Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

You guys ready? Is that a yes?

Thank you, Mo. Jesus. Scott, are we good? OK. All right.

Welcome, everyone, to the regular meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. It's 9 o'clock. We'll call the meeting to order. Madam Clerk, if you could take roll, please.

Supervisor Klein? Here. Supervisor Mulhern? Here. Supervisor Haschak? Supervisor Norvell?

Here.

Supervisor Williams?

Here. All right. And Supervisor Haschak will be leading us in the pledge today.

Hey, if we could all stand. Ready? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands,

Okay, we will now open up the podium to public expression. Anything not on the agenda today, please come to the podium.

Good morning. I'm Colleen Browder.

If you could pull that mic down. Thank you.

Good morning. Is this good? Good morning. I'm Colleen Browder. I'm here to read a letter from Robert Paul Preston, Governor Pro Tem of New California State. It's addressed to Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. County Registrar of Voters, County Sheriff. It's regarding notice and request to be heard, petition for redress of grievances. Dear Supervisors, Registrar, and Sheriff, the purpose of this notice is to... ask for an opportunity to address the entire board and or to present a claim contesting the certification of any election results at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Supervisors. I am also requesting the board direct the register of voters to respond to the request for information below. I invite your attention to the California Election Code Section 161000D, which states in part, any elector of a county, city, or any political subdivision of either may contest the election held therein for any of the following causes, D, that illegal votes were cast. The factual basis of my request is that it is common knowledge that there has been a flood of illegal aliens into the state of California, its counties, cities, and school districts. These non-citizens have apparently been allowed to register with the Department of Motor Vehicles. With that registration, these non-citizens have been provided with voter registration and election ballots. It is also common knowledge that the investigative reporters have discovered that some illegal alien and non-citizens have, in fact, voted. Providing these non-citizen voters registration and election ballots gives you, the members of the Board of Supervisors, and you, the registrar or voters, the legal basis to set aside the election and deny its certification due to the number of illegal voters as set forth in California Election Code Section 16100, specifically subsection D. These incontrovertible facts give you, Sheriff, not only the right, but the obligation to investigate voter fraud. If the Board of Registrar certify the election, they will be committing a felony. To the board and the registrar, would you please provide me and the person who served this letter on you the process, the identity of all officers, employees, and volunteers engaged in the collection and counting of ballots, including the disqualification of ballots and voter verification? As a voter in this state, as the server of this letter named below, we object to our votes being diluted by the votes of those illegally not legally eligible to vote. We also object to any compounding of a felony by certifying the election results. Thank you for promptly responding to this letter and giving me the audience with you to constitutionally redress the grievance pursuant the Bill of Rights Article 1. Thank you.

Good morning supervisors County Council chair Novell It's June 23rd. I Really didn't want to be up here again. So close to the end of our current bargaining unit contract We have seven days a Lot can be done in seven days, but we've already been at this for weeks without an agreement My union siblings behind me has some things to say about your offer and I'll let them tell you in their own words. And I do not understand why we are quibbling over whether or not Juneteenth is worthy of celebration. What I want to bring forward is a cruel reality that all of us are facing, that the current proposal only makes worse and does nothing to alleviate the pressures we're all enduring in the face of inflation that has nearly doubled since February to 4.2%. A recent West Health Gallup affordability index report looked at concerns about being healthcare cost secure. Cost secure meaning that a person has access to quality, affordable care and have been recently able to pay for both needed care and medicine. Our bargaining unit's median pay in 2025 was just over $59,000. in this survey that puts us into the $48,000 to $89,000 category. These are categories that they chose. That category is only 47% cost secure, less than half. In real person numbers, based on the wage categories that Gallup used, 812 full time staff make less than $89,000 base pay. And I used base pay and not the package, the benefit package, because the benefit package is not the money that pays for our out of pocket costs. 455 members are cost insecure for their healthcare needs. 455 people that even before negotiations were likely not able to afford both needed care and medication. We won't be able to afford to be healthy. I would have thought that we learned our lesson about coming to work sick during COVID. It does us no good to have health care that we cannot afford to use. And you say, oh, we're broke. We're broke and continuously ask us, the union, the workers, to show you where the money is. And we have over and over and over again. There's savings in unfilled positions. There are uncollected taxes. And yet over the last three years, we have watched this board make very questionable decisions about revenue and assets that send a clear message that you are not interested in investing into the county that you govern. You have divested real property, prevented directors from hiring staff needed to conduct mandated funded work in a timely manner, forgiven almost a million dollars in potential cannabis revenue, entered into a tax sharing agreement that does not even begin to support costs, incurred legal and settlement fees to the point where contract amendments allocating yet more money to your self-inflicted physical wounds are on the calendar today. This is your bed and you're making us lie in it. Be done with divestment. It's time for investment. And investment begins and ends with the people doing the work. And that's us.

Thank you.

Good morning. I am Betsy Mercer. Oh, excuse me. I'm a little bit nervous. A program specialist with the public health department and co-director of the oral health program.

You're asking me to settle for a mere 1% raise.

How many of us would settle for that? How many of us believe that's a fair offer made in good faith? I am here this morning to ask the board to re-examine the annual budget and its shortfalls. In particular, it is my understanding that the state auditor found the county failed to collect $30.6 million in property taxes, penalties, and interest since 2020.

Excuse me, ma'am. Could you speak into the microphone, please? Thank you.

Thank you. This failure was due to the county's collection systems and not the fault of the taxpayers. The state auditor has had to order them to restart tax auctions by this October. That $30.6 million represents 25% of the annual general fund, 25%. It was left on the table by the county's own failure, and that shortfall is now relied upon to argue that there is no money in the budget for more than a mere 1% raise. $30.6 million would go a long way toward a fair offer. This is not a true budget shortfall, but it's a management failure. And the county workers strongly urge you to stop asking us to pay for your failures. On a personal note, many of us spend 30% or more of our wages on housing costs alone, not taking into account the rest of our living expenses. And I've told friends and family about job openings with the county, and they've said they've heard the county doesn't pay a fair salary. I respectfully ask you to do the right thing and invest in those of us who are doing the county's important work. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Pete, and I work for the Information Technology Department as a Technician One on the Help Desk. It is an honor of mine to be speaking in front of you today on behalf of my union brothers and sisters. This is the first time I've had this honor, and I take this responsibility with pride, speaking up for those who can't be here or struggle to find the right words. Most of you know me. I've supported you with setting up cell phones or laptops. I've spoken with you either face to face, on MS Teams, or over the phone, and it is my honor to assist you with whatever your issue may be with the technology that we provide. I pride myself in assisting you with humility, kindness, and joy. And I do hope that our interactions leave a lasting, memorable experience. We've built at least a small relationship, one that I hope to build on and grow into a long-lasting one. I hope you all feel the same. My choice to be at the county is not driven by money, but as I'm sure we can all agree, money is what allows us to live life. Not an extravagant one, but one where I can afford a roof over my head, food in my belly, insurance for my health, and gas in my car. All four of those aspects are being threatened by continuous increases in costs. Insurance costs are skyrocketing. I was just informed the other day that my insurance is no longer accepted to get the care I need, meaning I would have to spend more money to get the basic care that I need. I'm being forced to either find new, pricier tiered insurance, have baseline pricier tiered insurance to have baseline insurance with insanely high deductibles or select a different provider, which in all cases would be cost prohibitive. Ukiah lacks health care options, so changing doctors becomes a massive task to get standard care. This is just not OK, especially as a county worker. In order to provide the service I do here for the systems I work with, I'm in need of a wage that matches these ever increasing rates. Every time I hear the county doesn't have the funding to meet our demands for a fairer wage contract, I refer to the Cubison and Mendocino County court case. The total cost of that case will be hitting taxpayers with a $2 million bill, including a $1.5 million settlement. $700,000 of the defense fees, which were paid to a third-party firm that doesn't reside here in Mendocino County, that money will not be going back into our county. Our wages will. county uh excuse me we are the vehicle oh sorry uh this county uh geez pardon me this county has lined us in digging in on that with the contract offers so far if you don't believe me on that please consider they told us to find the money that these wage increases and guess what we did yet we are still told the county doesn't have the funds let's at least be honest here stop gaslighting us and insulting our intelligence We are the vehicle that keeps this county moving. If you use cheap parts in the car, the vehicle will require more maintenance because cheap parts fail, costing more time and money. Why not invest in the parts that will keep the vehicle operating for extended periods of time? Better wages is like buying the best parts for your vehicle. Otherwise, parts break and the vehicle goes nowhere. Lastly, I'd like to remind the board you interviewed for our support from SEIU 1021. We scratched your backs during the election season. I believe it is time for you to scratch ours. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good morning, supervisors. My name is Amber Allison, and I work for this county. And I'm one of the people you're asking to accept a 1% raise. I want to talk about something this governing board would rather not be said out loud. For two fiscal years running, this county failed to file its required financial reports on time. It got so bad that the state controller had to step in publicly, issue reports on this county, and warn that a delay risked fines and threatened the county's bond rating. Think about what that means. A state fiscal officer in Sacramento had to publicly announce that Mendocino County cannot get its own books filed on time. That is not a budget problem. That is a credibility problem. And it happened on this board's watch. That is a choice. Every late report, every dollar misspent, and every 16% you voted for yourselves while offering us one, that is a choice about who matters here. You cannot tell us there is no money while the state has to step in to clean up after you. We see the pattern. It is on the public record now, and the workers of this county are done being the only ones asked to sacrifice. Come to the table and treat us fairly. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Jeff Weston. I am the vice president and chief steward for SEIU Local 1021. I am reading this on behalf of a program specialist employed with Mendocino County who couldn't be here today and one of the people you're asking to take a 1% raise as part of your current proposal. They state, I consider myself a lifetime resident of Mendocino County. I can't exactly call myself a resident as I do not actually live in Mendocino County, but I would like to. My entire life is in Ukiah, but my residence is actually Lake County, as I cannot afford Mendocino County. When I was younger and a single mother, I took advantage of various programs that Mendocino County has to offer. In 2016, I was blessed with the opportunity to purchase a home. At that time, I could not afford Mendocino County and moved to Lakeport. It has not always been easy, but I've been able to sustain for almost 10 years. I've worked for Mendocino County primarily in social services for seven years. I chose this work because I know that our programs can change lives if they are utilized. They changed mine. I still cannot afford to buy or rent in Ukiah, and a couple of weeks ago had to face some hard truths. I can no longer afford to live in Lakeport either. So at age 44, I am packing up my home, putting my items in a storage, and moving back into my childhood bedroom. Luckily, I have support from my family. I should be able to live in the county I work in, a place I love and a career I've chosen to help the people in my community. You are offering us a 1% raise. In 2024, the board raised its own pay from $95,302 to $110,715. a package worth $160,715. I make $68,931 a year, and I have almost $950 taken out per paycheck in deductions, and that is just every other week. To justify their raise, they compared themselves to three counties, including Sonoma. To hold our wages down, they measured us across eight counties, which includes Lake. How is that fair? The raise they gave themselves was 16%. They gave us 1%. That, to me, is insulting. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name's Jenny Shattuck. I am from the coast. Some people learn visually, so I brought some visual props. We've had a house on George's Lane. It's exploded three times. This last time was a doozy. It went on for like eight hours. there's debris fields all over the all the neighbors properties this is what I picked up out of my blind neighbors chicken pen they also we have been dealing with animal control for years have like 300 cats this is the amount of cat feces from a 20 by 20 foot area for one day this is the amount of In five hours, that was fresh yesterday from my blind neighbor's wine barrel planter that he had just filled with dirt five hours previous. So I'm going to leave these for environmental health, who says there's actually no nuisance and no problem. I'm also leaving this paperwork that has the codes for animals saying that if they actually defecate in your yards that it's an infraction and then it's misdemeanor. Nobody's ever shown up. There's that. I'm wondering if it was Environmental Health who finally showed up yesterday. There has been complaints for decades against this property. Our code enforcement can't do their job. They don't have enough workers. And then when environmental health or public health says there's no nuisance, they can't do anything. We have literally found humans dead for days being eaten by cats at this residence. This is insanity that this has continued to go on. for years and years. We cannot breathe outside. No one showed up after these fires. It was super windy, 40 mile an hour winds blowing all this toxic stuff into all of our homes. We were told by air quality to not go outside. And if I wanted to get a hose or a water truck, that I should myself hose down all of our driveways and sweep up the what might be asbestos debris myself. I guess they did some testing, didn't find any asbestos. But the half-burned, hundreds of yards of actual trash that burned with these fires is all 100 feet or less from all of our wells. And this is uphill from us. It rained two days later. There was no wattles put up. There has been no response. I do have to thank Gretchen and Bernie. Bernie got there that morning. The volunteer fire department who worked for eight hours to contain this mess. But enough is enough. So if somebody could pass these on to environmental health. And please, give these people a raise. These departments have nobody to help us. This has been years. We cannot let our children play outside. All of our animals are sick and dying because all of these hundreds of cats have diseases. Enough is enough You need to pay your people and fill these unfilled positions There you go

Thank you and good morning chair and supervisors Everybody here today. My name is Robert Maddock. I am staff attorney representative for Teamsters local 856 and I represent the public attorneys here as well as the probation unit I'm here I think SEIU, my friends, have done a great job of commenting on the raise that's been offered being extremely deficient. I'm here to actually talk about revenue. I really encourage you as supervisors to focus on revenue. I am currently working with several jurisdictions in other counties, working on tax boards and helping support with donations for revenue measures. We're sending support to all of our members who we have geolocated everywhere, so we know our Teamsters who work in Sonoma and live in Mendocino County. We will ask them to support measures that support your county to get public services done, Public safety, public works. That's what is needed. I was a deputy DA in Sonoma County. I can vouch for every single one of these workers here who works for Mendocino County that every day you come to work, You don't know if you're going to be dealing with a disaster. You don't know if you're going to be dealing with an irate citizen. You don't know if someone is going to walk in and scream at you, thinking you're some lazy bum taxpayer's tick living off of them, when in fact you're working your butt off every day for the public good. There's a reason we're called public servants, right? I love public service. I've dedicated my life to public service. I continue to work for Teamsters as a public servant for only public servants, because that's what I care about. This county needs to work on revenue. You have a beautiful location. I spent all weekend with my entire family camping in Willits at the RV, the Redwood RV resort there. My entire family. Multiple RVs, everybody there. Why? Because it's gorgeous. You have a beautiful county. Get people up here. The Bay Area is looking for recreation. Domestic travel is on the rise. You could bring in people who want that country feel, that want Mendo life. I live in Cloverdale. I love Mendo. Thank you. Thank you.

Through the chair, if I may, could I please get the speaker's name?

Oh, I am Robert. Madoc, M-A-D-D-O-C-K. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Anyone else in the room on non-agenda? Final clerk?

Seeing no comments online. Okay.

We'll move on to the consent calendar. I did not receive any notifications of any items being pulled. I'm not seeing any pens raised. We'll go to public comment on the consent calendar.

Through the chair, if I may, just for the record, proper notice was established.

Thank you.

Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Eileen Russell. I'm a community engagement manager for Mendocino and Redwood Company and Mendocino Forest Products. So this is public comment for something that's on the agenda, correct?

Only the consent. Oh, OK. Yeah.

So I got to wait. Thanks.

You're welcome. I'm not seeing anyone else. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone online to comment on the consent calendar?

Seeing no comments online.

Okay, we'll bring it back to the board for action. Supervisor Haschak?

I'll move approval. Second.

Okay, first by Supervisor Haschak, second by Supervisor Klein. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Our regular calendar, R1, discussion of possible action, including acceptance of informational reports from the assessor, clerk, recorder, registrar, voters, auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector, district attorney, sheriff, and various county department heads or designees.

Good morning.

Chair Novell, members of the board, CEO's office, and county council, I just wanted to give a very brief update on a situation you may have read about in the various news. And I think I updated you by email. But we were continuing to respond to a glassy wing of sharpshooter incident. Infested plants from Fresno have been distributed by Costco's, including our local Ukiah one. I just wanted to give you a brief update where we're at with this coordinated statewide effort to deal with it and how engaged we've been. On May 19th, Sonoma agricultural officials identified the invasive GWIS on grapevine shipments. The relevant sales window was from April 21st through May 21st. Approximately 13,000 grapevines were shipped, and 7,000 Costco customers in non-infested counties purchased almost 10,000 plants. Not all plants were infested. So far in Mendocino, we have not found confirmed GWIS, but there's a lot of plants out there. And we recently A few days ago, got a confidential list from Costco of their members. They're working with us. Costco's been a great partner in this. We're working now to do outreach in the community. We were able to trace forward about 25 of the plants. So we have about another 125 to go. At this point, we're focusing not just on taking the plants back, but additional trapping. I've already deployed over 200 additional traps, and we're looking at much more heavily in Anderson Valley before. And then by all these properties where they receive the plants and life stages could have We started to radiate out in these residential neighborhoods, many very close proximity to grapevines. So we're starting to do trace forward phone calls and emails, a lot of public outreach, a lot of extra just to let you know that people are going to be receiving calls from us and emails. And you might yourself hear from them. But we're working very hard to very respectfully reach out get their permission to place traps. If not, we move out a little further and place traps. So we're working very hard on this situation. I spoke to you briefly about funding. It does seem like the state is coming forward with a new funding plan. I've got a work plan due on that at the end of this week. But it looks like they're going to help supplement this, because this is going to go on for at least another year to two. To make sure and there have been positives confirmed in neighboring counties such as Humboldt Sonoma Sacramento I'm not sure about Lake County, but we will I just want to let you know we're working on it And we're in a new phase of outreach. There's no public health risk, but is a risk to our industry It's a disease that carries its Pierce disease, which is basically fatal to grapevines. We do have, you know, there is a small pocket that's endemic, but these glass-to-beam sharpshooters we talk are super spreaders, if you want to use a term from public health. They can fly a quarter mile to half a mile. a day, whereas our local ones might go 50 feet, the little native sharpshooters. So that's why this is such an issue. And just wanted to let you know we're working very hard. The state has stepped up with funding. And I would welcome any questions.

Supervisor Williams. Have any owners declined county traps?

No.

Thank you.

The public has been very supportive. I think they really value our grape industry. But thank you.

Thank you for the update. Anyone else? Yes.

