California Identification Remote Access Network - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome everybody to the El Dorado County Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting for July 29th, 2026.

Can we do roll call please? Commissioner Byrne? Here.

Commissioner Davies? Here. Commissioner Robinson? Here. Commissioner Schwarzbach?

Here.

Commissioner Allen? Here. Commissioner Gardner? Here. And Commissioner Waddell? Here.

Awesome. Next is the adoption of the agenda, approval of consent calendar. Haley, public comment?

Yes. We are now taking public comment on the consent calendar. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the commission. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the meeting room, followed by those participating on Zoom. If you're joining by Zoom, ensure to unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record before beginning your comments. Do you have any comments on the minutes or the finance report, the consent calendar? I'm pretty sure. OK, just checking. And it doesn't look like we have any public on Zoom at this time. Myrna has joined us on Zoom, though.

OK, so that being said, I will take a motion. It's been moved and seconded. All approved, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Very unanimously. OK, next up is our presentation for today. And I want to welcome all of our presenters, whoever you are.

I know.

Sorry. And Commissioner Strzok, I'm going to ask you to kind of take the lead on this.

Sure. Well, um. Surprise. No, it's not a surprise at all. So we have as a guest today, Mark Eckbert, who is the manager of the El Dorado and the Georgetown RCDs. And I happen to be president of the board for the El Dorado RCD. And so I invited Mark to come and discuss the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program and specifically the effort that's being done by the RCD to develop a 5,000 acre fuel break to protect Placerville. I'll leave it marked to describe it. But the issue has arisen. There are questions about what is the nature of this fuel break? When you're modifying vegetation, What are the ecological consequences? Will it be ecologically sensitive? And so those are important questions that need to be addressed. And these are on private land. So it requires private landowners to participate and agree to participate. And so this is part of public education effort to answer questions about the effort.

And thank you for bringing this forward. I actually had a couple of different concerns.

So this is all you. Cool. Well, thank you for having me. Again, my name is Mark Aker. I'm the manager for the Elrod and Georgetown Divide RCDs. I'm from Placerville. My family's all been here multiple generations. We've always worked in natural resources. So being at the RCD has really been a privilege and a really great experience. And We've done a lot of great things over my, since I've been here since 2002. And so we're always emerging and trying to meet the needs of the community with everything we do. I like, I have some members of my staff here who are primarily field crew, forest management. I'll let them introduce themselves. And also Jeff Hogue, the cap fire dude, would like to introduce himself right now. Yeah. Good afternoon.

My name is Jeff Hogue. I'm the assistant chief in charge of the community risk reduction program here for the Amarillo Audio Unit. So what does that mean? I'm in charge of the pre-fire strategy within our operational unit. That includes El Dorado, Amador, Alpine, and Sacramento counties in a small portion of San Joaquin County. So I work with my team in trying to determine areas that we can be most productive in terms of reducing wildfire intensity. And by doing so, we were able to create a safe area for our firefighters to work, reduce that overall intensity. So when a fire does go through the landscape, it's less destructive. We work closely with groups like the Office of Wildfire Prevention and Resiliency, the RCD, U.S. Forest Service, all those forest types of agencies that we get together with so we can start planning these types of projects. And really the benefit is to stay in line with what CAL FIRE's ultimate mission. So our mission is protect the lives, property, and natural resources of the state of California. And so how do we get there? By trying to reduce either ignitions or by reducing the intensity of those and having a rapid response to get out in front of those fires. Now, part of statute is that we are required to prevent and suppress wildfire, prevention being the one. So before the smoke ever flies in the air, we're already part of the conversation. We're doing a lot of these big projects. Now, the South Bostonville project, this is kind of a, this is a larger project for the unit to work with. That's why we coordinate with the Resource Conservation District. That's why we coordinate with OWAPR. So we can go about doing, getting all these rights of entries and stuff like that. The scale on this project is a little bit larger than what we typically have. Typically when we do what's known as a vegetation management program or project, it'll be like one or two landowners. This has over 200 landowners that we want to do that. And so why did we decide to target this particular area? Well, quite frankly, the population base for the El Dorado, or excuse me, El Dorado County is really right there in Placerville. That's one of our main target hazards. And so we've done a lot of analytics, uh, uh, to get to this point, uh, that's looking at like wildfire hazard. Uh, we are looking at the, um, uh, historical weather data, ignition data, those types of things. And we decided, Hey, the, probably the best place that we can actually deploy our efforts, our, uh, personnel, uh, Cal fire grants. Uh, this coordination is this area of South Placidville so that we're trying to prevent. the impact of that risk, the impact of those homes, the impact of the communities there, because ultimately that's like where a large portion of the economic center happens within the cap. So it is that coordinated effort. That's how we got to this component. But in order to do those types of projects, it's a process. And Mark's going to go in a little bit more about what that is and how we go about Adjusting some of these issue when it comes to biological ecological and how when we do get in there and put these efforts forward and get those fuel reductions to the area where we need to. So our folks can operate safely. It's overall we has that co benefit be beneficial to the landscape itself. Awesome.

