Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning. The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors calls this meeting to order on August 19th, 2026 at 9.30 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors Meeting Room 120, located at 2150 North Congress Drive, Nogales, Arizona, 85621. At this time, I'd like to ask Chief Mark Meredith if you would please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you, sir. At this time, we'll move to item B, adoption of the agenda.

Mr. Manager? Mr. Chair, members of the board, there is no changes to the agenda.

Thank you, sir. With that, I'll accept a motion to accept the adoption of the agenda as presented.

Mr. Chair, I move to adopt the agenda and allow Chair to deviate as needed.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion to second. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. We're gonna skip around a little bit today. We have some students with us who are going to have a little performance. So we're gonna move down to item E, B. Recognition of, let's see, excuse me. A and B. A and B recognition of Sun construction for its partnership and commitment to improving our community through projects that enhance infrastructure and quality of life of our residents and Victor Martin Del Campo project executive Sun construction for his outstanding partnership and commitment to projects that strengthen our infrastructure and improve our community So with that I'm going to turn it over to I thought Me first. Yes, go ahead. Okay. I'll give the floor to you.

Good morning everyone. So I just wrote some little words here. A few months ago I was contacted by Victor Martin Del Campo who works for Sun Construction. Victor and I met and he shared with me that one of the Sun's corporate goals is to positively helping the community. He told me that whenever an opportunity came up where they could help the community members, or support our local nonprofits, they wanted to see how they could be of assistance. One of the first projects they helped with was assisting an elderly woman in Monte Carlo who had several large trees on her property that needed attention. Also, they're exploring how to help Santa Cruz County Council on Aging with replacing their floor. Since then, Victor and I have continued visiting different parts of the community, identifying needs and looking for projects where Sun may be able to help. Our most recent project was with Mexicali Academy. A few months ago when I visited the school and received a tour, I noticed that the back portion of the school did not have a fence. I immediately saw a need. We have students at this school every day and I wanted to make sure they had a safe and secure space completely separated from the gym and building next door. I reached out to Victor and everything came together perfectly. Victor and the team of Sun Construction stepped up and built a new fence for the school. The fence included access to both pedestrians and vehicles. The gates open in both directions, letting cars enter and exit easily. And it is tall enough to provide the separation and security the school needs. To me, this is what community partnership is all about. As a public servant, I want to continue to identify needs, bring people together and help find a solution. But it takes people like Victor and companies like Sun Construction that are willing to step up and say, how can I help? To their credit, there are currently two more projects in the works with more opportunities we hope to address throughout our community. I'm very thankful to have Victor as an ally, and more importantly, as someone who shares the same commitment in helping our community. I truly appreciate his willingness to work with me so that together we can help our residents. And now I would like to introduce some of the students from Mexicao who would like to give some words.

Good morning everybody. This morning, Mexica Academy would like to give thanks and are deeply grateful to Supervisor Carlos, Luis Carlos Davis, District 1, Santa Cruz County, and also Victor Martin del Campo, Project Executive at Sons Construction, for their generosity and commitment to our Mexica Academy of Excellence community. Thanks to your support, our school now has a new fence that provides a safer and more secure environment for our students to play, learn, and grow. Thank you for investing in our school, for being true partners in strengthening our school community. Your support makes a meaningful difference. Thank you.

Muy buenos dias. En Michigan Academy of Excellence, queremos expresar nuestro más sincero agradecimiento al supervisor del distrito uno, Luis Carlos Davids, Sun and Construction, y a Victor Martin del Campo, Project Executive, Sun Construction, por su generosidad y por creer en nuestra comunidad escolar. Gracias a su apoyo y compromiso, hoy contamos con un nuevo cerco que brinda mayor seguridad a mí y a mis compañeros y nos ayuda a aprender, a convivir y desarrollarnos. Agradecemos profundamente que hayan invertido en el bienestar de nuestros estudiantes y que sean parte de los aliados que hacen posible seguir construyendo una escuela más segura y una comunidad más fuerte. Gracias por ser parte de la comunidad de Mexica.

And now we have something special, Danza Mexica Mexicayot. Do it right up here?

Yeah, go ahead.

Nuestra danza es una danza de nuestros ancestros, ancestros mexicas. Es una danza ancestral. Y así todos nuestros ancestros, siempre ellos antes al salir, al despertar y al salir a ver el sol, pues ellos saludaban. Así que vamos a hacer los saludos rapidito, empezando por el lado oeste, el lado este, perdón.

Y saludamos a nuestro Padre Sol que sale cada mañana para iluminarnos las mentes, iluminarnos el día e iluminarnos la vida. Atecoco, Elise. Ahora saludamos a ese rumbo donde se va el sol.

Donde se va la vida también, en cada atardecer, en cada anochecer.

Hoy saludamos también que ahí es el rumbo de la Madre Tierra. Donde crece la semilla, donde florece. Así es que hoy, que florezca el conocimiento de todas las personas que están aquí. ¡Atecócolise! ¡Atecócolise! ¡Atecócolise!

Now we thank you on behalf of the ancestors because they were the ones who opened the way for us. Our parents, our grandparents, grandparents. They have opened the way for us to be all of us who are present here. Today we offer you this atecocoli and the drum. Atecocoli 6. a community. Today we offer this Atecocoli, the sound of Atecocoli and the Venerable Huehue. Atecocoli 6. Today we offer you the touch of the tecocoli and the touch of the egg. Y así era la manera en la que nuestros ancestros veneraban al Padre Sol, veneraban a la Madre Tierra, y tenían esta conexión con la Madre Tierra, con el Padre Sol, con las aguas que vienen del cielo. Y así enseñamos a los jóvenes a tener esa conexión con la Madre Tierra, a respetarla.

and treat it like a living being.

is

Ana Laura, really quick, or the instructor, can somebody summarize this in English a little bit, like the ceremony, so just something brief, what happened?

Can you, Fabiola? No, Fabiola is bilingual.

No, she can't. I will try my English. I will try. So... I was talking about the ceremony from our ancestors, Mexica people, and our grandfathers and our grandmothers, always when they woke up, the first thing that they did is going out and say good morning to the father-son, and say good morning to the mother air, and say good morning to the mother air, but that is the direction of the bloom of the seed. They say good morning to the direction of the water, to the south is the direction of the water. So they say that because they thought that life is a ceremony. So they have this connection with Mother Earth because Mother Earth, it was the one that give, or they gave life with the food. It's the only, they give food for all the humanity. So that was that connection and that was the four directions, but they always were offering something. It can be flowers, it can be fruits, it can be something for Mother Earth and say thank you for the life, for preserve life to the humanity. So we did, as Tanzantes, these four directions. And we say thank you to the great spirit, because great spirit, we don't know. All the people is different and has a lot of faces, a lot of names. And we don't know, but we know that there is something more that is the creator of the world of Mother Earth. And we say thank you to Mother Earth because she is the one, is like human being for our ancestors. And she is the one that we need to honor and to respect. And that is the best thing that we can teach to our students, to the young people, to preserve those teachings. Okay, thank you. I don't know if I could explain, but thank you.

So now I would like to ask all the students from Mexicali and Sunt, everybody to come and take a picture with everybody.

Yes, please. Thank you.

go sideways

.

. .

. . .

Stand right here. Yeah? Perfect. There we go.

One, two, three. Look over here. Smile.

Thank you so much.

On behalf of all Mexicans, thank you. You're making a great difference.

Would you like to say some words before you guys conclude?

