Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

04/14/2026 board of supervisors meeting to order. Can we please start with the pledge of allegiance by supervisor Velasquez?

Ready to get I pledge allegiance to the flag

Thank you. Is there a motion to acknowledge the certificate of posting? Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. All good. That's five o. Next board announcements. Do we have any updates, announcements? Okay. Keep moving. Public comment opportunity to address the board on items of interest not appearing on the agenda. Is there any public comment for items not appearing on the agenda today?

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

Yeah. Just state your name.

Hi. I'm Timothy Pearson. I've been a resident of Hollister with my family for almost fifteen years. Like I said, I'm Timothy Pearson, and my family and I have lived in the house for almost fifteen years. My wife, Yuko, and daughters, Piper and Paige.

I'm here today on behalf of our family pets, Bubba and Stewie, two family dogs that, unfortunately, on the October 29, got out of our backyard in the course of under an hour, came across a couple neighborhood cats that did not end well for the cats, which we are extremely sorry, and and it it was an unfortunate event. However, the way that the case has been handled by the officer police department as well as our animal control, which is why I'm here today because I know it's a a joint, as well as commissioner Galloway, who is the superior commissioner who oversaw our appeal. So, basically, what what I'm here is it's an alarming way that the case has been handled, the overreach of police activity, animal control activity, as well as the city attorney being involved to try to kill our dogs over a mistake that happened one time. Dogs have had no priors, have never been out of out of escaped. And like I said, it was it was unfortunate.

So when we originally had our hearing at the police department, we were under the impression that they were gonna have a hearing to decide whether our dogs are dangerous, which this the rule is that if any animal, when unprovoked, injures or kills a a human being or domestic animal, that dog could be deemed dangerous.

The facts are

first of all, the the city and the police department had zero evidence that this was an unprovoked attack. At the police hearing at the house police department, they brought in they or they they had statements from both of the cat owners. Again, these people are well intentioned. They feed these stray cats that are in the neighborhood and call them pets. So I'm not I'm not saying my dogs didn't get out that day.

However, there was zero evidence presented to the police department or by the police department that the attack was unprovoked. Instead, the the police department tried to point paint us as irresponsible pet owners and basically degenerates to the community when that's about the farthest from the truth this could be. Like I said, I we're FFA members. My daughters are both a we're one just graduated. The younger one my okay.

Well, thanks for your time, and I have some sworn statements I'd like to leave that were not considered by commissioner Galloway or the police department when we were at the at the case, which basically shows this the preponderance of evidence was in our favor and not the other way around. Thank you very much for your time.

That concludes public comment.

Okay.

Great. Thank you. Moving on to consent agenda. Any, items whereas wish to pull from consent?

I was hoping we can pull 1.5, which is the proclamation for library week. 1.6, the presentation regarding water awareness month. Is there anyone here from to do that presentation? Yes. I'd like to pull that one. And then one ten, which is the informational state of the arts presentation. Thank you.

Mister chairman?

Mister chair, I'd like to pull 1.8 to be able to to just have for public understanding of the rule changes. Yep.

Yes. Okay. Is there public comment on items that will not be pulled for consent?

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

Okay. Great. Is there a motion to approve consent, except for item 1.5, 1.6, 1.1, and 1.8?

I move to approve.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

K. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zanger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez? Yes. Supervisor Kosmiki? Yes. Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kerr? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Okay. Great. Move to, 1.5 then. Registratillo?

Yeah. I was just hoping that we could give recognition, and approve the proclamation declaring April 19 through the twenty fifth as National Library Week in San Benito County. Do we are you will you be presenting a proclamation?

Are you bold or you should present it?

Oh, you want me to present it? Yeah.

Go for it. Go for it. Sure.

I can present it. Is there are we I make a motion to approve the proclamation first.

That motion.

Great. We have roll call vote on the the motion, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki? Yes. Supervisor Satello?

Yes.

Supervisor Currow?

Yes.

Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Great. I think

Austin's here. Austin, yeah, come on up.

Good morning. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you for being here.

Okay. So libraries are accessible and inclusive places that foster lifelong learning, offering a place where individuals of all ages can explore new ideas. They provide free and equitable access to books, digital tools, innovative programming, ensuring that all individuals have the support they need to learn, connect, and thrive. Libraries empower job seekers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners by providing access to resources, training, and opportunities that support growth and economic success. Libraries have long served as trusted and treasured institutions for all members of the community regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status.

Libraries, librarians, and library workers are joining library supporters and advocates across the nation to celebrate National Library Week. Therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors, proclaim April 19 through the twenty fifth twenty twenty six to be National Library Week. We encourage all residents to connect with their San Benito County free library by visiting online or in person to access its invaluable resources and services. Thank you, Austin, for everything you're doing, and thank you to the friends of the library. You guys are incredible.

And do you wanna talk a little bit about what you're doing next week? I know you've got some special things planned. I know I'm a guest reader next week too, so I will be there. I encourage our community. Please come out, support our library. And so I'm gonna turn it over to you now. So thank you.

Good morning. Thank you to the board, admin, and members of the public. Each April, we celebrate National Library Week as a way to recognize the essential role that libraries and library staff play in strengthening our communities. This year's theme is find your joy. It highlights the ways people find joy at the library from finding new books, discovering fun programs, attending you know, connecting with others through programs.

And so some of our events, we have story times, Roblox club, knitting groups, book clubs, all offer a wide range of opportunities, for all ages to, you know, that support lifelong learning, foster community connections, and promote engagement. We invite everyone to visit, next week. You know, sign up for a free library card, receive a calendar of all our events happening in April. We will have, you know, our story time at ten, to 10:30 on Wednesday, with supervisor Sotelo, and the friends will be, tabling as well. So I'll turn

it over to Nancy.

Good morning. I'm Nancy Gurton, and I'm a board member for the Friends of the Library. I'd like to thank the board of supervisors for presenting this proclamation today to our library in honor of National Libraries Week. In recognition of their hard work and dedication, the friends will be hosting a staff appreciation lunch on April 21. It's our small way of saying thank you to the library employees for everything they do for our residents.

Lastly, I'd just like to invite the board and the community to stop by the library and visit the friends information table on Thursday, the twenty third between two and 5PM. We'll have a prize wheel and plenty of information to share on how you can get involved. Thank you again for supporting our library.

Thank you. Is there a public comment on this before we

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card. On Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon.

And I have no public comment. Comments from the board here? K. Alright. Great. I'm moving forward to item 1.6 also pulled by supervisor Sotelo.

Thank you. Again, this was we're approving a proclamation declaring May as water awareness month in San Benito County, and I wanted to give special recognition of that. And I also wanted to hear the presentation from the San Benito County Water District. So I'll move to approve the proclamation.

I'll second. Great. We have roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Currow? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Yes. Your public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers on item 1.6, please provide a speaker card. On Zoom, you can press 9 or the raise hand icon. No public comment.

K. Great. Now there's a presentation we have.

Hi, everyone. My name is Lindy Barroso. I'm the water conservation program manager for the water district, and I'm gonna be doing a small presentation on what we're doing for water awareness month. We are proclaiming May as water awareness month and as the water conservation. We're finding ways to promote our rebates and our services to our county and our community.

Alright.

So why does Water Awareness Month matter? So we wanna aim to raise awareness on the importance of our water and trying to save it since it is a vital resource for our future. This is a summary of what we do at the water conservation part of San Benito. We collaborate with the city of Hollister, city of San Juan, and also Sunny Slope. So we do try to promote our rebates. And just for everyone that doesn't know, we do offer a lot of rebates. The first one is our turf removal rebate. It is a minimum of 100 square feet to a maximum of 1,000 square feet. We do pay our residents $2 per square foot. And with this rebate, you are going to remove your turf, but you could put anything that's more water conservative.

We do give our customers plans and ideas of what they could do. We have this as a very popular of one of our rebates for spring and summer coming up. And at the end of the presentation, I do have our, information with our phone number so you could contact us. We also have our landscaping hardware. This involves any type of irrigation system, which is up to $100.

Anybody, like I said, who pays their water bill to Sunny Slope, City of Hollister, City of San Juan is able to take advantage of these rebates. We also offer free toilets. So any toilets that are older than 1992, we are giving away free toilets or a $75 rebate in order to purchase a newer toilet that is more water conserved and doesn't use as much water as the older ones. We also have our water softeners. So for the water softeners, we tried to let our customers know of the effects of the salts in our water softeners and how difficult it is for us to recycle our water in order for us to use it in the future.

So we are giving this rebate of $300 to completely get demolish it and remove our water softeners because of the quality of water in San Diego is already really difficult, so we wanna make sure that it is a lot easier for us to recycle. And our last but most popular is our home water survey. For our home home water survey, this is something that we offer free to all our residents and customers who pay their water bills to Sunny Slope City Hollister and city of San Juan. Leo, which is our he's been in our community for more than twenty years serving in the water district, and you'll see him a little bit further down. So I'll keep going.

So some saving water tips, we do promote a lot of our tips through social media and our website. And, like, for example, watering, utilizing drip irrigation, that is something that we really try to enforce to our customers when they use our turf turf removal rebate, watering the lawn anywhere from nine PM to 6AM. Any water leaks to check for leaky faucets, upgrade older toilets, and just adjusting their sprinklers every year, and water efficiency just reusing our our water. We've got finally a few rain this past weekend, so I'm hoping that, you know, plants and everything got watered down using a broom instead of a hose. So there's a lot of tips and tricks that we like to promote for saving our water usage.

We do a lot of tabling, so that's where we promote our services. And then this is Leo. So like I said, we do offer free home water surveys. What he does is check the meter, make sure to do outside irrigation systems, and also inside of the home. He'll give you his best recommendation. If he's able to fix it on the spot, he'll definitely do it for free. If he can't, he'll give you his best recommendation for contacting a plumber. And so those are some of the services that we do offer, and we wanna make sure that everyone in our community is aware. So thank you so much. Our phone number is on there on our website as well if you're interested in any of the rebates. There's a lot of summaries and a lot of guidelines that we do follow. So give us a call if you have any questions, and thank you everyone for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Comments from the board? Well, thank you very much. We we approved this. Right? We did. Yes. Correct. Okay. Great. We'll move forward then to we'll go 1.1 with all the proclamations. This is pulled by Supervisor Chatello as well.

You wanna do one point eight first?

We'll just go back to them. I'm gonna do all the proclamations, and then we'll go back to 1.8.

Yeah. So same. I wanted to approve the proclamation designating April 2026 as arts, culture, and creativity month, and then accept the informational state of the arts presentation.

Great. Is there a public comment on this?

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

So I move to approve.

I'll second that.

I move roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki? Yes. Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kearl? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Alright. And we had a present we come and do the presentation, Jennifer?

Okay. Okay. Remind me more.

Okay. The arrow. Okay. Yes. Okay. Morning. Good to see you, chair Zanger and members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to do a very brief presentation on state of the art. April marks the eighth annual arts culture and creativity month in California that was passed by concurrent resolution in the California Senate in 2019. So we're very happy to get it recognized here locally.

The San Diego County Arts Council, we're a private nonprofit based here in Hollister, California. Our mission is to activate and engage people, communities, and spaces through arts, culture, and creativity. I know you're familiar with our organization, so I'll kinda go quickly through these details. But I'm very happy this year, 2026, we're celebrating our twentieth anniversary. We have a lot to celebrate, and I'd like to invite you all to our annual gala dinner, which will be on Saturday, July 18 at Pisces Ranch.

We normally do a a very lovely farm to table dinner this year. It's gonna be a more elevated black tie event, so we'll send those invites out very shortly. Our arts council, we serve as the state local partner to the California Arts Council, is our state arts agency. And you, as the county, designate one organization per county to serve this function. So there are 58 counties in California.

