Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everyone. It's 9 o'clock. We're going to call the order of the regular meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk, if you could take a roll, please.

Supervisor Klein. Supervisor Mulhern. Here. Supervisor Haschak. Here. Chair Norvell. Here. Supervisor Williams.

Here. All right, and I'd like to invite Brandon McGregor to the podium to lead us in the pledge, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States.

Thank you, sir.

Public expression on non-agenda items. Is there anybody in the room?

So good morning, chair and supervisors. Is this on? Is it on? My name is Julie Golden. I'm grateful to be speaking to a body of elected officials who actually represent my property, my neighbor's property and our interests in this county. Rather than standing before planning commissioners who said they were just making procedural recommendations while the annexation of the unwilling was being steamrolled forward. I ask you today to terminate agreement 24-085, the master tax sharing agreement, approved in June of 2024, and to start the notice process so the county is not locked into that formula. The MTSA was sold to shorthand so the county and the cities would not have to reinvent the tax sharing for every annexation. In practice, it has been used as a proxy to push annexation of unincorporated land without the informed consent of the people who live and own property there. A 20-year blanket formula is not a substitute for talking to landowners, looking at each parcel, and deciding whether annexation actually serves the public. Once a county entered into this agreement, it gave away leverage, and we lost our voice through abdication. Revenue and taxation code section 99 still requires a tax exchange agreement before LAFCO can act, but the master agreement already answers that question in advance. The county is left with little room to insist that countywide services, the sheriff, courts, roads, and health still be funded from the land that generates the revenue. County Policy 13 adopted June 17, 1986, said annexation should not be favored until a formula exists so revenues from annexed areas pay for the county's continuing obligations. The MTSA did not solve that problem. It papered over it. Ending the MTSA does not happen overnight. The deal runs 20 years with at least five years' notice to terminate. That is all the more reason to act now instead of waiting. The blanket deal also ended real collaboration. Case-by-case negotiation forces the city and the county to sit down, look at maps, costs and services, and treat property owners and partners instead of tax rate . We do not need one formula covering Ukiah, Willits, Fort Bragg, and Point Arena for two decades. Different annexations have different impacts. Some parcels make sense. Many do not. Please, terminate agreement 2485. Give the required notice to the cities in LAFCO. then handle future annexations one proposal at a time, with owners at the table, with real fiscal analysis and a tax sharing agreement written for that land, not for every future map a city might draw for you. Thank you.

Thank you.

D. Pallison, District 5 in Ukiah. I'm speaking now because I'm unable to be here this afternoon, and I want to make a brief statement related to item R14, and I hope you'll allow it. I want to take a minute to say that there appears to be a change in the tone and attitude in how this board is conducting business. I see a change in transparency, communication, and protocol that gives me hope. I want to say thank you to Chair Bernie Norvell and County Council Kit Elliott for your leadership. It feels like Sarah Pierce and Richard Angley may have the courage and be a breath of fresh air in their apparent willingness to take the difficult steps to move this county forward, out of the past, away from how we always have done things, and do the work to make us better. Thank you all for your work.

Thank you.

Good morning, Board. Shamice Cubison, I'm speaking this morning as a citizen and a resident of the city of Ukiah. I also want to implore you to consider giving notice to rescind and get out of the master tax sharing agreement. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Board. I'm Gizmo. I am coming to you this morning as the Mendocino County Climate Action Advisory Consultant. And I'd like to speak to the fact that we have a lot of inside and outside contractors here who are putting us in danger in two ways. One, continuous idling, which really promotes the problem that we're trying to relieve ourselves of. And so I would ask that any review of contractors inside any contracts that we sign from here on in the future has a review of idling policies for the companies that we're hiring. We shouldn't be giving money that we don't have to contractors who are idling six to eight hours a day just to run a yellow light on the top of their truck. And I know this also involves some outside contractors that Caltrans hires. And so when we ask a company, do you have idling policy? And they look at you and go, well, what's an idling policy? That's an issue. We need to start talking about that. We need to start moving that into the future. Second thing that I want to talk about this morning is the roadside fires that we have. Although this year we haven't had a lot of fires, the larger percentage of them, from what I have heard and learned recently, are from people dragging some kind of metal, whether it's the jack foot, trailer chains, or a skid plate, what have you. And so I'd like to see if the Board of Supervisors could work with the state to create a trailer chain safety checkpoint. And I think the first one should be in Hopland. I'm not, I don't, it's really hard to follow these because the after actions reports come out about a year later. And sometimes these folks drive on. You can drive through a really bumpy spot and create several ignition points along the freeway, hitting some potholes. The physical part of the vehicles creating the pivot point is where most of the time the issue is. And then if the road gets smoother, that person could drive on. So it's really hard to figure out who is doing this. But my estimation a lot of times from what I see out on the road is a lot of these folks are from out of town. They're from down south where there's a lot more humidity, sometimes 30% to 40% more until you come over Burke Hill. And then we're looking at 9% humidity down here. So we need to create a trailer chain safety checkpoint. And I'd like the board to move into that. into that direction if they can. And I'm always on the sidelines here to help out with that.

Thanks for your time. Thank you, sir. Anyone else in the room on non-agenda items?

Hi. Ross Liberty Welder, Ukiah, California. Well, Booneville Road. So I wanted to have a catchphrase for this. That's accidental abdication. I'm sure everybody's aware that the city of Ukiah annexation has been, they've decided to listen to the people and not do it. It was a big effort by a lot of people. I'm very proud for the very small part I played. I'm concerned that I won't be here for it next time. But I want to kind of hopefully head off at the pass the next time. And what happened to allow this was, you know, we the people, vote for you because, by and large, we trust you. We never got to vote for City Council, City of Ukiah City Council, for whatever, because we don't live in the city limits.

Those they sought to annex don't live in the city limits.

This, not you necessarily, but the Board of SOUPS signed on to a a master tax sharing agreement that left us somewhat powerless to and without representation to avoid in the future or to avoid such a takeover that annexation attempted to be. We would like to not have to go through that again. Like I said, I might not be able to, but to avoid that, I think we need to make a change to the master tax sharing agreement to make it where it is, like most master tax sharing agreements, somewhat kind of just laying out a framework, but not committing allowing annexation without input from this body. It seems to me that the master tax sharing agreement needs a clause in it that says that the board of supes can, at their discretion, opt out. That you guys can speak for us, which is why we elected you. and tell them, we're not going to let this happen. This is not a good deal. Our constituents don't want it. But last go around, it was all up to us. And it's a very high burden when it's a protest form as opposed to an election. If it was an election, OK, it'd be fair enough. But a protest form, if somebody just tosses it in the trash, then that is a vote for annexation. And that's a very high burden for us to overcome. I think we were going to do it. I think we were going to be able to do it. But it was a tough slog. So yeah, hopefully. either get rid of the master tax or get out of the master tax sharing agreement, which takes five years or Just make it to where the board has the ability to get out To speak for us and opt out All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you Madam clerk, do we have anyone online for public comment on an agenda?

We do We do we have two first is David a

Good morning, Board. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to visit or revisit the failed road tax issue that was before you recently. It's my belief that if You have an opportunity to let the public at large decide any issue, especially taxation. You have an opportunity to let the general public vote on something. it's incumbent on you to allow that vote to take place, even if your district's constituents don't like the idea, because democracy is about the general public voting on what is important to us. And if you refuse to forward a vote because your narrow slice of the public doesn't like that idea, I would consider that to be an anti-democracy move because you are restricting the larger public's ability to make our own choices based on a smaller portion of the public not wanting it to happen. Further, it's incumbent upon an elected official to explain to your constituents how something like tax distribution works. And my impression is that I believe there are plenty of people out there who don't actually understand how tax distribution works. And they are under this impression that if they pay a tax on something, they should somehow get that amount back in services. And that's just not the way it works in this county or the state or the country. It's really clear that in the country, some states pay much more to the federal government in taxes than they get back in services. And other states that pay less get more in services. And that's the way larger, wealthier states help to pay for poorer states to get some of the same services. And the same thing happens here. And as far as a sales tax is concerned, plenty of tourists pay into the sales tax, but I don't think that we're allowing them to have a say in what we spend their sales tax on. So a road tax that would be attached to a sales tax, there would be ample opportunities to... for people to demand that the taxes be spent on them but they wouldn't have any stake in this county such as tourists so i believe that people should be allowed to vote on the road tax and we shouldn't quibble about whether or not we get all that tax money back in services you know in front of our front door that's not a realistic idea thank you very much thank you thank you

Next, we have Anna.

Good morning, everybody. I appreciate this opportunity to make a comment. I'm again stuck with the same situation that I've been met with before. I see that seven other people were able to make e-comments online, but when I tried this morning, it failed again. I ultimately I attempted to submit e-comments on three items, three really important items, and now I'm having to call in from my hospital bed because I wasn't able to. And hopefully, you know, I'll be able to dial in with my comments when it comes up the agenda. But the county's grant assist system returned a 504 gateway timeout, and I have screenshots documenting the failure. Please do not again dismiss this by saying the system works for other people. A public comment system is not adequate merely because some people can use it some of the time. Every member of the public must have a reliable and accessible way to place comments into the public record before the deadline. No online system can be guaranteed never to fail, which is precisely why the county needs a backup procedure. When the e-comment system fails, The county should accept comments by email, preserve them with the agenda item, and confirm their receipt. So if I send an email, unfortunately, unlike the e-comment system, to my knowledge, it does not make it into the agenda packet because that could have been my backup plan, and I wasn't able to do that. So I will send a follow-up email, but it's not the same as getting it in the agenda packet. So I please ask the board to direct your staff. to document today's failure and determine its cause. I will email my screenshots and the statement as part of the record, and please establish a reliable backup system. Email is fine for me as long as it's treated the same way as a mean comment and makes it into the agenda, okay? Because public participation isn't optional. And I can't access, can't depend on the contracted website to work it, you know, work or not work at any particular time. I appreciate you listening to this because this has been an ongoing frustration for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, anyone else?

Seeing one more comment, we have phone number ending in 1835. Phone number ending in 1835. You are still muted. To unmute, you would press star six.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Yeah, I'm really calling about the, I want to talk about the moratorium on the data centers. I have some issues on that. But just in general comments, I would like to suggest to the Board of Supervisors that they need to have plot cameras on the discussion, in their discussion. This is an urgent matter. Hundreds of cities are taking them offline right now. And throughout Texas, Santa Monica has done it. They're getting rid of them all over. that this is a city issue, that Fort Bragg and Willits, they've made the decision to allow flock cameras. But I think that the Board of Supervisors should be weighing in. We could have a countywide prohibition. I believe we could. And this is a constitutional issue. I've talked to a couple of members of the Boards of Supervisors, and they have not been terribly aware of the public outrage that surrounds this issue. But people are very, very angry. I'm angry. This is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. Unreasonable search and seizure. They're going to know everything you do. They're going to have facial recognition can be brought into this thing. This is the imposition of a form of tyranny. And I know you guys stick to your knitting pretty carefully with the you know, things that you can control and that this is kind of above your pay grade, really, to address a constitutional issue. But I think it's your responsibility. And at least we need a hard discussion of whether we're going to allow thought cameras. Even if the Board of Supervisors is not able to prohibit them, at least they should weigh in on the issue. I'm sure it would have a big impact. So that's all I have to say. I'll see you in the moratorium on data centers.

Thank you. Could I please get your name for the record?

Yeah, this is Rex Gresset.

Thank you, sir.

All right. Seeing no further comments online.

Okay, we'll move on to consent calendar. 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, and then we have Supervisor Haschek asking to pull items C-16 and C-23. Is there any other item the board would like to pull? No? Okay, we'll go to public comment on the consent calendar. None in the room. Madam Clerk?

Seeing one online, David A.

uh thanks again chair thanks board item uh c25 i believe that's the request that the district attorney's office has to spend some asset forfeiture money on a vehicle or two um you know the civil asset forfeiture as an issue in the nation is one of the most publicly unpopular um ways that law enforcement and public safety fund themselves. And it's an extraordinarily controversial way to get a budget. And whether or not the funds here, the asset forfeiture funds that are being used are from an adjudicated, in other words, funds from a judgment filed through the court system, whether the money comes from the account there, whether that's adjudicated or unadjudicated, meaning possibly money or assets just seized without charges, without any judgment, that is unclear in this case. And I think it would be good for transparency And for the public to know, you know, perhaps the percentages and whether or not this money can be traced to whether it's just money seized under civil asset for which rules or whether it has been adjudicated. I think somebody probably has that information. And I think it would be interesting and important for the public to know. then on item c48 i couldn't help noticing that both c25 and c40 have requests for the same dodge durango gt v6 um and i'm and both for i think investigative units and it's just a curiosity to me what the um what the awesomeness of the dodge durango gt is as far as the um the necessity for these departments or the activities and, you know, what's the peculiar cool thing about these Dodge Durangos that you got to have a few of them for the county. I wonder if it's just an inexpensive way to get a good ride or, you know, they are not the most fuel efficient vehicles out there. And I know that there are hybrid types of SUVs that could be purchased. And I'm just curious about what the deal with the Dodge Durango GT is. Anyway, that's my comment on the consent calendar. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, anyone else?

Seeing no further comments online.

Supervisor Raines.

Chair, can you give an answer to that, the last caller's first question?

Which was?

The source of the funds, the seizure.

I cannot.

Sorry, all of the monies that are being spent in the forfeiture funds are ones that have already been adjudicated. All of the funds that are going through the court system are in a separate fund and cannot be touched until they are adjudicated to be used.

Thank you. And then, Chair, second question. The Dodge, I think the county has a policy of favoring hybrids, and we waived that for the DA's purchase because of reliability concerns. Can we document why we're purchasing vehicles that don't meet our policy in this case, just for the record?

Yeah, I believe we have both departments here that are looking for vehicles if they would like to come up and address that.

Good morning, CEO, Board. I'm Brian Arrington, Assistant Chief Investigator with the DA's office. The reason why we need a Durango that's fully gas, naturally aspirated, is the function of our systems in the car for our radio, our lights. There is a parasitic draw that happens when it's sitting there. For those who have electric vehicles or know about them, it'll drain the battery too much. And then the hybridized system, it's too much of a draw on the system to be reliable. And that's the reason why we want the naturally aspirated V6. And I know that it's counter to the policy that you guys have now, but it's beneficial for our agencies to have that. That's from the DA's office perspective.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Williams, would you like to hear from the other department?

I think it's good just because it matter of policy that we we have this rule in place and that if we're violating it will we should document why absolutely.

Mister McGregor thank you.

I board chair X you. As I you were also law enforcement of radios and lights and sirens we go in rural areas we pick up children transport children. It's easier with a non-hybrid vehicle. Hybrid have their place. And just for law enforcement purposes, they're not. For a hybrid, Toyota hybrid, we have one now. And we have the same issue. We have to jump it if it sits for a long period of time. For a hybrid, Toyota Highlander is $58,000. And for the Dodge Durango, the base model, we don't want the GT. The base model is $47,000. So it's cheaper to outright purchase.

Thank you, also. Thank you.

two more questions no and madam clerk we had no more public comment correct seeing no further comment online supervisor hash check i move approval of the consent calendar without c16 and c23 second okay uh madam clerk first by supervisor hash check is that conducted by supervisor williams will vote by the button

The motion carries unanimously.

OK, thank you. We'll address item C-16 now. Supervisor Haschuk.

Yeah, item C-16 is a letter of support for AB 2494, the state forest issue, which was authored by our assembly member, Chris Rogers, and also our state senator, Mike McGuire. So I appreciate the letter being sent out. My understanding is that it has passed both the assembly and the Senate. So we need a letter going out to the governor and my understanding is that a letter did go out yesterday to the governor, and so I was wondering if we could approve that letter at the same time we approved this letter that went out to the Assembly and the Senate.

If I may, to the Chair, Sarah Pierce, Interim CEO, yes, a letter did go out to Governor Newsom yesterday, and we can bring it back on the 15th for ratification, but it was sent.

OK so we can't just ratify it now.

I would defer to County Council.

I think frankly that again it's part of the legislative platform it's just supporting what you've already said and you've got this before you I don't I think that that would be fine in this situation.

The language is the same.

The language would be the same. We just changed the title to who it went to.

Second. Okay, we will go to the, is there any other questions from the board? No, we'll go to the public for comment on item C-16. Nobody in the room? Madam Clerk?

Seeing no one online.

Okay, back to the board. We have a motion for ratification of the letter and then also to ratify the letter going to our governor, first by Supervisor Haschek, I believe second by Williams. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Yes.

Could it be noted that it was unanimous?

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Are you asking for that to be on the letter? Yes. Yeah. Madam Clerk, would that be noted?

I'll defer to Miss Pierce. If I may, the letter was sent yesterday.

Okay, it was already sent.

Could we send a new one with that statement?

I defer to County Council. I'm not entirely sure. It was sent to Governor Newsom yesterday.

Supervisor Klein.

Chair, can you have the maker of the motion state his intent for what he's trying to do here? Because the motion that was just made was procedural to approve the letter that went out. If you're looking for a policy statement, then maybe you should restate.

Well, we approved sending the letter of support, which is a policy of the board. So I just wanted the governor to know that we were unanimous in that.

Well, I think what we did today, we're unanimous in ratifying the letter. Correct?

If I may, through the chair, I think that motion would be something different, but I will defer to county council.

I'm trying to understand what is being requested. So you want to change or submit a second letter noting that the entire board approved this?

Yeah, we approved this letter.

convenient how that's not being said before the actual motions being made and after the vote's been cast.

I guess my question is, The action that we're taking today is simply ratifying the letter. I'm not sure the benefit of a 5-0 vote to ratify the letter. Like you said, it's on our ledge platform. We did send the letter, so I'm not sure. I think maybe a more appropriate vote would be to note that it was 3-2, I believe, in support of the letter, and then maybe 5-0 in ratifying it, but I don't know. I'm confused as to why we need to note the vote for ratification.

If I could, I mean, it is all a matter of public record. Certainly individual supervisors can advise that we fully ratified it, but I agree because I know there was some back and forth on this.

Yeah, so I guess my intent was that RCRC has taken an opposition position on this and And they sent out an all points bulletin to get counties to send in letters against it. So I just wanted to show that we were supportive of this approach.

Which, yeah, I think which we did by ratifying the letter. If you need something more than that, I guess we can continue the discussion. But the county council is shaking their head no. Supervisor?

Well, I'm ready to move on. OK. Thank you.

And I believe we did vote on C-16, correct? Yes, thank you. All right, we'll move on to consent calendar item C-23. Again, Supervisor Haschek?

