Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Is September 15th. It is about 632 and we're going to get this started. We're going to start off with first. I need to announce that Supervisor K is our chair is not here tonight. He is back in Washington DC trying to bring back some money for us here in our County and so and he is going to be online here. So participating by zoom and so I just want to make sure that we've got Vito on here right now. Yes, sir. Okay, we miss you. All right, so that's good. So we're all set. So we're going to start off with the Pledge of Allegiance. If everybody would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we'll remain standing for our invocation. It'll be Reverend Scott Elliott from Big Valley Grace Community Church.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice,

Thank you, Scott. That was great. Thank you. Okay. We're now going to move on to our presentations here. We have a couple of presentations tonight. We're going to start off with our 2020... The month of October, September through October 15th, is Hispanic American Heritage Month in Stanislaus County. And we have each, from each one of our districts, had selected someone to represent the Hispanic community as our hero, kind of in that, to steal from Manny's hometown hero, a hero from our district that represents the Hispanic community. So I'm going to come down there and start with Manny. with

Okay, so then one of the questions was to talk about who influenced you the most. And you talked about your nana. Am I saying that right? Your nana. Yeah, I want you to talk a little bit about your nana. That's your grandmother.

That's great. That's beautiful. Okay, psychology. You got a degree in psychology. What made you do that?

I'm so sorry about your brother. Anyway, thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that with us. Accomplishments. What are you most proud of? What accomplishments are you most proud of? You talk about stuff at Franklin and the Healthy Start, but I'll let you.

Thank you. Just a couple more, sorry. So we talked about your Hispanic heritage and how important, how has that influenced you in your life to get you to where you are right now?

Perfect. Last thing is that you wrote in here, and I just thought it was great. You said something that you talked about how you want to make an impact in the community. And you said you want to offer encouragement in simply telling someone, I see you, I hear you, and you matter. And I just think that's huge. I mean, that's just what it's all about. And we never know, you know, each day as we go through life. But to see somebody and to listen to them and hear them on that day, it might have made all the difference in the world to them. And that's what you do. And so we're so proud to have you

All right. Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating Lupi Aguilera. Come on up, Lupi. Now, I told her that she was going to be doing a 20-minute speech about all the things that she did. You ready to do it? Okay. All right. Today, we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by recognizing Lupi Aguilera. Lupe's roots in our community run deep. She moved to Stanislaus County in 1991 and settled in Oakdale the following year in 1992. More recently, she just moved to Turlock. But because most of her work was in Oakdale, I grabbed her and just wanted to honor you for all your work you've done in Stanisl

Well, good evening, everyone. For Hispanic Heritage Month, my honoree is Maria Arevalo. And there she is. And unfortunately, she is traveling, but I will be sure to make sure she gets her certificate in person. But the reason I chose Maria is because of everything she does for us here in Stanislaus County. She's been a member of the community for over 40 years, and her passion is projects that develop youth leadership, increase civic engagement among underserved members of the Stanislaus community. A little bit about Maria. Maria received her undergraduate degree and law degree from the Univer

Thanks, Manny. And last up, we have Chance.

Well, I have the honor and privilege of recognizing a outstanding individual, Erica Ahayala. If you'd please join me. Erica is a champion for our youth out on the west side and in Patterson. She is the CEO and founder of Invest in Me, which is investing in our young people, our next generation of leaders. She has been a champion for them. She has led several cohorts for mental health awareness as well as leadership academies. She's doing outstanding work for our youth and making sure that we have representation for our young people across Stanislaus County, and possibly have a member of your c

OK, well, thank you all for that. That was just great. We're all very proud of you guys. Like we said, what you guys do is what really makes a difference out there. And it's an honor for us to have you here today. And congratulations on accepting these to you guys. Congratulations to you for getting these awards. It's been an honor today. OK, we're going to move on. The next thing up is it's Workforce Development Month. And Doris is going to come up and do a presentation.

Doris and Sarah, thank you very much. That was beautiful. Thank you for doing that. Any questions or comments from the board? Okay, we're good. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate all that you're doing. Okay, we're gonna move on towards public comment here first. Let me read a few things that I was supposed to read with regard to public. The Board of Supervisors continues to offer multiple ways for residents to engage in meetings, including participating by telephone, attending in person, or submitting written comments in advance. So do we have any written comments? Okay, no written comments.

Sherry, thank you for calling in. I appreciate your comments. So for anyone else, that's a budget item, what Sherry spoke about, which was fine. But it's a budget item, and if we could wait till we get to that in the budget, and then there'll be time to speak about and have public comment on that direct subject matter. Is there anybody else who would like to speak with regard to an item that's not on the agenda?

Okay, Susana. Susana, good evening. How are you?

Susanna, thank you for that. You know, our whole system is complaint-driven, so we need people like you to come up and make us aware of these things if we're not already. And Tara Chumley in the back is going to come around and talk to you about this and see what we can do.

