Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Ready to roll. Everyone knows when Terry Withrow puts his shirt on. All right. I'm going to call this regularly scheduled Board of Supervisor meeting to order. The date is August 4th. The time is 9.05 a.m. If I could please ask everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for an invocation from Mike Gunderson from the City Ministry Network.

Ready? Salute.

I pledge allegiance.

Good morning, board, thanks for this opportunity. Heavenly Father, I come before you today grateful for this county and for the people who call Stanislaus home. I thank you for the responsibility you've entrusted to these supervisors, staff, and public servants to speak, to seek the good of the community, especially when the work is hard and the outcomes are not simple. Your word tells us that wisdom is a gift you delight to give. So today, I ask for that wisdom. I ask for wisdom that is clear-headed, courageous, and compassionate. Grant discernment in decisions, patience in disagreement, and humility in leadership. Where there is tension, bring understanding. Where there's weariness, bring strength. Where there is division, plant seeds of peace. I pray especially for those in our county who feel unseen, the struggling family, the unhoused neighbor, the elderly resident, the young person searching for hope. May the choices made in this room reflect a genuine concern for the flourishing of all. Lord, you taught that those who lead are called to serve. Shape our leadership by that truth. Guide every conversation, every vote, and every plan with integrity and love. I entrust this meeting and this community to you. Amen.

All right, we're gonna move on to item four, which is a presentation from the California State Association of Counties, or CSAC Institute graduation. Paul Danchik, the COO with CSAC Community Foundation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Supervisors, CEO Hayes, I want to thank you for your leadership and vision in investing in your people through professional development. We know that professional development works. I'll share a little bit more on how we know that in a second. DeWitt Jones, who is a photographer at the National Geographic, has this great quote. He says, we must celebrate what's right with the world in order to find the energy to fix what's wrong. And today, we come in celebration to recognize those folks that have earned an executive credential through the CSAC Institute. Earning a credential is no easy task. I had the pleasure of working with your leadership team in September of last year to kick off the institute. It's a 10-course program, over 50 hours of instruction. And what I do know is while they're making an investment in themselves in attending the professional development space, they're also working full-time for the county. And I know that through a variety of ways. People who are connected with their cell phones and through other ways throughout the training itself. The idea of the training is to put some ideas on a table around public service governance and leadership and then be able to apply it right away. And we know folks take it back to their teams. So this is how we know professional development works, through short and long-term studies. On the short-term studies, it's getting a sense on how do folks interact with the classes? What do they take with them? What are they walking away with? Excuse me. From long-term studies through alumni studies saying, hey, what sticks with you? And over the course of the institute itself, the program started in 2008. And since that time, we've had over 2,000 alumni. And the 31 folks that we're recognizing today are joining that larger network across the state. With that, I'm happy to answer questions.

Are you still associated with any school? Before, we used to be associated with some different learning institutions.

Yeah, so CSAC is all in-house. Our instructors are coming from three different areas. They're coming from the academic community, they're coming from those within public service, and they're coming from consultants. So no direct relationship with a specific university.

I'm very proud. So I'm going to come down and help you hand those out if it's okay.

Yeah, please do.

Any other questions?

Great. With that, let's recognize the 31 graduates. John Bendicourt from probation. And graduates, when you come up, you'll receive a credential. And if you can stick around for a group photo afterwards. Individual pictures?

You keep going. We're just going to do one afterwards. OK, great.

Tara Chumley, Parks and Recreation.

Lieutenant Brock Condon, Sheriff's Office. You just keep raging.

I feel like I'm photobombing your pictures over here. Ed Quaywar from Community Service Agency. Sarah Denton from Library. Heather Duvall, Health Services Agency. Doris Foster, Workforce Development. Brooke Freeman, Sheriff's Office. John Tender Gill, from the Assistant Ag Commissioner. Carmaitha Guzman from Stancera. Erica Ignacio from the Executive Office. Jennifer Jaquez from the Chief Executive Office. Bettina Jamison from the Community Services Agency. Jennifer Jenison, Public Defender. Andy Johnson, General Services Agency. Sami Karim, Children and Family Commissioner. Eric Levmeyer, Office of Emergency Services. Rob Coslivi, Department of Environmental Resources. Lieutenant Fidel Lederos, Sheriff. Sarah Lewis, Assessor. Donna Linder, Clerk Recorder. Carrie McGee, Behavioral Health and Recovery Services. Leo Mendoza, Community Services Agency. Carmen Rio, Planning. Shaksham Rana, Behavioral Health and Recovery Services. Kim Sang, Planning. Alicia Sanders, Health Services Agency. Delores Soberanina, Treasurer, Tax Collector. Deborah Thasher, Health and Human Services. Talia Valdivia. Oh my gosh, Valdivia, Auditor of Control. Michael Walker, probation. And Josh Woolworth, chief executive office. Congratulations, graduates. Supervisors, would you like to join us? Great. Graduates, group photo.

Thank you. Can you get us? One, two, three. Thank you. Thank you very much.

So the best part about that program, it's voluntary by our employees who want to further their educational and different components. I did take classes. I was seated in January of 2009. I started taking classes and graduated from the Institute in 2010. I think it took me about a year. And coming off the farm and the way you The way you had a discussion was you yelled louder than the other person. And so it teaches you a lot about leadership skills, about budgeting, about building coalitions. And so I got a lot out of it. And I so much appreciate CSAC has continued this for what year in your 15th, 16th year? Something like 17th year, 18th year. There we go. I got my math. They didn't teach me math there. All right. So very good. So now we're going to move on. The Board of Supervisors continues to offer multiple ways for residents to engage in today's meetings, including participating by telephone, attending in person, or submitting written comments in advance. Those attending in person can register to speak electronically by visiting join.stanislauscounty.com. or by submitting the public comment cards as has been our practice. Agendas are now published in both English and Spanish. The modifications are designed to reduce barriers to participation and to make it easier for everyone to stay informed, engaged, and involved. We continue to appreciate your patience as we fine-tune new tools and resources. Soon the county will continue expanding public awareness through multilingual outreach, digital communications, community organizations and other local partners so more residents know how to participate in board meetings. I'm going to move on to item number five, which is the public comment period. We don't have any written comments for public comment. I'm going to open the public comment period. And before I do, I'm going to first ask Supervisor Chance Condit to present a certificate.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. You know, civic engagement, volunteerism is at the cornerstone of every public servant. And through this office, I've had the pleasure of meeting many outstanding public servants throughout Stanislaus County, one of which is here today and who unfortunately is moving away from our community. But I do want to call up Candace Weyrock. who is an absolute rock star in the community of Patterson, which is on the west side of our county. And I've gotten to know Candace over the last six years. She has been a phenomenal advocate for community. She's always quick to serve, always quick to say yes, and offer her time and services for the community. community of Patterson, whether it's through the Chamber of Commerce or whether it's through Love Patterson. But she has been a pillar of our community out there. And she has made a lasting impact that will last far beyond all of us here today. And you're going to be sorely missed. We hope that it is just for a short time and you obviously come back and venture back to the community of Patterson, but I did want to make sure that you were honored today for your outstanding service and dedication to the Patterson community. I'm just going to read this proclamation and I'll let you say a few short words. Stanislaus County is honored to commend Candace Weyrock for her exceptional service and lasting contributions to the Patterson community. Through her years of volunteerism and leadership with organizations including Love Patterson and the Patterson Wesley Chamber of Commerce, Candace has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to strengthening the community and improving the lives of others. Her generosity, compassion, and dedication have made a meaningful and lasting impact on Patterson. As she begins a new chapter, we extend our sincere appreciation for her many contributions and wish her continued success and happiness in the years ahead. Thank you so much, Candace. We appreciate you. Congratulations.

I was tricked into coming here today, probably because they know I never would have come if I knew that this was happening. But Patterson has my heart, and it's always going to have my heart. And the community there is so special, and I felt like God kind of put me on earth to advocate. for my neighbors and i got to do that through love patterson and advocate for the small business community through the chamber and i can tell you it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be that in patterson and i stopped harassing you guys i don't know if you noticed i stuck to patterson so you're welcome Yeah, I only harass chance now, so you're welcome. But so it has just been an honor. And I remember sitting in these seats during COVID time. And I never in a million years would have thought that six years from that time, I'd be standing here with this. So this is such an honor. And I just really appreciate it. And there's a few people who are in trouble.

Candace we wish you the best in your next endeavors and you didn't harass us you were informing us right? Thank you. Okay so we will now begin the public comment period. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on matters that are not already on today's agenda. When the clerk calls your name or phone number, please state your name for the record. Direct your comments to the board through the chair. And to ensure everyone has the opportunity to be heard, please limit your remarks to five minutes. Unless a different time limit is announced for special circumstances, the clerk is going to alternate between speakers who are in chambers and those who are calling in. Let's get started.

Thank you. As we get started, I will mark for the record that there are no registered callers at this time. First public comment card is from Ron McMurtry.

Welcome, Ron. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Board, Ron McMurtry here. I have three items, so I hope I can get through them all. The first item is I wanted to follow up on some comments from Ms. Lopez about the sheriff's speech or presentation he's going to make on September 1st. I think she proposed some things that are not possible. Like, you know, if the sheriff's going to go out in the community, he is going to have his piece. So that is not going to happen. So I want to make sure the public knows that that kind of, I know members of the public that are Hispanic or migrant workers are going to, you know, be nervous. But I'm going to ask, please have some courage and let's have some faith in this process. But I would like to request, if the board is not requesting that, the sheriff do some kind of PR campaign and try to meet folks and get feedback.

That's it for that one.

The second item is just a news item I want to let you know about. I don't know if you heard of K2, which is referred to spice. It's a strange thing because it's meant to be a substitute for marijuana, but it's technically kind of different. It's legally what they're doing is they're creating a synthetic compound that that they kinda advertise as marijuana, but it isn't, and so they get around some of the legal rules. And I don't know if we're having trouble in this county, but the accounts are that this is a, I know it sounds like hyperbole, but kind of a demonic substance. The effects are never good. They are very dark. And so people that consume this are going to have more problems. And I want to suggest, I don't know what the rules are about counties, if they can independently do any ordinances restricting certain substances to be sold wherever these are being sold. I don't know where. Okay, and then the third item is I was very concerned about the woman and her father who came here last time regarding the flooding at Roselle and Clarabelle. I'd like to suggest when members of the public come up and have a kind of a complicated case, Maybe we have a caseworker kind of follow through, and this is in, sorry, Supervisor B. Condit, but that was in District 1, so that they don't come up here twice. We have someone that can guide them through, okay? Like if there's a crime, something, have the sheriff investigate, okay? If we have a North County corridor issue with that woman, that she be guided through the process of maybe getting relocated. I'm very concerned about that because these folks come up and then they think they're not being listened to. And some of these guys don't have the means to know, oh, we should talk to the city or we should, they don't know what the departments are. They need a little guidance. And so maybe a caseworker one per district for one case until it gets kind of resolved. Anyway, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good morning melt Good morning chair board members staff community members melt tree Weiler. I've lived my entire life in Stanislaus County Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. Have you lost your way? Being a rational human being requires forming accurate beliefs based on evidence, choosing effective actions to reach goals, and managing cognitive biases and emotions, the core pillars of rationality. Rationality is seeking the true facts, weighing evidence honestly, and updating your beliefs when you discover new proofs. Instrumental rationality is picking the best and most effective paths to achieve what you want and fulfill your goals. Self-awareness—noticing when your feelings, fears, and fast-action snap judgments are taking over your thought process. Is getting rich and becoming wealthy the most important goal in a human's lifetime? Do we humans have a responsibility to our children and descendants? Yes, humans generally have a strong moral, legal, and social responsibility to their children and descendants. Their duty comes from the creating of a new life, the deep dependence of children, and the need to protect the future of our families and our planet. Biblical views on wealth are not a requirement. Scripture never commands believers to pursue riches. Instead, Jesus warned against storing up treasures on earth. Danger of money. The Bible teaches that the love of money is the root of evil and that wealth can put a person's heart away from spirituality. Focus on contentment. Believers are encouraged to be content with basic needs rather than striving to become wealthy. I hope that Mr. Dave and the Building Industry Association understand what I just shared with you. Freedom and democracy is sharing the core values of individual liberty, human equality, and rule of law. These principles ensure that the people have a voice in society while protecting their personal rights, shared core values, individual liberty, personal autonomy, and freedom to think, speak, and worship. Human equality is treating all people with equal respect and granting them the same rights. Rule of law. is that applies to everyone equally and limits the power of government. Justice makes sure that the laws are fair and that everyone is treated the exact same way under those laws. Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors and staff, some of you have been falling short. The corruption uncovered in StanCog is a prime example. Not fighting or taking responsibility for our children and descendants is a prime example. Some of you have been taken over by the Building Industry Association. You have not been fighting to save the best farmland on earth that we have here in Stanislaus County. This is your responsibility to the residents of Stanislaus County and to our children and our descendants. Please, Go to work for our children and our descendants. Thank you.

Milton, are you referring to LAFCO instead of STANCOG?

I was referring to the corruption in...

Okay. I know. LAFCO. You show up at all those meetings. LAFCO, though. Farmland Protection.

No. I'm talking about what occurred in Stan Cog and how you people should have been on top of that. You people should have been on top of that. That is ridiculous what happened to Stan Cog. The corruption there is unacceptable. Thank you. Thank you, Mel.

Sue and Tom Chaffee.

Good morning, Sue.

Good morning. Hi, Terry. Please forgive my husband's cap. He's been treating for cancer, so he's got lots of stuff going on on his head, so he keeps it covered. So sorry to have to keep that on. Thank you very much for listening. We come to you today with three issues.

Sue, could you grab the mic and just pull it down? There you go. Thank you. Okay.