Yeah, and this was a contract extension for outside legal counsel that helps us with the annexation issue. And so now that the annexation issue has been withdrawn by the city of Ukiah,

i was just wondering if there's a real need for this and my understanding is that there is if i made through the chair sarah pierce interim ceo yes um there are in outstanding invoices from july and august that need to be paid we've fully spent the original 25 000 So this is a retro request to increase it to 50,000. I don't know that we need exactly 50,000. It's probably going to be closer to 40. But we have not yet received the invoice for August. So the request would be to continue to have it pass.

OK, thank you. So I'll move approval.

We'll go to the public for comment on this item first. Anybody in the room like to speak on item C-23? Madam Clerk, anyone online?

Seeing no comments online.

Okay, back to the board. A first by Supervisor Haschak. Supervisor Williams? Second. And a seconded by Supervisor Williams. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to regular agenda item R1. Discussion of possible action including acceptance of informational reports from the assessor clerk recorder register voters auditor controller district attorney sheriff treasurer tax collector in various county department heads or designees. When in the room.

Good morning, Chair, Board, Matthew Barnes, University of California Cooperative Extension, Area Director. It's my pleasure this morning to introduce Mendocino County's newest academic advisor, Jenny Lane, Livestock and Natural Resource Management. Since January of this year, Jenny has been working with livestock producers and land managers to collaboratively address local needs and priorities to improve livestock and rangeland health. So without further ado, here's Jenny.

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to meet you. It's a pleasure. And thank you for your support of Cooperative Extension. As Matthew said, I started here in January, and I I come with a background in wildlife and disease surveillance and One Health education and research. And I also have worked in international livestock development and human nutrition with animal source foods. So I have a broad background. I'm a resident of Lake County. And my husband is a small business owner there that works across Lake Mendocino and Sonoma County's business. um i'm very honored to have this role you might recall my predecessor john harper was the livestock and natural resources advisor for years and he also was the county director for a long time so i have big shoes to fill but since i've started i've just really been able to take time to meet producers and land managers across both lake and mendocino counties and i'm listening to their needs and their interests And from there, I will build a program around research and extension. But I'm already pretty busy working on several projects. I've built good relations with Hopland Rec. I actually had the opportunity to work at Hopland prior in my last job at UC Davis. So I had some good relationships with them ahead of time. And we have a lot of activities there with the livestock, with virtual fencing, with both sheep and cattle there, and a producer that has a lease at Hopland. There's also several forage plots across Mendocino County that I've taken over monitoring. Several producers across Mendocino Lake County are also working on enrolling them in an intestinal parasite surveillance project that's led by advisors at UC Davis. And there's also a lot of different targeted grazing work for fine fuels mitigation as part of a comprehensive defensible space plan and wildfire preparedness. for both counties. And I'm also working on building relationships with groups like the Cattlemen's Association, Farm Bureau, the RCD, Forest Service, Tribes, and the BLM, which all have big roles in both counties. And finally, I see myself as a role, also some help with connectivity between both Lake and Mendocino counties. We share a large border. And as issues come up specifically around potentially predation issues, I think that because of my seat crossing both counties and I have good relationships with both ag commissioners and other public entities, I can provide a role there. i'm really pleased to be here thank you for supporting my role and others in cooperative extension and i look forward to working with all of you i have some cards for you and open to any questions thank you supervisor klein

Yeah, I just wanted to say welcome again. It's been a pleasure to meet you and see you at some of our stakeholder meetings and just appreciate the update to the board. I'm looking forward to working with you, especially as predation issues continue to be on the forefront of a lot of ranchers' minds. So, thank you.

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

Good morning, Chair Norvell, members of the board, Tony Raikes, Information Services Director. I'm here this morning to have a good announcement for you, that at long last, we will have an updated and refreshed county public website on September 17th. We all know that the current website has deficiencies, and the new one, alongside additional functionality, improved forms, workflows. I think most importantly, the thing that I'm most happy about is the search function works. So the bar was not high on that one, but here we are. September 17th, we're going to be moving forward with a better website. We've taken the opportunity to look at how people have interacted with the current website, looked at the heat map by which people interact with it, what do they interact with the most, and organized it in a more logical way that I hope will be more beneficial to the public using it.

Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Williams.

Yeah, thank you and your team. I may be more excited than anyone. How do we handle content being migrated to the new system so we get some eyes on? Because if I search, you know, say, I won't pick on a department, but I can find four or five different versions of a policy and I try to check the date on which one is the most recent and then based on my search phrase, did I miss another one? Is it possible that we at the same time of implementing the new site scrub the data so that we only have the most recent?

If I may through the chair, we took a concerted effort not to transfer everything over, specifically duplicates, specifically documents that were not finalized or that were purely, for lack of a better term, chaff on the website. And so we had a certain number of files and documents that we did transfer over that we'd identified specifically and then worked with the departments individually as to what got transferred over from there. So there was a piece that was done automatically, and then the large portion was vetted and is still being gone through right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

good morning chair members of the board richard angley interim director of planning and building services just wanted to take a minute to update you guys on a couple things affecting pbs one is the scam email that had surfaced when julia was out was here went back out again to the public we did get a press release out you know it's asking for large sums of money wire transfer we That information out there, if anybody has a question on their bills or anything, they can call us and check. And if you get something specifically requesting a wire transfer, you probably should call and check to verify the validity of the email. And then the second item is our online permitting software. I know Julia had notified you guys that was down. E-track it. We do have that back up functioning. And people can, again, apply online for billing permits and applications.

Supervisor where it just a comment when a department had leaves often there can be a sort of a whole it's created lack of efficiency and I want to thank you for stepping in haven't seen that. The same maybe more responsiveness and I've ever gotten from pbs and so I just think you should be recognized for. Stepping in and addressing all the needs.

Yeah, and to add to that, I've heard from several constituents on the coast about your stepping into that role, and everybody is very pleased. So I, too, appreciate you stepping up and taking on the job. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair, members of the Board. My name is Jeff Dederman. I'm the Fleet and Facilities Maintenance Superintendent. Today, I'd like to provide a brief financial and operational overview of our electric vehicle charging stations for the period of February 12th through July 31st, 2026. During this reporting period, our charging stations recorded 717 customer visits and generated $5,181 in revenue. The most encouraging aspect of this data is the growth in utilization. Revenue increased from just $235 in February to a peak of $1,286 in the month of May, while visits increased from 31 during the month to 167 during that period. May was our strongest month during this period, accounting for approximately 25% of all revenue and 23% of all visits during the reporting period. Although activity slowed somewhat after May, revenue remained relatively strong. with approximately $993 in June and $873 in the month of July. This indicates that May peak was not simply an isolated event, as we continue to see meaningful customer demand in the following months. Looking at the two sites, we have one at Yokeo Complex Social Services and one here at the Administrative Complex. Yokeo was the stronger performer. It did generate approximately 2,087, or 52% of the total revenue, and 444 visits, or 62% of all visits. From the operational standpoint, usage is predominantly a weekday activity. Approximately 81% of the visits occurred Monday through Friday, with Thursday being the highest volume day. UK also demonstrated a stronger weekend activity than the administrative complex, which I guess isn't necessarily surprising based on the surrounding environments there with grocery stores and things like that. Now, as far as cost recovery goes, our listed expenses for utilities, labor, and six-month service plans totaled $19,348 compared to the $5,181 in revenue. Utilities alone were approximately $5,039, and the labor was $8,609. As a point, the majority of that labor was related to startup costs as far as getting everything online, learning the system, making sure that all the charges were working, and working with ChargePoint to make that happen. And then six-month service plans totaling $5,700. So the current program is not yet recovering its full operational costs. At our current average revenue, at approximately $7.23 per visit, we would need roughly 2,677 visits, or roughly three times as many as we're seeing now to fully recover all of those costs. So that being said, moving forward, we're going to continue to monitor the program with a strong focus on revenue per visit, station utilization, maintenance costs, site-specific performance. We're also going to continue to evaluate opportunities to increase utilization during lower volume periods and regularly review our labor, utility, and service plan costs. In summary, the charging program is demonstrating positive operational momentum and growing customer demand. It has not yet reached its financial self-sufficiency, but we are seeing growth, and that's a good thing. If there's no questions.

Yeah, Supervisor Mohart.

Thank you. I had reached out to Jeff back in July because I heard from a constituent about the rate of our charging stations, and they felt that a lower rate would increase the usage. So I know that with a new system, we were trying to figure out what the usage was going to be, what our rates should be. But just something for the board and the department to continue to consider. We're looking at increasing the usage, reducing the rate, keeping the rate the same, and increasing usage. At some point, We need to look at whether or not we should lower the rate to increase the usage, in my opinion. I don't own an electric vehicle. This was feedback from a constituent.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams?

Thank you for the success, first of all. When it comes back to the board, it may be helpful to know what the range of prices are for other charging stations in the area so that perhaps the county would want to meet those or be a cent less so that we could claim we're the best deal in town. And I think that'll come up next time we discuss it if we wanted to adjust the rates. What are other providers charging?

yes and if i made through the chair during the next fee schedule we were looking to update the costs and provide that data as far as how we compare to other sites one of the i say issues that we run into is competing with the city view kai is charging they do set the rates for our electric bill so we are stuck and competing with them where they can charge a lower they may be able to charge a lower rate based on it being a city-owned charger. But we'll provide that data during the next fee schedule.

If I may, through the chair, the next fee schedule will be in December.

Great.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Neville, members of the board, interim CEO Sarah Harris, and County Council Elliott. I'm Angela Godwin, the Ag Commissioner. I just want to give you three brief updates this morning. I realize you have a full agenda. First, I want to bring up our Ag Pass program. We're really trying to increase participation. And as we're still in fire season with several more months of elevated risks in front of us, the Ag Pass remains one of the most practical tools we have to keep commercial agriculture operating when evacuations or restricted access are in place. It allows qualifying producers, livestock operators, licensed cannabis operators, kennel operators, and their managerial employees to reenter restricted areas to protect their livestock, irrigate, move equipment, care for their commodities. And all this, we need to note, is subject to law enforcement and fire commands. um authority the program is a partnership among agriculture cannabis animal care oes and the sheriff's office we want to encourage any remaining eligible operators who have not applied to do so now and this will put them in for renewal on the upcoming next season so there's still time to to complete this verification we can't help really process during an emergency so these need to be in place and we just really encourage I want to use this forum and encourage everyone in your districts that are eligible to apply. Again, it's not a guarantee, but it is the credential that emergency services are looking for to let you back in on a day basis to care for things. There's been a gift to the county, and I want to acknowledge a significant donation, which is now on permanent display in the common hallway of our Ag and UC Cooperative Extension, from retired Lake County Agricultural Commissioner Steve Hijack. He also served as Mendocino County's Assistant Agricultural Commissioner and Deputy Sealer for 13 years. and has given the department an extensive Lidophthora collection that comprises more than 200 native species of moths and butterflies. And the collection includes a relatively uncommon Mendocino silk moth, Saturnia mendocino, first described from this county in 1876 along with other prominent and local specimens. This display is both scientific and educational resource and a reminder of the beauty and diversity of our local fauna. I would invite the board and the public to view it. We're really grateful for this gift. It's 12 panels with over, like I said, 200 native species. And there's two traveling cases for when we go to different schools and do education and outreach. It's a very kind gift, and it really highlights what we have here. So again, I encourage you to stop by sometime and see it. And third, I just wanted to do an update, since you've been dark for the month, on neglected and abandoned vineyards. We're working on, it's been moving forward. We were looking at a partnership with the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District. They'd accepted, looked at our scope of work. We were working on a contract. And then their county council sort of weighed in that it's not the direction they think they need to go. But we still want to partner with them after the fact for resources, support for the vineyards. So since that pathway is no longer available to us as last week, we're now exploring other partnerships and internal resources so the work can continue. Priority remains pest and disease control with best management practices. We've noted that unmanaged blocks of vineyards can serve as reservoirs for powdery mildew, vine rot, insective vectors, including, as we all know, the sharpshooters that carry Paris disease. And that has become more and more of a threat. So we need to really address this, including the fire hazard they present. Our approach continues to be education and cooperation first, with AB 732 and existing county news authorities available when needed. I want to note our partnership is continuing with a cooperative extension with advisor Chris Chin's research on mothballing or idling a vineyard, which is a minimum maintenance that we're asking people to do to protect both the neighboring operations and preserve the options of returning to production. We'll keep the board informed as we move forward, and we are issuing letters and taking actions. That kind of includes my update. Again, happy to answer any questions. Appreciate you. And I'm also very happy to have Jenny Lang with us, too. We're maybe working on a bi-county wolf task force, as predation could be, as I gave the board the update last week. We have had a lone wolf sighted in the Mendocino County forest. So anyway, any questions I could answer?

I'm not seeing any questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Good morning, Karen Mattson, Museum Administrator. Good morning, Chair Norvell, Board of Supervisors, Sarah Pierce. I wanted to come and give you a few updates today on the museum. First of all, I just wanted to remind everyone that we opened a fantastic exhibit in May called Road Trip, Discover Mendocino County by Way of the Famous Redwood Highway. It's the 100th anniversary of the Redwood Highway. We are the repository for the Redwood Empire Association records and the exhibit tells the story of the development of the road from San Francisco to Grants Pass. There's all kinds of great ephemera for those who are familiar with the drive, but it's also really educational for tourists and it's been very well received. that is a semi-permanent exhibit so you'll have plenty of time to see it we do have another exhibit i wanted to let you know about it is called cannabis behind the redwood curtain cannabis in california and i'm excited to share this exhibit we were selected by exhibit envoy which is a non-profit organization that develops exhibits for small institutions in california And we've been working with our greater community in Mendocino and Humboldt County to collect stories and accept donations on loan for the exhibit. That's going to open October 8th. We're going to have two months of programming. And then the exhibit will be toured throughout California by exhibit envoy. And ultimately, we'll return to the museum as county property. But I wanted to give you two updates of things that are going to be coming back to you. The museum has successfully documented all of the murals in the Ukiah Courthouse. We have taken high-resolution photographs of those murals so that they could be preserved. The images can be preserved, but they can also be reproduced. These murals were a huge project, a community collaboration by the Board of Supervisors, local artists, and the museum. And we're happy to continue our stewardship of these murals. We're also exploring an agreement with Kim Turner and working with the superior courts to see if we can work together to get them reproduced in the new courthouse. So that's what we'll be coming back to you in the upcoming months when we get the details worked out to have you review. And the other update I wanted to give you is that we are actively working on relocating the Mark Walker sculptures. For those of you that are not aware of the sculptures, they were accepted by the Board of Supervisors 50 years ago. And they're located south of Willits along Highway 101. The facility services did a fantastic job cleaning out the area so that our team, we have a volunteer team for these sculptures. We're able to go in and refresh them and maintain them. They look fantastic. They're vibrant. You can see them from the highway now. And we're in a great position to relocate them. But what I wanted to let you know is that we are in the process of working with the city of Willits. They have a public art policy, and we're working with them to determine if they might be a good fit for display in the city of Willits. I am collecting as much information as I can. We'll have multiple options for where the sculptures can go. And again, that will be coming back to you within the next couple of months. Our goal is to get them moved this fiscal year. And I wanted to let everyone know how much the museum appreciates our partnership with the Roots of Motive Power. They are having a 44th annual STEAM Festival, September 12th and 13th. It's an extraordinary event. It's very unique. I'm always impressed by how many people are coming all over the state to see that. It's a free event, and I welcome the whole community to come check that out. And then lastly, I just wanted to let you know that the friends of the Mendocino County Museum are doing an exceptional job running our gift shop and our admissions desk. They have a dynamic team of people providing awesome customer service to all that come to the museum. They are in the process of planning their second annual fundraiser in october it will be held at ridgewood ranch on the 4th and i've invited them to or encouraged them to come back and tell you more details about the projects they've been fundraising for and what they're up to so thank you for your time thank you supervisor

Yeah, I just wanted to thank you and thank the friends of the museum. We've had a couple of wonderful presentations there. One was on the lost railroad of Sherwood Valley a couple of weeks ago. And then on Sunday, there was the Frolic video and discussion. And interestingly enough for everyone's edification, that Frederick Douglass drew up the plans for the Frolic. because he was a shipbuilder as a slave in Baltimore during the 1840s, right?

Yeah, he worked in the shipyard. He didn't do the plans, but he did work in the shipyard, and it helps us weave together all kinds of stories that connect the world to that history of the shipwreck, yeah.

So very good work on all of your parts, and I appreciate the collaboration with the roots of motive power these days.

Supervisor Williams?

Exceptional update. Where can the public learn about upcoming exhibits? Is there a mailing list, or how do we get the word out?

So our website, newly updated I hear, is a great source and also the Friends of the Mendocino County Museum website. But we put everything on our website and then there are different iterations like newspapers that we do put out and working on other methods. The Friends of the Mendocino County Museum have been sponsoring multiple radio ads and things like that to help us get the word out. You can expect to hear some on the cannabis exhibit for sure. Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more questions. Thank you very much. Madam Clerk, do we have any staff online?

Seeing none.

OK, open up the room to public. Yes, do we have another? Open up the room to public comment on R1. Madam Clerk, anyone online?

Yes, we have one phone number ending in 5225.

Good morning, Hannah Nelson. I just wanted to appreciate all of the updates and then specifically make a request regarding the updated documents and historical documents that may have not been planned to be migrated over to the new website if there could be a repository of historical documents that may have been determined to not go onto the new website. Sometimes it's really helpful when there's been movement and progress and some issue comes up to go back and look at prior policies and the history of how an evolution of something has happened. And so I would request that there's some information on where those historical documents for prior policies that have iterated over time are not duplicated to confuse people, but are available to research. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, any more?

Seeing no further comments online.

All right, back to the board. We'll accept a motion for approval of the reports.

Move approval.

Second. First by Supervisor Klein, second by Williams. Vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

OK. Agenda item R2, discussion of possible action, including approval or denial of requests from department heads and elected officials regarding budget impacts, funding and recruitment of vacant or new positions following the strategic hiring process. Ms. Johnson.

Good morning, Chair and members of the board. Sherry Johnson, Human Resources Director. Yes, this morning we have three departments that are in attendance to request hires. So we have Department of Transportation, Auditor Controller's Office, and Executive Office Facilities and Fleet. And I'll just let them come up. Thank you.

Supervisor Warren?

I thought we were getting rid of this process. No?

If I may, to the chair, Sarah Pierce, interim CEO. So the process is if people had budgeted the vacant positions, they're not coming forward. These are positions that were truly or increases that were not budgeted.

Got it. Thank you. Supervisor Haschek.

Yeah, I think we've all read the memos, and so I'm ready to act on it. OK, well, we will need to hear from the public first.

The department heads would like to come up and say anything. Oh, seeing none. OK. We'll open the item to public comment. Oh, I'm sorry, Supervisor Mulhern. No. OK. Again, anybody in the room like to speak on this item? R2? None. Madam Clerk?

