Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right. All right. Good morning. I will call to order the April 15th, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the second day of budget workshops for the fiscal year 2026 through 2027. Madame Clerk, please call the role. Supervisor Lee here, Supervisor Caps here, Supervisor Hartman here, Supervisor Lavanino here, and Chair Nelson here. Please stand and join me in pledge allegiance to our flag. Ready, begin. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Our first order of business is uh the CEO's report. CO MS, do we have a report this morning? No report this morning, sir. Okay. Next up, Madame Clerk, do we have any changes or modifications to today's agenda?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, I do have a couple quick announcements this morning regarding public participation. Members of the public wishing to address the board will have an opportunity to provide comments at the conclusion of each functional group presentation. If you would like to speak more broadly on the county budget, there will be an opportunity to do so during the budget workshop summary public comment period at the end of the day on Friday, April 17th. For those joining via Zoom, please indicate the specific functional group you wish to comment on when registering to speak. Lastly, for more information on the board of supervisors methods of public participation and instructions on how to provide public comment on items listed on today's agenda or during the general public comment period, please refer to page two. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. If you have any questions, please contact the clerk of the board's office at area code 805-568-2240. Again, that number is 805-568-2240. And that concludes my announcements for this morning.

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. At this time, uh, is the time for members of the public to speak on items that are not on today's agenda. So, these would not be budget related items dealing with the departments that we are discussing. So, are there any members of the public here to speak on general public comment? Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have two requests to speak from the public on general public comment today. Let's go ahead and close public comment. We will begin on Zoom with Anna Garcia. Then we will return here in Santa Barbara with Terresa Douglas. Anna,

hello. Good morning.

Um, okay. I am here to express concern about something I heard at Monday's workshop meeting regarding improving efficiency and more specifically medical record management. The move toward integrating AI into our medical records is a dangerous gamble with our most intimate data. I do not want my private appointments with my doctor recorded, transcribed, or fed into a machine learning model. What specific safety measures are um I'm sorry, I lost my place. What specific safety measures are in place? More importantly, how is the board verifying that those safeguards actually work? Trust us isn't a policy, it's a liability. Now, moving on to the subject of ICE. Uh they're at the jail this morning and we witnessed an ICE vehicle actually park in the back gate of the sheriff parking lot. I tried to report it and uh received hostile treatment. Um this isn't a political talking point anymore. It's a public safety emergency. I have seen the direct fallout. Alleged ICE agents are chasing and tackling people at the county jail, leaving residents bloodied and hospitalized. We've had reports and have witnessed alleged ICE agents breaking car windows, pepper spraying community members who are exercising first amendment rights to document these abuses and driving erratically through our city, even crashing at the jail and causing an oil to spill into the drainage area. This doesn't have to be our reality. The Multma County uh board just passed uh ordinance codifying sanctuary policies into their county code. They aren't just making symbolic gestures. They are formally banning the use of county property for federal immigration enforcement, prohibiting county staff from asking about or retaining immigration status information, and refusing to honor administrative

detainers or holds from ICE. Multma County declared a state of emergency because they recognize that federal overreach creates instability, chaos, and fear. Why is Santa Barbara County under the uh undesirable leadership of Sheriff Bill Brown still providing the grounds for this chaos to unfold? Your refusal to pass a similar ordinance is an active choice to let your neighbors be hunted on county land. Uh yeah, please address the ICE situation. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Garcia. We will now return to Santa Barbara with Terresa Douglas. Teresa.

Hi everyone. My name is Teresa Douglas and I'm here as a parent and a concerned neighbor speaking for the many families who no longer feel safe near La Pada. I'm advocating for the safety of my children and the roughly 7,000 children in the area. Right next door to La Pada is the Little League Fields and the Page Youth Center. And then the immediate vicinity, daycare centers, elementary schools, Trivia Home School, San Marcus High School, as well as students who wait for their bus along uh Hollister Avenue. This is a densely populated, child-c centered community where the county chose to place La Pada. La Pada houses psychologically ill and hard drugusing individuals without drug testing or background checks in the middle of our growing children trying to start their lives. Law enforcement is dispatched to La Pada on nearly a daily basis. Alarmingly, last month, Deputy Fabian Flores was violently stabbed in the chest by a knife wielding subject at La Pada who was booked for attempted murder. Since opening in 2024, incidents have only increased in the surrounding areas. It is merely a matter of time before the victim is a child of this community. It's not a matter of if it'll happen, but when. Shockingly, this neighborhood is expected to absorb additional permanent interimm housing units next to the Page Center. At some point, the cumulative impact must be acknowledged. Concentrating multiple high impact facilities in one child dense area is not balanced planning. It is an undue burden of unacceptable risk to a single community. When La Pada was approved, it was with good intention, but the evidence is born that this location in the middle of essentially a child's playground is not appropriate. We will all bear the responsibility when

the inevitable victimization of a child occurs as a result of La Pada. I'm asking you to take action during your budget discussions to prioritize relocating La Pada to a more appropriate location that is not inherently dangerous to our children. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Douglas. And that concludes general public comment for today. All right, that brings us to our second day of budget workshops for fiscal year 2627. And now I'll turn it over to our county's executive office, Mono Misado.

Thank you, Chair Nelson. We begin the second day of workshops. Um, you see the functional groups ahead of you or before you. Uh, Mr. Clemeni will talk about what updates we've made since Monday.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, yesterday we posted online with our materials um the jail housing options special issue both report and PowerPoint which will be heard on Friday as well as three additional board inquiry form responses related to veteran services. Uh the IV foot patrol building and IV crime statistics. Thank you. All right, I think now we'll begin with our functional first functional group uh today which will be public safety and I believe Miss Fernandez will kick off with another presentation before we get into the district attorney's office. Miss Fernandez.

Thank you chair, members of the board. We'll start this morning with a short video summary of the public services uh public safety services. The public safety functional group is dedicated to protecting our community and ensuring justice. This group, sorry. The public safety functional group is dedicated to protecting our community and ensuring justice. This group includes the district attorney, probation, public defender, sheriff, and fire department. Together, these departments work across the justice system from emergency response to rehabilitation. The sheriff's office provides law enforcement, criminal investigations, and operates county jails. The fire department responds to fires, rescues, and provides emergency coordination and preparedness services. The district attorney prosecutes and investigates criminal cases, protects consumers, and supports victims. The public defender provides legal defense to those who qualify, and works to stabilize clients and improve their legal and life outcomes. Probation supervises justice involved individuals and supports rehabilitation and jail diversion programs. Together, these departments work to keep our community safe, fair, and secure. The public safety. The public safety functional group makes up roughly a third of countywide operating expenditures and 38% of total county FTEEs. The group receives 51% of the county's total general fund

contribution. Looking at a 5-year trend of operating revenue in GFC, we see that GFC makes up between 40 and 70% of operating revenue for public safety departments with the exception of FIRE, which receives the bulk of its funding from property taxes, state contracts, and mutual aid agreements. In fiscal year 2324, fire started to receive approximately $2 million in GFC as a result of the Office of Emergency Management shifting from the CEO department to the fire department. Turning to operating revenue, we see steady increases for all public safety departments with the exception of courts in the first four years of the 5-year period, followed by a decrease in fiscal year 2627 for district attorney, probation, and public defender, largely due to declining state and federal grant revenue. The most noticeable change in the chart is the jump in sheriff GFC for fiscal year 2526. The darker blue bar in the chart represents $32 million in GFC for Northern Branch Jail operations funding that went to the general county programs department before being transferred to sheriff in prior years. After the the Northern Branch Jail funding plan was complete in fiscal year 2526, funding went directly to the sheriff's budget instead. The increase we see in sheriff operating revenue for fiscal year 2627 is largely due to the growth in city contract revenue and state grant funding. Here we see the five-year trend of operating expenditures, mirroring the operating revenue and GFC trends in the previous slide. The growth we see in the sheriff expenditures for fiscal year 2526 is primarily due to increases in jail medical costs, salary and benefits and internal services. DA, probation, and public defenders show modest year-over-year growth in operating expenditures. While in courts, there is a noticeable decrease in fiscal year 2324 associated with shifting the indigent conflict defense contract from courts to the CEO's office. The increase

we see in fire in fiscal year 2324 is related to establishing the regional fire communication center and increased state contract expenditures. In 2627, fire costs associated with salaries and benefits, contract services, and vehicle maintenance continue to grow. For all other public safety departments, costs were held relatively flat in fiscal year 26-27 through a variety of balancing measures that will be explained further during departmental presentations. Trends in FTE over the past 5 years show relative stability in DA, probation, and sheriff staffing. Fire shows a significant 47 FTE increase in fiscal year 2324 largely related to staffing for the regional fire communication center and various administrative positions to support overall departmental growth. We see growth in public defender FTE be between fiscal years 223 and 2425 largely related to CCP ARPA and other grant-f funded initiatives some of which are coming to an end in fiscal year 2627. Sheriff FTE decreased in fiscal year 2526 relative related to the change in dispatch operations after opening the regional fire communication center and further decreases of 30 FTE across multiple divisions are proposed to balance the fiscal year 2627 preliminary budget. Here we highlight major challenges and initiatives facing the public safety departments. Major challenges include growing jail medical costs, declining grant revenue and other sources of one-time and ongoing funding, funding operational costs associated with state programs and initiatives, and increasing complexity of digital evidence discovery and evaluation. Current initiatives for this group include expanded or enhanced diversion efforts, continued implementation of the Cal AIM justice involved initiative, updating case and evidence management systems, and improving the coordination of inspections, permitting, and

emergency response through the use of technology. Next, we'll provide a highle summary of departmental sources and uses of funds. The majority of the district attorney revenue comes from GFC at $21 million, followed by intergovernmental revenue at $10.7 million. That includes Prop 172 funds, which are state sales tax dollars allocated to counties for public safety, and AB 109 revenue, which is 2011 state realignment funding that is allocated by the Community Corrections Partnership or CCP. slightly more than $33 million or about 90% of the department's funding supports criminal prosecution activities. Most of probation's revenue is intergovernmental at $46.6 million, which includes $32.5 million of AB 109 funding. As the CCP funding administrator, the department passes most of its AB 109 funding on to other departments to perform public safety activities. The department also receives $34.1 million of GFC. These funding sources primarily support the department's administrative and adult services. Here we see the that most of public defenders revenue comes from GFC at $14.2 million followed by intergovernmental revenue at 5.9 million which includes Prop 172 and AB 109 revenue. funding mainly supports adult legal services at $23.3 million. The sheriff's GFC represents a third of total county allocations at $136.3 million. Intergovernmental revenue is sec is the second largest source at $44.2 million and includes Prop 172 and AB 109 funding. Sheriff funding primarily supports custody operations at $113 million, followed by countywide law enforcement at $84.5 million, which

includes the dispatch, patrol, criminal investigations, and special operations divisions. In the fire department, the majority of funding is generated through dedicated property taxes at $86.7 million and charges for services related to state contracts and mutual aid at $44.3 million. Funding largely supports emergency operations. The department re also receives a relatively small GFC allocation of $2 million that supports emergency management services. Lastly, we have court special services, which is primarily funded with $7.6 million of GFC and $1.8 million in charges for services, which include fees earned on collections. Funding primarily supports the county's maintenance of effort, payment to the state for trial court operations, enhanced collections, and alternative dispute resolution services. And that concludes the public safety functional group summary.

All right. Thank you, Miss Fernandez. this point we'll turn over to the district attorney's office and the honorable district attorney John Sabernoth Chair Nelson, members of the board. Um, I'm here today to present the district attorney's uh fiscal year 2026 20227 budget. Uh, with me today at the uh at the table is Nicole Mung, uh, our business manager, Jennifer Carropedian, the assistant district attorney, chief financial and administrative officer, Michael Sodderman. Present also is the chief of our Bureau of Investigations, Christina Perkins, and the head of our victim witness assistant program, Megan Rhinchild. Uh, all of whom will be available to answer questions if there are any. Uh before I begin, I just want to point out that oftentimes uh before a presentation, I receive some of my best uh inspiration reading the elevator doors and walls of the county administration building. Uh this year's inspiration came on the landing in between the first and second floor. And it's a coaster, it's a poster the county put up that says our mission. And this is our mission as a county. We deliver exceptional services so all can enjoy a safe, healthy and prosperous life. And as the first department head to present in the public safety group, I would just

like to point out in that mission where the word safe is. It was first. So, this budget reflects uh a department that continues to deliver critical public safety outcomes while experiencing increasing workloads, rising case and operational complexity and now significant resource constraints. Uh, I look at the annual budget as an excellent opportunity to highlight the important work that's being done every day by the employees of the district attorney's office and how the diff different functional units of the DA's office all work together to provide the critical public safety and justice services that we provide. and how every employee, no matter what job assignment in the DA's office, is important to our mission. On the attorney side, and when people think district attorney, they think attorney. We are the largest law firm in the county. Uh we secured convictions in gang related homicides in both North and South County. We obtained justice in some sense of closure for the victim's family in a 1988 cold case homicide. We obtained a conviction of a serial rapist who was terrorizing women at UCSB. We secured over $3.7 million in ordered restitution and 58 years in state prison sentences on large-scale white collar crimes. Our open murder cases, child sexual assault cases, and felony DUI cases, open cases are all up and the attorneys continue to handle them.

But none of that can happen without our support staff, the people that make it work. Every what we call a case results in a charging document. These documents all have to be filed with the court. They have to be filed timely. They have to be accurate. Every criminal case involves motions and other pleadings which must be filed. Once again, without the hard they are generally all on a time constraint. Without the hard work, the dedication, the accuracy, and the professionalism of our support staff, we would fail in our duties to the court and to the public. We issued over 16 and a half thousand subpoenas last year. Now, on top of preparing and delivering those subpoenas, we had to contact and coordinate the witnesses as to when they had to be in court. All done by our support staff. We received over 61 terabytes of evidence from law enforcement and distributed that to defense. Our Bureau of Investigations, another arm that we can't function without. They in they provide investigative support in all case types, felonies and misdemeanors, and responded to approximately 7,000 investigation requests prepared by the attorneys in the DA's office. Frequently, our bureau does primary investigation on la large largescale financial crimes, even when we are not specially funded to do so. Our bureau personally served over 2,900 subpoenas, and our bureau continues to participate in and in some cases provide primary investigative uh response in human trafficking cases. and most arson cases.

And then we get to our victim witness assistant program. These are the unsung heroes of the district attorney's office. Our victim advocates provide assistance to people who through no fault of their own are dealing with the trauma and loss that crime causes. The district attorney is the voice of the victim in the court system and the victim advocates allow us to make that voice heard and to provide for victim needs. Our advocates generally contact over 4,000 new victims per year. Our advocates provide services in cases even if there isn't a criminal case filed and they work to support victims and next of kin in cases that are sometimes decades removed from the criminal case being completed. All of these units operate as a highly functioning team and are all essential components of the critical public safety services the district attorney's office provides. One of Aristotle's uh philosophical musings definitely applies to the department I am fortunate enough to lead. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The key takeaways in this budget, um, it's basically that case loads and case complexity are growing significantly amongst declining resources. Our open felony case loads are up 62% since 2019. Our felony filings are up 6% and our felony referrals from law enforcement are up 16%. The number of serious open cases, including murder, sexual assault, and

felony DUI, has increased. We have seen a 3,600% increase in digital evidence between 2021 and 2024. And this is not only a significant workload and logistical challenge, but it's a huge contributor to the complexity of the cases that all criminal law practitioners are facing. And this workload is not static. It is becoming more complex, more data heavy, and more time inensive. Our total operating budget is 37.1 million with 150.5 FTEES compared to our FY2526 adopted budget. This is about an $800,000 or $2.2% 2% reduction to a budget that consists largely of salaries or more accurately put people. Specifically, we have seen a $3,94 uh $394,000 reduction in welfare fraud funding, a 273,000 reduction in EDDD fraud grant funding, and a 237,000 reduction in CCP funding for our diversion director. These reductions required $1.3 million in balancing measures to achieve a balanced budget. The total impact of the measures actually implemented by our office is closer to 2.1 million. Over the past two years, our budget to comp combat welfare fraud has been reduced by $516,000 due to the reduction in revenues and

funding received by the social service social services. These reductions significantly limit the DA's ability to investigate and prosecute welfare fraud, undermining the integrity of the very safety net programs the county is working to support. We are also relying on one-time funding for ongoing operations, and this method of budget balancing is simply not sustainable. The vast majority of our bud operating budget is utilized to fund the DA's mandated function of supporting public safety by engaging in criminal prosecutions and supporting victims of crime. The critical function of providing consumer and environmental protection is funded by fines, penalties, and fees and not general fund dollars. Transfers from general county programs support technology systems, digital infrastructure, and cannabis enforcement. Now, the staffing summary. This is where the impact of budget reductions becomes the most tangible. We are proposing a net reduction of six FTEES including one deputy district attorney for the specialty and collaborative courts, one deputy district attorney, our diversion director, one investigator for the pandemic unemployment and insurance fraud gr anti-fraud grant. Two investigative assistants in the welfare fraud program. uh the cuts that we received in the last fiscal year from social services, we had actually uh

reduced our uh welfare fraud prosecution unit by eliminating a sworn investigator and one legal office professional for general criminal prosecution. We're already a thinly staffed office and unfortunately these reductions are going to have real operational impacts. Our proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2627 demonstrates a reduction of approximately 800,000 dollars compared to our fiscal year 2526 adopted budget. These reductions are driven primarily by a loss of external revenue and position reductions. This is not a case of reducing excess. It is a case of reducing capacity. At the same time, workload is increasing, not decreasing. And despite these constraints, our office continues to deliver strong outcomes. We continue to prosecute all serious and violent crimes, including homicides and sexual assaults that occur in the county. We have secured millions in victim restitution orders. We have launched a cold case unit and already secured a conviction in a decad's old case and we respond to thousands of investigative requests. We have expanded restorative justice. Our neighborhood restorative justice program is now countywide and our treatmentbased programs and we have implemented and are implementing major technology systems. These accomplishments reflect the quality of the individuals who comprise all of our functional units and the resilient just get it done culture of the district attorney's

office. Looking ahead, our priorities are focused on implementing digital evidence systems, improving data transparency and datadriven decisionmaking, and strengthening recruitment and retention. Other goals include expanding our investigative capacity. We uh have our investigation, our bureau has been uh underst staffed for years and that problem is uh continuing and we are increasing our prevention efforts particularly in the areas of fraud more most specifically elder fraud and uh environmental enforcement. But any goal, any objective is going to be at risk uh as the resources continue to be diminished. We have made strong progress on operational improvements. Our case management system implementation has uh been accomplished and accomplished in a manner that in talking to my peers throughout the state of California, it was an amazing job by our team how successfully we were able to accomplish that. We're also making strong progress on advancing the digital evidence management system and we are expanding our data dashboards and transparency. We were ready to roll out a new uh public-f facing data dashboard with additional features. Uh we did run into uh ADA compliance issues which all county forwardfacing uh systems need to address. So, we are ready to roll with that as soon as we are sure we're ADA compliant.

But all of the improvements require staffing and infrastructure in order to be accomplished and effective. Fiscal issues. It's the widening gap between workload and resource is real and it's it's a real and prevalent concern. We are seeing flat or declining revenues, increasing personnel costs, growing unfunded mandates, rapid growth in digital evidence, and rising case complexity. At some point, providing the current level of service with declining resources becomes unsustainable. For years, the district attorney has been issuing warnings about the metaphorical tsunami of digital evidence that would hit when bodywn cameras were rolled up. That tsunami has hit, resulting in increased workloads associated with digesting, disseminating, and analyzing this digital evidence. And this workload, this increased workload applies to law enforcement, the district attorney, and all criminal defense attorneys. Our performance metrics show a system working efficiently. We have strong conviction rates. We effectively use court resources and we continue to recover restitution for the victims of crime. our balancing measures. To balance this budget, we have already taken significant steps. We have held services and supplies flat. We have reduced extra help. We have delayed equipment replacement. We have hired lower cost entrylevel attorneys. We have maintained an elevated salary savings. and we

eliminated two generally funded positions plus four more associated with outside revenue sources. We do have a restoration request and we're very aware of the fiscal climate and the situation that the county is facing and we don't make any restoration requests lightly. However, we are requesting the restoration of two critical positions. one attorney for specialty courts and one law office professional for our general criminal prosecution function. These positions directly support case processing, diversion and treatment courts, the timely resolution of cases, and the receipt and dissemination of discovery. Without them, pressure on the criminal justice system will increase and the county specialty courts will not be able to function as designed. The district attorney's office is at the center of the criminal justice system. When prosecution capacity is reduced, cases take longer to file and resolve. Victims wait longer for justice. Defendants remain in custody longer, increasing jail costs. Law enforcement investigations are delayed or unsupported, and public confidence in the system can erode. These impacts ripple across the entire system to the courts, public defense, law enforcement, and the community. We are doing all that we can internally to absorb any reductions. At this point, further reductions will directly impact public safety outcomes. Going on my theme of how important every employee is to the functioning of the

district attorney's office, and I think this is a sentiment that I share with all of my fellow department heads in the county. Uh my quote comes from uh the greatest coach in the history of the NFL, Vincent Thomas Lombardi. Coach Lombardi knew that in order for the organization to have success, everybody had to be working hard, working towards a common mission. Everybody from the assistant equipment manager to uh the quarterback. And coach Lombardi said, "The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual." And I I I speak as somebody that leads an incredible team comprised of amazing amazing individuals. That is a very accurate quote. So, we appreciate your consideration as and support as we work to maintain a fair, efficient, and effective justice system. And I'm available for any questions.

All right. Thank you, Dan. Questions from the board. Supervisor Caps.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. District Attorney. I really appreciate that excellent overview and seeing your team. I know what a strong team it is and what a a capable leader you are. Uh and I've really appreciated working with you as a as a team. Uh particularly two issues, your strong leadership on drivers under the influence and I know what a priority that that is and what a personal issue that is for you and also the way that you've stood up for our immigrant community this past year and a half um means a lot to our community. Um two questions for you. The first in the overview presented about this um day today, the lead initiative was diversion efforts. Um and I just wanted if you could speak from your perspective of how that's going from your department um as an as an initiative as a criminal justice partner. What does that mean um from your perspective in your department?

Yeah. What the the one issue that pro the overriding uh principle of our office will always be public safety but we have found there are ways to have diversion and public safety. Yes. When I talk about our filings, I'm generally focused on felonies here because our misdemeanor filings are actually down. Um, and one of the largest drivers of that is neighborhood restorative justice program where we are uh taking people committing misdemeanors and instead of imposing consequences under the criminal justice system, we're imposing positive consequences in letting somebody who is willing to put in some effort and positively redirect uh not get a criminal record. Um we do participate and will participate in all diversion efforts. We are always here to talk and yes there are disagreements.

Yeah. But if it's a disagreement it's not with the concept it's not with the principle from my perspective public safety will always predominate. But whether it's the public defenders ready program, whether it's the early representation, um you my office participates in all of these and really wants to see all all of these issues and items be a success with the proviso that they can be done so safely. So

yeah, and I'm going to ask ask each department that question. My second question is uh I think one of the first initiatives when I became supervisor was this data uh initiative that you brought forward. It's it's you mentioned it as an accomplishment but could you just speak um a little bit further about what that means and potentially any cost savings because as we all know with data comes more information and better decisions and if has that led to maybe if there's an example that uh comes to mind that has helped inform some cost cutting or better decisions for your department. Well, it's I I can tell you directly what what we really needed to do was get our data in order. Y

to have it digestible, to have it usable, and to have it accurate. So, when we employed Securo data analytics, one of the main benefits of that was actually ensuring that all the data that we moved over to our new case management system was in fact accurate. Now we have systems in place to ensure the accuracy of that data moving forward.

When I talked to about the success of the implementation of our case management system and I I have had uh peer DAS talk about how much litigation they were involved in prior to that happening in their counties which we avoided.

I see. Um it is largely because our data are we had accurate data going in. It was a key component of our case management system implementation and now we use it. We can see where the trends are where we use it regularly to see where do personnel need to be assigned. if we are hiring, do we need to assign that individual to Santa Maria because more of the large complex cases are occurring there. Yeah. Uh we use it on a management level all the time and we actually have and are uh prepared to release a large analysis of uh our data and how our data applies to uh uh our racebased data and how it applies to outcomes in the criminal justice system in that regard. So the data actually having accurate data which this project with entailed is going to allow us to have data dashboard. It allows us to have an accurate and effective case management system. It allows us to make personnel and staffing decisions. So it is actually versus one specific example. It actually permeates everything we do right now. Okay.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Supervisor Caps, Supervisor Levanino, and then Supervisor Hartman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning. Good morning. So, I saw your team walking down the street and I get the Law and Order theme song going in the back of my head. It's pretty cool. I was thinking Reservoir Dogs. Yeah. Well, you had that kind of you had that action going, too. Let's slow it down. Um I want to talk about can you just talk a little bit about you've had some amazing successes in the cold case uh recently. How is that team? How do you work um across departments? How how how is that put together and how many resources that take you?

It's actually uh an amazing collaboration between in the one cold case I recently went to trial. Of course, we have the benefit of having uh one of the most exceptional homicide prosecutors in the state of California working in Santa Barbara and u uh she has taken this on as something she believes in. So, she drives that. But we actually had a one of our Bureau of Investigations personnel basically once that case got near trial was working full-time. He was there for the entire trial. It requires coordination with an agency because you're talking about an investigation that occurred in 1988, which I know for those of us that remember the 80s, it's hard to believe that was almost 40 years ago. Uh so you're talking about officers that in most cases, investigators, particularly detectives, tend to be senior experienced officers. So they either have retired or passed. You're talking about an agency that has to still maintain the evidence. In this case, it was advances in DNA testing that allowed us to solve this case, but that required the agency to hold on to that. So, the Santa Maria Police Department put a significant amount of time into this case, not only reinvestigating things, but also making uh past and retired detectives available. So, it's very resource inensive in terms of uh our Bureau of Investigations, our attorney staff, and certainly whatever law enforcement agency was responsible for the initial investigation will all have generally hundreds, probably more likely thousands of hours involved in a cold case. But in the end, uh talking to a and the prosecutor, uh Bramson that

handled that case for us did a lot of the county's most significant cases, U-Haul case, the MS13 case in Santa Maria. She said the sentencing or the uh verdict in this case was like nothing she had ever seen. 20 people were there that remembered. The daughter of the uh woman that was killed was there saying, you know, this gave us closure. We we we had no idea what this was. She said in in a in the most distinguished uh career of probably any Santa Barbara County prosecutor, that is the one thing she will remember most.

Awesome. Well, that kind of takes me to my second question, which is the increase in electronic discovery. So, this massive flood of new type of evidence. While that's kind of daunting to deal with, doesn't that make your trials a little bit easier? actually just the opposite opposite. Okay.

So, and while I talk and one thing I was trying to emphasize is this is not only it's it's making the cases more complex because in the past you would have maybe three or four police reports, maybe three officers wrote reports on a fairly significant case. Uh a simpler case, maybe one or two reports with a follow-up or two. But now, uh, in a in any case, um, you might a domestic violence case might require the response of four officers. If they're on scene for an hour, that's 4 hours of video. So, it's not only incumbent on the prosecution to know that the video supports the case that we're moving forward with, but it's incumbent on the defense to determine whether or not the video provides uh exculpatory evidence. So in re while body cams for a number of public safety reasons have huge benefits uh it has made it has made our life more difficult in just from the workload perspective. So,

so from efficiency it it's horrible. But to get to justice you

right it it is definitely all the district attorney is seeking we're seeking justice and justice implies the truth and the body warrant cameras are are one factor that allow us to get to the actual events and the actual truth. What did occur? What was said? Who said what? what inflection there's a lot that so we're not complaining about a tool that makes justice more uh that makes it more possible to achieve actual justice but it does make cases more complex for the prosecutors the defense and the judges a lot of discussion is going towards we just simply didn't have the capacity to effectively ingest it when we talk about the digital evidence management system. What that will do is allow a more seamless and timely transition of digital evidence from law enforcement to the district attorney because we are the hub. We receive and distribute all the digital evidence, all the evidence from all the law enforcement agencies in the county. And if we get it quicker and more complete, then I can more rapidly transmit it to the defense, which then allows the criminal defense, the public defender and the criminal defense attorneys to actually begin doing their job. None none of which can be accomplished until they get the relevant discovery.

Thank you, Sesanino. Reser Herman. Uh well, I just wanted to add my voice to thank you for using your stature to speak out on behalf of justice in our community uh particularly for immigrants. Um my first question is um about the restorative justice and how that expansion has gone from your uh perspective and whether there are opportunities to expand it further.

Yeah. So it began uh with a collaborative initiative in between uh then supervisor soon to be assembly person Greg Hart and the then district attorney Joyce Dudley. So Joyce put me in charge of that project. We found a wonderful uh we heard a wonderful person came over to us from Department of Social Services who took it and ran and established a program but it was limited to the Galita Valley. Um we found it was much more philosophically and practically it was a much better approach than we're taking before. Uh the prior DA diversion was simply pay $250, take an online class, make restitution. Well, in this the uh person participating doesn't pay. They do constructive they meet with people. They get constructive input. They do constructive projects. They do things designed to bring them into the community rather than just sitting alone. We have expanded it by having members of our victim witness assistance bureau participate in the program which leads to more of the actual restorative uh functions happening with victims actually participating. uh and it also has uh made us better at collecting restitution if there is a financial loss because that's part of uh successful participation in the program is actually compensating the victim for any loss that somebody caused. So as far as expansion we are countywide on the misdemeanor level and I am always open. We're doing uh again our data analytics company is doing data. We are also

trying to find the net relevant data points with Dr. Shy from UCSB to determine what data points we should be looking at to determine if the program's effective, what parts of the program is effective, and how it can be improved. So, as you get that research back, will you be sure to share it with the board? I think we're very interested in that.

Yeah, absolutely. and that is part of the uh county criminal justice system. We'll be sharing it in in all of the collaborative diversion groups that we are active participants with uh with all the county departments including the CEO's office. So,

and um to follow up a little bit on Supervisor Lavanino's line of inquiry with all the data that you're getting from the body cams, um isn't can AI be used to begin to sort it out and put it into categories and show you where you might want to go in firsthand. I mean, I think it's an important tool and I just wonder how far along you are with that. Well, that that is one of the aspects of the digital evidence management system. With the digital evidence management system, uh any audio or video with sound that is ingested uh will have a transcription feature. So, it will allow for a and if the public defender will talk they actually already they are getting a system as well. But both the DA and the public defender, if we are to introduce something in court, we can't just submit an AI summary. We still our our staff will still have a duty to the court um and to justice to verify that whatever summaries are prepared are in fact accurate.

Clearly, you always have to go to the original source in whatever you do. I understand that. But but just to begin helping sort through and helping to get the focus screening. Um I I think that so so you're already doing that. Is there more to be done?

Yeah. Well, that is actually that is one of the functionalities of the digital evidence management system that we are uh that we are in the process of implementing. We're anticipating uh as of now uh beginning the actual implementation around October, but if I know anything about enterprise software is you don't bet large amounts of money on the first date that somebody gives you.

And then um my last question, just something I've always been curious about. How do the DA investigators work with uh law enforcement? H how do you coordinate that? Oh, it's uh that's relatively seamless. Often times uh when we need further investigation, the 7,000 plus investigative requests that come through, it's often times a contact from our our bureau. Our uh investigators are all peace officers. Many of them worked at the various departments that they're contacting. Uh they might have been sheriff's deputies at one point in time in their career, worked at uh SBPD, maybe they worked at Santa Maria Police Department, but they are general. Our our bureau, our bureau chief is also the a law enforcement officer and uh she communicates with all the other uh agency heads. So that's seamless. It's just like it's it's basically uh two law enforcement agencies communicating with each other.

So basically you're you hire investigators who have the law enforcement background and have been investigators in law enforcement, but how do they I mean it's been the case is presented to you. There's been investigative work done. H how much more has to be done? I I just trying to understand it in a little more detail. Sure. The they to begin with you need to look at a criminal case not as a static being. In fact, it only becomes a case once the DA's office uh submits a charging document which was accurately prepared by our support staff to the court. But a case you can't look at it as a static entity like uh this podium. A case is a living breathing organism. We know what's in the initial reports but sometimes it develops. Uh other witnesses come forward. The defense says the defense has a factor that they speak either to mitigation or innocence and then we have a duty to investigate that. So what happens is once you actually get from reading reports, looking at body cam to filing a case and continue, you see things you either need to establish to prove it or need to establish to prove that we shouldn't be going forward. And our investigators as peace officers, they can write search warrants. Uh they can make arrests. uh it gives them the ability to do actual detective work which is what what they do.

So so just so I understand so um you wouldn't go back then to the police department or to the sheriff's office and ask them to do additional investigation. Typically you carry it

depends on the when becomes an issue. Yes, we do that frequently. Um, if we receive a request for a prosecution, if we receive a referral and we determine there is insufficient evidence to prove it, we apply the beyond a reasonable doubt standard at filing. So, if we determine we don't believe there is sufficient admissible evidence to establish this case beyond a reasonable doubt to 12 juries jurors, we will send it back to the agency. we will send it back to Santa Maria PD, Lampogue PD and say, "Hey, you need to interview this witness. You need to follow up. You need to go to the store and get the video." Whatever task there is. But once we actually submit a case for filing, then it kind of becomes our case. Um, and then the followup becomes the responsibility of the district attorney. That is not to say, and particularly in serious violent cases, that the agency quits working because I can assure you, if we're prosecuting a homicide, the sheriff's department is working on that case, continuing to do investigation until the verdict is returned.

Thank you. Always wanted to understand that in more detail. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Super Lee. John, first I will say thank you. Uh Yuri and your team has always been fantastic to work with and very responsive. So I want to give you a chance to talk about the restoration request that you have put forward. Can you explain that more in detail?

Yeah. what um I mean what it what it came down to at the end of everything I had to cut to actual positions and I'm forced to focus on the mandated functions of the district attorney and that is where where we're having a problem where we're seeing increased workload on the actual act of prosecution. So, if I'm forced to cut an attorney, I've got to I've got to focus the resources into the prosecutions. Now, listen, I'm I'm not one that's going to give a sky is falling and saying things uh are going to completely collapse. If the court is having calendars, I am going to staff them. The difference is I won't have a dedicated in terms of collaborative treatment courts. I won't have a dedicated attorney. I will be filling in. I will be using it part-time. Uh whereas when you have a dedicated attorney, they know the philosophy. They're there to answer questions. They work on the cases beyond court. They know the philosophy of treatment courts. They know the participants. they know the clients of those courts and what their needs are and failings are. Um, that won't be the case. I will have to piece together coverage by who doesn't have a court calendar that day, which not only makes the collaborative courts less efficient, but it creates dissatisfaction and makes it more difficult for me to retain and keep attorneys when they are forced on top of their already heavy workloads to do an assignment they didn't do. We have actually actively recruited for people that want to work in the collaborative

courts. Uh the person that was uh our diversion director and the individual in the South County collaborative courts were hired specifically to do those jobs because they believe in treatment. They believe in the collaborative courts. Uh but I won't have that luxury under the current budget. As far as the LOP, we are we are already short staff. When you take a law office professional, sorry for the acronym uh supervisor caps. When you take a law office professional out of the rotation, that means it's going things are going to get delayed. Well, a lot of what we do in the criminal justice system is on a statutory timeline. So I will have to get the uh on view complaints filed by noon every day. I will have to get motions in on time. I will have to do everything on time. So what can I delay instead of providing discovery on an as soon as possible basis then I've had take assets away from preparing discovery. Now that discovery gets delayed to a at the statutory deadline. So what these positions do is make us less effective in the realm of collaborative courts and they are going to cut the law office professional position is going to make us less efficient in terms of our functionality.

Good. And are they currently filled or unfilled?

It's the analysis is a little bit more complex. They're currently filled. As far as the attorney goes, we have recently had some uh uh people leaving the office. So, there are vacant position. As far as the LOP goes, rather than we're right now the analysis is it won't be a pink slip, but it will result in a demotion because the opening that we would back people into is a one. it would cause us to uh take one of our really essential employees out of the senior law office professional band and demote. So right now we are not anticipating pink slips but we are anticipating a demotion and that will be one less uh position that we can fill in the uh criminal prosecution range. Thank you.

All right. Um I just my few comments are just more comments than questions. You know I I understand the duty that you have to protect victims. You know when we started off this here these workshops that's one of the areas that I specifically want to focus on and um you know that your office is a big portion of that. That said there's a lot of uh potential restorations and requests throughout a lot of those that are protecting victims in this throughout the county. And so I know we're going to be measuring those things carefully. Um, but we do appreciate the work that you do and if the opportunity to support those are available, um, I think you at least have the supervisor that's very interested in that. So, thank you.

