City Council - Regular Meeting

all right good morning everyone and welcome to the august 11th 2026 board of supervisors meeting we're happy to have all you here with us today we are going to start our meeting with a flag salute led by our the world's best county clerk recorder ryan rocco 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. We will now move to our consent agenda. I know there are two items that Supervisor Gustafson would like to pull for a quick comment, 12B and 16B. Are there any other items anyone would like to pull? And is there anyone in the public who would like to pull anything off of consent? Anyone online? All right. I will bring it back to the board for a roll call vote for the remaining items.

I'll move approval. I'll second.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gustafson. Roll call.

Gore? Aye. DeMattei? Yes. Jones? Aye. Gustafson? Aye. Landon? Yes.

We will now go to Item 12B, Proclamation for the 30th Annual Lake Tahoe Summit.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to pull this item to make a couple of comments. The first federal summit for the Tahoe Basin was held in 1997. And I hate to admit I was there, and actually an adult participating at that time 30 years ago. But it brought together our state and federal, our tribes, and all the communities to talk about a shared commitment. As you know, so much of what happens in Lake Tahoe is ruled by that bi-state compact. And Senators Harry Reid and Senator Dianne Feinstein said, we need to have a federal summit every year to report the progress we're making to protecting the lake. and what more we need to do with our federal partners. And it really was a call to action for the federal agencies to participate more in the solutions that we need to protect that lake. So it laid the foundation for the Environmental Improvement Program. Many of those projects are included with our Public Works Department and our Planning Department. in Tahoe and I look forward to a week from tomorrow attending that summit and I always encourage people to do that. It really is collaboration that gets things done in government and I think the summit is that annual reminder of all of us coming together. The proclamation is in our board packet. I won't read it but I will be happy to present it. Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you. Is there anyone here who would like to make a comment on this item? And anyone online? All right, I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

Moved by Gustafson, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. We'll go to item 16B.

16B, if I could real quick on the Youth Commission. Love this program. I absolutely love it and completely support what our HHS department does. Unfortunately, not all the kids in our county can participate because they are so distant. So I'm putting out a plea to the students that are participating this year and the leadership to think about ways to provide opportunities for leadership for those kids that can't drive to Rockland or Auburn on a weekly basis to participate, but could still have valuable lessons from it. So, just putting in a plea for maybe some remote or virtual opportunities, or maybe the students themselves come up with ways to engage students that are more remote.

Yeah, great idea.

That was it. I'd be happy to move approval of these appointments.

Okay, any public comment on this item? And anyone online? All right, it's been moved by Gustafson. Second. Seconded by DiMattei. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. We will now move to our public comment. And just as a reminder, at the conclusion of your three minutes, a timer will sound and the chair, that's me, we'll ask you to conclude your remarks and if you haven't yet finished within that 15 seconds after your timer goes off the microphone will be turned off and we're just doing this to ensure that everyone gets fair equal opportunity when it comes to public comment and there's no favoritism so i just want to make sure you're aware when the timer goes off what was going to happen so With that, if you have something you would like to comment on that is not on the agenda for today, I would ask you to go ahead and come forward. You're welcome to line up in the row there, and we are happy to hear your comments.

morning how are you great we're going okay good morning my name is Catherine Holt many of you have known me for a lot of years 16 years ago I came before you and talked on behalf of Boy Scouts of America and Eagle Scout Project with three signs for Placer Hills Fire Protection District and Medivista Applegate and Weimar I've also spoken extensively to you about the suicide prevention out of the darkness walk for Placer, El Dorado and Nevada counties. Today I'm here with some really exciting information. K-High radio station is now under new management. How does that affect or how can it affect Placer County? We're not just a radio station. We are capable of podcasts and video on demand streaming. So we can do all kinds of things. We're one of the last original radio stations locally owned in the nation. We have people that tune in to us Online and through the radio Facebook live streaming from all around the world So extremely exciting new management. We are here to work with you. We'd love to have a positive proactive relationship with the county so that we can respond to a wide variety of different things if we ever have to go into an emergency broadcast and situation. KHI would be your backup to reach the people. Our transformers can hit anywhere within Placer County, clear up to Squaw Valley. We hit El Dorado County. They recently had an evacuation, so we were actively involved in getting that information out. So today, again, I just wanted to give you a new, improved version of Kathryn Holt working for KHI Radio Station. I do sales, but I also manage all of their social media. Sorry, I saw the light change color. I was like, what's happening? I'm going to give everybody my cards. I'll hand this to one of the clerks here so that you know how to get in touch with me. You'll have my personal cell phone number and my email. And if anything comes up, be it campaigns, programs that you want to promote, either within the county employment system or outside, please let me know. Again, we do a phenomenal job with podcasting and video on demand and getting you your own channels. So I want to thank you, Catherine Holt, KHI Radio Station, and my number. It's 530-401-7502. I really appreciate all of your time. And I love the smiles. Thank you for doing it. You know, it's hard to get up and talk. So thank you very much for being human.

Have a great day. Great energetic first public comment. Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Jennifer Plosser County. Today I wanted to talk to you about dragonflies. Dragonflies cannot walk, but they can fly. They can reach speeds of nearly 30 miles per hour. They catch, kill, and eat prey in midair with roughly 95% success rate. They can hover in place, they can go up, down, or sideways. Why is this important? Well adult mosquitoes, adults eat mosquitoes, gnats, midges, and small flies. And it's been reported that adults can eat up to 100 mosquitoes a day. There's also damselflies, and they have the same function. Damselflies are a little bit different. They're the smaller, thinner one you'll see around where the dragonflies are a thicker, chunkier one. So how to attract dragonflies for natural mosquito control? The Farmer's Almanac says to plant... Let's see here... Black-eyed Susan, swamp milkweed, Joe pieweed, meadow sage, white yarrow, and certain pond plants if you have water on your property or they call them shore plants also. Arrowhead, wild celery, water horsetail, cattail, and water lily. The Compton Creek Mosquito Weed Abatement District down in Southern California, they're also using these techniques around the area, the NIH put an article out called A Meta-Analysis Reveals That Dragonflies and Damselflies Can Provide Effective Biological Control of Mosquitoes. So in this, they studied dragonflies and damselflies, nymph and larvae, so the little creatures that were living in the pond. They can control mosquitoes and indirectly disease that the mosquitoes carry due to their extensive predation on mosquito larvae. Experimental studies have measured the effectiveness of individual dragonfly, damselfly, nymph or larvae, controlling mosquitoes by introducing them to mosquito larvae and counting the number of larvae eaten in a given period. So over a database with 31 studies over 14 countries, they tracked that there was a reduction of 45% per day in mosquito larvae. And with the mosquito problems we're having out in West Roseville, it might be a good idea to introduce some kind of a dragonfly habitat since they are a natural predator, just like we do in the parks with hawks and stuff for mice and gopher control.

Thanks, Jennifer. I learned something new today. Thanks.

Hello, my name is Shannon Conroy, and I'm here to talk about flock cameras today. So with the recent court cases in California saying that geopensinine is sort of unlawful, with the current contract in place, I think the only way that you can maintain the flock system is by having one or two cameras because when you have a network of cameras, you are able in fact to track where people are going. So I'm concerned about the legalities of being in compliance with existing laws. And secondly, with the grand jury finding that the Placer County sheriffs were not sharing data with the Auburn Police Department, it calls into question how useful that taxpayer funding was being if our local law enforcement could not access the data. And it doesn't make sense to have out-of-state agencies, again, California has laws against it, but they were still accessing data. A colleague showed that 4.5 million searches in Auburn were being done mostly by out of state agencies and 1.5 million of those left the field blank even though they're supposed to put a reason for the search. So concern about the use of taxpayer money, the lawfulness of complying with current state laws and the fact that if the contract were to continue, I would ask you to consider putting it on a ballot measure to have the people say whether or not they would be open to this level of surveillance. Because I think that most people weren't aware of the extent to which flock cameras can track people. in California, it's a do not share, do not sell my data state, but we don't have the option to opt out now. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I get to see all of you at the same time. That's a treat, I'll tell you. Some of you will recognize me from being here and standing up at the LAFCO meetings. And I just want to say, even though I had some real concerns and reservations about our little Newcastle Fire Protection District joining with Placer Hills Fire Protection District, I just want to let you know, I think it's off to a terrific start. You can pass that on. Maybe I'll show up at a LAFCO meeting and talk a little more about that. But the second thing I wanted to mention to you is there was, in last week's Auburn Journal, there was a recommendation for bicycling on New Castle Road. I live on New Castle Road. It is a nice road to ride on, but I thought the article was a little light with regard to safety, because I know that trucks use it as a shortcut. A trucker friend of mine said that. I said, why not use Indian Hill, which is much more ample? They said, we really like using New Castle Road. The problem is that's combined with narrowness of lanes. Sometimes the white line on the right side of the pavement is missing because there's no pavement for it. And people frequently cut blind corners on New Castle Road. I don't know why, but I would certainly say the Sheriff's Department is always welcome to Travel on Newcastle Road and help us conduct ourselves as drivers the way we ought to I'm surprised we don't have more head-on accidents the main thing I wanted to mention to you this morning is my appreciation for the Placer County RCD chipper program Anything that you have done or can do to nurture that, further it, I really encourage it. I'm 82 years old, fixed income, I can't afford to have people do that outdoor work for me. I have to do it. And I do do it. which shocks some people, but the CHPR program is great. The people are always cordial. They work fast. They work hard. The only thing I could wish is a little more lead time, because as soon as we know they're coming, my wife starts making cookies. And she makes great cookies. The parolees could testify to that. And they have great attitudes. They're really super. And before that, it was inmates, and then for a short term during COVID, Employees, I will just tell you, the employees can't hold a candle to inmates and alternate probation sentencing. Those folks are terrific. So thank you for all you do. I'll see you another time.

And would you mind stating your name for the record?

Pardon me?

Would you mind stating your name for the record?

Oh, not at all. John Aniker.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thanks.

Good morning. My name is Sandy Brazel. I'm also here regarding flock cameras. I live in a neighborhood right off of Auburn Folsom, and I take Indian Hill Road all the time to go to church, whatnot. Anyway, a camera was installed on Auburn Folsom just, I don't know, it was northeast, whatever. It's the Indian Hill area, but it's on Auburn Folsom, and it faces the courthouse. At any rate, that was installed about a year and a half ago. And about two months ago, I noticed that the camera was no longer facing traffic, but it was turned to the back door, the backyard of a neighbor that lives on Palomino Court 11016. And I thought, this is really fascinating, because you're not supposed to surveil anybody without a warrant, and yet this camera was doing that. So I was tempted to knock on the neighbor's door, but I'm a shy person. So my point is that you have these cameras. People are very upset with them. And just turning them a certain degree, it's no longer there to do what it was wanted to do. There's also a camera on 49 as you're heading into town, into City Hall area, but it's on Marguerite Mine Road area, and there's two, one faces Marguerite, the other one faces the traffic that's coming into town, but that one, when I cross through the intersection and I look left, that camera is looking at me straight in the face. It is not tagging license plates, it's looking at facial data, so I'm upset regarding both of those things. So.

Thank you. Anyone else here in the chambers who'd like to make a public comment? Okay, and is there anyone online?

We have somebody online. Caller, please unmute your mic and give your comments.

Greetings, Supervisor Stein, 60-year resident of Gloucester County and director of Christian Valley Park Community Services District. I'm placing the county on formal notice. The proposed zoning text amendments threaten our community's survival. While we support affordable housing, current state mandates ignore two critical realities, fiscal infrastructure limits and the unlawful override of our covenants. First, the infrastructure crisis. The ZTA allows for up to four ADUs under 750 square feet with only a four-foot setback. This is unattainable. Our hydro engineer confirms we have a hard limit on storage and processing. And we are especially aware of drought-stressed wells in our district that can face higher failure rates, which we've had addressed in the past. The math is simple. If just 15% of our residents on our water build one ADU, we exceed capacity by 100%. If the four ADU maximum is applied, the system collapses immediately. You cannot issue permits for water we physically do not have. And let's not forget the majority of our homes rely on septic systems which face incidental failures, risks too. Second, legislative overreach. We have covenants requiring a majority vote to alter density These covenants have protected our infrastructure for decades. I ask how the county will notify residents that their democratic right to vote on changes altering their community's infrastructure load and character is being stripped away behind their backs. The solution, we cannot say build more with a plan for who gets water. Special district certification. No ADU permits should be issued without a written capacity certification from our water district. A hard cap in lottery. We must establish a strict ADU number based on actual capacity and use through a lottery system. Ignoring these constraints doesn't solve a housing crisis. It creates a public health crisis. We urge the planning department to halt ADU approvals until a capacity-based plan is in place. Further, you will be getting a resolution from our district and you will be getting a supportive document from our hydro engineer to support our claims. And I really urge the board to do better in terms of having these stakeholder as well and your general plan update when I applied or. Attended that stakeholders meeting. I was appalled at the low turnout and I would say that's because of it being one in the middle of the afternoon. You need to make this more attainable and you need to reach out to each of the districts and the stakeholders and remind them when you're going to hold it. Webinar so that we can put some

Thank you, Diane.

In the future, yes.

All right, is there anyone else online?

No, Chair.

Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and move to board member and county executive reports. Anyone have anything they'd like to say or report? Supervisor Jones?

