW SPEAKER WE'LL KNOW THROUGH THE CHAIR. NEW SPEAKER YES. NEW SPEAKER I AGREE AND I THINK THAT WAS THE HARD PART IS PAYING ALL THE MONEY TO AND I'M TOTALLY FOR IT BECAUSE You know, being able to have the information and the data and the visibility when somebody does questions important, but I think also investing in those the other boxes that you know what I mean have it on board and it knows what it's taking and I think that would be a huge I would like to see that program obviously and how do we do it, but I mean like you're saying. And I didn't mean to dish you last time that you were podunk or anything like that in your district without mail. But I mean, that's the important part. And I say the same thing because over where I live behind Lincoln Center, there's a mailbox and I mean, there's no security there. And there was always the question about, you know, you need to have accessibility and I get it so that people have access to it. But it's kind of redundant when you do have a mailbox because I think it's a felony either way. If you have a post, you know, it's in a mailbox or if it's in one of our election boxes. So I think it's important that we look at it. You know what I mean? I don't know that the video is the most cost effective way of doing it. because that's a lot of time. So we could have the boxes where everything that's put in it, it reads it as it does it. I mean, that makes more sense. instead of continually paying for video cameras when you could possibly buy a box that's way more secure and knows what's being put in it when it's being put in. So I thought that was a cool idea. I thought we could save the money from the video and pay for half of the boxes. So number of boxes, I agree with Vice Chair Ding. The data for how many are put in what, because the cost of it, and I saw some of the cost per extra boxes and it does get up there. So however we can streamline things and have people be safe and the security of San Joaquin County voting is important to me. But like you said, input, data and accountability, I think as a few things that I always pray for in our community, data, accountability and outcomes. And I think people respect that. And if you give them the numbers, why we're doing it and how we're doing it, it goes a long way. So thank you. Thank you, sir.

Supervisor Gaudi. So we had this discussion or similar discussion last board meeting, and we from my understanding, we pretty much already made the decision that there was going to be any changes between the next midterm election. So no changes between now and November. And I agree. I really want to see the data and the method. the data method, how it's driven. And I think meeting or deciding on this before our elections are certified, I think later data like December 8th would be better suited that we could have the current data to kind of look at and compare it to the past data so that we can, we'll have time to look at if we're going to make changes and we would have the opportunity to announce if we're going to change the locations of our ballot boxes. You know, I like the idea of technology. We did hear from our voter register that that these new ballot boxes are not even vetted yet and they haven't been used or they're being used this election, I think, in Sac County. So I would I would have a little bit of reservations and just to see what happens there first before we buy into another sales pitch of another election box. We already have boxes. I just think personally, you know, I don't I don't know the number of the amount of ballot boxes that are in my district, but I think it's just taking a common sense approach of, you know, where these ballot boxes are located. And we have time between, you know, the time after our December, I think our December 8th meeting, I believe our election will be certified. I would recommend after sometime after that date. And I also, too, want to hear from the public of what some of their concerns are and what some of the comments from the public before moving forward with this.

Thank you, sir. Vice Chair Deane.

So we've we've. We've gone off on a few different areas that What I'm trying to do here to start. Doesn't address. You know, the register of voters have just gotten a new grant and she's trying to figure out how to spend this money. And maybe we use this money to buy the boxes rather than lease them. You've got, you know, efforts on the federal side to streamline whether they're even going to be relevant anymore or not. I was really just trying to narrow this down to one thing, and that is. The state requires us to have 16, and unfortunately, we or fortunately, whatever position you take, we have to do that. I'm addressing the other 11 that we're paying out of general funds to the tune of over a million dollars that is not even required. And if you look at some of these drop boxes in the middle of a winery, um, You know when we can take a look at the data, but I I think My perception is with you know hundreds of mailboxes and ballots and stuff Why are we spending this money on on? Extra boxes that we're not getting any help from the state and that's what I wanted the data on Because the earlier we make that decision We're only going to do 16. We're not going to do 27 It does affect the budget process and how the register of voters is going to be spending this money and applying for grants. And I thought setting that the sense of the board on that early would would really help. And establishing how the rest of the money, you know, is going to be spent security cameras or where we get security cameras after the election for twenty seven or 16, are we everything else. So it really is not addressing. The cameras, where they're all going to be placed, we can talk about that as well, too. But it's just looking forward, doing some pre-planning. So we know going into the next election cycle, we're only going to do what the state's given us money for.

Thanks, sir. Anybody else? Anybody from public? Carla Haney.

Good morning, everybody. I don't usually come up here without any paper, but I think I know this subject pretty well. So state mandates for every 30,000 registered voters, you have to have one drop box. So I'm going to just push back a little bit. Right now we're at 410. That's 13.66 boxes, okay? Not saying because, you know, 2028, I'm sure we'll go up from there. So... When we first started talking about the COVID boxes, we went into the Register of Voters office to discuss that as per request. And they had a map of the county. And they said where they were going to put the drop boxes. And it's like, okay, so where are the post offices? Where are the mailboxes? And they weren't on the map. Now, it seems to me if you're logically going to put the drop boxes in the right place, you would have the mailboxes and the post office boxes on there. And that was not done. So to the point, as much as I hate drop boxes because, again, it was a COVID-mandated program, COVID's gone, guys, and so are the vote-by-mail. And we spend a million dollars each election on printing those vote-by-mail ballots. I hope you realize that. But if we're not going to push against the state, we need to go down to what is the mandate. People have gotten lazy. I don't want to have to walk an extra five feet. Come on, people, stop it. And that's why we push vote by mail. So Dropbox's participation in the primary actually dropped down. And talking about if we went with the ones that they're going to test in Sacramento County, to get, and I forget how many it was, it's a half a million dollars for this county to do those new boxes that read the ballots, or read the envelope and read the face. It's not cheap. So the drop boxes we have right now are the second phase. so we're going to go into a third phase and you want to do 27 that doesn't make any sense we're just throwing money away over and over and maybe we look at that we could retrofit what we have with the mandated number of 14 or 15 or 16 or whatever it is. So again, I hate both the drop boxes and the vote by mail because it needs to go back to voting in person, but this is a good way to start and then maybe money would free up for other departments. Thank you.

Anybody else?

I know I'm going to be a person that's going to be thinking of someone who's starting to kick a hand here, but paying out more than what we needed, why were these extra ones ordered in the first place? Is somebody getting a kickback here? Was there some underhanded work going here? Why is these agencies doing stuff that they don't need to do, putting this money out that's not their money, it's our taxpayer money that we put to take care of the needs that we have in this county? Paul here just took money out of his general fund to pay for something that we'd rather have that extra million dollars put into something that's paying for something for the county rather than giving some company extra money. And if someone in this agencies are sitting here and ordering extra materials and putting extra reliability on the county that it doesn't need, we need to know why they're ordering extras. You know, if they don't mark it up, the company doesn't intend bulk to get better deal. When you order 10, then you order five, you order 10. That's one thing. But when you're talking about ordering 11 extras, something smells fishy to me. And that is the waste that is causing problems. If we have something we have to do, we do what we have to do. We don't necessarily do what we want to do, especially when it's somebody else's money and somebody else gonna be responsible for that decision. Whoever made the decision to order those extra 11, should be getting questioned at this point. And when it goes to like, we're spending a half million dollars to do the paper ballots, maybe we need to put out there and say, hey, if you don't, if you start having people come in, mail a little flyer, your ballots will be there and have them come pick them up because over half the ballots that you send out aren't used. That's waste, it's also environmentally unsound to just destroy, to make paper and use it for nothing. There's other ways to handle these things where we still meet the requirements without being a glutton and a waste not only financially but also materialistically.