Thank you. Our next department in this functional group will be probation. And I believe things will be led off by probation chief Holly Benton. Good morning, Chair Nelson and supervisors. I am Holly Benton, the chief probation officer. And with me this morning are several members of my executive team, including Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Damon Fletcher and Deputy Chiefs Maria Story and David Ree. And of note, it's David's third day with our department. So, nothing like starting off with a bang. Um, I'd like to take a moment also before we begin to thank our department's fiscal professionals who prepared this year's budget. Um, particularly fiscal manager Ben Mesa and supervising accountant Vanessa Escobar. To start our presentation today, I think it's helpful to highlight probation's role at the heart of multiple initiatives and partnerships across the county, which I think this graphic does a good job of showing. Our unique mission is to serve our community by helping justice involved individuals who are ready to change and protecting the community from those who are not yet ready to change. Unlike our fabulous first responders and our attorneys, um sometimes our wins are not public, they are more private and they are in the lives of individuals and families. Um so the vast majority of our work sometimes is invisible to the public, which

highlights a point that CEO Miasado made in her opening remarks. Sometimes it's not noticeable unless something goes wrong. To achieve our mission, probation has built strong collaborative relationships with our courts and our criminal justice and human services partners. And we all seek positive outcomes for our clients and for the community. Probation serves as a bridge and a connector to supports and services seeking a balance between accountability and rehabilitation. And we participate in many cross- departmental and sol problem solving groups. Um, and it's our belief that the way we work across systems makes for a stronger and safer community. In light of the serious fiscal challenges that are faced by the county this year, we're focusing on our core mandates um, and ensuring our projects are in service to our mission. We're pursuing innovations to make our department more efficient, such as an AI solution to help with summarizing reports, which will allow our staff to spend more time on face-to-face case work. We're also going to be investing in newer technologies um including for our case management system. We'll continue to invest in improvements and enhancements for our juvenile justice center and I'll be touching on that a little later in the presentation. As always, our dedicated officers and staff are the heart of our operations and they deserve the credit for our successes as a department. They've demonstrated resiliency and commitment over the past two years in particular as we have faced a high vacancy rate and they continue to provide exceptional service to their community. Our operating budget of just over $74 million is balanced requiring a $2 million cut achieved through reductions. This is about 2.8% of our overall budget. The budget includes a $34 million general fund contribution and about $917,000 of one-time money for ongoing operations. We have no restoration requests and um no expansion requests because we do understand the importance

of the county social safety net and the need to preserve it. In particular, youth and families that are served by probation are often alo also first served by social services and county health. And so we see the need firsthand. Adult Services is the largest budget program in both operating costs and staffing, which includes several initiatives where probation is a lead agent or a significant contributor, including AB 109 public safety realignment, which accounts for $21.8 million of our operating revenues. This is followed closely by our juvenile justice center, which also serves as our secure youth treatment facility. The JJC program budget also includes the delivery of medical and mental health services to the youth in our care as well as treatment. JJC is followed by administrative services and our smallest major service division is juvenile services which includes diversion, supervision, and placement services. To balance our budget, we'll be deleting seven positions we've been proactively holding vacant in anticipation of having to make this reduction. And eighth is being reduced due to a loss of funding. And in addition, we are eliminating 3.5 juvenile deputy probation officer positions and restoring those with one-time funding. And I'll speak about that more in a moment as well. The department's budget was built on a flat general fund contribution, and the initial gap of $3.4 million was offset by the reduction in OPB and retirement costs, leaving the $2 million gap. Our budget does take into account the elimination of $650,000 of fines and fees backfill and a $346,000 increase in utility costs and internal service department charges which did create a significant budget impact for us. Our department has quietly achieved a great deal in the past year, but I'm going to highlight two of our more significant accomplishments for your board. We've been working on the CALAM justice involved initiative for over a year and I am proud to say that as of

April 1st we're live without CALAM at the juvenile justice center. This was a result of a great deal of hard work not just from the staff in our department but from county health and behavioral wellness as well. Probation also took the lead in partnership with the court behavioral wellness the DA and the public defender to design and implement a local process for Proposition 36. Your board will recall that this was a voter-approved initiative to toughen penalties for repeated drug offenses and theft related crimes and to allow for deferred entry of judgment and treatment were appropriate. Currently in our county, there are about 70 individuals being supervised pro by probation under this mandate. For the coming year, we have a number of significant projects on the horizon. One that we're excited about is that we have been um chosen as one of three sites nationwide to participate in a pre-trial support project. On any given day, there are about 530 individuals in the community on pre-trial services monitoring who would otherwise be in custody in the jails. So, this project will help us to continue innovating our successful and already robust program. We'll also continue to enhance our services at the juvenile justice center, including broader coverage by be well for our mental health services. more vocational opportunities for our young adults and getting our limited scope remodel of our three older units underway. We intend to focus on innovation, as I mentioned, to update our case management system and implement AI solutions to save time for staff. We've accomplished many items stemming from our KPM uh review, KPMG review, which includes cross trainining for our non-sworn staff, uh the beginnings of our departmental mentoring team, and the development of our re revocation dashboard. But we also consider some of those recommendations to be ongoing uh because we're continually seeking improvement and adopting uh the latest research and evidence-based best practices. For

instance, we have now developed a new set of adult supervision case load guidelines which we'll be piloting in the new year. And we're also going to be timestudying our activities in certain units to see what baseline we have so that we can actually measure efficiencies from the adoption of AI solutions. We have a number of fiscal issues to flag for your board today. I spoke earlier about the sunset of AB1869 fines and fees backfill which has been on the CEO's radar for years. I also noted that we have eliminated 3.5 juvenile positions due to um lack of funding for those in order to balance which was necessary due to the shortfall but the supervision services that would have been lost there are critical. So the department will use juvenile justice crime prevention act and youthful offender block grant funding uh reserves to preserve these critical services because at this moment there's no other way to mitigate it. We anticipate that in about three years, the reserve funds for those two grants could be depleted because we'll be using almost $800,000 of one-time funding each year. The CEO's office is aware of the issue and has committed to working with the department over the next few years to address it. One thing that spurred that decision is that recent legislature has capped the term of probation for most youth on probation at about a year. And as that case load um becomes more clear over time and we see what the impacts will be, we may be able to have more flexibility in our juvenile staffing. The next two issues are connected and those are the instability in state pre-trial funding and the lack of state funding for Prop 36. There's a $20 million cut to pre-trial funding in the governor's proposed budget for the next fiscal year on top of a pre-trial cut we already absorbed in the current fiscal year. Locally, this will be about a $300,000 cut that we don't have any way to mitigate. Our pre-trial population has risen 12% in the last few years. In addition, probation statewide received no funding for monitoring individuals

engaged in Prop 36 deferred entry of judgment. So, to address our local needs, probation has requested one-time funds through the community corrections partnership for two officers to manage that case load for one more year. Our juvenile justice center continues to be an area of significant focus for us. We anticipate that we will have 32 youth and young adults up to the age of 25 in our secure youth treatment program by the summer of this year serving multi-year commitments. 44% of our current detained population is age 18 or over. From my perspective, this means it's time to stop thinking about the JJC as a short-term facility for young teenagers and start thinking about it as a long-term commitment facility for youth and young adults who have committed serious and violent felonies. This highlights an urgent need to proceed with our limited remodel of the JJC to allow us to use our two oldest units and to create a treatment oriented space in the third as our population in custody grows into young adulthood. Unfortunately, the lowest bid for this project came in at over twice what was projected, putting the project in jeopardy due to a lack of full funding. So, we're currently working with the CEO's office on a funding plan. We have made progress on the hiring and retention of juvenile institutions officers who bring care and dedication to their work daily. That work is becoming much more challenging. Our officers supervise young adults in custody who would formally have served sentences in state facilities or in the jails, but their custody stay is governed by juvenile regulations. In addition, the regulations outlining every aspect of how I operate the JJC are now under active revision, and there may be additional costs to implement those changes once they are finalized. And lastly, but definitely not least, our case management system is over 25 years old and is obsolete. And so we must soon replace it with a modern system for which we don't currently have funding. Our system is often a primary source for criminal justice data

throughout the county. So it must be reliable and upto-date. Probation tracks over 36 uh performance indicators in our department. But today I' I'd like to highlight just two um of particular interest for your board. One is the rising population at the JJC. Since 2024, we have experienced a 50% increase in our average daily population. And this number does reflect youth staying in custody for far longer than in the past. In addition, our pre-trial assessments have increased nearly 20% since 2024, and they continue to increase steadily every year. So, in practical terms, this is a positive for the county because we're assessing far more people from release for custody. Uh but in reality, we have added only two staff to pre-trial assessments since we took the program over from the courts in 2020 despite the significant increase in case load. As I have discussed, to balance our budget, the department proposes to unfund seven vacant positions as well as um eliminating funding for some underutilized contracts and funding for supervisor standby pay, which provides an after hours contact for law enforcement related calls related to our clients. We don't anticipate any direct service level impacts from these changes. We have identified ways to either shift the duties or provide alternative services although the services may not be as immediate as in the past and we are not requesting any restorations. Our quote this year is by Alfred North Whitehead who said the art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. for our team. This quote speaks to the need for balance between what we must do and what we want to do. As public service servants, we must continue to move forward and to innovate and to thrive even in difficult times. To do so, there's now a need to identify the projects that don't serve our core mission or the county's criminal justice strategic initiatives and to adjust

participation and perhaps expectations accordingly. This will be our challenge for the years ahead given our role as a proud partner in many necessary and effective collaborations helping the county to achieve successful outcomes. And that concludes our presentation and we are available for any questions your board may have. All right. Thank you, Chief Benton. We got Supervisor Caps then Supervisor Leino.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Nelson. Thank you, Chief Benton. Uh I just want to start off by commending the way that you chair the community corrections partnership of which I'm a member. uh you do an excellent job keeping everybody together. It's a um and you know the the the way in which our criminal justice partners work together. Uh I've been privileged to see um come together in a really wonderful way in the last year or so. Um I know a lot of work has gone into that. So I would ask would like you to repeat what you said because you I think you made a bold statement that we need to think differently about who is in our uh juvenile justice probation. you said 40% are over 18. So, could you just emphasize that because I I want to understand and and the reframing um and and get my head around it and understand that further.

Absolutely, supervisor through the chair. Um your board will recall that several years ago SB823 was passed which was the legislation that closed the state juvenile facilities and shifted those responsibilities back to the counties. So now youth who would formally have been sent to the division of juvenile justice now remain within our facilities on what we call secure youth treatment program commitments. Those commitments can be up to seven years and those youth can remain in custody up to age 25. Um we have had youth committed as young as 15 or 16 years of age and they will be remaining with us into their 20s. So what happens is we have um youth who age from you know young teenagers into young adulthood and need different opportunities. They need different programming, different structure. Our facility was built many years ago and it was built for short-term stays. Um it was built for six weeks to a month um of stays. It's not meant to be for years and years. So, um, there has not been funding that goes along with this effort at the state level to change facilities. Um, counties have had to scramble to catch up and to create programming and to make an environment that's conducive to treatment u for those folks that are going to be staying with us for many years. And it does require a shift in thinking about not just the population, but what we do to enhance the facility as well. And may I think you had it in your presentation, but the so the the length of stay is now what did you just say?

It depends on the individual youth, but our um our youth can stay anywhere up to seven years in our custody. Seven years. Wow. And I know uh from from working with you how much you're committed to strong data and similar to the question I had for the district attorney. Can you speak to the work in which the data is driving our diversion efforts? Uh because again I know there's a lot of work that's been going on really and um amplified uh lately with the with many justice partners and there's more that's coming to the board soon. Can you just give a a a preview and and give a update please?

Absolutely. Um one of the projects that has been driven by the community corrections partnership is a lengthy diversion study. Yeah. Which has examined u many parts of our system and how diversion is functioning in our county. Um that study is nearing its conclusion. Um and the diversion strategic plan is going to be presented to the community corrections partnership on June 4th. June 4th. Um and it does include um you know the result of a lot of stakeholder and community conversations has been incorporated into that as well as stakeholder review of that plan to make sure that it's actually actionable and that you know there are things that we can move forward as a county and that our public safety partners can get behind. So that is forthcoming. Okay. Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you. Thank you Supervisor Caps. Supervisor Lanino.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Really no questions. just a comment that I just want to give a shout out to your whole management team definitely understood the assignment of this year's budget and um you know you've really embraced a lot of the KPMG recommendations u you were proactive in keeping positions open during the year um looking at more innovative more efficient ways to do things even among rising case loads and what I really appreciate is your 360 view of the county itself. So, one of the things we really struggle here is breaking down silos where each department has to understand that there's more going on in the county than just your individual department and we all need to work together. I think we're we're we're moving in a better way that way with sharing information and and breaking down barriers. But I it's very refreshing to have a department head come up and say that you are knowledgeable and aware of other things that are happening in other departments. So um you should be commended for that. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Levanino. Supervisor Hartman.

Uh yes. I I love that puzzle circle and and I think I I understand your department's mission as reducing and preventing recidivism and being the uh organizing department and services to make that happen and uh it it does require a lot um to understand that and pull it all together. Um I had a question about the calim congratulations. I I know what a huge undertaking that is. Uh, and for those who who aren't, we're we're giving um medical we're we're counseling people before they leave custody to um what kind of health services, behavioral health services are needed so that they make that transition more smoothly uh when they're out of custody. Um and I assume that's how it's working. Okay. Then the question is how are we evaluating that? Do we have a Jill Shy who's looking at at the success of that or the change or what what do we expect as measurements of success and how are we trying to um get our arms around that

supervisor through the chair I'm not sure that I can speak to that for the county as a whole I think that Caleim has really become a county initiative that is largely being driven by county health at this point who has taken it over and I'm not sure if any of our county health partners are sitting behind who are ready to hop up at any moment to talk about it. Um but it is now I think um incumbent upon the departments to have combined measures to be looking at what success looks like for Calim. Um you know it isn't any one department's initiative any longer. It really is more about how are we driving the service countywide.

Yeah. Well, this this is a big innovation and so we'll we'll need I hope from wherever you sit uh that you can help to drive that because your department is known for that. The the other question I'd like you to talk more about is your familiar faces database. Um got louder here. Uh the um I I familiar faces are people who have a lot of encounters with the justice system. Um, and Supervisor Lavanito often mentions, you know, it's just a tiny fraction of our overall population and we invest so much money uh in in dealing with them and and so I'd like you to expand what the database is and how you'll use it, how how it might uh inform other departments.

Um, certainly, supervisor. So um when we started familiar faces as a project, we didn't really have any way to capture um the types of contacts we were making or what impact that may be having on those individuals. So over time the database was built um with a lot of assistance from John Quo, our former IT manager who has recently retired. um trying to have a solution where all departments could access it and the data could be more readily available to us when we wanted to look at success measures or how we could parse the data for success measures because uh super supervisor Lavanino is correct it is a small number of individuals that we're serving but the time and the intensity of services that are given to those individuals because of the high level of needs really um you know it's hard to capture sometimes so sometimes it's housing sometimes it's counseling sometimes it's handholding to take those folks to appointments or make sure that they receive the meds that they need. Um, so the database really is a way for all the departments to be able to enter that information and for us to be able to then pull data to see kind of the bigger picture of what does this look like? Can it be expanded? Is this something that's scalable? Um, those are things that we don't know yet, but without the data, we can't examine it. So, and you know, it was a a long effort to get that database put together in a way that would be useful for multiple departments.

It it reminds me of HMIS that we use for homeless that different uh entities can access and we can track what what the services are very similar. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. And I'm going to jump in and then I'm going to turn over to Supervisor Lee. Um after that, I wanted to piggy back on Supervisor Hartman's question about Cal AIM. um you know because one of the things that I'm I look at Calim as an opportunity for um things that typically were paid for by the general fund to be paid by potentially another source through I guess billing is that kind of how some of that works with some of the calim uh coverage there.

So I think for us supervisor um there will not be revenues for our department. We have one position that we anticipate that we're going to be paying for through um what may come to the county for Cali. Um, for a more comprehensive answer to that question, I'm going to turn it over to CFAO Fletcher.

Uh, Chair Nelson, the um, at this point where we went live in the system, we don't have a strong indicator of how much Calim revenue will be coming into the county. And so um as a county group, we have taken a conservative approach with the Calim revenue and are projecting the amount of revenue that we need in order to fund kind of increases into the way that we are operating under Cala. So, Calame has requirements of services that we now have to perform for um the youth and young adults that are trusted to us and there is now a mechanism by which we can uh bill and receive revenue for that. Um much of that is system change in in how we do the intakes when the clients come into the juvenile hall and how we um deal with them as they go out back into the community and hand them off. Uh in order to do that, we added one position at the probation department and that position collects some of the data and also does quality assurance to make sure that um we're complying with all of the requirements under CLAM for those efforts to be billable. And so in the probation department budget for this year, we are just using the cal estimating enough calim revenue to fund that new position. Um and then as we move through and ultimately implement CALIM at the at the jail um then we'll see how much revenue actually comes in. In order for us to generate CALIM revenue um as with any medical program the service has to be uh billable. the client has to be medical eligible and we have to have turned them on in the um justice involved portal with DHCS and um probation just gained access to that justice involved portal. So um the

strategic nature in which we implemented at the JJC with a much smaller population than the um jail allows us to get the boat out onto the ocean and figure out what the problems are before we implement at the main jail. And so um right now we've taken a conservative approach recognizing we have a difficult budget year ahead of us. We didn't want to overestimate large amounts of revenue and then create a larger problem for the county um 6 months from now 9 months to from now when the revenue doesn't come in. So in our current year it's one new position funded with calaim revenue uh at probation. Okay. So it cost neutral for this year's budget essentially. Is the revenue you hope to offset that new position?

Yes, sir. Okay. But there is an upside potential there as well. There there is an upside potential there as well. Yes. For for probation, but but more so I think in the jail they're they're um predicted to generate far more calim revenue than than we will at the juvenile hall. Yes.

Yeah. I just think like you're saying it's this is kind of the the trial in a lot of the ways. So that's why I'm curious about it. you know, looking at the the budgets moving forward and I looked at, you know, charges for services and I didn't really see any in your budget and so I was thinking that's where I might track um moving forward. Um so just an area that I'm very interested in. Um I appreciate that's a conservative budget. I mean I think that this entire budget is very conservative and I think that that's how we run this county and I think that's really wise because it allows us the opportunity and flexibility. Sometimes it means hard decisions like we are having to to make throughout this week and and we will over the next few weeks. But um I I do appreciate that that perspective. Um will there be a time sometime during this next year that you guys will be coming back to us on CalIM? Because I am really curious about how that rolls out. I mean uh Chief Bon and I obviously meet on a semi-regular basis and I'm be looking forward to hearing how that those meetings, but I think it's also good for us to start to see if this is something that could potentially help us through this next year or next two years if those things those revenues start to come online. is

I see our CEO nodding her head. So, yeah. So, like likely there'll be an opportunity to have a report back at the board sometime later this year. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Um I'll go ahead and turn over to Resolite. Thank you, Chief Benton. Thank you. Hey, um can you touch briefly on the new probation building that's being constructed?

Absolutely. I can at least touch on it in um broad terms. It looks like it's going to be complete in the early fall, late summer is what we're being told. If you look out on Garden Street, you can see the big orange building. Right now, it's currently wrapped in its insulation. Um, and we anticipate that we're going to be moving into that building probably the end of the year. We're hopeful by November or December. So, it's very exciting for our staff. We're excited to be in a new facility that's climate controlled and um net zero green energy. So, thank you. And I've got an additional question on that. I know that parking is a concern for your employees and have you guys been able to find some solutions for that yet? We have not. There are no current solutions.

All right. Thank you. All right. Uh any further questions from the board? I see none. Thank you, Chief Ben Chief Benton. And thank you, probation department. Appreciate it.

And for note, that was the second Fletcher to sit in that chair this week. And our next uh function department and functional group will be our public defenders office and to be kicking it off uh regrettably for sounds like the last time um our uh public defender Trace Muga. Tracy and hopefully memorable. Uh I have

always memorable

have to have uh my team set up and and just preliminarily for the board's introduction, Stephen Acres, our new financial manager who's joining us for the first time. Thank you. Good morning. This is my 10th budget season. And each time I have stood here, I've tried to share the story of public defense, the human beings we represent, their challenges, and our systems. I've never stood here with more at stake for our community. However, when I was reflecting on how to frame the the budget conversation today, I kept coming back to the same two things. You cannot understand the criminal justice system without understanding the link between poverty and incarceration. And you cannot make decisions about the public safety without understanding that the safety net is the infrastructure that keeps people out of the system. serves as the bridge back when they find themsel themselves inside it and gives them something to hold on to when they walk out the other side. This year, this infrastructure is under assault. The daunting budget situation, the cuts to the safety net, together they are a perfect storm threatening all the progress this county has worked so hard to build. And underneath all of that sits a third reality. Public defense has never been properly funded. In my 35 years as a public defender, I've never worked in a fully resourced office. Not once, not here, not in any jurisdiction. But this is not unique to

Santa Barbara, nor is it an indictment of Santa Barbara. In fact, it's the opposite. I want you to know that the design, the right to have a lawyer under the Constitution that was guaranteed 60 years ago, it was badly designed. was never intended to be fully funded. And I want you to imagine spending your entire career in a building that was poorly constructed from the start. You adapt to where the floors are soft, where the windows don't open. You stop noticing the cracks and the leaks. It all seems normal because that's all you've ever known. For public defenders, our house is briefed, rushed conversations with clients because that's all the time you have. 50 clients in a single courtroom, all in need of attention, and a dozen new case assignments sitting in the queue, and a trial to prep for that starts the following week. That's our Tuesday. Our reality is that some of our attorneys are carrying twice the case load that the national standards say is the maximum. That is not only a staffing problem, it's a justice problem. A call that wasn't returned, a motion that wasn't filed, a fact that was never found. When I was appointed 10 years ago, I did not expect this board or any board to undo decades of structural underfunding overnight. 10 years ago, this office received 47 cents for every dollar the district attorney received. Today, that figure is 70 cents. Your investments have made a difference in courtrooms, in lives, in outcomes that will never appear on a ledger. Your leaders leadership has changed the narrative. This board acted before workload studies were published, before state reports made it impossible to ignore. You did not wait to be told. You clo chose to see the people this

office serves. You chose to see us. But this year, the fiscal ground shifted dramatically inside this office, across the county and the country. Workload pressures worsened by retirements, a judicial appointment, expected and unexpected departures, flat resources, fiscal cliffs. We held our budget together without cutting a single service. But there is a cost to clients, to staff, and a future risk to programs like early representation and holistic defense. Our misdemeanor teams have lost dedicated senior attorney supervision. That burden has now shifted back to our chief trial deputies. In July, our most complex postconviction work will be redistributed countywide, no longer handled by a specialist. Already overwhelmed trial attorneys are absorbing additional clients and cases while we go through recruitment and hiring to fill vacancies. And every single day you will find someone from our leadership team in courtrooms covering calendars or handling matters assigned to them. One chief trial deputy is carrying two homicides.

Another is carrying three homicides. A third is managing two complex sex crimes cases all while supervising the attorneys who depend on them for guidance. The workload pressures already baked into the cake are compounded with recent recent staffing shifts and will only worsen if the proposed cuts we heard on Monday happen. Those programs keep people housed out of crisis and connected to treatment. They are the first line of public safety in this county. The majority of people in our jail have mental health issues. Most were in poverty when they were booked. And the research is unambiguous and and this is the most important point. When you cut mental health health funding, incarceration goes up and diversion options collapse. When you cut food assistant, theft goes up. When you cut housing support, jail bookings go up. The people who lose access to services do not disappear. They cycle through emergency rooms, through jails, through every office in this justice system. Cut the safety net and we will all feel it. And then you might be wondering after all of this, why aren't you asking for anything? Why are you standing here and not asking us for any additional resources or restorations? The reason why is because we see the same budget you see. We choose to be a partner in this reality, not add to the weight. What we are asking for is much simpler. Protect what works. Keep moving the needle that you have moved. as budgets stabilize and the capacity to invest return and push Sacramento to share the responsibility for a constitutional right that has never been fully funded. Now, after listening to Monday and actually my peers here today, our hard year looks a little different than the other departments. We don't have

layoffs, no program eliminations. We're down from last year, not flat, zero new county dollars. We've absorbed the rising cost ex within our existing resources. But a budget that holds today cannot hold indefinitely. If we are faced with absorbing the same cuts next year, we will be an entirely different office. On slide four, when we talk about our operating budget, this slide tells you how we're organized. Every dollar on this slide is working hard. Every team on this slide is carrying a significant responsibility. Our holistic defense program is premised on the fact that you cannot separate the legal problems from the human ones. But it runs entirely on grants and the CCP. Not a single general fund dollar, which means it is only as stable as the funding that supports it. Our transfers supported critical technology tools to reduce our workload and work more efficiently on behalf of our clients, freeing our lawyers up to spend more time and to be more prepared. And in recognition of how complex the highest need clients are in our system, additional money was moved to assign a skilled advocate who exclusively works with clients suffering from the most severe mental illness in need of hospitalization or more structured community care. Now slide six and seven. I have to say it take me a whole afternoon to explain slide these slides. A white board and probably a cocktail. These these two slides tell the story, however, of an office built on borrowed time. We added seven positions through grants midyear and then lost nine as other grants expired. Bottom line, our budget went down. But every accomplishment listed in this slide is deserving of time in this talk

and is a testament to the value this office brings. Our trial teams try cases, winning, hanging, securing dismissals, negotiate and settle cases in our clients best interests every single day in this county. This office delivered 5600 holistic defense services to more than 800 people. Our community defender division placed 92 clients into housing 92 people less likely to return to the system. And this year, our attorney sealed 65 juvenile records. 65 young people who can now apply for a job. sign a lease, pursue an education without a decision made at 16 defining who they are. We expanded behavioral health and diversion programs without a single additional dollar. We modernized aligning workload tracking with national standards and deploying AI tools that give our attorneys more time. This office is most proud of the work that we do with our partners, the collaborations we have built, and the partnerships that make it all possible. Now, our fiscal issues are not abstract. A flat budget eliminates capacity to plan, to innovate, to respond when something changes. Leadership time shifts from strategy to survival. And every decision becomes a trade-off. And every trade-off has a cost that never shows up in the numbers. When resources run short, choices get made inside the office. Do we hire the attorney we need or promote the one who deserves to be promoted? Do we invest in training or do we absorb the next vacancy? Do we build toward a future or manage the present? Innovation does not survive scarcity. It is the first thing that disappears. And then there are the choices that land directly on clients. Do do I help cover the calendar because my colleague is sick or do I go back to the office and prepare a case and watch

the 80 hours of body cam that's sitting on my desk? Do we give the client in front of us the time they deserve knowing there are dozen more waiting? These are not hypothetical trade-offs. They are the reality of a system that was never properly funded. The obligation to provide effective defense does not shrink with the budget. It does not bend with the political climate. It is the floor beneath everything. Our balancing measures, the positions that we chose, they were important positions. Losing these positions put additional burdens on our management team and administration. They're going to require us to rely more on outside experts analyzing mobile cellular evidence. And we have to transition to a decentralized racial justice litigation strategy, losing our big picture lens on the inequities in our community. But let me leave you with this. This county has built a justice system that sees the human beings caught up in it. a safety net that catches people before they fall into it and safe offramps when they do. A public defense office that for the first time in 60 years and is this is to your credit each and every one of you who have been on this journey. Finally, as a county committed to closing the gap. Safety is not built with walls. It is built with investments in the people and systems that keep walls from being necessary. A budget is more than a series of numbers. It's an embodiment of our values. The one county, one future. This budget is where those words are going to be put to a test. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Maku. Are we allowed to clap or No, I'm Yeah, we are. Supervisor Lavanino. Oh, that was it. I You're going to be missed. Um, that was kind of a master class right there. Um, I just appreciate everything you had to say and it's going to be a huge, huge hole. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Lavino. Well said, Supervisor Caps.

Yeah, I kind of am still in dis disbelief that uh you're moving on, but with full support. Um, well, I want to appreciate the way you always make us see the big picture on two fronts. Uh, the first, thank you for connecting all of our work to our uh, tremendous poverty rate here in Santa Barbara County. We're second in the state and we went through Monday. I think failing to really I mean we're grappling with it but really upholding it and uh you brought it brought it home here uh with acknowledging how it affects your clients and how it affects your team. So thank you for that. Um and also just you know for acknowledging the our constitutional right to an attorney but the fact that that is not not funded and what that means to your department. uh light bulb went off for me. Um and and again with appreciation to to the board and past boards for doing it doing well by your department as much as possible for funding. So I appreciate um the overview. Uh and I just wanted to ask you um two questions. the first again as I've asked your other um criminal justice partners about diversion and could you please speak to the next chapter as you see it and your legacy with the ready program what would be the your hope or optimism anything you'd like to speak to so first I'd like to start with again a moment of recognition be because this board and previous boards have done more than could ever be expressed in my own words and I don't think any of you realize the

leadership you've shown and I know sometimes community members and even my own staff get frustrated that we haven't done enough or we haven't leveled the the playing field but you just I mean I was in construction you just can't fix something that quick. Yeah. And you guys have done so remarkable in so many ways. So again that needs to be recognized over and over again and the journey needs to continue. Yeah. As as far as the ready program, I actually would much appreciate if you'd allow me to have Leah Viegas talk about it. Leah Viegas is over our early representation program and and could offer a little bit more perspective on that. Pleasure.

Happy to answer any questions about the ready program. This is really is Tracy Makuga's legacy. Um, and so much of what she's brought to us as an organization has been expanding the perspective of what we do as public defenders, really taking us outside of the traditional confines of the criminal courtroom and really looking at our clients holistically and really looking about at the things that are going on in their lives that are bringing them into our system. Um, our ready program continues to be a a a star within our organization. And we're continuing to work with our clients at the time of booking and before arraignments to identify people who are um should be considered for pre-trial release um who are potentially on an IST track whose cases could potentially resolve an early resolution. That program has been piloted in North County with good results and we're going to be expanding it into South County very soon. um the program will be overlapping with some of the advocates that you've um we we've talked about previously, our shield advocate, our DSH advocate. Um so much of the work that they do is overlapping. And so what we've been very excited about and some of the things that I've been part of is trying to reimagine what each of these advocates roles are going to be as we work with our clients navigating the system. But when we talk about diversion, you know, diversion is really much larger than just the ready program. When we're talking about ready, we're talking about diverting people from jails. Um, diverting people from the criminal justice system is a different form of diversion. Um, that I think um, you know, warrants a different kind of conversation. Um, you know, traditionally uh, uh, consequences for our clients in the traditional um, criminal justice sense tend to have be punitive in nature. Um although even probation may have rehabilitative

components to it, a conviction at the end of the day can be very you know does have punitive outcomes. Um what diversion does is it really takes the rehabilitative portion of those consequences and puts it at the forefront which improves outcomes for our clients. But it does absolutely nothing for our own workloads which in fact increase with every grant of diversion. With every grant of diversion it means additional court days. It means more engagement with clients who otherwise would go off to jail or go off to prison or go off to probation. It requires more um ongoing case management and uh client involvement. And so for every diversion grant that is uh provided to one of our clients, it's a great deal of work for them and it's a great deal of work for us in order to get them to the point where they can successfully complete that program and get the benefit of their bargain.

Thank you. And you you mentioned the pilot program starting in in North County. Can you just give some rough numbers of of those who are participating? Um I just I can't recall right now. Is it you know ballpark? We attempt to interview just about everybody who comes in through the jail. However, we're not it's just not possible. We've got one attorney dedicated to the program and there's only so many people who she can uh interview on a on a on a daily basis. So I can't give you those numbers today, but I can provide them at a later time certainly.

Okay. And my second question really relates to the surge in uh federal immigration enforcement. And just if you could provide u with uh advocates and others listening now and watching just um what has that how has that meant for what has the impact been for your clients for your staff um just give us some give us some sense I've talked to to you personally about it but what has that meant for the work um for the cases? So from a pure workload perspective, we as defenders, the private bar, the conflict planner, we all have an obligation to do an immigration assessment. We all have an ethical obligation to evaluate each of our clients cases. And it's not, you know, you know, just picking out a person who's, you know, here you have a Latino name or here you have a Polish name or whatever it I mean, we have to do this assessment everywhere. So our workload has increased. Um, fortunately we have one of the best immigration specialists in California, if not the country, working for us and another person who works part-time. So, we're able to to absorb that. But there's a lot of work with that. The criminal justice system is a scary system, period. Right? You know, it it that's what the pro, you know, it is a scary system. And then with the overlapping of immigration, federal immigration agents in our community, there's an elevation of fear and concern. Um, and and and truthfully, I I'm not the expert on it, but I I I know this is that no one should be afraid walking in our streets. This is what we're all trying to do is make our community safe. This is what this whole conversation, this whole day is about is community safety. This is something that feels very unsafe for our clients, for their families, for our employees, for their families, and hopefully we'll have

some resolution and federal policy someday that makes sense to all of us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you,

Supervisor Herman. Well, first I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for your exceptional leadership of the public defenders office of the criminal justice partners and and for this board. You you've really uh defined a path and uh we followed you on that and uh we're better for it. I um just wanted to underscore what you've said today. You know it we often hear well public safety is the first business of local government and for people many people they define that in a narrow way that it's getting the bad guys and putting them through the process and locking them up but I think we have to remember that it is a function of a bigger system and uh so as we're sitting up here how to keep our community safe you're here reminding us that these social safety net programs are absolutely key and uh I think we know it but I think we have to keep explaining this to the broader community that if people can't have access to to food benefits, if they don't have housing, uh if life is constantly under stress for how they're going to survive, uh that that leads to to bad outcomes. And um so I I'm keeping that top of mind as I think about our budget. And um I just appreciate that you've developed things within your department, the holistic defense and ready to operationalize that idea. And it it requires um getting out of the silos and this cross department work which is very very hard and you know you don't um it's backbone work but it's it's uh it's hard to explain and get the time when you've got these cases coming through the door

that you've got to deal with. So you've somehow been a leader who could step back and look at the bigger picture and not just deal with the day-to-day but how do we actually change the system in a way that we can get out from under what this day-to-day pressure. So just wanted to express my appreciation and and I do want to say and build on what supervisor cap started with which is that she was glad that we talked about pro poverty. This is why this is an urgent issue this port is facing is with our poverty rates and with the safety net at threat, we really are going to have a a terrible downstream effect and I'm glad that's your top concern and that is my top concern for this community. So, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lee Tracy, I just want to talk about your team. So, a few months ago, I was able to go up to Longpoke in Santa Maria and spend the day with them and everything that you say about your team is true. They working incredibly hard. They're just amazing people that I came to appreciate as you have on the amount of work they have done and for every employee in the county too. But I was really proud to see them in action and we're able to sit down have a great meal and really I learn a lot about what they did as well as you do. So,

well, I would just I would just say this. Every person who works within the safety net and Department of Social Services, public health, the public defenders office, the the people that are really working with the community members that are at the most vulnerable, they're extraordinary. Their passion, their dedication, their commitment to this community unparalleled. And the work they do is always silent and unseen until we get into a budget room and then we have to talk about it. And so, I celebrate all of them that have been here since Monday. Thank you. Agreed. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Lee. And just a few thoughts about this conversation. You know, I know we're we're often dealing with the symptoms and um you know, I think something this county needs to think about at some point is some of these causes. You know, the the greatest uh um you know, fighter of poverty is a job and economic development. in this county is one of the hardest places to do business in and often we are not taking our obligation there and working as hard on that in that direction because I think that's something we really need to as we start to talk about all this we really need to embrace um further because I think um a lot of these problems could be solved in the future if we actually have the economic activity that um a place like Santa Barbara County could produce. Um, so that's something I um I'm thinking about all those things because you know these these people that are have chosen have gone down to life whether it's because of circumstances or choices um that is is unfortunate. Um I do want to acknowledge that your your department is is not fully funded on what it could be and and I think there's some other department heads that would also make the same case for themselves. Um, but I um I think we've I appreciate that you acknowledging the growth that has happened in your department under your leadership and I think that has a lot to do with your ability to educate all of us on the importance. I justice is is a big part of the of the criminal justice system and I think we all understand that and we appreciate that and you further and depth and have increased the depth in all of our understanding of that and I think that is your legacy in Santa Barbara County will be felt for many years beyond your time here. And so I appreciate your leadership. Um I think we're all uh striving to do more and do better with constrained resources and um um again I just want to thank you for your work on behalf of those that are in the criminal justice system that don't have the means to um fight for themselves and um that's a really big important part of this because you like

you said it could be a very scary system

when you have the government working against you and or at least that feeling whether you are innocent or guilty on trying to navigate that process. And um I think we have some great justice partners. I think the DA's office does an amazing job on um moving things to diversion and that they are looking for ways to get people um out of the system. I think our sheriff's department and Sheriff Brown has been a leader throughout the state and the country on people with addiction, getting them out of the system, getting them healed and to move on. And so I think I'm really proud of this organization. Can there be can we do more? Absolutely. And we should be doing more. But again, I thank you for your partnership in this for this last decade. Um, you you will absolutely be missed, but you but you definitely have been appreciated. Thank you.

We're going to go ahead and take a fivem minute break here um for um our interpreter and some of our other staff. Quick break and then we'll get back to um our next department, which will be the sheriff's department, followed by fire and then public comment.

All right, welcome back to uh the April 15th, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, second day of our budget workshops. Um our next department is the sheriff's department and we have Sheriff Bill Brown presenting.

Thank you, Sheriff Nelson. Good morning to you and the other board. Let me begin my remarks today by acknowledging the difficult position that you are all in with respect to our county budget as as a result of a variety of actions, legislation, and decisions in Washington DC and Sacramento. Uh we have all been put in a difficult position. Uh but you especially have the decision to make on how the county's now limited resources are going to be divided. You will have some difficult decisions uh in that regard. As I begin our budget presentation this morning, I'd like to mention to you and to our constituents who we represent, work for, and serve of a few things that have been said before, but which bear repeating. Although we are a single organization, the sheriff's office is really like six agencies rolled up into one. We are a law enforcement agency responsible for frontline patrol and investigations in our unincorporated areas and our contract cities. We are a corrections agency responsible for running two fullervice jails that are 70 m apart. We are a coroner's office responsible for investigating all violent, accidental, suspicious, and unattended deaths that occur throughout the county. We are a civil agency responsible for enforcing the court's orders. We are a court protection agency coordinating security services at each of the county's court complexes and providing baifts for the protection of 25 courtrooms throughout the county. And we are a search and rescue organization

that operates air assets and directs our worldclass search and rescue team in life-saving operations to locate and rescue missing people from a variety of perils. Despite the severe financial constraints that the sheriff's office has been under for almost two decades, the men and women of the sheriff's office have nevertheless garnered some very important achievements that I would like to highlight. We obtained grant funding for most of the cost of the Northern Branch Jail and we helped design that state-of-the-art facility and guide it from concept to reality. For the past 16 years or so, we've supported parolees released from the state prison system in our into our communities through privately run day reporting centers in both North and South County, which we oversee through grants from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. We are partnering with the Behavioral Wellness Department on our mental health co-response teams, which you've recently heard have been highly successful and strongly praised. Our vigilant patrol force, though stretched uncomfortably thin, has helped keep crime rates in our county extremely low and maintain the quality of life that we enjoy here in this beautiful place. Our investigators have time and again solved some of the most complex and heinous crimes our county has ever seen, and they have brought those responsible to justice. We are a diverse, inclusive, and color-blind organization, and we do not tolerate discrimination along racial, religious, sexual orientation, disability, age, or other lines. We have a long history of transparency. We were early adopters of INCAR video cameras, and we make extensive use of

bodywn cameras in the field. We share our crime rates, our use of force information, and other important information with you, with the media, and with the public uh whenever we are able. During the past few years, our narcotics investigative teams have removed millions of doses of potentially lethal drugs from our community, contributing materially to the significant reduction in overdose deaths that we have seen in the past two years. And lastly, we continue to provide secure and humane correctional services, including robust evidence-based inmate programming in the jail that is designed to reduce recidivism. This programming includes the sheriff's treatment program, our remarkably well-used in custody medicationass assisted treatment program, and a variety of vocational training and education programs offered in conjunction with local community colleges and private employers. And that's being done in two facilities, one of which, as you are well aware, is very old, very archaic, very decrepit, and needs replacing. But now our county faces another daunting financial future with significant declines in federal and state revenue streams driving an enormous shortfall in funds needed to maintain existing services. Once again, the sheriff's budget is being seen as a mechanism to help balance the county's overall budget. To put this into context, the sheriff's office lost 102 positions, 83 sworn and 19 nonsworn, in the wake of the Great Recession. 30 of those positions were civilianized,

which after that being accounted for and the additional 99 new staff positions added to run the Northern Branch Jail, we are still effectively down uh by 41 deputy positions from our pre-recession numbers. Despite the robust recovery in the US state and local economies, subsequent sheriff's office budgets did not restore any of those 41 deputy positions. This shortfall is at the heart of our ongoing reliance on overtime to minimally staff our jails and our patrol force. Simply put, we have never regained sufficient staffing to meet our law enforcement and corrections missions without reliance on significant use of overtime and extra help employees to minimally staff our jail and our patrol functions. If the cuts proposed during this current budget process stand, we will be down another net 30 positions, 12 of which are sworn deputies, bringing the total of general fund positions lost to 53 deputies and 19 civilian personnel. We have now been asked to make $5 million in additional cuts from our already strained budget. When one takes into consideration that which that which we may not even consider cutting from our budget, including custody operations and other mandated jail services, coroner, civil and other statutoily required services and other positions that are not funded through the general fund, including grant-f funded positions, contract city positions, state court funded positions, and ongoing costs relating to our major computer systems. and other

miscellaneous positions. The requested $5 million cut, therefore, is far more impactful than the way that it is categorized as 2.9% of our operational budget. On this slide here, we acknowledge uh the key takeaways and want you and the and and our constituents to understand that reduced budget impact will result in significant service level reductions, including less patrol coverage in our county's unincorporated areas, delayed patrol response times, the potential for increased crime rates, which again are are currently very low in the scheme of Delayed response to administrative requests and activities, including criminal and custody records, decreased efficiencies due to significant reductions in support staff, including behavioral health, forensics, IT support, food services in the jail, and janitorial services. Uh all of these are uh are important things in our organization. uh and we will not be able to sustain the the requested cut of $5 million without uh without layoff and without uh a considerable impact on the organization. So now to cover the nuts and bolts of the sheriff's budget and to walk you through what the cuts would be, I'm going to turn the presentation over to our chief financial officer, Hope Vasquez, and then our under sheriff, Brad Welsh, and I will return to wrap the presentation up.