Seeing none online.

OK. Back to the board. Supervisor Mulhern.

Thank you. Yeah, I did read the attached memos from the department and I read every agenda packet including the consent calendar that clearly articulates any kind of salary adjustments or position changes and so I would like this board to consider removing this item as a recurring item and Just respectfully ask that HR and the departments work together to make sure that they're falling within the budget as it relates to keeping our costs low, our employee count low. And then if interim CEO Pierce or HR have a department that's not cooperating with their recommendations, then to bring that item forward as a solo item.

Okay, I believe we can take that action here today, correct? Yeah, okay. Anyone else? Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, if Supervisor Meagher wants to make that like a motion, I will happily second.

I'll move approval of the attached recommendations and remove this item as a recurring item.

Okay, we have, yes.

If I may to the chair, will the discretion be to CEO and HR and confirm to bring back if there's any issues? Correct.

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

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Item R3, discussion and possible action, including acceptance of a presentation from North Bay Construction Corps and BCC regarding workforce development programming in Mendocino County. Supervisor Klein, this is your item.

Yeah, thank you. We have North Coast Builders Exchange here today and would like to invite them to the podium. They want to share a little bit about one of their work programs and some of the other amazing things that they do. Happy to have them here in the board chambers and as one of our very collaborative stakeholders. So I'll turn it over.

I'm Nicolette Weinsbeck, our Chief Programs Officer, and Natalie Spackman, who is everything Mendocino for us. Her title, I think, is Manager of Workforce Development, but she definitely has dug in and does several things here in Mendocino County. We are the Construction Trade Association for Sonoma Napa Lake in Mendocino County. We are happy to be collaborative. And I feel like Sally Sunshine today. I think I heard you say, Supervisor Williams, sometimes there's a hole when there's a change in staffing. And we have to say, we are also hearing really great things about some of the changes in your planning and building and from the administrative office. So if I was still a cheerleader, I would do a cheer and say thank you. We work with 22 local governments in our work. And all are not created the same. as you can imagine so we're happy to be here today we really want to talk about workforce but just so you know ncbe does only three things member services we are hoping that anybody that wants to get in construction start a company or already has a construction company that we can help them with any member services they may need it's not easy we bought a contractor's licensing school and we're hoping that people in mendocino as they're in the trades if they decide they want to start their own business we can help with that anything from their insurance to their seminars. The second thing we do, because I'm going to let them talk about workforce, is advocacy. I'm not always popular, and I probably won't always stand at this podium super happy as Ms. Positive, but today I wanted to share that we've got to work on some things with your staff around an issue with Caltrans the higher patrol that affected the county of Mendocino and we're working on that and I heard from that gentleman this morning that if you are interested I will look in idling into idling and what our contractors have as far as a policy that is something that was new to me so coming to these meetings is always helpful for me too we would like to be a partner on anything you need around construction and we truly truly believe that If there's not a construction workforce here, it would really be hard to drive economic development and do some of the goals that you guys think are very, very important. So I will leave it up to my team. But the positive part is there's really great workforce things happening in Mendocino. And these young people, even though you hear stereotypes about this generation, that is not what we found. Some of these young people that these guys have helped put through the program and graduated and now are working for some of your local contractors, are pretty amazing. And so that is really a bright light. So I would share with all of you, because you're so well-connected, and frankly, anyone here online or in the audience, if you know someone in construction that you think would be someone we could work with as a partner, we can't do this without industry partners. That is the way we run this program. It's very, very important to us. And we've got some great people taking interns, hiring your young people, and then working day to day on our programs. So I will turn it over to Nicolette.

Thanks, Lisa. So good morning. Like Lisa said, my name is Nicolette Weinsvig. I'm the chief program officer at North Coast Builders Exchange. Is somebody controlling the PowerPoint? I'm wondering if maybe we could go.

If I may, through the chair. Yes, can you just let her know when to proceed?

Absolutely. If you could go forward two slides, please.

I talked right through mine.

Awesome. So as Lisa mentioned, one of our pillars is workforce development, and that is the team that Natalie and I are on. And as a part of our focus on workforce development, North Coast Builders Exchange has long offered a teacher grant and scholarship program. So these may be two of our lesser known programs, but I just wanted to fill you in a little bit on that before we talked about the north bay construction corps program so these two scholarship the scholarship program and the teacher grant program were established to reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting education and creating pathways into the construction industry just to give you a sense of our recent investments in mendocino county the scholarship program and teacher grants program have been going on since the the 90 late 90s early 2000s but over the past four years We've awarded nearly $20,000 to local teachers for their teacher grants programs. And this teacher grant program is really to provide our classroom teachers with funds for consumables for their classrooms. So schools are able to access federal grants through the Perkins grant and stuff like that for their classrooms. That really supports professional development and large equipment for the programs. But it doesn't support the lumber and the fasteners and the things that the students really need to get that hands-on experience. And so what we do is instead of giving the money to the school district and having a teacher do a PO and going through a really long, lengthy process, we establish credit accounts at local companies. So we have a credit account at Freedman's and one at Rossi Building Supply and Gualala Building Supply and Mendo Mill. And the teachers are allowed to draw down on those funds so they can go directly into these local businesses and purchase the materials that they need. So not only are we supporting our teachers and our students, we're supporting our local economy here. Between 2024 and 2026, we also awarded a little over $20,000 to local students in scholarships. And these are students that are going to Mendocino College, that are going to electrical apprenticeship programs, that are going to Chico and San Luis Obispo and universities outside of California. that are focusing on degree programs in the construction trades. Our hope is that once they're done with those programs, that they do return to our local communities and work in construction or construction-related trade. And so that's why it fits into our local workforce development priorities. So these programs are one piece in a much larger effort to support our students and give them opportunities to help them take the next step in their lives. The other way that we're doing this and the reason that we're here really today is to talk to you about the North Bay Construction Corps program. So the North Bay Construction Corps program was established in 2017 in Sonoma County and brought to Mendocino County the very next year. So going into the 2026, 2027 school year, we as an organization will be celebrating our 10th year of the Construction Corps, which is a very exciting milestone for us. Construction Corps shut down in Mendocino County and actually in all four of our counties during COVID, and we were able to bring it back a couple years ago, engaging the same coordinator that we had in the beginning of the program to really make sure that as we were coming back, we had a strong program. The North Bay Construction Corps is a hands-on skills building and career exploration program for high school seniors in their last year or last semester of high school. And it really is to give them exposure to the trades, not to make them... a plumber or an electrician right out the gate, but to give them a good survey of what's out there and help them to decide if that is the next step that they would like to take and if it is to provide them support once they're done with the program in getting a job. And Natalie will talk a lot more about the construction core, but we're just really excited about the growth of the construction core in Mendocino County. When we started a few years ago, back up after COVID, we had a very small cohort in inland Mendocino, really focusing on Ukiah. the following year we expanded a little bit more to pull in students from redwood valley potter valley willett and then the following year we expanded to the coast and so we're serving fort bragg and mendocino and that is largely part in part are actually almost all the way in part of a very generous grant that we received from the state of California. So we received a million dollars to support the growth of North Bay Construction Corps in Mendocino County and this was spearheaded by Senator McGuire a couple years ago and then just last year we were awarded an additional $500,000 to continue this program to ensure that we're able to operate without having to worry about the funding really until 2029. And so while we are out there, you know, meeting with Mendocino Community Foundation and other donors to ensure that we will have financial sustainability beyond the state funding, we're in a really good place right now to be able to offer quality programming and really focus on expansion with this $1.5 million that we've received from the state. With that, I would like to introduce Natalie Spackman, our Workforce Development Manager for Mendocino County, who will tell you more about the local impact that we've had through our programming here. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you. I wanted to share a little bit about our program and the amazing students and industry partnerships that we have been building. And the program continues to grow. We are now three times larger than we were two years ago. um i'll tell you a little bit about the class structure so we have the students it's a three month program it starts usually the end of march it goes through the end of june it's taught all by local contractor and tradesmen and the students have a class session that is during the week one night and then they come on saturdays and that's usually where they'll do the hands-on skill building activities. We do construction math. We do financial literacy. We do resume and interview skill building. And then we also have concrete. We have electrical. We have plumbing. we have framing we have a heavy equipment day so we try to offer these students as much exposure and experiences as they can to you know kick start their careers and hopefully get them going in the right direction part of the program that we've incorporated is also community focused projects so for instance this year on the coast our program was each class session had we partnered with the coastal humane society so our concrete day was the foundation for a structure that we had built there framing day was the framing portion of it. And we were able to create a project by the end that was for the volunteers and also the public so that they could use that in the play area for the dogs and such. We also partnered with the Humane Society here inland as well. And I'll talk a little bit about we did three projects there. during our boot camp. Some of the partnerships that we've been working with, Mendocino College, Northern Rural Energy Network, Mendocino County Office of Education, Fire Safe Council, and NCO. So we were able to also, during our class sessions, NCO and Mendocino Firewise came out and they taught the students about home hardening We were able to do some retrofits to the CTE building out there. They replaced an awning. They also replaced ventilation or venting on the building. We were also, during our framing day out at the MCOE campus, they did a storage unit for the state preschool out there. They also did an ADA concrete project. Thank you to NorCal ReadyMix for donating concrete for that. And Duncan and Sons Construction helped guide the students through that project. Let's see. We also, Mendocino College, in coordination with Northern Rural Energy Network, were able to do a HVAC day. The students were able to go to the campus. They were able to get exposed to the sustainable construction program and actually work with their staff for the day and some of their students. So that was an amazing opportunity. We can't do it without the industry partnership. We have great local partnerships such as Mendocino Forest Products. They help us get materials so that we can do our projects. Our boot camp projects is the culmination of the program. So after they go through all of the class sessions, they graduate high school. These are 18-year-old students. And then they are able to participate either in an internship with a local contractor or the boot camp project, which, again, was in coordination with the Humane Society. They were able to build a feral cat colony, other requests of the Humane Society. Also, they did another structure for the volunteer and for their food pantry. So yeah, these students are doing great things. They're going off and doing schooling, or they'll send them back into the construction industry is the hope, or working with local contractors, getting them automatically into the workforce. And I think that's really all I have. So if you guys have any questions about the project.

Yeah, Supervisor Williams?

Back on October 7th of last year, this board unanimously passed some action that Chair Norville and I brought, asking the county to look at alternative methods to issue permits. We had spotted that approximately six counties have a self-certified program for licensed professionals, and we asked our department how could we incorporate that here. It has to work for the department. It has to make this side more efficient. But it seems like people who are trusted that have a license at stake, they still have a permit. They still get an inspection, but it would streamline. Do you have any thoughts on that? Could you be a partner in helping us bring ideas from other areas?

I always have thoughts on self-certification. Yes, absolutely. And I think best practices are exactly what we would love you to use us for, the resources and around other counties. Why recreate the will when somebody is already doing it well? So happy to work with leadership or whatever you want me to do for that. Anything that can make the system work, as long as it's working the right way, as you know, you don't have any engineers that are going to put their license on the line, most of them, if you can do self-cert and anything across the board. counter is great with us.

Thank you. I'll take you up on that. And then second question, I've seen some demonstrations of concrete 3D printing of houses elsewhere. Do you think that's coming to Mendocino County and would that be part of our answer for more fire resiliency?

we have not seen much of that yet i know it is out there and it feels um robot-y but um but it still has a labor component right it does have a labor component so yes if i'm if i make the chair i will be meeting with north bay construction um in september to discuss some of this yeah thank you supervisor in a few weeks it's september right here we are supervisor hashtag

Yeah, with the construction going on in Willits for the new construction trades facility at the college, then how do you interface with that?

So part of that, we were at the celebration for that, and that's where that second grant came from. We are very much hoping to work with the president over there and dual enroll all of our young people at Mendocino College and seeing if they can provide maybe that CPR training. And as that project goes forward, maybe that is something as far as boot camp, at least the kids can, the young people can see what is happening there and the progression. So we absolutely are interfacing with Mendocino College. And frankly, not only in Mendocino, but the campus in Lake County now.

OK, thank you. Sure. Supervisor.

Yeah, I want to thank North Coast Builders Exchange for all the work you do for this workforce development program and the multiple levels to your programming. I can't think of anything else that's more impactful for the construction industry right now than workforce development. My family ran a construction company, a general construction company, for 30 years. And there was nothing more difficult than having the right amount of employees to get the work done in a timely fashion. Right now, when you reach out to existing general contractors in Medicino County, you face like a one to two year wait time, potentially worse. And part of that is due to our labor shortage to the point where folks are reaching out to contractors in neighboring counties. And that's not something I'm interested in seeing for the future of Medicino County. So I really appreciate you bringing young folks into the industry. I feel it's appropriate that you're partnering with the college. Sometimes it's, you know, getting them into skilled worker programs. Sometimes it's just getting them the basic training and out in the field working. So there's different things for different people and just really appreciate this work. This is the impactful work that's going to change our local economy in the long run and just would love to see this in a multitude of industries and appreciate your collaboration with our community.

Happy to, next year when we invite you to the graduation, I would say it is, graduations are great at high school level, but these parents who come really have a high school senior that really didn't know what they were going to do, a lot of them. And so having them graduate and walk into a job is a big deal. We believe that this is the future of that piece. And so we are happy to be here and work with you guys and take any ideas you have on what that should look like.

Thank you. Great presentation. Thank you for being here. Any member of the public like to comment on this item? No in the room. Madam Clerk?

Seeing none online.

Okay, back to the board for acceptance of the presentation.

Move approval.

Second.

First by William, second by Hashtag. We'll vote by the button. We do have item R4 next, but we have a schedule. Sorry, Ms. Bearden.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. We have a scheduled break for 1045. I'd look to the sheriff. We can take a 15-minute break now and come back then. That'll work? Great. Thank you. So we will take a break now until 1045.

Scott, are you ready?

Ten forty five were back in session we're now addressing I agenda item are for discussion and possible action including adoption of route resolution for. Authorization for the sheriff to accept funding from the border. State and community corrections position sixty four public health safety grant program in the amount of four million five hundred thousand be. authorization for the sheriff to sign the grant agreement and any other necessary related documents on behalf of mendocino county to address public safety impacts associated with illicit commercial cannabis activity approval of c the creation of a new fund for Proposition 4, Public Health and Safety Grant Program Funds. And Authorization 2D, purchase fixed assets listed in Attachment 1 in the total amount of $274,420. And E, add the equipment to the county's list of fixed assets. Sheriff.

Good morning, Chair Norvell and members of the board. So we were able to receive the grant From Prop 64 through the BSCC, Lieutenant Aaron Clark wrote that grant for us. The focus of the grant and this proposal was only for illicit marijuana. It mentions absolutely nothing about our permitted growth sites. Nothing in our proposal that was reviewed and accepted by BSCC has mentioned our permitted sites. The funding and grant are intentionally specific to go only after illicit marijuana. Currently, we've asked for the funding for enforcement and personnel, as well as some of the equipment, as you mentioned, to handle the illicit enforcement and to eradicate marijuana at these sites. But there's no current recourse to kind of fix the civil regulatory issues encountered at these sites without dipping into code enforcement's personnel already. And so one of the things that we brought forward on that was we were asking for code enforcement personnel as well as a system, citation system, so that we can exact some fines and fees on folks who are coloring outside of the lines. As a result of not being able to take those things on, we've seen numerous times where illicit sites are constantly used over and over and over again when we have an enforcement action on them through my office with law enforcement, if we don't get that taken care of, then those sites are used again and again and again. And we get a lot of calls about, you know, you guys hit this site last week and it's already being replanted. So what we'd like to be able to do is to move forward and not have these sites used over and over and over again by illicit marijuana grows. But I'm not 100% tied to that. I need to know how comfortable the board is with having code enforcement deal with that while I deal with the criminal end of things. We need to stop that continuous cycle of having the sites used again and again. The Sheriff's Office team has suffered. We've had some atrophy because of funding and personnel where we haven't been out really working hard in the marijuana fields. And as a result of that, 75% of our homicides for last year and this year have been involved. Those homicides occurred in illicit marijuana sites. These grow sites are largely controlled. by transnational drug trafficking organizations. We know that for a fact. I can't go too deeply into that because of investigations that we have going. But some of these sites, they have just blown up in size, where 10, 15, 20 years ago when I was a much younger man, we would hit sites that had somewhere between 500 and 1,000 plants. And that was a large site for us. But now we're hitting sites. We're taking 10,000 plants a day just the month of July. I believe Lieutenant Clark. What was it, over 100,000 plants just in the month of July? 170,000. So we're creeping up on 200,000 plants just in July. So let's see here. Let me go back to my notes. Our investigators have found evidence regularly relating to these drug trafficking organizations and continue to investigate these matters as they are encountered. From enforcement efforts in recent months, our investigators are seeing the average of these growth sites being roughly 8,000 to 10,000 plants per day, with growth sites running 3,000 to 5,000 plants per site. Approximately, this is a marked increase over years past, and the evidence of the growth in this illegal market is being seen all the way across Mendocino County. One of the things that's going on is with the reduction in value of marijuana, we're seeing illegal cultivators making attempts to make the same or similar profits, and the way that they're doing that is they're building these sites out to be much larger. They're using methods which are contrary to good stewardship of the land. And that includes illegal pesticides. It includes illegal grading. It includes a lot of water diversions. We're seeing more and more trespass grows. Now, granted, some of these are in extremely rural areas where they're on one piece of property and their grow site just smears over into another one, or they develop a water source on a neighboring property. They do some type of a stream bed alteration, or they tap into somebody else's spring. These are the problems that we used to see kind of back in the 1990s, but they're blowing back up again. And then, of course, the big concern is the violence that we've had going on in some of the grow sites. Because, well, they've kind of gone a little bit untouched. One of the things that was an eye-opener for us last year, excuse me, last year and the year before, for years and years we had not seen at least an illegal marijuana grown out in the National Forest. Well, then I received a phone call from the captain who runs the Mendocino National Forest law enforcement team who said, hey, sounds like we've got a bunch of marijuana out in the National Forest again. We took our eyes off of it for a little bit. And that's where these crews went. And so we spent quite a bit of time last summer and the summer before dealing with marijuana grows back out in the forest, working with the Forest Service. And we did recoup some grant funding from assisting them. So these are the problems that we're facing right now. And these problems seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I've got Captain Cromer with me, who sat through two days Sounds like it was a lot of fun of webinars with the BSCC to figure out exactly what they want to see us reporting on and how they want this grant dispersed. And then I have Lieutenant Clark with me, who's running the marijuana team right now. And he's going to answer any boots on the ground questions that you folks may have.

