Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning, colleagues, staff, members of the public. It is 9.02 a.m. on August 25th, 2026, and we are calling this regular meeting of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to order. We'll start with having the clerk of the board provide information on how the public can participate in this meeting.

Members of the public, the instructions to participate in today's meeting can be found on the published agenda. These instructions provide information on how to submit written comments and also how to participate via Zoom. Live interpretation of this entire meeting will be provided in Spanish. To access live interpretation services in Zoom via laptop or computer, please click the Interpretation Globe icon and select the Spanish language. If you're using a smartphone or tablet, please locate the three-dot menu, select Interpretation, and then select Spanish language, and finally click Done. At this time, I'll ask your interpreter, Victor Hernandez, to provide these instructions in Spanish.

Thank you very much, Kim. Good morning, President Corso, honorable supervisors, Mr. Callagy, Mr. Mates, Mr. Niblin, all county staff, members of the public, Victor Hernandez, Spanish interpreter. que ya ha sido publicado. Estas instrucciones le van a dar información de cómo presentar sus comentarios, tanto por escrito y también por Zoom. También les queremos dejar saber que les vamos a proporcionar interpretación en vivo de toda esta reunión en español. Y para poder acceder a los servicios de interpretación en vivo por Zoom, ya sea con una computadora, una portátil, usted tendrá que hacer clic en lo que es un icono de un globo, es decir, un mundo terráqueo, después seleccionar el idioma en español. Si usted está usando un teléfono inteligente, una tableta, busque lo que es el menú de tres puntos, seleccione interpretación, luego seleccione el idioma y español y por último haga clic en done o listo. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kim and Victor. With that, we will move on. Sorry, let me find my agenda here. Too many tabs open, y'all. Here we go. Thank you for those instructions. I will now move on to the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in the pledge. Okay, we'll now take it over to Kim for a roll call, please.

Supervisor Speer? Here. Supervisor Mueller? Here. Supervisor Gauthier?

Here.

Supervisor Canepa? Here. And President Corso?

Here.

All present.

Thank you. We'll now move on to honoring the life of and board member remarks. Do any of my colleagues have comments or any honoring the life of remarks?

Through the chair, I have two honoring the life of. So this morning, we would like to honor the life and memory of Eugenia Valancourt, beloved mother of Donna Valancourt, and a woman whose century-long life was marked by faith, family, hard work, laughter, service, and love. Eugenia passed away peacefully on Sunday, August 16th, surrounded by her loving family. Born in Santa Rosa on December 7th, 1925, she celebrated 100-year birthday just eight months ago, a milestone that reflects not only the length of her life, but the fullness. Eugenia also was an employee of the county. Eugenia began her county service in the Department of General Services and later joined the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, where she served as lead payroll personnel specialist until her retirement in 1995. By every account, she was beloved by deputies, by staff, and by many people whose paths crossed hers. Again, I know that her daughters, two daughters followed her into the county work. Donna and Val Valancourt also worked, built their careers of service here in the San Mateo County as well. So we just want to lift up the memory of Eugenia and her family. Also wanted to honor the life of Frank, Abramo, today we honor the remarkable life of Frank, who was a World War II Navy veteran and a longtime member of the San Mateo County Veterans community, who passed away peacefully at his home on August 12th, surrounded by his family. His 102 years were marked by service, dedication, resilience, and deep love of family. Frank served the United States Navy during World War II, spending three years in the Pacific Theater. More of his work, he worked for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center here, and after that, I believe he also worked for the Department of Defense. Frank also found joy in community and activity. He was a longtime member of the San Mateo Elks Lodge and an avid golfer who continued playing until his 90s. showing his determination and enjoyment of life. May Frank Ambramo be remembered with appreciation for his service, admiration for his long life, and deep love for his family and friends. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no others, I'd like to add just a small comment to Supervisor Gauthier's honoring the life of comments for Frank, and just add that Frank was a City of San Mateo resident, and in addition to his military service, he also dedicated his career to scientific and technological advancement through his work with the Department of Defense, and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and that we honor and remember Frank for his service to our country, his contributions to science and innovation, and we are immensely grateful for the lasting legacy he leaves behind. I'll now read our county's land acknowledgement. Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, this is not our county's land acknowledgement. I'll now read... a different land acknowledgement. We honor and affirm the rights of the Ohlone and other indigenous peoples who call the unceded territories of the San Francisco Bay Area their traditional homeland. We honor the ancestors, elders, and relatives of indigenous people and their enduring contributions to San Mateo County and commit to continued healing, inclusion, and partnership. We honor people of the African diaspora, recognizing the profound impact of enslavement and systemic injustice, as well as their enduring contributions, resilience, and leadership in shaping our communities. We honor immigrants, past and present, whose cultures, experiences, and contributions have enriched our communities and continue to strengthen our shared society. With that, we will now move on to public comment. This is the portion of the agenda that is set aside for members of the public to comment on matters that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors but that are not on the agenda for today's meeting, for matters that are listed on the consent agenda, and for matters that are set for closed session. We'll be keeping public comment to two minutes. If a speaker goes over time, I will give them a single warning, and then I'll ask the clerk to cut the mic. This is to ensure equity of voice for all of our public commenters. Thank you, and with that, we will begin public comment.

We have received written comments, which were submitted and provided to the president and board members, as well as on the public website. And a reminder for those wanting to talk for items 1 through 20, please hold those comments until those items come up individually. We have 11 speaker cards for chambers. First, we'll start with Leopold Zargaro and then Dan Inescu.

Good morning.

My name is Leopoldo Zaragoza. I have a family of five kids. And I have a small land in the county of San Mateo. And I will need some help from you guys to update some of the regulations for septic that I want to put in my land. I don't know all the details, but my architect, Dan, knows everything. He can explain to you what I need. Thank you.

All right. Hi, good morning. I'll read my statement to be passed. First, I would like to thank Supervisor Ray Muller for meeting and talking with me. It was very, very, very helpful. My name is Dan Ionesco. I'm a licensed architect and urban planner. In 1979, I landed here from Europe, and in 1980, I opened my company in San Mateo. I have designed projects in Bay Area, California, United States, and overseas. Over the last 44 years, I have cooperated with many planning, building, and elected officials, and helped create, update, and when needed, correct various local regulations. I have become the private practitioner on the other side of the fence, that I see how regulations apply to people working, designing things based on the existing regulations. And I believe that I have a duty vis-a-vis our county to bring to your attention that I have identified a regulation that does not make sense today. We need more housing and we are blocking housing in San Mateo County for no reasonable reasons. I discovered the problem by chance. Currently working in San Mateo County, Santa Cruz County, and Santa Clara County, I realized that modern septic systems have been specifically and specially designed for smaller lots and for specific problems with various lots. And such systems do make sense, they are functioning, they are clean, and they are reliable. There are hundreds of them in San Mateo County, sorry, in Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz County, and in other area counties.

I'm sorry, sir, that's your time.

That's fine. I have some envelopes that I can give to the supervisors.

Please give them to the clerk, and you can always follow up with us via email.

This is a problem that we need to solve.

Madam President, maybe I'll just give the speaker my card, and we can have a conversation about his regulatory concerns.

Okay. Sounds good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Next, we have Henry Gardner, and then Laherre Kawanda.

Thank you.

Good morning, all. My name is Laher Kawadia. I'm a senior.

Can you please adjust the mic so people on Zoom can hear you? Thank you.

My name is Laher Kawadia. I'm a senior at Colmont High School and currently an intern for Stop the Scandals. And I'm Samara. I'm also an intern for Stop the Scandals currently and also a student at Colmont High School.

Nice to meet you. My name is Jiwon Kim. I'm also a rising senior at Colmont High School, and I'm also an intern at Forest Ricks in San Mateo County.

Hi, my name is Veronica Lebov, and I'm also a rising senior at Carmont High School and an intern at Fairfax and San Mateo.

My name is Zara. I'm a senior at Carmont High School, and I'm an intern for Stop the Scandals.

My name is Henry Gardner. I'm a recent graduate of Burlingame High School, an incoming freshman at Northwestern, and a summer intern with Stop the Scandals. I want to start by focusing on a number, 13.4 million. It's the amount our county has paid out in lawsuits related to alleged sheriff misconduct in just the last five years. along with another $48 million in pending claims. This comes at a time where the county has been in a publicized struggle over vehicle licensing fees, money which is reinvested back into our community. This money impacts our education, our opportunity, and our lives, and we demand responsible stewardship from our county. We ask them to showcase this stewardship by appointing a permanent, ongoing inspector general overseeing the sheriff's office.

Hello, I'm Anushka Swaminathan. I'm a student at Carlmont High School and an intern with Fixin and Stop the Scandals. The Board of Supervisors' own independent civilian advisory committee on the sheriff recommended that last summer that the board appoint an inspector general. A permanent inspector general would build ongoing relationships between the sheriff's office and the community. They would investigate complaints from both residents and deputies, providing a safety valve against disasters like what happened with the last sheriff. An Inspector General is a crucial step toward transparency and an improved relationship between the Sheriff's Office and the community, especially after the recent scandals. An Inspector General is a clear path forward.

Okay, I'm gonna need you to wrap up in like 10 seconds, please.

Okay, so we are here to present a petition where we have garnered over 550 signatures from members of the community, as well as over 20 organizations, including the NAACP, the ACLU, and the San Mateo County Democratic Party. So we will be presenting those to the Board of Supervisors today. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. And lastly from Chambers, we have Jim Lawrence.

Good morning, President Kosova and members of the board. I just want to remind you to reflect on not only what these young people have said today, but who is saying it? They are students. They spent their summer doing things that normally students don't do. Instead, they got involved with their community. They researched the issues, they attended the meetings, they talked to residents, and they even gathered signatures. They built the community support, and today they came before you, our elected leaders, with that message. Now, I spent many years in public service, like all of you. I can tell you that what I experience today is exactly what we want from our young people. They became informed, they chose to participate, to speak up, and I believe their voices matter. And to our interns, thank you. You showed courage. You showed leadership. And regardless of what happens today, you have demonstrated something very important. Democracy works best when people show up. Thank you.

All right, now we're going to go ahead and go to Zoom for comments. If it's time, please raise your hand. All right, we're going to go ahead and start with Natalia A. And then after, I'll make a final call. Please unmute and begin. Natalia? Natalia, are your hands raised on line? Last call? All right, that concludes public comment.

Okay, thank you. With that, we will now, oh. I keep misplacing my agenda here. Okay. With that, I want to thank everyone who shared a public comment. We will now move on to take action to set the agenda and approve the consent agenda. Now, bear with me. This one's a little complicated. I would like to suggest we move items 9 and 17 together. So consider item 17 during the discussion for item number 9, as both items involve Horizon. Item 17 is a resolution authorizing a ground lease with Horizon for real property located at 826 Mahler Road in Burlingame. In addition, I believe Supervisor Speer would like item 29 to be moved from consent to regular agenda, and I propose that we move that to the end of the regular agenda. And then I believe Health has requested that we pull and defer item 32 to a later meeting. Can I get a motion to approve this agenda and to set this agenda and approve our consent agenda?

Madam President, I have one other item that I don't want to move but want to draw attention to, and that's item 24, which is an agreement with a company that has had the contract since 2006. It's become an evergreen contract. And I think as we look to the ways that we're going to be tightening our belts, we need to look at these contracts that historically are just renewed decade after decade. So I just wanted to draw attention to that. And with that, I will move the changes you've requested.

Thank you.

Roll call vote, please. Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Yes. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Caruso? Yes. Motion passes.

Okay. Thank you. With that, we will now move on to item number one. And I will hand it over to Supervisor Speer and County Executive Callagy to present a resolution to Kitty Lopez.

Thank you, Madam President. It's a great honor today to celebrate one of the great advocates in San Mateo County. a great advocate for the vulnerable, a life truly dedicated to raising up those in need. I have had the pleasure of working with Kitty Lopez both at Samaritan House and also on the board of First Five. I think that she has truly been remarkable in how she has led her career on behalf of county residents. Kitty, you have a moral compass that has never wavered. You are a true humanitarian. And paraphrasing Vice President Hubert Humphrey, you have cared for those at the dawn of their lives and those living in the shadow of their lives, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. And we will be forever indebted to you for the service you have provided in our counties.

Madam President, can I add a few words?

Of course.

Thank you so much. I've known Kitty for over 25 years now and certainly got to know her wonderful husband, Jeff, also, who was a professor of mine up at Notre Dame. And I can tell you from... First-hand experience, Kitty's life has been all about service. She was an incredible executive director at Samaritan House, really expanding services there and reaching beyond what John Kelly and others before her accomplished. And she really set a path for herself in serving members of this county. for years to come. And then when she came to the first five, it was really the good fortune of the county to get somebody of this quality, somebody who's very difficult to say no to at times, but always has the best interest of the community at heart, who's carrying on this job with very serious work, but did it with a sense of humor and as a great leader, bringing others along and lifting up others under her guidance. It has been nothing short of a pleasure working with Kitty all these years. And as you head into, not retirement, but what are you calling it?

Preferment.

There you go. There you go.

Do things I prefer to do.

I would just... That's the sense of humor I'm talking about. I would ask you to reflect, Kitty, upon all the lives that you've impacted and all the people that you've served in this county throughout these years. That is an incredible legacy that will be established for years and years to come. So thank you so much for all you've done for this county.

Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, just one second. You will have the last word, Kitty, I promise. I just wanted to share a few words as well. I got to serve on the First Five Commission with you, Kitty, for about three, no, two years. Two years, I believe. And during that time, it was such a pleasure to work with you. And one of my favorite things about being on that commission was being really knowing that it was one of the few commissions that I really did not have to worry about at all because that commission was run and led by you and your very capable hands. And not only did I not have to worry, but I had such faith in your leadership and in your equity focus, in your leadership, the shared leadership that you had, the amazing team, the trust that you built, the shared decision-making, the community focus, the true focus on kids, on community, on families that was evident in every single decision that was made, the transparency. It really just was like the example of... how to make really good decisions for kids, for our littlest ones, in a way that I think is a true model to other organizations. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for creating that model, for leaving it in very, very capable hands. And I know you're going to enjoy your preferment and you won't be too far. And I'm just very grateful for the work that you have done and Yeah, thank you so much. I don't know if any of my colleagues want to share, but Kitty will have the last word, so.

Sure, I want to say to Kitty, you know, thank you for leading with heart, for taking care of those who are the most vulnerable, who needed that support. I will miss you. Well, I don't think you're, hopefully you'll be coming to progress because you were my dance partner. But, you know, I just want to say congratulations on preferredment. I love that idea to be able to do what you prefer. But all along, I think you've done what you preferred because you've been taking care of individuals this whole time. Again, congratulations on reaching this milestone. Hope to see you at Next Progress.

Kitty, I just want to thank you for your service. I think especially I think about the staff, the development, Michelle Blakely, who I knew for a very long time through Star Vista, but I think you've always had a collaborative approach and really working with the boards. I served on the board very, very briefly, but I saw how you've conducted yourself, and your preferment is well-deserved. So thank you, Madam Chair.

Please go ahead, Kitty. First of all, thank you, Supervisor Corso and Supervisor Speer and fellow supervisors, Mike Callagy. Yes, it's kind of freaky to know that both Mike and Supervisor Speer have known me so long, 25 years, if you combine my work at Samaritan House and First 5. It has been an honor.

I wasn't gonna get emotional, but that's hard for me to not do.

But it's been an honor to serve in this county in the two primary roles I've had at Samaritan House, working with folks in need, and then at First Five. And the through line in that, that was very purposeful, running Samaritan House and building that organization to be a primary safety net provider. But I always wanted to find out how can we, of course it's great to have our nonprofit partners, but I want to find out how can we do things differently for our young children and their families to help them grow and thrive without necessarily needing services. It's hard to do in today's world because everybody needs money and support and not everybody has it. But I learned that all the research says you have to start when children are young and I still believe that and the research still shows that. I learned all of this from my father, who was an immigrant to this country many, many years ago from Mexico, studied medicine at USC, and built a family practice in Los Angeles. He was a family doctor for over 40 years on Hollywood Boulevard. And yes, there were stories. And I might have to kill you if I told you. But everybody knew him, and he knew everybody. And he delivered everybody's babies and helped folks aging, parents and all the ages in between. And he believed in what could be possible and how could we all do it together. And that's sort of my motto. I love that word, possibility, and how can we build possibility for our kids and families, particularly for those who are farthest from it. That's our role, and I hope that that work continues. Thank you so very much for this honor.

Do we want to vote real quick? Or I think, did we vote on it yet? Public comment. Okay.

Sorry.

Okay. Let's take public comment and then we can vote.

All right. I do not have any speaker cards from chambers. If you'd like to make a comment on item number one, please raise your hand on Zoom at this time. All right. I do have one hand raised for Natalia. If you can please unmute. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, I'm not sure if I'm speaking in the right time spot. But I was trying to connect before and something happened.

Oh, Natalia, I'm sorry. This is actually for item one. We already I think you might want to be speaking on a different item. This is a presentation to congratulate Kitty Lopez on her retirement.

Okay, when can I speak about horizon?

That will be at a later time. Item nine. What time? It will be item nine.

We do not have a guaranteed time.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

All right. Final call for item number one. We do have Michelle. Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Board of Supervisors and Kitty. This is Michelle. We're so looking forward to celebrating you on a couple of events this week. and you're an amazing leader and a beautiful human. So hope to see you all soon and enjoy your performance.

All right. And that concludes public comment.

Thank you. Is there a motion to approve this proclamation? So moved. Thank you. Second? Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Speier? Aye.

Supervisor Mueller? Aye.

Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa?

Aye.

And President Corso? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

OK. Come on up, Katie. We'd like to give you your proclamation. And okay, with that, we will move on to item number two, presentation of a proclamation honoring International Overdose Awareness Day, and I'll be passing it to Supervisor Ray Mueller.

Thank you, President Caruso. I want to start by thanking one of my summer interns, Mia Burko, who researched and worked on this proclamation. August 31st is recognized around the world as International Overdose Awareness Day, and today we're recognizing it here in San Mateo County. It's a day to remember those residents we've lost, to stand with the families who are still grieving them, and to acknowledge that the crisis has reached every community in this county and our country. We need to remove the stigma from this issue by talking about it openly. I want to recognize Healing Overdose Prevention and Education, HOPE, a Pacifica organization founded by Rondell and Clarence Davis, whose annual walk is this Saturday, August 29th. I want to invite you to join HOPE's walk and resource fair at 10 a.m. at 399 Arena Del Mar, Pacifica. It's incredibly moving. There are so many families who are present there with pictures of those they've lost. Hope has been able to install life-saving Narcan dispensers throughout San Mateo County, four in Pacifica, one in Half Moon Bay, one in Belmont, two in South San Francisco, and one in San Bruno. This weekend, we'll be donating more boxes of Narcan to Hope. Easier access to Narcan reduces overdose rates and saves lives. We believe that providing Narcan in public spaces recognizes substance abuse disorder as a health issue and encourages individuals and families to seek help without fear or shame. And of course, I want to thank the Townie team at Behavioral Health and Recovery Services and the Overdose Prevention Coalition for their work in treatment and prevention. Dr. Ronnie Brown, who is in chambers today, San Mateo County Senior Community Health Planner, is on the forefront of this fight. Before transitioning to community health planning, Dr. Brown spent 27 years as a correctional dentist at the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility, Her specialized clinic became a state model for dental clear institutional settings, and it was there that she started to really actually see some of the impact of this problem. Dr. Brown.

Thank you so much for that introduction. My name is Dr. Ronnie Brown, and I work in behavioral health recovery services as a senior community health planner overseeing overdose education and response, and I also serve as the chair of the Overdose Prevention Coalition. August 31st is International Overdose Awareness Day, where the global community comes together to honor, to remember, to advocate for those lives who have been lost from an overdose. This year's theme is 25 Years On, Still Needed, marking 25 years since its inception in 2001. But that tagline, still needed, really challenges us to ask the question, Why is this day still needed? This day is still needed because overdose death rates remain high in the United States. According to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control, in 2025, there were 69,973 Americans who lost their lives from a drug overdose. Now this tragedy is not just a national tragedy. We see it here in San Mateo County. According to the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard, in 2024, there were 54 individuals who died from an opioid-involved overdose. The majority of overdoses do involve synthetic opioids, specifically fentanyl. This day is still needed because overdoses are a preventable cause of death. Now, an overdose is when a drug or a combination of drugs exceeds the brain's ability to regulate body temperature, heart rate, consciousness, and breathing. And in an overdose, breathing slows down or stops. And then the countdown between survival and death begins. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. There's mental confusion. Four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, brain cells begin to die. Seven minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes, there's irreversible brain damage. And after 10 minutes, brain death can occur. It's what happens in those precious moments that makes the decision and determination between survival and death. First, a bystander needs to be able to recognize the signs of an opioid overdose. Remembering the acronym BLUE, where B stands for breathing that's slowed down or stopped, L stands for lips that are turning blue, U stands for unresponsiveness or unconsciousness, and E stands for eyes where the pupils have become constricted. Secondly, the bystander needs to administer Narcan, a life-saving medication that can reverse an opioid-involved overdose. and they need to call 911. Third, the bystander needs to stay with the individual, perform CPR if they're trained to do so and if it's indicated, and wait for medical personnel to arrive. Overdoses are a preventable cause of death. This day is still needed because stigma-related barriers decrease individuals' access for receiving the treatment that they need. In 2024, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, only one of every five Americans 12 years and older who needed substance use treatment actually received substance use treatment. The adults surveyed in the study cited worry as the reason why they didn't seek treatment. Worry about what people would think. Worry about what people would say. It's stigma. Reducing stigma, providing compassionate care, meeting people where they're at, can encourage people with substance use disorders to get the treatment that they need and reduce their risk for an overdose. This day is still needed, quite frankly, because there's more work to be done. In 2024, the board held a special session, and they directed BHRS to expand our naloxone distribution efforts. Well, we have done just that in collaboration with the Overdose Prevention Coalition. This year, since January, we have distributed 3,223 boxes of naloxone out into the community. Every box represents potential. Every box represents hope that a life can be saved. But board, there's more work for us to do. We need your help to identify spaces and places in your district to expand our naloxone distribution efforts. In closing, I do want to share with you the final tagline of this year's theme for International Overdose Awareness Day. And it says, even though this day is still needed, it doesn't have to be forever. Let's strive on not making this forever. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

And with that, I will go ahead and move the proclamation forward.

Supervisor Speer? Supervisor Mueller?

We haven't taken public comment, and I actually wanted to say something briefly. Did you want to say something as well? No? Okay. Oh, go ahead, Supervisor Speer.

I just want to thank Dr. Brown. She was kind enough to come and do a brown bag lunch for our interns. They were Very impressed. And your message about bystander engagement is so important as we deal with this crisis. So thank you.

Thank you. I just wanted to briefly say that I got the opportunity to see Dr. Brown in action one day. I'm forgetting the name of the organization in the walk, but Supervisor Mueller was there in Pacifica. It was, what was it called? HOPE. HOPE had a walk, and it was very moving. There was a walk to honor people who had overdosed and it was family members and even strangers carrying the pictures of folks that had overdosed. But there was a training that Dr. Brown did at this community event and the training was excellent. So much so that like a member of my team and I sat down and actually listened to the majority of the training and learned so much. And so if anyone here ever gets the opportunity to take one of these trainings, please do so. It is so worth it. And I just wanted to share as well that I personally do carry naloxone in my car. Our team carries naloxone in our tabling and office hours box. And I know that our county had the intention of having a distribution box in front of the courthouse. And that didn't work out for some reason. But I would like to share the idea that why don't we just put like a sign up there and let's put the box in front of this building. And we can put a sign over there and people can know that we have one here and they can walk over and get one. And let's make that more accessible. I also think we can put some at other sites. But we can do that. If there are places that aren't willing to have the box, we can still overcome those barriers. So thank you. And did anyone else want to make comments? Supervisor Gauthier.

I just want to say, Dr. Brown, thank you for your presentation. I would love to have you come to District 4 and meet with some of our nonprofits. I know that there are families that are dealing right now with their loved ones who are in the hospital trying to recover from a drug overdose. So keeping them in mind. But I appreciate you coming here. We need to understand more. We need to educate our community members more often. So I will be reaching out to your office to schedule some trainings.

Okay. Public comment, please. Or did you want to say something? Oh, public comment, please.

Sorry. I do not have any speaker cards for chamber, so we'll go to Zoom for item number two. I do have one hand raised. It's final call for item number two. All right. We'll go ahead and start with Isabel. Please unmute and begin.

Oh, hello. Good morning, Board of Supervisors and Dr. Ronnie Brown. I just want to say that today's proclamation recognizing August 31st as International Overdose Awareness Day is an important reminder of the lives impacted by overdose and the work being done to prevent future loss. Just a special acknowledgement to Dr. Ronnie Brown and the San Mateo County Overdose Prevention Coalition for their tremendous leadership and dedication through strong partnerships and education and outreach. expanded access to lifelong naloxone. Ronnie and her partners continue to make such a meaningful difference throughout Simontown County. So thank you so much and such a great honor.

Thank you. And that concludes public comment. Thank you. Roll call vote, please. Supervisor Speer. Aye. Supervisor Mueller. Yes. Supervisor Gauthier. Yes. Supervisor Canepa. Aye. And President Corso.

Yes, and as I vote, I'm thinking about the many friends I've lost to overdose.

Motion passes unanimously.

