Economic Development - Regular Meeting

We're going to call our Economic Development Committee to order for May 29th, and we'll start with the roll call.

Supervisor Alejo.

Present.

Supervisor Church.

Here.

Norm Groot.

Here.

Catherine Steadman. Here. Keith Severson.

Here.

Janine Boye. Here. Gail Pittman.

Here.

Cesar Lara.

Here.

Heather Garner. I had a chance here. Nicholas kite here and then see here and Janine check her up here.

All right, we have a quorum move forward any additional questions to the agenda. All right public comment for anything not on today's agenda, yes, come on up.

I'm Jeff Ruster. I'm the executive director of the Monterey County Business Council. First of all, I want to thank the chair and the vice chair for a great dialogue around the county's budget process this year. And as a development services agreement funding partner in the DSA agreement, the funding does provide very critical source to help us provide a wide variety of workshops to a very diverse set of businesses all around Monterey County. And through the APEX programming and the Small Business Development Center program that MCBC offers, we expect to serve over 1,000 businesses during this current fiscal year. The majority of those businesses are women-owned, veteran-owned, and or minority-owned. businesses. The other thing I would highlight is that for every dollar that we get of DSA funding, we are able to leverage $3 to $4 of federal and state funding, which, of course, increases the outreach we can do, but just as importantly, allows us to deepen and customize the services that we provide to our clients. We will, of course, continue to inform all the members here of our workshops, our special events, and other resources that our partner agencies make us aware of. And likewise, when you're out there working with your constituents, if there is a business that you feel like MCBC's programming could support, please let me know or Jenny McAdams from my staff know, and we'll do our business to get there out there as soon as possible. So again, thank you for your partnership. Thank you for your trust. And together, I really do believe that we can work together to make Monterey's County's colony more resilient and more inclusive.

Thank you very much for those comments. Anyone else online? Since there's no one else in. We got one more person here.

No hands raised on Zoom.

All right. If not, we'll move to our first item of business, which is our approval of the action minutes from March 30th. Any questions or comments on those? Not, we could entertain a motion. So moved. Moved by Norm.

Second.

Second by Cesar. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those against are abstentions. Motion carries unanimously. Let's go to our regular agenda. We got four items here for today. And the first one is to consider an approval of an economic development committee calendar for this year. We're almost halfway through. But better late than never, as we say. Any questions or comments on this, on the dates listed there?

I will just add through the chair that I appreciate staff's consideration of changing the dates that were originally proposed so that I could continue participating on the committee. Thank you.

Thank you to our team for doing that, accommodating our members. And it's always good to stick with what we know. It works. If there's no public comments on this item, then we need a motion for this. Move approval. Moved by Norm.

Second.

Dr. Chen. Those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Those against? Abstentions. Motion carries unanimously. We'll go to receiving a presentation from Fleet Work regarding their efforts in our county. Thank you for coming today for presenting.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Morgan Bauer, and I am the Innovation Hub Director for FleetWorks. And thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about who FleetWorks is and what we can and are doing for local businesses, workforce, and economic development in Monterey. Next slide. All right. So our parent company, Defense Works, is a 501c3 located in Niceville, Florida. They have innovation hubs all across the country partnered with different federal labs to allow those labs to move technology in and out of the government. Fleetworks is the Defense Works Innovation Hub that is partnered with the Naval Postgraduate School here in Monterey County, established in June of 2023. I'm actually born, raised in Big Sur, graduated from Carmel High in 2010, went off to college, did the Army. worked at Amazon after I got out, and then was hired as a program manager for Fleetworks in April of 2024. Thank you for your service. Thank you very much. Our parent company works with federal labs to make it easier for small businesses and communities to benefit from having those labs in their community by bringing technology in, bringing technology out. What does that look like in practice? Next slide, please. So there are several ways that Fleetworks can help local businesses benefit from having the Naval Postgraduate School in their community. The first is by licensing out technologies and intellectual property that are developed by researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School. Why would a business want to license out federally developed technology? First of all, it just makes great economic sense from anywhere between zero and $15,000 up front and a couple points. Any back end sales, a small business can avail itself of research and development that took years or decades and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. So we know not every business has the opportunity to be able to spend that much time in a development cycle. And this is a great chance to be able to jumpstart. You have an already developed business. invention that has been validated in the lab. You have support from the inventors and you can focus just on commercializing it and making it into an off the shelf product that can be sold. So it's a great opportunity for businesses to jumpstart their products and their services by years. The second question we get asked a lot is, why would I care about licensing technology from NPS? I'm not going to be building a warship in my backyard. How is this relevant to me? Well, NPS has over 115 technologies available to license in eight different technology fields, anything from building a better wetsuit to optimizing training of artificial intelligence to planning delivery routes for parcels. And they have 15 approved patents just in 2025. So it's a fresh list with relevant new technologies that is constantly growing. We are also planning to do another in-person tech licensing event in September of this year. 21st or 22nd, focused on maritime and autonomous technologies, planning on that being down at the Hopkins Marine Station. So highly encourage you all or any businesses that you work with to sign up for that once it goes official. Next slide, please. The next way that we can help local businesses is by giving them opportunities to leverage the NPS field testing capabilities to be able to mature and speed up the development cycle for their products. The most exciting of that is the NPS field lab located at Camp Roberts, so down by San Miguel, down in South County. They have a wide variety of testing spaces there. 15,000-foot ceilings for flying drones and unmanned aircraft, along with an urban site for robotics, paved roads, off-road, and gravel road for autonomous vehicles or manned vehicles. As well as a agreement with Monterey County to use part of Lake San Antonio for testing, which has been hugely beneficial to a lot of technologists. So thank you very much to Monterey County for that agreement. And the ability to leverage testing in Monterey Bay if needed. The other exciting part about that is there's the ability for businesses to get a free cyber and radio frequency vulnerability assessment. As I'm sure you know, cyber crime is a trillion dollar industry. So companies can come to this, have experts look at their website or their device or their system, highlight all the places where hackers might be able to get in and then give the business a free confidential report. That's something that could save a business millions of dollars and is available four times a year, absolutely free, right in our own backyard. So if you know of anybody who could use that kind of service, please feel free to invite them to come out. The fourth iteration for this year, the Joint Interagency Field Experimentation Exercise. 26.4 is live for signups right now. So businesses can sign up. It is August 10th through 14th down at Camp Roberts. So again, invite all of you guys, any businesses that you know who might benefit from that to come down, check it out, see what there is to offer. Completely free. One of our Monterey County businesses that does take advantage of it is T-TAC. They're out at Ryan Ranch. And they have a drone that focuses on detecting and defeating explosive devices, mines, that kind of thing. So great to see some Monterey County businesses already using it. Would love to have more. Next slide, please. A third and final way that we can help businesses interact with NPS is through partnerships. There's everything from allowing a business to use lab space and researchers at NPS to conduct testing for a very small and discreet test, or a more longer-term involved multi-year research agreement, or there are also funded opportunities that we push out, probably about six to eight opportunities every year. We have 12 currently ongoing, and these are opportunities for businesses To get some funding to develop a prototype, get that in the hands of NPS researchers, other government sponsors, warfighters, acquisition folks, people who might have the ability to actually say, hey, this is the system we want in the government. We know working with the federal government, not always the easiest thing to do. So our goal is to try and level the playing field and make it a little bit easier for companies. We hold no IP. We charge no fees. It's completely free to apply. We have a three-page limit for our proposals that people put in. So I know a lot of businesses, you write a 40-page proposal and you have a 1% or 2% chance of getting it. It just doesn't make sense to even apply at that point. But we try and make it easy. Our goal is to level the playing field so that whether you're a group of students at a local high school or you're Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, you have the same opportunity to apply and eliminate. ongoing currently funded projects with 13 million dollars in funding uh for projects since 2023 so not huge but substantial and helping out uh small businesses next slide please All right, what is next and where would we like to go from here? We're working on some workforce development efforts with CSUMB, Hartnell, DART, Airspace Integration, and some others. We're working on a proposal to get federal funding to teach machining skills. That's on pause for now. We look forward to starting that back up in the future when we have some space to do so. Also look forward to applying to get the same kind of thing for castings and forgings. training and research there. One thing that we would like to do in the future is offer an innovation pipeline for students or small businesses or backyard inventors to be able to come to us with an idea. We use our metal 3D printing or our traditional machining capabilities to give them a prototype. Then we coach them, take them down to Camp Roberts. They can do their testing down there. And then once their device is ready, we give them specialized transition assistance and coaching, helping them match up with government stakeholders who are the right people to maybe eventually move that product into the government. So we're seeking some congressional funding for that. We have a request in with Panetta's office and with the House Appropriations Committee. Finally, one thing that we want to do is take advantage of all the test locations that are available in Monterey County. There's a huge variety of both privately funded state, federal, and local test sites down here. Already, people from across the world come out to Camp Roberts to do testing, but we would love to create a better network so that we can direct people to the right location for their technology. and make monterey county into a international hub for science and technology testing so how could you help us help monterey county businesses first of all would love to get a memorandum of understanding or a letter of support basically just saying hey the county thinks what fleetworks is doing is valuable benefits monterey county this is important because our type of contract with nps Having that evidence of local government or state government support is very important for us getting our contract renewed. So that is something that would be extremely helpful to us if you guys are interested in. Second, connections to any local small businesses that you work with. We're aware of a few. We work with a few in Monterey County, but we would love to broaden our outreach and be able to give Monterey County businesses more opportunities to work with the government and work with NPS. Finally, just better information on what the county wants to do with their economic development plans so that we can focus our efforts and where we're looking at federal funding into things that sync well with what the county's priorities are. So basically just helping us by letting us know what you need so we can plan around that and try and create a little bit more harmony where everybody's working together, pushing in the same direction instead of pushing separately. That is it for me. Are there any questions?

