Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right, good morning. I'll call the order the June 23rd, 2026 regular meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Here.

Here. Here. Here. At this time, please stand and join us in pledging allegiance to our flag. THE NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS THE APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FROM THE NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS THE APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FROM JUNE 9TH REGULAR MEETING AND THE APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FROM JUNE 9TH REGULAR MEETING AND THE JUNE 16TH BUDGET HEARING. JUNE 9TH REGULAR MEETING AND THE JUNE 16TH BUDGET HEARING. MOVE APPROVAL. JUNE 16TH BUDGET HEARING. MOVE APPROVAL. SECOND. MOVE APPROVAL. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECOND. SECON Next item of business is our County Executive Officer Report. Siomi Asada, do you have anything for us this morning?

Yes, I do. Thank you, Chair Nelson and board members. Just a couple of quick announcements. One is to acknowledge our public defender, Tracy McCougar, Santa Barbara County Public Defender Tracy Makuga has been appointed to serve on the California Independent Commission on Public Defense, a statewide blue ribbon commission focused on evaluating and advancing public defense services throughout California. The commission brings together leaders from across criminal justice systems to develop recommendations for lasting systemic reform. So congratulations to Ms. Makuga on this prestigious appointment and the opportunity to help shape the future of public defense in California. The second one is just acknowledging First Five. First Five Santa Barbara County recently convened more than 115 education and community leaders to highlight the benefits of nature-based learning for young children. Building on this effort, First Five is partnering with local schools and early learning providers to expand nature exploration areas throughout the county, helping more children access outdoor learning environments that support healthy development, school readiness, and overall well-being. So big thanks to First Five for doing that. All right. That concludes my report, Chair.

All right. Thank you, CEO Miyasato. Next item up is, 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. Staff requests that administrative item number 51 and administrative item number 79 be trailed until after closed session. Administrative item number 51 submitted by the General Services Department pertains to amendment number five to the construction contract for the Kachuma Lake RV site renewal project. AND ADDITIONALLY ADMINISTRATIVE ITEM NUMBER 79 SUBMITTED BY THE COMMUNITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT PERTAINS TO AMENDMENT NUMBER 4 EXTENDING THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AGREEMENT WITH BLACKFORD ARCHITECTS INC. FOR THE KACHUMA RV AREA RENOVATION PROJECT IN THE THIRD DISTRICT. BOTH ITEMS WILL BE CONSIDERED UPON THE BOARD'S RETURN TO OPEN SESSION IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING CLOSED SESSION WHICH IS CURRENTLY ESTIMATED FOR AROUND 2 P.M. Additionally, please be advised that Spanish and Misteko interpretation services are available for Departmental Item Number 6 today, which is the Annual Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds Truth Act Report and Community Forum. Please note that Departmental Item Number 6 will not be heard before 2 p.m. and is currently estimated to begin shortly after 2 p.m. today. Members of the public who wish to utilize interpretation services during today's hearing are encouraged to do so. If you are attending the meeting in person and have questions or need assistance accessing interpretation services, please see Deputy Clerk Leah Graham located on the other side of the room for assistance. And lastly, for 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 OR BY EMAIL AT SBCOB AT COUNTY OF SB.ORG. AND THAT CONCLUDES MY ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR TODAY.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, MADAM CLERK. NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS THE ADMINISTRATIVE AGENDA. Would any members of the board like to pull items? And I've actually got, actually right now, item 23 pulled by the public, 39 pulled by the public and by Supervisor Hartman, 42 has been pulled by the public, and then 45 has been pulled by the chair. Is there any other items?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, additionally, we just received requests for A49.

Okay, and A49 by the public?

A65 by the public.

A65 by the public, okay. And then we're going to trail item 51 and 74? Or 79?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we are trailing A51 and A79.

Okay, 51 and 79. All right, I'll take a motion of the administrative agenda with the exception of 23, 39, 42, 45, 49, 65, and 51, and 74. 79. 79, yeah.

So moved.

Second. All right, motion by Hartman, second by Lee. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Before we get to those items, the next item of business is the resolutions to be presented. Madam Clerk, will you please read administrative item number one to the record.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number one is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman and Supervisor Lavagnino. It is to adopt a resolution honoring Anne McCarty upon her retirement from the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center after over 30 years of faithful and distinguished service to the citizens of Santa Barbara County. And joining us in person today, we have Anne McCarty. If you can please make your way to the podium. And I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas Anne McCarty is retiring after more than 30 years of dedicated service to the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center, including 10 years as executive director, during which she provided steadfast leadership and compassionate advocacy for vulnerable members of our community. And whereas throughout her tenure, Anne established and strengthened partnerships across Santa Barbara County and was instrumental in integrating human trafficking advocacy into the center's mission, including serving on the Santa Barbara Human Trafficking Task Force since its inception in 2012 and as a current member of its leadership team. And whereas Anne's leadership fostered important collaborations with organizations such as AAUW and Pedal the Pacific to advance efforts to combat human trafficking, while her service on the Child Abuse Prevention Council, Kids Network Executive Committee, First Five Communication Committee, K-12 School Action Group, and Lompoc Youth Violence Coalition. And whereas, beyond her professional accomplishments, Anne has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to community service through her volunteer work with the Lions Club and more than 20 years of support for the Every 15 Minutes program, earning recognition as Woman of the Year by the Lompoc Chamber of Commerce in 2018. And whereas, with the support of her husband, Bob, Anne has made a lasting and meaningful impact on the well-being, safety, and resilience of the Santa Barbara County community. Now, therefore, be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby honor Anne McCarty for her outstanding service, leadership, and dedication to the residents of Santa Barbara County and extend its sincere appreciation and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and fulfilling retirement surrounded by family, friends, and loved ones passed and adopted today.

Supervisor Hartman?

I'd much rather hear you speak, ma'am. Chair Nelson, members of the Board of Supervisors, I stand here incredibly humbled by all of this attention. For those that know me and know me best know that this is not necessarily where I like to be. I'm a back row Baptist and that's where I prefer to sit and do the work. But I'll be honest, I have taken stock of everything that's been going on over the last few weeks, the last few months, and most certainly the last 32 years. I don't remember a lot of it, but I have been taking stock of everything that we as a team at the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center have accomplished. I have not done any of this work alone. I have had amazing advocates standing beside me, a board of directors that supported me along the way, And a family that has lifted me up when I needed it the most. It's no secret that I wouldn't be standing here without my husband who has been my biggest supporter, my biggest cheerleader, and the one that probably gave me the biggest kick in the pants when I needed it most. But the staff. of the Rape Crisis Center. They're the ones that do the work and are in the trenches each and every day and are partners in the community. The folks at the district attorney's office, the victim witness office, our law enforcement partners, our medical personnel that do the sexual assault exams. the coordinators, the advocates, the leaders, the program managers, everybody does this work. It's not done by Anne McCarty. It's done by all of them. And they're the ones that I sadly leave behind But I know that our county, our North County, is in great hands because of all of them, their leadership, their fantastic people skills, their tenacity, their drive, and most importantly, their compassion and their passion to support individuals and educate individuals in our community. I always said when I first started 32 years ago that I wanted to work every day to work myself out of a job. And I honestly believe that. That's how naive I was 32 years ago. And while I think that that dream is still possible, I also know that there are a lot of folks in this community who work harder to make us work harder. And our folks rise up every single day to face that challenge. I'm proud of them and I hope that you as a County Board of Supervisors are proud of them. And I know that what I leave behind They're going to continue to carry forward and I can't say thank you enough to all of you for lifting me up and For being my family, so thank you Thank you so much Yes, I remember being in a conversation with you and and

talking about the name of the North County Rape Crisis Center. And you said you it would be over your dead body that they ever took the word rape out of that. You have an uncommon ability to lead people gently but firmly towards truths we might rather not face. That sexual violence is not a rare or distant tragedy, but a reality that's actually woven into the fabric of our own communities, our own schools, and our own families. So you've brought that same unflinching honesty into classrooms across North County where the center's work with young people has given a generation of students the language, the awareness, and the courage to recognize abuse, reject it, and refuse to stay silent. So for those who've already suffered, your center has been a place of transformation. And it helps survivors reclaim the voices and their future. You've spent your career, 32 years, asking Santa Barbara County to be braver and more clear-eyed than we might naturally choose to be. and because of you we are your enduring belief that facing hard truths is the first step towards a safer and more just community and that's the legacy that will carry on thank you so much thank you thank you thank you supervisor and thank you ann thank you

Hard act to follow here, but Madam Clerk, will you please read item number two in the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number two is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman. It is to adopt a resolution honoring His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the occasion of his 91st birthday. And joining us in person today is Tepo Tuku. And if he can please make his way to the podium. Whereas His Holiness Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, has dedicated his life to promoting peace, compassion, nonviolence, and respect for the dignity of all people. And whereas for decades, the Dalai Lama has served as a global advocate for human rights, cultural preservation, environmental stewardship, and the peaceful resolution of conflict through dialogue and mutual understanding. And whereas his teachings and example have inspired millions around the world to embrace kindness, tolerance, personal responsibility, and a commitment to the well-being of others, transcending national, cultural, and religious boundaries. And whereas in recognition of his unwavering commitment to nonviolence and peace, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and continues to be an internationally respected voice for compassion and reconciliation. And whereas the celebration of his 91st birthday provides an opportunity to recognize his enduring legacy and the positive impact his life's work has had on communities throughout the world. Now, therefore, be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby honor His Holiness Dalai Lama. on the occasion of his 91st birthday, celebrates his extraordinary contributions to peace, compassion, and human understanding, and extends its best wishes for his continued health, happiness, and inspiration to people everywhere. Pass and adopt it today.

So I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors for proclaiming His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama's 91st birthday as Compassion Day. This year we are not only making the completion of full year of Compassion in honor of His Holiness's 90th year, but we also joyfully celebrating his full recovery following successful his both knees and surgery. His Holiness has visited Santa Barbara numerous times, building a profound connection with this beautiful community, with the University of Santa Barbara, through the establishment of Dalai Lama Indore Chair, UCSB, has become one of the leading centers for Tibetan Buddhist studies in Northern America. Their undergraduate and graduate programs in Tibetan religion, culture, and language play a vital role preserving and promoting Tibetan rich spiritual heritage. Our shared mission is to carry forward His Holiness' vision, creating a more peaceful and compassionate society. As a community, we all share the responsibility to honor these values, fostering harmony and inter-religious understanding. I thank you all Santa Barbara County is already a beautiful place. And it is my hope that someday soon it will be officially declared Compassion County. May our collective effort bring more compassion, wisdom, and peace to this world. And thank you. And also I'd love to request, announce, We'd like to invite all the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the committee members to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday this Saturday and June 27 at 2 p.m. at the Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State Street, Santa Barbara, California. Thank you very much. Peace on earth. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Supervisor Hartman.

I would just like to add that the Dalai Lama's message of compassion and nonviolence and human dignity really transcends the boundaries of any faith or culture. He spent decades sharing the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy with the world, teaching that the cultivation of inner peace, mindfulness, and loving kindness are not merely religious ideals, but universal human values. His influence in Western thought has been profound from the mainstream embrace of meditation and mindfulness practices in medicine, education, and mental health to a broader cultural awakening to the Buddhist principles of impermanence, interconnectedness, and the relief of suffering. The Dalai Lama has shown that ancient wisdom can speak with remarkable clarity to the challenges of modern life. And thank you for continuing each year to bring this forward. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Professor Capps.

One minute. Yeah, thank you, Teppo. I just wanted to thank you as well. I was at the birthday party last year, and it truly was a birthday party with a cake. and everything for his holiness. And I know that in addition to celebrating the Dalai Lama, you are such a key part of the interfaith initiative of bringing people together, of acknowledging so much more that we have in common with our faiths that bring us together as opposed to dividing us. So thank you for that work and thank you for the celebration.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

And now that we're done with resolutions, we'll be moving on to our business items here. We'll start with administrative item number 23. Madam Clerk, will you please read that item into the record?

Chair Melson and members of the Board, administrative item number 23 is from the Community Services Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding the authorization to apply for Homekey Plus funding for permanent supportive housing, and this is in the 5th District. We have one request to speak from the public on this item, and we will go to Zoom with Christina Walters. Christina?

Hello. Members of the Board of Supervisors, I'll be speaking now.

Christina, hold on just one moment. We can hear you, but you are very quiet. Can you move a little bit closer to your microphone, perhaps?

How is this?

It's about the same.

Hold on.

How about now? That's great. Thank you so much. Please proceed.

Sorry about that. Okay Hello members of the board of supervisors, my name is Christina walters i'm speaking in support of the county's application for up to 10 million in home key plus funding for permanent supportive housing at 124 South college drive in Santa Maria. Permanent supportive housing is an important intervention for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, particularly people living with disabilities and behavioral health needs. Research on supportive housing has shown that combining stable housing with services can improve housing stability and reduce repeated homelessness among vulnerable populations. Studies of permanent supportive housing have found that it significantly increases housing retention and reduces returns to homelessness among those who have experienced chronic homelessness. I want to share a concern based on my father's experience. My father has experienced chronic homelessness and is currently under housed. He is disabled, including only having one leg. He requires mental health services and a stable living environment. However, he was denied access to the home key location in Lompoc because his annual income was approximately $5,000 above the income limit. And so this is just a difference of $20,000 a year versus $15,000 a year that he received from social security disability. This experience raises an important policy question. How do we ensure that eligibility rules do not exclude the very individuals that supportive housing programs are designed to help? A small difference in income does not necessarily reflect a person's actual ability to obtain safe, accessible, appropriate housing, especially when disability-related needs are considered. I respectfully ask the county to approve the Homekey Plus application and consider the following recommendations. First, review how income limits are applied for applicants with significant disabilities, history of chronic homelessness, and high service needs. Second, explore flexible pathways or additional resources for individuals who narrowly exceed income limits but remain unable to secure appropriate housing. And three, ensure that permanent supportive housing programs prioritize residents with the highest barriers to housing stability. Permanent supportive housing is about more than placing someone in a unit. It provides stability, safety, access to services that help people maintain housing and improve the quality of life. And for individuals with serious disabilities and mental health needs, the right housing environment can be the difference between continued instability and a path towards long-term security, dignity, and independence. Thank you for your time and consideration and for your commitment to addressing homelessness in Santa Barbara County.

Thank you, Ms. Walters.

And that concludes public comment on this item.

All right. There's no additional comment on it from the board. Does anybody like to make a motion on 823? I'll move 23.

Second.

Okay, a motion from Lavagnino and a second from Hartman. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right. The next item of business was pulled by the public and by Supervisor Hartman. That's 839.

Chair Nelson, members of the board, administrative item number 39 is from the County Health Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding the acceptance of in-kind donations to Santa Barbara County Animal Services from the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation, Canine Placement Assistance League, Inc., Canine Pals, and Companion Animal Placement Assistance. Animal Arts Design Services valued at $25,749 and there is a forfeits vote required on this item and we did just receive word that the member of the public no longer wishes to speak on this item so we will just go to Supervisor Hartman.

Okay.

And I'd like to have Animal Services Director Sarah Aguilar come up and tell us what this is for, what's happening.

Oh, I was already on. Good morning. Thank you, Supervisor Nelson, members of the board. This item of donation of services of animal arts is being presented today as an additional way to support and best utilize the funding that we're receiving from Supervisor Carbajal and through the state government, or sorry, through the... You know what I'm talking about. Congressman Carbajal, sorry. And to ensure that we use the funds in the best way possible. Animal Arts is a professional national organization that designs shelters, veterinary clinics, and other animal related facilities. And to be able to have them come out at minimal cost to the county is a huge asset for us. They will not only do laser measuring of the facility, but they will also do listening sessions with staff, volunteers and stakeholders, as well as with our partners and community in order to ensure that The vision we have for our shelter reflects the value the community has of pets and animals. Additionally, we were able to have them visit the Santa Barbara shelter as well to maximize the time that they're spending here.

Wow. And have they been here yet?

I am 99% sure we are ratifying. So yes.

So that's exciting. And when would we expect to see the report?

We're hoping to have initial designs by the end of July. And the idea is that those designs will be done in laid out in phases so we can look at how to what the priorities are and how we should what things we should address initially with the funding both from Carbajal and then also the funding that we're receiving from the county to to match that.

Great. Well, very exciting. And thank you to the Animal Care Foundation and to CAPA because they've really driven this. So we're looking to really transformational changes there. Yes, we're very excited.

Thank you. All right, Supervisor Hartman, would you like to make a motion to accept this donation?

So moved.

Second. Okay, and this is to approve item A-39. Motion by Hartman, second by Lee. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Next item of business is item A-42. Madam Clerk, can you please read administrative item number 42 into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the Board, administrative item number 42 is from the County Health Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding acceptance of donations to Santa Barbara County Animal Services and the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation in the amount of $105,000. There is a fourth or fifth vote required on this item. We do have one request to speak from a member of the public, and that is Linda Greco here in Santa Maria.

Ms. Greco, welcome.

Thank you and good morning. My name is Linda Greco, the president of the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation, and I'm here today on behalf of our board, our volunteers, and most importantly, the animals and residents of Santa Barbara County. The Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation was created to support animals and help fill gaps that directly impact the welfare of animals in our community. Throughout our history, our role has been to support programs, medical needs, outreach, education, and life-saving initiatives. What I am sharing today is an extraordinary action for our organization. Our foundation does not typically fund county animal services positions. That is not our intended role, and it is not a sustainable model. However, these are extraordinary times. We have learned that the loss of an animal control officer position was imminent. We looked beyond the budget line and looked at what the loss would truly mean to the reality of our community. The public often does not see the delicate balance that exists within the already underfunded animal services department. Every position carries tremendous responsibility because the demand of services is always greater than the resources available. The loss of this officer position would have meant public safety calls, animal emergencies, and community response would have been stretched even further. Response capacity would have been reduced significantly with public animal calls potentially delayed and daily field coverage impacted by one third, from 12 hours a day to eight hours per day. Animal control officers are not just responding to animals, they're responding to concerned citizens, families in crisis, injured animals, dangerous situations, lost pets, and moments where compassion and expertise is most needed. The expectations placed on every animal services employee are incredibly high, and yet continue to show up each day with dedication, professionalism, and a deep love for the animals and people they serve. Our one-time commitment of $105,000 is not simply about saving a position. It is a message of appreciation. We want every Animal Services employee to know that their community sees them. We see the long hours, the emotional challenges, the difficult decisions, and the unwavering commitment. We also know that staff morale directly is affected by the things that continue on with the county, and it goes on to the animals that they care. This is our way of standing beside them during an exceptionally challenging time. At the same time, we recognize that long-term solutions require sustainable funding. The foundation is working closely with animal services to explore new avenues of support and innovative partnerships. However, this is with the understanding that the county budget challenges subside and the responsibility of ongoing staffing support is appropriately returned to the county. This funding is a bridge. It's an expression of gratitude. It is a commitment to the animals and people of Santa Barbara County. We thank you guys for your leadership and your support and an incredible team at Animal Services. And I just want to take a moment to put out there that our Tales of Hope Gala event, I know some of you attended last year, that will be coming up on September 20th. And so we hope to see you again. Our Camp Hope event is going on now. That's our camp that we hold in Santa Maria for children eight to 12 years old. And we do have openings also in July for July 6th through 10th. And we would love to have any of you stop by, just swing in and peek in and see what our program's all about. And then also, I just want to think about those animals of July 4th. Think about fireworks and any medications that may be needed or keeping animals safe. And Animal Services is holding relaxation clinics. We think that they're the first in the nation. And it's a drive-thru clinic where actually people can come and they can get a veterinary exam quickly and get some medication. a free microchip, and some ID for their animals. And that'll be held on the next one on July 3rd from 10 to 2. And so we hope to see the community there. And thank you guys so much. We appreciate you. Thank you, Ms. Greco.

Supervisor Hartman.

yeah i just wanted to add my personal experience with our animal control officers i've had two incidents one where i had a bobcat dying on my property and someone came out and and humanely dealt with that with tremendous professionalism and another was where a doberman was running terrified on an access road to the 101 freeway and you know people were gathering and we didn't know what to do and so someone came out So we really need that, and so glad that you've stepped up.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. We'll go ahead and get a motion on this, 842.

On the staff recommendation.

Motion from Supervisor Hartman. Second. Second from Supervisor Lee. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, our next item of business is item A45.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number 45 is from the district attorney's office. It is to consider recommendations regarding an agreement with Dignity Health for sexual assault response team medical program operations.

All right, I pulled this item. I wanted to invite D.A. Severnot to the podium and his team. I was just hoping to get a little bit more background about this item and how we got here and what this involves and who we have to thank for putting this together.

Chair Nelson, members of the board. Thank you so much for pulling this. It gives us an opportunity to highlight the absolute necessity that is the sexual assault response team in our county. And it also gives me an opportunity to talk about a great public-private relationship collaboration to get this. And when I talk about collaboration, within the county system there was also a significant amount of intra-departmental and administrative collaboration. The Sexual Assault Response Team provides trauma-informed medical examinations and support services for adults and children. who have been sexually assaulted or sexually abused. It is very specialized and it is very necessary. Imagine furthering the trauma of a sexual assault victim who maybe responds to a police agency already reluctant to report and then having to get in a car and drive either into San Luis Obispo County or in our south, if you're in South County, to Ventura. So we actually have SART locations in Santa Barbara, Lompoc, and Santa Maria to provide this absolutely necessary and compassionate service. This program was boosted and propped up in public health for years even though it was outside of the scope of their work public health agreed take on this work when the budgets and the difficulties that we are facing made it impossible public health didn't abandon this program dr hamami has been a tremendous ally in ensuring that the program continues. And even now he is assisting us with monitoring, carrying the contracts of the nurses until the district attorney's office is staffed to do so in the next fiscal year. He has been a tremendous advocate for us and keep it going. The CEO's office, particularly ACO Heitman, has been instrumental in clearing the road, communicating within the departments to get this, to make sure that this program would continue. The majority of thanks for the continuation of this program is the brainchild of the head of the District Attorney's Victim Witness Assistance Program, Megan Reinschild. This is what our victim advocates do. They fight, they care. This program could not die. It is absolutely essential. And I was in a meeting with Megan, my CFAO, and Megan said, I've got this we're going to find a way to make it work when it became obvious that the budget was not going to allow the current structure. Megan didn't give up she rolled up her sleeves she found another program that was run by dignity health and that's where the private partnership comes in hand dignity health stepped in they listened They agreed, they negotiated, and we're going to make it work in large part thanks to our partners, Dignity Health and Cottage Health. it truly was a heavy lift it's interesting there are still a few things that we need to clear up there's a little bit of a budget gap in this but we're confident that either through other agreements with law enforcement agencies picking up larger percentages but also having dignity health involved does allow us to get other private revenue sources that otherwise a county government agency could not bring in. I cannot thank the board enough, the CAO's office enough, public health enough, and certainly Megan enough. And our survivors of these really horrible, tragic, indescribable crimes, they need the kind of support that SART offers. And because of everybody that worked so hard to get us to this point, they will have a SART available in three locations here in Santa Barbara County.