Good morning. Katrina Bartle, my assessor, county clerk recorder. I just wanted to let you guys know what we've been doing. So I want to thank Madeline Klein for coming in and actually watching us do a lot of our processes a week ago about. And she actually got to see a little bit of everything that goes on in our office. So that was real nice. And I do encourage you guys to come in anytime as well. We didn't quite... get together with with mo and i but um it was it was nice to have supervisor klein in there so we're almost finished with the june election um we met this the new state deadline to have all of our vote by mail ballots counted by monday this past monday which was 13 days after the election we will We're on track right now to go ahead and certify by July 2nd, which is the first day we can certify by this law. And we're working on our provisionals. We're getting ready probably within the next day or so. We'll actually be able to count the provisionals, which is nice. We finished our manual tally. We've finished all the little tasks that we have to do. Speaking of staff, our full-time and our extra help staff have been amazing for this past election. um everything was tightened with the new deadlines and we had extra help staff step up regular staff step up and this past saturday was the first day we actually had a day off since the week before election so thank you to all the staff that we've had um on um to let you know i'm sure you followed it but um we had counted on election night roughly 9 200 ballots which is what we had received in we had maybe 150 to 200 ballots that hadn't been counted that we couldn't just get in because they were received that day so Monday before election, through election day, we received over 17,000 ballots from polling places, drop boxes, and in the mail. So those were the ones that we just finished counting. Now, the ones that the mismatched signatures, or the no signatures, or there was another problem, like maybe they voted twice, we're still working on those. And we have until, I think, June 28 to finish curing those. The assessor's office, we are in the process of closing our tax roll. We've started running reports with our final report set to run this Friday. Unfortunately, we don't have any figures as to what the increase may be for this year because with this system, unless we want to do a lot of extra math that we're going to have to do on Friday, it's almost impossible to do. So they are working with that and they're working with the vendor to get all that done. I'm preparing now for the November election, working with all the municipalities and special districts whose notice of elections have not been received yet. And they have to be received by July 1 in order to have themselves on the ballot. So we have 95% of our special districts and all of our municipalities set to go to election in November. So are there any questions? Did I forget anything?

I'm not seeing any. Yes, Supervisor Haschek.

I'd just like to thank you for all the work you and your team do for the elections.

Thank you. It's definitely an unsung amount of work that we do. And unless you're in there, you have no idea what we do and what we have to do to make sure what we've released is correct. Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair, if I might.

Yes.

I just want to thank you for the invitation to come over and see what's happening. And kudos to all of your volunteers at the polls and the extra help part-time who come in and work. It's really appreciated by the board.

Yeah, our poll workers are amazing. And they all probably average in age now about 80 years old. So it's amazing what they do. They get confused. They call me. We figure it out. And most of the time, whatever, if they have made a mistake, it's usually correctable. So it's just a tremendous amount of work that they do. And so yeah, it's great for them too. Thank you.

All right. Good morning, Chair, Board, County staff, Aizen Locatelli, Chief Probation Officer, couple things I wanted to praise the board about one I told you I would and then the other is also for the community the CCP grant writing position has been hired and I talked to the board when we did the CCP presentation so that that's the position that will help the criminal justice group go after grants and do the administration and management of it I took the employee around the county yesterday and did introductions with the sheriff's office, court, Ukiah Police Department, and then you still need to meet with the public defender and behavioral health. But this could be something really beneficial to the county, whether it brings in additional revenues or it brings in additional services that we don't currently have. And it's also somebody who's going to do more than just write the grant, but it will actually do the management and oversight and administration of it. So that position has been hired. and it is not general fund CCP is funding it so and then lastly with fire season coming up probation went through a training and our fleet of vehicles look different now they have been outfitted with sirens and lights so it could be a force multiplier for public safety and particularly the sheriff's office with them being down staff probation often is out doing evacuation notices and road closures with them ever since 2017 we've been out there but we never had lights and sirens on the car so it's been really difficult to get to disaster or emergency locations as we're stuck in traffic so we'll be much more visible to the community it's it's low lights low profiles we'll only be using them for emergencies we won't be pulling you over or writing citations in any way that's not what probation does but we will be out assisting during evacuations and we have high lows just like the sheriff's office does the technology is going to be the same in our vehicles as in theirs And with fire season, as you all know, we don't have enough resources or staffing to handle. So this is a way to help our partners and the community.

Supervisor Waring.

Yeah, Chief, thanks for the update. I've heard the suggestion loud and clear, focus on revenue. Do you feel that you're getting the assistance you need to go after all available revenue? Or are there grand possibilities that we're not exploring due to staffing shortages? Is there anything we can do to assist you?

Um, I've made that pitch for many years, and this is CCP's way of not being dependent on the county. Staffing has always been difficult. We're attempting to bring in an expert in criminal justice grants. They're out there, but each individual department has never been able to focus on it specifically. So we're hoping this model will allow the criminal justice system to have a grant writer and understand everything. If you just work as individual departments or in silos, we haven't been successful so i'm hoping this is just a two-year grant and everybody have voted to try that we're going to do something new and we hope to have success and report it out to you thank you thank you thank you okay madam clerk do we have anyone online seeing none online okay we'll go to public comment on this item

Thank you. Robert Maddock, again, Teamsters 856. And I do represent probation. I really want to echo what the chief has just said. I, again, worked at Sonoma County DA's office, and I saw the impact when we hired a grant specialist. We were able to bring in, I believe it was four FTE positions that are there to this day. There are a lot of public safety grants that are available out there, both federal and state. The Traffic Safety Board will fund positions, etc. There's also victims programs that will fund victims advocates and that sort of thing. There's the VAWA program, if you don't have that already, which is Violence Against Women and Children, I believe. So those are great opportunities. So I just want to say thank you for hiring a grant writer, and I think it will pay great dividends.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, anyone online for public comment?

Seeing none online.

Okay, we'll bring it back to the board. We're looking for a motion to accept the reports as presented.

So moved.

Second.

All right, we have a first and a second. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Agenda item R2, discussion and possible action including recognition of employee service awards for eligible employees with 15 to 35 years of service sponsored by human resources.

If I may, to the chair, Sarah Pierce, assistant CEO. So I would just like to ask that the departments that have employees on the list wait to the end of everyone being called to make any comments. So the first one that we would like to acknowledge is Sherry Johnson of Human Resources for 15 years.

So good morning, Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. So I am pleased to announce the recipients for the 20 years with the county. If you are here, please come up. Eric Rennert with the Public Defender. Thank you, Eric. Lieutenant James Elmore with the Sheriff's Office. Karen Lovato with Behavioral Health. Thank you, Karen. Katie Ford, probation. Lily Caravello with social services. Thank you, Lily. Michelle Azevedo with behavioral health. Natasha Adams with social services. Rhonda Brown with social services. Sheila Prosecco with probation. All right, 25 years. Chantelle Simons from the Sheriff's Office. Howard DeShiel with Transportation. Yay, Howard. Thank you, Howard. Isabel Oglesby with Social Services. Laura Hagenbart with the Public Defender. Tracy Wright with Social Services, 25 years. All right, 35 years, and I know she's here. Katrina Taylor. Thank you, Katrina. So we do have a, we'll take a quick break, and we do have a reception in conference room A, so please, oh, okay, after public comment.

Okay, any public comment in the room?

Pardon me? I would like to personally thank all of our six employees who have reached these milestones, Natasha Adams, Rhonda Brown, Lily Caravello, Tracy Wright, Isabelle Oglesby, and Katrina Taylor. These milestones reflect years of commitment, professionalism, and service to our community. Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and the positive impact you have made throughout your careers. We are grateful for your contributions and proud to recognize these remarkable achievements. So thank you.

Thank you.

Members of the board, my name is Miriam Ramirez, so Sherry. Congratulations on 15 years of dedicated service to Mendocino County. Over the years, you have been so much more than the HR director. You have been a trusted leader, mentor, problem solver, and my friend. Your knowledge, dedication, and steady guidance have made a lasting impact on both the county and the countless people who have had the privilege of working with you. Personally, I am incredibly grateful for your mentorship, support, and friendship. Thank you for always sharing your wisdom, answering my endless questions, and reminding me that somehow everything will work out in the end. The county is better because of your service, and I am better because of your guidance. Congratulations.

OK, Madam Clerk, I believe we have Ms. Antelope.

Hi, good morning Chair, members of the board. I want to say something too about Sherry Johnson. Sherry is a true gem. She is one of the most dedicated, competent individuals that lead this county. She always steps up and takes on new tasks and looks out. She is extremely passionate for the county. She is well respected and liked by all. The only flaw that I can find with Sherry is that her dedication to the county holds no candle to the dedication that she has for her family and her friends. She goes above and beyond for all of us, and I have True honor to work with Sherry, work alongside of her. I want to thank her for a service that she has provided, the service that she will provide into the future. Sherry, thank you. You are a true contribution to this county, and it's been an honor to work with you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, do we have anyone else online?

Seeing no further comments online.

okay we'll bring it back to the board um we're looking for a motion to in for recognition of employee service awards so moved all second we have a first by supervisor hashtag seconded by myself we'll vote by the button the motion carries unanimously Okay, again, we're going to take a 15-minute break, and Ms. Berry, would you like to announce again where it is?

Yes, thank you, Chair. It's in Conference Room A.

Thank you. Thank you.

Scott, are you ready?

OK, welcome back, everyone. We're going to move on to regular agenda item R3, discussion and possible action, including approval or denial of requests from department heads and elected officials regarding budget impacts, funding, and recruitment of vacant or new positions following the strategic hiring process. Human Resources, thank you.

Yes, good morning. Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. So yes, we do have one department here for strategic hiring, but I did want to just give a brief overview of the process that we'll be moving to after July 1st. So on the consent calendar, you had an item from Human Resources with the master allocation table. So all the positions on the allocation table are budgeted. And even if they're a vacant position, so they are budgeted. So the plan moving forward is any of the positions that are on the allocation table are approved to recruit as they become vacant. If they are not on the allocation table, they will need to go through a process and will need to come back to the board. So we would still have strategic hiring for positions that are not on the new allocation table.

Thank you, I believe we have a question supervisor way just in terms of strategic my preference would be to address the departments that are severely under staff first where there's an actual hardship. To workers is that is that possible as part of the strategic because I don't know that we can fill every position that's open so to be strategic I would rather feel the ones that are impacting us the most.

Yes. So if they're on the allocation table and they're vacant, they absolutely, after today, can put in requests to be filled.

Thank you.

Yeah, and we're happy to help any department that needs additional assistance.

Thank you. Supervisor Haschak?

So does that mean that with the position allocation table, that the number of positions we have currently will be kind of automatically filled? As attrition happens.

That's right. So if you have a position that's filled now, and then the individual leaves, you can recruit for that position to backfill.

OK. So we'll see no reduction in the total number of employees with this process?

Whatever's on the allocation table, that's the number that we have. So there should be no reduction.

OK. Thank you. Go ahead.

OK, thank you. And I have a representative from the district attorney's office to speak.

Thank you.

Good morning, chair, members of the board. Jim Snitches, chief investigator, district attorney's office. I had prepared a letter regarding the two positions. And I'm here to answer any questions you guys may have in regards to those letters.

The investigator, that's for the coast, correct? That is correct. Right. And that is to just fill a vacancy. That is correct. Recent vacancy.

Yeah, that vacancy was generated when our original chief had retired back in February.

Thank you.

Yeah, these positions are not new positions. These are positions that were removed some months ago or have been on hold.

I'm not seeing any more questions.

Thank you for your time.

We'll go to the public for comment. Seeing anyone in the room. Madam Clerk?

Seeing no comments online.

OK. Back to the board. I'd like to go first. Supervisor Klein?

Are there any comments from CEO's office on this request?

CEO's office has no additional comments.

Thank you.

And we're looking for a motion to approve. I'll make the motion to approve the recommended action. Okay, we have a first by myself, second by Supervisor Mulhern. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Moving on to item R4, discussion of possible action including adoption of the resolution appointing Sarah Pierce as interim chief executive officer for a period of up to six months. or until a permanent chief executive officer is appointed and setting salary at $202,716.80, $344,618 including benefits, compensation and benefits governed by Mendocino County Code Section 304120. Please.

So good morning again, Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. So the current chief executive officer's term expires on July 12, 2026, and the incumbent has indicated that she will not continue in this position. To ensure continuity of county operations while the Board of Supervisors considers a permanent appointment, this resolution appoints Sarah Pierce, currently serving as assistant chief executive officer as interim chief executive officer effective July 13, 2026. And I will say the first round of recruitment for CEO was not successful, and we are currently recruiting again with the first screening for applications on June 30th.

Thank you. And so quick question. If this action was not approved today, could you explain to the public what the situation would be in the CEO's office?

And if the position, Sherry Johnson, human resource director, if it was not approved today, as Sarah Pierce's title as assistant CEO, she would resume the responsibilities.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any. Yes, Supervisor Haschuk.

Just a question on the process of selecting a new CEO. Then if we approve this, and then Sarah's in until the end of the year, or we find a new CEO. And you said that the recruitment is ending on June 30th?

We have the first screening on June 30th. Okay. So we would keep it flying through that.

So I guess that how will the board be kept apprised of the progress with that?

So I would update through department head updates. I can do that, and also we can agendize it in closed session.

Okay. I think that would be good to keep everyone in the loop and make sure that the process is moving forward. All right.

We could do that on July 7th.

okay thank you i'm not seeing any more questions so we'll go to the public for comment anyone in the room madam clerk seeing no comments online okay back to the board for discussion and or action supervisor has check i'll move approval for the recommended action okay we have the first Second. First by Supervisor Haschek, second by Supervisor Klein. Yes, Supervisor Mulhern.

Thank you. I just wanted to, I've already spoken with Sarah and I wanted to let the board know that I'm going to be voting no on this action. I think that the county could really benefit from having an outside consultant come in and review our operations for the next six months or so. I just wanted to let the public know that.

Thank you.

Supervisor Williams. I hadn't heard that as an option. Can you talk a little more about it?

I think everything is an option. And as I considered this action today, we've had success with Ben Rosenfeld. We've had success with the outside audit. And I felt like for the CEO's position, I think that there's an opportunity to have somebody with a different perspective come in and look at not only the executive office but the agency as a whole.

So I'm grateful that Sarah is willing and I'm going to support this because we need somebody immediately to continue operations. But I also support Supervisor Mulhern. If we could find somebody of Ben's caliber to look at another segment of the county and give us advice, I think that's a win for us. And this isn't to cast any culpability on anybody with us, but sometimes people from the outside may have best practices that we should adopt. Is that something that could come back to the board? How do my colleagues feel about Supervisor Mulhern's idea?

Supervisor Haschak?

Well, I like that idea, too. I think that this would be a good time to look at seeing how we're doing things and the processes and the organizational structure and to see if there's another way of doing it. And if we did have someone like Ben Rosenfeld's caliber doing that analysis, I think we'd be better served in the long run. So if possible, I could add that to the motion.

Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, we already, you know, it's interesting because the board's had discussions about this and closed, and so it's awkward for us to come back and then kind of take this conversation in a different direction. I think my comments that I want to share for the public's understanding is when I look for our next CEO, I am looking for exactly as Supervisor Mulherin has described, someone with outside perspective that's going to bring fresh ideas and a different approach, not necessarily that our current approach is bad, but infusing new ideas. I'm not concerned about having Sarah as our interim. I had the pleasure of working with her, particularly the last couple months, as she stepped up and filled different roles. And I'm more and more impressed with her every single day. So I'm confident that she's able to help us in this short-term gap. I do see value in outside perspective, absolutely. But that's something I'm looking for in the hiring of our next CEO. And my focus is finding that person, bringing us candidates for consideration.

yeah i guess my opinion would be um i i think i understand uh supervisor mulhern's concern and i i don't discount it at all but i think i don't think we need to add it to the motion i think this is something that we could discuss enclosed when we're going through our um ceo hiring process if that's something we want to do we can discuss that and and bring that into the mix at that point but i don't i don't think it's related to today supervisor has checked

Yes, so we approve this and then is this something that Ms. Pierce could do an executive contract for, you know, you understand what the majority of the board is looking for and is that something that you could just do on your own?

If I may, through the chair, I would need board direction to go after a consultant to, we would have to do like an RFP or a single contract like we had with Ben to have a consultant look at the operations, I would need direction today for that. Or you guys can discuss it in close through the CEO recruitment.

Again, my personal opinion would be that would be the appropriate place to have that discussion. Chair, if I may.

Yes. Sorry to interrupt. And I feel like if you're really looking for a different direction, I feel like board members need to be involved in the selection of who's going to be doing that work. So perhaps Supervisor Mulherin and one other, you know, again, a conversation to have in closed session if that is who you like. But putting that back on staff, you may not get the... results that you're looking for.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams?

I'm content with it not being part of the motion today. I don't think we're agendized for it. It's tangential. But I don't think it should be a closed session item. I think, you know, it's not personnel. It's not CEO recruitment. It's not negotiations. It's not litigation. It's hiring a consultant to give us some best practices. I think that's probably an open session discussion. and it should be led by the executive office, because we don't want to do an RFP and just take whatever consultants apply. We want somebody of Ben's caliber, right? A lot of consultants provide work that's not really worth the money and may steer us in the wrong direction. So I support it if we can find the right person, and it's someone who would support our team in moving the needle.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, I'm interested in Supervisor Mulherin's feedback on an idea. Would you be interested in having someone similar to the setup we had with Ben and then the analysis we had of county council, finding someone, perhaps a retired CEO from another county, and having them come in and do kind of a comprehensive overview of the way the CEO's office is run and give some suggestions? Or are you specifically wanting someone that person to act as our interim.

I think that that would be a good option.

I'd be happy to work on that with you if you'd like. Okay.

And then the two of you could bring that back to the board as an open session item. Thank you. So we do have a first and a second. If there's no more discussion on the motion, we'll vote by the button.

Through the chair, if I may, for clarification for the record, the motion on the floor is just the recommended action.

Yeah, correct. And we did do public comment, correct? Yeah, thank you. All right. Vote by the button.

The motion carries with Supervisor Mulhern dissenting.

Thank you. Item R5, discussion of possible action including approval of amendment to agreement to Board of Supervisors 25202 with Catherine Elliott for Interim County Council Services to increase the contract amount from $190,000 to $360,000 and extend the term from June 30th, 2026 through December 31st, 2026. This is myself and Human Resources.

Good morning, Sherry Johnson. So we are in the process of recruitment for county council. We have an executive recruiter that's been working on this. But with County Council Elliott's contract expiring during 30th, the process was not going to be complete with the recruitment. So it was recommended to increase her contract extended through December 31st. So we should have, we're hopeful to have a first round of interviews on July 21st with the board.

And this, similar to the last one, this is interim until the process is finished and county council is hired. Correct. Thank you. Supervisor Hachek?

Well, I'm supportive of this because I think that we're very lucky to have Ms. Elliott to step in for the last six months or so and willing to take it on for another six months as we really find a county council. So I appreciate her expertise and her experience and knowledge of Mendocino County.

Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, also appreciate Ms. Elliott coming in and helping us in our time of need. I just kind of wanted to make a comment benefit of the public right we have 2 major positions of the county ones already vacant ones about to be vacant this is a time of flux for the county and I want to be really cautious with how we're managing things in our decision making not making large abrupt changes keeping consistency for staff is keeping our operation stable and having. Miss Elliott as our County Council has provided that so just thank you for supporting our County.

Thank you. It was worth.

I didn't have my pen up but I can get on in on this too. It's performances exceeded my expectations since she's come back. Just the flow of problems being resolved and getting answers is really accelerated. I think this is a good arrangement for us and that there's nothing more temporary permanent than temporary in Mendocino.

Thank you. All right we'll open this up to the public.

