Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

you

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors calls this meeting to order on September 2nd, 2026 at 9.30 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors Meeting Room 120 located at 2150 North Congress Drive, Nogales, Arizona 85621. Former student, Dr. Diaz, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you, sir. We'll go to item B, adoption of agenda. Mr. Manager.

Mr. Chair, there's one change to the agenda. We're going to move item six to action items from the consent.

Under consent, okay.

Thank you.

Do I have a motion? I move. Mr. Chair. Second. Okay. There's been a motion and a second. With the aforementioned change, number six, the consent agenda, move to H, action items. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Call to the public. Just a reminder for call to the public, we do ask that each length be limited to three minutes, and if you could please state your name and your address prior to beginning, that would be greatly appreciated. Ben Lomeli.

Good morning everybody.

I'm 546 Camino Romanote in Rio Rico, Arizona. I want to talk about public health and safety because everyone has a constitutional and human right and even the Pledge of Allegiance says we all have our equal justice for all. We all have a human constitutional right to Clean air, clean water, clean food, and the pursuit of happiness, which means peace and quiet in our neighborhoods, too. We need to enforce our codes in our neighborhoods. There's too many things popping up there that need to be addressed and have been chronicled for some time now. Science is important. We're going to hear some science today. I've always advocated for good science because science should be a quest for the truth. The whole truth. And nobody has a right to risk our public health and safety through pollution or contamination or other ways of risking our safety. We all deserve to be safe. to have good clean food, good clean water, good clean air. Those are essential, and they all come from our environment. So we cannot separate ourselves from our Earth, from our environment, and from each other, because we depend on each other for everything. No man is an island. We all need to work closely together. We have a comprehensive plan coming up. And so the science there is going to be very important. And everything is tied together. the water, the watersheds, the mountains, and I saw that as we started the meeting today, from the mountains to the lakes and the rivers. It's very important. Our watershed is also our airshed, so we need to take care of our air, our water resources, and our soils, the land itself. This land is your land, this land is our land, and we need to all have a responsibility, meet up to that responsibility to do our part. Yes, every drop of water counts, but we have seen the presentations by other scientists, how our groundwater tables are plummeting, and that does not spell for a good future. We're entering into the comprehensive plan, and so we need to be very conscientious of what our scientists, local, and other scientific resources are telling us. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you for caring. I know you've got a lot on your shoulders, and every one of us here needs to do our part. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you, Ben. Chris Workoven. Thank you, ma'am.

Good morning, supervisors and everyone here. My name is Chris Werkhoven, and I used to live in Senoida. Not anymore, because truck traffic and compromised ADEQ permits have started to lower quality of life for me and others. Today, already after one year of monitoring... Sir, where do you live?

Your address? At the moment?

Yeah. Marana, 7905 North Coltrane Lane. Thank you. Today, already after one year of monitoring, ASU will present data confirming the Calabasas AirSmart program has produced a true baseline of PM2.5, the smallest regulated particle. This validates the calculated annual background concentration of PM2.5, which determines how much PM2.5 the Hermosa mine can release to be compliant with national standards. PM2.5 requires careful monitoring because of its well-studied correlation with Parkinson down to very low concentrations. some conclusions and recommendations on this subject. Background 2.5 concentrations are nearly twice as high as used by SAO 32 in its air permit application over time and across downwind area of the Hermosa mine. That was found by the AirSmart people. There is a 30% exceedance of national standard when adding the mine emissions listed in the granted air permit. AirSmart monitors are as close as 1.5 miles from the Hermosa mine, but surprisingly, the only ADQ air monitor used is 41 miles away and not in a mountain area with mineralized soils and with very different climate conditions. Before submitting its first air permit application, South 32 had four years to assess air quality on-site. ADEQ did not request any on-site assessment by which public health was unnecessarily compromised. The EPA rule to use best available data with an adequate margin of safety was clearly abandoned. This new evidence, which we will talk about later, must lead to a 30% reduction in mine output to obtain true compliance with national standards. Renowned Barrow Neurological Institute of Phoenix found in 2003 The relative risk on Parkinson's is not zero below the current national PM2.5 standard. Santa Cruz County is therefore asked to determine premature death and society health costs when PM2.5 increases from this background to the national standard. Use the available EPA software. Community science groups will keep publishing findings when methodologies of regulators and judgment of elected officials is found to be compromised. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Chris.

Jay? Thompson?

Good morning, supervisors, county management, and members of the public. My name's Jay Thompson from Rio Rico. Today I'm speaking with my engineering and analyst hats on, and on behalf of our experts. Since many of you come from education, I want to frame this as a simple look for. In other words, what is most important to listen for in Dr. Lim's AirSmart presentation? First, the data you will see is independent, transparent, and scientifically calibrated. The kind of data set anyone anywhere in the world can download, analyze, and verify. That's happening. And the purpose of the community-based monitoring. It removes questions of trust, access, and interpretation. The data stands on its own. Next, AirSmart now has produced over six million one-minute observations, and the report will state that all monitors are calibrated against EPA-referenced monitors. The reports will also state the quality of data is defensible and reproducible. It's not modeling, not a consultant's interpretation. It's direct measurements. Second, listen for the pattern of findings. Number one, air quality is clean on average. However, it's punctuated by frequent acute dust events. and then those events are not evenly distributed across the county. We all see that. The documents show that 33,000 plus sensor minutes above the EPA PM10 standard and 10 to 14 times the spread between the most and least exposed sites. That is exposure inequity, visible only because the network has more than 20 sensors across homes, schools, and businesses today. We're adding more as we speak. Third, listen for the baseline. Year one is pre-operational record for the mine. It's the before mining data set. As the report will note, only a minority of year one events came from the direction of the mine. That's exactly what a baseline should look like. and is the foundation for measuring all future increases. Finally, remember this distinction. South 32 has a monitoring program that is seen as being designed to protect South 32. AirSmart is designed to protect the community health. South 32 operates three stations, reports with a month delay, and provides no real-time PM10 or PM2.5. That's the stuff that gets deep in our lungs and impacts our health. AirSmart provides countywide real-time public data and captures acute events that their system cannot see. So our goal today is to understand the difference between mind-focused program and a public health program. Dr. Lim's presentation will make that clear. This is about real protections.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Debbie Gonzalez.

Good morning everyone, supervisors. Good morning. Management and law enforcement. I am here to speak this morning about the traffic safety on Duquesne Road. Since the COVID pandemic, we've seen, by the way, I live on 100 Duquesne Road. I didn't mention that.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. So living on Duquesne Road and I must disclose I'm also serve as a school board member for Santa Cruz Elementary District 28 which is commonly known as Little Red. So I'm on their board. And so I have a deep concern for the safety issues of the traffic increase has increased. Initially with the COVID pandemic, we saw a sharp increase in recreational vehicles, not very problematic for us, but it caused a lot of commotion over the weekends. That's par for the course. But when the wall construction for the border wall began in spring of this year, It was instantly much more dangerous to travel, walk, ride your horse, whatever, along Duquesne Road. I wanted to raise that awareness for everyone. And I wanted to thank the county management for working with the residents along Duquesne Road and the school to try to figure out ways to provide a immediate answer to safety concerns, especially as it relates to the school. and we appreciate that so I wanted to also say thank you and I also want to say thank you to the sheriff deputies that have been showing up more to patrol and to sit parked especially in the school zone but especially this past week I wanted to say thank you so that's all I have to say and I did it in two minutes thank you thank you so much thank you for you do for all you do for the school district

Martha Monka. I hope I pronounced that right. If not, I apologize. It's all good, yes.

Hi, good morning. My name is Martha Monka. I live on Emily Lane in Patagonia. Okay so my name is Marta Monca and I talked about Cross Creek Connector a few weeks ago. Cross Creek Connector is a new road that was built with the main purpose of the mine trucks to get to the mine and back. Now there are probably almost 100 trucks going back and forth there all the time. I feel that two weeks ago I was listened to and thanks to the management, Christopher Young, some ideas and solutions have taken place. My neighborhood has been concerned about the high number of trucks idling on the side of the road close to road number 82 on a regular basis causing pollution and unfortunately littering. However, the no parking signs have been placed on the side of the road. There is less trash and we have been promised offense, making it impossible for the trucks to idle. So thank you. I really appreciate it. I wanted to thank the county supervisors for their work and time. And yet, I'm afraid that there is still so much that should be done. The residents on the other side of Cross Creek Connector, and if I have time, I would like to read a little bit, like a short email that I got from one of our neighbors. Do not want trucks, especially mine trucks, to idle on the other side as well. There is no reason why 10 or more vehicles at the same time should be idling there. It is not healthy for anybody who lives there and there is no reason why these people should be exposed to this amount of pollution. These vehicles should not station there. It is not safe and it's not healthy. We would also like to prevent the deaths of wildlife on that road. We think that proper signage with speed regulation and watch for animals on the road message might be the only thing that makes the drivers more careful as they drive up and down the road. So there was a turtle run over on Cross Creek Connector some time ago, and it drew huge attention from residents and organizations like UFA, Arizona Game and Fish, Center for Biological Diversity, and ADOT, to name just a few, and something has to be done about it. I have seen dead animals so many times on this road. There is also an idea of building some type of culverts crossing, like culverts for animals to cross since the washes used to be a natural and safe habitat for a lot of animals, and they are not anymore. And we have to do something about it, and signage and culverts might be a really good solution. And we hope we have the county's support as we're talking to other agencies and stakeholders. And at the very end, something really important, we're concerned about dust and pollution. It starts on Cross Creek Road and keeps going up on Harsha. There are many people concerned about our health and well-being, and wildlife, of course. There's this huge impact on our lives, and we want to make sure that the problems are addressed and solved. We did not ask for this pollution. We don't want it. We hope we have your support and you can help us to overcome some of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you, Martha.

Yeah. I don't know how that works. I got just an email from one of the neighbors, but I don't know if I can read it or later or how would that work?

If you could forward that to the clerk of the board, Ms. Alma. I could totally do that. And then that way we can all receive that.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Okay, that does it for the slips. Is there anyone else who would like to come up to the podium for a call to the public? Yes, come on up, please. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Wendy Islas, Rio Rico. Good morning, Chairman, Board of Supervisors. I'd like to recognize Dr. Lim for being here today to present his research and also I'd like to thank Calabasas Alliance for their ongoing and steadfast advocacy. We truly are at a crossroads when it comes to protecting our environment, our water, our air, our land, our wildlife. It is evident we need to implement essential and independent testing for water quality given the mining projects that we have in our county. I see on the agenda today that you're renewing contracts with South 32. What I have yet to see on any agenda, unless I've missed it, are contracts for independent water testing. I think that we all know the importance and essential necessity for this. Mr. Workhoven mentioned how Parkinson's can be caused. I'm here to share that I am witness to my mother who has Parkinson's and I'm witness daily to her debilitating state and it's not fun to watch. It's not fun I'm sure to go through it and we also know that contaminated air and water will cause other diseases. I also would like to mention two other items unrelated on the agenda. I've seen for the last three or four years quite a number of duplicate warrants coming out of the school district and I'm wondering if there's been any audit regarding this. There's a very large $34,000 sum on today's agenda and I'm just curious what's going on or why this keeps happening. I have gone and done my own audit. and I'm happy to share my results, but I feel that that should be something that you all should be doing. And lastly, I would like to request again the opportunity for the public to call in for a call to the public remotely. So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Wendy. Thank you.

Any other folks? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move to item D, current events, supervisors, and I will start off to my left. Supervisor Maleta.

Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I have several items to report. I had the privilege of meeting with our two, our county manager and Chris Young, along with the mayor of the city of Nogales and the current city manager, and it was a really fruitful meeting. One of the best I've had with the city and I want to thank them and I want to thank staff too. It seems like good things are happening with us in the city and that's great to see. It's important as Mr. Davis has really pushed for it and I want to thank him for continuing to do that. On 8-26, I attended the Educational Leadership Consortium. Superintendent of Schools did an amazing job with that. Thank you for inviting us. 8-28, Friday, Supervisor Davis invited Senator Gallego to host a town hall, and it's a very successful event. Thank you for doing that. We really appreciate it. and yesterday I had the privilege of attending an event for Senator Calley, it was men's mentorship initiative. He's pushing for us to help kids with single parents. He feels that a lot of kids with single parents are falling through the cracks and so he's pushing for that and he had a good Q&A with quite a few people from Tucson we were one of the few that were weren't from Tucson so it was nice that they invited us but it's good to see Senator Kelly really Coming out and and I also invited him to come down and Do do something something here for our County? Q&A sometime soon, hopefully And that's all I have to report Thank you, sir.

Vice chair Good morning

So Senator Gallego held his first town hall in New Galles at the 1904 historic courthouse. The event was great, it was a great success and full house. Made possible through tremendous teamwork and effort. Special thanks to Maya Donnelly, Kerry Munoz, and the entire staff for all their work. Maya worked really hard like before and during the town hall. She also helped us coordinate and got ahold of the Nogales High School Apache, so thanks for that, Maya. I really appreciate that. Also, special thanks to the Nogales High School Mariachi for joining us at the Center Gallegos Town Hall and welcoming our community with their beautiful music during the town hall. We also thank Mexicao Danza Machica for creating a unique atmosphere with their music, drums, and dance before the town hall began. We also thank Abby Kuhn, right? A student from Quatimundi for her beautiful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. She did an amazing job. I also want to thank county management, Mr. Valdez, Mr. Chavez for supporting this idea and helping bring Senator Gallego to Nogales and Santa Cruz County. This all started like four or five months ago when we met with the Senator in Phoenix and since then we worked together to make this town hall a reality so that our community could have an opportunity to ask those questions that are having an impact in Nogales and Santa Cruz County. I also want to thank all the community members who attended and participated during this town hall. It was also a pleasure to see the city manager, Mr. Fontes, Councilman Bonillas, newly elected officials, Mr. Luis Parra and Mr. Diaz. It was great to see the city of Nogales and Santa Cruz County come together in support of and participate in this important town hall meeting. I want to thank Jordan Toyo Sounder, Arizona Director in the office of Senator Gallego. He worked very closely to bring the Senator to New Galles, and it was a pleasure collaborating with him to make this event happen. We truly appreciate his partnership and dedication in making this possible. Lastly, I want to thank Senator Ruben Gallego for his first town hall in New Galles, and we hope it will be the first of many more to come. I also got a chance to attend the Arizona-Sonora Mega Region Industrial Capabilities Mission in Nogales, Sonora, at the U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Mexico. It was a one-day program designed for Arizona companies, regional businesses, leaders interested in cross-border manufacturing, suppliers' relationship, investment opportunities, and industrial cooperation. The morning features several presentations followed by a tour of local manufacturing companies in the afternoon. I had the opportunity to participate in the tour, which provided me with a better understanding of the manufacturing industry and a more complex perspective on the opportunities and challenges within this region. Yesterday, I attended the JTED Transformation Summit. I was invited to attend the JTED Summit, an event focused on career and technical education, CTE, workforce development, and preparing students for the jobs of the future. Some of the highlights included hands-on demonstration featuring drone technology, medical stimulation, and other CTE equipment, industrial panels, leaders, leaders from construction, aerospace, optics, manufacturing, and healthcare discuss future workforce needs and the skills employees are seeking. And they also provide a district update, an overview of the regional city growth, accomplishments, and strategic planning for the future.

So those are my updates.

Thank you, sir.

I just have a few. I want to thank WeServe, the group of realtors, for allowing us to be part of their meeting recently. Also took part in the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission Roundtable located in Tubac. I know there was a few folks here that were part of that. Thank you so much for being there. very important I was part I was able to be present at the best of Santa Cruz County Awards I'd like to thank the Nogales International for that as well as the I know then the Green Valley a paper they're basically one in the same same owners so thank you for that first things first south southeast area cross regional strategic planning also part of the watershed group a steering committee meeting uh... i also was at the senator guy goes town hall thank you uh... to uh... vice chair davis thank you uh... uh... supervisor maletta and thank you for all the folks that showed up that asked some some very good questions Yesterday took part in my Samba meeting. Was lucky enough to help with the NHS, that's National Honor Society, faculty council meeting held two days ago to choose the NHS students who would be inducted into NHS, which happens tomorrow evening at 7 o'clock at the high school. That was quite an event. And community check-in yesterday in Elgin. I want to thank those folks who accompanied me to Elgin for the check-in. And then after the check-in, we had an extensive discussion, and folks were able to see, you know, what's happening with the bridge in the Baba Kamari Bridge. at Elgin, so thank you to all those folks who took part in that. And lastly, I promised this person that I would apologize in person. She said I did not have to, but I'm going to. Ann Minton called me on Friday. I wasn't able to call her back, but then I looked back at my and it was buried about a month ago. So I called her yesterday and we came up with a plan of action. So I wanted to personally apologize to her for missing that email and not responding within 24, 48 hours. So I apologize for that. So with that, I will turn it over to Mr.

Manager. Mr. Chair, members of the board, County Managers Association made in Two-Beck a couple weeks ago. We discussed the bills and the resolutions that you guys will all be hearing in October. So there's some interesting ones. There's more to come. Also attended Santa Cruz Provisional College and South 32. automated industrial technology program. It was a ceremony to introduce their cohorts. It's nice to see local people trying to further their education and their career. I also attended the Moonshot pitch competition. That's where local entrepreneurs, myself and Supervisor Davis, they get to pitch their basically their company to a panel. It's a competition. They get pointers and what they could do better and what they're doing right. So it was nice to see local people that go through that process.

Isn't there like a $5,000 prize or something like that?

I think it was $2,500 for this one and then There's another one, so one. At the state level.

Yeah, yeah, for this one was 2,500.

So Stephanie, I forgot to say, Stephanie Bermudez is doing a great job working with entrepreneurs and local businesses and helping them prepare to pitch this, get feedback, improve their business plan. So thanks for her. She's Nogales native and doing great here too.

I agree. I agree, sir. And lastly, I want to congratulate Mauricio Chavez for the birth of his second grandchild.

So congratulations. Congratulations.

That's all in my report. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Okay, we'll move to item E. E1, finance, cash and investment, expenditure and revenues report.

Good morning. Mr. Chair members of the board for the cash and investment report and the general fund We have an overall balance of twenty million five hundred sixty thousand one hundred twenty four with an invested amount of seventeen million twenty three thousand two hundred and thirty five for the road fund we have an overall balance of five million two hundred and ten thousand six hundred and thirty four with an invested amount of five million two hundred and sixty six thousand five hundred and nineteen For the flood control, we have an overall balance of $2,364,270 with an invested amount of $317,408. For the Jail District, we have an overall balance of $5,641,967 with an invested amount of $4,523,744. For a total overall balance of $55,620,940 and an invested amount of $29,312,114. And an estimated end of month balance of $6,106,829.

Thank you, Madam. Vice Chair, any questions? No, sir. Thank you. Any other department updates? Come on up.

Good morning, Chairman Fanning, Supervisor Davis, Molera, County Management, members of the public. My name is Saida Bustamante. I am with Arizona at Work. We are a one-stop center that provides career services, job opportunities, workshops for resume writing, application tips, mock interviews. And I am here to provide an update of what we're doing. We have a current event that we're gonna be having October 14th. It's our annual job fair. It's a job fair and community resource expo. Last year we had great success. We had about 700 job seekers attend. More than 100 employers and community organizations attend and provide their services, interview applicants. There were a lot of hires that were done. This year it's going to be at the city of Nogales recreational center. I have flyers that I'm going to be providing there. They're going to be in the back. If you guys wish to participate, we always look for volunteers. And there's going to be transportation available. And we like this spot specifically only because it's closer to Our job seekers, the people whom we serve. So we're very happy that the city of Nogales was able to provide this location for us. And the other reason, any questions regarding our job fair, annual job fair?

I just have a comment and I want to apologize ahead of time. I will be out of town October 14th.

Okay, we'll still save your shirt. Thank you. We're making some shirts for Board of Supervisors.

I love that event and I'm sad that I won't be able to attend.

Thank you so much.

Quick question, Syeda. Yes. For those that need transportation,

Yes, so the transportation is a free round-trip transportation. They are picked up at the Primeria Alta Museum, and transportation will begin at 8.30 a.m. The event starts at 9, and the last pickup to the fair will be at 1 p.m. There would be, there's two shuttles that are transporting our job seekers.

Yes, sir. Clarification, go ahead. Yeah, the flyer says October 14th, and up there it says October 15th.

Okay, that is actually, and that's not the, that's not the flyer, so I apologize for that.

So it is the 14th?

It is the 14th, yes. Last year it was the 15th, so I think there was a confusion there.

Thank you, madam. Thank you.

Yes, of course. And then I also want to introduce Tanya Hernandez, one of our workforce development specialists. She's here to share a successful participant and his path with Arizona Network.

Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name's Tanya. Good morning, members of the public. I've been working with Arizona work for three years. I love what I do and I love to share my success stories. I have with me Luis Gagiola. He started the program in July 9th. He got his CDL license. He got his permit in July 22nd. His license, actual license on August 27th.

um and he's here with me to share his his experience good morning everybody my name is luis caciola uh i'd like to share a little bit i want to thank tanya and zyra for helping me and being with me this entire time ever having me under their wing um it's been a journey for me i got laid off from my job since march and i haven't had a job since then so it's been a struggle but um They've been holding me down, been patient with me, and showed me a lot of confidence within myself to get this license. And I'm proud of myself and proud of them for being with me the whole time. Because without them, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now, already seeking a CDL job. Pretty soon, and I just want to thank them very much and thank everybody Do you have a job yet? Not yet? We might have openings here at the county Yes, I did put an application here at the county and I talked to mr. Tebow Romero. So I'm seeking Thank you

Quick question. It's not a question. More than anything, it's a comment. So Zaira, Tanya, thanks for, like you said, sharing those successful stories because there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of positive stuff going on at the county, and sometimes those stories get buried. So this shows the effort, the teamwork, your effort as a community member trying to improve your life. So I always love to hear the stories. When I go and visit you guys, I know how hard you guys work. So thanks for bringing those stories. I hope you keep bringing more and more of those stories. We appreciate them. And congratulations on that.

Thank you very much.

Great story.

Any other departments? Okay.

And let us know if you can't find a job. We know a lot of produce people.

Alrighty, we'll move to E3, awards recognition and accomplishments. Recognition of Cecilia A. Mejia, public fiduciary director in honor of her retirement and an appreciation of 35 years of dedicated service. Ms. Cecilia, Ms. Mejia, will you come up to the podium, please?

Another great story.

And I'm going to read something on behalf of the county, and then we'll give you a few minutes to... Say a few words.

Okay.