Thank you, Sheriff. I was hoping that you could go a little more in-depth into how you see code enforcement's role in this. And then you also mentioned preventing these sites from just being turned over rapidly and how you plan to address that.

OK. Lieutenant?

Yeah, so with the, good morning, with the code enforcement's involvement, it would be somewhat of a parallel administrative investigation on their side. Our criminal side obviously can do only so much, and like the sheriff mentioned, we continue to see the continuous turnover to whether it's the same cultivators or not, they'll pass it on to somebody that they know or however that may play out. And so with the administrative side of it, it actually establishes accountability for the people that are actually doing it. It doesn't put the burden back on the community to fix those lands with the tax dollars that may have to be used to do so. It puts it back on either the property owner, and not only the property owners, but actually the operators of that property in case it was leased out if they're contacted there by either myself, the team, or code enforcement. They can also be issued a citation.

Thank you. Supervisor Wayne?

So as the county tried to roll out its legal program, so everybody knows there's been some hiccups. And I remember a time where Cal Fire was telling people remove some trees for fire clearance. They did it and then they couldn't come into compliance with our program. I don't think those are the types of scenarios you're talking about going after. The people who are in good faith trying and maybe every T isn't crossed yet but they're trying to get them crossed. Can you confirm that those people are outside of the scope of the enforcement.

Absolutely. They are outside of the scope of the enforcement. And I've spoken with those same people who have had to remove some trees and things like that where they're actually trying to be good stewards. But then they run afoul of us, not of us, of the county's program. And I think that what we have to do is look at things from a completely reasonable standpoint. What was your goal in doing this? Well, it wasn't to deforce something. It was, I don't want to lose my insurance. Things like that. We just have to have a sensible head when we look at these issues.

And then on the code enforcement, is it possible for, I know a third party firm has been considered. Yes. And I don't know that it's a good idea or not a good idea. I'm not for or against it at this point. But just issue spotting, some of the concerns I'd have are I don't want to put union labor up against non-union. I don't think that's fair to our labor. And I don't want to create an inefficiency where our existing code enforcement has to interface with another group and they waste staff time and there's yet more software. Is it possible under this grant for you to contract with our code enforcement so that they could scale up the personnel that they have, but keep it under their leadership so they just have more resources?

That is a portion of the grant. And Aaron, if you can speak to that. We want to be able to make sure that code enforcement has the resources they need to take this on. I do not want to take on this portion of it. It separates me from the job that I should be doing. And it keeps it in code enforcement's office, where they understand it. They know it. I don't have to learn a new system at that point. Let's try to keep this under the people who it's under, because there won't be the same learning curve for them. Aaron, can you speak to that?

Yeah. So in the grant, what we were looking for Increasing their ability to be more focused on that particular nuisance and not just necessarily the cannabis itself But the things that come along with it the extra, you know trash and garbage and build up the waste that gets left behind And things of that nature, you know Unpermitted dwellings and things that just are getting are popping up everywhere that we get complaints for often and you know And they're inundated as well code enforcement with things that are already doing so if we could in the grant we're looking for is an assigned position and funding them to kind of work along with us when we come to these sites, whether that's them in person with us to do so and see it themselves or we can forward them the information and they can address it accordingly from their position.

Understood. And then last, there are times where the board gets a bit backlash from the public and it's usually it's just in communication. I think if people understand that the goal here is to go after transnationals using illegal pesticides, I think you're well supported. But getting that messaging out in one meeting can be difficult. Is it possible for us to approve acceptance of the grant today and have a plan come back based on the feedback we provide today on the specific implementation?

If I may, through the chair. So on the orientation that I attended last week through the BSCC on Prop 64, we have been awarded it, but we can't accept it until the sheriff or a designee is granted authority to sign the agreement as it exists today. Right. So if there are modifications or changes, that would basically reenter into that negotiation conversation with BSCC to see A, if they would accept it, B, if they won't accept it, any other modifications they request, and then C, for the sheriff to sign those modifications and report back to the Board of Supervisors on what the agreement with BSEC is. OK.

If I may, through the chair, Sarah Pierce, interim CEO, we are also trying to bring an item back in October about the code enforcement priorities, board priorities, which is a separate conversation than this. But it is one that we will have soon that will then kind of tie into some of the activities. And then the position that was in this grant would report directly to code enforcement.

OK. Supervisor Heschak.

Well, thank you for going for this grant, because certainly we need to have that attention. And we can't be apathetic about these situations going on throughout the county, but especially up in the Kovaloa area. There's so much of it going on. So I approve of what you're doing with the grant. My question is around the software and the coordination with code enforcement and how the two are going to interact. I need to know more about the third-party administration of this software. I'm not sure how that looks. And, you know, we have processes, we have software, we have systems in place, you know, that code enforcement seems to be doing a really good job with it right now. And so I appreciate having another code enforcement just looking at these kind of issues. But I'm just worried about how it's going to really play out in practical terms.

Yeah, and I think Lieutenant Clark can speak to that. He previously worked in Lake County Sheriff's Office, where they did something similar with this code enforcement over there. And so, Lieutenant, if you don't mind speaking to that.

Yeah, so with the system, I mean, it falls solely on code enforcement. And from what I've experienced with it is you can actually kind of mold it to how you want it to be with your processes, your timelines, the fees that the county wants to put on the people that are doing some violations of the ordinances or the nuisances. And so those are things that have to be kind of ironed out with that company, specifically with the code enforcement department. Again, with the timelines for the fees when they have to be paid, the process of the notices, those timelines, all those things can be really customized by code enforcement with the system if they decide to choose to go with it. And so initially when you get a citation for something, it doesn't necessarily go into effect immediately. There's still a process of making sure that it was received accordingly and certified. them either paying it or not paying it. And then the process then begins from there on how the code enforcement team is going to get through with that program with those people. And then if there is hearings in the future, code enforcement can work with them to have an impartial third party review of the complaint or the

basically argument of the actual citation itself and so it's just a lot of those little things if if it were accepted code enforcement have to work specifically with that company to kind of customize to what they prefer and what's within county council's guidelines if i make to the chair can i add a little um so we would actually do follow our county policies as well purchasing policy we would go out after an rfp we would identify what we want in that scope we made like lieutenant clark said we may not want all aspects of it but it is something that we would bring back in front of the board before proceeding

Yeah, just so with $150,000 for this software or this third party, you know, just your feeling is that the existing structure that we have in code enforcement can't address whatever is going on because $150,000 could be spent for more, you know, another deputy or someone.

And Supervisor Hashtag, That is completely up to the board. I don't have a horse in that race in the least. I don't. If you guys choose to take on that portion of it through code enforcement, that's perfectly fine with me. If you choose not to, that's perfectly fine with me as well. I'll use that funding for other things in this realm. The question is, you know, code enforcement is often sent out with a five-gallon bucket and has to put 10 gallons worth of work into it. They truly are. Everybody in the county is strapped. We have more work than what we have personnel to deal with. And so they are constantly triaging, okay, what is the, it comes back to win-win. What is important now and what's important next? And personally, if we don't support them to be able to bring on extra personnel and to be able to bring on some improved personnel means of getting the work done, then they're going to continue triaging. And some things are going to fall through the cracks. And it's not because they aren't hardworking people. It's just that there isn't enough of them. And so I don't have a dog in the fight on this. If you guys want to go with the code enforcement portion of it, hey, I'm great with that. It's a portion of what we wrote into it. If the board doesn't have an appetite for it, that's perfectly fine with me as well. Thank you.

If I may, through the chair, however, we would need to work with BSCC to do a budget amendment, which would be another process. So we would not be able to make that change today. We would have to work back through BSCC.

Yeah. No, my question kind of boils down to, is that $150,000 best spent utilizing the software in the third party, or is it better to hire another code enforcement person or staff to provide that support within the system we already have.

If I may, through the chair, there is a position allocated in this funding under the same objective, number two, that includes a code enforcement position and the program. And from our conversations, we've had numerous meetings with code enforcement since we proposed this and included them in this proposal. My understanding, we had to cite a program that we believe works because the surrounding county uses it. That doesn't mean we've selected that program Interim ceo pointed out we'd have to go to a selection process to meet the needs of what we're requesting But it would resolve many of the administrative functions that I believe code enforcement has to encounter now like if there's a hearing They have to appoint a hearing officer and we have to work with county count that this company deals with all of those things So would streamline their involvement when somebody refuses to pay the fees that are being imposed on them All right, thank you supervisor Klein

Yeah, I appreciate the presentation and the discussion today. I just wanted to share in July I attended a session with Department of Cannabis Control. We were discussing kind of the legal market from the illicit market. And they shared statistics that 60% of cannabis consumed in California is from the illicit market. So just appreciate the focus is on the illicit market. This kind of work is needed for public safety broadly and also to help support the legal cannabis operators who are doing their best to follow the rules, pay their taxes, be good contributors of society. So just appreciate the approach and the conversation today.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams.

I don't know enough about the software to know if it's a win, but I'm hearing it may build some efficiency. We may get more out of it than hiring another officer. Is it possible to ask our code enforcement to weigh in? Have they looked at it? Is it something where there would be interoperability? I'm looking at, are there unanticipated consequences that this seems like a good idea, but then we find out three months in, I don't know what, I can't even expect that maybe there's appeals that come out of people get fines through the software, and those are coming back to the board, and now we have to deal with a cost we didn't anticipate. What are we not seeing here that could go wrong, and how do we tune that along the path?

If I may, through the chair, we have not looked at the software companies yet. We were waiting for this grant to either be approved today. If it is approved, we'll then go through the process of an RFP, put together a scope of work. Gretchen is coming up. She can also speak. But it's my understanding that this ticketing software could be used. It would be a county-owned software. It wouldn't be sitting with Sheriff's Office. So it could be used for any other agency, like environmental health that does ticketing, animal control or ag, so it could be used for multiple departments.

And does it integrate with Acela?

Because we have not gone through the software RFP, I'm not sure. It depends on who we would choose.

Can you hear me? Okay.

Good morning, Board Supervisors, Chair Norvell, Gretchen McLaughlin with Planning and Building Services. So generally speaking with our current process of doing citations, we'll always have to follow the ordinance for 1.08 to do proper noticing and issue the citations. And then essentially I think what would happen is regardless of what the company is, we would have to forward that information over to the software company, the third party, contractor to process that information, put it into their data system, and potentially provide support for a third party hearing officer, like what they were discussing, as well as serve as kind of like a collections agency. Outside of that process, code enforcement does have a process. The way that they're proposing it would make it a little bit more streamlined than what we already have, but there's still legwork that would have to happen on the front end through code enforcement to get the information to that company, if that makes sense. The paperwork still has to be completed either way.

Are you in favor of this part of the proposal?

I think there's some logistical stuff that we would have to kind of work through because if it's something that code enforcement does adopt, then we would kind of need to make a shift in terms of how our personnel is working through it. So I think we're kind of open. I guess it's kind of the best way to say it.

We're open. That's where I am, too. I just want to make sure it's a net win. And I hear that it's a little bit... unknown how the integration will work, if the software package will actually integrate with our ordinance, what the impact will be on our existing staff. There sounds like there is some staff time. Can the grant reimburse our department for the time they spend on the integration? So I would like some of this to somehow be wrapped up before we give a final thumbs up. But I support the concept.

If I may, through the chair, I don't know that we could have that wrapped up because we would actually need to get a scope of work and go through the RFP process. We can go down that path, and if it does not seem like it will be reasonable, we can work with the sheriff's office and BSCC to reallocate the $150,000 to other needs such as personnel. But right now, our only option is to accept it the way it is.

Got it. OK. Well, this is helpful. And then next question. Some of these grows are cartel, multinational. Just looking at other jurisdictions that have tried to collect fines from the cartel, are they generally successful?

It depends on how far down the ladder you're going to be satisfied. Sometimes the landowner absolutely knows what's going on, and they have levied fines fees, and they've taken lands. And that is successful. And a third party company will do that for us?

Yes. If I may through the chair to address some questions by supervisor Williams that we fully intend to have code enforcement involved in the selection process so if it's not something this program that we go out to bid on we hopefully get numerous vendors that submit proposals and we want their input because if it doesn't work for them, it's not going to work for us OK excellent.

Thank you. Supervisor more.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for going after these grant funds. It is a challenge for people that are trying to be in the regulated market to be competing with the illicit growth. I just I also appreciate code enforcement and the opportunity to work together because I think that there are other instances that are not cannabis related where it would be really important for the sheriff's office and code enforcement to be able to work together and hoping that whatever software system is chosen through the regular process it's vetted in a way that it can be used as interim CEO said for other departments and frankly i would uh rather a grant pay for that learning uh tool and and um that system then try to figure out how we're going to pay for it out of the general fund so i'm supportive of the budget as it's presented today supervisor hashtag there's another question about you know the for lieutenant clark in lake county where they're using it is there any incentive for that third party to find people

Do they get a portion of it, or is there a finder's fee or anything?

The systems that I'm familiar with, they don't get any extra. They get a set fee for each citation submitted. So after they get their assigned amount that they are going to procure from each citation submitted, everything else is collected by the county. And then the fees that we pay for them to take care of that citation in that process. So as that goes along, they get paid completely. And then anything extra that we, so if somebody's not paying that bill, it would actually end up coming back to be towards the county. And that That way the communities aren't the ones picking up that tab.

OK, so there is kind of an incentive to fine as much as possible from the third party, in Lake County at least.

If I may, through the chair, Quincy Cromer. The company is not issuing the citations, code enforcement is. So it's only on their selection and their enforcement is what they encounter. They issue the citation. The third company only gets involved once the citation has been issued and decided upon by code enforcement. So they have no choice. on who's being enforced upon, it's code enforcement. So their only involvement would be once the citation's been issued.

OK. So code enforcement would still follow our processes and policies and everything. And then they're just dealing with the implementation of that. All right. Thank you.

And the other portion of it is us putting funding in for another code enforcement staff. What we're hopeful for is that that code enforcement officer can concentrate that staff member that's going to be paid for out of the grant. has the ability to concentrate on these things as opposed to wearing five other hats. And I think that that's going to be helpful. We're keeping our fingers crossed. And now, don't get me wrong. We will be building the aircraft mid-flight with Gretchen over the next few months. And we will probably have some successes and some failures. And we're going to have to look at those realistically with eyes wide open. And the direction of the board is going to be very important for code enforcement. As long as everybody's walking into this eyes wide open understanding there are going to be some bumps in the road and we've got to deal with those. Then I think that we can be successful. Thank you.

OK. Thank you.

I'm not seeing any more questions. We'll open this up to the public for comment.

Hello. Hello, Steven Amato, President of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance. Welcome back, Board. Good to see you again. And thank you to the Sheriff's Office, and especially to the folks that worked on this grant. We know that that process is involved. It is not funded by any means. and really thank you in general for really targeting something and seeing a big need for our industry and our community at large obviously i mean i see this as a private landowner and citizen in the county of having a safe and you know place for people to live in it creates better property value makes a more desirous place for folks to do commerce in and all the above we're tired of hearing the black eye that ben mencino has all this illicit activities going on and such and then hearing that it's just so overwhelming it's like shooting fish in a barrel and like one pops out it's like a game of whack-a-mole It sounds like you're really making a concentrated effort towards addressing that the best you can and utilizing funds that were provided in Prop 64, which is an excellent path of doing it. A lot of the questions I had were actually asked and answered by the board. And thank you so much for having all that information and prepared. You know, it was a little bit confusing when I read what Activity 2 was going to be about the whole code enforcement, you know, section and such, and we had concerns of, like, was that going to be additional penalties that already exist on our books? Are we rewriting rules here and such? But it just seems like it's trying to streamline a process. I'd advise maybe putting in some sort of benchmarks and review periods to make sure things are working periodically because as an operator in this business and knowing that this still looks in hopes of being a major driver in our county's commerce, we'd like to see this be a great success. Because if we do this and other counties start doing this, you know, those numbers of 60% of the product in the state, and maybe even worse than that, maybe less, but, you know, starting to change might really help our market. And especially with things starting to happen on the federal landscape, you know, it's really good to try to kind of get our ship in order here. and start really moving in a real direction of really having real cannabis business coming in. State's looking to open up its Appalachians program that they have on their website by the end of 2026. I mean, I think we'd like to be known as a place that's really producing great legal cannabis. I mean, we represent the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance as licensed operators. I would have preferred to have seen the grant say illicit unlicensed grows, but I mean, you know, I think we all understand what you meant here. That is always going to be the major concern from our community is just that, you know, some of this might be used towards folks who are licensed and such, and if that can really be worked out and some really good public facing on it, that that's not what this is for, that would be great. Hopefully some of these resources will also help to make sure that there aren't mishaps of grows that are licensed and the helicopters come in and start doing some damage to the crops and such. That it gives you guys better tools to make sure you're really targeting those folks that should be getting hit with these. And other than that, I'd just like to thank everybody.

Thank you. I have a question. Steve, are you encouraging us to support this item today, contingent on there being some status updates going forward so that we can keep transparency?

Status, transparency, and it seems like they're open to collaboration with the county and the public, to be honest. As long as there can be public input, stakeholder input, yes, I would be more looking towards moving forward with it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room like to comment? None in the room. Madam Clerk.

We have two online. The first one is going to be a phone number ending in 5225.

Good morning. Hannah Nelson again. And thank you very much for the presentation, Sheriff and personnel. I want to say that I really can relate to the sheriff feeling the years and recurrent history. I share that sentiment. I very much appreciate leveraging funding to accomplish goals and to streamline things. I think that my main concern, as already enunciated by several board members and the public, is not creating unintended consequences that have a deleterious effect that was not anticipated or that even if there may be some anticipation can be immediately course corrected and some of those issues have everything to do with yet another overlay of software or coordination that's intended to be efficient but actually goes awry and creates more staff work particularly in administrative citations like that's a highly technical and legal thing and if it's collections and we already are trying to straighten out our finance and collections department and how does that interlay and then of course in the larger goals one of the concerns that I have while balancing the need to really go after dangerous criminals and environmental violations is the remilitarization of cannabis enforcement and at the same time like I said balancing the current situation and making sure that uh Law enforcement has the tools that it needs, but at the same time, making sure that there are safeguards to not have such collateral damage, both to the reputation of some systems that the county has invested a lot of effort and a lot of time in course correcting, such as with code enforcement, such as with MCD, as well as a level of accountability. So I would also really encourage a regular reporting and stakeholder engagement involvement, not just from a pragmatic implementation for each department that might be directly or indirectly affected, but also with the licensed community so that feedback and quick course correction and communications could be handled before it's too late and a whole lot of additional effort has to be put in. Particularly, I think that Any RFP and any code enforcement software that represents one aspect of it, but also in keeping with the larger goals of sometimes the county has an important goal of creating a stick, but then has to abandon the follow through. And what would be the natural consequence if years down the pike, there's all these citations and properties are being abandoned and it just creates a bigger vacuum. And I'm not suggesting we can answer that upfront, but I think that it points to a need to align the larger goals along with the practical implementation along the way. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Corinne Powell.

