Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning. We're going to get started with our Board of Supervisors meeting. It's Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. Can we please have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Supervisor Citello?

Ready to begin.

thank you uh your motion to acknowledge certificate of posting second all in favor aye aye great moving on to presentations and recognitions we have uh one item today one proclamation i believe that is the august proclamation declaring august 2026 as child support awareness month in san menino county Thank you. Okay, so first of all, is there, I believe our standard practice, we're not taking, we don't do like a public comment on the proclamation section. Is that correct, County Council? Great. Is there a motion to approve the proclamation?

I move to approve the proclamation. I'll second.

First and second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Is there... Anyone here for this proclamation? Perfect. Any Supervisors who would like to present specifically on this? Not?

Sure.

Great. Supervisor Kuro.

And good morning, everybody. Happy September 1st. Can you believe it? It's already September. Where did the year go? and thank you guys for being here today. We appreciate all the work you do. This proclamation declares August 2026 as Child Support Awareness Month for the County of San Benito. Child Support Awareness Month recognizes the key role that parental engagement and financial support plays in the well-being of children in our community to help them become healthy, productive, and well-adjusted adults. In addition, increased awareness of child support services helps parents understand available services, promotes voluntary compliance, and empowers families to access the financial and support resources needed to build stronger, healthier communities. I'm not going to read the entire thing. I'm going to just hit some of the highlights. Some of the big highlights are the child support collection contributes to improve long-term outcomes of their children in our communities, including higher academic achievement, better health, and increased emotional stability. DCSS is strongly committed to promoting the health and well-being of all children by establishing parental assistance in the establishment enforcement and motivation of monetary and medical support orders at little to no cost to program participants. in 2025 san benito county benefited from over 5.5 million dollars in child support collection with over 5.4 million going directly to the children and families that we serve these crucial payments provide everyday necessities such as food clothing shelter medical care reduce the need for public assistance and fulfill legal responsibilities And whereas, by providing resources, DCSS promotes long-term self-sufficiency, encouragement, it strengthens relationships between parents and children, and assists with creating stability for their children. now therefore be it resolved the san benito county board of supervisors does hereby proclaim the month of august 2026 as child support awareness month in the county of san benito in supporting and the state of california designating august as child support awareness month and on a personal note being a family that is multi-family family. I thank my father for all of the support he gave me, even though he was not my at-home dad. Child support services, having the support of your parents, even when they're not in your household, is crucial. And I love my dad very much for all of his support. Wonderful.

Thank you. Would you like to say something? Yes, just a couple of remarks. I'll try to be brief. Good morning. Anna Rizzo, Regional Director of Child Support Services for Santa Cruz San Benito. morning chair and supervisors thank you so much for having us so some wonderful points made by supervisor curio but i do want to reiterate a couple of things at its core the child support program ensures that children receive the financial resources they need to grow learn, and thrive. When they're supported with consistent support, families receive greater stability and it helps children maintain access to housing, healthcare, nutrition, and educational opportunities. These are the foundational building blocks for our community and for healthy growth and success. The program also supports parents. I think that's a really important thing to note. Helping them navigate the complicated process and work together in an effort to support their children. With the guidance that our program provides, we can reduce stress for them and strengthen their cooperation and co-parenting. And this, of course, promotes family resilience. These outcomes are made possible, I want to point out, due to the dedication of our local child support professionals. They are passionate. They work as a team. They show commitment and compassion every day, working closely with families and approaching each case with care and professionalism. Their work directly improves and strengthens the fabric of our county. I also wanted to express our sincere appreciation to the Board of Supervisors and to the County Executive Office and our partnering agencies, HSA, HSD. Your ongoing support and collaboration make this work possible. Together, we create a more stable, healthy, and economically secure community for the families we serve. So thank you again for your partnership and the support that's essential to this program. And I wanted to invite some local representatives.

Good morning, Chair and Board. I'm Denise Quintana. I'm a supervisor at the Department of Child Support Services. I just want to talk about, again, the dedication of the child support professionals serving the County of San Benito. And again, reiterate, in 2025, we were able to collect $5.5 million, with $5.4 million of that going directly to children and families. Our staff are committed individuals who understand the importance of providing these benefits during challenging economic times. Outreach is another important component of our program. DCSS has established a successful outreach initiative that helps individuals who are incarcerated at the San Benito County Jail navigate our services. Our outreach also extends to juvenile hall and local continuational schools. where we proactively explain the legal system and reduce the fear or uncertainty about the processes that they may need in the future. Looking ahead, we hope to expand this program to include our local high schools, and we welcome any of the Board of Supervisors, the Administrative Department to come by and visit our location. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely. You want just me or you want the whole board? We're going to do the whole board.

All right, thank you very much. Moving on, we have no department head announcements. We are moved to board announcements. Any board announcements from supervisors? All right, no board announcements. Great, moving on to public comment. It's an opportunity to address the board on items of interest not appearing on the agenda. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, the county council. We have an item to add, is that correct? Yes. Thank you.

Honorable Chair and members of the Board of Supervisors, we received a request to issue a support letter regarding Assembly Bill 1761. It was received yesterday after the posting of the agenda on Friday. It is urgent. That is, they are requesting that the letter be submitted this week, and we do not have another meeting until September 15th. Therefore, we are requesting that the board add this item to the agenda, specifically the consent agenda as item 1.15. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you please repeat the legislation?

Yes. This is submitted at the request of Central Coast Community Energy, and it is to support AB 1761 by Assemblymember Chris Rogers of Santa Rosa, a measure that supports energy affordability by improving transparency and certainty in how the power charge indifference adjustment, a charge on nearly all energy bills, is calculated.

Mr. Chair, do you need a motion to add that?

That's a good question. County Council, do we need a motion to add that?

Yes, we do, and we need a unanimous vote to add it. And if the board would like additional information regarding this matter before its vote as to whether or not to issue the support letter, then we can simply add that to the regular agenda for further discussion.

Sure, so is there a motion to add it to regular agenda for further discussion?

Well, I would make a motion to add it to consent, but if you'd like to add it to regular agenda for discussion, no.

It just seems like there might be some questions about it.

Sure, then I make a motion to add it to regular agenda, and which item would that now be? 2.5. 2.5 as item 2.5.

Okay, great, thank you. Is there a second?

I'll second.

We have first and a second. We have a vote, please, from the clerk. Roll call vote.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Curro? Yes. 4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we'll move to public comment. So this is public comment on items not on the agenda. Do we have public comment today?

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card. On Zoom, you can press star nine or the raise hand icon. And before we start, we have two comments, one from Jack and one from Ted, but it doesn't say for what, is it for regular public comment?

Just for flood issues, we'll take that on the flood item.

For both, okay, thank you.

Ted, is yours general? It's not about the flood, right, or is it? We'll do it under flood then, if that works.

Are you Ted? Okay, so we'll do it under 2.1.

Come do a public comment, and if you have anything for flood-related, come back for the flood item, if that's all right. Does that work?

Okay, so we'll start with Ted, and then I have a few others after that. And on Zoom, please press star 9 or the raise 10 icon.

Yeah, I'm Ted Julenberg. Part of the comments on the building department with the code enforcer, the... I got told that the building department code enforcer is so busy that she can't take care of anything. So it's been five years since I've filed complaints. I haven't gotten anything from anybody except being ignored, not told what's going on. And it's time that maybe we should look into the building department code enforcement. If they can't do their job, then we should get somebody else or help them to know what the laws are because they don't seem to know what they are. But anyway, the flood issues I'll hold to later because that's also part of the code enforcement because that's not being taken care of either. So I'll hold that comment to later. Thank you.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Justin Gregory.

Good morning, chair and members of the board. Thank you for your time. My name is Justin Gregory. I'm a lifelong resident of San Benito County. I'm here today because I believe San Benito County has reached a point where we need to stop asking whether our indigent defense system has a problem. We know it does. The county's own evaluation tells us that our criminal defense system is chronically understaffed and under-resourced. In one fiscal year, the system handled more than 1,100 matters, including 207 felony cases and 817 misdemeanors. Using even the outdated 1973 national workload standards, the county would have needed approximately five full-time defense attorneys just to handle the eligible criminal case. Under the newer 2023 standards, the preliminary estimate was approximately 10 attorneys, and the report didn't just rely on statistics. Judges, prosecutors, and probation officials all reported the same thing. There are not enough defense attorneys. At times, the system has operated with only two, and sometimes only one. That is not a minor administrative deficiency. It is a fundamental failure of capacity in our criminal justice system. When the government prosecutes someone, that person deserves more than an attorney who technically has a case number assigned to them. They deserve an attorney who has enough time to investigate, communicate with the client, review evidence, challenge the prosecution's case, negotiate when appropriate, and take the case to trial when necessary. Our criminal justice system in San Diego County is not even close to consistently providing the level of defense today. And now we have an opportunity to change that. The state has appropriated $1,702,055 specifically for San Benito County to improve its indigent defense system, including startup and implementation costs associated with establishing an institutional public defender's office. I understand that our county CEO is now working to hire a consultant so that San Benito County can become eligible to access those funds. I support that effort, but I want to make one thing very clear. The consultant should not be the beginning of the solution. The consultant should be the beginning of the solution, not another reason to postpone the solution. We have already studied this problem. We have already documented the inadequate staffing. We know the workload. We know what the national standards tell us. What we need now is implementation. And I'm asking this board to make commitment to our justice system. First, move forward with the consultant and the state's requirements so San Benito County can access the $1.7 million. Second, direct that every dollar of funding designated for public defense remain dedicated to public defense and not be deferred into absorbed by or used to balance the county's general fund for unrelated purposes. If the state provides money for public defense, that money should provide public defense. Third, require that the consultant's work produce an actual implementation plan for a properly staffed San Benito County Public Defender's Office, including the number of attorneys, investigators, support staff, and administrative personnel necessary to meet current workload standards. And finally, I ask this board to establish... Thank you.

Next in chambers Rochelle.

Flood.

Okay, you put general sorry. Elia Salinas.

Good morning, Board of Supervisors. I am here to request that in a near future agenda item, you please do a proclamation for Richard Betancourt. He is a long time resident to San Benito County. He has dedicated decades of community service to San Benito County. He was a planning commissioner for years and then on to LAFCO. I request that it be done and that if you would please have your clerk send me an email that it's going to get done so that I can contact Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas' office as well as State Senator John Laird's office so we can also get proclamations. These things are done. when a person dies and they never see the acknowledgement and I respectfully ask that you start implementing something like this in the future so that those that are community active and have been doing a lot of work for this community, free, they dedicated because they have respect and they love this community and that is what I am requesting that you please do this soon, thank you.

Next in chambers, Tracy Felton.

good morning mr chair members of the board i'm here to announce some amazing news we're finally ready to open our tiny homes at the migrant center we've been working on this project since 2020 and we are having a ribbon cutting ceremony next tuesday at 10 30 at 32 35 south side road we have 11 permanent supportive housing units and five temporary transitional housing units and we're so excited this has taken a long long time and i can't believe it's actually coming so i have some flyers in the back for you and there's also a press release that went out to our media outlets yesterday We'll also send it to you as well, and there will be copies of the press release in the back. So we just wanted to come here publicly and share. You're all invited. We hope to see you all there, and I actually can't believe this is happening. I am so excited. So that's all. I just wanted to bring it to your attention, and thank you for your support.

Next in chambers, Susan Loeb.

Okay.

Hi, good morning, Board, and good morning, Chair. Susan Logue with the Hollister, longtime resident, and with the Friends of the Library. I'm here today to talk about the summer reading program. That was a big success this year again. I have some numbers here as to the attendance. the number of people who attended this year. And we had a really good turnout. Another successful year supported by the Friends and other local nonprofits helping us and collaborating together. Lunch at the library was over 2,200 people. attending so we also were able to feed people the programs included live music and different cultures September this month is library card sign up month so please feel free to sign up for your library card if you don't have one yet and you can actually do that online too or give the library a call If you'd like to know more, just check out the program, the calendar online at sbcfl.org. And all the programs are offered for free for all children to seniors. And it's really a true hub of the community, as you know, when you go over there and see what's going on. I think they're just starting Pilates now, and they have chair yoga going on, along with many other activities for children. So thank you so much for your time and for your continued support.

And that concludes public comment.

Thank you. All right, going to move on to consent agenda. These matters shall be considered as a whole and without discussion unless an item is removed from consent. Do any supervisors have items they wish to pull from consent agenda? Yes.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to pull item number 1.7.

1.7. Any others? Okay, is there any public comment on the remainder of consent agenda?

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Thank you very much. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda except for item 1.7?

I move to approve.

Is there a second? Second. We have first and second. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Curro?

Yes.

4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Thank you very much. We'll move to the poll item 1.7, Syverza Carro.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and I would like to ask the sheriff to come up. The reason I pulled this item is specifically to have the sheriff have the opportunity to give an update to the community and have it more public and transparent about the status of the communications work that they've been working on. I really appreciate the share for being here today. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Supervisor. So if I'm assuming correctly, of all the parts of our response to the grand jury report, you want me to focus on the radio project?

I would love a just overview of your response on the grand jury report, but specifically want to get into the communications part.