D. Pallison from District 5 here in Ukiah. I was going to say something on the last item, and I thought you kind of covered it, but I'm just going to touch on it both, both as far as the interim CEO position and county council. I've noticed a change in the board in the last six months, and it's subtle, it's slow, it's baby steps, but it's positive. attribute that to Bernie's leadership and the change in the what feels like a change in the cohesiveness of the board and you are working together and having in-depth and comprehensive discussions during open session I'm a huge fan of Sarah Pierce I even voted for for auditor controller so that that I'll take you something and I feel that kid Elliott has brought a calm and an intellect and and and knowledge to the board with her experience she's been nothing but positive and helped I think you all do a better job and But I would like to see some reporting out. One question I get asked a lot is what's happening with the CEO and county council, and I don't know. I'm here almost every meeting and I don't know. It's always on the closed session agenda, but there's no reporting out on it. And I think that we have a right to know how it's going, and we have a right to know what the barriers are, what you're hearing. why people aren't taking the job or why we aren't offering the job. And I don't think that it needs to be in closed session. I don't think it violates anything. It's not a personnel issue. It's just broadly how the process is going. And I would like to see a regular reporting out on that so that we all know what you're dealing with, what you're facing, and why we are in the position that we are. Again, I would like to reiterate that I have total confidence in Sarah and Kit and what they bring to our government and what they bring in support of you as a board. So I hope that we can see more information sharing on this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Elise Cox, MendoLocal.News, and also MendoLocal Public Media. So I wanted to bring to the board's attention, as you consider extending the county council service, that we're having difficulty complying with the California Public Records Act. And this is in reference to some property tax data that I requested. It was delayed and delayed and delayed. It is illegal. You guys are way beyond the legal delays with providing me these records. I don't want to have to sue Mendocino County, but I will sue Mendocino County on behalf of the public in order for us to get the data. We should have had it before the election. it was germane to the election of the assessor of of of our new assessor who ran unopposed and maybe the the the data will show that there's nothing wrong with that office but um but maybe it's going to show that that office um was a very careless in data entry and that they created a problem um for the county that they that has not been solved but that could have easily been solved And the public was very upset recently because a public records request regarding the Cubbison settlement was actually provided in a timely fashion to the reporter who requested it. There was no public records violation. regarding the request that Mike Janela put in for the details of the Cubbison settlement. And in fact, the journalists like myself, like Mike, like everybody else who wrote about it, who've mentioned it on Facebook, any one of us could have come to you guys and asked for that public records. And I believe it would have been disclosed. But what is going on that people don't know about is that there is public records about the The assessment process, how the assessor's office is functioning, how we're assessing some properties, we're over assessing and some we're under assessing. And that data is being withheld from scrutiny. And I would ask that the board give direction to the county council to comply with the California Public Records Act. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam clerk and chair chair normal.

Yes, if I could respond sure Just a comment in terms of the California public records acts We are keeping up with them. We work with the departments. They are not our records We do not in the County Council have those records. We have to work with the departments we have had on Monday alone a I believe I heard 30 requests come in, extensive requests. We have massive requests from the same people over and over. We have to line those up and get those out as we can. It's all the same staff doing all the jobs that they normally do, plus doing the Public Records Act requests. We are absolutely in compliance with the law in terms of the timing, et cetera, but we have to wait as those records are produced, and we are producing them as quickly as we can. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, go ahead.

I'm not asking for it now, but could it come back at a future time? Just an overview of where we are with PRAs and what the obstacles are and which ones we can quickly comply, just to show the public what our process is for dealing with PRAs. As I understand, there's a lot of PRAs coming in from other places, generated by AI probably, and it's putting more burden on the system without more staffing that may be impacting local news media competing for those same resources. Is that an update that we could get at some point?

I would I would I would love to give that update to the board so and to the public this is not only an issue in Mendocino County it's an issue in all counties and cities and various other districts and then second for the chair I would personally like an understanding on the property records that are requested I would think there isn't confidential information in those records in which case just handing over the data file for our momentum should be fairly quick

So we don't have to get into it now, but I've also been puzzled on some of the requests Why why is there so much work on our side are we and if the board can get that understanding? We may find there's a different methodology for satisfying some of these requests.

That's less labor-intense Thank you madam clerk anyone online Seeing no further comment online. Okay. We'll bring back to the board for action or discussion

Move approval.

All right.

We have a first by Supervisor Haschek.

Second.

Seconded by Supervisor Klein. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Okay, thank you. We're going to move on to item R6, discussion of possible action, including possible adoption of a resolution waiving building permit violation penalty fee for code enforcement complaint for Meadow Farm Community Land Trust located at 31271 Country Road, Fort Bragg, APN 02011043. And this one is sponsored by myself, so I will hand the gavel over to the Vice Chair.

All right. Would the chair like to present?

Yes, thank you. So we've got a situation here where we've got a property owner who is a valued community member doing a lot of good in the community with several building code violations on the property, a lot of which, but not all, they inherited when they purchased the property. The history is they had a situation where they had a tenant on the property that was causing problems and they had to evict. That person filed the complaint with code enforcement. My understanding is the property owner has been in complete agreement with the understanding that they have issues that need to be resolved and have been an active participant in solving these. And the county requires, if you do have violations and fines and you apply for a permit to remedy them, that you have to pay the fines first. And in this particular situation, the fines are pretty close to the amount of the permits and my understanding as well as they've also applied for a lot of the permits to fix the violations and they're strictly asking for a waiver of the fines so they can pay for their permits and get the process started i'm a big fan of code enforcement i understand it i get it i think fines are appropriate but i don't think that they're meant to uh penalize people as much as they are meant to bring people into compliance and that's what we're trying to do here but the fines are in this particular case a bit of a hindrance to the applicant any board discussion supervisor house check

Yeah, it seems like the Meadow Farm Community Land Trust is trying to do the best they can to resolve the issues. They do good work in the community, and I approve this waiver.

Supervisor Klein?

Thank you. I appreciate the intent of this item. I spoke with representatives of the Meadow Farm community during the board's previous discussions around low intensity camping. They seem like nice people. But I am concerned about this item not necessarily because of the group itself, but the precedent that it sets. I was previously against an item last month surrounding cannabis tax relief because of the inequity about having some people pay and then other people get a pass. Some people come into compliance and pay their late penalties and fees, and it's concerning to me that this board would potentially cherry pick who has to pay. The item does not include the fiscal amount, so I did ask staff for an estimate for how much in penalties and fees we're actually talking about waiving and was hoping that someone could present that information for the public's awareness.

Director Krogh.

Thank you. Good morning, Julia Krog, Planning and Building Services Director. So since we only have a portion of the fees submitted, we had to do some sort of extrapolation based upon what we have in terms of the penalty fees that have already been assessed that are the six permits that are currently in process and so we estimate it's at the minimum about nine thousand dollars in penalty fees and it could be more than that depending on the job cost valuation of the projects as they come in and those permits are submitted so right now we have six permits submitted and I believe there's 17 additional that would need to come in I'm happy to answer any other questions any other staff comments

Let's go to public comment starting in the room. Please state your name for the record.

Jenny Shattuck, I actually don't know anything about this item. And if it's not like my neighbor's place and doesn't have a million things wrong with it, like burned out debris and toxic cat shit for piles and miles, I don't really care what you guys do. But I'm just going to speak again that you guys really need to fund code enforcement, give Gretchen the tools she needs, and the other departments to back her. Thank you.

Any other public comment from the room? Okay. Going online, our first speaker is John R. Okay.

Honorable Chair Norvell and Board of Supervisors, my name is John Risk. Since moving to Fort Bragg in 2023, I've served as treasurer of Meadow Farm Community Land Trust. Meadow Farm is a nonprofit organization dedicated to affordable community housing. agricultural stewardship, food security, and emergency preparedness. Meadow Farm is located on 28 acres on two rural county parcels located just outside Fort Bragg along Pudding Creek. Meadow Farm is the only community land trust in Mendocino County. Chair Norvell, thank you for sponsoring this resolution. We ask that the proposed resolution be amended not only to waive penalties but to include permanent reinstatement fees. For the reason I will outline, it is not the fault of Meadow Farm that our six permits applied for in 2024 have expired. The waiver of administrative penalties and reinstatement fees assures our ability to fulfill our mission while continuing to apply for permits to correct the various compliance issues facing the farm today. And we do not see it as 23 extra permits. We think, for example, all the electrical can be handled under two solar permits, which have already been pulled. Our current situation, as you said, stems from a retaliatory complaint, which I'm not going to elaborate on. I will say that we've already invested $8,800 in building permits, septic permits, and pre-conference fees. And that does not include $14,000 in capital improvements and soil testing and septic design we've done to become compliant. We operate on a budget of under $60,000 a year. While we have continuously pushed to bring things up to code, shifting county directives have caused delays and placed an unfair financial burden on our organization. Since 2024, we were required multiple times to change our application path, moving from a cluster development plan to a minor use plan, then to an administrative permit, and then finally back to individual discretionary permits based on changing county interpretations and code updates. In July, nearly a year ago, we informed the permanent staff that triple administrative penalty fees would stymie our ability to pay for all the permits. In September 25, we awaited a decision on vexatious county complaints, which was studied by the full board. In that way, it took until January and February of this year to be resolved. As a small community-funded nonprofit, these compounding penalties act as a barrier to completing critical safety and solar infrastructure. We're not asking to bypass the safety codes or avoid standard fees. We're simply asking not to be penalized for delays. So please grant us a waiver of the triple administrative penalties and any related permit reinstatement fees. Thank you. I also have Sojourner Lee, who is the secretary of our board.

John, try to wrap it up.

Thank you.

Okay, Marcy Snyder. Marcy, we can't hear you. Make sure you're unmuted.

Marcy, it does look like you're unmuted. This might be an issue with your microphone on the device you're trying to use. If you're on a laptop, you might be able to... Can you hear me now?

Oh, yes, there you go. Yes, go ahead. Okay, great.

My name is Marcy Snyder, and I'm a resident in Mendocino County, specifically Fort Bragg. The Community Land Trust is a private nonprofit. They provide services that actually help the county financially. They provide food security. They give food to the food bank. That helps our citizens locally. They provide affordable housing, which I know is a priority within Mendocino County because we definitely need more housing and more affordable housing. They provide training and support for emergency preparedness. They do work for the common good. This is not a private landowner that is just trying to get out of fees or penalties. This is a group of people with a board of directors, a nonprofit who does community good and gives tremendous community service. I urge you, Oh, I wanted to mention one other thing that they do. They provide workshops that are open to every member of the public, educational workshops. I urge you to waive these fines. $9,000 worth of penalties fees is probably beyond what they are really capable of doing and considering that they're actually taking a burden off of government to a certain degree. I encourage you to do this, to waive these fines. Thank you.

Okay. I don't see any more speakers online. Any further speakers in the room? Seeing none, that closes public comment. It's back to the board. I have a question for the sponsor of the item. I support this, but I'd like to ask that you help us memorialize what criteria we're using so that we treat the public fairly. County government can't choose favorites and apply different standards. We have to treat everyone the same. So whatever we're doing here, it's got to apply to other projects in the future. Can you take a role in helping us memorialize what that criteria is in tuning the department? That's one request. And the second is, of course, we need to properly fund code enforcement. Because if they're losing money from these fees, we don't want that to translate into a reduction in service. They provide a valuable service. I'll tell you, when I have constituents contact me because a neighbor is impacting the quality of their life, Code enforcement takes a very active role. They have a strong team. I've consistently been happy with their performance, and I don't want that to be impacted by a decrease in revenue. So I support you on this item. I think we need to continue to apply it fairly, and we need to figure out how to fund the code enforcement effort.

Thank you, so my understanding is we're not setting precedent here doing this with the board of supervisors, and this is the process The department does not have the ability to waive these fees it needs to come in front of the board The process in my opinion would be somebody you know reaching out to their specific supervisor asking them for support which they did and after hearing from them again I explained to the board earlier and to them that I support code enforcement I understand the reasoning behind fines but it's always been always been my opinion that the fines are not meant to be punitive they're meant to bring people into compliance and That's what they're trying to do. If I had felt that the landowner was resisting or fighting this process or not agreeing or not recognizing staff's work, that they are out of compliance on several of these buildings, then I would not have brought this forward. But again, this is the process. Are we cherry picking? I guess you could categorize it as that but you know this is the problem this is the process that the landowner has to get this in front of the board and because of the reasons I stated earlier I was happy to do it and I fully support it.

Follow up question in the future if I bring one of these from my district with the same fact pattern will you support it in the same way.

Absolutely. Again, I don't see fines as being punitive. If, you know, if the fines are set to bring people into compliance and if the fines are, if you brought somebody forward and the fines were, you know, a barrier for them to get their permits, which is the case here, then 100% I would support it.

Supervisor Haschuk?

yeah i think that this reminds me of the situation in laytonville to a certain extent where there was a person making all those anonymous complaints and we dealt with it as a board it's the you know as a board we have to deal with the specifics of each case and that's what we're doing here my understanding is that you know they inherited this land they didn't know that there were violations or permitting issues and then they were given sometimes conflicting reports about what to do. They went down several paths. And so it is a unique situation. And so I support waiving the penalty. And I guess the other question is the reinstatement permit fees that was just brought up. Now, is that part of the motion, or is that an extra, is that going to go beyond the $9,000?

Well, I'd like to hear from, yes, thank you.

Thank you. Julia Krog, Planning and Building Services Director. So that is not included as part of the penalty violation fees. It's a separate reinstatement fee. It's $172 right now per permit. So with their five permits that are currently ready to issue, they have one additional one that's in plan review. It would be the 172 times five.

i guess the question is is that going to be part of the motion um i'm not prepared to include it as part of my uh motion today um i'm i'm not willing to go that far on this today not seeing any further board discussion is there a motion um move the recommended action is there a second i'll second

First by Chair Norville, second by Supervisor Haschek. Any discussion? Seeing none, let's vote by the button.

The motion carries with Supervisor Klein dissenting.

Okay, thank you. So we're going to move on to item R7, notice of public hearing, discussion of possible action, including adoption of resolution adopting the 26-27 annual bid report of the Mendocino County Business Improvement District and levying an annual assessment for the bid fiscal year 26-27. The sponsor is Planning and Building. So Madam Clerk's proper notice has been established.

Proper notice has been established and all correspondence, if any received, has been sent to your emails.

OK. So the process today will be we'll have staff presentation. We'll have public input. Staff will present final remarks. Board of Supervisors present questions to staff or public. The public hearing will then be closed. And then the matter will be before the Board of Supervisors. And public comment will no longer be accepted. So it is 1052. We'll open the public hearing.

Good morning, Supervisors. Adrienne Thompson, Planning and Building Services. This is a notice public hearing today. It's the final step in the adoption of the bid annual report, adoption through resolution, and the intent to levy the 1% gross rent assessment from lodging businesses within the district. We have not received any, oh, I guess complaints against it or the other protests for lodging. As far as I know, you haven't received any either? County? No. And we'd like to give the time to the bid advisory chair, Callie Dim, as well as Scott Schneider to present. And staff is available for questions.

Hi, Callie Dim, Chair of the Bid Advisory Board. This year is 20 years, celebrating 20 years of the lodging bid being in existence. In that time, we have survived a recession, a pandemic, and it looks like we're pretty close to surviving losing a third of our funding with the county match being revoked. Other industries have tried and failed to do similar or self-funding mechanisms in this county. Lodging just continues to stay united and reinvents ourself over and over. I've kind of lost track of how many iterations there have been, but we're in the middle of yet another one. That we choose to be colleagues and not competitors over and over again I think is remarkable. It makes us distinct from the corridor to the coast, the south coast, the north coast. We continue to be on the same page. and just want the best for marketing for everybody. The changes that you approved last month are just what we need for lodging at this point to move on to the 2% bid. We are not really here today to ask you to approve that because you already did. What we're really here today is to implore staff to expedite those changes so that we can get to the 2% bid. And really, the most important thing is that data. Without the data, we can't do our job to the best our ability and the numbers of the bid numbers really impact the tot numbers we are working for you and for the entire county so getting that data to us helps everybody and uh yeah that's it thank you supervisor williams yeah chair is there a roadmap and a timeline for getting the data as requested are we talking a couple weeks or who who has it when when can we hand it over Well, what we're really talking about is moving to a third party collection agency.

If I may, through the chair. In the bid annual report and the last recommendation from staff, the timeline was for December 31, 2026 for the auditor to come back with third party recommendations and research.

So we're looking at about half a year just to come up with an initial plan?

From the previous recommendations, yes.

Chair, is there any way we can speed that up? It seems like that.

Yeah, we have Ms. Cubison online.

Good morning, auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector, Shamice Cubison. I have had initial preliminary, very preliminary conversations with one of the vendors and I have had discussions recently with another potential vendor. So my office is in conversations with them, but it is a fairly involved process in terms of determining which type of services we may be engaging with them. We're not solely looking at just the bid collection portion of it. We're going to be looking at whether it makes sense to outsource the entire TOT and bid collection. We also currently have a contract for just the data scrubbing from the internet, but that's not involved collections. So the service for TOT and bid collections has changed over the last three or four years. From the previous conversations I had with these vendors, they have changed how they actually do the monitoring compliance and collection. So we're kind of having to start over again in those conversations. We are working on it. I'm hopeful it won't take until December to come up with a possible solution, but we do need that time in order to have those conversations for them to evaluate what our current basic population of establishments is going to be and how they're going to structure their fees because they have changed how that works. We are still able to provide data, maybe not in the ideal format, But we had previously responded to the request from the bid for information, and we will continue to try to provide that information when it becomes available after the end of a quarter processing for the data collection information. I do recognize that a more robust perhaps reporting system may be helpful to them, but we have kind of come up with a rough way of providing them with some data as they have already been provided recently.

Chair I think eighty percent of the TOT comes from district five Yeah, I see some nodding heads and so a lot of bid also comes from district five I'd like to track this rather than find out end of year Is it possible to have an update included in the CEOs report just the status how it's progressing just what like once a month Yeah, I don't know why we can't do that By May through the chair the TOT and bid is collected quarterly and

Is that what you're asking?

No, I'm not asking for those numbers. I'm asking if we can get a monthly update on the status of selecting an outside partner. Because I know industry partners are going to be watching and asking, wondering what's happened as we get closer to December. I'd rather keep them informed. Maybe we'll run into obstacles and we think it'll take longer. Maybe we have good news and it'll happen quicker. But I think the CEO report is a fair way to get that information out.

even if there's no change of status if we could just highlight it in the ceo report what the current status is once a month and that would come from this cubbison yeah if i make through the chair it can go through the ceo report but um auditor control the treasurer tax collector would need to submit the data understood is that is that reasonable it's reasonable for the executive office i'm not sure uh shamisa's workload i would defer to her

We will do our best to provide updates. I'm not sure if it's the CEO report or if you're going to maintain the agenda item, regular item one.

I think either one would be fine. Either one. Yeah. Thank you. Any more questions? No? Thank you. Thank you. Public comment, please.

