Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

We are unmuted.

Okay. Good morning, Eldorado County. It is 9AM on Tuesday, April 28. Welcome everybody to the regularly scheduled board of supervisors meeting. I'd like to invite chaplain Lloyd Ogan of Sierra Chaplaincy for our invocation this morning. Good morning, and welcome.

Good morning, board. Thank you for the privilege of being able to come here and bless your meeting today. On behalf of the 30 plus chaplains from Sierra Chaplaincy who walk alongside your public safety professionals every single day in this county, we count it a great privilege to be able to do that. And, the opportunity to bless you guys today is another piece of that as we expand to the community at large. So if you would just bow with me as we, ask for a blessing this morning.

God, today is this, board begins its regular scheduled meeting. We just ask for your blessing, for your discernment, for your wisdom as they address the issues that come before them today. May your hand be clearly visible. May you bless and keep each of their families and, and these leaders as they administer the duties that are necessary to keep our county running smoothly. We ask all these things in your almighty name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Parlin, would you lead us in the pledge, please?

Yeah. Everybody, please stand and join me for the pledge. Begin. I pledge allegiance

to the flag The States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Madam, CAO, are there any changes to the agenda that was posted on April 22?

No. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay.

Great. All right. Let's move on to the consent calendar, and I'll ask ask my colleagues if any of you have a comment to make on any item on consent or if you have any items you would like to pull. We'll start with District 2. Supervisor Chernbu.

Yeah. I just wanna thank the board for all the support on item 13, helping the residents in Grizzly Flat. We found a money that's an affordable housing fund that we had. So I just wanna thank the board very much, and then we're gonna have a kickoff event. We'll be tomorrow, Homemade's gonna be doing it. It's gonna be at Building C from eleven to noon.

Okay. Great. How about district three, supervisor of your camp?

No changes, ma'am.

Okay. District four, supervisor pardon? No changes. Alright. District one, supervisor Ferrero.

Yes, chair. Just like to make a comment on item number nine, recognizing tomorrow, 04/29/2026 is National Fentanyl Aware ness Day, and I'd like to read one of the, whereas. The illicit fentanyl crisis remains a significant public health and safety threat affecting individuals, families, and communities across our nation regardless of age, race, or economic status. It is the age groups of 25 to 44 year olds account for over half of the deaths, and California leads the charge again in number of deaths. So I wanna thank the board for approving this proclamation in advance, and we appreciate its importance. Thank you.

Yeah. And thank you for sponsoring that proclamation. I just also have a comment on item number 13. I was on jury duty back when this came before the board, but I just wanted the people of your district to know that I would have strongly supported that and I support the transfer for the contract down in Sacramento. That's awesome. Thank you

for that.

Yes, of course. Okay. So we will now take public comment on all matters on the consent calendar. Public comment on closed session items will also be taken at this time. To be specific, we will now hear public comment on closed session items number one, two, three and twenty three and consent items numbers four through 17.

If you are going to address the board on any of these, would you please identify which item number or numbers you will be addressing to the board? And I do want to mention that we did receive one comment on the closed session item that the board has received. So Ms. Dawson.

Each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will alert you when thirty seconds remain and again when your time has ended. We will begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press 9 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.

Are there any members of the public in the room with us this morning that would like to address the Board on anything on closed session or on consent? Please. Yes, Please. Welcome.

There's so many people here today. I just wanted to give everybody a chance first. I'm Kelly Nelavaya, District 1. On behalf of my family, thank you, Greg, for acknowledging, which is not just he said, don't cry. I said, I'm gonna isn't just my son who was lost on 11/23/2025 to elicit fentanyl poisoning.

What I really want you to do today, it's not about my son. It's about Travis Scott from I want you to really look and see in your head, Travis Scott from Camino. It's about Megan Long from Placerville. Beautiful girl, beautiful family. It's about Michael Sellings from El Dorado Hills.

Aspiring young man, 35 years old, died alone in his room in El Dorado Hills from an illicit pill that he thought was a Percocet. Beautiful family. They left our county. Can you imagine the pain that they could no longer stay in their home? And my beautiful son, Michael Nelabaya, raised in El Dorado Hills, nationally ranked tennis player, talented electrician, poisoned by fentanyl unknowingly.

Fentanyl is showing up everywhere. It's showing up in vape pens as in as demonstrated by our sheriff Jeff Lykoff in a seas of Union Mine High School, vape pens being sold to children that were laced with fentanyl. Thank god we have a sheriff's department that are on their toes. It's being found in marijuana. It's being found now in contact affecting small children.

Maria Alvarado Gill has sponsored legislation trying to protect children who are being exposed to illicit fentanyl in their homes, in their daycares, even in their toys. You may have heard of poisoned, Barbie dolls. It's not the time for me to talk about what we're doing right or what we're doing wrong. We'll have those conversations because I have a lot to say about that. But right now, I just really hope that you'll remember not just these four, but the hundreds we have lost, but the 200 that are lost every day in this country to elicit fentanyl. The problem is only getting worse. Narcan is not the answer. The poison that killed my son is resistant to Narcan. It is resistant to test strips. It's called carfentanil.

It is deadly. Thank you.

Thanks, Kelly. Kelly.

Thank you. On that note, I would just like to take a moment of silence just to remember our young people that we've lost in this county. And the the list is far far more than that, and it's it's deadly, and it's final. And I'm sorry. Can we just take a moment of silence?

I'm Kathy Adams from Grizzly Flats. It's nice to be talking to you even though this is a serious thing about something besides Grizzly Flats. I just finished earning my BA from Southern New Hampshire University. My last class in political science was to write a project paper, and I chose illicit drugs, specifically fentanyl. And one reason I chose it was I haven't always lived in El Dorado County.

I lived in the Sacramento area. And on my working life, I was a restaurant manager working for a national chains in twenty four hour full service restaurants. And I can tell you, fentanyl not only kills people, it kills businesses. Is, you remember back when we had smoking and nonsmoking sections? Well, in my restaurant, a prime seating area, the windows got shut out twice.

As I always wanted to say, would you like shooting or non shooting? In the parking lot, we had gang activity, and the line was my parking lot. It took months to get the gang activity out there and the drug dealing out of the restaurant. I had to have sheriffs in there on graveyard. I worked split shifts on the weekend because I couldn't have a assistant manager new to the job working in, that environment.

And these restaurants, they're not open. They're out of business now, or they're not open on graveyard. So is I'm happy to find that elder other families being proactive on the problem. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public that would like to address the board? Please come forward. Good morning.

Good morning chair and board. I'm Tanya Harlow, wildfire resilience officer in AWAPR. I wanted to make a comment on item number six, which is the Wildfire Awareness Season Proclamation. First off, thank you, Chair Lane and Vice Chair Ferrero, for sponsoring the proclamation, which recognizes May through October as wildfire awareness season. I just want to take a moment and highlight what that really means. Wildfire preparedness isn't something that one agency or organization or resident can take on alone. It takes all of us to make consistent, informed, and practical decisions before the fire even starts. And that's what this year's theme is. It's partners in preparedness. And it's not just this theme.

That's the reality of how we actually reduce risk. So every partner, every jurisdiction, and every fire district has a role, and all of those actions really do make a meaningful difference. So I want to share the work that the county public outreach group has done in preparation for the proclamation. As you know, this is a collaborative group that brings together all the local, state, and federal partners from all parts of the county, including the basin and other organizations like the Fire Safe Councils to really be consistent in our outreach. And so we have developed a coordinated social media campaign that will run throughout wildfire awareness season.

And it's making sure that the residents know that they can have that there's clear, straightforward actions that they can take that are manageable and also let them know what's happening countywide as far as wildfire risk reduction. So And then also connecting them with the assistance programs and resources that are available. So a big part of the campaign is also going to focus on emergency preparedness and evacuation, because knowing what to do before the incident happens is just as important as the prevention. So our goal really is for people to feel prepared and informed and confident in what they're doing. So all the partners will be kicking off the campaign and the season starting this weekend at all different community events all over the county.

And this is really our opportunity to connect with people and answer their questions and let them know what's going on behind the scenes and how coordinated we really are. So, anyway, thank you again for your continued support and continuing to prior prioritize this. As we all know, when we stay coordinated and engage our communities in a meaningful way, we're putting ourselves in a much stronger position to be better prepared and more resilient to fire.

You.

There any other members of the public that would like to address the board at this time? Okay, seeing none, may we go online please?

Yes. Sorry, something's going on with my computer. Okay. Not taking public comment from Noleen Giles.

Hi there. Are you able to hear me okay?

Yes. We are.

We were just wanting to ask that the committee consider including all lodging and the seed committee and not just focusing on agricultural.

Mister Giles? Yes. We will be taking public comment on that item next. Right now, we are only taking public comment on closed session items and the consent agenda.

My mistake.

That's alright. We'll call on you in a few minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm now taking pub public comment from Polly Egart.

Hi. Oh, hello. I wanted to first make a comment about the public comment section and that it only gives us three minutes. My understanding is for any comment we might wanna make about any agenda items. So if we, have more than one to talk about, we don't have much time.

And, the other thing is is how are you guys gonna remember everything everybody's been say saying? You know, you hear 20 people talking, and then you go and talk about those items later on. And you're gonna remember what people said, like, you know, an hour or two ago about it. So I just wanted to say that. And the other thing is, yes, I'm I sent in a letter regarding the closed session item number two.

And the this is a real problem for us, as you know, And you've heard from us a number of times. Please read my letter, and I sent it to you all via email and including county council. You are responsible for allowing Black Oak Mountain Vineyard to break the law over and over and over again. And it continues to this day, and it's getting worse and worse and worse. And would you like to live near that?

Would you like to have a 165 events per year next to you with booming music and lots of people screaming over the hillside and drones flying over? You need to do something about it. I see that you've had a number of lawsuits already from property owners for, and they're not getting solved for years and years. So, the public needs to know about this if you're not gonna do your job. And it's not fair to those of us who are trying to live our quiet country life.

That's why we live here in El Dorado County and specifically in Cool. And I just see that you're trying to, do all kinds of things to disrupt that and, you know, allow it happen. So the people that have money, you know, get away with this stuff, and then the the small people just trying to make a little buck by, renting a room out get chastised by your code enforcement. Yet code enforcement has been told specifically by Karen Garner to stand down and leave, this particular property alone and let them carry on breaking the law. You people are responsible for that.

I almost got seriously injured because of a a drone flying over. You know? There's these very rich people, running these properties and having weddings there and all kinds of stuff going on over there. You have no idea. You need to, you know, live next to one of these places before you start making, you know, rules or allowing them to break the rules. It's not right. So anyway, please read my letter. There's a lot of legal stuff involved that you guys aren't following. Thank you.

Thank you.

There is no additional public comment.

Okay. And I will bring this item back to the board for action. Ms. Dawson, would you please read the item into the record?

Approval of the consent calendar with the following addition. We will include supervisor Ferrero's comments regarding the proclamation of item number nine in the minutes.

Chair, could I make an additional comment on the proclamation for a wildfire, awareness? I think that I appreciate you guys bringing it. I do. What I find, and we've all found it and why we need these proclamations, is that in between fires, which there will be more. There always will now.

We become complacent, and so we need these reminders. And I will just let you know, when I was flying to DC last week, I happened to choose a movie. The supervisor turned boobroom recommended, and I recommend that everybody in our county watch the lost bus. It is a fabulous reminder why this work is so important to our county. Every community needs to do its part so that we don't have a lost bus. So thank you for bringing that proclamation.

Thank you, supervisor. Is there a motion, please?

Madam chair, I'll move consent.

Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes five o.

Alright. We will now move on to public comment on the rest of the agenda items, excluding the public hearings that are scheduled for this afternoon. So to be specific, we will now hear public comment on items eighteen, nineteen, and 20. Please identify which item or items you will be addressing to the board. I do also want to note that we received over 70 public comments, written public comments.

The vast majority were with regards to arts and culture on item 19, and we received about a dozen on item 20. All of the members of the board have those written comments. I thank the public for sending those in. Miss Dawson.

Each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A time will alert you when thirty seconds remain, and again, when your time has ended. We'll begin with comments from individuals present in the boardroom followed by those participating via Zoom. If you're joining via Zoom, please ensure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining by phone, press 9 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.

Good morning. Good morning. Ruth Mikkelsen, district four. And I'd like to speak on item 19. You know, you really had to kind of be a sleuth to read the whole staff report and figure out what was going on.

