Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

You know, the Mexican culture, they give everybody nicknames. So, like, it really doesn't matter what your name is. You're gonna have a nickname. Mhmm.

I always got busy Lizzie or busy Lizzie or any of those busy

Okay. Everybody's like I know. I got it. I heard the memo. I get it. Know. I got

Alright. Is the best I can do?

Everybody looking at me. I'm trying. Alright.

You for your patience, every

in progress. Good

morning, everyone. Welcome to the Napa County Board of Supervisors meeting. I'm calling this meeting of 03/24/2026 to order. Roll call, please.

Vice chair Lesio. Present. Supervisor Ramos. Here. Supervisor Gallagher. Here. Supervisor Cottrell. Here. Chair Manfrey.

Here. And I will note we're having some technical difficulties, so please bear with us today. I would like Barry Eberling to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. And our next item is the pet of the week.

So Louise is here to introduce us to the pet of the week, who I understand has been nicknamed by the board already, Phantom. But we'll find out his or her real name.

Oh

my god. Chopper, Phantom. It's good.

On brand. Thank you.

Good morning, Luis. Who do we have here?

Good morning. This is Chopper. Chopper is a community cat that was brought into the animal shelter at the March. One of the animal control officers was able to find them. He was out roaming around. He had an injury to his back left foot. And unfortunately, we had to amputate his foot. He's not much of a he's sort of okay. Steady. Okay. He's been at the shelter since March. We had to unfortunately amputate his leg because he had an injury to it that wasn't repairable. And since he's been at the shelter, he's been recovering super well. He's been going to his vet appointments and the staff at the Silverado vet hospital have basically fallen in love with him. The staff have fallen in love with him.

He is gonna go up to up for adoption after today. He's been all cleared and I thought he would be a cool one to take. He prefers to roam around, sorry.

Okay. You have some excellent cat handling skills, Louise. That's delightful. Aw, Chopper. Aw. Is that better? Okay. Okay. Alright. Very good. Well, this is Chopper, and let's, let's find Chopper a home soon. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Louise. Okay. Our next item is approval of proclamations and commendations.

We have two proclamations today, one honoring arts in April month and one honoring public health week in Napa County. Do we have any public comment on our proclamations today? I don't see anyone in the room coming to the podium. Anyone on the phones? No? Okay. May I please have a motion to approve the proclamations?

So moved. Second.

Moved by Alestia, second by Supervisor Ramos. All those in favor? Aye. Passed unanimously. So I would like to welcome Christine Natali to the podium to accept the proclamation for arts in April.

Good morning. Good morning. Is is

this one on too? Wow. Okay. So so, Chris, thank you for being here to accept this. Arts in April twenty twenty six, whereas each April, Napa County joins together in a shared celebration of creativity, expression, and cultural heritage through Arts in April Napa Valley, a county wide recognition of the arts as a vital thread in the fabric of our community, and whereas for more than fifteen years, Arts Council Napa Valley, alongside dozens of arts and cultural organizations, hundreds of artists, businesses, and community members, has cultivated this celebration as both an invitation and a call to honor the power of the arts in our daily lives.

And the people of Napa County, hundreds of residents from each city and town came together to shape the county's community cultural plan adopted in 2008, affirming a collective vision rooted in the belief that self expression is everyone's birthright, the arts serve as a common language, the arts are critical to a healthy economy, the arts allow us to access our past, ourselves, and each other, and the arts give us a sense of place and of home. And the arts transcend boundaries and bring us together, telling our stories, preserving our history, inspiring innovation, and fostering belonging in ways both profound and enduring. And in times of both celebration and challenge, the arts remind us of who we are, connect us to one another, and illuminate the path forward. Now, therefore, let it be proclaimed that this Board of Supervisors, County Of Napa, State Of California, on this March 2026, does hereby recognize April 2026 as Arts in April month in Napa County and calls upon all residents and visitors to embrace the spirit of creativity, support local arts and cultural organizations, and celebrate the arts as an essential essential expression of our shared humanity. Here you are.

Thank you. If you'd to say a

few words. Yeah.

Thank you, chair Manfrey. Thank you, board of supervisors. It's an exciting time for arts in Napa right now. Over the last year, we've seen incredible growth in Napa arts, including making the arts more reflective of our Napa community as a whole. We've seen a successful Mariachi Festival. We've seen a successful Ballet Folklorical Festival, and we've seen our first Spanish language theater troupe come online. However, arts funding is again under attack. So we must advocate for the importance of that funding and also advocate that our artists get paid. I thank you again and have a great day.

Okay, great. And next, I would like to invite Liz Alessio to present a proclamation for public health week to Doctor. Wu and Jennifer Yasimoto. You go ahead and come up to the podium.

I'm so honored to be able to do this. Thank you so much, Chair, for asking me to do so. So this is a proclamation for National Public Health Week, April 6 through 04/12/2026. Whereas the theme for National Public Health Week twenty twenty six is Ready, Set, Action, recognizing that good health does not happen by chance, but through collective effort and commitment. And whereas for more than one hundred and fifty years, public health efforts have significantly improved the life expectancy and quality of life in The United States.

And whereas public health systems work every day to protect community well-being through efforts such as ensuring clean water and safe food, preventing disease, advancing science, and coordinating emergency preparedness and response, and whereas public health professionals help communities prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from a wide range of health threats, including disease outbreaks, natural disasters such as fires, floods, and severe storms, and other public health emergencies and whereas public health success depends on collaboration across sectors, including partnerships with county administrators, transportation agencies, educators, community organizers, and private businesses that all influence the condition that shape health outcomes. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that this Board of Supervisors, County Of Napa, State of California, on this March 2026, does hereby recognize the week of April 6 through 04/12/2026 as National Public Health Week in Napa County. We encourage all residents to acknowledge the importance of public health and join efforts in creating a healthier, safer, and stronger communities for all. Doctor. Wu, would you like to say a few words?

Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair Manfrey, Chair Supervisor Alessio, and all the supervisors. I am Doctor. Christine Wu, Deputy Director for HHS Public Health and Health Officer for Napa County. I'm so grateful to be here today to accept this proclamation on behalf of all the public health staff, to recognize National Public Health Week and recognize our part in the public health efforts to improve the health of our communities.

Public health, as you heard, is dedicated to preventing injury and disease before they occur and improve the health and well-being of entire communities. And in addition to critical health safety functions to protect the public, public health focuses on primary prevention and working upstream to address the social and community conditions that drive disparities and inequities in health problems, otherwise known as the social drivers of health. And as part of the Health and Human Services Agency, we envision a community where all people thrive and experience fulfilling lives. The twenty twenty six state morbidity mortality data was released just last week. And so in the spirit of the Ready!

Part of the Ready! Set! Action! Of National Public Health Week theme, I would like to take this opportunity to provide a few of the key population health findings from that dashboard. So over the past few decades, California has seen improvements in overall health and long, longer life expectancy and declines in death rates.

The all cause mortality, cancer death rates, and cardiovascular death rates all dropped to all time lows and life expectancy reached an all time high of eighty point five years. The top causes of mortality in Napa County, from 2024 data are still strongly weighted by, age related chronic illnesses starting with Alzheimer's and dementia, as well as ischemic heart disease. It's one and two, but they flip flop regularly. A good thing for ischemic heart disease rates in Napa County over the three year period of 2021 to 2024, we actually saw a decrease of eleven point eight percent of deaths, particularly for those who are of Asian or Latino groups. Other leading causes of death include the other cardiovascular diseases, stroke and hypertensive heart disease, various cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, alcohol related deaths, and kidney diseases.

The majority of these, with the exception of COPD actually, we saw declines, with the largest decline in kidney diseases of twenty four point seven percent, seventeen percent for alcohol and drug related, alcohol related diseases and, heart related, heart disease related deaths. Of concern when we look at this from a population standpoint, however, is that the one, from an age group perspective, the one age group of the younger adults ages twenty five to forty four on the state level and locally, twenty five to fifty four, we're seeing increased deaths, particularly driven by behavioral health issues and injury related causes, especially drug overdoses. And although you might hear that, you know, the drug overdose deaths have plateaued in California or decreased, which is similar to what has been seen across the nation, the truth is, you know, the overdose deaths remain higher than pre pandemic levels and is still a leading cause of death. Today, actually so moving on to better news. Today actually is, March 24 is actually World TB Day.

It's a day to raise awareness of this really old disease that's been around since, ancient times where preventive treatment, though preventive treatment is still available, is still a leading cause of infectious, the leading, the highest, sorry, the highest cause of infectious disease deaths across the world. And we're still seeing increases in deaths from TB across, in cases in California, across the nation, and also locally here in Napa. A little bit more about TB, it still kills two hundred people a year in California, can affect, people of all ages including children, and older adults. And, is wanted to just say a few metrics about TB. Eighty three percent of infectious TB cases are due to progression of untreated latent TB infection that typically is in a person for approximately twenty years before it becomes infectious TB, signifying ample time for preventive treatment.

And the cause and consequences of TB are significant. Estimates of medical and societal costs of TB reached $3.00 $3,000,000 in California in 2025. A good positive thing that was introduced last year, a new law AB 2,132 took effect last year requiring primary care providers to offer TB testing and follow-up for all adult patients. Then there are also emerging threats to public health, particularly with the federal funding cuts and policy changes that have had far reaching impacts to how local core programs in public health function. Some of these have led to, as you know, the misleading information that has damaged the public's trust in science, medicine, and public health.

Most concerning, however, is the resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases like measles causing outbreaks across the nation in California, and we and even locally, we had our first case in Napa earlier this year. First case of measles in Napa earlier this year. And all of the people who have had measles were unvaccinated. A recent study published in CDC's MMWR indicated that routine childhood vaccinations prevented five zero eight million cases of illness, thirty two million hospitalizations, over one million deaths, and saved over 2,700,000,000,000.0 in total societal costs. And so, you know, I really value the work that the supervisors have done in helping us continue the, the incredible work that we do in public health and acknowledging, you know, public health, next month for National Public Health Week.

So the last thing I'd like to do is to share an invitation for all of you, everyone here and those listening in, to join our twenty twenty six Community Health Fair, which will be held on the last day of National Public Health Week, April 12. New this year, we're gonna be at Oxbow Commons from one to 03:30PM because our usual location at Fuller Park is under construction, so we're not there this year. This is a family friendly event with many health promoting fun activities appropriate for all ages, including our seniors. I know that last time we were here, there was a interest in having a senior resource fair. That's our community health fair.

We have our BUIL mobile services will be on-site. There will be many community partners offering specific resources for the older adult community. So check out our social media for more information and the list of total, you know, community based partners that would be there. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Doctor. Wu, and thank you, Vice Chair Alessio, for reading the proclamation. I'd like to welcome the board up for a photo. All right. The next item on our agenda is our consent calendar, items A through AA.

Do we have any board comments or items to pull off of the consent calendar today?

Chair, my understanding was that five gs was being pulled from today.

I haven't is that correct?

I

I will that was my understanding. So

Super through the chair, supervisor, if you would like to, I believe that's still on consent, if that is something that you would like to discuss and would ask that to have that discussion and then continue the item to the next regular meeting so that this is on elections, correct?

Correct.

So that our so that Mr. Tudor would be here to answer any questions that you might have.

Sure. Thank you. I'll pull five gs. Thank you. Okay.

Very good. So it's been pulled. And would you like to discuss it today or completely continue it?

I think per the CEO's request, he'd like me to have the discussion today, ask my questions so that staff can be prepared for next time.

Thank you. Very good. So for items a through a a accepting five g, are there any board comments? Is there anyone in the room wishing to make a public comment? And is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Seeing no public comments, may I have a motion and a second to approve consent calendar items A through AA accepting item five gs?

So moved.

Second.

Okay. First by Cottrell, second by Vice Chair Alessio. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None opposed? So that passes unanimously. And Okay. We'll be discussing item five gs during item eight on this agenda. So we're going to go through a couple more things before then.

