Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Is your Zoom muted? Huh?

No, we're on public feeds now.

Yeah, but is your Zoom muted? Because we aren't seeing anything.

No, it's not muted. It never is. Okay, calling now. One sec.

Testing one, two, three.

Can someone confirm they can hear me in Zoom?

I can hear you on the mixer.

Talk again.

Testing 123. Can you hear me on Zoom?

Yes.

Staff said they don't hear anything on Zoom.

We hear it just fine on Zoom back here.

I'm letting it go.

madam madam chair we're live thank you clerk hoskins welcome everyone to the napa county board of supervisors meeting i'm calling this meeting of june 16 2026 to order may i have roll call please vice chair lesio present supervisor ramos

Supervisor Gallagher? Here. Supervisor Trout? Here. Chair Manfrey?

Here. At this time, I'd like for us to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and I welcome Brad Wagon-Connect to lead us in the pledge.

Please join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that Spanish interpretation is available for today's meeting. If you are here in the board chambers, you can access live Spanish interpretation on your personal device by scanning the QR code displayed in the room and using headphones. If you were watching from home, you can access Spanish interpretation through the zoom link by visiting Napa county dot Gov slash. Where you will also find today's meeting agenda in Spanish. If you are a Spanish speaker and wish to provide public comment today. Abigail Flores is available to assist with interpretation at the podium. We are pleased to offer this service as part of our ongoing commitment to accessibility and ensuring that more members of our community can participate in the work of the board. Ms. Flores will come to the podium now and repeat this message in Spanish. Thank you.

Antes de comenzar, me gustaría recordarles a todos que la interpretación al español está disponible para la reunión hoy. Si se encuentra dentro de la cámara de la junta, puede acceder la interpretación a español en vivo desde su dispositivo personal, escaneando el código QR que se muestra en la sala y usando sus propios audífonos. Si está participando virtualmente, puede acceder la interpretación al español a través del enlace de Zoom o visitando napacounty.gov barra diagonal español guión BOS. donde también puede encontrar la agenda para la reunión hoy en español. Si usted habla español y le gustaría hacer un comentario público hoy, yo estoy disponible para asistir con la interpretación en el podio. Estamos orgullosos de ofrecer este servicio como parte de nuestro compromiso continuo a la accesibilidad para asegurar que más miembros de nuestra comunidad puedan participar en la labor de la Junta.

thank you very much and now we're moving to item three which is pet of the week we will be introducing asta so i welcome asta and is louise here today okay great um to meet the the people here today okay you brought us a wolf i did

She was so eager to get out here. I don't know if any of you saw her through the door. She's basically like, hey, come on, we got a show to put on. But this is Asta. Asta is a four-year-old Siberian Husky mix. We might think she might be a Malamute, but with the breed, it can be a little challenging to tell. but we think she's more on the Malamute side of the breed. One of the main things that we noticed when she came in is her name is Asta. She came to the shelter as a stray. About a month ago, we tried to contact the owners, but we were unable to make contact with them to hopefully get her back home. Since she has been at the shelter, she has been a dog that stands out really, really quickly. Same thing, a dog that I question, why hasn't she been adopted? She recently participated in the parade, in the pride parade, and she did super well.

Yes, you did so good. There she goes. There we go. That's what she wants.

But she's super good. She does meet a lot of the stereotypes of a Husky. But luckily, from what I've noticed, is the stereotype is very, very low. So if you're looking for a first time Husky, she would be a really good candidate. When I came in through the door to meet the staff in the back, Laura actually made a really good point where I said, oh, her name's Asta. And she was like, Asta La Vista? Where it's like, yeah, most likely because she's a Husky. That's probably how she ended up here. So I want to give credit to Laura for that. But otherwise, yeah, she's a really good dog. If you have any chickens, we don't recommend this. She has shown some kind of prey drive to them. But otherwise, loves people, loves other animals that she's been interacting with. And in the pride parade, there were so many people she interacted with. Seeing her react the way that she did in such a high-stress environment, she did really, really well.

Okay, Luis, thank you. Asta is beautiful and very, very sweet. So thank you for bringing her in today. I hope she finds a home very soon. And her adoption fees are waived this week? They will be, yeah. Okay, perfect. Thank you. all right thanks we're going to move ahead to item four which is our consent calendar items a through y do we have any board comments or items to pull off of our consent calendar today i am not not seeing any uh is there anyone in the room who would like to make a public comment if so i welcome you to the podium at this time for any item on our consent calendar not seeing anyone is there anyone on the phone okay then may I have a motion and a second to approve consent calendar items a through y second control okay so I have a motion by Supervisor Ramos a second by Supervisor Cottrell all those in favor aye That passes unanimously. And we will move on to item 5, which is public comment for items not on the agenda. If there's and also for our 1 closed session item. So, if there's anyone present who'd like to speak on items, not on our agenda today, or on our closed session item, I welcome you to the podium at this time. I am not seeing anyone in the room. Is there anyone on the phones?

There is not. I'm sorry, Chair, there is no closed session.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. That's in the notes, but thank you. No closed session item. And then we'll move on to Item 6, Board of Supervisors Reports and Announcements. Do I have any reports or announcements from my colleagues? I see Supervisor Gallagher, and then after that, Supervisor Ramos.

Thank you. Just very quickly, at the June 26th Climate Action Committee meeting at 9.30 a.m., which starts at 9.30 a.m., we are going to have a presentation by some Air District staff to talk more about Rule 9.6 and the No NOx Emission Appliances Rule and the amendments that we are working on and will be coming before our board Um, this fall, so if you are interested in that, please feel free to come to that meeting. Uh, we will continue to report out on this. Um, you'll find information in my newsletter every month and we are also planning to have a community meeting as well. But the 1st meeting we will have will be Friday, June 26 at the climate action committee at 930 a.m. And that's it.

Thank you. Supervisor Gallagher supervisor Ramos.

Thank you so much. It's nice to see you all. I've had a lot of travels, so I'm going to update you on those. I did attend the June 3rd CALCOG legislative board meeting. CALCOG is the Council of Governments. It is a nonprofit, so it operates a little differently, but I sit as the representative for the Association of Bay Area Governments. And, of course, top of the mind not only was the budget, but also updates to SB 1087, which our Senator Cabaldon is sponsoring, along with my predecessor at ABAC, Senator Jesse Ehrigin. As of right now, it's been read into transportation. It's had some stalls, and so I'd be happy to talk to each of you as to how we can help our senator get that across the finish line. But there is some whips of support on the back end that need to be happening there. attended the Bay Conservation Development Commission on June 4th and then I also attended last week the regional summer meeting of CSAC in Kings County and I just want to say some highlights that were very impressive from that one I did get to two or three the Hanford viaduct of the high-speed rail project, which was really great to be able to understand the connection as we have just – we are doing the portal side in San Francisco at MTC to connect Caltrain over to high-speed rail, so to be able to see where this is all going to tie in is great. And given that we were in Kings County, in the heart of the Central Valley, there were many, many in-depth, meaningful discussions regarding water, regarding groundwater sustainability agencies, broadband. I thought broadband might actually be a bigger one. I was very, very impressed with the breadth of knowledge that our colleagues in the Central Valley have with experiences groundwater sustainability agencies and I think most importantly those groundwater sustainability agencies that have been placed on probation for not doing what they needed to do so I look forward to utilizing that knowledge going forward there there was a meet me in the street in American Canyon and I encourage all of you to come out on July 8th from 5 to 8 on American Canyon Road it is the greatest gathering of you know a few 1,000 of our close friends there. So that is all.

Thank you. Thank you. Vice chair. Let's see. Do you have, would you like to do any updates?

I can give a couple of just 2 quick, small updates. The work continues here locally in terms of. Well, locally and statewide on creating more access and planning for more childcare and big care. Some things have changed on that 1, as we know the. TK has kind of put the business plan for child care providers on their side and it makes it more difficult as a business as small business owner for them to be viable and sustainable and Calistoga is also has been working with your local child care provider up there the town has been doing a lot for that child care provider because they're essential for that community to move into a space at the fairgrounds and they're helping them with some financial support too. And also American Canyon is doing things also, their fire marshal is going out with childcare providers as they look for spaces to make sure they're not gonna be problematic. So I love the fact that I see these communities really rising up supporting childcare which is keeping safe places for our little ones and so parents can work as needed. The county coalition childcare coalition, we met last week and we talked about that. We talked again about some legislation, including SB 299. I've been asked to provide testimony next week on that. So I look forward to doing that. It's now in the in the Senate State Senate And so I'll be there but just continued work Just as a reminder for every nine babies born in this county. We have one license space so That's something that we need to continue to work on on the other on the lighter note I just want to thank anybody and everybody who came out to help fill care packages for our deployed service members this is a local nonprofit all volunteers all donations and There was 500 care packages that were filled, a couple hundred people. It's just a good-filled event. Those care packages go year-round into people who are currently deployed and who request those care packages. So they mean a lot from this community. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Alessio. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you, and good morning, Chair. I wanted to report on a few things. First of all, I wanted to flag that I joined the Assemblymember Cecilia Aguirre-Curry and Napa Farm Bureau's Peter Rumble to testify before the State Senate Housing Committee last week. On the assembly members farm worker housing bill, that bill would expand state support for Napa counties farm worker housing program. Senator cabaldon also sits on that committee and is a principal co author of the bill. He spoke in strong support of the bill and it passed out of committee on a 10 0 vote. So now it goes to Senate Appropriations Committee, which is a big hill to climb, but that's an important win that we have. And I just wanted to thank county staff who's worked on that diligently as well as our county partners, Farm Bureau, Napa Valley Vintners, and Napa Grape Growers. Also at the state level, CSAC and RCRC, along with our state agencies, including CMSP, which our HHSA director sits on the board of. Those groups have been in ongoing and intense negotiations with both the state Senate and the state assembly. The budget plan that has emerged is a great improvement from the governor's may revise. In that in that initial revise, there was a line item of 0 dollars for indigent care and that is something that sits in the county's responsibility. So that was. Really not acceptable for counties and our partners and after this county coalition work together on it, that line item is now at 125Million. So that's and that's important for the community to know that is really the state and the counties working together to address the big gap that will be caused by HR 1. And then finally, on a local level, I just wanted to flag a few things that have happened in the county over the past 10 days. Let's see. We've had a red flag warning. We've had we've had heat advisories. We've had a prescribed burn that happened out of the county. We have a prescribed burn happening in the county today and several road construction projects that long term are going to be benefits to the community. But in the short term are causing. you know big traffic impacts so i just wanted to flag that i think there's a need for us particularly in our rural hillside areas to figure out a unified mode of communication we have a lot of great agencies working here but i think we could do a better job in terms of emergency safety communication and i know ceo also up you and i will be talking about that and with the fire administrator too but i just wanted to give my colleagues a sense of i think that's a need that we could do a better job on Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor control. Great idea. I will note that all of us attended the flood control and water conservation district meeting on June 9th and. And supervisor Ramos and I attended numerous committee meetings for metropolitan transportation commission, where we also heard about our budget last week. I also attended San Francisco Bay restoration authority on June 12th and at that meeting, notably for Napa, we funded this scoping and design phase for the South Napa wetlands opportunity area access that will go through the. You know, relatively recently purchased a former vineyard site. At the corner of kind of highway 29 in the meadows and so that project has received a 6. Uh, 600,000 dollars green light to keep moving ahead, which is very exciting for our community. Um, and I will note that tomorrow there is a state route 29, a comprehensive multi modal corridor plan update at crosswalk church. So, if you're concerned about how highway 29 traffic. Woes are being addressed, you can attend that tomorrow evening at crosswalk church from 530 to 7. P. M. And then on June 24th from 530 to 7 PM state route 2912 airport Boulevard intersection improvements will be discussed at Hampton Inn on Hartle court. Um, and those are my announcements today. Thank you for listening. Item 7 is a discussion items pulled from consent calendar and we have none. So we're going to move on to item 8, which is administrative items. We have 2 items here, 8 a accepting from the registrar of voters, the certificate of sufficiency for the Napa county wildfire preparedness, watershed protection and open space preservation act of 2026. and we will consider related actions. So at this time, I welcome staff member Andrew Mize, our legislative and policy analyst, and Silva Darbinian, Deputy County Council, to present on this topic. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Andrew Mize. I'm your county's legislative and policy analyst and I'm joined today by Sylvia Darbanian, Deputy County Council. I'm before your board today with two action items related to the Napa County Wildfire Preparedness, Watershed Protection and Open Space Preservation Act of 2026. This is a citizen's initiative proposed for the November 3rd general gubernatorial election ballot. First, your board is required to accept and file the certification of the registrar voters of the verification of the petition signatures. That's action item number one. Second, the chief executive officer recommends placing the initiative on the ballot. As I'll discuss later, your board may alternatively postpone placing the initiative on the ballot to a later meeting and instead order an informational report today. Let's talk about the substance of the measure. The initiative proposes to levy a one half cent sales tax in Napa County, including both the incorporated and unincorporated areas of the county. Proceeds from the tax can be used in three broad areas. Wildfire preparedness, watershed and open space preservation, watershed and open space preservation, and watershed and open space management. The funds for wildfire preparedness will run through the Board of Supervisors in the form of competitive grants. The funds for watershed management and parks and open space will run through the regional park and open space district. The initiative sets out a spending plan for the funds, which are expected to total approximately $23 to $24 million annually. Funds will be split 50-50 between wildfire mitigation and watershed open space protection. For wildfire preparedness, I'll highlight some of the larger eligible categories, but want to note that the full list is in the measure itself. Fuels reduction, including along key access and evacuation routes and around vulnerable suburban communities and in forests to promote improved forest health and resilience. Implementation and updating of the community wildfire protection plan and smaller localized CWPPs. cost share programs to support defensible space and home hardening for vulnerable homes in high, very high and adjacent fire hazard severity zones and pursuing complementary fund state and federal grants and using revenues as matching funds. For preservation of watershed and parks and open space, several uses of funds I will highlight here are the protection of local drinking water sources, protecting water quality in rivers, creeks, and lakes, preserving natural biodiversity and native oak woodlands and other forested lands, protecting key agricultural lands, and acquisition of rights of ways and land needed to improve public access as outlined in the regional parks and open space master plan. And finally, acquisition of important open space lands and other lands that will address immediate threats to water quality, water supply, and natural habitats. For the management side of watershed and parks and open space, funds can be used in six broad ways aimed at managing, restoring, and maintaining native riparian habitats along streams, including evasive species management. They can also be used for improving riparian habitat resilience and restoring habitats after fire. Reducing erosion into streams, lakes, and wetlands, and improving public access to open space by constructing trails and public recreation opportunities contemplated in the Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District Master Plan. The initiative further grants the county and park and open space district, including the auditor controller, substantial authority to set rules and procedures governing grant making, distribution, and reporting of funds raised and distributed from the initiative. Finally, the initiative also provides for recruitment by the county of implementation and ongoing administrative costs. So next steps. Your board has two options for next steps on this sales tax measure. The measure is certified and must be placed on the ballot. The outstanding question is when to place it on the ballot. Your board may either vote today to adopt the attached resolution, placing the measure on the ballot, Or your board may postpone placing the measure on the ballot to a later meeting on July 14th. And instead order an informational report under the parameters of California Elections Code Section 9111. These reports are permitted in the case of citizens initiatives and though your board has previously ordered these reports for prior citizens land use initiatives, it has not ordered one of these reports for a sales tax measure. The contents of the report are permissive and tailored toward land use measures, though there is a catch-all statutory provision allowing the Board to direct its contents. The Chief Executive Officer's recommendation today is to place the measure on the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. is we're concluding the presentation. Yeah. Okay. Great. So I will ask for any public comment on this item at this time. So, if you're. If you'd like to comment, please come to the podium and each individual will have 3 minutes.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Joe Nordlinger. I'm the CEO of Napa Firewise. I want to thank Board Chair and the Supervisors, CEO Alsop, for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of our Fire Safe Council's residents of Napa County. While we have many supporters here on this issue and potentially logged in, I want to mention that we're going to really keep our comments brief and to only several people. We have Don Williams from Calistoga, the Vintners, and my counterpart over at the Land Trust, Melanie Parker, and we're going to keep our comments brief. I want to thank the county for their support over the years as it relates to wildfire resilience in past budget cycles and in the upcoming budget cycle. This is really today's consideration of the measure that so many people have been involved in developing is kind of a momentous occasion. It's been some time with many agencies working together to develop a comprehensive set of strategies for wildfire resilience here in the county. to think about our residents not just at the rural level but also at the city level and this this um consideration is an important step in really in really working to finalize and drive the ongoing implementation of many of these strategies and the maintenance of these strategies Since 2017, obviously, and 2020, Napa County has really pulled together in innumerable ways to make the county more prepared for wildfire. And those tragedies helped to forge tighter alignment and partnership amongst so many different entities focused on resilience. Napa County itself, Napa Firewise, Napa County Fire, Cal Fire, the Land Trust, RCD, Open Space District, COAD, and so many others. We really in many respects have become a model county and the state and we are recognized as such due to the high level of collaboration and integration and thoughtful strategies about how to really respond to wildfire. So I want to mention, obviously, this strategy has been informed by thousands of hours of our citizen volunteers, of scientists, fire ecologists, fire scientists, firefighters. And this citizens initiative that we've put together is really the sort of crystallization of so much of that work that we've endeavored to pursue in the last seven years. So, I want to thank the Board of Supervisors for your consideration of the measure. From our standpoint, we defer to the Board as it relates to the 911 report. We have time to get the initiative on the ballot. While we understand and tend to agree with the CEO and staff that the 911 is not required and may not produce that many insights at some cost to the county, obviously, to pursue it, in the end, we defer to your decision about how you consider that. And with that, I want to conclude my remarks and encourage our additional speakers who are going to also chime in on this initiative. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Supervisors. I'm Donald Williams, and I serve on the Council of Calisoga, but today I'm speaking not as a representative of the Council, speaking as a Calisogan resident. In the last decade, too many homes have been destroyed, lives disrupted, and communities traumatized, not to mention the anxiety that's produced by the attendant worry about the next big fire, which almost certainly will come. So I'd like to ask you to vote yes and to approve the placement of the wildfire prevention preparedness measure on the ballot. I'm not a big tax guy, but if we can forestall disaster and save lives and property with preventive measures, then I think we should invite the public to consider doing that with a relatively small tax. The improvement of open space is a complementary benefit of this tax. I recall at a meeting at Napa High School about 10, 11 years ago or so, the county presented a report which indicated that although many visitors came to Napa County because of the wineries and visiting them, even more visitors came to Napa County because of the natural beauty and landscape that we enjoy here. So preserving that, of course, is a secondary but crucial component of this plan. So I'd like to ask you to please do put this ballot on the measure, to put this measure on the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Williams. Excuse me. Yeah, welcome.

Anyone else? Good morning, Chair Manfrey, members of the Board of Supervisors, County Council Bratton, so good to see you again, and CEO Alsop, good to see you. I think I'm going to, well, let me just say who I am. I'm the CEO of the Land Trust in Napa County. As you all may know, the Land Trust is celebrating its 50th anniversary, 50 years of preserving the character of Napa through land preservation. We're also celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the creation of the Parks and Open Space District here in Napa. And as good of a job as my colleagues there do, it has always been the dream that that would be a fully funded open space and parks district. And so this measure does that. It finally gets us across the finish line for that. So I think I'm just going to add three words that maybe haven't been amplified yet. Parks, trails, equity. So on parks, there is a real... need in this county for more public access to public lands. And we have the ability to do that with this measure. What Napa County has not had and other counties do have is a robust partnership between the land trust and the other partners, the small nonprofits, the cities, and a funded parks district to onboard parks. I myself have done a lot of work in this arena, and I can tell you one of the very cool things about parks in this conversation here is that they are dual purpose. So I have managed and onboarded new parks that act as buffer zones to communities so that 364 days of the year, you're out there walking your dog or your mom is out there pushing your kid in the stroller, but one day of the year, That park is so well managed and so well placed that it protects communities from catastrophic wildfire. And those are the kinds of projects we'll be able to do with this ballot measure. Second word is trails. Napa County has so much potential for connecting trails from Valley Bottom to Ridgetop, from Baylands to Ridgetop, from Ridgetop to Ridgetop. And there's a lot out there on the books. And we can finally leverage money. Because when you have a local ballot measure, you can leverage state and private grants more successfully. So to build those trails. And it's 18 years. We can make a generational difference in trails and parks and open space. And the last word I wanna say is equity. And this, to me, just hits me every day in Napa County. Not everyone has equal access to have the benefits of nature in Napa County. Not everyone has access to the outdoors. The outdoors is essential for mental health and physical health. So with this money, we can actually make more equitable access to the outdoors. So thank you for hearing me today. And please vote to put it on the ballot measure.

On the November ballot.

Thank you, Ms. Parker, welcome.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Board of Supervisors. Michelle Novy with the Napa Valley Vintners. I'm here in support of placing this initiative on the November ballot. Following 2017, I think we all thought that wildfire, like what we experienced, was just kind of a one-off. And 2020 showed us that that wasn't the case. our Vintner community came together very quickly and formed a fire prevention and mitigation committee. Out of that committee, there were several recommendations, many of which have already come to fruition. But one of the most important recommendations was that there was a long-term durable funding mechanism to support the work of fuel management and ongoing maintenance here in this community. And that's what this initiative represents to us. It's a buffer against a $2 billion economic impact. It is an investment in our community and its resilience. And it's an opportunity for voters to say that this is important and this matters. The NVV has endorsed this measure, and so we're excited to see it on the ballot and vote yes, and hopefully you'll vote today to place it there at this meeting. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Novy. Is there anyone else wishing to comment in the room today? Yeah, go ahead and come forward. Hi.

Hi, my name is Lisa Hirayama. I live in Circle Oaks. I'm talking as a resident. I just kind of brought some notes up on the fly. But I wanted to point out that people in town might think that homeowners insurance doesn't affect them as much as it does people in the wildfire zones, because our insurance is getting canceled left and right, needless to say. And there's a crisis right now with homeowners insurance. So people are, I collected some signatures and some people are saying I don't want to pay any more taxes. It doesn't affect me, I'm in town. Well it does affect you because when they cancel homeowners insurance for people in wildfire zones, they have to make up that premium cost somewhere else and it's going to come out of your homeowners insurance in town. It doesn't matter. California fair plan has already said they're going to be increasing it by 30%. That's a lot of the insurance that we're only able to get now because we live in wildfire zones. So I'm looking at another $1,800 a year for a home to increase. And also when you're in town, If we have wildfires out in the hills, the smoke is coming to the valley. I remember in 2017, the smoke was horrible in town, and it also tainted the grapes. So there was a lot of destruction in town. It doesn't matter if we're losing our homes out in the wildfire areas, it's also coming to town. It will affect you somehow. This tax will help make tourists pay. Instead of us always having to pay the assessment on our property taxes, this will spread the tax out on tourists that come to town. And so, like someone just said, tourism is a big deal in this valley. Let's see. So I just wanted to say that I hope you will vote to put this on the ballot today instead of waiting another month because it doesn't seem like it's going to really change that much more in a month. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hirayama. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair and fellow supervisors. My name is Ben . My name is Ben Mackey. I'm the Vineyard Program Director of Napa Green. We're a community-based climate action nonprofit that certifies the sustainability of vineyards and wineries in Napa County. I run the Vineyard Program and work closely with landowners to recognize the opportunities and challenges of managing the wild lands around vineyards and wineries. And a lot of that funding comes through grants and those are one time grants where people can put a lot of effort and get a lot of management done. But all of that effort needs to be sustained. And so that funding always needs, you know, we have to be looking towards the future for that sustained funding to maintain all of that investment into the land. and be able to manage the risk for the entire community and so when i heard about this initiative it makes the most sense because we need that sustained funding and not just those one-off grant opportunities for those landowners to be able to do this really expensive management in the forest so i hope that the measure makes it on the ballot and thank you for your time today

Thank you, Mr. Mackey. I'm not seeing anyone else in the room. Is there anyone on the phones?

No, okay.

Then I will go ahead and ask my colleagues if they have any questions related to this item at this time. I'm not, okay. Well, once we get a motion on the floor, we'll do discussion, but right now, questions.

thank you so much I do have a couple questions and maybe this is for mr. opinion sorry this just reset to and looking at the at the ballot language on page 8 of the ballot that's where I'm looking up and 1 of section 5 on definition C definition section 5, where it says qualified 501 C 3 nonprofit organization and it goes down and the last. the last requirement says is headquartered in napa what is what is the definition of headquartered in napa for purposes of this initiative it doesn't have a definition i would look to whether they have an office here and they do business here mostly

This is our guiding.

So how, I mean, if this is an initiative, we as the county are required to enforce it as it is written. How do we defend against a, anyone can go to School Street and get a PO box. Is there guidance from the Secretary of State's office? I mean, residency is different. Residents of an organization is different than headquartered of an organization versus office of an organization. Where I'm looking for it for an ordinance that doesn't give. Deference right? That's that's what we wanted an ordinance and that right there.

i'm curious i think we can look to a couple of things one is that they have to be authorized to conduct operations not only within the state of california but within napa county and also the board of supervisors in this ordinance is given some authority to set rules reasonable rules to implement this ordinance i believe we have some flexibility here to look at what our parameters would be to make sure that the organization meets the purposes of this ordinance and implements the public benefit for Napa County.

OK, so then that brings me to the other part, which is the E, authorized to conduct operations in the state of California within Napa County. We don't issue business licenses. We issue use permits if you are conducting commercial activities out in the unincorporated. So how is that going to be interpreted as authorized to conduct operations within the state of California? Is that just like a general contracting license? Because I don't know what else in terms of licensure that the county of Napa has any oversight in that would meet the requirements of a plain language reading of E.

I think that's an open ended question. This ordinance leaves that open. So again, I think that the county can look at this and interpret it and put in the reasonable rules for implementation. I believe the intent was to give the board some discretion here to effectuate the intent of the ordinance. Would that be?

Given those two taken together, E and F, leave a lot of, leave me with a lot of desire for greater direction. Given the limitations in These are grants, not public contracting, but the guidance from California Public Contracting Code would suggest that we need to have clear determinations of when a local preference is being applied. And this doesn't have clear determinations as to when a local preference is being applied. So how would the county be able to meet are requirements that apply to all contracting because a grant is, in fact, a contract. You have to do something. You sign a document with us. How do we meet that requirement given that this language doesn't give us that guidance and clarity?

A lot of research and careful drafting of the grant.

Okay, next question. On wildfire preparedness, section 1A1, or no, 1A, roadside clearing of hazardous fuels along county roads and critical access roads identified by Napa County Fire Department. What is a critical access road that is not a Napa County road?

We think that this would be defined in the fire plan.

