Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Great. Good morning everybody and welcome to our last regular board of supervisor meeting this year. If we could stand now for the pledge, please. President Bondor, can you lead us? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great. Start with staff announcements. And we have Swey this morning. Good morning. Morning, Miss Medina. Good morning, board chair. Honorable members of the board. Hi, Shauna. Sweetie and Shauna.

So, as you can tell, Sweetie is really sweet. She is an intact female boxer bulldog. She's approximately two years old and weighs about 73 pounds. She was found wandering near Cal um Calaveris Airport at the Cement Bridge on Highway 49. She's super easygoing and has an affectionate temperament. And we suspect she was someone's beloved pet because she is very well trained as you can say. She sits, stays, and goes down. And we were told that we were standing in the wrong place the whole time. So they were getting they were getting a little shot of Shauna the whole time. She walks really well on a leash and keeps her kennel clean. This girl will be a great ad addition for a human family and will need to be spayed before she goes home. Again, we don't know her temperament towards cats. For our dog volunteers and our cat volunteers, our dog volunteers gave 727 hours over that because it was 70 727.25 of their precious time in November and 14 pups went to their forever homes. Our CAT volunteers gave 101 because it was 101.85 ate five hours they gave of their prec precious time and eight kittens went to their forever homes. Again, CCAS would not be able to operate without our dedicated volunteers and can we can never thank them enough and we are truly grateful for their kind and for these kind and caring humans. I did promise our statistics for uh 2025, Calaveris County Animal Services took in 310 pups. That's one pup a little over one pup per day. We had to unfortunately uh euthanize 27 of those and probably over half of those were hit by cars that were brought in by our public and uh good good people. Two went to the Calveris um Humane Society. 16 were direct transfers to other shelters. 137 were adopted by our community and 112 were redeemed by the owners. That means

that they were we took in pups and the owners came to us um to pick them up. For our cats, we took in 238 cats. We had to euthanize 28 cats. Unfortunately, we get in a lot of sick cats hit by car cats. Four went to the uh CHS, the Calaveris Humane Society. One was a direct transfer. 89 were adopted by our community and 14 were redeemed by their owners. To support Focus and CCTV, the Love Your Pet Contest is still on and it's up and running. To enter, take a cute picture or video of your pet and what picture of any pet is not cute and send in your entries to calivar communitygmail.com. The award ceremony will be held in conjunction with our CCAs second annual Valentine Speed dating event in February. Prizes will be awarded, including four $50 gift certificates, two season tickets to Murphy's Theater, and some libations if you're over 21. Winning photo videos will be aired on the Calaveris community TV and published in the Pine Tree Net. This contra contest runs through January 31st. Our pets giving is still on through December 25th, Christmas. We are still looking for some donations from our community um for our community animals and our pantry. Some items we have received already include canned and dog cat food, bags of dog and cat food, toys for our cats and dogs, and blankets. And that is all I have.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Shauna. Thank you, sweetie. Sheriff White. Good morning, Sheriff.

Good morning, everyone. Uh, I'm sure many of you saw the sheriff's office press release about a week ago, uh, regarding a search warrant service and a couple subjects that were arrested in regards to their dogs attacking livestock. So, um, I just wanted to come up behind Lisa and commend Calver's County Animal Services for coordinating with the sheriff's office under Director Medina and Michael Vasquez. Um they're working short staffed with limited resources and they're actually working on they did to complete that investigation and uh working on a number of investigations uh stemming from irresponsible pet owners. Uh so I just want to remind everyone that Calver County does not have a leash law quote unquote uh but title six of our local ordinance focuses on animals. Uh this includes responsible pet ownership, requiring dog licenses, addressing nuisance barking, prohibiting abandonment, and prohibiting dogs from running at large. Meaning dog owners must exercise due control of their animals and prevent them from running at large or trespassing upon the private property of another person without consent. Um most of uh uh most of the charges are infractions in our ordinance, but they can escalate to misdemeanors, especially for some of these ongoing problems. So really, I just want to come up and commend animal services that they are doing what they can with their limited resources, but please everyone for for public safety, for the quality of life of your neighbors, please uh exercise responsible pet ownership. Thank you.

Thank you, Sharon. Morning, Mr. Martin. Hi, Michael Martin, your public works director. I have with me here today Caleb Brock. He's the deputy director of Cal Transover Planning and we'd just like to share a few updates on a couple active projects that are going on. Thank you, Mah. Thank you, Caleb.

Members of the board, good morning. My name is Caleb Brock. I know some of you I'm the deputy district director captions district 10 for planning local assistance and environmental support. Uh my team primarily focuses on the pre-planning, planning, project initiation. Um but I'm in close contact with you know the other functions of construction and maintenance. Um and just wanted to come out and just give a few uh updates. Uh, I know the Murphy's project has obviously been on everyone's mind and we've been working diligently in the district office uh to move forward and figure out, you know, um what we can do to mitigate those uh concerns. Um and it's not just going to be a splash and go. Um I know that um the the barriers are are inconvenient and they're hard to navigate. Um we've got a team out that that will be out there uh today, tomorrow and on Thursday and striping should be finalized on Friday. Um but if not it will be Sunday. Um and we will be monitoring the situation moving forward and um because this was a identified as a safety project um action needed to be taken quickly. uh Calrans, you know, when we build projects, it's a long lead and there's lots of uh steps that we go through and and and engagement and and but for safety projects, there's a limited

uh amount of options that we can do to mitigate the situation um quickly and and efficiently and this was the best option uh moving forward. But as I said, we're going to be monitoring that and uh we work me, my team and the rest of the folks in the district, we work closely with with Micah and the county. Um and my team works a lot with the cog uh as on the on the planning side. Um but we we have been hearing you. We have been hearing your concerns. we're on it and and and you know I'm the big picture long range guy and so I'm I'm thinking holistically and we've got the complete streets you know project in the pipeline and so we will be incorporating all of the additional enhancements we can to ensure that safe safety mobility and that the public can can move through through Murphy's and of course the county region uh as well. Um and then the other one on the the Valley Springs. Um the project is almost complete. Uh they we should be done by uh February. Uh we had a delay with one of the uh the lights as well as the uh permit with PG& to get the signal on. Um but uh we're going to be buttoning that up and that will be done uh in February. And again the same thing like putting the light in there. We understand that that that there's, you know, fear and concerns around those things, but we've done the safety investigations and we will be monitoring that situation as well moving forward and make any enhancements and and engagement and follow up with the county as well to ensure that, you know, mobility and safety can flow. So, uh, happy to answer any questions that the board has or, you know, send back any followup. I don't have any questions at the moment. Supervisor Topelli.

Yeah, Caleb, thank you. Thank you for coming in today. Um, as I spoke at COG meeting last week, I want to thank Calrans uh for working with the fire district there getting that issue resolved. Um, I think they're very happy. Last Wednesday, they met and looked at the panel that they had to so it can accommodate what they need. So, I want to thank you on that. Um, I want to thank you for opening up the other lane, the turn lane. Now it's open. It's been blocked off for a long time, but you guys got it open. I want to thank you on that. Um, and um, again, the four-way stop as you brought up, that's going to be, I think, a big issue when you get the lights in. So, if you could start doing some surveying now, maybe I'd appreciate it so we maybe avoid some situation that could happen there. And then I want to thank Calrans again for the St. Charles Street project here. Uh putting the 10 parking places back and getting rid of the um what was going to be there um and opening that back up. That's a big thing here in St. in uh um San Andreas. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Bondorf.

Um I have a couple questions about the motion. Um with the hawk from a safety standpoint um the county went after the hawk um grant at Penn G and um highway 4. If why wasn't that considered in slowing down traffic um in lie of the median? Um, I kind of feel like it got flipped around and that's been really the intersection of concern and that's why we were aggressively going after the Hawk um for that project. Um knowing that, and you mentioned it in your update, um down the line hopefully um the safe street project would be funded um through a grant um grant means and that whole area would be improved based on public comment from the community already almost what was it 2018. Um on what that intersection is like. I mean, I the amount of money that's going in right now, wouldn't h would that end up getting taken out with the safe street project? Because then you're you're obviously going off of a plan, but I just I feel like it's getting the whole thing is getting broken up for that long longer picture, that bigger picture down the road. And I know that it's m money is everything. Um, but why wouldn't we? If we've got the hot going in, that's going to definitely slow down traffic before that intersection and kind of pump the brakes on brakes on the medium project so we can accomplish it. I you said a bigger picture rather than chop this whole thing up.

If I could jump in on that also really quickly, the the hawk program, we did get the the grand asorf said, but it's not going to be for another year, year and a half before that starts to go in. And I've asked numerous times for some sort of temporary measure so that people know that that crosswalk is there. It's very I I've personally have been in line when somebody I've stopped behind a car who had stopped for people crossing the person behind me because now there's that middle lane pulled into that middle lane to gun it because it couldn't figure out why we were stopping and nearly hit the people. um three months we've been sitting there with pylons in that median that could have honestly been used temporarily to show people that that crosswalk is there. Um I won't I won't get started. I want my constituents to talk. So I'll let if Caleb if you wouldn't mind just um answering some of their questions after public comment that would be awesome. Thank and thank you very much for coming. I really appreciate it and I'm sorry that you're the person that's here. And I could just speak a little bit more to Supervisor Bondorf's comments about the Hawk program. So the Hawk intersection crosswalk is, you know, primarily focused on pedestrian safety. So there's an effort to enhance that crosswalk, provide flashing beacons and and do other things to make it safer for pedestrians. The median itself is for vehicle safeties. So there's a safety project focused on vehicle safety and another safety project focused on pedestrian safety. The hog project is more of a planned project that they've been working on. That's why the lead time has been a lot longer. The median is more of a a minor a safety project which which is expedited much more quickly than the planned projects are. So that's what's why you're seeing a difference in the timing. But yes to your comment, we are looking at all the different nuances of the various projects that are happening in Murphy's and making sure that we're coordinating accordingly, not getting ahead of ourselves and doing improvements that we

may ultimately have to take out later. So that's part of what our focus is at this point is focusing on the other improvements that need to be done and try to package something together that's conducive and cohesive with with the other needs that are there. Now,

thank you. And then I have one more thing I wanted to to talk about like engagement you know as we when we build normal projects you know there's a certain amount of engagement that we that we do and and and we do that and we are currently in the early stages of de developing a district engagement playbook which is a statewide effort but then each district has their own uh playbook and there'll be more engagement. this the uh the flow of engagement from pre pre-plane planning on into maintenance will be better synchronized and um and part of what I was talking with uh project management uh yesterday about preparing for for today. And one way of of bettering our engagement with the board here is that project management can come we think twice a year um and spend 25 30 minutes uh do a presentation to the board about the upcoming projects and kind of timeline on things because we we have a lot of projects going on in Calveris County and you know in some of our smaller communities where where the state route is the is the you know the main route it's when we're working it's invasive and it you know the the improvements are great, but you know, if we can have your guys's participation and you're aware of what we're doing and you're aware of when we're going to be out and doing these engagement activities and you're there and participating, then we're all on the same page. Not everybody's going to be happy all the time, but at least we can share that information and uh, you know, work together on solutions moving forward. So, more to come on that and I'm happy to, you know, come back in a few months with the project management folks to, you know, to better inform the board. I have a question about that. How does that when you're building the playbook, how is that going to feed in when um a safety project like this automatically goes to headquarters? It doesn't filter

through the local jurisdiction. It doesn't filter through the district. And so then the investigation is getting done and then the opposite is happening. It's from coming from the top down, not the ground up. Um, and so how can and that's not something that I don't know if even district in the state of California can change at headquarters, but that is what has happened here. A citizen complaint has gone in. It has bypassed the entire what we are all normally used to in communicating with you and your colleagues at the district level, even our own staff gone to headquarters and now we're being it the opposite. And so, um, is there potential statewide policy on that before they start implementing into these playbooks so we can pump the brakes? You know, we can't be the only jurisdiction that's dealing with this, but there's got to be some of that happening as well.

Yeah, I I I I definitely hear the the question and I I sympathize with that. Um and and we do like you know headquarters is coming out with you know policy right but each just we're going to figure out what the best way to engage with our constituents of

district 10 we're we're we're a unique district. We have you know three valley counties and we have five rural counties and they all kind of act a little different. The constituents are different. the the needs and the terrains are a little bit different. And so our district playbook is going to be more conducive to what our partners need. And I talk about like my team is like pre-planning planning. The pre-planning is the relationships. You know, I'm I'm here today because, you know, my team deals more with the cities and the counties and they have the relationships. I have the relationship with the cog and like I'm I'm here to, you know, I I'm not an engineer. I don't have like technical stuff, but I'm here to say like

we're going to be engaging better. We're going to be doing a better job of like having regular conversations so that when we have a limited amount of time to, hey, we got the safety project, we got to take action now, like we're talking regularly and so we can have those conversations and work together on the solution. and realize that okay, we've got to do this now. It's going to be painful for a while, but down the road we can incorporate these other things and make the, you know, the whole strip through Murphy's better. And us, you know, not communicating that ahead of time definitely adds to. So, Caleb, actually, and again, I want my constituents to speak first, but I do want to say that three months ago, Micah and I were on a call and it was very evident that this wasn't a B project. And at that point, we asked if it was possible to sit down with the business owners, the community, and the county to figure out the way forward. And meeting after meeting, phone call after phone call, that never happened. Um, I'll leave it at that. But again, better communication is what we're all asking for. And I mean, I have the complete streets here. Again, it's eight years old. So, I mean, how does that factor in now? And I'm sure we'll be working with Micah to figure that out. But again, thank you for being here.

Um, uh, just thank thank you for stepping up and, uh, saying that you're planning on engaging more in the future. Um, that's a step forward. We all also know that you know more engagement can convolute in some situations but uh this this the issue with Murphy's it's happened other places and you know everyone in the community and I has got to realize also a lot of times afterthought engineering is 200% of the original project because you come up with issues that weren't foreseen and no nobody nobody nobody saw. So to mitigate that, I appreciate you taking the time to come here and say you're going to work on engaging us more in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Oliver. Morning. Morning, Len.

Morning, chair, members of the board. Doug Oliver, chief building official. I uh bring your board and the building industry a friendly reminder and a technology update. Um as your board is aware, the 2025 building standards code will be effective January 1st. So we are encouraging everyone to come in before December 31st at 4 p.m. any projects that they have ready to uh submit so that we get them into the current code cycle. Otherwise, they'll have to redesign their plans. We'd recommend they come in before 3:30, maybe come in a week earlier to make sure that we can get them through the system. We all we generally see a lot of people show up on the day at the end of the day and we'll accommodate everybody. We would prefer some patience and maybe even a a scheduled appointment. We're happy to take people in. Uh that being said, in addition, if for some reason a builder has uh plans that are substantially complete but are missing some key component, uh they can either come in with the what they have or uh schedule an appointment and we can get their application pre-reviewed and accepted to lock in that date and then they can come in with the rest of the information afterwards and start the review process. we still we have that program and uh we'll be we'll be running that so if anyone has any issues they can come in and we'll sort that out with them. Now I said that to take the the edge off of the next item which is our technology update. Uh as your board is aware December 1st we worked in earnest to uh update our permit tracking software. Uh the goal was to be able to allow for expanded online uh permit presence uh fee payment, electronic inspection and and planer view and uh in the testing it went swimmingly not so much in the live environment. So

we we are having uh errors uh affecting six departments currently. We are also uh seeing a a a few significant items we're working at that are preventing uh members of the public from accessing their uh dashboard and applying for permits or paying fees. We're currently working diligently with it and the vendor to solve those problems. Uh and we're encouraging anyone who has a online account if they cannot log in. It is uh a rather simple matter to fix uh with their password. we can reset their system manually and and allow them to set a new password and get back into the system. But for now, we are we are accepting u uh walk-ins, we are accepting appointments, we are accepting email applications to to get around this. And uh going back to my previous comment, if for some reason at you know December 31st at 4 p.m. if you attempt to submit an electronic application and it gets rejected, we're encouraging everyone to take a screenshot, get the date, if you have to come in, you know, the next day, we will honor that as the previous code cycle if they made an attempt and and somehow the system failed them. So uh we have multiple ways to get the customers served. We just want to encourage everyone to continue to participate and be patient. We will sort this out as soon as we can. If there's any technical questions that uh are below my pay grade, I've got the master of it here to answer your questions.

Are there any questions? Thank you, Doug. Very good. Thank you. Any other staff announcements? Morning. Good morning. I just came over to remind the board and the public that property taxes are due tomorrow by 5 pm. All right.

Yeah. Would you mind?

Oh, yes. No problem. Thank you. service. They don't show up to my house. Madam clerk, we'll move on to public comment.

Any item of interest to the public that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board and is not posted on the consent or regular agendas may be addressed during the public comment period. California law prohibits the board from taking action on any matter which is not posted on the agenda unless it is determined to be an emergency by the board of supervisors. If public comment is completed before the 30 minute allotted time period, the board may immediately move to the next order of business. If public comment is not completed during the allotted time period, it will be continued as the last item of business in order to provide an opportunity for the remainder of comments to be heard.

Thank you. Do we have anybody for public comment? Mr. Butner,

my name is Christopher Bunner, publisher of Calaver's 2026 election.com. It has now been 90 days without an acceptable resolution since CALR installed the concrete median and Murphy's on SR4. Two weeks ago, I stated here that CALR was not without fault in this concrete median debacle and that we would review important findings and facts at today's board meeting. The data-driven justification Calrans used for the median project was flawed. Facts and statistics support the argument that CALR made an error in judgment with their limited and aging data set used to justify this concrete median for installation during fiscal year 2025 2026 burdening our community with an unnecessary highway hazard. I recently filed public records requests with the California Highway Patrol and with CALR. My analysis of the preliminary responsive records received to date from CALR and the official final response of records just received from CHP indicate the May 2019 to March 2022 CALR traffic collision report summary that was used to justify the project was a statistical anomaly. The collision rate was 17 collisions in 34 months during the CALR study period from mid 2019 to early 2022. That's six collisions per year during the CALR study of that 1/ half mile segment of SR4. Newly received and analyzed CHP data reveals collisions per year have notably declined on an average in the 44 months since the end of this CALR study period. CHP's data specifically reveals that there have been only 12 collisions in the last 44 months, inclusive of November 2025 on that same 1/2 mile segment of SR4. That's only 3.27 collisions per year on average over the last 44 months. A

reduction by nearly half. That reduction in collisions per year represents a very significant metric that CALR failed to consider. Notably, there were no fatalities during the most recent 44-month time frame. I previously mentioned that the fatal accident Calrans cited in as partial justification for the median occurred more than 6 years ago in August 2019 and it was more than 13100th of a mile or two football fields east of the controlled intersection from where the concrete median ends. There is now more than enough empirical evidence obtained from this newly received and analyzed CHP traffic collision data to validate and justify the community's sentiment and demand 1900 voices strong and growing by online petition for the full removal of the concrete median and the restoration of SR4 from postmile 2949 to postmile 2962.62. My name is Christopher Butner, publisher of Calaver's 2026 election.com, a government watchdog and accountability blog. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Mr. Mau,

good morning members of the board. Peter Mau me of Murphy's. Um, first I want to thank uh Supervisor Huberty for all that he's done trying to fix the debacle as Mr. Butner described it of the concrete median. I appreciate the representative from Calrans being here today to hear our concerns. Um, I'd like to take just a moment to read a couple of things from CalFrance website. Their mission statement is improving lives and communities through transportation. And some of their core values are collaboration. We inspire and motivate one another through effective communication, teamwork, transparency, and partnership. I don't see that happening here. um innovation. We are empowered, excuse me, empowered to seek creative solutions and take informed risks and um people first. We consider how our work impacts people within the organization, within our communities and throughout California. In 2019, the county uh adopted a the Murphy's State Route 4 Complete Streets Plan. This was a plan that was funded by CALR. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on consultants, community meetings, public hearings. It went through the planning commission, the board, uh, council governments for approval, which was adopted. Um, half the project was built, um, several years ago from Pen Gulch to Main Street. Um, apparently uh, CALR ran out of funding to complete the project. So instead of putting in this barrier, why couldn't that money have gone to implement the other half of this plan which would have address the safety concerns as well as the multi multimodal transportation goals that CALR claims that they are um they're after allowing uh cycling and

walking as a part of the transportation planning uh for the communities of of this county. So, um I'm glad that Mr. Brock is here. Hopefully, uh he'll take some of this information back and work with the county and I implore the board to continue to work with Calrans to fix this problem. They're out there right now doing more work. Um I'm be curious to see what the result of that is. Um it's it's a hazard right now. traffic is being pushed into the median or to the the shoulder where cyclists and pedestrians have to walk. So, their supposed fix of this project has made matters worse. So, again, I thank you for your attention and continued work with Calrans and hopefully Calrans will hear us and work on implementing this plan rather than this so-called emergency plan that they have adopted. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Is there any other public comment?