At this time, I'd like to take public comment on any items not on today's agenda or any items that may be discussed in today's closed session. Is there anyone in the room wishing to make a comment on items not on the agenda or on our closed session item? I don't see anyone approaching the podium. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Then we're going go ahead and move on to agenda item seven, which is Board of Supervisors reports and announcements. Are there any board announcements today? I see Supervisor Gallagher. Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning. I wanted to just name a few things, say a few thank yous and congratulations. I recently went to the Nimbus Arts Open House in Napa. It's really exciting to have Nimbus Arts here in Napa.

And I encourage everybody to check out their website. They have their summer camps and their class offerings online, and they're doing some amazing things down there along the river. And I think that there are probably a lot of people that would love to take advantage of their offerings but maybe don't know about those yet. Also wanted to thank our PBES department for their work on the community workshop regarding the BDR on the nineteenth. The staff moved very quickly on feedback from the community to make the BDR even more accessible.

So I just want to say thank you to the staff for being so responsive. I also want to congratulate Napa Valley College for a very successful Aviva Mariachi concert on Saturday night. It's really a remarkable experience. I really encourage people to go out next year. It's really a celebration of culture and community and more than ever a reminder of preserving identity, staying connected, and celebrating strength and resilience through music and dance. It's really a wonderful opportunity for the community.

So

that's all I've got for now.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallagher, Supervisor Ramos, and then Supervisor Cottrell after that.

Thank you so much. I just want to share with my colleagues that I had the opportunity to represent ABAC and MTC at some lobby days. And one of the things that was front and center was senator Cabaldon's bill, SB ten seventy eight, which really is looking at modernizing the sustainable community strategy. And that is an incredibly important place for us to be because it ties into my other update, which is the ABAC and MTC have approved their plan Bay Area twenty fifty plus. This is our regional transportation plan that we have to do every four years.

Cabaldon's bill is looking at how do we go from simply planning and to more implementation. Doing one of these plans in the Bay Area every four years comes at a cost of $50,000,000 That $50,000,000 five of it is for the programmatic level of CEQA. So $50,000,000 every four years with the cost escalating. That's $50,000,000 that isn't going into implementation. So one of the things that we are advocating for as MTC and ABAC, We're cosponsoring this bill with senator Kymbalden is to change the time frame of those regional transportation plans from four years to eight years and to delineate an exception at the programmatic level of CEQA because when the work gets done and the projects are going, we have project level CEQA which is far more detailed.

And so that, in turn, would save us, you know, over an eight year period would save us $55,000,000 that can go into implementation. So there'll be more. Markups are happening now. We should have some good language. We have provided our specifics over to the LAO's office.

And so I believe that by the end of this week, we'll have some good language and how that we can look at how that would be relevant here more specifically in Napa County. In my capacity as serving on the Napa Valley Waste Management Authority, I had an opportunity to tour the transfer station. And, you know, I never was really just a fan, and you all knew this. I wasn't a fan of serving on this. But I thought, well, the meetings are down by my office, so I'll walk the flight of stairs and go to these meetings.

And I went to the transfer station. I've got to say, I am incredibly impressed in two ways, I'm incredibly impressed by how much disposal is occurring at our transfer station. So in that sense, not a positive, impressive way. But how we are dealing with it and the separation and how we are looking forward at taking construction materials out separately, how the recycling and compost efforts are parallel to that, That part was incredibly impressive. And so if you have an opportunity, even if you don't serve on one of our waste management authorities, I would highly encourage you to go to the transfer station and to understand we used to ship out by rail.

We now ship out by trucks by trucks. And so with the cost of fuel, as you think about right now, we really need to start thinking about how this is how our efforts in our daily household and business lives are going to affect the volume of disposal that we have here. So then I would say I want to share a quick update of our ad hoc, our inclusivity ad hoc. Supervisor Gallagher and myself had the opportunity to meet with the Napa Valley Together Initiative key leaders to understand really where efforts are needed to protect our vulnerable residents, especially those that may have mixed status or unsatisfactory immigration status and what those impacts are going to be. We know that this is multi layered.

We know that we'll be hearing more updates as it relates to Medi Cal eligibility, as it relates to indigent care. And so as we look at this, we're looking at it more proactively. And I was very grateful to receive a report with my colleague and to share with you that 90 individuals were interviewed. And so we've got some specific calls to action that we will be putting together for the board as we look forward as to how we can make sure that we're supporting our community holistically. The next part that I'll say comes with a referral with an incredibly heavy heart as I reflect on the recent news as to the conduct of Cesar Chavez during his lifetime and his exploitation of women and young girls.

And so by just level setting, we have two items that I feel here at the county that require our immediate attention. The first is we have a Latino Leaders mural on the Carithers Building. And that mural features many, many great people of many contributions here in Napa County, but it does in fact prominently feature Cesar Chavez. It is my understanding that that mural is not owned by the county. There is an easement to allow the placement of that mural on a county building that the owner is the NAPA Chamber of Commerce.

And so my referral would be that staff make a request that the Napa Chamber of Commerce remove the mural from our building. It just it it does, in fact, to me, feel like it gives the impression of of of the county's approval. And so I do want that part to be addressed. The next is we recognize both the state and federal holiday known as SF Chavez here this month. And I do know that this next referral will require meet and confers with our unions and how we designate this state.

But I do believe in hearing from Dolores, I do very much take stock in her words that the farm worker movement continues to be worthy of recognition, especially here in Napa County, and that that movement is greater than any one individual. And so with that, I would request that this board continue to acknowledge the day but to follow the lead of the California State Legislature to rename the holiday Farm Worker Day. And I would ask that staff look at how we can refrain or at least observe and reserve the day in the absence of the name of Cesar Chavez at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. Supervisor Cottrell?

Good morning and thank you, Chair. And thank you, Supervisor Ramos, that referral. I have a few things to offer up today. First of all, happy birthday, Saint Helena. It is the 100 birthday of the town today. And I also wanna mention that on March 12, there was a ribbon cutting at Gamble Grove, is a new 10 unit workforce housing project in Saint Helena. And I just wanna commend the builder. We did the groundbreaking a year ago, and they've completed the project. Now it took eight years to get the entitlements and build the funding stack, but we are here today. I wanna thank Jennifer Palmer for her work there.

The county was able to contribute part of that funding stack, but a big shout out to Our Town St. Helena and Napa Valley Community Housing and all the donors who were involved there. And also, the ribbon cutting was on the twelfth, and people started moving in on the sixteenth, so it's it's active. The other thing I wanted to mention was that senator Cabaldon convened a meeting of the senate select committee on California's wine industry right here in at Napa Valley College a couple of weeks ago. Assembly member Aguirre Currie attended.

We had a lot of our local wine industry members there. So I just appreciate the legislators who brought that that meeting here and really engaged to learn more about the issues facing the industry. And I wanna give a shout out to the the folks from the industry who attended. That was important. And then as the RCRC representative on the California Wildfire Task Force, I attended the spring meeting.

We were in beautiful Tuolumne County this past week, and I have a couple updates from there. First of all, we heard from CAL FIRE chief Joe Tyler who was talking about what a dry spring it has been and what that means in terms of early ramp up of staffing. And just checking with Chief Greenberg, I understand that here in the county we will be fully staffed as of April 6, that's so that's an exciting date. You mentioned there was training, rehire academy has happened, and helicopter training as well, so thanks to our CAL FIRE partners on that. And then the other thing I wanted to mention in honor of Public Health Week, our CRC is sponsoring a wildfire health impact bill, SB899, which will help the task force work with other public health partners to help us really be able to quantify public health impacts around wildfire smoke.

And then finally, another shout out to the Mariachi Festival. They had an initial performance in Lyman Park up in St. Helena, So I love having the Up Valley and Down Valley participation. We had great turnout. And I wanna also, in thanking the organizers, give a special shout out to Oscar DeHaro who has worked so hard to bring these groups here. So thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor. Goodrell, Supervisor Alessio or Vice Chair Alessio?

Thank you. Great updates. Thank you, everybody, for all those acknowledgments and for the referrals. As the MCE Marin Clean Energy representative, I'm happy to share that the budget was approved for this next year, which is great. But what's even better is that the board approved a 14% reduction in their electricity generation rates and a temporary bill credit through 2026.

MCE does quite a bit of community benefit and programming that goes back into the communities that are engaged with MCE. And that will continue. They really looked at what programs are really providing an impact. So through cost savings and through, frankly, going through reserves. The board really wanted, during this time of a lack of affordability, to provide some more affordability on utility bills through MCE.

Additionally, the MCE Cares credit relief will continue also through March 2027. Through NVTA, as a member there with Chair Manfrey, just a quick update regarding VineGo. VineGo is an essential resource that we know that gets a high demand VineGo. So just a couple of updates. Right now, VineGo, NVTA, the Vine Transit is assigning a road supervisor to handle additional paratransit trips as needed.

Additionally, the Vine is rebidding Saturday Vine Go services to assign additional morning and afternoon drivers. And they are retraining a Saturday Vine Go dispatcher, different from the one that's during the week, to send TransDev, which is the company that we use for drivers management, a log on Monday mornings of anyone that needs a follow-up for situations in the future. So I think those are all really productive, positive steps in terms of trying to address the needs and that gap there. Let's see here. I want to thank fire administrator JR Rogers and Napa Firewise administrator Steven Burgess.

We went on a field trip last week. We've looked at Dry Creek Road and the work that's been done in terms of fuel mitigation. We then took a little extra trip up to see the progress of the Dry Creek Bridge, which is it's a big project. I've been going up and down there for it's been a while. And it's getting closer.

It's going to be such a huge improvement for so many people in terms of the health and safety for folks that need that access. And then we went down Mount Veeder, we looked at the fuel reduction that's going to start sometime in April on Mount Veeder. So I just want to give a heads up and a thank you to JR and Stephen for that time that they gave me. Recently, I attended two community events, nonprofits. One is Mentus.

Mentus provides access to mental health and behavioral health for low income residents. They had a very successful fundraiser. They're very concerned regarding the lack of funding or retraction of funding. So this fundraiser was successful. I'm very happy for Mentus because as a nonprofit, it goes back into helping people in our community.

Additionally, I attended the Valley Community Health Foundation. And that's formally known back in the day. Well, they assist folks with dementia and Alzheimer's through a day care center and caregiver support and others. And so that's a very important also nonprofit and always happy and proud to be a part of that fundraiser for them. Want to speaking of, as someone just mentioned, how the grass is turning dry right now.

This is kind of a side note. I went hiking, and I was going to go up the Rector Dam because that's a nice, close but short hike and a great view. We started on the trail, and the grass is definitely dry. But what I want people to be aware of is that there are ticks out right now. So the first I mean, there's a lot of ticks, and you'll see them on the grasses. So I encourage hikers. See Michelle's out here, she's a hiker too, but be careful of those grasses that are coming over onto the trail and look closely. If you see little black dots, look closer and those could be ticks. So just beware, okay, of ticks. Go hiking, but beware.

We backtracked. We did something else until they go away. And they do go away. So just a little note on that. And then just two upcoming events that are this week. One is the fourth annual Napa Climate Summit, Resilient NAPA. It's March 26, so just a couple days away at NAPA Valley College from 3PM to 6PM. And then also the twenty first Annual Agricultural Day, and that's through the Farm Bureau, and that'll be at the NAPA Valley Napa Expo. And that's from 9AM to 1PM. So thank you for that.

Okay. Wonderful updates. Thank you all. There's so much happening around this county. And you've reminded me, Vice Chair Alessio, that my mother has spotted four rattlesnakes already. So please also watch out for rattlesnakes. They don't want to hurt you. As long as you just back away and don't mess with them, you'll be fine. Yeah. And thank you, Supervisor Ramos, for those excellent referrals.