Yeah. I just wanted to tell everybody I did go to the NACO conference several weeks ago and attended sessions on mid-sized counties and attended with you as well. We were very busy then. attended Veterans Affairs Committee legislative updates, especially regarding Build America, the Build America Act, Service Transportation Act, all the things that are important to us as far as federal funding is concerned. Then last week, we had a meeting with Ami Berra, that was members of PCTPA, our transportation planning, Committee and say cog Sacramento Area Council of Governments We met with Ami Barra and discussed federal funding for transportation And we also talked about housing infrastructure and a bunch of good things that we wanted to make sure He was aware of with all the demands by governments ahead of us wanting more and more housing so Then, last week, I had a supervisor's forum where the sheriff came and talked about the South American theft gangs that I know we're having all over the county, actually. They're targeting high-end people. They're very sophisticated. They're in and out in 15 minutes or less. In addition to talking about that, that led to talking about flock cameras. Because the flock cameras are license plate readers. They're license plate readers, and they have arrested the South American gang members because of these license plate readers, as well as our DA successfully prosecuted a murder case based on the evidence from a flock camera. Those flock cameras, the data, they're destroyed after 30 days, and they are only license plate readers. They are not observing you and me. They're mainly, they're after these, the people who can commit crimes regularly, that's the only way we can really track them down, is from their vehicles mainly. They're so sophisticated that they cut holes in your patio door. They don't even, they don't open it, they don't bust it, they cut a hole in the patio door, they climb in, they go into several places where people keep their valuables, either den, their bedroom closet, or their master bedroom, several places, and they come out of there hauling bags full of expensive purses, jewelry, and everything. They don't care about TVs. They don't care. But the main thing that they do is they observe your behavior because they want to make sure you're not home when they go in. They do not carry weapons. In fact, the one thing that the sheriff notices that if they find weapons in the home, they'll throw them in a swimming pool if they have the swimming pool because they don't want the homeowners to be able to get the guns and shoot them, but they won't take the guns. And so that I found very, very interesting. And then we were also invited to celebrate another 100 year birthday. at Sequoia, and so that one was put on by Silver Wishes, so had a busy couple of weeks, but thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Gustafson.

Thank you. I just had two items, quick items. I think many of us probably participated in National Night Out last week, and I was fortunate to have I think six in my district, I got to four of them, not up the hill in time, but I just wanted to thank our law enforcement officers, the ones in the room today, and all those that participated. It was great to see all the equipment and the kids and the seniors, it was kind of those demographics that attended most of these events and really learned a lot from our first responders, our sheriffs and our firemen. Very thankful for the outreach and the effort that goes into bringing all that equipment out there. And I know they were all around the county and I think it's just a great event for the community. Although I could encourage we do it at a cooler night. It was very warm. And then the other thing I wanted to mention was we are still working on convening the groups on the Highway 80 big rig issues that we have seen threatening our foothill communities. And we're still working with Senator Roger Nilo and Assemblymember Patterson and Assemblymember Hadwick to convene that meeting with CHP and Caltrans. But in the meantime, CHP and Caltrans have worked for much greater enforcement on Interstate 80, so I warn everybody. Drive the speed limit. They are out in force early in the morning. I was on my way down here before 7 a.m. this morning and I saw three CHP officers in that stretch on the Baxter grade from Blue Canyon down to Dutch Flats. So be aware and I'm thankful that they've heard our plea and are starting to really step up those resources. Thank you.

Thank you. Supervisor Gore. Thank you and I want to say thank you Supervisor Gustafson for really highlighting that issue and the safety issue on Highway 80. It really is a huge concern and affects so many things so I really appreciate you leading the charge and trying to get some issues resolved and addressed and it's great to see that chp is out there enforcing and then to the point of national night out which is great and we have so many law enforcement out there in addition cal fire and it's the hottest time of the year in august we have cal fire folks out as well and many of them are deployed elsewhere and i just i wonder if we might consider in the future doing national night out placer county style and doing it not on in august and maybe i know we try to do it like when school is not in right when people are not yet back into school that's probably why national night out is when it is but when it's 104 degrees residents are not coming out and so we have all these wonderful resources and few people um having the opportunity to interact with all of our public safety officers so i i don't know we might want to consider it and talk to our to our chiefs and see if that's an opportunity to make a change and maybe do it at the beginning of June, and it's usually not 104 degrees at the beginning of June, so just a thought that we might wanna talk about. I know that the city of Roseville had talked about it, but they didn't make a change, but it's hot and it's so much fun, but it's not enjoyed as much as it could be.

I will say out in West Roseville, they did start doing their National Night Out in October on the very western side. So the neighborhood associations out there all banded together, which is great, in my opinion. Okay, I did have one thing I wanted to mention. So I was also at the NACO conference with Supervisor Jones, and while I was there, I went on a tour. One of the tours that were offered was a regional dispatch center. And I know this conversation has been kind of under the surface for a very long time here in Placer County. And I just kind of wanted to throw it out there that I really, I think ultimately our job is to find what is the best way of delivering service to our residents. And there are a lot of varying opinions about whether a regional dispatch would be beneficial for the residents in Placer County. On the surface, the devil's always in the details. I think there's some validity to having those conversations around what would it look like to have regional dispatch here and so i would very much be interested um as one supervisor and maybe there are others who might be willing and interested in kind of just looking at more in detail what that might mean for placer county if we were to kind of join together and work together across all of our departments to see how we can deliver better levels of service so that was the one thing i wanted to note and with that we will That clock's behind, so we're good. We will go to our 9.30 timed item, which is Public Works Sewer Connection Fee Adjustment Zone of Benefit. And I would like to point out, while Robin is walking up here, that my incredible chief of staff made these amazing cone earrings as a celebration of all the Public Works items that we have coming before us today. So I'm in the mood for Public Works.

Great. Well, good morning, Chair Landon, distinguished members of the board, CEO and council, Rob Mahoney, environmental engineering program manager with Department of Public Works. Today I'm here to talk to you about sewer again. Zone of Benefit 55, known as Labodee, is a sewer service area located on the southern border of Placer County between Interstate 80 and Sunrise Boulevard. And it provides sewer service to approximately 233 equivalent dwelling units, or EDUs. The majority of wastewater collected in Lovote is conveyed through a downstream collection system owned by Sacramento Area Sewer District, or SASD, to the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, or SRCSD, for treatment. The current county connection fee in Lovote is $11,508 per EDU. and $11,221 of that fee is the regional component that the county forwards to SASD and SRCSD as a pass-through. The remaining $287 local component of the fee is placed in a reserve account to be used for capacity-related capital improvement projects within the Levote sewer collection system. SASD and SRCSD increased their sewer impact fees Recently, totaling $1,893 over the next two years, effective August 1st, 2026, and that is split by fiscal year at $977 in 26-27 and $916 in 27-28. Staff recommend that these fees be passed through by an increase in the county sewer Connection fees for levote and staff is not proposing an increase to the local component of the connection fee only the the pass-through fee that is the regional component So today staff is requesting the board take the following actions number one conduct a public hearing to receive public testimony regarding a proposal to increase the sewer connection fee and for Zona Benefit 55 Levote from $11,508 to $13,401 per equivalent dwelling unit over the next two fiscal years to reflect increases in the regional component approved by Sacramento Area Sewer District and the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District. Number two, adopt an ordinance amending section 1312350H of the Placer County Code to increase the sewer connection fee over the next two fiscal years. And finally, number three, determine the proposed actions are each not projects pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15378 and alternatively are each exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15273. With that, I would open it up to any questions you might have or the public.

Thanks, Robin. Any questions or comments from board members? Supervisor Gore.

Thank you. Robin, thank you. I have a quick question. You may or may not know the answer to this, but how many residences are actually being built over in the Lovote track? I mean, do you know if there have been very many? I'm just curious.

So from my knowledge, the area is an older residential area that is primarily built out. I think there are still a few lots that are vacant and capable of being built, but I think it's all residential.

Yeah, it's all residential. It's old, and there might be a few lots. I was just curious. It probably will affect a handful of properties.

Probably a handful of vacant lots left, yeah.

All right, thank you. Yeah.

Okay, I'll open the public hearing. Are there any public comments on this item here in the chambers? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

All right, I will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval. I'll second.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you. Thanks, Robin. We will now move to item 2A, annexation number 3 slash 5460, Straight Road.

I'm gonna need to know how I can obtain a pair of those earrings. Yeah, I'm sure we could hook you up. I would purchase them. Could be a fundraiser.

I thought they were great, except the last item was sewer pipe, and I'm glad that the cones were chosen. Maybe it's a challenge for next time.

There's a lot you could do with this. It's August, I mean. Yeah, they're lovely. I need those. Well, good morning. Sarah Gilmore here on behalf of Environmental Engineering. I have a pair of annexations today, the first being 5460 Straight Road property. Staff is requesting that the board open a public hearing to adopt the resolution which is included in the staff report to annex this property into zone of benefit 232 Placer Vineyards. The property is located east of Watt Avenue and south of Baseline Road in West Placer. Staff supports this request and in order to move forward we request you take the following actions. One. Conduct a public hearing to consider all protests, if any, to the annexation of 5460 Straight Road property, located east of Watt Avenue and south of Baseline Road in West Placer, consisting of APN 023670011000, previously lot 11, a portion of APN 023200017000, into the boundaries of Zone of Benefit 232 Placer Vineyards to provide sewer service. And to determine whether written protests of the annexation have been received by a majority of property owners who own more than 50% of the assessed value of all taxable property in the proposed zone.

No, you're fine. I just am making sure I was doing my thing right.

All right. Continuing on to the second action. Adopt a resolution annexing the 5460 Straight Road property consisting of APN 023-670-011-000, previously lot 11. a portion of APN 023-200-017-000 into Zone of Benefit 232 Placer Vineyards for Sewer Service. And finally, action three, to determine the proposed actions are each exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15319. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments from board members? I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who would like to comment on this item? Oh, I thought you were coming up here. I was like, ooh, what's going to happen?

Okay.

All right, anyone online? All right, I will close the public hearing and have the clerk announce the protests.

There were no protests received.

Okay, thank you. I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thanks, Sarah. And we have about 25 seconds until your next item.

All right. Well, this time I'll remember to wear my glasses. It'll be easier to read all those numbers.

You can tell us a joke.

And now I'm wondering how to make sewer pipes attractive and hearing-worthy. Challenge accepted. Right. Well, the Gladdy McBean clay pipes would be cool, like little tiny ones. All right, it's 9.40.

We can now move on. Item 3A.

All right. Again, Sarah Gilmore here, and I'm regarding the annexation of 13105 Dry Creek Road property. Staff is requesting the board open a public hearing to adopt the resolution included in the staff report to annex this property into the boundaries of Sewer Maintenance District 1, North Auburn. The property is located east of Blue Grass Drive and north of Dry Creek Road in North Auburn. The applicant will be charged the annexation fee in effect at the time they choose to make payment, and if paid at this time, the annexation fee would be $3,933.28. Staff supports the request and in order to move forward, we request your board take the following action. One, conduct a public hearing to consider annexation of 13105 Dry Creek Road located east of Blue Grass Drive and north of Dry Creek Road in North Auburn, APN 076181023000 into the boundaries of Sewer Maintenance District 1 North Auburn to provide sewer service and any objections to the proposed annexation. Two, adopt a resolution annexing 13105 Dry Creek Road, APN 076181023000 into the boundaries of Sewer Maintenance District 1, North Auburn for Sewer Service. And three, determine the proposed actions are each exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15319. Thank you.

Any questions or comments from board members? I'll open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who would like to comment on this item? And anyone online?

No one online, sure.

I'll close the public hearing and ask the clerk to announce any objections.

There were no objections received.

All righty. Thank you. I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

I'll second. Moved by Jones, seconded by Gustafson. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thanks, Sarah.

Thank you.

We'll now move to item 4A, annexation number 156. All right. Oh, sorry. I am so sorry. I made you walk up here, but we have three minutes, so maybe I'll do a quick department item here. Let's go ahead and go to department item 8A. Is Amy around? Great. Sorry about that.

All right, good morning, Chair Landon, members of the board. I'm Amy Ellis, the Director of the Adult System of Care. I'm here with two action items for your board's consideration today. First, to approve an amendment with Crow's Nest Ranch Outpatient LLC for outpatient intensive outpatient services to increase the agreement by $44,150 for a revised total amount not to exceed $180,000 for the original period of October 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026. And with that, to authorize the Director of Health and Human Services or designee to sign the amendment and to sign subsequent amendments that cumulatively do not exceed $18,000, consistent with the agreement subject matter and scope of work with human resources, risk management, and county council concurrence. And second, to approve an amendment with Crow's Nest Ranch LLC for outpatient and intensive outpatient services to increase the agreement by... $832,400 for a revised total amount not to exceed $1.1 million for the original period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2028. And with that, to authorize the Director of Health and Human Services or designee to sign the amendment and to sign subsequent amendments that cumulatively do not exceed $100,000 consistent with the agreement subject matter and scope of work with human resources, risk management, and county council concurrence. and also to approve a fiscal year 26-27 budget amendment number AM-01371 for adult system of care in the amount of $416,200. So Crow's Nest Ranch LLC is Placer County's only in-person option for Medi-Cal members seeking STD treatment in the North Lake Tahoe area. The region previous program had closed in 2021, resulting in an access challenges that have been pretty much longstanding. Crow's Nest opened in 2024, they obtained Medi-Cal certification, and they began serving residents in October of 2025. So since initiating the contract, they've experienced increase in utilization of their services, which I think is great news for the area. So this has resulted in these amendments needing to increase their dollar amount. I do wanna just point out a majority of these are Medi-Cal billable, so most of the revenues do come from the state for this. and it's mandated for the counties to offer these particular services to residents. So the fiscal impact of these amendments is basically there could be a potential fiscal impact of $994,550, and so that budget amendment to increase the appropriation with the offsetting revenue for our fiscal year 26-27 budget, and then the remaining will be available 25, 26, and then the 26, 27 budgets for the adult system of care. And then there is, like I said, no additional impact to general fund. And I'm happy to answer any questions about this.

Great. Thanks, Amy. Any questions or comments? Anyone here who would like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

All right. I will bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval. I'll second.

Moved by Gustafson, seconded by Jones. This is a roll call vote. Okay.

Yes.

Jones? Aye. Gustafson? Aye. Gore? Aye. Landon?

Yes. Thanks. Thanks, Amy. Thank you. Okay, now... I really gave you a run for your money this morning. Item 4A, annexation number 156.

All right. Good morning, Chair Landon and board members. Yuri Nam here on behalf of Department of Public Works Environmental Engineering Division to present the annexation of the Hidden Creek Residential Subdivision. The development contains 18 single-family residential lots. As stated in the board memo, we are requesting that the board conduct a public hearing to adopt the resolution included in the staff report. This will annex the property located north of Atwood Road and west of Grass Valley Highway into North Auburn, APN 051, dash 120 dash 007 dash 000 into the boundaries of Sioux maintenance district one, North Auburn. If approved, the project is required to pay an annexation fee of $6,344 per EDU for a total of $114,192. Staff support this request. To move forward, we request the board takes the following actions. One, conduct a public hearing to consider annexation of the Hidden Creek subdivision located north of Atwood Road, west of Grass Valley Highway in North Auburn, APN 051-120-007-000 into the boundaries of Sewer Maintenance District One, North Auburn to provide sewer service and any objection to the proposed annexation. Two, adopt a resolution annexing There is a hidden creek subdivision parcel APN 051-120-007-000 into the boundaries of Sewer Maintenance District 1 North Auburn for sewer service. Three, determined to propose actions are each exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15319. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Great, thank you. Are there any questions or comments from board members? I will go ahead and open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who'd like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

OK, I'll close the public hearing and ask the clerk to read the objections.