Lise Cox, MendoLocal.news. So this example of the tourism data, the bid data, and the TOT data is an example in which the interest of the Fifth Estate, right? That's a news media. Fourth Estate? Anyway, the news media overlaps with the business community. So I'm working on a story in which I think it was Scott Ma'am, I'm sorry. If you could speak into the microphone. Yes. So I'm working on a story. Scott or John told us that the Visit Fort Bragg committee, that the county had responded to part of a public records. It's basically a public records request when they do a request for data. But they only got part. They only got how the bid was distributed. And I believe it's over 70%. It was a newsworthy number of how much of that is generated in the coast. Now, what's frustrating to me, and this is why I say that we're not compliant with the Public Records Act, is that these are spreadsheets. These are spreadsheets. There's a property. There are addresses. There are spreadsheets with columns. This is not a difficult problem to solve. You can take the raw data, and you can solve it with quad code, and you can do it probably in under an hour. is all you need is the raw data and the spreadsheet. And really, that's all you need. And we should not be. We should be able to provide the information that the business community needs to make better decisions about how to allocate marketing dollars. We should be able to provide money to the data to the press so that we can inform the public on how dollars are getting allocated because people are going to want to have a conversation about that. But we shouldn't be saying that the data is so hard to provide because it's not. We've had a step change in algorithmic capability and it is it is possible to get the data that we need. And this is when we say that we can't do it, when we provide what's going on with the property tax assessment records in which I'm getting a request fulfilled, and all we have to do is change a filter to get the rest of the data. And that's taking weeks to ask for a different filter to be applied. You guys know what a filter is in Excel, right? It's a little dropdown menu. You change the filter, you give me my whole public records request. That doesn't take weeks. And when we let elected officials or we let our county council, which you have discretion over her employment, when we let them get away with telling us that public data is not available, we are doing a disservice to the public.

Thank you. Yeah, I just want to interject that I'm not okay pointing the blame at county council. County council provides legal services. their office doesn't have access to this data. Just like I don't have access. If I could go do the query or if I had access to this spreadsheet you're talking about, I'd give it to you. I'd give it to the public. As long as there's not some confidential data. I don't think any supervisor up here wants to withhold anything from the public. We'd hand it over. during the meeting. But there's a difficult dynamic in that we don't oversee elected departments. It doesn't matter which one, sheriff, district attorney, assessor, clerk recorder, auditor, controller, tax collector, treasurer. And so we need to work with them. We need to provide them the resources so that they're able to do these tasks efficiently. But end of the day, we don't really have any authority. I can't direct them to do anything. but it's certainly not County Council's job. County Council's job is to make sure we're following the law and providing legal services to departments.

Thank you. Anybody else in the room like to comment?

Of the Greater Ukiah Business and Tourism Alliance, We're a merged organization of the Ukiah Chamber of Commerce, the Main Street Program, and Visit Ukiah. We also are a designated California Welcome Center in partnership with Visit California. I would like to begin by saying that I am in support of the lodging bid, and I support the vital role that tourism plays in our countywide economy. Over the last few weeks, I have met with lodging stakeholders, business owners, wine industry leaders, and other organizations representing our inland communities. We have crafted an initiative that was emailed to you. As you are aware, inland communities have expressed dissatisfaction with Visit Mendocino's efforts on their behalf. There is a strong assertion by the bid committee and Visit Mendocino that the coast is the lead marketing asset for our county. That does not negate the destination assets of our inland communities. In fact, it points to the necessity to invest in developing a strong pipeline of assets focused on inland. I am here to advocate for this pilot initiative that seeks to assist all parties in reaching common goals. The objective is to support Visit Mendocino's overall mission while addressing the deficiencies that have been discussed. It creates a bridge between the coast and inland communities which have different marketing needs and tourism priorities. My request is that this initiative be considered to not only bring forth change, but unify our communities that desire a voice and a viable avenue for implementation. This is an idea for your exploration for something different, to acknowledge needs that are valid and should be addressed. We live in communities as diverse as the stories of the people that live in them. We talk about putting heads in beds. This remains an important priority. However, we cannot lose sight of our why. Visitors come here not just to stay in a hotel. They come here to be part of something outside of the hectic case, to see the stars, touch the earth, and connect in meaningful ways. Please give Inland autonomy, tools, and the leadership opportunity to share our stories in an authentic, real way. Give us the ability to direct the narrative direct our vision, and develop our dreams. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Elizabeth Archer. I am the president of the Mendocino Wine Growers, also known as MWI. I want to start by thanking you, our public servants, for your service. Very often you get a lot of grief and not a lot of gratitude from the people you serve. I am here today in support of giving the inland communities an opportunity to work with Visit Mendocino on getting some of the bid funds. I am also in support of the bid. Choosing to vote in a way that allows the Inland Coalition to negotiate with Visit Mendocino does not impact the bid. It does not negate the bid. It does not take funds away from the bid. So it's not a scary thing. It's just an opportunity to give the Inland Coalition time to negotiate in a way that benefits inland communities. So MWI represents growers and wineries in the whole county. So we care about the coast. We care about Anderson Valley. We care about inland. We know that inland Mendocino County brings tourism to the county. We know that's true. We also know that it's significantly underrepresented in Visit Mendocino's efforts. So please, I urge you to consider this common sense request from the Inland Coalition that Katrina just mentioned to give that coalition time to make sure that what inland Mendocino needs is also represented. This is just time. It's a common sense vote. There's no reason to just give that checkmark blank check to visit Mendocino when the inland coalition has expressed already its dissatisfaction with the way it's being represented. And we have ideas on how to bring it forward in a way that is beneficial to the entire county. And we're not asking for half. We're not even asking for a third of of the funding you know we're asking for a proportionate amount of the funding that we already know inland mendocino county is bringing in i think that's everything that's it thank you thank you

Hi, everyone. I'm Diego Mendoza. I'm the executive director for the Bendocino Wine Growers. I'm here representing in support of this initiative. I think, I mean, it's a very reasonable ask. And I think it's, I mean, everything needs to innovate or die or evolve. So I think this might be a part of an evolution where it kind of seems like a little scary, but it gives us an opportunity to work with BMC in a more significant way to where we're more in constant communication because we have, I mean, Now that FIFA is going on, you have one player on the field, but you have two great players here that are willing. It's not even two. It's a lot of players inland that are willing to play ball and help out with this. It's a lot. I mean, Mendocino County is huge. So I implore that you consider this initiative. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room?

Good morning. Scott Schneider, Interim Executive Director for Visit Mendocino County. First of all, I just want to say thanks to supervisors for helping us expedite the data and trying to get the data. I just want to say that with lodging properties throughout the county that we are available to help with any testing or implementation or research with TOT and Big Collection online. I think it's a great way to go. And so if You know, if you need any help with that, we are here to help. We would love to get something done in the fall so that it can be implemented by the first of next year. I want to address the inland marketing initiatives. well you know Katrina's idea is a great one and it's something to consider it's not really in the board's purview to make this decision the decision for you today is to see what lodging has opposed the bid and then you know that's what the purpose of this hearing is I will tell you that since our last meeting there have been a couple meetings with inland lodging owners and we've explored things that they want to do that they want to see done with with the money that they collect and part of that is is developing a lodging advisory group to help define how they want to market their hotels and their beds and their areas and if this proposal is something that they want to consider then we are wide open it is really you know this this bid is collected by lodging there is no public funds that that go into this program and so it is really lodgings voice that will determine how They want to market themselves. Some of the things that they came up with is they want to develop a strategy to increase non-business travel. They really want to fill weekends, which is great. They want to revive more lodging-generated events, like Destination Hoplin, or Hoplin Passport used to happen a couple times a year, and it used to fill all the hotel rooms in Ukiah. They'd love to see more of that. They talked about possibly Sonoma County Airport and doing some more advertising there to help people come and stay at their hotels along the highway. And then the possibility of supporting more group sales and meetings so that more people come here to meet and stay, again, in the hotels in and around the conference center and other areas that have good meeting space. And so I just want to reiterate, we are in conversation with these lodging owners. We're excited about the possibility. Really am thrilled that this new marketing strategy that we presented at the annual report last month has brought about so much passion and discussion. I feel like for a long time, the bid's kind of been on autopilot, and it's great to see people get reengaged with how we market this county. So we're excited about more conversation so we can do the best job we can for lodging. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room? Madam Clerk?

Seeing no further comment on line.

OK. Staff have any comments?

No comments from staff.

All right. Before we close the public hearing, any questions from the board? Supervisor Mulhern? Supervisor Haschek?

yeah so you know what i'm hearing is that there's this proposal to do a pilot program for the next year kind of splitting off um you know some of the bid money for the inland area and i've heard complaints about from the inland hoteliers for many years and about the representation of the inland area and so i guess my question for staff is Yeah, my understanding is we're dealing with the bid today but if we were to look at doing a Direction to to look at this this other approach of the inland Mendocino Tourism Council and to fund this this in a different way What would be the process?

Deputy County Councilman Matthew Kudrowski, today is about the bid assessment and the annual report, and that would continue the assessment beginning July 1 for the next fiscal year. Following that, the staff always brings forward the contract, which, you know, Yeah, we have a named contractor. We've been working with them for years. The ordinance actually kind of specifies the contractor. And we have control over the contractor's makeup to a certain extent. So that contract will come forward before the board in July. And that kind of has a scope of work as to what that contractor is going to do. If the board desired to give some direction to staff or to consider alternatives or to bring certain ideas, see if ideas would work and bring that back as part of the contract, we could take that direction today. But that isn't something that the board is voting on today.

OK. So that would be direction that we could give to staff to kind of explore the options on this. And you'd bring it back in July. And at that point, we could really hear the full proposal and decide at that point.

Deputy County Councilman Matthew Kudrowski, yes, I think we would take directions for our staff to work with both the VMC and these other entities to discuss that scope of work, see how much more detail we could get. I'll note that right now I don't think we could reasonably create two separate contractors, or we'd have to have a lot, you know, the code is fairly specific as to the makeup of a contractor. We'd have to figure out how to do, you know, that might require ordinance changes if we wanted to actually have two separate contracts. But we could bring back, you know, we'll take some requests from the board if there's a direction, and we can bring that back as part of the contract.

Thank you. So if we gave that direction, you could come back with all the options that we would have? Like if we needed to do an ordinance change or whatever.

So the ordinance change would have to happen if you wanted two separate contracts. That's my current read of it. So I wouldn't say there's a need to investigate that. We can consider amendments to a scope of work. We've had a fairly consistent scope of work in the contract for years. It's detailed enough, but we could definitely add more specifics to it. So if there is a desire of the board to have more information specified about inland versus coastal, we would probably reach out to the stakeholders and be working as part of that to get that back to the board. Okay, thank you.

And that discussion will happen in July when you bring that item back, correct? Yes. Thank you. Yes.

So the discussion or the direction would come today, and then we would, they'd bring it back to us in July.

We would take direction today if the board has direction to give or request of staff in terms of what to include as part of that. The annual report states very generically that there's going to be a split between coastal and inland in terms of focus of VMC. So I think this is reasonably within what we can at least take direction on or request from the board today. And then we would bring back either options or kind of our best presentation of staff as to how this would look in the contract. Thank you.

Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, my comments are definitely in line with supervisor hashtags. And I appreciate the conversation that we're able to have in context of this bid hearing and the report and the subsequent contract that's en route already. Of course, I fully support the bid. I support the data collection for tailored approach and more information for us to better utilize the bid. But I've heard multiple times at the previous hearing and at this hearing BMC has acknowledged that there hasn't been a whole lot of energy around the bid and things have been stagnant. That's the comment I heard today. County Council has mentioned the scope of work has been the same for several years. The bid report itself represents a shift from a countywide approach to the region-specific approach. Most of the focus is on the coast, as it should be. The bid is mainly collected from the coast. It does say that they are planning to have a specific allocation to the inland community that is in the bid. I think this board should explore options for seeing that specific allocation made in multiple ways. whether that is routed through our own contract, whether it is requested and called out in our contract, or whether there is a separate contract directing the funding to the Inland Stakeholder Group. Those are the three options that I see. It's my understanding that in the past we have specified allocations to certain organizations So that is definitely a possibility. I think that this board needs to acknowledge the comments that we're hearing from the community, the inland stakeholders, and take this as an opportunity to consider our options and have that full conversation and would ask that we give that direction today for staff to bring back for further conversation.

Thank you. Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. I've supported the bid and VMC. And I think everybody has recognized that there are different opportunities that happen inland and coastal. And it seems to me that this new inland organization has a really good grasp on what could help our local hoteliers fill more beds and then also what could help just in general the inland economy when it comes to outdoor recreation and tourism. So I would support, I think, seeing something come back in the contract in July. At this point, I don't know that we should shift the entire ordinance. I think that having an opportunity to see a year, maybe two years, see this play out and get some data behind what the shift could be would be a more practical move.

Well, it sounds like we have at least direction from three. Is staff confident they know the direction?

I guess Deputy County Council Matthew Kudrowski, I think I'm hearing direction for staff to investigate options and work with both VMC and the inland group in terms of modifying the scope of the proposed VMC MCTC contract to include specific allocations and potential strategies for inland. Go ahead.

Chair, would you be interested in having an ad hoc work directly with County Council on bringing this back?

I'm comfortable with that. If there's two of you that want to do it, I'm more than fine with that.

Perhaps Supervisor Hashtag would join me in working on this.

Supervisor? Sure. Okay. So that ad hoc will be Supervisor Klein and Hashtag? Supervisor Williams.

I'm not against the concept that I'm hearing, but I'm unclear on who the stakeholders are. I would think the stakeholders would be the businesses that have chosen to be self-assessed. As we take input on how to divide coast and inland dollars, will we be taking direction from the lodging establishments that are generating the bid dollars?

Deputy County Councilman, if I could ask you, right now we have, the inland group is the inland group. I'm not sure exactly who they're, there's hotels as part of that, and I'm not aware of the exact makeup.

Issue spotting potential conflict, if we start taking input on how to divide dollars by Stakeholders who aren't themselves assessed. I think we're gonna get into a situation of conflict and it doesn't matter This is not a coast versus inland This is just the people who are being assessed probably want to have this say and how those how those dollars are structured And I don't know if they'd appreciate other Businesses or individuals who aren't also being assessed Influencing that process we can really for my colleagues more than staff Supervisor client

I understand your concern, Supervisor Williams, and also would direct you to the makeup of Visit Mendocino's board, which does include a balanced group of stakeholders. And I'm sure we will ensure that the hotels have a seat at the table in the conversation.

Just a seat.

What's your concern, Supervisor Williams?

As I stated, mitigating conflict. Do we have any input from industry that this direction is supported? If we do, I support it as well, but it's a slight change from what was on the agenda, and I want to make sure that... We're not making a decision today.

We're bringing back information. That's correct.

I'm seeing no other questions, so 1124 will close the public hearing.

Through the chair, if I may, could I please get a clear restatement of the scope for the ad hoc?

Yes, supervisor Kleiner has Jack explore potential changes to the contract. For consideration.

Looking at an inland component of that.

Supervisor more are you OK with that? OK. The public hearing was closed at 1124 will bring it back to the board. Supervisor has Jack.

Well, I approve the bid, but I think that do we need to look at that 3% that we discussed last time? Is there any decision we need to make at this point?

If I may, through the chair. That was added into the annual report so that 3% will be paid to the treasurer tax collector as the administrative fee.

OK, I guess we were looking at different models of if there's a third party vendor and all of this, and that maybe the work is lessened for the auditor controller. Or more, do we go to a hourly fee, or do we keep that 3%, I guess? That was kind of what I've been thinking about lately.

If I may, through the Chair, Adrienne Thompson, Planning and Building. I believe the request was for staff to review cost recovery in that aspect, and if more would be needed than 3%. But that would come back. I'll defer to Shamise Cubison from her research into the third party vendor, since it's her department that takes the load.

OK. Ms. Cubison?

Auditor, Comptroller, Treasurer, Tax Collector, Shamice Cubison, a lot of the fee also relates to conducting the bid elections. So I think that, if I recall correctly, is still potentially on the table for discussion in the future about their request to potentially consider how the elections are conducted. So the Treasurer Tax Collector's Office does do an actual cost analysis for the collection of the bid, but also for conducting the election. And it is based on the actual costs of the employees and the mailings that are associated with the collection and the election. And the county's cost is well over the 3%. So the bid is not being charged more money than the cost to actually do the collection and conduct the elections. That's why we left it in. Even if we do the analysis and determine that we might be moving to a new collection mechanism, there will be a charge to the county for that contract for collections. And at this time, I don't believe it's been finally determined exactly how the elections will be conducted in the future. So it is my recommendation that you leave the 3% in place as it is for now.

Well, thank you for that.

I think I would prefer we use a dollar amount to represent cost recovery rather than a percentage because there's not a rational basis on on the percentage of the average room night increases the county's workload to collect doesn't proportionally increase. So if we use a percentage, it starts to look like a tax. If it's a set amount, it starts to look like cost recovery, right? The set amount is based on what it actually costs us in staff time to do the work. Maybe we're not recovering all of it, but at least the theory is that's cost recovery as a basis.

Supervisor Hashtag.

So you said a dollar amount. Are you talking about like an hourly You know, do we charge a fee like that?

Whatever we're currently charging, I'm comfortable continuing to charge that because I hear we're still losing money, right? We're still subsidizing it. I just don't think we should pass it as a percentage. Percentage starts to look arbitrary. It looks like a tax collecting, taking 3% versus taking some dollar amount that represents our actual costs.

Ms. Krogh?

Thank you. Julia Krog, Planning and Building Services Director. So I just wanted to remind the board, at the May 19th Board of Supervisors meeting, there was several CEO comments on that agenda item, which was the adoption of the annual report. And one of those included that recognizing that the county workload in administering the bid exceeds the 3% cap and incurs general fund expenses, that any discussion of the county foregoing that allowable reimbursement should not occur in advance of the future discussion regarding the potential third party implementation and then i'll just also note for the board that the three percent is included within county code in um title five so okay um supervisor hash check i'm not sure your approval was a motion i guess um well

With that information, Supervisor Williams, do you have any ideas about moving forward?

I'm happy to continue as presented until we get through working with a third party vendor and then reevaluate our actual cost.

We will entertain a motion. Supervisor Haschuk.

Well, I'll approve the recommended action.

Do we have a second? Second. Okay, first by Supervisor Hashtag, second by Supervisor Klein. We'll vote by the button.

Through the chair, if I may, does that motion include the formation of an ad hoc comprised of Supervisor Klein and Hashtag?

Yeah, I don't think we need it in the motion.

It's already been done.

Yeah. It's already been done.

Is that all right with staff, I guess? Because we are trying to go away from those directives, but we have direction to staff, we have an ad hoc form, and we have a motion to approve the bid.

If I may, through the chair, I believe it's fine to not have it in the motion because the ad hoc was created and direction was given.

Chair, again, we have a first and a second, and we vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. All right, next we have closed session. We have items CS1, CS2, CS3, and CS4. Open up the podium to public comment on closed session. Seeing none, Madam Clerk.

Seeing no comments online.

Okay, so we will recess into close. We will return no sooner than 1 p.m.

When are we going to reconvene? Oh, but are we going to come back in 10 minutes?

cs1 cs2 and cs4 some direction was given and then cs2 was moved to the next meeting so we could get back in here sooner which is going to bring us to item r8 discussion of possible action including a report out from chair norvell and supervisor klein regarding progress on city of ukiah's proposed change of organization and annexation and acceptance of staff report. Miss Pierce.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors, CEO Antle, Interim County Council Elliott, Sarah Pierce, Assistant CEO. I believe Miriam should be sharing her screen. I'm going to wait until she gets that up. OK. So if I can ask the board to hold questions till I get through this. It's a little bit lengthy, but I want to get through the talking points and then we can open it up. I'll turn it over to Shamice after I'm done and then open it up for discussion.