And I just want to make the comment that I don't think this was agendized very well. There's really no indication in the agenda what truly was in the meat of the item. And buried on page 23 of the 26 page staff report and no, I did not read it all. But I read that page searching for because someone had told me there was something about the senior day care, the project we love to beat to death. And even though you guys a few years ago came up with an idea of how you would keep that senior day care going when you got rid of the one in El Dorado Hills.

You had, like, a three year program and how you were going to raise fees each year, etcetera, etcetera. Here, we see it again. And I think you should stick to your plan. You spend a lot of time talking about it. Why don't you see it through? And I also think that one of the problems with senior day care, which I'm very, very familiar with because my parents went to senior day care. And, also, I was a volunteer at senior day care for twelve years. I ran the Family Caregiver Support Group. Family Caregiver Support. So I also want to speak on behalf of caregivers.

And I'm sure most of you on this board are of the age where you have cared for someone in your family. It is a task that takes really everything out of you, physically, emotionally, spiritually, to have a loved one be especially with long term illnesses, watching them deteriorate over the months and the years. And caregivers need respite to hang in there for the long haul. And when I did my family caregiver support group, which was monthly at the senior center, I took care of caregivers. I had up to 20 people coming who were desperate for support.

And that and that the the facility gave them that. Now I know there's some numbers, 11 people with the goal of 16 people to be there. That's just really the, tip of the iceberg. I think you have a bottleneck there because you're not paying your people well enough. It's a ratio that has to be kept of how many people work at senior day care and how many people can be accepted. When you pay them, I believe $16 an hour less than McDonald's, you're not gonna have a lot of employees there. And so you're not gonna be able to accept a lot of seniors into this into the day care. So I hope that you look at that, and I hope you quit attacking senior day care, and you can keep it going. Thank you very much. And also a shout out to Art's.

Thanks,

Ruth.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning.

Morning, members of the board. Good morning. My name is Brett Preble, and I'm commenting on agenda item number 19, file twenty six zero seven two three, specifically part two c, the mosquito fire settlement. Allocated $8,500,000 in mosquito fire settlement funds, $400,000 to a shared services agreement between our three fire departments, $8,100,000 for projects that benefit the mosquito fire footprint area. I sent letters to the board as a whole, and each of you got a personal letter.

I hope you had a chance to review them. And as evidenced by the fact that this issue has progressed through many meetings, we can all agree how important it is. I'm backing this funding allocation both for the benefit of Volcanoville and the divide as a whole. I asked originally for the entire amount in Volcanoville, and you had decided to allocate $400,000 for our fire department. I fully backed that.

And I urge you to vote yes, please. As I wrote in my letter to the board to the board, I'm passionate about the safety and security of our community, and I pledge to donate my time and expertise to the county and the board in any way, including fieldwork and ad hoc committees to provide the best possible team. I'm I'm very you've of demonstrated in recent board meetings and give us the best possible chance to survive the next catastrophic fire. As a point of interest, they seem to happen every two years, and this year is especially concerning being an even numbered year. Since I have a little bit of time left, just that's the end of my prepared comments.

I'm gonna submit my written comments and letters to each of you with my contact information. If any of you would like to come out to Volcanoville, I invite you to come out, and I'll give you a personal tour to see the effects of the mosquito fire and also point out what we can do to mitigate it in the future. Second thing I'd like to say is publicly thank our supervisor, Lori Parlin, for her guidance through this process, and also her care and compassion in the way she's represented us for the past eight years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Hi. Hi.

I'm Patty Hunsinger, and I'm not as eloquent as Brett educated. But, I want to tell you about our community. This is on agenda 19, and I do support the idea of helping the fire department. Fire is number one in our dangers, and then our snowmageddens, we've had three now, that, you know, do all the damage with the trees. So PG and E's a big part of our lives, and we have to deal with that.

So Volcanoville, Laurie, supervisor Parlin and supervisor Turnbull do know Volcanoville. We're just like any other community, you'd say. You know? I mean, there's all these little communities, islands of, forest. Thing is about Volcanoville, it's got the canyon.

So the canyon separates us from Forest Hill, and we have PG and E problems, and we also now have people in parks. And they hike down there, and there's danger with fire. We had a wonderful fire wise leader, Mary Knieelsen. She just passed away last year. And, actually, we did a ceremony for her last weekend, and, her plaque is at our little, fire station up there.

She worked so hard. She did the research. It only takes fifteen minutes for a fire to come from the canyon up to Volcanoville. And you think, oh, poor little Volcanoville. Volcanoville is the blockade for Georgetown and the divide.

So we've had two fires, the Trailhead Fire and the Mosquito Fire that put Georgetown in danger. Volcanoville Road was the barrier, and it they fought so hard. I live on what's a dirt road called Bear State Road, and a lot of it parallels with Volcanoville Road. When I got home and oh, shoot. They they masticated my my property.

Well, I was number two. Bear State Road was number two to save Georgetown. If it had jumped Volcanoville and then hit Bear State Road, and if it had jumped Bear State Road, we wouldn't have Georgetown anymore. There's nothing between us and Georgetown. There's another road behind, the one store in town, Marval.

It's called Buffalo Hill Road, and it also has those fire dangers from the canyon. Those are tiny little roads, and they are barriers for Georgetown and the divide. So I'm just reiterating what Brett has said that, you know, it is very important to keep that community fire safe. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Abby. Good morning.

Good morning. Terry Lomanschek, Arts and Culture, El Dorado. When I was here in March, I said I'll be back and here I am. Supervisor Lane, I wanna thank you for pointing out the numerous letters of support that were submitted for written comment. I hope you've had a chance to look at the sixty, seventy some letters that were submitted.

And many of them spoke passionately about our programs, such as our gallery exhibition series, our incubator program, our veterans writing program. By the way, up in Tahoe we are now including first responders in that cohort of folks who may wish to participate in creative writing to talk about their experiences. And it's true that many of those programs are supported by grant funds. But without the infrastructure and the staff to manage and house those programs, they may have to be cut back or cut eliminated completely. Then we have to forego the grant funds.

And in many cases, those are state and federal dollars that can come home to Eldorado County. The same thing is true of matching funds represented by our request to you. Those are dollars that can be matched and come back home. It's also extremely important for me to be able to say to potential donors, funders, and elected officials that we have the support of El Dorado County. That means a lot in in my world.

And Our request represents only 19 and a half cents per capita. And that is at the bottom rung of the state the statewide average for county arts arts councils. So I I thank you for your consideration of our request this morning. I know that our board of directors represented here today joins me in thanking you for your service.

Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Good morning.

Good morning. Whoops. Sorry. I'd like to say it's kind of hard to hear you when you speak.

Okay. Thank you.

My name is Kathy Lishman. I'm here on behalf of Friends of Seniors. And this whole system of not hearing the budget presentation and hear you discuss and have to make my comments this way is very inadequate. Senior day care and senior legal have been important to our community's most vulnerable for decades. Removing these programs is the easy way of addressing the budget shortfall.

No work, no sacrifice on the county's administrative part to be made. It does not address the real problem of how administrative costs are applied nor the imbalance of managers to staff. Eldorado County has one of the highest percentages of seniors in the state and hence a great need. Being a rural county, we lack the ability to provide these services via volunteer organizations and wealthy donors that some other places utilize. We have a reputation for wonderful senior services, and the people who they serve that really need them can't be here today or any day.

Please do not make a decision today on looking to remove these programs as their constituents are only learning about the cuts. We need time to show you the value and impact they have. In around 2010, the county undoubtedly with good intentions created an administrative health and human services agency to oversee the programs of four prior departments. Community services, including senior services social services public health and mental health. In theory, these efficiencies might have been achieved.

In reality, the agency was set up as a large and costly new level of bureaucracy with large administrative expenditures. I believe that the administrative costs to the programs that county has are really what makes them not affordable. And I think in maybe 2018, it was looked at already, and I don't know what has changed. There was a committee that was formed that looked at senior services, looked at senior legal, looked at senior senior day care, and it was decided that they were cost effective. I think the county needs to look at other ways to cut costs and not cut costs for seniors.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning. Lauren Hernandez, resident in Shingle Springs District 4. I want to comment on items nineteen and twenty, so the budget and agriculture lodging. And I really see an interconnectedness with those two. My background, I've worked in public policy.

I was raised here in El Dorado County and have primarily worked at the federal and state level. And I think we could see a lot of disconnect there, right, in how a government at those levels conduct the business of budget, and a lot of disconnect with that. But I also see here with your roles, you are the direct interface of where really that bridge and those budgets interconnect with people who need that the most. And so I really want to advocate for a very robust public process for the budget. I mean, I can't think of anything more critical of determining the resources and what's so impactful to our community.

We know that the economy affects the budget. The budget also affects the economy. I work a lot in that space. And so I would really like to advocate for a public workshop or even multiple public workshops that are regionally accessible, that are folks who are working right now are not able to attend and have their voices into these meetings. And regionally specifically because when we look at the county's land and our general plan calls our agriculture lands an economic asset.

But when you look at those across our county, with the exception of Camino where Apple Hill is, that is also where county lands and your revenue that supports your budget, I think, has the most opportunity for growth. It's also where people are facing the most economic challenges socioeconomically and have the greatest need for critical services. So we really start to see an interconnectedness to that. And so bridging the public's business closest to the public who are impacted by these decisions, I think, would be very helpful, particularly in time where civic culture is really challenged right now. And I think that's when we need to be leaning in more instead of pulling back.

And so remembering that core of this is the public's budget, let's make it accessible to the public to have that voice in it. The agriculture lodging piece, again, that to me, I just see the total interconnectedness with that. There's opportunities that you're going to be discussing today, but that could provide opportunity to the people who live on those lands. That could raise the economics for their households, but also create more revenue for the county. And so that's where we start to see, again, the bridge budget challenges, where are we maximizing the opportunities?

We can't cut our way out of a budget challenge. We have to be looking at how we can unlock opportunities for people. And the others, arts and culture, also a very strong supporter of that. Again, when we bridge and bring a process accessible to people, we'll see communities nationally. The data shows that when you have an arts and culture district or organization, property values trend 20% higher. And we know property values have a direct correlation to your budget. So are we making investments? These are the kinds of conversations that our community should be involved with in a robust conversation of what we

are investing as a community.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lauren.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, supervisors. Lexi Boger, district three. Today, I'm speaking as a local agriculture and lifelong small business operator in Eldorado County. And lifelong, I mean, when I was five, I had to wash dishes and do work, so I'm counting that.

I'm speaking to item 20, the agricultural lodging, and which I'm hoping that we'll start calling rural lodging instead of just agriculture. Right now, I don't know if you guys have heard, but the wine industry is in an absolute crisis. In El Dorado County alone, half of our wineries are out of business for sale or simply not operating. 50% of our crops last year were just left on the vine, and that's a mix between totally not harvesting and then harvesting some more. Some people didn't even pick at all.

Our local economy is struggling, and our lodging families have taken a hit to their livelihoods well with our recent changes in lodging, struggling to meet their mortgage obligations. And I think that this whole group in our rural lands needs immediate relief and appreciate staff's work bringing forward a very robust option of things to do. Some are more long range planning and comprehensive. Some things are addressable really quickly, and we're gonna advocate for, hopefully, a two pronged approach here. Urge you to consider the idea of an urgency pilot program for non CEQUA triggering changes that can be made for, like, a two year period while they do the long range work or those more in-depth things or your general plan update.

Put a sunset on it after two years. Let's just get people back operating a little bit in an easy way. This this urgency ordinance could be informed by the experts who are closest to the problem, which is usually where the best solutions come from. And I recommend that be seed in the agricultural commission who have already begun working together on economic issues that overlap between agriculture, rural lands, and our trusted economic advisers in the SEED committee. And I think that they could turn around for you a pretty detailed, easy pilot program very quickly.

Would also urge considering all lodging under one policy instead of having it separated between ag lodging and VHRs and short term rentals. They're really all the same thing. I'm an agricultural operator, but when I wanna rent my house, I have to get a VHR permit. So if that means that we need to consolidate the multiple ad hocs working on these different sections into one, then maybe we need to do that so that we can have a cohesive policy. And I'm hoping that this could be something that could get turned around this spring really quickly so we could get some relief and stay in business. So thank you very much for your consideration.

Thanks, Leslie.

Thank you. Good morning.