We currently have around 56, you know, county designated arts councils or arts commissions that serve as this partner to the state. This allows us to bring state and federal resources to the county, and it also allows us to communicate local needs in our arts and culture community to the state. This has resulted in a lot of programs around regranting, artists in the schools program, as well just like a lot of networking and peer learning that we do with the other county based organizations. We have an annual convening coming up just this Sunday in Sacramento, well, where all the state local partners will meet for a full day conference. As state local partners, we do a lot of things around funding, connecting artists and communities, advocating for the arts, supporting arts education and creative place making, and advancing social justice, and a lot of issues around, you know, climate impact, water awareness.

We've collaborated with almost every, you know, county agency and nonprofit here in the county over the last twenty years. Some of the programs that we do are well, I'll just name a couple. One, our biggest program, of course, is arts education. And, actually, I'm just gonna go to the next slide. Our arts education program has just really blossomed and exploded over the years.

We do a lot of programs in the schools, but our mainstay program is our artist in the schools program where we have a whole team of teaching artists that are deployed into the schools every day. They teach over a 165 art classes per week, serving 6,000 students per week. So you can imagine the magnitude. We are really seeing this program's been around for a number of years. We're seeing the the arts literacy, the language, the technical skills grow to the point where our teachers at the high school have to elevate their curriculum because these students are graduating and are and are going into the high school already with a lot of skills and familiarity and just excitement about art.

You'll see one image here I wanna highlight with Louise Roy. She's a retired high school art teacher for over ten years, has taught a life skills art program at our space, the Art Depot, to students with special needs. She does a group with a high school life skill students, and then she does a group with special needs adults with hope services. This is we do pay her to do this, so it's a it's a paid arts job. But this is just one of many programs that really impact the community and and special communities in a very meaningful way.

We also do poetry out loud. We have a new percussion program that we're doing with third graders throughout the Hollister School District. And so we try to meet all the needs from the visual to performing, literary, and media arts. We've also been growing our Arts Express grant program, which is a way that we bring in private and public resources to regrant locally. Throughout the years, we funded Dia de los Muertos and San Juan Bautista, the Halster High School Band, and number of other individual artists and arts organizations, as well as nonprofits that are not art art based but are looking to do art programs with their constituents.

We have a lot of programs that bring the community together through art exhibitions, tabling at at farmers markets, and Latin dance nights. One's on pause a little bit, but I hope to bring that back because I'm an avid dancer. So one of my favorites. I'm also really excited. Public art is probably one of our favorite things to do.

It it is, as you know, very complex. Many of you were around when we were presenting on the two Clean California projects over the last couple years, one resulting in the Washington Street underpass mural in San Juan Bautista, and the other one on the sculpture at the corner of Meridian And Highway 25. This summer, we're gonna do we're launching a whole mural festival where over a two week period, we're gonna put up five murals in Downtown Hollister. We've secured donated walls by local business owners in Downtown Hollister. And right now, we just released the call for artists to paint these murals.

So it's gonna be a real celebration for our community. We hope to have music, food vendors, and in a short period of time, you'll see amazing new artwork go up and will add and build to our county's public art collection. Lastly, I just wanna highlight, we are working with California Jobs First initiative. We're working with the state as well as regional organization to build pathways for visual and performing arts teachers. There is funding for these positions in the schools, but historically, this has not been a viable career to say, I wanna grow up and be an art teacher in the high school.

But because of prop 28 that was passed in November 2022, there now is a sustainable funding source for art jobs in the education system. So we're working with CSU Monterey Bay, Cabrillo College, and a number of local and region regional agencies to build pathways so a local artist here or student coming up in the schools can say, I'm gonna go to community college. I'm gonna go to CSUMB, and I'm gonna come back with the credentials to work in the local schools and have a good job with salary and benefits. We hope to release this plan at the end of the summer and then really look for implementation funding to to build out this credentialing program. So arts, culture, and creativity creativity month, month, we just wanna highlight.

We do a lot of local and statewide advocacy. Our whole team will be going up to Sacramento next month to meet with legislators. We're looking to secure an increased funding to the California Arts Council, our state agency, as well as a number of other, you know, policy and budget priorities. And, yeah, I just wanna thank you for this opportunity, and I appreciate your support and hope we can get a photo too for this year's proclamation.

Thank you. Yeah. I think we can do a photo. Should we have the proclamation? Do we have it somewhere? Do you wanna present it and join me? Go ahead. I'll present. Sure. I'll go down.

Thank you. Alright. Thank you, everyone. I'm not gonna read too much of this.

Very sleepy.

Yeah. I'm not gonna read too. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna kinda say something. You know, art in the community, it's an investment in the community. It's investment in our people, often our youth, in our culture, in our physical spaces.

And so it is something absolutely worth celebrating and worth expanding. And so I wanna again thank you and your team for for all that you guys do here. There's a a palpable impact in the community, so we really appreciate it. I will say I will be part of this. Whereas the San Mendo County Arts Council celebrates with major state level arts agencies, including California for the Arts and California Arts Council, and whereas these collective efforts at the local, regional, and state levels promote innovation, prosperity, equity, and enrich the lives of all Californians.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed on this day on this April 2026, the board of supervisors of county of San Bernardino, state of California hereby proclaims April 2026 as arts, culture, and creativity month and encourages all residents to join in the celebration. Thank you. Thank you, Ron.

Thank you, guys.

Yeah. Wanna do her board up here, though?

Yeah. Yeah. Can we do everybody?

Yeah. We can yeah. Let's go. Let's do everyone.

Yeah. You still comments.

Whatever you guys however you wanna do, you wanna stay up there?

No. Just ask some more questions and comments. But, yeah, that's fine.

We'll do the picture

in there. Okay.

Probably best.

We can't stand above people. We're going we go.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Comments from the board? Yes. How's Mickey?

Yeah. So, I have to repeat myself too much every year. I I do love this organization because it is you know, I think we're very fortunate to have this arts council, the people involved with it in particular. And, so, yeah, I just once again wanna say thank you because, you know, I there the impact is very, as chair Zanger said, palpable. You can see it throughout the community, especially with the youth, all the programs. I'm excited about the mural program. I just had a question. You know, we try to do outreach and get the word out on these things if we can. How's that does the community provide input on themes, for what the five murals might look like?

Yes. So we did a couple things. One is we we kind of had to stagger the different project phases. So first, we secured the wall sites. We're we're putting the final touches on that. We did release a community survey to ask about colors, themes. Julian, I know we got some we got a number of responses for that. We've done that in the past as well. So we'll we'll take that information to analyze it. But once we put the call for artists out, we're really looking at artists work samples.

It's not considered best practice to ask an artist upfront for a design, but we're really kinda selecting artists based on their experience, their capacity to do a big wall, have they worked at scale, their their experience working, you know, deeply in communities. Once those artists are selected, then we work more more closely with them on the design, and that's where kind of community response will play a bigger role. So that community survey is still open. We'll be taking responses for the next couple months.

Okay. Yeah. And just as one of 65,000 people here, just my suggestion is just as a resident, pinnacles, you think you could imagine I would hope that we could at least consider the motorcycle theme with the biker rally tradition and then rodeo egg for the first three that kinda jumped out to me. And, of course, there's history and a lot, you know, other things that are broader. But, yeah, those would just be some thoughts of mine.

Just

Yeah. No. Appreciate it. And those are those are a couple of the things that continue to to bubble up as well when we do these surveys. Yeah.

Great. Appreciate that. And then just checking in on the prospect or potential or if there's any help the arts council can provide with regard to the Pinnacles National Park branding aspirations we have here. And we've talked in the past. You came to the tourism committee, and we talked about maybe potentially partnering on some sort of if we get to that point of having a sort of a centerpiece or one or two centerpiece signs promoting Pinnacles, ideally on Highway 101 or 156, What could we what pathway could we potentially see toward getting to that, and what involvement would you maybe have in that sort of thing?

Well, I really invite you to see us as a resource for for all of the and, you know, any project that would involve, you know, community engagement, result in some kind of design or artistic element, obviously, public art. I know I was invited and accepted the invite to the May 27 tourism committee where I believe you'll be discussing wayfinding signage. So, you know, our goal really is to help bring jobs to artists to reflect our local community, and and we much rather see the county, you know, hire a local artist team or design firm to work on these kind of projects rather than go through a catalog and say, we'll choose, you know, this item here. Even though we know that's often a bit easier to do and sometimes a little bit more cost effective, But there there are ways that we really can work with artists. So that's where I would invite you to see us as a resource and a a sounding board.

We're also more than happy. We're very ambitious in terms of seeking out external funding. It is difficult to generate funding for public art. I know I I say this every time I come up here, which is public art is typically funded funded at the city or county level through a percent for public art. We we were working and got pretty far along with a a resolution for a percent for public art for the county.

So we're really just looking for the the, you know, public will, the political will to get that over the finish line. It does not take much, and it is very, very common. It's what we see in neighboring communities, small communities, mid sized communities, but that will really help elevate, you know, the design, the branding, the the, you know, inventory of public art, and it will also give you, you know, a source of funding so that when you want to do these projects, you have the resources to execute them.

Is it possible to work with the county on trying to get to a point where we can have a reasonable estimate of what a monument sign? I just drove again from, you know, to and from Southern California, the Atascadero sign. These things, I we always bring these up. I I think it's Atascadero. There's a couple of them. San Gabriel or They jump out, and that's kinda what I'm thinking. Is there possibility of providing some sort of from the art because you guys are the experts, some sort of estimate on what that sort of design and the the whole

Yeah.

Mean, what what could be really helpful is since you're a bit deeper in this work, if you have maybe three or four examples, like the ones you just mentioned, if if we could look if you could send that to us, we can figure out who, you know, commissioned those pieces, who was involved, and how much they cost. And that's usually a really good and effective way to do it.

Great. I really appreciate that.

To look for comparables. Yeah.

And then if you didn't catch the prior meeting regarding the CDBG grant, we we're looking at allocating some funding toward youth programming, including the arts, and we had members of the Latino coalition here talking about mari mariachi programs. So I just wanna make sure you're in the loop on that if you haven't been already. So that would have been Mickey Luna and Cesar Chavez. Not Cesar Chavez. Sorry. Cesar Flores.

Yeah.

And then also on our side, Enrique Areola Yeah. Is involved. So if you could please reach out to them, I would really appreciate.

Yeah. No. We'd love love to collaborate on that. We have funded a number of Mariachi groups over the years through our Arts Express grant program. I I would say that's an art form that really needs more financial support because it's often family led. And as as family members kinda transition in and out, sometimes these Mariachi groups will come and they're amazing. And then sometimes the energy will dissipate. And so this is something that would really benefit from more financial and just kinda like structural support.

Great. Appreciate it. We'll see you in

May at tourism as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments from the board?

I do. I just wanna say great, and thank you. And arts is so critically important. It was the arts that got me actually involved in politics because those of you that don't know twenty plus years ago, the county council of it, and they felt it was a waste of time and waste of money. And at the time, there's a thriving art community here that really was saddened by it.

You were there. You you kept fighting for it the whole time, and I'm always happy to see you leading the charge. And you're so right about all the positive things we can do and how we need to set aside the funds through different impact fees or different ways to make sure there's funding for the arts and do the things that will enhance our entire community. So thank you for you and everybody else in your group that's keeping it going.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Okay. Alright. Thank you very much. Alright.

Thank you.

K. We will be moving on to, back to 1.8. Supervisor Currow?

Thank you so much for allowing me to pull this one. I really wanna do it just for public understanding of the changes of the board rules. If county council wouldn't mind, just a quick review of the purpose of this so that the public's fully aware. That's really all I'm asking.

Mister chair, members of the board of supervisors, this particular board rule amendment grew out of a series of recommendations that were being issued by board ad hoc and standing committees. And the question, especially for our advisory bodies like the planning commission, is does the recommendation from an ad hoc or a standing committee constitute board direction or not? We know that the recommendations coming from board committees are just that, the recommendations, and they do not necessarily reflect board direction. So I therefore recommended that the board amend its rules to include a formal process and procedure for moving committee recommendations forward to the full board for their consideration and direction. And so what's before you is an amendment to the board meeting rules, which sets forth a process whereby every board committee recommendation shall be brought forward to the board of supervisors within sixty days for its consideration and action, if any.