Thank you for taking comments. I too have had many of my concerns answered. and appreciate that Steve and Hannah have brought up other issues to be considered, which I think puts public comment so far unanimously in the category of opinion that, yes, it's wonderful that currently the sheriff has... has elevated standards and a sense of rationality about approaching many of these issues but this uh grant tenure of five years may go beyond some of the people's tenure at the county we don't know i think we need to open it up to accept the item now and add additional important features. One of them to me, or a question still not answered, there will be a new fund set up from these grant funds. And who exactly will have access to distributing those funds? We've all kind of touched on the necessity of combining our information and resources locally. And I think we need, as Hannah suggested, a regular review and particularly coordination between the cannabis division and enforcement because There may be people that are slipping between compliance and enforcement, but if they have a viable track record with legitimacy in the county, I think that at that point, the county's cannabis division may have a better way of enforcing and extracting compliance than code enforcement will. We've had some bad experiences with code enforcement, excuse me, with grant funds in the cannabis sector. There was a lot of waste. A lot of things were probably done that shouldn't have been done. One was financial reporting errors to the state. Who will be overseeing from the county that there are perfect financial records kept in this particular grant? And I think that we need to stipulate in our paperwork and going forward that these tax-based funds cannot be used in conjunction with any enforcement imposed by the federal government, and specifically that none of these funds can be engaged with ICE activities. Full stop. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Seeing no further comment online.

OK. Back to the board for discussion and or action. Supervisor Williams.

Can we talk about how updates will come? Can we get a monthly update on progress, what's working, and any obstacles?

Absolutely. I don't know if we're going to be able to do it monthly. We can probably do it quarterly. Of course, during marijuana grow season, it's going to be a little bit tougher to do it monthly because doing a lot of the reporting and whatnot during that time when we've got more work than what we can handle is going to be a little bit tough. But we do have the grant reporting that has to be done. And so we can provide that to the board as well. The other thing that we need to also look at and discuss here, there's been a lot of questions about ICE enforcement and things like that, I want to make it very clear to everyone that I am a state peace officer and that the 10th Amendment clearly states that only a federal officer may enforce federal crimes. There's something that's going on across the news, across the nation, where people have this belief that I am a federal agent or something, and I am not. The 10th Amendment says that only a federal agent can enforce federal law the other portion of that is it states that i cannot be compelled to enforce federal law as as a state peace officer and i don't know that the public realizes that there's also things that keep coming down the pipe where they say are you going to enforce this against the federal government we have the legal decision that has been on the books and granted some of this is the fault of our legislatures They keep producing laws, and people keep thinking that a state peace officer can enforce state laws on a federal agent. We have the legal decision that says, I cannot do that. So I don't know why we keep seeing this go on. And it's causing questions all the way across the United States. But the answers are pretty darn simple. It's just that our legislators are not coming out and saying, here's the answers to this. I don't know. I think there's a lot of confusion there. It's a tough moment in the United States. Let's put it that way.

Thank you. Supervisor Haschuk.

Well, I'm in support of this. And what I'm hearing is that we could have quarterly reports kind of talking about, like, the departmental issues and if there's, you know, to make sure that that's flowing properly. And, you know, community feedback if need be. And regular reports on how effective you think it is. Because that's really what's important to make sure that this is effective. and we're doing what the grant wants us to do and what our communities want us to do.

I'm absolutely certain, Supervisor Haschack, that we will hear back from the community, which is probably our best barometer on this, about whether or not they are seeing improvements. We're going to be working with code enforcement, eyes wide open as we step into this, to see what works for all of us. And if we're If the software if the the third party isn't working we need to have a reverse gear to say if it's not working we don't continue down this road we find something that does work.

Right well, I appreciate that and I'll make a motion to approve the the recommended actions and and add that we'll have quarterly reports.

Supervisor more.

I was going to second, I suppose, but I think Supervisor Klein wanted to as well, but I actually wanted to add something else, and I think Sheriff Kendall brought up something that's really important, and some of the speakers from the audience brought up something that's really important. In Mendocino County, actions that are taken by the Board of Supervisors or any local government can be misunderstood with miscommunication, and so I would like to see if the sheriff in the executive office can work with the state of california and the grant administrator to put out some information to the public an faq or an article some type of information so that we can point to something as board members when we're asked questions about why we're doing this what the process is i mean of course i can tell people to read the agenda packet most people don't do that it would be really helpful for me if we could have um a brief summary and some some questions that were asked today answered for the public for their information and i appreciate all the information all the folks that came and asked questions today is that a second supervisor williams was that additional language part of the motion i think we could add it as part of the motion

I think it's a good idea because before this meeting is over, there will be fake news out there about what this board did. I'm getting accused of kicking seniors out of their home for minor code violations, which I know we're not doing. I don't know if the rest of you are getting these emails, but I mean, it's escalating. People really think we're doing it because somebody's, I don't want that to come out of this process. And if we can explain what this is about and what it's not about, that this is about going after illegal pesticides and tens of thousands of plants and cartel activity, I think the public will support it.

Sheriff, comfortable with that? Thank you. Supervisor?

So what the motion is, is to approve the recommended actions, direct Sheriff to come back quarterly with the report, and also to draft the FAQs about the reason for this grant. Are we in agreement? Second? OK.

Okay, if there's no more discussion on the motion, then we will vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you, gentlemen, very much. OK, we're moving on to agenda item R5, discussion of possible action, including acceptance of presentation by the Health Services Department on the Community Outreach Response and Engagement, or CORE 2.0 pilot program, and authorization for the Health Service Department to fill the positions to support CORE 2.0 and to backfill CORE 2.0 positions that become vacant in the future. Dr. Miller?

Good morning. If I can get added to the link, Web Zoom, that would be great. Share the presentation. Good morning. Here to talk about Core 2.0, we met with the board's ad hoc committee, the homeless ad hoc committee, to look at what could be done different And obviously there was definitely concerns that CORE, the original CORE, was not doing what we had hoped it would do to really look at homelessness and resolve some of the homeless concerns within our community. So behavioral health, we went ahead and started looking at what we could do and what we've done in the past. AB2034 program that was in effect many, many years ago. I think it disbanded in about 2009, 2010. And it was a behavioral health focus on homelessness and really going out into the community, walking the railroad tracks, going into where we knew homeless were, meeting them where they were at. and starting that first level of engagement. And so we built Core 2.0 kind of based off of what did hope used to do, and what worked with hope, what didn't work with hope, and then really looking at what was happening across the world, not just the United States, but what was happening in other countries, that were successful approaches to homelessness, what was happening in the U.S. where there were successful pieces, not that any program was 100% successful, but looking at the pieces of the different programs where they were seeing that people were able to get engaged and meeting the needs of people who were homeless or in those with behavioral health needs and really being able to engage We create a program based on that. So it is a behavioral health-focused program. It is also a homeless stabilization and care coordination program. And it really is something that we want to focus on is early intervention. We know that prevention and early intervention is what is actually most effective. And upstream prevention actually is 10 times better than downstream intervention. And so really looking at how do we create upstream prevention and early intervention to reduce the need for treatment and intervention. Core 2.0, what it is going to look like and really focus on is field based outreach and engagement, behavioral health screenings and assessments, intensive care management, crisis intervention, care coordination, housing navigation and stabilization, landlord coordination, Connection for benefit enrollments, so making sure people get connected to their benefits. Making sure people get linked to behavioral health, not just referring them, but making sure there's that linkage to get them into behavioral health treatment. Making sure medication support services, if they need them, that we're working to get them connected to medication support services. Looking at transportation assistance, we know that that's a huge issue for people at times. Working with discharge planning. So we're not asking them to do discharge planning. We have discharge planners in the jail. But making sure there's a warm handoff so that as the person is leaving the jail, they're already connected to services with the core team, if that's the best team to serve their needs. Working on family reunification and reconnecting to natural supports. Most people are most successful when they're able to be reconnected or have those natural supports, and we're aware of that. We want to make sure that we coordinate with health care providers, the shelter, law enforcement, the correctional system, and community partners. We really want to focus on eviction prevention and housing stabilization. So that's part of the prevention piece that we want to focus on. If we are able to know that someone is on the verge of being evicted, how do we start there? How do we prevent the evictions? We also want to look on short-term stabilization assistance, family mediation and support. So making sure that we're really identifying those first break episodes and working with families before they're so exhausted that they can't handle their loved one anymore. And we see a lot of times that happens with first episode psychosis. It gets to a point where people, unfortunately, do kick their loved ones out. And then we end up with homeless individuals And we're not really addressing the mental health needs during that first episode psychosis. So really focusing that piece of working with families on what is first episode psychosis, when a family has a loved one that's experiencing that, being that partner to support them, educate them, and then really helping them get their loved one into supportive services and meeting those needs, such as connecting to NAMI, but also getting them connected to service, explaining what first episode psychosis is. A lot of families Have a lot of reasons like I don't know what's going on with my loved one But really explaining sometimes it being they think it's drugs or a college when it's really mental health-based So making sure they have those education and support systems for that Intensive case management will be really key right so at all levels working with the family But also working with the individual are kind of the big things that we plan to really focus on it is It is really important for us to note that Core and Core 2.0 are two totally different programs. Core doesn't exist anymore. It went away. And so Core 2.0 is actually a new program. We decided to call it Core 2.0 because in behavioral health, we had already spent money on logoed items. So we have vests that say Core 2.0. So we spent money on items. And instead of throwing that away, We thought, why can't we use the name? The name still means similar to what we plan to do. And then we're not wasting funds that went into buying logoed stuff for staff and outreach education. And so we're rebranding it, but actually it's like a night and day program. We also want to, we're not going to focus on a housing first model. I know that's really common, we hear. But we also know on the behavioral health side, housing first models fail people. So if an individual isn't ready to be housed, we're actually setting them up for failure. And we're actually hurting the client, because when they get that eviction, it's going to be harder to house them the second time. So really, we're looking to develop an assessment tool that really assesses the individual with where they're at in the moment. So it'll be a housing assessment tool, a mental health assessment tool, really looking at what is the client's needs today. Of course, the goal is to get them housed. but making sure we're meeting with them where they're at. So not asking the client to fit the treatment, asking the treatment model to fit the client. We know that is best success is when the treatment fits the client, not the client having to fit the treatment. And so we're going to be working on developing an assessment tool that allows us to really do an assessment on what is the needs of this client and how do we best meet their needs and eventually get them into permanent housing, but we realize there might be steps along the way. We will be looking at crisis stabilization housing if needed, interim and transitional housing, supported independent housing, congregate living, residential settings, housing with families and friends, and of course the ultimate goal is permanent housing if that's something we can do. And some people do better in congregate living, and we're very aware of that, and that might be their long-term goal, and we do have those within our community to meet those needs. We're looking at starting with two core teams, which would allow us to operate seven days a week. There's been a lot of requests to not just have it Monday through Friday. To do that, we're looking at two core teams. The teams would go out as a partnership of two individuals. We don't want someone out there alone if we can avoid that. So putting a mental health rehab specialist, which is a trained mental health individual, they have to actually have an AA in six years and working in the mental health field, a BA in four years working in the mental health field, or a master's in two years working in the mental health field. So it's someone that is very familiar with the mental health and working with mental health individuals. And a senior integrated service coordinator, which allows us to kind of bring in a peer model to allow you have your mental health expert and a peer to really... make that team beneficial and really meet the needs of the individuals. We also are adding an additional clinical support. It's so important to have a mental health clinician that can do the assessments, get those diagnoses, and also help get them into alternative levels of care if we need. And a substance misuse counselor, very important as we want to start, if substance use is their main thing, we want to start engaging out there on the streets and start working to get them connected to treatment and services. We will also be implementing as part of the teams is really doing an evidence-based practice approach. So all of our teams and individuals on that team, along with the manager that will oversee the program, will also be trained in several evidence-based practices. We're looking at coordinated specialty care, assertive community treatment, principles, motivation interviewing, assorted field-based substance services, and clinical time interventions. So they will be trained in all of those evidence-based practice models to make sure we're able to meet everybody's needs. So we are kind of our implementation. It is a pilot program. We're very aware that there will be bumps along the road. And we may be looking to do things. Six months, we're like, hey, we need to do another evidence-based practice, or this worked, this didn't work. And so let's pivot to really work on what's working. We'll continue to look at what's happening across the United States. and in other countries to look at what's the kind of evidence-based practice there that's going on. We're looking at a phased-in, phased-out rollout, a multidisciplinary, field-based approach. As we said, two teams. We're looking at braided funding. And of course, part of that will always be quality assurance and quality improvement as we continue to look through this system. Some of our expected outcomes of this team is to reduce chronic homelessness and unsheltered homelessness. We realize it may not resolve all homelessness, but if we can reduce it, that's huge. Prevent housing loss and behavioral health decompensation. Reduce emergency room visits, psychiatric holds, and incarceration. Increase housing stability and successful community integration. improve continuity of care following incarceration or hospitalization, increase engagement in behavioral health and substance use treatment, and improve linkage to getting people connected to health, Medi-Cal, their SSI, if they qualify so that they're able to meet their needs and be able to be successful in housing. Our vision is here, what we hope to do, and then what we are asking for today, and we're happy to obviously answer more questions, is the approval of two mental health rehab specialists, two senior integrated service coordinators, a substance use counselor, a mental health counselor, and approval of funding from Measure B of $230,000 annually for five years. We are using braided funding, so we already have grant funds that will go to this. We're continuing to apply for additional grant funds so that we can potentially expand the program. We have opioid settlement funds that will go to this program. And then obviously, we asked Measure B for $230,000 annually for five years. Measure B did approve those funds. So at their meeting last week, they did approve the Measure B funds coming here as a recommendation for you guys to approve and support the core program. We also, the City of Fort Bragg also did provide a letter to Measure B stating that they supported CORE as they feel that it could be similar to what CREW is doing, and so there was support from the City of Fort Bragg. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Dr. Miller, thank you. A few questions. Some of them have been asked by the public, but one of the questions raised was duplication of services. Are we just duplicating? And I think one of the references was made to mobile crisis, so I was hoping that you could talk about that a little bit.

Sure. So CORE 2.0, as I stated, CORE went away and our homeless outreach teams no longer exist that were in the social services system. We do not have homeless outreach at this time that I know of within our systems. Mobile crisis is not a homeless outreach team. It is responding to crisis throughout the community. They're not out doing homeless work activity. Our mobile outreach and prevention teams are not doing homeless outreach. They're out working with individuals, case managing, and getting them into the system. So this is the only team that we would have that would be actually proactively out there doing field-based housing stabilization engagement across the continuum of care. and actually making sure people don't lose housing. We don't have a system right now that works with individuals who are potentially getting evicted and working with landlords to build those connections and to build additional housing opportunities. So it's a very unique, different team than what we currently have.

Thank you. And then there was a lot of talk about early intervention. I think we all understand the importance of that, but we do have a lot of people on the streets with mental health issues and or substance abuse, they're already at a point where they've lost their house. Could you talk a little bit about how these teams would be addressing them?

Yeah, so the teams will go out. So it's not just the prevention model. Obviously, if we have those individuals that are currently homeless, we'll be engaging with those individuals and really working with them to figure out what are their barriers You know, one of the biggest things is building rapport, right? You go out, the first thing you have to do is build rapport. Some will, some won't. We're not going to give up. We'll continue to work with people. We'll continue to build rapport. Once rapport is built, it's really about figuring out what those barriers are. What is their barriers to getting housed? And then working to overcome those barriers, right? And for everybody's different. There's not a one model fits all. Everybody's barriers are going to be different. One of the things I have brought up is that we know we have several individuals who are not going to want to be housed without their pet. And if they have a choice between their pet or housing, they're going to say they want to keep their dog. And so we're going to have to overcome, how do we then overcome that barrier of how are we going to find housing so that person can keep their pet? Because there's a good chance they're not going to let go of their dog. So there's going to be those barriers, but it really will be working on building rapport with the person, understanding their barriers, assessing their needs, and then how do we overcome those barriers to get people housed and make sure their needs are met and they can continue to be housed.

Up to and including substance abuse treatment?

Correct. Everything.

Thank you so much. Supervisor Klein?

Thank you for the presentation. Just piggybacking off my colleague's question, hearing from the public about duplicative services, we've had, you know, a team from social services that's done that housing stabilization. So are they going to continue to do that work or is now this just being completely transferred to CORE?

So the homeless outreach team that Megan Van Sant was running has disbanded.

OK.

I think they still do. Megan's team still does have some. I don't want to speak for her, but I believe they still have some housing stuff they do with families. And they have Live Oak and stuff. But I do not believe they have a team that's going out anymore. And so that will be the behavioral health team. if it's somebody that doesn't have behavioral health needs, then we'll try to transition it to the appropriate services in the county that should be meeting that person's needs.

Okay, thank you for that. And then my follow-up is, would love to hear from the ad hoc about the process and how they're feeling about this updated model.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Hashtag?

Yeah, so there'll be two teams, and they'll be working seven days a week. And where are they going to be focused? Because certainly in Willits we have a lot of, you know, last point in time count was like over 150, I think, homeless people. So where is this going to be focused? And is that part of the plan is to deal with some of the outlying areas of our county that aren't served right now?

So the original pilot rollout is kind of that Ukiah and greater Ukiah area. We did talk about this in Measure B about from a year from now, can we then start expanding it to the outlying areas? The question was, if they got a call for somebody in Anderson Valley or Willits, would we respond? Of course we would respond. We do it today, right? We would respond. But we also want to make sure we don't want to create something and then have it fail. So if I start too big and we don't work out all the kinks, we will fail. And so we really want to make sure we kind of master what's happening, build the relationships, know our successes, and then grow it from there into other areas in the county.

All right. So this could be reviewed in a year to see if we can expand it to other areas. Correct. Currently, there's a lot of areas in our county that have the same needs as the Ukiah Valley. Yes, correct.

Supervisor Williams.

This is a well-crafted plan, and I'm pleased and ready to support it. How can the board track status?

So we do plan to, and we're happy if, you know, we can add it to our CEO report because we will be giving the data also back to Measure B as I do with all of the programs they support. So I'm happy to add it to the CEO report. We're happy to do a quarterly report if that's what you want. We do have some specific outcomes we want to, we're really going to look at, you know, Number of individuals identified and engaged, what was our success with those. Individuals who are at risk of homelessness that we stabilized, so those that are potentially getting at risk of homelessness versus homelessness, so we can see how we're working there. Individual connected to permanent housing, whether they stay or remain housed, 3, 6, 12 months we want to look at. number of evictions or housing loss prevented, and then connection to services, and then successful transition to ongoing community-based services. So those are just off the top that we're going to start looking at, and we're happy to add additional measures to track. And obviously we'll probably have more as the program rolls out. We'll be able to see this isn't working or, you know, we need to track this too, but we're happy to report back to you guys however you'd like.