Morning, supervisors. Gordon Hill, lifelong resident of Belarus County. Currently reside in Posterville, and I have a farm up in Apple Hill. I'm here to address the ag lodging agenda item number 20, specifically with regards to the rural camping and what's available with regards to moving forward with that. Hipcamp was instrumental in bringing forward AB five one eight, the World Camping Initiative.

And unlike some might think, this had nothing to do with the state wanting to push off their responsibilities off to the counties. This took a lot of work on on their behalf, on the behalf of other organizations, and even some counties like in you, Minocino, and Santa Barbara. In 2022, Hipcamp did an economic benefit analysis for El Dorado County. It concluded that El Dorado County's Hipcamp hosts were responsible for bringing in $3,200,000 of economic benefit to El Dorado County. Since then, due to El Roto County's continued tightening regulations and its stringent code violation tactics, I'm guessing El Roto County has probably lost $12,000,000 in economic benefit.

We wonder why we have a $20,000,000 budget deficit. I have copies of that analysis here, and I'll leave that with with her with you so you guys can look at that. A b five one eight, the World Camping initiative was designed to be a plug and play initiative, so it's something that that can be moved forward with relatively quickly and easily. I would really appreciate if you guys consider getting that included. It's a win win both for El Dorado County and for the ag community when their their crops are not in production or producing and gives them some additional ability to to get income.

Lastly, I just wanna say this method of commenting way before the items are talked about and not knowing what your guys' discussions are gonna be is pretty ridiculous, and it needs to go back to the way it was. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. My name is James Marquez. I'm a resident of Placerville, and I would like to speak on behalf of Arts and Culture. I'm the director of, Arden Center, a local gallery here in town, And my, advisory board wrote a letter, and I'm I would like to read that into the record. Dear members of the county board of supervisors, we, the board of Ardon Center and Center for Native, Latino, and Indigenous Arts in Placerville, are writing to express our support for restoring funding for Arts and Culture, El Dorado, or ACED.

ACED is a vital resource in our community, providing essential support for cultural arts that serve as an essential component of access and well-being for residents across the region. The president the presence of a strong cultural art sector is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Access to arts and culture fosters community connections, supports education, and provides opportunities for creativity and inclusion across all ages and backgrounds. ACED has consistently demonstrated their ability to meet these needs, particularly in underserved areas where access to arts programming might otherwise be limited.

Without adequate funding, the programs and services provided by ACED are at risk, which would have a lasting negative impact on the cultural fabric of our community. Restoring funding is an investment in the social, cultural, and economic health of Eldorado County. We respectfully urge you to prioritize and restore funding for Arts and Culture Eldorado so that it can continue its important work for supporting artists, organizations, and residents throughout the region. We at Ardawn Center believe that these programs are imperative to the well-being of our communities because they offer opportunity for connection, expression, and provide space for culturally specific needs that is not offered in other places in our county. Access to the arts is a con is a crucial component in a fitting thriving community.

Restoring funding to arts and culture El Dorado supports the well-being of our community. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, board.

Gina Posey, candidate for supervisor here in District 4. Couple of things. First, I wanna thank you for bringing back the 8,000,000 $8,100,000 opportunity for the PG and E settlement, and to use that in Volcanoville. I was recently there and saw the scar, and I've talked to the folks in Mosquito and Georgetown and Volcanoville. And as you've heard earlier, and I won't reiterate those comments, it's really important that we use this opportunity to take this $8,000,000 and really prioritize it to have maximum effect for fire defensible space.

And I understand that DLT would lead that effort, and I'm hopeful that they will include the community, especially the Bear State Property Owners Association of Volcanoville, to look at the trade offs to make the best use of that $8,000,000 And second, looking at the rest of the budget, I too would like to see the public have more opportunity to look at the budget holistically and have some input to the various trade offs that you're going to make, whether you decide to cut services to the seniors, which I would not be in favor of, or your other trade offs. But we get piecemeal to budget, and we're not able to really say, well, we'd prefer this over that and give you our input. So if you could look at having one or two public workshops, a Q and A session, and really allow us to provide you that feedback, we think that would be very helpful. And then on the VHR ordinance, want to say that recently we had a frost. And, in Shingle Springs, one of our wineries were telling me that they are concerned about whether their crop's going to survive from that frost.

That's just gonna compound the issues we have in our winery in agriculture. And so whatever we can do, however we can move fast to provide them other revenue streams to help supplement what may not be incurring on their main product, which is their wineries, that would really serve our community and our residents well. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Good morning.

Morning, board. My name is Steve Downer. I'm the president of the Highway fifty Association wagon train. So I was here to just mention a few things. I don't know if you're probably all familiar. It started in 1949 as a commemorative of the California Gold Rush, people migrating to California to hopefully find a better life on that. And so we've been the Wagon Train has been running ever since annually on that. It draws a lot of people to the county. It seems that we're kind of heading on an upswing again. It's kind of ebbs and flows over the years.

We have people this year that are showing up from across the country. We have one guy coming from England even, which is interesting. So it does contribute to a lot through the county. The we have events in Lake Tahoe. There's events taking place in Pollock Pines. There's a big event in downtown Placerville. These events wouldn't take place if it wasn't if the wagon train wasn't coming through on it. So we're also in 1980, it was recognized as a state historical event through, resolution one fifty four. 1982, Nevada followed with it recognized as a state historical event. There's numerous recognitions.

And I, even the queen of England had something to do with her visit in 1983 because of the wagon train. So we've managed to, through some our budget has just about doubled in the last year, partially to the loss of the TOT taxes. We've been hit with some other fees. We've managed to do some fundraising to offset some of that, but it still is not filling the gap on that. So the wagon train takes a year in advance to plan due to the nature of it.

Next year, we've managed to pull off a full wagon train this year for the county. We're gonna have to do some serious rethinking for next year. So when it comes to, the budget, we would ask that you keep us in mind. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Good morning.

Good morning. I always like to visit the friendliest person here. You guys are all great. It's the you're friendly. Friendliest. Sorry. I think I misspoke.

Oh,

well. I just want to say I am so appreciative by how attentive you've been and how you are taking notes. You know, I'm sorry. I'm a teacher, and that's what we love to do, at least in training, is compliment because I have criticized, but so thankful for the engagement. I would first like to follow-up wagon train. Wonderful, wonderful people. We should invite you, Kim. I'm a writer, so I just appreciate that as shared. We go through each little community. You know, I'm also a planner, and I'm hoping someday we can bring back more celebrations and better celebrations at the different campfires.

And, of course, we'll invite you. And maybe someday we can have a board of supervisor wagon. That would be great. So but, you know, it gives you a sense of the values you have at the head of your agenda about the history of this county, about the beauty of the rural. There's nothing like riding at walking speed through the county to really appreciate how exceptional we are.

And then another one of your values in your vision statement is community, And it also builds within the wagon train, the small and overall, and we get great publicity for the county. So to me, you're switching from TOT to community funding, and I hope you listen to people about engagement, robust time. I hope you give direction to staff not to cut anything like senior day care and to add things like arts and culture and stuff, and you need time. And I, you know, I know we're in a budget crisis, and there's a lot of things to consider. Be thoughtful about it is my number one request.

I just handed out a set of questions. I sent you a simple email. These are questions. You've taken great notes, but I'm trying to give you specific questions about the senior day program. I love how people said stick to the plan. You made a plan last year about this time, May. Your numbers are not reflective of that plan. They're assuming nobody's paying any fees. In my questions, I'm asking you that. Because if your plan was working, 80% of the fees will come from people like me, the caretakers, caregivers who appreciate the respites.

Only $34 a day is your plan. And as shared, you have high demographics. You're exceptional. This is easy to cut. There's no mandate. There's nothing. But for thirty eight years, this county has been ahead. Please stay ahead for senior care. Thank

you. Thanks, Leo.

Good morning.

Good morning, chair, honorable members of the board. Dave Spar, vice chair, strategic economic enhancement and development committee. I'm here to talk about item number 20. You'll hear a presentation today, and it'll have four items on it. Number one, tourism improvement district. Number two, agricultural homestay and ag lodging. Number three, discretionary transient occupancy tax, TOT on campgrounds. And number four, discretionary transient occupancy tax increase. All four of these items were voted on and in our work plan. So I don't need to go into any detail there.

I'll just share with you our last seed meeting, April 16. We spent most of our time discussing item number two, the ag lodging, and really believe our charge is to look at generating revenue for the county. And one way is to look at all lodging, not just the ag lodging. So we would encourage you to look at all lodging and lodging items such as hip camp, low impact, and what can be done now that doesn't require or trigger CEQA, so non CEQA items, like ADUs, hip camp that the state has already approved and laid out a a program for us. And these are also supported by Farm Bureau, by the egg commissioners, and others throughout the county.

So please just consider what we can do on that item number 20 to encourage more lodging throughout the county and more revenue throughout the county.

Thank you.

You. Good morning.

Good morning, and thank you for your service, every one of you. Appreciate it. I've been in I ran for commissioner for District 4 twice, passed through a couple of chambers, prisoner farm trails four or five times. But four years ago, a friend of mine asked me to find a place for him to camp in El Alarcon. He couldn't find a place. So I talked to Hipcamp, they said, we don't have anybody there. So I have three sites. But a day later, I called back and said, have three sites. Please join me. And he said, you're you're booked. So I called back and said, give me another seven. He called back and said, your books. So I said, I'll have 11 site. I'm not gonna tell hip camp. I went to 20 sites, had it for four years.

About two years ago, the county closed me down. I realized this doesn't fit into some wild window, but we have a lack of housing. I worked as a a consultant on the Placerville Hotel that was on the edge for Placerville for a couple years. We're short on sites. The divide needs extra help. The wineries needs extra help. The grape growers needs extra help. Nine sites for each one of these. It's a nice contribution to your taxes. Property I've rented has been my my wife's family since 1918.

The issue will probably sell because we can't stand the double fire tax, the additional challenge we have to all economics, especially PG and E and the water issues. So I think it's time to look at hip camp and camping as an option to add to supplemental income for everybody in this county. I think the strong consideration. If it wasn't 92 years old, I'd be running for your seat. So, anyway, thank you for your service. I appreciate every one of you for what you're trying to do.

Thanks, Wendell.

Thanks, Wendell.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning. How are you?

Great.

Wonderful. I'm Ted Gaines, candidate for the Board of Supervisors, district four. And I just wanted to take an opportunity to recognize Jack Rulo, who has been just a fixture for the El Dorado County wagon train. And he just celebrated, I believe it's your 90 birthday. Yeah.

90 birthday. And, with the cutbacks and funding for the wagon train, it's a real challenge. And when you're suffering a deficit with your budget currently, we need to look at other alternatives. And Jack and the board have been very good at making phone calls and making sure that people are stepping up, through sponsorships with businesses and individuals. And so, we're following through at Gaines Insurance Agency in terms of a sponsorship.

And I just like to encourage other businesses to do the same thing that this is historical. We've got great roots in El Dorado County. Mean, we take a look a look at Brian Verkamp and George Turnboo in terms of their family histories going back generations. And this is something critical that's related to the gold rush, which takes us to Coloma and and how critical that is to our history. And, hopefully, businesses can step up and help in that regard. So thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks, John.

Are there other members of the public present in the room? Please come forward.

Hi there. My name is Justin Sawyer, landowner and business operator in Somerset in Turnboost District. So thank you all for your service. I'm gonna start with an analogy that speaks highly to El Dorado County, and that's low hanging fruit. Right? We all know what that means. You go for the easy ones first. So we've got a budget crisis, and we have a real opportunity to showcase what El Dorado looks like in a managed way. So low impact camping offers meaningful benefits to our community. It provides supplemental income to local families, farmers, and rural landowners, helping preserve open space and keep agricultural operations viable in an increasing challenging economic landscape.

It also creates a more intentional and personal tourism experience, one that is locally managed, environmentally conscious, and deeply connected to the character of our region, which is kind of what everyone is already speaking to. It's already here. We have to preserve the history. And some of these places, these private owned places, are only accessible by the landowners. So why not share them in this beautiful part of El Dorado County?

By expanding these opportunities, we can responsibly increase tourism dollars flowing directly into our rural communities rather than relying solely on larger centralized accommodations. No one we want opportunities where we can experience what is here, not building big hotels and big, you know, corporate stays instead, and let's keep it to what's already here. Beyond the economic impact, low impact camping fosters education and appreciation for our county's forests, wildlife, and natural ecosystems. Visitors gain a deeper understanding of stewardship, conservation, and the importance of protecting these lands when they are invited to experience them in a respectful and guided way. Private lands are often some of the most beautiful and diverse spaces in our county, and the privilege of caring for them is something that can and should be shared.