The county staff that is supporting the board ad hoc or standing committee will be the staff which prepares the report. The committee chairperson will be the one who will make the presentation to his or her colleagues, and then the board will consider the recommendation and take whatever action it deems appropriate, which therefore constitutes board direction for staff and for any advisory board commissioner committee that may be looking for direction from the board on that particular issue. In in reviewing the board rules and in coming up with this amendment, I also realized that there should also be a clarification for public comment. And that is right now, the rules, of course, provide for three minutes of public comment on any item on the consent agenda which has not been pulled. This rule will clarify that if any consent calendar item is pulled for separate discussion, then a member of the public is then granted three minutes to speak to that particular item.

The reason for that is that a consent item which is pulled for separate discussion is now placed on the regular agenda, and that item should be treated no differently than an item on the regular agenda, which provides a member of the public with three minutes as to each regular agenda item. So that's just merely a clarification in the rules. The principal issue is the process for moving board committee recommendations forward to the entire board.

Thank you so much. I really just wanted to have that for the public to understand, and I appreciate all the work you did on this. Additionally, the this includes committees and ad hocs. Correct? Just for clarification.

This would be ad hocs and standing board committees.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there a public comment?

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card. On Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And in chambers, Valerie Eglin.

Yes. Good morning, board. How are you today? The weather has been kind of inclement. When I saw this element on the supervisor's whatever the agenda, I immediately thought that, you know, even on a nonprofit board, your committees are subject to your whole board and that there is no action taken by that subcommittee or ad hoc that is not approved by the board in public with comment.

And in our case, as a nonprofit, it's a matter of you bring it you bring in the results of your work, which you're assigned to, and then let us all look at it. Because it's a matter of having a committee is to reduce the amount of work on every council member's agenda. Right? And so it doesn't take it outside of the realm of the public for comment and input. And so I really appreciated that this element was brought up, and I wanted to say so. Thank you.

I have no further public comment.

Okay. Great. Any comments from the board?

Yeah. I do have a comment, and I going back to the point made by the member of the audience here. You know, the the account I wanna make sure it's clear to everyone. There was never, in the past that I've been here, a situation that I experienced where a committee made a decision that moved forward without the entire board being involved. As was pointed out, committees make recommendations. Together, the boards decide. What this does is clarify the structure of how it should be done. It doesn't mean in the past some other deals were happening. It just helps clarify it. So I wanna make sure the public understands that. Thank you. Else?

I move to approve.

Is there a second? Thank you. May I have roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zanger? Yes. Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki?

Yes.

Supervisor Satello? Yes. Supervisor Kurl? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

K. Great. Believe that concludes consent. So we will be moving to, the public hearing 2.1. We have our public hearing on, several different, annexation approvals.

Believe I we have presentation on this, short presentation. I was gonna kinda leave it up to staff to see how they wanna deal with them as far as the presentation goes, but I think we probably have to vote on them maybe one by one. Okay. It's just

Good morning, chair and members of the board of supervisors. My name is Dean Skatada, the interim public works administrator. And let me call on Linda Yang, the RMA, CSA coordinator to to do the presentation.

Good morning. Good morning, chair. Good morning, board members, and good morning, members of the public. My name is Linda Yang, and I am the CSA coordinator with the San Benito County. I am here for, the presentation oh, I'm sorry.

For the public hearing for a presentation of approval of various annexations into the community's facilities district 20 18 Dash 1 for countywide residential services. K. The first annexation, that I will be presenting on is annexation Number 22, also, known as Tax Zone 25 for m excuse. I might say this wrong. Emammar Ishai Shibun.

The project was presented to the planning commission on 03/19/2025. The consent agenda for intent to annex into the CFD was on 03/10/2026. And just a brief information on the location. Address is 1401 Orchard Road here in Hollister, California. Currently, the property is a total of 28.57 acres, and it's going to be subdividing into three parcels.

Below is the information of each parcel, so it's gonna be subdivided into five two five acre lots and then an 18.41 acre with the road dedication of 0.16 acres. This CFD is only annexing into I'm sorry. This property is only annexing into the CFD for negative fiscal impact, which the current rate is $943.35. And there's no development proposed at this time for any future developments. And then here's a summary or a picture of what the future boundaries are going to be. And then I can stop here for any questions on this specific project.

I would just go through them all, I would say, now. Okay.

Okay. K. Next, annexation number 23, Tax Zone 26, also known as property of o O'Donnell Family Ranch. This one was approved by the planning commission in 12/18/2024, brought to the board on 12/16/2025 for the intent to annex into CFD 2018. Location is 859 Cowden Road in Hollister.

This one is actually two parcels totaling a 115.87 acres, and it's gonna be subdivided into three parcels. I believe the parcels are incorrect on that, and I apologize for that. The property proposed also is only for negative fiscal impact fees, and it's at the rate of $943.35. No future development is proposed at this time for this annexation. K.

This one is a little bit different and unique. This is the Fairview Quarter's previously annexation 13. The new annexation is specifically for only the phase one of the project, which is annexation number 24. This one is originally only annexed into the CFD to receive negative fiscal impact fees. However, when a new developer took over the phase one, they decided that they did they chose not to go the HOA route, and so they brought it back to the county for project specific cost for the county to maintain.

The negative fiscal impact rates are at $9.42 and 78¢ per lot. In addition to that, depending on the proposed project, it's adding $1,838.26 per unit for phase one only, and that is for maintenance of the general areas, roads, landscape, any street lighting, and any additional development for parks or any community areas. And this one is actually phase one is 74 single family residential parcels out of a 189 total proposed for this project.

And

here's a brief image of phase one where you'll see 74 homes. K. The next one is annexation number 25. This one is going to be annexed into the one of the original CFDs when CFD '20 18 was created, which is why it's under tax zone one. The development is Fulton Mojave Development Corporation.

This specific plot was approved by the planning commission on August 2019 and brought to the board on 03/10/2026 for the intent to approve into the annexation. It is a 4.01 acre lot subdividing into 10 residential lots, one additional lot for utility purposes. This one is going to be receiving the same services as the current CFD sunny Sunnyside Estates is, so they will be annexing with the same rate that they are currently at, which is $1,838.26. And here's a brief image of the current lot that's being annexed. K.

And the last annexation is annexation number 20 6, which is Brigantino d and d family. It was approved by the planning commission on 08/21/2024, brought to the board on 03/10/2026 for the intent to annex into CFD twenty eighteen. The current location is 2231 Shore Road in Hollister. It is a total of 251.94 acres being subdivided into two parcels and an additional dedication of roads of 3.46 total. This one also is only annexing for the negative fiscal impact fees of $943.35, and no future development has been proposed at this time for this annexation.

And this is not a so good image of the proposed subdivision.

That's it.

Thank you. Thank you. Did you, open the public hearing and go to public comment?

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

Okay. Great. Back to the board. Any comments, questions from board members? Reza Oh, go ahead, Reza Kosmeki.

Yeah. So thank you, staff for the presentation. We have talked in the past about you know, I've as everyone knows, I've kind of been raising the alarm bell on the flood of CFD annexation requests that we've gotten because, frankly, I believe there might be differences of opinion, but I believe our our CFD fees are extraordinarily low for where they should be. And but I do understand we talk we've talked about this in the past that these are applications that were already in the process, and we had agreed to at least the majority of the board had agreed to work with these applicants, but then look toward changing this model going forward with regard to fees. And we've talked about HOAs.

I know supervisor Velasquez has expressed opinions on getting away from CFDs toward HOAs. I just wanna, again, sort of push for and try to get some clarity here today on immediate steps forward for how we're going to make those changes. And, you know, just to specify, we are we use the CFD as a taxing mechanism for residential developments in rural areas. Oftentimes, as we're experiencing these fees, do not keep up with the actual cost of services, particularly sheriff's office, fire services, and the very expensive services that we have. And so I would like to also push us towards the direction of perhaps maintaining CFDs only for core services, public safety, and maybe brainstorm and look at what other services may make sense, but to get away from CFDs altogether for landscaping and other matters that really should be handled by the developments.

And we we've gotta get we've gotta catch up with the times here and start pushing for HOAs more often and make, essentially, make the developments pay for the services that that they have at in these subdivisions in the country. And so and I also will just reiterate, we've gotta get away from these subdivisions in the country. So as far as immediate steps forward, can we give this to the has the housing policy reform committee discussed CFDs, the HOA model? If not, can we put that on the plate immediately is my question. And then the second question is, if we haven't started the update, where are we at with the CFD fee update fee update?

Because I know we've talked about a broad range of fees that need to be updated, and this is certainly one of them. And I just wanna make sure that this doesn't get lost in the, you know, in the all the other complicated things that we're working here at the county because this is a priority. It's one of our priorities for the year. So I just wanna kinda get an update on where things are at. And if things aren't moving along, I'd like to see them move along very quickly. CEO or someone else?

So some of the departments are working on their fee schedules to update the fee schedules. The planning department will be also be working on the CFDs. And so I need to work with the staff at the public works because we have a change in the administration, so I will be working with them in that regards.

Do we need to bring in some sort of outside Mostly. Like a COG. We're doing the traffic impact fee study, which is a very

Most likely. Yes. Yes. At the at the environmental health department, they're doing it on on the staff. Some of the fees, we were exploring possibilities to do it in house in some of them by comparison with other counties, but definitely a consultant will be more helpful to have it on board.

I just wanna again reiterate that, you know, I know you're I know you're very busy and doing a great job. Steph's doing a great job. I just wanna reiterate that this Yes. Needs to really we kinda gotta hit the gas pedal on this at this point. I and I also wanna bring up we've talked about, you know, we're allowing these ones to go forward, at least the majority of us, it seems, based on prior discussion.

But what do we have to do to just basically say there's this is the line we're drawing. We put in some sort of moratorium until we have the fees updated? Because I certainly if that's legally possible, I'd like to look at doing that. So this isn't an informal discussion anymore about these CFDs coming forward and somebody else putting in an application and having some other sort of narrative for why we should allow it. And if this needs to be discussed further later, I'm fine with that if I'm catching you off guard. But we've talked about this in the past, so I just I just wanna have clarity on

I believe the last direction that the board provided was to bring all of these options forward in a workshop, if you will, or certainly a regular agenda item to review the various models for addressing this and then to get board direction from there. I believe that's where the board left it.

Where when and where can we where are we at on the workshop? Is that we're looking at in during the the budget as far as playing a workshop?

We have a calendar updated with the workshops. Did you have it available by any chance in your in your computer? We updated the workshops for the budgets as well, so I'm not sure. We made some changes to the

We talked about having a day, basically, that's set aside as the county council's alluding to to revenue generation fees. I just wanna make sure that this isn't one of those things that get that gets lost in the shuffle of everything else. This is a top priority, and I just wanna make sure that, you know, if I'm here putting my name and saying I'm okay because of process that these folks have come this far, but this is the point where it stops. That's where I'm at. Thank you.

We'll add it to it. We will add it to the calendar, so we'll let you know which date.

Okay. We'll get on that. And I'll just say really quickly because you mentioned housing policy ad hoc. We this wasn't one of the topics we were discussing when the ad hoc was created, but we can certainly I think if there's majority, Will, we can add it to the list of discussions as far as policy specific for HOA versus CFD.

Like that. Yeah.

So we can discuss that at the ad hoc level as well as the workshop that we're planning. That was just my comment. Supervisor Caro had

Yeah. I I just wanted to point out that the board did ask for a CSA, HOA, and CFD kind of understanding, the history behind it, where the fees are, what the fees are for, why we're having to do these annexations, what the purpose of the twenty eighteen dash one CFD was. Kinda this was all gonna be I don't see it on the future agenda item list. That's why I I agree with supervisor Kosmiki. This is a a hot topic item.