We come to you today with three issues that we need help with. Number one, our next-door neighbors at 1329 North Carpenter Road. What did I say? Thank you. 1329. We live at 1329. The neighbors are at 1321. Forgive me. I'm a little nervous. The next-door neighbors to us are building out and advertising and selling nursery plants, a retail enterprise on a residential property. It's been turned into code violations and we're waiting for help. It's been two months. We've heard nothing. I finally called Lane Avila and he gave me some update on what they'd be processing and that they're working on a citation for them. Two to three weeks ago, they placed a porta potty on top of our shared irrigation ditch. And it's on the property line. The rules for port-a-potty placement state that placement must be greater than 50 feet from a water source. It's on top of a water source. And eight plus feet from a property line. It's on the property line. So the neighbors told Carl Quinn from DES, and I updated that to Mr. Costlevy that was here today, that it was dry and not being used. However, I have photos of it being emptied. So it's in use. And the risk of sewage spill and the unpermitted placement on our property line is inappropriate. Karen Johnson from the public health department in charge of communicable diseases tried to get MID and DES to work together to resolve the issue. Neither one of them would do anything. I suggested a simple call to the owner It's on an acre of land. All she has to do is move it off our water source to prevent a communicable disease issue. I'm a 50 plus year public health nurse as well as an RN that worked at the bedside for 50 years. So it is a sewage spillage issue that needs to be attended to. Nothing's been done. The third issue is the people at 1329 North Carpenter Road 21 I'm sorry keep saying it backwards forgive me Thank you Nailed our irrigation gate shut We have appealed to everyone we can appeal to We went on property to say welcome spring of night 24 and they threatened us That if we ever went on their property it's a shared easement and that was put in place in 41 with a handshake. So we have to go pay a lawyer $375 an hour to try to make that a shared easement. We have used it for 50 years. We've been on that property since 1976. Consistently and constantly use that irrigation ditch. We maintained it up to that spring and she has nailed shut our ability to access our water. We've repeatedly complained, contacted Jason Ward at MID, who's in charge of the irrigation ditch, and he's interacted with the owner multiple times about the irrigation, but won't do anything at this point. She was blocking our access to water and it was going to flood her house. So Jason went out to talk to her. The ditch tender, Charles Birdsong, has been wonderful in trying to teach these folks because they have no idea about irrigation ditches nor respect for them. We moved to that acre in 1976. We bought it in 1978. We've grown a rural urban forest on that community property. with the water from the irrigation ditch. It now has trees that are at least three stories tall. It's an elm grove. We're trying to create a legacy forest out of it so that no one else will be able to cut trees down. These neighbors also took down 30 years of prime elm growth in a day and a half with chainsaws. Nobody would stop them. Nobody would help us. So I just want to let you know that... Uh-oh, that's my five minutes. Sorry. Quickly, we came to town because my husband's teacher has his master's in special ed, and he started the special ed in the public schools for the state of California here in Modesto. Prior to that, children with mental illness were housed in state facilities and not in their homes with their children. Since 1976 in California, we've been able to provide those services at their homes. I've exhausted all levels of the state and local Terry, you know what we've gone through because we've been in touch many times, and you're wonderful, Jennifer. I will get a formal complaint to you as soon as I can. My husband's on his fifth time with different kinds of cancers and a three-year battle. We're off to get radiation for 33 times next. Our forest is a gift to this community.

Sue, I need you to wrap it up.

Okay, we've worked to create this forest and we need some help maintaining it and help figuring out what to do with these neighbors who won't do anything they're asked. Thank you, Terry.

These are great people. It was great. We met. This is one of the good things about this job is my wife and I are out to dinner one night. And Sue's sitting there. And we strike up a conversation. And for an hour, we realize all the same people that we knew and just very good people. And so we're going to do everything we can to help you. I know we're trying to right now try to resolve this for you. And I can see Rob is standing in the back. Cause to talk to you again here with regard to the issues. And we'll figure this out.

Thank you so much. I'm sorry to take so much of your time. But thank you for listening. Thank you guys.

Next speaker is Kathleen Ritchie.

Welcome.

Thank you. My first time speaking here, so. Good morning, Chair and members of the Board. Chance and I know each other well, actually. I'm from the City of Patterson. My name is Kat Ritchie and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys today. So I'm here to ask the county to get ahead of an issue that is rapidly changing communities across the country, data centers. I don't know if other people have already spoken here before, but I was one of the voices that helped Patterson move forward in their moratorium, giving us an opportunity to fix our zoning. I've looked deep into your zoning, our zoning, because I'm part of county, and we actually have a lot of gaps as well, and it's something we wouldn't think about. So essentially all of our zoning was done prior to AI data centers being built. So when we look at the things that we require for somebody to build an AI data center, they can actually do it today in our county. They can do it under the basis of a warehouse or those sort of things. The criteria that needs to be built around that is an absolute change of our zones. So in Patterson, they have started that process. How much they've done, I don't actually know. Modesto has reached out and they're looking at what they need to do. What I believe strongly needs to happen with county is I think you need to create a commission for all cities to work together because the studies that are required in order to change your zoning are not inexpensive, but they can all be used to to be used if taken to court. Which at some point we will. Why? Because TID is one of the least expensive energy sources. And so therefore our county and our cities are a target. A substantial target. By the way, I'm in the tech industry and I have actually built some data centers or been a part of. So I do understand what they're kind of looking for and it's us. So I'm asking you to please create a commission. Please work with your cities. Find the right people to help get through this process quickly and have everybody adapt the same type of zoning so that way it's defendable.

Thank you. Thank you, Kat. John, do you want to speak on 7.1 or public comment?

Actually, I do. I am here to speak on that, but a friend of mine showed up and was just honored and I wanted to recognize Candace. Oh, let me, I represented that part of the county in Congress for just a couple years and let me tell you, Candace is wonderful. She showed up at one of my Patterson Town Halls in good choice chance, good choice on Candace, and introduced me to the Erin Brockovich stuff, hexavalent chromium, right? And I was like, oh my God, you know, first you're like, okay, is this real or is this not? Because, you know, we get all types, right? And it was very real. And I went back and studied it and pulled papers and it was just incredible evidence. And Candace was in the forefront of it for several years before I was ever out in Patterson doing town halls, just demonstrating the need for this county to do everything it can to get treated surface water delivered to as many cities as possible. because you can wellhead treatment X, Y, and Z, and then UV and Q and R come up, and you've got to wellhead treat those two. So Candice, good job. I heard you. I think we all need to hear you. And I couldn't be happier than to just stumble into seeing you be honored today. You will have to explain why in the heck you're leaving. I'm not happy about that. I hope others will be inspired by Candace to step up in meetings and come well-informed, forward-thinking, and sincere in purpose to address important issues as Candace has. But treated surface water, Candace. I'm with you. Thank you. Thank you.

That's very nice. Thank you. Okay, so that's all we have for speaker cards for public comment. Would anyone else like to come up and speak during public comment? Feel free to come forward. Yeah, come on out. Of course you.

So just to piggyback on both of the last two commenters, which that was a pleasant surprise to see you. I'm very excited that you were here. I want to encourage all of you. I got a little crazy on the internet and was like screaming at Patterson because I feel like sometimes I care more about clean water and our community than 90% of the people that live there. So I get a little riled up sometimes about that. But I want to encourage all of you to look into watching any of the recent podcasts that Erin Brockovich has done. It is terrifying, one, the direction that cities have gone that have, unbeknownst to them, gotten a data center basically overnight because of those same zoning laws where they're going in as a warehouse. And then what goes on inside the warehouse after the fact is what is causing and wrecking havoc on these communities. As Chance said, my hope is that someday God will lead our family back to Patterson. Right now, for my husband's job, it's leading us to the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains, so I guess I can't complain that much, but I don't want Patterson, I don't want Stanislaus County to ever become the wasteland and the dead lands that these communities become after becoming data centers. And I also don't want to continue seeing our children get diagnosed with cancer because of how high the chromium six is in Patterson. And I just want to bring that to your attention, obviously. We just heard a little bit about the chromium six, but on the drive over here I was actually looking up because our new town has like almost no chromium six in the water, which I was like yes I've been fighting for 12 years for clean water and the community I'm moving to does not have chromium six in the water Which is a blessing, but then I looked at Patterson's numbers again, and it's like 863 times the amount that would cause cancer one in a million which is like gut wrenching to think about. And then I started looking at some other cities. It's not happening in Newman. So there's something definitely wrong in Patterson that is causing its chromium six to be so high. And it's killing our babies and it's killing children. It's causing miscarriages. It's doing all the horrible things that you expect a cancer causing mineral in your drinking water to do or not mineral. I shouldn't call it that. A cancer-causing chemical in your drinking water. So I just want you guys to find a podcast. I don't care which one. If you like funny, then watch the Theo Vaughn one. But watch a podcast with Erin Brockovich because she opens your eyes to data centers and to drinking water. And I just really think that everyone... should have to do that little bit of homework. Watch a one hour podcast just to get a small glimpse into the life of someone who's advocated for environmental things. And I'm not like a typical tree hugger. That's not me. You guys knew I was here fighting against all kinds of things during the COVID time. That is not me. But I also think that we are supposed to be stewards of God's earth and doing that to our communities is not the answer. So I think that's going to be my last ever comment at a Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting. Are you guys? This is great. Thank you so much. I feel so honored and I have nothing but wonderful things to say about all of you. It's been a pleasure, you know, being a part of this community for as long as I have the last 12 years. So thank you.

Thanks, Candace. All right. Anyone else for public comment? All right. I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment period. We're going to move on to the consent calendar. Before the board takes action on the consent calendar, there are comments. Are there any comments from anyone first on the dais? Want to pull any on? Okay. We do have one request from Ron McMurtry for B5. Any other items from anyone in the audience want to speak on? All right. Seeing none, I'll take a motion for all excluding B5. All right. We have a motion and a second. Ms. Buck? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Ron, you can speak on B5 approval to introduce and waive the first reading of the ordinance amending section 2030-040 Stanislaus County Code to revise the membership of the Treasury Oversight Committee.

Thank you once again, Mr. Chairman. Romney Murtry here. I just, yeah, you know, it's an oversight committee. I understand that. And I understand the point of, yeah, we need someone more from the public. So it's good that, you know, make sure we're getting enough things. So my question is... Even if it's full, well, if we include the treasurer as actually one of the voting members, that there would be four members. So I'm kind of curious what the quota is. I feel like a small committee like this, you really need to have all four people there. And if we do, wouldn't having the treasurer be a voting member complicate things, since there's now going to be an even number of members? So that's my first question for the treasurer.

I'm looking to see. Do it afterwards. Yeah, that's his question. Okay.

Do you have other questions? No, nothing.

I'm looking at this. Do you have other questions on this item?

B5. I'm doing B. Oh, no, not on this one. Oh. Is this in B5? Or, sorry. This is B5. C3. So that's for David.

C3. Okay. So go ahead. I already did C3. So, all right. Go ahead and give me your comments on C3. It's all right.

They're just comments.

Give me the comments on C3.

I'm sorry. C3. I just want to see if I check with...

It's clearly stated on my paper that you wanted C3, so that's my total.

Yeah, and mine are comments. I'm not asking to pull it or anything, so that's fine. But I just want clarification if I understood. So it was the chip seal, and I remember getting the vehicles that were going to do the chip seal, and I just want clarification that this contract is just for material then for the chip seal. Is that correct? And my other thing is one of the areas that I am particularly concerned concerned about is Golden State Boulevard south of Keys Road. That's a horrible part of the road. Is that road too far gone to do this kind of remediation or will we need to pave? I think I know the answers, but I would like Director Lehman to clarify. Thank you.

Chair, while they're approaching, I'll let you know that I do have speakers on the phone now as well for consent items that have just been registered to speak.

Okay.

Good morning, Chairman Chiesa. Supervisors, Mr. Hayes, Mr. Bose, Donna Riley, Stanislaus County Treasurer Tax Collector. Actually, I'm kind of excited about being able to talk about this issue today, and so I'm glad there was a comment. It gives me an opportunity to talk about some changes that we are making to the Treasury Oversight Committee. The Treasury Oversight Committee was put in place following the bankruptcy in Orange County. I think that was 1995. Pardon me, 1994. It's been in place ever since. The treasurer was not made part of it at the beginning because the treasurer did not feel it was necessary to have the committee. So while it was mandated by the state, the treasurer at that time chose to not be a formal part of the committee. So we've moved forward like that ever since. And I think that that's something that really needs, the treasurer has been at these meetings. The treasurer is the one who leads the meetings. It should be stated that the treasurer is in fact part of the committee. But it's an oversight committee. It's not an activity committee. There is no actual voting. It's about oversight. It's about responsibility. responding to the board, if there's questions, if there are things that come up, I feel that you need a representative to be able to come back to you, and that's why instead of having a member of the public, which heretofore has never, as far as I know, communicated with the Board of Supervisors, I want you to choose someone to send to the committee someone that will be able to report back to you about in depth, but it's not a management committee and they don't actually have any votes.

Okay.

All right.

I just appreciate it. I know you're turning out here. You're calling it a day here. And I appreciate it. Five months. Five months left. And I appreciate this. Plenty of things that you're doing to try to make sure that everything is set before you leave. And I just appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. All right. Dave.

Good morning, Chair Chiesa, Board of Supervisors, Dave Lehman, San Francisco County Public Works Director. The oil contract always includes spreading. So Tally Oil will provide two spreader trucks and they have tanks that they'll fill up off of and they spread oil at the direction of public works crews. And so they provide the oil and then our guys run the chip spreader. And then we sweep and roll, and so we do everything, but we don't own those trucks. And we buy the oil and rent the trucks with the driver from Talley. And then the second question was Golden State, south of Turlock? No, it was north of Turlock.

Oh, north of Turlock. From Keys Road south to Taylor Road.

Oh, that's not in as bad of shape as south of Turlock. I think probably that section would be right that the part south of Turlock is old State Highway and it's a mess I would think with prep and chip would be appropriate from Taylor to keys that that's something that we could could do a more of a maintenance project and The reason why Golden State, and I'll just bonus answer, south of Turlock hasn't been done is because this is a project. But I think we can fix the bit between Taylor and Keys.

All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. So we do have, I'm going to let the CEO comment on a couple of people that are online.

Yeah. So I do want to bring to your attention, and as mentioned by our clerk, that we do have two members of the public registered to speak on our telephonic system. It's unclear about exactly when they registered, but it appears it may have been right about the time that you were taking up the consent calendar. So out of an abundance of caution, we would encourage you to receive those public comments from the two members of the public.

We're sure. We love technology, and it doesn't always work perfectly. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and acknowledge. And please tell them to unmute when they do to say which item they're going to be speaking on.

So the first speaker that we're going to entertain telephonically is Natasha Ryan. And she has registered to speak on eight items. Public comment, item B4, B5, B6, B7, And those are the ones that I can see at this time. I'm going to now unmute Ms. Ryan.

I can hear you.

Hi, how are you?

Great.