Great. Thank you for the presentation. How long has Fleetwork had this contract with MPS?

So it was signed in June of 2023. Operations really got started around December of 2023, January of 2024. So relatively new.

Great. Very interesting presentation. Didn't know this existed here in our county. And that's what this is about, to align us on opportunities to support business and other community endeavors. So thank you. Let's open for questions. Time to say it.

For these methods of coordinating with NPS through FleetWorks, like licensing or using the field test spaces, how many businesses are actually Monterey County businesses that are leveraging those assets?

So I would say two right now. T-TAC being the biggest one. Clara Copilot, although I think they might have moved out of the county at this point. They were here a couple years ago and also used that. But to be perfectly frank, our... Uptake in Monterey County is not as big as it could be. We would love to get more access and just make more businesses aware.

So most of the businesses you work with are from out of county and maybe even out of state. I see. Okay.

It's good to know.

Can you give some examples of some of the patents that are approved?

Yes, I can give you a few right now and don't tell anybody, but these, you might see these in September at an in-person event. So one of the professors has worked on an improvement to the traveling salesman problem. This is, some of you may be familiar with this, it's a mathematical concept of optimizing the route that it takes to visit multiple sites. famously difficult to compute just because of the number of different variations that become as you go from six stops on a delivery route to eight to 12 to 14, et cetera, et cetera. So he designed a more directed computational method where it actually just kind of limits where the computer is trying to simulate down to a certain set of variables and allows you to Simulate, and I think it's like with 70% of the resources and 70% of the time, you can simulate a delivery route versus traditional methods. And you can also take into account things like if there's a hill in the way, if the sea is rough, that kind of stuff, which could play into there that you don't. ordinarily think of when you're on a straight Cartesian plane. A little more tangibly, there is a professor who has developed a method to 3D print small pellets that can be put inside of a wetsuit that make it more cold resistant so divers can stay down in cold water for a longer time. Also offers some limited amount of ballistic animal bite protection, that kind of stuff. Then finally, there's also some communications technologies based around reducing file size when they're being transferred. It's a massive variety of different texts that are available. If you search the TechLink website for Naval Postgraduate School, you can actually see an entire list on there. I'm happy to send folks the link if they're interested.

We'll go to this and then we'll come back to you.

Yeah, just to follow up on Janine's question, it sounds to me like your scheduler of deliverer routes would really be focused on dispatchers for their delivery trucks. Is that kind of where you were going with this?

So definitely one purpose. It's also for route optimization for unmanned vehicles. So if you have a delivery drone... And you want to make it avoid certain areas or prioritize certain areas because there's a higher value customer delivery or something. Someone's got medicine coming in, so they need to be first. It's pretty unmanned systems focused, but it's got broad applications.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification there. My other question is related to the free assessment of cyber vulnerabilities. Several large agricultural companies locally have been infiltrated into their systems, and one actually in my neighborhood was down for over a week trying to recover. Is there a limitation to the size of the companies for these assessments? No. So I could advertise this to my membership as a possible way that they could have their system reviewed?

The only limitation is they need to come down and do an experiment down field lab. Okay. It has to be tied into something that's going on there. But as long as they're doing an experimentation, completely free, available to anybody, any size.

Okay, good. That helps. Thank you.

Yes, Cesar? Yeah, just a couple of questions. So was there a program in place prior to 2023 by another vendor or is this the first time?

So there have been several of the same kind of contract. One that's locally based and doing this work. There was not anything in place currently, but there's a few kind of remote people that are working. TechLink that I mentioned before has the same kind of contract with all federal labs, basically.

And then in your presentation, you listed me, government representatives interested in drones, energy and AI and more. Can you talk about the energy part of it?

Yes. So actually, the new sponsor of that whole experimentation exercise is the Department of Defense's Operational Energy Research Department. So they are going to be starting to send people down. I think they started last quarter to come and see what energy experiments are going on down there. We've had some pretty interesting ones, people beaming power to drones, that kind of stuff. So very cool energy experiments, and hopefully it's going to continue to ramp up with this new sponsor involved.

Yeah, like charging your electric car remotely.

Yeah.

All right, back to Beth.

All right. Two more quick questions, if everyone doesn't mind. First, could you talk a little bit about your collaboration with the programs like Mechatronics at CSUMB and Hartnell? And then my next question, should I wait? Maybe I'll wait.