And with that, we have a proclamation to present.

Okay, we'll now present the proclamations. Okay, moving on to presentation of a proclamation designating August 26th as Women's Equality Day. Supervisor Gauthier.

Thank you, Chair. And I just want to recognize from this dais, there are three women sitting here, so we should all take an opportunity to sponsor. I have words on this item. I know, Supervisor Speer, this was your item that you brought forward to the county some time ago. So today we recognize Women Equality Day commemorating the certification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which recognized women's constitutional right to vote. The 19th Amendment was a landmark achievement, but the fight for equality did not end with women gaining the right to vote. Many women, particularly women of color, continue to fight significant barriers to voting and civic participation for decades. Women's Equality Day is a reminder that representation matters. When women are able to participate fully in our democracy and serve in leadership, our communities benefit from a broader range of experience and perspectives. As elected officials, we have a responsibility to ensure that women and girls across San Mateo County have opportunities to participate, lead, and have their voices heard in the decisions that affect their families and communities. Equality also means addressing the barriers that continue to affect women, including economic opportunities, access to education, affordable childcare, housing stability, and opportunities for leadership. We should especially encourage young girls, women and girls to see themselves as future leaders, whether in government, business, education, public service, or their communities. Women's Equality Day is both a celebration of how far we've come and a reminder that our work toward full equality continues. We can honor the women who fought for the rights we have today by continuing to create opportunities for every woman and girl to participate, lead, and thrive. And I'm going to ask my colleagues if you'd like to have words.

Thank you.

And thank you, Supervisor Gaucher, for bringing this resolution to our attention. Today is the day. in 1920 when women actually got the right to vote. But I'm actually not going to talk about the past. I'm going to talk about the future. And I'm going to put this on to show that the Equal Rights Amendment has not passed. And we need to think about the future. It is 24 words. It has been introduced in the Congress of the United States every single session, and we have still not passed it. There are 165 countries around the world that have embraced the Equal Rights Amendment in their constitutions. That's 85% of the United Nations members. Only 10% of the countries have not. And the United States is one of them. It's a shameful recognition that we have not found the will to pass this amendment and put it into our Constitution. So I wish the young women who were here earlier could have been here for this so they recognize this is the challenge for them and for all of us as we move forward.

Thank you. I want to thank you as well for bringing this forward. I think about the reality that young women today have seen the stripping of some of the rights that women have fought so hard for in past generations. I'm just kind of filled with the emotion that... That the fight is not over, right? that we'll see the pendulum swing, swing back, that we will, we will get that passed. We will. I think we see, especially in California, more women in the assembly, in the Senate than ever before. And the nation will follow in, in due time. And, um, We'll get there. So while I am filled with a little bit of sorrow, I'm also filled with great hope. And the rights that women fought for in the past, we will... solidify and build upon like we always have. I also want to just take a moment to share kind of a dream of mine that I have and I'll give San Francisco a quick shout out in this moment. You know, I think about The right to vote and how some of the vulnerabilities of the immigrant community is due to the fact that they do not have a right to vote, right? They don't have that political power. And San Francisco does allow undocumented people to vote in school board elections where their children are in schools. And I think that's admirable, and that gives them a step into a political process where they have a lot of stake. They have a lot of stake in the game. And so I just want to kind of throw that idea out there as a dream for this county. And with that, I'll end my comments here. Yeah, just kind of like feeling this moment of there's a lot of weight right now. And as we're halfway through, almost halfway through this current presidential term, I just have a lot of hope for when this presidential term is over and what we can really get done when we get to start a new chapter. Thank you. Supervisor Mueller.

I just want to thank my colleagues for bringing this item. I vote for today, thinking of my daughter.

Thank you. Supervisor Canepa.

Great. I just really want to thank our commission on the status of women. You've done such a, let's give them a round of applause. Just such an amazing job. I mean, we have just really extraordinary and competent leadership. And I think this commission has made, since I've been on this board, an indelible mark in terms of not only women's lives, but I think just children's lives, residents' lives in general. It's really been a high-functioning commission that has been engaged, and it's great to see. I wanted to also recognize Supervisor Gaucher, Supervisor Corzo, and Supervisor Speer. your leadership and supervisor gauche being a sponsor of this um says a lot i know you're involved and engaged even when you're on the east powell city council but just part just happy to be part of this celebration applaud you for all your efforts that you have done each one of you in terms of your leadership positions in the county

Okay, public comment, please.

Oh, no, there's... Oh, sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot about that part. Please, we welcome your comments.

I just want to say, I just thank everyone for your comments. You know, I often say, when you know better, you do better. But in the United States, we know better, and we refuse to have equal rights. But I hope that in my lifetime, we will have equal rights for everyone. I would now like to invite my sisters... and the equality fight who are showing up today in white to show unity in this work to the dais to give your remarks.

Thank you. Good morning, honorable supervisors, county executives, and staff. My name is Ann Gerard, and I'm the president of the Commission on the Status of Women, and I'm joined by Vice President Lysandra Gutter. We bring hope, and we want to thank you for all the support that you have given us, for the initiatives that we continue to advocate for, but we are working together to improve the lives of women and families in the county. But most recently, your efforts to personally meet with stakeholders about childcare. the allocation of Measure K funds for the baby bonus, the investment of $10 million in the One Stop Navigation Portal, the Tri-Share Pilot Program, and the ongoing work to reduce the pay equity gap, which currently is 4% in the county. We have work to do there and on the ERA. But we're here today together with our commission members and supporters to celebrate the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. But there's a really important part of that history that needs to be acknowledged.

Good morning board and the executive team. So my name is LaSondra Gutter and I do feel like my comments have been said already, but I feel they're important so I'm gonna say them again. As we recognize Women's Equality Day, the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and the women who fought courageously for the right to vote, we must also remember that Native American, black, Asian, Latina, and immigrant women were among those left behind. Discrimination and Jim Crow laws were very active during that period in our history, silencing many voices. Voting is having a voice. So today I wonder, How many women sitting in chambers would have been afforded the opportunity to vote, to use her voice? Well, the Commission on the Status of Women is hosting an event today at the Burlingame Community Center from 4.30 to six. We're in collaboration with KQED and we will be presenting a panel on affordability in San Mateo County, giving real life examples of how voting can impact communities for the better. This is in keeping with the commission's focus on economic empowerment of women. And we hope that the board and everyone in the room gets the opportunity to come today. I know we're going to have it streamed to watch it because it's going to be important. And it's going to be fun because we're all going to be there. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Lissandra. I think you've got the message that we're talking about voting, and we hope everyone exercises their right this year and every year. But we want to inspire you. We have a video that we have produced with Supervisor Gaucher's can-do attitude and her staff. Bridget Berry, I'm not sure if she's here, but she... Bridget, you should stand up. Bridget shared her talents with us, and so we'll let it roll.

I feel like I can make a difference. All votes matter.

My voice deserves to be heard and will shape the future. I wasn't born with this right. I chose to become an American, and voting is one way to honor that choice.

Voting is the foundation of our democracy. Because it's the cornerstone of democracy.

Every vote matters. While it may seem that one vote in hundreds of millions is inconsequential, together they make a huge difference.

I care about the future.

My daughter's daughter's daughter is inheritance. As an immigrant with citizenship, I feel it's particularly important for me to be a voice for immigrants, especially since so many of us don't have the right to vote.

It's because I matter.

In a time where there is so much polarization, voting is a way to participate and help.

When I think of voting, I think of the word matter. Matter means you take up space and I proudly take up space to share my voice and to vote.

My parents and grandparents used their vote to make a better life for me. I want to use my vote to make a better life for my children and grandchildren and all who live here. Added to others, it makes the decision not only for our country and our state, but for local issues as well and reflecting on my community.

democracy is not a spectator sport it gets me every time i don't know about you um so i would like to invite our commission to come up and celebrate the day with all of you

Yes, why don't you come up, but we will take public comment and then vote. But you can come up. Go ahead. So we're ready. Let's take public comment.

All right, we're taking public comment on item number three, the proclamation for Women's Equality Day. Do you not have any speaker cards for chambers? If you'd like to make a comment online, please raise your hand at this time. I see no hands raised. There's no public comment for item number three. We may take

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve?

I move approval of the proclamation.

Okay, motion and second. Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Aye. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corso? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, with that, we will move on to item number four, presentation of a proclamation designating September 2026 as Suicide Prevention Month, and Supervisor Canepa is the sponsor for this one.

All right, thank you very much, Madam Chair. San Mateo County joins communities across California and the nation in recognizing Suicide Prevention Month. It's September, National Suicide Prevention Week, September 6th through the 12th, and World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th. This observance reinforces a critical message. Suicide is preventable, and every member of our community can play a role in offering hope, connection, and support. In 2025, 65 San Mateo County residents died by suicide. During that same year, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline operated locally by the Felton Institute's Peninsula Suicide Prevention received 9,212 calls, 1,073 chats, and 1,735 text messages from people seeking support. This year's theme, The weight we carry recognizes that many people, particularly men and boys of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, may carry invisible burdens such as emotional pain, stress, grief, isolation, and social expectations. Consistent with the state governor's executive order, N31-25, and the board's 2024 resolution recognizing loneliness as a public health crisis, This observance calls on our community to reduce stigma, strengthen belonging, and social connection, and ensure that no one carries these burdens alone. I want to recognize the partners contributing to the suicide prevention work. I'd like to thank my colleagues on the board who have in different ways contributed to suicide prevention in our county. the Felton Institute Peninsula Suicide Prevention Team, Taylor Coutts, Walter Ng, Frankie Anguano, and 24 crisis counselors, and our speakers today at San Mateo County Health. Joining us to make a brief presentation includes San Mateo County Health Public Health Policy and Planning Director, Dr. Tamara Jones, and Community Health Planner, Sylvia Tang. Thank you for joining us today.

Welcome.

Good morning, President Corso, honorable supervisors, county executives, county staff, and our community. I'm Tamara Jones. I'm the Director of Public Health Policy and Planning, and I'm honored to be here today to celebrate and thank you for the opportunity to recognize Suicide Prevention Month and reaffirm the county's commitment to preventing suicide. Since 2004, Behavioral Health and Recovery Services has advanced suicide prevention through the Mental Health Services Act funding. We want to recognize and thank BHRS for that leadership, and this slide highlights a very small snippet of the wonderful and many contributions over the past two decades. As suicide prevention transitions to public health policy and planning, under the Behavioral Health Services Act, we hope to build on that foundation. Our work includes dedicated suicide prevention coordination, strategic planning, and a focus on upstream prevention and policy. During this transition, our commitment to suicide prevention month and suicide prevention year-round remains steadfast. So I'm joined today by the county suicide prevention coordinator and committee co-chair, Sylvia Tang, who will continue. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Suicide Prevention Month is a time to honor people affected by suicide, support those who are grieving, and inspire collective action. The colors purple and teal represent suicide awareness and hope. Our key messages today are simple. Suicide can be prevented. Suicide affects all of us. And talking openly and safely about suicide can save lives. So we want to reduce the shame and increase connection so we can lighten the weight that someone may be carrying and encourage them to seek support. Throughout September, the Suicide Prevention Committee, local cities, and community partners will offer free in-person and virtual events. The updated information will be on our website. Beyond September, we invite community participation in our Suicide Prevention Committee for the county, which provides guidance and oversight for suicide prevention throughout the county. Every resident can help prevent suicide. And we can do that by three key ways. One is learning the warning signs. Two is knowing how to start a supportive conversation. And three, connecting someone to support. Key areas of support or local resources include the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, Alternatives to Suicide Peer Support, which is available for adults and youth, and Suicide Law Support Group. We also have great educational trainings and presentations by our partners as well. And one key thing, if you can't remember anything I say, is if you know anyone who is in emotional distress or thinking about suicide, please call 988. It could be for yourself or it could be for your loved one. And so I'd like to, we've invited Michael Kutz to share a brief reflection of why this year's theme for suicide prevention is important to him. And I'm hoping the video will work.

Hello, my name is Michael Kutz. I'm a San Mateo County resident, a Marine Corps veteran, current Navy reservist, a San Mateo County electrician's union apprentice, as well as a mental health advocate. I served five years on active duty as a Marine infantryman, including two deployments. And like a lot of men, service members, first responders, veterans, I know that there can be this unspoken and sometimes spoken expectation to carry a lot and to carry it quietly. That's why this year's Suicide Prevention Month theme, The Weight We Carry, supporting men and boys' mental health, really resonates with me. Strength isn't just about pushing through as hard or fast as we can. It's also about knowing when to speak up, to check in on someone, and to ask for support. This year, I'm honored to be a part of the upcoming event, Mission Follows You Home Veteran and First Responder Mental Health Forum on September 10th. I hope you'll be there to join us as we have an important conversation about mental health, connection, and supporting those who serve. Thank you.

Big round of applause for Michael. Thank you, Michael. And to close, we invite the San Mateo County community to take action this September to support our community, especially men and boys who may be less likely to ask for help. Three key actions to emphasize. First, learning the warning signs, including withdrawal, recklessness, major mood changes, or talking about wanting to die. Second, please share the suicide prevention events and resources, especially 988. Third, learn how to talk about suicide in a safe, compassionate, and supportive way. Normalize conversations about stress, grief, and loneliness and show that reaching out is a sign of strength. And finally, please consider joining our Suicide Prevention Committee Coalition. Thank you, Supervisor Canepa, President Corso, and to members of the Board of Supervisors for your support and doing the suicide prevention work in different ways. And to everyone in our community for building hope, connection, and belonging. Together, we can help ensure that no one has to carry this weight alone. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Did you want to share more comments, Supervisor Canepa?

Any comments from my colleagues?

Move the item.

Oh, I just wanted to briefly say, you know, this topic hits close to home for me, and sometimes it's a little overwhelming. But I... I recently met with a small group of women who talked to me about being a part of their child's high school DLAC district, high school's DLAC committee, and how they really wanted mental health and suicide prevention training in Spanish. And I talked to them about how I had gotten trained by NAMI to do a mental health training to freshmen and how I had done one. And I didn't realize that parents actually want to know this information. And I told them about NAMI. And I don't know if our county does that. We probably do, but if you need volunteers, I'm sure I could be trained myself or I could probably help find people. But it just made me really happy to know that even immigrant parents who don't speak English really want this knowledge to help their kids. And it gives me hope that... that we have families that want to break cycles and that there's a thirst for knowledge. So thank you for being a part of the solution and for spreading all of this good information. And yeah, I'm also grateful for the training that will happen on the 10th. I know in my district in Foster City, we had an officer take his life, I think, a year or two ago at the precinct, and it was a really difficult tragedy for folks there. So it's very much needed. So thank you. With that, I think we can move on to public comments.

Okay, we'll be taking public comment on item number four, the Proclamation for Suicide Prevention. I do have two speaker cards from chambers. We'll start with Walter Ng and then Taylor Coutts.

Good morning, supervisors. My name is Walter Ng. I am the community engagement supervisor with Peninsula Suicide Prevention, a proud program of the Felton Institute. For over 60 years, our diverse team of currently 24 counselors have stood on the front lines of crisis intervention here in San Mateo County, and we proudly answer local calls for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, providing immediate, compassionate support for those experiencing mental health crisis. Beyond the phone lines, we also deploy vital educational trainings. We also provide postvention services directly to schools, to county agencies, to nonprofits, community-based organizations throughout San Mateo County. It's laying the awareness of that information about that. We also extend our greatest gratitude to both the Suicide Prevention Committee as being a continued partner in helping create awareness about information about 988, as they spoke in their presentation, but also for the leadership of everyone here present in this board, because you guys all take a certain step toward that section of creating that awareness, but also informing your own constituents of that information as well. And so as we look ahead, we are immensely thankful for your continued support, and we look forward to expand culturally responsive trainings, both in different languages, but also providing interpretation and other providing services throughout the county and creating that awareness as well. As Corzo said, I have encountered a lot of individuals at tablings who have asked us about those magnets that are in Spanish, and they ask us if we do presentations in Spanish, and we unfortunately don't at this time. But I think in collaboration we can do something with interpreters to provide that support and or finding volunteers who might provide that support as well. Again, 988 is a free confidential service available for all residents, regardless of immigration status, regardless of what language you speak. Support can be found through that resource. It is available 24 hours, seven days a week, and it connects people to local support and resources that they'll need at any time. So my last stepping away message is don't wait. Call 988.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and do Taylor Coutts.

Good morning, members of the board. First and foremost, I'm a very proud wife. I'm glad you got to meet my partner in crime up there a little bit earlier. I'm his significant other, Taylor Kutz. And I'm honored to serve as director of Felton's Peninsula Suicide Prevention, your local 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Center for San Mateo County. We've been doing this service for over 60 years. Our team is small but mighty, but over 96% of our staff have lived experience with mental illness, suicide, and suicide loss.

So this work is our heart's work.

I'm proud to be here today alongside Sylvia and our amazing county partners recognizing September's Suicide Prevention Month. This is more than a proclamation. It is a community commitment here in San Mateo County, ensuring people know that they are not alone and help is available. Peninsula Suicide Prevention is humbled to support our community across the continuum of care like Walter mentioned, prevention, intervention, and postvention, walking alongside folks and uplifting them through some of their hardest moments. supporting folks and communities after crisis or loss, and ensuring that folks are connected to one another and services so that we can prevent crisis from happening. Suicidality is often an area of stigma, but struggling to find meaning and hope and connection when things feel heavy is one of the most universal human experiences, and we should be talking about it. This September, we invite everyone to help create a community where conversations about suicide are met with compassion and connection and hope without judgment. And we thank you all for your continued support and partnership with our work in this cause. This work cannot be done in isolation. And together, we can remind San Mateo County that help is available and hope is possible and worth it. And no one has to carry this weight alone. Thank you.

Thank you, and we'll go ahead and go to Zoom. For speaking on item number four, this is going to be a final call for item number four. All right, we have four hands raised. Natalia, please unmute and begin.

Hello. As we approach suicide prevention months and overdose awareness day, I would like to stress how critical it is to select a quality, well-vetted providers of mental health and addiction treatment services. With that, I urge this board to immediately withdraw our county's endorsement and matching grant for Horizon Recovery Services. In my city, they manage facility that has egregious operating history.

Natalia, I'm going to please ask you to speak to this item only and reserve your comments on Horizon for when that is the actual item.

I wasn't able to speak in a public comment, and you're not letting me speak now?

If you are going to speak to Suicide Prevention Month, you can speak.

It is, like Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Services.

If you want to speak to Suicide Prevention Month, please continue your comment. If not, we will move on to the next public commenter.

Okay, can you restart my time? Okay, so yeah, it's critical to vet providers of mental health and addiction treatment services. And I'm urging this board to immediately withdraw our county's endorsement and matching grant to Horizon Recovery Services.

Okay, let's move on to the next speaker, please. Thank you.

All right, we'll go ahead and go to Leticia Bito and then Legia. Leticia, please unmute and begin.

Good morning. My name is Leticia Abido Leti. I serve on the Behavioral Health Commission. I've also been a part of the Suicide Prevention Committee. And I just wanted to lend my voice in appreciation and support Really, I could have possibly spoken for even, you know, the overdose, the previous proclamations. It just really, as a San Mateo resident and engaged community member, it just makes me very proud to know that, you know, as Taylor just shared, just really displays the commitment that we have as a county to care for our most vulnerable. And, you know, there is a lot of education. I know there's certainly resources that I'm most proud of. You know, as I sit on the Behavioral Health Commission, we are often seeing really witnessing firsthand and as advocates here in the community, it really just gives us immense, yeah, just really pride in that what we see is a lot of collaboration, the community partners, there's unity, and it really does take that. As was shared previously, each individual each of us can make a difference as we are aware of the loneliness epidemic. It is real nationally. And these are the types of ways in which celebrating proclamations as these, the training, education, and coming together as a community partner, I think just really makes the difference. So thank you.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and go to Ligia Andrade and then Isabel. Ligia, please unmute.

Good morning, supervisors, President Corso, staff, and the public. My name is Ligia Andrade Zuniga. I use she, her, I have pronouns. I am the executive director at the Center for Independence of Individuals with Disabilities. And I'm also a board trustee for the San Mateo Union High School District. I wanted to, and I've been a member of the Suicide Prevention Committee as well. I just want to say thank you to the board for having this recognition. This committee is so important for our county, for information, education, and awareness. We have a significant population of folks within our disabled community that have a lot of anxiety, depression, a lot of mental health needs related to losing their benefits, related to even just being isolated and losing their in-home care right now is a really critical time for our community. in being present and being seen and just having the services that they need to feel connected. As a person with a disability, I can speak to my own lived experience of not having enough care and how it relates to your mental health. It's very scary and it is extremely lonely and isolating. So I just want to say thank you to the board again and to the committee for including folks with disabilities within this topic. And then also to not forget that our community is also unseen and vulnerable. So thank you very much. And I'm grateful.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and conclude with Isabel. Please unmute and begin.

Hi, I wanted to start by thanking the Board of Supervisors for recognizing September as Suicide Prevention Month and for continuing to bring attention to such an important work through San Mateo County. Also, a special acknowledgement to Sylvia Tang and San Mateo County BHRs for bringing awareness, education, resources, and just hope to our community. And to Sylvia for her continued dedication and hard work in bringing people and partners together in support of suicide prevention. So, thank you.

Thank you, and that concludes public comment.

Okay, thank you so much for bringing this forward, Supervisor Canepa, and I'd love to hear a motion. Sure, I'll move the item. Okay, thank you. We have a motion and second. Roll call vote, please. Supervisor Speer? Aye.

Supervisor Mueller? Aye. Supervisor Gauthier?

Yes.

Supervisor Canepa?

Aye.

And President Corzo? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, we will now present the proclamation. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to item number five, presentation on the impacts of an ongoing structural deficit for Caltrain. And Supervisor Canepa is the sponsor.

Great. Thank you very much. And first of all, let me thank our Executive Director, Michelle Bouchard and Casey Frumson, who we'll be hearing later from. Today, Caltrain carries a total... of three freeway lanes worth of people during peak periods on Highway 101, where traffic is already at 93% of pre-pandemic levels at rush hour. Although Caltrain is one of the peninsula's greatest transportation assets, it is approaching a serious fiscal cliff that could have major consequences for San Mateo County residents. The concern is especially striking because Caltrain is succeeding. Ridership is growing, customer satisfaction is strong, and the new electrified system is providing faster, cleaner, and more reliable service. We also know that Caltrain is a key driver of economic activity for cities and businesses in San Mateo County. with increased property values for commercial and residential properties located near stations. Yet, without a stable long-term source of funding, Caltrain could face an annual operating deficit of approximately $75 million and potentially significant service reductions in the coming years. The consequences could be dramatic. The elimination of weekend service, trains running only once an hour, station closures, earlier service endings, and fewer transportation options for families, workers, students, and seniors. That would mean more cars on Highway 101, more traffic, and more pollution. It would also undermine the tremendous public investment already made to modernize and electrify this critical rail system. As a Caltrain board member, I believe maintaining a strong transit system is an investment in our environment, economy, and quality of life. With that, I'd like to welcome Michelle Bouchard and Casey to say a couple words. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Canepa, and thank you so much for your service on the Caltrain Board. President Corso, supervisors, I'm here to basically introduce Casey, who's going to be doing the heavy lifting on this presentation, but I did want to emphasize a few things that the supervisor mentioned in his introduction of this item. We are close to two years after having launched electrification, and I think by all accounts, Really, the investment that was made in the railroad really has transformed the service. This year, we were just announced APTA's outstanding transportation agency, and that's amongst all of the transit agencies in the United States. And it really does bear out the benefit and the transformational quality of electrification. We also have been named the fastest growing transit agency in the United States, and that's as a result of having trip times that are much shorter, having a world-class environment on board the train, and all of the other associated benefits that electrification has brought. um as you emphasized supervisor the benefits do not just accrue to our riders they accrue to all of the stations where property values are enhanced and they also accrue to folks who are using 101 and 280 because we are taking three lanes of traffic we are unfortunately at an inflection point and casey's going to present some slides that we have been talking to the cal train board about for the last several months and have been preparing for what is an unfortunate, as we call it, fiscal cliff for the last few years. And Casey's going to tell you all of the steps that we've taken to put ourselves in the best possible situation in terms of lowering costs, and increasing efficiencies. And we do hope that there will be an opportunity for us to receive additional funding toward the end of this year. And Casey will talk about what we will continue to do to make ourselves a better railroad, but also will describe some of the unfortunate consequences that we're facing. So with that, I will introduce Caltrain's Chief of Staff, Casey Frobson.