Morning.

Morning. Isaac Rushing. Just to piggy back on what he said uh with I believe that the um the studies were flawed. Correlation doesn't prove causation as you said with the statistical analysis. Um I believe that um with that mentality we should redo the wagon trail realignment. A month ago, we had a rollover vehicle accident. Uh compound fractures patient was flown to the valley and that's one of the newest pieces of payment in the county. Um and a lot of that was because uh Calrans didn't take into consideration the track meet at the fairgrounds. So we had thousands of students coming up for that track meet and the light got backed up all the way to Pool Station Road creating a a hazard there. Um you can't have a relationship with community when the first thing you do is put bars around your office. Uh the CALR office is probably the third most secure place in the county besides the county jail, Angel's PD, and the CALR office. You can't have an open door policy with that. And they're just not um talking to the community. They're not integrating. The one way on Highway 26, you can't even get a fire bulldozer through there. You have to reroute them. uh the one way down on the wagon trail realignment. I've been sitting there when there's two CHP waiting with red lights on uh to go through uh Valley Springs. If you get dropped off at the end of town, you can walk down the sidewalk Taco Bell. That's going to be nice. Uh Angel's Camp has been a mess. Um I don't think there's a relationship at all with the county. Um and and that's a lot of the part the problem. Calr has become um just a process just they're they're doing their job but it's just become a process and it's almost um to the point where um it's like Calaver's county is being punished because of our political stand whether the county in general took a stand against Newsome's impeachment or the Democratic or excuse me the Republican vote for the president it feels like they're punishing Calvary

County on all the projects and they're not getting input from Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other public comment, Julie River?

Okay, we'll move on then. Uh my name is Shannon Gazetta. I'm also a resident of Murphy's business owner there, parent. I will say that I think uh better engagement is a great goal and totally accomplishable because there has been zero at this point. They've ignored thousands of residents. We've ignored all government agencies, including all of you, and continued work on a project that was both unnecessary, faulty information, and is creating so many more risks that you all are going to have to deal with because it's not going away. So, you all are going to have to invest your time figuring out what is our safety plan going forward. When students and parents are separated by a cement divider and emergency crews can't get between them, how is that going to affect our community down the line? When the supermarket can no longer sustain itself and our elderly residents nearby need support for their groceries, your public agencies are going to have to come up with additional funding to help them. When the enrollment at the school drops, causing changes to our school dashboards, affecting our ability to recruit teachers, which is already really hard in our rural area, as well as home sales. Then our property taxes decline. You will have to find additional funding. The list of ramifications goes on and on

and all of the projects that are in the works. If you think they're going to move smoother than this one, I wish you good luck. I will say that this morning, signage went up for notice before after the trucks had rolled into town as kids were being dropped off for school. There is no account for community involvement thus far. No plans have been shown to anyone of the work that is being done literally as we speak. And that's completely unacceptable for CALR just to do whatever they want with no input and barely an acknowledgement is completely unacceptable and I wish the future projects luck.

Thank you Shannon. Is there any other further public comment? Caleb, do you want to address any of those questions?

Uh, thank you. Yeah, I I did I heard the concerns. Um, I know we've been we've been hearing these things and yeah, uh, just because I'm here and talking about engagement and relationships. It's great talk, but you know, Calrans, me, my team, like we need to step out and we're committed to better engagement, listening, participating, informing um, so that the projects that we build uh, are beneficial to the community. and improve safety and mobility uh throughout the region. Um

so yeah, appreciate appreciate the opportunity to come and uh yes, we will we acknowledge that we could have done better. We could have done a lot better uh and we will do better and um yeah, appreciate appreciate the

Thank you. Are there any other questions? Caleb, I just want to say thank you. Um I am very concerned about the urbanization of our rural roads. I think that this is an urban project or in the minds of CALR, it is an urban solution to a rural entity. Of the petition, I have 1,995 people that live in Murphy's. 1,928 signed the petition to have it removed. Calrans doesn't understand how we drive and how we use this road. Um, again, I'll just leave it with I I look forward to working with you and and working with this plan and figuring out how we can make it all better. Thank you so much for coming.

Any other public comment? We'll move on now uh madame clerk to the consent agenda. Consent agenda items are expected to be routine and non-controversial. They will be acted upon by the board at one time without discussion. Any board member, staff member, or interested party may request a removal of an item from the consent agenda for later discussion. Thank you. Would any board member like to pull any of the items? Seeing none, would any member of the public like to pull any of the items on the consent agenda? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the board. Move. Second. All in favor? I passes 5-0.

Move on now to the regular agenda. Item number 26. Item 26, agreement, public works. Approve and authorize the board chair to sign a stipulation for entry of judgment between the county of Calaveris and Discordia Ranches LTD partnership resolving Calabaris County Superior Court case number 20 CB45113. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Packinger.

Good morning. This item is the culmination of years of work, discussions, negotiations, and uh a lot of effort from many people uh behind the scenes, including um for us. We had an attorney that helped us tremendously on this. And uh that's what's before you at this point. So, I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. Uh just let's hurry up and do this before anything changes. Supervisor Baldorf. Um

I just wanted to um thank staff. Um this has been a multi-year um teamwork to get to this point and I appreciate uh county council and our outside council for dig digitently working on this and getting us to this point. So, thank you. Any other discussion? Any public comment regarding this issue? We have no online public comment. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the board. Move. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you, Robert. Thank you.

Move on now to item number 27.

Item 27, agreement, behavioral health one, fine project exempt from SQA. Two, authorize the board chair to execute a lease agreement with Patrick D. Craig and Katherine A. Craig, trustees of the Patrick D. Craig and Katherine A. Craig Family 2000 trust for building located at 590 Toyansza Drive, San Andreas for Health and Human Services Agency Behavioral Health Division for a term of December 9, 2025 through June 30th, 2035 at the monthly rate of 11,223 for the first year with an annual 3% increase thereafter. and three, approve a budget transfer increasing appropriations by $483,486 representing lease improvement and operational costs associated with the item requires a four-fifth vote of the board.

Thank you. Chair Huberty, I believe Marcus Munoz is on Zoom for this item. And as you've indicated, Miss Halt is also in the room. Thank you. There you Marcos, are you there? He's coming. Okay.

All right. Good morning, um, chair, members of the board, Marcus Munoz, Health and Human Services Director. My apologies for not being there in person. I'm currently battling the flu, so I thought it best to take the call online. Um, as the state transitions to the uh, behavioral health services act framework, um, DHCS is establishing new accountability requirements that require counties to demonstrate measurable progress in housing and homelessness outcomes. Um on April 8th of this year, uh BHS held a study session to discuss housing opportunities. Uh the board gave direction to not purchase any properties, but rather look at other options. Um we continue to work with our local nonprofits, but housing inventory is limited. Before you today is another um solution. We are proposing a master lease with property at 590 Toyanza. Um, we have also secured a grant to renovate the building. Uh, this lease will ultimately help us to reach our performance metrics. Um, I do want to be clear that this is not a shelter. Um, this is this item does require a four-fifths vote. Um, by taking this route, we do have control on who we place there. This is not intended for people outside of the county. This is intended for Calaveris residents. Um, and so with that, uh, I'm here to answer any questions if you have any.

Any board questions? Supervisor Bondorf, going to make me do it. Okay. Marcos, can you repeat uh something that you just said? Did you say it was board direction not to purchase? Not to purchase. That is correct.

When did we give that direction? That was at the April 8th meeting. Um, behavior health brought a study session. Um, we were looking at several um, buildings at that time or I should say this was prior to me being over behavior health was um, at that time they said the board gave direction that they didn't want to um, experience any of the costs with um, the building um, owning a building and having to put money into foundation roofs and so on. And so they asked us to look at partnering with nonprofits um which we have. Um and then as we were looking at that, we also found um that we we're looking at the master lease um route as well.

Um okay. Well, I'm going to backtrack whatever I said that day. Um I think at least for me because we were purchasing so many buildings at that time um I was fully expecting a presentation with multiple options not this not just be cornered into this you were still putting pouring half over half a million dollars into a facility. Um why was there not and you did it very well in the last um presentation you did when we purchased the last building this year. Um the pros and cons of a renovation versus a purchase. And so I guess I was kind of expecting that kind of presentation today um before I supported pouring this kind of money into a facility we don't own. Um, I'm a little concerned if this is a longevity of the longevity of this with the way that the state funds now require us to use these funds um to maximize to maximize it um to maximize uh housing this type of housing. So, I just I was honestly expecting more um of a more of a selection, a choice to better u make my decision today. So, um I get that we're limited and there's probably a timeline, but I also don't want to be put in a corner where we're spending over half a million dollars on something we don't own and we still got to pour 30% of this budget into it for until the state decides we don't have a mandate. um which could be 20 years from now. So

um what do you have any other informations of comparison that staff looked at um before we at least for me support this?

Yeah, we are we are constantly looking at properties that become available. Um as properties become available, we're also keeping in mind the access to services. Um it's it's difficult the further we get away from services uh for our clients. So yes, we are constantly looking. Um right now there just hasn't been a lot of inventory on the market. Um this property became available and it is close to services and so that is why um we have put it before you today and there wasn't an option to buy there. There is an option to buy on this building. Um we did not go that route based on um the prer meeting of

do you have those numbers on you right now if we were to make that consideration? Um I don't have those numbers. I can uh we can definitely get those numbers. We can bring it back at a future board meeting with those numbers. Um but I don't have those in front of me. Okay. Thank you. Ben. Uh Wendy, do you have the numbers? Um 750,000. 750,000. Yes. To buy the unit. Yes. Maybe. Uh

maybe. Oh, but well that's that's what you heard before. So right possibly could be the same or in the same vicinity. Um because my my cons, you know, circulation on this may, you know, maybe some more input from the public, but my greatest thing was it was a 10-year lease and being locked in on 10 years. Um I'm totally open-minded about this issue. I think uh look, we cornered you all with our decision in April, you know, and because we we were wanting to tread lightly, especially with the way prices come on properties. But, uh, I think, you know, looking back on that now, we should be open-minded, give you the opportunity to come in with multiple, you know, ways to come at it because then we could be more pragmatic on our decision when we move forward. I I personally uh would if if How are we on a timeline right now? If we were to ask to how's this going to do us with the state with our mandate?

We would lose the option um and quite a bit of money in one area to u move forward with this piece of it to do the renovations. Um we would so we would miss this upfront piece with the behavioral health bridge housing. We've already been pushed out quite a um bit and I've asked for extensions. Um we would just have to regroup and look at something else at that point and try to meet the mandate through the behavioral health services act and wouldn't have as much funding up front because right now we're working with the behavioral health bridge housing and what's our timeline? What's our timeline on what's our deadline on this one? We already passed it. So

So why are we getting this after the deadline? We shouldn't be put with a gun to our head. I I know. I know. So I mean it's Sorry. Can I ask a quick question? This has been hot lapped around a few times on a different on different issues. Yes. Can I ask you really quickly? I was under the impression that the contract's very hard to read online, but that we had a 60-day out clause in this contract. Yes. So, if we were to do this and theoretically it didn't work out or we were able to juggle, we would be able to get out of this within 60 days. Yes. Okay.

So, um so we're past the deadline on the funding. So, there's not an opportunity here to potentially um do a lease to buy on this building, especially if we're putting so much renovation funding into it. Um, I'm just asking if there's a different opportunity here. Correct. Because the request would have to the budget request and all of it would have to go to DHCS to be approved. It just has to go through different processes and it changes the application request there for approval and then it has to come back. Yeah. There's just different steps because it changes what we're asking for.

The bureaucracy is convoluting it. These are unrestricted funds in your budget to make a purchase offer while you still utilize the fund for the renovations. Marcus, does that even make sense? Yeah. No. Um, it does. We do have um we do have funds. I I of course would prefer to use state and federal funds to purchase rather than our local county dollars. Um it's just more prudent that way. Um, but I I wouldn't recommend using our local dollars to purchase it. I understand that, but given

the timeline, is there could we spend and then get a reimbursement as we go through the process? You're still going to be using those funds to pay a lease. So, I mean, do you how did that money work? like next year do you put in for or is this locked in for the next 10 years with this facility? I think so. Sorry. So part of the changes coming across with the BHSA um beginning July 1st um 2026, we will be required to take 30% of our MHSA dollars and um use that to pay for housing um as a whole housing services.

We don't have either. So that that will be July 1st, 2026. Um and and so that's still a little little ways away. Um right now, this lease that's in front of you, uh the renovation and the initial lease will be paid for by a grant um through uh June 30th, 2027.

I do think that we could also go back and look and discuss with the owners a lease option to buy while we're in the lease as well. I don't know that they would be opposed to that. Um, and I don't know that that would be much of a change with the funding because it would still be a lease just at the end it would be changing ownership of the lease. So, after 2027, right, option. So,

I Yeah, I I just I just see the price on it going up after the renovation money goes in. But but that's that's but that I mean this is part of the box we painted ourselves into with our with our April direction. Um I just we kind of we are kind of painted into a corner on it and it's partially are doing partially I disagree with that.

You I that's not what for debate today. Um, could Marcos could that work with the funding with July 1st and then that money that is supposed to use that 30% that you're supposed to use go towards um the purchase like lock in a purchase price now and then the monthly payment for this year out of that grant money go towards the overall purchase price. Is that something that we could do? Absolutely. um after this meeting today, we can also reach out to them and see if we can get that amendment to the lease as well and see if we can bring it back here um at one of the next board meetings um to solidify it as well.

The owners have been willing to work with us the whole time. So, that that is definitely an option. Yeah, but I'd rather at that purchase price that's more reasonable. I mean, I think at least when I was making my decision in April, we were doing multi-million dollar purchases

and we had to make some we had to pump the brakes. Um, this is rather reasonable, especially if we're going to pour nearly almost the cost more than half of what would even be the purchase, let alone a down payment. So, I'm at least I'm I'm open to buying the facility if you guys can make those numbers work and at least contract. But that's just me. Um I'll let the other board members speak. I I I completely agree with that. You know, um if we if we can find a way to work this into the lease that we're going into right now, I would definitely be willing to consider it.

Marcus, we have a long meeting today. Okay. Is there a chance that we would be able to get an answer on this in the next couple of hours? No, because it got routed through. No. So, I just if we're going to change the action that's proposed and then we have to we have to reagend. I I do have a question for this almost $500,000 renovation. H how many rooms how many living quarters for $500,000 is this house going to have?

We're looking at 10 to start, but it'll be in phases. So, it'll depend on the architectural concept that comes back. Um we're hoping on the first floor um individuals, but on the second maybe at least one family unit. So, $50,000 for each room cost for renovations. I will. If we purchase the building, we'll still have to renovate the building and come up with the funds for renovation. And that you're only talking half of the building right now, the bottom floor. So, we would have to come up with a million dollars to do the whole thing, renovate it. Is that correct or is that

But we have the funds. So, we have the funds and we're we spend them or it goes back to the state and it's not general. It's the behavioral health bridge housing grant that came and we just don't have enough space in the county to spend it right now. So, um we're using it in other areas that we can. It's just we don't have enough options to really use it at in and the length of time. Do you have any estimates? You have $483 estimate for the renovations. Have you had any contractors go in and look at it? I can't because I have to cuz you don't have so you're just this is what we have.

This is what we need step by step. Okay.

I would support you um looking at that lease to buy and bringing it back in January if that will fall within the BHSA. Can't make that work. I can't. You can't. No. No. Can't make that work because it's got to go. It's got to be like through the state you just said, right? If the board feels that this is when something like this comes up where you have to act, you could um a special meeting. Special meeting. Yeah. But the state channels uh but we still have to go route it to the state to get it to go. Um my consideration I I did throw up there for for the rest of

Did turn it off. I thought I always left it on. uh for the rest of the board is maybe uh think about moving forward with what we have now and giving direction to work towards a lease to buy by 2027 or because 2027's the time this grant ends or sooner if will or sooner if able. I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there because it's it doesn't seem like the circulation through the state and everything else to change contracts can even work with this grant. So, it's either use it or lose it. That's where we're at. Yeah, that's the corner we're paying it into. Correct.

That's what it feels like. I mean,

correct. The hard part is if we also lose the money that we have with behavioral health bridge housing and we end up with just the BHSA where we have to purchase with just those funds. We don't have the extra funds to um renovate and the aesthetics, the appeal, the curbside, the extras that you get to with the BHBH funds. Even if you're just leasing, you get to do those things with the BHBH funds. which we won't later on down the road. You just have to make it ADA compliant and all of that. So, I mean, it's tough. I understand.

After this after this building, um are there going to be consideration for this department to find um more housing in the county for this under this? I mean, is that is that a goal? That is a goal. Yes. So this is one piece to a bigger puzzle. Yes. Okay.

Supervisor Andol has anything to say? I think we have to go forward. I will make a motion to move. Oh, hang on a second. I've got to get public comment first. Okay. Is there any public comment regarding this? Sorry. It's credit. I

I just want to bring in a public safety perspective on this. We have a lot of mutual clients between behavioral health and probation. And right now, those coming out of state prison and the county jails have no place to transition to. A lot of them end up homeless and kind of just floating around causing a lot of mischief. If I have a transitional place to put people, um, it is a whole lot easier to supervise them. it's a whole lot easier to get them to treatment. Um, this is a project that Wendy and I have been working on discussing on how probation can support this. Um, what we can do within the facility and outside the facility to make this successful and I think it's very important moving forward just crime reduction wise. And if you also think about our homeless population, without transitional housing and somewhere to start, they are not in a condition to go straight into housing. They need treatment. They need some skills built. They need jobs. And that's what transitional housing's for. Um that's what probation and behavioral health is learning. We're all specializing in these days is doing those transitions. But without this housing, we can't do it. We won't be as successful. So, I just want to leave it with that.

Thank you very much. Is there any other public comment?

I'll be brief. I'm a employee and I know the the building and the layout and I would think that it's strategic for us to be able to hang on to this particular property because of the location, the guts, what's in it, what is already there available for some of our folks that we work with and the sparity of what where we can place our people right now and the funds that we are having to put with our folks in other outside areas like hotels and things like this. this would allow us to have a base for helping, you know, the most needed, you know, community members that we have. So, I I hope you really we don't want to lose this. That's what I'd like to hear.

Thank you. Any other public comment?

Yeah, just wanted to comment on this real quick. There's another aspect of this that hasn't brought up yet. Uh we have a lot of staff that drive out of county. um transport clients out of county, bring them to services back here in San Andreas because we can't find housing uh when we place people other places. Like Todd just mentioned, we pay money for people to stay in motel and hotels and other locations that aren't even in Calabaris. So, another aspect of this project would be accessing services. You already mentioned um it's right there by the road as within walking distance. Uh it also allows our staff to be more productive. Um access their clients on a regular basis. uh maintain treatment for longer periods of time and keep people out of higher institutional settings possibly uh where they're going other places that we can't really have a close eye on time. So, just wanted to bring that up. Uh there's a lot of other things that go on to a project like this. It's not just the money as well.

Thank you. Any other public comment? Um, I just want to remind those listening online, if you would like to make a public comment, you must raise your hand to let us know. And with that, we have no online public comment. Bring it back to the board. Stacy. Yes, sir. What's the delay? Uh, Susan, do we still have a delay for uh people online? Okay. What is it? Five. Five or 10 seconds. Perfect. Okay. Just curious. Thank you. But then I'll bring it back to the board.

Um, yes. Autumn, you were going going to make a motion. Um, were you going to consider uh giving direction with that motion uh beyond what is already agendaized or I have no additional direction. Um, do we want to discuss possibly adding something like the direction to make everybody that way that way it's clear? Yeah.