But at the same time, I'm I'm also concerned when you have a developer like I believe it's the four sorry. I'm not remembering the name of it. The one out on Fairview. So Fairview corners are is that what it is? Fairview corners.

They're advertising no HOA, but they have to disclose and this is my question to staff. They have to disclose it's a CFD in their closing documents, and they have to understand what a CFD is. I I think it's very misleading to the public when you say no HOA and then they buy because I've been sitting with my CSA people who still to this day don't fully understand what a CSA is and now having to explain what a CFD is. So I'm very much supportive of this workshop, whatever this is, but also that the fees that are collected are are clearly recorded on what therefore for each one of these types of CFDs. There are still questions that I have from CFDs from the past and CSAs from the past that have not got clarity, and we're still debating who's in charge of cutting the weeds on this corner and who's in charge of the fence on this, you know, portion of the water easement.

I mean, there just needs to be more clear defined, and I know staff has done everything to bring that information together. There is historical missed information that was not recorded properly. We need to go back to these CSAs and CFDs and make sure that the recorded documents clearly are are on display for the public. It is very frustrating as a supervisor, especially with as many CSAs that there are in my district, that the history of the formation of CFA CSAs and the lack of communication historically, not now. I'm gonna keep reiterating.

Staff has done an amazing job meeting with CSAs and property owners, but every time I meet with them, they are completely confused. So I don't wanna go off topic. I just wanna support that we have to have this conversation, and the fee structure of it has to be part of it. And then it goes to budget, and where is the CSA, CFD budget, and are we over or under, and are how are we recouping those costs? So I I'm very supportive of the comments that were made about having this conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. The conversation with HOA on one of the projects to me is nonnegotiable. We should absolutely be requiring this. I like to see the conversation of HOA as a separate item come straight back to this board for approval. We cannot keep going through this situation. It doesn't mean there's no CFDs on these projects either because that has to be their Republic safety, but every single project has to have, and from now on, HOA, just by developers advertising, no HOA tells you the full story. It just does. It says, look. You can come here. It's cheaper, and don't worry.

You don't have to pay for it. The entire community is gonna help pay for it for you. And this is how we got into trouble in the past and why we're gonna keep having the same problems. Just point out some of these other smaller dividing some of their properties into different lots, that's been worked out. I just have a problem with the HOA on the on item number three.

Number four, that one was already a whole project been built out. It's the remaining last 10, so I can I can go along with that one? But I cannot go along with number three that is saying, yeah, no HOA over here. Just give us a CFD so we can sell these things cheaper. So no on that one.

Thank you. CEO, county council. I think there's there's pretty much broad consensus that we wanna do this workshop as soon as possible. So as soon as we can get that set up, I think we should do that because it's urgent, obviously. So

Yes. I'm actually scheduling right now with staff to schedule one. Perhaps do you want this on a special meeting, or do you want this one in a regular meeting? Special meeting, separate meeting. Meeting separate? Okay. We'll schedule one by the May, more or less. Let's figure out because it's we have to get ready for the budget. So it's we're gonna push very hard to get those information together.

Sounds

good. I think one of the concerns that I have is I work on housing projects. We used to have what is called the first time home buy loan program. The state require us to hold public workshops explaining the difference between HOAs and CFDs to the residents so they don't so they don't sign documents without knowing what they're signing for. And so that was a big portion.

It's it was a two hour workshop for individuals that were in the getting ready to purchase a house because sometimes they're not they can have the language available, but they don't really understand the language. When you use language that is difficult to understand even for developers or for people that are selling their homes. And those TFTs are trespassed passed to the next buyer without even knowing. So we would like to have this workshop. We're gonna also provide a notice for the residents, whoever wants to attend the workshop, so they can come and and join us and ask questions during the workshop that would alleviate the issue.

At least we we can make an effort for that.

Good. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any Okay. So then we have these several CFD annexations. Do we wanna separate them out? Yes. One by one. One by one? Okay. We can do that. So then with the first item within the item for annexation number 22, is there a motion? Pardon one? Yes.

I'll I'll make a motion to approve.

Second. I'll second.

We know we do public comment. Yeah.

We do.

Sorry. Yes. There's a first and a second. I mean, roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zanger? Yes. Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki?

Yes.

Supervisor Sicelo? Yes. Supervisor Currow? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Thank you. Next item number two, number, annexation for Tax Zone 26 Number 23. Your motion?

Make a motion to approve.

I'll second.

First and second roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger? Yes. Supervisor Velasquez? Yes. Supervisor Kosmiki? Yes. Supervisor Sicelo? Yes. Supervisor Kurrow? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Great. Number three, annexation number 24, the Fairview Corners.

Before we make a motion on this one, can I ask council a question?

Absolutely.

Because of the the advertising that this developer has been doing, which was all before I believe any of us were on the board this development, they're saying no HOA. Do we have the ability to reverse that and actually force them to have an HOA, or is this past that point on on item number three, which is the Fairview Corners at Fairview and, close to Highway 25?

I believe we're past that point.

Okay. That that's just what I wanted clarity on. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there a, motion for item three?

Move to approve.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

K. Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger? Yes. Supervisor Velasquez? No. Supervisor Kosmiki? No. Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Currow? Yes. Three two vote. Motion passes.

Great. Item four, please. Number 25. Their motion now I'll make a motion to approve. Second. K. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zanger? Yes. Supervisor Velasquez? Yes. Supervisor Kosmiki?

Yes.

Supervisor Satello? Yes. Supervisor Currow? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Number five, is there a motion to approve the annexation number 26 tax on '27?

I move to approve.

Oh, I'll second.

K. We have a first and a second roll call vote, please.

Oh, supervisor Zanger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kuzmicky?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kuro? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Thank you. And the remaining, pieces of the item, or basically staff direction to fulfill these, motions that were made. Is there a motion to approve six, seven, and eight, as staff directed?

Move to approve.

Second.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kozmicke? Yes. Supervisor Sicelo? Yes. Supervisor Currow? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. That will conclude the public hearing item. We'll take a five minute break, and then we'll move to regular agenda. Thank you.

Recording stopped.

Nine nine seven.

How are you?

Doing nice.

No.

I just wanna make sure. Yeah.

I'm just gonna do, like, a brief.

The arrow keys just to move along.

Recording in progress.

Hey. Welcome back, everyone, from our break. We're gonna move to regular agenda item 3.1. Receive an informational presentation regarding assembly bill fifteen forty eight. This is, I believe Gracie, are you presenting on this? Great.

I'm gonna be introducing. Okay. So for today's board agenda item good morning, chair, and warm good morning, board members and members of the public. For today's item, we're gonna be discussing Monterey Bay Area Stewardship Authority, which is gonna be which is in the process of being established by a b fifteen forty eight. This is being led by assembly member Pellegrin.

And for today's presentation, I would like to introduce a few individuals who are gonna be speaking on this and providing some information for your for your digestion, black pepper shrimp. So with that, I would like to introduce Donna Myers, who is a consultant for Trust for Public Lands. Moises Moreno Rivera, he is a senior project manager for Trust for Public Lands and Climate Resiliency.

And then

we also have Tomas Aduenas. She is the chief of staff, for assembly member Pellegrin, and she's gonna be on Zoom. With that, I'd like to turn it over to our presenters for further introductions and for the presentation. Thank you.

On the CS, good morning. We're really excited to be in community with you today. Good to see you again, supervisor Curran and supervisor Sotelo, chair, and members of for the board of supervisors. We have an exciting opportunity that we wanna talk to you about.

Sorry to interrupt. Sorry. CMA, can you please unmute on Zoom?

Okay. Alright. Sorry. Go ahead.

I was muted?

Yeah. Yes. It's okay.

About the first time that it's happened to me before is a I'm already used to it. I'm the youngest of five, so I get shut up all the time. So it's great. So thanks. Thanks for the reminder.

So Juan, unfortunately, couldn't join us, our director for government affairs at Trust for Public Land. Yet, we're still a small yet mighty team, and we also have members of the public that are here to speak on this item. For today, we wanna just give you a brief history of how we got here. We wanna tell you about the engagement that we've done, the outreach and engagement, and where we are in the legislative process, and how you can plug in, and how some of you have already been plugged in, and how we encourage somebody, though, to to be involved in this process. So with that, I'll briefly get it started.

I don't know if you're familiar with Trust for Public Land. It is a national nonprofit that has over a fifth over a fifty year history, and it's fifty year history around 40 of those years. We've done work in the Central Coast. As part of that work, we've mainly been focusing on land protection work and land conservation work working with local partners. And in 2021, the organization itself really pivoted, not necessarily to change who we are as an organization, but there's other things that the organization does, including raise funding for public lands.

And in our history, we've raised a we were able to coordinate with local governments to raise about a $112,000,000,000 in on public dollars. And doing that in in partnership with local governments, state governments, federal government. Understanding that, we started a a a climate conservation initiative to really understand the needs of this tri county area, both San Benito, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties to better understand what were the understand the goals and objectives of the state for climate resiliency, for biodiversity and habitat protection, natural and working lands protections, and equitable outdoor access, there's this bigger question as to what are the impetus, what are the the the barriers to achieve any and all. And the one thing that natural and working land stewards in this region talked about was funding for long term stewardship. And as a result of this 2021 work that TPL initiated, we got to work.

We created a a durable funding working group. Over 25 organizations participated, including organizations from San Bernardino County. This was truly a a an effort to try to address what what are the avenues that the organization could take and that the region can take really to address these funding gaps. Pivot over to to Donna to to continue on that on that story of how we got here.

Great. Thank you for having us this morning. My name is Donna Myers. Excuse me. I'm a consultant to the Trust for Public Land.

I've been a a conservation acting professional here in the Central Coast, Monterey Bay region for about thirty years, most recently as the general manager, executive director of the Salinas Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which I ran from for the first five years of its existence. But I've worked across the region, mostly looking at water and watersheds as foundational planning planning elements of what we need to think about as a region when we think about our landscapes, our viability of our water supply systems, as well as how we're managing things like like floods that we know our rivers can produce quite substantially here. I was brought on with Trust for Public Land primarily to work on establishing the process that we wouldn't do of engagement with trying to understand the conservation needs of the region as well as working with local governments and and hopefully, you know, keeping people apprised of what the needs were. And then also working with what we ultimately called the conservation practitioners working group, which was a group of organizations and and people who would had been involved again in the region for decades and really understanding from their perspective what this kind of authority might be able to do in terms of future benefit for the region, planning for climate resilience, and readying across literally county lines as nature does not usually recognize a county line.

Nature is is nature, and we we are lucky enough to have beautiful parts of California in our backyard. So we very much wanted to to put together groups from all three counties and really have that conversation. So I'll go ahead and move forward.

Yep. And

so after the work that TPL had started and and the kind of the informality of the the durable funding working group, what that group really recognized is that we have very little money for stewardship. The state of California and the voters of California have put in place various bonds over the last thirty years that have been funding improvements in the environment across the state as well as in our local communities. Locally, groups like our resource conservation districts across the three counties have pulled these grants in. But, again, most of these grants are either to to acquire land, potentially to do a project, a restoration project, a trail project, but the funds are not really able to fund any kind of further capital improvements or management. So grant funds oftentimes can maybe buy a piece of land, build a park, build the trails, put up some fences, do the kinds of things that we all enjoy.

But twenty years down the line, there literally is no money left to continue the maintenance and management. And as we all know, the value of having these these amenities in our communities has been shown again and again as something that's very important. So from a small group of people that was essentially looking at the question of stewardship funding, we then convened and looked at models around the state. And this work was done primarily by, TPL, turning it back to Moises, and then we'll talk a little bit about our process with what we eventually became the conservation practitioners working group, which actually helped draft some of the language that is in the bill today. So I'll turn this back over to Moises so he can tell you a little bit about some of the models that were looked at statewide.