Good morning, everyone. Casey Frommsen, Chief of Staff. I'll go ahead and jump into the presentation, hopefully. OK, perfect. You guys know the organization well, so I'm not going to go into that. But it's worth repeating here that when we've done information about the corridor, we have an 82% favorability rating that's up there with babies and libraries. And if you ride the system, it's even better. I mean, we're putting out a real world-class system. And Caltrain is something that's part of everybody's, not everybody's, but for millions of people, actually. It's part of their daily existence. And they take it to go to school, to work, to special events. You know, it's part of the fabric of their day. And as it's been mentioned, it's not just a daily part of people's lives. We really do have these big regional benefits from removing traffic to making a stronger economy, serving people. almost 40% of the Bay Area population and cleaner air when we think about the future generations and what our goals are. We have a system that's 100% renewable electric. And this slide talks about some of those benefits too. We're trying to think not just from our perspective, but what are we doing for our communities in the region, higher property values, contributing to the local tax base across the corridor so people are able to invest those resources in other activities as well. We have lots of major initiatives along the corridor that's highlighted on the left side, but I wanted to call out one smaller one where we're thinking about how we do all of these projects. How do we do them more cost-effective with innovation? So we're using a technology right now that helped us at one of the crossings see what was happening there, and we realized that there were three vehicles a week turning onto the tracks in that location. We worked with the local city, we worked with the technology providers to make sure they can enhance the audio when you go across the tracks. And then we invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions, hundreds of thousands of dollars with these cost-effective tools and the items that you have up there. And we've had zero cars on the tracks since then. And that's over a year and a half since we put that in place. And we're rolling that out throughout the corridor to make it an even safer corridor. And everybody's talked about it, but that three-legged stool and what people want for their service, it's faster, it's more frequent, it's a better experience. And the fourth one, which is a bonus, is that it is a great, reliable system. 95% you can actually time your schedule, your day, your weekend around a service that's going to show up when you need it to be there. As we've talked about with growing ridership, we have lots of different numbers to cut this and show how much growth that we've had. But we see it not just kind of on the people using it to get to and from work, but we have the highest weekend ridership ever in the system. So it's a 200% increase from what it was even pre-pandemic. And then we're also seeing people taking it to different events. sporting events, concerts. It's a service with the system that we have that you can use it for a lot of different activities. We have a dollar youth fair that is teaching the future generations how important transit is, and they're bringing their parents on board as they use it as well. And then you'll notice that our ridership has diversified too, as we have a system that works for more people's schedules. Nearly 40% are low income, 10% youth, seniors, and people with disabilities. And again, every single city is seeing this increase because we've expanded what our service increases are for everybody. We know that our partnerships with cities are really critical. They have the ability to help shape how communities interact with each of our stations. So we put a special focus on our relationship with them. And we've heard from cities, too, that they know they do some of these activities not just because it benefits the railroad. They really do it because it benefits their community and how it interacts with their downtowns and the other cities. local businesses that we have there. So we're really leaning into this partnership and going to each of the cities along the corridor and also highlighting the lovely amenities and things that happen in these communities, making it a win-win for cities as well as for Caltrain. So shifting gears, that was a lot of the positive points that are happening with Caltrain, but we have to be realistic about what we're facing as well. So this one just shows the dramatic increase in ridership that we've seen. In 2020, we had 2% of the ridership we had. We have this great trend that's occurring, but it's not quite what it was in 2018, 2019. Fares are a big piece of the puzzle for us. We used to have 70% of our budget covered from fares. That was bringing in roughly $100 million. Today, it's closer to $40 million. This is still nation-leading for a transit system. Most systems don't bring in and cover that much with fares, but it's certainly not what it was before. And we get to that bigger number for a couple different reasons. Commute patterns have changed. People are not going into the office five days a week. We still see a high watermark in the Bay Area of three days a week. Ridership is growing, but it's not as much as it was before. Costs have risen with inflation. And we do have another 50 plus miles of new infrastructure that we have in place that we have to maintain with our new electrified system that we didn't have before. So again, this is kind of what it looks like over time, and we know that we really need to manage this carefully. So what we're doing is we're looking internally first. What are we doing to be a well-run organization that's looking everywhere for cost containment strategies? That means strategic hiring freezes, a comprehensive cost reduction efficiency program. We held our operator contract, which is the largest part of our budget, to previous year's levels, which really looks like a cut then. We have crewing efficiencies. We're recouping costs from electricity. We're sending back 40% of our electricity to the grid, and 25% of it is actually what goes there. And we weren't getting paid for that until recently with help with some of our elected officials. So we appreciate that support. We also have looked at the past. MTC recently did a study that showed that over the past five years, Caltrans saved roughly $70 million on cost containment strategies. And just this month, the federal government, essentially the triennial review is an audit of our system, and they found no findings. That means that we are doing business to the best of our ability and really being transparent and doing it well. But we need to look on the other side as well. How can we monetize all of the assets we have so we're making sure we're bringing in revenue from different sources? On this slide, it shows kind of a variety of the elements that we're looking at, everything from the short-term items of these special events, parking, advertising, to the ones that are longer term of leasing out fiber optic cable, TOD. These are things that we need to look for in the long run to continue to make sure that we have a strong financial future for Caltrain. So as Michelle said, we have been talking to our board for many, many months about this and what it looks like. In June, our board adopted a framework for what we need to look at. And this is giving us two paths. If in November there is a successful outcome, we will be able to continue the level of service that we have been providing and the quality that we know that provides the region. If it is not, and there is not another external source of funding, then we will have to prepare and look at what those cuts could look like and being transparent about what that could mean. So we've presented to the Caltrain board these options. Again, today, the service frequency that we have, but what we have been talking about is hourly service, going back to that, no weekend service, early shutdowns, no special events, and station closures. This is not something that we do lightly because we know, especially for a rail system, this doesn't help us in the long run. It actually will start the downward spiral when we have less riders and less revenue. And then the last slide here is that we are calling this an inflection point. We certainly are not taking this issue lightly, and we're going around to the different cities and to the Board of Supervisors to make sure that we're here to answer your questions, to know what we're thinking about, and being prepared for what comes ahead. So with that, we're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you so much, Supervisor Mueller.

I do have a question, and I've wondered about this because the special event trains for for the giants are actually very popular. They're also very full. And I've always wondered why it was threatened that you would be canceling trains that were full. Why is that?

Yeah, I think that it's really with a gap as big as the one that we're looking at, no one small piece is going to do it. You have to look at all the different kind of levels of where we would have to pull the trigger for that. I think we will also have a more detailed analysis if we need to come back in January of what does the detail look behind these major kind of elements we're talking about. I don't know, Michelle, if you want to add anything on to it.

I'm going to be honest. That logic doesn't really carry for me. The Giants Day trains, which happen throughout the season, are full trains. Yet the public is being threatened with those special event trains being canceled. I don't understand the logic if they're full and they're actually some of the fullest trains Caltrain has.

They're also the most expensive types of trains to put out on the service because we're operating all of it at overtime.

Can you get a little closer to the mic, please?

We're operating it all at overtime. But why would you be operating at overtime if you were canceling trains that weren't full?

Because it wouldn't be part of the regular service. Every train that we operate beyond what is planned for. So if we have to go to hourly service, that is what we will be bidding out with the crews. And so anything else that is added on top of that would be at overtime.

But why wouldn't you be scheduling, if you're canceling, if you're doing service reductions and you're getting rid of trains that presumably aren't full and paying for themselves, why would you not add into regular service the trains that you're calling special event now, which are full and producing revenues?

Yeah, so to be clear, when you talk about that logic, we won't be operating express trains either anymore because we are obligated to provide coverage.

That's not answering my question. I wasn't talking about express trains.

But those are also the most crowded trains. So I just wanted to draw a parallel to what we're trying to do, which is we have to basically strip the service down to the most efficient service possible. Because we don't make money on any of the service.

So you're saying you don't make money. So I'm still lost. So you're saying that you would be canceling your most high-demand trains, right?

Yes, because we have to provide the most efficient service. It's high demand. It's also the highest cost. And the cost is higher than the fares that we're getting on board those trains.

I don't, so we can revisit this at Caltrain, but that frankly just doesn't make logical business sense.

We're happy to sit down with you and share the numbers.

Okay. Thank you for responding to those questions. I have a couple myself as well. So I have a few questions, and I kind of want to speak in layman's terms just for folks that are new to transit. One of the examples that I like to share with folks, especially that are not from the Bay Area, that are like, why is our transit in jeopardy? I don't get it, right? So folks that come from other parts of the country or the world, for example, It's very foreign to them that our public transit systems are fare-based, that they're funded by fares, and that that's why we find ourselves in this situation where we are at fiscal cliffs. That's like the most basic way I can explain it to people because in other areas where transit is very reliable and like much more frequent service, it's usually more like community funded or government funded, like has different funding sources. Do you feel like that's like part of the core issue here or...

Absolutely. The subsidies that we get today compared to many other places are dramatically different.

Okay. And so because our systems are mostly fair-based and funded by fairs, we face the reality that after the pandemic, with so many people working from home, we have not been able to get back to pre-pandemic ridership, correct? Correct.

Okay.

Yep. Okay. And so now, basically all of the Bay Area transit operators are in these, you know, fiscally dire situations. And even, as you were saying, the most... I forget what term you were saying, like the most... Yeah, the highest in demand trains, which are the most expensive, including express, which kind of blows my mind, would be would no longer be available to people because they're they're just more expensive to operate. So can you can you give me an example of like, let's say an hourly that stops at every stop versus an express like how what's the difference in the cost to operate those, for example?

Yeah, so when you cost it out, you have to cost it out as a complete system. So the most expensive type of service to operate is in the peak period because you're operating a lot of trains all at once. And so we're not able to use the crews as efficiently as if we're operating trains once an hour repetitively. And so to give you the answer, well, this train that operates five minutes before this train costs this much, It's difficult to do on a train-by-train basis because we have to take the entire system cost into account. But the fact is you're probably using the peak period cruise to probably only operate two trains, but you're still paying them eight hours versus if you're operating a steady amount of trains throughout the day. So no peaking. And that way, believe it or not, the crews can be used more efficiently. But you just can't provide the type of service that would be express or would be peaked service.

Okay. And then, like, for special events, like... I mean, that changes every season, right? And you don't really, like, what does that communication look like for, like, the Giants games or the Warriors games? Like, how much notice do you get on those schedules?

Sure. So we do it on a year-by-year basis. This year, initially, because we were operating the half-hourly service, we didn't anticipate providing any additional service. But then once we found that a lot more people were riding the train, then we added service. So we added service, I think it was at the beginning of the season, this season, but we were able to handle the loads without extra service last year because of the half-hourly service. So it all depends. Right now we find ourselves in positions where we are providing more rides to all sorts of different types of events on the peninsula. So as an example, we have partnerships with the Sharks and Bay FC. For those games, we don't require extra trains because of the loads.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Canepa, did you have questions? Yeah, I do. Okay, please go ahead.

Michelle, thank you for the presentation. You know, I've seen, I take Highway 1 quite frequently. I take it a lot. I've seen traffic pick up quite a bit. Can you speak to, I think a lot of the, I've sort of, my work has been sort of focused in this area. You know, I sat on MTC, Caltrain, and Samtran. So we understand that it's just not a Caltrain issue. When you look at the the merits of the problem. It's, it's a ridership, ridership issue. There are a lot of things. It's just not here in San Mateo County. We're talking about Muni. I think the, you may want to correct me, the estimated costs in terms of transit and not having the, the dollars they need is, you know, beyond $350 million. And so my question to you is, we know that in the Bay Area, 90% of people, they're not taking public transit. They're driving to work. Some are. I'm not saying not everyone. But a majority of the riders, they drive their vehicles. I think where my concern lies is more of on a practical level. What I'm concerned about is and maybe it's in my self-interest, right? Maybe, you know, sometimes you speak from that point of view, is if we don't have Caltrain operating, especially, you know, in Santa Clara, San Francisco, in San Mateo counties, all of those people have to go somewhere. And that somewhere is is our freeways. And so what we take for granted now, and then maybe you could talk about where ridership is, that's a real concern for me. The other is more sort of based from a business perspective, right? I mean, so we look at employers, right? A lot of our employers in San Mateo County, Genentech, you know, you look at Meta, you know, west of, you know, 101, there are a lot of people who rely on this service as well. And so to me, when I look at your structural deficit, where I have a tremendous amount of empathy in serving on Caltrain, I really worry about our highways, especially 101, being flooded with cars. And so can you just speak to that? Have you done any modeling? Have you really looked toward the impact if if Caltrain was to stop. And then finally, you were having a hard time answering Supervisor Mueller's question, so let me kind of answer it for you a little bit. One of the issues, I think, and we've talked about this, and maybe you can sort of add a little bit of flavor to what he asked, was we talked about the frequency, right? The ability to get trains going at a sort of rhythm, a sort of mode. If it comes to Express and if it comes to these Giants games, that's not even on the table because if we do not receive the dollars for transit, you won't have, you're not going to have transit. You're going to have to shut down stations. And my issue, Supervisor Mueller, with staff, you know, is that we've been painting this picture that, and they're working towards it, that everything is is great. No, not everything is not great. If this doesn't work out, Caltrain, and I know staff has gone through different models, very responsible, Caltrain could potentially close. And as a board member, I firmly, I know it's hard to believe, but I firmly believe it can happen. You'll have service that will, even if you take the service right now, Michelle, and we dwindle it all the way down, it's a problem. You don't have the revenue. You don't have the ridership. And to me, that's a problem. I wasn't trying to be hard on you, Michelle. But I know you've taken this position of being sort of balanced and providing alternatives as a responsible CEO. But the general public, they have no idea what's going to happen until we don't have that $75 million. And that $75 million is $75 million over 10 years. which is $750 million. And I know people, they love, I love Caltrain. It's my favorite transit system. Don't tell April Chan, I'll get in trouble. But I love the clean trains. I love how fast they move throughout the system. It would be a shame if it's not funded. So I appreciate that and I'll get back to you.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Mueller.

Yeah, so I just, so I'm going to be very careful not to talk about what's happening in November because I don't think that's appropriate in this setting or the money that might come from it. May or may not. But what I do want to say to you all is I think that as I look at this and the question I think Caltrain has to grapple with in these presentations that they're giving and what they're messaging to the public is that there is no recognition that instead of canceling peak time service when the freeways would be full if it wasn't there, or the Giants service, which is full, whether or not Caltrain, if it was put in this position, would move to hourly service instead or to an on-demand service and reallocated staff resources from hours when there weren't that many people riding to the train to the peak commute hours and the hours when people actually ride the train to the Giants game. And that is the fundamental thing that I think most taxpayers, when they look at what's being presented to them at this time, think that seems hollow. Why isn't Caltrain talking about reduction of service during non-peak hours? And that's something that just hasn't been addressed and I think has to be grappled with.

Supervisor, we'll be very happy to include messaging with respect to that because obviously it's not clear. A train does not cost the same as it does in the off-peak as it does in the peak period. And there's no period during the day that we cover 100% of our costs. even with enhanced ridership. So I can't take an off-peak train, push it into the peak period to provide more capacity there because it will cost much more than it's costing if I'm operating it during the day.

But that's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm asking you to do is, I'm not even asking you to do it, but what I'm asking you to consider is canceling the off-peak train and taking the staff hours that you say are so expensive and reallocating them to the peak period so you can keep the peak period going. I'm not asking you to add trains to peak. I'm asking you to simply reallocate staff time. Because you say it's so expensive to run the peak cars because of staff time. So there must be some cost savings by canceling non-peak empty trains. And that's not being accounted for in the discussion with the public.

Supervisor, I'll take your comment as feedback.

So can I just ask a question here? Supervisor Mueller and Supervisor Kennepa are on the Caltrain board. So Supervisor Speer? So only Supervisor Kanepa is on the Caltrain board? Do we normally have one? We've always only had one.

Oh, interesting.

OK. OK. Just was wondering, Supervisor Speer, did you want to make a comment?

Yeah, first of all, thank you for the presentation. I think you know my great love of Caltrain. The money we got for the baby bullet, the money we got for electrification, I'm a big fan. I am not a big fan of the internecine warfare going on between Caltrain and Samtrance. We spend so much time trying to deal with a reality that exists, that Samtrans has the right to manage the two agencies as long as it wants based on an MOU. But there is constant efforts to undermine that. And I know you're in a rock and a hard place because you have a JPB that is trying to wrest the power from Samtrans. But at some point, we're all public employees. We all have to work together. And I think it undermines your efforts to want to get more financing when there's all this quibbling going on constantly. And I find that half the time I feel I'm on the Caltrain board only because the issues that Sam Trans is dealing with are all about governance. So I'm hoping that as part of all of this, we're going to find a way for everyone to work together. And for the representatives from Santa Clara and San Francisco that feel that they want to be in charge when it was Sam Trans that purchased the right-of-way, Sam Trans that has basically kept it alive, I think we should make that very clear. And while your job is to make everyone happy on the Caltrain board, part of it is getting some adult representation that is going to stop the power grab that goes on that is not productive.

I'm going to jump in here and just say that As one of our county's representatives on the County Transportation Authority, I'm actually a little confused about some of what is being discussed here. And I think maybe we should, at the County Transportation Authority, which does have a purview and actually provides funding to all of The transportation operators in our county have a discussion there about all of the things that are being discussed here and try to kind of level set. I don't know that we should continue to do that here and now. But I do appreciate that we have brought information here to the public on, you know, what Caltrain is facing, some of the future decision points, also some of the amazing... improvements to the Caltrain system. And I had no idea, for example, that there are now like private trains that people can take to, not private trains, private cars. Did I get that wrong? Private cars that people can take to the Giants game? Did I miss?

No, but as part of our, as looking at other funding sources, we are looking at, you could buy a charter train and like rent it for that. But today provides service to many different things.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So why don't we wrap this up? Go ahead, Supervisor Canepa.

First of all, let me just, you know, let me just thank you, Michelle and Casey. You know, I want to say this, you know, I have four months left, but it's been an honor and a privilege to serve on the Caltrain board. Yeah, we represent different counties, but I think through our body of work and through your leadership, Michelle and Casey, we've actually shown how to get things done on a regional level, whether it's dirt on, whether it's what's going on on 4th Street in San Francisco, whether it's looking at various fair strategies. We have a very hardworking staff. We've done a lot, but as you know, my experience 18 years through various boards, this board will soon feel it, and I'll soon feel it in my position. When resources aren't there, that's when it gets extraordinarily challenging. And so when you talk about $75 million and you talk about what the operating budget is, then you talk about capital costs. You can try to reduce service as much as you can. You could try to identify efficiencies. I've seen so many slides at Caltrain about this. It's $75 million. You just can't do it. You need the revenue. And then if you do cut service, and here's where we talk about the spiral, the spiral is clearly this. Once service is cut, what happens? You're not going to have the trains. You're not going to have the people to service. There what happens is the fares are then reduced. So you compound a problem by not having it, by having other issues, because you don't have ridership. And so I'm proud of what we've done. Yeah, the issues on governance, of course. Um, we've had some conversations, Michelle, right about it. We've talked about it, but I think what we've done is we've talked about in such a way and a respectful way, um, with our colleagues to kind of figure the, you figure things out and things are tracking and make no mistake about it. Where Caltrain resides is where Sam trans resides, where shared service resides and staff and the provision and division of staff members. They sit in a beautiful building that was just built or just occupied by Caltrain a couple months ago. So I'm proud of what we've done at Sam Trans. I'm proud of what we're doing on Caltrain. And this is not easy, what you're embarking on. I'm glad you started with us first, and you'll move on to other cities. But we do have a problem, and it does need to be solved. So thank you, Madam Chair.

okay thank you i believe this was a presentation only so we do need to take public comment but no action is required thank you for the presentation um we'll begin public comment now all right i do not have any speaker cards for chambers so we'll be going to zoom for item number five for public comment if you'd like to speak please raise your hand at this time right we have call-in user if you can please identify yourself and please unmute to begin

Hello, my name is Gord Orbison, and I hate training so much.

Okay, we're going to go to the next speaker. Okay, that concludes public comment. OK, moving on to the next item. Item number, oh, give me one second. That's what I get for looking ahead in the agenda.

Item eight?

Item eight? Oh, OK. So yes, item number six and seven are set for a specified time. So we'll be moving on to item number eight, which I'll be handing over to Lee Pullen to speak on in-home support services. So please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, President Corso, members of the board, and Mrs. Callagy-Niblin and mates. Leigh Pullen, Aging and Disability Services, the Division of County Health. Before we begin our very short presentation here, congratulations on Women's Equality Day. Beautiful and moving. We are here on just a procedural matter. It's required by CalPERS, which provides retirement benefits for our IHSS public authority staff. And Nicole McKay, who's our retired, sort of, former employment, labor and employment manager, with human resources has been helping us with some of these negotiations. So just a little bit of context for members of the public. In-home supportive services, also known as IHSS, is a Medi-Cal program that provides in-home care support for people of any age who are experiencing disabilities or functional limitations. and need the help at home so they can avoid institutional care. The public authority is a separate but adjunct agency for which this board serves as its governing body. The public authority serves to support IHSS clients and care providers by maintaining a registry for folks who may need to find a care provider. to administer health care benefits to our care providers and to act as the employer of record when we get to the negotiation period for wages. Again, this is a procedural matter that CalPERS is requiring for us to present to you rather than it be on consent, if you're wondering why. And I'm going to turn it over to Nicole, who's been doing all the lifting on this.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome. As Lee said, we are asking you to give consideration today to an additional procedural requirement, and this is required by CalPERS, who provides the retirement benefits to our 19 public authority employees. No benefits changed by this action. If it seems familiar, it is. We were here before you in January with basically the exact same presentation. At that time, it was because CalPERS required us to have you adopt that you intended to make this change. At this point, we're asking that you sign the paperwork to actually make the change. This only changes who provides the monetary benefits should there be a pre-retirement death. Previously, this group had those provided through CalPERS. In 2021, this group moved over to Social Security, and this pre-retirement benefit now moves to that side. So should there be a – this has nothing to do with their actual retirement benefits. This is only that pre-retirement death benefit. Once they moved into Social Security, CalPERS began this process. We are now five years later, hopefully at this point, with your approval, finishing this process. At this point, I'll take any questions.

Thank you so much. Any questions from the board? OK, hearing no questions, I'll just say thank you so much for bringing this back to us. We know this is an important program. And folks receiving these services and the support from your department definitely need it. So appreciate this coming before us. We will move on to public comment.

Taking public comment on item number eight. I do not have any speaker cards from chambers. And if you'd like to speak on Zoom, please raise your hand at this time. Seeing no hands, no public comment.

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve this item? Thank you. Roll call vote, please. Supervisor Speer?

Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Yes. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corso? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you. We will now move on to item number nine, which is a resolution to authorize county funding and agreements for Horizon Recovery Services proposed recovery center at 826 Muller Road in Burlingame. And we will also be taking item number 17. There is a presentation by County Executive Callagy. And then we will be welcoming both Dr. Jay Africa and Eliseo from Horizon.

Thank you, President Corso and members of the board. I'll make this very quick and just go through the background very quickly. Also, as you all remember, the site of Bayshore and Mahler was the former sobering station run by Samaritan House. We had potential acquisition discussions April 7th, 2026, following by the board approval The county purchased a building on June 12, 2026. And then a framework has been developed for transfer approved by the Board of Supervisors on July 2. So there's two issues here. The first one, and I'll have... Dr. Africa, elaborate on that, if you desire, is the matching funds by the county of the 10 percent. When when Horizon originally went to the Department of Health Care Services for this grant, Bishop Grant, They were going for $20 million, and the match would have been $2 million of the opioid settlement, which was approved by the board. They actually ended up receiving $25 million. So the grant, we're asking for that to be approved for another $500,000 for that matching 10% of $2.5 million. And again, that would come out of the Opioid Settlement Fund. In regard to 17, the outline of the transaction, the county would enter into, we're proposing the county enter into ground lease with Horizon to grant immediate site control to the Horizon for the portion of the Mallard property. The county would retain two buildings in the parking area on the site for its own programs. yet to be determined. And the lease would continue with the county as we pursue the legal subdivision of the land. Ideally, we would complete that by 2027. And in that way, with this ground lease, Horizon could immediately commence construction of a suitable new facility on their portion during the lease term. Still be working out the lease amount, but whatever it was, it would be applied to the purchase price of $2.74 million for that portion of the land. The property would be restricted permanently. for use as a rehabilitation facility for up to 30 years. Um, and the reason we're here before you today is because horizon must demonstrate site control to the state of California for that facility to be deemed feasible and for the grant dollars to transfer to the Mueller site. Um, and, uh, Certainly, what we're asking is for an intention to demonstrate the Board of Supervisors' approval of the Horizon Site Control and then the 10% match for the B-SHIP grant. A couple of areas that we're working through with Horizon still is really – and we just didn't have time to finish this and present it to the board – is the easement on the property, the exact lease terms, indemnification clauses, insurance issues, and transfer taxes. And we'll be working in the near future to do that. So what I'm asking by resolution for the board to approve the ground lease in form of purchase and sale agreement and delegate – To me, the authority to modify and amend both transaction documents as necessary and effectuate the intent of the transaction and to increase that contribution to Horizon by the $500,000 to fully comport with the 10% match of $25 million by contributing $2.5 million. Happy to answer any questions. Dr. Africa is here, and certainly Horizon is here to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, any questions from the board? Dr. J., Africa, would you like to say anything? Eliseo Becerra is also here from Horizon.

Well, thanks for, I'll be quick. It really is sort of an important opportunity for us because we know that there is a critical need for these kinds of programs in our community. And so it was the first issue of the new amount is really more of a timing issue because when we applied, we were more, Horizon was costing it out and we didn't have the full amount. And the final award, which came months after we submitted the application, was $25 million. So basically, it's the adjustment. And then the last portion is to obviously designate, allow our chief and her designate to do all the negotiations as part of this process. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Eliso Becerra. I serve as the Chief of Special Operations for Horizon Treatment Services. So I wanted to begin by thanking the Board of Supervisors for the collaboration and partnership to see this project through for the needed services for your community. Also, with working with the executive leadership, it has been an honor to work in a process that is in good faith and has been nothing but gracious for the work that has been put into our project. I also want to thank the Behavioral Health Department for San Mateo County and the collaboration to see this project come to light. We did receive from the Department of Healthcare Services preliminary designation to be able to relocate into Burlingame. This is exciting news. We're excited to be able to see this project move forward and we'll be able to answer any questions you might have regarding the two items.

