Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right. Good morning, everybody. I will call to order the June 16th, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the budget hearings for the fiscal year 2026 through 2027. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Supervisor Katz. Here. Supervisor Hartman. Here. Supervisor Lavagnino. Here. Supervisor Lee.

Here.

And Chair Nelson.

Here. Please stand and join us in pledging allegiance to our flag.

Ready? Begin. God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

First item of business is our County Executive Officer Report. CO Miyasato, do you have anything to report this morning?

No report this morning, Chair.

All right, thank you. Madam Clerk, are there any announcements or changes to today's agenda?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, I do have a few announcements this morning regarding public participation. For members of the public wishing to address the board, they will have opportunity to provide comments at the conclusion of each functional group presentation. If you're registering to speak via Zoom, please indicate the specific functional group you wish to comment on during your registration. 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 general public comment, please refer to page two of the agenda. Individuals who wish to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance using the link provided on page two. Please note that Zoom is available solely for the purpose of providing verbal public comment and is not intended for viewing the meeting. Alternative viewing options are listed on page two of the agenda. 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 today.

All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Now it's time for the members of the public to speak on items that are not on today's agenda, which is going to be pretty hard since our entire budget's on the agenda. Madam Clerk, are there any requests to speak on general public comment?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we do have three requests to speak from the public and general public comment today.

All right, let's go ahead and get that started. And then let's close general public comment.

We will begin here in Santa Barbara with Gregory Lawrence Riker to be followed by Cesar Peralta. Gregory.

Welcome, Mr. Rucker.

Good morning, Bob, Chair, and the members. I'm here about this notice and other notices to vacate a property after... During the safe parking program, people are allowed to park in certain parking lots for the night. And there's some vehicles that pull in that are oversized that end up staying more time. And for two years, it's been pretty quiet at a parking lot over here in Goleta by the airport. And after one person comes in and trashes it, then it makes it a notice to vacate for everybody. And that's a reactive system. What I'm thinking about is a proactive system. And Rocky Nook Park has a steward or a park host. And there's unhoused professionals out there where they were displaced from their homes and in their vehicle. And a lot of times they're oversized. And there's a liability issue when they're on the street more than if they're in a park and stable. So with the Rocky Nook type of attitude, you could take the Adopt a Park program, which I know about, and then a stewardship commandeering partnership on an urgency situation to get these people, instead of liability driving on the road, It allows them to stay in a place but have it more structured where you have a few people that are professional on the property that are unhoused and put them on a board together, three people or five people, to decide who can pull in and stay. in a temporary basis, like a proving ground kind of situation, to see if it works. But when you put these systems together, it's not changing regulations. It's pretty much putting them together. Like my pass is equipment. I brought into Santa Barbara the sonar electronic locator. LIDAR SYSTEMS, VIDEO PIPELINE INSPECTIONS SYSTEM, AND THE TRENCHLESS TECHNOLOGIES. AND THAT'S ONE OF MY TALENTS IS CONNECTING THINGS. I DIDN'T INVENT THEM, BUT I BROUGHT THE SYSTEMS INTO THE INFRASTRUCTURE. SO IT'S ONE OF MY THINGS I CAN DO PRETTY GOOD IS SEEING THE OVERALL PICTURE AND PUTTING IT TOGETHER. AND THAT'S WHAT I SEE FOR THE STATE PARKING PROGRAM AND getting people more stable because this notice just displaces a bunch of people back on the street.

Thank you, Mr. Riker. That is your time, but we do have your contact information. I also believe our community services department, some of the members are here today. They may be able to reach out to you right away, or if you have a number where they can contact you, they can potentially follow up.

I have my phone, and I'm working on this. I have it till Sunday with a lot of people that are on that lot.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Riker.

Thank you.

We will now go to Cesar Peralta, then we will go to Zoom with LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt. Cesar?

Hello, my name is Cesar Peralta, and I'm here to request that the budget plan and all years that follow include the names and job titles to the employees of Santa Barbara, California, because I noticed that there has been three consecutive names that appear in the budget of 2021 to 2026, but they have no titles next to their name. Reese Elstad, Wesley Welch, and Stephen Yee. Reese Elsted is a person who recently blocked my public records request regarding the conversations done by email between me and Madeline Orr from the Santa Barbara Risk Management Team. I was given the attachment letters regarding my complaint for my false arrest, but I was denied the conversation that I had with the Risk Management Team. The City forced me to accept the settlement because the City Management Team claimed it was all the City can do that was within their budget for my wrongful arrest that caused permanent damages. For the past four years, the supervisors of Santa Barbara have ignored my request for an amended complaint to include damages and fines caused by the city employees. I was arrested in 2026 for failure to pay child support, but I had a separated AC joint, a winged scapula, and a long thoracic nerve damage. I was denied the right to introduce my x-rays and photos as evidence and the right to attend my civil lawsuit conferences. My arrest caused a $9,000 civil lawsuit fee caused by the city employees because my civil case was dismissed based on my absence due to my arrest. There's statute of limitations now and every person involved that represented my child has been funded except for my child, the mother, and myself. The SB courts got paid, the county jail got credits, the public defender and the DCSS workers all got credits for pretending to care about my child, but when there was no care. David Collins, Jennifer Diaz, Alicia received over a million dollars in credits for representing my child on behalf of the child services. There's too many people who have benefited off my daughter's case, and I feel like there's too many unethical and corrupt practices done by the representatives of Santa Barbara, California. It's not just the public defenders and the court representatives, but the city leaders and the supervisors are also taking advantage of the people. And I'm hoping that the extra $50,000 you paid yourself makes you 50,000 times more efficient this year to actually do something for the people instead of doing things for yourself.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Peralta.

We will now go to Zoom with LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt. And we just had a late request to speak from George Alvarez here in Santa Barbara, so we will go to George after LaWanda. LaWanda?

Good morning. Chair Nelson and members of the board, LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt representing Santa Maria Lompoc NAACP. Coming to you regarding the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund, the creation of one, we totally support it because it can help youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention program, and youth-led projects. And this is, the creation is from the Cannabis Tax Revenue. It's more than funding. The proposal would create a youth commission so that young people can have a formal voice in county decisions that directly affect them. It can help improve school attendance, academic engagement, college enrollment, and long-term opportunities for young people. We thank you for prioritizing this, and thank you for your time. Have a good day.

Thank you, Ms. Lyons-Pruitt.

And we will now go to Santa Maria for our final speaker, George Alvarez. George.

Good morning, everybody. I'm here on a very serious note. I didn't, during your process of giving things in the agenda, I didn't see it in the agenda. So my concern is a Serious one. I can stand here before you actually represent a large population base here in Santa Maria and Guadalupe in this issue. I received a letter that you will be closing our pharmacy here in Santa Maria. And I'm trying to figure out why. If we're going to transfer to Lompoc, it's an inconvenience for us to go to Lompoc to pick up our pharmacy things. But Why? We have over, I'd say roughly estimate 1500 people to get served here in Santa Maria. It's convenient. Large population base are minorities, Mexicans and whatnot. And I go for the three of you board members that are Democrats, that since you always preach that you're there for the people, it's a no brainer. You're gonna vote to keep it here in Santa Maria. Politics is a dirty game. I don't know if it's being played here or not. You're saving money. I don't know why. We're in a deficit owing retirement funds for the people that don't deserve it. Why should I be paying retirement or the farm workers paying retirement for your employees when we don't get anything for ourselves in general? So please do not shut down our pharmacy. It helps a lot of us old people get our medicine. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez.

And that concludes general public comment for today.

All right, with the conclusion of general public comment, we will now go on to departmental item number one. Madam Clerk, will you please read departmental item number one into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the County Health Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a public hearing for impacts to medical services provided by the County of Santa Barbara.

All right, thank you. Director Hamami?

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Supervisors. We're here to provide updates on some of the services that are going to be changing at our county health centers, and with me is Lindsey Walter, who is our Deputy Director for Clinical Services, and to my left is Gus Mejia, who is our Chief Financial Officer. So the reason we are providing this as a requirement of the Billingson Act, which requires a public hearing whenever the closing, elimination, or reduction of medical services. This hearing would present an opportunity for the public to provide input to the board before you adopt the budget as recommended. The California Health and Safety Code requires as well the Board to conduct a public hearing to discuss the closure, elimination, or reduction of medical services that are provided by the County. It additionally requires the Board to designate County Health to provide a 24-hour information service line to give eligible people immediate information on the available services and access to them, and to receive and respond to individuals and our patients who are eligible for services. We have established a 24-hour information line at 8.05. Oops, sorry. Thank you, Lindsay. We have established a 24-hour information line at 805-681-5100 to support our community during these changes. In order to help us address our ongoing budget challenges while preserving access to patient care, we are proposing changes to some of our clinical services. While some of these changes will be discontinued, changes will offer more choices, better hours, and more reliable access to many patients through expanded community partnerships. It is important to remember that our primary care access our sliding fee discount scale, and our financial assistance remain in place and will not be affected by those changes. We are proposing the discontinuation of in-house phlebotomy services at the Lompoc Health Center and the Santa Maria Health Center. Currently, these are the two centers that offer on-site phlebotomy services. These are blood draw and an acquirement of samples from patients. Santa Barbara Health Center discontinued on-site blood draw a while ago due to staffing limitations. We currently offer limited hours for phlebotomy services at Santa Maria Health Center, four hours per day, Monday through Friday, from 8.30 till 12.30, with the last straw at 12 p.m. The hours at Lompoc Health Center are from 7.30 to 5 p.m., but these hours change depending on the availability of staff. All collected samples are sent to Quest Diagnostics or Pacific Diagnostic Laboratories PDL for analysis. Results are then sent back to us and our providers follow up on patients. As an alternative, we were able to negotiate with Quest and PDL to perform the blood draws and sample collections from our patients upon referrals at their labs. This will offer a reliable, consistent scheduling and better hours as Quest and PDL are open early in the morning and later in the evenings. The availability of multiple nearby labs also provide accessibility that these are within one to two miles of our health centers and impacted locations and will improve access. And through our contract with Quest and PDL, our patients will not encounter any extra cost for these services. Pharmacy services in Santa Barbara and in Santa Maria will shift to community options and to the Lompoc Health Center pharmacy. resulting in extended hours, additional location options, and more flexibility for patients at the same rate that the county offers for discount pricing. We currently operate three pharmacies in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Lompoc health centers. Our pharmacies currently have limited hours Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. with no evening or weekend availability. We are proposing the closure of both pharmacies at Santa Barbara and Santa Maria and keeping one pharmacy at the Lompoc Health Center. We have contracted with Walgreens in Goleta, Lompoc, and two in Santa Maria to dispense prescriptions to our patients. This will provide patients that have health coverage better access due to evening and weekend hours. Santa Maria has a 24-hour pharmacy and locations that are within a couple of miles of our health centers. Patients will keep the same medication pricing they receive today. And for uninsured patients, the patient assistant program participants, they will continue to receive their medications with no interruptions through Lompoc and delivery to other clinics. Franklin and Carpinteria Health Center pharmacy services remain unchanged as our Lompoc Health Center pharmacy will be able to fill their prescriptions similar to how we were doing in the past. Some select specialty services at the Santa Barbara Health Center will be discontinued, with patients supported in transitioning to community specialists. These specialties include nephrology, urology, neurology, and gastroenterology. The Santa Barbara Health Center will continue to offer surgery, endocrinology, orthopedics, and infectious disease specialty services. These specialties are only offered at the Santa Barbara Health Center and are not offered at any other county clinic today. Our primary care providers in Lompoc and in Santa Maria coordinate the needs for specialty care through referrals to other specialists. A total of 792 patients per year are normally served through all these four specialties, of which 635 patients, or 81%, have some type of health coverage, whether it is CINCAL, which is the majority, or Medi-Cal or Medicare. Our patients in Santa Barbara have already been notified and are being individually supported by a clinical transition team that are coordinating their needs for specialty care. it is important to remember that these patients are still receiving their primary care services at our centers, and their primary care is fully available and unchanged across all our county centers. To support this transition in Santa Barbara, we have planned referrals to trusted available specialists within CINCAL Health Network. Our care teams are assisting with appointment coordination, medical record transfer, and transition of care support. Some of these providers we currently contract with and have agreed to continue to care for transition patients at their clinics. And some even agreed to provide the discounted sliding fee rates for those that are self-pay. Since our primary care services remain fully available and unchanged across all our centers, our providers and case managers will also be able to coordinate care and address any challenges patients might encounter through this transition. Patients will continue to receive communication, resources and support through health center staff and the 24 hour line, which again is 805-681-5100. Lastly, we do understand the effect of these proposed reductions on our team members. We have tried our best to support those who are affected And we are collaborating with County HR. Affected employees have been supported through job fairs, counseling, and transition sources. We remain committed to ensuring that all residents continue to receive access to safe, reliable, and affordable care. We ask the Board to approve these recommended actions A to C. And we are here to answer any questions.

All right, thank you, Director Hamami. Before I go to public comment, any initial questions from the board?

Supervisor Lavagnino. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So Director Hamami, can you just kind of explain the delivery system? I'm just kind of curious how that's all going to work. So let's say I'm a person in Santa Maria and I'm a current patient and I have an existing prescription. So I can either go to Walgreens? Or how's the delivery?

So very good question. Thank you, Supervisor. Let me start with the delivery system, because this is something that we currently do for Franklin and Carpinteria. Franklin and Carpinteria do not have their own pharmacy. When a physician prescribes, a provider prescribes a prescription, it is sent to the Santa Barbara Clinic. It is filled and our own carriers will take it back to one of those clinics and patients can come and pick it up when it's available. This transition period, we are focusing on those that do not have other options. That means those that do not have insurance. Those that have insurance can go to any of the Walgreens pharmacies, get their prescription filled immediately the same day with the same discount pricing because of our 340B contracts. Those that do not have insurance, the self-pay, will have the option for the patient assistant program to have their prescriptions filled by Lompoc and delivered to either Santa Barbara or Santa Maria where they can pick it. To the clinic? Yes. Okay. Okay.

Very good. Thank you.

All right. There might be a couple more questions, but let's go to public comment this time.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have two requests to speak from the public on this item. We are going to remain here in Santa Barbara with Leo Dacostas, and we will go to Santa Maria with George Alvarez. Leo?

And while Mr. Dacostas is coming up, let's go ahead and close public comment on this hearing, this item.

good morning chairman nelson and members of the board my name is leo de casaus and i'm here today representing sciu members who work in our county health department specifically in our pharmacies laboratories and specialty medical services Both our union members and the community we serve are deeply concerned and disappointed about the decision to eliminate and reduce critical medical services. These are not optional programs. These are essential services that thousands of residents rely on for their health and wellbeing. These programs being eliminated currently serve thousands across the county. who rely on consistent accessible care for their medical needs. The impact of these reductions is real and immediate. The county is proposing to rely on outside providers, including Walgreens, a non-union for-profit corporation. While assurances are being made about maintaining sliding fee discounts, there is no guarantee that these cost protections will be sustainable for the long term. The board letter indicates medications will still be available for pickup in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria. However, at the same time, pharmacy technicians, the ones responsible to administer these drugs to the residents, are being laid off. This raises a fundamental question I think Supervisor Lavagnino referred to in his question. Who will be responsible for safely managing and dispensing these medications locally? Even as of this proposal, over 2,000 patients have yet to select the pharmacy. That is thousands of individuals who are at risk of disruption in access to critical medications. In addition to pharmacy services, this proposal also eliminates specialty care, services that are not offered elsewhere very commonly. Patients with complex medical conditions will now be forced to navigate on their own an already strained external medical healthcare system. While we understand and sympathize with the county facing budget constraints, shifting care outward and reducing these services does not eliminate the need. It shifts the burden onto our most vulnerable residents, our most vulnerable patients and creates uncertainty. This proposal reflects a significant disruption to health care safety and continuity of care. Before you adopt this budget, we strongly urge the board to reconsider these extreme service reductions and prioritize solutions that protect health care. Thank you.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we will now go to Santa Maria with George Alvarez, and then we will return to Santa Barbara with Mike Stoker, who signed up before public comment was closed. George.

Okay.

yeah my again my concern basically is i have uh medical and whatnot so i'll be taken care of from that perspective in walgreens but the other population base isn't and we'll still have to go to santa maria to pick up the pharmaceutical drugs that they need the question i have is basically what drove this point of us being closed in santa maria isn't it would be logical to step back and say wait a minute we have this proposal what are the effects if we do it now can we wait to figure out exactly how we can generate information and give it to the population base that's going to be non-served meanwhile let it be 1500 2000 people that need to be educated as to where to go those who can't pay will have to be educated where the pickup is and what's going to be required of them. And it's chaos among that population base. It bothers me because we're a rich county. For every action we do, we have reactions. In this case, letting go some of our technicians, which do a fantastic job in Santa Maria. Insurance pays for that. I pay partial sometimes. I see others that don't pay anything. whatever program they're in, but they need to be served. And I think this is more of a need your quick reaction to save money. We all try to save money, but sometimes saving money hurts the population base. It hurts the people you serve, and it solves a problem that financially looks good on paper, but in the long run, people are gonna be hurt by this. Before you take that step, consider what's affecting the people that's gonna affect us in the long run. So please, I would hold off for a while and really study this before you pull the trigger. Thank you.

We will now return to Santa Barbara with Mike Stoker. Mike?

Mr. Chair, I just want to make sure I'm not confused. I came in late. We're focusing on anything on item one, right? Or are we just focusing on the pharmacies? Because I'm focused on healthcare clinics. It's the whole package.

Okay. I thought it was.

I just didn't want to make sure I had gone off script there. Chairman Nelson, honorable board members, the proposal before you would close specialty county health clinic care, county health care clinics that provide services in sports for specialty areas. As a result, a total of 792 patients will no longer have access to county provided health care as required by applicable laws. The staff report simply states, quote, patients affected by these changes have been notified and provided information about identified referral specialists. What the staff report does not mention is how many of the 792 patients have already transitioned, how many of the referral specialists identified will accept these patients, and what will happen to any of the 792 patients who do not have SenCal, i.e., the uninsured. The Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center has been informed that many of these identified referral specialists have not even been contacted yet by the county and at this point asking if they will accept SenCal or uninsured patients. The Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center strongly believes that many of these specialists will not accept SenCal patients and most likely none of them will accept uninsured patients that the county currently serves in the specialty clinics. The Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center believes that it is premature for the board to approve these closures and before the transition of these patients is completed. If the board wants to proceed in this direction, the SBT CAC would support these closures under two conditions. First, the closures do not happen until all 792 patients have transitioned to a specialist provider. And second, that these Providers have agreed to provide these services with no expectation of billing the county for the services. Until these conditions are met, either patients currently being provided with healthcare services will be left without services, and or the anticipated budget savings being represented to this board will not be realized as the county being invoiced by these private providers for these services that it will be legally obligated to pay will end up costing the county more for paying out services to referral specialists than rendering the services through the county operated specialty healthcare clinics. On behalf of the over 350 members of the SBTAC, we encourage you not to adopt the recommendations to close the county specialty healthcare clinics until these two questions can be answered to the board and to the public, which the Billingson Act envisions. Thank you for your time and consideration on this important matter.

Thank you, Mr. Stoker.

And Chair Nielsen, members of the board, there was some miscommunication on one of our members of the public, and we did have an additional request to speak that was approved by the chair. We are going to our final speaker, Troy Walton. Troy.

Hello, honored board of supervisors and board of trustees. Regarding Benson's hearing, Opposition to the closure of public health pharmacy. Good morning. Members of the board, my name is Troy Walton. I'm a resident of Santa Barbara and Hughes County of Santa Barbara Health Clinic for my health and prescriptions. I'm speaking here today to strongly oppose the elimination of our local public health pharmacy services. Losing the pharmacy is not a simple budget adjustment. It is a direct threat to the health and safety of our community's most valuable residents. For patients who rely on this facility, including low-income families, seniors, and fixed incomes, and those managing chronic health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. The pharmacy is a literal lifeline. Many individuals here face several transportation barriers, forcing them to travel further or navigate complex private pharmacy systems may simply go out of their life-saving medications. When people cannot access or afford their prescriptions, their conditions worsen. This change will inevitably drive up costs, preventable emergency room visits and hospitalizations, shifting the burden rather than solving it. I urge the board to reject these cuts, protect our public health infrastructure and keep this pharmacy open. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Walton.

And that concludes public comment on departmental item number one.

All right. Back to the board for some additional questions. Supervisor Capps.

Yeah. Dr. Homami, I know you referenced this in your opening presentation, but it just bears repeating. Can you just speak to the communication that has gone to the patients already? Just elaborate a bit more.

Yes, so as we mentioned, 81% of these 700-something patients have health coverage, of which probably the majority have SenCal. We have communicated with SenCal as well as with our patients about the changes, and we have acquired a list of providers that do accept SenCal as part of their managed plan and care for that. There are others, as I mentioned as well, where we have our current contracted specialists that said we will even see those in our private practices. Now, let's remember that some of these services are only offered through our clinics for four hours a month. So we're talking about a limited number of patient per specialty that are requiring transition, and several of our providers said we will be more than happy to continue seeing them. as well as several that did, and we have some emails that said we will continue to provide the discounted sliding fee scale. Now one thing to add is that Let's say a patient is struggling in finding a specialist. That is still our patient. That is still being seen by a primary care provider. The same way a physician, our physician or our provider in Santa Maria or in Lompoc is coordinating through all that, and we are not aware of any of them ending at the ER in Marion or in Lompoc Valley Medical Center. The same process is gonna be put in place, and we will closely monitor and make sure, and this is why we have a transition team that is now currently evaluating each one of these cases and ensuring that those that are critical and need immediate, we are coordinating with everybody, including the providers, ensure the continuity of care now with such transition would someone probably be more challenged or not as easy to follow up probably yes but this is why we have the transition team this is why we have case managers this is why our providers are going to be very much on top of the issue in making sure that they provide or they find a solution for that patient

Thank you. And can you speak to those patients that go to the pharmacies, what the communication has been to? I know, again, you've referenced it, but just to elaborate a bit more.

Yeah. In a similar way as well. We have signs at our clinics. We also have sent letters to our patients. informing them of the upcoming changes come July 1st. We have provided the discounted pharmacies, the four pharmacies that I mentioned with their addresses or where they can get those and all that, and also ensure that those that still receive medication through our patient assistant program would still receive those yes there will be a need for them to come and pick it up at our clinic but they already come and take it from our clinic so that is not going to be a major issue okay thank you

All right, thank you, Supervisor Capps, Supervisor Lavagnino. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I think that Supervisor Capps hit on the main thing for me is that, and from your answers, obviously understand this. So this, for us, we feel like this list needs to be really managed with case management. I'd like to get a report back to see how we're doing. I mean, you have a firm grasp in the numbers right now of how many people, you know, what the universe is and then who's going where. This is something obviously we got to keep our eye on the ball on as well so that we don't find out a year from now that 20% of the people never got covered. I think the pharmacy makes a lot of sense to me is that there's better access now. People still be coming into the clinic to get their medications. The phlebotomy makes a ton of sense to me. There's so many places you can go and get your blood drawn. So I just a report back to me would be the most important as far as continuing the outreach and then seeing how Successful we are with that outreach. So just trying to make sure no one falls through the cracks And if I may add Mr.

Chair and supervisors by eliminating or not offering these four specialties, that does not mean that we are not looking at different models, maybe different partnerships where we can offer a better service with more access, but with less burden on us from an operational cost. And these stocks have been explored and they're already in place.

All right. Thank you. I think it's important just to remind us all that this is not happening in a vacuum. You have a budget that you're trying to balance here. And so these cuts didn't come just because you were looking for efficiency measures. You had choices as a department on how to balance your existing staff, your existing services, patient care, and still have a balanced budget. Can you just speak a little bit more to just that whole process that your department went through in evaluating and finding these areas for efficiencies?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we presented at the budget workshop, we have been for the past several years experiencing a structural deficit. And that structural deficit has been supplemented by our fund balance, which is now at its lowest and probably will not be able to support our operations. added to it some of the changes that are happening on the federal and at the state level which added insult to injury and our deficit is too much to handle so whenever you're faced with that then you look at some of your operations where you can provide alternatives some of our costly operations that are too too costly to offer and there are other alternatives that might be more affordable and this is where you start looking at areas to balance the budget so pharmacy was was definitely number one because of the rising cost of operating three pharmacies and also some of the changes that the medicare renegotiated rates for drugs 10 drugs this year 25 the year after and so forth that are going not only to add deficit to our operations this year in the pharmacy but also put our operations more at risk in the years to follow to the tune of 1.5 million if not more So these are some of the unfortunate decisions that we had to do in order to preserve access to all our health centers. I think mistakenly some of the last speaker said we are closing health centers. We are not closing any of our health centers. Our health centers remain open. We are only reducing the four specialties at Santa Barbara and the two pharmacies in Santa Barbara and in Santa Maria. and lab services.