Well, thank you, DA Severance. Thank you, Megan. And thank you for the entire county team that has made this possible. I think it's very fitting on the day that we also honor Ann that this is something that we get to approve here. And thank you for making sure this stays alive. Thank you. All right, Supervisor Hartman, your light's on.

I did have a question. Could you explain the mechanics? That is, taking the sample and where it goes and how long and is there a backlog?

Yeah, go ahead. This is why I brought Megan.

Among other things.

Thank you, Chair Nelson, Supervisor Hartman, members of the board. We do not have a backlog here in Santa Barbara County. And the way it works is when a survivor comes in for an exam, the forensic examiner, the nurse examiner, who historically has been a contractor through public health, does California approved forensic medical exam and collects the evidence from that exam which gets transferred to the Department of Justice and processed there. So we do not have a backlog here in Santa Barbara County. And the Department of Justice is quick in turning that around? They are I'm not sure what the time frames are currently. I'm sure someone on our team Sarah Yeah

if you could come up, sir. Yeah, sorry, we wanna make sure we, yeah.

Sure, so I also owe a lot of thanks to Sarah Valverde, who's our district attorney's office SARC coordinator, and did a lot of the legwork to identify Dignity and Common Spirit as our partner, so I don't take all the credit for that.

So federal and state regulations require our Department of Justice crime labs to turn around our samples in 120 days. Our lab currently in Goleta has been understaffed for the last few years and at times The turnaround is up to six months. They have basically farmed out kits to our sister labs to get those back. They are fully staffed now, though it takes three full years to train up an analyst. So in the next few years, we should get back to that 120 days, but right now it's between four and six months. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you, Sarah. All right, thank you all. SO WE MAKE THE MOTION TO APPROVE IT. ITEM 845. I MAKE THE MOTION. I MAKE THE MOTION. SECOND. SECOND.

MOTION BY SUPERVISOR LAVADINO.

MOTION BY SUPERVISOR LAVADINO. SECOND BY SUPERVISOR HARTMAN. SECOND BY SUPERVISOR HARTMAN. ALL IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING ALL IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING AYE. AYE. AYE. OPPOSED? OPPOSED? MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY. MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY. NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS PULLED NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS PULLED BY THE PUBLIC, 849. BY THE PUBLIC, 849. MADAM CLERK, PLEASE READ THAT MADAM CLERK, PLE

Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number 49 is from the General Services Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding an addendum to the final environmental impact report, EIR, SEH number 201704106519EIR3 for the Oasis Meeting Center project, and this is in the fourth district. And we have one request to speak from the public on this item, and we are remaining here in Santa Maria with Todd Wilson. Todd?

Mr. Chairman and Board of Supervisors, my name's Todd Wilson, and I live in Orkut, two lots away from the entryway to this library and OASIS project. And my interest in the OASIS project and then now the library has always been traffic. My recommendation is that you deny the request by GSA to conduct the EIR, supplemental EIR, And I read briefly the packet. And I read the traffic report. And the traffic report is based on, without going into serious technicalities, this is really simple, it's clear as day. I'm surprised the GSA director hasn't seen that. The report concluded that there were no impacts on the 19,500 square foot library proposal. and they provided a traffic report because it was a major concern during the Oasis EIR, and this is a supplement to the Oasis EIR. The defined area of the study was 9,520 square feet. They didn't include 10,000 square feet of building as far as a contributing factor. The threshold that's in the study was 110 ADTs, The conclusion in the study was there were 103 ADTs and that there would be no impacts. Well, they didn't study 10,000 square feet, double the size of the study area. Clearly, if they included a factor for the 10,000 square feet, the contribution of traffic to that corner and the entryway, and to a complex intersection near the freeway involving a roundabout county study as far as resolutions of traffic issues. If they actually included a component for that, it would show that there would be significant impacts. And I don't think the board can continue further CEQA requires, if there are significant impacts, which actually the OASIS project concluded that it was a class one impact, I think you should deny this and ask them for some return information to give us a true indicator of what the traffic contribution and the conflicts of the community. And the whole community deserves integrity in these studies. We shouldn't be hiding. We need to get it right. Everyone is for senior center and library, but let's do it right.

Thank you, Mr. Wilson.

And that concludes public comment on this item.

All right. Speaking to that item in particular, since it's in my district and it's something that our office has been monitoring closely, we do know about those traffic impacts that existed in the EIR and those were the board made the determination that there was mitigations and measures in place as well as some things that were significant that we had to move forward with to move a project like this. My office continues to stay engaged in traffic issues in Old Town Orchid whether that happens with or without this these projects moving forward and I'm comfortable WITH THIS NEXT STEP IN THE PROCESS SO WE CAN MOVE FORWARD WITH THESE PROJECTS SO I'D ASK ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES TO MAKE A MOTION FOR APPROVAL.

MOVE STAFF RECOMMENDATION.

I'LL SECOND. OKAY SO WE HAVE A MOTION FROM HARTMAN AND A SECOND FROM LEE. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? SEEING NONE ALL IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING AYE. AYE. OPPOSED? MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY. NEXT ITEM OF BUSINESS IS ITEM NUMBER 65 WHICH HAS BEEN PULLED BY THE PUBLIC.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number 65 is from the Sheriff Coroner's Office. It is to consider recommendations regarding a request to approve the Sheriff's Office ongoing grants for fiscal year 2025 through 2026. And we have one request to speak from the public on this item, and we are going to Zoom with Willie Lubka. Willie?

Yes, good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Thank you for the opportunity to share a comment. I was reading the attachments on this item and noticed a couple of things that just raised my curiosity. I want to mention two in particular. On attachment B, there is a Homeland Security grant program with a value of almost $800,000 passed through the San Diego Sheriff's Office. I'm just very curious about what that is. What is that funding for and why is it coming through the San Diego Sheriff's Office? It is not addressed in the board letter. Secondly, on attachment A, there's a Homeland Security grant program of almost $200,000. Again, the question is just what is that for, what's it all about? I know that many members of the community may be wondering, and in particular, considering the item coming up later to make that forum. So that's all. I just wanted to point those out and say, I think it would be beneficial to get some transparency on those funds and why the one is coming through San Diego. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Lipka. Just to hold on, sorry, Sheriff Brown. I'm okay with moving forward right now. I'm sure we can get the information to Mr. Lepka at a later date. I don't know if we necessarily need to respond to the public comment unless Supervisor Hartman.

I'd like to hear from the sheriff. He and his team are here. Why not?

All right. Chair Brown.

Thank you, Chair Nelson and members of the board. The grants in question are both relating to the patrol boat, the grant for the patrol boat that was received from the federal government. It was under Operation Stone Garden, which is a federal grant program on border security, and it includes not only border counties, but those counties like ours that have international waters that are sometimes used to incur into our country by people smuggling drugs or people or other illicit activity. The first one was for the actual cost of the patrol boat and the second one was for some supplies and overtime related to the operation of that boat. This grant was brought before your board and was approved previously. Yes, thank you, Sheriff.

And the San Diego routing?

The only reason that San Diego is involved is that they actually administer Operation Stone Garden grants in the state of California.

Yeah, I think we run a bunch of grants for behavioral wellness through our county, for other counties as well. So I think this is a pretty common practice and nothing nefarious out there. So I appreciate that, Sheriff Brown, for the explanation. With that, can I get a motion for approval?

So moved.

I'll second.

Motion from Hartman, second from Capps. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, so that concludes our eight items that we need to vote on. I believe that there was a late poll on item number 73 by the first district that wanted to maybe highlight some exciting things happening in D1. Thank you. Real quick, let's read it into record.

Yes, Chair Nelson.

And this has been previously approved.

And members of the board, that item that was polled is administrative item number 72 from Supervisor Lee. It is to consider recommendations regarding a first district discretionary fund contribution for World Cup watch party production services. And there is a forfeits vote required on this item.

And again, we previously already adopted this, but I know Supervisor Lee would like to highlight it. So Supervisor Lee, take it away.

Thank you, Chair Capps. I just want to invite and ask the community to come out this Thursday to Santa Barbara Public Library, the Michael Tobes Plaza, at 7 p.m. to watch USA vs. Turkey. The last event was amazing, great turnout, family-friendly event, and churros, this time the ice cream. So every time USA scores, Steve, I'll buy you an ice cream if you show up. So I just want to highlight that. Invite the community out. The World Cup has been amazing. Great games and good community events.

Well, thank you, Sir. Thank you, Sir. You set the bar high for all of us on community engagement. And so we appreciate you doing that and showing your community and national spirit here. Thank you. And go USA. Go USA. Thank you. All right. So that concludes our administrative agenda. Am I correct, Madam Clerk? Okay, and just for the public, we are trailing item 51 and 74 till after our closed session. 79. Sorry, 79. My handwriting is awful.

Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board, that is correct. We are trailing administrative item number 51 and 79 till after closed session. So that should be heard around 2 o'clock today.

All right, at this time now... This is general public comment. Now it's time for members of the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda, which seems like every item was on the agenda today, so it's going to be hard to find something else. But Madam Clerk, are there any requests to speak on general public comment?

Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have five requests to speak from the public on general public comment today. And we will begin on Zoom with Doreen White. Then we will return to Santa Maria with Sherry Foster. Doreen?

And before Doreen gets started, we're going to go ahead and close general public comment this time.

Doreen, please proceed. Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. My name is Doreen White. I'm a resident of Montecito. And thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Vandenberg Space Force Base is on track for up to 100 SpaceX commercial launches per year. While these launches bring jobs and economic activity to our region, they also create real recurring costs for Santa Barbara County residents. Our communities regularly experience sonic booms that rattle windows and doors, shake houses and disrupt sleep. Frequent road closures on Highway 1 and coastal routes cause traffic disruptions. These operations also increase demands on public safety, emergency services and local infrastructure. Impacts on our environment Need deeper exploration also last week I submitted a proposal for launch mitigation and community benefit of $500,000 per commercial space X launch. At projected volumes this would generate $50 million per year and dedicated revenue placed in a restricted county fund with full public transparency. One of the ways that these funds could be allocated would be 20 million for infrastructure and transportation with Highway 1 upgrades, traffic management, road maintenance. 12.5 million for environmental monitoring and coastal restoration. 7.5 million million for public safety and emergency services. 7.5 million for housing affordability and workforce cleaning and 2.5 million community grant residential noise insulation. This is a fair share approach. The FAA already charges commercial launch operators user fees at the federal level. It is reasonable for Santa Barbara County to recover some of the direct local costs that fall on our residents and taxpayers. This proposal is not anti-space. It is pro-responsible growth. It allows the space industry to thrive while ensuring our communities are not left behind to bear the burdens. This will also align the community with SpaceX activities. I respectfully ask the board to, one, agendize this proposal for full discussion, and two, form a working group that includes community representatives, county staff, Space Force, and SpaceX. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I've provided a full proposal and budget details to the clerk. Thank you for all your work.

Thank you, Ms. White.

We will now return to Santa Maria with Sherry Foster to be followed by Chuck Williams. Sherry?

Yes, can I ensure that I have my six minutes of accommodation for speaking? Thank you kindly, sir. Okay, to all council members, this letter was actually served upon Sheriff Brown, Joseph E. Holland at their respective addresses along with the County Board of Supervisors. this is from robert paul preston governor pro tempore new california state p.o box 3726 yuba city california 95992 and it was stamped at 1106 a.m at the county clerk's office and it was served also to santa barbara county sheriffs and to josephine holland and this is regarding a notice and request to be heard petition for redress of grievances dear supervisors registrar and sheriff The purpose of this notice is to ask for an opportunity to address the entire Board and or a present claim contesting the certification of any election results in the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Supervisors. I am also requesting the Board direct the register of voters to respond to a request for information below. I invite your attention to California Election Code Section 16100D, which states in part, any elector or county, city, or any political subdivision of either may contest any election held therein for any of the following causes. D, that illegal votes were cast. The factual basis of my request is that it is common knowledge that there has been a flood of illegal aliens into the state of California, its counties, its cities, and school districts. These non-citizens have apparently been allowed to register with the Department of Motor Vehicles. With that registration, these non-citizens have been provided with voter registration and election ballots. It is also common knowledge that investigative reporters have discovered that some illegal alien non-citizens have in fact voted. Providing these non-citizens voter registration and election ballots gives you, the members of the Board of Supervisors, and you, the register of voters, The legal basis to set aside the election and deny its certification due to the number of illegal voters has set forth in California Elections Code section 16100, specifically subsection D. This incontrovertible fact give you sheriff, not only the right, but the obligation to investigate voter fraud. If the board and register certify the election, they will be committing a felony. To the board and to the registrar, would you please provide me and the person who served this letter on you the process and identify all officers, employees, and volunteers engaged in a collection and counting of ballots, including the disqualification of ballots and voter verification. As a voter in this state, as is the server of this letter named below, we object to our votes being diluted by the votes of those not legally eligible to vote. We also object to any compounding of a felony by certifying the election results. Thank you for prompting, responding to this letter, and giving me an audience with you to constitutionally Redress this grievance pursuant to the Bill of Rights, Article 1, yours truly, Robert Paul Preston, New California State, Governor Pro Tempore, citizen voter serving this notice, Sherry Foster. And I just have some additional information to say that we are not your enemy. We are here to help to restore the trust of the public and bring true representation back to we the people of Santa Barbara County. and I yield back. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Foster.

We will now go to Chuck Williams to be followed by Sienna Rodriguez. Chuck.

Thank you. Good morning, Board. Chuck Williams, Old Town Orchard resident and also a member of the New California State Movement. First of all, I would like to say that Todd Wilson is 100% correct in his speech today with you folks. He's 100% right. I also represent New California State and I really hate to be here. Under these serious conditions, the board will be considering certifying the recent election after 30 days of unconstitutional ballot gathering. Not long ago, I personally warned the board at the time about a liability certifying the stolen 2020 election. Then, probably within two minutes of that warning, I got a smirk from the chair, right? Who I like, and an immediate call for a vote. Unfortunately, the board at that time voted 5-0, passing the stolen election unanimously. A very sad day for America. Just to remind you all, this is a very serious matter. You will be held accountable even if you quit your job or retire. This includes those who have lost their seats or quit. Proof of corrupt ballot is overwhelming and New California State has that proof. Certifying this election will be compounding the existing felony. It will not end well for this board. I urge you all to make the right decision. just a heads up new california has a doge department of government efficiency and it's very effective and doge will be looking into this county at some point soon new california state will follow the u.s constitution to the t no more corruption no more corrupt deal making or fudging on anything and thank you guys for taking the time to listen to me Have a good day.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Williams. And if you guys have any evidence of election fraud, I really encourage you guys to get that to the district attorney's office. There would be appropriate county jurisdiction or department to work through that. So thank you.

We will now go to Sienna Rodriguez to be followed by Xander Rodriguez. Sienna. Sienna.

Hi, my name is Sienna, and Super Friars at La Bonita is my no-no. And we've been super busy with baseball all-star teams, and we were here just to say hi, no-no. Hi, my name is Xander, and we're excited for you to meet Tyler, no-no.

Good job. Oh, my gosh. Come on, Nona.

Good job. Nona's going to be in.

Yeah. Awesome.

Surprise at Lavadino.

All right. Well, this was a surprise, a good one. I'll just say a little bit about each one of them. So Xander, also known as Z Money, he's an all-star for Northside and his team lost the first game of the tournament up in Atascadero and then had to win seven games in a row to get back and win it all. And they did with a two out bottom of the last inning base hit. And they are the champions from District 65. By the way, he's also a state champion wrestler, but we'll let that go today. And Sienna is the only girl on her team, and she's an all-star playing right now. In fact, I'm going to be leaving today at 5 o'clock because we have another game at 5.30 in the Pomo. And I think the best part is that she had a little girl tell her mom yesterday that she came all the way to watch Sienna because she's the only girl around that made the all-star team. And she's showing the way for all girls out there that they can do whatever they want to do. Right?

Yeah.

Well, thank you. And that's my beautiful wife, Marion. Thank you for coming today. It's nice when you're retired and you don't have to go to work. Yeah. I'll join you in six months.

Supervisor Lavender, potentially the best public comment in 16 years? Possibly. Possibly. All right. Well, amazing. All right. So, Madam Clerk, does that conclude general public comment?

Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board, that concludes general public comment for today.

All right, and we are moving along here. Let's go ahead and at least do a department item number one.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the Human Resources Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an extra help, service and retirement waiver, and second amendment to the agreement for services as county executive officer.

Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. I have a brief report today and I'm happy to take any questions. Approval of the recommendations will take necessary actions to allow Mona Miyasato to continue temporarily in her role as a retired annuitant until the new county executive officer, Janet Peterson, commences her appointment on August 20th. and will amend the current employment agreement with Ms. Miyasato to clarify that the unexpended portion of her existing educational and professional development allowance for fiscal year 25-26 and 26-27 is payable to her upon separation of regular employment in July, estimated not to exceed $10,900. So thank you. That's my report.

All right. Well, I just want to jump in here and just say Xiaomi Asato coming on and staying this all the way till our new CEO comes in just shows just another act of selflessness on her part. Many retirees out there in public service, which, you know, a lot of people in public service, especially those that are well compensated, are often criticized. But, you know, Mona has stayed on this year beyond the time when retirement might have been best for her financially. to make sure that this county is in good standing financially and you know through a time of crisis and it's really important that we have somebody strong leading this organization and she put that above herself and has continued throughout her tenure as our CEO and so I just you know it's another act of a public service and so i'm just really proud to support this and proud and thank i want to say thank you mona for everything you do for us and um putting the county first and ahead of yourself and i'm like i said i'm more than happy to support this um this item suarez lavenino i'll make the motion okay i'll second all right any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed motion passes unanimously thank you mona All right, let's go ahead into department item number two.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number two is from the Sheriff Coroner's Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the renewal of the Sheriff Office Military Equipment Use Ordinance.

Lieutenant Henderson, please. Good morning, Chair Nielsen, members of the board. My name is Lieutenant Travis Henderson. I'm one of the two supervisors of the Special Enforcement Team, sometimes referred to as the SWAT Team. And I'm here on behalf of our Military Equipment Use Coordinator, Lieutenant Juan Camarena, who is unavailable to come today. And I'm here to present on Assembly Bill 481, which is the readoption and amendment of the Military Equipment Use Policy for the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office. I'm requesting readoption of the Sheriff's Military Equipment Use Ordinance and Policy today. As a little background, Assembly Bill 481 was signed by Governor Newsom on September 30th, 2021, and made effective January 1st of 2022. On May 17th of 2022, the Board of Supervisors approved the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Military Equipment Policy and Inventory List. Pursuant to AB 481 and Government Code 7072 , an annual report is required for as long as the equipment is available for use. AB 481 requires the Sheriff's Office to establish a use policy to be readopted by the Board of Supervisors through an ordinance. It identifies certain specialized law enforcement equipment as, quote, military equipment and requires oversight from the Board of Supervisors for purchase and use of what the bill has deemed military equipment. The law requires the Sheriff's Office to create a use policy, which is codified in Lex Poll Policy 707, that has been readopted by the Board of Supervisors after holding a public meeting to seek public input. The purpose is to increase transparency, accountability, and oversight for the acquisition and use of this equipment. AB 481 also requires an annual report to summarize both the equipment use, internal audit, and community feedback. Two community engagement hearings were hosted by the sheriff's office. The first was in Goleta on May 28th, and the second was in Orchid on June 8th of this year. The purpose of this ordinance, the Sheriff's Office is seeking approval from the Board of Supervisors for the continued acquisition and use of current and future specialized law enforcement equipment. To consider any concerns the public may have about safety, civil rights and the public's welfare. To approve the current use policies which establish ongoing standards for safe de-escalation techniques and law enforcement equipment. An application consistent with AB 481. The ordinance and use policies will be submitted to the Board of Supervisors for review and approved annually. While the legislation has been dubbed the, quote, military equipment, the reality is the equipment we've been using for years has historically not been obtained from the military. The only military equipment per se that meets the definition under 481 that we received from the military is our MRAP, which is a high clearance vehicle that we use for search and rescue operations. The purpose of the military equipment policy is to provide guidelines for the approval, acquisition, and reporting requirements of military equipment. The policy defines military equipment as per government code 7070. Items such as drones, command and control vehicles, battering rams, kinetic energy weapons, and specialized firearms are noted in the definition section of the policy. An attachment to the policy is the Sheriff's Office military equipment inventory itself. Under Government Code 7070, it defines the policy as a publicly released document that governs the use of this equipment, including a description of the equipment, its purpose and authorized use, as well as the cost, training, and procedural rules for use. Our policy and inventory list outlines these requirements in detail. The policy itself outlines the duties of a military equipment coordinator within the sheriff's office. This coordinator will be responsible for tracking the inventory, coordinating an annual community engagement meeting, preparing an annual report for this body, and establishing a procedure for the public to register complaints or inquiries about our military equipment use. The policy also clearly defines the timeframes in which the sheriff's office will present the annual report, hold the community engagement meetings, and other mandates in accordance with the law. For the impact on public safety, the adoption of this ordinance and policy will allow the Sheriff's Office to continue to use the equipment necessary to protect the public and our deputies during day-to-day operations and when we respond to critical incidents. Specialized equipment has been used by law enforcement agencies throughout the county and contract cities serviced by the Sheriff's Office. The need to prevent the escalation of violent situations from becoming a threat to the safety of the community, law enforcement personnel, and suspects themselves. It helps limit and reduce high-risk encounters with violent suspects and provides life-saving tools and options during natural disasters and other non-criminal incidents. As I mentioned, the inventory list defines the purpose of each piece of equipment the Sheriff's Office currently deploys. Under the purpose section, you'll see terms such as the preservation of human life, search and rescue operations, natural disaster responses, rapid response to catastrophic incidents, reduced likelihood of injury to the public and law enforcement personnel, high-risk apprehensions and mitigation of violent crime behavior, less lethal force options, and de-escalation. The justification for use of equipment. This specialized law enforcement equipment is necessary because there is no other reasonable alternative that can achieve the same objective of officer and civilian safety. The proposed law enforcement equipment use policy will safeguard the public's welfare, safety, civil rights, and civil liberties. This equipment is reasonably cost effective compared to available alternatives that can achieve the same objective of officer safety and civilian safety. and use of military equipment complied with the military equipment policy effective at the time of use. Recommended actions today. It is recommended that the Board of Supervisors receive and file a presentation regarding an ordinance readopting the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office military use policy. Receive and file the annual military equipment report. Consider and approve the introduction of an ordinance to readopt and amend the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office military use policy. And read the title of the ordinance and waive full reading of the ordinance. And at this time, that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take your questions.