I just basically wanted to say that I don't think that anything should be approved for any type of extra spending until you guys can start to fix your system that's right here in San Pablo County, really. And I'm pretty sure that you guys at least know my name because, I mean, I was doing a couple of agencies right here in this county but it's a lot of talk so you're not in any lawsuits right now but you really should think about really should think about like what your motives and incentives are before you do things and then you should adjust that and what i mean is like i i live in pro i don't even know what you guys are talking about but everybody's all hyped up on your little data pass center thing right but yet nobody knows that you guys have a whole data center downtown right in the middle of the mall So, like, I don't know. I don't even want to comment on all the rest, and I won't even bother or wait any more time. I'm just, I'm going to say, if I was you guys, I would start with your courthouse first. That's where I would start. Really. I'm going to tell you right now, I sat in court and witnessed a woman tell a judge that a cop raped her, and he sent everybody to recess, and I didn't even see that lady again, and I came back after the recess. She was on. So, and then they just dumped her out on Waterford because I seen her like two weeks later walking out there and she looked like some homeless cougar lady. But I'm just telling you that it's, you know, you guys can only get away with doing shit for so long. Really. And I've lived in this town for 20 years and I was a Jewish witness. I've been baptized Mormon. You guys are probably thinking, oh my gosh, she's the devil. No. No, no, no. I'm just telling you right now, like, my kids have went to Medusa High School. My son, my son, Went to Medeco High School because I had to live on the West Side for about four years. And I'm telling you right now, because of that school and not even just the kids, the schools, my son didn't even start high school till for three years afterwards, but he graduated. He graduated this year and it was for Turlock because Turlock did that. They helped him. But you guys really should start looking into your system that you already got in place. before you start wanting to build and make new buildings. I mean, like half of these buildings are empty. Like what? I don't know. And that's, I don't want to bother you guys anymore. That's just my, I just had to say that because I've been trying to send emails, papers, trying to get people to be in front of me, in front of a judge, but nobody can show up. Oh, and another thing, your healthcare organizations, Health Net and Health Plan of South King County, you need to check them. really unless you guys are also you know in on doing fraud medicaid fraud and then like illegal immigration all tied into one like come on i'm telling you right now i i am showing those those two people though and you're coming and i'm not going to stop you guys need to check them i requested my medical file from birth because unfortunately my mother lost me at four so i've been on medical support till now and um it's really crazy and i i'm going to school for medical assistance so i know what i'm reading And I know how many times I've been to the doctor, which is how many kids I have. Five, that's it. So with that said, I felt like if I tell you guys this, you guys at least know that there might be a problem somewhere. You guys might need to look at some of these places and not trust these people that you have in position to do the job because they're not all doing the job. So with that said, you guys can mute me or whatever and continue about your meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Natasha. Next up.

The next speaker is Michael. Michael, it's your turn to speak.

Hello, Board. Thank you for giving me this time to speak to you. I know that you're busy. I'm not speaking on behalf of my employer. I'm taking vacation today. I just wanted to I am a technologist, and I adore technology and what it can do to help our community. However, I am concerned about some recent reports of AI data center proposals coming up, in particular the one that was just posted about Councilman Ritchie asking for comment about a possible construction center on the FMC site on Graphics Drive near the Kansas exit, the Kansas 99 exit. Typically, these companies will try to silence any opposition by making board members and supervisor council members sign NDAs so that they cannot even talk about the projects. that are essentially using a lot of water and energy possibly rising costs for local community members on being able to buy water being able to buy energy causing environmental damage through polluting water as we heard about from other speakers earlier today also there's a lot of sound pollution constant sound and noise generated there have been reports uh if you look at these data centers from uh using thermal imaging, you can see that they actually pollute quite a bit. They might look like they're not doing much, but they actually pump out quite a lot of contaminants into the air. This is a top level voter issue. Both people on red and blue don't want these things in their communities typically. And if they do, then that's okay. We just want to make sure that there's not any undemocratic decisions being made about our city's fate without anybody being in the know. So really all I'm asking for the for the board here is just for you to declare that you have not and will not sign an NDA in regards to working with any data center construction projects. Just so that way everybody knows that you're free to speak about the things that are going on in our community and that it's not going to be the case possibly that you will be forced to stay silent or to keep secrets.

All right. Thank you very much. Michael?

No one else in the queue.

Okay. So we're going to continue working on our technology to make sure that we know when people get in the queue and if you make it. But anyways, we showed a little bit of grace today for sure. So we still have to deal with item B5 on the consent calendar?

Motion to approve.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Moving on to item 7, approval to enter into a professional services agreement with GeoSyntec Consultants Inc. for a third party technical review of the Groundwater Use Management Program, the development and the implementation of the Groundwater Use Management Program Action Plan. in an amount not to exceed $495,973. Kristi McKinnon and Rob Coslevy will be presenting. Maybe Rob. Good morning.

Good morning, honorable board members, CEO Hayes, Council Bowes, Chair Kiesa.

Is that better? Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Christine McKinnon, Water Resources Manager with the Department of Environmental Resources Groundwater Division. I'm here seeking approval of an agreement with GeoSynTech Consultants Incorporated for a third party technical review of the groundwater use management program and development and implementation of a groundwater use management plan on behalf of the department. environmental resources. Stanislaus County is the management area steward and responsible for developing an action plan for the non-district east management area within the Modesto sub basin to initiate groundwater pumping reductions in this area. Completing these actions will enable the department to maintain compliance with the department's sustainable groundwater management obligations under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and the Modesto Sub-Basin Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Executing the agreement will allow staff to follow the board's direction received earlier this year in January to hire a third party consultant to complete a review of the groundwater use management program for the Modesto groundwater sub basin and to develop and implement an action plan to initiate reductions in groundwater pumping in the non-district east management area. In addition, as proposed, this project will directly contribute to upholding the vision, mission, values, and priorities of Stanislaus County. The Groundwater Use Management Program Action Plan for the Modesto Subbasin Non-District East Management Area has three main components. The first is the third party review that is necessary to evaluate this program and a technical report submitted by EKI Environment and Water on behalf of some landowners in the non-district east. A proposed groundwater allocation groundwater allocation demand management framework by the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers Groundwater Association, GSA, and provide a recommendation which will be the basis for approving the action plan. The third is to support the department by facilitating a landowner and stakeholder work group that will function to support the department's development of the plan for approval by the GSA by November 1st, 2026, and to begin implementation of the action plan by January 31st, 2027. The Groundwater Use Management Program allocates the Modesto Subbasin's sustainable yield or sustainable groundwater supply to four different management areas within the subbasin. Stanislaus County is the management area steward for the out-of-district and unincorporated areas of the subbasin, and we call those the non-district east and the non-district west management areas shown on the screen in the eastern and western portions of the subbasin. The other two management areas are the Oakdale Irrigation District and the Modesto Irrigation District management areas. It's important to note that the City of Riverbank is within the non-district West. However, the City is responsible for oversight within its own area of jurisdiction just within the City. The non-district east area is the primary focus of this action plan, and that is because of its reliance on mostly groundwater, almost all groundwater, continuously declining water levels, and amount of necessary demand reduction, which has been estimated at 59,600 acre feet, to be achieved in order to meet the sub-basin sustainability goals by 2042. The department issued a request for proposal on March 23rd, 2026 to initiate the consultant procurement process. Four firms submitted proposals, including GeoSynTech Consultants Incorporated, Zanjero LLC, TriHydro Corporation, and Larry Walker & Associates. The proposals were scored and evaluated based on experience, qualifications, project understanding, technical proposal, and cost, according to the county procurement policy. A letter of intent to award was issued to GeoSynTech on June 4th, 2026. And through contract negotiations, the agreement was limited to only phase one work, which is required through June 30th, 2027. I'd like to now turn the presentation over to Len Mason from GeoSynTech, who will introduce the project team and walk through the phase one project approach, which includes this work necessary to meet our upcoming deadlines.

Thank you, Kristi, and thank you, board members, for having me here today. So my name is Len Mason. I'm a senior geologist with GeoSynTech Consultants. I'm based in the Bay Area. I asked my colleague and longtime mentor and associate Mike Tietze from Formation Environmental to join us today to also help speak to the board, the supervisors, based on his experience working in this area. So today I just wanted to focus on give you an overview of our approach and the items we'll deliver in the phase one action plan and groundwater accounting platform rollout. So I'll talk about our approach. I'll go into a little bit of the independent groundwater use management plan technical review, discuss the phase one action plan and the groundwater accounting platform rollout and provide an overview of our proposed schedule. So the project team is, we're composed of three different firms. GeoSynTech, we will serve as the project management and project lead. We'll take the lead on the action plan development, public outreach, and provide some strategic, senior strategic advisement. Our partners will be Formation Environmental. They'll be leading the third party technical review and also with Mike Tietze providing senior strategic advisement and then Environmental Science Associates will be developing the groundwater accounting platform. They have a program in place and they'll be developing it and customizing it to the east or the non-district area east. We put this team together based We've worked together for a long time. Mike and I were former colleagues at Formation. He's been a long advisor for me or mentor to me. And we have experience working together on similar problems in nearby basins, including the Turlock Subbasin for East Turlock, helping them develop their demand management program. Here's just an overview of our org chart. At the top of it is Stanislaus County. I'll be serving as the project manager. With that, we have one of my colleagues, Mark Hanna, will be serving as project director to provide some high-level strategic oversight and guidance. And then we have two strategic advisors, Mike Tietze from Formation and Amer Hussein, who's also from GeoSynTech. We've broken the project up into individual service areas. The Groundwater Use Management Plan Review, largely led by Formation Environmental, supported by Geosyntec. We have the Action Plan Development that'll largely take from the Independent Third Party Review, build on that with an ad hoc group, and I'll be leading that. ESA will be leading our groundwater accounting allocation program and developing the groundwater accounting platform. And our approach will really highly focus and leverage public outreach and engagement with the stakeholders and landowners. So just to give an overview of our approach, we're gonna start with an independent technical review of the Groundwater Use Management Plan. And the objective of this is really to improve the transparency and understanding of the sustainable yield calculations, how the allocation was developed and will be distributed, and reduce, help reduce any uncertainty and make sure that we're using, coming with the best data to develop this program. As I mentioned, we will really be stakeholder focused. We want to make sure that the action plan will be leveraging what we've learned from our experience in other areas. But we want this to be a local action plan that's developed through the ad hoc group. The consultant team will really act as facilitators of the ad hoc working group, bringing our expertise and our experience on similar challenges to make sure that it has the necessary components. and that the program that we develop is technically sound and is defensible. Based on our experience, what we proposed was a phased approach that's built up over time. And from our experience, this will lead to the greatest success of developing a program, creating the buy-in, and then making sure that it's implementable and people are engaging with it. So at the first part, what our goals will be is we'll really just start with the foundational rules, kind of lower reach items so we can deliver a functional groundwater accounting platform by that January 2027 deadline. With that, we'll also have a framework that will allow for program and expansion and adaptability as we gain a better understanding, there's greater buy-in, and the data understanding and the conditions evolve over time so we can meet those evolving needs. So to get on to the independent groundwater use management plan technical review, I just want to kind of give a brief overview of our objectives and why we think why it's needed and why the county staff has asked for this aspect. The first thing is to clarify the basis of allocations. We're gonna assess if the demand reduction is reasonably tied to the basic conditions, the sustainability indicators and the GSP milestones. We'll begin evaluating if the allocations are equally apportioned across the basin. And the main goals is to help reduce and explain any uncertainties to stakeholders to get people more comfortable with what the management program is directing and the reductions needed. So the review will really focus on the model performance, the groundwater and surface water model performance, to make sure that it's suitable for informing management decisions. We'll be looking at some of the questions that were brought up in terms of the model inputs, boundary conditions. In addition to this, we propose to perform an independent baseline groundwater demand characterization that can kind of ground truth what the model's showing us and give us a start of what the historical use has been, maybe reductions that have already happened, and allow us to chart a path forward and at least use data that can be measured against performance criteria moving forward. And then we'll also evaluate if allocations can be achieved and are aligned with the sustainability goals. We want to really highly involve stakeholders, so we've included two coordination meetings with the county stakeholders and the associated consultants to explain our process, provide updates on the progress, and then to gather feedback and be able to address questions and concerns that may arise. Here is an overview of our schedule. We'll begin with the technical review of the GWMP. In parallel, we'll be beginning to developing the action plan using frameworks that we've developed in other basins, but then bringing them to and working with an ad hoc committee to vet this and make sure that it is appropriate for the basin here, helping guide them, providing our expertise, and making sure that the action plan delivers the components that's needed. We've planned six ad hoc meetings currently to begin to deliver the first phase of the action plan for review beginning probably September, October for GSA approval in November and then authorization in January of 2027. that will be using a groundwater accounting platform to help guide the ad hoc group so they can understand how the accounting system will work, how this will affect how people can view their groundwater demand, how they can look at their accounts. And then our objective is to have a landowner-facing rollout for January 2027 that will deal with basic accounting rules It'll have the allocation, how it's distributed across the land, and it'll allow landowners to understand how their groundwater use is measured so they can begin making some management decisions for how they use their water really without any penalty to get used to it, to begin asking more questions and to start refining the program. Through that we'll have, after the program is, when the program is launched, we'll have a workshop to help landowners onboard and get used to the program, answer any questions. And then after they've had a time to use it for a little while, we've planned a second workshop in January to begin to answer more specific questions that arise through the use of the program. And then potentially with additional authorization, phase two would include once the first plan of the program is in place, expansion, refinement, and also hopefully develop ways that the program can become financially independent and feasible. So just to summarize our key takeaways, we'll start with the independent third party review. And the objective of this is really to improve transparency, make sure that everyone understands the demand reduction targets and allocations. make sure they're accurate and can be achieved. We'll develop this action plan primarily through stakeholder participation and vetting with the consultant group really acting as facilitators helping guide that process. Our goal is to deliver a functional action plan and gap for implementation by the January 31st deadline. And really the phase one of the groundwater accounting platform will hopefully provide the landowners a better understanding of how the allocations work, the groundwater accounting procedures, and then their management options before the second phase where enforcement would be included in it. And then our goal will be to create a framework for the program and have an ability to adapt with continued stakeholder feedback and as the data and conditions evolve and our understanding of our progress on meeting demand reductions and groundwater sustainability improve.

All right. Thank you, Len, for that summary on the geosynthetic technical proposal. This proposal, the phase one agreement through June 30th, 2027, includes the third party independent review at a cost not to exceed $122,000 and $377,000. The phase one action plan development and implementation support component includes costs not to exceed or up to $238,059. Additionally, project support tasks, including public outreach, public meetings, project management, and as needed technical services, will be completed with costs not to exceed $61,442. $40,097 and $34,000 respectively. Initial funding for phase one will require an increase in the department's budget to cover the contract cost. Long-term groundwater management funding is to be identified and may include fees that are proportionally based on the benefit of services received. such as Proposition 218 compliant processes, groundwater sustainability agency fees and assessments, landowner groundwater pumping fees, and penalties. There may be opportunities to secure other funding sources, including agency funds, state and federal grant funding. So just a quick conversation about governance and non-compliance. Why is the specialized support needed? It's because of capacity. The Department of Environmental Resources does not have the technical expertise, staff, or resources to develop the required action plan for groundwater sustainability agency approval by November 1st, 2026, or implement the action plan by January 31st, 2027. And noncompliance with the minimum groundwater sustainability plan requirements could result in the loss of local control and state intervention. So we are seeking approval for this contract. Failure to develop an inclusive, flexible, implementable action plan may also result in other severe regional consequences. In addition to losing local control, There may be serious impacts to landowners, the economy, and community. These include financial and operational risks, forced uncoordinated and unplanned land following, leading to community and environmental impacts such as dust, soil degradation, pest havens, unequal financial burdens on small farmers, and loss of public trust because they can't absorb these impacts as readily as some of the larger entities. Lost tax revenue in seasonal and permanent jobs, disruption to agricultural operations and businesses, in addition to litigation risks, regulatory friction, and enforcement activities. The Department of Environmental Resources staff is recommending that this board, one, approve the agreement for professional services with GeoSyn Tech Consultants Inc. for a third-party review of the Groundwater Use Management Program in development and implementation of the Groundwater Use Management Program Action Plan, an amount not to exceed $495,974. Two, authorize the general services agency director purchasing agent in collaboration with county council to finalize and execute the agreement. 3. Authorize the General Services Agency Director, in collaboration with the Director of Environmental Resources, to amend the agreement with Geosyntec Consultants Inc. up to the contract maximum should staff determine that additional services are needed. Four, authorize the use of $495,974 in appropriations for contingencies by a four-fifths vote of the Board of Supervisors. And lastly, direct the auditor controller to increase appropriations by $495,974 in the Environmental Resources Groundwater Program Legal Budget Unit funded by appropriations for contingencies as detailed in the attached Thank you for my opportunity to present today. I appreciate your time and welcome any questions, discussion, or feedback.

