Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, we are back. So where's the crow? You had the floor, I think.

I'm gonna just repeat myself. I think we have Richard, which I think we all know well now, from the Fire Safe Council. Thank you, Richard, for being so patient with our technical difficulties. If you'd like to explain a little bit about this position in the grant, that would be great, and why we had to revise the support letter.

So this position is largely orchestrated to my understanding through the California Fire State Council. We were able to link up with that council back in the January time frame and they alerted us to this opportunity for this grant. And they've been extremely cooperative with us in explaining the provisions of the grant and what types of activities would and would not be capable for us to apply for funding. So what we're here before the board for is that we had asked you earlier in the April timeframe to provide a letter of support, which you did, and it was a great letter. But after we submitted that letter, they came back to us. The California Fire Safe Council came back to us with a template that was actually simpler, and they're asking for us to just follow up with another letter of support that abides by their template.

Okay, great, thank you. Let's go to public comment before we do anything else.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment on this item.

Thank you. Any questions, or CEO, you had something to add before?

Yes, good morning. I have a question regarding the grant because I went into the website and it looks like the grant is for $151,500. It's for a 15-month period, but the performance time goes from May 15, 2025 to July 31, 2026. So I'm not sure if this, that's what is on the website. So I just checked because it's called the 2025 grant. 2025 wildfire county coordinators grant program. So I did it, I grabbed it from the information that was submitted. But if you go into the website, it says that that's the period that is covered. So I'm wondering if they going to be retroactive or if the grant is gonna be forecasted for the next period. I'm not sure. That's what I have all the information that I have available for you.

Thank you. The board members have questions.

Okay, well, then I just would be curious, based on the CEOs comments right now, is this Like that's the grant period and we're almost at the end of it or this is the beginning of it?

Do we know? It was my understanding it's the beginning of it, but I would defer to Richard. He's been working more with the grant. Okay. Richard, are you still online?

Can you maybe answer that question for us?

Yes.

Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay, terrific. Yes, it took a little bit of coaching on our side to understand the provisions, and I can understand the confusion here. Yes, it's true that this grant period began in 2025, and in the jargon of the California Fire and Safe Council, they call that the base period. And then what they were offering in 2026 was an extension to that base period for another $150,000 or so. So what they have allowed us to do is to submit a grant application for both the base period, 150K approximately, and the extension period for another 150K, so that we actually had a ceiling of approximately $300,000 that we could apply our grant application towards. Now, with their guidance, we followed that formula, and we've been working somewhat alerted to the fact that our full grant amount has been awarded. And so what we have, what we intend to do is have a very active agenda for what we're looking to do with this position that will be fulfilling in the county coordinator position. And the period of performance will be starting as soon as July 1st of this year. And then for the 15 month period that would follow. Okay, thank you.

I have some additional questions because the way that I read the letter is for them to apply on behalf of the county, meaning the county still holding liability for the grant application. And so if the grant is to be awarded, then what are the liabilities for the county, our responsibilities in terms of reporting, potential commitments that we had to make in addition to that. I just wanna have a full understanding and I want the board to have a full understanding of the responsibilities that is applying for a grant. Now, if I heard correctly, I'm looking at, you're looking into $300,000 application now. Does this mean they're gonna spend the money on the 15-month periods or in a 30-month period? Because, oh, they're gonna go retroactive to the last year to pay for salaries already incurred. So those are the questions that I have concerns. I don't know if he's available to answer the questions because I'm concerned about the county being responsible for the grant as well as the reporting. What, what responsibility we have for this grant. That's the bottom line.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Mr. Rick, did you want to?

No, is there full clarity? Do you need Rick to further check in, it sounds like?

Yeah. Yeah, Richard, if you.

Richard, are you still there?

Yes, I am. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Can you address the CEO's concerns? And it's my understanding that this would be going through the community foundation. And my question along with the CEOs would be the grant administration is by whom?

The fiscal sponsor for the execution of the grant is Community Foundation. That's correct. And so although there's narrative in the agenda that said something, you know, authorized Community Foundation on behalf of San Benito County, I don't see that in the template letter that they've asked us to provide. So the point here is that the administration of the grant will be through Community Foundation. And so they're the nonprofit that has that responsibility. As far as the tasking of the county coordinator, that would come, well, We've established a very good working relationship with the community foundation and made it very clear that we'll be the ones that will be directing the activities of the county coordinator entirely in alignment with what we've said we would be doing in the grant application. As far as the period of performance, it's for the 15-month period starting July of this year and for the subsequent 15 months that would follow.

Can I answer the question? I believe so.

I believe so, yeah.

Yes, thank you. Any other questions while we have Richard?

I think the concern here, Richard, just reading the room, is that the county is allowing this to go through the community foundation. If there's any issues with the person or position, it's all on... the fire safe council and not the county. I'm assuming that's where the question is kind of going. Is that where your concern is? And would that be a legal question for council?

I'm reading the support letter and they're calling themselves sub-recipient. We will have to develop a sub-recipient agreement with them. When you get a grant, if the grant comes to the county, we have to have a sub-recipient agreement with the community foundation. If the grant goes to the community foundation, a support letter should be enough, but not a support letter that says on behalf of the county. So two different things. So we need to, I just need clarification with them exactly what, because in the item it says, on behalf of the county, apply on behalf of San Benito County for the 2025 and serve as the grants sub-recipient, we need to develop a sub-recipient agreement. We need to develop this relationship. If we're gonna take ownership of this grant with the foundation, that's my concern.

So I don't think, Richard, because you're not an attorney, I'm not an attorney, I would say if that is what we need to do, if in this motion that we would say we are approving this with the understanding that that agreement would have to go into place prior to us moving forward with the grant. Does that make sense, Richard? It's an agreement between... and it would basically put the responsibility on the community foundation, correct?

No, we're still responsible if they apply on behalf of the county.

Okay, I don't know the legal purpose for this.

Yes, so if the contract comes under the name of the county, the grant, we need to develop a sub-recipient agreement with the foundation. If the grant comes to the foundation, then we will need a sub-recipient agreement. But it's interesting the way that the letter was written. It sounds like the county will be the recipient, and therefore we need a sub-recipient agreement.

Okay, that makes sense. So are you able, Richard, to address the question, is the grant funding coming and being on behalf of the county, or is it going to be through the Community Foundation directly?

It's my understanding it's to the Community Foundation directly.

this letter, we may need to have a stipulation that if it comes to the county, we would have to ask for an agreement to be completed by the community foundation prior to us handling that grant funding, because it would be coming through our auditor's office. I'm looking at the auditor staff and they're nodding their heads, right? I think having that stipulation that if it is coming direct to the county, we will have to have the subsidiary agreement. Is that what you called it? What'd you call it? Subrecipient agreement.

I'm not even gonna try and say it. Subrecipient agreement. So if the county is the recipient of the agreement, then a subrecipient is the person that is coming. A subrecipient. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Subrecipient.

Okay, so I would... I would, if there's not a concern from the board. Yeah, please.

I think we had some more, I think we had a question from Supervisor, I know Kazimicki had something. Oh, I thought you said, yeah. Supervisor Cesar, you.

Okay, I keep hearing that it's going to start on July 1. Do we need to have the subrecipient agreement done prior to July 1? Like does that need to be added to our agenda possibly for next week just to make sure that we are not behind on any of this? Okay, I just wanted to make a point that we need to make sure we get it on our June 23rd agenda so that we can formalize it so that we don't have any hiccups.

And the reason there's a big rush right now is because the deadline for this extension on this application is the 19th of June. So it was very gracious of the chair and staff to be able to get this on so quickly. We just found out about it last week.

So if I can get the contact information with Richard, then I will work with him to make sure that we have all the documents in place.

So would it be fair to make a motion with that understanding in the motion that if, so may I make a motion? I'd like to make a motion to approve with the caveat that if a subsidiary agreement, I think I said that wrong. Subrecipient, I'll get that. If a subrecipient agreement is necessary due to the grant coming directly to the county, that that will be completed with administration and the community foundation so that the grant can be administered properly If it is not, then it would just be the support letter if it's going to the community foundation. Okay, that's a long winded speech there, sorry.

Did you say second? I'll second that, yeah. Okay, we were first and a second. We have roll call vote, please. Supervisor Zenger? Yes.

Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Curro? Yes, and thank you, Richard. 4-0 vote, motion passes.

Thank you. Okay, moving on to 1B, this is our interim budget presentation.