And I have a couple add ons here. Several of us were present at the JD Fuller Recycling Awards ceremony on Thursday, March 19, which was a lovely ceremony honoring leaders in recycling who are effectively adopting programs at their places of business mostly and just doing a great job around the county. So shout out to all the winners there. We had a number of restaurants and other businesses. It was really lovely.

We also have coming up the Flood District groundbreaking ceremony for the next section of the flood management project from the bypass north to Lincoln or north to Trancas, which will be it's Lincoln a new floodwall and trail aligned with the river for the community to benefit from. And that will be on the April 1 at 09:30AM at River Terrace Inn. So please join us there. The North Bay Watershed Association will be holding a conference called a moment in a I have moment in a climate of change. Oh, Meeting this Moment in a Climate of Change.

That makes more sense. On Thursday, April 9 from 9AM to 5PM in Nevada at the College of Marin Jonas Center. And our public meetings for the baseline data report managed by our planning, building, environmental services department have concluded. But you can still comment online about our general plan or baseline data report as those things are ongoing. And there's a place you can comment any time of day or night. So go ahead and get those comments in. We really do appreciate them, and we'll incorporate them to the best of our ability. Okay. So now I'd like to move us to item A, which is discussion of items pulled from the consent calendar. And we have item five gs for discussion.

Is there any public comment on item five gs? Don't see any in the room. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Then I'll bring this back to the board for discussion.

Thank you so much, chair. My question to regarding five gs relates to this is an item that is an authorization of an agreement for services with Liberty vote for a total of 1,199,000.000, for elections through June 2032. And one of the things that, in looking at the item, I didn't see anything that said that we had gone out to bid for this item. When, I did receive a a response from mister Tudor, it did not it did not address why we have not gone out, for an RFP on this item. This just looks like a new contract.

It's six years. It's a significant amount. So I would just like an answer as to, did we go out to RFP? I don't believe we did. But if not, what is the exception that allows us to do so? Because I would imagine we need to actually solicit for bids on this. So those are my questions.

Okay. Thank you. Any other comments or discussion on this? Okay. Not seeing any. Is that clear?

Through the chair, I might be able to respond to the supervisor's question. Under our purchasing policy, there actually is an exception for election materials. And that aligns with statutory exceptions for using the purchasing agent for election materials. So that's what the Registrar of Voters is relying on in bringing this contract forward. But he may be able to answer other questions you may have.

So understanding the government code exception for purchasing regarding elections, then I guess my question is, how do we determine that this is the vendor that we utilize?

And that I would have to defer to the register of voters and his rationale and judgment in selecting this vendor. Okay.

Thank

you. I definitely would like to continue this and to give the opportunity to for mister Tudor to come and explain the selection process. It just seems like a very significant contract and and the absence of the reef of the inclusion of the government code section exception that allows to bypass the bid process and the criteria for selection, I do think are important of this board noting and knowing before we vote on a nearly $1,200,000 contract. Thank you. So I'll go ahead and make a motion to continue item five g until, a date to be determined by our CEO.

That was a motion by Ramos and second by Gallagher. All those in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. So we will go ahead. Thank you for that very much. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and move on to item nine, which is administrative items. And item 9A, review and approve the fiscal year 'twenty six-'twenty seven fiscal strategy and budget policies. Receive a presentation on the fiscal year 'twenty five-'twenty six midyear financial fiscal review and approve midyear budget amendments. I welcome Tracy Chelsea, our auditor controller and Michael Kleinman, our chief budget officer to update us on on our budget strategy and policies.

Thank you, madam chair. Before we go to them, just wanted to say a couple of things. My office's mid year budget review focused on focusing primarily on the general fund today as a key part of ongoing fiscal monitoring using six months of actual data, revenue and expenditure. We collaborate with department heads and the auditor controller's office to forecast end of year results and net county costs. The process helps identify and address current year budget challenges and informs development of our next fiscal year's budget and beyond.

At this stage, we project meeting all budgetary requirements, including maintaining a fund balance with some mid year adjustments made to both our revenues and expenditures. Beyond those adjustments, we propose no additional changes at this time. Because mid year estimates rely on limited data, they tend to be conservative, especially for expenditures, which often results in stronger actual outcomes at the end of the year. However, and importantly, recent actuals and current projections are demonstrating a trend of year to year general fund expenditure growth outpacing year to year growth in discretionary revenues. The county's primary discretionary revenue sources are all officially underperforming.

And I think it's prudent to assume that this will be the case for the foreseeable future, all while expenses and needs continue to increase. Property tax revenue, while continuing to grow year to year, actuals from last year came in below the ten year average, which is a little over 6%. And we currently project the same for the current fiscal year that we're in closing out the year. Sales in transit occupancy tax revenue are flat year to year and not growing. General liability and health care insurance costs continue to grow at an extraordinary rate year to year.

Just our general liability insurance is expected to grow a whopping 30% year to year. We are not alone. This is happening all over the state. December rain event caused an estimated 8,500,000 in road repair, due to landslides. And there is substantial uncertainty about the degree of impact to our county's general fund from HR one.

I know that, our director, Ms. Yasimoto, has been keeping your board and all of us appraised of what's going on in this space, this business that she's in. In addition to increasing staff workloads to implement new requirements, the federal government is also shifting significant costs to the state, some of which are likely to be passed on to counties given the state's fiscal situation that they're dealing with. Also, given the new rules around access to insured care for folks, there may likely be impacts on the county's indigent care costs. This is the welfare institutions code.

County is required by law to put that bill, again, for care and life saving care, health care for the most needy. And again, this is a full on general fund obligation. So we're watching this closely, and we're going to continue to keep you advised. These trends and realities are going to be key considerations and informants to our development of next year's budget, which we're looking forward to presenting to your board in hearings and in meetings individually later on as we progress in the next several weeks and later on this spring. With that, I'm going to turn it over to our new Chief Budget Officer, Michael Kleinman.

And she's also joined today by our Auditor Controller, Tracy Schulze. I want to thank both of them for their work and their presentation today and their leadership as we begin developing next year's fiscal plan. Thank you.

Can you hear me? Okay.

Good morning, Chair Manfrey and members of the Board. Thank you, Ryan, for the introduction. Tracy and I are here this morning to present to you fiscal year twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six midyear fiscal review. We have a lot to cover today. So Tracy will first go through the fiscal strategy and budget policies. Then I will go over the mid year fiscal review for the general fund and the budget amendments. Then go through the general fund stress factors and we'll conclude with questions. I'm going to turn it over to Tracy now to go over the fiscal strategy and budget policies.

Good morning. Tracy Scholzey, Audit Controller. Great to be here. As part of the budget development process, we review our annual fiscal strategy and budget policies each year. And we complete that to ensure that we identify and update your board's goals and priorities.

As economic conditions vary year to year, it is essential to review our strategies and then align our budget policies reflecting current conditions to develop a sustainable and quality annual budget, which we will bring back to you in June. So I'm going to be discussing Exhibit A, which is the Fiscal Strategy and Budget Policies. This annual review, we have one recommendation. In the Fiscal Strategy section of this document, we have no recommended changes. Usually, when we bring these policies back to you, we have a red line version to identify things very easily.

What happened this year is a lot of rearranging of the document, reformatting, moving things around, aligning it where the fiscal strategy came first, and then the budget policies followed. When I did a red line, it was impossible to follow. So for your knowledge, the fiscal strategy portion, none of the verbiage changed. A couple sentences maybe had a little modification, but nothing substantial, just more grammar. But on the budget we had one section that changed.

And we did pass out this morning. It just is the one section, and it's the general fund contributions to the non general fund departments or programs. So that document has the first page is the revised recommended language. The second page is what you had in the past. And then the next two pages are the red line version of that section.

So this is really the only substantial section that has changed. And the reason we have this change is because our current policy has specific dollars tied to annual amounts with an inflator for future years for contributions. In reviewing this section and the budgets of the receiving departments, our recommendation is to allow for an annual analysis of each of these funds and come back with a recommendation based on actual need. We recognize the limited discretionary dollars in the general fund, and we feel an analysis is fiscally prudent and warranted, especially as these funds may have sufficient fund balances to offset their costs. To expand, I would like to go over three main areas of the change.

The first is the Roads Fund. And we're just talking the operating division of the Roads Fund. So currently, we have a measure UMOE contribution that we are committed to. So in the policy, it still reflects that that is the minimum that we would obviously give from the general fund contribution. And then if there's additional contributions, we would use that analysis to offset the gap between other funding that is being received for those operating roads dollars and see what the gap is to cover that.

And we would come back and recommend that the general fund contribution to offset that gap. And this includes staffing for maintenance projects. So we know that there's going to be a gap. There's going to be some need there. But just to be clear, this is not talking about the Roads capital projects.

That's a completely different process. So that's the Roads Fund contribution. The second area is the Housing and Community Services contribution. Again, it would just be us bringing back a recommendation during the annual budget process, to talk about the gap and the need based on other funding sources that we have instead of just an automatic dollar amount plus an inflator. And then the third one is I'm gonna go in a little bit more detail because I know that this one is near and dear to everybody's heart with the fire fund, especially in the recent years with all the fires.

We would our our recommendation is to do the general fund contribution if needed for one time health and safety capital expenditures. I want to give you a little bit of history on this for everybody watching and for newer board members. Until 2020, the general fund has never provided a contribution to the general fund, maybe helped with some capital projects. Did I just say that backwards? The general fund has never done a contribution to the fire fund.

Sorry. So historically, we've never provided any funds to the Fire Fund from the General Fund. And in 2020, we received a PG and E settlement from the twenty seventeen fires. And that did go to the General Fund. And we started or did go to the fire fund, and we started the kickoff of the fire prevention program.

This is where we started teaming up with Firewise and doing a lot of community outreach and community public protection and infusing more funds for Firewise programs. We also had monies like the Bill Dodd million dollars that he infused in there as well. So 'twenty one, 'twenty two, 'twenty three, we started putting money from the general fund to offset the costs of fire prevention and fire wise. In 'twenty two, 'twenty three, we started putting money in for the BRIC grant because we were going for the BRIC grant. And we had the match for the BRIC grant that we needed to fund.

And we wanted to upfront that, so we made sure that we had those funds available. So in 2024, 2425, we did, have $9,000,000 of a match go into the fire fund. But then we found out early in '24 that we were not going to get the BRIC grant. And so at the close of 2425, your board approved the creation of a fire administration division in the general fund. And we moved all of those community protection prevention monies into the general fund, knowing that it was pretty much a general fund obligation.

And so we closed or we moved the 9,000,000 as well as all the expenditures for fire prevention into the new general fund division, which just left in the fire fund the historic work of all fire protection activities, which includes the CAL FIRE contract as well as the fire marshal activities. In developing the twenty five-twenty six budget, the policy still remained to give general fund contribution to fire of $9,000,000 which was unnecessary because now it's all in the general fund, and the general fund is already funding that fire prevention program using net county cost dollars. So that is why we're recommending to change the written policy of a certain dollar amount plus COLA into the fire fund each year and just talking about the one time health and safety capital expenditures. I do have more data for you. This graph is using figures, numbers, actuals for the last ten years, stripping out anything that was related to the fire prevention, the CWPP, the Community Wide Protection Plan, Firewise, Burke Grant match, anything anything to do with the prevention.

This is literally the dollars, the revenues in the dark blue bar, and the expenditures in the light blue bar of fire general operations. So this is the Cal Fire countywide and the fire marshal. And you can see for the last ten years, the dark blue bars exceed the light blue bars, meaning that the revenues coming in to that fire fund is exceeding the expenses going out in operations. The revenues include fire gets its own property tax allocation. So that's the majority of it.