I just want to say thank you to the county for allowing us to be who we are, Sun, right? And thank you to the guys that actually made it happen. Sun's purpose is to build environments where our clients, employee owners, and communities prosper. And what we do every day is just a testament to what we do. So thank you again for allowing us to be part of the community. And we look forward to doing more projects for the community.

Thank you. Thank you. And come here. I'm just going to give you.

Thank you. Thank you, you and your team.

We have a list, by the way. And I gave Victor a challenge coin so he could keep helping us.

Thank you.

Thank you once again, Victor, for everything.

Okay. At this time, we'll move back to, and thank you so much for making that happen. Great kids, and thank you to the son. We'll go ahead and move to item C, call to the public. We're gonna start with Martha. And when you're up there, please remember that you'll have three minutes. At three minutes, I'll remind you, and also please state your name and your address for the record. Thank you so much.

Okay, I can start, yeah. So my name is Marta Monca and I live in Patagonia, Arizona. Yes? Sure. I can go? Okay. Okay, so I moved to Emily Lane in Patagonia just before the construction of the Cross Creek Connector started. Now I find the heavy traffic on that road very concerning. There are multiple industrial vehicles going over the road all the time. As I understand, no one in the county keeps track of these numbers. The air quality on two ends of Cross Creek is getting really bad, and I'm sure that soil study would provide us with terrifying results as well. Meanwhile, what in my opinion is much worse is the fact that a lot of these trucks and semi-trucks idle on the side of the road on both ends of Cross Creek Road on a regular basis. the road was built in the way so that there is plenty of shoulder space on both sides for big vehicles however i'm not sure if it's legal for them to idle there at all is it there are multiple industrial vehicles idling there every day five minutes for a cigarette break or to pee lunch that takes 20 minutes on the side of the road with trash ending up being thrown in the wash while running the engine or taking an hour nap while the engine is on I contacted the county about the problem. The solution from the county was to put no parking signs on the side of the road. The signs lasted for around 24 hours. They got moved to the corner, and I don't know if they're going back. I mean, it's possible to work on the road every time after it rains, but it's not really possible to put two signs back so that trucks do not idle there anymore. I'm wondering why are we as residents expected to tolerate that? Why are these drivers allowed to pollute the air in our town, in my area? I don't even want to mention wildlife. Sadly, I don't know who cares about it at this point. My proposed solution is not to allow industrial trucks to idle there at all. They can station, stage somewhere else, but not on that road. These companies' poor planning is not our problem. I'm sure that their experts can figure out how to plan their logistics without treating Cross Creek Road as their safety zone. Thank you. I hope it was three minutes.

Thank you, Madam.

Thank you.

Jay Thompson. Thank you.

Thank you. Morning, supervisors. Morning. Morning. County managers. Chief Meredith. And members of the public. My name's Jay Thompson from Rio Rico. I wanna follow Ms. Manka's comments with a perspective granted in community impacts and decades of industry experience on my part. Cross Creek Connector is a county road in unincorporated Santa Cruz County. The roads serving the mines are also county roads outside the town of Patagonia. The county retains responsibility for what occurs on these right of ways. Yet every day, Marta said, residents watch. Industrial trucks and semis use both ends of the connector as an informal parking and staging area with engines idling, drivers smoking, eating, throwing trash in the washes, sometimes in cases of urinating or even defecating on the side of the road. This is not only for Marta but others. This is not an exaggeration. It's a daily pattern on county infrastructure. Citizens ask drivers and companies to stop and are ignored. They call Patagonia and they say to call the county. When they call the county, they've been told to call South 32. South 32 says the trucks are third-party contractors. ADEQ and DOT we both talked to defer back to the county. I spent decades personally in heavy duty fleet operations. This circular response was predictable. Idling for driver comfort, as every legitimate operator knows, happens. What we are seeing is poor scheduling, poor staging, an absence of enforcement on a county road itself that the county manages itself. Santa Cruz County, sadly, has no anti-idling ordinance, and ADEQ permits set no real idling limits here, just in Phoenix. But that does not leave the county powerless. We can restrict staging and queuing. We can enforce no parking zones. We can require South 32 and its contractors to publicly respond to citizen complaints. You can use your cooperative agreement to compel operational changes. We can act and we need a process for that. It's not new. Deferring these protections to Patagonia through the CPPA is outside of Patagonia's jurisdiction. It's a county road, not in town. When residents report repeated diesel exhaust, trash, and human waste on a county road, and the answer is always call the company, that's not neutrality. That's the county declining to use your authority, which you have, to approve when you approve the connector. Continued non-response becomes neglect. Remedies straightforward, enforce no parking, no idling restrictions at both ends of the connector. Direct South 32 and its contractors to designate staging areas, not the roadway shoulders. Create a formal county of record of complaints, impacts, and enforcement actions. Coordinate with ADEQ on diesel, PM, dust, and odor impacts, knowing that ADEQ only has one inspector for the whole state. Residents should not have to tolerate this on any rural county road. The county has both the authority and the responsibility to fix it. These same issues were raised during the EIS process and then funded by the Forest Service Consultants.

Go ahead, finish up.

These same issues were raised during the EIS process, then punted by the Forest Service consultants to other agencies and ultimately to the voluntary CBPA. We were submitting them again via the CBPA while being told Patagonia will be the center of protections. Even though Patagonia already addressed the original truck problem, they got the connector. The new road routing will send traffic through the Forest Service with tourists and landowners on to 82 past Patagonia Lake and through Nogales. Track out and dust remains unmanaged. At least the air data will tie numbers to reality, and that is coming. We need real impact and a protection plan, not deferrals. Thank you. Sorry for the extension.

Chris Workhoven.

The title of my little talk is On the Need for an Independent Community Science Council. My name is Chris Werkhoven. Good morning, Supervisors and everyone here. I used to live in Senoida. Not anymore, as the public does not get the water and air quality as promised by ADEQ in its permits granted to Australian mining company South32. Here are some examples concerning water quality. AD&Q systematically denied the presence of metal mobilization, but eventually the EIS, more than a couple of years, showed plume formation exceeding groundwater standards for antimony and other metals. Recent detection of those impurities, even before the mine started, places serious questions about the claim that such plumes only develop after mine closure. Add the next claim that drinking water not likely will be contaminated, and there are enough reasons to verify every assumption made in those claims. Not by a compromised governmental entity or mine-controlled CPBA, but by an independent community science council. Concerning air, significant corrections of emission rates were admittedly necessary when mine preferred input data were used in emission models rather than the best available ones. ADEQ and CNF never explained with proper scientific arguments that corresponding emissions increases remained compliant with safe standards. By using simple math and science, Council can easily reproduce already submitted exceedance examples, for instance, for lead. Also admitted by CNF is that the public is offered more insight into the risk of collapse of tailings piles when an integrated probability of failure instead of a select number of factors of safety is presented to the public. Needless to say that an unrealistic safety determination has dire consequences. The Board of Supervisors is therefore invited to demand independent validation of what today is the so-called best available protection. all that for his constituents. To pursue truthful outcomes is an unavoidable responsibility of elected officials. Thank you for your attention.