Um, on moving forward. I mean, is there any stipulations that somebody else would be willing to consider? I mean, I I would I would uh like to open it up so that we can bring multiple choices forward to the board in the future. um you know so we can be pragmatic about each situation as as we move forward. Uh so and I would all I also would like to personally if everyone else is willing to consider it uh give direction to look at the option to move to lease to buy or buy within the process before the 10 years is up soon as possible but at that time bring it back to the board because we may be in a position where we're spending millions of dollars on animal shelter or something else at the time. So depending on the price

from your lips to God's ears as far as the animal shelf is concerned you know I can't see I don't have the crystal ball so I'm just th I'm just throwing those out there for consideration. What direction would you like to put on there that that we look at at least buy or or a direct direction to look at the options to buy within within the parameters of our contract now and see if it's willing to be considered hopefully after we uh spend the money to renovate the place they don't tack that on to the price. Yeah. Super supervisor handle you okay with that?

Yeah. I mean I think we have to capture this bridge funding. we have to meet the BHSA requirements. It would be nice if we could work on it sooner than later. Um, and I appreciate your comments. You know, these we have to deal with this situation. It's not going anywhere. Do do I have a motion with that direction? I'll make a motion. I'll second it. All in favor? I I I want to post.

Yeah. And this is not because I don't support it. I'm doing my vote no to remind staff we shouldn't be put in this corner. This should have been brought to us months ago. And I don't know what the situation is and I get that we made decisions in April, but this should have come back to us for reconsideration. We're pretty open-minded board and we shouldn't have had a gun to our head today. And I'll have to agree with that statement that we needed a four fifth vote for. So thank you. Thank you, supervisors. Thank you, Miss Alman. Thank you. We'll move on now to item number 28.

Item 28,formational item, public health services. Receive a presentation from Calaveris County Health and Human Services Public Health Division reporting the services and programs provided. Yeah. Actually, do you need time to set up? Yeah. We'll just take a fivem minute break. Thank you. That was hard.

Thank you. We are back.

Just make sure you guys I'm glad you can see that. Thank you. Good morning board. Uh Kir biker, business administrator for public health. Haley Graham, health education program manager for public health.

So thank you for the opportunity to present. Uh we're going to bring our annual update um for the work that um Calvary Public Health is doing. 2025 has been a year of continued growth uh improved partnerships and strengthening our ability to serve every community in Calvary County. Um and today the public health leadership team is here to provide a brief overview of our programs accomplishments and a look ahead to 2026. So our mission is simple but foundational uh to improve the health and well-being of everyone in Calaveris County. Uh the mission guides every program, every service, and every partnership. Our values, community engagement, social responsibility, excellence, and equity reflect how we approach public health. We strive to ensure that public health services are accessible, culturally responsive, and grounded in data and best practices. 80. There we go. This next slide uh highlights the eight core service areas within public health. Each area plays an essential role in pro protecting community health from emergency response um to family health programs and data-driven epidemiology. Our teams work collaboratively across divisions and with community partners to ensure coordinated and effective public health response. In the next few slides, the team uh will walk through each area briefly uh to give you a picture of the scope of work that we provide to the county. To get us started, I want to talk a little bit about our health response and preparedness program. So, this works specifically within the public health emergency service function 8. Um, so when we talk about emergency preparedness in the sense of public health, it is really a med health um situation. So, more specifically, our emergency preparedness funded program is really focused on maintaining um supplies just in case we do enter into any kind of public health emergency. Um, so we do have a total inventory in stock of those supplies. We also work alongside our hospital here for a hospital preparedness program as well as some other clinics and healthcare

facilities in the community. Um, that's really ensuring that they are also equipped to move forward in any mass emergency that may happen on a a level. Additionally, we get funded through uh CDPH for our pandemic flu program. So pan flu really focuses on ensuring that we have flu vaccines and uh later did focus on co 19 support um in the long run and so we maintain that program to ensure that those seasonal respiratory diseases are managed in a way that allows access for everyone to kind of get those services. Additionally, we have our healthy communities unit. And so, this is really focused in our prevention side of community wellness. And um our team goes out a lot and you'll see them out a lot in the community in the education realm. And so, this is our injury prevention program which installs free car seats for any individuals in the community who are in need. We also do life jacket training uh fittings and helmet fittings as well. um and we distribute those uh items throughout the community at no cost. On top of that, we have our mobile programs and services. So that is our clinic van that you'll see sometimes in the community. Um this has been mobilized a lot more this year and hoping to add on a few additional services this upcoming year. Um but with that trying to increase accessibility for preventative uh health access and so we have been doing blood pressure screenings working on developing A1C screenings as well as some of our vaccine support in that realm. Additionally we have our nutrition education and physical activity program also known as CalFresh healthy living. So this is the prevention arm of your Calresh eligibility side. the this teen goes into school and um community based programs and essentially helps them develop safe eating habits and additionally helps them. We have a lot

of gardens at some of the schools that they um help develop and maintain. This program unfortunately will be no longer funded come April of 2026. So we are working really hard to ensure that the programs that we have started are uh sustainable without us moving forward. Um so working with some of those schools and senior programs to ensure that that help m is maintained. On top of that we also have our oral health program and so this is a team of one currently. Um but this team goes into schools and helps educate really young students essentially on um healthy brushing habits, making sure that they have access to toothbrush, toothpaste. It also facilitates our kindergarten oral health assessments. And so last year they did approximately 700 kindergarten oral health assessments, which was a big feat to tackle um alongside with our first five program, which you'll hear from a little bit later. Um, additionally, we have our tobacco prevention program. Also, working in the community, we have a youth-based coalition and an adult-based coalition. Um, they work alongside some of our substance use team at behavioral health as well. Um, ensuring access to making sure people have um the ability to quit smoking when they want to. um also having some support in terms of policy development and ensuring that we have an environmental system that is supportive of um eliminating or preventing tobacco use in our communities. Additionally, you'll see this sometimes as well, our substance use prevention education. This really works with our opioid safety side of things. And so we will host nlloxxone trainings. And so it'll teach you how to address and identify a nlloxxone or an opioid overdose if that ever were to happen. And then we also distribute uh free Narcan throughout the community so it's easily accessible to individuals.

On top of that, we have our epidemiology and informatics unit. So this team really focuses on our community health assessment. It is our cyclical assessment that you'll see about every 3 years. um that comes alongside our community health improvement plan and so that is developed with the data that is collected from our community health assessment. Um our epidemiology team is really uh the one that works on this and so they gather the data analyze some trends um in the community when it comes to health. And so they look at our communicable diseases, they look at structure environmental health concerns that individuals may have um as well as chronic diseases we're trying to work a little bit more in as well. Um that team works alongside our informatics team to make sure that they are visualizing or helping visualize some of the data. Um really making it interpretable to our community members and available so that people are informed about health decisions in the community.

And next we will turn to Courtney for infection disease and control.

Okay. So my name is Courtney Atnip and I am a program manager with public health. And as you see as we walk through a lot of our programs are intertwined. They're different but intertwined. So the first with the infectious disease control and prevention communicable prevention uh disease prevention is foundational public health program. We do this by monitoring outbreaks, educating community members and as simply as promoting good hygiene. Um these programs work daily to prevent outbreaks or illnesses before they are spread. Um one essential area is uh STI and HIV AIDS prevention. Public health provides community our community with uh education, access to condoms, testing resources, counseling, and accessible treatment uh education. We provide support to empower our community to make informed decisions about their sexual health and reduce stigma while improving long-term outcomes. through our public health clinic. Um we are working with partners and our mobile clinic as Haley had mentioned. We provide childhood vaccinations to support and safeguard our community to thrive and keep children up to date on their childhood vaccinations and schedules. Uh tuberculosis prevention and control plays a vital role in keeping our communities healthy. Um we aid in providing tuberculosis screening and uh help and support um through our clinics. Um this just helps to safeguard our community so they can thrive and move on. And if you know there's something um before spreading it through our community. Uh together these programs form a strong public health foundation, one that protect protects, educates and informs um we invest in prevention. We to invest in healthier families, safer workplaces and a stronger community. So the next slide

she does. Okay. Um, so this next slide is one that's very close. It's the programs I work with, uh, very near and dear to my heart. So the first program is California Children's Services or formerly known CCS. This program provides specialized case management for children 0 to 21 uh with serious conditions uh diseases or disabilities. Uh CCS provides supports to remove barriers so families have access to expert doctors, specialty care centers, therapy services, medical equipment, and coordinated support helping children receive the treatment they need without any additional barriers or pullbacks. Um our medical treatment unit, often called MTU, is a real essential part of the CCS program. It is located over at San Andress Elementary School. Um, and this offers physical and occupational therapy to children with conditions such as cerebral palsy or neurom muscular disorders. Our team and our MTU help children build strength, improve mobility, and gain independence and confidence in their daily lives for now and into the future. They work really closely with the families. They have strong ties. Um, and it's a really wonderful program. I encourage any of you to go and check it out over there. They do amazing work. Also, uh through the healthcare program for children in foster care, we provide support to some of our most vulnerable youth in our community. This program ensures that every child in foster care receives timely medical and dental services. We work extremely close with our social services department to ensure each child's health needs are understood, monitored, and met, bringing some stability to a really unstable life. Uh the maternal child and adolescent health program is dedicated to supporting healthy pregnancies, safe births, strong futures for children and teens. We work to improve access to

care, reduce health disparities, and provide education, supporting families to give children and adolescence the opportunity to grow and thrive and reach their full potential. Um our clinical services that we do provide within our public health department. Our cl and on our clinical mobile unit provides vaccinations and educational tools. Our clinical staff provides guidance oversight and directive support to our communities ensuring that every community member receives professional high quality services. So the last the California home visiting program strengthens families by offering early inhome support for pregnant and parenting families. Home visitors provide guidance on child development, health and parenting, helping families build safe, nurturing environments for their children and families, enabling them to thrive. And I can say this team is extremely professional. Um we work really close our clinical staff with Haley's team um to try to support our kiddos and new moms. Um together these programs reflect a commitment to giving every child and family the opportunity to be healthy, supportive, and safe. With that, I will pass it over to F5.

Good morning. Amy Eves, first five Calaveris executive director. Uh first five is guided by a clear vision that all Calveris County children will enter school safe, healthy, and ready to learn. One of our core commitments is that all services are available at no cost and with no eligibility requirements. Every family can access the support they need. To achieve this, our mission is to facilitate partnerships and fund strategies that strengthen families and support them in raising healthy children. This mission comes to life through a range of programs and initiatives, including playgroups, which are developmentally focused sessions that promote social emotional growth and give families opportunities to connect, learn, and build community. Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a beloved program that mails a free high-quality book each month to enrolled children from birth to age five, encouraging early literacy and daily reading. And by the end of this month, the imagination library will have provided 25,000 books to Calaver's children since its inception in 2023. Uh, talk read Sing Calaveris is an early literacy initiative that puts books directly into the hands of local children and provides simple strategies to help families build strong language skills by talking, reading, and singing together every day. Um, community event miniig grants and local and library miniigrants provide investments in partnership with local community- based organizations and libraries that bring uh that bring uh family-friendly events and activities, literacy opportunities and educational experiences directly into neighborhoods across the county. Strongstart Calaveris is our quality improvement program that enhances the quality of early learning environments for young children by supporting child care providers and caregivers through coaching, training, and resources. Strengthening Calaveris families is a countywide effort to support families

with children up to age 18 through prevent child abuse Calaveris and mental health services act funded parent and professional education. This program strengthens protective factors and promotes positive parenting. Together, these programs reflect our commitment to giving every child in Calaveris County the strongest start possible by strengthening families, empowering caregivers, and investing early. First five Calaveris is helping create a healthier, brighter future for our entire community. Oh, wait, hang on. Um, can you give us a little demonstration about the same caliberas? No, maybe

operations and planning uh supports the entire department uh by providing administrative services, fiscal oversight, policy development and communications. Um it also strength strengthens our department's internal capacity so our program teams all of those programs that were just listed can continue to focus on meeting community needs. In the past year, we've increased efficiency in the admin processes, reintegrated embedded fiscal, um, back into our division, um, and improved internal communication, and continue to invest in staff development. So, looking forward to 2026, uh, we have several major priorities. We'll continue to work on addressing the social drivers of health. We're rolling out updates to the community health data dashboard to provide residents and partners with more transparent and user-friendly health data. We will update our community health improvement plan to reflect community input and emerging needs. And then finally, we'll be launching our updated public health strategic plan, which will guide our department's direction for the next several year several years. So, our work is only possible through strong partnerships across county departments, community organizations, and this board. So, we thank you for your time, and if you have any questions, we're happy to answer those.

Thank you. Are there any questions other than the singing does just uh you know you with the stock of an emergency preparedness uh how often do you have to turn over the the stores on those because uh they expired. Yeah. Depends on expiration date of what item. So a lot of times we're looking at PPT personal protective equipment and so if the masks last than five years then we hold on to them. Um, but we try to evaluate by annually what those dates are and then we'll have to get rid of them and resupply them as needed. Thank you.

Is there any public comment regarding thisformational item and we have no online public comment. Great. I have a couple chair. Thank you. Um, the school nutrition program that's 100% gone

unfortunately. Yes. And so right now we did get um confirmation that whatever funds were left over that we had anticipated to come through through 2026 we will be able to utilize. And so we're working on purchasing some supplies for the schools that we have been working with to ensure that they can maintain and sustain some of the work that's been done. But unfortunately, a lot of the education and the team being able to go in and spend time with the students to learn about healthy living habits and how to access food um will all be eliminated. That's unfortunate. Um you know, I know Justin and Gwen were like celebrities on those school campuses. Definitely.

Yes. Um, and just to piggyback on what Amy said about First Five with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library that was in McComey Hill exclusively for many years and over the last couple years they've expanded it to all of Calaveris. Um, it's incredible feat. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Judy. If we did our last regular item, is Mr. Dungy all right if we do just another five minutes? Okay, thank you. Could we go ahead then? Yeah, that I'm gonna

Okay, thank you very much, Supervisor Stopper.

Item 29,formational item, integrated waste management. receive a presentation from Integrated Waste Management regarding the acceptance of bioolids at Rock Creek Landfill. Two, provide direction to IWM on whether the board is interested in pursuing the acceptance of bioolids at the Rock Creek facility. Good morning, Miss Cashy.

Good morning board. Uh Jennifer Cashy, director of integrated waste. I'm going to do a short presentation today uh regarding bioolids and I will keep it short. I know we have a time um constraint here. Um the purpose of this presentation today is to give a quick background of what bioolids are, uh the history of bioolids, how it pertains to the county, and um looking at some direction from your board on how we'd like to um review um the potential acceptance of bioolids. So what are bioolids? They are organic wastewater solids that can be reused, disposed of after suitable sledge treatment process leading to sledge stabilization. So some terminology that may be confusing as we talk about bioolids is uh sewage sludge refers to the solids separated during the treatment of municipal waste water. Bioolids refer to the treated sews sewage sludge that meets the EPA pollutant and pathogen requirements. So sometimes those are used interchangeably but they are very different terms. Bioolid uh disposal options uh there's a land application op option. Uh they can be used on agricultural rangeands, disturbed lands of needing reclamation or non-ag agricultural lands like parks, golf courses and home lawns and gardens. Bioolids that are to be beneficial use must meet federal, state, tribal and local requirements. Those are class A bioolids. There is a possibility of in incineration, the combustion of organic matter and inorganic matter in sewage sludge by high temperature in an enclosed device. landfilling, which is what we're talking about today. The sewage, sledge, and bioolids may be disposed of in a municipal solid waste landfill, such as Rock Creek with other waste. Sewage sledge disposal in a in a municipal solid waste landfill is regulated under the Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act and the EPA's accompanying regulations. That would be a class B. history of bioolids as it relates to Calaveris County. In 1993, there was authorization um of the disposal of waste water treatment sludge at Rock Creek landfill pending further evaluation of beneficial reuse alternatives. In 2001, acceptance of bio solids as alternative dy cover, which means that it was used as a cover of the waste. every single day we are required to do a um cover of the waste and we were able to use the bioolids for that matter. In 2009 there was authorization the acceptance of non-hazardous wastewater treatment sludge from Cala's County Water District, San Andreas Sanitary District, the Valley Springs Public Utility District and the City of Angel's Camp under this new acceptance policy. Some of the highlights of the policy was the original intent of accepting bioolids was on a shortterm option only. Utilities districts were strongly encouraged to pursue long-term alternatives that did not require disposal at Rock Creek. Bioolids must have a moisture content less than 50% and receive approval from IWM requiring testing, schedule delivery, etc. prior to any disposal. In 2009, the county issued letters to the agency extending the acceptance of bioolids in until the end of the year, which was 2009, referencing that it was intended for a short short-term solution that turned into a 16-year practice. In 2012, uh the county added Murphy Sanitary District as an authorized agency to dispose of bioolids and extended the acceptance of bioolids at Rock Creek. In 2014, we modified the criteria for

acceptance of bioolids for alternative daily covered containing in the policy on acceptance of bioolids at Rock Creek Waste Facility. Alternative daily cover acceptance criteria required bioolids to contain 80% solids at that time. So why bioolids now? On May 22nd, 2025, uh, Cala's County Water District, CCWD, contacted Integrated Waste Management with a request to dispose of bioolids at Rock Creek Landfill. Part of CCWD's request, they indicated that the CCWDA generates on average 11 tons of class B bioolids per week that are currently being transported to Susan City, 178 mile round trip with an annual cost to the district of $70,000. CCWD expressed that this method disposing of bioolids is expensive and not sustainable for them. Acceptance of bioolids has been discussed as a potential revenue generating option for IWM. Thus the reason of bringing forward this item to today for some direction. Potential benefits and drawbacks. Uh benefits is a revenue source. potential revenue for IDBM enhance soil structure and moisture retention. Bioolids can create or increase compaction rate at the landfill and act as a soil conditioner and also supporting communities lowering cost to our surrounding districts. Some of the drawbacks we notice right away is groundwater contamination. Proper precautions must be used to ensure Lee does not contaminate groundwater. Increased methane gas. Rock Creek utilizes a flare for landfill gas collection system. We must ensure that that collection system is equipped to handle a potential increase in gases. Forever chemicals often referred to as POS. Bioolids may contain persistent

contaminants like POS which do not break down in landfills. This is a ongoing conversation. It's a heightened awareness to POS as our regulatory agencies are looking at these in in great detail. Just a few elements to evaluate is additional wear on equipment. Due to the abrasive nature of bioolids, we need to consider the impact to the equipment at the landfill. Uh the breaking in of the new cell operations right now are placing a 5-ft lift of soft waste on the entire floor of phase 3A which was newly constructed. And the question is how does that impact that would pro how does how does this impact that process and would that introduction of bioellers need to wait until that first layer of waste is placed to properly dispose of it? Could we place the bioolids in cell 2B as a final waste? Establish a mechanism invoicing feast schedule or contracts. The current climate in California and calary cycle related to the bioolids. This comes back to the POS question and the implications long-term increase administrative management and reporting safe staff safety training to handle the special waste staff safety concerns any impact to EIR or SQA and update the joint technical document staff. I'm looking for direction today as um if the county wants to consider accepting bioolids again at Rock Creek and also for direction on staff to thoroughly evaluate all the implications of potentially accepting these bioolids. So essentially looking for feedback from your board um direction. Do we want to thoroughly investigate all of these questions and these elements to consider? Um is that something that we're interested in pursuing?

Any board comments? Yeah, I I have some comments. Um I have a little bit of history on this because back in 2009, um they were required to dry it out before they gave it to us cuz we used it for cover. They did it was costing them more money and time and area to dry it out. So they decided to truck it out in liquid. And so my question is are they asking to bring come back to us? Are there going to be is it going to be dried out? Is it going to be 50/50? It used to be 80%. Or is it going to be liquid? What what what is it that we're asking us to to accept?