There were no objections received.

All right, I'll bring it back to the board. I'll move approval. I'll second. Moved by Gustafson, seconded by Jones. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you. We will now go to our second department item, 8B, agreement with Starview Behavioral Health with Twyla.

Good morning, Chair Schanty and supervisors, and thank you. I'm glad that we were able to squeeze another item in here. So for the record, Twyla Abrahamson for the Children's System of Care. So I'll try to be brief. So Starview, you've heard about before. This is an adolescent center. It's located in Torrance, and it serves California's highest needs adolescents in a secure facility. It's a comprehensive intensive specialty mental health treatment program for young people with severe emotional challenges who cannot be treated effectively in other existing community-based treatment programs. So for your recollection, Starview has a multi-level program. It combines high quality residential care and educational services with those intensive specialty mental health treatment and rehab in a 24-7 secure facility. They are unique in California. Their integrated program eliminates the needs to admit children and teens to an acute psychiatric crisis, to an outside hospital for emergency treatment and instead transfers children between the psychiatric facility, and the community treatment facility, which is located on their campus. So as clinical acuity is mitigated, they can go back and forth. So Starview Adolescent Center, it's licensed by the California Department of Social Services as the community treatment facility, which is a safe, locked environment, providing those supportive needs-driven services, and that is a therapeutic program for lasting reintegration, hopefully back into their families and the community. In addition, they have that 16-bed acute psychiatric health facility, you've heard that term before, the PUF, and it's licensed by the California Department of Mental Health. And the PUF provides a comprehensive psychiatric and physical assessment, evaluation, and treatment in that safe and secure location. The PUFF actually functions as a cost effective alternative to repeated acute inpatient services or state hospitalization by stabilizing the youngsters and preparing them to transition to a lower level of care. And then layered on top of both are the provision of specialty mental health services. That's group therapies, individual therapies, family therapies, crisis rehab, full day treatment, intensive services, crisis response. So we are requesting that your board take the following actions because we do have need of this facility at times. Approve an agreement with Starview Behavioral Health to provide specialty mental health, psychiatric health facility and supplemental community treatment facility services in an amount not to exceed $1,500,000 for the period of July 1, 26 through June 20, 27. Authorize the Director of Health and Human Services or designee to sign the agreement and to sign subsequent amendments that cumulatively do not exceed 100,000 consistent with the current agreement subjects matter and scope of work with risk management county council concurrence. And the total cost of this agreement is 1,500,000 with the additional amendment authority up to 100,000 for the total possible fiscal impact of $1,600,000 and funding is available in this year's budget for Children's System of Care and there's no additional impact to the general fund. So if you have any questions about that, I thank you for consideration and be happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Twyla. Looks like Supervisor Gustafson. Oh, I apologize. Any questions or comments from board members? Anyone here in the chambers who has a comment on this item? All right, anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

Then I will bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

Move by Jones, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thanks, Twyla.

Thank you.

We will now move to our 9.50 timed item, Public Works Countywide Active Transportation Plan Adoption.

Good morning, Chair Landon, members of the board. My name is Katie Jackson, and I'm an engineering manager with the Department of Public Works. I'm here seeking approval of two transportation plans today. The first is our countywide active transportation plan, or the ATP as we call it for short. I'm joined today by Corey Peterson, who is a senior transportation planner and the project manager for this project with the Placer County Board. Transportation Planning Agency, or PCTPA, as well as Jessica Franz, who is an assistant engineer with the Department of Public Works. The countywide ATP establishes the vision for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure throughout the unincorporated county, as well as the cities of Lincoln, Loomis, and Colfax. The cities of Roseville, Rockland, and Auburn recently updated their ATPs as well. The ATP was funded by the Caltrans Sustainable Communities Grant Program and was adopted by the PCTPA Board in May. If approved today, the plan will be used to guide infrastructure projects, to prioritize improvements, to apply for grant funding, and to identify frontage improvements. Also, the countywide ATP would supersede the 2018 Placer County Regional Bikeway Plan. So at this point, I'll hand it off to Corey Peterson to talk more about the development of the ATP.

All right, good morning. Is this one on?

It is.

Okay, perfect. Good morning, members of the board. Thank you for having me. As Katie mentioned, my name is Corey Peterson. I'm a senior transportation planner with the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency. I'm very happy to be presenting this item before you. Thank you. As Katie mentioned, this has been a collaborative effort with all of our cities and with the county and PCTPA. This is the first time we've ever done a countywide active transportation plan here in Placer County. And so it's been a very good process and good to try and collaborate across jurisdictional lines and look at infrastructure that may otherwise be disjointed. But the way that we conducted this study is we really wanted to look at existing conditions and what could our active transportation network look like. We went out to the public. We did a lot of public outreach, which I'll detail in a later slide. to really listen and understand what the community wants to see in new biking and walking infrastructure across the county. And then we also did a lot of data analysis. We looked at destinations where people are traveling to. We used various data sources like big data to look at travel patterns and try and cross-reference that with destinations and where infrastructure can help bridge those gaps in the network. And then lastly and most importantly is how do we make that happen? How do we go out and seek grant funding to then bring home funds to Placer County and help build projects? So we did two rounds of community engagement. We did a couple of online surveys. We had interactive maps where the public could go on and draw lines and pin points on the map of where they had biking and walking concerns, where they wanted to see new projects. And then we also did a series of pop-up events across the county all the way from Rockland all the way up to Tahoe City. And so we were out in the community quite a bit for this plan. And then we also, as I mentioned, did a lot of data analysis. One of the things that we really wanted to do was marry kind of the objective data analysis and looking at destinations where people are walking by concurrently or maybe where they don't because there's genuine safety concerns, and then try and locate that infrastructure to help bridge those gaps, but also looking at community input and input from our agency staff as well. And then we also had a pretty extensive prioritization criteria, so when it came to looking at the projects and what projects made sense to bundle that would help the county compete for grant funding. We wanted to make sure it was based off of objective criteria that were based on the plan's goals, and that was looking at safety, looking at connectivity, looking at how can we serve vulnerable populations in our county, and then also what are kind of the low-hanging fruit projects and what could be, I guess, easier to implement. And I'm gonna pass it over to Jesse.

Thanks, Corey. Good morning, supervisors. I will continue by talking about the recommendations that are set forth in this plan for our Placer County roadways. Starting with the recommended bike network, we have a total of 386 miles of new infrastructure recommended. This includes 125 miles of Class 1 shared use paths, 56 miles of Class 2 on-street bike lanes, and 123 miles of Class 3 bike routes that are typically found on our more rural roads. An important note for both the bike and pedestrian recommendation totals is that the values do include the shared use paths that are proposed within the specific plan areas, but they do not include the on-street bike lanes and sidewalks that will be built out as those plans identify. There's also no recommendations inside the Tahoe Basin in this plan as they have a more recently adopted active transportation plan done through TRPA in 2024. Looking just at the pedestrian network, that 125 miles of shared use path is repeated as those facilities serve both pedestrian and bicycle users. We have 23 miles of new sidewalk that's recommended. This is mainly in areas where there's an existing sidewalk gap we're looking to fill or extending existing infrastructure to key destinations. Outside of the map extents are various projects that are recommended in Eastern Placer, including the Truckee River and Martis Valley Trails that are included in these totals. And there will be a lot more sidewalk build out with the specific plan area, it's just not included in the totals. As you heard from Corey, the projects were then analyzed based on that set criteria to create a priority score for each of the projects. That was then divided into three different tiers. So shown here is the tier one recommendations for the Placer County projects. These are 15 projects that either scored the highest and had the most priority for the county. This prioritization list is a guide to use for when it comes to grant applications. However, there are other projects the county is moving forward with that may not be on this tier one list. So for moving forward, adopting an active transportation plan will help the county be more competitive when it comes to grant applications to seek more funding to bring more projects to the community. The county does have a few various active transportation projects that are in progress in various areas such as Placer Hills Road, Taylor Road, Sheridan Lincoln Boulevard, Auburn Folsom Road, Bowman Road, and a number of others in the Tahoe Basin. This project will be what we use when we look at conditioning of frontage improvements for future developments that come to the county. So the actions being requested today are adopt a resolution to approve the Placer Countywide Active Transportation Plan and determine the proposed action is exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15262. And with that, I'll open it up for any questions.

Questions or comments from board members? All right, is there anyone here in the chambers who'd like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

All right, I'll bring it back to the board. I do have a question. Oh, sure.

On your prioritization, what does that mean in the future? Katie.

Katie, do you want to take that one?

Yeah, sure. So we did go through a prioritization process for all the various different projects that were identified, including, and we judged them based on the criteria that corey mentioned means safe connected inclusive sustainable and implementable and there's 12 different criteria so obviously it resulted in some projects scoring higher on those criteria than others and so those will be those will probably be more competitive in terms of applying for grant funding and advancing towards project development, those kinds of things. That'll definitely help them score better when we go to apply for grant funding for various projects.

OK, you know I'm looking at Eureka Road. And I know that in order to apply for grant funding, you typically have to be kind of a little bit farther down the road in planning. So can you work with me on that to make sure that we're at least setting ourselves up to be available? It's a pretty good priority level, I think.

it is it scored really well in the criteria that we used and we do have a meeting set up to talk about eureka road in particular and so really the next step for eureka road is a feasibility study to determine what kind of facility might do best out there what kind of right away do we have where are the existing constraints what could we do with some of the constraints that need to be moved or constructed around, designed around, those kinds of things. So Eureka Road's still in the very early stages, but we do have to go through some of that analysis before it can be eligible for grant funding.

We've got a lot of people willing to work on it, so I look forward to working with you on this. Thank you very much. Of course.

All right, I don't see any other questions, so I will bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

All right.

Thumbs up.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you. I'm really quick going to go to item 8C, which is the last HHS item, and get Michael up here to do his, and then we'll go back over to the timed items.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chair Landon, members of the board. I will be quick. I'm Mike Romero, Deputy Director of Health and Human Services for the Public Health Division. My department item today is the California Department of Public Health Future of Public Health Funding Allocation. The action requested is to adopt a resolution authorizing the Director of Health and Human Services, or designee, to accept the California Department of Public Health for future of public health funding allocation award certification in the amount not to exceed $1,269,609 for the period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. and authorize the Director of Health and Human Services or designee to sign the resulting agreement, related documentation, and to sign amendments that do not exceed $100,000, consistent with the agreement's subject matter and scope of work, with risk management and county council concurrence. So this funding began back in 22, 23. So this will be our fifth year of funding. This funds currently five permanent positions for us, three community disease specialists, and two epidemiologists. These are critical, core functions of public health that support the division, the department, and the community. So we're really happy to have it. In fact, we really need it. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you. Questions or comments from board members? Anyone here in the chambers who would like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

Okay, I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll move approval.

I'll second. Moved by Jones, seconded by Gustafson. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you so much. We will now go to Item 6A, Local Roadway Safety Plan 2026 Update.

All right, good morning Madam Chair and board members. It's good to be with you today to talk about the local roadway safety plan update. With me, Phil Vashon, Placer County Public Works. Here with me today is Katie Jackson, Engineering Manager with the Department of Public Works and also Josh Pilachowski with DKS Associates. We retained them to help us with this effort and we are so grateful that he was able to do that. He is a professional engineer with DKS and Associates. Before I get into the presentation, I will talk about the first few slides and I'll hand it off to Josh. The local roadway safety plan update is a critical thing for the Department of Public Works and I'll get into some of those reasons as we push along in the presentation. Our local roadway safety plan starts out with a vision zero statement. Essentially a vision zero statement is a commitment by local agencies that they will completely eliminate severe injury and fatal collisions by a certain date. For us, it's the year 2050. We really support what's called the state's State Highway Safety Plan and their goals in doing this. Many local agencies also have their Vision Zero Statements. It's not a requirement for local roadway safety plans to have them, but we felt that it was critical for us to have a Vision Zero Statement in our plan. Safe system approach, what is that? It's a set of principles and redundancies that were created by the US Department of Transportation. So you can see these six wedges in the circle here, these are those redundancies. And it's really to help drivers on the road because they realize that drivers are vulnerable, that drivers are, you know, that they make mistakes. And so that these set of redundancies are in place to help drivers and to minimize fatal and severe injury collisions. A timeline of how the local roadway safety plan came to being. Back in 2009, we came up with a traffic accident analysis system that Farron Pierce helped us with. It's kind of a stripped down version of the LRSP, primarily used to perform annual collision monitoring and safety evaluations. Then in 2017, Caltrans gave us some SART money or systemic safety money that we used to identify systemic improvements for some of our roads. In 2018, the Placer Connect was launched. Placer Connect is our complaint database that people send in traffic complaints and then we investigate them and come up with countermeasures for those. In 2021, we implemented our local roadway safety plan, which was in early 2021. It was adopted in 2024, we created our placer collision tracker. We did have an old database that we were using for tracking collisions, but it was getting antiquated and outdated, not very user friendly anymore. And so we had our IT departments help us come up with our own database that is very useful and very accurate at this time. And of course, about a year ago in August, September, we retained DKS Associates, we launched the update to our LRSP, and now we're here today to hopefully get that approved. We've had some really good success in the past with grant application, specifically the Highway Safety Improvement Program grants. We've gotten over $11 million in the past five cycles, with the biggest cycle, last cycle, cycle 12, about $4.65 million. So we've really had some really good success getting grant applications and money. Also that's again H-CIP and we've gotten the Safe Streets for All grant recently as well to help us do like a road audit on five of our roads. So we're really excited. I'll talk in a little bit about our future cycle 13 H-CIP call for project that has come up but it's time I'll turn the time over to Josh.

