City Council - Regular Meeting

Supervisors. It is just after 9AM, and we can let the record show that all supervisors are present. Chris Lopez will be arriving shortly. Are there any additions or corrections to our closed session agenda this morning? No additions or corrections. Alright, we have closed session items number one A through E. Is there any public comment on our closed session agenda this morning? Seeing no one in chambers and seeing no hands raised online, we'll close public comment for closed session. We will recess to closed session reconvening here in chambers at 10:30AM. Thank you.

Morning, everyone. We are going to reconvene the Monterey County Board of Supervisors meeting for Tuesday, 05/12/2026. Let the record show that one, two, all supervisors are present. And I'd like to, welcome Diego who's here for, Spanish interpretation services and an announcement. Great.

Thank you very much. We have a very special presentation this morning from the Sheriff's Honor Guard. Sheriff, is there any introduction to this? Or all right. We will just if we could all stand.

Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under love, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Just give a shout out of appreciation to sheriff Tina Nieto and the men and women who serve in our Monterey County sheriff's office. Thank them all for being here today and opening our our board meeting this morning. Thank you.

Okay. We can move on to additions and corrections by the clerk.

There are none.

There are none. Alright. You kept that easy for us. We do have a number of ceremonial resolutions, to present today, and I do see a number of folks in chambers. I'll just briefly mention that we have a couple, successor agency items to get through, and then public comment will follow our, present ceremony resolutions, our, consent calendar, and our successor agency, agenda items. So bear with us. We'll make sure we get through through everything this morning. So with that, we're going to start, and I'll ask supervisor Alejo, to do our well, actually, before we do that

Move approval.

See if there's any, public comment on our, concern on the resolutions this morning. Seeing no one approach, we'll bring this back to the board for consideration. Second. Alright. We have a motion from Lopez, a second from Church. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? None? Alright. Passes unanimously. Thank you.

Good morning. Everyone today, this resolution is proclaiming May 10 through 05/16/2026 as National Police Week and May 15 year as Peace Officers Memorial Day in the County Of Monterey. So I wanna ask our sheriff, Tina Nieto, and our undersheriff, Keith Boy, to join us. You want to join us on this side? How are doing, sheriff?

I'm good, sir.

Alright. Thank you. Everyone, this resolution is having us take a moment to pause and honor the brave men and women who put themselves on the front lines each and every day, who sacrifice, who respond during our greatest times of need, whether it's an emergency call, whether it's a wildfire, a flood, or any type of other emergency. These are the folks that are there to help you when you need them the most. And it's also a day to reflect on those that we lost.

And the city of Salinas, the county of Monterey lost one of our fallen heroes, JD Alvarado, age 30, a United States Army veteran on 02/25/2022, a day that we never will never forget in our minds and in our hearts and memories. So this resolution today reads in part, in 1962, president John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day, and additionally, the calendar week in which May 15 falls as National Police Week. There are more than 800,000 law enforcement officers serving in communities across The United States, including the dedicated members of the Monterey County Sheriff's Office. And I would just also say we have 12 cities, 12 police departments, a police department at CSU Monterey Bay, our probation, our district attorney's office, and other law enforcement agencies here in our county.

Since the first recorded death in 1786, there are over 24,000 law enforcement officers in The United States who have made the ultimate sacrifice and been killed in the line of duty. The names of these dedicated public servants are engraved on the walls at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, DC. 239 new names of fallen heroes are being added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Wall this spring, including a 111 officers killed in 2025 and a hundred and twenty eight officers killed in previous years. The service and sacrifice of all officers killed in the line of duty will be honored during the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's twenty eighth candlelight, vigil on the evening of 05/13/2026 in our nation's capital. The candlelight vigil is part of National Police Week, which will be observed this year from May 10 to May 16.

Friday, May 15, this Friday, is designated as Peace Officer Memorial Day in honor of fallen officers and their families, and The United States flag should be flown at half staff. I remember that day very vividly because of police officers and departments from all over our nation always come to Sacramento on that day to honor our fallen officers. Therefore, be it resolved this resolution by the County Board of Supervisors, declared that May be National Police Week in the County Of Monterey, and publicly acknowledges and honors the dedicated service of law enforcement officers in our community and in communities across the nation. And be resolved that 05/15/2026 shall be peace officer Memorial Day in the County Of Monterey and in The United States flag shall be flown at the County's offices on this date. So with that, sheriff, I wanna present this resolution on behalf of our board of supervisors to acknowledge the sacrifice and service of all your employees, both those sworn and those civil who provide the support to our officers as well.

We give them a big round of applause, everyone.

I'd like to invite all the sworn men and women up here for a photo with the Board of Supervisors, if we could get a photo with you. And also, I just want to remind everybody, public safety, no matter how polarized we are within our communities, because I know we're in very different times right now, these men and women that stand with me are willing to give their lives to protect our community. I'm going into my thirty eighth year in law enforcement, and I've lost friends doing the right thing responding to protect our communities. And so this means a lot to me. In fact, I start to tear up thinking about the friends that I've lost in this profession, not just police officers, but also any first responders, firefighters.

I know the nurses are here. I want to thank you guys because once we're hurt, we we go in and meet with you guys. So I I just want to honor you guys too because I know you guys have a real resolution going on. To the rest of the board, thank you. To the CAO, Susan, thank you for being good partners working in collaboration. No matter what the topic is, again, I always say we can agree to disagree, but we try to work the best we can as a county to do the best we can for our community. So supervisor, thank you. To the rest of the supervisors, thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Next week I almost said this week. Next week, May 17 through, May 23 is National Public Works Week. And what I'd like to do Randy, why don't you have you and your team and then eventually everybody or everybody now come on up here? Yeah. Bring them all up here. It's gonna be quite a few. Hello. How are you? Good.

Good. How are you doing? How are you? There we go. No.

That's not I don't know that's Okay. Hey. We we we have everybody up here. I'd like to this is this is this is a crowded presentation. That's okay.

So the Monterey County Public Works has been had around for about a hundred and seventy years. I may have had different names at different times, but that's a long time. And I'm just looking here at the resolution, which I really need to read because it really covers the many, many things that they do. And I can't I I couldn't remember all these. It's department has provided multiple diverse services throughout the entire county, including, but not limited to the planning, design, construction and operations and maintenance of its transportation system, public buildings, grounds and special districts, parks and open space, landfill and water, wastewater and stormwater management, emergency management and response and other important programs and services, including the five year capital improvement program, engineering development services, county surveyor, pavement management program and litter abatement program.

And that is a lot of responsibilities, and there's a lot of people up here to do it, obviously. So this will be next week the sixty sixth Annual National Public Works Week, and it's really great honor to give this to you, Randy, on behalf of the department. And one thing that I've consistently said is that these folks are first responders. And when there are storms, when there's fires, when there's floods, they are out there keeping the roads open. They're going out there on the weekends, in the middle of the night.

They're working on holidays, all for the benefit of the residents of this county. And it is, it is really underappreciated in my view because they are doing essential services that we all have to take for granted because every single person needs to use our roads and our infrastructure, and, they do a fantastic job. I just we cannot thank them enough.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Supervisor Church, Chair and members of the board. I really appreciate the kind words and the recognition of Supervisor Church. The third week of the month of May annually is National Public Works Week. And its roots date back to just prior to then President John F.

Kennedy officially proclaiming National Public Works Week. This week of May 17 through May '26, represents the sixty sixth National Public Works Week. The theme for this year is rooted in service powered by community. And it is a recognition that all the essential work of which these hardworking employees do here in Monterey County, statewide and nationwide are rooted in service. And we get our power from being powered by our communities because it's those communities that we are doing service for and we're giving back to, thanks to the Board of Supervisors and the hard work of these dedicated employees of which the county is fortunate to have.

Here at the local Monterey County level, as noted by Supervisor Church, we have twelve sixty miles of county maintained roads. Again, if you stretch those end on end with each other, that'll take you one third of the way across The United States in the East West direction. There's 175 bridges, 500,000,000 of road appurtenances like traffic signals, signage and striping. And then beyond that, we have our special districts that are maintained, the County Surveyor's Office. We have the over 2,500,000 square feet of County owned building space that is maintained by our facility staff, County buildings and grounds, fiber capital improvement plan, essential design services.

All of the county's vehicles, which the county maintains, are done by our county fleet. Our mill is delivered through our mill courier services. We maintain long term records repositories for the county. And then there's over 30,000 acres of parks and open space, including the Laguna Seca Recreation Area and Lake Nacimento, Lake San Antonio as well as former Fort Ort lands. And then not to mention, we have the essential services behind the scenes, the backbone, our support staff from finance and our administrative support that ensure that they all have the tools which they need to be able to do their jobs.

And that's also in large part thanks to the support that we received from you, the community, and the County Board of Supervisors, including with new Measure AA funds have come to improving roads at an accelerated rate as well as park spaces at an accelerated rate. But again, these are the spokes of the county wheel that keep it going by maintaining the product to market infrastructure ranging from the roads, the bridges, the county buildings and then our parks and recreation spaces for our public. We invite the public to attend our next Public Works Week event, which is being held this Sunday at Toro Park, seventeen May twenty six. We have various advertisements on it for social media. And in large part, it's part of what our effort is to show the public the importance of what we do, as well as how we do it, and teach them a little bit more about what is all involved with public works, facilities and parks here at the county level.

And it's also an invite interest for the next generation of employees, so that way the county has a fully functioning, sustainable workforce, take our places when that time does come. So again, thank you very much, Chair, members of the Board, Supervisor Church for this recognition of our staff. And thank you all, the Public Works, Facilities and Parks staff, for all the hard work you do, rain or shine, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a fire emergency event, or just your daily jobs on the roads themselves, patching potholes, trimming back trees, and keeping our county buildings going and HVAC systems going. So thank you all very much.

As every as they're taking their seats and exiting recipients of the National Nurses Week resolution? I'm presenting it to Natividad and the County of Monterey Health Department. So if you all will come up here. Wonderful. Excellent.

So what I'm going to do is hand this perhaps to you to hold up and let's take the sticker off the bottom. Excellent. So thank you for joining us. All of the representatives of both Natividad and the County Health Department who are here with us today, thank you so much for joining me as we proclaim National Nurses Week in Monterrey County. There are over six fifty nurses at Natividad alone.

I'm gonna wait for that door to close just so we give this proclamation the attention it deserves. All right, I think we have some quiet. There are more than six fifty nurses at Natividad alone. When we add the nurses working across the county's public health and behavioral health services and clinics, we're talking about a workforce that touches nearly every aspect of health in Monterey County. Nurses care for us in some of the most intense moments of our lives: During birth, through health crises, in hospice.

They support us and our loved ones at our most medically, when we're most medically fragile, in the NICU and in the ICU. And they're with us at our primary care for our routine checkups, supporting preventive medicine and the management of chronic conditions. This week's theme, the power of nurses, shows us the power that nurses show up in ways we don't always recognize. We think about the nurse who sits with a frightened patient because no family member can be there. Or the public health nurse doing outreach in a rural, low income community, building the trust needed for people to seek the medical care that they need.

Five Natividad nurses this year were recognized with DAISY Awards for extraordinary nursing. Four team members received Partners in Caring Awards for exemplary collaboration with nursing staff. Those individual recognitions point to something larger, a culture where nursing excellence is seen, named, and rewarded. National Nurses Week ends May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Her core argument that the conditions of care determine the quality of care is still true.

And the nurses of Monterey County prove it every single day. I'm going to end with my favorite quote from Florence Nightingale because I think of nurses as active duty public servants, And this quote really honors the change making that each and every one of you do every single day. She said, rather 10 times die in the surf, heralding the way to a new world than stand idly by on the shore. That's what we do each and every day. So thank you all for your service. And with that, who would like to take the microphone? Give it to Doctor. Harris.

Thank you, Supervisor Daniels. This is always a great week, this year we get to celebrate a number of things at the hospital this week, and also with my colleague Elsa here, and her folks, and my colleagues to my left. I really think you hit it on the head. You talked about extraordinary nurses and you and you alluded to the DAISY award, which is a very special program at Antividad. And I wanted to share with you an encapsulation of the power of nurses.

And these are not my words. This is a these are the words of a patient that nominated one of our one of our nurses in the ICU. In the scariest time of our lives, when everything felt dark and uncertain, Asa is a light is a light for our family. When we were overwhelmed with fear, she brought calm. When we had questions, she brought patience and clarity.

When our hearts were breaking, she showed compassion. She didn't just care for our brother, she cared for us. She was always checking on our family, always observant, always willing, and she truly poured her whole heart into her patients. Because of her and the incredible team in Natividad Medical Center, we were able to breathe a little easier. Asa, you will never know how much you mean to us.

That really encapsulates all nurses. It encapsulates the nurses at Natividad and at the health department as well. And truly the incredibly meaningful things that they do in the lives of individuals, their families, and their community. And as I say in the DAISY Award, and my deep appreciation of all that you do, who you are, and the incredibly meaningful difference you make in the lives of so many people. Thank you.

So I'm Elsa Jimenez. I'm the director of health services, and I have the privilege of working with nurses across our system, in our public health bureau, in clinic services, and in behavioral health, Wherein clinic services and behavioral health, our nurses are part of a care team that we formulated to really support the individual in the time of crisis, but also look at them as a whole person, and make sure that they're receiving the linkages and services that they need. And then in public health, where we really focus on population health. Do our residents have what they need to be able to live well? Are we monitoring and following up when we have a communicable disease?

Going into homes and supporting our first time moms, and making sure that we follow them over a two year period to make sure that that child achieves all the milestones they need to, and more importantly, that the mother as well is able to pursue higher education. I am very honored to be working with nurses across our organization, and I also want to lift up that we have very good relationships with our local higher institutions of education, where there now are pathways for individuals who want to pursue nursing to go through Hartnell and CSUMB. And now we're looking at developing perhaps master's level and graduate level programs so that we can give residents in our community the opportunity to pursue higher education in their own community and then be available to enter the workforce, whether it's at the health department, at Natividad, or any of our other health care partners. And so with that, I will hand it over to Doctor. Moreno, who serves as our Director of Public Health and our Health Officer, overseeing many of the wonderful things that our nurses do in public health.

Thank you, Elsa. So I just want to, first of all, thank our public health all nurses working under county government, in particular our public health nurses. I have tremendous responsibility as the health officer for this county. I'm responsible for protecting the public health of every county resident. And one person can't do it alone. And that's where the public health nurses come into

play.

So I want to thank all of you. Thank you. So

with that, let's take a photograph and thank you all for your service and all the nurses in Monterey County.

Thank you all.

All So I'm going to have the natividad folks come back up. You don't get to take a break. I'm sorry. It's just like real life. Come on back up. Come on, Libby. So we're proclaiming hospital week as well at this meeting. And I just want to take an opportunity to share that the oldest public hospital in California is now 140 years old. That's Intevidat. That is an institution that does not discriminate on who walks through the door.

They make sure that service is ready for community and that the level of care and compassion delivered from our nursing is at the highest level. And it's matched by the doctors. It's matched by the grades that we receive. Whether it's a leapfrog grade or a reevaluation by the surgical team that looks over the operations at this institution, we get the highest marks. And it's because the folks who show up are mission driven.

They're not there because it's the best pay in the state, not even the best pay in the county. They're there because they believe in the mission that has been set out by this institution for 01/1940 to serve the people of Monterey County and the Salinas Valley. This team continues to deliver. During the critical window we see ahead, based on results from HR one, this team continues to evaluate almost on a minute by minute basis what we have to do to remain not just viable, but truly delivering the highest level of care possible because our residents deserve it when they walk through that door. And it's for that reason that we're proclaiming Hospital Week in Monterey County.

And I want to give the microphone over to Doctor. Harris as well as our chair Libby Downey from the Board of Trustees to share a few words with us.

Thank you, Supervisor Lopez. You know, again, very proud and quite frankly, humbled to serve the 1,700 or so employees in Natividad, the many volunteers and the almost four fifty physicians that we have. You have some representation of Natividad team and the leadership and the care that they provide every day. But as Supervisor Lopez has said, and I've told him whether publicly or privately and many others, what really makes Natividad amazing are all those folks that I mentioned that serve the mission. We serve our individual patients.

We serve their families. We serve our community. And we're the all the fantastic things that that happened and that for us, whether it's ACS, is the surgical group that looks at trauma or the rewards we win. Some of the folks here are key to those awards, but in the rehab unit, or an OB, or the emergency department, or the residency, or we talked about education, and we have somebody here, Lourdes, who leads education across all sorts of allied health professionals or recent programs in helping youth that are transitioning from probation, mental health, which we also have an award to my colleagues at the health department soon will be here, or substance use, etcetera. The list goes on and on.

And I am proud every day to serve these folks and our community and and really just be the voice of all the hard work that they do for us. And it's it's proud to have hospital week. We do have some fun things, of course, lined up, and we will enjoy it. But proud to serve with our team here. Libby, as a member of the Board of Trustees, would you like to share some

words? Oh,

I was a public health nurse in this county for years. As you can tell, I'm retired now from that. But I would just like to say it's such a pleasure to be a trustee on this board. And I think the compassion, excuse me, the compassion that you feel from all the staff in the whole entire hospital is heartwarming. Excuse me.

On the other hand, you want to know that it's efficient and it does it's efficient and it's a hospital that does good work. And one of the ways we know that is Leapfrog, which looks at all the hospitals all over The United States, gave us an A. And that's for the fact that we don't have infections like a lot of hospitals do. Know, if you go to a hospital, you might say, Thank you. You might say, What's your leapfrog?