I think it's up to about 17,000,000 or $18,000,000 now. Plus, they also get revenues from the state for the veterans home. And a couple of the jurisdictions also provide reimbursement funds. This chart also shows the green line, which is the available fund balance in the fire fund. The fund balance right now in twenty four-twenty five, which is the beginning fund balance of this year, ended at $17,000,000 And you see, if I was looking at this going, Okay, all the revenues seem to exceed the expenses, why isn't the green line going straight straight up?

Because now let's add in our capital purchases, our one time capital purchases. I say one time, but you know we have to do them every ten years. So we have fire engines, we have apparatuses, we have all the equipment, the hoses, everything that is needed to be repaired and replaced throughout the years. So you can see a big spike in 'seventeen-'eighteen, another one in 2122, and a big one in 2425. Those are capital purchases.

And, so this is a perfect use of why we build up funds in a in a fund to be able to do those one time capital purchases. And, we're working with, JR and Cal Fire to come up with a ten year capital replacement plan. So when we're building our budget for the following year, we can take that into consideration and see what funds are really needed. And we can do a real good analysis of is there a need for general fund contribution to offset these one time capital purchases. So I'm going to pause there if there's any questions.

Supervisor Ramos? Thank you so much.

Very much appreciate you walking us through the history of this. So I guess my question comes down to when you let's start with the proposed policy language of saying limited to one time health and safety capital expenditures. Can you explain what that means? What is a health and safety capital expenditure?

Well, would probably consider everything fire is probably health and safety. But depending on well, maybe, say, if they needed to do more office desks or renovation or something, that might not be considered health and safety. But it's really to impress the fact that your board is committed to ensuring that the fire services for the citizens are going to be funded. So it's more of if we put, say, we need three fire engines, you're going to say, well, no, no, no. We're not going to worry about that. But that is a health and safety capital project. So it's more just to ensure your board's commitment to the citizens.

I guess from my perspective, I don't know what exactly is covered under health and safety capital expenditures. So perhaps some greater refinement in the language. You know, I maybe I spent too much time with our FSAC committee, but, you know, if I think about I wouldn't necessarily call out health and safety capital expenditures. I'd see that as, you know, fire apparatus capital expenditure. And so, like, that necessarily says we're buying engines and equipment.

If, you know, if, you know, how do we deal? We had an issue, a a a issue at a station where we needed to have a remodel. What is that? We had a I think it was a bathroom leak or something. Right? I think that was that was it. How do we deal with that? Is that health and safety capital expenditure or not? Because I'm not certain that that is. I would see that as a property management issue.

And so I would appreciate kind of some refinement of that language so that we can be clear of where the commitments lie. If our fire chief says, you need new engines and we have apparatus schedules, I don't see anything wrong with actually saying that limited to to to not necessarily one time health and safety capital expenditures. I would see that as to fire apparatus purchases that are delineated in the apparatus schedule because I we have an apparatus schedule that tells us how many how the length of of life of each engine. Those engines need to be ordered, you know, well in advance. You're in line for sometimes two, three years on some of them.

Well, four. I'm getting four from the back of the room. Two, three years. So I think it would be great to have that separated out and to acknowledge much like roads, right? Roads, we say, we're to fund this, but it's got to be on the capital plan.

Well, I think it would be prudent and certainly would provide the acknowledgment on the, to county fire that we do, in fact, intend to fund it. But she better be on the capital on the capital apparatus purchase plan, because we would have four years notice to know that that is coming. So I just wonder, is there a way to refine this to acknowledge that?

I am welcome to your word suggestions. Suggestions.

Madam Scherer, could I

Yes.

I think that we that nomenclature, or whatever you want to call the description, I think, was ours. I don't know if that's unofficial. But I guess the short answer is we wanna we're gonna work with we've already had conversations with with fire, with JR, about a kind of lining out a capital needs schedule so that we have an understanding of what the needs are year to year and over the next five years, over the next ten years, etcetera. We can refine the language. What we're saying here as a matter of policy is we're going to look at fire each year.

And depending on need, we will make recommendations to your board based on that need in consultation with our fire chief and his staff along with JR, whether that is a bathroom replacement, which, you you could also argue health and safety, right? Because I think the bathroom wasn't working. They needed to have a bathroom. Government bathroom work is expensive.

Sorry for the bad example.

Yeah. But, obviously, they have to buy hoses. Those are expensive trucks, etcetera. So we're gonna review this each and every year, but we're very happy to work on some different different language to describe that.

Yeah. I guess I would appreciate it because in looking at the capital expenditures, I would like to understand where that commitment lies. I don't foresee this board or others denying those requests. So I think it is incredibly, wise to include it into our our policies, but with greater refinement. My next question

Can I just make one more comment?

Yes.

So two clarifications. Currently in the history, the fire fund has normally always purchased their own capital through their fund balance. So this would only come into effect if they needed it, if there was additional need, if they used their fund balance and there was additional need. But at the same time, part of your annual budget adoption and even any changes during the year, you always see every single capital purchase. So let's just just wanna make sure

that everybody's aware of that. I guess the the next one comes down to when we are in fact looking at at these fund balances. And and I recognize and appreciate the work that our budget staff has done to identify that the $9,000,000 transfer is not needed at this time because it simply would, in fact, go to to fund balance. My question, and it's not just related to this, it's related to others, you know, what is the process of evaluation that we're going through to determine what in fact is an appropriate fund balance, for the non general fund departments and programs, based upon, you know, I would say a couple of things, and you might wanna sit on this one because one is we've got grants. And so if grants are coming through and they dry up and we've got work in progress, we've already experienced this.

Two, if we need holdbacks from reimbursements or or anything else. Three, if we have capital expenditures that need to happen on a time delay. Right? So if fire has three engines spaced out over the next three years of purchase at two and a half million dollars an engine, do we believe that 7 and a half million in general fund balance is the right amount? Like, are we gonna have a true up of here's your your apparatus schedule and and base the general fund minimum threshold on that apparatus schedule.

And that's just one fund. So I I'm I'm more asking the question of how are we going to make this determination on a more policy level as to what our appropriate fund balance is.

I'll answer yes. We're gonna do all of that.

Great. I like yes. Thank you.

I think it will be definitely coming to you with a full analysis and recommendation. And it's going to be your decisions.

And just to add to that, just as you said, every fund is very different. And there are some funds that receive grants, for example, or there are other funds that might need like a big purchase three years down the road. So if that were the case, just like you said, you know, we might not wanna contribute all at one year, three years ahead. So we might need to plan, like, $22,000,000 here, 2,000,000 here, 2,000,000 type of thing and purchase three years from now. So I think that is something that we're gonna be really focusing on and trying to explain that in as part of the budget process because every fund is quite unique and different very different in nature.

So but we'll be focusing on that and working on that and try to provide clarity on how we came up with our recommendation for the budget.

And my final question is and it was mentioned somewhere, maybe the CEO's letter regarding the potential measure that would be funding fire mitigation services. You know, my my question from a maybe it's not a midyear as opposed to an actual budget question. One of the things that that language does is that it requires the county to administer the grants. And so and there is an administrative charge or a drawdown that the county would get to receive. So my question then comes down to where are all these things going to live?

Because in my reading of it, it it says the county. And certainly, we wanna make sure that that we're putting it in an appropriate space. And so looking ahead to next year's midyear budget, if in fact that measure does pass, we're we're gonna have some some changes on how we we prepare the following budget. And so I ask, where would that live?

So there's a lot to determine with the accounting structure. But in my short time of seeing the measure, we're envisioning that the county's portion for fire prevention would be a non operating special revenue fund, just like your TOT measure for the housing program. And it would be part of that budget process to draw down like we do for for other non operating special revenue funds. For the parks and open space district, I believe that that's being that's for to be managed by the parks and open state space district, which is outside the county. And we would be putting that into what's called an agency fund, where we're an agent as the county and the county treasury to hold funds on behalf of somebody else.

And that would be the same process, where the Parks and Open Space District would be part of their annual budget of drawing those funds down. So those monies will be completely segregated and restricted for those purposes and completely accounted for.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions here since we're just go ahead. Supervisor Cottrell?

Yeah. Thank you. And first of all, I wanted to thank both of you for the time that you've spent before this meeting, helping me, and I'm assuming perhaps my other colleagues have also sat down with you. So I appreciate that. And welcome, Michael.

So my question is about the set of policies, and it it first of all, I appreciate supervisor Ramos's point, and I agree that having a little more detail around what the expenditures are, a little bit more than the health and safety, I think, is helpful. And and I'm sure that actually probably applies to the other ones as well. And just to recap, I think, on what I learned from you two in the meeting is that the goal here, is to understand that there has been fund balance that has been sitting with these different different funds that that we're saying, hey. We don't need to just do this general transfer based on last year's number plus COLA. Instead, we're saying, let's do it a little bit more case by case and really hone in there.

So can you help us with the, you know, articulate the logic behind that policy? And I know you also mentioned that that's not what you're recommending this year for HHS because that's very complicated and that's something that we may look to in future years as well, which to me, I think what what you're doing here, I'm generally quite in support of because I think it allows us to be more efficient. But can you help us understand and also the public understand why we're looking at this policy shift right now?

Sure. So all of these areas have alluded over the years. It's the health and human or the both the roads and the fire and housing and homeless, they they really it was based on grants coming in. It was based on monies coming in. Each one is a little different.

So for example, the roads fund, we always provided money for the roads operation because we don't have too much funding for that. We need to have those maintenance workers and keep maintenance projects going. Back when Measure T first was approved, it was two years before that they were going to get the money because Measure A was sunsetting back in 2018. So the board at the time said we want to fill that gap because we know that we're going to be getting revenues in and our roads are decreasing in value. We wanted to prefund that.

So we had this other, you know, formula of adding more money to roads. And then there was also, some, liability expense that happened one year, so we had to give more money. And it just elf evoluted in policy, evolved in policy to have this formula, if you will. And it was really looking back at what happened. Now the formula was, Okay, now the current formula is what we did last year.

So instead of really looking at what we need and looking at what we really need to have, that's what we're saying is instead of just doing it automatically, let's look to see what the needs are. And it might be nothing in one year, but it might be a lot in the next year, and so forth and so on. But you would be aware of why the changes happen. You would be aware of what the need is. And you would have that in front of you to make those decisions whether or not to proceed with those transfers instead of just having it automatic. And each one is unique.

Sure. May I just add to that really quick? Just wanted to say, too I appreciate that answer. But I'm very proud of the work that's being done by our roads people, our housing and community services people. They all do good work, obviously fire. And what we're talking about today is not about that. This is about understanding when you look at a graph like that, my takeaway is that, well, the fund balance has served them well. It's never gone below $9,000,000 They never had to draw it all the way down since 2015, 'sixteen. We've had some fire in there. It's worked.

They've relied on fund balance. And this is simply a conversation about making smart decisions based on the current fiscal climate, making those decisions year to year based on need. And I want to assure you and these business areas that we're going to do what we need to do in order to make them fully functional, making sure that they have great efficacy, etcetera, and serving the needs of our residents. But this is really taking a very close look year to year at how we're moving money around from the general fund into funds like this. And really, that's what this policy is all about, this policy change.

Yeah. So I would just say thank you for that explanation. I think that's very helpful. And I would love it if, know, back to supervisor Ramos's point about asking for a little more clarity in the fire language. I think having somewhere, you know, this exact phrase that it's not about rather than saying, let's just take the number from year, but to really look at present need. And then just what you're saying, we want to meet that need for our departments because they're doing great

work. Absolutely.

Okay. Thank you. Any Supervisor Gallagher or you?

Yeah, I just want to maybe this is clarifying or I don't know. So when our departments submit their budgets, I'm assuming they also are doing that analysis, right? So they're actually looking at their fund balances and figuring out what they need, what they don't need, what the parameters are around their fund balance, if be that some of those monies are restricted, etcetera. And so are you anticipating you would have to go in and do analysis on top of their analysis, or you want to sit with them and go through their thinking? Just trying to understand that piece of it?

Do you want to answer?