Okay. Today, on behalf of Santa Cruz County and the Board of Supervisors, it is my privilege to recognize Cecilia Mejia, Director of the Office of the Public Fiduciary, as she prepares for her retirement. Cecilia began her career with Santa Cruz County on November 12th, 1990, and will retire on September 16th, 2026. That represents more than 35 years of dedicated service, nearly 36 years to Santa Cruz County and its residents. Throughout her career, Cecilia has served with professionalism, integrity, compassion, and dedication. As director of the public fiduciary, she has carried an important responsibility, serving some of the most vulnerable members of our community as a court-appointed guardian or conservator and administering estates when no one else is willing or able to serve. This work requires sound judgment, compassion, and a strong commitment to protecting the dignity and interests of those the county is entrusted to serve. For nearly 36 years, Cecilia has provided steady professional leadership and dedicated service to Santa Cruz County. Cecilia, Santa Cruz County is grateful for everything you have contributed during your many years of service. Your dedication to this organization and most importantly to the people of Santa Cruz County is sincerely appreciated. On behalf of Santa Cruz County, the Board of Supervisors, your colleagues, and the residents you have served, thank you for your outstanding public service. We congratulate you on your retirement and wish you happiness, good health, and many wonderful years ahead. Congratulations, Cecilia, and thank you for nearly 36 years of dedicated service to Santa Cruz County. And with that, the floor is yours.

Thank you thank you members of the board members of management and the public. Thank you for the trust that you've given me in all these years. And I also want to thank my staff. They've been wonderful. They've been great. They're team members. My deputy Giovanni, my and are here present. The other staff are out on the field because we have a schedule to keep. I can't believe I've walked these hallways for 35 years, met a lot of amazing people along the way, met a lot of new friends, colleagues. It's just Santa Cruz County is an amazing place to work. It gives you an opportunity to expand and the opportunities, the people and the community that I've served, it's been an honor working. But I decided that it's time for me to move on to other adventures. Thank you.

Thank you. In the short time that I've known you, the words that come to mind when to describe you are humble and genuine. And so you are very much appreciated. And with that, would you like to? Thank you.

Yes, I'd be honored. It is a true honor. Look at that smile. I love your smile. You've made so many people's days, especially these people you work with. A lot of them are going through tough times, and I want to thank you for that. You are a true leader. And I had the opportunity to hire you for that position, I believe. Be a part of it, and you've done an amazing job. Thank you. You are a true leader, and we're gonna miss you. We have this very nice little memento here, and it says, presented to Cecilia A. Mejia, Public Judiciary Director, Santa Cruz County. in recognition and appreciation for 35 of dedicated public service to Santa Cruz County. Your commitment, leadership, and dedicated service have made a lasting impact on county and the community you faithfully serve. November 13th, 1990 through September 16th, 2026, With gratitude and best wishes on your retirement on behalf of our board and Santa Cruz County. Thank you.

Thank you.

That's a lot of years.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, can I make a comment on that? Please, absolutely. And I've spoken before on Cecilia's management of her department. No, she has to manage not only the operational of dealing with all the wards, but she also has a responsibility with her staff to deal with so many different bank accounts, checking accounts of dealing with all of the wards. At one point she might have maybe 50 or 60 bank accounts, and every year she has to reconcile that and present it to the auditors and present it to us. And, you know, she's always on time. She's always reconciled to the penny on all those accounts. So credit to her and her team. I mean, she's amazing. We're going to miss her. But she does really, really great work, you know, all around.

Thank you. Thank you.

I want to say something really quick, too. Please do. So Cecilia, I know you're retiring, but yesterday I received a call from somebody in the community. So we're going to, before you leave, I'm going to stop by to try to set a meeting before you leave. Well done. That's true. Well done.

Okay, we will. We need a favor, assistant. We'll go ahead and move to item F1, report on year one air quality monitoring by Dr. Chris Lim, associate professor, Arizona State University. And I know, Robin, you wanted to say a few introductory words for Dr. Lim. Thank you very much.

Thank you supervisors, our county management, and our audience. Thank you. My name is Robin Luckin, president of Calabasas Alliance. First before I introduce Dr. Lim, I want to acknowledge Dr. Denise Moreno-Ramirez who grew up in Nogales. She went through the entire public school system here, Nogales Unified School District. and is now the Assistant Director of the Earth League Secretariat at the ASU Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, which is an international voluntary alliance focused on sustainability and climate change, where the top scientists around the world are working to solve these monumental challenges. The work we do in Santa Cruz County would have not come together without her. So now, Dr. Chris Lim, our guest today, is an associate professor of the New School of Technology for Public Health at Arizona State University, guided by the motto, environment becomes health and inequality. His health and urban modeling lab combines sensor networks, global spatial and population health data, AI, and community partnerships to turn environmental signals into actionable place-based solutions. Dr. Lim currently leads an NIH-funded study examining air pollution, heat, and 911 activations in the U.S. and is a member of the University of Arizona Superfund team. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Yale School of the Environment and obtained his PhD from the NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Lim, along with his team at ASU and U of A, are the chief investigators for the AIRSMART program. It is a great privilege for the Calabasas Alliance to work with him and his team. Chris, all we can say is thank you. Come on up.

Good morning. Good morning to the public. Thanks for having me here today. I'm really pleased to share the results of the year one of the AIRSMART program. As Robin mentioned I'm currently at ASU but as of a few months ago I was at University of Arizona where I work with Calabasas Alliance and other members of the public to establish the sensor network and collect the data that's being presented here. Next slide please. So what AeroSmart is, is a network of real-time sensors with a free public online dashboard. So, so far we have 11 PM sensors a particular matter sensors for called quantic you modular installed across home schools and businesses across Santa Cruz County We also have additional 13 13 or so low-cost sensors called purple air also installed across Santa Cruz County I added those plus signs there to show that we're in the process of expanding this network over time The dashboard is bilingual. The data is open and real-time, free to download the data, and there is zero cost to host the sensors to the public. Before these sensors are installed across the community, we also place these right next to reference PDQ or ADQ EPA reference monitors in Tucson. We do this so that we can assess their accuracy against these more expensive regulatory monitors. Next slide, please. So this is what the dashboard, online dashboard looks like. So it shows a map of where the sensors are located across the county. When you click on the dots, you can see what the levels show. The dashboard also has real-time plots and graphs showing changes over time as well. On the right is a picture, I believe, in the town of Patagonia with a sensor installed under a gazebo. And these sensors are pretty small, lightweight. They just require cell signal and electricity. Next slide, please. So in Santa Cruz County, there's just one EPA monitor covering the entire county in Nogales, the post office. In the past, the county was in non-attainment for PM2.5, which are the smaller particles. Currently, it's non-attainment for PM10, the coarse dust particles. The next closest monitor is in Green Valley. So again, there's a big gap of... air pollution data across the city, but also the county. Air pollution levels can vary minute by minute, second by second. They can change very rapidly over time and over short distances, and these regulatory monitors cannot capture this very well. Again, there's just one monitor across the location, and they report hourly values as well, so it misses a lot of these real-time short changes in air pollution. Next slide, please. As we all know, the county's air pollution sources and profiles are changing over time. There's a big mine that's being developed with construction operations and heavy truck traffic on rural roads. There's also the border activity with the wall construction, materials transport, and a lot of idling trucks as a lot of the members of the public has already commented. Wildfire smoke can carry smoke over long distances, but also more regional sources as well. The PM itself can also change. The metal composition due to these changing activity patterns can change as well. Next slide, please. So far, what we have collected is more than 6 million one-minute observations across these sensors, more than 14 months of measurements. Again, we also co-located these sensors across the EPA monitors, and they show very high agreement against the EPA monitors. We have also observed very high pollution days. So we found six site days above the EPA regulatory 24-hour regulatory limit of 115 micrograms per meter cubed. Next slide, please. And this is what one day of sensor measurements look like. So this is at La Ligna, close to the Nogales border. So this shows very rapid changes, as you can see, in PM10 levels across time and across minutes. In the early mornings, we pick up Elevated signal as well maybe due to traffic in the region or other sources, but the point of this plot is to show that again The the one-hour averages really missed these peaks that you're seeing changing rapidly over time There's also a lot of spikes in high PM dust levels So on this particular day we had 93 spikes above the 150 Although the EPA limit is for the daily average, I just put that there to kind of compare against what you see here. And on one day, we also found more than 300 micrograms per meter cubed, which is a huge exposure profile that people are being exposed to. Next slide, please. And also, these dust exposures and PM exposures are unequal across sites. As I mentioned earlier, the air pollution levels can vary a lot depending on the location as well as time. So in the La Linea location, we found more than 135 hours above 150 in one year. At the treehouse site in the Patagonia Mountains, we observed a thousand-plus hourly peak at this location, and this value across locations can vary as much as 10 to 15 times. And and the tree house we found more than 6,000 minutes above 150 1100 more than 500 and this number was also pretty high at the little red schoolhouse as well next slide, please We can also pick up and detect dust storms. So this is one event that we picked up in August of 2025 when the monsoon rolled in with the dust. And across all sensors, we saw this elevated event. And these sensors, again, are able to pick up these minute-by-minute, hourly-by-hourly PM events. And this dust storm lasted more than four hours. All sensors captured it, and this was above the 24-hour standard as well. So this sensor network can pick up not just minute-by-minute averages, but all these regional events that are driving these air pollution episodes as well. Next slide, please. One point I would like to mention in this presentation is that although there are these EPA regulatory standards They're not Would have to say that the standards are behind by a couple of years what the science scientific evidence shows So a lot of recent papers and studies have found that there is no safe number when it comes to air pollution even below the EPA standards Although EPA standards are for daily or annual averages all these minute by minute second by second short episodes can trigger Health effects like asthma, heart attacks, cardiac arrest, stroke. Our bodies are very sensitive to these short-term exposures. Things like dust storms as well can also trigger health effects. Things like mortality, premature mortality, respiratory impacts, cardiovascular impacts, and all just pretty much every body system you can think of, air pollution is impacting your organs and body systems as well. Next slide, please. Also, our monitors, our network also, although it's expanding, there's a lot of potential hotspots with no monitors. The networks are mostly west so far around Patagonia and Nogales, so there's a lot of locations within the county with no monitors yet. which we're working to address. We, as the members of the community knows, the ongoing construction moves a lot of the heavy trucks over dirt roads, which can kick up a lot of these dust, short-term dust events that can trigger the health impacts. And what we're trying to do with the sensor network is to quantify how their pollution levels are changing in the community over time. Next slide, please. Thank you. Any questions or comments?

Mr. Chair. Okay, so just a quick question. So you said that you guys have 13 air smart sensors plus. How many would you want to have? How many more, like to cover the region or the area?

That's a good question. So obviously, more the better is, I guess, the easy answer, but at least 20. At least 20? 20. So just to clarify, we have... 10 of the more expensive sensors and 15-ish of the purple airs, and they do different things. The more expensive sensors are able to pick up dust, the coarse particles. The lower-cost sensors pick up the fine particles. So they are kind of a mix of two sensors. But overall, maybe doubling the number would be ideal for both of these sensors.

So like 30?

Yep, uh-huh.

And once you put on these sensors, who maintains them? Or how often do they maintain them?

So far, we've been working with the community group Calabasas Alliance and other members of the public that are hosting these sensors at their homes or businesses. But we do have plan or my students from U of A or ASU will come down and help them maintain these as well as installations.

Thank you. Supervisor?

Dr. Lin, thank you. Sorry. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for your research, sir. You said EPA only has one sensor in Santa Cruz County? I think we need to reach out to the EPA so they can put more sensors here. Are you all doing water as well or just air? Just air. Just air? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can I ask another question? Please. So you said something also that when it comes to EPA that their standards are behind? Uh-huh. So what can it be done?