Thanks, all supervisors, glad to be here today. Just getting my voice back, so apologize, it's a little gravelly. One thing to add on is why it's so important to approve this plan is it maintains current eligibility for H-SIP. There is a requirement that every five years it be updated, so this is part of that process to ensure that we can continue to get this grant funding to fund these safety projects. Part of that is looking at a new set of data. The last five years of available data brings that analysis up to date, ensures that past improvements have been evaluated, ensures that we're looking at the current needs and deficiencies throughout the county, and ensures that we're not missing anything. So we want to keep updating that data. Two things we really saw looking at the data is over half of the crashes that result in fatal or serious injury crashes do come from either improper turning or navigating of curves throughout the county or DUI, driving or cycling under the influence. So those were key findings that we wanna make sure we take forward in our strategies to not just highlight a Vision Zero goal but to achieve that. The other is that with our vulnerable users, pedestrians and bicyclists were involved in 13% of those fatal and serious injury crashes. In fact, on my way here, I passed probably, I was telling Phil, 30, 40 cyclists on Auburn, Folsom Road, so you have a very active transportation as we also saw just recently. So we wanna make sure we're protecting them as well. One of the key things from a local road safety plan is the identification of emphasis areas. These are the types of crashes users that see the highest proportion of high severity crashes. They help us focus our prioritization and improvements to have the biggest impact, right? We wanna focus the funds, the money, the attention where we can have the biggest impact. So the takeaway from the plan, three categories really, vulnerable road users. We saw it in pedestrian, bicycles, and young drivers. Risky behaviors focused on impaired driving, improper turning, and unsafe speeds. And finally, infrastructure focused on lane departure, oftentimes hit objects when a vehicle leaves the roadway. and intersections, and I will say that all eight of these MSIS areas align with statewide California Strategic Highway Safety Plan challenge areas, so we do have that support there. To support this, make sure that we're not only looking at the data, but that we understand the things underlying the data. We made sure that we had a substantial partnership and public outreach effort during this plan. We had a significant number of stakeholders that we engaged throughout the project, made sure that our findings, our recommendations were supported not just from a public work standpoint, but from multiple perspectives and agencies. We also went out to the public two times. We had an online interactive map where community members could come in, give feedback on different locations, different needs. We did have over 400 unique people go to the website, over 165 contributors, and at our two virtual workshops, over 41 combined attendees. So it was really great to see the community turn out and give their input on this. Finally, another main output of a local road safety plan is a high injury network. Just as the emphasis areas tells us the users and the type of crashes we want to focus on, the high injury network tells us where we want to focus on. The roadways where we see a disproportionate number of those high severity crashes. So we identified them looking at crash history weighted by severity. We use this once again as a way to prioritize improvements, making sure those funds go to who and where they can be most effective. It was almost entirely collector streets and arterial streets with a little bit of residential streets in there as well. We do have the top 10 locations, which in the plan, the top 10 segments and the top 10 intersections. We zoom in even further. We give a breakdown of what crashes happened there, what our diagnosis is, and what initial set of recommendations would be. In fact, we're just about to start analysis of that looking towards the active H-CIP call for projects. So we have our top 10 priority intersections and our top 10 priority segments. And once again, I encourage you to look at the plan, look through your district and see what the priorities are there. With that, I will hand it back to Phil to close this out.

All right, thank you, Josh. Moving forward, board members, right now, the next steps in this process is we are implementing H-CIP Cycle 12 projects. We're implementing two of those projects for construction this summer, some high friction surface treatment projects and some edge line improvements. We'll be doing three other projects next summer, including bike enhancement, crosswalk enhancements, and guardrail replacement. As Josh indicated, the call for projects has occurred for cycle 13. We are retaining Josh and DKS associates to help us identifying the highest benefit cost ratio projects that we can go after for cycle 13. And those applications will be due on November 2nd. And then as I mentioned before, FHWA funded a Safe Streets for All project for us in the amount of $350,000 where we're gonna do a roadway safety audit on five different roadways that we'll identify. So the actions requested today are number one, adopt a resolution approving the local roadway safety plan, 2026 update, and authorizing the director of public works or designee to implement the plan. And number two, determine the proposed action is exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines, section 15262. And with that, I can open it up to questions for myself or Katie or Josh.

Great, thank you. Questions or comments from board members? Supervisor Jones.

Yes, good morning. Thank you for that report. I'm always full of questions, sorry. So I'm wondering, you said you surveyed several roadways for safety. Now I know when I've spoken to Katie and stuff about certain roadways within my district, I was told that you use crash data, crash data. And so one of the important roads for me, which you've cited on here, Auburn Folsom and Forest Hill, but it's the intersection of Auburn Folsom and Forest Hill, which is high speed, it's a curve, I think the view is not that great. Although we've not had any accidents, I've had quite a number of people that are concerned about it, and so, My concern is that you have to have an accident in order to deem it not safe. I think, you know, why does somebody have to get killed before we decide it's not safe? Because fast high-speed traffic going out there and people crossing that may be hauling a boat because they're coming from the lake or whatever. So is this safety plan going to help us in any way?

I think you said Auburn, Folsom, and Forest Hill, but I think you meant Auburn, Folsom, and Newcastle, right? I mean Newcastle, but I'm sorry, Newcastle, right? Yes, you're correct. But that's a great question. This is not the only way that we evaluate safety. As you know, we get comments and questions and concerns from the public on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, about traffic safety throughout the county, and we investigate 100% of those questions and comments and concerns that come in, and so we don't We don't wait for collisions to occur. What the document is showing is where the highest severity collisions are occurring. And we do want to focus our efforts and attention, as mentioned in the presentation, on solving the areas with those high severity injury collisions, because that's where a lot of the damage occurs and life changing incidents for people. But that doesn't mean that we don't investigate individual concerns or complaints like Honor Folsom and Newcastle.

Right, because also, you know, another intersection is Douglas. Douglas carries 40 to 50,000 vehicles per day on that thoroughfare on Auburn-Folsom and Douglas from Folsom to Roseville. And so I'm seeing a concern about intersections at CINO and Berg. And so one of those is where I would really like to get a traffic light in, the one at Quarry Ponds, because... A lot of people are making a U-turn at that point, and when they do U-turn, they really don't pay attention to traffic that's oncoming or how fast they're going. And in addition to that, I have a lot of my older population, let's say, that they are afraid to go into that shopping center. I've had a number of people ask for traffic lights because they feel that they can't do it safely. And I think it's also, I think they're losing a lot of business in that shopping center because restaurants and places don't stay in business. They come in and they go out quite often. I just think it would be really helpful for both purposes.

Yeah, so you're talking about the intersection of Douglas and Berg. That actually isn't one of our priority intersections, but it is along a priority segment. And there are a variety of different countermeasures that can be applied to both priority intersections and priority segments. I know we've talked about Douglas and Burke in the past quite a bit, and there's not necessarily a collision pattern or trend at that location, but we do understand the concerns about, it's a high-speed roadway, and turning into and out of that commercial center could be easier with a traffic signal in place.

Right. Well, I notice that both of those intersections made one of your lists. I just can't spot it right now.

Yeah, it's a little hard to see on the slide. But along Douglas Boulevard, we have Douglas and Kingsgate Drive. We have Douglas and Cino Avenue. And then we have Douglas and Auburn Folsom Road are the priority intersections along Douglas.

Douglas Encino, that's where the new White Hawk 1 is, right? And we have a traffic light there. Yes. Is still a problematic intersection with the traffic light?

So it had, I think, a couple of fatal, well, it had a couple of severe injury collisions. I don't know if you remember the specifics, but I think one or two. All of these locations had at least one or two. fatal or severe injury collisions that occurred at that intersection.

Okay, well I know we've had a couple of fatals on Douglas Boulevard, but going over 100 miles an hour on one case and another was a motorcycle doing this at high rate of speed. Those things, nothing's gonna prevent those from happening.

Yeah, the erratic driving behavior is troubling and it's something that we're trying to target through enhanced enforcement of the area as opposed to infrastructure changes. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much.

And I just want to add one real quick. That intuition, the idea that we don't want to wait for a crash to happen is exactly in line with the safe system approach that Phil introduced. The idea that we want to be proactive, not reactive, that we want to build in redundancy so one mistake or moment of inattention doesn't lead to a high severity crash. That's exactly in line. While we did have the hotspots, the priority segments and intersections, one other thing that was introduced in the plan is the idea of systemic improvements. Those are ones that we don't need to wait for crashes to happen, they're ones that we recognize improve safety, the base level, and that can be done opportunistically with general maintenance funds or can be done in coordination with corridor plans or other things, but that just generally improve the safety of intersections of segments. It's another reason why the focus on behavioral. As you said, it's tough to address directly the behaviors of individuals. but what we can do is build a more resilient roadway so that even if the behaviors happen, the severity of the crashes are lessened and the impact on other drivers and users is lessened as well.

What would a systemic improvement be?

One I always like to give is just visibility enhancements. Whether it be inattention, whether it be dark conditions, whether it be speed where someone just can't react in time, the more we can improve the visibility of conflict points, points where two users may share the same space, the better chance we have a chance of avoiding that crash in the first place or of lessening the impact. So things like the retroactive back plates on signal heads, things like warning signs, adding signage and awareness to unprotected crossings, all things like that are examples of systemic improvements that we can apply wherever we can to address those.

That sounds appropriate for the Auburn Folsom and the Newcastle intersection, but Douglas Boulevard is a straight stretch, very flat, no hills, not much obscure vision for anything. So, I mean, I don't know what we can do about that.

I drive it many times. I know exactly what you're talking about. That might be one of the segments that's looked at during the RSA SS4A grant that Phil mentioned. Those are really nice because it gives a chance to go out into the field with people that live there, work there, drive there, enforcement officers, public works officials, consultants, and really have an in-place discussion about how can we address what we're seeing, how can we address what we see in the crush history. So we try not to give anything up for lost.

Yeah, well, we have, in Granite Bay, we've got a really good relationship. Our CHP and Sheriff have a good working relationship so that when CHP's not able to our sheriff can make traffic stops and be out there for traffic violations, stop signs, speeding and stuff. So I mean we're really lucky in that sense that we do get kind of a double coverage. Thank you for the report.

Supervisor Jones, one thing that I will add is one recent improvement that we have done to all the signalized intersections out there and I think it was a couple years ago is that we put up retro reflective yellow tape on all the signal heads which makes the signals more visible at night time as well as daytime. So that's one improvement that we've done on all the intersections in Placer County including the ones in Granite Bay. Another project that we're excited to get underway right now is our sign audit project where we're gonna be looking at Auburn Folsom Road and looking to upgrade signs on Auburn Folsom Road as well. So we're excited to move forward with that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Phil.

All right. Any other questions or comments from board members? Supervisor DiMattei?

Thank you guys for that presentation. As I see that these top 10 that you have are areas that have been built out for quite a while. And as we continue to build out in Placer County, I don't see anything on Sierra College here. And you guys know that I'm gonna push this till the day I don't be here anymore. There has been one fatality at 12 Bridges and Sierra College, and I don't even see it on the list. What's it take to get on the list? More crashes, we've had not a severe crash, that I know of at Sierra College in 193. And here we're still playing around with a roundabout or a stoplight as people continue to crash there. It was just another accident there at Fowler's. And according to CHP, if it wasn't for the tree that was planted there on their road, the person would have died. So why is it that As we build out Sierra College in Lincoln and the 12 Bridges area and Bigford, it has not met that criteria. What does it take to make this top 10 list? More crashes? Why can't we do this before we prevent the crashes? That's all I have to say.

So Sierra College Boulevard is obviously an area where we have higher speed drivers and not as many driveways or things that slow people down. As you know, we've looked a lot at Sierra College and it was part of the study today. It did not raise the level of being in that top 10, but that doesn't mean that we're not focused on safety on all of our county roadways. And as you know, we're looking at that signal at Sierra College and 12 Bridges. I know you're in favor of a bigger infrastructure piece there, but I think that when we do these studies, we do them every five years, and so we refresh the data every five years. And during the five-year period that we looked at for this study, it was from 2020 to 2024. I know there was a recent collision at 12 Bridges and Sierra College and so that would not have been included in the data that we looked at for this study in particular. But you know it is absolutely important to continue looking at Sierra College and to make improvements as we can.

No, I appreciate it. And I know there's a lot of older adult communities there. I had a lady who actually stopped at Sierra College at English Colony because she wasn't sure where she was going. Thank God there was no traffic that day. But she wasn't sure if she should turn or go straight. And I literally looked at her and she stopped in the middle of the road. And I know that that's a hard corner. You have granite rocks on both sides of there. It would take a lot to go fix that. But thank you for the info. Yes.

Other questions or comments? I did have one question on the reporting piece. So to Supervisor DeMattei's point about 193 in Sierra College, the number of incidents where someone goes through that stop sign and goes into their fence, I'm not sure that's going to be remedied by a stoplight. But let's just, for the sake of argument, say that it would be. If there were seven incidents in the last couple years where someone flew through that stop sign and went through their fence, but there wasn't necessarily an injury reported, is that included in the report, or is it only if there ends up being injuries that it would be reported?

It would be included if there was a collision report associated with the incident.

Okay, so CHP was called and something was filed. Yes. Okay, got it. All right, is there anyone here in the chambers who would like to comment on this item? And anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

Okay, then I will, yes, Supervisor Jones. On next steps for the safe streets for all, you said that safe speeds for all, you surveyed five roadways. I'm just curious, which five roadways did you survey? Okay.

So we have yet to determine which five roadways we're going to study with that endeavor, but hopefully that can come out with some of what Josh is doing with our benefit-cost analysis, and we will identify that shortly.

Okay. Good. Thank you. And I'll, for that, I will move approval. Okay. I'll say.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gore. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you so much. We will now move to item 7A, University of California Cooperative Extension Annual Report.