Yeah. We we were looking at what have what have other regions in the country, what have other regions in California done to address a gap in funding, particularly to address their needs. And after reviewing several models, the one that stuck out to us the most was the San Francisco Bay restoration model, where nine counties in 2008 came together to establish their own restoration authority to address a funding gap, particularly around sea level rise and tidal wetlands. We were able to then see how they, nine counties, were able to, you know, create a governance structure that worked for them and really to be able to then be an organizing structure to draw down federal money, state dollars. So since then, prop sixty eight allocated them specifically $20,000,000, and then prop four recently $85,000,000 just for being having a a structure for being able to bring in dollars.

Additionally, because of their organizational structure, US EPA in 2023 was able to award them $50,000,000 for projects that they had already identified. So the structure of being organized allowed for them to not only receive money and also eight years after they were established, we're able to generate their own money through measure AA. So the authority had the ability to to to self generate. Our work today, I do I want I'm cognizant of time, and I do wanna turn it to Tomasa. But if you could speak very quickly on on on our work today.

Yeah. So how we where we arrived at today with this drafted legislation is essentially by working across the region, as I said, about 27 organizations across the three county area. We asked them to actually self organize into a legislative drafting committee, and they did work for over about six months in drafting the legislation primarily in front of you. We also finally conducted field trips in each of the three counties. So we really understood on the ground what stewardship meant, and those were really helpful. Supervisor Curro and supervisor Sotelo joined us in one of those field visits here in San San Benito County. And after that, we got to work and finalized the legislation.

So, Tomasa, this is where you

come in.

Yep.

Okay. Oh,

no. There we go. Hi. Good morning. Everyone's Celina, chief of staff to the assemblymember. Thank you for allowing me to join you virtually today. So where we are now in the process is I just wanna share that assembly member, Pellerin, has been actively engaging in the development of AB 1548 for a year. And her approach to this is that she really wanted to be grounded from the bottom up versus Sacramento down. And definitely appreciated all the conversations we had across three counties with over 25 different organizations. Really enjoyed meeting the supervisor Sotelo and supervisor Purro and getting to know a little bit of the county, which, by the way, is beautiful and can't wait to go back.

And so that all led to the creation of AB fifteen forty eight, which is the Monterey Bay Area Stewardship Authority. And the vision here is, again, really to create a unique authority that can bring in dollars to this region that, tends to be overlooked by the needs of the San Francisco Bay Area or even Southern California, Los Angeles. Eighty fifty forty, we introduced that early in the process. We've gone through a couple of different amendments. Assemblymember, Pelerin is very much interested in hearing from the counties, from practitioners about what what does this mean to you, what questions do you have, what do we need to do to make sure that you have the appropriate tools to have this be successful.

We just went through our first policy committee. It was heard in Assembly Natural Resources Committee on Monday, and it now goes to the Assembly Local Government Committee where it'll be heard next week or not not next week, the twenty second. And, one thing I just want to continue emphasizing is that the version you see now is not going to be the version that will get to the governor. We still have a long way to go, many additional opportunities for, for amendments, and I just look forward to continuous, engagement discussion and dialogue on this bill.

Thank you. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. And that concludes the presentation. Is that correct?

Yes. That's correct.

Okay. Let's go to public comment.

If I just say one last thing. Sure. To Tomasas points, we really when this the impetus of this work really was the the the ecology of the area is very much connected. Right? So we were seeing how the county boundaries really to make no sense when wildfires are coming, where droughts coming, when flooding is coming.

And the the ability that San Benito has to help shape this bill for your needs. Right? The comments that we've heard on the ground, we wanna make sure that it's an equitable representation, and we want your engagement in this as much as the other two counties as well. So we're just excited for this opportunity. We know that while it is a smaller in size, it doesn't mean that the impacts are small in size. So I just wanna say thank you for this opportunity today.

Thank you. Thank you. All the comment, please.

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

Good morning, chair and supervisors. It's it's lovely to see you this morning. My name is Jessica Woolander. I'm the policy and advocacy associate manager with Green Foothills. We're a nonprofit dedicated to protecting open space and farmland to ensure a healthy environment for everyone.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Green Foothills strongly supports a b fifteen forty eight. The additional funds and capacity a Monterey Bay Area stewardship authority would bring to this region's ability to protect, restore, enhance, and steward steward our lands in an ongoing way would be especially significant for San Benito County. I know you're well aware that with San Benito's climate and rich soils, we have some of the state's premier working lands. Our open spaces provide essential opportunities for wildlife movement between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Gabalon Range.

Increased access to nature has a myriad of benefits for our community. Long term stewardship and protection of these lands is essential for the resilience and health of our county environmentally, economically, and on an individual level for our residents. We'd be grateful for your support of a b fifteen forty eight. Thank you so much. Next

in chambers, Valerie Egland.

Hello again. This is so important to San Benito County for our connections to the Bay Area, Monterey Bay, the Bay Area Ridge Trail that could be connecting or is going to be connecting with the new 25 interchange and perhaps bringing the possibility of the concept of from the Pajaro to the pinnacles that we can bring in funding through this consortium or authority that would allow us to begin future planning to really substantially say to our public that we are making way for a viable, not just entertainment, not just park lands, but also the economic stability of our tourism to give them some place to come to rather than just one designated area. The all of the business opportunities that come with bicycling from Monterey, the Coastal Trail, the Ridge Trail, and now we're coming with the Condor Classic is being developed this year again. And then this coming month, we've got the oh, the at Laguna Seca, we've got the bicycling festival there. It it's going to be big if we can loop into that and build on that.

So I'm reached San Benito Parks Foundation has supported Trust for Public Land and been involved with them since they first came to us at the historic park, talking about the open possibilities of side trails to the Pinnacles from Hollister. And so it has been a wonderful experience of being involved with these groups that have a greater vision for our area. So we are definitely supportive of and have written to speaker Rivas, and he has flagged that for his own attention in stewarding that this great opportunity. So thank you very much.

And we have one other. Carminder Brown.

Good morning, chair and board. Great to see you all this morning. I'm the my name is Carminder Brown, and I'm the executive director of the San Benito Resource Conservation District. We refer to ourselves as the RCD. What we do is provide free nonregulatory assistance to farmers, ranchers, and other landowners to conserve, protect, and enhance the natural resources throughout San Benito County.

We develop and facilitate voluntary stewardship and restoration projects on agricultural lands and community spaces. We do that through education, technical assistance, and project implementation. Our main clients of the RCD are farmers and ranchers. So I'm gonna speak to the benefits that I see of this a b fifteen forty eight legislation for our agricultural community specifically. First of all, I wanna reiterate what you heard from our presenters earlier that this bill was really built from the ground up.

It was it didn't come from Sacramento to us. It was shaped through all of those meetings that that Moi and Donna referred to with conservation practitioners from throughout the region. I was involved in those meetings from the beginning as were representatives of the REACH San Benito REACH Foundation and the San Benito Agricultural Land Trust. The land trust also participated in the legislative legislation drafting committee and actually helped write legislation. The RCB was involved from day one, and we helped organize the San Benito County site visit back in December that supervisors Carrillo and Sotelo participated in.

I also wanna emphasize that this is nonregulatory res regulation or sorry. Nonregulatory legislation. There will be no new mandates on landowners, and that's very important to us at the RCD because, again, all the work that we do with farmers and ranchers is always voluntary. However, this legislation, if passed and if this authority is created, will create opportunity and will bring resources to the people who are already doing the work here in San Benito County. So why does it matter for San Benito?

Our ranchers and farmers already steward their lands in ways that provide benefit to all of us. They are producing nutritious food, contributing to our economy, and in the case of San Benito County, managing over half a million acres of rangeland and farmland. No small task. But many of the practices that agricultural operators are being asked to do in these days to for the public benefit are an additional burden financially, things like habitat restoration, invasive weed management, and wildfire mitigation strategies, including prescribed burns. And what's really lacking is the sustained funding to both implement new projects and to sustain them over time.

Out of time. Thank you very much for considering this legislation. Thank you for your past support of the RCD, and I really hope you will decide to provide a letter of support. Thanks.

And that concludes public comment.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from the board at this time? Yes. Miss Brigitte Caro.

I wanna thank the presenters, not only for presenting today, but for the tour back in December. It was very informative. I know we started talking about this I wanna say it was almost three years ago, a concept that was thrown out there just a a phone call of would you be interested? And it's it's really amazing how much work you guys have put into this. Areas that I just wanna make sure that assembly member Pelerin is completely aware of from San Benito County some of our challenges.

And I know it's included in some of this, but just making sure that we're we're expressing where our challenges are in this community. We we don't really have besides reach, which we thank Valerie so much for all her work, we we don't have as much parks funding as we would like. We have a regional a Riverside Regional Park that we pretty much have the plans ready. We just don't have funding for it. We have, you know, Sunny Slope Estates Park.

Again, it's designed, but we don't have the funding for it. We we talk about the Vets Memorial, which I think this board for supporting that project and and asking speaker Rivas for assistance in that area. But understanding that it's not just we do have a riverbed cleanup issue. We're working on our homelessness and and and trying to remove it out of the riverbeds and being able to fund for that. How we have to be able to do stream bed cleanup with less regulations because of fish and wildlife and how our residents aren't able to keep their private properties, let alone the public properties cleaned for reducing floods.

And we we all know what's happened in the past in our our area when it comes to floods. But all of those are areas so when when and if this I'm hopeful that this legislation will move forward, and I'm hopeful that this board will support it. But keeping in mind that it's even down to the connectivity goals of our community, we have highways that are disconnecting us. Like Highway 156, Now that it has widened, we have completely disconnected a portion of our community to another portion of our community. Being able to look at connectivity across our region, not just in San Benito County, that would be wonderful to start.

I love the Papparo to the pinnacles, but also, you know, between our multi county region. So just keeping those things in mind. So if if there is funding that can come through this, it would be most supportive from my perspective that we are also looking at the projects that we can't fund locally either. And I know that's part of it, but there's so much to this legislation. I just wanted to to say it, you know, just put it out there. But thank you so much for being here, and I'm very supportive of of this legislation. And I know that you guys have been very open to hearing what our challenges are, and I thank you again so much for the information in the tour.

Thank you. Any other supervisors at this time? Is there a motion?

No. Oh. You have a question or a comment, I'll do too.

Go ahead.

Ahead. I just wanted to take the time to thank you guys. Moises, you made a good point about how a Samoyed County plays a big part of a big role in this because of the land we have here. And I I think most people in our community don't understand how we affect, I don't know, our community, but downstream to Wahtem or Bajaro River. I, you know, I was shocked and really stunned by the efforts to build build a massive development next to Bajaro River, and people now understand the flood consequences, not only in our own community, but what happens downstream.

Because the water can't go into the ground. It goes into that river, and it moves really quick. We're learning now. And that's what I really wanna make sure this group is about is educating our public that every action we take, there's a reaction to it. But let's make sure that the actions we take are a positive for our community, and I really wanna make sure that we are working with our partners and understanding the importance of San Mateo County's contribution to it because it really does a lot of stuff starts here. So and, again, thank you guys for doing this work you're doing. It makes makes a lot of sense.

Thank you. Mister Rajatala? Sorry.

Thank you so much for being here, and I think this is an exciting opportunity for us to bring in funding and resources. Curious, has there been any discussion of what kind of the governance will look like of this? I mean, I I understand that there is no no increase of mandates, and and I appreciate that. But what will that kind of governance look like at potentially at some point? You know, are we basing it off of population? Do we does every county just get so many seats? How exactly will that kind of work? Has there been any talk of that so far?

Tomasid, do you want me to start that, or would you like to answer first?

Sorry. I'm meeting myself. I'm meeting myself here. That's a good question, the supervisor. So the authority, itself will be governed by a nine member body.

The way that it's laid out in the bill is that there will be one one, from each county, there'll be, one supervisor representing each county, then each county gets to appoint, and then we'll have from each county, a city council member. So there'll be six elected officials on the authority and then three members of the public that should bring in a different, set of I should say expertise, with a requirement that they there be geographic diversity among the three public members so that, for example, not all three public members are from, you know, just one county. We wanna make sure there's there's as enough geographic diversity within the members of the public as possible.