That's a good question. I would say that minimizing just any sources of air pollution is the primary need right now, not just here but across everywhere. Just like I mentioned, any level of air pollution is unhealthy for you. In terms of the intervention side, ways to protect yourself are things like air purifiers, masks during really high air pollution days or wildfire days, eating a healthier diet, things like that are personal level things you can do. Overall, minimizing the sources is the most important thing.

Thanks for your presentation.

Thank you.

And I have one other question. You mentioned the Nogales border sensor was one of the ones that was really peaking high. That's one of my big fears because of the factories in Mexico and just a lot more activity in Mexico and everything pretty much.

That's a huge potential source as well, for sure.

I want to say thank you. My personal story, and we were always told that it was the dust in the air. My dad had valley fever back in the day, turned into meningitis in the hospital for three months. So I understand the implications of dust in the air. So thank you on that. My question is, South 32 is mentioned quite often, well, a few times in your presentation. And I know they have air monitoring. And one of the things that I've attempted to push for, and maybe you can help me out with this, is is there any collaboration between what ASU is doing, perhaps U of A, and South 32, so that whatever particles are in the air, whether they're picked up by your air monitors or by theirs, is there any collaborative efforts between the two?

Yeah, we've had a couple of chats, and I think our monitoring efforts are complementary. What we're measuring is real-time air pollution. What they're measuring is long-term metals in the PM, which are very different things. So I think by, I mean, our data is also open data, so we're sharing this on the website so anyone can look at it. And I think their plan is to do so as well. So I think we can definitely chat more to integrate our efforts a little more closely over time.

Wonderful, thank you. And I'll allow for one question, if there's a question from the audience, if anyone has any questions.

Rob, go ahead. Hold on, Robin. I agree with Mr. Fannin. I think if you can collaborate with South 32 early, like right now, I mean, and I said it in other meetings, if anybody, and they were willing to collaborate, get together, and if you join forces, gather all data, you know? Yep. I would really encourage that as well. Yeah, sure.

Anything to do with safety is important. Robin, did you have a question? Please.

I think it's important.

to note, does everybody remember what happened during the summer with the fires coming in from Canada and New York? Stuff like that, we hope to God that never happens here because the emergency room spikes went like up 300% just in New York City. So this is really, really important. We do have, right now, we're gonna be putting out 10 more of the quant modulars. Those units are cell phone powered And normally there's a $500 fee for anybody that takes one. ASU is picking up the complete tab, $500 per year per unit. So I'm incredibly grateful for that. They're also gonna buy some more Purple Airs and there's also some other types of equipment coming. So we're happy about that. As far as collaboration, we've struggled a little bit in our conversations with South 32 on that, but we need to do bigger science. We need to, for instance, the EPA unit that is on the post office, we're gonna put one of the quants up there. and just to make sure things are, that all these devices are very close in the data that they track. So I just wanted to comment, and again, thank you all.

Thank you, and thank you, Dr. Lim. Very much appreciate it.

One last comment or ask. Can we have that web information so we can monitor? Sure. Or our community if they want. Maybe we can post it on our website. Yes, sir.

I have one question.

Yeah, we'll do one question. Okay.

level of PM.

Chris, I'm sorry, can you come up to the, so that we can get it on, thank you, sir.

My question is about the average levels you have seen. How does that compare with the average levels seen in the state and nationwide? Better, worse?

For the PM?

For PM 2.5, for PM.

Okay. I mean, the sources of air pollution are very different from other places in the U.S., so definitely a lot more dust, the larger particles, a lot more peaks as well, as you've seen on the plot. PM, the finer particles, tend to be cleaner than the rest of the state or nation, but the dust is definitely a big issue here.

Thank you very much. Chris, did you have something that you would like to add? Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Great, thank you. Thank you for all you do.

Thank you.

At this time, we'll move to item F2, Santa Cruz County Strategic Workforce and Wage Growth Plan by John Brower, Dr. Victor Diaz, and Randy Tillery from WestEd.

If you guys want to come up.

Supervisor Fanning, Chairman Fanning, Supervisor Moleda, Supervisor Davis, county leadership, members of the public. A little less than a year ago, we approved a collaboration agreement with South 32 to do a workforce development strategic plan. And so we created a RFQ. and then we had a team together to evaluate the submittals and the winning submittal was from West Ed and that's where these fine young gentlemen are from this morning and so for about seven months, seven, eight months, we've been working with them, the executive committee with the three superintendents from the local high schools, Maya Donnelly here along with Greg Lucero who's also here from the community college. Thank you for being here, Greg. and South 32, we worked through this project which is a hugely important project because what we saw before this is we saw a lot of entities working in silos. And so it was agreed upon that we would do this and this would be the one for everybody to work towards. And so they're gonna give you a presentation as far as their findings and what we plan on doing moving forward regarding workforce in the county. Mr. Fanning you already mentioned Dr. Diaz former student high school from Rurico High School.

I think it was Mountain View.

That long ago. All right. And I'll just read on the websites there their biographies. So I'm not going to read it I'll just read the first couple of sentences Dr. Diaz brings commitments academic opportunity wide range of experiences in public education to work he leads to West Ed. Dr. Diaz leads and supports projects related to building and sustaining high quality educated workforce in schools across the country. Second we have Mr. John Brower. His background is in promotion of economic mobility and DEI through facilitating the development of workforce strategic plans professional development and contextualized learning resources that build a competitive workforce and improve access to career pathways as part of industry driven workforce development and education partnerships. And then third we have Randy Tillery. Randy Tillery has 29 years of experience related to building and implementing workforce development community development and educational strategies to increase economic mobility for vulnerable low income communities and individuals. So without further ado gentlemen the floor is yours.

Thank you sir. Supervisors, county leadership members, community members, it's really an honor to be here today. I would be remiss if I didn't sort of really thank the community overall for being so gracious in terms of welcoming us here. People have been incredibly giving throughout this process, and it's been a real honor to get to come here. WestEd, just by background, is a national not-for-profit that focuses on educational, early learning, and economic mobility solutions to build kind of thriving communities, which are really good places for people to learn and grow. We are a not-for-profit, but we are actually a joint powers agreement of a number of states, of U.S. states. So essentially, we all kind of work for you. at some level. And it's important to know that, that we work on behalf of states, on behalf of communities like this to really help them figure out kind of what are the most important things they need to do to advance community and economic welfare in those communities. The study was a great honor to do this. I will mention a little bit about just some of the very kind of high level components of the study. And this is a very high level summary. It is backed up by very detailed documents. The full plan is 175 pages long. It's accompanied by an economic and workforce analysis that looks at all the labor market data, community data, and other sources with both quantitative and qualitative. Dr. Diaz, I'll have to get used to calling you that, actually led the community engagement portion of this where we really talked to as many people as we possibly could to get people's inputs sort of on what was happening here in the community. Next slide. Hello. Oh, here we go. So this is just very quickly about kind of our basic framework. And one of the things to understand about workforce development as a field of practice, people think it's sort of job training or it's education. Workforce development actually emerged in the late 1990s because of the failure of federal job training programs. So there were massive investments in training alone, thinking that you could move people out of poverty if you just provided more training in the community. And what they began to realize is that that by itself was not enough. So the study, the national study of the Job Training Partnership Act in the mid-90s found that just making a lot more training available did not move individuals out of poverty, particularly adult learners who really kind of were in that kind of intergenerational poverty pool, families who had just been poor over a number of generations. So the goal was to connect job training and education strategies with economic development strategies really focused on bringing employers into the equation. So you had educators and workforce professionals working much more directly with business and industry around their pain points and needs to really help them problem solve for what are the needs of an industry. I could go to any employer and say, the labor market data says this, so I think this is your problem. They're going to be like, no, I have these other three things that I really need in my workforce. So having that employer voice at the table and really thinking about the ways in which a county wants to expand its economic base and to bring more jobs in the region is an important component of the work as well. Finally, it's also connecting it to community development, which is what are the needs of residents? You can have jobs available, but people have to get to jobs. They have to get to training programs. In this case, we found issues related to transportation, related to childcare, related to housing costs that people identified, that the residents in the community identified that, yeah, you can talk about training programs. If people can't get to that training program, then it's not really going to help them. And it's worth noting that in working closely with Chris that we really have been sharing information back, so this also informs the county general plan, the WIOA local plan, and other plans that are being created in the region. The idea is that all these things should work together. There should be like one voice, one community. I mean, the different things are gonna happen, but it's how you connect it together. And we call it the people, programs, and jobs framework. You have to really be thinking intentionally about the aspirations, assets, oh, there's a typo, and challenges faced by residents, communities, and special populations seeking to create wealth and access opportunity. What do people say they wanna do? What do they bring to the table? Just because someone's low income doesn't mean they don't have skills. Doesn't mean that they don't have assets. And how do you build upon those assets? Then programs, what is the education and training infrastructure look like? What's being offered by the provisional college? What's being offered through K-12 CTE programs? What kinds of programs are on the eligible training provider list, the ETPL list managed by the Workforce Development Board? And how you think about that infrastructure and how it's responding to both the needs of people and employers. And finally jobs, it's on your occupational demand, what's happening in the labor market, what's happening in your local economy. But most importantly, what are employers saying that they need? How do you center the employer voice and the resident voice within a conversation that builds a coherent, cohesive plan for really moving over? So there's gonna be three parts to this and it's gonna be way too fast and it's gonna be way too high level. So we will obviously share all the resources with you that sort of sit behind this. Dr. Diaz is gonna talk about the community engagement we did and what people really told us. John's gonna talk about regional industry and some of the major recommendations of the plan. And then I'm gonna talk about implementation at the back end. How are we gonna move this forward? What have people sort of agreed to sign on to? And what does it mean to create a regional collaborative that pulls the best of every system, that pulls the best from industry, and that really recognizes the assets within the community and building together kind of more coherently.