Good afternoon, Chair Nelson, supervisors. I'm going to quickly go through some of these slides for you. Um, the budget, this budget summary slide recaps the slides you will see later. It reflects the impact of the five million and balancing measures taken to provide a balanced budget. General FR reflects a small increase of $221,000 for net changes in jail medical contracts. This slide highlights the major service areas of the sheriff's office. The department is broken into administration, which makes up 8.8% of the comp of the department, custody, which is 49.3, law enforcement, which is 37.2, 2 and court services which is 4.7. For capital projects, we have year four of a five-year contract for our Taser 10 implementation. Uh we have miscellaneous grant purchases which include anti-RAM vehicle barriers. Um operational overtime for coastal security enhancement, automatic license plate readers and bomb team equipment. The final item on our annual replacement of fixed assets which is includes the copers and washers which we annually replace. General County program transfers consist of the use of cannabis funds for two narcotics detectives, funding of the consultants and legal ex, excuse me, legal expenses incurred for the Murray settlement, the final year of the pilot program for workers compensation carveout, and the funding for the digital evidence discovery project with the district attorney's office. Major staffing changes consist of the addition of three sheriff deputies and one sheriff's service technician for city contracts expansions and one department specialist for the Cal AIM program. Changes for next year consist of the 30 funded FTE which will be

documented in a later slide. The loss of one cannabis funded felony warrant sheriff dete deputy that was funded with one-time funding and the loss of one sheriff deputy for the co fourth co-response team due to the end of the grant. Preliminary budget changes from prairie year reflect the five million service level reductions and is flat with a net increase of approximately $100,000. This includes a $2.8 million decrease in salaries and benefits, a $1.9 million increase in service and supplies and a $934,000 increase in other charges. At this point of the presentation, I will turn it over to under sheriff Brad Wilt to highlight the department's anticipated accomplishments.

Well, good morning, Chair Nelson and the board. Uh, I want to first thank CFO Vasquez and her amazing fiscal team for putting this presentation together. Uh, and I wanted to introduce the remainder of our executive team who's here to answer questions at the end or during this if if there is any. Uh, CEO Gary Warington who's in charge of our operations support. Uh, as you know, Chief Deputy Ryan Sullivan who's in charge of our custody branch and then Kevin Huddle, our uh, chief deputy for our law enforcement branch. I get the opportunity to actually talk about good news, uh, which is great. I get to do that first, which is our anticipated accomplishments. Uh, as you know, we had a reduced overdose death rate the past two years, uh, in the county of Santa Barbara. I'd like to credit uh a lot to our community uh for becoming involved and becoming aware uh obtaining Narcan, but also with the assistance of groups like Project Opioid who as you know a countywide coalition that really focuses on like a multi-prong approach uh focusing on harm reduction um enforcement and treatment. And so we're able to reduce that death rate the last two years by 41% which is amazing. As you heard, one of those parts of the prong is enforcement. And as a former narcotics detective way, way way back in the day, I can tell you the stats I'm about to read you for the past two years of the work from the two narcotics team is nothing short of amazing. Um, they the last two years were able to seize 224 pounds of methamphetamine, 33 lbs of cocaine, 2 lb of heroin, 18 lbs of fentanyl, and over 15,000 M30 pills. This prevented over nine million individual doses um to reach the streets of Santa Barbara County and affect our residents. So, some amazing work from our narcotics detectives. Again, with the help of the community, uh we were able to continue to push our crime rates down. Our part one crimes are down 10%. We do credit

the community for becoming involved and reporting crime when it happens, helping us solve crime after, and then also help helping on crime prevention. We do enjoy a very low crime rate here in Santa Barbara County. We are blessed. Um, and it again, it's that that community partnership that we have, but it's also the work that our criminal justice work groups and committees do throughout the county of Santa Barbara. And we also like to say it's it's a direct product of the way we deploy our patrol resources, our custody staff, coupled with that evidence-based um treatment and classes that the sheriff talked about inside of our custody facilities, which uh reduces recidivism, which I think we're all fans of. through close collaboration with the CEO's office and the courts, we were able to uh finally ink theou with the Santa Barbara Superior Court, which was 15 years in the making. Uh I personally was working on that in 2020 when I was in courts and it's just fantastic uh that we're able to redefine what the county and what the sheriff's office should be doing in those courtrooms and we're able to get Daryl Parker to sign it on his last week and we wish Daryl well in his retirement. I would like to the sheriff and I would like to thank this board for your continued support in our hiring and retention efforts. Um specifically helping us uh offer hiring bonuses for some of those harder to recruit positions. It's helped immensely. At one point we got down to single-digit vacancies in custody. We got down to nine which is amazing. Um I know Chief Sullivan and his branch really appreciate it. Unfortunately, then we had a big retirement season this past March and those numbers kind of shot back up. But we're convinced with the support from this board and the CEO's office along with the amazing work that our sheriff and county HR do, we'll be able to to fill those ranks back up. Uh in a few weeks, we're going live with our guardian RFID program inside the

jail, uh which includes tracking medication delivery and incarcerated persons movement throughout the facility. that's going to help us on Murray settlement compliance. We successfully concluded our enterprise fleet pilot project which is a renew 22 project which saves the county on average about $140,000 a year. It's 8 and a4 uh% lower cost per mile and it's about $7300 less per vehicle per year. We want to continue um really expanding that program so we can continue to save the county and the sheriff's office money. We'd also like to thank the board for your support on the noise ordinance. Um, as you all are well aware, with your help, the help from the community from CSD, Associated Students, and so many more groups, we really really were able to curb um the the issues that happened with Deltopia this year. We'd like to congratulate CSD on a successful uh Soultopia. That was a great event with very very minimal uh problems. And as we talked about, uh, 2025, we ran out of ambulances countywide. Uh, by the middle of the morning, we had 85 arrests, almost 500 criminal citations. This year, we are down to six arrests and 40 criminal citations. But the best part about this is it freed up our EMSA partners to do the important work uh that they should be doing throughout our county. So, thank you again for your support. The uh, next slide. Oh, no, this is it. Good. the jail population review and advisory team or what we like to call the JPRAT. It's headed up by Chief Deputy Ryan Sullivan with an assist from Deputy Chief Spencer Cross from probation. I really think this is a great example of our criminal justice partners from public defender from the DA's office from probation and be well really working across departments towards a common goal. Uh this one being who is in our jails and what can we do to develop systems improvements.

Uh KPMG recommendation we implemented phase one of our demand-based patrol scheduling which was not only found to be successful but also reduces overtime and costs in the law branch and I want to talk a little bit about that more later. Uh we continue to use more scheduling adjustments and introduce more managerial controls to reduce our reliance on overtime and extra help. Next slide. Some of our goals and objectives going into next fiscal year along with tons of county partners, CEO, probation, DSS, be well, and county health. Um, as uh the chair mentioned earlier, we're looking to implement Cal AIM. For us, more specifically, that's our justice involved initiative, which, as you know, requires our custody facilities to not only start standardized screenings, but also provide those incarcerated persons with medical issues leaving our facilities with um medications and medical equipment, but most importantly getting that warm handoff um so they can improve their health outcomes, which we all want. initiative went live at the JJC April 1st and we expect it to go live in our custody facilities on October 1st. We relocated our North County Special Investigations Bureau to a more cost-effective facility. Uh it's on this list because we still have a couple things that we want to put some finishing touches on. In our main jail, we started our inmate reception center renovations, which not only going to improve ADA compliance. It's going to bring our medical clinicians inside the facility uh with the rest of our staff. It's going to add important spaces for our public defender partners so they can have that one-on-one uh client uh meetings, attorney client meetings, and it's going to enhance our pre-booking processing. And we look to finish that towards the end of next fiscal year. Uh Chief Otto looks to expand his demand-based staffing in his law branch. Again, this pilot program. We're looking

to to roll out our second phase of it later this month, which really just focuses on deploying our resources when the heat maps when the uh crime calls and our public need us. And it also we anticipate further cost savings on that. Our ATIMS or our jail management system uh 2.0 or upgrade is coming. and it's going to help with ADA compliance and further compliance with the Murray settlement. Our CEO is working with general services to obtain and install EV superchargers that would be necessary for us to uh start a pilot program where we can evaluate hybrid and EV vehicles for our our non-emergency or our administrative vehicles. We feel and I know the board also feels that there's some there's some opportunities there. We're also going to relocate and uh renovate county property for our South County Special Investigations Bureau. Uh for somebody who used to work there decades ago, this is long in the making, but we do appreciate the board and general services uh support on this to get them into a new a newer renovated facility and it obviously frees up uh county land for other projects. Next, our operational performance review. Again, that demand-based staffing, we've been talking about it for years. In December, we implemented phase one. Uh we're implementing phase two for our patrol teams later this month. We want to just kind of monitor that, make sure it's successful, and if it is, we'll scan our agency and see if any any other branches can benefit from demand-based staffing. Again, more savings are anticipated there. Our jail utilization or our custody meetings, we truly do appreciate um our custody staff having a seat at the table uh during these workg groups and committees. They are subject matter experts and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with all of our county partners uh including our justice partners. Our data management since December we have increased and almost doubled the

data collection that our managers and executives receive and a lot of it specifically relates to overtime. And what this does is this gives us gives our managers an opportunity to dive down deep within their branches, their divisions, um their units, even down to an individual, an employee to identify whether the overtime was absolutely operationally necessary. Uh and so that's important for us. fiscal issues to watch. Like was mentioned earlier, the loss uh or uncertainty of the state funding that we're getting as well as the the federal funding uh especially for grants is up in the air. We do seek out lots of grants for equipment uh and personnel and overtime. So, we're obviously monitoring that. I know on Friday we're going to talk about the jail system housing options. So, I don't want to go I don't want to steal anybody's thunder or go too deep into that. Um, but for us when we do see these housing projects that are kind of on the horizon, it it does while we're excited about additional tax base, uh, we are one of the criminal justice teams who has to just monitor that because we know, you know, with certain amount of of new increased population across the county, there's that potential to need more jail beds. So, just something for us to watch out. Our team continues to monitor uh, use of overtime. our teams in our three branches, they continue to use that new data that we've we've received since December. We've implemented more managerial controls to limit overtime only when it's operationally uh and critically necessary, which is actually where we're at right now. Our work shows that it's it's working. Uh we're working towards using 20% less overtime hours this fiscal year than last fiscal year. Um, an example is last pay period. So, pay period 7 of 2025, our agency used 14,450 hours and extra help and overtime. In

this pay period 7 in 2026, we use 8,049. So, that's 6,400 less overtime and extra help hours that were that were utilized that were build. So, we're trying to really um continue to ratchet that down and only use it when operationally necessary. Next slide. Oh, in co- response funding. I don't want to, you know, redo the exact presentation that the chair brought last week. However, as we heard, the program is so phenomenal and it helps so many people throughout our county. We are fortunate that we have a grant that pays for two and CCP that pays for one. But at some point, it would be amazing if as a county we could come together and find sustained funding for all four cars. All right, our performance measures. Um, I'm sure the the fire chief would agree with us that we have amazing dispatchers uh at the sheriff's office as well as the fire department. They really are the best of the best and we're excited to uh congratulate them and honor them this week during National Telecommunications Week. As you can see, one of the goals that they do is they try to answer 911 calls within 10 seconds. Uh we they consistently hit 99% which is amazing for our constituents. our crisis intervention training. As far as the 40-hour course goes, we usually put 40% that we'd like to have our patrol deputies uh get put uh get trained through, but unfortunately it takes a lot of funding for us to backfill the overtime. We hit 52% this year because we were we were lucky and fortunate to get a grant through BSC that paid for backfill overtime. So, we're able to host two 30 deputy classes. So, we got an additional 60 deputies uh in patrol trained in the 40 hour, which is amazing. Uh and again, we're always going to focus on getting our deputies uh to in progress calls within 8 minutes of dispatch. Okay, that was all the the good stuff. This is the the uh the heavier uh

portions of our slides. First off, the sheriff and I would like to like others have said before, we want to let you know that we do acknowledge the severity of the situation with the county budget. We did take it seriously. We're definitely trying to work on being a good county partner and that's how we came up with the over $5 million in cuts. Uh there 30 full-time equivalent positions. Um some vacant but a lot that are actually out there. Um so these aren't actually in any order. The the restoration requests I want to go over afterwards are they're not desirable. They were they were painful to do. Um, first up is our largest cut, which is the South County reconsolidation and the removal of personnel from the ISA Vista foot patrol. Those are 12 FTEEs, 11 of them being sworn. Um, one being a manager position and three being supervisors, seven sheriff deputies and administrative office professional. Really for us, we can't close any jails. And that was the only station that has an adj adjacent station within 10 miles, which is our sheriff headquarters. Most the way the way our geography is in this county, most other uh of our sheriff stations are between 15 and 35 miles apart. So obviously, you couldn't redeploy patrol teams and try to try to get to your constituents within a a certain amount of time. We had one computer system specialist who works in our IT. Uh we had a total of eight administrative office professionals. They're spread out through our custody branch, our law enforcement, uh and our civil office, as well as the reduction of a crime scene technician, so the folks that go out and process crime scenes. uh the removal of two cooks in our custody facilities, our behavioral uh health services manager who oversees our uh BSU unit, three

dispatch call takers, one custodian, and then we remove one sheriff sergeant line and civilianized it uh into a civilian supervisor as well as reducing uh extra help and overtime. So these are our service level restoration requests. Um out of the over five million, we requested about a little over four million back. Uh again, we just we want to continue providing our frontline services as well as our our clerical service levels where we're at. The first one is the ISA Vista foot patrol. Um it says 11 vacancies on the on the screen. There's not 11 vacancies in Isa Vista itself. That's just we do we are carrying 11 law enforcement vacancies as well as 21 vacancies in custody. So we don't actually have vacancies out in Iowa Vista. We we are staffed with with the 11 sworn in the one AOP. Um the current and past staffing deployments out in Vista has really afforded us to respond to any and all incidents within a mere matter of minutes. And that's either on foot or in our patrol fleet that we have out there. With the elimination of this personnel, it's going to increase the wait time for our citizens uh due to delays as we're going to handle this area as a beat. Uh so in a lot of sheriff's department and police departments, they they kind of split up their their cities or their counties in beats. So one deputy sheriff is working uh the 30 beat or the 40 beat. In Carperia, that's a great example. Lynen Avenue, uh to the east is the 30 beat, to the west is the 40 beat. And that's that's the deputy's responsibility for their shift. Uh if we were to reduce all this personnel, we would just have to have one deputy 24 hours uh policing is Vista as a beat. Now, additionally, the station's one of the earliest models of community oriented police policing in the United

States. Uh we feel that that program as well as our community resource deputy is a huge asset to the ISA Vista community. Um, it's going to force our community members to travel to sheriff headquarters for any clerical work, uh, any paperwork, and it also reduces our managerial and our supervisory staff at a time when we're being asked, um, to really have as much interior oversight as possible. So, that that's definitely going to hurt us. On the weekends, due to the population surge on most weekends in ISA Vista, we'll need to shift and pull deputies and personnel from other stations to cover those weekend nights to make sure we can maintain safety for not only the ISA Vista residents, but for all who visit Vista on the weekends. the BSU manager. Um, if if this cut goes through, we'll lose a mid-level manager position within the behavioral sciences unit. And that's going to shift all those programs and all those roles and responsibilities over to the sheriff commander, the sheriff lieutenants, and our sheriff sergeant uh that are currently in the bureau. This is going to increase obviously the workload for those positions. Uh, CIT training will also need to be sought from from a different entity um like Bwell or somebody else. Removal of the manager will also have a significant impact on the team's relationships with the mental wellness community uh as well as all of the other county departments and the trust that that manager has built over the last 10 years. The CSI technician or uh crime scene investigator technician, the elimination of this position is going to obviously increase the workload for our current staff. It could impact the timeliness of processing crime scenes uh out in the field as well as evidence that's done back at headquarters. Our criminal records and our station AOPs and and civil LPS. The elimination of these uh AOP lines is obviously going to increase the workload for our other

uh clerical staff. It could impact the timeliness of processing reports, arrest paperwork, and the other law branch uh and other uh clerical work that's done. Our CSS tech that is our IT department. Removing this position could create significant operational strain. It's ultimately going to uh negatively impact our service levels, our productivity as well as the user experience across our entire organization. our custody food service staff are losing our cooks. Uh it removes the relief factor for this job and I know we talk a lot about relief factors. Uh it it's going to necessitate that we either transport food or we cover cover vacant shifts with overtime. Um and obviously that's going to greatly impact the workload of our food services staff and our incarcerated people at the facility who will have to prepare extra meals. The custodian, this would be a reduction in sanitation at the main headquarters of the sheriff's office. Uh we've noted that our locker rooms and restrooms will not be maintained at the current levels and our custody AOPS that potential impacts could be really delays in processing bookings, releases um as well as the customer service via the jail lobby, telephones, emails, and delays in intra agency communications which we don't want. Again, these cuts are not desirable, but we understand the severity of the situation. We are requesting restorations for these positions to maintain safety and our current service delivery levels. Uh, and with that said, I thank you for your time and I want to turn it back over to the sheriff for final comments.

Thank you, Brad. Uh, in closing, let me state that because of the sheriff's office size, its mandates, and our 24-hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year operation, it should be no surprise that our agency is the largest user of the general fund. With limited exceptions, for year after year, our agency has been forced to make significant cuts in order to balance our budget and the county's budget. These cuts have resulted in virtually all of our custody and unincorporated patrol operations being consistently staffed at minimum levels and with inadequate relief factors, which is the number one driver of overtime use in our agency. Once again this year, we have been asked to cut a substantial amount from our budget, over $5 million, which will result in significant service level reductions to core law enforcement and correction services that members of our community have come to expect. Our support staff levels have been degraded for years, and they will again be hurt if the proposed cuts are not restored. Because of the magnitude of the budget reduction that we have been asked to make, significant cuts will have to be made to our patrol force. So, we need your help with this. Public safety must be government's top priority, and we ask the board for the restorations that we have requested. And if necessary, as a last resort, we ask you to cover those costs with one-time funding from the strategic reserve, which is currently at approximately $50 million. Moving forward, as a county, we need to seek and obtain new revenue sources

and stop allocating our county's limited general fund to cover deficits in other non-general fund revenue streams. Doing so continues to negatively impact the sheriff's office and the other justice related agencies and it negatively impacts the essential indeed critical services that we provide. In closing, let me leave you with this quote from Jakina Ardurn, the former prime minister of New Zealand, who very eloquently said, "Law enforcement is the guardian of public safety, and it must be funded accordingly." I thank you for your consideration in this important matter, and my staff and I stand ready to answer any questions that you may have of us.

Thank you, Sheriff Brown. We'll start with Supervisor Lee. Good, Jacqueline. Um, there's a picture I want to share with everybody if we if you're ready. Okay. I think some of you might recognize it. So, I don't know if you may have seen it and thank you for committing us that. So, that was during Sootopia. It was successful and I want that to set the tone of this conversation starting off that we are working together between all the deputies and our county and the board. It was successful because of you all the deputies, fire, all the agencies working together to make that successful cuz previously it was never like that at all. So I just I see a lot of people wearing green and I just want to tell you that I appreciate all your hard work and this is not easy by far. is very difficult and I do agree with you. The safety and well-being of the community always comes first, but that also means food security, health security and so many other things. So, I want to ask under Sheriff Brad Welch, so what kind of efforts are you making in your efficiencies to work with um the board and the county and to cut cost? Supervisor Lee through the chair, we have, you know, since kind of our our newer group uh under the sheriff's leadership, started in December, have really taken a more collaborative approach with our county partners, and we work extremely closely with the CEO's office to really identify system improvements, uh, efficiencies throughout our organization. Um, but honestly, we've been really focusing on how can we

continue to provide the best service to your constituents with the staffing levels that we have, but also uh reducing overtime and extra help costs. So, we've been focusing really on that and we've shown some like I shared earlier some dramatic results um with the outside the box thinking uh and the collaborative effort of this team and I can assure you moving forward uh we'll continue to collaborate and be a solid good county partner. Good. I do see that. I do see that your team is trying as hard as it can and I do appreciate you on all this because it's not easy and um yeah, I'll just end with that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Lee. Supervisor Caps.

Yeah, thank you so much for that presentation and uh for the partnership and for working well with your criminal justice partners. And I I do want to commend the executive team as well. uh you've had some some new leadership and I just need to comment that the communication has been tremendous in the last several months. Um uh I've really appreciated I've learned a lot especially from the under sheriff. Appreciate that and good job on the presentation. Um and also too I want to congratulate we had a recent presentation on project opioid and the dramatic dramatic wonderful uh decrease in um overdose overdoses in this county which has um led to meaningful uh improvements in people's lives for generations. Um and just a note because we will be talking a lot about Vista since that's uh on your on the list here. um the role that you and your department plays in cliff falls, which is something we all care tremendously about and you're often your team is often the first to to get those calls and so I just want to acknowledge the what that means. It's nice to be able to look your team in the eye and just say thank you because um I can't imagine what that's like to be on the other end of receiving that kind of call and having to do such heroic action um working with our fire department of course and other first responders. So thank you. Um so and I appreciate sheriff that you started off by describing the vastness of the work that your department does. I think you said it's like seven departments and um it is huge uh 233 $223 million and you do have tough cuts to make uh $5 million I will point out that that's 2% uh so it it is people's lives and so we take it all very seriously um but it is it is 2% um

and so but and I Vista is the vast majority of that so given it's the area I represent I do the majority of my questions related to Isa Vista. So, first a clarification. Um, under sheriff, you said that because the community asked me the vacancies. You just spoke to it, but I still don't understand how the 11 were listed as vacancies. Can you just clarify that because I did get a call specifically about that yesterday. Sure. That these aren't vacant.

Supervisor caps through the chair. So, what that means is we currently are holding as an agency 11 sheriff's deputy vacancies. Um, and so that's reflected on that chart because that that doesn't mean we're actually letting 11 sheriff's deputies go. Uh, we would be removing those deputy sheriffs, those actual physical humans from that station and putting them elsewhere, but we would be losing those lines. So it doesn't mean that we have 11 vacancies in Ada Vista. Just as an entire organization, we have 11 vacancies. So basically what that means is we can hire right now outside of the cuts, we can hire 11 more sheriff's deputies. If those cuts go through, those are gone. So we'll have 11 less sheriff's deputies uh that we're able to hire and deploy to the entire county.

Okay. So just to be clear, you were given the number, every department was sort of given a vac a number. You were given the number five million. you you were you have offered up a proposed Isa Vista. How many people are currently assigned to Isa Vista as their main area to report to? So, there's uh seven sheriff's deputies, one supervising senior deputy, two sheriff's sergeants, and a sheriff's lieutenant. Okay. And those are full. Yes.

Okay. And now just to to cover some basic facts the the building I did a board uh information form BIF um because I once this uh proposal came through I was having spent time uh at that um facility just was curious okay who is this our building is this UCSB's building to learn that uh UCSB it's a little complicated as things are um that UCSB owns the land but it's our building and so if we could just have some discussion because I do think that this potential budget conversation could affect the arrangement potentially and it's important for the board to understand it. So, if we could just air the information of of who owns the building, the land and how potential cuts could impact if possible the arrangement with our partner UCSB.

Uh, supervisor caps through the chair. We CFO Vasquez and I took a look at the lease uh yesterday. I believe it's a 40 40-year lease. Um, and it does kind of describe what the building can be used for. It does say that it's it's a law enforcement building. Uh, we do have a temporary uh holding facility inside uh the station. And really, I think and the sheriff can probably comment more on it, but we really would have to sit down with UCSB uh and like we've talked about, you know, before is really redo that and look at the LRDP uh and see what the best direction is for our two teams coming together. But the sheriff and I have been very clear that we want to maintain that partnership with UCPD uh who who definitely helps us police Vista.

Okay. But we're not under any concern at this stage or it's preliminary, but if these if these cuts that have been put on the table by the sheriff's department were to go through that this would be somehow in jeopardy. The building would be in jeopardy. I know that they also the UC regions pay 42,000 to the sheriff's department uh for services rendered in Vista with along with the lease I believe. Yes. Uh supervisor caps through the chair. That's correct. and it's our uh desire and direction to continue to use that building uh as a police station for our sheriff's deputies as well as the UCPD officers.

Okay. All right. So, that's just something to and I imagine those conversations haven't they happened yet with UCSB or those would be forthcoming? Uh supervisor capsu the chair? Not yet. We just wanted to kind of see how this week goes.

Great. And I'd be happy to be involved. Um okay. And so then uh the next um question I had and you know we all participate in IV safe meetings which have been super helpful in the progress that's been made in Isa Vista uh thanks to the convening of ISA Vista Community Service District has been on the uh crime rate which has dramatically decreased and so I did a board inquiry form about that as well and just to give the highlights and I would love for you to elaborate um that the crime rate has dramatically decreased 58% uh I believe over the last 10 years and when you pull out Deltopia uh it's even dropped 75% um if you pull out those numbers which with full optimism if we are on a new reset uh with this this board's actions and the sheriff department's leadership and so much grassroots support and I vista for Soultopia um hopefully we can see that continuing. So, um I just wanted to ask you sort of if that comports with your I know under Sheriff Welch, you started out in Vistister. um if that comports with your uh experience and when I look at the numbers it says in the latest numbers in 2024 16 1,674 violations of which over 50% 56% were related to liquor laws I imagine many of which were during Deltopia weekend um so really not serious crimes I mean I not violent crimes so I'm just wondering what your impression is in terms of police presence and the future of police presence um and the need for force uh and if that

went into your decision to put this up um forward before the board these positions because I mean did the crime rate dramatic crime rate reduction in Isa Vista lead to the decision to put forward these positions? or if you could just speak more generally to the crime rate reduction. Yeah, let me jump in there and and take that to begin with. Um you you point out very well that uh the ISA Vista of today is not the Vista of yesterday year. Yes.

In many respects, uh the the crime rate has plunged dramatically. Um the um the tone and the uh the mood and the uh the vibe that you get in Isa Vista is different than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago,

uh 30 years ago. And um that's a lot of credit there deserves to be spread around to a lot of people for that. That's a a lot of partnerships and a lot of uh effort that went into doing that and keeping Isa Vista events local and to do things that uh discouraged people from out of the area coming in who were the primary problem makers uh during times gone by. that absolutely the reduced crime rates uh really did factor into our uh focus on Isa Vista not just as being contiguous to another division being closer being able to handle it as a beat which we really couldn't do in any of the other stations. Um, but the fact that the crime rate has gone down so much, I think we can reduce the footprint, uh, the law enforcement footprint in Isa Vista. Um, and you know, we'll have to see obviously if if that if that plays out, if this happens, but, um, you know, of it was probably the best of the bad choices that we had to make in terms of how we could get to that level of cuts.

Sure, I appreciate that. So, just kind of a naive question, but liquor law, since most of the violations uh are liquor law related, is that towards establishments? Is that um I'm sure it's a mixture. Minors with fake IDs. I'm sure it's predominantly personal possession of alcohol, but uh it would it would involve some uh business activity as well. So, just personal possession, not necessarily disorderly conduct or violence or anything. Often times those two go hand in hand.

I understand. But that would be a different violation. Correct. Um, could be. It depends on, you know, I mean, they certainly could be doing both things and get cited for one so or arrested for one charge. So, it it would depend on the case.

Okay. And then and I don't know if you also pull out or if you change your staffing related to because I imagine the the vast majority of these infraction citations, apologies if I don't use the right language, um, happen on the weekends. And do you staff accordingly or do you have the same level of staff on a Monday night, which I have been there, it's far different than on a Friday night. Do you have the same I've walked around Lieutenant Tesla on a Friday night and it's jam-packed shoulder-to-shoulder uh or is it do you have the same staffing on a Monday night versus a Friday night?

Supervisor Caps to the chair. That's uh kind of what we're looking to do for demand-based staffing is look at the heat maps and the calls for service and deploy our resources when we're needed. So for an area like IA Vista, our current makeup is we have a higher level of sheriff's deputies and supervisors on Friday and Saturday nights when we get that surge in population from visitors and then we have less staffing on the front end of the week as we call it. So like the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday we we'd have a a smaller footprint of And you currently do that? Yes. or you're looking to do that. That's what we're current that's what we're currently doing and we want to do even more of that in the future with our

Okay. So, the decision to put these positions forward would reflect an intention to do that even more which would justify not as much of a footprint. We would we correct Supervisor Caps. We would have essentially one deputy round the clock continuously in Isa Vista, but we would do redeployment of certain deputies uh through this demand-based uh

staffing model through the use of our ancillary uh units like the K9 unit perhaps. You know, we would we would deploy in such a way that we would put additional resources in there Friday and Saturday night. And our hope is that we'll see some changes in uh the arrangement with UCSB and we'll see more UCSB officers as part of the foot patrol that will be in the community as well.

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up because I know that uh we've surfaced that the that uh there will be a renewed effort to get more participation uh potentially from UCSB's UCPD. Um so that we could see more of that which would again um assist in if these cuts remain um in more of police presence for true emergencies. Um or could you also explain to me what it would could look like um if the model shifted to more of a um event-based or emergency based? Where would where would the uh where would your deputies be stationed if they're not as fully stationed at the Isa Vista foot patrol uh headquarters?

Supervisor Capsu the chair. We would redeploy our Isa Vista personnel back to sheriff headquarters which is by the main jail. And how far is that from Vista? I I know but I just would like to hear you. It's 5 miles on the button. Um okay anywhere between 15 to 20 minutes with traffic.

Okay. But one in the morning wouldn't necessarily be traffic. So, okay, that just helps me paint a picture. And again, I think um uh everyone should be commended for the fact that we're really looking at a different scenario uh in Isa Vista. Um one a different one than when I was in high school and my parents said please never go out to La Vista. Um which I was very beautiful and didn't. Um so those are of course right those are my questions for now. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's she is watching right now. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Caps. Uh, Supervisor Hartman.

Yeah. Um, well, I I just want to commend you for all the accomplishments. I think those are really impressive. Um, I think we heard from the public defender that scarcity reduces innovation, but I think it can also um enhance innovation. You got to figure out how to do things differently if you don't have the same number of resources. I I'd like you to talk a little bit more about the demand-based scheduling that you're using. I mean, I think that that's really important. And I'm trying to understand, you've got officers assigned to different beats and how that how that beat coverage relates to the demandbased coverage.

Thank you for the question, Supervisor Hartman. to the chair. Basically, what we did is we looked at so our our data unit tracks um all of our car calls for service as well as uh dispatch, how they clear the calls, how many reports are written, how many offenses. And so our executive team sat down and looked at our unincorporated areas as well as our contract cities, and looked at when the each individual community needs law enforcement the most. And you know, before we were doing this, we were deploying our resources from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., you know, 7 days a week, 365 all the same. And so this unique approach is more how can we better serve the community? How can we better use our assets and resources? And so without getting too much into operational detail, uh we just really try to deploy the resources during those busier times and then have a little leaner and less staff uh during the times when there's less calls for service, less criminal activity, and less calls from the public.

So at dispatch for um for medical, they they tar the calls, and so there's a different response time for different levels of calls. Do you have that as well?

So, we do uh to a certain extent and I know there's a there's a a board inquiry form right now that we're working on. And a lot of times people think that our profession or agency responds code one, code two or code three. Code three is the lights and sirens, the whole, you know, the whole package. Um they do that when there's, you know, life uh you know, life danger uh to the community. Everything else really is a code two response. There really isn't a code one uh anymore. So, uh, we don't really track that per se. U, we can we're definitely trying to work through the BIFF. Um, but most times it's either it's either a code two response, so it's proceed to the call for service, uh, when when you can, as as soon as possible, in a safe manner, or the code three, which is okay, we have lights and sirens and we need to safely get there as soon as humanly possible. So, um, I I had an opportunity to do a ride along and I I guess I took away from that that um the majority of the calls, the the lion share of the calls tend not to be um even law enforcement, they they tend to be um community welfare calls. Is is that impression that I've come away with correct?

Supervisor Harbin, through the chair, that would be accurate. Uh I I started this career 27 years ago and I can tell you since then we've been asked to wear dozens of hats at times being social workers, being family counselors, uh and then also unfortunately having to enforce the law when necessary and take away people's civil liberties uh in the best interest and the safety of our community. So your ride along um I believe it was with Lieutenant Morris and yeah that's that that was pretty much a typical day in the life of a deputy which is you don't know it's going to be a mixed bag. Um like the sheriff said we're also the coroner. They take traffic related reports. They really go from call to call and everything is just different. So I guess that leads me to I mean your your officers are highly trained, highly skilled and I keep thinking about the medical model. I I go in and I see a physician's assistant or I go to urgent care and I see somebody lower down. So, I guess as I look at our response to calls when there's 911, we've got, you know, violence and and uh people's lives are at stake and that gets our highly skilled, highly trained officers that know how to respond to that. And we've developed our crisis response um our co-response to have an officer and a social worker who are especially trained to deal with those crisis events. Um and then we have our mobile crisis unit that deals with slightly lower you longer response time. But it seems to me the majority of our calls are social welfare calls that are lower acuity and we have our most trained people responding to these lower

level. And so what I'm wondering is if there's a different if we could begin at least thinking about a model where we could use perhaps not sworn officers but others that are um focused on that the majority of calls that that just need somebody and and I think of this particularly in light of our earlier discussion with the social safety net. I mean, a lot of the calls are I mean, the call I a 76-year-old woman wandering around uh lost from her husband, you know, maybe they could use somebody who knows how to connect them to respit care or you know things that um maybe there's other ways we can serve with people who are uh I mean we ask our officers to cover as you say this whole it's like our teachers we ask them to cover this whole range of things that they didn't have to do always before or or at least not to the level and constancy. Um, so I've been looking at other places. One of the places is Albuquerque where they've actually instituted um a a a community safety response team. And um I I think I'm not sure where um Supervisor Caps is going. We're not partners on this, but I I think it would be fabulous if we could figure out a pilot program where community response teams work with officers. I know that in Isa Vista, they did have a UCIV. I was trained in that. Uh people were trained in that. you wear t-shirts and on weekends and big events, you know, you're there offering water and help and you're training what you're not to do and what you're to uh uh when to call an

officer, when to call uh for medical support. But it it seems to me that we've got to be more innovative about how we're dealing with those lower level community welfare calls, getting better resources. I mean, maybe people need food, maybe they need shelter, maybe they need uh when you go on eviction or taking reports for traffic accidents. I for most of those things, violence isn't threatened. And I I realize uh with co-response, we need officers. we need and I I don't want this discussion to in any way suggest that I don't have uh the need and the appreciation for for our highly trained officers. I just how do we take some of the burden off them for these lower level calls? So that's um that's what I want to start a discussion on maybe not for this budget season but for the next. Supervisor Hartman, can I can I just add a couple of things there?

Uh there have been Well, first of all, we do do triaging of calls in our dispatch center.

And if the dispatchers are able to figure out that that is a call that could be handled uh in a in an alternative manner by someone else in the community, mental health professionals or through a a helpline or what have you, those calls are referred that way. The problem is is that most of the calls there's an uncertainty to to what they are at the beginning. They're called in by a third party or they're seen, you know, by someone on the street that calls it in. And often times those calls do have an element of potential danger involved in them. Often times mental health is mixed with uh drug abuse and with with alcohol. And so you have people in altered states who are potentially violent. And even the clinicians themselves, frankly, don't want to respond to those kinds of calls on their own. Uh, in Oregon, they had a a program called Cahoots that started, sounds similar to this one you're talking about in Albuquerque, where they uh did not have a law enforcement response. They had uh community uh uh clinicians that were partnered with like people with lived experience and uh and others, sometimes EMTs, I think. um that that program is no longer in existence because what they found was that majority of the time the cops were being called to that call anyway. There were, you know, there were there was this uncertainty or this uh this potential for a problem that exists in in the call. So that's how we've kind of evolved into this a cop on the street is a jack-of alltrades kind of a person. Um, and it's been that way for frankly for over a hundred years. I mean, in many respects. And a lot of it is is economic. I mean, the reality is you can say, "Okay, we can have these different teams and what have you, but if you want to try to cover 24 hours a day with different teams and everything else, the cost is going to get very, very difficult." And really everybody seems

to be going back pretty much to the model where law enforcement is going to be involved in that call in one way or another the majority of the time. So why not do what we do here? Get them and the clinician together. They can assess the call when they get there and handle 90% of those uh on their own without having to call in additional deputies. And that's where we see great value in this, not just in the humane side of the co-response, but also the fact that it is uh leveraging our patrol resources that are out there as well. That they're not having to send two and three deputies to uh a potential person in crisis call that could be a problem when in fact it can be dealt with by the the law enforcement officer and the clinician.

Thank you, Sheriff. Supervisor Herman. Yeah, I you haven't persuaded me that this isn't worth looking at in more detail. Um there are different explanations for the Cahoots program. Um but there are it's very success. There are such programs as as I said in Albuquerque and in Colorado and elsewhere. And I'm not saying that we want to necessarily copy anyone else. I'm just saying how do we apply our resources in the most efficient way possible? And I think for for traffic accident reports and that there for for public drunkenness in Isa Vista for um there are just many things we know ahead of time that it's unlikely that that it needs our our most highly skilled, highly trained people to respond. And I I think this merits further exploration. So, I'm putting it on the table now.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lanino. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, I want to go over the the cuts real quick. And if I'm reading this correctly, I just want to make sure. So, it's there's seven positions that are unfilled that would be in your proposed cuts that will actually be FTEES that somebody's in the position. Is that right? Is there seven? Uh, Supervisor Levino through the chair. We currently have 11 law enforcement deputy vacancies, right? So, removing those uh it's basically a wash, right? So, what I'm talking about is actual bodies leaving the department. You're talking about all the cuts or just the the sworn cuts?

Deputies. No. Well, sworn and I'm talking I'm not talking about vacant positions, right? Okay. Actual people in the spot. How many sworn do we have? Is it one at that? Sorry. Supervisor Levino through the chair. Are you asking how many sworn both how many how many bodies in the proposed of the 30 or Yeah. would actually Yeah. Seven. Seven. And out of those seven, how many are sworn?

I think it's one. Is it one? And and and Supervisor Le, if I could jump in there, that even that one would probably be at the end of this fiscal year, we anticipate that we would have a position for that. Okay. That one. So, I don't anticipate any sworn would be laid off under this formula. Okay. But several of our of our civilian staff would be.

I get it. And and I'm not trying to minimize it. What I'm trying to do is really get the number of I want to make sure that nobody walks out the door. So, that that's where I'm getting to on that. The first thing. So the second one is it's the game we always play the sheriff and Steve Lavanino is always my my department's been decimated and then I get to go to okay when I got here there's 597 FTEES and now there's 727 and your operating budget was 107 and now it's 224. So I know there's a lot of reasons and there's growth and everything else. I've been here a little longer than you. So what's that? I've been here a little longer than you first started.