Thank you.

OK, if you can move to the next slide. OK, so I have just some talking points I'm going to read through. So the presentation in front of you today focuses around the City of Ukiah's proposed change of organization and annexation known as the Sapling Map. This presentation is intended to focus on actual financial data. This is not a cost-benefit analysis and does not include other assumptions such as increases in county liabilities if the annexation does not proceed. Or on the flip side, one could argue if the annexation does proceed, will there be a loss to revenue due to taxpayers not being able to afford a 1% increase in sales tax or in the business tax? The executive office is happy to bring back an analysis, including assumptions, once the full board has discussed and we all understand what those assumptions should be. Lastly, please keep in mind that as of right now, the city of Ukiah has not indicated there's any economic development in the near future in the proposed annex area. So if you can move to the next slide. So I'm not going to go through each one of these, but these are topics the board should consider as we proceed through this presentation. These are all very important talking points. Next slide, please. So for slide four, I want to take a moment and just pause here for a few minutes because it's important for the board and the public to understand the difference between the county general fund and our non-departmental revenue. As the board is aware from the budget just passed today, the non-departmental revenue is the only pot of funding the board has full discretionary use of and is what helps fund your general fund departments. Recently there has been public discussion that the county's general fund is $257 million. To be clear, the $257 million quoted by the City of Ukiah is from our ACFER. However, it is more inclusive than just the non-departmental revenue and general fund departments. The $257 million includes all the county realignment revenue and revenue received from state and federal funds for social services. Examples of these programs are CalWORKs, foster care, or CCP, to name a few. As the board is aware, the state and federal funding and realignment revenue is considered general in a term because it has more allowable uses but is restricted to realigned and designated programs. These realigned and designated funds cannot be used to offset the sharing of non-departmental revenue outlined in the master tax sharing agreement. When comparing the financial impact of the master tax sharing agreement, the shift in revenue needs to be compared to the non-departmental revenue and not the $257 million noted in the general category in our ACFER. It would be disingenuous for me to conflate the non-departmental revenue of $92 million and the general fund category of $257 million. Everyone is aware of the struggles the county has had in financial reporting over the last five plus years, and in my professional opinion, it is one of the remaining pieces that needs to be cleared up in our ACFER. The realignment revenue and social services revenue should be categorized as special funds and not combined into our general category. This is something the auditor and myself have discussed with the state during our recent audit. So now focusing back on this slide, the budget just passed today had a non-departmental revenue of $92 million. As you can see, property tax in general makes up roughly 72.5% of the county's discretionary revenue. followed by TOT, which is heavily focused on the coast. And then the third largest discretionary funding is the Bradley Burns 1% sales tax. So please note that 7.6%, I'll come back to it in a few slides. The rest of the revenue streams, I'm not going to go through in detail. So if you can move on to slide five. Okay, so So this is how the unincorporated sales tax is broken down. The unincorporated sales tax is 7.875%, of which half goes directly to the state. The remaining 3.9375% is received by the county. However, all but 1% of the Bradley Burns, all but the 1% Bradley Burns tax is restricted or allocated to non-general fund uses. Please note that annexation will not increase any of the county sales tax revenue as the county is already receiving these funds. The only way it would increase is with economic development of which right now there is none proposed in the annexed area. If you can move on to slide six. So this slide breaks down the 1% Bradley Burns and the impact the master tax sharing agreement will have on revenue streams. As of our most recent HDL, the consultant sales tax report, 15 of the top 25 businesses are in the proposed annex area. According to the master tax sharing agreement, the county will share one-fifteenth of the Bradley Burns sales tax each year until year 15 when the Bradley Burns sales tax will fully go to the city for perpetuity. So if we take a step back and assume we're in year 15, we're fully within the master tax sharing agreement, The executive office realizes there are many factors which could change over the next 15 years, but using the data we have today and assuming the growth rates in our other non departmental revenue streams remain consistent, the county would be sharing roughly 3.24% of our discretionary revenue. And please remember there are many competing priorities for our discretionary revenue. So if you can move on to slide seven. So as mentioned before, there could be an increase in revenue if there was economic development. The executive office wants to caution though that any increase in county's revenue would be shared or would increase revenue to non-general fund departments such as behavioral health, public health and social services. There could be increases in public safety and Prop 172, but those funding streams are also shared or restricted. If you can move on to the next slide. I'm going to kind of go over property tax and then Chamise can answer some of the questions after we go through all of the slides. So according to the master tax sharing agreement, property tax revenue growth, also known as annual tax increment, And the proposed annex area will be shared as follows. 50% of the county's portion of the ATI up to the 2% prop 13 max will be shared with the city. So 1% will go with county and 1% will go to the city. Any ATI above the 2% will be shared with the city. The formula will be in place until the city's proposed annex apportionment, a property tax apportionment factor in the proposed annex area reaches 15%. So based on the city of Ukiah's initial calculations on the larger proposed annexation Valley Oak map, the city will not reach the 15% until year 2092. So knowing the Sapling map encompasses a smaller area, the likelihood of reaching 15% by 2092 is lower. The county will only see a 1% growth in property tax revenue in the proposed annex area well into the future. The impact to the county revenue is difficult to calculate as the property's tax system cannot handle an if-this-then-that scenario. The entire distribution will need to be manually calculated and then entered into the system until the city's ATI reaches 15% in the proposed annexed area. To complicate matters, each individual tax rate area will need to be manually tracked. The proposed annexed area includes 25 or 26 separate TRAs, which is about roughly 1,450 unique parcels or 1,750 acres. The proposed annexation area also splits some parcels in half, with a portion being included in the annexation and a portion remaining outside the annexation. Additionally, the proposed annexation also splits lighting districts in half. There are some questions the auditor's office does have. So what will be the status of the water, sanitation, and lighting districts? How does the annexation affect the Williamson Act revenue to the county? So the auditor's office has significant concerns with the manual process created by the MTSA while the master tax sharing agreement creates competing priorities with the manual calculation, setting tax rates, and extending the role, and year-end balancing. So the auditor's office cautions that competing priorities will require a significant amount of staff time beyond their current capacity. So if you can move on to the next slide. So this slide recaps the estimated revenue impact to the general fund or discretionary non-departmental revenue over the next 16 years. As you will see, the county's estimate in reduction of revenue is almost identical to the City of Ukiah's increase in Bradley Burns and TOT. Please note, both entities use data from HDL. This is why the analysis is almost identical. By year 16, the county is estimated to share roughly $30.4 million in discretionary revenue. Due to many complexities and calculations, we have not been able to calculate the impact it will have on the county's property tax, cannabis tax, business tax, or fees. So if you can move to slide 11. So this slide recaps the estimated expense impact to the general fund departments over the next 16 years. We've only calculated expenses known to be tied to the master tax sharing agreement. The first increase is related to the auditor's office, which anticipates needing to hire an additional employee or a consultant to implement and track the impacts to the property tax. The other impact the county was able to calculate was the increase in operational expenses for goods purchased by the county in the proposed annex area due to the 1% increase in sales tax. So as noted in the introduction, these last two slides do not account for any other assumptions such as benefits or consequences of an annexation. These two slides strictly looked at actual data when compared to the master tax sharing agreement terms. So if you can move to the next slide so the total impact for expenses that we're calculating is about three point seven million over the sixteen years. So on slide this slide is to remind the board and the public that the county is responsible for many mandated services regardless if they're performed in the incorporated or unincorporated areas. So the executive office cautions any revenue shift or loss has the potential to impact services countywide, including public safety, which is essential to fulfill the county's constitutional and statutory obligations to provide the public welfare. You can move on to slide 13. Um, the next two slides, I'll go over, um, some department, uh, specific statistics. The first side, uh, highlights some sheriff's office statistics. I'm not going to go over these specifically because sheriff Kendall is in the room. Um, and he can speak on those. Um, but we did, uh, feel it was important to present them. So if you can move on to the next slide. So the same for this slide, it highlights which roads from the 20 year plan will potentially be impacted. Please note there, so we are estimating there's about 18 miles of roads in the 20 year plan that could shift with an annexation. There's an additional one mile of road that's not in the 20 year plan that could also potentially shift. So a total of 19.65 miles of roads. So as noted in the slide, the county does estimate that there will be no cost savings or reduction expenses by removing the roads from the county's responsibility. The county would likely shift roads around and or into the 20-year plan. The shift of the 20-year plan would all be dependent upon economic factors in those respective years. So then slide 15. This is just a list of our competing priorities for discretionary revenue that the board needs to take into consideration. And so before moving on to the final slide, I would just like to remind the board, the executive office would like to remind the board that on average, if we're trying to look at a total countywide, our expenses are outpacing our revenues, regardless of general fund versus non-general fund. And then to close, for the slides if you can move to this slide. So this is just the consideration of discussion topics that I'll leave up on this slide before I turn it over to Shamice.

Good afternoon auditor, controller, treasurer, tax collector, Shamice Cubison. So just a couple things I would like to point out and then I'm obviously available for questions. I just wanted to point out to the board, based on what Sarah's already mentioned, and the public, that a lot of the taxes that are generated from the sales tax, in my opinion, are from people coming from beyond the Ukiah Valley. They are coming to purchase vehicles. They're coming to purchase plumbing equipment, electrical equipment, tanks, heavy equipment, heavy equipment repair stuff. Those are the types of businesses that are in the annexation area. Roofing supplies, that's not necessarily only supported by people who live in the Ukiah Valley. And the county is using that sales tax money to provide services throughout the entire county. It's not just being used to provide services in the Valley. So I'm not sure if it was anticipated what a project would look like and what the potential impact might be to the general fund. It's important to note that the amount of money is the equivalent of several departments' individual annual budgets that are paid for out of the $92 million. So hopefully the board will assist in identifying where the replacement revenues are going to come from. My rough estimate on the cannabis tax, which is not addressed, is at a minimum of $175,000. And that's at the reduced rates that the board has already implemented. So it will be more than that. And that is an item that would remain to be negotiated and would be lost on year one. We have asked the city to tell us what the plans are for the remaining districts that are in that annexation area, and no information has been forthcoming in terms of whether they will exist. whether they will be dissolved, whether they will be absorbed, whether they will become subsidiary districts of the city. But there are taxes in some of those remaining special districts and ATI factors that will need to be accounted for and also handled separately from the master tax sharing agreement calculations if they are to be dissolved or taken over in some way by the city. We will obviously have to deal with what is going to happen with any special districts boundaries which are not absorbed entirely. Those special districts are lighting districts for which the county is responsible for paying and maintaining the utilities in those districts. So that is another issue that will need to be resolved. I'll stop there and see if there's other questions.

If I may, through the chair. I did. I forgot to introduce John Bacher. He is our special counsel.

At this point, I'm not seeing any questions. Staff have anything else, or would you like me to go to the public?

I have nothing else to report.

Supervisor Klein?

Chair, I think that as the ad hoc and seeing that this is our item, maybe we should give a little bit of context about how our conversations have been going. Sure. I'm happy to start. So part of the reason why I was hoping to have this discussion with the board is the community overwhelmingly wants additional information and additional discussions. There's always a gap of information in terms of public decision making. But no item is more commonly asked about at my constituent meetings or just out in the community than annexation. So I just felt it was important that we have regular conversations with our board about what we're finding out. I know that all of us have different perspectives on annexation and have different things that we want included in the conversation. And I want to make sure that all those things are addressed. So that was my goal for this. I do think that it's important to note we've had three meetings with the city in terms of the ad hoc and county staff meeting with the city's ad hoc and city staff. I would say that it started off a little bit on the wrong foot in terms of information sharing and I don't know if we found our footing in terms of communication. And I wish that I could say it was going better, but it's really not. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's frustrated by the process. I'm not sure if that will change in our future meetings with them. but I would be hopeful that they would be and maybe these conversations where the county's hosting information and public dialogue and then the city's also hosting that will just will bring us clarity about what the community would really like to see happen and I'll just add supervisor Klein is right it's probably the most asked question I get is you know where are we with annexation how are the meetings going

You know we did get a letter from the city of Ukiah today the other day saying that they were surprised that we were having this agenda item and we did explain to them in the meeting the other day that our board is Very interested in updates very interested in where we are with the situation and and this item to me is not of course not about the MTSA but it's about getting the information out there and And then also finding out what the rest of the board wants to do going forward on what information that they want to gather, what information do they want to seek from the city of Ukiah. And then, you know, there's also been floated the idea of an independent, somebody coming in independently and doing a fiscal analysis. So I think, you know, I'm hoping that's something that we can discuss today as well. so with that we'll open it up to the public i'd just like to remind everybody that we do have two separate items this particular item is not about the mtsa so if you could hold your comments and your opinions about the mtsa to the next agenda item please come to the podium all right i'm not seeing anybody in the room i'm clerk do we have anybody online seeing none

okay again anybody in the room like to discuss this item no okay we'll bring it back to the board supervisor moore thank you i just had a question either for the ad hoc or for staff um the board is set to consider a sales tax increase for county roads um possibly in july is my understanding is one percent so as you've um had these conversations internally around the increase in sales tax which you're calculating will be an added expense for the county like are you also weighing in that future conversation yeah i

I have not brought that up. I'd be happy to include it in our analysis. I do think that the, what measure was it, measure A, the college bond that did not pass in the primary is probably a good indicator of where voters are at for kinds of tax increases. So personally, I don't feel that that's poised to pass if we do put it on the ballot in November.

But I would be happy to include that in our analysis moving forward just for the board to have that information Supervisor hashtag Yeah, I'm I'm a little we may get back to public comment, but if you could just hold please supervisor hashtag I

Well, we're dealing with two agenda items here, dealing with pretty much the same issue. And, you know, this is, I guess we're being asked, what kind of information do we want from Ukiah? And we can come up with a list of... 20 or 30 or 50 things and then the next agenda item is to get rid of the whole you know master tax sharing agreement so it's a little confusing i think it's confusing to the people here because no one stood up to say anything about this issue about ukiah so you know i went to the the ukiah town hall annexation meeting last week and you know their presentation is like night and day from what this presentation is and so you know there's we could probably discuss you know each of these issues and ukiah would probably have their point of view on each of these issues just like the county has their point of view And it's like when the county says it's going to cost $34 million, and Ukiah says, no, it's going to be revenue neutral. You guys are going to save, and it's all going to work out. And somewhere in between is the truth, I think, or an understanding, at least. And so what I'm looking for is a process to move forward so that we can get to an understanding for what we're trying to do here because I do see what Ukiah is saying is that maybe they can do some infrastructure better than the county does. They have more of a focus that the county is so spread out that we're dealing with issues here and there and everywhere. And maybe the city of Ukiah has an economic development plan that they can't talk about right now. So I'm just trying to figure out what is the process to move us forward to a better understanding of what the real issues are. I appreciate Supervisor Mulherin's letter that we received this morning. It laid out kind of, you know, the big picture of what we really need to be looking at And I don't know how we get to that understanding with this presentation of the numbers we're seeing up on the board here. You know, I voted against the master tax sharing agreement originally. But lately, I'm seeing it as the framework for any kind of agreement. I think Mr. Bacher. know said originally that this was a really good deal for the county and i didn't totally agree with that and i voted no but i'm just wondering i guess you're here for the next item but i'm wondering how do we deal with both of these items together and get to an understanding where economic development is crucial to this county, but it's not happening at the rate any of us would like. And so how do we, if Ukiah has a plan, you know, how do we support that plan in some way? And like Supervisor Williams said last time, there's got to be a point where there's a win-win for the county and the city. And so I'm just looking at this whole thing, trying to figure out what is the process for understanding the numbers from the two different entities. Maybe we need to have a board-board sit-down, all-day workshop, where we can say, well, I see that number up there, and it says 27 million, and we think it's zero. Let's talk about it, because there's some kind of misunderstanding here. So how do we get to an understanding where we can really say, OK, these are the numbers we can all agree on, and we still don't agree, or whatever?

So it's what you're seeing here today is based off of the information that we see we have received from the city of Ukiah. They're very adamant that this is just a draft. Nothing set in stone. I think they pointed that out in their letter why this was premature. But we, Supervisor Klein and I felt it was important to bring back the information that we have today. Could everything change? Absolutely. But it's we're a bit hamstrung on what we can analyze and what we can speculate on based on what the city of Ukiah is giving for information. If they don't know, we certainly can't know. So will that come to fruition? I hope so. Maybe they'll get their final plan after they go through the public process and decide what they can live with. They also have been very adamant in these meetings that this map that they're proposing is the smallest one that they can do that pencils out for them. So I don't see the map shrinking at all. There may be some property owners that are very adamant that they don't want in that they may exclude. There may be some property owners that want in that they may include. But this map is the smallest map that they can submit and have a pencil out for them. And again, the information that you're seeing from the group today is based on the information that we've gotten from the City of Ukiah. So I'm sure we'll get more in the future, but as of today, this is what we've got. And then also the There was some question about the numbers that we got from HDL, where it shows 37 million or whatever the number is at year 16. The city of Ukiah produced, I think we have that. Maybe if you can, do you have that on your slide?

If I may, through the chair, it was attached to the agenda item. I can pull it up.

Yeah it's the one with the bubbles and.

Yeah and then there's one slide on there that mirrors.

Lily can you let Miriam.

Pretty close to the same numbers that we produce which they should because they were sourced from the same spot. But there was some questions about how we came up with these numbers maybe these numbers are correct but they are really close to what the city of Ukiah produced.

Sorry, one moment. She's opening it. It's the one that says City of Ukiah presentation? Yes.

And if I can just add on please, while we're waiting is that certainly we're hearing there's other issues out there. There's split districts. There's, you know, split parcels. There's, um, you know, all these concerns out there about what that map looks like. And we, as representatives of the county need to take that into consideration too. But at the same time, I think that if we just sat down and talked about these issues board to board. Maybe there's a way of resolving those issues.

Well, that particular issue was brought up yesterday by Ms. Cubison, and it was presented to the city of Ukiah, and I believe we set the next meeting for them to come back with some description to answer Mrs. Cubison's questions of how those districts are going to be handled.

If I may, through the chair, if you can go to the financial tab. Next one. So this can you if you can make it a little bit bigger so in this pro forma from the city you'll see that the Bradley burns increase is at the very end 27 million is almost identical to the amount that was presented in in the county's report and the same thing with. The $3 million for transient occupancy tax, it's very close to the amount that the county calculated as well. We've not gone through the analysis of property tax because we're still trying to vet that information. But the information from the county and from the city came from the same source, from HDL, at least for the sales tax, and that's why it's very similar.

Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, I appreciate, supervisor Hashtag, that you're trying to find a format for us to have these discussions and come back with additional information. Part of the reason why I think you're seeing the county's information today is I don't think it's appropriate for us to sit here and present the city's information. and that's part of what i took offense to was when the city did present our information in the cons in the community meeting without conferring with us and i think that's part of what's not working in our current process is there's not that collaboration or hey here's this heads up you know this is going to this is going to happen this is what we're going to share so i just want to speak my personal perspective i don't think it's appropriate for the county to be sitting up here and sharing the city's finances And to Assistant CEO's point, our information, this specific snapshot, is coming from the same spot that the city is getting their information from. And it matches. Where we are running into issues in terms of the ad hoc conversations, is not about cost savings. It's about costs being shifted to other areas. So when we're talking about our roads, yes, there are roads that will be going into the city's purview out of the counties. That's not general fund dollars. Those are dollars that we're not going to have any cost savings because we're just going to move on to the next list and do the next set of roads. To my knowledge, from what we have found, there is not a cost savings. We will be shifting services to other areas, which, yes, that is a positive thing, but it does not offset the funding that we are going to lose. per the master tax training agreement, per all the information that's being presented today. And that is a big concern for me.