But it would not be a county road? I'm trying to understand, you know what, in terms of if this is saying critical access road, and that is separate from a county road. My concern is here are we utilizing. These dollars in improving private property that is not a county road. And if so, how is that criteria established? Because it is not clear clear here.

Supervisor, if you'll allow me. Sure. I think there's two sources that we can look to for what these critical access roads are. There's our own HMP, our Hazard Mitigation Plan, a draft of which is in process and expect to be adopted shortly. There's also the CWPP, which is updated regularly and which your board, I believe, adopts. In terms of looking at which private roads may be critical access roads, I think, again, the language of the measure provides substantial discretion for your board to make those kinds of determinations and create that kind of criteria and perhaps implement it into a future update to the CWPP or to the HMP. I understand, I think that your concern here is conferring private benefit using public dollars.

i see that our assessor has approached the podium do you have something to add to the conversation yes i do chair manfrey supervisor ramos there are a number of roads that you and i think are public roads which are not much of angwin is private roads so i can't list them all but i'm involved in this constantly as people are trying to figure out where's the center of the road who owns the road etc so throughout the county there are a number of private roads not just in angwin And I'm not defining what's there, but I just wanted to clarify for you that what many people use that are not on private property are private roads and serve many properties. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tudor. Mr. Lederer, our public works director.

Yeah, thank you. Steve Letter, Public Works Director. I just want to throw in sort of another category of there are private property or roads on private property that are not open to the public but still act as critical fire access at various times. For instance, the top of Atlas Peak and the top of Soda Canyon do not connect publicly, but in an emergency, there actually is transit and the ability to transit. That would be like a private road that still acts as critical fire access. I think it's called Sharp Road, the backside of Diamond Mountain, similar as private, but acts as an access sometimes during fires. So there are a number of those. So that may not help Supervisor Ramos' question as to how do you determine where the money is going to go. But there are a number of these roads that are on private property that do serve important important purposes.

Thank you for that clarification. Um, so. Let me try this another way. So if we use the CWPP as the guiding document for determining what is an access road and based upon our public works director definition of access road, that is separate from the fuel breaks that are listed in section sub IV. that are in fact uh already included in our cwpp our cwpp is not a roads plan it is a fuel and fire break plan so i guess then it comes back to it does sound in fact like this is critical access roads that in fact may be private utilized for access of emergency equipment but then i get back to the question of how do we determine and shield the county against conferring public benefit.

I think that this is a very broad document with a lot of discretion given to you to determine the safeguards as long as the guiding principle is that you meet the intent of this ordinance. There are broad categories of expenditures and They have given this board, the ordinance gives the board the discretion to make those determinations, considering all the different county plans and goals. As long as they're consistent with the main purposes of this ordinance, you can set implementation measures for this.

So, how, given that this is an ordinance. And it goes to the voters, assuming they approve it. There is no ability of modification at the board. So, how, in fact, does that look like that? We would be changing language to further define. All these areas that are. are not defined as headquartered in Napa County, making sure we meet the public contracting, the eligible to do work in Napa County, the critical access roads, and how do we do that? What comes next? Because it seems to me like that would be like a supplementary ordinance that the board and criteria, but my understanding is we're not allowed to touch an ordinance.

You can implement and this ordinance gives you authority to do that as long as your implementation measures are not in conflict with this measure.

Then I guess the question then is what if someone challenges us? What if we get sued for we do this? And we get sued for the way we choose to enforce headquartered in Napa County or the way we choose to enforce improvements upon a critical access rate.

I believe that this will be an undertaking where county staff will conduct a lot of research on these different issues. to help bring forth the ordinances and resolutions that implement this measure once it's passed. There will also be an effort to draft the grant agreements in a way that addresses those concerns in looking at various county procedures, goals, plans, it will be an effort to implement this ordinance. As with a lot of initiatives, this is kind of like a general plan of what the proponents want to do with the county staff and open space staff left with interpreting and implementing. That the devil is in the details, but you have the discretion to do that.

If I may, Supervisor. Yes. The language of the ordinance provides that costs for implementation and for administration of the programs are taken off the top of the tax revenue. Regardless of whether you consider a lawsuit challenging the parameters by which the ordinance is implemented to be implementation or administration of it, both costs would be covered by funds from the ordinance. It would be unfortunate, I think, to lose the ability to use that money for the purposes for which it was ultimately intended in watershed preservation, open space, and wildfire protection. But there is language protecting the county from incurring additional costs related to litigation coming from our implementation of it.

So that's my other question. Administration costs, there is no mention of indemnity for the county and these funds, half the funds come to the county for expenditure because they are expenditures of the county and there is no indemnity provision. Can you talk about that? Because administrative costs are different than indemnity. You're correct, I've never. I've never seen a measure that doesn't have an indemnity provision as well. So, what is what does that look like? because it's different and it's different in the sense that prior measures say like the flood control district, that's a district in and of itself. That's its own agency. I'm not concerned with Parks and Open Spaces portion of this because they're their own district and in fact have their own government contracting and indemnity that covers that. The flood district, when we sit in that capacity with our colleagues, that's its own district and has its own provisions for indemnity and administration. This is a group of private individuals telling the county we want to take. We want you to take this money. We want you to do these things. And there's no protection at the back end for the county in terms of indemnity. How does that get resolved?

As with all initiatives, Supervisor Ramos, once it is enacted by the voters, the county is obligated to defend the measure because it's a measure of the people. If there is legal challenge, we would defend. We would have to look at the merits of the case and perhaps If there's an issue with our definition of something and there is good reason to revisit that, we would look at amending our implementing ordinances. But we do have to defend and we do have to implement once it's passed by the voters. And we do...

Didn't we have, I feel like we had litigation regarding a sales tax measure with the county regarding the jail and childcare. 2014 does anyone remember? I wasn't here. Was anyone here? I don't remember. Of course you were, John. Of course you were still here, John. But we've had litigation in regards to a sales tax measure. And we've had language and challenges in terms of ballot initiatives as well. And so I just, from an indemnity standpoint, the lack that that's missing, I have concerns over it. Those are my questions for now.

OK. Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. I see Supervisor Cottrell. And then after that, I see CEO or counsel. Did you have something you want to add now?

Yeah, I was going to chime in here. Thank you both. A couple of thoughts on some of the comments that we heard. Number one, I think this is work we're doing right now. without a sustainable funding source to do it long term. This measure ultimately will provide $11 million or so a year on a regular basis in order to do the work for us to continue the work. I'm not sure what indemnity looks like right now. with our budget expenditures for anything that we do related to implementing the cwpp i'd be interested in understanding that a little bit better i would offer this would be a competitive process for your board this measure i believe has an oversight committee on top of it who's looking to make sure that Your board is adhering to just making sure the money is spent the way that the ballot measure describes it But through a competitive process I don't see any reason why your board can't in agreements with whomever we choose to Do whatever we need them to do again related back to the CWPP, there's no reason why we can't put indemnification into an agreement with whomever we're hiring to do the work. Unless I'm, I mean, and if you disagree with that, let me know. The other thing is that the the to the point about headquartered again I think between you know County Council supporting this the Oversight Committee being thoughtful about ultimately awarding our contracts to entities that we believe will have high efficacy in a deliverable for us you know these are this money is going to groups here locally like uh obviously ncff any of the fire safe councils uh land there's space here for the land trust to operate on the fire side as well rcd the community foundation any of our local volunteer fire stations are all non-profits All of these folks, in addition to others, I see potentially could be going after some of this money. But again, in individual agreements with your board, where we, I think, can require indemnification for the work that they're going to do.

Thank you. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you. And thanks to my colleagues for the questions and CEO Alsop's response too. I think it is, those are great questions and there are things we're going to need to look into, you know, if and hopefully from my individual perspective when this measure passes. I think the ability to add more Detail in the grant submittal guidelines, application guidelines in any grant and contract language. Once those things are awarded and I think the oversight committee as well. There are a lot of steps along the way where we can. As a county, we have the opportunity to. Tighten up things that we think are still open and and sometimes when you draft an ordinance, you would rather have it be over broad so that then we can come in and make adjustments. But, but not that are in conflict with the ordinance. Um, so, I mean, what I want to get to today is, um, 1st of all, uh, thank you to all the residents and organizations. Um, we've heard from fire wise, the land trust, um, cities, open space district, and our industry partners who have really helped, uh, create this. Initiative and brought it to this point and it really you've identified collectively a range of needs wildfire at the top of the list, open space protection, agricultural production. Right? We know that if we have these devastating wildfires, they're devastating to our agricultural industry. biodiversity and forest health, right? The number of benefits that will accumulate in this community with these dollars, both on the wildfire prevention side and on the open space and watershed management side really is across the board. Thank you to miss for making the link to the insurance benefits that this measure will bring to residents both in our cities and in our unincorporated areas. I think that's a really important 1 to call out and and the ability that we will have to make reasonable rules for implementation will be important as well. And the other thing that I don't think has been mentioned yet, or maybe touched on is. The leverage that this measure could bring to the county that so often when the county is applying for grants or nonprofits in our community are applying for grants, having being able to point to local dollars that are already being spent on the issue shows that we have skin in the game. And I know when. We're talking to representatives at the state level and the local level. It's so important when we can point to that. So, um, I am in favor of this of of, um, supporting this and I am happy to make a motion that we place it on the ballot today.

Okay, I see supervisor Gallagher with a 2nd. Okay. I actually had a couple of questions still. Did you have any questions? comments okay so i have a couple questions before we proceed with that one is um just to refresh our memories uh could you help me remember some of the other sales tax measures that have been considered um just for the sake of comparison and kind of like a baseline of where we're at with sales taxes that are county-wide and my recollection is that we passed and has now expired measure a for flood protection and measure U through NVTA for transportation, which replaced measure T. Are there any other active sales taxes at the county level? I don't...

I believe there might be a Parks and Open Space sales tax.

We have tried twice previously to adopt a Parks and Open Space sales tax and it failed narrowly both times. And then we also at one point attempted, the board attempted to pass, was it Measure M? Measure L, Measure M, I always, Measure L for fire protection and that one also failed. So just, and I, am I missing any, anyone in the room can speak, am I missing?

You're missing why why was general, which was that was the 1 with the jail measure why, which was, uh. That was, uh, for the replacement and that was defeated and, uh. Yeah, measure K was the last open space district 1 in March of 2020. yeah. Okay. And then L, which you noted, which is June of 2022. Okay.

And I see our auditor controller welcome. Tracy shows the auto controller. No, the measure you is the only 1 that we have right now.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted was looking for the whole context because, you know, a lot of counties have more taxes than we do. We don't really have that, especially with the expiration of measure a, we don't have a lot. Of sales tax is going on to help us achieve whatever goals we're trying to achieve as a community. And then my other question is that any clarification I can get on how the board of supervisors. Authority and oversight relates to overlaps with, or is separate from the authority and oversight of the citizens committee. They'll oversee. This would be helpful for me. So just distinguishing. The relative powers of those 2 bodies.

i can probably help with this one as well go ahead if you're ready okay so uh the board of supervisors you are going to be in charge of the whole implementation and process and grant agreements and so forth the oversight committee is really overseeing what happens after the fact to make sure that it's implemented correctly that there's checks and balances that there's audits being done that you know everything is being reported correctly and so forth so this is the same if you recall measure a with the flood and flood tax we had an oversight committee that met quarterly we walked over we went through all the expenditures we explained or we we had the presentations from each of the districts just like they do right now for measure you as well not the districts of jurisdictions and just to make sure that the money is being spent in the or in the spirit of the ordinance correctly and through the implementation so Board of Supervisors before Oversight Committee after okay that's that's really helpful clarification thank you anything to add

Okay, I am not, we have a motion and a second on the- Supervisors, before you proceed with that motion, we need a motion to accept the certificate of sufficiency.

So moved.

okay okay so i have a motion by supervisor alessio and a second by supervisor ramos to accept the certificate of sufficiency and adopt uh the res wait i have these as one item should i do them separately you can do it either way okay then um a little Would you like me to read it?

Yeah, why don't you read it back and then we'll... Okay. I'll move to accept the registrar of voters, the certificate of sufficiency for the Napa County Wildfire Preparedness, Watershed Protection and Open Space Preservation Act of 2026 and take related actions. That's number one. Yes. Do you want me to read the second or do you want everybody else to vote?

We had a separate person second on the second one already. Okay. I'll move on that. Thank you. I'll second. What? we're voting on certificate item a the certificate of sufficiency yes thank you um so i had a second on that from supervisor ramos on the sufficiency yeah on sufficiency okay all those in favor aye aye passes unanimously and then um i also had a motion from supervisor gallagher in a second from no motion from supervisor control in a second from supervisor gallagher to

to adopt the resolution calling an election and placing the initiative on the ballot for the november 3rd 2026 statewide election thank you

Well, that's true.

Oh, okay. Okay. We can have the motion in the second. Yeah.

I mean, the whole point is to direct the conversation. Let's have the motion and the second on the table that helps us focus. So, um, I think that was originally an intent. I don't know, but it was with my second. Um, so I just wanted to, uh, weigh in, uh, I think the questions and the concerns that supervisor Ramos has are important issues. And I think that. We will be discussing those during the preparation of the guidelines once the measure passes. I've also endorsed the measure and so I'm gonna say when it passes. I don't believe that there is a necessity for a 911 report. I don't think that we need to spend the additional county dollars to do that. I doubt that there would be anything revealed in that report that we don't already know. I'm not going to belabor the point, but I think that it's important that we have reliable and sustainable funding for wildfire prevention. And also, I really liked the way Ms. Parker talked about parks and open space, parks, trails, and equity, all incredibly, incredibly important. And I really want to see our open space district be funded so that it can do what it has, can really meet its mission. and we can provide those outdoor experiences and make our lands accessible to people. We have a beautiful place that we call home and many people cannot actually access any of the natural lands that we have. Yes, we have some, but we really don't have enough. And in addition, we need to take seriously the protection of our water and our watersheds. And this is 1 way to make sure that we are on that path. So, I'm happy to support this and I do believe that any issues that. Of concern around our, our ability to. Maintain distance around liability and and other issues can be Discussed and and clarified during the guideline process Thanks Thank You all set

Any other comments?

Go ahead.

Last, not least.

Okay. This has been great. Thank you, everybody. And I really want to thank everybody who was out there getting those signatures. That's a big lift. It's not easy. It takes a lot of time, your personal time. So thank you. I want to thank you, Napa Firewise and the Open Space District for your leadership in doing this. I fully support and endorse this. As a former Napa City Council member and sister and aunt of three family members who lost all their homes, two of which were here in Napa County in 2017 and in 2020, and then my niece that was in Paradise lost her home thank goodness they didn't lose their lives they lost everything else but their lives were saved thank goodness I know how this impacts everybody not just people who live in the county but the people who live in the city and in 2017 I was in the city pre City Council as just a local resident volunteer that went to the evacuation center at the crosswalk Church and located in the city, and I saw the elderly, the skilled nursing homes, the individuals, families, children, all pouring into that little gymnasium and really shell-shocked. I mean, they were in shock. We were kind of all in shock. It reminded me of that MASH unit, that show MASH. Everybody was just like, wow. And hearing the cries as they heard that everything was gone in their homes throughout the night as reports came in. That trauma that somebody mentioned is real. That sticks with me. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget seeing, as many here in Napa saw, how we were literally, there was a bowl, we were a bowl of fire. Fire was basically surrounding this entire county. That could have easily gone into every city, especially Calistoga, the smaller areas, but even the city of Napa. Browns Valley was at high, high risk. There was two good Samaritans that were out there over 24 hours in their bulldozer creating a firebreak line. There were people all, I mean, out to heights, and I mention this because This is all of us. This can impact all of us if we have another one of those catastrophic fires. And honestly, it's not a matter of if, it's when. So we have an opportunity to make a difference here, to come together as we did with Measure A. Measure A, I remember too, being a Napa local, I remember many years of the high tides and the torrential storms as the Napa River flood into the city with currents into downtown area with heavy currents, with silt, people having to evacuate for safety and having that repeated, going back to homes that were ruined. going back to businesses they could not reopen, triggering bankruptcies for people. I mean, that was a disaster that we saw again and again. And what did this community do? From the tip of Calistoga all the way down to American Canyon, we said we can come together and make a difference. We can pass Measure A, and we did. And look at the city of Napa now. Everything that's good for the cities, including the city of Napa, is good for the county. And everything that's good for the county is good for the cities. And so we are that model community. I see this and heard this and worked and witnessed this in many sectors, whether it be public health, natural disasters, economic development. It all supports each other. Sometimes I think we feel like, well, we're in this big valley. If you look at it from above, we have a small county. We're a tiny county. We are all neighbors to each other. And so, again, I just make a plea to the people that live in the city of Napa, know this impacts you too. Remember the air, the particulates in the air in 2017, how unhealthy that was for you, for your children, for your grandparents who may be compromised. with chronic disease or asthma or just general health. I worked at the hospital and we had those A21 masks before anybody else because we understood how those particulates and those fires, sure that was terrible for the vines, but that's even worse for your lungs. This impacts everybody, city and county wide. so I just you know I I think everybody again for going out there getting the signatures I'm here to support it in any way I can I think the county for their help in this and I just look forward to a successful measure so I guess it's time to roll up our sleeves and start thank you okay I see supervisor Ramos

Thank you. I think that a couple of things that come to mind are that the work that is being outlined here in this ordinance is by far necessary. And at this moment in time, one that you cannot dispute that is warranted for the protection of not just our public, but our watersheds and to really start addressing the impacts of climate as they are encroaching upon Napa County. I have great reservations about the language. Not about the purpose, but about the language. And I think that I want to distinguish that. The work that is being done and outlined is exactly what we need to be doing. We need to be able to coalesce as a community to be able to address the issues that are before us. I certainly know how to count. I've been here long enough that I know how to count that a 911 isn't going forward. But in fact, a 911 is what can help us answer these questions of what happens for language that is silent on indemnity, on what happens when the guidelines of what is a qualifying organization are not clearly laid out for us. and how in fact we meet the requirements of public contracting. While I don't disagree that we can add indemnity language into the grants, that's not my fear. My fear is those that we may deny grants to. When I look at this, because it's not going to be sitting as its own special district in In our, our budget, right? It's not like the groundwater sustainability agency. It's not like there is a buffer against. The general fund that we're going to be talking about the general fund general fund is already. You know, it's. revenues are are definitely under expenditures as is already and yes this is money but um in order to administer this it's going to cost them and yes we could take it but for everything else that is unanticipated and that is silent, I have concerns about. So I do think we need to look carefully as we move forward. If this measure, if this revenue measure were to pass, a couple of things that I think need to be very, very clearly laid out is that the authorizing resolution needs to be able to set aside administratively money for general liability and indemnity that is already built into the administration. As we built the administration of the cost, not just as a regular ISF pass-through, but to actually set aside money for risk on indemnity. Number two, I think that there needs to be an outside opinion in terms of what constitutes critical access roads and how that intersects with our obligations to not confer public benefit on private persons. Then beyond that, I do believe you know I in looking at the language you know again headquartered in Napa County and authorized to do work here in Napa County and having been here for ten years in Napa County I can only think of one organization that that meets that requirement and that's fire wise and I think that needs to be said. And so as we look at this and we look at the guidelines, the grant guidelines, we need to be very, very clear that that language in our grant guidelines is meeting the public contracting requirements. Because that's what a grant is. Yes, we're giving it, but it is a public contract. And we need to meet those public contracting requirements. And I do believe that As we do that, having both the authorizing resolution that establishes an expenditure plan for an administration plan for us of these funds, the grant guideline documents that come thereafter need to likewise further define all these areas that have not been clearly defined. I think we still, in fact, run a risk of invalid for vagueness. And yes, overbroad is great, but not when it's an ordinance you cannot touch. We are risking here as a board saying, if this goes to the voters and passes, That in order for us to not run amok of public contracting, we are not going to enforce certain provisions that are included in here. And I do think that that needs to be said. So I just wanted to lay it out. I think that we need to also likewise look at making sure that what comes next is an authorizing resolution for the administration that addresses indemnity and risk and also the grant guidelines.

Thank you. Supervisor Ramos. Those are excellent points and I do. Hearing that think that it's important that we proceed cautiously, especially in the items that you've raised. Yes, I think those are great points.

Could we amend the motion to include guidance to staff that we ask for staff to look at the items that Supervisor Ramos brought up and so that we can start doing the work on a potential follow-up document that would be the basis for the authorizing resolution?

We would probably be looking at it anyway. I would wait until the ordinance passes, the measure passes. OK. If you wanted to make it a formal motion, I would wait for that. But we have good notes here. We can certainly look at those questions.

OK. Thank you for the guidance and for the enthusiasm. Okay, so with that, we have a motion on the floor and a second to adopt the resolution to place this item, the Citizens Initiative on the ballot. All those in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you for the in-depth discussion, everyone.

We already read it. I think, yeah.

Do we get a break? Yeah. Okay. Should we get a break?

Yeah, yes.

Yes, we can do a five minute break.

Okay. Thank you, Chair. It's our parents' anniversary and I forgot to call them.

Madam chair, we're back when you're ready.

Thank you. We still have quite a bit to get through today. Our next item is item eight B adopting or considering to the adoption of a resolution declaring county property located in downtown Napa at 1127 first street as surplus land in accordance with the California surplus lands act government code section 54220. and to approve and authorize a budget amendment to reallocate previously approved appropriation for the 1127 first tenant improvement project and 1127 first HVAC replacement in the total amount of $1,998,946 to the first and second floor improvement at the hall of justice project. I welcome a staff report from our Chief Executive Officer, Ryan Alsop, and I see that our Public Works Director, Steve Lutterer, is also here to present.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I have a slideshow, a rare slideshow. Okay.

Our displays are not working.

My one opportunity.

I know. Yeah, okay. There's our live feed, and now we're waiting for the displays.

Mike's out.

Testing one, two, three.

I'm fine to do it without the slides, I guess.

Go ahead with the slides.

Do you have a copy, a printed copy of that? Okay, it's up. Here we go. Okay, I'm gonna get into it before something happens.

Okay, we're resuming the meeting. Go ahead, Chair Alsop.

Madam Chair, members of the board, the majority of our employees are located in approximately 961,000 square feet of owned office space. To fulfill their job duties, these properties are insured for around $455 million with an estimated market value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Mr. Tudor. And these owned facilities are highly visible properties located downtown and to our south. We also have other notable facilities including our sheriff's headquarters corrections rehabilitation corrections of rehabilitation facility among others and We also have several other properties that have either some county staff or no county staff. These are notable. We've got various other smaller assets related to facilities at the airport, roads facilities, ITS, communications equipment, Ag Commissioner's got different things up and down the valley as well as our Fire Department. Speaking of parks, trails, and equity, Skyline Park is again an asset there. Around 200 of our employees operate out of 153,000 square feet of leased office space, most notably our probation and child support services who are operating now starting at the end of the month out of 555 Gateway Drive, which is down south near our sheriff's headquarters, and our DA, most of her staff anyway operating out of 1250 Main Street. Various other smaller leases include our libraries in both American Canyon and Yountville and we also lease space at the Monarch Justice Center among other smaller facilities. This morning we're recommending you adopt a resolution declaring county property located in downtown Napa at 1127 First Street, also commonly referred to as Carruthers, as a surplus land in accordance with the California Surplus Lands Act, Government Code Section 54-220. Under this government code, the California Surplus Lands Act, that's before a local agency like a county or a city can sell or lease a property we must formally declare it as a surplus in this case at a regular public meeting and receive ultimately receive clearance from the California Department of Housing and Community Development which we will seek to do You're also at the same time approving essentially moving money that is targeted going toward this building, moving it over to the Hall of Justice to do some tenant improvements, which I will get to in a second. Staff's recommendation today to declare 1127 First Street surplus is informed by several key developments over the past 18 months. First, the new behavioral health treatment center that will be located at the former reentry facility. The county is making a sizable investment in local behavioral health and recovery services converting the former reentry facility into a modern facility community-based treatment center. This new treatment center will preserve and expand local capacity for mental health and substance abuse disorder treatment. It will include a sobering center, a residential substance use treatment and withdrawal management program, and a mental health rehabilitation center. These programs will support a more comprehensive state-of-the-art system for care for individuals in our community in crisis. I spent a little bit of time talking about it because it's an exciting endeavor. While probation has been utilizing the space as a temporary measure, it was never adequate for their operations long term. However, it is an ideal property for the behavioral health services that I've noted. Second, probation and child support services are in the throes of moving into leased commercial space at 555 Gateway, a former home of Treasury Wine Estates down south. Providing both of those business functions ideal space to function in, hopefully increasing their service efficacy, and I think they're quite happy, and I congratulate them in getting into more functional space. Obviously, child support services was located at 1127 First Street. Third, our new Corrections and Rehabilitation Center, which has opened. Our staff and the clientele that was at the Hall of Justice, and by the way, I would suggest that we talk about renaming the Hall of Justice. It's really not that anymore. Maybe administrative annex was Mr. Lederer's idea, but even though I'll keep saying Hall of Justice, our intention is to change the nomenclature on that eventually but opening the new jail moved the clientele along with staff down south obviously freeing up space where staff has moved out of over at HOJ And it also helped alleviate the problem of the clientele jamming, I'm assuming purposefully, the plumbing system, which was wreaking havoc on the second floor with flooding, et cetera. And that's not occurring anymore. Fourth, an empty first and second floor at the Hall of Justice has allowed us to move both probation and elections, both of whom were located over at 1127 First Street. into some of the 36,000 square feet of available office space there, providing, again, both of those business areas more space with better utility, and they're quite happy. We ran our last election out of the Hall of Justice with elections. We are preparing to move the assessor recorder business functions. and a remaining staff, there's about 38, out of 1127 and into the Hall of Justice. We've also moved the DA, most of her staff out of 1127 First Street and into leased office space at 1250 Main. It's not all of her staff. Some of her staff will, who is located over at the Hall of Justice, some of those people will join her. Some folks will stay at the Hall of Justice. Others will go and take some space, I'm told, at Monarch Justice Center, where we lease some space there. Also, informing all of this is the prospect of a new conference room just behind us at the Hall of Justice. So, these moves I've highlighted do require some TIs at the Hall of Justice, and today we're asking your board to repurpose some money previously cited for 1127 First Street. You previously committed $1 million for TIs at the HOJ. You previously also committed $1 million for 1127 TIs. Those are both available. Getting out of the contract for roof replacement and HVAC we believe will save us up to $2 million. It could be a little less. And we have in this recommended budget 750 in capital improvements slated for the Hall of Justice. All of those things we believe are going to be adequate to cover the TIs that are needed to do these moves and relocate some of these business functions over to the Hall of Justice behind us. Also, and importantly, pay for the addition of a new 2,500 square foot conference room, which is badly needed here. This could be utilized for all employee meetings. an HR training room. Anybody in this building that needs to have space for meetings can have a meeting there. I would even put forward, even though we've not talked about it, opening it up for the community, allowing the community to come in during the day, maybe even in the evenings, and utilize the space for meetings and things. There's sorely needed here in the downtown area, and we have the ability to do something there with the available space over at the Hall of Justice. I've been asked about the Hall of Justice or the administrative annex going forward, about what are we gonna do with that. The prospects for that I believe are longer term. Utility of that building for our county is really ongoing. It continues today to function as a court holding facility. on a daily basis. It houses critical countywide communications equipment, and we have vacant jail facilities on the third floor, all of which are extraordinarily expensive to replace, move, or remodel. The building is also in overall good condition, and it is providing a meaningful utility currently for some of our county's most important business functions who are now residing there. Finally, in terms of next steps, I would like to return to your board sometime toward the end of summer, potentially early fall. for a continued discussion around facilities to include the status of the sale of 1127 and discussing that and where we stand with that. to include the status of the moves that are being made to the hall of justice along with the tenant improvements and investments that we're doing over there and a general overview and status of our current lease spaces and agreements all of which i'd like to bring back to your board as some next steps potentially with some recommendations around those categories sometime late summer, maybe early fall, maybe in tandem with our budget workshop that we'll be bringing back to the board later on. And with that, I want to say thank you, and we're happy to answer any questions.