Those must have been some bad years. Yeah. So, and the other thing is I think it's it's it's I know we're going to be talking about the jail, but I think what's really ironic is is right now from what I can understand from the sheriff's department, it feels like, hey, you guys are stealing our money to kind of fund these non-journal fund departments, social services, mental health, that kind of thing. That's that's kind of the the feedback I've been getting when every other department feels like that they're losing because we're building another jail. So, we set aside $50 million to make the down payment. And other departments, whether they're general fund or non-general fund, they feel like they're taking a cut right now because we've got to build another jail. Not to mention the one that we already built. And I'll just say, you know, I support building the jail. I mean, it's 170 probably $170 million project. Nobody up here wants to build a jail. Not one constituent has called me and said, "Can you please invest in another jail?" Nobody does. But I know we need it and you know we need it. And for all the people that are working in the South County Jail, I apologize. You know, you shouldn't be working in those conditions. And if you're incarcerated there, you shouldn't be you shouldn't be incarcerated in those conditions. So, we need to we need to do something different. But for us to look at this entire budget and say, "Hey, the state is screwing us and the feds are screwing it," that's correct. But another piece of the three-legged stool is we're investing a heck of a lot of money in another jail. And that has to be taken into consideration. And I know if you're in the sheriff's department, you're like, "Well, that's a building. That's capital improvement. That's not really on us." But it, you know, other departments don't see it that way. They look at it as, okay, the

sheriff's getting more money again for that. So, I think that's important to talk about. Um, and to anybody in here in a green shirt that works the job, I mean, if you're in the jail, you got the toughest beat in the world. We know it's dangerous. If you're on the street, I I sure as heck wouldn't want to be doing that job. I've got six grandkids that all live here and we all want it to be the safest place possible. Um 64% of all property tax in Santa Barbara County goes into public safety into the public safety sector 64%. So it is the number one priority and a third of all general fund goes to the sheriff's department. So, it's not that there hasn't been a commitment to public safety. There is. It's just that at this time, you know, there are other cuts that are hitting us. Um, and we're getting hit with the perfect storm of we're investing a huge amount in a capital project that if we don't do it, and one of the reasons why we're here today is because Sheriff Brown and I think we're probably the only ones in an entire room of people again that wanted to build the star facility when nobody else did. And if we had done that, it would have cost us $10 million or so instead of 170. So building jails are expensive and needs to happen, but it is hamstringing what we're able to do um you know with the rest of the general fund money and the rest of the money that we have right now. So you know we're talking about no one really walking out the door at the sheriff's department. um that's sworn and there are going to be some impacts with these seven individuals. But to put it into perspective, Paul, can you give me the number of public health and social services?

Supervisor Lafernina through the chair, the total cuts in social services as proposed without restorations is 197 FTE uh with 180 of those filled and um county health is 128.9 FTE with 82 of those filled. So you're talking 200 and something bodies actually walking out the door without a job. And you know, yes, public safety is my number one concern. And as I think I heard from other public safety uh departments today, they also look at the social safety net as not giveaway programs. They look at them as uh the net that keeps people out of, you know, an everexpanding jail. So, I'm going to work as hard as I can between now and June to find you the money that you need. Um, and I still support I will work extremely hard to build the jail that I know that we need. Otherwise, we're going to be back. I won't be here, but somebody will be here in 6 to 10 years and say, "Guess what? We need to build two more pods

and now they cost 350 million." Right? So, much appreciation to all the folks that work in that department. Um, we appreciate everything that you're doing. Uh but it is a huge investment on this capital project that we're we're doing and it's impacting not just you, it's impacting everybody across um across the county. So um Supervisor Lavinino, if I may. Sure. Um I I first of all I I agree with you that the cuts that are proposed to the social services and public health are devastating

and we won't be a better county for it if they occur. uh things will be very difficult for a lot of people and nobody is saying that those those are not important departments and that those are not important functions. But what what I am saying is is that by looking at the general fund to backfill departments that traditionally have their own revenue streams coming in from other sources is is getting on precarious grounds because the general fund that we have is limited, very limited, and it's the only discretionary money that you have. We understand that. Um I'm just saying I think two things. one is let's try to not do that shift. Let's try to look for some alternative revenues. Um there are some some things that are percolating that may involve some some additional monies. Um the political third rail to mention it I suppose with you or your colleagues, but Sable is pumping oil right now and from what we have been told uh the property tax revenue should increase by about $5 million. uh if that were the case annualized that would take care of our problem completely. So um and I realize that there's a tremendous amount of of angst about it and there's all sorts of things there but the reality is we'd be foolish to not take that money. I mean we're going to take it anyway, right? If it's a property tax. So I think we need to acknowledge that and look at that as a potential revenue source. We've talked about a sales tax. As difficult as it is to to to get one passed, as I've mentioned before, we are uh in last place behind the cities. The cities have all, except for one, passed uh some kind of an additional sales tax that funds their public safety. And we haven't done that in the county. And that is it puts us in a in a bad position. And and certainly to your point, sadly, if we

could turn if only we could turn back time and and try to maybe convince people otherwise, there were some mistakes made in the past with with uh decisions that have had long-term repercussions that Star Complex would have taken care of about twothirds of the problem that you're having to deal with here. Uh would have been much less expensive if that was online. Um, before that, you know, there were years and years and decades and decades where it was obvious that we needed to do something about the jail, but the can just kept getting kicked down the road, down the road, down the road. And now you're in the position and going to be in a position Friday to look at what is realistically the right size to do. We have to do something and what is the right thing to do and hopefully not put those who will follow in your footsteps in the same predicament that you're in now.

Thank you. One last question and it's about the funding of the warrant officer through the cannabis and I know that was a one-time. Can we get kind of an update? Is that are we going to talk about that as we get to the cannabis use? Supervisor Lavino through the chair. Yes. Uh that is in the special issue this afternoon. It was one time funded. So it is not in the budget that the sheriff presented today. Will somebody from the sheriff's office be here at that time to kind of go Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Right. Thank you, Supervisor Lavino. I'm gonna I got a couple questions and I'll then I'll turn over to Supervisor Hartman who also got her has her light on as well. Um I just concur with Supervisor Lavendino on you know nobody wants to build the jail and um you know I but I am afraid of being a supervisor or being around 20 years from now looking back at this time. Um we we have this conversation in my office all the time with this and um you know it's the adult thing to do is to build this jail and and I think to build two pods as expensive as that is I just think that in years in the future when we know all this growth is happening that we're going to need it and we're going to have wished you know on April 17th 2026 that we would have been thinking ahead to that point and building for the future not for where we're at presently. So, I appreciate that, but I do know that doesn't alleviate what's going on on the street and going on with your your officers. And I and I just want to make sure that we're also, yes, we're not going to lay anybody off in the in the sworn side, but we just had a bunch of retirements. So, there's now a bunch of shifts that are unfilled, which is then going to push into the overtime issue if I'm correct. Right. So, I see a lot of nodding heads for those that are not seeing that that. So, this is a problem that has driven the overtime issue and as well as anou that this board has signed with the DSA and and other negotiating groups has has driven that and we're going to work on trying to clean that up the best we can. But, you know, not having the staff that you need to do the proper patrols or or whether that's on the streets of the unorporate area or at one of our two jails is driving that those costs and it will continue to be more expensive, but we don't have those. So, I I think um I appreciate what we're trying to do with Isa Vista and I really um am glad to hear about the changes that are happening there and that we can re potentially redeploy some of those staff members elsewhere. But when we saw on the the service level impacts, it's likely to be to the unincorporated area,

which is where a lot of patrols are. And that's one of the reasons why we'll never pass that tax is because it's going to be on the unincorporated area and the unorporate area already feels underserved by their existing tax dollars. You know, it's a chicken and the egg type of thing. You can't just tell taxpayers, hey, you pay more and then we'll eventually give it to you. You actually have to provide the level of service that they expect today and then they will they will fund enhancement. That's what I truly believe about the unincorporated residents. And I would change the preference. We're not in last place on taxes. I actually think we're in first place on taxes by having lower taxes. I'm sorry. Mike Stoker will appreciate that. And so, um um so I think that that's a big part of this discussion as well. Just there may be another perspective. And um I just wanted to talk about this um idea that we could that supervisor Hartman is discussing about having something different than um a different level of service that deploys. And I and I I think it's you know public safety is in the public efficiency department. You know we bring fire trucks to medical calls for a reason. We have an OEM department which is just sitting around hoping nothing happens but if they do that we have a great amount of staff there to prepare. Um, you know, we're trying to find efficiencies efficiencies where we can. That's why this board went down the level with the ambulance contract because we thought maybe we could find some efficiencies there. Um, I'm not necessarily in favor of of not having people show up on those calls that are law enforcement that are sworn. Um, I think a lot of those calls are lowlevel because first somebody shows up that's law enforcement. That if some level lower level person showed up just cuz they have a county t-shirt on doesn't mean that it's going to deescalate the situation. And I really believe that just a a car black and white driving up to a situation brings it down a few notches. And again, um along with Supervisor Lavino and I think this whole board, we all appreciate you and the work that you guys are doing to do that. Um but what we can do with those sheriff's officers is we continue

to continue to train them more and in other ways that they can deescalate. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm I'm a big fan of the co-response. Um that's going to be a surprise to nobody. I think that we need to have that that fourth team funded. I know it's not in any restoration requests. I think that's going to have to come from the board and it's coming from me from me um for two reasons. One, because I think it's vitally necessary. I also think it's there's a huge inequity to be actually pulling that out of the north county again, the unincorporated north county to serve the rest of the budget. So, that's something I'm going to be really in favor of. But then it's also the other work that's happening for our behavioral science unit with Dr. and with the crisis in CIT training. And I think it is really um pennywise and pound foolish for this board to make the cuts to that. Um you know, if we want to make sure that we lower the level of of calls, we need to make sure that our officers are trained. Um and then all the other community work that goes on in that. I think it's a it's an essential piece of the of the puzzle. Um and so it's it's an area that I'm going to be supporting and hoping that we can restore um fully as we move forward. Um, the last area that I I want to know about is rural crime. Um, initially on I think on the draft uh cut list might have had real crime on there. Um, but I think if Miss Vasquez is right, it's it's actually funded partly by a state program. Could you maybe help me with that? Is it a state program that funds the royal crime detective?

Uh, it's a grant. A grant? Yes. Okay. So, glad to see it not cut, but you know, it's really, you know, you talk about your priorities in in the county, right? and and we're an agricultural county. You know, it's our largest industry is agriculture. A2 billion dollar industry. And then if you talk about the multipliers on that, it's probably well over 10 billion. Um and we have one detective and I think an AOP that's trying to keep that the the uh the wheels on. Um is there a need for additional resources in role crime? Sheriff.

Um I I think there certainly is. I think it would be well received by the ACT community. I think it would help. Um, you know, they have some very challenging issues with some of these serial thefts that are occurring. They're very difficult to proactively stop because you're we have such the geography of the rural areas. It's so far apart. We can't be everywhere. But, um, again, it all gets it gets down to priorities in terms of, you know, do we have a rural crime deputy and not have a

deputy sheriff working in North? I mean, it's just a it it's it's these which fingers do I cut off and it's yeah you might be able to say okay I'll start with this one and this one this one and do some prioritization but the reality is they're all really bad choices right and again I'm what I'm really afraid of is that you know you're going to have just because we lower down the FTEES that we we have for you doesn't mean that that's going to um lower the workload that your department has. It'll shift it.

Exactly. And so, um, you know, I think we're going to pay for these 11 FTEEs, whether we pay for it in giving them to you or in overtime. I I think that's ultimately what we're going to do. I'm hoping that we have the resources um to to fill some of these gaps because I I think that that's part of our should be part of our strategy to lowering overtime and fatigue on our our officers and our sworn and unsworn um employees. So, it's it's definitely an area that I'm going to be digging in deep and is a huge priority me. Uh, under sheriff, did you have a

I just wanted to add uh Chair Nelson and Supervisor Hardman. Two things I I didn't uh add to your question about those lower level calls. Dispatch since October of 2024 has been doing uh additional call interrogation. It's called person center uh triage approach. Uh, and really what that does is it takes those lower level calls and if it does not necessitate a law enforcement response, it's it's pivoted and it's directed to a different organization. So really the ones that are coming through sheriff's dispatch has while it may be low, there's some sort of public safety aspect that needs a law enforcement deputy. And then also we do have sheriff's service technician positions. The majority of them right now are temporarily assigned to custody, but um as we start filling those ranks, we'll get them back in the law enforcement branch and they can do a lot of what you're saying, Supervisor Harbin, they can, you know, help out, take some some cold cold reports, uh you know, the lower level things that that can really allow our sheriff deputies to focus on those emergency calls for service.

And that is an innovation I can support. That is what I'd like to hear. Thank you. Let me I just want one last finish, then I'll I'll turn to Supervisor Hartman, then Supervisor Lavanino. Um, I'm going to be asking in my board of choir reform is is really looking at the overtime and which you know what's coming from corrections, what's coming from patrol. I think we need to look at that as a board. I think we need to understand that a little bit better. Um, you're opening and talking about some of these things. You don't have any choice on what you have to do. And we know because of court orders, there's certain things we have to do in the corrections side that um, no matter what we would would prefer, we have to do that. And that is driving some of the overtime. So, I want to get those things pulled apart cuz I think that'd be helpful for all of us in some of our decision-m moving forward. Supervisor Hartman, then Supervisor Levino.

Supervisor Hartman's going to let me jump in because I wanted to get on that rule crime. Um, so if it's a grant and it's a state grant, I mean I I don't know through which department it is, but I guarantee you we could get a lot of letters of support. We could I mean the more we know about it the more we could get active in pushing for a second deputy if that could help. Supervisor Lasbanino through the chair. Uh that particular grant has been uh fixed funded for years. Um, we've we've received the same dollar amount over a very long period of time, but we should hit up one of our former colleagues to find.

Yeah, we know a few people up there, but they've got some tight budgets as well. Uh, Supervisor Arman,

I I just wanted to respond to something that um, Sheriff Brown said. Um, I've sat up here for nine years now, Tim. And uh I always thought it was pretty hard and fast policy that we fund state and federal programs, the social safety net with state and federal money. Uh and that we had to do our general fund for for these other things. Um but this year I learned for the first time that um other counties do it differently and slow county and Ventura County um do dedicate general fund to the social safety net and so it's it's not as hard and fast. It's it's really where our priorities are and that's the question that we're facing.

Thank you supervisor Hartman. would just you know part of that discussion um you know obviously every countyy's economic situation is different you know some counties have a lot more toot because they've allowed development in certain things like slow county I mean you think about all those unincorporated communities with all those hotels that they have it really drives their budget um you know and I and I'm and I am willing as I've said to back fill with general fund and we have been doing general fund it's not it's just about how much we do and my hope um long term for this board is as we um deal. We wrestle our pension cost that we're able to maybe wean off some of those general fund dollars in some of those places so that we can spend that on capital and maintenance and and public safety so that you know we don't have department heads coming here saying how underfunded they are. And so that's the the future I I I strive for with this board. So with that I'm not seeing oh supervisor Lee and please

there's a quick question. How many deputies on patrol are in the academy right now? Or how many are in academy right now for patrol positions in the sheriff's department? Supervisor Lee through the chair. Right now we have eight sheriff's deputies in the academy. Okay. Just want to Okay, good.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Lee. All right, so it's almost one o'clock. A lot of you guys have been sitting here for all day so far. And I want to respect those of you who have stuck around. We need to do lunch eventually, but what we're going to do instead of going to lunch, we're actually going to make public comment for the departments that have been heard so far in the public safety group for two minutes for those of you who would like to speak before we we break for lunch. If you like your full three minutes and you like to comment on fire, which is going to come up after this, you need to stick around till after lunch to do that. But out of respect for a lot of you guys in the sitting here all day that may not want to wait through our lunchtime, um I want to go ahead and make public comment available to you. So um if you want your full 3 minutes, you're going to have to wait after wait till after lunch. If you would like to speak for two minutes and be able to to respond to the the conversations that we've had up to this point and then then leave, uh I'm I'm making that available in our public comment period. So, um, so this time, Madame Clerk, uh, would you go through our list and if you hear your name and you want to speak on fire or you want to speak for three minutes, just just kind of wave us off and then we'll skip you and we'll have that public comment after lunch. Again, we're not closing public comment on public safety. We are just temporarily allowing some of you guys that are here to be able to speak and then leave for for your lunch and extend lunch. Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have 32 requests to speak from the public on the uh public safety functional group for district attorney, probation, public defender, and sheriff. We will begin here in Santa Barbara with Sarah Eid Nunees to be followed by Cheryl Smith. Sarah.

And when you hear your name and if you hear your name as the second person that's going to come up, um if you just kind of stand maybe at the back of back of the uh um the aisle just so that we know that you're kind of queuing up, we'd appreciate it. Thank you, Sarah.

Didn't realize I'd be going first. All right. Uh hello, supervisors. My name is Sarah Eie Nunees. Um my husband Anthony is a detective uh in the Special Investigations Bureau with SPSO. Um we're longtime members of the Santa Barbara community. We both attended UCSB. Um we lived in Santa Barbara for 15 20 years uh until we moved on to Ventura a few years ago. Um in large part because as we wanted to grow our family and buy a house, we could no longer afford to stay in Santa Barbara. Um but we still consider Santa Barbara our home and we're deeply committed to this community. Um, I'm here today as both the wife of a sheriff's deputy and an invested community member to strongly urge you to re-evaluate the proposed budget and pay increases or lack thereof uh for sheriff's deputies. Um, my job centers around fighting for the protection of the environment and health of our local community members and my husband job centers around protecting the safety and well-being of our community. Uh both our careers are dedicated to protecting and bettering the Santa Barbara community. Um and I am assuming that we are the types of people that you want living and working in our community. Um we love this town in this community, but the proposed compensation and reduced benefits for deputies forces incredibly difficult conversations and decisions for deputies and their families. Um the fact that we had to move from Santa Barbara breaks my heart. Um, the fact that we would even entertain conversations about leaving this agency due to compensation breaks my heart. Uh, my husband loves this agency and I cannot imagine leaving. But your proposed budget and compensation for deputies puts the deputies and their families in a very difficult position. SBSO deputies are already paid significantly less than neighboring agencies. and your budget is creating a situation which public servants like

fire, sheriff's, public health, teachers, the most dedicated community members are unable to live here and may unable be unable to even work here in the future. Thank you. That is your time. Thank Thank you, sir. We will now go to uh JC Hunter to be followed by Jenna Flynn. JC, ready? Go.

I'm JC Hunter. I'm the treasurer for the Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association. I'm a patrol senior deputy. I work out of the Galita Valley Patrol. Uh I also spent a couple of years ago a year working an IV. And while the u crime rate may be lower in IV, I I had a rocking year there. I had to arrest a lot of people. I arrested a guy for attempt homicide. Uh there's a lot of stalking going on. Unfortunately, with the college girls, there's a target-rich environment for the predators. Um, you need to fund IV. Um, I'm working out of Galita. We have one county car. That's for the whole 270 square miles outside of the city of Galita. One county car. You eliminate IV, there's no deputies driving around IV. The one county car in Galita is going to be responsible to go to IV. So, when that college girl calls up at 3:00 a.m. because there's a predator breaking into her apartment, I'm going to have to come from Karp or Paradise or the tunnels. You absolutely have to fund IV. Absolutely have to do it. This is from a guy where the rubber meets the road. I'm doing the work. Last thing, uh, March 3rd, you guys voted to, uh, generate revenue for the social services program out of the pockets of the employees through furlows and pay cuts, uh, pay freezes. Do not do that. You do not charge the employees to provide services for the county. That's crazy. Please leave your employees money alone. We need it. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Hunter.

We will now go to Jenna Flynn to be followed by Lawrence Severance. Jenna.

Hi, good afternoon everyone. Board of Supervisors through the chair. My name is Jenna Flynn and I have been working for the County of Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office as a dispatcher going on six years now. I am also a sitting board member on our deputy sheriff's association. I'm up here and speaking today based on my concerns regarding the proposed budget cuts to the sheriff's office as well as the inadequate pay and benefits that are being offered to our current sheriff employees. I believe that the main rules of government revolve around maintaining order, stability, and safety within a society, and protecting the rights and freedoms of said society. As a dispatcher, I answer and generate calls for service, coordinating communications for and responses to emergencies. With the proposed budget cuts, I reiterate my concern that there will not be appropriate resources to respond to the ongoing emergencies that I and all of my partners answer on a daily basis. Calls that every person in this room, every person outside of this room standing in your hallways and every person who has stepped out wearing this green shirt has in some way or another had a hand in responding to or supporting. The county needs to understand that a reduction in funding and in sheriff employees results in greater risk to public safety. The well-being and security of all members of the Santa Barbara County community needs to be at the forefront when making decisions about the budget. I encourage you, I urge you to consider the negative impacts that would result from cutting the sheriff's office budget and from the reduction of pay and benefits to our employees. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Flynn. We will now go to Lawrence Severance to be followed by

Thank you, Lawrence. Uh, we will now go to Moren Earles. Is Moren here? To be followed by Laura Robinson. Moren, good afternoon. Um, I want to commend the board for your past support for increasing the public defender staffing and your progress on reducing excessive workloads. that leadership is already making a measurable difference. The budget moment is not a crisis, just a crisis. It's an opportunity to fix costly inefficiencies in our jail system and are that are still driving unnecessary incarceration. The data is clear from the presentations you've heard and our letter to you that when public defenders have manageable workloads and provide both early representation, people spend fewer days in jail before arraignment and that is already reducing our average daily population. With the expansion of those programs, they are that population will decrease in the coming years. The evidence and common sense tell us that reducing excess excessive workloads after arraignment will also reduce court delays, a major driver of prolonged jail stays. Even modest investments from you can save millions by reducing the people the time people spend waiting in jail. The economics is clear. It's been talked about $400 a day approximately for a person to stay in jail when they don't need to be there. The moral imperative

is clear. People have a right to time timely access to justice. Many are sitting in jail not because they pose a risk but because the system is delayed. These people are people who lose jobs, housing and stability and who will return to our community. We can invest in efficiency, fairness, and fiscal responsibility. Or we can spend millions expanding a jail system we know is not working as well as it should. Thank you, Moren. That is your Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Earles. We will now go to Laura Robinson to be followed by Matt Maxwell. Laura.

Hello, Chair Nursen and the board. Laura Robinson, executive director of SEIU Local 620 representing the county workforce. First, I want to say thank you to the public defender, the district attorney, and the chief probation officer for their words highlighting how critical every single employee is at this county and how important the social safety net programs are to public safety at this county. Okay. So, I'm here today because the proposed um the proposed budget before you includes layoffs in the sheriff's department that fall almost entirely on local 620s members. The lowest paid employees in the department even though they are not the ones driving the unfunded overtime costs that are straining the general fund. Our members have always shown up every day, kept operations running, and supported the system that allowed this department to function. Yet they are the ones that are now facing job loss because overtime overruns they they had no role in in generating. This is fundamentally unfair. We all understand the county is facing difficult decisions. But balancing the budget on the backs of the lowest paid workforce who are already stretched thin is not a solution. It only deepens the inequities and destabilizes the services our community relies on. I'd like to once again also reiterate that local 620 strongly supports the proposal to divert upfront jail expansion funds and to scale the expansion from 1.5 pods to one pod. That adjustment alone would preserve critical general fund dollars and prevent avoidable avoidable harm to the workforce right now. These are choices that reflect both fiscal responsibility and basic fairness. Our members are committed to serving the county. They deserve a budget that reflects the same commitment back to them. I urge you to protect these these positions, address the true cross drivers, and ensure that the lowest paid workers are not the ones asked to shoulder the burden of the decisions outside of their control. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to Matt Maxwell to be followed by Andrew Wyman. Matt,

good afternoon. My name is Matt Maxwell and I'm a detective with the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office. I love my agency. I believe in the work we do and I believe in the people I work with. Excuse me. But I'm standing here today to tell you something difficult. People like me feel forced to leave. And not because we want to leave, but because we can't afford to stay. We're currently operating without a contract. Our county's own compensation data places our classifications 10 to 12% below market figures. And the market continues to grow 4% per year. If you were to submit a contract offer for little pay or worse, propose taking away benefits, that would be a morale killer. Respectfully, when you take care of your deputies, they are better able to take care of this community. Over the course of a career, the average deputy experiences 400 to 600 traumatic events compared to three to four traumatic events for the average person throughout their lifetime. We ask that you support a contract that is reflective of that reality and competitive with market value. You want your a agency to be representative of the people of this community. However, many of us already live in Ventura County because we cannot afford Santa Barbara County. Those employees can work in Ventura County and make 20% more money doing the same job. You must be competitive competitive with these other agencies. Studies across law enforcement and public se sector employment consistently show if you pay competitively, you gain experience. If you don't, you lose it. That is a public safety issue. Replacing an experienced deputy costs significant money to recruit, complete background investigations, and train. And in the meantime, overtime is needed to cover those vacancies. This only adds more stress to the deputies who work in an industry that already struggles with trauma and mental health. We need your support. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Maxwell. We will now go to Andrew Andrew Wyman. I'll wait until after lunch. Thank you, Mr. Wyman. We will now go to Is there an Anna here? Anna, she might have moved to Zoom. We will now go to Max Moore to be followed by Mike Stoker. Max.

Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Max. Uh, I've worked with the sheriff's office since 2015, uh, a little over 10 years. Uh, I work at the Santa Barbara jail or what we call the main jail. I just want to sound kind of a warning on the proposed budget cuts for the sheriff's office and what's likely to follow. Uh, the purpose of government is to ensure that it society is safe and uh, it's paramount. Um, I appreciate the figures presented. Uh, but it is our responsibility, so that's to be expected. Uh, also what's important, uh, we have people entrusted to our care in the custodial environment. As a custody deputy, I'm responsible for and we're all responsible for ensuring that the people incarcerated in our two facilities are properly cared for and that they're secured until the justice system completes its role. A reduction in the sheriff's budget exposes custody deputies to danger and puts uh their lives and those incarcerated and entrusted to us at risk. Uh it will also affect staffing which is the reason right now why we have such a high overtime expenditure. These uh overtime uh numbers are not waste. They are not uh um sorry yeah they're not waste uh these are vital roles that are needed to provide the appropriate level of care to uh the people that are entrusted to us and uh they also help uh or they're vital to the advancement of these programs uh the sheriff's treatment program the medical assistant treatment program um as well as being able to provide the inmates with a level of medical care and mental health care. Uh if staffing is affected

and the sheriff's office continue to receive cuts, uh our ability to provide all of those things uh is in jeopardy. Thank you, Mr. Moore. We will now go to Mike Stoker to be followed by Karen Howenstein. Mike

uh Mike Stoker on behalf the Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center and uh over 350 members, we urge you to support the sheriff's restoration request. Uh these are tough times. Uh we all know that it really defines priorities. When I sat up there where you sat sat in 1991, that was the first year of realignment. That was when the fir the first year that the state stole our property taxes. We faced a 20% deficit and the county administrator recommended a 15% AC cut across the board cut. Sitting where supervisor caps is, I told my colleagues, I'll never accept across the board cut. Assumes everybody's equally efficient. Assumes everybody has equal priorities. And I said cops and firefighters will not be cut with any budget all support. Uh that became a very very public issue. Uh it carried over into the elections of that year. Uh Supervisor Stafo and Chamberlain got elected and uh the cuts that the sheriff incurred were immediately restored and I led the way that year uh to give the sheriffs uh an substantial increase in their salary uh to make us parody with other counties we didn't have. And I even led the way to make sure that they got safety retirement for the first time. That's what hap that's what you do when cops and firefighters are your number one priority. I understand the unfilled vacancy issue. I mean, at least make sure everybody that's in a uniform or in a suit keeps their job, but keep in mind those 11 unfilled vacancies. If they remain unfilled and you take them away from the sheriff, he loses flexibility. He's going to have issues like overtime that's so controversial in this county. And echoing on on the sheriff, I'll just say if Sable goes to full production, that's 8 to 10 million. If Sentinel Peak and loading racks and if EMB resources Quuiamama are up and going, you got another 25 to 28 million this year at the end of the year to deal not with

just the sheriff but other cuts that are on the table. Support our firefighters and our sheriff. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Stoker.

We will now go to Karen Howenstein to be followed by Lynn Gibbs. Is Karen here? I did see her earlier. Perhaps she's in the conference room. We will now go to Lynn Gibbs to be followed by Jennifer Baird. Lynn, thank you. I want to speak to the importance of the behavioral sciences unit and uh its manager. Um so I made a list of the things some of the things that person does. uh manages the county's co-response teams, regularly consults with field deputies, both co-response and other leveraging their efforts. The BSU manager's position is the only psychologist in the department and this is the only BSU position. So without that position, we lose the BSU unit. um regularly consults with behavioral wellness crisis manager coordinating departmental intersections, participates in all crisis negotiation callouts to deescalate them. It's difficult to estimate the cost savings when a potentially tragic outcome is averted. council's deputy suffering trauma. Um as a psychologist is able to exchange information with jail mental health, wellpath and behavioral wellness regarding individual cases. Secures grant funding $5 million since that position was created and so the position uh more than uh pays for itself. Um, finally, we and NAMI have direct communication in emergencies and we can initiate um an important welfare check when someone's life or welfare is at risk in a in in in a time-sensitive manner. And this can entail it has um on occasion rare occasion issuing Ebola or

be on the lookout uh for the person uh someone who needs uh priority attention and is at very high risk. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Gibbs. We will now go to Jennifer Baird to be followed by Steven Baird. Jennifer.

Good afternoon, Chair Nelson and supervisors. My name is Jennifer Baird. I serve as vice chair for the Santa Barbara County Commission for Women, and I am the founder and executive director of Hearts of Armor, where we support veteran families across this county. I'm also the wife of a veteran. I'm here in absolute opposition to any cuts to the behavioral sciences unit, the crisis intervention team program, and to the position of BSU manager held by Dr. Lee. Let me be clear, the BSU manager position is not a line item. It is a lifeline. My husband and I work directly within the CIT program, training deputies and law enforcement on how to respond when they encounter a veteran in crisis. Because of this program, those calls don't end in escalation or tragedy. They end in connection and support. Under Dr. Lee's leadership, the behavioral sciences unit brings critical support into the sheriff's office. Crisis intervention training, co-response programs, officer wellness, and 247 psychological consultation. There are not these are not extras. These are essential. Dr. Lee is the backbone of that work. She equips first responders to handle the most critical moments they face and make sure they can keep showing up to do it again. I've seen this firsthand. Dr. Lee has been there for my own family during a serious mental health crisis. I know what's what happens when this kind of support exists and when it doesn't. You cannot replace this with a cheaper alternative. You cannot replicate trust and proven impact with a budget adjustment. With all due respect, cutting this program is not fiscally responsible. It is short-sighted and dangerous because the cost does not appear disappear into shifts. It shifts into emergency rooms, into the jails, and into preventable tragedies. So, I'm asking you to find another place to make cuts. Dr. Lee is not expendable. This work is not optional. and my husband

Steve, who has lived through the kind of crisis this program is designed for and now stands beside law enforcement to help save save others, will tell you the same. Women like Dr. Lee are rare. Cutting her is not cost-saving. It's a loss to this county. It's a loss this county cannot afford and please make the right decision today. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer.

We will now go to Steven Baird to be followed by Suzanne Roen. Stephen. Chairman Nelson, Board of Supervisors, nice to see you. I'm going to start abbreviated uh on a special letter that I received September 21 of 2021. Uh dear Steve and the Banner Brothers team, thank you for your recent assistance in helping an inmate within the Santa Barbara main jail. As you may be aware, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office and our custody operations branch place the utmost importance on inmate safety and mental health. Unfortunately, this inmate was initially committed to causing self harm despite all efforts and interventions we provided him. While our staff gives exemplary care and assists all inmates, occasionally those conditions called for less conventional methods in order to make a meaningful connection. In this situation, when custody staff learned the inmate was a United States Marine Corps veteran, a decision was made to contact the Echo Group. I'm Steve Barrett. I'm the the proud founder of uh the Echo Group, Banner Brothers, the Veterans Organization. Um 12 years ago, I was going suicide by cop and my angels had badges. Um Supervisor Hart me talked about the others. this 2021. We have been the others in organization for many years now. Um, we've been thinking outside the box for a long time. And this letter is from Sheriff Brown. I can tell you that uh because of that officer that day, I had I had a a passion to go give back. I do this for free. I do not get paid. I don't have a salary that's up. But I can tell you one thing that I noticed here today is that we're not talking about a

salary that's going to be, you know, dropped down. We're talking about a loss of a job and a person and we're talking about that person. Dr. Lee, I'll tell you, if you don't want to you don't want to keep this program around, then what I suggest you do is you learn how to make 13 folds of a flag. And when that veteran takes their life, you learn the words and you present that flag to the mother, the father, my wife. It just happened again. It happens all the time. Thank you, Steve. Please. Thank you, Steve.

We will now go to Suzanne Werden to be followed by Graham Neman if he is still here. Suzanne.

Yes. Good afternoon, uh, chair and members of the board. I'm here representing Families Act to urge you to restore the position of the BSU manager, Dr. Cherylyn Lee. Her training and guidance skills have been invaluable to the sheriff's department and to our entire community. As law enforcement and the jails increasingly interface with people with mental health condition, her role is critically important. uh let us not dismantle or eliminate any key parts of the existing infrastructure that serves the role of uh protecting our population who struggle with behavioral health conditions. Her role has been absolutely indispensable in diverting many many people in a crisis from sitting in the jail for months or years at a time unnecessarily. She is a wonderful asset to our community as as are so many other people in this room today, but we're here to urge you to preserve the unit and Dr. Cherylyn Lee's position. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Ren.

I was notified that Graham switched to Zoom, so we're going to Tom Franklin to be followed by Hank Pitcher. Tom, Chair Nelson, members of the board, uh my name is Tom Franklin. I'm president of NAMI Santa Barbara County. You have a really difficult decision to make here. A lot of difficult decisions to make here and I really appreciate that. Uh my family and myself have been involved with the sheriff's department for years now because I have a family member with a mental health disorder and every interaction I've had with them has been excellent. And that's due to the CIT trained officers and the co-response team. Um I'm just one example, but um just as an example, and Sheriff could correct me on these figures if I'm off, but I understand that it's about $390 for one day in jail for one person. My my family member has been in jail for almost a year. Um not currently but in the past. So 365 days times 390 is $142,350. The CIT program and co-response is an excellent jail diversion program. So, I urge you to take a really hard look at the program and that position because without the behavioral wellness manager or the uh behavioral sciences unit manager, that program kind of falls apart. Thank you.

Thank you, M. Franklin. We will now go to Hank Pitcher to be followed by George Kaufman. Hank,

hello. I'm um going to read a statement that my sister wrote and she was unable to be here today and what she says uh represents me and uh a situation that we had growing up. Um and this is her writing. My sister is Charlene, excuse me. My name is Charlene Houston, born and raised in Isa Vista. I have been dealing with our county mental health department for over 60 years. You see, when I was just eight years old, my older brother had a psychotic break, and I watched police and ambulance responders take him away from our house in a straight jacket. Thankfully, we've come a long ways since that dreadful night. Most recently, I had the opportunity to participate in the crisis intervention team training held in Buon under the amazing leadership of Cherylyn Lee. I saw firsthand how the officers in that room were engaged in learning how to deal with someone in crisis. We had a dialogue that I wish all of you could have been a part of. It turns out it was one of the most hopeful things I've experienced in a long time. We shared our stories, concerns, fear, and we even did some roleplaying that allowed those law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to protect us to ask questions. I'll give you an example. So, I show up at your house and your loved one is talking to invisible people in a tree. What do I do? What would you do in that situation? We brainstormed and gave those officers answers to help them deescalate the situation. We need these services. We need these trainings. We need to have these conversations.

The good news is that my older brother is doing very well today. He is living his best life. I know this is because of treatment and housing programs that exist in Santa Barbara County to help people and families dealing with mental health issues. Thank you. Please retain the co-response program the crisis intervention team citademies and cherin position which I understand is currently on the chopping block. Bad idea. Thank you Mr. Pitcher. That that is your time. We will now go to George Kaufman to be followed by Gloria Sodto. George.

Good afternoon. We're going to ask you on behalf of NAMI and the several hundred families that we represent to consider three things as you deliberate. First, obviously, we need to have the fourth U team co-response team position restored. Um there's going to be little if any savings if this isn't done simply because if the calls keep coming in to 911 the sheriff is going to keep responding and we want them the response and I know you do to be the very most highly qualified people when that happens. Second we want to ensure you to help us ensure that the we have a robust CIT training program academy going forward. This is the lifeblood of what the co-response teams uh do that you've heard so much about. Third, we want to request that you uh retain or or restore uh the behavioral science unit position for all the reasons that you've heard so far. But there's one overarching reason and it gets back to the conversation that we had I guess last Monday. Monday a week ago now or Tuesday a week ago. Seems like forever. Anyway, uh one of the things that came up there was a discussion about how proud we are to live in a county that has a low use of force um um reputation, not just in the sheriff's department, but across all the PDs in the county, too. This doesn't happen by accident. This is a cultural thing. And I think that behavioral sciences unit is one of the things that actually drives and con continuously improves that reputation and therefore it's we think it's absolutely essential to continue.

And finally, I just want to repeat the same thing that I mentioned um on earlier this week. Uh and that is that u we need your this board to help us find a way to make all these programs sustainable beyond the current fiscal year. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Kaufman. We will now go to Gloria Sto to be followed by Gail Ouro. Gloria.

Um, good good afternoon, chair and supervisors. My name is Gloria Sto and I'm speaking today as a resident of Santa Barbara County. I want to ground my comment in a s simple but critical point. Public safety is not just about how we respond to harm. It's about whether we are willing to prevent it. Too often our budgets respond to crisis instead of addressing the root causes that put our young people at risk in the first place. If we are serious about public safety, then young people have to be at the center of that strategy and not an afterthought. I work closely with youth across the county and I see what happens when they are supported early through leadership, development, prevention, and strong community connections. They stay engaged and they make healthier choices and they build a strong sense of belonging and that is what prevention looks like. We often say invest in youth invest in our future because every investment we make in young in a young person today reduces the likelihood that they will ever come in contact with the systems like law enforcement tomorrow. It strengthens families. It stabilizes communities and creates safer neighborhoods over the long run. As a resident, I also want to acknowledge the compelling presentation we heard from our public defenders office. It w it was made clear that the level of need and the critical role they play in ensuring fairness and due process in our system is is is vital. Fully funding that office and department is essential to maintaining balance and justice in our county. As you consider this tough budget, I urge you to take a broader view of public safety, one that pri prioritizes prevention, invest in young people, and upholds equity across our systems. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss. We will now go to Thank you. We will now go to Zoom with Zach uh Kosubam to be followed by Anna Garcia. Zach, Zach, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. We'll return to Zach momentarily. We will now go to Anna Garcia to be followed by Karen Rice. Anna.

Yes. Hello. Um, I am here even though the timing of this meeting uh and all of the scheduled meetings make it extremely difficult for the people of this community to participate. I want to address the misalignment of our county's priorities. For too long, we have treated the sheriff's department as the primary solution to issues while the actual needs of our community are sidelined. Sheriff Bill Brown consistently treats our tax dollars as a blank check, frequently exceeding his budget and allowing fraudulent and wasteful overtime, which has been documented in various articles over the last couple months. We continue to prioritize jail capital expenses while our true safety nets remain underfunded. We should be deferring these massive infrastructure costs to invest in the services that will keep people out of the system in the first place. Budgets are value statements. We should be prioritizing the pay of our educators before funding those whose primary role is to protect property and incarcerate vulnerable community members. Furthermore, the department and sheriff Brown's ongoing collusion with ICE is a direct betrayal of our community and neighbors and is completely misaligned with the values of a healthy and inclusive community. When we look at behavioral health, it is clear that a co-response model does not need a sheriff. We can and must develop different ways to care for people in crisis. Law enforcement contact during mental health emergencies often exacerbates tension and directly endangers the lives of those who need the help. Who does this system protect? Certainly not me or my community. It is time to stop funding a bloated enforcement apparatus and start investing in the survival and dignity of our residents. I urge you to shift the funds toward education, health care, and other critical social services that truly create and maintain public safety. And I also want to amplify the public defenders um requests and say that is a good place if we need to put it

somewhere to uh help reduce the population of our jails. No more Bill Brown. We will now go to Karen Rice to be followed by Katherine Campbell. Karen.

