Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning. We're going to get started with our Board of Supervisors meeting. It's Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. Can we please have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Supervisor Citello?

thank you uh your motion to acknowledge certificate of posting second all in favor aye aye great moving on to presentations and recognitions we have uh one item today one proclamation i believe that is the august proclamation declaring august 2026 as child support awareness month in san menino county Thank you. Okay, so first of all, is there, I believe our standard practice, we're not taking, we don't do like a public comment on the proclamation section. Is that correct, County Council? Great. Is there a motion to approve the proclamation?

I move to approve the proclamation. I'll second.

First and second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Is there... Anyone here for this proclamation? Perfect. Any Supervisors who would like to present specifically on this? Not?

And good morning, everybody. Happy September 1st. Can you believe it? It's already September. Where did the year go? and thank you guys for being here today. We appreciate all the work you do. This proclamation declares August 2026 as Child Support Awareness Month for the County of San Benito. Child Support Awareness Month recognizes the key role that parental engagement and financial support plays in the well-being of children in our community to help them become healthy, productive, and well-adjusted adults. In addition, increased awareness of child support services helps parents understand

Yes, absolutely. You want just me or you want the whole board? We're going to do the whole board.

All right, thank you very much. Moving on, we have no department head announcements. We are moved to board announcements. Any board announcements from supervisors? All right, no board announcements. Great, moving on to public comment. It's an opportunity to address the board on items of interest not appearing on the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, the county council. We have an item to add, is that correct? Yes. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, do you need a motion to add that?

That's a good question. County Council, do we need a motion to add that?

Sure, so is there a motion to add it to regular agenda for further discussion?

Well, I would make a motion to add it to consent, but if you'd like to add it to regular agenda for discussion, no.

It just seems like there might be some questions about it.

Sure, then I make a motion to add it to regular agenda, and which item would that now be? 2.5. 2.5 as item 2.5.

Okay, great, thank you. Is there a second? We have first and a second. We have a vote, please, from the clerk. Roll call vote.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we'll move to public comment. So this is public comment on items not on the agenda. Do we have public comment today?

Just for flood issues, we'll take that on the flood item. Ted, is yours general? It's not about the flood, right, or is it? We'll do it under flood then, if that works.

Come do a public comment, and if you have anything for flood-related, come back for the flood item, if that's all right. Does that work?

Thank you. All right, going to move on to consent agenda. These matters shall be considered as a whole and without discussion unless an item is removed from consent. Do any supervisors have items they wish to pull from consent agenda? Yes.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to pull item number 1.7.

1.7. Any others? Okay, is there any public comment on the remainder of consent agenda?

Thank you very much. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda except for item 1.7? Is there a second? Second. We have first and second. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Thank you very much. We'll move to the poll item 1.7, Syverza Carro.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and I would like to ask the sheriff to come up. The reason I pulled this item is specifically to have the sheriff have the opportunity to give an update to the community and have it more public and transparent about the status of the communications work that they've been working on. I really appreciate the share for being here today. Thank you so much.

I would love a just overview of your response on the grand jury report, but specifically want to get into the communications part.

Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes, sure. Thank you so much. This is exactly what I wanted the public to hear. I am. I'm saddened that we don't have a strong project management, you know, individual that could be taking this on and really coordinating this for you. But I appreciate you and your team and everything that you've done. The main thing I wanted the public to know is because South County has very limited access not only to cellular but what the actual implication is if cellular is not available and you hit on it that starlink mini is crucial to ensure that all of the county is covered when she

Really appreciate that. And I appreciate administration's coordination with you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the board?

Thank you. Thank you. Is there a motion from the board then at this time on this item?

Great, thank you. That concludes consent. We'll move to regular agenda item 2.1, the flood item that we're all really here for today. We have a presentation from, is it from Public Works or from CEO?

Thank you. Let's start with public comment and then we'll discuss. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anything else before public comment? Let's take public comment now. Thank you.

Thank you. There's been a request for a short break. Do you want to take a five-minute break before we get back into discussion? Thank you. Okay, we are back from our break. We're gonna continue discussion here with item 2.1. We've had public comment. Come back to the board. Supervisor Kosmicki, this was your item you suggested last time. Do you want to start us off here with any questions or comments?