Thank you, Marianne. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you very much.

Linda and Jennifer, how are you? Doing very well tonight.

Thank you, guys. Great work. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Darryl Terrell. I'm sorry? Darryl Terrell. Darryl, good evening. How are you?

Thank you, Daryl. Thank you very much. Okay, any more public comments?

Very good. Okay, so we're showing that that's it. Is there anybody else that would like to speak in public comment before we close public comment? Unless it's an item that's already on the agenda, we'll get to that. Okay, seeing none, we will close public comment. And now we're going to move on to the consent calendar. And before the board takes up the consent calendar, is there anybody on the board that would like to pull any of the consent items? Seeing none, anybody from the audience like to pull anything from consent? Okay, seeing none, we'll look for a motion.

Motion to approve all consent items. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to items. Oh, sorry. Oh, Supervisor Chiesa, how could we forget you? Right. Okay. Okay, let's do a roll call. Right.

Perfect. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thanks, Vito. Sorry we did that. Okay. We'll move on to item 7-1. I think Jody's going to start us off here.

Okay, Jody, thank you very much. And thank you Angelica, Ryan, Joshua, Patrick, Joanna, Ruben, Christine, and Tara. Thank you guys all very much. A lot of hard work on your part just in doing the presentation. Thank you very much for doing that. I want to remind everybody, and we say this every time, but it's good to, especially for individuals who haven't been here before, IS EACH OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS RECEIVES A BRIEFING ON THE BUDGET, USUALLY THREE TO FOUR HOURS. WE DO THAT PROBABLY FOUR TIMES A YEAR AS WE GO THROUGH EACH ONE OF OUR BUDGET UPDATES AND WHETHER IT'S ADOPTED FINAL BUDGET

Thank you, Vice Chair. I appreciate it. I just have some comments tonight. I mean, I've been pretty consistent the last few budgets on where I've stood on this matter. And, you know, I believe the best way to prevent service reduction is to build a strong foundation. And how you build a strong foundation is by prioritizing our frontline employees. I still have concerns regarding our overall budget. I have been on the record in the past that's stating that this may be a balanced budget, but I don't believe or I'm not convinced that is yet to be an efficient budget. Our frontline employees are b

Okay, Chance, thank you very much. Anybody else? Nobody else here on the dais at this point before we open the public hearing. Vito, anything you'd like to say before we open the public hearing? Okay, perfect. Thank you. Okay, we will now open the public hearing. Okay, so we have several speakers that are here. I don't think we have anybody online at this point as far as speakers, but we just have people in the room. Okay, and Mary, I'll let you start us off here.

I'm gonna ask you to get that mic up closer to you so that

Thank you, Alejandro. Okay, so that's all the speaker cards we have. Anybody else that would like to come up? Milt, come on up. Milt, good evening. How are you?

Thank you, Milt. Anybody else? Come on up. If you could give us your name.

Anybody else before we close the public hearing? Okay. Seeing nobody else, we will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for further comments and discussion. And veto's out there too. Any comments?

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate everybody that came tonight and brought up really good points. Obviously, this is a decision that comes easy. And I know that some have said to pivot and hold off on the budget. And the concern I have with that is the other departments that are doing the same essential duties and the essential services that it keeps to keep this county running. And for that reason, I will be supporting the budget, but I would direct staff to return to the board and I chose the date December 15th because that's exactly 90 days from today with an update on the community services ag

Okay. Thank you. Let's hold that and let's give everybody a chance to comment, but go ahead.

Yeah, no, it's a, this is a, you know, one of the toughest decisions I think, uh, as supervisors, you can make when you have, you're making a decision that, uh, it's going to directly affect, um, our employees and their lives. Um, Remind me again the funding that we used to push off the layoffs or the RIP, the March 31st. There was a funding we used to kind of push it along further down the line.

Yeah, it was just escaping me. I'm sorry.

That realignment money that we used on this board to push that time off or the riff off, we did that to give us time to try to find funding or to fix the issue.

That was perfect. It kind of goes along with Manny's motion to come back and report 90 days we did give ourselves a longer runway in that regard using those funds it's a tough it's a tough decision I will be supporting the budget it is it's kind of a weird guy this is we haven't dealt with budget at least since I've been on the board that has dealt with these issues So we got good things going on in the budget that we should be celebrating, but we also got some horrible things going on in the budget. So it's a tough budget to deal with. So I will be supporting, but obviously Manny has it in hi

Thanks, Buck. I can't see Vito out there, but I'm assuming Any comments if you don't have...

Yeah, I will comment. So thank you all for coming in first and foremost and testifying. So during our budget briefing, I think I had explained this to some of our employees when we had our first meeting. My initial inclination is the faster we cut, the shallower the cuts were going to be. But realizing the magnitude of doing RIFs, reductions in force, And with the MOU and everything that has to be done with the MOU, we created that, from my perception, we created the right runway so we had more time to do them correctly. But I would agree with Supervisor Grewal's statement about reporting back

Great. Vito, thank you very much. I know it's almost going on 1 o'clock, your time back there, so we appreciate your dedication and being on the phone here.