Uh, hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Hi, my name is Dr. Karen Rice. And um I was at the jail this very morning um as ICE agents uh taunted us and uh stole a community member. Um from the jail steps, if the role of the sheriff's department is supposed to be to protect and serve, um we need to ask why are they uh letting ICE terrorize our community? because we know that an increased ICE presence means that people are less likely to report crimes, less likely to participate in uh the parts of our society that they're they're allowed to participate in. Um and it makes all of us less safe. They were there this morning. Second, then what will you, the supervisors, do about it? Um as others have said, budgets are moral documents. Um, and the money that we are going to spend in building a massive new jail in um, will lock us in in a long-term basis to continually prioritizing more staff to staff this jail. We need more to arrest more people and to hold them for longer. The goal is fewer people come into contact with our very flawed enforcement system. I support increased money for the public defenders better than Bill Brown can. And I support limits on the wasteful and fraudulent overtime that we're seeing over and over again. Shift the money to the public defenders, to education, and to the things that actually stop crime in our community. Thank you. We will now go to Katherine Campbell to

be followed by my apologies Stephanie Kizo. Katherine

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Thank you. My name is Katherine Campbell. I'm the threat management coordinator and the workplace violence prevention program administrator at UC Santa Barbara. I also serve as the lead of the UC systemwide threat management center of excellence for the University of California, Office of the President. I'm a public health social worker by education and training and I have eight years of professional experience in behavioral threat assessment and threat management. I'm here to speak to my partnership with SPSO's BSU manager, Dr. Lee, and the significance I believe her position has to our ability to prevent violence in the Santa Barbara community. I am not here to speak on behalf of UCSB as a whole. My thoughts and statements are my own. As demonstrated by my laundry list of titles, I wear a lot of hats. However, my work can be fully encompassed in this statement. I work to prevent violence at UCSB, within the Santa Barbara community, and across the entire UC system. I'm here today because I rely on my partnership with Dr. Lee and my collaboration with SPSO in every aspect of my work. UCSB is a unique campus within the UC system with many of our students living outside of the direct jurisdiction of our UC police department in Isa Vista in the jurisdiction of IVFP SPSO. This means that collaboration between our campus and SPSO is critical to ensuring the protection of our campus community and the Santa Barbara community at large. In my opinion, Dr. Dr. Lee is a critical partner to the successful collaboration between UCSB and SPSO largely due to her ability to navigate multi-disiplinary spaces and negotiate between academic and law enforcement leaning discourses. Dr. Lee and the team she oversees are critical partners to me and our campus in the doing the work we do to prevent violence. Dr. Lee supports our campus by providing consultation as a subject matter expert in behavioral threat assessment and threat management. Dr. Dr. Lee and her teams have also provided critical training to our campus threat management teams, UCSB police department, and our UC systemwide behavioral intervention team leadership council. I believe that the elimination of Dr. Lee's position and specifically the appointment of Dr. Lee in this position at SPSO would be detrimental to

violence prevention efforts in Santa Barbara. Further, one of my supervisors, Melissa Collins, with the University of California Office of the President offered the following statement to me regarding her work with Dr. Lee. Thank you, Katherine. That is your time. We will now go to Stephanie Kiso to be followed by Lwanda Lions Puit. Stephanie. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Hello everyone. I am here to advocate for the BSU manager position and overall unit within the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office. For background, I am Stephanie Kiso. I'm a former first responder in our county and the wife of a current first responder in our county. We also live in the county as well. I left my first responder career to focus on my PhD in psychology and suicideology and work very closely with our local first responders through my professional roles. I also work with local, state, and federal politicians on public safety legislation. All that said, I've worked with Dr. Lee locally in many professional capacities, including helping many county employees during a mental health crisis, all of whom are still on this earth and are still working to this day. If her position is cut, make no mistake, you are not just cutting a job, but in part abdicating responsibility to safeguard our first responders mental health and by extension the safety of our entire community. By removing this essential role, you are not just saving a few bucks. You are potentially inviting a wave of liability like increased workers compensation claims, potential lawsuits, and more. Also, consider the consequences of high turnover rates. When our first responders lack psychological support, many often leave their agencies and lateral elsewhere, leading leading to costly recruitment and training for their replacements. This is not just an expense, it's a disruption that compromises public safety. So, in closing, the decision to eliminate Dr. Lee's position will have far-reaching consequences, many that have ripple effects. This is about more than just budgeting and saving pennies now. It is about your duty to protect our first responders and our community that they serve. I implore you to work together to find a way to save this specific position. Stand up to show support for our mental health for our first responders. And if not, be prepared to answer for the fallout. Thank you.

We will now go to Lwanda Lions Puit to be followed by Chelsea Lancaster. Lwanda,

good afternoon. Chair Nelson, members of the board, Lwanda Lions Puit, representing Santa Maria Lampoke, NAACP, and the League of Women Voters of North Santa Barbara County. I want to begin by we want to commend and congratul congratulate public defender Tracy Makuga on your pending retirement and just thank you uh for the work that you've done the past 9 10 years. Um I really had my chest stuck out this morning as a proud former uh employee of the public defenders office. I also want to thank you for grounding us in a collaborative holistic approach to this budget workshop. We couldn't be more prouder and definitely applaud you. So, um I think we all think public safety should be a top priority for every resident of the county, but it must be balanced and it cannot be balanced on the back of safety net programs when we have people who can't buy food, pay their rent, afford health insurance. I really don't like the logic. and I should say we of taking successful programs that we know are going to push our button uh such as co-response, CIT, uh Oliv Vista foot patrol and using them at as bargaining tools at budget time. We must have aggressive measures to get overtime under control.

We need to fill these positions with aggressive recruitment incentives like Santa Maria Police Department and other departments have done. Thank you.

We will now go to Chelsea Lancaster to be followed by Graham Neman. Chelsea and Chelsea we have unmuted you on our end. if you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. We will we'll return to Chelsea momentarily. We will now go to Graham Neman and then we will return to Zach uh Kospum. Graham,

hi. I would like to comment on the proposed budget cuts and re-encourage the board to think about having a more responsible engagement with sheriff's budget. I think it was very uh enlightening to hear how while there would be very few people leaving the sheriff's department, we were talking about maybe 200 people from other departments being being laid off because of these budget cuts. And I and I want to repeat what um Supervisor Hartman and others have said about, you know, an a broader idea of safety that I think we should we should make sure we're keeping in mind. I think that um it's pretty clear to all of us that that to to make some of these proposed cuts like with the public defenders and and other um services that are not directly related to public safety officially clearly have an important impact if we if we start making these cuts. what we're going to see not is is um a disappearing of cost but a shifting of cost as I think one person already said. So I I hope that we can um be more critical of of what the sheriffs are saying about the absolute necessity while other other um departments like the public defenders were recognizing I think it was uh Nelson who said who acknowledged that the public defenders were not fully funded. And and I'm wondering how we're uh regarding that as as legitimate and valid while we're giving basically the sheriff's a blank check policy. I mean, we all saw those graphs. We all saw how those sheriff's budgets kept going up and up year to year, especially considering how more than

half of community welfare calls came down to things that can be sorry, more than half of calls were about community welfare. This means that we can we can redistribute resources and have a more a more efficient and more humane budget. Thank you. That is your time. We will now return to Zach Kosub to be followed by and then we will return to Chelsea Lancaster who is our final speaker before lunch. Zack.

Hi. Hi. Thank you. Uh thank you board of supervisors. I'm just going to keep my comment short today. Um, I support uh the budget cuts to the sheriff's department. Um, they they're lying about about colluding with ICE. I have video evidence of them um giving descriptions of um people that inmates that that had left to ICE officers. Um so, Bill Brown sheriffs are lying to you. And if they come up and tell you that they they need more overtime, they don't. Um you'll have officers like um uh you'll have officers out there uh patrolling um uh and and trying to intimidate people that are um just trying to take video and picture in the first amendment right. So until they stop lying I don't think they their budget needs to increase. Thank you.

We will now return to Chelsea Lancaster who is our final speaker. Chelsea, Chelsea, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute to provide your comments. All righty. Perhaps we can check back in with Chelsea.

Right. So Chelsea or anybody else that was not able to speak in public comment um after lunch, please uh make sure you contact the clerk's office and we'll try to get you in for after public comment that we take that we do after um fire. So I believe we're going to break for third how long co how long do we need? That's correct. Unless the board has any comments they want to make. Our intention would be take the break. Um, and how long? Um, we don't need we don't need a long break,

my colleagues. Uh, half an hour or do we need more than that? Okay, we're going to do a half an hour. So, uh, 30 minutes we'll be back um to do the presentation on fire and then after fire we will do a um public comment on fire or for those of you who are not able to speak in this public safety group, you'll have an opportunity to speak at that time.

Our fire prevention division is broken into four functional sections. Vegetation management, investigations and enforcement, inspection services, and planning and engineering. Protecting lives before emergencies happen. Last year we launched the RFCC with all seven fire agencies in AMR. Everybody was integrated in on June 30th. So truly July 1st of this fiscal year, everybody was in. This was a major accomplishment for the county. We are now 10 months into that. The center dispatches fire and EMS using closest resource model, improves response times across jurisdictions, and enhances coordination between agencies. This budget continues to support that system as it matures, recognizing that regional collaboration is the future of emergency response. And last but not least, the last major service area is the office of emergency management, charged with planning and preparing our community and partner agencies, as well as organizing training, duty officer coverage, and assisting with recovery efforts. Our capital investments this year are targeted and missionritical. A fireboat to support coastal and maritime incidents. A helicopter rotor blade replacement to maintain aviation readiness and safety and other support equipment that ensures our crews are ready when needed. These are not discretionary. They ensure that we will maintain operational readiness and safety. This slide outlines the general county program transfers that support two

critical areas of our operation. First, approximately a 440,000 supports one emergency manager position and a shared PIO um public information officer who are key in maintaining our emergency preparedness, coordination, and public communication capabilities. Second is a 2.1 million uh transfer temporarily supporting the RFCC go live. We saw a significant jump in FTEEs in 2223 and 2324. As mentioned earlier, this was due to the addition of the RFCC personnel, the inclusion of OEM, and other enhancements to our fire crew program. Our staffing remains relatively stable with a slight reduction to 319 from 321. This includes an ambulance manager position that is no longer needed and a reduction in an emergency management position. These decisions are never taken lightly and they do have impacts such as reduced emergency management. The reduced emergency manager will impact capacity in planning, coordination, and increased strain on the remaining staff. This is an area that we will monitor closely. Over the past 5 years, our budget has grown from 100 million to 134 million. This reflects added responsibilities like the RFCC and OEM increased system complexity and the rising c the rising costs across the board in technology and in and in cases like fire engines now have a 100% increase on uh specialty equipment. A fire engine uh eight years ago was 500,000. It's now a million dollars as an example. This past year, your investment

delivered real results. So, fully operational RFCC, 6.5 million secured in wildland wildfire mitigation grants, the implementation of a countywide emergency zone mapping program, expansion of bilingual emergency communications, which has strengthened emergency preparedness and public engagement. These are tangible improvements to public safety. We also completed a full revision of the county and operational area operations plan, strengthening coordination across all agencies during major incidents. We also implemented a public reporting system that allows residents, businesses, and agricultural operations to report disaster impacts, giving us real time situational awareness for supporting recovery efforts. Finally, we issued over 91 bilingual emergency alerts in coordination with the sheriff's department, ensuring we are re reaching our diverse community when timely information matters most. Together, these efforts improve coordination, awareness, and communication across the entire county. As we look ahead into fiscal year 2627, our focus is not just on maintaining what we have built, but deliberately positioning our department for the future. The environment we operate in today is changing. Incidents are more complex, expectations are higher, and coordination across agencies is more critical than ever. So our priorities moving forward are centered on four key areas. One, modernize mo modernize service delivery. This means expanding the use of digital tools and integrated systems to improve both efficiencies and effectiveness. Streamlining internal processes to reduce duplication and improve

turnaround times. This is about making sure that our personnel have the best information available in real time so they can make better decisions in the field. Number two is strengthen the emergency response system. We are strengthening the core of what we do, which is emergency response. We're improving evacuation planning and execution. We're enhancing training and operational readiness and strengthening inter agency coordination, especially during large-scale incidents. The reality is that no single agency handles these events alone. Success depends on how well we operate as a system. Number three, we're building fiscal resilience. We're also placing a strong emphasis on long-term fiscal stability. We know that there is unclear ahead, whether it's grant funding, disaster reimbursements, or other rising operational cost. We're strengthening a multi-year fiscal planning system. We're also spearheading a prior uh strior priority strategic priorities and risk assessment so that we can better adapt without compromising service levels. Number four, we are expanding our focus beyond response to community preparedness and resilience. This uh includes advancing our countywide evacuation coordination planning and implementing lessons learned through an afteraction tracking system, expanding community outreach and preparedness programs, especially in vulnerable and underserved served communities because the re reality is a more prepared community is uh the more prepared a community is the more effective our response will be. Preparedness is a force multiplier. Strengthening uh we are strengthening the foundation

the department uh of the department through better planning accountabil accountability and transparency. First we are focusing on priority prioritizing capital improvement projects working closely with general services to ensure we make the right investments at the right time. A key part of that development is a fire facilities plan which will guide the placement of future fire stations and identify the renovations required for our existing infrastructure. At the same time, we are strengthening our performance measurement process to better track and continuously improve across all areas of the department. And finally, we are formally formalizing a strategic plan which will set clear goals for each functional area with pro progress that is monitored and transparent. These are some uh uh things that we new uh issues that we took from the KPMG report that hadn't really been addressed yet. So, we're developing a compreh comprehensive uh information technology plan that will guide how we access and implement technology moving forward. While the framework is in place, it remains an ongoing effort as we can continue to refine how we connect and inform the community together. These efforts ensure that we are more uh connected internally and effective externally in how we deliver and share information. What keeps me up at night? Fiscally, like other public agencies, we are facing real challenges. Increasing technology cost and complexity, declining in federal grant funding, uncertainty in disaster reimbursement, and the need to maintain strong regional

partnerships especially around the RFCC. These risks are act these are the risks that we are actively monitoring. Our performance remains strong across three critical areas. One, response. We have 100% compliance on our ALS response. Prevention. We have a very high in the whole state. We have a very high defensible space inspection rate. And then in public communication we have a growing ready SBC engagement. This is uh the impact is balanced and we are performing at a high level across a full spectrum. To balance this year's budget we made a difficult decision to reduce one FTE and emergency management. This is a mandated program that will have service level impact and will it will have real effects on our capacity such as planning, training and inter agency coordination. I would also like to note broader funding challenges. A portion of our operation currently relies on federal funding sources including grant programs like EMPG and homeland security funding. These funds support support both staffing and critical systems such as our emergency zone mapping and um and personnel. Looking ahead, if those federal funds are not sustained, we anticipate additional staffing impacts in the future. The key takeaway is that we have balanced this year's budget, but there are ongoing structural funding challenges that will need to be addressed to maintain current service levels. Next slide. I'd like to close with a quote that

captures the spirit of our budget and where we are as an organization, especially since it's our 100red-year birthday and our roots are in forestry. Like CEO Mias's quote on Monday, a society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. We chose that quote very intentionally because much of what we are doing in this budget, whether it's investing in facilities, strengthening systems, or modernizing how we do service, are not short-term gains. These are investments whose full value may not be seen today, but will absolutely define the service level safety and resilience of this county in years ahead. This department began as the county department of forestry, an organization grounded in stewardship, long-term thinking, and understanding that what we build today is meant to serve generations to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Huff. Questions or comments from the board? Supervisor Lee, I just want to say um I always appreciate you and your team and how great a job you guys always show up and just I'm big fans of yours. So just keep doing what you're doing. Thank you, sir. Right. Thank you, Sar Lee. Suez Caps.

Yeah, I'll echo that. And there's been a lot of conversation about Isa Vista and I'll just um extend the gratitude particularly as it relates to uh the many um issues related to Isa Vista recent Narcan distribution that your um that your team participated in and of course the attention to cliff safety um and the calls that have been made there not only the fatalities but um so many saves that happen uh all too frequently. So thank you so much Chief Huff. Thank you. Thank you Supervisor Cap. Supervisor Herman. Uh, couple of questions. The first is, how has the roll out of the new mapping system gone? I'm going to have to defer that one to, uh, OEM director Kelly Hubard.

Supervisor Hartman or the chair. Um, I think quite well. Um, it's thankfully we haven't had to use it too often so far. Um but the few times we have we've been learning from those experiences such as the Gford fire um some other small incidents in in communities and so we continue to um learn those lessons, communicate to the community that it's a resource and a tool. We still want them to register for ready SBC alerts as the primary way to notify them and then continue to re um refresh our training with our partner agencies since it is a tool for the entire county. And how will the notice go out in in the new zones? I'm sorry, what was the question?

How how will notice of emergencies go out in the new zones? Thank you. So, when we do emergency alerts, we will still use the concept of defining the boundaries by the streets. We don't want to use the numbers per se that are identified within the mapping system. We know that is not um necessarily conducive for accessibility of the community. Um, for instance, I have dyslexia with numbers at times. I would struggle with a listing of zones identified by number, right? And so, we're going to continue to describe those and then they'll still also um receive that link to Ready SBC, be able to see the map, and be able to see the areas visually represented.

Okay. Well, I I think that's really exciting. Um, and I'm not eager for a disaster, but I am eager to see how how it works uh under stress. Um, the other question I have is um your corrective action um report tracker. Would would you expand on that? I think that is so important. You know, we got to find the lessons, learn them, and and give feedback and change. And I've always thought, well, we fires, for example, we we rarely learn what the cause is and and there's no summary statement of it. So, how do we go back and tell people, you know, don't drag your chains after you've loaded, be sure to check, you know, how how do we um So, I I don't need you to stand on my soap box, but let me let you stand on it and explain what this is about.

Well, thank you, Supervisor. Um, that's a that's a tricky qu that's a tricky uh question and and conversation because a lot of the times when it's not announced what the cause of the fire was, it's because it's under investigation. And it's under investigation because there's a lot of things going into especially for like a wildfire that takes, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres out. Um, the federal and state partners uh usually go after cost recovery. So there's there's a criminal aspect to that. And so the investigators don't typically let out what it is till sometimes years later because they're going through a process in the legal system that if they if they say too much too soon, it could compromise how that case turns out. So that's um that's one reason why it's delayed or sometimes you feel like you never know what started a fire is because it's going through that process. Um, we do an afteraction review on almost every fire or every incident. Uh, if it's a medical call, oftent times the the crew on the way back to the station will will debrief the incident. Uh, the larger the the more complex the incident is, the more complex the the afteraction review is. I know that OEM uh the OEM is also doing more work on that. So,

do you have more that you can add? But we we are we do it every day on every call and depending on the seriousness of the incident and the complexity we we either formalize it into a written document or we just do it on the on the tailboard of the fire engine

supervisor through the chair. Thank you. Uh the afteraction tracker is something that um was a goal of ours. We this county um I think in Mona's time here has had 29 proclamations, an additional 26 activations. We're averaging about 4.6 since Mona's been here. Hope maybe that will change with the next CEO. We don't know. Um probably not. Um and so what we realized is we didn't have we weren't tracking those after actions and those corrective actions that were recommended. And so we've been working to build that system so that we have a well doumented way to note each of those recommendations. Have we met them? What have we done to get there? Um and we have over 400. We're we're I kudos to Roger here on the team. He's been working through that. Um and we still have the COVID after action. So, we know that's another long list to add to that. Um but and then that's just populating it and then we'll go through and start documenting what we've accomplished and what we still need to work on and work through in the future.

I I hope I hope you'll um keep the board apprised of that. And if if you can't tell the the source of the cause of a single incident, I I still think you can say in general, these are the causes of our fires. I know that um once or twice a year you send something out. Uh often it's about defensible space. I keep looking for, you know, these are the things you shouldn't be doing. Uh in addition to the ones that you should, right? Um because I I think that's really important. Um I've seen people welding, you know, on ranch fences in highly, you know, high grass on windy, dry afternoons. And and so we just people don't necessarily think and I I believe we must do much more to educate people as things get, you know, bigger and bigger fires. I agree and that's something we can definitely add to our um our campaigns is is what what not to do or what to be careful of.

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman.

All right. um the one cut in OEM and you know I know that that's something that uh is going to is hard to stomach for uh your department as well as some of the people in the public and it's obviously position that as we talked about before it's you know much much of this work is an insurance policy um I guess you know I support what you guys need to do to get a balanced budget but I really think there's some opportunities in the future to be looking towards other grants this is usually a um a grant um intensive area and I know that you know you guys have been able to draw those down in the past, but I'm I'm just hopeful that, you know, moving into this next year that those are places that we can look so that um the shrinking of that department is not a a um a direction that we want to go long term. We've made a huge investment in that um our um center there and is with um and I think that we need to continue to um make sure that we're staffing it appropriately. So, just some feedback.

Thank you. Yeah, I agree. All right. Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you very much, Chief Huff. Thank you.

All right. So, uh this is actually now we are now complete with the uh uh public safety functional group. Um and we're going to go to to public comment on um specifically if you were not able to speak on the other items in the public safety group because you did not want to conform to the two-minute period, you can now speak in public comment now on this on this functional group. or if you wanted to speak specifically to fire and o um OEM, this would be your time to speak. So, madam clerk, do we have any uh requests to speak? Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have six requests to speak from the public on the remaining uh functional group for uh public safety. We are going to begin on Zoom and to return to Chelsea and Lancaster. Then we will return to Santa Barbara with Cheryl Smith. And before we get too far into the first speaker now, I will close public comment on this functional group. So go ahead and move. Go ahead and

Chelsea.

Hello. Good afternoon. Um, I was part of a group dating back to 2015 that was opposing the construction of the uh jail located in Santa Maria based on ongoing issues um regarded to Sheriff regarding Sheriff Bill Brown's um complete disregard for the fiscal health of our community. Um, I was reading that report this morning just to sort of refresh my my mind about some of the issues that were existing then that still exists now. One of them is that um back then, and I believe this is still the case, we had one of the highest uh pre-trial detention rates in terms of the amount of time that people spend uh in Santa Barbara County Jail, either awaiting trial or um you know, have not been charged. Um and in that time, as somebody alluded to earlier, um that's time that people become further marginalized, losing their housing, losing their job, things like that. In this report um which was crafted by Russell Trenhome again back in 2015 um after an extensive examination of things that the sheriff had claimed um he said that all of these are serious issues that suggest the hazard of relying on data produced by the sheriff's department in making decisions that will have a decisive effect on the county's financial health. the quality of the data is poor, inconsistent with other data, and unsubstantiated, internally contradictory, and subject to repeated change. Um, and these claims are substantiated in a fivepage document that I'm looking at now. I'm saying this all because we're really stuck in the definition of insanity when it comes to the sheriff's department. Um, when we talk about public safety, I'm glad that a lot of folks have brought this up.

That's a really expansive conversation. Um and you know thinking about what needs to happen in terms of um support for the public defenders office um real quality uh diversion programs really refocusing our efforts on that and then again the concerns about the ongoing collusion with ICE. I am one of the people that is at the jail um whenever ICE is there and it's really disconcerting to see how gleeully the sheriff's department cooperates with ICE um in front of our faces. Frankly, there was a whole group of BL uh brand new recruits that were there in the parking lot today. When ICE left the facility after kidnapping one of our community members, all of those new recruits gleefully waved at the at the officers. Um, Sheriff Brown claims that this is a colorblind department. Um, first of all, colorblindness doesn't exist. And to suggest that that the sheriff's department is cover colorblind completely ignores the deep racial inequities that we know exist in our criminal justice system, the the fact that so many people with mental health conditions are languishing in jail. That's your time.

Thank you, Chelsea. We will now return to Santa Barbara with Cheryl Smith to be followed by Lauren Severance. Cheryl.

Good morning, Chair Nelson and other members of the board. My name is Cheryl Smith. I am the mother of a 41-year-old son living with schizophrenia. I serve on the board of NAMI Santa Barbara and as a commissioner on the behavioral wellness commission representing District 1. I offer a perspective on how the intersecting responsibilities of the public defender, probation, the sheriff, and the district attorney in behavioral wellness affect individuals with serious mental illness and the efficient use of public resources. Since 2022, my son has had more than 160 court appearances stemming from over 20 cases involving misdemeanor charges and felony petty theft and shoplifting offenses, oftent times for items valued at less than $20. Driven by untreated schizophrenia, these incidents reflect an effort to return to the structured jail environment for food, safety, and shelter. In every case, he has waved his public defender, including during three jury trials that resulted in convictions. This cycle has led to repeated incarcerations, bench warrants, probation violations, and over 300 days in the jail, much due to continuences, and other system systemic inefficiencies. My son's refusal of voluntary treatment and evaluations, waiver of counsel, self-representation, failure to appear in court, and probation violations are manifestations of a symptom of his illness. Anaignosia, a lack of insight, not simply denial, that leaves him unaware of his mental illness and impairs rational decision-making. Coherence in court does not equate to competency. At every stage, dedicated professionals, including judges, district attorney, public defender,

sheriff, probation, and beware behavioral wellness have acted with good intentions. But the county's four secure long-term subaccute treatment beds for conserved justice involved individuals are however insufficient to meet the needs of a jail population exceeding 700 residents. I respectfully urge the county to purs to pursue future state infrastructure grant funding to expand secure long-term subacute care as outlined in the county's fiscal year 2026 and 27 preliminary budget. Departments have proposed reductions in response to declining state and federal funding. Investment in secure long-term treatment remains essential as the cost of failing to provide appropriate care is far greater measured in repeated incarcerations, strained public resources, and preventable human suffering. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Miss Smith. We will now go to Lawrence Seance to be followed by Andrew Wyman. Lawrence,

good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to offer public comment. These are very important hearings. Um, one of the things, a theme that's come up a number of times today is how costs or savings in one department can impact another department. And I want to highlight the problem in criminal justice by talking about delay in the courts and what's the cause of the delay and what are the consequences. Um, we now know that there's 70% of the people in our jail that are awaiting trial or awaiting a resolution of their case. Only 30% have been convicted and sentenced. So, we're housing a lot of people that are waiting. So the problem is um a recent study came out from the state on public defense and the disparities in staffing between defense and district attorney and the public defender you heard say this morning how they're very overcase loaded and you heard district attorney Sabern talk about how the complexity of cases is expanding and overloading their staff the public defenders understaffed relative to them And um one thing that uh Tracy Makuga did not ask for that I am asking you to consider is two additional attorneys and two additional investigators on the public defender staff because the problem is that they go into court and ask for continuances for just cause and they get them. And I've talked to a baiff who's in the court and he says that happens over and over again. So if you want to move people out of the jail and that we're talking 70%. And you could increase the the efficiency of the public defenders office, it's going to play out in a reduction. Uh two two places, Sacramento and a place in Wisconsin,

increased public defenders. They found in one case um that the average days in jail reduced from 7 to 14. and in uh another case it was a 20% reduction in their jail population. So this is an effective way of addressing the jail population. Um you're asked to fund the ready program. It's a great program. The data we have from the north county so far show that it's reduced the need for 14 beds and it's reduced jail time by 48%. Now that's not letting people slide. that's getting their cases effectively finished and out the door. So, fund the ready program. Please consider funding additional public defender staffing. Last but not least, I want to call your attention um clue and and the league have circulated a petition about the jail about the jail size. 27 organizations in your community and you take a look at their credibility preferred that you not overexpand the jail that you keep it to one housing unit. We'll address that later. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Severance. We will now go to Andrew Wyman and I believe Karen Howenstein has left so we will go to Gail Ouro who is our final speaker after Andrew. Andrew.

Andrew Wyman, a recent resident of Santa Barbara. Uh, I wanted to talk about the absolute necessity of continuing the behavioral science unit at uh, the sheriff's department. Uh, others have spoken about this more eloquently than I, particularly the public defender. Uh, I have a few other comments to add. I'd like to just as background tell you that I'm a psychiatrist. I was trained at Stanford and at Yale. I was the vice chairman of the department of psychological and social medicine at Cal Pacific Medical Center which was the other major teaching hospital in San Francisco and I did that for several years. I um had the opportunity to work with the sheriff's department in Wshaw County for several years as a consultant and I managed after um badgering the county manager for two years to set up an interdisciplinary program there which included sheriff's staff and members of the mental health community which uh aided in uh smoothing out the transition between those two facilities. ities in this particular situation. Um, you have someone who's been working for several years now at the science unit. Um, and it contributes to a what I would call a culture of caring uh, in the community. Uh, it's not the only place to go, but this particular individual, if they're doing the job well, creates and enhances that kind of a culture, which influences not only the sheriff, but everybody else in the community. uh what happens when that goes away uh and there's one major catastrophe which will call you cause you to spend millions of dollars on one particular

catastrophe. So you have to think about this is not a large department with 20 30 50 or 100 employees. This is a oneperson department. It goes away. It closes basically. The other part of that is what does it say about the community when you eliminate that particular division and what is the impact on all the people who have thought about and worked for and worked in and contributed to that particular uh division and that one individual who's running it for these several years. You eliminate that suddenly you have zero. There's nothing there now. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. I'm in and we will now go to our final speaker, Gail Oeno. Gail,

good afternoon, Chair Nelson, members of the board. I just want to start by uh emphasizing that the League of Women Voters is totally in agreement with the presentation that Larry Severance just made. um in addition to the efforts that you all have made by helping by approving things that reduce the numbers in the jail. Um there's also what's happening with Prop One funding uh this new set of 32 beds uh the CRT in in Santa Maria which is hopefully going to help us uh also reduce the need for more beds in the jail. And currently or at least in in March, the last figures we have were that 33 people were waiting in the jail for release to treatment that had already been ordered by the diversion courts. So a lot is underway and happening and we can talk more about that tomorrow. Um I basically have some of my own personal comments. Uh this morning you started with District Attorney Saver who opened the workshop highlighting the word safety as the number one priority and Sheriff Brown concurred in those comments. I don't disagree, but their views of where safety starts are too narrow. Safety starts in the community and in our county. We have a serious underlying problem, inequality. As our public defender noticed noted, our justice system penalizes poverty. If if your board chooses to cut 262

existing and filled J jobs in public health and social services and then you don't make commensurate cuts in the sheriff and district attorney's offices, you're more likely to decrease safety in our community. More families will be displaced. More people may become homeless. More will struggle with food security. More will not receive medical and mental health treatment that they need. 44% of people in our jails are on psychotropic drugs. They need mental health treatment. And they may need treatment that they cannot get in the jail. The needs for acute and subacute mental health treatment in the county are not being met in the community as they should be. I recognize these decisions that you're making today and in the next period of time, I'm not sure how long, are really difficult. I urge you not to rely on the unreliable promise of oil revenues to solve your much bigger financial needs. and I look forward to your continued funding for all the steps that you have taken to fund actions that reduce the number of people incarcerated. We shouldn't be living in a country in the world with the highest rate of incarceration. Thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes excuse me and that concludes public comment on the public safety functional group. All right. So that concludes our first functional group for the day. Oh, if we have questions. Okay. Yeah, sure. things you'd like to follow up on, supervisor Herman. Yes. Um, I see Director Navaro is here and I had some questions about the behavioral health unit if if I could.

Okay. a as you're walking up um we've we've talked about public safety and how important CIT training is for officers and uh I could you tell me what's what it looks like what CIT training looks like and was it ever done before?

Yes. So, thank you um Supervisor Hartman through the chair. Um, CIT training is actually statewide something that we began in California just about a decade ago. And that was some that was based on the Nashville model of crisis intervention training where you provide a host of trainings to law enforcement so that they may more effectively respond sometimes with partners in a co-response model and sometimes just on their own to folks who are experiencing behavioral health crises. Um, as with all other counties here in uh the state, Santa Barbara County's CIT was originally um held in the Santa Barbara Bwell Department and it was actually overseen and facilitated by Suzanne Grimacey, our current chief of strategy and community engagement officer and public information officer. Um, CIT is actually a facilitation of a various amount of trainings and presentations by a lot of folks who come together uh to present from NAMI, other advocacy groups, the uh behavioral health uh wellness department teams, law enforcement.

So, it's not one person like a college class giving a lecture. It's really um all the partners working together. And

no, Dr. Jul's critical role is how she gathers everyone and and coordinates the training and and and um brings the right partners to the table so that we have a real comprehensive robust training. So if um if we couldn't fund that position in the sheriff's department, is there any way that could be funded in bewell without coming to general fund? Yes, that could be funded within our behavioral health services act under the early intervention and within our crisis services branch of the department where it was previously. And um I think a a big issue is is a person and building trust and relationships over time. If if it's within if it's not just one person in one department, c could could how would your department would it revolve to a lot of different people or is it something a person could um establish relationships and connections? I I think again similar to the model um that hap there is a BA a BSU manager from what I'm understanding and if that manager were to report to us they would be maybe the face and the primary point of contact if someone had a question but then they would have a whole team behind them to address that. Um, if I may clarify that, you know, the co-response units, they consist of behavioral wellness staff and sheriff's department staff and the oversight of the clinicians is done by Be Well. Um, and so it's not supervised by Dr. Lee as a group. We supervise our own clinicians and and so that would continue to to happen um, you know, within our department. And could you describe how the Santa Barbara City model works because you're also involved with that?

Yes. And um referring back to our presentation last week, um John Winkler also uh branch chief John Winkler also reported out that the way that co-response teams work across the state is that you have officers that are assigned to special duties um uh within their departments and they're overseen by their commanders and by the management staff of law enforcement. And the clinicians are overseen of course and supervised clinically by their behavioral health departments. And then those two meet regularly. You know the teams meet regularly. There's a lot of uh partnership and cons and uh uh consultation that happens and training but they are separately supervised and managed collectively as a group

and that has been Bwell's role. Yes. Yes. Okay. Just want to make that really clear. And then we we heard some discussion about um mental health for officers. Is is is that something that Bwell does or that we do in the county or how does that work? I think Supervisor Hartman, we're starting to get into deliberations with this. I mean, we can I'm just asking questions because I can discuss this too and we can get deeper into this. Well, I'm I'm just asking questions. We heard a lot about this

meeting questions. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Um yes that there's we have experience in training other first responder teams on peer support. There's a model of peer support for instance with our first responders and fire. Um and Suzanne Grimacey within our BL department has led some efforts in that training as well. Thank you. So um I I'll ask a question for staff. You're fine. You can go sit down. Okay. Thanks. So that's actually great. Uh, HSA funding could pay for the behavioral science unit. No. Well, that's I'm asking her. I'm asking actually budget staff. Sounds like it's a funding source that behavioral wellness might be willing to pay for the sheriff's department's behavioral

um unit. It sounds like BHSA funding that behavioral wellness controls according to the department's response just now was willing to pay for it. So, but it's really they don't control it. The board controls it, right? Within that department. the the board would approve all right budget funding and allocations the county. So if she's offering to potentially pay for the behavioral science unit um that'd be a funding source that we might be able to draw on. It it sounded that way to me too. This is the first time it today too but yes.

All right. Thank you. All right. That concludes the functional group for public safety. And at this time we will go on to our general government and support services. And kicking that off will be Katrina Fernandez. Thank you, chair, members of the board. The next functional group presenting today's general government and support general government support services will start with a short video summary.

The general government and support services functional group provides the essential services that keep county operations running. This group includes the treasurer, tax collector, public administrator, clerk, recorder, assessor, human resources, auditor, controller, information technology, and general services. These departments ensure transparency, accountability, and efficient operations. The treasurer, tax collector, public administrator collects and distributes local taxes and administers estates and conservatorships for residents as required. The clerk recorder assessor maintains records, oversees elections, and assesses property values. The auditor controller manages accounting and financial reporting. Human resources supports hiring, training, and employees. Information technology provides secure systems and digital services. General services manages county facilities, vehicles, and capital projects. Together, these departments provide the foundation that supports all county services. The General Government and Support Services Group makes up 9% of the county's total operating budget, 10% of total county FTEE, and receives 13% of the county's total general fund contribution. Looking at the 5-year revenue trend, we see that GFC makes up the majority of operating revenue for auditor, clerk recorder, human resources, and treasurer tax collector. Most noticeable on this graph is the sharp decrease in general services operating revenue we see in fiscal year 2324 which is due to the formation of a standalone IT department in that year. Both general services and the IT department are less reliant on

general fund contribution for operations as both generate revenue via charges for county charges to county departments for internal services such as motorpool, utilities, information technology and communications. The increased GFC we see for general services in fiscal year 2627 reflects an adjustment made in the current fiscal year to shift administration of the countywide security services contract from the CEO to general services in 2627 operating revenue for general services and IT remains relatively flat. Finally, you'll note that the county maintains a separate debt service department managed by the treasurer which receives revenue from other departments to make annual long-term debt payments. The increase in operating revenue for this department in fiscal year 2526 is primarily interest income earned on certificate of participation proceeds. Here we see the 5-year trend of operating expenditures mirroring the operating revenue and GSSE trends in the previous slide. Debt service expenditures saw a significant increase in fiscal year 2425 due to the issuance of certificates of participation totaling $98 million. This most recent round of debt is scheduled for repayment over the next 20 years. The other departments in this group show modest increases over the 5-year period with the exception of general services and IT which show faster growth in expenditures mostly related to maintenance and IT service costs. Turning to FTE, the 5-year trend shows relative stability in all departments with the exception of general services due to the creation of the IT department. A few changes of note include a decrease in HR staffing in fiscal year 2526 due to the elimination of three ERP backfill positions, an increase in TTC staffing by 3 FTE in fiscal year 2526 to support the implementation of SB43, and an increase

in IT staffing by 13 FTE in fiscal year 2425, mainly related to establishing the workday support organization. We see additional increases in HR and IT in fiscal year 2627 largely related to the transfer of positions from other departments which will be discussed further in departmental presentations. Here we highlight the major challenges and initiatives of the functional group. Major challenges include rising capital project costs due to various factors including tariffs and energy prices, mitigating the impacts of workforce reduction where possible, increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyber security threats and expiring funding for the election equipment replacement. Current initiatives include the phase 2 implementation of workday, continued investment in and completion of significant capital projects, implementation of the IT modernization and countywide IT strategic plan and debt issuance for the Northern Branchale construction project. Next, we'll provide a highle summary of each department's budgeted sources and uses of funds. The majority of the auditor's funding comes from GFC at 9.4 $4 million and primarily supports accounting services. The greatest share of treasurer tax collector funding comes from GFC at $5.8 million and funds public support, tax and collections and admin services. The department also generates $4 million in revenue through charges for services which mainly consist of administrative revenue from the treasury and goes towards supporting treasury operations. Most of debt service revenue comes from the release of certificate of participation proceeds that are held in restricted fund balance and operating transfers from other departments for debt service payments marked here as miscellaneous revenue. The majority of clerk recorder assessors

funding comes from GFC at $12.8 million and mainly supports assessor elections and admin services. Charges for services are also a significant source at $6.3 million and consist of various property tax administration and recording fees that fund assessor and clerk recorder activities. Most of human resources funding comes from GFC at $8.1 million which is used to fund all departmental services with the exception of the county dental insurance fund. The dental fund is supported by insurance premium contributions which are classed as miscellaneous revenue. It's funding primarily comes from charges for services at $35.5 million. Service charges are collected from various county departments and go toward recovering the cost of providing IT shared services and communication services. Like it, a large share of general services revenue consists of charges for services at $30.7 million, which is primarily made up of fees charged to departments for fleet and utility services. Transfers from other departments for capital projects and vehicle purchases are another large source of funding, classed as miscellaneous revenue at $43.5 million. GFC funding to general services totals 17.2 2 million and primarily supports facilities maintenance, real property management and purchasing services. And that concludes the general government support services functional group summary.