By enabling thoughtful access, we create more advocates for preserving the very landscapes that make Eldorado County so special. I encourage you to see this topic gaining attention and truly appreciate your leadership in exploring updates. I urge you to include low impact camping in any revisions to the Lodging Facilities Code and to support policies that empower landowners while protecting the integrity of our environment. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there other members of the public that would like to address the board at this time? Please come forward.

Good morning.

Good morning. My name is Jerusha McRoberts, and I will be advocating for Wagon Train today. I have been involved with Wagon Train for twenty six years. My mother was prior to me. I am a local land owner.

I am a business owner and operator here in El Dorado County. I provide carriage services for special events at a lot of our locations the wineries Apple Hill tree farms in the area. We have a unique thing here in this County when we provide when we do wagon train we have people coming in from other states and other areas that don't have the opportunity to participate in such a significant historical event like we have here. So not only are we bringing in people but we're providing this County has something that other counties don't have the ability to show our pride in our history here. And that's something that when I go out to these special events, when I'm providing wagon rides at these special events, people ask.

People have come in from other counties, other states, other countries, and they've heard about Wagon Train. They've heard about Wagon Train and the Pony Express coming through and the history that's involved here, and they want to know. They want to get involved. They want to get their kids involved. And it's really exciting for people to hear our stories of what we're able to do and to share our pictures.

And we recently have expanded our imprint as far as our social media imprint. And so we have people that think honestly that we're rolling through Eldorado County nonstop all year long. We don't disabuse them of that notion completely, but we do have a larger impact coming in the next couple of years based on our ability to reach more people. And I think that if we're given the opportunity, we can bring this back to something that is so impactful for the County. You know, it was started an ability to bring in commerce for the Highway 50 Corridor.

Not saying we can quite reach that again, but we can bring back some of the heyday and some of the some of the interests that we've had. I just want to make sure that you guys are aware how important this is to not only people in our County but how widespread our footprint is. I want to take the time to appreciate ask you guys to to see what that can do for the county. Thank you for your time.

You. Are there other members of the public that would like to address the board at this time? Okay. Seeing none, may we go online, please?

Now taking public comment from online participants. Now taking public comment from Noleen Giles.

Hi there. Can you hear me okay? I'm sorry.

Yes. We can.

I just got bumped out. I'm sorry. Good morning. My name is Jebediah Giles. I apologize for my earlier mistake jumping in at the wrong time. I missed the agenda items there. I am calling in to address the the camping issue. I'm an agricultural property owner out in Somerset. I'm calling in today to share my strong support for the modification of the VHR policies in this county to allow for a more streamlined process for VHR owners on the West Slope. And I would also like to request that the county priority prioritize the inclusion of low impact camping with the VHR seed committee.

And the reason I'm asking this is it's my opinion that it is imperative that the issue of low impact camping, VHRs, and agricultural lodging be addressed simultaneously. I would also like to ask for immediate relief in the form of a tight two year pilot program, which will allow the committee time to study the impacts and benefits of low impact camping in other counties as well as our own. This would give the county an opportunity to work side by side with landowners like myself to build an effective, safe, and streamlined path forward for landowners to augment and diversify their incomes and use otherwise unusable land. I would really like to see El Dorado County adopt the state's a b five eighteen like many other counties have already done, this with resounding success. The measure was designed to be a drop in type resolution wherein each county can adopt the verbiage with minor edits to fit each individual county.

The benefits of low impact camping are extensive. It creates meaningful supplemental income for local family families, farm owners, and rural landowners, keeping land intact and farms operational. It introduces visitors to our county in a safe and personal way, creates needed long, locally run, and managed camping options and accommodations and channels tourism dollars to our rural and agricultural communities. Additionally, the type of people who frequent sites like Hipcamp, PitchUp, Outdoorsy, and others are exactly the kind of people we want as a county to attract. There are also people who love nature, love the outdoors, clean up after themselves, and folks who host them are also the same They value the beauty of the land, are good stewards in an effort to offer curated manicured experiences for their campers.

I want to thank you from the bottom of your heart for considering this agenda item, and I look forward to partnering with the county as as we move forward together on these issues.

Thank you.

Now taking now taking public comment from Tita Bladen.

Hello. This is Tita Bladen. I'm in District 1 Eldorado Hills, a resident since 1990. I'm here to talk about item 19, specifically, senior legal. Being that it is a mandated program, under the Older Americans Act.

I really would like to see transparency in how we go about reducing costs for this program, such as understanding where we're gonna send the request proposals to third parties. I'd also like to understand benchmarks as far as service delivery standards for both access and breadth of services. Hopefully, a comparison of what the county receives today and what the proposed solution for the future with lower cost. I would also like to understand better how do we set expectations for our seniors and their families, The well-being of seniors in Eldorado County impacts not just themselves but their families and their communities. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Laurel Mary.

The testimonies that you've and strong testimonies that you've heard in support of, ag rural lodging. The Eldorado County Chamber of Commerce strongly supports and advocates for this, as well as our ag council, strongly supports, and advocates for this. I do wanna recognize the extremely hard work that Leanne, Eli has put in to present bringing this forward for your consideration today. And we really encourage moving forward with the opportunity to expand economic development in this manner. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Polly Egert.

Hello again.

I already commented earlier about a particular property next to me that's been a problem to everybody around it. Even a mile away, we can hear them. I know I'm speaking right now on item number 20, and everybody's talking about the camping end of it. And I would like you to consider the fires. You we talked about fires earlier in this meeting and, you know, how dangerous and what a problem it is. So if you're having camping all over the place now now we have more fire danger. So, please consider that. Also, who will enforce this? Who's gonna say, okay. Your two weeks is up.

You know, if if we got landowners making money and the people are only allowed to stay there for a maximum of fourteen days, who's gonna stop them? You know, who's going to enforce this? You that we're already not getting, you know, code enforcement on, the other end of this, which is the VHR stuff. So now we have people like Lexi Boger, the seat committee, and Lexi and her egg thing, trying to, like, mix the VHR, vacation home rentals, and ag lodging, and camping altogether so that these people who have been skirting the VHR ordinances and have been breaking the law by allowing people to stay at their big fancy places, now wanna, not have to abide by those rules, so they wanna get away with the ag lodging. Shouldn't these places these, new, you know, camping and ag lodging things have to follow the same VHR rules, like, 500 feet, away from the next one.

They're not allowed to have the side by side. You know, I'm just saying, you need to have rules that respect the surrounding properties. We are having animal disturbances by these people. I mean, there's just, like, so much problems that you need to consider. And I I appreciate you have a lot on your plate, but it the other thing I wanted to say was someone got up and said we should have public workshops.

Well, the public needs to know more about this in order to have those workshops, and I I really think we should have those public workshops. And the other thing is people are trying not to follow the VHR rules, they wanna consider it ag lodging instead. And they have never even had a viable agricultural produce, and public people are you know, the public has not ever been allowed on their property. I'm talking about my neighbor again and others too that you guys support. And so they should have to follow the same agricultural rules.

And I also don't think that planning has been involved in this. So, anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Sue.

Hi, Sue Taylor. Still writing my notes. I was gonna call in support the wagon train. And I would say they have done the group has been amazing to keep that venue alive, and I would ask the board of supervisors to lobby the state to drop drop the fee that the Caltrans has put on them that's just making this so which will kill the venue. And I think if you care about the historical event, you need to have have any of you or collectively talk to the state about what they've done to them.

I would also ask that the you know, they've only gotten a very minimal amount from the county over the years, and you need to contribute continue with that contribution. It's nothing. It's it's, you know, pennies on and they've done so much. And I asked the board, you know, think about what have you done to support the history element in our county. I I all I see is housing, housing, housing, housing.

And then how are we gonna pay for services, services, services? We're tanking big time because you've had one thing on your mind. And these venues actually bring, people to the county to spend money here, and I would ask that you would help support that. And the other thing I've since I'm listening, the VHR, I would ask that we don't have a VHR that's not a hosted on people's property that are living there. VHRs that are not in that scenario, they kill neighborhoods, they kill communities, they kill schools.

I I hope our county never goes that direction. And it's also interesting with the ag stays. I totally support those. In fact, if you go back and look at the ranch marketing ordinance that I helped rewrite and turned it into the county, numerous times talked to the ag community, if they would look at what was written in there, it's it was a way to do ag stays that would support agriculture without being impacting to surrounding communities. That's you've gotta keep a balance between the communities that wanna live in a rural area without being extremely impacted in ways that are not conducive to those communities.

But ag should be first in our county. I I would hope that you would go back and look at that document, and it's interesting that people that fought me, all these leaders are the ones that are now pleading for the county to help you. Help them. And instead of fighting history and culture and and rule, I would hope that people would come around and see what our riches really are and start, start protecting those things. And I kinda resent Ted Games coming up to placate the scenario that's happening to the wake wagon train for his campaign. And I asked that maybe he go to the state and ask him to drop those frees.

Thank you.

Now taking public comment from Kevin McCarthy.

Good morning, Chair Lane and members of the Board. Kevin McCarthy, another landowner out in Somerset speaking to agenda item number 20 about agricultural lodging. A lot of good comments today, and believe his name was mister Sawyer. Took the words right out of my mouth. This is this is low hanging fruit, you know, with an ordinance like this to match a b five eighteen, we're not taking any existing housing off the market. We're really just bringing accessibility to existing rural lands. So I just really support the adoption of an ordinance that matches that and just allowing people to come and appreciate the rural parts of the county. So that's my comment today. Hope you all have a good one and thank you.

Thank you.

There is no additional public comment.

Okay. Well, I want to thank everybody for taking time out of their day to come and share your thoughts and your experiences with us. It's much appreciated. We'll now move on to our time certain first department matter, which is item number 19 and the CAO's budget update. Miss Dawson, would you please read this item into the record?

Of course. Item number 19 comes from the chief administrative office recommending the board, one, receive a presentation on fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven recommended budget preparation. Two, provide direction to staff to a, explore reducing the general fund cost of discretionary services in the health and human services agency. B, include the board's direction on community funding in the fiscal year twenty six twenty seven recommended budget. C, allocate 8,500,000 in mosquito fire settlement funding.

D, include any other direction if provided on the fiscal year twenty six, twenty second excuse me, twenty seventh recommended budget. Three, approve and revise board of supervisors policy b 16 budget policies. And four, approve and revise board of supervisors policy b one budget control and responsibility.

Thank you, miss Dawson. I'd like to welcome miss Owens and miss Winters from the CAO's office. Madam CAO, did you wanna kick this off?

Or I just had a quick little comment. I just wanted to remind everybody. Today is not the budget hearing. Today is a meeting that we started doing a few years ago to check-in with the board during our budget development process to get direction on any items that we might need, review our budget policies before we go back and work continue working with departments to finalize our budget. So there will be some direction given today, but there will be no decisions made about cuts specifically to senior services.

I do wanna emphasize we'll get into this more in the presentation. However, the direction today is to think about and give direction on potential changes to those services, not for fiscal year 2627, but potentially for 2728 or beyond. So I just wanted to provide that clarification to anyone in the room, provide hopefully, that's a little bit of a reassurance. We'll get into that in more detail with the presentation. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning.

Morning.

Emma Owens from the chief administrative office. And so Allison here will be writing down the direction that you all provide today, hopefully, so we can consolidate that. And at the end of the discussion, we'll have a motion that you can review and hopefully approve based on the direction you provide throughout the the presentation. So to get started, as Sue said, we're here today to present on the 2627 recommended budget, which we are currently developing. And so just as a reminder for what the overall budget process is, we're here today to get some direction from the board in late May.

So between the direction you give today, all of us sitting over here will be furiously working to finalize that budget book, and then we'll publish that in late May and return to the full board for the budget hearing on June 9, and that's when the full recommended budget is presented for review and approval by the board. That is before the start of the fiscal year, which is July 1. So many of the things that we're gonna include in that recommended are based on assumptions of how fund balance and revenue goes this year. So, really, we're developing this budget before the start of the fiscal year with a lot of assumptions based on how things are looking so far, usually with only six months of data to provide those assumptions and reviews. So because of that sort of early guesses, we returned to the Board.