I think it's important to recognize that you guys have been eating away into your savings for quite some time, just like anybody's household. This is going to be a theme throughout today. This is not the only department that's working through this. and i think it's also important for the public to understand that um we are coming in with additional general fund this year in your department right so typically you're funded by state and federal dollars that are going towards public health programs but this year we're actually going to take general fund dollars to help supplement those programs this year is that that's correct yes and we appreciate the board for that so again this board is not taking any of this lightly, I think is the point and the message that needs to get out there for the public to understand that this is, these are hard decisions. These are efficiency measures that need to take place for us to have a balanced budget, which we're obligated to do. And so again, that's going to be an ongoing theme throughout today. Supervisor Capps, and then back to Supervisor Labanino.

Well, thank you. I appreciate the context setting that you just did, and I also appreciate the tough decisions that are being made. I know that you came from an extremely big system prior to this. I kept the number in my head. I believe you had, what was it, either nine or 15 county supervisors that you had to deal with? something with 15, is that right? Yeah. So and many, many health centers. And I know that you don't have to speak to this, but you're also looking at productivity rates as well because that means more reimbursement to the clinics. And so this isn't just the only systemic changes that you're looking at to improve efficiencies. And so if you do want to speak to any other strategies, you're welcome to. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I know that this is a painful one, a painful piece of it, but not the entirety of the ways in which you're looking at the clinics.

Yeah, thank you, Supervisor. Absolutely, this is a great point. I think one comment said that we needed more analysis or we should take our time. We absolutely did. And our analysis has exposed a lot of areas where we can improve, such as productivity, such as schedule maximizing, such as no-show rates, such as cancellation of appointments. All these are being addressed as we speak. But it also showed that 75% of our cost is through a maybe a little bit over relaxed staffing matrix. And we had to take that into consideration. We also looked at the services that are most costly and can be provided by others and will not cause any interruption or discontinued of care. And these are some of the decisions that went, the factors that went into our decision and into our budget.

Thank you. And I just note, first and foremost, the patients are on all of our minds and as well as the providers, many of whom we've heard from, our partner providers. And I know this is not easy. And everybody is served. And so if they're not served in these clinics, they go elsewhere. And we're all very mindful of that. And that is never lost on us. So thanks for the explanation.

Thank you, Supervisor Kapp. Supervisor Lavagnino.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and just kind of put things into a little perspective as well. This was actually proposed almost 10 years ago by Dr. Wada. And at the time, the board said, well, you have fund balance. We know we're operating at a loss. let's go ahead and continue moving forward. And I think maybe the right decision back then, but at this point, the fund balance is gone. We're still operating in a deficit. And for me, and I think for all of us, we're looking at this as cannot keep working in a deficit in this manner. We need to do the right thing so that we protect the other essential services that we all provide. So again, nobody's doing this. haphazardly. This is well thought out by our public health department, and I know we're going to keep our eye on the ball.

Thank you. I think this is just for the public that's watching out there. This is the same process has gone through with our other 21 departments as well. So I think this is this one public health that needs to have this public hearing as we talk with these cuts. But just to know that that we've gone through this painstaking process with all of the other departments as well as we tried to balance our budget this year and a rather tough fiscal year. So with that scene and no additional lights, I'll go ahead and take a motion. um for the recommended actions a through c so moved and i will second okay any further comment on the motion seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes unanimously okay so that concludes our our bilson act hearing and at this time we will go ahead This brings us now to our County budget hearing for the fiscal year, 2026, 2027. Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two and three into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board. Departmental item number two is from the County Executive Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding fiscal year 2026 through 2027, recommended budget hearings. And departmental item number three is from the County Executive Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the fiscal year 2026 through 2027, recommended budget for the County of Santa Barbara as successor agency to the former County of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency.

All right, thank you, Madam Clerk. We now turn it over to our County Executive Officer, Mona Miyasato.

Good morning, Chair Nelson and Board Members. As you know, today we bring forward the recommended budget for adoption, and this is a more difficult budget than in recent years, but it is also a responsible one. It protects core services, provides financial flexibility, and keeps the county positioned for uncertainty ahead. As your board knows, we reviewed departmental preliminary budgets and work plans in April and today you have the agenda listed in front of you. This budget reflects the work, the direction your board provided and the additional refinements that we've been working on for almost a year. So before I begin, I just wanna thank your board, our department directors and their fiscal officers their executive teams, and especially I want to thank the County Executive Office budget team for their work in a very challenging year. And if you don't mind, I'd like to acknowledge them by name. First of all, Katrina Fernandez, Steven Yee, Chantel Ding, Daniel Williams, Charlotte Mack, and Bruce Haas. And of course, you know, our budget director, Paul Clemente. This budget, next slide, please. This budget is not only about getting through this next fiscal year. It's about stewarding the county's long-term stability. So for the first time in more than a decade, we are reducing the operating budget after years of growth. That is difficult, but it is necessary. And our responsibility is to meet today's needs while keeping the county financially strong, to serve this community for years to come. As you know, this budget was built in a period of real fiscal pressure, and you just heard about some of it from the County Health Department. And as Chair Nelson said, every department has felt that pressure. Costs continue to grow faster than revenues, including employee costs, healthcare, insurance, technology, public safety, and a variety of operating expenses. And at the same time, federal and state policy changes are affecting both services and revenues. As I like to say, which is true, your board is being faced to adapt to decisions that are being made elsewhere in Washington DC and Sacramento. That combination, that fiscal pressure has required reductions across county programs this year. It also makes fiscal flexibility more important than ever as we look ahead. And we know these pressures are not unique to Santa Barbara County. Counties across state are facing major safety net impacts, and we talked a lot about this at the April workshops. HR1, the big beautiful bill, has had a significant impact. Its impact has shifted significant federal safety net costs to counties, while changes to Medi-Cal and CalFresh increased both service pressure and county workload. The governor's May revise offered limited relief. The legislature's proposal, which was adopted yesterday, helps in many areas, but we have to be reminded that much of that help is temporary. It delays impacts for just one year or still unresolved. And Mr. Clemente will talk more about the state budget on his slides. And we will return to your board once the state and federal picture is clear and after the governor signs the budget. But even as the broader safety net tightens, your board has worked a great deal to preserve the core, more than I've seen in my 12 years here. The recommended budget adds 7.4 million in ongoing general fund to restore critical positions, preserve key contracts, and leverage other funding. Across all funding sources, your board has saved 148.5 jobs. And again, that is remarkable. The budget also includes one-time funding to reduce impacts this year. also continues initiatives for vulnerable populations and provides additional funding for indigent healthcare. On indigent care, we'll talk a little bit more about that. The legislature's budget proposal does provide short-term relief by covering emergency hospitalization costs, but counties still remain responsible for other care, and the legislature's proposal is only for two years. So we'll need to see what the governor does in the coming weeks. And again, this does not solve every problem, but it helps keep our foundation intact. Even in a constrained year, this budget continues to invest in major community priorities. Those include behavioral health, interim housing, CalAIM, the northern branch jail replacement, public safety radio network, renewable energy, EV charging, artificial intelligence, technology modernization, and workday phase two. But the point is simple. Fiscal discipline does not mean standing still. It means choosing carefully and continuing the work that matters most. The county is in a stronger position today because of major long-term commitments made over the last decade that we have had time to carefully plan for and execute. And they're listed on this slide. And these decisions help the county meet our legal obligations, our mandates and priorities, but they also shape our current flexibility. And that is the nature of long-term stewardship. This budget includes 51.9 million in reductions countywide. Every department has legitimate needs and many have shown significant restraint by not asking for restorations or expansions they know would not be able to be sustained. Not every request can be funded and that is the hardest part of budgeting. Stewardship requires us to distinguish between what we can do, what we'd like to do, but what we must do to responsibly sustain the organization. Advocacy is asking government to invest in a single priority, but governance is deciding among everyone's priority for the short and long term of the whole community. I want to directly acknowledge the employees and families affected by these reductions. These decisions affect real people. They're not just positions on a spreadsheet and departments know that and they feel the weight of those choices. At the same time, we have a responsibility to all residents who rely on county services and to the full county workforce of over 4,200 employees. We owe employees both compassion and candor. Compassion and helping them affected employees wherever we can and HR will discuss later this morning our efforts to assist displaced employees and candor and not making commitments that we cannot realistically sustain tomorrow. The risks ahead are real. About a third of our budget is from federal and state sources. And we know federal grants are changing. There's new certifications, some of which we may not be able to make. And safety net reductions may continue. And as we know, the state still faces future deficits. And we know in Santa Barbara County, disaster risk is not hypothetical. It's always present. And we can't assume that future reimbursement or assistance will follow past patterns. That is why reserves matter. In uncertain times, reserves are just not excess, nice to have, additional numbers, they are our protection. Finally, this budget reflects responsible stewardship service to our community and the county organization. The oak tree is a fitting metaphor this year. It does not become strong in one season. It does not, it becomes strong through deep roots, careful stewardship and decisions made long before the storm actually arrives. And this budget follows the same pattern. It's not built in the easiest year. It is built to help the county remain strong through whatever lies ahead. And with this budget, we are meeting today's needs while preserving tomorrow's possibilities. And I wanna leave on a more positive note. And as I said, even though this is a difficult year, it does not mean we are standing still. And so I'd like to show a video that we produced to highlight what's happening in this year's budget.

The County of Santa Barbara's fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget totals $1.66 billion. Guided by the theme Responsible Stewardship Today, Resilient, Sustainable Tomorrow, this budget navigates fiscal uncertainty driven by federal funding cuts and state revenue shortfalls while protecting essential public services and maintaining strong reserves for future challenges. Let's take a look at some of the investments making a difference in our community. The county continues expanding housing opportunities through workforce housing projects on county property, pre-approved free ADU plans for the public, and streamlined permitting. A new 30-unit family village will provide housing for families with children experiencing homelessness, while Hope Village in Santa Maria and La Posada in the Goleta Valley continue providing 174 interim housing units with supportive services. More than $613 million is dedicated to safety net services that support vulnerable residents. Investments include expanding substance use disorder treatment capacity to 124 beds, designing two new crisis residential treatment facilities, and continuing mobile services that connect farmworkers and their families with critical resources. The county continues advancing criminal justice and jail diversion programs that improve outcomes and reduce jail populations. Efforts include early legal support to reduce jail stays and medication-assisted treatment to help incarcerated individuals recover from addiction, reduce harm, and prepare for a safer return to the community. The county is also advancing a $176 million Northern Branch Jail construction project to replace parts of the South County Jail to modernize facilities and support compliance with federal disability access requirements. In climate resiliency and sustainability, nine new solar projects are expected to generate enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 650 homes annually, while the county's electric vehicle charging network approaches 300 chargers countywide. The recommended budget includes $202 million in capital improvement projects across the county. Recreation improvements include new overnight accommodations at Halama Beach, new bathrooms at Rincon Park and amphitheater renovations at Kachuma Lake. In addition, flood protection improvements are underway along Mission Creek, as well as improved safety for people who walk, bike, and take transit in Isla Vista. The Clark Avenue Hardscape and Parking Improvement Project will revitalize Old Town Orchid, while the county's new South County Probation Building will centralize services and improve access for residents. These are just some highlights from this year's fiscal budget. If you're interested in taking a deeper dive into the projects and programs the county is budgeting for this year, check out the county's new OpenGov Digital Budget Book, made possible through Workday. This online application provides enhanced accessibility and interactive charts. Like an oak tree growing stronger ring by ring, the county's resilience has been built through years of prudent financial planning, careful decision making, and strategic investment in the future. The fiscal year 2026-27 recommended budget ensures Santa Barbara County continues delivering essential services and building a strong foundation for future generations so all can enjoy a safe, healthy, and prosperous life.

And with that, Chair, I'll turn it over to budget director, Paul Clemente.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. I am Paul Clemente, your budget director. And I'll start with the budget overview before we move into the functional groups. So here's the roadmap for today. I'll start by setting the context for the recommended budget because the numbers really only make sense when we remember the environment that we developed them in. Then I'll walk through the countywide operating picture, the CEO recommendations and final budget adjustments. After that, principal analyst Katrina Fernandez will provide summaries of each functional group. We'll pause after each one for public comment and any questions from the board. And finally, we will come back to the board for deliberations and board action. Here's how we got here today, and I'll go into this in a little more depth on the following slide, but we started the budget development process in December with a five-year forecast, reported back to your board in March with a preliminary budget outlook update, and conducted three full days of workshops in April. The governor released his May revise in the middle of May, and we released our own recommended budget at the end of May, which brings us to adoption hearings today. The purpose of this slide is to take a step back and really remind us of the road we've been on this past year. Last summer and into the fall, the county started seeing very real pressures show up in county health and social services. Some of that was tied to federal policy changes, some of it was long-term structural issues, and some of it was simply the rising cost of continuing to provide the same level of service locally. At that point, both County Health and Department of Social Services were looking at very significant reductions. Some of those impacts were delayed or softened, including through one-time general fund support, but there were still vacant position reductions in social services last November. By the time we got to the December five-year forecast, it was clear this was not just a department-level issue. The county was looking at a much larger five-year problem, a cumulative $66 million deficit, which included both the underlying general fund deficit and the added cost of trying to preserve current safety net services in the face of federal and state budget impacts. Since then, the board has taken a series of steps to address the problem. In March, the board confirmed a two-year budget strategy focusing on balancing the general fund while preserving the social safety net as much as possible. Then through the April workshops, departments brought forward reductions to balance the preliminary budget. Those actions made a significant difference. The five-year projected deficit came down from 66.4 million to 21.6 million. But that improvement came through a combination of difficult departmental reductions and the use of general fund support, including 16.8 million to help backfill safety net services and address future deficits. So the takeaway is that this budget and your action today did not come out of nowhere. We've been discussing these issues with your board over multiple public hearings for almost a year now, and this budget is coming forward in the context of those past conversations and strategies, trying to protect core services where possible, using one-time support carefully, and continuing to manage fiscal pressures with an eye towards the future. The main thing I would emphasize here is that this is a reduced budget after more than a decade of growth, as Mona mentioned. General fund dollars were very limited, so the strategy was to hold general fund contributions flat wherever possible and reserve ongoing capacity for the areas under the most pressure. We did make increases where the county essentially had to, jail medical care, indigent care, in-home supportive services, and jail construction debt service. To balance the rest, departments reduced funded positions, contracts, and services and supplies by a total of about $52 million. The board directed $7.4 million of ongoing general fund support into safety net services and set aside $9.5 million for the larger challenge in 27-28. The guiding idea was to help the most urgent services now without making next year's deficit worse. One-time funding was also provided for capital projects and additional protective services contracts and social services. Coming out of workshops, the remaining $1.6 million in one-time general fund and $780,000 in cannabis revenue was left to allocate, which I'll be discussing in later slides. This is a reminder that the recommended budget solves the immediate problem, but it doesn't make the structural issue disappear completely. The forecasted general fund deficits begin in 2027-28 and grow over the rest of the forecast period. The $9.5 million set aside is important because it helps us approach next year with a more stable starting point.

But even after that set aside, we still project a deficit.

And when we include anticipated additional health and human services shortfalls, the problem gets larger. We will update the forecast again in the fall. But right now, the takeaway is that the county needs to stay disciplined. Our labor cost pressures, new mandates, litigation risk, disaster recovery, and capital needs aren't going away. A major uncertainty is what happens at the state and federal level. The safety net programs are especially exposed because they depend so much on state and federal funding. The various state proposals do include some one-time funding for Medi-Cal and CalFresh eligibility workload, portions of indigent care costs and other impacts, but there is not a lot of ongoing relief in the proposals that we've seen, and the governor and legislature still need to agree on a final budget. On the federal side, which we won't know too much more about until the fall, there are proposed reductions that could affect health and human services, nutrition, housing, and other programs. The important point for today's budget is that we do not yet have final impacts. We built the recommended budget with the information available now. Departments will keep monitoring changes, and if a final state budget gives counties more relief, staff can return to the board with more options in the coming weeks and months. And Dr. Hamami, the County Health Director, is going to talk a little more specifically about a piece of the legislature's budget proposal that may have a positive impact on some of County Health's billing revenue.

Thank you, Mr. Clemente. Mr. Chair and supervisors, we are very encouraged by the legislative budget that if approved, promises to offer some relief into our budget for one more year. That would definitely support the deficit that we are looking at but also what we look at this as maybe an opportunity to transition as we are redesigning our workflow and maybe adjust our ratio of staff to providers and that would give us one more year of transitioning where we can increase the productivity and offer our providers a little bit more of a cushion of a support staff for an extra year. so hopefully this budget can be approved and if so then we are looking at increasing probably our nursing ratio and our front desk aops ratio and that can possibly result in restoring about 17 ftes thank you

With that context, I'll shift to the recommended budget itself. The next few slides are the countywide picture, what changed from workshops, what the operating budget looks like, how revenues are structured and where the major expenses are. The largest change from the preliminary budget is the restorations that came out of the workshops. The $7.4 million in ongoing general fund support is targeted to social services and county health, much of which will be used as a local match and is expected to bring in another $11.1 million in state and federal funding. The budget also includes $842,000 in one-time funding for protective services contracts and a $523,000 deferred maintenance funding swap in community services to retain parks maintenance positions. You can see that the recommended budget is about $20 million higher than the preliminary version and staffing is 148.5 FTE higher than was presented in the April workshops almost entirely because of the social services and county health restorations. Even after those restorations, the recommended budget is still significantly below the current year staffing level. Departments came into workshops asking to restore 175.5 FTE. The recommended budget restores 148.5 of those FTE through general fund support and other funding sources. But compared to the 2025-26 adopted budget, the recommended budget still has 299.2 fewer funded FTE, mostly but not entirely from vacant positions. Staff worked hard to save filled positions where possible through vacancies, transfers, and other options, but there are still some layoffs and that is an important human impact to acknowledge behind the numbers I'm presenting today. I'm going to turn it over to Human Resources Director Christy Schmidt to talk more about what the county has done and continues to do to mitigate the impacts of these layoffs on the affected employees.

Thank you, Mr. Clemente. Chair Nelson, members of the Board of Supervisors, this slide shows the change in the number of anticipated layoffs that we've seen over the last several months. Going into workshops in April, you'll see that we were anticipating that we might have up to 227 layoffs as a result of the submitted budgets. After board restorations and also through some normal turnover, we got down to 86. So that was a big change in the number of layoffs we were looking at. Currently, we're anticipating about 77 layoffs, but that is changing every day. We are being able to reduce that through normal turnover and placing employees in other department vacancies. We had one person step forward. We offered folks who would wanted to take a voluntary layoff. Maybe they wouldn't have been layoff, but they were willing to take it to go on to other opportunities. We had one person step forward for that. And so we are gradually chipping away at that number. In fact, I almost brought that number down today. We're just short of finalizing. A couple of people who've decided to move on, and that'll save a position. And then we have a couple of placements that are pending just within, I would say, 24 hours that'll reduce that number further. Next slide, please. In the meantime, we are laser focused on providing as much support as we can to affected employees over the last several months. We explored labor concessions with our bargaining units, and ultimately that was to try to generate some budget savings to save jobs. Ultimately, those were not successful, but we did put some efforts into that. and really did get some good consideration out of our bargaining units. We just ultimately did not get there. We have offered an additional month of county health benefits by making the layoff date July 1st. And so employees will be covered through the end of the month on their health insurance rather than just through June. So that was something we were able to do. We've been providing assistance to departments, I mean to affected employees in finding other employees. We had two job fairs and I'm going to just get you the statistics on that. Two job fairs, one was in Santa Maria and one was in Santa Barbara. I'm gonna recite these from memory. We had about 10 employers participating in Santa Maria, and about 43 of our employees chose to come. We also had employment resource groups, four different employment resource groups there. And in the South County, we had 15 employers come, and 37, I believe, employees, and five resource groups were there to also help employees to find, and this is outside of the county, We're also giving employees priority consideration for recruitments within their classification in other departments, and we've been able to see a lot of placements there. For example, we have a computer systems specialist from the Sheriff's Department who is being placed in probation. We have three administrative office professionals who've been placed in B-Well. and one additional in probation. We have several other placements and dozens of people being considered for placement in other departments right now that are in the works and are interviewing. So we are giving employees of course paid time off to go to those interviews with other departments and so we're having some success there. We'll continue to do that over the next several months. We've also offered one-on-one career counseling. So our recruiters are signing people up to talk to them one-on-one, to talk to them both externally and internally about job opportunities, including helping them with resume writing and interviewing skills. So that is support for finding other employment. In addition, we're having transition support. We gave every affected employee a full workbook of transition resources that include information about their rights and responsibilities, about unemployment insurance, benefits continuation. maintaining mental health during transition, and also about applying for and being reinstated to employment over the next several months here with the county. We've also held transition workshops covering that same information. We're doing that all this month in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, and in Lompoc and online. the in-person and online, and we're offering benefits counseling for employees, one-on-one benefits counseling to help them with their questions related to benefits, including unemployment and health insurance. We're also helping employees plan for rehire and reinstatement. If history is a tutor, it's taught us that many of these employees will come back to us and they will go on to careers with us long term. And so we want to make sure that we are focused in on helping them find those opportunities and um and understanding their rights to reinstatement and how to stay in contact with us and make sure that those opportunities are there for them when they arise so that is what we are doing to support employees i have a question all right i got a question here from the board supervisor lavenino

I'm just curious, is that 77 number before or after the news we heard about the state budget that we can't count on yet? I understand. But that was good news of 17 maybe coming back. So is that 7760 or is it 70?

That is without those potential restorations. So that would affect that number.

Awesome. Thank you.

Supervisor Capps.

Yeah, thank you for walking through those steps, Director Schmidt, and also for highlighting. I know it's a very tentative time, and if you're one of those folks, it's potentially good news, but it's also very angst-ridden to hear as well. So I just want to acknowledge that anxiety with the legislature, and we want to acknowledge our own legislators who i'm sure i know have been fighting for us and fighting for this county especially the leader of the senate um senator limon so we hope that the governor signs this package and i know we don't know exactly what that means in hour by hour for us but i know we'll stay on it my question for you is uh how many vacancies do we have in a population of 4 700 how many vacancies are there roughly

Roughly 200 vacancies. It varies time to time. But in any one time, we would have roughly 200 vacancies. Of course, not everybody's going to be qualified for all of those vacancies. We have some very specialized positions. But I believe the last time, maybe there's a, somebody has a current number.

I WANT TO SAY, I'M TRYING TO REMEMBER FROM OUR QUARTER 3 REPORT, ATTACHMENT C ON THAT, MY STAFF IS PULLING THAT UP, IT WAS AROUND 450 POINT IN TIME, BUT WE ARE CUTTING, I MEAN, 299 POSITIONS IN THIS BUDGET, MOST OF THOSE ARE VACANT POSITIONS AT THIS POINT, SO THAT NUMBER, WHEN WE GET TO OUR QUARTER 1 REPORT NEXT YEAR, I THINK IS GOING TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER.

469. Thank you. I mean, I know we're going to go throughout the day, and every number is a family, every number is a person, and we all acknowledge that fully. And thank you for explaining the steps and, again, for outlining as much as you can what we'll try to do as soon as we get word that hopefully, fingers crossed, the governor signs this legislative package, which does restore a lot of funding for the counties, including this one. Thanks.

Thanks, Supervisor Kapp and Supervisor Labanino. Mr. Clemente?