Okay, thank you. Any questions of staff before we go to the public? No questions. Okay. We're going to go ahead and all of the presentations are done. We're going to go ahead and open this up for the public. We have three speaker cards to start out with.

First speaker, Carolyn Newman.

Carolyn Newman. Good morning, Carolyn.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, supervisors. My name is Carolyn Newman. I am on the board for the Stanislaus County Taxpayer Association, and I am on the NDE Ad Hoc Committee. I have a few questions based on what I was reading with this proposal. First, why was the independent EKI report given such strong standing and weight as compared to the officially vetted, sourced, and approved reports? Is this a precedent that the board intends to follow in other matters that are not water related? And if so, is this an avenue available to the public, the taxpayer association, the public at large? Could we hire our own consultants for our own issues in the future in response to other proposals? What happens if the independent report clashes with the two official vetted reports? What is the amount of standard deviation that would be required to declare a conflict? And for example, in the scope of billions of gallons of water, a dry creek bed of 5,000 gallons is a drop in the bucket. If there is a conflict, will this delay implementation? What is the process of resolution? Is the conflict per parcel, per property? How is that going to be decided? It was originally suggested by water manager McKinnon that the cost goal for this consultant would ideally be at or under $250,000. I'm curious why this cost more than doubled. The goal was to actually have it under $200,000, I think. I would like to know what made it go over and reach $495,000. We've known about these water issues since as early as the first report back in 2013. There's been a lot of time to prepare. I see the basic scope for phases one, two, and three, but my question is, is there a plan for once, we've gone through these phases, for weaning people off of these programs, what does stable look like? When does this program end? Or when are people considered stable and going to be independent on their own? A new study of the Sacramento aquifer that just came out shows that aquifers do not grow back to full size with replenishment alone. The main way to maintain and protect them is to prevent further draining. This suggests that the fastest way to protect the aquifer is to reduce pumping as soon as possible. Is there any way to accelerate this reduction process? Or with this new knowledge, is there a plan to adjust the plan to accelerate the reduction of water pumping. Lastly, I would caution against creating any exceptions or deviations from the GSP, GSA groundwater replenishment. The city of Modesto has openly admitted there are developers interested in building data centers within the city. It is not far-fetched to believe the same is possible for the county. Any exception, any deviation could open doors to this type of developer. The current validated reports of data centers under-reporting their power and water needs to get approval, digging their own wells, over-pumping, and when caught simply paying a fine as though it's merely the cost of doing business. I ask you to commit to upholding these requirements that we have in place to protect the aquifer for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you. I see Mike taking copious notes there. Good morning, Wrangler.

Hi, good morning. My name is Wrangler Wheeler. I am a farmer in West Modesto area. I spoke here with you guys in March actually on a very similar topic that does surround this and I was promised very directly that we would have no redundant or unnecessary spending. Yet here we are facing a redundant and unnecessary third party review of a study that was already approved by this board. All seven agencies included in STIRDPA actually approved our current plan. November 1st, the date we're supposed to submit our action plan, is currently 89 days away. 61 productive days. I'm assuming this gentleman doesn't work weekend and holidays like we do. Even if you could pull off this very unrealistic deadline, what happens if the six other agencies simply don't want to adopt your third party review? They didn't approve of this. They didn't agree to it. And frankly, they didn't even know about it. I think that Christy's doing the best she can in these meetings, but the other agencies are extremely frustrated with your staff. I don't think your staff is doing a great job at giving your perceived views of this board to this third board, because they seem to be confused. They ask questions that have no answers. They get very limited information, and then you guys drop something like this onto their lap with little time to review it and little time to agree on it. So even if you do waste this extra funding on this study, I'm not sure Sturgab is going to be very interested in implementing it because our deadline is right next door. We're focused on the future and how we're going to move forward with the current plan that we all agreed to. Thank you. Thank you, Wrangler.

The next speaker, Anthony, I believe it's Batto.

Ratto. Good morning, Anthony.

Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Board of Supervisors, staff. Anthony Ratto, we have a small vegetable operation on the west side of Modesto as well. I would like to ask this board to rethink this contract. When the topic first was presented, the goal was to get a consent item. That had to be pulled. The goal was less than $200,000. We're now at half a million. That's a wild proposal, or excuse me, that's a wild sum to be spent on rehashing the facts that your own GSA consultants have presented. To Wheeler's point, the county, along with the other six agencies, all approved the GSA consultant's math and work. And there's also a five-year review period within the GSA to adopt new information as the modeling, the studies becomes more pronounced. The 2018-2019 consultants that this own board hired drew similar conclusions to the GSA consultants. The non-district east has a severe overdraft issue and it needs to be rectified immediately. Please consider asking DER to focus this new consultant on the management action and projects aspect of this contract. Those would be the bottom two of the three that were listed up there. When Supervisor Withrow called me to ask if I was available for an ad hoc committee position, I immediately put it on my calendar. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm taking time out of my busy day to be here to try to offer guidance and support for smart business decisions. The non-district east is going to be faced with some significant financial projects in the immediate future. Some of this consultant money would probably go along much further being applied to the actual fixes than spent on more consultants upon more consultants. The over pumping needs to be arrested immediately and we need to rectify the severe environmental impacts that are taking place in the non-district east. Thank you for the time and I look forward to the opportunity to work on ad hoc group. Thank you, Anthony.

The final card that I have is for John Duarte. I also have a registered speaker online.

Hello, Board. Mr. Chairman, thank you for having us here today and for discussing this item. I'm here to speak in favor of this. I'm very thankful that the Board of Supervisors is stepping into this issue with the resources it needs. If you look at the STRPA committee, There's seven members on it, seven entities. It's two irrigation districts, five cities, three irrigation districts and four cities, I'm sorry, and the county. So in the non-district east area, the only entity on the STRPA board that represents the interest of the non-district east growers is the county. Now, Christie's administrating the meetings as well as representing the county on this board. He's doing a fine job administering it, but I do suggest that you may need an independent member on that board who's not responsible to kind of even-handedly administer the meetings as well as advocate the county's interests in the STRPA process because you have a very unique interest. There's about 27,000 acres of irrigated agriculture in the non-district east, only represented by the county. There's also, I think some estimates are 80 to 100,000 acres of irrigated agriculture in the east of Turlock Irrigation District area. There's gonna be severe cutbacks in the Turlock Irrigation District area per their plans. I believe that with the Oakdale Irrigation District Groundwater Replenishment Program, the 10-year plan, and Modesto Irrigation Districts potentially coming online with a plan that is actually accessible to growers in the non-district east area, as well as several of the local cities, Riverbank and Oakdale namely, Waterford potentially, living up to their urban water management plans that call and have called for decades. I was referring to these plans back in the 2010 water sale debate, that these cities have done nothing to access surface water resources for their urban water management plans. And their urban water management plans have called for them for decades. We have the surface water here in Stanislaus County. We can do better. We've got City of Modesto is pumping 20 to 30,000 acre feet a year of groundwater out of this aquifer while they have both the surface water treatment facility and the supply lined up to offset that. We're not using surface water from municipal use in areas where we need to be using surface water. The non-district east growers, myself and many others included, have recently installed surface water access as it's become available from mainly Oakdale Irrigation District. My orchards will be 95% on surface water this year. Other growers are doing similar things. The Trinitas development, which was supposed to be on surface water 10 years ago when it was right after it was put in, has just gone to surface water in the last two years. It was permitted by OID on the contingency that it would go to surface water a long time ago. So we're moving the ball. You're the only entity we have that, you remember the water battle, the water grab? The county worked hand in hand with the districts to stop the water board from taking many acre feet of our district water. We complained that it would lead to $167 million in farm gate loss. That would translate to $1.6 million in regional economy loss. That would translate to $330 million in labor income loss. It's all in this work. Well, if you take the 27,000 acres in non-district east and put them out of business, when there's other alternatives at hand, and I very much believe there are, and I very much believe this process will surface them and bring them forth, you're going to have, say it's $6,100 an acre times 27,000 acres, you're going to have the same economic losses in this county as the water grab would have had. And that's just in non-district east. I encourage you, I know there's a little more... copasthetic agreement down in the Turlock East Subbasin, but I encourage you to take a very active role in understanding all of the decisions made, get the best information you can from a competent group, and I believe you found a competent group, take the full scope of this of this contract and pay a great deal of attention to it because the Stanislaus County has wonderful water resources. We've got OID on the Stanislaus. We've got MID and TID on the Tuolumne River and we neighbor Merced Irrigation District in the County of Merced on the Merced River just south of us. There's no other place in this valley right now that has the potential to solve the SGMA compliance challenges and as well as Stanislaus County does. And the only one looking at the whole picture for Stanislaus County is you five gentlemen. So thank you for doing this. I'm strongly in favor of it. I think it's properly scoped. And I suggest you go forward with it as written. Thank you very much.

Thanks, John.

Final comment telephonically with Rachel. Rachel, it is your turn to speak.

Hi, good morning, Board of Supervisors. This is Rachel Hernandez, Mayor for the City of Riverbank. I just want to make a comment on this item. I think two things were noted today, that Riverbank manages our own water, which is actively stated, and then we are also part of the Sturgma member group. So I think there's a couple conflicting things, and I would love to request a deeper dive into the fiscal impact into the cities. We have not been active members, as was mentioned before, in these groundwater surface water conversations. So I would like to formally request a fiscal impact analysis on how the well mitigation plan program will impact our city. I mean, affordability is top of mind for us. Just to give you a quick scope of what we're working through, we just hired a consultant to go over our water rate study. We are having ongoing conversations about wastewater and those utilities, and it's all impacting our residents' And so I would like to request that and just to note that as part of the MOU that our council formally approved, we stated in there, we would love ongoing coordination, which one of our council members was included in the ad hoc committee for the non-district D and appreciate that. But we need ongoing coordination to help ensure that the mitigation efforts are balanced and effective across the jurisdiction. And that the city understands and requests that the tactics and strategies explicitly consider the impact to all of the members, including ourselves. So I just want to make a note of that as you consider this item.

Thank you for your comments, Mayor. Okay. So that's the last comment card we have. So now we're going to go to the audience. I'm going to let Milt go first. He was... running up here. It's okay.

Just one comment. I talked to you about this before, many times before, how valuable the water is here in Stanislaus County. And the issue we're facing now, this does need to be solved, is the fact that Already, we're looking at another water user data centers who are going to have an ungodly impact on our water supply. Basically, we should just outlaw them in the entire Stanislaus County, period. That's the only way we're going to have water for ourselves, for our children, and our agriculture.

Thank you. Thank you, Mel. Chair Frobos, welcome.

Good morning, supervisors. I would like to first start out by making a couple things on other comments that people made. One is Modesto Irrigation District has a groundwater replenishment program that provides water to the non-district east. That program has been approved, and we have two farmers on the east side that have taken environmental responsibility, aquifer responsibility to sign up for the program, and access in that water. So this idea that 27,000 acres of trees is going to disappear and destroy the local economy is totally hogwash. First off, the management plan that's already been approved by this board as a member of the GSA and the other six members, Modesto Irrigation District, City of Riverbank, Oakdale, as it stands right now. They have access to surface water from OID to make up for that. They have access from MID to make up for that difference. So they just need to step up and take responsibility. And let's take Modesto, for example. When we've had some of these meetings, the City of Modesto and Modesto Irrigation District have worked together. The City of Modesto and MID have spent millions of dollars to get the City of Modesto 50% off of groundwater. The non-district east has done nothing except complain and destroy the aquifer and cost the rate payers in the county. Every other rate payer in this county is funding their damage and destroying the aquifer. This has been going on for 20 years. Let's go back. I want to go back to... in history for just a minute so that people can grasp how long this has been going on. 2014, some of those farmers over there were sued by two environmental groups that they were destroying the environment, doing irreparable harm to the environment and the aquifer. That has proven to be true. They got that lawsuit dismissed by just paying them off, and those environmental groups went away. They asked them to do, in that lawsuit, they asked them to do environmental review. Where's the time up here?

Where we at? Keep going. That green light will start blinking yellow when you get 30 seconds.

Anyway. Let's get back to, so this has been going on. When Bill O'Brien sat in your seat, he said we gotta stop the overdraft. When Chris Olin sat in your seat, we gotta stop the overdraft. You guys spent, in 2018, you did a report that spent over half a million dollars of taxpayers' money to prove that that was unsustainable and that they're doing destruction on the east side. Going back to this management plan that has already been approved, When you say the EKI letter, that you need to do an analysis, the technical differences between the EKI letter and the management plan that we've already approved. That management plan was approved by you guys. That management plan was done by consultants that you guys, along with the other six members, approved. EKI sends a letter in, and that consultant group addressed those issues and said... One of the questions that were raised in the technical data that EKI did, remove the appropriated pumping. That was removed from the management plan. That technical difference that you want to now spend $125,000 on, that has been resolved. Move on to the next thing that EKI addressed as a technical issue. Exclude urban and domestic areas from overlying area allocation. That was removed at the request of EKI. After these things were done, EKI then agreed that that's all that needed to be done. And when you talk about transparency, improved transparency, these meetings were open to the public. The public comment was open over a year. And then it was closed and we voted to approve the plan. You can't ask for more approval. Supervisor Withrow, I'm gonna call you out on this. You have done nothing but defend a few friends of yours and a few investment people that you have that have done nothing but destroy the aquifer and cost the rate payers of this county hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. One thing that I totally dislike is an elected official that is not genuine and has been dishonest with their positions with the public. I ask you to not approve the $125,000 for the third party. All you're going to do is create a bigger problem. Because if you go ahead and you spend the money, then what has to happen, according to the SGMA rules that the GSA is governed by, you guys can't operate independent. You guys signed a mutual agreement to work with... the other GSA members. And if you do something with this $125,000 plan and it comes back different, then you have to, we have to notify DWR, we have to open it back up to a 90-day public comment period. Wrap it up, please, Bob. I'm going to wrap it up. And then you have to get the other six members to all agree to this. So what you should do on the front side is send out a resolution asking if the other six members are agreeable to this because we're all in this together. We're not one independent. And when somebody says you guys only represent the east side, no. We all six, all seven members of the GSA represent the whole county.