Good morning, board members, members of the audience. I'm Esperanza Collier-Warren. I'm the CEO for the County of San Benito. And I would like to present, to introduce to you, the interim proposed budget. And I wanna make sure that we all understand what interim means in this scenario. It means that it's a budget that is not ready and completed. It's just a proposal to continue operations beyond the June 30th. because if we don't have one available for us, we cannot continue operation beyond July 1st. The other reason is, in order to have a full adopted budget presented to you, a proposal, we need to close the books, which will take about a month and a half, two months, more or less, when the auditor completes that process. In addition to that, I wanna disclose also that they have been so many changes lately and that we have to make some amendments to the posting that was done on Friday. So this document, this presentation that you're gonna see today was updated last night. We received additional information from the auditor's office and I wanna acknowledge the auditor and the board for helping us to clarify some of the questions that we have and they came in last night and this morning we received another clarification. So it's a moving budget and I want you to be aware of that. So if you have some questions, we will come back with you and a second workshop is needed. So far we have, and I wanna acknowledge the following too. I have with me Leanne, I call her Leanne because she has an E at the end and Leanne is Leanne without an E. Leanne Ling is a consultant that we hired to help us. She was a former CEO and also she's a consultant for CSAC for budget purposes. She teaches budgets at CSAC. And... She has been very, very helpful. I have learned so many things from her and I appreciate that in terms of budgets with counties. So if we can go through the slides, please. Okay, so as I mentioned before, this is the interim proposed budget. Let's see, this is the snapshot of what we have projected. And when we say 2025 projected, it means that we have done some projections of the expenses. They're still not in the budget, but they're coming our way. So Leigh Ann worked with some departments to identify the projections on expenditures that they have. And so what we see so far is an assigned carryover of $2.6 million from last fiscal year. And the recommended budget, we moved that $2,636,000 to the recommended budget as a beginning and assigned balance. And again, this could change depending if the projections move or change during the completion of the end of the fiscal year. And so now we have a total revenues of $71 million. We removed, we included also the $2.9 million available for the library expansion. So we have a total of $74 million with $77 million in expenditures. So that put us into a $3 million shortfall But with the unassigned projected revenue, and again, projected unassigned carry forward, we have a shortage or a shortfall of $507,000. and change. So I'm gonna go through each one of the departments, and I wanna acknowledge the departments that were really able to keep their budget together, and some departments showed some less requests. So you're gonna see it through the presentation. Some other departments, they have augmentations, but they're not necessarily intentions based on just desires, they're basically needs. And when we're talking about needs, we're talking about departments that are being disabled from performing the duties and the activities that they have to do every day to comply with the public request. And one of them, one of the agencies is RMA, the Public Works Department. They're really struggling with this lack of staffing. And so we have worked with Planning Department and the Public Works Department. We also have some non-general fund agencies that have made some requests like Behavioral Health, because they are not required to comply with new laws and new requirements at the state level. So with that, let's go into the numbers. I have a total amount of $130,000 more in the administration portion, the CEO's office. I have also HR department and I wanna go a little bit on the explanation of the HR department and IT department is, my witness, we were short last year in our budget because somehow it was duplicated that deletion of some funds instead of being 300,000, we did 600,000. So we were short during the year for $300,000. So what we did, we pulled some money from the IT department and he's looking at me very sad because he said, well, what are you giving money if you're gonna take it away? But it was something that we needed to do because under the HR department, we have some obligations for insurances and the stuff that we have available. So we were able to secure that funding. So we're putting it back what we were missing last year. There's no incrementals in staffing at all. It's just the same staffing. It's just the additional funding that we need to be completed. on that department. Clerk of the Board only has an increase of $17,000. IT department, on the other hand, he said, okay, we'll give you $558,000. So they lowered their budget to $558,000. And as you may recall, last year, we made so many changes to the IT department in the system. So that lowers our accountability for this year. GIS has lowered the amount of 1.2, 1,286. I have OES with an increase of $9,000 and so on. So you'll see all the departments. I'm not gonna spend all that time in each one of them. You have a copy of them. And if you have specific questions regarding those departments, let me know. We can work on it. But the bottom line is the following. You have all the lists of all the departments, and I have some asterisks, and one of them, you will see it right now, the one asterisk. I'm gonna go into the explanation what that's money coming from. It says other non-revenue and expenses, those are CAP projects that were contemplated into the general fund. And so I will give you an explanation about that moving forward. Public Works reflects a $1.4 million, which is also including some positions that are highly needed in that department to perform their duties, everyday duties. County Council has replaced a lower amount because finally we're getting the effects of all the changes that we made last year in County Council. Clerk elections, we have a positive amount of $234,000. The auditors, an increase of $36,000. The Agriculture Commission is $333,000. So we're gonna continue working with each one of the departments to see what those changes means for every department. And so the bottom line is we have a total shortage of $1,847,821, 621, I'm sorry. So the reason we separated over here is because I'm gonna go ahead and explain to you what this $426,000 means. And so moving forward, remember that we mentioned they have some general fund projects. construction projects, CIP projects into the general fund. If you see part of, we're forecasting $500,000 for the Union Road. There are some change orders that we're still debating. Teams is contesting some of the change orders, but we wanna be safe and kind of like secure some funding over there. The other one is the $2.9 million that the board previously allocated for the library. So we have it as an expenditure in this account. The rest of the funding is either for fire contracts that we have pending among other costs, cost plan, liability increases for the library, for the overall county. and so on, so we have those expenses. In addition to that, remember that I mentioned the $426,000 that is in the previous slide on the bottom, non-department expenses. So those expenses, a portion is the cost plan, the retiree medical, the solar, the utilities for 1125 San Felipe Road, the rent, and the rental equipment. So that's what it is in that account. So for, and this is kind of like the status news for all of us, status and positives news. Last year we have our 15% operating contingency as well as the 5%. However, these amounts have been impacted by $4 million and this $4 million is nothing else but the, Sanjaya Highway, which hasn't been pulled from the account, is $1.1 million and $2.9 million from the library. They used that aside last year. That's what is impacting the general fund. Those are the revenues. The 5% emergency contingency, we set it up at $5.3 million, but with the new budget as of June 2025, $3.9 million, so you have a total shortfall under the reserve, so $3.6 million. We find today, thanks to the auditor, that the capital improvements project reserves as of June 30th, 2025, the $1.9 million is nothing, it's been sitting there since 2019, I believe. And this was an amount set aside for improvements to the old courthouse before the fire. So you have a positive amount available over there that can be rolled over into the reserves. to offset the $3.6 million shortfall in the general fund reserves. So you can use that money for that and you will be in about $1.5 million, $1.6 million short in the, the bottom line you will be $1.6 million short in the general fund reserves, the minimum required. Moving forward, we have, the new positions requested under the General Fund. We have a total of 18 positions, nine under the General Fund. Information Technology, $118,000. We have the Assessor's Office with $60,000. And Building and Planning have Administrative Specialist and Accounting Technician and a Building Official and Office Assistant and a Plan Shaker. These positions, I wanna say, will help us to bring more revenue, but also to respond to the needs of the department. One thing that I wanna mention to you also, if you recall, during our last budget meetings, we also recognized that we had the need to separate the public works department and the planning department. For some reason, many years ago, this department was merged. but it was also merged on the finance department. So you have one person dealing with two large departments and it wasn't really working. So our goal is to separate financially those departments to each one of them have their own finance officer as well as their own staffing to do all the projects. Because what is happening now is things are falling between and having one individual overseeing the entire department financially it's very hard especially when public works is a very complicated department it has road improvements it has maintenance it has parks it has all the cip projects and the staff is overworked to be honest and i want to request for you to consider this nine positions allocated we also have um We need another person in person, ground worker, and an engineer, two, one or two engineer, additional engineer, because we, the staff cannot, we only have teams and one other 80 available as engineers, and then it has someone working with them. It is very difficult for them to manage the entire county with all the work that we have. So that total is about $829,000. When you take up the 118 and the $60,000, you're talking about maybe like $700,000, a little bit of $700,000 for the RMA department, which is planning and building. So it's not really that much compared to what we can bring to the county if we're moving forward for the projects that we have available. In addition to that, I want to remind the board, I want to remind the board that we have upcoming grants for projects. We need engineers on board. Right now we have a consultant firm, but that's not the goal of having a consultant to do the engineer work for the county. That's the reason why I'm allocated for having an engineer on board with us so that we can address all those prices that are coming with the CDBG grant and with the road safety improvements. We're talking about $22 million in totals and grants. We need the staff to be able to move forward with those projects. Otherwise, we will have to use consultants. And under the non-general funds, we have a total of nine positions. Most of the positions are in the environmental health department, with exception of one in public works for the CSAs, is the buildings and grounds maintenance. They have a need for the CSA to have another person to help. And we have also two from HSA, and those are very specific staff that they need for their functioning. Those are non-general funds, so it's not impacted the general fund. Hold on, let me see. So here we are again, with capital projects with general fund impact fees, we only have the $2.9 million set aside for the library. The rest of the projects are funded by other funding. We still need to identify which agency is gonna pay for it. We're looking into the possibility and I'm working with the auditor to identify any trust funds available in each one of the departments to be able to see if we can use those funds to do those improvements rather than coming on to the general fund. So that's our goal, we're gonna be working with them to determine that, and with the departments. We're not gonna just make an assumption, we wanna work with the auditors and the departments as well to identify the additional $10 million that we need to do all the other improvements. The courthouse, I wanna say the $10 million, this is coming from the insurance, if they approve our request, that's still in the works. Oh, sorry, I think I signed out myself. Hold on one second. Oh, how do I do this last show? Can't see. That one, okay, I got it. Thank you. So we have also capital projects continuing non-general fund impact projects. and they have several of them. The ones that really concerns me, to be honest, is the old jail fire alarm system, the main electrical breaker, the showers and everything, and we're working with the department to identify the funding for that. It's coming from the trust accounts. New capital projects, non-general fund impacts, you have $561,000. So that total, that one and this one is about $3.7 million more or less in total projects, non-general fund. For the calendar and all the events coming for this budget, today is June the 16th. By the way, it's my anniversary, my first years with the county of San Benito, thank you. I made it one year and I wore the same suit just for the sake of the conversation. So today we had the interim budget. It is up to the board if you have additional questions, whether to continue the workshop or to bring a potential adoption of the interim budget next coming the 24th. I'm also putting in the agenda that June 26th, if it's needed, if you continue the workshop today that you feel there is some changes needs to be made and that you want me to bring those changes, I can come back with you on the 24th with an additional workshop and potentially the budget, if the budget is not adopted, the interim budget, we can come back on the 26th to make the deadline of the June 30th, 2026. This is the last day that you have a support to approve an interim budget to continue operations. Failure to do that, I have to shut down the whole county because I will not have the authority to run the county. Final budget adoption is contingent to the closer of the 2025-2026 budget. And we'll be working with the auditors and the departments to close our books And we're expecting that somewhere in September, we will have the project hearings, and it will be determined at the time, depending on the timeline that we have for the closing of the budget. But our last day to approve the final budget is October the 2nd, 2026. So I'm open to any questions you might have. I can go back to the slides if you need to.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's go to public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Thank you. Any comments, questions from the board? Yeah, Mr.