Thank you. Next slide, please. Yes Mr. Chair members of the board members of county leadership and members of the community. My name is Vic Diaz and I'm just so happy to be here with you all today. It's been an absolute honor to work on this project. I am a member of the first graduating class of Rio Rico High School. Go Hawks. And it is always an honor to get to bring the resources and the expertise of our organization to this community. And this project has been just an absolute honor for me professionally and personally. I know people are really eager to hear about the what's, the so what's, the now what's of our report, but I think it's important for us to also capture the how and how we came to the place where we have this plan. And so one thing that Randy mentioned that's very important to us is that we were very responsive to the community. We wanted to make sure we were in a listening stance for several months and in several different ways and very much respecting the assets that we have here in the community. We know that we have urban, we have rural communities. We know that our binational, international, bilingual character is a strength that isn't always viewed that way in the outside world. We also know that there are several different anchor industries that's very different from other rural communities and economies, not just in the state, but in the country. We know that the labor market isn't always the truest indication of economic activity. And we also know that what we experience in the community we experience excuse me is a group of people who really do care about the future of the region. And so we took a very asset based framework in the way that we integrated and interacted with the community. Next slide please. In terms of making sure that we captured community voice from March through July, we engaged residents and stakeholders through several different processes. We did interviews, we did focus groups, we launched a community-wide survey, and we also held planning convenings across the county. We did 12 initial interviews with priority stakeholders that really helped to set the context and to gather different perspectives in the region. We then developed, using what we found in those surveys, I'm sorry, in those interviews, we developed and implemented a community-wide survey where we gathered information from a wide variety of industry leaders, residents, and educators. And then in May, our team was here for three days where we conducted seven different focus groups in different regions around the county. Several people in this room participated in those, and so thank you very much to those who did. We also had a advice executive advisory committee. Again we have some members of that committee here. Thank you so much for participating that committee that's met each month. And very recently we have launched a group of champions to discuss the implementation and the governance for this plan. Next slide please. So some themes that we heard from the community. Randy already mentioned this notion of working in silos and I think it's really important to really understand where that comes from and the work that I do I find often silos come from very well intended places. It's usually somebody who's doing extra work to overcome the shortcomings of a system. They do that work in a way that isn't always collaborative because they're just focused on putting their head down and doing the best job that they can. So even in understanding what silos come from, it was important for us again to take a very asset-based framework to understand that again, silos do come from well-intended places, but they do lead to people not always rowing in the same direction or even understanding that they're in the same boat. We also saw from Community Voice that the region contains immense assets, but those assets are not leveraged to increase opportunity for residents in any systemic or strategic way. There's a lot of individual effort that's happening, again, at a very high level, but it's not always coordinated. One reason why that is happening and why that impacts workforce is inadequate access to childcare and transportation. We see though we saw those as consistent barriers for adults. We also saw housing identified as a concern for the workforce where we have people who commute into Santa Cruz County to work but cannot afford homes in certain part of the counties. There were also concerns about talent that leaves the region, both in terms of young people who need to leave the county to seek a bachelor's degree in other places, as well as working adults who might find that they plateau in their career, and in order to seek more career opportunity, they have to look outside the county. In terms of looking at a couple of solutions that came from the community, one was the need for the provisional college to be strengthened in order to have more training available in the region. and another that industry and education need to work more closely together so that employers are investing and upskilling their current workers. And we do have this nice quote from one of the community members who participated in one of our focus group sessions. And so with that, I will pass it off to John to go into a bit more of what we found in our work.

Thanks. Next slide, please.

Thank you.

Happy to be here today. Part of my background, even before I worked at WestEd, is in putting together workforce development partnerships in just about every industry of the economy in several different ways and in different sectors and in different regions. Goal of this is always trying to move the workforce system to being one that is obviously recognizing that it's a dual customer model, that it's obviously engaging employers and industry, and then also job seekers and folks looking for work. And out of that, for job seekers, it's one part of their personal identification. In addition to our family and our community, jobs are also one way that we think about ourselves, frankly, and help in relationship to that. The other axiom I've kind of come to believe in and part of how we approach this study and this work is starting with the jobs. This isn't about a supply side situation. It's about finding out where industry and employers are, looking at it from a problem solving perspective and where they are and where they're trying to go and to move. quantitative analysis that we did we drew on light cast which takes Bureau Labor Standards data state employment projections from the state of Arizona US Census Bureau American Community Survey data and then other studies like the Ernst and Young study done for South 32's project and we we looked at those for sources to assess industry trends occupational demand wage progression pathways because for us part of this isn't just where folks are in terms of immediate employment but thinking about it from a career pathway as well as retention that Victor talked about earlier can folks stay and come back if they see some pathways forwards for them In addition to skills gaps that employers see a need relative to it and your economy as it changes, your ability as a community to address those skills gap and who can help do that. And then just overlaying that with demographic patterns across the county. If you'll notice the slide that we've got up here is kind of our summary of that piece of kind of overall what we saw. We kind of prioritized in this different industry sectors. We looked at it both in terms of particular sectors but frankly also parts of the regions of the county. Consider the county one big particular region and understood that things like Tourism or other things may have a particular value in tubac that maybe also cuts across but in a different manner in the east part of the county for instance or how is manufacturing working from a Binational perspective and those kinds of things and and those are described in much more detail in relationship to The report itself so it The primary piece of this, I think, for you moving forward is to think about which industry sectors you all may want to prioritize that the executive team has been talking about as some initial action teams and focus on. Rome, like Nogales, wasn't built in a day, so you may want to figure out relative to the sectors that you have moving forward. Some of the labor market drivers that we saw in particular were clustered around wholesale trade, the logistics obviously the aspect of this. Infrastructure and construction obviously is another area that whether that's the family housing that folks raise to all the things that you're seeing having to deal with relative to general infrastructure in the county. Healthcare is another one that folks kind of raised as one of those six sectors. Next slide, please. The other piece is just to get what you'll get in the study as well as to sort of understand how we frame this piece in terms of employment and career pathway pieces of this. I mean part of this and again we really heard a couple of different things. supervisor donnelly was talking about the fact that they uh had seen students where roughly 30 percent of those students that are graduating don't really have an idea of what they're going to do next they they 70 know they're going to go to u of a they're going to go to pima community college they're going to go to asu going to go into the military they've got an employment idea a lot of folks uh younger folks in particular uh wondering what their future holds and what could the the future in the county hold for them in relationship to the system others folks leaving is there something to come back to as part of that if I go off to college or I go off to the military what can bring me back and contribute to the economy and shared prosperity so we we provide kind of basic analysis for you of entry-level middle-skill employment and more advanced skill employment relative to those sectors again this is a starting point but this is a way to go have a conversation with industry along with all of the stakeholders that you've got to figure out where those skills gaps are, where those opportunities are, and what those pathways are. I'm talking to folks. Next slide. Some of the pieces that, again, the sector is a little bit of a description relative to those, obviously trade, supply, and logistics. That can cut across both what you've seen in produce has been one of your primary pieces. You obviously have manufacturing going back and forth. Manufacturing is now all about supply chain and management. including AI and all that kind of moving forward health care we tried to take into account what you've been having to deal with in terms of work that's already been done and pipelines at the provisional college and school districts have done relative to health care as well as some other areas relative to your needs around mental health and behavioral health in your chip plan and other plans that you have again trying to build off of of other regional plans that you've got going on. Manufacturing construction I already talked about. There's quite a bit of public sector employment opportunities for folks, and including, you just saw it, the gentleman truck driver is maybe a place to come. and talk to and thinking about that in whole and both in terms of the county and municipalities but frankly also the state and fed. One of those was Customs and Border Patrol has quite a bit of openings in an aging workforce that you may want to think about that fed partnership. That's the kind of thing you could have a conversation with Senator Gallego or other folks kind of moving forward. hospitality, recreation, and tourism is obviously a big value for you all in another area. We also tried to talk about a little bit, a lot of entry-level jobs seem to be that retail kind of entry-level low-wage jobs. Can you build some pathways up and out of that relative to other kinds of professional services, entrepreneurship, and other things like that? So those are some of the primary sectors that we looked at, lifted up for it. Next slide. And these are just two examples. The other thing that we did again was to frame this within a longer term, not just the immediate, but for you all to think about what you can do over the next year to 18 months, something more over the next one to three years. and then three to seven years in relationship to particular sectors. And so to give you, again, all the stakeholders coming together, how does this fit within those other plans, but also where you go. Again, Nogales and Rome weren't built in a day. Next slide. And then some of our major recommendations, frankly, and I think Randy's going to at least a little bit more of what this might look like. But one is just create a workforce collaborative with a formal governance structure, decision making, and implementation processes. And I think Chris and others will down the line share with you what that might look like but something that won't go away that it's not built on personal relationships or a couple of specific relationships something more formal that over time folks are invested in and and everybody knows why everybody is there and what they're going to get out of being in that particular partnership from different parts of the county Building a clearly mapped regional pathway system to support career navigation. Again, that kind of thing will certainly help both the school districts, Arizona Works, young people, families, everyone to figure out where they're going. Another is obviously the role and positioning of the provisional college as a central training in addition to the schools for doing that and in partnership again with Arizona Works. tying the regional workforce strategy into your regional economic development strategies and trends. So some things may be changing moving forward relative to manufacturing or infrastructure projects you're doing or whatever you're doing in there and just again tying it to those larger efforts that you've got and successes. Then adopting sector strategies within the framework to address the needs and growth of those priority industries. Again, starting with the jobs, really engaging the employers in them and understanding what they're trying to do from a problem solving standpoint is one really important way. Then looking at this to adopting strategies to stop the talent drain. One of the principles that we put in the plan, for instance, is the idea of having an action team looking at work-based learning, the idea of building social capital, which right now in a lot of ways is built more on sort of familial relationships as opposed to having that kind of business connection, industry connection, so folks understand what the possibilities are for employment, for career awareness, what the nature of the work is like, what they may need in terms of education and skills. So those are some of the major recommendations. I think you're next, right?

