Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

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From everyone, it's 9 to 1. We're going to call to order the regular meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk, if you'd take a roll, please.

Supervisor Klein. Supervisor Mulhern. Here. Supervisor Hashock. Here. Chair Norvell.

Here.

Supervisor Williams. Here.

All right, and Supervisor Klein is going to lead us in the pledge today. I believe you. okay we'll open the podium up to public comment on non-agenda items

Good morning, Supervisors, Chair Norvell, County Council, Interim CEO Pierce. With the Chair's permission, we'd like to address item R5 on the agenda this morning so we can return to our duties.

Please go ahead. Thank you.

At noon yesterday, voting on the tentative agreement between the county and SEIU 1021 closed. We are proud to announce an overwhelming 96.94% approval. We would like to thank the bargaining team, the contract action team, and the membership for their time, dedication, and active participation in negotiation activities. We would also like to thank the management teams and department heads of all departments for supporting an environment where staff felt safe to engage in their constitutional right to participate in collective bargaining. And we would also like to thank you, the Board of Supervisors, for listening and for bargaining in good faith. No unfair labor practices were filed this time around. market improvement over last time. We almost had it done on time. We know how much we all don't love retro contracts, but it gives us something to work towards in two and a half years. So thank you very much, and we urge you to vote yes on item R5. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Lisa Wicke Schaffner, CEO of the North Coast Builder Exchange. We're here today to support and celebrate Sarah being here in her new role. We're very excited about that. I wanted to share with you that we have done some great work with the County of Mendocino with Caltrans and PG&E and different organizations that are here for a resource for you as you walk through all the multifaceted different projects you all have to do. So I wanted to share that and we're excited and happy to be a support here. Number two, we would love to be agendized and I asked that from the Board of Supervisors. We had 40 North Bay Construction Corps school seniors from the county of Mendocino graduate with this this year they are out working there and some of them are employed and we would love to come if you would give us a little bit of time maybe only 10 minutes on the agenda to share with you about that program it is a countywide program and I think you have a lot of hope and some pretty amazing young people out there wanting to be a part and stay in this county and work so I want to share that and And third, I can't help it, but from the Construction Trade Association, we are obviously nervous about any change that happens in planning and building. So anything you can do to make sure that permits still get out the door as expeditiously as we can and done the right way, we are excited and would like to be a part of any changes you make there, too. So thank you very much, and thank you for your work.

Yeah, we'll get you on the agenda. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Edward Aff. I'm just a citizen here. And originally, I was going to speak on behalf of the emergency audience on the moratorium for data centers, data center processing centers. So I've started doing research on this, and there's a mountain of research out there on it. which I'm sure you will discover in the process. But since today is not on the agenda, it's moved forward. I just want to mention a couple of things. In Northern Virginia, well, first of all, when these guys come looking to build a data center, they're looking for cheap land, water, and power. And if they can't find it, they will build power plants. And they will declare eminent domain for power line installation. And they will buy properties. They were spending, at one point, this one rural landowner, they were paying him $45,000 an acre, just as an example. So they create a lot of noise, and they create air pollution. They pollute all the water they use, which is millions of gallons of water a day, more than the city of Ukiah uses in a day of potable water. And they return the water unusable. And they also have noise pollution that will go a mile. That sounds like a constant leaf blower all day long, 24-7. They like to use nondisclosure agreements to prevent local officials and workers from sharing information until the public and poll opportunities have passed. They'd look for any loophole in local ordinances to legitimize their process. And so all I can say is I congratulate you for taking this on. And I really hope you're successful. And whatever you do with the ordinances and this moratorium, make it airtight, because they have expensive lawyers that can find any loophole in order to get their foot in the door. Anyhow, thank you very much for doing what you're doing.

Thank you. Supervisor Hashtag?

Yeah, just for the speaker's knowledge, that it is coming back on September 1.

Anyone else in the room? Madam Clerk?

Seeing no further comment on line.

Okay, thank you. We'll move on to consent calendar. Supervisor Hachek, first, Madam Clerk, has proper notice been established?

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

Okay. Supervisor Hachek has asked for C-26 to be pulled for separate consideration. We'll hear that after consent. Is there any other item that needs to be pulled? Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. I would like it if county council could provide a brief comment on item C-9 related to an email that the board received because of one of the candidates.

Thank you.

So with the chair's permission, we received a letter requesting that the item C-9 be pulled for, which is the certification of the election. And just for information, the board, the certification of the election has to go through pursuant to state code. Whether the board approved it or not, it's sort of irrelevant. It would go through as certified anyway. The issue was related to the third district and whether there was residency there. And with regard to the mandates of the registrar of voters in terms of a candidate, They are not required to verify or determine if a candidate meets the qualifications. They are by law entitled to rely on that candidate's declaration under penalty of perjury, and they do not have any kind of investigative unit. Again, if citizens have concerns in terms of residency, there are actions that citizens can take but not that the county would take.

Thank you. Supervisor Haschek.

Yeah, on item C6, just for information, Supervisor Klein and I were the ad hoc meeting with the Mendocino County Tourism Council and VMC, and we're happy with the outcome of it. You know, part of the changes made to the contract or that accounting of actual expenditures for inland versus the coast will be laid out and provided to the board on quarterly reports. And also, the California Welcome Center will be funded. with the $10,000 matching funds. And so the issue came up because the inland hoteliers that we were talking to were not happy with the representation from the VMC. And so we think that this is a step forward.

Yeah, I just want to say echo Supervisor Hashtag's comments and just appreciation for the collaboration that did happen between the various stakeholders. There wasn't necessarily agreement at the onset, but I think we're in a good place now and we're going to continue the conversation and make sure that we're getting the best results for our community.

Thank you. All right, we'll open the podium to the consent calendar. Any public comments?

Good morning. Aizen Locatelli, Chief Probation Officer. I wanted to quickly, before addressing item C-19, I just wanted to take a minute to honor Chief Probation Officer Marlon Washington of Marin County and his sudden and tragic passing during our state association meeting two weeks ago. This was definitely heartbreaking, unexpected, and prayers to his family and the Marin County Probation Department. C-19 is a proclamation. It's Probation Services Week, July 19th through July 25th. And if the board wouldn't mind, I'd like to just read the proclamation and then make a quick comment. Probation Services Week is observed annually to recognize and celebrate the important work performed by probation professionals throughout the nation. And whereas probation is an alternative to incarceration and the Mendocino County Probation Department delivers pretrial release monitoring, supervision, and rehabilitation services to justice-involved individuals being diverted from incarceration, and reentering the community after incarceration. And whereas probation professionals play a unique and essential role in our justice system and communities as trained experts with instruction in areas such as trauma-informed care, cognitive behavioral therapy, and emotional intelligence, and ensuring they are well equipped to address the complex needs of justice-involved individuals. And whereas probation is a connector In the justice system, bridging the gap and maximizing the resources available within the courts, local governments, law enforcement, social services, behavioral health, schools, crime survivor organizations, nonprofits, and the community to reduce recidivism by carefully balancing direct human services and research-based programming and interventions. Probation staff protect the public safety via proactive interventions. They are diverse. train professionals who provide supervision and treatment resources to protect and help people, families, and communities address the problems that drive crime, and whereas probation staff respect victims' rights and work to provide services and protection for victims, and whereas probation professionals are firm, consistent, and focused on rehabilitation as they hold adult offenders and delinquent youth responsible for their actions, provide opportunity for positive behavioral changes and enforce accountability with suitable incentives and sanctions, and whereas the Mendocino County Probation Department provides cost-effective, community-based alternatives to incarceration by offering evidence-based programming and connecting individuals to essential services such as mental health care, substance use treatment, and housing support. And lastly, whereas probation focuses on supporting and advocating for policies that help justice-involved individuals transition back to our communities safely with a balance between opportunity and accountability and ensure these policies will effectively address diverse needs of Mendocino County. I just want to take another minute to thank Chair Norvell and Vice Chair Williams for sponsoring this proclamation and the board in general for your recognition of the probation department. And I'd like to thank my staff. These public safety professionals play a critical role in the long-term safety of our communities. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Williams.

Yeah, question for county council. Just a reminder that I was a candidate in the election that we're certifying. The county doesn't see any potential conflict there.

There would be no need to recuse yourself.

Thank you.

Anyone else in the room? Madam clerk.

Seeing no further comment online.

Okay, back to the board for discussion and or action on the consent calendar minus C-26.

Move approval.

Second.

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

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. All right. Item C-26. Yes.

If I may, through the chair, Sarah Pierce, interim CEO. For C-26, I just wanted to make one comment, that it's going to require a four-fifths vote because it's in a budget appropriation. The agenda says majority, but it is a four-fifths vote.

Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, with this appropriation of funds, it's an extra $90,000 coming or going to the IWPC. You know, a couple years ago, we were contributing $70,000 or $80,000, and then it went up to $125,000, and now we're asked for another $90,000 on top of that. and you know our resolution that we passed was in support of the iwpc and what their position is and the work they're doing to create water security for the county and i totally support that i just want to make sure that when we approve this we're approving along with the money, our position in support of the IWPC and their actions. Because we've had a lot of controversy lately about the IWPC versus, you know, the Elsinore Water District coming in and the Trump administration getting involved in this. And I think that for local control, the IWPC has a path forward for water security in Mendocino County. So I'm moving approval of this action for the 90,000 with support of the IWPC's position and local control of our water resources.

OK. I'm going to ask you to hold that motion until at least after we hear from the public.

OK. Anybody else have any questions on this item?

No? All right. We'll open up C-26 to the room. All right. None. Madam Clerk?

Seeing no comments online.

OK. Back to the board. Questions or discussion?

They'll all make the motion that I just made.

OK.

So yeah, Supervisor Williams. Can I hear the motion again? Maybe the clerk can read it back.

I was going to ask for a Cleary statement.

OK, so the motion is to approve the $90,000 from the Water Agency Fund with support of the IWPC's position and local control of our water security.

I guess, yes, Supervisor Klein.

County Council can we make a recommendation on policy in addition to approving this budget item it seems like we're trying to conflate 2 different issues that are completely separate.

So I think the motion is to do the appropriations which is is listed in the as the agenda item I think the board can They can't direct what IWPC, but we are a member there. They can ask for direction or request. I don't think they can condition the appropriations on that mandate, so based on what we're doing here. But they could do a letter, ask for a letter to go over stating the request for that position.

Yeah, I guess for me, I think with board approval of the resolution that you're mentioning, I think that's the board direction. I struggle a little bit. I understand where you're coming from, but I do struggle a little bit putting in seems a little bit like a political opinion into a motion for appropriation of funds so I do I do struggle with that I think the board passing the resolution and then this board supporting the $90,000 says exactly what you're trying to say in my opinion.

I don't have a problem advocating for local control and I think we should approve I support the 90,000 so I'll second the motion.

The reviser has checked.

Well, it is, you know, it's $90,000 and it's a political statement about where we stand because this is taxpayer money and they want to know, hey, are we, if we're giving the money to this entity, we support what they're doing. So that's the statement.

Supervisor Klein?

Supervisor Hashtag, who is wanting to know? You just asked or said that they are wanting to know. So who asked the question?

Oh, certainly people are talking to me about it. Yeah.

Mind sharing any more information?

It's not really relevant to the discussion we're having, but...

It was relevant enough to bring up for an appropriation following a policy that the board has already approved.

Well, I don't think it's... I need to tell you who I'm talking to.

Interesting.

Well, can you tell us who you're talking to? I think we're going to be a problem.

I think we're going to move on. We've got a first and a second. Supervisor Clunge, your pen is still up.

Okay.

We've got a first and a second. A first by Supervisor Haschak, second by Supervisor Williams. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

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

Good morning, Board. Treasurer Tax Collector Shamice Keveson. First time I've had to leave the first part off. A little bit hard for me. I just wanted to give you some additional information. You do have the information that we reported to the state for the June 18th report that I am anticipating that we're moving the auction up till spring, hopefully sometime between January and March. We do have several factors that impact that, many of which I can't specifically get into. They are personnel related, but they are not performance related. I wanted to give you some additional information. I did meet last week with one of the vendors that provides the collection services for the TOT and BID. I've asked them to go back and give me some better information. Their fee schedule doesn't quite work for what we have in Mendocino County. A couple of areas, namely, they would consider the campgrounds a hotel, which pushes them into a much higher Fee category and I know because the board does dedicate the TOT camp to fire We would probably like to minimize the cost impact to that And then we had a few other things I needed to work out with them. I did just inform Scott from Tourism Commission or I'm sorry a tourism lines outside that the initial response if we were to go bid only would be a Considerably more money than they're paying right now. So I'm trying to work through some of those details It really would require the county to be willing to move the full TOT collection also to them Which I'm not opposed to but I want to be able to work out the real Cost and benefit of doing that one other area that I'd seriously like to consider is moving the business license renewal and collection piece to them as well if we go with that particular vendor and That may indicate a need for an increase in our business license fee, but our business license fee is really very, very low because it's just an annual renewal of $40. It doesn't include any type of gross revenue percentage or anything like that. So I do hope that if we see that as a good move, that the board will support a potential increase to that fee. But that would definitely allow staff to focus on collecting secured and unsecured taxes rather than business license, which frankly is not a very good revenue source for the county at the moment, the way it's structured. So I just wanted to give you those brief updates. I'm not sure if you have any questions for me.

Supervisor Mulher?

Thank you for the advance for receiving the letter. I'm a little bit caught off guard by the business license. Might you be bringing back a complete restructure or just an increase in the fee?

Well, the business license renewal, frankly, at $40 is not very cost effective to the county in general, but it does require almost a significant portion of one of our staff people to actually send the notices out and do the collections for that. um every year and so frankly it's a service that that particular vendor provides throughout the state and is very um efficient in terms of kind of coordinating adding new business licenses and collecting that so the the overall obviously implementation and fee structure if we give them more serve if we ask them to do more services is better overall than if we just ask them to do one piece so if we just ask them to do the bid collection that's actually quite a bit of money just for the bid piece. If we enroll that into the TOT and bid, there's another good savings to that. But if we give them another function like business license, it continues to spread some of those other fees to actually make the whole contract more favorable to all those different pieces.

okay and so again thank you for um the letter that you sent out um to the state so that we had a little bit of time to think about it i think the outstanding property tax is obviously a concern to the county to bring those funds in but it also is really a concern to our constituents um some of them feel like there's an unknown out there whether or not they'll be receiving this bill so i just wanted to make sure

that you have everything that you need from the board is there anything that we can do to help um help this happen a little bit sooner or it basically like how can we help you are you i'm sorry supervisor you're referring to the auction piece yeah okay so everybody's received a bill for the auction piece right those are defaulted properties so there's not a additional bill going to the constituent they they are have not paid the bill But the confusion that I think a lot of taxpayers have is this $30 million that was referred to by the state is not $30 million that's going to go to the county general fund. It is not. It is money that is for the Teeter plan. And so if the Teeter plan recovers all of that revenue and also all of the interest and penalties through auction or payment, there is potentially money that may be transferred to the general fund if we are above the threshold required for the tax loss reserve fund. But that is not $30 million. It might be a couple million dollars, but it is not $30 million. So I just want to be clear that when we talk about that $30 million, it is not revenue to the general fund.

Right. What I was unclear about, I guess, is that everybody that may be included in that has received a bill. So there should not be any surprise bills moving forward to people because that's really a concern for people when they're not expecting to have a large property tax bill. That was the concern that I had.

So I wouldn't be able to even quantify that if they hadn't been given a bill. So if they're on the default list, they've been given a bill in the system. And they've also been given a notice of delinquency also. And we are before You know, that happens every year. The delinquency publication happens every year.

Thank you, Supervisor Haschuk.

Thank you for the report. And with the business license fee, have you looked at other jurisdictions, other counties, and what they're doing for their licensing fees?

I'm not sure exactly, Supervisor, what the question entails, whether you're just talking about collecting I mean, it's not my office's role to really determine if you want to change the entire fee structure of the business license, because that is a significant impact to the business community. I do know that there's some contention, obviously, certain actions taken to expand territories may impact the business license because the business license in some jurisdictions is based on gross receipts or revenues, and so that significantly changes the business license cost. Presently in Mendocino County, you aren't basing your business license fee on receipts or anything else. Everybody pays the same amount, whether they make a lot of money or whether they make no money. So I'm not researching that in terms of that may be something you want to direct other staff to explore. Certainly, that's something somebody else would do. But our office just collects the fee that's been determined by the board that's due for business license renewal.