Um my understanding and I I think that we that would be an element that we would have to research as well and and have some clarity on. Uh my understanding some of those methods have increased and we have um a much drier result as to the processing that used to occur. But I would like to allow, you know, districts individually to kind of address those because I think they would be able to speak to that more clearly. That that's my question to begin with is what are we accepting here, right? Um it used to be dry at least 80% dry again and that's what we accepted and we used for cover. Then they didn't again they didn't want to dry it out. They wanted So anyway,

yes. And maybe to clear more clearly answer that question, uh, Rock Creek would still require IWM would still require those um, standards to be put in place. Um, but I but as it relates to their processes, I would allow them to speak to those more clearly. Palmer.

Um, I just going to say I'm open to the conversation. I know since I've been on the board, um, it has been a discussion with CCWD from the 2 by 2 to just informal discussions about it. Um I know they have a challenge. um they need to find a location and some of the things that have been presented the community has not taken um has not liked those proposals and so I would like to explore um solving this problem that we have and it's not just CCWD you know ma making it available we have a resource that other partners in the community can um utilize if they do need um and and see what that looked like. So yeah, I'm I'm open.

Rather handle. Yeah, this list of elements to evaluate. Very interested to see what you the experts come back with. I'm gung-ho for it too. I just have a question is how do these other agencies deal with the drawbacks that are presented? And don't answer that now, but I mean again, just to do a little bit more homework. And when you say these other agencies, uh, the receiving agencies, the other landfills, is that what you're Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Yes. There any otheries? I was going to say, Ben's out there having a good time. Is there any public comment regarding this?

Good morning, everybody. My name is Damon Wackoff. I'm the director of operations for the Galv County Water District. Thank you, Jennifer. I'd like to thank you for consideration. So to answer your question about uh drying bioolids, yes, absolutely. We have four wastewater treatment facilities and we use a what's called a belt press to dry the solids into a cake and then the belt press pushes that cake into a rolloff bin. And so right now what happens with those 11 wet tons per week is that they're uh deposited into a rolloff and then then in the middle of the night Gambi trucking from San Andreas rolls in, picks up that unit, drives it to Cissoon and deposits it. All of the waste is analyzed. So all the constituents of concern are analyzed before we can dispose of the bioolids at the waste facility. And so that and that uh the analysis happens annually. So, uh, we're continually looking at the bios to understand what the the makeup is, you know, working with the landfill to monitor the water quality out of the monitoring wells. And so, it's kind of this, uh, continual feedback loop, if you will, uh, related to the condition of the of the solids uh, in regards to POS. So just for your information, CCWD has analyzed all the surface water supplies to and groundwater to our treatment plants for the presence of POS. So in the raw streams, the water supplies, it's all non-detect absent. We are in the process now of analyzing the waste stream for POS. So if they are present it'll be a very interesting conversation to have because they won't be coming from the surface and grow our supply humans and so that will be an item of consideration obviously if we if we as we discuss this f further I really appreciate your uh kind of your thoughts about continuing the conversation

because as we all know bioids are a super it's like a super boring topic here in Elder County and nobody really has an opinion about Um that said, I think we can all kind of like work through this as an iterative process to make sure that whatever happens benefits the everybody involved because I think you know everybody can recognize that a change in how we dep dispose of bioolids and where we dispose of bioolids results in a savings for our foss which ultimately results in a savings for our Thank you Jane. Um, so the 11 tons that you're talking about generating that's been pressed and dried. It's not a liquid.

Correct. That's correct. I want to make sure I understand that. Yeah, that's right. And I just wanted to add on I you guys are working through this. Um, we did this significant investment into the landfill to keep it there. So, I just want to make sure that um I know CCWD recognizes that, but help us to maintain that investment so we all can use it. Um I want to um I don't want to do anything that disrupts that. That's a lot of money. Um and we want I I want to be partners, but I also want to make sure that we're protecting our infrastructure as well.

Absolutely. And we respect that consideration. Yeah, we're we will be right there in step. So it goes to 50 years. Well, we we just closed the one cell and we have monitors on there for gas. So So this would be somewhat that we need to think about because we don't we were using it before, but over the last since 2009 when they decided to truck it out um because we wouldn't change um we haven't put any in there. But if we start now at the bottom again, who knows, you know, when we go to close this cell, um, just something to think about. That is definitely things that we need to investigate.

Yeah. And we're no stranger to monitoring wells as well. We have monitoring wells around all of our wastewater disposal facilities. So, it's we're speaking the same languages when it comes to that. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? We have no online public comment. Thank Thank you. This was anformational item. Informational item. And so just um I just so I'm hearing correctly. Um it sounds like we you're directing us to move forward and look at all the different elements and um bring it back for consideration. Correct. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Yep. Yes. We're five minute break now. Yeah. Five minute break as we get ready for the minute hours.

Thank you. And we're back. All right. Well, we'll get started. Good. Good morning, everyone. My name's Gage Dungeie. I'm a partner at the law firm. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead, please. Item number 30. Thank you. Thank you, supervisor. Item 30formmational item human resources receive the mandatory training required by government code section 12950.1 AB1825 to be conducted by grade Dunie by Libert Cassidy Whitmore. Thank you. All right. Great.

Um hopefully everyone can hear me. Okay. Pleasure to be here. Good morning all. As noted, my name is Gage Dunie. I'm a partner with the law firm of Libert Cassidy Whitmore. I'm based out of their Sacramento office. I've worked with the county actually for several years. I've actually done this training for a number of supervisors and other employees. So, it's a pleasure to be here doing this training uh before the board. I know we have a few other um electeds and other supervisors who are present for for this morning's training. We have a two-hour training that we're doing that's required by law. Um we'll start here, take a break roughly about noon, about halfway through, let you guys move around. I know it's hard to sit through two hours straight. Um take a quick 10-minute break, let you guys move. If you have any questions as we go through the training, please feel free to ask them. You should have a handout, I believe, that shows all the slides I'll be doing, and we'll obviously be going through those slides as well. Um, and they'll be on the screen here. And then I also have a copy of the uh the county's equity policy, and I'll reference this during the train. This is our policy that that addresses discrimination, harassment, retaliation, as well as things like bullying, abuse of conduct, these kind of issues when they come up. Um, so that's kind of a, you know, kind of a brief overview. I should mention in terms of background about myself, I've been an attorney now for over 22 years. All I've ever done is labor and employment law. Um, and I say that because sometimes I talk to people when I do trains and they'll say, "Gage, can you help me with the will? Gage, what if I get arrested? Gage, I can't do any of that stuff. I don't know anything about that." You know, what I do do and what I've done my whole career is representing employers on management side and mostly public sector agencies like cities, counties, special districts over that time. Um, these things we are going to talk about this morning and this is a um this is a training we're supposed to do two hours every two years, not a not a brand new law. Part of the reason we do that so frequently is because these issues still arise and I'm going to touch on that. This stuff still takes place. Um, and this applies not just, you know, just to the rank and file employees that come here and work at the county supervisors and managers, elected officials. We're all required to do this training or do a form of it. And so it's really really important we do that. Um, but we'll get jumping into that. So going to the agenda here, these

are the things we're going to cover in this two hours. First of all, overview of laws and policies related to discrimination, harassment, retaliation. Um, you know, what does that mean? Where do these laws come from? It's important to kind of get a sense of where this is, where this is. They're not brand new laws. They've been on the books for upwards of 60 years. I'll even touch on that. We'll talk about protected classifications. Um, we hear that phrase, what's that mean? Things such as race, gender, national origin, disability, religion, for example. But we're also going to talk about this concept of bullying and abusive conduct. Something that is covered in the county's equity policy. Not necessarily unlawful, but yet from an administrative standpoint, it's not something we should be tolerating in the workplace. And we can use our policy to address that when it comes up. We'll also talk about what you know what is the difference between unlawful discrimination, harassment, retaliation. You hear these phrases, they're legal terms. They aren't the same thing. It's important to understand their distinction. They can sometimes overlap each other, but we'll explain what that means. And then finally, we'll spend a lot more time focused on types of unlawful harassment. These are the issues that do come up unfortunately on a daily basis in the workplace. And it's important to be aware of it, understand why why we should not tolerate that, why we should to address these things and prevent those things from happening. We we'll end our training focusing on what are your obligations as a supervisor and I'll explain what that means um in the the duties of a supervisor not just I mean a board of supervisor being a supervisory employee and that could also apply to your electeds here and how that applies and then what's the county's obligation to address unlawful discrimination harassment and retaliation in the workplace and what can we do to address that but before I jump into that I always like to ask this question first why are we here doing this training I already kind of gave away part of it in my little intro there. The law requires it, right? Two hours every two years. And so the law requires it. That's actually not a brand new law. Um that went into effect in 2004. So we're looking at a law now that's been in effect almost 20 years, a little over 20

years, right? Two hours every two years in terms of its effectiveness. That's now applied to elected officials. You know, more recently, we now actually a few years back, even our our nonsupervisory employees are required to do one hour of training every two years. So the state law requires it. our friends in Sacramento where I'm at, the legislature thought it was important everyone does that. So obviously that's true. But from a county standpoint, from the entity of the county, do you think it's a good thing for us to do this training as well? And I would say yeah, and here's why. And I mean, I've done this training, I've done literally hundreds of these trainings during that that over 20-year time period. And one thing I've learned talking to a lot of different people, seeing what happens in the workplace, seeing these kind of things. One of the points that was made to me actually by a different county client um someone came up to me during a training I did and they said you know what Gage you're talking about the law requires it and you're talking about you know what we don't want to get sued for example because I don't think the county wants to get sued do we for discrimination harassment retaliation all true I mean liability these kinds of issues are things we want to avoid but one of the most you know like I said this one person mentioned during a break and said Gage I tell you what that's all true but let me tell you one other thing we owe it

to our employees to have a workplace that's free of discrimination harassment retaliation All of your employees come here at the Calverse County to serve the the your your own constituents, your citizens, provide public services. They don't come to work to be subjected to discrimination, harass, and retaliation. And so that's really important. I think it's important to think about that, you know, and keep that in mind because that's part of the reason we do this. Part of the reason we do a refresher every two years, which, you know, for those that have done that, you've seen this before, perhaps you've seen me do this training. I know I've done it here at the county over the years. Um, and we see those things kind of come up. But it's important to remember that and reflect on that. And why I say this though is because sometimes I'll also hear gay just harassed and stuff. This doesn't happen anymore. And I'll tell you what, wrong. Here's what I got up here. I got these different pictures of people and these are actually current things we've seen in the news. I used to when I started doing these training materials for our firm and I'm in charge of updating them. I would almost have to update this slide almost on a monthly basis at one point because we had so many different things happening. I try to keep this as as kind of current as possible. Um, I put up here just so you see, you know, if you can tell, you look at the top leftand corner, that's Harvey Weinstein. And everyone's heard about him, Hollywood producer. He's now in jail. You know, he's the he's the epitome of what I would call quit proquo sexual harassment because his mo or modus operandi, so to speak, was sleep with me and I'll make sure you get in that mood. He actually ended up getting convicted from a criminal standpoint for some of his actions. and now he's in jail. Um, probably not going to be out anytime soon. You know, I put up the in the in the middle there on the top, that's the Me Too movement. One of the things I think that was real interesting that we've seen dating back to the late 2010s, 2018, 2019, you know, that we saw this kind of resurgence of harassment issues in the workplace and a resurgence of society saying this should not be tolerated because we started seeing some highle people who I think thought they were above the law or no one's going to touch me like the Harvey Weinstein or others, heads of companies,

corporations, electeds, um, other kinds of things. And we see that issue, you see it arise, but some of the more recent ones too. Smokeoky Robinson I got on the on the upper right hand corner that just happened this year. You know, earlier, I think it was earlier this summer, I believe, there were allegations that came out that Smokeoky Robinson um had sexually harassed, I think it was staff members, maids at his home, others housekeepers he had worked with. These are in the news. On the bottom here, in the bottom left, I got that's that's Vince McMahon, the World Wrestling Feder, or used to be world what's it? World wrestler in charge there. Number of sexual harassment type issues that came up with him. The one next to him though is Fiona Ma. She's our state treasurer, an interesting elected official. And they actually the state had to had to settle a lawsuit earlier this year um or excuse me, it was last year, August 2024 for 355,000 related to sexual harassment allegations against Fiona Mar, state treasur, you know. So these are rising all different levels. Of course, I I heard a second ago Sean Diddy Combmes, I guess, right? One of our entertainers. And he just, as we were aware, got convicted. He's going to jail now. And the last guy is a person named Skip Bis um who was on Fox uh Fox Sports or FS1. He's a a sports columnist. He actually had also sexual harassment allegations by his hairdresser. These are just current ones. I mean I could probably find newer ones and we could swap these things out. My point is unfortunately harassment does still take place. We still do see these issues. It is something that that happens out there and that's probably why we do this training to make sure we know that at least here hopefully at the county of Calaveris we can do our part to prevent that kind of thing from happening not put ourselves in that situation. So I always ask this se this kind of follow-up question after this. Should you want to be at this train? And I know you guys are busy people supervisors and our other electeds and others that are that are here this morning for part of this train. I know some sometimes people say Gage I got better things to do. I

got to run the county. I got I get all that. However, understand that you got to do it state law. Understand we want to do our part to protect our employees here at the county and that's all very important. But why should you also want to be here at this training? And the most important thing is because individual liability can apply. Personal liability. Any individual, any employee, supervisor, non-supervisor, elected doesn't make a difference, can be individually liable if they engage in harassment. supervisors actually potentially can be liable mean supervisory employees and they potentially can rise to the level of the board if they're aware of it and fail to act. And when I'm talking about, you know, what's that mean? That means your money, not necessarily the counties. And the example I like to give on this, and it's an older one, but it just gives you a sense of it. This is something from the early 2000s. It involve FedEx. If you know that that company, obviously major shipping company, I'm sure they deliver here at the county every day, right here at the county administrative building. FedEx had a sorting facility in the early 2000s. This is in the post 911 world. They had a sorting facility in the East Bay over near Oakland where they had two individuals who were of Arab descent who came to work every day and were being subjected to racial slurs and comments based on their national origin. They complained to FedEx management. Nothing was done. They eventually, you know, filed a a complaint with with what was then the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, California State Department. got a right to sue letter and then filed a lawsuit in Alama County Superior Court. Went to a jury trial and they won. How much you think they won? Anyone want to give a guess? Millions. It was millions. True. Throw a number at them. It's okay if you don't want to. I'll give I'll help you out. $61 million. Of that $61 million, the individual supervisor who also engaged in this harassment, condoned it, failed to act, got hit with a million dollars. I use that example because that's one of the highest examples I'm aware of of an

individual liability. $1 million. Is that an everyday occurrence? No. You know, if we were here at the Calvar County Superior Court jury trial, we hit a million dollars. I don't know. Maybe not. You know, or you go down to the federal court um in Sacramento, maybe not the same thing. I get that, you know, but let's take onetenth of that. $100,000. Do you guys have $100,000 lying around, $10,000, 20, whatever it is. My point is, my assumption is for anyone who's, you know, worked hard for the money they earn, that's probably something you want to use for your own personal pursuits, your family, your, you know, other types of things. I fully get it. as opposed to something you could have prevented in the first place, not engaging unlawful harassment or not condoning it, not allowing, not failing to act when we're aware these things take place. So when I say should you want to be at this training, yeah, because it protects you as well to make sure you understand what the laws are, what the potential liabilities, what the issues are that can affect you and how that can hit home because I should mention too, especially when we were talking about other employees at the county or supervisors, if you're the if you're a supervisory employee, for example, who's aware of harassment and we get sued for, you have your job for long? Probably not. You know, there's liabilities, all that there. All of which these are things we can address and we can try to prevent. So that's kind of the main idea. So when we talk about our training as we go through this, we're going to talk about what do we need to know and what can we do to prevent it, you know, and that's going to be our goal that we're going to kind of go through as we talk about these things. Now, as I do this training, I'm going to go through and because we have this on a PDF, I'm already giving you guys the answers on this. I'm going to give you six quick kind of true false things and I'll explain that. It's just good to get some scenarios, be aware of some of these things. For some of you, this has been a refresher training. Perhaps it's a first-time training for some of you as well. It's just good to be aware of this. The first true or false is harassment can be based upon any protected classification and why that's true and we're going to explain what that is in a few different slides. It's not just sexual harassment. I know that slide I had earlier with more current

events. Most of those individuals were sexual harassment type cases. Even the Me Too movement, that's by far the most common complaint lawsuits that we see are on sexual harassment. But when we talk about unlawful harassment, any protected category can invoke it. And this also includes that FedEx case I mentioned that wasn't sexual harassment, national origin harassment, discrimination. So any of those protected categories can create unlawful harassment, can create liability, and we'll touch on that. It's not just sexual harassment. That's why that answer is true. Number two, anti-harassment laws do not apply to volunteers and interns. True or false? And the answer, as you see, false. Why? The way that in California, it applies not just to employees, but anyone who's in the workplace. And this can involve volunteers, interns, anyone who has some a working relationship within the employer. So, if we have volunteers who are here at the county or interns that are unpaid, it doesn't really make a difference if you're on the payroll. So, so to speak, or not, you're in a workplace relationship. The idea is we should not allow and tolerate unlawful harassment versus anyone who's part of our workforce as a result. That's kind of the idea there. So, it's broader. It's not just potentially employees. Next one. Employees who report harassment must put their complaint in writing. True or false? And the answer is false. But I will tell you often times when I do this training, a lot of people say, "Well, true. Don't you want it in writing?" And I'll tell you what, yeah, we do. To the extent we can get it in writing, you bet. And the reason why is does it create a good record? Does it help us investigate further what took place and what happened? Yes, it does. However, on the flip of it though, if an employee doesn't write it down and and and instead verbally communicates a harassment complaint, are we still not on notice? Are we still not aware of it? One time when I was a a younger attorney, this is literally in the early 2000s. Um I had a case for a client. There were a private sector client. They were like a oh like an oil change place, like a quick lube or something like that, so to speak. You know, I can't remember their name off hand, but they

had a lot of teenage employees and stuff that worked there. And one time a female teenage employee came to the manager and said, 'Hey, you know what? I feel uncomfortable around my coworker here. He's been kind of, you know, hitting on me, asking me out, saying inappropriate things. Something should be done about it. And that supervisor said, "Oh, well, you know, hey, that's that's not that's not good. Here's a form. Fill it out and we'll look into it." But the employee didn't fill the form out. Now, does that mean the harassment stopped?

Nope. And aren't we on notice? And what ended up happening was the employee didn't fill it out and the employee instead went to what you would now is called the California Civil Rights Department. Previously the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, filed a harassment complaint, and then they had to respond. And and the member of the the the company tells me, "Well, we were just waiting for the response to come back for that form to come back. That's not sufficient. You still should have acted to address it." Now, I always encourage any kind of supervisor, if you get a verbal complaint, should you write it down when you contact HR or others so we can look into these things? Yes, try to get that information the best you can. We want to encourage employees who report complaints to write those things down because it's going to help us do a better, more thorough investigation. Nonetheless, we can't force that because once we're on notice, verbal and/or written, we have to act on it and we have to follow through on it. That's why that answer is false. Next one. Unlawful discrimination generally does not apply um or does that occur, excuse me, when a supervisor applies work rules uniformly. Now, when I say this one's true, here's the point I'm getting at here for a second. Just give you a scenario. Step back. Sometimes you read that and can get a little confusing as to where I'm getting at here. Let's say I'm a supervisor here at the county. I'm a supervisory employee. I oversee, we'll say, 10 employees in in a certain county department. Fine. And among those 10 employees, I got people I like to work with, and I got somebody I just plain don't get along with. Not my favorites. All right. One of my one of my co-workers I oversee was my is Jimmy. Jimmy's a good guy. worked with him for years. Real reliable. Never have to worry about Jimmy with anything. Does a great job. And then on the other hand, I got Jane. Jane's a newer employee, but frankly, not a very good one. And we just don't get along. We butt heads a lot. Now, Jimmy comes to work 10 minutes late. I let it slide. He's a good employee. I'm not going to do anything about it, right? I don't want to get him in trouble. Jane comes to work 10 minutes late. What do you think I'm doing?

Oh, Jane, a little late today, aren't we? Da da da da. Here's a tardy. Give her a written notice or whatever verbal, you know, reprimand, discipline her for. Could Jane claim unlawful discrimination under those circumstances? How come? What comes to mind in that equal treatment? Yeah. Not fair, right? Someone at a different standard than someone else.