Next slide, please. So one of the things that is sort of an animating force for me in this work is that everything that I've learned in 29 years about how you advance the economic interests of residents, about how you help industry kind of build more collective wealth, about how you pull communities together, the ability to actually realize economic mobility and economic growth is highly reliant on the relationships between systems. There's no single system that's gonna step in and sort of solve this problem. Economic development's gonna solve it, the college by itself isn't gonna solve it, the workforce board, but it's the collective actions and how you build across systems strategies that everyone agrees to row in the same direction on that really builds economic strength and helps residents realize economic opportunity. And so the core recommendation for this plan is really built around that recognition. There's a long and storied history around what's called workforce intermediaries, where you have exactly this kind of structure. So your economic development players, business and industry, education, higher education, workforce development, sit at a common table to build strategies that really can connect residents with economic opportunity and build more economic opportunity for the future. And so that was one of our core recommendations. And it builds upon all those things that Victor was describing about rowing in the same direction. How come we're all doing different things if we could just all get on the same page? There was a ton of quotes from people that we could have put up that basically said that exact same thing. What this would do is it would create a shared space for decision making by educators. And this has come up. It's like, well, if we all agree to do this, how do I know that this entity over here isn't going to continue to do its own thing and isn't going to be part of this? So how do you kind of create common understanding for that shared decision making? And how do you ensure that not only that the public systems involved are at the table, but the business and industry are also at that table making those decisions? And if there's a need for a collective conversation around transportation and logistics, then you can spin up an initiative where you're pulling in dozens of employers in that sector to kind of dig deep about to do some collective problem solving just around the needs of that industry. So this shared table that would get created then would support some cross-agency collaboration around specific implementation priorities. So you have 15 people sitting at a table. We're going to work on these five things this year that are really important. How are we going to assign people from our agencies to work on this together? And then how are we going to measure that it's being effective and that it's actually getting done? So it's not just a place where people talk. I'm working with a state right now where they've created a new cross-education interagency council where they're gonna slap each other in the back a lot, but they're not actually gonna change what happens on the ground. The idea is this is not only sort of shared decision-making and agreement, it's driving action within the community. And so this could support, like I was saying, any number of broader industry-specific kind of sector initiatives. So there's different ways in which these kinds of collaboratives get framed. One of the things they talk a lot about are sector collaboratives, industry-driven sector priorities where you create a room where initially the employers are kind of talking to each other. There's some agreement about what the primary needs of the industry, not just individual employers, are. the educators are watching and listening and learning from that conversation, and then they all agree together about how to move to advanced manufacturing in the region or another industry that you want to focus on. Having this kind of collaborative and having it be formal and having it have formal operating agreements and a common shared charter strengthens the ability of the county to apply for funding of this group of entities. I can think of no fundamentally really important funding source for this work when they're not asking about the partnerships you have around you and do business and industry have skin in the game. And this is where you come to agreement. What are the funding sources? One of the parts of the plan includes a really exhaustive, almost a little bit way too long inventory of all the funding sources that you could potentially be looking at as a part of this. But rather than people competing with each other about who's chasing dollars, it's making collective decisions. We should go after this. This partner can be the lead and it's gonna support these strategies that we all agree on. or we have something that can fund the whole collaborative and we have a nonprofit who can be the 501c3 to receive the money and we all decide together how that money is going to be administered. These are really important steps forward for advancing community interest as a whole is your ability to talk about money. And at the end of the day, these things sometimes break down about the inability to talk about money. And then at the end of the day, it's also a space where we can be sure that the plan that we've created and future versions of that plan that this group sort of renews and refreshes are aligned to your other kind of planning in the region, the we owe a local plan, There's a re-compete plan with the Department of Commerce, which has some really amazing things that we tapped into. Your regional economic development strategy managed by Seago and the county general plan. There's gonna be different flavors in each of these things, but if there's some really core strategies that everyone agrees need to sit in the middle of this, it creates a framework for doing that. Next slide. I know I talk way too fast. This is just a little bit about the structure. These things differ in intent a little bit, these kind of formal collaboratives. You always have some kind of, we call it a champion's table. It could be a governance council. You can call it whatever you want. But you have some number of folks who sit at a table who represent their agencies and have decision-making authority who are coming to agreement about what the priorities are going to be that they're all going to work on together. And that that drives the creation of action teams, which I talked about a little bit in the prior slide, or industry sector discussions. And there's a backbone function. So in some way, you're building a distributed agency, right? That it's not its own entity, but it pulls upon the resources and capacity of all the agencies and industry that are participating at it. But someone's got to sort of be sure the meetings get scheduled. There has to be a communication strategy involved. There's a number of things that this entity has to have if this is going to be an effort that you can broadcast to the community and say, like, look what we're doing together. We were talking about an issue yesterday. We had a champions meeting yesterday afternoon. You have the oncoming issue around Medicaid eligibility and nutrition assistance programs where people have to demonstrate their ability to work or demonstrate that they're working in order to be able to continue to receive those benefits. It became a very animated discussion. There are lots of different perspectives, but the general agreement was this is a problem that no one agency can solve, but an entity like this where everyone agrees to work collaboratively around what's going to be a really dire community need This is what this would enable you to sort of tackle together. Everyone looks at the same information. Everyone agrees about the roles that different entities can play. You can have a collective conversation with industry about how they're gonna help support the ability to actually for more people to be able to work to keep their health benefits. It's exactly that kind of problem solving that this supports. Next slide. So these are some of the initial recommendations. And these are all based on discussions we have had. So we have had this executive advisory committee we've met with every month throughout this. A lot of these things have been sourced through them. We reviewed this list yesterday with this group of champions that we have. So the Santa Cruz County Office of Education seemed like a really good place, neutral space to house this. One of the important principles here is it doesn't represent the interests of any single organization, but it's an entity that everyone agrees can play a neutral role in pulling people together, scheduling the meetings, housing some staff to support the work of the group, and that there would be a champions group. This group grew by two yesterday. But what's most important are not necessarily the individual names here, but you have representatives from the important government entities that need to be involved, you have representatives from your anchor industries and drivers, so the employers are always sitting at this table, and then you have the education continuum also involved. And it doesn't mean that other people can't be involved. There's going to be a lot of committees that get spun up. There's going to be a lot of work to do. And people can definitely connect and tap into this. But you have to have one place for the people who actually have to do the work, sit in the same space, and figure out what's most important. And in fact, the first step that we actually took yesterday was to schedule a champions meeting at the end of September. So the idea is this group will meet for the first time. And it's going to be for a whole day, for five or six hours, to talk about governance, and decision making and begin the process of setting priorities. And nobody balked at that, which is really important to identify that this was, that nobody balked. Everyone was sort of on board, I guess. And so what that shows to me as someone who has had to do this in a number of places Is that there's a level of community willingness here? There's a level of common understanding of a problem that needs to be solved collectively and not individually And then we have some other recommendations for action teams that there should be an economic development team which can be the county's existing economic development efforts can actually be that part of this group and but also we'll sit on the team. We have SEC Economic Development up there, an education team where we're gonna leverage the existing consortium meetings among the districts through the county office to have those hard conversations among the K-12 districts, and a workforce team that will be led by the provisional college and the workforce board. And we'll have employers involved in every part of this that we can and then we will stand up some sector initiatives. We're recommending manufacturing, construction and infrastructure and trade supply chain and logistics. Healthcare came up yesterday. The group could get together and say like no, it's going to be these two, not these two just because West Ed recommended them. And finally, I think before we get to questions, I just want to read the vision statement that the executive committee co-crafted with us that actually drives this. And it's actually on the first page of the executive summary of the report. and I think it really captures what people really feel about this. Santa Cruz County will build a workforce development system rooted in its binational identity and bilingual strengths, connecting every resident from youth to adult learner to quality jobs and economic mobility, and positioning the county as a model border economy where community and industry thrive together, which I think captures the plan really well. And with that, I think we have some time for questions. We talked a lot, so.

Just as when you started doing this, once again, thanks for the presentation, a lot of information. So when it comes to stakeholders and the advisory committee, right from the beginning, do you feel that somebody was missing or you would have liked to have somebody else just from the origin?

I mean, I don't know about specific, so we made a real effort to be in every part of the county, because we understood the regionalism in different parts of the county was really important, that the character of East County is very different than the character of Tubac and the character of Rio Rico and the Nogales, so we made a real effort to that. I'm not aware of any, we would like to have had more individuals. I mean, probably like a total we had between 200 and 250 folks who did surveys or were in the interviews or came to community meetings that we run. You always would like to see more. One of the things about a plan like this and an effort like this, it's not one and done, right? You don't do this and say, okay, we're done now. No one else gets a word. One of the things I put into some ideas for an initial work plan was after the group begins working, like in a couple of months, like in November, maybe you have a community celebration of this where people are apprised of the plan, where there's something like an event where you can pull people in to get more voices to the table. You always want more voices included. And that's probably the most important principle of this. But I don't feel like we missed anyone specifically. We tried to hit all the industries. We toured a warehouse. We saw the port. We really kind of tried to be as much as we could. But you can always do more.

Anything else?

I just want to thank you for recognizing the different regions. because Santa Cruz County is really different at every different region. Puerto Rico, Nuales, Tubac, Amado, and Sonora, Patagonia, yeah. We're really different and we have different needs. And thank you for your study. It seems like it's really detailed and I'm excited personally.

Yeah, it's so detailed it's a little overwhelming, even I'll admit that. Yeah, I mean, one of the things about the regional aspect of this is that, look, when you form a group like this, you're going to make decisions that not every single person or every single region is going to be their top priority. It's going to make them completely happy. What's important is that everyone has been heard in the process, and there's transparency about the decisions that were made or the folks, you know, the directions that were chosen. And that's what the structure that we have recommended should do. It should be an open, transparent forum. And we tried to be sure every, so one of the things we paid attention to yesterday that came up in the meeting is we needed another representative from East County because they weren't as strongly represented. So we're trying to address that as well.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you again.

Speaking of the East County, I have a name, and we'll see if he's interested. If you're interested, Josh Montesana. He's someone who's attempting to, if I'm not mistaken, Chris, revitalize the chamber in that area. So that's... Okay, yeah. A couple things I have to say. First of all, I know you call it rowing in the same direction. I'm a firm believer in that. I always say get your arrows pointing in the same direction. Everyone's arrows are pointing in a direction, and people have heard me say this before. But if you want to get something done, they all have to be pointing in the same direction. So I agree wholeheartedly with that. A couple of recommendations about industry, especially from the eastern portion of the county, the wine industry. That's something that you might want to tap into. Also the hotel motel restaurant management, a thought there. I love the idea of the first step is getting everyone in the same room and a shared space for decision making. So I'm very, very excited about that. I know there's a lot of different personalities and a lot of different thought processes, but getting them all in the same room and starting to turn those arrows or those oars rowing in the same direction, I know it's gonna be a chore, but like I think someone stated, Having everyone in the same room at the same time, I think that's a step in the right direction. So thank you. What great work. And lastly, and I say this in jest, talent leaving. Still waiting for Dr. Diaz to come back home.

Well, Supervisor Fanning, I will say, although I've called Phoenix, me and my family called Phoenix home for almost 20 years, this is always home to me. I'll be leaving here to have lunch with my mother, who still lives in Rio Rico. I have so many family members who still live here who are who are buried here this will always be home. And I think that's an important part to also talk about here. It didn't get mentioned much but Santa Cruz County is part of a larger infrastructure in southern Arizona. It's impossible to put Santa Cruz County on an island devoid from talking about Pima County from talking about Maricopa County. and Interstate 19 and Interstate 10, soon to be Interstate 11. And so I think one of the things I really appreciate about my positionality here is the ability, one, to communicate to folks early in this project that there isn't just one Santa Cruz County. There's so many different communities here. And two, the connectivity that does exist in other places. And so yeah, like I said, I will always consider this place home even if my address is in a different code.

I know, I'm just giving you grief. and you know it's been said a couple times today and i want to i want to draw everyone's attention to our our motto um and thank you to shannon and the folks that were responsible for that it was mentioned by uh supervisor maletta it's been mentioned here the place of amazing places santa cruz county the place of amazing places

We also want to just give a special thanks to Chris Young. He has been an extraordinary champion working beside us and dealing with really complicated issues and how to get things scheduled and when we could come out. And it's been a real joy to work with him and the county on this. It's been really great.

Thank you, gentlemen. So when it comes to talent returning, like, I heard that Lisa Favela, somebody that went to the high school with me, she's returning after a lot of years. She's going to work for NUSD as a psychologist. So that's something good. I already offered my help and everything. But I have another question. So I see a lot of information, a lot of theory, a lot of concepts, this shared space that we need to work together. So when it comes to putting all this into practice, when do we expect to start seeing some of that? And what do you envision? How would that work, all this information into practice?

So we're starting this month, essentially. So we're convening the champions group. They've all agreed to come together for an entire day to begin to sift through the plan and prioritize, and we'll help them with that process to identify some initial, some of the most important things we'll be able to identify, some things that can get done this year. And we talked about that a lot yesterday. There's some things that just we should try and get some wins for the county and for people in the county right away while you're building towards recommendations that are three years out or seven years out that take longer to get to. If this doesn't move to action quickly, it'll stop. And the goal is for it to be very public, have a communication strategy that people know what's happening because one of the gaps we encounter is just an awareness gap. You know, adults don't know what's available for opportunities in many ways. So they might know kind of vaguely, but they don't know how to get there. So how do we address, if there's going to be a lot of retirements in Customs and Border Patrol, how do we ensure that local residents are getting access to those jobs? Because wouldn't you want local residents representing the culture of the community actually playing that role on the border? So it's going to be how quickly we can move. The most important thing will be not to try and do the top 100% of things. all at the same time. So to create some priorities right away, I'm sure there's gonna be opportunities for Chris to come back and brief all of you on sort of what's happening and how it's moving. But it has an implementation plan. Everything here is meant to move to action right away. So that's our goal.

And when you said that, for a lot of this to be transparent and people know all this information, is this the committee or the community overall, to know what's going on? No, it's for everyone. And how is that gonna be shared, for example, with the community, besides meetings like this?

So it's important to understand that this is just the beginning. of the process now that we have the plan that now that we have the asset mapping this as mentioned up there it's now going to go be seated in Maya Donnelly County School Superintendent's office and she's already identified a staff member that can take on these additional responsibilities. And so there will be a work plan once we have that first initial meeting in September. One of the subjects that will be talked about will be how do we make sure that the community knows what we're doing and we're advertising. And so that'll be part of the discussion at the end of the month. But also, as you know, Maya's office is out there in the public with the literacy bus, with the different grants and programs that Charity has. So it'll be a very transparent and publicized process that we're going to go through.