So CSUMB has been, Mechatronics has been a great collaborator. Luis has been hugely helpful. And also credit goes to the folks over at DART because they managed to be the connector and use some of their funding to get CSUMB Mechatronics program students involved. Over to NPS, to the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education. That's up there. Also, that's where my office is. Next time you guys are out at Monterey Pines, if you're ever in there, please let me know. Come stop by. No gate. You can just come in, see all the cool metal 3D printing stuff that we're doing. But the mechatronics students that interned at NPS through that program have been fantastic. Some of them were developing an augmented reality program to teach people how to do metal 3D printing. We're hoping to get that spun off on different ships out throughout the Navy so that folks can just put on some goggles and have a step-by-step guide on how to actually operate a CNC machine and do 3D printing, that kind of stuff. The CSUMB students were instrumental in actually getting that from us. what we had before, which was basically just like, here's a PowerPoint on your VR goggles to something that's actually interactive and showing you where you need to go for everything. So fantastic partnership. Hartnell folks, they've kind of had a more longer standing program. We get Hartnell interns at that consortium every year, probably. So they also do great work. I think several of them were working on doing some streaming 3D printing stuff last year with Siemens and some other government folks. So excellent collaborations with local universities. We want to expand it more if we can.

And my second question is, I think we have in our agenda today, the importance of agriculture in Monterey County and ag tech is also an area of technology development here. Have you guys targeted that sector for a relationship with NPS generated technologies?

Yes. So we have a pretty good relationship with the rest of our folks. It's just... Trying to get us both spun up and have opportunities that are funded and interesting to both sets of stakeholders that we work with. That's generally been the challenge because if one of us has something we're like, oh, this is relevant. then it's not relevant to the other. So we're trying to dial that in. One very exciting agriculture thing that is going on at NPS that not a lot of folks know about is their regenerative grazing program that they're running. Right now it's down at Camp Slow, but they are desperately trying to get the permits to move it up to Camp Roberts and Paso Robles. Basically a program using advanced tracking techniques to be able to have cows go on to military ranges and do the active grazing there, improving the biome. It's not like a standard ranch where you can just have the cow in the pasture, but here you have to be really managing them where they're going keeping them away from unexploded ordinance so it requires a lot of technology and tracking but nps is working on that program uh one thing that we hope to expand out i know richard vaughn has been talking to some folks around the county about different partnerships and opportunities to work with uh that ranching program and very excited hopefully it comes up to camp robertson right

How does this program compare or compete with MCBC's APEX Accelerate?

So we actually work with the APEX folks. They come down to Camp Roberts every quarter just to kind of take in, look and see what technologies are out there. It's really a little bit of different levels. They're kind of with folks who are just getting started up, which we want to get more into that space. We're looking right now mostly in kind of the mid-range of people who have a prototype or have that kind of stuff. They're more on the lines of people, you know, got a great idea. How do I get started? How do I get a cage code? How do I get logged into SAM.gov? that kind of stuff. But, uh, we worked with Victor and Jordan and, you know, when we have folks who come in who are at that early stage, we pass them over to them. I think there was a Santa Cruz company recently who was just getting started and wanted to explore the defense space. Uh, so we, you know, introduce them over to Jordan, Victor to help work with them and get them spun up. So it's kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement where, uh, If we have folks who are early stage, we send them over to APEX. And if they have folks who are like that mid to later stages, they can send them over to us for some of our stuff.

Thank you. Anything else? Last question, sir. Yeah, just super quick on the ongoing efforts around workforce development. Can you explain a little bit about what you're looking at teaching machine skills and what that is? Maybe it's to Beth's question with Hartnell, but I'm just wondering who's eligible and what's the scope?

So there is a federally funded program called America's Cutting Edge, which works with colleges and universities to establish training programs, both for the students at those colleges, but also for anyone else who's in the workforce, like transitioning veterans, people coming out of high school, people who are looking to make a job change, people who are looking to upskill, free boot camps throughout the year. So they have that program. It needs to be centered at a college or university and have that college or university teaching it. We're still working with CSUMB and Hartnell to get set up. It's a lot of juggling different space and power requirements and personnel availability and such, but Eventually, we would hope to get two CNC machines side by side, run through about 40 people through the boot camps every year, plus all of the students who are in those different programs, get them the skills to be able to do computer numerical controlled machining and basically advanced machining skills.

So is the idea a certification at the end? Yeah.

It's not like a full, like you are a machinist ready to go in the workforce, but it gives you the basic skills that you need to apply to those things.

Yeah, because a partnership exists like a machinist union. I found some stuff in the Bay Area around manufacturing and those skills, so we should probably talk.

Yeah, that'd be great. Great. If there's no other questions, we'll go to comments from the public on this. Seeing no one in chambers, anyone online?

No?

Okay. As direction, because this is not agenda, it says action, but you were requesting a letter of support. If the board is okay to provide direction to Richard Vaughn to draft the support letter. I think there's value in having a vendor, a business that's the access point in dealing with NPS. Otherwise, it's very complex trying to have that right person at NPS to be able to connect with these potential opportunities for local businesses and communities. I would just say also just, if you were successful in getting the contract renewed, just building those bridges with more of the chambers and other natural stakeholders too, so they could amplify the work that you're doing and what opportunities you offer as well. So how does everybody feel about the letter?

Yes. Is there a motion we should do or do you need it?

It seems like everybody's nodding their heads. You're all good with it. I think we could just document it, unanimous direction to, unless people have a problem. Anybody have any concerns with that?

No.

Okay. Just to have Richard Vaughn write a support letter.

That's from staff, not from the chair, correct? Yes. That's from Richard Vaughn, not from you as the chair, correct? Either one. The reason I say that it's going to be authorized by the commission, that would require a motion by the commission. I say it's not agendized by the concern.

Okay, I'll make a motion.

It's not agendized as action, so we can probably direction just for Richard to bring this back and just maybe on consent. That would be the direction for today, just because it's not agendized. But we'll probably direction it in on a future meeting. We could just be on consent and get it out the door.

So is the idea staff would come back and have a future meeting and then we would... Yeah, just vote on it. Is timing an issue just because we meet quarterly? No.

I mean, this is the item is agendized here. So I don't know. I mean, not the letter, but the presentation is. Yeah. And so the item's agendized. I think we could take action on an item.

But if it would have been agendized, approve a letter in support of the contract, then that's clear. This is just a presentation only. It's information only.

Well, our contract isn't set to be renewed until 2028, so we do have a... Okay. So let's just keep... Let's go the safe route.

If there was urgency, maybe we would consider it. But that's direction, and it's noted on the minutes that unanimous support for directing Richard Varner to bring a letter at our next meeting to support the work you do. So thank you, Mr. Bauer, for coming today. Thank you very much. We'll go to our next item, which is receive a presentation from the ad commissioner's office regarding the agriculture economic report. And this is a hot topic because we got a pest in Monterey County that runs our grape vineyards throughout the county. And they've been on it trying to collect these plants that were sold at Hostos and Salinas and where else? And Sand City. Sand City, right? So they're trying to get those plants back because it could spread this pest that came from the Fresno Nursery. Those impact our ag industry too. We've got to always be on top of it. They've been busy the last few days. What's it called, Norm?

Classy-winged sharpshooter is the pest, and the disease is Pierce's disease on grapevines. Scary. So it's resulted in some areas, really not vineyards. Yeah, it's been a pest in probably two decades now that we've recognized it and has resulted in the early years of some vineyards essentially being killed and pulled out. Right. It's a very serious pest, or it's a very serious disease, excuse me.