Anybody else from public?

Thank you for this conversation. We really do appreciate all the thoughtfulness that's been given to this issue. um i did want to go back to the common sense that that supervisor gardia talked about this will be our third set of boxes um keep in mind every time we've fought against them but right now they had to pour concrete slabs to put these boxes in so it will be i do hope that you take the time to really thoughtfully consider the design the implementation and how they're put in Another thing I wanted to talk about was the placement of the boxes. I strongly believe that they should be put inside government buildings because taxpayers are already paying for them. And they do not have to be open for 24 hours. Only one box has to be open for 24 hours, and that can be the one that is located here at the county office. So they can be put inside of police stations, fire stations, things like that. When they, their first set of boxes, they were inside businesses and they were closed during weekends. Even the one at Viaggio, it was inside the building. So it was closed Monday, Tuesday. It can be closed, that's fine. They just list it on there. So once again, in your careful consideration, I think that the boxes should be smaller like they were before and placed inside government buildings that we're already paying for. IT'S NOT ONLY THE MONEY THAT FOR IT'S NOT ONLY THE MONEY THAT FOR THE ACTUAL SECURITY CAMERAS BUT THE ACTUAL SECURITY CAMERAS BUT THE STAFF HAS TO GO OUT EVERY DAY TO STAFF HAS TO GO OUT EVERY DAY TO COLLECT THE BALLOTS FROM THESE COLLECT THE BALLOTS FROM THESE BOXES. BOXES. THESE BOXES ARE FROM THE FURTHEST THESE BOXES ARE FROM THE FURTHEST POINTS AWAY. POINTS AWAY. THEY'RE LOCATED 50 MILES APART. THEY'RE LOCATED 50 MILES APART. SO IT IS QUITE A LOT TO PAY STAFF SO IT IS QUITE A LOT TO PAY STAFF ALSO TO GO AROUND TO ALSO TO GO AROUND TO ADDITIONAL BOXES. ADDITIONAL BOXES. AND ONCE AGAIN THE STATE AND ONCE AGAIN I WOULD REQUEST THAT THAT BE PUT IN WRITING AS TO HOW MANY WE ACTUALLY NEED. THANK YOU.

ANYBODY ELSE? DO WE HAVE ANYONE REMOTELY?

NO, WE DO NOT.

A age before beauty. Good.

Thank you. I mean, so Delta College is kind of one of the ones that we're looking at. Right. And I mean, I don't know how many students know that the post office is right there on Robin Hood. So, I mean, those are the things, you know, do you want civic engagement? So, I mean, there's kind of that question. I think we're going to add it. I don't know if it's there yet. or if it's going there. So I don't know. I don't know if the data from what Supervisor Gardea is talking about helps that because like that would be one of those they wanted at Delta College civic engagement and getting young folks to vote is what I'm all for. But I mean, also, there is a post office right there. I mean, on the perimeter, I mean, you get the stone's throw away. So those things, I think, have to be we have to be mindful of. So I mean, it might be SIX FOURTEEN OR THIRTEEN AND A HALF ROUND UP TO FOURTEEN AND THEN FIGURE OUT YOU KNOW WHICH ONES ARE ARE A WASTE OF MONEY I THINK IT'S PRETTY PRETTY MUCH BASIC SENSE RIGHT SO THAT'S MY TWO SENDS THANK YOU SIR UH SUPERVISOR DICKMAN THANK YOU CHAIRMAN PAUL'S MAKING ME LAUGH UM YEAH I AGREE I MEAN UH SUPERVISOR GRADIER

stated, you know, common sense. And it's something that we need to look at. I mean, at the end of the day, the state and correct me if I'm wrong, gives us money to run these elections, you know, when it's time to run elections. And, you know, we get paid, reimbursed, I guess you could say, or paid whatever, which way you want to say it for a certain amount of drop boxes. And, you know, I'm not going to get into it too much, but, you know, we've for the last year or two, we've talked about our fiscal impact coming from the state and the feds and the effect it has on the counties. Counties are expected to take over more programs that are created by the state where it's state responsibility. So that means more money coming out of our general fund and services that we have, you know, we provide here in San Joaquin County, you know, cuts have to come somewhere. I mean, we don't have unlimited, we're not in the federal government. We can't just print money. So, YOU KNOW, THE ECONOMICS SIDE IS SOMETHING THAT WE NEED TO LOOK AT. AND, YOU KNOW, FOR SOME REASON, CAMERAS CAME BACK IN THE CONVERSATION, WHICH ISN'T REALLY ABOUT, BUT THEY'RE CONNECTED. YOU KNOW, FOR ME, AND WE DISCUSSED IT TWO WEEKS AGO OR TWO BOARD MEETINGS AGO OR LAST BOARD MEETING, WHATEVER IT WAS. FOR ME, IF WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A drop box we have to have cameras on that for deterrence and of course that's just more funding that's going to be coming out of our our pockets if we go over what the state mandates thank you chairman thank you sir supervisor

I appreciate the common sense approach to this, and regardless if you agree or disagree with mail-in ballots, I mean, our president voted in his Florida election via mail. So there are values to voting by mail. I just want to make sure that, you know, that when we do make a decision on where these if we're going to remove boxes or adjust boxes or or go with a new type of box, that we're not rushing into this so that we're not changing these boxes every election. I think by rushing that decision, I feel like we should the staff from the voter the voter registrar's office. We should give them direction to to provide us with the data and give us time and not rush it to come up with our, you know, bring up our concerns. And, you know, I'd like to know a little bit more about what's in my district and what their locations are. And that's why I really feel that, you know, after the election is certified, December 8th meeting would be a a good time to discuss this because i feel like between now and the next election is we have time and that's that's just how i feel about it but i i think this is something we shouldn't rush into that we should do our due diligence not to try to waste money save money but also make sure that we're addressing everybody's concerns supervisor dean yeah if i could

And earned a colloquy here with my my fellow supervisor. Um, I think I hear Pretty much unanimous consent that we shouldn't be spending Any more than we're required. And that we're all in agreement. We should do 16. Boxes. I'm also hearing Supervisor Guardia. You saying we shouldn't rush into a decision on where we're placing all these boxes until we have Adequate data. So If if there was a motion, I guess what I'm I'm asking is if there's a motion on the table. That we're only going to do the state mandated number of drop boxes, which would give the register of voters some guidelines to create that data and then come back to us on the December 8th. Meeting so we can discuss the placement of the boxes and so forth that would actually give her a target to so she knows what she's looking for. Would that be something that's acceptable to you?

I personally would like to see the data first before I say the amount. Obviously, I feel like we're all on the same page of being fiscally smart. If the data backs that up, then I support that 100%. But I don't necessarily think that right now is the time to put a number on it. Fair enough.

