Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

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Good morning, everyone. Welcome to San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors meeting, September 15, 2026. The meeting is called to order at 9.07. Please join me for a moment of silence to honor our men and women in uniform and to honor our fellow Americans who we lost on September 11, 2001. Thank you. Supervisor Kanpa, would you lead the pledge?

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

Madam Clerk, roll call, please.

Supervisor Gardea.

Present.

Supervisor Cannefa. Here. Supervisor Dean.

Here.

Supervisor Rickman. Here. And Chair Dhaliwal.

Here. We have one proclamation proclaiming September 26 as first responders month in San Joaquin County. Board members please join me.

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to read the proclamation as the board comes down into the well. And after I finish reading the proclamation, I'm going to read off the first responder organizations that support San Joaquin County. And as I call your organization, I would invite you down to the well with the board members for a picture. The proclamation states, whereas many residents across San Joaquin County have benefited from the courageous service of our first responders, and whereas law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical services, and other partner organizations in the public safety sector provide our first line of defense every day, protecting our communities and ensuring our safety regardless of the peril or hazards to themselves. And whereas lives are saved as a direct result of the extensive training, rapid emergency deployment, and coordinated efforts of our first responders. And whereas the residents of San Joaquin County rely on their dedication to preserving the peace and securing the safety and well-being of us all. And whereas in the face of the homeless crisis and increasing wildfire dangers throughout the state, our first responders tirelessly protect our community with courage and selfless concern for others as they carry out their duties. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim the month of September 2026 as First Responder Appreciation Month to honor and celebrate the contributions and sacrifices made by all first responders in San Joaquin County, presented this 15th day of September 2026. At this time, Chairman, I'd like to call each of the organizations down to join the board for a picture. And I would invite the board to step forward into the center of the well so that we can have everybody gather around you for the picture. Manteca District Ambulance Services, Sen Cal Fire and EMS Authority, Escalon Community Ambulance, San Joaquin County Emergency Medical Services, Farmington Rural Fire District, Ripon Fire District, South San Joaquin County Fire Authority, Cal Fire Tuolumne Calaveras Unit, Woodbridge Fire District, Stockton Fire Department, Collegeville Fire District, Cal Fire Castle Rock, Waterloo-Murata Fire District, Clements Rural Fire Protection District, Montezuma Fire Protection District, French Camp McKinley Fire District, Escalon Consolidated Fire Protection District, the Lathrop-Manteca Fire District, Lyndon-Peters Fire District, McCallumie Fire District, Liberty Rural Fire District, Manteca Fire Department, DLA Installation Management Fire, Lodi Fire Department, Thornton Fire Department, Manteca Police Department, Lathrop Police Department, Lodi Police Department, Stockton Police Department, Escalon Police Department, Tracy Police Department, Ripon Police Department, CHP Stockton Area, CHP Tracy Area, our San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department, our San Joaquin County Probation Department, and our District Attorney's Office. And if you're standing in front of me, you're not gonna be in the picture, so you gotta squeeze in and fill in as well.

It's like a twin.

Thank you.

Everybody grab their proclamation on the way out, right down there in front.

One for each agency, not individual. Two votes for Bradley!

So there's no names?

Oh, they're all the same. There's no names? They just take one? Yes, ma'am. They just take one, there's no names, right? They're all the same. They're all the same. So one page to pilot, right?

You're not supposed to look bad.

Next, we have oral presentation by the San Joaquin County Agriculture Commissioner of the 2025 crop report.

Good morning chair members of the board seal and County Council. I'm Kamal Bagri, agriculture commissioner and sealer and I'm here today to present our 2025 annual crop and livestock report prepared in accordance with section 2272 and section 2279 of the California food and agriculture code. With me here is Zach Bergueland. He's our agriculture biologist and inspector, and he will be going over certain numbers with me. So this year's crop report theme for 2025 we have is pest prevention. A lot of people ask, what is pest prevention? Simply put, pest prevention means finding and stopping harmful pests early before they have a chance to spread and cause major damage to our crops, environment, and community. You can think of pest prevention like having a smoke detector in your home. We don't wait until there is a fire before we take action. We try to find the problem early while it is still small and manageable. The same idea applies to agriculture. Some pests can damage or destroy crops, spread plant diseases, affect our local environment and create significant financial losses for farmers and businesses. Once a harmful pest becomes established, it can be very difficult and expensive to control. Our job at the Act Commissioner's Office is to look for these invasive pests, identify them, monitor their movement, and take appropriate action to prevent them from spreading. This may include inspections, surveys, education, quarantines, or other control measures when necessary. This work isn't about protecting farmers. It helps protect our food supply, local jobs, businesses, natural resources, and the overall health of our community. Most importantly, pest prevention is usually less expensive and less disruptive than dealing with serious pest infestation after it has spread. As a part of our pest prevention, in 2024, Agriculture Commissioner's Office acquired Inspector Whalen, and he will be demonstrating his skills at the end of the presentation. So in summary, the 2025 San Joaquin County's gross agriculture production value was 3,356,227,000. This shows an increase of 6.39% from our 2024 total value. IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THESE FIGURES REPRESENT GROSS VALUES OF AGRICULTURE COMMODITIES RATHER THAN NET RETURN TO THE GROWERS. I'M GOING TO PASS ON THE MIC TO ZACK HERE TO GO OVER THE TOP 10 COMMODITIES.

THANK YOU, KAMAL. SO PRESENTING THE TOP 10 COMMODITIES IN 2025. The 10th top commodity in 25 was silage with a total production of $68.465 million. This represents a decrease of $2.168 million, which roughly is about a 3.07% decrease overall from 24 to 25. The ninth most grossing commodity was blueberries, with a value of $103.68 million. This represents an increase of $26.033 million. This is roughly a 33.53% increase from 2024 to 2025. And the eighth gross commodity in 25 was processing tomatoes with a rounded gross production of $155 million. This represents a decrease of $653 million decrease, which is about a 4.69% decrease. The seventh gross commodity was cattle and calves with a production gross of $165 million. This represents a decrease of $629,000, which is a 0.38% decrease from 24 to 25. Our sixth most grossing commodities was cherries, which had a gross value of $210.1 million, which represents a decrease of $29.918 million. This is a 12.4% decrease from 24 to 25. The fifth most grossing commodity in 25 was grapes, with a $272 million gross. This represents a decrease of $47.31 million, which is a 14.82% decrease in the grape crop from 24 to 25. The fourth most grossing commodity was eggs and chickens. This represents a $283 million gross, which is an increase of $21.427 million. This is a 8.19% increase from 2024 to 2025. And the third grossing commodity within San Joaquin County was walnuts with a $306.8 million. This represents an increase of $34.016 million. This corresponds to a 12.47% increase. Second most grossing commodity was milk with a $556 million gross. This represents an increase of $19.055 million. This is a 3.55% increase. And the most grossing commodity in 2025 for San Joaquin County was almonds with a 584 million gross. This represents a $54.963 million increase from 24 to 2025. All right, thank you, Kamal.

Thank you, Zach. In crop report, you will also find our top five exports by commodity last year. Last rule, I think it's 2025 numbers here that we represent here not for 2026 number one commodity We exported out of our County was almonds with three hundred three thousand certificates written Walnuts were number two rice number three onions number four and cherries number five It is important to note that not all commodities requires us to write these certificates and also If you look at rice, we are not the number one rice growing county here, but we do export a lot of rice out of our port of Stockton. So we wrote 65 certificates, but that doesn't mean that all the commodity was grown in San Joaquin County. So top 10 countries by certificates, again, this represent the countries only that requires certificates to be written for export, and you could see that there are new countries here. Japan was not number one in the past, so Japan, India, Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Germany, UAE, Canada, Mexico, and Italy are our top 10 countries. where we have written this federal certificate for exporting commodities. Pest exclusion program. is a part of our pest prevention system. Again, we do inspections at various facilities, parcels, at nurseries, at seed coming into the county, bee shipments. So this represent, we had over 8,000 different shipments that our inspectors inspected. Again, the number of shipments that come into our county are way bigger, but with the amount of staff we have, we were able to inspect over 8,000 in 2025. Another very important program is pest detection. This is also part of our early detection of any invasive pests that might have passed through these inspections or come through the borders. And we look at different, pest with these trapping program and Mediterranean fruit fly, oriental fruit fly, melon fly, these are all invasive fruit flies that we are looking for when we are putting traps in urban areas. In 2025, we had a total of 8,278 traps that were placed in urban areas. Certified farmers markets are and it's another program we have which support our growers to sell directly to the consumers and in San Joaquin County we have a seven different certified farmers markets I would like to point out there is a difference between farmers markets and certified farmers market in certified farmers markets are producers, they are required to showcase their certified producer, which tells you that the product is grown in San Joaquin County. And our staff goes out in the field, verify that commodity is grown here, and they put it on the certificate, and that certificate gets displayed at the farmer's market when they are selling the product. So you can buy fresh produce from these three, seven different farmer's markets in San Joaquin County. Pesticide use enforcement is another very big program of Agriculture Commissioner's Office, and we issue A lot of different permits which could be restricted materials permits or operator IDs. We have continuing education meetings we hold for our growers because they have to be certified in order to spray certain pesticides. We do different container recycling events for the plastics of the pesticide containers and you could see we inspected over 267,000 containers in 2025. I would like to say thank you to all the industry partners who helped us put this, provided the data to put this crop report together. And I would also like to recognize Zach and Hayden Lewis, and two of our interns from Delta College, Mario and Erich. We every year bring Delta students to put this crop report together, so I would really appreciate a big hand for these two students. thank you and now we will have our uh detector dog inspector whalen come up here to show show you how do we do um detection of different pests uh in san joaquin county and uh this is dog team is one of the biggest part of our pest prevention program It takes lot of hours and time of our staff when we are doing these inspections, especially at the parcel facilities. And you will see how Wayland makes our job super easy because whatever takes us over 20 minutes to inspect in one UPS truck, Wayland can go in matter of minutes through that truck and point out to us which box has any agriculture or fruits or plants or soil material and our inspectors then can go and inspect that box and see if there are any invasive pests which are hiding in those boxes. So I would like to invite Waylon down here. So he has tagged a box, which we will open to make sure there is plant material or agricultural material in this box. Oh yeah, there you go. So these could be oranges from Florida, which could be harboring past or from another country. So this is how he finds the pest or commodity for us. So good job Waylon. Again, he's a very, very important member of our team, and he makes our job very easier to able to inspect and find the material, which took hours in the past for our staff to go through those boxes. He goes to FedEx, he goes to post offices all over the country. all over, I would say, northern part of the state because he would go into Yolo County for the Sacramento Post Office. He goes to Santa Clara, to San Jose. At the USPS facility there, he goes to San Francisco because all that is part of the pest prevention system, and USDA, as a USDA inspector or USDA dog, we have to follow a very strict regimen for Waylon, but we are glad to have him, I'm sure he would be helping us to protect the agriculture industry in coming 10 years at least. So thank you so much for that. So when our agriculture commissioner staff is conducting inspections or survey, I would like to remind everybody that we are working to protect our community today and prevent a much bigger problem tomorrow. Pest prevention is a shared responsibility, and by working together, we can help keep our agriculture, environment, and community healthy and protected. Thank you so much for this opportunity, and I'm here to answer any questions board might have.

So I think we're in the finals for doing a dog training facility, correct? How many communities? Fingers crossed.

Currently, Josh Harder's, Congressman Harder's office is working with our department to identify if USDA can place a dog training facility in San Joaquin County. With CAO's help, we have identified a property here close by to the agriculture commissioner's office, which is suitable for this type of facility. So we will see in November, there's supposed to be a report coming out, which is a feasibility study by USDA to see if there is a possibility of that dog detector training center. Currently, there is only one training center in the whole country, and that is in Georgia.

And they need 13 acres. What's the footprint that they wanted? I'm sorry. 13 acres is what they need.

Oh, yes. So there is a minimum requirement of how many acres it could be because they have to have pens and, you know, not just the building, but the areas where drug trainings can take place. So they were asking for a minimum of 15 acres that California Department of Food and Ag told us for. So, but this area is bigger than that. So it will be very helpful to have that here.

Great to hear good news on the crop report. So it wasn't as dire as we thought, right? So thank you.

Kamal, is Wayland the only one or do we have more?

In our County we only have Wayland, but across state of California we have 17 dog teams. So for 58 counties there are only 17 dog teams and agriculture commissioners are fighting for more dog teams to make sure that we can have our strong pest prevention system in the state.

Supervisor Gurdia. I know it's impossible to inspect all shipments, but what do you think is the percentage of shipments that we inspect here in San Joaquin County?

It depends upon where they are coming from so not every single shipment gets inspected, because there could be some states which don't pose the same threat as maybe say Florida and these shipments. There is a page here in our crop report which will showcase you showcase that how many pests have been detected. And again, it depends upon year after year. We know that after COVID, number of inspection, number of materials coming into the county, they did increase, but it's impossible to tell you how many we inspect versus how many require inspection.

So you really can't give a ballpark of 10%, 5%?

It's not possible to give that number because we have thousands coming per day, right? Amazon also brings a lot of shipments, but they might not require inspection because They might not hold plant materials, or they could be coming from the states, which do not require inspection. So we try to do our best. And what we can tell you is that when Waylon is there, we are going through 100% within that time frame, you know, when the belts are running. Because it is difficult when the boxes are going over the belts to be inspecting every single one. That's why dog team can sniff. get on the belt, sniff every box, and can point out which one needs inspection, and those boxes get pulled, and then inspectors go back and inspect those.

All right. Thank you.

Supervisor Rickman? Thank you, Chairman, and good morning, and thank you for the report. It's always nice to see, and I think it's great for people that are watching that are here to see what an economic engine and what we actually grow here in the Valley. You know, it's not We just don't feed the valley we feed, you know, not even the state, the world. So thank you very much for bringing this. It's very eye-opening. My question I had was I know when you talk about pests, is there anything that's alarming? I know we didn't we have something with the citrus that was a concern at one time. And if that is still a concern. Yes. Because I have like three citruses in my backyard. Maybe I shouldn't say that. I don't have any fruit trees, but I need some traps.

So in May we got notified that there were some grape plants which came into the county from another county down in in the valley, which is which county is partially infested with the pest called glassy winged sharpshooter. So those grape vines were sold at our big box stores like Costco and found out that those grape shipments were infested with glassy wing and our urban population, our community members bought those grapes and planted them in their backyards. That was that's a huge issue for us because now we are going through every single yard and inspecting those plants and their yard because the pest is not going to stay on that grapevine. It's going to move to the other trees. And citrus, glassy-winged sharpshooter loves citrus. And we are going around and doing that survey. We did find live insects in certain yards. And we also find live egg masses. So when you're purchasing these plants, I know that our community members trust our nurseries, our stores, to be selling plants which are clean and pest-free, but that doesn't happen every time, right? So like Supervisor Gardea mentioned, you're doing inspection, what percent? So these shipments came from Fresno County, and we did not have inspectors go out and inspect them because they were not accompanied by certain specific type of certificates, which required them to be held for inspection. But now we are looking at over 10 million state will be paying to all the act commissioners to go out and do survey. And in certain counties, we are finding some infestations have been already identified because of this incident. So it is important that.

Is there any accountability to those who purchase it. I mean, for example, the big box stores like Costco that you mentioned. Do they have the responsibility to make sure they're inspecting those?

So in this particular case, we are educating our stores that they need to contact us when they are receiving these type of shipments because Costco didn't help them for inspection because there was no paperwork. But then there was a shipment right after that in July which came out of Texas, which is another state that we really look at all the material very closely. And they shipped willow trees, and again at Costco, and they again got sold into the county. And they were also infested with glassy-winged sharpshooter. Again, pest prevention is such an important part because if we would have inspected these shipments before, it would be much cheaper than now what we are trying to do. And certain counties are actually doing applications or spray programs. IN CERTAIN YARDS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO MAKE SURE THIS IS IT I'M SORRY CHAIR IF YOU I'M ALMOST DONE HERE IS IT A LEGAL OBLIGATION ON THOSE STORES TO HOLD THEM FOR A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME ONLY ONLY IF THEY ARE AWARE THAT THEY ARE COMING FROM THE STATES THAT REQUIRES INSPECTION AND IN THIS CASE THE THE NURSERY WHO SHIPPED IT DID NOT PROVIDE CERTIFICATION SO there is an action pending against that nursery versus the Costco. But we are trying to educate our stores. Either it's Home Depot, either it's Costco, or any other stores which could be selling different type of plants, including our nurseries. Our nurseries, they're certified. They go through inspections every year, so they are fully aware. The problem is the... STORES WHO ARE NOT AWARE THAT THESE SHIPMENTS COULD ACTUALLY HARBOR PESTS. WE ARE TRYING TO EDUCATE THEM AND MAKING SURE THAT THEY CONTACT OUR OFFICE ANY TIME THE PLANS ARE COMING OUTSIDE OF THE COUNTY TO MAKE SURE THOSE SHIPMENTS ARE CLEAN.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. AND THANK YOU BOTH AGAIN FOR BEING HERE. AND THANK YOU, CHAIRMAN, FOR YOUR PATIENCE. THANK YOU, SIR. VICE CHAIR DEAN.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. FIRST, I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR COMING BY OUR NEW NORTH COUNTY OFFICE. a couple of weeks ago, which is slated to be open next year and under budget by the way. And I'm gonna enjoy having you in there. You gave me quite an education when we're in there. And since obviously our main focus is increasing our egg sales, not only in this county, but in the state. Organics versus grown in California. pesticide use. Can you explain that again?

So a lot of people are under the impression that organic produce is pesticide free. So we have conventional growers and we have organic growers, right? They spray different type of pesticides under the programs. Conventional produce is inspected quite frequently by Department of Pesticide Regulation when they're taking samples at box stores or grocery stores very frequently. Organic, we have a program here and San Joaquin County Ag Commissioner's Office goes out, maybe we take two samples a year out of organic produce to make sure they are free from any pesticide residue. The biggest concern we always have is making sure that this produce, either it's conventional or organic, does not have any pesticides on it. But again, conventional products, we are inspecting a lot more than organic products. Then comes any produce which is imported outside of the country. Data has shown that a lot of produce which is coming from our other counterparts, you know, let's say from Mexico, they could be tainted with certain pesticides. And it is important for our community to understand that California grown to, in personal opinion and as an act commissioner, I would say is more safer to purchase. So when you go out to a store, look at that commodity and see where it has grown. And if it is California grown, I have much more confidence to buy that product versus whatever's coming from foreign country.

When you told me that when you went to the store, I mean, I got all wrapped up in this. Finally, I listen to the kids and I'll start buying the organic stuff. What the heck? But when you told me what you buy when you go to the store, you know, always California and conventional, not organic. So I think the more that message gets out, the more it helps our our growers as well. So thank you.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else? Anybody from public? Andrew.

Supervisor, first I want to thank you for your support of our Ag Commissioner here. Her staff does a great job. We work very closely with them on training, education. We've been working particularly with the glassy-winged sharpshooter deal we've had going on, making sure everybody understands what's happening and protect what growth we do have. You saw in the crop report that we are up, which is awesome, especially considering I think everybody knows if you look at your bills, everything's up right now. So to see the income in agriculture is up is very heartening. But there were a few that dropped also, particularly grapes. Those poor guys, I... Unfortunately, just from what I've seen now, the 2026 crop report a year from now is gonna show a further decrease there. There's a lot going unharvested, a lot going unplanted. So it's still tough, but we did see an increase. We appreciate that. and we appreciate your support of agriculture throughout the county we saw with the crop report plus about a month ago just the way that every dollar that comes into agriculture just kind of echoes throughout our our community so um this is a big thing for san joaquin county and i really appreciate your support thank you thank you sir anybody else thank you thank you

Now is the time for public comment on matters that are on the closed session agenda on the consent calendar or within the jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors, but not listed on the agenda. Members of the public attending in person who wish to speak are requested to complete a speaker card and provide it to the clerk. If you are joining us remotely and wish to speak, Please raise your hand now by pressing star five. Please direct your comments to the board. No personal attacks, please. First speaker is Janine Etheridge.

Good afternoon. My name is Janine Etheridge with Oakdale Equine Rescue. In January of 2025, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office confiscated a group of horses pursuant to a search warrant. As a trusted partner of local enforcement, our rescue proudly stepped forward to provide immediate specialized care for these animals required. At that time, we anticipated a short healing period. Today, 20 months later, we continue to fulfill our commitment to these exact same horses. This is a 24-7 responsibility. Our team provides around the clock care, including specialized feeding, farrier services, and emergency veterinary care. Because many of these animals suffered severe abuse to their legs and heads, they require highly experienced handling. Out of respect for the animals and law, we show up for them every single day. Because this remains an active criminal case, our priority has been to fully support the prosecution and to protect the integrity of the legal process. To ensure we did not interfere with law enforcement's efforts, we strictly complied with the request to maintain social silence on social media. While we have been glad to safeguard the investigation, this prolonged silence has been devastating financial consequences to our nonprofit. we have been completely unable to publicize our work or ask for community donations to cover the massive care costs for that fall outside of the county's funding. Furthermore, because our public channels have been dark to protect this case, many assume we are no longer operating. The resulting financial and physical strain has forced us to limit our intake of horses from neighboring areas because of the resources are fully exhausted. We deeply value our relationship with the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office and our shared mission to protect abused animals. However, as winter quickly approaches, our resources are stretched to the absolute limit. We are seeking a collaborative resolution to end this legal gridlock. We look forward to working with the county to finally make these horses legally available for adoption so we can place them into forever loving homes they deserve. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Ann Johnston.