Supervisor Williams.

So I think some of the information we're looking at is probably accurate in terms of numbers, but I don't know if it tells the truth, right? The truth is a broader concept. And I don't even know if this is a draft plan. It looks like a concept that the city is trying to move forward. At this point, if I were working for the city, I wouldn't be thinking about development because the moment I think about development, I'm probably going to trigger CEQA. And I can't start on CEQA before there's even a plan, right? So California has created this dynamic where there's a bit of a chicken and egg and it creates gridlock. So I don't think it's that they have a plan and they're not sharing it with us. I think procedurally they can't really think about that. We know this county needs housing. And the economic future, both in the city and on the county side, depends on growth. And you're not going to have growth unless you have housing. Do we envision housing being added to the unincorporated where we don't have infrastructure? Probably not. We're closing less than one house a week. And for a county our size, it should be more like six, right? We don't have cities that are able to do infill to build up that housing stock. So I think I trust the executive office. I think these numbers are accurate. But I think there's probably a broader projection of what this county and city would look like 20 years out. And as much as I trust our staff and I trust the ad hoc, none of us have the experience of pulling off a successful annexation. And I mean successful that both the city and the county get stronger in the years to come. I'm generally not somebody to suggest consultants. A lot of consultants that have done work for us haven't produced outputs that I'm proud of. But Ben Rosenfield really gave us a great roadmap, had the credibility, was able to work with a broad range of quote unquote stakeholders and come up with a plan that most of us trust. Could we do something similar to have the county represented working with the city where instead of a dynamic of they begin a concept and then we tear it apart, we work together to figure out how do we build a transition plan that's going to leave both of us much stronger. And maybe we can't do that. Maybe the public says no. Or maybe the truth finding, we figure out that we're in such bad financial shape, any sort of annexation is going to bankrupt our services. I don't know what the answer is. But what if there's the possibility that There is some annexation that the public would support and would leave the city and county on a trajectory to both have increased revenue. I wouldn't want to cancel that out at this stage where we're just beginning to look at the draft of a proposal. So Supervisor Haschak, I think, has the right point. We need a different working arrangement with the city, but I think part of that working arrangement might be bringing in someone that has the expertise to guide us. And who knows what questions to ask and what data to look at. And otherwise, we're just sort of randomly poking around at what the city has come up with and saying, well, here's how we extrapolate it. And that's not going to work. We might be right. We might be wrong.

So I'll answer. And Supervisor Klein can correct me if I'm wrong. But the city of Ukiah did tell us that they do have an economic development plan, but for the same reason that you shared involving CEQA, that they can't discuss or share that with us.

Well, Chair, I don't know what, I mean, economic development plan may just be that, you know, if you have larger area, you know you're going to provide more infrastructure and you're going to have some type of build out. That's logical. Do you believe it's as specific as on these particular parcels or is going to be multifamily housing?

I don't know, and I'm not going to speculate on behalf of the city of Ukiah.

Yeah. So that's my point. We don't know, and I think it's probably inappropriate at this stage to have those details. We need someone who can guide us through the process. Otherwise, we're going to learn by doing our first annexation, and we're going to probably fail. And I think we're already failing. I think everybody's failing. The fact that we can't have a discussion, and you have two very different meetings, and you have factions, and nobody believes the other's information. This is not a success story in the making. How do we transition this so that we're all working together?

Well, I don't know that we don't believe their information. I think some of the information we've certainly corrected, and I think they've tried to correct some of our information. But as far as the economic development goes and speculating, And your question of how do we get there? And how do we understand you're not going to understand at all until they present you with their economic development plan is and I'm again certainly not willing to speculate on behalf of the city of Ukiah Supervisor claim

Yeah, I want to add something to this. I obviously wasn't on the board when the master tax sharing agreement was signed. And much of the conversation around annexation between the city and the county has been around what we are just referring to as the balance areas, the kind of seen as positive revenue, potentially negative revenue areas. So this red and green that's attached to the master tax sharing agreement that kind of outlines per the process in the master tax sharing agreement if you take some of the green you have to take some of the red kind of thing so to create that balance from an outside perspective because again I wasn't here I did not think that the city of Ukiah would be pursuing annexation of the entire area the first time that they came out the gate I think that part of the community's concerns with this proposal is that it is so much all at once. And I think the ad hoc has expressed that we are not against annexation. I, as an individual, am not against annexation. I think it makes sense in certain times, in certain areas. What I am against is this all or nothing approach. And I think the community would be more comfortable with seeing something that is a little bit piece by piece. That goes for proving the services that the city is saying that they want to provide, as well as not taking all of the revenue from the county, even with our step-by-step master tax sharing agreement. If there were smaller annexations that could happen piece by piece, I think the community would be more comfortable with that. And so I just want to bring that as a point of conversation for this board's discussion today.

Anyone else? I'm not seeing anything. What about, does the board have any input for the ad hoc committee of what information you would like us to seek from the city of Ukiah? Supervisor Williams?

I would like you to seek information about a consultant who has experience completing a successful annexation who could guide us and would know what questions to ask.

I think we have had that discussion, and I think both sides are in agreement that that's a good idea.

Can the ad hoc suggest that we split the expense with the city? It shouldn't be all on us, but it's not fair to put it all on them either.

I think they suggested they pay for it last year.

I believe they did.

Do we want to co-pay and co-choose the individual? What I don't want is to find that we have a report and one side doesn't trust it. And so we want someone credible that we both believe in. We probably, both sides need to have an interview panel.

Yeah, I think that's something that staff could bring back for an agenda item.

If I make it to the chair, yes, we can bring it back.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Mohor?

Thank you. The original report that came out in the CEO's report last month I thought was really disingenuous. It didn't clarify that there would be, I understand, the end point, that there wouldn't be savings in roads in the Sheriff's Office. But I also didn't feel that it articulated that the reason that there won't be savings is because it will be transferred to another area right so i think um also for me the comparison of the loss of revenue without doing projections for the increases in revenues that we know we're going to have because we have now started projecting revenues. So I think the county can also do a better job of telling the complete story in a way that helps the community understand that there are benefits to people that are outside of the annexed area, because the county does deliver services in unincorporated areas. And just for Supervisor Williams, I looked up our MCOG housing needs, 3,780. in the county. So that's 10 per day that we don't wheel water. We don't have sewer services. There's a lot of things that the county can't do. And cities, all of them, because we're talking really about one city right now. But in general, the master tax sharing agreement was created because there are four cities. that can offer at least some of those services, although some of them offer different services. I mean, I think that that's a really important part of the conversation. Cities do things differently than counties do, and that's why we have different jurisdictions.

Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, I think that if we were to find a consultant or someone who could mediate this situation and, you know, the county could put forth three names of people who are trusted and the city could put forward three names or we could come up with someone who is mutually trusted. And if the city, I think if the city is offering this annexation, then they should be the ones who are paying for it. But I just kind of think that It's all within the context of the next agenda item, too, about the master tax sharing agreement is that with that item, if we say we're going to get rid of it, then this whole discussion is moot.

Not necessarily, because the tax sharing agreement doesn't cancel for five years.

Yeah, but someone wouldn't go forward with it if.

Unless they think they can get it done in five years.

Well, the whole thing is a 15-year process.

Right, but my understanding is if this was completed within the five years, then it's going to move forward. Am I wrong?

I'm sorry, can you repeat the question? Ask special counsel.

Yes, sir.

Is your mic on?

Thank you very much Okay, so let's say the agreement were cancelled immediately that wouldn't prevent the annexation from going forward what would happen is the city would file an application with LAFCO and Then a process would start for the city and the county to begin a tax exchange negotiation and there's a period of time it's 60 days for the city and the county to negotiate and try to reach an agreement and What this master tax exchange agreement does is establish it. There's an existing agreement. You don't have to go through that process. It already exists. So if it terminates, there would still be a mechanism to proceed with an annexation. So that's the first point I want to make. And then the other point I wanted to make is that the agreement does say that if you terminate the agreement, it doesn't become effective for five years. So if you were to issue the termination Today, before July 1, it wouldn't become effective until July 1, the five-year anniversary of July 1.

Does that answer your question?

Well, I guess my point was, you know, I'm going with Supervisor Williams' idea about finding someone who can look at the issues and come up with a presentation that both the city and county can agree on.

Right, which I think is what Mr. Bacher is telling you, is that would still happen. Unless the city of Ukiah didn't think that they, I'm guessing that unless the city of Ukiah didn't think that they could get this process done within five years, then yes, they would probably not want to move forward. But again, that would be me speculating on the city supervisor client

Yeah, something I want to highlight for this board's attention. At the second meeting, the city suggested that the Brush Street Triangle be included in the map. The Brush Street Triangle being kind of in the middle of the current city scope makes complete sense to me to be annexed. And there are already existing out of service area agreements where landowners have agreed to be annexed in the future. This has been a longstanding issue. But we were asked again at our third meeting if we agreed to including it in the map, which I thought really interesting because we had so many other things to talk about that this was being brought up again. But I want to ask our board if there is interest in Brush Street Triangle or any feelings on that. The city did present landowner signed documents agreeing to be annexed or saying that they were in support of annexation. But those landowners were only from the Brush Street Triangle. There were not any from any other areas that they were pursuing to annex. I did ask if they were going to be taking that same approach to the other areas that they're proposing to annex, and they said no.

Supervisor Williams.

Yeah, just on John's question. My understanding, this is looking at the MTSA key terms PDF that was attached. Page, I don't know what page this is.

If I make it through the

Page, page, page, page. That's the next item. I know, but John just brought it up, so it's kind of relevant to the discussion. Tax sharing provisions implemented during the life of this agreement shall survive termination of the agreement. So if we were to terminate now, I'm tying it in, don't worry. If we were to terminate now, I think it would force the city to complete the process within five years because they want these terms. I don't know if we're going to get as good an annexation if we try to rush it than if we try to work together. And so that's why I'm focusing on, as soon as possible, finding a consultant who can help guide us to work together. Maybe it doesn't go anywhere good, but at least there's a chance and we're doing it from the start. You still have a concern, CEO?

No, we just need to make sure that we're not combining the two.

I don't think we're combining them. We're talking about why we want a consultant.

I have a question for Mr. Bacher. Your experience with annexations is five years reasonable? Or is that borderline?

Usually clients will ask me, how long is this annexation going to take to get through the LAFCO process? And I will quote them, nine months to a year. I mean, to a year and a half is my typical quote. This is a gigantic annexation with a lot of moving parts. I think it will take a lot longer. Five years is a reasonable period of time for a project like this. It could be done much quicker than that. Annexations are very contingent on the politics behind it. If there's not a lot of opposition, And you have the vote to laugh co things can move very quickly.

Thank you supervisor more.

You just wanted to get back to the supervisor clients question about the brush a triangle and I've talked to 2 of the property owners at large on a large. portion of that area that have asked to be annexed and so I think in particular if people are asking to be having city services then it makes sense that they are included and as we all know there is an area there at the Brush Street Triangle that causes lot of calls for law enforcement particularly from the Sheriff's Office and Supervisor Klein has tried to help me work on that to get some relief for the residents of that area I just having seen the difference in the way some of the projects operate within the city versus in the county and the reduced calls for services in the city I think it would be a benefit to those residents to have a additional law enforcement activity from UPD and in that area. But I also understand that there are costs to providing that services. And then this is why we have, um, you know, the ad hoc, the city working on negotiations, right? Because there are costs to providing services in that area as well.

Okay.

Not seeing anything else from the board staff. Do you think you have your direction? I don't think there's anything to take action on here today.

If I may to the chair, the executive office is happy to bring it back an additional analysis as we said in the introduction, we just need a better understanding of what needs to be included and so is the direction that we will work with the ad hoc in the city to identify a consultant, I need clarification on what the direction is.

Yeah, so it sounds like we're all in agreement about independent consultant. Is that something that Supervisor Haschek, you know, threw out the idea of three and three, the city naming three, the county naming three. I think that's something that we, if we're going to do our end of it, probably not the ad hoc, it should be done and open. Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, before we move on to the next item, Chair, I think just given that there's so many people here from the public, can we go to public comment again?

We can.

Yeah, thank you.

Supervisor Haschek?

Well, I threw out the idea of three and three, and that's the way to get a mediator. But at the same time, we need a person who's really an expert in this field, who can look at the numbers and understand the complexities of annexation and help us figure it out, too. There might not be three of those types of people.

Supervisor Williams?

Yeah, I don't want to get in the weeds too much. I think I'd rather focus on the consultant. But imagine everybody's received a letter from John Anderson about Mendocino Forest Products, Mendocino Redwood being included. And that's one where I would urge the city. They probably have some shared infrastructure, and there's some basis for why they would include it. But in terms of opposition, I would advise them to not include those properties. I think those don't really fit in the city. Like, when you start thinking about fences and the other codes in a city, those don't seem like the ideal parcels to include in an annexation. I imagine this is a rough plan, and as they start looking parcel by parcel, it'll get refined. But if the ad hoc has an opportunity, I would encourage passing along that those parcels probably should stay in county.

Supervisor Klein?

And Supervisor Williams, to that point, how much should the ad hoc be weighing the individual parcel owner's interest in being annexed?

It. I would ask the question right of you because ultimately this isn't a decision for us we're not going to vote and we should make it clear to the public we're not working we can take on it with that we can take we can take we can take a position but ultimately it's for the the landowners to decide and so you know the city must be looking at if they have great opposition most landowners don't want this and they're motivated they can they can they can stop the process So if we know there are owners that are going to object and be vocal in campaigning against it, if I were working for the city, I would remove those from the annexation plan because I don't think it's helping it pass. And there may be others that want city services, right? I have some constituents that basically live in the city of Ukiah. They're at the edge, and they would probably benefit from city services. So as you said, I'm not against annexation overall. You know, I may be against some of the specifics of an annexation plan. I haven't seen a formal plan yet. I've seen the beginning of a plan, and I think we're giving feedback, and a consultant could give more feedback, but... How so I think the ad hoc should feel empowered to pass along any information we get from constituents of that They're objecting and why they're objecting and what they recommend Super

to get off mute. Supervisor Williams, if you have constituents that are interested in being annexed, please pass their information along to me because I would love to talk to them and just hear from them. I really have yet to find anyone who wants to be annexed and that's part of what my problem with this process is overall is I do not see the community being interested in this annexation proposal.

Miss Pierce, are you comfortable with the direction?

Can we get a clear statement of the direction?

Yeah, so we're looking for an independent analysis to, I guess, basically do the fiscal, walk us through the projections. That sound right, Supervisor?

Make sure it's agreeable to both parties.

That the person doing the work is agreeable, correct? Understood. Thank you. OK. All right. We'll open the podium up for public comment.

Tracy McNerlin. My dad is a disabled veteran, and he lives in the proposed annexation area. So I'm speaking for him and my stepmom today. You mentioned the truth, wanting to know the truth. And I think part of the reason a lot of the people out here don't want annexation is because we're not getting the full truth when we go to the city workshop, right? The Ukiah Valley Fire Authority was touted as this great success story about this city joining this district and how great it's working out. Three days later, pops up on Facebook, They're going to need money and they want to pass a bond to raise all our taxes to raise money for that service. That's not a great success story. Where's the truth in that? The truth is in your constituents. A lot of your area, Supervisor Williams, not a lot of your area, some of your district is the annex area. So when I drive to my dad's house from 101, to Bourbon Lane, right, which maybe some of that is, maybe some is not, I saw 23 no annexation signs within like a half a mile. So my suggestion would be if any of you have any of your areas that are in this proposed annexation area, why don't you just get a text messaging service and send out a survey and ask your constituents what they want. You know, why do we have to go through this whole process over here with the city, wait for them to annex, wait for them to send a letter, and then we have to protest it? Why don't you just find out what they want now? It's really not that hard. And you talk about the city's economic plan. i would love for the city to incorporate their economic plan now has anyone looked downtown and seen all the vacant storefronts that we have how businesses are shutting down because of the taxes and the fees and the license fees how it's just not worth it anymore implement a successful economic plan, let me see that they can make Ukiah a healthy economic environment, and then maybe talk about making the boundaries bigger. But I'm not seeing it. I see homelessness everywhere. I see 10 windows broken for eight different businesses downtown. It's crazy. I... I had to work with the city of Ukiah as part of the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District. And this was, I don't know, five, 10 years ago. Three of the members on that city council are in this room today. As a sanitation district, we saw some discrepancies in finances, and we asked to have them reconciled. And the city said, yeah, there are some discrepancies, but you're never going to get that money from us. So we had to sue them to get that money. And that was a five-year lawsuit, and that is how difficult it was to work with the city, and it's the same players sitting here today. So I know how difficult that can be. This is a gigantic annexation, and I think it needs to be reconsidered.

Thank you.

Board of Supervisors, my name is Eileen Russell, and I'm here today representing Mendocino Forest Products and Mendocino Redwood Company. And I'm here to make comment to oppose the latest annexation boundaries proposed by the city of Ukiah, which includes several parcels, including the Ukiah Sawmill. We own and operate just under 230,000 acres in Mendocino County. and several large industrial sites near Willits, Fort Bragg, and Ukiah. MFP MRC is a Mendocino County business in every sense and should remain in Mendocino County jurisdiction. Thousands of local citizens depend on MFP MRC business activities. The benefits are far reaching, including hundreds of direct jobs throughout Mendocino County, comprehensive health benefits that support local health care providers, charitable investments in schools agriculture and senior programs and ongoing support for local contractors and suppliers after meetings with the city of ukiah attending public meetings and review of public information mfp mrc has concluded including our company's parcels in the annexation area will have a detrimental impact the latest annexation boundary splits the physical business into with some in the city and some in the county and the most glaring example divides the sawmill complex this could lead to compliance issues and greater expense And annexation into the city of Ukiah will create limits on the business and increase expenses to the detriment of the entire community. And there is no map which could be drawn to bring MFP, MRC into the city of Ukiah effectively. And any reduction in county funding for the sheriff's office will impact response time and services. We have a longstanding relationship with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, and that benefits the entire community. So thank you for considering our position here and in future discussions.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is John Radnich. I had some notes made, but I guess the way this is being presented, they don't really apply here, but I'd like to say a couple of things. You guys are talking about A versus B, the city versus the county, and how to get together on it. And I think Supervisor Klein made a good comment about she hasn't talked to any of the people in the proposed annexed area that want to be annexed. If you drive around and look at all the no annexation signs you see, you can see that the opposition is pretty overwhelming. Most of these people here are here because they don't want to be annexed. And I think you five supervisors, you know that you're the representatives of the people. And in this case, the people of the annexed area. It's not a decision to what's good for the people or who thinks something's better. It's what the people want. And they don't want to be annexed. At the last city meeting, Ross Liberty, who's not here, brought up a point that the city could put up an advisory vote. of the people and have it on the November ballot. That could be the people in the annexed area and just see if they want it or not. The LAFCO procedure is kind of skewed. They send out a letter. You've got to send in a protest. And they only count the negatives they get back. Well, if you look at our last election, half of the people voted. So you've got to have 25% of the people return these letters with negative comments. That's pretty much the 50% of the people to actually vote. So right to start with, it's making that a bad process. So I think the county could put it on the ballot in November, which is coming up in a few months. Be an advisory vote. Those of us in the proposed annexed areas Do we want to be annexed, yes or no? And make your decisions on how to proceed based on that. And you should do that before you go and spend money on financial consultants or spend any further time discussing it. If the people don't want it, you should say no because of that. But anyway, I thank you for your time.