Anybody else? Do we have a motion?

Um, the motion would be to direct the register of voters to bring forth. And I think we have most of the data from her already.

Um, yes, if I may, through the chair, I believe this supervisor, Gardea was looking for the election first to happen the general election in November. So we don't have any of that data yet.

correct okay okay but i but i also here's my concern too is you got a grant sitting i don't want her spending any money on extra boxes security cameras anything else for 17 or for extra i mean you got to remember that you know budgets you start spending money for things you need the year after and so forth and that was my main concern was um not this this next election but what we're spending now for future elections.

And I believe I believe that we would have the opportunity to give direction and where that grants, you know, obviously she could she could come back to us with some ideas and we can give direction at a future date, because my belief is that that budget is already set for November. So there's really I don't see any changes to the till after the next election.

Fair enough. So motion to direct the register of voters to bring back data and get input from other board members for the December 8th meeting. So we can compare elections data and we can move all the boxes into Supervisor Guardia's district. Around his house. The data support with lights and security cameras.

DO WE HAVE A SECOND? JUST TO MAKE SURE I UNDERSTAND THE MOTION, I'M GOING TO INTERPRET THAT MOTION TO BE THAT THIS DISCUSSION BE CONTINUED TO THE DECEMBER 8TH BOARD MEETING AND DIRECTION TO THE REGISTER OF VOTERS COME BACK WITH DATA AT WHICH POINT IN TIME THE BOARD MAY TAKE SUBSTANTIVE ACTION WITH RESPECT TO THE ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN RAISED IN THIS DISCUSSION.

Is that the motion? That's the motion.

Second.

We have a motion and second. Call for a vote, please. Motion passes 5-0.

You know, since you're a government employee, we could put the box in your house with security cameras.

I'd have to get through my dog first. That's probably not going to happen.

STAFF IS REQUESTING THAT WE DISCUSS ITEM DISCUSSION ITEM NUMBER FOUR BEFORE ITEM NUMBER THREE. NUMBER IS THAT OKAY WITH BOARD? SANDY?

YES IF THAT'S OKAY THROUGH THE CHAIR THAT'S OKAY WITH THE BOARD WE'LL HAVE THE PARTS GSD EXCEPT OUTSIDE COUNCIL AT 1130 NO OKAY IS THAT OKAY SUPERVISOR RICKMAN?

Can we, are you okay with that, Vice Chair? Vice Chair? Number four before number three? How about my colleagues on the right?

Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Accept an oral presentation regarding the San Joaquin County 10-year park system plan update.

Vice Chair, members of the board, county administrator, county council and clerk of the board, Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on the San Joaquin County Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Today's briefing is an important milestone in the planning process and will give you a snapshot of where we are, what we have learned so far, and where the plan is headed. Over the course of this effort, the project team has been looking at the county's parks and recreation system from several perspectives, from the physical inventory and accessibility of parks, to community needs and expectations, to operations, staffing, and financial considerations. We have also taken a look at the future of the Mickey Grove Zoo and how it can continue to serve San Joaquin County in a changing recreation and conservation landscape. The work presented today brings these pieces together. We will begin with a brief overview of the project. and the county's existing park system, followed by key findings from our inventory analysis and community engagement. We will then share preliminary opportunities related to the zoo and the county's operations and financial framework. Our goal today is not to present a finished plan, but to provide the board with an understanding of what we are hearing and learning at this stage, and to receive your questions and direction as we move forward toward the next phase of the master plan. With that, I'll turn it over to the project team to walk through the progress to date.

Good morning, Chair of the Board, Board members, Madam CAO, County Council, Clerk of the Board, Asha Galal, Parks Administrator, Um, we started the master plan or park system plan back in November. Uh, we have spent a lot of time reviewing our physical system, our operations, and hearing from the public. I'd like to introduce our principal from our consultant team, Anna Laybourne, and she is going to take it away.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for having us for this progress update. Our team is leading the effort and I'll have those from the zoo solutions join me in a little bit to present later on and then at the end we have someone coming on an audio from City Gate Associates that's providing the operations and look at the funding assessment that was part of this effort. So our presentation is going to focus as I said on the initial findings from the inventory analysis and community engagement efforts that will inform this plan creation. The planning process is more than halfway through complete representing a great deal of information that's now available regarding technical evaluations of your system and community input received. You'll likely notice that this presentation our whole team is really holding back trying not to give too far out into the recommendations for changes as that content will be a part of a draft plan scheduled at the end of this year that we will present at that time for your review. So I want to start off with what the purpose is of a park system plan is to guide the next 10 years, so this long term outlook about enhancing maintaining and adding to the county's parks open spaces, the recreational opportunities and also the zoo. The plan is informed by community needs, as well as data about our analysis that is used to direct the county's decision making into the future. I'll share some of the data that we've collected to inform this plan, first starting with what's essential to understand is about the people that the parks serve. There are 814,000 residents roughly that reside within this county, and the plan is also addressing the increases in population that are projected over the next 10 years. The diversity of your residents equate to a wide range of recreational needs and trends. We've created a comprehensive inventory of your 23 parks and open space properties that total 960 acres for a detailed evaluation of your offerings, their conditions, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Park system plans include level of service measurements to define current park provision rates and how it can be used for a tool to establish quantitative goals for the future provision. Level of service measurements are tailored to the scale of your large county with multiple data inputs telling a story about the amount, quality, and accessibility of parkland and recreation opportunities relative to the population demand. Benchmarking comparisons take four similar California counties is another point of input. This presentation has a sprinkling of benchmark data backed up by detailed reports analyzing these five categories on the right of the slide at the slide. Park acreage per population is a very typical level of service measurement in park plans to identify if you have enough developed parkland. San Joaquin currently provides 0.81 acres per population. With the rate of population growth, we project by 2035 the need for additional nearly 50 acres of developed parks just to maintain that current rate of park provision. San Joaquin County's rates are far below all of the other benchmark counties in park acres per 1,000 residents. San Islas County has both the greatest number of parks at 31 and the greatest rate of acres per people with a ratio of 31.6 compared to San Joaquin's 0.81. Closest to San Joaquin County's rate is Fresno County with 16 parks and a ratio of 1.12 parks per 1,000 people. Also of note, these other counties all have considerable federal and state lands that contribute to residents' outdoor experiences at a rate far greater than what San Joaquin currently has. Evaluating park accessibility shows that your destination parks, the regional parks, sports parks, and water destination parks are well located and distributed fairly evenly throughout the county. Nearly all of residential homes are located within a 30-minute drive of county destination parks, as this map is showing. Our team of experts have evaluated the conditions of your parks and their structures. This chart shows that none of your park properties are rated as excellent, perfect condition. 10% are rated as good condition, 55% rate as fair, and 35% as poor condition. This map points out that the community and neighborhood scale parks along with regional sports complex were evaluated to be in the worst condition of the parks. The need for maintenance, replacement, and improvement to existing parks was a common sentiment in the community survey that I'll share in a moment. Community and stakeholders have been successfully engaged through focus group discussions as well as a countywide survey that received 525 responses. The public open house meetings last night and one tonight are also adding to that view of people's preferences for parks. This represents a broad and representative input has been really enlightening to the needs assessment. The survey results provide new insight into how residents from all parts of the county want to enjoy San Joaquin Parks, the issues that matter to them, what would encourage them to visit parks more, the opportunities and priorities for the future, and preferred funding approaches. The most common reasons survey respondents choose to visit your parks is to enjoy nature, gather with family and friends, and to attend events. Trails within parks and play spaces are also top attractions. The most common issues that cause people not to use the parks more are a lack of restrooms, insufficient maintenance, heat and a lack of shade, lack of sense of safety in parks or in traveling to them. We also understand people's priorities for future investments from the survey. They see essential purposes of county parks for natural resources preservation, places to be outdoors in nature, providing places to play, and parks contributing to being a great place to live and work. Maintaining and improving existing parks and recreation facilities before pursuing major expansion projects was rated as essential or very important to 87% of the respondents. This brief overview of the analysis and community input findings concludes with a preview of the draft plan vision statement that guides the creation of what we'll present in a future presentation regarding strategies, investment priorities, and action steps. And with that, I'll have the folks from Zoo Solutions present about Mickey Grove Zoo.