Yep. And we've got to control it as much as we can.

It is not controllable at this point.

Yeah. All right. Pass it to you. I teed you up.

Well, good morning, Chair Alejo, Vice Chair Church, and committee members. My name is Rich Ordonez, and I'm the Assistant Ag Commissioner. I'm pinch hitting today for Juan Hidalgo, who, as you pointed out, is busy with some issues currently. And thank you for the opportunity to talk about the Economic Contributions Report for Monterey County Agriculture. So last November, our office released the economic contributions of agriculture report. This report shouldn't be confused with the annual crop report that our office has mandated to produce every year. The agriculture, the economic report that we're talking about today goes beyond the crop report and quantifies agriculture's total economic contributions.

Next slide please.

Monterey County was the first county in California to commission a comprehensive report of agriculture. The thought of producing this report was to enhance the information that our annual crop report puts out, and we were thinking about refreshing it about every five years. This is the fourth, this report is the fourth in a series of reports that our office has released. So we started this in 2012, and then had our second one in 2015, and our third one in 2020, and now again in 2025. We contracted with Dr. Jeff Langholz and Dr. Fernando Paulis, both economics professors at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, They did all the research and the calculations in this report. So this report is more closely tied to the 2023 crop report. You can see that's a little on the left side there. It has 2023, even though we had published the 2024 crop report at this time. That was because the data that the economists use, which is the USDA in-plan, if you're familiar with that data set, that was the latest that they had to compare. So they used our 2023 crop report. The economists, like I said, they used the Implan dataset. So with modern economic tools, they were able to enhance the mandate that we have for crop reports and go beyond ag production value, including they quantified local food processing, the multiplier effects, employment, and overall economic structure of the county. Next slide, please. So in the previous slide, I mentioned the concept of multiplier effects. I'd like to clarify what that entails. So the multiplier effects come down to two types. The first one is indirect effects, which refer to business to business spending. This is the money that agricultural producers and processors spend within the county on supply and services. They buy vehicles. fuel and seeds, they purchase insurance, pet services, banking, they pay for fertilizer, chemicals, contract work, and other items. Now the second multiplier effect is induced effects. Induced effects are the dollars that employees of ag companies and their suppliers spend within the county. They buy groceries, healthcare, housing, utilities, clothing, transportation, they pay for their education, entertainment, taxes, and other expenses. So the key point of this slide is whether you're talking about indirect or induced effects, every dollar in agricultural output creates economic ripples throughout Monterey County. Next slide, please. So when we add the various puzzle pieces together, the total contribution to Monterey County agriculture in 2023 was more than $11.7 billion. As this slide shows, $4.77 billion in farm production, $3.13 billion in local processing, and $3.81 billion in the multiplier effects, representing all the spending by companies and their employees involved in agriculture. Agriculture total contribution amounts to over $32 million a day if you break it down by day, and that's a pretty impressive figure. Next slide, please. So in addition to agricultural economic output, the study also estimated employment effects. As you can see, Monterey County supported a total of 81,000 full-time equivalent employees. Remember, full-time equivalent employee equals 40 hours per work week per person. So that means that There were probably more people involved due to part-time workers, but they had to reduce that to full-time equivalents. So this consisted of 56,000 direct jobs in food production and processing and another 24,000 employees from the multiplier effects. Next slide. Now, let's zoom out to the bigger picture. Now, actually, this is on page 17. I have a partial chart up here, but if you want to see the entire chart, it's on page 17 in the report. So we have a table with the rankings of 20 county industries, and you can see that agriculture, including production and processing, is the single largest industry in the entire county economy. And the rankings keep going down all the way down to 20, which mining is the number 20th. Next slide, please. So it's a similar story in employment. This is on page 18. Ag, once again, is the largest employer with over 56,000 direct jobs. Again, not including the multiplier effect jobs, followed by government, accommodation and food services, health and social services, retail trade, and so on, all the way down to 20, which is mining once again. An interesting fact that came out from the report is that one in every five jobs in the county is attributable to the agricultural industry. So the final topic is on economic diversification. You've heard the old saying, don't put your eggs in one basket, because if the basket drops, you might lose everything. It's a similar story with county economies, industries such as agriculture and others. When it comes to agriculture, there's a lot of economic shocks that can disrupt the system, or in other words, knock over the basket. There are price drops, disease outbreaks, new regulations, new competitors, price spikes, and key inputs such as labor and water. There are weather issues, increased frequency and intensity of severe weather events, Throw in a COVID pandemic and other things like that. There are trade policies such as tariffs, and some of those tariffs can affect certain commodities more than other commodities. It's a long list for growers, and that might keep them up at worry at nighttime. Next slide, please. Fortunately, economists have come up with a formula for measuring the level of economic diversification within a county, an industry or a county economy. And when we use the formula to calculate how economically diversified ag is within Monterey County, the resulting score is 0.57. And that's on a one point scale. The report goes into detail about what that number means. But the main message is that the number is above average economic diversification within the agricultural industry. This economic diversification provides critical resilience within agriculture and the wider county economy. The formula economists use for this diversification index is called the Shannon Weaver Index for all you economists out there. Oh, and just an interesting fact that our county produces over 100 different types of commodities. The slide there is just barely scratches the surface with the tomatoes and peas there. So the economic next slide, please. Oh, yeah. the economic diversification level is not only high but it's also consistent so if you look at the right hand side of this graph you can see that the latest score of 0.57 for 2023 that's the exact same number that we saw a decade earlier in 2014 on the far left side of the chart so it remained consistent which runs contrary to what we're seeing in many counties across California that have become increasingly dependent on one or two commodities. An example of this is Napa County, where wine grapes is the predominant crop in their county. If there was an economic shock to the grapes, it would devastate their ag economy because their crops aren't as diversified. In 2025, the Pickett Fire in Napa County wreaked $65 million worth in agricultural damages, with wine grapes facing the brunt of the fire's assault. Wine grapes accounts for 95% of Napa's production value. So I'm going to summarize the three key messages in the report. First is that agriculture is a very large economic output in the county at over $11.7 billion. It includes the three pieces of the puzzle we spoke about earlier. That's farm production, locally sourced value-added food processing, and multiplier effects. Second, is that ag is the county's largest industry. You're ranked number one for output and employment. And the last is that ag has a strong level of economic resilience with an above average diversification score. And that's the end of my presentation. And if you have any questions,

Try to answer them for you. Thank you. Mr. Richard. Thank you for your presentation. So open it up for questions from anyone. Yeah, let's start with Dr. Let's go to the supervisor first. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for it, Richard. Make a comment and then a question, actually. I think, you know, looking at the nearly $12 billion in agricultural output just shows you how critical it is the decision to make on water this year is going to really be because it's a slight impact, could have a big impact on that. The other thing is it's really great to have this full perspective of where ag fits in. So, and being that we are the Economic Development Committee, it kind of drew my attention to something non-ag on here, on this list. And I'm... This to me is a real surprise. I'm looking here at number four on output manufacturing, which is over $3 billion. I did not know we were that much larger than that in manufacturing. Do we have any information on what that is exactly?

No, Supervisor Church. Some of the categories there, I was kind of surprised at how big government is as far as the listing and rankings of industries. I think a great place that we could probably find out about it is if we talk to the economist that did it.