We'll return on September 22 this year with our adopted budget recommendation to the Board. And that's our chance to amend the budget after the fiscal records have closed for the current year, update those projections, update based on what the state has done with their budget, and then that is hopefully the end of this budget, and then we all start work on next year's budget. So first is general revenue assumptions. So as I just said, we typically because there's a lag in when revenues are received and when we are making these projections for here, we're making these assumptions based on six months of data. If I had maybe a month more, I could give you based on three quarters of data, but mostly it's on six months of data.

So, again, this is what we're recommending for the recommended budget, but, again, we'll we'll true everything up and adopt a budget when we know what the actuals are for the current year. So property taxes are the largest source of unrestricted revenue for county services. They're about 70% of new discretionary revenues. If you look at the dollar bill here on the right, you can see that the county of all the property taxes that are paid in the county, the county gets 23.5% for discretionary services, and then we also get an additional 6.3 because of that state county in lieu of vehicle licensing fee swap that happened. So we only get a portion of the property taxes that are collected in the county.

If you look over here on the left, we wanted to show you the percent of growth. So this isn't property tax collected. This is the growth of property tax from year over year. And so you can see the high of 14.9% in fiscal year 2006. Then we have the low of negative 6% in twenty ten-eleven.

And then luckily, over the past ten years, things have stable. And the average over the past ten years is 5.8% in property tax growth. Moving to the next slide. You can see here we have what we have budgeted for current secured and vehicle and the VLF swap property tax in orange budget, and then the actuals are in red. And these lines are so close because we have great property owners in this county.

They pay their property taxes consistently, so it's very easy to predict how much property tax we are gonna have and set the budget based on that. And so here, you can see this dotted line shows that we're projecting that we are going to meet our budget for what we have budgeted for current secure for property tax. And then in the next year, for recommended budget, we are assuming four percent growth. And that's typical. We're a little conservative. While the assessor works very hard right now to finalize the tax roll, we'll know the actual amount and adopted budget so we can true up and adopt a budget the growth based on the actual role growth.

Emma, before you get off of this slide, I just there was a comment made earlier. We do listen to your comments, by the way. But there was a comment made earlier about our property tax revenue growth. And I I just want maybe you could clarify or the CEO could clarify. Our growth, we have Prop 13, which we all love.

Not but we all love it. And but it's a factor in the fact that, my let's pretend that my, value of my house doubles in a year. My property tax, though, can still only go up that 2%. Correct? So I just you know, there was a statement made earlier, and I wanna make sure people understand that that, the the revenue growth on your existing home, if you stay there, it you know, it's only two going up 2%.

It's when there's either new houses or when a house sells and is purchased and reassessed at that higher value. So, I mean, that's just something that we all need to keep in mind. And, yes, I love Prop 13. I'm not trying to say we should get rid of it, but it's a factor. And I just wanted to make sure I just there was something said earlier about, you know, our values of our homes going up so fast and our revenues, and it's like, we it's a it's a fixed amount for most of us that stay in our homes, and and that that's good for us. So but for the county's budget, it's it's a factor. So just wanted to throw that out there. And did I get that kinda correct?

Yeah. You got that correct. We're seeing 4% growth because our budget largely depends on the turnover of homes where someone sells their home and then it's reassessed at a higher value and now they're paying property tax on that higher value. So when there are a slowing of the real estate market, we are gonna see a slower percentage of growth there, which is why we're guessing 4% now and hoping it's a little higher in adopted budget. Good.

Thanks. So moving on to sales tax, the sections of this penny equals 7.25%, which is the minimum sales and use tax rate in California, and that's what we collect in the unincorporated areas of the county. So here you can see the county gets 1% and then our transportation funds get a little 0.25%. The county does get some of these other sections. Here you can see 2011 realignment and 1991 realignment.

Those, including the transportation funds, are for very specific purposes. Discretionary revenue that we're getting out of the 7.25% of sales and use tax is this 1%. So here is the two lines, budget being orange for sales and use tax and actual sales and use tax in red. Sales and use tax, unlike property tax, is much harder to predict and to project. Largely, that in the last few years has been due to the state changing how they disperse this sales tax to us, and that has impacted how in this projection has looked.

So you can see here in 2324, what if we take out the change in the MCNFP process, we actually 2324, right here. Sorry. We were a little lower in our actuals than what we had projected, and that was largely due to a slowing in the first quarter receipts. So July through September activities. It was actually down 12% that year.

I can say, luckily, our first quarter receipts this year kinda recovered that amount. So basically made it so that dip didn't happen, and it's back at what it was the previous year. So this year, we're projecting our sales and use tax to grow 4% over the prior year, and that's really because that's first quarter receipts recovered. And without that, we would be having a different conversation. So we're projecting no growth next year based on just wanting to be conservative in the recommended budget. When we have the actuals for sales and use tax for this year, we'll revise this projection.

So question here as well. So in our current budget 2526, which we're currently in, were the projection for sales tax to fall has not been realized?

No. Because we recovered those first quarter receipts. So we were very lucky in that first quarter.

Okay.

And Emma, what's the online just online because we all purchase so much online. What's the is it from where somebody lives that we collect sales tax?

Or is

it from

It's not the easiest thing to explain. So the in a a few years ago, the state changed its policy, and then that was followed up by legislation where if you buy something from a disbursement center or a distribution center, say, a large retailer like Amazon or I'm trying to think of other ones. Wayfair was an example. They say that disbursement center, I purchased something from my let's say I live in the unincorporated parts of the county here. I purchased something, but it's fulfilled by a distribution center in Sacramento County.

Sacramento County gets that sales tax. Whereas if I go down the street and I buy something in the unincorporated parts from a a a regular brick and mortar store, the county gets the the sales tax share of that. So it's and but if, say, if I ordered something from a large company and it came from out of state distribution center, the county, it goes to our pool for sales tax for out of state purchases.

Okay. And that's been a an evolving Yes. Thing the last couple years too that we've been trying to figure out how

it's the main state change that has really changed kind of how these projections have looked.

Yeah. Supervisor Chernboo? Yeah. I got

a question and stuff. Especially when they're going to have a mileage tax, what they're talking about, the state's putting on, that's gonna impact our sales tax a lot because more people are gonna be shopping online than actually going to businesses because it's gonna impact it, especially when you're talking about miles that they put on their vehicles. So there's a lot of factors that's coming down the pipe that we need to look at.

Yeah. That's partly why we're being very conservative in projecting no growth for next year from what we're currently projecting this year, because we do wanna be conservative as things change.

Yeah. Okay.

So the last discretionary revenue is our discretionary TOT revenue. This is 10% tax on hotels, motels, and vacation home rentals. So here you can see in the actuals, we had a big peak during the pandemic when people were not traveling using airplanes. They had to stay locally. So a lot of people came to Tahoe, and we saw this big peak.

And then slowly, the peak has been declining as travel restrictions decreased due to the pandemic. And we've seen this revenue fall a little bit in the last few years. I just was looking at Placer County's projections for revenues, and they too are seeing had the same peak and then are projecting that their TOT is going to fall slightly this year from the prior year. So it's not just us, it's sort of duplicated across sectors here or counties. So we had projected 7.25 as our budget for the current year.

We're projecting just a little bit higher in actual revenues this year at 7.4 in discretionary TOT, and we would like to set that same 7.4 as the projection for the budget for next year. We'll still carefully watch this. This one, we don't we really only have six months of data on this so far. People are turning in their last of their receipts for the third quarter, and so we'll know more at adopted budget on what this revenue is. And so now to highlight a few things that we have included in the recommended budget so far.

We have $24,500,000 in state and federal funding for the Office of Wildfire Preparedness and Resilience Projects. We're hoping to get FEMA approval any day now, and then we can start spending down that money. It's a carryover of a grant that started already, and so we're really hoping to to have this money in the budget and to spend We the budget assumes the jail expansion is gonna be operational for half of the year, and the increased cost of this expansion in services is partially offset by the use of $1,250,000 from our jail expansion designation. And this will leave $1,250,000 in that designation for use in further years. That's what we put this designation aside to, was to sort of lessen the impact of the general fund on opening up this expansion of the jail.

We're adding two positions in probation for the random testing unit to enhance pre trial monitoring, as the caseloads for pre trial monitoring have increased significantly recently. The employer share of health insurance premiums is increasing $3,300,000 in the general fund and the recommended budget right now. Luckily, we have put aside a risk program increases designation to help sort of smooth. We knew risk programs were a little volatile, we wanted to be able to smooth the impacts of that. So we're pulling $2,000,000 from that designation to kind of offset the $3,300,000 And I'm sorry if the slides don't work.

It just said my internet is unstable. So please tell me if it stops following me. And so that will leave $2,000,000 in that risk designation for future years. The budget includes the continuation of the broadband grant in planning and building, and so that's continuing in the budget. We conducted an analysis of the fair market value adjustments over the past few years, and the recommended budget brings down the fair market value designation down to $1,100,000 We really think this amount is sufficient to cover any adjustments that may happen in the future, and that's largely due to the hard work of the Treasurer Tax Collector's Office, who was able to have it so there was no adjustments back in July at the end of the last fiscal year.

So we're hoping that continues, but this still leaves $1,100,000 for if there is any adjustments in the future year. And then lastly is the recommended budget includes the planned completion of the Diamond Springs Parkway Phase 1 and the Mosquito Riveridge project by the end of this calendar year. So that's an exciting thing finishing up in the budget. So I want to take a moment to talk about kind of the overall theme of the budget, and that's a tightening of the budget while maintaining current service levels. And And largely, the credit to this is all to departments.

They really were willing to comb through their apartments, look through where they could cut, what efficiencies they could make, what special revenue funds they could pull through so that their use of discretionary resources didn't increase. You know, they restricted that increased use of discretionary resources as much as they can. So really, I want to thank every department for trying their very hardest to to help us get a balanced budget and to not be coming with drastic cuts this year, which we're not. We're we're it's a tight budget, but we are maintaining current service levels in the budget. I also wanna thank the board.

We made some really hard cuts last year. We closely watch what other counties and cities are doing with their budgets. We talk with different associations on on how their budgets are going, and it's a other counties and cities are having much harder conversations this year because they didn't make some hard cuts last year. And it was really it was hard on departments last year, but because we did that hard work this year, this budget is easier, but it is a tight budget. So I do wanna caveat that departments kind of cut down things to the bare minimum. So if we do ask them to do anything extra or if things significantly change, they might have to come back to the board with amendments to their budget because they really don't have a lot of extra to do things beyond what what this plan that we are setting in the budget includes.

So

the slides before are largely kinda where we are with the budget, what's included, not included, what our assumptions are. Now now we're getting to the direction that we need from the board on the budget. Okay. Actually, a couple more slides. So we are meeting some of our budget policies. Our general fund contingency, we're setting at $8,200,000 which meets the goal of 3% of adjusted general fund appropriations. That is $50,000 increase from the current year's budget. The general reserves set at $13,700,000 which meets the goal of 5% of total adjusted general fund appropriations. This is an increase of $100,000 from the current reserves that we have set. Our pension and IT designations are meant to be used every year.

We add funding to it every year, anticipating increases in future years, typically an adopted budget. And then we use funding every year as we planned in prior year to use the funding. So based upon the current CalPERS actuarial reports, we're using $1,500,000 from the designation, and that holds $7,300,000 in that designation, which is three years of projected general fund increases. And then we're using $410,000 from the designation for IT investments, but we will still have $1,600,000 in the designation, which meets the goal of three years of projected needs. We haven't met a few policies, which is typical in the recommended budget as we budget conservatively.

And we have some goals that we really want to prioritize in the adopted budget. And that includes our $6,000,000 addition we need our $6,000,000 addition to the designation for capital projects. In the recommended budget, we've included 3,000,000 in a road maintenance contribution of discretionary resources, but we're still $2,000,000 short of the $5,000,000 goal. And then we'll need to replenish $41,000 based upon what we are using from the disaster designation for mass care and sheltering in the budget. And then we'll also want to revisit the CalPERS amounts once the new CalPERS actuarial reports get released in July, early August, and we'll incorporate that into the adopted budget.

So those are where the policies stand now. And then on March 10, you all provided some direction that we update one of the budget policies, and then we also return with updates to board policy b one, which is budget control and responsibility. So we have those for your consideration today. So the main change to board policy b one is to align the policy with county government and county ordinance that kind of updates the language to almost exactly copy what's in the ordinance and government code. And so that'll allow the CAO to approve budget transfers that do not increase overall appropriations in the budget unit.