Thank you, Mr. Fernandez. Right. No questions from the board. We'll go ahead and start with our first department and we have our treasur tax collector public administrators department. And we have for our Yeah. And tax day. Not his taxes. That was five days ago. But presenting um for the very last time as our treasure tax collector, Harry Hagen.

Good afternoon, Chair Nelson, members of the board. Um it is kind of a little bittersweet. I mean, this is my last budget workshop after 30 years. So, um I can't promise it'll be my best, but I'll uh we'll see. So, with me today are soon to be treasurer elect Jim Dora and Leanne Hagerty, who's the treasury finance chief for the county, and um several members of my staff. Behind me, our chief investment officer Dan Chandler, Tristanati, who works in the public administer and public guardians office, too. And so let's move on. All right. So the key takeaway here is this is a status quo budget. Um meaning that our general fund contribution is flat, but our service level um that we're going to be providing um the residents of of the county of Santa Barbara is not being reduced. That will stay status quo. And so our core services treasury tax collection public administrator public guardian um you know within the treasury most people don't know that we run a $2.5 billion fund and it's not done with outside consultants or money managers. We do that ourselves. we run a bond fund that we select the securities daily and um so when you see the interest income increasing in your budget this year it's a direct result of the good work that people like Dan Chandler are doing um to facilitate that just want to give him a shout out he's kind of a person that keeps his head down and doesn't get a lot of attention so move on all right so our operating budget 112 million dollar and the general fund contribution of 5.8, it's a tad over half of our budget is general fund and we appreciate that. Um, we've been good

partners and I appreciate the trust you've had in me to um, be a good steward of that money. Um, our full-time equivalents of 50, we'll look into that a little bit later. Um, and our balancing measure was a reduction of one FTE. These are our major service areas. Administrative and support, um, debt administration, deferred compensation, uh, treasury banking and investments like I mentioned, um, the tax collections, um, property toot and cannabis are the major drivers there. And then our public support, which is interesting. Most people don't realize that the majority of our FTEES are actually in the public support division. A public guardian, um, public conservator, public administrator, protective pay, veteran services. There's a lot of things that, uh, that division does that kind of go unnoticed. Okay. And so, our general county program transfers, cannabis tax, um, that covers two staff people. and then our accounting and collection software. Um and so this year um you do not see the cannabis audit funding and the um the pricing service would be the other item that wouldn't be in there this year. Okay. So that's our staffing right there. Um there was a BIFF uh budget inquiry form that was asking about um veterans. So um in 2223 um that number did increase um by two vs and um a cost analyst also for uh toot audits if you remember and so that increased our our funding or staffing to 47. Um the subsequent year we added a veteran supervisor um that is currently um Rhonda Murphy and that increased it

to 48. All three of those positions are currently filled. Um and then um 49 I believe is a a treasury tax person we funded that had been unfunded. And then in 2526 there's a net of two. You gave me funding for SB43. And those positions are funded and filled. And um they're directly responsible for um another slide that we're going to show later on. That's an accomplishment. And so the 50 is a reduction of the one one position that we are um you know using as our balancing measure. Okay. As we talked about um 11.2 million is a static number. Um and so it's a status quo budget. Nothing more on that slide. So the the governor gave us not us as the county, not just the not just the treasury tax collector's office. This was a um a group effort between the courts, um county council, public defender, um behavioral wellness that the governor, you know, gave the county of Santa Barbara the award of of a care champion. there was 10 counties that received that and the metric I believe they used was um the petitions per capita and so um we were very proud of that and as the other county departments that took part in that also our secured tax rate um when we get to our performance measures you'll see that 99% is a pretty static number we will have 999% of the secured role collected by June 30th 1% a roll to the redemption. That's it

happens every year. But the reality is we're going to collect 100%. Only once in my career have we ever seen a property not get collected. It was a property that was a super fund site in North County was stripped off as uncollectible and but every property will be collected one way or another either through um funds or in a rare rare occasion through a tax sale. And the last anticipated accomplishment wasn't done by me. It was done by these two people here. That was redesigning the treasury deposit process with workday. It was not an easy lift. Um but Leanne and Kim and other members of our staff too um did that. I just get to present it. All right. Our goals and objectives. Like I said, we're going to continue to provide the same service delivery with less financial resources. We'll do that. Whatever you whatever you need, we're going to do it. I tell you right now, we will continue to collect the 99% on the secured roll by the end of the fiscal year. And then we will participate in the issuance of the coops hopefully for the Northern Branch jail expansion. Uh fiscal issues to watch, not this year, but if um if things continue poorly, um I don't need to remind you that there's the saying of do more with less is it sounds good but it's after a little while it doesn't work and so we will continue um with the service level you expect um but depending how deep cuts get in in out years um things could change but there is sunshine at the end of the at the end of the tunnel and that's the pinchion and you're going to get an update from Greg I assume on Friday um from SV serves but we know that there's there's some sunshine coming and so we just got to get through the tough years right now and then hopefully things will normalize and

we'll be on better footing that way. Okay, our performance measures um secured taxes at 98.5 unsecured taxes, that's a little that's a little diff more difficult. Um but we have a lot of tools that we use and in some cases very rare we um will file leans or seize assets. um the toot collected for hotels. Um the big bump um going from 2324 to 2425 was the increase in the tax rate. Um same with the with the vacation rentals. Um and then um from 2526 um it was a full year of that. I think it was January 25 is when we did the um the rate increase and the veteran benefit claims um you see no difference there and I'll explain in either the next slide or the slide after that the next slide. Yeah. So this position it's never been filled. So, when we received the supervisor position, which became Rhonda, her position, the funding for her position, if you recall, I told you I'm not going to fill it. We need to evaluate if we really need it and we didn't have the space in Santa Barbara to put the person and it's and it's I'll give a shout out to general services because they went the extra mile trying to find a space. We looked at so many different spots. Um, and so it's not a function of of general services. It's just um there was just nothing that was available that could could house the veterans and and preferably be near the VA clinic, being on a bus line for people to get there. And so, um if we ever do have the opportunity to fund a position, um we

may be able to do it internally even. I'm not asking for funding. Um we are going forward with a remodel of the existing Santa Barbara Veterans Office um with Kirk and his crew. And so when that day comes and Kim will be the person hopefully spearheading that um we'll have the space to put that person there and have a second BSR in Santa Barbara. Yeah. No restoration request. Um this is a bit odd for me. I don't I don't usually put a quote on. Um, but anyone that knows me well knows I'm a I have a big admire of JFK. I really am. I've gone to his library and just can't say enough good things about him. So, the quote is change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. And it seemed appropriate on the day I'm passing the baton to my able assistant. So, that's it. I'm here to answer any questions. Try not to get emotional. Yeah,

thank you Mr. Hagen. Uh, Sers Lee, so with the bill more anticipating to be open, what can you guess the revenue from the tots will be in the next fiscal year?

Yeah, supervisor Lee through the chair. Um, I I can't really put a dollar amount on that because some of the other hotels in the area, I'll say probably the Rosewood be a, you know, prime, you know, example. Um, have taken over some of that, right? Um, I would say there's probably going to be a net increase. I think that I can say that pretty confidently, but as far as the absolute amount, I can't tell you what that was. Um I can tell you that um the Builmore was a very strong contributor to the tot in this county um before it closed. So I think that is a positive and that's probably the best I can give you on that.

Okay. So based on their previous numbers, do you have a range where they were on their TLTs? Well, you know, I don't like to give individual numbers when we get information right on a on a on an operator basis. I treat that just like the franchise tax board or the IRS would treat your personal um tax information. You only provide that to facilitate the collection of taxes. And so I can't answer that, but I can tell you um it'll have a positive effect. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Sally Lee. Super Hartman.

Uh yes. um our county, your office is known as the premier veteran services in the entire state and uh you've got a few people doing the work of many and I'm I'm just wondering in terms of succession planning or you know how how do we how do we maintain this status over time? That's the Harbing. That's a great question and really comes down to the people and so the person that we have Ronda Murphy is a superstar. I mean I've said that before publicly um but we do when you added that position that provided us the ability to kind of create um a career path for people in a training path. And so we do have a veteran service rep that's a senior that is you know Rhonda's right-hand man I'll call it. Um so um and the veteran service reps that we hire many times their work studies that we've had work study program is a program that we use for more administrative tasks in the office. We don't pay their salary. We just um we sign up on their time cards that they're working. They meet certain criteria and they get paid through the veteran services or veteran the VA. And so, um, we've had those people, um, and then we've hired them as veteran service reps then. So, they're they're partially trained in most of a lot of the aspects of their job. Um, but to answer your question, to replace someone um, of Rhonda's ability, um, it it's going to be difficult. I'll just

We hope she stays for a long time. Yeah. I I had one other question and that is um are you satisfied that we're doing all we can to collect toot from the short-term rental and and homeay program?

Am I satisfied? Um Supervisor Hartman? Absolutely not. There there I'm sure there's um people leasing out, but we've we're using tools. One of the tools we use um is a service um called from a company called Decard and they data mine for us and so they will look at Airbnbs or look at VRBOS you know Reddits all these different online platforms but a lot of people they they lease just word of mouth too and so there it's really going to be difficult unless the neighbors complain or or or we get something from PND and you know we have a very good working relationship with Lisa's crew. She does a really good job. Um, you know, some things are going to fall through the cracks and and we're not naive enough to think that it's not happening.

But but we do have this service that is mining. Now, a lot of people aren't putting addresses. They'll put general neighborhood. Is there anything you can do in your office or you you actually need an address to go after an individual? Uh, we do need an address. Um, but the data mining does provide that for us too. So, different different ways. Okay. Yeah. So with um we're not going in blind. Okay. And thank you. Yeah, Leanne staff does a really good job. As small as it is, they're small and mighty. Yeah.

I guess my question to piggyback on Supervisor Hartman's question is, are there other tools that we could be helping or that you might be able to acquire to um deal with again unregulated short-term rentals? Um Sure, Nelson. Um there are a few um there's one in particular I think that could potentially help and that's the ability to pay online. Um so people are it's it's if you make payment easier for people they're more likely to be compliant. If you make them go through a bunch of hoops um they might drop off that way.

Yeah. It seems that you know I hear from people that go through the process legally and how frustrated they are at those who don't. And so, you know, um the county process is very arduous and expensive and and you know, versus somebody who doesn't go through that process at all and and doesn't have to pay the taxes. So, I know that's definitely a frustration out there. So, um um I think a level playing field is what we want for everybody. Um absolutely. Yeah. Following on, what would it take to have people pay online?

Um we've looked at a couple services. We are, one thing that we didn't put on is anticipated accomplishments, maybe we should have. We're going to be rolling out a new payment site um hopefully before the December installment so I can, you know, enjoy it a little bit too. But within that, they may have the ability to allow our toot operators to pay electronically online like that, too. There's also another service that we're looking at also. Um, so if we could fit it within our budget, we So, you're on it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It would help our staff a lot. Yeah. All right. And I promise, Leanne, we'd try to fit it in, too.

Well, Mr. Hagen, thank you very much for the presentation. I don't see any other lights on. And just thank you for your your service. I know that um we're looking forward to working with Kim, but you will be sorely missed.

Thank you. And I'm going to miss all of you also, but I'm here for another eight months. That's right. That's right. This isn't the end of day. Our next department is the clerk recorder assessor and it's Um,

come to my attention. It's come come to my attention that uh, Mr. Holland was not able to make it in person. Yeah. Um, can you hear me? This is Joe Holland. Yes, I'm on Zoom. Yes, Mr. Holland, we can hear you.

Okay, good. Uh, well, uh, good afternoon, um, Chairman Nelson, members of the board. Um, I want to point out that I've got some staff in the room there. I got Melinda Green, chief deputy clerk recorder, uh, Michael Daly, chief deputy assessor, and Martin Kobos, the um, chief deputy elections, and then additionally have Vanessa Grafe. She's the finance officer for the department. Okay. So, if we can start off with the um uh Vanessa, can you put it on the first slide? Um I think I have the one with the recorder's office picture. No, the it would be the next one where the have the budget at a glance.

Mr. Mr. Holland, your first slide that you have here in the room is key takeaways. Yeah, I want to go to the next slide, please. The budget summary.

Yeah. Um, so here we have um the budget summary for the uh for the department. I'd just like to point out that we're actually um three different departments, elections, clerk recorder, and assessor. Um we have a 22 million budget with about 13 million almost 13 million uh general fund contribution and we have a total of 106 employees. Can we go to the next slide? So there's the breakdown per um division. Um so you can see you see the breakdown per division. If we can go to the next slide. Next slide please. Well, there's the staffing summary. Uh, next slide, please. And there's the operating uh budget. Um, source of funds. So, we have about 6.9 million uh of our source of funds is from operating revenues. Next slide, please. Um, next slide please. I seem to have different set of slides here. Vanessa, can can you go to the next slide? So, these are just some of our um

departmental goals and objectives. You can see for assessor, this is actually a pretty big one. Uh taking all of the real property files and scanning them and digitizing them. That's we had 130,000 file folders that are now um being scanned and digitized. And then the um for the recorder division what we want to do is um with SB 255 when you record a document for a grant deed for your house for example we then u mail out a notification so that if somebody were to try and commit fraud and record a deed on your house we're going to send you a notification that a deed's been filed. on your house and SP 255 provided funds to do that. So if someone tried to commit fraud, you we're going to notify you. Um so that's a a pretty big one. Next slide. Um, so we're going to perform a fee study to identify opt optimal billing methods and that's we're currently doing that. So I'm just I'm not going to touch on all of the issues in in each slide, but I'll try and hit the highlights. Next slide, please. Um so the one of the challenges uh in the um for the recorder's office is the recorder's office is entirely fee driven. And so there is no general fund

for the recorder's office. And what we're finding across the state is the fees are not sufficient to actually pay for a robust um recorder division. So um we're currently working with other counties across the state to try and see if we can get uh the fees enhanced. Otherwise, at a future date, we may need to come to your board to get general fund contribution for the recorder's office. And of course, we want to avoid that. Next slide, please. So here we're looking at some of our performance measures and I'm just going to hit on one that we're proud of is the p percentage of campaign finance filings completed electronically. So we're seeing um almost 100% of the campaign filing now is done electronically and that is um a huge increase in benefit to the elections division for candidate filing. Next slide please. Um so here's just some of our balancing measures. Um, next slide. We don't have any restoration requests. Next slide. And this is a quote from Leo Toltoy. What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. And uh, this is relevant. A lot of people don't know, but in our department, we do about

4,000 marriage ceremonies per year. So, um, I think this is a good quote. Thank you. Happy to take any questions. Well, thank you, Mr. Holland. Um, I am a little disappointed that you weren't able to make it here in person or give us some um, let us know in advance. I know we asked all the department heads to be here in person. Um, and maybe that might have gone a little smoother. Um, yeah. Um, my apologies for that, but I'm dealing with some health issues. Believe me, I would have loved to have been there. Would have been nice nice to have you.

I've got a couple questions and I don't know if any my colleagues do. Give me one second. would you um help us out a little bit with just talking about your department and um can you walk us through how you're currently exercising um the day-to-day oversight of this department?

Currently I am working remote from home and so I've been working remotely. Um I haven't I've been working straight through the weekends and during the um week I am available by phone instantly to the staff and so that's how I'm managing the department. I don't think um well I know that all the division managers there that are um in the room have been able to get a hold of me um instantaneously. So it um you know um the community is very aware of remote working and um believe me if I could be in the office I would be. I'm looking forward to improving my health in the near future and will be returning to the office soon.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Halden. Um, one of my questions also had on on your budget had to do with your general fund contribution. Um, can you talk to me about what areas are discretionary versus non-discretionary? Um well elections a lot of the general fund contribution goes to elections. Okay.

Um and that is in my opinion non-discretionary. We're not going to cut elections. Um you can't do 90% of an election and get away with it. Um the other discretionary is the assessor budget. Um if we need to make cuts in the department, they're going to be made in the assessor division and that's been the case over the years. Um and again, general fund, I mean, um clerk recorder division is completely fee driven and there's no general fund contribution there. All right. Thank you. Those are my first two questions. Supervisor Hartman.

Uh yes. Um we are disappointed not to see you in person today. I I'm just curious, how long have you been working remotely?

Uh about 18 months now. And um c could you describe leadership team meetings and how you uh work with your uh leadership team? Um as I said I'm available instantaneously to all my uh management staff and so uh they can call me in a heartbeat and I'll pick it up. Um that's a lot different than um previously when I wasn't working remotely. the um I haven't taken a vacation in 18 months. I haven't been away from the office for 18 months. Um so I am available to them and I speak to each one of them whenever they want to speak to me or or I hope reach out to them if there's any issues. But primarily they they reach out to you on a oneby-one basis and you're not there um proactively directing the various departments.

No, I I I would disagree with that. I'm I proactively reach out to them um on various issues, you know, elections and well various issues in all three divisions. So now I'm proactive actively reaching out to them and they can proactively reach out to me anytime they want.

So this year there's a lot of concern about election integrity. I guess there has been in previous years too. Um how are you uh addressing that in a proactive way? Um, you know, I've been running elections for 24 years now, and the best thing you can do for uh running elections and maintaining integrity is to not have any issues. Um, we have not had any issues in 24 years. And so I want to maintain that integrity by uh continuing that track record. Um there is nothing independently that um we're doing to so-called raise integrity. I mean I'm in uh communication with the other 58 counties and if there and if there's anything that um we feel we need to do we'll do it. Um but nothing right now specifically beyond maintaining maintaining the integrity of the process that we've been doing in my uh career for 24 years.

So are I mean are you working to with your executive team to anticipate issues that might arise and prepare for them ahead of time or

Yes. um we talk about any potential issues um consistently, but that's no different than we've been doing for years. Um you know, working with uh the FBI uh and Department of Homeland Security in the past, um working with the Sheriff's Department to try and um save off any um potential issues. So, uh, we're we're not doing anything differently than we have in the past. And like I said, you want to maintain the integrity that we've built hard to, um, build up over the years.

And could you describe um, polling places and are they going up and down? Santa Maria elections office, is that going to be open? I mean, can you give us a little more detail on how you're planning to structure the elections this year? We're not doing anything differently. Yes, Santa Maria Elections Office will be open and and um we're doing that. We have I believe Martin can chime in. U Martin um I think we have 20 25 dropboxes across the county. Um Martin, do you know the number that we have right now?

Uh I believe there's 18 drop boxes. There'll be and polling places. How many? 61.

And I'd like I'd like to point out that those dropboxes were not required by law to have any dropboxes. We have 18 of them. And dropboxes are very labor intensive. Most people don't know that. You have to have two people at go and pick up ballots at each dropbox. And on election night at 8:00, you have to have two people at each one of the dropboxes at 8:00 p.m. to pick up the ballots. Um, most people don't know how labor intensive they are. And I'd like to also point out that we're not a voters's choice act county. Um, we chose not to become voters's choice act where, uh, Ventura County is a voter's choice act where they have vote centers for every so many people open a few days before election, but they have a greatly reduced number of vote centers as compared to polling places. So, we have polling places and I felt that was important to have polling places uh open on election day. Um so, you know, for the disabled to get access to to voting. Um Martin, how many um vote centers would we have if we were a voter's choice act?

I believe we'd have somewhere around 30 to 40 vote centers. Um, and those unfortunately would be open, well fortunately depends how you look at it, they would be open for 11 days prior to an election. It's very expensive in terms of staffing them, in terms of renting the facilities. Uh, so it's it's an entirely different model. Yeah. And Martin, isn't like one per 50,000 registered voters? Yes, that's the number. So, we would have five vote centers as opposed to the number of polling places that we have.

And how many polling places do we have? And has that held constant or as you have the drop off voting, have the polling places been reduced? Well, Martin just told you how many we have. How many polling places do we have? My my question is h is that holding constant over time? No. The number of polling places changes generally with each election depending on district lines and things of that nature. We try to have as many as we can open while still being conscious of the district lines. Each election is different. And do you get enough volunteers?

Currently, actually, we are very appreciative of the volunteers or or workers that we get during an election cycle. We used to have to go out and actually advertise a lot. We're very fortunate in that we have returnees who are coming to help us uh with the constant changes that we have. Uh most people utilize vote by mail or dropboxes. Uh we find that there's less than 10% of the actual registered voters who go to a polling place and 10% is a little on the high level for us. Generally, it's about 5 to 6%. Thank you, Supervisor Levanino.

Thank you. I want to I guess Mark I'll just go to you because I'm talking about elections and the election office in Santa Maria. So when will that open and how long would it stay open? Ballots for this current election are mailed out on May 5th. So that that office will be open and staffed beginning May 5th. I'm sorry, May 4th. Getting my days mixed up. May 4th. It'll be staffed and open until the conclusion of the election. Santa Barbara one will be open though when same same time. The Santa Barbara main office is open all the time,

right? And we have the largest city. I'm just saying it's it's uh we may not have as many voters, but with my office and Supervisor Nelson's office right next to the elections the closed election office 90% of the time, it's very apparent to us when it's closed and there are people that quite frankly uh and a lot of them are older, they don't want to go to a dropbox and they don't feel comfortable in it. They want to they might have a question. They've got a damaged ballot. They've There's just all kinds of things. And I find myself becoming a part-time elections employee while that office is closed. And I really do not see a good reason why Santa Barbara would be open and Santa Maria would be closed. I just that's that's that's something that uh we really got to grapple with. So, I don't know how the funding on that works, but you know, if it's every I I don't I don't know how to fix it except to open it and it's just unacceptable the way it's the way it is right now.

Mr. Holling, do you think you could speak to uh the Santa office and the plans? Are there potential to having that open because I don't think it's just the month before the election. It's often a difficult I know for north county candidates for their filing. Um and then there's also the need for people to often reregister to vote or ask questions of the elections office and it's it's quite a bit of a hardship for north county residents. Um I still remember the day when we actually had one in LMPoke as well. So we've gone from you know one in mid county, one in north county just to a single uh office in the south county. And um I I know many of us are interested in in that being remedied in the future.

Well, Supervisor Lavagnino hit the nail on the head. It's all about funding. Uh we don't have the staff to um open that up for the whole year. Um we could definitely look into that. No one's brought this up to me before and I'm hearing this for the first time. Um, like I said, I've been doing elections for 24 years and we had originally opened up LMPoke with elections and we had a full-time staff there and um just as we went through the great recession and were forced to um to you know make cuts um that's where it became you know you you look at the volume of people going through there and it just didn't make sense to have it open anymore. And um with Santa Maria, it's the same thing except that we open it now during the election so that people can get there. If we needed to staff Santa Maria, um it would it's all about funding and you know, happy to entertain that. Um, I don't know that this is the appropriate venue to be doing it during budget hearings.

Well, it's our only opportunity to address you. So, it's we think it's a budget issue. And um I think it's one of the chicken the egg issue with the north county office. If it's staffed, I think people will be there. And I think often the reason why you don't have the the traffic and is in part because it's often closed. And so there's an expectation of it not being closed. And I think you got to build that culture. Um, and that comes starts with services first. Um, I I don't know what, you know, maybe between now and June, you guys can look at your staffing model and see if there's a way to be able to potentially staff that office uh throughout the year, you know, um, better or potentially um, alternating staff between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. Um, and that would sounds a lot more equitable to me. Um, you know, maybe neither one of them are open full-time. Um but again that's this is the opportunity for us to address the departments and so I think it's it's wholly appropriate to ask those questions. I know supervisor Caps has had her light on for quite some time so I apologize please supervisor Caps.

Yeah hopefully this is just a quick question related to the budget. Uh good to see the team here. Um just do you have a dedicated I know people are really worried about the protection of their vote this year uh in particular. It's a and I know the secretary of state does a lot to communicate. Do we do you all have a dedicated line item in the budget for communication with the public to assure them that their vote will be counted and be safe because we counties are run elections are run by the county and the county alone?

Um no there is not a dedicated line item for that. that's just becomes that's part of what we do. Um is we meet with um the sheriff's office and we meet with county council and um who whoever we need to be to make sure that the integrity of their vote is protected. And like I said, we've got a very good track record of doing that. I'm not anticipating anything happening at this point, but if it does, u we're in communication with the sheriff's office and we'll address things if and when they come up, but there's not a specific line item for that. Um we I mean it's multiaceted. We're looking at

cyber security, physical security, we got alarms, we got um the sheriff department is there on election night. Um it's multiaceted u what we do to protect elections. No, I appreciate that. My question was about communicating with the public, with the voters. Is there a person that does that? Uh is there an effort to do that? Do you do you communicate with the voters externally? Um, not beyond what we do right now. Not specifically. Okay. With regards to how we're protecting, okay,

the integrity of their vote. All right. Well, uh, Supervisor Lee and I are bringing an item, so we'll get into this at our next board hearing, but thanks for answering that. Thank you.

All right. I've got one last question on on voter integrity. You know, obviously it's a big conversation about voter ID throughout the country right now and since 90% of our ballots are um delivered through the mail where the chain of custody that isn't necessarily sure where you know how it gets there. Um how do you guys assure that that that ballot was filled out by that person? How do we get that that connection there? Well, 100% of our ballots are delivered through the mail. We're 100% vote by mail. Um, there are when you sign your vote by mail envelope, um, we compare that with the signature we have on file from your voter registration. And if your signature doesn't match, we will not count your vote. we want to open the envelope and we send a if your signature doesn't match, we send out a letter to you letting you know um by the way we didn't count your ballot because your signature doesn't match. So you have an opportunity to come in and correct it. Um, and so that's how we ensure that the voter that the voter that filled out that envelope is the voter that's entitled to fill it out.

So it's the signature verification is that's the ID is your your signature and the the matching process. The Say that again, please. It's the signature matching is what gives you confidence that that's the person who filled it out and those that's done through like OCR or some type of optical um process.

Um it we do have an OCR that for those signatures that are real close and their style and and of of handwriting, we'll accept those. If they get off a little bit, we actually have staff that sits down and goes through and looks at them with a human eyeball. And if they still don't uh agree that that's the proper person, it's kicked up to a supervisor and then after that it's kicked up to a manager. Yep. But no, it's it's not 100% OCR. A lot of them are done with human eyes.

Okay. So, a lot of potential for human air there. So that's that could that when they it's reviewed through the system there's like a tolerance level right on how strict it will pull signatures. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And and what that level is set at is that is that a determined by the state or is that determined at each local um county level? I believe it's determined at each local county level. And what what is the setting that we set ours to in Santa Barbara County? Martin, do you know what the percentage is or what the setting is?

It's a it's a very low setting. And I can just add that even though it goes through that scanning process, every ballot is still verified by humans. We don't necessarily trust that every ballot is going to go through that system and get uh correct it. We still look at them. We all look, we look at every ballot that goes through. Our system is set at a very low confidence. So that there are many that come out that require human eyes. And throughout time, signatures change. I'm sure that there's not a lot of people within this room whose signature has stayed the same since the time they registered to vote. And we're very aware of that. We send out letters and we even call the voter if for some reason there's a mismatch. And oftentimes that's corrected. Um, and since you guys are in the election business, um, are there other jurisdictions maybe outside the state of California that are using ID somehow with mail-in ballots? Are there some technologies out there or is this the state-of-the-art when it comes to um, election integrity with mail-in ballots?

Um, I I don't study other jurisdictions outside the state of California. Okay.

All right. Thank you. Any further questions from the board for our clerk's assessor recorder's office? All right. Well, that concludes this department. Hope to see Mr. Holland at in June at our final hearings. But this now brings us to human resources and director of human resources Christine Schmidt to get settled. Uh uh I'm Christine Schmidt. I'm the director of human resources and I'm here today with members of my staff that include uh Ivon Torres who is my assistant director and we have our division chiefs Carlos Silvis who's over employee relations uh Natalie Alvarado who is over talent acquisition so recruitment and talent development in our training operations. Erin Jeffrey is our division chief over uh fiscal matters for our department and also workforce planning. So classification and compensation which we've really been focusing on and Katie Torres is here who is our employee benefits and wellness division chief but is also taking a greater role on having a more centralized oversight of employee disability uh leaves of absence and return to work. Um and then we also have Luis Hernandez who's here and he is our um budget management professional. Um, human resources is a partnership

department. Our job is to support you, the CEO, and all of our departments to find and retain highquality employees at all levels and to create a work environment where those employees can thrive and accomplish their best work for the community. When times get tough, our partnership role becomes even more important. We're called upon to help our organization solve problems in a myriad of ways. Our budget is facing contraction uh like so many other departments countywide, but our focus in the coming year will be on how we can best support the organization and other departments through their challenges. We'll also work with our uh excellent employees to navigate change and work in close communication and collaboration with their union representatives. Next slide, please. I'll have a relatively simple budget presentation today. Key takeaways will be that HR will play a key role in supporting the organization through budget challenges this year and anticipated for next year. We'll continue to achieve synergies in our HR countywide by, among other things, uh, enhancing our role as a business partner to departments and optimizing the focus of our existing human resources staff resources throughout the organization, bringing disability compliance into our department from risk management, and we will also be bargaining with all of our representative groups within the next 12 months. We have four that are up currently and by this time next year we will be up with the remaining six. Uh and implementation of the workday uh human capital management and payroll modules remains a priority for our

department. Next slide. Our operating budget is just over $11 million and about 8 million of that is general fund. you'll see we receive program transfers of $169,000. Um we have 34 full-time equivalent employees. Um and then in order to absorb our operating cost increases as well as uh regular salary and benefit increases without requesting additional funds, we've implemented $153,000 in balancing measures. Next slide, please. Our operating budget is divided into five main service areas. Employee relations is responsible for labor negotiations and day-to-day labor relations and also advises departments in complicated areas of HR practice including law and regulations, policy and labor agreements and also serious discipline. and they staff the civil service commission. Administration and fiscal provides oversight to our department and engages with other department executives to determine needs countywide. We provide fiscal oversight of the department and of our benefits funds and um we also budget for our uh business partner role in this uh division. And then uh benefits and wellness uh as I discussed focuses on employee benefits uh employee wellness programs and they also oversee our leave disability and return to work functions. Next slide please. Recruiting supports departments with their recruitments and does recruitments for countywide positions. And classification and compensation oversees our pay structure, making sure it's justifiable and transparent for employees, management, and members of the public.

And finally, training and development maintains our learning management system which is used by uh trainers throughout the organization um and provides technical, professional and leadership training. Next slide. As mentioned before, we receive $169,000 in program trans uh transfers which we use to implement our popular regional leadershipmies. Uh this is county a county-led program uh that provides multi-day leadership development at three levels. The supervisory level, the management level and the leader level. Um we invited local cities to participate in these uh ummies and they pay a share of a the cost. Uh each academy consists about twothirds county employees and about one-third city employees. And that allows employees from all of these organizations to uh walk away with contacts from within their own organization but also across organizations. And it also is establishing a shared basis of leadership philosophy across uh the different organizations in our region. Next slide please. Our staffing changes this year include two transfers in and one position elimination. Uh as part of our effort to support uh departments and optimize the use of our existing HR management resources, we brought the HR manager too in from the public defender department under our supervision. And in addition to supporting the public defender halftime, this HR manager now supports managers in departments that otherwise wouldn't have support at that level. Uh through our business partner function, we also brought in the disability manager from risk management to work closely with our existing leave of absence management function to

coordinate support for employees and facilitate their return to work. And then finally, in order to balance our budget, we did need to eliminate one position. This position supported benefits and wellness. Um, and it coordinated wellness events and activities like our benefits fairs and our mental health symposium that we held last year and worked closely with the employee wellness committee. Um, we will need to absorb as much of that u work as we can within our other existing staff. Next slide, please. Our operating budget includes an increase in costs related to those positions um transferred in which isn't an increase in the overall uh budget for the county as well as an offset for that position that we did eliminate and uh an increase to the self-funded dental plan um and an increase in other charges related to insurance claims offset by a reduction in our internal sh services charges. Next slide please. Some of our accomplishments uh this year have included supporting the social services department and the county health department through two separate rounds of workforce planning related to revenue losses. Taking over supervision of the be well fun HR function. Uh they had turnover in their uh HR manager and in discussing with um uh Tony Navaro the director in Bwell. uh she really wanted to try to achieve a a new level of professionalism in her HR um operation and so this was a new model for us where under a service level agreement we've agreed to supervise her HR staff bring them into under sort of our wing um and um you you heard from her earlier she's very pleased with that result um we completed 12 executive level

recruitments those are department heads and assistant department heads and above Um we implemented AB 339 requirements which are very complemented complicated uh requirements ahead of other agencies. Uh this requires union noticing of susp substantially all service contracting activity and so lots of agencies were scrambling to get that in place and we were one of the first to actually accomplish it. Uh we uh are launching programs to improve the applicant experience in recruiting and we're finishing a multi-year IT classification and compensation study. We've now finished it and we're ready to bring that to the mut and confer uh process. Next slide. Thank you. Our goals for next year are to continue to support departments through budget challenges and to mitigate impacts uh of work workforce reductions on our employees. We're going to conclude the four current labor negotiations and initiate bargaining with six additional bargaining units. So we as I said we'll get but within a year we'll be meeting with everyone. Um, we're going to modernize employee performance al uh evaluations to make them more simple for supervisors and less time consuming, but also more meaningful for employees. Uh, we're going to communicate uh countywide standards for classification systems, disability accommodations, and training programs. And what we find is that when we really um establish some good countywide standards that are written that people can go look at, it helps to create shared understanding in the organization about how things work and sort of get rid of some of the black boxes uh that come into HR practice. So we want to get those out. Um and we want to implement findings of our uh Prism Health Insurance Program review. We've put out an RFP or we are putting out an

RFP within a few days. um to uh review Prism Health and just make sure we think it's still the best bargain for us. It's still the best option for our health insurance programs. This is a pulled program through Pris Prism, but we haven't looked at it in a while and we think through for due diligence purposes. We need to take a look at that and just sort of poke at the edges and make sure that that's still the solution for us. So, we'll be implementing we'll be getting the findings this summer and and implementing them next year um as appropriate. Uh and then we're gonna uh advance a new timeline for the workday human capital management and payroll functions. Next slide, please. We implemented all of our priority recommendations from KP&NG, but I want to highlight uh a few activities that we sort of consider ongoing goals. Uh one is to define the delivery of ownership of HR services between county HR and departments. And one step we've taken here is this new uh service level agreement model that we've done with Bwell where we can maintain sort of the what the department likes is having somebody embedded in their department who goes to their management team meetings and is part of their management team and yet benefit from the HR expertise in our department and the networking that happens between uh HR folks and and just from the supervision that Ivonne and I as long-term HR professionals can provide. And so we that's a that's been a big um improvement there. Um we're also continuing to invest in that business partner model. Uh like I said, we brought in one position from the public defenders uh department, which is a fairly small department. that HR manager position will now continue to support the public defender department, but also we'll have half capacity of that manager to support some of our departments that

don't have that level of HR management support through our business partner um function. And so, uh we continue to to try to meet that need that was identified by KPMG and by our departments. Next slide, please. Oh, did we miss? Oh, 81. Oh, no. Go ahead. All right. Thank you. So, fiscal issues to watch for us. There are they're the same fiscal issues that anyone any general fund department is having to keep an eye on. We're not special in that way, and we are affected in the same way as other general fund departments. Next slide. Uh here are some of our performance measures that I just want to uh call attention to. Um the first one you'll notice is uh new county employees retained in their first year. We do expect expect to meet that goal of 80% and slightly exceed that. Uh you will notice that we're expecting the number of recruitments to be lower than they have actually materialized in prior years and that's in part some of the slowdown that's that's due to these budget challenges and departments not moving forward with recruitments. Um what we've done is we do have a vacant recruiter position. we've been able to repurpose that those funds to help support the employee relations side of um uh looking at uh workforce planning related to revenue changes and working with our with our uh departments and with our labor unions on that. Um we also have uh we're meeting our goal for the average number of business days between creating a recruitment requisition and handing that eligible list over to departments. um that goal. Uh so we're meeting that goal just about. Um and then uh I will note we do we have uh the average number of business days between opening and closing of noneo employee relations investigations. These are sort of routine investigations into alleged mis

employee misconduct and things like that. Uh we did have we only had two and so we had one that we took over from another department when they had turnover. it sort of skews this year's uh um numbers, but I think what what's notable to me here is that we've really reduced the number that we're handling with our high level employee relations staff and we've we've been able to handle those at lower levels in the organization, those less um uh complex types of investigations. Um and we're greatly exceeding uh the number of um participants in leadership development series. Uh again, and because of that uh investment that we've gotten through program transfers into those regionalmies, we got a lot of people getting the training they need. You know, the the uh supervisor or leader can make or break uh a work environment. And so we're happy to be investing in that. Next slide, please. As we discussed, we eliminated one position as our balancing measures from benefits and wellness. Next slide, please. uh we have no restoration requests and our quote is uh from Henry Ford even uh if everyone is moving forward together then success takes care of itself and we thought that that captured what we see as our partnership role moving forward together with our departments but also the one county one future um value that we have and we share and I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you M. Schmidt Sue Fres Herman um could you explain the difference between the SLAs's and business partner what's the difference in the model

the SLAs's are really departmentf funded staff through their budget and uh they are embedded in their department and there to really uh serve as on the management team of uh of the department and so that would be be well and the half of a position in the public defender. So very focused on their management uh in-house. Uh the business partner is a more of a um a consultant service that we offer to managers who are not necessarily HR experts in the departments in helping them work through just the day-to-day issues that come up in supervision and management of employees. Uh those are in our department. uh they're they're not embedded in in the department, but they will go to meetings and management meetings and supervisory meetings as invited by the department. So, they're kind of an in-house uh partner rather than a

and so the ones that are embedded in the departments, do they ever come and hotel at at and get part of be part of your team as well?

It's interesting that you asked that. They have not traditionally, but um we have had a request from we've been doing trying to do more to support the success of our HR managers and not just sort of uh but to support their success and we've had a request um that both the fire uh chief and the sheriff have supported for the fire uh HR manager and the uh uh sheriff HR manager to come once a month and be embedded in our department on one of the days when all of our staff is in the office. Well, congratulations. I I think that's great and and uh I I think your leadershipmies are really um important for cross department now to hear that the cities are involved and as you say creating a shared philosophy or culture of leadership across the county. I I think that's brilliant and uh that's really how we stay innovative I think is is thosemies. So well done. Thank you. All right. Uh, and I just, you know, have some questions about your just your funding. Your budget's $11 million, $8 million of general fund, but you really serve the entire county organization. And so, um, typical, you know, like ID and others, they they kind of fee out to the different departments. And so, just trying to understand that a little bit better. Um, so most of most of the funding of your department is purely general fund. some most yes most of it is general fund um and then some of it is uh related to our um dental plan uh we get uh revenues in and we we send them out uh to pay claims so we do that we have a self-funded dental plan that we administer so part of it is that and then for the general fund side I'm going to let uh Mr. Clemente explain how we get some of that back from uh enterprise funds and and other funds.

Yeah, Chair Nelson. Um HR is one of those central service departments who most of their costs are captured through the cost allocation plan. So those special revenue funds um that aren't in the general fund do receive charges um and that comes back to our overall uh discretionary general revenues in department 991 and then acts as GFC contributions. So, we do recoup the GFC costs um that uh HR incurs in support of other departments. It just doesn't go directly into their budget as something like a transfer from departments. It's part of their general fund contribution. I I understand how it works, but I'm curious on the number because you're you're saying that that funding goes into 991,

right? Or so so is your question, how much of HR's costs is recouped through the cap? I'd have to look into that and get back to you. Um or I know auditor controllers here, but I doubt they have that number right off the top of their head, too. Yeah. So,

I just think it's interesting. I think we see that in other some of the other departments of how it flows back through and charges for services or internal departmental deal. So actually it would help me understand a little bit better their work and what things are charged to that you know what because because I' I'd ask okay what things aren't charged to that you know that are purely general fund you know so that as we're making decisions that go okay is that more important than this or that the other but it's kind of obscure here the way I'm seeing it um so I guess some great clarity into that would would help the supervisor

sure not seeing any lights thank you mmid thank you HR Next up will be our I believe our our last elected department uh here auditor controller and auditor controller Miss Betsy Schaefer. Do you have the cap number?