Thank you. Anyone else out there? Yeah, come on up. Good morning, Mary.

Good morning. Aren't you glad I was late? So I'm Mary Jackson. I was born and raised on West Turlock on a farm. And we have 60 acres that my daughters think that they want to be farmers with. So I have a vested interest with pumping from almond farmers that are surrounding my parents' former vineyard. Now it's oats and alfalfa for our neighbor's dairy. I have questions. So Mr. Bose, please write these down. Is this a mandate from the state? Because whatever this gentleman just said, I completely agree. If you are in partners with five other agencies, you need to respect them. And I'm not trying to throw darts or anything, but I'm not happy with what you're doing in Wood Colony. Because my parents live in West Turlock. WHEN MY MOM KNEW SOMETHING WAS GOING ON, WHEN WE PUT BLUE DIAMOND, BECAUSE THEY PAVED FULK HEARTH. MY PARENTS LIVE ON FAITH HOME. MY PARENTS PAY ATTENTION. SHE FLIPPED OUT BECAUSE SHE CAN SEE THE COSTCO SIGN FROM THEIR PROPERTY. People who live in the country don't want city. Sherlock has a very strong urban boundary. I fought for that when I was on the city council, and you know I'm mouthy. I will continue to fight for that. But I want to know who's mandating this, and I want you to leave Wood Colony alone. Got it? Thank you.

Thanks. Anyone else? Mike?

Yeah, Mike Tietze. I'm the general manager of East Turlock Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Agency. I'm on Len's team, full disclosure. So I just wanted to point out a couple of observations with respect to the commenters that I thought you might be able to benefit from. I think every single commenter wants to be fiscally smart. wants to do the most cost-effective thing. The reason for the third party review is simply because groundwater management in a shared resource with five other agencies can only move forward at the pace of trust. That doesn't mean complete trust, that means sufficient trust. Non-district East has been represented by the county as has non-district West. That limits the county's ability to be an advocate for non-district east. I understand that. It is inappropriate for the county to be an advocate for one area and not be an advocate for another area. Therefore, my perception is that similar to East Turlock Sub-Basin, when I first joined up there, that non-district East has felt underrepresented and therefore felt it necessary to engage with a consultant, which I recognize the name as a responsible consultant that brought up some issues that they felt that there were with the allocation approach. I have not reviewed that. I don't have an opinion on that at this point. But what I will say is that the financial risk that the county is dealing with is one of three things. The best outcome is things move forward with significant demand reduction and projects in the non-district east area where the county's economy suffers but necessarily so because you are migrating to a lower groundwater demand and therefore less income for your farmers, lower property values. I think that is the best possible outcome and non-district east bears the brunt of that. The second best outcome is that there is a disagreement and you don't meet the objectives of your groundwater sustainability plan. And if there's a disagreement, if somebody doesn't come along, there's a disagreement, you can't meet the demand reduction in the area where it's most required. That results in state intervention. That costs a lot of money. It costs attorneys fees. You spend money on going into potentially state intervention and still having to comply with the groundwater law. The third and worst outcome is that people in non-district East feel backed against a wall and legal action starts to look like a good option to them. And I'm not trying to use scare tactics. I think that that's a realistic potential outcome. Adjudication is not an easy thing. all five members of Sturgba, five other members of Sturgba in the sub-basin would have to open up their books. So it's not easy for them either. So I think that the purpose of the third party review, which represents less than one third of the cost, is to build that trust I'm not going to say right now that I recommend it or I don't recommend it, but that's the purpose of it is to save money, not to spend money unnecessarily and duplicate effort. Thank you.

Can you just talk a little bit about your involvement in the Turlock Subbasin, a little bit of your history there and what you've accomplished down there with the similar non-district east, non-district west, or east-west issues going on. Can you just address that a little bit?

So going back a little bit further to 2014-2015, I was involved in helping the county develop a discretionary well permitting program to determine when groundwater well applications required a closed sustainability review. And that was in response to the lawsuits that the gentleman referred to. which the county was a member and did not get out of those lawsuits, but passed its groundwater ordinance, which was a huge step forward for the county. In 2021, I got involved in East Turlock Subbasin was brought on as the general manager as the groundwater sustainability plan was being finalized. Similar situation to here, although I will say every place, even a small distance away, seems completely different. But yes, productive aquifers in the east, primarily surface water, a water district that had been responsibly providing water and had extensive infrastructure investments in for the good of the community overall, concerned about not wanting to bail out farmers on the east, but wanting to work together with them so that things don't fall apart. And so after two years of negotiation, we worked out a water accounting agreement with East Turlock Subbasin GSA and Turlock Irrigation District and West Turlock Subbasin GSA where we agreed to transition up to 21,000 acres of land to non-irrigated use over time. and to pay for developed water, which we were pumping, which was being drawn in from TID's developed conveyance facilities. That hurt. That hurts a lot. In exchange, we got an agreement for them to provide 35,000 acre feet of replenishment water at a starting cost of $50 an acre foot. and that the payments that we make for developed water go into a fund where they're applied by TID to fund groundwater sustainability projects. To make it all work, we had to develop rules and regulations. We had to develop ways to measure groundwater consumptive use at the farm level. We had to develop a groundwater accounting platform. We had to implement land repurposing program, incentivized following program. I don't mean to be defensive, but I had to chuckle a little bit when somebody referred to consultants not working weekends or holidays. Ask me what I was doing at 2.30 last night before I got up at 6 o'clock this morning so that I could be here to speak with you. This is something that requires all hands on deck. It is probably one of the biggest quality of life issues to hit this county, is making the transition to groundwater sustainability. It's supremely important. And it's very costly in terms of personal cost when you consider, just by way of example, that most farmers on the east side, that their land values have plummeted from about $20,000 to $25,000 an acre to about $12,000 an acre if you can sell. So that just is trust.

Thank you for that, Mike. That was great. Just that there was a lot of pain for the individuals on the east side, and that was accepted by them, knowing that that was going to happen. Because of the trust you built, you were able to build this trust between the east and the west, and there was no question that the east knew that there was going to have to be concessions. There was going to be pain there. But you guys were able to come to an agreement there. As a result, if you get into that point of trust, it seems like that's where you got.

That's correct. And I think East Turlock Subbasin has recognized that it bears the responsibility for its own overdraft and for fixing it. But we had to have cooperation from TID in order to make that work. And I'm very happy to say that we have a great partner in TID. We have a great relationship. It doesn't mean that it's pain-free, but we work together very, very well.

Perfect. Thank you, Mike.

Anyone else to speak on this issue? Opportunity all right, I'm gonna close it and bring it back to the board for comments and or action I Guess I just want to state really quickly because Mike I appreciate your comments I was on both the Turlock East and Turlock West sub basin boards and I was able to accomplish that for about probably about a year and And then the war drums came out about potential lawsuits. And so then I stepped away from the east side. Christie stepped in. And we put a wall in between, never had a conversation about it. And I represented the West Basin. And it wasn't until Mike came in that things had calmed down. I know everyone got together and came up with this plan. But again, it took a couple of years of conversation. So I appreciate what you had done down in the Turlock Subbasin.

I appreciate the presentation by you guys and all the hard work. I know how hard everybody's worked on this. And we will continue to work and we've got our work cut out for us in the next six months here to really produce. So thank you for that and I appreciate all the comments. I won't even go there with Bob Robos' comment with regard to my credibility here and my intentions. It's not even worth a response. Okay, so let's talk about where we're going to go here. We've been asked to be the stewards for the non-district east. That's why we're here. The county is into non-district east and non-district west. Non-district west doesn't have serious overdraft issues, so we really always seem to focus on the non-district east. So the, you know, when we look at this report and what we're going to ask, you know, the money we're going to ask to spend here, and we seem to be focusing only on the, you know, we're not experts. The county is not experts, as Christy, as you said, as it states in the reports. We're not in the water business. We've been thrust in the water business since probably back in 2014 is when the county first started and passed the ordinance. So we're not experts in this. But what we're doing here, and I think you pointed this out in your presentation, Christy, For the 122,000 that were asking for this third party, everybody's focusing on this third party analysis. It's not about reviewing the reports. It's about reducing uncertainty. And that is the key here. Because if we can reduce uncertainty, we can get to the spot that Mike and everybody down in Turlock was able to get to. Ended up in a spot that still was very painful for the guys on the east. But the uncertainty was gone and everyone felt that they were all rowing in the same direction and wanted to accomplish the same thing. So I appreciate that, that that was part of the report. I don't understand if any of us were in a spot where we had conflicting reports. You know, conflicting diagnosis, you know, and we have, say you have a doctor, you have a medical issue, and one's telling you this and the other one's telling you this, you're going to get a third opinion. That's what you do. You want to be able to make sure that you're making the right decision, whether it's a medical issue, business issue, personal decisions. So then I say, what's the downside of that? The downside is that we're going to spend $122,000 for this. And from the report, we will hopefully get more certainty and eliminate the uncertainty that's out there right now. Who knows what the report's going to come back and say. But without that, we still will continue to have this distrust that's out there. And there's no downside of doing it. Yeah, because what we're talking about doing here, and it's probably going to happen, is going to change people's lives, both personally, financially, throughout this whole county, throughout the whole basin. Right? I mean, that's what we're talking about. These are serious ramifications of what's going to have to be implemented here in order to make this groundwater sustainability plan happen. And there's no... I don't think there's any... any false hopes of individuals on the east side as same in the west. Things are gonna have to be done here. Changes are gonna have to be made. And the purpose of this is to try to get us to a spot where we can accept that and avoid the litigation that we talk about that could come here. We talked about Mike's team and what you've accomplished down there. I appreciate it. And we're thrilled to death to be, I'm hoping, hiring you here today to help us and to be able to accomplish the same things that you've accomplished down south there. We've actually got a meeting in two days here. We know the timeline we're up against. We've got a meeting set for two days this Thursday for our group that Anthony's on and Carolyn's on to jump right into this thing if this board approves this today and we move forward. So I look forward to all that. So the potential risk here is if we start to tear this thing apart and we don't go with this today, delays as Mike's made reference to, not only the delays will make us not be able to meet the deadlines that we need to meet here, but we're talking about lawsuits and potential state intervention. So we have all worked very hard to try to bring this thing together. And what we do in this county is try to bring people together, is try to build these collaborative efforts to accomplish things. That's what we do as a county. I won't go there with Bob anymore, but as a group of supervisors, we have the county's best interests involved. That's why we're here. That's why we're trying to do this. And if we can do whatever we can to help us get to that spot with the least amount of lawsuits and potential state intervention, that's why we're here. That's what this is all about. So I totally support this. It's been a long time coming. We've been working on water since 2014. Our county was a leader across the state in these issues. When SIGMA was passed, we even had input on the wording in the legislation because we were leaders. And so we continue to lead in this effort. And the way we've gotten to where we've gotten is by bringing people together and finding solutions that we can find that middle ground to make things happen. So I want us to continue to do that, and again, I will 100% support this.

Thank you. Other comments?

I'm going to just make a few clarifications for myself in questions to staff. But first of all, thank you so much. Thank you for all the people that came to help with the presentation. So there's things that we're hearing from different member agencies, and that is a part that's a little concerning to me. We have at least one person on the phone and then the gentleman that spoke on behalf of MID that they feel that there is some redundancy. I, as one person, can get over the redundancy issue if I see that by doing this, this does build consensus. So I guess this is a tough question to ask because there's probably no right or good answer to it, but doing this study with their... I'm looking at this as a way to build trust with everybody, the partner agencies, non-districtees, the Westside farmers, that if doing this allows us to bring closure to this issue, because obviously no one wants, I mean, we're all in this together. I know that was mentioned. No one wants state intervention. No one wants other people facilitating the discussions that us as a community should have. question, and again, I don't know if there's right or wrong answer, but doing this study, does this alleviate further discussion or litigation that lets us proceed forward post November 1st? And I guess I'm looking to my two colleagues that are gonna have these tough discussions in the coming days and weeks leading up to November 1st. As stewards that is representing non-districtees, as it was stated by one public member speaking, Does this alleviate that concern? And so I'm less to just staff but asking my colleagues.

Yes. So the way I look at this, Manny, is not doing the study will definitely lead us to increased conflict, litigation, potential state intervention. The downside to it is if we don't do the study, yeah, that we're in trouble. And that's just knowing the disagreements that are out there right now. I see no harm in the study happening.

I don't anticipate... I've already stated the harm part. I just feel on doing it, if we do do it, do you feel that that will dispel or build enough trust that we could proceed forward with the study?

I do 100%. I 100% think that's what's gonna happen here. I don't anticipate that the study's gonna, I'd be surprised if the study did find something that was unbelievable between the two studies that were done. But I think 100% that doing the study will get us to a spot where we've made the effort, we have two conflicting studies, we've gotten a third opinion, and we can move forward here with whatever.

And since we're the stewards for non-district east, with whatever comes of this study, okay to continue based on what the study presents to us.

Yeah, we have a group. Our group will then take the results. The group that are a part of this will then take those results and move forward.

Manning, I don't think you can alleviate 100%.

That's why I said this was a tough question to answer anyway. I don't think we can get any certainty that it's not going to happen. I just want to make sure that there's more certainty of it not happening if we expend these funds.

I agree with Terry. I think if we don't do it, I think that opens it up even more that the legal aspect will be taken advantage of.

Yeah, I'm just hoping that expending, I mean, these are taxpayer dollars, ratepayer dollars, hard-earned dollars, and there is a certain sense of redundancy because, you know, I know you mentioned third opinion. We got a first opinion, got a second opinion, now we have a third opinion. At some point, we have to stop taking opinions and just know that that's what the diagnosis is, right, speaking in medical terms like you brought it up. And I hope that that's this third opinion that just puts it to now a path of actual treatment of the issue, which is that we don't want straight intervention, we don't want litigation, and we want to proceed forward so that we show that we're good stewards on our own and not anybody having to intervene.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And as a member of the ad hoc committee and the elected representative for the non-district east area, I am supporting this because I want to know why. I want to know why there's different assumptions, different conclusions. And I want to make sure that the area is treated with fairness, as all of... our basins are treated with fairness. But I want to know those particular issues, why we have differing in assumptions. And I want to continue forward with this. I want to continue working with the ad hoc committee. And once we have that information, putting those plans to work. There is no doubt there's pain coming for non-district east areas. There's going to be reduced pumping. There's going to be fallowing of ground. There is no doubt about that, but I want to ensure that there's fairness in that data to make those assumptions and conclusions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. I know data centers have been a hot topic at today's meeting. I'm going to go ahead and get it out of the way and kind of cut it off at the pass. But I am going to take a stance against data centers in my district and District 5's currently. I want to be on record with that. I do believe that Patterson did the right thing in placing a moratorium. My district, it doesn't seem suited for it, especially on the west side of the county where water scarcity is prevalent, as well as water contamination, as mentioned earlier today by some of my constituents. So I did want to just go ahead and be on record in regards to data centers, because I know it's been a hot topic of late. Chrissy, if you don't mind, I just have a few questions, if you give me some clarification. So what happens if the other members don't adopt this?