There are other few minor updates to the policy as it hasn't been updated in a few years, and they're listed on the screen there. Really, the main change is to align the language of b one with government code in our county ordinance. Any questions on that one? So for b 16, the only change is to fixed asset policy as directed back in March. And so we are asking that you update the policy to the language shown on the screen here.

This is the full language that's being proposed in the revisions, and that is to allow the CAO to approve additional fixed assets as long as overall appropriations in the budget unit are not increasing and that each additional fixed asset cost does not exceed a $100,000. So that's the main change is allowing the CAO to approve those limited additional fixed assets. Any changes or impact questions, comments on that one? Okay. Okay.

Kind of continuing the talk of policies. Board policy b six outlines community funding. So we have this policy that outlines how community funding is allocated and how if we do have it included in budget, how we manage that process. This is funding allocated by the board throughout the year for a public benefit. The amounts have varied from 35,000 to 75,000 a year.

We removed this funding back in 2425, and we haven't included it in the budget since. But there has been a few mentions of this funding at a few different public board meetings. And so we wanted to just to bring it back to the board with the full question of, would you like us to include this funding in the recommended budget, include the process that we had last year, which it was not included in the budget? Do you want to continue with policy B6, or should we repeal it if we are going to not provide this funding anymore? So really, this is input from the board that we're seeking.

I just wanna mention on on that note, you know, we were asking departments to cut their budgets. And this was the board of supervisors' very intentional desire to show that we were giving we were giving up something as well. So, I just wanted to put that kind of little note on that, because I think a couple of you may I think you were here for that, but Here. Yeah. We're here.

We're definitely here. We had that discretionary about $15,000 each district, that we could, with with the process, support the good work that was being done in all of our districts by nonprofits. So just put that note on that for the board.

This is gonna be the hardest conversation. You know that. Yeah. Like, the littlest bit amount money we always talk the most about.

Yeah.

So yeah. It's gonna happen.

The board fund?

Yeah. Well, it was until everybody caught on. Well, yeah.

And then I think you owe me some too.

I probably do.

Yeah. Okay. Do we Wanna have that discussion?

We can have it now, or we can wait till I get through the rest of the content and then have It's

done right.

We have HR one, which is a a little bit of time and a little complicated, and then we have mosquito fire, which I'm hoping will not be as complicated.

Could we maybe get through the slides and then take a quick break, because we haven't yet, and then come back and start some discussion?

That sounds good. Thank Okay.

Moving on to HR one. So earlier this month, you all received a presentation from CSAC on kind of HR one, but I wanna bring this back from, like, the total impacts of HR one to how that impacts our county and our budget. So first, I have to take a little off road to talk about 1991 realignment. So 1991 social services realignment is funding from the state to the county to provide the county share of services that is the county is mandated to provide by the state. So basically, the state said, I want you to provide these services for me, or I've mandated that you provide these services.

Here is the money to do that. And those services include self sufficiency programs like eligibility, the administration of CalFresh, CalWORKS, other eligibility programs. It has protective services, which is child welfare, adoption assistance, foster care, and then it has in home supportive services. So outside of HR1, I've been working with HHSA for years and I've written it up in the budget that we've been concerned about this revenue. As in El Dorado County and across all counties in the state, program expenditures for that are funded by 1991 realignment are outpacing growth in the revenue.

So we have program costs going up, but the revenue isn't going up at the same at the same pace. And so we've been worried about what happens if we don't have enough 1991 social services realignment to cover the cost of these programs. It's been something we've thought about and worried about for a few years now. So then comes HR one. And so now it's a conversation I was hoping to have in a couple years, but now it's a conversation we need to have this year.

So there are some very specific impacts to Eldorado County from HR one. There's an increase in indigent Health Care, and this before the Affordable Care Act, this averaged about $4,000,000 a year in expenses from the county for this service. We're hoping it won't ever get to that level again, but I just wanna put the note on how much it cost us before the decrease for that service really need reduced. We know that there will be a workload increase for eligibility staff. The rules on how eligibility services get reviewed, how often, what they have to review are changing, And so eligibility staff will have to do more work than they currently are because of HR one.

And then the most direct impact is the increase of the county share for Calc fresh administration is increasing by 50%. So that's the thing we have to this year for sure. We know what the cost is and we know what we'll have to build into the budget. So when you look at what we are including in the budget this year in 2627, we're not including any of the impacts to indigent health care yet. We're kind of taking a wait and see approach on this because we wanna see how much it actually does increase in our population and then incorporate those costs into our budget.

Eligibility staff will this year be doing more work to comply with HR one, but we're not including any of those impacts in the budget. Again, it's a wait and see approach, but it might mean that we need to kinda shift costs later in the year once we see those impacts. We're also hoping maybe the state will help a little, so that's part of it. So it might be something you see in adopted budget or it might be something that we bring in midyear depending on when the state budget is passed. The thing that is for sure has to be included in the 2627 budget is an $800,000 increase in our share of CalFresh administration. So that's on top of the 800,000 we currently have. It's an extra 800,000 we had to add into the budget.

And, Emma, would that still apply if the state decides to fund all these programs?

If the state decides to fund it, then the 800,000 will be great news for our general fund because currently, we do not have enough 1991 realignment to cover that $800,000 impact, and we're gonna have to cover that $800,000 with general fund resources.

Yeah. And I think it's very important for the public to understand that these are state mandated programs without the funding, and it it's gonna take from other areas of discrepancy to fund these programs for those, and and we don't know exactly where the state's gonna go with it yet, but we have to anticipate this is But but we're just

pointing out that as of now As of right now. Allocated $0 to any county for any of these programs. Right.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.

They're putting a burden on the county statewide, and all 58 counties are fighting this tooth and nail to get some money from the county or from the state. Right.

We'll go go a step further then. Start with the feds, h r one, change the requirements that then comes down to the state, and then is where where the boots on the ground. So, I mean, the whole upper government system is really not watching out for our residents and how we're gonna get the money to provide these services. It's, I think I to supervisor Veercamp's point, we'd love to do the work. That's what counties are here for. But if we don't have funds, and so that that's our reality. So, yeah, thank you for that. And I understand too you're gonna be doing some advocacy.

Yeah. Well, we sent letters. We approved the letters to be sent to the governor's office and and and other groups, but we are supervisor Vercamp is going to be meeting with senator Alvarado Gill, and I'm gonna be meeting with, assemblyman Patterson and Hedwig. Hedwig. Sorry.

With health and human services and and, the CAO's office. And I believe those are all taking place next week down in Sacramento. And at the recommended recommendation of CSAC, who's advocating for all of the counties, every county in the state is hopefully doing the same thing. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's it's fairly unusual where El Dorado County and LA County have a common interest, but we are aligned on this because it's gonna have devastating consequences to every county.

Absolutely.

So 1991 was already struggling to meet the programmatic cost increases. We have already built in the transfer of 10% of public health 1991 realignment to social services to sort of cover those programmatic cost increases. But when it came to this 800,000 from HR one, we just didn't have additional funding. So that's gonna need to come from general fund resources this year, and it may increase in well, we know the because we saw those three things. Only one of the impacts was included this year, so the the costs will increase in future years.

So how are we covering the 800,000 this year? HHS had 400,000 left of their American Rescue Plan Act allocation that the board allocated to public health. If you remember, we reported the full amount of lost revenue that we are allowed to under the American Rescue Plan Act. So some of that, due to the timing of how we're reporting American Rescue Plan Act, some of that really is discretionary funds at this point. And so HHS say is willing to give up that 400,000 that they had unspent that they were planning to spend in 2627 back to the general fund, and they're going to use public health realignment because it is eligible public health realignment costs for those expenses. So that was covered half of the $800,000 gap with a one time

Yeah. One funding

a one time funding swap. But that means that we still have a $400,000 increase of the new general fund contribution to kinda cover this gap caused by HR one. So we know this year, we only had some of the impacts of h r one. In 2728, we are gonna have more of an impact unless the state helps us. But at this point, we did not include any state funding because it has not been approved.

When we may revised budget comes out in May, I hope there is great information that we maybe can provide to the board. But until then, we need to assume that there's no extra funding. So how are we going to mitigate the impacts of this legislation in future years? We all continue to ask questions of all of our associations, our partners, other counties of how they're doing things. Just yesterday, h and I HHSA and I were sitting on a call with the county budget managers talking about realignment revenue.

So we're doing everything we can to learn from others and maximize how our associations are handling this. HSA has done an exceptional level of combing through the level of service for all of their mandated programs, seeing what the minimum level service is. Are we providing that minimum level of service? What happens if we don't provide that minimum level of service? So they're gonna continue that work to see really to make sure that what we're providing in those mandated services is the minimum level of service because the funding just isn't enough to cover a higher level of service.

And then lastly, we would like the board's direction to explore reducing the general fund cost of some discretionary programs in HHSA. And as Sue said, we want the time and the space to properly explore this reduction, and that's why we're bringing it up now because we're talking about reductions that would happen in July 2027. So not this upcoming July. This is more than a year in advance of when we would be reducing services. So Eldorado County is the only area on aging in the state that provides senior day, and we're the only AAA, the area agency on aging, that has county staff providing senior legal.

So this is two areas of HSA programs we're providing a higher level of service. It's a discretionary level of service. So senior day is budgeted with a general fund cost of over $700,000 a year in the recommended budget. Despite our plans last year with the fee increase and consolidating sites, we still struggle to meet our our get the max participants a day that we are seeking for, which is 25. We're averaging 16, and the cost of the program is just increasing.

And so the plan that we're hoping we would be able I mean, HSA has worked hard to do targeted outreach and try to get people enrolled in the program and to stop the program, but it's just not penciling out. And the increase is I mean, it's 700,000 doll dollars. It's a great program, But we have heard that there are private programs opening up. So this is typically not we're the only county in the state that provides this service. There are two new private providers that we've learned of that are providing the service on the West Slope, and we'd like to continue to explore if there's other providers who might be open to opening up and providing the service as well. So based on the average participants and the

answer think it was alluded to or at least a question or alluded to in public comment about it's a staffing issue. I don't see it then based on what you said is as a staffing issue. We're staffing it and only getting 16 participants when our target's 25. Is that correct?

Yes. Yes.

And I wanted to double check. Yes. So Olivia sure and Yeah.

Say it's you know, so the the public understands.

So that was the main reason behind consolidating the sites because then it was easier to staff with the consolidated sites, but we're still not seeing the participants that we need.

Not $16 an hour we're paying to the staff. We've got staff. We've got people available. People aren't coming.

Correct.

So I I just sorry. I just wanna add, we are staffed to serve about 24. So we've actually stopped hiring because we can't we don't have enough demand to support hiring more staff.

Yeah. I just put it it was pointed out, and I just wanna make sure we clarified that.

Let's back up a year. Mhmm. In Eldorado Hills, there was more demand. We just didn't have the staff to to fulfill that. Correct? Because we couldn't hire people to work in Eldorado Hills, but we had people on a waiting list. We had we had more participants.

A year ago, Eldorado Hills did have staffing challenges, which was why we decided to consolidate in Placerville, which was easier to staff.

Thanks.

Moving on to senior legal. There are currently 3.5 FTE allocations in senior legal, and it has a general fund cost of over 750,000 a year. Now we we do have an obligation to provide legal services for our senior population, but our service levels far exceed that minimum mandated level. Per the California Department of Aging, again, we're the only county where we provide the service with in house staff. But also, again, we're asking for direction to explore this over the next year with all the stakeholders.

We just didn't wanna start doing that work and having that conversations without the full board's direction on changing the service or considering a change to these services. But we do know that next year's budget, if we don't have state funding, will be challenging to balance with the impacts of HR one. So the specific direction we're seeking today is to determine the cost and process for moving from in house senior legal to contracted senior legal, and then to explore in the wind down of senior day services, which would include performing outreach to current and potential private providers. And then for both of these option, we we will return to the board with with the results of what what the work is, what our analysis showed, and come and ask for a recommendation then. So, again, no final decision is made today.

The decision today is just to direct us to explore this. Any thoughts, questions on this?

We wouldn't be exploring this if we knew HR one was funded. Correct?

We we had balanced been close to balancing the budget before HR one impacts really increased the cost, I mean, in social services before we had that shortfall. But it is it doesn't mean in future years, if there is a change in discretionary revenues that these are one of the main discretionary programs we have in HHSA.