Are we on?

All right, Miss Schaefer, please go ahead and get started. Thank you. Um, I'm Betsy Schaefer. I'm the county auditor controller. Before we get started, I think we can answer your question real quick. Okay. Yeah. No, please do. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good quick question. I think it was $4 million that gets recouped. 4.4 million uh recouped from HR services back to the general fund. Perfect. I just trying to figure out what that work looked like. Thank you. I appreciate it.

All right. Thank you. Um so I'm here to present our 2627 budget. Um, I do, you know, always when I get started, I always just want to thank the board. Um, thank you for considering our budget. Um, thank you CEO Mia. She just walked away. Um, for leading us through these budget challenges. Uh, thank you Paul Clemeni, our fearless budget director. Uh, thank you Stephen Knee, our CEO analyst, and I call him our CEO uh, therapist also. Um, I want to introduce our AC team. Um, in the front here is Danny Foreer. He's, um, our new financial reporting division chief. He just started about in his position nine months ago, but he's 15 years with the county, so um, seasoned. Um, Nick Knocker, he's uh, more than 15 years. I don't have it off the top of my head, but he's our financial reporting supervisor, of course. Always, you know, thank you to the the rest of the CEO team. Um over here is um Courtney um Kramer. She's our business manager and of course she knows the budget better than I do. Um I don't um even try to beat her on the budget. Um and then we have Shauna Jorgensson, our chief deputy controller and Ed Price um the best assistant auditor controller there is. So, all right. Our budget went um I want to start off with good news, which is basically um we were able to receive or we're going to try and receive um it's about $200,000 in extra direct charges, special revenue fee money. So, um, this is a $1, uh, fee that's been $1 for since the 80s. And now we, um, thank you to the board. You approved a $1 increase from last year, uh, or last last week at the bud budget

meeting from last week. And so now we're able to um, start collecting that uh, from the other taxing agencies. Um, and that will start um, beginning next next fiscal year. Um you'll see um we have several slides where we talk about um that we had to unfund three vacant positions uh to meet our budget um uh to balance our budget. And also sort of the message of our budget is um we're continuing to progress our operations and mandates on a status quo budget. Uh and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but I am proud of that. Overall, um our summary budget, uh we have a $12.8 million budget. Uh we have $20,000 of capital that's really for um like hardware servers. Um we most of our budget is general fund contribution. Um do we have the AC cap number? That would be interesting because we also get recouped um from that. Um, we have a $1.5 million uh general county program transfer. Um, that's for our uh workday support team of seven staff. Um, we have a slide on that. Also, we have 52 full-time equivalents and that's the dollar associated with those three um FTE um unfunding. So, $457,000. We have four major operating budget. Uh gosh, we have four major budget programs. Um administration and support, audit services, accounting services, financial reporting. Um administration is really um this group up here. Um we review, you know, um all the board letters, public records requests, credit

cards, um warrant controls, and really we try to keep the rest of the office engaged. Oh, I forgot to thank my the ACT team back at the office. So, thank you guys. Um, and then audit services is we have six FTE there. Um, or I'm sorry, five FTE and they do um a lot of special projects um m uh mandated audits and uh they take care of the whistleblower hotline. Our biggest budget program is accounting services with 38 uh staff. Um that is the division that pays the bills, pays payroll, um that um allocates property taxes. So really the the key and I put there the accounting bones of the county. And then we have financial reporting with five FTE and they do our uh countywide financial statements, the cost plan that we've been talking about. um they help with the budget, especially the adopted budget that goes to the state controllers's office. And um we just try to be a good partner with the CEO's office. Um this is our general county program transfer at 1.5 um almost $6 million and that uh that supports the 7 FTE that supports the workday support division. our staffing trend. We have a right at 50, you know, low 50s um uh uh staffing. Um and those three FTE are kind of labeled there. Um one financial accounting analyst uh an FSA and a financial office professional. So we did uh decrease in in staffing but um our operating budget overall increased

and that's primarily for salaries and benefits colas. Um we had a small increase for services and supplies for some um AC software specialized AC software uh which I'll talk about a little bit and then again the I think that 3FT is on every slide there. All right, our anticipated accomplishments. Um this is what we want to accomplish this fiscal year before June 30. Um, I will say I I was asked to add pictures and all I could think of I'm not very creative I guess but all I could think about were a forer covers. So over the next few slides you'll see a couple history a couple years of act for covers. Um I think the team took those pictures themselves and

that's a good one. They're very proud. They're very proud of those pictures. So I'll take it.

Okay. Thank you. Um but there's three main areas where we like to accomplish our work. um we want to support a fiscally sound uh county, we want to support um high impact projects and we want to really strengthen internal audit. So under the fiscally sound county um you know I say this every year but u we added a little bit more detail here which is we distributed you know $1.3 billion in taxes. So the assessor's office assesses it, the treasurer uh collects it and we allocate it. Okay. And then we did this over 235 distinct transactions to eight cities, the county, one county, one future, 24 schools, 49 special districts, and four RDA successor agency. So, a lot of different entities out there that receive property tax money. We also uh provide uh countywide financial information necessary to make decisions that impact services to the community. Um, we support high impact projects. Um, I think most of the county knows that, um, the ERP went live, the workday ERP went live in August of 25. Um, we're now starting the analysis of the ERP phase 2 project, which uh, Christy mentioned is human capital and payroll. We also by strengthening internal audit, we um, we do feel we have enough staffing right now to accomplish our annual audit plan. And then uh we we actually do a lot of work with those five people um there we have 36 audit projects um including the CSD homeless grant, sheriff overtime and fire accounts receivable. So what we want to what we want to um accomplish next fiscal year um I think it was county council that said we're going to be doing more of the same. And

so uh that's what we'll be doing too, more of the same. I do one thing I do want to point out is under the high impact projects. Um we have uh developed an accounts receivable and a revenue inventory policy. talked about this I think a little bit last year at budgets, but this is an area I really think that the county um as a whole should um be more conscious of and it's just where's our revenue coming from and how do we account for it and are we accounting for it um you know the best we can and um so and then we do want to update our county financial policies such as travel incumbrances other fiscal policies you know when we went hybrid. We did not update our county policy for travel. And I think that's really important. It was sort of a new definition of commuting or actually really trying to hone in what commuting is. Um under internal audit, we will be doing a enterprise risk assessment over the next uh few months before June 30. Um we'll continue to maintain the whistleblower hotline and continue analysis of payroll time data. Um the next slide is related to the KPMG uh operational review recommendation. Um we com we completed their recommendation to increase the effectiveness of our auditing procedure. So, one of the things they said is expand your uh inputs into risk and um and so we did that. We added areas such as um staffing changes, legal settlements, workers comp, and other things. You know, part of the question I get is what what is

this risk assessment? And it's really it's the likelihood of something bad happening, right? So we asked the departments to tell us what what things might be happening in your department where something um bad could happen or not go as well or as um expected and it could be financial it could not be financial but normally these things lead to financial issues. our fiscal issues to watch. Um ERP uh the work at ERP system support maintenance that's ongoing. Um ERP phase 2 HCM and payroll. Um I have there the impact of uh AI artificial intelligence on countywide accounting and operations. We want it. We want to use it well, but we want to control it. We don't want it to control us. So that's um I think that's a big thing we want to think about for um you know now and really ongoing. We want to continue our internal audits on financial processes, policies and data. And we did um add some new software. Um we this is not really new. It's replacement. So we do have a whistleblower software but we're replacing it uh with the new software. We did that because they increased the price um because we wanted our data. We felt it was our data and they um said, "Well, you can have it, but you have to pay more." So, we we're replacing that out. And we also um are buying uh replacing our internally developed what we called ACT for software. And now we're buying uh I don't know if I can advertise work uh software that is going to um hopefully integrate well with uh workday. Okay. our performance measures. Um I will say we're doing a good job on our

performance measures. We're trying to automate things as much as we can and we're trying to be um good at reporting and uh we're trying to retain staff. So and I think our measures show that um our balancing measures a little bit more detail there. Um so the FOP that we unfunded is in um administration. Uh the FSA was in our property tax uh division and our financial accounting analyst was in financial accounting um or facts division. There was a question on what percentage of our staff is um it wasn't us directly but it was overall you know three people losing three people is out of 55 is 5.5% of our staff. Um and then losing if we don't count the seven workday support people it's really 6.25. So that's that is that's a significant number for our department. We do not have any restoration requests and I wish I had jumped on the Dolly Pardon bandwagon uh for Monday, but I did not get the memo. Um but there was another um there was an another theme that happened on Monday which was sort of uh resilience and um good stuff happening. So I think uh this uh this quote is relevant. It's be like a flower, survive the rain but use it to grow. It's by Brian Ford. I don't really know who he is. I think he's a motivational speaker. Um and it is April so I think it's more like April showers bring May flowers. So, I'm happy to answer questions.

All right. Thank you, Miss Schaefer. Questions from the board. Not seeing anything. So, I'll just ask a quick question. You talked about trying to source where our revenue is coming from. Yeah.

And I think that's really um an important thing to do. I think if we don't know where the revenue is coming from, it's hard to ask for more or really, you know, see that connectivity. I often think that um when people don't know those things, they either feel like they're overt taxed or under or you know are underprovided for and I think if actually we can drill into that and so um any efforts towards that I think is really helpful. You know I brought it up during P&D that we may want to look at you know even what's assessed you know of of development um just so we know what those revenues are coming from. I think drilling down to those things would be helpful for all of us to really understand where our money is coming from and you know what those services go for. And to that end, um I know I've talked to you best about franchise agreements and and getting, you know, to our um for people that know about county finances is that um all the utilities rent space underneath our roads and um they pay a percentage of their revenue to us, but it's something that we don't really dive into too much, I don't think. And so it's something that I'm really interested in us making sure that some of these big utilities are paying their fair share and um their rent to our county.

Yeah. Can you speak to that for a moment? Yeah. Well, actually, thank you for asking that. Um, actually, your question um is part of the reason why I want to do this deeper dive. Good. And um so, and I'm glad I will hear your question again because I keep telling them we really want to look at this and we'll have it on that. Okay. Thank you, Miss Schaefer.

Not seeing other questions. I know it's getting late in the day so we're going to keep moving along. So, thank you for your time. So, just for agenda management here, I know we're getting late in the day. Um, but we also have some public speakers here that have been waiting for a very long time. So, we're going to try to honor them as well. Um, we're going to try to power through ITD and general services. We are going to skip the AI presentation that's going to be done first thing on Friday morning and then we are going to quickly move through the policy and executive and get to public comment, especially with the young people who who are here to participate in our our local governance. Want to make sure they have an opportunity to be heard from. So Chris, all right, ITD, let's go.

Well, good afternoon, Chair Nelson and members of the board. I'm Chris Churwin, the county's chief information officer and the department director for ITD. I want to start by just recognizing my team, uh, two wonderful leaders, Kyle Slatterie and Andre Andre Monostorii as deputy CIOS and then our finance team, Joel Flores and Alexis Gonzalez, did a great job putting our presentation together. And Daniel Williams, our CEO budget analyst, fantastic job. We enjoy working with you. So, couple key takeaways that I want to highlight. Uh, you know, it's been three years now since it became a standalone department. Time flies. Uh, we've made significant progress, uh, over the last three years. Uh, but we still have a long way to go. And so, our focus right now is implementing the modernization plan that we published this last year. And so, we're well underway. Uh, but we've got uh we definitely have our work cut out for us. Um, one of the largest projects that we've been involved with for several years now is the public safety radio network project, which is uh we're we're aiming to and we're on track to complete that in this upcoming fiscal year. Andre, go ahead and go to the next slide. Uh, our budget is 36 million of which 20 million of that is uh the capital budget. Um and then our GFC is uh just under a million dollars and 77 FTEES within our department. Three major service areas, admin, IT shared services and communications which IT shared services is the largest as I mentioned. The public safety radio network uh is a large project uh just just shy of 14 million. And the other capital project is our core IT infrastructure upgrades such as routers, switches, uh wireless uh large uh uh or important infrastructure that's central to our network. Uh shy of 3 million was the general

county program transfer for the PSRN project. We are at 77 FTEES right now. Uh in this past year, two of the three new positions added to our team came from the county executive office. Our operating budget is just slightly smaller than it was um in fiscal year 2526. As you can see, uh 36 million uh for this upcoming year. So, anticipated accomplishments for this upcoming year. Um as I mentioned, we're well underway on our three-year technology modernization plan. um excited to have the chief information security officer now in ITD uh and Andre Monasuri will be taking over that role here before the end of this fiscal year. Uh we adopted the county's first artificial intelligence policy and tomorrow morning I will be presenting on uh an update on where we're at countywide with AI. Um several other initiatives there. We assisted in the workday financials. Um exciting to know that we're going to be rolling out uh our first countywide um AI tool which is Microsoft's co-pilot chat that's going to be launched here uh in the next month. Go ahead, Andre. And then our goals for uh fiscal year 2627, like I mentioned, we want to complete the public safety radio network upgrade. Uh we're doing a lot of work in continuing to enhance our cyber security uh management program. Our GIS program is expanding uh significantly as well and and doing really good work uh there. Um we're going to continue to uh work closely with HR and uh auditor on the uh workday phase two. And I know many of you have asked me about when are we going to get new phones? Uh we're we're going to be starting the modernization project of our countywide uh phone system this upcoming year as well.

So I mentioned uh in progress is the modernization plan and um we did complete we completed that road map of publishing that road map and then as I mentioned implementation is underway go ahead uh we've made a significant amount of progress over the last few years in IT governance and so we have I would say a very mature um IT governance committee in the exe the EITC the executive information technology council it's it's running very efficiently we've also uh added some additional governance around AI which I'll talk about more tomorrow and we also have governance around the technology innovation fund as well so made significant progress in those areas and we're currently working on a project management intake process which will help with departments who want to uh receive assistance with some of their technology projects in regards to project management. Uh so we're working on that. Fiscal issues to watch. I would say the the kind of the two primary things there are uh we are seeing significant cost increases in primarily hardware costs. Uh and there's multiple reasons for that but that's that's that's definitely impacting um things like uh laptops and servers and memory and things like that. uh software subscription costs also continue to increase. Uh so we're we're very carefully watching those and looking for alternatives or looking for how do we uh minimize those cost impacts. Go ahead Andre. Uh I'll go ahead and skip this for now. And then balancing measures. So, um, as I mentioned earlier, we, um, we're our budget is our operating costs are, uh, basically flat for this year. And so, we are using some reserves to help, uh,

keep those, uh, to offset the cost growth, um, and just looking very carefully at services and supplies, uh, and making some, uh, changes where we need to in order to try to keep costs down as best as we can. Go ahead. And then we chose this quote for two reasons. One is open-mindedness is one of our core values within ITD. But the other reason is for whatever reason my department has a lot of Dodger fans. And so when they said, "Hey, we need a a quote by Mookie Bets," I said, "All right, well

smart people over there. only takes three. Any questions? Good idea. Uh, yes. Has nothing has nothing to do with baseball. But so what percent now of it is wrapped up in ITD as opposed to in individual departments in terms of staffing? Yeah, staffing wise. So we are about 45% of all staffing is within ITD now. Okay. Awesome. And do you expect that to grow or is that part of do you think where it is right now you're comfortable?

I'm comfortable where we are right now. Yeah, we've spent the first couple of years as a standalone department really working on the foundational elements of building what we needed to and I think a lot of that work is done. Now we're really focused on let's manage enterprise applications. Let's work on efficiencies. Let's work on standards uh so that we can really drive I you know the the progress in terms of breaking silos down, sharing data, things along those lines. So that's really our focus now.

Okay. So you'd say there's no plans over the next fiscal year to bring in other departments into ITD. Whatever's there right now is stable. You think it' stay that way? I think we're relatively stable. Although I do think there's opportunities for some of the smaller departments who may realize that um just similar to what HR is doing in regards to there's some smaller departments that may say you know we only have one or two IT staff it might make sense for ITD to provide that service um because we have a much deeper bench we can provide more coverage you know that type of thing. So those conversations are are happening. So is that driven by you or the CEO's office or the board or how how does that work of I think it's a combination. Okay. Yeah.

Supervisor Levanino through the chair just FYI. Some departments have gotten together and we've already started talking about ideas um for the next budget year and that was one thing to look at about greater centralization of certain services. So I think departments themselves realize there's opportunity. So you're talking like be well public health or just smaller ones. I I would say that the initial interest is the smaller departments. Um and you know, so that's that's what we're we're having conversations on now. Thank you. Yeah, super caps. Thank you, Supervisor, for having you. Yeah, Director Tin, I just want to say that was an excellent very succinct presentation. Thank you. You're welcome.

All right. In interest to keep things moving along. You know how how much I like your department. So Okay, sounds good. Yes. Thank you. All right. So, we're, as mentioned before, we're going to skip this special issue on AI that's going to be presented on Friday morning. Um, and we're going to go to our last U department in this functional group, government support and support services. And we have general services. And presenting for general services is department chair or department head, Kirk Loggerquist. The teacher and me, sorry. I guess we're the anchor leg here. Anyone excel is excited that we're the final department today or

you're not the final department. So, I'm just letting you know that

I know there's more after us, but uh All right. Good afternoon, Chair Nelson and supervisors. I'm Kirk Larquist, director of general services. With me, I've got Lind Dable, assistant director, Ted Taber, assistant director, uh Cody Bowen, real property, and Brent Markley, finance. Uh I'm pleased to present the general services budget briefing today. Is there a clicker? Thanks. Um, before I begin, I want to thank Lind Dyel and Brent Markley and the entire GS finance team for pulling together this budget request. Many hours went into developing these fiscal numbers and all our divisions provided detailed inputs. For the second straight year in a row, we were presenting a status quo budget. Yet, given that, we are still projecting to meet our operational requirements. Our FY2627 budget request supports our operational plan with strategic adjustments implemented for long-term financial resiliency. We have scaled our budget to align with no growth in the general fund allocations by reducing operational expenses where possible without major impacts to service delivery. We're developing teams with our existing staff and capital and facilities focused on improved efficiency in project delivery and a more proactive approach to deferred maintenance supported by upgraded data analytics. As was briefed during the capital improvement plan in March, we are not expecting any one-time funding for the second year in a row, but remain ready to execute county priorities should funding be made available. Our capital division remains busy completing current and prior year projects, which also includes some larger multi-year cops funded projects. uh and preliminary work's underway on the behavioral wellness north county crisis residential treatment facility based on a $20 million grant from the behavioral health continuum infrastructure program uh awarded by the state. Uh, also I want to mention because we supplement county project management employees with contracted support, uh, we can adjust up and down our contracted uh, staff based on project management scope and demand, which we had to reduce our contractor support by two personnel this past year. And GS fleet continues

to upgrade systems and enhance efficiency, data analytics, and user experience with focus on remaining affordable and practical for departments and remaining as competitive as leasing through third parties. For our budget summary, a major driver to our status quo budget request is that we had a large reduction in general fund liability insurance uh a general fund liability insurance premium of 632,000 uh dropped off due to a large claim uh falling off our books. Additionally, we're able to reduce our IT rate in the general fund by 315,000. And we balanced our general fund budget through a number of other smaller savings. We have five major service areas within general services. Uh first, under admin, finance, HR, we've driven down our department vacancy rate to below 5% and have a couple of active hiring actions out now and should be approaching fully staff very soon. As previously mentioned on slide two, capital continues to work multiple high-level projects that will greatly benefit the county. Our real property division has made progress on renegotiating some rents for county lease properties in an effort to save money. Our energy man manager has made significant progress on renewable energy with power purchase agreements as well as electrifying some buildings. And I'm happy to report that our solar array at the Northern Branch jail went live Saturday morning, completing just before the NEM 2.0 deadline. Our fleet continues to transition towards uh electric vehicles and puts a lot of effort in keeping emergency vehicles such as sheriff's cruisers and fire trucks in top condition despite the amount of use those vehicles see on a daily usage. Our procurement division continues to streamline and engage with our local businesses and focus on environmentally friendly products. And quick highlight, our mail services never receive the recognition they truly deserve, but Dave Hunner and Adam Sville make sure the mail is delivered throughout the county in a timely efficient manner. And lastly, our GS finance team track our complicated finances to ensure vendors, utility providers, contractors, and more paid

timely and everything is tracked appropriately. Uh highlight on this slide are two of our larger cop funded projects that are currently under construction, continuing into the next fiscal year. The main jail intake reception center started just a couple months ago and is scheduled to be complete in spring 2027. And our promotion headquarters on Garden Street is topped out and will dry in shortly and scheduled to be complete this fall. Under one-time general county program transfers, this funding is status quo compared to last year and has been and has briefed during the capital improvement plan back in March. These funds address our backlog of deferred maintenance. The one additional item not previously seen is the sheriff replacement vehicles where the cost of new vehicles exceeded the fleet replacement reserve due to vehicles being much more expensive over the past few years than had previously been planned for under depreciation schedules. This amount of 489,000 is to true up the amount needed for 16 new pursuit vehicles. Our general services staffing remains flat. While we've made a couple of adjustments internally to the department, that has not translated to adding or eliminating any new positions. Our operating budget reflects an overall increase of 1.3 million due to the transfer of the Triumph Security Contract back into general services from CEO Risk. General services had a pretty major accomplishments this fiscal year. Uh through the approval of power purchase agreements by this board, we will increase our renewable energy portfolio from 66% to 84%. And we brought online the solar array at the regional fire communications center, allowing the facility to become net zero. We received a $4.7 million grant from the California Energy Commission to further expand our electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout the county. Our facilities maintenance crews have responded to over 6,500 work orders, including 400 emergencies, and have been on call and responsive during multiple atmospheric river events, power outages, and

unforeseen utility disruptions. And along with the rest of the county, GS transition to workday, and have lived through the learning curve. Our capital divisions complete a number of projects to include the Calriel Waterloop phase 3, completing upgrades to a 100-year-old infrastructure, the renovation of the recently acquired facility at 315 West Haley Street to support behavioral wellness, and internal renovations to county facilities to support public works, social services, and information technology. We are finalizing the best value procurement process for use on future construction contracts. The real property division renegotiated a couple of leases and one specifically for social services that expected to save nearly $900,000 over the next 5 years. And lastly, our facilities and fleet divisions implemented an in-house fire apparatus testing station that will allow for in-house testing by vice outsourcing. Under goals and objectives, uh we continue to refine our procurement processes and will be transitioning e- bidding from public purchase to workday since the go live of the uh enterprise resource program. Additionally, after the updated environmentally preferable procurement policy was approved by this board in August 2025, procurement has been providing guides and products uh and services to departments that align to policy. General services real property updated the space management policy which was approved by this board in June 2025 with a desire to maximize county-owned space and reduce leased facilities plus maximize hoteling station as hybrid work is the way of the future. General services facilities maintenance developed a dedicated team to focus on deferred maintenance and have utilized the maintenance connection program to analyze data in order to make the most efficient def decisions based on available resources. As previously stated, general services energy manager continues to pursue renewable energy initiatives and electrification of buildings to save on energy costs. As briefed in back in January of this year, while we are seeing reduced electrical consumption across the county, our utility costs

have slightly increased due to higher rates. Additionally, we are capitalizing on thirdparty financing by going after grants, rebates, and alternative funding models. General services capital is looking at process improvements in order to best deliver cradle to grave projects for the rest of the county in a timely onbudget manner. And lastly, on the human resources fund front, we have driven down our vacancy rate from 22% when I started there started here 3 years ago and are approaching zero. During my tenure, general services had 10 internal promotions. uh 21 new employees joined the team and we have adopted 980 work schedules for multiple divisions which is improving morale and have sent many of employees through the various leadership and management training courses offered by the county under the general services KPMG recommendations we've continued to make good progress department has made uh great improvements on facility maintenance analysis uh our fleet division purchased online training subscription and scheduled in-person trainings on electric vehicle maintenance and operations as we transition away from internal combustion engines. I mentioned this as an accomplishment already, but we've also made great strides on space management and have started conducting LAR scans of various buildings, starting with the Santa Barbara admin building last week and are integrating data with the ArcGIS interior spaces to map out our buildings and assign spaces and look for efficiencies. Procurement has collaborated and partnered with the auditor and CEO's office to establish and implement the incumbrance policy for workday. We've worked with human resources to establish processes for departments to ensure advanced notice to employee organizations as given before contracting services and compliance with state assembly bill 339. And we've worked with community services sustainability and public works resource recovery on the update and implementation of the environmentally preferable procurement policy. Some fiscal fiscal issues that we'll be keeping an eye on include planning for budgetary uncertainties. We are addressing our contingency amounts and

capital projects to account for higher than anticipated material costs, tariffs, transportation, and energy costs. We continue to refine our fleet process to be more efficient and to offer an exceptional vehicle service to all departments. This includes phone-based apps and keyless entry to check out vehicles, which has been in beta testing. And lastly, we look to manage customer expectations on what can be delivered. We're in our second straight year of capital improvement plan, not receiving any one-time funding for special projects, which we know impacts the various departments and their critical needs. And lastly, as an internally focused department, all our divisions strive to provide the best possible customer service to county departments as their mission success is our success. A few performance measures, uh, renewables we talked about. Um, we're working on accomplishment times for preventive maintenance. And uh lastly, we recognize that a couple of our capital improvement projects have faced delays due to a variety of factors, but for the majority of our projects, we've been executing them on time and within budget. We've identified 380,000 in reductions that can be made with no significant impacts. These include contract cost, IT software, extra help, and training. And because of our large reduction in GF liability insurance premiums um and a reduction in the ITD ISF rate in the general fund of 315,000, we were able to balance the general fund budget with a lot of small trimming of line items. So even with the flat general fund contribution, the 18% funds and the 4.2% increase in salaries. Uh hence why we can go status quo here. We have uh zero restoration requests. And in solidarity with my fellow department head and Dolly Parton fanboy, Chris Neden, we offer the following quote. The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

Excellent. Well done, Supervisor Lee. Hey, great presentation, Kurt. So, I want to talk about the space management policy. So, a while back we talked about moving this space down to the other not so attractive campus. I just want to make sure from your point of view, are we ever going to do that or are we staying here? You mean moving the admin building to to to turn supervisor? That hasn't been decided. Your board will make that decision in the future. When we did the Cay Rail plan, we talked about that as a possibility, but there's no decision yet. That's a future decision for the board. And since we've kind of stopped progress on the Kyle master plan that I mean that'll be a future decision. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Lee. Supervisor Caps. Yeah. I just think that was an incredible presentation and you have always been so responsive and our meetings are very similar. Uh just chalk full of information and and such uh display of competency. And I just want to acknowledge that your cuts, I know they're a lot smaller than some other departments, but just the fact that you've managed to do so without uh any effects to staffing just by looking at contracts and travel and trainings and that's that's the ideal. So, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Caps. Uh my question was on deferred maintenance backlog. Um I didn't see that in here, but where are you guys at now and what are you guys anticipating being at next year? Currently har about 172 million in deferred maintenance. Um it grew about 2 million this past year. Okay. Um you know as we bring on additional data analytics uh and see I mean it could potentially rise not because it's necessarily not getting done is that we just have better data. Um, so I mean ideally hopefully it doesn't grow much at all and that we can continue to arrest it.

Yeah. Well, that's always the hope is that we're at least keeping it flat so that we're not debt financing our budget. So, I mean that's kind of always my goal. Of course, I'd want to bring it down to zero someday. Probably will never happen, but I think the idea for us as a county is to not let it grow and because I think that that really just passes that on to future debt for these kids in the front row eventually have to pay for if we don't pay for it now. So, and it's going to be a lot more expensive for them in the future. So, I really want to make sure that we're handling our business today. And so, that's why it's a a big issue for me. So, thank you. I mean, 2 million is not too bad in this in this budget. Um, it's still not something that's um preferable, of course. Um, but thank you for that.

As I said, we we do have a deferred maintenance team. We got a project coordinator. We got a couple building maintenance workers that are specifically honed in on deferred maintenance. Um, our new facilities manager we hired a year ago. he's really focused on uh a campus approach uh rather than kind of all over the board focused one on one campus at a time and then move to the next. So it's and we're seeing some dividends there. Thank you, director. Great presentation. Supervisor Levveno. I guess this might be more for Paul, but with Kachuma, I guess Kachuma is going to possibly finish May Juneish.

Have we factored any additional revenue in for this fiscal year for Kachuma? Supervisor Levven, you know, through the chair current fiscal year 25, are you talking 2627 fact 27? Yeah. Uh as far as the RV and the So, so uh the CSD department uh gets that revenue. They are they are assuming a full year I believe of of revenue there. They've they've one of their issues this year and why they're significantly under budget if you recall is because they assumed a lot of operations in the current year that they haven't been receiving that revenue for. All right. Cool. Thank you, Supervisor Lab. Daniel S. Reser Hartman.

Um, just two things. One, congratulations on being fully staffed. And, uh, I just wanted to mention to your staff, the unsung heroes, how often I hear how happy, um, other departments are with the the prompt and really great service. Um, you're doing a great job, great morale. All right, seeing no more lights. Thank you, Director Lagquist. Thank you, director, general services team. And that concludes our general government and support services. At this time, we'll go to public comment on this functional group. And earlier we didn't have any. U Madam Clerk, do we still do we have any public comment yet on this section?

Chair Nelson, members of the board, we have no request to speak on the general government and support services functional group. Excellent. Okay. Not that we don't want to hear from the public. We do. And you're going to get your chance here in a moment for many of you guys. So on policy and executive supervisors, the policy and executive group has three departments, but you heard county council, they um because of scheduling went on Monday, so we will be very brief.

Miss Fernandez, are you going to Yes, we'll start with the video and then we'll just move to the the Sanes.

Excellent. The policy and executive functional group provides leadership, direction, and oversight for county government. This group includes the county council, board of supervisors, and county executive office. These entities guide policy, budget, county operations, and legal representation for the county. The board of supervisors sets policy and makes decisions on behalf of the public. The county executive office manages the budget and oversees county operations. County council provides legal advice and representation. Together, these entities guide the county's vision and ensure responsible governance.

I got to point out real quick that you and I were wearing the exact same outfit. Okay. That's embarrassing, man. I I I only have two, so it's really easy. Oh, that was sad. All right. All right,

chair, members of the board, we'll move right into the department summaries. So, you'll see county council, the majority of county council funding comes from GFC at $12 million and supports their core legal services. Here we see that 100% of the board's funding comes from GFC at $5.2 million and funds district and board support activities. In the CEO's office, major sources of funding include insurance premium contributions at $60 million, which pay for the county's general liability, workers compensation, unemployment, and medical malpractice insurance programs. Intergovernmental revenue is also a significant source at $5.9 million, comprised mostly of ARPA revenue that is transferred to other departments for board approved projects. Finally, we have the General County Programs Department whose primary source of funds is GFC that is held in fund balance for board approved policies and projects. Fund balances are released to various departments throughout the fiscal year as projects are completed and associated costs are incurred. And that concludes a policy and executive functional group summary. All

right. Thank you, Miss Fernandez. And our first uh group is board of supervisors and uh Miss Odman. Thank you for tapping in on our our behalf. They were gonna make the chair do it and I I I said no. So anyway,

good evening. You're very welcome. Uh Britney Odman, deputy CEO, and I'm accompanied by Don Holden and Anhelica Ram Ramirez, who uh assisted with preparation of both of these budgets. So I owe a debt of gratitude to them. Okay. Uh the board of supervisor's budget is a status quo department budget. Uh there was some reduced general fund contribution due to some decreased liability rates and the um other post-employment benefit savings. A key takeaway is to continue to provide some reliable quality uh services to the county as you responsibly plan to for future budget needs. Budget summary. The operating budget is just over $5 million with 19.48 48 full-time employees. Uh your department is made up of five districts. Here are districts one, two, and three with the associated employees and the budget. They're all very similar. The average uh office has four employees with the exception of district five, a smaller uh a smaller district, so 2.8 employees. And then the sixth um element is board. That's where a majority of the ITD and extra charges uh come from, as well as um for insurance, liability insurance, and things of that nature. That's just under $700,000. Staffing summary, uh held pretty flat over the last few years. Uh this year, uh we did this year current fiscal year, uh there was an addition of a 0.4 full-time equivalent. That was a converted extra help position from to a regular part-time position in district 4, bringing district 4 to full to four full-time employees. No staffing changes are recommended for 2627. uh the operating budget um there is a difference for next year of uh a

reduction of $134,000 and this is due to general liability as I uh mentioned before and those OPED savings. Some anticipated accomplishments. Just quickly want to roll through some of these. Some um uh many of your districts highlighted the long-term solutions to cannabis odor issues in the Carpentria Valley. um proactive work on da dis disaster preparedness and sustainable development. Um building new units, housing units near jobs and transit, affordable housing units that is and uh improved quality of life in Isa Vista. Um there were many uh policy uh changes um including uh the rental inspection program among others. Also want to highlight the um securing federal and state funding for homelessness initiatives. U maintaining strong governmenttogoment relationships and um strengthening countywide law enforcement capacity through uh the addition of a warrants detective and expanding north and south county narcotics teams enforcement teams as well as implementing responsible investment strategies for the Santa Barbara County employees retirement system. Some department goals and objectives include prioritizing affordable housing solutions, um continuing to do that, continuing to enhance countywide fire safety, um advancing other priority capital and policy initiatives, including um improvements to open space, supportive housing and services for people experiencing homelessness, and streamlining permitting tools to cut costs and reduce project timelines. also uh deepen the anti-poverty and safety net strategies. Additionally, uh the the board will maintain fiscal responsibility through disciplined budgeting in these

challenging fiscal years. Um they're going to support sustainable improvements in the criminal justice system and increase the number of um recreational fields and connect regional trails. These are just some of the highlights. fiscal issues to watch related to the budget. Uh as you've been hearing about the health and human services funding pressures, uh the debt obligations and operational costs tied to the northern branch jail. Um also of top of mind is affordable workforce housing and ensuring that residents receive mandated and essential services. There were no balancing measures uh necessary because of those reductions in the general liability and oped savings that I mentioned. There are no restoration requests and our quote is, "Be like the oak, steady in the storm, grounded in your purpose." Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Oman. I see questions from the board. We just have to ask ourselves, I guess, right? Thought else might be kind of fun to like those priorities, guess which supervisor, which which one? Some some of them are obvious, of course. Um, all right. Not seeing any lights. We'll go ahead and move right along. Thank you. I just want to say so the next odd one is obviously the county executive office and Britney Odman our deputy CEO will go over that. You know the county executive office because we oversee the whole operations of the county and we focus a lot on the other departments and this is our one time to just kind of highlight what we're doing as a department but we will be brief. So Miss Odman, take it away.

Thank you CEO Miaato. I will be presenting today on behalf of um Mona and the county executive office. So some key takeaways that I want to highlight for our department are um that our budget reflects a 7.4% 4% reduction in general fund contribution and that's uh you'll see by unfunding three vacant positions and some reductions to services and supplies including um and then also uh I wanted to highlight that we are focusing on many things but um particularly including countywide strategies for sustainable reductions and efficiencies in our budget. Our operating budget is just over $73 million, 86% of which is the riskmanagement budget. The general fund contribution is just $ 8.9 million and uh one-time transfers from general county programs is uh 343,500. We have 40 full-time employees. Um as I mentioned, we cut $731,000 and there are no restoration or expansion requests. The county executive office is made up of two budget programs. We have county management and risk management. A majority of the staff work in county management uh 31 full-time employees um in the divisions listed here. And the risk management budget program has nine uh FTEEs and that supports all of the insurance programs, general liability, workers comp, unemployment, as well as our public records tax requests that come into the county. Our general county program transfers include $100,000 for criminal justice uh experts u specifically for the jail population studies and then 243,500 that comes from the cannabis tax revenue for cannabis administration.

Next year's budget includes those 40 employees which is six fewer than the current fiscal year. Um this result is uh the six reduction is three in the current fiscal year that we uh transferred to other departments mid year. Those came to the board for various actions and then we are proposing to unfund three vacancies for next year. Those vacancies are the business analytics manager, the inclusion initiatives manager and our compliance officer. Our budget decreased by 731,000 mainly due to eliminating those vacancies and um as well as reductions in our services and supplies budget. Uh under our anticipated accomplishments, much of the work we do is to lead collaborative efforts across departments and many of these accomplishments have been mentioned by those other departments. Uh so on this slide uh I think you've heard from um other departments on most of these but here I did want to highlight um a couple things that um are pretty unique to our office. One is that we supported the successful implementation of the Sherpa budget development software. That is the budget development team of course. Um coordinated efforts of a regional task force to address unlawful roadside vending that was led by um staff in our office. Completed the county's 175th anniversary video series. As you know, uh you've watched those videos from uh that Kelsey Bhuta Gerkens produced. and we are on track to implement an entirely paperless docketing process for board meeting materials that comes out of the clerk of the board's office. Our 2627 goals and objectives include continuing to work with departments to advance criminal justice initiatives, uh strengthen the safety net by ensuring the indigent care program is implemented in the most fiscally responsible way. Um there's some other items here, but those are the things I I definitely wanted to

highlight. We will support uh continued financial and organizational excellence through leading and coordinating countywide budget reduction planning. Um we are implementing the new York your county year services video series and streamlining and improving other programs and processes highlighted here. Um our top four KPMG recommendations um are included here on this slide. Um I think for us uh one the top item um the strategic management performance measures is continuous. Um we are in this year finalizing our countywide renew efforts and we are working to establish a foundation foundation for the next phase of strategic management. Um and I also wanted to highlight that uh the the organizational structure between the assistant CEOs and departments is fully implemented and for the first time uh this year we are fully staffed with our principal analysts and our budget team. So um some of the fiscal issues that are top of mind for us are how to maintain core services that the community relies on with changes outside our control. uh the jail costs, litigation costs and settlements, disaster planning and the effects of um disasters as they occur, the continued decline of cannabis tax revenue, and managing the increasing number of public records requests and the associated staffing impacts. This is a sampling of some of our performance measures. Uh we track and aim to project general fund revenues consistently under a 3% variance. We keep the strategic reserve at 8% of general fund operating revenue. Um, we annually review each cannabis operator's compliance efforts and track the number and completion rate of workers compensation claims received within the year.

This just gives a little more detail into uh those reductions that I talked about. Those are the three positions we unfunded. That totals about $677,000. And then our service and supplies um that includes training, travel, transportation, food. We reduced that by $54,000. We have no restoration requests. So I'll close with a quote from quote, excuse me, from Peter Ducker, who has been called the father of modern management. Um his most famous quotes emphasize actionoriented leadership and creating the future. The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday's logic.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Oman. Questions from the board? S Lavino,

I don't have any questions. And I know, you know, we're going to have plenty of time to talk about Mona's accomplishments, but it has been a historic run. You've done an amazing job. So, but it also surrounded by a great team and I think one that has really stood out that we don't really get to talk about too much brought up. One of the things is Kelsey and what a difference she has made in our um in the way that we present ourselves to the public. Um, you know, as there's been more focus on it, uh, as we continue to try to wrap, um, the public into more of what we do, we're only as good as the message that goes out and and how we do it. It looks so professional now. It feels so obviously everybody knows I have nothing to do with it. There's there's somebody that's professional that's professionally handling it and it just looks great and it it's the right message. It looks good and um yeah, amazing job.