What's your grade? Most people don't know about that, but that's something I'm really proud of. But most of all, I'm proud of our staff and everywhere you walk in that hospital you feel welcomed and you feel like people are there to serve and to help you. And I just love being this Board of Trustees.

So officially proclaiming the tenth through the sixteenth as National or as Hospitals Week here in Monterey County. I also wanna just leave you with two numbers. 60,000. That's how many people came to the ER last year. 2,200.

That's how many babies came into this world in the Tyvydad last year. Numbers matter. And so, that, we say thank you to the entire team for your dedicated service to the people of Monterey County and folks from beyond. Thank you. Sorry, Nancy.

We're testing you. Stay up here. We've got one more here. Doctor. Nancy Busher, we also have a resolution recognizing your contributions to the County Of Monterey through your work at Natividad Medical Center.

Thirty years of executive leadership, Nancy has put together some incredibly important programs, including Code Lavender, which was post a traumatic event, making sure that our nurses were wrapped around and that services were available to them and that their needs were thought about in those critical moments post a traumatic event. She has led the nursing team. She's done an incredible job. The amount of awards that we've won under her guidance and leadership, we just can't we can't talk enough about her efforts. We are so proud to have you as part of our executive team. So much so that at the last meeting, as we were talking about so many of your accomplishments, we started whispering left and right, shouldn't we give her a resolution? Absolutely. She wouldn't take it. Doesn't matter. We'll find a way to get her there.

So we proclaimed hospitals. Could got her through the door. And with that, we have this resolution outlining your dedicated service to the County Of Monterey, to its residents, and more importantly, to the team and the Typhoon and the way you wrap around us helping us continue to serve the community. So we wanted to take this moment to recognize your service to our community. And before I give you the microphone, I'm gonna hand it over to Chad one more time.

Thanks, Supervisor Lopez. Really appreciate it. You know, it's it's an incredible honor to be here with Nancy and have the have the board provide this resolution. And and I think I can say the support of the board the board of trustees as well. Nancy, this is a testament to her leadership that I can tell you each and every one of these individuals here from the hospital are so proud themselves and the guidance that Nancy provides.

All those things that I mentioned previously for the other awards, Nancy's leadership and lifting those up and her folks that are also leaders lifting these many things that we do are fantastic. Nancy is our CNO, but what folks don't know is just her fundamental, just deep, deep, long standing knowledge of health care, mission focused services to patients, families, the community is just immeasurable and irreplaceable. And her leadership, including towards me, I will never do anything that Nancy doesn't tell me is okay. I'm just deeply grateful. And then also, the hospital is deeply grateful for the leadership that you provide to the hospital as well to broader health care community.

If I could have my team come up here, these are people that really run the hospital in leadership. All of these are leadership across the system, the ER to the ICU, to the women and children's, to the education, the mental health. All of these are the people that make it go and support the staff who do incredible work at Natividad. You know, I've always had the pleasure of being in a profession I love. I love nursing.

I have a passion for it. And I really encourage people to come into our profession because it's the most rewarding thing there is. As you heard from the patient in the DAISY award about ASA in our ICU, one of our nurses, to make a difference in someone's life, even for a moment, that stays with you forever. And I really want to thank you for the award. I appreciate it. It's not about me. It's about the hospital, and it's about the care that they give our community. So thank you. Thank you all. I appreciate it.

So, as part of getting the next generation in, she's even helped set up camps. So, there's summer camp where your local youth can come spend time learning about what it means to be a nurse at an institution like Natividad. Again, her leadership, even though she won't take the credit. And with that, here's a resolution.

All right. It's always fantastic to have the chambers full of celebratory opportunities. So thank you all for joining us and for bearing with us through all of our resolutions this morning. I am going to invite up our maternal mental health task force who's with us here today as we celebrate Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week in Monterey County. I'm going to ask you to hold this for me.

Thank you. We do have the best team here, I love seeing folks from behavioral health, from county health, from First Five. We've even got probation and social services up here with us, which is significant and telling given that most communities have not made the types of progress that we've made in terms of addressing maternal mental health needs for our residents. And I just personally want to say thank you. So in The United States, perinatal mental health conditions, which are known as maternal mental health conditions, are the most common complication of childbirth, most common challenge issue that's going to arise for a birthing family.

Maternal mental health is essential to families' overall well-being and health, and that untreated maternal mental health conditions affect the development of the baby, resulting in increased risk of physical and mental health conditions for the infant, for other children in the family, and for, of course, the mother. In Monterey County, we estimate that between 2020 and 2022, more than twelve percent of individuals who gave birth experienced prenatal depressive symptoms, More than seventeen percent of individuals who gave birth experienced postpartum anxiety symptoms as well. So we often talk about just postpartum depression, but postpartum anxiety and OCD and other challenges are within that larger category of recognition. We know that by increasing awareness through routine screenings the types of screenings that you would get when you go to your postpartum checkup or when you go to your pediatric appointments, These are screenings that, when adopted with a culturally sensitive holistic approach, can work towards preventing these disorders from escalating. And we know that when people get treatment for maternal mental health disorders, it's very effective.

It's incredibly effective. So catching moms and dads who are struggling and getting them help early makes a huge difference. And in Monterey County, for quite some time, we've had a maternal mental health task force that's working collaboratively, interdepartmentally, beyond the county to make sure that we are continuing to increase awareness, reduce stigma, expand capacity and training for family serving agencies and providers on maternal mental health. I had my son fourteen years ago at Natividad, and we've come a long way in that short period of time, raising awareness and making sure that resources are widely available for all families. Monterey County's Children's Council acknowledged early childhood development as a cornerstone of resiliency for both individuals and society, and recognized that Monterey County did not have sufficient resources focused on child development from the prenatal stage through eight years old.

And thus in 2012, like I said, we've been working on this for quite some time, the Children's Council created the Bright Beginnings Early Childhood Development Initiative. And so that early childhood development initiative, Bright Beginnings, has provided continual support for the Maternal Mental Health Task Force, which is a county wide collaborative that brings together advocates and practitioners to expand access and improve treatment and support. I've got to give a shout out to my mom who was there at the forefront. Before the county was at the table, she was convening folks with that mental health task force, knowing that the need was significant and tremendous. And I want to thank the county for stepping in and joining in that work.

So today, I'm honored and proud to see the work that we do grow, to know that there's still more work ahead of us. We're working on that with our county clinics, and that this Board of Supervisors called upon all of us as parents, as friends, as local governments, as health care providers, as first responders, early childhood advocates, to become informed about the symptoms and impact of maternal mental health on the family, to pay attention to those families that are in that perinatal period, pregnant, getting pregnant, postpartum. Make sure that you're helping connect those individuals who need resources. We have phenomenal resources here available in Monterey County, and we worked really hard to build that system up. So I want to say thank you to our team that's here today.

Thank you to the team working ongoing to continue to understand and increase awareness and make sure that everyone who starts a family here in Monterey County has the best start possible. So with that, I will pass the microphone. Is there anyone who would like to speak? Thank you.

Thank you. I am a mental health provider in our community, worked for behavioral health for a really long time, and joined the Maternal Mental Health Task Force really early in its inception. And at that time, there were a number of us who really had our heart in the place but didn't have all the resources. And so having the bright beginnings come into the process with us, with the wisdom of all who you see up here, has really provided the backbone to bring in the partners who are healing our community, growing our community one maternal mental health assistance at a time. And the community that we have here is really what we need and to grow.

And so we'd welcome you to join us. And just so appreciative of all of the people who are making this possible.

Let's hear it one more time. We've got the most incredible team.

Thank you, Rolindus, as one of the steering partners for the Maternal Mental Health Task Force. And I'm with Bright Beginnings, and you heard that a lot. But really, we are an initiative launched by the Children's Council. And back in 2012, our fearless co chairs Francine Rod of First five Monterey County and co chair there he is. Doctor Moreno, our public health officer, showing that we it takes all of us to do this and the wisdom of the Children's Council and their mission to help coordinate our services.

And so this year, we really wanted to honor that and the work of the Children's Council and share their work is hidden, and we really wanna make share that with you, what they're up to when they put their efforts together. And I also want to invite everyone, just one plug, to join us. It is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month here in Monterey County. One in four in this room has been affected by it in some way. So please come and join us for a community walk.

We have several coming in Soledad on Friday at 05:00 in Cesar Chavez Park and, the weeks to follow as well. And we're holding a conference at the end of the month, on May 29. And you can find that on our website. You'll find that somewhere, Bright Beginnings Monterey County. Please join us out in the community to show your support. And thank you to the Board of Supervisors for repeatedly recognizing this month.

Thank you so much. And again, I just want to personally say that this is a family mission. It's part of why I got involved in local government and local politics. Because when we take care of moms, we take care of families, when we take care of new families, so many other things become so much easier for all of our systems. And in recognition of Mother's Day, which just passed, I do want to acknowledge and give a shout out to there are individuals who've experienced reproductive challenges with miscarriages.

All of those hormones all come into play. All of that is relevant when we talk about maternal mental health, and knowing that there's help available. And sometimes you've got to ask a few times, and I'll say that from personal experience. You might feel like you're screaming and saying, I need help, but keep asking. Help is out there.

Ask until you get the support that you need, because we are here to provide those services, and we have great resources here in Monterey County. So thank you all for being here, and we'll take a quick photograph. Okay, we've got one more. Along the theme of mental health, a bunch of us were out at NAMI walking for NAMI walks last weekend. But I'll invite the team and I'm not sure who we're presenting this to, but this is for May 2026 as Mental Health Awareness Month here in Monterey County.

We've got a behavioral health team in the house. Thanks for coming back. I know you were here working really hard on our Behavioral Health Services Act, but we actually, I'm going to hand that to you. Alright, and this is our final presentation this morning, so thank you all for bearing

with

us. But we do want to talk about and you can scoot on in talk about for a moment and recognizing Mental Health Awareness Week. Mental health being a critical component of overall well-being, impacting individuals, families, and communities throughout Monterey County and beyond. We know that mental health conditions are prevalent here in The U. S.

And around the world, with more than one in five adults experiencing mental illness of some kind every year. So approximately one in twenty adults are living with a serious mental health condition here. We know that many mental health conditions start early in life, with about half of all lifetimes mental illnesses emerging by the age of 14 and three quarters by the age of 24, highlighting the necessity for awareness and early access to services. We know that we've worked really hard to address mental health stigma and misinformation. We're working and continuing to navigate through state funding changes so that we can have access to care that's available so that individuals who want to receive services or seek treatment don't have to work as hard to find that treatment and receive those services.

Mental Health Awareness Month was established in 1949 by Mental Health America and is observed every May to help promote awareness, give us an opportunity to talk about our own stories and those of our families, and to reduce stigma around mental health services. Here in Monterey County, our Behavioral Health Bureau serves approximately 13,000 individuals annually through a comprehensive system that offers accessible, high quality treatment and recovery oriented behavioral health services in collaboration, importantly, with our community based organizations, with local schools, with our health care providers within and beyond the county, and with peer advocates to deliver culturally responsive care across the entirety of our county. And even as we navigate through changes to the Mental Health Services Act to become the Behavioural Health Services Act, we remain committed to addressing mental health disparities, ensuring that care is available to all those who need it when they need it at a location and in a language that they need it. So on behalf of our County Board of Supervisors, I want to proclaim and recognize the work that Monterey County Behavioral Health practitioners do and there's many more of them who are here today but encouraging all residents, employers, schools, and organizations to find ways to talk about mental health, mental wellness, mental illness, and understanding that it's not uncommon.

It's actually very common. But I think oftentimes, because of stigma, we don't talk about those realities. But you don't have to suffer alone. We've got help available, and I want to thank our team for being at the core of making sure those systems of care are working. Thank

Thank you. You, Chair Askew. First, I wanna start by apologizing on behalf of our director. She was here earlier, but she had to leave to an appointment. But she's thankful for this.

And on behalf of our entire bureau, I just wanna sincerely thank you, Askew and the board for the resolution recognizing May 2026 as Mental Health Awareness Month. We are truly honored and grateful for your continued support and partnership. And the recognition reflects the dedication and compassion of our staff, as well as supervisor, as you mentioned, community based organizations, providers, schools, advocates and partners we work alongside every day to support the well-being of Monterey County residents. As noted also, California continues implementing Proposition one and transitions from the Mental Health Services Act to the Behavioral Health Services Act. Our system is experiencing significant change and transformation.

And throughout it all, we remain committed to improving timely access to care, reducing stigma, and promoting hope, healing, and recovery throughout our community. We remain steadfast in serving our residents with compassion, equity, cultural responsiveness and collaboration across systems and alongside our valued partners. So thank you again for this recognition and for helping reinforce the importance of mental health awareness and wellness for all residents of Monterey County. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all for joining us in those celebrations. We don't usually get to do so many of them, but today was special. It was great to have folks here in Chambers. So we're gonna move on to our appointments. We have two appointments, today. I'm happy to open that up for public comment on any of the appointments. Seeing nobody approaching and no hands raised, we have a motion from Alejo. Second. Okay. I saw a second from Lopez with the fingers up there, so we'll call that one second, and, we will, move on to a vote. All in favor? Aye. Alright. Passes unanimously.

We can move on to our consent agenda this morning. Is there any public comment on anything on the consent agenda? Seeing no one approach and no hands raised, we'll bring it back to the board. Any comments or questions on consent agenda? The motion for approval from Alejo, a second from Lopez.

I did have one just a a comment on item 44, which is the ascent amendment to it's a a contracting sorry. A contracting consulting contract for our community's climate action plan and adaptation plan, and we're extending the term. I did just wanna note that this item is coming back to us shortly for, I think, the approval, and I just wanna make sure that this extension wasn't extending the timeline by which our climate action plan was planning to come back for board action.

Do we Hi, supervisor.

This is Cora Pantrout, sustainability program manager. That is correct. This is only the contract underlying the work with Ascense, but we are still on schedule to bring the climate action plan back to the board.

Okay. Fantastic. Is there a date for when that climate action plan will be coming back to the board?

Yes. We are on the calendar for next week on the nineteenth.

Okay. So May 19, we can expect the climate action plan to return. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much for that. All in favor of the consent agenda? Aye. Aye. Alright. Passes unanimously. We can then move on. We're going to, reassess the board of supervisors, and call to order the successor Record show that all supervisors are present. This is now the time of the meeting for general public comment. Thank you all for your patience. I do have a number of of comment forms, but if you'd like to approach the dias, if we can have people line up, we do have a number of general public comments.

And I can call names or we can just sort of go through. And if you make sure you say your name, I'll check off and make sure we don't miss anyone. We're gonna allow two minutes for general public comment today, and I do wanna thank everyone in advance for helping us monitor the time and stay within the two minute allocation so that I'm not in a position of having to interrupt anyone. I don't enjoy that part of this role, but if you can help me in that way, I would appreciate it. I do wanna just also comment that all people, all residents are welcome here.

These are your chambers, and we ask for shared respect while people are providing their testimony. Our county code allow does not allow for signs or placards or demonstrations of yelling or clamping or stomping in the chambers. And this public comment is to allow for test test testimony test on matters that are within the jurisdiction of the county but not listed on the agenda elsewhere. So, I'll also just mention if you have additional testimony that's not able to be shared in the two minutes allocated, we do encourage and invite you to either provide a copy so that we can pass that up to the board, or you're welcome to email the board of supervisors at cob@countyofmonterey.gov so that we can have that on our public record. With that, I'll say welcome to our chambers, and thank you for joining us.

Nancy Zwang here. I'm back before you for a third time to request that you consider and vote on a statement that essentially declares the board will uphold The US constitution and require federal immigration agents to act within its purview. Our original statement has been modified by chair Wendy Root Askew and has been submitted to the clerk for your review. The CAO unilaterally decided to instead water down this declaration to a statement that Monterey County recognizes September 17 as Constitution Day, encourages civic education, etcetera. Its strongest provision is that any enforcement activity is within constitutional safeguards.

Surely this Board of Supervisors can do more than support the celebration of Constitution Day. This is not a partisan issue. Monterey County residents should be able to work, attend school, shop for food, attend church services, enjoy a park, and abide in their homes without fear of masked agents, capturing them, forcing them into detention facilities, and then deporting them to who knows where. Clearly, the resolutions this morning demonstrate the commitment to mental health of county residents, and this fear that the undocumented have, and even some citizens who have brown skin, leads to anxiety and depression, and dramatically affects their quality of life. This is a humanitarian issue.

I hope you supervisors have the heart and the guts to see this and put this resolution on your agenda. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Michael Bear. I live in Pacific Grove, and this is our third time before the body to advocate for a proclamation reaffirming the constitutional order and your oath to defend it to help protect the residents of this county against the illegal acts of ICE and immigration. We, the people, demand that it be agendized, discussed, and voted on by the supervisors before the public. If you are here in support of this effort, please stand.

Thank you. It's tough to come out on a Tuesday morning. And if you're on Zoom, please and support it. Please raise your hand or put up a heart emoji or whatever you can do to indicate your support for our efforts. I submitted a packet, which you have before you, which, includes chair Askew's, proclamation declaration, an organizational chart, and the CAO Della Raiso's rewrite, which, with respect, entirely misses the point.

This is a democratic moment trying to happen right now in this chamber. A bureaucrat does not get to decide that criticizing federal officers is beyond the county's authority, which she said in an email to us, and prohibiting the supervisors from voting on the resolution. Indeed, it is your oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that requires you to criticize the federal officers who are systematically shredding the constitutional order. That was a beautiful ceremony this morning with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the democracy and to the constitution by which it is ordered.