Sure. So thank you for having me here. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Supervisors. First of all, I think the room looks fantastic. This is only my second time being in here since it's been redone, but it definitely feels more professional. So I tried to wear my nice jacket today for all of you. So when I first became sheriff, one of the first things that happened is that the then jail commander called me one day and said, in a panic, it was pretty late at night, and he said, hey, the grand jury's outside of the jail. What do I do? And I said, let him in. And that kind of started what I hope is a great relationship we've had with our civil grand jury, which is we've been very open, transparent, actually use them as a champion of our office to point out any deficiencies that we have, to maybe celebrate any of the successes that we were finding ourselves in the midst of, but definitely have been very open and honest with them about our challenges and have told our staff to be completely open without fear of any type of retribution from their administration that let them know exactly what's going on in here and what needs to be fixed and what's going well. I think if you look back to 2021's report and all the way through, I have pretty much been in agreement with everything that the grand jury reports have said. And I think we've made a lot of work. We've done a lot of work to try to tackle those challenges together. But on this one, there were a couple of things that we did disagree with, which is not common for us, but I just, I don't think it was any malintent. I just think it was a little bit confusing to get into some of these BSCC reports. So the first thing is that it did talk about staffing and our staffing being under standard. So just for the public understands, we have an oversight board at the state level called the Board of State and Community Corrections. Recently, the governor called me and he had appointed me before and he had called me and asked me if I would do three more years on the board, which I agreed to. So I'll be going through the Senate confirmation for my next term on the Board of State and Community Corrections. But we oversee everything that's not a prison. So all of the county jails and all of the juvenile institutions in the state of California, we have oversight and... and we do approve all the regulations that come down from the state so i said on that board which i took that position hoping that it would actually spotlight our jail and make sure that if i'm on the board that we're doing things correctly and so one of the things that has come up in front of you multiple times is that are below level are falling below staffing levels in the jail So that was highlighted. So we wanted to point out that we are not below minimums. We are probably at minimums, but we're not falling below to where we have any type of corrective action by the state. And that's for the main jail side. We're still unable to open the Curtis J. Hill Rehabilitation Facility. And when I say that, that's just the two housing units that are in that building. We are still using the Curtis Hill Facility for booking, administration, medical, So it is in use, it's just there's two housing units in there that we're not using because of staffing. But as a whole, the way we're running our facility right now, our staffing is adequate. The second thing that they brought up – actually, I'll get to that last, Supervisor, because that's the one you really want to talk about. The next one is that we were non-ADA compliant in some of our stuff that we were doing in there. So one of them is that the reception area is not ADA compliant, which if you go by 2026 standards is probably true, and it's something that we're looking at and we're trying to remedy with – with the county, but it's not legally required of us. But the ADA compliance that we are looking at is the year the facility was built, not the 2026 standard that we were compared to. So we were in slight disagreement with that. Though not legally required, we are working with county admin to remodel a shower that was pointed out in that report. It's not legally required to be ADA compliant. We think it's the right thing to do. So we're working forward to do that. The next one is that we require additional staffing for transport. We have never. So first of all, it pointed out in the report that we didn't have policies on that. We actually do have policies on that and they're online. Anybody can access them from our from our website. So we do have policies on transport on both the correction side and the operation side. And so those are in the response. We listed what those policies are. And though it may be desirable for some of our staff to always have two correctional officers on every single transport, it's not reasonable. It's not. feasible, it's not reasonable, but we've never denied a second officer for transport. So if we have any type of high-risk transports, and just so everyone can kind of grasp what we're talking about, we have daily transports between the jail and the court that come from our jail facility. Sometimes that's one person, sometimes it's a van full, and we typically try to use two transport officers for that, but it's not always reasonable. But definitely if we're taking someone and we're transferring them to high desert prison or San Quentin or something, or we're gonna go do a pickup or we have a high risk individual, we always fill that with a second individual. So there have been times where correctional officers have transported individually, typically by their choice, or they haven't asked for a second officer because the jail commander is always compliant with that. We definitely err on the side of caution even if it's on overtime. But to do an overarching requirement that every transport has two deputies or two correctional officers, we would just have to double up our cars. And that's not seen, even most major cities don't double up their cars at this point. So that means that every single time we arrest someone, we have to have two deputies riding in the car. It's just not reasonable. So we're not going to agree with that recommendation. Prior to that one, the other one that was brought up was the use of our sobering cells. So we have sobering cells and we have safety cells. There's different requirements for those type of cells. We have had to be a little creative with our minimum staffing and with issues that come up and challenges with behavioral health and things that have happened inside custody. Out of an abundance of caution, we have moved people into sobering cells that weren't there for sobering reasons. They were there for their own safety. And so because that didn't fall into the sobering category, which is a 30 minute check, a random check within every 30 minute windows, we were operating on the fact that they were in the standard, the regular housing facility, which is our checks. We had just moved them for their own safety to a different room, but they had the same status. So we were doing hour-long checks, and the state had asked that if they're in the sobering cell, whether it's for a sobering situation or not, that we still do the 30-minute checks. So though it's not really a noncompliant thing, it's kind of a best practice deal. So we've started doing that. And honestly, we're trying to just limit the use of even using them for non-sobering reasons anyway. But sometimes we just have to work with what we have inside custody. So to get to the communications thing, this has been an ongoing saga, which I will point out that, and I know that we've probably all spoken individually on that. I think every time that we've brought something in front of this board, even when it's a change order or it's been additional funding that we didn't understand was needed, The board's been unanimous on supporting this communications project. So the issue is that we don't have really strong project leadership. We don't have strong project expertise in the sheriff's office. So we've relied a lot on vendors to kind of walk us through the project and then also on Cal OES. And so we have joined the state system, which is the California radio interoperability system. We have joined in with the state. So just real quick to make everybody understand, we've invested probably in total, we're looking at about $2.5 million, which was like 1.25 of that came from the Rescue Act funding. It wasn't general fund. And we've used some other funding sources to try to limit the impact on the general fund. but we're going to be getting for for about two and a half million dollars what other counties are into already about 35 45 million dollars and they're not even finished with their projects yet so um i remember specifically when supervisor curo and supervisor zhang around the ad hoc and we when we looked over all of our options and we looked at the chris system it was like this is the easiest decision we've ever made like let's not I specifically remember when the supervisor stood up and was like, what are we even wasting our time talking about this? Let's move forward. So we've been moving forward with the state, but it's been really difficult. So we had to do these things in chunks. We're working with different vendors. We have things that need to get installed at Technology Parkway. We have things that need to get installed up at Dispatch, which is a completely own. They have their own separate vendors, their own separate people. It's all trying to be coordinated through the state. And it's just been really difficult for us because what happens is we'll get to these milestones and we get everybody in a room and the engineers will point out something like, for instance, we were in the room with the engineers and they said, do you want any of these radio channels to be dispatched? Clearly, we need to have a dispatcher. And they said, well, you guys didn't buy that equipment. You only bought the radios. So we would come across these things with the engineers that we didn't know we were supposed to have. The sheriff's office, we don't know that I need a consulate sitting next to a computer that's going to talk through a T1 line to Santa Cruz. We're just a bunch of dumb cops that just push a button and talk on the radio. So those things have happened. But where I can tell you where we are today is that we do have four radios that have been programmed that are in testing. From the moment we started using those radios, it is a marked improvement. And that's talking on our current channels. That's not even switching to the state channel yet. But one of the biggest things for us is that the repeater has moved up to Fremont Peak, which we never had a repeater on Fremont Peak before. So just that one mountaintop is better than the four mountaintops that we had before. So just that alone has made a big difference. So we're in a testing phase. We're getting to the end of that testing phase. And what needs to happen now is We have to have one vendor come in and install. They've already been programmed and install these consulates down at our office. A different vendor through SCR-901 has to install consulates up there. And then once we get that going and that connection's made, then it'll be a full rollout. And part of what this board already approved is prepaid for all the installation and all the vehicles, all the radio programming. And what we learned after the first four radios were programmed and it was successful is that part of our agreement that we prepaid for is that they can do it all over the air. So from now, from here forward, we don't have to wait to schedule Sacramento to come down here and physically touch our radios. They do it all from keystrokes from some crazy room and then it just programs our radios over the air. So where we were and where we are, is completely two different places, and where we're gonna be here very soon, I don't have an exact timeline, but I would say within the next couple months, is that the radios that we will have will operate on a thing first called LMR, which is land mobile radio, that's talking to the antenna on a mountain peak, If that doesn't work, the radio kicks over to a cellular card and it talks on the cellular network. If that doesn't work, it kicks over to Wi-Fi. So one of the things that we will be doing is placing a Starlink Mini. The fire department's done this on a few of their rigs. Amador County Sheriff's Office just went to full deployment of Starlink Minis. So they never, ever lose radio connectivity. So it will be a hierarchy. The deputies won't know what's happening. It happens in the background. If it doesn't have a good hit on the tower, it'll go to cellular. If it doesn't have a good hit on cellular, it goes to the Starlink and they'll never lose radio communication. So I'm sorry if that was longer than it needed to be, but that's kind of where we are. Open to any questions.

Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes, sure. Thank you so much. This is exactly what I wanted the public to hear. I am. I'm saddened that we don't have a strong project management, you know, individual that could be taking this on and really coordinating this for you. But I appreciate you and your team and everything that you've done. The main thing I wanted the public to know is because South County has very limited access not only to cellular but what the actual implication is if cellular is not available and you hit on it that starlink mini is crucial to ensure that all of the county is covered when sheriff's deputies are dispatched out especially with uh future South County is going to become a very active area for your team and I really want to make sure that the deputies are safe. So thank you so much and I have no further questions and I appreciate you being here.

Comment on that real quick. We have also been working with the CEO and with our admin team to try to do everything we can without touching the general fund. So when we're looking at these other things, these change orders that come up, Starlink minis, we're looking at Homeland Security funding. We're looking at impact fees. We're looking at all these. So that kind of draws some of these things out to try to just not go grab from the reserve. But so that's also been kind of a thing that's delayed a little bit.

Really appreciate that. And I appreciate administration's coordination with you. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's go to public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon.

Go ahead. Am I the only one?

Okay. Good morning again. Starlink minis. are awesome. I try to avoid going to anything that has to do with that individual that owns those companies, but I had to succumb and I bought myself a Starlink. It's been fantastic. The minis are awesome and they work trust me anywhere you have access to if you're in the forest you're not going to get that much but if you're out there and you even if you have one quarter of satellite access they work fantastic and you will be you you'll know that you feel safe And has nothing to do with anything else with social media or trying to watch a movie or something like that. But the fact that you have phone access is fantastic. And if this is something that can be available to public safety, I really strongly recommend it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from the board?

Valerie, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes.

Yes, thank you very much. And thank you, Sheriff, for a great presentation. Much appreciated. The South County... Valerie, you need to unmute yourself. Oh, there. Okay, okay. I thought I'd had it. Anyway, yes, thank you for the presentation, Sheriff, and our South County people really do need that kind of support. But also the San Benito County Amateur Radio Association has repeaters on different mountains down around and the one that's up at Fremont Peak. So all of these together, create more support, we're going to be perhaps needing it in the future. You know, the world is not as calm as we look around the room seat. So much appreciated that all that is going on. Thank you.

Thank you. And if I could add one thing from what Valerie was talking about, just so I do think it's another highlight. So I've also been granting access as requests come in from our neighboring agencies. So we have all the counties that surround us. We're working on, I think it's Monterey right now. that needs to fill out some paperwork with the state. But everybody's been granted access to our system, and then we've been granted redundant access to theirs. San Jose Police Department recently reached out to me asking for access to our system, and they brought up the fact that when we had the shootout here really close to this building, We could not communicate with the San Jose police helicopter that day, which would have been a huge win for this community. And then that person ended up going back to San Jose and shooting a sergeant over there. We will now have that connectivity and that capability to talk to everybody. And I think that's a really big deal. That's from Caltrans and CHP to all of our neighboring agencies. So if somebody requests access from us, we give it to them. And then as far as the amateur radio folks, they've been the backbone of this community for a long time. They're an amazing group of people. They can set up mobile repeaters in no time. They have really tried to help us troubleshoot the system throughout the years. And we will also be working with them to see how they can access the system. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there a motion from the board then at this time on this item?

I would move to approve.

Is there a second?

Second.

We have roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zanger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Curro?

Yes.

4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Great, thank you. That concludes consent. We'll move to regular agenda item 2.1, the flood item that we're all really here for today. We have a presentation from, is it from Public Works or from CEO?

Good morning, board members. Good morning, the public. The staff is going to be making presentation. I have different departments available to present about the prevention measures they're taking in regards to the upcoming El Nino storm system. I do want to mention that they have been working very hard on the last two weeks to be able to prepare ourselves for the upcoming storms and i also want to mention that you have and i don't know if the staff can put it on the screen two trainings that we are coordinating with the office of emergency services at the state for training available for staff and as well as the incident command that in this case, I wanna acknowledge that the sheriff has agreed to be the incident command for the upcoming storms. I really appreciate his willingness to come with us and work with us. And so, but we all be attending the training to understand what are the roles and responsibilities in case of an emergency, what are the tools that we need. And I have two flyers over there staff has been registered for the two trainings. They're happening on the 15th, 16th, and 17th. However, the 15th, we have a board meeting, so I will be sending my staff to attend that one, and I will be attending the 16th and the 17th. The crucial one for the sheriffs is the incident command system, which is the one that leads all the Air Force in case of an emergency. I also want to acknowledge that we have made contact with the 911 service provider, which is in Santa Cruz, and they're walking the staff through the process of how to communicate and notify residents about an upcoming storm so that we start evacuations. So staff is going to go ahead and proceed and make a presentation to you. It's not complete. We're addressing issues, and we heard from, to listen to the community about the concerns, areas of concerns, but also invite the board to give us an input about other things that we might be missing. As I said before, it's not complete, but we're working on it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board, CEO, County Council, Adolfo Gonzalez, Public Works Administrator. Today, I'm pleased to present to you our storm preparedness presentation. I've been working with staff over the last few days to come up with this presentation and coordinate our response. So what is El Niño? El Niño is a natural climate pattern caused by warmer than normal Pacific Ocean temperatures. That can change weather patterns, increase the chance of a wetter and stormier winter in California. Some of the potential impacts that we can experience here within the county is roadway flooding, drainage issues, erosion, saturated soils, downed trees, debris, slides, road closures, and damage to public infrastructure. What you see here is the FEMA flood zone map for the County of San Benito, and it's broken down into the North County and South County. I'll have Abraham from Planning present.

Thank you so much, Adolfo. Just very briefly, you may all be familiar with the FEMA flood zone area very much. And just very briefly in regards to the maps, as we know, FEMA has designated three zones in San Miguel County as areas of flooding for members of the board and members of the public. And one of them is is zone A, the other is zone AE, and the other is zone AO. And very briefly, just in regards to the differences between them, and it's very important for us to know so that way we may be prepared in regards to whenever there is a a flood in San Benito County as we've experienced in recent years. As we know, these areas are mostly in areas around rivers, creeks, drainage areas, and low lane parts of the county of San Benito. And in the blue, light blue area, I know it's kind of hard to tell, we try to be able to issue the map from FEMA as best as possible. But the light blue area we can see and kind of picture in our minds along 156 where it hits Fairview Road and then kind of towards the north going to Shore Road and then to the north of that along Lubbers Lane as we know very well. Lake Road, Fraser Lake Road, all those areas in baby blue color to the north is considered zone A. And then you can see that it actually comes down along the San Miguel River, South County, Tres Pinos, Paisines, where it connects, airline connects with Cienega and at Old Hernandez Road. So it comes all the way down. And the very important part, also you can see it towards the west, kind of just east of San Juan Bautista as well. And so FEMA designates this area as high-risk flood area, subject to the 1% annual chance flood. And I'll go over very briefly in the next slide what that 1% chance flood means per FEMA. But the very, very important part to consider about this flood zone is that FEMA has not completed a detailed study in this area. of showing how high the floodway waters may rise. That's one of the particular identifiers of Zone A. Unfortunately, and I see some members of the audience here that experience these flood zones personally up in North County along Levers Lane in 2023. before then as well, we know that it's very dangerous and it rose several feet actually and some homes actually had two feet of water inside their homes as well. In regards to zone AE, zone AE is the blue color in contrast to the darker blue color and you can see zone AE is also in various parts. And Zone AE, we can see it also primarily along San Benito River, where 156 is located to the north, and then it goes all the way to south of the Union Road Bridge that was just essentially reconstructed or built. So that's a major area where Zone AE is located. And then you can also see it towards the east, where 156 is at as well, to the south on Fallon Road, and then between San Felipe Road and Fairview Road, and also to the west, kind of where 156 at the entrance of San Juan Bautista, those are the areas. And so AE, the difference between AE and Zone A is that in Zone AE, it is designated as a high-risk flood area, subject again to the 1% annual chance flood that I'll be identifying in just a little bit per FEMA. And the main identifier here is that FEMA has completed a detailed study here. So we know what the base flood elevations are in these areas. So we know that when the 1% chance flood comes in, such as in 2023, we know how high these areas can flood to. We have that information from FEMA. And then finally, Zone AO, as identified in the dark blue color there in the map provided by FEMA, is located in some of the areas as well in the county. Primarily, we're just south of Zone AE, where Fallon Road is at, and it goes all the way down to McCloskey and even portions of Santa Ana Road. And that area... is identified as also a high-risk area, and water is expected to flow or spread across the ground at relatively shallow depths, generally one feet to three feet, and that's the zone A-O. And then in regards to the FEMA 1% annual chance flood, per FEMA, a 1% annual chance flood is a flood that has a one in 100 statistical chance of occurring or being exceeded in any given year. It's also sometimes called the 100-year flood. Many of you have heard of that, but that name can be misleading. It does not mean that a flood happens once every 100 years. Therefore, a 1% annual chance flood could happen two years in a row. It could happen several times within 100 years. We've experienced it already in just these past few years, multiple times, or it can sometimes not occur for more than 100 years. And just to finalize this slide in regards to what FEMA uses to determine what these flood zones are, They basically use historical rainfall and flooding, stream flow records, watershed characteristics, ground elevations, and topography, and hydrologic computer modeling. Excuse me. And why is this so important? It's so important for communities to prepare. And I'm not going to read this whole table, but just in six inches of water, a person can lose footing, particularly in moving water. Small animals may have difficulty moving through water. Vehicles may begin to lose traction. We saw that in 2023, unfortunately. In just two feet of water, a person can be knocked down or swept away depending on velocity. Evacuation may become difficult. Lifestyle can become stranded or separated from shelter, food, and water, and many passenger vehicles can become impossible to operate safely, and road may become impassable at just two feet of water. And then five feet or greater, Life-threatening or potential fatal conditions for anyone caught in the flood without safe refuge can occur. Significant risk of drowning and loss of livestock or elevated refuge is unavailable. Unfortunately, we saw that in 2023. And then roads can be completely impassable and emergency access may be severely restricted. And this is some of the main reasons why it is very important to prepare. I'll pass it back to Adolfo.