OK. So it would be on us to provide some direction. Correct. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Katrina Bartlemy, assessor, county clerk, recorder, registrar, voters. I do not have my state audit report done yet. I'm working on it and have been working on it, but it's not ready to send yet. So I wanted to let you know. Since the election, we've had some problems in our office related to personnel. Our key assistant registrar of voters is out on a medical, and she will be out for another couple weeks. We've had to limp along and do it. It's a tough job for both of us to do. And for just one of us, it's put us. We were able to certify and everything on time, but it has put us behind. Also, right after the election, after we certified, we got a call from the Secretary of State's office that there was a potential recount for the governor's race, 61 candidates. And that would be a manual recount. We had seven days to respond to the person who asked for the recount, which all 58 counties did with an estimate on how much this would cost a day. In Mendocino County it would cost about thirty two hundred and fifty dollars a day and we estimated it would take us about 27 days minimum to complete this and part when you have a recount part of it is that the person who asked for it has to pay for it and that's all within the election law and so He, of course, wanted it to be free, no charge. The Secretary of State's office set him clear on that, and we all did that. So he finally responded to me on Monday, last Monday, when we would have had to start the recount by Thursday. We would have had to send out an email to every candidate telling them that we were going to start this on Thursday and how long we thought it would take and everything else. So the person who asked for it, it never He never sent any money. He was going to start it in Shasta County if he had deposited the money. And that didn't happen. So the recount is off. But it took me several days to prepare for that. I had to get employees ready to come in on a day's notice, extra help employees who helped with the election to start with. And so it was quite an endeavor to find out that we didn't have to. But I was worried that if I didn't prepare for it, it would have gone forward and we would have been behind. So we've been a little busy. We certified the election. We closed the roll. And I promised to get my report to the state. And I've reached out to the head auditor that came to the county. But I'll have it done within the next couple of weeks.

Great. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Thank you. Have a good day.

I just wanted to thank Ms. Bartle-May for all the work and your office for the election. It seemed like things went really well. And so thank you.

Good morning, Chair Norvell, members of the board, interim CEO Pierce, County Council Elliott, clerk of the board, and members of the public. For the record, my name is Megan Hunter, auditor controller. And I'm here today to provide a brief update on the state audit responses that were provided in June, the status of our annual financial audit, and some staffing updates within our office. We did submit our responses to the state recommendations on time. And some of those recommendations included our policies and procedures, which we are working on a full office manual that we anticipate having completed in June of 2027. It will cover basically all of our financial procedures. We have implemented operational improvements while continuing to work on our comprehensive procedures manual. There are several items that we continue to work on. We are in the process of implementing an electronic journal entry workflow, which will reduce a lot of the time and backlog of our journal entries. We've established journal entry deadlines and countywide trainings have been completed. The departments are showing increased compliance and are working really closely with our office to ensure that issues are tackled ahead of time instead of after the fact. And then we've also continued our partnership with regional government services who will be helping in this upcoming audit as well as ensuring that some of the GASB standards are implemented and we will continue to educate staff on those new standards as they are released. We've also started Working on the reimplementation of our finance system, there has been a steering committee established. We're working very closely with Information Services and the CEO's office. We do plan on meeting with a couple other sites in August who are currently utilizing MUNIS to determine their best practices and kind of set up a roadmap for our reimplementation. We've also evaluated a lot of the functionalities of MUNIS so that we can potentially implement those in the process since this is going to be such a long reimplementation. It takes probably three or four years before we'll be completed with the project. We continue to meet monthly with the executive office. And our communication has really improved vastly with all of the departments. And we will continue to bridge those relationships. We've established regular fiscal deadlines. We've conducted county-wide year-end trainings. And we've also conducted journal entry trainings. For our audit, we are on schedule to publish the ACFER by December 31. We've scheduled field work with our auditors the week of August 19. We've already begun preparing for the audit. providing documentation as well ahead of time so that we ensure that the field work will continue smoothly, and we are hoping to reduce delays and improve efficiencies in this upcoming audit. And then lastly, I have some staffing updates. We hired an account specialist supervisor, which was filled at the end of June. And she's kind of getting her bearings and settling in well. We have a new accountant auditor, too, who joined the office today. And the recruitment is still ongoing for the assistant auditor controller position. But we do have a candidate that we are vetting at this time. So if you have any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer.

Thank you.

Supervisor Williams? Thank you for the thorough presentation and the collaboration with departments.

Thank you.

If I may, the chair, can I just ask one clarifying? I think you said August is the field work. Is it October?

Oh, sorry, it is October. It is, yeah, okay. I actually put down August, just thinking the other thing, so thank you. I just wanted to clarify, thank you. Which is the normal scheduled time. Generally, it's like either a little bit later in the month of October, but we're hoping to get everything ready for them before they arrive.

Thank you. Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. I just wanted to thank you for the update and for being here. And same question that I had for Shamice. Let us know if there's anything that we can help streamline the work that you guys are trying to do over there. Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. Madam Clerk, seeing none others in the room, do we have any staff online?

I guess we do have one staff online, Melissa Hannum.

Good morning, Melissa Hannum, County Librarian Director. I wanted to let you know that we are having a library software upgrade, so limited services are going to be available during the system migration. We're entering an exciting new phase of modernization this summer with the implementation of a new integrated library system, Polaris. This upgraded system will be shared through our regional consortium of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino County libraries, helping to streamline library operations and improve services for patrons. As part of this upgrade, the library will also launch a new online catalog and mobile app. These tools will make it easier to discover new titles, browse our audiobook and DVD collections, and explore staff-recommended reading through a new Staff Picks feature. Another feature called Roll Up will allow patrons to view all available formats of a title, including print books, audiobooks, and ebooks, in a single search result. To complete the transition, the library will migrate data from the current system to Polaris from July 27th through August 4th. During this period, some library services will be temporarily unavailable. During the migration, patrons must bring their library card to check out materials. The online catalog will be unavailable. We will not be able to issue new library cards. Materials cannot be checked in. Renewals will not be available. Fines and fees cannot be paid and new holds cannot be placed. So to minimize any inconvenience during the period of June 29th through July 26th, all due dates have been extended to six weeks. Patrons are welcome to keep their checked out materials until the new system is fully operational. And the last data place holds was July 12th. All services are expected to return to normal on August 5th when Polaris, the new online catalog, and the mobile app will officially go live.

I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk.

Seeing no further department heads online.

OK. We'll open the podium to public comment on item R1. Madam Clerk, any online?

Seeing none online.

OK. Back to the board. We're looking for either discussion or a motion for acceptance of the informational reports.

Move approval.

Back in. Thank you first by supervisor Klein second by a supervisor has check vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you item or 2 discussion of possible action including acceptance of presentation of the 2025 leadership academy graduates as Johnson.

Good morning, chair, members of the board, Sherry Johnson, human resource director. And I do believe Mandy will be on Zoom to share. OK, thank you. So it's my pleasure to recognize the 2025 graduates of our Leadership Academy. Our 2025 Academy consisted of nine courses offered twice annually and totals nearly 30 hours of interaction. Its purpose is to ensure unified effectiveness in our leadership and equip each leader with a common foundation of leadership skills and values, allowing us to move forward together. Course topics include high performance organization, DISC, personality styles and emotional intelligence, leading with effective communication, building trust in teams, performance management, county employee policies and procedures, time management essentials, facility skills, and change management. And I'd like to congratulate the following graduates. Under the Leadership Academy Under Management, Rose Britton, Jessica Byers, Heather Caril Rose, Juanita Dreiling, Katie Efford, John Gall, Melissa Hannum, Travis Kilmer, Angela Lewis, Xuan Malala, Sarah McBurney, Kathy White. Her supervisors, Ryan Cameron, Kayla Carlson, Nicole French, Christina Griffith, George Embry, Hannah Lee, Ulysses Lopez, Antonio Renteria, Ryan Rose, Amanda Stoner, Megan Zaid, Mary Logan. And the emerging leaders graduates, Laurie Brown, James Camfield, Amber Garces, Kristi Gard, Katherine Miller, Tamara Sams, Ana Sanchez, and Amanda Tyrell. Thank you all for participating. Your dedication to learning and commitment to leadership, professional growth, and excellence strengthens our organization and community. And I'd also like to thank Katie Ford and Lori Brown for their lead in the Leadership Academy and all the HR team for assisting with these courses. And the 2026 Academy courses will be starting August 6th.

I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this forward.

Thank you.

Any public comment on R2? No. Madam Clerk?

Seeing none online.

OK. Back to the board for acceptance of the presentation.

Move acceptance.

I'll second. First by Supervisor Hashtag, seconded by myself. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Item R3, discussion and possible action, including acceptance of presentation regarding the rural county representatives of California, RCRC strategic plan. Yes, sir.

Thank you, Chair and members, for having me here today. I appreciate the opportunity to provide you an update on RCRC and some of our priorities and activities. One of the things I wanted to say at the start is please don't hesitate to stop me anywhere along the way where you've got a question or want to provide feedback. I recognize you've got a pretty full agenda today, so I'm going to move fairly quickly through it. But again, do stop me anywhere that you've got a question. I don't know if you're able to pull the slides up or not, but I will continue on while that's underway. Today, what I want to cover is not only RCRC, but some of our affiliate entities. Over the years, we've started a number of both public and private companies to help support our rural counties, so I'll touch on those as well as I progress through the presentation. But I wanted to note at the start that our board adopts a three-year strategic plan. And within that plan, I think you'd find a number of topics that are ones that you're well familiar with, from broadband to rural health access to economic development opportunities and infrastructure. But one of the things that's unique about our strategic plan is that our board has set a dual vision for us. One is to be the premier advocate in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C. on behalf of rural counties. But secondly is to be their innovative service provider and so think of us as the entrepreneurial arm of rural counties. When there's a challenge too big for a small county they will come to us to see if we can get economies of scale through our 40 members and over the years that's led to the creation of some of those affiliate entities that i'll talk about in a little bit as well. So that gives you some sense of why we have those entities. But I wanted to start with our advocacy work and our policy emphasis areas. And if you want to move on a couple of slides to the next one. That perfect thank you so advocacy has long been the cornerstone of our CRC and the work that we do on behalf of rural counties and again I think the topics that you would see under the policy areas are ones that are you're very familiar with what I wanted to draw your attention to though is the box labeled key topics because that's really where some of our focus work is occurring. And one of the ways that we do that is our board forms ad hoc committees to address high priority issues. And I want to thank Supervisor Klein. I think you're actually on all three of our ad hoc committees this year. One of them is recruitment and retention of public employees. That's out of recognition that some of our counties have unusually high vacancy rates, and those have persisted for a number of years. I know one county had a 100% vacancy rate in behavioral health therapists as an example. So part of what we're looking at is, are there ways from a policy perspective we can assist with recruitment and retention? The second is predator management ad hoc. This was really born out of the impacts that the wolf population is having, particularly in the north state, but it also includes mountain lions and bears. And so we've got membership from throughout the state looking at basically our policy around those areas and interacting with Department of Fish and Wildlife. They will have speakers come in and talk to them. And then the goal of the ad hocs is to develop updated policy for consideration by our full board on those topic areas. And then the last one is the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act ad hoc committee. This one came to life out of recognition that the legislation has been in place several years now. We're reaching some of the mandatory reporting thresholds for low and medium priority basins in particular for which there isn't funding. The legislation didn't contemplate some of the changes that may be needed now that we have better data, whether it's boundaries or off ramps or potentially looking at how do you fund those reporting requirements. And so the committee is evaluating all of that. And we'll look at updated policy again to bring back to our board on those fronts. A couple other areas I wanted to mention. One is mandates. I think we're all familiar with the challenge that the state imposes upon us with mandates. And if you look back in time, counties had a regular process for filing test claims before the state mandates commission. And when legislation becomes law and has the potential to, it is either a new requirement upon counties or adds a service level upon counties, In order for counties to get reimbursement under the mandates clause, they must submit a test claim to the state mandates commission. And if one county submits that claim and it's approved, then all 58 can take advantage of it. That test claim must be submitted within one year of a county triggering that cost. And as I indicated, there was a regular cadence of this historically. But then it dropped off over the last 15 years. Well, we've been working with CSAC to basically pick up that ball and to run with it. So RCRC has two entities under contract to file test claims on behalf of our member counties. We've had success doing that. Recently, a claim was proposed to be approved for Sutter County. We're working with Butte County on a claim. We're working with San Benito County on a claim. And then we're also found an arcane provision of the law called legislatively determined mandates, where when a bill is tagged as a potential mandate, we can just file a claim with Department of Finance or file this LDM, as they're called, with finance to say, hey, the legislature said this is a mandate. We can preempt the mandate commission test claim process by agreeing on what that mandate should be. So we are doing that for everyone that comes out now. The Department of Finance has not been tremendously thrilled with that and has kicked them back to say, you need to go through the test claim process. But we've accomplished two things in doing that. One is it tolls the statute of limitations. So when we file those legislative determined mandates, until such time as the Department of Finance responds, we've extended out the statute of limitations to file a test claim. Second, and I think this is more important from an advocacy perspective, it puts the Department of Finance and the legislature on notice that no longer are we going to let these mandates slip by without filing test claims. And so for each one that the legislature passes, there's an almost immediate response now of sending those in through legislatively determined mandates. So step one of our mandates process, helping counties file more test claims. Step two, though, is we did some digging and discovered that not all of our counties are getting all the reimbursements that they are potentially eligible for. I think we have five or six counties that actually didn't get any mandate reimbursement. We had another nine, if I'm remembering correctly, that are well below the statewide average for mandate reimbursement. So we put out a request for proposals, basically, to all those involved in the mandate reimbursement world to say, give us your best ideas on how you can help, particularly our small counties, increase their mandate reimbursements. And then RCRC may ultimately put together a contract to assist those small counties in doing that work. So that's going to come out, or those proposals are due in August. So more to come on the mandates initiative. I just wanted you to know that we're putting a lot of effort into that space. The last one I was going to mention on this slide is jail medical services. We have 25 counties and five regions participating in a study to look at long-term options for providing jail medical services. And whether you're one of those 25 counties or not, I don't think Mendocino is, but even if you're not, I think you're going to benefit from the results that come out of it because those results are going to look at a variety of options. Essentially, they're going to look at if you were to meet the national accreditation standards for providing jail medical care, What are the different ways you can provide that care? It could be regionally. It could be just regionally going through the contract procurement and administration process to continue with a private vendor. It could be regionally having a single vendor providing that service. It could be regionally having a public agency model or doing all that same work individually by county these analyses will look at all those array of options and then do detailed financial analysis associated with them so that counties can look at that and say okay for the long run this may make the best option because what we do know is counties are seeing significant cost increases with renewals Not unexpected when the primary provider went through bankruptcy here six months, eight months ago and has emerged from it, but the expectation is and the reality is that we're seeing significant cost increases, not only with that provider as a result, but also a few of the other providers that have come into the marketplace. So we know that costs are going up. We know that the risks and litigation are going up, and we're working closely with those counties to look at what the long-term options are. So that's a quick analysis of some of our advocacy efforts. I was going to switch to our affiliate entities now. Pause to make sure there aren't any questions on advocacy. And we can come back to it at the end if there are. But I wanted to pause for a second.

We have one. Thank you. Sure.

I have two questions. The first is regarding AB 2494. Yes. As you know, our county has taken a position that we're in support. And of course, it's co-sponsored by our state representatives. Assemblymember Rogers, Assemblymember Connolly, soon to be Senator Connolly, Senator McGuire, and I see that RCRC has taken a position contrary to ours, opposing us. Half the acreage is in our county. We're arguably the most impacted county out of all 58. Now that you see that we have a different perspective on this, would RCRC be willing to back us? I understand this decision was made without even consulting our county.

That's a difficult needle for us to thread because while Mendocino is supportive, we've got multiple counties that are also opposed and less amended. So in those situations, what we do is we look to what is our board policy on that front. And our board policy says that while we support efforts that will lead to increased wildfire resistance and carbon sequestration, We oppose any efforts that are going to put additional requirements on timber harvest that could negatively impact wildfire resilience. I think at the end of the day, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, one of their parting recommendations was for the author to bring everybody in and try to identify collaboratively a landing place that could meet everyone's interests, and I suspect that exists. I do think that there are potential amendments that could address the concerns that are being expressed around durable on-site carbon storage around the mature forest language that's in there. I think that there are solutions. So I'm hopeful that that will be what happens next, and we'll reach agreement. And the opposed and less amended will turn to support at that point.

So I guess my concern is less about this specific instance more about the abstract that we weren't consulted is there a way to remedy that going forward that I understand none of the supervisors all not know the 5 of us were asked what is the county's position had we didn't have a seat at the table we didn't vote in it can you describe what that process is so we have an opportunity to weigh in next time even if we're on the losing end we want the opportunity to be part of the conversation.