Sisipuete.

And I'll just ask, in accordance with county code if we could refrain from, from demonstrations of clapping and things like that. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Meredith Knoll, and I live on Carmel Valley Road. I live approximately one mile from Highway 1, of course, going north and south. And I have here this morning what I see every single workday from Monday to Friday, bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper to bumper traffic. I would be happy to show you the video that I took this morning on the way here, not only on the side of I 1 going north, but also coming back on Highway South.

But I'm here to talk to you about saving the work, the grief, the agony, the costs, all of Monterey County, for all of the people that you had up here this morning, the public work, the health department, the hospitals, and the nurses, because God forbid, and I say that with all sincerity of every part of my body, god forbid, whatever whoever it was that are approved, elder's Remedy, which indeed is not a remedy. It is a pattern for disaster coming down Carmel Valley Road for three separate developments that will increase that bumper to bumper traffic in case there's a fire on Carmel Valley Road? I'm asking clearly that you your approval for any development of houses anywhere in Carmel Valley and the village before you do an assessment of the traffic. And, also, think about property which is taken away from residents, which I can't eminent domain. You can go out on the highways.

We're making two roads. There are only two roads extended to three feet, four feet on each side for safety and security of your constituents.

Thank you.

God forbid you have a fire with that kind of traffic. Infrastructure does not allow it.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening.

Morning, supervisors. My name is Beverly Bean. I'm from Salinas. Monterey County has some of the highest use of cancer causing and lung damaging fumigants in the state, and use has been growing around schools in the last fifteen years. One fifth of all brain damaging organophosphate use in the state is concentrated in Monterey County.

Many fumigants are so dangerous that they are banned in dozens of countries. Chloropicrin and one three d are both banned in over 40 countries. Chloropicrin is illegal on the battlefields. It is labeled a lung damaging agent by the US government. We should not be risking the lungs of farm worker and farm worker communities by exposing them to this chemical.

At all six state pesticide air monitors in Monterey County, the levels of one three d in the air are at least double the lifetime cancer risk warning levels set by experts. And five of those air monitors are on or near school grounds. The ag commissioner should not allow our children to be exposed to pesticides at unsafe cancer causing levels. We must reduce their use, especially near schools. Fumigants can travel for miles at harmful levels, but the school buffer zones are only one quarter mile.

The ag commissioner is your employee and he works for the county. In a recent meeting, he refused to require notice of intent to apply organophosphates. This means even he does not know about their use. He refused to consider increasing the buffer zone to one mile. He refused to work with the DPR to implement pilot projects to help infill school buffer zones with organic farming.

This would be safer for children. When California communities face undue harm, county ag commissioners can act to protect us. So are you, the board of supervisors, going to step up and make sure the ag commissioner does his job Thank you. To protect the public?

Thank you.

Karen Cameron, concerned Salinas resident. Salad

bowl of the

world, yet we still have no air monitor for pesticides. I think that's criminal that the CDPR removed it in 2017 and can't answer as to why they will not bring it back. They have one in Pajaro that they deem sufficient for monitoring all of Monterey County and all of Santa Cruz County. That's ludicrous. And there's something that they will not want to bring them to any of the high volume agricultural areas like Salinas, a lot being hidden.

In California, the organophosphates went down 26%, Yet in Monterey County, 54%. That is where accountability for our Ag Commissioner must come in. All of you appointed him. Now you just say he's an employee of CDPR. And he passes the buck to say, well, CDPR and EPA give me an out on this and that.

It's not acceptable. And just to give you a little data, since we don't get much in Salinas, the in Salinas Vision 2040 climate change plan, they've quoted from OEACal EnviroScreen, Salinas experiences higher levels of diesel particulate matter and airborne pest pesticides than the majority of census tracts throughout California. In the Monterey County General Plan Environmental Justice Element, the pesticide's pollution burden were noted for: 99% at Buranda, 99% Las Lomas, 99% Moss Landing, 95% to 99% Castroville. Pajaro, where we're getting measured, is at 79% to 100%. So I don't understand why I'm the only one that's screaming about we need an air monitor.

And quite frankly, that's not going to be sufficient. Because as you heard previously, at all the levels that they've been having of the six state monitors, it's been more than double what is allowed. So there must be ways that you must hold our county ag commissioner present. I do want to give him credit, because he did show up for the Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, unlike any of you.

Again, I'll just ask for county code to refrain from demonstrations during public comment. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Mark Weller. I'm here in place of Nelly Martinez, who couldn't be here because of a family medical emergency. And I work for Californians for Pesticide Reform. The local branch is Safe Ag Safe Schools office in Salinas. And following up on the last two comments, a number of us did meet with the Monterey County Ag Commissioner on April 1, and it was a concerning meeting, in that we brought proposals, all of which other Ag Commissioners have done, at least to some extent, in the past.

So nothing out of the, nothing unheard of. And so we're really concerned that two categories of pesticides that are very harmful, cancer causing fumigants and brain harming organophosphates, are on the uptick in our region, especially near the most vulnerable populations, schoolchildren. And so what we proposed, what we asked for, was that the current quarter mile buffer zones be expanded to one mile. The Imperial County Ag Commissioner has a one mile buffer zone for aerial applications of pesticides. And we also ask that the Ag Commissioner at least require growers to provide notices of intent before they apply brain harming organophosphates.

Because right now, he does not know when or where organophosphates will be applied in advance. He can't take action. He can require notices of intent. He refused. And finally, we called for the Ag Commissioner to work with the Department of Pesticide Regulation to fund pilot projects to create organic farming within the buffer zones around schools so that it would be a 20 fourseven protection from children rather than the six a. M. To six p. M. Protection that they have now. Thank you.

Good morning. As a community member to Monterey County, I am concerned as to the lack of action to protect our community from the terrorist organization ICE known to torture and kill our citizens, not just undocumented individuals, but those who also are advocating for our community. We are supposed to be a sanctuary state and need to act as such. I am requesting and asking for a resolution to defend our community from ICE and also the following policies. Policy number one, prohibit outside employment with ICE as it is a conflict of interest to work with Monterey County where employees have access to personal information and then also work for a terrorist organization where they can utilize this private information to kidnap and torture our community members.

Policy number two, prohibit ICE from conducting any type of business in our community. Policy number three, sheriff's department to end SCAP immediately in all collaboration with ICE. Now policy number one, to establish a civilian oversight of the sheriff's office, something that has been discussed before, but there was never any action or follow through. Right? Now as the leaders to our districts here, right, the community, we look at you to do what is right and to unite to protect our community against these terrorists.

There will be some people who agree with ICE, but that is why you guys need to unite and be brave and do what is morally correct. Right? Like, back in the day when people were in agreement with slavery and the Jim Crow laws. Right? You guys wouldn't be okay with that. Right? Well, now this is your chance to show us what side of history you're working on. Will you stand up and protect your community, or are you gonna sit back and come up with these cowardly excuses to allow ICE to take kidnapping our family members and tearing family apart? And who knows what happens to the ones that were kidnapped. Right?

Now please do what is right, and we will support you because

Hello, my name is Jess Arrigo. I'm a Pacific Grove resident. I second everything this previous speaker said. I second all of this on pesticides. I was glad to be here and honor our nurses, mental health programs, hospitals, public workers. I am here to ask the board to agendize the proposal written by Ms. Root Eskew. Handing people over to ICE in the name of public safety is just scapegoating the most disenfranchised community members. You don't go after the rich and powerful who cause the most damage because they can go after you with their money. They can hide themselves on their sprawling compounds with their security guards and private jets.

Instead, we send our most vulnerable neighbors to concentration camps because it's the easiest way to look like we're doing something. For example, nobody is doing anything about Epstein's co conspirators, including no one in this jurisdiction doing anything about Epstein's crimes in this county. Virginia Dufres Roberts, one of Epstein's most vocal victims, documented at least one of them in her memoir, Nobody's Girl. On 02/22/2001, she says, from New Mexico, which is one of his ranch compounds, we flew to Carmel By The Sea, California, where Epstein had meetings. Epstein was in town for the so called billionaire's Dinner hosted by John Brockman to coincide with the annual TED Conference in Monterey.

Epstein regularly attended Brockman's Billionaires Dinners at TED, hobnobbing with a who's who of academia, literature, tech, and show business and entertainment. She describes how minors were groomed and trafficked, victims were pitted against each other and forced to recruit other victims, and yet there was no protection or justice for them. And some of that happened in this county. Agenda I's root and skews proposal, and also we need to be not doing anything opposing ICE in all ways possible.

Good

afternoon, I'm here to ask this board to take seriously, the need to stop ICE's action in this county. We reflect on history and think about the average German citizen in the thirties and forties who was a hardworking, good person, and yet who failed to stand up to the regime. This may seem like a dramatic example, but the fact is fascistic behavior has arrived. Over 70,000 people are in blackout detention centers. We they are unsupervised, these detention centers, by elected officials, by regulatory boards, and by the press.

Over 70,000 people are in detention centers without due process. We have concentration camps here. And just because you have not experienced them knocking on your doors, they never knock on the privileged doors first. Just because you haven't seen it does not mean it isn't happening. We are at a relatively early stage in this well documented pattern of fascistic behavior where you supervisors have an opportunity to do something about it, to stand up for your community, to stand up for your values, and to put yourselves history. Please have the courage to agendize proposal and ask yourself how you will be different from the average German citizen. Thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors. Joshua Ezekiel, city of Carmel. Let's talk about tear gas. Does tear gas belong in our schools? No. I have asthma. I didn't have asthma until I was in my thirties, and I moved to the Salinas Valley. I taught thirty odd years in the Salinas Valley. My son did develop asthma as a child, and we know that chloropicrin damages lungs, yet it's applied in the fields around Salinas. Well, and all down the valley.

We also know that organophosphates damage the nervous system and lungs. We know from the CHAMACCO study that a distance of one kilometer for gestation is really critical for the nerve and lung harm that organophosphates can cause. In California, one seventh of babies are gestated within that one kilometer, but in Monterey County, it's not one seventh, it's one half. The state does have six air monitors, as was previously mentioned, in the entire state, and they all show people are being exposed to double the amount of cancer causing t loan that a WEHA specifies. By a weird wrinkle of state law, the only official outside of Sacramento who can protect the people of Monterey County is the agricultural commissioner whom you appointed, and yet he has refused to ring our schools with a mile of organic farms.

The Agricultural Commissioner does not only serve industries, he also serves the people. We need you to make this agricultural commissioner serve the people of Monterey County. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. My name is Christian Thornley, Waste Management, WM. And I wanted to thank you for your time. Thank you always. I try to come every quarter and speak to you, keep you up to date on what we're working on. So I'm going give you an update with a focus on some of the events that we've been working on in the community. In April, on April 25, we had our Lockwood community drop off event. It was at the San Antonio School. We collected more than seven tons of material. 60% of the tonnage was diverted away from the landfill, which for us is a a really great day.

Generally, with with these events, we're usually around 40 to 45%. And also, we we did have in in March, we had an event in King City, which we gathered over 20 tons of materials. So really great events for the communities. Keep the illegal dumping off the sides of the roads. Our next community drop off event, I wanted to invite everybody, is in Aromas on June 6.

So it's coming up, but it's already mid May. So we'll be out at the sports park in Aromas. I know we've been done some promotion in that community, and people are excited about it. It's usually a very busy event. And following that, August, we have an event in Castroville and San Ardo.

So we've we've got a lot of events coming up. I did want to highlight one other event. We worked with the North County Rec Center in Castroville and Monterey County on an Earth Day event at the Morocoho Park, which is right near the high school, North County High School. And we did a community cleanup on April 25 and provided a bin alongside the county, provided a bin for the residents of that community to use. And we filled the bin. It was a 30 yard bin. Thank you very much.

Morning. My name is Eduardo Diaz, member of SAS, Safe Ag, Safe Schools. And I'm here to talk about the meeting that, I was part of with the ag commissioner. I'm I'm extremely disturbed that the ag commissioner took him over two years to sit down with us to have a conversation about the harms of pesticides that are being sprayed near our neighborhoods, near our schools. The lack of urgency, the lack of respect that he showed for the farm workers, for the students, for the community is alarming.

Organophosphates, all these dangerous chemicals have been sprayed near our communities for too long. Our farm workers are being exposed. Our children are being exposed. Our students are being exposed. I have signed up for, spray days in just a month of April.

I received over 23 notifications in just thirty days of pesticides being sprayed near that school, Ohlone School. 23 out of thirty days, they have been exposed to to to dangerous, pesticides. And our and our ag commissioners, the lack of urgency to to sit down with the DPR to find ways to protect our students, to protect our community, the lack of giving us the respect to have the conversation needs to change. And you have the power to make those changes. And I know some of you on this board know exactly how harmful these pesticides are to our community and how they are harming our students with learning disabilities, with asthma.

I did a thirty day hunger strike back in September, and I cannot tell you how many stories I heard of how it's hurting our farm workers, how it's hurting our community, our students. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard how many people have died to this, and we this is not something new to us. This is something that we are all aware, and we need to bring change to this soon.

Good morning. Supervisor Askew, supervisor Church Lopez, Supervisor Alejo, Supervisor Daniels. My name is Horacio Mesquita. I live in Salinas since 'seventy four. I used to be a farm worker and then I became a farmer.

And then I moved to the community San Gerardo in 2005. I was the secretary director there for seventeen years and I lived there for thirty five. We built those houses because there was a big need of house in those years. I saw how discriminate the farmers are using the pesticides and the fumigants. And those years were Salara, methobromide, chloropictrin, and trichloropropane.

We lost three of our wells. We have to go two miles away from the community to build a new water system. The new water system is getting polluted also because of the over usage of nitrogen and the exploitation of the water. We live in the aquifers dry, just like seawater intrusion and the land lease up basin and the East Side and also Corral De Tierra. We need more protection.

The farm workers and their families are getting hurt. There's already been nine people dying San Gerardo with cancer. There's about eleven that have that are going with chemotherapy. And there's a lot of things that can be done, you know? We can have the farmers at least tell their neighbors that they're going to be spraying. We can have a system where you can see the dangerous chemicals that are going to be spraying at the right at the place. So please help and protect the people, the farm workers and the families. Thank you.

Okay.

Here we go. Hi. Hi. My name is John Brady. I am 63 years old. I lived in Monarch County all my life. All the immigration stuff that's going on bothers me. I remember when I was 15 years old, I saw on TV a native in a tropical forest cutting a vine off a big tree. I would get the name of the tree. I called the information desk in the Monterey Library and asked them about it.

The name of the tree is called Ayahuasca. It grows in tropical forests around the world. The library also told me it can grow in local it can it can grow the ivyostomy, it can grow in hot weather too with good soil and steady rain. Hopefully, it will be one day, it will be cultivated around the world with a lot of jobs. The tree takes at least five years until you can for for for producing the tree food.

It has the same effect of alcohol, but only has the addiction of caffeine. They say it is a hallucin they say it has hallucinogens. I bet once I bet scientists can extract the hallucigens. They say that is illegal in The United States, but you can buy it online. And there is a retreat in Shasta County, California.

It is very extensive there that deals with ayahuasca drink, the loophole in Shasta County that you can get in the name of religion. There is other places around the world too. If it was closely, the alcohol industry would hurt and people wouldn't like that. Maybe one day the people can get can get it started. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Who's going on board? Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. So a lot of the resolutions that were, that were presented earlier, a lot of them were tied to pesticides. Right? Chris was talking about birth stats and all this other cute stuff. How many of those were affected by pesticides, Chris? You come up here for photo ops, but you don't do nothing to protect us. Speaking of photo ops, Luis Alejo right here, the king of all photo ops. Fairview's closed. Didn't you do a photo op saying how it was open and you're helping the homeless people?

It's closed. So I don't know that that I don't know what happened right there. ICE is violating the constitution, so standing up to them should be a no brainer to elected officials who took an oath to defend the constitution. So, Sonia De La Rosa, yeah, you x'd it all out. That was kinda crazy. So air monitors. Speaking of air monitors. Now, Luis, you canceled your arch idea. Right? Because I think you got scared with the recall. Right? You're still getting recalled. But, anyways, you canceled the arch, and then you went and got $500,000 from Zoe Lofgren, right, for the soccer fields, and you got $15,000,000 from your buddy, Bruce Taylor, right, for the soccer fields. Yeah. You did.

Don't you shake in your head. No. You did. You got that money, and you threw it away in the soccer fields. That's four air monitors, Luis. Luis, the That's what we call you because you're a piece of work. You know that that's four air monitors. It's 400,000 each air monitor, Luis. That money that you just threw away on the soccer field so people could run around and kick a ball, that could have put one air monitor on each side of town. But you don't care because your donors, Bruce Taylor. Right? He doesn't wanna have air monitors out here. They wanna spray whenever they wanna spray. And South County needs air monitors more than anywhere else. Supervisor Lopez.

He's over here making some post about who the kids need? The kids don't need. They need air monitors. It's common sense, Chris. You know better, and you know better too, Luis. You're a joke. Dad, you're a joke.

Good

afternoon, members of the board of supervisors. Ask you. Cesar Larao, board member of the California for pesticide reform, along with the labor movement with the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council. I just want to speak on two critical issues. One is around pesticides.

Think my colleagues before me have spoken really clearly more needs to be done about protecting kids around schools, and in general, the community. Spray day monitors have been in California a little bit over a year, March. And just in my home, which is a quarter mile away from Musko, I've received more than 200 notifications of those pesticides being near my neighborhood. And it goes beyond the Act Commissioner, it goes beyond California. As the Board of Supervisors that actually hires the Act Commissioner, something needs to be done proactively that's reasonable to protect our community.