Okay, thank you, CEO, also for that formative presentation. At this time, I welcome any public comment on this item. Is there anyone in the room wishing to comment? I'm not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Does the board have any questions related to the property at 1127 First Street and the other items that CEO Alshap presented on? I am not seeing any questions. That was a very thorough presentation. Thank you. May I have a motion and a second to adopt the resolution and approve the amended budget? So moved. Second. Okay, I have a motion by Alessio and a second by Supervisor Cottrell. Are there any deliberations related to this item?

If I can? Okay, thank you. I'm just, this is a long time coming. For us, again, going back to this whole local NAPNS, we remember when there was, when Caritas was just built, there was the plaza, there was the water fountain, there was the water tower, there was Mervyn's, there was a bus stop pullout, and it was an exciting time. But that was 1973. And the county, you know, used this space after it was no longer a clothing store, department store, called Crither's, which we call it to this day, kind of like calling the Department of Justice the Department of Justice, even though it's no longer that. So we'll need to kind of break that habit. But, you know, and used it for its full life and then some. I took an early tour of this building when I joined the board, and I was kind of shocked, and I think this is just beyond the right thing to do. We need to do this. It's time to, and we have, and thank you, CEO, for being proactive, and Director Letter for finding new spaces and better spaces. for our work family, right? People spend so much time away from home to work, and they spend a lot of time in their office spaces and inside these facilities, so it's really important that we have spaces that feel good, that have dignity, that have light, that meet their needs on the practical purpose too. So I'm thrilled that we're at this point. Again, I'm gonna hearken back when I was on city council, we just, city council couldn't wait for the county to like, when are they gonna let go of that building? right because there's a there's a lot of opportunity and it's another domino that's going to drop that's going to allow for more economic development frankly for the city of napa and as i said earlier what's good for the city is good for the county what's good for the county is good for the city And at the same time, keeping county employees in downtown I know is very important to local business because we frequent their stores, we frequent the restaurants. So I think that's great. So moving on and seeing what happens, I know that we're in good hands to find the right purchaser of that building and space. I'm excited to see what that potential and opportunity will be for that individual or individuals. So I think that just the next thing I just wanna say is in regarding the TIs, we do have a lot of work to do in the current Hall of Justice. I want that space to be as open as possible comfortable and practical and just provide a space where people want to be there if we can provide to be let's make it aspirational let's try to make it it may be short term i don't know what the long term is going to be in terms of you know 10 years from now it's a huge investment to you know put up a brand new building if that was ever something that the board would want to do here But in the meantime, I just want us to put our best foot forward to make that space as inspirational and comfortable as possible for our employees. Thank you.

Okay. Well, comments well taken. Any other comments? Yes, Supervisor Ramos.

Thank you and I want to thank all the staff, principally our staff who has had to endure being in Carithers and your patience in allowing us to get to this place. while I will say at first it was a hard place to get to and understanding that Carithers no longer has the right functionality for the county. It's been with us through a lot and it has served some of our most vital functions as a county for decades. So it's not, I'll be supportive of this, not because moving properties is necessarily what I signed up to do here as a supervisor, but understanding that the demands for continuing to provide a high level of service require us to do better in terms of space planning. and so I definitely do look look forward to to the sale and for us to be able to have a discussion that comes thereafter as to what comes next and while our predecessor way way predecessor not including me board had long identified the south campus as the main main campus recognizing that the fiscal constraints that we have that we'll talk about more and a bit have us in a different place at this moment and so I do think that this is the the right move with the minimum price I do I think in some ways we also need to tip our hat and say thank you to the construction company that didn't cover our roof, that allowed us to see this moment for what it is. I think if that circumstance had not happened, we might not have had the pressing need to move forward as we are now. terms of the renaming of the Hall of Justice I do think it is timely you know looking at we are going to be providing administrative services mostly through there and utilizing it as our large conference room so I do think that that it is time and I would and um i think that i think that this is a great first step into what is going to be our next facility plan not a facilities master plan but certainly a strategic plan as as we move forward thank you thank you supervisor ramos i'm not seeing any additional comments

Okay. Yeah, I'll just echo that this is an ongoing conversation. I expect we'll be continuing our facilities conversation basically indefinitely as board managing so much space and so many people in that space. And that I also think it's really important to keep our work centers downtown because it makes a big difference to downtown businesses and it also makes the center of the county seat also the heart of the community. And there's nothing quite like having your government centered in a downtown, and you really only have to go to a city that has made the decision to move all of the government functions out of downtown to feel the difference. And it's hard to explain, but it is palpable when you compare how both things feel to live in a community. So with that, I support us moving forward on this as well. And I have a motion and a second on the floor. So all those in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. Congratulations. Okay. We are now moving on to item nine, public hearings. And I just want to note for the, just for anyone who's staying through our budget hearings today, that we're planning to get through as much of this as we can. We may end up taking a relatively short lunch break. We've talked about 15 or 20 minutes. We'll kind of see how long we go. But just to keep things moving and to try to get through the remainder of the budget hearings, which of course we opened yesterday evening and are continuing now so with that we are on item nine a continuation of public hearing from june fifteenth twenty twenty six to accept testimony on the fiscal year twenty twenty six twenty seven recommended budget and continue hearing for consideration to june twenty third twenty twenty six for adoption uh... Our first item is to continue the public hearing from June 15th, which we are now doing. And I welcome a staff report from chief budget officer, Michael Kleiman and our auditor controller, Tracy Schulze. Yes.

Madam chair. Thank you. Before we go to Ms. Kleiman, Ms. Schulze. I'm looking in the audience and I see people who were here last evening.

I know Mr. Everling tuned in, watched it.

I don't see anybody else except for county staff. So I'm gonna annotate my comments and just say that, stick with what I said last night. And I wanna thank these two. I wanna thank Maiko, her staff, Tracy, her staff, for all of their leadership and support and hard work in getting this together and getting us here today. We will be back next Tuesday with your board, hopefully adopting a final budget. With that, I'll turn it over to Maiko.

Morning, members of the board. Maiko Kleiman, Chief Budget Officer, joined here by Tracy Schulze, our auditor controller. Just going to go through the presentation agenda really quickly. We are going to go through the budget book and the state schedules, and then we're going to go into some of the details about the general fund. And I'm going to briefly go through the capital improvement project budget process that we're changing. And finally, I'll review other funds by each fund type. And at the end, at the conclusion of all the presentation, we'll be taking questions. Now I'm going to turn it over to Tracy to go over the budget book and the state schedules. And that will include the available fund balance for all funds.

Thank you. So we went through this yesterday, so I won't belabor it. The budget book is in major categories. The introductory section, one of the comments from last night was wanting more of a budget and brief. I would say this introduction section is your budget and brief. A little bit more detail gives you a lot of information overall. of the whole budget and what the priorities are for this fiscal year the next tab is the fiscal strategy and budget overview which includes our policies our fiscal strategy our budget policy and budget policy of controls then we have the state schedules which I'll come back to then you have the different sections based on fund type and so each of the fund types is listed there At the end, we have the special districts and other agencies that is going to be a separate item, I believe later this afternoon on those. And then we have a statistical section and the glossary. Again, I will not go over the entire state schedule. I know that that was probably a lot from yesterday. One of the big things is the all funds. You'll see there is the listing of every single division that you guys are approving for having the presentation today that we are prepared to answer questions on. It's organized by functional area, so it's kind of the general fund is spread out throughout the different functions. you can see there it's pretty much a good summary for you to have your recommended revenues expenses and then the net County cost if it's general fund or going into the fund balance if it's a that's outside of the general fund just another comment that's going into The fund balance is not always a bad thing. It's kind of intentional in a lot of cases where money is built up to be used for future projects or for future programs. And net county cost is the mechanism for the general fund because all the property tax, the transient occupancy tax, sales tax, and other discretionary dollars are put into what's called the non-departmental budget unit and spread out to all the departments that are general fund funded so that's that's the mechanism for that it is online and I don't think there's anything more I need to say unless you want me to go through the schedules at all okay

Okay, so the all funds budget is a countywide total that includes, maybe I'll just show it on the slide here, includes all these funds. Total appropriation for all funds as recommended for fiscal year 2026-27 is increasing by 3% as compared to the fiscal year 25-26 adopted budget. Countywide, salary and benefits are increasing from approximately $388.4 million to $400.3 million, an increase of $11.9 million. There are assumptions built in from different bargaining units into the calculation of salary and benefits. And also County by general liability and property insurance costs are distributed to all County operational departments and are increasing from approximately twelve point six million to thirteen point eight million an increase of 1.2 million Yeah So All funds budget is, when including all funds, it should be noted that transfers within and between funds as well as activity of internal service funds are duplicated for budgetary purposes. And you can kind of see on that pie chart that the green and the pink areas are those examples.

So now we're going to focus just on the general fund, which is the general primary operating fund that accounts for all the discretionary dollars that the county receives. This is going to be pretty much focusing on page 19 of your budget book, where we talk about the general fund in a full picture. We estimate the beginning fund balance. This fund balance estimation is something that we do about two months ago, and we're estimating what we think we're going to be at as of 6.30, so two weeks from now or three weeks from now, whatever day it is, two weeks from now. And so this is really an estimate, and it's a very conservative estimate. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know if there's any things that are going to come unexpected. And so we want to make sure that we have a conservative estimate and we can adhere to the budget policies. So we're anticipating starting the year with about $27 million, getting additional revenues throughout the year, about $312 million, and then we're going to use some of our obligated fund balance as well. That obligated fund balance is releasing the fiscal uncertainty reserve for two purposes. One is the $7 million is going into road repair for the 2025 storm projects, and $3 million is going to be reclassified to another restricted fund balance of the general reserves. We're doing that to keep our general reserve policy up to what we put into our budget and fiscal strategic plan. $330,000 of that use of obligated fund balance is additional tobacco revenue fund balance. That is due to the revenues coming in less than what our committed obligations are for the contracts that we've already approved. So, we have total general fund financing sources of $349 million. Your recommended budget is showing appropriations of a total of $338 million. That increase to obligated fund balance is what I mentioned before as a general reserve requirement, which is listed on page 40 at the bottom. It's part of our policies. And it's 15 percent of the general fund and health and human services expenditures with removing some of the transfers, the one-time transfers, to not over-inflate that number. Then the next number, the remaining available fund balance, is basically the plug figure to make the revenues, the sources and uses equal.

that number represents how with this budget we will be ending the fiscal year projected to have a available fund balance of seven point seven point five million dollars any questions on that yes just real quick and I didn't give you a heads up on this question I apologize looking at the fund balance the twenty six million almost twenty seven million dollars how does that compare to past fund balances that the county has seen Is that relatively the average, or is that high-low, do you recall?

It does fluctuate. The beginning fund balance last year, I believe, was in the 50s, and we dipped into that quite a bit. In the chart that you'll see for the ten years if we use this as a baseline you'll see the ups and downs So you'll know where our fund balance is normally.

Okay, perfect.

That's true I've got that chart and that I think that 50 was probably because of ARPA funds that were coming in Yeah, we had we had a lot of extra federal and state revenues and release of the FEMA funds and so forth that that increased that I

Great. I was just trying to make sure that I know that we do see fund balance each year. It's kind of my point. That fund balance is not just a one-off. That this is really, we kind of position ourselves to make sure we have a cushion and a fund balance.

Correct. And our budgeting is very conservative. So we budget conservative on the revenue side. Usually we're hoping that our revenues come in higher than what we anticipate. and we also budget expenses on the higher side. One good example is the fire fund, even though it's not a general fund, but it's something that I think everybody can appreciate, where we don't know what's gonna happen, and so we budget high, and hopefully we end up not having to spend all that money. Another big piece of this is, and you'll see most of their expenses, is salaries and benefits. And so if we have higher vacancy rates or if we have, you know, different challenges with retaining employees or getting good employees, you know, we may not realize all of those costs. But we don't want to not budget for them because we want to be fully staffed. So those are the things that will fluctuate. So our budgets really are built to –

have the worst case scenario and we come in much better at the end of the year and that's that's pretty normal because we want to make sure that we're prepared for what we what we need thank you and thank you for pointing out the 15% in terms of the general fund and Health and Human Services fund appropriations I think that's really important at that reserve is really important it seems like it's a healthy reserve too

It is. Thank you. The amount in that with this $3 million is going to be $70 million that we have in a general reserve. It's extremely good position for the county to have that. We've used it quite often with the earthquake, the fires, the floods, and COVID, and that is our funding source before we get any state or federal revenues coming back or insurance costs coming back, so proceeds coming back. So it's a very good, healthy fund balance to keep in reserve.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, it's 77.6, I guess, is the general reserves. Thank you.

I also see a question from Supervisor Cottrell. Oh, is it Gallagher?

I had some more questions about department use of fund balance, but I'd rather hear the presentation and make sure we get to public comment. Okay, thank you. Anything from Supervisor Gallagher?

Well, I'll just throw this out there and then you can answer it later. I just wanted to make sure that it's understood that, you know, it's really the prudence of our department heads as to why we have fund balance. They do an incredible job to make sure that they are building fund balance in an appropriate way. So my questions will be. What are we going to do going forward? So we'll have 7.5Million in fund balance at the end of the year. If we are continuing to put fund balance into our budget, which. Is normal to do, you know, there's still the concern, like. You know, how will we continue to use fund balance as we deplete fund balance? And how are we going to determine for each department? What is the appropriate amount of fund balance? We should have. So just so those are for when we get to the discussion, because I think we had some discussion last night about fund balance and grabbing it again today. So just making sure we get to that discussion.

i can appreciate that and and just an overall comment um depending on what the activity is in each of the divisions the fund balance decision is unique to each so it's a much longer conversation than a just general rule so okay So this is a 10-year view of our general fund revenues. So this is actual revenues coming in. We're not talking budgets other than we're estimating to come in at the end of 2026 and our budget for 2027. So this is designed to show you, just in the general fund, the trends. Property tax is at the bottom, which is our biggest discretionary dollar. Sales tax, transient occupancy tax is the green, and then other taxes is the lighter blue. And that includes excess ERAF coming back to us after we fulfill the state's obligation to fully 100% pay for our schools in this county. That excess ERAF comes back to us if it's additional. And then other revenues. So you can see the trends of The four bottom ones are the discretionary dollars. And what we're looking at for property tax over the 10 years, there's an average of just under 6% increase each year. Again, that's an average. We are projecting a little over a 4% increase in the budget for next year. Sales tax, an average over the 10 years is 3%, and we're pretty much keeping it flat for next year. Transient occupancy tax, the average is just under 2%, and again, we're keeping it relatively flat. Again, conservative budgeting, hoping that the revenues do come in higher than anticipated. Other taxes again. We're keeping that flat as well. So when you look at the other revenues The other revenues are things that come through For various purposes and I think well, I'll go through the the spikes first so in 2018 that small spike is uh it's actually part of the e-ref calculation uh we got more in the excess e-ref there but there is a little bit higher in the red and we actually sold water street property at that time in 2020 that largest spike there is the 34 million dollar settlement from the 2017 fires Then you see 21 and 22, that was COVID recovery. We had several home improvement projects going on, so we had a little bit more permitting fees. We also had federal and state grants, $14 million in CARES Act money, and the sale of old Sonoma property. And in 2025, we have another little spike, and that, again, is ARPA and federal and state monies, and also interest increases, which was a good year for investments. So if you take those spikes out, you can see that our revenues are gradually increasing each year, which is a very good thing. But you can see what we're projecting is not as big of an increase from this year to next year. So this is a breakdown and another way of looking at how our revenues are spread throughout the general fund. Taxes, and that includes the other, the XSE REF and the VLF, is about 200 million. And the other categories there, I would venture to say that we wouldn't be getting those revenues if we didn't have the expenses to go along with them. Most of it is more reimbursement-based. such as intergovernmental that is prop 172 for public safety as well as other federal and state grants for things that we have to do. Charges for services is another big piece of that. That is, again, we're providing services and getting paid for them, so we're incurring the expenses in order to get those monies. So bottom line is the blue is really your discretionary dollar, and that funds what your priorities are. But as you know, most of your priorities are state-mandated services that we must provide as a county. The expenditure side, you can see the bulk of our expenditures are in two major categories, which is pretty common, salaries and benefits. We are a service industry, so our biggest expense is our labor costs, which makes sense. We're the people that are behind what goes on here, so that makes sense. then services and supplies is just our general operation costs so that includes rents contracts consultants program supplies equipment training etc the other financing uses you'll see that term is along with other financing sources on the revenue side, those are really transfers. So other financing uses for the general fund, we're transferring out to some of our priority pieces, which is health and human services, our roads fund, housing and community development, or community services. So those are transfers out, and then the small piece of capital assets and other minor categories. So when you put the expenses on top of the revenue chart, you can see there, that the expenses pretty much trend up when we have the other revenues coming in as higher and the expenses are increasingly exceeding our Revenues in the last two estimated years to your point about using fund balance Again, those last two years conservative budgeting so we're hoping at the end of 2026 that red bar will or the revenue bar in total will pretty much match the green, that the green will be lower and the revenue bar will be higher, so we actually end up in a better situation than we're expecting. And the same with the 2027 budget. Conservative budgeting, always going to look at using available fund balance because that's what it's for, but hoping that we come in much better than we anticipated. Then this goes back to your question, Supervisor Alessio, about the fund balance. So overall, when you look at the graph, when we use fund balance, it's relatively stable throughout each year. We do increase fund balance as well in good years, and we use it in years that we may have a little bit more expenses or the revenues are down due to whatever economic reasons that the revenues go down. So we have been a very fiscally responsible county, and we have been utilizing our fund balance very strategically. I'll turn it over to Michael to start our discussion about the general fund.

Okay, so the first one is the general fund expenditures. General fund expenditures were requested at 338.4 million, which is a decrease of 2.9 million compared to last year's budget. There is a, highlights are a decrease of transfers to various other funds. There is a release of 10 million from fiscal uncertainty, 7 million for the November 2025 storm roads repairs projects. Also adding $3 million to support the board's policy level of the general reserves. Salary and benefits for general fund is increasing by $5.6 million, which is $10 million. General liability property insurance cost is increasing by 28.3%, which is $2.1 million. One million for, we are requesting a one million for appropriations for contingency for vacation payouts. As I described yesterday, vacation payouts tends to be very unpredictable. So rather than inflating the department budget, we are requesting that we appropriate one million appropriations for contingency, and at mid-year, we're going to be requesting all the departments to review their budgets and if they're able to absorb that cost within their budget then that's what they would do but if they cannot then we will be coming to the board to reallocate the funds from appropriations for contingency to department budgets so that is something new that we are implementing for next year. Fire administration is increasing by 7 million for expanded fire mitigation efforts with offsetting revenues from state and federal hazard mitigation grants. Fire administration has approximately 5.8 million of general fund cost. Public Defender is adding three attorneys, two full-time employees, and one limited term funded by State 2011 Realignment Fund. Total cost of all three positions are roughly around $605,000. Sheriff's is adding two deputy sheriffs. Both are funded by contract with City of American Canyon for a total cost of around $450,000. There is a general plan, $1.2 million appropriated with $541,000 covered by general plan surcharge. Those are the highlights for general fund. I'm going to next go to capital projects fund, I described quite a detail yesterday, so I won't repeat that again, but basically the summary of it is that all these funds have CIPs in their own funds, and CIPs are unique in that we are budgeting at the project level. Last year's budget hearing, I think there was quite a bit of conversation about why we did not include the entire capital improvement project as part of the annual budget. And the challenge with that is that it's really difficult to budget large capital projects far in advance, and you end up guessing sort of the amount. So, what we've been doing in the past is we've been coming to the board as different phases of the project move along. So, typically, you saw budget amendment being requested at the beginning of the project, then design, then construction. The benefit of that is that you are basically, it allows for accuracy, but, and you don't tie up the money that is unnecessary. However, it does, your board does see budget amendment throughout the year. And also it gives the parents that the budgets projects were not planned for. So what we are recommending that the board approve is we created uncommitted project budgets for buildings and roads and also airport. And the board will be approving the budget for those projects, uncommitted projects, with the list that is included in the budget book. So there is a list of projects that Public Works staff prepared with the not to exceed amounts. The idea is that as staff is ready to move forward with the projects, they will be asking for a budget amendment approved by the CEO's office and the auditor controller's office because it only is reallocating the funds from the uncommitted project to a specific project. So, that way, we're able to give your board will see less budget transfers coming your way throughout the year. Also, there is a plan that is laid out in the budget as part of the budget book. So, hopefully, that will be giving more transparency and gaining some efficiency in the process regarding the capital improvement projects.

Okay. The next.

Okay. So, next, we are moving to operating special revenue funds, starting on page 271 of your book. So, operating special revenue funds are funds that account for revenues legally restricted for a specific purpose. And these are some of the highlights. So, Health and Human Services is one of the operating special revenue funds. They are increasing by approximately 6.3M privately, primarily driven by increasing behavioral health treatment cost, expanding services and the addition of behavioral health treatment centers set to open in fiscal year 2627. In addition to expansion of the facility. HHSA has been very intentional in controlling internal cost in the face of headwinds related to HR1 and increasing administrative burdens that fall to agencies. As you saw in the personal schedules earlier on the book, HHSA increased its self-sufficiency divisions, FTE, by five full-time employees, but only added one net full-time employee to the agency. They accomplished this by repurposing existing full-time employees across the agency and moving them to self-sufficiency division, moving positions to where they are most critically needed. We really appreciated that because at the beginning of the budget, budget process, one of the instructions given to the departments was as much as possible, no added new positions, but be creative and try to do ad deletes. So you did see a lot of ad deletes, I think, in the personal schedules, which I think is great because they are aligning their staffing to align with the new needs of the services. Next is library is increasing by approximately 18Million for the projects at the Napa and Yonville libraries. Each library has a corresponding capital improvement divisions that accumulates cash for future improvements. When projects are identified and approved, the funds are transferred from the uncommitted project reserve to the specific project budget. So included in the budget is roughly $10 million transfer out of uncommitted projects funds, the Napa Library HVAC replacement project for almost $10 million, and then Yonpil Library improvement projects for about $300,000. Rhoads is next. Rhoads is increasing by approximately $12.9 million due to budgeting $4.85 million more than prior year for capital improvement projects. There is $14,850,000 budgeted for Rhoads 00 that I talked about. That's the uncommitted CIP project that we created for various projects. And you'll find the list of projects in the Capital Improvement Projects Fund page. And there is additional $7 million budgeted in Road 01 for the construction of 2025 November storm repair projects. Affordable housing is decreasing by $7.9 million due to one-time transfer for affordable housing projects in the prior year. And fire protection funding sources are reduced from prior year due to general fund contribution decreasing. But as you can see from their fund balance table, they maintain a strong fund balance. Okay. Next is non-operating special revenue funds starting on page 370 of the book. Non-operating special revenue funds also account for proceeds of specific revenue sources that are legally restricted to expenditures for specific purposes. Funds are collected for specific purposes and distributed to different departments for specific purposes. Okay. Next is capital improvement projects. So to note, this is Fund 3000, and as I mentioned before, all the other CIPs for different funds are included in their own funds. So as for Fund 3000 capital improvement projects funds, no additional funding from general fund to accumulated capital outlay is included in the budget at this time. Accumulated capital outlay has 6.5 million available fund balance, which will be used for various projects that are listed in the budget book. About 1 million is going to specific project and additional 5.1 is going to CIPOO, the uncommitted project, according to the list that is in the book. Nexus Debt Service. There is only one issuance outstanding, the 2012 Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, which funded the installation of solar panels at multiple county facilities. The bonds mature in June of 2029. Next is internal services fund. So internal services funds provide goods and services primarily to internal government customers with revenue collected as charges to reimburse for the services being received during the year. Some of the highlights are fleet replacement of roads equipment and vehicle replacement based on the replacement schedule. Employee benefits decreased of $7.7 million due to not needing to budget for OPEB unfunded liability payment. General liability and property insurance increased by 9%, $1.2 million. Last section is enterprise funds. Enterprise funds provide goods and services primarily to external customers of the general public, similar to business with revenues collected as charges or fees billed for the services being received during the year. Some of the highlights are airport fund has $14 million for capital improvement projects. It has an addition of one limited term position. Animal shelter is adding one full-time employee position. And Lake Barissa Concession's general fund contribution is increasing to $350,000. Those are all the highlights for all the funds. We'll open it up for questions.

Okay, thank you very much for that clear and informative presentation. Um, so at this time, does the board have any questions about the presentation? Um, I see supervisor almost how would you like to do this?

Uh, like, I'm asking what order would you like to do it and to have questions and do you want to go? Um, through, like. Specifically through like general fund and then operating. How do you want to organize that?

Sure. Um, I think that that if we Well, I'm also Wondering how many people are here for public comment, too. So Okay, so let's go to public comment first see if it raises any additional questions and come back to the board on questions and then We'll go from there So, if there's any public comment, we would be happy to hear from folks at this time. Welcome, Mr. Tudor.

John Tudor, tonight, today I have my registrar voters hat on and I have to leave to go and try and cure 292 signature on ballot envelopes that I could not, that our staff could not do. So I mentioned to Supervisor Alessio last night that this is my 48th budget hearing. and I thought you might be interested in the comparison between 1973, which was my first budget hearing, and tonight, and thanks to our wonderful auditor-controller, the general fund in expenditures in 1973 as compared to $338.4 million this year, were $15,671,811. So that's quite a change, and I appreciate during my time on the board the time you are spending with this presentation and dealing with the public. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go cure some signatures, and I'm available at any time by text if you need me.