Good morning members of the board. I'm Ann Johnston, president of Read to Me Stockton and here to represent Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and to thank you for your support in the past and hope for your support in the future. Because since we included San Joaquin County in our book distribution, we've added almost 5000 more children from San Joaquin County from South San Joaquin County today. actually in october we'll be sending out 16 265 free books to young children throughout san joaquin county thanks to all of your support so as we mourn Dolly's passing, we want to celebrate her legacy because she gave so much to the world, not only in music, but in her foundation that provides for the Imagination Library. And to that end, the Dollywood Foundation has determined that every year there will be an annual celebration, a Dolly Day. on 925, that's September 25th, which is next week. So every year there's going to be a Give Like Dolly Day and a lot of promotion about it. It's obviously too late to do a proclamation from this group for this particular Dolly Day next week. but we want to invite all of you to join us as we go out to a local preschool and read some of dolly's books to the children in that preschool you're welcome to join us let me know if you're interested we're going to the joan richards learning center next friday 9 25 at 9 30 in the morning so it's important that we recognize the the wonderful things that dolly parton has done in our county in our nation in the world and to that end because we're celebrating dolly's legacy and we're going to celebrate dolly day next week i'm leaving each of you one of dolly's books supervisor canapa has already grabbed his Good night, gorilla. So you'll have to fight over them. I'm gonna give the city clerk these books. I'm also going to give you a listing of where the books are actually being sent throughout the county by zip code. So you can see how many books are going to every zip code. The only community that's not on here is Lodi and the Lodi School District communities because they're served by the Friends of the Library in Lodi. That's a separate affiliate of the Imagination Library. But they have another probably 3,000 children that they're sending free books to. We've been in business, Read to Me Stockton, for 15 years. We've sent out 1.1 million books. So help us celebrate on 925 by reading a book to a child. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Mary Elizabeth.

It's okay, thank you. Yeah, so everybody got a page from an FDA report. So it's coming around. The font is real small, you know, so you might need a magnifying glasses or your glasses. If you count down four on the fourth line there, you'll see Podestos Market and Deli. And so I just picked that because it was recent and I knew it was in the county. I still am having a hard time, you know, those edges of Stockton. But you'll notice that sale to UP. So that means the business sold to an underage person. And you go over, they sold cigarettes in a package. It was Marlboro. There's the date of the inspection. So that's when the undercover, underage person, the decoy, went in with FDA and made the sale. And then they received notice on June, a warning letter, and charges not yet available. So I just want, I just call that example to you because the existing tobacco retail license exempts so many businesses from even basic inspections that are done so that local law enforcement can take action so that our youth are not able to purchase nicotine products. And that's one of the main emphasis of the tobacco retail was to stop youth being able to buy. So this is not happening with the existing, because more types of business can sell. All types of tobacco retailers, in fact, sell to underaged. So it's really critical that we protect our public health. One other thing that I'd like to bring up is a thanksgiving to the community development director. she posted a invitation for people to sign up to learn more and participate in the data center process. So that was excellent work and I signed up and I know others have signed up and that's a positive thing, you know, to put it out there, you know, so that people can learn more along with the county staff. And another thing that I wanted to, ask consideration for is advanced manufacturing. So advanced manufacturing is a catch-all term that includes some really toxic activities that normally would go through a CEQA process to make sure that it was fully mitigated. Not so yet. Just to think about it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Please.

Good morning, Chairman Dhaliwal, Board of Supervisors. My name is Melanie Knott, and I'm a concerned Patriot citizen of San Joaquin County. Voter fraud. Let me share a few details of a case. The people of the state of California versus Shakir Khan out of our own San Joaquin County. 14 felony counts of voter registration fraud from the 2020 election. Our San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office discovered 41 sealed and completed mail-in ballots when searching Khan's home. And a citizen looking into the voter rolls discovered 71 names, fictitious, false, not real names, registered to Khan's address, phone number, or email. A sheriff official commented, quite a few flaws in the voting process. No fault of the ROV or their office, but people are able to register to vote and cast a vote. The online system is an honor system. You click you are a citizen, when not, you are registered, vote, and receive ballots to vote. There's no checks or ballots in place. This is a problem. Before I've read that our President Trump addressed the nation regarding the catastrophic conditions of our election systems, and I would go into details, but I'm probably not gonna have time to go into those details. One of those details is that identification of registration fraud and proof of non-citizens on our voter rolls, this is a concern. Our president addressed the nation And today the ROV will be addressing authorization to expend funding from the state of California to expedite the voting counting process and provide voter outreach and education. To go back to my notes, in my own research, I found that it was the sheriff's office who discovered and citizens who discovered fraud, not the ROV's office. So my question is, what's the responsibility of our ROV's office? Yes, secure, honest, transparent elections, but they're not finding fraud. So I guess my concern, my question would be, we're spending this money for what? We're allowing them to get this money from the state for what? Okay, so it looks like I've run out of time, but I thank you for your time. And I ask that you just take a look at it and ask yourself some questions. There's voter fraud in our county and it needs to be addressed. Thank you.

Thank you, Madeline. Anybody else? Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman of the Board. I just wanted to really quickly say a comment about the Oakdale Equine Rescue and what they spoke about. We're working hard. I know the DA is doing everything he can to move this case forward. The plaintiff in this case is doing everything she can to drag it out and It's just using the rules of the court to be able to do that. So everything's being done on the law enforcement side that's possible. As far as the rescue we're doing, we're working with county council as well as the DA's office to try and have those horses declared abandoned by the plaintiff. so that then the rescue could start finding homes for them. But that doesn't alleviate the problem right now. They have a tremendous amount of expenses, you've heard. So I don't know if there's anything county-wise, donations that can go towards a nonprofit like that, but they have just been amazing. As you've heard, it's been over 20 months that they have volunteered and stood by these horses and nurse them back to health. So anything that we can do financially, any little bit that you guys can do would be fantastic towards a nonprofit like that because they've stepped up for the citizens of this county and for these animals that were being abused and Um, because of the dragging out of the court case, um, it's really the impacted them as you've heard. So anything we can do to help them would be fantastic. And we will continue to try and get them labeled as abandoned through the court and then, uh, be able to start dispersing them out to good homes. So thank you for your time in this. Thank you, sir.

I'm into question.

Sheriff. Sorry. I'm just wondering, is there, with the abuse cases, is there restitution that the person would possibly pay during a court case? I mean, and what's the shortfall that this young lady is looking at filling?

It would be nice for the community to know so that obviously... You know, it's thousands and thousands of dollars a month of the feeding and the care and the vet bills and all that type of stuff. And we'll get you exact numbers. We'll send them to you. The LT is back there who's handling the case. And we'll get you that. Yes, we will ask for restitution. By the time we get to that point, this client will probably have, this suspect will probably have liquidated and hidden everything that she possibly allegedly doesn't have. And that's part of our case is searching out everything that's that she owns, that she's trying to hide, that she's putting in other people's names from what I'm being told. And so we're doing everything we can, but, you know, restitution's a long ways down the line and it's a daily basis that they're dealing with this, so.

Yeah, if you could get that information. Yes, we will. Get it out in the community and hopefully.

Yep, I try and mention it every month in my videos to donate to them and to help. but it just takes a lot because horses are very expensive. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair.

Anybody waiting remotely?

No, Chair, we don't have any remote participants.

Okay, let's move on to the consent calendar. Any item needs to be pulled?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to pull 13, 14, and 21.

Anybody else?

No.

So far as I recommend, nothing. Vice Chair, let's talk about number 13.

Somebody here from GSA or from

Hello.

You've been working your tails off on this for, well, we've been working on it for three years and it's finally coming to fruition. This is huge. I mean, it is, you know, we've had constituents sending texts and emails about, you know, the disrepair of the zoo and, you know, What exactly is it? And you've been working very hard on it so we can bring a zoo that San Joaquin County can be proud of. And this is pivotal, whatever, to getting it done. Anyway, can we explain exactly where we're at right now?

Good morning. I'm Maria Garcia-Sheets and I am the Executive Director of the San Joaquin Zoological Society. And Supervisor Ding is absolutely correct that this is a pivotal moment that we are thrilled, excited, and just ready to go in order to help bring Mickey Grove Zoo back to a place where we can all be proud of it. For those of us who grew up in San Joaquin County, we remember the zoo and remember just how outstanding and wonderful it was as we were growing up. And unfortunately, because of budgets and time, the zoo is not in that place at this time. So we're excited to hear that there is a professional plan being made to develop the zoo, to improve it, perhaps expand it. That would be fantastic. And we are looking forward to being a part of that process to provide insight, to provide support, to help raise funds, to make this something that all children in the future can enjoy and that all citizens in San Joaquin County can be a part of. and that can be a draw to our community because we will have a world-class zoo in our neighborhood.

Go ahead.

Um, we're also very excited supervisor. Um, this is a long time coming for the zoo and we can't wait with the master plan coming through and this new fundraising arm with the zoological society, it will help us bring our zoo back to its splendor.

Thank you. Yeah. The, the, it was so contentious. AT THE BEGINNING OF INDIVIDUALS THAT TRULY CARED, THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET ON THE SAME PAGE FROM THE COUNTY AND THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BUT THE PASSION IS THERE. I DO WANT TO TIP MY HAT TO JOSH FROM THE COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE WHO HAD TO SIT THROUGH THE ORIGINAL MEETINGS. THEY WERE NOT FUN. AND JOSH, YOU DID A HELL OF A JOB just moderated and keep everybody focused. And I want to thank you for that. And I'm excited for the progress. One, you have anything to say? I'm sorry.

Sorry, through the chair, Daniel Ramirez, Assistant Director of General Services. No, just, you know, same lines with Ashka and the Zoological Society. You know, we're excited to move forward and start making progress and help revitalizing that area. So yeah, we're looking forward to it.

And Daniel, not enough can be said about the new leadership at GSA and bringing everything forward. I mean, from our North County facility that is gonna be ahead of schedule and under budget to the zoo. I mean, you guys have really stepped up to the plate. And this is just a really proud moment for San Joaquin County. And I wanna just say thank you to everyone.

Thank you.

Supervisor Gaddia. No, it's exciting, the improvements to the zoo. And as a child, I remember the seals, and that was a place to go. But I heard expansion. So I could think of a great spot for the expansion that could possibly be the miniature golf area. You wouldn't want to put miniature golf in place where you expand the zoo. Just want to throw that out there.

I can tell you.

We will make good use of the area, whichever way the board decides to go.

So I just have a couple of questions. When's the first fundraiser and how do people get involved with your the new foundation? And thank you for leading that, because it used to be very strong back in the day. And I don't know where it fell off or how it fell off, but I'm glad to see that there's a new beginning and that you're doing that. So if Supervisor Ding's office could do that and share with people.

you know how they get involved in money wise or you know time wise or idea wise i think it would be a great step in the right direction so thank you thank you chair thank you sir just one more supervisor did you have a like a tragic event happen at a miniature golf course when you're five and you have nightmares about it every night or you have to wear a helmet now through the chair

I had a lot of tragic moments in my life, I'll just say that. But I will say, you know, you were on fire last meeting with your jokes and stuff, and I wanted to throw one back at you. That's all.

Receipt.

Number 14, sir.

Is it still morning? Good morning.

Good morning.

So here is, regardless of what the funding is for, that's not why I pulled this at this point, and we will get to part B. My concern is, as a board, I think too often, if it's a state grant, And the comment is always, well, it's not our money. It is. But if we don't spend it, somebody else is going to. And so whenever there's a state grant, automatically we want to receive it. And what we found as a board, and Supervisor Rickman points this out every single meeting, is we get teased with the money, but eventually they become an unfunded state mandate. And once the program starts, once the expenditure starts next year, the money is not there and we have to continue to spend. And under the leadership of this county administrative team, we're in great shape compared to the rest of the counties. I was listening to reports this morning of the other counties that are laying off employees and budget cuts and said, and we're not there. I don't want to join them. So I guess what I'm asking is, do we really need this money or is it, you know what the heck, it's a Christmas present. Is there an expectation next year? What exactly is the money for, et cetera? Thank you.

Absolutely, through the chair, Supervisor Dean. We are using this as a one-time ability to hopefully efficiently get the vote count done. As you all are aware, we're already doing a really good job in our county. We are using this really what it's intended for, for additional staffing so we can maybe run a double shift so we can see if we can get all of this processed and done in a much shorter window than what's required. We still have the allocated 30 days to finish the Canvas. we are allowed to do it as early as the 22nd day. And so we have no intention of using this for something that's going to continue to incur costs year after year. STAFFING AND POSSIBLY A COUPLE OF MORE, WE HAVE THESE THINGS CALLED OPEX MACHINES AND THEY'RE BASICALLY BALLOT EXTRACTORS. THEY ALLOW US TO OPEN THE BALLOT AND REMOVE IT FROM THE ENVELOPE. THEY'RE NOT VERY EXPENSIVE PIECES OF EQUIPMENT BUT THOUGH IT'S AN OPTION TO HELP US WITH BEING MORE EFFICIENT AND GETTING THE VOTE BY MAIL THROUGH AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. AND SO WE'RE FOCUSED ON THOSE ONE-TIME EFFORTS FOR THE NOVEMBER 3 ELECTION AND NOT A CONTINUOUS COST THAT WE WOULD INCUR. SO AS WE MOVE THROUGH THIS, WE WOULD NOT BE LOOKING AT ANYTHING THAT WOULD BE AN ONGOING COST FOR THE COUNTY YEAR AFTER YEAR.

SO MY QUESTION, YOU KNOW, WE'RE SPENDING THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION DOLLARS, WHETHER IT'S STILL TAXPAYER MONEY. I GUESS I'M MORE INTERESTED IN MAYBE SETTING AN EXAMPLE AND TELLING THE STATE QUIT SPENDING MONEY WE DON'T HAVE. IS IT REALLY GOING TO MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE? I mean, you you've already surpassed the other counties and. And county, and I'm just wondering if it's really worth three quarters of a million dollars or if we're better off being good stewards and not accepting it.

Through the chair I will share this was there was an opportunity a while back, and I believe the board signed to To support this funding for the counties at that time to help with election administration however, I I don't I don't know that there is a Again, it would be a one-time thing. It's a Band-Aid on trying to speed up for this one election. It's not going to do anything for the foreseeable future with maybe the exception of the OPEX machines that we would purchase. So I'm here to support the board's decision. However, I did want to point out that when this came about several months ago, it was something that we did present. And I think there was, at the time, the board as a whole decided to support that. So I just wanted to make sure that I pointed that out.

So that was the one time I believe the board made a mistake in four years. But anyway, I would like to pull this for a separate vote when that. Comes to a point. This is I don't want you to take this personally or or anything to do with the efforts, because I think you guys did do a fabulous job in this this last election. I just want to make sure in these times where I mean, the state's broke, and they haven't figured it out yet. We're the ones, we're an appendage of the state. They set the rules, they tell us what we have to do, and then they refuse to give us the money down the road. And it's about us. We've gotta do what's in the best interest of San Joaquin County. Thank you.

Supervisor Gurdia.

Thank you, Chair. You mentioned one-time money. Staffing is not one-time money. And you did make mention of it's a Band-Aid for the next election. But then our constituents in the future elections are going to ask, why didn't we have the same performance? And it's because we didn't invest the money in staffing. So I understand where you're coming from when you say staffing would be a one-time deal. I would be in support of any type of equipment that would make us more efficient. What type of flexibility do we have with this money? Are we able to purchase, you know, a van, you know, vehicles or things that are going to be in need in the future? I'd hate to see money given back to the state and given to another entity that they use it for like type things.

IT WAS TWO SENTENCES AND IT WAS LITERALLY WHATEVER YOU CAN DO LITERALLY WHATEVER YOU CAN DO TO SPEED UP THE VOTE COUNT FOR TO SPEED UP THE VOTE COUNT FOR THE NOVEMBER THIRD ELECTION. THE NOVEMBER THIRD ELECTION. SO I THINK IT'S VERY LOOSELY SO I THINK IT'S VERY LOOSELY LAID OUT SO I THINK THERE ARE A LOT OF LAID OUT SO I THINK THERE ARE A LOT OF THINGS THAT WE COULD CONSIDER ITEMS THINGS THAT WE COULD CONSIDER ITEMS TO HELP US SPEED UP THE VOTE TO HELP US SPEED UP THE VOTE COUNT. Buying equipment when I say staffing is one time because we use temporary workers And so that's why I was referring to that we can instead of doing our normal 200 we hire we could hire additional folks and run like a to a Two-tier shift, but again that may not help us for future elections, so that is absolutely right However, there is opportunity for equipment We'd work very closely with the county administrators office to determine that if the board sees fit to move forward

and my thought with that is you know it's equipment that you might need the next election why not purchase that now that frees up your budget for additional staffing in the future absolutely thank you sandy

thank you chair i removed my speak because supervisor gardia did clarify uh i just wanted to point out the staffing would be temporary or part-time so that's why it's one time but that was already clarified so i removed that thank you thank you um i i agree but i think this money can multiply in our local economy i mean if it's just if this gets into the hands of folks that are part-time increment workers right

that this would multiply. So, I mean, it's $769,000, but I think refusing it obviously wouldn't let it multiply in our local economy to give folks the opportunity to work for the ROV. I don't know how many more folks. I mean, I get it, but everyone was always complaining about the speed and how slow it was to get the first round out. I mean, there were some glitches. So anything that I think that we can do with state money, I think we need to do. And that this, if you do the multiplier four to seven times in our local economy, I think is a boom. And I understand the fiscal responsibility part of it, but I'm not willing to give $769,000 that can go into people's hands to buy products and pay for rent and pay for utility bills. So I will be voting yes for this.

Supervisor Rickman. Thank you, Chairman. Real quick, as Supervisor Gordillo mentioned. So is there equipment that you can identify to buy? I mean, is there equipment out there? I mean, duplicate what we have and you know, whatever those may be.

Through the through the chair, Supervisor Rickman, yes, we we could expand an area in our office and have a ballot extraction area that's much larger than the space we have now. And that is one of the bottlenecks that we experience is getting all of those ballots opened after they've been processed. So there is that opportunity for us. Absolutely. Thank you.

So what was the guardian? You know, we've had constituents for since the last I mean, since I've been elected here, talk about transparency and security of our election. Is there the ability to. Provide better security and transparency through this type of funding.

Through the chair. I will definitely supervisor guardia work with the county administrators. It doesn't mention anything about security It talks specifically to speeding up the vote count, but also keeping our election secure is very important I will share that in the time of VOTERS, WE'VE ACTUALLY WENT THROUGH THE OFFICE AND DID A THROUGH THE OFFICE AND DID A COMPLETE REDESIGN IN ORDER FOR COMPLETE REDESIGN IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE VERY TRANSPARENT. IT TO BE VERY TRANSPARENT. SO NOW WHEN THE PUBLIC WALKS SO NOW WHEN THE PUBLIC WALKS THROUGH, EVERYTHING THAT WE DO THROUGH, EVERYTHING THAT WE DO WITH BALLOTS IS EITHER ON CAMERA WITH BALLOTS IS EITHER ON CAMERA OR BEHIND A GLASS WINDOWS OR BEHIND A GLASS WINDOWS WHERE THEY CAN SEE AND THEY CAN WHERE THEY CAN SEE AND THEY CAN ALSO ENTER THOSE AREAS. ALSO ENTER THOSE AREAS. SO THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF JOINT SO THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF JOINT EFFORT ON MAKING IT dark spots in the building where sometimes ballots weren't on camera. Today, when a ballot comes into our possession, it actually stays on camera from the time it arrives in this building till the time it's in a sealed box. So we've definitely made some great progress there. There may be some things that we could look at that securing an area so that we can speed up the vote count, like putting in cameras in that additional room where we could create a ballot extraction space. We would do things like that because that would be for the greater good of speeding up the vote count.

Yeah. And I believe I believe you're doing a great job on that, you know, especially with the new technology. I mean, what I think is what's been identified is people that aren't truly registered voters are getting their ballots in. Is there, you know, through the I.T., is there a type of programs out there that can identify if these people are truly registered voters or not. You know, those are the type of securities, what I'm thinking, not so much the trustworthy of our employees and our volunteers. It's more the ballots that are coming in that aren't truly legitimate ballots.

So through the chair, I'd like, Supervisor Gardea, I'd actually like to maybe invite you down. I do truly believe that the ballots are coming back to us. The rigorous process we do when they arrive here, we are ensuring that it's a valid ballot. There are other things that we're looking at. like the secured ballot paper, to know that that is ballot paper that we ordered through our vendor. There's a lot of things in place to assure that. What I would say, and something that we do do that's very important in light of the Shakir Khan case, as I heard mentioned today, is we have tightened parameters to where we actually audit and look at any address that has more than 10 people registered. The Secretary of State's office actually adopted that as part of their checklist. So now statewide, they're doing something that we did in light of the Shakir Khan case. With that, we also work very closely with the sheriff and the DA's office if necessary. So whenever we see any sort of anomaly or they come to us with anything, we're working very closely. We can't always disclose what we're working on, but we are working diligently with them to make sure that we have safe and secure voter rolls to the best of our ability. And I'm happy to talk a little more with you about that if you would like.