Makes perfect sense. And I think that is great feedback that we can carry back to the team in terms of how do we strengthen that going forward. Ultimately, the idea is to be able to check in with supervisors we know have policy interest in that area or counties that have policy interest in that area. Doesn't sound like that worked to your satisfaction at this point, so that's great feedback for me to take back and talk to the team and evaluate how we can strengthen that going forward. I don't have the exact remedy today, but I do want to take that feedback back and work on it.

Appreciate it. And the second question is regarding broadband. We were one of the early members for Golden State Connect Authority. I still think it's the best way to roll out broadband in the rural counties. And it's certainly not on RCRC to fund, right? You're helping us with state and federal funds. It seems after about $56, $57 million is allocated to Mendocino County, we will have connected zero last mile in our unincorporated, which is really hard to explain to taxpayers. Do you have any thoughts on how together we can lobby for true equity? Equity means it costs more to deploy broadband to some parts of the state, right? You have children trying to do education. You have seniors trying to get... health care online in places that cost more. And it seems that the state direction has been spend the dollars to cover as many people as possible, which is the opposite of equity. It means cherry pick the areas of density, which is exactly what the commercial providers had done for decades. Any thoughts on how we can work together to drive the state towards true equity?

Well, I'm going to have a slide on GSCA in a second, so maybe I'll come back to it a little bit. But the short answer right now is I think we need to increase the cadence of our participation at CPUC, California Public Utilities Commission meetings, the commission meetings themselves, to make the statement you just said. And they need to hear directly from community leaders, community interests on that front. One of the commissioners has said to me that those voices are compelling to them. I can tell you there's another county right now that is on the verge of the CPUC taking back their allocation, even though the county, rural county, has a plan for deployment ready to go. But the CPUC staff are concerned that it doesn't meet the letter of the resolution. We disagree. I say all that to say that it's going to be another lost opportunity like what you're describing where those monies will revert back into a fund, disappear, and in all likelihood that county will never see those funds come back. So we share the concern. I think we need to amplify our voices at the CPUC, and I'll talk a little bit about GSC in a minute.

Excellent answers. Thank you.

Okay, thanks. So Golden State, if you go to the next slide, please. Golden State Finance Authority is a joint powers agency made up of all 40 counties, including Mendocino, that provides financing for an array of uses from if you have someone in your community that wants to buy a home, Golden State Finance Authority can provide them down payment assistance. But more recently, one of the things we've done for our member counties is provide bridge financing. So if you have a small district or the county themselves or a city that received a big grant, but has to put the money out first before they can be reimbursed by the grant, we provide bridge funding for that. And recently, we just signed the latest one is with Plumas County for $1 million. They have a bridge project. They needed help cash flowing that. So GSFA provides that assistance. But if you go to the next slide, one thing I wanted to call out that GSFA does do is provide a program specific to county employees called the Assist to Own program. So if you're a Mendocino County employee and you want to buy a home, you can get up to 3 and 1 half percent down payment assistance at zero cost. What that means is there's never payments due, no interest ever amortizes. It just sits there. The principal amount is a second until such time as you sell your home, at which point the principal only is due, or at the end of 30 years you would need to refinance. The costs of that are borne by Golden State Finance Authority. It was something our board did out of recognition that it was a tool that could be used to help with recruitment and retention. I think you've had nine employees take advantage of that and buy homes in Mendocino County or around Mendocino County as a result of that program. I just want to stress it so that everyone knows it's available and it's a tool that can be available for them. Go to the next slide. So now on the Golden State Connect Authority, this is our newest public agency, a joint powers agency made up of the same 40 counties. It came to life five years ago, roughly. Supervisor Williams has been a board member since its inception. And it came to life because at that point the state had just passed SB 156, which was going to put a lot of money out for broadband deployment. And our small counties said, we just don't have the capacity to go after those dollars. We need help. So we formed GSCA to do that and within a year GSCA had pulled down 19 million dollars in state grants to do engineering including here in Mendocino County And then a couple years later, we had pulled down $185 million for construction. We paired that with $110 million of private investment, firms like Franklin Templeton and Vanguard. And we are just now in the final stages of putting together about a $220 million contract to complete all of our initial projects areas that, while unfortunately don't include Mendocino County, we were awarded into Hama, Glen, Amador, Alpine, Mono, and Imperial counties. And in fact, we are already in construction in Glynn County. So to take a new public agency that didn't exist five years ago and to now be on the precipice of 220 million in construction, I think it's pretty impressive. And we're excited to get that work underway, but recognize, as Supervisor Williams indicated, there's a lot more to go. So think of this as the foundation. Once we get this system in place, the idea is to start to build out in concentric waves to hit more and more unserved rural areas. One of the challenges has been exactly what Supervisor Williams references, which is that these rural areas are costly to build in, and sometimes it seems like the lower risk, higher density projects get prioritized for funding. I think it's going to be, we're going to have to keep up, as I said before, sort of amplify our voices and keep that cadence up, particularly before the CPUC. I think we've got some champions within the legislature, but at the CPUC, I think we have work to do still on that front. So I hope, Supervisor Williams, that answers your questions. And if so, I'll move to the next entity. Golden State Natural Resources is a 501 nonprofit we formed to really help the state advance the pace and scale of forest resilience projects. As you likely know, the state has set a goal of treating a million acres a year. we've reached a little over 500 000 and now it's declining and it's declining because those treatments take state and federal subsidies to occur and presently there's large piles of low diameter biomass left behind that's either as you can see on the slide that either decomposes in place or is burned in place our goal has been it has been to find a commercially sustainable outlet for that material so that the proceeds of that could be reinvested to get more forest resilience projects done We're working closely with entities like Lawrence Livermore Labs and others to complete an environmental document, which will hopefully be out in August or September, that will look at forest treatment occurring within 100 miles of two sites, one in Lassen County, one in Tuolumne County, transporting the low diameter biomass to those two sites, and then converting it to wood chips and shipping it by rail as far south as Kern County, as far north as Southern Oregon, or potentially Reno to the Bay Area. That said, that type of commercial user does not exist in California yet. So we're working with Lawrence Livermore Labs to identify what are the array of potential users in the future. And basically, it's likely to be someone in the alternative fuels field. So think sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen, something like that, or an alternative wood product. And we're working with the University of Berkeley's Wood Innovations Lab to identify what the future innovative wood products look like. The point of our project is to de-risk the supply side so that when one of those big users does come into California to use this presently unmerchantable biomass, we will have de-risked the biomass supply side so they can get that material and have it at the ready. So that's what the environmental document will assess and it will come out this fall hopefully. Next slide. Two more to go, I promise, and I'll be done. One is our Environmental Services Joint Powers Agency. Excuse me, sir. I apologize.

We do have one question. OK.

Thank you. So going back to that biomass idea, Does that have to do with that pellet plan that was going on?

It did, but our board last summer basically pivoted away from the international market and pellets to looking at a future domestic market that relies on wood chips. And there were two reasons they made that pivot. One is that the market for pellets changed. While demand remained strong, supply had increased exponentially, namely from Vietnam during the time that we had been doing our environmental analysis, and that had the effect of softening prices to the point to where it didn't necessarily pencil out anymore. And secondly, there was a lot of concern with using that biomass to ship overseas. So our board looked at that, looked at the comments that came in, looked at the financial modeling and said, we're going to pivot to the domestic market. We recognize that's a risk because those commercial users don't yet exist in California, but they felt that was the right thing to do for the long term. And so that's where our work has been devoted since.

Thank you.

Okay. Environmental Service Joint Powers Authority, this is made up of 26 of our smaller rural counties, basically to help them with CalRecycle regulation, Regional Water Quality Control Board regulations. And so they come together and achieve economies of scale through that process. And then Mendocino is not one of those members, so I'll move to the next slide. And this is our last one, the Rural Advancement Institute. This is a 501 , our board brought back to life to do two things. One is to focus on educating primarily urban legislators and their staff. And we've held two tours, one in Mariposa County, one in Monterey County, and we're planning a third now in Tehama County. And we've had increasing attendance at each of those to get them out into rural communities to talk about everything from ag to natural resources, all the typical rural issues that you might expect, but to familiarize those urban participants with those issues. The second is to partner with primarily academic institutions to do research around topics of key interest to rural counties. And I think the most recent one may be of interest to you, which is we just finished a – it's now been actually published – report with UC Santa Barbara looking at the issue basically of – fire and EMS capacity in rural counties, and the twin challenges of increasing call volume, decreasing volunteer availability, and then you couple that with not sufficient funding for paid staffing, and it's a challenge for many of our counties. So I think if you were to read that report, you would find it nothing new. It's probably something you're living and dealing with every day here in Mendocino County, but I can tell you that many in the legislature are blissfully unaware of that challenge. And as I was in your county last week, I said many legislators have no idea when they're driving from LA to Mammoth on 395 that they're depending on a basic life support ambulance system staffed by volunteers that may or may not be able to respond if there's an accident on 395. And I just use that as an example that may resonate with them. So this report really identifies that. It's the first I've seen of a California-specific statewide report that does that. And then it lays out a dozen recommendations. Step two, and what we've just initiated with UC Santa Barbara, is to take those recommendations and build them out. So the professor's, one, going to be the data is a little uneven across jurisdictions for that first report. So he's going to be reaching out directly to jurisdictions to really tighten up some of the data. And then secondly, working on those recommendations. But doing so in an interesting way that I think will resonate with the legislature, which is looking at health outcomes. And part of what we suspect that the report's going to show is that there are lower health outcomes in rural areas because of this gap in fire and EMS capacity. And health outcomes is a topic that is near and dear to many in the legislature. So trying to tie it together in a way that resonates with terminology and issues that they're used to studying, but get to the underlying issue, which is the challenge for fire and EMS capacity in rural areas. So look for that report to come out in the coming year. And with that, that completes my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions or feedback you may have.

Great presentation. Thank you. Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, I just want to say thank you to Pat for coming and giving this update to the board. It helps for not only the full board, but also the community to be aware of one of the amazing things that we get to participate in. RCRC is definitely the bright spot in my time as being a supervisor. I love participating, working with your amazing staff. It's such a great team at RCRC. Always having really important conversations about the most important policy issues facing rural communities. Thank you for coming. I'm looking forward to connecting you with our Fire Chiefs Association, Fire Safe Council to talk about the fire and EMS capacity, as well as our county staff that's working on this issue. The SGMA work has been really helpful. It's something that is really challenging for a lot of property owners. There's opportunities for us that are going to come out of the jail medical work. And I could go on and on. Just the benefit is huge for Mendocino County to participate in our CRC. And just thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor more.

Thank you. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for the presentation. I hope that maybe the executive office can share some information about the importance of our CRC and why we participate because I think that especially highlighting some of the affiliate agencies and I know that I talk about the homeownership opportunities with Golden State Finance Authority often because it is really a benefit, I think, that other agencies don't offer, and especially when, as a rural county, we are trying to be competitive, especially when we're looking at law enforcement and other positions that are so key to our community. That really is a benefit that cannot be seen in other agencies, so really appreciate all of the work that you do for us.

Appreciate that and if ever we can participate in a Realtors Association or some meeting like that locally to help get the word out About the down payment assistance programs. We're happy to do it Thank you.

I have no more questions. Thank you. Thank you any public comment on this item Madam clerk Seeing no comments online Back to the board. We're looking for a motion for acceptance move approval.

I

Second. First by Supervisor Williams, second by Klein. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Item R4, discussion of possible action, including approval or denial of request from department heads and elected officials regarding budget impacts, funding, and recruitment of vacant or new positions following the strategic hiring process. Ms. Johnson.

Good morning. Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. Yes, we have one department that would like to make the request to the board this morning, so we have the Sheriff's Office. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Norville, members of the board. Sheriff Matt Kendall I have with me, Captain Jason Cadillo. We're requesting to fill more positions for the Sheriff's Office. Currently, we're dealing with some pretty violent crime and whatnot that you guys probably have seen in the paper. More homicides, more issues, and we're running short on personnel. We have currently eight personnel out on injury, several of those folks we don't believe are going to make it back due to the type of injuries that they have. We have a few that... We need to dual fill those positions because I just don't think that we're going to see them back to work. We also have some injuries that we will have our folks back, but we've got one subject who, you know, broken bone. We have to wait for that bone to heal. We've got a subject who had some pretty serious tendon damage during an arrest, things like that. So right now we're dealing with some pretty serious crime because the illicit marijuana has blown up again in Mendocino County, particularly in the north. It has gotten completely out of control. We have transnational drug trafficking organizations that are working in our areas. We're dealing with homicides. We're dealing with things like that, including human trafficking. So we're going to have to start hiring up again. We need to get these positions refunded. A big portion of that funding is going to come from the grants that we've been working on. But we're still about 33% behind on being able to pay for that based on those grants. And so Captain Cadillo will talk about the fiscal impacts.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Norvell, members of the board. Jason Cadillo, administrative captain of the Sheriff's Office. are probably aware, and as the sheriff stated, we're looking to fund the five positions that have been unfunded as a cost savings measure that we worked hand in hand with the CEO's office to show some cost savings for the county. As the sheriff stated, we're definitely in a critical point in time with our department. One of the last board meetings, they discussed the 33% vacancy rate that we had at the sheriff's office. That doesn't include the individuals, eight individuals we had out at leave that are going to push that even higher, probably into 44, 45% vacancy rate. That's impacting our services to some extent. As the members of the board are probably aware, hearing from your outlying areas, the north sector as well as the coast, right now our main area where we are really struggling for personnel is out of Ukiah, our busiest sector. 50% of our calls for service come out of that sector. We do have some relief in sight. We have hired Three deputies, one of them being a lateral we swore in yesterday. We have another three laterals that are looking to be hired in August, one on August 3rd and then two on August 17th. hope is for the board to continue to work with us to get our numbers up so that we can provide the level of service that the county deserves and with that being said we've had prop 64 with the hard work of lieutenant aaron clark as well as megan zaid from our financial services bureau they were able to put us in a position where we receive this funding from Prop 64, which will cover two full-time positions, which would equate to about just a little bit less than $500,000 in savings over a five-year period, or actually fund those two positions at a $500,000 cost over the course of the next five years. One of our key needs at this point is at our supervisor level. First line supervisor for the sheriff's office would be a sergeant position. The sheriff mentioned we are down first-line supervisors in two sectors, which is critical. County Council, I'm sure could attest, is very critical for the Sheriff's Office to ensure that we have proper supervision of all our personnel. Right now, we are going on at least two shifts without first-line supervisors, which is requiring our lieutenants who are tasked all over the board right now, not only acting as deputy sheriffs, but are acting as supervisors reviewing reports, the day-to-day operations of the jail at the supervisor level, and being tasked with their managerial responsibilities. So we're stretched very thin. We've got one shift out of central sector right now that only has one deputy and a sergeant, and that's a day shift. and it's one of the busiest shifts that we presently have, and we are having to fill the other shift with overtime. So you've seen, or you're going to see, I spoke with CEO Sarah Pierce earlier in the week about a huge amount of overtime that's going to be coming in from our homicide as well as having to cover these vacant shifts. So we would really appreciate it if you'd look at Funding those five positions, it would be a cost to the general fund of a little over a million dollars, and I understand the county's position with the budgetary constraints that we're in, but you also have to understand the sheriff's position in that we've worked the best we can with the sheriff by working with less and doing more, and now we're at a very critical inroads that is showing to be a situation that's going to I don't see anything positive coming if we are not able to continue to recruit for the positions and have the positions that were allotted actually funded. As everyone's aware, we've spoken to this before, it takes us about six months to get someone hired. So immediately, you're going to see some budget savings in that six-person request in that it probably wouldn't be until January December, hopefully, that we could actually look at having those positions filled if we have some interest. And right now, we are having a lot of interest with Lateral specifically. That is a cost savings to the department. We could get them over. We could get them working in a shorter amount of time. And we're not having to invest on the front end in terms of their training and their academy date. So we're open to questions if there are any.

Yeah, thank you. Supervisor Hashtag.

Yeah, thank you for that. So with the Prop 64 money, what will be the duties of those? The two deputies, I assume, will be used with that grant money. And that will be just for illegal marijuana eradication or... What's the purpose of that?

The purpose would be backfilling the assignment of two new investigators, and part of their duties would be illicit marijuana grows, but with illicit marijuana grows comes the violence that's associated with homicides. In general, they become generalized investigators that may have a specialty in the marijuana realm, as well as with the human trafficking entity of it.

OK, so it's overall.

Correct. It's an overall generalized investigator.

Yes.

If I may, through the chair, we will be bringing an item forward on September 1 about Prop 64 in more detail. Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more questions. Thank you both.

Thank you. Yes, sir.

OK, we'll open this item up to the public. Anybody in the room like to speak on this? No? Madam Clerk?