Thank you for your work, Mr. Tudor. Any other public comment on this item before we proceed? I'm not seeing anyone approach the podium. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. And I will note that this is broken up on the agenda and into this piece, which is hearing the testimony on the budget. And then 9B is specifically Tourism Improvement District budget. 9C is County Service Area Number 4. 9D is In-Home Supportive Services. 9E is Lake Berryessa Resort Improvement District Special Tax. And it kind of continues that way through specific topics that are listed on the agenda. So I just want to make sure I'm hearing you clearly. Like, do you have a proposal for how to organize this section of the discussion?

I will go ahead and I will make a suggestion. I think we first should start off with the fund balance and just finishing that discussion and take all comments on that. Then move on from there to the general funds and going in through each of the divisions in order. And then after that, we take on the non-operatings. And then I do believe we should have some time where we discuss the capital projects, as that is different in the sense of how we're appropriating money and moving it forward. So we should talk about those capital capital projects and then we could take them in the order of the book and then at the end I think we should say, you know, knowing that there's going to be a budget workshop, I think that this is a great opportunity at the end of as we go through this to be able to say what are those things we want to be able to review in the budget workshop and to give guidance so that staff can do that diligence in preparing for it.

okay if if i may just do a point of clarification uh those other agenda items that you mentioned are all the special district items so this first the item that you're going through right now is the county-wide all funds which we just went through um and i don't know if we're able to put the powerpoint up without showing the board just so we can put the sections up there um to show you the departments okay so Okay. So the departments that you're going to be talking about first, well, I think you're doing front bounds first, but that's the sections in here. Okay.

Chair, one modification I might suggest is I think there are people who are here for the groundwater district, and so I would suggest that perhaps we move that one up to the front of the special districts, or that's a good suggestion. Thank you.

Put that...

Did you have, yeah, it was there same thing. Okay. Okay. Um, that is a lot more structure. Thank you. So, um, in that, uh, let's see. So do I have any board comments or questions about fund balance to start? I think we've, okay.

Yeah, and my question, thank you. I think we asked the question.

Supervisor Gallagher for. To expand those. Supervisor Cottrell was going to add to that, but I think staff also has the questions. Okay. About fund balance that we had earlier. Do you remember?

I thought we answered them, so I don't know what other fund balance questions you have.

Okay.

I mean, you mentioned about what is the best policies of how much fund balance each fund. I think we'd have to go into every single one of the divisions to talk about that or the funds to talk about that. Generally, the GFOA's recommendation, government finance officer's recommendation, it ranges between two to six months of expenditures. But again, it depends on what the activity is that we're talking about. Their guidance really is on that reserve, the general reserve, to have that at approximately 17%, 16% or so, and we have 15%, which is pretty, we also include health and human services fund balance in that calculation, so it is higher than the 17% of our general fund. So regarding the general fund alone, the general reserves covers the best policy, best practice. The use of fund balance comes and goes each year depending on when the revenues come in and what the expenses are. So there's really not a perfect standard or a perfect answer to your question.

Yeah, I think I'm just concerned that we, you know, we continue to use fund balance and that's okay to a certain extent. But we're relying on our department heads to figure out how to assure that creation of fund balance. And so. Oops. You know, we don't, I mean, we can hope that we come in under. I feel like we say that a lot, like, and hopefully we'll come in less and hopefully because there has been a trend, but we might see ourselves suddenly trending the other way. So that's just a concern that if we continue to do that, we do put that expectation on our department heads. to continue to create fund balance and I'm just trying to figure out how realistic is that and what you know making that clear because we are depending on fund balance.

I think I think it's part of the whole budget process because when we started this budget process um people give their wish lists if you will and say this is our budget excuse me and we look at the trends of our revenues and say this is our revenues and when the wish list comes out, guess what, we don't have the money for that. So we go back and we work with the departments and say what is the essential, what are some efficiencies that you can create? and we come to a balanced budget. We have historically always used beginning fund balance for the general fund. It's a normal practice because we end up better than what we anticipate. As I mentioned before, that's a normal practice, very conservative budgeting in both sides. But it's really a balancing act to bring the recommended budget for the CEO to bring the recommended budget to you in a balanced fashion knowing that or with an additional still having available fund balance available. I've seen counties that go down to zero every single budget so we don't want that and but you can see our activities we want to also like I said budget for the worst case because we want to make sure that even in the worst case scenario we're still anticipating ending with available fund balance which has happened

um each year yeah and i think uh you know to supervisor ramos's point yet la uh yesterday last night whatever it was um you know we're budgeting now to use excess eraf and so that's not necessarily something we've done in the past so i don't know that that's the worst case scenario because we don't always know if we're going to get excessive rough and how much so i i think that's you know

little a little bit of a quandary too i'm going to punt this one to mr elsa yeah thank you um for the chair uh i think that the discussion around fund balance should be taken in consideration of the of the big picture um i would agree with tracy that if you look back throughout history this county's always used fund balance at different times throughout the last 10 years. And what that is, it depends. I think this budget is demonstrative of what we are doing given the headwinds that we are facing. General fund expenditures are down $3 million. We're contracting. We have $80 million in cash that's in a pretty thick piggy bank. There are some requirements to access that money, but that's by design. And that's a really good place to be in. We have no debt. Yes, we have about $8 million in fund balance. We'd have more if not for some rain on a weekend where we had to Spend $7 million. I'm beginning to appreciate living here. I'm not used to that. The estimates on our fund balance for the end of the year closeout are ultra conservative. We always finish with a lot more. And that is, I think, what we're telling you. We're going to come back in the fall. And I think that will be the case. And as Tracy had pointed out, the gaps here will be closed. And so look, your board, the county budget five years ago is not the same as the county budget today. Your board has inked agreements with all of our bargaining units for multiple years. In salary increases. The growth in salaries alone this past, just from year to year, 12 million? Roughly? $12 million. Just in one year. Now, labor is our biggest expense. We're a people-centered business. The good news is that your board has done a really good job of making sure that we are paying competitive wages. It's really, really important. You don't want to find yourself in a hole that you're having to dig out of, because that would be a compounding negative factor overall. on our budget. We've held the line, save labor. If you take labor out of the equation, we would have no growth in our budget at all from last year, essentially. So we are really holding the line. Our department heads, yes, they have done an excellent job. We can't do this without them. Any new position that has been added has been added outside of the general fund. It's either an enterprise fund or there's some other way to pay for it. That's all been thought through. We do this by holding the line, not expanding our organization, staying tight, finding efficiencies, and navigating a time when the revenues coming into the county are fairly anemic, waiting for a time for those to grow back and get stronger. And I believe this budget overall is demonstrative of that. We could not be, I would argue that we could not be doing what we're doing today without using ERAF. At the time we changed that policy, we were headed into a massive facilities master plan that came out to be $200 million at the end that we pivoted away from. We were headed into a round of new negotiations with our labor unions. We had BRIC where we were gonna have to pony up $50 million out of the county's general fund. Could not have positioned ourselves to do any of that. without making some changes in how we were budgeting our money. It's just a different time today than it was five, six, seven years ago. And so I feel really optimistic about where we are. Yeah, we're cognizant of some of the headwind but we are again this document that we have put together we believe is a really big step first step in the direction of making sure that we are managing correctly and and positioning ourselves to weather continued headwind

I had a follow up on that. Thank you for that. And a follow up on the use of fund balance. Looking at some budgets from previous years, one of the line items that I found helpful when we're diving into, say, the division detail, we've got appropriation revenue and net county cost. In some previous editions of the budget, we've had the line item about Previous use of previous existing fund balance current use of fund balance So I'd suggest we add that back in because I think that would get to what a lot of us are interested in is being able to track and forecast year-over-year and and everything you're saying makes sense in terms of there's times that We're going to use it more times. We're going to use it less when I look through this budget understanding that that was an important policy right that we're Again, moving to rather than Michael, as you were walking us through yesterday, an automatic percentage increase, really taking a look at what each department needs and what getting a good handle on actuals, I think is really important. And I think understanding what that impact on fund balance is too, because I think to the point also that supervisor Gallagher was getting at is the amount that fund balance is getting used this year. you know, in some places it's substantial, which again, I applaud. I think it's the right thing to do. But I'm not sure we could take that. A department could take that same amount of dollars from their fund balance in a future year just because the dollars wouldn't be there. So ongoing conversation here. And I think, again, this chart that you've got that shows us a big picture is really helpful. But adding a little bit more detail on the actual page of each division and department would be helpful in terms of fund balance.

So I can completely appreciate that. We do have some challenges. The challenge is, and this is a sad challenge, but it's our report writer. In order to produce this book, we do have a report writer, and it's very difficult to maneuver and put those things in there. The second challenge is fund balance is not just revenues minus expenses each year carried forward. That would be a really easy thing. Fund balance is more on an accrual basis. So there's receivables, there's payables, there's also restricted fund balance versus available fund balance. And at the time of this budget book, we don't know how much of the available fund balance is restricted. So we're not being able to give you a really good picture. What we can give you is historical stuff. We can give you that. And I'm almost envisioning just a separate report, like the all funds, where we give you the history of, maybe it's the past five years or 10 years history by division of fund balance. So we can come up with something creative like that that gives you a lot of the information more on a schedule versus every division. Because it was one of those things that was very misleading. The numbers weren't really telling the true story and they didn't work out mathematically, so it caused a lot of questions. Another example is depreciation in the enterprise funds and internal service funds. Depreciation is an expense, so it reduces your available fund balance, but it's not a reduction in cash, and so when we looked at that, we were noticing that some of the cash numbers started increasing in the budget book to make the numbers work, so that didn't work either. We're looking at creative ways of doing that. We understand the need and I think if you're okay having a separate schedule, I think that could be something that we can easily do.

Okay, thank you for taking those points into consideration and again, I think For me, it's less about the down to the dollars and cents, but the ballpark is very helpful. And I appreciate having a schedule. But again, to be able to have the snapshot of each department and division when we're looking at the whole profile of it is really helpful. So I would continue to opt for something like that.

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Cutrell. Vice Chair Alessio?

My understanding and past experience, and this is with the city of Napa and city council, and I don't know if it's the same with the county, but the primary source of fund balance usually comes from unfilled positions. throughout the year. Is that true with the county? Is that where most of the fund balance comes from, where the surplus comes from, is the unfilled positions? Because I think understanding the source of fund is kind of what we're trying to get at, is that the department heads, which we all appreciate, that I know that they don't get their wish list fulfilled. They're working in financial constraints and trying to fulfill the mission, right? priorities of the board and the county but is how much of an impact is unfilled positions have in creating a fund balance could pass that was in my experience as being a major contributor to it that is major contributor to it but we do ask the departments to also build in salary savings so

We have the salary and benefits calculated, but then there's an additional line that the departments include for salary savings, which basically decreases their total salary and benefits budget. So it's not the vacancy is already assumed for in part of the budget for partially, but it still is the case that if they have more vacancy than they expected, then that is one of the major contributors for having additional funds available at the end of the year.

And what you're describing, that's new this year, or has that been ongoing? No. That's an ongoing process?

That has been an ongoing thing that the departments, I think departments more than 20 FTE have been asked to budget salary savings, but again, the departments don't know at the time they built the budget what kind of salary savings they will have. So it tends to be conservative. So if the actual vacancy turns out to be more, then yes, it does contribute to having excess funds at the end.

Thank you. And then my last question is, you know, in terms of the funds that we have, in savings, if you will, or in investments, do we see, in terms of the interest that we receive or market appreciation that we receive, does that contribute to the fund balance also?

Yes, it does, yes. That's what I thought, okay.

So I think just knowing, understanding the source of fund balance, because that's been my past experience, that's also great. That can be a really strong contributor to fund balance.

Right. We do budget the interest, but again, we conservatively budget. So if the interest comes in higher, then again, same situation that would add to the fund balance.

OK. And again, I'm just going to get down to where my experience in this position, both with the city and now with the county, as Tracy was saying, our auditor controller was saying, it's really standard to have a fund balance. Thankfully, I mean, we don't want to be in a county that doesn't have it. But that's how the city works too. I see the county works that way. It's a fiscal responsible way to hopefully have a fund balance at the end of the year and historically it shows that we have. So that is part of the budget process. It's part of what's fairly, that's been standard here. So I have no concerns regarding the fund balance. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Leslie. Supervisor Ramos?

Thank you. Building upon the questions I asked yesterday, I wanted to ask, so on the general reserves at the adoption of this budget, the general reserves with the additional 3.2 million added to it will be at what amount? 77.6. 77.6 million. Okay. So, you know, I think one of the, you know, from a reserve standpoint, I feel confident, you know, percentage-wise, on the GFOA recommendation, we should be at about $58 million. I'm fine with where we're at. I think that's a great place to be because, unfortunately, we need that for general reserves. General reserves are not available to us for operating expenses. General reserves are not available for staffing changes. General reserves are not available to add assets in the normal course of business that may need immediate replacement. That is what the general fund is for. And so I think to kind of wrap this up, I think when we get to the budget workshop, We need to really understand from an actual basis how much we have dipped into general fund. What is our average over a 10 year period? Where do we see ourselves going in terms of those adjustments? I am less concerned at the programmatic level of the departments and their general fund, at their fund balance as opposed to the county's overall fund balance. For me, I think that it's important that if we were to be in a scenario with only 7.5 million in our fund balance this year, if we were to be into this scenario of, I think on your chart too, two years, last year 19 million, right, and the prior year was one million, we would not be able, we already cannot do, what we did this last year. That is the important part. And yes, these are, this is a line of savings, but just because you have it doesn't mean you spend it. And I think what is really important for the budget workshop as we go forward, when we look at our own Board adopted policies of fiscal strategy and budget policies under guiding principle number five. It says the county's goal is that on average actual annual general fund operating expenditures will not exceed operating revenue. We are three years in a row not going to do that. And even though we, well, no, four, yeah, four years. Three, three, because of where we were at, right? So one, 29, the last time we were able to meet that marker, 24, 25. I think it's important that we look at How we can do that, the fund balance is there as a secondary safety net. We're not using it that way. We are using it to balance. And I am increasingly concerned that we continue to balance the budget Needing to utilize the fund balance and also this year the additional 10 million that were that we are I'm gonna call it 7 7 million because we're putting 3 million into reserves the additional 7 million that we're releasing from from fiscal contingency, right or Right from fiscal uncertainty. Sorry fiscal uncertainty and And so I, I do think it's important that we look at the general fund, its trend, what we have needed it for and, and why we are continuously needing it. And that's the real, that's a policy question for this board because you know, it's, it's, We want to be able to support the departments as they come forward for their requests. At the same time, here we find ourselves a few years running, not meeting our own budgetary principle number five. That's my concern.

I do want a little point of clarification. Your board decides when we use the fund balance. So when you look at those negatives, many of those were moving money to accumulate capital outlay for capital one-time purchases. We're not in the business of having a huge savings. When we do get one-time monies or we do have things going on that we need to, that's when you decide that we're going to use fund balance. So I just feel like there's this negative connotation that goes with use of fund balance. That's strategic. You build up fund balance to use it for certain things. Just like the $7 million, we could decide not to do those road repairs. you don't have to but you've already decided in a board item earlier to use the seven million dollars for those road repairs so i just i just want to like level that off that it's not an it's not an operational deficit at the end of the day and maybe that's part of the budget workshop is saying what are we actually dipping what did we do one-time things that we're using our fund balance for because that's pretty much what it's for we built the jail with cash

We did, absolutely, point taken. But I think that that's where the fiscal restraint needs to start back here, right? And we already, I mean, we just surplus Carithers to make changes for our facilities master plan because we could not afford a debt service payment for the larger facilities master plan. We did not have the money to go forward with $190 million project. And so if that's the case, If we are in a position where we cannot afford that debt service, knowing that we're only carrying 600,000 or something on the solar panels. We are essentially debt service free and we cannot afford a debt service payment. If this were the budget, that is my concern. That is where we need to exercise greater fiscal prudence and you don't get there unless you really start building that fund balance and agreed. You know, when we'd close the books in the back end, right? It was fun balance. Truing up with and making those payments into the accumulated capital outlay that allowed us to get to the 138M dollars cash. On hand to be able to do the replacement correctional facility. we are not at all on a trajectory to ever be able to do that again with the way that we are spending. And so that to me, that's the alarm that we need to sound that this fund balance, and I agree, it is in fact for those one-time projects, but when it costs a million dollars a mile to pay, you you're we're not getting very far right these county roads are long and we're not getting very far even if we had the 7.5 million dollars um so that is for me i think as we look at the fund balance it has to be not just where the historical part of it has been but also how we need to be able to have the flexibility for the operational uses that we need And we start having a commitment to building that accumulated capital out like, because it's sitting, I think, with 6.5M in projects right now. That's not going to get us even to a place. Currently maintaining our facilities as is right now. Moreover, you know, we, we have. out of necessity because we could not take on that debt service payment on the facility's master plan, just did not make sense at this moment to take on all that debt to put some fresh paint on this building. You know, now we're in a position as tenants. We are tenants over for the district attorney's office. We're going to be tenants for the probation and child support services. We're tenants over for fire. We're tenants over for agricultural commissioner sealer of weights and measures. That's a lot of tendency we, we didn't have that before and so we really need to start looking at how we make sure. That this county has secured assets to be able to deliver. The facilities we need, and it starts with the fund balance. It starts with prudent. A fiscal responsibility, and as long as that green line. Is touching at the top, you know, things need to start looking a lot more like 2019 and 2022 around here and I'll be it. Those were our and care act dollar years and we had great influxes, but we also. had very different labor contracts that were approved by the board at that time. We also made sure we paid on our unfunded. We used some of our 115 trust money to be able to pay down on our pensions to be able to make those labor contracts more beneficial. So I just say it in terms of how we go forward and how we look at the fund balance overall I think is important. I think for, I do have, no, I think my next question, that one is on non-operating revenues. So I think that's it for the fund balance part for me.

Okay. Thank you. I don't see anyone else on fund balance right now, but I appreciate all of the thoughtful comments from my colleagues and answering questions from staff. So, um, the next thing on the list is general fund for each division. So, um, if we want to pull up, Oh, it's already up. Okay. We have a slide, um, for all of the divisions of the general fund. And so at this time I welcome any questions on these items.

Supervisor Ramos. Thank you so much. When it comes to the, I will say overall in regards to all of the departments and something that I hope that we can look at at the budget workshop going forward, understanding that it's built in right now, how we calculate the apportioned share of general liability for the premium of the various departments, that has been, illuminating to me to understand how that is all working into our various departments. And I think that from a budget workshop, we need to be able to address that. The next thing I wanted to, the one part I wanted to ask in terms of, it's on page 119 and it's in regards to the non-departmental general fund and the revenue sections as they're coming in. When we look at the taxes, you know, We heard from Mr. Tudor that he's projecting downward. We are saying upward. We had a mid-year budget adjustment that's reflected for the major change. What is, will we at October's workshop have a good check-in to see how we are doing with this approximation?

The timing will be very close. We will be issuing the tax bills in October, and that will be the time where I'll be able to give you exactly what went out in the tax bills. So, yes, I will.

hopefully have that okay thank you next we are using a substantial amount of of the fire fund to be able and I know we adjusted in our fiscal policies how we're going to be able how we are going to how we have committed to ensuring that fire is made whole but utilizing that fund balance do you anticipate running that down or is there going to be a discussion to incorporate the apparatus acquisition of fire to be able to plan for replacements?

Are you so you're specifically talking about the fire fund on the fire fund in terms of the revenue side?

Because right now we are. We are using other sources, right? It says on the bottom of 119 other financing use decreases and it talks about. The decreases and transfers to the fire fund, so that was last year's. We, in the budget, we had a $9.5 million transfer to fire. We did not act upon that transfer at mid-year budget review. We are not adding to it. We are going to use fund balance. So what is, from a revenue standpoint, How are we going to plan that?

So if you recall, at mid-year we did a 10-year review of the fire fund specifically. And the only transfers from general fund happened in the last couple of years to the mitigation increases, the fire mitigation. And last year your board approved a change of accounting for that so that the fire fund would really be fire protection. the cal fire contract and the um uh grand marshal or fire marshal grand marshal fire marshal and uh um the visual i just had was funny um So the mitigation piece is now in your general fund. And so that's why the transfers were not, we're not done. Cause that was a completely separate program that we were funding with the general fund that we never funded before in the general fund. Fire protection has always every single year come in a little better than, than there. That was the example that I use with the conservative budgeting. And, and thankfully, I mean, there's been times, um, that we, you know, we, we were close, but, um, the only time that they really dipped into their fund balance was for large equipment purchases. And so that's, again, on purpose, purposeful. You build up the fund balance and then you do your replacement. So our new policy that was approved back in the early calendar year, so that we would be reviewing it on an annual basis. that's how we would be doing it so right now we're anticipating them ending the year much better than projected and but there's still two weeks in this year so I shouldn't say that out loud because that's jinxing it and then We'll be showing, you know, each year we'll build in their equipment replacement reserves and so for equipment replacements, expenditures and showing you, you know, if they're dipping into their fund balance or if they're adding to their fund balance.

Perfect. Um, my next question page 125, the vacation payout, this is the, uh. Division 10, 5, 9 is 0 on appropriation for contingencies in terms of the 1 million. Can you explain. Uh. how this is changing right because we didn't have this before on vacation payouts at at the general at this department at this county-wide level and if you could explain how that's calculated and how are we going are we going to do this every year and how are we going to true it up sure in the past the each department budgeted vacation payout line as part of their salary and benefits

So, when we looked at how to predict that number from many different angles, we looked at number of employees who are eligible for retirement. We looked at many, many methods, but we could not really come up with a really good way to figure out when people retire with what kind of accrual they might have. These are accrued vacations typically cashed out by people who retire. And in many cases, it could be very costly because it's at the cost of it's at the hourly rate that they retire at. And so it could be very expensive. So what happened is the departments were guessing and including vacation payouts for the right reason, but it was artificially inflating their budgets. So what we did was we were able to see what the County General Fund spent as a whole. on vacation payouts, those actual data are there. So we were able to look at it as a whole. However, we couldn't see who was going to spend it. That was the challenge. So by doing it this way, we're no longer artificially inflating the salary and benefits line for each of the departments, but we are budgeting Basically, putting money aside for vacation payouts, in the past few years, I think it was somewhere around $600,000 to $800,000. It really varies depending on who retires or who leaves that year. So what we would be doing is at mid-year, all the departments do review their salary and benefits very closely. If there is a vacancy, then there is no need to increase their budget to pay for vacation payouts. But if there isn't and they had a large payout, then we would be reallocating the budget from appropriations for contingency and decreasing it and increasing the department. So it would be basically sort of a net zero effect.

Perfect. Thank you for that explanation. If there is the eligible 40 hour a week cash out that some employees may be able to exercise, is that going to be addressed at the departmental budget level?

Yes, so that would be coming out of the vacation payout account at the department level. Again, if they are able to absorb that within their budget, then there will be no budget amendment required. But if not, then we would be dipping into this appropriations for contingencies. So it's the 40-hour vacation payout as well as when staff leave. They are allowed to cash out their vacation time.

So it just, it seems to me, I appreciate the forward-looking and being able to be more, to true up what that approximation is for the vacation payouts, but I do want to say I think it's important for the departments to be able in managing their employees and their time that those We should be discouraging the payouts for sure. I mean, part of having a great workforce is that people take enough rest to recharge. And you should have two tablespoons of whatever that was about to suggest, sugar. I don't know. Two tablespoons of sugar. But I do believe that this is something we need to look at carefully. This is not a secondary savings account or bonus payment for staff. This is intended really to be able for people to replenish themselves. it is concerning that we have this much. I get it if there is someone, a departure or retirement, but on the cash out provision, I'm very concerned about that. And I think that that's one of the things as by directing the departments to absorb any cash payouts, that's upon the department heads and their management team to be able to encourage their staff to take that time off. And that is something that we really, when we look at the leave balances that we have, on the books, it's a lot. And the number of people, I mean, I'm looking at some of them in the room. I know y'all are losing vacation time. That's not what this is designed for. So I just, I think that this is something that requires further study. especially as we're coming forward with the PSE negotiations next year for the HR director to come back and to kind of be able to look at this in a healthier way that advances the goals of the organization. And then I had one remaining question and I'm as a sheriff and sheriff it's for you. um can you explain uh Good afternoon. In your budget, Sheriff, you have a request for drones, both a medium and a large drone system. And I was hoping you would take a little bit and tell us why are we doing this?

Sure. So drone technology and the use of drones for first responders and for law enforcement, I think it probably started about 11, 12 years ago. We got on board at the sheriff's office about nine years ago. We actually still have some of those original drones. So what I would share with you is if you remember the first cell phone you ever got and then the cell phone you were carrying nine years later, that's a little bit what's going on. The other thing that's going on as well is we we were we budgeted for and were funded to buy some drones in fiscal year 24 25. By the time we got around to trying to place those orders in, things changed in the market. Tariffs skyrocketed and the price of those drones became unattainable for what we budgeted for. So we basically didn't buy those capital assets, gave the money back to the general fund because of the demand for drones and the tariffs and the taxes and things that happened in the second half of that particular fiscal year. So a little bit of what we're doing as well is catch up, catching up from the loss of that. You know, we buy a Ford Explorer for police work. We don't drive it forever. We drive it and after a couple of years, replace it with another Ford Explorer. Similar things. And we have various tools of drones. They're used almost daily. I won't say daily, but pretty close. They're used multiple times a week. We use them in very large critical incidents, and there are certain drones that are better for certain functions. And we have some very low-cost drones for certain functions, as the item before you today, and the budget is the higher end, the medium and large drones for larger incidents. critical instance whether it's a missing person or to go look in the backyard or to look inside a building before we send humans in or even dogs sometimes we can send a drone into a building fly it around into the bedrooms bed make sure that we can find somebody that's hiding before we actually put i'm not going to swat operation before we put swat operators in that building Same thing with like a backyard. If you envision a cluttered backyard and somebody hiding, we have dogs for that and we have drones and we try to throw all tools and we really required nowadays with some of this changes in state laws. There is an expectation that, you know, before we create a. human versus human conflict or confrontation that we have these other de-escalation type tools so that we can, you know, check the box on all possibilities to minimize a violent encounter when at all possible. But that is a It is an emerging technology. I anticipate we'll be back every year. We'll be looking to replace, because we do actually, you know, I mentioned the cell phone thing. We actually still have some of those nine-year-old drones. And they're definitely, a lot of them are just paperweights now, unfortunately. Some of them still work, and we still use them from time to time. We have 11 pilots, two in the valley, I think three in American Canyon. We have pilots at Lake Berryessa and our detective bureau. They're all FAA trained drone pilots. And ideally, we always have on duty somewhere in the county of Napa one of our staff. to be able to respond to a scene quickly not having to go to an office or an armory to pick up a drone it's in their backpack in their patrol car and they can quickly get to a scene whether it's a the tree tunnel in santolina it was used there for that standoff and it was using the standoff at ang we want to be able to get there quickly put that drone up in the air quickly and get that operational intelligence and that advantage to critically resolve that public safety hazard

Thank you for that. I certainly do understand the emerging technologies concerns and having to have more updated equipment. I guess a couple of things that I would suggest, highly suggest, looking at the fact that the city of Napa also has drone program is there that opportunity to have an MOU with Napa where we could have a joint use and and purchase of drones it certainly does seem if I believe they have nine pilots you have eleven do we really need 18 pilots overall number one do we really need 18 drones certainly understand the need that where we're at right now but I I think it would be incredibly beneficial as we look at investing in this. We're tracking what is training hours versus actual deployment hours. What is the investment and the return on hours of each of these drones? and how do we best utilize our partner agencies to be able to have some sort of a, you know, maybe it's a secondary factor of mutual aid that comes in from those other drones. But I certainly would like us to be able to look towards the options of those joint uses.