Okay, thank you. Vice Chair Dane.

Supervisor Gardea,

I appreciate your comments and I'm wondering if maybe what we do, there was a, I'm speaking in cliff notes again. Excuse me. The security, I don't think anybody has a problem with the transparency as far as once the ballots get into the office. I think you've done a great job there, and I really haven't heard anybody voicing concern about that. There were a couple of areas. One was the signature verification. You know, you have so many days to cure, you know, those ballots through, you know, whether it's postcards, what have you, if something might be needed there as well um but i would i would like to see and and while supervisor canopy i understand your your point but you know when you say we i just it's not our money it's the taxpayer money so if it can benefit the county you know long-term And if I would have support on making sure that these funds are spent on equipment or something that we're gonna end up paying for next year, I think that would be a better use of taxpayer dollars.

Through the Chair, if I may respond, Supervisor Ding, this will go into a separate account and it will be monitored for exactly what it is. So it's not something that's just gonna be rolled in, it'll be put into a special account and we'll be able to monitor everything that it's utilized for.

reminds me of Al Gore in the lockbox. That's fine. But it's still it almost sounds like we're trying to find ways to spend the money. So I Council I don't know at what point is it do we pull it and then I would make a motion or supervisor Gardea I just like to see a little more definitive on how the dollars are being spent on things that we probably are going to end up like you know you're if you've got a bottleneck in that office and it's something we're going to have to address down the road let's use this money and address it right now

yeah through the chair is this something which needs to be approved today um i asked the question because to the extent that the board wants to give direction more specific direction on how to spend it i think it might be good to bring it back for that purpose if that's uh and and make sure that whatever look at ways in which the money might be spent, which is in compliance with the grant conditions, I would be hesitant to on the fly have the board give direction as to how the money ought to be spent, just because we have to be careful that we do comply with those grant conditions. But I don't know how time sensitive this is.

THROUGH THE CHAIR COUNSEL, NOVEMBER 3rd IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER AND THE EXPECTATION IS THAT WE MAKE AN EFFORT TO SPEND IT FOR THAT. IF POSSIBLE, IF THE BOARD AGREES, TODAY IS JUST THE CHECK IS ALREADY IN THE HANDS OF THE AUDITORS OFFICE SO IT WOULD JUST BE PUTTING IT INTO THE ACCOUNT. THAT'S WHAT THE ASK IS TODAY, NOT THE EXPENDITURE. SO MAYBE WE COULD BRING BACK AT ANOTHER MEETING WHAT WE'RE SPENDING IT ON. WOULD THAT BE APPROPRIATE?

Through the chair, yeah, that makes sense to me. So if the board approves this, if the ROV wanted to bring back more specific proposals as to how it might be spent, that would make sense in my mind.

Counsel, can we give direction?

Direction now as to how, direction to bring it back? Yes. What we're looking at? Sure, you could make that motion. Okay.

I have some questions before we do that. Olivia, out of $769,000, how much money is going to be spent if approved to buy equipment?

IT WOULD PROBABLY COME TO FOR IT WOULD PROBABLY COME TO FOR THOSE OPEX MACHINES WE'RE PROBABLY THOSE OPEX MACHINES WE'RE PROBABLY LOOKING AT WITH CAMERAS AND LOOKING AT WITH CAMERAS AND REDOING THAT ROOM BECAUSE WE ALSO REDOING THAT ROOM BECAUSE WE ALSO WOULD HAVE TO SET UP THE ROOM IN WOULD HAVE TO SET UP THE ROOM IN THE SPACE FOR IT SO WE WOULD PROBABLY THE SPACE FOR IT SO WE WOULD PROBABLY BE LOOKING AT A COUPLE HUNDRED BE LOOKING AT A COUPLE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS TO DO THAT EXPANSION THOUSAND DOLLARS TO DO THAT EXPANSION OF THAT ROOM. moving equipment in and purchasing normally. So it wouldn't be doing flooring and all that stuff like we've done before. So it would be a few hundred thousand. I also want to be clear, 113,000 of it is for outreach and education. And we're trying to do a campaign to alert voters of how they can return their ballot sooner. If they're going to vote at a polling location, we are really driving home the sign scan and go where they can come in and they can still cast that vote by mail as an in-person ballot. And so we're really pushing and driving that messaging home. So that 113,000 is specific to that, and that leaves the remaining 660,000, and that would be the portion for equipment and staffing, if that makes sense.

How many employees do you plan to hire?

We usually hire about 200, anywhere from about 150 to 200 for any given election. And so we would be able to increase to probably another 40 to 50 in office to assist us with doing, and if we're doing double shifts, we would be able to have more staff because they wouldn't all be onsite at the same time.

For how long?

Probably engaging about two weeks before the election and continuing until about a week to 10 days after the election.

So a little less than a month?

Yes.

What happens if we don't approve? What happens to the money? Does it go back to the state?

I believe it would go back to the state if not approved.

Then they will spend it somewhere else.

Okay, thank you. Would I make the motion now, counsel, or after consent?

I believe you called for a separate vote, so you could make the motion in conjunction with making a motion to approve it, or you could make it as a separate motion.

Now or later?

That's up to the chair as to when the separate vote would take place.

Okay. Just one second. We have a speaker. Supervisor Canepa.

I just have a point of clarification. It needs four-fifths to accept the check. We need four fifths to accept the money. So that is correct. Yes.

To increase the budget to increase the budget.

So we need four fifths to take the check. So that should be the first order of business, right, is to take the money.

Well, I'll combine that.

OK, thank you. Or do a 50 50 split or something, possibly. Thank you.

My motion would be to accept. Accept the money, but give direction that we would like to address the bottleneck and other equipment that we might foresee being needed in the coming years. Would that be acceptable, Supervisor Gardea?

I would like to do like a friendly amendment because we're getting close for time. I think the $113,000 is already allocated for outreach and engagement. I'd like to add that to that so that By the time next, we're two weeks closer.

Sandy.

All right. Thank you, Chair. I just want to make sure that the board knows that the funding was given for this general election. So anything they put in place has to be for this general election. And if it's equipment, obviously, yes, they can use it in the future.

Thank you, Sandy. Supervisor Canepa.

Would it be possible to do a 50-50 split on the remaining six whatever, so half on equipment and half on labor? I mean, is that something that would be

I wouldn't support that. Guys, this gravy train is coming to an end. It's already over. I'm telling you, you better look at next year. You better look at down the road. And if we have money like this, let's look at things that we're going to actually need rather than, well, this might help out a little bit. Let's we're in a very unique spot here in San Joaquin County. You know, turn on the radio and listen to what the other counties are going through. I mean, they're struggling. We've been very conservative. We've been in good shape. Let's keep our eye on the ball and what's coming next year. And if there's things she can do with these dollars to alleviate those financial burdens over the next couple of years rather than spend a few hundred thousand dollars on three or four weeks worth of work. I would think that was more fiduciary responsible.

I get that, and that's your opinion, but I have a different opinion, so I mean.

And then you can vote on my motion.

Through the chair.

Yeah, one second, Supervisor Gardea. Are you done, Supervisor Kennum? Yes, thank you. Supervisor Ackerman, then Supervisor Gardea. Thank you, Chair.

You know, a lot of talk about equipment. I mean, you know, you're the director of ROE, so you know what, you know, can be used and what's needed and stuff. All this talk about equipment and stuff and how much, I mean, I'm not sure where the board is going, but, you know, we're talking spend money on equipment. I mean, how much money do you need for equipment? What equipment's needed? I mean, I think we're... way over our skis here. And, um, so, I mean, you talked about some sorting machines, I don't know how many sorting machines you need, but to me is, I mean, you're, you're in that position for a reason or the reason you were hired for that position to make that, um, decision. So I don't know if the board is trying to instruct her to get a certain amount of, equipment at a certain dollar amount or whatever it may be but if we need equipment and there's a process for that i'm i'm gonna refer to you as the expert on that so i don't know what you guys are trying to do but i i i'm not i'm not following i i think what i what i'm trying to do is we're going to accept the

In my opinion, we accept. The money because it's the first order of business and and direct her. To take a second look at how we're spending this money. Um, and and see if there's other things for instance, and the original proposal she has this bottleneck in the office and so forth that wasn't included in there. So I'm trying not to hold up the process on the check. But at the same time, let's put another set eyeballs on this expenditure.

Why share when do we If the board approves accepting the money, then when do we give the directions because the election is Around the corner. Two weeks.

If you could, you'll have the money. Yes. And then bring it back to the board in two weeks on addicts. Does that give you enough time?

We could do that.

You can?

Yes, I would like to share that. And thank you, Supervisor Rickman, for your comments on how we are spending it. I will say that we are working with the county administrator's office and we will make sure that we're meeting all the grant parameters. I mean, time... I FEEL BADLY SOMETIMES BECAUSE I FEEL BADLY SOMETIMES BECAUSE WHEN THINGS ARE TIME IS OF WHEN THINGS ARE TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE BUT AS YOU PROBABLY THE ESSENCE BUT AS YOU PROBABLY READ IN THE MATERIAL THE STATE READ IN THE MATERIAL THE STATE GOT THIS CHECK TO US AT THE END GOT THIS CHECK TO US AT THE END OF AUGUST AND HERE WE ARE SEPTEMBER OF AUGUST AND HERE WE ARE SEPTEMBER 15TH IN FRONT OF YOU AS SOON 15TH IN FRONT OF YOU AS SOON AS WE CAN AND SO I DO KNOW THAT WE AS WE CAN AND SO I DO KNOW THAT WE NEED TO MOVE QUICKLY. The plan would be expanding that room and emphasizing the purchasing of that equipment because that not only helps us for this election, but also for the foreseeable future with other elections. We do a good job getting counted in this county and we can make it work. The bottleneck I'm explaining to you is something that we've been able to mitigate election after election. However, it is nice as we grow in volume and we have more and more people registering to vote. having more equipment and more space and the ability to do it is important. And so I definitely will put an emphasis on that. It would be nice, Supervisor Ding, you did mention with the cure letters and that process, there would be an opportunity maybe to hire some temporary staff to execute that process a little faster and having more people getting that done. So those are some things that we could look at as it relates to labor. And we in the ROV, and you have my word, our job is to make sure that we're good stewards, and you all have highlighted that very well for us. And so our plan would be to spend it appropriately and make sure we're emphasizing equipment. However, if they ask us to come back in two weeks, we'll make it work.

How about this? Let me revise this a bit. a motion to accept. We're all adults. We've got phenomenal staff here in place that are very fiscally responsible. You've heard some of our concerns instituted. Yes, sir. And not worry about a motion coming back. That work.

I'll just make a short, short suite. I think time is of essence and we're running out of time, similar to our ballot boxes. And we're waiting on the data to make sure that we make an educated decision when the next time we talk about this. And I agree that, you know, we hire professionals to do their job and trust that they do their job well. And just kind of I feel that you get the where we're coming from. And so I appreciate the amendment to the motion. I agree with the supervisor, Dean.

So through the chair. Yes, sir. I just want to make sure I just want to clarify what the board is considering. So Supervisor Ding, the Vice Chair Ding's motion is to accept the money and direction to the ROV taking into consideration the comments that were made here when deciding how to spend the money. And then Supervisor Gardea has seconded that motion. Is that what we're looking at? Yes.

Sandy.

Thank you, Chair. I would just like to clarify with what you just said that these recommendations are still okay because it's just to retroactively accept the funding and retroactively authorize the auditor controller to create the fund that they already have to deposit and then to increase the appropriations in the budget along with what you said.

Okay.

Thank you. Vice Chair Dink, your motion is that we accept the money and then give direction to Olivia in two weeks? No, no, no.

We've given verbal direction. We have great faith that Olivia and the county administrative team have heard us and will watch i just really want to highlight you know we just the fact that just because the money's coming in we can't just come up with different category i really want to give it a little deeper thought now let's make sure and we did this process identified something that we weren't thinking about before and that is the bottleneck in your office so there's 200 grand that we just saved that we're going to have to spend down the road so so your motion is accept the money

Accept the money with direction and that's your second Just to click just just to clarify I don't know it's it's I I understood the direct the motion to be to accept the money and For the ROV to please take into consideration the comments that were made here when deciding how to spend the money as opposed to any specific Directive as to as to how to spend it correct you speak ding better than I do.

I

OK. That helps. We got a motion and second call for vote, please. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. Vice Chair Ding. Thank you. Vice Chair Ding, number 21, sir.

SO I COULDN'T LEAVE THIS ON CONSENT. THIS IS EXCITING NEWS FOR THE COUNTY AND A LOT OF WORK HAS WENT INTO THIS AND I WANT YOU TO EXPLAIN TO THE BOARD EXACTLY WHAT THIS MEANS.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Chair Dhaliwal, members of the board, county administrator, county council, Vice Chair Dink, thank you. What this means for SJ Health, first off, Ahad Youssef from SJ Health The new access point award transitions us from a federally qualified health center lookalike to a fully fledged FQHC, which is a federally qualified health center. So it removes the lookalike status and what that does is that the biggest benefit is it opens the door to numerous federal grant opportunities that were closed to us before. We still maintain all the benefits that we were getting as a health center program lookalike, but we just have added benefits, and again, the most significant one is that opening the door to more federal grant opportunities. The 650 is not a ceiling. This is just the entry into the door. And as long as we maintain our compliance status with HRSA, this funding will continue. Most FQHCs in the area are not receiving the minimum amount of this 650. It's much higher than that. So that's what we intend to do. Annually, we will be submitting what's called a SAC, a Service Area Competition, to HRSA to increase the amount of this. Again, it's just base funding. So yeah, we're really thrilled. We've been working on this for the past, since we've ever been a lookalike in 2014 was when we attained that status and we submitted our NAP application in 2024. A lot of hard work and effort went into that and the federal government has responded and they started giving out the notifications a couple weeks ago and then Administrator Tom Engels from HRSA actually contacted us and wanted to come visit us and just see us in person. So that was a very kind gesture on their part. So it was just really nice being able to see the clinics ultimately transition to full FQHC status.

So correct me if I'm wrong. I see the 650 is it's kind of an allowance. It's a starting amount. Give you an example. CMC in San Joaquin County, I think it's 10 million. So it really is a starting point. And between all the activity between clinics and behavioral health in D.C. right now, they know San Joaquin County. WE'RE SITTING AT A VERY TOP LEVEL AND THINGS ARE MOVING. THE CBO PROBABLY WOULDN'T LIKE MY MATH BECAUSE THEY ONLY CATEGORIZE THE EXPENDITURES AND NOT DOLLARS SPENT. THE MORE DOLLARS WE GET ON THE FEDERAL SIDE FOR THE CLINICS FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH, WE ACTUALLY AS A COUNTY WILL SAVE MONEY ON EXPENDITURES THAT ARE MADE AFTER THE FACT RATHER THAN PRE-TREATMENT.

just wanted to commend you for what you're doing and this is really exciting news for San Joaquin County Thank You vice chair oh I just wanted to commend you to also because it's huge how far we've come you know aligning back with the county the clinics and I think the mobile aspect of what this money can do. And can you kind of explain to that? Because I think that's the more exciting part of it. The start of this 650,000 is the outreach that you could do to go to seniors in their places. That's pretty cool.

Through the chair, yes, Supervisor Canepa. What we specified in our new access point application, the actual new access point was an additional mobile unit. So we have one big one, we have a couple support vehicles for that, that goes out into the community, it goes to homeless shelters. And what we specified in the application was we provided a lot of data on the constituents of San Joaquin County, the health, And we determined ultimately that the most appropriate use of the funds would be to expand services by acquiring a second unit, a big unit. So we're currently looking at like 40 footers, which would be like a coach, sort of like a bus size. So we would have the ability to retrofit it to have two exam rooms instead of one. And then the idea would be to, I mean, this would offer full primary care services, wraparound services, but in addition to that, enhance, behavioral health services, substance use disorder services in the field where providers would have the ability to prescribe medication assisted treatment right there and really make an impact. And then just as you stated, the larger the larger integration strategy, not just the mobile unit, but with the other funds that will come in with this, will allow us to achieve that, I think, much more efficiently.

And the outreach, right, you talked about North County and South County, too, that the depth and breadth expands also, so that's exciting. Absolutely, yes. Great news, thanks for pulling that.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Do we have a motion, consent calendar items one through 28, except 14. Motion to approve. One second, sir. Do you want us to speak or? No, a second. Okay, you got a second. We have a motion and second call for vote.

I'm sorry, who was the second on that?

Subrata Ken. Motion passes 5-0. Discussion item one. Review and adopt rates for the active and retired health plans. HR

Good morning, Chairman Dhaliwal and Board. Got with me this morning our benefits manager, Oriana. She will do the presentation on the RFP and the benefits.

Good morning, Chair, Supervisors, CAO. Really excited to be here. My presentation won't be as exciting as Waylon the dog, but we're gonna try and make it a good time nonetheless. Really excited to be here to talk about our benefits. One of the things that I wanted to point out was that in 2026 this year, we switched our benefits to run from a to a calendar year from a fiscal year, which I think is going to be able to support a lot of our employees. in really just understanding the structure of benefits because most benefits run on a calendar year. And so there were oftentimes a lot of questions. So we're really excited that we're going to be starting that this year. But I do want to just dive right into some of the things that we've been doing. So we did do a medical RFP this year and we really just wanted to take a high level look at what benefits we were offering and really dive into some of the things that we're able to offer to our employees. This RFP was intended not just to test the market but to try and find plans that would really align with what our employees wanted and needed. So why did we decide to do it? This has been something I think that's been being discussed in HR for some years now on trying to figure out some solutions for some of the costs that we continue to incur by trying to provide these healthcare services for our employees. The rising costs of self-insured and high-cost claims were creating greater year-to-year volatility and making future costs harder to predict. For example, in this last fiscal year, we had to come to the board on two different occasions to request an additional $13 million of unbudgeted funds just due to high claims from employees who were going in with larger claim costs. So what we did was we issued an RFP to evaluate the carriers and then to look at different plan designs while trying to grow what we were already offering to our employees. All of those who were involved were HR, Siegel, who is here today with us as our consultant for benefits, purchasing and support services, which I want to get an extra shout out right now to Philip Brosman from purchasing who had to rein me in, which, as my husband can tell you, is not easy to do. Um, so it was just helpful to have him on the team and then the County administrator's office and some of our staff within human resources. So just wanted to give a big thing to thanks to everybody who really pushed that process through. So there were some things that we wanted to achieve during this process. The first one was sustainability. We wanted to reduce those exposures to those volatile claims that we were having through our self-insured plans. Those self-funded plans were the Select, Select Premier, and Select Exclusive. We also wanted to look at competitive costs. For anybody that was on our plans this most recent six-month period where we did the July through December, we saw really high increases, particularly with Sutter. Sutter was looking at a potential of over 30% increase. We negotiated that down to 27 but that's still a very high increase for our hardworking and dedicated staff that we have here at the county. During this RFP process we did ask for all of our, for everybody that submitted proposals to give us a multi-year projection so that we can get an idea of not just this upcoming year but also a couple of years out so that we can get an idea of how much the expenses would cost in the future. We did find that For Sutter in particular, those costs didn't look like they had any trajectory of slowing down. We also wanted to look at continuity of care. We wanted to make sure that no matter what we're doing in this process, that we're preserving access to existing providers and minimizing the disruption for any carrier transitions that we would be looking at. We wanted to have stronger benefits to maintain comparable plan designs with expanding benefits. When I came in as benefits manager, one of the things that was very apparent to me during this last open enrollment cycle that we had in May, we went and talked to labor organizations. We also talked to a lot of staff at our open enrollment fairs. And there were certain benefits that without hearing it from staff, I wouldn't have personally known that these are things that we want to really start reaching out for and looking at. And so we're gonna hit on some of those, but the primaries being chiropractic, acupuncture and hearing aids. Hearing aids, I heard resounding questions about hearing aids across the board from our staff. And so we're gonna get into that just a little bit. So I wanna talk about some of the changes that we're proposing for this upcoming year. So again, these plans would run from January 1st to December 31st of 2027. One of the transitions that we're looking at is the transition from plan C, which is our current plan that we operate for our part-time employees. So those part-time employees working anywhere between 1300 hours to 1560 hours in a year. as determined by an assessment period, are offered a plan that is through San Joaquin General Hospital and Clinics. So there's no necessarily primary care physician services. There's not dedicated individuals. And so there is a plan that is affordable that we had with the Plan C, but we are transitioning that Plan C to Kaiser. So now all of our part-time staff would be able to participate in that. There's over 100 people who are eligible, close to 200 people who are eligible for that plan, but only 25 people take advantage of it. And we really want to make sure that more people are taking advantage of these healthcare services because that's going to cost us less money in the future when we have a healthier workforce. And so we think that this switch from Plan C to Kaiser is going to allow for that. And so nothing else on the plan would change other than the fact that they would be moving to Kaiser. And I did just do a quick cost comparison to where if we were to have done that this year on this six-month period, current Plan C is $93 per pay period what those employees are paying. If they would have had Kaiser in this period, it would have been $99. I think it's $103 in this next one for 2027. lot of availability through the Kaiser network that them and their families can now have that they didn't have prior so this is I think a big win. One of the other things that we are looking to change would be a transition from our Sutter HMO and high deductible health plan to UnitedHealthcare for the same HMO and high deductible health plan. Now the UHC plans are comparable to the current Sutter HMO and high deductible health health plans when it comes to things like co-pays and deductibles It's the same structure As you can see on the monthly premium examples our current Sutter plan for an HMO is twelve hundred and sixty three dollars had we renewed it would have been thirteen hundred and 48, but with UHC, there's actually a decrease to $1,242 with that HMO renewal. So people will start to see a little cost savings there. Where the big change is on this is the high deductible health plan. The current high deductible health plan is $947 a month for our employees. If we were to have stayed with Sutter's Renewal, it would have been 982. With UHC, it is $708. So again, a major savings for our employees on that plan. We do have something that I know a lot of people have a question about with the continuance of care. I know that I've had a lot of questions already as people are hearing murmurings of, The biggest questions are co-pays and deductibles, which will be the same. The continuance of care, so employees who are currently receiving treatments such as infertility, that's a big one that I've been getting. Infertility is still covered under the UHC plan. They do have their own specialized department that handles the continuance of care. For 90 days transition to get them into any doctor that may not be covered through that network but one thing that I do want to just debunk is this myth that people are gonna have to change doctors and with unlike Kaiser, which is an integrated service models, which means that Kaiser facilities have Kaiser doctors when you look at other medical providers They contract and share the same networks. So Sutter, when you go to use Sutter, it's typically contracted doctors that use the same network as Anthem, that use the same network as UHC. And so the minimal disruption was something that we were really looking at with almost 100% of the same doctors being in the UHC network as the Sutter network. We are going to be working very closely with UHC, who is also here in mass today, to work with them so that there's nothing that the employee has to necessarily do. We're going to work with Sutter to get those files transferred to UHC so that their primary care physicians are already intact. And they're not coming in as a new patient. I know that was another concern that people had. They won't be coming in as a new patient where an employee says, I have this Dr. Smith, and now Dr. Smith isn't accepting any new patients, so if I come in under UHC, am I coming in under as a new patient? No, that continuity of care would continue, and we are working with Sutter and UHC to ensure that that information just gets transferred over to the UHC network. The way that I like to frame it to people, the easiest, simplest way is we're not billing Sutter anymore, we're billing UHC, or vice versa, right? But they use the same networks of doctors and physicians. Kaiser, so Kaiser is pretty much Kaiser. They're remaining a core active employee option with enhanced benefits for 2027. So like I said, hearing from a lot of employees and my job as benefits manager is to try and make sure that I'm listening to our employees and really trying to target some of the things that they're asking for so that we can continue to provide excellent healthcare services for our employees, right? They work so hard for us, we wanna make sure that we are keeping them healthy so they can continue to work for us. Oh, excuse me, one second.