Thank you for having me, esteemed Council. Jay Tacey with Zoo Solutions. Our portion of the project has specifically been the master planning of the Mickey Grove Zoo. In doing so, we have really looked through four lenses at the Mickey Grove Zoo, the first one being animal welfare, second one being guest experience, third one being operational efficiency, and number four, financial feasibility.

One second, please. There's a question.

Yeah, I don't mean to cut you off. I just want to get back to the first part of the presentation. So when you when you and one of the slides, I want to say page three or four was a pie chart is, you know, poor, good and fair. Do you have those like district specific?

We can. Yeah, we know the locations that map shows and we can break it down by district. And there's a report that shows a lot more about what those conditions were. how we rated them and what the structures within those properties, their conditions and their life cycle.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Sorry about that.

Quite all right. So we've been looking at the Mickey Grove Zoo Master Plan through these four lenses that I described earlier. First one being animal welfare. And whenever you start talking about animal welfare, you automatically lump in the conservation perspective of this. The good news is that we've got a really healthy baseline. The animals look well, well cared for, but we do have some work to do in this arena as well. We've got a missing institutional collection plant. And I should go back to say that everything that we're doing is to prepare the zoo for future accreditation as well. So that's one of the focus points of our mission here. our lens to the guest experience. And whenever we talk about guest experience, we also start talking about the educational component of it. That's so critical to the mission of the zoo itself. Again, we've got a healthy baseline. We've got a newly launched website, some newly integrated social media stuff that's really been getting a little bit of a foothold here for us. There is a little bit of attention necessary in this arena as well. We've got a severe lack of food and concessions and some things that have been called out in some of the surveys by the guest component. operational efficiency being the third lens. And in this one, we focused a lot on safety as well. So again, the staff has demonstrated an immense commitment to the animals and to the park and zoo itself. However, we did notice some shortfalls that we've been working to shore up for them as well. We've had some missing critical policies. All of those things have been well on their way to being mitigated at this point. Financial feasibility, this ties in directly to the master plan itself. We are looking to get back to an independent line item for the zoo budget. We think that'll provide a lot of advantages. The current projects have been a bit disconnected from the previous master plan. So the master plan that we are working on is going to create a cohesive guideline to get all of those things in line and in unison. And then we are looking to hopefully increase some of the funding through some revenue generating programs as well.

This is to discuss some of the feedback that we've gotten from stakeholders, specifically from the survey that was given out to the public. The first question that we had asked was why don't you come to the zoo more? And the number one answer was the zoo feels outdated. So to understand what outdated means in the zoo setting, this is the modern zoo paradigm where it goes from a passive viewing to active engagement, opportunities for people to learn in tactile ways, whether that is potentially things like petting zoos or potential animal feeding opportunities, behind the scenes tours, things like that, that increase that guest experience and that satisfaction. going from a quantity to a quality of habitat. That means we're not just trying to put as many animals as we can. We're not just trying to protect those animals, but we're trying to make sure that they have enriching lives through the environment that we're putting them in, that their exhibits foster their natural habits and those habits are hopefully on display for the public to be able to learn and to connect with nature and feel like they have more of a conservation mindset after they leave. Zoos, typically, the old zoo was the kid-only destination. We've seen more and more in the last couple decades that that is not the case, that it's not just families, but young adults, adults, the elderly visiting those places and they've become a multi-generational event hub, a place for communities to come together. And then limited vending and concession that the modern zoo has a opportunity to become a culinary experience with food trucks or special events, partnerships with local wineries, things like that that have really taken place in the modern zoo setting. This was some of the question from the question of what would you like to see at the zoo? These were the top responses was the petting zoo, larger habitats for the existing animals and animal feeding opportunities. As we said, that kind of feeds into that modern zoo paradigm of it feeling outdated and becoming more actively engaging and modernized, if you will. And then finally, as we said, expanding the audience. So the traditional zoo goer is not just the family and the child and everything like that, but it is become a multi-generational hub. And that is echoed in what the community is telling us that 39% desire those seasonal events that become a hub for those special events. And 34% said they desired those adult specific events, you know, wine walks or brew at the zoos that are happening at modern institutions.

Okay. With that, we'll have Julie speak about the park system overall operations management and financial background.

Oh, she's on audio. She is online and she does have her mic unmuted. Okay.

And Julie, if you're on, we'll have you speak to these next slides. She's with the CityGate Associates.

She is still on and her mic is unmuted as I can see it, but I am not hearing her. Okay.

the speakers. Okay, she said that there's a delay of about 10 seconds, but I would expect by now to work. I'll pull up her speaking points and deliver it if we can't get her through here. Just keep things moving. OK. Identified as a dedicated workforce for employees with significant and valuable institutional system knowledge and desires to improve facilities is one of the successes that we see here.

If I could just interrupt real quick. Can we ask Julie to please try again? OK. Thank you.

Julie, is your audio coming through now?

If you want, we can ask Julie to please try rejoining the meeting.

OK. And I think if you want, I can also, I have her speaking points I can share if we need to. may take a few minutes to resolve. However, you guys want to proceed. Okay, I'll just proceed presenting the slides. Thank you for accommodating. So some of the first slide here we're sharing some of the successes of findings from city gates evaluation about the various opportunities they saw. One was that you have a dedicated workforce with employees with significant and valuable institutional system knowledge and desires to improve facilities throughout your park system. The findings from the operational staffing show that facilities are in deteriorated condition. Those are the structures and buildings and their need of upgrades. Many of the work practices are more reactionary due to inefficient manual work systems and an organizational structure that doesn't support that preventative maintenance actions take place. This slide is showing, if you go to the next, the staffing levels have steadily declined over the last 35 years, showing a significant drop since the 1990s to where you are now with your current level of staffing for the parks, despite the fact that your system has grown. Go to the next. We benchmarked the county spending per capita in the middle as what CityGate did here. And so you're right in the middle of all of those benchmark communities I shared earlier of spending per capita. Also the county's full-time equivalent for staffing is shown here with 10K residents in the middle here for San Joaquin County. Also reviewing the division's financial status, cost recovery is low compared to other comparable agencies. The financial system is inadequate right now to meet the reservation system needs, which results in less efficient manual processes being used. So the opportunities we see here on this next slide is that evaluating and establishing a policy for level of service for maintenance and operations would be very useful. Investing in additional staffing and contract services to match the desired level of service and implementing automated maintenance management systems to improve financial controls and internal technical systems with a commitment to reinvestment in capital funding to address deteriorated facilities. So that concludes the presentation slides we've prepared for you all and are interested in your questions or comments.