Correct. Correct. Not fair. Not equal. I think that's the first thing that comes to mind when I throw that out there. Hey man, that's not fair. And I agree, you know, and interesting. It's not a good way of doing things. Why not treat people in the same manner and enforce the rules uniformly? But that's not really it. Where would the unlawful discrimination come from? It' be a protected category. And in this situation, what's that protected category? Gender. Male employee comes to work 10 minutes late doesn't get written up. Female employee comes to work 10 minutes late and does. Now, when I give you that scenario, does it really sound like I have some, you know, animus against Jane because of her gender and that's what I'm trying to do? Probably not. However, I want you to remember, you know, what's a judge or a jury going to see? How's it going to look when those things come up? How's that going to apply? And that's where if you start, you know, deviating how you enforce things or, you know, playing favorites with people or whatever it is, if that can create an inference of discrimination or invoke a protected category, all of a sudden we could have liability there even though perhaps it wasn't even intended. and whether or not we have to go all the way to a trial or a settlement those all take away resources from the county that you should be focused on other things. So it's important to be aware of that. So when I say this in this situation if a supervisor applies the work rules uniformly if in that situation I said hey Jimmy I know you're a good employee but she came to work late and I have to enforce the rules and I do the same for Jane is there really a good inference of discrimination there? No, probably not. You know not going to have that kind of concern. Not going to be there. So in this situation, the answer is true because to the extent we can apply our work rules uniformly, that's going to be a good thing. Now we got two more here. True or false. If an employes religious beliefs preclude the employee from working with any gay, lesbian, or transgender employees, the employer has to reasonably accommodate the employee. And the answer is false here. And the purpose I have behind here is that we have protected categories in these different kind of contexts. And that's

important. Um, but we can't use one protected category to trump another. So, I understand people and these are sensitive things. There's religious beliefs, religion versus sexual orientation. Both are protected categories under California law and we can't trump those. That's how that works. I want to give the same idea. What if someone said, "My religious belief says that I cannot work with African-Americans." Would we have to accommodate that? No. Once again, race and religion, you can't use one protected category and trump another, for example. So that's the kind of concept that what that has there. I understand for some people these can be sensitive things but in the workplace context we have to make sure and apply our law here in California uniform. Can on that?

Yes. Go ahead. Um because we here you did religion uh and it can't trump another category you're saying but you see it go the other way sometimes. Well in the same token if someone says let's let's see there. So if someone says let's flip it, if an employee whose sexual orientation um and their own beliefs say that they don't they can't work with someone of a certain religion, do we have to accommodate that? No. No. Okay. And then I'm I'm thinking of that in a different context then. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

No, no problem. Thanks, sir. All right. Last one here. Um true or false. If the employer is investigating a claim of harassment and the harassment stops, the employer may discontinue the investigation. And the answer here is false. And here's the scenario I like to give on this one. I know today is a Tuesday, but let's pretend it's a Friday, right? Fridays are always great days because we're getting ready for the weekend. And let's say it's Friday at 4:00. You're one hour away um you know from from your shift ending or finishing up work for the day. And as you're in your office, let's say it's, you know, me in the office as that supervisor. I oversee 10 employees and one of my employees comes into me and starts talking and says, "I'm sorry to bug you at the end of the day on a Friday gauge, but I feel like I'm being subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace. I get comments from John Doe. He keeps making sexual innuendo, other things. I don't think it's appropriate." Now, I've gone to this training, so I know it's my duty to try to gather the information. I know it's my duty at that point to pick up the phone and to call HR. I got Judy over here to make sure they can look into it. So, I I end up sitting with that employee and we end up talking for a half hour. I get all that information. Next thing I know, it's 4:40. I'm looking at the clock tick tock because I'm almost out of here. But now, I got to write an email. I got to make sure HR is involved. Man, yikes. It's a lot of work. But let's say at 4:45 that employee comes right back and says, "Hey, hey, you know, Gage, I know everything I just told you. It's cool. Don't worry about it. I don't want anything done at that point. Can I say, "Whoa, great. This is awesome." You know, hit delete on the email. I was getting ready to send it to HR and I can stop doing it. What do you think? Nope. And the best analogy I can give, and I don't mean this in any weird ways. Actually, I did this train several years back, one county down in Tammy County, and someone yelled out, "Gage, you can't unshoot the shotgun." And I think it's a good analogy I like to think of in that. What I mean by that, it's already out there. Once we're aware of this incident, we have to follow through and

look into it. Now, I will say if an employee who makes a complaint initially doesn't want to cooperate in the investigation or doesn't help, I mean, could that impact our ability to address it further? Sure. But we have to show that we looked into it because in that situation, just because the person says that and says, "Well, I don't want you to do anything about it." Does that mean the harassment stopped? Not necessarily. And how do we know that? I've actually seen cases too, guys, by the way, over the years where that scenario's come up. An employee says, "Don't do anything about it." But the harassment continues, then it becomes a bigger issue. Then we actually see a legal claim or even a lawsuit. And what ends up happening is the supervisor in that situation said, "Well, I didn't do anything because the employee told me they didn't want anything done about it." That's not a valid defense under California law. That's not going to cut it. And nonetheless, liability would still attach. And frankly, if you want to think of it this way, we didn't do our jobs there. Even every once in a while in this scenario too, I hear people will say, "Well, you know what, Gage? I'm I'm friends with this employee. They told me this even though I'm I know I'm in a supervisory position and they said they don't want anything done about it. I want to honor their requests." The better way to think about it is we owe it to your friend to make sure we address those things so that we can prevent having a workplace full discrimination, harassment, retaliation. You have a question again, supervisor. Yeah, I apologize about that, but uh you know, you're talking supervisorial position that's that's on the ground supervising people in that position. our supervising positions. um that if we have someone come forward to us, it's not necessarily

our great question and then it's like you know and in some instances you know which direction I mean of course HR but what if the complaints directed that way and you know to go on I mean it could be any level in between us and the person

great point and I and I should clarify too when I say and and I and as elect it's you know And to a certain degree as a board of supervisor members, you guys are kind of the ultimate supervisor in a way. But going to your point, even if it's not a direct report, you know, so let's just say I'll take a I'll take a supervisory employee. Let's say that I have a person who's not I don't I'm a supervis employee and I have someone who I do not oversee and they come and tell me that do I have an obligation to notify HR? Answer is yes. And what I would suggest for you know anyone you know at the day is here in the same in the same regard if you were to hear those kind of complaints it's not something for you to necessarily investigate but it's to notify county management about it which would usually be HR you know or perhaps uh Teresa as the CEO to make sure it's looked into. Yeah, great question though because that's tough because sometimes I know it's really easy to say, "Well, I don't Hey, that's not my employee. I don't want to deal with it." But potentially we're still on we're still liable in that situation even if they're not your immediate report because the concept and the idea is as a supervisor um whether you're elected supervisor, supervisor, employee, I know I'm kind of using those terms, you know, um every time I say supervisor, I'm not trying to imply everyone here. It could be a supervisor, employee, manager, of course, but you guys are a supervisor agent on behalf of the of the county and that means you're held to that standard. So that's why we have to address that. Excellent question, sir. I appreciate you bringing that up. But yeah, so idea here is we don't want to put ourselves in that situation. And for the most important part and for most of, you know, um supervisors, managers, electeds that are here, when these issues do come to your attention, we're not saying that you have to go look into it. We're saying make sure and get HR involved if that's possible. Let the county administration know so we can follow up and do our do our jobs to make sure and close the loop on that issue. All right, let's talk about laws. So every time I have done this training and like I said this is a training that we've been required to do now over 20 years um and it's you know kind of modified a little bit we now expanded to even non-supervisory employees and others obviously electeds and appointants had to do it as well and we

see that but a common question I get gabage these these harassment things these are like you know must be new laws or new issues or you know and and I guess that's that's what's going on right wrong actually these laws and I have a list here. These potentially date back over 60 years. They've been on the books for a long time. At the federal level, probably the initial law that first came out was the Equal Pay Act of 1963. So, it's a law that's 62 years old. Now, um this was a law that initially came into place because there were gender inequities uh between male and and female employees who did the exact same job and that was a concern created liability. A year later, Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act at the federal level, that's probably the more foundational law that prohibited discrimination, harassment, retaliation based on protected categories, race, gender, national origin, religion. So, we saw that in 1967, Congress passed another law, the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. Um, anyone know what the threshold is for age discrimination, by the way?

40. Yes. 40 years of age. Dying. No. And I I joke about that because in 1967, who did Congress think was old? 50 something.

40 year old. I don't know. I I'm 47 now. So, you know, I've protected. No, I'm joking. But, you know, um I just find that interesting. That's where that threshold came from. You know, technically speaking, if you're under 40, if you're, let's say you're 39 and say, I was told I was too old, that you're not protected. 40 is the weird age they came up with. But that's where that came up with 1967. Um then the most recent law was the Americans with Disabilities Act. That was in 1990. Um so now we're looking at that's a law that's 35 years old. Um and the Americans with Disabilities Act protects not just it's a very broad law access not just you know for employment but into public buildings and things like that. But if an employee has a disability or medical condition, we potentially have to reasonably accommodate them. Um so there are other laws that apply. 42USC1 1981 is a race discrimination law and 42USC1983 is another law that applies to public sector agencies if you abuse under color of authority something that could once again create liability. California though, interestingly enough, has we call the Fair Employment Housing Act that actually was first passed in 1959, 66 years old. Now, it's been amended over time, of course, and as have these laws, but these protections are still there. California's uh fair employment housing we call FIHA. FIHA has actually um you know, encompasses most of those federal laws into one place. it's actually a lot broader, provides for broader protections and and remedies and actually includes more protected categories than they do at the federal level. Um, and finally, we have the California Equal Pay Act, and that's kind of a similar California law, but whereas the federal law just applies to gender, the California Equal Pay Act provides not just for gender, but also race-based Equal Pay Act kind of issues as well. So, these are not brand new laws. Now, why I point all that out and I said, you know, people think it's new and you see stuff. I think what's true though having done these trainings now for over 20 years and talked to a lot of different people and kind of getting

their experience is you know yeah these were on the books 60 plus years now but the reality is they weren't enforced for several years and what's what's the cause of that it's awareness you know now we've seen a few different kind of instances in our history that's really brought the awareness of harassment discrimination issues to the forefront um and I think that's helped you know make people more aware we can't tolerate this stuff the first one that comes to mind honestly. This was in the early 1990s and it involved a Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and if anyone remembers that I was a kid at the time and uh so he was appointed by President George HW Bush or Bush one who's now passed the former president. Um and why I bring that up is real interesting. He he as we know these these judicial nominations especially to the Supreme Court these days pretty contentious right anytime that comes up you see hearings and all sorts of stuff. Prior to Clarence Thomas, for the most part, those Supreme Court hearings weren't a big deal. They were actually real easy and they came by really quickly. That all changed with Clarence Thomas, though, because he come he's appointed. He was a a a federal appellet court judge. He gets appointed. Um, and then a person came forward by the name of Anita Hill, if you recall. She was a law professor. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice Thomas on the appellet court. And she came forward and said, "Hey, this guy's a bad apple. you made inappropriate comments or references and I'm not going to go into what those were. You can look them up. They're kind of interesting, you know, but who who likes a story like that median. You could have missed it. It's a big deal. I remember as a little kid because I was I was born and raised in Fresno, I should have mentioned down the hill in Fresno County. And I remember we had one of those old school TVs with the the knobs on it, you know, with the the rabbit ears and all that. Guess what was on every channel every day? Clarence Thomas here. It's front page of the newspaper. You couldn't miss it. Now, they had the confirmation hearings. He was he was confirmed. As we're aware, he's still on the high court. He'll probably be on there till he either chooses to retire or dies technically.

Um, very, very close vote. Why I point that out was after that though, because of all that awareness, because of that being out there in the media, we started to see a spike in awareness that, hey, things like sexual harassment in the workplace, that's inappropriate. We should not tolerate that type of activity. We saw laws that were strengthened. In California, for example, every employer has to have an unlawful harassment policy, whether you have one employee or obviously thousands, you know, one employee on up. And we started seeing some more of these protections, obviously doing trainings over time. Now, I mentioned earlier, you saw on the slide, the me too movement. And I think about the me too movement that was in the late 2010s, 2018, 2019 roughly, put Harvey Weinstein up there, and he's in jail now. And you started to see that in a lot of ways that was kind of like a you know a second um in my opinion kind of like a second revival to remind everybody that these things especially in the context of sexual harassment you know we can't tolerate um and when I say it's a good thing that the me too movement happened the good thing not because of the victims of of harassment that had to speak up and address it and of course those things never should have happened but the good part is putting that awareness out there once again to remind everybody we can't do this and I think what was interesting with the me too movement is we did see you know some pretty pretty uh I use the term highlevel people whether they're heads of companies Hollywood you know types we saw elected officials people who I think thought they could get away with this stuff and no one's going to care and the me too move them said you're wrong and so it's another good reminder that we can't let these things happen this is not something that we can tolerate you know whether it's here in the county workplace or at any employer you know here in California or frankly you know nationwide it's just not something that's appropriate for us to too. So, sources of law very very kind of interesting. You know, they've been there for a long time, but a lot of this really comes down to the the mere fact of awareness and how does that apply? So, in terms of enforcement though, when

these laws went into effect, especially title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, California's Own Fair Employment Housing Act, they were actually written in a way that we're not just going to let everyone go down to the superior court and file a lawsuit looking for $61 million or whatever it was in that example I gave you. No, they actually have to be filed initially with an administrative complaint through one of these administrative agencies, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for Federal Claims, which is the EEOC, or the California Civil Rights Department, um, which used to be called the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. They got renamed a few years ago. That's for any kind of FIHA claims. And the reason for this was and the whole idea why we have these administrative agencies is that the whole goal of these laws um is that lawsuits technically should be a last resort. The ultimate goal is these issues come up, let's remedy them and get the person back to work and they can be an intermediary to address that. Both the EEOC and the California Civil Rights Department can take a complaint. They technically can take a matter to court, although that's usually pretty rare. More often than not, they try to facilitate a resolution if possible. If a resolution can't be made, or they can make a determination that they don't think there's a an issue of law, so to speak, they'll still issue what's called a right to sue letter, and an employee can still then have the right to go to court if that's what they choose to do. Now, what's interesting is there are statutes of limitation, though, for each of these two to file a complaint. for an EEOC complaint involving a violation of federal law, 300 days from the date of the alleged discrimination, harassment, retaliation to file that claim. Here in California, it's longer. It's actually three years. It used to be one year. It's extended um I think that was in 2019. It got extended out to three years. So 3 years from the date of the alleged discrimination, harassment, retaliation to file the claim with the California Civil Rights Department. So we have those timelines. are there for good reason. Part of the reason I mean

even going back three years I think you know at times could could be lengthy but it's not it's not we're also trying to address what's happening more in the here and now and not saying hey 10 years ago this took place and those are hard to investigate hard to look into and that's why we have those statute of limitations that apply. Finally we have the county's policy though and as everyone got here and this is the um equity administrative policy um that we have here. This is the county's policy that addresses harassment, discrimination, retaliation. It also addresses standards of conduct. As it notes right on the front, you know, all County of Calaveris officials, officers, appointed or elected managers, supervisors, employees, volunteers, unpaid interns, and third party contractors are required to conduct themselves in accordance um with the entirety of this county policy of equity and all applicable local, state, and federal laws. The goal here, this is our standard here at the county to address these issues when they arise. It notes what our prohibitions are, notes what our protections are um against discrimination, harassment, retaliation. It provides that complaint procedure for an employee to make a complaint for us to look into. Identifies the civil rights department and the EEOC resources. We talk about providing confidentiality to the extent possible. One of the things that the laws do point out is if we're going to investigate a matter, we can't guarantee absolute confidentiality because we have to be able to address the allegation, confront our accusers, be able to do that so we can make a proper determination. But at the same time though, you know, if someone makes a harassment complaint, for example, we should not send a countywide email out that says, "Hey, John, you know, Jane Doe made a harassment complaint. Everyone don't bother you." Something like that. That's not appropriate. It's on a more need to know basis, right, from when these issues arise. And then it appi provides our appropriate remedies for sustained violations and for how we can address those things. This policy has what we call a zero tolerance policy and that just means a

single violation of the equity policy can subject an employee um to appropriate disciplinary action. That doesn't mean you're fired necessarily. Depends on the nature of what took place. Um but there's going to be a consequence potentially for a violation of this policy. That's the idea behind it. We of course distribute this policy accordingly. um to new and current employees with acknowledgement forms um to ensure they receive it. We would post it in the workplace and update the policy when appropriate. From time, and I'll mention, we do see laws that that um do change and it's important we update our policy to reflect what those are. Um for example, I'll mention as we go further, there have been a few new additions to California's Fair Employment Housing Act in terms of protected classification. So, this happens from time to time, but that's our county's policy for doing that. All right, let's talk about protected classifications and bullying and abusive conduct. And I like asking I know I have these kind of random questions I throw out here, but I like throwing these out here. What is unlawful harassment? Now, you know, one time I asked that question and a participant yelled out, I got the answer, Gage, it's harassment that's unlawful. Boom. All right. You know, and I said, well, thanks. You really didn't really answer my question. You kind of just restated it. But so, I just like to throw that out there. So, let me give you an example. I mean, um, for example, this morning, uh, I live in the Sacramento area. I'm married. I, my, we have a son who's eight years old. Um, I had to get my son up this morning early trying to get him, you know, get him ready for school. My wife's upset because he's running late and I'm the one supposed to make sure he gets dressed and, you know, gets breakfast and she's upset at me and she gets on my case because I didn't get my son John ready. Is that unlawful harassment that my wife was harassing me in that way? Is that unlawful? Do I wish it was?

I joke because my office is five blocks down from the state capital. I'm tempted to go down there sometime and say, "Give me some relief, right, to our legislature, but they're probably not going to help me out." So then I ask this question, is there such a thing as lawful? Perhaps you that could be an example of it, but let me I'll give you a better example here. Let's say for example um back in the day when I was a lowly associate at Liber Cassidy Whitmore where I work and you know trying to to make my way and whatever it was and hypothetically let's just say I wasn't doing the best job and and my boss her name's Shelene she comes in my office and gets upset because I'm screwing up. She says, "Gage, you're no good lazy attorney who will never amount to much because you keep screwing up. you keep coming to work late and you keep giving me just, you know, really bad work product. Shape up. And she walks out and slams the door. Is that unlawful harassment? What do you think? I mean, I don't like being called no good and lazy, and that's not the nicest way to approach it, right? Yeah. I don't know. How about this same scenario, but what if she says this instead? Gage, you're a no good lazy white boy attorney who will never amount to much because you keep coming to work late and you keep giving me substandard work product. Shape up lazy white boy and slams the door and walks out. Why?