Oh, sure. I think it's the latter. We really want to understand each of the fund. Like we said before, different funds have different reasons for why they might need certain fund balance. There are some budgets that kind of has a more uniform sort of rules like the I s Internal Services Fund, for example.

They're supposed to have just sixty days of operation. So those, those are pretty easy to monitor because we have sort of a guideline on what number we use to monitor that balance and the department staff is fully aware of that. So there's that communication there. But I think, you know, with the fire fund and the road fund and the housing and community services that we're talking about, it does it it is gonna require us to really meet with them, and understand how the funding works so that we're not jeopardizing anything for their department. So that's our intent that once they enter the budget, we're gonna be meeting with each one of them. Okay.

Thanks. And I have some kind of general comments and thoughts, but I don't know, chair, if you'd like to take public comment or We're not other done. People

do you have actual This was an interruption of the presentation.

Yeah, we're

not done yet. I

didn't think so, but it's been going for a while,

so it's not true.

Okay, all right.

Thank you. I'm done. I'm going to turn it over Ms.

Stein. You. Right.

Okay. So as Brian mentioned, the departments are asked to enter midyear review based on the six months of actual data. And based on that information, as you can see on the screen there, so using the most current financial information available, we are conservatively estimating that the general fund will complete fiscal year within an available ending fund balance of approximately $11,200,000 This is roughly an $800,000 increase compared to the adopted budget projection of 10,400,000.0 and is a result of several adjustments both within revenues and expenditures. The reasons for these variances in both expenditures and revenues are included in the attached report. But some of the main things to just point out are is one of the main variances in revenues are related to property tax.

While actual property tax revenue is projected to increase from last year's actuals to this year's estimate actuals by about 5%. The amount is approximately $7,000,000 lower than what was budgeted due to an overestimation of end of the year receipts. Other taxes are also underperforming as well. But these decreases are offset partially by some increases resulting in net decrease of approximately $4,100,000 in revenues. As for the main variance on expenditures, as Ms.

Schulze went over earlier, our decreases from not transferring the general fund to the fire fund and fourth quarter general fund contribution to the housing and community services due to both funds having sufficient balances. These decreases were also offset by partial partially by increase in salary increase due to deputy sheriff's association's labor negotiations, increase to conflict public defenders legal costs, increase due to new lease office office spaces and increase due to transfer to roads for the storm repairs. Net result in decrease of approximately $8,000,000 in expenditures, as you can see on the screen. So the estimated ending fund balance of approximately $11,200,000 suggests that the general fund should have the necessary resources to make it through the rest of the fiscal year without the need to make expenditure reductions beyond those that have already been made or assumed in these projections. And also, another important thing to remember, and Ryan mentioned this too, is that because departments work on midyear budget estimates with only six months' worth of actual data.

With another six months remaining, the midyear estimates tend to be very conservative, notably expenditures coming in below estimates, usually resulting in actual numbers at the end of the fiscal year to be much better. Next slide, please. So Exhibit B Attachment B is it Exhibit B? Exhibit B is the 18 budget amendments that are being requested and the details of each of them are included in the attachment. Amendments are results in either shifts between divisions within a fund or an increase in appropriations of offset by additional revenues or use of available fund balance.

Next slide, please. Do we have any questions on either the midyear adjustments? Because they're pretty much laid out, so we didn't really wanna take the time to go through them unless you have any questions.

Supervisor Ramos? Thank you

so much. So I wanted to could we flip back one slide? Because I think the the chart kind of helps. So Mhmm. If I'm so the the addition the last line, addition to the fund balance. That means we take our beginning fund balance of 55, and you're saying we're adding 11 to it. Is that what you're saying? So mid year, middle column, top line, bottom line, we're at. Can you can you explain add or reduction of available fund balance?

If you look at the beginning available fund balance, that's the total that we have.

Mhmm.

And we're saying if we use all of that minus all the expenses we use, we're gonna end with 11. So I guess we're not adding it to the beginning. It's just the ending available fund balance.

Okay. So that's what I wanted to clarify. So I just I've I've said this before in the budgets. That means we are essentially taking money that was there and not dedicated a portion to anything. We had a 55,000,000, and now we're gonna end with 11,000,000.

That's 44,000,000 of expenditures that are not accounted for in other revenue sources. They're accounted for and carrying the general fund the fund balance that was created in prior years. And so from my perspective, I'm incredibly concerned by this pattern because what this accounts for is also our excess eRAF of this last year was how much?

30,000,000. Oh, for this year, we're estimating $30,000,000.

But we got the pay we get the payment in August. Right? So our payment in August was how much? 27? Was excess fee give me

a sec.

Yes. It was about 27 and we released the reserves as well, but that does get accrued back into the previous year.

So Oh, sorry. The actual, I think, from last fiscal year was $29,421,020.29 almost $30,000,000.

So if you go back thank you. So if you go back three years, four years, we did not use to budget XSE RAF, and that was an additional amount that allowed that fund balance to grow. And that we could then, from that fund balance, look at these one time, investments and whether it was something that was unplanned, if we had an additional expenditure of negotiation labor negotiations, whether we needed to address emergencies, we did that. So not only are we spending the 44,000,000, of that 44,000,000, 29 of it is excess eRAF. And so this is a spending pattern that I am concerned as to how we are going to move forward and ensure that the fund balance I I guess the the question here is how are we gonna determine what is a healthy amount of fund balance to maintain?

Because if we started at '55 and we're using 44, that's sounding to me like fund balance needs to start at 44 because that's what the current growth the current expenditure pattern yields. We're ending at 11. So we cannot even meet the same budgetary moment next year as we did in this year's budget because the the fund balance has not started. Now I understand we have increased our fiscal uncertainty. We are, are fully funding our general reserves policy, and and that's great.

Stress factors for this general fund. So as we prepare for fiscal year twenty six twenty seven budget, there are some current stress factors, the general fund that are known today and will continue to challenge the limits of our general fund resources. So I'm just going to go through the list. So as mentioned multiple times, property tax revenue growth is not increasing at the same pace as expenditure due to lower than average growth in assessed values. Other key discretionary revenue streams such as sales tax and transient occupancy taxes are underperforming in today's economic climate.

Ryan also talked about the general liability and property insurances, but those two are increased by nearly $2,000,000 from fiscal year to this current year to next year. Yes. Right. The cost for liability and property insurance has been increasing each year, and it is unknown by how much in the future years, so that is a huge area of concern. And same thing for the health insurance.

Health insurances are increasing each year as well. We're estimating nearly $2,000,000 from this current year to next year for the health insurance for the employees. And that too is unknown by how much in the future years, so another big area of concern. The estimated total cost for a general plan update is approximately $6,500,000 but that includes the $1,700,000 for the current fiscal year to update the baseline data report. Roughly half of the cost is projected to cover by collected fees, resulting in estimated net general fund cost of approximately $3,200,000 And for general plan update, about I think $1,200,000 of that is of the $4,800,000 budget is for the community engagement elements.

Most years, as Ryan mentioned too, is that we have significant road damages during the winter storm. So those seem to be sort of an annual cost that we incur. So that is another area of concern. Lake Berryessa Consensus budget was funded partially by a federal grant, but that grant is expiring. So our current funding is around $250,000 but next year it's estimated to be $350,000 And then by the following year, it's estimated that the general fund will be covering the entire cost.

And probably the cost is going to be around $700,000 a year. And the current labor agreement with the NAPA Association of Public Employees, Public Service Employee Unit representing most county employees, it's expiring 06/30/2027. So we have a good we've already built in some of the negotiated things for next year's budget with COLA and such, but beyond that, it's still it's an unknown at this point. So and county facilities are aging and in need of renovation. Not only are major capital needs increasing, but this has also required the county to enter into lease space while still maintaining the current buildings.

Excess EVRAF revenue continues to be unpredictable and includes the uncertainty of BELA funding without a state legislative fix pending Napa County Unified School District becoming basic aid. And lastly, ongoing federal and state financial pressure reductions are greatly affecting the funding for our most vulnerable populations we serve through our Health and Human Services Agency and programs offered through Housing and Community Services. As Ryan mentioned in his opening statement, this includes but is not limited to behavioral health and mental health service transitions and the new HR1 Medicaid eligibility changes, But staff will come back at a future meeting with more details on those. And I think it was mentioned brought up by one of the Board members. This is not a stress, but one of the issues $05 sales tax increase to fund parks and fire prevention projects.

It may be on the November 2026 ballot. And if passed, it is expected to raise approximately $23,000,000 per year starting 04/01/2027. Currently, the general fund includes approximately $5,000,000 annual cost in certain years more to support wildfire mitigation and prevention and parks and open space preservation. Next, I'd like to invite Mr. Minnehan to the podium to give a little information on the excess EVRAF.

Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Minnehan.

Tax collector. So if I'm in front of you, you know, it's either excess ERAF or it's VLF, and this morning, you get a little bit of both. Excess ERAF for the midyear projections come in at about 26,000,000 between 26, 27,000,000. We released the 2223 reserve for another 3,000,000 to bring us to about $30,000,000. Excess EURAF is impacted by two factors this year.

One is a change in law regarding how charter schools are funded, and the second is the average daily attendance of Napa Valley Unified School District. So to deal with the easy one first, we'll start with the change in law. Supervisor almost probably remembers this, but a few years ago, the Department of Finance accused the XSE RAF auditor controllers including miss Sholsey of redirecting school property taxes to benefit local agencies. The DOF is constantly attacking excess CRAF. The state controller's office opined that the auditor controllers were properly interpreting law.

The Department of Finance then sued the state controller's office and lost. So, of course, this year, the Department of Finance changed the law. So now all of the funding for charter schools comes through eRAF. So it reduces the county's excess eRAF by a small amount. The second piece is Napa Valley Unified School District's average daily attendance and this is complicated.

In the current year, Napa Valley Unified School District's average daily attendance went up kind of changing the the path from, their decline in enrollment over the last few years, but this was due to the full implementation of transitional kindergarten. But the ADA moving into the future is very mercury, and it's not because of anything that Valley Unified School District is making doing. It's because of what Vallejo City Unified School District is doing. Vallejo City Unified School District is trying to bring funding back into their district, and so they are capping inter district transfers out of their district at 1%, which equates to 80 students per year. Most of the students leaving Vallejo City Unified School District are either going into Napa Valley Unified School District or they're going into Venetia Unified School District.

In most cases, inter district transfers happen between districts in non XSE Raft counties. And so what happens is the state funding effectively follows the student no matter whether it's in Vallejo Unified School District or for this, in this case, Venetia Unified School District. State funding will either go to Napa or Vallejo or it will go to Venetia. In Napa schools, that does not happen. Because we are an excess of URAV County, Napa County taxpayers dollars fund all of the students coming in from outside of Napa Valley Unified School District.

So the inter district transfer students coming from Vallejo Unified School District, they come into Napa Valley Unified School District, increases Napa's local control funding formula minimum guarantee, which is then covered by Napa County taxpayer dollars. There's no state. The state actually benefits from that transfer. In real numbers, it's about $10,000,000 a year for the county solo. Napa Valley Unified School District has upwards of 900 inter district transfer students.

I'm assuming most of them are coming from Vallejo Unified School District. The new cap, Vallejo Unified School District cap, will have a significant impact on ADA as we move forward. But it's gonna be transitional. Right? It's gonna take some time to get through it.

There are three metrics or measurements that a district can use to determine what their minimum guaranteed funding is. One is the current year ADA, which for Napa Valley Unified School District is high. The second is the prior year ADA, and then the third is the average of the three prior years. So for this year, for example, Napa Valley Unified School District's ADA is 15,300 students. It's high.

So next year, we can guarantee that they will use the prior year. So that same fifteen three hundred will and then over the next three years, they will start using the average. So you're gonna see incremental drops, but it won't start until 2728. And then it the ADA loss and the inter district transfer student loss will then slowly, smoothly move forward, and we'll see that. So their revenue limit will drop.