Chair, I appreciate it. Just wanted to point out, I think everyone's aware that I did put in a future agenda requests for some additional incentives to add to the budget proposals for the Sheriff's Office, just in light of just the increasing challenges that we have with staffing with the Sheriff's Office. I just wanna point out some context. So this board has been very, I think has been very supportive of the Sheriff's Office. We've taken some bold steps just in the past few years. I think Sheriff Taylor has been on the record that he appreciates the board and the support that we've given through some challenging times with regard to the sheriff's office. We've had staffing issues. If you've been around this county, this is not a new issue, relatively speaking. I think we're at a point where we're at a very significant issue point in time here where the challenge has exacerbated quite a bit. We're hearing from the public the level of concern with sheriff staffing in particular, but I do want to just point out that there are ebbs and flows with our community. I think everybody knows the reality of the limited resources in a community like ours that we've had over the years. There've been calls for higher compensation for a very long time, understandably, from our public safety personnel. This board, just over the last four years, we've done roughly, if you do the math, somewhere around 25% compensation increases through salary and benefits. Less than two years ago, working with the Sheriff and Supervisor Zanger, I brought forward proposal to redesignate jail personnel positions, which were also very significant increases that we put in for the jail. I appreciate the entire board got behind that. And so this board has stepped up. you know with raises with with compensation throughout the county um you know even in the midst of budget difficulties this year we we you know we have a contract that enhanced the longevity pay threshold for sheriffs so you know allowing for additional benefits through longevity pay um for sheriff's personnel so i just want to point out we have you know we have taking this issue very seriously. This board has prioritized public safety in the sheriff's office in particular, despite, you know, unfortunate misinformation that we constantly hear. We have very cognizantly and openly said, you know, we're going to prioritize the sheriff's office. We, we care about all of our employees, but when it comes to what's essential, we have to provide adequate public safety services. And, you know, even though this past year, like I said, we couldn't do these, the increases for raises for folks throughout the County. We, we did, sort of set the Sheriff's office aside, putting that perspective out there that we have been supportive. We still have a significant and serious challenge with staffing at the Sheriff's office. I think we're at a point where we've tried these things in the past and we have to get bolder. We just have to. And despite the ongoing challenges that we have and we're facing some, we have stabilized the budget. So thank you to staff. Thank you to all the departments for working together. Thank you to the board. for really taking rolling up our sleeves and stabilizing this budget. We still have a bit of work to do this year, but I did put some thought into just considering where we're at, hearing feedback from the public, hearing feedback from the sheriff's office. This is not going away, this problem, and we have to face it head on, we have to face it now. And so putting some thought into it, some ideas that have been, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel with these things, but putting in a package of sorts to really get serious about incentivizing and recruiting sheriffs and retaining the current deputies. I did propose, as you see in the slides, in the agenda under future agenda item under items, a new program for hiring bonuses, a new program for retention bonuses for existing employees and implementing a new policy that would allow recruits from outside California agencies. And thank you to the Sheriff, Sheriff Taylor, had a conversation with him about this and he added that to the mix and I really appreciate that. But adding a policy in place that allows new recruits from other agencies with experience to transfer over those years of service to San Miguel County for the purpose of benefits. Those are the three things that I put out there. I feel very strongly. I would love to hear from the board on just thoughts on these, but I do feel very strongly that these are necessary steps. I'm open to hearing, you know, again, if there are alternatives ideas that board members would like to throw out there, but I do feel like we do need to, this is sort of the minimum to me. We're gonna be going into negotiations with all the bargaining groups again for the next fiscal year. And once we iron out this budget and kind of see where we're at, I think we'll be in a position where we can have those open conversations about what we can do for all the groups. But I will just say that for me, my number one priority in this budget is making sure that we're putting in incentives like these to make sure that we are recruiting and retaining sheriff's personnel. So more specifically, I've proposed the $25,000 hiring bonuses, which would essentially match Hollister. Hollister has another category for deputies or others sworn personnel field and patrol personnel who come from other agencies the 25 is for newer folks but if you go $25,000 spread it out over a certain number of years you don't take the hit in year one you spread it out it incentivizes the new recruits to stay for those number at the at the very minimum for those numbers of years so I was my thought was three to five years

Supervisor, do we want to go over some of the specifics of it during that agenda item or is this going to tie into the budget?

I think it ties into the budget and I think it is important as long as we're talking about the budget, this is something I would have brought up whether there's a future agenda item or not. I put it in writing just to make sure that it's in writing. We have full transparency and I want to make sure that because of the importance of this, the urgency of this with the budget needing to be approved and basically a week and a half that we have a public open conversation about it, that this is not something that we can afford to go in the back room and I could do negotiations. I wanna at least get it out there and then approach the DSA to get their thoughts and to perhaps go into more formal discussions about it. But I did feel it was important to have to bring this up now because it is relevant to this presentation. So the $25,000 hiring bonuses is 10%, again, open for discussion, but my thought was really 10% retention pay for existing sworn field and patrol personnel. That could be spread over a couple of years if that's the board's wishes, but something to show that we're making efforts to retain our current personnel. And then of course the years of service is self-explanatory. Just wanted to put that out there off the bat. As long as I have the floor, I do have questions as well. One, you know, well, first of all, for context, and I said this to the CEO and thank you to our consultant, sounds very qualified, done a lot of great work. bringing this to us. Let's be clear, these are departmental requests. This is a CEO request. There's a lot of conjecture that can be out in the public using big words like deficit and multimillion dollar deficits. This is not a final budget. We're getting close to that point where we have a structural balancing of our budget, but this board's gonna make the final decision, as you know, on a balanced budget. And I do intend to balance this budget. As far as I did have a question, one time revenues, what comes to mind is the, as I always bring up until we dispose of it, hopefully soon is the Rosa Murata property. And if we can include some level of projection on the Rosa Murata property into the budget, I would appreciate that. That could be a six figure dollar amount that adds to the revenue side of things. I think that it's very reasonable that we should be able to sell that property within the next year. I noticed the HR, just some of the things, you know, you always look for anomalies when you're looking at budget numbers and they're almost always explainable. So no one take offense at any of this. HR, the increase from 722 to $1.081 million.

Yes, I was explaining before that the last year when we did make the reductions to the departments, $300,000 will reduce it from the HR department, but it was duplicated. So it reduces $600,000 and that puts that budget short. It's the same, basically the same budget. We just recovered the $300,000.

Okay, I'm just trying to make sure that's crystal clear for the public, you know, in case people see these numbers and, well, why is this going up or why is this going down? It was supposed to be a million dollars. Right, right, right. And public works, I know that we're not, it didn't look like we're adding a lot of positions, but the budget itself went up by quite a bit.

So there's also some explanations about it. In the planning, in the public works departments, we have maintenance, facility maintenance. and we have parks as well. Facility maintenance is the biggest issue that we have right now. We have decaying buildings. We have very old buildings that are always in emergencies. I'll give you an example. Library has a pipe that broke. We need to address the issue. We had to shut down the library one afternoon and bring the people over here to the restrooms. We have facilities everywhere in the county that needs repairs. We have the small detections. We have a lot of maintenance. We went short last year with only $200,000 for the maintenance for the entire county buildings. So we increased that amount to $350,000 on my request because we need that one.

I understand that, but what we're going to be doing here is giving you direction at the end to go back and do X, Y, and Z.

Right.

Hopefully we can keep that in there. I will just say that if you're deciding between putting in something like I proposed with public safety and one other area of safety that I'm going to bring up, which is the road striping, To me, those are the two big ones this year for me is ensuring that we're putting in serious, bold incentives for recruitment and retention of sheriffs, deputies, and also the restriping. I think we really have to just face it head on. We can't afford, we're going to have to make sacrifices elsewhere in order to make sure that some of these essential things that the public is calling for. And I think we all recognize are necessary that we get those done this year. We can't just put off certain things. You just got to get done. And then you have to deal with the things that, that are maybe a little lesser on the priority list than those things. And so for me, the sheriff's office addressing that challenge head on and starting to chip away at least and picking some areas that are the most needed for restriping to me are two things that are gonna be really important. With the public works facility maintenance, you can't use capital and reserves for that. So I think just to make that clear for the public that it's paying attention, But I think that's one of those areas where we just, I know you don't wanna keep deferring, but I don't wanna keep deferring on the sheriffs either. And I don't wanna keep deferring on striping. So those types of things are gonna be a little bit above facility maintenance for me. I noticed the treasurer was up. 134,000, I think, roughly 11%.

I'm assuming that's just positions coming and going, but if there can be some sort of- Yes, one of the issues that we have from last year, as you may recall, we included in the budget, in the proposed budget, final budget, to do some step increase risk. I wanna recognize SEIU for coming to the table and agreeing to one year to do that. But we have MEC, they never agreed to it. And those are management positions. They make higher money salaries, and yet they didn't agree with the terms. And therefore we lost revenue right there, potential savings from last year. So this is, they continue receiving the increases in salaries and therefore that's what this amount is increasing most of the departments. The increases are related to not being able to negotiate the new MOU.

Well, you're bringing up obviously a sensitive topic and I'll try to be as focused as I can here. But just again, for the public's standpoint, now we're talking publicly. Normally, with a lot of these negotiation things, legally we go in the back in the closed session because it's bargaining. You're essentially bringing up a point that we have discussed in closed session. So now it's out in public that the management group is not coming to terms. They're the one group.

But it's impacting the budget. So I have to be upfront with everybody. Why is the budget impacting?

I'm calling on that management group to come to the table and get this done now. This is unfair to the rest of our employees. And frankly, it's selfish. And as a county, we need to come together and we need to find these solutions together. And the way that that particular group is behaving is not... not showing unity with the rest of the county and taking that, you know, understanding the need to actually see what's going on here. So I think it is important that we get that done. How can we get that done sooner than later? I know, can we explain process with mediation and basically get to that point where, you know, what's the end point here to this whole thing? Can I discuss that? I mean, I'm just asking process. Yeah.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Supervisors, we can certainly discuss process as it relates to the specific negotiations. That is a matter that is only proper for closed session. we are at a point which everyone is aware of that we have reached an impasse with the management group. And now we are required to go through the impasse procedures that may ultimately under the terms of the MOU, and current law result in the unilateral imposition of a last best and final as presented by the county. So that's where we are procedurally. And so we expect that there should be some additional information to provide to the board and to the public over the next couple of months as to whether or not we are able to negotiate a resolution or whether we are going to have to impose. Thank you.

Okay, great. And Commissioner was up 333. It looked like somewhere around there, 300 plus.

Yes. And this is just a copy of what is submitted through the OpenGov. We identify all the expenses. We did some of the projections for expenditures. The departments are available over here for any questions that you might have regarding the budget, but this is just a copy and paste of what they submitted through OpenGov.

Yeah, Ken, are you available to...

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Go ahead, Supervisor Kozmicki. Oh yeah, what is the increase? So the biggest part of the increase is that it's a reduction in revenue. Our main reduction in revenues are the state probably dropped 25% in revenue so that it adds to higher expenditures with the reduction in revenues. Okay, all right.

That explains it, thank you. And then I see general fund contribution to roads of $3.4 million. Just for clarity, is that the gas tax that just funneled through the general fund?