There's a lot to talk about. We have 15 minutes in our presentation. So I'll have you guys introduce yourselves as we get to the end here. So It's really great being so close to your presentation so I can read it. But so living with fire, you know, the, I guess the major threat that we're seeing is fire, right? It's the most catastrophic event that can destroy sort of unilaterally across the board, everything that's passed for the most part. And historically fire has been on the landscape and we've had fires that have been, you know, five, 10, 15,000 acres and so forth. And, you know, as, of just recently over the last five plus years, the scale of these fires and the burn severity is at a magnitude that is total destruction. And we see that in places like Grizzly Flats. There was, you know, 12 point something million dollars of investments in community wildfire protection grants in Grizzly Flats prior to Caldor. And it didn't make a difference at all. So fire effects, the community, the landscape, the ecology, the economy in different ways. If you look at Sierra Tahoe, this is the pre-fire Caldor ski map. If you look at post-fire, there's no more trees on the ski map. It's open. If you've been up there skiing, it's a different experience. Sierra Tahoe lost $45 million a year in economic revenue to El Dorado County in one single year. It was closed for one year. We opened it First year and then opened it fully the second year. So when you do a post-fire recovery, you know, when you have 100% of the dead trees, all the trees in this landscape were dead, just like grizzly flats, just like many places in Calgary. And so the recovery process is, you know, pretty much extraction, trying to meet the landowner's goals and safety goals of the community, like in grizzly flats, for example. So this is not the type of work that we want to do. That's why we're trying to invest in it preactively in community wildfire protection so that we can protect the ecological, the economical, the hydrological, the economical productivity and resources that we all depend on. And so one of the things that we're doing is we want to find out, okay, so what have people done in the past? How do we learn the lessons to make sure that as we design projects moving forward, we're designing them to be functional? What is the accountability of government agencies when the community is expecting these projects to protect the community. And so what we've done is we've mapped out using Tahoe Central Sierra Initiative, FACTS, which is the Forest Service Project Tracking System, and CalMapper, which is the state tracking system. Anybody who has public funding whatsoever from any source goes into these databases. And what we're doing is we're bringing them into what will be a public-facing data entry database that you can query. And it will tell you all the information about who funded it, who did it, when was it done, what were the treatment methods, and all the information about any project that you see out here. So you can find out, oh, I'm driving out here. Who did that project? Well, that's what we're doing too. So we can see what land management has been done, what is going on, who's doing what. So we can evaluate what we're doing compared to what everybody else is doing on the landscape. So we want to complement things. We want to look at the cumulative effects and how things are connected to each other. We don't do this by ourselves. The RCD is non-regulatory, non-enforcement agency. We do not own land. So everything we do is in partnership with somebody else, which means we're implementing their goals, right? And so each landowner has different goals, and that's variable. It could be rangeland. It could be cropland. It could be forestland. It could be erosion. It could be pollinators, backyard conservation, whatever it might be. So what we do is we coordinate with the Office of Wildfire Preparedness and Resilience. It was formed after the Caldor fire, so the county had more say in providing direction to all of the other partners in the county to make sure that we're spending money efficiently to meet the goals and to protect communities primarily through the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The South Fork American River Cohesion Strategy is our science-based collaborative where we have Pacific Southwest Research Station with Pat Manley, you know, and all the other Craig Thomas and a lot of other entities providing input on project design, adaptive management, indicator measurements, and how we can go about looking at projects in advance of implementation so we can see where our controversial issues are, like size classes, diameters of trees, or the use of herbicides, or other things like that. That's our forum for looking at evaluating science-based planning and adaptive management. The Healthy Overall Landscape Partnership is focused in the Crystal Basin. That's where our large nonprofit organizations provide assistance to the Forest Service to bring in lobbying and leveraging resources to implement projects on the El Dorado National Forest. The Headwaters Connect is the El Dorado County Water Agency's new watershed-based collaborative planning forum. That's where you have your water purveyors, your utilities, your basically who has any jurisdiction authority to make sure people have water and electricity and other access to reliable resources. They also talk about restoration and a lot of other sort of holistic projects. And those are a primary partner for the RCD because we have very, very similar emissions. Tahoe Central Sierra Initiative is helping us with our tracking system so that they collect data from all other project components and they're putting all that information into our treatment tracking system. So that's our partner there. They have geographic scales and scopes. So we try to utilize each one of those partnerships for what they can benefit us and provide information back to us for as much information as possible to give us feedback on the projects that we're proposing. We are the only ones who are consistently present in each one of those collaboratives to make sure that we're exchanging information and talking about things and vetting things prior to doing any implementation. If you're not a member of one of those, they're open to attend. What do we do? We try to evaluate. The reason why we're doing this is because we need capacity, right? The RCD doesn't have a lot of staff members. I mean, these are a great crew, but they're only here for the summer. Courtney Jackson, she's our community engagement representative. We're working at any time, anywhere between one and 3000 landowners at one time. So communication is essential because every landowner has different goals and issues that we need to address because it's their property, it's their project. Ben Akusha is our forest project program manager. He helps with our mapping and project layout and project management. And our field crew are out there beating the brush, setting flags, and working with our field biologists and archaeologists and all the other crews that are out there to make sure that the project delineation is what it's supposed to be. So coordinating with partners, again, sharing information and advancing projects to a stage that we hope is going to meet that expectation so that we can be accountable to meet the function of the project whenever we need it, whatever that might be. Again, this is more of a plan integration. Since Caldor, the county has updated the general plan safety element. The Cal Fire has updated its Emerald or El Dorado unit plan. We have updated fire hazard mitigation maps. The Transportation Commission has updated its evacuation preparedness plan. OES has done a huge amount of work updating its evacuation preparedness strategy. The Forest Service is working on updating a lot of its priority plans through the Forest Leadership Team. And there's a whole suite of things that have been done on a regional basis and on a statewide basis to make sure that people are aligning their priorities and their projects so that the funding that's coming in is meeting each one of those goals and the actions that are coming out of these local plans is being tracked and that we can report out to say, yes, we are implementing this component, this component, and this component of the general plan. of the unit plan or whatever those plans be, because there are action items associated with these plans. They just don't sit on the shelf. We read them and we use them. We get the collaborative input, like I just talked to you about, for a collaborative decision-making framework. Data intake systems, so we standardize our data. So everybody that we work with has standardized data sets, so all the attributes that we report out on are easily understood and consistent, whether it's our project or anybody else's project. We get freedom of information at request and public records request. All the time. I got four within the last two weeks, right? How much timber did you take off this one? What did you do with this? Where did it go? All this. So we just give them everything, right? So data consistency is very important to maintain integrity. Maintaining GIS platform. That's where we are right now. All these projects that you have, you can go onto our website right now. I'd put your personal number in there and find out if you're in a project area of ours. We need to make sure that people have access to our project information, all of our contracts, all of our mapping systems are all on the website. And we'll continue to use that platform to maintain transparency and accessibility. And then pilot project testing. This is a new project. CAL FIRE is a lead. And they basically said, hey, this is what we would like to do. Because we know that after CAL DOR, after King, if you look at that fire map and you look at Placerville, it has a lot of fire suppression. And with that is that growth of vegetation that continues to grow with the absence of fire every year. But we also know that there's a lot of assets in there. And I'll show you maps of that later. So this is a pilot. So we don't want to get it wrong. So we aren't starting anything any day soon. We've done a lot of public workshops. We've done a lot of communications. And this is a great opportunity for us to continue that. And then we evaluate our actions. Every day we go through. We say, OK, we're on this unit. Are we doing the right thing? How do we adaptively manage the process and the outcomes? So this is the Placerville wildfire resilience strategy area. It's 80,000 acres. All the way down past Seymour Springs. We have over the last almost three years now had several town hall meetings with city council, public meetings, public workshops. And we have a tool on our website where people, the public can go in and they can identify where their resource concerns are. A lot of these are homeless shelters, or there's a burn pile here, there's a dead tree here, or there's a lot of information in here that we gather so that we can understand and get as much information from the public as possible so that we can design our programs around this. We also basically have to know what the threat is a little bit more. We have to know more about the threat. We really rely on the technical experts at CAL FIRE, the Forest Service, the Water Agency, and a lot of other organizations to help us with this. And we bring in consultants like Spatial Informatics Group, Wildfire Services, WSP, and others to help us with our analytics. So Placerville has a 360-degree threat, right? It could come from the prevailing winds coming from this direction. It could come from Chulibar. We had a fire there earlier. So we know that the threat, is 360 degrees. So if you think about your castle, what do you do? You know, we talked about this. We say, okay, if you want to be really aggressive, you build a moat around the castle, right? Well, we know that's a fire break. And building a fire break like that probably is not socially acceptable, right? I mean, it's going to protect the community, right? If the fire comes from outside of that and it hits the moat, well, great. But we can't go there. So where can we go? Where's the balance? And that's what our process is trying to find out where that balance is. Because we want to maintain accountability, but we also want to maintain the integrity of our natural environment. Ultimately, working in post-fire environments really sucks. You lose. We want to be able to go out and enjoy ourselves, and we want to work on projects where we are increasing the healthy fisheries. We're increasing habitat for ecologically sensitive species. We're working on agricultural land to increase productivity. We don't want to do mitigation. mitigation is not the type of work that we want to do. We want to manage landscapes for the highest productivity, and we are doing the aggressive approach on fuels management because we know they're in a quasi-unhealthy condition for the most part. So again, we want to know where the critical facilities are. These are the critical assets, most of the hospitals, the main hospital between Tahoe and South Lebanon. Where are the schools? Where are the evacuation centers? Where's the communication centers? Where's the areas where we have hydrological infrastructure where people depend on for water. So we look at all those critical assets and say, okay, can we focus around protecting those areas? How do we do that? So just for 15. Yes. Oh, okay. Ready? We do vegetation. We do conditional flame length. How, how does fire behave?

And then if we want to give them leeway, that's fine.

We do look at, uh, One of the things we do is we also look at structure-driven fires, Paradise. How do we look at structure-driven fires? We've modeled each class of every home and have run burn models through structure-driven scenarios versus build-driven scenarios as well. We also look at vulnerability of the community, whether it's a census class for what age group they are, what their mobility is, or whatever it might be. We look at them. What's their ability to evacuate? All these different climate or census data as well. We break this into three tiers, if you will. The Placerville city center, the WUI and the periphery. So if we look at the city of Placerville, this may have a different treatment approach. You know, you might be aggressive looking at those critical assets. You look at the wildlife and urban interface where you have the evacuation routes, the roads, the density of structures. You're looking at trying to work around the homes as close as possible. But then you look at the periphery and you have a different type of approach. You're not doing the moat. You're not doing, you know, you're looking at more sensitive treatments, looking at squatted outpacks or different types of ecological zones and looking at migrational patterns, you know, looking at browse, shelter, all these different things. So that's the type of approach that we're trying to design here. We also work with the Native Plant Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, Sue Britting, Lester Lebedkin, and some others to give us recommendations on the type of treatments that we can do in this periphery and in the womb. We look at the pillars of resilience, which projects are community-based, forest health, and water resilience. This is another framework that tells you about the planning stages that we go through to develop a project. And you have this presentation. You can look at this. And then we map it. We GIS map this. And what we're doing now that has not been done before is working with Esri, who runs the ArcGIS program. And we're building suitability models for all the different projects. So whenever we look at a project, It'll give us the outputs through GIS analysis of what types of assets or community protection, what kind of projects are forest health and what kind of projects are water resilience. And these are just pillars that we get from the state. So that's why we're using these. And it gives us quantitative output. And so we can assess, what is this project doing in terms of its benefits? And we can run this analysis for what's it doing for, are there any individual, one way in, one way out roads? Are there any spotted out packs or is there any, whatever it might be, we can run this analytics and the suitability model to give us an analysis and a printout that we can run a report and give you a report that has all of those attributes of the project that we can share to anybody. And we'll also be able to have you do this for any project that you see on our website as well to run your own suitability analysis and project benefit and summary. So these are the two project areas. This is 5,500 acres. It's blocky because we haven't delineated the treatment units yet. All right. So we're not going to treat 5,500 acres. Right. It's going to be much smaller. We haven't gotten there yet. Um, our crews have been out there working really, really hard on people's property and they've been doing a really great job. Um, it's hot and you guys, and you know, there's dogs, snakes, you name it. And these guys are just out there beating the ground. What area is that right there?

Diamond Springs. Oh, that's Diamond. Okay.