I've been around farmers and agriculture my whole career, and they always say how Monterey County does not take any subsidies. We're not like the Midwest or others that receive federal subsidies or get money for not growing anything. But the question is, what is our community suffering from? Water, as clearly identified, even the wild that Monterey County helped the ag community out there put down is being contaminated by nitrates, which comes from pesticide exposure, or pesticides in general. Our air beyond air monitors, I know what we're going to find.

And what we have found with air monitors that have been in our community, the levels are high. So the question is what can we reasonably do to safeguard our community? And the second is immigration. This board of supervisors has a long history of standing up to ICE and protecting our residents. So more could be done. I wanna get rid of the rhetoric and look at practical solutions towards that front. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and good luck on the rest of your meeting. Thank you.

My name is Chris Pereira, President of LULAC Council two thousand fifty five. I am here today because our immigrant community is tired of excuses, delays, and political theater from Monterey County leadership. This board loves calling Monterey County a welcoming city or county. UP resolutions hold press conferences and issue statements about protecting immigrants. But when it is time to take real action against ICE, intimidation, and fully enforce the truth that suddenly the item gets pulled, watered down, or buried behind bureaucracy.

That is unacceptable. Families across the county are living in fear. Parents are scared to take their children to school. Workers are afraid to speak up, seek services, or report crimes because they fear detention and separation from their families. These are the same immigrant workers who kept Monterey County alive during COVID while others stayed home.

Instead of courage, this community gets silence and obstruction from the c CAO office and weak accountability from this board. And we demand that CAO Sonia Della Rosa stop obstructing and diluting efforts meant to protect immigrant communities. LULAC twenty fifty five demanding Monterey County fully cut cooperation with ICE and stop hiding behind symbolic language while our community suffers. Civil rights are optional. Due process is not optional.

Human dignity is not optional. The people of Monterey County deserve leadership with courage to stand up to fear and intimidation, not bureaucrats who stall, dilute, and hide from action. Enough excuses, enough delays, protect our community, and enforce the truth fact the way it was intended to be enforced. Thank you.

Alright. Is there any other public comment in chambers? Now would be the time. Alright. We do have a number of hands raised online. I will just make a note that it given the time, it's about 12:30 right now. We will move item number 14 to the afternoon schedule. So if you're calling in on item 14, you can call back again at 01:30. Having said that, we'll move online to general public comment starting with the phone number ending in 837 and then the phone number ending in 902.

Hi, supervisors. This is Brian here. Mahatma Gandhi said that the society has judged how it treats its weakest members, and we're not doing a very good job of being a loving, good, healthy society. The way we treat animals with factory farms, the way we're cutting down so many precious trees, we're actually really hurt our ecosystem is very fragile and we're cutting down all these magnificent eucalyptus trees that nourish us spiritually and that produce so much oxygen. And we're losing our oxygen producing capability because we're cutting down and we're destroying more than faster than things can grow.

And those mountains around Salinas, they would be bare without all those eucalyptus trees. They're huge climate rescuers. And when it comes to people, we have congressman Panetta who gets a lot of APEC funding, and the government of Israel look. I'm Jewish background, but I don't like them. They're doing a genocide. They're horrible. And Panetta is helping to genocide children. And people who speak up for the Palestinians are terribly treated and abused. What kind of society is this? And not to mention, of course, the farm workers in the ICE.

These horrible things especially sensitive people. And we need you to be brave and to stand up for people and humanity and trees and the earth. We're all connected. What happens to one happens to all. And the mark of a spiritual person realizes that. We're all connected. We are each other truly, and we wanna all thrive, but we can't get ahead at the expense of anyone else. That means spiritual death for us, and let us please protect these magnificent trees on a local level. And please stand up for the Palestinians. Do some

Thank you.

Do some resolutions. So thank you very much.

We'll go next to the phone number ending in 902 and then to Dusty CW.

Good afternoon. My name is Nina Beatty. International events are impacting Monterey County. On May 1, UN investigative journalist Richard Medhurst reported that the goal of US attacks on Iran and kidnapping President Maduro is the creation of the petro gas dollar and making The US the sole source of gas and oil for the world, including Europe and Asia. The US has done this by the Navy's blockade of oil and gas from other countries in the Arctic, their capture and sinking of oil tankers, destruction of Levantine ports, and US enabled destruction of oil and gas infrastructure of other countries.

Chevron is the biggest beneficiary. This is important. The price of gas is escalating here, but former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter asks, what happens when there's no gasoline at the gas stations? What happens when there's no aviation fuel? Spirit is out of business.

Flights are being canceled. The Monterey Airport expansion may end up being a waste of money. County administration doesn't have the luxury of ignoring these events or what your policies to support expand the military facilities and missions actually means. When visitors don't or can't come here and the TOT tax is zero, when people can't get to their jobs, when Salinas Valley Ag can't grow crops because they don't have fertilizer, when food can't be shipped to markets and restaurants. Remember, the US Navy did this and you support it, destroying this community with Chevron laughing all the way to the bank while the Navy and Pentagon siphon off taxpayer money to do this.

The Pentagon has also put this community at risk for attack by other countries to defend themselves and stop US piracy, the crimes against their nations, the murdering of their children, and the grooming of arming of seditionists in their countries through the DLI. A new study found eighteen hundred babies have died in Cuba since 2017 due to US sanctions and the blockade. Who's conducting the blockade? The US Navy. Where are the mothers?

Saying no. Julia Ward Howe founded Mother's Day to stop the wars. I urge the board and the county to loudly protest the lawless, immoral, federal, and military actions if only because of the tremendous economic and community impact to you. Otherwise, when this happens, the county will only have itself to blame for deserted streets and highways, bankruptcy, poverty, or military attack.

Thank you. We'll go next to Dusty and then to I iPhone twenty twenty four.

Hello. Good afternoon, board of supervisors. My name is Dusty. I'm the manager of outreach for the Diversity Center. And I want to mention the Diversity Center.

We're a nonprofit organization, that inspires and advocates for the LGBT plus people of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. We also envision a healthy, vibrant, and diverse intergenerational LGBTQ plus community. So with that in mind, I wanted to join you this afternoon, and speak out in, favor of a proposed resolution declaring the county of Monterey as a sanctuary county for transgender, gender diverse, and intersex individuals. It is integral at a time like this where our TGI folks, our brothers, our sisters are, facing heightened heightened attacks against their autonomy that Monterey County stands up even further raises their hand higher than the state and says, this is a place for you to not only live, but a place where you can thrive. You know, so many of these wonderful ceremonial resolutions earlier recognizing the wonderful health care and health care practitioners that Monterey County has.

So I've I, just wanna speak out. That would be fantastic for us to also say beyond that, also, this is a place where gender affirming care wholeheartedly lives and is welcomed, and everyone has the opportunity for equity in their health care. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll go next to, Chris Garcia and then to Josh Stephens.

Hello, and good afternoon, Monterey County Board of Supervisors. My name is Chris Garcia, and I am the regional program specialist of the Diversity Center. I'm here to ask you to adopt the transgender sanctuary resolution and designate Monterey County as a sanctuary county for transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, gender fluid, and intersection individuals. By adopting this resolution, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors can show their direct support and solidarity with the LGBTQIA plus community and also affirm that our county is indeed a sanctuary and home where the rights and protections of these community members your community members, are highly prioritized and valued. This is a crucial action, especially within this current political climate, for the protection of LGBTQ plus youth and students in Monterey County who consistently face discrimination and direct threats to their rights, especially from the federal government level at this time.

Adopting the transgender sanctuary resolution is a lifesaving act and would actually be a direct suicide prevention act by fortifying Monterey County's commitment to equity and human rights for all. So please let your constituents know and send that direct message that you stand with them and that Monterey County can actually be that sanctuary and that refuge for those who are facing direct threats and attacks onto their identities. And as a person within this community myself, I identify as genderqueer and trans and someone who works and lives in this county, I could always speak to my personal experience as well that this would just be absolutely a lifesaving, life preserving act for everyone. Thank you.

And I'll just thank And I'll just make a quick note that we do have item number 17 on the agenda, for this afternoon, which is a referral referral for transgender queer fluid Sanctuary County. And, currently, we'll continue with, general public comment for items that are not elsewhere on the agenda. So we'll just ask you to refrain from commenting twice. We'll go next to Josh Stevens.

Good afternoon, chair, members of the board, and members of the public. My name is Josh Stevens, and I'm a resident of North Monterey. I come to you today not with a typical administrative grievance, but with a deep concern regarding the erosion of basic decorum and respect originating from this very diets. Specifically, I'm addressing the recent conduct of district one supervisor Luis Alejo. In an era where online discourse is already highly polarized, we rely on our elected leaders to elevate the conversation, not descend into the mud.

Unfortunately, supervisor Alejo's recent derogatory comments on the Internet and his pattern of belittling the very constituents he was elected to serve are frankly beneath the dignity of this office. Public service is a privilege. It is not a taxpayer funded platform to publicly mock, demean, or punch down at community members who happen to voice differing opinions. When a leader reacts to criticism with petty online insults, it does not show strength. It shows a fundamental lack of professional temperament.

Furthermore, when a member of this board uses their position as well as their keyboard to disparage the public, the silence of the rest of this board risks being interpreted as complicity. We cannot allow this kind of behavior to become the accepted standard for Monterey County leadership. Therefore, I am formally calling on this board to hold your colleague accountable. I urge you to agendize the motion to officially censure supervisor Alejo for your conduct unbecoming of a county supervisor. If a formal censure is not the chosen path, I demand that the board outline what other tangible repercussions will be put in place to ensure this behavior stops.

We do not expect perfection from our local leaders, but we absolutely demand basic foundational respect. It is time to send a clear message that consents for constituents will not be tolerated in Monterey County. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We'll go next to the phone number ending in iPhone, iPhone twenty twenty four. IPhone twenty twenty four? Okay. We'll move over to we have Catherine followed by the phone number ending in 705.

Catherine? Okay. We'll go to the phone number ending in 705.

Yes. Good morning, supervisors. Lorna Moffitt here. Mister Church, Kate Daniels, and senator Laird, you have withheld pertinent fire information from the public concerning eucalyptus trees, which endangers every homeowner. You presume to know more than one of the top go to fire scientists in The US, Jack Cohen, who states the trees, including eucalyptus, are not the cause of fires and urban wildfire interface fire problems.

It's house ignition zoning problems. And you've now cut down almost 2,000 eucalyptus trees on false science. Eucalyptus trees that could be cleaning up our air, the heavy metals of battery fires, keeping our bay cool, producing 51,000 pounds of oxygen a year, and contributing over 300,000,000 gallons of water vapor a year. These trees could be cleaning up pesticides and herbicides, but instead you're cutting them down with a vengeance. This is wrong and harmful to us all.

We need to leave eucalyptus trees so they can contribute to our well-being instead of promoting a false hate fear campaign to cut them down. Mister Church, it started with you in your office and you need to end it in your office. You didn't seek the best science from the only fire science lab in The United States. You went to Cal Fire, who by the way is being sued for destroying the Chaparral Forest in the name of fire. You hired local postgraduate students who are being trained by timber science in our colleges on how to cut down forest into park like settings so they can have all our old growth.

You need to stop killing the eucalyptus, mister Church and Kate Daniels and senator Laird. The bible says, hurt not the trees nor the seeds, and you're doing both.

Thank you. We'll go next, to Catherine. Catherine, are you able to unmute and share comment?

I just now got the option to unmute.

Okay. We've got you. There you are. We've got you live. We've got two minutes on the clock for

you to queue. Second, the sensor on Anejo, he needs to go. He I went to him when he was an assemblyman with problems within Monterey County Child Protective Services. It's been fourteen years. Since then, the social worker was fired, not criminally charged. Our county was sued for 1,200,000. I want an ad hoc. I want an investigation into their patterns and practices. I'm directly tied to that case because that same worker lied to take my grandson. The DA should've had a conversation with me.

The DA should have charged her. Luis Alejo has been knowing about this for fourteen years, and he's done nothing to investigate Monarch County CPS. I'd like an ad hoc. I want him censored, and I want someone to start investigating into the thirty years Linda Castillo was a social worker. You guys control their budget. You have some kind of control as far as their patterns and practices. They are violating them daily. Secondly, I am discouraged with our city leaders. They hire a developer who imbalances our money for the homeless people. And you guys are silent.

You should be outraged. And we have two motels sitting fenced up that we're paying for us taxpayers. It's egregious. Does anybody know what they're doing? And, again, another dead one on the track. Why is it Pacific train company responsible for those fees for our law enforcement that we're paying? What are you guys doing about that? There should be no one dying on the track. No one. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll go next to iPhone twenty twenty four. We have you unmuted on our side. You might have to press is it 6 to unmute on your side? Yep. So you might have to press 6 to unmute, but we've got you unmuted on our side here. This is for iPhone twenty twenty four.

This is Brian Clark. I don't know if you can hear

me.

We can hear you. Thank you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Thank you, supervisors. Again, my name is Brian Clark. I am associated with the project that was just approved by the Planning Commission, a couple weeks ago.

I thank you very much. The Planning Commission, the approval of this project was again the result really only because of governor Newsom's new regulations. While they use builders remedy, he also did new regulations for infill developments, which is prop which this project would also have qualified for. So yes, this project was approved, but it took eighteen years to get approved. Kenyatta Nextdoor took twenty years to get approved.

So the planning commission, think number one, the county council needs to give them a primer on the new regulations and that the supervisors may want to again review with the planning commission what their charter is and it is not to support and express their own no growth opinions. So in this case, the no growth opinion was to use the traffic report and say, we think we should get a new traffic report. And the county council had to advise them that again the county had signed off on the traffic report. So, this project in terms of traffic, for example, using vehicle miles traveled is what the state uses. The county uses level of service, but again, per the state guidelines, this is the least traffic impactful site in the county.

It is an infill development next to all of the existing public serving businesses. I could walk 30 feet, 30 feet to my attorney's office. I walk less than a block to the post office. Within a handful of blocks are multiple banks, restaurants, two pot shops.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. We don't have any more hands raised and there's no one else in chambers. We're gonna go ahead and close public comment. We're gonna recess

And I'm for sure.

I'm sorry. We're gonna recess for

lunch. And

I had never had jurisdiction over any cases fourteen years

ago. We're I'm a family gonna recess for lunch. Wonder we'll be reconvening here at 01:30. Thank you.

I was addressing defamatory statements that were made.

Supervisor, we're we're recessing for lunch.

And when I say that somebody is being an online troll Point of order. Definition to it. It says that when a person deliberately

Points of personal privilege are allowed.

Yes. Of course. We've always done that in our

practice except during the We're recessive for more chairs.

Thank

you. But when you say someone is online trolling and they're engaging in defamatory, bullying, and false statements online, we all know who these people are. But there's a definition, and it's only when you call it when you're describing a person who posts deliberately offensive and provocative messages online, such as social media, or performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and motivations of trolls can range from benign to sadistic. These messages can be inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off topic, and may have the intent of provoking others in displaying emotional responses or manipulating others' perceptions, thus acting as a bully or provocateur.

This is a modern thing that all of us as elected now have to deal with. And just because you call people out and their poor behavior doesn't make it wrong. There's a definition. And when you ask you only say that these people are acting like online trolls, that is exactly what this modern day definition describes, and it's a new reality, unfortunately, even here at our Board of Supervisors chambers.

We're gonna go ahead and reconvene the Monterey County Board of Supervisors meeting for what day is it today? It is Tuesday, May 12. Thank you. And it's about just after 01:30. Let the record show that all supervisors are present with the exception of supervisor Kate Daniels who will be who will not be here this afternoon.

We're going to start the afternoon with item number 14, which we pushed from the morning agenda. And I will pass the floor to Donya Namitsu to get us started. Just for the sake of time, we can Better cut do some catch up this afternoon. So thank you. I'll try

to go as fast as I can. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Donya Nimitzu. I'm with Housing and Community Development. Before you today is to conduct a public meeting, receive the recommendations, and adopt the twenty twenty six-twenty

action plan and authorize the director

adopt to

sign the required documents. 20

There are two types of funding, CDBG funds and home funds.

Don, sorry to interrupt. We're going to start off with having Diego announce Spanish interpretation services. Pardon me, Diego, if you wouldn't mind making an announcement. Thank you. Thank you. Pardon me again, Don, I'll let you continue.

Okay, thank you. So there's two different types of funding, CDBG and HOME. We are now both entitlement to both. We became a participating jurisdiction in HOME funds last year. There are specific things that it can fund and not fund.

I'll kind of go fast. So CDBG, it has to meet one national objective, which the most common is to benefit low and moderate income persons. Home basics, we get the annual appropriations, but we also have to match funds. We have to match 25¢ per dollar that is utilized on housing projects. This is does not include whatever money is, accounted for admin.

Urban County is made up of the following jurisdictions, city Of Gonzales, Greenfield, Marina, and Sand City. We're inviting the cities every three years to participate. If they choose to participate, we enter into a JPA, and then every five years we do a consolidated plan. I highlighted in red what happens every five years and how it kind of plays into it, but then every year we do the notice of funding availability, the application process, and then making our recommendations. This is some of the stuff that CDGB has funded locally.

For CDBG funds, we got notification of what we will receive in 2026. We're receiving $1,338,382 We had remaining funds left over from last year. We didn't allocate and assign all the funds. So then there was some extra admin funds. So we have 173,385.