All right. Thank you, Lieutenant Henderson. Questions from the board? Supervisor Lee, then Supervisor Capps.

Thank you, Chair Nelson. Just a couple of questions. So I see a number of these items were acquired through private donations. Can you explain where those donations are coming from?

I can. Supervisor Lee, through the chair, there are a number of philanthropic organizations throughout the county and the state and the nation that provide private funds. Specifically, the special enforcement team has its own 501c3 that privately fund raises throughout the year to fund some of these projects that we undertake. The Search and Rescue Foundation also has a nonprofit that supports it, and they also privately fundraise. And some of the other monies come from grants and other philanthropic organizations, such as the TUI Foundation, the Woods-Clayson Foundation, and other organizations that support nonprofits and public entities.

Something like 1805 is involved? Yes, sir. And to follow up, Joe, can you tell us how often the large and more expensive equipment were actually used last year? I can.

If you'll give me one minute to flip to page six of the first detachment in the military use report. In use in 2025, the Bearcats were used on eight separate operations and there were no operational uses of the MRAC.

Thank you. And do you have a ballpark of the maintenance on this equipment that has been used?

Supervisor Lee through the chair. I can't quote a specific amount to you. I know that the overhead of these vehicles is included in the operating budget through the county garage. But any major fixes come out of our general operating budget.

Okay. And is there a metric that you use when you decide when this equipment is no longer being used or should not be used?

Supervisor Lee, through the Chair, it is absolutely something we take into account as to what the operational life is of a piece of equipment, especially as valuable as one of our Bearcats, and understanding how long we have to use it and the cost involved in keeping it operating, yes.

Okay, and my last question is about drones. I know the Sheriff's Department is looking to drones usage more. How are we doing that with the drone program currently?

Supervisor Lee through the chair. Currently, our drone program is a pilot program operated exclusively through the special enforcement team, which was brought about via fundraising. It is a resource available to the team. It certainly does not replace any of the other resources we currently have, but it is something that just expands the capability of our SWAT team. Thank you.

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

Yeah, thank you. To pick up on Supervisor Lee's question, without revealing anything that you shouldn't, do you see the technology changing, improving, becoming more high tech, to use a layman's term, moving more towards drones and less sort of more towards traditional military equipment that we might see more on television kind of thing? Do you see it improving and becoming more savvy?

Supervisor Capps, through the chair, I think in the 20 years I've worked for the sheriff's office, technology has absolutely exponentially improved. These drones definitely provide another resource. Sure. Like I mentioned, they don't necessarily replace our current resources. I think the technology of a drone to be able to carry human beings is phenomenal. uh going to be considerably far in the future right but it does absolutely increase our officer safety it provides one other step and yes the if you follow the advancement of law enforcement drones and public safety drones the technology is so impressive that i don't see it slowing down because it has so many extra applications

Yeah, that's good to hear. And then alongside with that, how do you keep up with training then to keep everyone up to speed, so to speak, with the technology?

Supervisor Capps to the chair. Specific to the SWAT team, the training is rolled into our normal two times a month specific training for the team. The operators who are assigned to the special enforcement team find time during their normal training hours and in their own time to keep up with FAA regulations and continue to keep that skill set sharp.

okay and this is perhaps just i sort of i don't understand the inventory list but uh on the list page seven it says you know a bomb squad response truck it says 2007. i i'm assuming that's just on the list because it was purchased in 2007. i just want to make sure you didn't Are these new? Is this a new truck that you purchased this year? Or is this just on the list because it's the inventory that stays on the list?

Supervisor Capps to the Chair, as part of SB 481, we have to report any piece of equipment that qualifies under the law as long as it stays in our inventory and is available for use.

Okay, and I see that that has a lifespan of 25 years. So I just wanted to clarify that because... just to make sure that we weren't buying old equipment, but I assume not, so that's good. Okay, those are my questions, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Capps. All right, not seeing any other questions. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public that are looking to speak on this item?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have no requests to speak from the public on this item.

All right, Supervisor Hartman?

Yeah, do we get this equipment new or do we get some things used?

Supervisor Hartman, through the Chair, the only equipment that we receive that is used would be military equipment through the DMRO process, which is previous military equipment such as the MRAP that is cycled out of military service and available for other state and local entities to absorb through DRMO. All of our other purchasing is new vehicles. Most of the grants where we receive money require us to buy new equipment as opposed to used.

All right, thank you, Mr. Henderson. And I have to ask the question, so you guys had two public hearings in the public, and what was the attendance on those?

Chair Nelson, I believe the Goleta meeting had one attendee, and I don't believe there were any attendees in the Orchid meeting.

I think I count as the one attendee in the Orchid meeting, so... WHICH JUST SHOWS THAT THE PUBLIC OBVIOUSLY AT SOME POINT THERE'S NOT AS MUCH SCRUTINY ON THIS ISSUE WITH THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT WHICH IS NICE BECAUSE I KNOW THAT'S A RARE THING THESE DAYS. JUST FOR THE PUBLIC, READ THE REPORT. IT'S REALLY EDUCATIONAL ON WHAT'S GOING ON OUT THERE IN THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT AND I THINK IT'S REALLY IMPRESSIVE OF DATA COLLECTION THAT YOU GUYS PROVIDE. I know you guys are required by law for that level of transparency, but it's available for those that have questions about your department. It seems to be well documented, and there's some value there for the public. With that, would somebody like to make a motion for staff recommendations?

There's no public comment?

There is no public comment, yeah.

So I will make the motion to move with staff recommendation.

Okay, and I think that was A3E, is that correct, Madam Clerk?

Yeah.

Mr. Nelson, members of the board, that is correct. Recommended actions A through E. All right, thank you.

So motion by Labanino and second by Supervisor Lee. Any further discussion at the board? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we're going to go ahead and take a short five-minute break before we come back to Department Item Number 3.

All right.

All right, good morning. We're gonna reconvene the meeting of June 23rd, 2026, Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. We're here in Santa Maria. Our next item of business is department item number three. Madam Clerk, will you please read that item into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number three is from the General Services Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a mobile home rent control petition for review of arbitration, Del Celio Mobile Home Park, RP folio number 004144, and this is in the fourth district.

All right, thank you. So this is a hearing to review the final award of arbitrator John Derrick, dated March 31st, 2026, in the matter of the arbitration between Del Cielo MHC LLC Park Management and the homeowners of Del Cielo Mobile Home Community. Before we begin, I would like to ask County Council to briefly describe the legal framework under which the board's review will be conducted, including why this item is before the board today, the standards of review and a recommendation on how to handle public comment. Madam County Council.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. So why is this item before your board? An arbitrator issued a final award March 31st of this year. The management filed a timely petition for review of that award, which is pursuant to Rule 23 of the mobile home rent control rules for hearings. The homeowners filed a response, and so this is properly before your board for review. The standard of review is abuse of discretion. So this is different than you use in land use appeals, which is when it's a de novo standard. So the board's role is not to re-weigh the evidence or substitute its judgment on the appropriate amount of the rent increase. Under Rule 23, an abuse of discretion is established when the board finds that the arbitrator either failed to proceed in a manner required by law, made a decision not supported by the findings, or made a finding not supported by substantial evidence. When you are looking at the first one, failed to proceed in a manner required by law, that's what the ordinance means as a matter of law, then the board applies independent review and is not required to defer to the arbitrator's construction. But for questions of fact, the board applies substantial evidence and should uphold the arbitrator's factual findings if they're supported by substantial evidence in the record, even if there is contrary evidence. As for the record and public comment, the board's review of this item is further constrained by the mobile home rent control rules, which is codified in the county code. Rule 13 provides that the official record before your board consists exclusively of the materials that were before the arbitrator. Rule 23B allows the Board to hear oral argument from the parties and their representatives and their attorneys, but the Board's review is limited otherwise to the paper record. But the Brown Act also requires that the Board receive public comment, so we recommend that the Board make a procedural motion at this point limiting the hearing to the existing record and receiving public comment as argument rather than new evidence.

All right, let's go ahead and can we get that part done right now? Is that a motion? So the County Council has asked that we recommended to make a motion to limit public comment as arguments and not evidence.

I'll make that motion.

Okay, Supervisor Lavagnino? I'll second. Okay, the motion is also seconded by Supervisor Hartman. Any further discussion on that? Okay, seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. So just for the record for everybody involved, public comment will be viewed as strictly argument and not additional evidence for the record. Okay, the order of today's hearing will be as follows. We'll start off with ex parte disclosures of the board. then there'll be a staff presentation, followed by a presentation by the management of Del Cielo, and then a presentation by the homeowners. 10 minutes has been allotted for each of those two presentations. At that time, we'll be open for public comment, followed by staff response to public comment, and then a five-minute rebuttal by both management and then a five-minute rebuttal by the homeowners. And then we will conclude with deliberations and a vote of the board. First up here is ex parte disclosure. Do we have any ex parte disclosures? Supervisor Lavagnino? I have none to report. Supervisor Hartman?

None to report. Supervisor Lee?

None to report. Okay.

None to report.

And I have also none to report on this. So there's no ex parte disclosures here. We have no additional information provided to this board about these proceedings outside of what is already in the record. All right. On to staff. Mr. Tiber.

Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. Thank you very much. I'm Ted Tiber presenting the staff presentation on behalf of General Services today. We're presenting an appeal of the mobile home rent control arbitration decision by the Delcello Mobile Home Parks Management. The mobile home rent control is governed by Santa Barbara County Ordinance Chapter 11A, which provides that a party may appeal an arbitrator's decision to the Board of Supervisors, which is why we're here today. The Delceola Mobile Home Park is located in the unincorporated community of Orkut. Management noticed a rent increase in the resident homeowner's petition for arbitration under the county's ordinance. So we held a hearing on January 21st this year in this room here in the Santa Maria board hearing room and written briefs and evidence are included in the record that's on appeal for you today. So the question for the arbitrator was what increase is allowed? And it was agreed that a minimum increase of $1767 was allowed, but management sought a maximum increase of $39.16 per month. So the question is where in that range between 1767 and 3916 was the permissible rent increase? And the hearing closed after the January hearing and briefs on March 13th. So the arbitrator's decision found that within that range, a $24 increase was allowed. That's six more than the minimum and $24 less than sought by management. Some of the costs were allowed to come in, other costs were adjusted, and some costs were disallowed entirely. So following the arbitrator's decision, management appealed to the Board of Supervisors two issues contained in the decision. So the first item on appeal is that management is not entitled to any increase over the minimum amount to achieve a fair rate of return. And then the second item on appeal brought by management to your board today is that the $20,000 broker commission is non-allowable management arguing that it should be allowed to come in and comprise part of their rent increase. So the park residents responded or resident homeowners responded and their briefs sought a affirmation of the arbitrator's decision. And so looking at the first item on appeal before you today, that management is not entitled to any increase over the minimum amount to achieve a fair rate of return. So the ordinance itself at 11A5 states that the arbitrator shall have no discretion to award additional amounts as just and reasonable return on investment. Therefore the issue, this issue issue number one or item number one on appeal is goes to the legality of the county's ordinance itself and the arbitrator correctly notes that his decision in his decision that a constant a constitutional challenge of the ordinance is outside of his role in administering the ordinance so therefore we recommend affirming the arbitrator's decision And the second item on appeal before you today is that the $20,000 broker's commission should not be allowed to come in to constitute part of a rent increase. The arbitrators finding that the broker's commission cost was incurred before the park was purchased by management and was not incidental to owning the park was not an abuse of discretion. therefore in conclusion we recommend finding that the arbitrator did not abuse his discretion both on the items appeal items one and two and also adopt the sequel exemption that there's no possible significant effect from the recommended actions and with that that concludes staff's presentation on this item for

thank you mr tyburn before i go to the presentation by management i just have a question for county council should the board refrain from asking any questions until we get into deliberations not that there are any questions i'm just curious on how to proceed

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, you can ask clarification questions now if you have anything for staff, but just deliberations would be.

I do not at this time, but Suarez 11, you know, please.

Yes, thank you. I'm just curious on the process, so just getting my head around this because I don't think I've seen this before, but so what would be the next step if we determine, so we make the determination, what's either the park owner or the the the renters, what would be their next step of recourse? Is this final, or how does it?

Supervisor Lavagnino, yes, this would be the final action from the county, and so if the parties wanted to pursue it beyond that, that would be legal, yeah, in court. Thank you.

And just so I understand, this appeal's been brought forth by the park itself, right, appealing this? All right, so that concludes staff presentation and initial questions. Now we have a presentation by management, and Madam Clerk, will you set a timer at 10 minutes, please?

Good morning. Jason Dilde appearing on behalf of the appellant, Del Cielo Manufactured Housing Community LLC, the owner of the park. I'll be brief, and I want to be clear about what we are and are not asking you to do today. We're not asking you to rewrite the ordinance. We're not asking you to change the rent formula or to set policy. We're asking you to do the one thing this review is for, to look at whether the arbitrator applied the ordinance the way the law requires. And the heart of it is narrow and concrete. The ordinance establishes abuse of discretion three ways that they went over earlier. The arbitrator failed to proceed in the manner required by law. which is what we're focused on. The decision is not supported by findings or the findings are not supported by substantial evidence. Again, we're on the first one. The arbitrator failed to proceed the matter required by law. That's a legal question. You review it directly. The tenants raised in their reply brief or responsive brief, a substantial evidence framing for this, but that doesn't fit what is at issue. This is a purely legal question about what is incidental to the purchase. And what we're talking about here is the Broker's Commission. Section 11A-5F1 of the ordinance expressly allows, quote, expenses incidental to the purchase of the park. And it specifically excludes things as well. And that is, quote again, principal and interest on loans and depreciation. So it allows expenses incidental to the purchase, excluding principal and interest on loans and depreciation. The park was purchased in 2024 for just under $21 million. The commission at issue is $20,000. And a commission on a real estate purchase is about as plainly a purchase expense as it gets. So the arbitrator disallowed it anyway, two ways. First, he drew a line between core expenses and incidental expenses and labeled the commission core. This is a distinction that ordinance never draws. The word again in the text is incidental to the purchase. It doesn't say minor. It doesn't say secondary. It doesn't exclude the central cost of buying the park. Second, he relied on timing, that the commission was incurred before closing, but the ordinance has no timing limitation at all. Nothing in it turns on before closing versus after closing. And here's the problem with that reasoning. Due diligence costs, legal fees, third-party reports, et cetera. Every one of those is incurred before closing. And every one of those is plainly incidental to the purchase. The arbitrator's own logic would exclude all of them. That tells you the interpretation is wrong. This is not a complaint about the ordinance. This is the ordinance being misread on a point where the arbitrator had full discretion to get it right. Correcting it is squarely within your power today. We ask you to restore the $20,000 commission and recompute the increase. That one item is worth about $9 per space per month. And it would move the award from $24 to roughly $33. The second point is the fair return. And candidly, it may be one for the court, but I'll get into it briefly. The ordinance requires a just and reasonable return. But Section 11A-5-5I-1 fixed that component, and the arbitrator specifically found that he had no discretion to evaluate it. So the question the ordinance is built around was never reached. We raise it here principally to preserve it for judicial review under Code of Civil Procedure Sections 1094.5 and 1094.6. And we ask that the record reflect it was raised. So our request is straightforward. Grant the petition. At a minimum, modify the award to restore the $20,000 broker's commission and recompute the increase. Remand for a determination consistent with the ordinance and note for the record that the fair determination was raised and preserved. Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right. Thank you, sir. We'll now take a presentation. If there's no questions from the board, we'll take a presentation from the homeowners.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair and Board of Supervisors. Can you hear me?

We can.

Thank you. Good morning. This is Bruce Stanton, attorney for the affected tenants, respectfully asking that the decision of the arbitrator be affirmed. Disagreement with an arbitrator's decision may be the impetus for appealing that decision, but mere disagreement with the decision is not sufficient ground for overturning it. And when a court reviews administrative decisions such as this, where a non-vested interest is affected by the decision, the court proceeds under what's called the substantial evidence test. Substantial evidence, according to California case law, means more than a mere scintilla, but less than a preponderance. And it means such evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. Substantial evidence is that which has ponderable legal significance, is reasonable in nature, of credible and solid value, so that the trier of fact could have found as he or she did." using the substantial evidence tests, a court must resolve reasonable doubts in favor of the administrative decision and uphold that decision if there is any substantial evidence to support its findings. Those are the findings of appellate case law that were quoted by me in the brief in opposition submitted by affected tenants. And in this case, the decision we believe recites detailed and well-supported findings and law to support its conclusions much more than a mere scintilla. There's credible, solid, substantial evidence to support the arbitrator's findings in connection with each of the issues submitted for judicial review. I'd like to emphasize that this was a full day hearing Um, the decision is a 13 and a half to 14 page decision. It's very detailed. Um, the petitioner, the owner was permitted to submit 23 page opening brief, 27 page response brief. I know that there's any question that there was adequate opportunity for the park to, um, to brief and participate in the hearing and to have all of the issues properly put before the hearing officer. As staff indicated, the amount in controversy here is in fact $21.49. That's really the amount that could have gone either way. And when you look at the decision on the two issues, you know, first of all, the petitioner says they're not asking the board to rewrite the ordinance or change it? Well, I would respectfully say they are because they're challenging in essence. And I guess you even heard basically for the record for, I guess, a writ of mandamus action that could follow this hearing. if the board would affirm the decision that challenges the very language of the ordinance where the arbitrator clearly has no discretion to go beyond the ordinance standard. In other words, it seems clear that when the county passed this ordinance, it viewed the embodiment of fair return as being in the language of the standard and not to go beyond that. That's what the arbitrator had in front of him. He had no ability to perform some kind of independent review of that, go beyond that. And in essence, doing so would have really been performing a legislative function, which he has no power to perform. He has to apply the ordinance that's in front of him. With respect to the broker's commission, the park owner says, well, this is an incidental expense. And when you read the decision, it's pretty clear that the arbitrator found it was not incidental. And in fact, when you consider the other... You know, the other sort of possibilities here for incidental expenses. Clearly, a broker's commission is something negotiated by the park owner. It could be manipulated to the park owner's benefit if the park owner thought we can increase rents, the more commission that we agree to. And if we go beyond that, if a broker's commission is not a core expense, as the arbitrator found, but seen as incidental, would that imply to inspection fees, attorney's fees in connection with the transaction, loan broker fees, closing costs? I think it's clear that operational expenses are the key here. And an incidental expense is certainly not a core broker's commission. I think Mr. Adilde in his presentation even said that the commission is, quote, as plainly a purchase expense as there is. Well, then that's not incidental, is it? If it's that plain. Incidental would be something... not a major part of the purchase occurring by chance in connection with something else or liable to happen as a consequence of something, which is what the arbitrator found. And lastly, just to say that, you know, he, I think correctly viewed this as something that has to do with the actual operation of the park. And it was incurred before the park purchase was completed and operations commenced. So we believe that the decision was well founded by substantial evidence was well reasoned and would thank you with that and submit our argument and I'll answer any questions you may have.

Thank you Mr. Stanson. All right seeing none from the board I think we'll at this time go to public comment.

Chair Nelson and members of the board we have no request to speak from the public on this item.

All right. So my next item is staff response from public comment. There's but should I allow staff MS Council to respond to the presentations? Or was it only to public comment that they would respond to Mr.

Chair, members of the board if there's just any clarification that would be helpful to do now.

Mr. Tiber, is there anything to clarify from staff?

No, we're here to answer any questions from the board, but no comments on the party's presentations.

All right. We'll go back to management for up to a five-minute rebuttal, and we'll give you a little extra time if you need it, but since you did not use your entire presentation time.

I won't need it. The residents want you reviewing this under the substantial evidence standard, but that's not the standard. That's an issue here, which I touched on briefly. Substantial evidence asks whether there was enough in the record to support a factual finding. We're not disputing a factual finding. We agree the commission was paid. We agree on the amount. I don't think there was any... anything from the residents basically disputing that. It was basically on the legal interpretation of incidental as he kind of got into, Mr. Stanton got into just a minute ago. What we're challenging is arbitrator's legal interpretation, that a broker's commission isn't, broker's commission isn't incidental to the purchase, purchase, incidental to the purchase, sorry, under section 11A-F. That's five, sorry. That's a question of law and the ordinance itself lists failure to proceed in the manner required by law as a separate independent ground from the substantial evidence ground. The reason it's listed separately is that it's reviewed differently. You don't defer to a legal error the way you defer to a factual finding, which is what Mr. Stanton was going on about for substantial evidence. So pointing to evidence in the record doesn't answer our point. There can be ample evidence supporting a number, and the legal test applied to that number can still be wrong. That's what happened here. Then the residents also are reading incidental to mean small, minor, trivial, not worth much, but that's not what the word means in this context, and it's not how the ordinance uses it. Incidental to the purchase describes a relationship, not a size. It means an expense that arises from or is in connection to the purchase. Incidental to something. A broker's commission is the textbook example. You don't buy a park without a commission. That's the connection the ordinance is pointing to. Read their way, the provision collapses on itself. Every meaningful cost of buying the park is substantial in dollar terms. If incidental means small, the ordinance would allow recovery of none of the real costs of a purchase and only the trivial ones. That can't be what the county intended when it expressly wrote expenses incidental to the purchase into that section. Our perspective is the word is doing relational work, tied to the purchase, not setting a dollar ceiling. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. This time we'll go to the rebuttal by the attorney for the homeowners.