Thank you so much. With that, hearing no questions from my colleagues, why don't we go ahead and move on to public comment?

All right. We'll be taking public comment on item number 9 and 17. Do not have any speaker cards from chambers, so we will be going to Zoom. Please raise your hand at this time. And a final call for item 9 and 17. And I have Natalia. Please unmute and begin.

Yes, good morning, supervisors. I am asking you today to immediately withdraw our county's endorsement and matching grant to Horizon Recovery Services. They operate facility in my city in San Mateo, and that facility has just egregious operating history. Since opening in 2019, this facility has been suspended two times for severe violations of the health care code and the explicit falsification of records. Horizon has repeatedly jeopardized the lives and health of our most vulnerable residents and the county has repeatedly lost services for an extended period of time due to lengthy suspensions and license revocation proceedings. Allowing this organization to receive county backing directly violates San Mateo County's policies of ethical procurement. Horizon is an unreliable and high-risk provider that should be disqualified from receiving public contracts. I urge this board to immediately contact the grant agency and formally notify them that the information previously provided in letters of support from Supervisor Corso, J. Africa, and other county officials regarding Horizon's reliability was misleading. By continuing to back Horizon while fully aware of the licensure suspensions and current probationary status, this board is actively exposing our county to severe legal liability, which we cannot afford in this time of budget deficit. Protect our residents, safeguard our taxpayers, and shield our county from liability. I ask that you rescind the endorsement, cancel the matching grant, petition the state to take over the BHRS infrastructure grant, and deny any future contracts to Horizon Recovery Services.

Thank you. Thank you. And that concludes public comment.

Okay, bringing it back to our board for a motion.

I move approval of this item.

Thank you. Is there a second? Okay, second by Supervisor Speer.

I want to clarify that's both the items. Thank you. Thank you.

I have one question. We have addressed the concerns of Natalia as well. I just want to make sure that we go on record that her concerns have been addressed and we're not overlooking anything.

I would defer to Dr. Africa with respect to that.

Yes, just a reminder that the state actually provides sort of the licensing, so anything that, you know, any provider that we work with has to be licensed by the state, and the state sort of credentials, certifies them. So we have worked very closely with Horizon and continue to work with them in ensuring that none of the previous things have happened, and we have a staff that monitors and audits all of the things that are concerning to us on a regular basis.

Supervisor Mueller? Is it accurate they're on probationary status presently?

Right now they are because, Clara, how long are they on probationary? Yeah, we don't know where it ends. So when they issue, after a disciplinary action, they actually visited the site in San Mateo. They did an announced visit. And all the things that they were looking at, they sort of passed with great colors. But they still need to be on probation because I think there's a length of time that they have to remain in that state. But they did visit it this year and was okay. Maybe Eliseo can answer that.

I also served as the chief compliance officer for two years with the organization. So we have one year left on the probationary period. Like major health care institutions, like hospitals, these situations do happen. So the state provides additional watchful monitoring. we've been meeting all those standards when they come to visit with zero deficiencies which is quite amazing and astounding to say because we've worked really hard to fail forward and to be able to assume responsibility and make sure we're providing the most quality standard of care for our clients all right what i want to know and it's a question for county council so what happens

Worst case scenario, you fail to fail forward and you have another deficiency during your probationary standard and the license is revoked.

We would be able to address that depending on what the deficiency is. I can't speak exactly what would come about, but we are very watchful in monitoring those items that they're specifically looking for to audit ourselves. Audit consistently on a weekly basis. Our executive team is performing current audits. WE HAVE A DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS DOING SPOT CHECK AUDITS. WE HAVE AN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COMPLIANCE OVERSEEING THE COMPLIANCE MANAGER THAT WORKS AT THAT FACILITY. SO IT'S CONSTANTLY BEING MONITORED. WE ALSO HOST A TUESDAY CALL WITH EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP THAT I TAKE PART IN TO MONITOR THOSE AUDITS AND MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE MEETING ALL REQUIREMENTS FROM THE STATE. WHETHER IT'S TO FAIL FORWARD OR NOT, WE WOULD HAVE TO SEE WITH THE STATE, BUT WE WOULD BE CONTINUING ON WITH BUILDING OUT THE PROJECT.

And if I may, through the chair, Supervisor Murillo, it's a good question and one that we've contemplated also. The fact that the state has awarded Horizon a $25 million contract votes well for them and with the changes they've made. But the site is restricted for 30 years. So if they failed at some point in time, whether the state – um disallowed them to continue or they for some reason went out of business it would still have to be uh that site would still have to be used for um for uh rehabilitation purposes and we would then go look for another provider all right so but there's no there's no one we're not left in a position where there's any enrichment

the provider to the provider so I don't believe that would be the case I mean again they would be in violation of the terms of the grant for operating the site and as County Executive was indicating we would have remedies to exercise so I just want to jump in here real quick and say that you know I would I

I would challenge and actually, I don't know, Dr. J, if you can speak to, you know, the the norm for this kind of licensing, this kind of treatment, and how often, like, like, what's the norm for, you know, when issues arise in this kind of treatment facility?

President Corso, I really respect your line of questioning, but you jumped in the middle of my line of questioning, so I'd like to finish it. Thank you.

So what I'm trying to go ahead... Actually, you can pause for one second, okay? I'm the chair of this meeting now. When you're chair, you can do it your way.

So the chair exercises the right to interrupt another supervisor?

I'm going to finish my thought, okay? Thank you. So would you mind answering that question real quick, please?

I actually am not sort of familiar, but these are really difficult services, obviously. People are in need. And so I don't know the data, but maybe Clara, do you know any sort of data, like how often these things happen? But again, the state has a rigorous compliance plan. So the mere fact that they awarded Horizon meant that they had faith that this organization can provide the services. It doesn't count the fact that there were some issues a few years ago. And from what we have seen that they have addressed it, the state came unannounced a few months ago and had no issues. So that they still will need to be on probation for a while until that other year. But that is a normal practice that when your license is suspended, you have time to kind of recover and address the issue. And there's usually some time lag to do that. So they came to visit. My hope is they probably will come again until that next year. And then if they've proven that they've addressed the issue, then it will go forward.

Thank you, and I guess just to kind of take your point home a little bit more, Horizon delivers a lot of programming in the entire Bay Area, and this one site had some issues, but in the grand scope of all of their programs and services, the state still finds them to be a really high-quality service provider, gave them a $25 million grant, to do to run this program in our county and they are on track to get off of probation and continue to provide high quality services supervisor mueller

So first, I just want to say it's unfortunate that the president felt the need to interject.

Can you please just continue your questions? Like, let's just move on, okay?

No, I'm not going to.

Okay, let's have a show then. Go ahead.

As a point of order, when one supervisor is addressing and in the middle of a line of questioning, it's very important that no supervisor exercise power over that supervisor to interject or try to shape the discussion. I really think that we need as a board to go ahead and recognize that decorum. That being said, what I want to go ahead, and I'm not trying to argue against this, I'm just trying to make sure that we have the mechanism in place should this contract, now that I know your probationary status, should somehow your license be revoked. That we have the mechanism in place to make sure that the county is in good's position to go ahead and claw back any grant monies or any funding that has already been granted to the grantee. So do we have any clawback provisions for that grant? I realize it's a state grant, but for any of the funding that we are providing this project?

Just in candor, and I'd have to defer to anybody else who might have different information, I don't think the agreement contemplates the ability to claw back that $2.5 million. I think the notion is that the money is going to be used to move the grant forward, and there isn't any mechanism for that.

And, Supervisor, I think that that money would go towards the building of the building. Whoever came in subsequently and purchased that building would then take over that operation. So it would essentially still be a good investment if that other provider came in and took over the building. Okay. I'll let him pass, too.

You won't pass. Supervisor Speer.

Just for point of clarification, when were you put on probation?

The current probation was two years ago. I don't have the exact time.

So two years ago, you were put on probation because there was a death at the facility. Is that correct?

The original occurrence was back in 2021, and then there was a review of information. During that time, we were trying to build our compliance department out where there was a deficiency found, and then it was extended out three more years.

So during this period of time, when you applied for the grant, the state was aware of the fact that you were on probation.

They were aware, yeah. It was part of the application? Yes, DHCS is aware of all our records.

And they were confident in giving you a $25 million grant? Yes. Okay. Now, my question to you, County Executive, if in fact they were to fail, they would still be the owner of that property, which would mean that they would be able to receive rent from a subsequent provider of that service at that location for up to 30 years, correct?

I defer to the county attorney. I'm not that familiar with the terms of the proposed lease. I know that his office has been working on that.

Thank you. I think I'm going to ask my colleague, Mr. Fox, who actually was very involved in the drafting of the lease and some of the other related documents, to speak to the specific mechanisms at play here.

The ground lease as presently drafted does provide that they would have site control and they would be obligated to comply with the deed restrictions and the terms of the ground lease during the term of the ground lease so that it was being operated as a rehab facility as described by the state grant. So you are correct that they would have essentially a landlord position if they exercised the the purchase option, and they would receive the income stream from a tenant who would lease it and operate it consistent with the state grant. That's what's contemplated.

So if they chose to charge an exorbitant rent and we needed to make sure we provided those services in the county, we in the end would be picking up the tab.

I am not an expert in how the funding for rehabilitation services would work under such a circumstance. I believe that it would go to an RFP.

No, of course. But, I mean, in the end, the county will be paying for the services rendered there and...

It would not be obligated to fund a tenant who was using that particular facility. So, for example, if Horizon decided to charge an exorbitant rent, the county would not be obligated to issue an RFP to a replacement provider that sought to use that particular site. So that's the downward pressure on Horizon charging exorbitant rent at that site. There's no obligation on our part to site the facility there.

Do we have the ability then to require that if they were in a position where they became the landlord of a tenant who was providing these similar services, that the rent would have to be consistent with the rental rate at that point in time? Is that a provision that can be put into the agreement?

I think we could explore that. I think that we have to explore a little bit more to determine if the state would actually take the facility back because it's actually their grant money and they're required to operate for 30 years at least. So we can explore the way the grant is written. Additionally, we could also explore putting in a sale provision of the land if, in fact, their license is revoked and they're unable to operate, that they would sell the property within 90 days. We could explore that also. So there's various things that we can explore to ensure that we address your comfort level with this.

All right. Thank you.

So I do believe we have a motion and a second. Maybe... Before we do a roll call vote, I just want to say for a second that... You know, going back to when this first came to our board, the first vote that we took on this for the $2 million that was on consent, I just want to publicly apologize for how this board and how our community has treated Horizon. These are really difficult services to provide. We talked earlier today about overdose and drug treatment, and we were very celebratory and empathetic. And then, you know, we have a discussion about actually providing services and the difficulty of that, and the tone is different, and that's not lost on me. So I just want to apologize for that.

Roll call vote, please. I'd like to come in. Okay, go ahead So again, we got to talk about decorum So first off I think in going ahead and talking about what safeguards are within a contract Should there be a default is not to undermine the services that are being provided and that was not the intent of myself I'm sure that it was not the intent to supervise your spear and to indicate that because we are talking about what is contained in the contract and the issue default is somehow a negative disparagement is not accurate. And we want, obviously, we need these programs. They're very important. We're just simply trying to go ahead and make sure that we protect those valuable dollars in the event that there is a default so that we continue to provide those services to those who need them. And so I don't think that there's the need for us to go ahead and set up that sort of political dialogue in the passing of this. And I think for the decorum and the way for this board to get along, we should try to avoid that.

Okay. What I will say is that I have attempted... several times to pass a governance handbook for this board, and I have attempted to have a discussion about that. And for some reason, we as a board have been unable to do that. I would gladly do that, but that is not what we are here to do right now. I was speaking for myself when I made my comments right now and I said what I said. Let's do roll call please.

Through the chair, can I just say something because I brought it up and I just wanted clarity. We had somebody bringing up some accusations that I felt that we needed to just address before moving on and I think we've done that to have a better understanding of what you're bringing and what you're providing so it's not cloudy going into this final decision. So thank you for your presentation. Thank you for the clarity. I think the community deserved that as well.

And that's totally fair. Thank you. Supervisor Speer.

I would hope that when we speak, we don't speak on behalf of the board if the board has not made it clear that there's an apology that is appropriate. Secondly, I hope we've learned a lesson from this whole experience that putting a $2 million grant on consent is not advisable, that it should be on the regular agenda so that it can be properly vetted by the entire board moving forward.

Supervisor Gauthier, I apologize I didn't mention you in my comment. No problem. It was inadvertent.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Yes. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corzo?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously for number 9 and 17.

Okay, thank you. With that, we will move on to item number 9, and that is... A one second here. I think number 10. That is a resolution authorizing an agreement with Baker places, an adult crisis residential adult crisis residential services. And we have Dr. Africa here to present this item.

Again, thank you again for having me here, but really the item for consideration is a three-year agreement with Baker Places in an amount of $8,316,934 to provide crisis residential services to our county residents. If you remember last November, Redwood House closed DECREASE THE NUMBER OF ADULT RESIDENTIAL BEDS THAT WE HAVE. WE CURRENTLY HAVE 13 THROUGH OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH SERENITY HOUSE. WE WANT TO CONTINUE HAVING MORE ADULT RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT BEDS AND BAKER PLACES THROUGH AN RFP kind of understood sort of the philosophy that we wanted. Our hope is that as Redwood House 2.0 will be rebuilt, that we will find an alternative or a temporary so that we can have more of these beds. And the goal, again, is to be more co-occurring services. Redwood House only focused on mental health. And now with SB43, we want to be able to address people who have mental health and substance use conditions The staffing will be 24-7. They're really looking at providing beds for about 16 severely mentally ill, co-occurring over 18-year-olds. And hopefully, again, Baker Places will be able to look with a location for us and then also provide the temporary services as we rebuild Redwood House 2.0. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions from the board?

Yes, thank you, Madam President. I have one concern. We are basically giving this entity the power to find a location, sign an agreement, and provide services without knowing where the location is. And I don't want us to be in another situation where there's not transparency, where the community is not aware, and where we have given carte blanche authority to an entity without having the understanding that they have done the due diligence with the community and with the local city. So I would like to see the agreement amended to reflect that.

We definitely learned from the lesson before, and part of the contract stipulation would be to really be clear about what Baker Places will need in partnership with us and in the community to ensure that the issues that were brought up before don't happen again. We are also in the stipulation being very clear, kind of like a fee-for-service model, like what are the things that we're going to pay Baker places for versus just a blanket sort of contract. So we're being very, very clear the kind of deliverables in this process. But they would not engage with us, obviously, if there is no contract to kind of work together.

I don't think that answers my question. Does the agreement have a provision whereby there would be a public airing of the location with the community to assess the appropriateness of the location.

Sorry if I wasn't very clear. We are going to put it in the stipulation that community processes, communication, there will be a plan that will be shared across the county about what Baker Places will be doing and looking at for the location. Yes. So we will put that there.

But they're going to sign a contract with a third party for the property before that's even known, it sounds like, based on the way this is drafted.

Yeah, we are looking around. They are the experts finding a place that meets the criteria for a crisis residential treatment facility. Maybe I can work with our county council to ensure that. but they will not even engage in this process without a contract, we can be very clear about the expectation of that contract, including a community process, engaging the community, scouting the location. So we can be very, very clear about that.

No questions.

So are you done with your questions, Supervisor? Okay. Supervisor Canepa has a question. I have some questions as well. Supervisor Canepa.

Great. You know, I think that's a very fair point. You know, we've had issues sometimes in communities when it's come to land use, right, especially around what we just heard earlier. So I'd like to understand. I think I'm... You know, what's the plan? So my concern is and I know you're going to you're going to go back to staff and work with it. We want to push and move these projects forward into the communities. You know, one of the things I would suggest and I think I've talked to the county executive about this is when we go into communities and cities, you know, we should really engage with the council. the city council. City council should pass a resolution saying, look, we're in support of where this is. Once we get buy-in at the council level, they're going to be doing the community report. What ends up happening is is we put these um you know these facilities in communities that are not in unincorporated land and we find ourselves sort of like jello i mean because we're putting these facilities and really there isn't any sort of input from the community and so the reason i say that it protects the county Because the county now can say with these different facilities, look, we've gone to the city executive, we've gone to the city council, we've gone buy-in. I mean, what I'm concerned about, Dr. J., is that what we're currently doing right now needs to change. I mean, we have all this money through the state, through the passage of, is it Measure 1? What is it?

Is it BHSA? Prop 1.

Prop 1. We have this influx of money, but we're really not doing that sort of outreach. And so I don't want to relive the Mahler site. Again, it's complicating. It's confusing. And I think it's a best government practice to say to the city, we've identified this site. Do you support it? And that's just public policy 101, and it would save us a lot of problems as we move in with all this Prop 1 money.

Thank you.

So I have a different opinion here. I actually don't think that it is or should be our decision to influence where these sites are located. It shouldn't be political. It should be about what is best for the people receiving these services. And providers know how to make those decisions, not politicians. It shouldn't become a spectacle in a public forum in this way. It becomes really ugly. and so I do think that there should be, you know, some kind of community, community engagement. Um, but I don't think that, um, I don't think that it should be like a requirement written into a contract that, uh, I just get concerned that if we write it into this contract, then we have to write it into every single contract. And that delays and creates more and more hurdles. And it's completely contradictory to the intention of Proposition 1. And it creates local practice that is in complete opposition to the very existence of Prop 1 and what the voters intended when they passed that. What happened with Horizon and San Mateo is obviously not ideal either. It is election season. It was election season. It's still election season in that district right now. Guess what? The two people at the center of that are on the ballot for election right now. I think it's a very bad idea for us to tread water in that direction. I just think it's a really dangerous place to go. I think maybe we can have a more thoughtful discussion about this as a board. But I would ask our board now to, like, let's, we can talk more about it. I don't think this should go into this contract right now. But we should, you know, I think we talked about having a public process for how we as a county purchase property rights. Um, in incorporated areas, like let's have that discussion. And I would ask County executive Callagy to, um, bring that back as an agendized item for us to have a formal discussion and create a process that we then, um, share with our city partners. Um, And that extends to our vendors and properties that they purchase, but we should not do it now in this contract at random. So I would propose that and I'm just wondering how my colleagues feel about that.

So it's clear as mud to me, Dr. J, the process by which you're indicating there will be a stipulation. So I'm struggling with this. So we're going to stipulate that they're going to, with them and the contract, that they're going to go and do a community outreach process. But to what end?

So I think what I'm hearing is the concern from what, for example, happened at Horizon, that we didn't engage the community, we didn't kind of engage the city council, we didn't tell them in advance. So one of the things that we're going to do, which is really part of the community planning process, when we are building facilities that are needed in the communities, we tell people about the services, we answer the questions, you know, We try to give them sort of an overview, what's the process in place to keep people safe, so we hear all of that. So we're going to work closely with Baker Places to do that. One of the things that we'd like to do in their action to look for a location, we would just do that in the beginning as well. So not wait until the last moment, but really in this process, already partner with the entities that are in that district or in the cities.

but dr africa what happens if during that process the community concerns that might be raised or the city council concerns or the city planning concerns come back with substantive issues that affect with good reason the placement of the facility

Like any other place that we have, we try to really mitigate their concerns. So I also want to just make sure that what we're trying to do right now is just find a temporary location for as we rebuild the Redwood House, which is already a crisis residential in Redwood City. That's the ultimate goal is that that is rebuilt to be another crisis residential. Right now, we would be trying to engage to find in a location temporarily so we increase the beds from Serenity House, which is 13, to another 12. That's what we're paying. So when we are scouting for the location, we would engage with the community and the city council to say that this is what we're trying to do. Now, there are certain stipulations for these residential facilities or these facilities that we're building that we are allowed to do with, I don't know how I would say, not necessarily not input, but state regulations that allow us to build these facilities because of the state funding, for example, similar to the BCHIP grant.

Okay, but I want to make clear, the only avenue left to the board would be to try to mitigate whatever concerns were raised by the stakeholders through that community process. There would be no ability for the board or the county to indicate to the applicant that they cannot proceed at that location.

I'm actually going to ask County Council John if he can address that. I mean, my fear at the end of the day is that every location will not be suitable for any treatment facility because of what is happening. So we want to really partner as best as we can to answer community's concerns. That really is sort of my fear, but maybe John can answer if there's any questions.

Before we hand it over to County Council Niblin, County Executive Callagy would like to share some thoughts.

Yeah, I think if I may interject here and just set the record straight. So for every single property we purchased, we go to the city manager and to the city council. I would say that with the exception of the last purchase in Foster City, where we didn't go to the city council. but the city manager was made aware and presumably the city council was aware. But typically we sit down with the council members, we try to educate them. This is a process that has always going on and it has always been utilized. But to the point that you're trying to make, This has become so politically charged in every community that it's just easier for councils to say no and not here. And I've heard the same thing many, many times. These services are warranted. They're great services, just not here. Wrong location. So that is what we're up against. And these are vital services that we're required to provide. But I think where it's going to have to be at the end, and that's why I'm happy to work with the board on this, is that this board has veto right and that it has to be approved by this board no matter what the property is. And hopefully that this board would put you in a difficult situation, as it did last IN MILBRE AND OTHER AREAS, BUT THE BOARD VOTED TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THAT PROJECT IN THOSE AREAS. SO I THINK THAT CERTAINLY THAT COULD BE DONE IN THIS INSTANCE, TOO, THAT WHATEVER THE LOCATION IS, THAT THERE NEEDS TO BE BOARD APPROVAL FOR IT TO MOVE FORWARD. But I just want to, again, reiterate that we have always talked to the cities prior. In fact, many cases before even this board knew that we were looking at those locations because we wanted their input before we came to the board. And then we polled the board and determined if there's support. So that's the way it's always worked. But obviously we need to modify it because what we're doing now is simply not working.

So, and I thank you that for counting. So just to finish what I was saying, Indicating was and with my question then so I actually don't think the board needs to self Impose on itself the inability to go ahead and exercise that discretion I think you know it's not like it was It's not like the Burlingame was cheering when we put the facility in Burlingame I was I had many outreaches from folks who were unhappy it went in burlingame who i'm still interacting with on the fact that horizon is in burlingame but the board made the decision that that was the more appropriate place for the facility and the facility as of today is going forward so i don't think we need i think the board can make the decision appropriately where to go ahead and and place facilities so i am fine i i actually would like to see the board retain discretion

Supervisor Canepa.

Thank you very much. You know, the challenge here, and Jay, I don't think this is in your sort of area, is really the planning aspect of it. Mike, what I would encourage staff to do is to really work. The La Quinta was very challenging. The smaller, it was very challenging. I think we're finding ourselves in a position where we're always behind the eight ball. What we need to do is we need to work with our planning directors at the city level to identify with our real estate division what are the locations that they think make sense. And if we get out ahead of that and we work and understand what they've identified, I think that'll alleviate a lot of our issues. You know, I think land use... As a, you know, I'm very, you know, maybe it's very parochial or very old school. If you're coming to build something in unincorporated San Mateo County, or in my case, when I was in the city of Daly City, my main goal is to see what we can do to have the conversations, bring the people together, say to them in honest conversations, hey, we worked with our planning staff. Here's the sites that we've identified. Staff works in concert with the city manager or working with the county executive. We should be able, through deliberation and discourse, the city council should be able to say, hey, we have the best information besides us. Our planning staff has identified plan, you know, alternative A, B, or C. But by doing that, it gets us to a better outcome. And it would alleviate a lot of the issues that are before us. I'm not convinced, Mike, I'm not convinced that every city going to say no I'm just I'm not convinced that every City Council is going to say no what I am convinced is is that if we're able to bring them along bring them bring them along early then we would avoid the issues that we had with La Quinta and in Mahler and so I hear everyone's comments, but what we're doing now, and you recognize it in your closing, it's not working. It's tension. We're looking disjointed. We need to find a better process, and I'm glad that you've kind of acknowledged that we can do better in that area. I think it's needed.

And if I can respond, Supervisor, going back to the LaQuinta issue, We did extensive outreach. We had more meetings there than we had anywhere else. We had sit downs with the city council. We went to city council meetings. And yet, you know, that still fell apart. Yet the board voted to move forward with that three to two. And and that was the board's desire to move forward with that. So the problem being and we've had we've heard that before is like, let's help you find a different spot. Those buildings aren't for sale. It's not a good buy for the county. And we're always looking at trying to get the best buy for the county. There's no government zoning area in any city plan that I'm aware of. THAT DESIGNATES AN AREA FOR GOVERNMENT TO BE IN. SO THESE ARE ALL THE CHALLENGES WHEN WE'RE TRYING TO FIND A PLACE TO MOVE OR TRYING TO FIND A LOCATION THAT SUITS OUR NEEDS, TRYING TO WORK WITH THE CITY AS BEST WE CAN. BUT THE INTERESTS ARE NOT ALWAYS CONGRUENT. AND THAT'S WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES OFTEN, TRYING TO WORK THROUGH THAT INCONGRUENCY.