Questions or comments, Board? Supervisor Canepa?

So, thank you, Chair. One of the questions, it doesn't include the city parks in the county, correct?

Correct. We are only looking at the, well, I should say it is only the county managed and owned parks that we are looking at. The city's parks are their own plans.

Okay, so then as part of this plan, I mean, obviously we talked about the sports complex out of the soccer facility, the, you know, people needing more that that that's coming into consideration then that'll be presented the sports complex is included because they've been wanting bmx and things like that so those are things that are on the docket that you'll present coming forward yes the county the county parks plan will include a few at the the of your sports complex yeah because i mean that's the thing people you know the negativity that comes out of the zoo i mean and those things that but i like you said you always went to marine world to feed the lorikeets and you crawled under and saw the groundhogs or whatever those little gerbil looking things were but i mean right it's that's the interactive part of it and that'll be coming forward too as a recommendation we will have strategies within this plan for that long-term 10-year outlook of improvements and changes for all of those properties okay and then so when you show some of those slides the return on investment i mean so is that is that it and i think The accreditation process, obviously, a lot of people bought. Back in the day, I bought a Mickey's Grove Zoo pass because you got reciprocal, right? Being able to go to other places is that when we started seeing the drop off when the accreditation went away. And, you know, I mean, so then you could go to Oakland or you can go to San Francisco Zoo and get a discounted price. And it was but I mean, I was just at the Oakland Zoo and I saw that stuff. You know, they have a new tram up there where there's food and new exhibits. I mean, and it's exciting and new. I mean.

I'll have Jay speak specifically to the zoo financial component, as that was independently looked at from the system as a whole.

Okay, thank you. Yes, I know as an AZA member, you do get discounts to go to other AZA institutions. However, I'm not sure that general public coming to an AZA institution would automatically get some sort of discount to go to another zoo, if that was the question.

No, I was just saying with the memberships. I mean, so that's why you bought a zoo membership at Mickey's Grove, because then, you know what I mean,

you know nice for the family to go to other locations i see yeah that's something that could be discussed in the future plan for sure thank you thank you chairman uh i don't know if you're the correct person to ask this question too but you know looking at the benchmark comparison with the other cities or excuse me the other counties and the acreage of park provided by state and feds You know, we're the, God, we're low, low, very low, low, low. I mean, 258, the next lowest at 1,828. How do we rectify that? I mean, is there a process? I mean, how do we go out about getting state and federal property so we can use for parks?

Well, that's a bit different matter worth encouraging the state and federal agencies to be involved with that But it often means you're working in collaboration with land trusts and other organizations that we had some stakeholder meetings with to identify properties that might be worthy of their their acquisitions and providing of those services We're primarily focused in this study on what you as a county can be doing perfect to provide those outdoor recreation experiences and And that note about the benchmarking is primarily to point out that you just don't have that same abundance of public outdoor spaces that other counties do. So people may be traveling outside your county to appreciate those things, or they may be relying all the more on your county open spaces to do just that, of having a place to go fish, enjoy nature, hike around. That may be more dependency there on on your county resources than what some of these other counties have.

No, I mean, hey, that's a great finding. Thank you for your report. And it puts into perspective, I mean, total county park acres, 660 for us, and the next lowest one is 1,150. So thank you.

Yeah. Supervisor Gurdjieff. I appreciate you stepping in and filling in, but my my my advice is if we're going to get a presentation to make sure that person is in person because with technology. But I do got a question on staffing levels. Is there a reason why? I mean, I understand that, you know, Staffing levels have to have had to be adjusted due to, you know, budgetary reasons in the past. But are there other reasons like our staffing levels are that, you know, example outside contracting for maintenance? Is that part of the reason why our staffing levels are in the position that they're in?

Through the Chair, to answer your question, Supervisor Gardea, the landscape and maintenance contract was just new last year when we executed that, so the staffing levels have been where they have been. for several years as that diagram showed, the decrease from the 90s. And being in this position for about a year and a half now, what I have found historically is, as you all know, when times get tough, Parks and Rec always gets cut. So some of those cuts you can see occurred in the 90s, and then again later, and it just hasn't been built back up.

um and that's where we stand still today with our staffing levels yeah and i and i also think you know i think this board's on the same page of starting to think outside the box of like you know private partnerships with you know especially with our sporting uh events and you know these different clubs and different leagues out there that that are looking for places to play that are willing to put skin in the game and and invest into uh some of the sports complexes and uh i I appreciate that. And I'm not going to speak for Supervisor Rickman and you know, because I know that he's been working on the South County Regional Park for quite some time. But and the reason why I asked that question earlier is, you know, per district. And I want to say our team has been doing a good job and we're stepping up to plate. Things are heading in the right direction. Not as fast as I would like to see and not as fast as the community would like to see. But I want to say We're heading the right direction. You guys are doing a great job and I appreciate this this report because it really paints a picture of the position that we're in and what we got to do in the future to improve better places for our constituents to enjoy. So. So I got.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not really a question, just a comment since Mickey Grove Zoo was brought up and then looking at some of your stats here on what they're looking for, interactive, et cetera. I had a constituent. make a suggestion we have uh in in this county we have egg venture days um and they're amazing and we have you know thousands of kids show up who have never seen a you know a cow or a goat or a chicken or anything else and one of the suggestions is that we maybe incorporate some of our egg into the zoo which would have kind of a lot for your interactive petting etc um but still make for a nice finya, so I'll just leave it there.

That is one of the ideas we've heard suggested previously, and we've been looking into that of how to augment that. Thank you.

Anybody from public want to speak on this item?

What?

I don't see public. All I see is staff.

Chairman, any supervisor questions?

Yes, sir.

I actually like your idea of of presenting something in a petting zoo or something that's kind of county and community orientated. You know, access is great. And I actually think opportunity instead of venture golf would be a great place for a petting zoo. Ouch.

If I may speak for a moment. We love to hear everything that you guys are saying up here because this all fits directly into the master plan that we've created so far. So kudos to that you guys with your foresight and you know with the leadership from the county over here. These are all things that have been discussed and are implemented in. We're actually working on a theme called the seed of change. which fits directly in with the new county slogan. And it gives us a lot of flexibility within the master plan because we are operating in a small footprint. So we know that we need to have these charismatic animals from all over the world to help attract visitors and help them keep coming back so they can learn about all the different ecosystems. but our specific storyline that ties the entire thread together follows the path of a seed through its life cycle and how all these different animals from around the world can impact the local environments with the traveling and transportation of the seed, and there's a direct tie-in to the local economy, the local agriculture, and that is where the petting zoo falls into the master plan that we're talking about. And then it comes full circle and winds up into what we're calling the you are the seed of change is the last segment of it that's a call to action so that after these people have all these experiences, after they get the local tie-ins, the last thing that they're going to do on the way out is hopefully understand that they are the ones that can change the conservation of all these species and the protection of our environment through their little actions that they can do every single day. Glad to see that you guys are all seeing that already.