So we have a total of a little over 1,500,000 to allocate projects and services. So home funds. Home funds, we became a participating jurisdiction last year, but it was already after the application process. So this year, our application process includes two years of funding. So we have a total of a little over 1,000,000.

And admin, we can utilize 10% of the funding for admin. However, we downsized it so that we can provide more of the funds to the projects that were requested. So the public services with CDBG that we're recommending is shown and Echo is not listed on here because we are going to recommend that that be paid out of admin. It's the one that we can utilize admin for, so do so that we can give more appropriations to the other ones. CDBG funds covers admin for staff, county council, public notices, environmental reviews for ECHO, and for our city data services and management system, and Veronica Tamna Associates.

So here are the projects that we received applications for, for CDGB funds and for home funds. So, City of Marina were recommending the amount that is in their JPA, Alba 150,000. The Catholic Charities of the Diocese, they did not provide everything in their application that was needed to evaluate their application. So our recommendation is to not allocate any funds to them. Central Coast Center for Independent Living, we're actually doing a little bit under CDBG, and the remaining under HOME.

For Community Homeless Solutions, same thing, we're doing a little under CDBG and HOME for their housing reroofing project. Housing authority for TBRA. So we didn't get an application for the TBRA, however we want to extend the invitation to the housing authority to participate and utilize the funds in their tenant based rental assistance that they currently are already doing. For Rippling River and Pacific Meadow, we don't have a funding recommendation for them because their application didn't clearly state what they were wanting to do with the funds. There was a large emphasis on paying for insurance, which is not an eligible expense.

And then for Meals on Wheels, they ask for 100. We have 50,000 that we are recommending, and then the Veterans Transition Center wants to do some more solar empowerment for the veterans and we're recommending to fund their full request. Home, we're only taking 45,000 for the admin costs and that is it.

Any questions? Thank you. Let's open this up to public comment. Is there any public comment? This is on item number 14. Item number 14. We have one hand raised online. We have a couple hands raised online. Anyone in chambers? Nope. Okay. We'll go online to phone number ending in 194 and then the phone number ending in 747. We're starting with the phone number ending in 194. Feel free to unmute. Okay.

We'll move to the phone number ending in 747. Public comment on item 14. Alright. We've got 194. We've got everyone unmuted. So we'll start with the phone number ending in 194.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Very faintly.

Can you hear me now?

It's still very faint. We're gonna try to turn the volume up here in chambers. Okay. I think it might be on your side. Just speak as loudly as you can. Okay. Go ahead.

Remove the diggative language.

Yeah. We're not getting any audio. Okay. Let's try the phone number ending in 747. Do we have anyone on the line? 747. Alright. We are not getting any audio. We'll circle back on those maybe logging off and logging on again, to see that if works better. Let's bring it back to the board for any discussion, and I'll I'll try public comment one more time. Checking in with my colleagues. Got head shakes. Please.

Yes. A few few questions. Could you describe on the community homeless solutions that they were the biggest awardee, just over a million dollars? What what is what what is PHS facilities? Where is that located? Just didn't didn't give me the description of where that project is.

It's in Marina.

Okay.

It's a affordable housing complex, and they need all new roofs. We funded them last year, but we only did a small portion of what we of what we had. And now that we have the home funds, we can utilize that.

So they got unused money from last year, and with this, they could pay for the entire cost?

So most of the funding is coming from the home funds that we that we received.

Right. But they were allocated some money last year for the

safe I think it was, like, 182,000. And

how do we know how many homes?

They haven't started the project. So they haven't utilized last year's funds yet.

No. I understand. Like, they're gonna reroof how many houses?

Oh, it's it's buildings. And I wanna say there's 15.

Yeah. Great. Then nothing wrong with the Veterans Head Transition Center, but solar power versus housing needs. Right? Or the Catholic Charities tenant based rental assistance. It seems like I would put priority in putting our limited dollars to a program that's gonna help people stay housed or repair housing. Like, I know the senior senior housing projects have a high price tag, but I don't know if solar empowerment right now is really where we should be spending our limited scarce dollars that could be used on rental assistance, for instance, to keep people out of the out of danger.

I I would say I would agree with you. However, they did not submit all of the required documents with their application for us to even evaluate their application. There's there's like 20 something documents that need to be provided, and they only provided three.

Okay.

So

Well, I would just ask my colleagues, you know, I know veteran VTC does amazing work, but this is one of those instances where a 187,000 could go a long way to helping people who are on the brink of being evicted or or losing their homes to stay housed. And I don't see why we can't go back to Catholic Charities. Angela DiNovella has worked with us on many things their executive director and be able to bring that back at a future day once the paperwork is completed. They were the only applicants doing rental assistance out of all these that applied. But that would just be one of my suggestions.

I think right now, it's with everything going on, solar projects are good, but maybe there's other grants to help VTC with that. But at this point in time, I'd rather have money go toward the need is greatest in our county.

Any other comments from the board? Darby has his hand raised. We'll come to you in just a second, Darby. I have just appreciate the work that's gone into this plan and appreciate all of the in-depth conversations that we've had with the urban counties committee. I'm gonna say the name wrong always.

Right. And and trying really to think about how we can, you know, to supervisor Lejuez's point, like, make sure that we're doing the robust outreach that's needed so that when applications come, they're aligned in ways that are meaningful and supportive of the broader goals that we've aligned. We're are really trying hard to align ourselves with knowing that housing and additional units is a top priority. The the committee didn't make any changes to the staff recommendation when it came forward, but I I think is wanting to continue to see sort of a a a breadth of how we engage and align these dollars and with some of those other goals. So I just wanted to comment on that.

I'm also really glad that we've secured the direct home entitlement funding for the first time this year. I think that's a really big deal, and it's a credit to the team that we have here in Monterey County. So thank you, Don and Darby and team for doing that work. I did have one concern in regards to the federal compliance language that's now formally part of the action plan documents. There was a fairly significant discussion in the city of Monterey in regards to the the language that speaks to issues of Gender ideology.

Specifically, the action plan expels includes language stating that Monterrey County shall not use funds to promote gender ideology as to find an executive order. The action plan also includes some extensive immigration enforcement compliance language. So there's there's a number of things in there that I find concerning. And the city of Monterey was able to make changes to how they submitted their their their application in ways that took that language out, but acknowledged, you know, generally federal compliance. I'll also note that in conversations I've had previous to this meeting today, I understand that our county that that there may be a position that we believe that these provisions related to that executive order are actually not enforceable.

So I I'll get that direction from county council. But given that they're not enforceable and given that there may be another path to to not including those specific, really offensive language, I would like to have us amend this plan before we submit it to exclude that offensive language, and we can work with county council. I thought that we had done that prior to this meeting, but it's still in the plan as I read it on the agenda. And I think just to be very clear, there are there are downstream effects when we when we comply with that type of hateful and offensive those statements. And even if we're saying that it's not legally enforceable, that language does create a chilling effect.

It does create fear for our organizations who are trying to determine what services outreach or affirming practices that they feel that could put their funding at at risk. As a county, we have a very clear position of support for equity, inclusion, and dignity, and so to state otherwise on this application, I think, would be action that flies in the face of everything else that, every other position that we've ever taken. So

I do know that an addendum was created to attach to the agreement. If you allow Darby to talk, I think he can give you more insight to that.

And so let's go to Darby first, and then we'll go to county council, just for a comment on those questions and to supervisor Lejuez's question as well. Thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors. Darby Marshall, housing program manager. First, to supervisor Oleo's question about, the community human services, PHS. That's permanent supportive housing. That is 21 buildings with 53 units, and they currently have 160 clients in those facilities.

And the intent here is we we want to replace the roof so that those units don't deteriorate and we have to pull them offline. With regards to the offensive language, that language is not actually found in the action plan. It's in the actual federal agreement itself. And when I went and looked at what the city of Monterey had referenced, was last year's agreement, and it was in fact in last year's agreement with the county. We do have county council has drafted an addendum, indicating that we are a member of a class that there is an injunction against the enforcement of that that will be attached when we, sign the formal grant agreements with the federal government.

So we have taken care of it there. Other than that, it's not part of the action plan itself. It's it's one of these things that the federal government just tacked on as a codicil to the the standard agreement that is used for CDBG at home. And and with regard to Catholic Charities, if I may, one of the challenges that we have, supervisor, is tenant based rental assistance is not generally for keeping people immediately housed. It's it's more like the section eight voucher program.

And so one of the challenges that it comes with administering a home tenant based rental assistance program is you have to have a huge amount of institutional infrastructure to go out and do the unit inspections, collect leases, and do all kinds of extra documentation. And that's why we're we're recommending that we work with the housing authority to do that. They have an emergency shelter voucher program that they're out of money for this year, but if we fund it at the end of the year, they can convert those to regular section eight vouchers. So it kinda does exactly what you're requesting. It helps keep people keep people housed now, but it also creates an opportunity down the road to get them permanent housing vouchers.

So, hopefully, we can keep them housed longer. So not only was the the Catholic Charities application deficient, but there was also no discussion of how they, that they had any understanding of the logistical requirements of trying to manage those funds because they are very complex.

Thank thank you, Darby. Let's take it back out to public comment and try this one more time. So we're gonna go to the phone number ending in 194. And you'll have to press star. Okay. 194.

Hello. Can you hear me?

We can hear you better now. Thank you.

Okay.

And go ahead. You have two minutes for public comment.

Hello, board of supervisors. My name is Sarah Epperson, and I am a resident of Pacific Grove. I am calling to urge you to remove the bigoted language in the county's CDBG proposal, specifically the statement that Monterey shall not use grant funds to promote gender ideology as defined in executive order one four one six eight, which is profoundly harmful and exclusionary. As a queer member of the community, it is extremely disappointing to see the county comply in advance for the deeply hateful and discriminatory administration. While this administration's goals are to marginalize and erase these members of our community, It is your duty to stand up for safe for every member of our community, especially the most vulnerable who need the housing support and stability that the CDBG program is designed to protect.

Our local government should not adopt or perpetuate language that marginalizes its own residents. Doing so signals to the members of the LGBTQ plus community that we are unwelcome or unsafe in our own community. I urge the county to remove the language from the final version of the CDBG program and to refuse to endorse or perpetuate the harmful rhetoric in executive order one four one six eight. Monterey County has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership by affirming that every resident deserves dignity, housing, security, and belonging regardless of gender identity. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for persevering to get through on the phone. We'll go next to the phone number ending in 747.

Hi. Can you hear me?

We can hear you. Thank you for joining us. We have two minutes on the clock for you. Thank you.

Okay. Hello, and thank you for taking my call. My name is Megan Yeoman, and I'm a resident of Pacific Grove. I'm calling to urge you to remove the completely unnecessary and offensive language in the county's CDBG proposal, specifically the line that Monterrey shall not use grant funds to promote gender ideology as defined in executive order one four one six eight. As the mother of a queer child and the grandmother of a trans child, I am extremely disappointed to see Monterey County preemptively bow to a hateful administration instead of stand up for the most marginalized members of our Monterey County community.

I hope you're able to do the right thing and remove this language and recommit standing up for all members of our Monterey County community. And also thank you

for all your hard work.

Thank you. We'll go next to Catherine.

Hi again. Thank you. I'm an activist, as you probably know, for children and families. And I represented a case out of Texas wherein the mother was transgendering her children against her father's will and against the child's will. He was only seven years old. We granted gay rights. Now we want transgender rights. We want to indoctrinate our children. This is insane. We need to have some moral high ground.

I stand with the federal government. There are children being abused by their own parent for them to be transgender. This is more of a mental health issue. The next thing we're gonna want is people marrying their pets. Draw a line in the sand. This is egregious behavior. This is not the child's voice. This is adults speaking for a child. It's insane. It's harmful.

Read the story about save James. These children are being mutilated for the behavior of mentally ill people. And back to the money, we have so many illegal aliens in Monterey County in California, period, that broke the law. There's a law about crossing the border. There's a process.

I'm a retired Social Security worker of twelve years. They had amnesty. They chose to hire coyotes and come across the border with illegal papers, and they're using those illegal papers to get welfare benefits and housing in our community. That is shortening the ability for our local legal citizens to get the housing they need. I'm a retired registered process server. I served so many court lawsuits in low income housing. Gang members, there ain't supposed to be felonies felons living in low income housing, but they are.

Thank you. Alright. I don't see any other hands raised, so we'll bring it back to the board. And I'll just so I appreciate the the comment that it's in the template or it's in the the signatories and so that we can do an addendum. But I'm referencing on page one of or page it's page one of the annual action plan.

The entirety of the introduction paragraph reiterates the language that that I'm asking to have removed. And so that's not the the the if we can do an addendum to to to strike out the the the form language, but to have it included specifically in our plan is what I'm objecting to. So just to be very clear, this is on page five of the PDF attachment d that very clearly includes written out at the forefront of our plan language that is highly objectionable. We'll go back to Darby.

Supervisor, if I may. We will I I will have to work with county council on that to figure out the the best way to do this. It I'm not sure it's as simple as simply striking it out of the plan because that that it big pieces of this plan are written by HUD. So I'll have to work with county council, but we will either have have a paragraph that this is HUD HUD required language that is unenforceable, or we will or we will strike it if, county council says that that that is acceptable.

Alright. Happy to, entertain, action by this board on this plan.

Yeah. I I I'm fine with all the recommendations except for the solar empowerment. I wonder if my colleagues would be willing to kind of remove that one. And then what Darby mentioned to there's a possibility to put that towards keeping people housed, but through the housing authority, which can do all the verifications. I just don't see them that they've applied here.

So, I don't know what needs to be done for them to be able to carry out such a program. But a 187 with 1,000 with all the significant costs and people struggling even more with gas and many other things, foods going up. I I just wonder how how could that be carried out, Darby, if if my colleagues would be so inclined to use that money for for housing program?

Supervisors, unfortunately, the way that this the CDBG program works, we can only use 20% or 15% of the grant dollars for public services. And in order to fund additional tenant based rental assistance, we would have to use CDBG public service dollars, which are already fully recommended. So this is the the solar empowerment is coming out of the funds that are restricted to affordable housing, infrastructure, and community facilities. If you if the board wanted to, you could direct us to reduce the amount that is available for owner occupied, housing rehabilitation and direct that to tenant based rental assistance, but only within certain limits before we would trigger having to come back to the board and amend our consolidated plan. It's certainly doable.

It's just, what the board's desire is.

So I'll just add, I think, and, you know, I think one of the things that I feel comfortable with that PTC is they're investing significantly in it and creating additional housing units. So any reductions in their PG and E costs, I'm confident in watching their work that they're reinvesting that directly back into the creation of additional units serving homeless individuals. So I'll go to.

On that particular solar project I'' not on the committee I didn''t look into detail I'' wondering if one of the reasons being proposed is to say for them to save money on electric bill, which how much would that be and that obviously opens up money other program programmatic money for other activities if there's being saved and that's also some long term savings. Without a reason why there'd be to pull that on them, I'm disinclined to do that myself.

Yeah. I don't I I we're there's four of us somewhere in two not there. So whatever moves us forward today, I I think we've and on the other matter, I'd still lack clarity on what I I I would turn to counsel if we're gonna make a motion at this point on the other item on how to approach that to put us in a position where you've heard the concerns of the community. We've seen them play out on I think supervisor asked you social media with community around the city of Monterey, similar issues such as at this point, what's the right path forward?

If I may,

chair. It's our position that enforcement of that particular certification isn't joined by federal court orders, specifically Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence versus Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And what we would recommend is putting an addendum on that says the recipient does not certify compliance with said provisions, and it it can be what's in the contract as well as what's in the draft proposal that's required, and state that these provisions have been enjoyed by federal court orders. So you're you're striking through an addendum, if you will, the the offensive language.

I I think but I would also ask that we remove it from the page one of our plan and reference the addendum in that the city of Monterey simply took language that said, you know, that they'll abide by federal, you know, federal rules and requirements as legally enforceable, which would address, I think, both points.

And and we can add that we will comply with federal law. Did my concern about actually marking up a federal contract is that once you change a contract instead of putting an addendum, there's more likelihood that the funding will be pulled and the contract won't be executed by the federal government.

Not hearing a motion. I'm gonna make a motion that we adopt the the proposal that's in front of us with amendments to page one of attachment d to reference the similar language to to direct county council to work with our team and consult the city of Monterey to mirror language that was used in their application speaking to speaking to this issue of the offensive language that's being called out. So that'll be a motion.

I wanna make sure we're not just jeopardizing the whole the whole thing here. I mean, it needs to be this is an important issue. It has to be addressed. And when does it does the decision have to be made on this?

The action plan is due to HUD by Friday.

Well, that makes a problem, doesn't it? Are are we gonna be able to get, yeah, some language over there?

I'm confident that county council can work with them to get get some language in there.

You feel you can do it in that period?

It it's it's simple. It would be following these lines. We'll take look

at what

city of Monterey did as well.

I not on this issue, but I just wanna speak. I'll vote for this today, but I I would just ask staff to I just and maybe the committee that solar projects aren't the the priority right now. The start where where or the greatest need is, even though it's they're nice, they might save some, but I don't think they're gonna save a lot because they're so expensive to install and and to for this amount, I don't think it's gonna serve that many households. But this could have served dozens of families needing that help. But but for today, I wanna support it because I do think VTC does great work.

Alright. And the motion is clear to county council. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. Passes with the four present, supervisors. Okay. Thank you again, Don, for all the work. Alright. Let's move to item number 15. This is an update on our measure AA funding and related projects, and we'll bring our AA team in. Thank you for joining us Debbie.