Seeing none.

OK. Back to the board. Supervisor Hashtag.

Yeah, just a question for the acting CEO. We just passed a balanced budget. So this $1 million, do you have an idea where this will come from?

If I may, to the chair, Sarah Pierce, interim CEO. So the million dollars is the cost for a full year. As the memo states and Captain Cadeo just said, it's probably going to be closer to, I would say, about half a million dollars once we get them hired and through background. So I would turn it to the board. Public safety is your number one mandate. We do have a balanced budget right now. We did balance with one-time funds, so there is a potential that you could use one-time funds for this year and then identify ongoing funding streams for future years. The Sheriff's Office was a great partner in our budget conferences, and they did come in and only ask for what they thought at the time, and now they're coming back and saying that we need additional positions. they are looking at other grants as well so right now um there is not an identified source except for one time so i turn it back to the board to see what other um funding streams that you guys may be aware of or additional cut somewhere else okay so i think for me i think we've had this discussion for as long as i've been here you know with the budget and staffing and what are going to be the priorities and

We're going to get to a point where we have to make a decision. What is the priority? And I'm willing to make a motion to approve this item. And for me, I think today is that day. We're going to have to decide. Do we want to fund the sheriff's office or not to keep them operational in the way that they see fit? And so I'm in 100% support of this.

I'll second that motion.

OK. First by myself, second by Hashtag. Any discussion on the motion? Supervisor Klein?

Yeah chair just want to appreciate your comments. I agree completely we are at a crossroads for the county where we will have to at some point soon make some tough decisions about what that what the county is going to agree to fund. And public safety is our number one mandate and certainly worth being funding I appreciate the transparency from the sheriff and his staff today sharing about why we came to this request and look forward to supporting it.

Okay, no more questions will vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you, gentlemen. We're going to move on to our regular item R5, discussion of possible action, including adoption of a resolution and approval of a memorandum of understanding and MOU between the County of Mendocino and the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which is SEIU 1021 for the term of July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. Ms. Johnson.

Good morning again, board. Sherry Johnson, human resource director. It's my pleasure to bring forward SCIU MOU and resolution and to highlight some of the enhancements for the MOU. The term, as you mentioned, is a three-year term. And we had some language cleanup. We have salary enhancements, COLAs, for three years. We have a bronze plan, which is a high deductible health plan, which is employee only at 100%. on-call premium increase, bilingual pay increase, and an additional holiday at Juneteenth and maintain a floating holiday. So those are some of the enhancements for the contract. And I do want to say I want to thank you to the SEIU negotiating team, Nate, Christina, Jeff, Jackie, Tracy, Patrick, and also Akesh. And thank you to this board and also the county team that worked at the table also with the teams. So interim CEO Sarah Pierce, HR manager Cal Satern, and we had Luke and Sam from our labor team also. So thank you.

Great. Any questions for Ms. Johnson?

Seeing any.

Oh, yes, Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, I'd just like to say thank you to SEIU 1021 for the negotiating and their comments earlier today. It's really appreciated by the board. And I think that this is just recognition that we are in tough times financially, but our greatest asset are the employees.

Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, I wanted to thank all the stakeholders who are involved with our negotiations. It's always challenging. And my comments are about this item and the next few items. I appreciate the COLA for fiscal year 27-28 and fiscal year 28-29 being dependent on revenue triggers. I think that's very cognizant of the financial circumstances we're in. The board will still have to work very hard for us to be able to manage the impacts of these various MOUs. But just appreciate the thoughtfulness and I'm looking forward to continuing the collaboration moving forward. Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more questions. Thank you.

Yes. Public comment.

Yeah. Anybody in the room like to comment on this item? Item R5? Madam Clerk?

Seeing no comments online.

OK. We'll bring it back to the board. Supervisor Williams? Move approval. Second. All right. First by Supervisor Williams, second by Supervisor Haschuk. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Item R6, discussion of possible action, including adoption of a resolution and approval of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the County of Mendocino and the Teamsters Local 856. the Mendocino County Public Attorneys Unit for the term of July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2029. Again, Ms. Johnson.

Yes, good morning again, Chair. Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. Yes, I'm again pleased to bring this MOU and resolution forward for the Mendocino County Public Attorneys Group. We do have a four-year contract, as they have been at a contract since July 1 of 2025. So it's very similar terms to the prior with SEIU, but this is a four-year term, and salary enhancements, COLAs, health insurance, the same, and also adding the holiday of Juneteenth. And I would like to thank the negotiating team for the public attorneys group, which is Frank, Nate, and Robert from Teamsters. So thank you.

Great. Thank you. Supervisor Williams? do we need public comment we do anybody in the room like to speak on this item item r6 none madam clerk seeing no comments online okay back to the board supervisor williams move approval second okay uh again uh motion made by supervisor williams seconded by supervisor hash check we'll vote by the button

The motion carries unanimously.

OK. Thank you. Item R7, discussion of possible action, including adoption of a resolution or approval of a memorandum of understanding or an MOU between the county of Mendocino and the Teamsters Local 856, Mendocino County Probation Unit for the term of July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2029. Ms. Johnson?

Yes, thank you, board. Sherry Johnson, human resource director. So I am also pleased to bring forward the MOU for the probation unit, MOU and the resolution for a three-year term with COLAs actually seen in three years, also with the triggers as mentioned by Supervisor Klein, modified to the health insurance and also addition of the Juneteenth holiday. And I also like to thank the team from Teamsters with Chelsea, Nicole, and Michael, and also Robert Maddox. So thank you. And I would also just like to say thank you to all the labor negotiating teams from SCIO and Teamsters for their professionalism, kindness, passion for the county, and they were good reps, representatives for their members and our employees. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Any questions from the board? None. Any public comment on this item, item R7? Madam Clerk, any online?

Seeing none.

OK. Back to the board, Supervisor Williams.

Move approval.

Second. And first by Supervisor Williams, second by Haschak. We will vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously. Thank you.

OK item or a notice of public hearing discussion possible action including adoption of a resolution amending exhibit X. And you know county master fee schedule effective summer nineteen twenty twenty six and let's go to policy require longer adopting female decay modifications for health services. OK, so it is 1028. We'll open the public hearing. The public hearing will go as such. Madam Clerk, has proper notice been established?

Proper notice has been established, and all correspondence received has been sent to your emails and or mailbox.

Thank you. The hearing has been opened. The clerk has read any or announced any correspondence. We'll have staff presentation, public input or comment. staff can present final remarks, the Board of Supervisors can ask questions of staff, the public hearing will be closed and the matter will be sent back to the Board and no public comment will be accepted after that. Yes.

Good morning, Supervisors. Ashley Lavelle, Principal Administrative Analyst with the Executive Office. At the April 21, 2026 fee hearing, the Board requested the Health Services Emergency Medical Services Dispatch Fee be left intact and brought back for further review after additional meet and confer with regional ambulance transport providers. We're bringing back the April proposal to eliminate the current flat dispatch fee and replace it with a volume-based, multi-tiered structure set in relation to the number of calls for service. Dr. Miller, Director of Health Services, is here to provide further information and insight to assist the Board with making a decision on how to appropriately set these fees.

If I may, through the chair, before we turn it over to Tammy, I would like to say that we did update a modified memo from health services. The last page at the bottom had some incorrect monthly amounts. So that has been uploaded this morning. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Norvell and members of the board. Tammy Bartlemay, Public Health Services EMS Program Manager. So as explained before you today are the updated EMS dispatch fee schedule. This item transitions our county from an outdated flat rate to a volume-based cost recovery framework. So this follows, as was mentioned earlier, the direction in April to pause and bring our ambulance providers into the conversation. Following those extensive meet and confer sessions, we worked with the providers and came up with a fee schedule that we believe is fair and sustainable. To support that goal, we built two key balancing measures into this framework. So an attrition rate. We applied a 30% reduction to raw CAL FIRE dispatch data to better reflect uncompensated dry runs and cancellations. After consulting with CAL FIRE leadership, we confirmed this baseline data already excludes routine administrative logs like an ambulance checking in or checking out of service. By filtering out those status changes and cutting the remaining workload data by a full 30%, we built what we believe is a strong baseline safeguard to address non-transport calls. So I'd like to also point out with this 30% attrition rate being applied, this takes a provider such as MedStar from tier four to tier three. So it's a cost savings to them. We also implemented, staff worked and implemented a three-year glide path. So we structured a transition for providers facing these adjustments to give them three years to come up with the full cost amount. And then as outlined in your packet, Adventist Health has agreed to this structure so they will move to their transition fee and they will not need the three-year glide path that we established. So we believe this framework is a direct product of our meet and confer sessions. And staff recommends approval of this updated EMS dispatch fee schedule to stabilize our regional emergency network.

And I am available for questions I'm not seeing any questions Thank you We'll open this item up to the public anybody in the room Madam clerk any online Seeing none Okay any final comments from staff I

Just thank you for reconsidering this and we really believe we came up with a fair process and we worked really hard on this and so thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams you have a question?

Thank you for the extra effort to meet and confer working with providers. I'll move the recommended action. Okay.

If I may, through the chair. So what the executive office brought forward is our standard fee schedule, which shows the tiers. So I think we need to modify the recommended action to accept the department's proposed changes to have the MedStar Tier 3 be phased in over three years.

So moved. OK. Does the clerk have that?

Yeah. 1034 will close the public hearing. And then, Supervisor Williams, if you could restate your motion, please.

If I made to the chair we would need to a modified motion to accept the department's recommendation to phase in the tier 3 for MedStar over 3 years.

Provides a range of you as the first are you fine with that I am okay second. We have second, Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, we received a letter from MedStar. And was that letter before this was worked out or after? Or are there still concerns that their viability might be at risk? Or what do you know about that?

So they did express concern with the cost of rising gas and other costs increase. They are concerned of that. And that's where the three-year phase plan came into effect, or what we felt was fair. But as far as viability, I don't. Fees are going up and costs are going up. And I can't really tell you. I can't project what they're long Of course, nobody wants their fee to increase.

Right. So we've done all we can to present a fairer approach.

Yeah. We've met with MedStar specifically several times.

Yeah. Thank you. Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. I just wanted to appreciate the work that staff and MedStar did do together and understand the concerns that they have. And it is challenging. when fees have to increase. One of the challenges that the community faces, whether that's ambulance services or businesses, people that are trying to develop their properties or contractors, when fees go up, is challenge and i think that you know the what the county can do is continue to have important conversations um come up with strategies that hopefully can at least be helpful to the folks that have to pay the fees and of course to make sure that we're providing the best level of services that we can and when we're not to adjust and so i just wanted to um i understand that fees going up with with any of our fees is always a challenge and appreciate staff for the work that they did and there's already a motion so thank you.

Okay, so thank you. We have a first by Supervisor Williams, seconded by I believe Klein. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Moving on to item R9, discussion of possible action including approval of the appropriation request in the amount of $170,000 dollars of one-time funds increasing the total bower park restoration improvement project budget from two million four hundred forty two thousand four hundred forty two dollars to two million six hundred twelve thousand four hundred forty dollars to fully fund the proposed project improvements and authorization for the purchasing agent to issue change orders to the contractor to complete the project pursuant to public contract code section two zero one four two yes sir

Good morning. My name is Doug Anderson. I'm the capital projects manager for the county. Chair Novell, members of the board. So this item is we've negotiated a final phase two contract with the contractor Mars Construction, Mars Engineering of the Ukiah area, who has been working on the Bower Park since October. They've made good progress given the weather conditions over the winter, are now geared up to proceed with phase two. The issues we encountered in getting to this final agreement for phase two, given the limited budget resources we had through the grant, meant that several features of the project design are not included in the phase two agreement. We were pretty much aware of this when we went into this agreement because our budget exceeded the, or our contract proposal exceeded the budget for the project even at the beginning. So what we've done now is clarified the scope that is not included in the current phase two. And we're here before you today to try to understand if there's any interest in helping to fund the balance of those features so that we can include some or all of them in the final contract that we have with the current contractor. Briefly, the items that aren't included in the current scope is the electrical and lighting that we had some security lighting near the entrances the landscaping and irrigation work that was enhanced landscaping around the front and entrance areas of the building of the site and then also some important repairs to the fencing in the park we do have limited fencing around the ball fields in the tennis court that need to be repaired so those can be Those can be used as intended, but there's quite a bit of fencing repairs that's not included. I just want to make sure that you understand that what we have been able to include in the current phase two is all of the recreational facilities that were planned in this project. So the baseball, tennis, basketball court, new full court, basketball court, and the recreational, the playground equipment is all funded and included in the existing phase two that we have. So at this point, we're just looking for your interest in supporting the final phases of the project that we were hoping to get done with this grant.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein.

Yeah, question for staff. What will happen if this phase is not funded?

To the chair, the only thing that we're not going to be able to complete if we don't get the additional funding is the lighting, fencing repairs, landscaping, and irrigation improvements. So we've pared it down to those things. And those are things that, in our mind, we believe can be deferred to future opportunities to find funding.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more questions. We're going to go to public comment.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody in the room like to speak on this item?

Good morning, Chairman Norville, members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Kevin Evans from Wallalla. And also, I am the chair of the Wallalla Municipal Advisory Council. uh i support and our board supports 170 000 we would like to see bower park completed as intended i just have a few questions that i hope can be answered staff just mentioned what amenities are included in phase two that they're planning on uh funding and we we support that My other question is, does the $170,000, if approved, fund county employee expenses and contract services? Or is all of the money going to materials and time? The other question I have, and I did not see it, and maybe it's somewhere in a line item, what is the board's plan to maintain the park once it's completed? We look forward to your answers. We would love to share that information back with our residents in Wallalla and the surrounding areas. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room?

Good morning, Chair Novell, fellow supervisors, interim CEO Pierce. My name is Dave Spock, and I serve as chairman of the Mendocino Coast Recreation and Park District. I encourage you to approve the proposed budget increase to fully complete the Bower Park Restoration and Improvement Project. And I'd also like to remind you of the district's interest in the long-term success of this crucial south coast infrastructure. Bauer Park has provided popular and affordable recreational opportunities for decades to people of all ages and economic circumstances on the South Coast and in the Bi-County community of Walla. Providing public access and a broad range of recreational activity, there is nothing like this park within a 90-minute drive for coastal residents or visitors. MCRPD supported this board when you adopted resolution number 23018 in pursuit of state funding to renovate and improve Bower Park. On June 19, 2024, the MCRPD board of directors adopted resolution number 2403 to transfer almost $178,000 in one-time state per capita grant funds to help the county implement the complete project scope, including items that you just heard about today. This board accepted the transfer by adopting resolution number 24110 on July 9, 2024. While this previous contribution to the project budget is strangely absent from the staff report for today's proposal, we trust that the county and state staff have accounted accurately for the $170,000 budget shortfall. Acknowledging the MCRPD board's proactive partnership and in compliance with this board certification on January 24, 2023, please approve your staff's full funding request. Complementing our capital project contribution, MCRPD has expressed interest to members of your board and to county executive office staff in creating a partnership to operate and maintain Bower Park in perpetuity. For the district, the extent of funding available to this partnership is contingent upon an accurate accounting of annual property tax allocations based on actual data used to build property owners within district boundaries. All district requests to the county for this data have been refused. A partnership with MCRPD would also be contingent upon demonstrated county commitment to operate and maintain Bower Park infrastructure. The uncertain funding for Bower Park maintenance in the fiscal year budget you just adopted is confusing and concerning, particularly in consideration of your certification on January 24, 2023. The district and county share a duty to serve the South Coast taxpayers. MCRPD salutes your championship of this capital project and asks that you keep your long-term promise. help MCRPD partner with the county to competently operate and maintain Bauer Park for everyone forever. Thank you for receiving my comment.

Thank you. Yep. Supervisor Williams?

Yeah. For the last speaker, Dave, I don't know that the full board has a copy of the refusal. Would you be willing to share that?

Of course.

Thank you.

To whom shall I send it?

CEO.

The BOS email, BOS at MendocinoCounty.gov. Will do. Thank you.

Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, for the speakers, there's a question about the maintenance. And so you went through those numbers and the history of it very quickly. So can you lay it out again what you think that the county's obligation is for the maintenance of the park versus the recreation district?