That means more excess eRAF will be coming back to the county and the cities. This impacts VLF. Napa Valley Unified School District is about $24,000,000 away from basic aid, which is a distance. Even if these 900 students have all happened today and they were transferred back and we lost the funding, Napa Valley Unified still wouldn't be closing in on basic aid. They would still be a ways away.

The current developments in VLF, San Mateo County for the first time, Mateo County was not made whole from their VLS obligation from prior years. They have sued the state. So we at some point in time, we'll have a little bit more clarity on that. We've been working with San Mateo County as they once again try to instill a legislative fix on VLF moving forward. And then there's one other school funding bill that's currently making its way through Sacramento has to do with average daily attendance.

It would add a fourth metric would be which would be a five year smoothing formula so that any changes related to the inter district transfers of students would slow down even further, be more gradual. So I'm here to answer any questions you may have.

Supervisor Ramos? Thank you.

I very much appreciate this update. And really, the the clarity that I don't think we have heard up until this point, and that is that the basic aid dollar that Vallejo is getting does not follow the student. And I think that that is an incredibly important consideration for us here because when when we look at the the cost per student, that's the it's roughly

$13.

13,000. And so at, we believe, about 900 students.

Yep.

So 900 times 13,000 of Napa County taxpayer dollars. And those are specific, I guess, now, are those the taxpayer dollars that are incurred in the NVUSD footprint or are they total Napa County dollars of the ex of the ERAF dollar that shifts?

It's a combination of both. So the first funding source is property tax derived within Napa Valley Unified School District's boundaries and then the second piece is eRAF. And so these students coming in are increasing their eRAF entitlement. Again again, Napa County taxpayer dollars shifted from the county and the cities and special districts to ERAP.

And so of that, when we look at county obligations and maybe this I might need to give you my calculator. But, when we look at the contributions of unincorporated Napa County taxpayers to NVUSD subsidizing out of district transfers in, is that a disproportionate amount?

Yeah. The county shifts 80% into ERAP. And so if you take 900 times 13,000, you're probably around $1,212,000,000 dollars. 80% of that, you're probably looking at around 9 and a half, $10,000,000 per year.

9,360,000.00. So that is 9,360,000.00 that otherwise, if these out of district transfers were not part of NVUSD, would shift back to the county of Napa as excess eREF. Correct. Okay. So I I guess what I I will say and I I think the no.

I as someone who has used intra district transfers for family reasons, I I think that sometimes there are definitely reasons for, for for these transfers. But what I don't know, and I certainly would be curious of, and and perhaps this this could come in the way of a future of a referral to work with, Josh Schultz, our superintendent of schools, is to understand proportionately how does this number fare with other, excess ERAP jurisdictions because I think it's it's not like for like. Right? As you said, if you are is Benicia a basic aid? No.

It's oh, that's an average daily attendance school district as

well? Mhmm.

Okay. So I I think, one of the things that we previously, at least in my time here, have not engaged in in the discussion of of what this actually means in terms of the policy application that is happening at NVUSD to allow this number of inter district transfers to come into the school district and the missed revenue for the county of Napa. If we're at we're at 80% of the excess eRAF, what's city of Napa probably 15% of of that. American Canyon is small because they're an ERAP two, not an ERAP one county. So I think it would be really prudent for us to at least have the knowledge base of accurate numbers of what these inter district transfers look like and really how that is going to play out with the callback of students limited to 1% of student body at Vallejo Unified.

These are all these are numbers. This is data. This is all very readily available, and we don't know this. We don't have this information. And so when it we look at the budgetary impacts of what this means, fully understanding that NVUSD can make these decisions, we need to also understand how it's going to impact us and how shifts in their own policy of attendance and admission can impact the county's dollars of return on excess eREF.

Yeah. I I think that's that's all absolutely correct. I'm pretty sure Napa Valley Unified School District doesn't understand the impact that their decisions have on the county and other. So they're making these decisions in a vacuum, and they're making them, I think, based on available size and schools and basically shifting money into the district because the if they were not within an excess ERAF County, this wouldn't be wouldn't be germane to us. It would just mean the state is funding 13,000 of this student in one district or the other with no impact to the other jurisdictions.

Okay. Thank you, treasurer tax collector Minnehan. Thank you. Noting the time, I'd like to give us a comfort break here until yeah. So let's I'm sorry to interrupt the presentation, but we'll go till five after eleven.

Heads. I think that, and I completely understand the logic of the policy changes. It makes sense. It'll be interesting how we compare this, after a few years of going through this policy change and how did it make a difference overall. We have to acknowledge that our revenue is coming in shorter than it has, that things are flattening or declining in terms of revenue.

I do think that, you know, we do need to think later on about opportunities to increase our revenue. You know, I talk about economic development and the importance of that. And that is very much, it needs to be, a county function and a county thought through the CEO's office, through planning and building. There's opportunities out there in terms of how we can support, the businesses and other opportunities in the unincorporated areas of our county and do it with intention and have a service or somebody who's doing that work, to support the CEO in that. So I think, you know, that's a later conversation.

I also think that, you know, the continued, success of our grants, I think we do really well in the county with our grants, but as many grants as we can achieve, I think that's important. So looking at ways that we can increase revenue as our we know our our expenses are increasing and being mindful and having the the department heads be mindful of of their expenses, but I know that they already have been. So so we'll just continue that work. The need is always there. We're gonna do our best to address the needs, which always outpace what we can do.

But, again, with the hard work and the dedication of the county departments and every person in the county staff that, serves our community, will continue to do work. I have no changes or questions in regards to what was presented. I thank my colleagues for the questions that they've had. I thank you for the private time that we had prior to this. And so I'm supportive. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Alessio, Supervisor Gallagher?

Thank you. I just wanted to make some general comments and give my thoughts. I did have an opportunity, yes, to have some discussion with the CEO and with the fiscal staff and with some of the department heads. One thing that I'd like to recommend, again, I think we've talked about this in the past, is I think that it is important that we have a budget workshop for the board. And the reason I say that is that we don't generally get to have a a specific discussion around our priorities as they are specifically expressed through the budget.

So I think having the opportunity to have a draft, from the CEO that we can discuss and respond to from a priority standpoint before the budget hearings, again, I I think that that would be extremely helpful. I wanted to comment on budget policies regarding fund balances. I think it's important to acknowledge that there are trade offs involved in both departmental fund balances retention and general fund reversion. If you're looking sort of from that 30,000 foot level, such as the CEO and the board in these positions, siloed fund balances can represent resources unavailable for redeployment countywide. Consolidated reserves in the general fund are easier to track, audit, and report.

And better resource departments can accumulate larger balances over time and may not bear a direct relationship to actual service demand, program complexity, or board priorities. And I also understand on the department side, I have an understanding of that just from having run a lot of program in the past. The fund balance can support multi year project planning and capital investments without reliance on one time general fund allocations. The fund balance eliminates this sort of use it or lose it dynamic that can drive a lot of spending near the year end, and additionally retain balances, create a direct financial incentive for department heads to operate efficiently and scrutinize their spending throughout the year, which I believe they are doing. I'm I I think, food for thought is us taking a hybrid approach, maybe considering, retaining fund balances up to a defined ceiling or defined percentage or designated for specific approved purposes.

As been has been stated, departments have various funding mixes and, levels of, budget complexity. I think it's also important, something we haven't discussed, is to look at the fiscal ripple effect of many of our programs. For example, our Health and Human Services and homelessness programs directly impact what we spend on law enforcement and public safety. And so while we may be making an, an investment on that front end that we're kind of curious about, well, why are we spending those dollars? You know, being able to look at it on the back end and say, well, you know, if we spent a million here, but we saved 2,000,000 here.

I think we we have to be able to figure out a way to look at those, benefits that accrue to the county for very real dollar benefits, which may happen over a longer period of time than twelve months. So I think those are my comments. But I would like us to be able to think about some of those issues in further depth. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Any other comments or questions from the board at this time? No? Okay. I will is that a referral for a budget workshop?

I guess it is. I think that is something we should do. But I don't know if you all if the CEO needs a nod or he wants to respond, actually. Yeah.

If you want to respond, that's fine. Or I can

WOODRUFF: I think I

JULIE comment here.

JULIE I think understand what Supervisor Gallagher is saying. And I would ask for a little bit of flexibility and latitude to follow back, starting with you, supervisor, and get a little bit more detail and then follow back with each one of you and figure out how we might go about doing something like that, what that entails. Obviously, we have a schedule in how we develop the budget. And I want to understand how this would fit into that schedule. Not saying that it couldn't or not that it's a good, a bad idea.

So I I I guess that would be my response. A budget workshop, I can work with our team here, and we can figure out how we might be able to deliver something for you.

Okay. Fantastic. And then there were a number of comments from Supervisor Ramos that were pretty specific to the content. Does anybody feel like they need any clarification? Do they have those? I'm not gonna hazard summarizing all of that. But are there it was it was clear enough? Yeah? Okay. Okay.

Then I guess we're gonna go ahead and move forward. I'll say thank you to to our auditor controller and chief budget officer for the detail oriented presentation. It was very thoughtful and thought provoking, and I appreciate the work of the auditor controller, CEO, our treasurer tax collector, and all of the department heads. And I'm not going to call any out because everyone is dealing with the same sort of uncertain funding reality and constant surprises. So just thanks to everybody for responsibly stewarding NAPA's public funds and keeping us moving forward with all of our programs. And with that, I will ask for a motion to approve the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven fiscal strategy and budget policies.

So moved.

As amended.

As amended. As amended. Okay.

I guess that's You wanna clarify? Yeah. Guess I think it would be appropriate to clarify the as amended language. I mean, I I I trust staff understanding that what I'm asking for is to be more specific in in delineating what health and safety expenditures are in the in the fire fund, to knowing that they are they go beyond apparatus. They do.

But I do believe that the apparatus that reference specifically in there, to apparatus would be apparatus that appears on the capital replacement schedule or some reference to that. I think if we find ourselves in an emergency situation, you know, where we have an incident, where we have a a fire over or, or some other issue that would that would then trigger, you know, emergency funding, that could then go to fiscal uncertainty. But I I think you understand where I'm getting at. So just to make sure we're clear on that's the amended language on that portion.

Okay. I am looking for a second. Second. Okay. So that was a motion by Vice Chair Alessio, second by Cottrell. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. That passes unanimously. Thank you so much, everyone, for getting us here. It's

And the budget amendment?

Oh, b. Hold on. Oh. Oh.

I'm happy to make a motion to approve the recommended mid year budget amendments for fiscal year twenty five twenty six.

I'll second that.

Okay. First by Alessia, second by Cottrell. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No? Okay. That also passes unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item 9B, receive and accept a presentation of the annual report regarding the status of the 2008 Napa County general plan and progress in its implementation as required by government code section six five four zero zero. I welcome a staff report by Trevor Hawk, supervising planner. What's that? Okay. He's on his way.

Okay.

We'll go ahead and move to nine c and come oh, okay. Welcome. We'll go ahead and stay with nine b. That's okay. Welcome. And we look forward to your report on the status of the Napa County General Plan from 2008 and its progress.

Thank you, Chair, honorable members of the Kannapolis County Board of Supervisors, Trevor Hawks with the Planning Division. And I'll be giving this report, the staff report on the annual report regarding the 2008 general plan and housing element implementation progress. I'm also joined at the table today with Joseph Dota. He's a relatively new planner, one with the county. He started here in November.

And Joseph primarily assisted in putting together this year's APR. You know, we bring this report to you at the, second board of supervisors meeting every March. It's, it's not as simple as just hitting export in a database and bringing this report to you. Especially the HCD section requires going through, multiple databases, putting this all together, understanding, you know, what HCD is looking for because it changes every single year. So I'm just really proud to bring Joseph up here who's helped us put this together.