Meaning protected classification. So I give you that example and the reason why I say that though is because I will say I was actually I was just talking to a client about this yesterday. the terms harassment and another term that we'll use that that that these are legal terms. Hostile work environment. If you've ever heard that, these are legal terms, but they're all predicated on there has to be a protected classification in place. Um what is not unlawful harassment is what a person believes on their own is unlawful. And I I I'll give you an example. On occasion, I was talking to super or talking to a a client yesterday. This guy was a manager and he told me an employee said, "Hey, I'm I'm being subjected to a hostile work environment." I said, 'Well, what's the employee upset about?' Well, she's a probationary employee who's not doing a very good job and her supervisor is trying to give her constructive criticism, and she says that's a hostile work environment. What do you think, guys? No, it's not. It's part of the workplace. You know, it's easy to throw that word out there, but it has to be backed up by one of these. Now, in that example, and you guys caught on to it, lazy white boy, so to speak, worse, which means race potentially, and gender in that example. That's where have to be triggered there. So these are your protected classifications that we have under state and federal law um and that that apply sex, gender. California um also has gender identity and gender expression um as we're aware um so individuals um whose gender identity is not of that which they were assigned at birth potentially protected. I know it's a sensitive subject for some understandably but in the workplace it's a protection here under California law. Sexual orientation is also another California one. Individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, for example. Once again, they have a protection under California law. That's a protected category. Race, national origin, color. Um, those are pretty easy. Disability and medical condition. I mentioned earlier on our list of laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act or the ADA, very common. People are familiar with that. Um, and that was passed in

1990. California's Fair Employment Housing Act also actually even has broader protections against people with disabilities and medical conditions. Um, this one's not an absolute protected category, but what the law requires, for example, is if someone has a disability or medical condition, we have an obligation to see if we can reasonably accommodate that. And just to give you a sense of what I mean by that, um, I'm just going to give you two two very examples on the far extremes. If we have an employee who comes forward and says, "Hey, I have a doctor's note." and perhaps even wants to, you know, to self-disclose that I have carpal tunnel syndrome and I just I type a lot at work. I need my accommodations to get one of those wrist rests so that I can, you know, do that and it won't aggravate it. Can we reasonably accommodate that? What do you think? Yeah, those things cost what, 10 bucks? I don't know, probably even less than that. That's something we can do. And guess what? The person's right back to work getting their job done. What if, on the other hand, and now you I know we have the sheriff's department here. If you have an applicant to be a sheriff's deputy who comes and says and has no arms or legs and says, "I want to be a sheriff's deputy. I think I can do it." Do you guys think you you guys Wow. Okay. I want to hear this one. My hunch is to be the other way around

because the essential functions of the job to be a sheriff's deputy would have to be to, you know, meet certain physical standards, be able to affect the powers of arrest, to do some of those things. And that's probably going to be a difficult thing to do if you don't have any arms or legs. That's my option. Although, if you guys make it work, I want to hear all that. I like,

you know, That may be true. Now you whether there's an AI deputy or something we can, you know, that's another story. Fair enough. But I use those examples. I mean, and and I should point out this is true. Case by case are going to dictate that. You could actually have two employees in two different jobs with the exact same medical condition and work restrictions. One we can accommodate, one we can't because it's all going to depend on what their circumstances are. And so that's exactly true. That's what we have to address. Um, next one's genetic information and characteristics. This is one that was um passed. There's a federal law called uh it's called GINA, which stands for the genetic information um oh and trying to remember what the N is another uh uh act. Nonetheless, um the genetic information part of it though is we can't use a person's genetic characteristics to deny employment. Now, the only example I've heard where this comes up that I can think of, and that's why this law was passed around 2010 or so, was where um I think there were some employers probably in the private sector who would actually ask people about, you know, what's your medical history or what's your genetic history like on an application? Any idea why they might be asking for that group health insurance premiums? Because the fear is uh oh if we hire someone who has you know you know a genetic or medical history family history of I don't know whatever it cancer let's pick whatever thing that's going to make our premiums skyrocket. The reason why that's unlawful though is guys I'll tell you everyone in this room we have I'm sure we have family histories genetic histories of all sorts of conditions and ailments. Does it mean you're going to get them? Not necessarily. And we can't discriminate someone based on that. So not a very common one but that's where that one that's probably the most common example where that one we talked about religious creed so we obviously have freedom of religion here in the United States. Um and uh so based on that we can't discriminate against someone based on the religious beliefs and similar to a disability accommodation if someone

has a religious belief or like for example that they can't work on the Sabbath or something like that we have to see if we can reasonably accommodate that in the context of their job. Marital status. Um, this is kind of an interesting one. This is here in California. It's probably also implied at the federal level under gender discrimination. But we can't ask someone, especially in this sort of this comes up in the employment context. We can't ask someone, are you single, married, or divorced? And here's the basic reason why. What difference does that make to their ability to do the job? None whatsoever. And I've talked to people over the years on this one. Um, and it's almost exclusively the feedback I've received has been from from females, from women over the years who said that that's what they would ask and there perhaps would be a stigma if you were divorced or, you know, not married and they would deny employ. That's ridiculous. Has nothing to do with anything. That's why that's unlawful. I will say, you know, the one area and this doesn't come up because hopefully most of my clients I work with don't ask that question on an application because it's unlawful. But where I could see it come up and you got to be careful is, you know, we don't want to solicit someone's marital status. Like let's say in a job interview, sometimes that's just done in small talk. Hey, are you married? You got a family? Probably not intentionally being done that way, but try to avoid that kind of inference. You know, if someone self-discloses these things, totally fine. It's just we don't want to make it look like we're, you know, compelling that or trying to make a, you know, determination based on this. Military and veteran status. This was added to the Fair Employment Housing Act about 10 years ago. Um, I can tell you that, you know, I would hope any employer, including here that get the county of Calaveris, honors those who are have military service or veterans of the military and we don't discriminate, harass, or retaliate based on that. I don't feel like this is a huge issue, but it's a protection that we thought was sufficient from our legislature to make sure insure. So, that's another one that comes. I talked about age, 40 years of age and older. Now, age discrimination is interesting um in that way or you know, even age harassment.

The whole idea behind age discrimination though is you're 40 years of age and older, you suffer an adverse employment action which is usually termination and you're replaced by a younger worker and you're still capable of doing the job. Um so if you're over 40 and you're, you know, have nothing to do with your age, you're not doing the job correctly, that has nothing to do with it. You that's not a discriminatory act. But there is such a thing as age harassment. You know, sometimes I joke around with uh you know, doing this training as I examples if people are calling others, hey, good grandpa, old fddy daddy, this kind of thing in the workplace. Not a good thing to be doing. That could be a harassment based on that. There was actually a California Supreme Court case. This was in the late 2000s. It involved Google. And you guys all know Google. I feel like it's Google everything these days, you know. Um and it's really interesting. I had two friends at a college that that worked out at Google in the early 2000s. And the way they explained that environment when it was kind of growing was that that it was basically people were on roller skates and they'd play they'd play board games in the middle of the day and it just kind of not your not your typical I wouldn't say very very uh you know very contrary I'm sure what happens here at the county on a day-to-day basis when we're serving the citizens here at the county. Either way, in this case called Reed versus Google, this guy Reed, he was in his early 50s and he was like a mid-level manager at Google, but his superiors were actually younger and they would tell him and call Reed, they would call him old buddy duddy. They called him eight track, which I always think is kind of messed up, but they would say, "Hey, we got a meeting coming." Kind of implying that he's older because of an eighttrack. if you had to get the audio system, you know, and they would tell him things like, "Well, you're not hip enough or progressive enough, you know, in our ever changing environment." All of those kind of imply what? You're too old. Now, the underlying evidence, as I understood in that case, was this guy Reed was doing just fine in his job. There weren't any like fatal flaws or errors, but what ended up happening was he eventually got terminated and was replaced with a younger worker. So, he

sued, took it, you know, to the superior court. Google actually tried to get the case thrown out. They appealed it all the way to the California Supreme Court who came back and said, "Hey, look, you know, because Google's point was, well, we have a management right to pick who's the right fit and that's not, you know, we you should this this case should go nowhere." And the court said, "Yeah, you do have a management right, but when you're calling the guy at track, an old fddy daddy, and saying he's not hyper progressive enough, I think a jury can decide whether that's age discrimination or not." So, guess what happened after that?

Yeah. Google wrote a penaltment check pretty quick and moved on. Um but that's an example of age discrimination. Um the newest on the list here, this just came into effect a couple years ago um in response to the our US Supreme Court's overturning of Roie Wade and employees quote reproductive health decisionmaking is a protected category or new California law. I don't know how often that's really you know been invoked. I think that was just kind of a response you know from our legislature to that court case. It's not something that I've ever seen come up you prior to that in the workplace or anyone ever talk about. But that's where that that's where that one applies and that's what that means. Opposition to discrimination and harassment where that one applies and what we're talking about here on that is if an employee comes forward and makes a complaint and we say, "Hey, quit stirring things up. You're fired." Well, that's retaliation. You know, they're they're trying to voice a concern. Um and if that's an issue that that comes up, um that's going to be a liability. That's why that's a protected category for doing that. We want to encourage people to address those issues so we can look into it. And then finally, we have association and perception. Association and perception. Here's a good way to think about this. Let's say I work here at the county and um for whatever reason, I work in one of the county departments and it turns out my co-workers and others are all convinced that I'm I'm homosexual and they make uh homophobic slurs and other things towards me. I don't appreciate. I complain about it. You know, nothing's done. I end up going and getting that that right to sue letter from the California Civil Rights Department and I go down to the Calverse County Superior Court and file my lawsuit looking for my $61 million, right? They talked about earlier and we go to we go to trial and my attorney puts me on the witness stand and says, "Mr. Dunie," because that's how attorneys talk, right? You guys watch all the shows and everything, you know? Mr. Dunie, are you truly a homosexual? And I said, "No, I'm not. I'm actually heterosexual. I'm married. I have a son, John. There's my wife Andrea over here. I mean, everyone assumed it, but it's not true. Now, could the county at that point say,

"Hey, fool. Great. Gage isn't even gay." Case dismissed, right? What do you think the judge says?

Case continues. That's how judges talk. I don't something like that. Why? Because there is no stupid defense. And what I mean by that is, does it change the underlying behavior? Um, does it really make a difference if everyone's treating me as I'm based on sexual orientation or whatever is considering I'm gay and I'm being harassed based on that in the workplace? Isn't that still unlawful in that scenario? Yeah. So, association or you perceive someone to be in a protected category, right or wrong, does it make a difference? Um, and the last one I have here, you know, based on a combination of any two or more protected characteristics, um, that was something that was added a couple years ago or uh by the by the state legislature. I kind of find that one interesting. have to mention it, but honestly, all you need is one. All you need is one protected category. So whether there's a combination of two, I would tell you probably already applies, but nonetheless, that's part of how that is. We did put we did note here that says there's new protections for cannabis use offduty that was actually added to the Fair Employment Housing Act. It's kind of like a protected category. Um not as much relevant. We don't usually see discrimination harassment based on that, but that's where the legislature chose to put that. So that's why we we note that there. Let me cover a few quick things and then we'll then we'll take our break. Um, gender identity and expression. As part of this train, the legislature requires us to address a few things with respect to that protected category. Um, all employers must permit employees to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity or expression. We have to refer to employees using their preferred name, gender, and pronouns and designate single occupancy facilities using genderneutral signage like like restrooms for example. And we must not enforce dress codes more harshly against a person based on their gender identity or expression or discriminate against an applicant for failing to designate a gender or if they designate a gender that is inconsistent with the applicant sex assigned at birth or inquire about a required documentation to prove an individual sex or gender. Now what about

bullying or abusive conduct in the workplace? And I think this is kind of interesting because we do hear this phrase a lot. And actually your equity policy does address this. Um but bullying, abusive conduct, you know, it's in the news a lot. We see in schools, for example, we also see in the workplace. And I hate to say we've seen workplace violence incidents and things that are unfortunate that perhaps the root of that could have been dated back to what I would say call bullying type, you know, situations. So when we talk about this, the legislature actually a few years back said we bullying and abusive conduct technically is not is not unlawful. You can't go down to the superior court and file a lawsuit and say I'm being bullied worth $61 million or whatever it is, right? It actually get thrown out. There's no actual legal basis for that claim. Part of that though is because if I asked all of you and everyone in the room to write down your definition of bullying,

it's very much a subjective, you know, kind of thing. It's really hard to kind of quantify an illegal thing as opposed to unlawful discrimination, harassment, retaliation based on a protected activity or protected category status. So to give you a sense of this, you know, kind of a rough definition of bullying, abusive conduct, conduct in the workplace with malice that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer's legitimate business in the interest. And this can include verbal abuse, derogatory remarks, insults, threatening, intimidating, humiliating, physical or verbal conduct, or undermining of a person's work performance. But even though that's not unlawful, our equity policy that everyone has a copy of, we do address that in here. And from an administrative standpoint, we should take action in that situation because if we I would say this from a more, you know, kind of, you know, practical standpoint. If someone's getting bullied in the workplace, what's not getting done? Work, right? And I'm not just talking about the victim of the bullying or the aggressor of the bullying, everyone else who's not doing their work because they're watching. It's an unnecessary distraction in the workplace that we cannot tolerate. That's why we have it in the equity policy. That's why we address these things when they come up. So, when we talk about bullying versus unlawful harassment, what's the difference? because they both involve offensive conduct, things that can be pervasive or severe or that goes beyond mere incivility. And what the difference is is that protected classification. If it's not there, that's what's going to be your kind of, you know, hallmark to have a legal claim under our Fair Employment Housing Act, for example. So, while unlawful harassments directed at membership in a protected classification, that's why it's unlawful. Just the term bullying, if there's not a protected classification invoked, may not do that. But we still shouldn't tolerate it. That's why we have it in our equity policy. That's why we enforce those issues and we don't let that that take place or occur. Now,

before I go to the next section, let's take our 10-minute break. We're right here at noon right now and we'll come back at 12:10.

Okay. All right, guys. We're back. Good news is we're more than halfway done. We'll keep things moving along. I'll try to get you guys out of here um right about 1 o'clock. So, we're still moving along. So, our next section, what is unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation? And the reason why I like to kind of, you know, first of all, these are the three terms we're talking about purpose of what we're doing in today's training. But it's important I think to understand what the distinction is between these things. So what I have on this next slide, I have a kind of one of those uh um or you know kind of charts here, vin diagram so to speak that shows discrimination, harassment and retaliation. They are three distinct things, three distinct legal terms, three distinct issues. Now it is very much possible and why I have the overlap. You can have situations where there is unlawful discrimination present as well as unlawful harassment. So they can overlap or discrimination and retaliation or even potentially all three. But it's important to understand the distinction because people sometimes like to use these terms very freely and frankly they are three distinct things. So let's start with discrimination. Adverse employment action that's taken based on a protected category protected classification. And when I use the term adverse employment action, I'm talking about things like hiring, firing, demotions, failure to promote, assignment of job duties. Now, the reality is when I use that phrase adverse employment action, this happens every day because I mean every day in the workplace there might be situations where we do have to hire, you know, fire people or ref or, you know, decline to hire. We demote someone, perhaps we assign job duties someone doesn't like. That happens. That's not unlawful. What makes it unlawful is if it's done based on a protected category status. So, for example, if I say, "John Doe, you're fired because you're Asian." What do you think, guys? That's pretty obvious right there, right? Adverse employment action termination based on protected category status, race, national origin, for

example. In that situation, obviously unlawful. Now, when we talk about unlawful discrimination though, one thing that's important here is there is no individual liability. And why? And the reason because this happens part this these things take place within the course and scope of employment. This happens every day as I mentioned. It actually is part of your job to do things. But here's the way to think about it. Who on earth would ever want to be a supervisory employee if every day they come to work to do their job which could involve an adverse employment action they're going to get threatened with individual liability. And so um as a matter of public policy here in California for example at the federal level there is no individual liability. Now, mind you, is the county liable? Yes. And in that situation, if you're a supervisor, for example, who does say John Doe, you're fired because you're Asian. Even though that that supervisory employee may not be individually liable and the county is, that supervisory employee is probably not going to get their job for long if that's how they're handling themselves. But we're talking about, you know, something that's done in the course and scope of employment. You know, employment actions happen in that in that manner. Now, let's contrast that with unlawful harassment. As I put in that first bullet point, unlawful harassment is not within the course and scope of employment. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, but Gage, it happens in the workplace. That's true. Of course it does. You know, that's what makes it unlawful and that's why we have to address that's why we're here doing this training. That's accurate. But the difference is if someone, for example, is making inappropriate sexual jokes or racial comments or homophobic jokes, is that part of your job? If you look at job descriptions or job classifications as to what that is, do you see a bullet point that says tell racial jokes and sexual comments? Nope, you don't. Is there a job classification here at the county that's comedian one, comedian two? No, we don't have those things. It doesn't apply in that regard. And so even though it happens in the workplace, it's not within the course and scope of

employment. And that's why when I talked earlier about individual liability, the public policy is you can be individually liable because you don't have a justification for why it took place anyways. There's no real reason why this should have happened in the workplace. It doesn't make sense. It shouldn't be here. That's why there's individual liability potentially if someone engages in it. And we're going to expand on this definition more, but a very generic unlawful harassment definition. verbal, visual, or physical actions that are unwelcome um and directed to or related to an employees protected class. And this also includes actions buying towards employees, independent contractors, vendors, other non-employees like volunteers, paid interns. It's anything that happens in the workplace, so to speak. For example, if we have a even if we have a vendor that comes and and let's say we we have the I mentioned FedEx earlier, the FedEx delivery man who comes on a daily basis to the county, makes inappropriate comments to our employees of a sexual nature and that person complains, we have an obligation to look into it because once again, we're protecting our workplace from that type of behavior. Um, and so we have to address those things if they come up. Now, the last one here is unlawful retaliation. And unlawful retaliation as we talk about here this is the kind of aftere effect of discrimination harassment and when first part someone engages in protected activity they make a harassment complaint perhaps they participate in investigation of a harassment complaint um there's an adverse employment action as I mentioned they're they're terminated they get demoted they get their job duties reassigned and there's a causal connection or a link between those two activities so if I make a harassment complaint today I'm a county employee I make a harassment complaint today and tomorrow I get fired. Could that be unlawful retaliation? Potentially, you know, doesn't look good, at least on the surface, unless something else independent led me to get, you know, terminated that because it looks like that's linked. On the other hand, if I make a harassment complaint today, the county does its due diligence, they look

into it. Let's say the complaint sustained, they take appropriate corrective action, and nine months from now I start coming to work tardy all the time, and I eventually get terminated for excessive tardiness. Is that really unlawful retaliation because of my earlier harassment complaint? Probably not. Probably not a causal connection there. It's probably unrelating, but obviously those kind of links are make a big difference here. There's other factors though that can Oh, yeah. No, no. And I guess I should go back to that they give direction to do something that all this depends on the underlying nature case by case of what took place. Yeah. Just giving an example. the supervisor that work a distinction could I turn on Gary after I was done.

Okay, going on though here. So, case study. Jody files a sexual harassment complaint against her coworker Don while the agency investigates Jod's allegation. Uh Don is upset about the complaint and tells the other employees in the department that Jod's a no-go liar and tells her supervisor that she has a poor work ethic resulting in Jod's demotion to a lower position. Has Jod been subjected to unlawful retaliation? Yeah, potentially. So, right in that example, Jod engaged in protected activity. She made a complaint as a result of that complaint because the person was upset or engaged in retaliatory conduct towards her. She was demoted, had an adverse action that's probably linked to that complaint. That's where that could arise. Now, what if instead Don ignores Jodie at work following the harassment complaint and leaves the room whenever she comes in because he does not want her to accuse him of anything else? That make a difference? Maybe. Now, I want I want you guys to think of it this way. Who here likes being accused of anything? Do any of you have like a nice shirt? It says, "I heart being accused." On the back, it says, "Bring it on. Walk around. Let's do this." Yeah, I like it. No, I think it's uncomfortable for anybody. And I think human nature typically says when you're accused of something, it's what I would call you have two general kind of almost innate responses. Fight or flight. Fight means I'm gonna get that person back. No one accuses me of anything. And that's kind of that first example what this person Dawn did here. Flights where you avoid the person. All right. I'm not going to I'm not going to go around Jody. I'm going to avoid that. Flight may be just fine. We may encourage flight to avoid future incidents happening. However, what if it turns out that Don's job on a daily basis is to interact with Jodie and now he's given her the silent treatment and refuses to talk to her. Could that be an inference of retaliation potentially or affect her ability to do her job? Potentially. It's an awkward scenario. I'm just pointing out that's things to think about. And so anytime if you have an employee who you're the victim, you're the person

who's accused of something from that standpoint, you don't want to dig the holes of unlawful retaliation. Obviously, refer the accuser to a superior, report the accusation yourself, but that third bullet point is probably the most important. You really want to put yourself in a refrain from any action that could be interpreted as unlawful retaliation. And that's tough because human nature sometimes tells you otherwise, right? But you want to put yourself in a in a in a better situation. Um, you know, it's not the end of the world, but we have to move on from those things. If you, you know, you did do something wrong, we, you know, take our constructive counseling or whatever the issues are. We cooperate, we move forward, we follow the policy, and we go on to the next day. That's kind of the main idea there. But let's talk about types of unlawful harassment. There's two types that are out here. Nice how the law has taken that concept of the term harassed and how does it really apply. It's been kind of deviated by the courts into two different types. The first is called quidd proquo which is Latin for this for that or sometimes I call it economic harassment. And then two the second one is a hostile work environment or environmental harassment. Um and so when I think about the first one here which is quid proquo sexual harassment as I mentioned I call this economic harassment. Sometimes guys I call this classical sexual harassment. And why I call it that is this is what a lot of people think about when we think about sexual harassment mostly because this is the most extreme form of it. This is also what we see in the movies and on TV and you know even some of the headlines. Gosh, think about Harvey Weinstein for example. What was his MO? Sleep with me and I'll make sure you get in that movie. Now my example I put here is sleep with me and I'll make sure you get that promotion. You know, like I said, you see this in the movies and on TV. Right. I used to joke around doing this training that if you ever watch old 80s and 90s movies that are on the USA Network or TVS or TNT on any given weekend, you may see this scenario come up. And Hollywood has its own little stereotypes of who the quid proquo sexual harasser is, you know. Um, and

wherever it is, that's just you see those kind of things that come up. But I'm hoping everyone when you see this example as well, I hope we all fully understand this is entirely inappropriate behavior. Hope no one's writing down on their sheet, hey, that's a cool pickup line, Gage. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is entirely inappropriate. Sleep with me and I'll make sure you get that promotion. Not a good thing. We shouldn't be tolerating that kind of thing in the workplace. And when we go to what that means and what are the elements of economic harassment, here's what we have. Job benefits promised explicitly or implicitly in exchange for sexual favors or denied if sexual favors are not given. Sleep with me and I'll make sure you get that promotion. Job benefit promised the promotion in that example. Explicit or implicit. In that example, it's explicit because it's right out there. Sleep with me and you'll get the promotion. The idea of like implicit or implied would be something like this. And a supervisor goes to a supervisory employee goes to their goes to their subordinate and says, "You know, Jane, if you're not more friendly to me around here, puts his arm around her. I can make your life difficult. We are having drinks tonight, aren't we? something like that. Could it be implied that the sexual favors are look be given? Potentially. So, and that's the exchange. It's an exchange for sexual favors. Now, quit proquo sexual harassment. Why this is treated differently than hostile work environment is because the severity of it when you see this scenario, this isn't good. This is this is the situation that we should not allow. This potentially depend on the nature of it could even be criminal, you know, and it's not a good thing and the courts treat it differently. So actually when we establish that quid proquo sexual harassment has occurred or has taken place what the courts say is you establish those elements strict liability applies. Strict liability is a fancy way of saying that if we go to court and that's established you're not asking the jury who's liable. They're already liable. Guess what you're asking the jury at that point?