Good morning, supervisors. Robin Luckey, President of the Calabasas Alliance, 1377 Camino of Ha Ha. Last Monday around midnight, we had one of the fiercest storms I have experienced in my 22 years living in Rio Rico. The wind gusts were 30 to 40 miles an hour with ping pong size hail on the northeast side of the community for nearly an hour. At about 1 a.m., my husband told me we had no water. He was catching an early flight to the East Coast and did not get to take a shower. I started calling Liberty Water and I texted you, Mr. Supervisor, at about 2.40 a.m. to report the outage. The customer service representative said it would be back up in 20 minutes. At 7 a.m., I called again. This time, the rep said 11 a.m. for water service. At around 9.30, I walked down to the pumping station near my home and saw a Liberty Water workman who happened to be our area supervisor and asked him what happened. He said 11 power poles were on the ground that provides electricity to our three pumping stations and that the water main that carries water to the Rio Rica ranchettes had disengaged and washed into a ravine and they had not been able to find it for a while. I asked him if he could please deliver some drinking water to the affected homes if service was not back by 11 a.m. He said yes. At 11 a.m., still no water, called Liberty again and asked when we would have our service back and if they would be delivering water. The rep said that would be around noon. Just keep in mind we have, we're up in the hills, we've got young families, we have elderly, and it would have been at the 12th hour if there was no drinking water, no running water. And I asked him to please escalate this request to his supervisors, and I hoped that my call was being recorded. At noon, my water was restored. There was a knock at the door and two cases of water for me and my neighbors. The supervisor told me that the main pipe was still being repaired and that the pressure might go down, hence the reason they went ahead and delivered water. So the bigger question is, Our wood electrical poles in Rio Rico are 30 to 40 years old. When will TPE start replacing these since they are already in the area expanding service to the east side of the county for the mine and port expansion? According to Arizona Administrative Code R14-2-407, a regulated water utility is required to make a reasonable effort to supply continuous water service. However, there is no rigid mandate to provide water to customers in an outage. As a reminder, according to ARS 11251, the Board of Supervisors does have the authority to act in situations like this to protect public health. You know, I'm going to make a statement here, and I was a medical professional for 15 years, and the statement is when you're sitting around the emergency room and somebody's been in a horrible accident and it was preventable, We like to say to ourselves, there is no such thing as accidents, just teachable moments, and this was one of them. We've got climate change, and we need to pay attention. Thank you very much for the time.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to come up to call to the public? Kathy, come on up.

good morning mr chairman members of the board kathy campana from rio rico i won't take as long as everyone else complaining about the roads but i'm going to complain about the roads actually the trail the road was damaged pretty badly in that storm the trail was really damaged it's buckled in a number of locations The weeds are taller than I am in some areas, and branches are hanging down, hitting me in the head, and I'm four foot 11. So we know they're hanging low. Apparently, The trail was never engineered for drainage. So when the grader goes by to clear the road, he creates a berm and everything backs up onto the road or creates a berm on the west side of the trail and everything backs up across the trail. what dirt there is on the trail because it's really fine dirt becomes super slippery and it's very hazardous for the seniors who walk there. I see a number of big skids because It's so slick. It's very dangerous It would have been nice when it was put in if it were done right to begin with It would save the county a whole lot in maintenance but I'm not picking up the garbage on the trail, walking through the weeds with all the chiggers, so we need those taken care of, and we definitely need the trail cleared for the safety of the people that use it. Thank you.

Thank you. Well put. Thank you, Kathy. Any further? Okay, seeing none, then we'll move to item D, current events. Vice Chair?

Good morning. So, here are my updates. I'm going to skip the one from Xicayo because everybody saw what happened. So yesterday, Colin Bishop, Chris Young, and I toured three water treatment plants in Nogales, Sonora. They're called Los Alisos, Lomas de Anza, and Puertas de Anza, planta tratadora de aguas residuales, water treatment plants. We did this tour with public works staff and engineers from the city of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. This tour was important because we got to see the origins of what we know as Oso Wash, but from the Mexican side. We also got to see their infrastructure and everything they are working on the Mexican side to improve the water flow into Nogales, Arizona. We are very thankful to the city of Nogales, Mexico and Mayor Jim for coordinating this tour. This is part of the new collaboration that has started between Santa Cruz County and the City of Nogales, Mexico. This new binational collaboration between Santa Cruz County and the City of Nogales, Mexico is very important to me and it already producing good results. This tour, our monthly meetings, are part of this new binational effort to improve better coordination, prevention, and communication on both sides of the border to better serve our community and our residents. Later on, Chris and Colin will provide an update, and they're going to mention everybody that were there. Would you want to add?

So in March we had the Growing Water Smart conference and Nogales-Sonora was there. I believe you, I didn't hear all of it, I believe you mentioned Joaquin and the group.

No, no, for some reason I. Okay.

Go ahead, go ahead. So I just want to mention the people that are in that photo from the Nogales-Sonora site. It's Fernanda Moreno, the city manager. Leonardo Sandoval Mendoza, who's the director of UMAPAS, which is the water company for Nogales-Sonora. Jorge Ignacio Medina Esqueda, the public works director. And then Claudia Hill from ADQ. And so in March, we talked about Oso Wash and some other things that we had in common. on both sides of the border and they then they uh committed themselves to making that better and yesterday we saw a lot of improvements that they've already made regarding oso wash if you go out there now it's very different than what it was a few months ago one of those things is just to let you know to what point they're getting to they cut the water off for 12 hours every other day to about 10 000 homes so that they can manage the amount of waste water that comes into their plants. So they've committed to help that area that also wash and other areas also. But I wanted to make sure that they got mentioned and also the fact that they are working hard to improve the conditions for the water that crosses over to our side of the border.

Colin, would you want to add something? Okay, absolutely. You were part of that tour.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, supervisors, county staff, and the public. So I was very grateful. Part of my background, actually, I've lived in the wastewater world for the last 30 years. So I actually was very excited to go tour all the wastewater infrastructure, probably more so than anybody else. But I was very pleasantly surprised that when you look at all the things they're putting into place to actually address their situation. So not to get heavy into technical details, but over the last six months, it looks like they've made a number of improvements that have substantially led to better water quality. They have some very real challenges on the collection side. You know, when the storm events occur, you can imagine there's a lot of debris. gravel their sand that creates a lot of issues for their pumping infrastructure as they try to get that wastewater to the plants so that's a challenge that they're working through right now and it looks like they've come up with some solutions that will help that and then on the treatment side they've as you as we saw yesterday they've implemented some different measures to improve the water quality and the operation of the plants. I would say the other part of that is their staff. In talking with their staff and their technical people, they clearly have staff and people there that know what they're doing, they know what the challenges are, and so they are actually using the resources they have and what's available to make the situation much improved. So all in all for me, having been a person that has seen many wastewater treatment facilities essentially worldwide and a lot over the U.S., I was actually very happy and pleased with what I saw and the progress that they've made. Not that there's not more to do, there will be, but I'm also excited about the binational cooperation, the communication that's going on, so that we have awareness on both sides of the border of what the challenges are for both from a resource standpoint and a water quality standpoint, and that we can coordinate the steps together to actually improve it for both sides of the border. So I don't know if you have any questions.

No, thank you. Thanks for your comments.

Very good.