San Benito County would have a board supervisor, an elected official from the county of San Benito, and then a public member. And then that would be the same for each of the other counties currently as as as written.

Okay. Okay. So board of supervisors, city council, and then one public member.

Correct.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you to the speakers, everyone that's advocating for this. It doesn't seem like there would be any opposition certainly locally to this. I always say that, you know, San Bernardino County is sort of a microcosm of the entire state in a lot of ways, whether it's just geographically, the egg industry, demographics.

You know, but we are a small county and we are fighting here to preserve this area. The beauty of this area really is really at the heart of who we are, the the lands and the health of the the lands and the water and the environment. But but being such a small community, it does make it especially hard sometimes to advocate for funding. So I think this approach from a regional perspective definitely makes sense. And I will just say that for the state as a whole, you know, protecting this particular region should be a very important priority because of what it represents for the entire state, whether it's the tourism industry, just the culture, the beauty of California.

Our region really is plays a critical role in what California really is. So just to put a plug out there when this when this gets to the legislature for competing with a lot of other programs and ideas, I I do see this as something that would be very valuable not only to our county, to our region, but to the state as a whole. Thank you for all your work. Thanks. Thank you, supervisor.

Thank you. There are motion if there's no other comments, questions?

I move to approve. I'll second.

Great. Move roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zanger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez?

Yes.

Supervisor Kosmiki? Yes. Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kurl? Yes. Five zero vote. Motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

We do go to the local government committee as you see next week. You know, that letter of support really means a lot, and it would also mean a lot if there's a board supervisor that would like to join us in Sacramento for for the the local government committee. I know that was not part of the agenda, but open invitation. Just putting

it out there. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. We will be moving to item 3.2. This is the final map for track number 330, commonly known as San Juan Oaks Phase 5 located at San Juan Oaks Drive.

Mister chair? Yes. I need to make an announcement because I have to recuse myself per government code. 84308. I have received over $500 from the developer on this. This project had started prior to me being elected on the board, but I am supported by this organization that is affiliated with this development. So I am going to recuse myself.

Alright. Thank you.

Alright. Yes. Well, good morning again, chair and members of the board of supervisors. So here's a quick synopsis of the of San Juan Oaks. On 11/03/2015, the board adopted the San Juan Oaks specific plan under board resolution number 2015Dash85.

Also on 11/03/2015, a development agreement had been entered between the county of San Benito, Pulte Homes, and San Juan Oaks LLC, which vests certain rights and that requires the property owner to provide certain public benefits beyond those that could otherwise be imposed by the county as conditions of development. And the development agreement is attached to the packet. And so all entitlements are summarized in the background the background summary of the board packet, and it can also be found on letter f on the development agreement. And subsequently, CSM13Dash86, truck number 330, commonly known as San Juan Oaks, was conditionally approved by the planning commission on 11/18/2015. The conditions of approval is also attached to the packet.

So due to the scale of the project, San Juan Oaks is being developed in multiple phases. So San Juan Oaks is now seeking to record final map for phase five, which will create the 67 lots for non aids restricted single family detached residential units. And, also, phase five will include the hotel parcel and five neighborhood commercial parcels. With the approval of this final map for phase five, the total count being created and recorded so far is 810 lots for active adult units and 67 lots for non AIDS restricted units. And to summarize all those, we've recorded phase one for two hundred seven nine active adult units, and it's already been recorded.

Yeah. If you can see, yeah, the phase one in the color green there. And phase two, it was already recorded also. It creates 531 lots. That's the phase two in blue.

And so it makes up for the 810 active adult units. And so for phase five, the this red color, so it will create the 67 non aids restricted units. So note that phase three and phase four have not been created yet. That will be in the future. So to date, the total building permits issued, based on our records, they already pulled 120 building permits.

And we are already have a we also final final 96 units. So that means there's already a certificate of occupancy issued for 96 units. So staff recommendations. Number one, approve the final map for TSM 13 Dash 86, truck number 330, commonly known as San Juan Oaks Phase 5 located at San Juan Oaks Drive. And number two, accept on behalf of the public the offer of dedications for uses in conformity with the terms of the offer of dedication subject to the condition that the county of San Benito is not responsible or liable for any cost or expense of any offer accepted unless authorized by separate action of the board of supervisors.

And number three, direct the clerk of the board to certify on the final map the action of the board of supervisors. And number four, authorize staff to submit the final map to the San Benito County recorder's office for recording. So that concludes my presentation, but I would also like to acknowledge the presence of representatives of the developer. And so you may address your questions to either the staff or the developer, and we'll be happy to answer some questions. Thank you.

Let me get a public comment, please.

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

Great. Any questions, comments from the board at this time?

Mister chair?

Yep.

Yeah. So just to reiterate, this project was approved in 2015, so eleven years ago. There's a development agreement that was approved. The development agreement was amended. My understanding is April 2019. That's before anybody up here was on the board. And so they're working through the project, restaurant, golf course, homes, hotel. The development agreement itself, just again, to clarify whether it's yourself or Abraham counsel, is is in compliance the the developers in is in compliance with the development agreement to this point, or are there any areas where they're not compliant with the development agreement?

Well, currently, they are doing the phase five. So with the phase five with the progress on phase five, yes, they complied with all conditions of approval and the development agreement. So there are timelines in the conditions and the development agreement that they need to comply. And, yeah, for the phase five, yes, they have complied.

Right. So but then council, as long as they're in compliance with the development agreement on a project that was approved eleven years ago, this board doesn't does or doesn't have discretion on

Mister chair and members of board of supervisors, yes, you are correct. There is no discretion on the part of this board as long as the developer is in full compliance with all the terms and conditions of the development agreement.

Okay. Thank you. And then the only the part that I'd was of of keen interest to me is the park project, and I know they're working on that as I communicated with Abraham on this before the meeting. Can we just get an update on where the the I know there's a couple parks, but the community park in particular that would be open, that would be essentially would be a county park. We have just an update on where they're at with that and which is kind of how we're looking at that kind of unfolding, when it might be done, when it might be open because be great.

Yeah. Let me call on the developer to Okay. To explain the the progress of the park. I have seen it myself, and it was mentioned to me that it could be ready May or June this year. So it's almost ready. So

Good morning. I'm Dustin Bo with Millennium, owners San Juan Oaks. Mister chairman, members of the commission, just directly, we'll be done next month with the county parks and, you know, percentage wise, they're about 85% complete right now. As a general rule and as an operating philosophy, we live up to our commitments or die trying. And if we're dying, you'll know well in advance. So try not to surprise you with anything.

Thank you for that. That's all I have. So

Carrie, so I have a couple of questions here. Here, we're talking about phase five. Yet three and four aren't done. What so we're jumping to phase five on this?

So yeah. From if you can pull up again the map. Oh, yeah. So you know this in the exhibit phase one and phase two, and then phase five is the red one. So it's pretty much they're developing from although phase five was late, but from from the East to the west. So three and four are not yet done.

Correct. So I I have well, I have, in the past, had questions about your project, and I actually voted no on that previously. And the response from, like, yourself, your family was a $5,000 contribution to the recall of my my position here as a board member. I find that a problem because not I'm not gonna agree with all developments, but I think development should be based on the merit and not on if somebody votes no, I'm gonna give money to recall them. If somebody's voting yes, I'm gonna give thousands to make sure they get elected again.

So I wanna make sure your company, your future plays by the community rules. And that's being fair and selling your project based on the merits of it rather than attacking somebody like me that's has noticed something because I don't like an item. I think that's what this community deserves. And, obviously, you're gonna be able to go on with this project. I can't stop you, but I wanna make sure you're upholding everything you're promising.

And I really think you probably would have, and you probably are going to. I just wanna make it clear to you that that type of thing should not be happening in our community. It's just not right. And it sends a signal to the rest of the community that there's a problem with some developers that are willing to do exactly that because I voted no that you'd give $5,000 to try to recall me. I just find that offensive. I just want you to know face to face.

Appreciate it. I'm happy to have that discussion with you if you'd like.

Anytime. Sure.

And, yeah, we would have lived up to our commitments. Absolutely. Yeah. Do.

And, again, you're the largest developer in this county, so I expect you to hold a higher standard.

I appreciate that. We believe in the same, and I think we have. I think when you go to San Juan Oaks, you'll if you haven't been, I think you'll be impressed. It's, like, good operation, golf operation. Restaurant operation is fantastic. The homes are great. The community is nice. We've tried very hard to make sure that was part of a community, an asset for the long term of the community. So we recognize that the golf course and that had a lot of emotional, you know, long term ownership in this community. And we wanted to be good stewards of it.

I spent a lot of time there in the past. Loved it. Loved the the feel of it. Quite frankly, again, I'm just really disappointed in the actions your company yourself took, and it's just disappointing.

I totally get that discussion with you.

Thank you. Any other comments, questions from the board at this time? Okay. I don't have anything to add, so there is a motion. I'll hear that now. Sorry.

I move to approve. Second.

We have roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zanger?

Yes.

Supervisor Velasquez? Yes. Supervisor Kosmiki?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Four zero vote. Motion passes with supervisor Kura Rakiste.

Thank you. Someone go get supervisor bring her back if we could for our next item. Thank you. Oh, she's back. Great. We're gonna be, we're gonna keep moving forward. Item 3.3, updates, from board supervisors on committees and ad hocs. Does any supervisor want to start with updates they have? I can go first. That's great.

Thank you. Start with COG, council of governments. So as I think as everybody knows, the big one right now is Highway 25, and so we are working toward through the process. The EIR is still moving forward on the expansion. And once again, we have opened up the alternatives to providing two additional options that would encompass essentially an actual expansion of the highway, which in the past, it really wasn't.

We were going with the even a more drastic version of that, I think, the highway one fifty six model, which was to basically just build a new highway. But I think with the help of the current cog board that advocated very aggressively with Caltrans, which previously was not very open to the idea of an actual expansion and using the two existing lanes and building two additional lanes with the two existing lanes. It's just been a very it's been a very positive process working with Caltrans, and I'm very hopeful that we can continue to move forward with all the options on the table and give very serious consideration to what I've been advocating for, which would be a much more cost effective approach and hopefully an approach that lowers the amount of time involved with the expansion, which is to build two new lanes on top of the existing lanes. And we are also additionally going forward with the, as I mentioned earlier, the traffic impact fee study. We're pushing the gas pedal on that as much as we can to get that done, so look out for more on that.

As far as tourism committee goes, I think everyone's aware essentially what we've been working on here because everything's, come to the board. But just to recap, again, the, hotel incentive program, I think we have an ad hoc. I'm hopeful that we can, you know, maybe get that. I know we all have a lot going on on our plates and staff in particular with planning all these things, but hopefully we can get that ad hoc moving to refine that program, the hotel incentive program. Excited about that.

We also have, as we all know, officially branded our community as home of Pinnacles National Park, taking a soft approach because of the budget situation this past year, but I'm hopeful as we get into the budget and we had this conversation about signs in particular that we can, you know, move forward and take some other steps forward in the next year with regard to continuing to prioritize the branding of our community as Home Of Pinnacles National Park. Gotta take that thing back from Soledad who stole it from us to begin with. And then, otherwise, we have the wayfinding plan that we are working on. We're trying to make that as least complicated as possible. Essentially, it's a sign plan, and we'll have further conversations hopefully about a monument sign of some kind, which is not necessarily it's not gonna be a cheap project, so we're gonna need some help on that, I would think.

And then a series of other, more artistic, signs that fit in with the feel, of our community, that would promote, the other primary attractions that we have that in that would include such attractions as Hollister Hills, Fremont Peak, De Anza Trail, several in South County, you know, you know the list, the historical park, the wineries. There's a few more. So hopeful that we can make that a priority moving forward. And then and we will have a presentation in May as the arts council alluded to, and so really try to get them involved and and take some steps on that. And then fire protection committee, we're continuing to go through the feasibility study process.