So some of the recent flooding that's occurred within the county is in 2017, the Pacheco Creek flooding in 2021, the new Idria Road bridge that was washed out. In 2023, again, we had the new Idria Road bridge washed out, as well as flooding in Dunville, Lovers Lane, and San Felipe Road. these floodings demonstrate what our vulnerabilities are especially within the north county side section of the county so what is our storm preparation strategy so we are currently inspecting known flooding and drainage problem areas uh we're grading roads and shoulders to improve drainage this is existing work that's currently happening and occurring throughout the county or we're uh clearing culverts, planning on clearing additional culverts, ditches, and other drainage facilities. We're going to be removing debris from obstructed stormwater flows and preparing equipment and resources for the winter storm season. some of the areas that we have looked at and we will be looking at include king city road where we've patched and graded lone oak road where we've also patched and graded nyland ditch along the santa highway along san juan highway we've been mowing we are currently inspecting Pinoche Road, New Idria, Cienega. We were out in Cienega yesterday looking at some culverts and some ditches. And we will be inspecting Lovers Lane, Frye Lane, and Lake Road. And of course, these are some of the known problem areas. Now, if El Nino storm hits as hard as it is being predicted, we know that we will have flooding. so our goal is to prepare for that emergency and in order to prepare again we are inspecting all of these known problem areas within the north county and the south county and uh attending the the trainings that uh the e911 trainings the eoc eos trainings In terms of Lovers Lane, which I know is a huge, huge concern, back in 2023, I believe, the county supervisors met and the Army Corps of Engineers CEO met with residents out at Lovers Lane where the Army Corps of Engineers reviewed and inspected Pacheco Creek. The Army Corps of Engineers came up with a list of recommendations that the county could do to improve conditions on the creek. So the county has been working with HCD to apply for grant funding, for CDBG funding, and we're still in the process of securing that funding. We just resubmitted our application just recently, about a week ago, where we had to respond to some additional questions that HCD had for us. What our plans are in terms of securing winter resources is we We intend to establish on-call contracts with providers and vendors so that we can have the necessary resources immediately available to us. Those types of resources include heavy equipment, tree removal services, et cetera, so those types of services. we are going to identify specific locations where we can stage our heavy equipment and materials that we may need at different throughout different parts of the county and then of course confirm As we get closer and closer to the storm seasons, we'll confirm availability and check in with contractors to ensure that they are available, they have the resources and the amount of power necessary to respond to our needs. We intend to establish local mutual aid partnerships with local agencies that may be able to respond and assist in the event that we need their assistance. We'll identify those agencies that may not be prone to the type of flooding, severe flooding that the County of San Benito is prone to and determine whether or not they can assist us in times of emergencies. will develop procedures for requesting their assistance when they need and address reimbursement, insurance liability, and resource tracking and documentation with them. As the CEO mentioned earlier, the county staff has met with our 911 communications team on August 27th, and we received an overview of the county's emergency alert warning system. public works will be attending uh training between uh on september 15th through the 17th and public works and the ceos of office finance team will be real review emergency purchasing and reimbursement documentation staff's recommendation is receive this presentation regarding the county's winter prepare to storm, provide direction regarding storm preparation, provide direction on whether staff should explore mutual aid partnerships with local agencies, and direct staff to return to the board with any recommended agreements, actions, or funding requests as necessary. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Let's start with public comment and then we'll discuss. Thank you.

Excuse me. There is another presentation from HSA also with evacuation protocols and plans that I would like to share with you before we go to the public comments. Thank you.

Good morning. We just wanted to share briefly, as the Health and Human Services Agency, we're responsible for mass shelter and care, as you're probably aware. In the 2023 storm, we stood up to emergency evacuation shelters, one at the Vets Building and one at our Migrant Center. This year, working alongside the CEO, we've been proactive and reached out to our partners. The Vets Building has committed to allow us to use the Veterans Building in the event that we need it from September to December. And we've reached out to the Migrant Center again. It's a specific side of the Migrant Center. It's the dormitory areas, which is far more effective for housing folks because it's set up like a living situation. They've committed to allow us to use it from December to April in the event that we need it. My staff stand up the shelter. All of my employees are the disaster service workers that work the shelter 24 seven. It was very effective. We've learned a lot from the last two events. um we've also reached out to the american red cross we have two on site we have there's two trailers that are housed with units for 75 individuals it includes anything that you need food any supplies wheelchairs cots blankets those are on site for us ready we've reached out to patsy who's our coordinator she's given us the contacts we also have um I believe between 500 and 700 cots at the Salvation Army that are dedicated to San Benito County. I hope we never need that amount of cots, but they are available for us with blankets as well. We'll continue to work with our internal team at our office to start preparing for working with our community partners to assist in areas that we may need them. We try to be organized because sometimes in the middle of a chaos, it gets more chaotic when you have more people. And so we're trying to really plan strategically Amanda, my assistant director, as well as I are going to attempt to attend the training. We've already done those in the past, but we will try to do them again. One of us will be there for sure. But we're just here to answer any questions if you have any questions or suggestions. But we feel more prepared this time than we did the last episode. And so we just wanted to just advise you the proactive things that we've been planning for.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

And just to finalize part of the presentation, I mentioned to the staff that we need to prepare what is known as the local assessment center. A local assessment center is a location in which several agencies and nonprofit organizations come together to identify the needs of those individuals that are being evacuated in case of emergency. And so today we're talking about floods, but the reality is this county needs to be prepared for earthquakes, for fires, And in my past experience, a local assessment center is the number one priority to identify what are the needs of those that are being evacuated. Because sometimes what happens, individuals run away from the fire, they don't take their medications, they don't take the items that they need to test their blood, to test their blood pressure, And so we need to be proactive in creating those assessment centers that individually assess the persons and their needs so that we can secure those items that they need to continue surviving. It also allows us to identify how many people have been impacted. At the same time, we are also updating a directory from the areas that we believe are going to be flooded mostly because of the location, not because we want them to be flooded, but because they are located in areas that are most likely be flooded. So staff is gonna be testing the system so that when we have an event, we have the updated phone number of those individuals in those areas, particular areas, so that they can receive a messaging system. We're gonna be working with the staff to identify who's gonna be in charge of sending those messages to social media to identify who is gonna be making the phone calls and everything. And as a reminder, the entire county staff becomes a worker for the state in case of disasters. not only that we also understand that we can be short staff and therefore it is in our best interest to communicate with non-profit organizations that are willing to assist and we have identified several of them that we're going to be contacting them maybe having a meeting with them all together to identify how can they assist us in case of an emergency because in the last um when it comes to the time of an emergency we cannot only rely on our staff we have close to 70,000 people in the county, including the cities that might need assistance. We don't know the level of disaster that we can foresee, and therefore we wanna be prepared. And sheriffs, you wanna make a last point? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I just, since we're on topic and it's early, as two hurricanes set off the coast of California, I wanted to say something when we're talking about evacuations and sheltering. So we have a handful of deputies and even if we call in all of our staff, we still don't have very many. We will do like we've done every year in the past and we will go when we have to do evacuations and we will go to every house and we will tell you to get out. We are not going to stand there and argue with you. We're not going to listen to how you know better than we know that the waters aren't coming or they are coming or you'll evacuate when you want to. We're gonna go, we're gonna facilitate everyone to evacuate in the moment that we deem it's necessary for you to evacuate, and we're gonna move on to the next house. To protect my staff, I'm gonna say I do not expect my staff to go back into an area that we've already tried to evacuate and had someone refuse. Then my staff gets ridiculed in the media for not going back into these situations when now somebody's animals are at risk or their family's at risk because they chose not to evacuate when we asked them to. I will tell you, because of the heart that all of our employees have, and this includes the firefighters, Hollister police, and everybody else that gets activated, especially our search and rescue team. Thankfully, we have them. They're all going to go back in. I'm telling them they don't have to, but they're still going because that's what they put this uniform on for. But we can't go everywhere at once. When this happened last time, we were having major intrusion of water on Lovers Lane at the same time it was happening on Churchill. And those people we hadn't made it to yet. So we were trying to shift our resources to get those people out as it was happening on Lovers Lane. There's only so many people working at a time. And so I urge everybody that if we're coming to you and saying it's time for you to evacuate, you should have already had a plan for your animals and for your family. Because these things, it's not like the Grand Canyon that had a wall of water out of nowhere rushing through the Grand Canyon. These things are predictable, therefore they're preventable. We're going to be able to see when these weather systems are coming. We're going to know, based on the water gauges upstream, what's happening. And we're going to be able to give you enough time to get out. So I just want to urge everybody, I'm not trying to be cold or rude. But I have only a few people working. They're going to come and get you out. We will go back in to rescue you if you find yourself in a situation. But I can't promise we're going to be able to get back into every place we've already cleared. And if we've gone to a house and asked you to leave and you refuse to leave, we're going to move on. And I'm open to any questions. And I don't know if that generates any more public comment, but I think it needs to be said.

thank you yes thank you and just so you know i have a scheduling meeting with the two city managers from san juan bautista and hollister to start preparing a coordinating efforts among ourselves as the three administrators for the community thank you mr chair if i may i'd like to follow up on sheriff taylor's comments the county council's office does have a role

when a local emergency is declared. And our role is to act as the legal advisor to the board, to the director of emergency services, who is our county executive officer, as well as our incident commander. Now, we have already prepared and have ready every legal document that would otherwise be needed during the entire course of a local emergency from the proclamation of a local emergency by your Director of Emergency Services all the way to the Board's adoption of a resolution terminating the local emergency. But within it are a series of orders and ordinances. So, for example, we have already prepared evacuation orders. So should the sheriff indicate the director of emergency services needs to issue an evacuation order, then we're already prepared. It's already done. We just simply have to identify the areas of the county where the order will be issued for. Then that order will be issued immediately, giving the sheriff and his deputies every legal authority to evacuate all of those individuals from the designated areas. We've also prepared other orders such as a curfew order, a curfew ordinance. And so all of those orders, resolutions, and ordinances for San Benito County have already been prepared. And in the event that a local emergency is declared, then the County Council's office will immediately respond and then provide legal advice throughout the course of that local emergency. So I wanted to emphasize to Sheriff Taylor that he will have our full support during the entirety of the event, as well as our director of emergency services. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anything else before public comment? Let's take public comment now. Thank you.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on Zoom. Please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And in chambers, we'll start with Mary Hashir Accord.

Good morning, Chair Zanger and supervisors. Thank you for holding this meeting. It's a topic that, you know, I had some concerns about, so I'm really glad that you're taking proactive action and preparing for a super El Nino. We know that with climate change, these events could happen much more frequently. So I want to talk about the proactive actions that you've actually, a lot of you have made some excellent comments and the presentation has been really excellent and helpful. I just wanted to point out from a personal perspective, our nonprofit Protect San Benito after the 2023 flood helped a number of the ALBA farmers. I know people are aware there are quite a few Latino farmers, organic farmers in the Lovers Lane area. They suffered the brunt of the flood of 2023 and even before that, I think in 2017. It's an area, as people pointed out, that floods often. So our group has given several grants to the folks there. And the needs are, you know, we were helping them after the flooding. You know, we were helping another nonprofit that just basically wrote $1,000 checks because FEMA was not helping them very quickly. And they were pretty desperate. So our group provided some grants to several groups. They're kind of little communities of farmers. And so what I was thinking could be helpful is, you know, that hasn't been discussed, you folks have talked about a lot, is to have outreach to these communities. This community that we work with is mostly Spanish speakers, but to actually help them, you know, prepare in advance. I've actually talked to some of them about the coming Super El Nino and what they're doing to prepare. So I don't know if that has been considered. So that's just an idea that I... thought of that no one has discussed. So community meetings, maybe town hall meetings, some of them may be in Spanish, or Spanish translations. So these are some of the more vulnerable communities. There's also I remember the trailer park outside of San Juan Bautista that had suffered a lot of flooding. These are the more vulnerable communities. So maybe working with those communities and having community meetings with these groups would be very helpful. That's an extra sort of idea that I wanted to throw out there. People have talked about the evacuation shelters, and that's really great, having that prepared. We were thinking, I wrote down, preparing supplies for seniors, people with disabilities, pets and livestock, but maybe that's already been thought of. And the other thing I was thinking of is, you know, we do have, you know, a tight budget given the recent deficits, but building up an emergency fund that's adequate to handle the situation, I think is really important. So those are just some ideas I want to throw out. Thank you very much for your time. Next in chambers, Fallon Gregg.

Good morning chair and board. I really appreciate that this meeting is available and the reports that have been given were excellent. They covered everything that I was gonna talk about. So I was really pleased to see that we're being proactive, but it is September and I don't know when the rains are expected, but they will be here. And so I think we're a little tiny bit maybe behind the gun and so we need to get make sure that that preparations are done as soon as possible. And one of the things that the issues that I was concerned about, of course, was the Lovers Lane area because they historically flood whenever there's a little bit of water. And so they need protection. Ditches need to be drained. Debris needs to be cleared out now. rather than later or, you know, down the road a little bit. That's, I think, something that can be started now. And another area of concern are the commuter roads, Highway 25, Fraser Lake, Shore Road, and Lovers Lane Road. Those areas flood historically. And so I think the ditches, the drain ditches along those roadways, those commuter lanes, need to be cleared and maybe dug deeper and sandbagged if needed. So those were my main concerns, making sure that debris is cleared from the areas that typically flood, the culverts and the drainage ditches. And so I would just like to stress that it's better to be overprepared and not need it than to be, you know, need to be prepared. And so we need to act now rather than later because it is approaching soon. So I thank you for having this meeting. I thank you for those that gave reports. They were really helpful. They covered most of the areas that I was going to talk about. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Ted Uhlenberg.

Thank you, City Council. I have a neighbor that has put in a nuisance row of trees. I have pictures of what you can see. We're supposed to be 10 foot clearance on both sides. And I can show you pictures where last year it flooded our side of the property and didn't hit the other side of the property. Because And then I went over to San Benito County Water District and said, hey, this needs to be cleared out because this is an issue. I was told it's not our problem. It's the other people's problem, the county's problem, not the water board's problem. So the county, they didn't do anything about it. The flooding came again. It went all the way to Fairview Road and across the road. So if you want to talk about traffic hazards, and impacts, there's one right there. But if they don't take the job seriously to do the job of enforcing and taking care of these problems, this is just gonna be exacerbated into a bigger problem. So anyway, they just need to take care of the water issues that people tell them about and be responsible. Thank you.