It's on the next slide.

SB1. The general fund contribution to roads.

Are you talking about this slide, 3.4?

3.4.

It's actually the combination of $500,000 pending projected for the next year to complete the union road So our Public Works Interim Administrator is contesting some of the change orders. But to be safe, we projected $500,000 in potential change orders. It's not settled yet, it's in discussions. And it also includes the $2.9 million, we shouldn't call it rows, it's actually rows in the library, the $2.9 million. So we had to account for those expenses over there in that account.

The 2.9 is what again?

The library, the library expansion. Oh, okay. Yes, it's a combination. If you see on the bottom part, it says $500,000 wrote, $2.9 million in the library.

Oh, maybe I just read that wrong.

Yes.

Which page is that again?

That is, oh, no, I didn't. It's maybe like a four and a fifth. Sounds good, all right. Okay, thanks.

And then the building planning positions being requested. I know we have shortages in the, and then the budget doesn't actually look like it's escalating.

Well, we have planning because they lost some of the positions, so we're replacing with other positions. So one of the things that I did in a meeting with the department heads a while ago was for them to come together and to do some changes in their operating staffing, whether they want to, move people around and with different positions and everything so they can make it work. Like we're doing cross training at my office, at the administration office, because before we only had one person to do all the checks and everything. So we need two people. So we do cross training. So some of the changes that they're making and they're reducing some of the costs as well when they do make changes. If they lose one position, we didn't replenish that position. But we're asking for different positions now that are in high need rather than using consultants.

But is that a misnomer to say like we're adding, are we adding positions then if we're just swapping in positions for old?

There is a combination of swapping and adding positions. And that's why I made sure that we had these positions requested over here identified as what it was.

But are the new FTEs just net FTEs? As in... How many new net FTEs are there?

Nine. Nine in total for the whole county.

So we are adding significant staffing for building and planning on top of the positions that were vacant.

Yes. We're not filling some of the vacant positions. We'll be planning with other positions as well. And you can see the list over here.

Okay, I just think maybe, you know, I know there's a lot of work going on in building and planning, and I'm not intimately in that office and all that, and I respect Abraham and everybody that, you know, so I'm not saying it's wrong necessarily, but I think to maybe take a look at that as we go through position prioritization and all that, again, there's a lot going on in building and planning, but I just... it jumps off the page a little bit. That's a lot of new positions.

We'll come back with more details if you need to. In the second workshop, we can come back with more details.

And then I saw Fire Station 5 planning $500,000. The only question I had with that is how and why are we planning without having clarity from the ongoing feasibility study that's going on? I'm wondering whether it makes sense to have clarity on where we're actually going in the bigger picture with fire services before we necessarily take steps toward. But if there's a... good reason to start the planning now. I certainly am not against that. I'm just wondering where that sort of.

So we had the contribution for the fire. It's the contract that we already have signed and in place. So we had to come for that contract for next year. It's $3.5 million, but some of the funds are coming from different sources. So we accounted the $1.4 million that is pending.

No, but the $500,000 for fire station planning, fire station five. So we have, there's four fire stations and there's a fire station five.

You mean contingency? What's that? What are you talking about? Okay.

Capital projects, yeah. And again, I want to be clear, I'm not necessarily against that. I ask a lot of questions.

Number five, planning and design.

I ask a lot of questions.

That was included and that's what we included at the request of the department. We can look into that one and find out what that is and what is it you would like us to do.

Just how it fits in line with the overall picture because if it's not realistic that we're going to be, for instance, doing a fire station in the next year, then maybe... And again, I'm not saying I'm for or against that. I just think it's something to take a closer look at. Some of the just very smaller items, and I'm sure there's good justification, the jail playground, $40,000. I don't know if any of the sheriffs, Corral or Taylor, I don't know if anybody can just sort of give peace of mind on the word playground has certain connotations.

Thank you, Supervisor. Captain Crow would like a playground for his children to play on at the jail. No, this has been in the planning for a long time for the Community Corrections Partnership. It's to facilitate better interactions between incarcerated persons and their children. During visitation, we were gonna have a playground constructed inside the perimeter of the jail facility so that when there's family visitation, it's a better environment for the children. This has been a priority of the CCP for years. We've been trying to push this through. It's been held up in risk management. We'd still like to pursue it, but if the county decides that they don't want to do it through risk management, then we need to take it off the list. It's zero impact to the general fund.

Yeah, CCP, I get it. And it's approved by the CCP. And the concept itself, actually, you sold me right away when you said interact with their kids. I think it's a good thing. Thank you. Appreciate that.

I just want to mention that this is non-general fund. I just want to have clarification. It's not really impacted the general fund. It's just the projects that were submitted under non-general fund.

Got it. The water refill station in Edmond, very small amount. And I actually said, you got to get a water refill station here. We can't have. So I'm kind of the one that pushed that. But $6,500, is that just a rough? I do think you need a water station here. Don't get me wrong.

Yes. That's the number that I was provided by public works.

Yes. Drinking water. Basically the water in the faucets is not drinkable in my opinion. And I don't think the filters that are put on the faucets are.

I think the issue was at one point that they wanted to have it in the public and the entrance rather than in the back. And in the back is another issue. So we need to figure out that.

So I will work with staff to get it. There could be a couple thousand dollars cut off that I would assume. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's most of it. Consultants versus staff or engineering roads, is there data to show that it's actually less expensive?

And no, I think honestly, because the numbers, we were just copying and pasting the numbers that were submitted by the department. I think this one, to be honest, is backwards. As the planning, they should be higher and then they probably were slower. But we'll check on the numbers. I don't feel confident seeing all the positions around the planning department, but we'll come back to you on the next workshop with clarifications. And I will bring what is the impact of each one of those positions into each one of the departments.

okay and then um cannabis the measure that was approved i was curious about um you know when the process when that can actually be implemented so that we can start collecting revenue and how that revenue might potentially some of that at least a conservative dollar amount should potentially be included in the budget i i i

I will do, try my best to come out with those numbers, but the reality is it's based on applications, so we don't know if they're gonna come together this year or next year, but we can definitely try.

Have current operators in place who plan to operate and continue operating.

Okay, hopefully they come together really quick so that we can get some revenue.

I mean, they've asked what the next steps are, so I do think just getting clarity on that, because if there's a six-figure dollar amount there potentially, we definitely wanna include that in the budget.

Okay, so potential funding coming from cannabis?

And that's pretty much what I have. Again, just to recap, my biggest priority I really think needs to be included is I propose these incentive programs for the Sheriff's Office and to have a discussion about what we can do on restriping. Thank you very much.

So I wanna go back to the reserves. So if you see over there, you have an overall reserve shortfall of $3.6 million. When we upset that $1.9 million, you can make that decision to use those funds that we're not longer gonna be using for that building. You have now a total amount of $1.7 million. I just did my math right now. And so you have a shortfall now under the reserves of $1.7 million. Just keep that number in mind. unless I go back to the departments, okay. we can have discussions with the department. We have a very short window, so I'm gonna be inviting the departments that are specifically in their pink, red area to talk to them and see what we can do to minimize the cost, to lower our liabilities in this case for the budget. And I also, I think it's hard to determine the amount, I understand, the retention and the bonuses for bringing people to the county. What I think is harder for us to do is to project the longevity for people transferring from another department because it's unknown. So for example, if we have, one deputy coming on board with us that is coming from another city with 20 years of experience, the impact is higher than having an officer that is coming with 10 years of experience. It'll be very difficult for us to kind of like project that amount, to be honest, but we'll try to do different scenarios to see, we're gonna account for the worst case scenario. But I want you to make you aware, I wanna make you aware that if you have a shortfall of $1.7 million in the budget and the reserves, the only way that we can get those funds is number one, if we reduce the budget among the departments, so that way our shortfall over here of 507 is lower so that we have a positive outcome. that's one, but we also had to touch the reserves. And so the board will have to make a decision as a board to reduce the reserves percentage for one year and to develop a plan of how are we gonna replenish the reserves because we are required to have a minimum of, well, you pass a resolution with a minimum of 15% for reserves and 5% for emergency contingency. So you have to, modify your resolution to lower that amount and maybe provide a plan. And I'm just thinking ahead of time, if cannabis is gonna bring some money to any funds that comes from cannabis be replenished to the resource because the resource are gonna be suffering the impact more than anything.

Sorry, thank you for that. I think what we've learned is that when you go back, you know, because this is really our first, you know, question. you know, pitch at this whole thing. And I, so to give direction here on some of the priorities, some of the things where maybe these are at the top, but also to nudge departments to go back, do some fine tuning. And we tend to be able to find some creative solutions to shorten that budget up. And if we, at that point, if we have to have a discussion about reserve policy, then we have that discussion. But I think the initial step would be giving direction to, you know, what can we do without, we don't want any more pain for our staff. What can we do without, you know, so we talk about capital, we talk about facility to get us through this next year, you know, and then we start to hit that point where we have that structural stability more so in year three after these two years of working to, you know, really balance this budget. That would be kind of how I would approach the whole thing.

Okay, so I just wanna make you aware that the department has made a lot of sacrifices. From last year to this year, when I came to the county, the first request for budget was $117 million in expenses. It was reduced all the way to the $71 million or $72 million expensive. They have made a lot of sacrifices. I want to make sure that we all understand that.

Just to be clear, because I was part of that process quite intimately, that $117 million was a pretend number. There was never a $30 or $40 million deficit. Those were Fantasyland numbers. A lot of it was the vacancy budgeting issue that we've addressed. So I think it's important to point out, especially for the public that can take these exorbitant numbers and just run with them and use them politically, there was never a $30, $40 million deficit. Those were departmental requests. And that's the point that I was trying to make at the beginning. These are departmental requests. It's our job to say these are the priorities, now make it work. Um, and that's basically where I'm at is my priorities personally this year, we have to address this sheriff's issue. We just have to, and I believe we have to address high level priorities for restriping. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Corot, did you have comments, questions?