Okay. Yeah, we closed the public hearing at this point, so I think we're, yeah.

Thank you. Okay. This is, like it's been said here, this is the hardest thing we do on the Board of Supervisors. This and when we do condemnations, when we take people's property for the good of the government. This is the single most hardest thing that we have to do. And none of your comments are lost on this board, I can tell you. All of us... um feel this and and it's painful for all of us to work through this thing i you know we have a whole budget here but and but this is when we're focusing on this one issue which we rightfully should be um it's it's that important you know i lived throu

Okay, thanks Jody. All right, let's look for a motion.

Before I make the motion, I just want a couple more points of clarification. I know when I met with members, the concerned members, we had the Zoom call last week. One of the things that was brought up was management to employee ratio and then I know my colleague also brought it up today. So I did do my research on that with CEO's office. The community service agency has 51 management positions for a department of roughly 1,027 frontline workers, a ratio of about 5%. It's the lowest ratio for the entire county as far as management frontline staff. And then as we are going through this process

May I ask who gave you those numbers as far as the ratios and when did you get them? I spoke with the CEO about four o'clock today, and that's- So you got it at four o'clock, because I've been asking for those ratios for three years, and I haven't got it. Maybe my timing is right. No, I've been asking for those numbers for three years, and not just for one department, but all departments. Because I've been told that they're doing an analysis on those ratios, and I have been asking consistently. I voted against the last two budgets because of lack of numbers and ratios and data. But if Supervis

No, I've been very specific on these last two budgets about the ratio numbers between managers and frontline staff.

No, I understand, but Supervisor Graywall is very specific on the numbers between managers and frontline employees. I haven't ever seen anything specific like that before. So I just, obviously I've made the request. It's been three years. I would like to have each department break down just as Supervisor Graywall was afforded two hours before the meeting.

No, I know. I've asked for ratios in the past by each department, similar to what Supervisor Graywall was provided two hours before the meeting, and I've had trouble even getting that.

Okay. Let's move on. So we have a motion, and we're going to look for a second. We have a motion and a second. We'll do a roll call vote.

That's an aye. And I am going to drop off this call after this item is done. Because we have an early morning tomorrow.

Very good, thanks. Okay, it's a 4-1 vote. The budget is approved. Okay, thank you all very much for being here. We're going to take a quick five-minute break here.

Okay, I think we're going to try to get going here again, guys. We'll call the meeting back to order. And we'll move on to item 7-2, public hearing to consider adoption of the Stanislaus Home Consortium and Stanislaus Urban County fiscal year 25-26. Annual report.

Very good, Dana. Thank you, and Angela. Thank you. Any questions for staff before we open the public hearing? Seeing none, we will open the public hearing. Milt, come on up.

And, Milt, very good that you remembered that from the meeting before. That's great that you're pointing that out, and now we need you to go to the city council in Turlock and ask them that same question. So thank you for doing that. Okay. Any other... Public comments? Nothing online. Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for further discussion or a motion.

We got a motion and a second. I don't think we need to go all in favor. Say aye. Opposed? Pass unanimously. Thank you guys very much. That's great.

BHRS. Thank you guys for staying here tonight.

Okay. Thanks, Ruben. Any questions for Ruben? Ruben, it sounds like this budget we just passed is going to help you out.

Very good. Thank you. Okay. Open this to the public. Any questions from the public? No. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Just to clarify, Milton, I don't want to cut you off. I'll let you finish.

Yeah, no, you are. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, no money was lost. It was just a delay in payment to these individuals. They worked for it and they earned the money that's owed to them, but they just weren't paid. So is that a good explanation of it, Ruben? Yeah.

Very good. Thank you. Okay. Bring it back to the board for further comment, discussion, or a motion. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Pass unanimously. Thank you, guys. Okay, we'll move on to Board of Supervisors reports. Any?

Just a quick report, Vice Chair. So we did have our 30th community cleanup out in the city of Newman over the weekend. We filled a total of five bins, which accumulated to 15,000 tons of debris and trash that was hauled off to the landfill. I do want to thank the mayor of Newman, Casey Graham, for volunteering his time. He's out there for several hours during Saturday, as well as Fire Chief Bowen and some of the Newman firefighters for coming out and volunteering. It was a very successful event for Newman, and we filled a lot of bins up.

Okay, thanks, Chance. That's great. You've been doing that a ton. I know out there. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, we'll go on to our legislative fiscal and management report. Chief Executive Officer Jody Hayes.

Perfect. Thanks, Tony. Thank you guys all for being here so late. Sorry it's such a late meeting. Sergeant Carranza, thank you very much. Sorry I kept you so late. I know you told your wife you're going to be home late. Good deal. All right. This meeting is adjourned.