Good morning, I'm Josh Hunsinger, your Director of Agriculture, Parks, and Natural Resources, and it's my pleasure to introduce this item today. Placer County has a many decades long history of working with and providing mutual support for and with our University of California Cooperative Extension program. Our current county support consists of providing office space to our UC colleagues, front counter staff support, as well as financial support for some program staff and materials. University of California Cooperative Extension provides Placer County's farmers, ranchers, rural landowners, and youth with state-of-the-art research-based information, education, and support. I am thrilled to see the recent increase in support. State funding over the last several years has increased and that is directly reflected in the amount of staff support, the number of farm advisors and other staff that we have supporting folks in Placer County and providing services to our citizens. I'm thrilled to see this increase. And with that, I will turn it over to UC County Director Michelle Fish to begin the actual presentation. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for giving us some time today to go over our annual report for 2025. I am Michelle Fish. I am the Area Director, cover Placer, Nevada, Plumas, and Sierra. So I got a little bit of a bigger territory than our previous County Directors. And I have to figure out how to use the clicker without my glasses. So as Josh mentioned, right now we are fully staffed with our academics that support Placer County. We have five that are housed in our Placer County office. Andrea Warner, our livestock natural resources advisor, Matt Rodriguez, our 4-H youth development advisor, Bruno Piton, environmental horticulture, our brand new small farms and horticulture advisor, Ben Baldy, and Katie Lowe, who's our academic coordinator. and she does fire ecology and wildlife preparedness with our statewide fire network. We also have some folks who are not housed in Placer County, but they also provide support to the county in other areas. Kitty Oppliger, Community Nutrition and Health, Olivia Henry, Food Systems, Claire Sorrellas, Orchard Systems, and Whitney Brim de Forest, who is our rice advisor. So those are our advisors, and just for reference, all of those advisors and myself are all funded centrally by UC ANR. Um, we also have our statewide programs that run out of our office in Placer County. These are usually our most well-known programs. I talk about our farm advisors and people kind of glaze over, don't know what I'm talking about, but when I mentioned 4-H, when I mentioned Master Gardeners, they all go, oh yes, I know those programs, I'm familiar. So we also have CalFresh Healthy Living, which I will talk a little bit more about. We have UC ANR Fire Network, who covers our county. That's part of what Katie works with. And environmental stewards also touch in our county and do a little bit of work. And I just got a phone call yesterday that we are also gonna have somebody from our, master food preserver program, who's going to be developing training, and she is going to be housed in our office. And I love having statewide program people just sit at a desk in our office because we kind of get first dibs on things. So I'm excited to see how that goes. So some news, I think I mentioned this last year, but in our community nutrition and health programs, CalFresh Healthy Living was our locally, it was SNAP-Ed funded. We had it for over 30 years. Last year that funding was cut. We were able to continue through this year because we were able to use carry forward funding. But so those that program, unfortunately, and those people will no longer be with us. In this past year, we were still able to reach over 2000 youth, over 200 adults in Placer County, nutrition, physical activity, garden. resource management, food safety topics. We supported 14 school gardens, which I'm happy to say we were able to turn that over to partner organizations and partner agencies to continue a lot of those, which was exciting. Our volunteers extended over 4,000 hours of direct education. And like I said, that funding will end September 30th. So we were all a little disappointed to see that go, but I'm glad that some of our programming is going to be continued and that And we have some lasting effects here. And with that, I am going to, again, same as I did last year, I'm going to let our academics come up and talk about their specific programs, because they do it way better than I do. So first up is Andrea Warner.

Thanks, Michelle, and thanks for having us here today. My name's Andrea Warner. I've been here for almost two years now, which is so crazy to think about. But I primarily work with our livestock producers in our county and focus on livestock production and pasture management both with beef cattle as well as sheep and goats and working with some of our targeted grazing folks as well who are grazing for fuels reduction and fire management. What I'm primarily focusing on right now is wrapping up my needs assessment in which I'm doing interviews with ranchers, doing lots of farm calls, really trying to narrow down my program in Placer County and identify what it is that we can best support them with. In addition to that, I've done a lot of collaborating with local associations and organizations such as CAL FIRE, our RCD, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Tahoe Cattlemen's, all of these folks to provide outreach opportunities to our local producers. And then the final kind of pillar of my program is research, based on some of that feedback that I've gotten from producers, doing on-farm research trials as well as working at our UC ranch down in Browns Valley in Yuba County to carry out some research trials that can hopefully support producers and provide them some research-based answers. So just some fun extension highlights in terms of outreach that I did with my program last year. I love to get folks out in the field clipping grass. It's really fun. That's a much larger part of my job than I ever anticipated, but we have a good time doing it. So I hosted several workshops on grazing management for both sheep and goat producers. I also coordinate the Placer Nevada Yuba Disaster Pass, which educates our commercial livestock producers on fire behavior, incident command system, and disaster planning. And we partner with our local sheriff's department Ag Commission and CAL FIRE to carry that out so that in the case of an evacuation or a fire on their ranch that they're still able to get in there and take care of business and take care of their animals. One, the next topic I guess that has been really prevalent in my needs assessment is succession planning and setting up our farmers and ranchers for transitioning to the next generation and keeping agriculture alive in our counties. So partnered with several other livestock advisors and folks to host a Ag Legacy event to learn about some of those resources related to succession planning. And I have a feeling that this will be a strong theme coming programs as well. It's been very well received. Finally, on the kind of health side, I work with a lot of the veterinarians from UC Davis, both in research and extension. This year we hosted a really fun webinar series. It's four weeks long. We do it in January. Folks can kind of tune in in the cold, dark, rainy season. And we reached over 200 livestock producers throughout the state on those webinars this year. So super fun to collaborate with UC Davis Vet Med on that one. So research in the field, a couple of projects that I worked on last year was using prescribed fire for reduction of barbed goat grass on annual rangelands. This is a really tough one because it really decreases our quality of feed for our animals, but it is challenging to get in some of these summer and fall time burns, as we know with fire safety. So partnering with local organizations and identifying proper times to burn to improve our rangelands and safely conduct prescribed fire has been really helpful. Also look at, we're looking at pink eye and cattle. I didn't share those pictures with you. Everyone always says ew when I put those up. So spared you that one today. But looking at different fly control products and their efficacies to see if the practices that producers are spending money on are worthwhile and if not, kind of funnel down ways that they can best control some disease in animals. looked at applying some fertilizer to annual rangeland and the cost and potential detriments of that as well. And then understanding impacts of long term climate change on annual rangeland. This is kind of a funky little structure that you see on our left here. That's actually a rain out shelter that we have at one of our research centers down in Browns Valley. And we have our annual rangeland planted under there and we can move that shelter up and down to simulate different levels of rainfall. And so we can kind of see what we can expect in terms of species composition and forage quality and stuff for our livestock based on different rainfall or climate change impacts. So that's a long-term study that we're monitoring along with soil temperature, all those types of things that producers may need to be aware of as things tend to warm or as our rainfall seasons tend to change. So all of that, I'm drinking from a fire hose. I'm going to pass it off to Matt, our 4-H advisor.

Hi, I'm Matt Rodriguez, 4-H Youth Development Advisor for Placer, Nevada, Southern Yuba Counties. And so I've got some exciting stuff to report here. As you all probably know, 4-H provides a variety of different experiential learning opportunities for our young people and has a long history here in Placer County. So thank you for your support. We provide embryology programming to teach kids about embryo development and to cultivate that legacy that Andrew was talking about of love for agriculture. We also provide drone STEM education opportunities, which I'll talk about in a second, as well as our Junior Master Gardener program. And we, this past year, served 387 youth in schools and continue to look for opportunities to partner with our schools to provide 4-H education. We also deliver our programming through summer camp deliveries. And this past year, 63 Placer County youth attended. And we continue to grow out that program as well. And we provided $2,500 in scholarships to graduating seniors. And I want to recognize my community education program coordinator, Jonathan and Stephanie, for doing a wonderful job there. Some highlights, program highlights, we have 10 community clubs, 480 youth members, and then 134 adult volunteers. So some specific programming projects that we are working on. One is the 4-H Junior Master Gardener program. We were approached by the juvenile detention facility to offer garden education programming for their youth. So right after this meeting, I'm actually headed on over there to help with that. But we're going to be focusing in on therapeutic horticulture to support youth mental and emotional well-being. The other program that we're really focusing in on is our 4-H drone STEM education program with a partnership with Western Placer Unified School District over in the Lincoln area. We're programming at Phoenix High School and it is over the past two years has actually grown. Atlas Learning Academy is now attending that program. They're sending kids to the program as well as Lincoln High School. And so the district, Western Placer Unified School District actually is providing grant funds to keep this program sustainable long term. So that's an exciting thing. And that program is funded through a grant that we have through the United States Department of Agriculture. And thirdly, can I ask a clarifying question?

Oh, sure. Please. So drones and agriculture help me out. What is the nexus?

Yes, thank you so much. So the curriculum that we developed is called Sky Mappers and it was grant funded through the USDA. So the USDA wants us to create a program for youth to teach them how technology can address local ag concerns in the community. So I'm leading the Placer County site implementation. So the kids, for example, will go on a farm and use drones to survey like the wells, for example. Local needs that our local producers are identifying for the youth. And it teaches them how to use the technology, how they earn their trust certificate for drones. But then also, we are collecting data from the youth on what they're learning. And one of the impacts that we've seen is that they have a greater appreciation for agriculture. So thank you. Yeah.

On that, just a little FYI, we used it back when we had large acreage and you can't get into it in the field where it's been irrigated or it's been sprayed and the drones have actually benefited to see kind of where the dry spots were, where the alkali layers were. It actually helped us produce Better crops and actually to put in our sprinkler systems to make sure that certain areas had better water when you have You know hundreds of acres and you try to cover it. You can't just go do it on your four-wheeler The drones actually have really benefited us in the past. So look forward to Using those kids and if they ever want to come out and be more happy to let them go play So let me take you up on that Thank you

Really exciting program, and so I will talk more about how we're gonna expand that program, but before I go there, we have three upcoming youth mental health first aid trainings, August, October, and November, so we're looking for more ways to advertise that training to our 4-H volunteers, our educators in the school systems, as well as youth practitioners. So because of the success that we've had with the drone program, we're actually going to expand it as a bi-county 4-H community club project for Placer and Nevada County. We're going to offer it up in the Chicago Park area, but still open it up to Placer County youth to attend as well. We have a volunteer, a CES and myself who will co-lead the project and we're in the process of purchasing some equipment for that. The other priority that we're going to look at in the future and continue to build out is our 4-H volunteer professional development trainings and so I'm a part of that and we're going to continue to support our volunteers with that. And then last, I'm working on some youth development research, applied research in regards to youth mental and emotional well-being based on feedback that I'm getting from the school districts as well as others that work with youth in the community. Thank you very much.

Good morning, supervisors. I'm Bruno Piton. I'm environmental horticulture advisor for Placer and Nevada counties. And so environmental horticulture is our use and production of ornamental plants, our landscapes, right, our gardens. So just for that quick primer. And, you know, these provide a lot of human and ecosystem benefits, right? They're habitat. There's a lot of, you know, human well-being benefits, mental health benefits. you know in our county there's a lot of concern around fire wildfire and defensible space and so you know and some of that stems from this zone zero regulation that's going to come about and then also this public resources code which says you know we need to maintain a fire break made by removing all flammable vegetation or other combustible growth And there's some, it's not really clear what that means. And what I wanna do, and you know, because we could basically clear all our properties and have concrete or gravel, but you know, I wanna provide those benefits, right? We all wanna provide those benefits as well as maintaining like fire resiliency in our communities. So on that track, I've been working on fire smart landscaping. And so we've developed a publication with Katie and another colleague of mine on fire smart landscaping in the Sierra foothills. And so this is available to the public and has, I think, 50 plants that are common in our landscapes and the maintenance recommendations around those. as well as a lot of guidance that's research-based on our ornamental landscapes and maintaining them. We've been holding these wildfire preparedness walking tours. And as of this annual report, we've only held one, but we've done, I think, five more since. And 40% of attendees at these said the horticultural advice was the most valuable part of that walking tour. We've had a staff member who's been out and delivering fire smart landscaping advice as well, and they've reached over 650 residents in Placer County. And then with my master gardeners, so I'm also the academic advisor for our master gardener program. And so my job is to ensure that they're delivering research-based information to the public. And we've initiated a fire smart demonstration garden at our South Placer Fire District. I think it's Station 18 in Loomis. And then we actually, this coming October, we'll have a Fire Smart Expo Day there to educate the public on the garden and the plants selection and the maintenance involved. And so now I'll talk about our Master Gardeners. And so Master Gardeners, their role is to work with the residents of Placer County. and delivering their own outreach and education to residents. We have 143 UC Master Gardeners, which is really robust considering our population at like 550,000. We have a really big, robust community of Master Gardeners. And then they delivered 20,000 hours, which is valued at over $700,000 in volunteer time, delivering outreach, training, educating people. They had 260 outreach and education events. Then we have a UC Giving Day, and they raised almost $5,000, which I think put them in the top three for master gardener programs within the state. And then they also got funding from the California Native Plant Society to deliver a programming within their demonstration garden focused on educating kids about native plants and the benefits associated with those. And so that's all I have, but I'd also like to thank you for your continued support of our programs and our office. You have a question?

Well, since he's here, I'm just curious. We had a public comment earlier today about dragonflies and the benefits of dragonflies and how they eat mosquitoes. And that there are plants, like black-eyed Susies, that was the only one I remembered, that actually draw dragonflies that then will eat the mosquitoes.

So I don't know that I can answer that. I am not that knowledgeable about dragonflies, but I could look it up and get back to you.

Well, I want to encourage you to look into it and see if it makes sense to introduce some of those plants into our ecosystem that then could address...

So, and this is right, one of the benefits of our landscapes or gardens is providing plants that are pollinator habitat. And so, you know, a lot of these pollinators have different life cycles. They need different, they have different needs, right? So pollen, nectar, et cetera. And so, you know, having a well, like a diverse landscape and garden helps draw in all those different pollinators and other beneficial insects. I could look a little bit more into Dragonfly specifically.