Okay. First off, thank you board, board supervisors and chair Askew. Michael Beaton, assistant county administrative officer. Presenting with me today is my esteemed colleague, director Ishi, from public works facilities and parks. Today's item is requesting the board approve a budget resolution to appropriate funds for Measure AA projects that were previously approved by the board, receive an update on some of the early successes of those projects, approve the expansion of two of those projects, which you'll hear about in a little bit, and add one new Measure AA project to the approved list and all related budget transactions associated.

This item requires a four fifth as it is budget related. In August 2025, the board identified fiscal year twenty five-twenty six budget priorities for Measure AA funding. The initial projects had emphasis on being placed in highly visible community impacting projects. Priority areas identified by the board included road repair and infrastructure projects, water and sewer infrastructure, parks projects, essentially mandated services, and public safety. The board also directed that projects should not be approved until funding was actually received, or what I call cash in hand.

On 02/03/2026, the board approved 10,100,000 in tier one projects identified on the exhibit with funds that were received at that time. The board also gave direction to move forward with the tier two projects as funds were received, which was another 4,200,000. Well, the funds have now been received to support both tier one and tier two projects and including the items that are currently in the fiscal year twenty five-twenty six budget. Today's action is in part to effectuate those budget transactions required to appropriate the funding to those departments to finance those projects to proceed forward. In addition, on 04/23/2026, the Measure AA Committee received an update on the early successes of some of those projects, which you'll hear about in just a second.

During that update, the Measure AA Committee was supportive and identified two roads projects that were identified for potential expansion from the initial scope in the tier one and tier two projects that were approved. Also identified was an opportunity to implement planning efforts for a scenic road protection structure to preserve and protect county assets. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Director Ishi for a continued update.

Thank you very much, Assistant CIO Beaton. As introduced, I'm Randall Ishi, Director of Public Works, Viscilla and Parks. And the presentation before the board is, as stated, an update on the early success Tier one and Tier two projects, in addition to some additional Tier two projects that were asked the department for the department. And as noted on this next slide, this is essentially the same presentation that's provided to the Measure AA Committee at their April 6 meeting. So the overview of the presentation is to talk about here again the status update, proposed FY twenty six Q2 projects, and then open up for questions and comments by your Board and the public.

And to start us off, these next few slides are examples of the early success projects as approved by the Board that have been completed well before the thirty June twenty six end of fiscal year date. This first slide exemplifies before and after pictures of Blackie Road. The paving work was completed on 03/26/2026, and the striping was completed on April 1. Moving on with another example of success has been completed is Dolan Road in the North County. The paving work was completed with the extents that were increased from Castro Boulevard Westerly to pass the railroad tracks.

And the paving work was completed on April 14 with the striping being completed on April 23. Top picture shows the before condition, and the bottom picture represents the after condition. The project that the department engaged on was the first tier of the San Benanzio Road from State Route 68 Easterly to Harper Canyon. The paving work was complete on April 6, with the striping work being completed on April 9. The bottom picture in this case represents the before condition, and the top picture represents the after construction completion and completion picture.

This next one represents Reservation Road. And on Reservation Road, the paving work was completed on 03/25/2026, and the striping was completed on 03/30/2026. Topics represents the before condition of Reservation Road nearby the East Garrison community, and the bottom represents the post construction completion pictures. And running things out, in the South County, we had Bradley Road. And Bradley Road's paving was completed on 03/12/2026, with the striping being completed on 03/20/2026.

Bottom picture represents the before condition through the community, and the top picture represents the post construction and completion picture with striping pending in this particular picture. But again, striping was completed on March 20. So a lot of road projects were completed in a very short time frame once the funding and direction were approved. Staff engaged on those, and with a couple months time period, these road projects were completed, with the last few in the hopper as we speak, again, to be completed before thirty June twenty six. The parks projects have started as much work as they could, but due to lack of appropriations, they are not at the same level of completion or initiation.

So the item today will, if the Board approves it, will give them that funding and appropriations so that they can continue with their projects. This slide is a location map representing the additional Tier two projects that the department brought back to the Measure AA Committee for the consideration. It's a Google Earth based map with the pushpins representing the three proposed project locations. And the background layer around the Google Earth base map represents the Board of Supervisor districts. So first project the staff presented was the Viera Canyon Road.

And Viera Canyon Road's original tier two limits were from C Route 156 to approximately one mile east. Taking in feedback from the committee from previously, staff looked at it further and determined that an additional tier two project to be done at the same time as the original tier two project could be completed, And it staff recommends adding approximately 1.1 miles to the end of the county maintained road at an estimated cost of $1,200,000 So again, it's to do the original tier two project plus an additional 1.1 miles to get the project fully paved. Again, the road fully repaved within the county's maintained mileage at an estimated cost of $1,200,000 additional. The total Viera Canyon Road project cost would be approximately $2,200,000 And again, this proposal would complete all of Viera Canyon Road that's in the county's jurisdiction. The next one is San Benoncio Road.

And as mentioned, the tier one project, which was from State Route 68 to Harper Canyon Road, at approximately one mile, has already been completed. So the original tier two that was brought to the committee and to the board was from Malpos One Point Zero to Malpos 2. And that's the far easterly side of the San Benazio Road, where it loops back around into Crowley Tierra. Staff, again, looked at this a little further. And staff determined and recommended that the project could be increased by approximately half a mile to the east of this proposed Mont Post 1 to 2 due to its pavement condition for an approximately an additional $800,000 or $800,000 Thus, the total San Bernardino Road cost for the tier one and tier two would now be $2,800,000 But here again, the additional tier two request would be $1,800,000 And the final project proposal that staff had brought forward to the committee was the Scenic Road Protection Structure.

And as the board knows, this is a multi hazard mitigation project that protects critical infrastructure. It stabilizes the road known as Scenic Road, where it resides upon a bluff and has a proclivity to become scoured by highway of action and other environmental hazard. And the project would also safeguard sewer and communication lines that are within the road prism of Scenic Road. The project supports public access by protecting the Carmel River State Beach, which serves approximately 80,000 plus visitors annually. And it's a resilient coastal project in that it's a low profile wall that protects the bluff from, again, waves, lagoon outflow, those environmental factors that Steph have mentioned previously, and also to predict it from the one hundred year flood and storm event by providing that level of protection.

And it also enhances environmental sensitivity by allowing a natural lagoon breach to occur as opposed to the action of which county public work staff perform every year typically during the winter season where a pilot channel is carved into Como River State Beach to help promote the flow of the Como River back to where it should go across the beach and into the ocean. That is done after staff acquire many permits from the various regulatory agencies. And as a note, this project was one of the top three priorities of the from the legislative workshop and legislative priorities of the board. And so this slide summarizes the progress to date that has been pursued on the Scenic Road Protection Structure project. Staff had applied for a FEMA Hazardous Mitigation Grant program grant, also known as Hotel Mike Golf Papa.

But unfortunately, it was not selected. So in order to keep the project moving forward, staff brought this proposal to the Measure AA Committee, where the plan would be to not only continue seeking other grant opportunities, but also to start a set phase of the project of initial design and permitting, which would be done through a request for proposals process to select a consultant team. And the team would be scoped for just enough work to be able to start more design work, potentially get it to the 60% design, as well as start acquiring permits, the multiple upon multiple permits that are needed for this project. In addition, Steph would look at acquiring other local funds to help pair up with this initial money to get the project going. So the request was $500,000 to do the request proposal document, solicit it, bring back to the board a qualifications based, highest based consultant team for the initial design and permitting of the project.

And again, with an eye towards the future, it would try to combine other local funds for this phase. But the outcome of the product would be to make the Seneca protective structure more competitive for grant opportunities. In talking with the grant scoring committees and others for feedback through a debrief, it was found that to make a project more competitive, it needs to be at that 60% design level with an understanding of what permits are needed for the project. So in summary of these additional Tier two projects, the first project of increasing the Tier two limits of Euro Canyon Road would be an additional 1,200,000 The next project was to increase the limits of San Benazio Road for additional $800,000. And the funding for the initial design and permitting and the preparation of the request proposal document for the senior protection structure is on the order of $500,000.

So the total additional request at this time is $2,500,000, and this was supported by the Measure AA Committee. And that concludes this part of the presentation. And with that, we open it up to the Board for questions or comments. Staff, And thanks you very much.

Thank you. We'll start with public comment. Is there anyone for public comment on this item number 15? Seeing no hands or so, bring it back to the board for public comment, public discussion or motion. Supervisor Church?

This wasn't this is on the the project list. It was the parks I know which have not the work has not started on that because just the way that the funding goes. Do we have do we have an approximate date when some of these park projects that have been talked about earlier will be or have been talked about the major a would be coming forth?

Thank you for the question, supervisor Church.

And I know I'm jumping kind of ahead to attachment b, maybe which you're gonna discuss later or earlier, I should say. Later, that would be the right word. Yes, I'll get it right. But, I would try to get somebody some timeline on this.

Certainly. And, good question, Supervisor Church. When we get into more development on some of these projects, we can certainly provide your board and the Measure AA Committee with a further status update of the development of these projects. Again, some of them have been able to acquire the materials for the project. Others require some consultants to assist with that portion of the project due to the level of complexity. So those will take a little bit longer. But if your board approves the funding appropriation for them, Park staff is ready to reengage on these and provide an update of where where they're at in terms of their timelines.

We don't we don't have a date right now is what you're saying at this point.

There is not a date determined at this point. Correct.

Thank you.

Yeah. I just wanna call out, point out that as we look at the map of the projects and where the pins are for this next round, there's not a single one in the 3rd District. And as we talk about equity and wanting to make sure to address the biggest needs with the majority of roads, I was obviously part of the committee that made this recommendation. And the reason I'm calling it out is in the past they've been referred to as our slush fund projects. So I just wanted to call that out and say that in the future, in the first two rounds, we've not received our portion whether you're looking at road miles, whether you're looking at need or failing roads in the third yet.

But I've been happy to meet these immediately doable projects and agree with supervisor Church to bring these to the forefront to capture what we had outlined as a priority in framing these projects as key quick wins for the community. But as we look forward to the future, I just wanted to frame that and be clear that for now, right, there's not much yet in South County. We've had a couple small roads, but in the future, I'm hoping we can have that parody and I not be called out in the future and say, ah, this map has a lot more South County. Well, this is why the first two have not been there. But as we move forward, look forward to continuing to make progress countywide, which is what we've been able to do so far with these projects and position key projects that have been identified by this board like the protection structure in Carmel for future wins.

So happy to support this today.

Well, I'm kind of reluctant because I I I don't totally understand this process yet either because it seems like we approved doing part of the work part of the improvements on these two streets. And then instead of looking at other roads that are on our waiting list, basically, roads that supervisor Lopez is talking about, now we're saying, well, let's spend another 2,500,000 on doing a little bit more on these other two areas in the county versus spreading these resources more equitably across the county. So here here we are extending projects that are already getting done. I know it's not fully, but but there's other projects in the pipeline waiting, and now we push off 2,500,000 less for those to get these to get more done on these. And I I don't I don't know the conditions of the road.

Right? Because we don't see I I know Randy, you and your team are professionals at this, but when when it comes to us here, we don't see this is the this is the current photo of additional tier two on Viera Canyon, and this is why we think it's needed. This is the dangers that it presents. We don't get any of that. And we just got always get, oh, could do more. It's gonna cost so much if you guys approve it today. But that's all basic. We're not getting any other analysis of how was that prioritized. This this additional work was prioritized over all the other projects that are in the way. Randy, I don't know if you had a response to that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Rosa Leo. Those are very good, salient points. And, as you noted, there are multiple needs throughout the county. These were ones that staff felt would be quick wins that could be done before June 30 with the case of Scenic Road Protection Structure needing to go beyond that.

So we would need to do probably an assignment fund to take it beyond the June 30 date. But again, these are ones that, while construction crews are out there, they would be completed before the June 30 date, again exemplifying that these early success projects are showing delivery back to the rate payers, our public. But that all in mind, and as you pointed out, there are many other needs and other projects in the county. There is a compliment list that staff have prepared for consideration for a future year, in this case fiscal year twenty seven, that we would like to bring back that are separate of this item. These were just ones that here again we felt could be done in the next two months time period.

And to that end, the Viera Canyon Road, by way of example, some of the things that we looked at besides the timeline for construction was also how it serves as a corridor for residents who live in that area to get to a destination place, in this case, a shopping center to get goods and services at which they need both local along that street, but also in other portions of that part of North County that people would use to access the Proom Tree Shopping Center.

Yeah. Well, just feedback on what you said. I'd rather not do projects, multimillion dollar projects, because they're quick wins before a particular date. I would rather see in the future saying, these are how we rate roads. Tier one is very poor condition. Tier five is the best. We rank these, evaluate it. This particular new additional tier is tier two or tier one. That would be some objective evidence that we're focusing the limited resources on the roads that are in the worst repair first, rather than say, oh, we're doing some work up the street. If we add this, it's a quick win for the public.

Maybe the road is is not as bad as other roads that are in the wait. Right? So, that's what I'm saying. Let's let's have some objective criteria in the future. Otherwise, if we don't see we don't know what is voting for these blindly because it looks good and it's a quick win. And I I don't think that's the way we should be making decisions over limited dollars when we have so many roads and very, very bad repair. And I'd rather focus on those if if some of these stretches are not as in bad condition. Yes, they do deserve attention at some point, but there's probably other roads that are in far much worse shape that probably should be prioritized over these over a quick win before June 30.

Right. I did have a question about the project list shows 16,850,000, including the 650,000 for the housing element implementation. But the board report shows 16,200,000 appropriations increase for 2526. I just want to make sure I wasn't missing where the housing element fits in. Is that for next year's?

Great question. We worked with the HCD director in the department. They identified they won't actually start the work for the housing element until next fiscal year, so we have included it in the fiscal year '27 recommended budget. So it is included into next year's budget as they were not able to start or complete this item this fiscal year.

Okay. Great. So it's it's there, but for next year. And the other 12 point or sorry, 16,200,000 is for this year's budget?

Correct.

Got it. And then yeah, it it to supervisor Olejo's comments, I think I can just echo a perfect need again for why we need just some policies to guide how these dollars are spent, prioritized. I think that issue has come up every single time we've had a conversation. So I will again ask for that to be prioritized. And in regards to the sort of equity point, 4,000,000, just about 4,000,000 of the initial 13,000,000 in roads allocation is is headed to District 3.

So I just wanna make sure we we know that where the roads are, where the needs are. And what I hear you saying is that you wanna make sure those projects are, like, getting done in the same you know, timeliness and order. So the the funding is allocated. I just wanna make that clear. We're all on the same page for that.

I think the point was I have two thirds of all road miles in my district. Right? So 66% of all roads are in the district. So four purse four out of 13 isn't equal to the 66% of roads.

Right. And so back to the policy and process that we use, just the number of road miles may not equal the number of miles driven on a road. And so I think there's nuances in how we need to get really clear about how we're valuing and prioritizing investments. We could have, you know, tons of road miles, but if they're you know, I think there's there's details there that need to be considered. And so I just wanna call out, like, there is there is there is a priority being given to District 3 in terms of in terms of roads improvements. And then on let's see here. The I just wanna confirm the housing element. Okay. I've got my questions. So those were my questions.

Thank you. I can support, you know, given the lack of a process that we're following clearly that we've all agreed to. I can support what's in front of us today, but, again, we'll, state that, like, it would be really great to have, some clarity of what the what the guidelines are for how that we agree on collectively, so that when things come forward, we are on the same page. So, I'll pass it back to supervisor Church, and then I'm happy to entertain a motion.

We have talked about those guidelines too, and and are developing it. These are the initial projects that were approved, and we were following the direction the board gave as the board report states in August '25, which it says, do high visibility roads, which is what was done. And that's, you know, that's what we're doing. And and they're, you know, it is gonna be difficult to completely measure things out between road mileage and population. But there's a lot of road miles down in in South County that need to be addressed.

There's larger populations up in the North. So, the way it's coming out is it's roughly coming out equal, I think as you're looking through some of these areas. But there's going to be times where we present things such as this time where it's heavier in other areas, and next time, hopefully it'll be heavier down in South County. And, in terms of putting a lot of money into a certain road, I've been pushed, I've pushed on this repeatedly, and it's my experiences when Paradise Road was paved a year or two ago, and the county had to fix a very bad area, and then we had some extra funds that we extended it. We didn't do the entire road.

So, yes, I got people that said thank you for paving the road part of the road, but where we stopped paving I got complaints, because people said, why did you stop in front of my driveway and not pave that? So, instead of us taking pieces here, and pieces there, and pieces there, and doing little bits like it's we're trying to put together a broken vase or something, it's really good to proceed forward on this. With Viera Canyon, there was talk of doing just the first mile. Just, I think it was the first mile up on San Fonencio. And, I've advocated and appreciate the support on that, that we go through it when we have a project, a road that's bad, like Viera Canyon, that's a good example.

I'm familiar with that better than I am, San Bonancio. The whole road is about the same condition. So why stop at one mile? Let's do two. And let's finish the road and get it done properly and right.

And in terms of developing a plan for this, I'm I don't know if we should go back on the worst roads. Otherwise, I'm sure we're gonna be paving for a long time on Nacimento Ferguson, perhaps, which is a dirt road, and it does get some use. But you gotta look at the condition of the road, and how much it's used, and the purpose it's used for. And so, there's not gonna be a perfect science in this, but we have been talking about that in the meetings. But, right now, we're still going through what was the general direction that was given months ago on going through with high visible projects and that was the direction the board gave and I do hope we'll have something a little more specific when we come back again.