I think the CEO report is a good way to do it.

Yeah to answer supervisors clients question about the ad hoc for me personally, I'm super excited about this program. There's been a lot of effort is certainly from doctor Miller her staff to go into this. Supervisor more her to myself met with several departments within the county. I did have a private conversation with the crew team and the city for break. As Dr. Miller mentioned, they sent our letter of support because they think it very closely mirrors the crew program, which they deemed to be successful. Dr. Miller did reach out to the courts and had a good meeting with them. Dr. Miller, maybe you could share one of the outcomes from that meeting about some of the boxes to be checked on some of the forms.

Yeah, so I work with the courts pretty regularly. And so we've been working with the courts trying to make sure we know if an individual is in for and incompetent to stand trial, Or there's something that we have a mental health individual that's in custody that needs mental health supports. Honestly, we're always trying to catch them at discharge, but sometimes people are coming and going quicker than we can get them. And especially with some new laws regarding misdemeanors, people are not going to be booked, or if they're booked, they're going to be in and out. really trying to make sure that people that are going in and out and that the court feels has mental health or substance use concerns that we can make sure we know who they are because we don't always know who they are and so we worked with the courts to put on their form for the judge to be able to one of the requirements is that they come to behavioral health for an assessment and that we would get one the individual would be required to do that as part of their release but it would also notify us that they had an individual that they're referring to us. And so we were able to get that form updated, and that's been rolled out to the judges.

Thank you. And then to answer the question about expansion and where this program is going to be located, I've always been a favor, and it was my intention early to focus this on the greater Ukiah area. It's where I think our larger problem is. The coast is mainly covered with the collaboration between the Sheriff's Department and the City of Fort Bragg with the Prop 47 grant. Would love to get it expanded to the rest of the county as supervisor has check mentioned will it's cove low area But I think the pilot program being based in the Ukiah area here And we did have a conversation with you UPD about it they would happy to work with the core team. I think it's a great opportunity to build this program, you know, work the kinks out here, and then whether it's a year sooner or whenever it happens, we get a plan in place that we know is working and working well, then to expand it certainly north. Supervisor Mulhern?

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. And I think for me as an ad hoc member and then also as a member of the Board of Supervisors for the last seven years, it is my hope that this is the piece that's been missing from homeless services. And I do not agree with this comment that people make that we have you know too many service providers i think that there's a misunderstanding about the different things that people do and who they serve and why they serve different people and well i think that the social services outreach team did a good job of trying to reach the people that wanted to be reached the families in their cars the people that were ready to be housed We very clearly still have a visible gap with the people that may be having mental health or substance misuse disorder struggles that remain on our streets. And many of them are now much older adults than when they were first on the streets and with an generational poverty and addiction and mental health issues in their families. Many of them continue to remain on the streets for whatever level of comfort they find in that. Like Dr. Miller mentioned, maybe it's a pet, maybe it's familiarity with being able to keep the items that they have and to stay on the streets. And in order to really reach and serve those people, I think that you need to have persons that are trained and qualified and ready to serve those individuals. And I think that's really the difference with the Core 2.0 program. is that we will be hiring people whose intention when they first start the job is that they'll be working specifically in this program. And that's not the same for our, I'm very grateful for the social services outreach team. I'm very grateful for our crisis workers who have stepped in to fill a gap in the last year or so and tried to help people stay housed and tried to help people that were on the streets. But I really think that having employees that are specifically trained and hired to Run this program is what we need to to make a difference visibly on the streets, and I think you know I Am born and raised here, and I know that growing up we've always had some level of people that were out on the streets and In the 80s and 90s we knew their names. I am fortunate enough to be in a position and in places that I know many of the people's names that are on our streets right now and I For whatever reason, they haven't met thresholds for Lantern and Petra's short receiverships. They haven't met thresholds for being arrested and in the jail for whatever reason. They remain on the streets because nobody has been able to fill the gap of what they need. And I think... This is really an opportunity to help serve some of those people that remain on the streets. And then also, I think the systems that are created from the state or from the federal government offer gaps. And some of that is around being able to retain your housing, which we know is um is very important so having a team that is able to also help meet those needs for people that are struggling with substance misuse disorder and behavioral health needs i think is really going to be helpful to our community so um like supervisor norvell said we met with social services health services we met with the district attorney's office the supervisor norvell met with the We met with community stakeholders to describe the reasons why we needed a different program that could hopefully reach the people that we're not currently reaching. I think that as far as statistical data and how we are able to prove success with this program, I personally have seen the difference on the streets in Ukiah with the change in the laws that went into place. in 2025, some transitions within leadership at both the Sheriff's Office and the Ukiah Police Department. They have implemented some changes. And I also think that leadership on this board has changed the impact that we've seen. And I thank Supervisor Klein and Supervisor Norvell for supporting me. this work because it's been something i've been struggling to do um and it's been a real challenge by myself and so i really want to just say that i appreciate the additional support to try to have a community impact we've been able to put some other programs in place things like related to trash and what the city of ukiah is doing related to picking up in the creeks they have a volunteer coordinator that is working with companies and businesses that schedule a time so that they can also help clean up in the creeks. We now have the Clean River Alliance coming up into Mendocino County and helping clean up on the Russian River. The Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority has been able to find some funds where we are now able to do additional cleanups and i think all of these things the um increase in funding from the abandoned vehicle abatement program that voters approved so we're able to haul off um trailers all of these things are having a visual impact in our community and i'm not going to name the people that are still on the streets but they're still there. And so I think this is my hope that this is the last piece to help those people get into, like you described, whatever kind of housing is going to meet their needs.

I'm not seeing any more questions. We'll go to the public for comment. Anybody in the room like to speak on this item? Seeing none. Madam Clerk?

Seeing no comments online.

Okay, back to the board, Supervisor Williams. Move approval. First by Supervisor Williams.

Second.

Second by Klein. And Dr. Miller, I just would like to thank you for all of your effort here. It's been a pleasure working with you and Supervisor Mohart on this. I think your attitude on this since day one has been to solve the problem, think outside the box. That's not always easy to get to in government. So I really appreciate your effort there. And I wish your team the utmost success in getting to where you want to be with this program. So thank you. First and a second will vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. We have a scheduled 12 PM lunch. We will return at 1231. Yes, sir.

We have some people here for item R6. Maybe we could take that now and then do lunch.

We could. Miss Beardsley, I know I've worked this out with you, and I did. I'm sorry. Are you and Atlas going to be okay with lunch after? Great. Thank you. Yeah. We're going to take a five-minute break. We'll be back at 12.06. All right we're going to move on to item or 6 discussion of possible action including adoption of an urgency ordinance of many single County Board of Supervisors imposing a temporary moratorium prohibiting the processing and approval of new data centers uses within the unincorporated County to allow for a valuation of the public health environmental and fiscal impacts and the enactment of further and appropriate regulations could excuse me concerning such uses County Council.

Yes, sir. Deputy County Councilman Matthew Kudrowski, on July 7th, the board directed staff to prepare an urgency ordinance establishing a moratorium on new data centers in Mendocino County. Government Code Section 65858 authorizes the Board to enact such an ordinance by a four-fifths vote, which prohibits uses that may be in conflict with a contemplated planning or zoning proposal that the county intends to study. The ordinance must contain findings there's a current and immediate threat to public health, safety, or welfare. The initial term of a moratorium is 45 days and can be extended up to one to two years, only after a notice to public hearing. We prepared an ordinance for the board's consideration, which includes the concerns prompted by data centers, and the agenda item also has several articles regarding the data centers and their impacts. The ordinance defines data center use and then does provide certain exemptions for customary server rooms or ordinary computer equipment that supports on-site operations and a couple more as well. In addition, to the extent applicable, any repairs or maintenance of existing facilities that could be considered a data center would not be prohibited. As noted in the ordinance, this use type isn't defined or regulated under the current county code, so the reason we're doing this is to prevent the applications coming in for construction of buildings that could be used as data centers and could be processed under a building permit. If the initial ordinance today is adopted, we anticipate being back before the board on October 6th for a notice public hearing on a renewal ordinance. And if there's any questions on the ordinance, let me know.

Yeah, Supervisor Hester.

Well, I appreciate County Council's help on this. think the only questions we've had are why is it only 45 days and you explain here that that's what we do with these urgency ordinances and that we will come back in October 6th and you know hopefully extend it to you know for a year or two years so that we can do the ordinance right

And then a reminder to the board that this does take a four-fifths vote. And then I would like for the public's benefit here just to take a straw poll of my colleagues to see if they are in favor of R6. Myself, I am in favor.

I was a sponsor, so yes.

That's three. Hashtag. And as a sponsor, so yes. Yeah.

So it looks like 5-0 at this point to support the ordinance. So with that, we'll go to the public. Anybody in the room?

Right. And Chair, if I could.

Yes.

I just want to acknowledge the hard work by the ad hoc itself in sort of gathering information and working on the language of this. And also my colleague, Matthew, for his work with the ad hoc. I think it went very well in terms of that.

Thank you for saying that. Yes.

Good day, supervisors. I'm Eileen Russell. I'm here today on behalf of Mendocino Redwood Company and Mendocino Forest Products. In response to the moratorium on data centers, we want to share our industry perspective. There is a new wave of renewable energy ideas, which include co-locating data centers with the sawmill for use of renewable heat, power, and water. We currently need heat for the process of drying lumber. This is just one way that the energy or heat produced in data centers could be used at another facility that would benefit from it. Data centers could provide value in creating jobs and improving infrastructure. So I would just ask that you please consider these considerations. Keep these considerations in mind when considering future regulations around data centers.

Thank you for that.

Yep, that's all.

Good morning, Stillboard. My name is Gizmo. I'm here partially on behalf of Dolly Riley, chairwoman of the Red Valley MAC. She has an eye infection and would like to be here today but can't. We sent a letter, the Red Valley MAC did, of which I just want to be clear I'm not part of the board, but I do participate in the meetings all the time. We sent a letter to the board with our concerns on the data centers. And at this point, I'm really happy that we're. But I think we should move this to a 90-day period. And the exception to the 45-day rule, I think, should be lifted this time, because October puts us really close to the holidays in November. And I think if we could move this to a 90-day moratorium, we'd have a little bit more time to get some more information and also see what some of the other counties are doing around the state on this issue. And I guess that's about all I have to say on this subject. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning or afternoon, board. I also want to thank the board and staff for proposing this moratorium and writing up the proposal for it. I think it's very appreciative that you've given the public time to collaborate with you all on this issue. My name is Ellen Drell. I'm speaking on behalf of the Willits Environmental Center. We support a moratorium and also its extension, because I think it'll take a year or two to really thoroughly vet this issue. We recommend just a couple of changes to the moratorium language. One is, I think, enlisting In moratorium findings, Section 2C, I think it would be worthwhile to mention two additional potential environmental impacts. One is loss of farmland. I've seen pictures of data centers that spread over hundreds of acres of flat farmland, and it's pretty shocking. And Mendocino County is not that well endowed with flat farmland, so I think data centers could threaten the precious farmland that we do have here. I also think that in this same section, moratorium findings, we should reference the fact that the county's commitment to curbing global warming is somewhat undermined by the proliferation of data centers because of its use of water and electricity. And so much of the booming alternative energy now is going to serve data centers instead of the basic needs that we have for power in this society. So I would recommend that we just list the county's goals and the state's goals to reducing carbon emissions and And getting alternative energy to power our necessary services is somewhat threatened and undermined, potentially, by data centers. And the last thing is, in section 4C and 6C, under exemptions, public safety is listed along with emergency communications or emergency operations. And I would like to see public safety omitted from this list, certainly not the emergency communications and emergency facilities. I realize those are top priority. But so often, especially in the public's mind, and in reality, public safety is equated with policing powers. And much of this data is based on surveillance, which is very troubling to the public. And it's getting worse and worse and worse. And this surveillance includes things like flock cameras, GPS devices in cars and computers and phones. facial and voice technology recognition, and even data collection on people's finances, their purchases, and even their susceptibility to ideological manipulation. AI data centers are based on all this, to a great extent, on all this surveillance information. So I think it would be Since policing power and public safety are sometimes equated, I think eliminating public safety is prudent here, because we still have the reference to emergency communications and emergency operations facilities, which obviously need to operate even during the moratorium. So those are my suggestions for changes to this moratorium. And again, thank you for taking this cautious approach. It's much appreciated.

Thank you, Supervisor Williams. I wonder if we could insert to address Ellen drills concern. I wonder if we could insert local on before public safety, right? Because we want to exempt our sheriff and other local public safety agencies. But I think what you're describing is we don't want that to be used as an excuse for outside forces to come in and claim that it's public safety processing.

yes and i you know i haven't talked to the sheriff about this and i don't know what to what extent they they feel you know flock camera information and gps information is really important to their operations i don't know so i'm not sure how to respond to that ted but i appreciate you and then i want to acknowledge question are we done with public comment uh no okay i'm totally out of order here that's all right

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

We have two online. The first one is going to be a phone number ending in 1835. Yeah, hi.

I'm a little... First of all, I haven't watched a board of supervisors meeting for a long time. And I think you guys are really very impressive compared to boards that I was familiar with in the past. I would point out that data centers are less popular in the United States to have one near your house than a nuclear storage facility. They would prefer to have radioactive waste in their backyard rather than a storage center. And when I first heard about this, I read the moratorium and it called for the study of regulations which would impact the siting or development of data centers. And that alarmed me. I'm less alarmed now having heard everybody talk about it. If in fact our county regulations do not regulate data centers, then maybe a moratorium is a good thing. But it occurred to me in my ignorance that you can't erect a shed in Mendocino County without regulators coming down on you and making you jump through a bunch of hoops and then shaking you down. And I can't imagine going before the zoning commission, the zoning commission, I guess, and suggesting that you wanted to put up a thousand acre giant building which made all this noise and sucked up all the energy and water. It doesn't seem to me that that would have got past our existing zoning laws. And it also in the, you know, forgive my naivete, but I just thought that sounded kind of weird that you're going to study the regulations that would impact the site interdevelopment of data centers. Are you going to study them to alter them? Are they going to be altered in favor of data centers? I was suspicious. As I say, having watched you guys at work all day, I'm less suspicious now. And maybe that was just me being paranoid. But it said also that the county anticipates receiving inquiries and applications for data centers. I'd like to know if they have made contact with the county already. And I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to check out some texts and emails and nondisclosure agreements to see if that's been the case. Once again, I'm suspicious of this whole thing. And my suspicion is... It's kind of sad that I'm a suspicious old guy here, but I... I said earlier when I was talking about the flock cameras that it was above your pay grade. I didn't mean that, really. I meant that you guys don't typically deal with constitutional issues. The Supreme Court deals with that, or it's dealt with at a higher level than the board of supervisors, with great respect. But in this case, with the flock cameras and with this data center, what we're seeing here is the imposition of an enormous amount totalitarian surveillance state on the people of the United States. I don't believe I'm being hyperbolic, and I don't think this is just me saying, thinking this. They've erected 4,000 of these data centers, and they plan to erect 4,000 more. And they're not profitable. It's easy to find out that they're not really profitable unless they are used for national surveillance like they have in China. You can use these flock cameras for facial recognition. There's a whole range of intrusive surveillance that's coming down. The last speaker spoke eloquently about that. And I think if you're not trying to pull something sneaky with the regulations to allow data centers behind our collective backs, if that's not the case, I guess it's not. then I think it's just important that the border supervisor shares the concern of the American people that their constitutional rights not be abridged, that surveillance be limited on principle, and that we all take a stand here against this, what is an ongoing plan, an existing plan. It's not our imagination. Oh, yeah, I'm over my three minutes, right?

Yes, thank you, sir. If you could finish up.

Yeah, okay, that's it. That's it. I'm rambling on. Thank you very much. And I want to emphasize that I think you guys are doing an admirable job. I was very impressed with the meeting today. I haven't always been.

Well, I'd like to point out on your behalf that your approach to this board is different than any I've seen at any other council member or board meeting. So thank you for that.

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

Sir, could I... Rex Gresset? Correct.

Okay, next we have Anna Stockle.

Good afternoon, folks. Hey, I figured out how to log into the Grand Killer website or whatever. You have to log in with Facebook, and that's not okay for me to have to sign into social media to submit comments. So I'm renewing my earlier request this morning to fix the login. We should be able to log in directly, and that's the part not working. But that's an update. It's possibly why it works for other people and not me is because I don't want to use an untrusted company to log in and submit comments to a government agenda. And they've proven they're untrusted. They just lost a million-dollar lawsuit because that girl killed herself. So moving on with data centers. So part of my comment got through, but I want to add to it. I oppose this urgency moratorium on new data centers. I'm not sure why we need it. If we called this a factory, and if it were a factory and not a data center, I don't think – it would be getting the same level of pushback in a data center. And I don't know why. It's a factory, okay? It's just that the output happens to be AI. It happens to be data, right? And not widgets. You know, we would go, oh, yeah, factory jobs. Yay, you know, we're all for it. Let's, you know, let's see how we can support these people, right? Just like the marijuana industry. Hey, and let's see how we can tax it, right? But For some reason, there's this fear of data centers, and a lot of it's based on old information that's no longer true. So, and the ordinance says that the county anticipates receiving inquiries and applications, so there's no pending Mendocino County proposal, so I don't know why we need an emergency ordinance. Okay, so anticipating that someone might submit an application in the future is not evidence of a current and immediate emergency. And data centers are also not new nor unstudied. So they've been around. So why weren't we using this time to study them and how they could benefit Mendocino County? Because I don't see that. I don't see any evidence of that. And in fact, your ad hoc committee had two guys who are publicly opposed to data centers. So of course, you're going to get an opposal as the result. And so I'd like to see people who are familiar with data centers be involved and can discuss the data centers and can talk about what's really true You know, they don't take hundreds of acres, right? And they don't contribute to global warming, and they can produce their own power. They don't necessarily contribute to global warming any more than a factory would, but we're not freaking out about that. You know, we wouldn't be freaking out about that. So I'd like to see a committee that focuses on the benefits and understanding them instead of just having what looks like to me a knee-jerk reaction out of fear. And just compare it to like what would we be doing if it were a factory? It's the same thing. And so could we please put together a committee to study the benefits? And there are lots of case studies out there, right? Data centers are providing emergency heat. They're providing emergency power to cities. The case studies are there. So please take that into consideration because I really don't see any need for an emergency ordinance at this time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Eileen Mitro.