Well, just briefly, when petitioner says, well, we're not using substantial evidence, what we're saying is that the arbitrator failed to proceed according to the law, that argument would really have to depend upon the ordinance specifically saying that a broker's commission is among the expenses that must be considered. It doesn't say that. It talks about incidental expenses as a class of expenses without specifying anything. So therefore, once you take that beginning language, then the arbitrator is applying that to make a decision based upon the evidence presented to me is this an incidental expense or not? With all due respect, that's where the substantial evidence test comes in. There's been no evidence of any facial failure to proceed according to law here. The arbitrator very carefully and specifically employed and utilized each of the standards in sequence that the ordinance talks about. They're challenging his finding based upon the facts and the evidence that the commission was not incidental. That, I believe, is where substantial evidence comes in. And there's plenty of evidence and plenty of rational basis for his decision that this was not incidental, that it was a core expense. And with that, we rest. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. All right. I believe that concludes the process of this hearing. I think at this point now we'll bring it back to the board for deliberations and ultimately a vote. County Council, did I miss anything here? I just want to make sure we're doing everything okay.

Yes, that's correct.

All right. So questions or comments from the board? I don't mind jumping in just as I think this isn't really a district issue. It's it's really a legal issue. And I think from what I've heard here in this hearing and the review of the record, I do not believe that the arbitrator proceeded in a way that was not required by law, that his findings were supported by substantial evidence. I'm not concerned about that. I think it was not spilled out specifically to the commission, so I think that's where discretion comes into play, and I think that's where The arbitrator made an interpretation, and that's why we have our arbitrators in these processes. And so at this point, I believe, my personal position here is I would, make the findings that the arbitrator did not abuse his discretion. I would affirm the award made in the arbitration would be my recommendation, but I'd be happy to, and also find that the arbitrator did not abuse his discretion and affirm the award determining that the $20,000 broker commission is not able to be passed through to tenants.

So I'm surprised. Any thoughts on this? I just a hundred percent. I'm behind you on that. And, uh, I'LL BE READY TO, IF THAT'S A MOTION, I'LL BE READY TO SECOND UNLESS WE HAVE OTHER DELIBERATION COMMENTS.

OKAY. LET ME REAFFIRM THAT. AGAIN, THE 20,000 BROKER COMMISSION IS NOT ABLE TO BE PASSED THROUGH TO THE TENANTS AND ALSO THAT HE DID NOT ABUSE HIS DISCRETION IN INFIRMING THE AWARD RELATED TO JUST AND REASONABLE RETURN ON INVESTMENTS. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE I GOT THE RIGHT LANGUAGE THERE. COUNCIL, DID I SAY THAT RIGHT?

Yes, Mr. Chair, that's correct.

All right. I know it's a highly litigious environment when it comes to these things. I want to make sure that I'm not accidentally saying the wrong thing. But I think ultimately, neutral arbitrators, again, are important in these processes, and that's why we built this into it. And I don't see anything here that dissuades me. Other thoughts?

And, Mr. Chair, it sounds to me like you're consistent with staff recommendation.

I am. That would be, well, actually, I'll ask for, as the chair, I'll ask somebody else to make the motion. Supervisor Hartman, did you want to make any additional comments before we get to the motion?

Well, I agree with what you've said. I mean, if you look at the list of things, they seem that you're allowed to pass through. They seem to be things that are necessary to the operation and maintenance and repair and amenities that are provided. It doesn't go back before the purchase. And then I'm sort of persuaded by what the arbitrator said, that reading the ordinance as a whole allows for passing through obligations incurred after the change in ownership. To interpret the ordinance differently would be to allow a slew of other expenses to do with purchase of the park. the attorney for the park residents talked about inspection fees, and that could be a broad list. So I think that would be inconsistent with the list that were given in the statute. So to me, it hardly seems arbitrary and capricious what the arbitrator did. It seems quite reasonable.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lavagnino? All right. So I'll make the motion, and I'm going to read it so that we're clear. that we considered the petition review of the arbitrators March 31st, final award in the matter of Del Cielo Mobile Home Park and the affected tenants. And then B, we made the following determinations regarding the appeal as supporting attachment A, which were the findings. One was we found the, well, just one through three. Do you want me to read those? One through three.

Okay, which was, again, that it did not abuse its discretion on just and reasonable return and determined the $20,000 broker commission is not able to pass through and that this is not an item under CEQA.

Correct.

Okay, so there's a motion by Labanino. And was there a second?

Hartman will second.

And a second by Supervisor Hartman. Any further discussion on this motion? Okay, seeing none, just for the legal point, let's just go ahead and do a roll call vote on this.

Supervisor Lee.

Aye.

Supervisor Capps. Aye. Supervisor Hartman.

Aye.

Supervisor Labanino.

Aye.

And Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay. All right. Well, that concludes this hearing. Thank you guys for all of you participating. Thank you, staff. Thank you for both sides. And thank you for the public for attending. And who says county supervisor meetings are not exciting? Okay, Madam Clerk, will you please read department item number four into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number four is from the Agricultural Commissioner and Weights and Measures Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the annual Santa Barbara County Crop and Livestock Report for 2025.

Mr. Chang, please. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Chair Nelson, members of the board, CEO Amiasato, County Council, members of the public, Jose Chang, Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner. I want to introduce my team today. Laurie Martin, who is the Assistant Agricultural Commissioner. Matthew Mayton, who is in the back, he's the Deputy Agricultural Commissioner. and we have dallas estrada who is an agricultural agricultural wage and mission inspector she's going to be helping today doing the presentation as well we are very pleased to present the 2025 crop and livestock report highlighting the agricultural industry in santa barbara county i also want to express our gratitude to the agricultural community for providing the essential data to make this report possible And lastly, Mr. Chair, I just want to, I also want to acknowledge our team in compiling all of the data, gathering the data, and ultimately for the production of this report. And with that, I'm going to turn it over now to Agricultural Waste Management Inspector Dallas Estrada.

The crop and livestock report is required by the Agricultural Commissioner per California Food and Agricultural Code 2272 and 2279. Our first crop and livestock report record dates back to 1916. The total gross agricultural production value in 2025 exceeded $2.2 billion, which is an 11.5% increase in gross value over 2024. This growth was driven by several factors, including an increase in total harvested acreage, higher crop yields per acre, and stronger market pricing. It is important to note that the values presented in this report reflect only gross values and does not consider costs such as labor, planting, irrigation, harvesting, packaging, distribution, or other expenses associated with production and marketing activities. For over two decades, strawberries have consistently held the number one spot in terms of gross production value in Santa Barbara County, serving as the cornerstone of the county's agricultural economy. Strawberries were followed by nursery products, broccoli, head lettuce, and leaf lettuce in the top five. Wine grapes, cauliflower, celery, blackberries, and livestock rounded out the top 10 commodities for 2025. Santa Barbara County's diverse agricultural industry is reflected in the movement of commodities within the top 10 rankings from year to year. The following comparison highlights changes between 2025 and 2024. Strawberries, nursery products, and broccoli maintain their positions as the top three commodities. Head lettuce, leaf lettuce, and wine grapes each moved up two positions compared to 2024. Livestock continues to rank among the county's top 10 commodities, maintaining its position at number 10. In 2025, vegetable farmers experienced a better growing season than the previous year as cooler weather and improved plant varieties helped reduce pest damage. However, because of soaring production costs, labor shortages, supply chain, and other ongoing challenges, vegetable prices continue to climb. Santa Barbara County's fruit and nut crops led by strawberries experienced a decline in harvested acreage, but an increase in overall value. This category made up 51% of the county's total agricultural production value, driven largely by strawberries remaining their position as the county's top commodity. The increase in value was primarily due to strong market demand, which resulted in higher prices in both the fresh and processed markets. Wine grapes were valued at over $87 million, marking a strong 23.9% increase after rebounding from significant decline in 2024. This increase was driven by higher yields per acre and the high quality of the grapes, which resulted in robust demand and premium pricing compared to other wine-growing regions. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc were the three leading varieties in both harvested volume and gross value. Santa Barbara County's flower and nursery industry remained strong thanks to steady market demand and consistent production. We are a region known for a diverse and well-established horticultural industry, ranging from specialty orchid and rose growers to large-scale wholesale nurseries. Field and seed crops saw a decrease in planted acres and a 4.2% decrease in total value. Strong national beef prices in 2025 coupled with increased demand contributed to higher livestock production values. Apiary production also experienced growth with increases in both bee registrations and overall colony values. I will now turn the presentation to Assistant Agricultural Commissioner Lottie Martin.

Many of the agricultural commodities produced in Santa Barbara County are exported to 36 countries worldwide, with Mexico and Canada remaining our top trading partners. Last year, 118 million pounds of these commodities was exported. Please note the export figures in this report reflect only those commodities requiring a phytosanitary certificate and does not include for unrestricted exports. Santa Barbara County producers continue to meet the demand for organic commodities and in 2025 there were 206 registered organic farms. Strawberries remain our number one organic commodity with over 2,500 acres dedicated to organic strawberry production. Here's a list of the farmers markets we have in the county. We have over 100 certified producers who sell at these markets as well as at markets outside the county. The Agricultural Commissioner's Office is dedicated to protecting and advancing Santa Barbara County's agriculture and natural resources. Central to this mission is our pest exclusion program, which conducts rigorous inspections at mail carriers, retail nurseries, and throughout the community to intercept the introduction of invasive pests. In 2025, our county ranked first in the state for pest fines, successfully identifying 375 invasive pests confirmed by California Department of Food and Agriculture as detrimental pests of concern. As a result, we issued 181 notices of rejection, safely turning away or destroying plant material that threatened our local environment and agricultural economy. To get free help identifying a pest in Santa Barbara County, our department has partnered with the University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. Residents can submit a photo or a sample of the pest along with details about the location and any associated plant damage via email or by dropping it off at one of our department offices. The University of California Cooperative Extension bridges the gap between university research and practical real world solutions for Santa Barbara County's agriculture. From introducing climate resilient crop adaptations to managing pest threats, these expert advisors provide direct support, workshops, and programs for our agricultural sector and local communities need to thrive in a changing environment. Staff recommends that the Board receive and file the 2025 Crop and Livestock Report and find that the proposed action does not constitute a project within the meaning of CEQA. Thank you, and we are pleased to answer any questions you may have.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Martin. Questions from the Board? Supervisor Lavagnino?

I'm going to let it go. Let it go. It was cannabis related. So I'm going to go ahead and ask anyway. So I know we don't include cannabis as part of the crop report. We do have it in the crop report, but it's not counted. And now it's being rescheduled. I'm curious, when would it become actually part, when would the numbers actually, when would we start counting that?

Yeah, Supervisor Lavagnino, through the chair. It ultimately has to become an agricultural commodity at this point. This is still not an agricultural commodity at the federal level, and as such, it's still an illicit commodity to be counted for the report. But it is included, and you discovered that it is included in the reported value, and staff does a lot of work, you know, to come up with that value every year as well.

I appreciate that. So even if it gets rescheduled from class one, it's still not an agricultural commodity. That's a whole different process that has to go through.

So right now there was a reclassification with cannabis. But if it is, yeah, like you said, a schedule one, then at that point, then it would be. But yeah, thank you. Okay, great.

Thank you, Supervisor Leopoldino. Supervisor Hartman.

Yes. Well, so our berries, including our wine, are increasing, even though the acreage isn't increasing, the yield and the price for the quality, those are what accounts for the, is that correct?

Yes, that is correct, Supervisor Harmon, through the chair. And I think we are seeing, especially in the wine grape acreage, that I think it is becoming stable at this point. And so we don't foresee seeing significant changes in terms of acreage. But obviously last year it reflected the quality of the wine grapes and that definitely increased the value for that. And the berries, I'm always amazed the value of them even though it's not a significant acreage. But definitely consumers are willing to pay a little bit more for them.

And I had no idea that Kuwait and United Arab Emirates were big purchasers of our berries.

Yes, they are. And I can actually, I witnessed that firsthand. I had, you know, a privilege to be in that area of the world. And I actually bought berries from Santa Maria. And so I have seen our berries, you know, in that part of the world.

And my last, you kind of skipped over this a little fast. I almost stopped you in the middle. We're the number one county for identifying pests in California. Could you elaborate on what that means?

Yes, Supervisor Hartman, through the chair. We have the most pest finds for B and C and, I mean, A and B and quarantine-related pests in the state. And so we consistently, our staff is amazing. They consistently find things at the carriers that would potentially get out into the area and cause harm. And then we'll be adding a dog to our team soon. So that's really exciting. So I expect our numbers will increase even further. But yes, we hold the record in the state right now.

And you have, could you talk more about your partnership with Master Gardeners? And is that common elsewhere? And what role do they play?

So we do partner with the University Cooperative Extension and the Master Gardeners and that is common in other areas of the county. San Luis hosts them and so they work out of that office as well and those partnerships are pretty common throughout the state. But basically the Master Gardeners are a volunteer corps that's trained by the University Cooperative Extension to identify pests. And currently they are working in our Santa Barbara office to restore and build a teaching garden. So in a few months, if you have the opportunity, we'd love for you to stop by and check it out because they're doing a really fantastic job.

I would love to see it and congratulations. That's an extraordinary to be number one in the entire state. That really shows a lot of concerted effort and smart working. Thank you.

Thank you.

Right. Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Capps.

Well, thank you for the report. I always look forward to this. It makes me proud. I know it makes us all proud. So just a very general question. When you get these results, when you look at the data and you step back and we're at the end of the fiscal year and resources are tight, what are your takeaways for where you can focus or what sort of some lessons that you take from this?

Yes, Supervisor Capps, through the Chair, thank you for the question. You know, I actually was anticipating, you know, I got to say that I was anticipating your question. And I do, we do reflect collectively. And I think, you know, one thing that I, one word that I can describe it is the resiliency of not only the agricultural industry, but also the agricultural workforce. And last year, it was certainly very challenging and difficult for everybody. But I also bring it back home, and I see the team that we have in our office. And I think, you know, when you look at the number of pest finds that we are seeing and intercepting, we feel very proud of that. I mean, this year, the budget is very challenging, and probably for the foreseeable future, It will be like that, but we are also, you know, doing better more with less and we we we take a lot of pride on that. But definitely, you know, I see the resiliency of both the agricultural workforce and the agricultural industry. And I think that is a reflection in the report.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Supervisor caps. Um, I'm correct. Having public comment on this item.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we do have one request to speak from the public on this item. We are going to remain here in Santa Maria, and we will now go to Claire Weinman. Claire?

Hello, good morning. I'm Claire Wyman. I'm the president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. We're happy to be here today to celebrate a bright spot in agriculture and the community. These values reflect the significant support of jobs and other businesses, which is where most of the numbers you heard today go. They're gross values before any of the various increasing production expenses. At the same time, agriculture is also facing some significant challenges, and we need the support and partnership of the board and county to keep local agriculture thriving, especially for locally owned small and medium sized businesses. The board's recent commitment to rural safety is a great example, and we thank you for that. Several significant items will be before the board this year. Essential inputs from petroleum and their derivatives, where to facilitate recreation and open space without debilitating agriculture, and how to support solar autonomy without undue impacts to agriculture. We look forward to continuing our leadership on these and other important issues so we can continue to celebrate a healthy and diverse ag community for many years to come. Thank you.

And that concludes public comment on this item.

All right, thank you, Ms. Weinman.

Supervisor Hartman, do you have additional comments?

All right, I just wanted to comment that, first of all, I'm very proud of our ad commissioner's office. I think it's a shining star within the county and within the state. And I always brag about our team to anybody I get a chance to, as well as about our agricultural industry here in Santa Barbara County. There's a lot to be proud of here. And I think there's also some information here that we need to just keep an eye on because I think that there are threats out there to this industry. I'm hearing from a lot of farmers. There's a lot of imports coming in that compete with our products. You know, it's very expensive to grow here. And when we have to compete with other countries that don't have the same level of regulations or regulations, workforce protections or environmental rules that makes it very, very difficult for our growers to compete. You know, you saw our production go up by 11%, but That doesn't mean that that was profit by any means. I would think that for most of the growers I'm hearing from that their costs to grow are going up even greater than that. And so they likely made less money despite the fact that that grew here in the county. Looking at the vegetables, you know, our numbers went up, but that was over a lot more acres. So actually... price per acre went down in Santa Barbara County for our vegetable production. So that's something just to keep in mind. It's not a stable environment. It's not, you know, this isn't, you know, rental property where you can always just count on a fixed rate of return here. Supervisor Adam used to call farming legalized gambling. And so he also made it one of his other famous quotes is how do you make a small fortune in agriculture? You start with a big one, right? So, yeah. That said, you know, there's a lot to be proud of. A lot of innovation happening in our county. The relationship between the county and agriculture I think right now is strong, but it's something that has to be guarded. And so I think we continue as a board need to keep our eyes on that and continue to make the investments and be wise in our decisions and think about how what we do up here impacts what's happening out there, not only for our farm owners and operators, but also for their ancillary businesses and then ultimately the farm workers. Because when the production suffers on the farm, it suffers at home for a lot of our, most of our county employees, or most of our employees in our county are agricultural workers. And these small macro changes have huge impacts on eventually what they can get paid. And so I think that that all trickles down and I think it's really important for us to keep an eye on that. So again thank you Jose and your team. You guys always do an excellent job. I'm very proud of your department. So with that I'll take a motion to receive and file this item.

So moved.

Second. Okay we have a motion from Hartman, a second from Labanino. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And Jose, don't go anywhere? Okay. Gives the good news. Now you're going to give us the bad news. Okay. All right. Thank you. Madam Clerk, will you please read item number five into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number five is from the Agricultural Commissioner and Weights and Measures Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an ordinance amending the Agricultural Commissioner's fee schedule, weights and measures fee section.

Okay, Chair Nelson, members of the board, CEO Homi Asato, County Council Van Muelen, county staff, members of the public, again, Jose Chang, Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner, as well as the sealer of the county. With me today are Lori Martin, and she's gonna be in the back, the Assistant Agricultural Commissioner and sealer, Matthew Mayton, who is the Deputy Agricultural Commissioner and sealer, and Daniel Garcia, who is the Supervising Inspector, and Daniel is going to be doing the presentation today. We are here today because we are proposing to amend our Agricultural Commissioner's fees schedule, specifically the weights and measures section. I will turn it over now to Daniel.

Effective January 2024, Assembly Bill 1304 amended state law by updating Business and Professions Code 12240. This bill increased the maximum annual registration fee to improve cost recovery for counties conducting commercial device inspections. While this change has narrowed the funding gap for this service in Santa Barbara County, the maximum allowable fees still do not fully offset the total operational costs of these mandated device inspections. As an overview, Business and Professions Code 12240 authorizes the Board of Supervisors by ordinance to establish an annual registration fee to recover the cost of inspecting and testing weighing and measuring devices pursuant to Business and Professions Code 12210. This slide shows our current versus our proposed device registration fees. You will notice some of the devices include utility gas submeters, water submeters, computing and counter scales, as well as other commercial weighing and measuring devices, including taxi meters, gas pumps, and EV chargers. Staff recommends adjusting device fees to cover rising operational costs, including staff, equipment, and training, as well as meeting board policy requirement for full cost recovery. This recommended adjustment also aligns our rates with neighboring counties, as shown in this chart. Staff conducted comprehensive stakeholder outreach in both English and Spanish, including the distribution of informational mailers to all impacted businesses. Additionally, copies were provided to local chambers of commerce in the county and several statewide trade associations, including the California Retailers Association, California Grocers Association, and the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance. In summary, this recommended Weights and Measures fee adjustment enables the County's Agriculture Weights and Measures Office to update its fee structures for the first time since 2021, improving cost recovery for mandated device inspections. This proposed change is projected to generate an additional $100,000 in annual revenue to support these mandated services. It is staff's recommendation that the Board of Supervisors take the following actions, A through D. Thank you, and we are pleased to answer any questions you may have.

All right, thank you, Mr. Garcia. Supervisor Lee and Supervisor Hartman.

Thank you, Chair Nelson. Was there any pushback from any of the industries? Was anybody upset about the increases?

Supervisor Lee, through the chair. At this time, we have not had any comment from the public or any businesses. Wow. Okay, that's my question.

All right, thank you, Supervisor Lee. Supervisor Hartman?

So you really work as the county's Consumer Protection Bureau?

Supervisor Hartman, that's correct.

And do you have a hotline if people suspect things are not right?

Yes, we have our phone number that gets routed basically right to me and I'll handle it within about 24 hours. We also have a online portal where consumers can launch anonymously through our website.

Any complaints? Supervisor Hartman, if I may, through the chair, in the last slide of the PowerPoint presentation, you know, there was a seal. And on that seal, it has, you know, our contact information. And if you notice, we also added a QR code two years ago to make it very simple for the public to, you know, submit any complaints to us. Most other counties, I would say 98% of other counties don't have something like that. It was something that we pioneered a couple of years ago.

Wow. And I've seen things recently about prepackaged underweight. Could you elaborate that a little bit?

Sure. Supervisor Hartman through the chair. We conduct routine inspections that include package inspections in this case. And so we're looking at commodities that are packaged by weight typically and looking to make sure that they meet that weight statement. And of course, that's the net weight statement, not including the packaging of that. We went through numerous grocery stores and packers in the county, including just some of local packers, whether it's baked goods, even milling products, and some agricultural commodities as well. During that time, we did find that it was mostly training issues that we were finding in the field where preset tears were not appropriate. But we made the correction with the businesses on site, issued violations as were deemed appropriate.

Well, good for you for protecting all of us.

Thank you. All right. Questions? Did you have questions? Okay.