Thank you for asking that question. The county a number of years back did a study of all the parks within the portfolio and came up with a cost estimate at the time, and I think it's about five or six years now behind us, of about $75,000 a year to maintain Bower Park. And that, again, was a snapshot at that time. And as you all know, probably painfully aware, costs have escalated astronomically. Everything is much more. And so to keep Bower Park, although it may not be expensive in the early years given that the new work that's been done ultimately to keep our part it probably is reasonable to estimate that there's something in the ballpark of a hundred grand a year the district has approached the county multiple times at different levels and you've heard me speak about this informally in these settings uh to partner on maintaining bower park the district as you're aware has access to a different cost structure potentially economies of scale that would improve the efficiency of taxpayer resources to maintain that park and operate it. However, the district has learned through a number of very challenging mistakes in the past to be very cautious of over-committing itself financially, particularly when it comes to the commitment of structural funding. And that structural funding, of course, is TETER allocations derived from property tax contributions. The district has attempted to come to grips with those numbers in a much more accurate and objective way. most recently through the preparation of a municipal service review with the Local Area Information Commission. This issue came up as a question and at that time was also rebuffed, allegedly because the question involves a scope of work that's beyond the traditional scope of effort for a municipal service review. The question remains unanswered, however, about what the district could afford to contribute and how that partnership could be structured. The district continues to be interested and sees Bauer Park as perhaps the best prospect for supporting South Coast recreationists. Yet we need to know how much we can afford so that we avoid making mistakes that have been made in the past of overcommitment that have subjected the district to serious jeopardy. So I don't have a number for you specifically, sir. I'm very interested in finding that number. With your help, we will find it. And we'll find a way to make sure that Bower Park stays up and works well for everybody. Thank you.

OK, thank you.

Anybody else in the room like to speak on this item? Madam Clerk, any online?

Seeing none.

Okay, we're going back to the board for discussion or action. Supervisor Williams.

I'm going to move the recommended action for all the reasons stated. And also note, I think it's important to show the state that the county has good follow through. This took five years and some of that is on us. The execution was slow and costs inflated in that time period. But I think next time we go to ask for money, it'll be helpful to show that we were able to fully follow through on the original commitment.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein.

Yeah, I just wanted to quickly note that this funding is being proposed to come from carryover funding, so it's a one-time cost, and I feel that's appropriate for the scope of the work.

I believe we have a first by Supervisor Williams. Yes, Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, I guess a question for Supervisor Williams. Do you have a long-term plan for after we get these capital improvement project done, then how is it going to be maintained?

We have our law enforcement expenses trending at a steeper slope than our revenue, right? Not sustainable. The county museum, not sustainable. Just about every service we look at provided by the county is not financially sustainable. We have revenue shortfall projected as far out as we can see. So I don't think we have a plan here, and it's certainly not the highest priority, but I think you have a lot of taxpayers far from the county seat that aren't getting a lot of services. This is one of the few things that they get. And I think it's more than just recreation, right? There's not a lot of public lands available to children in that part of the county. So I think the immediate is we need to follow through on this grant. The long-term, how do we sustain it, I think it's a general sustainability question for all county services.

So we have a first by Supervisor Williams, all second. Any more discussion? We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. It's 1052. We're going to take a 15-minute break and then come back.

Are you prepared? We're the Office of Emergency Services, and we're committed to providing the most up-to-date and accurate information so that you and your family can stay safe during an emergency. Part of being prepared is knowing your hazards and taking proper precautions. Visit MendoReady.org. On the Know Your Hazards page, you can find hazards for where you work, where you live, and where your kids go to school. On the Plan and Prepare page, you'll find a plan template. It's important to know what you're going to do, what you're going to take with you, how you're going to communicate, where you're going to go, and how to get there.

One great way to prepare is to pack a go bag. Each member of your family should have their own go bag. Visit our website MendoReady.org to get a list of items that should be in your go bag.

Gathering and organizing important documents before an emergency is an important part of preparedness. So visit MendoReady.org today where you can find a list of important documents that you should have ready near your go bag in case you have to evacuate.

Not every emergency requires people to evacuate. An emergency kit will have supplies for you to remain self-sufficient for 72 hours. Find a list of supplies for disaster kits on our website, MendoReady.org.

A prepared community is a resilient community that will recover faster from disasters. So take some time today, visit our website, get yourself prepared so you can be MendoReady.

A beautiful, clean river doesn't start here. It starts here. What we put down our storm drains goes straight from our streets into our local creeks. Simple changes can make a big impact. Like when you wash your car. The best solution is washing in a professional car wash. But if you wash at home, divert wash water to an area where it can soak into the ground, like a planter strip. Also, empty your bucket of dirty wash water in a sink. The wash water will make its way to the treatment plant, where it is clean. You probably know how to pick up your pet's poop when you are out on a walk. After all, it's the neighborly thing to do.

But what about the pet waste in your backyard?

Pick it up regularly, and especially before rain or irrigation water washes any of it into a backyard drain. Your pet's poo is full of bacteria and nutrients that can contaminate our creeks. Scoop the poo, bag it, and put it in your garbage. When tending to your yard or garden, check the weather and prevent over irrigation. Runoff of fertilizer, herbicides, landscape materials, compost piles, and leaf debris pollute our creeks. Remember, timing is everything. Pick up any litter or trash that may get into the streets. If you grab it before water or wind arrives, it doesn't have a chance of ending up in our creeks. It's up to each of us to take care of our creeks and rivers. They're ours to protect. Find out more at streets2creeks.org.

Are you prepared? We're the Office of Emergency Services, and we're committed to providing the most up-to-date and accurate information so that you and your family can stay safe during an emergency. Visit MendoReady.org. It's our one-stop shop for emergency information. You can sign up for emergency alerts, find your pre-established evacuation zone on our current emergencies map, and find hazard and preparedness information.

Imagine you're faced with a disaster such as a wildfire and you're ordered to evacuate. I'll bet you wish you had more time in that moment. Now is your chance to buy yourself that time. Sign up for Nixle and Mendo Alerts on our website, mendo-ready.org. Do it today.

If you want your family to be as resilient as possible, it's important to take some time today and visit MendoReady.org where you can look up your pre-established evacuation zones on our current emergencies map. You can also find important tools to help maintain your situational awareness such as the Alert California Wildfire Cameras and the Caltrans Road Conditions Cameras. We hope you'll take some time today to prepare so that your family can be MendoReady. Thank you.

Thank you.

Are you prepared? We're the Office of Emergency Services and we're committed to providing the most up-to-date and accurate information so that you and your family can stay safe during an emergency. Part of being prepared is knowing your hazards and taking proper precautions. Visit MendoReady.org On the Know Your Hazards page, you can find hazards for where you work, where you live, and where your kids go to school. On the Plan and Prepare page, you'll find a plan template. It's important to know what you're gonna do, what you're gonna take with you, how you're gonna communicate, where you're gonna go, and how to get there.

One great way to prepare is to pack a go bag. Each member of your family should have their own go bag. Visit our website, MendoReady.org, to get a list of items that should be in your go bag.

Gathering and organizing important documents before an emergency is an important part of preparedness. So visit MendoReady.org today where you can find a list of important documents that you should have ready near your go bag in case you have to evacuate.

Not every emergency requires people to evacuate. An emergency kit will have supplies for you to remain self-sufficient for 72 hours. Find a list of supplies for disaster kits on our website, MendoReady.org.

A prepared community is a resilient community that will recover faster from disasters. So take some time today, visit our website, get yourself prepared so you can be Mendo ready.

A beautiful, clean river doesn't start here. It starts here. What we put down our storm drains goes straight from our streets into our local creeks. Simple changes can make a big impact. Like when you wash your car. The best solution is washing in a professional car wash. But if you wash at home, divert wash water to an area where it can soak into the ground, like a planter strip. Also, empty your bucket of dirty wash water in the sink. The wash water will make its way to the treatment plant. where it is clean. You probably know how to pick up your pet's poop when you're out on a walk. After all, it's the neighborly thing to do. But what about the pet waste in your backyard? Pick it up regularly, and especially before rain or irrigation water washes any of it into a backyard drain. Your pet's poo is full of bacteria and nutrients that can contaminate our creeks. Scoop the poo, bag it, and put it in your garbage. When tending to your yard or garden, check the weather and prevent over irrigation. Runoff of fertilizer, herbicides, landscape materials, compost piles, and leaf debris pollute our creeks. Remember, timing is everything. Pick up any litter or trash that may get into the streets. If you grab it before water or wind arrives, it doesn't have a chance of ending up in our creeks. It's up to each of us to take care of our creeks and rivers. They're ours to protect. Find out more at streets2creeks.org.

Are you prepared? We're the Office of Emergency Services, and we're committed to providing the most up-to-date and accurate information so that you and your family can stay safe during an emergency. Visit MendoReady.org. It's our one-stop shop for emergency information. You can sign up for emergency alerts, find your pre-established evacuation zone on our current emergencies map, and find hazard and preparedness information.

Imagine you're faced with a disaster such as a wildfire and you're ordered to evacuate. I'll bet you wish you had more time in that moment. Now is your chance to buy yourself that time. Sign up for Nixle and Mendo Alerts on our website, MendoReady.org. Do it today.

If you want your family to be as resilient as possible, it's important to take some time today.

Including acceptance of a presentation from Behavioral Health and Recovery Services regarding specialty mental health services and the Behavioral Health Services Act. PROVIDE DIRECTION TO STAFF REGARDING COUNTY ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD USES FOR CONTRACTED PROVIDERS AND APPROVAL OF AGREEMENTS WITH ONE ANCHOR HEALTH MANAGEMENT INCORPORATED, MEDICATION SUPPORT SERVICES IN THE AMOUNT OF 2,200,000. MENDESINO COAST HOSPITALITY CENTER IN THE AMOUNT OF 640,000. MENDESINO COUNTY YOUTH PROJECT IN THE AMOUNT OF 750,000. REDWOOD COMMUNITY SERVICES IN THE AMOUNT OF $10,664,056. And number five, tapestry family services in the amount of $4,952,300 to provide specialty mental health services to eligible medical Medi-Cal beneficiaries of Mendocino County for a total combined amount of $19,206,356, effective July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027.

Good morning, Dr. Janine Miller, Health Services Director. So today we're here to talk about behavioral health services for the county and some of our contracted providers, our larger contracted providers. First, I just want to do a quick breakdown of how the specialty mental health system works in the state of California. As you know, the county contracts with the Department of Health Care Services. Specialty mental health services are a carve out from your managed care plans. And they are contracted through each county to provide special mental health services. Also, there's a couple of cities. But most of this is county driven. The state, many years ago, contracted out special mental health services to the county to provide those services with the agreement of also providing 1991 and 2011 realignment dollars. And so that is where we fit in. It's important to remember that we are what we call now, it used to be more about called a mental health plan. We're now called a behavioral health plan as the state has really started to merge mental health and substance use into the same plan. We've been a substance use health plan for many years, but now they're really trying to look at that model as a behavioral health model and starting to see more of that integration, even with our contracts with the state starting to integrate with both mental health and substance use information. So as you know, We are a carved-out system, and so we are funded through Medi-Cal or Medicaid, as the feds would call it, in Medi-Cal in California. And the way our services are funded is that we bill Medi-Cal for a service. It is based on a reimbursement. We like to say it's like a 60-40 reimbursement. The federal reimbursement is about 60%, give or take, and the county reimbursement through our realignment dollars is a 40% reimbursement. So we never get, generally we can get some 100%, but on a basis, it's really kind of a 60-40. When you look across our whole system of care, there has to be a match dollar for us to bill services. And so we're always leveraging those match dollars to the Medi-Cal billable dollars received through the federal financial participation. We often get asked if we have a county, how much the county general fund puts into behavioral health, and this is behavioral health as a whole. I'm talking about mental health and substance use. What we have on the substance use side is zero. There is not a maintenance of effort requirement of the county to give any general funds into the substance use side of the house. But on the mental health side of the house, there is a general maintenance of effort that was set by the state many years ago to be able to receive realignment dollars and draw down Medi-Cal funding. And that is set at $28,840. So that is the only general fund that goes into the mental health system to provide services throughout Mendocino County through the Special Mental Health System. As I noted, we get FFP, Federal Financial Participation, through Medicaid. at the federal level, and that comes through the state, and then we have that contract with the state to reimburse for services. We are also funded through 91 realignment, 2011 realignment, and then the Behavioral Health Services Act, which we'll touch on a little bit today just because there has been so much changes with Prop 1. Those changes really take effect July 1st for us, so we're kind of walking into a new era when we look at especially mental health versus when we're looking at Mental Health Services Act versus Behavioral Health Services Act. As noted, we are here with our main five contractors today. We do have other contractors that we contract with. And we are still in the process of finalizing these contracts. The contracts in front of you are preliminary contracts. We are still working on the Behavioral Health Services Act. piece of those contracts, which means these contracts could come back mid-year or sometime in the fall as we really work on Behavioral Health Services Act. As we did in RFP for Behavioral Health Services Act, we are still finalizing that. The state put into requirements that we have evidence-based practices that we have to meet this year as part of Behavioral Health Services Act. And so we're really working on making sure those Behavioral Health Services Act evidence-based practices are the priority of where we're spending our FSP dollars. And so we're still fine-tuning that and working with providers on what does that look like to make sure we're meeting all of our mandates through Behavioral Health Services Act. So there could be some changes to these contracts in the next couple of months. We also have requests from additional contractors who are asking to come into Mendocino County, and we're working on those to provide services in Mendocino County. With the current contracts in front of you, we have an estimated of 3,845 clients that will be served. We usually go over that amount, but that's just an estimate we throw out based on our current contracts with a total cost per beneficiary at almost $5,000. We know that vacillates between the beneficiaries based on whether or not a beneficiary ends up being conserved or having multiple hospitalizations versus just having generalized outpatient services. We included in here our consumer perception results. We've been trying to include these so you can see these are actually, this is completed by the client and family members. It's broken down into family responses, youth responses, adult responses and older adults. It looks at the client rating their services, how they feel their services were for the year. This is a multi-page so there's multiple surveys that are completed. I only pulled a couple for you. This is program overall outcome satisfaction. You can see where the county rates compared to the state rating. I included in there 24, 25, so you can see those comparisons. This slide talks about family youth. This slide here looks at adults and older adults and their ratings of how they feel their services were and it, as I said, notes the comparison to our results compared to the state average of all the other counties. We also included in here, on a side note really quick, this is analyzed by UCLA. This is not done by the county. It is done by UCLA for the whole state of California. Clients can complete this survey either in paper form and then it gets mailed in, or they can do it electronically. And a lot of clients are starting to move to that electronic version. But I would say it's about half and half that we saw this last year. These are the results of how many have been arrested within the 12 months. It also, as you'll see here, it's 24-25. It looks at youth and adults. And it also compares us to the state, how we're comparing to the state when you look at our county to the state. This next slide looks at how many people reported that they had an encounter with law enforcement. Of course, this is self-reported. Both of them are self-reported. And it includes in there, as I said, 24, 25, and then the county versus the state on those metrics. We also require that all of our providers do a lot of data reporting. We have them provide data on a pretty regular basis, monthly and then quarterly. biannually and annually. We have a quality assurance committee that meets with the providers every month and reviews their data to see whether they're in compliance, out of compliance, what our timeliness looks like, how our grievances are going, and looking at hospitalizations. This just gives you kind of a data look of some of the additional data we pull that we look at to see how clients are doing. This gives you a report out of how those clients are doing, looking at fiscal year 22-23 through fiscal year 24-25. It looks at the number of people that entered service this year, those who utilized crisis service this year, those who utilized crisis last year but didn't need to use it this year, number of people who didn't utilize, that were in the system that didn't use a crisis service, number of people that needed to be conserved, those that got off conservatorship within the year and stayed off conservatorship is always a success when we're able to get people off conservatorship. and the number of people that were housed in the system this year compared to the last three years. We also are working on one of the new requirements with the state of California is HEDIS measures. I reported a little bit on this last year. The state is really starting to look at HEDIS measures across all systems of care, both in the managed care plan have had HEDIS measures for a while. They rolled it out to the behavioral health plans. to looking at HEDIS measures in client care. These four are the requirements for the behavioral health, the mental health plan, substance use has a couple of other HEDIS requirements, but this is what they are judging us on and looking at fines, fees and sanctions. They have a requirement that we be in a certain category, 50% or above in all of our HEDIS measures. So I wanted to just draw out the four that they rated us on this last year, 25, 26, and then where we fell in those rates. We weren't allowed to release the state's rates, so I did do a mean state compliance rate so that they had a low and a high. And so what I was able to do is I could show our rates and I could show the mean state rates to see how did we look at, from our HEDIS measures, compared to the state's overall kind of mean compliance rate at the state level of where counties are at. That doesn't mean that there weren't counties that were lower. There were, and that doesn't mean there weren't counties that were higher than that mean rate. This gives you a look at the HEDIS measures. Of course, they don't have 2025 yet released, but it gives you the look at 2024 compared to 2023. Last year, you guys were able to see the 2023. These are all counties where you can see where Mendo is within our HEDIS measures or where they're looking at the quality performance measures from the state to see how the counties are doing. You'll see that Mendo moved up closer to The top there, when you're looking at 23-24, I also included so that you guys would have it at 23-22 so you can see where Mendocino County was from 23-24. These are some of the top measurements that the state is looking at to compare counties right now. The state is also in the process of creating a behavioral health dashboard. They just released the first version of it last week where we can see how we're comparing to the state of California. It doesn't allow you to look at individual counties, but it does allow us to kind of compare where we're at compared to the state of California. A lot of it is looking at timeliness data, which we have. And then I think over the next couple of years, we're going to really see those data metrics build out. And so we'll be able to bring some of that data to you probably next year a little bit different than we have this year. We get asked a lot about outcome measures and I know we've talked a lot about CANS and ANSA over the years. I wanted to just bring this today as there was a question asked to me of can we tell how clients are doing. There's a lot of different measures we can look at about how clients are doing. The state is looking at which outcome measures they want to potentially make a requirement for adults. In the children's system, we're required to use the CANS 50, which is moving the CANS IP, and that's what the state looks at for our outcome measures. I added this slide in so that you guys could see what that looks like. I asked for a random sample. I did not ask for the best clients. I said if we pulled nine clients from different providers, what would that show us? And you can see what it shows, our oldest cans, you'll see the oldest to the most recent, you can see the change from did they improve, the percentage of improvement, We always are looking at, are we seeing improvement in their CANS and ANSA? Are we seeing that the client hasn't needed to go into crisis in the last year? That's a success, right, if we're able to maintain people and keep them out of crisis. And are they medication compliant? And that's one thing you'll see with the HEDIS measures. They're really looking at, are clients medication compliant? And are they getting follow-up if they do have a crisis? or go into the emergency room, are they getting follow-up care? So I just wanted to show that this is additional metrics we do look at to see our clients improving. We didn't want to give it, you know, we didn't cherry pick. You'll see that some of these did have a crisis need and some did not. And we are looking at that as we look at our whole system of care. And I'm going to hand it over to Karen to talk a little bit about behavioral health.