Of course. And I will say we do train with them from time to time. We co-respond with them. The drones are still limited in how long they can be up. So sometimes, some of these incidents, there could be a police officer pilot and a deputy sheriff pilot, and they're just trading off as they're having to change batteries because of the limitations. Today, as great as the drones are, they're still very limited on how long they can stay in the air. So there is a lot of co-response with them. We aren't at the cutting edge of this technology for law enforcement. There's other jurisdictions in California and around the country that have really robust real-time crime centers and drone first responder programs where the actual drone gets there before the cop does. It comes out of a dispatch center and they're watching and getting that information. that's more for a municipal setting i don't think we'll ever have a drone first responder to you know to beat me to england um but i think uh hopefully some of our cities in the county kind of i think we'll be there someday here in napa county for some of the cities

Okay, thank you. Well, Oscar, while you're here, I have one question. Sheriff Ortiz. Yes. Sure. I noticed that one of the items listed as a goal for the Sheriff's Department is to continue to close out the 2020 L and U lightning fire insurance debris removal collection. I just was wondering if there's still debris being removed from that fire, which was almost six years ago or.

There is not. There is not the the collection of is speaking to the collection from the insurance companies. And it's a requirement from FEMA, that we're making efforts to go back and find those funds if they were if there was part of their insurance policy.

OK. Great. Helpful to know. Thank you so much. OK. Just being mindful of time here, it is 1230. I don't see anyone else with questions at the moment. So can we go to public comment and then come back to this? permissible you already asked for a public comment okay my bad okay then i think we're going to take a brief lunch break um let's try to come back at 12 50 and get going again we still have a lot to get through so thank you all

Chair, we're live now.

Thank you. I do have a quorum here, so we can begin again. We left off asking questions about our divisions within our general fund, and so I welcome my colleagues to continue that discussion. Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks for getting us all back. People are sprinting in right now. We're going to move on to the next topic without you. I wanted to make a couple of observations. We're talking about how departments and our whole teams are flexible and responsive in this somewhat more challenging financial time. So I just wanted to call out one of the things that we were talking about was that There was not a lot of hiring, very few new positions open. So I just wanted to thank department heads for that, because that's discipline and trying to figure out how to use our teams well. And also as a board, we have worked closely with our labor partners and so investing in our employees is important and every employee is more expensive so we want to be very careful about adding new people and so there are a lot of reasons that a department may need to increase spending in general but really in this flat rent revenue year-over-year situation i appreciate when departments are holding the line I wanted to call out a couple of examples I saw in PBES and HHSA where I think their narratives and their financial numbers are showing efficiencies. From PBES, we read about reduced consultant activity and a lot of big accomplishments this year. Um, improvements in inspection processes, simplifying public interfaces. I know that means a lot to people when they walk up to counters. You know, they're not in the business of all the work that the government does. And so the more we can make those. Those interactions productive for everyone makes a difference and reduced wait times is meaningful too. Similarly, in HHSA, we saw metrics that show increases in services delivered and clients helped year over year. And so I just wanted to give shout outs there. I did have a question on page 293 of HHSA. I need to turn to there right now.

Clerk? So we did move over to the special revenue fund section.

I can hold that for the next one. So let me go back to a question that I had in general kind of across some of the different general fund departments. We did see increases in general liability and internal service fund charges. I know we're going to talk more about internal service fund. recently, but when we see those big numbers, I would love to figure out how we can do a better job of tracking what exact percentage is from the increase in general liability and what is the increase from internal service funds. I know we saw it is an important department that serves all our other departments, and it's a little bit insulated in a budget picture, right? Because the increases that department heads pay, we just see as a more A general line item than a specific increase there. So that's a general question that I wanted to ask about on. On this category, and then. Let's see, I think that's what I had in terms of oh, I had a question for actually on the neighborhood property improvement program, because that sounds like something that's really valuable to lots of our. constituents but this was the first I'd heard about it so anything on that and then my final kind of overall point is I really like the narratives that we read about here and every year I think we get better and I think we can do more to to link the stories to the numbers that we've got so that when we talk about X line item we can tell a story about where those how those dollars were spent And then when we have to decrease funding, that we see what we're missing as well.

So on the internal service funds, if you can wait till we get to that section, then it can be broader. And PBS, I will leave that up to Brian.

Welcome, Director Bordone.

Hi, good afternoon. Yeah, this program is more or less doing the knock and talk going to properties that, you know, have the cars on the front lawns or maybe some overgrown vegetation. You go out and the code enforcement team informs folks on the requirements and how to come into compliance. So it's kind of a social outreach component of our code enforcement program.

Cool. And that's great to know about. And again, that to me seems an example of that's an investment, right? That a cost, but it probably, we probably see payoffs and then we're having to do less co-compliance on the backend.

Yeah, and it also, I think, helps establish a relationship. And so code enforcement may not be perceived as so intimidating or scary for folks at times. So yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And then I think this will come up under internal service funds as well. But noticing, you know, we talk about where we're seeing increases in FTE. And we have the personnel schedule um let me figure out what page that's on um i did not see that it reflected an additional it fte or and i'm not sure if it picked up uh a couple public works ftes anyway i think it's i i think my suggestion going forward is I understand that those were just, I believe, general fund FTE increases.

As for Public Works FTE, it's a limited term position. One of the deputy directors is retiring this fall. So it's a limited term, short term position that is shown as an increase, but it is temporary.

Okay, great. And then there was an increase in an engineering FTE as well.

That's for public works, correct? Yeah. Right. That's the position that I was just referring to for public works. Okay. The engineering. Okay. I don't believe there was any increase to ITS.

I think that happened this year, this fiscal year.

So it's probably budgeting for a full- A full, okay, so it was like 68 in the past and moved up to 69 this year. Okay, great. And then I have another, so it must be another division of public works that I saw go from 39 to 41.

So, right, yes, that's for property management. Um, so those are added, um, during the fiscal year, um, for the custodial services for the new lease space, um, out in gateway. Okay. Um, so they were added during the fiscal year.

OK. OK. So that might be another interesting data point when we're looking at those personnel schedules to kind of capture what happened this year, because that is part of the increase that we're building into. So OK. Thank you. I think that's what I have at this point.

Okay, great. Do I have any other comments on this topic at this time? I am not seeing anyone. So, the next discussion subject is non-operating special revenue funds. operating special oh sorry um not that was bad thinking of cars and the dmv i guess um operating special uh revenue funds um so yeah i welcome any comments or questions at this time supervisor alessio

Yes, and I don't know if Director Yasumoto might be here, if I could just call her up for a second. I mean, I think what I want to bring to attention is the state in Prop 1 that was passed a state ballot, which transition MHSA, Mental Health Services Act, to Behavioral Health Services Act, was voted in. But with the state budget, it's basically reducing, it's taking 30% of what was for BHSA to mitigate the budget and non, Behavioral health services funding, and I've received a lot of emails on this. I'm on the behavioral health board for the county. Um, and our director, please, if you don't mind. How are we able to kind of mitigate 30% loss and be able to continue that outreach in those services that we provide?

yes so um uh good afternoon jennifer yosemite health and human services director um happy to answer that question it it somewhat was covered in part in the presentation on june 2nd i know it was a lot to cover because it's really complicated this shift from mhsa to bhsa You're right, the opposition or concern that counties had to the transition under Prop 1 is not an objection to investing in housing interventions, obviously, but that you're robbing from Peter to pay Paul and you have less money to do so. In our integrated plan that your board approved that we have now submitted to the state, we asked for what's known as the small county exemption. So that brought us down from the stated 30% for housing interventions and it allowed, there's already a 7% that counties can move between the three categories, so that brought us to 23. And then we asked it for another 6% exemption to bring us down to 17%. So that helped as a strategy to one, continue investing in housing interventions, which we have been doing in behavioral health for a long time, connected to supporting treatment. But it helped us to keep the other two categories, the behavioral health services and supports and full service partnership. That allowed us to keep the funding and not decimate treatment, which is the struggle that all counties have been going through. In addition to the fact that the state takes 5% more than they used to take, so we start off at the gate with less money. So that was one part of the strategy. The other part of the strategy, and I think this goes in part to, in some respects, the discussion around use of fund balance. Because for MHSA, now BHSA, because of the wild swings that you see year to year in the funding, which was another objection that hasn't yet been solved. But because of that, you can see a swing that goes from 6 million to 12 million in one year. While you're trying to stabilize programs, because this county has been really good about not go, go, go, and now lay off, lay off, lay off, or let's expand that contract and then let's slash it down to nothing because that is not how you build sustainable programs. And we're working really hard to do that. So we very strategically are letting out about 50% in that case of the fund balance for now BHSA dollars to be used over the three-year integrated plan. So that's over that three-year window. The strategy also being that during that three-year window, we work with our providers to increase the amount of revenue that can be drawn down by Medi-Cal. So that three-year really gives us sort of a glide path. So if you look at what ends up being that budget over the three-year IP, it's a $40 million budget because it's between 13 and 14 million in each of those years. It is a concern and I think we've done a really good job. We also did release an RFP for early intervention in December. And so those contracts will be coming to your board very soon to start with the new fiscal year because we wanted to still continue investing in early intervention. And that actually comes out of the behavioral health services supports bucket. of which we're using fund balance to keep high. And we also, because we dropped the housing interventions, we could bring the BHSS category up to 45%. And that's beyond the 35%. It's a lot. Yeah, I know.

I'm trying to track and I don't know if anybody else is tracking, but I know we're in good hands with you. So overall, we're okay this year. Yeah. Um, we don't see much of an impact. Our community won't see much of an impact because of the budget deficit from the state.

that is our goal our goal is to smooth out the edges and so for the course of the three-year plan and again a lot of this also depends on how revenue comes in each year and how that revenue then affects our fund balance and what we can carry forward but We are in good shape under our BHSA transition. It is a big lift. It's a big lift for all of our providers. It's a big lift for our internal programs because we have to implement evidence-based practices during that same time frame. And again, it's adding pressure to all of our community providers to increasingly push services into the Medi-Cal realm, which is harder for smaller organizations who Medi-Cal is its own machine. But I think on the VHSA funding, we are fine.

Thank you. I have one more question. I think it applies to this section. The North Napa transitional housing, formerly the Motel 6, that is expiring at the end of this month, a couple weeks. Is that over your purview? I know before Jennifer Palmer used to oversee that. Are you the one to ask about that? No? Okay. I don't know if we have anybody because I'm just concerned about, again, what is the funding what are we doing the mitigation and the funding for that? And is there a plan for that in this budget? Cause I, I didn't see it.

Hi, Jennifer Palmer. Deputy. Assistant CEO, formerly Housing and Community Services. Thank you. The North Napa Center was an encampment resolution grant granted to the city of Napa. So the county actually has not ever been a funding. I thought we were partnering on that. Okay. I mean certainly partner in service design and coordination of onsite.

services and the support of clients there but no that was wholly funded through a great city of Napa yeah okay and so 60 and I can't remember how many rooms there are 50 60 rooms the individuals are going to be I know they're working on maybe transitioning some but they're we're gonna have an increase in unhoused people

There were the capacity of the facility was 65 rooms. The city has been working to reduce occupancy there knowing that the state was looming pretty much since the day the program began. I think it's less than 20 who still remain and they're actively working on housing placements, family reunification, all of that. So I think we're not gonna end up with a situation where a whole bunch of folks are gonna leave there into an unhoused situation. We have room at the shelter and they're still working and there's still several weeks to go. So it's gone from 65 down to a much smaller number.

Yeah, if something, please keep us updated if something happens. I just, I'm seeing encampments rebuilding as I go over the Imola overpass. I don't know if it's a direct result of what's happening at the North Napa Center, but this is one of those that we work together with the city of Napa on, which is great, but please keep us posted. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of funding need to serve those folks, keep them, to help them get housed. All right, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Let's see, I see Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you, Chair. I had a couple other questions on HHSA. And one of them had to do with, I know that we were fortunate, thanks to our director's creativity and staff's quick thinking, to receive that state grant on the Behavioral Health Treatment Center. So I wanted to get a little background on the staffing of that center and if those are going to be new positions or where that's coming from. And then while Jennifer's walking up, I just wanted to make a shout out to on page 285 looking at goals. the importance of increasing the number of resource family homes to help foster youth in our community. I think it's always great to take a moment to call that out. And then I had one more question on the administration, but maybe you could speak to the Behavioral Health Treatment Center staffing and what that looks like on the ground.

Yes, I'm happy to do so. So you did not see a request for positions outside of our self-sufficiency services group, and that's because we intend to staff the services that are part of the Behavioral Health Treatment Center through a contracted provider. And just sort of just contextually, we actually have one of the three programs is already operating. It operates on the grounds of Napa State Hospital. And so that was also relevant to the prior discussion around all the properties that we are leasing. M1 and M2 on Napa State Hospital grounds is where our current residential treatment and withdrawal management program exists. We intend to, within the next month, open up an RFP to get a provider, hopefully one that will run all three of the programs that are envisioned there to hopefully get some economies of scale. I will tell you it will be a challenge because some of these programs are brand new to our community. So we are going to do our best to get a good provider. And again, the idea of being able to move over our residential treatment and withdrawal management program to what I hope is a forever home. is a really good thing because the current locations have outlived their useful life. And as you know, the reentry facility is a really lovely facility that will provide a really good space for treatment and recovery.

Great Thank you so I think what you're saying is that there will be three programs run out of that that location, one of which we already have in in underway so it'll be that team will move there and then the county will be contracting with another provider to provide those two other ones are you thinking that the whole thing could be.

The RFP will be to run all three programs.

Okay. Got it. All right. And two of those, so that's expanding to two new service programs.

Two new service programs and then increasing the capacity because the new footprint allows us to have more residential beds than we currently have at the current location. So really this plan is in part about keeping, it's about growing and expanding the continuum, but it is also about sustaining what we have. Because if we don't have a facility for our programs, they go offline when the facility goes offline.

So thank you for that investment. My last question is actually on page 293. It's the division detail for fund 2000, division 20010. And it's basically just if someone could walk me through. I'm looking at the total appropriation and then going back to the question about fund balance and it's really About last year it looked like the adopted appropriation was about 15 million and the estimated actual was about 23 million and so we so we ended up going we used fund balance and to the tune of about $7 million. And I think we've had a great discussion about using fund balance is strategic, but just wondering about where our head was in adopting one number and then having another number as the actual.

So I'm going to potentially, I'm looking to Tracy, because I know Tracy and HHS's CFO, Kimberly Danner, have been talking about this very issue. So I want to defer to Tracy, and then we also have Kimberly here.

I'll take a stab at it, but I think Kimberly can probably answer better. This is, so the general fund contribution to Health and Human Services is allocated throughout all the programs. And this administration division is capturing all the administrative costs and then allocating those out to the programs as well. So they should almost be zero every year. So it's more of an allocation department and that happened probably about, I don't know, 10 years ago where the state decided that unless we charge the program, we couldn't add them into our cost plan or cost report for some of the claims. So we had to book everything here and then allocate, spread it out to the different programs. So it should be a net zero.

Yes, Tracy. Good morning. Kimberly Danner, chief fiscal officer for Health and Human Services Agency. Tracy is exactly right. The administrative division is the costs of that division. It's a support division, and it benefits all of the direct services we do. So, those costs are allocated to the specific benefiting division. And then what that allows them to do is we can claim those in our various state and federal grants and allocations. I think your question is more to the fund balance there. The reason why we are currently working with the Auditor Controller's Office is because we historically had not We have historically managed HHS at the fund level, so all of the various divisions. And so what wasn't being done is a true-up at each division and bringing everything down to zero. So it's an accounting transaction. So we've been working with Tracy's office to go ahead and true that up for prior years so we can bring us to zero. and then on an annual basis, we will go in and make the accounting transaction so that the fund balance that's showing there is actually a true representation of what it's actually using. So what you're seeing here is more because those historical trends, those accounting transactions weren't done, and so it's appearing there, and so it skews the information a little bit.

OK, I think that's how. Thank you. I think that explains it. So when we are seeing the delta there, it's it has to do less with a change in plan about what budget was adopted a year ago today and then something that happened in the interim next month. It was more looking back saying, OK, this is where we want to be today. And how do we line up our accounting transactions to make that to get us there?

Yeah, you really have to look at it in total for all of HHS's divisions. So you have to add them all together to see the true impact or the true number. Until we do these accounting transactions, then the numbers will appear under the appropriate divisions.

Okay. That's really helpful because I think that actually informs the earlier discussion about fund balance where we're seeing like there's it's not so much what's the method to the madness is not the right word, but methodology, right? And more about saying some of the numbers that we're seeing are for a different set of reasons that have to do with a shifting in policy of how we're trying to account here. Correct, 100 percent.

Okay, thank you. And this is one of the challenges with that box that we used to have with the fund balance, because it's really fund balance is at a fund level, so fund in total. And so, as Kimberly was mentioning, if you look at the estimated actual for this year, you can see that they're projecting to spend 16, sorry, backwards. projecting to spend 23 and using 16 and that'll be a shift of just where the general fund contribution goes to or if they're shifting out the administrative cost to the program. So it's little pieces of a big fund. And so that's why by fund level for the fund balance is gonna make more sense. Got it, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Ramos?

Thank you. I had a question because this is new. Are we still on operating?

We're on operating special revenue funds.

Special revenue, okay. For those, for example, child support services, they have a reduction because it's stated of the move that they are making over. And so my question is when we have a leased facility, uh, and the cost of the lease, um, can you explain the, the difference in how that is calculated for charges to that department and division child support three 59. I'm trying to just understand which, From an appropriation standpoint, is that a services and supplies issue? Where does it go?

The lease for 555 Gateway is currently all in probation budget. It is not in child support services budget.

OK. And can you explain why?

It is a general fund cost. Child support services is not general fund funded. So therefore, we wanted to keep the cost in the general fund. So probation is a general fund department. So that's where it sits right now.

Okay. And so I guess that is that is the only is that the only one that we are doing is that the only department in which we do that and don't apportion the square footage I understand why we don't backfill we should not backfill because it's against our policy so we don't have, given the revenue stream from the federal government versus the state, that there's not sufficient money in there to be able to capture an additional part of this. Is that correct?

yeah it's it's general uh county facilities so general fund is you know paying for that so in that the district attorney is a general fund department so the district attorney is using general fund dollars for their facilities so that's that's kind of the methodology that we've been using for this okay so um

So I guess from a back of the house standpoint, right, we simply just track the square footage that child support services is gonna be using, but they are not contributing in any way to it.

For the rent.

for the, sorry, for the rent. And well, wouldn't that be rent and upkeep and maintenance also, right? Like custodian and all that stuff, they're not paying for any of this.

I believe the property management cost is charged to child support services. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they are paying for the maintenance of the custodial piece. The management part. Just the lease cost is not reflected.

Doug? If you could clarify, please.

We didn't have any lease costs for child support before because it was in a general administration, so we didn't charge them, but yes, I think property management.

Thank you. Douglas Stewart, Douglas Stewart, child support department director. Yes, that's correct. They came to me with an initial request as to that. I explained the board's policy in the past of not backfilling. My understanding is that we will be incurring a little bit less of Other costs dealing with some of the move. So we are happy to contribute to the county's coffers to reimburse if that's the way they want to do it. I told them, I asked them to be careful because I knew that it was delicately handled how my department is funded. So if it's a matter of squaring up with the county, that's not an issue from my perspective.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. It just wasn't made clear. I certainly understand that. I thank probation for carrying the weight for child support services on that one. So great. You guys are friends and great handshake. And that was it. Thanks. That's my last question on operating.

Okay, super. I will just note on this one that page 316 is the list of accomplishments and goals for roads and we did have a comment asking that we include specifically achievements and I do see that it is already built into goals for bicycle facilities and pedestrian safety. That's a huge priority for everybody on this board. I'm saying that based on previous discussions and think it would be a good place to highlight the work that's being done because there's a lot of work being done and we want to show that off so you know that's just my going forward for next season you know just making a note there that that I'd like I'd certainly like to see that in there okay so I don't care I had one more yes go ahead

Okay, I just wanted you mentioned page 316. I had 1 item on 315 and I mentioned it before, but I just wanted to call out the specific language where it says this is we're on the roads division and totally support what you just said. And ditto to that services and supplies increased by 2.3Million, 36% mainly due to general liability insurance costs, continuing to increase and internal services fund charge increases. So. I think that's just a segue to say that's good information and it makes us have, I think, more questions. So being able to provide more breakdowns of what those pieces look like, it will be helpful.

Thanks. Before we leave the operating special revenue funds, just a couple little antidotes for you. Back to John Tudor's 1973 budget, the library was funded at about $2 million, and fire protection and the mitigation, actually the whole fire fund, was $450,000. Just putting it in perspective. Now we can move on to the non-operating special revenue funds.

Okay, fantastic. So I welcome any questions at this time. Looking to my colleagues, I see Supervisor Ramos.

Thank you. I. I wanted to understand a little bit more specifically looking at the realignment section. And so I guess probably the one that would be best would be if we go to the district attorney's office. It has a contribution. In the past, here we're using the fund balance on these realignment dollars and contributing it in. And so I guess it's more of a question as to philosophy. Why are we carrying a fund balance and not utilizing all the realignment 2011 dollars into all of the budgets like here I see the district attorney's office is using 40,000 why are we are we not there is one where we are there's one where we are putting money in it's a very insignificant amount supervisor Ramos can you give us a page number I'm sorry 433 thanks so if you go through 433 these are all realignment dollars it starts with 430 432 433 these are all 2011. i'm trying to understand When are we keeping a fund balance of 2011 funds? Why do we not utilize them entirely? And separate from the CCP. I understand the CCP and they keep a fund balance and they're funding great projects like our acquisition of the behavioral health facility, staffing positions of the public defender's office. I'm just wondering why are we not utilizing at all times

What I can say about the non-operating special revenue funds in general is that each fund can only be used for specific purposes. So in case of district attorney's realignment funds, I can't exactly state what they are for. There is a specific purposes and how it works is that every quarter the department prepares a backup demonstrating that the funds were used for those specific purposes that fall in that category and then That's how the departments are getting reimbursed for these special revenue funds. As for retaining the fund balance, In some cases, for public defender's office, for example, they are requesting to fund one attorney position as part of the budget this year. They have, they did analysis and they saw that they can fund the position for, I think, two years, so I think that's the limited term. term that they've set for that attorney position, and that attorney will need to provide function that is specific to that special revenue fund. So I'm not sure if I'm answering the question regarding which ones are retaining what fund balance, but in those specific cases, in that case, that's what how they're retaining the fund balance and planning to use it.

OK, so if I look at this one would be under page 437 under the probation, the youthful offender block grant. So this is putting money into into fund balance. And so, it's 47,140. And so, I'm just, I'm wondering, you know, we've got revenues here that are exceeding the appropriations, right? That's how we're ending up with fund balance. Why? Because there's no way that, I mean, this isn't, is it all 2011 realignment funds going into there? It says intergovernmental revenues. So is it all 2011? I get that 2011 really ties our hands as to what we can do and it funds certain programs. What I'm trying to understand is are we making sure that we are using all realignment dollars available to us first before making general fund contributions into these programs? That is my question. Because at the end of the day, those 2011 dollars are not going to pay the bills. We know this. And so I want to make sure that we are, in fact, utilizing, like, court security. I drilled down with this earlier with the sheriff. We know that court security does not, the realignment dollars do not cover the cost of court security. I think this year's shortfall is $750,000 on court security for salaries and staffing. So we shouldn't be carrying a fund balance on 2011. We should be utilizing all of it. And so I'm trying to figure out Where is that methodology and how are we drilling down into those funding sources?

It's an excellent point, and we really do depend on the departments to know what is eligible costs to be reimbursed. And I know that that is something that, in fact, my internal audit team right now is doing an audit of the last couple of years to make sure that those funds are being used appropriately. We did that a couple of years ago, and we're trying to do it annually, but doing staffing, we haven't been able to do it annually. But it's also an education to the departments to make sure that they're drawing them down. So good point.

So then I'll just say instead of let me transition this from a question to a comment, I think we need to really prioritize the use of our realignment dollars. It's one thing, I mean, we can stay up here and we end up going to Sacramento and say we need more for X. But if we've got fund balance available on these realignment dollars, we are not sending out a consistent message. And especially as the person who is the one that is providing county testimony on unfunded mandates in the administration of justice, we need to be sure that we are utilizing all of these so that we can make the case to the state, understanding that their budget is not, we are faring much better than the state, let's just say that. But I do think that we need to make sure, so I appreciate knowing that you've drilled down, you're looking at this from an auditing standpoint, but I'd like to see all these funds used. These really should be first in funds. And so to the extent that I don't know if it necessarily requires us to drill down on a secondary line on these particular areas, but it's worth noting that we've got to be able to utilize all of those. And my comments are exclusive to our programs that are being funded by 2011 and not the CCP, because I appreciate them carrying a balance.

Okay, thank you for your comments. I see Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you, Chair. I'm just looking over to Supervisor Gallagher. You're good? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to, and Ms. Kleinman, I'd asked to talk about this a little bit earlier. On page 402, this is our local transportation tax TNU, and I thought it would be helpful to get a walkthrough. I think the community and the county understands the importance of these dollars, but I think it would be great to kind of, again, put the pieces together the narrative that we know and the actual finance components of it that we don't.