Since we learned it today, and I thought, all right, we pay attention during public comment.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody. Hi everybody. My name is Ben Baldy. I am the Horticulture and Small Farms Advisor. This is going to be a little more of an introduction to who I am and what I'm trying to do in the program because I started in March and I'm still learning the county and the needs of my clientele. I'm originally from Massachusetts. I have a bachelor's in plant and soil science and I came here for graduate school and went to UC Davis and I got a master's in international agricultural development. specialized in plant pathology. I have a combination of farming experience as well as cooperative experience throughout my 20s. I've been a vegetable farmer, gourmet mushroom farmer, and a CBD hemp farmer as well. I worked for UMass Extension, and I worked for Cooperative Extension here in California in the Southern Sacramento Valley. And I also have some international experience doing extension work in Cambodia and in Jamaica. And so right now, my program is currently in its needs assessment stage. This means I'm going around to growers, introducing myself, showing face at different events. And I've been doing these farm walks where I go to growers and we have a conversation around what kind of challenges they're facing. just building that list and that rapport. I have had several workshops as well, an IPM workshop recently. I've been going on farm calls as well when growers are having production concerns and I provide technical advice. A lot of irrigation, a lot of different pests and disease come up as well. I have several pilot studies going on which isn't replicated replicated trials, but just pilot studies trying to learn some techniques and what might make sense in our counties with our growers. You can see one of those in that picture with the marigolds and the onions. We were scouting and monitoring onion thrips this summer using trap crops as well as some beneficial plants to mitigate some of the onion thrips for one of my growers up in Nevada County. and we have formed a collaborative newsletter between Cooperative Extension and Placer and Nevada County RCD, trying to join forces a little bit and get all that information in one accessible place. I've been a part of several grant applications to look at some management and research opportunities for plaster nevada counties as well but my long-term plans are to conduct these regional research efforts really hone in on a website and a resource base work on ipm programs and maybe some modeling efforts for pest disease and weather concerns in the future that's pretty much all i have so yeah thank you

a little bit shorter than everyone else so all right i don't think i've had the pleasure of meeting you all last year so good morning thanks for giving us the opportunity to come and speak in front of you today my name is katie lowe i am a forester and a fire ecologist with uc cooperative extension and my other hat i wear is i am the statewide coordinator for the university of california division of agriculture natural resources ucanr fire network The Fire Network is a statewide program from the University of California that focuses on developing and delivering wildfire-related extension and research throughout the state. We have locally here two staff members, myself and Joaquin Pastrana, who's our staff research associate. His background is more in prescribed fire and fuel and vegetation management. Again, mine's in forestry and fire science, but he's based out of Grass Valley. but together the two of us work with our local regional advisors here and our other statewide colleagues to develop locally relevant research questions or projects around fuel and vegetation management and forest health as well as delivering extension materials related to land stewardship so prescribed fire pile burning targeted grazing forest management community wildfire preparedness, so home hardening, defensible space and evacuation readiness, and then fire and forestry workforce development. So making sure locally Placer County, Nevada County has an adequate fire and forestry workforce to help us implement these critical projects. So in 2025, we reached about 91 Placer, Nevada County residents through three workshops centered around wildfire preparedness and targeted grazing. We presented at eight community events and meetings, reaching over 300 Placer, Nevada County residents. And then of course, one of our biggest projects that we continue to this day is collaborating with Placer County Office of Emergency Services and their fire safe council coordinators to administer the placer county firewise community volunteer reporting tool and that basically if you all are familiar with the firewise community process if you sign up to be a firewise community member you have to commit yourself and your community to doing a certain number of volunteer hours or monetary investments to improve the fire resilience of your property and of your community. Reporting on all that data is a really big burden for communities. Placer County, I believe, is one of the leading counties in the nation of firewise communities, and it can be a big burden for leaders who have maybe tens or hundreds of residents within their neighborhood that they're responsible for collecting that information for so we've worked with oes to take on the burden of helping communities with their reporting and storing that data in the long term so in 2025 we had about 133 residents report their volunteer hours and investments through our tool So looking ahead into 2026, which we're now a little over halfway through, we continue to host wildfire preparedness workshops. As Bruno mentioned, we host wildfire preparedness walking tours. We really love collaborating with our local fire departments, local sheriffs, OES on these events to really get residents to understand the interdisciplinary and complex nature of wildfire preparedness related issues. We've hosted, as Bruno said, I think five events so far, and we're actually hosting one tonight in the Granite Bay area, so Supervisor Jones, if you're around, you can always attend, but it'll be at the Hidden Valley Community with South Placer Fire. So, so far, we've had pretty good success through these events. We also do a lot of locally relevant research on targeted grazing and the mosquito fire footprint. That's an ongoing project we're having. And then I also did some work with colleagues at UC Berkeley on doing some larger scale climate change modeling throughout the Sierra Nevada region to understand drivers of impacts on forest health with climate change and fuel management. And then, honestly, the thing that I'm most proud of is really in the last four years that I've been here, working on building a reputation, getting to know communities, and working with communities and partners, and helping our community. communities translate our science-based information to actually getting work done on the ground. In 2025, about 37% of residents who use the Firewise reporting tool said that they actually referenced UC ANR fire network materials or knowledge gained in our workshops to implement those home hardening and defensible space projects on their properties. So we're actually making a difference and getting work done on the ground. So that's one thing that I'm very proud of and hope to continue in the next year. So the event is at 5.30 p.m. at the Hidden Valley Community Center, if you know where that is. And I can certainly send you the address if you would like.

Did I mention there was a quiz at the end?

um that's all we have for you today so we're open for any questions comments great questions or comments from board members uh just one comment um kind of just to promote the 4-h kids that on september 12th at the auburn uh fairground school country fairgrounds we want to call it there will be their live auction so those kids who are working diligently today to keep those animals healthy will be for sale and look forward to uh purchasing more as I got Supervisor Gore to purchase her first hog this year, so it was great.

More room in my freezer.

So thank you guys for that.

Any other questions or comments? Yes. Supervisor Jones?

Yes, I have a question on the 4-H youth. On current projects, you spoke about therapeutic horticulture, so I was just wondering what is therapeutic horticulture? Okay.

Thank you for that question. So we have one of the great things about Cooperative Extension is that we can pull together multidisciplinary teams that focus on different content areas. I have been working with some master gardeners and also with people that have expertise with horticulture therapy or therapeutic horticulture. But the idea is that we want to use the vehicle of gardening, getting people outside to support their mental and emotional well-being. Uh, and so, uh, we're in the process of, um, reviewing literature, uh, creating curricular materials, uh, with the goal of programming with our young people, uh, to teach them a love of gardening, but also to show how gardening can directly impact their mental and emotional wellbeing.

Can you have a small garden over there at the juvenile detention area?

We do. We've got five raised beds and we've been partnering with them for the past four years, three to four years. And so it's an exciting partnership and we have big plans on how we're going to support their well-being. And so thank you so much.

And the reception from the kids?

So far, yes. We had one kid who was recently released from the program. When I was working with them, they had no prior experience, but then as we started gardening, they reminisced on how they used to garden with their grandmother. So it brought back positive memories. They're now released back into the community and are doing well. And then the next person, the next youth that I'm programming with, I'll be meeting with them right after this meeting, he also said that he remembers gardening with their grandparent as well. So it's giving kids positive things to think about and reminisce on, which is part of helping them out.

Part of the therapy.

Yeah, thank you.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. And just one other thing on the Firewise community. So have you noticed an explosion of Firewise communities in the Granite Bay area, that part of Placer County?

yes and i also want to just acknowledge the new placer west fire safe council too so we've been trying to go to that meeting somewhat regularly and engage with those communities i know the new ones have like hundreds of homes so we're trying to get them on board with the tool doing workshops there that sort of thing a lot of a lot of interest in our community for that firewise

Of course. Especially since so many people live on the border of Folsom Lake, which they don't do a very good job of managing their vegetation. So they all live in fear. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you all.

And I would just like to say thank you to you and your whole team for trekking out here and sitting through a little bit of the meeting. And we just really appreciate the work that you do, and it's so important. I think a lot of people in the community have no idea this even exists. And so anything that we can do on our end to support you guys and get the word out on the programs that you're offering, feel free to send stuff our way to include in newsletters and that kind of thing. I'm sure we would all love to put that out there. Great.

Thank you so much, and thank you for having us today.

Thank you. And then before you leave, I just want to check, is there anyone here in the chambers who would like to comment on this item? And is there anyone online?

We have two online, Chair. Caller, please unmute your mic and give your comments.

Greetings again, Supervisor Steinway-Zalesi from Christian Valley Park. I grew up with 4-H and FFA. I did not hear FFA mentioned, unfortunately. But before I get there, I would just want to address that it's been publicized now that the primary goat grazing rancher or provider is pulling away because of not being able to pay the herders or the tenders and so on and so forth. And I'm just wondering, I mean, that is the most effective way fastest way to level ground and low hanging trees and so i i don't know what the county's looking to do to support um this guy because he's got over 4 000 goats and he's just saying it's just not it's not penciling out and that's a problem um and then as far as 4-h goes that's really disappointing that it's moved so much away from animals because, as we know, taking care of animals, especially livestock and or any other kind of things like birds or whatever, is so important and it's cathartic. It was for me. But there's also, when I was growing up, I used to engage and bring 4-H groups and or leaders to school grounds and bring animals and get the kids excited to talk to their parents in that and then or engage parents in the school grounds to get more participation on those 4-H and to engage with other parents that have a skill set to put into the 4-H. Then in terms of landscaping and so on and so forth. I just, this barren landscape scenario, I'm going to put the elephant in the room. We have quiet weapons for silent wars. A lot of these wildfires, no amount of vegetation mitigation is going to stop these because they actually engage in the smart meter system and ignite the house. The house is the fuel. And if you look at the landscapes of What's happened in Spokane, what happened in Maui, what happened at Camp Paradise, on and on. There are whistleblowers that show you that those are directed energy weapon ignited fires and using the infrastructure for that. So what I'm saying is pull your head out of the dark place. There are other countries. And then water systems, I will just leave with that. The attack on the water systems is like hell out. This is what I'm saying. We're being attacked. Nobody's talking about it. So with that, I'm gonna yield.

Thank you to. Are there any other questions?

Color, please unmute your mic and give your comments.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

My name is Gould Orbison, and regarding drones and agriculture, there should be no drones to spy on us hard-working white people. We need drones to spy on those illegal and those criminal and those racist . Yeah, that's what we need to be using drones for.

Okay, I did wanna comment to Diane Louise's question about goat grazing. We did actually, the county just sent a letter to our members in the legislature yesterday or the day before yesterday about this issue and it does sound like they are actively engaged on it but I'm gonna kick it over to Josh just to give a quick update on that.

There we go. Yeah. Good morning again. Josh Hunsinger, director of Ag Parks and Natural Resources. So the county of Placer has a very significant interest in this issue around the overtime laws and regulations for goat herders that care for these animals that do this prescribed grazing, this intensive grazing for vegetation management. Our parks division, my parks division, has a significant contract and uses those goats and sheep extensively throughout Placer County, many different sites. They not only provide a great service to Placer County and keep our lands in good condition, but are also super popular with the public. They really love their sheep and goats every year, seeing them outside of their neighborhoods. So the fundamental issue is that the goats and the sheep, because they're often used in conjunction, require 24-7 on-site care. Everything from making sure the animals don't escape and go out on a busy roadway to protection from predators and dogs. and just general welfare, making sure they're doing okay. And if one gets sick, they get taken care of. And so for the last several years or several years ago, I should say the legislature passed some rules to really clarify the overtime eligibility for those workers. So that, you know, with being on site for 24 hours a day, but maybe not working actively 24 hours a day, they're not subject to 16 hours a day worth of overtime. And there was a good clarifying exemption in place. For some reason, they put the rules for sheep herders as a permanent law, but for goat herders it was temporary and it expired in July 1st of 2026. So I've been working with Supervisor Landon, working with Dan Macon, our former livestock advisor who moved a little bit south, as well as Andrea, to get some great information on this. RCRC is also heavily involved in this issue, as well as I'm in contact with the Farm Bureau and Lincoln Rocklin and Roseville who also utilize sheep and goats in a similar manner so we're all really pulling together to hopefully find a legislative fix to continue this overtime exemption so that these this really fantastic vegetation management tool continues to be affordable and available to all of our local governments

Great. Thank you. And the good news is it seems to be a bipartisan issue that both sides care about. So hopefully we can find a good resolution.

I'll also just real quick mention on the 4-H versus FFA question. So they're two different programs. Both programs do show animals at our local fairs, but the FFA programs run through our high schools, Auburn, Forest Hill Del Oro and Lincoln all have FFA programs. They're all fantastic, but it is separate from the 4-h program that is Managed through you see Cooperative Extension.

Thank you. Thank you again. We appreciate you guys being here We will now move to our to item 9a updates to the uncodified schedule of classifications and compensation ordinance

Good morning Madam Chair, members of the board, CEO and County Council. Nicole Lopez, Assistant Director of Human Resources. The action items before you this morning. One is to introduce an unquotified ordinance, waive oral reading to amend the schedule of classifications and compensation ordinance related to the retitling of the Deputy Director of Engineering and Surveying to Engineering and Surveying Division Director and update the salary grade. Two, to introduce an ordinance, waive oral reading, to amend Placer County Code Chapter Three, Sections 3.12.020 and 3.12030 relating to adding notary pay for eligible confidential employees and expanding the classifications eligible to receive the certification pay for a certificate of registration as a civil engineer or land surveyor to include the engineering and surveying division director. Human Resources received a request from the county executive office to adjust the classification and compensation of the deputy director of engineering and surveying. After considering several options, the County Executive Officer approved a title change from the Deputy Director of Engineering and Surveying to Engineering and Surveying Division Director while remaining in the unclassified service. The ordinance proposed for consideration serves to amend the uncodified schedule of classifications and compensation ordinance to adjust the salary grade of the classification from management 470 to management 471. Additionally, the county executive officer approved expanding the classification eligible to recertification pay for a certificate of registration as a civil engineer or land surveyor to include the engineering and surveying division director if the incumbent maintains active certification as a registered civil engineer or land surveyor. issued by the California State Board of Registration of Professional Engineers. Board approval is requested to amend the Placer County Code Chapter 3 to expand the classifications eligible to receive the pay under that certification. Additionally, the County Executive Officer approved adding the certification for eligible clerical employees that are designated as confidential under the employer employees relations policy who obtain a California notary certification. While it's not required of the positions, these certifications can help assist the county in providing overall department effectiveness. Accordingly, the approval is requested by the board to amend those sections of chapter three. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have regarding this item.

Any questions or comments on this item?

One question, Chair. Yes. Thank you, Nicole. So adding notary pay, will this be eligible for all notaries that are employed at Placer County or just with the certification of registered of several engineers? I'm sure we have... registered notaries here in our own building. So will this blanket everybody in the county or is just this specific to engineering?