I'm going to continue with my updates. I hosted my monthly District 1 Advisory Committee meeting. During this meeting, we discussed how property taxes are collected and where they go. We also talked about the list for our case. I'm looking forward to our next meeting. Lastly, we have been working on bringing Senator Gallego to a town hall in New Galles for a few months now, and it seems that the day is getting closer. I hope to be able to make an announcement soon. So those are my updates.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chair, good morning. Good morning. I want to first of all thank Supervisor Davis for the great treat bringing Mexico out and the partnership with Stunt. Thank you. A couple of events that we attended last week. We attended the teacher of the year graduation i think ms donnelly's here maya great job amazing program also that same day we attended the south 32 first class graduation their electrician class good group congratulations to that group This last week, we also put up these bike signs for a project that Alexis Simon, whom participated with the emerging leaders And that was part of our project, just bringing notice to drivers in the Keno Spring area. So we put up a total of six signs, I believe, Shannon, right? And thank you, Shannon, for helping Alexis through the whole process. I appreciate it. And also, I want to thank a group that's been working together. Shannon's also part of that group. It's the Talkin' Trash group. Basically, we have a lot of issues with trash in Santa Cruz County, mainly in Rio Rico, and we had a meeting our actual county attorney was there, health department, Colin, and so all the key people that need to be involved so we can enforce some of these issues that we have in the county. And hopefully in our next session in September, we'll have a study session where we really talk about everything we've come up with. And that's all I have for today, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chair, one last thing. I want to thank Liz Meek, who's really working hard with her neighborhood group, and they're picking up trash, and they're doing a good job. I want to thank them as well. along with other volunteers that that do a good job of of picking up trash and and also jesse who's part of the santa cruz shining and she will be teaming up with us as well sorry sir thank you fantastic news thank you um i want to thank kate tyrian

for the tour in Patagonia. Chris and Colin and I were able to take part in that tour. She's got some wonderful things happening, so thank you to Kate. Also, thank you to Connie, Brian, and Ben. I was able to head out to Oso Wash to see what was happening out there. Very informative, so thank you to those folks. I also had a somewhat informal meeting with Dr. Mary Vanis, Rich Bowman, and CBP regarding their thought process on the checkpoint. So I want to thank CBP and Dr. Vanis and Mr. Bowman for taking part in that meeting. Also had a wonderful meeting with the two-back chamber, Carolyn Addison and Ariel Desuse. Very informative meeting, and our goal is to get all of our arrows pointing in the same directions regarding our chambers throughout the county. Thank you to Bob and Allison Seltzer, eastern portion of the county tour recently. Yesterday, I want to congratulate those who were elected. I also want to congratulate Ms. Alma. The difference between, I caught you with your mouth full, sorry. The difference between, I believe it was Mayor Maldonado and Mr. Garino, former Mayor Garino, was three votes. There was a law recount, automatic recount based on the law, and what was the count difference? There was three. It was the same. So the reason I bring that up is because that's a testament to Ms. Schultz and her team for a job well done and making sure that it is accurate. So thank you to your team. And based on that, I did have an opportunity to meet with one of the newly elected, he will be elected, and that's Louis Parra. we had lunch yesterday and we were able to sit down and we were able to talk and I'm hoping fingers crossed that the county and the city can continue to connect and to make those positive connections and collaborate more often so I want to say thank you to him for the meeting Yesterday we had the CPBA meeting. I know that you're gonna give some background information of what happened during that meeting and other meetings. And then I did wanna read, and I heard exactly what you said, Ms. Campana, and I believe Chris is already on that, so we've heard that. But I do want to read from a longtime resident, Flo Emerson. She put, good morning, John. I was so impressed with the county employees' response to the recent monsoonal flood events that I wrote a shout-out on the Nextdoor app. Almost 20 people responded to my post affirmatively, and I didn't get any snarky comments. that's a positive I also commended UES and Liberty water so yes as a county there's things that that we need to continue to focus on and the path being one of those and like I said I know that Chris and I have already discussed that and hopefully didn't you say this week yeah so that's a positive other than that that will conclude my report

Can I add one more?

Please do.

I had a senior moment. I forgot one really important matter. On August 11th, our IT specialist, Mr. Balderas and myself, attended a Mediacom meeting at Tubac. And this is exciting because Juan's been working on this for years. These are beads monies that were... that Mediacom secured for Santa Cruz County. And it's, I believe, all totaling with what Mediacom and what they got from Beads is a total of $16 million. And what it is in actuality is improvement of our broadband in Rio Rico and Nogales. So that's exciting. And that's all I have, Mr. Chair.

Are you sure?

Well, if you want to be specific, they're currently in a NEPA process. It's going to be six months. And after those six months, hopefully they can start construction and really improving our broadband. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir. Mr.

Manager. Mr. Chair I also would like to recognize the efforts of Public Works and staff we got hit by a big storm event there's a lot of debris that builds up through the years it happens about every three years but they were out out there about two o'clock in the morning maintaining the roads making passable so Just wanna recognize those efforts. Starting Monday, the contractor that's helping us with painting the building, they're gonna start spraying, so look out for traffic control and signs so that your vehicle doesn't get sprayed. And then also I wanna recognize Alma's efforts. It's a burden on a county this size to regroup and get all the volunteers together and recount, but she did an awesome job and congratulations, thank you.

Thank you. And just a testament to our road crew, I live off of Embarcadero, which is on North Pendleton. And I actually, no exaggeration, those of you who know where that is, there's a wash that runs right down through Embarcadero across Pendleton and kind of diagonal into another wash. And it's been running before. And I know it's run at least twice this year. maybe even three times and not once have i had any issues going through there so just another i mean first first-hand account of uh the hard work that they do getting out at two o'clock in the morning so thank you once again mr sure can i say something

So county manager, could you provide an update on the plan that we have? I think it's once a month starting next meeting or I don't know if the following meeting to open it up for the public at the press due to transparency.

Mr. Chair, members of the board, so what we're planning on doing management is before the meeting, we haven't decided whether half an hour or 45 minutes before the meeting is, I'm sorry, before the Board of Supervisors meeting is for us to basically have office hours. And people have questions regarding any issues or regarding the agenda of the South, they could come and hopefully we'll be able to answer their questions if we can. Something that's outside, we're just telling what the, what the item is what's involved and and why it's on the board agenda and if there's any other questions that we can't answer we'll come back and make sure and get the answers for them thank you great thank you very much all right we'll move to uh item e e uh one uh finance cash and investment expenditures and revenue reports maria

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board.

Morning.

For the cash and investment report in the general fund, we have an overall balance of $22,110,357 with an invested amount of $17,023,235. In the road fund, we have an overall balance of $5,639,255 with an invested amount of $5,266,519. For the flood control overall balance, we have 2,643,957 with an invested amount of 317,408. For the jail district, we have an overall balance of 5,913,838 with an invested amount of 4,523,744. For a total overall balance of fifty million nine hundred and thirty four thousand three hundred fifty three and total invested amount of twenty nine million three hundred and twelve thousand one hundred fourteen with an estimated end of month balance of nine million two hundred and seventy thousand two hundred eighty Thank You madam vice-chair any questions, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much All right Update on 2A, and then we'll go to any other departments that like to come and give an update. Update on early actions community investment agreement by Deputy County Manager Chris Young.