Well, so once we have a draft action plan, we'll take it to the GSA for consideration of approval. And if they don't adopt it, then I'm hopeful that we'll be able to work out a solution. And of course, any policy decisions will have to come back. to the board for additional consideration or direction or approval. So that is something that could happen. But we're confident that our consultant team is one of the best of the best and we're hoping that any unresolved uncertainty will be resolved as part of this process. And we come together with a viable work product that I hope that everybody will be able to accept.

Okay, of course. I mean we want to hope for the best in this case scenario and hopefully if the consultant is approved and hired that they can mediate whatever issues or problems. But just hypothetically if they don't, we're in a similar situation where we're probably not going to meet the deadline. In that case, do we get a refund from this consultant?

That's a good question and no, that wasn't involved in part of the contract. The way the groundwater use management program was written indicates that if the management area steward doesn't have an approved action plan approved by the GSA in place within two years, then the GSA will take over and they will make a sub-basin action plan on managing demand reduction in that management area so that would be the non-district east so that of course would cost all of the entities in addition to the county as the management area steward additional money on top of everything else and then the GSA would take over ownership of managing the management area until the county resolved the issue and got an approved action plan in place so none of this is going away. Our best solution is getting this work done now, the best way that we know how, and thankfully, you know, we're not hoping to model this exactly like the work we've done in the East Turlock Subbasin, which is working. But a lot of those strategies we're going to bring to the table and ask our ad hoc work group and landowners to vet to see if that's something that does fit here. Because we not only want to meet our deadlines, we want to build something that's going to work, that we can implement, and that's going to help our landowners achieve the sub-basin sustainability goals.

I understand our intentions are clear and they're genuine. But at the same time, you know, we are dealing on standing on kind of shaky ground here just because it is a little bit of out of our control. We approve this today, then it goes to GSA. They shoot it down. We're on the hook for $495,000. I mean, obviously, a reimbursement clause, in my mind, would absolutely need to be mandatory in that case just because we'd essentially just blow money in that scenario. Why did the cost rise? If you can kind of just get, I know that was kind of mentioned here today. I believe Wrangler is the one who brought that up. But why did the cost kind of rise when it came to this?

So we didn't anticipate the expense and the work that it would take to get this work done. The department was hoping that it would be as least expensive as possible and with that said under the $200,000 but it wasn't until we received various quotes for various components of work needed for implementable action plan in addition to the third party review that we knew how much these tasks would actually cost. And when that came together in a proposal, the department looked at the proposal and had internal conversations and decided to take it down to only the first phase, which is to prioritize the tasks that we need to get done immediately in order to move forward with reaching our demand reduction targets. So that's why the contract was scaled back to go through June 2027. Okay, got it.

And just may I ask, is this a local consultant? Or where geographically were they located out of?

GeoSynTech, I believe you guys are out of LA?

We're based in Oakland.

We're national. I'm based out of Oakland.

I'm based out of Walnut Creek, California. I work out of Oakland as well. And some of my team members are in Southern California.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And Chrissy, why isn't the current management plan sufficient? I mean, it was agreed upon. Why, I guess, is there uncertainty with moving forward with that initial plan?

Well, so that's a good question. And so the thing is, is the management plan adopted by the GSA is just the beginning. That is that groundwater allocation framework at a sub basin level. So what that does, is it takes the groundwater pie based on the sustainable yield of the subbasin and splits the pieces off to the member agencies in the different management areas. That's just the start. So that's why we could only start working on the second stage now because the action plan takes it to a different level. It takes it from the sub-basin level and it says, because the groundwater management plan says that an action plan is required for the non-district east management area because of the magnitude of demand reduction that needs to take place there. It's the only management area that has significant overdraft issues and continuously declining management areas. So now that we've split up that piece of the pie, The next step, the county is the management area steward is responsible to develop the action plan. The action plan is more like the recipe and the oven and how you bake a cookie. So we're going to take our piece of the pie that we get for the county non-district east management area and figure out how we're going to spread that to the landowners within that area and how we're going to meet our demand reductions and actually figure out a way to do it, in order to do that we have to provide incentives to our land owners to provide flexible business options to make this work and that's what we've done in the East Turlock Sub-Basin. Got it. And then as a back, oh sorry.

No, go ahead, go, please.

And as a backstop, I mean the county does, you know, we are able to take enforcement action but we would like to do this the way that we think we can get to the goal post in the time that we have.

Got it. And so just a question about the current ad hoc committee. I mean, was this introduced to them that we get feedback input from them and was this recommended with a consensus of the ad hoc committee for our consideration?

So when we asked the board to approve the groundwater use management program, we were provided direction to hire the third party consultant and to also, Supervisors Withrow and B Condit were appointed to help facilitate and lead the efforts. Supervisor Biconda and Withrow asked the DER to put together the ad hoc work group to bring various entities to the table to start these conversations so we could start getting ready to develop and get buy-in for the action plan, yeah.

So did they vote on this, though? Did they say, hey, we want this to go in front of the board, we want the board of supervisors to pursue this plan?

Well, there was no vote asking the DER to pursue an ad hoc work group, but the board did approve the action plan conditionally.

But I'm talking about the meetings in the ad hoc that BCON did and Supervisor Withrow are a part of. Did that ad hoc committee say, we want to hire this consulting firm?

No, so it's not a public committee, right?

Yes, it's ad hoc, yes.

Yes, so there's not going to be any voting. We're going to get feedback from our ad hoc work group members, hope to build consensus, and then if not,

Was the feedback glowing of, hey, we want you guys to go hire a consultant?

No.

Okay. I just wanted to know. Because consensus is going to be our major obstacle depending on the decision here today. That's just where I have some major uncertainty. And also, I would like to get reimbursed if it is unsuccessful. That is just where I'm at. So that's just where I'm a little uneasy. And if my colleagues can make me feel a little bit more CONFIDENT ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I KNOW WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, THIS IS A VERY HOT BUTTON ISSUE. IT'S A LIGHTNING ROD OF AN ISSUE AND TOPIC. WHISKEY'S FOR DRINKING, WATER'S FOR FIGHTING. WE KNOW THE SAME. AND THIS MIGHT BE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND SIGNIFICANT VOTES WE TAKE HERE TODAY BECAUSE IT IS THE FUTURE OF OUR VALLEY. IT'S THE FUTURE OF OUR LOCAL AG ECONOMY. And I do want to acknowledge my colleague, Supervisor Withrow. I know there are comments made about him today, but he's a good man. I know he has a pure heart. He loves this county. He wants what's fair and he wants what's right for our farmers and for our Stanislaus County community. So I have nothing but respect and appreciation for him, whether we agree or disagree. So I just want to leave it at that. But that reimbursement based on success, That is going to be kind of a make or break for me here today.

If I could just ask one quick question. So on the $495,974 that we're voting on today, only one, 22 would be, we're spending or additionally for a third option or third opinion on the study, regardless, whatever my math, $122 minus $495,373,974.

It's quick math.

would be spent regardless. Just to alleviate some of the concerns that Supervisor Seekon had brought up, that that would be spent up. So when we're asking for reimbursement, it would only be on the $122,000 because the other work we would do regardless of if there was consensus or not.

So the $122,000 is just for the third party review. Yes. So that's in addition to the work that we would have to do to build and implement the demand management action plan. But required because we were provided direction upon approval of soliciting for a consultant to develop the action plan we needed to do the third party review.

Again, just sorry for my own conversation. We would be spending the remainder of that regardless to make sure that we're managing the GSA and the duties upon us as stewards for this region. We would be doing that regardless.

Well, yes. We did receive various proposals, and the proposals came in at different amounts, and the award was issued to Geosyntec because they scored highest based on the county procurement policy. So I would say yes.

I'm going to say yes. I know that was a long answer, but yes, the 122 is potentially the only money that we're spending in excess of what is necessary. Yes. So good question. So I can only go, you know, based on my experience down in Turlock. So this board took action back on January 27th to move forward with this. That's what brought us to this point here today. And so now we've heard from some different folks. The Turlock sub-basin, the thing that we recognize, and I'm talking about the west component, there's the city of Turlock, Ceres, Houston, Daenerys Community Service District, Keys Community Service District, Hilmar, and Modesto has a little portion of it, and then TID. And we recognized early on that TID is the only one that really has the solution. They're the ones that, made the surface water agreement with Turlock and Ceres, which were the two largest communities. Modesto and MID have the same type of relationship. And it's trying to get all of these smaller municipalities onto surface water. I agree. Someone had said that. I can't remember what I've heard today from who. But TID was the solution in dealing with the east side, allowing them to what infrastructure, what they could afford, who was going to pay for what. Mike stepping in again because it was those same really difficult conversations that there's going to be profound impacts on on the east side to some degree and and bringing people together and I think that Turlock irrigation district gave a little and and received a little so I I'm just going based on that and the Modesto sub basin Modesto irrigation district and Oakdale irrigation district are have to be a part of the solution and If they choose to be, which they've proven that they will be partners with folks that they're willing to sell water, it's just trying to work through that. And then getting cities onto surface water because everyone is under pressure from nitrates, chromium 6, TCP 1, 2, 3, and the constituents just keep coming. And dilution is the solution. I've said that 100 times. So getting them to pump less allows because The job is not to put people out of business, but the job is to create as much value as we can for folks within the realm. But, again, that's conversations that we may not, again, affect. But I think as an arbiter, this third-party study, again, I don't mean to put so much pressure on you, Mike, but I saw you do good work. under tough circumstances, I think $122,000 is worth the effort on that. We are moving forward. Again, I can't imagine because the tough conversations that we had down in Turlock are going to be the same ones that are had here. And it's trying to minimize as much as possible those impacts. So I will support this. And I want to thank you for your work. This is absolutely a thankless job. There's no end situation, right? Everyone's going to come out a little bruised and battered. So with that, I'll entertain a... Well, may I just make a motion to have that amendment a part of the contract?

Is that at all being considered by my colleagues?

No.

Okay. I will not be...

I would just have a question on that. Yeah, go ahead. Is it you want our colleagues to go and bring this to the partner agencies, and if they are in agreeance then? What I would not find... fair to the consultants is they do the work and we can't build consensus because of internal issues or issues within our community and then we tell them we're not going to pay the bill. I can't.

No, we're kind of in the same position we were with the vendor situation. We're kind of hoping for the best. You know, we're coming from that cart before the horse there, where we're hoping they're going to be successful. I don't know, I mean, I want to be optimistic, but I'm a little bit of a cynic there. I don't know if they will be successful, and I just would hate to blow that money. So without that amendment, I will not be supporting it.

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to support all staff recommendations. Second.

Before I vote, I just want to put a caveat into my vote. Obviously, we had a lot of discussions today. Trust is one of the reasons we're doing all this, and I'm putting a lot of trust in my colleagues. They're going to have these tough conversations. They're going to bring back to the board. I think transparency for everyone involved, including non-district east, this would be a third. Opinion on something that hopefully regardless of the outcome that our reputed Consultants find that everybody's going to go along with that and that will alleviate you know litigation alleviate further distrust and alleviate uncertainty the last thing I want for our community and that's why I'm supporting this is a hundred and twenty two thousand dollars, even though it's hard-earned taxpayer dollars is The op the If not doing this is going to cause us millions of dollars in damage or other things that will come of this discussion, I think $122,000, as much as hard it is to spend that money, I feel it's necessary for the three things that I brought up, trust, transparency, and alleviating uncertainty. So I'll be supporting this.

Thank you. This does require a fourth or fifth vote. I'm going to turn it over. We're going to do an actual roll call vote, please.

Okay.

Okay. District 1. Aye. District 2? Aye. District 3? Yes. District 4? Aye. District 5?

Nay.

Thank you.

All right. Motion carries 4-1. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Two minutes, but before we take two minutes, CEO has a statement.

Yeah, just a quick announcement. I apologize, but due to another matter that I need to attend to this morning, I won't be able to remain with you for the rest of the items on today's board agenda. Assistant Executive Officer Tina Rocha is going to come up and help you with the rest of this meeting. Thank you.

That's right. We're going to take a quick two-minute bathroom break, and then we'll be right back. Support budget structural operating deficit for fiscal year 2027 and recommendations to balance the budget and mitigate impacts to the community, staff and county's general fund. Raul Mendez, Angelica Ramos and Christine Huber will be presenting. and maybe Joshua Woolworth, too.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Assistant Executive Officer Rocha, County Council Bowes, as mentioned, Raul Mendez, Assistant Executive Officer with Stanislaus County. We'll be co-presenting this morning with Christine Huber, our Director of our Community Service Agency, and also Angelica Ramos, our office's Chief Financial Officer. As mentioned, Joshua Woolworth will be driving the presentation. Joshua, as the board is aware, has been providing support. leadership and technical support to the agency for the last few months. I do want to share that or make a note that we represent a larger team that's been working on this item for over a year, making it possible for you to hear our recommendation and to consider the plan that we have laid out for consideration this morning. So, if we can go to the next slide, Joshua. As the chairman already read, I'm not going to read that again, this is the item that's before you. We have quite the presentation planned. We'll walk you through some of the history, kind of the game plan that's been developed and some of the next steps. You'll see that today is a first step of kind of a two-part plan, the next part of the plan will be implemented as we were recommending as part of the adopted budget, but wanted to kind of share the immediate actions that are necessary today to kind of start implementing a way that the agency, the organization can address this budget deficit. So as way of background, the community service agency does build community by cultivating safety, stability, and resiliency. for individuals and families in Stanislaus County. CSA operates and oversees various social welfare programs that provide cash assistance and social services and supports to families in our community, including vulnerable children and adults in ways that strengthen and preserve the family structure. The CSA program support and services budget includes staffing and operational costs to support the administration of these very important programs to our community. We are here today because through our fiscal analysis working with the department, we have identified a $17.9 million budget deficit. that needs to be addressed, and so today we're here to share some of the causes of this deficit, the solutions that we've identified as options, and then we also want to make sure we address impacts to the community. As we have background again in early 2025, we started looking at this issue. Our office along with our community service agency began validating the source of an accumulated fund balance in the program services and support budget to ensure that the county general fund had not been over recognized in prior fiscal years. The available fund balance as of July 1st of 2024 was $32.9 million and had grown significantly since fiscal year 2020. Due to fiscal staff and leadership turnover in the last decade, historical and institutional knowledge and fiscal expertise for the department were lost. Standard accounting reconciliations had not been performed in the many fiscal years under review. This analysis resulted in corrections and adjustments that were processed at year end during fiscal year 2025. As previously noted in July 1st of 2024, the program services and support budget had a available fund balance of $39.9 million. In fiscal year 2025, the department used $7.5 million of fund balance for annual operational costs and made an $18.2 million adjusting entry to correct prior year's errors, leaving a fund balance of $7.2 million available for the fiscal year 2026. The 2026 adopted budget for this budget unit relied on the use of fund balance of $9.4 million, which included $8.4 million in 2011 realignment fund balance and $1 million in wraparound reinvestment. There was insufficient 2011 realignment fund balance to support the operational structure for the fiscal year. leaving a $5.2 million gap. This board may recall on September 30th of last year, the agency brought forth a plan to begin addressing this deficit. And as part of that recommendation, they were able to resolve $2.9 million of the 5.2 deficit. And then later came to the board as part of the 26 fiscal, or I'm sorry, 2026 first quarter financial report to create additional savings to close out the additional deficit. So focusing on the present, earlier this year in January of 2026, we concluded the department's fund balance work. It concluded that the department did not have spendable fund balance at the start of the fiscal year, which means that the department was already operating in a deficit of $3.2 million. Looking forward to 2027, this deficit was projected to increase to approximately $17.9 million. This deficit represents a deficit of the department doesn't do anything, continues operations as currently being provided, but can be reduced through some reorganizing of operations, eliminating some overmatching scenarios to about $13.5 million. In any event, the deficit is something that needs to be addressed. As this board is aware, the organization has a past practice of expanding and contracting services and programs to available resources, and we find ourselves in that situation today. Additionally, the analysis did conclude that the department was not applying the county general fund contribution policy correctly, which requires the recognition of non-general fund sources first prior to tapping into general fund. And so it was inconsistent with the policy, the board approved policy of the general fund essentially being a pair of last resort. While stagnant and declining revenues may have also contributed to the structural deficit, it really was the department's belief that the entire fund balance was available that led to this situation, combined with the loss of the institutional knowledge. about the allowability of funding sources. So CSA has historically, maybe going on to the next, same slide, I'm sorry. CSA has historically maximized staffing levels based on available federal and state revenue allocations in order to maintain current service levels. CSA's estimated budget for fiscal year 27 is $187.4 million, supporting 958 field position across various program areas. Reaching this conclusion, record our office to engage with the department to develop a plan to address this projected structural deficit. I want to, at this point, turn it over to our CSA director, Christine Huber, who will walk you through some of the work that was done by the department in concert with our office to essentially close the gap. And so I'll turn it over to Christine at this time. Thank you.