Next in chambers, Jack Kimmich.

Yes, good morning. Thank you, Supervisors and Chair, for the opportunity to speak. We live on San Felipe Road in between Lovers Lane and San Felipe. 2017, the water came through, as everybody remembers. After that, I spoke with some of the old-timers that have been there for a long time. And they said that prior to CEQA, they allowed the farmers to go and clear out the gravel that was in the riverbed. And one of the individuals that lives on Lovers Lane said that in high school, that they used to race their trucks in the riverbed. It was wide and it was deep, and their parents would never hear them. And so if we want to fix a drainage problem over there, we need to find out. at where Soap Lake is, where that water's supposed to flow and clean a ditch out. Even if it's a small beginnings to clear that out so the water has a place to go, that's what causes the flooding in the Lovers Lane area. Obviously when the levee breaks or The storm drain that's on San Felipe at around the 6,000 block, when the water in the river fills up and it backs up through that pipe and moves the manhole lid off, and we have two feet of water bubbling up, flooding two homes, that was correctable. And in 2017, it was brought up. In 2023, it was brought up. And, you know, it's a $2,000 to $6,000 part that goes on the other end of that culvert. It's called the duck bill, and it prevents water from backing up through that culvert. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff. It's great to hear that there's plans and actions and people are doing inspections and stuff like that. But unless you get boots on the ground and clear out that waterway through there, you know, we're just going to have more of the same. Correct. In that case, you know, we've got the sheriff's department and the search and rescue guys and those others that do deep water rescues that can, you know, support and help. But we need to take care of those areas, you know, And it's great to have surveys and all that other stuff, but if you had a base plan that says the water from that creek starting at the bridge going all the way through the bridge to Lover's Lane and then from there following it all the way out, that's what needs to be done. The flooding that we have is a real flooding where it goes as far as it can and then it backs up. It's like when your bathtub overflows. So, you know, if that gets fixed, then I think we're going to have a lot less problems of those impact of the flooding in that area. The other thing that I think needs to be mentioned too is a lot of the farms and a lot of the homeowners through there, they have chemicals in their barns. And when it floods, those chemicals wash out. And that creates a serious issue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Rochelle.

Good morning, Board. Rochelle with the Pacheco Stormwater District and also a resident on San Felipe Road. I wanted to add to the report where it was presented. I didn't hear much about San Felipe Road. I know you can't cover all. But San Felipe is a big problem. So I'm here to sort of be the voice in the ear of the county. If we can make sure that we move forward. Our water district is the one who contacted Army Corps of Engineers. We're the ones that invited the county along with it. We did the tour. We saw a lot of debris around properties, and I'm right now in the middle of trying to get a sponsorship or funding from RCD to get trash bins or large trash collection bins to do the pre-cleanup that we need to do. Like Jack said, we've got farms with oils, chemicals, We have people farming on the levee. We have people living in illegal encampments along the levee. We have beds, mattresses, abandoned cars, ovens, stoves, all waiting to be pushed into the home front doors of people who live on Lovers Lane. So what I need from the county is I need sponsorship for you guys to sponsor us. through a grant so that we can get these containers delivered, we can get the cleanup happening so we can solve one problem. The other thing, we need to make sure that our district, the Pacheco Stormwater District, is still going to be getting that 1.5 million that the county supervisors kind of put aside for our district to do Levee repair, creek clean out. We had a report, a final report delivered to us by the Army Corps of Engineers, states where the vulnerabilities are on the creek. We know what to do. We need help. Let's see. So we're working on removing debris. I need help with the county. Oh, boy. Good practices. We want to really move forward with working on the county on good practices. We know what needs to be done during this emergency that happens. We've lived through it. We know that right now the county needs to step up to the plate and get the bridge maintenance done along Pacheco Creek Bridge, San Felipe Road, Lovers Lane Bridge. Total overgrowth. The only thing that's saving the greens from growing along the roadways are the cars that pass it. So total neglect. I also back up what Kimmich said about the old days, being able to drive your bulldozer through our creek to open the waterways, to clear the debris. And we're inundated with an invasive species, which is the orondo. So thank you.

I have one on Zoom. Valerie, you've been unmuted and you have three minutes.

Yes, thank you very much. That was an excellent presentation. What I would add to it is that residents get a NOAA, N-O-A-A, National Organization of Atmospheric Blah Blah. It's for weather. And you can get it out of your app store. It will keep you informed hour by hour about all precipitation, storms, et cetera, that come through. Now that's, depending on the level, you have to pay maybe $20 a year, but it's well worth it and it will advise you. Google also has come out with a weather thing that I notice is popping up on my feed. So there may be a free app out there from Google I want to thank Public Works for working on the ditch grading along School Road and this Anzar district to keep water flowing. However, when the fiber optic people came through ditching to bury their cable, they also run the grading that had been done that was beautiful to get water off the road and not flowing across the road. I noticed also at the airport, they've got a sandbag station, and whether they're looking out for this El Nino situation or whether that was for some other thing, but that looked like something that could be done around neighborhoods that flood. I want to say kudos to the people who are working on the culverts. They're being marked, I noticed, for repair. And that will save roads so that water is not flowing across and undermining things. Much appreciated. And legal. Appreciate what our legal has said about advance preparation of legal papers in order to get things expedited, not in the midst of the storm, but before the storm. So I'm glad that the Board of Supervisors has prepared this presentation for our local community and all the way down. Thank you very much. You have a good day.

Thank you. And I have one more in chambers. Bill Flory.

or just the opportunity that this meeting is even taking place, very important. I'm a lifelong resident on Lovers Lane, a Chaco Stormwater District trustee as well. I think most of the issues have been that my concern have been already addressed, but I do want to emphasize a few things. One is that, you know, the drainage, drainage is a huge problem there. Just a lake forms out there, and not only there, but on, you know, my property and all over the place, because the drainage is terrible out there. And also, as well, I do want to bring up that money has been allocated to remove the debris under the bridge. I live right next to the Lovers Lane Bridge. Money's been allocated, and I was kind of wondering when that's going to actually take place. That needs to be cleared out. That's just a big roadblock for the water that comes in. It's going to... You know, it's a dam right there, basically. So it needs to be cleared out. Hopefully there's a timeline of some sort that's going to be established to get that cleared out. And if you could maybe just let us know when that would take place. Hopefully soon, before the rains come. Because once the water comes up, there's not going to be any use in working on that. And again, another thing I'd like to mention, there's been another flood in 1995 that probably should be mentioned as well, even though it was 30 years ago, but it's just seemed like the frequency of these occurrences are getting more and more, especially with this new El Nino coming up, it's going to be probably inevitable. Something major is going to happen, I would imagine. And also just overseeing the processes of the particular one here that was presented earlier. You know, for instance, the equipment and that type of thing that's going to, is there someone actually going to be seeing that these get taken care of? And is there any way that we can be made aware that is even the stormwater district or even the public? let known where this equipment is, who we can contact if we need it, and that type of thing. So anyway, I think that's all I have. All right, thank you, thank you very much.

I have one other, Josephine Alfaro.

Good morning, my name is Josephine Alfaro and I live in Lavers Lane. I'm a new member of that community. Well, I was in Pacwa in 2023, living only nine months in that property. We lost everything. And I've been working with, I mean, every single person that I know that can help. I met Ms. Esperanza right there. This last time, I developed issues with my respiratory because the water, it was sunk in front of my house. I have a fly's infestation in my house. Smelling every day the, you know, the... bad water is stunk in there also we are so concerned because we have a lot of disabled people in that area one of my neighbors has a daughter and then another neighbor is in wheelchair So it's a lot of elderlies. Now we're facing no supervisor. And we are very concerned, you know, very extremely concerned. Like everybody says, we need a discipline with the cleaning. Cleaning, it's the most important thing. Having, you know, like... a manager or somebody to be every year that creek, those ditches, everything has to be clean. I don't have a lot of experience regarding that area, but I hear how in the past, people, they got together and they clean and they minimize the, you know, the catastrophe of, you know, the situation. Please take in consideration every life matters in that area too. In these three years that I've been there, The only thing I hear is everybody gets concerned about their properties, but Lovers Lane, I notice, is the bottom of the list. Please, I really hope this time you guys listen. Thank you.

And that concludes public comment for this item.

Thank you. There's been a request for a short break. Do you want to take a five-minute break before we get back into discussion? Thank you. Okay, we are back from our break. We're gonna continue discussion here with item 2.1. We've had public comment. Come back to the board. Supervisor Kosmicki, this was your item you suggested last time. Do you want to start us off here with any questions or comments?