Ms. Miller, we have one question.

Yeah, on that last slide, is it possible to give us an indication of how we're doing on average relative to state or some other comparator?

For the ANSA?

Yeah. Because otherwise I see the percentage. I have no idea if it's that good or it's that bad. How are we compared to the state?

Currently, there isn't. I do believe that if the state comes up and says, yes, this will be the outcome measurement we use, I think the state will probably put in our dashboard those outcomes. Currently, the state doesn't ask for this information, and they're still vacillating between three different outcome measurement tools they're looking at. So not today, unfortunately.

So how should the board interpret this? Are we winning? Are we losing? What do these numbers mean in your eyes?

When I look at our HEDIS measures compared to our timeliness to access, our percentage of, you know, when I was looking at our percentage rates of how many people are getting services, you know, our percentage rate for people getting into services was like 5.38%, and I looked at some other counties and it was 2%. So I feel like if, you know, that doesn't mean we're perfect. We always have room for improvement. We always will. We'll never have enough money in mental health, let's just be honest, right? There's always going to be barriers at different levels. I feel like when you look at our HEDIS measures, you look at our timeless to access, you look at our ability for people to access, penetrate services and get into services, we're really up there. I think we're doing pretty well. That's not to say we don't have areas for improvement. We always will.

Karen Lovato, Deputy for Health Services. The MHSA to BHSA transformation, as far as highlights, it was initiated by Proposition 1 in 2024, which created new regulations, primarily expanding Mental Health Services Act to Behavioral Health Services Act, including serious substance misuse conditions along with mental health services. It changed the funding organization from the prior components to three primary components with 30% of the funding going for behavioral health housing, 35% for full-service partnerships, and 35% for behavioral health services and supports. The new regulations prioritize funding for the most severe and chronic conditions and symptoms over prevention, and they require use of funding and reserves of funding for evidence-based practices where appropriate. So the 30% housing intervention is for individuals with serious mental illnesses and or substance use plus chronic homelessness, with 50% required to be focused on street-level encampment-based homelessness and a maximum of 25% able to be used for capital facilities development. Full service partnerships is a similar component to the prior organization of MHSA, and it's 35%. It's for behavioral health treatment and supports with whatever it takes models, really trying to help the individual overcome barriers. But there are new requirements for use of qualifying evidence-based practices where appropriate for those full service partners to be triaged through and treated with evidence-based models. The behavioral health services and supports component, the 35% remaining, is for all of the remaining services that had previously been funded under MHSA, with 51% of the component being required to be spent on early intervention services for individuals 25 and under, with a prioritization of use of evidence-based practices such as early psychosis intervention for transition age with experiencing early psychosis. The remaining 49% of this 35% are for early intervention programs that are not evidence-based practice, outreach and engagement, workforce education and training, capital facilities and technology, innovation pilots, and any other qualified BHSA expense.

confusion about what is happening with the county electronic health record, what's going on with our contracted providers of going into Avatar, And there's been different direction given at times about everyone going into the county system, or could we create interoperability. So we decided to bring this back to the board for a final decision on how you guys would like to see what's going forward with that. So we have an electronic health record avatar. We've had it since about 2006. And we've obviously had different providers using different systems. And one of the things that has changed for us is that the state has now been really, well, I guess it's always been required through CMS, Center for Medicaid and Medicare, but now really pushing back on the state to make sure that the behavioral health plans are also really making sure that we have API data accessible to clients. And so that does create a little bit of a change for us of having to have a patient portal, in a sense, and making sure the API data is available. And also not only to the clients, but also to the state. And there are some requirements that we have to do that within 24 hours, get it posted. So we've been working on, you know, looking at what is happening within Avatar. We did create a second system. So we have a Route 1 system and a Route 2 system so that the providers could have access into Avatar without going into the county's main system because of confidentiality and the fact that we've rolled substance use into Avatar. and public health into the Route 1 system. We needed to have that firewall, so created a second route system. Currently, we have a hospitality center and Mendocino County Youth Project are in Avatar, and our other three providers are currently within their system asking for a hybrid model. We are rolling out the organized delivery system for drug Medi-Cal. Obviously, there's some changes with partnership. And so we are working with those new providers that are coming in. And most of them are willing to go into Avatar and not require a hybrid model. So that will help a little bit. So in your PowerPoint presentation, we kind of said these are our mandates of what we have to be able to provide. I know there's been some thought of the county has to provide it, but the law actually says if the county subcontracts, we're still required to provide the data that our subcontractors are doing. So even if we're not doing the service, we have to provide the data. We have to get it for our subcontractors. It has to be posted. It has to meet the timeliness standards. of the state. So we do have to have a patient access API, provider access API, prior authorization API, interoperability standards, privacy security, public reporting governance. These are the things that we are seeing as we merge into where the state is going to get in compliance with CMS on all of our health system requirements. We are very aware that there's no guarantee that those won't change tomorrow. So we know what we have to do today. We also know at the federal level and the state level, they could continue to put new requirements on that could make us have to expand what we're doing today. And it does seem like every day we have something new we have to do. I put in there what the county responsibilities are so that you can see that to make an informed decision and what the contracted providers must do. We did a detail of what are the three systems. If they just used their own system and didn't have interoperability, what would be the impact for the county? If everybody was an avatar, what would be the impact for the county? And then a hybrid model, what does that look like? Obviously, in all transparency, we know everyone being an avatar is the easiest model. That's just the reality, right? So we know that. We also know that that may not be the easiest model for all of our providers. We did a quick breakdown of that. Our recommendation, as we said, the easiest model is everybody goes into Avatar. We also don't want to not support that we know that it can be difficult for our providers to go through that system. So in front of you is two options. um, requiring that everyone goes, if they want to contract with the county for behavioral health services, that they use the county avatar system. We are currently working with the sheriff's office, um, tech care, their health record system to create full interoperability with avatar so that all the records that a nap care does will come into the county system. So we have a county record in house. Um, you know, should there ever be a change? or looking at a hybrid model. So we kind of outlined what are the impacts of a hybrid model and what it would require. We do know that a hybrid model will probably be more work on the providers, but also we do feel that we will probably have to more work on the county also. So a little bit of possibly one or two more staffing to meet those needs. So in that, we also are making recommendations. If the board decides on a hybrid model, these are the recommendations from the department. to move forward with a hybrid model. And that's really to make sure that there is an interface, that we limit the number of hybrid models so we don't have 20 providers and 20 different systems needing to create interoperability, because we have to build it every time between the two systems. So it's not just, hey, you hook it up. It's actually a build out we have to do every time. that there is a requirement that it's done within a year from the contract that we have to push the interoperability has to be built within Avatar and whoever the priority needs to be accomplished within a year. And then obviously the cost needs to be the cost of everything needs to be held by the provider who's asking for interoperability. So those were the main things. You can see the other requirements in there. And that we definitely have to make sure that everything is posting and they're able to stay in compliance with state and federal regulations so that we're not out of compliance. The state really is moving to sanctions, fines, and fees. What that means is if they sanction us, we might be able to get the funds back when we get in compliance. If they do a fines or fees, we lose the funding. We will not get those funding back. It's not going to come back to us. So those are things to make sure that every time we're out of compliance, the state's moving to really starting to do sanction fines and fees on counties, and that will impact our budgets if we're not staying in compliance on the behavioral health side. And we are happy to answer any questions.

Just real quick, could you help the public and perhaps the board understand a little bit more about what specialty mental health is? And then after that, describe what you would see as a successful outcome for somebody in specialty mental health.

Sure. So, especially mental health is, it's different, right? So, there's what you hear across the state is mild, moderate, and severe. And we are the severe provider. So I always say, if you were going to see your primary care and they said you had a heart condition and they referred you to your cardiologist, That's us. We're the cardiologists of mental health, in a sense. So we're not serving the mild to moderate. Like, if you could go to your primary care, you're not coming to us. If you need a specialist level care, like a cardiologist, that's us. So we are the top tier. We are serving the most severe individuals in the county. And that is our mandate through the state. That's what carved out meant. When they carved us out, they gave the managed care plans the mild to moderate. They gave the county the severe clientele. And so most of our clients, their mental illness isn't going to go away. They're severe. They're going to live with it the rest of their lives. And so when you talk about success, when we look at mental health as success for our client, We're not expecting that our clients are going to probably be able to go get a job. That's probably not really realistic. But if they can keep their housing, they can stay out of a crisis, they don't need to be conserved, they're medication compliant, and they're functioning at their baseline, that's success to us. And baseline for every client is different. There's not a set baseline. Every client's baseline is different. And so we're really working to make sure we get the client to their best baseline and that they maintain at that baseline. And that might mean that they have to have high-level services the rest of their life. That might mean that sometimes where a severe client, once they're at baseline, they're able to step down and they become more of a moderate-level client. But that's not the majority of our clients. So our high-level clients are going to stay with us. They're going to need some form of probably case management, therapy, rehab, and medication support the rest of their lives.

Thank you for that. Supervisor Williams?

Overall, I think the contracts are a lot better. I appreciate the effort. I mean, they're a lot longer for one. It took me a while to get through them. But I don't have any questions there. I would prefer we have one standard for record keeping. I think this idea of a hybrid system, I don't think that we'll get it done in time. I think at some point we'll find there's inconsistencies. It doesn't work 100%. They'll be finger pointing about, is it the integration layer? Which vendor is it that has a problem? And it'll be the county that gets sanctioned. And then you see the direction that mandates are trending. At some point, that model may not allow us to meet mandates. So I would think it's smarter from the start to standardize on one system maintained by the county. Does the director have any issue with that?

We support, we will support whatever the board decides. We, you know, we also know that for our providers it's a lot of change and so we're also trying to support the providers. We do, like I have said, having everyone in Avatar is easier but we also understand that It might not be the easiest model for all of our providers.

Is there a way to support them? I understand there's a little bit of pain in change, but I'm suggesting this one-time change is a long-term gain compared to the alternative of having hybrid systems supported. Is there any way for us to support our providers making that transition? Are there any resources to help them use our standardized system?

I know that there are two of them here and they may have comments. I know that some of the concerns that I think we can support them with the technology needs and try to be that support. I know that some of the concerns they have expressed, and so I want to make sure they're heard, is that they also don't just serve Mendocino County clients. So if they come into the county system, how do they put their non-Mendo clients into the county's database, right? Because then we have access to client data we shouldn't have. So that's been kind of that challenge. And they could get their own avatar system. Avatar is not cheap, right? And so coming into the county system and having a two-root system really reduced the cost, but it means that you're in the county system. And so I know that that's been one of their struggles.

Thank you.

Can you talk a little bit about the extra work your staff has to do through the hybrid model when people are not in the avatar systems?

Yeah, I'm going to have Tony as our electronic health record manager, and he is our expert, so he can probably give more detail on that.

Thank you.

Sure. Tony Lemus, Health Services. So we would expect a lot of data validation that we'd have to take a look at as far as if they were inside of the system. And we would have to do that on the QA side and the EHR side, if that answers your question.

I guess, so it's, if they're not in the avatar system, they present a paper file to you, is that right? And then your staff enters it into the system?

If they're not in the avatar system, we would start a model where they would, administer some of that data and chart within our system and get that data to us in that real time. That's what the hybrid model is proposing, is that they would enter the system and do the administrative work with their administrative staff.

So no extra work for your staff?

Sorry?

No extra work for your staff?

I'm again it would it would just be validation we would have to take a look at it and make sure that it entered correctly and and then. Do the data reporting thank you.

Not seeing any more questions. I will go to public comment plus staff you're finished that correct.

Good morning Dan Anderson with anchor health and chief operations officer there. And. I wasn't really prepared to comment and talk on this. So the slides that our behavioral health director provided is the first time I'm seeing those. So I'm talking a little bit off the top of my head here this morning and want to make sure that maybe we can add some context here. I want to say thank you to the behavioral health department for their work on the EHR issue. We've actually been working on this for several years and trying very, very hard to go with, find a solution to what the board had actually voted a couple of years ago that all the behavioral health providers would go and use Avatar as their primary EHR. We were, in fact, ready and planning to do that, had agreed to that. But when the root system came out, the second root system, we realized that there were a number of significant barriers that would be there that would prevent an organizational provider such as Anchor Health being able to do the work that we needed to do. Some examples of that were we would not be able to get... When you enter client data, there's a lot of stuff that goes in there in terms of their demographics, their social security number, and so forth. It turned out that we would not be able to control that data, that we would have to get reports built by the county for us to be able to track the clients served, the number of services they received, the timelines, all of that kind of data that we use to manage our services. we wouldn't be able to control that or have access to it. And part of that was because the county system has all the county's clients in it. And so it just was going to create a significant challenge for us to be able to manage our services. Secondly, as was mentioned earlier, we don't just serve Mendocino County Medi-Cal beneficiaries. We serve other counties. We serve folks with other payers, grants, other funding sources. And so what do we do with those there wasn't a system in a way for us as an organization To do that all in the county system because those aren't Mendocino County beneficiaries so it created these challenges that We couldn't figure out how to how to solve Avatar couldn't figure out how to solve we kind of ran into this to this wall here So we began looking at what other counties are doing we brought in our ehr folks we use exim we brought in their programmers their engineers other counties are using a hybrid system there's still work going on county-wide to create this interoperability it's not it's not ready to roll out yet but there's progress being made and so i guess what we are recommending and hoping and asking the board to consider is some flexibility around this as the technology gets developed. It's not ready to go right now. LA County is using their health information exchange as a way to get this information into the county system on the timely way. Other counties are using flat files where they're able to provide that information on a real-time basis in terms of patient encounters. There's a whole range of things that are going on around the state. And my hope is that the board just doesn't say, well, the simplest solution here is everybody go into the county system without recognizing the challenges and the barriers and the impact that it will have on on your partners here at the community-based organizations. It's not as simple as it sounds. It's very complicated. If it was, we would have done this two years ago. We have been having weekly, monthly meetings for two years on this and are still trying to figure out paths forward. Our electronic health provider and their engineers are part of this conversation, say, well, we could do this, we could do that. But it has to then go back to Avatar, and Avatar says, well, we can do this or we can't do that. So it's just been really, really challenging. So my hope is, and I can provide you an outline and a report on this that presents our concerns and our issues and the barriers. I don't have it in front of me, so this feels like I'm kind of operating a little bit with one hand tied behind my back. And this isn't blaming anybody. It's just saying that's the problem here this morning. So if you take a quick vote this morning and say, oh, yes, everybody should be in the avatar, which is the simplest thing, but it just really creates a serious impact on our ability to do the work. And let me add one more thing to this. So Anchor has added a mental health rehabilitation center to our operations. We do bill. through the mental health system, especially mental health. But DHS requires us to do a whole host of other tracking and documenting things, from physical health exams to monitoring the medication delivery. So we use what's called an EMAR. It's an electronic medication system that tracks when medications are handed out. We can't do that. without a lot of expense and development in Avatar right now. So to say, OK, go in and use Avatar, it's just not able to work because of the technology that's required to make that happen. That's just one example. And I could give you 15 to 20 other examples of how this would require a huge amount of engineering Which is possible, but the technology's not there right now.