Diamond Springs, highway 49 here. And it goes all the way up past Motor City, all the way up to, um, Really, right here, here's Carson Road right here, this is the North Forkweather Creek, and this is Snow Ridge. And then Placer, the PG&E funded project, it goes from Diamond Springs at their utility center, all along their utility line, all the way over to Four Bay, all the way down to the Four Bay power plant, and then the two SMUD lines. We're not going to the north side yet. We don't have enough money. That's planning that's far out, right? But we are focusing on the south side of the freeway. yeah going around the airport coming along the power line there that's proposed we're just evaluating it so this is a scenario that we say we're not right now we're not coming up with projects yet this isn't a catalog of projects we don't really have a catalog of projects until they're done and that we can tell people what we've done but you'll have access to the projects as we plan and they and they evolve but this is a great scenario you have a beautiful watershed and in that watershed You've got beautiful resources, diversity, everything. And now you have this community center right here. And so now you have the draw that people are at the expectation that this community is going to be protected. So CAL FIRE, other responsible agencies are pressed and tasked to protect these communities. The county develops ordinances, things like that. The RCD comes in and we say, okay, well, let's build a sheet of fuel freight or something over here. You know, that's controversial. People don't like that. This could be another development of a community, and it's just going to be just fine if people put homes there. But heaven forbid we do any land management that helps protect these assets that people are asking us to do. So that's why we're like, well, if we're going to do something around this watershed, let's plan it out so that it's long term, productive, and it doesn't have any impacts. Because we don't want to cause harm. We really, really don't. OK. If you look at that scenario in Placerville, this is a map that shows the building footprints and the road footprints. In this 80,000 acre project area, if you look at just the human impact of the building footprints and the road impacts, you're looking at almost 40% of the area that's already impacting ecological conditions and functions of the watershed. So we're designing projects that are around these zones in areas that would protect these assets without going out to the extremities or so forth. So there's a lot to learn here. And we're working around a lot of infrastructure that's already there. So this is our process, community engagement, right of entry agreements. We send out right of entry agreements early because that tells people that we're doing something in the end of the month. People don't ever get engaged or call or do anything until they actually get something in the mail that's a right of entry agreement saying we're going to enter your property. Then all of a sudden, boom, we get calls, which is great. That's what we want. We are initiating CEQA. We're doing biological surveys, archaeological surveys right now, every day. We've been doing them for six months already. It takes a long time to do these. We're field mapping. And then once we have the mapping done, meet all the landowners, talk about things, get feedback, work with our collaboratives, model it, then we might have an implementation plan. And once we have an implementation plan, we go to the authorities who are providing funding and say, can we do this? We look at scoping through CEQA. Are there any things that we need to address? But then all of a sudden you do it and there's the equipment. And all of a sudden, boom, that's a problem. It's a shock. Our time frame for doing these projects are short. So we have to do it as aggressively and effectively as possible. These are the industry tools that are used to manage big, heavy fuels across large landscapes. It's not all the tools we use. We do hand treatments as well. But for the most part, this is what people will see. And all of a sudden, we have a new set of concerns and issues that we have to deal with people. And it's education. So we pull back, and we stop, or we pause, and then we educate, and we get feedback. Sometimes people drop out. It's all volunteer programs. If it's not your property, you don't want to do it, we don't go there, period. And so this is the scenario in Kelsey. We focus on ridgetops. roads and right-of-ways. And this is an example where you see a large landscape where the fuel treatment is on the ridge top. It was very aggressive. This is probably the most aggressive treatment that we've done as far as the types of fuels. And so there's a lot of, you know, again, just focusing in on the ridge top. And you can kind of see, you know, what it might look like in a similar area. And this did stop a fire earlier. Well, before it lasted.

Yeah, we had a small ignition out there, was it last spring or something like that, and ran into that fuel treatment, and we were able to get around it pretty quickly. That's really kind of the point here, is to address these kind of things and find these areas that have the highest strategic value. Like Mark said, it's 5,500 acres. The goal is to not denude the entire 5,500 acres for the sole purpose of stopping wildfire. That doesn't help us on the natural resources side of anything. The goal is really to have... create a landscape where you're going to have that lower fire intensity as it comes in. Because practically, California is adapted to fire. For thousands of years, it's been on the landscape. And our fire exclusion policy that happened a little over 100 years ago has really kind of backed this thing to this corner. Now we're having the advent of what basically is the mega fires. And the potential there to actually do an entire landscape due to a fire without this level of treatment is actually much higher than the folks going in and treating it with their equipment and mechanical hand use and other tools that we have available, even prescribed fire that we have available. So we think that this is a good project in terms of the South Blosserville fuel break component. It would be nice to see what we can do about getting around the entire thing. But like I said, it's not exactly entirely possible to be able to get on every piece of land. We have that big footprint because we don't know what the participation is. So we go out and put those rights of entry out to the 200 plus landowners out there. maybe not everybody's gonna want to participate. And so in some ways it could be a bit of a mosaic, but if we can capture enough of them, then we're gonna meet overall what our strategicals are here on this particular project and beyond, you know, throughout the unit and actually throughout the state. We have some mandates for fuel treatments that need to be done statewide as well. And we're doing our part to try and meet those mandates.

In the Caldor fire, I know that It threatened collard pines. And there was some work done there. You want to speak to that?

Yeah. So with every project, as we design it, we have a modeling scenario that we run. And we say, OK, what kind of conditional flaming modification will happen? What pre-treatment? What's the fire burn severity look like in the fire shed? And then post-treatment? And then what's the fire behavior over a 25-, 50-, and 100-year period? So we can evaluate a maintenance return interval. We found that the project that we did off Fleming Meadows and that whole area out there, when they interacted with the Caldor fire, it allowed crews to gain access to an area that had previously been managed to some extent and had received treatment that it allowed the fire to behave like we predicted. And it allowed crews to get in there and really stop it from there. They believe that, and Wendy Thomas, Supervisor Thomas did a big video on her last day here. She basically showed that if they did not hold the fire there, they were possibly going to evacuate Placerville while Tahoe was also being evacuated by the same fire. That's the magnitude of the threat that we're talking about.

I'd like to thank you guys for what you're doing. I've lived here all my life. I worked at a sawmill, the Old Bishop Cow Lumber Company.

I worked up there for 20 years.

And I was the president of the union when that bill closed. I made a statement at the state capitol back then that in 30 years we'd have such catastrophic fires in this country that complete towns would burn. And that happened to Paradise first. And I've seen that happen time after time. And that fire that happened over there should have never happened. The Forest Service should have stopped it. I know what they did. They stopped you guys from doing your job. And that's exactly what happened. And I'm going to tell you, I really appreciate it, because I'll tell you, this area, because I live in Placerville, and I will tell you, I worry all the time during the summer months, because I live right there on the corner where the old taco house is, on this side of it, and the canyon is right below me. And that scares me to death, that canyon, because if a fire comes up that canyon, we're all gone. So I want to tell you, I appreciate what you guys are doing, and you've got my support.

MARTHA MINOWSKI- Patrick? funding question. How would you characterize the continuity of your funding? Is it short-term?

Do you have long-term prospects? I hope that we never have to have another post-fire investment ever again. After Caldor, we received almost $35 million. That's with a fraction of the recovery that's needed. And that was from? So the governor's Forest Management Task Force. The governor adopted the executive order 1.12 authorizing emergency forest recovery teams. And with that, Forest Service and CAL FIRE provided that funding to the El Dorado RCD as a pilot program for post-fire recovery on private lands. And we also did some public lands as well with Forest Service. And it's very expensive. But we were able to get in there a little bit sooner and address some of the hazard and safety issues. Our funding now, you know, the collaborative that I talked about, we're all evaluating the capacity of all of us. So when we're talking about capacity and funding, we're not talking about agencies. We're talking about the work that we're putting on the ground. Like what type of work are we putting on the ground and what's our capacity to do that? And each agency has its own and unique role. Sometimes we get the grant, sometimes not. American Forest gets to grant or, you know, whatever it might be. So I believe that our funding is secure for a long period of time. We are also diversifying with agricultural programs. You know, we've got hedgerow programs. We've got pollinator programs. We, you know, we want to provide technical assistance to landowners so that they have the means and education to do management on their own. Right. And the dependency on supplemental grant funds, I don't believe is sustainable because But it is what we're doing because we've been reliable and we've been effective to do the job right. So as long as our funding and our relationship will be directly mirrored to the community's needs, whatever that might be.

So for that whole area, the main idea, just so that I'm fully understanding it, is to get onto as much property as you can and to really thin out and get rid of the undergrowth? Is that your main goal or?

So, yeah, I mean, I would put it in terms of, so we don't, we don't quantify things in terms of number of parcels and so forth because we do strategically placed bills treatments. And so if you saw in that picture, you know, we're not going down into the draws. We're not going into, you know, areas that we know are going to be more expensive, harder to treat, and probably more ecologically diverse and sensitive. You know, and so we look at strategically placed field treatments, and those are where we target those landowners and get their participation. If, for example, though, we have, you know, every, you know, a 40 over me who says, yes, I want to do it. And then this side of the table says, absolutely not. And then this whole table says, yes, well, we'll probably go over here, but I'm sorry, we're not going to do you guys. Cause we just, it's, it's just a fragment spot checkerboard type thing. We've got to have, you know, we're not going to, the threat, remember the size of the threat. I would say you can't sail across the Bering Sea with a boat that you bought for Folsom Lake. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to say, is there a viable project?

And how is this going to affect this topic? Do you think it will? Or is it just because you're targeting private landowners that they're not worried about it?

So one is... I can't answer that question across the board because we depend on these surveys and learning about the information about the environment that's there first. And once we learn about what's there, then we can assess what they are overall impacts based on the methods and methods that we use. Our goal is to have no impact. That's our goal. Now, how do you do that? I mean, right. I mean, there's always going to be some short-term impact, but what's the long-term impact or long-term benefit. So we, you know, we've got a lot of, that's why we, have the data that we get from the professionals we hire to give us the surveys, to give us information back on our best management practices, our standard operating procedures, and our design criteria so that we can say, okay, here's what the guidelines are for this species. Here's what the guidelines are for this species. And we make it specific for each and every species, whether it's an invasive or whether it's endangered, whatever it might be. It's got a design element. And we adhere to those in our CEQA document. And that means a lot of times, We either have limited time periods that we can operate or we have exclusion zones. And so is there anything to add?

Well, so the goal is to minimize the impact of all that.

I think the goal is to increase productivity of the ecological function. The other goal is to have it not burn up. What's the consequence of doing that? I'm in complete support. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what we're, that's what we're.

We've done nothing for many years.