How much are the damages? These cases that I've seen over the years doing this now for over 20 years that involve quit pro sexual harassment. I can only think of one case that I've actually seen go to trial. All the other ones exclusively settle out of court because the writing's on the wall. It's game over. This isn't going to go well. And you're seeing liability. You see settlement, you know, payments, things, all things that can be avoided. These are entirely inappropriate things because it's entirely about an abuse of power. So, let's give a case study here. Sonia's the finance manager and oversees accountant Leo among others at the county. Leo's current assignment includes preparing department budgets, a highly coveted duty that involves overtime. At one time, Sonia and Leo briefly dated, but Leo ended the relationship because they have to work together. Sonia still regularly flirts with Leo in the workplace and makes comments to him that they should quote get back together. Irritated by the flirting, Leo confronts Sonia and tells her to stop. Sonia tells Leo she'll just reassign him to the less desirable job duties of audits at the county which has no overtime if he does not quote chill out. Is Sonia liable for quidd proquo sexual harassment? What do you guys think? Yeah. Now I will point out sometimes what we do see with quid proquo sexual harass and this kind of goes to this example is people who do date in the workplace that happens that can come up but then those relationships go bad. You know that's not a good thing. And anytime you have a direct supervisor and subordinate who date, could that be a liability for the county potentially? So, you know, and and I I work with agencies that have, you know, more explicit rules to address that. The county potentially here may do that as well. But the idea is we're trying to, you know, avoid a situation where we're creating liability because of a personal relationship that can go bad quickly. And the other parts too is when you have a direct supervisor and subordinate who are dating, what else do you see? You see favoritism claims from other employees, other kinds of concerns. And

when they break up, then you see that retaliation or you see these kind of scenarios here where this can also apply. So we also see it that way. Now I should mention real quick when we talk about quidd proquo sexual harassment. This is the only type um of of harassment that does just involve sexual harassment. The law has not applied it to the other protected categories mostly because logically they don't really fit. There is no quid proquo disability harassment. be disabled with me and I'll make sure you get the that doesn't really add up or make sense from a logical standpoint. So, it's usually that's why the courts have only applied it to sexual harassment in that scenario. Another one here, Jack and Jill begin work at the same time as entrylevel dispatchers at the sheriff's department. Jill turns to Jack on their second day of work and says, "Sleep with me and I'll make sure you get that promotion." Has Jill engaged in quidd proquo sexual harassment? anything different here?

She doesn't have the ability to make that come true. So,

they're both at the same level, you know, and the problem here, this actually is not quit proquo sexual harassment. Um, or shouldn't be under most circumstances because they're both at the same level. One thing about quit proquo sexual harassment, I mentioned strict liability. It's treated more severely. You look at it differently that way and the courts look at it differently. It's all about an abuse of power. You have to have a someone who's in a supervisor subordinate relationship to create that who can affect that promise and that's an abuse of power that's there. Now I will say does this make it appropriate? No. And would it still be we'll talk about a hostile work environment? Could it still violate our policy and still create liability? The answer is yes. Just not considered quid proquo. Supervisor stopper. Go ahead.

Uh so a question on that because it's abuse abuse of power at that point. What if a subordinate suggests to their their supervisor, for example, that they'll do that with them as long as they get what they want and then Oh, I see what you're saying. So, because it's still abuse of power by the Yeah. But if you flip it, it's still abusive by of power by the upper person. Correct. It could I mean, so for example, a subordinate employee were to suggest to a supervisor, I will sleep with you, but you got to give me that promotion if I do, right? The flip of it. Um,

I'm not sure that creates quid proquo liabilities because it's kind of the reverse of it, but it's still inappropriate. Still, that's not something that should happen. I, you know, I would I would hope that's not I mean, and I hope a supervisor, if that were to occur, you know, would would decline and and report it, you know, um because that's not the kind of behavior has nothing to do with county service. That's not the kind of behavior you want to promote here in the workplace. But no, good point though. That's that that would be the flip of it. That's correct. That happens all the time in Hollywood, by the way. Yeah. No, I I other you know that may be Harvey Harvey Weinstein made me think of it because not every one of those women were quid proquo. It went the other way sometimes too.

And whether we know the ins and outs of that, you know, nonetheless though, um the Harvey Weinstein how that looks. And once again, I should always point this out because it's kind of a good point. Do we ever know what truly ever happened? Right. In those kind of any kind of court case, you know, unless you have personal knowledge, no. Circumstantial as opposed to hard. Correct. And the other thing you have there is pattern. Correct. And I would just say that the bigger thing is optically how does it look to a judge or jury in those circumstances? And if the optics don't look good, you're going to be liable.

It's that simple, you know. So hopefully we don't have people who engage in that kind of thing whether either way because that's not the kind of employee you want to have at the county and that could be an issue. Yeah. And I don't know what happens. I'm not I've never worked in Hollywood. Can't really imagine. I will say one thing that's funny about Hollywood just going to that you know we saw the me too movement. You see these things and you see like Harvey Weinstein and other things. If you ever watch Hollywood movies and prior to the Me Too movement and you see how they portray themselves being movie producers. Yeah. They're at they're at pool parties and there's a lot, you know, it almost is kind of like that's how it was and everyone was okay with it until they weren't. You know, glorified.

Yeah. They glorified, you know. Nonetheless, though, I think going back to the benefit of the me too movement we mentioned earlier, that was a great way to say, "Hey, that's wrong and we should know better." And I think you've seen a change somewhat in Hollywood towards that, you know, but there Yeah, it's just funny you you you see the differences over time. It's an interesting kind of observation. Moving along though, another case study. Um, program analyst Mary finds sexually offensive language on the wall in the unisex restroom at the office. Mary immediately is immediately offended and complains to her supervisor. Is this quidd proquo sexual harassment? This one's a little different though, right? And here's what's different about it. I mean, first of all, is Mary being, you know, is there any job benefits being promised to Mary here? No. I mean, let's say Mary makes $30 an hour when she went into the restroom. She makes $30 an hour when she left. Now, there's no economic detriment or anything going on there. No one's saying that, you know, here's a job benefit promised or give me sexual favors. Instead, what we're seeing, you know, and think about this way, too. So, she sees sexually offensive language that's on the wall of the bathroom. Do we know who wrote that sexually offensive language? No. You know, not necessarily, though. Maybe we can investigate and find out if they should they should be disciplined.

Was it directed at her?

Was it directed at her? Did the person intend to offend Mary as opposed to be, you know, I would say an idiot or someone who probably shouldn't be doing that in the workplace and to defacing a wall. Right? So in this situation, it's not quit proquo sexual harassment, but this is more what we call hostile work environment or environmental harassment. And this is the more common form of harassment. When I say common, this kind of stuff, I hate to say it, potentially can come into play on any given day in the workplace. Um, you know, quit proquo, I would tell you, is obviously more severe. Um, it does happen. It doesn't happen as frequently, but hostile work environment can be a lot more subtle. May not seem on the surface to be as offensive at times, but yet nonetheless can still potentially create liability and I would tell you happens a lot more. Um, you know, this can involve, you know, inappropriate emails, or it could involve, you know, sexual jokes, racial comments, things that are in the break room, other things during the workplace. These are things that do happen. I've sat through trains before, guys, where I talk about these things, and right when the train's over, I watch an employee walk out and make a sexual joke on their way out the door that I can overhear. You know, these things do happen. So, this is the hostile work environment, environmental harassment. And here's your elements of this. The first one, there must be a protected category involved. So, we go back to that list. I had all of them are now in play. Race, gender, national origin, uh, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, if you're 40 years of age or older, all these potentially apply. So, they now all come into play. There must be physical, verbal, or visual harassing conduct. Now, in the next couple slides, I'm going to give some examples of that. So, we'll come back to that. The behavior must be objectively and subjectively offensive and unwelcome. Now, this one's kind of interesting. When you hear that objectively and subjectively, let's start with subjectively. Subjectively is

is means you means the individual is offended. Objectively offensive means society as a whole would be offended by that type of behavior. Um, and the reason why the courts require you to have both is because if it was just subjectively offensive, guys, we would have lawsuits coming out the windows of the courthouse because the laws aren't here for people's sensitivities. They're here for what we find as a whole would be potentially offensive. Now, I mean, I say that because there are some people sometimes you hear um I've heard a lot of different phrases over the years, eggshell, they're very sensitive kind of people. You say hi to employee, they feel offended. Hi, good morning. Harassment and they walk away. I I said hi. I society probably would not find that to be a harassing type behavior, you know, in that regard. Now if on the other hand though you know uh we talk about and we talk about objectively offensive but the standard that that the law looks at is how would the the reasonably prudent person that's usually kind of phrase used within that protected category view. So if you have an employee for example who makes an inappropriate sexual comment you know towards a female employee that female employee is offended by it then the question would be would the reasonably prudent female be offended by that type behavior. you have both that element satisfied. So that looks at it from that standpoint. The next uh one is that the behavior must be severe or pervasive. Severe traditionally under the courts means that a single act of harassment can create liability and it's almost always been exclusively limited to physical acts of harassment that are also criminal in nature. If someone engages um in inappropriate, you know, sexual assault, rape, obviously, things that are going to land you in the county jail, we could also have civil liability for that one individual act of harassment. That's a physical act. All other behavior though must be typically pervasive. And pervasive means it's a

fancy way of saying it's on an ongoing basis. It's not isolated or sporadic. So, for example, if we have an employee who tells that sexual joke in the break room, a supervisor overhears it and says, "Knock it off." and it doesn't happen again. Is that pervasive? No. It's only happened once or let's say it happens a couple times. We take the appropriate corrective action. It's why we have that zero tolerance equity policy by the way so we can do that. We're trying to limit liability. On the other hand, if it happens every day in the workplace on a more ongoing basis and no one does anything about it, does that make it more pervasive? The answer is yes. Now, I will say in the last few years, and we're still waiting to see how the courts kind of interpret this, as a result of the Me Too movement, I think this was back in 2019, California said that it's possible a single incident could still establish liability even if it's not pervasive. We just haven't seen how that's applied so much yet. The last one is the behavior must unreasonably interfere with the workplace. Not too hard to establish. Someone's making a harassment complaint, that means it's affecting their ability to do their job. And that's where that comes into play. Now, as I mentioned, some of these things were were changes that that came to the law. Um, this was back in 2019. This was in response to the Me Too movement and ways to kind of strengthen some of the laws. So, we always try to point these out. First one is that a decline in productivity is not required to establish harassment. It's sufficient only that the conduct altered the working conditions to make it more difficult to do the job. Most of these are in response to certain court cases. There was actually a court case that said, which I think is crazy, and the legislature said, "No, we're not going to allow that anymore." But the court case said that someone who was being subjected to sexual harassment would not have an actionable claim because they persevered through it and were still able to do their job. Does that really change the underlying behavior and what they're being subjected to? No. It's crazy. So, that's what that means. That's that first one. I mentioned a second ago, a single incident harassment may be sufficient, and it's kind of unclear from the courts what that's going to be just yet. The other change

was that the totality of the circumstances matter including stray remarks by non-decision makers. Um that goes to a discrimination claim. Um standards do not vary by the workplace. There was actually another court case and this this change by the legislature overturned it. But in that court case, the court of appeal implied that if you have, for example, a uh bluecollar workplace where people are like, you know, out in the field, that may be different than an office environment, and that, you know, um that may not necessarily create a hostile work environment, which is kind of a weird way of saying that. It's almost like saying, well, depending on what type of employee you are, type of job duties you do or something, you know, does that mean that harassment's not harassment? I think that's crazy. And that's what the legislature said. What's that?

That's discrimination. Yeah, harassment's harassment. And that's kind of what the legislature said to address it. And then the last

the last part though is that the behavior must is rarely determinable on paper alone. And that was the the legislaturator's way of saying that, you know, if we see questions of fact, this should go to a jury to decide if harassment occurred, which means that there's a lot more potential if there's a lawsuit filed, this could go all the way. courts are a little bit more um restrained from being able to, you know, dismiss cases on a motion for summary judgement. If you ever heard of that phrase, things like that. Now, let's talk about physical, verbal, and visual harassing conduct. So, physical conduct, I call these first ones the, you know, sometimes we call them the captain obvious examples, but the obvious examples. If someone's engaging in sexual assault, touching, groping, physical intimidation in the workplace, I think we can recognize those are things that are inappropriate. Um, and I they're not going to be tolerated. Those are things that may also involve getting law enforcement involved and land you in jail. Obviously, you know, these are very severe incidents. Less obvious examples though, massages, hugging. There was actually from hugging. There was another, this was in Yolo County. Yolo County had a lawsuit where their um elected sheriff at the time, this is a few years ago now. um he's no longer the sheriff as I as I understand but the elected sheriff would go to male employees and shake their hands but to female employees in the department he gave him a hug and one said that's you know felt really uncomfortable getting a hug from the sheriff was kind of I don't think there was necessarily ill intent but I should mention you don't have to have intent to create a hostile work environment and that created liability I believe that case was settled for roughly I think it was $500,000 something like that um we also saw some interesting situations too where uh in the state legislature, there was an an assembly member um who was known as Huggy Bear and he would hug everybody and then there were claims that came out against him on that and there was never I don't think a lawsuit per se that took place but it became a heightened kind of issue you know not good I mean massages too I when I talk about hugs I'm not saying you can't hug in the workplace

but I probably wouldn't go to the employee you know you don't know very well and say hey it's hug Tuesday let's give a big hug same goes for massages don't go to the employee you don't know very well and say hey it's it's the massage massage time of year. It's Christmas around the corner. Here you go. Let me give you a back massage. Ah, probably uncomfortable. Don't do that too often. But these are kind of the situations where more physical touchings are taking place. Oh, quick case study. Although Geette was assigned at birth as a male, she recently began presenting as a female consistent with her gender identity. She notified her co-workers of her new change presentation as she previously presented as male as a male named George. John and Ashley refused to refer to Geette by her name or female pronouns and still call her George and frequently ask him why he uses the women's restroom and wears skirts. Have John and Ashley create a hostile work environment? And the answer is yes, because in California, gender identity and expression are still protected categories. So, let's move on to verbal content. This is by far the most common area that we do see in the workplace. Sexual comments, jokes, mocking accents, teasing, slurs, you know, and I'll tell you what, why do we joke in the workplace?

What is it?

Yeah. Breaks the ice, right? Makes makes the day go by. I mean, I've been trying really hard to throw some throw some jokes out here as we do today's training. You know, I hope it makes the training move quicker. The good news is we're moving along pretty good. We're in good shape. We only got about 15 minutes left here, right? So, you know, we do do that. We joke around, but often times those jokes involve things of a protected category status. You know, sexual jokes, racial jokes, uh homophobic jokes, religious jokes, you know, these things do come up and they occur and it can be a problem. Now, sometimes I'll people come to me during trains and say, "Gage, you know what? Yeah, we do joke in the workplace and I have friends and yes, you know, perhaps we have jokes that may involve a protected category status, but no one's offended. What's the big deal? Now, my response to that is, how do you know anyone's offended? Can you guys read minds? Sometimes when I do these trains, I wish I could read mines. You guys, I think, are all very bored right now. I get whatever it is, right? You know, no, I can't read. I don't know. But at the same token, what I would tell you on this kind of thing is, have you ever had a situation where you may have actually laughed at a joke but felt uncomfortable about it inside? Could happen, you know. And I'd also tell you this too, don't forget the unknown. And when I say the unknown, going back to that list of protected categories, as you I like to tack that on the unknown. Do you know everyone's protected category status? Some are more obvious than others, right? Race, gender, national origin. Okay, maybe we can identify that. What about religion and disability? Now, granted, if someone, you know, is in a a wheelchair or something like that, perhaps you can identify their disability, but do we know everyone's disability and medical condition by observation? Not necessarily. How about religion? Could you be making a religious joke in front of one of your, you know, your colleagues, your co-workers in the workplace and have no idea that yet they're part of that religion and are offended by it? Some people are really vocal about their religious beliefs. Others keep it close to the vest and

don't talk about it. That's the unknown. That's where that could arise that way. So, I talk about this with verbal conduct and these kinds of things. And, you know, this is where liability can attach. And I don't I don't have some magic wand to say that no one's ever going to tell a joke or comment of a protected category going forward. No, I don't have that, you know, magic wand. What I'm telling you is one that violates our equity policy and two for everyone that's part of this train that can create liability both for the county and potentially individually depending on the nature of it. And that's something you have to be aware of and you got to be concerned about. Let me go to the next case study. Ron arrives to work and finds a noose hanging in his office's doorway with his co-workers and supervisors in the hallway looking at it and doing nothing. As an African-American, Ron is extremely offended and also embarrassed in front of his co-workers. Has Ron been subjected to a hostile work environment? Yeah. Now, I'll tell you, I've used this actually this case study for several years now, and even on occasion, sometimes I've had some some of the agencies I've worked with, people come and say, "That's really harsh. Why do you use that example?" Because it's happened. This isn't something I made up. This is based on actually true life stories and cases where someone did that. But when I give you that example and I put it up there, I hope everyone in this room understands that's entirely inappropriate. And when I say from visual conduct and a visual standpoint why that's an issue, no one was touched, no physical conduct, not a word was said, but the visual, the optic of it, right off the bat, we understand is entirely inappropriate and can't be, you know, can't be condoned. And even worse in this scenario, you know, co-workers and even the supervisor are just standing there doing nothing about it. you know, scenario like this comes up, you move in. Hey, take that down. Let's let's get going. You know, we don't want to stand there and make a scene of this. That's kind of the idea behind it. So, we talk about visual conduct, social media posts or images, emails, you know, I should mention one thing. If people

use county email, for example, or even a personal email to a county account, guess what, guys? That's public record by the way, you know, and Joe Citizen can always make a request for it. But if there's people putting passing on jokes or anything that is inappropriate for protected category status, you got a written record of it right there. Cartoons, drawings, gestures, staring, learing. And then I mentioned the varying in sexual conduct and affection between other employees at work. We've even seen scenarios, I hate to say, I've seen them over my career where people, I'm not sure why they decide that's a good idea, but they engage in relations in the workplace and get caught. And I'm going to tell you right now, that happens, you're not working here much longer. That's not going to go well. Now the last part here and then we're going to go to our last sections here. Gray borderline areas. I mentioned earlier about what if we have workplace relationships or private and consensual relationships between supervisors and subordinates. I call that a gray borderline area because depending on the nature of it, that actually may be okay. If you have a direct supervisor or subordinate though, that may create concerns or conflicts of interest or favoritism issues. Offduty conduct. Now, when you're outside of work and you're out in the workplace, depend on the nature of and I got to tell you, you know, it begs the question of when are you, especially I would tell you this at a higher level perhaps like where you guys are as elected officials, when are you technically off duty, so to speak. It's a good question, you know, but if it comes up and reflects back on the on the county or in that situation, that still can create liability. And oftentimes, even if we have just, let's just take um, you know, a rank and file employee who's outside of work, and they're with their co-workers, it's not a work-related event, not county sponsor, and they're making sexual jokes and racial comments, that on its own may not create liability, but if you don't think that behavior doesn't trickle back in the workplace the next workday or soon enough, then is it our problem? Yes, it is once it's there. So, that's where that can also apply. Um, I invitation to lunch, drinks, or dinner. You know, people go to go to lunch together. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a little different than telling a co-orker, "Let's go have a