So I I think as Emma mentioned earlier, the struggle with the realignment revenues, the 1991 realignment revenues, we likely would have this conversation again in a year or two. But with that, the board you know, governing is choosing. And so if what what we're proposing here is the department has seen this issue coming with their revenues, and they're trying to take care of that problem in their department. And I admire that. And they've done everything they can to try to to plug those holes and and suck it up and and, you know, absorb the hits that are coming from the state and federal mandated programs that aren't fully covered.

So at the end of the day, if the board does not want to provide that direction for these services, you can certainly direct us to say we have to look somewhere else to provide that funding for those services. You have that option. So what what we're looking at here is continue on with the department's efforts to try to plug this hole and keep that within their department. If you want to take something from somewhere else to fund these services, that is absolutely your option and a discussion that we could have at any point in time. So I just wanna make that that clear.

You do have that flexibility. As Emma said, we are about just about balanced with the budget. So if you're gonna make a decision like that or provide us direction, you you we're gonna ask you where else you want us to look and what you wanna sacrifice on, you know, somewhere else to find that funding.

Last

slide with content. So back in April, we brought to you a budget transfer recognizing this money that we had received from PG and E from the mosquito fire related to a settlement That resulted in we had to pay $300,000 back to Cal OES and FEMA, and then that left $8,500,000 that we put in a designation. And we said we'd come back to you today asking for direction on how we're gonna spend that $8,500,000. Unfortunately, last week, after I finalized this presentation and it was published, we had a meeting with CaloES, and we learned that we do have to pay an additional 187,000 back to them from law enforcement mutual aid money. So this slide remains, except now instead of I would like to amend it that we I'll be returning to you probably next board meeting with another budget transfer in the current year to pay the state back that additional $187,000 that they paid us for our mosquito fire response.

But now that we got additional funding, we need to pay them again. So that would

leave 7.9.

7.84 that we would be designating for projects that benefit the Mosquito Fire footprint area. And that is holding the funds in a designation as we develop projects between DOT or other county programs that specifically benefit those in the fire footprint area. We would pull from that designation. The board would approve pulling from that designation to fund those projects. We met with the DOT director. We really discussed what the best uses of this funding would be, and we really want to thoughtfully leave it in the designation until we have a specific project in which we can pull from that designation for those specific projects.

Yeah. And

just I know we struggled with calling it the mosquito fire footprint area because that could be seen as too specific, especially with the 400,000 for the start service. Could we just call it the mosquito fire impact area perhaps? That would include anything in the area on the divide that We

can yeah. I think we settled on, using the word benefit, projects that benefit the the fire impact area. But, yes, your point is well taken, and I think that when we bring those back for so any potential use of that funding will have to come back to the board for discussion. So that's another opportunity for you all to say, okay. This this met our original intent, which was, you know, kind of in that. Because you could look at it the evacuation footprint, you know, not necessarily the fire footprint. You could look at it a lot of different ways. And I think when it comes down to it, the time to really make that decision is when you're confronted with one of those projects or when one of those projects arises.

Okay. Good. Yeah. I just wanna make because I know that there was concerns raised. Like, the word footprint could be really interpreted narrowly, and we don't necessarily wanna do that. So okay.

I just got a question. Is it is it possible that even though it's designated just for mosquito, is it possible to put, take some of those funds to help the final 12 homes to be built in Grizzly?

So it it's the board's discretionary money to allocate how you want. The only time pulling from a designation takes a three fifth vote is with the adopted adoption of the approval of the recommended budget. But anytime in the year, if you wanna pull funding from a designation, it just takes a four fifths vote.

Okay.

Okay. I think that got us to the end of the presentation. Correct? Yep. Okay. The board has requested that we take a short break. So I'm gonna ask the board to be very prompt and be back at 11:10. So about six, seven minutes. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. Just a little bit of in house comments at this point with regards to the agenda. We we do our best to try to predict how long things are gonna take, and the reality is it's hard to predict. So this, we have a hard stop this morning at 11:45, for the purpose of going down to the fairgrounds and hearing all the news stuff with the fair this year, and meeting with their board. So with that in mind, we will likely just be able to get through this particular item.

Although we did have item number 20, which a lot of members of the public spoke about already, and that was scheduled for a time certain department matter, at 10:30AM. Clearly, we're not gonna be able to make that. Additionally, we have two public hearings that are also time certain for the afternoon. The Department of Ag regarding the scanner ordinance is to be heard at one. And item number 22, which is the repeal of the tobacco retail ordinance, is scheduled to be heard at 02:00.

So unless, any of my colleagues disagree, I would like to recommend that we move item number 20 so that the public is clear on what we're doing. We'll move that to trail behind, the 02:00 time certain item number 22. So I would expect that will probably be about a thirty to forty five minute item. And so we'll hear item number 20 after item number 22. So somewhere probably around 02:30 for those of you who are trying to schedule your day. So is there any objection from my colleagues with on that, what makes sense?

Think that's our only choice, and we apologize.

Yeah. I think so too. Yes. Apologize very much. Okay. So where we are here on the budget update is I'm gonna ask the board to participate in two different ways. First of all, we're gonna take clarifying questions on the actual presentation. We asked a lot of them as the presentation was unfolding, so I don't know that you'll have a whole lot there. And then after clarifying questions, we'll bring this item back to the board for deliberation, and to give direction. Okay?

So we're at the point right now where we're doing, clarifying questions. Do any of my colleagues have questions on the presentation that you've heard today? And I'll ask, supervisor Verkamp, vice chair,

to kick off. I'm good.

Oh, excuse me. Supervisor Verrill.

One question Sorry. I got a cliff bar stuck in my throat. Regarding community funding, how how did that work?

Yeah.

How is it allocated? Was it allocated directed to individual districts? How did that work? And it's probably more a question for the board members then.

Yep. Supervisor Parlin, do you wanna explain that?

Why am

I having to explain that?

She allocated it.

To the work. So there there was, yeah, there was this pot of money, and it did vary every year. And, I think when I first got in the board in 2019, it may have been 20,000 or some 15. And quite honestly, I'll own it. The it wasn't being tapped into a whole lot, so I just kept tapping.

And, and then, you know, economic times were pretty darn good, and so the amount kept raising, and then everybody started tapping into it. Was awesome. And then we had the, you know, trying to as supervisor Lane said, we saw. Our our county was very, looking forward on the budget issues. We saw what was coming, and so we started to, you know, hunker down, and the board decided that it would be, you know, a a show of, hey.

We're all gonna have to do this. So we were the like, that was the first thing that we really said, we need to take a pause on this. But it was basically as it got more formalized and we started tapping into it more, we decided to everybody got a fifth.

For an allotment.

Yeah. And then there were some districts that would say, hey. We wanna put a bigger chunk to a cause. And so some of us would buddy up here and there and put our, you know, 5,000, let's say, together towards something. And then it got even more formalized the last couple years where the recipient organizations had to sign an agreement because at first, it was pretty darn loosey goosey and easy to allocate. But then we realized we needed some accountability because we always want accountability with, you know, public funds. So that's kinda that's kinda in a nutshell how it went, I think.

And I'll just add, I have the policy pulled up in case anyone has any questions. So it really was just established in fiscal year twenty seventeen, eighteen. So it's not necessarily a very long standing practice. And, again, the policy does, require that each one be brought to the board individually and that an agreement be executed. So it can get also a little administratively burdensome as you can imagine

It is.

If you're, splitting that money up into 500 or a thousand dollar chunks here and there. It gets to be quite a bit. And so part of the request is here if you if you wanna go back to including this funding, then give us direction on how you wanna do that. If we need to revise this policy, if we should somehow either incorporate this policy into our budget policies, or on the other end of the spectrum, you might want to just repeal it and say, we're not going to do that anymore. So you have the range of options.

So each donation had to be approved by the board. All right. Thank you.

Yeah. And in the practice, far as I recall, because we did it for a couple years once I was on the board, typically, they're like, appointees to committees and commissions. You know? As as long as it's something you're in favor of and you're bringing it forward, they typically were always approved.

Okay.

Are there other clarifying questions? Okay. So then let's move into deliberation and action. And, again, this item we are being asked to provide direction to staff, they will come back with the absolute particulars at a future meeting, I would expect. So we're providing direction. Where do you wanna start, board?

Should we just go down them? Top them. They're kinda in here. Right? Is the list?

So explore reducing the general fund cost of discretionary services in health and human services in the fiscal year 2728 budget to aid in offsetting the impacts of house resolution one and the 1991 realignment fund shortfall.

So, again, the ask here is

Direction to staff.

Mike. Yeah. Mike Sim. Sorry. The other way.

Just direction to explore. So it's it's not a decision. It is for I know, I think we received a few questions about sort of very detailed questions about how would senior legal services be provided. We don't know yet. So and we wouldn't go down that path and explore that unless we knew it was something the board wanted you to have staff spend time on. So we would go gather all that information, what are the options, cost benefits, all that, and that would all come back to the board for a

decision. Yeah. I guess a specific question that I would have with regards to, for example, senior services. I didn't see what the offsetting revenue was to the cost. Do we have an approximate over the course of the last several years? This is approximately what that has generated to offset general fund cost.

That's the one number I didn't have in my notes. But it we do collect fees for senior day, but the fees are not covering the cost of the program. So if you give me a second, I can try to look for what those fee revenue what is. Okay. But

Okay. Perfect.

Can be part of the review. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Should you

want direction on each one separately?

Yeah. Yes.

Alright. So I I would I would move that we, direct staff to explore further recommendation this item.

Okay. There's a motion. Is there a second? The motion would be exactly what is

Right.

Printed on item number one, which is let's be clear on our motions. Mister Verkamp, would you like to read explore reducing?

So explore reducing the general fund cost of discretionary services, health and human service agency in the fiscal year 2728 to aiding and offsetting the impacts of house resolution one in the 1991 realignment funding shortfall.

Okay. That is the motion. Is there a second?

Can can can we motions

we need a second to have the discussion.

Okay. I'll second for discussion.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor.

To it, though, but we we can amend

it. Yeah.

Or or is it just direction? Because, what I'm wondering is, like, we specifically had questions about, you know, the Eldorado Hills Center that was closed. And I'm I'm curious to know, do we know did those folks just go find other services? You know? Because I have seen h h HHSA's promotions out there for senior day. I mean, I've seen it out on social media. I've seen it in newsletters, and yet we're not getting people to enroll. So it's like part of that exploration to me should be, well, what happened? Where are people going? In addition to what's available. Do you know what I mean? I'd I'd like to see all that. So does that need to be in the motion or just direction with it? I

think that we're that would be considered. And and I think it's appropriate for us to say we really want specifics. Know? We really want you to dig into the program and tell us what is the revenue, what is the cost, how many people are being serviced, how important is this service to the board and to the community? Because we're talking about more than just the senior day care program. We're talking about CalFresh and all the other mandated, right, that are supported by HR one and 1999, 1991 realignment funds. So it's more than just am I correct or am I wrong?

We're we're talking about only reducing those two specific services in fiscal year twenty seven, twenty eight because we can't reduce the the mandated program costs

senior nutrition. We're not

Yeah. We're only for these two very specific

So it's only senior day and senior legal, specifically. Okay. That's all we're exploring.

We're trying send money. We're assuming almost $500,000 in in revenue from from participants in senior day.

500,000? Mhmm. Okay. It's interesting because up in the basin, we provide senior legal services through a nonprofit.

Mhmm.

Exactly.

There's there's many ways

to seek

a cat.

Other ways to do it.

It doesn't mean we're not gonna provide the service. It means we would consider doing it a

different mandated to provide that service somehow. So we just need to look at the model to your point.

And so when when you talked about in your presentation that there's two new businesses on the West Slope that are currently looking at providing these types of services, maybe we could partner with them.

Mhmm.

This is what we're talking about, not for this year, but for 2728.

Yeah. And and the question I have is how how many of the ones that are in El Dorado Hills are coming up to the facility up here? You know?

I can get back to you on that. I don't have that specific number.

I know wanna have analyzed.

Yeah. We want all that in

in that's in the explore

component.

So that's the kind

of stuff we're looking for. So okay. Supervisor Perreu?

My my thoughts on this and I'm gonna support this because it's exploratory only.

Yeah.

I'm more I'm more apt to look at the senior legal as I am the senior day.

Yeah.