But, but I don't think learning ever stops. I think that you have to learn and there's things that we don't know. And that's why we have these collaboratives. That's why we're asking for information because, you know, I mean, I mean, I've talked to Shelly before. I said, Hey, we're doing these projects. Fire adapted 50. We do it over 8,000 acres under that project. You know, how is that going to have an impact? How do we do things better for helping, you know, a diminishing herd or helping a diminishing fishery or helping whatever it might be, whether it's bees or monarchs or whatever it might be. You know, we're looking at tribal partnerships where we're putting in more, you know, different types of plants and reforestation, not just reforestation for planting, but looking at maybe partnering with them to plant some more types of species.

And Mark, there's a variety of design criteria and best management practices out there that we follow. Just describe that.

And I think what you said, like we're constantly learning because it's, I think we get a little bit nervous when there's these huge projects that we're seeing, especially on the forest. This is a little different because it's private lands and, but that we're, so we're seeing these huge projects being done and, and I don't really know if we do know the impact. I guess there is going to be an impact, you know, but we just don't know enough about the species. Like for instance, mountain whale or the deer herds or, they're obviously going to be displaced for a while, you know, but so, so I think that that's like the, the, the tension that we feel is like, this is a lot.

So I think it's fair to say there's a tension in, in this there's, there's a, and it's a risk, it's a cost benefit, risk benefit, um, trade-off that, that we're involved in.

So we're asking a lot, whenever I used to do stream, um, and habitat improvements, we would always say, okay, are your management goals background or are they ambient? A lot of times, especially within streams, you know, or in forests, you can't meet that background condition. And so what condition, you know, pre-settlement condition, right? So what condition can we try to achieve in a short period of time? And then over a longer period of time, let's come up with a long-term strategy. That's where the funding comes in. That's where we want to direct funding is longer term management so that we can get to a more desired condition over time, you know, and, and then set benchmarks of management objectives and goals on, on progression of management, not just one entry.

And there's accountability, like those big equipment that comes in, I'm assuming those are contractors that are coming in. So is there, is there accountability on how they're, how they're actually treating the, I mean, I know you probably mark stuff that they want to cut down and all this, but are you coming back in afterwards and looking at that that was correctly done?

You have bears, in other words. Do you have burn area, in this sense, non-burn area rehabilitation after mastication?

Do we do any? I'm not sure.

So in a fire, they come in and they do what's called a bear burn area. Anyway.

Yeah, burn area response.

Exactly. So they're just trying to rehabilitate the land after the fire. Do you guys do that after the mastication?

So the treatment, I guess, there's a couple different perspectives on it. One is the treatment itself is rehabilitation. But then there's also where you have had previous fires, Kelsey, and you had a conversion of the landscape post-fire that has not returned to sort of some level of background condition.

Pre-fire condition.

Yeah. And so then we could come in and say, okay, well, maybe we can find some trees. Maybe we can, you know, if it's totally, one thing we'd like to do is not have to do this. We leave, again, we leave clusters, we leave islands, we leave different types of, you know, again, as much integrity on the landscape as possible without jeopardizing the fire behavior scenarios. So I think that there's the question that After you treat this, are we going to have a response of the landscape where you have increased infestations and noxious leaks? And that's a re-entry that we would like to be able to do. The problem is that maybe the grant funding sources don't have that time. So that's the funding question is having adaptive management over time and investing in a landscape and reaching your actual goals. Instead of, you saw that map with everybody across with all those projects. Well, with all those projects on the landscape, why aren't we resilient? Why are we still having to do it? I mean, going back and doing a first entry retreatment is ridiculous. That's what we're hoping that we don't have to do that. Mark, what can we do for you?

I have a question. What is it we can do for you to help you?

So I always answer that question by challenge us. Ask tough questions. Go on a site visit with us. help us interpret the landscape. Tell us when we need to pay more attention to something. You know what I mean?

Well, that's kind of our second half of this conversation is potentially doing a site visit. I just have one quick question. Is CDFW involved in this? Well, they have to go through CEQA.

And so we're looking at all of that. Yeah. As far as, I mean, we can give suggestions. But I think you privately contract all of the biological surveys. We don't do any of that. And so... Yeah, and there's definitely species that they focus on, they're looking at, but there's also species that they don't. And we just don't, there's a lot just we don't know. We really don't know how some of these things are affecting it. And yeah, it's, yeah, the long-term.

One thing that's important, especially in the private land, is the increase in the edge effect. Because we have vast stands of live oak, poison oak, Blackberries. Blackberries. Yeah, the ever-prevalent blackberry. You know, years ago, I tried to do a blackberry clearing on Hollow Elevation Stream that had fish in it at one time. The blackberries had so choked it out, the fish had all died out. And I went to Fish and Wildlife, and they said, well, yeah, but blackberries are a habitat. It was, but the blackberries killed all the fish downstream. up and downstream of this. And China Creek's getting that way now too, and it's an uphill stream. But anyway, so what are you gonna do? Here you have an invasive, and it is basically murdered endemic fish populations, and yet it's habitat, so therefore you can't mess with it. We have to kind of change that thought process. And think about the fact that edge effects are always those areas that bring in populations where there's more biological diversity.

So any further questions? I have a more quick question. How do you get

on board like if you want to participate if you know an area in the county in like the in that area that that is really thick that you would like work done on how do we reach out within the footprint if you yeah that footprint you got within the footprint i live there one and i know a lot of people probably like some of these other people do that would yeah they really love to see what you guys are talking about go on because so we would love to do um so i've spent

a lot, you know, we go and we sit in people's living rooms and talk to people and their neighbors. We have, they have like appetizers and all kinds of stuff. We talk and it's not always really friendly. Right. You know, they want me going into the lion's den and I'm like, bring it. I want to know because, you know, because again, you know, the vulnerability of the natural system is greater than it ever has been. And so we don't want to do anything that's going to, trigger any type of impact that's going to be, you know, escalated to a, to a, to a scale that we don't want to have. Absolutely not. So if there's areas that we can go to and say, here's areas that we want you to really consider these types of treatments, if you're going to do them or exclusion, we want to be able to know that. I mean, there is enough landscape out there. We don't want to treat the long areas. You know what I mean? So yeah, let's do it right.

And I think another component of it too, is like, we, we want to continue this process beyond like what, you know, um, just within the South possible people. If it's successful, you know, there's other areas that can benefit from it as well. So like, these are good conversations to have, and they help kind of ground us in some of our priorities. You know, obviously number one is for me, I think about our firefighter safety, uh, the communities that we're trying to protect those types of things, but That other component that is so big is that ecological component that goes along with doing this. And if you're going to go and be changing the landscape, you could have some type of impact there. We kicked that around a little bit today, but really continue to ask the hard questions and engage. If you guys have folks that are within that footprint, reach out to the RCD, reach out to CAL FIRE, talk about getting those rights of entry, talk about what those prescriptions are going to look like and the treatments on that piece of property are. And then we'll learn from that. And so if we go to take this to the next place, you know, because it has that level of benefit, you know, we want to continue this process. This is not a one and done for Cal Fire, for the RCD, for any of these groups that are really have a lot of interest in getting this low.

So if there's not anything further, we'll go on to part two, which is to discuss and consider possible action regarding a future commission site visit to Texas Hill to review wildfire resilience work conducted by the RCD.

We'll take public comment once they have the discussion and before there's any action. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, yeah, go for it. Do you want to hold the discussion about that part and then we'll take public comment? was raising her hand.

Oh, OK. Yes.

I'm sorry. And then we'll come back for action. OK. Sorry, Kathy. I missed you.

She hasn't said what she said.

So do you want to have the commission discuss the second part first, and then we'll take it?

Yeah, you want it.

Yeah, I kind of agree. Let's hear from Kathy. OK. Because they won't be able to hear what the discussion is before giving comments.

Okay, if you don't care, then let's follow Kaylee's lead.

Okay, so can the commission go ahead and discuss the second part of this?

So how are we finally doing that, going to a...

I'm 100% behind it because virus suppression is one thing that has never been taken care of in the state of California until the last few years when they started cleaning up all the highways, taking all the trees down, getting rid of the fire prevention and stuff. So you're for going to a... Absolutely. I would probably help you guys go through my neighborhood and talk to the people through 49 because it needs to be done. You guys are 100% right on target. Nothing's been done. Before people were here, the fires burned everything. And then since we have people here now, we have to have We have to do something. We used to do logging. We don't do logging anymore. The only logging they're doing is taking it off Sierra Pacific's land and, of course, the fire . But we're not doing any logging, haven't done any logging. And that's the biggest problem because the logging used to provide the roads, the way to get to the fires. The people that worked in the mills used to help put out fires. A lot of things stopped happening when the mills closed. And a lot of people didn't understand that, that it was going to be catastrophic fires. within years because we did absolutely nothing. And we need to start doing something again.

Patrick?

So just bringing this back to our mission to advise the board. The question is if we do go out and do this field trip, which I think would be fascinating. not going to give us a better understanding in the event that we either decide we want to proactively advise the board on issues or if we have opportunities individually to talk to our board members. For my point, in my relationship with my board member, I think the background that I would gain from doing the exercise reviewing this work

OK, let me ask, is anybody opposed to going out? Where exactly is Texas though?

Oh. On the airport. Just south of the airport.

OK. South of classical. Fire out there a couple years.

So then the first thing I would ask is, when do we want to do this? Because it's still pretty darn hot for the next couple of months, which is probably in September, we're up in Tahoe again. And my second question is, Commissioner Schwartzbach, would you be happy to take the lead on this and organize it with these folks so that we can make this field trip?