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for the great information from staff, everybody that came out to share information. I know I've received some things, whether it's by phone or by email, so there's a lot of interest in this topic. Yes, it is September 1st now, but we have some time here, so we need to be aggressive. We have a few months, you know, obviously before December. My understanding is that according to the predictions that it's maybe late December, early January, into February, sort of an event that's possible here. So we do have to really get aggressive. Some general thoughts based off of some of the conversation here and some, you know, research is, you know, I'd really like to get a better idea on the reserves and what potentially is available in reserve funding. We do have an emergency fund set aside. I know somebody mentioned having an emergency fund. So if we can get some sort of information on what we realistically have available in the event of a major issue here. I want to thank Caltrans on a couple fronts. Recently mowing the San Juan Valley area along 156 and some of those drainage areas. I did request that from them after hearing concerns from some folks in the ag community. They also deepened the floodplain after the expansion. There was a huge floodplain along 156 and they did respond to some concerns as well that were brought up about just wasn't deep enough. So I think that was helpful. I want to note, it was probably well over a year ago, I had a meeting with a former public works administrator and stakeholders expressing concern about the San Juan Creek in particular. So when you have that map up there and you see North County, South County, the San Juan area, the third area there is the San Juan, east of San Juan, San Juan Creek area. um and i just want to make sure it's clear that that is it's not just a small area this is a creek that essentially runs from san juan oaks all the way along the the highway 156 ferry morris all the way to the mission um so this is a really important um lover's lane obviously is you know potentially the worst as it always is when we have storms but i don't want to lose sight of san juan and san juan creek we've had issues with the um the the mobile home park there getting flooded out um it's an area that um that can really see some serious damage um and so um i was told over a year ago that we were going to get moving on san juan creek clearing out working with the state trying to get the clearance to get in there um ultimately allowing property owners hopefully to get in there and help out. I think ideally this is a situation where, um, and I'll get to, um, request specifically that I have as far as getting emergency access, emergency clearance from the state. Um, but we really do need to do whatever we can to, um, allow our partners, the property owners to, to use their resources along with ours to clearing out these creeks. Um, and then, uh, As far as, you know, we just need to prepare for the worst in this situation. And, you know, I do want to mention, I want to thank staff and the county and the board for the work that we've done so far with the San Benito Riverbed. I do think that's a big deal that we, you know, we got ahead of that before this winter and that we got a lot of debris, a lot of trash. The encampments that were in there, it wasn't just encampments. There was a whole bunch of junk in that riverbed. And I think that will be helpful, but it's only a start. as a whole i don't think we have to reinvent the wheel that's the positive thing here uh we have you know 2017 in recent history 2017 and 2023 we should be taking a look back at what impacts there were where were the impacts what could we have done better um what we what have we done since and what can we do between now and uh the start of 2027. And so here's what I would recommend in light of all the great conversation I've heard today and just talking to folks in the community. Again, identify available funding and potentially available funding, whether it's from the feds of the state or whomever. And then I would like to get a response on there was a concern about allocated funding in particular for Pacheco, the Pacheco Creek, the district there. If we can get an answer on that, I would appreciate that. I think the not the easiest thing we can do but the most logical thing we can do in this situation is clearing out these creeks that's something we know is a huge problem and it's a huge cause of exacerbated flooding that can be prevented and so to me that seems to be something that should be at the top of the list as far as our focus is getting these creeks cleared out in my district it happens to be san juan creek there's issues there's flooding elsewhere and i'll get to that san juan canyon In particular, I've heard some concerns as well. But I think having a focus on clearing out these creeks and clearing out debris, whether it's Lovers Lane, whether it's San Juan Creek, identifying all those areas throughout the county that are the most vulnerable when it comes to flooding. addressing drainage issues. And so, um, you know, going through and inspecting, so that would, this would be kind of the third thing on my recommendations, available funding, clearing out creeks, uh, inspecting all related. I know public works is probably aware of this, but I want to try to wrap it all together, inspecting all, uh, related infrastructure, uh, when it comes to drainage, uh, and, and trying to prevent blockages, damaged equipment, and just doing our best to address those issues. I know Jack Kimmage brought up, I know he was speaking with the chair at the break about San Felipe, Lover's Lane. I'd like to see that addressed as well. Prioritizing number four for me is prioritizing. These aren't in any particular order. Prioritizing sensitive areas like those near schools, medical facilities, homes, and vulnerable populations. Identifying evacuation routes. Number five, identifying evacuation routes and addressing any potential impediments there may be for evacuation in the event of a major catastrophe here. You mentioned on-call contracts. Thank you for that. With heavy equipment and contractors that we would need on-call, I would recommend doing that as soon as possible because they're clearly, if there is a major event, there's gonna be a high demand for those contractors. And the sooner we can get in contact with whoever they may be, the better. I would imagine after this meeting today, even that there will probably be more attention in our surrounding neighborhood communities that maybe haven't had this sort of a discussion yet and they're going to get the ball rolling so i would like to see that part of it moving quickly as possible um just as an aside on that i think santa cruz i was looking around looks like santa cruz county is maybe the only one in the area that i can see that's it's been kind of as proactive they have a website up already in el nino preparation website maybe we can take a look at that and glean a gleam off of that I think starting preparation for how we're going to provide resources and how we can collaborate with other agencies and nonprofits to provide resources, such as sandbags and those sorts of things, and just being ahead of the game on that. Collaborating with cities in the area, jurisdictions. I would recommend... You know, it's always easy to just throw around ad hocs and task force and these things. But I would recommend highly that we develop a task force now, essentially, that would encompass local jurisdictions, state and federal representatives, nonprofits, the agriculture community, the stormwater district. And if I'm missing any, I'm certainly not meaning to do that, but just a broad spectrum of interested stakeholders on this issue. We're having meetings, we're prepping, making sure we're covering bases. And on that note, advocating with state and federal leaders now on what potentially there may be as far as resources and any sort of input they may have for us. Next, I had having an outreach plan. I think that was mentioned. Some of these things, I'm just, obviously, I'm not, you know, these are things that have been discussed here today, but I'm trying to bring it all together. Having an outreach plan, including Spanish in that outreach plan and seniors, so Spanish-speaking seniors, vulnerable populations, again, I think at some point here relatively soon we should plan to have town halls in the night time. Something where as we get closer, maybe as we start to develop a plan here for the upcoming rainy season that we again invite the public out and have some sort of workshop town hall sort of events where we're getting more input from the public. I think next I had having a communications plan for residents to report issues to the county. So not only a communications plan when it comes to outreach, but a communication plan on the other side of things for residents to be able to easily communicate with the county if there is an event on any damage or safety issues that come up. You know, there was mention of plan for emergency operations center. Let's solidify that plan for providing shelter. Let's certainly solidify that. And as we go here, we need to make sure that our, you know, our staff is fully trained on this. So, you know, whoever's involved, we need to make sure that they're adequately trained in how to respond. I know the sheriff's office has certainly has it covered from his end. But yeah, certainly other staff that are involved because it doesn't just involve necessarily public safety fire. There's HHS, there's A lot of folks that throughout the county, public works, I'm sure behavioral health, the list kind of goes on and on. We have planning. So I'd like to see whatever sort of training we may need for that. And then I already mentioned just analyzing damage from 2023 and 2017. And then lastly, I just want to mention, please let's not forget San Juan Canyon Road. I did forward the email that we received expressing concerns from San Juan Canyon Road to our CEO. So if you could review that, Esperanza, I would greatly appreciate that when you get a chance. But there's a lot of concern in San Juan Canyon, like other areas, in light of the damage that was seen in 2023, flooding that was seen. There's a stream that runs along San Juan Canyon. It's small, but it can get substantially larger in size when there are events. And so if you can set aside some time, Esperanza. I'd like to sit down and talk a little more about the concerns that were expressed from the San Juan Canyon community in particular. And I know the board looked like also received that email. And lastly, I just want to piggyback on Abraham correctly noting, you know, There's a misnomer of this 1%, and I know we talk about this every couple years. There's no longer a 1% storm. These are more like 20% storms or whatever it might be. It seems like it's every few years now. So we just have to be realistic about that and don't treat it anymore as a 1% storm. Treat it as if it's going to happen, and we need to be as prepared as possible. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, Professor Currow.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Kosmicki, for putting this as a future agenda item. It is an item that I have been very concerned about for some time and been working with my constituents on where the concerned areas are. And I'm going to pre-apologize because my district is very large and I've had lots of conversations. I already forwarded, just so it is on public record, I already forwarded a comprehensive list of priorities, including Pinoch Road, which is, the issues are striping and reflectors, potholes, mudslides, culvert cleanouts. New Idria Road, which we know will most likely wash out again, especially because of the damage from the reclamation of the mine from the feds as a Superfund site. Cienega Road also. Soil stabilization is a major issue. We know that the area between Hudner Ranch and Mudstone is a drainage issue and going to have major slides. They also do not have striping of any kind. They have no reflectors of any kind. Major pothole issues, which will become sinkholes along Cienega. The culvert cleanouts are everywhere, but weed abatement is huge. Kalinga Road, not just Cienega Road, but Kalinga Road, Bitterwater, King City, potholes and striping. Those are the big things because we're going to have sinkholes if we have too much water. Southside Road, weed abatement and a clearing out of Trace Pinos Creek. There's many other areas, but I wanted to make sure that I highlighted that these are areas that I have made a primary focus with the CEO and staff. Fairview Corners drainage of that new development, I'm very concerned about how Fairview Corners, while it's under construction, is going to drain into the residence towards the east. We already have seen some drainage issues because of that project. just in the grading of that project. Quail Hollow at CSA, I don't know which number it is for the CSA, But the park, I've also notified the CEO and staff about an enormous eucalyptus tree that we know if there is too much rain, it is going to fall. It is in the CSA park. It is the responsibility of the county to at least chop off the top of it, if not totally remove that tree. Additionally, I have cottonwood, which I have to thank staff in the road crew In the floods in 2023, Cottonwood was completely just a mess. And the staff went in there and redirected the creek with moving huge boulders and getting the flow so that it wasn't flooding to the level that it could have. It was really bad. San Juan Canyon, I also forwarded all of the information from multiple residents to the CEO. San Juan Canyon also has a huge impact on how the drainage from the canyon comes down into the valley. I think we really need to be looking at that because we need to be collaborating with development that is already in progress. San Juan Oaks we need to be coordinating with. We need to know where they've been working on water diversion to make sure it's being retained on their property. but they can't hold this amount of water. It will far exceed the capacity. Santana Ranch also, it'll far exceed the capacity. We know Fairview is gonna have major issues. Okay. Thank you to South County residents. You are the most resilient people I've ever met in my lives. You are more prepared than anyone. And I am going to make a comment and I hope that the Lovers Lane residents understand this is nothing against any of the impacts that you guys have had in prior flooding but understanding that you live in a flood zone and that flood zones and that is a pacheco past stormwater district is a private property district understanding that that has been a flooding issue for decades i agree with every comment that's been said here fish and wildlife and sequa have killed us being able to be prepared for flooding and monterey county and it's been pacharo valley flood district and i'm sorry my phone went to sleep i had it all up on my phone uh pajaro valley regional flood management agency, the County of Monterey, the County of Santa Cruz, the City of Watsonville, the community of Santa Cruz and Monterey County Water Resource Agency have all done a Pajaro River watershed prevention request to the governor to get access to the water or the river area to be able to clean it out. We need to be doing that. We need to collaborate with San Benito Water District. We need to collaborate with every one of our water systems because where the water is flowing is going to be not just a county responsibility. I want to make it clear. The majority of the areas where the flooding happens is because residents are the owners of those access. We don't have the right to go into private property in flood areas and clean out creeks. We actually would take on a liability if we did that. We have no legal authority. So we can fix things maybe from the top or maybe from the bottom, but there are areas that are private residents' responsibilities that if we don't collaborate, you're going to have an impact because it just takes one property owner not cleaning out their portion. that could flood everyone else. So with that said, the collaboration and education about where is county responsibility versus private residents, that conversation, I completely agree. We need to have a town hall by region We need to have very clear maps with property owners where we know we can't go in, where property owners are going to have to go in. But we need to advocate as the Board of Supervisors on your behalf to get you an exemption through Fish and Wildlife, having the governor do a pre-state of emergency to ensure that we can go, you can go in there, we can go in our areas, you can go in there and clear it out. okay so i think there's a lot of sort of education and collaboration from a public and a private partnership but that also includes non-profits the non-profits need to be at the table talking with us on what they can do we should not wait and respond to where the floods are we need to start now and collaborate together knowing where the trouble shot troubled areas are I have a few more things. I'm gonna take a breath. Hold, please. Okay. So culverts are a major problem. They wash out. Culvert clean out, majority of culverts on driveways are private property. We need to identify and make sure that residents are informed that it's their responsibility to clean out their individual private culverts. we need to have kind of like a culvert identification plan because I know the roads department knows where they all are. It's really scary when you're driving on a road and this is from experience with the road crew. You're in South County, you're driving on a road and they stop before they get to a culvert and they make you as a supervisor go down under the road and look, the road is there. There's nothing underneath the road. This is in Coalinga Road. This happens on New Idria. This happens on Pinoch. All of these roads are going to have high-risk areas that will sink. When I warn residents, they go, oh, it floods here all the time and I just drive my four-wheel drive over it. Okay, everyone, if we could go back, if I had the visual, I would just remind everyone, remember New Idria Road? The image of the water that looked like it was only maybe a half an inch running over the road when the water decreased? it was more than 16 feet down a car will go in and never come out and people will die in these situations do we already lost um i believe it was one individual or was it two on the the they went over um san benito river and this was about a year ago and they they perished and unfortunately the sheriff's department and search and rescue had to go out there and they found their bodies down because they they drove through a river that just because you think you can if the sign says save your life turn around there's a funny sign out there i can't remember where it is on on kalinga road but it's like if you want to live don't drive over this creek i mean it's pretty a blunt sign um i agree with the vulnerability of our seniors and disabled we need to collaborate with our schools We may need more evacuation locations than we're preparing for. Even just starting the conversations with schools about gyms and common areas where we could have a backup for those 500 to 700 cots. It's great to have 500 to 700 cots, but if you have no place to put them, it's not going to do us any good. Weed abatement is a major problem this year, and I'm not sure exactly why, if it's because of the shortage from our team, a maintenance issue, or the fact that we've had more, we had some more rains. But we have some roads that have come down to literally one lane because of the weeds. And it's not just weeds, it's tree. abatement there there's some major tree issues so um just to make public works aren't you glad welcome welcome it's day two day two you started on on monday as our public works director so welcome adolfo we really appreciate you being here nothing like coming to a county that needs a lot of support um the okay so i did the seniors uh the state action i already did i really i've already forwarded information uh to the ceo on what um monterey and pajaro river watershed has already proposed we need to collaborate with santa clara valley water district too we have to remember even though your flood zone is known The dam is on the Santa Clara side. We need to be having conversations with Santa Clara Valley Water District about how and what has been done. I know there was a mention of either 1.2 or 1.5 money that was being set aside. I believe that was CBDG, I think I have the acronym wrong. I think that money is not happening, so.

Just to clarify on that point, the applications were submitted but they were not completed. They were incomplete, so staff worked with the response. It's already at the state level, and we're just waiting for the contract to begin the work. Under the CDBG program, we cannot begin the work until the funds are being allocated through a contract.

Thank you for that confirmation and clarification. I appreciate the ask for sponsorship for Pacheco Stormwater District. Understanding that sponsorship does not mean that the county can give more money. We need to collaborate with supporting you to get grants to be able to deal with what needs to happen. I completely agree with Supervisor Kosmicki. We need to know how much emergency funding we have available and how much are we willing to use for pre-preparation, not reaction. I think that conversation needs to come back. When it comes to are disaster service workers. All of our county employees are disaster service workers. And as a former county employee, your role, there used to be, back in the day, where every... key individual that had a role, whether it was tracking of invoices for the FEMA reimbursement, whether it was coordinating volunteers, everybody had a role. And I wanna make sure at the board level, we understand what our role is as board members, because I felt in 2023, there was so much reaction instead of preparedness and across the board communications. We were being told as a board, and please correct me if I'm wrong, colleagues, that we would be notified via an email. What we got were weather reports every day. It was great. We got great weather reports every single day. That doesn't help us communicate with our residents. I can look up what the weather's gonna be. What we need is clear communication and the understanding that legally in an emergency situation, we are able to come to a command center and observe, take notes, and inform separately our residents. That's not a Brown Act violation. There is no Brown Act violation in an emergency if we're trying to gather information and get it out to our residents. We need to. I felt so useless in 2023. I would really like our roles to be more defined in how we can help spread the word. So that brings us to actionable items. One, of course, anything that we can do to support the clearing of creeks with fish and wildlife and the state and getting people access and ourselves access. We need to bring our ranchers and our ag community together. We need to mobilize them and use equipment that maybe we don't have access to. We just need to give them the authority and the freedom to get into the creeks and riverbeds. Securing supplies, every resident in this community needs to start preparing with a kit. They need to be prepared to evacuate. You need to be sure you know. So we need an educational program and a town hall just about preparedness for evacuations. Monitoring local alerts. This is where I wanna make sure that we are training our, departments that everyone is pointing people to the same location. When you go on our Office of Emergency Services and you look at the alerts, it's not always clear exactly where or how you're supposed to be getting your information. There is a Genesis, G-E-N-A-S-Y-S system that is on our San Benito Office of Emergency Services. And you click this alert portal to get notifications on your phone. Are we utilizing that system and are we educating the public to use that system? Because if that's not the system we want people to use, we need to update our websites. And we need the top of our San Benito website to have this emergency preparedness be the key highlighted area. Road conditions are very important, but that needs to be key. Another area, because when you click on this alert system, it asks you to log in or register. And then you get text messages that come from and emails that come from our system. I want to make sure if that's the system we're using, who's in charge of it, who's making sure it's current, and how are we advertising to the public that that's how we're communicating with them. When it comes to evacuation areas, I just did a really quick Google on web san benito county evacuation notices well it took me to gis and there's an evacuation map and in the evacuation map it says inactive zones right now are gray so the whole county is inactive but they have advisory zones that are yellow when there's a problem evacuation warning zones that are orange evacuation zones that are demanded which would support the sheriff and his team where evacuations need to happen, which are red. Then they have safe zones that are green and they have shelter in place zones that are purple. If we're having this on our website when we're Googling, then we need to have somebody that's in charge of maintaining it. And if we don't, we need to either remove it or we need to make sure that our communications are single point communications and not because i googled a couple of different things and it took me to like four different locations to find information and i went maybe we don't necessarily we have all these great past things but what are we expecting the people and the public to utilize okay one of the comments from our public is that every life matters and i completely agree with that every life does matter but you also stated bottom of the list is your flood area i think everyone in the entire county knows that lovers lane is our flood zone and it is going to flood we cannot try to prepare to not have it flood, it's gonna flood. Even with all the preparedness that we can do, it's gonna flood. We need to be prepared for when it does flood, what are the evacuation routes? Totally agree with Supervisor Kosmicki. Evacuation routes, shelter locations. The CEO was talking about our local assessment centers. We need to do pre-assessment centers before the emergency happens so that the residents are prepared. So with a town hall, that local assessment center could be a more interactive town hall.

I think it's, for clarification, local assessment centers assesses the individuals that are already in an emergency situation. They don't do proactive because we don't know what they're gonna face. The town halls are the proactive. Yes, thank you.

I wanna make sure that we know that, but also when we're doing town halls on preparing that we're doing in that town hall, if there is an evacuation order or you are flooded, This is where you're going to need to go, and you'll have this local assessment center that will help you guide through what your resources are. I think that kind of level of education would be great. Supervisor Kosmicki already did that one, so I'm not going to repeat. Oh, these fiber companies that are putting fiber in the ground, I really hope Public Works comes down on them a little harder. They trenched, they dug up ditches, they put in fiber, and then when they left, they just left the dirt on the side of the road. So all of these areas that grading has occurred, now we have what we call dirt and debris. What's gonna happen when the rains come? All that dirt and debris is gonna wash. And when it washes, it's gonna wash into culverts. So we really need to hold them responsible for going back and compacting soil, making sure that the trenches, the drainage is not impacted. Some examples, I know that the public had some example areas. I know Cienega Road, the old side of Cienega Road has had the same thing. We know that there are South Side Road had it. I know it also was along Highway 25. So those are areas that I think we need to push back on these companies that just come in and their job is to put in fiber, but they're leaving a mess that we have to clean up. We need to get on them before it's a mess and hold them responsible and put them on notice that they need to come back and do compaction. Okay, almost done, I promise you guys. I'm getting so close. So, the alert system we already talked about. the debris left from the 2023 floods. There is still in Tres Piños Creek so much debris. With the small water consolidation project and the way that they have trenched across the roads, we know we're going to have drainage issues we also know that there are slopes on roads that like going on to bellotto road from south side road it's gonna flood there and there's no um there's no way to get that uh water to the creek because of all the debris in Tres Pinos Creek that's still there. All it was done was kind of pushed to the side, but it used to be Tres Pinos Creek. You could actually see the culverts underneath the, what do you call roads or bridges that are on the riverbed? They're called something. It's not a bridge. It's a riverbed access. We also need to make sure that the gates are, on these riverbed accesses like Trace Pinos Creek at Southside Road, when we say it is not passable, that those gates actually work. They don't work. They put a sign there that says flooded and people just drive through it. I really think that we need to be a little more proactive in those areas. So we did that. Kind of going through town, South County. New Idria and Pinoch, I am so concerned about washouts and how people are going to be able to get out in an emergency. I know we can't fix Pinoch all the way, and I know we can't fix New Idria all the way, but even if we can look at temporary... that could be put on the road that would retain it. If there are other options out there that we can look at that with maybe a mixture of water and whatever, we can lay it down that would allow the roads to be passable, that would be great. Also reflectors. how much money can we put into striping and reflectors so people don't drive off of these very steep cliffs? I have serious concerns about Pinoch because of the cliffs. Okay, with that, I agree we need to know funding, we need to know how much we can pre-allocate for prevention, how much we can put into town halls, advocating with a very collaborative letter potentially from Monterey and Santa Cruz to get the governor and Fish and Wildlife to allow access into all of these creeks, educating the public about their responsibility in private areas. And I believe that is it. We can, oh, nonprofits. Coordinating with our nonprofits is going to be crucial because we know we don't have the resources. So maybe a nonprofit consortium could happen, and that is keeping in mind that we need to be talking to the community foundation, all of the nonprofits that work with the community foundation, RCD, the Resource Conservation District, we should be working with what's the other, CHEAR, who the only good thing we have going for us right now is that we as a board invested in the riverbed cleanup. The riverbed cleanup, we need to know the status of the riverbed cleanup. We need to know, has CHEAR removed everything? There was a huge amount in District 4 that was being staged for removal. And then does Deputy O'Day have enough resources and equipment to be able to get in the riverbed and keep homeless out so that we don't have to worry about a death in the river. I want to make sure that the equipment he has is adequate. And if there's a state of emergency, can we replace equipment? Can we pre-purchase equipment? Whatever it is. Because when I went on the riverbed tour with Deputy O'Day, I think his ATV or his whatever it is might need a little love. from us so with that said i thank the board for indulging me with my long-winded comments i think i covered everything i thank all the public that's here and the public that's not here that emailed all of your comments and concerns i have been forwarding to the ceo and to staff and i will make sure that that communication continues, having a point of information coming into a database from residents, it needs to not be flowing through supervisors. We are a delay in the communication. So having not just an email, but a data collection source that would be from our website where people can put information in, and if it is 911 level, they need to be calling 911. It's always protect yourself and your family first. So thank you, everyone, for coming out today, and I really appreciate the item being brought forward. Thank you. Ms. Chatella.