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for the great information from staff, everybody that came out to share information. I know I've received some things, whether it's by phone or by email, so there's a lot of interest in this topic. Yes, it is September 1st now, but we have some time here, so we need to be aggressive. We have a few months, you know, obviously before December. My understanding is that according to the predictions that it's maybe late December, early January, into February, sort of an event that's possible here. So we do have to really get aggressive. Some g

Thank you so much, Supervisor Kosmicki, for putting this as a future agenda item. It is an item that I have been very concerned about for some time and been working with my constituents on where the concerned areas are. And I'm going to pre-apologize because my district is very large and I've had lots of conversations. I already forwarded, just so it is on public record, I already forwarded a comprehensive list of priorities, including Pinoch Road, which is, the issues are striping and reflectors, potholes, mudslides, culvert cleanouts. New Idria Road, which we know will most likely wash out a

Thank you for that confirmation and clarification. I appreciate the ask for sponsorship for Pacheco Stormwater District. Understanding that sponsorship does not mean that the county can give more money. We need to collaborate with supporting you to get grants to be able to deal with what needs to happen. I completely agree with Supervisor Kosmicki. We need to know how much emergency funding we have available and how much are we willing to use for pre-preparation, not reaction. I think that conversation needs to come back. When it comes to are disaster service workers. All of our county employe

I wanna make sure that we know that, but also when we're doing town halls on preparing that we're doing in that town hall, if there is an evacuation order or you are flooded, This is where you're going to need to go, and you'll have this local assessment center that will help you guide through what your resources are. I think that kind of level of education would be great. Supervisor Kosmicki already did that one, so I'm not going to repeat. Oh, these fiber companies that are putting fiber in the ground, I really hope Public Works comes down on them a little harder. They trenched, they dug up

Thank you. Most of my comments and concerns were already addressed by both of the other supervisors, so I'm going to try to make this really quick. I understand that we have private property, and then there's the property that the county is responsible for, and that we all kind of have to do everything that we can to maintain that. but is there anything that we can do to help our private property owners know of kind of the risk, know what resources are available to them, anything that we can do to kind of help so that we're all kind of working together as a team to kind of, do everything we ca

Thank you, Sheriff. I appreciate that. Really quick question on Nixle, though. Don't go too far. So does every single agency or jurisdiction, so let's say Hollister Police Department, do I have to sign up for Nixle through Hollister Police Department? Then I have to go to the sheriffs and sign up for that one as well? How does that work? Because I am signed up for some Nixle. Maybe I'm signed up for all of them, but I just want the public to understand, and I want to understand better, how do we sign up for these Nixle alerts? And if I sign up for the county one, is that then going to give me

Thank you. I appreciate that clarification because I think sometimes we sign up for one and then we think it is kind of all-inclusive to everything in our community. I think that's something that hopefully maybe we can put that information out to the public so they're very clear on how to sign up and how to make sure that it's kind of countywide. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's all I have on Nixle now. Thank you. I feel like I'm going to jump all over the place, but in light of we have a district that has a lot of potentially flooding issues, et cetera, that is without a supervisor right

And is that okay that we share your email with the public as people? I mean, it's public information, but I just want to make sure that as we're... Yeah, go ahead, Supervisor.

I totally agree with you. The only concern I have is you're gonna be inundated with emails on your county email. Would it behoove us to have a District 5 email that is all District 5, so it's consolidating the information?

Okay. Thank you very much for that. There has been comments today about illegal living conditions out on Lovers Lane, etc. Is there anything that we can do to be proactive about that to start working on that kind of inventory and making sure that we're kind of on top of that? There was a lot of devastation last time and people were really, really impacted by that. And so I want to make sure that we didn't just we're not ignoring that issue and that we're being proactive in that. I think that we need to make sure that people are safe. Let's see. I have the fiber line. So is there anything, just

Okay. Thank you for that, Adolfo. In regards to chemical cleanup and kind of hazards... Is there any opportunity, as well as I think some of the conditions that were out there, and I know that environmental health went out last time and kind of assessed the situation, but is there any opportunity for like integrated waste to, or even environmental health to maybe one, like with integrated waste, do a, I know we do quarterly cleanups, but if we could do like a special cleanup for, and really putting an alert out to the community, hey, if you have any of these, you know, things you can, take the

Are we able to go? One of the comments today was about digging deeper and it sounds like Caltrans possibly did that. So is that something that might be available to us too?