So would we want to do it in August?

It's overly good. Thank you. OK. Good. Actually, November might be better.

OK. Well, November, you could be getting into heavy rain.

This is true. I got a raincoat on. The end of October should be

Right?

I mean, this is not my area of expertise.

October or November would be... November, we're pushing Thanksgiving and holidays.

Let's do October.

And we have that issue.

So shall we try for October? Yeah. Okay. So if you can work with these folks and make that happen...

I just have one problem with October.

You're going to be gone.

Yeah. Yeah, but we won't miss you.

But...

It's tough. Well, October it is.

Well, would you still be able to organize without being behind? Because you're probably the most knowledgeable and probably the least.

I've already been out there.

Right, exactly. So that's what I'm saying. You can organize the field trip.

I guess the question is, when are you leaving and how long? Right, yet again. October 14th to November 7th. What? Yeah, where? Antarctica. No fires down there, by the way.

early october early october i mean this this is a very poor excuse he's going to coordinate with these gentlemen these ladies and let's do it the first part of october can we do that kaylee that's to propose a special meeting yeah yeah we could do that can't we you'd have to pick a date

So if we want to flip the calendar.

Or. We could do it in November.

But like she said, like November might be great. November. Next month is off. And that's the Thanksgiving thing.

How does our date conflict with Thanksgiving holiday?

It would be the day before Thanksgiving. So it doesn't conflict. You're so helpful. So helpful. My house will be packed full with family. Yeah, there's no way. Don't worry.

It's not going to happen. So we would probably postpone our meeting anyway. Thanksgiving. When would we postpone it to?

Well, so do we want to try and postpone the November meeting until earlier? like the second or third week in November. Dennis?

What's wrong with the first week in September or October?

Because we have to do a special meeting and we have to do all this stuff.

Well, we can discuss this at our next meeting.

I'm going to defer to your judgment here because you're the one that's going to have to organize it.

What I would say is we want to have a meeting in November. We're going to have to notice it if we're changing it. So we have to set a public notice of changing the meeting. Why don't we have it mid-November and incorporate the field trip mid-November?

I think that makes sense. The 11th or the 18th? The 11th is Veterans Day.

So probably the 18th.

Okay.

18th of November.

How does it work for you, Mark? Just so I'm clear, you're talking about having our regular meeting.

Regular meeting, but moving it to the 18th.

CARC Daniel Conference, and we were notified yesterday that our strong horse paper was accepted for presentation.

Okay.

We're going to be at conference.

Tell me a date that works in that time frame for you.

How about, how long are you gone?

It is the 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st.

How about the 12th, the day after Veterans Day? Yeah. So it would be on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday.

Okay.

And we don't have to consider this a special meeting. It's just a moved meeting.

Yeah.

Okay. Is everybody in concurrence with that?

Say the date again, please.

It would be November 12th, which is a Thursday. And I would assume that we'll probably meet here And then resume the conversation at Texas Hill.

And that's going to be our November general meeting.

Yes. Yes. Instead of bumping up against Thanksgiving. And then Commissioner Schwartzbach-Appeal will work with Kaylee also to make sure that everything is... Because there's rules about this. Trust me. Trust me.

It's not fun. I love all these rules.

Good. Okay. Are we good?

So...

Public comment. We're now taking public comment on agenda item three. Each speaker will have three minutes to address the commission. We'll take comments first from individuals present in the meeting room, followed by those participating on Zoom. If you're on Zoom, unmute yourself when called upon. And if you're on the phone, press star nine to raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature to indicate your interest in speaking. We ask that you voluntarily state your name for the record.

Go ahead. Kathy, do you understand me? No. So this is the news to mark the end but I just wanted to make the comment that, I have three actually. You said the CEQAs were performed by a contracted .

CEQA? Yeah. No, the RC Board of Directors is the discretionary authority to adopt CEQA.

Okay. At any rate, you know my concerns about They do their biological surveys in the middle of the day. And they don't really take into account because they don't see them. So that's one of my concerns. I just want to state that here. So cameras are a large piece of the property in that talk. So they're not going to do that. And also, you talked about them, when they do their surveys, it's special listed to be guidelines for. But what about resident species that aren't particularly important and sometimes hated by people? Those are also very important. My concern is the lack of shrub islands, logs laid down, things like that provide habitat for these smaller animals and birds. I get concerned about a genetic bottleneck. fires produce the genetic model. But the genetic diversity also is a complaint. What this is, I'm all for what this is. It's just that the BNPs that come up in the literature with laying down log and shrub islands and having shade trees for thermal, the heat's gonna catch up with all these bare ground with no transvaporation from the trees. So can you, you didn't discuss any of that here, but I was hoping you would bring it up, because this is the Wildlife Commission.

Yeah, the, these biological surveys, the terrestrial, aquatic colobos, they look at the ecological conditions of the site and identify any type of potential plant, animal, whatever might be there. And it's not just listed, you know. If we were just funded by the state, we would not legally have to account for any federal illicit spaces, but we do. So we try to be as holistic as possible. And then there's the data that comes through there and it says, okay, well, if you don't observe it, it's not there. Well, we presume presence as much as possible, right? We're presuming presence of fissure in classical, right? So, you know, so we are trying to account for as much of the um, data that we collect from our biological experts. And, um, we, we believe the people we hire are qualified to do the job. Um, and then, um, then we get recommendations, but then there's, you know, there's, Hey, you know what, this is a dead dying tree that doesn't have any, um, occupancy. Let's put it on the ground and let's leave it there. You know, let's, let's, let's, we, we like soil productivity. We're a resource conservation district. Uh, we like soil productivity. at every traffic level that that provides. So yeah, there's a lot of things that are done on the narrative side, but then there's a lot of things that are done on the field side. You know, adaptive management occurs all along the way. And it's through observation, input from landowners, input from other people, and we take all that into account.

How does the homeowner or the property owner, you say they have a complete say over what you do, is there... a component of education to the property owner that you lay down this log, it'll be there for this, or they already, you just go there.

So our sociological approach to working with landowners is very much a skill set that we learned day one that we started with. You have to listen, and learn as much as you can before you show up and think you know everything and tell somebody what to do on their property. Because we won't work on anybody's property. We'll get thrown out of this county in a heartbeat. And so we have to be very sensitive to that. And so first thing we do is we learn about the property from them. They know more about it than we do or the scientists or anybody. The history, everything. They know what's underground as far as utilities, but they also know what's underground as far as their dog that passed away or their whatever it might be. Um, we get that a lot. And so we take that into account. We also have grandpa's favorite tree. We have this, we have that. There's all the kinds of things that come up that we say, okay, we're going to protect these. We're going to, here's some flagging, you know, make sure you mark these and we'll learn, you know, we'll map them. We'll put them on the map and do all this stuff. And then we delineate it on the map and they say, okay, I like this. Let's do it. And, um, and then we go to Cal fire and we say, This is the map. We had to model it. We had to see if it was going to meet the objectives of the, of the public's investment, because these are public funds that have been allocated under a bond primarily that's been adopted by the public. And there have to be used for that purpose. If we don't use the funding for the purpose for which it was intended, we risk having to give that money back. So there's that balance, right? And so, um, And that's on an individual landowner. And then all of a sudden, if you start looking at every single landowner in a row and every single person here, we have to do that. You know, for every single person. It's time consuming. And sometimes it causes delays. And sometimes we have to explain that to the grantor. But again, you know, I mean, I was born in Marshall High School. I know people. My dad lives on the tunnel right by North Ridge. My dad, Wayne Ager? Yeah.

Oh, my God. I've known him my whole day. I've been working with him since I saw him.

So at the end of the day, I want to be able to, you know, have you stand up on our behalf and say, you know what, these guys did what they said they were going to do. You know what I mean?

Okay. Thanks. I like what you say about the mosaic because that leaves a heterogeneous landscape, which is very important because animals are going to need to find other places to live.

Yeah. And chaperone environments are very sensitive. We're not going home. There's all kinds of different senses. You know what I mean? There's certain things that we just have to agree on.

I'm seeing no additional public comment from the room. Now taking public comment from online participants.

Seeing any additional public comment.

Okay, so we need to take a vote on going ahead with the November meeting and moving it and potentially going on a field trip.

I'll make a motion to move our meeting to November 12th, but that will include a field trip to Texas Hill. I'll second.

It's been moved and seconded. All that agree, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. All right. Agriculture Commissioner Report.

I don't have much. The board appointed the new ad commissioner at the last meeting. Her name's Jessie Fowler. She's coming to us from Calaveras County. She will be starting on August 10th will be her first work day. Other than that, she has Leanne talked about the new world screw worm at all with you guys. CDFA issued some import requirements for animals due to new world screw worm that's been detected in Texas and New Mexico. It affects wildlife. It'll affect any warm blooded animal. So that's something that they're keeping a close eye on. Does that include humans?

Yes.

Very rarely, but it's possible.

It's a parasite? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a magic. That's close. Yes. It's mostly, most of the detections have been in cattle in Texas, and the one in New Mexico was a dog. They have found some wildlife instances of it as well. It was something that was in the United States back in the 60s and they were able to beat it back all the way to South America using sterile fly releases and that's what they're doing again. So hopefully they'll get a handle on it before it becomes an issue in California. But that's just something to be aware of.

If you get any paperwork or reports or whatever, if you want to forward them to us, that'd be great. Sure. Thank you. Absolutely. Great. That's it. Okay.