We have interviews being set up from the consultant with the fire protection committee members. And so, you know, I and the other committee members will be going forward those interviews to give some insights. So if you, as a board, have any recommendations or priorities you wanna see in the feasibility study, please do pass that on, and we will include that

in the

conversation. LAVCO, we are continuing with the, you know, municipal services review process, wastewater, and some other things. We had a presentation this last meeting. I could not make the meeting, so thank you to supervisor Velasquez for being there from the high school district on their proposed I believe on their proposed project. And we also just recently filled the public member alternate position as well.

So thank you to Barry Katz for stepping forward and doing that. And then last lastly, the Monterey Bay Area Resources District, I'll be having a meeting in Monterey tomorrow. And just wanna again continue to emphasize for our community, whether it's the county government, cities, other jurisdictions to keep a lookout to constantly be looking at the Monterrey Resources website and stay in contact with myself as the representative because there are a lot of grant opportunities for vehicles and different types of things. So thank you very much. Thank you. Treasurer Shattel?

Thank you. So let's see. What am I gonna start with? How about we start with public defender oversight committee? We had a meeting yesterday, and we had a retreat a couple weeks ago, and I'm happy to report that, like, the wheels are really moving forward with that committee. We're really starting to kind of make a lot of way. I think everybody on the committee is kind of on the same page. And so we will be having a few things coming to this board to solidify things like a complaint form, a survey questionnaire. We're working currently right now on our mission statement. So there are some things that we'll be bringing brought forward over the next few months.

There's a lot of discussion, and and and so things are not quite ready to come here, but but we are making a positive impact in that area. The Vets Park Commission, unfortunately, we have not been able to meet. Our last meeting, I think, was last week, and it was canceled. I think that's due to not having enough staffing right now, but I know that several of the members did reach out to me from that committee. I am not the chair.

I'm just a member on the committee, but there is a desire. They would like some updates of what's going on. I know we did send letters of support from, you know, from the community regarding Vetspark, some of the the projects that we'd like to do out there, repaving, lighting, a second entrance exit, and we've sent letters of support to congresswoman Lofgren. And so hopeful that maybe we can get some funding there. The area agency on aging, Lots going on with just trying to you know, so many changes with everything with funding coming from the federal government and state government.

There's a lot of changes there, and there is conversation around the a ADRC, so aging disability resource center. And we have one here locally. But there are some that, due to different reasons, they are closing their triple a or they no longer wanna do it. Maybe now the county wants to take over, whatever the reasoning is. There's some legislation that's being put forward by senator Laird regarding currently, if you have a triple a, you cannot have an a d r c that is independent of that.

And and so there's some legislation right now that would make it so that you even if, let's say, the AAA went away, that the ADRC wouldn't go away immediately. I think it has, like, a year or something to continue, and that's really important. So that as some of these triple a's figure out kind of what the next steps are, we don't leave our vulnerable population of aging adults and people with disabilities without a resource center and places to go to get the information. In first five, we have been working on our bylaws. We have done a ton of outreach and different programs.

We have a new executive director. She's been there about a year now, but she's still kind of new, and she's just absolutely amazing and doing a ton of work. One of the the projects that they have going on right now is vision task force, and they are doing some vision screening and vision testing for children. The focus was going to be on TK and Kinder with the Hollister School District to kind of get a a sample size. The the goal is ultimately that all of our children start school with, if there are any vision problems, those are identified prior to them starting school, and really giving kids a really, really, good kind of head start that give them a solid foundation.

Unfortunately, we were not able to do it at the Hollister School District. Thank you to Aromas San Juan School District. They were agreeable to take this on. Because of the size of the school district, we had to change it from, TK kinder to we are doing TK through, I believe, it's fifth grade. And so that is happening. Thank you so much to doctor Redman, a local optometrist here, and doctor Theker, who as well is a local optometrist. And this is really cool to see this effort happening. A lot of partners coming together, County Office of Education, First Five, Public Health. It's just it's it's really amazing, all of the partnerships and and the effort that's going. So that's really awesome.

At RCRC, we have been working on, you know, kinda staying up to date with all of the bills and legislations being put forward. One of the bills that we we spent quite a bit of time talking about last month, and I wanna make sure I get the number correct. It's SB eleven seventy six, which is Choi, I believe, the last name. And this is talking about it prohibits a foreign actor from purchasing, acquiring, leasing, or holding a controlling interest as defined in agricultural land within the state of California. And so there's a lot of conversation among RCRC regarding that right now, keeping a very close eye.

There are counties that are offering letters of support that they are supportive of that and would like to prohibit that prohibit a foreign actor from purchasing ag land here locally or state of California. The other thing that we spent some time on and that r c r d r c r c is starting to work on is with the state of California, with all of the mandates that we have, know, kind of come down to local government, kind of the pushback a little bit on that. And so they're working with a group that is doing I don't know the official name. Greg, do you know the what is the official name when you fight back the state of California on a mandate? They're unfunded mandates.

Yeah. And we can push back. And if you're successful in that lawsuit, then the state of California then pays for it. I don't know what the official name is. But, anyways, there's a lot of conversation. There's actually some, they're taking some sample cases right now and and pushing back on some of those. And so, to be you know, the unfunded mandates are just a real challenge to us rural counties. And so I will bring back any information, and if there's ever an opportunity for us to potentially benefit from something like that and join in.

Are you looking for s b 90 claims?

Is that what you're thinking of? Think what it might be. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. AMBAG, unfortunately, our last meeting, I drove all the way to Monterey, and it was canceled. So AMBAG was canceled last month, but, again, we're working on the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. Pajaro River Watershed Prevention Authority, we had a meeting last week. They are starting to work in the Watsonville area on the Pajaro River in Reach 6, and so there is starting to be some work on that. And I think that's pretty much those are my committees, so thank you very much.

Thank you. Sperry Velasquez, any updates? No. I have nothing. Sperry Zukoril? Okay.

So when it comes to ad hocs, I know that we're trying to schedule a meeting for am I on the right one? The affordable housing ad hoc. I don't believe we've actually gotten that scheduled yet. So if we could just make sure that that's one that's dealing with affordable housing. The ag element is a stakeholder group.

It is a public meeting. It's it's not really an ad hoc. It is a public meeting. The public can attend. We have, with the staff, had our what we were told from the consultants was our last meeting, but there was no vote taken by the stakeholder group.

And so I've met with the CEO and and discussed and and asked staff what the next steps are on the ag element stakeholder group. We had the most engaged meeting we have had yet in this last meeting that was just a few weeks ago. But what came out of it was a bunch of feedback on the draft egg element, and we haven't seen that final draft. And we would like even if the consultants are no longer funded, we would like as an egg stakeholder group to have that brought back to the stakeholder group and individuals would like to either say they are supportive or they're not supportive of because there's so much controversy around the egg element. The other thing is that part of the egg element had the discussion about acreage and it being a five acre or a 40 acre.

That was moved aside from the egg element, and a separate committee was created. I don't see that on the committee list. This was a committee to discuss either five acres or 40 acres as the minimum size. And then in South County, I think it goes from 60 to a 120 acres as minimum size. But this group, a lot of them want to attend that, and I didn't have an update form.

So I said that that would be happening post the egg element. So, staff knows that we're trying to get one more egg element meeting to see that final draft and actually have a vote of the members so that that I can bring that back and have it presented to the board for consideration. I don't really have the I don't really have anything on any of the other ad hocs that are to update. On three CE, you know, there's a program in three CE just so everybody remembers. This is where your power is coming from unless you opt out of three CE and go to PG and E.

PG and E does the distribution equipment, and we actually are the power suppliers. And this is a multi county organization. They had a program that they budgeted $1,500,000 for battery storage for solar on small residents and small businesses, and it took off. They had so many applications. They exceeded the 1.5 in their projections.

It went to 3,500,000. And now in the pipeline, they have 3,700,000. So it's a major topic that's being discussed at three CE is how are we gonna pull back because this was a pilot program, and we've exceeded, so we we don't wanna subsidize, and have it hurt, rate payers. So that is a major topic that's coming back. We're actually gonna have a special, board meeting on that to discuss what the proposed pullback is.

And as that moves forward, there's a new program that will be coming out at the beginning of next year. And so we're trying to sandwich those two programs together. And as information becomes available, I'll be sharing it with all of the board members either through the the clerk of the board or through handouts that come from them. Behavioral health, I'm gonna kinda lump behavioral health in with CSAC and NACO, and it's all HR one. I mean, we had a board retreat last week for CSAC, and the major topic was about HR one.

Counties have listed all of their potential funding streams that are gonna be pulled back. I don't know if we actually have all of our numbers for HR one for, all the programs that are not being funded from HR one. This includes h h HHS behavioral health, but the problem is CSAC is completely united with all of the other organizations to be able to say this is a state problem. This is not a county problem. HR one is not being funded for these services, and we have made it perfectly clear the state has to resolve this situation.

It cannot push what we discussed at the retreat was that we, as rural counties and all counties, have slowly been pushed state responsibilities and programs, and they are constantly starting to fund them, and then they end the funding. And then we have unfunded mandates, but we're taking on those programs. And it has been years and years of this pushdown that if we don't actually start to draw a line in the sand, which is kind of where CSAC is right now. They're drawing a line in the sand, and especially the rural counties and the rural caucus have said, we have to stop and but we need to have stories about what does that mean for impacts for our residents. The NACO executive director came and spoke at our board retreat, and it's all about the individual storytelling.

They don't necessarily want just the numbers. They want actual impacts of individuals that were being benefited from the programs, and that would include how many people are being removed from those funding sources. What is the county able to do? Anything I will I just so you guys know, I pushed back and said we have no funding in general fund to fund any, or subsidize any HR one programs. I mean, I made it perfectly clear.

There's no wiggle room in our budget to be able to fund HR one from our county. So it is going to be cut services, and we don't know exactly what that looks like yet. And I know that the CEO is working on that with staff. Let's go on. So, cab, the cab board, I did not see that I still had a vacancy any longer in District 4.

Is there still a District 4 vacancy? I didn't see it on the website, but I thought I saw it on the CAB website. If you could clarify because that position does not have to be a a low income resident. I have a low income current member that will take that position and qualifies for it. It's just a District 4 appointee.

If if you could clarify that for me. When it comes to I have no update on the emergency medical care committee. We we actually, the last meeting, I believe, was canceled. Integrated waste local area task force, we have asked for a special meeting on May 5, and we've asked both city managers to attend and we've asked the CEO to attend to actually understand the full purpose of the integrated waste task force because we're being asked to make a recommendation that really has to go to every one of the cities and the county to actually even make that recommendation. So if we can't vote to make a recommendation as a task force, we're kind of struggling with, then what are we here for besides to approve the budget and say, okay.

Now send the budget out to everybody because we have some issues with the bylaws. It's May 5 is the meeting. So and I believe I added that to your calendar as a request item. Mobility partnership, Valley Transportation Agency, VTA in Santa Clara County. Highway 101 In 25 is gonna have a closure tonight from eight a 8PM to 6AM.

I have tried to send that out on social media. I know COG has also sent that out on social media. I just wanna make an announcement because 8PM is kinda early in my book. Not everybody's home by 8PM. And 6AM, some people are already at work at six I mean, 6AM. Some people are already at work at 6AM in the Bay Area. So there is a detour route. People need to be mindful of that. You can go on to COG VTA. You can go on to my Facebook and see it, but I also have asked the CEO to post on that.

NACO. The big conversation at CSAT, we had the NACO executive director present, and it was about the the surface transportation bill. And NACO is pushing and going to pushing to have it go to local governments. It's $2,200,000,000,000 in from the Department of Transportation with 3,000,000,000,000 at the local level. And they're trying to make it where they're not earmarked on, like, a specific safety item where we would have more flexibility on those.

So 44% of the roads in in the country are ran by counties, and the DOT is not funding us enough. So we're really, really pushing for transportation funding to be able to maintain our rural roads. There was a great presentation about the green light initiative. I'm not gonna go into it. I'll I'll share it with supervisor Sotelo, but it was really nice to hear the history of how the green light program actually started for our veterans.