Through the chair, what does UHC stand for?

UnitedHealthcare.

Okay, thank you.

Yep. Sorry, I'm going to keep using that acronym, but UnitedHealthcare is UHC. Thank you for that supervisor recommendation. So the Kaiser plan, one of the things that, like I said, we talked to employees and they really had an interest in chiropractic, acupuncture, and hearing aids. So we were able to add these, what are called riders, which basically means additional services on a medical plan for an additional cost. We were able to add the riders to the plan with a 4.2% rate increase coming for this upcoming 2027 year, which is a decrease of where it's been in the past. And that included the riders, the cost for the additional riders. So they will remain providing the services for our HMO and high deductible health plans. So our health maintenance and our high deductible health plan moving forward. So no big changes with Kaiser other than enhanced benefits and adding some things that our staff were really looking for.

Just want to point out on the previous slide, though, that the hearing aids are not available for the high deductible plans, the enhancement.

Correct. And that's like a legal thing. But yes, there's reasons why it's not. It's offered in a different way in that plan. Maybe somebody else here can explain that much better than me. One of the other changes was the switch from the self-insured plans and consolidating them into one fully funded PPO plan. Again, the biggest concern was the volatility between these plans and having to keep coming back to the board asking for more money because we have these very high cost claims. So there we what we currently offered through the anthem Prudhomme buyer network was the select premier and select exclusives And so we are consolidating all of those into one UHC premier plan that premier plan is just going to be one plan that Encompasses all of what was offered in the select premier and select exclusive at the highest level so the highest level was that premier plan so all of the All of the terms that were in that premier plan, we basically kept in the UHC premier plan. The premiums are, were projected to increase drastically with the self-insured this year just because of those high-cost claims. And so this is a way for us to be able to better manage our budget on these plans. And again, Anthem Prudent Buyer Network, again, UHC contracts with the same network of health care providers. One of these plans was 100% doctor-transferred, and then the other two were, I think, 99-point-something percent. very minimal disruption in who would have to change a doctor, if at all. And some of those are specialists within that too. And so it could be that somebody went to a specialist once that they no longer need to go to that one. This particular plan is comparable to the higher level premier plan and is, again, one of those things that is now consolidated into one plan. There's a lot of confusion between the Select Premier and Select Exclusive. As we've been seeing in the benefits unit in general, people being confused about what they're actually offered within those three plans and what the differences were between those three plans. So consolidating it into one plan is also going to be helpful for our employees when it comes to understanding what their benefits are. One thing I do want to also point out is they have about 90, UHC has 99 to 100% of the current network that we're using with Sutter and the Anthem Prudent Buyer Network, but they also have a network outside of that as well. So we're actually broadening the scope of what we're offering in terms of availability of physicians and doctors and things like that. Our other benefits that we get are our UnitedHealth Dental through UHC. So we've been longtime partners with UnitedHealthcare through our dental program. Those rates will increase by 12.5% in 2027. We offer three dental plans through Delta, which is the standard core and buy up. Those are increasing by 1.8%. Right now with our employee only for the dental plans, we actually pay 100% for employee only. For an individual who's on the plan by themselves, there's no cost for dental for our employees. And same with the vision. But that's going to be the buy-up plan for that one is going to be $1.80 for employees moving forward. The buy-up for the Delta Dental will be $1.05. So just to note what those rates will be for this year. Some of the other things that would be changing would be, again, we're eliminating that county managed care plan or the CMCP, which is, again, part of that Anthem Prudent Buyer Network. So we are moving over to the UnitedHealthcare PPO plan to replace that plan. Again, same network, same doctors. So non-Medicare options for our retirees will be United Healthcare PPO, United Healthcare HMO, Kaiser HMO, and Kaiser Northwest with limited disruption. And then chiropractic, acupuncture, hearing aid benefits are available through those applicable UHC plans. Retirees also have options through Kaiser for Medicare HMO. So they have the traditional high, traditional low, and Kaiser Northwest. So Again, there's no plan replacement here. Everything is the same except for, again, those enhanced benefits where we're offering chiropractic, acupuncture, and hearing aid benefits, which in retirement you could imagine that's going to be very helpful for them. The UHC PPO is going to also replace that Sutter PPO, which is currently in place. I mean, I can keep repeating it over and over, same network, same co-pays, everything is really the same. We have the addition this time of the Hartford Medicare supplement Medigap. So that's going to be available as a new supplemental option designed to work with the original Medicare's for those individuals who are on Medicare and currently might be using Anthem or one of our other options, that Hartford Medicare Supplement Medigap came in very low in comparison to the others, so it's also going to be a really good benefit for our employees, or rather our retirees, I should say. Again, we offer those other benefits for UnitedHealth Dental, Delta Dental, and VSP Vision for our retirees. So the biggest takeaways are that Sutter moves to comparable UHC plans and that Kaiser's remaining intact and that those part-time staff will now be shifting over to Kaiser. One thing that I do want to just name is that we do have open enrollment coming up. And open enrollment for retirees is October 1st through 30th. For our active employees, it's October 12th through the 30th. So a lot more information will be coming out at that time. But I just want to note for employees that for those employees who are currently active in the Sutter plans for active employees, If you are on Sutter, HMO, or high deductible health plan, we will automatically transition you over to the UHC comparable plans unless you opt out of or make a different election. So just as in the past where if you don't want to make any changes, you don't have to do anything, it would be the same thing. Instead of Sutter, though, you would see UHC. So if you have Sutter HMO, you'll get UHC HMO. If you have Sutter high deductible, you'll get UHC high deductible going forward unless you, as an individual, go in to elect a difference.

Oriana? Yeah. We have a question. Yeah. Vice Chair?

Oh, I can wait until she's.

You want to wait?

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. We'll wait.

Uh, so really the overall outcome is more predictable, fully insured arrangements, competitive market tested options. And, um, you know, we really tried to do our due diligence to ensure that we got everything that we wanted out of this process. Um, yeah, that's my presentation.

Vice chair Dean. Thank you very much. One of the questions I've, I've, uh, I'm not going to say from constituents. It was one. The monies that they already have banked, why they can't use those funds if they're retired, they move out of state to buy out of state insurance. Does this make any sense to you?

It does. I know exactly what you're talking about. That question is something that I think that our offices have been working on trying to find solutions for, but it's also a retirement piece and something that was in past MOUs. for, it was contractually assigned that way well before my time, but we're trying to dig in and do some research on, I don't know what solutions we will be able to come up with, but I know we are having long conversations about how that happens.

But it is correct right now that they're not allowed to use that bank money? Correct. For out of state? Okay.

Supervisor Rickman. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you both very much for It's through report. For active employees and retirees, I just want to confirm that if you have a PPO, you could just stay with your PPO. You're not moving people from PPOs to HMOs.

Correct. Correct. So if you're on the self-insured plan, you'll move over to the PPO. If you are on an HMO, you're going to move to the HMO. If you're on the high deductible health plan, you're going to move to the other high deductible health plan.

Okay. So just to confirm, if you have a PPO, like Anthem,

you would move to the UHC PPO.

But it would still be a PPO, so it would still be less restrictive as HMOs usually are. Correct.

And we have UHC here to answer these questions for you, too.

Yeah, I don't need to go in detail, but I just wanted the overall to make sure. And you mentioned you have your annual health care sign-up or changes, whatever you may have, and you mentioned In the past, I know it pops up, you like your health care so you stay, you don't do anything. So are you saying now that the employee has to actively

No, we're going to automatically move them to those. We're going to shift them directly. So it, unless they may go in to make their own change.

Right.

One thing I want to note though, is that SJ Sarah does it a little differently. So for retirees, they have to actually opt in. So for retirees, we're trying to do a lot of outreach about giving them information because If their plan is no longer going to be offered, so if they are currently on Sutter or Anthem for retirees, they have to go in and actively make the selection of what plan they want. For active employees, we are going to just automatically put them over to the comparable plan unless they go in to make a change on their own.

So if you have Anthem and you don't do anything, It'll switch over to whatever the comparable. To the UHC, yes, PPO. Now retirees, so if the retirees don't actually go in there and, you know, make the change, then what happens?

They lose their coverage.

Yeah, I mean, so what are we doing to confirm or affirm or make sure that these folks don't lose their insurance?

Yeah, we're doing a lot of outreach with them.

And what does outreach mean?

Yeah, so we're getting ready to send out a bunch of mailers with this information. We're emailing them. So all this week we're going to start mailing out all the flyers to the retirees. We also are emailing them. We are offering two options for retirees to come to some of our open enrollment fairs. And we're going to talk to, I'm actually going to be going with one of my staff in October, early October, to the retirees brunch in that they have every month or whatever it is, quarterly. We're going to go do a presentation there for them. But for our admin building and our Mickey Grove open enrollment fair that we're going to be hosting, we're inviting retirees to come there for any questions that they may have as well.

Are we doing something like how many retirees do we have? I'm just trying to look at the fiscal side of it now. I mean, something like certified mail, because one thing I don't want to see, the last thing I want to see is somebody who's in their coverage because they didn't get their mail. Exactly. Because, you know, they've been doing the same thing for the last 30 years, whatever. Now all of a sudden they have an incident and they go to the doctor and now they don't have insurance. You can see how that can destroy somebody's financial well-being.

Yeah. I mean, we're doing as much outreach as we possibly can to get in touch with these individuals. SJ Sarah is the one that's really responsible for the signups. We don't do that in-house. We're doing our part.

But we're doing the outreach. Yes. I just want to make sure our retirees, I don't care what it takes, if it's certified mail, that these people are notified. And, you know, because realistically.

Yeah, we send out about 6,000.

Because, you know, we have dinners, we have luncheons and stuff. And I'm pretty sure all retirees don't go to these things. Some people like to retire and be left alone. And so we need to reach those people.

Yeah, we mail 6,000 mailers to retirees. All right.

It's just a very big concern, and we need to do whatever we can to make sure these folks are taken care of. They take care of the public service. Now it's our turn to make sure they're taken care of in their retirement. So thank you very much for your presentation, both of you. Appreciate it.

And just to ease some concerns, because we'll probably get questions about that, we will definitely be working with S.J. Serra and with UHC to look into some of those things that may come up, right, where somebody was in a plan and they didn't know because they haven't done this for some time. And so we'll probably have to talk to S.J. Serra. I'm not sure what all their bylaws are around that, but we'll try and work with them to figure out ways and solutions for if those things do happen.

Supervisor Gurdia.

Quick question. So Segal, the consultants, when did you give or when was their report given to the county on the possible changes to the different benefits?

So we went to RFP for it. So we directed Segal to work with us in purchasing to submit for an RFP to see what other organizations were out there. So that's something that we've been working on since May, April, maybe a little earlier of this year. So it was human resources initiated with support from CAO. and purchasing provided services for us to be able to channel that. So it wasn't necessarily Segal's reporting of what was happening. It was a collective process through the RFP process.

And this was the first time we've done this?

No. We did an RFP some years back, 2020, I think it was. but it's been some years since we've done an RFP on it.

So I got a follow up question. So do we have any type of labor management meetings in order to allow labor to come in and see like the different increases or the changes that are upcoming into benefits?

Yeah, so we have met with the labor organizations. I've met with them twice now. So we met with them once to kind of just go over the health of our organization and some of the concerns that we had that we were seeing with the cost and increases. We met, actually it would probably be three times, we met with them last, earlier this year when we were changing from fiscal to calendar year, we met with them and talked about the increases that we were looking at for the July 1st through December 31st coverage period, and talked about how we're just seeing the trajectory of increases coming across the board, and that we were gonna be going to RFP. So we did notice then that we were gonna be going to RFP at that time, and then, so we had a meeting with them about that, And then we met with them again more recently before the RFP had concluded. So we were hoping that it would have concluded in time, but it was taking a little bit longer. And we did meet with them to discuss the potential for what may be coming up. And then we held a meeting, it's all one big day to me, I think it was last week, where we talked to them about more in-depth information, similar to what you heard today, for those labor organizations who were able to join in on that call we did hold a teams meeting for them to discuss some of these because they had some of these concerns and that's what helped us to to provide some answers today for some of the questions that they had.

No and I appreciate you guys setting up that meeting because in the past when I'll put my my union hat on you know we had these same type of meetings and we were able to go back to our members and really give them a heads up of what's coming down the pipe and and they're able to you know their local leaders are able to answer some of the questions that we get sometimes. So I appreciate that.

Just so we're clear, though, Supervisor, the RFP process is kind of a closed process, so they weren't able to participate in that process. But once we completed the process, we did communicate the information out to them.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I know it's a managerial right, and it's not something that goes out as part of the MOU or whatever. But I think that any time that communication's there, I think it's a good thing.

Yeah, and I think we're really doing a lot to try and remain in good faith partnership with the labor organizations by giving them a lot of the information. And they've been helpful, like I said, just in those meetings, finding out that, you know, hearing from a lot of them saying they wanted the chiropractic, the acupuncture, immediately we jumped on that and added it to the RFP right after I left that meeting, right? And so I think that it's just helpful to keep those communication lines open as well. And we definitely are for that.

No, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Supervisor Kahn.

Thank you, Chair. I just have a few questions. So on the self-insured UHC Premier, It shows $22.29 is the base. And then self-insured renewal goes to $26.55. And UHC Premier fully funded is $27.24. So that's $500. Yeah. And then just one other part of it. And the chart on the, some of those are 33%, 32%, 42%. Is that better or is that worse? I mean, so you're saying better, but I mean, is it because we're not adding the multiplier to the current plans for the HMO, PPO, or whatever it is?

Okay, let me answer number one first, and then we'll circle back to two because I'm not sure exactly what you're asking on that one. So for the first one, you're talking about the premier rate examples. So the current premier rate, if you are in what we currently have as our premier plan for the self-insured, is $2,200.00. If we were to renew it at this point, if we were to have kept that plan, it would have been $2,600. And so because we're doing it with UHC, it's $2,700, but it's a PPO plan, not a self-insured. So let's say six months from now, we get five people with millions of dollars of claims. We're going to be coming back to this board asking for millions of dollars more at the county. to cover those costs, and then next year when we go for renewal on that again, those increases are gonna skyrocket for those self-insured plans because we're not only paying for the medical costs, there's also stop-loss insurance that we cover here too for some of those, for that particular plan, so.

Okay, so the 75 bucks difference is between the green and the blue, and it's gonna reduce our liability and risk?

Correct.

Okay, then... One of the other questions. A lot of the dental folks, the dentists, are making everybody pay up front. Why? You know, so you have to pay the dental and then submit a bill. Why is that? Can somebody explain that? A lot of the dentists want you to pay them and then you submit the bill.

To your dental provider?

Yeah. It's all over. I mean...

Okay, so I can't respond to that here right now, but I can definitely, I will go look into that.

Does any of these folks know why that's happening? Someone's got to know.

UHC is our medical provider.

Oh, they're all, I mean, friends and a lot of them, even the new dentist that we switched to is making, you know, payment, and then you have to submit it to get reimbursed. And why is that? Yeah.

Carlos, do you have any? Do you want to step up to the podium?

Carlos Guzman with UnitedHealthcare. We offer the fully insured dental plan as a direct compensation where it's based on co-pays. And so the member pays the doctor or the dentist the specific co-pays outlined in the benefits summary. Maybe the issue is on a self-funded where they're not contracted. I'm just speculating. We don't offer that coverage where they're asking money upfront and for them to submit a request into maybe the self-funded carrier. But from our perspective, the fully insured members need to pay a copay because it's based on contractor providers. Contractor providers may decide to do an upgrade, for example, a crown upgrade, but they need to provide the member a statement where it shows what the upgrade is, what the cost is, so the member is aware of that cost upgrade.

okay perfect so you're saying most likely the dentist is out of the network so if you don't have an in-network dentist that they're saying they're not reimbursing us the right amount or whatever so you pay first and then battle it out with them yeah and i do want to commend you on doing this though because it was driving me nuts um that that you know the care and the insurance kept going up and sometimes you know what i mean people weren't getting good service so i'm glad that we saw that there is uh you know, some competition out there and that we are able to get better service. I mean, hearing aids, acupuncture, and the third one are huge for people because, you know, people want alternatives to pills. And so that's nice that that's out there. So thank you guys for doing that. And thank you for bringing it back and consolidating folks so that, you know what I mean, it's easier to explain what they're being provided. So appreciate that.

One thing I did want to just address here, too, because we did get this question a lot, and I know people are going to say, well, what about the question I asked about the GLP-1s? We did look into a rider for GLP-1s. It was really expensive and very limited amount of staff would have been able to participate using it because there are also some requirements that would allow you authorization to use a GLP-1. So, I mean, it was very expensive per month per person. And it's not something where you can just pick and choose as like a buy up to say, well, I want to buy that particular plan as an individual. We had to do it for every person as a county if we were going to purchase those. But I did just want to make note of that because that was a huge request from people as well.

Yeah, I got kicked to the curb a couple of times and it was pretty. Then they sent it some hearing and I got three hearing things saying no. So they pretty much. Right.

They cut you off, man.

Yeah. Anyway, thank you. Thank you.

Supervisor Gardea.

So it was made mention that Sutter, this is what I feel like from an employee that used to use Sutter or still do use Sutter, actually. They went in business. They want to take Kaiser business away from Kaiser. They offered a very competitive rate and then they increased it by 30 percent later on. What stops UAC from doing the same thing?

Let's ask them. In building in, we did ask for the next couple of years. So they do have a cap at what they are able to increase for in the next year or two. So I believe that cap is about, you want to? Yeah. I'm like, here we go. Let him answer for himself.

At UHC, we do have a cap on the HMO plan, which is the plan that's going to replace the Sutter Health plan of a 14.9% for 2028.

So that's a one-year cap or is that?

Yeah, so one-year cap. We could look at a cap for 2029, perhaps this time of next year and negotiate with the county. But right now we have a one-year cap.

Yeah, I like the idea of negotiating it. I think... Our county administrator would love to figure out future budgets and possibly increases.

Yeah, and we really want this to be a long-term partnership too. Everything that was said already is absolutely correct. We have the same network as a Sutter, so it's the same providers. We partner with Sutter very well. It's always... a challenge in our industry to control costs. We're committed to that. So happy to have these conversations for the 2029 year as well.

I appreciate that. And I'm glad you guys brought a team to answer the questions. And I did confirm my wife works for Sutter and you guys are well within their network. Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I think they see we're not scared to switch providers if they try and increase us too much. So hopefully those negotiations go well. But they do need to, because we're just joining them too, they need to also get a sort of base, right, for how we perform in this year in order to make those future limitations.

Anybody else? Public, Megan Shearer. Megan?

I'll start.

What's your name, sir? Victor Bastion.