This item is, there's two certifications being added. One, the engineering is an existing certification, but we are adding the eligible classification to include the engineering and surveying deputy director. With notary, right now there is no certification for notary in the confidential classifications. So this is a specific group of employees who are designated as confidential who would be eligible now to receive notary pay if they have this certification. With the other employees throughout the county, say for example those that may be represented by PPEO, there are provisions in the PPEO MOU that would allow for individuals to receive notary pay if the department head approved and the CEO also approved based on the work that they're doing and they're performing, whether or not it's a requirement of the position they're in in their assignment or what kind of work they're doing for the county.

Okay, thank you.

Those are one-offs, if you will, so they're based on individuals that move forward and request the pay if they're doing that work. And the department heads can also request the pay.

Supervisor, if I can just maybe add some clarification. So the notary pay is separate of the changes for the engineering surveying division, right? So we have notary pay that's available to county employees already, but there are some that are designated confidential. like in the clerk of the board's office, for example, that do provide notary services, we wanted to make that pay available to them as well.

But it's completely separate things. So this would then make them eligible for this pay? Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that.

Any other questions or comments from board members? Is there anyone here in the chambers who would like to comment on this item?

Good morning, members of the board. Andy Sisk, Placer County Auditor-Controller. I wanted to make comment that I publicly support this item for the notary pay, as well as the civil engineer that's going to be getting the additional pay. And I'm hoping that we apply this going forward for all management employees. Consider those that are currently getting certifications that have earned it on their own dime. that they're eligible for that. But more importantly, we should close the loop on section 3.12020, subsection W, where we currently have professionals receiving the 2.5% incentive pay, but if they get promoted to management, they would lose the pay. And that doesn't feel right, and as a recruiter trying to recruit talented people to Placer County, this is really a disincentive if the applicant is aware of that. So I'm hoping HR can close what appears to be an unintended consequence. Thank you.

Thanks, Andy. Andy, before you leave, can you repeat that number, the 31?

You didn't memorize it?

I got the W and the 3. That was it.

And it depends if you're looking at county code, 3.12020 subsection W, the PPEO MOU that drives this is 6.05 subsection B.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Any other comments in here?

Hi, Tristan Butcher, Placer County Treasury Tax Collector. Just a couple points of clarification I just wanted to confirm. Prior to this, notary pay hasn't been approved for offices under the PPO section. So would this now allow us to request that for our notaries in our office? And then in addition to that, how many notaries are actually receiving that additional pay currently?

Thanks. Thank you. Good questions. Anyone else here in the chambers who'd like to comment on this item? And anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

I'll kick it back over to you.

The notary pay provision has not been approved in prior years. It is based on the operational and business needs that departments are currently experiencing that the CEO and the department heads that have notaries within their operation are requesting and receiving that approval. So at this point there are no employees that are receiving certification pay. There are folks that are in process through the PPEO provision that are under new application of the provision. And then this, of course, would open it up for confidential employees to be considered as well.

Did that answer your question, Justin? Okay. All right. And is there no one else? Supervisor DiMattei.

Thank you, Chair. Going back to what Mr. Siskett asked about 3.12.00w, how is it that we justify moving people up in rank but then taking away their certification pay? That makes zero sense to me. Why would I want to stay and get moved up?

Well there are other incentives for the management employees which typically the pay of those classifications incorporate those. So the base hourly rate is typically adjusted to consider those types of certifications that may be required of the position. So it's really dependent on whether or not the classification the person would be moving into. has it as a requirement of the minimum qualifications of the position, or if it's something that's undesirable, an added bonus. So the pay structure would be dependent on both of those factors. So there's other incentives to become a manager that are built into the management package, which is things like the management leave and other benefits, but certainly if your board was to have interest changing that direction, we'd certainly be open to that.

Yeah, I mean, if you're promoted as a manager, obviously it was your certificates that probably helped you get there. So now it seems like we're taking that away from them, even though, yeah, there's other benefits to being in management. But if I had a certification that got me to be there, why now I'm going to get paid less to be there because of that? Or not paid less, but now I'm not getting that benefit pay because I have it, but I'm bringing it with me to be a manager.

Typically it's built into the base hourly rate of the higher level positions so that you wouldn't necessarily pay for the certification pay because the base hourly rate is increased and it's factored within it.

If you could send me that, I would appreciate it. To see that, how it's paid out.

We can find an example, depending on, because not all classifications receive certification pay, so it's gonna vary. Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Gustafson?

I was just gonna suggest that perhaps we could take a look at what that would really, the financial implications of that, because It is typically built into the job qualifications. If you had somebody coming from outside the area, here's your salary, and it would be built into the competitive market. This is just from my previous experience, but I'm certainly willing to consider it. I just need to see the financial implications countywide, because it could be a huge change. Absolutely.

Okay, any other questions or comments? then I will bring it back to the board. I'll move approval of the item.

Second.

Moved by Gore, seconded by DiMattei. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. We'll move to 9B.

Nicole Lopez, Assistant Director of Human Resources for the Record. The action before you is to introduce an uncodified ordinance, waive oral reading, to amend the schedule of classifications and compensation ordinance to create the classification of assistant chief district attorney investigator and to adjust the salary of the chief district attorney investigator classification. You may recall this action was presented and approved by the board at the July 14th meeting where a side letter agreement recognizing the new classification in the current Lima MOU was also approved. This item is being reintroduced to update the base hourly rates to reflect the recent general wage increase. The proposed salary grades were submitted while the general wage increase was being implemented So those increases were not reflected in the original proposal. The revised estimate to the annual cost associated with this request is approximately $364,746 including salary and benefits. Funding is available in the district attorney's office budget and will be included in the future year's budget for the proposed budgets for board's consideration in the future. I'm happy to address any questions that you may have on this item.

Thank you. Questions or comments on this item? And is there anyone here who would like to make a comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

Okay, I'll bring it back to the board. I'll move approval. I'll second. Moved by Jones, seconded by Gustafson. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. And Supervisor Gore absent. We'll move to 9C.

Nicole Lopez, Assistant Director of Human Resources. The action requested is to one, approve the renewal agreement with Athens Insurance Inc., DBA Athens administrators in the maximum amount of $1,342,254 for the three year period of July 1, 2026 through June 30th of 2029. And the second item is to authorize the director of human resources to sign the renewal agreement and all resulting documents subject to county council and risk management concurrence. The county is self-insured employer under the California workers' compensation laws. To administer the self-insurance program, the county retains the services of a third party administrator to manage the processing of workers' compensation claims and to ensure the county complies with the various regulations and procedures that govern a self-insured workers' compensation program. Following a rigorous RFP evaluation process in 2023, Athens Administrators was selected as the top-ranked firm due to their ability to meet the county's high expectations and service demands. Over the course of the initial three-year contract term, Athens has proven to be an integral partner in advancing and supporting the county's objectives. As a result, we're requesting to extend the contract. The total fiscal impact, the total cost is not to exceed $1,342,254. Funding for the first year totaling $447,418 is included in the fiscal year 26-27 workers' compensation insurance budget, and any additional fiscal year's costs would be included in the future year's budget. There's no additional impact to the general fund. Happy to entertain any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Supervisor Jones.

Oh. Polly.

Any other questions, comments? Anyone here in the chambers who'd like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

All right. I'll bring it back to the board. I'm in approval. Moved by Jones, seconded by DiMattei. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions? Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Item 10A, Placer County Evacuation and Transportation Resiliency Study Update.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dave Atkinson, Assistant Director of Emergency Services, here with Courtney Peterson from Placer County Transportation Planning Agency. We're here to give your board an update on an important project that we have been working on, and we haven't talked to you about this project since your board approved it since June of 2025. The project is the Evacuation Transportation Resiliency Study. uh... just to give you project overview uh... this is built upon a long-term partnership that the county has had with plaster camp county transportation planning agency uh... as well as a multi did it disciplinary department effort by placer county uh... as evidenced by staff from several different apartments here in the room today Funding for the project is through a Caltrans climate adaptation grant, plus a generous contribution from your board of $100,000 to help with this project. The goal of this project is to enhance Placer County's transportation system's ability to facilitate safe, orderly, and efficient movement of people away from imminent or ongoing hazardous incidents, and to ensure access for responders during emergencies and disasters. The outcome that we are looking to achieve with this project is to provide a prioritized list of transportation improvements and other resiliency opportunities that will help Placer County facilitate faster and safer mass evacuations. Of course, this effort, as I mentioned, is multidisciplinary. Another one of the goals of this project is to coordinate with the county safety element, specifically Senate Bill 99, which has to do with single ingress for communities, as well as AB 747 and AB 1409, which has to do with evacuation route assessments. Another big benefit of this project is the fact that it's being done in parallel with several other efforts ongoing. Of course, your board is well aware of the general plan update that we are heavily involved in, as well as local hazard mitigation plan update that we hope to bring to your board here at the end of this calendar year. uh... the community wildfire protection plan work that we are engaged in currently and the p c t p a countywide zero emission vehicle plan as well as some other plans so our goal here is really tried to uh... both uh... horizontally and vertically integrate these planning efforts uh... so they'll speak to each other in our alignment with each other You know, in years past, oftentimes these plans are done at different times and they're based on different assumptions and things like that. And our goal is to try to bring these all together and kind of under one umbrella so that they are all in better alignment. And with that, I will turn it over to my partner here.

All right. Good morning again. It's good to be here. As Dave mentioned, my name's Corey Peterson, senior planner with PCTPA and the project manager for this important study. I'm gonna kind of go through our scope of work kind of at a high level. I'll hit on most of these points throughout the presentation and then of course we'll open up for any questions. The first thing that we worked on was assessment of existing conditions. So looking at the existing county roadways, the county infrastructure, communications infrastructure, looking at elements of your safety element and looking at high fire severity zones and limited evacuation areas of the county and trying to get a good baseline for subsequent analysis tasks that we would be doing. We did one round of community engagement. We have another one coming up. I'll talk about that in a minute. We also did a pretty robust data analysis and simulation modeling exercise as well. And then currently we're working on our recommended transportation improvements that would help facilitate evacuation. And then throughout the whole process there's been a lot of stakeholder coordination with Placid County Sheriff, with other county departments, and with the six cities and the town as well. And then we're expecting a draft Report to be ready probably later this year and then go for completion in early 27 So when we talk about hazards, you know, obviously this is a very it's a very broad definition We're really focusing on these five Hazards specifically so obviously in Placer County the big one is wildfire That's you know, a lot of our resources in the studies looking at wildfire and wildfire evacuation but also concerns about flooding especially in the west part of the county and Extreme snowfall, particularly in the eastern part of the county, and believe it or not, that is a neighborhood that's over at Donner Summit near the county line during the extreme snow event we had a few years ago. Extreme heat, like we've been having this week, and extended power shutoffs, such as PSPS from PG&E. So these are really what we've been focusing on the most in this study. One of the things that we did early on was we held what we're calling a virtual incident command center workshop. And so this was a gathering of transportation officials, local law enforcement, fire departments. We had several of our surrounding neighbor counties join us, such as Nevada County, Washoe County, Nevada, the town of Truckee was involved. We had two of these workshops. We had one for the eastern part of the county up in Truckee, and then we held one at OES here in Auburn for the western county. And really what we're trying to achieve is to develop some plausible scenarios for a wide variety of hazards that we could then analyze and recommend improvements to help facilitate evacuation. And this is directly based off of input from our first responders who are out there responding to these emergencies as they happen. We also identified, besides, you know, besides identifying areas for specifically to analyze through simulation modeling, there are other areas that were looked at for qualitative assessments, which I'll explain here in a minute. And then public engagement has been a big part of this plan. We really took a three, three-phased approach, looking to listen to the community. That was the first round of outreach that we did about a year ago, and then analyzing that feedback and looking for not just specific locations where there are evacuation concerns, whether it's an infrastructure constraint or looking at vegetation management along roadways, and then trying to identify kind of what are the geographic areas of concerns across the county. and how does that identify gaps in our network that need to be addressed? And then lastly, applying that feedback to our recommendations and supporting future grant applications to help implement them. So for our public engagement, we had a project website, interactive map. People could go in and drop pins and draw lines. You can see that in the bottom right of the slide. We had a lot of feedback from all across the county. We did focused interviews. We had pop-up events at different locations from Auburn, Colfax, all the way up to the Tahoe Basin. We also did presentations to Fire Safe Alliance, Fire Safe Councils, and have been very involved with those groups as well. And then some of the feedback we received, we talked to hundreds of people at our pop-up events through presentations. We had a lot of people respond to our survey. Most of these will probably not come as a big surprise. There are a lot of areas of the county that have really big evacuation concerns with few exit routes for people leaving their neighborhoods, bottlenecks on highways, looking at narrow shoulders, vegetation clearing along roadways, and then also evacuation challenges for seniors, people with disabilities, or people who have livestock or pets that have to evacuate. And then we also heard more desire for real-time information, looking at the communications side rather than just infrastructure, especially those who may not speak English as a first language. For data analysis, we conducted an analysis using a traffic simulation model, and so essentially we fed in traffic, we looked at a wide variety of scenarios, again, through our partnership with law enforcement and fire, to look at what would a realistic evacuation look like, and then what are some projects that could help facilitate evacuation in these areas. We also looked at qualitative assessment areas in kind of the foothill areas, looking at key transportation routes, and then again, documenting those corridor constraints on those one-way and one-way-out communities where maybe there could be better signage, better vegetation clearing, or power pole hardening. And then lastly, just some examples of infrastructure improvements we're looking at. This could be areas that have a potential secondary egress where emergency responders are able to get in and we're able to run contraflow on some roadways. Looking at shoulder widening, intersection controls, and also trail connections can be helpful as well. And then also operational strategies like signal timing, traffic control points where we have an officer out flagging traffic to try and speed up the evacuation. And then one thing that we haven't mentioned is we're also doing a task to look at resiliency hubs. So looking at areas like community centers, libraries, cooling centers in extreme heat conditions where people can go, either whether they've evacuated or whether there's bad smoke or extreme heat, they can go for some air conditioning and relief from the heat. So next steps, we are gonna be holding more stakeholder meetings and finalizing our recommendations. We'll be holding a series of pop-up events in September. We'll be in Auburn, Forest Hill, Colfax, and up in Tahoe City, talking to the public about the draft plan, and then we expect a draft to be ready right around the end of the year and into early 27. And with that, we're happy to take questions.

Great, thank you. Any questions or comments from board members? Supervisor Gustafson.

Thank you, thank you. I'm excited to get this completed and answer some of the public's concerns about this. Two points I didn't hear you speak to, and this may or may not be part of the study. First, I think the first one is, was TRPA involved as, and TTD involved in the transportation evacuation in the basin? Absolutely.