So this slide shows the basic revenue mix for the operating budget. The county has about $1.67 billion in operating revenues. The key point is that not all of that money is flexible. A large share comes from intergovernmental revenue, charges for services and program specific sources. Those dollars often have strings attached. So when we talk about the budget problem, it's not because the county has no revenue, it's because the flexible revenue that can be moved around is much smaller than the countywide total. Looking at the same revenue by fund reinforces this point. The general fund is the largest single fund, but major county services also run through special revenue and enterprise funds such as fire, behavioral wellness, social services, resource recovery, roads, county health and others. Those fund sources have their own legal or program restrictions, so we usually can't solve a general fund shortfall by pulling revenue from other funds. This is an important slide because this is the revenue source where the board does have the most flexibility. Discretionary general fund revenue is recommended at about $431.2 million next fiscal year, which is a 5.8% increase from the prior adopted budget. That sounds healthy, and in many ways it is. But the demands on those dollars are growing faster than the revenue. Labor costs, new mandates, jail medical, indigent care, safety net backfill, and capital needs, to name a few that we've discussed. Property tax does most of the work in our discretionary revenue at nearly four-fifths of the total. TOT, sales tax, cost allocation, and other revenues help, but they are much smaller and some are more volatile sources. That concentration is useful to understand. It means that when property tax is steady, it gives the county stability. However, it also means we don't have a lot of different large revenue levers to quickly pull when costs rise or when state and federal funding shifts. This slide connects where discretionary dollars come from to where they go. On the left, property tax, as I mentioned, is the main driver. On the right, you can see public safety receives about half of the general fund contribution. The rest supports the remainder of the functional groups between $26 to $67 million each. This is our $1.66 billion in operating expenditures by spending category on the left and functional group on the right. On the spending side, the budget is mostly people and services. Salaries and benefits make up about half of total operating expenditures, which is typical for a county government because so many services are delivered by staff. By function, health and human services and public safety are the two largest areas, combining for about two-thirds of all county expenditures. Total salaries and benefits are lower in the recommended budget than in the current adopted budget, mainly because of the reductions in the funded positions. But some cost pressures are still moving up, especially in health care, which we see increasing over $5 million, even with the reduction of almost 300 positions. Reducing positions brings down the total, but doesn't eliminate the underlying cost growth in salaries and benefits, which is part of why the budget can be balanced in one year and still show a deficit structural pressure in the forecast. Now I'll move into the CEO recommendations. First with the restorations and one-time uses that are already built into the recommended budget. Second, the remaining CEO recommended adjustments that are before the board for consideration today. I'll start with what's already included and then turn to the decision items. These are the workshop restorations in more detail. The biggest piece is social services, $5.3 million in ongoing general fund support that retain positions in child welfare and food assistance eligibility work and to restore two essential service contracts. The local investment there is expected to leverage additional state and federal funding. County Health received $2 million to restore medical assistant positions in the clinics and staff and animal services. Community Services, as I mentioned, retains four park maintenance positions through a funding swap using 18% deferred maintenance funding. So there was no additional general fund dollars that went there. And the District Attorney's Office preserved one attorney position that had been on their restoration requests. They did that internally through salary savings on a position reclassification. So a total of almost 150 FTE were added back into the recommended budget after the April workshops. This slide shows the $10 million earmarked for capital projects, projects like the Juvenile Justice Center in Santa Maria, Los Prietos Fire Camp water and septic work, the Lompoc Animal Shelter, Clark Avenue improvements, Mission Canyon Curve work, and various parks projects. Your board approved this list at the April workshops. The one caution is the Northern Branch Jail expansion. We didn't know what the cost of the bid would be when finalizing the recommended budget. So the recommendation is to earmark this list and then finalize the allocation after the MBJ construction contract is approved by your board. These are the remaining one-time decision items for the board presented as attachment A1 in the hearing materials. These are not already built into the recommended budget. They are being presented for discussion and adoption today. The proposal here uses the remaining available one-time general fund, cannabis tax revenue and other identified sources and incorporates much of what we heard in board deliberations at the end of the April workshops. The general fund side totals about $1.62 million, cannabis totals close to 781,000 and other sources total 555,000. If your board approves the adjustments as shown, it fully allocates the remaining one-time dollars. I'll walk through each of these in more detail on the next slide, and then we'll return to this table towards the end of this hearing today for board action. So the recommendations are to fund a second rural crime deputy for 267,000 one-time general fund, which will be focused on agricultural-based crime and homeless encampment liaison activities. Restoring the behavioral science unit manager in the sheriff's office to support co-response work funded with a mix of 180,000 one-time general fund, as well as $60,000 in BHSA dollars from behavioral wellness. A fourth co-response team intended for the North County area funded with $295,000 by the CCP. A warrant officer funded with $240,000 in cannabis revenue focused on serious and violent felony warrants. A film commissioner function as an economic development effort funded with $150,000 in cannabis revenue. One county council attorney to bring more litigation work in-house and reduce reliance on outside counsel over time, funded with one-time dollars over two years with $700,000 before the general fund begins picking up those expenses through the cost allocation plan, which would lead to reduced outside counsel costs. Youth education funding by supervisorial district, $50,000 each to be used how each supervisor directs within their district during the year, funded from cannabis revenue. So that's a total of $250,000. And a sheriff set aside of $812,000 that would come back to the board later for specific allocation. The set-aside does not decide the exact use today. It preserves a funding source for future board direction that could help address unanticipated labor or overtime costs, emergency needs that arise, or potentially restore some Isla Vista patrol positions on a one-time basis later this fiscal year. Attachment A2 is the cleanup layer after the recommended budget was developed. These are usually carry forward of unspent funds in the current year, appropriations connected to recently approved contracts, technical corrections or other updates that need to be incorporated into the adopted budget. The attachment increases appropriations by about $3.2 million across 11 departments. uh and like i mentioned examples would include recently approved contracts that weren't in the budget at the time but are now getting built in with this action so with that i can pause this section for questions or we can move on to the functional group summaries with ms fernandez i'm not seeing any lights here so let's go ahead and continue

Thank you. Good morning, Chair, members of the board. We'll start this morning with the Health and Human Services Functional Group. Health and Human Services is comprised of Behavioral Wellness, Child Support Services, First Five, County Health, and Social Services. This functional group represents 36% of the total county operating budget and comprises 39% of county FTE. However, because the Health and Human Services departments are funded primarily through state and federal sources, this group only receives 9% of the county's general fund contribution. Here we highlight changes to the recommended budget since workshops. Notable updates for this functional group include the $7.4 million ongoing and $842,000 one-time restorations made to safety net programs and the social services and county health budgets presented earlier by Mr. Clemente in his opening slides. Here's a summary of measures taken by each department in the functional group to balance next year's budget. During workshops, departments presented a preliminary summary of balancing measures that totaled $55.7 million. After restorations, the balancing measures remaining in the recommended budget totaled $37.3 million and include the reduction of 187 funded FTE. And that concludes the Health and Human Services functional group overview.

All right. I see any lights on some initial questions here. Let's go ahead and go to public comment on health and human services. Madam Clerk, are there any requests to speak from the public on this, these groups of departments?

Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have two requests to speak from the public on the health and human services functional group. We are going to begin here in Santa Barbara with Laura Robinson. Then we will go to Zoom with LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt. Laura.

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD, LAURA ROBINSON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SEIU LOCAL 620 REPRESENTING YOUR COUNTY WORKFORCE. I'M HERE TODAY HOPEFULLY FOR THE LAST TIME TO SPEAK ABOUT THE VERY REAL HUMAN IMPACTS OF LAYOFFS AND SERVICES REDUCTIONS CONTAINED IN THE PROPOSED BUDGET. FIRST I WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND EXPRESS APPRECIATION FOR THE 7.4 MILLION IN RESTORATIONS THAT HELP PARTIALLY MAINTAIN CRITICAL SAFETY OF SOCIAL SAFETY NET PROGRAMS FOR OUR MOST BORN AND RURAL COMMUNITIES. Those restorations matter, and our members and our communities see them. Unfortunately, they do nothing for the 84 employees that still received layoff notices late last month. And with the service cuts and position reductions still before you, I would not be doing my job as a labor leader if I didn't stand here today and fight for every single member I represent. So you're here today to adopt a budget, but yesterday our state legislator adopted their budget and includes over a billion dollars to backfill the adverse impacts of HR1 to counties. This includes additional IHSS funding, social service compliant funds, and indignant care funds. I've been struggling with that word. While reconciliation may alter some final details, I have to believe that our legislators, most of which are relatively competent human beings, would not invest so heavily in these programs without having the necessary conversations to ensure agreement could be reached. Unfortunately, given the timing, county leadership has not had the opportunity to thoroughly review the state budget and make updated recommendations based on this new information. We all make the best decisions, we all make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. But today, there is new information, and the reality is that this board does not have a statutory obligation to adopt the county budget today. We have until June 30th to complete this task. Given the stakes, I believe it would be prudent to pause, take a beat, and allow the CEO's team the time to review the state budget and return with updated recommendations. Sounds like some have already come in. That is reasonable and that is responsible because this budget has real human impacts on your staff and your constituents. A decision of this magnitude should not be made lightly or prematurely. Lastly, I would not be doing my due diligence if I didn't once again urge this board to invest a small portion of your discretionary or anticipated surplus funds into the existing BSIP program. This would help mitigate the impacts of layoffs to your loyal employees, people who come here every day to serve the community they live in, love, and support. They deserve that dignity. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Robinson.

We will now go to Zoom with LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt, who's our final speaker on this functional group. LaWanda?

Good morning again, Chair Nelson and members of the board. LaWanda Lyons-Pruitt representing Santa Maria Lompoc branch of the NAACP. We support public health. We believe healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Healthy people equal healthy communities. The PowerPoint. It looks good, it looks easy and it sounds great, but we beg to differ because it's not realistic. And we know that if there are reductions that someone has to suffer. I say that the employees that they're gonna suffer, I was a county employee. I went through two cycles where there were funding cuts. So I really understand this. There will be more work, longer hours. The morale will suffer as well as the health of the employees. I didn't hear anything about the front offices at any of the county clinics, but my understanding is that the staff in the front offices have been pretty much or will be pretty much decimated, non-operational. So who's gonna suffer also? The patients, the public health patients. Also, I believe that by contracting with Walgreens, wouldn't that be more expensive? Again, we support public health, we support their employees, but we ask you to just look at the full picture. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lyons-Pruitt.

And that concludes public comment on the Health and Human Services Functional Group.

All right, so questions from my colleagues for any of the department heads in this functional group? Supervisor Hartman?

Yes, I have a question for Director Nielsen about Adult and Aging Network and about the Kids Network. And as you're walking up, when were these established about how many people participate in each and how much would it cost to keep them going at a minimal level?

SUPERVISOR HARTMAN THROUGH THE CHAIR. THE KIDS NETWORK WAS ESTABLISHED BY THE BOARD IN 1991 AND THE ADULT AND AGING NETWORK WAS ESTABLISHED BY THE BOARD IN 1999. FOR A MINIMAL CONVENING TYPE OF ROLE WHERE OUR MANAGER THAT HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN THE PERSON INVOLVED WITH THESE PROGRAMS JUST PLAYED THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY CONVENER HOLDING MEETINGS, YOU KNOW, FOUR OR SIX TIMES A YEAR TO BRING THE COMMUNITY TOGETHER. WE ESTIMATE THAT IT WOULD BE A TOTAL OF ABOUT $42,000, $30,000 FOR THE KIDS NETWORK AND 12,000 FOR THE ADULT AND AGING NETWORK. I'M GOING TO ASK ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AMY KRUEGER TO GO INTO ANSWERING YOUR QUESTION IN MORE DETAIL AS FAR AS THE ACTIVITIES.

Thank you, Chair Nelson, Supervisor Hartman. We have a very robust representation in both networks. We have approximately 120 members and kids and 150 in adults due to the recent activity with master plan and aging has really, you know, increased our participation rates. So both of these networks are cross-sector consisting of multiple county departments, most of our county CBOs, stakeholders, service providers, and both of them are focused on really looking at how do we align our priorities in our county, make sure we have cross-sector representation, participation, looking at how do we build capacity, address emerging issues, align our approaches to serving these populations, And again, very much valued by all of our stakeholders as a way to come together and share data, resources, training, and again, really look at how do we align our resources to get the best impact to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families, and disabled and older adults, respectively.

And the Kids Network produces a scorecard. Kids Network, yes. It gives us kind of a sense of where we are and focuses all these different 150 people sort of on the same set of data and where we're headed.

Yes, absolutely. That is one of the primary activities. About every five years we do data analysis, research, and then produce that publication to help inform your board as well as all of our community as far as how are we doing in serving the needs of our kids and youth in our county.

And then as far as the adult and aging network, we just produced that master plan for aging. There's a lot of momentum, a lot of organizations. I mean, we held a meeting that just dissipates if we don't continue holding this group together.

Yes, so as you have been very much involved, you know, we've recently produced that Aging Well in Santa Barbara County, kind of the assessment and then the plan, the master plan for aging in our community and the Adult and Aging Network is pretty much charged with implementing that plan and that is, you know, how we do that is by bringing all of our partners together and identifying the roles for each respective agency, and again, aligning all those efforts and measuring our progress. So yes, that is something we've just done, and it is a very critical time for implementing that plan. Thank, yeah.

NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. NEW SPEAKERS. AND SO IF THE BOARD WANTS US TO CONTINUE WITH THESE NETWORKS, WE CERTAINLY CAN, AND THERE'S NO COST RELATED TO THAT MANAGER BECAUSE WHATEVER WORK SHE DOES FALLS WITHIN THE UMBRELLA OF OUR FUNDING, SO WE WOULDN'T NEED MORE MONEY FOR HER, BUT IT WOULD TAKE HER AWAY FROM THE WORK THAT WE HAD PLANNED HER TO DO, AND THAT'S FINE, WE CAN WORK THAT OUT, BUT THAT WOULD BE A COST IN A WAY. AND THE OTHER THING IS THAT RELATED TO THE KIDS SCORE CARD AND THE MASTER PLAN ON AGING AND ALL OF THAT WORK, THOSE ARE ACTIVITIES THAT WOULD BE AT A HIGHER LEVEL THAN JUST KEEPING CONVENING OCCURRING, AND SO THE FIGURES I QUOTED TO YOU OF $40,000 AND $12,000 OR I THINK $30,012, THOSE COSTS WOULD GO HIGHER IF THE BOARD WANTED US TO CONTINUE TO ENGAGE WITH THE COMMUNITY AND HAVE THOSE SORTS OF PRODUCTS BE THE RESULT OF THOSE NETWORKS. and what would that cost um it would depend upon the scope of of um i mean it would all be it wouldn't be related to any of the manager's time it would all be related to the activities of bringing people together producing reports having contractors doing data research doing surveys that that sort of thing and so the costs would kind of vary um SINCE WE JUST GOT THROUGH WITH SOME OF THAT WORK WITH THE SCORE CARD AND THE MASTER PLAN ON AGING, THAT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE ON THE RADAR NECESSARILY QUICKLY, BUT IN THE FUTURE. AND SO IF THE BOARD WANTED US TO CONTINUE AND TO DO SOMETHING BEYOND JUST CONVENING, One possibility would be to get board approval on a project by project basis that we could put a cost associated with it for the board to decide, did they want to fund that? I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman and Mr. Nielsen. Supervisor Lavagnino, and then I have some questions about this item.

Okay. I actually see a lot of value in continuing to convene these two organizations. A lot of our CBOs and our service providers are really kind of going through the same thing that we're going through today. They're looking at their budgets and they're under the same, they're looking at us to kind of pick up the slack and we're looking at them to kind of fill in the holes. And being in those meetings is, It's a really good way to kind of gauge the temperature of what's happening in the community. I understand that we're not gonna be able to do the full boat next year or maybe the year after that, but I would really look to, at least from my perspective, I do see a lot of value in sitting down and talking to each other, we're working on the same goals. It really stops a lot of the duplication that we see out there. WHEN WE'RE AT THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING FOR THE KIDS NETWORK, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT PROBABLY 20 OR 25 OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS OF THE BEST COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS THAT WE HAVE, AND IF WE DON'T, IF WE'RE NOT THE CONVENER, WE ACTUALLY KIND OF TOSSED IT OUT TO EVERYBODY ELSE, LIKE, HEY, COULD YOU GUYS DO THIS? WE'RE ALREADY UNDER STRESS. YOU GUYS ARE CUTTING OUR GRANTS. You know, I threw this out there before. I know you said you could cover it, but then you'd have backfill issues with other things that she might be doing. I've got an available source of funds to be able to do this if that's what it takes. I've got some money in the 990 and I won't be here much longer. So we can talk about that with our budget director and figure out how that needs to be done. But I think it'd be a big mistake for us to kind of walk away. I mean, shoot, Kids Network's been around since 1991, you know? And we've been through probably worse situations financially since 91. And I just hate to see that get cut. So even at the limited scope that we're talking about, I think it's really important for us to find a way to make that happen. So appreciate. THE OVERVIEW OF IT.

CERTAINLY. AND JUST TO BE CLEAR, YOU KNOW, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE BOARD DECIDES TO DO, THERE WILL BE NO ADDITIONAL COST RELATED TO STAFFING RELATED TO THE MANAGER BECAUSE IT'S WHAT WE DO, IT'S WHAT WE'RE FUNDED TO DO, THESE TYPES OF ACTIVITIES, GREAT SIGN OF THAT UMBRELLA, IT WOULD ALL BE RELATED TO PROJECTS OR COMMUNITY EFFORTS.

Yeah, and really as far as the scorecard goes and those types of things, I mean, I know they're important, but I do think that's something we got to pause for a couple of years and just what we have to save is the crux of it. And then we can adjust as times get better.

So I've got a quick question that I'll go back to Supervisor Hartman here. So I want to kind of dial in on what you said initially was that the staff member, the manager that was in charge of that, Is it going to be moving over to which division?

The manager is within Adult and Children's Services and would, for the coming year, would just be taking on work that was left by the manager that left and a reorganization of the work as a whole within that branch. if we continue with the network to whatever extent time that manager is now dealing with kids and adult and aging, we just figure it out within the remaining managers within Amy's branch of adult and children services. So it's just really a matter of prioritization of work at the manager level.

And that's what I'm trying to get to right here is that my understanding is that you guys are being cut to the bone in your child services division. And so I'm concerned about taking that person that we're now sending over to child services pulling them away in their time and energy to go work on Kids Network, which has value, but what's the primary value here? And if we're already deep into the bone on child services, I don't see how you guys have the money to bring that person over to something here. It's nice to have, and it's something that we should do, and it should be something your department convenes. I definitely agree that you guys should be bringing those people together, but I'm not sure. how you do that when you guys have so many needs already in the child welfare services side. So, cause it seems like you guys would need a backfill. You guys already need backfills. It's already in our budget. So how are we opening up a basically another position there within your department on child welfare for gonna move over to the kids network?

So Chair Nielsen, really within my department for quite a long time, the workload has been such that it's a constant prioritization of what's most important. Sure. And so when Assistant Director Krueger and I spoke about the possibility of this a few weeks ago and said, you know, if the manager's time gets redirected back to these networks for maybe 20 or 30 percent of her total time, how is that going to impact plans and you know her answer was you know we'll just prioritize you know we'll continue you know that it's it's there's always more to do and always important things that are falling to the side and and so this would just play into that but we will certainly make it work and the good thing about managers is they don't require being paid overtime so We get the work done that has to be done and we'll make it work if that's the board's decision.

No, and I get that. And I know you guys are going to take that from us and take that seriously. But what I was hearing in earlier discussions is that the way we are right now, we're not sure if we're going to be able to make our monthly appointments on some of our children that were under our care. We're not sure if we're going to be able to move forward with some of our foster families and our adoptions quickly because we don't have that capacity. I would much rather see our scores improve and that manager work on making sure kids get adopted than having the Kids Network. So saying it will work, you'll make it work, I appreciate that, because you guys are very nimble if it's a priority of our board, but I'm telling you, my priority are those areas higher than the Kids Network. Kids Network has value, I'm not disagreeing there, but as far as prioritization, when we're gonna be seeing those delays increase significantly under this budget, I don't know how in good conscience we can pull away from those services that are already suffering to fund something that's convening, which is important, but not nearly as important as the foundational functional services of that department. So we can't just make it work on that side. I'm not sure how we can make it work on the other. Eventually resources are finite. So I guess that's the discussion. Okay, Supervisor Hartman.

Yeah, well, I agree with both my colleagues. And as we all know, budgets are moral documents. I think the Kids Network and the Adult and Aging Network, someone sent, we've received many emails, but one person described it as a relationships-based infrastructure built over years that cannot easily be rebuilt once lost. It has tremendous value in pulling a lot of disparate efforts under one umbrella. That kind of communication is extraordinarily important. And these are social safety net services. So what I would put on the table is, the fulfillment money that's sitting there, $190,000 that we give away to chambers and visitor bureaus, and we don't even ask for performance standards. I mean, if you ask me what is the better way to spend our money, that's what I would say. Or, as much as we might like a film director, I would rather invest in children and aging adults. I am just putting it out on the table if we are talking about priorities. I want to protect children in social services, but I think we can find some other money for higher priorities in our budget.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Thank you for putting your cards on the table.

Yeah, and I totally agree with you, but I kind of got to go. As soon as you brought that up, I just looked at the list, and I'm like, okay, well, what's more important than kids? A second rural crime deputy, I support that. A BSU manager, a fourth co-response team, I support that. A warrant officer, yes, because it's protecting kids that are out in the community. You know, youth education funding.

That's the problem.

Everything's important. and limited resources in a time when all the things that the County provides are just essential services for the most part. And so I think that's the focus that we have to have today. Honestly, I understand your concern, but if I've got a director telling me in a tight budget that he can get it done, I'm gonna hold him accountable that it does get done with the resources. If he's not asking for additional resources, and I'm offering them, I don't know what they would do for you, but I am offering them, but I totally get your point, but we could zero out the rest of this and put it all towards child welfare. I think we've done an amazing job so far in protecting the kids under our care with the changes that we made and the $7 million commitment we made to move to general fund dollars over there. So yeah, today is a balancing act. It's not gonna be easy. but I'm gonna take Director Nielsen at his word.

Balancing Act and a wrestling match.

Just to be clear, Supervisor Levinello, through the chair, I don't need additional resources for the staffing. I would need those small dollar amounts for the supplies related to doing those convenings.

Okay, thank you, Director Nielsen, and thank you, Supervisor Levinello and Supervisor Hartman for the discussion. All right. I believe that is questions for this functional group. The board can also bring back some of these department heads later when we get to the end as well. So I think at this time, we'll go ahead and move to our next functional group.

Thank you, Chair. Members of the Board, the next functional group is Community Resources and Public Facilities. This functional group is comprised of the Agricultural Commissioner, Weights and Measures, Community Services, Planning and Development, and Public Works. This functional group makes up 19% of countywide operating expenditures, 13% of total county FTEs, and receives 7% of the county's total general fund contribution at $28.1 million. The one notable budget update for this group is the $523,000 ongoing restoration of four community services maintenance positions using existing 18% deferred maintenance funding. Here's a summary of the measures taken by each department in the functional group to balance next year's budget. Again, these are the same measures presented at workshops less the four FTE restoration for community services. Balancing measures remaining in the recommended budget total $2.4 million and include the reduction of 5.75 funded FTE. And that concludes community resources and public facilities functional group overview.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Fernandez. Questions from the board before we go to public comments? Professor Hartman.

Yes. I would like to have Director Armas come and talk about this fulfillment fund.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, Jesus Armis, Community Services Department. As we reported during the April workshop, the county has been funding a variety of chambers throughout the county for quite some time. We've been allocating approximately $190,000 per year for the last decade. Prior to that, it was slightly more, but it was reduced during the last round of recession cuts. As indicated in April, the largest amount is directed toward Visit Santa Barbara and following which it's Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce. Visit Santa Barbara receives approximately 75,000 and the Santa Maria Chamber receives slightly more than 39,000. There's a descending order there with the Los Olivas Business Organization receiving the smallest amount, slightly over $1,100. as I indicated in April, again, reiterate this morning, those are entirely discretionary dollars and can be allocated as the board deems appropriate.

And are there any performance measures? Do we get anything?

We do get some limited data, but nothing that allows us to actually measure a direct quantifiable return on that investment.

Now, Visit Santa Barbara, they get the largest amount. Now they used to have a film coordinator, director, and they let that function go. Do you have any knowledge about that history?

I do know that they did perform that function years ago. I'm not certain whether it was dropped at their request or at the county's request. I don't have that direct information.

Thank you.

uh director almas let me uh i don't see that number but i know we also have an mou with reach um is that i know that's kind of in the chamber economic development side

THE 190,000 THAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED DOES NOT ENCOMPASS THAT ORGANIZATION.

CAN YOU HELP ME OUT WITH THAT? I THINK WE GAVE THEM SOME INITIAL FUNDS, BUT MAYBE THAT WAS JUST A ONE-TIME.

WE HAVE NOT IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS.

OKAY. BUT WE STILL HAVE AN MOU WITH YOU, BUT NO ONGOING FUNDING.

WE HAVE AN MOU REGARDING VANDENBERG.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

SUPERVISOR HARTMAN. I BELIEVE WE HAD A CONTRACTOR WITH REACH. THAT IS, WE GOT SOMETHING BACK FOR THE MONEY. IS THAT NOT CORRECT?

DON'T DISAGREE. Okay, thank you. I was just curious if there was any ongoing funding in that bucket of economic development, which that should be, I mean, that's the intention of the board is for that to be economic development. All right, thank you, Director Armas. Let's go ahead, Madam Clerk. Is there any public speakers for this functional group?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have no request to speak from the public on the community resources and public facilities functional group.