Okay. I have a couple of questions. Um, one, The comment that we need to make it through this year, this fiscal year, we've been saying that every year for a lot of years. The number of times that I was told by the CAO, just make it one more year. Just suffer one more year. Just cut your staff one more year. do the overtime as a MEG employee and not get compensated. I will tell you, I am struggling with one how we are to this point in the budget and I don't see that we've addressed the difference between ERP and OpenGov. We had a huge conversation last year about this Information going into OpenGov did not match what was in ERP. We discussed going back to using ERP numbers that were more accurate and came directly from the entry of the departments. I think we need to still continue to have that conversation because the accuracy of the numbers directly impacts what we're able to do in the future. And I don't trust that open gov is transparent enough. It looks great on the website. I get it. It does look great on the website. It seems very transparent. But if the actuals in ERP and the budget requests from the departments are not side by side with what the request is from the CEO, I don't feel that I can make decisions that are informed. The comment about departments are asking for in the past budgets that were way beyond what they needed. I think the reality in this county and this community is we absolutely are underfunded in every single department. We are being pushed by the state to provide services and then they yank the funding and we're stuck holding the bag. We have to start talking about what services each department feels that are coming out of the general fund but are state mandated. What services are we going to have to say we can't do them? That's a recommendation that I would recommend comes from the departments directly. What are the programs that are serving the least amount of people that are coming out of the general fund that we can push back and say, if you're not funding it, we can't supplement you. Because HR1 is going to financially cripple the majority of small rural counties. HR1 is cutting funding that now the state has not supplemented. And we don't even have that as a conversation piece. They're going to run out of money. And if their reserves run out of money, then we have to make a decision as a board, what services are we cutting versus are we going to supplement through the general fund? We have already been saying we can't supplement through the general fund. I have made it perfectly clear. We don't have anything to supplement with.

We also need to talk about, we didn't go into detail.

What was the final outcome of the cost plan? Did we have savings?

So for the purposes of this fiscal year and the interim budget, again, is being used the last year's cost plan. We have a group that has been sending us all the questions regarding the concerns about the new cost plan. Once we complete that exercise, we'll come back to the board to do a workshop about cost plan so that you can make a determination which one to use and what to approve. The board will have that decision made before the end, before the final adoption of the budget.

But understanding that when you reduce cost plans, expenses in departments, you're reducing the revenue supplements in other departments.

But it's technically a wash when you're using that for general fund agencies.

So it's about services and are we able to maintain the services, because if this department's cost plan is no longer gonna subsidize, I don't wanna use that term, that's a bad term, offset their actual costs, We need to see the breakdown of those numbers and how they impact. When we talk about the state programs, are there programs in departments that are funded by the general fund that have legislation that is pushed down and removed funding after some period of time. Example I know which is a very big political conversation that will never happen across the state is it used to be the vote by mail, absentee voting was an SB 9 claim and all of those claims would go to the state and we get refunded for all of our costs for vote by mail. They stopped funding that. Do you know what the state said to us? I dare you to stop sending ballots to people. We know we can't stop sending ballots. So what supplemented that funding was the general fund. We need to have tough conversations with the state on what we can and can't afford as a rural county. OPEB, how much is OPEB funded? Is OPEB a process that we could temporarily underfund? allowing us to use that as somewhat of a bridge loan instead of going into our reserves how can opeb be evaluated with all the loss of staff that we've had are the actuarials accurately reflecting the amount of time that people are staying in this community in this county and in these positions where those costs are actual where we can really know that's where we need to be I would highly recommend that we do a deep dive into OPEB and see what we could potentially not fund. I'm not asking, I apologize to the auditor. I gave him a text notice this morning about this. I really think we need to have a longer conversation because that could be an area to bridge. When we talk about an interim budget and we talk about no, projects moving forward unless they're an emergency. These are road projects, these are facility projects, so these are basically all capital improvement projects.

For the ones that you already had, the $2.9 million that was passed last year, we're proceeding with that project. Unfortunately, we didn't get the funding from the CDBG program. but the librarian and myself, we're gonna be working on another grant application, but the project must proceed, because as we wait, the cost is just increasing. So we're moving forward for that one. We had the funding set aside. It was approved last year, and that's why you have it there. For the road improvements, we set aside $500,000 for the Union Road just to complete that project. We forecasted $1.1 million from Shanghai Highway that they haven't billed us, so we're in the process and adjusting all the change orders and the Fairview. All those are being considered in the budget already. but we still have a shortfall in the general fund reserves and so is in the general fund interim budget. What I don't wanna do is to continue doing additional projects of any sort moving forward until we get the final end of the fiscal year. so that way it will give us the numbers. Because right now we are, everything is projections. And for a lot of people that don't understand budgets, budgets are always done on projected revenue and projected expenses. But many things can happen during that time. And so we don't expect to have, if we say we have $72 million in revenue, We are speculating that we're gonna have, or projecting that we're gonna have $72 million. It doesn't mean that I have it right here and sitting in my pocket, it doesn't. It comes little by little throughout the year. And so when we receive property tax and everything, sometimes we receive less, sometimes we receive all the total amount. So I want people to understand, I don't have the budget over here with the funds, we don't have it. And so... I wanna be careful to continue being careful with expenditures as we have been. And I wanna acknowledge again the departments that I know everybody worries about their own department. I have to worry for all of them together and the budget. So this is something that we work together, we're gonna continue working together to minimize the impacts to the general fund. The interim budget is to continue with our salaries, to continue with the normal activities of the county, but to avoid any additional projects. So if there's a desire to include additional construction projects, please don't do it right now. I don't think it's the right time until we get the final ending of the fiscal year. that's my request okay so how does that impact road safety it's a huge impact but then unless you want to make a decision today that you want a specific item or there's an emergency they'll use the reserves but the reserves are already being impacted with 1.7 million shortfall from the previous adoption of 15 and 5%. It doesn't mean that you cannot change those percentages. You can make a decision today and say, I want 10% reserves and 3% emergencies, but that's up to the board's decisions. Normally it's 15 and 3%. That's an adaptive resolution that you pass last budget process. And so we try to keep up. Based on those numbers, that's where we have the shortfall. If today you decide that you want a specific roads improvements or maintenance, then you have to let us know now because when we come back again, we can bring those numbers to you.

Okay, I know that, economic development is a massive issue in our community. And if we don't start looking at economic development and actual revenue generation, It is great to promote tourism and I totally support that, but we need the road infrastructure to support the tourism, to support the businesses. And so many promises have been made in the past, prior to me even being here, that have all shifted out of, I'm just gonna say it, District 4. It's very apparent and my constituents see it and they call me all the time about it. So I have real concerns there. When we talk about what I'm expecting to see is I wanna be able to go in to the system, whether it's on links on the web or whatever and see the actuals from fiscal year, for 24-25. We should be able to see those because the ACFER has been completed for that year. We won't see 25-26, but we'll see 24-25. And we need to start to see what our actuals are and ensuring that departments are closing the books for those years so that we are not seeing the rollover of actuals committed costs that have not been included in this current budget. Every unpaid bill that was from last year's budget, if it's not rolled over into this year, it is going to become a problem and what we're projecting will not be accurate. I really want the department to speak up about what's happening. And so whatever is being presented to us in this next round of meetings, I want departments to be able to express legislative impacts, like what happened with the Ag Commissioner, a revenue reduction. And are those revenue reduction something that the general fund can take the hit on? Or is that something that we have to push back on the state? Because we're gonna get to a point how I completely support not only all of the suggestions from Supervisor Kosmicki, because I support our employees, but we need to be looking at that long-term for all of our employees. And where are the cost projections for all of the suggestions that were made? Because I think we're going to be shocked how much that's going to impact the budget. And we have to make sacrifices. And if facilities are where we're going to try and make a sacrifice, our facilities have not been maintained for decades and our facilities are falling apart. And when we say, that safety is the number one priority. Safety includes the health and wellbeing of all of our employees. If we don't have safe facilities and our employees are getting ill or hurt, that cost in workers' comp is gonna sink us. So it's great to have a plan of what you wanna do, but we have to have the money to fund it. How are we gonna bring in the revenue to support these proposals? I need more numbers on anything that comes forward with the proposals that were set forth by Supervisor Kosmicki. I didn't understand when you said IT, there was 600,000 and 300,000, what happened?

So in the HR department last year when we made reductions to all the departments, There was a confusion when we were doing the reductions per department. Remember that we went like three or four times cutting the budgets for every department. So one of the cut-offs from the department and HR department, they pay the insurances and everything else. was duplicated. So instead of cutting $300,000, we cut $600,000. So the budget went down to $700,000 instead of being a million dollars. So what we did during the year, and I apologize to IT department because I had to take $100,000 from him, and then I had to cut everywhere else to be able to make all the $300,000 and survive the year.

And this is why I really, really want us to address our contract issues and budget needs to be in OpenGov, I mean, in ERP, not OpenGov, because we need to get more concrete data that everybody's on the same page with. Right now, I'm still concerned that departments are putting their budgets in ERP, and when it goes into OpenGov, they're not the same. And what are we approving? Are we approving what's presented in OpenGov or the actuals that are the requests from the CEO? So I understand that we have requests from the departments. All of these department requests are in an Excel. I'm used to seeing them in the system.

So these numbers that you see over here with the requests, total requested, are from the OpenGov.

That's from OpenGov. Yes. What was put in ERP? Yes. Do the departments agree that their numbers are accurate?

I think we have, let me go back a little bit to explain how it works. They're not gonna go into the ERP until the board decides to approve something, then they'll roll over into the ERP. There is a process to do it which have requested assistance to open gov to do the roll over because the two systems that you have, and you've been having this for a long time, doesn't communicate. I cannot just click an item and transfer it. However, the numbers that you see over here are the numbers that each one of the departments submitted. And that's what is reflected in this spreadsheet.

So I get that we stopped using ERP. The problem is if I keep hearing from departments that the numbers that are in OpenGub are not accurate, I'm struggling. Yes. Where are the accurate numbers?

But the open gap has been used for two different things to which is my understanding. They're using to do the RFPs when they do bidding process and RFPs goes into the open gap. When they want to introduce a request for the budget, it's an open gap. It's not in the ERP. It has never been in the ERP. Oh, yes, it has. Well, to my knowledge and to what the staff told me, it hasn't been happening.

We used to not have OpenGov. We had everything in ERP. The departments were able to see their actuals and their budgets from year to year to year and their priors. We were able to then see their requested. We were able to then see the recommended from the CEO, able to see the difference on each of those, and then be able to adopt.