Yeah. And my point to to that was the same in that. If we went strictly by the data, I'd probably end up with 90% of the funds. If you go strictly by failing roads, length, condition, access, and the pure sense of equity, and I'm not looking for that. I'm trying to be fair to the colleagues, understanding that there's needs countywide. I'm not trying to create a program that just looks at that because it would only benefit my district. That was the point I was making. Again, back to why the program is so far rolled out the way it is. I know supervisor Church has seen the data. Randy's presented it several times and just shared, well, this is what where the f's are.

This is where the d's are. And it would we'd be paving South County for six, seven years before anybody else saw a dime. And that would not put any of us in a great light when trying to show the community that measure a a has worked beyond folks saying, well, Lopez took it all. And I'm trying to avoid that conversation, through clarity and transparency around the fact that we're not necessarily using direct algorithms and data or there would be a straight slant to south.

Yeah. Madam Chair, as supervisor Church indicated and I think Supervisor Lopez has too, the committee is working on guidelines. We've had some preliminary discussion at the last meeting. I believe the committee's meeting again in June and we'll be further working on that. So there will be guidelines developed and bringing those to the board at some point.

Again happy to entertain a motion.

I so move to approve staff recommendation.

Right we have a motion from church a second from Lopez. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. One opposed, three. Just need a four fifth.

Okay. We did need four fifths. So it's has the effect of not going forward.

I'm gonna drive before this comes back, I'm gonna drive down Viera Canyon Road and see the conditions and also San Benazio.

If if I can propose an alternative. If the direction is because of the additional items, if we can get potential maybe approval to move forward with the budget resolution, but authorizing the county administrative office to make changes to the budget resolution as to remove the additional items that were identified that would at least allow us to fund the current approved projects. I'd really appreciate that.

And so to be clear on what's being impacted if we don't do that at this point, there's the projects in parks, they don't have the flexibility within their funding to move forward on those. So those are at a standstill until we can get this funding resolution passed. Again, the parks projects we approved last time have not moved forward because the funding has not yet been allocated. So bifurcation would let us move forward.

My concern is on two additional projects. So if we put that aside and bring it back down the road, then I could go with the rest as

Would you like to make that motion?

We could modify your motion.

Well, failed. So we're starting with the new motion. I

I'd like to see this come back with a full board, frankly. It's and I don't know how quickly we can do that on doing things. But, you know, I've been pretty otherwise, we're just putting a putting a standstill on our projects, which I thought we were trying to deliver to the public, which is what the board asked us to do in August. And now we're not doing that. So, know, I guess we don't don't have a and don't have the forfeits vote to serve the people in this county as as we've suggested.

But I I think we should not do projects because they're convenient and you wanna get it before June 30. That should not be the criteria, as was stated by staff. But the other projects have been in the works. I'm good with those. I could move those forward. Just these are two additional projects don't seem to have the justification to do them just because it's convenient.

So would you like to make that motion?

Yes. I make the motion to approve all all the the recommendations with exclusion of the early success tier two additional projects.

I'll second that.

Okay. We have a motion and a second. Is staff clear on the motion? Everyone's clear on the motion?

I would like that for consideration, not as part of the motion, but additional direction that that other item the other items we brought back at the soonest possible time to get that gets us to four.

I'm fine with that.

Okay. All in favor on the replacement motion?

Aye. Aye.

Any noes? Do we have four? That was four yeses? Alright. Okay. Thank you for that. And the other item, we'll get that on the next available agenda, hopefully, as soon as possible. He will move on to item number 16 to receive a presentation from two of the four development set aside agencies. We have the Monterey County Business Council with us and see Monterey.

Good afternoon. Chair Esquire, Board of Supervisors, Assistant CAO Pallanelli, Richard Vaughan, Economic Development Manager here, and we have a presentation, as you mentioned, by the two development set aside agencies out of the four that we currently oversee. And I'll be introducing both executive director and president and CEO of the organizations. The first presentation that we have is by Jeff Ruster, our executive director for the Monterey County Business Council. And just to give you some additional background on the development set aside program, this is a program that operates annually.

And the organizations are required to provide an in person presentation and then their annual report. And this is the first of the two with the in person presentation to the Board of Supervisors.

Jeff?

Thank you, and Madam Chair and Board of Supervisors, I'm Jeff Ruster, the Executive Director with the Monterey County Business Council. And, I'm joined today by Jordan Caballero. Jordan is a key staff with the MCBC program. He works on our Apex Accelerator program and also is the current lead for the Small Business Development Center. Both programs we'll talk about in just a second. Joining us virtually as well is Jenny McAdams. Jenny is the director of operations. She also is our point person for the Leadership Monterey County program. And, we are here today to report during the period of July through December 2025. I just want to point out for the record that I just joined back in March, a couple months ago.

So, all the accomplishments, the great work that has been going on is really due fully to the credit of the staff. Jenny, Jordan, Victor Valdez, Rhonda DeVito, and others. Next slide. MCBC just celebrated anniversary, and since day one, our mission has been focused on making stronger and more resilient the economy of Monterey County. And though our mission has stayed very focused on the same thing for the last thirty years, Our operating approach and our programs have changed through the years as the economy has changed and as the needs of businesses have changed.

And, you'll see up here a brief listing of the different programs that we've run. I've already mentioned them. The Apex program, the Leadership Monterey County, SBDC, and there are other initiatives as well that are funded with DSA resources. And, on the next page, I'm sure you'll recognize the priorities here. The thing I really wanted to emphasize though is that for every dollar of funding we get from DSA, we're able to leverage 3 or $4 from the federal government for the Apex program, and then for the SBDC program, both federal and state dollars.

So, that obviously allows us working with our partners to expand impact within the county. So, it's a critical source of funding for us. On the next page. In order to stay in tune with the needs of businesses, we interact with anywhere from 500 to 600 businesses a year. So, that's obviously feedback that we can get in terms of the opportunities and the challenges that we're facing.

As I think you're aware of, we've done a lot of research through the years, most recently on kind of what the regional economic trends are, and also the opportunities, and again, the challenges facing small business. These reports were available on our website. We believe they provide important input to policymakers, to our partners, and it really does help MCBC decide where to target most our resources to get optimal impact, where we should be doing our marketing and outreach, and where, and who with whom we should be partner to increase that outreach. Leadership Monterey County is just a wonderful program. Everywhere I go, I seem to encounter like a current cohort member or former alumni of the Leadership Monterey County program.

It is developing the next generation of leaders. It provides, you know, wonderful learning and network opportunities, study tours. There have been study tours to date since the pro this program launched. I think it was February for in both the agricultural sector, the education sector, And there's another study tour that's lined up for this Friday. Apex.

The Apex Accelerator Program. Again, this is funded with the Department of Labor. During this time, we've supported around two fifty companies during that six month period. What I would note is those companies, some of those companies were able to secure $70,000,000 worth of contracts, which I think is a particularly impressive number over a six month period of time. And for that specific six month period of time, because there was the shutdown, there were a lot of layoffs, and there's a lot of reorganization going on with the federal government.

So, again, I think these speak testimony. And you'll see also in terms of client different demographics, the women owned, Hispanic owned, veteran owned businesses are a big part of the clientele that we serve. And the only other thing I would add on this program, this program is designed mostly for well established businesses that can have the systems in place and the experience to really manage the complex procurement processes often associated with government contracts. The Small Business Development Center program, again, is funded with a mix of state and federal resources. We served over 300 businesses during this six month period.

The SBDC program is a nice complement to the APEX program because the SBDC program, can you it does serve well established businesses and quite often there's a referral to the APEX program, once maybe the business plan has been put in place, and then maybe going after government contracts as a way to kind of implement that that business plan. But, SBDC also does serve folks that are just starting a business. Maybe a first time starting a business. Are people thinking about starting a business? And, we do have a rotating presence for this program in Soledad, in Monterrey, and obviously here in Salinas as well.

A couple numbers I would just point, you can see kind of the businesses that we serve and the profile of those businesses for that six month period, a key data point would be that there was an overall increase of 1,800,000 in sales by these companies, which obviously enhances the local tax base and 15 of those clients went on to actually start a small business. Coming back to the DSA priorities, economic workforce development, marketing and outreach and partnerships. I think this example here, supporting childcare entrepreneurs, a wonderful example of that. It is a program that is really a partnership that is being led principally by Nurture and Bright Beginnings. They have, over the years, developed a strong program where they work with entrepreneurs and provide training in Spanish and English to help entrepreneurs establish a home based childcare business.

Around June, that training was coming to an end. There were 62 businesses that those organizations helped in terms of helping them through the licensing process, the training, as I mentioned, and providing them small grants to defray the cost of starting up. SBDC then came in and supported some of those companies in the July, August, September, October timeframe to provide them with further technical assistance, because that first or two years of being an entrepreneur can be very intimidating. There's a lot of new things, a lot of unexpected things. So, having the ability to tap into the SBDC advisory network really helped those companies.

And, about with a cohort that ended that year, last year, about 500 new slots were created. And, I'm really happy to say, with additional funding provided by the county, we directly, MCBC, with county funding, have supported a second round, a new cohort, of about 30 individuals that just started about a month ago that we hope leads to the creation of 200 to two fifty new childcare slots. So, again, I want to just thank you, and I want to thank Richard and Isela for the very warm welcome that they've offered me. They have been very patient with all the questions I've been asking here in my first couple months on the job. But, of course, I want to thank every one of the the board of supervisor members here.

It is really due to your individual and your collective leadership that the county and the economy is stronger, it's more resilient, and it's more inclusive. So, that ends my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Maybe let's we'll bring it back to the board for any questions on this presentation. No? Supervisor Lejo, anything? Nope? Okay. We will say thank you for the presentation. We'll do the next one, then we'll do public comment and then some discussion. Thank you.

And next up, we have Rob O'Keefe, president and CEO of c monterey, and he'll his team will actually be sharing the presentation virtually over Zoom.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, supervisors. Thank you for the opportunity to provide this update. I also have with me Mackenzie Fisher. She's on our marketing team. She's going to run the PowerPoint because I can't push the button right. So she's going to do that for me. So an update on our are you still logging in? And there we are. So strategic update, as Richard had mentioned. Give a few updates and go through this pretty quick, then a little bit of foreshadowing on what's coming next.

So on the next slide. Staffing update. Some of you may know a couple of these folks. We've bolstered our community relations program and how we work with our community first by bringing in Don Mathis Park as our new vice president of marketing and community relations. She had ten years at Pebble Beach. She was at three c e four number of years before joining us. We're very excited about that. And then I think you all know Colleen Courtney who is coming on a week from yesterday as our new community relations director. So we're very excited about that. This is an updated report of investment report.

It's looking at the dollars that the county's invested for through the third quarter of this fiscal year and the return on that investment measured in a number of different ways ranging from our sales team bringing in 25 groups to county properties which resulted in over 3,000 booked room nights and over $2,800,000 in economic impact. We also put up there 42,000 website referrals. When people come to see monterey.com, we want them going to a businesses URL as quickly as possible. Most of the businesses, have 1,200 plus members, most of them, the large majority of them are small owner operated. They don't have sales teams.

They don't have marketing capabilities. We're that for them. And because of your investment, it's free for those in the county. Let's go to the next one. I sent this out earlier, but I wanted to bring it up one more time. Mcvga right now is not there. There's sort of a leadership vacuum in terms of, how we project, our wine country. We are working with several of the leaders in that. And as they come together, including SLH, they actually got a grant for wine tasting room promotion. We're working with them on that. But we're not waiting. We are moving ahead. And in the next year, this is just a warm up. You may have seen this. It's just outside of Chular.

The next year, we're gonna going to focus very heavily on wine country and pushing that. It's an the industry is hurting here and elsewhere, and it needs that promotional boost. And we have a really unique wine country experience that we're going to be out there very big within the coming year. Next. I think everyone should know the new flight from Chicago is launching on the twenty third. A lot of work went into this. A lot of collaboration went into this. Visit Carmel was very involved. The airport, of course, the aquarium put in a considerable amount of dollars to help promote this flight, and we're very excited about that. And this is a little bit go ahead to the next line of how we're promoting it in Chicago right now.

And do we have sound?

Wonder begins the moment you land. Discover Monterey, Carmel by The Sea, Pebble Beach, Big Sur, and so much more with new nonstop flights from Chicago. Monterey, find your way here.

This is playing in Chicago right now. And in, on the flip side, we're working with CHU Chicago. They're the DMO there, and they're gonna be running ads soon to get people to fly from here to Chicago because the flight won't be successful unless it's full both ways. So it's that type of collaboration that's important to make these things not just start, but continue. Next slide.

Speaking of continuing, so when you all get together with the community and we work hard to secure these flights, it takes an upfront commitment from a promotional standpoint to make it happen. But then you got to keep it happening. And just as we've done with Dallas and Denver and other markets, not only have we successfully over the years these are markets that we're always advertising in. And not only have we been successful with keeping these flights going, they're actually increasing the size of the aircraft for these flights. So seven thirty sevens will be more commonly seen here from LAX, from Denver, from DFW.

And that means in the coming summer with the Chicago flight plus the others, we're gonna have an additional 4,000 air seats coming into our county over the course of the summer. Huge opportunity because the people who come from further away, they spend more, they do more. And like I've always said, if we can just get one more night, we might be able to do better than that with these folks coming from Chicago. Next, please. Honore 1,000 is our history series. We've got our own version of Ken Burns going about the county to service historical facts. You've heard of America February. We thought we could do better, so we went a thousand years. History and culture are some of

our biggest assets as a

tourism destination. So we are, for the entire calendar year, celebrating that. One small example on the next slide, what that looks like.

Tourism and we did studies many years ago about why do people come to the Monterey Peninsula. Is it because we're the golf capital of the world? Is it because we have all these music festivals? Is it all because of this? And after doing those big studies, you know what the conclusion was? People come to Monterey because of its beauty. Monterey County and the coast. It's the scenery that sells.

That's just a small snippet. It actually went a couple hours. But we didn't wanna bring that here today. As you all know, Sam Park can talk, and he did a great, great episode for us, and we're doing other multiple episodes. So, this is this is our history series for Monterey County that will run through December. Next, on the arts, partnering with the, arts council, and Jackie is here. And that's Jackie's coat. See, Jackie, I told you you're gonna be in our presentation. We're celebrating art, another, amazing and important way to get people's attention and get them to visit. And so we're celebrating the murals.

We're celebrating the galleries. We're celebrating the artists and the stories behind the art. And again, this is a year long program. We'll probably go past this year. Next.

On our community relations part, the only thing I'll point out here, is that we do have over 1,200 members, and the membership is free in part because of the investment you make in the other jurisdictions that we work with. And we're constantly bringing new members in, which is really important because we can't do what we do without having these interesting businesses involved. And then the collaboration, we collaborate with everybody. And on the c monterey board of on our board, you have supervisor Daniels, is a voting member. Jackie is on there, Norm Groot, and you can see the rest.

So community wide collaboration is our strength, is our superpower, and we're doing it. Next. Talked a little bit about this, how important groups are. Travelers coming for groups generate 158% the value, the spending of leisure visitors. They're hugely important and highly competitive. And we have a program where we have representation office in Chicago, Dallas, LA, and San Francisco so that we can bring those groups in, groups from further away. And we've got to reach folks on the group side that don't even know you can do a conference here. Just like we've got to reach leisure travelers that don't even know there's a place called Monterey where you can have a vacation. They're out there. We're trying to get to them.

Next. Highway 1 was a big part of this, first quarter. We've been working with the Big Sur community, Caltrans, our friends at VisitSlo throughout the three year closure. When it opened, we hit it pretty hard. In fact, we're tying it into FIFA as part of our event strategy. And we've been, referring to Highway 1 as the great California FIFA road trip, where there is no better way to get between FIFA games in LA and San Francisco than Highway 1. I didn't say the fastest way. I said the best way. That's an important distinction. That's next. And here's one of the unique ways we partnered with the community.

The legendary road.

Can you keep going?

Francisco. A place

to slow down and enjoy the view.

Hey, tell them what's up? Where

are headed?

Those are

professional race car drivers. They look like teams.

Trade the track for the pitch.

What's with the ball?

The match in LA? San Francisco is next.

Highway 1. Join a view. You

can't say FIFA in

a commercial

World Cup.

Premier sporting events.

But that's a unique way where we partnered with the regional soccer complex, Laguna Seca, and we brought these folks together just to demonstrate that we are that great sort of nexus between sporting events, halo events we call them, which I'm going to talk a little bit more in a minute. So next. I have some good news. We're sort of back. I can tell you that there has never been greater visitor spending.

In 2025, our Dean Runyon study came out and showed that we've had the highest level of visitor spending for a calendar year in 2019. And then the question's been for six years, are we back? Well, we're back, sort of. Dollars 3,300,000,000 over 03/02 in 2019. You can go ahead and think to yourself, what if we adjust for inflation? That's why I say sort of. But it's a huge step forward. And I can say very unequivocally, there's never been more people working in tourism. So we had significant growth there. And there's never been more tax revenues coming from the tourism economy. So really big steps forward. Next. What's next? Next. This is an important chart.