Right. Any other questions on this functional group? Again, we can come back to them later on in the meeting as we go into deliberations. Okay. Seeing none, let's keep rolling right into community resources and public facilities. Madam Clerk, or sorry, Ms. Fernandez, would you please continue?

Thank you, Chair, members of the board. Our next functional group is public safety. Public safety functional group is comprised of court special services, district attorney, buyer, probation, public defender, and sheriff. This functional group makes up roughly a third of countywide operating expenditures and 37% of total county FTE. The group receives 50% of the county's total general fund contribution at $215.2 million. There's been one notable update to the DA's budget since workshops. The department was able to self-fund the restoration of a specialty court's attorney through the reclassification of another position. Here's a summary of measures taken by each department and functional group to balance next year's budget. Again, these are the same measures presented at workshops, less the one FTE self-funded restoration for the district attorney. Balancing measures remaining in the recommended budget total $9.4 million and include the reduction of 46.5 funded FTE. Here we have a summary of the restoration requests deferred to hearings, all of which are from the Public Safety Functional Group. The district attorney requests totals $122,000 to restore one FTE for data discovery. The sheriff's requests total $3.9 million to restore 24 FTE across various divisions, including the Isla Vista Foot Patrol, custody records, cooks and custodial services, computer and crime scene support, dispatch, and administration. These requests were presented at budget workshops and are not included in the CEO's recommended budget.

that concludes the public safety functional group overview all right questions from the board or we go to public comment i'm correct we have any public comment on this item chair nelson and members of the board we have four requests to speak on the public safety functional group okay i'm gonna go ahead and close public comment on the public safety functional group and would you go ahead to our first speaker we are going to begin here in santa barbara with lynn gibbs to be followed by cheryl smith lynn

Chair Nelson and supervisors, I serve as public policy director of NAMI Santa Barbara County and an advisor to Families Act. And we want to thank the county CEO and behavioral wellness and you for recognizing the importance of the behavioral sciences unit and the BSU manager's position within the sheriff's department. That position is much more than administrative. It orchestrates, directs, and manages the functions of the co-response program and the CIT Academy. And perhaps most importantly, it has served as a lifeline for community members at the most serious risk. And so we greatly appreciate that. And continuing that position in co-response into the coming year will provide that year for us to figure out how to make those programs sustainable. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Kipps.

We will now go to Cheryl Smith to be followed by Mike Stoker. Cheryl?

Hello, Chairman Nelson and supervisors. My name is Cheryl Smith. I am on the NAMI Board, and I'm also a Behavioral Wellness Commissioner. And I'm here today to say thank you. This budget has required difficult and painful decisions. Throughout this process, you have heard from departments, organizations, and community members seeking restoration of funding and extensions for programs we can all agree are important. Every attempt has been made to meet this year's budget constraints as equitably as possible through shared decision making. I specifically want to thank you, though, for considering the recommendation to continue funding another year of funding for the Sheriff's Behavioral Services Unit under Dr. Lee and for continuing support for a co-response team. These investments reflect an understanding that public safety and behavioral health are not separate issues. They intersect every day in our community. Dr. Lee and the Behavioral Sciences Unit have earned respect not only within Santa Barbara, but nationally. The unit supports deputy wellness, training, crisis response, and some of the most challenging situations law enforcement encounters. Just as importantly, it is a program that deputies trust and use. The co-response model likewise continues to demonstrate the value of bringing behavioral health expertise into the field alongside law enforcement when responding to individuals in crisis. In a year when difficult tradeoffs are unavoidable, I appreciate your recognition of the value of these programs provide to deputies, individuals experiencing behavioral health challenges, and the community as a whole.

thank you for your leadership and for the thoughtful work that went into this year's challenging budget decisions we will now go to mike stoker then we will go to zoom with ivan vega mike chairman nelson honorable board members the santa barbara county taxpayer advocacy center and on behalf of our over 350 members oppose the proposed budget cut of 4.9 million to the sheriff's office budget which will lead to the elimination of 30 full-time equivalent positions, 11 of which are sworn deputies. The SBTAC acknowledges the budget restraints you are working under. However, it comes down to a simple question. What are your priorities? The SBTAC believes this board has shown in recent times by a number of actions that public safety is no longer the number one priority of your board. We have seen over the last five years a much more hostile approach in public forums by your board in dealings with our sheriff, Bill Brown. And we've seen that when hard decisions have to be made, the commitment to our deputy sheriffs is not what it was in the past. In a recent board hearing, when each of you was asked what was your top priority, only Chairman Nelson said public safety. Instead, the focus has been on overtime, which suggests the sheriff may not be properly managing his department. The SBTAC believe many board members use the overtime issue to shift the focus away from the board's lack of support for the sheriff and the sheriff's office. The fact is there are several independent studies that each of you are aware of, all of which concluded that the sheriff's office does not have the number of FTEs necessary for the sheriff's office to carry out its statutory duties. All these studies concluded that the sheriff's office is several dozen FTEs short. With these proposed cuts, the deficit will be even greater. Enough of overtime and back to the budget. The SBTAC urges you to publicly prove that public safety, and in this case your sheriff's office, is your top priority. If it is, you will hold them harmless when the budget cuts in these difficult times. If not, cutting 30 positions in the sheriff's office will be one more action in sending a message to the public, future potential recruits, and to our existing deputies that when times are tough, you just don't have their back. To the extent that you do move forward with these cups, the SBCTAC believes the Board has one option available that you could pursue that will help you in adopting the balanced budget staff as recommended in the short term, but send a message to the Sheriff's Office as a top priority. You could direct staff that when the unanticipated revenues and property taxes from Sable Offshore, which are not included in this year's revenues due to the Board's opposition to Sable, are collected, those revenues will be the first dollars returned to the Sheriff's Office budget to restore funding for the FTEs being eliminated. You know, and I may just add one last thing, something for you to think about, not for this budget, but between now and next year's budget, and I know you've done in the past. City of Carpinteria just finished a survey of priorities for their city council to make a determination. Public safety came in far and away number one. And I think between now and next year, this may be a great time to have a survey of the county. I am completely convinced there's no question public safety will be number one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stoker.

We will now go to Zoom with Ivan Vega, who is our final speaker on this functional group. Ivan? And Ivan, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. Ivan, we've unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. Chair Nelson and members of the board, unfortunately it appears that Ivan is having some technical issues. So that concludes public comment on this functional group.

All right. Mr. Vega will be here all day, or at least for the next couple hours. So if you wanted to chime in on public comment, will be available to you. Okay, some questions from the board in this section, Sue Rezlevenio?

Yeah, I just want to highlight a couple things in the sheriff's budget. I know one of the recommended uses is the second rural crime deputy, and just want to point out that You know, there's, I think one of the reasons, and it's a big shout out to the mental health advocates in Denomi, the reason why we have a fourth co-response team, why we have one co-response team, is because you've come here every meeting that we've had this issue and held our feet to the fire, talked about stories about how life's improving when we do have co-response. And now when you look back, after not that many years, we're on a fourth co-response team, which is awesome. And I appreciate you being here today and acknowledging that. At the same time, we've had one rural crime deputy. And the reason why we don't have two, three, four, or five is because Those folks are on the farm. They're working and they're not here telling us, Bob and I hear about it a lot. Guys will show up to, they're gonna harvest the field for the day. There's no tractor. The tractor they left in the field is gone. It's somewhere in the riverbed. They go over to their well. Why didn't this field get irrigated? It's because some guy came along and took all the copper wiring out of the well. They call for our help. We have a great rural crime deputy, but one for the entire county. And so just want to talk about that so that we can defend that position. I think that is really needed. I also just want to talk about, just for a second, because it's come up a couple of times when people said that public safety wasn't my number one concern, or when we asked that question. I just figured that goes without saying. The public safety budget is 50% of our county budget. 50% of all general fund dollars go to public safety. And there's other aspects of public safety besides more sheriffs, more firefighters. When I was asked what my number one priority was, I said child welfare. And I think that is an aspect of public safety. You leave a kid in a situation that is not healthy, it's going to be a public safety issue in the future. I know this is time for questions, but it's on the top of my mind, and I am getting a little bit into the old aging network. So I better say it when I remember it. But I had the unfortunate circumstance last night of watching a documentary. I was on an eight year old kid and his mother systematically neglected him, abused him and ended up finally murdering him. And it was in another state and there were calls made to social services. The kid was eight years old and weighed right around 30 pounds. And so those situations are out there. That's why it's so difficult when people say, well, what's your number one priority? A kid didn't have a chance. So that's what we are trying to avoid. And I do think that that is a public safety issue. And so while I fully support the Sheriff's Department and fire, all of these things that we're doing are very, very important. And for me, the fact that One out of every $2 goes into that department, I think shows everybody our commitment to making sure that people feel safe when they go home.

Thank you, Supervisor Labanino. Supervisor Herman, then Supervisor Capps.

Let's see. Well, I'll echo what my colleague Supervisor Lavagnino has said. We do really need a rural crime officer. I've talked to people who warehouses hundreds of thousands of dollars are stolen from gangs up from L.A., stealing irrigation equipment, stealing pesticides, stealing things that are, you know, really, they're locked away, but they're remote, and so it's very difficult to put a system in place to monitor that. I do want to say that I, as the description in the budget proposal says some of this funding or some of this time of this person should be spent in the riverbeds. I know we're working in Lompoc for a joint agreement between our sheriff's office and Lompoc PD to get once every two weeks or so a team out there, but we've spent an enormous amount of money, just $400,000 on cleanup and more than that on counseling, getting people out. And that is all for naught if we cannot maintain some kind of a patrol, some kind of monitoring. And so I really think that, I hope the board will support the rural officer also doing that once every couple weeks as well, because we just need more coverage there. And I would like to emphasize my belief as well that public safety is much broader than just arresting people and putting them in jail. That's kind of the last deterrent. But our sheriff's budget, if I have it right, we've gone from about a quarter of our general fund to about a third of our general fund. It's not like we aren't funding the sheriff's piece of it, but the sheriff kind of gets all the decisions at the end of the pipe that aren't working upstream. And if we don't start doing things upstream, we're never going to get ahead of it. And so the investment in the social safety net services is exactly that. And I know our sheriff has been at the forefront in terms of mental health and trying to address that. And if kids don't have enough food to eat, if they don't have enough health care, if they don't have the support services to help their families get by, then they end up in trouble. And then they end up in, you know, arrested and in jail. And that's a lot more problematic trying to restore people, retrieve it. It's better to invest up front. And so, again, I think a budget's a moral document. And what we're trying to say is we want to invest upstream as well. And I guess that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Capps.

Thank you. I do have a question, and thank you to Mr. Stoker to get the ball rolling here. No surprise. Well, no one looked forward to this day. It's been kind of looming on the calendar for a long time here, June 16th, because this is tough. It's tough at the city level. It's tough at the county level. It's tough everywhere. And as our CEO said, put into good context. This is really us grappling with decisions that are largely made elsewhere, but also the burden is on us. But I think it's really important to set the context straight that while we are making the final decisions, these recommendations came from the very capable directors. While we are ultimately bearing the load of these cuts, and no one wants to make cuts to personnel, we always try to avoid that. These personnel decisions came from the people who manage the personnel. They don't come from us. And I think that's a particularly important point that I want to make because the bulk of the Sheriff's Department RECOMMENDATIONS CAME FROM THE SHERIFF TO CUT POSITIONS IN THE DISTRICT I REPRESENT, ISLA VISTA. IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME, NEVER MY WILDEST IMAGINATION THAT I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT TO CUT ISLA VISTA FOOT PATROL. THESE ARE NOT MY CUTS. IN FACT, IN APRIL WHEN WE WERE ALL WORKING REALLY HARD TOGETHER, THE RECOMMENDATION UNANIMOUSLY FROM THE BOARD WAS to the sheriff to please find the cuts elsewhere, not with the Isla Vista Foot Patrol, at least not with half of them if possible, because crime has been reduced by half. So please try to find it elsewhere. And so my question is with your team here, what rigorous process did you go through to evaluate, to avoid those cuts to personnel? With a $223 million budget, were there contracts that could have been reduced? equipment etc if this is an open-ended question if you care to explain it's apparent that that process ended up not with the direction of the board because you came back with the original recommendation of isla vista foot patrol and uh supervisor captain members of the board

As I think I've stated, I know I've stated it with you, Supervisor Capps, but just to let the public understand why the Isla Vista Foot Patrol was the... that we made the cuts in. Well, first of all, let me preface this by saying we don't wanna make any cuts. And the reality is we believe that the sheriff's office is grossly understaffed, not overstaffed, and we didn't wanna make any cuts. We were mandated to submit a budget that removed $4.9 million, which was the result of holding the general fund flat. So that was a dilemma that was presented to us. And we basically went through these exercises that were sort of tantamount to Sophie's Choice kind of exercises, where we look and believe that we are not overstaffed. We believe that we have indeed too few staff in many areas. But nevertheless, we looked at prioritizing. The problem is our budget is significantly predominantly salary, people, staff. The only way to achieve a $4.9 million cut is through reducing positions in our organization. And the lion's share of those costs come from our sworn staff. And so with that in mind, and with it in mind that we couldn't really take any cuts from the custody side because we are, as has been mentioned before, significantly understaffed in terms of the ability to operate two full-time jails, as those studies that Mr. Stoker just alluded to have said. So we really couldn't take anything from custody. And we were therefore tasked with taking Where would we take these cuts from? The reason that Isla Vista was selected, the only reason that Isla Vista was selected, well, several reasons that it was selected were number one, that it was contiguous to an existing division that would allow the manager, the lieutenant, and the sergeants or the supervisors to provide management and supervision to that contiguous adjacent area. Number two there has been a significant decline in crime in Isla Vista and The crime rate was such that we felt that we if we have to reduce We could reduce and we could operate with this limited number of people that we would have left In there and again it was it was a forced choice. It was we had to make a cut somewhere a proposed cut somewhere TO MAKE THOSE CUTS ELSEWHERE WOULD HAVE PUT AN INCREDIBLY SIGNIFICANT IMPACT TO THE UNINCORPORATED AREAS OF THE COUNTY IN THE REST OF THE COUNTY THAT ARE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE SPREAD OUT GEOGRAPHICALLY WHERE WE HAVE ONLY ONE TYPICALLY ONE OR TWO DEPUTIES IN AN AREA THAT IS SIGNIFICANTLY LARGER GEOGRAPHICALLY THAN ISLA VISTA WHICH IS ACTUALLY THE MOST COMPRESSED AREA THAT WE HAVE IN TERMS OF POPULATION. in the county. As you know, there are other issues here. One is the historical and expected contribution made to policing Isla Vista through the university, which has not really been adhered to in recent years. And there have been problems and issues and remain problems and issues with respect to that. But and they in all fairness to the University Police Department there They have incredible budget issues going on as well and and are actually in worse shape in terms of percentages of staff That they don't have that they're down than we are But anyway, it was just a question of if you've got to make this forced choice Where do you make it? and Isla Vista was the logical place to pull those people. We don't want to pull them from anywhere. We don't believe that we are anything close to being overstaffed. In fact, we've said it, and you've heard me say it many times, we believe we're understaffed. So, you know, I'm sorry that it came down to this, but this was a mandate that was issued from a decision that was made from the county, a decision, quite frankly, that many don't agree with to do an across the board cut with the general fund departments. So in other words, there was no prioritization. Everybody had to come up with a 5% cut, which for the sheriff's office was, a significant and indeed devastating cut because of the size of the general fund that we utilize for our organization. We are the largest consumer of the general fund in the county. So a 5% hit to us was significantly higher than any other county agency.

I appreciate that. And we've gone around and around. We don't need to repeat it. I appreciate the board's support previously. It's bewildering to me in such a sizable budget, $223 million, again, that there wouldn't be areas of contracts or equipment, moving to drones, things, again, that it's far be it from me as a civilian to be presuming, but that's where I would have seen, I was hopeful that that would be an area in which cuts would be coming back as opposed to personnel. So we'll do what we can up here. But again, that's what I was hoping in April that we'd come back and we'd see less to Isla Vista and more in those areas. I know other departments like general services, for example, was able to make all of their cuts in the areas of contracts, travel, et cetera, and not in personnel. And I think that's what we're always trying to do. That's certainly what I did as a school board member. And that's what I do as a supervisor is to try to keep the cuts away from people as much as possible.

And I can understand that at first blush, you can look at the size of our budget and say, wow, it's a big budget. Why can't you find that money elsewhere? The reality is that when we talk about travel and office supplies and those kinds of things, that is budget dust compared to the number of people that we have. And we cannot make that number up on the periphery like that. The reality is there are huge portions of the sheriff's budget which we cannot cut, which we are legally not allowed to cut. And those would include the protection of the courts that were mandated to provide by state law. Again, we've talked many times about the statutory requirement for the sheriff to operate the jail and to accept inmates from, except prisoners from all the law enforcement agencies that operate in the county. Those are mandates. We cannot cut to where we can't properly operate facilities like that. We can't take cuts from our contracts. The contracts are paid for by other entities. cities or the tribe in terms of the reservation, but those funds are paid by them. So we can't cut into that money because they're specifically paid for a specific service. So when you start to whittle down where the cuts can be made, there's only a very, very limited area. And unfortunately, that typically puts the hardest impact on the unincorporated areas of the county, the patrol and in law enforcement services that come to the larger parts of the unincorporated areas of the county. And then lastly, let me just say that I want you all to understand too, we're still reeling, we're still having the impact of all of the cuts that were made in the wake of the great recession. which took down the numbers of investigators, the numbers of narcotics staff that we had, took down all of our units that were discretionary units, the crime prevention units and things like that. We're still dealing with all of that to where 40 positions or so that were cut were never restored to the sheriff. Now we've had the jail and we've had additional people given to us to operate the jail, But that's a separate entity other than what we're looking at in terms of what we need as a base level to operate our patrol and investigative functions in the county. And again, those were really the only areas that we could target for cuts. And those just recommendations that we were sort of forced to make, certainly not that we want to make. And certainly our belief is, as you all know, and we requested restoration of those positions. And I hope that when you have that discussion, there's some money that's been earmarked there that could be used for that. I hope that you will do that. I hope you will. I'd like to see Isla Vista restored to the extent that it can be.

you i mean thanks i i i take your word that you looked everywhere you possibly could and i also just you know from where we sit we hear every single other department director in very various terms of of uh of in factness that they also probably feel very similar to you do that they're completely understaffed so i just think that's an important perspective to also have thank you all right thank you sir caps um i have a just a question um

Because I'm concerned about these cuts as well. I mean, I think we all are because, you know, especially those of us that represent large areas of unincorporated area, what that might look like. Because I think, you know, at the end of the day, the Sheriff's Department is still going to respond to Isla Vista if there's a crime there happening. You know, you guys are still, that's still your obligation. The response may not be as quick as it is, but, you know, we can't control you know, the need out there in the community that the crime that might exist. But just so we're all on the same page, if we do reduce these positions here today, are you laying off any deputies because of this?

No, we would not lay off any deputies. We have vacancies in all of the areas, all of the ranks that would be reduced in this area, and we've specifically been holding some of those vacant as a result of this.

And I'm not trying to take advantage of the fact that you guys are being fiscally prudent to do that, but I just want to make sure that the public understands that the service level that we have today will be able to be maintained. It's going to be difficult. It may drive overtime up. THERE MIGHT BE OTHER CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE OUT THERE OF THIS ACTION BUT I THINK THAT'S IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND AS WELL AS IN THE ONE TIME RECOMMENDED BUDGET HERE OR ONE TIME FUNDING THAT Hector, rural crime deputy, fourth co-response team, warrant officers, three more positions. I know those were previously there, but they were, I think, one-time funding. So they're not ongoing funding. So I know it's kind of a little bit of a budget math there. So those are going to hopefully be restored today. Also, I think right now in the recommended budget is some restoration money for Ivey, which potentially is another three officers there. So I think we're, I know it's not perfect. I know that there's still a lot of work to be done, but I think there needs to be some, you know, for the public that's concerned about our cuts to public safety here. I think we have, you know, we're trying to balance through this couple of years here. We really are. And I think that's really important for us to understand. I guess one of the things that you are going to lose out on though, is without those vacant positions, you know, I know you guys are always careful about over hire. And I guess my question, and I had, I should ask this before the hearing, but CEO Miyasato, what are we doing with the overhire? I mean, in the past, I know we've made funds available for potential overhire because for the public, when the sheriff goes through a hiring process, he doesn't know how many positions he's going to have at the end of it. And so he's got to be careful not to overstaff. Can you maybe speak to that for a second? Because we're going to be a lot tighter now because right now all the vacant positions go away on July 2nd. So how do we handle that moving forward with future classes?

Chair Nelson and board members, you're right. We kept a pot of funds available for the sheriff for any potential overhire so that we wouldn't be caught. There would be some funds where they could use on a one-time basis every year. There is $1.8 million available. If it doesn't get used, it goes towards helping cover their overtime, but that is still available in next year's budget.

Okay. I just want to keep that in mind, you know, because I don't want the sheriff to slow down on their hiring because I know in years past when we did that back 10 years ago, then that's when we kind of got behind and we could never catch up. I think your executive team has done an amazing job and your HR team to try to bridge that. Although I know you guys are probably slowing down and anticipating these cuts as well, but I really want to encourage you to continue to to hire because I think that's you know you just can't stop or else you know you'll fall further behind so and I think this board is very aware of these priorities and I so I appreciate what you guys are you're trying to do here and you know I know we had this conversation and thank you sheriff I just have some comments so you're good about prioritization and what we're spending our money and these documents being um you know moral documents you know and i actually met with some of these youth here they're asking us to invest in them today and um you know county governments is one piece of the government puzzle and we are a certain tool to do certain things YOU KNOW, MUCH OF THE INVESTMENT THAT IS IN OUR YOUTH USUALLY COMES AT THE STATE BUDGET LEVEL WITH OUR SCHOOLS AND OUR OTHER SOCIAL SAFETY NET PROGRAMS. WHEN I MET WITH SOME OF THESE YOUTHS, THEY WERE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT OVER 70% OF OUR STATE BUDGET ACTUALLY GOES TO YOUTH IF YOU ACTUALLY GO BACK AND PULL IT APART AND LOOK AT IT, WHETHER IT'S, YOU KNOW, ABOUT HALF THE STATE BUDGETS TO EDUCATION, ABOUT 20% OF THE REMAINING 40% FOR SOCIAL SAFETY NETS GOES TO YOUTH. So, I mean, we are making significant investments in the state of California towards our children to be in these preventative services and our education system, which should be a pipeline towards success and not necessarily towards, you know, having to, having to interact with our public safety systems in a negative way. So just making that comment, Supervisor Lavagnino.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And let's go to some good news then in the Sheriff's Department. I don't know, Sheriff, if you want to come up and talk about, or if you want to send somebody up about the warrant officer, just got the, all the measuring, the, measurements that we're using to see if we're successful or not in this, and they're pretty astounding.

Well, Chair Nielsen, members of the board, Supervisor Lavagnino, it looks like we're not actually prepared to do all that. So I'm as ill-prepared as the rest of my staff. We didn't realize that was going to be coming up. That's okay.

I was just looking at one of the measurements is to conduct at least two intelligence-led warrant sweeps per quarter. That would be eight in a year, and we've already done 50. So with 22 people arrested and 34 warrants removed, it looks like you guys are doing outstanding work. It is a target-rich environment out there. So good job.

It is. And if I could just add, just to editorialize a little bit, The good thing about having this position is that it allows us, it's taken us an ability to really take a deep look at the number of warrants and really focus on the freshest and the most serious crimes that have been committed. And it's nice having a full-time person that can be the person that not only sometimes goes out and makes those arrests, but also who coordinates that with intelligence and information that goes out to all law enforcement officers in the county as well to know who is in a particular area and who's wanted. And it has resulted in a lot of people that heretofore would have probably slid under the radar being held to account. Great.

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

A follow-up question on the warrant officer. So my original impression was that we had a huge backlog and we needed to clean that up. Some people had died or moved away or they were small. So we went through and cleaned it up, focused on the most important ones. And I guess my question is this. Is this something we need in an ongoing way or are we, that could be absorbed in the regular budget or do you need a warrants officer in perpetuity because otherwise people will escape because they didn't show up?