Thank you, Chair. Yes. I think it would be helpful if you were to explain what our role is in this process, because some of the public comment, I don't want to mislead the public that we're decision makers on this. It's not going to come to us for a vote, right? So, you know, it could be everyone's against it and we know it in the annex area. And I certainly hear from a lot of people that they don't want it. And I'm not in a position to lobby anybody that they should. All I can advocate for is that we have good information about what the outcome would be and what the finances would be and how it would impact services. But based on public comment, I'm worried that there may be a disconnect in understanding what our authority is in this process.

Well, I think Supervisor Klein pointed it out earlier, and I think we do have a role in this, and I think it's important to hear from the public on their opinion on this, because in the end, if the City of Ukiah does submit a proposal, the city or the county has an opportunity to either support or oppose. So I think hearing from the public whether they want it or not is important information that we should hear. Go ahead.

Good afternoon. My name is Steve Miller. I have proudly lived in Mendocino County since 1947 and I've enjoyed my life here and I want to continue. During that time the Board of Supervisors for the county has made some great decisions and they've made some awful decisions and I'm hoping that today I can share some information that will help you make a very good decision. Before I get into that, I am opposed to the annexation. I want to live in the county. I don't want to be any part of this city. I don't trust them. I came here today to ask you to please vote to end the master tax sharing agreement.

Yes, sir. I don't want to interrupt you. I'll add more time if you need it. But the MTSA is actually the next agenda item.

So I need to sit down and start over or what?

Well, if you don't mind, if you could save that comment for the next item.

I'll do it.

Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Janelle Rowe, and I am here speaking today on behalf of the Employers Council of Mendocino County doing business as Mendo Matters. Mendo Matters supports annexation in principle when it is driven by demonstrated community need, supported by those that most directly affected, and accompanied by clear evidence that it will improve services, protect community character, and provide long-term fiscal sustainability. We do not believe these standards have yet been met with this proposal First annexation should solve a problem not simply move boundaries Many residents already receive acceptable fire police road and emergency services through the county or special districts where is the evidence that existing services are deficient and what new services will annex residents and businesses receive in return and Second, annexation may bring higher costs and increase regulation. Residents and businesses could face higher utility rates, permit fees, assessments, business license costs, and expanded code enforcement without corresponding benefits. Third, annexation does not guarantee infrastructure improvements. Residents deserve to know how future roads, drainage systems, and other infrastructure projects will be funded before annexation occurs, not afterwards. Fourth, many residents value the rural character of these neighborhoods. Future city councils will control land use decisions. And history has shown that expanding city boundaries often leads to increased development pressure and the gradual loss of agricultural land and open space. Fifth, this proposal shifts tax revenue away from the county. Those revenues support countywide services that every citizen in this county relies upon. Reducing the county's tax base could further strain roads, public health programs, and law enforcement, to name a few. The concern is compounded by the master tax sharing agreement. And I know that we're not on that, but it is tied. Mendo Matters supports the efforts of Supervisors Klein and Norvell and encourages the board to terminate that agreement, which I'll speak on again on the next item. Finally, this proposal has advanced without sufficient public outreach or an independent fiscal analysis. Residents deserve a clear understanding of the long-term costs and consequences before such a significant change is approved. Mendo Matters respectfully urges the board to proceed cautiously and ensure that these questions are fully answered before moving forward. And we thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Hopefully I won't ramble too much. This is off the cuff. Dan Edwards, I'm a District 1 resident, I think, for like 25 years. And I used to be at District 4, the coastal one. So some things I just want you to consider is that if this does guess implement district what is it district five and district one will also be part of the city of Ukiah which means we could have three board members that are all from the city of Ukiah which is gonna run the whole county just think about that whether it'll happen or not I don't know but it's a possibility my concerns is with the with just of the budget with the sheriff's office and also other public safety stuff that come out of the general fund I'm just afraid that we're gonna end up having less deputies and it's gonna affect you know the entire county as I've been to every one of their meetings I don't trust the city of Ukiah based on back when Mason I had closed and that company approached the board not you guys but the people that used to occupy your seats and they they basically wanted to purchase the property and have it rezoned so they can put Costco there. The city of Ukiah was anti that. The board was not making a decision, so they put it up to the voters. The city of Ukiah, I'm pointing to them because they're right here, the city of Ukiah decided that they would launch a campaign to make it be an evil thing, and their big The big push was to make it so that all the mom and pop businesses in the city of Ukiah were going to shut down because this big Costco animal is going to come in and ruin everything. At the time, I was the president of the Deputy Sheriff's Association, and we came out in support of it. This was going to bring funding to the county, more deputies, more tax dollars and whatnot. The city was successful in killing the project, and they immediately purchased the property next to Fowler's there. and then sold the property to the same company, and then Costco came in. And now I have to spend my money in the city of Ukiah, which I don't like. I like spending money in the county. And the other concern I have is with just the business licenses. Business licenses, if you own a business in the county of Mendocino, you pay about $270 for your initial permit, and then it's $40 a year after that. Once it becomes the city of Ukiah, I'm not sure what their prices are completely, but it's based on your gross revenue. So as I pointed out last time, I have a friend that owns a business that does about $4 million in, I guess, taxable or whatever that's considered for the business licenses. And so his business license will... increased from $40 a year to around $5,000. Is he going to pay that? No. Who's going to pay that? Us, the byproducts from them. So this is just a lose-lose for the county. So please just make sure you look at all the T's and the I's and cross them or dot them or not. Thank you.

Thank you.

Through the chair, if I may, could I please get a restatement of the speaker's name? I'm sorry. Dan Edwards.

Hi, my name is Vicki Turner, and I just wanted to thank you guys. I've been to all the no annexation meetings, and when you go to the city, they speak in circles. I can understand everything you guys are saying, and it makes sense. So thank you. And I am in Madeline's district right now, and if I call the sheriff, he comes. I just like the services I get at the county. I don't feel Ukiah's ran well, and I think you need to cut the master tax plan.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Armand Brent. I live in Ukiah. And again, I think I'm going to be maybe the sole minority view here. I feel compelled to speak. Most folks don't like the term annexation, and I don't like it either. So I'd like to reframe the concept as a plan that provides for the future health of the Ukiah Valley. I've been to several annexation meetings and researched the issue. And I sincerely believe that the greater Ukiah community is at a crossroads. I understand that many people just don't want to be part of the city. But as far as I can tell, there will be no perceptible change in terms of quality of life, taxes, zoning, and so forth. But to me, a great deal is at stake. For example, some of the small water districts are in dire need of serious upgrades, costs that could run into millions of dollars. The city is in a position to take the lead on water issues and therefore access state money intended to subsidize consolidation efforts. But this critical need to create stability and efficiency depends on annexation. Planned affordable housing, timely road maintenance, more reliable law enforcement coverage, and fire mitigation services are also tied to planning for the future health of our valley. I'm not sure why there's been such a concerted and well-financed effort to resist this plan for the future health of the greater Ukiah community. Perhaps it's just a sign of the times. But raising unsubstantiated fears among property owners is short-sighted in my view. We should instead be focused on securing a viable future in this valley for our children and generations to come. The revised sapling annexation plan will allow the city to very incrementally recoup enough income to pay for the existing services it already provides without reimbursement to areas outside its city limits and provide additional needed services. In the annexation meetings I've attended, I've watched city personnel berated and ridiculed. I'd like to ask my neighbors to remember that not all governmental efforts are intended to disenfranchise community members. Sometimes government exists to serve its constituents, especially municipal government, and I believe Ukiah is exemplary in this regard. Thank you.

Thank you. I do.

Sir, I have a question for you, a question for the speaker. Thank you. Your talking points today sound almost word for word sometimes, like what I've heard from the city of Ukiah. And actually, some of those words were exactly out of the letter that they sent to us this week. Can I ask, did the city of Ukiah ask you to come and speak today?

No, they did not.

OK. Thank you.

And I resent the implication.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Mike Bazzani, a business owner, retired deputy, and former police officer for the city of Ukiah. What he just said about better services and whatnot, you all really need to come to their little meetings they have. My son works in town. There was a dead homeless guy across the street at Mill and Main Street. for pretty much all day. They called at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Police department thinks the guy's dead. They showed up at 5 o'clock. There isn't that much crime going on in the city of Kiowa. I know. I used to work there. All right? The chief of police was at the meeting. He said that was today. He had no clue about it. He was going to look into it. Haven't heard anything back from him yet. So you might consider it. They're great services that they want to provide. Thank you.

Thank you. We're not seeing anyone else. We'll check online again. Yes, sir.

My name is Warren Colombo. I'm 62 years old. I moved to Ukiah in 1993. I'm definitely against the annexation. I live on the south end of town, and there's no annexation signs everywhere. And nobody wants it. And this gentleman here was saying how great the city is. It's not. The county having the sheriff's office and that, is so much better services for us. And they're talking about where the money is coming from or what it is. And it's like, oh, well, city of Ukiah just picked up five water districts. My water bill used to be through Willow was $65 a month. Now it's $98 a month. It's like that's going to be the wave of it, and you're not going to get the services. And everybody talks about the BS and the annexation. How many acres are they trying to annex in to pick up all their tax dollars? How many? 9,000 acres? 4,000 acres? Mo, you know. Sage, you know. How many acres are they trying to pick up?

MO ROCCA- Sir, if you could address the board, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

OK, well, I'm just wondering. She's part of the board. How many acres? I don't know, Warren. It's ridiculous. This other lady that spoke first talking about the downtown and how, oh, it's going to make the city great. It's not. There's so many businesses that are out of business. They're boarded up. There's rent. There's homeless everywhere. And they're like, well, where is the money being spent that is in the city of Ukiah. That's what I want to know. Where is the money being spent? Because it's not downtown. It's not going to the people. So you used to have a section, a block of streets with seven parking spaces. Now they have five, because we did these things that go out and around. And eliminated a parking spot on each side for each block. And then you got to drive out into the center lane to get around it. And everybody's sitting there.

I apologize for interrupting you again. But if you could just speak into the microphone.

I speak pretty loud.

You do. Thank you. A lot of time I'm a little loud for other people.

So is that good enough?

Perfect.

Thank you.

But anyways, the... crap that's going on with the... It's like, oh, we're spending all this extra money to beautify the city. We're going to bring all this money into the county. I'll tell you what. All it's done is raised everybody's taxes. So if you've raised my taxes, I have less money to spend in this county. So you really think you're bringing people from Santa Rosa or... or Lake County to spend their money here because we beautified the streets and took out two parking spaces for every city block. I mean, it's ridiculous. Oh, we have nicer looking lights. It doesn't do jack crap for the taxpayers that are spending their money. So where is the money going? Like, all the taxes, where's the money going? I mean, is it going to the city managers? I mean, I know Sage. I've known him for a very long time. He's my middle son's best friend. That's his uncle.

Thank you, sir. I've allowed you to go over because I did interrupt you twice, so if you could wrap it up, I'd appreciate it.

all right well that kind of sucks but uh the money is being pissed away in a bad spot extremely bad spot was that loud enough thank you hi thank you for letting me address the board my name is lori williams and i live on the south side of town um

When he brought up the water, it compelled me to come up and speak. I was with Willow Water District for years. And we live in an area where there's 30 houses that aren't really well served by any water, because pumps have to pump the water off the hill. And we've always had water problems. My water bill did go up. We've had one outage since the city was in control. I'm happy to say that they were very responsive to the problem. However, they couldn't guarantee it wasn't going to happen again. And they said that they don't have any plans to fix the problem. that willow water district was working on at the time and i might be ignorant and some of the things going on behind the scenes but um that scares me i just want to make sure that the board and i know you carefully consider everything to the best of your ability and you're all smart I think part of the problem that the constituents are having, call it ignorance, people don't know what's going to happen. They don't know what to expect and they're afraid because it's going to cost us more money. And we don't have more money. We're already paying as much as we can. So every little aspect does need to be checked and crossed off before anything is passed. I don't think there's enough information getting out to the public so the public is scared maybe if some pros and cons i don't know if maybe the journal would a lot of people don't come to these meetings i rarely come to this meeting but this is important to me i like living in the county i love my little unincorporated area of the world um i have nothing against the city of ukiah if i wanted to live in it i would be And so I think more information needs to get out to the people about exactly what is occurring. And I know you don't even know the ramifications yet. But every time there's an idea or something that's set in stone, people need to be told. And maybe if it is good, more people will be on board. No information is not going to help. It just makes us scared. So thank you for hearing me. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

My name's LaManda Walker. I'm going to apologize. I have really bad social anxiety, so it's huge for me to be here. I live on the north end, up near the works. And I bought my property in the county because I like peace and quiet. I am a disabled veteran. And as the city bought their piece of property over on Carousel Lane, knowing they bought it in the county, I feel like that has a huge push of why they are trying to annex up north, that far north. My husband and I, my husband wants to open a business, but right now we're in limbo. We don't want to open a business right now because if we get annexed into the city, the fees are going to be a lot higher so there's no point in us even trying to open a business right now um there's a lot of worries that i have like everybody else my water bill actually my water bill's tripled and i'm using the same amount of water So I'm super concerned. And then there's, like everybody else said, there's a lot of businesses, empty businesses in the city of Ukiah. There's still a lot of roads in the city of Ukiah that have potholes. So why are you not taking care of your people that live in the city of Ukiah before trying to annex us out in the county? Take care of those in the city first. Because with this annexation, what you're proving to the people that live in the city is they don't matter. You don't matter. We care more about annexing more people. And that's my biggest concern. And I've talked to a lot of people that I know that live in the city limits, and that's their concern. They're like, we feel like they don't care about us anymore. You know, I feel like they should take a poll to see who wants to be annexed. But it hasn't happened, and I don't think it's going to happen. Because honestly, they've shown that they don't care how any of us feel that live out in the county who are in the proposed annexation area. So I really ask you, Board of Supervisors, to help us and be our voice. Because we feel like they don't care, but we do. And that's why we're still here fighting. And we will continue to fight till the very end.

Thank you.

My name's Steve Roberts. And I don't want to insult anybody, but I feel like if I asked the city of Ukiah a question, they're going to have an answer. But everybody up here, we have to go to a more professional. Or I just don't feel like she put up the fact that we should look at annexing smaller areas at a time, not just go for the whole thing. But I don't feel like the county, I can be wrong, has done their homework on this whole situation. We don't have answers. That's my opinion, OK? But I see you asking questions, but it's not like, We're prepared to give answers. I could be totally wrong. But you haven't looked at other alternatives like she brought up. Let's look at annexing a smaller area. The city talks about how great it is when we're going to be annexed to the downtown Ukiah, all the beauty and all that. And I'm with the other people here. The downtown is dead. It really is dead. The buildings are half empty. The rents are too high. That's only my opinion. And thank you.

Thank you.

I'm from District 5 in Ukiah. I wasn't planning on addressing this issue at all with you, because where I live, I have no threat of being annexed ever. I wanted to thank you, the ad hoc committee and staff, for bringing the information forward that you have, because I think as expressed here, we don't know what this means for the county. And it's really scary as we face the budget crises that we have been currently in the last few years, and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better, what this actually means for us. And I really appreciate the information that staff brought forward today, starting to paint a picture for us about what it means. And I think it's important that we talk in clear text and say that when we talk about the sheriff that, yeah, the deputies are going to go somewhere else. We're not going to cut any deputies, but it means he can go somewhere else. And roads, as I understand it, Our road money comes from the state. So if we lose 18 miles or whatever roads, does that mean we're going to get less money to fix the roads we have? And I think those are the kind of pictures that you as our county representatives need to paint for us. And I appreciate this conversation and this discussion, and I hope it continues. I hope the ad hoc committee continues because, as was expressed, you are our voice for those who live in the unincorporated area. And I encourage every one of the constituents in the districts to contact your supervisor directly and let them know where you stand on this if you are in the annexed area so they know exactly what it is you want and why, so they can be your voice. And I hope these conversations and these reports out continue so that we can see the effect that it's going to have on us as a county as we try to do the business that we need to do. So I just wanted to share that, and I hope that we see more of these reports. Thanks.

Thank you.

My name's Helen Sizemore. I live in the city of Ukiah. I contacted the city because when I turn off of State Street onto Brush and try to go towards the freeway, there is a small part of the road that is flat, and then the rest of the road is awful. And the city said, it's the county that controls that. When you go north on State Street, it's terrible, bumpy, pothole. I mean, it's the main street of our town, and it's a mess. And it's the county. And when I contacted my supervisor, Mulhern, she said, it's on the books for 2028. So that means we have a mess of roads in the city that the county is responsible for. I don't know how that's going to get fixed, annexation or not. The county needs to take care of the center of the city of Ukiah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the board, Chair Norvell, Matt Kendall, Sheriff. I heard a couple of people and a couple of the supervisors saying that we'll just move deputies into other locations and we won't lose any deputies. Well, I'm sorry. Looking at the numbers, I appreciate the fact that we're going to try to get a good look at this and get the real data about what we will lose and what we will gain. But right now, I think that we're agreeing on what we will lose. That's how I feel about it. If we lose that much revenue, do not tell me that we will not lose deputies. The sheriff's office is public safety, but folks tend to forget public safety is also the district attorney, the public defender, probation. We have several services. I'm also the coroner. We have several services that work within the city on a constant basis. We will not see less work out of that. As a matter of fact, the price is going up all the time. When we look at that and we say, okay, we're going to have less revenue, and I believe that the slide deck that Ms. Pierce brought forward, the numbers were almost equal, the city's projections, our projections, because they came from the same place. Do you think that, can anybody up here give me a guarantee that public safety will not be affected by this? Absolutely not. So, some of our supervisors may feel like, well, you know, this is a question for the 1st and 2nd District. Well, it's really not. It's a question for the entire county. And so if we start losing revenue, we will lose deputy sheriffs on the south coast. I've got a resident in Covalo at this point. I don't know if I can afford to keep those folks on. And when we look at who takes on the largest portion of the general fund revenue out of that roughly $94 million, yeah, the sheriff's office is a big bite out of it. But we've got a lot of other folks who actually have to work in the city, including myself, because the duties of the sheriff are not just patrol. I keep the jail, also the coroner, all civils. I have to protect the judges. Those are all duties of the sheriff. Those duties are not going away. Anyway, when you think about this, think about the revenue loss. Can anyone guarantee me that public safety will not be affected? If you can't, then I think we need to take a really good, hard look at this. Thank you.

Thank you, Sheriff.