Just one more. Not really a question. Just a comment that, yeah, they are the eyes and ears and the cops out there that are protecting all of us. You don't even think about it when you go to get your gas. We're all freaking out about how much it costs, but you have no idea. If it wasn't for you, we'd have no idea if we're getting a gallon when we pay for a gallon. So really appreciate all the hard work that's going on. And folks, I don't do it, but I encourage you to, and I'm going to start doing it, is look at your receipt. Not just at the gas station, but I meet regularly with Director Chang, and there's so many instances where even large corporations that you would think Well, I guess we probably would think that they would. But maxing out, like overcharging, numerous different items that are just picked off the shelf randomly. And so, you know, when times are tough like this, even when times aren't, but even more so now is when you're buying something, just double check and make sure that the price that you're paying for it is what was listed. So I appreciate all the work you do out there, your whole team. I know you're widely respected in the community, both on the ag side and the weights and measures side. And I think this is one of our departments that obviously we should hold up as an example to everybody. So thank you.

All right. I had a couple questions. Well, first of all, I wanted just to piggyback on that. It's not just protecting the consumer. You guys are also protecting businesses, right? Right. You guys obviously expose when their equipment's malfunctioning, right? I mean, I'm sure we don't have a problem with selling somebody more product, but it's also good for them to know. So they're not necessarily selling more product than they intend. Does that occur sometimes out there?

Provisor Nelson, yes, that's correct. When there's issues with accuracy, it can be benefiting the customer or sometimes against the customer. And so when there are losses to the business, EVENTUALLY GETS PASSED DOWN TO THE OTHER CONSUMERS. SO LEVELING THE PLAIN FIELD AMONGST THE BUSINESSES, TOP CONCERN.

THANK YOU, DANIEL.

KAREN ELLISON, I JUST WANTED TO ADD THAT UNDERCHARGERS, THOSE ARE VERY COMMON ISSUES THAT WE SEE WITH SOME BUSINESSES. meaning that they are you know charging less you know for that item so the consumer is actually you know getting more um and so we let those businesses know when when those cases are happening great thank you um i just have some a couple questions on some of these sub meters so um so it's like a i guess a gas sub meter that would be at our house is that what that is

Supervisor Nelson, yes, that's correct. This is in the case of sub metering. And so when there is a entity that pays a bill for an entire either mobile home park or apartment complex in lieu of the customer and then READS INTERNALLY AND BUILDS THE CUSTOMER. WE ACT AS THE REGULATING AUTHORITY AS OPPOSED TO A RESIDENTIAL METER THAT WOULD BE ON A HOUSE AND REGULATED BY THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION.

OKAY. AND SO LIKE IN A MOBILE HOME PARK, YOU GO OUT THERE AND CHECK ALL THE SUBMETERS EVERY YEAR?

The timeline for inspection on submeters is on a 10-year cycle, and so we request that they bring in 10% of their meters to our labs. We have a lab in Santa Barbara and one in Santa Maria, and we do testing in-house on those meters to ensure accuracy and that they meet the correct specifications.

And that happens every 10 years, that they bring in 10% of their meters?

10% annually, so that over the course of 10 years, 100% of the devices are inspected.

OK, so they bring in, and when those devices get brought in, that's when this fee would be, so it will be $10 per sub-meter?

So the fees are paid annually. So there's an annual registration permit that is sent out. annually every January and those fees cover permitting and there are no testing fees that occur when we do the inspections.

Okay so I apologize here let's go get back to that then let's go back to that slide here for a second I want to make sure I understand this correctly on the new fees current versus proposed. So, again, I guess the gas meter would be a vapor sub-meter, is that right? That's correct. And so are we charging for all of them every year, even though we only test a portion of them?

You want to take that one?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Supervisor Nelson. So that is correct. So what it is, is they pay an annual registration fee for all the meters. The cost is $10. The proposed cost is $10 per meter. We only test them once every 10 years. But the actual cost, the fee study that we did that was reviewed and approved by the auditor's office, the actual cost is like $123 to test each individual meter. So broken up into 10 years, it's $12. Okay. So that's how we figured out the rate.

I appreciate that explanation. I mean, I was curious about how that all worked. Sure.

more reasonable to do it that way? So that's, yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, you know, I'm obviously never a huge fan of increased fees, but I see these ones to be really important for both consumers and businesses and, and reasonable. And I think you guys do a really good job trying to keep those down. Not all departments do that, but I know you guys do. And so I really appreciate that. And so I'll support it with the motion when somebody's ready to make it. And I guess we should ask, is there any public comment on this item?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have no request to speak from the public on this item.

All right. Any further questions or discussion? Seeing none, would somebody want to jump in and make a motion to adopt staff recommendation?

So moved.

Supervisor Hartman's made a motion. Second. Second by Supervisor Lee. Any further discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, thank you, Jose and team. All right, for those of you guys watching at home, we're gonna go ahead and break for closed session in a moment here. I'll have County Council read out what we're gonna be discussing in closed session. Also, I think we may have had a public commenter on closed session, so we'll make sure that's available if they are still down in Santa Barbara who would like to provide public comment. Again, we are trying to come back at 2 o'clock. We do have a pretty robust closed session, but our goal is to get back at 2 o'clock to be able to provide a time certain on the Truth Act. So, Madam County Council, would you please read into the record what we are discussing in closed session?

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. In closed session today, the board is scheduled for two items of anticipated litigation. This is significant exposure to civil litigation based on the facts and circumstances in the agenda. One refers to a threat of litigation by G&K Protos LLC and the other is Santa Barbara County Firefighters Local 2046. we also have one item of anticipated litigation a decision deciding whether to initiate litigation we have three items of existing litigation torgeson versus the county and zimmer versus the county but those are both santa barbara county superior court cases and sable offshore core versus the county which is a u.s district court in the central districts of california and Conference with Labor Negotiators for Employee Organizations, Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association, Santa Barbara County Probation Peace Officers Association, Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Managers Association, and Santa Barbara County Firefighters. And the agency designated representatives are CEO Miyasato and Human Resources Director Christine Schmidt. And the time estimate is two hours, so hopefully we'll be right on time backwards.

at 2 o'clock. Great. We'll try to stay on that timeline. Madam Clerk, you said there was public comment or one point. I know we have a potentially written public comment by that individual, but are they available for public comment in Santa Barbara?

Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board, we did previously have a request from Yana Zimmer for the closed session public comment, but she has currently left, and there is an additional public comment for your board.

Okay, and just for the record, we have received her written public comment that I think she was planning on providing orally. So all that has been received by the clerk, made available to the public and each of the board members prior to attending closed session. So with that, we'll go ahead and recess for closed session. We'll be back in a couple hours. Thank you. All right, everybody, good afternoon. We're going to reconvene the meeting of the January 23rd, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in Santa Maria. We're just returning from closed session. Madam County Council, will you please report out on items discussed?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. The board met in closed session, two items of anticipated litigation based on the facts and circumstances listed in the agenda, one item of anticipated litigation of deciding whether to initiate civil litigation, three cases of existing litigation, Torgerson versus the county, Zimmer versus the county, and Sable offshore core versus the county, and conference with labor negotiators with the unions listed, and the board took no reportable action.

All right, thank you very much. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get on with our final item for the day, item number six, the Truth Act. We have to return to two administrative items that have already been read in the record. It's A51 and A79. Madam Clerk, has there been any public comment on either one of those items?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have no request to speak from the public for administrative item number 51, nor for administrative item number 79.

Okay, great. I will take a motion to approve A51 and A79.

So moved.

Second. A motion from Hartman, a second by Lee. Any further discussion on the board? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Okay, this time we'll begin item number six. Madam Clerk, will you please read item into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number six is from the Sheriff Coroner's Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the annual transparent review of unjust transfers and holds, truth, act, report, and community forum. And before we proceed, Chair Nelson and members of the board, I do have a quick announcement for the public.

Yes, go ahead. No.

As noted this morning, please be advised that Spanish and Mixteco interpretation services are available for Departmental Item Number 6, the Annual Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds Truth Act. Please note that members of the public who wish to utilize interpretation services during today's hearing are encouraged to do so. If you are attending the meeting in person, have questions or need assistance accessing interpretation services, please see Deputy Clerk Leo Graham located on that side of the room. And now I will go to Carlos, who will interpret in Spanish, and then we will also have interpretation in Ms. Sacco as well.

Carlos.

Carlos.

I thought my voice was loud enough, my apologies. I have done the whole bilingual explanation in Spanish, and now the Mixteco interpreter is going to say it in Mixteco.

Thank you.

all right thank you um before we get started with sheriff brown um just make an announcement president chair if you plan on making public comment make sure you get your public comment slip in prior to uh the end of the conclusion of the presentation. We will close public comment after the first speaker comes up to speak in public comment. Also to be, make sure we get through everybody. I know there's a lot of people who want to discuss this issue, and we also have translation. We're going to have public comment at two minutes, so that allows for time for as many people to speak as possible, as well as time for interpretation, and still be able to manage this item in an appropriate way. So with that, Sheriff Brown.

Thank you, Chair Nelson and members of the Board.

Good afternoon. We are here today to share information with you and with members of the public regarding persons to who our agency provided access to federal authorities in accordance with California's Trust, Truth, and Values Acts. In addition to reporting the statistics that are required under the Values Act, which is SB 54, in the interest of transparency and responding to requests for information from Supervisor Capps and other members of the public, we will also share some additional information regarding an explanation of SB 54, the Values Act, so that the public has a clear understanding of its requirements, the transfer of released inmates for whom a federal warrant has been signed by a magistrate, and immigration-related arrests made by federal authorities on or near our county jails and their curtilage. and questions regarding our policy relative to the installation of SCRAM alcohol monitoring devices. I'm now going to turn the presentation over to Chief Custody Deputy Ryan Sullivan, who will walk you through the background for the hearing and through the data from our 2025 report. I will be back at the end of the presentation to finish up what I just said I would add and then to conclude and be available for any questions.

Thank you, Sheriff. And I'd like to thank you for bringing it early this year. I mean, I think that's something that there's a lot of interest in that. So I just wanted to thank you and your department for bringing it in such a timely matter.

Mr. Sullivan. Good afternoon, Chair, board members. We'll start off with kind of some background. So in this slide, we will outline the three pieces of legislation that impact immigration enforcement within California that the sheriff just mentioned. The first of which being the Trust Act, which went into effect January 1st, 2014. The Trust Act prevents local law enforcement from detaining non-citizens pursuant to an immigration hold or detainer beyond the time that they would otherwise be released from custody. The next one is the Truth Act, which went into effect January 1st of 2017. The Truth Act provides Know Your Rights information to undocumented individuals that ICE wants to speak to while they're in custody. It also requires that local law enforcement disclose ICE access to undocumented persons who are in local custody in four different ways. First truth act requires that a law enforcement agency must provide a written consent form prior to an interview with ice Which is translated in multiple language and explains the purpose of the interview that the interview is voluntary And that the individual may decline to be interviewed if ice is notified of an individual's release date and time then the same notification must be provided to the individual and their attorney or permitted designee and As mentioned before, the Truth Act also mandates that the local governing body hold an annual public forum, which is why we're here today. Next piece of legislation is the Values Act, which is commonly referred to as Senate Bill 54. It prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from using money or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes. It also required the California Attorney General to publish model policies limiting assistance with immigration enforcement to the fullest extent possible for use by public schools, libraries, and health facilities and courthouses. The Values Act amended Section 7282.5 of the California Government Code, which reads, a law enforcement official shall have discretion to cooperate with immigration authorities only if doing so would not violate any federal, state, or local law or local policy and where permitted by the California Values Act. This discretion only applies for individuals who have been convicted of a serious or violent felony, or a felony in which they were imprisoned in state prison, or for several specified offenses that are delineated within that section of the government code. If the conviction for one of these specified offenses was a misdemeanor conviction, law enforcement can only cooperate if the conviction occurred within the past five years. If the conviction for one of these specified offenses was a felony conviction, law enforcement can only cooperate if the conviction occurred within the past 15 years. Next slide. The Sheriff's Office does not enforce immigration law. The Sheriff's Office does, within the law, authorizes individuals to be transferred under the Values Act. Our policy is a comprehensive document that directs the actions of CUSSE deputies and records personnel as it relates to compliance with the Truth Act. Our policy outlines what forms must be provided to inmates, under what circumstances, and how ICE interviews are to be conducted and how ICE access requests are to be handled under the law. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office does not enforce immigration law, does not check immigration status on anyone we arrest or book into custody at the jails, does not hold anyone beyond the release date in the absence of a warrant signed by a judge, and does not share information with ICE unless the requirements outlined within the Truth, Trust, and Values Acts are met. Now we're going to step a little bit into our process for notification. And this process begins when an individual is booked into a jail in our county. Following the booking of an individual into jail, they are fingerprinted to confirm their identity and ensure that the subject does not have any active wants or warrants we were not previously aware of or the law enforcement agency was not previously aware of. We do not ask or otherwise check immigration status and do not notify ICE of the arrest. ICE does receive notification of fingerprint records from the Department of Justice following their electronic submission. If ICE is interested in obtaining information regarding an individual in our custody, they will notify our custody records bureau via fax or email of the information they are requesting. These are ICE requests that we are referring to in our reported numbers in an upcoming slide. Our custody record staff will manually research the inmates criminal history and current charges To determine if there are any exceptions pursuant to the balance that is established within the truth trust and values acts That will allow us to share the subjects release date with ice If there are exceptions, CUSSE records staff will distribute written notification to the incarcerated person advising them that they qualify for information sharing in accordance with the Truth Act and the person's record will be flagged in the jail management system. If there are not any noted exceptions, the request is filed in the incarcerated person's record and no response is given to ICE. Written notification is still distributed to that person to advise them of ICE's interest but that they did not meet the exception for our agency to notify ICE of their release. If an individual does qualify under the criteria specified within the Values Act, once that person is sentenced or their release date is known, ICE is notified via email. These are the qualified total that we'll reference here in a later slide. And that's how they're notified. Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office does not hold or retain individuals for ICE transfer past their release time. Once individuals are eligible for release from our custody, ICE must be at the facility to transfer the individual in a safe and secure manner. This next slide shows a kind of a snapshot from 2024's data to 2025. From 2024 to 2025, there was a decrease in requests from ICE, 229 in 2024 and 221 in 2025. There was also a decrease in the number of individuals that were transferred to ICE in 2025, 12 compared to 16 that were transferred in 2024, which accounted for 0.1% of the overall releases from the jail system. There was a slight decrease to the percentage of those who qualified for SB 54, which was 1.87% in 2025, compared to 1.95% in 2024. This chart also reflects judicial warrant transfers that were made at the Santa Barbara County Jails. Whenever a judicially signed warrant exists, the transferred person no longer falls under the purview of Senate Bill 54, the Values Act. Although there is no mandatory requirement for disclosing this number, we are doing so in the interest of transparency. In these next three slides, I'll go over some of the background of the 12 individuals that were transferred in calendar year 2025. These charts show how many times each individual has been in Santa Barbara County jail system. Please note that this does not show how many times they may have been incarcerated in other jails or prisons. These charts also show the charges the individual was in custody for at the time of their transfer, as well as the qualifying offense or offenses and the dates of convictions for each individual that was transferred. Additionally, this chart shows whether they qualified pursuant to Senate Bill 54, of which all of them did, and the date and time of their transfer to ICE. Please note that, as I mentioned earlier, for qualifying convictions for specified offenses, there's a five year look back period for misdemeanor convictions and a 15 year look back period for felony convictions. We'll start with number one. Individual number one was currently in custody for lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14, which was the same offense that qualified him for transfer following a conviction. THAT PERSON HAD BEEN IN OUR CUSTODY ONCE BEFORE. NUMBER TWO WAS CURRENTLY IN CUSTODY FOR A FELONY VIOLATION OF PROBATION FOR MULTIPLE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RELATED CONVICTIONS WHICH QUALIFIED THEM FOR TRANSFER. THAT PERSON HAD BEEN IN OUR CUSTODY 13 SEPARATE TIMES. PERSON THREE HAD BEEN IN OUR CUSTODY 12 SEPARATE TIMES AND WAS IN CUSTODY FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT FRAUD AND HAD A QUALIFYING CARJACKING CONVICTION. INDIVIDUAL FOUR HAD BEEN IN OUR CUSTODY EIGHT SEPARATE TIMES AND WAS IN CUSTODY FOR KIDNAPPING, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, FALSE IMPRISONMENT AND ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON AND WAS ULTIMATELY CONVICTED OF ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON, WHICH IS A QUALIFYING DEFENSE. MOVING ON TO THE NEXT SLIDE. Person number five was in custody for a felony violation of probation for domestic violence and cruelty to a child and had a qualifying felony conviction for domestic violence. They had been in our custody three times. Individual number six was in custody for a felony violation of probation for domestic violence and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs along with other offenses. They had a previous qualifying conviction for felony domestic violence and had been in our custody seven separate times. Number seven was in custody for a violation of parole and had a previous qualifying conviction for assault with a deadly weapon with a gang enhancement in which he stabbed a rival gang member in the chest on behalf of his Criminal Street gang. This person had been in our custody four separate times. Person number eight was in custody for felony driving under the influence with injury as well as hit and run and other vehicle code violations in which they were convicted for felony DUI which is a qualifying offense. They also had a previous qualifying conviction for felony second degree burglary and they had been in our custody once before. And moving on to the final one of these slides. Individual number nine was in custody for possession of a controlled substance and giving false identification to a peace officer. They had a previous qualifying conviction for possession of identifying information with the intent to defraud 10 or more persons. They had been in our custody three times. Person number 10 was in custody for felony violation of probation on drug and theft cases and had two previous qualifying convictions, one for felony possession of controlled substances for sale and the other for possession of identifying information with the intent to defraud 10 or more persons. That person had been in our custody 19 separate times. Number 11 was in custody for public intoxication and had a qualifying felony driving under the influence of alcohol or drug conviction while driving a stolen vehicle with priors. They had been in our custody two times. And lastly, individual 12 was in custody for a misdemeanor domestic violence case, had been in our custody six separate times, and had a qualifying conviction for felony driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs with prior conviction. I will now turn the presentation back to Sheriff Brown.

Thank you, Chief. I now want to respond to specific questions that were asked by Supervisor Capps in a letter that she wrote to me, and I'm going to read you the question and then the response to give you some additional information besides what was presented in our mandated reporting. So the first question that was asked was beyond official transfers, does the sheriff's office track how many individuals are released from county jail custody and subsequently detained by ICE while still on sheriff's office property? If this information is not currently tracked, could you please explain why and whether implementing such tracking is possible moving forward? We are aware that ICE has arrested some persons who have been released from our custody within the publicly accessible areas within or adjacent to our jails. These include lobbies and waiting areas, sidewalk areas and parking lots, as well as roadways within or on the periphery of the jails. When such arrests are made, they are made by ICE personnel without the involvement, coordination, cooperation, or assistance of Santa Barbara County Sheriff's personnel, and usually without our being previously notified that they will be operating or working in those areas. Sometimes it is obvious that ICE is awaiting the release of a certain person, i.e. if they are in or outside the lobby or waiting area and are incidentally observed by our staff. All of these areas are outside of the secure zones of our jails and are open to and accessible by any member of the public. including ICE personnel. ICE has occasionally notified us in advance that they will be operating in our parking lots, but most of the time that we have been aware of such arrests, they have not notified us. Other than having captured some of these incidents on our jail security cameras by chance, we do not document, track, record, or report these arrests in any way. Given our jurisdiction, staffing and other resources, attempting to do so would be impractical and burdensome. We do not intend to attempt to track or report these peripheral arrests in the future any more than we would monitor and record arrests made by other law enforcement agencies that operate independently in our county, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration or the California Highway Patrol, for example. The second question that was asked, there was a recent incident involving the installation of a scram device in which, as I understand it, a protocol issue arose and changes were proposed afterwards. Could you please provide additional information regarding the updated protocol and the steps being taken to prevent similar incidents in the future? In a slanted and misleading article that was published in the Santa Barbara News Press on April the 2nd of 2026 that was entitled Investigation, ICE Arrests at County Jail Far More Frequent Than Official Reports Show, The reporter, Lillian Perlmutter, wrote about a person named Gustavo, quote unquote, who was released from our jail and immediately arrested by ICE agents who were waiting in the jail lobby. There were a number of incidents of misleading and inaccurate reporting in this article. First, Ms. Pulmuter described Gustavo as having been, and I quote, arrested by local police after a fight with his wife, end quote. In fact, this inmate had been arrested for felony charges of having beaten and strangled his wife on two separate occasions. She quoted Gustavo as saying, and I quote, they, referring to Santa Barbara Sheriff custody deputies, led me out by the arms and ICE was already there, end quote. As a result of this allegation, we subsequently went back and reviewed security video of the date of this release and found that it had been captured on our main jail surveillance cameras. Although clearly identified, ICE agents were waiting for him in the lobby. Gustavo walked out of the Sally Port under his own power with no custody deputy holding his arms or touching him in any manner. Thus, Gustavo lied about the actions of the ICE agents and the reporter repeated that lie as though it was the truth. Further review of the video showed that ICE agents had taken Gustavo into custody before a scram technician who had been waiting in the lobby himself could attach a scram device to Gustavo's ankle. In discussing the sheriff's office protocol with the reporter, Our Northern Branch Jail commander had given her the Northern Branch Jail protocol for the installation of the devices, which is done in the secure area of the jail before an inmate is released. However, the practice at the time in the South County Jail, which has less space in its internal release area, was for the scram technician to await the release inmate in the waiting area and install the device at that location, being witnessed being witnessed by custody deputies who would accompany the released inmate into the lobby. As a result of our review of this situation, the Sheriff's Office has established a uniform practice of inviting the scram technicians inside the jail, and we will install the devices prior to an inmate's actual release from the secure area of the jail. That practice is now uniformly in effect in both the Northern Branch Jail and at the Main Jail. The third question, during my time as board chair, I formally invited ICE representatives to participate in a public hearing, but did not receive a response. I understand that your office has been in contact with ICE representatives regarding the upcoming Truth Act forum. Can you confirm if they will be in attendance at this forum? The contact that I had with the acting field director was based on the invitation that had been offered by Supervisor Capps and I passed that invitation on to our local acting ice field operations director last month. I have not spoken with him since then but I did receive a text message from him yesterday that said that they regretfully would not be here because in order to do so they required clearance from headquarters and that clearance had not come through for them. Question number four, for this upcoming hearing, today's hearing, please provide the public with a clearer understanding of SB 54 as stakeholders have consistently observed a general lack of understanding regarding the law, its requirements, and the limits it places on local agencies. Greater public education on this issue would help reduce confusion and improve transparency. Custody Commander Ryan Sullivan just presented a detailed summary of SB 54, the Truth Act, at the beginning of this presentation. Generally, the law prohibits the use of state or local resources to assist the federal government in the enforcement of immigration law. However, there are a number of exceptions if... that person of interest has been convicted of violent or serious felony offenses within the past 15 years or of certain misdemeanor or wobbler charges, wobbler being could be filed as either a felony or a misdemeanor. And if that's the case, if it's a misdemeanor charge, it would be within the last five years. It is certainly understandable that there's some confusion about SB 54. It is an incredibly complicated and convoluted law which references other parts of California law which have listings of offenses. And rather than having one just laundry list of what is and what is not an offense that qualifies under SB 54, you have to do this back and forth situation and it has been it's been difficult to understand not just for the members of the public it's been difficult for us and for our staff over the years to understand it as well so it's completely under understandable we have worked with our district attorney our public defender and county council to develop an easy-to-review listing of offenses which do qualify under those exceptions to SB 54, and that has not been an easy undertaking, but it has been something that we have done. So with that... Yeah, I think I'm gonna leave it there, and I'm happy to answer any questions, or my staff is here available, any questions that you might have.