Okay. I am the acting president of the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association. Chair Dhaliwal, supervisors, good to see you all again. On September 4th, the Attorneys Association was notified by County HR of the RFP at no prior time had it been addressed. with the attorneys association um we did schedule a meeting with them where um we were told we would not be provided anything in the rfp for us to evaluate so we're working on the san joaquin county board packet agenda item 5.1 submitted to each of you not with what's just been presented here On behalf of the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association, we respectfully oppose the proposed elimination of center health plan and the county's existing premier select and select exclusive medical plans and the replacement with UnitedHealthcare effective January 1st, 2027, based upon the record that's been presented here. The San Joaquin County's Attorney's Association does not oppose responsible efforts to control healthcare costs, nor do we oppose United Healthcare merely because it's a different carrier. Our concern is that the proposal before the board focuses heavily on projected financial benefits without adequately addressing the consequences to employees and their families, the actual long-term economics of the proposal, continuity to care, or whether the proposed UnitedHealthcare plans are truly comparable to the coverages employees currently receive. Healthcare benefits are not simply another county procurement. For employees and their families, this decision involves established physicians, specialists, and ongoing treatment relationships, medication, hospitals, mental health care, and continuity of care. A change of this magnitude warrants considerably greater scrutiny before existing plans are eliminated. I would ask the supervisors to examine the HR's claim or the county benefits claim that replacing Sutter gets a benefit to the county. The county estimates that replacing Sutter Healthcare with UnitedHealthcare will result in annual costs of approximately $33.2 million compared with projected 35.3 with a Sutter renewal. So the county is therefore describes approximately $2.1 million as savings or cost avoidance. The county's own report, however, also states that replacing the current Sutter options with UnitedHealthcare is projected to change the county's annual premium costs by only approximately $43,000, not the $2.1 million. Point one percent compared with the county's current premium expense. This two point one million figure therefore represents the avoidance of projected future costs, not actual current costs. The distinction matters. A projected future cost increase is relevant to the board's decision, but it must be weighed against the disruption associated with eliminating these costs, especially at the last hour on September 4th when the attorneys association and the other labor units were notified that it was the county's intention to change this.

Can you give one more time? I'll add one more minute, please. Okay.

The county also points to rate stability as a reason for selecting UnitedHealthcare, yet the proposed UnitedHealthcare individual said it's going to increase 14.9% next year. If they build it into it, they're going to charge that. That raises legitimate questions regarding the extent of which UnitedHealthcare actually provides long-term rate stability beyond the initial year plan. As he just said, he will negotiate that. There's also a particularly relevant comparison occurring at the same time. For the 2027 year, CalPERS independently evaluated UnitedHealthcare's basic HMO and declined to renew them after UnitedHealthcare proposed rate increases of 23% and 21%. At the same time, CalPERS added Sutter Health Plan in San Joaquin County and surrounding counties in part to preserve members' access to Sutter providers. While the Attorney's Association recognizes that CalPERS are not identical to San Joaquin County, proposed plans and the CalPERS experience therefore does not establish that the county's proposed UnitedHealthcare proposal is financially unsound. It just presents the question I would ask the board to consider and evaluate this entire thing and consult with the labor.

Good morning. My name is Catherine Seitz. I am a deputy district attorney at the San Joaquin County DA's office and I'm a member of the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association. The county also points to the right stability. The county states that UHC's replacement plans will maintain access to Sutter health providers and provide access to a broader statewide network. But saying that Sutter participates in a united healthcare network does not answer the questions that matter to individual employees and their families. Before eliminating the existing plan, the County should demonstrate whether employees can retain their primary care physicians, specialists, medical groups, hospitals, behavioral health providers, and ongoing treatment relationships under the specific UnitedHealthcare networks being purchased by the County. The Board should also know whether existing specialist referrals and authorizations will transfer, whether prescription drug formularies and specialty medication coverage will change, whether UnitedHealthcare imposes different prior authorization, step therapy, or referral requirements, and how employees undergoing active treatment will be protected during the transition. The county's assertion that UnitedHealthcare provides a broader network is not a substitute for meaningful analysis of whether the county employees will retain the healthcare relationships they actually use today. The county has also characterized the move from its self-funded premier, select, and select exclusive plans to the UnitedHealthcare as financially advantageous. The county's own report warrants closer examination of that assertion. The proposed UnitedHealthcare Premier Plan does not reduce premiums. The county expressly states that transitioning from its current self-funded plans to UnitedHealthcare plans represents an overall 32.5% increase in premium costs. And that is from the San Joaquin County Board packet item 5.1. The county further projects the annual UnitedHealthcare premiums of approximately $41.6 million compared with approximately $39.1 million under the projected self-funded renewal scenario. Thus, even against the projected 2027 renewal, not merely current costs, the state UnitedHealthcare premium is approximately $2.5 million higher. and that source is also from the San Joaquin County Board packet agenda item 5.1. The county's financial rationale instead appears to rely substantially upon transferring claims risk from the county to UHC. According to the board materials, moving to the fully insured arrangement will eliminate approximately 4.9 million in prospective stop-loss premiums avoid approximately $500,000 and other self-insured plans expenses and permit reduction of approximately $11.3 million in required claim reserves. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Scott Porter. I'm Deputy District Attorney of San Joaquin County. I'm a member of the Attorneys Association. Following up with what Ms. Seitz said, those numbers should not be conflated. Avoiding an annual stop loss premium may constitute recurring savings. Avoiding identifiable annual administrative expenses may likewise constitute recurring savings. But reducing an 11.3 million claims reserve is not the same as saving 11.3 million every year. A REDUCTION IN REQUIRED RESERVES MAY FREE COUNTY FUNDS OR IMPROVE LIQUIDITY BECAUSE UHC ASSUMES THE INSURANCE RISK, BUT THAT FINANCIAL BENEFIT IS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM A RECURRING ANNUAL REDUCTION IN HEALTHCARE COSTS. MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE BOARD MATERIALS DO NOT MAKE CLEAR WHETHER THE PROJECTED 39.1 MILLION SELF-FUNDED RENEWAL FIGURE ALREADY INCLUDES OR EXCLUDES THE IDENTIFIED 4.9 MILLION STOP LOSS EXPENSE AND APPROXIMATELY 500,000 IN OTHER SELF-FUNDED EXPENSES. That is a critical accounting question. If these amounts are already included in the $39.1 million figure, then the proposed UHC premium of $41.6 million is plainly more expensive. If they are excluded from the $39.1 million figure, the appropriate comparison may be substantially different. The Board should not have to infer the answer. Our source for this is the San Joaquin County Board packet, Agenda Item 5.1, Fiscal Impact, page 816. Before approving this change, the Board should require an apples-to-apples accounting showing the complete projected 2027 cost of maintaining the existing self-funded plans, including claims, stop loss, insurance, administration, reserves, and all other expenses, against the complete cost of the UHC arrangement. The County should separately identify recurring annual savings, one-time reserve effects, and the economic value attributed to transferring insurance risk to UHC. employees will experience significant premium increases. The effects upon individual employees also deserve considerably more attention. According to the county's own rate sheet, employees presently enrolled in select or select exclusive will be consolidated into the new UHC Premier Plan. The gross biweekly premium increases are substantial. Employees only shows a 32.9% increase. Employee plus one shows a 32.9% increase. Employee plus family shows a 42.37% increase. Even employees currently enrolled in Premier face gross Premier increases of 22.61% for employee only and 31.34% for family coverage. The source is the board packet, Exhibit A, 2027 Rates, packet page 820.

I have 30 seconds left.

I would like to say personally, I've been on a board before. I know you're making a dollars and cents decision. But individually, I've been here for 25 years. Sutter Health Plus is the first plan I have actually loved. You don't talk to a computer when you talk to them. You talk to a person. And this is another thing at UHC. I know nothing about UHC. But Sutter Health Plus has been amazing. And when you talk about mental health providers, Sutter Health works with Carillon. uh my understanding is you which she does not work with caroline they work with optum or united behavioral health i may be wrong about that but if my if i may sutter health plus with mental health coverage the providers and the sutter health plus people themselves have quite literally saved my daughter's life thank you very much yes um

I have several speakers, but if everybody's going to address the same thing, then if you guys select a spokesperson, I can give you extra time.

Oh, no, we have a, thank you very much, Chair, but we have an order of people. I've said what I had to say originally. Thank you very much.

Good morning, my name is Ashley Augustine. I'm a deputy district attorney with the county and I'm also a member of the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association. Members of the Board, these are not insignificant changes. The Board materials do not provide an enrollment breakdown showing how many employees are presently enrolled in Premier Select or Select Exclusive at each coverage tier. Nor do the materials clearly explain the resulting payroll deduction for employees under each bargaining unit's negotiated contribution structure. Before eliminating these plans, the board should know how many employees and dependents are affected, what each employee's actual contribution will be, and how much additional money employees will be required to pay out of their paychecks. A proposal should not be described simply as financially advantageous to the county without simultaneously disclosing whether the financial structure shifts additional healthcare costs onto county employees. The county's own human resources memorandum recognizes that employee health benefits are, quote, negotiated with the county's labor organizations, end quote. Nevertheless, the board materials describe an RFP and evaluation process involving human resources, Seagal, purchasing and support services, the county administrator's office, and participating carriers. The materials do not identify SJCAA or the affected bargaining organizations as participating in the carrier evaluation and final selection process. Regardless of the county's contractual authority to modify medical plan offerings, employees and their representatives should be provided sufficient information and a meaningful opportunity to evaluate a proposal that potentially changes their doctors, healthcare networks, treatment rules, prescription coverage, premiums, and out-of-pocket costs. For these reasons, SJCAA respectfully requests the Board that the Board not authorize the elimination of Sutter Health Plan or the Premier Select and Select Exclusive Plans at this time. We ask the board to sever or defer those portions of agenda item 5.1 and direct human resources to provide the effective bargaining organizations with sufficient information to independently evaluate the proposal. including disclosure of whether 39.1 million self-funded renewal projection includes or excludes stop-loss premiums and other self-funded administration expenses. Enrollment information identifying the number of employees and dependents presently enrolled in each affected planning coverage tier. An analysis showing the actual employee payroll contribution under the proposed UnitedHealthcare plans. compared with current coverage. And a provider disruption analysis identifying whether employees can retain their existing physicians, specialists, medical groups, hospitals, and behavioral health providers.

Hello, my name is Gina Della Maggiore. I have been with the District Attorney's Office since 1999, and I'm currently a homicide prosecutor. The board is being asked to make a decision that will affect thousands of employees, retirees, spouses, and children beginning in approximately three months. Once the existing plans are eliminated, those employees will have to navigate whatever changes follow. The county has presented reasons why transferring risk to UnitedHealthcare may be attractive to the county. It has presented projected savings from avoiding a future Sutter increase, but it has not yet presented enough information for employees. And with all due respect to our county supervisors, for this board to determine whether the entire proposal represents a better healthcare benefit at a genuinely lower long-term cost. Healthcare is part of a public employee's compensation, but unlike salary, changing a healthcare plan can change the doctor treating an employee's child, the specialist managing a chronic condition, the medication an employee can obtain, or the rules governing an ongoing course of treatment. A projected financial benefit should not be sufficient to make that change without first establishing exactly what is being saved, whether those savings are reoccurring, what additional costs will be borne by employees, and whether employees and their families are receiving genuinely comparable healthcare coverage in return. For these reasons, the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association, which I am also part of, respectfully requests that this board defer these portions of agenda item 5.1 and require full, full financial disclosure, employee impact analysis, and meaningful absolutely meaningful participation by the affected bargaining organizations before the existing medical plans are absolutely eliminated and done away with. Thank you so much.

Thank you next please.

Hello, my name is Allison Vanilla. I'm also a Deputy District Attorney and a part of the County Attorneys Association. I just have some additional things that I want to bring to the board about just UnitedHealth Group in general. I do have an article here from Economic Liberties detailing a bunch of abuse in the last seven years from UHG. They've been accused of engaging in the following activities. 3 reports and 1 lawsuit for violating patient privacy, 12 reports and 5 lawsuits for up coding and over billing the federal government, 15 reports and 5 lawsuits for denying patient care based on cost instead of medical necessity, 14 reports and seven lawsuits for steering patients and providers towards UHG owned subsidiaries in order to increase company profits and an additional eight reports of corrupt practices. I would also like to note that UHC on their own website claims that they approve 98% of claims. However, other Forbes has reported that they actually have the highest denial, estimating approximately one-third of claims are denied. That same article also states that they have the most expensive premiums in the nation. So while they might be discounting our costs right now with a one-year cap, there's no guarantee that that will be true in the future. The Muni Health reported that UnitedHealthcare denied approximately 20% of ACA marketplace claims in plan year 2024. Also highly concerning is that there's currently a class action lawsuit still pending that started in 2023 for UnitedHealthcare using AI to automatically deny claims when they knew there was a 90% error rate. This lawsuit is still ongoing. There's had been, from my understanding, several motions to compel discovery that are being fought, but it seems that the cost savings from the county are being pushed onto the employees in these ways. And I believe, I'm not sure what dental insurance you have, Mr. Canepa, but just a thought if it is a uhc one maybe the provider is tired of arguing with uhc over getting that money back so they're making the patient pay forward and making the patient deal with their insurance company rather than dealing with the headache of it and there have also been several reports about that thank you next please

Good morning. My name is Megan Shearer. I am a deputy public defender. I've been with the county for 12 and a half years in that capacity. And I'm also a member of the San Joaquin County Attorneys Association. Thank you. And I'm also short. I have a couple comments on how this was brought about and the resulting effect and the limited information we've received. I think we can all agree that two of the most important reasons that we all come to work despite our passion for what we do and our dedication to the communities that we serve is our money and our health care. And right now, what is being proposed is threatening both. This was brought about very last minute. The board was notified on September 4th, 11 days ago, regarding a serious and significant change affecting members and our families. I think it's disingenuous to say that the board was consulted along the way in this process because it absolutely wasn't. And I appreciate Council Member Gardea's concern for union and being pro-union. I think that's super important. And the fact of the matter is the union was not involved in this. So to state otherwise is completely disingenuous. The other thing is the proposal that we received contains no information regarding what these changes will actually look like. So I personally have the Premier Plan. It's going to be a 32% increase, which is going to be close to $10,000 for my family. And I went on UHC's website last night to see what this Premier Plan, it just said ambiguously UHC Premier. I couldn't find a matching plan. on their website. Therefore, I wasn't able to determine if our current providers are even covered. I share Ms. Fennell's concerns about the UHC's denial of claims. That's something that has been in the media, in the national media, especially the last several years regarding UHC's denial of valid claims and the resulting consequences for people's health. People have died waiting for their claims to be considered by UHC. That's not a fair way to treat your employees who dedicate themselves to serving this community. So I think that the lack of information, the hasty way that this was brought about, and the fact that we don't know what this is going to entail. I know several of you are small business owners. And if a vendor came to you and said, hey, I'm going to hike your rates up by 32%, and I'm not going to tell you what you're getting for that, you'd tell them to pound sand. I'm asking the board to either defer this so we can get some more information. If Mr. Ding, someone said, hey, I'm gonna charge you 32% more for chicken, but I'm not gonna tell you if that chicken's organic, what farm they're coming from, anything like that, you would say no, because that's absurd. And Mr. Canepa, I know that your family is a small business owner as well. If someone came to you and say, hey, we're gonna upcharge you 32%, a third more for something, but we're not gonna tell you the quality, you would say that's absolutely ridiculous. That's what the county is doing right now, and I think that it's absurd and should be deferred. Thank you.

Next.

Good morning. My name is Janet Smith. I also am employed by the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office. I've actually been employed with the county for over 33 years. And I'm not going to duplicate, but I am going to invite you all to go on to the Department of Managed Health Care website. And I'm going to ask you to look at all of the prior violations by UHC and look at what is being discussed. One other thing I think is very important is that we were never notified. We were never brought to the table. We were not advised of them coming in. It is absolutely not accurate that the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Association was ever brought to the table. We were notified by September 4th and here we are today with a resolution at the back of your packet asking you to sign off. At no time have we been provided any information. I think it is also important when you go onto that website, you will see that only for the first 10 violations, they have been fined $585,000 for their actions. That is only representing 10 of the 152 violations that are documented by the department. It is all there for you to see. And I have to ask you, have you seen it? Have you looked for it? Or are we just relying upon the information that's being provided to us? Because that is very important to us. The use of AI, fully documented. The only reason that their denial rate changed in 2024 was because the Senate committee was taking them forth and was addressing and attacking the posture and the position of their business. This is a conglomerate. This is not a healthcare plan. They are sweeping through the country and they are taking on more than they have the capacity to. The numbers that they are providing to you, we do not find to be accurate. We cannot. There is nothing that's even indicating what the plan is going to be. How do we know that this coverage is going to exist? There's nothing on their website. This is not transparency. It was not transparent when they came in and they presented to you. You went into backroom meetings. We were not invited. We also have made requests for documentation so that we can be educated. It's been denied. That is not transparency. If the information is as they say, then why not provide it so that we can know what it is that we are doing here? We don't do that when we go into court. We don't go in half-cocked. We don't go in with limited information. It is our obligation as it is yours. to know what it is that we're doing. It is your obligation to protect your constituents, which we are, against this type of an organization coming into our community. And that's why CalPERS has gotten rid of them over a 167 million dispute. And we're asking you to consider that and to deny their request to come into our community and at the bare minimum delay it so that we can all be educated on the same plane about what is really being given to us here.

Next. Anybody else? I believe I was the end of that process. I have a card from Nora Lamont.

I beg your pardon? No, she's . Sir, Ms. Lehman is currently in a serious case right now. She's unable to make it.

OK. So nobody else? No, sir. Any questions, board members? Oh, yeah.

Well, the good news, we have some pretty damn good attorneys here working in San Joaquin County. including one who sued her own insurance company before she was 21 and actually won. And don't think I forgot that, Gina. I. I can't see how we could possibly move forward without more information here, you know, from a personal perspective, you know, Sutter. But am I happy with the rates I'm paying right now? No, I'm not happy for paying for anything. But I get my provider, I get my specialist, I some other specialties I need within my family. And this scares the bejesus out of me. So I full heartedly want more information and we shouldn't move forward today.

So what was the grandpa?

I mean, do we rebut? There are some. y'all going to defend yourselves or something? I mean, after that, it was pretty harsh. So I mean, someone's got to step up and say, or Siegel or somebody, y'all got to defend yourself. You got a bunch of attorneys sitting there. So I want to hear from your side, and you're going to wow me or something, right?

Yeah. So Eric Palmquist, I'm a vice president at UnitedHealthcare. You know, that was a lot to digest. Sounds like we're kind of saying two different things. I think some of what I heard, you know, was questioning the provider network and, you know, perhaps members losing providers. I'm oriented stated that the provider matches a nearly identical like like a ninety nine point nine percent. So I think we're just sort of saying two different things. Talking about claim denial rates is a question that we get often, and I can go in to a detail on how we pay claims. If you'd like me to do that, perhaps that makes the most sense. to address now and some of the other more easy to explain differences of opinion we can address after. When it comes to claim denial rates, we do not maliciously deny claims, nor do we ever deny claims for a profit-seeking of motives. If you were to break down the way that we pay claims, 91% of all the claims that we receive are auto-adjudicated. And what that means is a human being does not touch the claim, it comes in electronically, it gets processed through our claims processing system, and it's paid automatically. The other 9% of claims do require human interaction. So a person has to touch the claim. So of that 9%, about half, 4% of claims are simply missing information. So there are what we call administrative issues. We reach out to the provider. Sometimes we have to contact via member. We get the information. and we pay the claim. The second 4% of claims, we have a issue related to who pays primary. So for example, Medicare, or a Medicaid or a subrogation in the event of an auto accident could pay a primary. So we review that, we analyze it and a lot of cases we pay on a secondary basis. So that gets us down to 1% of claims. Of that 1% remaining, we are left talking about things like a medical necessity. So is the claim that the provider um is requesting payment on essentially a medically unnecessary are they following clinical guidelines um so half of one percent of claims we do actually deny because we feel that the provider is not following a clinical like guidelines that does happen, it's very rare. And then the other half of that, like 1%, we see, you know, like revenue seeking behavior, providers, upcoding claims are trying to get like additional, like a revenue beyond the service that was actually So when I hear something like 30%, that's outrageous. We're nowhere near that. We're at about a half a percent. We're very similar to all of our competitors in the space. very similar to Blue Cross, like in that regard. We have a lot of very strong references here in this area, like a lot of your neighboring counties. If we were denying 30% of claims or something outrageous like that, we wouldn't have any customers like across the whole nation, right? And we wouldn't have the references that we do. So I'll just say that, and then if there are, Other questions about like employee contributions or enrollment or a plan design or the provider network, I think we can easily address those as well. Yeah, go ahead.

Johnny Siegel, County Health and Welfare Consultant. We assist the county in evaluating the RFP process during this process. And what we did with the provider network for the self-funded plan is that we took the most recent 12 month of claims and used the actual claims data to match against what UHC is proposing on their network. And their network has essentially a 99% match to what was currently being utilized by your constituents and members. And that is based on the current data that we have. With respect to the self-funded costs, those costs, the 39 million do includes the stop-loss fee and the administrative fees. But like the gentleman previously mentioned, the 11 million reserve, that is correct at one time savings, not a continuous saving. And I think the issue with self-funded claims as well, it's over the last several years, the costs each and every year for every fiscal year has been running up starting from fiscal year 2022, 2023, it's $24.5 million. $23, $24, $27 million. We got a slight reduction in $24, $25, and $26 million. And most recent, $25, $26, is $31 million. So the cost has been rising, but at the same time, we're seeing a reduction in the enrollment in the self-funded plan. exacerbate the cost on a per member per month basis. For the most recent fiscal year, we're seeing a 32% increase on a per member per month cost. So I think that's the primary contribution to the increase, not just to what UHC is proposing, but equivalent self-funded projection as well. It's primarily driven by the claims. Thank you.