Is there any opportunity for us to potentially bring in like CHEER, the nonprofit? I mean, I heard, you know, I know they help down in the riverbed quite a bit. I know that this all comes at an expense, you know, but if there are vehicles down there and there are, I don't know, just washers. I don't know what exactly is down there, but it sounded like there's quite a bit and it sounds like it might be a pretty big task to I think we've got to use every resource that we can, and I don't know if CHEAR is available or not, but I know they did a lot of the cleanup down in the river, removing a lot

Okay. And I know Integrated Waste has worked with CHEAR quite a bit, and so... I do think that we need to think about as we are going through this budget cycle, and I know we have zero money, and so please don't kill me. But I do think we need to be realistic in allocating probably some emergency funding to be proactive right now in preparing for this. You know, I'm trying to be realistic, and I know how hard our financial – outlook is right now, but I do think that it will be far worse if we are not proactive right now. And so I do, as we are, you know, this will be the month that we finalize

thank you a couple things i'm gonna do my best not to repeat anything there's been a lot that's already been said obviously um i will say so as far as i understand public works question with the creek clean everything that i've heard over the years of dealing with this is basically we are allowed to remove anything loose we cannot uproot trees in the creek and we cannot dig out the sediment but we can remove all loose things is that correct that is correct okay so we can do that we know we can do that i think the board is all on the same page we want to do that i 100 agree we need to throw eme

Thank you. Thank you. That's good to hear. And yeah, I think... The issue then is that residents that are in an area that may flood that have livestock really need to take it seriously and be proactive about it because like the sheriff just mentioned, we can't go pick up your sheep. We can't go do that. So you'll need to plan ahead. I know not everyone has, they may have livestock, but they don't have a trailer. Maybe they borrowed it to get them there and they need to plan ahead, residents need to be prepared get livestock to a safe location so we don't have any issues with that. I know there

It's after the certification. So it could be as late as the 3rd of December, 5th of December, if it takes that long to certify.

Okay, good to know. Good to know. Just for everyone to know. So December, looking at maybe early December, we'll have a supervisor available again at that time. I want to go over a couple specific areas. I know there are a lot we're touched on, but as far as the roadside cleaning of the ditches and the culverts. Along Fairview in front of Santana Ranch all the way down to Santa Ana Creek where it drains there. I know there was issues in the past and it would go across the road and there was issues with the Fairview Mobile Manor flooding and stuff like that. So that is, I know, a potential prob

Thank you so much for bringing up the large item the large animals evacuation that that was on my list and I omitted that the other one is is I was just typing an email to start the conversation hopefully maybe at the mobility partnership level. The flooding preparation at 101 and 25 due to the construction of the new safety corridor that they're trying to create there. We know that that completely went under water. And how is Caltrans preparing for the El Nino? I have brought it up as a mobility partnership topic. And then how Highway 156 with the expansion, we noticed it after the road was a

Yeah, I just wanted to try to further just sort of refine next steps a little bit if possible. And I agree with basically everything my colleagues have said. But I think, you know, either by I think the 15th is maybe unrealistic for most of this because it's two weeks away. We have I believe the budget would that be on the 15th?

So what I'm gonna suggest is that we give you a little bit of time, we have the budget we're dealing with, but to come back with those first priorities and give some updates on how we move forward with these suggestions made by the board, I would probably suggest maybe having another special meeting after the 28th, between the 28th and the, I think it's too far out if we go into mid-October at this point. So having another special meeting between the 28th and the first meeting in October so that we can just focus on this. Go ahead.