Chairman Fanning, Supervisor Davis, Supervisor Molera, county management, public, thank you for the opportunity to speak towards the updates that we have for the early actions. You mentioned a little bit about what we're talking about with the CPB right now. It's 100% protections. 99% protections is what we're working on right now. That's the biggest area that we're focused on and we're gonna continue to focus on that. Just to let everybody know, on the CPBA website, there's three different ways to comment. There's two different surveys and then just an open comment area where you can express your opinion or your thoughts. about what should be done with the CPBA. That'll be open until I believe August 31st. And obviously we take that information and that helps us form what we do within the meetings. So please make sure that if you would like to express your opinion, you have something to say, something specific you'd like to see in the CPBA, please make sure you visit that website. If you have any questions, please contact me about that. Right now with the early actions, I wanna remind the board and everyone exactly what we're trying to accomplish with these early actions as a county. First of all, any funding or benefit that comes from the CPBA, we don't want that to fund any of our core functions as a county, okay? So the benefits and things like that that come from the CPBA are things that are outside of our core functions, okay? They're benefits for the community, but we don't want Cell 32 funding our employees and things like that. So when we look at the community investment projects that we have, they're things like childcare, housing strategies, things like that that are tangent to things that we do as a county, okay? I just wanted to reiterate that part. The specific projects that we have, let me give an update of each one. The independent emergency services audit, we finished that, we opened up the bids on August 5th. We received two submittals, and so right now, Sobe from emergency management is getting her group together to develop their matrix to decide which bid they would like to go to for the study. The Patagonia flood control study phase two. That study, they've already had at least one meeting, if not multiple meetings, so that's going on very well. Jeff up in the health department is in the process of buying the equipment for their mobile health clinic. The childcare plan for the entire county, this one I'm very excited about. We have a group called Epic that is contracted, and they work with First Things First. They're based out of Colorado, having nothing new to the fact that I'm from Colorado. They're based out of Colorado, but they've partnered with First Things First here in Arizona. And so we have our first kickoff meeting on Monday, and we're working with First Things First, the local chapter and regional chapter on that also. So that's an exciting advancement. The countywide parks, recreation, open space master plan. Mr. Fanning, you had mentioned getting the chambers together. So what we have decided to do is this Friday we have a meeting with the three different chambers that we have in the county, along with Sky Islands Tourism, Linda Shore. Shannon is also going to be there also, and they're going to drive this study. They're going to drive this study to make sure that We have the correct information and an implementation plan so that we can have a good idea of how we want to move forward with our nature-based tourism and also with open recreation spaces. And then the last one we have is the housing strategy. Colin received seven, eight submittals. five got excited he received five submittals they're open on august 5th and so he's going through his process to develop the matrix and and decide which submittal that will be chosen obviously both the emergency response and the housing strategy will be will be brought up for your approval within the next couple of weeks so all of the projects on the community investment um agreement for the county are underway and if not at least started are halfway through. Do you guys have any questions?

So you said that the CBPA website, the last day to provide feedback is August 31st, right?

Yes, we extended the day. I believe we had one type of survey that was due the first week of August. So we created a second survey and extended to the end of the month.

Can we make an announcement through maybe Shannon so that reminding people?

Sure.

I mean, just another.

Should I add a reminder before it's over? Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Any other questions?

No, sir. Yes, I just want to make sure that as we move forward, especially with the emergency, we have Chief Mark Meredith here. I want to make sure that the local stakeholders are part of that discussion. Same thing, and it seems like early childhood education and child care, you're inferring that First Things First is part of that as well, correct?

They're a big part of it, yes. They'll be the driver behind it. So when we do, there's two aspects to that. First of all, the public engagement of the three or four specialists that are chosen to help Colin and Sobe make the determination of the best submittal, that's one. engagement and then obviously when they do the study they'll be community engagement also so there'll be there'll be two two two spaces where the community is definitely involved wonderful thank you sir thank you thank you any other departments wish to present

Okay. Prior to going to the study session, I know that Chief Meredith is an incredibly busy person. I want to move to action item G1, discussion possible action to approve proclamation declaring September 28th, 2026 as Sonoyta Elgin Fire District Day. Do I have a motion?

I move. Second. Second.

Okay, there's been a motion and a second. And during discussion, I'm gonna go ahead and read the proclamation and then ask if you have any words that you'd like to say. So with that, September 28th, 2026, Sonoyta Elgin Fire District Day, celebrating 20 years of service and partnership by the Sonoyta Elgin Fire District. Whereas, 20 years ago, through the vision, civic leadership, and support of local voters, the residents of the Sonoyta and Elgin communities established the Sonoyta-Elgin Fire District to provide reliable fire protection and emergency medical services. And whereas, For the past 20 years, the Sonorita Elgin Fire District has faithfully served residents and visitors with professionalism, compassion, and dedication by providing fire protection, emergency medical services, rescue response, fire prevention, emergency preparedness, and public education throughout the communities it serves. Whereas the continued success of the Sonoyta Elgin Fire District has been made possible through the partnership and support of the citizens it serves, neighboring public safety agencies, the counties of Santa Cruz and Pima, health care providers, schools, businesses, community organizations, and the many firefighters, emergency medical personnel, volunteers, employees, governing board members, and community leaders whose commitment has strengthened public safety for two decades And, whereas the 20th anniversary of the Sonoyta Elgin Fire District provides an opportunity to recognize the vision of its founders, honor those who have served throughout its history, celebrate the partnerships that have sustained its mission, and reaffirm a shared commitment to protecting the lives, property, and quality of life of the communities it proudly serves. Now therefore, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County, Arizona hereby proclaims September 28th, 2026 as Sonoyta-Elgin Fire District Day and extends its sincere gratitude and appreciation to all those whose vision, service, dedication, and partnership have made the Sonoyta-Elgin Fire District a trusted protector of the community for the past 20 years, passed and adopted this 19th day of August, 2026. So with that, we'll go ahead and move to the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. At this time, Chief Meredith, if you'd like to say a few words, please.

Mr. Chair, supervisors, member of the public, thank you very much. I will be brief. I'm also going to take the liberty, Mr. Young, to say that the process for the service audit for emergency service is going very well, and we've been engaged from the beginning. So thank you. Whenever I talk about the history of the district I'm very careful to remind myself and everybody else that we are much older as a fire department than 20 years. People really through bootstraps set up taking care of the eastern part of the county well before 2006. However, it's important to recognize that in 2006 we did become a special tax district fire district in the state of Arizona. And we are grateful for the opportunity to take care of the residents and visitors of the eastern side of the county in partnership with Patagonia Volunteer Fire and Rescue and then of course to further support the entire county. The fire districts and the PVFR and the City of Nogales Fire have made great strides in our collective effort to take care of the county and to recognize as a small county that it's our job to take care of the entire county as a group, not just our own little areas. So that's been really good to see. And then finally, just to simply say that 20 years is an important milestone in the history of our fire department, and I am grateful and appreciative of the recognition from the county today. Thank you so much.

Thank you, and thank you for collaborative efforts, and thank you for all that you and your team does.

Great leadership.

Okay, we're gonna backtrack to item F, study session. County Supervisors Association report to the Board of Supervisors by Jacob Emnett, Legislative Director from County Supervisors Association of Arizona, and I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Supervisor Melita.