I was going to try to stay quiet. My name is Ed Gall. I've lived in Mendocino County most of my life, except for when I had to go away for work. I've been in law enforcement for almost 50 years. Supervisor Klein, if you ever decide to go in law enforcement, I think you got a good role. I think that you can pick out an imposter that probably is sitting with the rest of the city of Ukiah people. Mr. Williams? just like everybody else is. Drive through your area, talk to your constituents, and you will find that a lot of people in your area do not want the annexation. I think it's all about money. It comes down to money. That's all the city wants.

Thank you. Thank you. OK, not seeing anyone else, we'll check online again.

Seeing no comments online.

Okay. Before we close this item out, we'll bring it back to the board. Any more discussion? Supervisor Haschak?

Well, I just wanted to make sure that we gave direction for the assistant CEO to look for a mutually agreed to consultant or person who could look at this. And we didn't talk about the finance of it afterwards. So is the city of Ukiah going to pay for this person, or are we going to split it?

Well, we're certainly willing to ask that question in our next meeting.

OK, so.

All right, we'll leave it at that. Myself, I'm on board with you. It's their project. I think they should pay for it, but I'm happy to bring it up.

Right, because we're looking at setting a precedent on this case, too. Absolutely. So whatever happens here probably happens next time.

Yes, agreed. OK. Ms. Pierce, you sound good with the direction? I'm good. Yep. OK. We're going to move on to item R9.

Chair, before we get going, I just want to let you know that I have another meeting I have to leave for. I'm going to jump on this end, so I'll be available there.

Thank you. Item R9, discussion and possible action, including adoption of a resolution to terminate Board of Supervisors Agreement Number 24085, Master tax sharing agreement between the county of Mendocino and the cities of Ukiah, Willits, Fort Bragg, and Point Arena. Due to fiscal operational impacts arising notification of the signatory cities of Mendocino, And direction to staff to notify Mendocino Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, that the county anticipates the proposed annexation would create a substantial risk to the provision of mandated public protection services consistent with the framework established by Mendocino County Policy Number 13, Annexation. Sponsors, Chair Norvell, myself, and Supervisor Klein. So again, since we're asking for direction, I'll hand the gavel to the Vice Chair.

Would the sponsor like to present?

Yeah, I'll go first. So basically what we have here is a year ago tomorrow, Supervisor Williams brought this agenda item. The resolution, I believe, is the same resolution and the agenda summary is the same. At that time, we had a very lengthy discussion. He did it sometimes about whether it was right or wrong to terminate the MTSA. Supervisor Mulhern and Williams and Haschek were very adamant that we should terminate it. Supervisor Klein and I asked for an opportunity to meet and confer with the City of Ukiah, go through the process for one year. And I know I said at least more than one time that after a year, if we weren't comfortable with the discussions or the proposed annexation area, that we'd be happy to bring it back and vote along with them to I believe I misspoke and Mulhern was against it was just supervisor Williams and hash check and supervisor Klein and I asked for the one year to negotiate with the city or at least confer and if we felt any different after a year that we would bring the item back so that's why we're here today supervisor Klein oh sorry

Yeah, I'd like to add, again, want to stay true to this process. We asked for additional time. We went through kind of the pause of the original annexation proposal. Then the city brought forward a slightly different but still very similar annexation proposal. I think my biggest concern is that While the terms are somewhat favorable to the county in terms of the revenue sharing, the scope of annexation makes that kind of a moot point, given that it's such a large area and will have a large impact to the county finances when speaking about the specific city proposal. And then also the process laid out in this master tax sharing agreement, I do not feel works. We have tried really hard the ad hoc has and county staff has to work with the city of Ukiah and to have productive conversations. And frankly, our conversations are not productive. And I'm not confident that this tax sharing agreement lays out a process that will ever be productive with the city of Ukiah.

Board discussion? Not seeing any. Supervisor Haschek?

Well, you know, I appreciate what Supervisor, or Chair Norvell said, but the recommended action is to terminate the agreement. And so I'm looking at it. You know, I voted against it originally. And last year, when Supervisor Williams brought it up, I was ready to vote against it too. But I guess that I've been thinking about it as this structure that we have the framework and i wish that mr bacher were here because he was one who really guided us through this process that took several years to come up with and he said at the time that it was a very good framework it was favorable to the county And I just look, if we don't have this framework at this point, are we going to have to do everything individually, city by city, every time it comes forward to recreate something? It will take a couple of years to recreate the process. I don't know if the particular situation of the city of Ukiah is such that it's It's affecting what we do with the master tax sharing agreement. So I'm just trying to figure that out of where do we go from here if we don't have this tax sharing agreement in the future. I'll just leave it at that for now.

Council?

If I may, through the chair, Special Counsel Bucker is online.

Is that where you were? Yeah. Do you want to call on him now?

Yeah, if he could talk to us about, does he still believe that this is a favorable approach for the county? And if not, is there something that we can do to, can we adopt or modify it in some way? Because for me, part of it was when you're talking about the balanced approach, i think that some of that language wasn't really clarified at the time and so we're struggling right now to see what is really balanced and and move forward because we can't just say we're not going to do annexations with any of the cities anyway sure i'm happy to comment can everyone hear me yes okay so um

I did say it was a good agreement. That's been quoted back at me several times. And what I meant was, that as far as master tax exchange agreements go, this is a good one. It has the city sharing sales tax and other revenues with the county. Usually in an annexation, the city gets to keep sales tax and transient occupancy tax revenue and things like that, and the county doesn't get any of those revenues. And so my point was that this particular annexation tax exchange agreement is favorable to the county visa the other master tax exchange agreements. But it is the case in many other counties when an annexation would cause harm to the county that the county would just choose not to not to enter into a tax exchange agreement because it would be harmful. So in the absence of a master property tax exchange agreement, the city and the county would have to negotiate on each annexation proposal and the county would decide whether or not to enter into the agreement. And I think many counties would under those circumstances, choose not to enter into the agreement if it felt the annexation was harmful. So, I mean, as far as master property tax exchange agreements go, it is among the better ones I've seen. But there also is a harm associated with annexation in this particular case. And if we didn't have the master tax exchange agreement, you wouldn't be obligated to accept that harm.

Supervisor Norvell.

Yeah, thank you. So I think One of the issues that the ad hoc committee was struggling with in this process, and I think it goes back to the previous board's decision to accept this, was nobody, I don't think anybody anticipated maybe outside of, except from the city of Ukiah, the size of the annexation that they were going to propose. I know when I was on the city council, we were talking about a little bit of East Fort Bragg because the people were running into water and septic problems and the hookups were right there. We had, we took one, there was discussion about annexing the harbor, very small. We took it to committee. Half the owners showed up and said, absolutely, we don't want it. So we dropped it, right? With the master tax sharing agreement, you don't have that opportunity. If the city of Ukiah proposes like they did, They can negotiate with you, but they do not have to. This is their proposal. You don't have any leverage. And I was hoping Mr. Bakker would speak to the leverage aspect of this. You've lost all of your leverage to negotiate whether this is a good deal or not deal, a bad deal. And if you don't have the tax sharing agreement, what it does is it forces the city of Ukiah or whoever it is, to come to you with something that maybe isn't so bad that you can work and get to a happy medium on. At this point, the only tool that you have as a supervisor to oppose this is a resolution that you're going to present to LAFCO. If the city of Ukiah sticks with this map and sends it to LAFCO, It's up to the voters in the area to either support it or not, but you have absolutely no say. And, you know, everybody's concerned that the numbers we put out are premature because we don't know the size of it. But based on the size, and again, City of Ukiah has been very clear. This is the smallest map that pencils out for them. They're not going to do anything smaller than this by much. So this is what we're stuck with. And at year 15 or 16, you're talking about a $34 million hit to your coffers. Are there going to be some things that offset that? Absolutely. But where are we going to come up with the rest of the money that this annexation is going to cost the county to pay for all the things that we need to pay for? So I think the main point is you have zero leverage with this tax sharing agreement. Now, if the city of Ukiah came to us with a very small, my guess was the city of Ukiah was going to do this in pieces. They didn't. We know what they're going to do. They came out with a very large one in the beginning. They got some heat from the community, so they went back in-house. They shrunk it down, but it's still very huge. And like I said, at year 15 or 16, it's $34 million to the county. So until we can come up with a way to regenerate those revenues, we're going to have to figure out you know, how bad this hurts us. And you don't, you have no negotiating leverage whatsoever with this tax sharing agreement.

Supervisor Klein.

Yeah, within that same vein, I've spoken with colleagues from across the state, other rural communities, some small, some larger, some much more advanced than us, and almost every single person I spoke with said no, I would never sign a master tax sharing agreement specifically because it removes the leverage and it removes the specificity of leverage you have over certain areas that folks want to annex.

Not seeing any further board, any staff comments. I'd like to ask the city of Ukiah if they'd like to speak before we go to public comment. Ideally about how we work together. My concern is that we don't lose county services, and I don't think that's your intent, but this would be a good time to have a discussion about how that might work.

Sage San Giacomo, city manager for the city of Ukiah. Appreciate the discussion. I appreciate the public input today We are in that process of taking in input. We're adjusting we started off with a map that was highly driven by the provision of critical life and health and safety services And and supported by the water districts that were included within that and we have since through this process over the last year significantly revamped. And we're still in that process of doing that. I appreciate, Supervisor Williams, I think your comment earlier on the last item, that we don't have the information yet. And so I understand why the public is concerned, why it's scary. But we shouldn't be making choice-limiting decisions. Nothing changes tomorrow if you take action one way or another. As it was reported, the faster tax sharing agreement, because of knee-jerk reactions, had the five-year clause in it. So that way, we didn't have knee-jerk reactions in that all boards that were involved with an annexation or consideration, we had to be able to vet that information. We'd be able to go through that process. Currently, you have a partner at the table who is wanting to vet that. The current proposal is within the designated and balanced areas, not even all of those areas, but shrunk from that, that was included and required by the county to be included in the master tax sharing agreement. It wasn't something the cities asked for. It was something that the county asked for. And those maps were drawn in relation to what the county wanted in the master tax sharing agreement. So you have a partner. with the cities who are working towards perhaps our first annexation, maybe not. But that still yet has to be vetted. The information needs to be vetted. I think the discussion about bringing in people who might know more than us to be able to ask the questions that need to be asked, because there were certainly things here this afternoon that I would disagree with, and I'm sure the county would disagree with certain things. But bringing in people that are smarter than us, that have gone through this process, that know what questions to ask or not or what to examine, the cost of services versus does it save money or does it shift money in directions, these are things that we don't know yet. And we should have that information before we decide to cancel an agreement or to proceed with an annexation. The city of Ukiah is not proceeding with an annexation at this time. We're simply in the drafting and the consideration phase of that. So again, there is no shot clock that's on the Board of Supervisors or on the community that's readily apparent that I think justifies throwing all of this away.

So you can imagine at least four of the supervisors up here are going to have issue with any plan that causes the sheriff to lose deputies, right? Because we're going to have to tell people in the unincorporated that they're getting a lower level of service. How does the county work with the city on formulating a plan that won't have that outcome?

Yeah, I think that is, again, through this process, because it's not just about the sheriff's office, right? But I think people would be upset if we see what happens in Clear Lake with the sewer districts and failures happen in the unincorporated county, or we see the loss of water, or not being able to have water, or droughts, or other things. You have to look at the totality of the services and the provisions that are in there and find balance. Those are all things that deserve consideration, including the Sheriff's Department's concerns with regarding to staff. Because we're not talking about trying to take away from one or the other. We are trying to rise all boats. What is good for the county is good for the cities, and what's good for the cities is good for the county. And so that's what we're trying to achieve.

I think supervisor Norville has a question for you yeah just if you could clarify because I know in the last meeting your attorney Mr. Williams answered this question for us but I've heard from several people in the community that feel like they've heard different so in a lot of these ad hoc meetings that we've had discussions on it seems to most of the time circle back to the safer grant money which you're talking about with the water districts and the sanitation districts and the need to bring up the rest of the community, and fix that infrastructure. Could you tell this board, and for the benefit of the public, whether or not you need annexation as an absolute in order to get the safer grant money?

nothing is absolute there's always alternate there's always alternatives but what i will speak to is the agreement for the water agencies and putting that together took nearly two years to put that together and get everybody on the same page something i never thought i would see in my lifetime here of bringing partnerships together bringing the fire district together, bringing the sanitation team, all of these bringing us together as partners is the key to success in Mendocino County. Division is not going to get there. And so this just deserves, I mean, I think all we're asking for at this point, it deserves more deliberation, more fact finding, more discussion. I think as staff, we owe that to the decision makers, to LAFCO, and to the community. Those are all things that we should be doing as staff is bringing forward and answering these questions and vetting and coming forward with the most reliable information so that good decisions could be made. Right now, the county's own staff report says there's things that are missing. Why would we move forward with any decision that would throw everything away when we're all in agreement that there's items that are missing? And it's not just fiscal analysis. It's service delivery analysis that needs to go into the conversation. Because it's not just about money. Really, government's here to provide a service, a service that hopefully means something, And certainly when we're talking about water, sheriff, police, fire, all of these, I think, do mean something to most of our community members. It deserves a greater discussion.

Supervisor Norvell.

Yeah, just lastly, I don't think I got my answer completely. I appreciate you taking the time to answer. at least confirmed for me that in the last two meetings ago, I believe, that we had in your facility that Mr. Williams did confirm that the safer grant money can be achieved without annexation.

I'm not going to speak for anybody else in this discussion. What I've indicated is that are there different ways of doing things? Absolutely, there's different ways of doing things. But it's also whether or not they're practical and feasible. And we have significant concerns related to service delivery for a number of these partnerships we're in as to whether or not they will survive the test of time without figuring out this partnership between the city and the county. Because right now, and I propose here, we're talking about loss of revenue. What have we experienced basically in the past two decades? We're losing ground. Currently, the city of Ukiah, out of all the cities in Mendocino County, has the lowest tax rates that are in place for sales tax. But we are losing ground. We've lost the cannabis industry. We've lost industry. We've lost a number of things that are having those impacts. I could almost assure you that that's the current trajectory if we stay on the course that we're on now and do nothing. Or we could work on these partnerships and figure out how to do better for our community. That is the effort that I think that we need to do. Because we do nothing now, and we don't achieve certain things, and we lose infrastructure, or we have crumbling roads, or we have crumbling waters, or we have sewer that can't be served by some of these other areas. That is going to hurt everybody in Mendocino County, not just the city, not just the county, everybody. And so this absolutely is, I think it was in the council's letter, and it's been repeated today. We are at a crossroads where we can choose a direction. We could choose the same, which 10 years from now, I think we have lost even that much more ground. Or we could choose to figure out a better way to move forward. I hope that we choose the better way to move forward. At least give that the consideration it deserves and the opportunity for potential success Maybe at the end of this conversation, at the end of the day, the city of Ukiah does nothing. The county does nothing, because we figured out it wasn't the best course of action. But right now, we don't know that as we sit here today.

Thank you. I think Supervisor Haschek has a question for you.

Yeah. So the city of Ukiah annexed property in the Western Hills a couple of years ago. So that was without the master tax sharing agreement, correct?

We've done a couple different annexations of city-owned property, and so I'm just losing a little bit track of time. What it was, it was a no-share tax sharing agreement that we reached because there was really no revenues or anything that were being produced from those properties, and the city had acquired those properties to preserve open space in the Western Hills. So yes, we've done that on city-owned properties.

OK, yeah, it's a very different kind of scenario.

It's a different process also under LAFCO.

Right. And certainly, I guess my problem is that when you start talking about all these sales tax generating businesses in the north side of Ukiah, then it becomes very complicated. And one of the reasons why we have this master tax sharing agreement is to kind of create this process beforehand to come up with something that we can move forward with. But in this case, it seems like, looking at the previous agenda item, If we're losing money, then that's a concern for all of us on the board because we have a fiduciary responsibility. But looking forward, I agree that we do need to look at economic development in a new way. And how can we move forward as a county and the city of Ukiah? And so hopefully we can get these analyses done that show that, hey, it's potentially revenue neutral for all of us. It's a win-win that we can move forward into doing something better for everyone going forward. into the future. Because I don't want to have to recreate this process every city, every kind of quadrant we're going to annex. Because the city of Willits wants to do it. The city of Port Bragg has looked at it. But the city of Ukiah, for the scope of it, it kind of threw us all off track.

you want to clarify the question for sage well the question was originally about the western hills yeah and i'm just making a statement it was a city-owned annexation is completely you know uh different on that side of it um but i agree with all the points we should be concerned about the fiscal side of it for the county and the city we should be concerned about the service delivery side of it for the city and the in the county And we need to analyze those points and come forward with that information so public decision makers can weigh in with good information.

Tax collector Cubison.

Thank you. Auditor-controller, treasurer, tax collector, the Western Hills is subject to the master tax sharing agreement.

John, does that answer?

Yeah.

Okay. How do you see? What is the best arrangement for the county to work with the city? I don't want to see hostilities, I want to see us get to the truth, present it, maybe the public supports it, maybe they don't. But it doesn't seem to me that the current arrangement has been productive.

And I agree. We've all struggled through it. But I think difficult things take time. And I have every bit of confidence in working with the county that we could bring collaboration together and hopefully succeed. We want to take forward the proposal. I heard the proposal. Let's talk about fiscal and service. I heard fiscal, but I think it should be fiscal and service. analysis, because that's really the whole picture side of it, and want to take that forward and have that discussion with the city council. And I think that brings in a neutral party that is able to identify things that we're not asking that we should be asking, how to analyze it, and how to perhaps present it and move forward in a way that provides the information in a format that can be digested.

Yeah, so Mike, before you sit down, my question for the ad hoc and for the city is do we want to continue the current working arrangement or is there a better way to do it supervisor has checked earlier brought up having a joint boards the city and the county meet together maybe it'll take several meetings to to catalyze progress but would that get us somewhere in front of the public that's more effective i don't honestly i don't know that we need to go there yet and i'm going to place some blame here but i think

so a lot of what we're doing and what we did on the last agenda item was bringing information forward because the public has concerns right i mean we've got a bunch of people in the room here today you go to the city of ukiah meetings they're concerned you know whether they want annexation or they don't we can only provide information and analyze it based on what we get from the city of ukiah now the city of ukiah is slow rolling that information out and they may have a very valid reason for doing that But my fear is that we're going to get to a point where they're ready to submit and then we're going to have to make a decision. So I'm comfortable with the process that we have have some of the meetings and discussions not been great. Absolutely. But this is a very big deal. It's going to cost money to the county. It's a big deal for the city of Ukiah. So those things are going to happen. I would absolutely appreciate the opportunity to continue down the path that we're on. But we can't analyze or do anything outside of speculation until we get information from the city of Ukiah. And until they're ready to do that, we're kind of in a holding pattern waiting for that to happen. So I don't think the problem is The ad hoc working with the City of Ukiah, I think the problem is the amount of information coming out of the city is not coming out at a speed that is satisfying to the public. And again, City of Ukiah may have a very valid reason. I'm sure they've got a process, but for us as a board to express to the community and for the community to be able to express, it's an extremely frustrating process.

I'm going to interject here. I think three supervisors don't have much visibility into that process. We're not at those ad hoc meetings. So I hear the frustration, but I don't see it firsthand. Is there a list of information that we want to request from the city?