We've gone well over, but a supervisor does have a question for you.

Yeah, so without being able to sort of white bar the problem and understand it, I have a hard time with this hybrid, because I see the county has hybrid systems today. I would say our MUNA system is used in a hybrid model, and we see the problems that have come out of that. And same with Aumentum. So I don't want to create another one of those situations. But I also see the hardship for the organization. You have clients from multiple counties. How do you integrate? You need a system for all of your clients. We need one for all of our patients, right? And those are two separate needs. Could we continue with the mandate that we're standardizing on Avatar, but ask you to come back and present maybe with an engineer what the difficulties are on a roadmap? I would love to do that. Is it a matter of time? Maybe the county, maybe we could work with Avatar to provide an API so you can get direct access to your patients that are in our system and you could back feed your separate software and do your own reporting and there may be a way to do integration in the reverse. So instead of the county working with a hybrid, maybe your organization could work with a hybrid that you have a way to pull your data out of our system. There may be options that facilitate both needs, but I don't want to today decide on a hybrid system because it's creating a long-term trajectory of possible fines from the state and compatibility with future mandates and the sort of support headache we have with our other hybrid systems today.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Can I just respond? Please. So I would love to be able to come back. And we actually could bring the engineers from EXIM. I'm not an IT expert, so my language and ability to describe this is probably limited. But I'd love to bring back. And we've been trying to do this within our EHR work group. I think there are paths forward here. And I understand the need for simplicity. And obviously, none of us want sanctions. But this is a complex. If it was simple, the state would have solved it. And they haven't. Every county is doing it differently right now. Every county is. And that's because it's just complicated. So I would hope there's some space and time here for some creative work through here. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein, do you have a question? It can wait until after the comment. Sorry.

That's okay. Good morning, or almost afternoon. Victoria Kelly, Redwood Community Services. I'm not going to, I mean, I could say exactly what Dan just said, but I just will echo my support on the majority of what he described. We are in a different EHR than even Anchor Health. We did make a shift a couple years ago. We have been operating under a contract working toward interoperability for this last year. And so I, too, am a little taken aback that there was a position for the board to make a decision on if we're doing that or not today. We have had a significant amount of investment into what interoperability will mean for us as an organization, but also us as a partner with Mendocino County. And we do operate in other counties. We do have other grants. We also are really pushing our private insurance, which has been a mandate within our contract with the crisis residential treatment, and to expand our services and our access to private insurance. That would pose a barrier. Avatar does cost a significant amount more. If we had the ability to go with Avatar when we made our initial shift, we would have. It is significantly out of range. The other issue around if we have to be in Avatar, we will have to have another EHR. We won't be able to work within Avatar with our other funding streams and our other grants in our other counties. We will have to continue to operate a second EHR. And so all costs within Avatar within this contract will have to be, that's a whole other separate conversation. And I do want to echo the last thing. I have been hearing our county partners' concerns about this for a long time. As a provider in the state, I have been pushing for advocacy at the state level to address interoperability, because this is something that the state needs to take on. This is not something that individual counties should be taking on. And so under some of our memberships, our organizations in advocacy have been pushing to say we need to be addressing how providers and counties are building interoperability so we can make this work. There is technology out there that can make this work. And it doesn't have to be archaic. And it doesn't have to mean that we aren't going to meet our data points. technology available that we can make this work. So I agree. I just would temper the decision today and try and get more information, because it has a big ripple effect. So thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Camille Schroeder with Anchor Health Management. Again, I'm beyond words. I don't really know what to actually say about the presentation and such. But I was hoping maybe, Supervisor Williams, you have a lot of experience and investment knowledge in this field and in this work. And we have been spending a long time and a lot of effort trying to come up with something that will help us have our data, be able to take care of our members, Understand what we do so that we can do it better support and assure that we none of us have the mandates And the sanctions and the things that were presented here today Would it be possible to do an ad hoc meeting and have you join us? And I mean your expertise could be really helpful to getting us over the line before making a real firm decision based on the presentation here today. So that's what I would ask at this point to maybe be able to close the chapter on this. Everyone has spent a long time and a lot of work trying to get there. And there's so much more to share that a public meeting wouldn't be able to meet. So that's my personal ask. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein.

Yeah, I want to thank the commenters for their insights and just ask our director what kind of timeline she envisions this. Appreciate you bringing this to the board for our awareness. And when do you need to have a decision made around electronic health record?

I'm not sure that we have to have a decision today. I mean, you know, I think the question is every day we're spending more money, both the providers and us, to build interoperability, and I don't want to keep pushing for something if the board is going to push back and say, no, everyone should be an avatar. This was, you know, I think we announced at the Behavioral Health Advisory Board that this was coming forward about the avatar. It's been a question. Multiple board members have asked me why everyone's not an avatar because that was a direction by this board. So I was asked to bring it back today as a question because several board members believe that that was the direction. And so, you know, we've been trying to pursue interoperability. Dan said, you know, for several years we have been at the table meeting every other week with XM. We were meeting with Credible, and that kind of came to a halt for a couple months. But we have been trying to move it forward The question for us is do we continue doing this knowing that we're putting money in to build up the avatar system And we are we have been doing that and the providers are putting money in and so I you know I don't think there has to be an answer today, but I also Because I've had several questions asked me why is everyone not an avatar it really was a decision like do we are you know what are you asking for the department now because I you know, we're spending money to try to build interoperability, but I've also heard some feedback that everyone thought everyone was going in Avatar, and so that's why we're here today.

Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Comments to my colleagues, I think that it might be appropriate for us to have some sort of ad hoc form to work on this issue, and it was suggested by one of the commenters. I'm just supportive of that idea as we work through this issue because it is pretty detailed.

Thank you. Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. I just want to say first that the agenda was properly noticed and had the presentation, had all of the information about what the discussion was going to be today. So that anybody would be surprised surprises me. And I will say that I am one of the people that has been asking, why is everybody not on Avatar? Because that was a board discussion. I also am aware that the department and the service providers have been meeting regularly to try to work through this. And I understand that there are actually maybe even over 20 other counties that are going through a different system and trying to figure out their hybrid model. So it seems like through all 58 counties in the state of California, this is a challenge trying to figure out how service providers and county agencies can work together to meet the mandates of the state. So I do agree that this is a statewide issue that we should be working with our legislation and our our NGOs and our affiliated agencies on to improve. Because at the end of the day, it's the people that get lost in the systems of whether or not a flat file downloads correctly and whether or not somebody's reporting into the same system there is a person that is impacted by that decision so i don't want to be flippant that it is just one or the other and here's where we need to be and i think an ad hoc is probably appropriate to figure out where we go next because the board did give direction there was direction that it should everybody should be an avatar by one or two years And here we are at this point where that didn't happen. So a more detailed work group I think is appropriate.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams. Yeah, I agree with Supervisor Mulhern.

I don't think our providers are being difficult. I think they just want to wait to work with us. And there may be some possibility that we're not going to touch on in this session. And so I'm fine working offline. But the board already made a decision that everyone wants to use Avatar. So status quo, if we take no action, is we're continuing in that direction. I would say until such time as we can come forward with a proof that it's not possible for them to perform their role in our system. Does our staff understand why they can't use Avatar for our patients and use the Avatar API to back feed their systems?

Do we understand why the providers cannot?

Yeah, I mean, that's what I would do is I would, if a Mendocino County patient comes in, I would use the county system avatar and then use the avatar API to read it into another system if they want to do their own data analysis.

So we have two providers locally, Youth Project and Hospitality Center, that are in Avatar. And then we have some of the drug medical providers that are coming in. And their model is that they have their own EHR, but then they use the county's EHR. further when they see county clients. So if they're serving one provider who does medication management services, they have 30 counties they work with and they use the county's avatar for those counties that are that county's clients. They have their own EHR and they also use SmartCare for their other clients. So they'll use whatever the county's is they'll use that EHR, and then they have their own sub-EHR that they can transfer data to and from.

Exactly. Is there a reason that can't be done in this case?

It could be done, but the community has stated that they can't pull their own data from our EHR system.

But there's an API to pull it. I mean, I've looked at the dogs.

There's an API that goes to the patient access, which is the third-party application. That is the mandate. However, that's a third party that is not contracted with them.

Can we help them with that piece?

We can look into that and talk to NetSmart Avatar and see those options. We do know that it is that barrier that they can't pull reports without us creating them. We did offer to create whatever reports they need, but it does mean them waiting on the county to create some of those reports, but we can look at the API.

But they could also pull all of their data from Avatar into another system and do their own reports in that system, right?

Yes, as long as reports were written for them to pull it in and out, yes.

We would write it in the database, and they would generate it.

Okay, so I agree with Supervisor Mulhern. I think it's an offline conversation. Is the director comfortable with us taking the recommended action today, leaving this part out, keeping status quo until we're able to have some ad hoc discussions?

Yes, I'm fine with that.

If I may, to the chair, can I get one clarifying question? Do the contracts currently being brought forward state that there is a requirement? Do we need to modify any of the contracts?

We'll need to modify. If, yes, we'll need to modify the contracts from the perspective of right now they do talk about interoperability. So if we're staying status quo, they would need to say they're using Avatar until such time. Well, unless you guys want to leave them with the information regarding interoperability.

Well, let's have to poll the board. My preference would be to make the right decision once, and I don't think we have enough information to do it now. So I would rather keep status quo, but open the door to conversations about general impossibility with integration, and we may have to update our requirement if we can't find a solution.

If I may, Mr. Chair, does this mean that we would bring the contracts back on September 1st as retroactive as well then?

I would recommend if you could, you know, approve the contracts knowing we'll amend them with the language for Avatar because, in other words, they go a month without payment. And so I won't be able to pay them, and they're providing services, and so that's going to be like a two- or three-month lag for payment, and so that wouldn't be fair to the provider.

Okay. We also have public comment to finish, but Supervisor Hashtag, go ahead.

Yeah, I agree with that approach. When you look at page 24 of the slides, that, you know, there's a lot of impacts to the county. And, you know, with the county impacts, the technology and infrastructure, all of those things listed kind of show that the right way to do it is to move towards this avatar that's what we thought we were doing but we're hearing that progress is being made at the same time there's all these barriers that are aren't allowing it so let's keep working on that but the intent is to move in that direction okay thank you anybody else in the room like to speak on this item madam clerk any online seeing none

Okay back to the board supervisor can we ask County Council is there a reason we can't just amend and approved today. Why does it have to come back. So what what part you want to amend I'm sorry so that the maintaining the status quo of mandate to use avatar.

So it would be amending exhibits exhibit C. It would be the avatar portion of the contract.

The contract. It would need to reroute back through cobblestone.

Why? I mean, it's normal course here. We approve contracts subject to amendments made during the meeting. Why is this any different?

And then we would, as far as I know, that we've not approved a contract that has a different scheduled that's attached, I think we would need to appropriately then reattach the schedule.

What if we were to keep contracts as is, no amendment today or ever, and the board clarifies what interoperability means, that it's enabling our service providers to interoperate with Avatar to pull the data. for their own uses, right? Because they do need some interoperability. It's just a question of do they put our patient data in separate systems from ours, or do they put it all in ours and they have interoperability with pulling that data back into theirs to do their own analysis? I think it's open to interpretation. We need to solve that problem for them, but I don't know that we need to modify our contract.

The current contract does say that we're going to build a hybrid model of interoperability, so I just want to be, you know, that's what kind of the term talks about, and that they're going to pay for the build-out and stuff. I don't know if an option is, and it wouldn't go back through a cobblestone, if we could just pull that piece out and they could approve, and we could try to go back to the office, amend them all really quickly, pull out that piece, and you guys could approve it later today? Okay.

Chairman, I would prefer that because otherwise we're approving a contract that's sending a message we want them to begin spending their money building out a hybrid system that this board actually doesn't support, at least today.

If I may, to the chair, you would remove Section C?

I think it's Exhibit C. Exhibit C? I think it's Exhibit C because I think A is the main and then B is BHSA, so I think it's Exhibit C. I'd have to, but we would remove all the avatar, the interoperability language out. I'm thinking that it would be under.

Dr. Miller, could you restate what your preference would be in this based on the discussion?

My preference is to make sure that the contractors get at least a contract approved today so they can get paid between now and September 1st. So I am happy to go back to the office and have my team just pull out the language regarding interoperability. We can bring those back as separate contracts and have that not even be part of the special mental health. We can make sure that they're two separate contracts going forward. because I think that will make probably more sense. And I'm happy to do that. As long as county council thinks we can, if we just change nothing but pull that language out and then bring it, and we can get it back to the board today for approval.

I would have to look at it a little more carefully in this situation, but this is something that we have given to the other parties, and they've signed on.

That's correct.

And so if we're changing contract terms, we do need to go back to the persons we're contracting with. And so the current, I'm not sure what you're saying, which contract you want to go forward today.

It would be all five of the contracts, but pulling out a portion of the contract term that's only about Avatar. Two of them don't. You could approve two. So Youth Project, I mean, we could pull these apart. Youth Project and... Hospitality House are in Avatar. Their contracts are totally different. There's not a conversation about interoperability. They are using Avatar. They've been using Avatar for the last year. They are totally fine. Those contracts are, we could pull that as a separate. You guys can make that as a separate. Youth Project and Hospitality Center are already using Avatar. And the language is in there to continue to use Avatar and reimburse for the number of users they have. So you're only looking at three.

Thank you. Supervisor Mulher?

Thank you. I'm just wondering at this point, the contracts have been signed by the providers with the provision in them that they would be using Avatar.

It is in the... They would be using the administration part of Avatar, but they would still be using their own system.

Right, but that it has to continue to work with us. So the contracts could move forward today. The ad hoc could work on whether or not the requirement would be to switch Avatar to their actual system. So the contracts could be approved today. As they are listed, it's the way that we've been operating. And then an ad hoc could bring back to the board a recommendation about whether or not they fully implement Avatar.

Do you agree?

Yes, as long as the board agrees. That wouldn't be status quo. It would be status quo to what we're doing today. But it wouldn't be status quo to what the board voted on, which I think Supervisor William is kind of stating status quo to everyone has to use Avatar. So I think you guys would have to make that decision. But I would want their contracts to move forward at some level today. Because to make them wait till September for payment is not realistic.

Supervisor yeah, I want their contracts to move forward as well, and I have full support County Council could get it done We have a very long closed session. We're going to be busy for hours We could come back and take this at the end of the day purse supervisor Mulhern's comment. I Think it's a mistake that right now Our providers are expected to use avatar this contract tells them no you can do a hybrid and then we come back in a month and say we want you to use avatar again and and we have to amend the contracts. That thrashing isn't good for either side of the agreement. So is it possible to make the change and have the county sign? The other party can sign later as far as we're concerned.

I would just need to understand on those three contracts, is there an agreement with our contractors for that amendment?

We'll have to ask them. And if not, then the contract won't go forward.

It's status quo, though, right? We're not introducing anything new here. This is what the agreements have been for the last couple of years.

The other suggestion is to amend the term and just do a term until October 1st and come back and amend after you've had that chance to negotiate, to shorten the term. And that would be, I think that's fine.

Thank you. Supervisor Mohrer?

Thank you. I think that using the term status quo for something that didn't happen is an awkward way to phrase this conversation because it's confusing people. Supervisor Williams, you're referring to status quo as what the board's previous direction was that everybody switches to Avatar. I want to make sure that all five board members agree that a hybrid model may not be a viable option for the providers, which I am not decided on yet. in reviewing that there are essentially half the counties using an entirely different model that none of the providers have mentioned in the counties not using in the state of California and that other providers that are using the avatar system are also struggling with trying to figure out their management of with their providers and their county as an agency I still have more questions and so I would like to see the contracts move forward, which is the model that would allow them to continue to use their system and share the information with the county so that the county has the information that they need and then come back to the board with a no, you must. be on avatar and it and maybe I'm alone in that and that be fine. But I do want to hear from the other board members, because I think that the way that things are being described can be a little bit confusing right now.

And that mirrors your earlier idea. Plus, you had the added comment of forming an ad hoc to get through that process, correct? Would you like to form that into a motion?

I would, but I would like to hear from Supervisor Hashock first.

Supervisor?

Well, I was going to make a motion to approve as is items two, which is a hospitality center, and three, the youth project contract. And then with the others, we do a short-term contract for three months and have the ad hoc work with them to try to figure out a path forward.