It was a green light hanging in a barn in a barn, and someone went to go see the constituent. And he goes, why do you have that green light? And he goes, because I honor, the military and veterans by having this in my barn. And from there, it turned into a nationwide, program. So it what it brought it down to for me and lots of the attendees is it doesn't matter how small the initiative is.

Anything that we wanna try and do, we just need to get the story behind it and help advocate for it. Mindy, supervisor Sotelo did the, public defenders. I just wanna thank council and staff for all their work on the public defenders oversight. It has been a a big lift, and we know it it's it's an added workload for them. And with that, the only other major topic is about public information officers at CSAC.

They are working collaboratively with each of the counties. There are a handful of the rural counties that do not have public information officers. So I have connected, the CEO with the CSAC. They will be having meetings about HR one and how they're pushing out the talking points to each county. So, I would, just like, some authority maybe in the future for the CEO to be able to push out information as it becomes available from CSAC. So maybe that could be a future agenda item. And with that, I will end. Thank you so much, mister chair.

Thank you. Most everything's been covered by other board members, but a couple things. The housing policy reform ad hoc, we're working to set up a meeting time to continue the work that we're doing. We have a couple more things you wanna finish up in that ad hoc. Same with the setting up meeting for the hotel incentive program to finish refining that means working on that.

Tourism, I know super supervisor cousin Mickey spoke on it. Just wanna reiterate with the wayfinding, we are gonna be seeking we're be meeting with community input. So if there's anyone that's reach out to me if you think you're relevant as far as the wayfinding, you can have an input on that. So we just wanna have a, basically, a stakeholder community meeting where we can get input from different sectors of the community. Labco, yes, we had the presentation from the high school district on their proposal for the second a second high school.

It is the proposal that we've heard for a while now in the same location over there. That's what they're suggesting off of Buena Vista. Governance, they're doing the water district is doing their work on the Fallon Well project. So they're doing work on Fallon Road, and I just wanna make a little PSA. I would appreciate if people would stop speeding by when they're working. I heard a lot of complaints that people are driving very fast on Fallon Road as they're trying to do the work out there, so please be cognizant of that. We don't want any issues or accidents out there. And I believe everything else was covered. So that's it. I know we do need to go to oh, Yes.

Sorry. I forgot animal control services, and I I do think that there'll be some things coming to us in the near future. And so I I wanna make sure that I try to report out that we we have had some meetings. We continue to look at the data. We have toured the Santa Clara County Animal Control Shelter to see what what how how they operate theirs, what that looks like.

We're exploring and looking at all options for how do we provide the best services in the unincorporated area for animal control services. My next meeting is I'm setting up a meeting with the chief of police to to discuss animal control services with them and some of the data, but we continue to meet. We continue to have conversations. And I know that we will be having a meeting with the city of Hollister as well with their representatives. Had a very kind of brief conversation, and they are interested in looking at maybe like a JPA model.

So we will be bringing some things forward in the near future. But I just wanted you to know that we are working on that. There is nothing definitive yet. We're still continuing to gather data, gather information, and try to put together something that that will make sense for the county, and looking at kind of what our resources look like, and providing the absolute best care that we possibly can for animal control services. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for adding that. We go to public comment, please.

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

Great. Thank you. This was just an update, so there's no, action that we need to take. So we will include the item and move to the audit committee. So we will adjourn as the board of supervisors and reconvene as the audit committee. Item 4.1, is there acknowledge a motion to acknowledge the certificate of posting?

So moved. Second.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Passes. Public comments. Is there any public comment on items of interest not on the agenda?

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

Great. We have the minutes of the 03/10/2026 audit committee meeting. Is there public comment on the minutes?

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

Great. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the March 10 meeting? Move to approve. Second? Second. Great. Please say aye. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Great. Motion passes. Moving to 4.3, monthly auditor controller informational update on the audited county's annual comprehensive financial report and single audit report for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2025. Is the mic on?

I heard myself very well. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, again, chair and board of supervisors. Joe Paul Gonzalez, auditor controller for the county.

I'm really really happy to report that, the county, audit has been completed. The county's annual comprehensive financial report that I have in my hand that, that I provided to all of you in an email, has been audited and has been, given a clean opinion, unmodified opinion by the external auditor. It has been sent to the government's finance officers association for its review for consideration of of the annual award for certificate of achievement and excellence of financial reporting. In the ACFR, you'll see the 2024, 06/30/2024 certificate of financial award. Not a lot of agencies get that award, and I just wanted to point that out that San Antonio County has.

In addition, the I also included as an attachment in that email to all of you the single audit report, and, that single audit report was submitted to the federal audit clean clearinghouse, on March 31, and it was submitted without any issues or findings. So, that's that's a that's a good news for the county, especially as it relates to, it's important that the single audit always be reported timely and that it's, you know, having a clean, you know, a clean opinion is important or, any sort of grants that the county, applies for. Today, you'll be hearing from, our external auditor, Lindsay Zimmerman from Brown and Armstrong. She's gonna be providing you a a small, short presentation and follow followed by assistant owner controller, Leon Gudinias, who will be drilling down on the ACPR to provide you some of the highlights of the ACPR. So at this point, if we can have Lindsey present.

Okay. Thank you so much, Joe Paul, for that introduction. I just wanna start by saying thank you so much, board, supervisors, and chair for allowing me to present the audit results. Joe Paul already gave a great presentation, so I will get right to the point. We have for the scope of the audit, we are to pour we were to perform the audit in accordance with GAAP or generally accepted auditing accounting principles and also with government auditing standards or GAAP as issued by the comptroller general of US.

You're also required to communicate at the conclusion of the audit in accordance with professional standards, report on in any internal control deficiencies, if any, and then also, report on that federal compliance for federal funding for the single audits. And then right now, the differences between our responsibility and management's, we are to form an express opinion on the financials as a whole, develop, our opinions based on our audit findings of the financials and on compliance, strategically plan and execute the audit process, and then also evaluate, internal controls over financial reporting. Management's responsibilities are to prepare the financial statements in a complete and accurate way, to upkeep the internal controls over financial reporting and adhere to laws and regulations. Management is also tasked with preparing the financials, designing and implementing internal controls and ensuring compliance, and then also adopting and executing new accounting pronouncements each year for, GAAP I guess. For timing, we performed our audit planning and assessment, in March and through May at our office.

We came out in May and performed our internal control, testing where we performed walk throughs, of all major processes, detailed test of controls over all major processes as well, and then formulated our plan while for the final fieldwork while the the county was closing their books and making final preparations. We performed our fieldwork in November all the way through, the March time frame of just this last month, and we're able to report and complete our, final reports by the, 03:31 deadline. And this was the certificate. Just wanted to note that we were able to or the county was able management was able to also submit for certification of excellence, for this year as well. So just a couple extensions, and we're able to present that.

So should get it. And then, reporting as a whole, the financial statements are presented fairly in all material respects. We did not note any, internal controls over financial reporting. And then the for the single audit, the federal testing that we've performed on the federal funding, there were no issues, no direct or material effect on any major federal programs for the year ended 06/30/2025. And then here's just a brief summary of all of the areas that we needed to, opine on.

So it's unmodified on both the financial statements or the ACFR as well as an unmodified opinion or clean opinion on federal awards. No material weaknesses or significant deficiencies, in either area. No audit findings that needed to be disclosed in accordance with uniform guidance. We performed testing over the three major programs for home, highway planning, and construction in the last part of the COVID nineteen coronavirus, and happy to report, had no findings. And because there was a ish a finding last year, we had to make sure that we covered the 40% of the total funding, so we make sure we covered that as part of those three programs.

And then just to briefly touch on the required communication, the county adopted both GASB one zero one and one zero two. GASB one zero one was about compensated absences, which, the county needed to include, some of the sick time as deemed that that needed to be on the, the financial, reporting. At one zero two didn't have too much of a significant impact, and these are the significant estimates and sensitive disclosures that we reviewed and tested in terms of useful life of capital assets, self insurance, compensated absences that I touched on earlier, leases and SPITAs, and then the big ones up the net pension liability and net OPEB liabilities, which were based based on actuary assumptions. Happy report. There were no corrected or uncorrected misstatements, no disagreements with managements, and no other audit findings or issues.

And then just to touch on the prior year finding status, there was a material weakness over internal controls. And so the current year status wanted to present to you is that the the county has continued to make significant progress in terms of the timeliness and the accuracy of the year end financial reporting close. Due to turnover and staffing, the county was able to complete the ACFR and single audit by the federal and state reporting deadline of March 31, but did miss that original GFOA, a recommended submission, just due to, they like that report for maintaining timely financial reporting. But the county seems to be on track of achieving this full compliance and reporting next year, with the additional resources, needed in order to aid in executing those that internal control environment. And the management re remains, committed to strengthen those processes and sustain their positive trajectory going forward.

And with that, wanna make it short and sweet? I just wanna open up to any questions that you might have.

Thank you. We're gonna go public comment right now.

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

K. Great. Thank you. Any questions from the board at this time? Yes, Rose Stella.

Thank you. I just first of all, congratulations on your to you and your staff regarding your certificate of excellence. Awesome. That's amazing. I was curious on one of the slides just so that I understand it. So when it was talking about the responsibilities, so the auditor's responsibilities, that would be the this this is the Brown Armstrong responsibilities. And then management responsibilities is that, like, you or who exact like, I just wanted to understand when it lists management responsibilities. Is that you? Is that the CEO? Like, who exactly are we talking about with this? Because your

title is the auditor.

The auditor controller's office. Yes.

Auditor controller. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I immediately see management administration, and I think CEO, so I just wanted that clarification. So the auditor's responsibility is the firm, and then management would be the autumn auditor controller's office.

Because we prepare the financial statements.

I just

wanted to make sure that I was understanding about that. So thank you for that. Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate it.

Any other questions from the board? Theresa Currell?

So thank you so much. I know how much work this is for staff. I know how many hours it takes for you guys because it it's it's kinda like the unsung election. In elections, you know, we would have an end, and everybody knew it. You guys have this, and it isn't always public and known how much effort is put into the act for.

It this is a technical question that I don't know how to really even answer. If I go to the fund balances and there is a committed row in the general fund and all other, fund funds. There's no committed cost since 2020. Can you help me understand why there's no committed what's changed since 2020? Because it shows in 2017, 2018, and 2019, we had committed costs.

So have to yeah.

If Lindsay I don't know if she wants to respond to that because this is the her section

Gotcha.

Of the presentation. We can answer that question in in the next section which goes into some of that.

Oh, okay. So I can hold off on pill. On if if you're gonna go into it deeper. I I thought that was the end of the presentation.

Yeah. If you can hold

off on that question so that

Oh, sure.

We can

answer that question

No problem.

During the No problem. I'll hold off on that question. I'm just trying to understand Yep. You you know where I'm gonna go with committed and and what does committed mean in this report in versus what does committed mean maybe in the budget, which could be a different terminology. I just wanna make sure that that I'm understanding it correctly. Thank you.

Okay. CEO, you had something to add?

Yes. I just want clarification. This is the single audit. Right? And so is this the single added? Or is this is this report related only to federal funded projects?

This is for the comprehensive financial report for the county as a whole and also for that.

Yes. And I just wanna clarify because I was put on an email that Joe Paul sent to the to the staff. This is not a full audit. I I just wanna make sure that we all understand that. This is a random audit for specific projects that were that's you send an email asking for that specific are three projects that were selected to be audited. And so that was part of this report. And so and my it's my understanding that you were targeting targeting only federal projects funded. Is that correct? I'm just curious. I just want a clarification on that. Thank you.

So there's you know, we're talking about two different documents. Right? ACFR, the annual comprehensive financial report, and the single audit. The single audit relates totally to federal programs. Yes. And and that's what I sent on March 31. I sent the entire board and and and to yourself a copy of those two audited reports financial reports. Yes. That's correct.