So someone along the line made the decision to separate the two systems. It wasn't me, that's for sure, because I'm coming from a county that has one solution, everything is in there. So for me, this is new to have two systems not communicating each other, it's a real struggle. And our consultant who is here today, she addressed the same issues. There's recommendations that she's gonna make to us based on what she's seen in the system, because this is not a system that is not working for this county.

Right, I completely agree it's not working. And I can't make decisions on information that I can't trust. That's where I'm at right now. I talked about being able to see in more detail each of the departments. Normally we can see in more detail. Will we be getting that next week?

Yes, so our plan to do this week is to start rolling over all the requests into the system so you will be able to see line by line for each one of the departments and do a whole prenup in the system of all the departments.

And is that gonna be out like before?

That's our plan and that's what I was calling them. If you notice in my calendar on all events, it's the actual, we're gonna call it workshop on the 24th. So our goal is to do it by this Friday to roll over everything that we have so far. And so that you can see the numbers by departments individually. into the ERP system. But we are going to request, we actually requested assistance from Open Gap to be able to do the rollover because apparently no one in this county other than Raymond at the Behavioral Health Department is the only one that does the rollover. So it's a challenge for us to do that.

Okay, it would also be very helpful to understand where the differences are, even just a brief comment from a department head of what the difference is, either what was cut, what the impact is, why the revenues are down, just something that we can base our decisions on because I don't feel like I have enough to do anything. I think my last comment is just going to be that if engagement was, how it used to be is each department would sit at this table and express in about five minutes, they were given five minutes, what's happening in their department, what are the pros, what are the cons, and what are their challenges? Are we planning on having any of that sort of dialogue or is that not where this board wants to go?

I think we have a misunderstanding. Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. This is an interim budget. This is not the final budget. Before the final budget happens, there is a number of series of workshops, hearings that are going to happen. If you see in my schedule right now, the September 27, as soon as the budget closes, we'll have real numbers. And with those numbers, you can make real decisions. Right now, what we need to do is to do an interim budget, not a final budget. Before the final budget, you will have a series of workshops. We had it last year, which you were reviewing.

I'm talking about those workshops. Yes, those are coming in September. Are we going to have interaction and understanding in more detail each of the departments? Similar to last year. Okay, the reason I'm saying this is because we're talking about what we're expecting. I do not want to assume that we're going to see this when I'm not seeing enough detail here, which we had the department submit their budgets back in what month? May... No, no. When were they initially asked to submit?

They were asked in April. It was extended to May, so they were basically... And last week, they were still making some changes to the budget.

Changes, but the original deadline, I believe, was sometime at the end of March. Yes. That was when everybody was supposed to have their budgets in.

That was moved forward because of the department were not able to meet those deadlines. And we have some people leaving in some departments, so we had to replenish those. I have... working in some departments just to be able to produce those numbers that you have today.

And I know the biggest challenge right now is RMA. I know it is. And it's been a sore spot that we have not dealt with. We keep saying we wanna separate it out. We don't have the money to deal with it. If we don't deal with it, we're gonna lose out on lots and lots of money, millions of dollars in reimbursements from the state. If those invoices and those claims are not put through to the state timely, we will be on the hook. You're preaching to the choir. I'm trying to get everyone to understand that I get it, and if we're adding more overhead and costs but we're not going to support those positions, that's going to be a problem for me. Because if those positions are not funded and that department fails, and maybe that's the goal of some people. Maybe it is because, you know, if RMA fails, then development fails. And if development fails, then we have nothing coming into our county. I'm sorry. I'm just to the point that if we don't have the real reality conversation about where we're at, it's going to bite us and we are going to go bankrupt. because we are not looking at how much the state budget that just got an interim done today, how much that is going to affect the revenues coming in. And their projections are not accurate. I have no other comments except for to say I expect to see more detail. We need to look at OPEB. We need to understand the cost plan more. I thought we gave direction last year that we were going to really address the open gov issue. I would really like that to be something that the board either gets behind or says that they don't support because I feel it's wasting time. Staff time, it's wasting your time. It is costing us as much money as it's costing us in this room right now with all of you sitting here. How much time we're spending playing in OpenGov is a bigger problem. And if we can start to cut that cost down, we are going to find fiscal savings across all the departments. Besides that... HR1, we have to have a conversation about it. And I will be bringing, if you're saying we have to tell you what roads right now we need help on, we need to make sure that Cienega Road does not fail. Cienega Road and the wine trail is going to ruin our wine industry. And if tourism is our focus, that road is key to our tourists. Getting to the pinnacles, part of the tourist package, if you may say, is actually moving people down that road and going to wineries. If we can't support them, that's gonna be a problem. But at the same time, if you haven't been out to Pinoch, get some insurance added to your car. And the claim for New Idria on all the damage from those reclamation vehicles, that has made it almost impossible for the cattle industry to actually move their cattle in and out. All of this is revenue that will be lost in the county And I know they're not big, busy roads, but they're part of our economic structure. And our ranchers rely on the access to get their cattle in and out. That's the only way they can make it profitable. And when the roads are not accessible, so New Idria is a problem for me. And with that, I basically think I gave all my concerns and options.

Thank you. So where's your stall?

Thank you. So first off, thank you. I know this is no easy task by any of our employees, admin, office, so thank you. I appreciate finally seeing it. So I've got a couple questions. You mentioned earlier that there was recommendations from the consultant. Will we be hearing those recommendations today or is that going to be at a future public hearing? At a future, yes. Okay. Okay, thank you, I'm excited to hear what the recommendations are. Let's see, on the, so there's the total approved, the 25-26 year, and then we have the requested 26-27, and it's listed by department. Are those the department's requests, or has there been any edits or changes to that requested amount, or that is the request that's coming from those departments?

Yes, those are the requests that are coming from the departments.

Okay, on the status of reserves, and it listed the capital improvement projects reserve, the 1.975 million, was that what was previously referred to as the Teeter Fund?

No, the Teeter Funds were rolled over into the general fund already.

So this is different than the Teeter funds?

This is different. So you have by resolution an operating contingency of reserves of 15% per the last resolution and a 5% for emergency contingency. We met those numbers. But during the approval of the last budget, you also approved the $2.9 million for the library and summer road improvements, about $7 million. So the $4 million that you see over there, that includes the $2.9 million for the library and $1.1 million from Sondheim Highway, which is already finalized, but we haven't accounted into this fiscal year. It's gonna be forecasted to be paid, but it's coming out of the general fund because that's the money that you use to pay for those improvements.

Okay, so it's not the Teeter Fund, because I thought we had, okay. The amount is similar, and so I was confused. Oh, it looks like Joe Paul wants to say something. Yes.

Good morning, Chair, Board of Supervisors. To answer your question, the source of funding of that reserve was the Teeter Fund way back when. But once it moved into the general fund, it's just general fund money. But originally, yes, it came from the Teeter Fund, but back in 1819, I think.

We designated that original Teeter Fund that was in there. This is a different Teeter Fund, whatever you want to call it. This is different than the original one that we designated previously.

We signed it to a capital reserve that, hey, you know what, we're going to hold on to this money. The board said they wanted to hold on to this money because they were going to work on the renovation of, the old courthouse, which is the court quarters.

Okay, okay, thank you. I appreciate the clarification. And that's the reason I was saying that instead of having a 3.6 shortfall, if you use those 1.9, you actually have 1.7. So your shortfall is smaller. Gotcha, okay, thank you. If the board decides that we use those funds for the reserve so we can replenish the reserves.

Gotcha, okay, thank you. Capital projects, no general fund impact. There is nothing on here about Vets Park. Did we take that off of?

That's a separate presentation for the parks. I'm getting my numbers because I wanna present to you in the next workshop what we have in impact fees and what has been committed to the state for three different grants. Okay. That's coming in our conversation as well.

That's not off the table right now, it's just coming at a different presentation. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, the water refill station installation at the administration building. While I love that, I'm concerned, what about all the other departments?

I'm concerned too. I think water has to be available for everybody.

It looks like our capital improvements manager, can he come up, please, Solomon.

Good morning, board. So regarding water refill station, the County Integrated Waste Management Department received two refill stations in the last fiscal year. And one of the station was installed at the RMA building. And we also made the efforts to have the design completed for administration building to install a refill station at the front of the building. The design is completed. We already have the water station sitting in the public workshop, and this $6,500 proposal is to install the refill station at the admin building.

Okay, so there's one at RMA already. This would be a second one, and then hopefully we'll get one for every single department?

Correct, yes, hopefully.

Okay, I just want to make sure that we're being fair kind of across the board and that we're not... Sometimes it can be seen that administration is prioritized and I want to make everybody else know that they're important too.

Correct. And for clarification, we already have the plans to install the refill station at the front of the building that could be used for public as well as for the staff.

Is it inside the building?

Inside the building at the front. And this $6,500 is for the installation services.

Okay, great. Thank you. do we have to post the budget 10 days in advance of the June 30th?

No, that's for the final budget. The public hearings, when we have the final budget, the workshops, we're gonna start doing the public hearings and that's what the requirement is. Not for this one, this is the interim budget. This is just.

And so the public doesn't, we don't have to give the public 10 days notice for the interim?

Because you're not approving the budget, you're just approving operations and interim budget to continue operations Technically, all the numbers can change through the process, but we need to have an interim budget. We cannot make those assumptions until the fiscal year is closed. Okay.

I think we did the 10-day window last year prior to the June 30th, didn't we?

It's not legally required for this one. If you want us to do that, that will put us into the 29th of June to come back with a public hearing.

Okay. I just want to make sure that what we're doing is very transparent and that the public feels that we're following all the rules or following the law.

Good morning, Supervisors. Leigh Ann Link, consultant. Under the County Budget Act, there's actually a two-step process. So the Board must approve a budget, an operating budget by June 30th for the upcoming fiscal year. However, the second phase of that is the 10-day notice of a public hearing, which is your budget hearing, and then after the close of the budget hearing, we need a little bit of time to make changes to the budget that come up through the budget hearing, and then the final budget is brought to you for adoption. So it's really important to make the distinction between approval and adoption, and the public hearing is what's required for the adoption process.