Okay. Hi. Eileen Mitro, Climate Action Mendocino. These have been wonderful comments. Thanks for all the work you're doing. I've had a family emergency, so I'm at the hospital. Not for me, but is artificial intelligence a good thing or a bad thing? Will we be getting the best answers to our questions or business and medical dealings, or will they be incorrect? Hard to say how this will unfold. In terms of what the previous speaker said, I don't believe there are very many jobs and a factory would usually provide jobs. So that was one of my concerns. Electricity is a big concern. And as far as I know, they really do use a lot more energy. Will our power rates increase a lot due to data centers? And If you introduce a data center that will consume more than we're already using, how will that work? We're already kind of low on our power transmission for what we need now. And then there's water. We need to be working now to store all of our water, given what's going on with the dam removal process. We need to have ponds, wells, reservoirs, storing roof runoff, and get as much as we can so that when we get rain, we can hold on to the water. There's a lot of confidence that Ukiah has plenty of groundwater. But the source of that water is the Russian River, so we need to keep that water table stable and sustainable. I like the idea of the lumber mills using it for heat, but what about water? Water is really important. You know, if the data centers are willing to fundraise the fund, the raising of the Coyote Valley Dam, there might be a consideration here, but I think that's doubtful. And finally, I am concerned about ag lands. There's all this concern and fear about removing the dams. What's going to happen if a data center eventually depletes our water table? Such that our agricultural economy is affected. My goodness. What we always recommend is the precautionary principle, which states that you don't act in favor of something until you are as certain as can be that it's safe and wise to take action. And I think this is way too early. I agree with both sides of the comments saying that we really need to study this. And are there benefits? And can we limit the size? Certainly electricity, water, those things are of huge concern for the climate. Thank you very much for all you do.

Thank you.

Next we have John R. Thank you, Bernie, and the other supervisors. This is John Risk. I'm with Meadow Farm Community Land Trust and also on the GRI Climate Crisis Work Group. And I filed e-comments on this, so I don't have to repeat them. I think Eileen did a good job indicating the environmental effects. I just wanted to say thank you for a 5-0 vote on this. It's nice to see you guys all working together, you ladies as well. And I would like to invite us to have equal Equally meaningful discussions when you're on the coast next month or later this month. I think we have a lot in the coast that's unique to discuss. One of those is dry sanitation and low-income housing. And I like the fact in the core workshop we just had that housing for displaced substance abuse people is costs here, so we have to be creative, and I appreciate the good work you all are doing. Look forward to hosting you here in Fort Bragg, and thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Seeing no further comments online.

All right, we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and or action. Supervisor Haschek.

Yeah, just looking at the resolution or the ordinance number, that... maybe uh well i think that on section 2c we should add loss of farmland and we could add on 4c local public safety and i'm just trying to figure out if if we could include the climate goals as part of the moratorium findings

Deputy County Councilman Matthew Kudrowski, I'll say for loss of farmland, there are still requirements for our zoning districts. Right now I don't see there being an analogous use permitted by right in the agricultural zone on that front. So at the moment I'm not sure it's necessary to add to that statement of intent of feared impacts or likely impacts. I think for both 4C and I think it's 6-2-B or D, it's public safety emergency communications or emergency operations facilities. So we're talking about public safety facilities. I think that's reasonably defined as if it's a public safety agency who's doing something and not necessarily a data center where potentially public safety information or really flock camera information is hosted. If there is a desire to try and tighten that, I take direction from the board. In terms of wanting to reference climate goals if we had language we can put in there I can either find some myself or we're gonna during the rest of the day Or that could go on the ordinance ultimately, right? Potentially in terms of the ordinance, I'm not sure planning a building I think they said last time they have been thinking about exactly how they would tackle this if that needs to go and into the ordinance it can. I think the ordinance might be defining this data center use and making it a use permit, I guess.

Thank you.

Supervisor Williams? I want to recognize and invite Mendocino Forest Products to be part of the drafting as we get started on the long-term ordinance. It's foreseeable that there will be some use cases for computers in our room besides spying on Americans, curing disease or, you know, climate research. and hearing the potential to use renewable energy and co-use heat that's generated so that it's not a waste product. I think those are the kind of discussions that we want to have. That's much different than a 100-acre data center for processing flock cameras. So I don't want you to feel that this is punitive towards a local employer. Your company is not the target of this action. We want to have a policy in place to avoid nuisance and other unanticipated consequences. So thank you for bringing the idea to us.

Supervisor Klein.

Thank you. I'm supportive of the language as it's written today. I don't know of any data centers that are knocking on our door, but I understand this is something that the public wants. I appreciated the comments from Medicino Forest Products. It kind of ties into some of the notes that I had taken. And just as a side, I appreciated the attachments that were included with this agenda item with some different research and some national informational fact sheets from Congressional Research Center. My constituents also appreciated that just being a part of this package Some of the examples that I appreciated were Missoula County and Montana have they have an ordinance that's crafted to require operations to be in industrial zones and requires them to offset a hundred percent of their electricity use and There is an example from Atlanta which requires a special use permit for every new data center that empowers their council to renew the water consumption, energy efficiency, and noise mitigation plans. So those are some of the things that I would be interested in seeing. I think that there's a way for us to craft this very thoughtfully and carefully in collaboration with our community.

Supervisor Mulhern?

thank you um thank you for the ad hoc for bringing back the i am working with staff on this i think that as we move forward i understand i i think that just given some of the public comment again there's confusion about the process and what's happening so i want to make sure that we're able to clearly communicate so that everybody understands and just I don't know that anybody said. I think we should probably opt for 22 months and 15 days or whatever the process for the longer term when the ordinance does come back to give staff more time. I think just given our ability to complete things, that would be appropriate.

And so if you could explain a little bit the reasoning for the forty five day and then why it would be coming back for a possible extension.

The government code section it's a six five eight five eight it only allows for an in you know initial forty five the period And in general, I think it's structured so that an agency can bring this at a next board meeting and say, wait a second, we had a real problem, and we have to address it right now. But it's a very short interim period to allow for that renewal to be a notice to public hearing. So that will go out in the newspaper. People have advanced notice of that, and that's why it's a short turnaround time for that initial or potential renewal of the ordinance.

So, for me, in order to get this passed today and not have to bring it back later in the day, we could pass this now and then some of the language that Supervisor Williams has brought up and Supervisor Haschak and maybe even Klein on the ag land, that could come back at the next one with a couple of different options. Is that correct?

I'm sure we could expand upon it if necessary at that next meeting. I'm not sure if the ag land is necessary to get brought in, given that there's no uses by right that would be analogous to a data center or a warehouse. But we could always add some more things at that point in time for additional concerns as to why we're going to renew it.

So I would ask Supervisor Hashtag, are you comfortable with that process, passing what we have today and then bringing back your concern for the language on the 15th?

Yeah, and I think that Mr. Kudrowski explained it very well, and I'm all right with the language as it is. And I would move that we approve the recommended action. Second.

All right. We have a first by Hashtag, second by Williams. No more discussion. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

All right. Thank you. We are going to break for lunch. It's 1238, so we'll come back for 30 minutes at 110.

Scott, are you ready?

All right. Welcome back. We're going to jump into item R7. Discussion a possible action, including establishing an employment agreement between the county menacino and eyes and locatelli to continue serving as menacino county chief probation officer in the amount of one hundred ninety eight thousand one hundred and forty dollars and eight cents eighty cents per year with the total annual compensation of four hundred eighty one thousand four hundred eighty two dollars and fourteen cents. The $481,482.14 includes salary and benefits commencing August 30, 2026. Ms. Johnson? Yes. Good afternoon, Board. Sherry Johnson, Human Resources Director.

So the proposed employment agreement recognizes that chief probation officer is a unique county position with a statutory relationship to the Superior Court that differs from other county department heads. The presiding judge supports the chief probation officer's transition from the department head unit to an individual employment agreement. Human Resources supports this approach as it provides a clear and appropriate framework for addressing the compensation benefits and other employment terms of the uniquely structured position. This agreement does not change the board's authority over compensation or the county's responsibility as the employer. Rather, it provides a mechanism of establishing terms that are specifically tailored to the chief probation officer's statutory role and responsibilities. So thank you.

Any questions from the board? I'm not seeing any.

OK, thank you. Thank you.

We'll go to public comment. Anyone in the room?

Good afternoon. Patrick Hickey, field representative with SEIU Local 1021. We have some serious concerns about process here. You've recently settled agreements with a large number of your employees throughout the county. And just in terms of consistency, equity, and process, to be proposing both in this item and the next item 20% increases for some of the highest paid employees in the county when what you've offered to other employees in the county who are also doing very valuable, important jobs are being offered a 3% increase. You really need to think about what kind of message you're sending to your staff. Are they not worth what these individuals are worth? Are they not worth your appreciation for the work that they do? The general process in this sort of instance is to do a compensation study to look at what other comparable jurisdictions do and pay for their particular positions. If that's been done, it's certainly not been presented to the public. So in both instances, we would ask that this be withdrawn until that's completed so that the board has an opportunity to really look at this based on data, based on information, based on what other comparable classifications, positions are being paid in other comparable rural counties in California. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room? None madam clerk.

Seeing no further comment online great, thank you was Johnson.

Could you. Talk a little bit about where this position was. The relation ship to market rate.

So yeah, Sherry Johnson, Human Resources Director. So this position was about 30% below market, and we had done a market review with comparable counties. So we have looked at this. So this fits within the market for the comparable counties that we have.

Thank you.

Supervisor wins it can we clarify which counties is that the standard set that we've used for other studies.

That's correct.

Supervisor Klein move the recommended action.

All right, we have a motion to have a second. Second by first by client second by more her. The discussion on the motion. The browser Williams.

um is it is it possible at a future time to publish the uh survey just how we arrived at this number i think it's a fair question to ask the public will be asking if i make the chair uh sarah pierce interim ceo i believe we can as long as it doesn't um obtain confidential data or anything yeah i believe we can i think it's appropriate thank you for that supervisor hashtag

Yeah, we're bringing this position up to to the comparables market rate are all the positions in the county and market rate.

I'm Sherry Johnson, human resources director, so I would say that they're not all at market rate.

Thank you. Again, we have a first and a second. No more discussion. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. All right. Item R8, discussion of possible action, including adopting the resolution setting the salary for CEO from $250,000 to $300,000 annually with an estimated annual compensation of $510,000, including benefits. Again, Ms. Johnson.

Good afternoon, Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. So this item is to receive authority to recruit with a higher salary. So as the recruitment has been going since February for the CEO, it has been the direction of the board to have the salary increased on the brochure. But the only way that that could have happened was to receive authority through this action in public through the board. And I just would like to note that any hire could negotiate their salary, because this position is a contracted position. So this salary authorizes Human Resources to publish the $300,000 on the brochure for the recruitment. And if you would like, I could give a brief update on the status of the recruitment.

Sure.

Thank you. OK. So in February, we ran a recruitment with an executive recruiter. We had 45 applicants as of April 7, 2026. And we had an interview with the Board of Supervisors. There was four. applicants that were recommended to interview, one withdrew. So we interviewed, the board interviewed three applicants on April 21st, 2026, and there was no successful selection from that recruitment. We chose with the board to recruit, handle it internally, so Human Resources has been handling this recruitment since May 21st of 26. We have, to date, received approximately 45 applicants, and none have been selected at this time for an interview. We've had several thousand hits on our recruitment, but with, like I've said, about 45 applicants. So I would love to turn it over to the chair and vice chair to see if they have any other additional input they'd like to share.

Not on the recruitment, I don't, Supervisor Williams.

Yeah, I think we're looking for somebody to be qualified. We're looking for someone who has experience at a California County You know managing a reasonable number of people, right? so if we get an applicant that has been city manager of a really small city or You know has been involved in the county, but has managed six people. That's not enough of a track record for us to feel the confidence and At the current compensation level, we're not getting qualified applicants to interview. They're not making it past the first round. They might be decent people that are on their way towards something like this, but none have been deemed ready for this type of position.

So I think the county is not in a great place to be offering higher compensation.

But months and months are going by, and we're not getting anybody even to consider interviewing. And this looks like the only path to hopefully bring in some more qualified applicants.

Yeah, and to you, Supervisor Klein.

Yeah, I just want to say I had a couple of constituents reach out, just sticker shock factor, right, and concern. Why haven't we found someone? And I just wanted to add... you know, part of what the feedback was from our recruiter is we're only getting a certain pool, to Supervisor Williams' point, we're only getting a certain pool of candidates for that 250 mark. And if we do raise the salary and advertise a little bit higher, hopefully we'll pull in some of those candidates that we are looking for. Doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to pay them this amount. There is a negotiation process. I also just am concerned about staying consistent over time. If we don't keep our increases year after year, we will fall behind with market. And that's for all of our positions, right? And we've been cognizant of that as a board, making sure that our positions are staying in line with market.

miss johnson i have one more question for you um in in regards to our current interim ceo um my understanding is she's um received a 10 increase for the interim spot correct that's correct and then this this item will not affect that correct that's correct yeah thank you supervisor hashtag

Well, if we listed at 300,000, then that's what the person expects. We don't negotiate down from that, it seems. So am I understanding correctly?

Sherry Johnson, Human Resource Director. So this item is setting the salary at $300,000. So if this board would like it to be at a different up to or a different thing, which I do think that, and I'll check in with County Council Elliott to see if there's a different direction that they could give based on the item presented.

To add to that, it increases it to $300,000, but as you mentioned, it's negotiable, and we do not have to agree to pay somebody $300,000 for this job, correct?

I would like to see if I could get help from county council because it does say that we're setting the salary at $300,000, but I don't know if we could do it based on experience.

If I could, through the chair, my experience has been usually up to and subject to it. I mean, it's always subject to approval by the board, and it's based on the person's experience. So if you add that, you'd be fine.

Okay. Okay. So what we're doing is we would say it's up to 300,000. We're not promising anyone 300,000, right?

I do think that the motion would, yeah, you would have to set the motion differently because it states in the agenda summary and the resolution setting salary at 300,000. Yeah.

Yeah, that was my understanding too. So, you know, I have a problem with with the 20% increase when we just gave staff a 3% increase. And I do think I've heard of a candidate who seems very competent in everything lately. So I think that if we went to 3% and then said it's negotiable also, I think that's a better approach.

3% or $300,000?

3% increase to the $250,000, which would be like another $7,500. Thank you.

Supervisor Williams?

Can HR talk about salary studies for this position? What are we seeing as market?

The market for this position is $300,000 in the comparable counties.

Thank you. Supervisor Klein?

Yeah, I'm sorry to go back to this topic, but my understanding is that because it's a contracted position that the salary is negotiable. Can someone confirm that that is the process? So it's one thing to set the salary at $300,000. It's another thing for us to negotiate the contract.

So if I could, I agree with that concept. What you're trying to do right now is set the salary. And I can say, even in my own process of being hired in Nevada County, they had a set salary and it was negotiated after that. And again, it depends on the experience, et cetera. So it may be a situation where they come back for more money as well, if you get a candidate that you want and they won't come over for less. It's continuing to be a process, but I think in setting the salary at this time, it messages to persons that they should consider the position.

Thank you. Yeah, that clarifies it for me, and I'm in support of this today because I am interested in advertising at a higher salary in order to potentially recruit additional candidates that we weren't getting before. That does not mean that I support paying $300,000 just to anyone who applies and anyone who we decide to hire. There is still a negotiation process of which will depend on the person's experience and who they are and what they bring to the table.

Yes.

i just think that if you set it at 300 000 and you advertise it like that which hey it's good to get more applicants in but but you're not going to come back and say well we're actually going to negotiate it for 250 because that's what we think you're worth i mean that's gonna that would set the everyone up for failure okay thank you supervisor williams

Yeah, Supervisor Haschek, I think that's fair. What do you recommend? We're not getting qualified applicants. We don't have a pool to interview. And so if we leave it at 250, it seems like, given it's already been many months, we're likely to see that same pattern. If we increase it 3%, do you think we're going to see more qualified applicants?

Well, I've been talking to a person who says he applied. Seems very competent, has the experience and everything. And I just think that we set the salary at $257,500. $257,500, which is what the rest of the staff got as an increase. And then we say it's negotiable. And if we find the all-star, all-star, and they won't do it for less, we go to $300,000.

But the problem we're seeing is, I'm just being frank about the experience because the chair and I have been receiving the resumes and talking to HR about each and At the current level, we're not getting qualified applicants. When HR is done screening, they just don't meet the basic qualifications. They may be decent people, but they don't have a track record of doing this type of work at this scale. And so my worry is if we increase it 3% because we think that's fair and we still don't receive applicants, we have a vacant position.

I'll add, I think we're not giving any one specific person that's already in the role a raise. We're just, like Supervisor Williams said, we're trying to be more attractive. I agree with him. The pool of people that we got, I think was based on the salary, and we all agreed that none of them were appropriate, or at least a majority of us did. I think this is an opportunity to attract new applicants. And I'm not hesitant to this at all because, as it's been explained to us, we do have the opportunity to negotiate. And in the end, if we think $300,000 is too much, then, you know, we would have to agree not to pay it. So I'm completely comfortable with this. No more questions. We'll go to the public for comment. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.

Hello, Nathan Maxman. This just gives a bad look. This is 20% when the staff was given three. It's 50% since 2022 as an increase to the CEO's position. The last two contracts After the contract prior to this, the Board of Supervisors was voted a large pay increase. Then after this contract, to vote the CEO's position a large increase is just a really bad luck. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room? None. Madam Clerk?

Seeing one online, Anna Stockwell.

Hello again. Thank you, Mr. John Hashtag for your comments. They are a lot in alignment with what I said on e-comment about the 3%, you know, and also I agree with you regarding this advertising for $300,000 and say we can negotiate for less. That's actually deceptive advertising and there are California laws about that. So it's beyond a bad look. You know, you're looking at being unethical. when it comes to advertising for more. And from listening, so I don't see the recruiter's contract in the agenda. And from listening to the comments, it sounds more like it's a recruiter problem and not necessarily a salary problem. I don't see any evidence that says this is a salary problem. So I'm wondering, you know, what was the contract with the recruiter and what were the agreed upon objectives? How many You know, how many resumes do they think they could get? How many qualified resumes? It's really hard to comment when, you know, some of it's kind of a black box. So I would ask the board to look harder at the recruiter contract and maybe consider a different recruiter if we're not getting qualified candidates because that's what a recruiter does. And, you know, regarding this market research, it's not $300,000. That's to the south, right? That's Rich Sonoma and the other more profitable counties, okay? Trinity is $245,000. The latest data that I could find, Trinity County is $243,000, $48,000. Lake County is $233,000, $199,000. So this is not market conditions at all. And we have to consider the medium income in Mendocino County and the cost of living. A quarter mil is a freaking fortune in Mendocino County. Okay, maybe not in Palo Alto, but around here it is. And that's more than enough money if somebody really cared about the country, the county, excuse me, the county to come and work for the county. If they're not going to do it because it's not $300,000, well, then maybe they're not the right candidate. Well, I would seriously please urge the board to go back and look at the recruiter and maybe and potentially hire a different recruiter and make sure that, you know, make sure we understand why we're not getting the qualified candidates in the pool. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Madam Clerk.