To me, that's What strikes me as interesting is it's actually above accommodation and food services.

Supervisor Church, food production, some of that is considered manufacturing. No, I get it. I'm saying economists sometimes lump some of the food production part of it as manufacturing.

And I saw that, but it appears on agriculture it says production and processing. That's exactly what I was trying to get at. Is this really separate from ag? Because it seems like it's trying to pull off the way, but I have some questions as Cedar just kind of points out there onto it. So it would be an interesting thing to learn a little more about because that's really our job here. And I'd kind of like to understand exactly what's going on right there.

The way they categorize their Their categories of items, it's quite a bit different from like what our crop report does, too. So, yeah, there's a little bit of probably some cross mixing of those.

If I could add, I was in I was part of the team that started this in 2012. And so we had to make some choices about categories based on the federal category. numbers that we were getting and how that all fit into it. So manufacturing is kind of one of those nebulous categories that includes a number of different things on a federal level that may not necessarily apply to us. But it would be good to have a better definition. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Chan.

I have a question and a comment. The question is a strong resilience above average. So what is the average? If we're above it, do you know?

Well, I don't know the actual what an average would be, but like one would be a perfect scenario, which is impossible from what I understand from the economist for an industry to be at. So 0.57, you know, I figure at five is probably kind of average. So 0.57, we're up there. Yeah. So, sorry.

That's perfect. And then just my comment, you know, looking at the health and social services, I mean, we see it working in healthcare, but it's, you know, impressive to see that it's part number six, ranked number six on this list for direct economic output. So, thank you.

Other questions on this side?

Yeah, a number of questions. One is you highlighted the number of direct direct Uh, jobs and how is each to a included onto that? And what's the current number we have? I've heard 15,000, but I want to ask.

Yeah, I'm not sure how each to a, how if it was how it was calculated in there. Um. Um, and the current number at this point is, I, I'm not quite sure I'd have to look into that to get an answer.

Yeah, and also on that point, so many of the work And agriculture is seasonal. What does that mean exactly to the workforce? You know, what's the ratio of permanent? Permanent meaning like, you know, at least 2,080 hours a year, which is eight hours a day, full-time employment compared to in some of the crops, like in wine pruning, it's like three months if you're lucky. You know, it's short season. So how much of it is kind of like... You know, seasonal compared to year-round employment, because that, of course, affects people's livelihood if they have year-round employment.

Right. I think that's probably why they broke it into full-time equivalent units, you know, because of the many seasonal workers that we have in the county.

And is there an average salary on the workers? Because at the macro level, it seems like a lot. But if the average salary of a farm worker is livable or not is something we should look at, not just the economic impact of big number, but what does that mean to working families? Yes.

Yeah, you know, I'd have to see if we could find those numbers. I don't have those at this time.

We know you're filling in for the Ag Commissioner today.

They kind of stump up too much, you know. And the last question I would have is around health care, because, you know, just talking to Natividad or the local hospitals, you know, you could definitely talk about that. You know, there's, you know, Providing health care for workers is a big step. But as we know, a lot of the hospitals, including Nativa, that have a high percentage of Medi-Cal and others. So I'm just wondering how much of the workforce is actually covered under health care. And then, as we know, when you're a seasonal worker, you're working. You might have health care while you work, but you'll take care of your pains and hospital visits afterwards that you might not have enough hours to have health care. So just wondering what the economic is that on agriculture in regards to how much of the workforce is actually covered by health care coverage or does the public subsidize it with Medi-Cal or other services?

Yeah, I'd have to look into that for you, Cesar.

All right, let's go to his side.

Yes, thank you. I wanted to kind of piggyback on Cesar's questions and ask a little bit more about, I know that just to, I guess, put it on the radar, because I know that it sounds like the information isn't readily available, but it would be very interesting to know what the median wages are for the jobs generated by ag, as well as the percentage that are at or exceeding the livable wage threshold. And it would also be really interesting, I'm curious to know, if there's been consideration of doing that kind of analysis for both the direct jobs as well as the multiplier types of jobs, considering that they're in different sectors. So just a thought to put out there with respect to that. And then a question in terms of economic diversification, it sounds like 0.57 is quite good. And I'm wondering if there are thoughts about how to further increase diversification, especially given the number of crops we have dependent on water and looking at climate change and different weather patterns and so forth.

Yeah, I think that's a unique thing here with the type of agriculture that we have and the crops that are grown in this area. We have Like I said, over 100 different types of crops that we grow here, like cool season leafy vegetables. So the diversity is very strong here. You compare that to other counties like in the Central Valley who are maybe larger in economic value, but they're not as diversified, a lot of tree crops, cotton, and that sort of thing. So I think we're pretty safe for a while here in the county.

Thank you. We'll go to Beth and then to Janine.

I have a question about the numbers for the economic output of ag. The numbers that are given on, I guess you can't see this online, under Monterey County Agriculture at a glance are quite different from the ones that are here. production. I think, are those from different sources with different categorization of, you know, what the total output is, direct and indirect with multiplier? And if you don't know offhand, that's fine. I can move on to my other question.

Where's the first page there?

Okay. Yeah, the total for this particular chart is 11.7. The total for the other one is 7.1 roughly. So I was wondering if those were calculated in a different way, had different sources.

Oh, so the $11.7 billion, that's the total economic contributions. But then I guess on page 10, you're talking about the 7.129 billion.

Correct.

So that is...

So that includes the gross dollar value of what's produced plus the value-add product, the bagged salads, the things that are value-add.

I see. The larger number. That's totaled into the $7 billion. Okay. Okay. And this one doesn't. The other one does not include the processed products in this one. Is that what you're saying?

I don't know which one you're pointing to.

The one with the $7 million total versus the one with the $11 million total.

Yeah, the $7 million will include the processed.

Oh, that one will include it.

Yeah, because the production value plus the processed is the $7 million. The way I was calculating.

Yeah, because some of the process is the manufacturing. Yes.

Okay. Let me ask my other question. I'm not sure I quite got that one answered. What are the greatest threats to, top three threats to Monterey County agricultural revenues in the future?

Oh, gosh. Top three threats. Water, labor, pests.

In that order.

Maybe. It could be any order, really.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right. Janine?

I heard a couple people talk about wages. The county has that SEDS report, this EDS report. It may be good to have that circulated to this entire group because it covers all industries. So anyway, that'll answer your question.

Maybe a topic for the future meeting. Just to take a look at that again. Yeah. Yes, we'll just say that. Thank you.

On your direct jobs report, I think it would be good in the future if we could add how many of those workers are seasonal workers. Just because some of our industries, including healthcare, we see the dip when it does dip. We could see a change in our census and the change of the people within the community. So it would be good to say how many of those people are here seasonally and during what period of time they're here. Because I'm assuming this number includes those seasonal workers that you were speaking of earlier. Because those 56,000 people aren't necessarily in Monterey County for the entire 12-month period. They're here for five or six months. And I think that's important for the different industries that are in that multiplier effect because we see the dip.

No, that's a great point. I'll take note of it and see what we can do in the future.