Okay, thank you so much. So I would love to see on June 24th, coming back with the numbers regarding Supervisor Kosmicki's suggested changes or suggested additions. I just wanna, if we can come back with as realistic as possible numbers, just to kind of know the impact to the budget, as well as possibly including potentially the Measure D, the cannabis revenue potentially, And I've got a ton of questions on that that I will save for later. It's probably not appropriate for the public hearing, but I think a lot of that is going to, we will be able to use that revenue this year, right? After January 1, we can start collecting that fee to our cannabis growers.

Go ahead, do you have a question? We have to assign an amount. We do. We have a range.

Correct. But it hasn't been certified or anything, so that's why I'm like, I don't want to get too far into this conversation. I just want to make sure that we can start collecting revenue within this new fiscal year. That is a whole nother discussion, right? But how do you do projections if you don't have the rate? Well, you could do a projection, the lowest is two, the highest is 10, and the middle is five. Give us three different scenarios of maybe what that looks like. I don't know. I mean, I think there are ways to do it without having a confirmed amount quite yet to give us kind of an idea. And I think that kind of starts to help us figure out. I would suggest working with maybe... I believe it's going through planning and building right now, yes. How many acres have already been requested, et cetera. I think there is a way for us to put this together in as hypothetical, realistic as possible, but I think that's gonna be critical to understand the impacts. We obviously have the impacts of the nine general fund departments, and I think it was the nine in the non-general fund. But with the suggested changes, which I am supportive of, I just wanna make sure what does that look like in our budget? Are there areas we're going to have to look that we're going to have to cut? And what are those areas? So I just wanna make sure that we're being very clear about all of those. And so I appreciate all the work that's been put into this. it's a good start, but we still have quite a ways to go, right? But this is kind of that, the temporary budget until we can get those hard numbers and really, I really appreciate everybody working so hard on this and it's been a tough year, but I do feel we are in a much better place today than we were last year at this time. So anyways, I look forward to seeing what you're able to bring back and keep continuing moving forward. So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Pretty much, well, not pretty much, everything that I wanna touch on was addressed. I'm not gonna repeat everything. I will say comments regarding Cerreza-Curro, comments about pushing back on the state. I, of course, wholeheartedly support that, but at the same time, and I'm not saying you're saying this, my impression is that I, the state is going to do what they're going to do to a certain extent and it doesn't seem to matter how much it is detrimental to us or other small counties it doesn't seem to make a difference they uh are going to do what they're going to do to an extent and so we need to make sure that we do want to push back on it and use our uh the groups that we're part of to do what we can to push back we also need to be realistic i think and make sure that um we understand like a lot of this A lot of the things that are happening that are in momentum are not going to be undone. And so we need to try to work with that and figure out how we're going to address those problems. And like I said, I wasn't suggesting that you were saying that it's gonna get undone or anything, but I just wanna be clear that a lot of these are just gonna be consequences that we're gonna have to deal with. Like I said, I don't need to repeat anything else. I do want to say that we'll kind of iron out the calendar here, but we are gonna go back. We are gonna formally hear the future agenda item that Saroja Kazimicki brought forward so that we can go through public comment on that so everyone has a chance to address that. And we'll talk about if we wanna hear that at the future budget workshop. As far as right now, I know the last slide on the presentation, we had dates lined out for the calendar of events, June 16th, 24th. And there's a few with potential adoption. So as far as going forward at this point, We, I believe, I mean, the next thing we have is June 24th, and we don't anticipate potential adoption at that meeting, I would say, is that correct?

It's dependent, I'll bring the numbers for you, additional information, and then you can make a decision whether you wanted to adopt a temporary, an interim or temporary budget, or we can move forward with the 26th, which is next Friday, upon all the comments, but I need to show you the numbers and how we're gonna be landing for what the changes and the requests that you made today.

Okay, Mr. Kosmicki.

If you're done, I just had a couple just go for it. Cannabis, I think we talked about if you use the $2,000 per acre, I'm not trying to be presumptuous, but I personally won't be going lower, wouldn't support lower than the $2,000. It was the $1,000 to $10,000. I think the initial discussions were somewhere in the $2,000 to $3,000 range, but I think if you... Yeah, no, as far as where we start, though, where we actually decide to put the dollar amount down. No, it's 1 to 10.

No, it's 2 to 10, right?

Yeah, it's 1 to 10. I don't recall. I think we talked about 2 is the lowest we'll actually go in principle. We can get clarity on that, but I'm 99% sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think just using that as the most conservative way number, I think, and then figure out when the growing would start looking at the number of acres that are currently operating. You can probably figure out a pretty reasonable projection. Just, I know it's just hashing over like smaller dollar amounts, but I'm, you know, I just want to say $6,500 for designing a water station. I feel like we could probably do that just a little cheaper than that. Just, you know, doing some initial research. I don't know if we always have to do the government route of, you know, design, whatever, the process stuff, but I'm pretty sure you can go to the store and buy one of those things right now for cheaper than that. I think maybe there's wall-mounted options and things that they use in schools and different things. The number seems just a little high, not the end of the world. And then I agree with Sue as a crew on clarity with OpenGov and ERP moving forward. That really needs to be a priority along with having quarterly budget updates. We gotta do it this year. I'm gonna put my foot down on that one. It's just gotta happen. And then definitely open to the conversation about if there's a willingness to put, when this iron's out, if there is available funding for roads, I'm open to the conversation about district four roads. And then agree with the, obviously the cost projections for the share of incentive programs, CEO can verify that that is the first thing I asked about on Thursday, but just it's, to be fair, it's been five days, four or five days. So it's, you know, having those, but just between now and the 24th to get, I think you can have reasonable projections on what was proposed, including as we talked about, just having to work with whomever you need to work with, whether it's the sheriff finance side to bring something back to give us a better idea on that. And then down the road, I'd like to talk about CDBG more. I know that initially our application was denied because of some technicalities. Is that final final or do we have this follow-up application?

We haven't heard from them. We've resubmitted everything that they requested.

So we still have an open door potentially for CDBG, which we could use toward the road safety projects we've talked about. And certainly again, District 4, we can have those conversations if that is available. And then just finally, if we need a formal, well, the only other thing I wanted to ask the board is, As far as stripe, I know it's extra striping. Is that something that there's a willingness to look at? I mean, or is that something we wait until September to see where things iron out? It's just something that I threw out there, obviously. And I just, is there a possibility to bring a number forward and just at least have a conversation about it and decide whether we wanna push that decision out until September?

I'm personally leaning, we can hear, I'm personally leaning to push that one back a little bit. I mean, I'm not super into the striping idea at this time, personally. But, I mean, I don't know what the numbers are. Don't want to make a motion that gets denied. So, what's your call?

My biggest concern with striping is safety. Right now, the most unsafe road, based on my residents' calls, because I know I'm gonna get a whole bunch of calls for saying this, is when the fog comes in on Pinoch, they will go off a cliff. And sadly, dodging potholes is going to cost someone their lives. And if they can't see where the road is, if there's some way we could, instead of striping, maybe have some sort of reflector or something that is more sustainable or can last. I'm open to options, but when you're talking striping, are you talking thermal striping, which I would never recommend in temporary situations, and when you do regular paint striping you're going to have it run off so you're basically washing money down the road so i think we need to have kind of a bigger conversation and when we get to september if we have a road like union road was that's so highly traveled and you can't see where you're at those are the roads that we need to be focused on and i think the roads crew can really help tell us where those roads are and and i thank the road crew for everything they do i hope they know I still would love to get more staffing for our road crew.

Thank you for that, and I agree based on, I'll just say San Juan Highway, San Justo Corridor, for me, I do constantly hear about it justifiably. So these are issues people have, and Union before we repaved it, it was just a constant and justifiable concern about the safety aspect of it. So to continue that conversation, that said, I would just give direction to work with the sheriff fiscal side to bring back projections as mentioned by other supervisors on the proposed incentive programs. and then directing departments to make further reductions without cuts to staff, if at all possible, and to return with options with regard to balancing the budget on the 24th with the expectation of likely coming back for final adoption on the 26th. That's a motion.

There's no motion. Can I make a comment? I'll second and make a comment. I wanna clarify, pushing back on the state is just one thing. We need each of the departments to educate us on what programs they are required by law to do and they are using general funds to subsidize it because they've lost funding. We know that there are state mandates out there that are not funded. And without that number, we need your recommendations of what programs Could we say we're not gonna fund? And then that's the pushback on the state of saying, we don't have the money to do it. Law enforcement is more important. Road safety is more important. These other priorities, health and safety of our residents are more important than whatever this program was that was helping, if it was helping anybody. That's what I'm asking and that's what I'm requesting the board to agree to.

Is that some...

that as a friendly amendment, just making sure that that was included.

Thank you.

Thank you, no, I just wanna clarify in your motion, you mentioned looking into the, basically the suggestion you had as far as the future agenda items.

The three proposals that are laid out in the future agenda items just to come back with projections as to what that would cost.

Well, I want to be clear then, if that's included in the motion, we do need to go back for public comment than probably before when you hear public comment on that because that wasn't... Whatever you choose as chair, I will just say that it falls under the umbrella of budget.

So I don't, from a technical standpoint, but I'm fine with going back for certainly more the better on public comment.

I'm just going off County Council brought my attention to make sure that we hear public comment on it because the first public comment was just the first item on the budget. So yes.

Just a quick question as we're talking about kind of the roads and the striping and the potholes, et cetera. Several years ago, we bought that software. Remember that was supposed to be for measuring kind of the road index and all of that. Have we ever gotten any results from that, is anybody tracking that? Because I would love to incorporate that into part of that discussion. And I mean, if we are paying for it still and we're not using it, then we probably need to cancel that. But if we are using it, but we're just never taking that data and looking at it, I would love to take a look at that data and maybe that would help us make some decisions about what are areas that we really need to stripe or that we need to do extra precautions on or that there's potholes that absolutely have to be addressed. I think there's probably issues in every single one of our districts. And so I think that might be really, really helpful. So if we can maybe just shine a spotlight on that, we'd like to have that information brought back to us, I think would be great. So thank you.

Thank you. So County Council, would it be permissible at this time to just go back to follow comment on that specific piece of it since it's included in the motion? Okay, then do we have?

Mr. Chair, can I ask, can we just open it back up to public comment so anybody can comment on anything? Is that acceptable?

Yeah, I would be fine with that.

Because then we can just hear from our, then I feel like we've been a little more engaging. Absolutely.