However you want to work it out with the chair and yourselves and the board, but I just feel like we need something before mid-October so we can at least get the ball rolling on some of this stuff. For me, it's sort of a triage sort of thing. You've got to identify, okay, so we just suggested a whole lot of things. What are those top five to ten things? Come back with some answers on those. For me, identifying the available funding, and that's something you're going to have to do anyway because of the budget schedule that's coming up. First and foremost, a plan for addressing the clearing out

Look, I'm not... This has got to be driven by the property owners to a large extent. So that's... I think that that's clear from the board. That's clear in the law.

But we need to identify how do we get the word out to these property owners. I think the Farm Bureau is a good start. Some of these organizations in town that can help us, we need to get the word out that – here are, here's what you can do. Um, and here's what you can do. I don't even want to say can't do, because if I'm talking about life safety issues, we need to just get in these creeks and clear them out. If I, you know, I'll be blunt about this. If, if we're talking about the, the difference between worrying about, you know, uh, issues with salamanders and frogs and you know, following th

Sorry. So I really appreciate the kind of honing in. The only thing I would say is I completely agree that we need to have this as an open topic for every meeting. I think we need to have a schedule for what the town halls would look like and what regions those would be. And we have to remember. striping reflectors for road safety, even to be able to stay on the road. We know how bad Union Road was before reconstruction. That's nothing compared to driving in the fog on Pinoch Road. We have to look at road safety striping something, even if it's just to make it through this rainy season, becaus

Thank you. So I think there's consensus then on next steps, so we're good with this. Any other comments, questions? All right, well, thank you very much for the presentation, staff, Public Works, Tracy, everyone. Thank you so much, Sheriff. We will now move on. It's noon. County Council, do we have anyone in closed session at this time that we need to go out for, or can we keep going?

make a suggestion to try to work out with staff and if we want a break to go get food and then come back at one o'clock so that because closed session could go an hour two hours and just to be fair to everyone we don't want people starving and making bad decisions when we're all starving so um probably trying to fit that in there thank you yeah so let's let's do and let's continue regular agenda item we'll break at 12 30 for lunch and closed session does that work for everyone

Okay, great, thank you. So then we'll keep moving to item 2.2. This is from our probation department regarding the community corrections partnership plan.

Thank you. Let's check for public comment.

Thank you. Back to the board is any board members have questions, comments? Yes.

Thank you. I don't really have any questions, but I just want to tell you, Ashlyn and Lorraine, great job on putting this presentation together. It was very complete and very comprehensive. I really appreciate you explaining what kind of AB 109 is, what we can use the funding for, where it comes from, including all of the, you know, your interest that you're receiving every year. It's really telling looking at that whole spreadsheet. I didn't think I had a question, but now I do. You mentioned the growth funds. What is exactly the growth funds money, and why does that fluctuate so much, and where is it coming from?

Sorry, I said I didn't have a question, and then I did.

okay great thank you so much for the explanation that's it i just wanted to really um say thank you i thought this was a very well done presentation so thank you very much thank you thank you

just have two things um yes the presentation i love the simplicity of it but what i love the most about it is that it actually has from our erp system a report that is showing the fund balance i'm sorry i am just all giddy over that it's like that's exactly what i want to see when we ask for fund balances that's what i want to see um i want in this you may have to explain this Because I can't remember because this is a detailed listing of the fund balance, but it excludes roll up accounts. All that means is all the detail that's in between has been rolled up. So it's in one nice little report.

Thank you. Sir, because Mickey, did you have any comments? Okay. Yeah, question quickly. So I healthy reserves, do we have any idea? Were you able to make any estimates of on the current trajectory? How long that would be there?

Um, uh, yeah, thank you for presentation. The other question I had was on things and we discussed it a little bit, but like, um, some of these positions seem to be, uh, expensive. Like the, the district attorney investigator, I think is like 350 K, right? For this is around there. Now I, the DA is not here, but, um, that seems like a very um expensive position to be funding through this is there any like consideration i don't know if this would happen at the ccp executive level as far as like hey can we can we have a a um less expensive position to be funding through like for your office throu

Okay, thank you. I don't think I have any other questions at this time. So I guess that would be it. Is there a motion on this item then at this time? We need to take a motion here, right, to authorize it?

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to ratify and approve the local CCP public safety annual realignment plan, including the updated budget for 26-27, and authorize the chief probation officer to implement the plan and delegate authority to execute and amend all agreements, move random understanding, and the additional language as recommended. Great, we have a first, is there a second?