Yeah. And speaking of water, like 90% of water in Monterey County is used by agriculture. And so I know there's been issues around water in regards to nitrate levels and other levels were very unique because like, for example, the Central Valley literally Shasta produces the water goes down the aqueduct and arms take it and then it goes to LA. We're an insular system where the water produced here with, you know, Lake Nacimiento, Lake San Antonio, Tornado Valley and others. you know, maybe it's a broader topic, but economic development in hospitality and agriculture was the two top industries, rely so much on water. 90% of it is used by agriculture. You know, what's a variety, you know, like crossing our fingers is not going to do it. So is there anything that we should be looking at in regards to prioritizing some of that or figuring out a way to, to change the multiplier in regards to it not being 90%. I guess they're crop designs that will use less water or, you know, just wondering what that means because that's going to affect the industry and the economics.

Yeah, I think they're currently, you know, some seed breeders are working on, you know, more water-efficient plants and, you know, people are looking at crops that are maybe more water-efficient as well. I know that there's some growers in the South County looking at that sort of thing. So...

Well, I'll just add to this that if you look at the extraction reports that we've been collecting since the early 1990s, so the Water Resource Agency has been collecting, not we, sorry. You'll notice that agriculture has reduced water consumption or extractions by 25% since we started collecting the information. So we are conserving. We are using technology. We are using drip irrigation. And so a lot of the, I hate to use this pun, low-hanging fruit has already been picked in agriculture for conservation. And so now we are looking at new seeds, new water, drought-tolerant type lettuces, things like that, that will improve that number. But they're going to be exponentially more expensive to gain that type of a percentage in the future.

Yeah, well, thank you for all the good questions. I just wanted to comment that there's, you know, to keep this, to keep a strong agricultural industry in Monterey County, we also have to pay attention to those potential threats. And as you said, there's some short-term adverse impacts through tariffs on agriculture, but others are long-term, like on the issue of water, right? And we know that in Supervisor Church's district, a lot of ag land is at risk. Right. with implementation of the Groundwater Sustainability Act, potential restrictions on pumping connected to saltwater intrusion, but thousands of acres that could be at risk down the road if restrictions are placed on pumping in North Monterey County. There's also different consumer trends, right? People consuming less wine has a direct impact on the wine industry in Monterey County and in other parts of our California. The one thing that wasn't included here was just cannabis. We included in our crop report. Monterey County actually authored the legislation, I think, in 2018. I think it got implemented 2020 or so. It gets added as an addendum of the crop value of cannabis, even though it's had its downturn. I think it's still, you know, when it placed side by side with the conventional crops, even with the downturn, it's still a number five or six, you know, in terms of total value. Just something that's not included here, but it is included in the crop report. Thank you very much. This is only a presentation. If there's nothing else, we thank you for your presentation. All right. Oh, any public comment on this item presentation? Nobody in chambers and nobody online. So thank you very much. Good job trying to fill in for. All right. Last item, everybody. It's a receiver presentation on the sustainability program manager, sustainability program manager on Monterey County's community climate action and adoption plan. Something that's been worked on for a while, and we have an update. We're getting closer on this.

Go ahead and share my screen. It looks like we are all set there.

Cora, if you could explain, this is required under state law for counties, local governments to have such a plan, correct?

Yes. So thank you, Chair and telecommittee. My name is Cora Pantrod. I'm the Sustainability Program Manager for the County of Monterey. Rich touched on some of the more long-term aspects and effects of climate change with increased heat, severe weather events, and pests and the related issues. But today we're going to talk more about an overview of the Climate Action Plan and focus more on some of the opportunities for the adoption and implementation of that plan. So just as a brief overview, so the Climate Action Plan is a roadmap for identifying existing greenhouse gas emissions as well as future greenhouse gas emissions, setting reduction targets so that we can meet goals established by the state policies and standards of SB 32, AB 32, and AB 1279 so that we can meet our California greenhouse gas reduction goals. And we're also focusing on climate adaptation and providing the community a direct way to engage and participate in the implementation of those strategies. In addition to our statewide goals that we are responsible for meeting, We are also responsible for meeting General Plan Policy OS 10.11. So this is the founding document that really establishes the need for the county to develop a climate action plan. And there are specific goals and standards for our greenhouse gas inventory and our reduction targets that we are responsible for meeting throughout the adoption of this plan. As our chair mentioned, we have been working on this project for quite a long time now since 2021. And this climate action plan has been all the better for that. We've had robust stakeholder engagement with multiple different sectors that this committee is involved with. And we are now at our final stages where we are preparing to release our draft climate action and adaptation plan for a 60-day public comment period. And then after that, we would return to the board for adoption later this year. So this is a look at our greenhouse gas emissions inventory. So we started this project, as I said, in 2021. So 2019 was our tallest year of data that we had to look at. And as you can see, our biggest source of emissions is transportation, followed by agriculture, and then combined buildings at 21%, if you look at residential and commercial buildings. So here's another way of looking at that. And I think if you start at the bottom, this graph makes it really clear that most of our transportation emissions come from light duty vehicles. In the agricultural sector, a lot of this is from fertilizer application. And then on the building side, most of our greenhouse gas emissions come from gas use in our buildings, whether residential or commercial. So here is our greenhouse gas inventory and projections without local action. So this accounts for statewide action. but not anything at the county level. And as you can see, these are our 2030, 2040, and 2045 targets. And these are downscaled from the state targets from the 2022 Scoping Plan to the County of Monterey's responsibility in the unincorporated jurisdictions. So without local action, it's clear that we are not meeting those statewide targets. With the proposed strategies and our climate action adaptation plan thus far, this is our current projection for greenhouse gas reduction. So, You can see with our black line that is with our local actions, and then there is a dotted red line. So this accounts for carbon sequestration possibilities that are included in the climate action plan. So the plan as proposed would meet our targets for 2030 and 2048. And that does satisfy our requirements as a planning document at this time. We do not have to envision all the way out to 2045. because more information and data will become available over the lifetime of continuous planning processes. So now we can focus on some of the proposed strategies and actions, and really our big opportunities that we see are building electrification and clean energy, vehicle trip reduction, and duty adoption. So for trip reduction, this is expanding access and adoption of public transportation, and also things like micro and shared mobility so that people don't have to rely on a single occupancy vehicle. And then for those trips that we can't take out of cars, then electrifying the rest of those vehicles on the road. And then climate smart agriculture and fire adapted lands, that's certainly a large issue area where there's opportunity for. And then just more globally, really focusing on the green economy and being able to provide support there. So here's a quick snapshot at some of the opportunities for these major issue areas. So for buildings really focusing on the electricians, workers, construction workers, and the high-growth jobs there. Similar story for our transportation. initiatives that requires a lot of workforce development opportunities. And similarly, with our agricultural and natural land efforts, we really want to be a good partner of the county focusing on incentive based structures and providing resources for our farming community and ranching community. to be able to adopt some of these practices. And there's a lot of things that we can do for adopting the frameworks for making these incentives possible and seeking funding, providing grant support, and ultimately being a collaborative partner in this effort. And I wanted to zoom in a little bit on our building sector because I think that it really illustrates the potential for high-row job developments over the course of the Climate Action Plan. So this is from a UCLA 2019 study on California building decarbonization, workforce needs and recommendations. And they were taking a look at California's building electrification goals. And over the long term, through 2045, they found that there are significant increases in job production by meeting those goals and having that statewide investment into clean energy in our buildings. So on the low end, they estimated that net increase to be 64,000 jobs per year. And then on the high end, that was 104,000 jobs. So here's another way of looking at this. So as you can see, a lot of these jobs would be created from the residential and small commercial retrofits. Similarly, with large commercial retrofits, that would be another major generator of jobs. And then renewable energy construction and electric generation and distribution is also a major source of job growth over the next 20, 40 years. So here is a QR code and where we will be displaying our sign-to-action application plan online during our 60-day public comment period. This will be available in early June. We are working on announcing a release date for that very soon at a press conference, but I don't want to get tripped up and overpromise just yet. And once we start that, we will be doing rounds of community and public engagement and hosting events. If any of you are interested in partnering in that or have venues that you would like me to come out and speak at, I would be happy to include that in my roadshow. So with that, I will pass it back to the committee for questions and comments.