Thank you. Most of my comments and concerns were already addressed by both of the other supervisors, so I'm going to try to make this really quick. I understand that we have private property, and then there's the property that the county is responsible for, and that we all kind of have to do everything that we can to maintain that. but is there anything that we can do to help our private property owners know of kind of the risk, know what resources are available to them, anything that we can do to kind of help so that we're all kind of working together as a team to kind of, do everything we can to prevent bigger issues. Does anybody have any input on that, or is that something we want to address later? I mean, I will say I'm so grateful for this topic being brought forth today, but I think this is the beginning of the discussions. I think we really should start probably having like a monthly report to us about the work that has been done, what still needs to be done, any additional priority areas, et cetera. Sheriff, did you come up because you want?

Now we're fighting over the microphone. I wanted to make sure that everyone in the community knows to please sign up for Nixle alerts. um it's on our website it's on the leave the county's website we have tried in the past to funnel everybody to one information source we don't have a pio so i would say that that's probably going to default more on our office at this point when we're talking about catastrophes floods earthquakes but i don't want to and we'll work really closely with the county to make sure we're not putting out different information. We'll probably just regurgitate what we're putting out on the county side, but it's the San Benito County Sheriff's Office on Facebook and Instagram. We're not really good with keeping up on X or Twitter, though we should be. We'll try. You can try there too, but definitely Facebook, Instagram, we're much better. And then if you follow the San Benito County government site as well, I'm sure that we can work together to push messages out on there. But definitely sign up for initial alerts. We'll push out on our social media pages and our website information on Reverse 911 and things like that. And then in speaking at the break with some of the residents of the Lovers Lane area, this is not an official determination of how you should do this, but in speaking with folks that have been out in, like, we'll say the Lovers Lane area specifically for generations, they have told me that they keep a really close eye on the rainfall up at the state park. I think it's Henry Coe State Park outside of Morgan Hill. And when they watch the rain totals up there, it's about five to six hours later that those waters will come down. That's the old farmer's almanac, old school way of trying to track for local knowledge. We watch the river gauge on the Pacheco Creek near Bell Station. And so when we see those waters starting to come up, and then you can also go, we'll also push out on our social media pages today, the links to the National Weather Service or the NOAA water gauges that everybody can go and click on. And then you'll see, these um forecasts for creek levels and river levels will be on there and then you can also go to the individual gauges so in some times folks need to be self-sufficient because we're not gonna be able to do everything all the time but at the same time just so you know what we're looking at we're looking at those water gauges when they start coming up or we see an upward trend that's what triggers us to go to those communities and then but we did also speak of some folks didn't get uh warning ahead of time And I believe that those times are like when the levees breach. When the levees breach, it's all hands on deck. It's definitely a reactive time at that moment. We can't forecast if the levees are going to breach or if the water is going to get through somehow. So in those cases, that's an emergency response. So we're going to do everything we can. Last thing, because it just came up as well. Please, property owners, this is not the time to worry about, in my opinion, as far as public safety, what's permitted, not permitted, legal or not legal. If we go to your parcel and we're letting you know that there's an evacuation order and you know that you have unpermitted structures, RVs, trailers, stuff with a bunch of people living on your property that maybe we don't know about, we're not gonna know that unless you tell us. So that came up last time. that maybe we made contact at the main house, but we missed the four trailers on the backside of the five-acre parcel that we didn't know that people were inside. So we don't have the ability to go and search every ranch property for every person that can possibly be there. Please, property owners, in these times where lives are at risk, just let us know that people are there so we can go get them out. And don't worry about the ramifications as to why they're there, but we need to get these people out. So thank you.

Thank you, Sheriff. I appreciate that. Really quick question on Nixle, though. Don't go too far. So does every single agency or jurisdiction, so let's say Hollister Police Department, do I have to sign up for Nixle through Hollister Police Department? Then I have to go to the sheriffs and sign up for that one as well? How does that work? Because I am signed up for some Nixle. Maybe I'm signed up for all of them, but I just want the public to understand, and I want to understand better, how do we sign up for these Nixle alerts? And if I sign up for the county one, is that then going to give me all of the alerts from Hollister PD as well?

so there is a way to parse them out so you can like text sbcso i think it is to 888-555 and then that would give you next alerts for our office the better way for everyone to do it and if you may or may not want to be inundated but what i do is just text 95023 or your applicable area code to that 888-555 i'm pretty sure that's it um And then that gives you all the regional alerts. So if you do your, I get Monterey County alerts based on my geographical location in the county. Some of the Monterey County alerts for weather come to me as well because I'm, more on the edge of town so that would be my suggestion if you want to get all these alerts from police us monterey county the county on the nixle alerts page just put in your zip code would be the all-encompassing alerts or you'd have to go to each agency i'm not sure what it could be hpd i'm not sure what it is but i think for us it's sbcso would be text to that number and you would only get sheriff's office alerts and i don't know what the county We often pick our little moniker, but the best thing to do, in my opinion, especially when we're talking about weather-related stuff, is just your zip code.

Thank you. I appreciate that clarification because I think sometimes we sign up for one and then we think it is kind of all-inclusive to everything in our community. I think that's something that hopefully maybe we can put that information out to the public so they're very clear on how to sign up and how to make sure that it's kind of countywide. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's all I have on Nixle now. Thank you. I feel like I'm going to jump all over the place, but in light of we have a district that has a lot of potentially flooding issues, et cetera, that is without a supervisor right now, who should they be contacting since they don't have a representative essentially sitting up here what is the best route for these residents to feel that they're being heard, that if they have any concerns, they know who to contact. And I think it's great for us to know that as well so that we can direct people to the proper person that they should be contacting while there's this vacancy.

They will be contacting me, and I just want to make you aware, I have contact information for Josephine Alfaro, which is already in the Lovers Lane area, and I have another person as well. So when we coordinate the meetings with them, we're going to let the entire board know about those meetings, the town hall meetings that we're having with them. So I will be the contact person for that scenario, in that situation.

And is that okay that we share your email with the public as people? I mean, it's public information, but I just want to make sure that as we're... Yeah, go ahead, Supervisor.

I totally agree with you. The only concern I have is you're gonna be inundated with emails on your county email. Would it behoove us to have a District 5 email that is all District 5, so it's consolidating the information?

We can actually create one email specifically for that supervisor that is not having a supervisor right now. And Public Works, the Sheriff's Department, social service, HSA, and myself, we can have access to the same emails to read what the community is addressing concerns. We can create one specific, and we're going to call it District 5 for access for information. We can do that. I think that's the best approach.

Okay. Thank you very much for that. There has been comments today about illegal living conditions out on Lovers Lane, etc. Is there anything that we can do to be proactive about that to start working on that kind of inventory and making sure that we're kind of on top of that? There was a lot of devastation last time and people were really, really impacted by that. And so I want to make sure that we didn't just we're not ignoring that issue and that we're being proactive in that. I think that we need to make sure that people are safe. Let's see. I have the fiber line. So is there anything, just to kind of add a little bit more with what Supervisor Kuro was saying with these fiber line kind of contractors, is there, if the work is complete, is there an opportunity for us to call them back to the table and say, hey, you've disturbed this side of the road. We need you to put it back to the condition that you originally found it in. Is that something that we can do quickly so that we can report back in a month or so about that, hey, it's all been done?

I will touch base with them today. I know they're currently doing some additional work, and I know they have more work programs, so I will sit down with their management and have that conversation.

Okay. Thank you for that, Adolfo. In regards to chemical cleanup and kind of hazards... Is there any opportunity, as well as I think some of the conditions that were out there, and I know that environmental health went out last time and kind of assessed the situation, but is there any opportunity for like integrated waste to, or even environmental health to maybe one, like with integrated waste, do a, I know we do quarterly cleanups, but if we could do like a special cleanup for, and really putting an alert out to the community, hey, if you have any of these, you know, things you can, take them to the landfill for free on these days, et cetera, but maybe doing a special or maybe just coordinate it with the next one. I don't know when the next one is supposed to be. but making sure that it aligns with what we're trying to do right now. And then I know that OES at one time had emergency radios, and I don't know if we still have any. If we do, we should try to get those out. If not, is there any opportunity for us getting any more of those? I think they were purchased through a grant. And I want to say we had some... a meeting maybe two years ago about storm preparedness or emergency preparedness. And we gave out a lot of the radios, but I, I just, if we can double check and see if there are any more radios available. And if not, if there are any more grants or there's anything where, you know, working with Cal OES, if we might be able to get some more of those radios might be really helpful to make sure we're keeping in contact with the public. Um, I really, really agree and like the idea of having a meeting. And again, I think we should really focus on what we are doing, but also what resources are available for our community to help prepare them as well, because it's going to take all of us. A question that I have for Public Works is how are we going to ensure right now that this is a priority? There are so many priorities. You guys are very short staffed. So what are we diverting or stopping people from working on to now start to prepare for creek cleanup? I know that we've okay, yes, we need to get it done, and here we are three years later, and there's still things that haven't been done. But I know that we're really short-staffed, so I know we need to hit this very aggressively. And so what can we do from now until when these storms start realistically cleaning up? And maybe this isn't an item that you can address today, but if it's not, maybe when we have a month from now when we have this meeting, I would love to see what our plan is with how we're going to get this work done.

Yes, and thank you for that question. And as you pointed out, we are very short staffed and Supervisor Kerr pointed out, I've only been here two days. So my intent is to have weekly status meetings with our public works road folks so that I can obtain progress reports on where we are. So we are doing inspections. Then we will prioritize on how we're going to basically attack these specific areas. We will have to – something we'll have to give. So some of the typical routine maintenance we will have to move away from unless it's a safety issue so that we can focus on clearing out some of these other areas. I also – want to touch upon the creeks and pacheco creek and some of these areas are within private property so we the county cannot for the specific reasons that were cited cannot enter these creeks So there is a section under Fish and Wildlife Code that allows us to inform Fish and Wildlife that we will be entering the creek beds or that the property owners will be entering the creek beds to perform clean clean up. We are required to coordinate and basically inform them that we will be doing this because we can document the potential for flooding since we've had this flooding. I've consulted with county council, so I will be sending out that email this week to Fish and Wildlife, letting them know that we will be moving forward with some of this cleanup.

Are we able to go? One of the comments today was about digging deeper and it sounds like Caltrans possibly did that. So is that something that might be available to us too?

The focus is going to be to simply clear out what is damming the flow of water right now.

Is there any opportunity for us to potentially bring in like CHEER, the nonprofit? I mean, I heard, you know, I know they help down in the riverbed quite a bit. I know that this all comes at an expense, you know, but if there are vehicles down there and there are, I don't know, just washers. I don't know what exactly is down there, but it sounded like there's quite a bit and it sounds like it might be a pretty big task to I think we've got to use every resource that we can, and I don't know if CHEAR is available or not, but I know they did a lot of the cleanup down in the river, removing a lot of the waste and debris that was down in the riverbed, the San Benito riverbed, when we were doing the homeless cleanup.

I'm not familiar with CHEAR. However, you know, I will familiarize myself, and we will be looking at all our options.

Okay. And I know Integrated Waste has worked with CHEAR quite a bit, and so... I do think that we need to think about as we are going through this budget cycle, and I know we have zero money, and so please don't kill me. But I do think we need to be realistic in allocating probably some emergency funding to be proactive right now in preparing for this. You know, I'm trying to be realistic, and I know how hard our financial – outlook is right now, but I do think that it will be far worse if we are not proactive right now. And so I do, as we are, you know, this will be the month that we finalize our budget, I do think we need to probably think about a realistic amount that will likely come from our reserves about preparing for this storm, or if there's any of the departments that have any funding that can go towards storm cleanup and coordination, et cetera. I think we've all got to keep that at the forefront of our mind. I think that the other thing that's going to become critical, and I appreciate the sheriff talking about keeping the public informed is, Who will be tasked with that? I think that is something that we're going to need to assign. Who will be in charge of all of the public information? Because that position then becomes critical when you're going through an emergency and a disaster. And so we're wanting to make sure that we highlight who is going to be in charge of all of our public information going out. So I think those are the majority of my comments. So thank you very much.

thank you a couple things i'm gonna do my best not to repeat anything there's been a lot that's already been said obviously um i will say so as far as i understand public works question with the creek clean everything that i've heard over the years of dealing with this is basically we are allowed to remove anything loose we cannot uproot trees in the creek and we cannot dig out the sediment but we can remove all loose things is that correct that is correct okay so we can do that we know we can do that i think the board is all on the same page we want to do that i 100 agree we need to throw emergency funding reserves whatever we can at this because it's going to be cheaper than dealing with it afterwards And obviously, we want to prevent issues, not just deal with them after. So I am 100% supportive of funding this in whatever ways we can. We'll get into that. Regarding the structures that were mentioned from the sheriff and supervisor, Stello, This is just another reason we really need to be aware of this because I walked the levee recently with some of the residents and the Army Corps of Engineers, and there's clearly people living in places that they are not supposed to be living at. And it's getting to the point in these situations where it's about life safety. So we do need to crack down on that. We do need to make sure that people aren't living in these areas because it could cause issues for our law enforcement because a lot of issues for them. So we need to make sure that we're addressing that as well. The animals, the livestock, and particularly in the Lovers Lane area, I know in 2023, there was, Bellotto Park had space open for animals. Do we have anything set up for that again for livestock safety? Do we know, I don't know if the Public Works or Abraham or someone has any information, Sheriff has some information about that. I would love to hear about that, so.