Sure, I'd be happy to. So as we briefly touched on the talk of 2011 realignment funds, Measure U, which was Measure T, works in a very similar way. So as you recall, it's for the Napa Countywide Road Maintenance Act. So it is restricted only to be used for road improvement in the road improvement projects. So Napa Valley Transportation Agency actually manages this fund. So how it works on the accounting side is that Napa Valley Transportation Agency receives the half cent, half cent, half cents, right? Docs. And they collect it for all agencies. then they transfer the funds on a quarterly well auditor our auditor controllers transfers the fund from napa valley transportation agency to this specific special revenue fund so we have a special revenue fund that is specific to this measure you obviously the intent is that it doesn't get mixed in with any other funding In case of Measure U, there is public work staff does need to bring to MBTA on an annual basis the list of projects, and they follow that project list on how they go about the projects. So, once the Public Works is ready to move forward with the project, we then establish a project budget. And at that time, we pull the money from measure use special revenue funds to the project budget. The funds then get spent there. And at the conclusion of the project, if there is any funds remaining, then that remaining balance actually reverts back to Measure U Special Revenue Fund. So the mechanism there so that it never gets mixed in with anything else. And in most cases for these Special Revenue Funds, there is also a reporting requirement. So in case of Measure U, there is a biannual reporting that Public Works staff has to provide. make sure that the project, the money is really spent on the project, and they report on the progress. And there's also an audit that happens, and I don't know for sure about the other special revenue funds, but I assume many of them do, that there's an audit that actually happens by, in case of Measure U, by external auditors. So it goes through a pretty astringent process. A process to make sure that things don't get mixed in. So this mechanism is really great for that because it makes a very clear tracking on how the funds and funds are being used and it doesn't get mixed in with anything else. So.

Great if I can add as the board member for along with the chairman free, there's an oversight committee specific to this and. As former chair of that board, the chair sits in with that meeting, they have monthly meetings, and they're the oversight board. This is a continuance of a previous Measure T. There was no increase in the staff sales tax. to serve the roads for 30 years. And there's a bonding aspect that may come into play at some point. But everything is, there's oversight by this oversight committee and oversight by the board too. So I don't know if Director Leder wants to add to any of that, but there's a lot of oversight that doesn't get mixed with anything.

Thank you. Thank you. That's kind of not where I was interested in going. And I love that background that you provided. And so then looking at the numbers here, again, kind of a similar question to the HHSA discussion we had where we've got revenue in last year's adopted budget of $9.8 million. And then the estimated actual came in more like $13 million. And so just again, if you can walk us through how we got there again, we've heard about, um, in another department and another fund kind of the true up. Um, uh, process that that we're going through with some of this stuff right now, but so can you walk us through those. Sure.

In case of Measure U, we actually asked the MBTA for an estimate for the revenue for the following year, so when we build the budget, that's the number we use. Obviously, we don't know how things go, so there is some fluctuation, and I guess in this case, it was a lot more, so which is great. In terms of the appropriation, this kind of goes back to how we were talking about the capital improvement project process. So you see that there was, I think, nothing, there was no funds appropriated at the budget time last year, but you see the estimated actuals because as throughout the year, you saw multiple budget amendments come through that was funded by the Measure U project. So that's how this is built. Working here, yeah.

The other thing I'll mention just in terms of the accounting is that you're obviously operating on a fiscal year, whereas construction, all my construction projects cross years. So it's very difficult when you look at exactly what's budgeted versus what's spent. on a year-to-year basis. I'm working in calendar year, you're working in fiscal year, so the numbers tend to cross. On an operational basis, we actually have a spreadsheet that we maintain monthly, which is really like a checking account, if you will. So on a month-to-month basis, what may look like a fund balance may not be because we've already committed it to a project or we've moved money um at the moment that checkbook is actually negative because we just started the deer park project but haven't received our our may and june revenues yet i mean it'll be fine but it's just that it's that fluctuating balance so it's just really difficult to look exactly what the budget says because it's trying to again work in the fiscal year whereas in reality our construction projects are in a calendar year so but we do we do track the funds extraordinarily closely yeah to make sure that we don't go too far or and frankly that I mean they're giving us the money to spend it so we're trying to spend as much as we can as soon as we can to fix the roads faster

Got it. And I appreciate Supervisor Alessio's point about the extensive oversight that's there. But I think it's helpful for the public to understand, right? Because people do want to know what is being spent per year on these things. And again, it's one more example, I think, of the nuance of a fund balance at any particular moment in time. It could be already committed things or it could be an accounting true up. So anyway, thank you. Appreciate that.

Okay. Okay, great. Um, so I'm not, is there anyone else wanting to comment on this item? I don't, it doesn't look like it. Okay. We're going to move to the next section of the budget book, which is capital projects. So I welcome any comments on the capital project section at this time. I am not seeing anyone. Okay. Then we've got, I'm not really anticipating much comment, but we have debt service. We have internal service funds. What's that?

Oh.

I am okay. I see Supervisor Gallagher, you are first.

Thank you. This is, I don't know if this is a question or what it is, but we have a lot of discussion around the internal services funds and growth in the internal services funds and the amount of money that all of the departments are paying. And thinking about our IT services, I think there are probably ways to be a little bit more creative and take more advantage of the talent in the department. So, for example, if we could have IT provide services to all the departments to train county staff on a lot of things that they could actually be doing, such as using a lot of the applications and software that we have purchased over the years or we're kind of continually purchasing. software and apps and all of these things to keep us current with technology, but are we really training people to use that technology? And shouldn't we be training everybody across the county, not just relying on maybe one person who might be up to speed on that in IT? I think that's a way you build capacity within the departments and eventually start to reduce that dependence on some of those internal service departments and therefore reduce the costs that actually are borne by each of the departments. So that's like one example of trying to take the internal services departments and encourage them or ask that they bring a lot of their expertise into the departments in places that are appropriate so the departments themselves could be a little bit more self-sufficient.

Thank you. I see Supervisor Ramos.

Thank you.

I will take these in order.

I'm going to I'll start with when it comes to the October workshop, I think a principal focus for us, in fact, needs to be the ISF. And my reasons are we are asking the departments to to be judicious with their use of general funds and within their budgets. And time and time again, the putting aside salaries and benefit increases, their greatest increase is the ISF every single time. And when we look at what comprises that, we have fleet, we have IT, we have property management, and we have some OPEB, which I'll get to that one. And then we have liability insurance. So let me start with fleet. You know, we have... as i i drilled into this and putting aside depreciation because i know that's its own little accounting thing looking at the at the increases in in fleet if you go to page 91 uh fund 4100 has the equipment that is going to be replaced we have roads equipment understand that but then we have vehicle replacement equipment and um which we've got hybrids and rav4s and interceptors all that stuff and having drilled down into these I think it's time that we really take a hard look at the cost of fleet and what that means. There are solutions in place. For example, Enterprise has a fleet management system and cadre of vehicles available to us to be able to actually assess if that can minimize our cost. I struggle in thinking that we need this many vehicles, and I'm not talking about the law enforcement vehicles, so just to be clear, I'm not talking about the interceptor, and I'll get to the hybrid interceptor, that's its own thing, or the prisoner, transport van or I believe it's the Toyota Camry, which is the DA's Camry that is specifically outfitted for some undercover work. So I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about everything else and the cost of them. The fact that, you know, a hybrid, a Prius hybrid is going to cost us $60,000. That to me is shocking that that is what we're budgeting for and the pricing and the cost of it. When I look at the vehicles that, I'm not saying we don't need vehicles, we do, but I think that this is an opportunity for us to look at is there a way to do it better. And so what I would actually propose here in fleet for my colleague's consideration, we include it in the budget, but we not authorize the purchase of these vehicles until we have an opportunity to assess if there is another, if there is a better way to be able to meet the needs of our fleet requirements. When it comes to There is a lot that we are doing here in IT when I look at the accomplishments and the goals and certainly for 69 FTEs I expect this but There are some enhancements and improvements that we need to work on continuously, but I see some accomplishments that they are great in principle, but they are not county functions. So when I look at receiving a notice of award from the CPUC for NVUSD and Napa Valley Adult Education to fund digital literacy that in fact we helped provide, we helped to distribute, not a county function. Not sure how we ended up in this scenario of helping out with nvusd we did it with parents can and moving forward as well it seems to me if we're going to be assisting non-profits or other organizations it should be done through a grant Our own grant process and not in. In providing those services. So, I, I. I guess I would, I would say to that is, I think we need to be. Very judicious and how we are. supporting our own departments first and making sure that we are working towards towards furthering our own needs I do want to stress the importance of what is listed in the goal of making sure that the IT policies are updated and include artificial intelligence use, and I know that that is coming forward, but I think that those need to be our priorities. Likewise, when we look at how we have computer devices and supporting, and the data that we're looking at, and page 508, This is an extreme cost, and I will say from my colleagues, I had to go through this more specifically and make changes because I became aware of the ISF through my own opening of my district office in American Canyon. It was enlightening to me the costs that our departments pay. I made changes in what I was doing for an office that I pay zero rent on based upon the pass-through ISF costs that were coming down. And so for that first time, I'm grateful for the opportunity, that very first time, I was placed in the exact same position as departments, and it gave me an understanding as to why I think it's the sheriff's office, they have their own maintenance, and they do that separately to not bear the cost of the ISF. Um, and and so that's on the property management side. Um, the sheriff's office has it on on the inside to also not pay the cost of the. We've got to ask ourselves a real question. The method by which we are administering the ISF and passing it through the departments, if it makes more financial sense for a department like Health and Human Services, like the Sheriff's Office, to do their own work and to have their own FTE assigned to them versus doing the running through the ISF, this is not working. I would like, Ms. Kleinman, if you would talk to us a little bit about the employee retiree benefits. This is a large shift and how this is done and the estimates and how the percentage that were funded on OPEB and the confidence level that we have in that funding level. If you could talk a little bit about that. Pages 516 and 517 for my colleagues. Sorry, 516.

Before we proceed, can I ask for some clarification regarding the fleet vehicle purchases? Yes. Okay. So you mentioned that you'd like to put the vehicle purchases on hold for non-safety vehicles? Yes. Okay. So Ford Interceptor Hybrid, Ford Interceptor Prisoner Transport Ban, and Toyota Camry Hybrid are exempt from that direction? Yes. Okay. And they're also large tractor mower and Toyota forklift electric. I'm- Also exempt. Okay.

Those are not vehicles. I'm talking about just the good old Prius that I drove down to Kings County last week. Okay. I'm saying I think we need to really take a hard look and I offer this up for discussion that I think we should direct our CEO to look at alternatives on how we can meet our fleet needs. Director Lederer?

Yeah, so a couple things on fleet. Let's see. In no particular order, the $60,000 budget estimate for vehicles, when we put together those estimates, that's not necessarily what we're going to pay for the car. That's a conservative estimate because those estimates are put together Generally, the fleet replacement needs and how many vehicles we get are decided between the analysts and the CEO. We then go buy them. So once that's determined, we're sitting there in January or February preparing a budget for today for a car that we might not buy until June of next year. So there are so many things that go into what the cost of a vehicle will be. We estimate a number very conservatively because of that. If you can imagine, this past January, we were sitting there with unknown tariffs, which we still don't really know. They go up and down every day. I don't remember if the war had started by then, but that has obviously affected prices. um in general inflationary pressures that we see and these are all real things that we deal with you know every year certainly have dealt with every year since covid so the budget estimate that we put in there is an estimate and there are a lot of conservative factors in there in order to account for these things doesn't mean that's what we pay for the vehicle Every vehicle we go out and we bid them And obviously we we accept the low bids now sometimes things do go up I believe there was a mower at the airport for instance that we Estimated the number it actually came in higher, but then we had savings from from some of the other vehicles So we were actually able to move forward We have certainly seen over the last couple of years, supply chain disruptions. There was one time we were looking for a particular vehicle. We ended up finding it in Mexico because that was the only place that the vehicle was. I mean, it was a Toyota. It was a regular, I mean, it wasn't, it was manufactured where all the other ones were, but it happened to be located. So I just think it's really important to recognize that those are, Those estimates don't drive what we actually pay for the vehicle and they don't drive what the individual departments are paying for replacement either. So I don't think we should get too concerned necessarily about that particular number. Over the years, we have studied Fleet four times that I'm aware of, 2009, 2015, 2018, and 2025, 26, because Enterprise is really good at marketing to people, so they continue to ask the questions. What we found is that in many cases, or at least I'll say in some cases, an enterprise situation might actually work if you don't have your own yard, if you don't have your own mechanics, and you're basically starting from scratch where you haven't already invested in the equipment and the people and all of that. It could be that at least situation works. What we've always found is because we do have our own yard, because we do have three very efficient mechanics who do the work on over 300 vehicles, and you could argue maybe we should have less than 300 vehicles, but that's a different discussion. We've always found that it's more efficient to do it the way we're doing, and primarily because those people are amortized, not only over the 300 cars, but also the road equipment. They do work for Yountville, they do work for the school district, those are revenue opportunities. So I'm not saying that enterprise or some sort of solution like that might not make sense for certain people and maybe even us for certain times if all three of our mechanics who are all retirement eligible decided to all walk out the door at the same time if for some reason Now, our fleet yard is used for multiple, multiple purposes, but if for some reason we decided to sell it, we didn't have a place to do our own maintenance, which we can do a lot cheaper. There could be situations, but essentially the study, Supervisor Ramos, that you've been asked for has been done multiple times. I'm also concerned that if we put those vehicle purchases on hold at the end of the day, it's only going to make them more expensive. It's going to push us into the new vehicle year. The vehicles may or may not be available. One of our favorite vehicles over the last year or so because it met EV goals and air quality goals is the Ford F-150 Lightning. Well, Ford just discontinued making that vehicle. And so we're going to have to really struggle to find something to replace that. One thing that the board could potentially do if they're interested actually to save money, we do have a 5% local vendor preference policy, something the board put in many years ago. ultimately resulted in is yes more of our vehicles are sold to local vendors but it also means our local vendors don't have to sharpen their pencil as sharply as those from out of town and in reality most of the out-of-town dealers just don't give us bids anymore because they figure they're just going to get you know beat by the five percent preference so that's an area that in fact it's a valid policy goal I understand why the board did that but it does cost us money so I guess what my recommendation is is Certainly, as we've done before, I think it's worthwhile to continue to look at how fleet and every operation works. I mean, there's always ways to make things more efficient, but I do believe that the vehicles that were in the budget should stay in the budget and get purchased if we wait until September or October or whatever I think we're only gonna cost ourselves money in the long run and perhaps we can have this discussion more in depth during this year leading up to next year's budget so that's my recommendation and you can do whatever you choose to do okay thank you mr. letter yeah

Um, I, I still thank you for that. I, I still believe that it is prudent for this board to make a decision. And in fact, how we do our business is a policy decision that this board has not had an opportunity to weigh in on. And, uh. So. Apart from the fact of calculation of the ISF and how that is doled out to the departments, I do think it's prudent for us to take this time to look at, should we be in the business of owning cars? That's really what it comes down to. Very much like we've looked at, should we be, today, should we be in the business of owning Carruthers? We made a choice not to own Carruthers anymore. I don't recall a moment where we have gone into the in-depth what are the costs of having a fleet lease versus a fleet maintenance decision point. When it goes to, I think, Michael, you were going to tell us about the employee retiree benefits and where we're at with that. our funding level currently and the confidence level that we have in that funding level.

I'll take this one. I'll give Michael a break. So the reason that employee retiree benefits is in an internal service fund in the beginning might be a little bit helpful. So we charge based on an assumption of what it's going to cost us for our pension, for our Well, we know our healthcare rates. We know the rates as of January 1st every year, so we at least know the first six months, and then we do an inflation for the second six months. And basically, that's all part of the payroll system. So as each individual gets paid, we also pay retiree pension, workers' comp, unemployment, all that stuff. And that money then gets brought into here, these internal service funds for employee retiree benefits, And we also do something for OPEB as well for the health insurance, retiree health insurance benefits. And so we charge that on a per person basis at the department level based on actual people. And so that money comes in here and then we pay the claims. So you can imagine paying every month your health insurance bill, instead of having to pay and hit every single department, you're only hitting one fund, one account, because all the money's there and you pay the bill out of there. So that's kind of the mechanism for that. It's based on actuals, and the OPEB one, which is the one that I believe that you're asking more about, because there's a $7 million savings, if you will, in the budget. What we used to be doing in the previous years is when OPEB started to be recorded on governmental books, just like pension is now being recorded on governmental books. It was happening, I want to say it happened, started back in like the early 2000s because several governments were going bankrupt because they'd have a huge retiree liability and then they would have a huge exodus of people retiring and they couldn't actually fund their liabilities. So this county wanted to fund OPEB over a 20-year rolling period. And of course, as costs get more expensive, as employees retire, it's an ongoing funding mechanism, rolling mechanism. So we still charge for OPEB, we still charge everybody for that and it gets put in here. But we're basically now paying as we go for all the retiree benefits that we're paying out every year for all of our retirees. But in the past we had this huge liability and so in years we would pre-fund our OPEB liability when we could using available fund balance. And using it as a one time we have available fund balance, we can add more to it. And so this $7 million savings, if you will, is not really savings. It's just not adding more to that unfunded liability because we are at about 95% funded. It's based on an actuarial report that happens every two years. Actuaries, there's like a long running joke in the accounting world where actuaries are the profession where you can be wrong all the time. Um, so, but it's based on actual, it's based on assumptions, how long people are going to live, you know, what, what plans they have and so forth and so on and who's going to retire when, um, so those numbers and even salary, uh, comes into it. Um, so those numbers change every two years. Uh, we believe at about 90 to 95%, um, we don't need to contribute anymore. There is something in the works that we'll be working with, we have a, I wanna say it's a pension advisory committee, but I think we should say pension and OPEB advisory committee, that we'll be working, that started working on this last year and we're gonna pick it up again to bring a policy forward to you about when we contribute more or when we stop contributing or when we even take money out. Um, it, it ranges up and down the state. I mean, I know a county that wants 250% of their liability in this fund because they never want to be in a situation where they can't pay the retiree benefits. Um, I wouldn't go that far, but that's, you know, we, we have to discuss that and go come through with the policy. So we're pretty comfortable at where we're at now. Um, so that 7 million differential is because we don't have to put $7 million in it anymore.

Excellent. Thank you. So I think that that is That explanation is great, and I would look forward to, as part of the budget discussions, as we look at what is that confidence level of funding that we want to be able to have for OPEB. And likewise, to also look at if we are in a position to be able to deposit more money into the 115 Trust as well, and maybe it's a lower funding level and we put money into the 115 Trust, holding it there, But something for us to look at at that budget hearing. Thank you very much. The next one is liability insurance. Liability insurance, page 520 for my colleagues, liability insurance has increased by $3 million from actuals over the last two years. That is a tremendous increase. I understand the insurance world is changing. I think one of the things that we need to be able to look at, and I would like a greater understanding of this, the confidence level of 75% for the county. And how is that determined at this current time?

This allocation fell in the purview of the risk manager. So they have traditionally, I understand that they kept it at 75% confidence level for the past years. It is something that we need to look into further. As you know, we came into doing this position mid-January, so it is on something that we're going to look further into. But as far as the 75 percent confidence level, I understand that's been the percentage that they've been used. Unfortunately, I don't know how they came to that percentage.

So I do believe it's part of their actual report as well for the insurance claims. And I don't remember if it's the actual best practice or if it's actually a GFOA best practice to either have 75 to 80% confidence level in reserves. So we're in the position, in a good position to be able to come up with funds when we need it without breaking the bank. But yes, we do need to look more into it. That is something that's kind of been a little bit of a gray area, including how it actually gets charged out. We do know that in the past, they did like a 10 year experience level and spread out claims over 10 years and charge the departments. And of course, if your department is a higher risk or has many more claims, you're gonna get apportioned more costs. That's just the way that it works. But the increases were based on the increases in the market.

Sure. And I know, Mr. CEO, you're going to be bringing a plan for us in terms of risk. And I think what would really be prudent, you know, we have not had truly a full-time risk manager for three, four years now. As we move forward to having a fully assigned person to risk, I think in this area, it would be very mindful for us to track what our progress measures are, what those opportunities are for on the education side and the prevention side, certainly because some of these claims, not every claim, there's always gonna be claims, but some of these claims are preventable, and so I think that it would be very prudent for us to be able to track this, and I personally, I think the ISF is, has a life of its own and maybe it deserves a day of its own separate from the budget workshop because that very much sets the direction of how we're going to budget and what we're expecting the departments to handle. And I will say now that the Board of Supervisors being its own budget, Certainly shed light on you all heard it. I complained about an ISF charge to us and I get it. I get that. We're part of the bigger picture now and grateful for that experience to be included in the pain that our departments have. But we've got to start looking at. Are we in fact. calculating and apportioning this correctly so that it is not, the ISF should be enhancing and not a hindrance. And so as we continue to go down this path, more times we keep on hearing that the pressure of the ISF is what's really causing hardships to our department. So I think the time is now to look at all of those inputs into the ISF and to really drill down its calculation, its value, and what is truly a passed on eligible cost for doing business. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for those comments. I see Supervisor Cottrell and then after that or actually Councilor or the CEO, does one of you want to make a comment now?

I can wait.

Okay. Go ahead, Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you, uh, divisor Ramos for those points. Um, I think I'm in a similar vein here. Um, I like this idea of being able to spend time understanding more about the ISF because I think what we are hearing from departments, you know, throughout the pages of this budget book is the increase of those costs. And again, I think it's, it's a little bit challenging to drill down. I'm looking at page five Oh four. Um, IT and really the change that we're seeing in terms of their Revenue right is going. It's just a total At the total revenue line an increase of 2% right which seems if I'm a department head and I get a 2% Increase in my bill. I'm not going to call it out in my budget report so understanding what is the bill that our department heads are facing from this department as an example. And I'm sure, I'm not trying to pick on IT. I think it's something that is probably throughout other pages here in this section. And then just some thoughts. I appreciate the discussion about fleet. thinking about a middle ground there. I also would be interested in a little more updated study on that, and I'm also not interested in, we have a recommendation from our department head about a process to move forward, so I'm fine moving forward with what the recommendation is here today, and also asking that we learn a little bit more about the possibility of a leased fleet for the future. So I think those are the main questions I wanted to bring up at this point. Thank you, Supervisor Cottrell. CEO Alsop?

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say a couple of things on this. So ISF is, you know, throughout the 58 counties, you know, the feeling on ISF is mutual. I've been in a couple other ones, and they're always... I want to make sure that our employees, our hardworking, dedicated employees that are working in fleet and ITS, property and other places, understand that we value you. This is a very good discussion to have. And this should really highlight the fact that a lot of these, I'll use ITS, you're an overhead function, business function of the county. And your work should be as efficient as you can make it. so that you can pass those efficiencies on to your clientele who are everybody else outside the department. And I want to thank Meg Miseregon for her leadership and where she's taking. If you look through your goals and objectives, you read through these goals, this is, these goals are demonstrating that you're taking us to a place where we can likely reduce the cost that we're passing on to departments. And I know that that's at the forefront of your activity. We've heard about fleet. Insurance risk, yes, Supervisor Ramos, the risk management program that we are rolling out, which I have met with each of you individually on to share, it is a three-tiered process, but involving a policy-making body, for lack of a better description, that will in fact be providing some feedback and some leadership around metrics, feedback around how we can potentially reorganize the methodology that we currently use to spread our general liability costs around It's also interesting, a lot of these, I mean, a lot of this is labor, right? And when we have an increase in salaries and benefits for any of these groups, those are expensive. And those get passed on to the clientele, whether it's the board or the CEO's office or others. But I wanted to say that this has been a really good discussion on this particular subject, and we will continue to drill down on it, find efficiencies, find ways to do better. And I know that everybody that's involved here is committed to doing just that. So I thank you.

Thank you, CEO Alsop. I don't see any other lights on for this one here at the dais. I am also interested in seeing some kind of look at the efficiency of fleet services. I do very much appreciate the comments that the prices of everything are going up and if we don't move forward with purchasing now, that could cost us more money in the long term. So in light of that, support moving forward with the current proposals. Okay, so we will move along to enterprise funds. You're ahead of me, thank you. And this includes the airport, the 5th Street garage, the animal shelter, and concessions. And I'm sure we're going to have some discussions about these. So I welcome opening comments from anyone on the dais and questions.

No question. I just had a really enjoyable visit at the animal shelter recently. Met a volunteer who's been helping there for a while and I already had this discussion, a little small one, with the director later on this. I remember the shelter was more newly, was a little bit more fresh. The structure itself is sound, but it needs TLC. And I know there's some budgeting there to do some more facilities work, but also just making aware here on the board that whatever we can do that's in the budget or a director letter can figure out in terms of just those improvements at the shelter would be, I think it's ready. So I don't know if anybody else has had a chance to go down there. Great staff, great volunteers. It's heartwarming and heartbreaking to see all the animals there, but they provide a wonderful service. But the facilities itself is looking tired. That's all I just wanted to share.

Okay, thank you. Helpful observation. We'll feedback. Anyone else on this? Supervisor Ramos?

Thank you. When a couple of things, you know, I think that are important to know in this that these are, in fact, enterprise funds. And I appreciate the time that both Ms. Schulze and Ms. Kleinman spent with me to kind of go through this in a little bit more depth and understanding that at the Fifth Street parking garage, we do make a contribution into the Fifth Street parking garage, but it is by contract for the with the other parties that we own that structure with, correct? Okay. On the animal shelter, likewise, we are paying a contracted amount. So with the jurisdictions, the partner jurisdictions, costs are spread out equally. We're not bearing any more than our contractual portion, correct? Contractual. That's correct. I think it's based on population at the moment. Yep. So to that extent, I think a couple of things that warrant saying in the animal shelter, you know, the The animal shelter, and I know the sheriff has had to deal with this one many times over, the animals that are coming in are primarily coming from the cities of Napa and American Canyon, including my guy. My guy was roaming the streets of American Canyon, came in through the shelter and adopted him from there. I think they and I know that this has been a continual discussion and that other some of the partner jurisdictions had even looked at other options but you know I think we really need to to to look at not just the cost of the operation of the shelter but now as supervisor Alessio said is the upkeep and maintenance of the building is an additional one. And so I just flagged that as to this is something that we need to look at when we look at facilities as a whole. We need to be looking at the cost of facilities that in fact are serving others beyond the county. And I think that that needs a different lens that we look through it. I certainly am grateful that the shelter is there and that it gave me my very best friend that got a second chance. But we do need to make sure that we are looking at it. You know, when we look at even just the the HVAC costs into the shelter. That is a tremendous, tremendous cost. The next one, I alluded to this at a prior meeting, but when we look at the Lake Berryessa concession, And I don't think that this should be taken in isolation. I think it needs to also be taken with the decrease in funding to the sheriff's office because the Bureau of Reclamation funding grant going away for the Sheriff's Office so that means all patrolling on around Lake Berryessa on federal properties is a county expense now it means that in addition to that we are paying we're increasing and coming in at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the concessionaire cost Our previous contribution was $250,000. That's an increase of $100,000. And also, the Sheriff's budget has a decrease in revenue for marine patrolling of Berryessa from State Waterways grant that is also going down in revenue. So that is to say, Nobody responsible, truly responsible for Berryessa is paying for Berryessa except for this county. And that's troubling. It's troubling in the sense that the Lake Berryessa concession is an enterprise fund. And the definition of enterprise funds is that the county general fund should not be supporting it. They should be operating like businesses. And Lake Berryessa in no respect is operating like a business. And I think that that brings back what I had brought forth at a prior meeting and asked that this board have that opportunity to really discuss Lake Berryessa. Now, if we were to say Lake Berryessa should simply be, just figuratively speaking, just all parks and recreation, then this shouldn't be an enterprise fund, right? We would deal with it and prioritize our funding differently. But a decision was made to make Lake Berryessa financially sustainable and to operate it like an enterprise. and never has it ever because we are spending $350,000 of general fund on the Lake Berryessa concession only to recoup $33,000 in miscellaneous camping fees and boat launching fees. And so that's a real discussion that we need to have at the policy level, how we want to define the uses and experiences at Lake Berryessa because as it stands right now, if in fact the Steel Canyon, just putting that as furthest ahead in the pipeline, Steel Canyon were to happen, if everything goes well, soonest is 2031. And so the sheriff has, you have three FTE up at the lake, Sheriff? Three FTE from the sheriff's office at the lake. Probably more on party weekends, I mean holiday weekends. And then we have that and then we have the Lake Berryessa concessionaire at $350,000 a year. And we have five more years of this. So I'm just saying it's time for us to have a discussion about how we're defining this and what this looks like because it's not functioning as an enterprise fund. Yes.