So section sixty five four hundred of the government code requires planning agencies to prepare an annual report regarding the status of the general plan and its implementation and to provide provide copies of the report to their legislative body, which is the Board of Supervisors in this case, the State Department of Housing and Community Development, and the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation. The HCD report is HCD provides us with a form that we use for the housing element portion of the report, and that also contains a regional housing needs allocation progress report section, which you see in the attachments to this. It's the summary and, table b. And, this kind of this essentially is a, a progress report on our implementation of the six cycle housing element and our regional housing needs allocation for the six cycle. Also required, but it's contained in a separate table, is our progress report on the action items within the general plan.

I'll talk a little bit about the numbers you're seeing in the APR summary tables today. As the board should be aware, we are within the six cycle planning period for a housing element. This covers the, years 2023 through 2031. And for the sixth cycle, the county was allocated a RINA allocation of a 106 units, which is 45 very low income units, 16 low income units, 14 moderate income units, and 31 above moderate income units. For reporting year 2025, the county, issued 58 building permits for dwelling units within the unincorporated county.

This is an increase of 19 from reporting year 2024. The 58 permits consisted of 35 primary single family detached dwelling units, 22 excess and 22 accessory dwelling units. For the, 22 ADU building permits that you see in the report, that were issued in this year, five of those qualified as very low income units, eight qualified as low, and five qualified as moderate income units. Of those numbers, I believe some of those were also you know, some of those are not based off of deed restrictions. It's our calculation based off of a formula that ABAC lets us use where we look at all ADUs and assign a thirty thirty thirty ten allocation of affordability.

But some of those actually are also from deed restricted units through the county's affordable ADU program. And I believe one of them is also from a unit within the River Sound development, which was originally Napa Pipe and is part of, what is it? It's s b two thirty five where we get credit for the affordable units that are built in the RiverSound development. So a little subjective here, but I'd I'd I'd like to report to the board that we're doing very well on our RINA on completing our RINA for the sixth cycle. With the completion of the 2025 reporting period, we will have completed now and and issued building permits essentially for the entirety of the counties above moderate, moderate, and low RINA allocation with only 26 building permits remaining, to be allocated for our very low RENA allocation.

And, while I can't be certain over the remaining years to 2031 if we would get that, if you look at the current rate of allocation, it it looks to me like we'll probably be able to to meet the very low RENA allocation as well. So, to finish on that, we've also issued 81 certificates of occupant c for dwelling units in twenty twenty five, sixty three for single family dwelling units, 18 for ADUs. And so that that kinda concludes looking at the APR. Attached to this report as well are two implementation tables, one for the general plan, which features a 108 of the action items and implementation actions of the county's 2008 general plan, and one with the 51, action items of the housing element. When you're looking through this, you know, please remember our, general plan was updated in 2008.

And so these action items also include, the update to the circulation element in 2019, the update to the safety element in 2023, and, three iterations of the housing element, 2009, 2014, and 2023. And, board, that will conclude my report. Staff is here to answer any questions on the item if you have any. Thank you.

Supervisor Ramos, go ahead.

Thank you so much, and thank you for for this report. And I think it really it it bears reflecting and expressing gratitude to the prior board of supervisors who ensured that we were able to have a transfer of Rina credits to the city of Napa in perpetuity. Because truly, one of the places in which we sit as an agricultural county that is voter determined agricultural county is that our space to be able to implement housing is incredibly limited, just percentage wise. Take our topography on top of it, and we have very, very few spaces in which, the densities really needed to be able to implement these, housing policies from HCD are, all but near impossible, for us here at the county of Napa. So with that, I I would like to to ask going forward, we made changes to our housing fee structure.

And so those changes were based upon square footage. And so I think one of the things that is missing here where we see the above moderate and the square footage, so that it's above moderate category of housing, which is 37. I think that for us to have a a real snapshot of and and really a check-in of those those housing fees as well is to also be able to see the breakdown of the square footage, on an annual basis when this report comes forward. If we can see those, those homes that are within the the the threshold category that waives the the housing fees, the impact fees, that I think can help also inform as we did say that we would have a check-in to those interested parties. I think that that would help us have that check-in to see how is that policy working.

Is it creating the motivation that we had hoped to create? And I think that, mean, you're already putting some little subcategories. Like, what's one more line? Right? It's just a spreadsheet. So I just give that by way of feedback. I think this is a great opportunity in future years as we implement that next year to be able to check-in. Thank you.

Supervisor Gallagher?

How'd you know I was going

to click that? Thank

you. As I was reading through the update and the projects completed, the projects ongoing, projects to be completed, one that keeps coming up is the residential building envelope ordinance. This was initiated in 2022, including a draft ordinance and related stakeholder outreach and public hearings. In 2023, the effort was placed on hold per direction of the interim CEO and has not been reprogrammed. I think it's worth highlighting that that is something that we should get back to.

And I realize that we've got a lot going on in planning and building. We have BDR, general plan update, etcetera. But I just wanted to highlight that as something that I think is important that we figure out a timeline for that, that we actually program some kind of a timeline for this and not just kind of leave it in limbo. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Good comment. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for the report. And, first of all, just ditto what, supervisor Gallagher said on that residential, building envelope. I think that is something that we wanna keep going on. And again, it's helpful to have the frame, Trevor, that you provided that this is something that we've got to provide to the state.

And so it's helpful for us to see where we are, but there's also that obligation we have. What is helpful for me as I'm reading through it are seeing the things that previous boards who approved the 2008 general plan and any modifications prioritized, and yet we haven't got to yet. Example, staff will prepare a TDM evaluation report for the Board of Supervisors as we get more TDM monitoring data. I think that's important. Action item CIR, 31.1, basically implementing the policies of that of that item, and we got an update there.

But and all of these the other one I think I noticed was, in partnership with interested historic preservation organizations. So we have some that are not yet programmed. So I guess my question to you and, planning staff is, given that these were priorities of the existing general plan, how are they gonna get carried forward into the build out of the next general plan? And is there a way that we can highlight or star these items as we're as we're stepping into this next general plan process?

Hi, Yeah, good

welcome. Director Bordana.

As part of the general plan update, we'll be doing what's called the policy matrix where we'll identify all the existing policies and goals in the general plan. We'll ask ourselves a number of questions, one of which those that have not been put forward, we'll ask ourselves, do we still wanna do those or do we wanna do them slightly differently or are they otherwise still needed? So we'll have an opportunity to revisit those goals and policies and related action items as part of the general plan update.

Got it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Vice Chair Alessio?

Sure. Important topic. So looking at this, it looks like we haven't been able to achieve any of the acutely low or extremely low. Did I hear that was part of the formula that we do need to fulfill before the end of this cycle? No.

Technically not. We provided with any extremely low or acutely low RHNA. I don't I can't give you the history of the state legislation that added that as a RENA income category and exactly when it took place. But when ABAG gave us our RINA allocation in 2021, I believe it was, it did not include that. We will see that in the seventh cycle.

And those will be RINA allocation categories that we will have to, analyze and how we're going to be able to provide for that in the county in the seventh cycle. And I believe, there's, a formula in there where I think some of the very low can count towards whichever the next one down is, whether it's extremely or acutely. I don't I don't know which is the lowest, but, we we don't have to actually we don't have arena allocation for those categories. They're just putting them in there now. HCD updates this form every single year, and so they've put those categories in the summary table that you're seeing, but we don't have any allocation for that.

Thank you. And I know it doesn't acknowledge the type of housing. It's more based on the cost of housing. But we know we have real issues around transitional housing, transitional youth housing, housing for older adults. Those are all issues.

It's not part of what we do here, but I just want to put that out there. The other thing that this doesn't capture is the work that our housing departments I see Jennifer Palmer's here that she does with the city to house people that are from the incorporated area into housing that would be that's in the city. There's a lot of work and effort there. And those folks are many of the folks that she helps, her department helps, really do fall in that very low or extremely low. I know that's not part of what they calculate, but I just want to kind of acknowledge that there's a county city partnership where we are serving the needs of this community.

And they are, of course, being housed in the city with some of the different programs we have. But good report. Thank you. That's all I have.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for acknowledging the partnerships are essential. I have a couple questions. How do we know how many of these are fire rebuilds?

It's a good question. We we do, probably in the database. I mean,

I'm sure

somebody somebody does. Somewhat.

Yeah. I could, what you're what we have historically brought to the, the board is, this summary page. And Yeah. What what we get from HCD is a an Excel temp Excel template with, like, 20 different tabs on it, and then we have to go through and put the data in there. And we also report to Department of Finance, and so we do have those, numbers.

They aren't in the summary sheets. I can't think of them off the top of my head, and and we do collect those. And, certainly, I think with the, you'll see, I think it's in the table or the summary form. We got a lot of applications in before the 2025, and and I think that might have been because of the sun setting of the, but I don't know how many of those were specifically for that necessarily.

Okay. I can understand why it's not in the report as it is. It's just something that I'm personally interested in following because we lost so much of our housing stock in just three years' time there. And I really think it relates to our long term planning. And I think it also relates to fire protection and how many structures are likely to have to be defended in the future, that sort of thing.

Going forward, I guess I would request any information related to fire rebuilds is of particular interest for the county in the years in the near future, I'm sure. And then relatedly, it might be helpful to see this in a map format so we can get a sense of the spatial relationship of, are we seeing rebuilds way out in various highlands and various estates? Are we seeing more ADUs going in closer to the cities? Is there any kind of pattern to what we're seeing just so that we can kind of track how our policies are affecting the shape of our communities? So proximity to cities, wildland urban interface, fire rebuilds, those are my comments.

Director Bordano, are you do you have a comment?

I was just going to note that our fire rebuild policies have been expired. And so we wouldn't necessarily track future development as a fire rebuild. We would just identify it as a new house or new houses in a given area, which we do track and can map.

It was my understanding that there's an exception to the fees for affordable housing for fire rebuilds. So I think in that sense, we're still honoring them.

Yeah, from a fee perspective.

From a fee perspective.

Housing fee perspective.

Yeah, housing fee perspective, yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, I don't see anything else from the board right now. Are there any public comments on this item? Is there anyone on the phone? No, not seeing anything. Thank you so much, planner Hawkes and planner Dota, for your presentation today. Really appreciate the information.

Thank you. You. Appreciate it.

Okay. Our next item is 9C, receiving a presentation on the Bay Area Regional Energy Network Efficiency and Sustainable Energy Home Program and its impacts on Napa County to date. I welcome staff report from Ryan Melendez Planner. Ryan, welcome.

Thank you, chair. Good morning. Still morning. Right? Chair Manfrey and members of the board.

I am Ryan Melendez, a sustainability planner with PBES department, and I'm joined today to and excited to introduce my counterpart managing the Bay Area Regional Energy Network programs, William Doran. And we have an informational only item for you today, but really excited to bring this report to you to highlight, Bayron's new inner efficiency and sustainable energy or EASE home program, kind of a twofold presentation today. One, to highlight the work that's already been done as this program opened in September and also as kind of a call to action to help market the program here in Napa County. So just information, some background on BayREN. If you are unfamiliar, we are the Bay Area Regional Energy Network.

We are a coalition of all the nine Bay Area counties and administered by the Association of Bay Area Governments. And we work to together to partner and to promote energy and greenhouse gas reductions in the built environment. So in existing buildings, both in residential, commercial, and public sector buildings. We serve the Bay Area with these three priorities in mind, promoting healthy and energy efficient buildings for residents and businesses, helping to build capacity for local governments to help increase their impacts in this space, and to help reduce carbon emissions by catalyzing regional activities and helping local jurisdictions to help meet their climate action goals. We now offer nine different programs.