Yes, thank you. And I think we all have a lot of great things to say about our CO team and the support that we all receive. And um I know we're trying to move things along quickly. I think that's why I'm going to put it at the end of the day so that we wouldn't we wouldn't spend too much time on it. But again, um she knows our things and and we're going to get a chance to talk a little bit more about that over the next couple months. But um yes, thank you for the presentation. And I think that takes us now to our um

special issue, cannabis revenue and budget update. And okay, thank you, Chair Nelson, members of the board. Uh I'm going to turn it over to Carmela Beck, our cannabis program manager, to walk you through this item.

Great. Uh good afternoon uh Chair Nelson and members of the board. Carmemella Beck cannabis program manager and I'll walk you through the cannabis revenue budget up update. Uh there are key a few key issues for the board to consider when reviewing the 2026 2027 projected cannabis tax revenue budget. The fiscal year 2526 adjusted cannabis tax revenue is 5.3 million. The fiscal year 2627 projected cannabis tax revenue is 4.7 million. This is just over 650,000 less than the current year. During last year's budget workshops and hearings, your board reduced cannabis program ongoing expenditures to rightsize costs in line with shrinking revenue. Because of those prudent measures, next year's expected 4.7 million in cannabis revenue is sufficient to cover ongoing uses of 4.5 million. Next year's unallocated cannabis tax revenue is projected to be $780,600. Of this amount, 190,800 is the projected 202627 ongoing use balance and 589,800 is the projected carryover balance. When considering revenue allocations per the board adopted budget policy, cannabis revenues are not intended for any new ongoing uses beyond those adopted in the fiscal year 202122 budget. Sheriff staff did request continuation of one-time funding for the sheriff warrant officer funded by onetime dollars last year. Staff seeks board direction on the allocation of these funds. This this slide shows the referenced carryover balance of 589,800. Note that the fiscal year, sorry, note that the fiscal year 2026 27 projected cannabis tax revenue of 4.7 million was adjusted down to reflect potential loss in revenue due to

potential cannabis business license revocation for non-installation of odor abatement equipment required per the new chapter 35 and chapter 50 ordinance amendments. Ongoing cannabis program expenses total approximately 4.5 million, leaving a projected ongoing use balance of 190,800 and a total unallocated balance of 780,600. This table details cannabis revenue ongoing uses. The 202526 adopted budget was about 4.7 million and the estimated actuals are 4.2 million. This is a decrease of just over 500,000. Reductions are in council enforcement and treasurer tax collector costs in addition to a deputy council pos council position that was held vacant. The 202627 cannabis tax revenue ongoing uses preliminary budget is just under 4.5 million. The biggest changes being that the sheriff's department secured a new lease on a smaller building providing cost savings and council is expected to fill their vacant position. The present slide shows cannabis revenue approved one-time uses. The 202526 adopted one-time uses totaled 762,000 and estimated actuals are now 725,000, a difference of $37,000 due to a reduction in HDL audit spending. The 2026 27 one-time uses preliminary available budget is once again $780,600. Per the board adopted budget development policies. Uh revenues are not intended for new ongoing uses. One-time options include the following. To increase contribution to deferred maintenance, reserve funds toward overall general fund deficit. Consider department

requests for one-year continuation or new uses. And to allocate for other board priorities. Our recommended actions today are to provide direction on the projected unallocated tax revenue funds to be included and the recommended budget or to provide other direction as appropriate. Thank you. That concludes today's presentation.

All right. Thank you um to the board. And just for everybody's uh um information, Supervisor Caps had to leave a little early and just for the especially for the youth here, she want to let you know that she will be watching and she will make sure that uh you guys' comments will be taken into consideration for our deliberations on Friday. So it's not cuz she doesn't want to hear from you. So I just want to make sure you guys know that. So with that, Supervisor Labanino. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, if somebody could just come from the sheriff's department and kind of give me an update on the warrants uh officer, what they've been up to, what he's been up to, what value do you see in continuing the program, etc.

Superino through the chair. Good afternoon. So, when we first got the position, it took a few months to get our feet grounded. We worked with the CCP workg group to figure out some data that we want to see. So, his primary responsibilities are coordinating out of county and out of state extraditions, search warrants. He writes search warrants for cell phones to be able to help investigators locate people they're looking for. um working with allied agencies to track one of the suspects surveillance operations and then he provides be on the lookouts to all of the police departments and the sheriff's office with real time information of current warrants and potential where they live. Then through the KPI data we've been able to extract some of it. Sometimes our Wanda program, it's where we track our warrants, doesn't allow us to abstract all the information that was required. But overall, I think it's a successful program. It is one person and then he works with other investigators to do it. But we have been able to reduce the number of warrants in the system. So when the program was implemented, we had 9,961 warrants in the county and today we have 9,280. So we think

those are felony warrants or those all misdemeanor and felony together. Those were all the warrants I believe. Okay. So are I mean I think some of the direction was to kind of clean up the misdemeanor warrants as they go with the public defender and DA. Is that ongoing? That's ongoing. And they're purging and closing out ones that aren't needed anymore. And he's primarily focusing on felony warrants. Correct. Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Labino. Um, my question Oh, Supervisor Lee, please. No.

Okay. So, at our last regular meeting and Steve wasn't here, I presented a film commissioner idea and so I want to just throw out to the board, let's kick this can down June when my staff can come back with options about the film commissioners and things that we can decide on and whether to use this money to fund that film commissioner. just just want to throw out there. And also for staff, can we look at public health and be well in the canvas budget whether we can shift that funding around? I just want to learn more about those. Yeah. The funding for those.

So I kind of can I piggyback on that because I know we're going to be asking for some um education and and some things that uh the youth are going to present. So, yeah, it'd be really nice to know what those other I think it's 219,000 that's out there, what that actually is doing so that we don't overlap, but that you know, but you can come back to me on that. I I want to hear from them. Yeah.

All right. And then my question was going back to of the of this year's funds, the two therapists that were funded, I believe that went to CSD and um I just want to know how that went. I mean, were those funds expended? How many how many youth were addressed? Um Oh, good. Were all the funds, you know, were were the all the funds used? Do we have some data?

Thank you, Chair Nelson. Yes, we do have some data that's pretty impressive. As you'll recall, you allocated about 240,000. The contract that you approved called for 35 u families or clients to be served. As of uh current data, 34 have been served and u qualitative commentary has indicated that the participants have seen some measurable improvements in their mental health. They are um also seeing some mental some uh noticeable improvements in employment and education efforts and so the intended outcome seems to be uh realized. Now the 240,000 is for the fiscal year. the pace of spending is not matching the time frame that's lapsed and that's primarily because uh these are likely to be year-long cases that are going to be um assisted. So, we're we're u pleased with the level of response that we've received and the number of clients that have been served.

I I guess I need to dig into that a little bit more. So, you said 35 families. Yes. How many um uh I guess because this is for therapists, how many appointments is that per family? They meet every uh every month or two they meet with each family. So every month or two each family? Okay. Just trying to do the math here. So about $700 a visit. Is that what the rate that we're looking at? I don't have the figure in front of me. It was it wasn't quantified as a per visit rate. It was more Yeah. I think it'd be interesting to to to dive into the numbers a little bit. You know, um I think we unanimously supported that, but I also want to make sure

that, you know, that's delivered at a at a frequency that's more appropriate. I mean, $700 a visit is a little on the higher end. Um so I'm hoping that that that's not accurate. Um so if you guys maybe could go back and take a look at that and dive into those numbers and make sure that we're getting a good return on investment. Excuse me for interrupting. We do have uh a new report due any day now. So that'll give us a chance to update you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Rams. Um and I and I and I'm I concur. I think that um I know you're looking for direction now. Um I think there's still so many things um in

supervisors because we're missing a supervisor and missing a supervisor on top of that. Yeah. So, I I think this is a discussion that we can um talk about on Friday to give a maybe some some some direction, but I know that there's other expenses here and I think I mean where I'm going to go on Friday is I'm going to throw some things out there to to dig in deeper some priorities, but I don't I think with the uncertainty at the state with uncertainty on many other things, I I think it's going to be hard to give detailed direction. And I think we want to get you guys in the right direction, but I think some of these smaller things where we're arguing about $10,000 here or there, that's going to be really difficult for us to to drill down. And I think having more flexibility when we know more would would create better decisions.

We'll summarize what we heard for you for Friday and then I think that's probably be the direction we would head in. Okay. S 11, you know, you happy with that? I Yeah, I mean obviously I want to hear public comment because I know they've got they've got something they want to say. So, um, but yeah, obviously, yeah, we'll get to Friday, get to deliberations, and we're not, we're in April. We still got the May revise. We're early. We don't have to lock anything in right now, and we've got all the way till June. So, Yep.

Perfect. But again, we do want to hear from you, those that are advocating for programs that are that you want to support. So, with that, I know we have general county programs and fund balances. Is that something we're going to do today or is that something that we can talk about on on Friday? Chair Nelson, totally your decision. Um, if you want to take the public comment now because I don't think anyone's here to talk about general county programs and then I mean general county programs could be 5 minutes after if you'd like or it can be Okay, let's go ahead and break for public comment at this time.

Yes, madam clerk, please uh public comment on policy and executive. Chair Nelson, members of the board, we currently have uh 15 requests to speak from the public. Okay. Apologies. 15. 15. Okay. Make sure I heard that right.

Speak on the policy and executive functional group. And we are going to begin here in Santa Barbara with Carmen Martinez to be followed by Avet Peralta. Carmen. Good afternoon, board of supervisors. My name is Carmen Martinez. I am a Lumpoke Santa Barbara County resident and a member of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I am here today to speak to you about the current spending of cannabis tax revenue and why we must realign our priorities to better support youth and our communities to fully honor the promise of Prop 64 of investing in young people right here in Santa Barbara County. Since 2018, the county has collected nearly 55 million from cannabis taxes. Unfortunately, the majority of these funds have gone to enforcement this year. While the county is expected to collect nearly 4.7 million in local cannabis tax revenue, the majority will continue to be funneled into enforcement while the youth and underserved communities continue to lack critical support. We believe that cannabis tax revenue can be used more effectively if it is directed to serve the youth of Santa Barbara County. Through helping start up this coalition, I have seen the need and passion the youth have to do something more. We all have youth in our life which could be greatly served by a youth fund. Whether it is through family, friends, or neighbors. Through working in the public, I have been the person that people come to when they need food or other support. Programs are being cut and we can't stop that all in one go, but we can ease some of the fall. Investing in youth will ultimately give back to the county. Every $1 invested returns up to seven to eight to

$13 in long-term public benefit. Youth programs deliver proven results. Youth with mentors are 55 less likely to be arrested and 46% less likely to start using drugs. Our state capital, Sacramento, currently allocates 40% of cannabis tax revenue to youth services. Help us see a positive change in our community. We are calling on the board of supervisors to create a youth fund pilot program using cannabis tax revenue to invest in youth development and enrichment programs, mental health services, early intervention and substance use prevention, basic needs and support systems for young people. We urge you to use the unallocated cannabis tax revenue to launch a youth fund pilot program that d that invests directly in people in you young people. It's time to shift our priorities from punishment to investing in preventing healing and youth empowerment because our youth deserve much more than just enforcement. They deserve investment in their future. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. We will now go to Ivet Peralta to be followed by Brandon Lopez. Ivette. Uh, good afternoon board of supervisors. My name is Ivet Peralta and I'm a county um resident and also a a great supporter of the youth impact coalition. I'm here um as Carmen said to also urge you to realign the spending of cannabis tax revenue and to honor the promise of Proposition 64 by investing directly in our young people. When California voters passed Prop 64 in 2016, they did so with a clear commitment to invest in communities harmed by the war on drugs. Since 2018, Santa Barbara County has collected nearly 55 million in cannabis taxes. Yet, the majority of the funds have gone to the sheriff's department. This year alone, the county expects to collect nearly 4.7 million in local cannabis tax revenue, and that pattern is set to continue. I work directly with Santa Barbara County youth, and oftentimes young people tell me they feel the weight of their parents stress, facing the high cost of housing, immigration, family separation, um lack of access to mental health and health care. The stress affects their mental health and their academic performance. Santa Barbara County youth deserve investment in their well-being and their futures, not investment in their punishment. The data backs this up. Santa Barbara County youth are approximately 50% more likely to experience a felony arrest than youth statewide. And also, the research shows that when youth have mentors, 55% of them are less likely to be arrested and 46% less likely to begin using drugs. We know what works. We simply need to to have the will to fund it. Other jur jurisdictions are already leading the way like San Diego County. Um Sacramento allocates 40% in its cannabis of its

cannabis tax revenue to youth services. Santa Cruz and um Vista have both redirected funds to youth programs and community resources through dedicated youth funds. As a member of the youth impact coalition and a great supporter, I have been I have seen firsthand what young people can do when they have access to funds and resources and um trusted individuals that can help them make a positive change in their communities. Today, we are calling on the board of supervisors to create a youth fund pilot program funded by cannabis tax revenue. It is time to shift our priorities from punishment to prevention and from enforcement to empowerment. I hope you were able to listen and honor what the youth are requesting. They're not all here, but I'm really glad that they powered through and state to make their voices heard.

Thank you.

We will now go to Braden Lopez to be followed by Brandon Vasquez. Braden. Okay. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Braden Lopez and I am a Santa Barbara County resident and supporter of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here to ask you all to rethink how cannabis tax revenue is being used. Like you've heard, in 2016, Proposition 64 promised to invest in communities impacted by the war on drugs. But here in our county, most of that money is still going toward enforcement instead of helping the youth. Since 2018, the county has collected millions in cannabis taxes and as of now over 780,000 remain unallocated. That's a real opportunity to invest in the in the young people. Youth in our community are facing challenges that being from the lack of resources as to struggling with their mental health. But we know what works. programs that have pro programs that provide mentorship, support, and prevention services that lead to safer but even stronger communities. That's why we're here to ask you to create a youth fund uh pivot program using cannabis tax revenue to support youth programs with uh programs with mental health services and early intervention. It's time to shift from enforcement to investment because our young audience deserve a great education, any support they need, and an opportunity, but the the but more of all a better future. Thank you all.

Thank you. We will now go to Brandon Vasquez to be followed by Medeli Agua. Brandon.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Brandon Vasquez, and I'm a Santa Barbara County resident and proud supporter of the Youth Impact Coalition, a coalition that has spent the past year advocating for the creation of a youth fund. I am here today to urge the board of supervisors to take action by using unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create pilot a pilot youth fund program. This is an opportunity to honor Proposition 64 by investing in youth who have been harmed by the war on drugs and by decades of uninvest underinvestment. More than 55 million in cannabis tax revenue has been gener generated. Yet the majority of these funds have gone toward law enforcement rather than being reinvested into young people and communities most impacted. At the same time, Santa Barbara County currently holds over 780,000 in cannabis tax revenue that has not yet been allocated. We urge you to use these funds to launch a youth fund pilot program that invests directly in young people. To say that youth are underinvested underinvested is an understatement, especially here in Santa Barbara County. Across our communities, we continue to see a lack of accessible programs, enrichment opportunities, mental health support, and resources that young people need to thrive. As a product of public education and a lifelong resident of Santa Maria, I have seen firsthand the impact of this lack of investment has on youth. Too many students experience depression, isolation, and a lack of support and in some cases begin to disengage from school and their and their future because they do not have the programs, guidance or community they deserve. That is why we are calling on the board of supervisors to create a youth fund pilot program using cannabis tax revenue to invest in youth development and enrichment programs, mental health services, early intervention and substance use prevention and basic needs and support systems for young people. We

know that youth programs deliver real results in Santa Barbara County. Youths are about 50% more likely to experience a felony arrest than youth statewide. Research also shows that every $1 invested in youth programs that can generate can generate up to 7 to 13 in long-term public benefit. These programs do not just support young people in the moment. They create safer, healthier, and stronger communities for everyone. Other cities have already taken action. San Diego invests in youth substance use prevention. Sacramento allocates 40% of its tax revenue to youth services. Santa Cruz and Vista have also redirected cannabis tax revenue towards youth programs and community resources. Santa Barbara County has the opportunity to join the movement. Lead with vision and become a pioneer in making a major investment in youth. We urge you to act today by using unallocated cannabis tax revenue to launch a youth fund pilot program and make a real investment in the future safety and well-being of young people across Santa Barbara County. Thank you. Thank you.

We will now go to Maideli Aggera to be followed by Enrique Morales. Maideli.

Good afternoon board of supervisors. My name is Melia Aer and I am a Santa Barbara County resident and the sergeant of arms of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I am here to speak about how about how cannabis tax revenue is being used and why we must better align it with the promise of Proposition 64 to invest in communities and youth. As a student, I have personally seen the impact of undefunded educational programs. Programs like EAOP, which provide college counseling and exposure to higher education, have been limited to budget cuts. The past year, only 15 students per high school in Santa Maria were able to participate in um university excreation. That means many students lost access to opportunities that shape their future. Through my work with the Youth Impact Coalition, I see the challenges young people face every day. Limited access to educational programs, mental health support, and safe space. These are real needs, not just statistics. When funding is cut, students lose guidance, mentorships, and chances to see colleges as real possibilities. Investing in youth programs create opportunities, builds confidence, and straightens our community's future. I urge you guys to prioritize funding for youth and educational services. Investing in youth is investing in the future of Santa Barbara County. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We will now go to Enrique Morales to be followed by Eva Maria to Kent to London. Enrique.

Um, hello chair and members of the board. My name is Enrique Males, a Santa Barbara County resident and the president of the Youth Impact SBC Coalition. Thank you for taking the time to hear from today's young from today's youth. I'm here to talk about the cannabis revenue tax and how we can use it rightfully. To get straight to the point, out of tens of millions of dollars in cannabis revenue, only a small fraction has gone towards youth programs while millions have gone towards enforcement. That imbalance doesn't reflect the original intent of Proposition 64. To quote, "60% shall be disposed in the youth education prevention, early intervention, and treatment account." In one recent budget year, Santa Barbara County spent $3 million on cannabis enforcement and only around $100,000 on youth safety programs. Um, when Proposition 64 passed, voter supported not just legalization, but reinvestment, especially in communities and young people affected by past policies. That intent matters because it guides how these funds shall be used. We have strong consistent evidence that early investment in youth reduces long-term public cost. Right now, the county has over 780,000 in unallocated Canada tax revenue. That presents a clear opportunity to act in alignment with both the intent and Proposition 64 and proven policy outcomes. If we had more resources resources directed towards youth programs, u mental health, um early um intervention and basic needs, we could fundamentally fundamentally change outcomes not gradually but significantly. I want you to think about how you felt when you were a teen and you had nowhere to go or no one to go to. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to Eva Maria to Torea Catalan to be followed by Gloria Sto. Eva.

Yes. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Eva Maria Toalva Catalan and I am Santa Barbara County born and raised here in Santa Barbara and a proud supporter of the Santa Barbara County Co um Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here today to speak about the county allocating tax revenue and urge you to prioritize the need to better support youth in Santa Barbara County. In, as you heard, in 2026, Proposition 64 was passed with the promise to reinvent in communities to reinvest in communities impacted by the war on drugs. Since 2018, the county has allocated nearly 55 million of cannabis tax revenue. Yet, much of the funding continues to go towards enforcement. While youth and underserved communities lack critical support, in the work that I do with young people, I consistently hear that there's not enough programs to meet their needs. We have the opportunity to make that change. By investing in more funding into youth leadership, mental health, college readiness, substance use prevention, and workforce development, we can create a meaningful lasting impact. As you heard, we're already falling behind. A lot of different counties have already allocated cannabis revenue to youth programs. So today, I urge you to protect and prioritize funding for youth programs and prevention efforts. Thank you so much for your time and commitment to our community.

Thank you. We will now go to Gloria Sto. Then we will go to Zoom with Lee. Gloria,

good evening um chair and members of the board. My name is Gloria Sto and I'm a proud Santa Barbara County resident, a mother, and the executive director of a youth serving organization working across this county. I'm also a proud supporter of the Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here today to speak about how the county is spending cannabis tax revenue and why we we must realign our priorities to better support youth by fully honoring the promise of Prop 64. Since 2018, Santa Barbara has collected nearly $55 million in cannabis tax revenue. Yet, the majority of those funds have gone towards enforcement rather than investing in the communities that have been most impacted by the war on drugs. This year, the county expects to collect $4.7 million with approximately $780,000 unallocated. We believe these dollars can be and should be used more effectively by investing directly in young people. In my work and as someone who grew up in this community, I've seen firsthand both the challenges young people face and the potential they carry. Too many are navigating systems that respond only after harm has occurred instead of investing early in their success. That's why we are calling on you to establish a youth fund pilot program using those unallocated cannabis tax funds. This youth fund would invest in youth leadership development, mental health support, college and career pathways, and youthled solutions as well as um prevention investments that we know lead to stronger outcomes for young people people and safer communities. The data is clear. As you've heard, youth in our county fa face higher arrest rates than the state average. Yet, we know prevention works. Every dollar invested in youth gives us a return of up to $13 in long-term public benefits. And mentorship alone significantly reduces

the likelihood of arrest and substance use. This is a chance to shift from reacting to harm to preventing it, from punishment to opportunity. We urge you to move forward with the youth fund pilot program and to invest in youth and invest in our futures. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Sto. We will now go to Zoom with Lee to be followed by Myra Lopez. Lei, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

All right. Um, good evening board of supervisors. My name is Leup and I am and I work with SB County Youth and I am a part of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. Since 2018, the county has collected $55 million in cannabis taxes. Prop 64 promised that these funds will go to communities harmed by the war on drugs. Yet, a majority of these funds have gone towards enforcement, not towards the youth and the underserved communities Prop 64 was meant to serve. The number tells a clear story. Santa Barbara County youth face a felony erase arrest rate of 50% higher than the California average. This isn't just a social crisis, it's also a fiscal one. We know that mentorship program reduces arrest by 55% and drug use by 46%. From a budget perspective, the choice is simple. Every dollar that we shift from enforcement to these programs returns up to $13 in long-term public health benefits. We don't lack the evidence. We simply need the collective will to fund the prevention that the families we work with so desperately needs. We aren't asking for the impossible. Sacramento and San San Diego already use the revenues to transform lives. Currently, the county has about 780,000 in unallocated cannabis tax revenue and we're asking you to use those dollars now to launch a youth fund pilot program. Let's stop spending on punishment and start investing in prevention. Our youth and our young people deserve to be empowered, not just police. Thank you.

We will now go to Myra Lopez to be followed by Natalyia Perez or my apologies to be followed by Lwanda Lions Puit. Myra,

can you guys hear me? Uh yes, if you can please just uh raise your voice a little bit. Is this better?

That's great. Thank you. Please proceed. Greetings, board of supervisors. My name is Myra Lopez and I am a youth Santa Barbara County resident and a member of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here today to take a call to action about how the county is using cannabis tax revenue and why we must rearrange our priorities to better support youth and our communities by fully honoring the promise of Prop 64 of invest investing in young people right here in Santa Barbara County. Specifically, we need to uplift those youth and stop being and to stop being such hard to be to stop being such people who don't invest in them. In 2016, California passed Proposition 64 with a promise to invest in communities harmed by the war of drugs. Since 2018, Santa Barbara County has collected nearly $55 million from cannabis taxes. So far, the majority of these funds have gone to enforcement rather than our struggling youth in our county. We believe that cannabis tax revenue can be used more efficiently if it is directed to serve the youth of Santa Barbara County. Here as a student in San Here as a student in Santa Barbara County, I understand the hardships that many of these people go through. We are calling on the board of supervisors to create a youth fund pilot program using cannabis tax revenue to invest in mental health services, youth

development, and enrichment programs. The county currently holds over $780,000 in cannabis tax revenue that has not been allocated. We urge you to use these funds to launch a youth fund pilot program to invest directly in young people. We know these youth programs deliver results. In Santa Barbara County, youth are about 50% more likely to experience a failure risk than state youth. Other cities like San Diego and San are have such programs. It is time to shift our priorities from punishment to investing in preventing healing healing and youth empowerment because our young people deserve more than just enforcement. They deserve a future. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. We will now go to Lwanda Lines Puit to be followed by Natalyia Perez who is our final speaker. Lwanda,

good afternoon again. Tier Nelson and members of the board. Uh Lwanda Lions Puit representing the Santa Maria Lombok branch of the NAACP. We totally support, totally agree uh with the young people. I think that they said it best. Um we know that this investment will reduce arrest and substance use, improve graduate, excuse me, improve graduation and college enforcement. That's the southern slain coming out. Boost mental health and resilience and build future leaders. and we definitely uh support investing in our youth and using some of the cannabis tax revenue for them. Thank you. We will now go to Natalyia Perez who is our final speaker. Natalyia.

Good evening chair and members of the board. My name is Natalia. I am a resident of Santa Barbara County, a mom of two, and I'm here to support the creation of the youth fund pilot program. I care deeply about how we invest in young people and the future of our community. Since 2018, the county has collected millions in cannabis tax revenue intended to support communities, especially youth. Yet, much of it has gone towards enforcement rather than prevention and opportunity. At the same time, one in five children in our county lives in poverty. In Santa Maria, only 17% of adults hold a bachelor's degree compared to 38% statewide. And our you our youth felony arrest rates remain higher than average. These aren't just numbers. They reflect real young people facing limited resources and barriers to success. But we know what works when we invest in mentorship, mental health, and sorry, when we invest in mentorship, mental health, and career pathways, youth are far less likely to enter the justice system. Prevention programs cost far less than incarceration and create a long-term benefit for our communities. As a Navy veteran and civic engagement coordinator, I've had the honor to work with many families with youth coming from different backgrounds and all sides of life. I have seen firsthand how access to support, guidance, and opportunity can change a young person's trajectory. When youth feel supported, they rise. That's why I urge you to establish a Santa Barbara County youth youth found pilot program and dedicate funds from the cannabis tax revenue to youth programs in our counties. Focus on leadership, mental health, and prevention. This is about shifting from

reacting to problems to preventing them and investing in potential instead of paying for consequences. I respectfully ask for your support. I also encourage you to review the written public comments submitted by those who were unable to attend. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Miss PZ. And that concludes public comment for the policy and executive functional group. All right. Thank you. And so, uh, back to the board. Sue Resanino. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, first off, want to thank how many of you from Santa Maria? All right. Cool. That's how I know he's from Santa Maria, right?

Yes. All right. So, I I met with this group uh I'm going to say three or four months ago, and um you know, it made me go back and read Prop 64. And there is uh you know the intent was at the time that a lot of it would go back to youth and and for education uh prevention and uh but um I do want to clarify something. When you see enforcement when a lot of the money was used for enforcement it wasn't enforcement against people that were using or what the enforcement was is against the growers. So the enforcement was to make sure they were following all the rules because there's believe me laundry list of rules of what they could and couldn't do. And so that's where a lot of the money went. Um just FYI, uh a million and a half dollars we were able to get out of the cannabis funds that's paying for um helping pay for some of the soccer fields that across the street from Sanchez Elementary. So that park that's being built right there, some of it came from cannabis funds as well. But I totally support um what what you're asking for. But um you know I think you got a civics lesson a little bit today too. You saw these other departments come up and a lot of the times we would ask what are your measurables? What are you doing and how how many people are you seeing or or what's this money actually doing? How are you how can you measure whether or not you're successful? And so uh what I'd like to see is a couple of things. Um one is that and I do see Tony here Navaro. Um, and uh, so by Friday, what I would like to do is just kind of get a better feel from staff on what that $219,000 is doing right now through Bwell and public health that's for education. Um, I want to see exactly, you know, where that's going so we get a better knowledge of of what's already out there. And then what I would ask,

um, you know, that we could always do some sort of a placeholder between now and and June. of of saying, "Okay, you know, um, let me just tell you right now, there's $780,000 of unallocated funds, but there's about $17 million of people that want that $780,000. So, so it's going to be uh very competitive, but what I would like to see from you is I understand it's a it's a um it's a youth fund dedicated to youth. But I did hear probably seven or eight different ideas that you had about mental health, um food insecurity, counseling, those types of things. I think what would serve you better between now and June is to come up with something that is laser focused of maybe one thing that you want to focus on so that if we funded it at a certain level that you would be able to come back next year and say, "Okay, you gave us this much money and this is what we did with it and this is how we were successful with it and this is how we kept people out of trouble." then it's going to be a lot easier. I won't be here next time, but it'll be a lot easier the next time you come in. And it's like, hey, here's our, as you saw with every department, they had to put up a thing that said this was our goal, and we met 96% of it. Um, so I have to get two other votes uh in between now and June to to allocate some money, but uh you know, that's that's that's that's part of my job. But you also need to be speaking to other decision makers to make that happen. So I think what we should do is uh staff direction to find out what's going on with the other 219 and on your side come up with a very clear idea of something out of all the ideas that you have of

one thing that would um kind of jump start that this would help jumpstart you with so you could come back and measure to us and show us that you were successful. But again, thank you for sitting here all day. You guys did an amazing job. It was a great me message and I think it refocused a lot of us on, you know, what the intent of Prop 64 was. So, great job. Thank you, Supervisor Leanino. Supervisor Lee,

I just want to follow up on Steve's comments. So I was able to work with FOA in the past while I was on Karp city council and they were very specific about the ask about flavor tobacco banning that in the city of Karp and we were able to accomplish that. So really focusing on what you asking for because you're asking for money but I don't know what you going to use it for. You say some things but I just people ask me what I'm going to give me money for. How do I explain to them? I can't. So going back to C's point, it's be laser focused so you can come back and try to convince us why you need the money. Thanks.

Thank you, Super Lee. And just some comments I thought about when we were we were discussing this as well. Um, so we all have office funds and um and every every every year um I spend $10,000 which is most of than my 990 on youth sports in Santa Maria and LMPoke um because I knew that's one of the ways that we can try to invest in our kids. So um that's one of the ways that we we can do that as well as other programs. Um, so just maybe another model here too is also looking at um maybe allocations by district towards some youth activities as a one of our an idea. I mean, I don't know if that's the bright idea, but it could be something that we could kick around as well if we're going to, you know, allocate some of these funds because, you know, the needs in Santa Maria are different than the needs in Los Alamos, which are different the needs throughout the county. So maybe that's partly what we we look at and that way we can get those distributed potentially more equally across the county. So that was just something that I was thinking about when I was hearing this. Um there's a lot of good different ways we're great different programs. Um what I do appreciate is when adults u mentor youth and I because that think that's really important that we need to have more adults that care about kids in their lives especially in these formal years. So those of you that are working with this group, thank you very much for your your work and I think when the county can invest in that, it does serve us well and is and is a good investment. So I'll be interested in the conversation as well. Supervisor Hartman. Um, who all is part of your youth impact coalition? What what groups constitute the coalition?

Isn't Enrique the president? We got to get an answer. Mr. President, yeah, you do the mic so we can record it. Come on. YEAH. UM WELL we have multiple groups but I think our biggest one is um FLA which is a future leaders of America. Um and I mean that's the biggest uh group we're trying to uh get in. You know we have a Flamas bi-weekly and we try to um invite them to this coalition but we try to get groups from many areas and so far we have what are they? Fly

fly. Um and um yeah, we're just trying to get multiple groups because we are passionate about this and um last time you did come, you did talk about how uh we wanted to be more laser focused and I think that's something we should have definitely talked about before coming here. Um to have more of a straightedge plan. Um and I think um that's what we're going to consider next meeting. Uh, next meeting we're going to talk about how we're going to be more laser focused, what we're going to do differently, how we're what we're going to talk about, what we're going to try to get, where that money is going to go and all that, and come back with um a guide, and um I think we're just grateful for the consideration. We're grateful for the um advice and everything that and we just uh loved being here. And uh thank you for your time.

Thank you for participating. Well, if I might add, I when I first was running for supervisor, they told me to watch the budget hearings that that would be a way to learn about the county. I it it you already have to know a lot, I think, to find it titillating and interesting. um that you all um sat here all day and were paying attention I think really speaks to your stick tuitiveness and uh I'm really impressed by how poised and how um what what upand cominging leaders and public speakers you are. I would add one thing more about the focus for your proposal and that is to to be doing something that others aren't to the extent that you can. We don't want duplication and I think that that's um you know something that you can do distinctively given who you are and and the members of your coalition. So, um, I I'm excited to see what you're going to come back with, but I really appreciate your, uh, getting us focused on the issues that you raised. It's it's really important, and I know you, some of you have been working on this for years. Uh, and and so, um, I I really appreciate, again, that's another testament to how motivated and and persistent you are. So, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. All right. So, um, we have we are we hit this one last item before we we break here. We're going to go over the, uh, fund balances and and general accounting programs. And to do that, Mr. Clemente, thank you. V, thank you, Chair Nelson. I can do this quickly. Uh, general county programs is a department that kind of accounts for countywide types of activities that are not typically uh associated with a specific department's function. Uh, the operating budget has decreased $2 million from prior year, but I'll touch on that on another slide. It's really just a timing and budget thing. Um, Northern Branch Jail projected costs, debt service, strategic reserve. There's a lot of the board's sort of fund balances and priorities, um, policy things driven that are held in this account or in this department. Uh really key takeaway here, I'd say that $68.3 million GFC that comes to this department. This is 10.1 that supports things like operating costs in the department and then existing debt service payments. Uh and then an additional 57 million that goes into various fund balances that are sent out to departments. Biggest ones being 18% maintenance fund. Um the set aides that we've got now for next year's uh deficit. U the the jail debt service. Um, so a lot of these large set aides and things that we're holding for future use come through GFC to this department. I can just pass on this one. Capital projects. Uh, really it's the capitalized um cost of the software that we pay out of this for the workday subscription and sherpa budgeting software. That $2 million drop is the UCSB uh housing settlement funds just how they came in last year and were budgeted versus now they're in fund balance. So they don't hit operating budget like they were last year. Uh I'd say one on here we this is the

fund we used $5 million in the current year to avoid the uh kind of plug that DSS fund balance gap we've been talking about 42526 fiscal year and avoid those mid-year layoffs that were discussed in the fall. Uh this is where the 18% uh 165 comes out of and on that top one that 5.3 million that is a project we've had going for a few years where we send public works money. They're able to leverage high-cost bridge program funding from the feds and then they send that back to us and then we hold it for their next uh project. So I do believe they have a it's Bonita school road the bridge crossing um that's going to be their next one coming up uh next year. We are setting aside the 5.7 million uh ongoing for the indigent care program. We've discussed um working on funding plan for the phase two of the workday implementation for human capital and payroll. Uh continuing the northern branch jail construction funding. We have both the one-time um set aside in here as well as the debt uh the $9 million debt service we're um anticipating and we'll find out more on Friday. fiscal issues we're watching just deficits the growth of strategic reserve every year we have to continue putting funding into that to stay at the 8% as it's a policy it's 8% of operating revenues in the general fund so as those revenues grow every year we have to continue um putting additional funding in to keep the strate strategic reserve at our policy and this slide here this shows the general fund key discretionary fund balances held in general county programs um this doesn't touch on fund balances held in other departments. A lot of departments have their own balances for specific purposes. Most of these accounts, as I mentioned, are associated with board approved policy or prior commitments and are held for specific purposes. Um, many of those counts we get, they they come in and then we send them out. Like I mentioned, the 18% uh roads baseline, facilities maintenance baseline, uh

there's a hazardous tree mitigation. A lot of that just goes right back out to departments. Um I can just touch on we see those projected remaining balances there that 6.8 million that's a um behavioral wellness account we established probably over 10 years ago uh when puff costs were regularly going over that's a general fund obligation we are getting hit with surprises uh so we started putting a balance aside for that we had a million dollars a year um right now it's at 6.8 made or will be next fiscal year. Um, as we know, Bwell has these rising IMD costs they're projecting in the future. This is a potential sort of um contingency balance for that if they start exceeding budget in future years on that. Uh, the incar video replacement 734, that's that is a balance we build. We we drew from some of that uh I believe in the prior year. Yes, in 2526 to fund their replacement of a lot of their in-car video. Uh we're going to continue building that up again until the next time they need to cycle that through. Strategic reserve we see there $49.8 million share replacement vehicles 700,000. That's really when they uh moved to Enterprise and sold a bunch of their existing uh fleet off. We hold that money here in 990. Their patrol vehicles and other things as they are replacing those if depreciation which has been a problem lately with the sort of rise in the cost of vehicles unanticipated when they were building the depreciation for those accounts. They um are seeing overages as they're replacing some of their patrol vehicles and we're using this balance that we're holding here to to help them offset those costs. Uh the AB199 is funding we received from the state. Um uh and and what we've been using it for is if you recall the incompetent to stand trial penalties. If we go over um a certain rate the state sets on that, we owe a penalty that then they send back to us and use towards programs they've approved to address that. So that's

where that balance is kind of ins and outs. Uh that $5 million at the bottom there is a contingency fund balance we hold um by policy at $5 million. That is really um a kind of an emergency fund last ditch if we need to draw for things. That concludes my presentation.

All right, questions from the board on this. Um I I think I do actually. Can you bring that put that that slide back up? I just wanted to um understand so all the inflow for the 26 27 increases I mean where are all those coming from those all from ongoing general fund I mean there's different pots right so like I mean new gel operations for one is a big number

uh chair Nelson so it's it is a little confusing a lot of the recommended increases particularly that one I'm taking from other fund balances is in this same thing. So you'll see it in the recommended decreases in the next row. So unassigned fund balance is a good example. That $13.7 million that we see coming out of that, I'm moving into new jail operations. Um and that is what that balance is is the uh surplus we carried over at the end of fiscal year 24-25. That's one of the many pieces I'm using to pull into that new jail operations. That's where I'm holding the one-time funding for the Northern Branch jail construction project. Okay. Yeah. It's it's it's complicated. Um

but I think it's you know I appreciate it. I mean this shows where we've been very um uh conservative in our budget, you know, and I think one of the things that uh I see on there is a program stabilization. Um you know what that looks like and I think that's really just anticipating what we're we're looking at seeing next year. Do I do I understand that right? So right now that's 19 million. We're increase by 18 million but we're also going to see that pull down.

Correct. Chair Nelson. So the $18 million we see going in. A lot of that is the um this is where we're holding the $9.5 million reserve for for 2728. It's also where I'm putting the $ 8.9 million debt service anticipated payment um for the for the Northern Branch construction project. some of the things that are going out of that. Um I believe I am sending some of that down to the new jail operations and then that's where we are funding the RFCC um backfill. That $2.1 million a year is coming out of that. Um I believe some other things I could pull if you want.

Okay. But I I think it's just it's important to highlight um that that's so that the cuts aren't deeper in the future, right? I mean so

yes. Um, for those of who've been around with the pension system for a long time, we have the smoothing. This is kind of our smoothing is the way I I look at that is it allows us to smooth out a little bit some of these ups and downs. So, as bad as this budget year is, it's not as bad as it could be. And next year, while it will be bad as well again next year, it's still not going to be as bad as it could be if we didn't um we weren't prudent with these different fund balances. And I and I think that that's one of the hallmarks of this budget team um that I don't see in other counties. And I think that that's, you know, you you'll read in the headlines other budget or other counties having much larger deficits and I think it's partly because they're not preparing like we are. And so again, I it's my appreciation to the budget team for this. Um supervis.

Yeah. Just a question on the be well line that so that million dollars we put in is that what's the color of that money? Is that general fund? Supervisor Lavin through the chair. It's actually TAC. Okay. Please send it over from the TAC fund. Okay. So I you explained why we were holding in case there was there was issues in be well but that has to be spent. What are the restrictions on that? TAC dollars don't technically have a restriction but the board for past 20 plus years I believe has had a um desire and we've always strived to use it in the sort of health realm. Got it. Public health type activities.

Okay. Great. Thanks. Thank you, Supervisor Lavino. Not seeing any other lights. I think we will be adjourned for today. Um we'll be back returning um on Friday, April 17th, 2026 for our third and final day of budget workshops. Um and we will also be carrying over the AI and presentation for those of you who who are waiting anxiously for an AI presentation. Um so, thank you all for sticking with us and we will see you on Friday.