Jay wasn't able to hold back with the ideas. We tried.

Thank you. Anybody from public? Anybody waiting remotely?

No.

Thank you. No action is needed. So let's go to item number three. Receive an update on the South County Regional Park project and authorize the county administrator or as you need to execute a task order in the amount of approximately $1,000,000 with the near construction management Inc for phase 3. Josh.

Thank you, Chairman Dhaliwal, members of the board. I'm Josh Bronco, Senior Deputy County Administrator. I have with me Ash Kalal, who's going to introduce the presentation, and then we'll have our construction management team do some of the presenting as well.

Good morning, still. Board members, Ash Kalal, Parks Administrator. We're here today to provide an update on phase two and three of South County Regional Park and what we're looking at headed forward. So real quick, just to give a project recap and a brief history on the project, there is approximately 100 acres located north of Highway 205 on Tracy Boulevard in Tracy that we are looking at as South County Regional Park. It was acquired in 2010 from the City of Tracy from Prop 40, using Prop 40 funding. The lease payments that we are receiving from that land currently, because it is being leased for ag use, are being deposited into a restricted fund for the development of that park. Phase one was completed in 2024 and phase two we are on track to have completed in the middle of this year and that includes a refined site and landscape design. We have concluded the public outreach program for this project, site topography, utilities and geotechnical investigations. The environmental study is expected to be completed later on in the fourth quarter of 2026. As far as the community outreach program, we really had a robust community outreach effort which included a community town hall workshop meeting, virtual stakeholder meetings, several pop-up events over the last two years in Lodi, Stockton, Lathrop, and at Mickey Grove Regional Park. We also had two online community surveys and we had a special website developed for the project. These surveys garnered over 2,000 community members' responses. Key takeaways and feedback from the community engagement program is that people are really looking for direct access to water. They're looking for a haven for aquatic activities. They're looking for trails, scenic walking trails and passive park areas, shaded areas and some passive sports activities and a venue for social gatherings and special events. At this time I'd like to introduce Julian Cho, Senior Project Director for Vanner Construction Management to go over the conceptual design and recap.

Thank you, Ashka, and good morning, everyone. I wanna thank the board for this opportunity. Also, Supervisor Rickman for your continued support and for this opportunity to present the phase two of this development of this South County Regional Park, which is a continuation of the conceptual design in phase one that we presented back in 2024. As Ashka mentioned, this represents a milestone accomplishment excuse me, in the accomplishment of this park really sets the tone and the parameters for how the park may look like in the future. It represents a great teamwork that we had with the county departments within the last past 12 months. It's been a real pleasure working with CAO's office, Parks and Recreation Department, the public works, health and science, health and environmental, as well as the public works and the city of Tracy as well. And sorry about that. and also many talented professionals from our Vanner team. Thank you so much. So what we have here is a combination of all that collaborative efforts within the last 12 months that culminated in this site plan that we have today. We've conducted a comprehensive feasibility study and a in-depth research into the site, into the physical aspects of the site, including topographic survey, geotechnical investigation, the site utilities and infrastructure study and environmental studies for CEQA compliance to really ascertain the facts and data and to really learn about the site in terms of its potentials and limitations um to arrive at a conceptual site grading plan and an upgraded site and landscape design along with our updated project schedule and project cost estimate and we've also done a research into some of the potential funding sources and opportunities to help fund the project. So again, we wanna thank the board and Supervisor Rickman for your support. And at this time, I wanna introduce Jericho Farfin with Landscape Studio to give us a little bit more about where we are today. So thank you.

Thank you, Julian. Thank you for having me here today. I'm gonna go through my notes here and like to present the design. Just real quick, just to remind you, the highlighted area in the center is the South Regional Park. It's about a mile away from the Legacy Sports Complex and about two miles from the Downtown Tracy. We can go to the next slide, please. Okay, one of the first things that we discovered on this phase is that the grading is, right now the current site is pretty flat, it's used as farmland. So one of the advantages that we have is to create the topography. And the advantage that we have is minimizing the export and import of soil is using topography for views, interest, equal zones that kind of help define the park unique and help with the flora and fauna. In terms of, we can go to the next slide. Responding to stakeholders and community feedback, we began to redefine and redesign the park. As you will see, the lake has grown a little bit and that helps us reach the above ground FEMA lines that is needed for dwellings like the community center and other buildings. And then also in the community events and community feedback, there's been a request for additional amenities like the RV parking AC on the top, Frisbee golf on the right, a comprehensive back of house facilities on the bottom. And earlier in the previous presentation, they mentioned a pump track BMX, and that has been continuously developed and added on the bottom right. Other community responses has been to have a beach access. So that's right above the lake text there. and have it be recreational in terms for swimming and also kayaking, boating in this lake. And one of the unique features that has developed further is kind of this island in the center, and we're calling it the Butterfly Island, where we're hoping to make it a pollinator island with butterflies and have an educational value in addition to an iconic feature of this park. Next slide, please. So we call this the Trails Park because it's connected by a bunch of trails, whether it's a passive recreation or a little bit more active, you can find your niche and experience this park in different ways. The more active in terms of the BMX pump track, the Frisbee golf, but also passive in terms of RV camping, the children's camping where E and D are located on top. Skills course on F and also venues for community engagement on where L is located. In addition to that, there's opportunities for educational opportunities like farmer's market and community events on O and greenhouses and overflow parking. And lastly, one of the community responses was to create an amphitheater. And that is, if I can see from this distance, it's EE, an outdoor amphitheater for the public to have various activities. Let me go through my notes, make sure I picked up everything. Yep, we talked about the beach. If we can go to the next slide. Oh, previous slide, sorry. One of the things that I'd like to end is that the master plan has become responsible to the site, more reflective community priorities and more deliberate about sustainability and long-term operations. We're not only planning a collective park of amenities, we're working towards a regional destination that's memorable, operational, responsible, environmentally responsive and sustainable. uh for san joaquin county over the long term thank you and i'm available for any questions afterwards any questions oh no sorry uh chair dollar wall we do have a few more slides if we could oh one one second there's a question you're waiting

Go ahead, Josh.