I had a question for UHC. So why did CalPERS drop you guys?

We had a very great relationship with CalPERS and a very long standing partnership, one that we were very proud of. It came really down, from my opinion, to a cost, a reason. Their claims were performing very, very close, if not exceeding their premium. Sutter came in with a very aggressive rate that we could not match. You know, and these things do happen, right? From time to time, we win a piece of a business in a partnership and we lose one. Sometimes we take business from Sutter. Sometimes it's the other way around. But yeah, that's the overall of reason.

All right. Thank you.

Yeah.

Still got a couple more. So please continue. You know, I feel like there's definitely some beating up being had right now. I do know that I'll speak for myself, but I believe we're all on the same page that, you know, the county is dipped into reserves. We've had MOUs that, you know, we were able to sign and, you know, through negotiations and that we're looking at the overall health and I commend our HR department to look at alternatives. You know, I do want to say that on, you know, we get our agenda on Friday and it's a lot of pages. There's a lot of information and we have our meetings with the county administrator and we ask the questions that We ask. But, you know, to hear in public comment, I really think some big concern, you know, there are some concerns that were brought up. You know, obviously, they brought a bunch of attorneys and there was a lot of information that was being given to us that it's going to take a little time to to compute my brain. But. I kind of want to hear from my my my other supervisors what their thoughts are.

And if I can just really quickly prior to that, I know there were two other questions that I just wanted to address that were asked. And yeah, good job, guys. So one of the questions that was asked for enrollment on the self-insured plan, On our premier plan, we have 279 people. Now that's not employees, that's employees and their dependents. For the select plan, we have 394, again, employees and their dependents. And then for the select exclusive, there are 12 employees and dependents. And as Johnny stated, those numbers decrease each year. So the more people that opt out of those plans for those self-insured, the more expensive it becomes for everybody else that are within those plans as well. And then one of the other questions that was asked, and I know that typically the plan comparison charts are usually released with the open enrollment documents, but we generally have a plan comparison chart that shows you all the plans compared to each other So it'll list out like what your deductible is, what your co-pay is, what your ambulance costs are, all of those things. And so those are documents that would be going out with all open enrollment documents. And generally those aren't, even with changes and plans, those generally aren't documents that we submit at the board. Those are always just come in with the open enrollment documents. So we would have those available with the open enrollment documents. But as I stated in the presentation, and I know that we talk about comparable plans in the board letter, but it doesn't outline exactly what comparable means. But essentially, the comparable plans would be the very similar plan type with co-pays uh... and with the types of treatments uh... and we really did want to make a strong comparison for what we were currently offered uh... what was currently being offered with the with the UHC HMO PPO uh... and the premier plan uh... the high deductible plan all of those in comparison they received all of the data from Sutter of what was currently being offered in those plans to come up with their plans that were comparable to those. So I just want to make sure that I name that.

Do the chair if I got to follow up. Yes, sir. So how many how many employees do we have on the Sutter plan right now?

Think about one thousand three hundred.

Thirteen hundred.

And this might be a Sandy question. Are all our bargaining units the same when it comes to employee, employer portion?

At this time, yes, I believe through the chair. Thank you. But yes, I believe everybody.

Minus those on the cafeteria plan, yes.

Okay, yes. And there's one group left on the cafeteria plan?

There's a couple of bargaining units, two or three.

Okay, but total of employees, not very many.

Yeah, not very many.

Yeah, the majority are at the 80-20.

80-20? Yes. So regardless, the cost for the employee and the county is going to go up based on that 80-20 split?

Through the chair, I believe. Yeah, depending on which one you select.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, for a couple of the UHC plans, the cost would be going down. for the HMO and the high deductible, the cost would be going down for the employee and the employer.

But what would that, are we talking about 1,000 employees or how many employees would go down?

All of them. So essentially the, if we, well, I don't wanna, I don't have, can I bring that back up so I can show it?

I think it's slide number five.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, can you bring that up? Sorry, thank you. So in this example, we see that we currently for Sutter are paying $1,263. With the UHC, we would be paying $1,242. If we were to keep Sutter in January, our employees would be paying $1,300. For that HMO plan, the employees would be paying less than they are currently paying right now. If we kept Sutter, they would be paying more than they are paying right now. And the same thing with the high deductible by a lot more, right? So right now, employees are paying $947 a month. If we were to keep Sutter, they'd go up to pay $982. But with UHC, they're going down to pay $708.

Supervisor I also want to clarify the issue regarding labor unions so a notice was sent out back around February March in regards to the RFP process to all the unions again the RFP process is a closed process and so once that process got underway it is a closed-end process where they are not you know eligible to participate in the process itself But once it completed, we did reach back out and let them know what the outcome of the process was, which was last week. We meet with them monthly, the union leaderships, and unfortunately in August, the process was still going on, so we weren't able to inform them at that time. So we reached out to them before the current meeting today to let them know that we were moving forward and there were selections, et cetera, but the intent was certainly to get them the information as soon as we could, but unfortunately the process lasted longer than we anticipated, but notice did go out prior to the RFP starting and then we did follow back up with them once the process itself was completed.

Supervisor Rickman. Thank you, Chairman. I know we still have a lot to go here on our agenda today, so I'll keep it brief. There is a lot of questions, a lot of accusations, and a lot of information that HASN'T COME TO LIGHT TO THIS BOARD QUITE YET AND I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S GOING TO COME TO LIGHT TO THIS BOARD IN THE NEXT FIVE HOURS. SO SOME OF THE THINGS THAT I'D LIKE TO GET SOME INFORMATION ON, THE SHIFT COST TO EMPLOYEES, THE STOP LOSS, YOU SPOKE ABOUT 15.9% IN 2027. WHAT'S THE SAVINGS TO THE COUNTY IN TWO YEARS IF THE NEGOTIATIONS FAIL AND WE MOVE FROM THIS PLAN TO YOUR PLAN? So I think there is a lot of questions. I mean, I would feel better and I would recommend to this board is to have these questions answered. I mean, you can go back on the video and see all the questions that were proposed to this board or the accusations that were made and provide answers to this board on those things. And, you know, Supervisor Cartier mentioned, you know, the financial side of it, too, and I think that's just You know, it's very important in the in the in the atmosphere that we're in this state that we're dealing with in the county level. So, you know, versus, you know, versus the two plan versus, you know, the rate increase, 15.9% of what it can evaluate from there. So what are the cost savings, you know, in relationship to, you know, those rate hikes? So that is my recommendation.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Dean.

I am quite pleased with today. I want to commend the director for searching out alternatives and bringing it forward. I know you've you've worked your tail off on this with your team and you've done a fantastic job in doing this. What's the motto? The motto greatness grows here. We have to use all of our resources, however. And I want to thank the Attorneys Association for doing their research and bringing this forward. We're not dealing with a lunch program here. We're talking about our health care. We're talking about our retirees. There's a better product to be had. And I think we can develop that off the short lincoln douglas type situation we had here today but i i agree and i wouldn't call them accusations i i would call them improvements to the process so um i i would like to send this out for further evaluation but thank you to everyone thank you what what's the drop dead date so doing this i mean the only concern that i have is

where are the other union folks that you know what I mean that we have one we have one group here you know that if it was that important to other folks why are they not here in representation so that's my first question um so then the other question is when does the open enrollment and do we need if we did do this do we have a special board meeting I mean so that we do change the savings are there you know I mean so the the doctors seem to be there if they have a 99 You know, but I get it, the mental health thing and the continuity of care is very important to me too. And those were kind of the most important things that stuck in my head because people that are in therapy and things like that are very volatile and changing things like that is important. Not important, I mean, changing it, but keeping their continuity is there. But I'm just worried, you know what I mean? We only have a bite of the apple to save a lot of money, just like Supervisor Ding was talking about earlier. You know, this is dollars and these self-insured plans, you know, I mean, it's just averages. When less people go there, the rates go up. And a lot of us folks, as we get older, you know, that's supposed to be an offset. The young people are supposed to offset the costs because I'm on the health plan of San Joaquin. And it went from $135 per person per month to 350. So as those averages come back, it costs so much more. So these fancier plans where you go out of county are harder because the cost is higher and the offset is not there. And I think that's where a lot of the savings comes from, if you could possibly speak to that.

Yeah, a couple of things. First, timeline. We're kind of already at the 11th hour. Open enrollment is supposed to start on October 1st for retirees and October 12th for employees, which means we have to get all of the materials out to them prior to that for them to make those elections. Because we do have a 60-day window where we have to get all of the data transferred from one organization to the other, get everything set up in our systems. This really is the last board meeting that we had. We already pushed it to this board meeting because we weren't done with the RFP process because we were weighing out all of these exact same scenarios and we wanted to be very clear. One of the biggest things that we were looking at was the continuity of care. and the amount of individuals that would be impacted by having to change doctors. And when we felt very confident in that with the 99% and 100% and learning UHC's process for continuity of care, which maybe Eric can speak to that just slightly too, because I think that was one of the biggest things that as a group when we were having these discussions on the RFP, those were two things that we really looked at. because we wanted to make sure that it was the least impact for employees as possible through this transition while trying to save not just the county money, but employees as well. um the rates that would continue to increase on all of these plans were just a lot more than what uhc was offering in these next couple of years and that's what we were looking at yeah when it comes to what other what other counties around or you know who's using you right now yeah so proximity uh so in this area we're lucky enough to partner with um santa clara schools um uh

Yup, Sacramento Municipal District and then Contra Costa Schools. So just in this like a local area. Yeah. And those are just our public sector accounts that we used as references publicly for our proposal for you. So when it comes to continuity of care, that's only going to exist when someone is going to lose their doctor under us. Right. So I want to say that, you know, first off, we don't have any continuity of care. like issues if the provider's in Sutter's health plan and they're also in ours, right? So we only have like a continuity of care process when they were seeing a provider under either Sutter or Anthem's network and that provider is not in our network. So we're going to have to go through this pretty rare because, like was mentioned, the provider match is exceptionally strong. But in the event that a member does lose their provider, they would have a 90-day grace period for certain clinical conditions like a maternity, certain complex care conditions, infertility is included in that where we would cover the care under their existing provider for 90 days, and then we would work with them if there was a need to transition to one of our like in network providers after that, like a 90 days. So it's rare that it's going to occur because the provider matches so strong, but we do have a process to handle it if it does occur.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Chair.

Supervisor Rickman. Thank you, Chair. So why do you bring this to this board on the 11th hour? And before you I mean, you're talking about the RFP and that, you know, it sounds like, oh, we have no choice. And now we're here. The board has questions. We have you know, now we can't bring it back because of all this. What's that all about? I mean, I'm to a point now, it really bugs me because it's, you know, it sounds like staff brought this information, the board is supposed to rubber stamp it, and we move on. And knowing that if you watch some of the meetings that we have, we do have questions, and it sounds like these questions are not going to be answered. Is that the case? Because I don't think we're going to get through this whole thing. And there's a lot of information here that question needs to be answered. And I don't think it can be answered in this meeting. So if you can't bring this meeting back by October 1st, we're in Washington, D.C. here next week. And, you know, we have, you know, other duties as assigned. So is that correct? Is that what you're telling me, that this cannot come back?

Can you give me two seconds?

Because if that's the case, then well, you know what? I'll hold what I was going to say.

OK, one second.

While she's referring.

Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. And Sandy, and it's. And this isn't pointed just to you, Director, but this is becoming, this is not a rubber stamp board. I think we've kind of proven that. I mean, we do our homework, and this happened with the Register of Voters earlier. It's getting to the point they come to this board where, I mean, if I had to give one piece of advice to every director from the departments, assuming you're going to be here twice, and if you get done on the first time, congratulations, move on, but... I agree with you, Supervisor. And I would deny it before I'd approve a bad plan.

Through the Chair, I hear your comments and I appreciate your comments. We should always have a backup plan. So that's what I would like to hear from the department, what our backup plan is, because I agree. It should not be a rubber stamp. I will say that the process, it's a long process to do the RFP. And so that started way back, I believe the director said back in March. So it has started a long time ago, but to come here and say that I don't, I would never want to put the board, you know, Put your backs up against the wall and say you need to approve it Otherwise, no one in the county is going to have health benefits come January I would like to hear what the backup plan is so but I do appreciate the comments So I would never assume you guys would rubber-stamp anything I think that

Partly it being at the 11th hour was because we were working so diligently on this as professionals in the field and with everybody else that we brought in, we sort of tried to have all of those questions answered ahead of time. Not that there was an assumption that there would just be a rubber stamp to let it go, but as CAO Regalo said, it's also a very lengthy process. AND IT WASN'T JUST AN ISOLATED DECISION. THERE WERE A LOT OF FACTORS THAT WENT INTO THIS PROPOSAL FOR TODAY. WE CAN PUSH BACK TO COME BACK ON OCTOBER 1ST IF THAT WAS NECESSARY. THAT DOES PUT US IN, AND JUST ALL TRANSPARENCY, IT DOES PUT US IN A LOT TIGHTER OF A SPOT WHERE WE WOULD BE PUSHING BACK OPEN ENROLLMENT THEN. some other things that we would be having to push back at that point in trying to get everything done prior to setting up accounts and doing all of these other things. So it's not to say that we can't come back October 1st but I just want to also assure the board that we have done our due diligence on this to come up with solutions that would benefit employees and the county both together. We went into that space with the county and employees in mind when we were going through this entire process. This wasn't something that we took lightly at all, which is why it took so long, because we kept pausing and stopping and asking these questions, which is where we're landing at today.

And I believe I still have the floor, Chair. It may not be an assumption. You know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, you know, call in the 11th hour. You know what? It's not what it sounds like. And, you know, it sounds like, hey, you know, we're in a tight spot. And it's, you know, you know, that's unfortunately, you know, it's not the board's fault, you know, that you are. And, you know, I appreciate you guys, you know, due diligence and know try to get as much information as you can but at the end of the day as supervisor ding you know just mentioned you know that information needs to be brought forward to the elected representatives of san joaquin county in order to make that decision and we can only make the decision if we have you know adequate information in our hands so we can make that educated decision me personally I don't feel like we have all the information, at least for, I mean, I can just speak for myself that I don't have all the information that I need to make, um, you know, the best decision that I could make. And you mentioned October 1st, I'm out of the area, October 1st, you know, I think our CEO is out of the area October 1st. So my question then is if we can't meet as a board, because of prior obligations and duties, not personal, but county duties, then what happens? We did this whole RFP. If we miss, we don't wanna push back the open enrollment or we don't wanna jeopardize anybody else's. Yeah, can we stick with status quo, bring this RFP back next year when this board has

Appropriate time to take up this matter and again, you know, it's it is what it is So you said October 1st, I thought that was the next board meeting so my apologies I was just saying October 1st because I thought that was the next board meeting. It's October 6th as the next board meeting So when you said bring it back, I thought I just meant the next board meeting So we can certainly have a discussion for what the next steps would be then. As far as bringing it back, I think that's probably the best idea, even if that means pushing back open enrollment some. We're not going to, employees will still have their timing for open enrollment, we'll still give them their timing for open enrollment. That won't shift, it'll just be, yeah, so we can come back October 6th. I would prefer that than to push till next year. That would be my preference.

All right. Thank you. And then I'll stop my time. Thank you, Chairman. Appreciate it. Thanks, sir.

Vice Chair and then Supervisor Gurdia. I have two requests.

The first one, rather than a set date. So if we don't, I mean, who knows what's going to happen on the 6th? if we don't have an agreement, do we just go status quo into the next year, everybody keeps their same plans, rates go up, whatever they said they go up, what have you, and we continue? I would rather just, I want a perfect product. I want everybody's input before we move forward. And then my second question is

they're they're dying back here i think they wanted just one more comment is that okay chairman uh just just one one second please um board members please uh keep in mind that we have outside attorneys waiting we need to they're all in here those are in-house yeah we need to uh We need to wrap this item up that way we can move on. Ms. Smith, please come to the lectern.

I want to be able to answer the question that Supervisor Gardea asked of this gentleman. I apologize, I don't recall his name. The reason that CalPERS is dropping UnitedHealthcare.

Can you speak into the mic, please? Thank you.

Yes. And the reason being, And I quote, UHC's basic plans came in with extremely high and unsubstantiated rate increases for 2027. And that came from the Chief of CalPERS Health Plan Research and Administration Division, Mr. Rob Jarzombek. So that is the reason. I wanted you to have facts because opinions are not relevant. And I think it was also interesting to know that Siegel is on the agenda for this board later on to extend their contract as they are trying to represent that UHC should be brought in. Thank you.

Can I answer?

That's for actuarial. Hold on, sir. Vice Chair? Oh, I'm out. You're out?

Oh, no, that was for actuarial. It's on the agenda for actuarial separate. It's an ongoing. I asked Sandy that already.

If board members are ready, can we entertain a motion?

One quick question.

Yes, sir.

So the question is, Are we going to have those comps? I mean, and that would be the thing that the question is, can you that's because I mean, we're going to push this out to another day. What are the questions that we're going to be asking? Did you hear them all? Or I mean, so, you know, they want some input. How many folks dollar wise? So if we don't pick this, how much is this going to cost the county and its employees is what I would like to personally see. So, hey, do a Sutter comp. What it's gonna cost each employee and then what it's gonna cost for each plan how we're saving the money and what we're doing I mean you can get into smear campaigns anyone I didn't look I didn't I don't go into that because that's not our job to do background on Sutter and do background on UHC Because that's your guys's job So I mean those are the things that we I'd like to see is some of the questions Obviously, we don't want that controlling all the all the conversations because other folks aren't here So we have one labor group here that are very vocal and I appreciate that. But what are other folks, you know, in our organization and how is that helping not just the Sutter folks? You know what I mean? So I think it's awesome that you're giving acupuncture and hearing aids and everything to Kaiser folks that we didn't offer before. I mean, there's some pros and cons, but that's what I'm looking at is not only the dollar amount, but care. And obviously, you know, everyone's going to do that. They're going to steal a client and gain a client. That's, health care. So however we can save the money for the county is what I'm looking for and keep quality care. And so if the numbers are ninety nine to one hundred percent, then they shouldn't have a problem. Right. So anyway, that's my two cents.

Point of point of order, Chair. Yes, sir. You open a public comment for one member from the public. I know somebody else wanted to. I mean, at least if you know if I'm correct, you open a public comment for one person. You have to allow for everyone. I will. I will give them the opportunity. Thank you, sir.

I just wanted to spin you out. I had one of the specifics, banked accounts. I want to know what happens with the employees, retirees that have banked account dollars for out of state policies. They said, I think there was, we're negotiating or we're talking about it. We need that 2027, the 13.8%. I'd like to see some numbers for 28, you know, again, and this is one of the problems is You know, they it's not just insurance, it's everything in life. They come in and they, you know, they fish and then they say, hey, you know, I just got it with whatever the hell it was, Disney Plus or net whatever was nine ninety nine. And now grandkids get to watch their forty nine ninety nine. um cable go up but anyway a little more and then the the big one is this needs to be shopped to the employee groups um for input and and that to me is is a decisive factor when it comes back is you know what what do the different groups have to say i need we've got great talent here in this county let's use it let's get all their input thank you sir ariana if we continue this to october 6th

Are you OK with that?

Yes, I will make that happen. And we do have a meeting coming up with the labor leaders again this week on Thursday, where we planned to go over all this again with them. And so we will provide some of the questions that have been asked today in that as well. I'll try and gather that in all of my spare time.

Thank you, sir. Please.

Carlos Guzman with UnitedHealthcare. I just want to provide additional context on CalPERS situation. As Eric mentioned before, we had long-term relationship with them. And it is true that UnitedHealthcare came in with a high increase of 21 and 24%. And that's because of the Claims in premium ratio was was pretty high. So so it was provided to them What it's not in the news and what was nothing in the press is what that meant for the employee and in the impact as well that that had on the employees and so that 21 or 24 percent was going to be about $100 more than what Kaiser is and And for some reason, the employees never had an opportunity or the members never had an opportunity to see that difference. What was reported was it's going to be a 21% or a 24% increase. And so there's a lot of people, a lot of employees are pushing back on that too, but ultimately, CalPERS made that decision. But I just want to add that additional context, that additional color that Yes, it is a high increase, but when you put it on the rate, it was going to be about $100 more than Kaiser, and it would be comparable to the other HMO plans that were there. Actually, they still have a higher expensive HMO plan with Blue Shield and Anthem, and so the UnitedHealthcare was going to be comparable. So that's the additional context that I wanted to provide.

Thank you, sir. Supervisor Garcia? You good? Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion to continue the meeting until October 6th, which is our next scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting. Second.

We have a motion and a second.

One second. If I could make a suggestion, it sounds like you would like It sounds like the board would like this to be continued to October 6th with direction of staff to come back with information relevant to the issues that were raised here. And I think the CAO suggested potentially having a plan B in the event that this board decides not to approve the proposal.