And last comment. So the government, industry, and education, those are the stakeholders who are on board, right? Right now? Am I correct? So I would just recommend to try to include nonprofits because we have a lot of them. Right. You know, like a lot of nonprofits that even some of them are here with us in this meeting, so.

So one thing that if the couple slides before what you saw you saw some arrows coming down from this this core group. And so you have things like child care housing as you guys already know we're doing those studies. So there will be a lot more to it than just that core but that will be the core that meets probably monthly depending on how Maya wants to run it. But there'll be a lot that comes off of that because as was mentioned in the presentation you can't just provide training. You have to look at transportation childcare housing everything else. And the nonprofits are the ones who play a huge role in those activities.

Good. Well, thank you for your presentation, and thank you, Chris, too. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.

Safe trip. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, can I have a question on the presentation? Would that be OK? Please. Yeah. I know one of the slides mentioned some jobs that were looked at, multiple jobs and some medium wages. And I may have missed it, but were those medium wages

At the local level or is that a national level on those know all the data all the data is Santa Cruz County it is that yet that you know that we pulled and That that slides important because it draws the distinct a lot of times when you do training programs people Everyone's training for those entry-level jobs only it's important to understand what you know What jobs you can get with a high school diploma which jobs require some additional training and which jobs require a bachelor's degree and having that in front of you. Because if you're just building for an entry-level job, then you're not saying, but then how does that person get from that job to the next rung in the ladder? So we're always talking about career pathways, occupational ladders, staff credentials, things like that. Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you again. Okay. At this time, we'll move to Item G. Do I have a motion to exit regular session and move into flood control? I move. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Alan, give us the news.

Yes, sir. Chairman Fanning, Supervisor Davis, Molera. This is the Flood Control District. Report and it's going over what's kind of been happening in August So we did finally get some more rain pretty much counting wide two inches on all gauges We are still below Here in the New Gallus area where The average rainfall for the month of August is 4.43 inches. We received approximately three inches. Some outliers, Casablanca Road at the highway 82 received over five inches of rain and in the town of Patagonia as well received a little bit more of three one thing I want to note is that we are could be experiencing an uptick in monsoon moisture and that should be happening within the next few days There is a tropical storm, Marie, that's coming up the coast off of Baja, and there'll be some additional moisture that's gonna be evicted into the area. So we should expect an uptick in some of those storms. Of course, we don't know where they're gonna be. They're gonna probably be intense because most of the storms nowadays are intense and we have straight line winds, tornadic type of storms that have been happening in August. So that's the rainfall. Moving on to floodplain management. The district received 227 flood reviews in August. 199 of them were in Santa Cruz County, 27 in Nogales, and one in Patagonia. We received 10 floodplain use permit applications, seven in Santa Cruz County, and three in Nogales. No site reviews, and we had a few drainage complaints. So moving on to projects. First is the Ephraim Canyon project, which is mainly a retention detention project that's happening off of Ephraim Canyon. We have been looking for some grant opportunities and our engineering contractor Solis Engineering has applied for grant monies from two FEMA grant programs flood mitigation assistance and building resilient infrastructure and communities and that happened last month moving on to Patagonia regional flood control project and that's something that's coming out of our community agreement with South 32 We had our second phase kickoff meeting yesterday with our consultants and we have some pretty high tone consultants have been doing some amazing work in the town of Patagonia to try to resolve some of the floodplain, excuse me, some of the flooding issues that we have in the town. The first phase happened yesterday. We all got together to discuss some of the alternatives, some of the alternatives in Patagonia being retention detention, multi-use retention detention that would look at parks and things like that. We looked at some storm drain designs. We're looking to perhaps work with the Nature Conservancy on doing some watershed restoration and some restoration of Senoita Creek just immediately. upstream of Patagonia. There's some modeling that was presented during the meeting. It was a very high tone type modeling, 2D type modeling with flow vectors so we could see where all the excess water's going through the two-year, the 10-year, the 100-year events, those sort of things. And one of the main places that we identified for maybe perhaps a project is the bridge there. Highway 82 right there in Patagonia. So that bridge is kind of constricting flow right there and some of it's going over the top, river right. So the next steps there will be a public meeting and that should happen sometime in October and it'll be at the town's, town office there, yeah. So that's what we got going forward. Moving on to Monte Carlo Monte Carlo is a subdivision that's been built designed in 1974 circa. Final report submitted 8 6 26 waiting for final acknowledgment and approval from the from the county. So it's it's on our desk. We're reviewing it. three individual private floodgate designs have been identified for for individual people uh... what we're looking at is trying to provide some floodgates are for folks that are receiving uh... flooding from the street uh... that's been exacerbated by folks driving down the road. These private individuals have a home that's built below the road in their driveway. And so they're getting water that's flowing into their properties right there. So we looked at three different designs. One is pretty high tone. Automatic floodgate we looked at a different one that I described last time that was an aluminum type floodgate that can be constructed and then also now we're looking at a High grade plastic type of floodgate that can be snapped together So we're looking at those three different options we're looking to do a demonstration project for a couple of different individuals there in Monte Carlo and And the idea is that we would create a policy and process that folks could apply and get these floodgates. And so that's kind of where we're going forward. On a more tactical level, Monte Carlo, we did receive our new phase two report from CMG. And again, we're looking at very high tone type of modeling that's basically identifying areas of breakout within some of the drainage channels within the subdivision. And now we're going to a design phase where There'll be a design layout and that layout will look at different areas where we might have to have Acquisition and easements and right-of-ways as far as putting in some new flood control structures Some of the new structures could be channels to be some bank protection that sort of thing Another thing that was identified within the report is looking at three retention-detention basins that are immediately upstream of the subdivision and making sure that those are maintained on a regular basis, annual basis, and also looking at the main Monte Carlo Basin, which has received quite a bit of sediment and that sediment is redirecting some of the flow within the basin so we're looking at having somebody go in there and remove some of the sediment and and also making sure that that basin is you know function as it should so there's that and also one of the other recommendations was that on an annual basis in after storm events to do some inspections of some of these basins and the different drainage channels and things like that. So going forward, like I said, I think the next phase is gonna be the design phase where we're actually gonna see where these potential flood control projects can happen within the subdivision and then at that point, identify what kind of acquisition and then look for additional funding as far as taking care of some of the flood control projects in that area. So that's it for my presentation. The town of Patagonia is going to have a flood and flow meeting here coming up this month, and so we'll have something from them. Oh, there is one that I forgot was the Nogales wash. So Nogales wash. We have received the incident report from our consultant. And so that incident report has been submitted and we also have a rainfall analysis of that particular storm so we could kinda understand why that storm happened and why we had the flows we did. And so we have a pretty good understanding of what to expect in the future. And this sort of storm is something that we could probably have on every other year interval. So two year event, something that heavy monsoon type, watershed wide type of storm will create the kind of flows that we saw within Sonora and also which ends up down the Nogales Wash. So something we could maybe plan for in the future. That's it. Did you have any questions?

Thanks for your update, Allen. Yes, sir. When it comes to the demonstration project in Monte Carlo with those two or three families, do we have a date for that? No, sir. No?

No. I've been given the green light to purchase the structures. So whenever you want me to do that, I can. We need to reach out to those folks to make sure that that's what they want sort of thing.

Yes, at least let's talk to them to make sure if that's the way they want to go. Yeah, absolutely. So we can move forward.

And moving forward with that and then also moving forward with this project that we're working on too. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you.

I have a question on the Ephraim project. You said Solis applied for some grants. How much money do we realistically need to begin that project? Because I know it's been on hold.

I thought it was like 80 million, right?

Mr. Chair, members of the Board, the original cost estimate came in around $80 million because the submittal for the grant and the scope of the work that was going to be conducted Essentially, that berm that we were going to construct was deemed as a jurisdictional dam. So that's what it needed to be a pump. It had a lot of requirements. Since then, we've revised the scope and looked at an offline basin. that would reach the similar results, that's closer to a 25, $30 million project. Mr. Manager, quick question.

Go ahead. No, no, finish, I'm sorry.

These grants that we're applying have the potential to, if we're successful, to bring in about $10 million.

And we already have 10 for that project?

Initially we had $12 million in that project.

So we would need like maybe like three more?

Well, the period of performance is about to end for the resilient community, and it's because we had to change gears with what we were trying to construct. So at this point, we're not gonna hit the, we're not gonna be able to complete the project before the period of performance, so that's why we're applying for a different grant.

Thank you. Thank you. I you meant you at the very end of your discussion you talked about future expectation by looking at to see what happened you know in that the last rain that created what it did create with the wash and so forth in Mexico and the United States right you also mentioned we have an upcoming storm activity do you see them similar power

It's a degrading tropical storm, so there could be rain bands coming across the state, which would have the potential of having as much as seven inches of rain falling. However, I don't think that's what's going to happen. It's more of an advection of moisture coming from that particular storm. When that kind of scenario sets up, it's gonna be on an individual basis of where these storms are gonna happen. So wherever the proper dynamics are happening, then there's gonna be more moisture in order to feed those sort of storms. So it's gonna be really hard to predict where exactly it's gonna happen until you can kind of see it happening, so to speak. But I just wanted to mention that that's what's coming across my desk right now. So I don't think it's like all hands on deck or something. It's just more of an observation of to try to educate everybody on what some of the monsoon storms are like and what drives them.

Thank you. Number four, any public comment? Thank you, sir.

Yes, sir. Thanks.

Okay. With that, do I have a motion to reconvene into regular session?

Second. Move to adjourn flood control and move into general session.

ticket that we have a motion second any further discussion hearing on all those in favor please signify by saying i i motion carries unanimously okay we're gonna move to each action items i'm going to go to number six under consent agenda first that was discussed at the beginning of our meeting to move into action items uh... so with that number six discussion discussion possible action to approve proposal with wilder landscape architects to document Landscape related impacts from border wall construction in the locale area and the amount of eight thousand six hundred eighty including authorized reimbursable expenses Do I have a motion?

They move second.

It's been moved and second in discussion Mr.

Manager Mr. Chair, this is an attempt from the county to look at the repairing area that's in that locale area. It's about a half mile that we're going to monitor. So the goal is to inventory everything, the existing conditions that we see now, and see if, because of the wall and see if they deteriorate through the year. So we're gonna monitor this. If we show, we're gonna use this as almost a pilot project to understand what's really happening. If we see that, if we're seeing much deterioration or the repairing area, not the trees and the vegetations and also the wildlife, not flourishing the way we were used to, because the wall's the first time we ever, it's been a barrier in that area, so we're gonna just monitor it. There's different techniques that the welder will use to monitor that, and we'll do it on a yearly basis to see what impacts that wall had on that area. Our goal is, if there is impacts, is to go after grant money and sit with our delegation and see what we can do to mitigate any impact that have occurred because of the border wall.

Wonderful. Thank you, sir.

And there's some beautiful trees there. I mean, really old trees. And initially, that's where Santa Cruz crosses to Mexico, right? Right in that area?

That was, yeah, you're correct, Mr. Chair, members of the board. That was a port of entry at one point.

But the Santa Cruz River actually crosses into Mexico there, right?

The river's outside the area we're gonna monitor, but not by much.