Okay, I apologize. So I'm gonna go over the cost estimate and then also some of the funding opportunities that were mentioned earlier in the presentation. You can see here phase one and two have been completed. The actual recommendation before the board today is approving the third phase, which will result in the design build package. We'll need to put this project out to bid. We have received some updated estimates on the design and construction costs from Vanner for the current scope of the projects. That is the $89 million that you're seeing on this slide under phase four. We are also, as the capital projects team, working on a revised capital improvement plan for the board to review and approve. And so as part of that process, we've gone through all of our projects, including this one, to estimate what we might see for soft costs and contingency for the projects that we have in the plan. So that $31 million is what we're using, 35% of the direct cost to estimate what that might be in the future. And again, that's something we're using for planning purposes at this point to understand what the commitment might look like. The actual costs will likely be different. This is simply to put something before the board that we're comfortable is accounting for all the possibilities that are unknown at this point. Similarly, the escalation that's included on here, we've used a 5% escalation through the midpoint of construction in order to account for the inevitable increases that we will see for both labor costs and material costs. So all of those factors together is what you're seeing here with this revised estimate of $135 million for those three areas. So the funding assessment that has been completed, I do wanna give credit to our General Services Department and the work they're doing to identify these grants with the help of Vanner, our construction management team, so that we can cover some of those costs that we were just looking at on the previous slides. So you can see on here, we're expecting that there'll be a potential for up to $47 million in grant funds at this time. What we're planning as far as moving forward with these opportunities is to first complete this third phase so that we have a project that would be considered shovel ready in order to make sure that we're able to use the funds that we do receive within the performance period. Most of these grants have a performance period of three years and so we wanna make sure that we are gonna have time to do the procurement process and of course the construction within that three year period. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Ashika, and she can talk about some of the operating costs that might be associated with this project.

So another thing to consider with this project is the ongoing operating costs and staffing needs for South County Regional Park. These are preliminary planning level estimates based on fiscal year end of 2025, 2026 actual costs. So you're looking at staffing, we're estimating about 1.75 million annually, annual operations at 400,000 a year. One time funding need of one million and that's to establish the initial fleet equipment and technology. And then that would put our preliminary planning level estimate for annual operating costs at about 2.1 to 2.3 million, including the approximate 1 million one-time investment.

As far as the project schedule, so this third phase, we're expecting to wrap up the end of the fiscal year. And then provided that we are able to identify funding, We're looking at probably a six month procurement period to do the RFQ and RFP to get a design build entity on board for the projects. And then potentially 30 months to complete the design and construction of the project. So we'd be looking at June 2030 as a potential opening date, again provided that the funding is identified for this project. So for this third phase, we've talked a little bit about it. Basically where we're gonna end up with is what are called bridging documents or design criteria that we can then use to complete the procurement for a design build entity to move forward with phase four, which is the actual design and final design and construction of South County Regional Park. So with that, that's the end of our presentation. Happy to answer any questions the Board or the public might have at this time.

Questions, Board? Supervisor Dutty? No? Supervisor Ackman?

Thank you, Chairman. Have we looked in I mean, first of all, hey, I love it. I love the park and land. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here and thank you for the presentation. You know, this is a long time coming. You know, there was money at one time in a fund like 20 years ago, I think. that this park had been talked about and that money would just, you know, kept on getting pulled out, pulled out until it was zero. And, you know, we're starting in the last couple of years since I came in office to, you know, bring it up to what it is today. But, you know, looking at what we're trying to approve today is great, is that I think that one of the most important things about this project is making sure it's shovel ready in order to, you know, just like when we go look for you know, roadway or highway, highway grants, you know, and, you know, talking to the feds and say that, well, they had your project shovel ready. It's a better chance for us to getting grants and get this project moving forward. But what I was going to ask, is there, have you guys looked into about doing the stages?

Yeah, thank you. Through the Chair, Supervisor Rickman, we haven't identified a detailed phasing plan, but that is a possibility, certainly. So as we're completing our applications for the grant opportunities, we can identify certain scopes of work that would make sense to deliver a complete project, but maybe not the full scope that is envisioned for this part currently. So yes, that's something that we could, consider moving forward, understanding it's very unlikely that we're gonna find a grant to cover the full cost of this project in one go, and so we're gonna need to be creative in identifying those opportunities and delivering the project potentially in a phased manner.

I mean, hey, it has, everybody I've talked to, it has it all implemented in here, and But one thing I, you know, I can talk to the developers here or the planners is when I talk to folks, they were, you know, they're looking about trails, you know, walking trails, bike trails, you know, native plants and animals and species, you know, so the education, you know, side of it, you know, being a lot more passive, you know, is that what something that you guys heard a lot about? and um but no i would like to see you know it it staged i mean being prepared for that you know so it's it so we can get something out there versus you know still trying to get this money 10 10 years down the road yeah i can uh to your point supervisor rickman i can tee it up for our our

designer here, but initially, I guess just to speak to the process we've been through in this phase, we have had lots of discussion with City of Tracy and the public about what's already out there. Clearly there's legacy fields and there's also a nature park planned further south. And so there has been a concerted effort to differentiate what's in this current scope from those facilities.

And I've seen the City of Tracy's, I was there, you know, and trust me, ours is a lot better than theirs. Of course.

With that being said. And to your point, some of the things that we've incorporated in the design to differentiate this park from that park would be trails, the BMX facility that was mentioned. So there is some more active amenities than were originally contemplated, which certainly there's a cost associated with all of those, but it's also intended to make the park attractive so that it's actually used once the project is completed. Okay.

Yes, I would agree. In addition to the native planting and introduced natives, placement of planting is an amenity. There was a presentation earlier about shading and being comfortable. Knowing where to place trees, knowing where RESPITS IS VERY IMPORTANT THROUGHOUT THE PARK BUT IN ADDITION TO THAT THE AMENITIES THAT MAKES THE AMENITIES UNIQUE THIS PARK OR THE OTHER PARK THAT YOU MENTIONED IS THAT YOU GET TO INTERACT AND BE INSIDE OF IT VERSUS OBSERVE IT FROM THE OUTSIDE AND IT'S LESS OF AN URBAN SETTING IT'S MORE OF A OPEN NATURE SETTING SO WE THE PARK OF TRAILS YOU KNOW YOU GET TO EXPERIENCE ROUGH AND organic trails or paved trails or a bike path with bikes. Depending on the speed and walking and abilities and elevation, you're able to experience this park that is unique compared to any other park.

That's great. Like I said, I love the concept. I love the design. I love what's out there. I think it's a little bit for everybody. You have legacy fields there, for example. When I was mayor, that was my baby that know get that thing built and you know you have thousands of people every weekend so of course you know the idea of them to go to the um the county side and you know it'd be great too to have fishing there so i can teach supervisor gardia how to fish i mean it's something he's been asking me to do and i just haven't had time um but no thank you guys and i think like Before I know the grants out there. I'm glad you identified those grants and of course it cuts the price down a lot I know the state has grants, you know and something that we need to look at the feds also And it's something that when we go back to Washington DC It's something that hopefully we can you know, take some folks with us and you know talk to some of the feds or whatever You know Agency that may be so we can do some funding So thank you everybody very much. Thank you for your hard work. It's beautiful

I don't know if catching tadpoles is considered fishing. This is amazing because I've heard Supervisor Rickman complain about not having a regional park for so many years. But I mean, in the conversation before, I mean, you know, it said don't build new. That's always my concern is the capacity. And how do we do it? You're talking two point one million dollars a year in ongoing expenses. And I get that. So how how do we do that? I mean, we're talking the shortcomings that we have with the parks that we already have. This is amazing, beautiful plan. I mean, that the possibility for all those folks in South County to have a quality regional park, I think, is outstanding. But I mean, one one item where you were saying we're dire straits you know and you know we need more people and more staff and more money and then this is absolutely abusing i mean 137 million dollars how do we get that and if you guys are working on it and i want to applaud you because this is amazing and the plans that you have brought forward and the thoughtfulness that you put into it is cool so then how how do we address that as a board i mean

yeah it's it's through the chair to supervisor kanapa it's the right question to ask i think it's the question that we're wrestling with as well as as a team because we we do see that feedback from the public that they want to see an investment in the existing facilities at the same time we also saw that in order to maintain our current level of acres per capita we're going to need to add to our current portfolio so To your point, right now the funding that we have available for the actual construction is very limited. It's limited really to that fund that Supervisor Rickman was talking about, which is about 200,000 as far as fund balance right now. So we might get a couple trees for that, but really we're going to need to be creative if we're able to move forward with the actual construction of this project and identify some grant funding opportunities, because right now, there is not funding identified for the construction. We have funding identified to get us to that point, and I do think there's value and moving forward with this phase so that we can solicit some of these grant opportunities, but everything outside of that is going to be net new for the county. And that includes the operation costs, which is a general fund impact. So that $2 million that we're looking at every year, that would be general fund commitment to hire those additional staff.