So I'm honored to present our CSA staff, our county supervisor association is here to provide the report for the year. Normally our executive director, Mr. Craig Sullivan is here and does most of the report, but he had shoulder surgery, so we wish him well and a quick healing. Here with us today is our Current CSA president Alton Joe Shepherd. Thank you for coming today. Mr. President. It's an honor to have you here Also present is Yvonne Ortega Jacob Emmett and Brandon knee. Thank you you guys. Thank you for attending and we appreciate you having here and The floor is yours

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Mr. Chair, Mr. Fanning, board members, it's very good to be here in person today. Just traveled down yesterday, spent a little time here, enjoyed my birthday yesterday. Happy birthday. I'm glad to be here today. For the record, my name is Alton Joe Shepherd. I have the honor of serving as this year's CSA president. And so I wanted to be here to thank you for your involvement with CSA. Your partnership and your organization makes CSA a very important and effective collaboration. I'm very grateful for the board's voice at our association and it carries a lot of weight when we have all members present, all 15 counties in the state. And as you know, when I took office or took my position here, I made it very simple as far as making those connections and connecting the ships. And so I made it as a goal for me to go and visit all 15 counties. And I have done so so far and it's travel. I learned a lot from that process. So I just want to say thank you for being there. I also like to thank Supervisor Carlos Davis for his service with our association on the Legislative Policy Committee. It's a committee that I've served on for many years as well and it's very, very important every Friday as we get together and we have our sessions to go over and elaborate on the state statutes and all the bills that are going through our legislative during their legislative session. I ALSO WANT TO ADDITIONALLY LIKE TO THANK SUPERVISOR MOLARA FOR HIS PERCEPTATION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL, NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF COUNTY AS HE REPRESENTS OUR ASSOCIATION THERE. FOR MANY YEARS HE'S BEEN THERE, VERY EFFECTIVE LEADER AND HIS LEADERSHIP TO PUT US AT THE NATIONAL STAGE AS WELL. AND SO I JUST WANT TO THANK SUPERVISOR MOLARA. Again, joining me today is Jacob Emnett, and he's here to brief you in regarding all the issues that CSA has worked on this past year. But before I turn the time over to him, I'd like to also extend our invitation to our most important meeting of the year, which is Our CSA summit which is going to be in Flagstaff and Coconino County October 6th through the 8th and so if you haven't registered, please get registered and hopefully we'll have a great dialogue there as we all do and that's always the most important part of our sessions and our meetings is when we have that and and so again thank you mr chair um and colleagues there it's always good to see you guys here great to be here in nogales as well and um got to see a blessing earlier and uh it's just coming from my neck of the woods you know it's it's an everyday thing and i like to see that in our younger generations you know as we come together is when people to celebrate life that we have. So again, thank you very much for giving me this time to introduce Mr. Emnett. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

So good morning, Chair Fanning, Supervisor Carlos-Davis, and Supervisor Malera, as well as Jesus, Alma, and the rest of the team. My name is Jacob Emmett, and I'm the Legislative Director for your County Supervisors Association of Arizona. I want to thank you for providing me the time today, and as Supervisor Shepherd said, for your participation in our association. It is a real pleasure to be with you here in Nogales. It's gorgeous, but also it's about 10 degrees cooler than it is in Phoenix. and to be able to present on our activities in the most recent fiscal year and the legislative session. I know you're very busy. I'll only cover a few specific points of emphasis on each of the slides, but please feel free to chime in. If you have any comments or questions on the items, or if you see something I didn't cover that you'd like to discuss, there's sort of a stopwatch running up here, so I am trying to be timely with my presentation. Alma, could we go to the next slide? Perfect. So I'm sure there's at least a few people watching here who don't know a thing about us. I do want to quickly sum us up. We're a nonpartisan organization that represents all of the state's 61 county supervisors across each of the state's 15 counties at the state legislature as well as beyond. We serve as a centralized intergovernmental office and we've worked to build a research and data function that communicates the county perspective to policymakers and the general public. If I could have the next slide, please. Thank you. So we're governed by our board of directors, which includes every single supervisor, and we're led by our executive committee, which is a six-member board that includes two supervisors from larger counties, two from medium-sized counties, and two from smaller counties. And as the supervisor mentioned, during the legislative session, when the monthly meetings of our board are insufficient to keep up with the pace, we are directed by a 15-member legislative policy committee on which Mr. Carlos Davis serves that meets weekly. I wanna thank him for his service on that committee. I know that these meetings aren't convenient, and they can certainly run a little long, but they do ensure that we're continually accountable to you guys and that your county's perspective is represented, and we really appreciate that. And while I'm talking about our leadership, I also wanna thank Supervisor Mullera, who serves as our representative on the National Association of Counties Board of Directors that ensures our state has a voice at the national level.

Next slide, please.