Second miss Miller those contracts would then again have to come back right and the The providers would have to agree to the short-term contract.

Yes, the providers would have to agree to the short-term contract.

Yes Okay All right. So we do have a first by supervisor hashtag is seconded by Williams Madam clerk, could you restate the motion, please?

approve the second and third contract that being the youth project and the Mendocino County the excuse me Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center and approve a short-term contract for the other three for three months while the ad hoc works with the companies okay thank you supervisor client question

Yeah, I just need more clarity. I'm trying to understand how these short-term contracts would work, because I'm understanding we're under the timeline of today, and so would look to staff for clarity about what that would really mean in terms of a short-term contract.

So it would mean that we would go back to the office, change the date. We would just edit the dates. We would have to consult with the three contractors because the two, like I said, the two are already in Avatar and make sure they'll agree to sign those short-term contracts. It would mean that we would need an ad hoc committee form pretty quickly because we'd need to make a decision and be back in three months to this board so that we're not putting them without a contract and without payment.

Thank you and then before we vote. Supervisor Maher could you restate what your motion would have been.

Yeah my my motion would have been to move forward with the recommended action and regarding the county electronic health record usage for contracted providers, which was the request for the recommended action was to provide direction. So my direction would have been to create an ad hoc of supervisor Williams and hashtag to work with the behavioral health department and the providers to determine whether or not moving forward with an only Avatar model versus a hybrid model, what the recommendation from the Board of Supervisors ad hoc would have been.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein?

I would be supportive of that action.

You would or would not? Okay. I would too. Supervisor Haschek?

Well, I'm not in support of that because I don't want to be on that ad hoc. I don't have the expertise.

Okay. So we have, yeah, Supervisor Williams.

I'm not unsupportive. I think Supervisor Mulhern has a good idea. My only concern is I don't want to sign a contract for 12 months with a hybrid system because we don't know the answer.

She's right. It may be that

After some fact-finding, we find there's a solution to use Avatar for everyone. I don't want to put that off for a year. And so this idea of passing a contract today until June of 27, doing the fact-finding and then coming back and trying to amend it doesn't seem like the best flow. It would be better to get that answer first. And so that's why I think Supervisor Hazchek's approach of three-month extension, basically, so we can do the fact-finding and reach the right answer. We'll put pressure on everyone to get to that answer soon.

Okay. We have a first and a second.

Yes. The motion that's on the table for Supervisor Haschak does not create the ad hoc that the motion itself is referencing. A creation of an ad hoc, I believe, would be needed to make the ad hoc, would need to be in the motion to make the ad hoc. Is that correct, County Council?

Well, couldn't the the chair create the ad hoc after the vote?

If I could, there's debate on this, but there's also preference of your clerk of the board. And so the preference is that it's part of the motion in order to track it more successfully.

Through the chair, if I may, it is in the rules and procedures, I believe, that an ad hoc must be formed in a motion.

Thank you for that. That's my understanding as well. So Supervisor Mulhern, Supervisor Hashtag has stated that he doesn't. And I don't want to put you on the hot seat here. But I would challenge anybody, certainly in this room or at the county, maybe aside from Dr. Miller and her staff, to have a better understanding of the system, both behavioral health, substance abuse, all of that, than you. um so i would um whether this motion passes or not um we're going to need an ad hoc so i would um i would ask for you to as well as supervisor williams to be on it and i'm not i'm i'm not in favor of supervisor hash check's motion i'm more in support of yours if that helps

So can I I'm I have to say I'm got some confusion here you have people saying they would like to make a motion.

I don't know if any we do have actually we do have a first and a second. Okay, we're having a discussion on the motion the discussion right now is around who's going to be on the ad hoc. So who made that because you're trying to buy your house check was the first of the buzzer Williams was the second. Supervisor has to.

so with that i would just say hey if we're going to form a ad hoc let's form an ad hoc of supervisor williams and supervisor mulherin okay so let's uh can i get one more clarifying question sorry yes um are we bring if this motion passes are we bringing this back at the end of day which is likely past 6 37 o'clock um i think that would be the best route yes supervisor moher

Yeah, just for clarification, if Supervisor Haschak's motion passes, behavioral health staff will have to go back and revise contracts. They'll have to get approval to change it to three months. So if that happens.

Right.

Supervisor Klein?

Chair, did we basically have some polling of the motion before we vote?

We can. I think we're, my understanding is we're at least three to two in favor of Supervisor Mulhern's. Does that satisfy your question? Yes, thank you. OK. All right, we'll vote by the button. Yes.

Through the chair, if I may, clarification. Did the maker and the second want to add the creation of the ad hoc to the motion that's being voted on currently?

Yes.

And for clarification of the record, was that Supervisor Williams and Supervisor Mulhern?

Yes. Supervisor Williams as the second? Yes. Okay, we'll vote by the button.

The motion The motion fails with Supervisor Klein, Supervisor Mulhern, and Supervisor Norvell dissenting.

Thank you. OK. Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, Supervisor Mulhern. I can make a motion for the recommended action to accept the presentation from Behavioral Health and Recovery Services regarding specialty mental health services and the Behavioral Health Services Act and provide direction to staff regarding the county electronic health record to create an ad hoc of Supervisors Mulhern and Williams Bring back a recommendation to the board. Of fully implementing avatar with our entire system or creating a hybrid model.

Second person first by Supervisor Mohr second by client Supervisor has to if I make the chair and this is the approval of the contracts as well.

Supervisor has checked.

Well, I think there needs to be a time set for bringing it back. So it's not open-ended.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams?

Yeah, it was just a clarifying question. Do we foresee that this decision that's made about how to move forward on health records impacting the next contract after June 2027, or do we see that information having us renegotiate with the providers mid-contract? So if the ad hoc is formed and the answer comes back in two months and the board supports it, will we be renegotiating a couple months in or will we be saying that takes effect at the end of the contract?

I think that'll be a recommendation that the ad hoc brings back in consultation with the behavioral health department and the service providers. I think at this point, everybody understands that the direction of the Board of Supervisors was to get everybody onto Avatar. We're going to have a conversation about whether or not the hybrid model continues. And if the recommendation is that we go to Avatar and the entire board approves that action, then the contractors are aware that that is something that could potentially impact their contracts.

So desert yes, I have a follow-up question for county council is county council agree that we're we're able to amend the contract after both parties sign and they perform services and we pay within that year period.

So that was my concern in terms of if both parties signed this contract and I'm it's a very large contract I was trying to look at it at the last second. I'm concerned in terms of the procedure, but usually we can't just amend unless we get their agreement. So if they say no, we don't have any recourse until the contract ends and start of the next fiscal year.

Thank you. Supervisor Haschek?

Yeah, two things. One is the composition of the ad hoc hasn't been clarified, and the other is Why wouldn't we go to like a shortened contract? OK. Can the maker kind of explain that?

Supervisor Klein?

I believe we had a comment from our Director, Behavioral Health Director.

I believe all of our contracts have termination clauses. And so we can turn without cause so I would say that if They didn't want to amend and we were saying you had to be an avatar We would have the ability to give a 45-day notice of a termination So I just wanted to make sure that all of our contracts have term clauses

And my other, my comment has been we have two of the service providers represented here today, and we could, you know, do a litmus test for if they're agreeable to this process, you know, to Supervisor Hashtag's point and Supervisor Williams' point to make sure that this is an okay process with our partners.

Seeing nodding heads.

Okay.

Supervisor Mulhern, did you have a question?

No? Okay.

Ms. Bearden, could you reread the motion? You can't?

Through the chair, if I may, I am missing a few portions that I was going to go back and look at. If you could restate it, I can fill in those portions.

I cannot, but I believe Ms. Mulhern can. Ms. Mulhern can, yes. Okay.

The motion is to approve the recommended action from the Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Department, and the direction to staff regarding the county electronic health record is to create an ad hoc of Supervisors Mulhern and Williams to bring back for consideration to the board full implementation of Avatar versus the hybrid model, a recommendation to the board.

The second agrees.

And the second agrees, second being Supervisor Klein. Supervisor Hashtag, do you have a question on the motion?

Yeah. Is there going to be a time limit to bring back a recommendation?

No.

OK. As soon as it's finished?

Yes.

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

The motion carries unanimously.

okay thank you thank you miss thank you miss miller well i think that was assumed that the contractors i'm not i haven't yet yeah but i was just looking at my chair script i think we are yeah Miss Pierce, what time we have a time session for closed.

If I made the chair, we do not have a time session for closed. We have a time session for being back and open at 130. OK, for the road tax items.

OK, so we've got we can knock out a couple other things here, correct?

Yes, we can. We do have a closed session, though, which I think will take about a half hour.

And that's not time it's not time okay is there a preference from the board you want to. Not more work out now or you want to. Okay.

And we'll need a little break though for staff for lunch as well right so we'll go.

And what time is the time 1.30 1.30 OK so we're going to be about half hour about another 20 minutes OK that work.

It does we have we just need to stop just needs a bunch break.

OK this burden will keep us on track. Thank you.

If I make the chair if we're looking for an item we could talk about that. You do board of Supervisors reports or you could do the grand jury ad hoc.

Yeah, let's start there are 13 discussion of possible action including appointment of an ad hoc committee regarding the response to the 2526 grand jury reports titled from policy to practice digging deeper into the board of Supervisors oversight of planning building services and continuity compliance report. Pardon me.

Thank you. Would the sponsor like to introduce the motion, introduce the item?

Other than the title, no.

We do have an obligation to report back to the grand jury. So we need to form an ad hoc to do that. You and I were the last two. I prefer not to be on this one again. But I would, my only recommendation is that whatever the ad hoc comes back with is that it's on regular and not consent.

Board discussion? Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, thank you. I wanted to express my desire to see at least some continuity from the last ad hoc to this next ad hoc. Maybe that's not possible, but I do think it would be important to have someone who was involved at the last ad hoc continue on. And then I, as an individual, do not have the bandwidth to participate in this ad hoc. I'm still hearing healing from some medical stuff that caused me to miss the last meeting, so just preference that I can't participate.

Okay, let's go to public comment. Any public comment in the room? And those online can use the raise hand feature.

Good morning, or afternoon. Dee Pallison, District 5, here in Ukiah. There are several important issues identified in this current grand jury report, but I believe the most critical is the failure to implement PRC 4290 and California Code of Regulations Title 14, the state minimum fire safe regulations. I spoke to you last year about the failure by PBS to fully implement PRC 4290 in Title 14 and the importance of you addressing this failure. In response to my comments, Supervisor Williams asked the Planning and Building Director to respond. Director Krog stated that there appeared to be a gap between the information I had received from CAL FIRE and what PBS had received. Supervisor Williams made the comment that we, quote, don't want to leave this dangling. And Supervisor Haschek stated, quote, we need to clear this up so everyone's understanding is the same. As a result, you included in your motion clear direction to PBS to contact CAL FIRE to get the necessary clarification to fill these gaps and to come back in a month or so to report back. Director Krug acknowledged this direction. We never heard back from Director Krug on this item. Now we have a new grand jury report that indicates this is still an unaddressed problem. As I shared at the last meeting, it appears great strides are being made to, in fact, implement recommendations made in last year's report. And yet nothing addresses the implementation of PRC 4290, Title 14 in its entirety. I did reach out to CAL FIRE myself, both locally and at the state level, and CAL FIRE clarified that one, the definition of preexisting in the context of PRC 4290 and Title 14 is any structure built prior to January 1st, 1991 in the SRA and in the very high fire hazard safety zone anything built after July 1st, 2021. And two, in order for CAL FIRE to conduct a 4290 inspection, they must receive an application. And three, a quote from a CAL FIRE official, it is not our job to tell the county how to do their job. The two largest gaps I see here are one, the misinterpretation of preexisting by the county. And two, the county is not referring all residential and commercial structure permit applicants to CAL FIRE. The state minimum fire safe regulations are very clear, and I suggest you read them, especially sections 1270.04 and 1270.05. 1270.04 states in part, the local jurisdiction shall provide the director of CAL FIRE with notice of applications for building permits for construction or development within the SRA. And the local jurisdiction shall ensure that the applicable sections of this subchapter become a condition of approval. And section 1270.05 states in part, subchapter 2 shall serve as the minimum wildfire protection standards applied in the SRA and the very high fire hazard safety zone. I remind you that since you are the top of the command structure, you are in fact our building official. And the responsibility sits on your shoulders. When those that you have delegated that authority to fail to fully and correctly interpret and implement state law and so jeopardize the health and safety of all Mendocino first responders and residents, it is the duty of the Board of Supervisors to give clear direction to that effect. Please do the right thing. Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more public comment in the room. No public comment online. Back to the board for discussion.

Supervisor Haschuk.

Well, I'll acknowledge that the speaker had it correct that we did give direction to have CAL FIRE and the director of planning and building come and kind of address this issue before us to kind of work it out. And that never happened. It adds on us. We're not making sure that that happened.

Is there a motion? Go ahead, Supervisor Moore.

I would like to ask Supervisor Haschak if he's willing to serve with Supervisor Williams on this ad hoc, and then I'll make a motion.

Yeah, I'll do it.

I move that we appoint.

Go ahead.

Is there more public comment?

I have a comment, but you go ahead.

I'd like to move that we appoint an ad hoc of Supervisors Williams and Haschak regarding their response to the 2526 grand jury report from policy to practice and the continuity compliance report. Second.

Okay, there's a first and there's a second. I have a comment. Our last ad hoc to work on this, I found it extremely frustrating, the dynamic between being guided by county council and the grand jury being guided by different county council who works for us. And I don't want to experience that again because if I'm on the ad hoc, it's to get to the bottom of this and come up with what needs to be done in the solutions. And we just couldn't make any progress last time because the process So is this a repeat of the last go-around? Is this a problem that can't be solved by the grand jury approach, that they generate a report and all we can work with is that report? We can't have a dialogue to clarify because, you know, if there's specific cases that are called out but we don't know what they are and we can't get clarification, we can't have a sit-down, All we can do is rely on our staff to ask, are we in compliance? And if our staff says yes, we're going to come back with a report that says we disagree, we're in compliance, and we're going to have the same public comment that we're not doing our job. So does county council need to look at how we can be productive at solving the concerns this time?

So there's a bit of a compound question. So if I understand, you're wanting to go beyond what your responses are to have a dialogue. Is that what I'm hearing?

I don't want to have a repeat of what we had last time, that we had two supervisors trying to solve a problem and found that process didn't allow us to do anything productive. That's not going to be a good look if we do that exercise again.

So in response, responses and how they are supposed to be prepared are laid out actually in the penal code in terms of what you do. And many times when a grand jury is doing investigations and they ask questions, I find a lot of times departments start to solve those problems by having the questions asked. I mean, sometimes by the time a report gets to the Board of Supervisors, some of the issues have been resolved. You know, there's different ways of doing it, and the Board of Supervisors can have an ad hoc, but usually it's more staff-based in terms of getting the answers, et cetera, and then would work with the Board of Supervisors to finalize that. The issues that are brought up in terms of being able to move forward and do something would be something you might agendize for a meeting in the future. But in terms of using the responses to the grand jury report, it's fairly limited in terms of legally.

So one of the difficulties is the grand jury report is finding that PBS isn't adequately complying with state regulations. And the ad hoc is going to ask the same staff, are you complying with state regulations? I think that staff is going to say, yes, we are. Then what? And I don't know. Last time, I went to the CAL FIRE unit chief and asked her, can you look at this? Are we doing something wrong? If we are, we want to fix it. Help me. And the response I got was affirming that staff is doing it right. So where do we go from here to be productive?

And again, I think working directly with the CEO's office who oversees the planning department would be very important. Some follow-up you've you know, you've got a limited time in which you respond to these so you might not get all of those answers But you do actually have to rely on your staff for some of that So for the board do you want this do you want do you want Williams on the ad hoc?

Who Williams and Norvell couldn't make progress on it last time? I'll do it if you assign it to me, but if somebody else would like to take a swing at it by all means I

I think the fact that you know the issues and you you pointed them out so clearly I would support you still being on there.

Supervisor modern thank you, I I think one of the challenging things for this particular issue is that miss Allison has been coming to our meetings and bringing it to our attention. But she is not on the grand jury. And so there's nothing that prevents any member from the Board of Supervisors, including Supervisor Williams, from sitting down. We could even have staff sit with Ms. Palfrey. And there's nothing against the rules that would allow us to have a conversation with a constituent versus the statutory requirements of responding to the grand jury. Because I agree with Supervisor Williams, it's very frustrating what our requirements are. But to be clear, any member could of the Board of Supervisors could meet with a member of the public that has a concern.

Right?

Supervisor Klein?