And counsel, should we include, you know, after conferring with labor groups,

Mean some of those would be that I would I would interpret those to be some of the issues that were raised I'll make them.

I mean, I'll include that in the motion and we have a second. Are you you guys understand the marching orders?

Absolutely.

All right.

Thank you call forward, please Motion passes 5-0 We're going to recess the board meeting in one second. And now the board will be acting as a governor board for the in-house sports services public authority. We're going to convene the in-house sports service public meeting, public authority meeting. Adopt the resolution of intention to amend the contract between In-Home Support Services Public Authority and the Board of Administration of CalPERS. Any questions, board members?

Chair, this is a discussion item. So there will be a presentation and then open for public comment and a vote by the board following the item.

Are you wanting to proceed?

There is another item which is on consent, which is Assembly King County.

Yeah, there's one more.

There's also the ROV presentation under discussion.

Yes, ROV we can come back and deal with that at 1.30. I was thinking about taking care of these two. Okay. If it doesn't delay us too much.

I don't know how long the presentation is.

The slides, yeah. Yes, sir. It'll be short. Okay. Thank you, supervisors. We're here today for a resolution of intention to amend the contract between the public authority and CalPERS. This is due to CalPERS' request that any public agencies that have not amended their contracts to comply with the PEPRA regulations do so at this time. So we're following their direction in doing that. The changes for PEPRA were implemented via state regulation, so the contract wasn't required to be amended. and those changes are already in effect at the public authority. And CalPERS just wants any agencies to have a contract that matches the provisions of the plan, so that if an employee sees the contract, there's no confusion about what their benefits are and why they're different. And that's basically, and it's just an administrative issue. So the purpose of the amendment is to reflect those changes from PEPRA And there is no fiscal impact due to that because those changes have already been implemented. So the steps that are required is the board needs to approve the resolution of intention. And then this discussion starts a 20 day notice period, or I don't think that's the right term, but a 20 day period before we return to the board for actually amending the contract. So we'll be back on October 20th with the contract amendment, which is also attached in your packet. And it's not October 6th that we're returning, sorry about that. So we are requesting that the board of directors approve the resolution of intention, authorize the chair to sign the resolution of intention, and authorize the clerk to sign the certification of governing body's action, which is, those are the CalPERS forms that they require us to use in this process. Any questions or comments from the board?

Thank you, sir. Any questions? Anybody from? Yes, sir.

Just real quick. So is this just the age changes or what's the language that's changed?

So the PEPRA regulations are the public employee Public Pension Reform Act, Public Employee Pension Reform Act, there we go, I got it, sorry, which changed the contributions amounts. For example, currently for the, what the CalPERS calls the classic members, I think you guys call it tier one and tier two in your pension plan, The employee has a fixed contribution of 7% and any changes go to the public authority's share. Whereas for PEPPER members, Agency's contribution is capped and changes go. There are occasionally changes to both, but for the most part, it's about a 50-50 share with employees paying slightly more than half of their contribution rate. And they changed the retirement ages. So classic members are, in the case of our contract, 2% at 55, with 50 being early retirement. So that retirement age changes to 62 for the new members, the members that basically have joined since January 1st of, December 31st of 2013. So everybody that's been hired since then, which is about half our staff, are on the newer benefit model.

And then the second question, I'll be quick, is why did they have to request us to do it and why didn't we just do it?

Well, at the time, I think that they weren't prepared to deal with contracts from all the agencies. And I think that they're just getting around to that now because the law didn't require that the contract be changed.

Good afternoon.

Through the chair, I'm sorry, the microphone is not turned on yet. There you go.

I just wanted to clarify that we are back on October 6th. That was just a 20-day wait period. So I think when we were reading the slide, just got the numbers confused.

Thank you.

Old age, sorry. Anybody else? Any questions? Anybody from public? Anybody waiting remotely? Board members, do we have a motion?

Move to approve.

Do we have a second? I'll second. We have a motion and a second, either by Supervisor Gurdia or Supervisor Rickman. You can pick one. Call for a vote. Motion passes 5-0. We will adjourn the in-home support services public authority meeting. and now the board will be acting as San Joaquin County Flood Control Water Conservation District Board. Approve a consulting service agreement with RNF Engineering Incorporated in an amount not to exceed $843 for the North San Joaquin County Area Drainage Master Study for the district. Any questions? No questions. Anybody? Anybody from public? Anybody waiting remotely? Any questions, Board members? Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve. Second.

We have a motion and second. Call for a vote, please. It's not showing up. Okay, now it is. Motion passes 5-0. Now we will adjourn as Flood Control and Water Conservation District meeting and reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting. And this time we will recess to closed session.

One more question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello. We are also trying, but we cannot hear anything. Please be yourself on mute because it starts at 1.30. I think you can wait on the line till 1.30 or dial in at that time. I think we should just continue to be on mute.

No, it's 1 p.m.

I think if you're following the group messages, they said it's going to get 1.30. Okay.

Good afternoon, everyone. Board will reconvene after the closed session. County Council, is there anything to report? There is no reportable action. Thank you, sir. 1 30 schedule item is a public hearing and appeal by nanette martin care of george v hartman of the planning commission's approval of conditional use permit number p a dash two four zero zero five zero six district five staff report please

Good afternoon, Deputy Director of Planning Corinne King and I have Stephanie Stowers, Principal Planner here to provide a presentation and then we're available for any questions.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Board. This project is an appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of conditional use permit to establish a religious assembly facility. The project includes the conversion of two agricultural structures, totaling approximately 7,400 square feet in two phases over five years, and also includes six annual religious events. The maximum daily attendance is not to exceed 70 people, and religious events are limited to 600 attendees per day, not to exceed 150 people at any time. The project site is over nine acres in size and is located at the southeast corner of Nancy Amelia Court and West Lammers Road, north of Tracy. The property has a general plan designation and zoning of general agriculture, and the surrounding area consists primarily of agricultural land with scattered residences. This is the site plan submitted by the applicant. The area proposed for development is outlined in blue, with access proposed from Lammers Road. The phase one building is shaded in green and the phase two building is shaded in yellow. Access from Nancy Amelia Court is restricted to the existing residence and agricultural operations and is not permitted for the religious assembly use. This is a photo of the project site taken from Lammers road at the approximate location of the future new driveway, looking south at the area proposed for development. The planning commission considered this item on May 21st, 2026, where staff recommended approval of the project based on an ability to make all of the required findings. Community members spoke both in favor and opposition of the project. Opposition stated concerns relating to compatibility with the agricultural zone, flood hazards, traffic, noise, water supply, and existing private covenants, conditions, and restrictions on the site. After considering this testimony, the Planning Commission voted 3-1 to approve the application. Subsequently, on May 26th, the approval was appealed. After the Planning Commission's approval, staff identified that the findings included in the staff report and reviewed by the Planning Commission were in the format of our 1992 development title and not the current title that was adopted in 2022. Staff updated the format of the findings to conform with the new title, but these updates are administrative only and provide additional clarification. The analysis, conclusion and content remain consistent with the findings approved by the Planning Commission. The appellant submitted documents outlining the appeal. This document was reviewed by staff who identified five key points. The first statement alleges noncompliance with floodplain regulations and procedures including SB5. The Planning Commission adopted the required findings for use permit, and these findings included a statement that the project is consistent with the goals, policies, standards, and maps of the general plan. The general plan public health and safety element was updated for consistency with SB5, and the development title implements these policies. As a result, the project and its approval are compliant with all floodplain regulations and procedures. Additionally, prior to issuance of any building permits related to the project, all FEMA building standards must be met. The second and third statements allege inapplicability of the CEQA exemption used and that insufficient CEQA review was completed. A notice of exemption was filed for this development consistent with CEQA section 15183, which relied on the previously prepared and adopted EIR for the general plan in 2016. Since this time, CEQA standards for traffic have been updated from level of service to vehicle miles traveled. And level of service is still the standard utilized by the development title. The traffic memorandum prepared for the project evaluated traffic impacts under both VMT and LOS. And the VMT analysis concluded that the project impacts were less than significant and the LOS evaluation determined that no traffic mitigations were required. The appeal states concern regarding consistency with existing CCNRs and the validity of a recorded termination of these restrictions. The CCNRs are private agreements outside of the jurisdiction of San Joaquin County. The final statement alleges that insufficient analysis of water quantity for fire safety was performed as part of review of the project. The South County Fire Authority reviewed the project and provided comments and conditions of approval consistent with the fire code. This consistency will be confirmed as part of the building permit process. As a result, it is recommended that the Board of Supervisors deny the appeal with the recommendations shown on this slide and contained in the board packet with the updated resolution provided by Council. Thank you.

Any questions for staff?

Chair, thank you, Chair. Yes, sir. Before I ask me my questions, I just want to give an opening statement here. My questions concerned land use, compatibility, public safety, agriculture, infrastructure and enforceability. They do not concern the applicant's faith or religious practices. You know, I would ask the same questions of any comparable assembly used proposed at this location. You know, I have quite a few questions, but I'll break it up, you know, throughout our time. But one of the arguments I have is that the principal route serving this project includes the intersection of Lammers Road and Tracy Boulevard, which I believe the applicants own traffic memorandums identify as operating at a, you know, LOSF, which is an unacceptable level. It goes from A to F, if I'm correct, A being the best, F being unacceptable. During evening peak with approximately 126.6 seconds of delay. THE GENERAL PLAN CALLS FOR COUNTY INTERSECTIONS TO OPERATE AT LOS C OR D, IF I'M CORRECT, DEPENDING ON THE CLASSIFICATION. THE TRAFFIC ANALYSIS CONCLUDES THAT THE PROJECT CREATES NO ADDITIONAL DELAY. only because it assigns approximately two project trips to the ordinary weekday PM peak, but it doesn't analyze the reasonable maximum event condition involving as many as 600 attendees. Instead, special event trips were averaged across a year and excluded from the intersection capacity analysis. So without analyzing concentrated event arrivals and departures, departure at an intersection already operating at a LOSF or unacceptable level. So how do you demonstrate that this project had adequate and safe access or that its intensity is comparable with the surrounding roadway system?

Chair DeLawal, members of the board, I'm Cheyenne Raymond, Engineering Services Manager with the Public Works Department. So you are correct, the traffic study was done, or traffic memorandum was done to evaluate both VMT and LOS. The LOS study determined that with two additional trips generated by the project, that it didn't increase traffic delays, not requiring any further mitigation at the intersection.

Okay. But you're talking about, I mean, you have these delays or the traffic throughout the whole entire year. But what about these 600 events or 600 traffic volume events that you have?

So the analysis that was prepared looked at the normal operations of the religious assembly at that intersection and because the events are spread over a long duration of time and they are sporadic, they weren't included in that analysis.

Now looking at The 110 trip VMT screening, why is it appropriate to analyze a 600% event when the screening test asks how many trips a project generates or attracts per day? On an actual special event day, will the project remain below the 110?

Yeah, again, through the chair. So VMT analysis looks at the average daily trips. So there may be a total of six events, but the total trip generation is annualized. So it's spread over the year to get to an average daily traffic value, which screen well below the 110 vehicles per day threshold.

So the study, and again, I went through tons of paperwork. If I'm in error on something, please let me know. But the study relied on observation made by volunteers at another event, correct? That management described as typical, not a maximum attendance event. So it assumed, again, 600 attendees, four to six occupants per vehicle, only 120 total vehicle movements, only 20% of those movements during the peak period, and staggered arrival throughout the day. So at four to six people per vehicle, 600 people would ordinarily require approximately 100 to 150 arriving vehicles, plus their departures, potentially two to 300 vehicle movements. So How do you reconcile that?

Yeah, to the chair. So to your point, the traffic study leveraged empirical data from a similar event. Also, just in preparation for today's hearing, we've looked at the numbers as well with those assumptions and that we determined that the number of trips needed or the number of events or people needed to generate the number of trips to get to the 110 threshold for VMT would have to triple either in attendees or triple in the number of events.

So staff, the guidance described trips per day, and that's just what we're talking about, right? Staff, our staff, apparently... AVERAGE A HANDFUL LARGE SPECIAL EVENT ACROSS THE WHOLE ENTIRE YEAR, 365 DAYS, TO REACH THAT FOUR DAYS OR FOUR TRIPS PER DAY OR WHATEVER IT MAY BE. I MEAN, IT JUST DOESN'T SEEM LIKE THE MATH IS CORRECT TO ME.

I BELIEVE THE TRAFFIC ENGINEER IS ONLINE. The 600 attendees is the max number that the applicant expects per event. But however, the traffic engineer looked at actual events for the similar type and determined that three to four vehicles for average daily traffic was what is expected to be generated under the EMT analysis.

You know, and looking at that intersection, I mean, you know, it's unacceptable. So, I mean, I drove it yesterday. I know that roadway very, very well. I've driven it many times in my past 52 years on this earth. And so... It's at an unacceptable level now. So adding more cars to that per day or through an event, do you think that's appropriate? I mean, what about the safety? I mean, what needs to go into that road? What are the different conditions? I mean, I don't like taking that turn. Most when you're coming off of Tracy Boulevard and heading onto Lammers, I mean, it's not the safest, I don't think. And I guess being ranked F would conclude that it's probably not the safest. you know, it's unacceptable. So we're just gonna, you're gonna burden that roadway even more with this assembly there.

To the chair, so, order for us to condition the project to have mitigations the project would have demonstrated that there were additional delay times associated with it and since the traffic study indicated that no additional delays were going to be generated by the project there were no further mitigations but you know we just went over this whole um math and i it just doesn't make sense if you look at

you know, 600, and you look at how many vehicles per car, you know, the ingress, egress, and so on. And in our general plan, and you didn't discuss our general plan, is it a condition for a C and D, not an F, right? What does our general plan say?

Yeah, level of service D is the acceptable level of service.

And so we're even, we're not even at the acceptable level. We're F, the worst possible rating that you could have. is what this roadway is, or this intersection, I could say, or since not on Tracy Boulevard to South Lammers. So why would, if it's at an unacceptable level, why would you put more traffic on it when our own general plan advises against it?

Yeah, so the traffic study, the intent of the traffic study is to understand what mitigations a project is required to do

I don't see any mitigation in there. When you talk about, you know, whether that's a 70-person regular limit or, you know, how do you verify 150 people in a, you know, simultaneously limit and, I mean, how do you measure that? Is somebody going to be out there with a clicker and how many cars? I mean, this is just questions. I don't need to answer right in a second. I know you're on there. So how will the county determine whether 600 daily attendees have been exceeded? What special events be reported or approved in advance? How much advance? There's a bunch of linear questions, but my main concern on this topic, and I'll stop here, Chair, and let everybody else talk, because I do have more questions, is, I mean, you have, I mean, this just goes against the general plan of the CRD, and we have an F-rated intersection. It's just to me you you burden the roadway and hey, this isn't the first time I've talked about it I've talked about infrastructure before and how we're building Out in the county and our infrastructure is staying what it has been right so with that chair, I'll Yield my time for now Anybody else

I'm going to open the public hearing. Is the appellant present? Anybody want to speak in favor of the appeal? Please step forward to the podium.

Thank you. Good afternoon, supervisors, chairperson, Mr. Dollywell, and staff. My name is George Hartman. I've been an attorney in San Joaquin County for a long time. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I really couldn't understand what staff was saying about whether they made changes in their findings or they did something to comply with issues that I raised at my appeal. So she spoke very quickly. I may want to revisit that. I represent Nanette Martin. She and her husband were the owners of the whole of Tracy Gardens Farms. A hundred acre parcel and then it was subdivided. My appeal, I submitted an appeal and an amended appeal, which sets forth the nuts and bolts of what's wrong with what the Planning Commission approved and their actually legal inability to approve it. But I do want to disclose for the record only that I am an Advisory Water Commissioner for San Joaquin County. That has nothing to do with us, but I think it's proper to disclose it. The other thing I want to tell you is that I worked long and hard with Public Works after SB5 was passed to develop your Section 703 rules and regulations regarding construction in flood zones so that the county could find a way to deal with discretionary permitting in flood zones. And we are talking today about at least a 100-year flood zone with a projected flood depth of 13 feet. So we're also facing Super El Nino. And the last one of those, we had significant sections of Tracy flooded. And so our main concern with this project is the safety of people, not religion. Nothing like that. It's strictly public safety. And you've already heard about the traffic conditions on Tracy Boulevard at the intersection. Well, on the other side, it's just as bad. I think it's an ugly road, if I'm right. So our appeal covers two topics, flood risk and the jurisdiction under SB 5. At the time of the Planning Commission hearing, required findings by law were not part of the record. SB 5 requires that various findings be made and the Planning Commission approval was given without those findings being present in the record anywhere. Nor was there anything from your county floodplain administrator in terms of that person's required findings under your development title, Section 703. The flood exposure here is not theoretical, and we're facing a superaluminium, just like the one in 97. The flood depth is 13 feet. We're not talking about wet floors. We're talking about catastrophic inundation of a permanent assembly use facility. NOAA is currently placing an 81% probability on a very strong El Nino event by year's end, forecast to be among the strongest on record. bringing increased flood risk to the San Joaquin Valley through spring of 2027. Approving permanent assembly use construction at 13 feet of flood exposure without mandatory SB5 findings in the face of that forecast would be, I don't know what to say, would be problematic. The CEQA exemption that was used, one of the main things missing was a traffic study. As Supervisor Rickman points out, it's problematical. And the thing I want to point to is that you approved and the Planning Commission approved another temple a half mile from this site on Bethany Road. A CEQA initial study was required. A traffic study was required. The buildings were required to be elevated above the floodplain. That is part of what the Planning Commission approved was elevation, but it's elevation and flood proofing. On this particular property, the residence is elevated. the structures that are proposed are not. And so there's some awareness, I think, in the area of what it takes to get above the floodplain. The CEQA exemption that staff relied on is section 15-183. It was not applied in the Bethany Temple an initial investigation was done along with traffic studies and so forth. You can't apply rigorous CEQA scrutiny to one temple and waive it for another one half a mile away. That's disparate treatment. It's not allowed. The traffic analysis done for this did not really examine peak day intensity. Moreover, CEQA requires an evaluation of the water availability, yield and fire flow adequacy, which are critical emissions on a flood prone site with 13 feet of NAVD flood exposure. A full initial study is required. The SB5 findings are mandatory and you can't, this is a hearing de novo. So the fact that this was done maybe by staff after the planning commission is okay. but we need to hear the SB5 findings that they made. We need to see your floodplain administrators findings. None of those were in the record and I have not received an updated staff report. At this point, We think this should go back to the Planning Commission. We think staff should undertake an initial CEQA study because the CEQA exemption that they used clearly doesn't apply. And it doesn't apply because it's based on conditions already examined for the county area being developed. not the peculiar conditions of this property. That's what causes the problem. You can't use that exemption without, when you haven't examined the peculiar characteristics of this property, like being in a flood zone. So we think the appeal should be sustained. If you favor the project going forward, this should go back to the Planning Commission. and staff should make the required findings and do the required CEQA work. That's it for me. If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, thank you.

Is there anyone else who's wishing to speak in favor of the appeal?

Supervisors, back with you again today. So we're in favor of this appeal, the San Joaquin Farm Bureau, Andrew Genesee, Executive Director. We have a number of concerns with this, just like we have with pretty much any project that lands a non-ag use into an ag-zoned area. We deal with this with subdivisions, we deal with this with large-scale solar, and now we're dealing with this with another conversion. This is ag 40 zoned property in an ag area surrounded by agriculture. We have concerns with the traffic, not because of an intersection, but because in an ag-zoned area, you're moving equipment. You're moving tractors, harvest equipment, trucks, trailers, oversized machinery, and transportation of agricultural commodities throughout this area. These activities often occur according to weather and crop conditions, harvest timing, and other factors that cannot reasonably be scheduled around events occurring on neighboring properties. The site plan provides 61 parking spots with a staggered attendance, which we do appreciate as it lowers the peak, but that still just kind of shows you how many they expect to have on this property at any one time. This is traffic that will be interacting with, like I said, large slow-moving equipment and making it more difficult to access these farming properties. The proposal identifies Lombers Road as a primary access to the facility and prohibits access from Nancy Amelia Court. If the county allows this project to proceed, all parking, passenger loading, event queuing, traffic staging should be contained entirely on site. The farmers need to retain safe and efficient access for agriculture equipment and vehicles at all times. We are equally concerned with the effect of introducing members of the general public into close proximity with active agriculture operations. Farming is not a quiet or static land use. Depending upon the crop and season, agriculture operations may involve dust, noise, odors, pesticide and fertilizer applications, irrigation, nighttime harvesting, equipment movement, and other activities necessary to produce agricultural commodities in a safe and efficient manner. These activities can conflict with the expectations of people visiting a public assembly facility. Over time, this type of land use incompatibility can result in complaints or pressure upon neighboring growers to modify normal and lawful agricultural practices. I see this regularly. Just last week, I was dealing with landowners in Ripon who were upset because of all the dust from almond harvesting, even though they purchased housing directly adjacent to almond farms. This happens regularly and will continue to happen as long as we are citing non-ag operations in ag area zones. The San Joaquin Farm Bureau is particularly concerned about the approval of this project could have ultimately shift the burden of accommodating a non-agricultural use into existing agricultural operations. The conversion of existing agriculture buildings to assembly uses is also troubling from a broader land use perspective. Agriculture zoning protects more than just individual acres of farmland. It protects an agriculture landscape and the infrastructure supporting that landscape. The ability of commercial agriculture to remain the dominant land use in an ag-zoned area can be impacted by the movement and changing of ag properties and ag buildings into non-ag uses. Viewed individually, one project may appear manageable, but viewed cumulatively, however, the continued introduction of public assembly and non-agriculture uses into agriculture areas threatens the long-term viability and character of these areas. I would encourage you to support this and oppose this project, thank you.