Supervisor Hartman through the chair. A couple of things. One is that the warrant officer position has also acted in this new role as the person who coordinates and handles extraditions as well. So people that are arrested outside our area and are brought. We used to have a position that did that exclusively, and that was a victim of a budget cut. So that's no longer there. So this has allowed us to, in a handful of instances, get some of the most serious criminals that have escaped and were fugitives and been arrested by other agencies out of state to be brought in and have those warrants taken care of. As far as the actual backlog, there is a significant still a number of old warrants, and there's been a group that has been working to try to address that. As you know, these warrants are held by the courts. They're not held by the sheriff's office. So they are working and have been working with this with this group to try to address that and to whittle down that number as a result of some people that, as you say, some people have died. Some people are, you know, some crimes are beyond the statute that and There's a decision made in the interest of justice to just dismiss warrants and so forth in certain cases where they're really really old But so I do believe that it is still There's still a good opportunity for that position to be used to be put to good use and to To go after the ones that really are the most important the most serious criminal activity that's been perpetrated by people who have warrants that they should be the ones that we focus on and And this provides us a mechanism to do that in addition to just chance encounters out in the street by patrol deputies and that sort of thing.

So again, will we reduce the backlog and then it could be part of normal operations or do you see this having to be ongoing because of the extradition function?

I mean, there are literally thousands of warrants. So I don't know that it's going to reduce the backlog to the point where there's a handful, you know what I mean? We just don't have the staff to be able to make all those arrests, nor do our existing law enforcement agencies. So we really want to try to focus on going after the most serious offenders.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. And Sheriff, Supervisor Kapps.

Thank you. Along those lines of Supervisor Hartman, isn't it, my understanding is that each officer is, there's a process in place for them to go after the warrants that the arrest where they're made. It doesn't necessarily take a dedicated person. I mean, it does happen without a dedicated person as well. Is that correct?

THE WARRANTS ARE PUT INTO AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM. SO THEY CAN BE SEARCHED AND PULLED UP BY GEOGRAPHY OR BY DATE. THERE'S WAYS TO SORT THEM AND GET THEM. WHAT WE GET WITH THE WARRANT OFFICER THAT WE DON'T HAVE, IF IT'S JUST people, patrol deputies that in their limited spare time maybe can go out and look for a particular person. That does happen quite frequently. But it is still limited in its scope, whereas having a dedicated position that's there to A, either go out and do it themselves, or B, provide the intelligence information so that all those deputies do know who's in their area and where they are. That helps a lot. And I don't know if that answers your question. I think the reality is warrants have, you know, there are, it's a problem. People abscond and they don't go, you know, to court and they're not held accountable for their crimes. And sometimes it takes years, you know, before they are just chance encountered through a traffic stop or whatever and ultimately arrested. But I think this keeps the system, it keeps a fresher system in terms of the churn factor that's going on.

And I would like to bring up Chief Benton, because I know in addition to the board using cannabis funds for this one-time position this past year, the CCP, Community Corrections Partnership, also spent a lot of time really cleaning up the lists. And that is in tandem with this dedicated position really has made a ton of progress on this issue. So Chief Benton, could you speak to the progress there? Because I think we've learned a lot about who these folks are and maybe dispelled some of the fears of how serious the crimes are of the folks that are still out at large.

Supervisor Capps, through the chair, I can give a little bit of limited data on what has occurred since we came to your board on behalf of the CCP and presented about this data. When we presented to the board in December, there were about 9,800 warrants. At the present time, there's about 9,055 warrants. So it's a pretty significant reduction that we have seen. One thing that I will say is that these are static snapshots. So there have been additional warrants introduced into the system in that time. So this does not, I can't really speak to the number of additional warrants that have come into the system. The District Attorney's Office has identified two batches of warrants totaling about 2,200. And of that, they have cleared 737 of those warrants. So they have requested that the court dismiss them, and those have actually been dismissed. The court has actually also identified a number of 1300 warrants, and those warrants are going to be slowly cleared by the courts. They're low priority. Many of those are low level offenses or court warrants that probation never saw. They're, as the sheriff said, they're being held by the court. So when all is said and done, there's another, 2,859 warrants that are going to be cleared in this process. So we would be looking at a reduction on the static snapshot of about 6,196 is a final total. And there will be additional efforts in this area going forward. The group has continued to meet. The departments have continued to identify words that could be cleared. There are a number, about 159 probationers have been arrested on warrants in the last six months. So, you know, the work is ongoing.

Thank you. And we've learned, too, that the vast majority are misdemeanors, correct?

That is correct. Out of the batch that's current, about 78% are misdemeanors, 22% are felonies, and about 4.9% are those heavy-duty strike offenses.

But still, and I appreciate all of those who've been a part of this effort, especially, and raising the alarm bells, especially Supervisor Lavani. And collectively, this is a ton of work. And I know that, along with supporting this position last year, that the board directed the Sheriff's Department to come up with metrics for the warrant officer, and it took some doing. I think the metrics came back to us in December, but then I understand that those metrics were determined not to be valid. Can someone speak to that? Because I do think it's important if the one-time position is continued that we understand we have a handle on what are those metrics, particularly since we have a better handle on the actual data from the CCP's perspective.

Absolutely. Supervisor Capps to the chair. The original metrics weren't going to give this board a legitimate snapshot of what that position was doing. So what the sheriff and my team did was really just get back into what can we show with the data reports that we have, the data reports that we can have, that can give you the analytics that you need to show you that this position is indeed working to reduce the amount of warrants and apprehend those dangerous felons that are still out there terrorizing our community. So we believe the new metrics that our team, and we work with the CEO's office as great collaborative partners, and we believe the new data standards that we're going to be showing you with this position will show you in the next 12 months how absolutely valuable it is.

I mean, the original one was pretty straightforward. It was just a 20% reduction in warrants. So how could you be more clear than that going forward?

Supervisor Capps to the chair. A lot of the systems that we're working with in the county are very antiquated. Our WANDA warrant system is, I believe, over three decades old. So in order to extract data or track data on it, you need to actually add additional systems to it that sometimes simply don't exist. So in that analytic, there really wasn't an ability to actually pull all that data and stand behind it and say, this is an accurate number. So we wanted to scrap that and make sure the data we give to you is backed up and is absolutely factual.

But don't we have the, I mean, it seems like we're making huge improvements. I know we've done a lot of investments in data. I'm just not really tracking what the holdup would be.

Yeah, again, we can get data straight from the core system as far as how many they expunge. But ultimately, all the warrants go through what's called our WANDA system. And again, it's very antiquated. It's not the most collaborative team partner in our technological services that we have. And so again, it's a little finicky. And we're trying to make sure the data we do pull out of it can be backed up by our team.

It does give me a question mark. We can talk about it further, but I think these are precious funds. As we know, we're facing layoffs of many people. I just want to make sure that as we go forward with a one-time position that we really know exactly what the impact is. Part of that was to have a reporting mechanism, having metrics. It took six months to get the metrics and then to be told we're not quite sure those are the right metrics. Yet, on the other hand, the other side of our criminal justice partners have been really making a ton of progress in cleaning up the backlog of warrants and really making, demonstrating huge progress in terms of

reduction in the in the courts reduction and in the district attorney so i just want to make sure we're on track and we can discuss it further to see if there's interest in continuing this this position thank you all right thank you supervisor caps at this time we're going to go ahead and take a break before we take a break i just want to do a little agenda management um we have two more functional groups to get to um i understand there's a lot of public commenters for the palsy and executives i'm actually going to try to get through those between now in lunch after we come back from our break and then we'll probably break for lunch which will be a pure break for lunch not deliberations for staff goes and works while we eat so we'll take about a half an hour lunch break probably around one o'clock and then we'll come back for uh hopefully final deliberations we may have to take some breaks and deliberations so staff can go back and get some numbers and come back to us so just kind of this is a living breathing process for all of you out there so just bear with us but that's the plan as of right now so we're gonna go ahead and take a five-minute break we're gonna try to keep to that five minutes so don't go too far All right, everybody, if we can take our seats, please. All right, can we take our seats? Don't make me use my gavel. All right. It's my old classroom management skills. All right. All right, welcome back, everybody, to the June 16, 2026 budget hearings of Santa Barbara County for the years 2026 to for 2027. We were just coming back after a short break. And we're gonna go ahead and move on with our next functional group, which is our General Government and Support Services. And headed off to Katrina Fernandez.

Thank you, Chair, members of the board. This functional group is comprised of auditor controller clerk recorder assessor general services human resources treasurer tax collector public administrator debt service and information technology The functional group is makes up nine percent of the county's total operating budget nine percent of total County FTE and receives thirteen percent of the county's total general fund contribution at fifty four point one million dollars and Notable updates for this group since workshops include one position transferred from the CEO risk division to human resources to support disability and leave management activities. Here's a summary of measures taken by each department in the functional group to balance next year's budget. Balancing measures have not changed in this group since workshops. They total $1.8 million and include the reduction of five funded FTE. And that concludes general government and support services functional group review.

All right, any questions from the board before I go to public comment? Seeing none, is there any public comment on this section?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have no request to speak from the public on the General Government and Support Services Functional Group.

Now back to the board. Not seeing any lights here. Good job.

Supervisor Lavagna, please. It's just a comment. I just want to give a big shout out to Human Resources and Christy's team for... THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST DIFFICULT STRETCH THAT WE'VE HAD IN HUMAN RESOURCES AND THE WAY THAT THEY'VE HANDLED A VERY DELICATE SITUATION. I'VE ONLY BEEN THROUGH THIS ONE OTHER TIME, 15 YEARS AGO ON THIS BOARD. Maybe we learned a lesson from that time, but this I thought was done with compassion and clarity and, you know, just want to give a big shout out to that entire team.

Thank you, Supervisor Labanino. All right. All important departments, but other hotter topics today. So moving right along, we'll go ahead and move to the next functional group. And that is policy and executive, Ms. Fernandez. Yes.

Thank you, Chair, members of the board. The policy and executive functional group is comprised of the Board of Supervisors, County Council, County Executive Office, and General County Programs. This functional group makes up just 6% of overall county operating expenditures and 2% of county FTE. 22% of the county's GFC is allocated to this group and is primarily received by the General County Programs Department before being transferred out to other departments to fund a variety of board-approved policies and projects. Notable updates for this group since workshops include the previously mentioned transfer of one position from CEO risk to human resources. The balancing measures for this group have not changed since workshops. They total $1.1 million and include the reduction of four funded FTE. And that concludes the policy and executive functional group overview.

All right, thank you, Ms. Fernandez. Questions from the board before I go to public comment? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, do we have any public speakers on this functional group?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, yes, we have 14 requests to speak on the policy and executive functional group.

All right, great. Go ahead and get that started. Let's go ahead and close public comment on this functional group.

We are going to remain here in Santa Barbara for all 14 requests to speak. We will begin with Isabella Avalos to be followed by Brisa Rodriguez. Isabella.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Isabella Avalos, and I am a Santa Barbara County resident and a member and supporter of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I am here today to speak about how cannabis tax revenue can be used to better support youth in our community. When California passed Proposition 64, it included a promise to invest in communities and young people. Since 2018, Santa Barbara County has collected millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue, yet many young programs continue to struggle with limited funding. As a young person in Santa Barbara County, I have seen how important youth programs are. They provide opportunities to learn new skills, explore future careers, and prepare for college. However, programs like AVID often have to rely on fundraising because funding is limited, which can reduce opportunities such as college visits and other valuable experiences. Like my AVID class, there's also a lacking of funding for mental health services and prevention education programs that support youth in our community. These are exactly the kinds of programs that cannabis tax revenue can help fund, providing young people with the resources and support they need to succeed. That is why we are asking the Board of Supervisors to support creating a youth fund pilot program using cannabis tax revenue. The county currently has more than $780,000 in unallocated cannabis tax funds that could be invested directly into youth development and enrichment programs. For example, a portion of these funds could be used to create a youth commission made for young people from across Santa Barbara County. This commission will review youth funds, grant applications, and help make fund decisions and provide recommendations to supervisors on issues affecting our community. We are asking to prioritize prevention opportunity and youth empowerment so that more young people have the resources they need to succeed. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Alves. Great job.

We will now go to Brisa Rodriguez to be followed by Barbara Magada. Brisa? Thank you.

Okay. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Brisa Rodriguez and I am a Santa Barbara County resident and supporter of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here today to ask the board to invest in youth programs to ensure that young people have a brighter future. Youth have faced many cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impact our lives. Today I'm asking the board to allocate $780,000 of unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. Unfortunately, the majority of these funds are being funneled into enforcement while youth and underserved communities continue to lack critical support. We believe that cannabis tax revenue can be used more effectively if it is directed towards serving the youth of the Santa Barbara County. In my experience as a Santa Barbara County youth, I have seen young people struggling with mental health challenges and substance abuse due to the lack of available resources. I myself struggled with substance abuse due to mental health issues since the age of 11 and I believed that I had no support. It was on to the eighth grade that I was referred to a program through my school that I was finally able to recover because I had that support system. That experience changed my life. If we had more resources available, we could help students find support earlier and prevent these issues from becoming worse. Young people need to know that they have a place to go when they need help. And when youth receive services, Those services should not be a bandage solution but an opportunity to address the root causes of the challenges they face. Research shows that investing in prevention and youth development builds stronger communities and reduces long-term public costs. These decisions affect us directly and we deserve to be prioritized. this 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 that address these issues and create better outcomes for young people across santa barbara county thank you for your time and consideration thank you mr Rodriguez we will now go to barbara magnet to be followed by gloria soto barbara

Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Barbie Maganda, and I'm a student at San Marcos High School. I'm here asking the Board of Supervisors to invest in the youth program to ensure young people have a brighter future. Youth has faced several cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impacted our lives. I'm asking the Board to allocate 780,000 of unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara Youth This funding can support youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention programs, and youth-led community projects. For example, in my Advent class, we were always fundraising to cover costs like buses, hotels, tours, and food for college tours. It doesn't stop there. We also need support in mental health prevention and leadership. The youth fund can help improve school attendance, academic engagement, college enrollment, and long-term opportunities for young people. We have repeatedly, repeatedly, FACED FUNDING CUTS AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, AND THOSE DECISIONS DIRECTLY IMPACT OUR LIVES, OUR OPPORTUNITIES, AND OUR FUTURES. THIS BOARD HAS THE POWER TO BE TRAILBLAZERS IN SUPPORTING YOUTH ALONG THE CENTRAL COAST. I URGE THIS COUNTY TO USE ITS RESOURCES TO ITS FULL POTENTIAL BY INVESTING IN ME, MY PEERS, AND THE YOUTH ACROSS SAN BARBARA COUNTY. THANK YOU.

We will now go to Gloria Soto to be followed by Jessica Rodriguez Martinez. Gloria?

I saw him do that, so. GOOD AFTERNOON, CHAIR AND SUPERVISORS. MY NAME IS GLORIA SOTO AND I'M THE PROUD EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND ALUM OF FUTURE LEADERS OF AMERICA. I AM HERE ON BEHALF OF THE YOUTH IMPACT COALITION AND NEARLY 18 ORGANIZATIONS WHO HAVE SIGNED ON TO THIS INITIATIVE AS WELL AS OVER 400 COMMUNITY MEMBERS. who have signed petitions in support of this initiative today, which is the creation of a Santa Barbara County Youth Fund using unallocated cannabis tax revenue. First, I want to acknowledge and appreciate the board's willingness to invest in young people, especially at a time when youth-serving organizations are facing increasing demands and limited resources. Any youth investment matters. However, I also want to emphasize that this proposal is about is more than just funding. It's about fulfilling the promise of Proposition 64 and ensuring that communities most impacted by the war on drugs have a meaningful role in shaping how these resources are invested. We understand that there has been a discussion about allocating $50,000 to each supervisor's district for youth programs using cannabis tax revenue. While we appreciate that commitment, we believe there is an opportunity to go further. The vision we and the youth have brought forward is not simply a fund for young people. It's a fund led by young people for young people for prevention. Young people are not asking adults to make decisions on their behalf. They are asking for the opportunity to help lead those discussions through a youth-led grant-making process. Youth from across the county would identify priorities review proposals and make recommendations on how funds should be invested to support prevention. This approach recognizes what we see every day. Young people that young people understand the challenges they face, and they often have the most innovative and effective solutions. We know that the best prevention strategy is not enforcement. It's opportunity. It's investing in leadership development, mental health, mentorship, education, civic engagement, and community-based programs that help young people thrive. At FLA, we have seen young people organize around issues affecting their communities and lead to creating lasting change. They are already doing the work. What they need now is an opportunity to help shape the investments intended for them. TODAY, WE ARE HERE ASKING YOU TO THINK NOT ONLY ABOUT HOW MUCH FUNDING IS ALLOCATED, BUT ABOUT WHO HAS THAT POWER TO HELP GUIDE THOSE INVESTMENTS. IF PROPOSITION 64 WAS INTENDED TO REPAIR HARM AND REINVEST IN IMPACTED COMMUNITIES, THEN YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD BE MORE THAN JUST BENEFICIARIES. THEY SHOULD BE PARTNERS. We respectfully urge you to make a bold investment in youth leadership by supporting county by supporting a countywide youth fund that includes meaningful youth decision making and reflects the spirit of community reinvestment that the voters envision. When we trust young people with resources, leadership and responsibility, we don't just invest in youth. We invest in the future of Santa Barbara County. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Soto.

We will now go to Jessica Rodriguez-Martinez to be followed by Darlyn Rodriguez. Jessica?

Hello. My name is Jessica Rodriguez, and I'm a resident of Santa Barbara County. I'm here asking the board to invest in youth programs to ensure young people have a brighter future. Youth have faced many cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impact our lives. I am asking the board to allocate $780,000 of cabinet tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. This funding can support youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention programs, and youth-led community projects. This funding would especially benefit young people growing up in poverty. Many families cannot afford counseling, leadership programs, tutoring, transportation, or other opportunities that help the youth thrive. I was one of the lucky ones. My parents came to this country with nothing, yet they worked tirelessly to give me every opportunity they could with the little money that they had. They sacrificed their own needs so that I could have a chance at a better future. There were times where we lived very simply, eating like beans, tortillas, and cheese for days, but I never heard a single complaint. They were willing to go without so that I could thrive. Investing in youth programs help bridge that gap by providing resources, mentorship, mental health support, and leadership opportunities to those who need them the most. A dedicated youth fund would ensure that a young person's future is not determined by their family's income, but by their potential and the opportunities available to them. We have repeatedly faced funding cuts at the federal level, and those decisions directly impact our lives, our opportunities, and our futures. This board has the power to be trailblazers in supporting youth along the Central Coast. I urge this county to use its resources to their full potential by investing in all youth across Santa Barbara County. This affects us directly and we deserve to be prioritized. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez.

We will now go to Darylyn Rodriguez to be followed by Myra Lopez. Darylyn?

Good morning. My name is Darlene Rodriguez and I am a student athlete at Santa Maria High School. I am here today asking the board to invest in the youth by supporting the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. On the behalf of the youth community, we need investment, not just enforcement. Too often money is spent on the problems that occurred instead of preventing them in the first place. Youth deserves opportunities, guidance, and support, not pathways that lead to involvement with the justice system. When we invest in education, mentorship, and youth programs, we help students succeed, stay engaged in schools, and build brighter futures. As with myself, throughout these programs, I was able to learn new quality skills and grow out and be involved more in my community. Since I was on a rough path throughout FLA and upper-bound programs and pre-college programs, I was able to better my future and know how to help myself through these youth programs. Youth people deserve to be heard, supported, and empowered. the board to invest in youth and career opportunities that help us since we are the future. We need to build that community support. Students, as myself, ask to allow children to take actions and voice their opinions. Why should we allow adults to voice their opinions in a children's situation when we are able to ensure problems and making sure where the fund would be... making sure where the fund would go, as well as having our counties and everything be organized. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Rodriguez.

We will now go to Mayra Lopez to be followed by Adam Pacheco Hernandez. Mayra.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Mayra Lopez. I'm an upcoming freshman here in Santa Maria. Santa Barbara County now ranks second highest in the state for its poverty rate, which affects one in six adults and one in five children. This matters more, this matters because more than 18,000 children under 18 in Santa Barbara County live in poverty. Ever since I have looked around at my environment, looked at the people I have been surrounded with in my community, my family, my friends and my peers, including myself, I have come to an understanding that it is difficult for young youth such as myself. They have to face many challenges and cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services and other resources that impact our lives. I have been given the pleasure to grow up with these people and have been given the time to grasp the difficulty of being a young adolescent. Strangers and peers, friends, families, fellow students come up to me for guidance. I am not a professional. If you take a good look at me, you can see I'm just a person like them. Sometimes I do not know how to help them. So please take my story into consideration. Allocate $780,000 of unallocated tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County's Youth Fund. This matters to our youth in Santa Barbara County. I urge this county to use its resources to their full potential by entrusting in me, my peers, and all youth across Santa Barbara County. This affects us directly. We deserve to be prioritized. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Lopez.

We will now go to Adam Pacheco-Hernandez to be followed by Miranda Perez-Lopez.

Adam?

Hello, my name is Adam Pacheco. I'm a student at Pioneer Valley High School and also the Secretary of Youth Impact. I'm asking the board to allocate an unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Youth Santa Barbara County Youth Fund to support leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention programs, and youth-led community projects. This matters as youth in our county experience felony arrests at a rate about 50 percent higher than the statewide average. We also know that youth with mentors are 55 less likely to be arrested and 46 less likely to begin using drugs. For all we know, the youth who does not have the same opportunities as many people could be the next best teacher or supervisor or doctor, but they don't have the funds. I believe that if we fund youth, then they will see that they can have a better future than ending their lives or committing a crime just to survive. And as a youth myself, I have had much help from a lot of non-profits like Tequio, Raíces, FLA, and Youth Impact that have taught me strength. And I know you were all teenagers once, so I know you would know how for a teenager it takes a lot of bravery to be out here, and I feel like I'm running out of breath.

You're doing great.

AND, YEAH, I JUST WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE IF THE BOARD WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT TOOK A LOT OF OUR TIME AND COURAGE TO DO THIS, AND WE WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE IT IF YOU WOULD, YOU KNOW, FUND OUR FUTURES, BECAUSE I THINK IT IS AN INVESTMENT IN THE LONG RUN FOR ALL OF US, BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE THESE FUNDS, THEN THEY CAN GROW UP TO BE BETTER CIVILIANS AND, YOU KNOW, CONTRIBUTE TO OUR COUNTY, AND I THINK ALL OF US WANT OUR COUNTY TO BE BETTER, AND THANK YOU.

We will now go to Miranda Perez-Lopez to be followed by Brandon Vasquez. Miranda?

Sorry. Hello, my name is Miranda and I am youth of Santa Maria. I'm here asking the board to invest in youth programs to ensure young people have a brighter future. Youth have faced many cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impact our lives. This matters because Santa Barbara County now ranks second highest in the state for its poverty rate, which affects one in six adults and one in five children. Youth in Santa Barbara County report concerns about job opportunities, college access, housing and food security, which means from the youth you see before you, to just an average child who you see every day that just passes in your mind. One and likely just not one of us are suffering from poverty and its many effects. I am one in five. Most of my peers are one in five and we are all too aware of it. I worry with my mother about financial burdens and I don't have the privilege of not being ignorant to it because I cannot ignore what's in me and my peers' face. That is why I am here. If us youth in poverty could have this one thing, it could lift so many of our burdens from our education, drug problems, felony rates, to mental health. It is absolutely important for us who already have been born to fight for the right for a better life and future. Youth just need a chance to prove we aren't just another statistic. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lopez.