All right. Questions from the board? Supervisor Lavagnino.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think that's the, I think you're really hitting on the, I think that first question by Supervisor Capps really hit the thing. I really don't know. There might be folks, but when you look at the 12 people, I get it. But it seems like the number that and we don't know what the number is of how many people are taken into custody by ICE in our own lobby. That's the gray area that everybody's very concerned about. So we say it's publicly accessible, but it's still on county property. Why aren't those people, well, first off, Why aren't we tracking how many? To me, it's different than when you say, well, it could be anybody out in public that got arrested. We don't track those. This is in our lobby on our property. I would think that's something we would want to quantify. And the second part of that is, why isn't ICE? OK, so you're communicating with them on ones that meet certain standards, and they're showing up. So how many of those, do they meet the standard that they're not showing up and then they're getting them in the lobby? And how come that's just not, it seems way less safe, way less humane? I just don't understand how that works.

Yeah, let me... quite a few questions. I know. It's all coming off the top of the head, so sorry. Let me try to figure that out and roll it back to you.

Thank you.

So first of all, the 12 that we've reported that ICE did come and pick up, there were also others that we notified them of per SB 54 that did qualify that they did not come and pick up. And that's been the case for the last number of years. There's been a certain number where they just have not showed up, and we have had to release those people into the community rather than release them to ICE. As far as the people who they are coming and arresting in the lobby or on the curtilage of the jail, those people are typically going to not be the people who qualify under SB 54. Those are going to be people who they have, they, ICE agents, have probable cause to believe are in the country illegally and have committed an offense but they don't qualify under the California law. We don't notify of them of that. The only thing that we do is notify, as we do with all of our jail inmates, the public of a release date when a person is released from jail. ICE has access to fingerprint databases, they have access to incredible number of resources that they have. And they use those resources as well as taking the date off of our website, no doubt, to determine when somebody is going to be released. And if they want to arrest that person, they typically will come and We will let them know within the same parameters that we will let a member of the public know when we are going to release somebody. It's usually within a two-hour window that we'll give them on a particular date and time. And there's reasons for that. Obviously, people come and arrange rides and pick people up and so forth. But again, it's public information, which goes both ways. As far as the, I think, did I answer all those? one for me was why don't we track oh the number yeah the reason we don't track them is because we just don't know uh all of them for example take the northern branch jail for example the way our jail is designed uh it's very different than the than the southern jail a person is released from custody through a sally port that goes out onto a walkway and walks out into the front of uh the jail and we don't have anybody outside monitoring that they're in others they're released directly from the secure area of the jail to the out doors and they um although we have security cameras there those cameras are not monitored unless there's a reason to go back and look at them. The people who are monitoring cameras are monitoring the cameras on the inside of our jail and making sure that staff and inmates are safe in the jail. And although we have huge banks of cameras, we don't have, it's not a one for one or even 10 for one situation where people sit and monitor them. So we don't know, like in that case, I'm sure there are many times where people are released and ICE may be waiting for them and we're not aware of it. No one has come to work and seen them or no one has, so there's no way for us to sort of divine that as to if they're there or not. There are other times, as I mentioned, where it's very obvious. Headquarters sometimes, when I pull in in the morning, there can be, there's usually, if ICE is there, there's usually a group of protesters, many of whom are probably here in the audience today, who are out there as well. And so it does become more obvious if that's the case. But the reality is, like I said, their arrests are their business. They're really not our business. They are a bona fide law enforcement agency. Whether people like that or not, they are. And they are authorized under federal law to make arrests. And they do make those arrests. All the time. And so they are responsible for reporting those arrests. I think a lot of the confusion comes in. And again, it gets back to this very misleading article that was written that said as though it was written as though we were hiding something from the public when we said we've released X number of people. And we have had, as mentioned, a surge in arrest warrants that have been signed by federal judges. They didn't used to hardly ever send those. We had 33 of those in 2025. So between 33 and the 12, that's what, 45 people, But this reporter said that they got some information or they got information from another group, mysterious group, they didn't identify who it was, that said ICE had indicated that they had made 99 arrests at, quote unquote, at the Santa Barbara County Jail. not in the jail, at the jail. And so those numbers that they reported allegedly were numbers that ICE provided to them and included, apparently, all of the arrests that were made in proximity to the jail in any of those areas that I'd mentioned before, some of which we were aware of, most of which we were not. And as far as tracking it, again, unless there is something that occurs, we did have one, for example. We had one where a guy... took off from ICE, who was attempting to arrest him. And there was a pursuit. And he doubled back. And he climbed a fence. And he jumped into the secure area of our jail and injured himself in so doing. But we did take a report, obviously, on that, because he was illegally entering our jail. a secure area of our jail as as well so other than that it just is something that i'm not aware of any other sheriff's office or law enforcement agency that tracks and reports arrests made by another law enforcement agency and i think there's probably room there to ask ice and frankly we don't want to do it we want to be seen as far removed from ice as possible Because ICE is, we are not working with ICE. We don't coordinate with them. We don't give them information. And we don't want to be seen as engaged in anything that's not required communication with them. But I don't think there'd be anything preventing the board or Supervisor Capps or anybody from making a regular request of ICE if this information is indeed public information that they have given out, which really the reporter did not identify in the article as to where that information came from, other than it was from some academic source. group that I think in a subsequent article may have been further identified. But again, it's not anything that we know of that we could verify. And so I don't know if those numbers are accurate. I don't know if those numbers have any meaning whatsoever.

You good, Steve? Yeah. All right.

Well, thank you, Sheriff, for answering the questions, and you've gone beyond what the law requires today, and that's noted and appreciated. So just to build on the topic here, because it is of concern how many arrests are happening on your property, on the jail property, and to be clear, you you run the jail yeah the board of supervisors does not it's it's your policies that control the jail and you're making it abundantly clear that you do not track the the arrests that happen in the lobbies uh in the parking lots and so I just want to clarify, are there any legal restrictions that prevent you from doing that? You've made it clear that you don't want to coordinate, although you text, so there is some coordination, but are there any legal policies or restrictions that could prevent you from jotting down somewhere if there's an arrest in a lobby so that we could start tracking, you could start tracking?

Supervisor Capps to the Chair, I don't believe there's anything legally that would prohibit us from reporting anecdotally those types of arrests. The problem that I would have is there would be no way for us to gauge the accuracy of any kind of number that we came up with in terms of those arrests. No way to confirm if it was a truthful number or not. And again, it's really not our jurisdiction and not our responsibility. It's the responsibility of ICE who are making those arrests. And they are accountable to the public. And apparently, this reporter or the source that she had for some of this information was able to obtain that information. I don't know what the breakdown was. But I'd be reluctant to do that just because it's going to, by its very nature, not be a very accurate report. And again, we're going to be accused of underreporting or not reporting or what have you, and I As I said, we want to keep the trust within the immigrant community. We want to make sure that we are not seen as somebody who is working with ICE. And we don't. And you can snicker and say whatever you want, but the reality is we do not. And we abide by the law.

Well, I appreciate that, but I think it gives a false impression, and I was just at the northern jail this morning just to double check and was at the main jail not too long ago. It's not as though it's Grand Central Station. It's literally like as if there were an arrest right there. We would all be very much aware and very much cognizant if that was happening. to be sort of unaware of what's happening also presents a real red flag to me of jail oversight. And again, you run the jail, but I would just wonder, what's in place then to evaluate the impacts? I mean, this is happening almost every day, every other day, every third day. This is not sort of a once in a blue moon situation. And I imagine this is, these are your inmates that have been released. You know who they are. And then there's a disturbance. Oftentimes there's protesters. So this is not some sort of quiet in the night situation. And when I was at the jail with some members of your team, there was nothing else happening. So it would have been very obvious. And so I'm just, Again, we can't have a policy that you would start tracking, but I just want to put up the numbers to demonstrate what an anomaly our county is for the number of arrests that happen on jail property. So this is coming from ICE. This is the data deportation report. center numbers from UC Berkeley. And they're getting this information from the federal government that we've had, this is last year, 99 arrests on your property, Sheriff. This is not on or on Bataravia. This is on jail property. So Santa Clara is a big county. They had three. Kern, big county. Fresno, 16. Imperial, 33. Ventura, 49. SLO, 55. Why? And yet we don't track or we don't seem to have a sense of this is a situation we need to get a handle of, right? I mean, there's safety concerns. There's fiscal concerns. There's oversight concerns. Do we have cameras in the parking lots? These are inmates that are released. And so it just really begs the question of what sort of evaluation process is happening? Are you thinking of a new policy? supervising caps up until today we haven't seen these these numbers these were the numbers that were in that report uh in the news press this is very accessible and if you could continue with the next slide this is a disturbing i need to tell you this is disturbing but this is the white house this is whitehouse.gov this is where these numbers come from they have this is the website it's the main page Whitehouse.gov, aliens. You can keep going. There's a heat map of Santa Barbara, California. And this is where the number's coming from. So if we're not tracking, as Santa Barbara County, where you, as an elected official, represent immigrants, where are people supposed to get numbers?

Well, Supervisor Capps, through the Chair, first of all, as I said, this is the first time that we've seen these numbers. And the numbers, to my recollection, other than that 99 number, which was reported by Ms. Perlmutter in her initial article, which was allegedly a number that was given to this academic group that may be the one that you've quoted on the slide, I don't know. But it appears to be that those numbers to the left are anecdotal numbers. They're not official numbers that are released by anybody. And as far as this White House map, I don't see any numbers and I don't know

Yeah, it's hard to zoom in, but anybody can go to it. It's really disturbing. It's whitehouse.gov.

That number of 99, apparently, and again, I've not asked and got this clarified, but apparently, that number would include the official number that we released that was 12. The 33 that were picked up on federal warrants, so that would make a total of 45. And then supposedly perhaps the balance of 99, 45 making up 99, perhaps the balance of that number are numbers of people who have been arrested at or around the jail. over the 2025 year. And that may or may not be the case. I don't know. We don't have any way to verify that. And those are not our numbers. And so it's not appropriate. I'm not aware of any other sheriff in the state of California that is reporting arrests that are made by an agency other than by the sheriff's office. And there's reasons for that, as I say. It's because those numbers are not appropriate. numbers that we can verify.

Yeah, you've made it abundantly clear that you're not going to start tracking, but I would just ask you to reconsider because in addition to the trauma that everybody's going through, and I don't mean to add to it by putting up a White House website, which is literally the home page right now, so maybe we want to take that down, but it's just for our government, for our county to not be tracking and to not have access, and I don't know if the Sheriff's Department isn't doing it YOU KNOW, WHO WOULD? AND ALSO, TOO, YOU KNOW, BECAUSE OF THE ACTIVITY THAT'S HAPPENING ON JAIL PROPERTY, AT WHAT POINT DOES IT TRIGGER YOU ALL TO HAVE, LIKE, RETHINK A POLICY WHERE MAYBE YOU INTERVENE, MAYBE YOU START TRACKING, MAYBE YOU START EVALUATING WHAT ARE THE SAFETY CONCERNS THAT'S HAPPENING? THIS IS GETTING OUT OF HAND. I MEAN, THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY A SITUATION THAT IS GOING TO GO AWAY ANYTIME SOON. WE LOOK AT, YOU KNOW, WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE IS DOING, WHAT KIND OF rhetoric that they are having. I'm just asking, at what point will you be reconsidering a policy of sort of head in the sand? And I just point to Ventura County has a data dashboard, which is, again, I don't know what their policies are like. I'm sure a lot of our advocacies do, but in terms of reporting, their data dashboard is much more clear, and so I just wanted to provide it as an example.

Supervisor Capps, let me say this. I've said, and you've heard me say this many times, we've talked about it privately and publicly, that it is a given that if ICE is not arresting people at the jail or in the jail, They are going to be arresting people in the community. They're not going to not arrest people. That is their responsibility. That is their mandate. As you've pointed out, they're the most well-funded law enforcement agency in America right now. And so they will be carrying out their mission one way or another. And frankly, I would much rather they arrest people in our jail if we can legally... provide them access to them through SB 54, which is state law. or even at our jail, because it's going to be less disruptive, it's going to be less, it's going to be less safe if, it's going to be more safe if they do it at the jail location rather than if they do it in the community. We've all seen these instances in the community where people, there's confrontations, there's the potential for violence, for peripheral arrests, for all kinds of problems and issues. And I don't want to see that, quite frankly, in our community. You've also seen and heard that the people who we turned over to ICE, those 12 people, were all convicted of serious offenses. They were all repeat offenders that were in our jail facility. The opportunity to have those people removed from our community to where they will no longer be committing those crimes against our community, many of which are crimes that are disproportionately made against the immigrant community, is something that I think we need to take advantage of. We need to work within the confines of the law. We need to be very forthright about it and transparent about it. But again, I understand what you're saying and I understand your concerns and passion about this, but it would be like having a concern with a neighboring police department or another agency that we were somehow expected to report out on them and intervene somehow or what have you. We have to operate strictly within the confines of the law Our ability to communicate with ICE is regulated by SB 54. And as I said, I don't want there to be any misinterpretation about that. On the same token, I want to make sure that our community is safe. And if there's an opportunity for people who have you know, committed serious crimes in the past to be transferred to ICE custody, I think it's the appropriate thing to do. I'd like to ask Chief, you know, I just want to clear up a misconception, I think, about even though you're correct, the area is in fairly close physical proximity with our lobbies, waiting areas, and so forth. But I'd like to have him explain how with the amount of staffing and with the structure of our jails, both of them, how it could be very easy for somebody to not notice that somebody is out there making an arrest.

Yeah, thank you, Sheriff. Yeah, you know, it does seem like something happening in our property we should always be aware of, but what you don't maybe think about all the time is as people that have worked in a jail such as myself for 20 plus years, we're not concerned about what's happening in the parking lot or in the community typically. We're concerned about the individuals that we are sworn to keep track of and supervise and make sure that they're safe and have their needs met. As the sheriff mentioned, there's certainly instances in which we are aware of ICE activity or ICE being in the lobby, things of that nature, but we are not aware of every single one of those. And the challenge we have is we don't want to come in here reporting some data set that says that there were 50 arrests by ICE on our property and ICE has data to say they have 75. So it would be very difficult for us to be 100% accurate in reporting somebody else's statistics. And then I think that's our challenge of saying, yeah, we're going to do that or we want to do that because it's not something that we can accurately track every single day and make sure that we account for every single instance.

Thank you. I have other questions, unless you want to just stay on this.

You can continue, and then we'll go to Supervisor Hartman. I have questions as well.

Yeah, I mean, thank you. You talked about the folks. It's better for ICE to take those who are in the jail. What struck me with these number of requests, 221 ICE requests, that 28 individuals qualified for a transfer, yet only 12 are transferred. what goes through the the criteria that you all look at because clearly it's not just the the offenses or the crimes or the the time that the previous deportation i mean do you look at the fact that they've rehabilitated or their mental health evaluation i mean you're really because i just do need to say uh we're seeing increasing reports of in detention centers across the country, which are popping up everywhere with this extreme budget of $191 billion. We're seeing tons of deaths, I think 33 recently. So you're really making these big decisions of what might happen to individuals' lives. Meanwhile, they've already served time. They've already served their time for the crimes that they've done here in this country. So what's the discrepancy between those numbers? And what is the evaluation process? I understand that it takes quite a bit of time to deal with the requests and decide which ones you're going to turn over to ICE, which ones you're going to transfer.

Supervisor Capps to the chair. What the process is is essentially reconciling federal law with state law. So ICE sends us notices that they want to get information on release dates or get a person held for them to come and pick them up upon their release. They are not constrained by SB 54 and its prodigy. So they basically issue these notices to us. And the job that we have is to then take the notice that they give with the inmate information that they provide and to research that inmate's criminal history to see if And their current charge to see if they qualify under SB 54. That's the only litmus test. There's no test about rehabilitation or anything. They're still in our custody for the primary offense that they're currently dealing with. And so that... information is determined whether A, it meets the criteria, or B, it does not meet the criteria. If it meets the criteria, we will cooperate with them as we are allowed to under the law. If it does not meet the criteria, we do not cooperate with them.

But the numbers don't match that because it says in your data that 28 individuals qualified for a transfer, yet only 12 were transferred.

ICE only showed up 12 times out of 28. In other words, 16 times when people who would have been qualified for release, ICE was not there to pick them up. And they were released, as the law requires. And I can give you some speculation on that. That was in 2025. That was when they had lots of people deployed to Los Angeles. They had lots of people deployed to Minnesota. they probably didn't have the staff themselves to come up and do that. But those, we notified them of those, and we would have released all 28 of them if they had showed up. Okay.

And then, so 33, I noticed for the first time in this report, you've identified the 33 federal judicial warrants. Correct. Tell me about that. That relates to Operation Guardian Angel. Is that something that came? Why are you identifying those, and can you tell me about those individuals at all?

So, Supervisor Capps to the Chair, heretofore, it was very rare for us to get a federal magistrate signed warrant.

Yeah.

There's a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through. It's a difficult process, from what I understand, for the U.S. Attorney's Office to go through and do that. But last year, they started a policy of looking for people. And it generally only, to my knowledge, it applies primarily to people who have been deported and have returned to the United States. So they're repeat offenders. They're not just the first time. This is they've been deported, and they've come back into the country illegally. If that's the case, there's a certain federal statute that they can seek and obtain a warrant from a federal magistrate, and the magistrate will sign that warrant. That signed warrant has full force and authority, just as any other federal or state judge signed warrant does, which requires us to hold that person for a reasonable period of time until they come and pick that person up. At that point, they essentially go off the books as far as SB 54 is concerned. It's a completely separate item. We reported those numbers to you just because we wanted to be fully transparent about how many people were released to ICE on those warrants, but they are separate and distinctly different from what the normal quote-unquote process would have been under SB 54. But it's a relatively new policy change by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

So you saw an uptick from the year before?

Correct. Yeah, I don't think we had any the year before.

Right, okay. And how much time would you say all of these requests take as you're evaluating the 221 and then you get ultimately to the 12 that were transferred? I mean, how much staff time to process this, to look through, to see who actually qualifies under the law? How much... How many, if you had to put a dollar amount or resources, would you say, I've heard that it's time intensive?

I don't think it's, you know, superficial, the amount of time. I think it is, it does take some time. All of those people obviously have to have criminal histories run and reviewed and then determine if those offenses and or the current offense meets the criteria of SB 54. But 220-some of those, there was a very limited number that actually met the criteria of SB 54, as I say. I don't know if the chief or anybody has any information about how long. We happen to have somebody here who does this work. She, you know, is very good at what she does in that respect, but that's part of her job, you know, in working in jail records to make this information known.

Okay, so it's just one person's job that really goes through all of these 221 requests.

Yeah, and what happens is if they meet the criteria, then there's, you know, the paperwork is placed into the inmate's jail file. And if they do not meet the criteria, you know, they're not. So it's, if they don't qualify under SB 54. There were other provisions of SB 54. There are other provisions where ICE can request, for example, to come and interview somebody, but they rarely, if ever, do that anymore. I haven't heard of that happening for the last several years.

OK, and thank you for clarifying on the SCRAM technology. This is my last set of questions right now. But I just want to make sure I understand, because it was alarming to hear about that incident in that article, but also a second incident where the SCRAM ankle bracelet was put on in a public setting. So I understand you now have changed the protocol where the SCRAM technology will only be put on inside the jail, not in a public place for both jails, is that correct?

That is correct, but I just do want to clarify.

So there's no way that ICE, my question is, there's no way that ICE would be tipped off about this happening?

No. About the installation of the scram device?

Yes.

I mean, I suppose they could be tipped by a scram technician or somebody, but it's certainly not information that we would release from our jail. And I just wanna mention that, You know, again, the way this distorted news article was written, it made it sound as though we were holding information back or we were doing something that was wrong. It was done for the best of intentions. It was to make the best use of available space. Normally, when someone's getting released and they need to get a scram device put on, they're more than happy to get that scram device put on because that's going to facilitate their release. So we had done it in the lobby because there wasn't enough area in the in the main jail booking and release area to do it and to have additional people and doing that. But because she made this kind of big deal out of nothing, we ended up saying, okay, we're just going to go with a uniform policy. But there was nothing that was untoward or inappropriate with the policy that we had.

Well, I mean, there was a second incident where the scram technology was put on and ICE was present in the near probation. So we just want to make sure that there isn't some sort of way in which you can see how there's alarm bells if a judge has ordered a rehabilitation of somebody, and then as that technology is being put on, ICE has an opportunity as they're literally bound to come in and rather than going with what our local judge has determined is the best course of action for this person's future and their life in a humane way and the federal government comes in inhumane way and takes them. And that's, I don't think that that is a small thing or something that's been blown out of proportion. You can dispute the facts, but I also think if you communicate more, which is what I've been encouraging you to do, and you are right now, so I appreciate the dialogue, then people don't jump to different conclusions. And that's what we're trying to improve.