You can see here that they're broken down into three three categories. Residential programs, we'll be talking today specifically on the single family ease home program, but you can see we have a multifamily program serving five or more units with the single family program serving up to four units. We have a green labeling program that also helps with some of the disclosure and training industry professionals, greenhouse calls with providing youth opportunities to get into the green workspace and provide kind of a soft energy audit, and then Bayron Business Program and Bayron Refrigerant Replacement Program focusing on small businesses. Then capacity building programs with codes and standards for building departments, integrated energy services, and targeted decarbonization services for public building upgrades and energy efficiency programming. Today, we'll be focusing on the single family ease home program, but we are happy to come back and speak on any of the other programs at any time.

And I will pass it to William to get into the in-depth

work of the program. Excellent. Thank you, Ryan. And again, thank you, chair and members of the board. Happy to be here today to speak about Ease Home. When I introduce this program to people, I like to point out we used or we were originally going call this program the Home Ease program. And a couple months before launch, we realized you say that too quickly and it sounds like homies. And it wasn't quite what we were going for. So with a quick name change, we got back on track and launched this program last summer. This program helps income eligible residents to make energy upgrades to boost home health and comfort all while lowering their overall energy usage.

When I say homeowners, let me actually step back and say instead residents because this program not only helps homeowners but it also helps renters which is unique for a lot of energy efficiency programs. Also, say single family but what we actually mean there is one all the way up to four unit households. So triplexes, duplexes, all eligible for this program as well. And when I say energy efficiency, I like to clarify what we mean when we're talking about A lot of other energy programs are focused on what we call electrification. That's removing gas appliances from a home and replacing them with electric alternatives.

Energy efficiency doesn't necessarily focus on gas because we don't necessarily want people to move from having a high amount of gas usage to a high amount of electricity usage. We want people to have less usage of whatever fuel it is they have. We're looking at sealing up a home and doing whatever we can to prevent energy loss throughout the day. So homes that participate in e's home are receiving personalized upgrades tailored to their home and they are led the whole way through by BayREN staff and our partner contractors. As this program is designed to be accessible to our moderate income population, BayREN provides incentives of 80% of total project costs.

Again, goal with this program is to promote resiliency, health, comfort, and safety all while maximizing energy affordability and encouraging energy savings. And we do this by making this offering available to households that outside of programs like Ease Home would not be able to access this work or afford it independently. Throughout the rollout of Ease Home, we've kept at our center of focus on equity, aiming to reach households that face barriers to energy upgrades and are not served by other existing programs. These audiences were identified based on an analysis of demographics across the Bay Area and the existing range of energy programs. First, moderate income households are often the populations that don't qualify for the available low income programs, and they're also not able to afford a lot of the upfront costs that come with electrification.

Second, households with limited English proficiency in general face language and cultural barriers when it comes to government programs and energy is no exception. Lastly, homes in high pollution zones are the most likely to have high rates of air pollution related health issues such as asthma and stand to benefit the most from programs targeting indoor air quality. When I speak with residents that have participated in Ease Home, the most common anecdote I hear is how easy it is. And it makes me really happy to hear because a lot of other energy programs out there are very complicated to get into and that complication deters residents from continuing and that loses the opportunity to create energy savings and also kind of reflects poorly on overall efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission. So with this program, step one, of course, is to submit an application.

And I'm not kidding when I say this is the easiest application ever. Address, name, income, you're qualified. Once you're qualified, you're given the opportunity to schedule a site visit where an energy advisor comes to your home. It is at that site visit that the actual income verification is done. At no point in this process does someone have to upload tax returns and personal information to some unknown database.

It's all just done visually in person. After that's done, the energy advisor inspects their home, checking things like attic, crawl space, major appliances to identify potential spots where energy could be reduced, find some upgrades that we can make around the home. Once that's been done, the energy advisor provides a personalized scope to that resident and the resident has two weeks to agree if they want to participate or not. Once they've agreed, they sign their paper and return it to us. They're scheduled time with a contractor to come out and do this work.

And again, when I say easy, I mean it. Most of this work is done in one day. We're trying to minimize the possibility of people having to take multiple days off of work to get these upgrades done. And any permitting or inspections that need to be accomplished along with this work is also handled by our contractors. After the installation is done, energy advisors are made available to support the residents with any post installation needs and all upgrades are backed with a one year warranty.

As Ryan said, we launched the program just last summer and we started doing projects here in Napa County in September. Since then, we have completed 17 projects and those 17 projects have had a total project cost of $132,500 BayREN has paid $116,000 of incentives across those projects leaving just 16,500 as the cost to the homeowners. If you break that down, on average that is an $8,000 project with $970 charged to the homeowner. Through the first six months of running Ease Home, we found that a lot of the homes that are participating need more help than we originally anticipated. Originally, were looking to cap projects around $6,000 but like I just said, we're coming in around $8,000 on average just here in Napa County.

So starting this spring, Bayron is actually going to increase the maximum project threshold from that 6 to $8,000 up to $14,000. Along with that, we're increasing the copay amount. As it is right now, it's capped. You'll never pay more than 20% of the total project cost. Previously it had been capped at 1,000 we're increasing it up to $2,000 just to correlate with that increase in overall project cost.

But with this increased cost per project, we're allowing for more comprehensive projects and an increase in the overall benefit to homes and residents. To see what these projects look like, here is a real world example. This is a personalized proposal that was given to a home here in the city of Napa that did this work last November. You can see each line is a different upgrade that that home could receive. Everything from attic and wall insulation down to hot water pipe insulation and whole home air sealing and weather stripping.

Costs for each are on the right side and if you total all of those up, you'll see this one project alone cost $9,900 BayREN paid $8,900 for that project and this work was completed for the homeowner at a cost of only $1,000 to them.

And as a special treat as well, Bayron had partnered with Univision to actually help coordinate a short segment about this exact project that William just highlighted in the previous slides. And we would like to share this. It's a two minute short video. The video is in Spanish and with English subtitles. Great.

And just to clarify as well, I don't think we got into this, but the income qualifications are capped at 120% of area median income. So that is for its specific county to county. As this is available in all nine Bay Area counties, it varies from county to county. But for NAPA, we have a range for household size of one. Those those income limits are up to a $134,625.

Up to family five, we have 207,675, but we have this comes from the state area median income calculations annually, so it does change year to year as well. Those are the most recent 2025 income limits, but those are changing as well. And our call to action, if you are interested or your friends and family, coworkers, neighbors, anyone else you might know is interested, please encourage them to check out our website. You can find our interest form that will go directly to William and I and we generally will kind of contact them upfront and ensure that they would qualify for the program and hand them off to, the program application. You can also find that interest form there on the QR code on the right or at the website below.

And one last thing that I'd like to highlight is a potential new partnership opportunity with the we're exploring the possibility of partnering with Napa County Housing and Community Services Department to utilize funds from Napa County's affordable housing fund to further support the applicant's co pay for East Home projects. PBES and Housing Community Services staff are working with Bayron's program implementation consultant on a formalized, contract agreement to initiate this partnership where the county would pay up to $1,000 per project. Originally, with the the $1,000 cap on copay amounts, this would completely fund the project at no cost. We didn't know at that time that the the copay amounts would be increasing. However, it's still a great opportunity to be able to to help offset some of the costs even further for these these residents.

And we hope to initiate this partnership and formalize that agreement later this spring or or early summer. And with that, we are happy to take some questions. Thank you for your time. One kind of last announcement on this, we'll be out at the Napa Climate Summit this Thursday, March 26, the Napa Valley College to present and and table on this. We'll have flyers and and other information, and we'll also be out at the community health fair on April Sunday, April 12, and at the Napa Earth Day celebration on Sunday Saturday, April 18. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Melendez and Mr. Doran for your excellent presentation. Very informative. I see Supervisor Cottrell. You want to go ahead? And then after that, Supervisor Gallagher.

Yeah. Thanks to you both for the presentation. Great to learn about the program. My question is for folks who participate and qualify and then may have this $1,000 payment, is there is that is that something people can spread out over time, or is that required in a lump sum?

That payment is due at the time of the installations, generally.

Okay.

We we've thought about this and and trying to come up with other strategies for being able to spread that payment around. And and the beauty of Bayron is that it offers these kind of structured programs, but also some flexibility for counties to be able to implement programs more tailored to the needs of their residents. So we've we've chatted about this with some of our counterparts in Marin and Sonoma Counties that have potential revolving loan funds that could help essentially offer a zero interest loan to residents to be able to make this payment. So we can explore that here in Napa as well. But as of now, that payment is due at the time of installations.

I will add, I know some contractors, because it varies on contractor, have had personalized when it's discussed upfront, kind of like a, hey, I'll pay half now and then half after next paycheck. It's been kind of a case by case thing and that's usually established between the resident and the contractor that's kind of outside the BayREN relationship because that payment's direct.

Got it. Yeah, so maybe just one suggestion I would have is when PBIS is talking with HCS, if there's any way to include that, some sort of structuring of an installment system for those, that might make a lot of sense. But overall, what a great program. Thank you.

Thank you for that suggestion.

Wonderful. Supervisor Gallagher?

Yeah, thank you. Great program and happy to do whatever we can to promote through our own channels, newsletters, etcetera. Just as a thought, maybe it would be great to, at some point, come back and talk about the government section. I think it's really interesting to see what we may be able to take advantage of as county government in terms of our own facilities. And not sure if we have taken advantage of any of those programs. But I think it's definitely worth exploring to make sure we do that.

Absolutely. Thank you for the suggestion. I was cluing in during the budgetary discussion too, and I was thinking the exact same thing.

Okay, great. I don't see anything on my left. But I have a question, which is what was the source of the cost overruns that you were seeing? Do you have any sense of that?

You know, it's kind of varied. A lot of the times it comes from wall insulation. That's ultimately the largest individual measure. Actually, can I see the clicker really quick, Ryan? If I just jump back to that one example oh, the slides are gone.

On that example we showed, if you look there, the attic insulation is a cost of $2,500 and that's covering 1,000 square feet. But the wall insulation covering only $700 is almost double that cost, dollars 4,900. And then also the drywall repair that's covering up the holes that had to be drilled in order to put that in, that's another $1,200 So wall insulation alone is just over $6,000 That's kind of the largest cost driver for these projects. Additionally, I will say we are adding a measure going forward. Historically, our focus has been just insulation duct repair duct replacement.

Starting this spring as well we are adding induction cooking as a core measure. So that upgrade alone is upwards of 3,000 for each house. So if you're talking about attic insulation, potentially wall insulation, and then an induction stove that is right there probably breaking $10,000

Okay. And then just for a point of clarification, anyone in the entire county who's a homeowner has access does this apply to businesses? Like just who can qualify?

So this is, again, just single family households, one to four units that qualify within the income range that Ryan discussed. We have separate programs for small businesses, which again, Ryan and I operate those for the county. So if there are any small business owners listening, please reach out to us. We're happy to discuss what we have available to help.

Okay, great. And then I just want to give you an extra shout out for doing all that outreach at those community events. I know that's a lot of work. You got to haul the tent out there and pop it up and stand around in the sun. But you're doing a great job with outreach and I see you out there when I go. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. And we have flyers here. If you we have a stack of flyers we can leave if you wanna take them and and distribute them whenever you can. Help us spread the word.

Thank you. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay.

All right. Thank you for that wonderful presentation. And at this time, will move us on to agenda item 10, which is closed session. And we will be taking up item 10A, conference with labor negotiations, government code section 54,957.6, agency designated representatives, Christine Bersenio, director of human resources, Napa County Probation Professionals Association non supervisory unit, and Napa County Probation Professionals Association supervisory unit. So I recess us to closed session at this time.

Thank you. Thank you. We have returned from closed session. And before we adjourn, I would like to ask County Council to report out on our session item.

Thank you. The board met in closed session today on item 10A conference with labor negotiations and there's no reportable action. The board gave direction to agency designated representative. Thank you.

Thank you, counsel. We will now adjourn to the next board of supervisors meeting on Tuesday, 04/14/2026 at 9AM.

Two weeks. Great. Thank you. Wow. Yoo hoo.

Hey. Wait till October.