We will now go to Brandon Vasquez to be followed by Evangeline Jimenez Hernandez. Brandon.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Brandon Vasquez and I'm a proud Santa Maria resident and also a proud supporter of the Youth Impact Coalition. I stand here before you to ask for an investment in youth. Using the 780,000 in unallocated cannabis tax revenue, to create a youth fund for Santa Barbara County. This funding will support youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention programs, and youth-led community projects. Besides funding, we're asking for the creation of a youth commission so that young people have a former voice in county decisions that directly affect youth. Even after this pilot program, we wish for the youth commission to remain intact With this commission, youth will be empowered not only civically, but also in leadership. Throughout conversations with youth, I heard stories about substance abuse, mental health needs. I believe that there's no question of need, but rather how the Youth Fund will support. This is reinforced by the 400 plus signatures in support of the Youth Fund and 12 organizations that signed a letter of support. including but not limited to MICOP, CAUSE, and VISION y COMPROMISO. Research shows that investing in prevention and youth development builds stronger communities and reduce long-term public costs. Not only that, but in the honor of Prop 64, we ask you to rethink about what Prop 64 is for. it is for the creation and the investment of youth and those impacted by the war on drugs with that we urge the board of supervisors to consider allocating this fund for a youth fund in santa barbara county thank you thank you mr vasquez we will now go to evangeline jimenez hernandez to be followed by ariana v gomez evangeline

Hello, Board of Supervisors. My name is Evangeline Jimenez Hernandez, and I am a student at Santa Maria High School from Santa Maria. I am here to ask the Board to invest in youth programs to ensure young people have a brighter future. Youth have faced many cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impact our lives. I'm asking the board to allocate $780,000 of unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. The funding from the tax revenue will support youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, parenting programs, and youth-led community projects. This is more than funding. The proposed policy creates a youth commission so young people have a formal voice in county decisions that directly affect us, just like right now. Most of us came, took time, because we care about the decisions that are being made. Youth in our county experience felony arrests at a rate of about 50% higher than the statewide range, which would be about 3,214 arrests per 100,000 residents. That's a high number, which I feel is a number that is preventable with youth funding as to educate the youth about the problems that are based in our society, in our community, and give them opportunities as to grow and learn rather than just staying in one place and going down the wrong path, which I have seen happen to multiple of my peers. We have repeatedly faced funding cuts at the federal level, and those decisions directly impacted our lives, our fraternities, and our futures. This board has the power to be the reason why young youth along the Central Coast are having the support that they need to have a brighter future, not just for themselves, but for the rest of the county and possibly the states. or just county to use its resources that it has into to their full potential as soon best in all of the youth across santa barbara county this cut or this funding will affect us all in great ways thank you for your time thank you mr jimenez we will now go to ariana v gomez to be followed by kimberly hernandez rodriguez ariana

Is there an Ariana here? Oh, thank you. We will now go to Kimberly Hernandez Rodriguez to be followed by Eva Maria Turalban Catalan. Kimberly?

Hello, board members and attendees. My name is Kimberly, and I'm a student from Santa Maria High School. I am here asking board members to invest in youth programs to ensure young people have a bright future. Youth has faced many cuts to education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that impact our lives. I am asking the board to allocate 780,000 of unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. This is crucial because the youth is the future. Invest in the future. We need more leadership opportunities outside of schools. We deserve investments. We need a say around policies that impact our futures. Who better than youth to decide for our future? We as youth know what the problem is and can come up with a solution. Trust us to lead. Trust young voices. We have over 15 organizations countywide who are supporting this initiative. this affects us directly we deserve to be prioritized thank you for your time thank you we will now go to our final speaker eva maria toralba catalan eva

Good evening, Board of Supervisors. My name is Eva Maria Torralba Catalan, and I am a Santa Barbara County resident and a member of the Santa Barbara County Youth Impact Coalition. I'm here asking the Board to invest in youth programs to ensure that young people have a brighter future. Youth have faced many cuts in education, basic needs, mental health services, and other resources that directly impact their lives. This is why I'm asking the board to allocate $780,000 of unallocated cannabis tax revenue to create the Santa Barbara County Youth Fund. This funding can support youth leadership programs, mental health and wellness services, prevention programs, and youth-led community projects. This is more than funding. This is also about voice. The proposed policy creates a youth commission so young people can have a formal role in the county decisions that directly affect their communities. This matters because more than 18,000 children under the age of 18 in Santa Barbara County are living in poverty. Youth in our county experience felony arrest rates about 50% higher than the statewide average. At the same time, research shows that youth with mentors are 55% less likely to be arrested and 46 less likely to begin using drugs. This is personal for me because I have seen how limited access to programs and support can affect young people's motivation, safety, and sense of belonging. When youth are given consistent support and safe spaces, they show up stronger in school, more engaged in our communities, and are more hopeful about their futures. Sustainable funding is critical because youth programs should not depend on temporary grants or shifting priorities. We need long-term investments in communities that can rely. There's other counties that already created youth funds, so please don't fall behind. We have repeatedly faced funding cuts in federal level and those decisions directly impact youth lives and their futures. This board has the power to be a leader on the Central Coast. I urge you to use the county resources to their full potentials by investing in all youth across Santa Barbara County. This affects youth directly and they deserve to be prioritized. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. and that concludes public comment on the policy and executive functional group all right thank you and i want to thank all you speakers you guys did an amazing job so thank you for traveling here and you guys very articulate and um appreciate your comments i know it weighs on all of us okay questions on this functional group for staff okay i'm not seeing you here at the board um All right, that actually concludes our morning session here. We're gonna go ahead and take a, I believe a half an hour lunch break, if that works for staff. I know I've heard for the budget team that they're happy with half an hour as board offices. Are we good with half an hour? Okay, so we're gonna take a 30 minute break right now. It is, let's see, 1234. So we'll be coming back about five minutes after one to begin board deliberations. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY. WE'RE GOING TO GO AHEAD AND GET STARTED HERE. ALL RIGHT. WELCOME BACK TO THE JUNE 16TH MEETING OF THE SAN BARBARA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS. THIS IS OUR BUDGET HEARING AND DELIBERATIONS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027. WE'RE COMING BACK FROM A QUICK LUNCH BREAK AND WE'RE GOING TO GET, I BELIEVE, RIGHT INTO THE DELIBERATIONS HERE. Budget staff, would you like to give us a recap?

Sure. Chair Nielsen, members of the board, just a quick recap. So the recommended budget includes the targeted safety net restorations, $7.4 million in ongoing general fund support for social services and county health, which is expected to leverage an additional $11.1 million in state and federal funding. It preserves 143.5 positions in social services and county health. Recommended budget also includes the $842,000 in one-time restorations to protective services contracts. It keeps the four community services maintenance positions through the deferred maintenance funding swap and the district attorney's self-funded attorney position through the reclassification of a higher level position. It also earmarks the $10 million in capital improvements that we showed on a prior slide. these are the remaining ceo recommended adjustments that we discussed earlier presented as attachment a1 in the hearings materials and brought back here for deliberation these recommendations fully utilize the identified one-time general fund cannabis and other available sources so if your board wants to add something increase an item or hold money back that will require a corresponding change somewhere else on this list And so I can pause here now for deliberations. And if the board affirms this, we can move on. And if you want to discuss and make changes, we can pull up a Excel version of this.

Okay. Actually, before we got to that, I actually wanted to open up to my colleagues. Is that any further questions of any departments? I wanted to just make sure that that was covered. If there was something outstanding that I want to make sure. Okay. They're good. Okay. Yeah, I just want to make sure now that we've heard from all the departments, if any of you guys wanted to ask any further questions, we have all this executive staff in the room. I just want to make sure that we're good there. Okay, so that we're clear. Yes, let's go ahead and put that back on the screen here. And so right now we have a proposed budget as stated by our budget director. All funds are allocated in this budget as proposed. And for adoption here or any changes, we need to make some alterations either through this sheet or somewhere else in the budget. And so I'll go ahead and I think I just maybe we could start off by, expressing whether this is where you want to go or if you want to go in a different direction and give each of my colleagues a chance to maybe comment on the budget as a whole or make some comments about these these areas and i'll start off kick it off with supervisor lee i just want to ask about the process do you want to start from the top to the bottom or just general well right now they're all it's all on the table as a package so in theory we could adopt this whole all this as is and there may be some of us that want to just adopt this cleanly but there may be some of us that want to make changes so i guess my question as a guide this is i actually would like to know whether are there any changes that you might want to see to this list i do not but i just want to do a plug for the film commissioner why i'm supporting to bring this forward because this position is about economic development something important for myself in the office

but I believe this opportunity is big. Our recent economic forecast shows that the creative economy generated approximately 3.8 billion dollars in local activity and that number continues to grow. We have an opportunity here to really invest and be rewarded for this and I believe that Director Artemis and his team will come back with a program and metrics for success that we can

really this program can pay for itself and that will continue to be successful in this um film commissioner idea okay so do it here right now as as is you would be comfortable as long as that's in there that this has proposed yeah on the screen would be where you're at as of right now yes please okay all right thank you surprisingly and we'll come back we'll we obviously have to find three votes to move forward here so we'll have a conversation about these these things um supervisor caps

Well, as we all are, I'm interested in funding things not from the general fund, and I understand that the warrant officer, if we chose to continue it for another year, which I have some questions about given the nature of my questions just now because I didn't really understand the data, it could potentially be paid for by the CCP. And that would then align it with the work that's going along with the CCP and then remove it from the general fund obligation is my understanding. And maybe somebody could speak to that to back me up here, but that would certainly take off some pressure from this. And I would be supportive of that or of not continuing the position just given the fact that I just haven't seen any metrics.

So let me help you with this. So you're asking whether there could be other, if it could be swapped out next year potentially? Because right now these cannabis funds are one-time funds this year. And so what is your proposal right now?

My understanding is that there's funding in the CCP this year to pay it for the upcoming year and to not pay it from general fund this year.

okay so i guess can we hear from somebody with ccp to see if that's an option obviously that's not necessarily it hasn't been decided yet by ccp so um again i'm just going to try to find consensus in a lot of these things so would what you're proposing would it be maybe adopted as now and then if the funding could come through later on in the year that it might be able to supplement or supplant those funds so all right let's go ahead and miss benton

Supervisor Cavs, Chair Nelson and Board. So the Sheriff would need to make that request of the Community Corrections Partnership and the partnership would consider it. It's not guaranteed to be funded by the partnership. So that request would need to be made and then authorized by the CCP. And it probably would come from one-time funds.

That would be the request. so right right now you know there's no guarantee it would have to be a request and so i guess uh supervisor caps you'd be asking that the sheriff make that request sometime after the i mean it can't be obviously done on the spot today but i mean at some point to be heard by the ccp is that the part of your request right yes that's part of my request and i serve on the ccp and i'd be supportive of that move again i'm looking to uh support more

Boots on the ground in Isla Vista and this could potentially with the CEO support Provide more of that there or potentially you know that again just relieve some of the pressure on the general fund With funds that are dedicated from the state which is again what we're trying to do is always leverage So I apologize that this kind of came to me just recently literally in the last hour that there could potentially be some funds from the CCP that could pay for this continuance of the position and which again would align nicely with the work that the ccp is doing on on warrants so make sure i hear what i was what i was um

Listening, so potentially right now have these funds that be funded from CCP and then the funds that are currently in this budget cannabis, these cannabis funds would be used for additional law enforcement in Isla Vista.

Well, I would argue just to be put in this set aside to be determined by the CEOs. Also, it looks as though we're coming back anyway, given the governor's budget, but my preference would be to make sure we have full coverage or as much as we can at Isla Vista, given the need there. So that's my suggestion. I understand there's some contingencies there with the CCP needing to do that, the sheriff needing to request it first of all, but I would hope that that would all align. And then we would, again, relieve some pressure on the general fund right here, but still maintain this warrant officer and that work and hopefully get some better data about what the warrant officer is doing in the field. Okay.

CEO, do you have any comments on that before I?

And maybe Ms. Chief Benton can just confirm this, but just remember the CCP can't supplant general fund. So if you wanted to move ahead with the warrant officer as proposed, or if you wanted to wait, you would have to wait until the CCP makes that action. We couldn't fund it now with general fund and replace it with CCP. Just wanted to be clear.

Okay, make sure I hear that correctly. Because right now it's funded. There's somebody that's in that position that will be funded through June 30th.

I believe that's correct, yes.

And then for CCP to eventually cover it means it needs to go unfunded to get funded?

I think we'd ask the sheriff's office about whether that person would just be moved to other work. There's no layoffs in the sheriff's office, so we'd have to find out what does that actually mean on an operational basis for this position.

So we'd actually have to have a break in those activities. Perhaps. To try to find a way to fund it, okay.

Can we see if there's three votes for that? Yeah, no, I'm just talking. I mean, we're going through a lot of exercise and maybe there isn't.

Fair enough. I just want to give Supervisor Capp's concept

some you know i just want to understand that process for all of us what that would look like so i like to see i like to see everything funded out of the ccp but unfortunately uh yeah no i i honestly i don't care where the funding comes from the work just has to get done and i i'm uh I thought step one in the warrant thing was to clean up the warrants, which we're doing. It hadn't been done for a long time. And so I think we're moving forward on that. I also think there were some significant arrests made, especially up in North County. There were a number of barricaded situations where we took very violent felons out of the community that probably would have slipped through for months or years into the future. So I see the value in it. I don't really care where it gets funded from. So, but yeah, I'm not, I'm not interested in just eliminating the position and then wait for it to maybe get funded in the CCP in the coming year. All right.

Thank you. I just want to go back to really quick to supervise the caps to make sure I know you brought that up. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about, about the CEO's recommendation? Then I'll come back over to you to.

Well, along those same lines, it's noted in the comments that the BSU manager position could be funded out of BHSA funding if it's housed under BWELL. I'd also be interested in exploring that to see if there's support amongst the board for that as well. Because again, that whenever we can, if it makes sense for us to be utilizing state funds as opposed to our general fund, I think that's something worthy of discussion.

Okay.

Do you want to get sort of a conceptual or just ask each of us?

What I want to do, I want to ask each one of you guys, based on the recommendation right here, where you guys are at with these, you know, obviously Supervisor Lee, you know, emphasizes film commissioner, Supervisor Capps is bringing up two-ish topics that we may will now convalesce around.

after that so i'm trying to flush out the issues first and then we can kind of discuss those and hopefully we can come down to some kind of conclusion towards the end so um are those the topics for those yeah because again my motivation is uh the isla vista foot patrol and making sure that we aren't short staffed there and making sure that we are um that we have funding there and if this this relieves some of that and working with the ceo's office we we put some um Some contingencies on that some metrics etc so I like her I like the approach and so if we can even add to that Potentially with some savings that directly come from the state. I think that's a win.

I just want to see if there's consensus there Okay, let me go hit the other supervisors, then we'll come back to these topic areas as a group supervisor 11 You know did you want to? defer to supervisor Hartman

Yeah, I'm interested in talking more about the film commissioner, and then I want to put on the table the fulfillment fund.

Okay.

And then the youth education, youth commission and youth education funding.

Okay, so you want to talk a little bit more about that? Okay, so we've got film commission, PSU, warrant officer. Sheriff's 11, yeah?

Yep, I'm good with, interested in the film commissioner. I'm not opposed to it. Just want to hear more about it. And then on general county programs, I'm good with the dollar amount. I just want to see, I think we need to talk about how exactly that that would happen and what the, how that would, And I don't like it by supervisorial district, just put it that way, so then we can talk about that. And then I also wanna talk about one other thing is reallocating some money that we have in some parks funds, actually designating them for the community. a certain project. There's money in an account right now for one project, and I kind of want to take some of that and move it into another project, so.

Okay. Well, that's, we've got these items up here on the CEO budget here. Let's maybe talk about some of these things that are off budget. So I think Supervisor Lavinio, actually, let me, I'll go through mine real quick as well. Sorry, I forgot about myself. So I'm generally okay with everything that is in the CEO's adopted budget. I'll just go through a couple of things here. As far as the BSU manager is, I don't mind maximizing how much comes from BHSA, but I do think that that position is really important to remain the Sheriff's Department. So as much as funding that can be coming from BHSA, but still keep that in the Sheriff's Department, I think having the behavioral science unit in the Sheriff's Department is really helpful for that department in general. I think it's a really healthy place for it to be. And I think the trust that's been gained by that manager is really important for that department and keeping it within the Sheriff's department is important to me at that level. If we can shift the funding to get more of it paid for by somebody someplace else, I'm happy to do that. I think we could probably could increase that amount by more than 25% and still satisfy the grant requirements of the BHSA. um the film commissioner i wanted to lend my support for that you know i think it's been proposed as a one-year pilot idea i do think there's potentially economic development opportunities here and i also think there's a recognition that a lot of these revenues is generated adjacent to the first district and that's it's kind of a passion project for that office and so i want to support that getting down to the general county programs I REALLY AM INTERESTED IN THE YOUTH FUND BEING DISTRIBUTED BY DISTRICT IN PART BECAUSE I THINK EVERY DISTRICT HAS DIFFERENT NEEDS. I REPRESENT A LOT OF UNINCORPORATED AREA THAT HAS A LOT OF NEEDS. WE DON'T HAVE ANY PARKS AND REC AND SO EVEN NOW THE Limited discretionary funds that I give in my office, I give it to youth programs to try to supplement that. So I saw this as an opportunity for me to continue to supplement that in my district. And so I really would look forward to that opportunity to find those places to continue to support youth programs in my district. i know what the work the future leaders are doing is important as well but i i think that you know it's a diverse county there's needs throughout it um i think some of the work that they're doing or looking for is something that needs to be supplemented by some of the educate education providers as well um so just a point of order i i thought we were identifying what needed more discussion and then we would discuss okay um okay if i'm wrong okay i got a little caught up here as chair thank you for getting me back in place and then the sheriff set aside um i wanted to get a little bit more specific on that on maybe you know uh programming it more towards uh isla vista so all right so let's go through these uh let's maybe talk about the ones that are not on budget um super 11 you know you talked about reallocation sure and if i could have director armis come up because we're

Looking at, well, let's just, I kinda wanna know what the status of the Santa Maria River Levee Trail is and how much we've spent, where are we? Yeah, Chris is here as well, yes? Sorry. Yeah, this is your project, so.

this is well I think well this epitomizes collaboration right this cooperation it's going to take everybody so where where are we out with the existing project right uh Supervisor lavenino through the chair the project EIR is out for public comment right now and we're hoping to bring it to your board this fall okay EIR in the fall

And then how much money has been expended? Like what did we put into it so far and do we have any balance that's out there yet? I think that was the money going down the drain.

Supervisor Lavagnino, I assure you we're putting it to good use. It's 1.5 million was set aside for it and we've expended a little over 400,000 to date.

All right, so we got a $400,000 EIR. That was good because I've seen many of them go into the multi-million. So that's not bad. So we still have some money, but that's set aside for, I mean, we're holding that for design, right away, that kind of thing.

Supervisor Lavagnino through the chair. Yes, exactly those two items.

Okay. So then the second part is that's one of the projects. The other one is we still have money from, is it Exxon or Shell? Shell. Shell. And I think we've got north of 2 million in that.

Supervisor Lavagnino, Director Sneddon will answer the question.

Okay.

As of this past year, there was about $2.1 million.

Okay. Oh, go ahead, Paul. Let me jump in on that.

I believe it was a $3 million. The Bonnie property some years ago was purchased for $900,000 or so. $2.1 million was left. That is what your board allocated $1.5 million from for the public works study. So there's about $600,000 left unallocated. The rest is what Mr. Sneddon was speaking of.

Okay, great. So we've got about 600,000 left there. And then just so, and I know Bob's gonna jump out of his chair here, so I'm not trying to get the money. I'm just trying to figure out what the balances are. And then in the North County open space trails, pot of money.

My recollection, Supervisor Lovenino, through the chair, there's about 900,000 after the board had set aside 800,000 at Supervisor Hartman's request a year or two ago.

okay perfect so the only thing i'm concerned about is the 2.1 i leave the north county i know i know supervisor nelson has a bunch of projects that he's doing a great job of trying to cobble together some things um But is there a requirement on the shell that it's supposed to be spent in the Guadalupe area? I know that's where the impact was.

My understanding is similar to yours, that it's to be expended in that area. All right.

And then from what I recall, that money is kind of being targeted for a Guadalupe campground.

At the staff level, that's been the discussion. I'm trying to identify a campground in the Guadalupe area.

And I think Supervisor Hartman was the champion of that and got that into the plan.

Yes, but I think it's kind of stymied right now. I think that it would be, it may not be ripe. Like a placeholder, I think it is in the rec master plan, but my sense is that if we have a real going concern that needs money, it might be better reallocated to the trail.

Okay, so then the trail is gonna need, obviously, a lot of matching funds and those types of things. So I know ATP grants are a good place for that, but we're kind of, tell us where we are on that, because we're right up against a deadline, right?

supervisor lavenino through the chair the the atp grant cycle is every two years and the applications for this cycle are due on monday i believe and generally your uh applications do better if you've got a project that's you know more the more shovel ready the project is the more um competitively they do

So how do we get that project more shovel ready for the next cycle of ATP?

Supervisor Lavagna, through the chair, I think completing the right-of-way and design work would be the way to do that.

I know we were able to get some federal money for the Santa Ynez River Trail, and I look at the BUILD program, for example, at the federal level, and that might be another source of money besides ATP. Are you familiar with that? I think it used to be the RAISE program, maybe?

Supervisor Hartman through the chair. Yes, there were a lot of programs in the federal highway, the last federal highway infrastructure bill. They're moving more towards a model of formula funding versus grant funding sources. In its current form, it's still got a ways to go to get approved. So we're tracking that very closely. We're also tracking other grant opportunities that may come up for projects like this.

But I guess the bottom line, if I can just put an exclamation point, is that we're more competitive if we have some money that we can produce locally to match those grant applications for federal or state.

Supervisor Hartman to the chair. Yes, you're correct. For example, the state ATP program has, I think it's 10 points out of 100 are based on how much local match you're bringing to the project. So essentially, the only projects that make the cut have that 20% local match.

okay well i guess where i'm going then is i mean it's like we kind of got money earmarked for a project that really has zero traction it's not making a lot of progress and then we are going to be running out of money soon for a project that we have an eir and we're kind of moving forward on so I mean, my request would be that somehow we allocate that 600,000 for at least a named project so that we could actually start grant applications and those types of things for the levy trail. Yeah, that's the only one I have that's not on the list.

And just to be clear, Supervisor Lovenino, through the chair, you're suggesting that it effectively be reserved for the trail?

Yeah. Thank you. I think, I guess it's the $600,000 balance. And then there's still your million dollars in North County open trail parks and whatever for

So if I could speak that just for a second and thank you for recognizing some of the work that we're trying to do up in the North County on a trail acquisition and my philosophy and the reason why I haven't gone after some of the $900,000 funds is I'm trying to find other sources first. I want to use our money to match things or entice more money into projects. So I have not put anything out there and named it to a specific project. I just been dangling out there for either the land trust or others to get that done. I think one of the reasons why we haven't moved forward with the levee trail application for the ATP grants was because that was one of the conditions actually of that approval. Actually my vote at the time was contingent that we actually get through the environmental before we applied for grants because sometimes the money shows up and then that drives the conversation and we don't look at the impacts. And I wanted to make sure the impacts were evaluated before we bring in the money. Because I'm still concerned that we're going to have a difficult time meeting the EIR's requirements and mitigations necessary for agricultural impacts at that project. And I don't know what those are yet. Hopefully that's going to be fully studied in this EIR. But a 300 or 400 foot buffer for multiple miles of agricultural easement that needs to be secured is probably in the millions of dollars. And I'm not sure how that's to be done and i haven't seen that yet and so that's one of the things i'm concerned about i know if we don't have that addressed we're definitely going to get there's going to be litigation involved with that because it's going to be a significant taking and so i want to be that's why i wanted to have that resolved first before we went after grants and so um that's part of that history there on that although i don't mind reserving the 600 000 if we resolve those issues then i actually i think you even see the agricultural community you know get behind it at some point

Yeah, I think the problem is going to be the same thing with the Guadalupe campground. It is also next to row crops and there's going to be people interested in that too. So yeah, I'm not saying that all of this is full speed ahead. I just want to make sure that there's money there so that when we get through the EIR that we've got something to do. Because I do think that the campground is not DOA, it's not KOA, it's not DOA. KOA? Yeah. But I think it's stalling out and, you know, you know, we should really allocate that money to somewhere else in Guadalupe. Supervisor Hartman.

And I would very much like to see it allocated to the trail. And I think it might be time for that North County open space to get dedicated to a project in the fourth district.

Okay. And we're, we're, Again, I've got lots of, I got more projects than I have money. So that's what I've been, again, trying to leverage those funds. And so if that's the board wants us to come forward with something, I can identify something. But again, I'm trying to get that done with donor dollars or other type of the dollars first or grants. We're actually got some grants into the federal government on some properties that are adjacent to the base. And those are some REPI grants. So our office is definitely working that. I don't have a problem with it moving over there. Again, I know we still need to go through an environmental process if we want to earmark that.

Chair Nelson, Supervisors, we were just trying to ask County Council whether she recalls whether that shell money had strings attached and whether it could be used for the trail or not. I don't know if she can deal out that answer right now, but I just want to let the board know you could at any time with a three-fifths vote designate it. It's only four-fifths vote to appropriate it to an actual project, and a lot of times you will just set us aside and give us direction. So even if we can't do it today,

you can always tell us at any time to come back and with the three-fifths vote you can designate the six hundred thousand dollars to whatever project you'd like so you guys are loving you agree i'm not going to be here very much longer so i i want to do mine uh swan song yes all right so you still have six months six hundred thousand dollars if if we get the approval the designation of that is part of

THE MOTION TODAY THAT YOU'RE HOPING FOR. OKAY. THE OTHER ISSUE THAT'S NOT ON THE CO'S ADJUSTED RECOMMENDED ADJUSTED BUDGET HERE IS THE FULFILLMENT GRANTS. Supervisor Hartman, what is the Hartman proposal here?