All right, Commissioner reports. Oh, I'm sorry. Bye.

Maybe we should excuse the guests.

Oh, gosh, yes. If you guys want to leave, I'm sorry. You are more than welcome to leave if you guys don't mind.

Well, we're looking forward to Jim's presentation. It's OK, you guys.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

OK. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, guys, bright and early in the morning. Yeah.

All right, Commissioner Davies, let's just go around the room. Go for it.

Oh, you know, I'm going to cede my time to my little talk, if that's okay. We're running long.

Well, are you going to talk about anything else about that?

No.

Okay, Mr. Burr. The only thing I have. We talked about visiting other permissions. I have some contact information here. We are still waiting to possibly make contact with the commission in Douglas County. If there's anybody that's interested in doing this, Let me know. We found it to be very informative part of the pandemic. When we shared information and common concerns and common solutions. So if you're at all interested, let me know, please. Pardon me? Right. And here's the contact information. I'd be more than happy to visit with the Nevada County Fish and Wildlife Commission. It's farthest away. And I know quite a few of the commission on that particular.

Did you know Amador has a new commission? Amador only has a new commission.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I think they've only met like two or three times. But that's another neighboring county that just established a commission. All right.

So if anybody's interested in visiting other commissions, please contact Dennis.

Commissioner Welk.

Thank you. I worked very briefly with Chair, I said very briefly, we only did a lot of work. Verna?

We have an agenda item for that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. That's all I did. Doesn't it feel good?

Well, I did some other stuff.

Mr. Gardner. Okay. Mr. Robinson.

Well, about a month ago, I went down to Sacramento and picked up some wood buck or wood duck boxes that I'm going to put up around Paul and Pine's area up there along the stream. My son.

That's about all I got down. That's it. That's what it is.

Commissioner Shrestha?

So last meeting, I brought up the idea of a science symposium on mountain lions for the county with a target audience of the Board of Supervisors and other decision makers, as well as the public. We also had our last meeting visit from the Mountain Lion Foundation, which was really productive. They met with the sheriff, they met with Florida Kilgore. They got a lot of meetings in while they were here. They came to my property and I showed them around. They wanted to see a property that had lions interacting with livestock. And well, and so there's a lot of lion activity in my neighborhood with all the neighbors and so forth. And one of the things that has... kind of been a result of that visit and the outreach that we've had is that, um, we're discussing, I've written to them a conceptual proposal of a lion research and management program, all the different components, estimates of what it might cost, what are, who might be collaborating with us, uh, and so forth. Um, they've been digesting that and we, uh, one of the good, uh, outcomes is I think I have a new partner to help me with this, and that is the UC Davis Carnivore Project. And they've offered funding to Fernando Mahara to work with me to craft a project. We are scheduled to talk further about what elements of the project they want to sponsor. And of course, we'll be talking with our collaborators like CDFW as well. So in terms of the science symposium, I like to kind of like put that on the back burner because depending on how this goes, it may change the nature of what we want to do in a symposium. We may want to use the symposium to roll out the project and have experts talk about different components of the project and do it that way. So I'm waiting to, so I'm still talking with them. Fernanda's been out in the field catching lions, so he's not available.

Is the carnivore project a non-profit or is it part of UC Davis?

I think it's both. Okay.

It's not the same non-profit that Haley's is. Right, yeah. My next question.

No, no, this is the UC Davis carnivore project. which is, uh, actively working with, uh, lion management programs in a number of counties around the state already. Okay. Right.

Yeah.

And for, for now, Nahara is, uh, you, you know, he's a PhD and a DVM veterinarian, uh, permitted to, uh, anesthetize lions. And he's published a lot on lions, has a lot of really great ideas. Uh, he's actually a real expert. So, uh, i think we're making progress on putting something together uh it's a complex project that's you know it's taking a while to happen but the fact that the mount lion foundation has undergone a um what would you call it a uh transformation in in their approach uh is a really great development for us and um i think they want to work here so okay we'll see how it goes all right

Did they indicate an interest in maybe cooperating with funding? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that presentation we had was outstanding. And it's obvious, at least from my point of view, that the whole philosophy of that organization is changing.

Yeah.

And it's changing to the better. Yeah. I was very impressed with the presentation. And it was only 15 minutes long.

No, it wasn't.

There was a lot of discussion, which was good. That's what we wanted to see.

I know. I'm sad I missed that meeting. So I started watching it.

Yeah.

Both the presentations, because I think Elena presented, too.

Yes.

Anyways, I'm partway through, but I want to watch that.

Well, we should talk.

Yeah. Well, and I'm going to talk with one of them this week.

Well, what I would like to do is send to you, for your review, a proposal that I sent to them.

Awesome. I would love to read that.

Okay. Yeah.

Do you have an additional? I'm just, I'm worried about time.

No, just a comment. You know, as individuals, we go to different meetings. And I would like to know if you're going to a meeting and you'd like someone to go with you to help me learn more about what these commissions are involved with. Oh, there you go. I'm just saying, if one of the commissions is going to the Monarch Society's meeting or something, Okay. If I know and I can make myself available and I'm not in closing, I'd love to attend some of the meetings just from a learning standpoint. Sure.

So, yeah, if we know that we're going to the meetings, then absolutely. Sorry, there was something I should have said. Thank you for reminding me. We have our DA meeting the morning of our next meeting.

So I think Dennis, Pat, and myself will be going with Bob

OK, perfect.

Thank you.

Briefly, the clear coexistence flyer will be going out in the fall tax bills for everybody on District 5 of El Dorado County in the fall. and um we got funding we got the whole project funded through a donation from team bear which is the organization i work with and then all the bear box companies that that service lake tahoe so um it came at no cost to the county which was really nice so you'll be seeing those oh actually you won't because you still live in district five sorry um and then um in the next uh for the next uh meeting ma'am kaylee um i'd like to make sure that the september meeting meets your qualifications My plan is to just do the aquatic invasive species and the California Tahoe Conservancy Upper Marsh Project field trips, just like we had planned for May. But if any of that changed, I'm going to put that on the next agenda so we can discuss it in case you guys want to do something different. End of report. Shelly, your turn.

Bob, sorry you can't be here. You got hung up. But I was going to just say that we, I think he probably worked on this, but Warden Pica is no longer with us. He was our South of Tahoe warden and he got another job in Siskiyou County. So he's moving. So we're down that warden. We don't have an Alpine warden and we're supposed to get a Tahoe warden, but that may be delayed now. So a lot of staff changes in law enforcement within our district. So that's one thing. As far as my report, lots, lots of bear activity. And I'm just trying to get my bearings that have been away for two weeks. But I got back and things are blowing up with bears everywhere.

Bearings, is that a joke?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, I get it. Yeah. So other staff changes within our agency, our mountain lion lead is no longer there. Jason Lombardi is not the lead of it. my program anymore.

Is he still there?

No, I think, I think he moved on. So, so I don't know how they're going to fill that. I think John Randolph, I don't know if you know him, but he's going to kind of take on Jason's stuff in the meantime.

Yeah.

And he might fill it like they might just put him in that position eventually, but I'm about to change in some of our staffing and our budgets are really bad this year. So we're, we're kind of scrambling just to,

the bare minimums because of you know big stuff just just broke around their phone calls i know oh geez all right is that good yeah okay so a next agenda item commissioner davies recommending the commission receive and file an update about a livestock predator workshop he attended in june hosted by uc cooperative extension central sierra and tell you public comment

We should have the discussion. All right. Go for it. I can go? Okay.

All right. So what initiated this was a predator workshop that BC Extension did. In fact, Corey and I went over to the one in Jackson. I thought it was good information, starting information. I'd like to read a little bit about it and brought some papers to play with because I don't You and your cohort. There's five of these, and then you have six. Okay, and then.

Make sure Kaylee has one.

I'll make sure she has one at the end.

So where did Jason Lombardi go? I'm not sure.

Oh.

I just got an email.

Okay, so then I'll add the second one. So this was basically a Wolves in California presentation by Peggy Orrick. And then another one, the cost of cohabitation impacts and impacts of expanding wolf populations by Tina Tate and Ken Tate from UCB. So Peggy's from UCB and Tina's from UCB. So the two, the two studies both discussed population dynamics, habits, habitat requirements, as well as impact on wildlife and cost to ranchers in fact there. So these were included in this EDC Cooperative Extension Peoples, mostly speaking Syrian. easily most of us know this, but wolves were in California until 1925. And I think that's an important date when we get a little bit later in the presentation. In 2015, a lone wolf crossed the California-Oregon border. 2015, a wolf crossed the California-Oregon border and returned to Oregon shortly afterwards. Today, 11 years later, wolf packs cover large parts of Northern California and even some of Southern California. California differs from other Western states in that California has a high urban population that believes it wants wolves. So the first phase of Dr. Orrick's team project went from June 2024 to June 2026, and it was determined to determine home range and habitat use, occupancy predictions, native ungulates and carnivore estimates within wolf areas, ungulate resource selection, prey and diet analysis, livestock depredation patterns, and conflict reduction and compensation programs. So it was kind of a large, large project that Katie did. She had lots and lots of input from stakeholders, non-stakeholders, and other people. So the team used in-person interviews, questionnaires, direct engagement, camera traps, DNA analysis and microscopy to analyze 1,030 scat samples. They had 15 colored animals across five packs. And they modeled habitat suitability and dispersal. And a lot of this information that's coming was previously known. Wolves are generalists. They live in many, many different environments. And they have three biological seasons. Basically, spring and early summer, which is their denning. Summer and early fall, which is after denning. And then winter and late fall and winter, non-denning. It's all about reproduction. So they're also active at night and most active at dawn and dusk. Very similar, actually, to lunch. Dispersal within a wolf pack can occur as early as a year. It averages two years, but it could go throughout their lifetime. And I thought this was... Interesting. Wolves in California eat cattle in depredations, scavenging, which can be influenced by deer populations. I think that's in density. I think that's important as well. So the perceived effectiveness of non-lethal methods and the GAL people would discuss this with mountain lions as well. And they found that range riding or human presence was about 54% effective. Carcass removal, about 44%. Turbo flabbery, which I was surprised at.