So this slide lists a number of the ways that we provided value to supervisors and professional staff throughout the year. The first thing, and I believe this is going to be the blue, we serve on and track committees that are dealing with county relevant policies. Some of the most important are the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System Board of Trustees, on which our Director of Strategic Initiatives, Brandon Nee serves. He's never here when I get to say that, so I get to gesture to him now, as well as the Governor's recent Energy Promise Task Force. Second, we convene supervisors and speakers from various sectors. Those are in orange. This year, we were able to host the Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, the new administrator of PSPRS, representatives from the State Land Department and more. And then finally, in green, we conduct regular briefings for affiliate groups that work within the counties. This includes your managers and administrators, but also your planning directors, finance officers, your civil deputy attorneys and more. Next slide, please. One of the things we are most proud of is our research and data analytics functions. Those are led by Vernessa Fielder, who's our director of research and analytics, and those allow us to quantify and better communicate the things that you guys and your counties do daily. Our new website, which we refreshed last year, has made a great platform to host the content we create. We had a really old one beforehand, so it's nice that we have a new one. things like reports, visuals, and videos to share it with you, your staff, state policymakers, as well as the public, and that's countiesupervisors.org. Next slide, please. So developing all of this content is only achievable by sourcing, cleaning, and storing massive amounts of data that's already publicly available. We're currently using about 60 million points of data, which are spread across 45 years and just under 2,000 metrics. All of that helps our team to build a variety of tools to help demystify local government for people, which include, next slide please. Our data tools. So if you haven't had a chance to look at these on our website, I'd highly suggest it and I'd start with the county encyclopedia. The specific data that these tools provide on a county by county basis is really astounding and our capacity in this area only continues to grow. We just continue to add to what's available. Next slide please. Thank you. So the benefits of having this plethora of data and related visualizations means we're able to quickly create issue or policy specific briefs or explainers as topics emerge at the legislature. Vanessa and Zoe Averill, our research and budget analyst, have outdone themselves this year. They've created 10 textable policy briefs as well as videos on county services and specific fiscal analyses. I guess the question is, why are textable policy briefs important? But the state legislature generally, and the legislators specifically, are really deluged with emails, hundreds a day. And a short, easily digestible brief on their phone is sometimes the best way to reach them. So when we've sent them out, we've gotten great responses from staff. And in addition to being ready for information, our database helps tell us where more or better data might be necessary. And so this has led our association to receive three grants from the state's Board of Regents, two separate sense-completed studies on recruitment and retention for PSPRS and CORP, and one for an ongoing study on procurement. Next slide, please. Here are some of the broad briefings we've done to date. As you can see they're on important recurring topics that are difficult to fully explain in the 15 minute meetings we generally get with legislators and their staff. Things like property taxes generally, state funding for probation, county all tax payments and more. Next slide please. And these are just some of the very specific policy specific briefings we've done as well as a little itinerary of our work with the Board of Regents. Next slide please. And last, but certainly not least, I do want to take a second to talk about Creatures of Statute, the association's new podcast. For decades, we've done great written work and one-on-one briefings with members. But as you know, legislators and their staff are busy. And it can be hard to get a meeting. And it can be very hard to get them to pick your email out of all the ones they receive each day. And so the podcast really tries to meet people where they're at. and gives us a way to educate everyone on counties while they are doing something else like driving, working, or exercising. Craig and Zoe have done unbelievable work on this in the years. So since we've started it, they've published 32 episodes with 16 guests that are spanning a number of different topics. They were, I think, in the studio while I was in the office just a few days ago doing another one. And Vanessa, Zoe, and Brandon have also spun off another podcast off the charts for deep dives on the stories behind the data. And those are all available on Spotify if you're interested. I'm really excited about this. I really can't give Zoe and the team enough credit. Zoe participates in many of the podcasts, but she also edits them and she wears a ton of hats for the organization. Next slide, please. Okay, now on to the legislative session. So they ended just over a month ago. They adjourned sine die on June 13th. The session was record breaking in that it saw the highest number of bills ever introduced, more than 2,000 in total. What I found interesting was that this didn't really translate into a higher number of bills that became law. So the legislature actually introduced less bills total last year, but more of them became law. Our team worked really hard to try and get the county message out. We were able to hold over 100 combined meetings with legislators before and during session, not counting when we're gonna try to grab them in the hallway or talk to them on the phone. And we testified 49 times on a variety of bills. We're really working to make sure that those numbers keep rising and that we keep getting out there. Next slide, please. so on the budget debate about conformity with the federal government's hr one or the one big beautiful bill act dominated the f y twenty twenty seven budget discussions as you know both the federal and state governments impose an income tax and when the federal government enact specific changes like its expansion of tax deductions that we saw in hr one the state needs to decide if it wants to adopt those changes into the state's tax code This year, total conformity with those changes would have reduced state revenues by about $438 million. And when you keep in mind that the state really only had about a $378 million surplus and that it still needed to have money afterwards for nearly $400 million in ongoing one-time costs, you can see where the math really starts to get challenging. In the end, the state settled on nearly full conformity with HR1, and they were able to make the numbers work by sweeping some funds, cutting some agencies, and adjusting some caseload expectations. Next slide, please. So this slide looks like a complicated slide, but it really just shows you incoming state revenues, outgoing state funds, and starting balances across the next three fiscal years. I'd really like to draw your attention to the ending balance row, which is that bolded one in the middle of the table, and specifically the one that's in that little white square. This is how much cash the legislature and the governor are projected to have left at the end of each budget year after they've paid for all the things they're already committed to. as has been common they have spent almost all of the money they could have given what they're expected to see so in fy 2028 they have an ending balance of just 24.3 million dollars on an 18 billion dollar budget so if anything unexpected happens let's say the economy does poorly and revenues come in lower than expected or more people participate in state government programs and costs come in higher than expected we could be right back in a deficit and the state has left itself very very little buffer next slide please So this is a summary of how county financial priorities fared in the 2027 budget. In general, green means we achieved exactly what we wanted. Orange means we were able to achieve what we wanted, but not quite in the way we wanted. And then red means we were unable to get the item included in the budget. We were able to get the state to fund the raises for its probation officers in FY 2027. As you know, since any funding increases necessitated by raises were pulled out of the state's baseline about five years ago, and as raises have been continually necessary to recruit and retain these necessary public safety personnel, the association has had to continually return to the legislature to ask it to put forward the funding necessary to make its own state officers whole. As the number has grown and the legislature has resisted any ongoing spending, this has grown more difficult. We were very happy to see this included as the $10 million not being included would leave these state funded public safety officers high and dry. While the state's budget does put in the necessary funding ongoing for FY 29 and beyond, it does not include the funding for FY 2028. I imagine that has a lot to do with that small amount of money we saw they had remaining to them for new projects. and as such we will need to focus again on seeing those funds included in the budget next year we were also able to see one-time penalty relief for the spending of opioid settlement dollars in excess of the expenditure limit protection of county pass-through dollars from agency cuts and the state make good on its promise to hold the county's harmless from increases to corp employer contribution rates that were imposed in the fy 2026 budget One quick thing I wanted to note, our team really tries hard to double check the state's work on the budget. And so when we saw the all tax costs for FY 2027, we double checked them. And because of what our team found, we were able to save counties about $4 million in total on this year's contributions. Next slide, please. This slide just shows some of the other counties' impacts of the budget. Of note, despite there being no bill to specifically increase Superior Court judge salaries, there was referral, it would have set up a different structure, but it didn't necessarily increase salaries immediately. These salary increases have again made their way into a final budget. And the last pay raise for Superior Court judges really just took effect in January 1st of this year, so there's another one scheduled. As you know, counties must pay part of the cost of superior court judge salaries, but these salaries also affect the salaries of a number of other judicial officers. Those are justices of the peace, court commissioners, and judges pro tempore, who are also county costs. And that means for every $1 the state spends on judicial salaries, and every $1 it commits, we have to spend over $2. Moving forward, we'll continue to educate legislators and staff about the statutory linkages between these salaries and other officer salaries. And we'll also explore, as we did this year, trying to find some mechanism that holds the counties harmless for these raises that the state continues to find essential. Next slide, please. Here's the final tally of our legislative priorities. We're really happy to see seven different priorities signed into law, including fixes to election timelines, expanding protections for county logos and brands, permitting counties to access existing financial assistance from WIFA to remediate cesspools, making common sense changes to state regulations, and providing additional protections for residential solar customers. Two priorities, one to dedicate ongoing funding to wildfire mitigation, and another to increase the financial liabilities that the governor's emergency council may incur in response to emergencies were not enacted. And while there's at least some understanding amongst legislators of the need to resource emergency mitigation response, the barrier to such proposals continues to be a combination of their resistance to authorizing additional ongoing expenditures, so committing kind of for the future and the tight budgets. These discussions will be increasingly important as the federal government mulls over how it wants to change the role of FEMA. Next slide, please. So as you all know from our legislative policy committee, a tremendous amount of our efforts are directed towards reactive advocacy, and that's responding to bills that legislators put into the process that affect counties. We engaged on a number of different issues this year, but there's two I wanna highlight for you. First, there continues to be a conversation about the increasing need for energy generation. And we've seen legislators and interest groups focus on proposals that try and speed development and deployment of these resources. Unfortunately, a number of the bills this year tried to accomplish those goals by cutting locally elected officials like the board out of the process by exempting these projects from zoning under conditions. We know that questions of siting, like where a plant is sited, are really important to the community where the infrastructure is located. And as officials who reside in those areas and who are elected locally, you're currently the participants in the process with the most connection and accountability to local residents. So we've consistently opposed proposals that exempt these structures from local zoning if they get approval from federal or statewide bodies, which would remove the decisions from the people who will impact the most in favor of people who are further removed from the community. While they didn't succeed this year, we definitely expect to see them reintroduced in future years. Second, there continue to be discussions around the criminal justice system. Those include on the funding side, the state eliminating fees without appropriating money, which shoves costs down to counties. And on the practitioner side, and as you know, we provide indigent defense, prosecution, public fiduciary service, and much more. So we'll continue to monitor those going forward. Next slide, please. This slide is just a small cross-section of the bills that were enacted into law. One bill I'd like to single out is Senator Hilde Angus's SB 1167. It represents a compromise on public notice between local governments and the Arizona Media Association, which represents the state's newspapers. It makes meaningful improvements specifically in how it restructures notice to not punish local governments for extended production timelines and related early submission requirements that they shouldn't be responsible for. There are also bills that prohibit placing a tax or fee increase or matters discussed in executive session on the consent agenda and that expand the information that eligible entities, which includes public officials but also peace officers, can request be protected. The general effective date, the date on which most bills become effective is September 12th of this year. And we've sent out an official legislative summary containing all the provisions of all the county relevant bills to you and your staff to try and help assist with that. But please always let us know if there's anything more we can assist with. Next slide, please. This slide just talks about the agencies that were up for continuation this year. One thing I'd note, there was significant discussion about changes to laws governing the disposition of state land, and a number of those changes did make it into the continuation for the department. Your county does have some state land on its northern edge, as well as around Sonoyta and Elgin, and so just would recommend a review at your convenience. Next slide, please. Finally, the ballot referrals. I actually need to update this one because stuff just happened yesterday on it. As you know, the legislature and the citizens can get measures on the ballot. The legislature has made great use of that ability to try to pass measures that the governor might have otherwise vetoed. So they passed three legislative referrals in 2025 and an additional seven legislative referrals in 2026. And then the citizens, up until yesterday, were able to get one initiative, the necessary signatures. There are three that have some relation to counties. SCR 1004 prohibits implementation of a vehicle mile travel tax. We don't do that, but the idea has been tossed around in other states as a way to get EV users to pay for their use of the roads. HCR 2044 would expand. the existing state constitutional band against state, counties, and public entities engaging in preferential treatment on the basis of ethnicity, and HCR 2001 would mandate on-site tabulation and presentation of government-issued ID at the time of voting. There has been a lot of back and forth legally on these referrals. So at present, HCR 2040 and HCR 2048, which you see up there with kind of red, have been struck from the ballot by the Superior Court. We do expect the striking of HCR 2048, that top right one, to be appealed. And then the Citizen Initiative, all the way on the right, the Protect Education Act, also saw a legal challenge. And I think just yesterday it concluded that they didn't have the signatures to get on the ballot. And so they were about 15,000 signatures short. You need around 250,000 in total. Next slide, please. I guess all that is to say that the length of the ballot with respect to the referrals is still very much in flux, as Alma knows. These are all the work products we've gotten out ahead of next session. I believe our legislative summary, our CFO guide, and our annual report were all sent out a few weeks ago. But of course, always happy to answer questions on them. Next slide. Perfect. So additionally, having just wrapped this last session up, we're just about ready to start preparing for the coming session. Submissions to our policy development process were due last Friday. We received a record number of proposals, about 31 in all, so there's a lot of work ahead of us. Luckily, we'll be heading somewhere beautiful. We're excited to be returning to Coconino County for our policy summit in early October, and we hope to see you there. Next slide, please. This is the last one. Thank you so much, Alma. Finally, just on behalf of all the CSA staff, including Penny, our Director of Financial Services, and Yvonne, our Executive Assistant and Special Products Coordinator, who are both very important but who I haven't been able to mention, I want to thank you for giving me much of your time today and for sticking with me through this and for your engagement in our association. We are all really, really proud to serve you and be on Team Santa Cruz. I am more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Vice Chair? No, just thank you for coming down. It's nice to see everybody here.