The approach we took to decreasing our budget and minimizing impacts was to focus on minimizing those impacts to the community staff and stay true to the department's mission and vision. CSA considered a variety of approaches to balancing the budget for fiscal year 2027. In July of 2025, CSA implemented a hiring pause, filling only positions deemed urgent to operations and to funding available. A formal hiring freeze at CSA was implemented in April of 2026 at the direction of the CEO's office. The elimination of optional vacation cash outs in April as well, and the department eliminated all extra help and part-time positions in May of 2026. We looked for opportunities to achieve savings that will have the least impact on the community, on staff, and the County General Fund, and have incorporated the following strategies in the development of the 2027 adopted budget, which balances expenditures with available revenue. We maximized all federal and state allocations to the extent that matching funds are available. We reduced discretionary expenses We reduced operational overhead. We reduced staff development activities. We reduced contracted services, direct to program costs, and overtime. As I mentioned, we eliminated vacation cash outs. We're deferring the purchase of fixed assets, which includes equipment and vehicles, to future budget cycles. And we are recommending today to delete 71 vacant positions, reducing the total allocated positions from 1,065 to 994. If additional funding cannot be identified, CSA is at risk of needing to implement an immediate reduction in force for up to 67 filled full-time positions. Through other allocations, approximately 42 positions in lower classifications may be available to create potential landing spots. I would like to share with you the impacts to our customers potentially with these reductions. Specifically in child welfare services, supportive services that are designed to reduce barriers, expedite access to treatment, and support timely family reunification such as substance use treatment, individual and family counseling, and parent partner programs will be less available or not as timely. Closure of the teen center will eliminate a central hub where current and former foster youth receive independent skills training, life skills, financial budgeting, education support, job readiness, and other critical services. CSA will still provide services to youth placed in Stanislaus County, though the services may not be as easily accessible or available when teens might need them. Stable housing for foster youth aged 21 to 25 who age out of foster care will be less available and youth will experience longer wait times to access. Assistance for youth age 18 to 21 for securing apartments, obtaining supplies, and clothing for job readiness will be limited. Social security advocacy will be limited to only those age 16 and older instead of screening all foster youth. Sexual abuse services will be restricted to focus on current clients only, reducing access to community workshops that service sexual abuse prevention and safety net measures. Sober living environments for parents and children and parenting and childcare supports for women in substance abuse treatment will be reduced, potentially increasing relapse risk and delaying family reunification. The elimination of clinical supervision and licensure training for master's level social workers will reduce a key recruitment and retention component and potentially affect case management quality and consistency. And loss of financial support for respite care could decrease caregivers' retention, reducing the number of available foster homes, and increasing placement disruptions for foster youth. The deletion of vacant positions and potential reductions of additional positions in child welfare will reduce the program's ability to implement best practices that strengthen prevention efforts and support timely reunification. While child safety will remain the agency's highest priority, Many activities will be scaled back to state and court mandate. I'm sorry, back to state and court minimum requirements. Home visits for foster children and reunified parents will shift to the mandated minimum of once per month compared with the enhanced engagement currently provided based on individual needs. Experience has shown that without best practices there could be an increase in child removals, diminished capacity for meaningful engagement with foster youth and families. delays in the submission of court reports, and longer periods for families to complete reunification or family maintenance services. Our Adult Protective Service Program helps older adults and persons with disabilities maintain safe living conditions reduce the likelihood of self-neglect and homelessness. With the reductions, the department will be able to help fewer individuals preserve their independent living status and could result in more referrals to adult productive services. As a result of the reduction, community members will have less access to services that help with transportation, power of attorney processes, restraining orders, and rental disputes. The deletion of any positions will increase caseload, which is anticipated to delay investigations, reduce follow-up visits, and limit early interventions. Impacts to our Sandworks community, which is our public assistance programs. There will be processing delays, threatening timely access to food assistance, impacting household nutrition and stability. Delayed benefit approval disrupts income stability and affects families' ability to meet basic needs. Delayed determinations can result in a loss of medical coverage and limit access to essential health care services. Longer wait times for assistance when visiting our office or calling the benefit center. With less capacity, optional services like home visits or personalized workforce guidance may be scaled back to prioritize essentials potentially influencing employment outcomes. Slower response times to fraud reports and reduced number of investigations which will result in decreased recoveries and prosecutions exposing the programs to increased risk and financial losses. potential noncompliance with application and renewal timeline requirements that could result in corrective action and or penalties for performance. There's a potential for increased air rates that may incur financial penalties which will further reduce local resources, a potential to not have staffing capacity to support care and shelter operations during an emergency, and potential to be delayed in implementing requirements of H.R. 1 and jeopardizing our clients' benefits. Deleting any vacant positions and any potential reduction in the workforce will create higher caseloads for remaining staff, placing additional strain on the workforce that is struggling to meet requirements at current staffing levels. There are some impacts to other county departments as well. CSA has a $6.4 million contract with Workforce Development of which $5 million is to provide welfare-to-work services that will be reduced by $2 million. Workforce Development plans to use one-time carryover Federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or WIA, funds to offset approximately $1.1 million of this reduction. The balance of the reduction will be absorbed by moving two staff to WIA youth funding, moving one staff to adult dislocated worker funding, holding vacancies, not renewing a contract with LearningQuest, reducing space in outlying facilities, and other operational savings. CSA also has approximately a $750,000 contract with health services agency that funds three public health nurses and part of a nurse supervisor. Two of the public health nurses and the nurse supervisor will not be renewed representing approximately a $590,000 reduction. The positions support child welfare services, emergency response and family reunification. They support social workers by providing the medical side of an investigation. They also ensure that foster youth with complex medical care as well as being an advocate for their medical needs. HSA has held other funded positions vacant and will be able to transition current staff to the funded work. There are some potential impacts that are not factored into the budget balancing activities. Specifically, the federal changes to the CalFresh program via the passage of House Resolution 1, or as we know it, H.R. 1. Effective October 1, 2026, the CalFresh federal reimbursement rate will be reduced from 50% to 25%, increasing the county share from 15% to 22.5%. The CalFresh able-bodied adults without dependent work requirements are in effect now. And implementation of a variable CalFresh state share of costs effective October 1, 2027 for states with payment error rates. implemented changes to the Medi-Cal program that the county is required to comply with. There are new work community engagement requirements effective January 1, 2027 for adults aged 19 to 64 that have been eligible under the Affordable Care Act. The expansion, they must work, study, or volunteer at least 80 hours per month unless exempt. Counties must identify and verify non-exempt enrollees, track participation status and monitor compliance. Enforce disenrollment for non-compliance and review exemptions. The six month renewal process is effective January 1st, 2027. Renewals moved from annual, they moved from annually to every six months. Counties must implement systems to flag and process semiannual renewals, outreach to members whose automated renewals failed, and prepare for a significant increase in renewal workload. The non-citizen eligibility reductions are effective October 1st of 2026. Certain immigrant categories will lose eligibility for full scope federally funded Medi-Cal, requiring transition to restricted scope coverage. Counties must update eligibility systems to reflect new citizenship criteria, issue notices, and conduct outreach for impacted enrollees, and transition individuals to restricted scope Medi-Cal as necessary. Shortened retroactive coverage will be effective January 1, 2027. Retroactive coverage periods will be reduced to one month for those that had qualified under the ACA expansion, and then two months for all others. Counties must ensure updated retention of eligibility verification data, inform members clearly, and process applications accordingly. But with the challenges, there are opportunities. financial and operational impacts to social service programs from the state budget for 2026 to 2027 and any subsequent agreements between the legislature and the governor have some positive news for counties. For CalFresh, the match waiver for A match waiver has been implemented for administrative costs for fiscal year 2027 through 2029. So our match requirement stays at the lower level of 15.5% for the next three years. It waives the county match requirement for the $20 million in state general fund that is for counties, specifically for the able-bodied adults without dependence readiness. It provides a one-time state general fund augmentation with multi-year spending authority. And before the fiscal year 2027 state budget was finalized, states were notified of their federal fiscal year 2025 payment error rates. And California's rate was 10.93% compared to the national average of 10.62%. Because California's rate did not exceed 105% of the national rate, California's federal fiscal year performance will not count as a sanction year. In child welfare services, the final budget agreement provided a one-time statewide $20 million state general fund for counties to maintain and increase emergency response staffing capacity and is available until June 30th, 2028. This is the second round of this funding and it does support staff who work in emergency response. For Medi-Cal, a one-time investment of state general fund for statewide eligibility workload related to H.R.1 implementation and restore the cost of doing business adjustments for two years and is available to expand through June of 2028. With the restoration of the cost of doing business adjustment, counties will be subject to performance penalties though during fiscal year 2027 and 2028. CSA is in the process of analyzing these impacts and will report back to the Board during a future budget cycle or via separate Board action. At this time, I will turn it over to Angelica Ramos.

Thank you, Christine. So I'm going to take us through some of our recommendations. I want to talk a little bit about some transfers recommending from 1991 and 2011 realignment, but I want to give a little background before we go on to the next slide on what this is. So 1991 realignment is a revenue that the county collects in statewide sales tax. It's funding that was shifted to cover, funding that was provided to cover a shifted responsibility from the state for many health, mental health and social services programs. So this is provided as a dedicated funding source to help with what used to be a state general fund obligation. Similarly, 2011 realignment is also statewide sales tax and provides funding for counties' responsibility over several health and human services programs, which include mental health, substance treatment, child welfare, foster care, adult protective services, and some parts of CalWORKs. This is, again, responsibility realigned to counties. that used to be the state's funding responsibility. We received dedicated sales tax for 2011 realignment and vehicle license fee revenue to administer these programs locally, giving them greater flexibility to tailor services for community needs. Within those, next slide, within those funding sources, there is some flexibility to transfer funds between programs. We call those subaccounts. It requires board approval, but the county can transfer 10%, up to 10% of a given year's 91 and 2011 revenue from one subaccount to another. 2011 revenue legislation, again, also requires, also allows that between behavioral health subaccount programs and protective services funded programs. You can do this one time annually. The 10% allocation is based on the amount that was deposited in the previous year in the subaccount with the lowest balance. So sufficient to say that there is a calculation included in the legislation for the amount that you're allowed to transfer. The departments that receive most of this funding are our largest departments, the Health Services Agency, the Behavioral Health, and the Community Services Agency receive the largest part of this, but we do have some other departments that receive realignment funding, DER to a smaller extent, Public Defender to a smaller extent, and many of our public safety departments. Given the size of the deficit that's been identified in the budget for 2027 for CSA and its corresponding impact on the community and staff, staff is recommending a one-time approval for a transfer of 1991 and 2011 realignment in fiscal year 2026, which we just closed out in the process of finalizing, as detailed in the fiscal impact section of the staff report. The realignment funding, excuse me, The realignment funding will come from funds currently supporting behavioral health and recovery services. Behavioral health and recovery is confident that it can operationalize the transfer of the funds and utilize current fund balance to mitigate any impacts to the community, but understandably is noting that any loss of funding reduces future behavioral health ability to provide services to the public at some point down the road, which would be compounded by the department's inability to draw down Medi-Cal funding on a dollar for dollar basis. However, there is some matching that would still occur over on the CSA side. with the realignment transfer. This transfer will allow for what we're calling a bridge year for CSA to get their budget balance in fiscal year 2027. This bridge year will allow the department to push out the effective date of a reduction in force to allow time for natural staff attrition to occur and mitigate some of the need for reduction in force, reducing the impact on existing staff. If this recommendation is approved, staff will return to the Board of Supervisors with a request. later in the year to begin reduction and force actions for any positions that have not been vacated or transferred or dealt with to mitigate the deficit. And then we'll do that with the adopted budget, 2027 adopted budget. The chief executive office is also recommending a limited countywide hiring freeze. to create potential job placement opportunities. Sometimes we refer to those as landing spots in other departments to mitigate workforce reductions. However, all peace officer classifications will be exempt from this limited countywide hiring freeze as those are not anticipated to provide landing spots for the positions that may need to be reduced. And so with that, we've also identified the need for some corrective action support steps and some ongoing department support. And we have three that we've included in the report and we're recommending. The first is to create a new legal budget unit. We'll be creating a new legal budget unit in the auditor controller's office to house Assembly Bill 85 revenue. CSA will need to make requests to the auditor controller's office to access the funding needed to support operations that are to be funded with AB 85 revenue. This will create a layer of oversight that will ensure the funding is used as intended. So part of the issue, as we described earlier, was there was quite a bit of AB 85 revenue and fund balance that, through the loss of institutional knowledge, the department believed was available to be used across all of their, to fund any and all of the operations, but was not so. So that will add that additional layer of oversight. Second, the CEO's office will work with CSA in monitoring the department's year-end closed activities annually to ensure that resources are managed and aligned with county policy. We do that now with departments. This just indicates a deeper level of engagement with the department, which we started doing in this last fiscal year. We plan to continue those more intensive oversight efforts for the next three years, starting with fiscal year 2026, which we just partnered with. probably growing in 2027, but it's subject to the department demonstrating success in managing year-end closed resources and aligning with county policies to include. General fund needs to be the payer of last resort as we're closing out the year. Additional monitoring efforts will be extended if satisfactory process is not made. Finally, the CEO's office will create a standard list of schedules that will be required from CSA upon budget submission. Those will be in addition to those that are already required via countywide department budget instructions. In the past, there were a lot of schedules that have existed, and over time, as there has been turnover, some of those have not continue to be maintained. We're going to resurrect those. And I think, and we believe they will also provide valuable insight for the department to monitor their budget on their own throughout the year. And again, these will be required materials from CSA with every budget cycle turn in. So in conclusion, the transfer of realignment to CSA of up to $5.1 million will provide this bridge year to a balanced budget in fiscal year 2027. However, this action is unprecedented. If approved, staff will return with a request to implement a reduction in force of up to 67 filled full-time positions with the 2027 adopted budget. CSA is recommending the deletion of currently 71 vacant positions since there is just not enough, there's not sufficient revenue available to support them. CSA will continue to explore alternate funding sources and seek other strategies to reduce costs or access other revenues to balance the budget in fiscal year 2027 and minimize impacts to the community, to staff, and to the County General Fund. The department will provide an update to the board as part of the 2027 adopted budget and future budget cycles and request approval of this reduction in force. Chief Executive Office will examine the use and effectiveness of this one-time allocation of realignment funds to the Community Services Agency to close out the structural budget deficit. As described, staff will return again during a future budget cycle with additional recommended board actions. as necessary. This may include transfer of additional realignment funds after further analysis is completed and as we monitor the outcome of this initial, the availability of this initial transfer throughout the year. Okay. Budget adjustments to reduce appropriations and estimated revenue will be recommended with the 2027 adopted budget. This will leave them with appropriations that will get them balanced. But the adjustments that reflect the transfer of the $5.1 million to CSA will not be included in the adopted budget. We plan to provide that throughout the year as budget updates are brought to the board. assuming that the department was able to operationalize effective July 1, 2026. Ongoing analysis will be performed to determine appropriate budget adjustments again throughout the year so that we can get an alignment and we plan to return again with an update in 2027 mid-year budget and in future budget cycles as needed. With that, I will turn the presentation back over to Raul who will take us through our staff recommendations.