Sir. And Mr. Chair and Board, as a technical measure, we recommend that there be a contract with Wilder. And so if the Board, well, the procurement policy that the Board has already approved a couple years ago, allows for, I think, county management or the finance director to sign a contract, it would be helpful if the board authorizes county management to sign any contract with Wilder.

Thank you. Any further discussion? No, I just want to thank county management for taking this proactive initiative and document that area on the east side and document it right now and the impacts it's going to have for building that fence, that border wall. And like you said, maybe in the future, hopefully, we're gonna have that documentation and if we need to apply or make a case on what happened there, we would have that information. So it's good to be proactive.

I concur. Mr.

Chair, Bob, do we need to amend the motion or are we good with it?

The motion as it is certainly is to accept the proposal and that's fine. But yes, I think Supervisor Mullera would be helpful if the board further authorizes the county management to sign on behalf of the county, any contract with Wilder. And they're based on the proposal.

Yeah, just a friendly amendment, Mr. Chair, to my motion, move to approve allowing staff or county manager to sign.

Second. Okay, any further discussion? Move forward with the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you for recommending to take that off a consent agenda. I think it's incredibly important. With that, we'll move back up to H. Action items. Number one, discussion possible action to approve and adopt proclamation declaring A, September 2026 as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month throughout Santa Cruz County. Vice Chair. Vice Chair.

Wait a minute. Do I have a motion? I move.

I'll second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. At this time, this will be considered discussion.

So I'm gonna read the proclamation, right? Proclamation September 2026, Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Whereas suicide is a serious public health concern that affects individuals, families, friends, workplaces, schools, and communities throughout Santa Cruz County. and its impact reaches people all ages and backgrounds, and whereas mental health challenges, substance use, isolation, trauma, significant life changes, and other circumstances may increase vulnerability, making prevention, early identification, intervention, and timely access to appropriate support critically important. and whereas rural and border communities may experience unique barriers to accessing behavioral health services, including transportation, providing availability, financial limitations, stigma, and lack of awareness about available sources, and whereas suicide prevention requires collaboration among healthcare and behavioral health providers. schools, first responders, law enforcement, courts, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, families, community leaders, and residents. And whereas increasing awareness of suicide warning signs and available resources encourage individuals to seek help and creating supportive environments where conversations about mental health, can occur without shame or judgment can help save lives. And whereas Santa Cruz County recognizes the dedication of behavioral health professionals, health care providers, first responders, educators, law enforcement, social service agencies, community organizations, families, and families affected by suicide and whereas every resident in santa cruz county can contribute to suicide prevention by promoting connection compassion understanding and hope and by helping individuals experiencing emotional distress connect with appropriate resources and support and whereas proactive parents who raise safety concerns in family court deserves to be heard on the evidence rather than dismissed and children deserve to be believed and whereas suicide prevention awareness month provides an important opportunity to educate our community reduce stigma strengthen partnership promote prevention and early intervention and and reaffirm that suicide prevention is a responsibility shared throughout our community. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors hereby recognizes the month of September 2026 as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. throughout Santa Cruz County, Arizona, and encourages all residents, businesses, schools, healthcare providers, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, faith and community organizations, and other community partners to participate in suicide prevention awareness efforts. Learn to recognize warning signs, promote available resources, support individuals and families who may be struggling, and work together to build a community rooted in hope, connection, compassion, and resilience, passed and adopted this second day of September 2026. Thank you, sir.

Okay, we'll move to the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, sir. Item B, September 14th through September 20th, 2026, as National Diaper Need Awareness Week. And I'll ask Supervisor Mileta if you could please read that proclamation. I'd be honored, Mr. Chair. Prior to, do I have a motion to accept?

Aye.

I move.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Go ahead.

Okay, thank you, sir.

And the irony, because I'm having issues in my district with someone throwing diapers on the frontage road right in front of Calabasas School. I had a text this Sunday where someone saw a bunch of diapers thrown in the middle of the street and this has happened quite a few times in the last year we're hoping to maybe set up some cameras or something to see if we can catch this person unfortunately So, the proclamation is Diaper Need Awareness Week, September 14th through September 20th, 2026. Whereas diaper need, the condition of not being able to afford a sufficient supply of clean diapers to keep babies and toddlers clean, dry, and healthy can... adversely affect the health and well-being of children and their families and whereas national surveys and research studies report the nearly one in two families struggles with diaper need and 48 percent of families delay changing a diaper to extend the availability of supply and whereas a daily or weekly supply of diapers is greatly and Eligibly required for babies and toddlers to participate in child care programs and quality early education programs that enable children to thrive and parents to work and whereas many parents struggling with diapers need report missing an average of five of I'm sorry, an average of five days of work each month due to the insufficient supply of diapers and whereas without enough diapers, babies and toddlers risk infection and health problems that they may require medical attention resulting in medical costs and parents may be prevented from accessing child care need to go to work or school nearby destabilizing the families economic prospects and well-being and whereas the people of Santa Cruz County recognize that diaper need is a public health issue and addressing diaper need can lead to economic opportunity for states families and communities and improved health for children thus ensuring all children and families have access to the basic necessities required to thrive and reach their full potential. And whereas Santa Cruz County is proud to be home to trusted community-based organizations, including that recognize the importance of diaper and ensuring health and providing economic stability for families and thus distribute diapers to families through various channels and whereas through their important work of addressing diaper need. Diaper banks play a critical role in supporting families, improving infant health and well-being and advising our local and state economic growth now therefore the board of supervisors santa cruz county do hereby proclaim the week of september 14th through september 20th 2026 as national diaper need awareness week and passed and adopted this second day of September 2026, Chairman John Fanning, Vice Chairman Luis Carlos Davis, and yours truly.

Thank you. Mr. Young.

I just wonder if we could take a picture for the proclamation with the group.

And I don't know if you guys would want to say something. I don't know if that's possible.

Ms. Molina.

There's circles of peace.

If anyone would like to come up.

Thank you for what you do, by the way. We really appreciate it.

So good morning to everyone. We've all been waiting patiently for this and thank you so much for allowing us to be here. So Patty Molina with Mariposa Community Health Center. Suicide Awareness Month is a really important month for people to be aware of and to understand that there are resources out there for people to get and that we need to dismiss the stigma that a lot of people have because it's important to get the help. You need to take care of yourself in all levels of whatever profession you're in. And so there's really significant impacts that this month has for a lot of different people and their families who have gone through this. So we're creating an awareness for the entire month and we're going to have different activities throughout the month that we hope that the community will join us for. They'll all be posted on social media. Just to name one in particular, we are going to have a table at the National Night Out, right? That's what it's called, at Teachea Park. And then we'll also have a walk on the 16th starting at 8 a.m. from City Hall down to the border and back if you'd like to join us as well for that. So thank you so much.

Good, good. Wonderful. If we could have, yeah, let's. Thank you. If we could take a picture at this time if you'd like to come on up, that would be greatly appreciated.

Does anybody wants to say something else, add something else? Thank you. Pat, it would be good when you have the flyers or anybody like share with us so we can see if we can share through Shannon to promote those events.

Yeah, I'm happy to share them with her.

Okay, thank you.

And thank you for all that you do, folks.

Yeah.

But I do, I think it's important to acknowledge that the members that are here with us, Servants of Peace, CEHAC, and CODAC.

Come over here.

CODAC, yes.

You could all introduce yourselves. Yeah, yeah, don't be shy. You do great things for our community.

Good morning, I'm Erin Sol. I'm a community health worker for CEHAC, which is Southeast Arizona Health Education Center. Thank you.

Hello, everybody. My name is Lupita Gonzalez, certified community health worker, also for C-HEC.

Good morning. Elia Felix, certified community health worker for C-HEC.

My name is Alberto Durazo. I'm a counselor and a case manager for Kodak, a behavioral health agency.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Eva Zuniga also representing Blanca Costa Circles of Peace. Thank you so much for this opportunity. This may be routine for all of you but it's something very special something we look forward to as an alliance. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thanks again for all your work.

Okay, with that, we'll go to vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Okay, lastly, under this portion, 1C, do I have a motion to approve September 18th, 2026 as Rotary International District 5500 day? I move. No. Then I will second it.

Just kidding. I'll second.

All right. It's going to be a 2-1 vote. And I will go ahead and read it under comments. Whereas Rotary International is an international service organization comprising 46,000 clubs in more than 200 nations with 1.2 million individual members providing approximately 47 million volunteer hours each year and whose stated purpose is to bring together business, professional, and community leaders to provide humanitarian service. In addition, the Rotary Foundation helps Rotary members to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace by improving health, providing quality education, improving the environment, and alleviating poverty. And whereas Rotary International District 5500 has been created within this larger international organization to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise with more than 50 Rotary clubs and approximately 1,400 members, and Southern Arizona working together in community to be of greater service to those in need throughout Southern Arizona. And whereas District 5500 have joined together to bring Rotarians, Rotary youth, and others to a district conference at the Tubac Golf Resort and Spa, on September 18th and 19, 2026 to share ideas and initiatives for local and global service projects and to build greater awareness of the services that Rotary provides. And whereas District 5500 fosters high ethical standards in all aspects of personal, professional, and community life, and whereas District 5500, part of a global network, values diversity and celebrates the contributions of people of all backgrounds, regardless of their age, ethnicity, race, color, abilities, religion, socioeconomic status, culture, and whereas Rotarians have been anticipating gathering in person to educate, inspire, and engage one another on topics relevant to the Southern Arizona communities they serve, and enjoy learning from one another across varied types of collaborations, and whereas the District 5500 Conference offers Rotarians, Rotary youth, and others a chance to grow together through the shared goals of enhancing mutual collaborations on international, regional, and local humanitarian efforts, as well as exposing the wider world of Rotary to Rotarians interested in providing leadership for Rotary's efforts in the future. Now, therefore, The Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County, Arizona does hereby proclaim September 18th, 2026 as Rotary International District 5500 Day in Tubac, Arizona and encourage all residents to join us in honoring all Rotary clubs in Rotary International District 5500 for their commitment to humanitarian efforts throughout the world to provide service to others, valuing diversity and inclusion, promoting high ethical standards, and advancing world understanding, goodwill, and peace through its fellowship. In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hand and cause the seal of Santa Cruz County to be affixed the second day of September 2026. signed by myself, Vice Chair Luis Carlos Davis, and member Rudy Molera, and future Rotarian, hopefully.

Is that a motion? No, that's not.

Okay, with that, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. Okay, with that, we'll move to... Mr.

Chair. Yes, sir. I miss you saying Davis. Davies? Yeah, you said Davis now.

I apologize. It will not happen again, sir. No disrespect. I apologize. I'm going to go back up to H2. Discussion of possible action to approve and authorize partial release of Substitute Assurance Agreement Number 2025-06067, specific to lots 48 through 61, inclusive, and 63 through 78, inclusive. Two back golf resort development unit number two. Do I have a motion?

Move to approve. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. And now, aye, consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented minus number six? I move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. And last, but certainly not least, Jay, adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Yes, sir.

You had mentioned, I think you mentioned this earlier, and we have a board meeting before then, but we do have a, you had asked me to make sure we have the Santa Cruz County Fair September 18th also coming up. Very good. So I want to make sure we got that. We have a board meeting before that, but I know that you wanted to mention that.

Yes, most definitely. Thank you, kind sir. Hope to see everyone out there. A lot of fun for the family. Okay, with that, do we have a motion?

Move to adjourn?

We did. Did we?

Before I was rudely interrupted.

Yeah, before you were rudely interrupted.