Through the Madam chair, uh, supervisor Ramos. I think that as soon as next year,

the general fund impact will be somewhere around 700 that's correct yeah um next year's budget is using the available fund balance um to offset the cost so um that available fund balance is probably going to be gone so following year it's likely going to be around 700 000

So I just wanted to mention the history, if you will, when the board decided they wanted to get into developing the resorts back in, I think 2019, if I'm not mistaken, it was understood that the board would have to invest. uh well the board and ceo and board at the time decided to hire somebody to help with this development process and it was understood that the board would be paying through the general fund for that person's um efforts and and the other efforts around at the consultants and whatnot for a period of time um the bor agreed to pay half of those expenses for a certain period of time that that period of time has has expired which is why The increase to the general fund is going up right now so basically that all has worked exactly the way The board had thought what hasn't worked as I think supervisor Ramos has pointed out is that we haven't gotten to the point where the resorts are developed and are creating revenue because in the long run The idea is that the revenue from the resort would then pay back the general fund to that investment and throw off additional money to help pay for sheriff and fire and whatnot. So as Supervisor Ramos pointed out, we're not to the revenue point. The process is exactly what the board meant, but again, for a lot of reasons, primarily the market, we haven't gotten there. So absolutely, if the board wishes to, and I think the board does, it's time to reassess where we are, and we should have that discussion.

I'm just saying the process is pretty much what the board was expecting the results was not where everyone had hoped to be at this point yeah I would just say I agree with that that accounting but you know nonetheless I'm just letting you all know that we'll be here next year talking about seven hundred thousand dollars

Yeah, that's helpful to brace ourselves for. Thank you. OK. Anyone else with comments on this section? No? OK. Then our next section of the report is special districts and other agencies.

And that is also the chair. That's a separate item. Oh, sorry. So we need to close this one. Great. So as we close, I just want to throw this up there to thank everybody on the team that put this together. It was a very enlightening experience this year. I really appreciate the opportunity to help out. So thank you. But the most important down at the bottom, all the department heads and the dedicated fiscal staff, they really did a lot of heavy lifting this year. It was very, it was actually very, I'm gonna say it, I don't know about Michael, but it was fun actually working with everybody and talking through the numbers and trying to come up with good strategic efficiencies. But I also want to thank your board for your vision and support, and of course the CEO and his vision and support. Okay, Supervisor Gallagher?

Yeah, I'm sorry. I just wanted to, since we're winding this part up, I wanted to wind up the previous discussion about the public defender Padilla attorney. I just would really appreciate my colleagues' Supporting asking our CEO to research how we can build capacity, whether that's inside the county or with partners or or through partnerships. to provide these important legal services. And so I'd like to be able to continue the discussion, not necessarily impacting this year's budget, but I want to have a little bit more of a brainstorming session and be able to do a little bit of this offline and maybe potentially come back with some ideas for the future.

And if I can add something. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, I support that direction. With a conversation with Supervisor Gallagher yesterday and input from the community, it does seem like we need a specialized individual there that can create a little bit more justice in this justice system. And that's a good way of doing it. So I appreciate Supervisor Gallagher bringing that forward and definitely support that.

Okay, very good. And before I ask for a motion and a second, I just like to thank the staff for all their hard work on this too. I know it's been said, but can't really say it enough because it was a lot of hard work. It was a lot of teamwork and there were a lot of big changes this year. So I see that and I appreciate that. And the spirit of collaboration was really evident in working through this with staff. So appreciate that as well. And I also want to recognize that we're all continuing to function in an era where there's a lot of instability. We have political instability and environmental instability, and it's not easy. And I do recognize that pretty much every change that's been made, like it or not, is usually in response to some situation that's beyond our control, and we're just doing our best. That and then not to, you know, I'm sure I'll miss some important things, but some of the really high level things that I heard were that we have room for improvement or areas where we could evaluate for more efficiency in staffing and managing liability and risk in facilities planning. and particularly in long-term project planning. And that's been an ongoing conversation, I know, and I'm also hearing the animal shelter loud and clear in updating our IT policies to be fully modernized in prioritizing the use of real alignment dollars and also in leveraging internal services for more impact and efficiency. And then as far as budget hearings, I know there was more, but I definitely heard looking at long-term trends, looking for more detail on specific departments and divisions, and also internal service funds, and possibly evaluating fleet. I don't know if that'll be part of the budget hearings or if it'll be, or budget workshop, sorry, or if that will be separate, but we will get back to it. Yes, CEO Alsop?

Yeah, we've heard everything, we have made notes. This has been a very healthy examination of the budget and we appreciate all of your feedback and all your questions. I did want to say one thing because I wanted to be fair to animal shelter. Mr. Lederer, Lee Sharp have kept me very up to date on the situation with our animal shelter. It needs to be expanded. they're out of room, I get it. Those animals there and the staff deserve some attention and I have asked Mr. Lederer and Lee and have offered myself to, talking with some of our partners who are making contributions, who are part of that shelter over there, particularly the city of Napa, city of American Canyon. Talk to them about what's needed and creating a pathway to go down with them regarding some additional funding potentially. So we are working on that. That's where we're headed. I don't know, we'll be back to your board to give you an update. Those plans are in the works. But thank you very much for today.

Okay, very good. So with that, I will ask for a motion. Yeah, I would like to say something too, but go ahead. Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you. First of all, I appreciate all your summation. I think those are all great points, and it's great to hear that those have been captured. I had a couple of notes I wanted to go over. Appreciate Supervisor Gallagher's point about the Padilla attorney looking into that, and I think you phrased that well of let's investigate it. And I think the ask that we heard repeatedly, and I wanted to thank Napa Valley Together for ongoing interaction, was for one FTE. You know, we could explore partnerships, as Supervisor Gallagher mentioned. We could look at a half FTE. But anyway, looking forward to what we could learn about that. I have a note here that just says, Amber's and Belia's point about year-over-year tracking. So I think you made that point yesterday, but I think that goes to tracking long-term trends. So thank you for that. I wanted to thank the budget team for their responsiveness and the department team for the way that we're looking at capital project budgeting. I think that makes it easier for us as board members to track what's happening and not worry that we're continuing to get mid-year budget adjustments. And that it's hard to put dollar amounts on projects that we haven't planned out yet. So I appreciate where we landed there. And then I think just in terms of goals for next year, we have to articulate them if we're gonna aim for them. One of them being I would love to see us get to this point and have some fund balance that's equal or greater to where we're landing at seven million. And that's just, I'm picking that number because that's what we have. But I think something there makes sense. And again, understanding that there's lots of flexibility and dynamism and unknowns. And also, you know, I want to go back to on page 41 of our policy. It says every effort will be made to continue capital and planning programs geared to meeting the county's long term needs. To me, that means we couldn't it wasn't the year to make a contribution to our accumulated capital outlay, but that we will want to continue to do projects. So aiming for something there. And again, these are aspirational, but I think it's worth setting them out as places that we wanna go. And I agree, this has been a great discussion and looking forward to where we go from here. Thank you.

Great comments. Thank you, Supervisor Alessio. Just really in closing, I just did want to leave without thanking everybody, department heads, our auditor controller and CFO, our CEO, the staff and attorney. I mean, this is all hands on deck to bring us to this moment. And always we can count on Supervisor Ramos to make sure we're doing a very thorough job on this. And I always learn a lot through the process. And I definitely hear what you said about the ISF. I remember hearing that before, so thank you for bringing that up. And again, I think going back to what our CEO says, in terms of the feedback and the questions, this is not questioning staff. This is just kind of examining how can we do this better in some ways, because that's our charge, is to try to do this as best as we can for the public and for our staff here. Going back to what I know our CEO wanted to do, in this time where there's really, as we know, there's more mandates that are unfunded. There's from the state and the federal governments. No thank you very much, but that's the reality. There's more need than we have in terms of revenue. But overall, I hear also that we're in a very strong, healthy fiscal position. We don't want to take that for granted. We're mindful on that. I appreciate the approach and the teamwork here. And this budget, and reading this from the CEO's notes from before, this budget was designed to maintain essential public service, support and retain a strong workforce, preserve healthy financial reserves, protect taxpayers, and strengthen long-term resilience as we provide essential public services to our communities. And I think that we're doing that. So thank you.

Go ahead, Supervisor Ellis.

Pardon me? Okay. Thank you to staff. I very, very much appreciate the diligence with which you have presented this budget in an incredibly best estimate way that we can do. As I shared with both of you, it does feel different and there are reasons for that and I very much appreciate the countless hours that you and your teams have put into this. I think that the way in which we have approached the budget this year, will in fact get us to a better place. I see this as an opportunity of pivoting to a direction with greater fiscal discipline moving forward and I see this as a baseline year and I hope that in for future years, as Supervisor Cottrell said, that it's not we hope we come in better, it is a we are going to come in better. And that is truly the goal here. The greatest thing that we can do in our budget is twofold. Our money is a statement of our values. And the money and how we manage the money is the greatest display of stability and that is the function that government provides the community. So I appreciate all of your work in that. I will go ahead and attempt that this is gonna be a motion to continue um to our next uh public hearing on june 23rd at 9 00 a.m for final adoption and it includes the direction of exploring fleet alternatives and the padilla attorney second

Who was the second?

Me.

Gallagher, okay. I have a motion by Supervisor Ramos, seconded by Gallagher. All in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you. Do we need a comfort break before we go on to groundwater or do we want to get through groundwater? Okay, comfort break. You can't say those words without taking one. Let's come back at 3 p.m. Thank you. All right, so I, we're gonna go ahead with the meeting now, and we were moving item 9H, which is presentation, read it exactly, conduct a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget for the Napa County Groundwater Sustainability Agency for total appropriations of $2,481,182 up before we continue on with the rest of the items listed on our agenda today. So I welcome a presentation on I'm opening the public hearing on this item and I welcome a staff report from Chief Budget Officer Michael Kleiman on this item.

Good afternoon, members of the board, Chief Budget Officer Michael Kleiman. I'm joined here by Tracy Schulze, our auditor controller. Requested action today is for the board to tentatively approve fiscal year 2627. Budget for Napa County Groundwater Sustainability Agency for a total appropriation of $2,481,182. Budget details start on page 555 of the book. The agency develops and implements a groundwater sustainability plan for the Napa Valley groundwater sub basin. Revenue from fees is increasing by approximately 2.2 million, reflecting the implementation of a groundwater fee to support program cost-effective fiscal year 2026-27. Staff is here to answer questions.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment today on this item? Anyone in the room, please come on up. You all have three minutes.

Thank you, Chair Manfrey. Hi, supervisors. CEO, also thanks for the opportunity to speak on this this afternoon. I'm Caleb Mosley, Executive Director of the Knapp Valley Grape Corps. Here to speak in favor of an additional review of the new proposed groundwater fees to see if we may be able to reduce the burden on our growers in the community, in the sub-basin, and this is the first year of the rollout of the fees for our growers. As you all know, many growers received postcards last week stating what their fees would be, and I want to acknowledge and thank Jamison for her outgoing communication and trying to get ahead of this. I will say that we still have received feedback from many of our growers, both members and non, surprised and disappointed. which isn't too surprising. I just want to acknowledge that this has been a long journey. We all recognize that this started at the state level, that we have all inherited it, and I want to applaud us all for working together to get to this point. I also want to acknowledge that we have a community of growers that are committed to protecting all of the natural resources that we utilize to grow our incredible grapes here, including groundwater. and that we certainly don't want to see our path lead towards the paths that some groundwater sustainability agencies in the Central Valley have landed on, which Supervisor Ramos explained. I've heard those stories as well, and they're frightening. So we're on the right path. I appreciate it. But I do have to say that I've received some real world examples from folks on our board and members that are looking at tax bills of one that has about 130 acres planted in Oakville that's looking at a $12,800 increase to their farming costs. And this is on top of an already difficult landscape that we're operating within. And again, I also want to acknowledge not the county's fault. This is not our doing. There's a lot of state and federal services that are waning right now that are part of the equation when it comes to how we're farming our grapes. A specific example is the Tree Assistance Program. If you've heard of that, that's from the USDA. It goes to the FSA office out in Fairfield. It was helping our growers replant due to Leaf Roll 3 and Red Blotch, highly successful program that has just been rendered essentially unobtainable, if that's the right word. Our growers can't use it because they've changed the stipulations on how to get those funds. So you really can't tap into that any longer. The state is also having issues with providing the basic services that we've relied upon for quite a long time now, including our crush report and even our NAS ability to look at how many acres we have. In some instances, growers have already stepped up. to try and help with this, but kind of just want to recognize that above and beyond all the issues that we're working on here, the state and federal pressures, along with the changes in the industry that we're all noticing, GLP-1s, generational shift in consumption habits, things that, again, do not revolve around what's happening here. What we're asking is that there is this one piece with groundwater that you do have the ability to look into and see if you can support. And some of my colleagues here have some more concrete examples. And with that, I thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mosley. Welcome, Mr. Rumble.

Thank you very much. It's like old times for me, except I don't have the stress of actually answering the questions for the budget. So Peter Rumble, Napa County Farm Bureau. I want to start by acknowledging that the county is weighing many, many competing priorities, and they're all very worthy priorities. So we get it and acknowledge that. As a primary economic sector of Napa, the health of your budget is strongly linked to the health of our agricultural community. And as you know, it's hurting right now. Our recent work with Cal Poly has finally demonstrated the weight of fees and regulatory costs up to almost $2 million just to grow and harvest grapes for our large growers. It's $2 million every year just to farm. The next report on wine production is going through review now, so you're the first to hear it. But the preliminary findings show that up to $23 a case to produce wine, and if you have the audacity to want to sell that wine after you produce it. That's another quarter million dollars a year in regulatory fees just to sell your wine. And that number jumps up to well over a million dollars for some of our larger producers. The researchers found that Napa agriculture is on the brink of economic viability. Now, as I've said in the press, as I've said to some of you, The bulk of those costs are generated through federal and state regulations, not local regulations. So not your board's fault. Same with the GSA. That's not your choice. That's coming from the state. But we ask that your board consider not making the problem even worse. So I'm receiving calls as well, just like Caleb noted, just had one yesterday or the day before saying, what's this $10,000 bill that I got? I already pay fees for the water that I use and for all of the onsite mitigations that I do to protect water quality. Isn't that covered in what I already pay? No, it's not. That's another $10,000 bill. So we understand that the GSA needs to be funded. It's the size of the budget and how the costs are allocated that is in your hands. And just as a reference point, I was at a community forum, agricultural forum with Congressman Thompson about a month ago, maybe two months ago, and a farmer there from Yolo or another county was incensed. He said, what is this $9 GSA fee that is staring me down? We've got $98 staring us down per acre. I really appreciated deeply the collaboration of your board and your staff on so many issues, including this, and I hope that we can find a way to reach our goals while minimizing the burden on agriculture. Thanks.

Thank you for your comments. Ms. Benvenuto, welcome.

Thank you. And thank you for moving our item up. Michelle Benvenuto, wine growers of Napa County, in collaboration with our coalition partners here today. So we are not asking for additional general fund dollars. We are asking that the proposed $500,000 contribution and the underlying GSA budget be structured more fairly. First, we ask you to set the budget from which the fees are calculated to an amount closer to the actual expenses, not the theoretical ceiling. At the December hearing, Ms. Crosby described budget as worst case ceiling and confirmed that last year's actual spending came in over 20% below the projected budget. If realistic costs are expected to land closer to 1.97 million rather than 2.47 million, we ask that the groundwater users not be billed against the inflated budget. Additionally, Proposition 26 requires fees not exceed reasonable costs. Billing against a budget that staff themselves called worst case is difficult to defend as reasonable. Second, of the 500,000 contribution, 200,000 is earmarked for self-supplied users. 100 of that will directly offset their bill. The second 100,000 is to support reserves and fee waivers for self-supplied users. In the December GSA presentation, staff estimated that only $3,129 per year would be needed for these waivers. So the remaining 97,000 would go to a fund at reserve. Given the current conditions in the wine industry and across our community, this is not the moment to set aside nearly 100,000 a year for future needs. The need is now. We ask that that be redirected to immediate rate relief. Third, the numbers shown in balance, self-supplied users receive relief covering roughly 61% of their bill. Agricultural users who shoulder 74% of the total cost receive only about 12%. That said, we're not asking for relief directly, exclusively to agriculture. We're asking for relief that benefits all groundwater users. So in summary, keep the 500,000 unchanged. Adjust the budget for which the fees are calculated to 1.97 million. That reflects a more realistic budget. And finally, redirect the nearly 100,000 earmarked for reserves to broad rate relief. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Welcome, Ms. Novi.

Thank you. I'll just summarize, hopefully, what you've heard from us today. It's a recognition that so much of this is outside of your control, and these are mandates that you're being handed without necessarily funding to go along with it. But the industry is being squeezed from every possible angle, including GLP-1s as well. But jokes aside, demand is going down. The industry is struggling kind of at every turn. And so to have this fee come now is very difficult for our members and our industry to kind of weather. And there might be a comment like, oh, it's $98 per acre. It's really not that much. When I look at that and I look at a small operation and kind of the decisions that they're making as far as how they're going to be paying their bills and what to keep and what to cut, I get worried about people making decisions about leaving their sustainability certification programs, which are the very programs that we want to be incentivizing and which help achieve the overall water use, water conservation. As Ms. Benvenuto outlined, we are asking that the structure of the, I guess, contribution that the county is making to this fund is structured a bit differently. We're also asking that we look at this budget and as CEO Alsop mentioned earlier, are we staying tight? Are we operating as efficiently as possible? That's the question that we're asking. It's not that the line items in there don't make sense or don't sound good, but are they all absolutely necessary at this moment when that cost is being directly passed on to our growers? We know that you want to support and sustain the vitality of the Napa Ag industry through balanced regulation. We're asking that you look at this particular item a little bit more closely and appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Novy. Are there any other comments from anyone in the room? I'm not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay, great. Then that concludes public comment and I'll bring it back to the board for discussion. Any comments on this item? Oh, I see Supervisor Alessio and then Supervisor Gallagher.

Thank you. I tell you, out in the community when I talk to our farmers, our growers, the vintners, the wine makers, it's consistent. Everybody's seeing an unprecedented time in our history here in Napa County and what's happening to the wine industry and we know it's not just a one year issue, it's a growing issue that hopefully will resolve over time, or there could be a permanent correction. But this is all happening very fast to those, to the growers, to those in our wine industry. The wine industry, just as a reminder, has given a tremendous amount to our communities, to the people we serve. And it's all about how do we serve the people in this community? How do we serve the most vulnerable? How do we reach equity and excellence? And we do that through the funds that we receive in this county, the tax funds, which is massive. I think I have something here on that. Let's see here, Napa County receives 450 million in tax revenue from the wine industry. The wine industry multiplier is 3.2, and California direct economic output of Napa wineries is 7.2 billion. The industry supports 8,500 direct winery jobs. And then we look at Napa Valley Vintners and what they have done over the years as additional fundraising for our nonprofits. That fundraising supplements something that we don't have to figure out in our general fund, or any fund for that matter, and is a huge lift in caring for the people in our community, which ranges around $245 million. So our wine industry has been there for us. I think we need to be there for our wine industry, even if there's not a great impact, even if it's just a little and it's symbolic and we say, you know what, this is something that we can adjust and that we're gonna try to do for you because you've been there for us. if um and i'm going to ask jameson if she can come up if and just kind of um or you know just in terms of what was stated before about the overall budget which shows in our in our packet it's 2.48 million um if it's accurate to say 1.97 million is more of a moderate budget or what would you say about about that difference in terms of what's worst case versus realistic

Right. Slash moderate. If I used the term the worst case budget, that was certainly a misspeak on my part in December. What I was trying to represent is that the rates based on the budget that we generated for next fiscal year is what I would consider typical. It is a... A typical having to project out over multiple years kind of, you know, the ebb and flow of budgets because we can't do this fee exercise every single year. It would be wouldn't be a good use of funds, frankly, would not be a good use of money. So the budget is not a worst case. The budget is typical. And it's a tight budget, I would say. What I was trying to represent in December, and I'll repeat here, is that the rates that were generated based on that number are the highest that one can be based on that number. And in fact, the point I think that could maybe help your deliberations here is that We know that number cannot be higher, right? You've adopted the fee structure that exists. You've adopted that in December. Those rates cannot go higher. They can go lower. And there are a number of things that could happen. Even if you adopt the budget as presented today with no changes, there are some things that... could, and I'm going to hazard a point to say that they likely will bring those rates down. What are those things? Number one, if we have fewer dry farmed acres than we projected or than we modeled in the fee. When you generate the numbers for the fee, you have to make some assumptions About things one of those was how much dry farming do we have we assumed about 10% of acreage in the valley is dry farmed I'm quite certain that's an overestimate and and perhaps the folks from the industry could validate that and If we have fewer dry farmed acres, that would go to reducing those rates. Another thing, if we have more people than modeled using alternative water supplies, using things like recycled water or surface water, that would also bring the rates down. As Ms. Benvenuto pointed out, any unused waivers would go to reducing the fee. We don't anticipate there will be a lot of waivers. And in fact, in the last week and a half, I've only reviewed and approved one waiver. But there could be more. And I hope anybody that qualifies and is 80% of area median income or below hears this and knows that they can apply for a waiver. But that's a very small amount. The remainder of that $100,000 that was set aside for combined waivers and to build a reserve, If the board chose not to have a reserve, that money would also go to reducing the fees. So I should have set that one separately because that would take an action on your part. My initial statement was to point out that there are a number of things that could happen that will reduce the rate even if you adopt the budget as is. So the numbers that we sent out on the postcards were the worst case, if you will, but the budget was not worst case. So I hope I made that point clear.

Okay, thank you. I'm very open to looking at the using the unused fee waiver section to help reduce the burden even if it's a little bit I think you know I think just the overall morale it might give a little boost to the overall morale like okay here's little bit of a compromise in terms of what is available since you're saying that you know the 2.48 really is more realistic it's typical it's what we're expanding expecting in standard I think this is a time that we we do what we can and you and I talked about this earlier so if we left you know, 5,000 in terms of fee waiver, which when we were talking, you thought that'd be more than ample probably. And then there was 95,000 remaining. It would allow a reduction of $4 and 32 cents per acre. Um, is my cr

if you if um yes if there was the 95 if we assume that five thousand dollars of waivers were actually um acted upon I don't think it will be anywhere close to that so let's just let's just assume for this to make it round the easy numbers let's assume the entire hundred thousand let's assume we We've literally had one waiver request that saved us $63, 62.58, running up to 63. Let's assume there are no more and the entire remainder of the 100,000 was for reserve, and if the board decided not to have a reserve, that would reduce the rate $4.55 per irrigated acre. on itself but that's would be again in addition to those other factors which would also reduce the rate the having fewer dry farmed acres than we modeled having fewer people use alternative water sources both of those things now i would like to a couple the converse is that if we and i'm sure we've all heard it If we have a larger number of people reporting that they have removed fines, that could have the opposite effect on rights. Again, we can't go above the rate you've set, but it could chip away at some of the savings from the other things. I will tell you, I don't think that's likely because even though we absolutely acknowledge and recognize that there have been a lot of vines removed that would only be vines removed since January 1st of this year because anything removed before that is already incorporated incorporated into the assessor's database and we'll be getting the latest numbers from the assessor like in a couple weeks a month So it would only be vines removed since that point. And I don't think there probably been a huge number since that point. But one point back on the reserve, again, it's funded not by the fee itself, but by the general fund. If we were to forego that, that is our cushion, if you will, for things that come up. unexpectedly um and there do seem to be things that that come up and it is our buffer if you will um against those things that come so spontaneously during the year so if we didn't have that that could also be the answer to the question of you know if we get a call can we do more about x y or z The answer could be no. So I just want to present both sides of the picture. And one more point about the budget that you're being asked to adopt is $2.48 million. However, our revenue need is only $2.168 million. And that's because the $300,000 of the $500,000 that the board already committed to already went to reducing rates. So it already took our budget need down. So that's already factored in. So I just wanted to make that quick point. Hopefully I didn't confuse with too many of the 100 of the 500 and the 200 of the, yeah.

Now thank you for that. That was really helpful. And in terms of the the what is for the reserves. What type of, can you give me a couple examples that we're talking about?

One of the things we're trying to promote a lot is that growers take advantage of a service offered and has been offered by the Resource Conservation District, but is funded by the Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which is Irrigation Distribution Uniformity Assessments. A lot of syllables. Basically just a test to determine how whether or not an irrigation system is delivering more or less water than it's designed to do. At least in Dr. Garcia's estimation and it's also our, we share the opinion that that's one of kind of the lowest hanging fruits that you can do to make your irrigation system more efficient. We're trying to encourage people to do them and they are. Dr. Garcia has gone out and done more of these funded by us, and so if we get people, you know, we've talked about these incentives. We're trying to offer these incentives, and that's one of them, that you can get that for free. So if we get, we've already gotten more uptake. I think he said he's on track to do 60 by the end of this month for the fiscal year. I would love to see a lot, I'd love to see more people call than we have money. And so that would be the pot we'd go to to fund more of those if there was interest in the community. How much are those per assessment? I'm sorry, I don't know. They're not expensive. I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's basically RCD staff time and also post-processing the data. I think it takes them about at least a half day to a day to perform because they have to set up across an entire block and measure. No field is flat. They all have at least a little bit of slope, and so the amount of water that's coming out of emitters on the downhill slope is gonna be more over time, or sometimes less, but that's the point of it. But I think it's pretty nominal, but still that would be the pot that we would pull from. And growers aren't doing that themselves? They may be.