And then we have Peter McNamee.

Yes, thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak to this. I want to echo the last person's comments as well. It seems to me that the fundamental issue here is recruitment and what the board's doing essentially and the county is doing is trying to apply a solution to that problem that has broken down and is failing, which is that somehow continuing to raise salary is going to get you a qualified candidate that's going to produce the best outcomes for the County of Mendocino. and that there's just patent evidence in front of you that no matter what salary you offer doesn't necessarily going to guarantee you that you're going to get good people who actually have the ability to deliver what you need to manage the county of Mendocino and the challenges it faces. Frankly, I don't think this is an issue about money. I think this is an issue about what you're offering as a package of working conditions. And it's just not attractive to people with the talent that you need. And so just throwing more money at it, well... In the end, you may just end up with somebody that you accept because that was the best you can find. And yet you set a salary that's so astronomically high that it produces ill will from the public as well as employees. And I just think you need to fundamentally rethink your whole recruitment strategy and not just go back to this notion that somehow doing a salary survey among other counties is going to give you a silver bullet that is going to deliver qualified talent to the county of Mendocino. It hasn't worked in the past, obviously, and it's not working now. And the definition of insanity is to continue to repeat doing something that's proven not to work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing no further comments online.

OK. We'll bring it back to the board for discussion or action. Supervisor Williams.

Yeah, just discussion. Another direction we could take this is do nothing. I'm not unhappy with how the county is being run now. I think Sarah Pierce will tell you that she's not a political person. It turns out that's exactly what we need. This place is being administered. I have no complaints. I haven't, I've been surprised that the responsiveness, the good decision making, I'm happy with just keeping it at 250 and not having qualified applicants and seeing what happens. Just throwing that out there. It's another direction we could take this.

Supervisor Mohrer?

I think that I agree that interim CEO Pierce is doing a really great job. I think she's also made it clear that it's not her intention to continue to do that job. So I guess for me, If the previous salary was not attracting applicants that were qualified and interested in helping, what I believe is the board, the community, and our employees and the other elected officials work through some really very serious challenges about how we move forward as a county, then I'm interested in seeing what an improved salary brings in for applicants. If it doesn't bring in any additional applicants, then that's our answer, that it didn't work. But if we don't try to increase the salary and re-advertise, then we're going to continue to get the same quality applicants we've been getting for the last six

What else supervisor hashtag.

Well it's it's kind of the PG&E model. How much do you pay the CEO? And like Supervisor Williams said, maybe we need to rethink our strategy on this. And maybe it's a more dispersive kind of distributive kind of leadership where we have three or four kind of CEOs or deputy CEOs in charge of different aspects of the county. But I think that when you put all our eggs in one basket, it hasn't worked in the past for us. And so I think that PG&E, going back to that analogy, they're paying whatever, $1 million, $16 million, $36 million, whatever, to the CEO. And they get the same results that a person making $500,000 would do. It's just, how much do you focus the money on the top? Thank you, Supervisor Williams. Yeah.

John, if we're trying to get someone to leave another county and move here, it's tough if we're offering less than what they're already making, right? That's a hard model to get somebody to get up and leave and come to Mendocino County. They're rooted somewhere already. And they see the pay at $250. It's a non-starter. If you want to try to cultivate someone who's already here, I think that's a different direction we could take this. I'm not trying to sell anybody on this proposal. I've heard complaints, why doesn't the board have anyone to interview? Where are the applicants? And being on this committee interviewing people, I recognize that it's been long enough with this strategy. As Peter said, we're insane if we just keep it at 250 and expect somebody is, we're going to have a pool. So far that hasn't panned out. But if you want to do something different with it, I'm happy to support you. I think it's a lot, and I don't know at 300 if we're really going to get that person either.

Well, I guess from my point of view, it's kind of like, OK, if we don't get it at 300, then do we go to 350? And is it the money that's a factor? Because we've got a beautiful county. People want to live here. And what is that factor that people aren't applying for the job or people rising up through the system? So how do we make it work that people want to do the job at, you know, something that we can sustain as a county to.

Supervisor are you confident that it's not a money issue.

Well I think what what I've been hearing is that people are kind of they look at the you know lawsuits that we've had they look at the grant or the state audit and some of those issues are are probably keeping people away from taking it on.

Anyone else? We're looking for a motion for the recommended action unless somebody has a different motion. I'll move the recommended action. Yes, Supervisor Hashtag.

Well, I'll move that we increase the pay by 3% and that we list it as negotiable.

Question for County Council.

I believe there was a motion on the floor, so you don't get a second. You need to see if there's a second for the first motion. Thank you. And then vote on that before you can jump in with a separate motion.

Thank you. So we do have a motion for the recommended action on the table. Is there a second? Supervisor Klein?

I'll second the recommended action with the addition that our salary is advertised as a salary range and not one flat amount.

OK. I support that. Any discussion on the motion?

Well, what would that salary range be?

How about $250,000 to $300,000?

I would support that as well.

Supervisor Williams? I think I'm out. I don't think this is a good process.

OK. You'll have an opportunity to vote. Supervisor Klein?

Supervisor Williams, which part of this is not a good process in an effort to make it a better process?

I don't think we have a strategy or is our is our strategy to attract someone to leave another county where we have to pay more than the receiving today to get them to even think about applying or is it to cultivate somebody that's already committed. There's a lot of variables outside of just setting the salary level and we're doing this piecemeal. And I think if we don't have a united board and if we don't have labor in support of it. I'm okay holding off.

OK. So we have a first and a second. Is there any more discussion? And again, just point out that we're not giving any one particular person a pay raise here. We're just increasing the salary to try, in my opinion, to attract some different applicants. So we will vote by the button.

The motion carries with Supervisor Haschak and Supervisor Williams dissenting.

Thank you. We're going to move on to item R9, discussion and possible action regarding proposed direct review of nonconforming use determinations related to the Ukiah Rifle and Pistol Club pursuant to chapter 2.54, the Mendocino County Code, original jurisdiction of land use matters. This is county council. Supervisor Klein?

Yes, Chair. Before we begin, I just want to disclose that I am a member of the Ukiah Gun Club, but do not hold any bias or particular concerns with this.

Thank you.

Kowalski. Deputy County Council Matthew Kowalski. So this item is under Chapter 2.54 of the County Code. The Board can take original jurisdiction of any permit or approval when time is of the essence for such approval and based on the project's special contribution to the county's general welfare and economic well-being. before the Board today, is a request for the Board to take original jurisdiction over non-conforming use determinations related to the Ukiah Rifle and Pistol Club. As provided in Chapter 20.204 of the County Code, a non-conforming use is the use of a structure or land which was lawfully established and maintained prior to the adoption of the zoning code, but which does not conform with the use regulations for the zone in which it is located. Today is not about any substantive determinations about these non-conforming use determinations, just whether the board would take original jurisdiction of making those determinations. As outlined in the agenda summary, there's a history of concerns regarding certain construction and the extent of activities at the club property. For many years it was presumed the county did not have land use jurisdiction over the property based on it being owned by the city. However, following entering into a joint powers agreement with the city, The county agreed to exercise land use jurisdiction over the property. County staff had been gathering information from relevant parties in preparation of making non-conforming use determinations under that joint powers agreement. Those determinations are typically made by the director of the Planning and Building Services Department, who recently left the county. Given that, we believe it's most efficient to bring these determinations directly to the board for consideration. In addition, given that making these determinations would resolve long-running disputes and jurisdictional questions, these determinations will have a special contribution to the county's general welfare and economic well-being. Taking direct review requires a majority vote for the board. If it's taken, time has been allocated on the October 6th meeting of the Board of Supervisors. The county is working on the draft agenda packet and any recommendations for the board and anticipates that being publicly available no later than the end of next week. If there's any questions, please let me know.

Yeah, thank you. So given the current situation with the gun club, would you explain what the process would be if this was not passed today?

If this does not get passed today, we would then move it back to Planning and Building Services and figure out how to have an initial determination there. That being said, that determination is appealable to the Board of Supervisors.

OK.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions. We'll open up the podium. Anybody in the room? Item R10? None? Madam Clerk?

Seeing no comments online.

R9?

None? For R9, seeing no comments online.

Thank you. All right, back to the board. Discussion or motion? Supervisor Haschek?

I'll move the recommended action.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right. First by Hashtag, seconded by Klein. Any more discussion on the motion? None. We'll vote by the button.

The motion carries unanimously.

Thank you. Item R10, discussion of possible action including acceptance of staff presentation regarding home program income funds and direction to staff regarding approximately 350,000 receded home program income.

I'll go ahead and share my screen one moment. Thank you for that. I'm Swen Malala, Executive Office for R10. Earlier this year, staff went to your board to receive direction whether to use the county's receipted or collected program income from the home funds for the Marigold Villas. At that time, the board provided direction to work with Supervisor Maharon and come back on what types of projects this kind of funding could fund. So if you notice, the agenda summary today is pretty open-ended. It's on purpose because staff is looking for your direction again. So we've been, since earlier this year, we've been RESEARCHING PROGRAM LIKE GUIDELINES, MEETING WITH HCD REPRESENTATIVES AND MEETING WITH SUPERVISORS MAHERN AND SUPERVISOR KLEIN. WE ALSO MET WITH MEGAN VAN CENT ON WHAT KIND OF FUNDING CAN SUPPORT, HOW THIS FUNDING CAN ALSO SUPPORT INTERNAL COUNTY PROGRAMS. AT THAT TIME, EARLIER THIS YEAR, THE COUNTY HAD COLLECTED ABOUT $300,000 in program income. Since then, one of the program participants have paid off their loans, so now we have about $350,000 that are available in funding And as a reminder for the board, the home program income is generated by a home loan that the county did through a 30-year loan at 3% interest. Unless one of the participating property sells, we're not expecting any more payments to be collected until 2031. And I will turn it over to Administrative Analyst Christy Gard to go over the allowable activities under this funding program.

Sorry about that. During our research working with HCD about the home program income, we found that there are two different types of programs or projects that can be done. You'll notice the first one I talk on the talking point there says construction. They call these project activities. The primary focus of home project activities is to create and retain affordable housing. So this type of funding can support multifamily rental projects, which include new construction, acquisition, or rehabilitation with or without acquisition. And they can also support first-time homebuyer subdivision construction projects. And there are some limits there, some minimum and maximum limits. And we're going to talk about that in a bit.

The other type of activities that are allowable are program activities.

The primary focus of home program activities is to increase the supply of affordable housing for low-income first-time homebuyers, as well as to support low-income tenants and homeowners to afford or preserve housing. So the types of programs that can be utilized under this stream would include first-time homebuyer programs. So these are loans or grants to low-income homeowners to assist with the acquisition of a modest, single family home. Also, so the modest single family home would be a home with a value limit of up to $437,000 for Mendocino County. Another type of program would be owner-occupied rehabilitation. So these are loans or grants to low-income home buyers or home owners to assist in rehabilitation of their home so that they can adequately reside in their home and keep their home. The other type of program would be tenant-based rental assistance. And this provides rental assistance payments to low and very low-income tenants so that they can stay in their home. and then single-family development activities. So this provides funding for new construction, rehabilitation, or acquisition for single-family homes in order to sell them to low-income families and first-time buyers. Next slide. So when we were digging in to find out what the eligibility was, So I wanted to clarify, we're going to use AMI on the screen there. That is area median income. So eligibility would include very low, which is 50% of the area median income, to low income, which is 80% of the area median income. So any individual or family, they would have to fall within that very low or low category. Mendocino County in general is eligible to receive these funds because we are under the 65% area median income. That's the other part of the eligibility. Eligibility also includes that the program has to be in an unincorporated area. And then if we're doing a construction project, the minimum amount of funds that can be used per unit is $10,000. So if you have 30 units, the minimum amount towards this would have to be $30,000. And it cannot exceed, there is a maximum, cannot exceed the maximum per unit subsidy limit, which changes every year. So it is based on the family income Or I'm sorry the household income and the number of people so depending on each unit And there was a calculation for that Give it back to swim

So what we met with Megan to see what kind of programs this funding could cover internally. She was interested in a tenant-based program to help prevent people from being evicted, or some sort of senior preservation program where perhaps we can rehab their home to help the seniors stay in their home. She was also interested in subsidizing Project Room Key, When we met with representatives from HCD, they did express that subsidizing home key projects up to about 70% of their rental would be potentially eligible. And I also did reach out to the CDC, who managed this funding before they transferred it back to the county. They are interested in creating a tenant-based RENTAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM TO SUPPORT LOW OR VERY LOW INCOME HOUSEHOLDS WITHIN THE CITY OF UKIAH. PERHAPS RENTAL ASSISTANCE UP TO 300 OR 500 PER MONTH DEPENDING ON THE NEED. And I would like to invite the supervisors, Moharian or Klein, if they have additional comments. But when we met with the supervisors, they were interested in also bringing it back to the board to suggest issuing an RFP so community partners can apply for this funding.

Is that it? That's it. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Supervisor Haschak.

Yeah, so you mentioned about the tenant-based rental assistance being available just in Ukiah.

When I reached out to the CDC, that's the program that they're interested in creating if we were to give them this funding.

Why just Ukiah?

I don't know.

yeah it doesn't yeah i'm sorry doesn't that contradict the it says in here it would have to be in the unincorporated area yeah so we could not do it in the specifically in the city of ukiah or no that was their proposal but we we could do our own program

Yes, these funds are to be used in the unincorporated area due to the fact that the city can apply for funds on their own.

Thank you. Can I answer your question?

Yeah, I'm just looking at some of the other options. So your idea, is this $300,000 plus just one time only, or is it ongoing?

These are program income collected over the years. CDC used to manage this program and these are from a long time ago. They had like a home rehab loan assistance program and over time this program participants pay back their loan with a 3% interest. So we've been collecting it and sitting there. So right now we have about 350

hundred thousand yeah your other option is to let it sit and collect more but the next time we're expecting a payment would be around 2031 well it seems like there's a lot of need out there and there's going to be more need as the year comes to an end just Has anyone talked to code enforcement? I've met with people who said, oh, there's people being removed from their homes, or their homes are red tagged, or whatever it is, and that the places need to be rehabilitated for decent, safe living. So is there any input from code enforcement or anyone like that about housing needs? that would benefit from this program we have not reached out to code enforcement well i'm just is it possible to do half and half like half for the owner occupied rehabilitation and the other half for rental assistance or is that too much too much administration

So as a program income, the county already has the funding sitting there. However, we still need to put together an actual application. And that is a lot of effort. Once an application gets approved, we can draw down about 20% admin costs. But putting together that application, the county will not be able to recoup for it.

So you're looking for one path.

It's up to the discretion of the board if you'd like the staff to put in that effort. We have tried to do a CDBG RFP, which resulted in a lot of staff time that were not recoupable. But that's the will of the board.

Supervisor Klein?

Thank you. Supervisor will hear I think was the one who brought up some concerns with the original conversation that happened in February about how to spend the home program income and so I volunteered to participate in conversations. With what to do with the funding what our options were I believe we had one conversation with staff we just expressed an interest in exploring all of the options and not just hey we've got one thing we're just going to plug and play and just We want to make sure that $300,000 is not a small amount of money. We want to make sure it's being utilized to the best of its abilities. And so from a process perspective, I'm a little frustrated because this was put on the agenda with no real follow-up conversation with us as an ad hoc when we had expressed an interest in being involved in the process. And personally, I don't feel like enough exploration has been done on our options. I listened to the CORE presentation this morning and heard that at least to a certain extent, the social services team had shifted gears, disbanded to a certain extent. They're going a different direction. That's what we were told this morning. Or at least they were minimizing their role. And CORE is now doing a lot of the work with rental assistance and keeping people in their homes as kind of a wraparound homelessness service program. Were they consulted in the process about how they could potentially use these funds?

If I may, to the core that was just submitted today, I would I will defer to Schwinn, but my guess is no, because that had not yet occurred.

OK, because if we're shifting who is working on rental assistance, broadly speaking, it sounds like social services still has some lane in some role. But my concern is that we're not exploring all of these options.

and if the county is going to focus a lot of their efforts into this core 2.0 program i would be interested in seeing what the funding can do in terms of that program um so the board's direction in february was to come back to figure out what kind of projects this funding could cover the eligible activities so we looked at it but if the board is interested in certain programs like core please give that direction to the staff and we will likely we will be happy to to look into it it is a lot of conversations back and forth with hcd rep how this could work out and so we'll be happy to look at whatever kind of projects or activities that you're interested in and bringing it back yeah i would just ask chair that when we go to supervisor mohairan because this this item is really because of her you know bringing to the board's attention what we can do with this funding thank you supervisor moher

Thank you for that, Supervisor Klein, and thank you for the team for meeting with HCD. I also have some process frustrations, but I think that what we've gotten ultimately, and what my opinion is, is that We have enough departments within the county of Mendocino that are trying to support either families or individuals through social services that works with families and also works with the home keep. And behavioral health, which is trying to help manage housing of variety of types for unhoused individuals that may have mental health or substance misuse challenges, that we have enough internal functions where we could use this funding to support community members through tenant based rental assistance. And while 350,000 is a lot of money to have been built up, I don't think it will go that far. So rather than go through an RFE process or RFQ process or other lengthy processes. It would be my preference at this point to use those funds within the agency to have our department support the community.

Supervisor Mulhern, are you focusing on the TBRA?

Yes.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams? I'm in support of Supervisor Mulhern's proposal.

Yeah, I am too. I'm really big on the TBRA. We did it at the city for several years. I think they still are, and it was super successful. The city managed it itself. In your process of doing this, did you find a reason why a county department couldn't administer these funds?

We have to look into it.

Provisor when given there are some unknowns, I think our best action is to thank staff for the research you brought back what we asked for and take this offline. Let the ad hoc continue to work. Yeah, I think you your general board support on your proposal and come back. We could even be on consent with something that's shovel ready.

or do I would agree with that I'm supportive of but I think we may need to narrow down and maybe I could be wrong what we're after with these funds if it's just tenant the TBRA. Supervisor Klein.

Yeah I would Move that staff further explore TBRA use within existing county programs and departments.

Second. I'm going to ask you both to hold that until we go to the public.

We can't withdraw it. That's not in our rules.