So open it to public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And in chambers, we'll start with Celeste Toledo.

Hello, everyone. So I truly appreciate the conversation about the Sheriff's Department. However, I wanted to be mindful with the side of corrections is this is this or position throughout the whole Department of Corrections and Patrol. So there are individuals in different locations throughout many counties that want to, or are looking for work, right? And when they come and they look at our website, they see that the pay is not compatible to other counties. So a qualified candidate, when they're looking into our website and they look at the pays and whatever benefits that we have displayed, they're just gonna pass. They're like, oh no, San Benito County is definitely not the place for me or my family. to live in equality with that amount. So they go elsewhere. So I understand that we're trying to maybe steal, and that may sound harsh, but we're trying to steal other qualified candidates, right, from other places, Santa Clara, My husband works in Santa Clara. He's a correctional sheriff and he works under transportation. There's no way that he would be making or he would leave his position to come here. However, he loves the idea of not commuting, but there's no way that he would leave his position for the pay here. So given that, I've just been mindful that the corrections do deserve, to be paid equally or even more because they, in a daily basis, all officers give their life. Imagine going to work every day thinking that you might not come back because you're carrying a weapon, a side honor, and that's pretty much it. So you guys know. Thank you. Thank you.

Next in chambers, Ashlyn.

Hello, good morning. Ashlyn Knez, Chief Probation Officer. I just wanted to comment a little bit in response and to highlight and bring to your attention also probation's impact as far as public safety and some of the retention issues that we also are facing. I think the DSA does a really great job of kind of putting out to the public some of their staffing crisis and what they're doing. And some of what you've proposed is in response to what you've seen. I do want to note that the Deputy Sheriffs Association is also comprised of probation officers. So there are 15 probation officers and six supervisors, which makes up a total of 21 DSA members. And it's very, I feel like they kind of get grouped in with the deputy sheriffs. They don't really have the same, pool and purview to like really speak on some of their challenges and they don't always do the best job as far as advocating for themselves, but they are a part of that bargaining unit and should also be looked at because our department itself has also faced several ret... retention issues with respect to probation officers. Specifically within this last fiscal year, I've lost four probation officers. I'm still currently down two probation officers and we continue to have retention issues. When we're talking about budget for this coming fiscal year, you will see that there is an increase in certain line items for my budget specifically with respect to overtime, with respect to temporary pay and things of those nature, that is directly in response to my staffing crisis. Having to call upon officers to do overtime, having to cover multiple things with fewer people, that does impact our budget. If you look at my overall budget for the current fiscal year that we're in, we are over budget on those line items, which is why I've requested to increase those line items. for the next fiscal year budget. So I just wanna bring that to your attention so that you're also taking that into consideration because A lot of what public safety is, is what the first responders are doing on the front end with making the arrest, making our community safer. But a lot of what probation does goes unnoticed and they deal with the immediate crisis and response. Probation is tasked with dealing with everything thereafter. So that's a two to five year process for every single individual who comes through the probation department and has to get reintegrated back into the community and set up for success. And my staff do a really great job, even with lack of resources and with minimal staffing, but I just wanna highlight and bring that to your attention as you guys go forward in making decisions and budgetary decisions for public safety, because probation is a huge part of public safety and we don't always have a voice at the table. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Melinda.

Good morning, I'm Melinda Concius, treasurer, tax collector, public administrator. You asked about the increase in my budget of $134,000, and I just wanted to make a little clarification. So the explanation that the CEO gave you regarding $134,000 the MEG group and not settling their contract yet is totally correct. In my department, I only have one MEG member, so I didn't want you to think that she was gonna get $134,000 more. Part of it is that when they did the layoffs in this current year, they accidentally picked up a different employee's pay. And so this is correcting it for about $50,000. I also asked for some temporary, some addition and temporary help, because while we lost this person, I can deal with that. I just need to be able to hire some temporary help during our installment periods. So I increased my temporary budget, probably about $15,000 to cover that. And I also had some, so post on the tax collector site, then also postage and handling continues to increase, thanks to the assessor for all his contributions. all the building that's going on in the county and he's able to capture a lot of that through the property taxes. And then on the treasurer side, I increased the budget probably about $10,000, 10 or $15,000 for some increases in services that we have, but I also increased the revenue. So I just wanted to give a little clarification that that $134,000 wasn't just for my one mega employee. Anyways, that was my clarification on that budget. Thank you.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Wendy Solorio.

Good morning, Chair and Board. I'm officially here as the branch manager of the Department of Child Support Services, but after listening to the commentary, I wanted to take my afforded break and make this comment regarding Supervisor Kosmicki's report regarding law enforcement and his suggestions. I also want to acknowledge Chief Kanes' sentiments about their office as we work with them closely in our relationship with the court. I currently live in District 5 in North County. We've lived here since I was four years old, so you can imagine how long that is. And I live on the property of my elderly parents. I want to comment on Supervisor Kuro's suggestions regarding the roads. in the entire county, but specifically in North and South County. So I believe that the striping and the road improvements in the opposite ends of the county or even in your district supervisor needs to be addressed along with the safety portion. I can speak to the staffing that Sheriff Taylor has and how stretched it is. But we need to remember that if a car goes off a cliff in Pinoch and my parents have a medical or someone squatting on their property in North County, we have no services. So and vice versa, if something happens on Pacheco Pass or near in the Dutt Lovers Lane area and some car goes off the road in Pinoch, they're not going to get their services. So we recently encountered an incident such as that where we had a squatter that had been. living in a car under an apricot tree for three days. And because services were so stretched, including the probation office, because the person was on probation, it took hours upon hours to get someone to come out and ask them to to vacate the property. So I think we need to look at it, instead of looking at it in silos, there needs to be a holistic approach to how all of the county safety issues can be addressed. And I also do appreciate the budget constraints, but I just wanted to share that for our elderly residents who can't get in a car and go get help or can't go down to the sheriff's office and wait for an officer to come out. It's really hitting home for my family right now. Thank you. Thank you.

I have a few on Zoom. Stacey, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes.

Thank you so much, Karen, supervisors. I just want to remind you, and especially with the comments about being bold and taking bold action, Measure A is costing our county about $14 million a year in unrecovered revenues. The businesses that could have been developed on the nodes are just one example of that. Furthermore, there's the Prop 172 money between $4 and $6 million annually that comes back to our county that's earmarked specifically for public safety. and yet we've been unable to track where that money's been going. Yesterday, a Hollister Police Department officer was involved in a fight possibly for her life with no backup until one available sheriff deputy was able to come over and assist her in taking a known suspect with warrants into custody. Last night, there was a horrific fire over on McCloskey Court. One of our firefighters was injured All of the local resources were tapped, overtapped. We had one engine came in, I believe, from Aromas that was posted up in San Juan Bautista to provide services to the entire county. It's no secret that there are certain supervisors on the board who have not supported public safety. To stand up and make speeches about it today is... honestly a joke and kind of reprehensible to be really true we need our public safety officers to be truly supported not just with lip service not just with proposing amendments now that we're losing the deputy to San Juan Bautista and maybe the supervisor feels compelled to step up These problems have been going on for much longer than just this last year, and enough is enough. Thank you.

One other. City of San Juan, Bautista, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes.

Yes, good morning. Chair and Supervisors, this is Jackie Morris-Lopez. I'm City Council Member from San Juan Bautista. And I just wanna say, I commend you all for sitting up there during these difficult times, discussing your budget, the County budget. We'll be doing that tonight as a City Council for the City of San Juan Bautista. And I can tell you that this is not just a local issue. I was present at the Gilroy City Council meeting last night And this is something that is happening everywhere. They're hard decisions. And for anyone that's not sitting on the dais that can freely criticize any of you supervisors decisions and comments, I feel that that's really unfair. We are mandated from the top down at the state level to make these hard decisions on a daily basis. And it's a critical mass problem when the state also mandates that we grow exponentially and provide housing. And with housing, as we all know, all of you on the dais and my colleagues on my dais and everywhere else, it involves infrastructure. And what are the primary infrastructure needs that expanded housing and people bring to a community? Safety, fire, police, roads, water, sewer. So with people that are stating that you as some supervisors have thwarted economic growth or growth in general, we really have to pull back and look at what does that growth do to affect our communities and these services that are essential. It's not an easy decision. And I can tell you that speaking from my perspective as a city council member of San Juan Bautista, yes, we've lost a dedicated sheriff deputy, but the Sheriff Taylor has committed to providing services to our small community. It is not like that service is going away. It will look differently, yes, may not be ideal, but at one time our small city had a police department and my uncle was the chief of police back in the 70s. That's no longer the same community as we know. Hollister is not the same community. San Bernardino County is not the same community. So with these changes come real hard decisions and sacrifices. So I wanna commend you all for taking taking the time to inform the public and the municipalities in the county, like our city, San Juan Bautista as well. Thank you for the hard work that you all do.

And that concludes public comment.

Thank you. Okay, we had a motion. We had a first and a second. Are you ready? Does everyone take a vote on this now?

Can I just... clarification on probation. Are we going to be getting numbers with or without? Because if they're part of DSA and corrections, they should be included. in the numbers. I just wanna make sure that we're clear, okay?

If- I mean, Madam Chair or Mr. Chair, I'm certainly fine including that as an estimate to get a gauge on it. And we can certainly look at that, all the numbers next week.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Yes.

Sorry, I don't mean to complicate things, Can you read the motion again? I just wanna be very clear on what it includes, because there was a lot to it. He didn't write it all down.

I can, I have it here, yeah, I have it here. Yeah, no problem, yeah, yeah, and I go back and review the tapes just like you do, Vanessa, so no problem there. Yeah, so the motion is to give direction for the CEO to work with the sheriff and the fiscal staff and bring back projections for proposed incentive programs as presented on the future agenda items, adding in probation to include that in the analysis and directing departments to make further reductions where possible without cuts to staff and to return with options with regard to balancing the budget on the 24th with the expectation of a potential adoption on the 26th.

I'll second with a friendly amendment just to remember that we want the OPEB reviewed and departments focusing on unfunded state mandates that they would recommend removal of. Besides that, I think we've got it all. And the cannabis. Four items. And whatever was missed in the tape.

Okay, move the bill, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Curro?

Yes.

4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Thank you. That's it. Adjourned.