Okay, thank you, Angelica. And we have nine staff recommendations for your consideration this afternoon. I will summarize them for your benefit. The first is obviously accepting a report on the Community Services Agency program and support. program services and support budget, structural operating deficit for fiscal year 2027, approving the deletion of the 71 vacant positions within the CSA program services and support budget, and the corresponding amendment to the salary and position allocation resolution to reflect the recommended changes. We also are making recommendations to formalize the transfer of the $5.1 million from essentially mental health, BHRS subaccounts to social service subaccounts, and then also directing the audit controller to forward a copy of the documentation, reallocating these funds, and then staff recommendation seven, As Angelica mentioned, directing the CEO and the director of CSA to recommend adjustments as part of your adopted budget for 2027. This agenda item will include a reduction in forced action, recommendation A, directing the CEO to return to you in a future budget cycle with any other actions that are needed. to implement this plan, including the possible reallocation of additional realignment funds. And then the last recommendation pertains to the limited countywide hiring freeze mentioned earlier with some exclusions, exceptions for PS officer classifications, but essentially putting that into effect immediately through the end of the current fiscal year. Nine recommendations for your consideration. This concludes staff presentation. We are all available to answer any questions you may have. Mr. Chair, back to you.

Thank you very much. You just want to answer what the hiring freeze and what it actually means. What is the term again? is essentially a soft hiring freeze.

It's a limited, yeah, countywide limited hiring freeze is the way we're framing it. Essentially, it provides the CEO's office the opportunity to have conversations with county departments as they're looking to fill positions to make sure that we're cross-referencing those positions with potential impacted positions at the community service agency. I can share, your CEO has made it pretty clear to staff that we need to move quickly when those requests come in. We currently have the peace officer classifications outlined or designated to be excluded. If there are other classifications where it makes sense to also provide some exclusions, exemptions, we will implement that following discussion and conversation. But, yeah, that's in summary how that is supposed to work.

I'm going to start from Manny first because I think you were.

Well, thank you for the presentation. We had briefings on this. Obviously, this is a difficult decision. The hiring freeze, the soft hiring freeze to naturally, through attrition, maybe fill some of the positions that have been lost here is, I'm assuming, the reason we're doing this hiring freeze. And then again, in the presentation, a lot of you saw a lot of this is from federal and state funding as well, and we're already in process to look for backfill dollars if the opportunity presents itself, but we feel that it's responsible as a county to any of the shortfalls we're doing to get ahead of this, so I appreciate staff working on this. Again, these aren't easy decisions, they never are, but for the long-term sustainability of the department, I think these decisions need to be made.

So I'll be supporting this item.

Thank you. Thank you guys for the presentation. This is difficult. Like Manny said, we all were briefed on this when we first found out about this and how this was going on. And then the update was to kind of tell us the dollar amounts that we're talking about here. It just shows how important this is. First, how important accountants are. That's always, I want to make sure that everybody knows that. But just the importance of the institutional knowledge and how we lose that sometimes when people, as people move on, transfer to other departments, things like that, that happen. That's how this happens, right? I mean, that's how we end up in a spot where all of a sudden something that we thought we had coming to us isn't coming to us, and we have budgeted and planned based on having that money being there. I kind of equate it to, you know, as you're in a business and you have all these clients, and you get a bunch of new clients, and, okay, so then you ramp up for the clients, and you think that's going to be good, but then you find out those clients aren't coming, so you don't have that revenue. Now you've got to make adjustments. As difficult as that is for everybody, we have to make adjustments. It reminds me of back in the day when things were terrible when I first started and Vita first started when we were doing all kinds of cuts and just to survive to get through these things and that's what we have to do. We have to make these adjustments and hopefully we can make corrections. A couple things I want to make sure we memorialize is that we are taking this money from BHRS and that we don't forget that and that that day comes back. I know that it will, it's more than just this that is coming from BHRS. There's realignment and like I said, reimbursement dollars from Medi-Cal that could be coming to us by taking this, and it takes away realignment, our Medi-Cal reimbursement that we could have coming to us. I know there's also, I think it was mentioned in the presentation, Christine or Roe, that there's also that same thing could happen on the CSA side, right? Some of those dollars we'll get. So I'd love to get that number. I know a couple times in our briefing we said we're going to get a number back, and I'd love to see what the actual effect of that was between BHRS, CSA, after Medi-Cal reimbursement, after, if not Medi-Cal, the the reimbursement that we'd have coming to us. So I'd like to see what the net amount is that we actually ended up kind of leaving on the table because of having to do this. But we have no choice. I get it. But yeah, but again, I'd really like to see us make sure that as some of us are maybe long gone at some point here that we still remember we took this money from BHRS and it's got it coming back to it to them at some point here, so.

I won't forget. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Raul, Christine, Josh, Angelica, thank you guys for your presentation and also the briefing that we had on this. There's a question on the, not so much on the peace officer, what about putting that public safety? Is that, because we have positions in Office of Emergency Services, those type of things, is that

We can certainly look at that, Supervisor. I think we initially started with public safety and felt it was too broad because even within public safety you may have like admin positions that essentially there will be alignment with what CSA is maybe proposing in terms of a reduction in force plan. We certainly are open to having conversations about classifications that We just know aren't going to be a landing spot or a good fit for what we're trying to do for the agency. But certainly we can have more conversations about that, trying to maybe broaden those classifications that fall within that exception or that exclusion.

All right. No more questions. I'm going to go out to the public and acknowledge that we don't have any written comments to see when the public wish to Provide comments. Come on up. I saw your head snap back when you heard $17 million.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Steven Morrow, for the record. Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, Ms. Rocha and Mr. Bose, having to deal with any type of a budget deficit and cuts in services hurts, especially for the work that CSA does for our community, especially the less advantaged members of community. But it's a decision that has to be done because we can't print money, unlike the federal government. We've got to balance our budget. But one thing I heard during the presentation about fund balances, and as you know, for the last several years, I have been cautioning on the use of the fund balances to cover these funding gaps in our budget. And I think it was Mr. Withrow who said years ago, we're not supposed to be a bank holding onto this money and not using it for our community. And I can support that. But as those fund balances have dropped, We now have to be maybe a little bit more cautious, but now hearing that here we had a fund balance where we thought we had this much money and all of a sudden it's not there makes me wonder is there an elephant in the room? Are our other fund balances throughout the county budget facing those same types of issues And when you sit down to cover the proposed and adopt the budget next month, is that fund balance money that you might be contemplating using, is it really here? So maybe this is a good time to start asking some what are probably going to be some difficult questions because we don't want what happened here at the CSA, which is going to affect their great work, to make sure we don't have any other issues elsewhere in the budget, which will now create a much larger problem. So it's just something to consider. And again, to the folks who did the presentation, thank you for the very detailed presentation.

There's going to be real impacts to the community. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You heard where they could occur, but they're going to occur because there's going to be fewer people. We did exceed the service level of what we could actually afford, the dollars that were coming in. Acknowledge that, and when we first heard about this, it's been about six months when this came to light. It's taken us that long to tear it apart and figure out what's going on. The natural reaction is the quicker we make changes, the less the impact's going to be, but there are many more things that you have to, when you're talking about employees, who has bumping rights, they have to negotiate with the union. So it's a lot more difficult than in private industry. And the dollars that we received our briefing from, the dollars, realignment dollars are much lower than what was stated originally to me because it wasn't a 10% of it. So that's very good. I will remember with that. I know we're running short on time. I will entertain a motion if there's no other comments.

Second.

The motion is second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Carries 5-0. Thank you all. Okay, on to item three, public hearing. To consider the approval of the fiscal year 2026-27 assessments for various community service areas, the landscape assessment district, and landscape and lighting districts. And your militia will be presenting along with Dave Lehman, I think.

Good afternoon, Chair Chiesa, Board of Supervisors, Assistant CEO Tina Rocha, and Council Bose.

Good afternoon. This is an annual public hearing to consider approval of the fiscal year 26-27 assessments for the following special districts. With me is Deputy Director Andrew Malizia. Got a little good news. We're doing interviews at 1.30 at Public Works for a deputy director, so wish us good luck. So Sam's been gone for about six months now. At any rate, off we roll.

Good afternoon, Chair Chiesa, Board, Assistant CEO Rocha, and County Council Bose. We are here for the public hearing to consider the approval of the fiscal year 26-27 assessments for our special benefit districts. Our special benefit districts consist of 20 county service areas. They will be referred to as CSAs, just to avoid any kind of confusion from the previous item. They are very different. These are special benefit districts. So these are labeled as numbers four through 27. We have one landscape assessment district, which is Del Rio Heights, and we have seven landscape and lighting districts, Bret Hart, Bystrom, Howard McCracken, Laurel, Paradise South, Riverdale, and Riverview. With our CSAs, CSAs 4 through 12 currently do not have an assessment methodology to adjust the methodology, or excuse me, to adjust the assessment. Those were grandfathered in with Prop 218 back in 1997 and have been held stable since then. CSAs number 16 through 27 all have an approved methodology to adjust the assessment annually based on the projected cost of the services. The increases that we are currently proposing for this fiscal year are due to increased costs in labor and operation and administration, to also reduce the reliance on the fund balances that do exist in some of these CSAs, and in some cases to maintain or increase the levels of service. The annual assessment increases are proposed per the approved methodology as established within each engineer's report. And last, CSA number four was recently, or back in 2020, I believe, was split off with CSA 10, which is a parks district. And as part of that, there's a repayment to CSA 10 over four years. And so the final payment of $62,500 will be paid this year from CSA 4 to CSA 10. From 2022 to 2026, over the last few years, there have been a few annexations that were part of the particularly in the Denier area, CSAs 19 and 21, resulting in higher budgets for each of these districts. The operating budgets of the new zones did not actually impact the assessment rates of the existing zones. Due to the timing of the acceptance of the improvements, they were not part of fiscal year 2026, but they will be part of 2027.

And this is a pretty dense chart. I thought I'd just read off maybe one of them. In D1, all of Ranch Estates, we're proposing an increase of 21%, which is an increase of $119.23 per year. There's approximately 29 houses in there. And we are proposing to use $10,000 of fund balance this year, which will decrease fund balance by 12%. staff is recommending a maximum increase in the assessment of 129.93, or on some of them that are smaller, we're asking for 100%. CSA 23 Hillsboro and D1 going from 50.56 per year to proposing 101.12, which is an increase of 100%. And we are using a little fund balance there, but we need to restore fund balance. staff recommends find that the notice of public hearing was published in compliance with the government code conduct this public hearing set the fiscal year 2026-27 annual assessments as shown in the staff report make the engineers reports a part of the record of this proceeding and authorize the auditor controller to add the annual assessments to the 2026-27 tax roll Staff is available for questions staff acid anyone wishing to make a comment during the public hearing Please identify the name or number of the special district. They are commenting on It's very good.

Okay before I go any questions of staff questions questions questions, okay We don't have any written comments. Do we have any online? we do not does anyone here wish to make any comments on it and Seeing none, I bring it back to the board for action. Motion to approve. Second. Motion. We have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Motion carries 4-1. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. We're now going to move on to Board of Supervisors reports.

National NIDOC tonight. Hope everybody can make it out of their neighborhood.

Stay cool, Terry? That's all. Nothing? I'm going to just do the Houston Historical Society this weekend, the Barth family, and the Asali family, Cleo and Joyce, and Frank and Maria Asali were honored. My favorite event of the whole year, bar none.

I have it, but I'm unable to access it right now. I'll have to do it in the next meeting.

Same as Supervisor Graywald, National Night Out tonight, I'll be attending the series one on Saturn Court. Thank you, Nason Sanchez and the Saturn Court community for organizing that. And I'll be heading over to the Empire National Night Out, which is hosted by Love Empire, and that's going to be at the Empire Library. So excited for that.

Thank you very much. I forgot to acknowledge receipt correspondence. Thank you. I'm going to move back to nine correspondence. Acknowledge receipt of correspondence to refer to the recommended as recommended on the agenda. Item 11, legislative fiscal management report.

Just one quick update. The public is invited to the Kenwood Star Neighborhood Infrastructure Improvement Project groundbreaking ceremony next Wednesday, August 12th at 9 a.m., and that's located at Star Avenue and North Denier Avenue in Turlock.

Perfect. Okay. There's nothing else for the good of the order?

Good job, Tina, filling in. Good job.

Yeah, thank you. This meeting is adjourned.