AND I AGREE WITH YOU. I THINK THE LAQUINTA WAS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT IN SOME OF OUR ACQUISITIONS BECAUSE What we've done is you talk about the outreach. We did the outreach after the site was already selected. What I'm suggesting is much different. What I'm suggesting is to work with the planning department initially to identify sites, not to have a site put on a city and then say, hey, here you have to deal with it. No. What we want to do is to get out ahead of it, work with the planning staff right away. Hey, look, I've identified a site on El Camino.

uh real um the city planner they support that that's to me that's that's that would be the best approach to get out ahead of it so thank you thank you um so oh um okay i i just want to make a comment real quick and then i'll hand it over to you um so I would like to add to further County Executive Kalagi's point that often the areas that many cities and at times residents would point to as being appropriate for some of these sites are actually least appropriate. for the residents and future patients of these sites. And sometimes they're commercial. Sometimes they are actually closest to the highest risk areas where it's actually the worst place for these residents to be. Often they are historically redlined communities. And I won't even get into... the racial implications of that. But I do think that we shouldn't ignore that context. And that context is still very present today. And we shouldn't be blind to it. It's still very present. And if we're not going to be real about that, then Yeah, I'll just stop there. But, yeah, I know Supervisor Speer has a comment to make, but I would like to, you know, vote on this item, and then we will be convening to close session. We will have lunch, and then we'll come back. So Supervisor Speer.

So as I look at this contract on page 12, It says contractor in collaboration with BHRS will lease or buy an appropriate facility in the central location of San Mateo County. Prior to opening, The following must occur. A contractor and county will conduct a facility walkthrough. Contractor will obtain written approval from the county. I'm not prepared at this time to vote in favor of this because it doesn't have language, I think, that reflects what we've been talking about. So I either would like to see us postpone this and change the language, or I'm indicating that I will be a no vote.

okay um supervisor cannibal um when is our uh through the clerk when is our next board meeting september 15th what i would do and you know i don't know i can if i can support it today i understand that there's a funding component what i would ask is that we continue this item uh to the next meeting so that something can be brought back to us from staff that sort of addresses uh board members concerns so um i'm willing to support a continuance on this item

OK, let's make the motion to continue the item. OK, let's take public comment, and then we will do a roll call vote.

OK, I do not have any speaker cards for item number 10. If you'd like to make a comment online, please raise your hand at this time. It's the final call for item number 10. I do have one hand raised. Leticia, please unmute and begin.

Yes, good morning or good afternoon. I just wanted to express I feel that it's, you know, just given the circumstances of the fact that it's a temporary location. Again, apologies, so I serve on the Behavioral Health Commission, and I just am in full support of not delaying, and I feel very, you know, not delaying this matter further. I feel that, you know, just thinking about a quote that comes to mind is that often the price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. However, I will not say that this is a mistake given the discussions that we have been having. I don't see that the risk is high with respect to what Dr. Africa has how he has responded to the concerns of the board. And I am in full support of certainly just, you know, as a community member, and as an advocate for mental health services, of which more and more we are learning that there really isn't sufficient funding for the increase in need of services, mental health services, substance use services in our, well, in our nation and certainly in our local community. So again, I would caution that, you know, the delay. And my support is to move forward as a community member, as a mental health advocate, and as a, you know, a member as I sit before you serving the Board of Supervisors on the Behavioral Health Commission. Thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes public comment.

Thank you. I'd like to make a substitute motion to approve the item as presented. Is there a second? Okay, roll call vote on the first motion and second.

All right, Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Aye. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corso? No. All right, motion passes to continue this item.

Okay, we will now move on to closed session, and we will reconvene after closed session. Thank you.

All right, the time is 12.07 p.m. No problem. OK, Madam President, we can begin in about 10 seconds.

Thank you.

The time is 1.01 PM. We can call the meeting back to order, Madam President, with all supervisors present.

Thank you. And it is 1.01 p.m. We are going to squeeze in item... 11 before we start our study session, which is item number six. Let's take a quick vote to amend the agenda. And we actually do have something to report.

Yes, Madam President, thank you. In addition to a vote to amend the order of the agenda, I wanted to report out that on a unanimous 5-0 vote, the board, pursuant to section 54957.1 of the California Government Code, approved the initiation of three different items of litigation. The action, the defendants or the respondents, the particular forum and other particular shall, once formally commenced, be disclosed to any person upon inquiry, unless to do so would jeopardize the agency's ability to effectuate service or process on one or more unserved parties, or that to do so would jeopardize its ability to conclude existing settlement negotiations to its advantage. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I would like to, I motion to amend the agenda to move item number 11 before item number six. There's a second by Supervisor Kenneba. Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Aye. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corso? Motion passes to your item 11 right now.

OK, and we will keep. Yes, go ahead, Supervisor Speer. Considering the lateness of the day and how many more items we still have on the agenda, I'd like to move 19 to consent. If we can do that, even though we've already taken up the consent agenda, can we just move that back to consent? I had originally lifted it from consent to regular consent.

I'm sorry, the question?

We have an item that's on the regular agenda. All right, I'd like to make a motion. Okay. Second. To accept the report. Okay, roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Speer? Aye.

Supervisor Mueller? Aye. Supervisor Gauthier?

Yes.

Supervisor Canepa? Aye. And President Corso?

Thank you. We are moving, with that, we have moved item number 19, Well, we already approved the consent. So I believe we have just approved item number 19 with this vote. And we will now hear item number 11. And it will be quick so that we can move quickly on to our study session. Thank you, Director Hodges.

Yes. Good afternoon, President Corso, honorable board members, Mr. Callagy, Mr. Niblin, Mr. Mate, no, Mr. Ely is here. I'm Ray Hodges, director at the county's Department of Housing, and I'm pleased to be joined by Rocio Nalda, a housing and community development specialist on our team from DOH. THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING FUND IS THE COUNTY'S FLAGSHIP PROGRAM FOR PROVIDING CAPITAL SUBSIDY TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY THROUGH A RIGOROUS COMPETITIVE PROCESS. THE FUND AND OUR ANNUAL COMPETITION WERE LAUNCHED BACK IN 2013 WITH RDA BOOMERANG FUNDS AND YOUR BOARD HAS CONSISTENTLY DIRECTED A RANGE OF RESOURCES TO SUSTAIN THE COMPETITION ANNUALLY SINCE THEN. MOST OWNEDLY MEASURE K BUT ALSO ARPA AND CARES ACT DOLLARS AND SOME OTHER RESOURCES. The Affordable Housing Fund is also the means by which our department disperses other local, state, and federal funds that we compete for whenever possible. So across our first 13 rounds, San Mateo County has supported 72 affordable housing developments with a total of 5,122 affordable homes. 3,142 are complete and occupied by low-income families, seniors, public employees, veterans, farm workers, persons with disabilities, and formerly unhoused persons and families. 790 are under construction right now, and another 1,190 are in pre-development. But we know those projects have commitments from us, but we know our cities are shaping additional projects that are earlier in pre-development right now. And this speaks to one of the primary goals of the fund, which is helping the county's 21 jurisdictions produce and preserve affordable homes, and thereby helping them make meaningful progress towards RHNA housing production targets from the state in their housing elements. Given the amount of funding we have available to administer versus the demand we see in the competition every year, our team strives to stretch the county dollars as far as possible to maximize the number of affordable homes we can support in the 21 jurisdictions. And you can see here the county has invested a total of $364 million in those 5,100 affordable homes. But that investment allowed us to access $3.2 billion in private financing and subsidy from the state, federal government, and philanthropy to produce and preserve affordable homes, but also to create jobs and construction in property management, supportive services, financial services, and more. And right now, to date, every dollar of Measure K proceeds invested in the fund has leveraged $16 of other resources. So in round 14, we had just over $29 million available to allocate. This included $19 million in New Measure K funds, $5 million that was returned to the county through changes to previously awarded projects, $5 million in Mental Health Services Act funding from BHRS, and $100,000 in county impact fees. We received 10 applications requesting $70 million. One did not meet threshold requirements, but what you have before you today in a moment here is the recommendations of DOH staff and our Housing and Community Development Committee, which held a public hearing on these projects last month. The nine applications that met threshold were located in nine communities across the county shown in the map. The six highest scoring projects recommended for funding are located in the cities in bold on this list. South San Francisco, Half Moon Bay, San Carlos, Redwood City, unincorporated North Fair Oaks, and the town of Portola Valley. Three projects were not recommended for an award due chiefly to readiness, but also lower scores on depth of affordability and limiting the need for county subsidy. They're all good projects, though, and we expect they'll approach us for support in the future. So staff in the Housing and Community Development Committee recommend awards to six projects. They sum to 459 affordable homes in five new construction rental projects and one first time home ownership project. These six requested a total of over 37 million in capital financing. Through staff's underwriting and scoring, we recommended smaller awards to two of the projects, but we're confident they can still move into construction with that award. None of the nine projects requested the available MHSA funding, so we are awarding just over $24 million today, and we'll put that remaining MHSA money out through a more focused over-the-counter supplemental NOFA in the fall. So another of the most critical goals of the fund besides leveraging and readiness is to provide affordable homes for populations that are central to your board's priorities. So in this round, these six projects will provide a minimum of 24 units of supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness, 76 homes for persons with an intellectual or developmental disability, 39 homes for senior farm workers at least 24 for County and other public employees and 193 units for families who need two and three bedroom homes And I'll turn here to reseal for some quick details on this project Welcome

I'm going to talk now about 555 Kelly. This project is located in the heart of Half Moon Bay, close to a health clinic, pharmacy, grocery stores, public transit, and agricultural employment. It will have 40 senior farm worker units, and at least two of these UNITS WILL BE ASSIGNED FOR SENIOR FARM WORKERS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS. THE PROPERTY WILL HAVE A COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER THAT WILL PROVIDE SERVICES FOR THE ENTIRE FARM WORKER COMMUNITY. The project has secured significant city and state funding, including a $13.3 million award from the Joe Serna Farmer Program, and $2.76 million from the Infill Infrastructure Grant, and a city commitment for $3.1 million. $1.4 million comes from a county ARPA award to the city. The project requested $7.3 million, and the recommendation is a reduced Measure K award of $6.5 million. This recommendation is conditioned on the project working with the county secure operating subsidy and applying for 9% tax credits in early 2027. The staff and HCTC, Housing and Community Development Committee, are also are also aware of a local initiative in the November ballot that will overturn the city's council approval of the project if passed. Should the ballot initiative be successful, the Department of Housing will meet with the developer and the city to discuss appropriate next steps at that moment.

I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I thought we could do this item really quickly before the study session. But can you just tell me like how much more time you think you need? Okay, I'm so sorry. We could also just move it back to after, but the study session is probably going to take like two hours. Okay. This is very important. Madam Chair. This is very important. And you're doing a great job, Rocio. You're doing a great job.

Madam Chair, you know, we have the items. We've reviewed them. I know we've been pretty diligent on the package. I appreciate staff moving forward in an expedition manner. But I'm really, to be quite frank, I know where my colleagues are. I'm ready to vote the item now, and I'm willing to make the motion.

If you have questions on any of the projects, happy to answer them.

I'll second.

Okay. There's a motion. There's a second.

Okay, we do need to do public comment. Wait, did you want to?

I just wanted to just show the press, just because Walnut Street was covered by the Daily Journal, that we have had extensive discussions with the city council here, with MidPen, and resolved those issues to the satisfaction of the city council. Now that that's on the record, thank you.

Okay. Thank you so much, Rocio. I think this is your first time presenting. You've done really well. Let's do public comment. All right.

We're doing public comment on item number 11. I do have one speaker card from Chambers. Is Holden Wiseman still here? All right.

PRESIDENT CORZO, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. ALL I WANT TO DO IS BE VERY BRIEF AND SAY THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION OF OUR PROJECT IN PORTOLA VALLEY. THOSE TWO UNITS ARE A FIRST FOR US BUILDING ON A CHURCH PROPERTY. SO THAT'S A VERY UNIQUE HAPPY TO PUT FORWARD IN FRONT OF YOU TODAY AND TO RECEIVE FUNDING FOR THAT. I'LL CERTAINLY TAKE UP DIRECTOR HODGES' INVITATION TO COME BACK AT A LATER DATE FOR MORE SUPPORT ON LORAL LANDING OR OTHER PROJECTS THAT WE WILL HAVE IN THE COUNTY AND REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR CONSIDERATION TODAY. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. WE'LL GO AHEAD AND GO TO ZOOM FOR A PUBLIC COMMENT ON ITEM NUMBER 11. IF YOU'D LIKE TO MAKE A COMMENT, PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND AT THIS TIME. FINAL CALL. WE DO HAVE ONE HAND RAISED AND THAT IS ANN. PLEASE UNMUTE AND BEGIN. Thank you.

I just wanted to say that the project of 555 Kelly, it is my understanding that it has to go to voters. And I don't know if that will or will not be approved. I have no idea. But I am still requesting that Cypress Point in Moss Beach be designated for senior housing. And there are already places for farm workers at that site. This is something that will be completed within a year. And people could be moving in at that time instead of having to wait and find out whether or not this will be approved. And so I just wanted to put that out there. Also, there are still safety problems with Cypress Point. There is no sidewalk for children to walk on to school. There is the dirt. It is just a dirt path with the one side is a ravine and the other side is the Highway 1. So with the lack of funds coming from the vehicle licensing fees, that may never get taken care of. And this is a great risk for families with children. So it is a much better site for seniors. And I please ask that you consider that at this time. Thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes public comment for item number 11.

Thank you, Supervisor Mueller.

Yes, colleagues, just with respect to the 55 Kelly project in Half Moon Bay. While it is true the project is currently facing a referendum, it was passed by the city council and At the current time, the state of California is threatening litigation against the city of Half Moon Bay for noncompliance with its housing element. I think it's important that we move forward with this item today to empower the city of Half Moon Bay to become in compliance with the housing element should the referendum fail or should the referendum pass, not pass, and it fail. Sorry, referendums are odd. The referendum needs to pass for it to go forward. If the referendum fails and the project isn't going forward, we still need to put the city of Half Moon Bay in the proper positioning to negotiate with the state of California over that potential lawsuit. So either way, it's very important that this funding move forward today.

I see a lot of mics on. Does anyone else want to make a comment? No? Okay. We have a motion and a second, I believe. Roll call vote, please. Supervisor Speer? Aye. Supervisor Mueller? Yes. Supervisor Gauthier? Yes. Supervisor Canepa?

Aye. And President Corso? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, now we will begin item number six, our long-awaited juvenile justice study session. And with that, I will hand it over to Supervisor Speer for welcome and purpose of the study session.

Thank you, Madam President. This is, as one writer said, a historic study session and one that is very important and one that I think we're going to learn a lot from. At the outset, I just want to say thank The good news is that juvenile detainees have declined over the years. Today we have 40 detainees at the Youth Service Center, down from several hundred a decade ago. We're going to hear today from probation chief John Keene and from the district attorney's office, the private defender's office, and a judge. and from community partners providing services to the youth. And we will hear from the JGDPC Chair Johanna Rasmussen as well. I've made two visits to Hillcrest now. The most recent last night where I sat with six or seven detainees, some under 18, some over. It was an enjoyable gathering and I learned a great deal. I think there's improvements that can be made, but I also think that the conditions there have improved. These are the words of the detainees, and that the food has improved, and these are the words of the detainees. So there's some good news here, there's some need to improve news, and we look forward to hearing from all of you.

Thank you, Supervisor Speer. I will start by reiterating my lived experience and my actual first points of contact with our juvenile justice system growing up in this community. And that is through my experience being the younger sister of of my brother that passed away when I was 16. I was I think under 10 when he was a teen and he was incarcerated in our juvenile hall when it was called Hillcrest. and was located at 21 Tower Road. And this was actually at a time where our county was charging families for their youth being in detention. And our family was very low income. And I actually remember calling into a Board of Supervisors meeting during COVID and making a comment via Zoom. And then I actually joined this board and I remember having a conversation with former supervisor Slocum where he mentioned remembering hearing a public speaker refer to a time where families were charged for their young, for their family member being incarcerated. And I remember him feeling like that, like he took that a little bit personally. And that actually made me feel some empathy because I can understand the now being in this role, how, you know, we answer for a system where decisions were made decades prior that we had no role in, but we are now in these seats making decisions about that same system. And we have to deal with the impacts of, you know, decisions made years prior. And it's a great responsibility. And I have since, you know, have supported other family members in going through the same system and, it is through this lens that I bring a lot of care and compassion for our young people and I have also seen and actually gone back to the YSC, the Youth Services Center, with a cousin of mine who was incarcerated. When she was invited to come back and speak to incarcerated youth from her lived experience, having graduated from San Jose State, having turned her life around, having become a mother, and you know, having really positive relationships as an adult, positive, healthy relationships with staff who, you know, like do workout programs with youth, now adults, and have positive relationships, right? Positive friendships. And so, you know, this system at times has caused harm, but that's not all that it's done. A lot of youth have been rehabilitated. A lot of improvements have been made. And I think that It is our duty to kind of honor all of it and respect all of it. And my intention with this study session is that we all see each other, that we center the youth and that we kind of hit a reset button and that we start rowing in the same direction and that we value each other's work. We respect each other's work. And we stop fighting each other because that all that it does is waste our energy and it doesn't serve the youth. So that is my purpose for this study session. And I'm grateful that we're all here. And I hope that you share that purpose with me. With that, I would like to welcome. Chief Keen to share the state of the juvenile justice system in our county. Welcome, Chief Keen.

Now, I was willing to concede my time to the previous presentation if you needed those two hours, but I figure we need to move forward with this. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. Honorable Board of Supervisors, Mr. Callaghan, Mr. Nibble, and Mr. Ely, our public, our department, our system partners who are here, our CBOs who are also here to help support this conversation today. this conversation today. And so I'm very happy for the opportunity to really have a broad conversation about the state of the system, the state of where we are, but also to level set and hopefully to reset some of the narratives and information that's been kind of put out into the ether, which I think has had a detrimental impact on the work itself. The words we use matter. Words have meaning. When adults intentionally mislead or misrepresent information, it actually hurts rehabilitation. It doesn't help it. While a much smaller population exists at the fall today, they have much more significant challenges and can be much more difficult to serve. Many of you have heard me say that rehabilitation pre-assumes that people were already in a good place when we met them and for some reason they fell off and we just reached down and picked them up and dust them off and they're good to go. Unfortunately, the reality is the vast majority of the young people and the adults in the system for that matter that we work with actually didn't start in a good place. They're starting in a place with deficits that exist that require almost habilitation rather than rehabilitation. starting and teaching and creating information and building pathways that didn't exist before. So as we think about that, young people need those who choose to do this work and choose to be in the system to have a positive, transparent behavior pattern and be willing to not jeopardize young persons' outcomes for their own personal gain. My goal today is to provide you with factual information about the role, function, administration, regulation of, and operation of the probation department, specifically at the Youth Services Center. Policies, regulations, statutes are the foundation for which we operate, not ideology. We implement the law as it is, not how others would wish for it to be, how others would like for it to be. The institution division itself is overseen by both our juvenile institution department as well as our juvenile services. Our goal is to provide a safe, secure housing for individuals who come into our space, support their families, and then aid youth in rehabilitation and transition back into the community because we recognize that the vast majority of our young people will be heading back. Our vision and our vision statement here is that we're going to help make youth have more positive and life-changing choices when they return to the community. That's our vision statement. That's our hope for every single young person that walks in our door, regardless of how they got there. All the policies, rules, and limits that are in place at the facility help young people make the transition from a school of thought that has contributed to them being in our space, and hopefully to a more pro-social mindset and a positive outcome on life, which is essential for long-term, sustainable rehabilitation and success. There are two separate groups, primarily at the facility right now. Those that are in our prep program and then the secondary group that's in SOAR. Those in our prep program are kids that are gonna be there a minimum of 60 days. Some of them have had dispositions. Others are there because of probation violations. And then our older population, which is the SOAR population, This program was put together as a response to Senate Bill 823, which transitioned the care, custody, and control of youth that would have otherwise went to state facilities back to local counties. It required for the probation department in the county to develop programs that mirrored or were similar to those at the state system. As you can imagine, this was a very difficult lift and one that we did not ask for. It was one that requires that the entire way in which the juvenile hall was built and established had to be turned on its end. I literally tell people that we're literally driving a car and changing tires at the same time and looking out for potholes along the way. The population over the last two years have been pretty consistent. You'll see that there's been slight spikes this year in overall numbers. However, the numbers themselves have been pretty consistent on average all the way through. So our population, which is our older population, initially when we first built the program back when Senate Bill 823 passed, our thought was that we thought that we may get five or six youth that would be in this category of being supported. The reason why we thought that is because we were very low users of DJJ. Matter of fact, San Mateo County's mindset around rehabilitation has always been to keep young people here at home. So not to send folks to DJJ and not to overly place a lot of kids in a sense of removing them from home. So we try to find ways and have always tried to find ways to support youth here. This board and prior iterations of the board have been very supportive of that process. However, it served as a detriment for us when the funding streams were put together. Because unlike many other counties who had had long historical trends of sending people to DJJ, our money that we received as a result of that was impacted by that. So we received a lot less than surrounding counties around us. So one of the main things I think is important today is when we level set is to talk a little bit about kind of the system as it stands, how we were put together, what our goals are, and the way in which we do our business. Detention reform and the rise of alternatives to detention really started in the late 90s. The goal was to look at the large numbers of youth that were inside facilities and understanding that there was a good chance that a large percentage of those young people did not need to be in custodial settings to receive services. So San Mateo County, like many of the other Bay counties, started to look at what could they do differently to provide a different level of support to young people. So that started in this county in earnest around 2005. So the county as a whole put together stakeholder meetings and groups and really looked at who could provide the best level of services for young people at the same time building a new system that would really be more focused on putting more young people at home and less people in detention where possible. On the screen you see several of the things that frankly are hallmarks of San Mateo County's focus on only having young people in detention as a last resort. First you see the actual building of the YSC. Supervisor Corzo, you mentioned the old juvenile hall at Tower Road. There's no question that that was an antiquated system and building that had been in place for a very long time. This county, along with many other counties, looked at how can we put together services that are not only best for young people, but also help the families. So this concept of a youth services building is around bringing things together under one roof. So you're not sending families all over the state and all over the county to receive support. So that was the first kind of step in that process. The juvenile hall actually turns 20 this year in September. And so it is a well-lived building that's been around for a while, but at the time it was definitely one of the newer models of what people had hoped for detention in terms of the changes. This county also had an assessment center process where it evaluated young people to determine who needed to be in the facility and who didn't. I'm very proud of the fact that when I came in 2013, we actually really focused on creating diversion programs out in the community. Myself, educators, police chiefs, and a few other folks in the community all went and spent a week in Georgetown to learn how to build a diversion program that was going to be multi-systemic and multi-functional both outside of the system as well as in. So, as part of that, we created a cohort of diversions, many of which still exist today. We are very fortunate enough to actually fund a deputy probation officer who works out of the city of San Mateo. She's here today, who provides diversion services out in the community. Also, diversion was now offered in school settings. There was huge changes in school discipline practices, which also helped to reduce the number of young people in the facility. We also narrowed the admission criteria over time, meaning that opposed to in the past where young people would make it to the hall for a variety of low-level offenses and sometimes even parents who decided they want to teach their young person a lesson and drop them off for the weekend, we really became very strict in the criteria in terms of who could actually come into the facility, focusing really on those offenses that really were issues of public safety. And I have to say also, too, that this particular cause has oftentimes caused challenges between us and some of our local police department friends because they are very frustrated by the fact that we actually don't take more young people in, that we actually are very focused on only taking in the young people that we are statutorily mandated to. And so it does, in fact, at times create tension. My superintendent, unfortunately, spends many of her weekends fighting back calls from folks trying to negotiate how they can drop more young people off. And then lastly, we talked about the utilization of state funds for preventative activities. This county has always invested tens of millions of dollars in prevention. In many of your districts, you'll find local programs at either school-based levels or community levels that are funded by this county that focus on making sure that young people don't become a part of the system. We have over 10 years worth of comprehensive reports online, and you'll hear me today refer to a lot of online materials that you can look up for the public. We have comprehensive reports in the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council annual reports. Those reports will outline the utilization of tens of millions of dollars focused out on community, focused in community settings and in schools and others to focus on ensuring that young people do not come into the system unnecessarily. And if you would mind, just give me a second. I want to spend a couple seconds to play this video. I think it's very informative in terms of just how the process actually works in terms of actually coming into the facility. Kim, would you be so kind?

What is the booking, admission, and classification process at the YSC? The San Mateo County Probation Department has a legal and standardized process for receiving youth into the juvenile facility. The admittance of youth into the facility is conducted in a respectful, humane, trauma-sensitive, and culturally cognizant manner. To start, the arresting agency is responsible for transporting the minor to the Youth Services Center and provides the booking staff with the necessary arrest documents. This documentation is essential for a smooth transfer process and ensures compliance with legal requirements. Prior to admitting the youth, institution staff reviews the admissions paperwork and determine if the youth should be admitted. Youth under the age of 12 years will not be accepted into custody unless there are allegations of murder or certain sexual assaults. Upon admission, youth are read their Miranda Rights. Admission staff inventories the youth's personal belongings and issues basic clothing, bedding, hygiene items, and offer food upon arrival. Parents and or guardians are notified via phone. All youth are entitled to at least two free phone calls within one hour of admittance, unless physically impossible. Housing classification is determined by a number of key factors, including age, maturity, sophistication, emotional stability, program needs, public safety considerations, medical slash mental health considerations, gender, and gender identity of the youth. Factors such as compatibility with other youth, size, non-association orders, protective custody orders, and gang affiliation may also influence housing assignments.