And that's part of the stakeholder outreach that Corey mentioned. We've had several meetings with TRPA. They have a related but not exactly the same type of study going on. I think it's a PROTECT grant that I think that they got. So it was important for us to make sure that we were in alignment. town of Truckee same thing they are doing a similar effort and so same thing we want to make sure especially in that area so much evacuation is going to you know go from one jurisdiction to another and so making sure that there's that good coordination you know for the basin a lot of that evacuation flow is going to hopefully end up at interstate 80 in order to get there they've got to go through Nevada county in the town of Truckee so making sure that both of our studies, again, have those same assumptions so that any projects that come out of either or both study complement each other. So a lot of coordination, which is why we're a couple of years into this now, and a lot of that is just that coordination and really making sure that everybody is pulling in the same direction as we do this together.

I appreciate that very much and I know a little bit about the PROTECT grant and the other efforts going on in the basin. The other comment I have is I sometimes think we neglect to really educate the public on safe refuge and what they can do to protect themselves if all else fails and I hear this all the time that people think they have to get out of an area And are afraid that they're not going to be able to get out and there are some steps they can take and and so I'm trying to I Understand a concern that we don't want to encourage people to stay when the sheriffs are asking them to evacuate but if the traffic is jammed and they don't have a or knowledge of what they could do to protect their loved ones, people panic and maybe do the wrong thing. So I would just, as we're talking about evacuation and the significant concerns people have, how can we weave in safe refuge in a manner in which they know how much space they need, look for those golf courses, go to the water, the beach, You know, in Tahoe I hear this all the time and I'm thinking so many of us live very close to accessing the water if all else failed. And so I just, I don't want to take for granted that the public really doesn't know what our firefighters are trained in, what our sheriff's deputies are, what kind of areas to look for if the fire comes at them.

Two thoughts on that. So one is, Corey touched on this just briefly as earlier part of the presentation. So another component of this project is this resilience hub concept. The idea that not all disasters necessarily require or it's even desirable for people to totally leave the area, and so what can we do to sort of set ourselves up for figuring out what does a resilience hub need to have with it? An interesting part of this project too is, and it was mentioned as part of the plans that we're aligning with is, as electric vehicles become more prevalent, thinking about how does electric vehicles, as part of evacuations, what does that mean for the amenities and things that we need to be thinking about, not only during mass evacuations, but again, these resilience hubs. you know what does that look like so that is definitely part of the thinking i've been very fortunate that our sheriff's department has been an active participant in this all the way along because we know when we go to these meetings and have these conversations as you mentioned you know this comes up what do we do if and so making sure you know that we can address those as we go along it's been a real part of this and so again a lot of the public outreach again another I would say another benefit of the fact we're doing all these plans together as you know as we talk about vegetative management for areas where maybe there aren't a lot of the ingress egress options and that means maybe there's some extra effort there to harden those routes to just doubly ensure that they are available how do we also make sure that's being well addressed in the community wildfire protection plan local hazard mitigation plan things like that so definitely part of our thinking supervisor as we've been working our way through this I appreciate that I know

Many, many, many winter storms where all exits were closed and people had to hunker down without power, without Wi-Fi, without necessarily having communications. So thank you.

I had one question. And when the report, the draft report comes out in the fall, is that something that will be circulated out to the public for them to comment on? Or what is the kind of public engagement at that point?

Absolutely. So as Corey mentioned, we're in the process of kind of putting the meat, if you will, together. We have a lot of stakeholder outreach to do along with that because a lot of these projects affect our cities or special districts and that. And so I want to make sure that we're in alignment with You know, they're thinking in terms of projects and that we obviously don't want to recommend something that's out of alignment with, you know, with another jurisdictions thinking on what they want to do. But absolutely, this will be out for public review. It's a it's a grant requirement, honestly, is part of the the money that funding that we receive from Caltrans, that there's a lot of public engagement. We'll see this again at the PCTPA board, and there will be a significant amount of outreach once this comes out for the public to look at.

Okay, great. And you'll be circulating it to us as well so we can get it out to our MAC members. Okay, perfect. Any other questions or comments from board members? Is there anyone here in the chambers who would like to comment on this item?

Hi, I'm Jennifer, Placer County. I just have a question, and Mr. Atkins kind of touched on it, but do we have enough gas-powered vehicles for evacuations with the laws that are coming to create so many electric vehicles going into fleets in our county and in our special districts? Because in a lot of our areas where this kind of evacuation's gonna be needed, we're in a different kind of terrain. And electric vehicles, when you get the batteries wet, can turn into a fire bomb. If we're on electric buses and it gets caught in fire, if electric vehicle starts on fire, it can take a whole fire truck to put out or not be able to put out at all. So I was just curious if you guys have factored in the electric vehicles, the dangers of them in certain situations, and if we are able maybe to lobby to our legislators for this to keep gas-powered vehicles that are gonna be safer and more efficient probably for these kinds of situations. Thank you.

Thank you. Yep, that'd be great. Unless there, is there anyone else in here who'd like to make a comment? And is there anyone online?

We have one online, Chair. Okay, I'll have you wait then.

So as I mentioned.

Oh no, sorry, I'll have you wait until this next one.

Caller, please unmute and give your comments.

Greetings again, Supervisor Steinweiss, Alessi District 5. I'm going to just piggyback off a little bit of what Jennifer had brought up because I had just watched a couple of videos regarding how many vehicles are now mandatory to be parked outside because they're so highly defective and incendiary. So this is a huge problem. We have the state trying to mandate things and pushing manufacturers into creating fire bombs that can't be put out. That's a huge problem. But also, I'm recommending, too, that, you know, European countries, because they've been under, and other countries that have been under wars, have fallout shelters or bomb shelters. And I would suggest that infrastructure starts to be implemented in this country, because I really feel like World War III is already here. We are already getting cyber attacked, water infrastructure, so on and so forth. So why aren't we not looking at shelter in place in ground structures for people to run to rather than to drive away from? I mean, you have military dumps everywhere. There's no reason for these types of infrastructures so people aren't caught on the road dying like they were in paradise and or up in Spokane or wherever. So, you know, I never hear anybody talk about shelter in-ground. European countries have that dialed in. Why don't we? And with that, I yield. MS.

Thank you. Anyone else? MS. No one else cares.

Thank you, Supervisor. So in response to the zero emission vehicles, as I mentioned, we're certainly taking a look at that. It presents some interesting challenges. If someone runs out of gas during an evacuation, it's easy enough to put a couple gallons of gas in to keep them going. What does that need to look like with an electric vehicle? Certainly something that we're looking at as part of this. And then of course another aspect, and it's not just an electric vehicle issue, but there are folks out there who do not own their own transportation or maybe can't get to their own transportation in a particular situation. And so that's definitely something that's been considered as we look at some of these analysis as we continue to push public transportation and that for other reasons. That also presents a challenge then during any kind of large scale mass evacuation of folks' cars several miles away for our park and ride situation or something. What do we do about that? And so that's part of what's being looked at that. And Sheriff is here, but I don't want to speak for them, but I know that's something we've had a lot of conversations about as we think about evacuations in particular situations. How are we gonna move people who can't just get in their own car and drive away? Obviously, we're very fortunate that a large percentage of the county's population has that ability, but not everyone does, and so that's not something that's forgotten in terms of our thinking. As for what I'll say, shelters, kind of hardened shelters, a little bit of that's being looked at at the resilience hubs that we're talking about, but probably a little bit outside the scope of this course, which is really very focused on evacuation transportation, It's coming from Caltrans, obviously, so the focus of this particular study is those transportation improvements that we can make to get people out of the way, not necessarily focused on large community-style bunkers, things like that, but certainly if there's an appetite to look at that, we can.

I was just gonna add on the EV conversation. We've been working on, at PCTBA, we've been working on their countywide zero-emission vehicle plan, And so that's something we've been coordinating very closely and looking at where charging infrastructure is most needed in this county, both light duty and medium heavy duty vehicles, but also that's why the resiliency hub conversation is so important and what kind of resources will be needed to help charge those vehicles so they can get out in an emergency situation as well.

I know.

Obviously, I sit on the transportation board, and this has come up plenty of times, is that most likely when you're in a disaster situation, you're not going to have power. Those who have an electric car, I would only suggest that you probably have a backup vehicle because you're not going to be able to go stop there and wait 20 minutes to go refill your car where, you know, to... my colleague's point you obviously can fill up a car with four or five gallons of gas and and continue to get yourself out of a serious situation so just food for thought that the power is not going to be on if we're evacuating people so don't try to plan on stopping at a charging station or put a generator in your trunk and turn it on and go

Supervisor Gore?

Well, and as I look at my public works folks in the back, I think they very clearly understand our value of making sure that people are taken care of. Like, yes, there's this mandate to go to all electric, but we know that that's not feasible everywhere, and I don't think we're going to get rid of all of our gas-powered vehicles so that we can make sure we need to do what we need to do in our community as they're nodding their heads at us. And, yeah, I appreciate the comment because it is a concern. It's definitely a concern, and we have to make sure we do what we need to do to take care of our community in all the different facets.

Supervisor Gustafson?

And to those who don't have any vehicle, I know in Caldor Fire, TTD did run buses to evacuate folks out of the Tahoe Basin from South Lake Tahoe. And so buses and our micro mass transit may be part of the solution for those like J1s that are in town working in our restaurants and businesses that don't necessarily have personal vehicles here.

Okay, I don't see any additional questions or comments, so thank you so much for being with us today. Great presentation. And with that, we will go ahead and move to our last department item, Board Appointed Fire Safe Councils of Placer County.

Okay, I can still say good morning for another couple minutes here. So the action requested is to adopt a resolution to rescind the following resolutions. Number 2010-209, establishing the Greater Lincoln Fire Safe Council. Resolution 2019-107, reducing the membership of the Greater Lincoln Area Fire Safe Council from seven members to five. Resolution 2019-119, establishing the North Auburn Ophir Fire Safe Council and directing the clerk of the board to post vacancies to the North Auburn Ophir Fire Safe Council. Resolution 2023-030, superseding resolution 2004-236, regarding appointments to the Greater Auburn Area Fire Safe Council. and resolution 2004-236 appointing four members to the Greater Auburn Area Fire Safe Council and then secondly to adopt a resolution to affirm support for all of the Placer County Fire Safe Councils. So just as a reminder, we brought this item to your board back in March of this year, talked about the fire safe councils being grassroots, community led organizations here in our county. Placer County is one of a very small group of counties where some of our fire safe councils are board appointed. At one point we had, we have sort of six fire safe councils right now. Of course, one of those, all the members are vacant. and essentially what we reported to your board and the direction we received is for the Greater Auburn Area Fire Safe Council established in 2002 to become a non-board appointed community led organization, that the Placer Sierra Fire Safe Council would remain a board appointed body at their request, the Greater Linker Fire Safe Council would become a community led organization, and the North Auburn Over Fire Safe Council would also become a community led organization. Just a reminders to a couple of things that came up with that. The North Auburn Ophir and the Greater Auburn Area Fire Safe Councils have both expressed a unanimous desire to merge back together. They were one organization up until 2019. At that point there was a desire to separate them because they felt like there was a need for maybe more community focus. They've since had some challenges maintaining quorum and community support, enough council members to continue forward. And so they've desired to merge. Also kind of a new, thing that's come along in them and recently is the Placer West a supervisor mentioned a brand new fire safe council I would say that they've been incredibly successful of late they have a very robust and active eight-person board Supervisor mentioned Firewise Communities, happy to report that Placer County is still number one in fire safe councils. We just got word of our 150th fire safe council, or excuse me, Firewise Community, and a lot of that is a credit to our fire safe councils, especially Placer West, who've sort of leaned forward for us in terms of helping us get out the word on those. In terms of coordinating bodies though, because obviously coordination is incredibly important. We have a lot of different work going on that you heard from UC and A&R just recently about all the things that we have going with them. So just want to let the board know that as part of that support that we continue to provide to the fire safe councils and will continue to support as long as your board gives us that direction. is we have the Fire Safe Alliance, and so it's an opportunity for the Fire Safe Councils, Firewise communities, and other agencies and members of the community at large to take active part in our wildfire protection efforts. And then as I mentioned, of course, with all the planning efforts, our community wildfire protection plan is hopefully gonna be wrapping up, if not at the end of this year, but the beginning of next year. And we will, of course, be looking to continue to lean on our fire safe councils to help us be that sort of community advocates and help us extend our reach beyond what government can do and the implementation of our community wildfire protection plan. I think that's it for my report to the board, unless there's questions.

Okay, questions or comments from board members?

I just, I want to thank you for the flexibility of honoring what each community wants. They have different reasons and I think that was our direction we gave you last winter and I appreciate you bringing forward a recommendation that does that, accomplishes that. Thank you.

Supervisor Jones? Yeah, and I do think that the community-led is what's created our little firestorm, if you will, of Firewise communities. Everybody's really interested. We advertise at our MAC meetings every month and our newsletter and everything. So they're really, really participating. But thank you.

And is there anyone here in the chambers who'd like to comment on this item? Anyone online?

No one online, Chair.

All right. I'll bring it back to the board.

I'll second.

Moved by Jones, seconded by Gustafson. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And no abstentions. Thank you.

Thank you for the board's support.

We will now move to item 11, closed session, and I will have County Council read us out.

Thank you. The board will now adjourn to closed session to discuss one item of existing litigation, County of Placer versus Ultra Power Rockland, and one item of anticipated litigation. During closed session, the board will adjourn as the Board of Supervisors and convene as the successor agency to hear one item of anticipated litigation, and then we'll reconvene as the Board of Supervisors. Thank you.

All right, we are back from closed session, and I'll have County Council read us out.

Thank you. The first item heard by the Board of Supervisors was an item of existing litigation. For that item, the Board heard a report and provided direction through a 5-0 vote. The second item heard by the Board of Supervisors was an item of anticipated litigation. For that item, the Board heard a report and no direction was provided. No vote was taken. Then the Board of Supervisors adjourned and convened as the successor agency. The closed session item for the successor agency was one item of anticipated litigation. For that item, the successor agency board heard a report and provided direction through a 5-0 vote. That concludes the report out of closed session. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now adjourn our meeting until our next regular meeting on Tuesday, August 25th.