Okay. Well, let me, I'm going to support your film commissioner, but let me get there the long way. This was, the film commissioner was decades with Visit Santa Barbara. It was really funded through tourism related efforts. So the county would be taking on a role that the private tourism sector had handled. And the benefits really go to hotels, caterers, rental companies, certain property owners. And so in the past, it was those industries should fund the promotion rather than asking the taxpayer to subsidize. We don't really know why Visit Santa Barbara doesn't do that anymore. And I would say that it's very difficult to quantify the benefits of a film commissioner. We really have jurisdictional issues to overcome. We think about, well, why does one industry get concierge treatment perhaps than others? Can one FTE really do it? I'm willing to give it a try, but in the fulfillment grant, the Visit Santa Barbara has $75,000. And I think if we do the film commissioner, we could reduce that to $50,000. What I would like to do is take $25,000 from the Visit Santa Barbara money, and this will take, Director, this is gonna go into another issue, so I'm putting all my cards on the table. I very much support and have been tremendously influenced by the young people here. And they also visited some of us individually. They also attended our budget workshops. And what I learned from them is really the intent of the cannabis money. And then I kept thinking, Santa Barbara has, this is something else they said, that our juvenile arrest rate is almost double the state rate. I mean, that is sobering and I looked it up and that is true. We have the fourth highest among 58 counties. Although we have experienced substantial declines, that's still true. So we were talking earlier about what is public safety and how do you invest in public safety? And it seems to me you do it first and foremost by investing in youth. and they're asking us to give them a voice in county government. I would very much like to see that because as we've all experienced, explaining what county government does is one of the hardest things in our job. so i would like to see a commission created a youth commission like other counties and some cities have done and then i would like to see the 200 and i like to see the 50 000 go to staff that now where the other 25 so we get 25 from Visit Santa Barbara. I think we need Director Armas to explain where we would get the other 25, and that would fund the commission. And then the 250, I believe we really need to keep that intact. Otherwise it gets disseminated and dispersed. Believe me, I represent Lompoc. I have about a half dozen organizations that are tremendously underfunded in a disadvantaged area. but I'm willing to forgo that because I think this commission, I would like to give those young people the opportunity to themselves identify what they think important projects are and to develop the leadership and empowerment so that they can allocate that funding through a youth commission run out of our CSD with $50,000 support. And if Director Armis, you could explain how else I might get that 25,000 more that I would need for this proposal.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman, through the chair. So if the target is $50,000 and she's identified a portion coming from the fulfillment allocation, I did have a chance during the break to determine what kind of fund balance exists in our Human Services Commission allocation. Since that is general fund dollars, and there's about 25,000 of that we could easily access there without Diminishing the work that the commission is going to be doing in the forthcoming year. They'll still preserve some balance there for any Unexpected events that might occur, but we were reasonably confident that we could free up about 25,000

So I think we have to do some horse trading up here and that's what I think would be us fulfilling part of our moral obligation with this budget and really working with the youth, really investing in public safety upstream and I would strongly urge my colleagues to support this.

So getting back to the fulfillment grant piece, you're saying status quo fulfillment grants, except for a $25,000 reduction in the Visit Santa Barbara funding is what you are proposing and putting on the table at this point? Yes. And can you remind me what the fulfillment grant total is? Again, it was a- 190. 190, okay. So we're reducing that to 165. and the 25 coming from Mrs. Santa Barbara. C.L. Miyasato.

We did a budget inquiry form for the workshop. So I want Mr. Clemente just to run down what actually makes up that total for the fulfillment grants, just to refresh your board's memory.

Sure. So of the 190,000, Visit Santa Barbara was around 75,000. Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce was about 39,000. South Coast Chamber of Commerce, about 28,700. Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce, about 20,000. Solving Chamber of Commerce, about 7,300. Visit Santa Ynez Valley, about 7,000. San Ynez Valley Chamber of Commerce about $4,750, Buelton Chamber of Commerce about $2,600, and then the Los Olivos Business Organization was about $1,100. Okay.

All right, so this feeds into potentially pulling money out of a fulfillment grant, but it's also more of the general conversation that we were having about the youth education funding. And do you guys feel comfortable talking that through right now as a board?

Yeah, thank you. I mean, I sure appreciate your interest, Supervisor Hartman. I did have a question just on format because I met with, Future leaders of America yesterday, and I my understanding is and maybe they can correct me that they do have their own structure already And so I just would be I don't want to I'm not all that interested in creating new structures that cost money If there already is one that exists, and I just wanted maybe something one of you could clarify If we can put you on the spot you've already did such a great job miss Soto I

Thank you for the question, Supervisor Capps, and thank you all for considering the proposal that the youth have presented. So what the youth are proposing is for the county to establish a youth fund through reallocation of cannabis tax revenue and to ensure that that youth fund, which would be essentially a grant-making program, be youth-led. um and there is already a structure that could um support that effort the fund for santa barbara has a youth making change committee and they could very well um BE THE YOUTH FROM THAT YOUTH MAKING CHANGE COMMITTEE COULD BE THE ONES WHO ADMINISTER OR WHO MAKE FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS. MY UNDERSTANDING FROM THE YOUTH MAKING CHANGE COMMITTEE UNDER THE FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA, IT IS YOUTH LED GRANT MAKING PROGRAM. THEY RECRUIT YOUTH FROM NORTH AND SOUTH COUNTY AND MID COUNTY AS WELL. AND ONCE A YEAR THEY RECEIVE PROPOSALS WRITTEN BY YOUTH GROUPS THEMSELVES. THEY CONDUCT, THEY REVIEW THE PROPOSALS, THEY CONDUCT SITE VISITS, AND THEN THEY MAKE FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS. So, that is one of the ways in which the youth problem solved when it came to this question of like, well, who would administer it and how would that look like? I would also like to note that the youth, even with that in place, the youth are also still very much in favor of you all considering the establishment of a youth commission because it STILL VERY WELL PAVED IN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUTH VOICES TO BE HEARD IN COUNTY GOVERNANCE. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT THIS ONE-TIME FUNDING IS CONTINUED.

I just want to, I mean, I appreciate that. I also just, my interest is that in cannabis education, and I also really do appreciate the Youth Making Change existing structure. I've been to their events in the past, and it's very empowering because they really do kind of soup to nuts of the work, doing the research, finding the grant, administering the grants, finding the organizations, and it's very empowering. So again, I'm not, AGAINST YOUR PROPOSAL, BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE'RE NOT CREATING ANOTHER REEL THAT WOULD COMPETE WITH SOMETHING AND PUT MONEY ELSEWHERE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY DETRACT FROM EXISTING WORK.

NEW SPEAKER AND IF I MAY ADD, I'VE SPOKEN WITH THE FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA AND THEY WOULD BE WILLING TO HOUSE THE 250.

NEW SPEAKER SO I WANT TO TOUCH ABOUT YOUR IDEA ABOUT the 250,000 for youth. I would like to support that by this rate because Girls Inc and Boys and Girls Club were directly affected by cannabis in the Carpenter community and there's many youth programs such as the downtown club in Santa Barbara on the east side and many other programs in the west side that can benefit directly. But I respect your idea, but I would prefer by district more locally money spent.

And I would jump into here just for the conversation too. I'm by district as well. I do think if We think, you know, by our district, the best thing is to give the money to the fund for Santa Barbara. That's a worthy cause for those district funds to go into. If that's the right mix for you and your district, the best way for those to get deployed. I just know that we have five very diverse districts. And, you know, I want to make sure that we get you know for me if these funds are going to be spent i would like to make sure that they go into places that are more suited for each of our districts and not necessarily one big pot so that's my preference as well supervisor lavenino and then hartman yeah i honestly i think dilution kills effectiveness um

Yeah, I mean, I've got a Boys and Girls Club and I've got a YMCA. I don't think that's what we're talking about. Those are funds for me that I, you know, we all support those groups, but we don't have five human services commissions. We don't have five planning commissions. We don't have five any commissions. We have one and we all have different ideas of what we'd like the money to go to, but... Personally, what I heard was they're telling us they want to make recommendations to us. So, I mean, I get why people want to do it out of their own district, but then you just basically end up with another 990 account. That's basically what the 990 is, is like if you have an organization in your community you support, then if they've got a need that you can help fill that. So I just think once you go down to district, what are you talking about now? You're talking about $50,000 a district. It doesn't really meet to me what Prop 64, after going back and reading it now, it's a lot about cannabis education. And I don't think you're going to do that with $50,000 in a district. I don't know what the fear is that maybe we have different priorities, but I mean like we have the racial equity grants coming out of the fund. I know some of us have had concerns about those and where those were going to go. And then we've all supported all of their recommendations. So I think it might be more fear-based or something that, I just think it's a great opportunity. We've never done anything like this before. And I think that in the spirit of Prop 64, we should try this. I don't really have a preference one way or the other, whether we handle it or if it goes to the fund, But I do know, I mean, I'm looking up right now about youth making change. There's Santa Maria and Santa Barbara. So that would probably be my preference than recreating our own, but I'm open to debate. I just think if once you go down to Supervisorial District, it just gets so diluted that I don't think you're really making any significant change. and you're not really, you're giving the money out instead of having the kids make the decision and the youth come back and telling us, this is what's important to us. Which is props to them because honestly, 90% of the groups come in here just want us to write them a check, right? And say, yeah, here's your money. So I think it's, this seems like a different approach that appeals to me a lot more than just writing a check to them.

Supervisor Hartman and Capps and Beck and I have some comments as well.

What I hear first and foremost is that youth in our county particularly those who haven't had a lot of resources are asking for a voice in county government. They're asking to learn about and have an opportunity to share their views on county government. I think to be able to do that, we need to have something within county government. When Gloria and her colleagues youth came and talked to me, I pushed hard and said, we don't have the resources to be able to support a commission. How could we fund the grants perhaps like the equity grants? And so the fund for Santa Barbara, which I think has done a great job, came up as an alternative. If we had a commission, I think each board member would, like maybe the Women's Commission, appoint three members. And then I think we would really get them motivated by saying part of your job is to allocate these funds. So I think it's really important that we try to keep it integrated and I think that it has tremendous promise in building leadership for the future and I just think that gets dissipated if we do it district by district I think it gets dissipated if we try to separate the funding source from the Commission responsibilities so my proposal is still to fund the commission, a youth commission with 25 and 25, and then to give them $250,000 to allocate.

All right, thank you, Supervisor Herman, Supervisor Capps.

Well, okay. I'm landing somewhat in the middle here. I think potentially with Supervisor Labanino. What I heard loud and clear from our youth was that they want to work on cannabis education. We had a really interesting conversation about something that I've just been made aware, painfully aware of as the direct link between adolescent cannabis use and potential. bipolar and schizophrenia it's happening with um sadly with the son of a friend of mine right now and i had no idea and i have a teenager and they were of course fully aware and they're the ones peer-to-peer messengers are far better Advocates to do this. I think we should give them the money Rather than I don't want to create a new structure a new County entity So I would be either in favor of all of it going towards Future leaders through the fund for Santa Barbara or if not has a fallback district by district But that's where that's where my interest is because I do think this Fairly new study from the Journal of American Medical Association of this link. Dr. Dan Brennan has really been speaking out about this link between mental health tendencies and heavy use cannabis is fairly new and I don't think people really know about it and we have a lot of educating to do so that's that's where my interest is again they were all over it when I brought it up in our meeting yesterday so I think we have a lot of educating to do and I think we should stick to the cannabis educating part of this mission. I know you all do a lot of other work at FLA. I've known you for a long time as not you individuals, but the organization, particularly on the school board. And I just applaud the work. There's a long track record there. And so I would want to just stick with what works.

So question. Yeah. So is that three votes then for if supervisor hartman would go that it would be 250 000 we could do the administration through the fund and it would be a grant making proc proc process similar to the equity funds those come back to us before approval potentially i still have a question no i understand i'm just trying to make sure i know where they are too because i didn't think supervisor hartman was good with that, but I mean that's obviously not your starting position.

Half a loaf is better than a loaf. I mean half a loaf is better than no loaf.

I've been called a half loafer a lot of times up here, so.

You have, CCO Miasato wanted to say something.

So I just want to be clear for what Supervisor Capps is proposing. For the grants that would be distributed through the fund, would they all be related to cannabis education or no?

That's my interest.

So I actually have a question about that. If that's the direction this goes, I know we already, through I think behavioral wellness, have funds that are going out for I think three organizations throughout the county. I know Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley is our big one up in Santa Maria. So is that, that's already, and it's a couple hundred thousand dollars, is that right? It's only 35 each?

Yeah, it's 35.

chair nelson is uh you're talking about the behavioral wellness funding that goes out it's a hundred and twenty thousand almost and it's thirty nine thousand ish to about forty to each of those three organizations okay so if we're gonna go down that route you know it seems to make makes more sense to deploy that money towards those programs if that's what we want to do is get out to um cannabis education so i don't know if that's on the table at all as we try to spread these funds out towards those areas Again, I'll make one of my last pitches on by district. I know Supervisor Lavigneau, you were saying that it's another 990. In my district, we do a lot with our 990. We pay for a graffiti abatement program. We do a lot of youth work with the little money that we get in our office. So that's one reason why I'm kind of fighting hard for it because I know I can leverage that to do even more in my community. I represent seven unincorporated areas that don't have Parks and Rec programs don't have those other levels of services. We don't have community centers. We barely have libraries. And so for me, that's one of the reasons why I've been kind of a dog after bone on these funds to come back to my districts. I just know how much more we could do. It's not a dilution for me. That's actually something I can use to enhance services to my constituents. So that's the reason why I was going after district funds. And that's my big pitch there for myself. Again, you guys all have different districts and different needs. Obviously, Supervisor Lavagnino's district and mine are very different on the amount of services that the county is required to provide for those municipal constituents. But if we're going to go down the education route, you know, I would rather see it go to those organizations that were currently already funding, they're already out there in the schools, they're already providing this training, if we're going to go ahead and get those funds out for youth education on cannabis. I could support that, if that's the route that we wanted to go.

Supervisor Loveno? Maybe I have a, I don't know if, I'm trying to give you an out of saying, you know, what about a bifurcated proposal where we don't all have to agree? I mean, we do this sometimes with SPCAG is sometimes you do half lane miles and half, I mean, if, I don't know how many, I don't want to get it down too far, but I see the value in doing the grants because it gets the kids involved. If you don't, I don't want you to force, I don't want to force you into that. So is there a scenario where if you wanted to opt out and do it out of your district?

I'd be okay with that. And that's why I said we could give our district monies to those, that funding cycle.

Well, no, I want it stipulated that it's for the youth commission and you're going to do it through your own district.

That's fine with me.

May I?

I have only also recently become aware of the profound new research about the impacts of cannabis on the developing brain and I heard the statistic that a cannabis-induced psychosis can make somebody 50% more likely to suffer from schizophrenia later on. That is staggering. We have a little bit of money in our behavioral wellness. Knowing that, starting with our whole cannabis program, I think a lot more money would have been devoted to education. But I'm wondering if a proposal couldn't be that a portion of the money that we would allocate of the 250 would go directly to cannabis education through creative programs that the the youth come up with and then give some flexibility to spend in other areas for the the rest of the money if that could get a third vote from supervisor capps so i think we have a lavenino and a hartman proposal i'm not sure which well yeah mine was okay so

YOU KNOW WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO, JUST TAKE $250,000 ALLOCATED TO YOUTH FUNDING AND TALK ABOUT IT ANOTHER DAY SO WE DON'T WRAP EVERYBODY UP IN HERE? BECAUSE THIS IS REALLY A DIFFERENT HEARING. ARE YOU GUYS GOOD WITH THAT? BECAUSE WE'RE HOLDING UP A BUNCH OF PEOPLE AND WE REALLY SHOULD, I MEAN, WE COULD HEAR BETTER PROPOSALS, WE COULD HEAR DIFFERENT THINGS. ARE WE GOOD WITH JUST SAYING, HEY, THERE'S $250,000 ALLOCATED OUT OF THIS BUDGET FOR A YOUTH EDUCATION FUND, WE'LL FIGURE OUT Because they were under the gun, too, of coming up with proposals. And that way we can move the business on and we can get back to this at a later time.

Let me go to CO Miyasato here for a second. Thank you, Supervisor. We could definitely set aside $250,000. We can come back and have a hearing. We could talk about how you would like to allocate that. We can do that. We can just keep it at $990,000. We can give it to CSD to hold on to. Either way, it can be set aside and you can have another hearing on how you would like to allocate it.

Okay, can we do that? Keep it in general county programs here beyond this hearing and come back to it?

As much as I don't want to do that, because I wanted to hammer it out today, but I think... WE'RE GOING TO END UP WITH AN INFERIOR PRODUCT IF WE KEEP GOING THE WAY WE'RE GOING INSTEAD OF ALL OF US KIND OF FIGURE OUT COME BACK BECAUSE I MEAN DUDE TODAY WE HAD A MILLION THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT SO AND IN THE SCOPE OF THINGS 250 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR ALL OF OUR STAFF THAT'S HERE YOU KNOW WE'VE PROBABLY BURNED 100 GRAND OF IT ALREADY SO I'M THERE SUPERVISOR LOWER YOU KNOW SUPERVISOR LEE I agree. Let's kick the can on this. Okay. But not very far.

Let's not kick it very far. Right.

We hear you guys. We're in for $250,000, and we're just trying to figure out the best way to do it. So you're going to need to burn these people's lines up and educate them on how you want it done. Okay?

Right. Can I make a point? Yeah. If you talk about cannabis funding, then my district probably should get most of the funds.

I thought it always went to the districts that supported it so that it created it. So, but I guess not. I hear you, Roy. I got you. All right. And it's disappointing, but I want to come up with the right program. So, and I don't think we were headed that way. So let's figure this out.

Okay. I appreciate that wisdom, Supervisor Lavagnino. So let's go ahead and put a pin in that. And hopefully that's going to be a part of our final motion here today is to move that to general county programs to be decided at a later date. but not too far yeah soon hopefully this summer I think would be our hope to give this back at some point for further discussion so that we could so the kids can hit the ground running at the new school year all right All right, let's go to the next controversial issue. Let's go to BSU manager. I think that I'm kind of going to go back to our CEO recommended adjustments. Right now we have in our recommendation $180,000 from the general fund and $60,000 from behavioral VHSA funding. Supervisor Capps, you had brought this up as a topic area for further discussion.

Yeah, to see if there's consensus about moving it to behavioral wellness in order to be paid for by state funds. And then it would certainly maintain the mission of keeping it as a supervisorial role. Also noting that again, the community corrections partnership, CCP is paying for the fourth unit of this, which is great news. And so there's synergy there and that's just, you know, I won't follow my sword for this one, but I feel as though it is a smart move.

I guess my question is there are still some functions there that are really valuable to our organization, the Sheriff's Department, to have their behavioral science unit there because of the support that they give to our officers, as well as what they do on hostage negotiations and other things that cannot be paid for by BHSA funds. So 100%, I think, would limit what that position does today. And so I like to, you know, again, the most that we can pay for by BHSA funds, the better. But I don't want to 100% go there to 100%. I like to keep in the Sheriff's Department. And I like for it to be able to have some of those law enforcement functions that it currently does. Director Navarro, did you have some comments?

So per the BHSA fiscal policy regulations, funds must be spent in accordance with the three-year integrated plan and in categories that align to where funding is available. Currently in our BHSA three-year integrated plan, funding is available in outreach and engagement and in workforce education and training. So we looked at, along with the sheriff's team, they presented to us a list of the duties that Dr. Lee provides in her role as the BSU manager. And we identified, in looking at that and what was presented to us, Bewell identified that about 25% of the work that she does is related to CIT, which can be put under workforce education and training. combined with co-response, which would be outreach and engagement. So that 25% of the time is what she spends really on her work as a BSU manager in co-response and CIT. And looking at the 75% other duties that were listed, they were really related to public safety services activities and administrative tasks for the SBSO, for the Sheriff's Office.

Okay, that's helpful to clarify that. So it sounds like we've already maximized our BHSA funding. One question I have about that, that's based on our three-year plan we have right now. If we open that up at all and maybe make some adjustments, are there other ways to fund the current activity of that position that just are not in our current plan where there's funding?

Not currently. Again, the 75%, the other duties that we looked at were strictly related to sheriff's office, public safety type activities and duties, such as hostage negotiation, threat assessment, and direct services provided to law enforcement officers. So those do not fall under any categories within BHSA. However, if there was, you know, again, We did not go down any other path in terms of looking at other activities that the Sheriff's Department may find that would be helpful to them in working in mental health. We have not looked down. That is not an area we discussed. They just presented us with what her duties are and asked us to figure out what percentage we could fund.

All right, thank you. Sio Miyasaru, did you?

MS. NAVARRO, WE ALSO SAID THAT YOU HAD MENTIONED THAT KIND OF GOING ALONG WITH WHAT SUPERVISOR NELSON, CHAIR NELSON IS SAYING, IT COULD SOLELY BE FUNDED BY BHSA BUT THE DUTIES WOULD HAVE TO BE ALTERED.

YES. SIGNIFICANTLY.

SIGNIFICANTLY. SO THAT FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGES WHAT THAT POSITION IS AND WHAT IT HAS BEEN. One reason I've been fighting for this job is it's a fairly progressive thing to have a behavioral health professional in a sheriff's department like this. This is something that I think we lose in our sheriff's department. It's something that probably doesn't come back. And there's been so much invested there. I wouldn't want to lose the momentum of having that role. I think it's something that our county is actually seen as a leader in that way. And I think... You've heard from our advocates of how important that is. And so, again, I'm a big fan of keeping this position. And this sounds like from staff that we've maximized what we can pay for by other sources. So that's where I'm at. But are you okay with that?

Yes, I just wanted to explore it.

Yes, I think it was a good, healthy. Question. Supervisor Lee.

Just confirm me. You want to keep it under the sheriff's department?

Yes. And it would stay 180 under the general fund and $60,000 would be paid by BHSA according to CEO's recommended adjustments.

I'll be supportive of that.

Okay. We're all good there? Okay. Warrant officer. Again, this was one that was also brought up by you, Supervisor Capps.

Yes. So again, I had some questions around the data of the warrant officer. It sounds like great progress has been made in general on warrants with the community. the criminal justice partners working together and that's wonderful news. I just have questions about the warrant officer as a one-time position and we should be asking questions. And so my suggestion would be if we can pay for that position under CCP funds, we should do so. I know that's not something we can absolutely know at this moment, but it looks pretty good given the folks in the room who would be making those decisions. So that's my suggestion.

And I appreciate that because I would love for it to be paid for by something else other than this as well. But I did think I did hear though that that might be considered supplanting, which I think we need some clarification because if that's the case, then it isn't eligible. So I guess, let's hear from Chief Benton here on this because I think that's really important and that's for where Supervisor Capps wants to go here on this.

SUPERVISOR CAPS, THROUGH THE CHAIR, THAT IS CORRECT. THE CCP CANNOT PERMIT SUPPLANTING AND THE GENERAL DEFINITION OF THAT IS TO TAKE FUNDS THAT ARE REALIGNMENT FUNDS AND SUBSTITUTE THOSE FOR FUNDS THAT ARE BEING USED FROM ANOTHER SOURCE, SUCH AS GENERAL FUND OR CANNABIS FUNDING. SO IT CANNOT BE A DIRECT ONE-TO-ONE SUBSTITUTION.

OKAY. SO I GUESS I GOT MISINFORMATION.

A LITTLE NOT THERE.

A LITTLE BIT BEFORE. OKAY. Well, I have some questions about this continuing. I'd rather see that go towards boots on the ground in Isla Vista where we know there's a general need. This seems like something that it's been explained to me that individuals, officers all do anyway. We've made some progress. It seems to me that we don't need necessarily a dedicated position, and I'd rather see that be dedicated towards the densest part of our county in Isla Vista.

All right. Other thoughts on this, Supervisor Hartman?

Well, I have a lot of sympathy for what Supervisor Capps is pointing out. When this was initially proposed, I was scratching my head and I wasn't really sure that it was gonna be worth it. In my mind, we let things get out of hand and we had a real backlog and we had things we had to, sort out and and I think we're still in that process I I don't believe I would be in favor of doing this as a permanent position but I do think it will take several years to kind of get caught up but one would think that it would be part of normal business that when people are supposed to be in court and they aren't and they abscond, that it would be part of business procedure to follow them up, not just if they're in traffic tickets. So I hope that we can get to a steady state where we don't have a big backlog, but I am very supportive of two or three years if we can and see where we are.