So I think it's important to understand.

What is the booking?

Thank you. I think it's important to emphasize that there is an actual legal process by which how we take young people in. So it's not this kind of willy nilly approach. I've heard people say that probation incarcerates kids. That's not our function. We don't go out on the street and school kids up off the street. There has to be probable cause for police departments to bring young people into the facility. What you have in front of you, and I know it's kind of small print, so I'll just quickly say, it really outlines the legal requirements for certain populations that have to be admitted into the hall. So those individual situations that involve welfare and institutions code section 707B, which are considered serious and violent felonies, those have to be taken into the facility. But the police department on the street still have a mandate of having to make sure they have sufficient probable cause to bring young people into the space. See, also, we have our age restrictions. 12-year-olds, generally speaking, are ones that we would not want to have in our space, so it has to be very specific situations. Those warrants oftentimes are runaway warrants from other counties. We are mandated by law that if there's a runaway warrant that's out there, we have to find a space for that young person. So the reason why we could get into the 12-year-old space. 14-year-olds and older that are taken into custody all fall into this next criteria. We talked about the use of a firearm, the commission of a felony. And here's just a laundry list of those offenses that fall under 707B. The current census of the population that we currently have now, everyone in our facility now has at least one felony in addition to whatever additional misdemeanor charge they have. All the felonies they have are consistent with the state requirement to book people in under that. There may be young people who may have additional misdemeanor charges on top of the felonies, but a person is not going to be booked into our facility on a misdemeanor unless it involves serious violence or injury. If you look at our two-year booking information that's in front of you, we have focused on really ensuring that the young people that we can get home, we send home back to their families. We have other alternatives like electronic monitoring or home detention where they're able to stay with their families and be in those spaces. So, if you look at the total number of population that the supervisor mentioned in her opening compared to the number of bookings we have per year, you see once again we actually keep much smaller numbers of young people that actually make their way to our space. Now, the next part of this presentation is really one where it's important to, once again, level set the environment at the facility. It's not to villainize young people. It's not to try to attempt to modernize the staff and say that they are doing work that others couldn't do or that somehow it affords them some type of special treatment. It is actually to just make a affirmative statement about what exactly is versus what folks say is not. In front of you, this environmental data is focused on some really important issues. One, we look and see the staff injuries over the last five years, attacks directly at staff over the last five years, youth on youth attacks, contraband incidents we found in the facility, and our computer use violations. We'll talk a little bit about that here in a while because there's been a lot of conversation around us removing people's access to computers for no good reason. So the things I'll point out here is that when you see some of these attacks, these are targeted directly towards our staff. These are things where young people have unfortunately been encouraged to say that the people that work there are bad people, or they don't have to listen to them, or that if they say something to you that you don't like, tell us and we'll take care of it from our perspective. And those types of commentary has helped to create an environment which, in my opinion, is less safe for our employees. So we don't necessarily allot this misinformation. Matter of fact, most of you know I've never presented this information to this board before. We just kind of work with it and keep it moving because that's the task that our incredible staff have taken on. However, the reality is is that when it's referenced in a way to suggest that either we are bad people intentionally trying to hurt children or don't care about the kids we work with, our folks come and work in very incredibly difficult situations. And the last point I'll make about this is that if you look at the number of our population here recently compared to what it was five years prior to COVID, where we were regularly averaging over 100, 120 youth, we averaged the same number of attacks and injuries to employees when we had four times, four times the number of young people in our facility. And this is data that is workers' comp data that is easily obtainable for the board. We have to keep those by state mandate. Contraband. These are some of the items that we found in our facility as we do searches.

I have a binder.

that's stacked full of copies of everything from improvised stabbing instruments, sharpened toothbrushes, sharpened screws, sharpened nails, shards of glass, makeshift tattoo equipment, marijuana, vape pens, and medication that's been cheaped to then utilize to provide to other youth in the facility. So when we talk about creating an environment that is rehabilitative and safe, these are some of the realities of what that looks like. So once again, when there's this impression that we're only serving low-level youth who don't need to be in the facility, and they're there because of some evil intention by the probation department or law enforcement in general, the facts don't measure up. There's also been a lot of conversation that somehow we work without any regulation and that no one's in control of us and we don't have any support from the state to provide structure, guidelines, training, or any of that to our staff. The reality is our staff, when they start their careers, they take almost 300 hours of training to initiate, additional 50 hours within the facility to support their learning, and then mandated 24 hour training hours that have to be done every single year. We also have state regulatory oversight. The Board of State and Community Corrections is California's independent agency overseeing local adult and juvenile correctional systems. They provide standards, training, inspection, and public safety grants. That is who we have to answer to to ensure that our facility can run. We also have support from advisory committees like OICR and our local JGDPC. The BSEC has professionally trained inspectors. They utilize standards that are clear and articulable. And then when issues arise, they work with counties to make sure that corrective action plans are created. Title 15, which is the corrections group that we are a part of, that encompasses everything from staffing, programming, abuse concerns and allegations, food standards, education standards, and medical standards, just to say a few, as well as Title 24, which is the building standards, which actually outline everything in the facility in terms of how it's put together. Everything for how thick the bed can be, how far off the floor it can be, ADA concerns, the way the building itself was built initially. was built this way under funding that was responsible for it. In the 13 years I've been your Chief Probation Officer, we have failed inspections zero times. We have had correction actions zero times. We have certainly had our experiences during that time where the state has said, you know, we would like to see you do this a little better, or we have advice on how you could do better training, or we have advice how you could write your policies a little different so they can be clear the next time we're here. But we have never failed an inspection. Copies of these past inspections can be found, 10 years' worth can be found on the website for people who want to go read.

Chief Keene, I'm just going to give you a time check. We're going to give you 10 more minutes.

Well, I'll just say respectfully in protest, people who have taken shots at me have had far more time than that.

That's true. I'm going to give you more time.

Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it. Thank you. Next is the conversation around PREA, and I'll speed up here a little bit, Supervisor. There's been a lot of conversation about why we're not compliant with PREA. PREA, as you all know, is the focus on eradicating prisoner and detainee rape of all times in correctional facilities around the county. around the country, excuse me. The Department of Justice has a very distinct set of categories in which they determine whether you are compliant with the goals of PREA and the legislation associated thereto. In front of you have what are the general themes that encompass the entire legislation itself. Most notably at the top are zero tolerance policy for abuse of any kind, along with additional issues around training, medical reporting, and investigation, to say a few. The reality is that the probation department has been and is substantially aligned with the federal standards of PREA. All the themes that are in PREA are covered by our current department PREA policy. You can find this PREA policy on our website It's a prison rape elimination tab, and then under that you can tab it, and it has our policy. It has instructions for parents who want to reach out to suggest or express concerns. We have additional interactive launch item there for services for individuals and employees who may need support in this area. And it also shows that at the end of the day, we are abiding by all the regulations that Title 15 actually has. In my research around this, because I know it's been a very concerning issue considering a lot of the allegations that have surrounded our county and our area, what I found was actually pretty startling, which is technically no one in the state of California is in compliance with PREA. Compliance requires two primary additional issues. which is one, an auditor who comes in and actually provides auditing of your policies and standards. That's one we don't have. So when I say we're not in compliance, it's not that I don't care about keeping people safe, because as I started off, words matter. We're not in compliance because we don't have auditors. Matter of fact, a quick check of the auditor page on there for an auditor search, there's not a certified auditor within 200 miles of San Mateo County, I searched. The only two that are actually listed on the website are two folks whose auditor certificates have expired three years ago. The only current auditors that exist are in L.A. County that I could find at this point. The second part for state certification is what's called a governor's certification, where the state actually certifies that it's going to 100% certify that every area has complied and will follow the rules of PREA. We haven't done that, and we haven't done that since this started in 2014 in terms of compliance checks. Actually, what exists is what's called an assurance declaration. The assurance declaration just simply says that we're going to do our best to try to make sure that most people in the state actually have the elements of PREA in their functioning. However, by the strict letter of the law, unless you have everything, you have nothing. Our diet and meals. We have some of our partners here today are going to talk a little bit about our diet and meals, the individuals who actually do the work. We're so proud and pleased to work with the Sheriff's Office and Correctional Health on this. I know there's been a lot of concern and question around this, but the meals are supported by dietitians, health professionals, and they're individualized for each youth's needs. They're aligned with USDA standards for school meals. And currently, even though we have roughly 30-plus youth in the facility, Our staff are actually, or their staff, are actually managing over 80 separate diets for young people. That includes everything from medical needs, religious concerns, as well as calorie intake. As I said, the Youth Services Center is almost 20 years old. It is a lived-in building, but these pictures were taken within the last recent months, and you'll see it's not necessarily a space where I would say it's a death trap or a horror place for people to be. We recognize the importance of bringing arts into our space. And so in collaboration with the Sheriff's Activity League and working with our youth, they actually have painted murals throughout the facility that they have participated in to do certain things. The Arts Commission has been a great partner in this. Thank you to Supervisor Canepa, who many years ago made that connection between us and them. And so we've been able to do that work. and have really good positive outcomes and actually create really unique opportunities for young people in the space. What you see in front of you is another space that the young people participated in building, which is a sensory deprivation room to help support some of those times when young people just need a quiet space to go to. This was a thing where everyone participated, even myself went and did painting in that space, because we all wanted the young people to see that we actually valued them and cared about their long-term goals. Thank you. Here's our community mural outside, which once again is a demonstration of our commitment to the arts because we recognize art is an important part of rehabilitation. It was really about providing the young people with something as an inspiration to help focus them on the time that's to come because we really stress to them that you are not your current environment and your current situation. There's more positive things to come in your life. The activities that we do, we do everything from family nights. We have graduation activities. Obviously, we're very proud of the activities of our school programs and the work that they've done. The young people that have graduated from high school with us, the young people that have graduated from college with us. It is a tremendous opportunity. We do baking activities with them. We have car shows with them. We have movie nights. We do everything we can do to try to provide alternatives. And at those movie nights and other opportunities, we do include additional food on top of what is provided by Correctional Health. Oftentimes there's concern about programs in our space. We actually have a very robust program system. Matter of fact, honestly, there's not enough hours in a day for all the programs that are here. This board has been generous over the years with your support of programming in our space. Just a few months ago, you approved a historic amount of programming for the institutions, and those programs were also both internal programs and as well as programs that are out in the community. These are just some of the programs that most recently you approved. Definitely highlight CORE. We heard from a young man yesterday who actually specifically called out CORE as a program that was important to him, that was teaching him how to engage in positive relationships and connecting with people. And Supervisor Corso, that was your brainchild and certainly wanted to say thank you for that. And these are just reminders of the other contracts that you recently also provided to provide services in our space.

Technology.

We have done our best over the years to try to provide technology opportunities for young people, and it has morphed over the years. When I first started in 2013, we had a couple of computers facing a wall, and that was pretty much it. In the early stages of Project Change, that I'll talk about here in a second, we really all had kids working off one or two desktop monitors, and that was all they had. What we've done and what you see on here is we've committed to providing opportunities for young people. There are desktops that every young person who's in school have access to. We work closely with the school department. They have their own technical IT department. We have ours. They work collaboration to do that work. But there are desktops accessible for them to utilize. The laptops are for those young people that are in college. They have their own individualized laptops to help them do the work they're doing. We're very proud of our Origin tablets. It's a tablet system that individual youth have that gives them access to additional educational opportunities, but also gives them recreational opportunities. They also have the ability to call and make phone calls and video calls to their families from this tablet. One of the most interesting things last night we discovered is that the young people were disappointed that the movies don't roll around fast enough, but unfortunately it's because they don't have access to R-rated movies. And so the young people were really frustrated by the fact that they're watching the same movies over and over again. But the tablets have created an entirely new way for young people to look at things, as well as get additional certifications, education, as well as therapeutic opportunities around drug and alcohol consideration. We've upgraded our Wi-Fi access points throughout the facility to ensure a better stability for the young people who have access to these systems. Because we're dealing with young people, they love their games, and so we commit to purchasing PlayStation and Xbox games for youth to be able to utilize. A lot of that, the systems themselves, were donated by outside people, and we've helped support and maintain those through acquiring additional services. And then coming soon, we're going to have our VR equipment. One of our providers that you'll hear from today, they're going to be providing additional support utilizing virtual reality to help with the teaching of skills for CTE. So they're going to learn how to do a lot of incredible things through a virtual space. This is just some of the origins, education and communication technology. We see all the different things that youth have been accessing over the last 12-month period. During that time, we've made over 46,000 calls from the tablet space. 19,000 of those calls have been connected. And on average, the calls are going about 15 minutes apiece. Here are some of the learning materials that are inside Origin and just some great opportunities for young people to gain additional support on top of all of the services you all have graciously approved. The technology at the YSC, as I said, is a 20-year-old building. We constantly have worked to upgrade that material. We use a CENSO program, which is an interesting program, which actually monitors our computer use. Unfortunately, it allows us to know when our young people have violated our computer use policy. They've either gone to prohibitive sites that are sexual in nature or violent in nature. They've made contact with victims that they have victimized out in the world. They've either gang-banging on social media, other things that are prohibited activities. CENSO allows us to monitor those things. But ironically, our young people are brilliant. They find ways around our system all the time. And so we are constantly having to reboot and reassess and change and figure out other ways to address that. In support of creating a safe environment for our young people as well as our staff, we've also instituted body cams in our institution. That body cam program, we rolled them out a few weeks ago, but we're having some technology issues. It's getting a little warm on our staff's chest while they're wearing them, so we're actually having those bodies replaced so we don't have any workers' comp issues with that, and then we'll be redeploying those at that point. We've upgraded a live scan machine, which is our fingerprinting machine, also added a mobile version of that. Sometimes it can be very difficult and challenging for young people that are having negative experiences at entry, and so we can go to them, and it makes that part of it a little safer and a little less stressful for when they are getting booked in. We've upgraded our metal detectors, as you see with the contraband pictures that we've shown and plus the stack that I have here. Unfortunately, we've come across more activities and more things, and so we've needed access to that. And also the body scan. Body scan, I always want to talk to you really quickly because it's an important addition to our space. We recognize that searching youth, strip searching youth, is something that people are not in favor of. However, the law allows for it in very specific circumstances. We only do it in those specific circumstances. We have written materials that show when we do it. But our preferred way of doing things is to utilize the body scanner. And so we have that as a way, it's a less invasive process in terms of removal of clothes, although frankly the machine actually is in a lot of ways more invasive than physically getting nude because it goes very much in terms of knowing what you have on your person. But it's a safer way to do things, it's a less intrusive way for young people, and we certainly understand the public's concern about what was being characterized as an illegal strip search. was not an illegal strip search. The strip search that folks didn't care for, but the reality is we had a very valid reason for doing so. It was a health and safety reason that would have impacted the entire facility. Additional upgrades to the Wi-Fi, upgrades to our CCTV. This is an important part of, obviously, for us as we try to make sure we have an environment that is safe and is void of any type of illegal sexual activity or negative behavior. And so we have upgraded our systems to ensure that not only can we keep recordings, but it's backed up if we lose power and we have access to things for long term. Lastly, we've put in under-the-door cameras, which are important. And I should say, back to the cameras, they're not in personal spaces. They're not in the showers. They're not in the restrooms. They're not in places to in any way negatively impact young people and invade their privacy. They're in public spaces, but they're outside of buildings where any time you move in our facility, we can see you to see if you're in a building or if you've moved a youth somewhere in the building. So the reason why those cameras exist is to support that. And then lastly, under the door cameras are important because unfortunately some of our young people have recovered their doors so we can't see what's going on inside. And then when we have to go inside, they've kind of jimmy rigged the floors where our staff have slipped and fall trying to go in. So this is important to allow us the opportunity to see what's happening in the rooms for safety reasons. Project Change, as I said earlier, is one of the programs that we are most proud of. It is an award-winning program. Hopefully this board is very proud of the fact that San Mateo County is the model, the model, the very first one for this type of educational program in college spaces around the state. When I got here in 2013, I utilized my own funds to help support the creation of this program. Along with the work that our Project Change partners worked for, they actually were instrumental in really working with us and not losing faith early on. And so we had really good incremental growth to where we are today, where we have multiple young people that are graduating college, getting multiple degrees while they're in custody with us, and going on hopefully to four-year colleges. We also have a CTE program that we are very proud of. This new program is California A to G approved in terms of the actual credits. So those 15 credits that our young people need to consider college here in California. It's focused on making sure they get mastery training in classes that are going to help them out in the world. So STEM related careers, trade careers, culinary design, and design and transportation. So these programs are critically important for our young people who may not all be focused on this idea of going to college. Where's probation's data? Another comment that we don't have any data, now where's our data at? Our data can be found in several websites across the net. Our probation department website actually has a data dashboard that has our information. A local action plan is there. Once again, a local action plan is the plan that helps to determine how we utilize services, how the money is spent, and how we actually demonstrate our value system as a county IN TERMS OF WHAT OUR INVESTMENTS ARE IN ANNUAL EVALUATIONS OF OUR CONTRACTED PROVIDERS SO THESE EVALUATIONS ARE DONE BY AN OUTSIDE ENTITY A THIRD PARTY INTEREST AN ENTITY WHO HELPS SUPPORT US IN THOSE ANNUAL REPORTS AS I MENTIONED EARLIER THE BSCC THERE'S JUVENILE HALL POPULATION DAY THERE THAT'S BASED ON OFFENSE LEVEL AND AN ADJUDICATION AS WELL AS THOSE REPORTS I MENTIONED EARLIER THAT WE HAVE DONE IN TERMS OF OUR INSPECTION Chief Probation Officers of California, we also have a public-facing dashboard there that has access to all of our information, including adult, pretrial, and juvenile data. The Office of Youth and Community Restoration, ORCR, has information about our SecureTRAC treatment facility and the program there, too. We have to submit an annual plan to actually utilize and operationalize the funds that come from it. And San Mateo County Open Data is where you can find information about our budgets, how we spend our money, and things of that nature. Lastly in the space to come, we have a few things on the horizon. One, we're going to be working collaboratively with John Fung and his team at Child Welfare to create a program for secure track youth leaving the facility where we can assist them with housing funds and actually funds that they can utilize to help support those next steps. That program is going to be working through the guaranteed income program that they run And so we're gonna find a way to operationalize money transfer between the two if necessary to ensure that those young people who actually would qualify for it will get access to it. Secondly, we hope to work with the board as well as procurement to look at potentially some type of modified procurement process for some of the services we need at the facility. Right now that process is very difficult and causes a lot of consternation with the population. with the community and is creating some tension and stress in terms of just how we operationalize court orders. So I think there's a need for us to look at that. Also, I'm very proud to say that we acknowledge that we could do better with our PREA phone system. And so I'm in discussions with John Fung again to see if we can actually utilize an outside service for the 800 number. Right now, it is monitored by our staff. and we recognize that that is something that we could do better at and so we'll be working with them to see if they actually have 24-hour services as you all are aware of so we're trying to see if now there's some legal ways in which we can operationalize it through that process and then lastly um as i said we are going to be doing a 20-year acknowledgement of the um the building itself the opera the beginning of the opening of the juvenile hall What I'm going to propose to do, because I think a lot of what has been said in the public is because the public has not had a chance to see our hall. And because of the way things are actually done, it's just difficult for people to just randomly come and show up and be walked around. So I'm proposing that we do an open house that is commiserate with the 20 year opening of the facility. That way we can invite the public to actually come in and see the facility, go through the process, go through those things so they can see themselves. The reality is I know no young person wants to be in the facility. We don't kid ourselves into thinking that that's the case. But I am very proud of the work that we do, the way we do it, and how we approach trying to be thought partners and advocates for youth, as we are. Our advocacy looks different from others, but we are advocates nonetheless. I will concede the rest of my time. I do have one last slide that I hope to get back to later, but I'll concede my time. We are fortunate enough to have partners here today that help us do the work, and we have some of our partners from Correctional Health here and also Behavioral Health. I'm not sure who wants to go first. Dr. Africa is going to come up and present.

Thank you, Chief Keen. And I'll just briefly say that I love the idea of an open house. And one of my favorite murals actually wasn't pictured. It's one with a lot of hummingbirds. And it's one of the newest ones. And it's beautiful. So welcome, Dr. Africa. And then I think we have Michael Del Rosario and Hector Soto and Durga Namburu next.

Good afternoon, again, Board of Supervisors. I'm here with my colleague, Mike Del Rosario, who is the Director of Correctional Health Services. We'll just take a few minutes to talk about behavioral health services at the YSE and also correctional health services. So before I go, I want to just... acknowledge that that picture that you see there is the adjacent land of the Phoenix Garden, which I will be talking about in a little bit. So we really have been really grateful to have the opportunity to provide support to young people. I'll talk a little bit about the mental health services, as well as substance use services. In terms of our clients, as Chief Keen said, the clients over the years have decreased, the young people in custody. And so you can see actually in the top left, from about 2018 to 2019, we were seeing unduplicated about over 300 youth, and now we're probably seeing half of that. We have nine staff that provide a variety of services for youth who are in custody. therapists, we have case managers, we have psychologists, psychiatrists, just in case they need medication support, and also peers and family partners that either have lived experience navigating sort of the system. In the bottom part, I wanted to give you a sense of how engaged we are with the young people. So in the data, we divided it into three sections. One we call the general population. So we actually don't know how long the young people will be there, but we average about 29 days of services. Obviously, if they leave earlier, we won't have that much time. in terms of community-based services you know when a young people a young person leaves the yse we still are able to provide community-based services to them because sometimes they need additional support as they transition back to the community and then the third kind of supports that we have is we connect a therapist individually case by case with a with a youth in custody also when they leave. So Chief Keen talked about the SOAR program, and our engagement with that young person, actually until about 25, is up to about one year. So again, our efforts is to engage them, continue working with them, so that they continue to succeed being in the community or succeed in their rehabilitation. So again, our services are anchored in trauma, trauma-informed and culturally responsive services, not just in terms of language, but really understanding the cultures and the environments that our young people have grown up with. We use evidence-based practices. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps change people's perceptions and their thinking. Dialectical behavioral therapy helps give them a sense of self-regulation. Many of these young people actually have a lot of trauma and have a lot of chaos in their lives. And so we try very hard while we are working with them to try to give them sort of a sense of skills and opportunity to think about the things that they have experienced. And again, our work really needs to be successful, needs to be coordinated with many entities, obviously our colleagues from probation, but also our community partners. I have to say that once a probation staff refers, the entry to behavioral health is a referral from our custody or probation staff. So once our POs refer a young person, we do an intake, we do a screening, we try to understand what their perspective is, what their experience is, what their need is. And then based from that, we spend time kind of linking them to services. We provide individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy. We even invite their parents or their caregivers to participate in some of the sessions because we know, you know, their caregivers are also in part of their recovery. We do a lot of care coordination. We provide 24-7 crisis support. When it's needed, we provide medication management. And then also, in certain cases when it's needed, we do psychological assessments. If they need a higher level of service, if we try to understand their thinking or their personality, We do cognitive testing or personality testing in augmentation to the therapy that they receive. then last one before i turn it over to michael again the phoenix garden is really the six acre land adjacent the yse and instead of just seeing that as being connected to nature we've really used it as an opportunity to provide healing and connection with the community with young people who are attached to the yse to be to kind of be around nature and talk to other folks other community members so again as part of their sort of entry to community And I'll just say that that's one of the features that one of our young people love. Many of them really are not connected to nature. Many of them don't understand food production or beekeeping or horticulture and really hopefully can change and impact their lives, not just focusing on their crime or being in custody, but really out in the community. And then again, one of the things that we are working that's new due to CalAIM is really a much stronger relationship in helping people who are young people in custody, and then when they go out, as they transition back to the community, to link them to appropriate services. We are also doing that in the adult side at McGuire and the jail, but also we're trying to do that more in probation. So again, we really operate in partnership with Chief Keen and his staff and are grateful to provide these services for young people to heal and continue on under recovery. So now I'm going to turn it over to Mike to talk about medical services.

Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon, President Corso, Board of Supervisors, County Executive Office, community members. My name is Michael Del Rosario. I'm the Director for Correctional Health Services. And I'm here to talk to you about the services, the medical services that we provide to our youth. Medical care starts from the time the youth enters our facility. We address whatever medical conditions or health care needs that they have. and initial screening is done as soon as they come in. Our partners in probation will do an initial screening, and then our registered nurses will do a complete medical screening as soon as possible. During that time, acute and chronic illnesses are identified. We look for any communicable diseases. If they have any substance abuse history, we want to make sure that those are addressed early on, and we do an initial mental health assessment. Within 96 hours of coming into our facility, a health screening is completed that will include doing vital signs, pregnancy testing, and visual and hearing exams. The probation staff, I just want to highlight, really plays an important role in early identification of a patient's medical or mental health condition. They will alert CHS if they see any abnormal conditions. All youth are seen by our nurse practitioner for a wellness exam within one week of arrival. RNC calls are conducted daily by registered nurses for any medical requests that the youth might request. If any after-hours support is needed, we utilize the San Mateo Medical Center ER for consultation. But for any medical condition, our nurse practitioners will address any acute or chronic illnesses, provide urgent care treatment when needed. Specialty services are also offered for all our youth if they require more specialized services than what we can offer within CHS. We utilize the San Mateo Medical Center specialty clinics for any in-person visits or telehealth consultations. And if the youth requires more specialized care through Stanford, USSF, Kaiser, or any surrounding hospitals, if they need those services, we will refer them to those places. If a youth comes in and they need to have their braces managed, an orthodontic referral will also be made. Our optometry services are offered to our youth that requires eyeglasses. So we will refer them to San Mateo Medical Center. And once we have the prescription for the eyeglasses, CHS will actually purchase the eyeglasses for the youth. We also offer laboratory and radiology services. As I mentioned, we do pregnancy testing early on. Universal testing is offered to all our youth, which we screen for SCD, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and we do TB testing for all our youth. When our youth are seen by the providers, automatically they are ordered routine blood work. And then when we do chest X-rays or imaging, those are done at our Samantan Medical Center facilities. Dental X-rays are done in our facility. Dental services are offered to all our youth and automatically, as soon as they come in, they are scheduled to see a dentist within 30 days. And also, if they happen to stay six months, they are automatically scheduled for a follow-up exam in six months. Routine dental care provided, you know, regular exams, cleaning, tooth extractions, hygiene, of course, and if they need a root canal, we'll provide that as well. For those with complicated tooth extractions, like a wisdom tooth, we do have an oral surgeon that can come in to our facility, and they will take care of those, you know, those type of complicated extractions. For more urgent visits, we will refer them to our county partners and county health for dental services. As our overall goal of providing comprehensive health care to our youth, we provide a lot of health education. And so we would do health topics that includes drugs and alcohol, contraception, skin care, dental care, food and nutrition, and any other topics that the youth finds interesting or they want to know more about. Annual flu vaccinations are offered. So during usually around the fall season, right before the flu season starts, we offer flu vaccines to all our kids. Immunizations. So our team will actually look at the patient's records and identify if they're missing any immunizations. If they're behind on any of their shots, our team will provide that as well. Our dietician is on site that will manage any dietary needs, special meals. If they require medical diets, we have a dietician that can consult with them if they want to lose weight, gain weight. You know, we have specialized service for that. And as part of our Calum initiative, as Jay had mentioned, discharge planning is very important to us to make sure that we can transition the youth into the community. So we provide the discharge medications up to 30 days of medications upon release and also provide them with prescription or we call into their pharmacy to make sure that they never run out of meds until they get a chance to go to their doctors after their release. That's part of our ongoing efforts to make sure that this Health that we provided for them will continue on to the community. Thank you.

Thank you. We have, I believe, folks from nutrition and a dietician up next, and our sheriff's office as well.

Good afternoon, all the board members and the public.

We also have a lieutenant as well. I don't know who wants to start here. Go ahead, however you want to do it.

Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Captain Ben Hand with the Sheriff's Office. I'm the facility commander for the— Captain, sorry. No, that's all right. I'm the facility commander for the Maple Street Correctional Center, where we have our food services through the Sheriff's Office. I'm going to allow—this is Durga Namburo. And Hector Soto to give a brief presentation on how the food is prepared and presented to our IPs in the county, because we also provide the services to our adult facilities. And then Denise Chu is here from Correctional Health. She's a dietician who supports the program.

And is that a lieutenant behind you as well? OK. See, I knew there was a lieutenant somewhere. Greetings. OK. Thank you. Go ahead, Durga.

Okay, one second. Good afternoon, everyone. So we're going to call her. Sorry.

And also after this, we're going to do a time check because I know we have a judge waiting, and I would love if someone can connect with her and make sure. Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. Okay, okay. You see, you're smart. That's why you're the judge. Okay.

Okay. We're going to cover our food services for youth service center structure and why. The nutritional standards and our menus, how they're built in, and what youth are served each day, and how we control food safety and our services, how it is evolved. Coming to our operations and daily delivery for the meals, San Mateo County Sheriff's Office Food and Nutrition Services provide meals for YEC through contract with probation department. Meals are planned and prepared through Sheriff's Office Food Service Operations. All the meals are transported to the YEC with all the food safety procedures. I'm sorry.

It's going too fast, I believe. Yeah.

Meals are delivered to appropriate housing units for all three meal services, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our focus is to consistently deliver safe and the nutrition's balance and appeal meals to timely manner. As staff understands serving the youth is secure and setting requires high level responsibility for attention to detail. The sheriff's office recently secured purchasing contracts with established food service vendors who provides all the school meal, school nutrition programs requirements that includes U.S. Foods and Cisco. We regularly check quality of meals and our meals, how we serve, all the final checks before it gets to the youth. So I will be sharing more details on the nutrition and other topics of what we perform. Thank you.

NUTRITIONAL REQUIREMENTS. OUR MANUALS ARE DEVELOPED WITH THE STANDARDS THAT APPLY TO YOUTH IN OUR CARE. MANUALS ARE PLANNED WITH APPLICABLE TITLE 15 REQUIREMENTS, USDA NUTRITIONAL STANDARDS AND NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH AND BREAKFAST MEAL PROGRAMS GUIDELINES. WE USE THESE STANDARDS TO MAKE SURE THAT MEALS ARE PROVIDED NUTRITIONALLY APPROPRIATE. WE MANAGE OUR MEALS AND SNACKS TO SUPPORT ADEQUATE DAILY NUTRITION AND CALORIC INTAKE. MENUS ARE ROUTINELY UPDATED, INCLUDING AS RECENTLY AS JUNE 2, 2026. THESE ARE BASED ON SEASONAL FOOD AVAILABILITY, NUTRITION, YOUTH FEEDBACK, AND OPERATIONAL NEEDS. OUR MENUS, MEALS, AND SNACKS. THE MAPLE STREET RECREATIONAL CENTER PROVIDES FOOD SERVICE TO YAC AND PROVATION STOP SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, 365 DAYS A YEAR. We prepare and provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner trays for youth and staff. We currently serve about 27-plus youth on a daily average, some of whom received double trays. This comes to approximately 330 trays per day. We operate in a four-week cycle menu for the youth. We provide special diets as required and approved by Correctional Health Services Dietitian. Menus are developed and maintained in accordance to applicable compliance requirements and dietitian guidance. All meals are prepared to meet the nutritional and dietary needs of the youth while maintaining required food services standards. In addition to required meals, youth receive three snacks each day. Snacks provide an additional opportunity to support daily nutritional and calorie needs. Snack offerings are incorporated into the overall food service plan. Providing these additional snacks demonstrates our commitment to supporting adequate nutrition.

I'm a dietitian with Correctional Health Services. I've been with the county for 20 years. I predominantly serve the adults, but I do also serve the youth. I've been there since Hillcrest, so I'll be Jackson from the beginning, and I'm really proud of the food services program. I believe there's always room for improvement. From my perspective, my job predominantly is to do nutrition assessments. I calculate the person's needs and compare it to intake and the food offered to them. What I do is I identify problems. I look at the etiologies and then I look at the data to support that and then provide a service to make sure that the food or the diet order is mainly according to what the kid can tolerate the child, the youth can tolerate.

Sorry.

Currently, we have 26. I looked at Epic this morning. We have 26 youth in our care. 23 are on the diet list. 19 of those 23 are on double trays. And 15 of those 19 ask for extra eggs. Some of them have wanted up to 12. The nutrition requirements for this age group at the highest level is about 2,800 to 3,000 calories. Currently, they're provided probably about 6,500 calories a day and probably 24 ounces of protein. As a dietician, I framework my assessments around a problem etiology and signs and symptoms. And I feel like with this particular group, meaning like teens in general, young adults, have very strong preferences about food, and also we have a domain that we use to categorize a problem, and one of them is knowledge and beliefs and attitudes about food. So the contributing factors are their age and also what they have looked up on the internet. I know right now they're very protein-driven, and so based on how many calories we give them, they have gained weight. But it's not that great, but it's because they tend to gravitate to the proteins. And I think the food service direct department has been doing the best they can. They have been going over and above. They don't ever complain about any of the double trays. They also get snacks in addition. I have, well, unfortunately, I don't have the diet list without the names so that you could see, you know, how vast this is. I think the issue could be the delivery, maybe those kind of changes, but I'm not involved with that, but I know that they're doing the best they can. That's all I have. Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisors.

Okay, wait.

One second.

They won't brag about themselves, but they make the best cookies ever. So my team's going to hand out some of their cookies. Whoever wanted leftover cookies, sorry, grab it now or they're going to be gone. But go ahead, share the cookies.

Thank you.

And some of us actually had lunch that they prepared and that the youth eat as well. And I enjoyed it personally. I think most of us had the lunch. Can I say one more thing?

Yes, go ahead. OK, back when I was looking at the report, the 23 and 24, I want to point out that the school lunch program is very, very strict with their nutrition requirements. And for protein, it's only two ounces per meal for that group for high school kids. Two ounces, picture a McDonald's hamburger with the two ounces of grain added to it, one cup of fruit and one cup of vegetable.

And so I think that was part of the issue too, is the restriction.

Okay, thank you.

Through the chair, can I just say that I recently had an opportunity to tour the facility, and I saw firsthand the great work that you are doing over there. That is a huge kitchen. You're preparing many meals throughout the day, and again, we had food today that you prepared, and I just appreciate everything you do. It gave me a better insight as to what's actually being provided to everyone within the system. So again, thank you for your work.

Go ahead, Supervisor Speer.

Leave it to food to get our attention, right? I will tell you that in my visit last night, food came up, and they actually had some complimentary words. In fact, they said, the food's a lot better now than it used to be. So, kudos to you for that. They do want more salt and pepper and spice, and I know the school lunch program doesn't allow that. The dietician can help us with that, but think the blandness bothers them a little bit and we can somehow Slip them some packets of salt and pepper. That might be nice. Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead. I'd just like to add that a couple of months ago, we had a survey of how the food has been going on for this past year, and I'm happy to say that we have a copy of it, all the comments that they did about how the food has been improved. We have worked very tirelessly to... not make some difference, reinvent the wheel. How can we use the spices to generate these flavors that they would like to? And I think so far for these comments, we are very proud to say that they have. And we also are committed and willing to anything that we need to do and can do for it, that does what it is. Food is my passion, and I love to do it, so it doesn't matter to me who is that aunt, but food is important to us, so we're committed to do that, and if we hear anything that we need to be changing, we're ready to do it, happy to do it. Hopefully we can get the program we had at Glenwood, where the kids were in the kitchen and preparing their food. As a food service worker, I would love to go back and reinvent that, because For me, it was very, very important, very successful and satisfying for me to, if we can ever bring that again, I will do it in my day off or whenever it has to be.

Yeah, I think that's the goal. If they're anything like my teenager, they will think that they can cook better than you. So I'm sure you're open to the challenge. I love the challenge. Okay, thank you so much. Oh, I lost my...

Oh, okay.

Thank you. Okay, we will now move on to, of course, actually, why don't we pause for a second? Chief Keen, I think you had another slide, one last slide you wanted to wrap up. Okay. Did we have any questions for the bulk of, okay, no, no questions for Chief Keen yet.

We'll wait till the end.

Okay, perfect. I'd now like to welcome Deputy District Attorney Nadia Han. And I want to acknowledge that our District Attorney Steve Wagstaff is here as well. Welcome, Nadia.

I can't believe I have to follow fresh-baked cookies. That's unfortunate for me. My name is Nadia Hahn. I'm the deputy district attorney in charge of the juvenile division of the DA's office. Thank you to President Corso and the supervisors for the invitation to speak with you today about the DA's role in the juvenile justice system. The purpose of the juvenile justice system as a whole is to provide for the protection and safety of the public and each minor under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court and to preserve and strengthen the minor's family ties whenever possible. And that's codified in Welfare and Institutions Code Section 202. It goes on to lay out the sort of guiding principles that the DA's office uses in all of our deliberations. Agencies charged with enforcing and administering juvenile law are mandated to weigh the following considerations. Safety and protection of the public, the importance of redressing injuries to victims, and the best interests of the minor who is the subject of the juvenile court matter. The juvenile division serves a number of different functions. We're involved in the actual court process from the filing of a case through disposition. But the one that's most relevant to today's study session is probably the review and charging of cases. So that will be my focus today. It's the prosecutor's decision to file a petition that initiates the court process. Chief Keen did touch on this, and I think it's important to understand that just because an offense is committed in the community by a minor does not mean that that case is going to end up in juvenile court. There are a number of levels of review that occur before a case reaches my office. The first starts with the law enforcement agency who took the case. The agency has several options for what to do next. They can determine whether any further action is needed and it's frequently the case that the youth's school, family, community can provide adequate support and guidance for that youth and the case needs to go no further. They can refer the minor or their family for additional services either through the county or through a community-based organization on a voluntary basis. Chief King did talk about the diversion programs that our law enforcement agencies and schools have created that are in-house programs. But if none of these options are deemed appropriate, then the case will go on to the next level of review, which is being forwarded to the probation department. Once there, a deputy probation officer is assigned and does essentially a similar analysis. They are also authorized to decide that no further action is needed under the circumstances. They can refer the family to another agency or community-based organization for services. And then they can offer informal supervision to the minor and the family for a period of up to six months where the family can receive services on a voluntary basis and the case will be closed afterwards without ever having gone to court. The fourth option is to refer the case to the DA's office for review. If the case is referred to the DA's office, regardless of what the offense is, the assigned prosecutor will also review for filing suitability. The assigned DA can decide that no further action is needed. They can refer the case back to the probation department for informal supervision or file a wardship petition to initiate the court process. And I had an asterisk under the probation column because there are some categories of offenses that mandate a referral to the DA's office, although this doesn't mean that they are mandated to be filed. Those include the 707 offenses that we heard about earlier that I won't repeat, but those are serious and violent felonies. It also includes possession of a gun or deadly weapon on school grounds, assault of a school employee with a deadly weapon, victim restitution that exceeds $5,000, or if there's a prior wardship. On average, the Juvenile Division reviews 550 cases per year and files petitions in 360 of those cases, and that's based on data from the years 2021 through 2025. This information is offered to illustrate that prosecutors exercise of discretion is done carefully and on a case by case basis and that the receipt of a petition or a case does not mean that filing will be automatic. Those are my prepared comments for today. I thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you, and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you, Nadia.

Any questions from the board?

Oh, Supervisor Speer.

Thank you. So about 60% of the cases that are referred to you actually are then processed through, it sounds like, based on those numbers. So of those offenses, the 707s that are automatically brought to your attention, not all of those will be processed through a court procedure.

Yes, and I can give you an example of a time that a case might come to us, the report having been taken and sort of labeled as a 707B offense, but then we later determine that it not only doesn't need to be filed as such, but that maybe there is some kind of diversion or informal action. probation that would be appropriate. I would say the most common would be what's called an Estes robbery. And that is where a shoplifting is elevated because there's some kind of a use of force or threat against the loss prevention officer or the store employee. So those, while technically that can be counted as a robbery or could be charged as a robbery, our office by policy looks at whether a weapon was used, whether there was significant injury to the victim, the amount of loss. And so a case that has come in as a robbery, we may actually end up filing as a petty theft or not filing at all and referring to diversion. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we will now move on to the private defender's office, and we have Ron Reyes. Welcome.

Good afternoon, President, members of the board, and members of the public. My name is Ron Reyes. I'm the assistant chief of the juvenile defenders.

Ron, I'm going to just ask you to make sure you're speaking into the mic. Is this better?

Yes. All right. I'm the assistant chief of the juvenile branch for the private defender program. I have been a defender for 23 years, and I have the privilege in the last seven years to be heading the juvenile office for the private defender program. In addition to my local practice, I also serve on the executive board with the California Youth Defender Center, which supports over 1,600 youth defenders throughout the state by providing training, amicus briefs, as well as legislative advocacy, where I have co-led several state youth justice bills. I'm also proud to share that CYDC chose San Mateo County this year to hold their annual roundtable training, and it's going to be held at the College of San Mateo in October. I appreciate your time for allowing me to do this presentation. I want to start by sharing a little bit about our youth defenders. We have 10 youth defenders in our office. They handle cases wide in different levels. They start with the first level and the more serious level are the transfer cases. We have also, we handle mid-level cases where are serious felonies and listed in the Welfare Institution Code 707B, as I'm not going to go through what these are. They've been covered by the Chief's presentation and Ms. Hahn's presentation. We also have our attorneys handle the third tier of cases, which consist of low-level felonies and misdemeanors. One of the things that we thrive is the training of our attorneys. Handling juvenile law cases is a very technical area of the law. So we require all of our attorneys to complete minimum 15 hours of MCLE each year. And of that, there has to be eight hours of juvenile law-specific training. We offer in-house between 10 to 12 hours of MCLE juvenile training, and we also collaborate with organizations like CYDC and the California Public Defender Association for additional training to collectively have about 24 hours that we offer to our attorneys at no cost to them. And in addition to the training, we make sure that our attorneys have the support they need to do the best job possible. And that's through the support services that we provide. It starts with our panel private investigators. We have in-house now holistic and medication specialists that I will talk about in a little bit. We also have a panel of social workers. We work with experts. And we work with client advocates as well. And I added this slide here to just give you a highlight of how we are involved in the life of a case. It starts on the very left. It starts the minute the youth literally at times are at the scene when they are arrested. We get a call in order to provide a Miranda consultation and discuss with them their Miranda rights. And then it moves on to when the youth is booked at YSC. And then we start working through our holistic and mitigation specialist to work on ways in order to release that youth at the detention hearing. And the first green box there, that's, of course, our courtroom advocacy, which consists of rigorous litigation strategies. We investigate the allegation and the petition. Violent motions, setting contested hearings, and also using experts to support our litigation strategies. And last but not least, it's also our work under the secure track treatment facility, as the chief has mentioned, with the closure of DJJ. There's a lot of work that had fallen on us and then which it's changed the way we handle post-disposition representation. And there's a lot of effort that we have been putting into that since the closure of DJJ. I want to share a data point on each of these areas that I share with you, and then I'm going to start the first area I'm going to share with you about our Miranda hotline. We have attorneys on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Last year, we received 248 calls from law enforcement agencies. We conducted 244 consultation with youth that had been arrested. And then of the youth that we've spoken to, 98% of them elected to assert the right to remain silent. And a breakdown of the youth that we worked with in this area, 65% of them were 16 and 17 years old, and then 35% of them were under 15 and under. Right. The next area that we are very proud of, we have done a lot of work on, is through our mitigation and holistic specialist, Lindsay Page, who's here with me today. Lindsay started this service with us back in January 2024 on a contract basis, and we are very grateful to our chief defender for agreeing with us to switch, realizing the importance of this work, to switch that THIS WORK INTO FULL-TIME POSITIONS, SO LINDSAY IS WITH US NOW FULL-TIME. THAT STARTED IN MARCH OF THIS YEAR. WHAT LINDSAY DOES ON A DAY IN AND DAY OUT, SHE MEETS WITH YOUTH SOON AFTER THEY ARE BOOKED AT GIVENAL HALL, AND SHE STARTS WORKING WITH THEM, CONNECTS WITH THE FAMILY AND ANY OF THEIR SUPPORT PEOPLE. SHE REQUESTS THEIR SCHOOL RECORDS AND ALSO STARTS WORKING ON A SAFETY PLAN. OUR GOAL ALWAYS TO HAVE MET WITH THE YOUTH WITHIN 24 HOURS OF THEM COMING INTO YSC, AND OFTENTIMES SHE SEES THEM WITHIN A FEW HOURS OF THEIR DETENTION. LAST YEAR, IN THE LAST FISCAL YEAR, LINDSAY CREATED 56 SAFETY PLANS IN WHICH SHE CONNECTED THE YOUTH TO 10 DIFFERENT COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS SO THE YOUTH, WHEN UPON THEIR RELEASE, ARE RECEIVING SERVICES. She also developed 60 detailed fully structured release plans that include schedule for school, work, extracurricular activities with contingencies if the youth is released on EMP. She also at times work with the youth to ensure they are re-enrolled upon their release. They are re-enrolled into their school of origin. We also referred 21 youth to the Youth Education Law Project at Stanford, which they provide the youth with representation at discipline hearings, IEPs, as well as direct representation and education law type of cases. And to give you a highlight of the result of Lindsay's work, we had 141 detentions that were referred to our office last year. We referred to her 82 of those detentions, and she worked based on that. Her work, 64 of these youth were released as a result of her work, and that's a result we're very proud of. Another data I'd like to share with you is a lot of the work that our attorneys have been doing, which is the area of transfers. And in 2016, and very briefly, just to give you a little bit of history here, in 2016, Prop 57 was passed, which ended the ability to try children in adult courts, and that practice at the time was known as direct file. Since the passage of Prop 57, every youth that is facing transfer must have an evidentiary hearing before a juvenile judge, and then only the judge can order their transfer into adult court. Since the passage of Prop 57, we represented seven individuals in which they were facing transfer petitions, and none of those sevens were transferred to adult court. We did have two cases in which we called retrospective transfers. Retrospective transfer is for individual whose cases originated in adult court, but due to the change of the law, they came back to the juvenile court. And in that, we had one of the cases happened to be right after Prop 57 had passed and part of the global disposition in that case and went back to adult court and they disposed that case. And the second retrospective transfer, it just concluded weeks ago. And in that case, after a very lengthy transfer hearing, the transfer petition was denied. And that case remained in juvenile court. And that's a data point that we're very proud to share with you this afternoon. In the next area I want to focus on for today's presentation is our post-disposition advocacy and our work with youth are committed to the secure track. As the chief has mentioned that a lot of responsibility had fallen on that county since the closure of DJJ and also with that, with SB 823, there's a lot of responsibility that we were tasked with. And as a result of that, we work with our youth advocates. Each youth who are committed to secure track is assigned a client advocate. And the client advocates work with them on the creation of individual rehabilitation plan, not only with the youth, but also with the defender. They meet with the youth at least once a month in order to track their progress as they make progress towards their rehabilitation plan. They attend MDTs, court reviews, and coordinate with the different service providers. And they also assist the defenders in identifying appropriate, less restrictive programs as they transition from a secure facility into the community. And to share a data point on the work that we have been doing in this space, in 2026, there were 10 youth that were in secure track. Nine of them were eligible for the six-month review that's mandated by Welfare Institution Code 875. As a result of the work that our advocates and the advocates of our defenders, those youth, we were able to save them 55 months off of their total time commitment. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions, and thank you for your time.

Thank you. Any questions? Okay, I actually have a question. Yes. So I'm interested in the... in the Miranda consultation work that you mentioned. I'm gonna ask a brief question and we can talk about the rest offline because I know we have a lot of folks here. Actually, we'll just talk about it offline. But I'm just interested in like how that works Especially with our incorporated areas where we still have school resource officers. Because I've heard, like in my district specifically, that these Miranda consultations interfere with them having relationships with the young people. But to me, I feel like they're really important. But I'm just trying to kind of tease out, like, what's the... I don't know. I'm like, it's good. if having a relationship with a young person leads to them incriminating themselves and going to jail, then let's err on the side of caution and make sure they're not doing that.

Absolutely. Our job is to advise the youth of their Miranda rights, what it means, and what the consequences of giving an incriminating statement, and how it plays out in the legal system if they were to give any statement that is incriminating. They ultimately make that decision. We don't make that decision for them. So that's why we ask only specifically trained attorneys. Our juvenile defenders are the ones who actually handle those calls because they understand the adolescent brain development. They understand that most youth do not know what Miranda rights is. are and how they would play out if they were to be, you know, to work to give statement. Another thing that we also focus on, we address the fact that given a statement and whether you're going to be detained or not are two separate things. And then that should not be part of the equation if they're making their decisions, whether they're going to be given a statement or not. Thank you. But as far as the mechanics of how it works, I'm more than happy to share with you that information.

Okay, thank you. We'll talk more about that offline. Any other comments? Okay, we will now move on. Thank you so much, Ron. We'll now move on, and I'd love to welcome Presiding Judge Susan Jakubowski. Did I say that correctly? Very good. Okay, welcome, and thank you for your patience.

President Corso and members of the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Callagy, Mr. Nimlin, and Mr. Ely, thank you for allowing me to be here this afternoon and to address you. My name is Susan Jakubowski, and I am currently assigned as the presiding judge of the juvenile court. This is my second time up at juvenile court. I was a judge up at the juvenile court from 2018 through 2021, and I really value this work. I enjoy it. And so when the chance came to go back,

I asked to go.

I took over as presiding judge in late May of this year. We also have a second judge up at juvenile court, Judge Amara Lee, and she started in May and has worked with me for these past few months. I'm here to talk to all of you about the role of the juvenile court judge and how juvenile court judges, stakeholders, and justice partners work together in the juvenile justice system. In the past few months, the juvenile court judges have been meeting with the various justice partners, stakeholders, and community-based organizations to learn more about them and to visit their facilities. And one of the reasons we've been doing this is Judge Lee is new to juvenile court. It's been several years since I've been there and many things have changed. So I feel it is helpful for both of us to gather as much information as possible about the programs and individuals who are working with us in the juvenile justice system. In San Mateo, there are two juvenile court judges. Both of us preside over juvenile justice matters and dependency cases and handle all of the hearings in a case, including pretrial conferences, trials, and dispositions. We also are responsible for conducting periodic reviews of cases as provided for in the Welfare and Institutions Code, and sometimes if we just think a youth needs some additional monitoring, and we just want to make sure how they're doing and to make sure they're getting the services that they need. In addition to our court work, Judge Lee and I also attend events involving our youth in the Youth Services Center as well as the community. We have attended independent living graduation. We attended graduation in the Youth Services Center. And we ask to be on the list for events at the Youth Services Center if they're doing presentations. So if we have time, we can go over and be there with them and see what they're doing. As a juvenile court judge, I work regularly with many different stakeholders and organizations in the juvenile justice arena. These include probation, the district attorney's office, the private defender program, the human services agency of San Mateo, county council, behavioral health and recovery services, court appointed special advocates, the juvenile justice and delinquency prevention commission, fresh lifelines for youth and live in peace. Each of these stakeholders and organizations has a different role working with young people who become involved in juvenile justice in the county. The model we currently use in Juvenile Matters is one of collaboration involving these stakeholders and organizations. Many of us meet regularly to discuss policies, procedures, and programs to see what issues need to be addressed and to improve how services are provided to the youth and their families. As presiding judge, my main priorities are that the youth receive the services necessary for the rehabilitation and development while they are in the juvenile justice system. It is also important that the youth and those that provide services to them, as well as the community, remain safe during this process. Although each of the stakeholders may have different responsibilities in the process, my goal is to continue to have everyone work together as much as we can to reach a resolution so that we continue to focus on the goal of rehabilitation of our youth so they will succeed as future adult members of our community. And I'm happy to take any questions if anyone has.