Kendall at dinner together." That could have a different circumstance of it. Um, references to appearance or dress, casual touching to non-intimate body parts, hands on shoulders, waist, arms or legs. You know, I would say it's probably not a good idea to do a whole lot of touching in the workplace anyways, but you can see how the nature of it really depends. These are why these are things you should be careful. So, last couple sections here. What's your obligation for those that are that are a supervisor? And when I say that being a supervisory employee or as a human in an elected capacity, you the ultimate supervisors we talked about. The definition is anyone who has any responsibility or discretion to lead others. And we talked earlier, even if it's not your own employees, it still can be invoked under that um under that definition of fallen as a supervisor. But why that's important, this is straight from the government code. Harassment shall be unlawful if the entity or its agents or supervisors and that's of everyone here who's part of this training knows or should have known of this conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action. Knows of the conduct means someone reports it directly to you. Should have known is you observe it, you see what's going on and you fail to act potentially. So, as I note here, supervisors have an obligation to report harassment, discrimination, and retaliation of which they become aware. Now, the important part, and we're going to talk about this for everyone, that doesn't mean you're the person who investigates it or looks into it. We go through our, you know, our chain of command here at the county. That starts with HR. We go to the county administration. That's their job to do that. The bigger thing is these issues arise, we report it and look into it and we've done our job to address it as opposed to looking the other way and hoping it goes away, which doesn't always do that. Liability can attach. So, case study, Margaret supervises a team of five employees, four of whom are male and one of whom is female. Today, Margaret overheard the male employee standing around a food truck at lunch speculating on how their female colleague must be quote in bed. The female colleague was not in the office

and did not overhehere the discussion. Does Margaret have an obligation to take action even though the female employee was not there to overhear the discussion? What do you think? Yep. She's a supervisory employee that violates our policy. It creates liability and it may just be, you know, simple step in to knock it off. And if this becomes a bigger issue, we get HR involved to make sure and make a note of what took what took place either way. So supervisor's duty to respond if they observe overhear harassing discriminating type conduct they need to report those things um and involve management and HR promptly and that can include third party complaints so even if it comes from someone who says I've observed this or seen that doesn't seem right we should still look into it um verbal complaints even potentially rumors um if we have enough information to go upon I even I'll give you a great example what about anonymous complaints do we have an obligation to look into anonymous complaints. The short answer is potentially if there's enough information in the anonymous complaint for us to look into. Now granted, if we got anonymous complaint that says John Doe is a harasser and he harasses everyone at the county, well, that's probably not sufficient enough for us to look into. It's too broad, right? But if the complaint said instead, it was anonymous that John Doe has been harassing um Jane and um and Jenny at the county who both work in the public works department or something like that. Do we know potentially who we can look into? We can go talk to Jane and Jenny, find out. If they say nothing's going on, that may need the investigation. On the other hand, they may say, "Whoa, I'm not sure how you found out about that." But yes, that has been an issue. John Doe has been doing that and we can look into it further if that comes up. We don't necessarily have to hear the word harassment to trigger our duty to act. It's the nature of what's being described. But most importantly here, don't ignore the response. Take immediate action. Report, follow up on any harassment, discrimination, or retaliation complaints that come up. Obviously, to the extent you're involved, cooperate in the investigation. But our ultimate goal, we

want to prevent further harassment and assure no retaliation so we don't see any further concerns going forward. Now, last part, we're almost done. What's the county's obligation to address unlawful discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in the workplace? So, first things, we got to take appropriate corrective action. Um, and probably the most important thing, a complaint comes our way, we have to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation. Now, I mentioned we get a complaint, can I shoot the shotgun was my my analogy. Sorry, it's just kind of a fun phrase that you I like to use. It's a great way to think about it. It's out there. we have to now close the loop and look into it, see what did or did not occur. Um, and part of the reason we investigate too, by the way, just because someone makes a complaint, does that mean on its on on its own that it's that that happened? We don't know. We have to find that out. I have seen allegations that have come in over the years um where an allegation's made. We do an investigation. It turns out that wasn't sustained or that's not exactly what took place. That's why we have to look into it because it wouldn't be fair otherwise for us to make a determination based solely on a complaint alone. We talked about confidentiality being limited in those circumstances and we have to keep the victim informed. If you make a complaint as an employee, we look into the complaint and we don't we don't report back to you what happened. What do you think? Nothing was done. So, we do circle back at the end of the complaint. We can say that the matter was sustained or not sustained. We may not go into the specific disciplinary action if we're going to take that because that's a personnel matter, but we can close the loop about that we did take this action and to let us know if anything further happens. We follow our disciplinary policies to discipline violations that are sustained. We do preventive training to prevent future violations. Sometimes that's done in a remedial fashion. Otherwise, we're going to do it in accordance with the law like we're doing today. Two hours every two years for supervisory employees, one hour every two years for non-supervisory employees. And we would publish and update the county's policy accordingly. That's the equity policy. So changes in

the law will make sure and update options for resolution. Obviously we follow the equity policy. We follow the harassment complaint procedure in there. Um our ultimate goal and why we want to you know these issues come up and people make complaints. We want to handle this internally. That's why we have a policy because our ultimate goal really is to prevent you know get someone back in the workplace try to address the issue and move on. However, someone still has a right to make a claim with the EEOC, as I mentioned, 300 days from the date of the alleged discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or for the California Civil Rights Department, three years. And once they get what's called a right to sue letter, they potentially can still go to state or federal court. Hopefully, that's going to be a last resort because hopefully we're doing our part to try to prevent these things, try to address these things if they arise. And that's really, really important. I can tell you that over the years what I've seen um looking at cases that do go to court I would probably tell you roughly speaking threearters of those cases the person who's the complainant the one who is the victim of the harassment who decided to file a lawsuit and if you were to ask him why did it go this far to where we got to a lawsuit they would probably say one way or another I did try to complain about it and I felt it fell on deaf ears or was not being taken seriously or was not looked into. Now, sometimes you have others, no matter how hard we try to address it, follow our policy, take appropriate corrective action, they're still not satisfied. They still have the right to go to court. That's probably the other 25%. And that's, you know, that's kind of how I call cost doing business. That's it's a reality that we we do see lawsuits entirely. That does happen. But hopefully we're in a better spot to defend against those if we've done what we're supposed to do. County liability here. counties liable for the conduct of supervisors who engage in unlawful harassment, discrimination, or retaliation, or if we fail to take um all reasonable steps necessary to prevent harassment from occurring. So, if we have someone who engages in that type of behavior um at the supervisory level and we're aware of it and failed

to act, the countyy's going to be liable in that circumstance. But as I mentioned from a personal liability standpoint, going back to your money, your wallet, all employees can be personally liable for engaging in unlawful harassment. This is actually true for even non-supervisory employees. It's just in that situation that the county wouldn't be necessarily liable if we have two non-supervisory employees that were engaged in like harassment towards one another. Um, and we weren't aware of it. There still could be individually liability. But more importantly, supervisors are also liable if we condone it. were aware of it and failed to take appropriate action to address it. And those damages can include back pain, emotional distress, and for individual employees, punitive damages. The county as a public entity is exempt from punitive damages, but individual employees are not. Um, that case with FedEx I mentioned earlier where we had $1 million assessed against the individual employee. Part of that was punitive damages because of the severe nature of what the harassing conduct was towards those two employees. All right, last thoughts here. We're almost done. prevention. Never play favorites. Um why I point out by that I gave you that case study earlier. We apply our work rules uniformly. I think that's important consistent in how we do that. Report all complaints immediately. So issues do come up, they come to our attention. It's important that we address that when they arise. Take those complaints seriously. And then I also say monitor the workplace. something I try to encourage um and that may be a little more difficult for for um the electants here on the day as in your capacity as a supervisor member but for what I would say though your supervisory employees who on a day-to-day basis or in the workplace be aware of what your subordinates are doing but the same could happen for you if you're aware of an incident that comes up and we can look into it to the extent we can address an issue before it becomes a bigger issue that's going to help reduce our liability and it's us doing the right thing to enforce our policy and maintain a workplace free of discrimination harassment and retaliation. Of course, follow the county's policy, the equity policy, as everyone has a copy of here. And then

the last part, people don't like when I say this, but it's still still true. Be a good role model. If you're the individual who's the one making sexual comments, racial jokes, these kinds of things, you are establishing as a role model something that that you think people are going to think is okay. When it violates our policies, it creates liability and frankly is not doing the right thing for our employees overall. That's the main idea because our ultimate goal is to establish a workplace defined by courtesy, sensitivity, and respect. Um, all of our employees, all of you as electeds come here to serve the citizens of the county of Calaveris. We got to do our job to address guys. Thank you so much for your time. Happy holidays, happy new year to all of you. And um, if you have any questions, feel free to let me know. But thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. That was impressive. Thank you for the two hours. It's interesting. Yeah. No, thank you supervisor. I appreciate you should have pre public comment. Yeah, I was going to ask for public comment after. Does anybody else have any to say? Did we have any public comment? Let me say

my name is Christopher Budner, publisher of Calaveris 2026.com, a government watchdog and accountability blog. Unlawful harassment was defined in your presentation as including actions by towards employees, independent contractors, vendors, and other non-employees. Please elaborate on whether a county district supervisor's constituents are considered a non-employee by your definition. Please further elaborate on this specific element of unlawful harassment, providing two or three additional scenarios depicting how a non employee might realistically be harassed by a county district supervisor. Please elaborate on whether it is considered unlawful harassment if a county district supervisor allegedly retaliates against non-employees. Please elaborate on whether the act of stalking a non-emp employee to their home by the spouse of a county district supervisor allegedly with the intent to threaten and intimidate constitutes unlawful harassment of that non-emp employee. This is not a hypothetical scenario as one of the five county district supervisors is well aware. My name is Christopher Butner, publisher of Calera's 2026.com, a government watchdog and accountability blog. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'm I'm with with with all due respect in terms of these specific scenarios, I'm not in a position to answer those. If there issues that I would tell you that and I'm not also um you know an employee of the county, so to speak, as opposed to a vendor for purposes of providing this um it would have to be something that be addressed by the county from that perspective.

So we with public comment the usual practice is we let people talk but questions during that time. It's up to the board. Thank you. Is there any other public comment? We have no online public comment. Thank you. As this is anformational item. Thank you, Gage, very much. Thank you. I actually have a question. Oh, sorry. I didn't know.

No, it's okay. Um I just wait for people. Um curiosity, at what point does it drop? Because many of us in this room are elected officials. Um, at what point is it become, and you don't have to answer this today, it just I've always wondered, does it become first amendment versus harassment? You know, there's not,

I mean, we we deal with that public all the time. Um, and so where does that line become? Um, you know, if someone were to go in and yell at say Teresa, but say I'm with Teresa and someone's yelling at me, but she's subject to that environment. How did that be? Is that still first amendment or is it now harassment to Teresa, you know, in a hostile environment? I just I mean how did how do you deal with that with the positions we sit in and gate that and whether or not we go to duly and compli complain you know what I mean?

No it's it's a fair question and it's also one that I would say and it's a very complicated point because it depends on the nature of what the speech is. It depends on if it's done in an official capacity. Um because first amendment rights don't always apply um to a public employee who's engaged in their in uh their official duties. Um but then it also depends on the nature of what you're saying. So you know can this be used to to chill political discourse for example which happens you know not necessarily when I say that out loud. That also depends on the specific scenarios of what was said or not said. Um,

so then that's when an investigation would be good to have to make sure that we're reacting to the correct, you know, going to say this happened. I don't know where to balance it. No. And fair enough, supervisor. I think are people going to have disagreements, for example? That's the nature of the discourse of government, you know. Um, and that's that's appropriate. Um, but then once again, you look at protected categories and what those things are. It doesn't mean people can have personal opinions on those things necessarily, but how they apply into the workplace or in terms of what you do, that's where I think that's a balancing act of how that's going to take place and that becomes difficult. I agree with him. Thank you. Okay. All right, guys. Thank you very much.

Happy holidays. Thank you, everyone. Make sure and turn your forms. Thank you. I'll collect them down here and then give them to Oh, no. Come on. It was done too. So

yeah, we're going to go into close session now and then we're going to come back from close session to report out and do supervisor announcements. So close session item 31 pursuant to government code 54957.6 conference with county designated labor negotiators Terresa Hitchcock and Judy Hawkins regarding the following employee organization deputy sheriff's association DSA. Item 32, pursuant to government code 54956.9D1, conference of legal counsel reexisting litigation, James Gamble versus County of Calaveris, Calaveris, County Superior Superior Court case number 25CB 48346.

Thank you. And we do not have any online public comment. Thank you. And I don't see any public comment here regarding close session. No. Thank you.

You're live. Thank you. We are back. Uh madame clerk, would you report out please from close session?

Close session. Um agenda for today uh report out item 31 pursuant to government code 54957.6. Six conference with county designated labor negotiators Terresa Hitchcock and Judy Hawkins regarding the following employee organization deputy sheriff's association DSA board action no reportable action taken item 32 pursuant to government code 54956.9D1 conference of legal counsel reexisting litigation James Gamble versus county of Calaveris Calaveris County support superior court case number 25c CV48346 board action on a motion by supervisor stopper and second by supervisor Bondorf the board voted to authorize county council to defend the county in this action in which plaintiff James Campbell alleges wrongful death of his uncle due to dangerous road conditions and to retain the Cfield Law Firm to assist county council in the defense of the action.

Thank you. Is there any public comment? Seeing none, is there any online? We have no individuals online. We'll move on to supervisor announcements. In compliance with government code section 53232.3D, board members shall provide brief reports on any meetings attended at the expense of the local agency and may make other announcements or report out.

Thank you, Supervisor Stabber. Um, I'm going to hand over the speech to mi Miss Andal because she attended SESAC. I had uh vehicle problems that perpetuated and so she was able to stand in on me and she uh from my understanding from talking to people, she elevated with a learning curve like this. So, she did a good job. So, I'll hand that over to her.

Supervisor Topelli. Yes, I attended the um part of the tree lighting ceremony in Valley Springs on Friday night. It was well well well attended. I think half the town was there. And then the next day the parade. It was the largest parade. I've been doing a parade for the last 20 years. It was the largest parade um that I've ever been involved in. There were 60 entrance and so it was very well. Sunday I attended the main street here, the San Andreas Merchants Association tree lighting and the the uh closing of Main Street and it was well attended also. It was very good. And then uh just a big shout out a big shout out Calaver High School football team. They are playing this Saturday in Fullerton for the state championship.

So congratulations guys. Awesome. Supervisor Fondor.

Um, tomorrow I'll be attending RCRC. Um, also happening tomorrow. Unfortunately, um, and not be able to be there. Um, but I hear that Gay is speaking. Um, Habitat is having a um, groundbreaking, I guess, is what you want to call it, um, of the new development uh, in Angel's Camp, which is really, even though it's within the city, it's um, for the county and city our size, this is one of the biggest developments in the state of California that Habitat has ever um, done. So, there are there is a lot of spotlight on this project. Um, so thank you for being there. Um, um, and then I had originally gone because um, for personal reasons, but uh, ended up being quite the night on Saturday night with the sheriff and um, the congressman was there at the cattleman's association dinner. Um, and the sheriff uh did his spiel, the congressman did his spiel, and I got lucky and um didn't have to say anything. Um, but it was a good turnout and um it was really nice to see them both out and about. I'm still trying to figure out how the sheriff beat me there after the parade, but yeah, I swear she got picked up by a drone or something.

Yeah, please. Um and and also on Saturday night after the parade, uh I attended the Terrace Shopping Center tree lighting and it was well attended to. How many hot cocoa did you have? It sounded like a lot of hot cocoa. A lot of hot coco.

Um as supervisor stopper said, I did attend SEESAC last week in San Jose. Um huge conference, so many workshops, committee meetings. Um definitely a steep curve but um I learned a lot, made so many connections. Um it was an absolute honor to be around so many like-minded uh driven, dedicated people. Um came home to a very busy Christmas uh weekend. Starting off in district 2, um I had the honor of MCing the tiniest Christmas parade in Mountain Ranch with our mayor. We call him the mayor, Phil Alberts. So, that was a great honor for me to get to assist Phil. Um, and then, um, off to Bo Hill that had a Christmas open house and the veterans crab feed. While I didn't make it to West Point, they had a great Christmas tree lighting, craft fair, parade. Um, so, a lot going on. And I did make it Sunday night um down here to San Andreas to the carolling on Main Street. Um, and thank you for pointing out the football game. So proud of our boys. I think this is the first time ever in Calver High School history. Um, so my nephew is going down there. Um, it's a great honor.

And Supervisor Huberty, thank you for chairing this year and bearing with me in my first year of service. All of you.

I'll I'll start off by saying it's been a complete honor. Thank you all for letting me chair. That was awesome. Um, on the 2nd, I was at the behavioral health board meeting. Um we're actually changing offices now that they've uh vacated their uh um mobile units for the new building. Um and we chose new officers. On the third, I attended the Evitz Pass property owners council. Uh again, a very um positive um way of getting a lot of information um circulated in the upper Highway 4 corridor. Again, going on about Burn Buddies and all the other things that are coming on to um hopefully we'll get some big snow here on the 4th. I did attend the winter wise at the Independence Hall in White Pines. I just wanted to thank our sheriff and all of our frontline um for being there and for educating our community on on best practices. On the 5th, much like uh Supervisor Tanelli was saying, the Murphy's parade was off the hook. It was bigger this year for some reason than ever before. Um for a moment there, it felt like there were more people in the parade than there were watching it, but actually there was a huge crowd out there as well watching. on the 6th, um, Supervisor Fondorf was there. We opened the Matt Museum,

which is huge. Um, if you get the opportunity, I don't know if you want to say a few words about it because it's it's it's unbelievable. Um, it is such an honor uh to our Native Americans. Um, and to the and to the artifacts that everybody saved. The county gave the artifacts. Uh, the city gave the artifacts. the old-timers Museum. Um I put the Stephen O baskets in there as well. Um and it's it's it's just and the Dr. Cooper's baskets. It's unbelievable. And you don't really feel like I mean it it's a it's a museum that's worthy of being in downtown San Francisco. They really did a beautiful job. The attention to detail and the history is phenomenal. Um and then I was in Valley Springs and then the Angel's Camp that night. Again, a huge parade, over 60 entries. Um, I missed the Moch Hill. I would love to have been there. Um, and then on the 8th we did the uh Christmas lunchon at the Arnold Library that Jesse Sprag was there. It went very well.

Thank you, madam CEO. Would you have anything? Julie, thank you for stepping in. Pretty I I think Sarah's in a pub somewhere off of Kings Road at the moment. She's enjoying herself. I'm coming through. That's it. Susan, merry Christmas everybody and have a great new year. Thank you. Yes. Merry Christmas everybody. GN fear.