I'll second. Oh, go ahead. Whoever you want. Supervisor Sotelo gets it.

Okay, we have a first in a couple seconds. Can we have a roll call vote, please?

Great, thank you. Thank you. All right, we're going to go off to lunch and closed session. We need to take public comment on closed session now before we break.

Okay, we are back from closed session. County Council, do we have any reportable action? Mr.

Thank you. We continue with regular agenda, but We are actually gonna switch 2.4 and 2.3. If that's okay with the board, we're gonna switch the order of those because staff has, urgency has to get out of here, so we're gonna try to do 2.4 first. Is that okay? Yeah. Good? All right. Move to item 2.4. This is regarding the county's vehicle leasing program.

Thank you. We had a public comment, please.

Great, thank you. Questions, comments from board members?

Mr. Chair, if we do move forward with this analysis, NACO has some really comprehensive procurement specifically in agreements at a national level that have brought rates drastically down for local jurisdictions. I would just recommend that we reach out to their procurement team at NACO just as a resource.

No, I'm not. This is specifically to vehicles. It's for fleets. It's all negotiated through NACO to get the best bang for the buck for local government.

I've actually been contacted by local car dealership here that would love to have the opportunity to be able to bid You know, the comment that or the conversation that I had was, you know, they've not been able to do that and they would like the ability to be able to quote it. They thought in most instances, they would be able to meet or beat whatever these groups are that we're dealing with. So I would love to see us be able to support local if we can. Maybe we contract with some of these different things. for rates, et cetera, but that we are always checking locally and kind of keeping thing

Okay. Do we need a motion on that? There's consensus?

So I move to approve as stated by County Council.

Is there a second? Second. Great. We have first and a second. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Great. Thank you. I'm going to move forward to, move backwards actually, to 2.3. This is our Public Works Department. Receive informational update regarding the Fairview Road median island long-term maintenance of the landscaping.

Great, thank you. Comments or questions from the board?

Just a thank you. I appreciate the negotiation with the developer, the long-term role of the maintenance with the CFD and the consistency with the view of other developments like Santana Ranch so that we are showing a pattern in our community. I really appreciate all the work you did. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, also just want to say thank you to staff for this. Thank you to the board and thank you to the developer. And just to make sure that going forward, we sort of have this as a structured, you know, sort of thing that we make sure that we obviously want to include these things in the CFD. So thank you, everybody.

Thank you. And I just want to say thank you to Supervisor Kosmicki. I know I wasn't paying too close of attention to this. I wasn't thinking about it, but you were stickler on this one and it worked out pretty well. So I think just thank you for that, making that an issue the last time we talked about this. And now this can be a standard going forward. Thank you. That was just informational, right? There's no action we need? Great. We'll move on then to our last item, which was the item that we added, 2.5, the letter of support for AB 1761. I don't know if we have any actual further informatio

I sit on 3CE, and this came in yesterday afternoon. I thank the CEO for catching it, because I did not catch it before she caught it. And this letter is, did the letter get sent out to all board members? Okay, you did get it out to all board members.

I'm going to forward it right now. Yes. I'm going to forward it right now just to make sure that everybody has it. I'll be blind CCing the board.

Okay, well, I'm just forwarding it right now via email. Basically, this legislation is a way of being more transparent with the rising prices and where the data is coming from for increases in energy bills. So basically, what they've stated here is this is a tool to ensure customers receive energy bills that are fair and accurate. is increased transparency in how the PCIA charges are calculated. The PCIA is a fee designed to ensure customers who leave utility generation services like customers of community choice our energy, I'm reading as I'm talking because it goes into some technical stuff

And this has already passed the legislature. It is now moving forward to the governor's desk for signing. And this letter would be to support the governor in signing this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Great. Any other further questions or discussion from board members?

No, I just wanted to just have at least a few minutes to look it over. So appreciate that. Thank you.

Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Is there a motion to send the letter of support?

I would move to approve to approve the letter of support to the governor's office.

Thank you. And that concludes regular agenda. We have no future agenda items to discuss, so I believe that would be adjournment. Thank you.