Thank you. Supervisor Mueller.

Thank you, Judge Jakubowski. I wanted to ask, when I was going through the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Commission's operating policies, it says appointments is done by yourself in conjunction with the presiding judge.

Right.

Then later on in Section 4, it says that the county executive's offices and administrative staff provide support to the Juvenile Justice Commission. Who is the entity that reviews the report and determines whether or not the report that's being done on inspections is in compliance with standard practices? Is there any body that makes sure they're following the rules or doing the inspection right?

Well, I will cede to Ms. Rasmussen that she can address that. I know that the presiding judge of juvenile court reviews applications for commissioners and makes a recommendation. And I think then they are ultimately confirmed eventually by the board. I do know that they are provided under the law to be able to go in and do the inspections. Obviously, I review those reports and information, and if there's some concern, we can address it. But I will also let Ms. Rasmussen speak in a little bit more detail to that.

Okay, so what I'm trying to understand is when I look at the reports, and I've gone back and looked at the last reports, under Section 15, Under Section 2A, it says there should be not less than seven, then no more than 15 commissioners, and we have 10 right now. Later, it makes it very clear that no one commissioner can speak for the body, as you would expect. When I look at the reports, in 2025, only three of the commissioners actually did the inspection, and only two signed it, pretty close to one person speaking for the body. Right. In 2025, only four did the inspection, which is still less than a quorum of members of that board. And so I'm wondering, is that adequate or is that, how are we supposed to take that as a body or as a county?

I will allow Ms. Rasmussen to speak to that. From attending the meetings, what I am aware of is that they have commissioners that sign up to do the inspections. I believe then they present all of the data and information from those inspections to one another. And so the ones that, as I understand it, they have these commissioners who sign up to do the inspections. and then those are probably there. Conduct the inspections, and I believe they sign off on them, but I think the, and she can get into more specifics about this, then I believe that they share that information with, at the JJDPC meetings and with the rest of the commission, and I will say that I was not up at the juvenile court in 2025. And 2024, I haven't been there since 2021 was my last year there. And I am also newly the presiding judge up there as of May of this year. So from what I remember, and that's what I'm going back to, that's my understanding of how things work, but I would leave it to Ms. Rasmussen to provide you a little bit more detail as to those questions.

I appreciate that.

Thank you. I'm just going to jump in. Judge Jakubowski, I just want to, before we invite Chair Rasmussen up, if you'd allow me to let, I've actually done a bunch of research on this because I'm the liaison to this commission now.

Yes.

And so I know Mr. Callagy has some information and we have Deputy County Council Judith Holliver that has some information and we've been looking into it. So there's like state law, which I know Chair Rasmussen serves on a state body as well and has that perspective. But we discovered that we actually have a local council. ordinance, and we will get to that, and I will give Chair Rasmussen more time during the JJDPC presentation section, if that's okay with you. Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I totally understand, like, you're not even, like, full three months into the new role, so thank you so much for your presentation.

I have a question. Oh, Supervisor Speer. Thank you, Judge, for your presentation. I don't know if you have read the Civil Grand Jury report of July 2025. It's entitled Vacant, Valuable, and Vulnerable, Reimagining San Mateo County's Youth Service Facilities. Have you had a chance?

I have not yet.

So maybe after you read it, we could have a conversation because there's some really, I think, valid questions that are being raised as to how we can provide services to this population, maybe in a less constrained fashion or differently than we are. So I would encourage that conversation once you have a chance. Of course. Happy to. Thank you.

I think Supervisor Canepa also has a question.

I don't have a question, but really I want to thank you, Judge, as well as Judge Lee. I think we've had incredible representation from the court Your ability to leave and then come back speaks speaks volumes. I think it takes a very special Person or special people and I think what the court has demonstrated Over a period of time is really fair but being compassionate and really making sure That we understand people's stories and what we can do. I mean these are be quite frank with you These are young people and everyone deserves a chance, especially at a young age. I'm delighted. I'm excited that you're back. Whatever I can do as a board member, I just want to support you and your efforts. Please tell Judge Lee, who I sit on the library board with, that you guys are doing an incredible job. We really do enjoy working with the both of you. I'm glad you came back.

And one thing I did want to say, and I look forward to reading the grand jury report about the facilities. I think that, as Chief Keene mentioned, and I think we all are of the opinion that there's always ways that we can improve things. Facilities, working on getting youth connected earlier with services, working on getting services for the youth and their families in a quicker way and in a broader way. And I think certainly there are things that can be done to improve the facilities. And that's what I think we all want. And that's one of the reasons that many of us really try to work together collaboratively to find ways to make things less like a facility for the youth and more a system where they can work on the rehabilitation. They can focus on their education. They can do a lot of fun things. One of the things that I like to stress a lot of times is they've done things that are very serious sometimes, but they're still kids. and they need a chance to be kids. And I think we all really, the justice partners and the stakeholders, all have that same goal in mind, that we work with them in an environment that will address their issues, allow them to be kids, and help them to get to a better place at the end of the day. So I'm open to all of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. Mr. Callagy, would you like to answer Supervisor Mueller's question, or should we invite Deputy County Attorney Niblin? Go ahead.

I was going to actually defer to my colleague, Chief Deputy Judith Holliver, who I think can address that issue and maybe a couple of other things.

So the body, the JJDPC body is a little complicated because it's a hybrid body. So it's a combined statutorily mandated body under 225, with code 225, which is the JJC component, juvenile justice. And then the DPC component is an advisory commission to the board. And they're combined, which is why you have the appointments that are made by the judge and then also ratified by the board. But the inspections that are done of the facilities and the reports on those inspections are specifically in the code as an obligation of the JJC, the statutory body that reports to the court. So while the reports go to the board and there are recommendations in them, it's the court that oversees that process of inspecting and receiving the reports.

And I just wanted to add that from my understanding, Judith, and you can correct me, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors back in 1974

Somewhere around there, maybe 66, 74.

66 passed an ordinance combining the two bodies and created the JJDPC commission as we know it now.

Correct. And that was amended in 2006 and is in our ordinance code. And that is a prerogative of the board that is provided for in the code. Some counties have combined them. Some counties have not. There are other options for the DPC portion of that body. So some counties have just standalone JJCs.

And if I can just add, yes, that is absolutely correct. The JJC has somewhat of a limited effect in the board. At one point in time, I decided to expand that and adopt the JJDPC under 22 Welfare and Institute Code 233 and then combined them. So that, which I think took on even a larger role after that, but... The duties assigned to 225 are somewhat limited, as I understand it.

Supervisor Mueller.

Yeah, so that's kind of what I was getting to in my questions, is that under 225, really the obligation is to do the inspections.

Right.

And so if less than, I mean, in 2024, only two people did the inspection out of the entire commission. In 2025... Less than half of the commissioners did the inspection. So to the extent, how is the commission satisfying 225, and what weight should our body and other bodies be giving the commission's findings if it can be so swayed by such a small amount of the commissioners?

Well, I'm not sure that the code requires that all the commissioners do the inspections. It's the commission's duty to conduct them. That's the purview of the commission and the court overseeing the commission. And the code does provide for how many members on the commission, but I haven't seen anything that says that absolutely every single commission COMMISSIONER HAS TO PARTICIPATE IN THE INSPECTIONS. IT MIGHT BE THAT THE, I THINK, AND THIS I WILL DEFER TO MR. BRASMUSSEN, I THINK THAT THE WAY THEY DO IT IS THEY SELECT PEOPLE TO CONDUCT THE ACTUAL INSPECTIONS AND THEN THEY BRING THE INFORMATION BACK TO THE COMMISSION AS A WHOLE TO DO THE REPORT. BUT I'M NOT POSITIVE ABOUT THAT PART. OKAY. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THAT'S A PART I DON'T ACTUALLY ADVISE ON REALLY.

Okay. I would suggest to the commission, in a circumstance like this, where we are weighing all of the information coming to us, to see a report that's only signed by two commissioners and only two did the inspection, really, to me, doesn't satisfy the obligations of 225.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And so I'm going to take... some privilege here and actually invite Chair Rasmussen to present on the JJDPC and to our partners from Fly and Live in Peace. We're gonna have you go last. Thank you for your patience. Chair Rasmussen, please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Kim, am I pressing the white button? Okay. Thank you so much for having us here again today and for pushing through and getting this study session going.

You can look around.

I'm pretty privileged to work with some pretty amazing partners who work tirelessly to ensure that our young people are not only safe, but that they receive services and their lives are improved. Since I was here in December, I'm not going to spend too much time going back over the items that we already shared. I'll just provide a brief overview, which I think answers some of Supervisor Mueller's questions. And it also includes the ordinance that was referenced by Supervisor Corso. So legal authority of the Joint Commission. So the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 established national standards for how youth in custody were to be treated, and it also supports local efforts at prevention. And then San Mateo County in 1966 passed Ordinance Number 1769, which established the Delinquency Prevention Commission. The Welfare and Institutions Code that was spoken of earlier requires that every county have a JJC, Juvenile Justice Commission, and it authorizes the board to create and maintain a Delinquency Prevention Commission, and then the county's responsible for paying stipends and expenses. And our commissioner appointments are just as we spoke about. They go through the courts first, and then they come to you after that. And the same members serve on both commissions.

So who serves on the JJDPC?

So we have individuals with lived experience. We have educators. We have elected officials, community leaders, advocates, youth. Last year, we had five youth commissioners, which I was very proud of. And we have parents. I myself come from a family of four generations of law enforcement. My family served San Francisco and San Mateo County for over 100 years, and public safety is our legacy. I also had a child 20 years ago who went through the juvenile justice system, and I was one of those parents who received that bill. When my daughter was sent to CYA, the bill was $86 a day, and that was in 2022, which was considerable for a police officer family. So we all bring a unique perspective to the table in this work, and I think that our diversity matters. We share one common responsibility, and that is to look independently at how our systems are serving young people and where we can do better. So getting into our mandates and responsibilities. So facility inspections. So Supervisor Mueller, we conduct about 20 facility inspections a year. The Youth Services Center and SecureTrack inspection takes about four days. There are very few members of the commission who can take off four days of work, four days of school. We can only do it during the weekday, during certain business hours. That is a commitment that is a commitment Big facility, and so we have difficulty finding people who can clear their schedules for that many number of days to participate. Each year we encourage people to sign up, but we also are mindful that people may not have that availability, and they're going to sign up for maybe an inspection that would only require them to take off one day of work, and that might be for the Canyon Oaks facility or the receiving home. We also have youth who have transportation issues, and so maybe we'll give them the responsibility of doing one of the reports that don't require going out to a facility where you're just doing research on what's happening at Camp Glenwood or what's happening over at Camp Camp. So we do put the sign-ups out and people sign up. We're very clear about the time commitment that's involved and the hours that it takes to do the reports. We prepare the report. We distribute the report. It goes before the full commission and we discuss it. and the full commission votes to approve it. It then goes to the state of California, and we provide it to the board basically as a courtesy because you provide the budget for these facilities, and if there's liability involved, it falls on us, the taxpayers, the board here. So I'm hoping that...

They answered the question? Okay.

Okay. All right. So besides facility inspections, we work with BSCC and OICR to ensure compliance with all the things we heard about earlier. We conduct educational evaluations of the programming that's being offered in the hall and in SecureTrack. We inquire into the administration of juvenile court law. We make policy recommendations for system improvements. And then on the delinquency prevention side, we're responsible for coordinating delinquency prevention efforts throughout the county. So we build partnerships with schools and organizations that work to prevent entry into the juvenile justice system in the first place. We do a lot of community engagement and outreach. Commissioner Blanco has been instrumental in making partnerships with our school districts and our superintendents. And we go and give presentations there. We give presentations to civic groups. And we create resource and guidebooks for parents and families. And we study the root causes of juvenile delinquency and recidivism in hopes of improving public safety in San Mateo County. So when we came in December, I think we said we had 10 minutes, but I think we went over an hour, which was really amazing. So we highlighted some of the issues that probation consistently has said they're not in their purview to fix. For example, The chief, as much as he might want to provide adequate food or food that tastes good, that is really correctional health and dietician. Everybody has their own space, right? So there were issues that we elevated, many of which, working with probation year after year, that they said, we need help with. Procurement is one. For instance, we had some, when I say we, I mean collectively, because that's how we work. But we had some shelving that was on order about five years ago. And that shelving went through the procurement process. But by the time it got approved, I think it was earlier this year, the company had gone out of business. So we have to start all over again. And then they said that the wait at DPW could be up to two years before they could get it installed. So being able to have some sort of expedited procurement process for our juvenile facilities would be very helpful, not only for probation to be able to take care of the facility in the way in which they want to, but it would also eliminate these issues with the carpets and the painting and the things that we mentioned to you in December. As far as I wanted to touch base on the dental care, I appreciated the very thorough and comprehensive reports that were presented here. There were, in this last inspection cycle, long waits for dental care. I even had one youth who had a court order and waited eight months, even with a court order, to get dental care. There are issues within the system that we need to elevate. That's our responsibility to do so. The limited PREA compliance, that mainly from our perspective was that there was no information available on the website as far as not policy, but the actual numbers, the actual PREA numbers that let's say the Sheriff's Department has on their website. Lack of confidential reporting options. I was really happy to hear that the chief mentioned that they were looking at an outside number. I did look to see after our meeting two weeks ago what the reporting options were available online. Supervisor Corso mentioned those. And it's a PDF form, so not all youth have access to computers in the hall. Mainly it's just college students. So to be able to access the PDF, print the PDF, fill out the PDF, and then email it back to probation is really cumbersome for juveniles when you may not have that access, right? Their parents might be able to, but I... I have messages on my phone from parents who say they don't want to go through normal channels because they fear that their child may be retaliated against. So these are real fears that parents have. And having alternative ways that don't involve going through probation, I think, will be very helpful. We currently house females with males, which has its own issues. We don't have enough females, which is a fortunate position to be in, but it is difficult to house them together. So that's on, we have one on the secure track unit. Sometimes we'll have three, four on the other housing units, yes. Okay. And then most recently, there's been a lot of discussion about difficulty in accessing funding for our secure track youth. I know that the state has provided, I believe, we're close to $12 million for this population and that there are steps that must be taken to access that funding. And that's something that we're interested in learning more about and wanting to see what barriers can be removed so that money can be used for the youth and their individual rehabilitation plans. staffing levels are always something that we bring up and I know that Mr. Wade and I we communicate probably each week we communicate and I know that they're really trying to hire new folks they even change the shift schedules to include 312s and 410s to sort of because everybody's vying for the same people so I think that they're working towards that We are seeing a growing number of youth who are experiencing housing instability. So if a youth stays in custody until their 18th birthday and their probation is terminated and they don't have anywhere to go, we're finding out where do we place them. We're currently working with Samaritan House to see how we can build a partnership there so we can keep those kids off the street. Oh, okay. So I'll go into now the issues in the community. So there's a lack of robust reentry services and support, meaning that when my daughter went through the system, we had what was called wraparound services, and it was a wraparound program that really did just that. It wrapped around the family, whatever that looked like, to provide them with the intensive services that they needed to succeed. And right now, we have contracted services that are very limited. At a recent meeting, we talked about this, and the first month could be as little as four hours. And that four hours is not really robust reentry services. So that's something that we are looking to improve. Also, transportation to the Youth Services Center. Sam Trans eliminated the bus route up there a few years ago. And the commission lobbied Sam Trans to reconsider their decision. But they said that the neighborhood was located in an affluent area. And that was a factor as to why the service was cut. And so we have not been able to restore any public transportation up there. which is critical, because that's where youth check in with probation, that's where we have court, both dependency and delinquency court. There's a lot of services that are being provided, visiting, things like that. Challenges accessing programs and services once they're out in the community, and as I mentioned, the basic lack of support. So all of these issues are connected. If we look at the community issues, all of those are interconnected. And if we want young people to succeed when they leave custody, it's very important that these things are in place when they walk out the door. Facility and maintenance, getting back to our procurement process and mentioning the delays that we had with the carpet and flooring, much of the damage to the carpets has resulted in the change of the food services that were transferred during the pandemic over to the county jail and are now heated up, as you've probably seen on your visit. There's ovens and there's refrigerators on the housing unit, and you'll see the extensive food stains and whatnot. It's and near the tables where the youth eat. And the facility is coming up on 20 years. And I think having an open house is a fantastic idea. But it is a state of the art facility. That track, what we have in the center, that is a beautiful facility. And our goal as a commission, when we raise these issues about the maintenance and issues that need to be done, we want to keep it that way. We don't ever want to get back to the place we were at 21 Tower Road. So it requires maintenance. And it is hard to believe it's already been 20 years, but it has. And so just like in our own homes, we need to keep care of things. Okay, so we've talked about the carpets and flooring, the lack of personal storage, general housekeeping and maintenance. One thing I learned just in July when we went for our most recent inspection, Commissioner Patton and I, I learned that we do not have a housekeeping contract in place for the juvenile hall or SYTF. The youth are the ones who perform all the housekeeping. which is fine, but it kind of also explains why we don't have, things aren't deep cleaned, right? And I don't know how they've been trained to clean. My children have chores at home, but cleaning a facility of that size, I think, is worthy of a contract, just to ensure that we're doing that Deep cleaning I do know there's a contract in place for the administrative offices and the lobbies and things like that and I believe I spoke with mr. Wade and Miss Ramirez during the inspection about ways to see if we can expand that contract to include some some deep cleaning there so Okay All right. So commission challenges. So some challenges that we've faced is with our annual inspection report. Like I mentioned, we send them over to the board each year as a courtesy for the reasons I've already explained. And we very seldom get feedback. We were really happy in December when we got feedback, and we were invited by Supervisor Canepa, who was our liaison for probably more than a decade. Yeah. So... Okay, and then inclusion. Sometimes we find out after the fact that really important decisions have been made or there's discussions happening or planning, and we don't know about it. And here we are, this board of volunteers, unpaid volunteers, who dedicate their time and expertise to benefit the youth. And so we'd like a seat at the table. Commissioner stipends and expenses also covered under Welfare and Institution Act. 231, those have not been provided as long as I've been on the commission. There is a code that states that commissioners will receive a stipend for attending meetings and their expenses will be covered, but we've never received that. In other counties, they use that money to give scholarships for youth, to help youth commissioners in transportation. That was something we brought to the board, the way time goes, maybe three years ago. And at that time, I believe the president was Warren Slocum. And he said that was not something that the county was interested in doing. But it is in the Welfare and Institutions Code, isn't it? Yes. So and that is for the delinquency prevention. So communication gaps in coordination and information sharing. Commission funding. Our commission doesn't have a budget. You heard back in December how much we self-fund and buy things on our own. During the pandemic, we were using my own Zoom account to conduct meetings. Access to information. It is challenging to obtain information and data to carry out our oversight responsibilities. accomplishments we have a handbook how to help your child after arrest that sits in the lobby of the juvenile hall probation lobby private defender's office and we are in the process of updating that now and we found someone who was willing to donate their services to translate that book in tongan so we'll be able to have it in three separate languages that we're very excited about We did the voting rights program, which is a county-wide program to elevate voting rights for youth. Our college laptop initiative. Now, this was the issue that when we were here in December that Supervisor Speer offered to get the 12 laptops. And I just want to be very clear that the laptops that we provide youth, and the chief and I had a conversation about this, are kids who have been released from the facility do not have any technology and are enrolled in college and wish to continue. We provide them with laptops.

I'm going to ask you to please just finish out your presentation. I don't want you to address a specific board member. I want us to kind of get through to the end here, and then we'll have board questions and keep it moving.

The laptop initiative is on me. OK. Okay, Suited for Success and then the Pierpoint Program. The commission raised $680,000 for the Pierpoint Program, which we can't administer programs, so we put FLY in touch with those funders, and they handled that contract. WE ARE RECOGNIZED AS STATEWIDE LEADERS. I FOUNDED THE CALIFORNIA JUVENILE JUSTICE COLLABORATIVE. I SIT ON THE ADVISORY GROUP IN SACRAMENTO FOR POLICY AND LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY SUBCOMMITTEE AND COMMISSIONER BLANCO SITS ON THE OICR EDUCATION AND ADVISORY SUBCOMMITTEE. And I spoke about how we're doing outreach, educational outreach. We do policy and system reforms. Educational transition plans is one that we've been working on with the County Office of Education, Superintendent Marco Chavez. We discovered that we weren't in compliance with educational transition plans, and what that means is any youth who's incarcerated over 30 days is required to have a plan on how they're going to get back into school, enroll, what's going to happen. So we are actively working on that. I think they just entered into an MOU with probation, and we are working to fix that. Protecting youth confidentiality, I spoke on that earlier. the strip searches. I just wanted to make one clarification. I do have a report in my hand that was sent to me by the Office of Youth and Community Restoration who investigated that incident and found the allegations to be substantiated. So I have a copy of that report for clarity. OK. Visiting, after the Youth Bill of Rights was passed, we went in and talked with then-Presiding Judge Susan Edizotti about sibling visiting. So we got that put through. And then we've reduced the wait time for eyeglasses by elevating the issue. It used to take up to a year to get a pair of eyeglasses. And now the wait time is about 30 days. And the youth have pillows. When I joined the commission, the youth didn't have pillows. Whoops. Okay. So some of our delinquency prevention work, that's what I'm going to show you this video.

So in January, we held our very first prevention and action schools, communities, and youth voices conference.

And I know I saw Supervisor Mueller there. He took the time. Thank you so much for being there. That meant a lot. We didn't get a chance to talk.

Appreciate you being there.

But we created a video of the day that shows, I don't know how to pause this, I'm sorry, that shows just the level of collaboration and work that went into this event. And I think, I'll go ahead and show you now.

Chair Rasmussen do you know how much longer this is?

There's many people here today in the video and I was hoping that they could see themselves.

Thank you, but we've been going for two and a half hours now and we still have a lot of items to get through.

So this video, for those who are interested, is available on our website. So it was a huge event. We raised over $30,000, Commissioner Blanco, to put that together. It was sponsored by Project Change and the community colleges. So we're very proud of that work, and we'll be sending you an invitation for it.

the year coming up.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that when we were there in July for the inspection, it was noted that under the Title 15 nutritional guidelines, it showed that we were not in compliance with menus and that the nutritional values had not been established. And I understand through talking with them today that the lady who's responsible for developing those menus and for signing off that they meet the nutritional values has been out on a medical. So I just wanted to mention that. So that is the extent of my presentation today.

Okay. Do we have questions from the board? Supervisor Mueller.

I actually do have a question. So you mentioned that when it takes a course of four days for all of the commissioners to do all of the inspections, or is it four days just for juvenile hall?

Yes, for the juvenile hall and the secure youth treatment facility. So they're on one campus, but they are two distinct facilities.

How long does it take to do all the inspections of all the facilities in the county for the commissioners?

We start the process in July, and we wrap up by the end of the year, so half the year.

OK. And about how many commissioners are doing each of the inspections?

Well, commissioners, we ask that they sign up for at least two. And when our numbers are lower, then sometimes we need them to sign up for three.

All right, so then I'm trying to understand, for each of the facilities in the county then, is there somewhere between three and four commissioners? Let me ask you this. Is there any facility in the county that there's a majority of the commission doing the inspection together? No.

No, and most of the time, that isn't something that the facility would like for us to show up with 10 people. It doesn't really take that to do the inspection. We try and rotate and give everybody an opportunity to serve on whatever inspection team they want to. But to show up, I know even for graduation events, probation has requested no more than three. So it's just a matter of how things work that way. No, we don't. We share the work. That's how we do it. And then everybody weighs in. Everybody votes to approve.

All right. So earlier you said that people couldn't get the four days off the juvenile hall. People couldn't get the four days off the juvenile hall. And now additionally to that, it's your belief that the facility doesn't want more than four people.

Well, I think we should ask. That's just been my experience. The most we've ever had on the team is four. But I think the best person to ask is the chief on how many. If he'd like all 10 of us to come, I don't know that we could achieve that. But we could ask him.

Chief, do you have any problem with all 10 going? Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead.

I do want to try to figure this out because for two years in a row, it's been a very small number of people who actually did the inspections. And like I said, in that one year, three did it and only two signed. I'm not sure why Ms. Swope didn't sign that year.

She left the commission by the time the report was issued, and she had already left the commission. She had termed out.