Yeah, of course.

Good presentation.

Thank you for your presentation, wow. That was to the point, concise, and well-timed, thank you. Thank you for reporting, we really appreciate it. We appreciate your partnership.

Jacob, thank you so much. Thank you to President Shepard, Yvonne, Brandon. What an incredible organization to be part of, to be on the collaborative nature of our organization, CSA, is pretty incredible. And all the things that you do on behalf of the counties, very much appreciated by Santa Cruz County. So thank you so much, Jacob. Thank you.

Thank you.

At this time, we're gonna move to item, let's see, G2. Discussion possible action to ratify pro forma, pro forma number 108552 with West Coast Arborists Incorporated for removal of a eucalyptus tree and stump. grinding to address hazard at the Tubac Community Center in the estimated amount of $12,300 public works. Do I have a motion?

Move.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Discussion? Any discussion? I'm gonna, go ahead, Mr. Young, and then I'll chime in.

First of all, I want to thank the group from the Tobacco Community Foundation for being here. This was a very tough decision. It's a beautiful tree. It's representative of the area, but it's just become such a danger for the community there, the building there, and the people that are there. So it's necessary that it's removed.

Thank you. I know on social media, Ann Gortatis, formerly Ann Seaman, her dad is the one that planted that, if I'm not mistaken, a long, long time ago. And although it pains me to say that this is the best move possible, this is the best move possible. It's already created damage to the building on two different occasions. It's damaged at least two vehicles that I'm aware of. And although it's beautiful, the one thing that we cannot have is loss of property is tough to deal with. I mean, because we've had to do so. But loss of life associated with something like this, it's to me, although it's a difficult decision, it's not a difficult decision because when you're talking about people's safety, that has to come first. So I totally get that. We have support from organizations in moving forward. The only thing I will ask is I got a text earlier today, and I just want to make sure I put this on record here, if there's anything we can do. And maybe you can look into this, Chris, and talk to that company. Hope that the wood could be utilized and wonder if the trunk area could be used by Art at Two McCockery Mesquite to make beautiful tabletops and so forth. So just a thought. I don't know if that's doable or not, but it could help a local business perhaps. And anyone who's seen... You know, the tables around two back that are incredibly expensive but incredibly beautiful. I'd like to see that happen. Mr. Young?

All I say is we can look in and see what can be done with the wood, definitely.

Please do, yes. This company is very well known and I hold them in high regard, so hopefully they'll be able to make that happen. With that, do you have anything to add?

You don't wanna hear what I have to say.

That you just bought a table like that?

No, I want the tree transplanted into your property. Just kidding, just kidding.

Okay, with that said, we'll go ahead and move forward with the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye, motion carries unanimously.

You're gonna have to answer to my wife.

Number G3, discussion possible action to ratify invoice number emergency-26-SCC01 with the Nova Engineering LLC for bank protection and concrete slop installation at Holcomb Drive in connection with the 2026 monsoon emergency in the amount of 142,917.60. This was requested by Public Works. Do I have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion?

Can I just add something? This was in partnership with the city of Nogales, right?

Yes, these are the projects that we identified when we had that initial storm that damaged part of the wash. So we're just ratifying, making sure that everybody knows what's going on with it. And yes, it is in partnership with the city of Nogales. Perfect.

I want to personally thank the city for partnering with us.

Thank you, and that's for three and four, right?

I believe so, yes. I'd like to thank Inova, the city, and all the folks at the county who helped bring that under control. The fast action, I think, by all involved very much helped the situation. Okay, we'll move forward with the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Number four. Mr. Chair.

Yes, sir, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I think we have a typo.

It should be slope, not slope. Slope, okay.

Thank you.

For the record, concrete slope. I thought it was a technical term, so I just read it as it was. Slop. It's supposed to be slope. Okay, number four. Discussion possible action to ratify invoice number emergency 26-20. SCC02 with Inova Engineering LLC for bank protection and concrete slope installation at Hohokam Drive in connection with the 2026 monsoon emergency in the amount of $101,839.65. Do I have a motion?

I move. Second.

Been moved and seconded. Discussion? Mr. Manager? Mr. Young?

This is still the same two projects that we mentioned, yes.

Thank you, sir. Okay, we'll move forward with the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Okay, at this time, entertain a motion to leave regular session and move into item H, jail district. I move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. We are now in jail district number one. Discussion possible action to approve agreement with Trinity Services Group Incorporated for an annual adjustment to the meal prices at the Santa Cruz County Adult Detention Center reflecting a 3.5% increase based on the Consumer Price Index for food away from home effective October 1st, 2026.

Move to approve. Second.

And it's moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, go ahead.

Oh, the food increase is happening everywhere.

Yeah. So. Necessary. Yes. All right, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. At this time, entertain a motion to reconvene into regular session. I move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Item I, consent agenda. I have a motion to approve as presented.

Move to approve.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. And with that, do I have a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn the meeting. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. We are adjourned at 1114. Thank you.