It says a lot, but it's a little hard to understand. This is an indication of how much our competitors have to spend per room per year. You can see Newport Beach up there and Napa at the very top. That's budget firepower. The dollars that they have to spend to keep people from coming to Monterey County. You can see where the average is, and you can see where Monterey is. Between the TID assessment, your investment, and the investment in other jurisdictions, we're still not where we'd like to be from a budget standpoint. But because I think collaboration gives us an extra boost, we can punch above our weight, and we make those dollars work. But unless some people think, why do we even need to market? Look how beautiful we are.

Those places are pretty beautiful as well, and they're spending aggressively to keep people from coming here. Next. So what's it look like for the rest of this year? This is a forecast that was done by Tourism Economics at the beginning in February, right before the Iranian war. And it showed essentially flat growth with occupancy and the other metrics. The reality turns out, next slide. This is first quarter of this calendar year. We beat the odds. We beat the trend significantly. Occupancy didn't go up by 0.4%.

It went up by 7.6%. This is a demonstration of how, working together, we can beat the odds and we can be better than we might otherwise be through the collaboration that we conduct with you and with others. Next, travel outlook. It's never been a better time for this somewhat cliche good, bad, and ugly. There is a lot of uncertainty out there. Fuel prices are very high. There is a downward trend or downward pressure on group business travel and especially international travel. But we're going to continue to focus, and we're going to continue to gain ground. The pie, when it comes to international, has shrunk, but each slice is more valuable. And that's why we need to be aggressive.

The next slide. For the coming year, you can see some of the parameters or the strategic imperatives with our new business plan, market growth. We have a thousand new rooms. Well, we just opened 300 of them. So does that mean we have only only have 700 more? No. No. Because there's been some other hotels announced or soon to be announced. So we've got to continue to fill new rooms while filling our existing rooms. Some of the other things we're investing in, I'll just point out responsible travel, we're taking that to a new level in the coming year.

Wine country, mentioned. Event development is a huge opportunity, and we're going be talking lots more about that. We're very excited. We've got three things right now on our books that we're working on. Three mega events. One of them has to do with the US track and field team, Junior Olympics. They're possibly coming here. Not a done deal. Working on it. We've got the Ragnar races. If you've not heard of Ragnar races, but you've heard of the Spartan races, think Spartan but a relay. Or better yet, think 2,500 people here next June for three plus nights. Big business. And then we're also gonna get a big bite of the FIFA Apple. We have a team, cannot disclose who they are until they tell us we can.

But they're gonna bring a group here for some FIFA activities. It's really cool. I'm very excited about that. Bringing these groups in that don't that that aren't here now give us opportunity to plant business where we need it most. So next slide. Another big point I would just want to leave you with, I'm winding down here. We've got to get folks coming here from further away. We have to be focused on the Midwest and the East Coast. Chicago is just a start. By the way, we're working with the airport and some other markets.

Some of them are a little closer in like Portland and Salt Lake City, and some of them are a little bit further out. But the investment that you're making and that other jurisdictions makes is allowing us to reach further and further away for people who stay longer, do more, spend more. And on the international front, next slide, these are the markets that we're active in. International marketing is long lead development, long relationships. You don't walk away from it because it's down, you lean into it to get it back. You can see there on the left, key markets are Canada, Mexico and The UK, but we're also active in these other markets as well. Next. Car Week. We were challenged. I'm sorry, supervisor Daniels isn't here.

We were challenged by her. How do we take the resident frown and turn it upside down? Well, we've got some ideas on how we do that. Car Week, nobody owns Car Week. Right? But the community and the community benefits greatly from Car Week, over a $100,000,000 event. But we've gotta find ways to help do better than we're doing now, and we're doing a pretty good job working with the county. Cmonterey.com/carweek is the best resource for car week information, the things you wanna go to and the roads you wanna avoid. Residents use it as much as travelers. We're gonna upgrade what we're doing in that space, and we're also gonna work with some of our partners in the community.

Ideas like, what if travel on MST buses and shuttles was free during car week? What would that look like? Would that encourage more people to get on buses? I think so. Another idea comes from actually Kimberly Craig and supervisor Daniels, and that is, what if we have work from home week the same time we have car week? Any business that can work from home, let your team members work from home, take a few more people off the road. And we're working on other ideas like that. Next. We have you have talked about a number of times, what does a long term strategic program look like with Sea Monterey? And we've talked about long term agreements of some sort, and that conversation I hope we'll continue.

But, I wanted to just give you some things to think about on the next slide. It's been said by several of you that if we are going to be successful in the investment that you're making, we can be more successful if we have more projectability. These are some of the things that we can look at over the span of a three to five year. And take your pick of the things that are most important to you. Owning the central course as a sports stage. We're sort of moving in that direction. We've got the assets to do it between Monterey FC, the regional soccer complex, and Laguna Seca. We've got this great competitiveness that draws people in, not to mention the US Open that will be here next year at Pebble Beach, and on and on and on. Turning events into economic engines, hugely important. What would a tourism master plan look like?

I sure like to get involved in that and develop it with you and input of others. Redistributing demand countywide more and more that monterey one thousand and the arts program that we' doing in part that' for traveler dispersion get them out to South County Get them out to North County, and move them about. It creates economic benefit in in the smaller pockets of the county and greater economic benefit for all of us. So over the next, I just wanted you to know that we're thinking long term. We wanna continue to talk about what that can look like and work with you in making that a reality. Thank you very much.

Alright.

We will bring it to the board for questions.

Thanks, Rob, for the presentation. It was really a good overview. And, I appreciate your final comments towards the end about more into South County and North County. I know you've made the comment that you're trying to urge people to stay one more night, so obviously one of the steps. I looked at some of your promotional information though, video.

Everything is on the peninsula though. So, again, I just like to see the imitate getting down to South County. They've got wineries, there's the pinnacles, missions. I know they have bad roads, but I think we can get past that and then of course in Salinas or Steinbeck or even Elkhorn Slough or Moss Landing, which is unique. So I'm really supportive of everything you're doing, but really looking for that, expanding out as much as possible and showing people that in Chicago that it's more than Monterey And and right in the surrounding virus.

Because we are a big county. We have a lot of of neat features to it, a lot of reason to pull people in here, and this is a big engine to to drive a lot of things.

There's no question. And it it is poor choosing a bit on my part because we've got a great video. We actually just shot one at Pinnacles as part of the Monterey 1,000 series. We almost got supervisor Lopez in it, but for scheduling. But we were still out there. It's just not ready to show yet. We were actually in the Steinbeck house. We shot one of the Monterey 1,000 episodes. It started there with Susan Shillinglaw and covered a lot more around there. And in development coming up later in the summer, we're going to create brand like little videos for each region.

So Moss Landing's going to have its own video. Salinas Valley's going to have its so I call these our product lines. If Monterrey is our brand, then all the jurisdictions and regions are sort of our product lines. And so we're going to be creating more and more. But I take your point, we have it. I wish I would have brought something in addition. The Steinbeck House would have been perfect. But I'm really excited. The Pinnacles one will be publishing here soon. And I take your point and absolutely agree with you. That's part of our master our current master plan. Get people out these, and we gotta give them reasons to do it.

That's great. It sounds sounds like you're approaching things that way, so I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Questions? Supervisor? No? No? Okay. Let's open it. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open it up to public comment and then bring it back for discussion. Is there any public comment in chambers?

Good afternoon, chair, supervisors. Rick Aldinger, chair of Monterey County Hospitality Association Government Affairs Committee. I want to reinforce, the importance of the role c Monterrey plays in, support of the now well over 27,000 hospitality workers in Monterrey County. Many of these workers are supporting small mom and pop businesses in in Monterey County. These folks are working their tails off to make ends meet, to do a good job, to be welcoming and hospitable, And they're working so hard at those goals, those tasks, that they don't have time, they don't have the resources, frankly, to have their own marketing department.

And I know I was a general manager of the Big Sur River Inn for sixteen plus years, and that was our situation. And the River Inn, like many other of these small mom and pop businesses, rely heavily on the support of Sea Monterey to make sure that our voices are heard. And when our voices are heard, everyone wins. Our visitors, our guests are happy that they can patronize these smaller, more intimate settings. They love getting out and meeting the people, and that's something that we're all really, really good at.

This also allows these mom and pop businesses to support their staff by offering more shifts, more hours, because people know about us now and they're coming to see us. And so I I can't stress more how we all rely on what c monterrey does for the betterment of all. Thank you very much.

Alright, good afternoon, Madam Chair and Supervisors. I'm Janine Chircarat, my day job's managing director of the Portola Hotel and Job. My responsibility to the county is on the economic development committee, and I'm also the chair of the board of C Monterey, so I'm complicated. I think Rob did a good job with that, but I said to him, why didn't you show the Visit California video? We just went to Visit California with all the destination management companies from all over the state of California, and it was announced that Monterrey is gonna hold that conference here next year, which is absolutely amazing, given it's usually We were in San Diego, so usually it's in a major destination.

But we're having it here. But the three minute video is absolutely amazing, because it does show all of South County. It shows, it highlights everything in our region. And he got cheers when we showed this video. We we can't put it on YouTube because maybe he used a little Big Little Lies and maybe some music rights that will prevent us from from showing that publicly.

But come to our annual meeting, you'll see it there, I'm sure, at our annual meeting. And given our time constraints today, we decided not to show it to you. I do want to just simply say the reason I'm up here is to say thank you. We've had I had my hat at MCHA for years all through COVID, which was a very challenging time. I just I smile every time I see Nick Chulos because that COVID collaborative came to life because of a meeting with Nick Chulos and myself in the very beginning of COVID.

So, thank you, Nick, for for being there for us and our industry. We're in a in a great space right now. Rob and his team are probably the best team I've ever challenges ahead of us. And I was reading about El Nino today. I'm like, oh dear Lord, do we need another natural disaster? No. But we have great things to promote up and down the entire county. And

we would love to

keep that going, and Supervisor Church for just bringing forth the discussion and maybe making it a five year agreement. That would be amazing. So, thank you for all that you've done for our industry.

Hello, Jordan Cabrera with MCBC and also commenting as a member of the public. Just want to thank you for all the hard work that you do and continued support of all of the programs within the DSA. We know the economic impact isn't just infrastructure and tax revenue, but also the jobs that are created, which allow all of us to enjoy living in this community. So just wanted you to know, not only do we have these results from federal contracts, but also we're trying to get more information from state and local as well. So everything that you're seeing is just federal.

Just keep that in mind. And also, we're happy to you know, we're doing a lot as is, but we're happy to do more. So if you feel like you'd like more resources in your specific district, we're we're happy to continue to partner with the deputy workshops, one on one counseling, whatever it may be. We wanna make you feel that, you know, your districts are being supported specifically. So we do thank you for the support, and we're always here to help.

Thank you.

Alright. I'm not seeing anyone else in chambers, so we'll go online. We have a phone number ending in 837.

Hi, supervisors. This is Brian Rosen here. For tourism to really be helpful, we need good convenient mass transportation. And it was very sad when the bus line 24 was very convenient from getting to Downtown Monterrey to the Carmel Valley in one shot. And now it only now you have to get off another bus, and you have to wait, and you sometimes miss the bus.

And people were going out there to the wineries. It would from public transit to work, it has to be convenient, and it would be great to reinstate that. We also need to think about the train. Apparently, the train's gonna be coming down, and we need incentives for people to take the train. Now I understand the economic benefits of Car Week, but there are also huge environmentally negative benefits of increased tourism.

Not to mention with all these people driving cars to the Monterey Peninsula, it we need to look at the environmental benefits. We live in a false economy. And, also, bear in mind that people who work in these hotels are virtually slaves. They're brown skinned people for the most part who are virtually slaves who are underpaid, overworked, and live in terrible condition. They can't even afford to make their ends meet.

And a lot of Hispanic people and they and and people who are not legally here work in those places, they have to share homes with other people crammed in. So we're talking about slavery, modern day slavery. And so there's more to life than money. We need an economy that is, you know, based on righteousness and just a bunch of more cars coming in and polluting, destroying our fragile ecosystem without even a good train in place. Maybe it's time to start rethinking the tourism.

It's not acceptable if it brings more cars and more environmental degradation. It's a good idea, but it needs to be done in a much more responsible way beyond lift service. So at least wait until you get a train in.

Thank you.

Thank

We'll go next to, Carla Lobo.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

We've got you live, Carla. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation, but I want to raise concerns regarding equity and who is truly benefiting from Monterey County's tourism investment. Today, we heard about luxury visitation, wine country branding, car week, Highway 1 campaigns, conference tourisms, and plans for managed growth with another thousand hotel rooms. We also heard goals about owning the Central Coast sports stage, turning events into economic engines, and redistributing countywide demand. If that is truly the goal, then communities like Seaside must be intentionally included and elevated, not treated as secondary to Monterey, Carmel, and Pebble Beach.

The county's own DSA guidelines require measurable community impact and support for underserved communities, yet there is still no district level breakdown showing how much investment or tourism revenue is directly benefiting my city of Seaside and its residents, youth, entrepreneurs, or local business corridors. Seaside already has strong community demand for recreation and sports infrastructure through the parks and recreations master plan, including the vision for an indoor recreation and fitness facility that includes an NBA court basketball court. The community support is there, but investment and regional promotion continue favoring already established luxury destinations instead of helping elevate cities with untapped potential. If Monarch County truly wants equitable economic development, then Seaside must be part of the destination strategy, sports tourism strategy, and long term investment strategy moving forward. I also want to let the supervisors know that it would be in their best interest to strongly encourage and require transparent district level reporting metrics, equitable benchmarks, and measurable community benefit standards tied to every development set aside investment moving forward.

Because if there are truly countywide investments, every community, especially CSAT, should visibly share in return and help shape.

Thank you. We'll go next to Janet. Janet? Hi.

Janet Hardisty. I would like to see the county spend money on issues on Highway 1 rather than bringing more tourism in on Highway 1. We have so many choke points along the way, and everybody that comes to the county, whether it's the cities or the unincorporated county, they must see Big Sur. And I think with San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Visit California, the local businesses, the social media, the short term rentals, all advertising, Big Sur as an area, we could maybe start a program, do a three to five year program and find solutions to correct what's going on at Bixby and other areas along the coast rather than paying Visit Monterey to bring more tourism because everybody else is bringing it for us. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other hands raised or anyone else in chambers, so we'll close public comment and bring it back to the board for any discussion. Supervisor Lopez.

Just a note of appreciation for the work that's gone in, and I sent a text message this weekend. I had the opportunity to do a conference, WIR, out in Hawaii. And as part of that, there was a lot of lessons around responsible visitorship, specifically in how you it's a weird thing to say, but train the visitor to respect the place. There there was an entire two hour session about the efforts that have gone into training the the visitor and helping them understand the culture of a place and the reason that it exists in the state that it does, meaning the respect that went into preserving it and its history. And so there were a lot of lessons there that I'm hoping I can pass resources forward to the groups that spoke today so that they hopefully can either learn some of those strategies or elevate some of those here locally to help build some of that understanding.

And that comes from a visit that I recently had to Big Sur with a local businessman who pointed out to me that even if the visitership was down as we saw during the closure, we still had the behavior issues. And I think as part of that, it's pointing to a difference in the visitor desiring to walk away with something different. And often, in our instance, that's the Instagram shot, the TikTok video, the frame that they're expecting to be able to post for clout on social media. And so understanding how that there's a need to combat that in some way. I think what I heard in that visit pointed to some of those key strategies that have been widely successful.

And as part of that, I did end up doing the road to Hana with my young family, and we were able to use a GPS guided tour guide. And it was extremely helpful in understanding the place that we were. Every time we passed a key marker, it would point out you're about to pass Road Marker 0. This is the beginning of the road. It would tell you something culturally important and significant that happened there.

And as that, you developed a different respect for the place that you were visiting at each stop as it talked about the history, who lived there before, what they did to preserve it in the way that it exists today. And again, was tied to your pace. It wasn't you have to keep up and meet be there at a certain time. But each GPS marker you hit in the app that we use was called Shaka Tours, and they've got guides throughout California, throughout Arizona, as well as all the different islands in Hawaii, but, noticeably missing is the Monterey the Central Coast. They do have stuff in Northern California as well as Santa Barbara and, slow.

So it was interesting to me to see that we were missing as a gap there, perhaps someone to reach out to to help develop, given the key historical importance of our region. Some sort of a strategy. Again, as folks learn the stories, they tend to respect a place better than expecting just to show up and be catered to as a luxury destination. It's about understanding what you're visiting and what has happened in this incredible place is obviously the birthplace of California's state government. So just a few thoughts coming out of that experience, wanting to help inform a strategy as we move forward knowing that I'm largely not talking about my district.

I want to be respectful of supervisor Daniels who isn't on the dais with us at the moment, but those are strategies I'm hoping to share with her and her team as well as the folks from C Monterey hoping that at some point as well perhaps we can develop a loop right through South County that talks about the similar history in the Salinas Valley because there is several options under each one of those GPS guided tours. If somebody was to do the Carmel Valley loop, let's say, and understand the history of wine as its and its significance in Monterey County being a key appellation for Pinot and Chardonnay and being able to hear some of that history on that tour and be pointed to certain stops, I think it would be a great opportunity for us to leverage some additional visitership without a heavy cost. I think is that something that the developers, as long as we point them to the right stories and messaging, could help us do. I think that is a way to help build a respect for who goes, who came before us, and also who continues to maintain the land, to Carla's point about, right, who are we serving in this work?

And serving the people who continue to work the land, serving the people who are here before us, the natives, the native peoples of these lands. I think all their stories can be told through these mediums and build a respect at the same time from the visitor that hopefully will help curb some of the bad behavior that we've seen over the last decade, I think, and especially since the COVID shift. Thank you, madam chair.