What was that?

It's electric wire that has flags on it.

Right. And that's about 32%. I'm surprised it was that high. Electric cleansing, about 26%. Guardian dogs, as low as 24%. But when you think about that, we'll go into what gets eaten and how they're guarded. Electric deterrents, electronic deterrents, and life, 14%. So this is the part Shelly's not going to like. So what stakeholder group or groups are seen by the public as the most or least trusted source regarding world humanity? So you don't kill a messenger.

She's sitting next to you. And I know. And I know.

And this is probably skewed for one reason, and that's because of the people asking the questions. The most trusted university researchers Whether it's skewed from the people asking or responding to the questions. The respondents will probably skew it. Right. Okay. So if I ask you, Pat, right?

Yeah.

In all probability, I'm not going to say, well, I don't trust you.

Well, I mean, the only thing lower than the government agencies is nonprofits.

they write high and cooperative extension ranks high and usda wildlife businesses county officials cattlemen's associations and neighbors are in the middle and then at the bottom there's non-profits and then right next to them is nrcs cdf anyway where's the rcd on there right there it's not there it's not there Do you know what the size of this sample was? It was a reasonably large sample. I have the entire thing here, and I can send it to you. These were mostly cattlemen. Pardon me? Mostly cattlemen. This was sampling the pack areas, and mostly out for cattlemen, but as far as that were affected, right? But as far as who they talked to, it was like 600 non-combats. Okay.

This is online too. This is on our website.

Right.

So you already know the answer. I'm really curious about this Fox Life thing that says 62%. It's the most effective thing. I'm skeptical on Fox lights. No, it said, and where does it say 60? It says Fox lights, electronic deterrent. 62. So electronic deterrent.

No, that's negative. Less effective. 14, I think. Gotcha. More effective. Oh, I see. Okay. That's a weird graph. That's a very strange graph. Yeah.

But I think at the end of it... Okay. She posed the question of what you do before the wolves arrive, not if they arrive. What do you do before they arrive? Three things. Identify and document any sightings. Prepare for the first potential depredations. And if possible, remove the attractants. If you're a cattleman or a sheepman, that's kind of hard to do. That's actually what you do. Anyway.

There was a lot of discussion about carcass removal and boneyards. Because that, when they say attractants, I think they're not meaning the animal, like live animal in the landscape. The attractant was the boneyard.

Yeah, and I'll get to that over here too. So here's the other one. So, um, so, um, you know, Tate's, uh, cost was basically cost of cohabitation with expanding wolf populations. Okay? So she was the second part of the speaker series. And so these are perceived and real costs that are related to increased depredation and stress caused by dramatic increase in number of wolf patterns. I think one of the Well, I'll just go on there. Between 2015 and 2024, there was a minimum of 110 pups born to new and existing packs, averaging about 12 to 13 pups overall per year. In 2025, five packs of the 12 produced 26 pups. So they're actually, I guess, right in that same range, but they're going about 10 to 13 a year. So in 25, confirmed and probable wolf kills and injuries went from zero in 2015 to nearly 200 in 2025, with the Bay End sale, Harvey, and wheelback tax, the outstanding bad actors. I think the Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife dealt with one of those packs.

Yeah.

You'll notice there are several of them do not have that pack location on there, but it's squeezed in between Harvey and Morrison and I think Harvey was one of the bad actors. So to give some perspective how we differ from other states, Montana has a full population of about 1100. They lost 54 domestic animals killed by wolves, 35 cattle, 16 sheep. Sheep are usually guarded by dogs. You can kill a lot of sheep if you're a pack of wolves, so I'm surprised. Yeah, and three-fourths. So in Montana, they averaged one depredation for every 20 wolves per year. Montana removed 25 wolves. Bad act. In Wyoming, in 2023, the world population was only 352. They lost 49 domestic animals, 41 cattle, many sheep, four goats, one horse, seven wolves for depredation per year. California was a lot higher than that. I think, personally, I think it has to do with the fact that they just weren't here for a hundred.

Exactly.

And we have zero management plan. So an important metric in California is the declining deer population. You'll notice that in one of your handouts there. Between 1917 and 1926, the deer population sank below 400,000 statewide. Correct me if I'm wrong, Shelley, because I'm using their numbers. And notably, wolves were eliminated in California in 1955. Deer populations peaked then in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were over 2 million deer. Since the 1960s, there's been a steady decline in herd numbers. A lot of that has to do with habitat loss, a lot of it. And the last count that she had on this was 2013, where there was less than 440,000 here. So it's dropped down really close to where they had shut off deer hunting.

And what is that habitat loss due to? Pardon me? What's the habitat loss? 40 million people.

People? So in 1911, there were 8 million people here. Now it's 49. What do you think?

Well... A lot of those people are living where there aren't, it's not the traditional deer herd areas, you know.

But there are still, it's also forest management.

That's what I was getting at. I was trying to get at.

It's both, yeah.

I'm asking a forester, is it forest management that's responsible? It has a lot to do with it. I mean, you can see there. I kind of teed it up for you.

But it's habitat degradation. It's habitat fragmentation.

With forest management, you have this constant change in the landscape and you constantly have new beneficial things coming in. Surprisingly enough, when you graze over a landscape, you actually have better habitat for deer because the cattle can eat really crappy stuff. The deer then benefit because they're eating all the sprouts after the crab and stuff. It's just after we masticate something or it gets burned, initially you have this high protein content sprouts coming up and they just lick it up and they prosper. Now, after five years in the Caldor fire, the brush is this tall and basically has lost its ice cream value.

So, Jim, I'm going to ask you, sorry, we have 25 minutes and a kind of a packed agenda. I don't want to miss anything that you are saying. So I have a couple of considerations. Number one is if you think you're going to finish up, then no big deal. But perhaps do we want to continue this on to our next meeting?

I can burn this out in a few minutes.

Okay. All right. Again, I do not want you to short sheet us because you're sure? Okay, all right.

So the original objective was to quantify the indirect economic costs of cohabitation between beef, cattle, and wolves. And there's an obvious relationship to reduce body condition, lower conception rates, lower weaning weights, and lower sales, of course. In 2022, now, this is interesting. In 2022, they found that 86% of wolf's calves Ranges of Harvey and Lassen packs, and you know, they say it was right there in between those, contain cattle DNA. This could be from the direct depredation or from carrion, and if scat samples were taken on location, this is me, not them. If scat samples were taken around the carrion, then there would be, it would reflect a high percentage, but 85% is an enormous amount. But, you know, it'd be easy to follow buzzards or a ranch that says, well, I got a dead one over there. Obviously, it's a wolf kill, so we're going to take scat samples, right? And I think that has skewed that number. I don't think they did that intentionally, but I think that has skewed that number. Anyway, so researchers found that wolf presence disrupts seasonal cortisol, which is a stress hormone, production in cattle. leading to the lower conception rates, increasing energy expenditure, and overall reduction in vigor. It's shown that wolf-impacted herds had 58% higher cortisol levels than control herds. In 2023, the researchers originally estimated the cost, and this is kind of a unique metric. The cost of moderate conflict with wolves to ranches to be close to $70,000 per wolf. And with severe wolf contract tax, $163,000 per wolf. The updated figures for 2025, because they're kind of increasing exponentially, is almost double that. I don't know if I have that in there or not. In the current legislation, the Assembly earmarked $25 million of taxpayer funds for lost compensation, if you can prove that a wolf killed your livestock. I'm guessing that there's an equal amount of cost to the taxpayer for regulatory expenses and fish and wildlife costs, because it's got to have cost a boatload of money.

$10 million.

I think there's other classes. With wolf numbers increasing exponentially without any management plan, mountain lion numbers increasing without a management plan, their numbers increasing, and the always pervasive coyote, do we really believe that the dwindling deer herds and other prey animals could absorb the losses? If not, then what?

Well, the answer is easy. We all become vegetarians. This is not a problem. I feel vegetarian. I've been all my life.

It's accurate. You know, if we all became vegetarians, we'd have to start plowing the loon.

Interesting. Very interesting. Jim, thank you.

Good stuff. Hey, so quick. We don't have anything over our county that we know of yet, though they may have come through.

They've come through. They just haven't established.

What do you propose the commission do at this point other than just the information? Do you think there's something else we should be doing? Should we be forming some sort of white paper?

I think we should be paying attention. Just paying attention. Just paying attention right now. Because with KB Oryx, Dr. Oryx, it isn't if they come. It's just when they come, they will come. We do have, by the way, here. So we have the Nielsen's up here off of MET. And then we have, well, the Balkans are over up in the divide. So you're talking cattle ranchers. Yeah, cattle ranchers. I don't think we have any sheep or permatease.

I think we ought to make copies and provide copies to each one of the supervisors. If not, talk to each one of us and talk to our supervisors about what's going on.