And for it it it's it kind of it's kind of a bad look what we've done over the last year. You know, we closed Eldorado Hills to say we're gonna consolidate Placerville, and now we're talking about closing Placerville. Granted, there is I know in Eldorado Hills, there's a private senior day care center. I think the price is comparable to what the county is charging. It might be better service.

Someone will look at that. One thing I would ask you to look at is, including or looking at transportation because currently, we provide transportation from El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park up to Placerville. Mhmm. So I'd like you to include that in the exploration. Yeah, I just I think I think it's a bad look, we're it's like we're slowly kind of pulling a wool over the public's eyes. But I also realize, especially if the HR one money doesn't come

in Yeah.

We're gonna be looking at a whole lot more than this. I know. So

Thank you for those comments. So there's a motion and a second. Is there further discussion on the motion? Nope. Okay. Seeing none, then all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes, Feinfeld.

Okay. Thank you. We'll move on to the next question, which which is including the board's direction on the community funding that we were just talking about for 2627 recommended budget this coming budget. Comments, questions, concerns? Anyone?

I don't know. We don't have the wagon train on here. Do we skin the cat with this one, or do we separate the two? Because I want I'm definitely an advocate for the funding the wagon train.

Yeah. So I'll I'll go so when we, when did we roll this one? When did we roll back the wagon train? Was it

last year. Yeah. 2526. This budget.

Okay. Right. Because I get these confused. So first, we did the community benefit funding. We paused that. Then the following year, we had this and it was a slate of items that were what did we call them? Non county services, I believe, that whole slate. And I'll be the first to admit that when we were talking about the slate and all the items in there, the the wagon train didn't get brought up in the conversation. It was just lumped in that list. And, in hindsight, I wish I had noticed that.

We we were just so focused on the other items. So I too would like to fund the wagon train because of its historical and economics, too. I mean, if it's bringing people from all around the world and we can promote it better, it's bringing the heads and beds and the TOT that we always talk about. So I I would support the wagon train. I just don't know a dollar amount. And will we swap that out for the community funding for a year maybe? I don't know. That's

So I had some thoughts on this, and thank you for expressing your support for that. And you're right. There were there were, you know, we did throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Right? Yeah.

And and there were some consequences to that that weren't, specifically discussed. And I even think arts and culture was a little bit caught up on that as well. They were all kinda listed together in the same group. I've been working with the wagon train folks this this year trying to come up with some kind of solution. And what I would like to recommend to my colleagues to think about is for this coming fiscal year, 2627 Mhmm.

That we consider providing matching dollars to the wagon train. So up to $10,000 for fiscal year 2627 for matching funds. So they would go out and fundraise as well. So that would allow them a mechanism for leveraging our funds. And with the idea that in the following fiscal year, maybe we would consider a reduction in that amount, but still matching funds to just help them really kind of get some momentum and get on their feet.

And that could be $7,500 in the following year or five thousand dollars in the following year. That's up to the board to decide but that was something that I was definitely thinking about for the wagon train. And then that idea kind of dovetailed off of my observations around arts and culture and how they raise revenue. And so I think that their request for the 37,500 in next year's budget is also very legitimate in that they leverage that for so much more. And when it comes to grants, you have to sometimes show a local match in order to be able to get that grant funding.

And the grant funding that Arts and Culture has been able to get has been significant. And when you talk about the wagon train and you talk about arts and culture, you know, they dovetail. And I regret the fact that we made the decision to cut their funding entirely. And I'd like to see this board consider both of those suggestions. But we can take them separately or we

can take them together either way. But I do think that those are good examples of, support that we can give to those organizations that bring so much more benefit. Right. And because you have been working with the wagon train so much this year, can you elaborate a little bit on because my understanding is it's it's a it's the requirements and the CHP and all that. It's like new regulatory things that weren't there before that are becoming burdensome again, the state, perhaps. And the state's not going to forgive fees for whatever they you know what I mean? Like, can you elaborate so we know what we're talking about?

Yeah. Thank you, supervisor, for bringing that up. So what I know is several years ago I'm going to say three the wagon trains had an anniversary celebration of their seventy five years of doing the wagon train. And back at that time, the California Highway Patrol, which escorts this group for multiple days through, as we know, over the mountain, they had been telling the wagon train folks, you're gonna have to pay for this service. We can't afford to just do this.

And the CHP, in fact, had already been cutting off a lot of other organizations that were getting free services and saying, you know, you need to pay your fair share. Back then, the wagon train folks had a good alliance with assembly member

Bigelow.

Patterson.

And well, it was Bigelow actually, Bigelow before Patterson as well because I think we went to Bigelow numerous times to get the state to wait Yep. Wait

until in the seventy fifth anniversary example, I believe it was assembly member Patterson's office that really kinda led the way. And they said, just do it this year, CHP. You know, it's their seventy fifth, and we'll figure it out going forward. So CHP provided that service next year. Wagon train pleaded the same case. We don't have the money to be able to pay for this. It's a $20,000 expense just for the escort. And so CHP provided the service for another year and said, this is it. We're serious. This is it.

And this year is the year that they are requiring the wagon train to be able to have to provide this service. Fortunately, the wagon train had a little bit of money put aside. It pretty much wipes out their their, savings account. So they've made the decision to do it this year, and I've been working with them with the concept of let's see if there's something we can do for the next two years to at least give them that advantage of getting that infrastructure built back up in their budget and being able to sustain it. You heard a business member come forward saying, our business is going to give to this.

This is, I think, that what we're trying to set up with the county is leveraging, giving the wagon train the ability to say for every dollar we raise, we're getting a dollar matching from the county, and that's helpful. So that's a little bit of the background that I'm aware of. They don't charge a lot for the participants. Maybe that's something that they need to look at and and restructure, but those are all their decisions to make. And I think in the face of the funding cut, they're very aware of what's before them.

I speak on that a little bit because Brooke and I talked about this. And, biggest thing is my family, especially Hugh Turnbull senior, brought a wagon train from the East to the West to California. But the biggest thing is is I talked to my veterans commission commissioner, and there's probably funds there that will be able to support that, especially if there's veterans sitting that are involved in the wagon train. So it's a possibility too.

Yes. Thank you for that. That's great. Are there other comments specifically on this item?

When's the wagon train? June June, July?

Beginning of June.

Beginning of June? Beginning of June.

And CHP already said that they're charging?

Yes.

Who at at what level?

20 it's up But

what who who was it was it Placerville CHP?

You know, no. I mean, I got a call from lieutenant Krengel, on this matter. He's the lieutenant up in the basin.

Yeah.

His department will take the the majority of this responsibility and, you know, again, with a little bit with regret. They don't they're not happy about the fact that they have to do this, but they are treating all of the different groups across the horizon equally. And, the wagon train totally understands that. They need the protection. You know? They're coming down Highway 50 on horses and wagons at a very slow rate of speed, and you've got cars. And, it's very important that they have this. And so they're they're biting the bullet this year.

So yeah. Yeah. I remember being on the receiving end from the department saying, you're gonna send guys up to escort. I'll support the the match, but I I also have an idea that I I might be able to work on behind the scenes that if it works, then maybe we don't have to contribute that match regarding the traffic control.

Okay.

It's worth a couple phone calls.

Okay. I'd like to at least put it in play for the wagon train so that they have an expectation of what they can do, especially for next year and potentially the year after. I think it will give them a little bit of security. If something else ends up working out, fantastic.

K. So

I would move that we allocate $10,000 in up to $10,000 in matching funds for the Highway 50 wagon train for fiscal year 2627. And I would further recommend that we provide up to $7,500 in matching funds for fiscal year 2728. Is is that the general fund.

Is that enough?

So is there a second, and then we can discuss that?

I'll go

ahead and second that.

Thank you, supervisor Turnboo. So there's a motion and a second question, mister VirTrak?

Without seeing a budget, I mean, I don't wanna get totally into specifics, but I don't know if that's enough. I mean, I'm I'm

I've been working with them, and, I think that that will suffice for now until maybe we come up with a better option. I I think I can say with certainty that in my many discussions with them, this could work. We don't typically take, public comment at this point unless you wanna hear from them.

Well, if it's an up to I mean, obviously, our our want is to impact as little as possible to the county

Yeah.

General fund, but I I would I would make an alternative motion up to 15,000 just in case it doesn't come through.

Yeah.

I to me, the wagon train is is El Dorado County Mhmm. And has been for a long time, and I think we should do the right thing to, fund it. And and I think Help fund it.

And then we can look at the veterans too because there is money that they can you know, that they always look for Yeah.

There may be a smaller some alternatives here. But Exactly.

Well, I'm happy for you to amend the motion if it's going in the right direction. So do you wanna make that amendment?

Yes.

I would.

So I will I'll go ahead and amend my motion to be $15,000

in fiscal

year second batch.

2627. And what about $10,000 a year?

You guys figure

it out next year and see what hap I don't think we should obligate next year.

Okay. Be fine. Yeah. Let's go

15 for this.

I like that. Okay. Let's do recommendation for 15,000 in fiscal year twenty six, twenty seven. Supervisor Turnboo has seconded that amendment. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes five o.

Okay. And in that same vein, I really do want to bring forward the arts and culture, request for $37,500 also again, to provide matching dollars so that they can leverage those funds to to much more than that. We have a big project going on up in Tahoe that wouldn't even be where it is today had it not been for arts and culture and they've been working on it this whole year without any funding from the county, and it's been touch and go. You know, they have staff, and thank god they do. They're excellent staff, but we're having to fundraise to pay their staff to support a project.

And I I just think that that's that's asking a lot. I care about this group, and I think they do some amazing things in the county. And I think they're as important, as the wagon train as that is to our culture. This is the group that really solidifies that. So I'd like to support that.

I would ask the same question, Brooke, if we could, from a view. So what does their budget look like? What what outside funding is coming in and their fundraisers and so forth? Because I sat on this board before, and we had presentations that said they would be self sustaining. And this was years ago, and here we are back now asking for continued funding. So, I don't think we fund very many nonprofits, if any, in the county. So I'm I'm just have that concern as as things are are tight. So that's my that's my take and concern.

Madam Ciel? Sure. Yeah.

I just wanted to put out there that, in anticipation of this conversation, when we were working on, you know, balancing the budget, we tentatively set aside maybe $50,000 in case she wanted to allocate for community funding. So from our perspective, we've we have the $50,000 tentatively set aside. If you've just allocated 15 of that, we maybe have about 35 left before I would ask you, you know, where else it is that you would like us to look to pull that funding. Is it, you know, reducing contingency, reducing another designation somewhere else, or reducing a service somewhere else if you're gonna increase the amount of funding provided. Supervisor Ferreira?

Yeah. I I I'm having trouble supporting this. Apologize. We're in cost cutting mode. I kind of see this as, you know, if we're gonna support this, then I think we should support, things like the tourism authority, the welcome center, other entities that bring in money to the county. We just can't measure that amount. So, yeah, I don't apologize. I can't support it.

Yeah. I'm with you. So

having heard from my colleagues, I'll still go ahead and make a motion that we provide up to $35,000 in support to arts and culture for the purposes of being able to fundraise matching dollars. Is there a second? All second, doc. Oh, there's a motion and a second.

So better.

Oh my gosh.

Oh.

All right. A little bit of levity here. Okay. There is a motion, but it fails for lack of a second. Is there further direction that the board would like to take on this item, specifically around community funding?

Just the the policy b six. I know staff wanted to perhaps update it to reflect what our current practices are, but that's hard to do when this is an item that's dependent on the budget. So I don't know if it needs to be amended or just paused or ignored for a year, or can we just leave it there?

You you can just ignore it for a year. Okay. It it there's language in there that says when allocated by the board. Perfect.

Okay. Yeah. Then we're gonna ignore it this year and not touch it. How's that?

I I thought I heard there was 35,000 still left available. Hey. I just do one I would be remiss if I didn't remind the board. This is the 200 and fiftieth anniversary of this country. There may be a project such as fourth of July, something

Yeah.

The the blast down at the fairgrounds that could use some money. So, I hope we could I know what the ask is is $5,000. We could talk about that, or we could just leave it alone, and I'll bring it some other way. Or I'll

I think he's talking about right now.

That that's fine.

If you have it, because we're in this mode.

There is a ask through the Fair Association and the Platteville Speedway for $5,000 because the increased cost of fireworks being the two two hundred and fiftieth, there's more need. And the Esparto mess last year, they're harder to get. So there's an ask of for $5,000 for our fourth of July blast El Dorado County fourth of July blast. K.

Let's go ahead and check that.