Thank you for your presentation and all the meetings. You gave us a condensed version, but there's other slides because usually you have a longer presentation, right? But you did list all the different meetings that you've had, the outreach that you've done. So it's very much appreciated. And here you're coming, inviting and soliciting more public input. So we'll open it up for comments. Yes, we'll start with Beth and then we'll come this way.

Cora, I know that with climate action plans, one of the fundamental issues is that all of these mitigations are documented in these plans, but they're unfunded in budgets for cities and counties. And so nothing ever happens with those recommendations. In this case, is the county actually funding any of the specific items cited in this plan?

So we are including in our climate action plan, there is a section on cost estimates, and there are a number of short-term actions for the sustainability program to take the lead on developing long-term funding strategies to meet these goals and actions. There is not currently in our budget recommended funding for that intervening time, but we have been successful at drawing down grants amounts in large large awards. And we continue to do that as we are working on developing this plan. So as we proceed after the adoption phase, and we'll be coming back to the board and looking at here are some long term funding options that we can do both as a county and the region. And this is how we can draw down funding and provide funding over the long term to meet these goals. So we're preparing to not just let this sit on the shelf somewhere.

Okay. And for specific Monterey sectors like agriculture, can you connect farmers with perhaps, I don't know if there are any left under the current administration, but incentives, federal grant incentives to make changes that reduce emissions? Are those things that you're already doing?

We can absolutely do that in partnership with our RCD and other partners in the space. Additionally, there are healthy soils grants that we can take the lead on and we can expand our programming in that area.

And the Air Resources District also gets state money and then provides grants for personal electric vehicles and also for agriculture and other industry vehicles to help move towards that or incentivize moving towards that. Let's go this way.

Thank you. This is really informative. And I have a couple of clarification questions, mostly focusing on the... the page seven and page eight. So the emissions without local action, just relying on the statewide action, and then the emissions with proposed local action. So it looks as if, and this isn't surprising given what we've heard coming from the governor's office, that the primary statewide strategy is focused on reducing transportation emissions. So I wanna make sure I'm reading that correctly from the chart. And that our local strategy certainly focuses on that, but also gets us closer to those targets by primarily by, in addition, focusing on reducing building energy emissions. Is that accurate? Yes.

And Hannah, can you put this on the slide also? I forgot to introduce Hannah Kornfeld, our lead consultant with Ascent Environmental Inc., who's been assisting us with this project. But yes, that is a correct read. So looking at the statewide targets, they really do lean heavily on transportation reduction, primarily through EV adoption and VMT production. Additionally, for building energy, the issue that we see there is funding. We know the technology. We know how we are able to achieve emissions reductions. It's just who is going to pay for that and where is that investment going to come from. For quite a few other sectors, there is a lot more that needs to be developed for how we can account for those emissions reductions in the long term. Okay, great. Thank you.

Of course. Yeah, I actually... Kind of looking at our major $12 billion industry, which we just had a discussion with, my question is actually isn't so much for CORE, it could be for Norm. I'm wondering if you could. Put him in the hot seat. I'm just kind of curious with as climate change comes about, are there some crops in particular that are really more vulnerable than others and that we might be having to adjust to?

Yeah, we've looked at this several different ways. And I think for some crops, it would actually extend the season into the winter months where we would be able to produce lettuces and other things, depending on, of course, how this works out with pests and diseases and the current prohibitions we have on growing some of these crops because of that. But yes, I think there's some advantages that can be taken. We haven't really particularly identified any crops that would be suspect to climate change issues other than maybe some coastal berries and coastal crops that rely on the cooler salt air influences, let's put it that way. So we're still looking at that part of it and trying to understand how that fits into the mix of everything and all the decisions we have to make about water and some of the pest and disease pressures that we have right now. So to be determined, I guess is the best way to answer your question. Thanks. And if I could follow up on your question about transportation, This plan applies to the unincorporated areas of Monterey County, which is the rural areas, which is very difficult to electrify a lot of our equipment because we just don't have the capacity for our grid to handle all of this. And I've been through this with a lot of our farming operations in some of the remote areas of our county who want to incorporate electrified equipment. equipment and cannot get the power to do so. And so that's one of the greater challenges that we have in this plan is to understand how we can put that puzzle piece together that provides the power to our rural residents to make sure that we have the opportunity to take advantage of equipment. So that's going to be a bigger question I think we have to pose to our providers and determine whether or not they are going to be able to provide us the power that we need.

Yeah, legislators.

Yeah. Yes.

Just as as part of this plans implementation, is there going to be any procurement recommendations for the county and for other government entities?

Yeah, so that's that's definitely certain something that we are going to explore further. So, in addition to our community focused climate action adaptation plan, we're also also developing a municipal climate action plan. And one of the key strategies that we have in there is our EV procurement policy. We just came to the budget committee with a grant that's bringing in $10 million to make a large step in the right direction in that regard. And then we're going to also be looking at our green economy programming, how we can support the community and adopting more sustainable technologies and solutions to some of the ongoing issues that we experience.

And have we also, you know, like, for example, fleet management for the county, for example, just converting all county-owned vehicles to electric or other forms is not easy. And, you know, just imagine plugging in hundreds of county vehicles is very different than, you know, taking them to a gas station. Doing that is so money becomes available. And then on public transportation, you know, part of it, you know, zero emission buses and the whole, how interconnected are you with, with like public transportation, even though it's a joint powers, the County has seats on how, how does that look like for the County of Monterey to convert vehicles into like hydrogen or electric compared to diesel?

Yeah. So for our, um, bus transition, so, um, we are in conversation with our transportation partners, so TAMC and MST, And also we have multi-jurisdictional talks with Metro and SCCRTC up in Santa Cruz County. It's really an interesting issue because these buses are expensive, but they have their benefits. And we're trying to work on how we can collaborate amongst our agencies to make that happen. One of the interesting things when you look at our transportation emissions, Hannah, if you want to pull up our greenhouse gas inventory, is that we are looking at the unincorporated county. But an interesting exercise is to think about someone who starts their day in Salinas and then they go and they work in Monterey, as many people do. So they start in an incorporated jurisdiction. They do most of their driving in an unincorporated county. and then they end their trip into a city. So how we've developed our greenhouse gas inventory and the carbon accounting protocol is that we are actually taking a third of those emissions from that trip, and then the remaining emissions are divided between those two cities. So we all have a stake in partnering with our local jurisdictions on how we can solve some of these transportation issues. And that is one of the actions that is in our climate action plan in the short term, is for the sustainability program to really take the lead in engaging in those conversations. And we are definitely needing more and more staff time to make that happen, but we're on the right track there.