Well, I appreciate that. And I think that, you know, the reality is the, and I don't know if you have numbers even estimated numbers, but the number of people that are released with SCRAM devices is somewhat limited. I mean, I don't know if we could give you that, but it's an unusual occurrence. Let's just put it that way. It's not something that is super routine.

So you're saying right now on the record that there's no sort of tip-off to ICE when the SCRAM devices are being put on?

Well, I'm not aware of any tipping going on at all in any circumstances. And if there were, if that was to come to our attention, that would be a violation of law and that would be grounds for us to investigate and potentially take disciplinary action against someone if it was one of our employees. As far as what it may be being done by someone else that's not employed by us, I don't know. I don't have control over that.

Supervisor Capps, if I might add a little. I don't think it's specifically related to the SCRAM. It may be more related to the Sheriff's and Probation's electronic monitoring program. So individuals that are on electronic monitoring GPS do have a date in which they are finished with their sentence, and they would return back to the jail to return their electronic monitoring device. Neither probation or the Sheriff's Office shares location data or anything like that with ICE, but ICE would know the release date if they saw it on the website or something like that. So I think we did have an instance or two of that maybe a year or two ago in which I did access some individuals that were turning themselves back in or turning their device back in at the jail lobbies. But it was not SCRAM related. It was Sheriff's GPS.

Okay.

Well, I've asked enough questions for now. Thank you, Sheriff. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Supervisor Capp. Supervisor Hartman.

Yeah, I just have one question. So this report is for 2025. And that was, I think it was that year that we got the letter from AG Bonta about the different how you define transfer versus re-arrest. And I wonder if you could just expand upon that and explain how, if at all, that affects our numbers.

Sure. We historically had not categorized a rearrest, where someone's released and then rearrested by ICE, as a transfer. In our parlance, in the sheriff's office lingo, a transfer of a prisoner is one that is done between agencies where that person never leaves custody, never has... never gets dressed out in their own clothes, never gets their property given back to them. It's a specific definition that we have for that. So we didn't use that terminology and we reported for a number of years, a number of, you know, a negative number in terms of transfers at the same time that we were completely and openly reporting all of our SB 54 related transfers. And someone looked at these two things and said, wait, they're reporting zero transfers when in fact they have done X number that whatever we reported in the Truth Act hearing. After some communication with the Attorney General's office, the Attorney General's office opined that we should call them transfers rather than re-arrests. And we complied with that and we went back and we, I think it was for five years, we went back and actually adjusted the numbers. Those numbers were adjusted on the Attorney General's website as well. So we no longer use that, our local definition of a transfer. We call them all transfers now. And rather than, and we now, it's now called a transfer officially, we now actually do a transfer within the confines of the jail in those circumstances. So it is not, it's still a little different because we're still releasing the person with their property and their own clothes. We're not keeping them in a prisoner's uniform or any of that, so. so did that change the numbers i mean no okay i mean the numbers it changed it from zero that we had reported yeah back for several years to whatever that actual number was but it but it never changed anything on the sp54 reported numbers that are from the forums

Okay, so the transfer is just those that ICE has requested and they show, and ICE shows up and actually takes custody of the people.

And meet the criteria for under SB 54.

Yeah, not the people in the lobby or elsewhere. Correct. Got it.

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. And I've got a couple questions. I actually spent some time with Ms. Perlmutter, the reporter, and she obviously didn't understand that people get fingerprinted and that goes in a database and there's a lot of publicly accessible information. I think you went through that a little bit with your chart, but I think it's important for the public and everybody to understand that there's a lot of information out there that ICE can look at that may not be coming directly from your department, might be coming from the courts, right? The court cases happen in public, right? You know, when there's a court calendar, right? Where you see, you know, somebody could get fingerprinted ICE could look at the court calendar, see that somebody's in court that day, so there's a chance that they may be released, could actually probably watch court on Zoom, which you can do, and know if they're gonna be released, that they're going back to the courthouse to be released, right? I mean, that's a reasonable thing that that ice could be doing that does not include any coordination from your department now channels in your 100% right.

The reality is everyone that we arrest we fingerprint under an electronic national system that takes their fingerprints and provides that those fingerprints to the FBI and through them it is provided all federal law enforcement agencies as well and so we are just doing what is the standard protocol across the nation.

So does it matter your immigration status on whether you get fingerprinted or not?

Absolutely not. And as mentioned before, we don't even ask anyone their immigration status. We'll ask where their place of birth is, but they could be a naturalized citizen for all we know. We don't question them about that. We don't go into that. But the information, as you say, is gleaned by ICE from a variety of different sources, including that national fingerprint database, which is the first thing that happens when somebody is arrested.

So that if you're ICE and you're looking for, you know, you have maybe a list of people that you might be targeting because they may have committed crimes here and you might want to...

Correct. Oftentimes could be someone who's been previously deported and fingerprinted. That fingerprint is now in the system. They... get a hit from those fingerprints electronically, could be somebody that is wanted for some kind of federal criminal offense. They have all of those federal databases and resources at their disposal.

And our local ICE office here predominantly, right, is to actually deal with the federal prison, right? Isn't a big portion of their work actually just waiting for people who have gone through the due process, have been punished by going to federal court and then actually then the removal of them from the United States at that point?

That is the primary, my understanding, that's the primary responsibility of the local office here in Santa Maria. The ICE agents that typically come to the jail and that make arrests in our community are typically based out of the Los Angeles office.

Right, so it's kind of an ancillary.

Or the Camarillo office.

Right, so it's kind of an ancillary thing here, and that might be a reason why only 12 of them, you know, 12 arrests have happened or transfers have happened. Yep. Because it's kind of more of a secondary thing. I WANT TO MAKE SURE I UNDERSTAND. I KNOW THERE'S SOME CONFUSION ON I KNOW THERE'S SOME CONFUSION ON HOW IT ALL WORKS. HOW IT ALL WORKS. I DID WANT TO CLARIFY ONE THING. I DID WANT TO CLARIFY ONE THING. IF I CAN GET SLIDE 7 UP HERE FOR IF I CAN GET SLIDE 7 UP HERE FOR A MINUTE. All right, so this is 24, 25 comparison. And so outside of the judicial warrants, all the numbers went down from 24 under a different presidential administration to the new administration, right? Correct. Okay, I just wanna make sure I read that correctly. So 24 Biden, 25 Trump, numbers went down, outrage went up. Correct. Okay, I'm happy to see 26, 26 numbers too. I don't know. Any preview? How are we tracking?

No, we don't have those numbers available at this point. And we certainly want to make sure they're very accurate. And if I could add, that's also one of the problems that when this news article came out by Ms. Perlmutter, she released information that we hadn't released to the public and that she had obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request from us. We hadn't completely processed it and you know, made it, made sure it was ready for prime time either. And so, again, it was written in such a way that it was as though we were somehow withholding some information or holding something back. Absolutely not the case.

Like I said, I was interviewed. We spent about an hour together on the phone. That was obviously the premise of the article going into it before she learned a little bit more about the process.

And she, you know, she is a professional journalist. who works for a variety of different newspapers, and her specialty is immigration. And her body of work is fairly extensive, but it's very much negative towards law enforcement. So, I mean, historically, that's the way her articles are written.

Understood. All right. Thank you. That concludes, I guess, Sheriff's presentation and questions for now. I think we'll go to public comment. Madam Clerk, how many public commenters do we have this time?

Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have 65 requests to speak from the public on this item.

Okay, as previously mentioned, you have two minutes to speak. Again, we have some that will be done in multi-language, so we're going to need some extra time on those, and they will be allotted the time as appropriate. And as soon as the first speaker comes up, we'll be closing public comment. No, your call. Dealer's choice.

Turn also members of the board. We're going to begin on zoom with Jose Vasquez to be followed by Ivan Vega Jose.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Please proceed. Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Good evening, Board of Supervisors. My name is Josue Vazquez, a project coordinator for the Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Projects Immigration Legal Assistance Program. I am here on behalf of MICOP and as a member of the 805 Immigrant Coalition. Today, I would like to speak on the behalf of the indigenous migrant community members who continue to experience a heavy fear and anxiety that they too may be separated from their families like the almost accounted for 375 families of Santa Barbara County to this date. Community members fear leaving their homes and experiencing the same traumatic experience. This fear has come about because those who have been detained by ICE were either on their way to work, to the grocery store, or to a friend's home, all regular activities that everyone in this room I'm sure has participated in. The continued actions by law enforcement agencies have continued to prove why there has been a historic sentiment of distrust from our community. Our county government and sheriff's office should respect and uphold everyone's humanity and human rights, regardless of their immigration status. This county should stand with community members. The rule of law and due process rights by ending all ice transfers and notifications to Santa Barbara County in compliance with state law. Please join the over 10 counties that have already ended ice collusion. Thank you.

We will now go to Ivan Vega to be followed by Fernando Hernandez. Ivan. And for those members of the public on Zoom, if you can please refrain from raising your hand, we will call you in order that your speaker slip was received. Thank you. We will now go to Ivan to be followed by Fernando Hernandez. Ivan?

Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Ivan Vega. I'm the leadership development director with Futures for America. I believe that ending the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office voluntary collaboration with ICE is a positive and necessary step in supporting equal due process and greater public safety for all. The people in the county jails, regardless of the severity of their crime, have paid their debt to society. and have been released as ordered by a local judge. However, Sheriff Brown has never declined an ICE transfer request that he considers to be SB 54 eligible, even though California law gives him the complete discretion to disregard those requests, as many other sheriffs do. This is a clear case of aiding and abetting a system of injustice that actively harms and may even result in the death of many community members. Our county government and sheriff's office should respect and uphold every person's humanity and human rights regardless of their immigration status. We do not want any of our county institutions to take part of a violent, ever-expanding, and unaccountable system. By separating the law enforcement agencies from federal immigration enforcement, the sheriff's office can build trust with all residents in Santa Barbara County. and stop terrorizing our communities.

We will now go to Fernando Hernandez to be followed by Amanda Green. Fernando? Fernando, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute and provide your comments.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Fernando Hernandez. I am a DOJ accredited legal representative with MICOP, Mixteco Indigena Community Recognition Project. It's really, part of my work is to meet with family, community members every week. We are, I'm located here in Matera County. We also have another office in Santa Barbara County. Most of the week, we usually meet with the community members and we have concerns about the community members not being able to reach out to the police because of the same thing of them, like police sharing information with ICE. And this is a huge concern for us and more because their family, the community members are like more vulnerable because they don't speak English, which eliminates the, which brings the language barrier. It's also really surprising to me that we spent a lot of time kind of like reminding the sheriff that, it's like that he doesn't have the numbers of people that have been detained by ICE, saying that it's better not to give an accurate number, but I think we should at least know a specific amount of numbers instead of having zero. SB 54 is supposed to share about transparency, but in this case, the way that we are seeing it is that the sheriff is not sharing any numbers. So this is really like a big concern for me. And also for other committee members. So I call on the Santa Barbara Service Office to protect our committee, well-being and safety, respect the rule of law, and do justice by ending all non-legal required ICE transfer. And to also please at least try to have a, for next time, try to have a better number or at least a number close to it. It doesn't need to be inaccurate, but it would be better than having nothing. Thank you.

We will now go to Amanda Green to be followed by Brooke Lutz. Amanda? Amanda, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. Amanda Green on Zoom. All righty, we are moving on to Brooke Lutz to be followed by Chelsea Lancaster. Brooke?

My name is Brooke Lotz, and I'm a resident of Santa Barbara and an immigration attorney, and today I'm speaking as a member of the public. Today, the sheriff's office stood before our community and repeatedly said that they do not cooperate with ICE, then confirmed again and again that they do cooperate with ICE, but only as permitted under SB 54. As noted by a few of these previous commentators and supervisor caps, the sheriff's office has the discretion to cooperate under SB 54 on convictions that are exceptions, but it is not required. The sheriff has the discretion to choose whether or not to cooperate on any and all of those exceptions. His continued voluntary decision to cooperate with ICE blurs the lines between federal immigration enforcement, and local law enforcement. For community members who are afraid and living their lives in the shadows and terrified of being arrested, detained, and separated from their families, this distinction must be crystal clear, particularly when we think about those same communities working with law enforcement as witnesses, if they are victims, and if they think that their families are also at risk for being detained for lawful cooperation with law enforcement. We ask that you end voluntary cooperation with ICE under SB 54 and let federal immigration do its own job on its own time and its own money. Thank you.

We will now go to Chelsea Lancaster to be followed by Anna Arce. Chelsea? And Chelsea, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments. Chelsea Lancaster on Zoom, if you can please unmute to provide your comments. We will now go to Anna Arce to be followed by Jacqueline Carlson. Anna? Hello? Hi. Hi, Anna. Please proceed.

Yes. I urge the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office to end all voluntary collaborations with ICE. No one should be transferred into a detention system that has been repeatedly practiced, deadly overcrowded, crowding, inadequate medical care, abuse, neglect, and violations of basic human rights. When local law enforcement voluntarily facilitates ICE transfers, it contributes to those violent harms. This cooperation is not required by law. California gives local sheriffs discretion and many counties have already chosen to limit or end ICE collaboration. Santa Barbara County declared racism as a public health crisis and committed itself to equity and inclusion. Those commitments require action. We cannot claim to value justice while voluntarily participating in a system that disproportionately impacts immigrant, black, brown, and marginalized communities. I urge the Sheriff's Office to end all non-legally required ICE transfers, release notifications and assistance with ICE arrest. Thank you.

We will now go to Jacqueline Carlson to be followed by Anna Garcia. Jacqueline? Jacqueline, it appears you are unmuted, but we cannot hear you. Jacqueline Carlson?

Yes, can you hear me now?

Yes, we can. Please proceed.

My name is Jacqueline Carlson. I'm here representing the Restorative Justice Education Center at La Casa de la Raza. We serve over 1,371 families impacted by customs enforcement. 32 of those families in hiding right now. 72 of those families receiving aid for mental wellness. It is time for us to act as a County on policy. You may not be able to do much with the sheriff's department, but you as owners of the property.

Jacqueline, unfortunately you are breaking in and out.

Perhaps you can move.

Hi, Jacqueline, please proceed. You're just breaking up a little bit.

Okay. So to cut it short, what I'm saying is that you as board of supervisors have the responsibility for that property. And regardless of what happens at the inside of the county jail, you should provide safety. There's ways you can do that. And you've done that at the Department of Social Services, Veterans Services and other agencies. Why? Because at the end, It takes civil action to move policy when our boards of supervisors don't. And your responsibility over providing safety in parking lots and other settings is still your responsibility, regardless of what the Sheriff's Department does, where you can provide safety officers and security officers like you do in all of your other buildings. That would give you the stats that you're talking about so that then we could respond as a community. We ask you that you start to explore that because in policymaking, you do have the responsibility of the safety of people on your properties, regardless of whether they're in a parking lot, in a structure, or in a lobby. Thank you.

We will now go to Anna Garcia to be followed by D.O. Day. Anna?

Hello. So Sheriff Bill Brown is lying. He's off script now and trying to swirl our thoughts so we don't notice. To the sheriff, whether approved under these laws or not, we demand that you stop sharing data voluntarily with ICE or any databases that they can access. Emphasis on voluntary. Now, let me tell you that there is a deputy present every time that I have witnessed ICE at a jail release. For example, just last week, I saw an ICE agent force their way into what you kept calling the secure area, and forcefully drag a person being released from your custody out of that secure area. Was that reported by the two deputies who were present? Here's another one. After seeing ICE do it over 10 times, I decided to take a peek in the glass facing the secure area a few days ago. And then immediately a voice came over the intercom asking what I was doing. Seems like it's selective awareness that affects whether you or your staff notice what might be happening in the lobby. And lastly, Sheriff, I want you to remember that there is video of everything you and your deputies are facilitating. Santa Barbara County voters, pay attention. We need to deal with this shitty situation, so let's flush Brown down.

We will now go to do data to be followed by Sarah Paredes D. Hi there.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Thank you. Good afternoon, board members. My name is Dee. I'm an organizer with a local nonprofit, Buen Vecino. Like many here, I'm bravely concerned with the impacts of ICE collusion on our community, the fear that every encounter with authorities could lead to the disappearance of a loved one, and the grave injustice done when those who have paid their debt to society are transferred to abuse-ridden centers. I'm also concerned that the sheriff's office in ICE collusion operates without financial transparency. I asked that the board require accountability for the cost of collusion, especially given the Sheriff's Office's recent misreporting of ICE transfers to the Attorney General and the alleged overtime fraud reported by the Santa Barbara Independent. Our tax dollars, into which undocumented immigrants contribute an estimated $892 million, should be spent for the benefit of all, on housing, health care, jobs, and education. Instead, our resources are being needlessly expended tearing families apart, creating widespread distress in our institution's unjust system, and sending community members into concentration camps. Taxpayers, which again include undocumented residents, have the right to know where our hard-earned dollars are being spent, and the right to request that the Sheriff's Office stops laundering our resources on inhumane and destructive activities. Please end all voluntary cooperation with ICE. stop responding to detainer requests, stop sharing data, and stop transferring community members. Board members, please require greater accountability from Sheriff Brown and implement a system so that the public can more closely monitor collusion. Thank you.

We will now go to Sara Paredes to be followed by Lisa DeNacos. Sara? Oh, it appears we lost Sarah. We will now go to Liza Donacos to be followed by Liam Broncar. Liza?

Good afternoon, supervisors. I am the manager of MICOP's Immigration Legal Assistance Program. Our program assists many persons in your county as well as San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties with their immigration matters. And I'm asking for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff to end all voluntary cooperation with ICE. Because among the disastrous history of ICE is the fact that it poorly trains its agents. nor does ICE work within the confines of law, a practice which Sheriff Brown today told us is vital. SBCSO must end enabling an agency that calls itself an agency that makes frequent mistakes. It arrests people who are citizens. It physically harms people or property without impunity. The Trump administration has funded the expansion of ICE detention facilities. So when SBCSO cooperates to share inmate release information with ICE and the person's taken to an ICE detention facility, SBCSO is knowingly placing a person into the custody of a facility where guards are poorly trained. California ICE detention facilities have countless abuse reports, sexual and physical, and since January 6th deaths. Sheriff Brown, you can do better. I ask for you to end all voluntary cooperation with ICE. Thank you.

We will now go to Liam Broncar to be followed by Blake Onisev. Liam?

Hello, I am a volunteer with 805 Undocufund. I regularly am at the jail property in North Santa Barbara County. And the claim that the sheriff is keeping the community safe, he can't even keep the public space there safe because volunteers have been threatened with mace. catholic workers were forced out of the alcove which is right by the release door and you know this claim that this is a public space and you don't care what's going on it's clear that you don't care you don't care what's happening to our community you don't care what's happening to the people who are showing up trying to help the victims of these kidnappings right out of the release door where people are supposed to have their freedom walk and they're being hauled off to concentration camps where the conditions are awful. And this is the reality we're facing. We should start acting like that is the reality we're facing. That's all I have to say.

We will now go to Blake on ISEVT, and we will return to Sara Paredes. Blake?

Good afternoon, board. During his comments today, the sheriff stated that he performs certain practices in order to protect individuals who work and are held in county jails. This is an important point because the sheriff clearly understands that safety lies in his hands, whether for his general respect of human life or because of liability to the county and its taxpayers. However, it also seems that concern for human life is dependent on the individual and their documentation status. First, by voluntarily working with ICE without a judicial warrant, the sheriff is actively choosing to see immigrants as inherently less than individuals born in the U.S. The sheriff therefore believes it is okay to have double standards for immigrants. He believes it is okay for immigrants to be deported to a country they fled from in the first place, whether because of violence, poverty, or additional harrowing circumstances that very well may have contributed to them ending up in the jail system in the first place. There is a vast body of research proving this. An individual working for a public institution should be against double standards that treat individuals differently based on where they were born, especially after they've already served their sentences. The bottom line is this. ICE custody is not a safe place, and the sheriff should not want to harm any individuals. 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE detention in decades. Accepting death as a possible punishment for immigrants is the highest form of complicity and disregard for their lives and human rights. Bored. today your community members are here before you demanding and begging you to end all voluntary transfers it is within your power to do so many counties already have do not let us down we will we will now go to sarah paredes to be followed by christina p sarah

Hello, my name is Sarah Juarez with Buen Vecino. Thank you to the clerk for letting me back in. I'm here tonight to speak about transparency, accountability, and compliance with California law. The Truth Act was created so that communities can know when and how local law enforcement cooperates with federal immigration authorities. Last year, Buen Vecino discovered a troubling discrepancy. For years, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office reported at Truth Act forums that ICE was conducting what it called re-arrests or pickups from the county jail. Yet during those same years, the sheriff's office reported zero transfers to the California Department of Justice. In its August 4th, 2025 letter, the attorney general wrote that the sheriff's practice of notifying ICE releasing individuals into a secured area where ICE was waiting constituted transfers under SB 34. The Attorney General stated, and I quote, these rearrests are transfers that must be annually reported to the DOJ. The Attorney General also found, quote, at no time since the enactment of SB 34 has the Sheriff's Office reported to the DOJ any transfers to immigration authorities. End quote. As a result, the attorney general requested that the sheriff's office review its previously filed annual reports and submit corrected reports reflecting transfers made to the federal immigration officials and requested that this be done within 30 days. Now I am here to ask, has the sheriff's office complied with the attorney general's request? Have the corrected reports been submitted? And will you provide the community with an update on what actions were taken in response to the attorney general's findings? The purpose of the truth back is transparency and the community deserves to know whether the sheriff has complied. We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time.

We will now go to Christina P. Then we will go to Santa Barbara to begin with Kristen Santiago. Christina P. Christina, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please. There you go.