I would think so. Business owners are looking for ways that they can cut and be proactive.

I would assume that many have already done that. I don't have a comparison of all the growers in the valley who what relative percentage have or have not. Maybe some of the folks here can... offer that information. I do know that we, again, Dr. Garcia has reported that many people are reluctant to do them because they're trying, for very understandable reasons, to get as much life out of that irrigation system as possible. And sometimes, based on the result of the testing, it might mean the irrigation system needs to be replaced. So that's a very expensive endeavor, or it can be. He did report that in many cases it doesn't. necessarily result in having to replace the whole system sometimes there are some tweaks that can be accomplished that don't but I think that could be one of the reasons it's like sometimes you don't want to know right I probably should change the oil in my car and I might need to do some spark plugs but let me see if I could just keep going down the road until it crafts out sorry

It's late in the day. It's late. I know, we're getting tired. Okay, I appreciate that. I still think this is a time where we meet the moment. That's just my personal opinion. When this came to us in December and you gave a great presentation. and I supported overall, but this was a three-two board decision. Not everybody on the board was in favor. Just because of the additional burden, we understood what it was doing to the wine industry that this is a very real, this is their daily reality. And though this may not be able to help a lot, if we can do something to help a little, I think we need to do that. So that's what I'll have to say.

Thank you. Supervisor Gallagher and then Cottrell. Thank you.

And thank you, Jameson, for going over the different ways that the fee could actually come down. That's really helpful and I think important for everybody to understand that we can't go over what we have approved, but we could very well come under. And I understand the industry concerns and the suggestions that have been brought up. I'm a little concerned about, you know, we are adopting an overall philosophy around how we handle our budget. And these special district budgets are, you know, ideally we handle them the same way we handle our larger county budget. And we are saying that we produce a budget that is conservative and we make sure that we hold a reserve. And those are very prudent decisions. So I'm not sure how we justify changing our philosophy to accommodate a special district budget in a different way. And I think that we need to be consistent. If our staff tells us, this is the budget, this is what is realistic, but we now try to put them in a situation where they have to somehow reduce that budget and say, oh, and by the way, we don't really want to put anything in reserve. I mean, I think that's completely going in the opposite direction of what we are normally doing with our budgets and we should have that consistent way of behaving. I think that it also bears mentioning again that we are putting $300,000 toward the reduction of fees. That is not something that's done in other counties where fees are being used to support GSAs. We are we are doing that we have made that commitment. So we're already attempting to reduce the pressure on the industry And You know, there are also ways to reduce your fee, theoretically, if you meter your well and you find out you're using very, very little water. We could be looking at how can we charge people for what they use rather than using modeling. So you can't have it every way. You know, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want, if you believe like I'm using very little water and I don't believe that this fee actually represents what I use, well then that's fine. Give us the data. Show us what you're doing. We'll figure out a program for that as to how we can really get to a point where people are paying for what they use. But there's the reticence still to be metering. And looking ahead to our report to the Department of Water Resources at the state, we're gonna be saying that we have had an undesirable result. I mean, I think we're going, this is not a good way to be going. And we are gonna be expected to figure out why is that and what are you gonna do to fix it? And I think that this plan goes a long way toward making sure that we can do the things that we are required to do as a GSA. And I don't believe that we should be employing a different kind of budgetary philosophy than we are trying to do with all of our budgets. So those are my comments for now.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallagher. Supervisor Cottrell? Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Supervisor Alessio and Supervisor Gallagher. You guys are raising a great range of points here. And thanks to all the industry partners who waded through much of yesterday and today to discuss this. So I think, and Jameson, thank you very much for your comments too. I think I have a question for you here, but I first just want to echo some things Yes, to just make sure that we're acknowledging what an incredibly challenging time this is for our grape growing industry. And it's a very dynamic time as well with our county budget and the inputs or lack of inputs we have from our state and federal partners. And we do wanna be partners with our growers. And we also want buy-in. So I think if there is a way that we can work together on this challenge, and I understand the point that You know, a small reduction could be meaningful. I'm happy to engage in the thought process. I also think it's worth noting. I know working with several other counties that are dealing with Sigma as well. The. Often the entire program is is shouldered by the water user so the fact I want to give the county some credit for our significant contribution from our general fund and then Also, we do want to be disciplined overall. I think this point about we're asking to hold on to reserves across the organization is is important and And then, so how can we be creative here? So my question, Jameson, is looking at our fund balance, the fund balance for this. Can you walk us through that, what we adopted, what we're recommending for this year, and what existing fund balance is after this?

I might have to refer to our illustrious colleagues here. But boy, we have heard a lot about fund balances today. I will just say that we did apply a fund balance to the calculations which generated these numbers. But if I may ask Ms. Schultze or Ms. Cleon to speak on that.

Sure, so I'm going. It's 549, state schedule. 549, thank you. 549, the state schedules. So looking at, and it's, I'm sorry, it's 548. Why do we have different numbers? No, 548 is the State Schedule, Schedule number 12. So if you look close to the bottom, it's Fund 2720, Groundwater Sustainable Agency. The estimated fund balance at the end of this year is estimated at almost $1.4 million. So it's showing that we... We have 1.4. We're bringing in 3.3 for total financial sources of 4.7. The budget is at 2.4. So we're showing that we're carrying forward about 2.2 million.

So rather than pulling $100,000 from reserves, I would suggest that perhaps we could pull that $100,000 from our fund balance. One million. Yes, so that's one suggestion I have. And then I appreciate this point that Supervisor Gallagher raised about if a way that we collaborate and align incentives with growers is to encourage that monitoring and metering Unfortunately, at this point, we don't have a financial scheme that allows someone to say, hey, I'm using so much less, please just bill me for that. I think that's the ultimate goal. But we couldn't credit a user today with that. But that's what we want to encourage. So I think that's the right direction to go in long term. We can't offer that alternative today. So one suggestion I would throw out there is if What I just suggested and so Jameson, I'd love to hear your feedback on on that idea I have no objections to that the

the business about fund balances i leave to the experts right here and to our own department um uh budget expert but i have no objection to that i don't think it puts the program in any kind of vulnerable place so thank you can i ask a question yeah of course um the costs per year of funding our groundwater sustainability agency are roughly In the current year, our revised, well, same as our adopted and revised budget was $3.4 million. So it's less. Our typical budget is less than our current fiscal year budget.

And we have a balance of how much in fund balance, Ms. Schulze?

We're starting the year with $1.4 million.

1.4 in fund balance carry forward that was not used to fund part of the budget. Correct. And you're saying you have no problem using that or getting rid of that?

getting rid of i i don't know about getting rid of the entire thing but i think we were talking about how about a million well it also looks like you're increasing your fund balance by 870 or 868 000 based on this model based on the budget and i believe 500 part of that is the 500 000 that the the board committed to contribute to this venture so it's it it's more inflated than it really is effectively is my understanding uh Supervisor Ramos budgeting by committee go ahead um yeah thank you so um if I am

If we could drill down and see the intergovernmental revenues that are in the GSA at 631, 128, what is that?

That is a grant from Department of Water Resources called the CALSIP grant. It's to, right, and unfortunately, it's, well, it's always great to have grants, but it's to do work that wouldn't have been done otherwise, probably. So it doesn't, it doesn't offset any of the other budget line items.

Okay, so I guess the, if, if the five, if what you're saying is that the 500,000 in line 48 is coming from fund balance, then we shouldn't be depositing 868 into fund balance, right? It can't, it can't come from, from both my, my understanding was that that was a 500 000 general fund commitment into the gsa that's right so i think the the the I do want to maintain that I think it's important that the fee structure stay intact because it is relevant to the nexus, right? So the fee structure needs to be intact, but I think looking at the request being to true up to the actual expenses of the budget, it seems to me that the revenue can come down at least by the $868,000 that is being contributed to the fund balance. And if we utilize a GFOA standard of 16% to the operating for a fund balance, we, we need to target a minimum of say roughly $400,000 in fund balance. So I, I'm not going to try and budget from the dais other than to say I think that this is one that perhaps we don't close, we continue to the 23rd and we make the recommendation come back with a revision of no addition to fund balance and do so by reducing revenue, not the budget itself.

If I can make a recommendation, when you're adopting these budgets, you're adopting the appropriations. You can adjust the revenues down after the fact. So you're adopting the appropriation is what you're really doing. I would like to be able to take some time to work with Jameson and find out what we can do with these numbers. I would also recommend possibly smoothing out the fees so it's not like a big hit next year as well, so carrying some of that over to smoothen out the fees so it's less of an impact. You'll also have some history more of how much it's costing on an annual basis. but I believe you can still adopt the appropriations budget because I don't believe that is changing. It's really just what we're going to end up utilizing in the fees.

True, but I wouldn't, what I'm saying is that we not appropriate additional funds to fund balance. That is what I'm saying here because if we have a fund balance of 1.389 I'm not seeing the need to add.

So it would change your total financing uses, which is what the resolution is, correct? That's what I'm saying.

That is my recommendation. So if that's the direction, it would seem to me we cannot, we should continue this one and direct staff to do the work to bring it back for final adoption on the 23rd.

Yeah, we'll take your input and consider it and how to do it. We'll work with Jameson and the department and then come back on the 23rd with a recommendation.

I supervisor would like to make an additional comment.

Yeah, but I wanted to also give you time to speak. I was going to kind of summarize. I think what I heard to this point, which was. It sounds like collectively we're interested in in helping provide some relief here and also understanding we need to stay. Disciplined in terms of understanding that the long term goal is incentivizing ways to collectively reduce and and better monitor and meter and that using fund balance seems like an appropriate thing to do at this point. And so I support this idea of continuing the item and bringing it back and it gives you a chance to figure out how to best work with it as well. And.

okay thanks i also support the idea of continuing it i do have a couple questions and an observation so um question one is is the postcard that went out was it a heads up or was it an actual bill it was a heads up it was not an actual bill that was the whole point of it was even though we've been talking about this at numerous board meetings over the last gosh i i really hate to admit it's like three plus years

It was not a bill. And you know what? Hindsight, oh my gosh, that's the one thing we should have put on that darned card. This is not a bill. But I think we made it otherwise clear that it would show up on your property tax bill, which will come later this fall. And it's a good opportunity to say again in a public forum, anybody who is dry farming, we want to know by July 10th. If you have pulled out vines since January 1st of 2026, we would love to hear from you by July 10th. If you're using alternative water sources, we want to hear from you. If you think the information is incorrect, or your well is outside the subbasin. For the people that are kind of in the middle, it's very, very clear, but many parcels around the perimeter straddle the subbasin boundary. If your well, you know, your parcel straddles, but your well is on the outside, you will not get charged. But in most cases, we don't know where people's wells exactly are on their parcels, so we would depend on people to tell us that. So that's all the information we're seeking over this next month, and that we'll use to refine all this. We'll find out how many of all these different things we had, and that'll go into the final calculation, which we intend to come to you on July 28th for approval of.

Okay, and then, let's see, I have a couple other, okay, so, where do I wanna go first? Has there been any discussion of giving credits for recharge projects? No, not yet.

I mean, it's it's a it's definitely a on the horizon, but I can't say that I would that the conversations have been. Detailed and and so forth enough to really say how much with.

Yeah, I think it's just part of that, like, instead of, you know, like, well, you know, yes, I'm definitely hearing people would like to pay less. of a fee and i certainly understand that also we have to run this program somehow and um and i would i would really like to find any way we can to i said incentivize recharge because ultimately that's the way the one way where you can uh use at the current level or similar to the current level and not have not be creating a situation of overdraft And so the more we can move toward that, you know, the more I think happy everybody's going to be about the situation. I, of course, support metering and monitoring anything we can do on that, too. I'm happy to see. And then I am just wondering if you're willing to speculate about what's likely to happen with these fees over. two years, five years, ten years, do you expect them to kind of go up with the cost of inflation? Do you expect them to table out because the program will be stood up and running or maybe even drop because the program is running and successful? What do you see as the bracketing the ballparks that we could be in.

I'd like to see us get to a place where we have enough buy-in from the the groundwater using public both self-supplied domestic users and ag that we can ratchet some of this back. I'd love to see everybody step up and take responsibility for themselves and most of it could go away. I mean I think the county will always have a role in in monitoring wells that would never you know that's what governments do very well things that people don't want to do individually we can do for them collectively that really makes sense the annual reporting the monitoring and so forth um but i would love to see everybody step up and so we could get rid of a lot of it

And maybe just as a refresher, so we've been moved up to a high priority based on status. Um, and if we manage our resource as well, we can be moved back down that staircase of status.

We've always been high priority.

We were medium at the beginning. Really? Yeah. We were arguing against that at the time. Okay. So, um, yeah, so this is something to where the more we can get our hand, you know, our. the community around it rallying, making things successful, the whole program can ratchet down in the level of intensity over time. And I just, I don't want us to lose sight of that, that this is like, not like a sky is falling situation, but it is a minor crisis and it's something, groundwater moves slowly, it's something we'll deal with slowly, but that the light at the end of the tunnel is that if we manage the resource well, we can get out of the situation we're in. So I do wanna keep that in mind. And then I just wanna make the observation, thank you for answering my questions, I just wanna make the observation that if you create a pressure on one side, let's say I'm gonna charge a fee for sitting to my right, everybody would suddenly like to move to my left, wouldn't they? And so and so there's a lot of parts of the county where we're not charging groundwater fees because it's outside the basin and it's effectively an incentive. For a cheaper business opportunities in those areas, and I just want to call that out as an economic forcing factor, which is a reason why. you know, I would I would like to look at this and try to keep as much of an even playing field as possible because Some of those areas have their own groundwater problems But they are outside the basin and other parts of those areas are I mean I'll just say like a high conflict area for residents or for you know, hillside development You know conversations that we have in the community and so I you know, I don't want to see us create a situation where we're favoring developments that are

ultimately um in less ideal locations and so to your concern uh in steps our water availability analysis updated for for this year that that's the tool that we'll be using to manage that very eventuality okay great thank you

And then I also will note for the community that there are groundwater meetings coming up. There's one tomorrow and there's one on July 1st. Would you like to tell us about those? Thank you.

Yes, tomorrow, I understand we already have 25 people registered. We're doing a virtual public meeting for anybody interested, all affected groundwater users, anybody who's just even interested in the idea. From 3.30 to 5 p.m., the link to register is on our website, which people can go to the main Napa County homepage and just put in the search bar groundwater sustainability fee, and we'll have a whole page with everything related to the fee there. Very close to the top are the two links for the two dates. As you said, there's a second public meeting on July 1st. It is from 5.30 to 7 in the evening. And if necessary, if we get a really high turnout and we need to do a third, we'll do a third. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Ms. Crosby. I'm not seeing any more comments on this one. I heard clear messaging that we are going to continue this item. Do we need to take a vote on that? Yes, please.

Continue it? We need to take a vote on the continuance to the 23rd.

I'll move to continue this to the 23rd. Yeah, motion by Vice Chair Alessio, second by Supervisor Ramos. All those in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. Thank you for your participation today. Okay.

Chair. Yes. How much are you going to charge for our seat?

Well, I'm going to look at a way to offset the cost, don't worry. Okay. So, um, we're going back to item nine B. Now, uh, this is a public hearing to consider testimony on fiscal year 2627 recommended budget for Napa Valley Tourism Improvement District budget for a total appropriation of 8.5 million. I would like to open the public hearing on this item and I welcome a staff report by Michael Kleiman, chief budget officer and Tracy Chelsea, our auditor controller. Thank you.

To repeat what you just said, this is for the 2026-27 budget for the Napa Valley Tourism Improvement District with a total appropriations of $8,510,000. We're looking at page 562 on the book. These activities of the district are funded by 75% of a 2% assessment, not a tax, but an assessment on short-term room rentals at lodging facilities. This is an assessment that was voted in by the lodging community on themselves. And it's 75% of it that goes to this fund to promote tourism within the county through marketing and events. In the budget book, you can see the estimated actuals. I wanted to point this out, shows that we're adding to the fund balance of 10,000. That's an estimated actual that is actually not really correct. It's more of a timing thing. Um, because all of this money, uh, through your board direction of the NVT ID goes to visit Napa Valley to support this effort. And so it really is the money coming in and the money going out directly to visit Napa Valley. So it should be zero at the end of the year, but this is an estimated actual.

Thank you.

Okay, so is there any public comment on this item? Anyone wishing to speak in the room? Not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? Okay, then I will bring this back to the board for discussion.

Are there any comments on this item?

I don't know if there's much of a comment. I just say that the county's NVITD met yesterday and approved the county portion of the NVTID. A good portion of it goes to visit Napa Valley, which really is our marketing and communications branch. nationwide and globally, and that works very closely with Visit California. So I think it's a good investment. And then there's some small other little allocations. But overall, just letting you know, there was supportive feedback on that. Thank you.

Okay, thanks. I'm going to pass this off. I am missing an appointment because this is going so long. Oh, okay. So I'll be right back. All right.

All right, so I guess I'm running this at this point. Anybody else? Anybody else have any comments or questions? Not seeing any. Do we have any public comment on this? Not seeing any. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve?

We don't have to have a motion. We just closed the hearing. We just closed the hearing and all these special districts come back on consent unless you do what you did with GSA.

Perfect. So does it need to be continued? Nope. It's on your notes. Okay. Do we have a motion to close this public hearing? We don't need a motion. We don't need that either.

Just close the hearing and we'll see this back on consent for adoption. I'm very powerful. I will close this hearing. Thank you.

Thank you. Very good. let's move on to the next one second yeah she gave me to me here thank you okay So we're going to move on to 9C. Conduct a public hearing for the county service area number four to consider testimony on the fiscal year 26-27. Recommend a budget for total appropriations of $715,220. I'm opening up this public hearing. Is there a staff report?

Yes, there is. So CSA number four is with the total appropriation of $715,220, starts on page 560 and 561 of your budget book. This is an assessment per planted acre of vineyard. to assist in the housing accommodations for the farm workers in the county. We have the three farm worker centers, and this is what goes to fill the funding gap. The other pieces of that funding is tenant rents and county contribution, but this is a big portion of it. This stays in this fund to fill the gap. So it only funds what is needed at the end of the year if we don't get anything else. There was a presentation or somebody talked about it, I think, this morning about the state funding as well for the farmworker centers. So obviously, if we get that, that secures these funds a little bit more. So what this budget is showing is $715,220 in basically transfers to fill the gaps of the centers, um, with the assessment coming in at, uh, approximately 644,560, which is a little bit of a decrease because, um, we're assuming some decreases in planted acres for this year. Um, and then of course there's interest on top of that. Um, so again, this budget really does just fill the gap and anything that's left over just keeps continuing to build up for times and needs where the gap is larger.

Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? I'm not seeing anyone in the room. Is there anyone on the phones? Nope. Okay. Is there any discussion on this item? I'm not seeing any from my colleagues. Then I will go ahead and close the public hearing and note that this will come back on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. Okay, we are now on item 90. This is a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 2627 recommended budget for in home supportive services with a total appropriation of $1,644,025. I am opening the public hearing on this item and welcome a staff report.

Thank you. This is the budget request for in-home support services public authority. The budget details are included in page 553 of the book. The activities are supported mainly by state and federal funding with small portion of county general fund to pay for in support services.

Okay. Thank you. I wasn't sure if you were done. It's okay. Uh, very good. And I'll just, I'll just note that this is an incredibly important, uh, service the county provides for people in need. Um, is there anyone in the room wishing to speak on this item? Not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No. Okay. Um, is there any board comment or questions on this item? Not seeing any, then I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back to the board on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. Thank you for your presentation. Moving on to item nine E. This is a public hearing to consider testimony on the automatic annual four year I'm sorry, on the automatic annual 4% increase to the T1 special tax for the Lake Berryessa Resort Improvement District budget, the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget for a total appropriation of $1,624,610 and to accept the district engineer's report. And I am opening the public hearing on this item and our chief budget officer, Mike O'Klyman, has a staff report.

Yes, this is the budget request for Lake Berryessa Resort Improvement District, as mentioned, for a total appropriation of $1,624,610. $1,394,668 is for Division 52200, which is the operations. and $229,942 is for Division 52110, which is debt service. Budget details start on page 578 of the book. The district provides water services to approximately 180 homes in the various states subdivision. Significant change to the budget is that tax revenue is projected to increase by $51,000 due to the automatic increase tied to the T1 special tax.

Thank you. Um, is there any public comment on this item in the room? I don't see anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No. Okay. Then I will bring this back to the board for discussion. Do I have any comments or questions from the board? I do not see any. Uh, then I will close the public hearing. And on this item, um, I would welcome a motion and a second to accept the engineer's report.

So moved.

second okay i have a motion by supervisor cutrell and a second by vice chair alessio all those in favor aye aye that passes unanimously by all members present state uh Okay and the increase to the special tax for the Lake Berryessa Resort Improvement District will come back on June 23rd on the consent calendar for final adoption. And we are moving on to item 9F. This is a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget for the Monticello Public Cemetery District. for a total appropriation of $112,742 for cemetery operations and $12,000 for the endowment fund. I would like to open the public hearing and I welcome the staff report from our Chief Budget Officer, Michael Kleiman.

So the budget detail starts on page 565 of the book. The district is supported through a share of property taxes generated by properties located within the district and sale of cemetery plots. It mainly pays for the landscaping services of the cemetery. Landscape services budget is decreasing by $25,000 to offset the trend of decreased revenue from the plot sales.

Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? I'm not seeing anyone in the room. Is there anyone on the phones? Nope. Okay. Is there any board comment or discussion on this item? Not seeing any. I will go ahead and close the public hearing and note that this will come back on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption by the board. We are now on item 9 G conduct a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 202627 recommended budget for the Napa Berry as a resort improvement district for a total appropriation of 2,209,812 dollars. I will open the public hearing and pass it off to Michael climate, our chief budget officer for a staff report.

The budget detail starts on page 586 of the book. Of the total appropriation, $1,692,102 is for Division 52400 operations and $517,710 is for Division 52410 debt service. The district provides water services to approximately 245 homes in various Highlands and Oak Ridge estate subdivisions. Significant change to the budget is that taxes are projected to increase by $880,000 due to passage of measure a special tax.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the room wishing to comment? I don't see anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? Okay, then I will ask if there's anyone on the board who would like to comment or ask any questions. I don't see anyone. I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back to the board on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. We have already heard item 9H, so I am moving us on to item 9I. We will conduct a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget for the Napa County Housing Authority budget for total appropriations of $2,840,215. And I am opening the public hearing at this time. And I welcome a staff report from Michael Kleiman, our Chief Budget Officer.

The budget detail starts on page 573 of the book. Of the total appropriation, $733,025 is for Division 50600 administration and $2,107,190 is for Division 50605 farm worker centers. The authority owns and manages three farm worker centers. Revenues include tenant rents, assessment collected through CSA number four, a state grant, donations, and affordable housing funds. There is slight increase to the budget due to increased costs for operator costs and client meal expenses.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the room wishing to comment on this item? Not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Is there anyone on the board wishing to comment on this item? I'm not seeing anyone. So I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back to us on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. And we are moving to item 9 J, which is a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 202627 assessment of 150,811 dollars for county service area. Number 3, and adopting a resolution authorizing the assessment levy. This has been continued from June 2nd, 2026. so I'm continuing that. Hearing, and I welcome a staff report from Michael climate, our chief budget officer.

Thank you. On May 5th, 2026, the engineer's report for fiscal year 2026-27 was submitted to the board. After receiving the report, the board by resolution declared the county's intended levy assessment for CSA number three, set for today for a public hearing to consider any protest or to the proposed assessment. The engineers report proposes total assessment for fiscal year 2026-27 of $150,000 $811 allocated among parcels of real property in CSA number three, receiving street related services. The amount of the assessment allocated to each parcel is included in the engineer's report. This public hearing is to hear and consider any testimony in favor in opposition to the proposed assessments.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the room wishing to speak on this item today? I'm not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones?

No.

Is there anyone on the board who would like to comment? I do not see anyone. So I will close the public hearing on this item. May I have a motion and a second to adopt the proposed resolution imposing the assessments for community service area number three for fiscal year 26-27? So moved.

Ramos? Second.

I have a motion by Ramos and a second by Vice Chair Alessio. All those in favor? Aye. That passes unanimously. And we'll move on to item 9K. This is a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget for county service area number three for a total appropriation of $206,000. And I will open the public hearing with a staff report from Michael Kleiman, our Chief Budget Officer.

Thank you. Budget detail starts on page 559 of the book. CSA number three provides landscaping, street and highway lighting, and street sweeping services for the CSA number three area. Budget is decreasing to better align with the prior year actuals.

Thank you. Um, is there any public comment from anyone on the room in the room on this item? I'm not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No, is there anyone on the board who would like to comment? No. Okay. Then I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back to us on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. And we are now at item 9L. This is a public hearing to consider testimony on the fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget for the Milliken-Sarco-Tula-K Community Facilities District for a total appropriation of $387,635. I am opening the public hearing and welcome a staff report from Michael Kleinman, our Chief Budget Officer.

OK, so budget details start on page 568 of the book. This is a financing district to pay for the construction of a recycled water pipeline through an assessment to the benefiting owners. There is no significant change to the budget.

Thank you. Is there any public comment in the room or anyone on the phone? No. Okay. And I'll bring this back to the board. Is there any comment on the board? I will just say, I appreciate you giving the budget book numbers as you're going. I think that's very helpful. Thank you. Um, so I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back on June 23rd for, uh, adoption on our consent calendar. We are moving to my item 9 M conduct a public hearing to consider testimony on fiscal year 202627 recommended budget for the Silverado community services district for a total appropriation of 251,430 dollars. I am opening the public hearing and I welcome a staff report from Michael climate, our chief budget officer.

Budget detail starts on page 563 of the book. The district is funded by a special tax levied on the parcels within the district to pay for landscaping, street lighting, sweeping, and sidewalk maintenance. Budget is increasing slightly due to increased cost for landscaping services, insurance, and sidewalk repair costs.

Thank you. Very informative. Is there anyone in the room wishing to speak on this item? Is there anyone on the phones? No. Is there anyone on the board? Not seeing anyone. So I will close the public hearing and note that this will come back on the June 23rd consent calendar for final adoption. We have reached our final agenda item, which is adjournment. And we will adjourn this meeting to our next Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, June 23rd, 2026 at 9 a.m. Thank you all. for a productive day.

Thank you.