So Dara out at the fairgrounds is always very accommodating as we have been in the past. We've been messaging back and forth with Ken and Dara and myself about opportunities for that. Those opportunities, and maybe we have her come to a meeting and speak to it, but my 30,000 foot view on it is That would be an available resource for people. However, like everybody else, the fairgrounds don't have staff that can monitor the animals. So if you are going to bring your animals out and put them in a pen or put them in something, you're going to have to provide food, water, and everything for them. The fairgrounds is not going to be able to do that, and nobody else is going to be able to do that. But I'm confident in talking with Dara that if the need arises, those resources will be available. A long time ago, as part of search and rescue, we had equine evac and large animal evac. We don't have that anymore as part of our search and rescue. We don't have that ability. I believe the city of Hollister purchased through some Homeland Security funds the ability to, I think they have a large livestock trailer and truck, I believe. I'm not sure if it's in service. And I made the comment in a meeting the other day that I'm not sure that they're responding out, and I had people, I think it was in my grand jury introduction meeting, I had folks in that room say, well, we have reached out to animal services for stuff, and they have responded to us in the county for large animals. So I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I know that that's a resource. But on the county side, I don't think that we have the ability to go get your animals for you and transport them. You'd have to be self-sufficient in that. But the fairgrounds is definitely a place to go. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That's good to hear. And yeah, I think... The issue then is that residents that are in an area that may flood that have livestock really need to take it seriously and be proactive about it because like the sheriff just mentioned, we can't go pick up your sheep. We can't go do that. So you'll need to plan ahead. I know not everyone has, they may have livestock, but they don't have a trailer. Maybe they borrowed it to get them there and they need to plan ahead, residents need to be prepared get livestock to a safe location so we don't have any issues with that. I know there were some issues last time, so we got to make sure we get on that, but I would encourage people to take it very seriously. The sandbag pile, we had a big pile of dirt and sandbags available for residents. I don't know if that's available now or it will be, but I want to make sure that that is available if it's not and that the word is out so that residents can start preparing in advance. As far as the District 5 situation, I'm correct with they will have a supervisor early or mid-November, is that correct?

It's after the certification. So it could be as late as the 3rd of December, 5th of December, if it takes that long to certify.

Okay, good to know. Good to know. Just for everyone to know. So December, looking at maybe early December, we'll have a supervisor available again at that time. I want to go over a couple specific areas. I know there are a lot we're touched on, but as far as the roadside cleaning of the ditches and the culverts. Along Fairview in front of Santana Ranch all the way down to Santa Ana Creek where it drains there. I know there was issues in the past and it would go across the road and there was issues with the Fairview Mobile Manor flooding and stuff like that. So that is, I know, a potential problem area that needs to be cleaned out. Keep an eye on that as well as on McCloskey Road. And as far as I understand, some of the issues on McCloskey have to do with may have to do with some of the farmers making sure that they rebuild their ditches there. I know sometimes they go over them in the summertime for different crops and whatnot, but just to make sure that the ditches are existing on McCloskey, I think would be very important, very helpful. And again, yeah, creeks obviously near Lovers Lane, Santa Ana Creek near San Felipe actually is an area that I think needs to be, make sure that we're looking at. The creek by Rosa Morada Road in Fairview, I don't believe there's ever really much debris in there. That area just floods because it's not very deep. I don't know if there's a lot we can do about that, but I think it's worth checking on. And then the sheriff brought up in passing Churchill off of Fairview. That's an area that can get really clogged up and can be a problem as well. So I just want to make sure that those are on the radar of Public Works to look through. regarding Supervisor Kosmicki's idea of task force. I'm totally open to that, but I also, and I was gonna suggest this, I think we should have this as basically a standing item every month now to get reports and figure out what we're doing so that we can keep working on this, we can keep hearing where the concerns are and what we need to address. And I believe that's everything I had to say. Is there anything else, Supervisor Kuro?

Thank you so much for bringing up the large item the large animals evacuation that that was on my list and I omitted that the other one is is I was just typing an email to start the conversation hopefully maybe at the mobility partnership level. The flooding preparation at 101 and 25 due to the construction of the new safety corridor that they're trying to create there. We know that that completely went under water. And how is Caltrans preparing for the El Nino? I have brought it up as a mobility partnership topic. And then how Highway 156 with the expansion, we noticed it after the road was active and installed, the highway was installed between Union and San Juan Bautista, that it changed the flow of water. and how is that flow change impacting the flooding of the fields and the flooding of actual highway 156 so these are two items that i really think we need to collaborate with caltrans on so i'm also starting a conversation with the ceo and cog on that so thank you

Thank you. Sure.

Yeah, I just wanted to try to further just sort of refine next steps a little bit if possible. And I agree with basically everything my colleagues have said. But I think, you know, either by I think the 15th is maybe unrealistic for most of this because it's two weeks away. We have I believe the budget would that be on the 15th?

No, the budget is on the 28th, but we have, I need to have the staff to coordinate tomorrow all the requests that you made, but I do also want to allow County Council to clarify the situation that I'm having concerns about it, and it's getting into private property. And so we can come back with you. We have a workshop on the 28th. for the budget, I think that will be appropriate for us maybe to continue with this meeting, unless you wanna have a special meeting, because right now for the 15, it's too close for us to come out with a plan.

So what I'm gonna suggest is that we give you a little bit of time, we have the budget we're dealing with, but to come back with those first priorities and give some updates on how we move forward with these suggestions made by the board, I would probably suggest maybe having another special meeting after the 28th, between the 28th and the, I think it's too far out if we go into mid-October at this point. So having another special meeting between the 28th and the first meeting in October so that we can just focus on this. Go ahead.

We can do it either the 28th or the 29th. The 28th is a special meeting and the 29 as well for budget purposes. We can add it on each one of those meetings.

However you want to work it out with the chair and yourselves and the board, but I just feel like we need something before mid-October so we can at least get the ball rolling on some of this stuff. For me, it's sort of a triage sort of thing. You've got to identify, okay, so we just suggested a whole lot of things. What are those top five to ten things? Come back with some answers on those. For me, identifying the available funding, and that's something you're going to have to do anyway because of the budget schedule that's coming up. First and foremost, a plan for addressing the clearing out of creeks. is the number one thing that we clearly can do and we should. And to have that sort of what challenges are in the way, what communication do we need to do with property owners, what clearance do we need to get from the state in order to do that? And so for me, I'd like to have at least some idea of what's necessary by that basically a month from now. And I know you said...

I just wanted to clarify a couple of points. We, the county, will be responsible for cleaning out some of the bridges and culverts and a specific section of right-of-way that's within the county right-of-way along the Lovers Lane area. In terms of Pacheco Creek, a lot of it lies within private property. And from the county, we are not allowed to go onto private property to do those types of things.

Look, I'm not... This has got to be driven by the property owners to a large extent. So that's... I think that that's clear from the board. That's clear in the law.

I have been approached by various property owners that are willing and want to go into the creek.

So have I.

So this is a mechanism that I'm trying to assist them with so that they can have that access to that.

But we need to identify how do we get the word out to these property owners. I think the Farm Bureau is a good start. Some of these organizations in town that can help us, we need to get the word out that – here are, here's what you can do. Um, and here's what you can do. I don't even want to say can't do, because if I'm talking about life safety issues, we need to just get in these creeks and clear them out. If I, you know, I'll be blunt about this. If, if we're talking about the, the difference between worrying about, you know, uh, issues with salamanders and frogs and you know, following these very antiquated laws that the state has and just getting these folks in and clearing the creek. I want these folks to get in there. Whatever we need to do to get in the creeks and clear them out, we need to do it. And however we need to, whatever pathway we have to get on to get toward that, we need to do it. That's, for me, number one. So if we can get an answer on that by the... that that basically a month out um establishing those on-call contracts i mentioned earlier that i think that should be a priority because everybody else is going to be following this wave i'm telling you right now uh word's going to get out that we're doing this and santa cruz is doing that we're getting ahead others are going to be doing the same thing having a task force codified by at the very least by early, late September and just who would be on that task force, some recommendations from staff. We talked quite a bit here at the board about who would be involved and maybe making some preliminary contacts just to be aware that we would like to do this. And then what an outreach plan might look like. I would suggest getting something out between basically in the immediate term alerting people about the nixle situation and just getting signed up for nixle the board the county is in talks to preparing for the upcoming winter storm we really highly encourage everybody in the county to get on there it's going to be a useful tool um and then uh having a plan to for me having a plan for the emergency operations center by october Those are sort of the ones that jumped out to me as far as like, let's get some answers on some of this and then let's refine the plan. And I would actually suggest, I think supervisors tell them a great point about regular. Maybe we need to do it just every meeting, you know, at that point, because we're already talking about. october and our mid-october then the next meeting is late october and then we have a couple meetings you know we don't have that many meetings between now and december so i would suggest maybe at least in the immediate term just let's let's try to flush this stuff out at every meeting because it is that high of a priority thank you thank you

Supervisor Kerr has a quick comment.

Sorry. So I really appreciate the kind of honing in. The only thing I would say is I completely agree that we need to have this as an open topic for every meeting. I think we need to have a schedule for what the town halls would look like and what regions those would be. And we have to remember. striping reflectors for road safety, even to be able to stay on the road. We know how bad Union Road was before reconstruction. That's nothing compared to driving in the fog on Pinoch Road. We have to look at road safety striping something, even if it's just to make it through this rainy season, because coming over Cienega Road, it wasn't even a rainy day, and I couldn't see where the road was. So it's very much a concern, not only of me, but of the residents.

Thank you. So I think there's consensus then on next steps, so we're good with this. Any other comments, questions? All right, well, thank you very much for the presentation, staff, Public Works, Tracy, everyone. Thank you so much, Sheriff. We will now move on. It's noon. County Council, do we have anyone in closed session at this time that we need to go out for, or can we keep going?

Mr. Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors, Our Labor Negotiations Council is available at 1 o'clock if you'd like to proceed, and then we can go into closed session at 1 o'clock. Sounds good.

make a suggestion to try to work out with staff and if we want a break to go get food and then come back at one o'clock so that because closed session could go an hour two hours and just to be fair to everyone we don't want people starving and making bad decisions when we're all starving so um probably trying to fit that in there thank you yeah so let's let's do and let's continue regular agenda item we'll break at 12 30 for lunch and closed session does that work for everyone

Okay, great, thank you. So then we'll keep moving to item 2.2. This is from our probation department regarding the community corrections partnership plan.

I'll be quick.

You're not gonna do what?

Thank you. right good afternoon board of supervisors chair thank you for having me ashlyn canez i'm the chief probation officer here and i also chair the ccp committee let me just Okay, so I'm here to just talk to you a little bit about Assembly Bill 109. This is a key piece of legislation that passed by former Governor Brown back in April of 2011. The purpose of this justice reinvestment was really just to manage and allocate criminal justice populations in a cost-effective way so that was by reducing the prison population immediately and also shifting responsibility from the state to the county for certain subpopulations of offenders it also created a revenue mechanism and for those for the revenue that was brought in it was to reinvest those savings into different evidence-based programs and services that would be provided to this realigned population the overall arching goal is obviously to increase public safety while also holding offenders accountable and providing them resources and helping them to reintegrate back into society and into our communities. So the Community Corrections Partnership is a county-wide community there's seven executive committee voting members that vote on the use of the funds for this particular committee and that is me as chair along with our superior court judge our district attorney our sheriff our public defender chief of police and our behavioral health director There are other members who sit on, the superintendent of schools, the HHSA director, someone from victim witness also sits on, and we do have a board member that attends those meetings as well. So for AB 109 funding, there was a dedicated and permanent revenue stream that was provided through vehicle license fees and a portion of state sales tax. This is further outlined through trailer bills AB 118 and Senate Bill 89, and the latter provides revenue for counties, two counties for local public safety programs, and it formally established the local revenue fund 2011. and we call it the AB 109 Trust Fund. This funding is constitutionally guaranteed, so we do get it every single year. The amount changes, and what we have seen historically and what I'll get into next is how that revenue has increased over time. but there's never a year where we will not receive revenue. So I just want to be clear. Some of our funding requirements. Funding shall be used to provide supervision and rehabilitative services to adult felony offenders subject to local supervision and should be spent on evidence-based programs and services. Some of those things may include any of these that we have here, which are evidence-based risk and needs assessments, the use of intermediate sanctions. So that's different forms of, instead of having someone incarcerated, you can put them on alternative forms of supervision through electronic monitoring, community service, home detention, day reporting. restorative justice programs etc it also allocates money for more intensive local supervision since we do have the prison population that gets released and they are supervised here locally and then we have another sub population of what we call mandatory supervision offenders that the county probation department supervises and those are no longer sent to prison they are serving their sentence here locally they have a portion of their sentence served in the county jail and then they are reintegrated back into the community and have a supervision portion it also encompasses behavioral health treatment anger management any cognitive behavioral programs job training and employment services for these population and also a portion of the funding can be dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of those programs as they are implemented And all of those are detailed in penal code sections 3450, 1231, and 1233. So this gives you an at-a-glance snapshot of our AB 109 funding that has been received throughout since its implementation. So you can see each fiscal year we do have a base allocation amount that is received. And the last two for this most recent fiscal year and last fiscal year, they have asterisks on them just because those budgets have not been fully reconciled at this time. In addition, up until 23, 24, every time county probation departments would work and along with CCP members to develop a plan for the use of these funds, these plans used to be submitted to the board of state and community corrections and there was incentive planning money that was provided if you were to submit your plan on time so we used to receive a hundred thousand for the development of that plan and the submission of that plan but that funding was redacted and removed from the budget so we no longer receive it and therefore we no longer are required to submit that plan to the board of state and community corrections in addition you'll also see the different growth funds that have been received each fiscal year there have been years where we did not receive any growth funds and then we've had really amazing years where we've received really robust growth funds as you can see in 2021 and 2022 we received over 1 million in growth funds that was unanticipated In addition, all of this money is sitting in a trust fund account, which is accruing interest. And so I have also gone through for each fiscal year and added what that interest has been and how that affects the overall total. So you can see that as well. In this most recent fiscal year, 25-26, There's $363,000 in interest that has been accrued, but that's only three-quarters of interest, so there is one more quarter that will be added to that overall amount. And then for 26-27, I don't have any... indication of what that is at this time so we are in the midst right now of reconciling this budget and completing last minute journal entries the auditors are processing those and once that is done usually by the end of september then we will have a fully reconciled budget and we'll know fully what we have going into 26 27. In meeting with the Board of Supervisors prior, I did try to garner some feedback as far as what questions may come up in preparation for this so that I could make sure to have that information available to you. There was a question as to the funding itself and how much was being dedicated to different programs and services versus salaries. And so I have detailed some of that information here. As you can see, the sheriff's office is using $429,718 for different programs and services. Most of the... programming that's offered to incarcerated inmates is funded through the Community Corrections Partnership funding stream, and some of that is detailed here. The probation department also funds a couple of different contracts and services with our electronic monitoring, and there are other things listed here. The behavioral health department funds bed spaces in our sober living environment through this, as well as funding for the DA's office and the public defender's office for them to have case management systems in place that talk to each other and that help provide the ability for them to case manage their caseloads. And that total for this current fiscal year of 2627 is $703,894.42. And then as far as the CCP funded salaries that we have, I have detailed here the different positions and how many of them are county positions versus non-county positions. So as you can see, There are 22 and a half FTE county positions that are funded through this funding stream for a total amount of $3,269,274.12. And then we have 2.75 other FTE positions that aren't county positions, and that is related to our Superior Court and our Hollister Police Department. So we do have partnerships for funds to be used for non-county entities. And this is really a very important part for me to know is these positions help provide baseline services here in this county and really are essential to us, me as a probation department, and I'm sure the sheriff will say the same thing, and I know we have the jail commander here. The importance of these positions being funded, it really does help offset general fund as CCP has an ongoing commitment to continue to provide services to our justice-involved population. Population. Okay, sorry, I'll wrap up. This is our trust fund account balance. So this was pulled as of August 27th. And as you can see here, the bottom line number of what's sitting in that account right now is $11,895,781. I provide that to you because I know there's always a lot of question as to our budgeting practices and if we over budget with the amount of revenue that we're bringing in that is an intentional over budget because we do have a very healthy reserve balance and we have needs here now and today that we are trying to meet and so we don't plan as a ccp executive committee to always do that but when we have a need and there's funding available we are going to utilize it to the best of our ability And that I was really close on that 10 minutes. So thank you for your time. And I can answer any questions that you have.