Supervisor Lavagnino.

i totally agree with that uh hopefully this isn't something we have to continue but i think we got a good start need to make progress we're cleaning up the backlog and uh yeah i i see your point and i think we've got to do it at least this year and we'll see where it is next year

Supervisor Lee. Can we do like an IV warrant officer?

A what?

IV warrant officer.

Well, yeah, because see, the good news is your crime is down. My crime, not so much. So I got a lot of people out on felony warrants.

That's fine.

So all right, so right now we're going to keep status quo on that is where I see at least the consensus at it. But I think there's a recognition of the entire board that this should be a temporary position. I've been hearing that they work really closely with our narcotics teams as well to kind of further help them with some of their efforts there. And I know that that's been a good synergy. But again, I think we're a lot of us are still are very sympathetic to the issue of the of Isla Vista. And I think we'll come to that.

And if I can just make a request, because I really didn't understand the data that came through on that board inquiry form. If we can actually understand next year when we're making this decision, what this officer, the direct arrests that were made from this position, that would be really helpful.

Okay. So I see the film commissioner. I know that this is one of the items, next item up there that we had kind of pulled. Supervisor Lee, you've made a pitch before. Do you want to make another? I do. You're getting support, but I'm going to give you an opportunity. Just a little more?

Yep. So I just want to touch base on Supervisor Hartman's point about what the film commission does. It's not just about hotels and restaurants. It's about creating jobs where film employs crews. local crews union crews and these are good jobs that's in addition to the tlts and other benefits so we also need help with permitting make it a streamline make it faster so that we can bring this business into accounting so there's much more than just hotels and restaurants there's it's a great opportunity for jobs great paying jobs all right um supervisor hartman and supervisor caps oh

I'll support the overall budget, but I just want to be on record. I don't think this is a good expenditure of county money at this point. This really is something that Visit Santa Barbara did. Nobody's told me why they don't do it anymore. The benefits mainly go to Santa Barbara. They get most of the TOT. We've learned that in Santa Ynez, where they go for the day and they come back and stay at night in Santa Barbara. And I think trying to come up with any measures that would show success, it's really tough. We have an industry that the state is trying to support, but it is in decline. And so even if you held steady, well, that would be a success measure. These things are... I just don't think it's a good... But I've said my piece, and I know nobody will agree with me, but I do feel necessary to express my values and my skepticism.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. C.O. Miyasato, and then back over to Supervisor Capps here.

I just want to point out some history because I think we've been saying we don't know why it was defunded by Visit Santa Barbara. I don't think it was defunded by them. I think it was defunded by the board when I'm looking back at the history because I have a recollection when I came, there was still some conversation. I'm looking just at our archive. It looked like This position was funded and then it got cut gradually after the Great Recession. So it looks like the Board of Supervisors had funded it. I can't tell how much, maybe $75,000, and it was decreased in 2010 and again until it was eliminated.

If I may ask, how was it administered?

I don't recall how it was administered, but I believe it was similar to what's being proposed. It was a person who was doing the work.

The research I did said it was Visit Santa Barbara.

All right. And I don't know if 10 years, I mean, Visit Santa Barbara was not, is a rather newer organization, right? It was former the Santa Barbara Chamber and then they created Visit Santa Barbara. So actually 10 years ago, I don't even think.

It was Santa Barbara Convention Visitors Bureau.

Okay, gotcha. Supervisor Kapp, sorry, I know you're waiting. Yeah, I know.

And I really, I said this in the budget workshops, but I applaud the ingenuity of this position. I know it's just for one year. I have optimism that it's going to produce. And just being out and about on the community quite a bit lately, people are really looking for us to be creative about economic development. And I know that there was a speaker in Santa Maria recently. I read the story about it. I think that, for me, what it does is challenge me to think, What should I be doing? You know, how can I be learning from District one about what other ideas should we bring be bringing to the table? We really have to be generating more revenue here. I know we all feel that we feel the pressure. We don't like what we have to do today. And so I see this in a bigger context of this is just one position, but it's bringing in revenue. We are optimistic that it will be because you think about the number of producers that potentially wanted to, we have no idea, wanted to film here. And then they start off the process and they don't get the permit they want and go elsewhere. But just, you know, what does that mean? We have a lot of economic development to be doing here. This is going to be tough headwinds for a long time. So I am fully supportive.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Capps. Supervisor Lavagnino?

I'll support the film commissioner, just as I do most other revenue-generating ideas that doesn't really seem to go many places here, but I will support the film commissioner, and I would like to fill out an application, if I could.

I would love to do that job. Extra help? You're not the first one. I've been knocking down doors wanting the job. I'll put you on the list.

Put in a good word for me.

hire him back and get your help. There's something that's, I think it's really cool about this opportunity is, Yes, there's an economic opportunity here. And I know that there's some skepticism on there and how to quantify that. And I think we really should be working on trying to figure out if we can connect those numbers. But there's also a sense of community pride when our community is shown off on the small and big screen. And I think that's something that a lot of us already feel. And when we had this conversation up before, I think we all started throwing out different movies that were in our district. And how proud we are of that. And that's actually people in your own community talk about those types of things. So if this is something that we can help facilitate, I think it has value. And again, I want to thank the First District for championing this and looking forward to its success. And I think it's definitely worth a try. So I'm going to be supportive as well. All right. I think that brings us down to the sheriff set aside is one. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

I do have. I would like to ask about the county council one attorney for two years just because we didn't spend any time on it in the budget workshops. I'M SURE IT'S A GOOD IDEA, BUT WE HAVEN'T HAD ANY AIR TIME AT ALL IN A PUBLIC WAY. SO I THINK IT'S WORTHY OF DOING SO FOR THE SAKE OF TRANSPARENCY. I DID HAVE SOME QUESTIONS, BUT I JUST WANT TO HEAR, I GUESS THAT WOULD BE COUNTY COUNCIL TO SPEAK ABOUT WHAT THAT IS AND PARTICULARLY WHY IT WOULD COME FROM CANNABIS FUNDS. THAT WAS SORT OF A CONFUSING THING FOR ME. AND I DID HAVE A QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT POTENTIALLY, WHY IT SURFACED AFTER OUR BUDGET WORKSHOPS. So process as well.

All right. Is the answer for budget staff or, I mean, I know there's a good explanation for it from council, but how'd you guys want to put it? Yeah. Okay.

mr chair members of the board so this is really a cost savings proposal and it came about after the initial work for budget workshops which we do really early in the year because we got some new estimates from outside council So as you know, we handle most of our litigation in-house, but there are specialty area cases where we do look at outside counsel as an option. We have seen a significant increase in the hourly rates, as well as the estimates that we're seeing for the work. And so we proposed that we can do it. If we had more resources, we could save the county and the enterprise fund on the outside council costs by doing it in-house. So you would see significant savings. First, we're going to see it in the enterprise fund, but as well as the risk management fund.

CME Sutter.

So just continuing what County Council said, yeah, we have extraordinary outside council bills coming through and there is an outside litigation, outside council line item that we deposit to the County Council's office. And so part of that, the $200,000 is reducing that line item to help offset the costs. Also, as she said, I think the enterprise funds, mostly public works, I think will probably see the biggest benefit initially because a lot of the litigation that we're seeing is in that area. And the way we do cost allocation, we have to fund it up front with general fund and then wait till the cost allocation plan catches up. And so that's the reason. On cannabis funds, it was really because it came late to us, the request, and that was what was left, quite frankly, after your board's workshop where you express what you wanted to fund. And that was really what was left. And that's what we allocated in order to fund this.

Okay. So it was more of a balancing measure than actual specific for cannabis related reasons.

And also that the cannabis revenue is continuing to fund an existing staff person, I believe in County Council. Is that correct? Yes. So it made sense.

Do we have a, thank you. Do we have a ballpark of, of cost savings roughly? Yeah.

Mr. Chan, members of the board, I can tell you that for one case that we just took in-house, the savings is estimated at $2.5 million, because that's the estimate we got from outside counsel before we took it in-house. So this would allow us, I mean, even if we took one more case, um just based on the number of hours we spend on taking one case to trial or up to close to trial it's between two and three million dollars a case that we would spend on outside counsel and as i said we already try to keep everything we can in-house as many cases as we can so we came up with this option as just a way to see anticipated savings in the future and if i if i could jump in and you know there's also something else that's changed recently is our deductible

at the county where previously we had a much lower deductible for for litigation where i believe at 750 000 our insurance would typically kick in that number is now two and a half million is that is that do i have that two million sorry so you know before that was you know you get to 750 000 really quick right and then so this is why this becomes a little bit that delta is a big deal for for the lawsuits that come to our county Is that, am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. So in the past, when the deductible was lower, then once we reached that cost in outside counsel, the rest would be covered by insurance, but now that's a much higher number. So we're going to expand that before we get to coverage.

Thank you. That's helpful. I mean, I think I knew I didn't really have questions on the merits. It was more the process because it wasn't discussed at all during the workshops. And I think, you know, everybody had to have a lot of restraint and not ask for more positions. And that's hard. I want to acknowledge the department directors who've been sitting here all day and, you know, and to see other positions. I just thought it was worthy of discussion. So thank you.

Alright, thank you, sir. Caps. I think last one on here is the sheriff set aside. I had some thoughts about that. I don't know if anybody else does as well. My my initial I saw there's a list of different things to be funded there obviously overtime, but I thought. If we're allocating that, I know that to Isla Vista we're trying to backfill some of those positions. I didn't know if we want to be more specific with the allocation there on the set aside. The set-aside could be potentially a sergeant and three additional deputies is what I believe that that could potentially fund in Alavista, which is starting to get some traction back towards the foot patrol. But I wanted to hear your thoughts as well on that supervisor caps.

No, I appreciate what the CEO's office has done by by establishing a set aside like this. And what I'm looking for is just really more information from the sheriff's department and more collaboration so that if you just restore this, then it's hard to to work in the kind of partnership that I would want. And so I think by doing this methodology, we can establish some future allocations, future metrics, and really establishing what are we looking at. I know there's conversations that are happening with really tremendous progress in Isla Vista. As we've discussed, the crime rate is down by half. That statistic is... is with Deltopia numbers. And so if we do, if this is in a new era with a Zoltopia, which is far less resource intensive from the county's perspective, there's a lot of discussions underway with UCSB, with Isla Vista Community Service District of what the future of policing really can look like. And so I think by setting the funding aside as those conversations continue to happen this summer, we can put forward more of a structure, more of a game plan so that we understand really what does that relationship look like with the Isla Vista, excuse me, with UCPD because that relationship had sort of not been as structured as we would want. And so this allows for a little more time to put some teeth, put some structure in place before the funding is allocated.

Okay, so if I understand that correctly, you're looking to just keep that broad for right now, future date you're comfortable with at this point?

Yep.

Okay. What about, and I'm fine with that too. I was just, again, I've been hearing your concerns about Ila Vista, so I wanted to make sure that we were being responsive, and seeing those funds there, it seemed like a natural connection, but if you're comfortable with waiting,

Yeah, and I don't know if the, I mean, again, this is, CEO Musato, if you wanted to speak about this, because I think it's a smart approach.

So just Chair Nelson and board members, my staff, some of the sheriff executive staff, UCSB administrators, UCPD, IV CSD, we met to try to start talking about what is policing, what should that look like in IV. And so that work has just begun. And so that's why we wanted to have a little bit more time, information, so that all groups could come together and see if there is consensus about what should be there.

Okay. I'm comfortable with that. Everybody else good on that?

I just wanted to go on record though because I am fully supportive of the rural crime deputy and I just hadn't said that out loud yet. I know you all have expressed that support and I just I hear that I heard that last year and and I yeah so we kind of skipped over that one quickly but I think there's broad consensus for that position.

All right. Yeah. Thank you, Supervisor Capps, for adding your voice of support to that. Supervisor Lee?

I just can see our ag farmers up there happy. Yeah.

For at least a day. Yes. For at least one day.

Yeah.

Well, again, I know that Supervisor Lavagnino has spoken to that and against Supervisor Hartman about the need for that. And I think it is a significant investment in our agricultural areas. And I'm excited to see that. I know that's something that's been asked for for quite some time. And I think the need is definitely there. And I think it's gonna help with the synergy of what's fighting crime in some of these more rural areas. So I think that's a good investment. All right, so I'm seeing consensus around actually the CEO's recommended budget. So I think the caveat set, it took us a minute. It took a minute.

It's like she knows who we are. She does.

She does. So I believe the motion that we'll eventually be looking for here is to adopt the CO's budget. And there's some additional things here as well, but a couple other things I heard that I think that there could be consensus on was moving over the $600,000 that's left on the shale settlement money towards the river project for potential future matching funds or some other, you know, moving it from one project to the other. is one of the items. And then the $250,000 youth fund set aside for further discussion at a later date.

Supervisors, that's correct. We have basically the sheet that we provided, but for general county programs, youth education funding, instead of by supervisorial district, it's a set aside for the board to make further direction on allocation. And on the $600,000 from the shell, we would say set it aside with the intention of the trail pending county council confirmation, because we just want to make sure that it's appropriate given the settlement.

OK, so those would be those would be additions to the CEOs recommended adjustments. In our motion so. Is there CEO?

Go ahead. 10,000 if we want to take just a two minute break. I think we can put put it up on the screen. The amended version we talked about. We can pass pass one out so everyone is clear for the record. What you're adopting five or 10 minutes here. Yeah, about five minutes would probably OK. Alright guys, stay close.

5 minute break. All right, we're returning back to the June 16, 2026 meeting the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. This is our 2026-2027 budget hearings. We've just concluded deliberations and now we're going to be, we have a conceptual summary in motion. I think it's up on the screen here based on the deliberation discussions that we just had. And I think what my plan on doing here is to get a motion and a second on this, and that will open up for further discussion. So supervisors can make any closing comments that they might want to before we take a vote. So kind of get a motion on the recommended actions, which are I think A through G. and incorporating attachment A1 that was just recently on the screen that has been distributed to all the supervisors that's in the back of the room and available online.

So moved.

Second. So I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All right. Any of you supervisors would like to make any parting comments? I know Supervisor Capps, did you want to say a few words?

Yeah, sure. Thank you, Supervisor.

Before we vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Nelson. And I appreciate that we landed in a good place. I had no doubt that we would, thanks to the steady leadership of our CEO and the budget team. There'll be plenty of time, not too much time, but plenty of time for Accolades and comments so I wanted to speak a bit about where we started today with some opening comments really about the the role of public safety and our lack of support or our support about public safety because really this conversation today as it generally does when it comes to budgets centered on public safety and that's where we spent the majority of energy and And I feel, I take this really seriously, and I want to clarify a few things and some thoughts that I have. I believe firmly that requiring accountability from our public safety departments, from specifically the Sheriff's Department, is not undermining or showing a lack of commitment to public safety, but the opposite. It's actually a vital part of it. Public trust is the foundation of effective law enforcement. They don't need me to tell them that. They know that. Accountability helps build trust and maintain trust. Former supervisor Stoker, when he was here, he suggested we do a survey and I sort of chuckled because for the past several months, I've done far better than that. I've actually walked hundreds of doors and earned quite a few votes and heard from quite a few people. And yeah, they do care about public safety, but they also had a lot of questions about overtime. a lot of questions about ICE activity at our jail. And they're asking me. They're holding me on the hook. They're holding me on the hook about fiscal oversight. And they should. That's my job. And they're my boss. And this is when we get to basically report back to our bosses today on how we're doing, how we're measuring up and how we're handling their money. It's not our money, it's their money. So when we're asking for transparency, when we're asking for data and we're not getting it, and we're asking for professional standards, I'm not attacking law enforcement or undermining it. I'm believing in it. I'm wanting it to be better. I'm wanting our public institutions to be fair, responsible, effective. The vast majority of our deputies who do their jobs with such integrity and the kind of courage that I could only imagine doing should welcome accountability because it strengthens public confidence in their work. And so again, demanding this accountability and supporting public safety, as has been pointed out as half our dollars, these are not competing values. And again, I appreciate this board so much, the camaraderie, how we come together. So many institutions do this kind of work with a lot of tension, we do not. But today I appreciate this board because you all realize that in fact, accountability and support for public safety go hand in hand. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Capps. Supervisor Labanino and then Supervisor Lee.

Well, this is number 16, the last one, and it's Mona's last one. There's a few other people out there. It's our last one. I just want to say how much I appreciate our staff, from the CEO down to our budget staff, all of our directors, everybody that sat through this, everybody that had to try to put together a budget last year, being asked to do more with less. We understand how difficult that was, and we know the sacrifices that you're making, and we're kind of judging you on how you run your department at the same time cutting resources to your department. It's not a great place to be in. But sometimes it's what's necessary. And to all the employees, I hope you can realize that we did our absolute best to save as many jobs as possible. When we started this, we were looking at hundreds and hundreds of layoffs. We're now down to 60 and we're still working that number. And I'm just really proud of the work that the people in this room do. It's amazing, you know, when people ask me, well, what does the County do? And I started like, It's hard to put it into words that people understand, but man, we touch people's lives all the time. People are so worried about what's happening at the White House or in Sacramento. The reality is it's the county employees that are interfacing with people all the time, all the time, whether it's at parks or social services or the fire department or animal control or the Ag Commission or public health, It's just in their daily lives. And you guys do amazing work. We wish there were more resources to be able to hand out because when you start, you figure out what you do when you have to stop doing something and then you say, okay, well, what's important? It's all important. It's all really important work. And yeah, it's gonna be weird not doing this again, but... I really enjoyed it and I'm glad we got to where we were because I do think that it's, in a lot of places, it gets a lot more heated. We all disagree with each other about how to do something, but we all, I don't think I've been on here where I felt like at any point any somebody was doing something they didn't think was the absolute right thing to do i disagree with it sometimes i don't understand it but i i know that that person's coming from a good place so um i'm looking forward to this next uh six months and me coming and talking to you guys at public comment about how you're screwing up next year's budget so

We appreciate that. Supervisor Lee.

Oh, Steve, I hope to see you in public comment next year. I just want to say first of all to thank staff and for all the hard work and this year's budget. In particular, thank Mona and all the directors. We basically give you a rock and ask you to make super obvious. So great job and we appreciate it. I hope tonight we can all sleep through the night and not wake up three times. So these are tough times, but we need to make these cuts now because worse are coming down the road. Going forward, we cannot just cut our way to success. We need to grow our local economy and generate more tax dollars. We think cost is budget shortfalls, but that doesn't mean we don't have to do our best to address the needs of our community. We can do better and we will. I think we have done our best on this budget and I'm more than supportive of approving this. So great work. It's not over and I look forward to working with everyone on the next budget cycle. So thank you.

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

Well, it is a bittersweet budget with being the last for CEO Miyasato, who I think you said it all, she knows us. And the fact that her proposed budget sticks and her amendments stick, um really illustrates that and i'm going to miss it and supervisor lavenino has the historic context he's always the one who can pull out budgets from years ago and tell us the trend maybe workday can do that in the future but i'm going to miss the jokes this is we in my mind we had kind of a a fork in the road. Either we were going to do across the board cuts and everybody was going to bear some of the burden, or we were going to start hacking away at different programs. And we sat up here and wondered, well, what's mandatory, what's not? But county government gives an array of services, and you kind of have to hold it all together. And I think what we decided as the board in our budget workshops was to really trust our department heads and our CEO with what they were presenting. And I think the fact that we did that, we weren't at each other's throats. And so I think everybody deserves a lot of credit for that. i too want to thank hr this has really been uh i mean you know because you're dealing directly with the people who's who's no longer can work with our county and are no longer part of our county family And I think you've done it with compassion. I particularly liked the resource book, the one-on-one meetings, and we hope that soon those people will rejoin the county family and really appreciate. I think Supervisor Lavagnino said it all. I've worked at state government, I've worked at federal government, And I really love local government best because although they determine a lot of the protocols and audit us and we got to make sure we do it the way they say, we really experience the people who are relying on us to deliver. And across the board, I hear from people when I go out knocking on doors, how really impressed they are with our county employees in all the different departments. And I know how responsive they are when I or members of my staff call. So it's really a privilege to be part of this county family. And even though we've got a rough year this year and we've got a rough year next year, I think we've got a template. We did a two year budget. So we've got a 3 million shortfall. We don't know what else is gonna happen, but we're in pretty solid shape, especially as Supervisor Nelson who serves on CSAC and RCRC will tell us compared to other counties. So a pat on all our backs. I think we've done a pretty good job.

thank you supervisor hartman and um just some parting comments from on my end is that you know it's a it is an honor to serve as your your chair to do this and to go through a budget process like this um it's a unique experience especially you know myself who is kind of in a sometimes a minority position to get a chance to to kind of bring us all together and to land this and it's been a really honor this year to go through this even in a hard year It's an honor for me also to guide our board through hiring a replacement for Mona. It's such big shoes to fill and we're gonna be passing the baton to a new CEO who's gonna embrace our team and our culture and hopefully not to replace, but just to elevate us from where we are right now. A couple of words that I heard Mona say in her opening comments that I wrote down right away that just kept on being embedded in her presentation was first of all, stewardship. And I think that that's something that we've all embraced here as a board and as a county and our responsibility of having a very fiscally sound budget that we're stewards of the taxpayer dollars and taxpayers resources. Things that like public safety are things that we're obligated to deliver in a in a humane process. And also governance. And I think we've done a good job on governance here. Not advocacy, but governance, as was pointed out in those opening comments. And I think that's really important here. It is bittersweet. I mean, there are some specific cuts. There are families that are, you know, tonight realizing that those layoff notices are really going to hit. And I think we're going to continue to find ways to try to bring back those employees. I think we've got some great things on the horizon. I think some of what we're seeing at the state budget is potentially a lifeline. We were very conservative in our budget this year. We made some tough hits so that we could shoulder this and so that the cuts weren't gonna be bigger in the future. And I think that hopefully will pay off here. There are areas though that are going to be hurting this year. I mean, I definitely, those cuts in the Sheriff's Department are real. We're worried about Isla Vista as well as other areas that are not fully staffed. I think that's something that our board is going to need to continue to look at. I think child welfare services, you know, is going to be cut to the bone this year. And I know that we don't have the funding to solve all that. But I think that's something when the first places that I want to look at in our future budgets or when we have future registrations, how do we get money back out there to bring back case aids so that we can make sure that we are we are serving those families? Because I think, you know, I think Super Agile Avenue, you know, mentioned it earlier, but, you know, child welfare services is public safety. And so I think that a lot of you that have called out those services as your top priority, you guys were I agree with you guys are prioritizing that. I think that's something that's really important. And I think we need to continue even these hard times to make investments on the future of our capital in this county. And that's often, it's easy to kind of neglect things when we're pushing forward, but I think that's something in the future that we're just going to continue to have to be good stewards of. And this budget does that but I think we have some challenges ahead. So again, thank you, my colleagues, for a cordial and a respectful process here. And so I appreciate this. And we still, even though we'll make a motion here or vote on our motion here in a moment, we still have a lot of work to do, but it's a good start. So with that, Madam Clerk, do you have the motion? Are you comfortable there? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, and I guess we need a second, there's a second motion, right, for department item number three. Can you go bring that motion up on, is this that motion?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, that departmental item number three, again, just to remind the board and the public, is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget for the County of Santa Barbara as successor agency to the former County of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency. And we are looking for a motion to approve staff recommendations A and B.

Supervisor Hartman? So moved. Second. Okay, we got a motion by Hartman, a second by Lee. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

all right that concludes our do you all right can i get the last word would you mind yeah yes sorry you deserve it one second guys i i just want to say thank you to your board and all the previous sports for your support of the county executive office our budget staff for um and being great fiscal stewards for this county uh i stayed past march when everyone typically leaves because i wanted to help us get through this process and i thought if the board does anything crazy i'll be really pissed but you didn't and I appreciate that and I appreciate you just showing who you are very responsible not just to your residents but to the long-term sustainability and stewardship of the county and for all those employees who are being laid off I do want to tell you that you aren't just a number we do consider what's happening to your family but I also want to give you some hope There once was a young man who was in planning, and he got laid off during the Great Recession. Then he got hired back as extra help, and then he got laid off again. And then he went to the Department of Social Services, and then he came to the CEO's office, and that is Paul Clemente. So the county family really tries to assist others, and so don't despair. It may take some time, but you'll always be at the county family, and we hope we have you back. And lastly, I just want to say I appreciate your board and your support of me, but it's not just me and the county budget staff and the assistant CEOs. It's everyone in this audience. Yep. The department heads have done such a great job. They've had tough years as well. There's a lot of silent work they do, but just getting their budgets together to make these tough choices, I applaud them. So thank you.

Thank you. And with that, we are adjourned to our next regularly scheduled meeting will be in Santa Maria on June 23rd.