We can hear you. Please proceed. Thank you. Good afternoon Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors. My name is Christina Pizarro and I was, I just wanted to make a couple comments. I was troubled to hear Sheriff Brown dismiss the news press reporting as distorted when the reporter's work was based on public records obtained from government agencies. If there are factual errors in the reporting, then identify them specifically. Tell the public exactly what was wrong, but simply labeling investigation distorted without addressing the underlying records raises more questions than it answers. The issue here is not whether the annual Truth Act report from 2025 showed 12 formal transfers to ICE. The issue is that journalists obtained records showing additional ICE arrests connected to the county jail releases, including activity in 2026. Those records were not invented by a reporter. They came from public agencies and were obtained through the public records process. When a reporter files a records request, receives document, analyzes data, and reports the findings, that is journalism doing exactly what it's supposed to do. The appropriate response from a public official is not to attack the messenger. The appropriate response is to explain the records, provide additional context, or release more information. Many community members are asking a simple question. If records exist showing ISRS associated with the county jail releases in 2026, why isn't the sheriff's office proactively providing current data instead of requiring journalists and advocates to piece it together through records requests? Transparency should not depend on who has the resources to file requests or analyze documents. Transparency should be the default. Calling the reporting distorted risks undermining public trust in journalism without addressing the substance of what was reported. The public deserves more than a dismissal. We deserve answers. How many ICE-related notifications, transfers, and post-release arrests have occurred in 2026? What information does the Sheriff's Office possess? What records have been released and what records have not? Thank you, Christina. That is your time.

Thank you. We will now go to Santa Barbara to begin with Kristen Santiago to be followed by Annie Krinsky. Kristen?

Hi, I'm Kristen Santiago, Santa Barbara resident. Whether the number is 99 or 12, I want the Sheriff's Department to not collaborate with a terrorist organization, which is ICE currently. The Sheriff's Department wasn't involved, as far as I know, in the Glasshouse Farms. Maybe they were, I'm not sure. But I want to take a story from there to show what I am trying to articulate here. There was a young woman working there who was a Santa Barbara resident. She had her two-year-old toddler in a daycare situation with a close friend. She got caught up in the raids. I imagine she was undocumented. She was sent to LA, and then she was sent to Texas Detention Center, where she stayed until October. She was there, chained up, couldn't take a shower the whole time, and I am sure this woman has never committed a criminal act. She was fortunate that the woman who was taking care of her child managed to get to the border once this woman was released and give her her child. I use this story to tell you we are living in extraordinary times and we need to protect our neighbors, we need to cut down on any Actions with ice and I would hope that sheriff Brown can hear me Because we need to be a better County.

We need to have a better Sheriff's Department Thank you We will now go to Annie Krinsky to be followed by Teresa Cardenas Annie

Yes, hello, my name's Annie Krinsky. I'm a resident of Santa Barbara. I'm also a member of Indivisible Santa Barbara. You cannot deny that the Trump administration has dramatically expanded the budget, staffing, and enforcement authority of ICE. You can't deny the savage arrest of immigrants that are happening everywhere. You can't deny that the government has erected these horrendous concentration camps where people are forced to exist in cruel and inhumane conditions. For our local government to assist ICE in any way in these barbaric activities is totally unacceptable. Our residents deserve to know that their city will protect them to the greatest extent possible. The sheriff should not be voluntarily collaborating with ICE in any way, and the sheriff should not participate in a heinous system that destroys lives. Thank you.

We will now go to Teresa Cardenas to be followed by Robert Crisco. Teresa?

Yes, hello. My name is Teresa Cardenas. I'm here to ask and to plead Sheriff Brown to please do not cooperate with the cruelty that ICE and the Trump administration is inflicting in human beings. Doesn't matter where they are from. The sheriff's voluntary collaboration with ICE has to stop. No one should be held on concentration camp conditions with inadequate medical care and spoiled food where they are subject to physical and sexual abuse. It is inhumane to be separating lives, to be separating families. We are talking about human beings that deserve humane conditions. Please, Sheriff Brown, stop this cooperation. Thank you.

We will now go to Robert Crisco to be followed by Larry Barrett. Robert?

Hello, everyone. I am a citizen of Santa Barbara, resident of Santa Barbara. In this historical time, We see the rule of law, the national rule of law, eroding much like it has in other times in the past hundreds of years, even thousands of years. The political machinery directing ICE actions continue to ignore the norms of law that sustain our democracy. Denial of due process, for one. Enabling ICE by doing them favors is like collaborating with those who pardoned or would fund the January 6th insurrection Confederates who attacked, injured, and caused deaths of law enforcement officers. Sheriff Brown, you have the ability to change your mind, change your choices, make decisions. You can do that. Democracies can and have died. and authoritarians have been defeated in elections so that democracies can live.

We will now go to Larry Barrent to be followed by Marilyn Brewer. Larry?

Good afternoon, supervisors. I'm Larry Barrent with Indivisible Santa Barbara, and I sometimes wonder whether we have two Sheriff Browns who appear before us. Because there's the Sheriff Brown who came today and said he does not cooperate with ICE and got angry when some people sniggered at that thought. But we have a second person who showed up looking a lot like Sheriff Brown who said he wants to make it as easy as possible for ICE to detain people formerly in his custody. I mean, he's grateful for ICE's removal of persons from our community. That's the definition of cooperation. That's what cooperation looks like. I remember months ago, a Sheriff Brown, who was a friend of programs of jail diversion and treatment, who expressed compassion for folks in his custody who had a bad break, who were fighting mental illness or drug abuse, But the sheriff before us today has never met a prisoner he would not turn over to ICE for further punishment, that punishment which looks like 60 people in ICE's custody who have died since Trump was elected, countless more sexually abused, tortured, forced to sign voluntary deportation papers. Our sheriff has discretion under law to cooperate or not cooperate with ICE under certain circumstances, but the sheriff has told you he does not exercise discretion. His cooperation with ICE is automatic, unthinking, cruel, and heartless whenever the law allows it. No official of this county should help ice destroy our community. We ask the supervisors use all tools at your disposal to end our sheriff's voluntary cooperation with ice. Thank you.

We will now go to Marilyn Brewer to be followed by Alex Castro. Marilyn.

Hello. My name is Marilyn Brewer. I'm also a member of Indivisible Santa Barbara, but I'm speaking today as a resident of downtown Santa Barbara, so I know firsthand how the presence of ICE has affected my neighbors and our community. And I was appalled when I learned that our sheriff voluntarily cooperates with federal immigration authorities such that he decides which individuals who otherwise are legally entitled to be released into the community and returned to their families are instead subject to double jeopardy and the risk of detention under horrible conditions. Conditions worse than how we treat incarcerated serial killers in our country. I am calling on our Board of Supervisors to join other counties in Santa Barbara to enact policies to prohibit the Sheriff's Department from any discretionary cooperation with ICE or other federal immigration authorities. Such a policy would go a long way to trying to restore and improve the trust in our local law enforcement. Thank you.

We will now go to Alex Castro, then we will return here in Santa Maria to begin with Stephen Brown. Alex?

Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Alex Castro, and I'm here with Unidos 805. Ending the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office voluntary collaboration with ICE is a positive and necessary step in supporting equal due process and greater public safety for all. By separating local law enforcement agencies from federal immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office can build trust with all residents in Santa Barbara County. 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE detention in decades, with 32 immigrants killed in ICE custody due to racial prosecution, neglect, and cruelty. The Sheriff's Office is knowingly transferring individuals to detention centers that are rife with abuse, where detainees experience profound trauma, and where death is a high possibility. This is the highest form of complicity and disregard for the lives and human rights of our community members. Local taxpayers are footing the cost of Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office collusion with ICE. DHS and ICE have billions in funding from the federal government and they don't need any more from us. A significant portion of our county budget is being wasted by Sheriff Brown to tear apart families. Meanwhile, Santa Barbara residents are going without housing, healthcare, and food. Sheriff Brown has never declined an ICE transfer request that he considers to be SB 54 eligible. Even though California law gives him complete discretion to disregard those requests, as many other sheriffs do, this is a clear case of aiding and abetting a system and institution that actively harms and may even result in the death of community members. Unidos 805 calls on Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office to stop handing over our neighbors to ICE and end all voluntary collaboration with immigration enforcement. Stop transfers and notifications to ICE without a judicial warrant. Stop sharing information, data, and resources with DHS and ICE without a judicial warrant. And stop all forms enabling and assisting ICE in arresting and brutalizing people at county jails and in the community. Please join the 10 plus counties that have already ended ICE collusion. Thank you.

We will now return here in Santa Maria to begin with Stephen Brown to be followed by Mary Ellen Reyes. Stephen?

Do I have three minutes or two? Two, okay. Good afternoon, Chair Nelson, board members, ladies and gentlemen here on Zoom. And thank you guys for your service, for being here and listening to us. A few years ago, I had my DNA analyzed by Ancestry.com to reveal my lineage, the folks who came before. What I found, no surprise, is that almost all of us, like almost all of us, I stand in the shadow of immigrants. A crowd of men, women, and children scattered across time, this world, circumstance, and my family tree. In my case, on every branch. For me, that reality informs who I am. what I value, who I stand with. So in this moment, in this historical moment, I stand with all immigrants, particularly those being abducted, imprisoned, and deported by ICE, without due process, treated cruelly, stripped of their civil rights, their human rights, and sometimes their life. So in this moment, I believe we're in a fight, a fight not about policy, but about power. and who wields it? Will it be we, the people, or armed, unaccountable, masked agents of ICE? I know who I choose. Do you? Do all of us? Thank you.

We will now go to Mary Ellen Reyes to be followed by Lisa Casillas-Simpson. Mary Ellen?

Thank you, Supervisors. Thank you for listening, and thank you for staying. I appreciate it and listening. I really do. My name is Mary Ellen Riese. I'm not representing my employer nor any other organization. I'm on my own free time, and I'm not working. On a day off from work, I stopped by the jail here in Santa Maria to see for myself what goes on. I thought you had directed ICE to stop using public county property for enforcement, but there they were again, like they do almost every day, even on weekends. I have proof of this. on my iPhone I took pictures of 4 ice agents on the sidewalks and their 2 vehicles in the parking lot and video of the friendly deputy who coordinated with them you can see the time stamps less than 3 minutes after the deputy goes over to ice. 2 young men who are supposed to be free and handed they're handed over by the jail dragged into cars and ice pulls out with them 3 minutes very efficient. If that's not a transfer, I don't know what it is, and there are hundreds of these taking place. We have all witnessed it. I'd be happy to provide the proof to my representative supervisor and testify under oath, including how they nearly assaulted me in the process. I took very detailed notes of all this. I came here to say I really wish that you would protect us. And when I say us, I mean all of us, every human being that lives here. I'm a person with great privilege and even I do not feel safe. They nearly assaulted me last month. Ice continues to take away our neighbors without judicial warrants. They're escalating the violence against citizens who peacefully observe. And if you cannot or will not protect us, will you please at least stop cooperating with them? Please stop cooperating.

We will now go to Lisa Casillas-Simpson to be followed by Rochelle Carr. Lisa?

Yes, hello. My name is Lisa Casillas-Simpson. I'm a proud military family here from Vandenberg, so thank you. Here today, I'm going to implore you, each and every one of you, to please somehow vote or or direct or somehow to not become complicit in funneling our county taxes to aid and abet the domestic terrorism that I believe is happening in our community. Do not enable fascism. Do not undermine the rule of law. Arrests without judicial warrants are kidnappings. Thank you.

We will now go to Rochelle Carr to be followed by Donna Poling. Rochelle?

Hello, my name is Rochelle. I'm a nurse and a volunteer with 805 and DocuFund. I'm here to advocate for Sheriff Brown to stop the ICE kidnappings on jail property. They're targeting our immigrant community, often for their first DUI. Here's an example of someone who fits that criteria. He is a strawberry farm worker who was dropped off at the US-Mexico border alone at age 14. He was able to get a job, worked, and bought his parents a home. Since he left the jail, he proactively completed the steps to address his DUI, installed the breathalyzer in his car, took classes, and paid the fine by his court date. He vows not to drink and drive again. Everyone should have the same chance to redeem themselves through our justice system, not to be pummeled, tased, and kidnapped without warning. At the Santa Barbara County North Branch Jail, I have seen dozens of kidnappings. On April 2nd, I saw a young man around 18 years old cuffed at the release door and taken to ICE headquarters. And then 30 minutes later, he was unconscious and being loaded into an ambulance. In my volunteer work, I have also delivered Christmas presents to their children, the children of the fathers who have been kidnapped. And so I know there is a boy on every street corner on the north side of town in Santa Maria living without their father because of our sheriff's collaboration with ICE. How does this prevent crime? taking the resources from children. Allowing this to continue is cooperation and collaboration with ICE, and it is harming our community and its future.

We will now go to Donna Pulling to be followed by Maria Seguera.

Donna. Thank you, Supervisors. I'm here representing the Santa Barbara Green Party and the California Green Party, who not only does not want the continued collaboration of our resources in the county to go to Sheriff Brown's policies, but we want to abolish ICE altogether. That is our stand. I am so proud to be here today with all of these people. I have not yet heard one person speak in support of Sheriff Brown's policy. You have your mandate, supervisors. Please do the right thing. Thank you.

We will now go to Maria Salguera to be followed by Sophia Estrada Navarro. Maria?

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Maria Salguero. I'm senior attorney at the Immigrant Legal Defense Center and I also lead their policy work. Thank you to the supervisors that today asked critical questions. I took some notes, Sheriff Brown, from your presentation and I just have some thoughts. You cannot claim that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department and ICE are two different agencies with two different objectives and also say that you prefer that arrests be conducted in the jail and not out in the community for public safety reasons. You cannot differentiate yourself from ICE while also being a vehicle to make their immigration law enforcement easier. You also cannot emphasize that it is costly and burdensome to track ICE arrests happening in your jail lobby while choosing to spend taxpayer money in voluntarily engaging in SB 54 transfers that also are burdensome and cost taxpayer money. and you also can't quantify how much that money is costing. And lastly, you cannot emphasize that your department's priority is public safety when the public is here today telling you we don't feel safe, that ICE enforcement in our community makes us statistically unsafe, and that as an immigration attorney, I can tell you this agency is out of control and acting violently in our community. Thank you all.

We will now go to Sofia Estrada Navarro to be followed by Fernando Martinez. Sofia?

Hello, everybody. Is he speaking as well? He's not. He's just next to me. Thank you.

If you want to talk, then you need a mic, okay?

Okay, hello to all. My name is Sophia Navarro. I reside in Santa Maria. I would like to use this time to bring attention to our county sheriff's reckless behavior, which starts from the sheriff's misuse of public funds since 2018. He obviously is not equipped to be able to handle this task. I urge the board to hold him accountable in upholding our laws and in managing our budget responsibly. Oh, I'm sorry, I was out of breath. I ran over here. How often has the sheriff's lack of cooperation with immigration enforcement affected his budget? Please assign an oversight committee to help him manage his staff scheduling. so that their overtime and mismanagement of funds will not cut into our much needed local housing trust fund, improving housing affordability, addressing houselessness, keeping public areas like pool and skate parks open. I would like to see our county join the other counties that have separated local policing from federal immigration enforcement. We demand better from our local sheriff. We do not want any further schemes between you and ICE. out between you and the federal officials who come and violate our civil liberties so crassly. Now, to address the collaboration I have witnessed at our county jail. Your procedure and charts, which are pleasing to the eye, do not correctly reflect what myself and other observers have witnessed with our eyes on county property. I have seen these agents be crass and even laid hands on an observer who was there to bear witness. Please do all you can to minimize ICE presence in our county. Thank you for your time and consideration to our request. Thank you.

We will now go to Fernanda Martinez to be followed by Juan Carlos Diaz who will be utilizing Spanish translation. Fernando.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Nelson and board members. My name is Fernando Martinez. I serve as a community organizer with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project here in Santa Maria. I'm here to speak in support of ending the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office voluntary collaboration with ICE. Is it necessary and positive step towards ensuring equal due process and improving public safety for all residents? When local law enforcement separate itself from federal immigration enforcement, it strengthen the trust between communities and their institutions that is meant to protect them. We must also be honest about what is happening to people who are transferred into ICE custody. No one should be subjected to detention conditions that include overcrowding, unsanitary environment, lack of adequate medical care. Many of these cases have been documented in whereas many physical and sexual abuse have happened. It is unacceptable for any local agency to be connected to a system where people face these harsh conditions. Collaboration with federal immigration enforcement does not only impact undocumented community members, it also affects the US citizens, asylum seekers, refugees, survivors of trafficking, green card holders, and DACA recipients who are also being impacted currently. We cannot ignore the reality that ICE detention has resulted in significant harm, including preventable deaths and documented failures in care and oversight. By continuing to facilitate transfers, notifications, and cooperation, the Sheriff's Office becomes part of the system that exposes community members to serious risk and trauma. I respectfully urge the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office to prioritize safety and dignity of our community by ending all non-legally required ICE transfers, stopping release of data notifications to ICE, ceasing all cooperations that enables ICE arrests in our county, just like any other counties have done to protect our community. Thank you.

We will now go to Juan Carlos Diaz. to be followed by Angelus.

Good afternoon, Santa Barbara County Supervisors. My name is Juan Carlos Diaz. I'm a community advocate with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, and a member of the 805 Immigrant Coalition, and I am a resident of Ventura County. I stand before you today as part of the migrant indigenous community to speak for those who have no voice, for those who have been treated unjustly only because of their skin color or the language they speak. I have family members that live here in Santa Barbara County, as well as other families who are hardworking people in this area, and I worry about their safety when they leave home to go to work. Detentions in public spaces and workplaces, as well as transfers in jails, it is nothing more than racial discrimination against our hardworking people. I want to echo those voices of those who have tragically died at the hands of ICE. Let us not be complicit with these atrocities. All the individuals whom ICE has taken away brutally and with hatred are sadly mothers and fathers who have been separated from their children. I demand that Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office protect the well-being and safety of our entire community And I also demand that it respects the rules of laws and due process by ending our transfers to ICE and the sharing of related releases data that are not legally maintained and ceasing to facilitate as arrests in Santa Barbara County. No child deserves to have their life damaged by family separation. Put an end to voluntary collaboration with federal immigration authorities now. Please join the more than 10 counties that have been already entered the collaboration with ICE. Thank you.

We will now go to Angelus, who has requested Spanish translation to be followed by Anna Hayen. Angelus?

Good afternoon. Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara. My name is Angeles.

I am a military participant on the community of the Mixteco indigenous locally. To put an end for the voluntary collaboration of the sheriff from the county of Santa Barbara, That collaboration, against that collaboration with ICE will be a positive step. And I would like to share with you why.

My family, my brother-in-law was taken away.

And now we have a broken family.

My niece with her husband were also cut off.

She had the dream of becoming a teacher, serving the community. But now she has to leave her studies to be able to support my sister.

Now I have to take care of my little nephew, which is underage. Now my sister had to take the decision of having to go out to work.

And now I have a niece taking care of my nephew.

We no longer have the support of my brother-in-law so that my niece could continue with her dreams. Así es que ahora tenemos una familia partida.

We have a broken family.

Y mi sobrina, pues su vida y su sueño de servir a esta nación, roto.

And my niece's dreams of helping and fulfilling this nation's needs now is broken.

We demand that Sheriff Brown stop transferring the immigrants to ICE. From the jails to immigration.

Before he should check the cases, truly check the cases.

Not only you're damaging the families, but he's damaging his own nation. Because he's breaking the careers.

Which My niece's dream was to serve her now nation.

Muchas gracias.

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Ana Jaen. Apologies for mispronouncing that. To be followed by Teresa Suarez. Ana.

Thank you. Not sure if it was captured. I wanted to make sure that there's a child with Down syndrome in that family that was just shared. I didn't hear it correctly, so I wanted to make sure that that was captured. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Anna Nguyen. I am a resident in the city of Santa Maria and I am MICOP's program director for Santa Barbara County. Today, we come to ask for your support in ending the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office voluntary collaboration with ICE. This collaboration continues to impact the immigrant community. Our community is scared. We as a community are feeling intimidated. Is this how the Sheriff's Office wants to work with the community? I heard Sheriff Brown said that they want to build trust. It's not working. I keep hearing that the Sheriff's Office needs to uphold the law. I would like to remind you that slavery was also this country's law. We all know that that was an inhumane law. Your cooperation of continual incarceration of black and brown bodies is a violent form of enforcement. Our county government and sheriff's office should uphold every person's humanity and human rights, regardless of their immigration status or color of their skin. Thank you.

We will now go to Teresa Suarez to be followed by Beatrice Garcia. Teresa.

Good afternoon, Supervisors. My name is Teresa Suarez, a Santa Maria resident in District 4 and a youth program manager at MICA. Ending the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office voluntary collaboration with dice is a positive and necessary step in supporting equal due process and greater public safety for all. I'm here to respectfully ask that we do not normalize that injustices taking place under this administration. As our elected representative, you have a responsibility to protect all members of this county. We urge you to look beyond the narrative that immigration enforcement is only targeting criminals and consider the real impact that these policies have on families in our community. Those of us who work directly closely with immigrant families witness the trauma caused by detention, deportation and family separations every day. Not long ago, our farm workers communities advocated for higher wages because their families were struggling to afford basic necessities. Poverty already places tremendous distress on children, families, and now they have to face additional barriers, uncertainty, and trauma caused by the constant threat of detention and deportations. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office is knowingly transferring individuals to detention centers where abuse, neglect, trauma, It's happening. And for a fact, 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE detention in decades, where 32 immigrants killed in ICE custody due to the racial persecution, neglect and cruelty. And I think I don't need to stress the psychological harm that is happening on children, our families, things, normal things that we go on a day that we can do with our families. Those are things that we cannot do. We urge you to end ICE collaborations just like the San Mateo and other California jurisdictions have. Stand with the communities you serve by prioritizing the safety, dignity, and well-being of all families in Santa Barbara County. Thank you.

We will now go to Beatrix Garcia who has requested Spanish translation to be followed by Alondra Mendoza. Beatrix?

Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Beatriz Garcia.

I'm a resident of Santa Barbara County.

I am a youth leader with the organization MECOP.

And I recently graduated from Pioneer Valley High School.

As a young person, I have relatives and friends who live in fear of deportation.

I also have family members who have already been deported by ICE.

And this has greatly affected my family.

Not knowing how to handle this situation causes stress and concerns about housing.