Yeah. And, um, the, on the board of Monterey Salinas transit, and we have our own plan to meet our carbon emission goals. And as, as grants have become available, we've been bringing in more electric buses. The terrorist issue recently added hundreds of thousands of more on recent purchases. And there's also the issue of, uh, um, Such a large county like ours, electric's more feasible in the shorter routes, but like South County to Salinas, that's where they're not going to be as effective, right? But MSC is looking to bring double-decker buses because those routes are heavily used, and sometimes there's not enough space even on a conventional bus. So we're looking at how to make it more efficient and provide more space to increase transit opportunities.

Yeah, but also on that point, hydrogen is a lot of public bus entities are converting to hydrogen, even over electric. Expensive infrastructure. Well, that's why. And different dangers with hydrogen. Yeah. And the lack of workforce actually service the buses.

And I would just add similar school districts are looking or moving towards electric, but in the longer routes, it's also an issue of not as efficient for those school districts that pick up in the rural areas. Anyone else? Yes.

One more comment and one's a question. My comment is, is you talked about commuting and in the healthcare industry. One thing I've noticed is I'm getting employees that are commuting farther and farther. So I have employees that come from Stockton that come from Los Banos every single day. And so. It's not just Salinas, Monterey, which is a very crowded route, but we are seeing those people with those long distance commuting. So I think this ties into workforce development and working with our colleges to make sure that we're growing our own as well as our housing industry. And can people afford to live here? Because a lot of the people say, well, you pay me a good salary, but. I'm not going to sell my 3,000 square foot house in Stockton, and I'm not going to get that same house in Monterey County. So they decide to continue to commute. So I think this ties to both of those industries that we need to improve on as well. My question was, I know the county just installed solar at Natividad, at the Sheriff's Department. They're doing it across the street. How does that affect, and is that part of the overall county's plan to reduce their own emissions?

Yeah, so that certainly does. That is part of our implementation efforts for our municipal climate action plan. So that reduces electricity costs. It makes our electricity that we're sourcing greener. And those projects also have EV charging stations that are being able to service both our fleet vehicles and also staff vehicles so that we can transition to EVs across the county. Employee commute is one of our largest sources of emissions at the municipal level. So it's really good to be able to provide those amenities to assist people in that transition. And we are looking at a variety of different structures for bringing more of these investments into county buildings. So these projects that you mentioned, so the county financed the capital cost with those upfront. We've also have other buildings like a 1441 Schilling Place We have a large solar array that the county didn't have to put money down through a power purchase agreement. So we're trying to be creative with our solutions for how we expand on the programming.

And I'll just comment as a county employee. Many of us were... felt the hit of it when we didn't have anywhere to park while they were being developed. But I will say that they came with a lot of bonuses that we didn't expect. So although we lost a couple of spaces and we had to walk far for a little while, I have noticed that it provides you covering when it's raining outside. Right. It provides extra lighting at night. So not only for our employees, but for our patients. Natividad is a big area. It covers a lot of space. And when you are leaving the facility at night, it was very dark outside. And we had lights, but I can tell you that the solar has provided additional lighting so our patients... And individuals coming to visit in the evening are able to go out into what they feel is a more secure space, as well as the EBS chargers for our patients as soon as they come up, as well as our employees. So those are benefits I think that we didn't necessarily expect, but we are glad that we have now. So we appreciate that opportunity. the county investing in that and doing that at Natividad, and I'm sure the other government facilities will as well.

Thank you. We are all about co-benefits and the sustainability part. If we've got problems, we'll try and solve it with sustainability.

Yeah, we had we had push for that. And we started with the Schilling building. Right. And now the second set of buildings was the ones you stated Natividad, this building and across the street. And I think it was our 9-1-1 ITD. And that those three buildings alone will save the county taxpayers 46 million dollars over the 30 years. So it pays for itself. But then it saves us millions of dollars in energy costs. So it's a win-win. And then CORA recently got another big win. There was a grant opportunity for more, a grant for meeting these goals. And we got a $15 million grant, of which $10 million comes to Monterey County as the lead applicant. And then we leveraged the investments in those three buildings as the local match, which the state grant required. And another $5 million goes to our consortium partners, San Benito County, Santa Cruz, City of Salinas, Santa Cruz, and One other city. Watsonville. Watsonville. And so that 5 million, we split among them. But we brought, we draw down another 15 million only because we use these projects as leverage. So another example of when meeting these goals, we're able to then bring more state dollars. And that grant will allow us to buy 55 electric vehicles for the county and 48.

46 charging stations. 46 charging stations. And also do workforce development training for our technicians to service electric vehicles and charging stations. and to really undertake some of these major planning issues that we see at the county level, but across the region, too, for EV adoption.

Just a follow-up question. I know that the new charging stations that are at least at my facility are that we're going to charge employees and people to use them. Where will that money go once it's collected?

That depends on the building. So for NMC, that fund is going back to NMC. For other county buildings that are solely managed by one department, like the health department, for example, funds would go back to their budgets. and assist them with their EV charging programming. For the multi-tenant buildings managed by facilities, that gets a little bit more complicated, but the funding is mostly to pay for the EV charging itself and then be redistributed across those departments, and we're working with facilities on that.

Thank you.

So that was an example of where Monterey County's leadership helped our other local governments benefit. Some of that they would have to put in a local mansion. I think it was $2.5 million of leverage to help our other local government partners. Anything else? Yes.

Are the chargers you guys putting out, those quick chargers that are going on?

So we have two dual-quart quick charging stations at the government center, and then the rest are level two using a 50-amp charger. So depending on your car, that'll get you $22 million. 15 miles per hour.

Great any other questions comments from the public on this. See, Saturday, not online. Right that thank you for your work and your presentation and look forward to the end of the year is the goal right to get get done. Oh, one last thing I would mention, just the controversial part of this, right? Even with our plan, this chart shows we would make significant progress, a significant decline. But in meeting the state number that they set for us, it gets us to a point where it may require more drastic action, right? Where it makes decisions difficult and might put additional costs on housing or on the people who could least afford it, right? For example, to meet some of these goals, it may require action, for example, in our building code to no longer, in future housing, to have gas stoves, gas heaters, water heaters, traditional water heaters, which all adds cost to construction. And then housing is already very high. And during a blackout, you might not have electricity, but if your home at least has gas, you're able to stay heat, you're able to cook. Those are the impacts you have with those kinds of changes. And then not only on new houses, but it would even require to have funding to incentivize people who have existing housing and to make those retrofits to meet those goals. That's where, in those fine areas, but... But when you try to get to that, meet that state goal, that's where those kind of decisions come in. And they're very difficult ones. And they do have financial impacts on our local residents and businesses. So I just want to put that out there because that's one of the tough ones that chorus had to deal with.

Absolutely. If climate change was easy, I wouldn't have my job.

Yes. And so thank you for your leadership there and for your patience in carrying out this work and hearing from all the different stakeholders throughout the county on this.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, everybody, for having me.

All right. Thank you very much. We can conclude our meeting. Everybody, thank you very much.