Right. I mean, this is quality of life issues, obviously, for South County. So, I mean, that's important. And how do you fund it and how do we cut up the pie? So I'm all for it. I mean, especially that's a very ambitious timeline. And I mean, it's great that you've done it. And seeing the grants that are out there, I think are huge. And like you said, when we go back to Washington, D.C., and then you just go and figure out where we can be advocates. So thank you.

To add to the operating costs, we do have something that we haven't mentioned. We do have a lot of activities in the park that are revenue generating. We will have weddings, we'll have special events. So those will be, we haven't really identified everything in detail, but we do have all of that revenue generating activities to help with the operating costs. So those have been taken into consideration as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Gardea. Yeah, I think it's a great project and the rendition, the picture is great. And I like the idea of a lake because I'm pretty confident I'd kick Supervisor Rickens, but any type of fishing. So, uh. But a quick question. So like we both sit on Sajafka. And so examples like the Mossdale project in order to move forward with like the Mossdale project, they have to purchased a purchase like environmental impact credits. Would that be something that would fall in play where like Sajafka could purchase that or be part of some collaboration on buying that or being part of that property as part of the credits? I mean, that's something that maybe you reach out to Darren because that, and I don't know if somebody could speak to that.

Go ahead.

I was just gonna say, I'm through the chair to Supervisor Grady. I'm not familiar with the program, but it sounds like what you're suggesting is maybe they would contribute to the park construction to offset some other impact, environmental impact.

Yeah, so example. So we're in the process doing a Mossdale dry levy project in order to put this levy in place. You're taking away environment. There's you're taking away environment from that area. So you have to go out and buy credits, meaning property, in order to to put in those levies. And there could be an opportunity and you'd have to get some more information from Sajafco on this. But They have a lot bigger budget than we do. And, you know, obviously, flood mitigation is a major thing that we're going on that we have going on in our county right now. But there could be opportunities to subject of using this as a credit with and provide some funding.

I appreciate that. We'll put it on the list and we'll look into that and have those conversations.

And then secondly, and it's kind of related to this project and we talked about money generate money generating opportunities. Has there been like a feasibility study for like RV camping and on this project?

as far as what revenue we might anticipate from the RV parking? Correct. I don't think that we have done that analysis just yet. That's definitely something we can do during this next phase to understand what the revenue might look like. I will just say, speaking candidly, whatever revenue we generate from this property is not gonna offset the cost 100%. Just the parks budget in general, we have about $8 million in revenue and our expenses are about 16. So that's, we might offset half of the costs. But that is something that we can look at some of our other sites and see what it might look like here. Certainly the location is prime because of the tournaments that are going on down the street. So that was some of the thought process. We can...

And I just ask that question because I know, like those Rios, we have 26 RV sites and then Westgate. We have we have 11 campsites. And to expand off that, are there opportunities that would help funding in, let's say, Mickey's Grove or some way if we were to put in RV camping and if there was a feasibility study done on that where we could kind of offset some of the we could add revenue to our parks? And that's why I asked that question. I mean, with the price of fuel, there's a lot of people in our community that would love to take their RV somewhere within 20, 30 minutes and enjoy the outdoors and the facilities that we have to offer. So it's just kind of thinking outside the box. I mean, obviously we can always do things the way we always done it. And if there's opportunities to create revenue, why wouldn't we?

Yeah, agreed. And just want to make it clear, we are planning to have RV camping here. So we'll do some analysis and understand to what extent we'll offset that $2 million that we were looking at.

Yeah, and our 10-year plan is if there's opportunities to expand into other parks, and if it's revenue generating, we should at least look at it, not saying it would be feasible to move forward with it.

Through the Chair, to answer your question, Supervisor Gardea, economic tourism is being addressed through the 10-year park system plan and looking at ways to improve our existing amenities is being included in that plan as well.

Thank you.

Supervisor Rickman? Thank you, Chair. What's the timeline for this phase, so phase three?

Should be complete by the end of this fiscal year, so June 27.

No, OK, so that's OK. And the only thing else. It needs to be completed by January of 29 before I leave office, so. No pressure, so you have a job cut out. But no, thanks Josh. You know, thank you very much and you know, thank you both for being here and for a we're excited here in South County. It's a long time coming as Supervisor Tampa mentioned. Hey, we're the only one that doesn't have a regional park and so it's long overdue. But this is an important step as it gives an opportunity to, you know, like I said, ask for money from Fed and state. So that's something, you know, your staff needs to look at if it's June of 27 and have something written up or something that we can show going out, identify where we can, you know, who we can advocate for and get some of these funds.

Through the chair, Supervisor Rickman, that's definitely something we will do. And I just wanna reiterate our General Services Department has done a great job of onboarding some outside support to help with that process, not only with this project, but other projects in our capital improvement plan. So kudos to them for having that foresight and making that happen.

Okay, good work, appreciate it.

Thank you, Chairman. Anybody from public? Anybody? Waiting remotely? No. Board members, do we have a motion? Second. Make a motion to approve. We have a motion and second call for vote. Motion passes 5-0. County Council?

Thank you.

Ready for the closed session?

We are, yes. We're going to close session pursuant to Government Code Section 54957 and 54954.5 to do an evaluation of the Director of Community Development. and secondly we are going in pursuant to Code Section Government Code Section 54956.9 to address the lawsuit I will spell the name B-E-V-I-L-A-Q-U-A versus San Joaquin County

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, SIR.

NEW SPEAKER YES, I'M ANTICIPATING THERE MAY BE AN ANNOUNCEMENT FOLLOWING CLOSED SESSION.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. THE BOARD WILL RECESS TO CLOSE SESSION.

I'm sorry. This shouldn't take long. Hello, hello. Yeah.

Hello, hello.

To the right.

Hello, hello.

Board will reconvene after the closed session. County Council, do we have anything to report?

We do. With regard to the lawsuit Bevellaqua versus County of San Joaquin, the motion was made by Supervisor Kennepa and seconded by Supervisor Gardea to settle that suit. That was approved by a vote of five to zero. The terms and conditions of that settlement will be available upon request once all parties have signed off on the settlement documents. That's all I have.

Thank you, sir. The meeting is adjourned to September 1st at 9 o'clock.

Bye.