Thank you, sir. Through the Chair, if I may, we do have several people logged on for remote participation, and I apologize I did not include it in your outline. I'd like to ask if there's anybody online that wants to speak in favor of this appeal that they go ahead and press star five now. It may take them a little bit, and I want to make sure that they all have time to raise their hand when they want to speak. Right now it's in favor of the appeal.

Please let me know when you see someone.

I shall. And then when we get to people speaking in opposition of the appeal, I want to give them the same opportunity then to press star five.

Should I wait for you or should I continue with people who are here? I'm not saying anybody raise their hand. Okay, not yet. Yeah. Anyone else who want to speak in favor of appeal?

Good afternoon, supervisors and staff. My name is Philip Martin, 12067 South Lammers Road, Tracy, California. I request that a masonry wall around the perimeter of this project be a part of any approval as was the case with the Bethany Road Temple. This will protect attendees and young children from wandering onto Lammers Road where the speed limit is 55 miles an hour or wandering into neighboring fields which may be treated with pesticides. It also would protect neighboring farms from fugitive garbage and debris. Neighboring farms farm walnuts and alfalfa, and you don't want garbage or debris in food crops or sticking out hay bales. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Anyone else in favor of appeal? Anyone waiting remotely? Michelle? Anyone in opposition of appeal?

Thank you Mr. Chairman and Supervisors, Mike Hakem 3414 Brookside Road in Stockton. I'm going to go a little bit out of order from my presentation based on some of the issues that have been raised so far and specifically Supervisor Rickman's question about traffic. Our traffic consultant is online and at the end of my presentation I'm going to ask that he be given an opportunity to respond to the questions raised by Supervisor Rickman. By way of brief background, the conditional use permit was approved by the Planning Commission with various conditions of approval related to flood protection in accordance with SB 5. One of the conditions, 2-L, was approved by the Planning Commission and it indicated that prior to the release of any building permit, plans and calculations shall be submitted and approved by the public works department for elevation and flood proofing in compliance with the San Joaquin County general plan and development title. So the planning commission did consider the flood issue. They did adopt a condition of a requirement for flood proofing and consistent with your general plan and development title. In accordance with government code 65962, the project has also been conditioned to meet the FEMA requirements for FEMA flood protection to also be incorporated into the project requirements before a building permit can be issued. So it's our considered opinion and disagreement with the appellant that the findings and conditions of approval prepared by staff in your board letter are in compliance with your general plan in compliance with your development title and your floodplain regulations. With all due respect to Mr. Hartman, he's been practicing a long, long time in San Joaquin County, as I have, but the point of my comment is for him to say that he never got a copy of the staff report is disingenuous. He knows very, very well that the staff report comes out ahead of the public hearing, and the obligation on his part is to get the staff report and read the staff report and be prepared for the hearing this afternoon. This is a trial de novo. It's not a review necessary. necessarily limited to the planning commission purview it's a trial de novo of the issues that mr hartman's raised in his appeal and staff has gone to the difficulty of improving and updating the findings and the conditions to comply with the issues that mr hartman raised in his appeal so staff is ready willing and able to respond to you on terms of the issues that have been raised by mr hartman and how they've been corrected in your current board letter to be compliant with requirements. There are other issues that Mr. Hartman brought up in terms of the fire protection and I will point out briefly that the South Stockton Fire Authority resulted in what's called Condition 5 and that all fire systems are designed by a licensed fire protection contractor and tested by the authority prior to occupancy. But to go back to my opening brief comment on the traffic issue, I do want to point out that the numbers that are being used are the maximums. We also have what are considered the allowable limits of activity and attendees, and it's, looking at my notes real quickly, we have limited our attendance during the weekdays to 70 persons, so that's 70 persons per weekday. Remember, it's not a church service as we're somewhat used to in growing up where everybody shows up for a 10 o'clock and everybody leaves at 10.45 for the 11 o'clock, then the 11.15 shows up. This type of religious attendee activity is staggered throughout the day. People come, pray, and leave. They don't stay for an organized service. So when we're limiting our attendees, we have the ability to do that, and it would not be difficult, Supervisor Rickman, to put a parking attendant condition on the approval, which would limit the number of attendees that can attend the events. and the number of parking so we don't have the difficulty with parking on the street and the other issues that have been raised in other matters. So with those comments, I stand here for questions, but I would respectfully request that our traffic engineer be given an opportunity to respond since Supervisor Rickman raised some good questions and issues at the beginning of the hearing, and I would certainly respectfully request that he be given a chance to respond to those, Mr. Chairman, with Supervisor Rickman's concurrence.

Chairman? Yes, sir. Through your permission, I have a question for him. Yes, please. You're talking about 70, so when you're talking about 70 people, you're talking about 70 people at one time, 70 people per day, or is it both?

70 people maximum throughout the day. It's 70 persons attending total throughout the day. So it's no more than 70 from the morning to the night.

Does that include staff, volunteers, children, clergy?

It doesn't include the church staff. No, it does not.

And then for special events, does the 600 attendees mean 600 unique visitors during the day?

That would be 150 at one time, no more than 150 at any given time throughout the day on the special events, and those are six per year. So you'd have 150 maximum, Supervisor Rickman.

On the property at one time.

on the property at one time, 150 maximum.

And how would that determine that? Who's going to determine that?

Well, my suggestion would be that we put a parking attendant or a supervisor in terms of the facility attendance and occupancy and make it a condition of the obligation to have a parking attendant and an accessory supervisorial attendant to determine that we don't exceed our maximum. What our best effort is to put a condition on the property and our best effort is to put a supervisor or an inspector in position to qualify and correct and inspect and supervise that condition.

So why does the transportation, the memo, analyze 10 annual event while the current proposal is six?

I apologize, I couldn't understand that.

Doesn't the transportation memorandum that I guess we're gonna be discussing, I guess he can answer that question, analyze 10 annual events while the current proposal is only six?

We're only proposing six accessory events. That was the original application is for six accessory events.

When you're talking about the two, I guess there's two buildings, right? Phase one and phase two, will these both buildings? There are two existing buildings and we intend to- But you're talking about a first phase and a second phase, correct?

I'm sorry?

A first phase and a second phase?

There's currently two buildings on the site and we intend to reuse both buildings and not to build any additional structures. We're gonna be using both buildings. One is for a meditation and one is for a temple.

Okay, so- You're talking, well, the first phase would be, it was separate, at least in the proposal. Does, my question is, when you incorporate phase two into the proposal, does that increase attendance, parking, or anything like?

The attendance numbers are fixed at the front end. Regardless of the phases? Throughout the entire life of the project, both for phase one and phase two.

Okay.

Those numbers don't change, Supervisor Rickman.

All right, thank you. I'm sorry, Chair. Yeah, I think the transportation guy, he's going to clarify.

Let me go to Supervisor Kanpa, then we'll go remotely. Supervisor Kanpa? I got a whole laundry list here.

So then if you're waiting for flood information and you have to raise the elevation of those two buildings, what do you do?

We have to raise them, Supervisor Camp.

Yeah, you're going to wait for flood instructions on saying, hey, you got to raise it five feet. You're messing with an old building. How do you go about that?

We'd have to raise the buildings to comply with the floodplain requirements. We're not asking for any exemption from those requirements.

So then how do you raise, I mean, if you got to raise the foundation 13 feet, pick the building up and raise it 13 feet?

Foundations and the structures.

Really? Okay. So I just had a few things. So there was some questions I read as much as I could, and it got confusing because there's appeal and stuff. So SB5 gives, right, that there's so many parameters, right? So are we, is SB5 being followed? Just like, so the thing is, if there's a place that's built half a mile down the way, then this, obviously, location should be held to those same requirements. So that CEQA thing came up. the 15-183, the conditional work permit is on condition of us approving it. So, I mean, it's not a guarantee by any means, correct?

Through the Chair, yes.

So, I'll just go through. The first one was SB 5. The second one was the conditional permit is obviously a condition of the Planning Commission gave you a list that you needed to follow, right?

There are 80 conditions on the project.

Okay. So, those are in existence, right? So, then SB 5 The 1992 updates that we were using wrong or now, they're not an issue now?

No, through the chair, we updated the findings. We used the other template. We should have used the current one. There's nothing substantially different between the two, just a little bit of rewarding.

Okay, and currently the flood zone rating is what? 100-year, 200-year, and I heard 13 feet. Go ahead, Cheyenne.

Through the chair. So the FEMA flood zone is a FEMA zone, AE flood zone. Its base elevation, base flood elevation is 13 feet, but that's relative to sea level. So the ground itself could be elevation five, eight, et cetera. So it's not that it's inundated with 13 feet of water on it. It's just, it's using the same reference elevation.

Okay, so that doesn't mean that specifically that that building needs to be built at 13 feet.

That is correct.

Okay, that that's just the requirement to 13 feet above sea level.

Yes, exactly. So then the architect will use the topographic data collected to determine what the existing ground is and then what's required for the project. Then you'd asked about ULOP. So ULOP or urban level of protection is a 200 year standard. This project is determined to be in a non-urbanizing area and is only subject to the 100-year building standard.

OK, perfect. Thank you for clarifying that. The next question is, we just approved those changes for the Tracy Rural. Are we doing the new permission that we've just given them last meeting? Or is this before that? I know we just gave them some updated policy parameters for Tracy.

Through the Chair. We didn't receive any updated conditions from South County Fire, but they would be required at time of building permit to meet whatever code was in place at the time.

Okay, and then the one down the street, did they have a fencing requirement?

The one on Bethany Road was required to put a masonry wall around the entire parcel. That was added at the Planning Commission.

And the reasoning for that?

It was a little bit of agricultural, a little bit of safety, a little bit of everything.

Okay, and this is obviously remodeling old structures.

That's what they're proposing is to revitalize two agricultural buildings into their religious assembly.

Okay, perfect. Thank you, those are my questions. Rochelle, anybody waiting remotely?

So I believe we do have the traffic.

LNG is online.

OK. And it looks like they're unmuted at this time. So if they wanted to participate, they can. Nobody has raised their hand to speak.

Anybody else in opposition?

Good afternoon, Chair Dhaliwal and Supervisors. Brett Jolly serving as Special CEQA Counsel along with Mr. Hakim for the applicant. I want to really focus on the two main issues here involving CEQA, which is whether 15183 is an appropriate use and also the operational intensity assumptions that were raised by the appellant. Specific to some of the issues we're talking about today, let's back up and talk about Section 15183. So essentially the appellant argues that the county's erred by using the section 15183 to streamline the project because the decision is not supported by substantial evidence. This is not correct and this is not a correct understanding of the way that the CEQA law works on this. So we always hear about CEQA reform. CEQA reform is a bipartisan dream that's out there. But there's even a ballot measure this November on CEQA reform. But what's important to know is that even without new legislation, CEQA can be streamlined by making more frequent use of underutilized laws that are already on the books. And that's exactly what staff has done here. They've relied on Section 15183 from the CEQA guidelines, which says that where a county is certified in EIR for its general plan or zoning ordinance, which you have done, and a project is consistent with the development density as set forth in that general plan, which this project is, no further environmental review is required except where substantial information shows that there are new impacts that were not previously considered that are peculiar to the project. Now, this has been long underutilized by agencies for a couple of reasons. The first is it's a slightly more complex analysis than whether or not to simply do a negative declaration or an environmental impact report. We see that with some of the questions coming forward today. But second, the reason this has not been used extensively in the past is there was some debate about what development density meant in terms of that guideline. and density is often associated with residential development. But this question was answered in 2023 and 2024 when two cases took up the issue and concluded that this does apply to non-residential projects. The first case being Lucas versus City of Pomona and the second being Hilltop Group versus County of San Diego. I like to cite cases because we have one lawyer on this board, and so I hope it makes him happy. He's back in his seat. So what I would say here is kudos to your staff for actually utilizing this 15183 exemption to streamline not only this project, but numerous other projects that have come out since the Hilltop decision in 2024, confirming that this is an exemption that can and should be used on projects of commercial, industrial, and other natures, not just residential. And so that goes to the question that's been asked a few times about this Bethany religious assembly project and it had to do a traditional negative declaration sequel process and it wasn't subject to the 15183 streamlining. I don't know when that project was approved, but like I said, since the 2024 case of Hilltop, agencies, and again, your county in particular, have been looking at how to utilize the CEQA streamlining to help get projects through the process and not get mired up in years of environmental paperwork, which is something most people think is a good idea. So in terms of how that applies to this particular project, the appellants basically say this doesn't apply because it's not supported by the record. But there is substantial evidence in the record that shows that 15183 does apply. And this is a highly deferential question on whether or not the Planning Commission erred in applying that. That comes out of the Hilltop case I mentioned. There the Planning Commission had actually determined that a project was subject to a 15183 exemption. It was appealed. came to the Board of Supervisors of San Diego County. San Diego County Board said, no, we don't think it's subject to 15183. Go back and do a new environmental impact report. And the Court of Appeal said, no, this record shows that 15183 does apply. It was consistent with the general plan. And the general plan had an EIR adopted for it. And therefore, you could not require a new EIR to study that. You've got to apply the 15183 standard. And so I think it's important to note that with respect to the Farm Bureau's comments on this, that they don't like the idea of having religious assembly uses in the agricultural zone. That's a perfectly fine policy position, but it is inconsistent with what your ordinance currently provides. Your ordinance currently provides that religious assembly uses are conditionally permitted in the agricultural zones. And so if there is a debate to be had about whether or not that's a good policy and whether or not the ordinance should be changed, that's something that you are welcome to instruct your staff to do. I mean, you took action a couple of weeks ago to study whether or not data centers should be allowed in zones in the county. You could do the same thing with religious assembly uses. Being aware of the RELUPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which is a federal law that limits certain regulations on religious facilities. But it's something that can be taken up. But today is not the day to do that because it is allowed in your ordinance at this point. So we should look at under 15183, what did your staff do to determine that the project does not need further environmental review? Well, we've got a 40-page CEQA checklist that is in your staff report, and that relied in part on the traffic memo that has been discussed. Based on that analysis that went through and looked at every, the way that your general plan EIR looked at every impact in the county and then compared what the impacts from this project would be compared to what the general plan already assessed and concluded there are no significant or substantial new impacts that are coming from this project. And this important, Supervisor Rickman, on your question that you had asked about the level of service F, the general plan already looked at the traffic at this intersection in its traffic analysis in 2016 when this was adopted. And it concluded at that time that, I believe at that time it concluded that the intersection was already operating at a level of service F. So the issue here is not will this project add more traffic, it's is it consistent with what the general plan EIR looked at? And the answer here is yes, that's supported by the evidence in the record. Regarding appellant's claims, they were not addressed in great detail, but concern about water flow for both general water and for fire status, apparatus status. Again, that's not grounds for further review under 15183. Environmental Health Department requires well permitting to meet objective county standards. Further, South County Fire Authority did review and condition development on established water supply that meets the objective standards of the California Fire Code as it has been adopted, including that recent adoption they had would carry over. This project would be subject to that. And so these are standard conditions. They're consistent with CEQA. They're consistent with the language of 15183, and they don't trigger further environmental review. regarding the issues of flood impact safety. That's nice that the appellant is very concerned about the people that might be attending this events on this property and them being subject to flood safety issues. But as noted, this project will be subject to being built to the appropriate FEMA standards and have to meet all of those requirements that are set forth. Those are objective requirements that the project will have to meet when it is constructed for final use. And it's also important to note that CEQA says we don't consider the environment's impact on the project. We look at a project's impact on the environment. Here, that flooding issue, as it's in CEQA, is basically saying, what will the potential floods do to this project? That's the environment's impact on the project. That's not what CEQA says. We look at, that was even reiterated by the California Supreme Court in 2015 in the building industry association case. In terms of operational intensity, the appellant has said that the checklist analyzes ten special events while the conditions of approval permit six, and this creates an inconsistency. We had a little discussion about that. I will remind you there's no error here. It is very reasonable and common for environmental analysis to look at impacts of a more intense version of a project and the project to ultimately be conditioned or modified to operate at a less intense level. So here, the traffic memo said, oh, we will assume there will be 10 special events per year. But now the conditions say there can only be six special events per year. So even though that traffic memo looked at 10 and said there's not going to be a significant effect, the intensity of the project has actually been reduced by 40%, so there will only be six of those special events per year. So this does not show that there's an error in the 15183 exemption on that basis. In conclusion, the appellant fails to meet their burden on appeal to demonstrate that the use of the 15183 streamlining exemption is not supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, we ask this board to deny the appeal and to adopt the findings, including the modified finding that was presented to you by staff earlier today. Unless there are questions for me, I will turn the podium over to architect Joe Halasek who will briefly address you about the design of the project itself.

Chairman, I have a question. Yes, sir. Supervisor Ackerman. Thank you, Chairman. You mentioned 15183. Correct me if I'm wrong, that limits repetitive review, secret review, correct? Environmental review? Correct. But it doesn't prohibit the county, this board, to examine effects of a particular project. property like what we're doing today, correct?

Well, it does put limitations on your ability to require additional environmental review. That's what the Hilltop case said. If the project is consistent with the zoning and general plan and it is the EIR for the general plan has been adopted, that unless there are particular circumstances relevant to the property, that you only look at those particular circumstances above and beyond what they would be in the general plan EIR.

You're talking about like peculiar. Yes. Right. Is that what we're kind of doing now, for example, with the traffic?

But that's essentially what the traffic memo was designed to do, including looking at VMT, which is a new impact that was not around at the time that the general plan was EIR was adopted.

But even the VMT talks about delay under the governor's letter and so on. We'll jump back to that. But, you know, you mentioned, you know, the general plan. And correct me, you're the lawyer here. I'm not. And what we're talking about here, the religious assembly is conditionally permitted in the agricultural zone. It's not a requirement. It's not a King's X, right? It's a condition.

Correct. It's conditionally permitted. It's a discretionary decision.

So it doesn't automatically make it consistent with the general plan.

Well, it's consistent because the general plan and zoning codes say that this is a conditionally permitted use.

But would it require a project specific compatibility? I mean, for example, I pulled out some of the things for the general plan, you know, land use 7.1, protect agriculture land needed for viable commercial agriculture, 7.2, non-farm development must be compatible with surrounding agriculture demonstrate why it needs an agricultural location avoid detrimental impacts and be cited to avoid disruption agriculture operations 7.5 protect agriculture from nuance nuance i got the steve ding disease here, the nuisance complaint generated by non-agriculture uses and require adequate buffers between non-agriculture uses and adjoining agriculture operation. That's all in the general plan. Right, so, I mean, like I said, there's issues that we need to resolve here. It's not just a Kings Act.

Right, they're not necessarily CEQA issues, but yes, I concede your point that you do have discretion in evaluating whether or not to grant a conditional use permit for religious assembly use or any other conditionally permitted use in any zone.

So since you're up there, so what unique site requirement necessitates this being in an Ag Zone, this assembly building?

Well, I don't think you need a unique requirement to put it in an axon.

I was just wondering why here.

Why is it here? Because it is conditionally permitted in the zoning ordinance, so the applicant has brought forward that conditional use permit. Anytime somebody brings forward a conditional use permit, Supervisor Rickman, it is because the board, through its adoption of its zoning code, has said these uses are appropriate, but we want to review them on the site-specific issues.

Isn't that what we're doing now?

The board can do that now. Yes, that's part of your discretion.

That's all I have. Thank you. I appreciate it. Sure.

Go ahead. So obviously these folks want to be good neighbors, and this isn't starting off all that well from my 30,000 foot view. So what have you guys conceded to these concerns of these people without citing a bunch of law and case law? Because those case laws, I don't know if they're for religious things that you're You know what I mean? And I don't have time to look at that now. I saw it in your report. So I don't have the time to take those case laws. Is it the same apples for apples thing that you're talking about? This 40 acres or some acres were taken out of a general plan, put into a church. So, I mean, I get it. So if you cite that, I have no idea what you're citing. And I don't know. You know what I mean? If that's relevant. So those are the concerns. Good neighbor stuff. And, you know, were those case laws about a religious building in an ag area? I don't know.

So, yeah, the cases I cited had to do with the application of CEQA in general in terms of and I know everybody loves CEQA. case law cited at them. But in terms of the substance of your question of what has been done with the project and how are the applicants communicating with the neighbors, I would like Mr. Hakim to answer that because he is taking the lead on that part of this project.

Cause I mean, I just, it's, I know, and it's a quasi judicial, I hate doing cram downs, right? Everybody should, you know, you wanna have a good neighbor and you wanna be a good neighbor. And so the other question, when was this subdivided into 48 lots? Is this one of the 40 acres that was originally subdivided? This property was subdivided and the street was named after their family member. Is this one of the subdivisions of that plot breaking up back in the day?

This particular subdivision was an antiquated subdivision. It wasn't approved by the general plan. It was an antiquated subdivision, which to be kind to it, it would be an exception to the normal land use program analysis.