So we do have a real low number of deer herds, so we have less of an attractive.

And we have no elk.

And we have no elk.

They have elk up there.

And we don't have alpine cattle. We don't have grazing up high, do we? Yeah, there's some.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they go up in that Sierra, the Ice House area. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And SBI uses Fraser's.

I work with Spock. He actually does cattle. Okay.

Good to know. Yeah, I've seen Sherry Bockey. But they run their cows mostly on the George County Divide and up in Gray Horse Canyon.

They used to take their cows up to Klamath.

Yes, they did. They knew the ranch where they went. When they were in school with Jim Bach, you know, his best friend, he used to go up to his ranch up there. That's what they used to bring her kids.

So any other questions for Jim?

No, can we agree that we're going to share this information with each one of our students? Absolutely.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. As we should. Okay. Public comments? Do we have any public comments for agenda item four?

By the way, Scott, we need to be on guard with our kids because It would be a disaster. I don't see any public resume.

Okay, we'll move on to the second item number five. Reviewing the following fiscal year 26-27 funding requests totaling $15,100.

and consider taking action to approve each of the requests. So you all have the request in front of you. Any comments on any of this?

Any changes to the request from any of the commissioners?

No. No comments?

Public comments? Now taking public comment on agenda item five. Get the public comment from the room.

Okay, so I need a motion, please.

Motion to approve.

Second. Can I ask a question? Yes. In terms of, this is about $15,000 in funding. What's going to be the remaining balance in our budget?

Do we have What do you do about Marna?

Marna, did you hear that question?

She's asleep. I don't blame her. She's asleep. I would be. Oh, my gosh.

We don't have...

Don't we have a financials in here? Yeah.

I think our budget can tolerate 2,000, just exactly how much you'd be looking for. So 25, 26, it looks like it would be 13,000, 14,000-ish.

That looks right now at 27, almost 28,000. Yeah, so less 15,000.

Okay.

All right.

I just thought we should know that.

Good point.

Very good point. Okay. So it's been moved and seconded. Those who approve signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, let's go to item six, clerk of the board, staff recommending commission discuss the ethics training reminder for commissioners who have not completed the required online courses. So is there anybody who has not committed? And oh, gentlemen, gentlemen.

I don't know.

Would you like a good email?

Okay. Yeah.

And it is an every two year requirement.

So you will get a notice from Human Resources from Heather Anderson for a target solution. And if you don't have it or it's been a really long time since you first got the email, I included her contact information in the reminder that I sent out last week. If you can't find it or you don't have any of the emails, reach out to me.

Are you looking to be fired? I have a remedy for you. I struggle.

understand why I have to take it seven times.

Well, every two years. Every two years, that's the requirement.

There's a government code and a supervisor's policy that requires it. And it's because this commission makes decisions on funding that gets spent. So it's part of your obligations under that. And if you don't do it, then it'll be up to your board member how they want to. Okay, so it's

Oh. Fell right into it.

Let me know what happened.

If you struggle, you know, contact, what's her name in human resources?

Heather. Heather.

You can do it together, you know.

That would be the way to do it. I'll tell you, it's pretty easy.

Except you have to do it. You each have to have a computer up. It was. Because you have to go through and get the certificate.

Holy shit.

Okay, so. Any public comment? Come on. And that's just receiving file or information only.

All right.

So are you sure you're OK with moving your items?

Yeah, really? Continuing. Well, I think the next thing is Board of Supervisors.

Report, yeah. So yeah, item seven is we are providing a progress update on the annual Board of Supervisors report. You all got it in your package if you didn't get it in your email. So this is a very underlined, very rough draft. Please, please go through it carefully. and send Kaylee any corrections, amendments, additions that I have no ego in this. So change it as you see fit and then send it to Kaylee. Kaylee can send it to me and I can make those changes. But we do have a, I would like to have it done before next August meeting so we can present the final draft. It needs to be approved at the next meeting. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

presentation regarding this is a year. Yeah.

So, and I, I was not at the meeting where we did the mountain lion. So I listened to it, but I have really, really bad reception for so many other. So some of it was missing. So again, go through this again. I'm not, this is totally a rough draft and some of these photos are placeholders and the financial information is last year's. I don't have this year's yet.

I'd like to just note that on this, talking about the urban beaver, the RCD put in pond levelers to support the beavers down in El Dorado Hills. The locals took out the pond levelers, or took out the dams and destroyed it. Yeah, but I thought you would want to know.

Which community was that in?

El Dorado Hills?

Yeah, but which, like, there's a lot of little... Oh, sorry.

Do you remember what it was called? What's that little creek that it was in?

Is that the one that, is that the pond levelers that they got the coexistence program?

It's the one on the other side of Target, you know, it's over, it's south, is it south? It's south. Yeah, south of Target.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. I could get the details for you from Mark. It's really disappointing. Yeah. It just shows you that we need to do more than modify the environment.

The topic here is not the beaver ponds. The topic is actually the Board of Supervisors report. So we don't need any blessing. Public comment, please, because I'm going to see if I can get to it.

On this topic, I wasn't vice chair when we set up this meeting. I'm not going to be able to attend the board meeting with you.

that's fine that's fine actually i think i should go to costa rica and you should just all right just put that out there anyway go for it so do we have any public comment on agenda item seven okay let's see if we can get through we have nine minutes um so commissioner gardner item eight commissioner gardner recommending that commission discuss purchasing custom shirts for commissioners to wear at fishing derbies and other sponsored events

So when we're at fishing derbies, people don't really know who we are. We do want the banners. But I feel like people are weird about talking to us. When I'm standing there, people are like, who are you? Why are you talking to me? So having some sort of identification and having shirts would be fine.

So I was given a shirt by Kathleen that is this, if you look at our current membership photo in the presentation, I'm the one wearing the green shirt with the Fish and Wildlife logo on it. So we have those, but I don't know how we did that. But if we should refresh them or something.

Okay, we've had shirts in the past. We've also had hats in the past. But to answer your question, normally what we're doing is sitting at some shape and a table that recognizes the Fish and Wildlife.

Yeah, we need to have our banner left. So, yeah.

But, yeah, I like the idea.

I like the idea.

Do we want to create an ad hoc committee to come up with a shirt or work on? I mean, or should we stick with the shirt that we have and just make more somehow? And who paid for this?

Kathleen, who paid? Okay. I'm not sure if Jim... I'm not sure everybody has one, but do you have one, Steve?

No.

I think it was when Eric was on. Eric was the one who did it. I still have the logo, the logo that he produced it, but he might have had it enhanced by somebody else before it got here, so low resolution.

Is this it right there?

Yes, that's the logo.

Yeah, it's pretty low resolution. Okay.

I think I have an order from church. I think I have your shirts and I have a contact and I think they have our logo. I mean, you're going to form a subcommittee.

Well, no, I mean, if we already, if you're okay with using the shirts that we already have, then absolutely. Let's just get some order. Okay.

Well, once we get approval funding wise, then I'll go, I'll go, I'll take care of it.

Yeah. That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Maybe find out how many people want a shirt. I'm fine. I have everybody here. I'm sure. Dennis can go get an estimate for it and then bring it back.

Hey Dennis. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that?

You mean his hat? Oh, sorry.

I'll get an estimate for hats. Okay. Thank you.

And then, um, If you can bring that back to the next meeting, that would be awesome. Put that on the agenda, yes, Kim? Yeah. Does that work for you? OK, go with public comment.

Do we have any public comment on agenda item eight? I don't see any.

OK.

So last item, we're going to squeeze this in. Commissioner Gardner-Riochum and the commission discuss willingness to participate in the 2027 County Fair 149.

We talked about this a little bit last meeting. see if you would be interested. It's not like we'd be interested, but doing a real deal, we can, we would kind of need a lot of people to be helping in with taking hours and standing at the booth.

So how many days is the county fair? Four days.

Oh, oh, okay. It's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Okay. I'll do a day.

Yeah, I'll do a day.

We can,

do what we've done. We have participated before. And we've had your furs and skulls. And we also got with the fish and water lake. And it was very, very successful. And with a lot of questions. And we interface with a lot of people. Good idea.

Could we have a subcommittee to do research and breaks? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a good idea. Yes, it sounds like. Would you be willing to help me?

Shirley. That's great. I'm a committee member.

Shirley, another meeting. Not to be applied to you, but is there any problem with us doing that? Is there a conflict with

Board of Supervisors have a problem with any of that administrative problem.

I'm wondering. I'll have to look into it and bring an update at the next meeting.

Okay, so yeah.

No, no, great.

If we need to do like a proposal about what we might do, whether it's just educating about the fishing derbies and having flyers that are approved, like fencing, how it should be on their property and all the

flyers that we are and fair wise information and oh my gosh there's so much but the booth is going to cost money it shouldn't be too much but yeah i mean i i'm assuming that that every vendor has to pay yeah there is probably another thing you have to look into okay yeah okay i'll see if all the labor was there but we have um yes and we so we haven't and with it's june

July? June. It's in June. It's usually Father's Day weekend. Okay, perfect. So we have an ad hoc committee of these two, Commissioner Gardner and Commissioner Byrne. And then Kaylee's going to look into the permission from the Board of Supervisors.

I can't believe we made it back here.

We did it. We did it. Any legislative reports? Please say no. Okay, good. Our next meeting is August 26th somewhere in this building. And without any further business for the commission, we are adjourned at 1657.