Thank you. Let's check for public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide a speaker card on zoom, please press star nine or the raise 10 icon. And I have no public comment.

Thank you. Back to the board is any board members have questions, comments? Yes.

Thank you. I don't really have any questions, but I just want to tell you, Ashlyn and Lorraine, great job on putting this presentation together. It was very complete and very comprehensive. I really appreciate you explaining what kind of AB 109 is, what we can use the funding for, where it comes from, including all of the, you know, your interest that you're receiving every year. It's really telling looking at that whole spreadsheet. I didn't think I had a question, but now I do.

Yeah.

You mentioned the growth funds. What is exactly the growth funds money, and why does that fluctuate so much, and where is it coming from?

I'm going to let my budget officer explain it because she can explain it better than I can.

Sorry, I said I didn't have a question, and then I did.

Good morning, Chair and supervisors. The growth funds are usually received once. Short people. Okay. The growth funds are usually received a year later from the previous fiscal year when the state reconciles their budget and sees that we had an excess amount of funding. So if someone went out and bought, there was a lot of car sales, and then they got an extra what they expected exceeded on the registration of the vehicles and the sales tax, then they're dividing that up between the 58 counties. It's also, we also get a, every three years, we get if they make a profit, because the state's not allowed to make a profit, they divide that. And I believe that's called, it starts with R, and based monies. And it's not as much as the growth. It's maybe about $5,000 or less. But they know they've exceeded even that. So every three years, it's an allocation that we get as well.

okay great thank you so much for the explanation that's it i just wanted to really um say thank you i thought this was a very well done presentation so thank you very much thank you thank you

just have two things um yes the presentation i love the simplicity of it but what i love the most about it is that it actually has from our erp system a report that is showing the fund balance i'm sorry i am just all giddy over that it's like that's exactly what i want to see when we ask for fund balances that's what i want to see um i want in this you may have to explain this Because I can't remember because this is a detailed listing of the fund balance, but it excludes roll up accounts. All that means is all the detail that's in between has been rolled up. So it's in one nice little report. I just want to make sure that that's known for the public. Yes. Okay, good. The other thing is when you stated the removal of the funding, the redacted funding of that $100,000, that was state removal funding. That was not us as a board removing funding. I just wanted to make sure that the public is aware of that one too. Besides that, excellent presentation. I really appreciate the simplicity but also the detail with all of the information for the public and the board. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, because Mickey, did you have any comments? Okay. Yeah, question quickly. So I healthy reserves, do we have any idea? Were you able to make any estimates of on the current trajectory? How long that would be there?

I wasn't able in time for this because this was already scheduled for September 1st and all of our materials had to be provided ahead of time. But I am working on it. So when we come back to CCP, I think our next meeting is September 17th. But now that we have a mandatory training with OES for the preparation of El Nino, I did send out a doodle poll to everyone that attends CCP because we're looking to schedule that out in October and that meeting date in october we would have that information okay yes for the ccp executive to kind of review and see right now i have what contracts i have in place and i know what positions are already being funded and so i will for the next three years have that available and then we'll see what that bottom line how that impacts yeah that'd be great i think that'd be great i appreciate that

Um, uh, yeah, thank you for presentation. The other question I had was on things and we discussed it a little bit, but like, um, some of these positions seem to be, uh, expensive. Like the, the district attorney investigator, I think is like 350 K, right? For this is around there. Now I, the DA is not here, but, um, that seems like a very um expensive position to be funding through this is there any like consideration i don't know if this would happen at the ccp executive level as far as like hey can we can we have a a um less expensive position to be funding through like for your office through this program or i don't know if that's ever been broached at the meetings or how that would go about

I don't know that we've ever had we've really gone down that because it's really we're funding the position, but then, when I prepare the budget I tie it to a specific person because that's the person who's in there doing that serving in that role. But we can definitely have that conversation I know some of the things that have also impacted is when you have a more senior staff who has longevity who has. you know, they've been with the county for more than a decade or maybe even more than 15 years, and then they're getting post-certificate pay and other things because they work in that law enforcement capacity and they have things afforded to them through their contract MOU, that's really what drives, you know, that number to be higher. And then contract negotiations, increases in salary, increases in, any special assignment pay, things like that. Those always impact the overall. And when we are approving positions, we are budgeting for whoever's in that role and is continuing to serve in that capacity. And we try to make sure that everything is encompassed. And a lot of that work is done in that workforce plan that's developed with county administration. So we pull those numbers from that.

Got it.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you. I don't think I have any other questions at this time. So I guess that would be it. Is there a motion on this item then at this time? We need to take a motion here, right, to authorize it?

Yeah, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to ratify and approve the local CCP public safety annual realignment plan, including the updated budget for 26-27, and authorize the chief probation officer to implement the plan and delegate authority to execute and amend all agreements, move random understanding, and the additional language as recommended. Great, we have a first, is there a second?

I'll second. Oh, go ahead. Whoever you want. Supervisor Sotelo gets it.

Okay, we have a first in a couple seconds. Can we have a roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki? Yes. Supervisor Curro? Yes. 4-0 vote, motion passes.

Great, thank you. Thank you. All right, we're going to go off to lunch and closed session. We need to take public comment on closed session now before we break.

If you'd like to make a comment on Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.

Okay, we are back from closed session. County Council, do we have any reportable action? Mr.

Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors, there is no reportable action this afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you. We continue with regular agenda, but We are actually gonna switch 2.4 and 2.3. If that's okay with the board, we're gonna switch the order of those because staff has, urgency has to get out of here, so we're gonna try to do 2.4 first. Is that okay? Yeah. Good? All right. Move to item 2.4. This is regarding the county's vehicle leasing program.

Mr. Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors, this was an issue that was brought to the CEO's attention, and I was asked to look into the legal issues surrounding it, which then led us to review the history of the county's vehicle leasing program. And in doing so, we realized that the Board of Supervisors may not have been as involved as they should have been, and that the County Executive Office should have been more involved as well. So back on December 1 of 2015, the Board of Supervisors approved a vehicle leasing pilot program, and I want to emphasize pilot, with Enterprise Fleet Management. The board approved a master equity lease agreement and a vehicle maintenance agreement. The board authorized Health and Human Services to lease six vehicles with an additional four vehicles to come back to the board for future approval. Now, there is no record that the additional four vehicles ever came back to the board for approval. The term of the master equity lease agreement is reflected in each schedule which is produced and assigned to each vehicle. The schedule for each vehicle tears off the master lease agreement and establishes the specific term and conditions of the lease for each vehicle as its own contract. The HHSA director and deputy director were specifically authorized to execute and deliver the lease schedules to Enterprise on behalf of the county without further board approval. An amendment to the master lease agreement provides the option for the county to purchase the lease vehicle at the end of the lease. Now, according to our research, the board requested that Health and Human Services report back to the board on the cost benefit analysis of the program within five years. We could find no evidence that this issue was ever brought back to the board. Nonetheless, The vehicles continued to be leased, but not only for HHSA, but for county departments throughout the county. There is no indication in the record that the vehicle leasing program or the vehicle maintenance policy were ever brought back to the board for review and consideration. And there is no record that the Board approved the expansion of a pilot program to a city-wide program. It is estimated that 33 vehicles have been and continue to be leased under this program. They are leased without the approval of the County Executive Officer and the Board of Supervisors. And in doing so, a department is not required to develop and present the cost benefit analysis of leasing versus purchasing a given vehicle. So in light of the county's budget challenges, we thought it appropriate to bring this issue to your attention, which may be the first you have heard of this, and to at least bring to your attention that without county executive and board review and approval, there is less control over the vehicle leasing program and the county budget. So we felt it appropriate to present this to you and to seek your direction as to next steps as to how the board wishes us to proceed with respect to the current countywide vehicle leasing program. Thank you.

Thank you. We had a public comment, please.

If you'd like to make a comment on Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Great, thank you. Questions, comments from board members?

Mr. Chair, if we do move forward with this analysis, NACO has some really comprehensive procurement specifically in agreements at a national level that have brought rates drastically down for local jurisdictions. I would just recommend that we reach out to their procurement team at NACO just as a resource.

Are you talking about the source well? Okay.

No, I'm not. This is specifically to vehicles. It's for fleets. It's all negotiated through NACO to get the best bang for the buck for local government.

Sounds good. Thank you.

I'll forward you some information.

Thank you.

I've actually been contacted by local car dealership here that would love to have the opportunity to be able to bid You know, the comment that or the conversation that I had was, you know, they've not been able to do that and they would like the ability to be able to quote it. They thought in most instances, they would be able to meet or beat whatever these groups are that we're dealing with. So I would love to see us be able to support local if we can. Maybe we contract with some of these different things. for rates, et cetera, but that we are always checking locally and kind of keeping things local, if at all, if we're able to. So I would recommend that, you know, the CEO, you come back with kind of some suggestions for us. But I'm good with moving away from the current model and possibly looking at an alternative program.

Yes, the only concern that I have with this process is the sheriff is ready to lease six patrols We're not talking about purchasing patrols, but leasing patrols. What I want to do is to do an analysis of whether or not it's more convenient to lease or to purchase, but also to explore other options locally and the NACO as well. So I will explore all three options and then coming back to the board. Yeah, I think that sounds great. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.

Okay. Do we need a motion on that? There's consensus?

Yes, Mr. Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors. What we would ask is that the Board direct the CEO to explore alternative measures including a cost-benefit analysis of vehicle leasing versus vehicle purchasing, and to bring back various options to the Board of Supervisors for their consideration, potentially in place of the current countywide vehicle leasing program. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Is there a motion?

So I move to approve as stated by County Council.

Is there a second? Second. Great. We have first and a second. Can we have roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Currow? Yes. 4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Great. Thank you. I'm going to move forward to, move backwards actually, to 2.3. This is our Public Works Department. Receive informational update regarding the Fairview Road median island long-term maintenance of the landscaping.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board, CEO, County Council, Adolfo Gonzalez, Public Works Administrator. And today we're coming back to you with a presentation on the status of the median island on Fairview for the Fairview Corners development. The section, the area where the island is located is within the enclosed green rectangle there on the project location map. So in November of 2012, the board adopted the Five Corners specific plan, or Fairview Corners specific plan, I'm sorry, typo, The specific plan allowed for about 189 residential units, and in July of 2018, the Planning Commission approved the Fairview Corners tentative subdivision map. The approved tentative subdivision map included a landscape median island along the frontage road improvements. This is an example of what the tentative subdivision map approved, a landscape median island. When we came back to you, we came back earlier this year, we came to you for approval on a hardscaped median island in lieu of a fully landscaped, irrigated median island. We presented that alternative to you back in uh june of uh june 23rd of 2026 following board's discussion we received direction to come back to go back to the developer and uh request or work out uh negotiate with them on having the maintenance assumed by the cfd Staff met with the developer. We discussed ongoing maintenance of the median landscaping island and its inclusion into the CFD. The developer has agreed to maintain the median island and will include that in the phases two and three annexation into the CFD. And that will include, of course, maintenance, landscaping, irrigation, et cetera. this is the current status of the median island so the developer has constructed the outer portion of the median island the concrete the inner portion which is going to be where the landscaping occurs will be happening as soon as as early as the middle of this month These are photographs of Santana Ranch, the Median Islands along Santana Ranch. So this is the typical design that should be followed so that we maintain consistency along Fairview Road. So the landscaping, it's still under design. It'll include similar plantings, trees, bushes, and of course, irrigation. we should have a first draft of the landscape plans sometime next week we hope and then once we review those and go back and forth with the developers so they can make any changes that we deem necessary we'll bring that back to the board so that the board can have an opportunity to to review the plan look at the plans and and uh approve prior to installation and with that i open it to any questions you may have.

Thank you. Check for public comment.

If you would like to make a comment on Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Great, thank you. Comments or questions from the board?

Just a thank you. I appreciate the negotiation with the developer, the long-term role of the maintenance with the CFD and the consistency with the view of other developments like Santana Ranch so that we are showing a pattern in our community. I really appreciate all the work you did. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, also just want to say thank you to staff for this. Thank you to the board and thank you to the developer. And just to make sure that going forward, we sort of have this as a structured, you know, sort of thing that we make sure that we obviously want to include these things in the CFD. So thank you, everybody.

Thank you. And I just want to say thank you to Supervisor Kosmicki. I know I wasn't paying too close of attention to this. I wasn't thinking about it, but you were stickler on this one and it worked out pretty well. So I think just thank you for that, making that an issue the last time we talked about this. And now this can be a standard going forward. Thank you. That was just informational, right? There's no action we need? Great. We'll move on then to our last item, which was the item that we added, 2.5, the letter of support for AB 1761. I don't know if we have any actual further information from staff on what this letter is at this time.

I sit on 3CE, and this came in yesterday afternoon. I thank the CEO for catching it, because I did not catch it before she caught it. And this letter is, did the letter get sent out to all board members? Okay, you did get it out to all board members.

I sent it to everybody last night, and I made that decision.

You know what?

No, I apologize. I send it to the chairman.

I'm going to forward it right now. Yes. I'm going to forward it right now just to make sure that everybody has it. I'll be blind CCing the board.

Let me see if I can get on the, I copy you. Can you put it on the screen?

That would be great.

Yes, I sent it to the Sherman to you and to County Council and Vanessa as well to go to board because it was the last minute and I just want a clarification whether or not we'll be able to get it through an urgent matter in the agenda.

Okay, well, I'm just forwarding it right now via email. Basically, this legislation is a way of being more transparent with the rising prices and where the data is coming from for increases in energy bills. So basically, what they've stated here is this is a tool to ensure customers receive energy bills that are fair and accurate. is increased transparency in how the PCIA charges are calculated. The PCIA is a fee designed to ensure customers who leave utility generation services like customers of community choice our energy, I'm reading as I'm talking because it goes into some technical stuff here that I don't need to really read into. Basically, it's giving more information to customers about their rates and the rate increases to allow them to make better decisions about if they want to go with PG&E or they want to go with a provider like 3CE. That's my understanding from the very short amount of time that I've been in between step trying to research, but I'd love to turn it over to the CEO if she has Anything to add?

No, it's just the letter clearly states that it improves regulatory FNGs and encourages your children to verify calculations since the underlying data will be open for review, to review. So I think that's a good tool.

And this has already passed the legislature. It is now moving forward to the governor's desk for signing. And this letter would be to support the governor in signing this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Go to public comment.

If you'd like to make a comment on Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And I have no public comment.

Great. Any other further questions or discussion from board members?

No, I just wanted to just have at least a few minutes to look it over. So appreciate that. Thank you.

Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Is there a motion to send the letter of support?

I would move to approve to approve the letter of support to the governor's office.

Is there a second?

Second.

Can we have a roll call vote, please?

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Curro?

Yes. And thank you, board.

4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Thank you. And that concludes regular agenda. We have no future agenda items to discuss, so I believe that would be adjournment. Thank you.