Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

you you Thank you.

To the public input test methods to verify your connection. To the public input test methods to verify your connection.

Test one, two, three. Test one, two, three.

you you you Thank you. Thank you. So, Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. you

All right. Welcome back. Madam Council, do you have anything to report from closed session?

Yes, Madam Chair. Reporting out for item D, the Board of Supervisors directed legal counsel to defend and authorize the defense of individually named defendants, including those to be named later with a reservation of rights. In the case of Maximiliano Mejia versus City of Visalia et al., Tulare County Superior Court case number VCU 330546. The adverse party is Maximiliano Mejia. The case involves an allegation of negligence with a dangerous condition. The motion to defend was made by Supervisor Larry Macari, seconded by Supervisor Pete Vanderpool. The motion passed 4-0 with Supervisor Dennis Townsend absent.

All right, thank you. Now if we would please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and stay standing for a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

All right.

Start this evening with Board of Supervisors matters and I'll start on my left with supervisor Vanderpool.

I

Thank you, Madam Chair. A few things to go over for this week, some upcoming public meetings. I have a meeting of the Tulare County Employees Retirement Association tomorrow at 8.30 at the Tessera Board Chambers. I also have an International Agri-Center Board meeting tomorrow afternoon at 4 o'clock at the International Agri-Center Heritage Complex. And then lastly, I'm gonna be meeting with various departments and constituents throughout the week. It's gonna be a hot one, and I look forward to the weather getting better, but kids are back in school, busy, and I hope everyone's doing well as well. Is that it?

That's all I got. Sweet, that's good. All right, Supervisor Valero. All right.

Well, great evening, Tulare County. I just attended the Ribbon Cutting for Educacion for Everybody on behalf of Supervisor Shuklian, located on Main Street across from Redwood High School. And this organization works to help students and families with financial empowerment workshops and support community resource fairs, free movie nights, along with partnering with other agencies to offer educational resources. On Thursday, we have a public safety town hall in Three Rivers with the California Highway Patrol, Tulare County Sheriff's Office, and Tulare County Fire. Looking forward to a great discussion on all things related to safety, security, and emergencies in our mountain community. On Friday, I will be attending a community resilience workshop hosted by Food Link of Tulare County. And then lastly, I have several calls and meetings with constituents across the district. And that is all I have, Chair.

Okay. Supervisor Macari.

Well, good evening, everyone. Thanks for coming. Just a lot of meetings with our staff. I had meetings with Health and Human Services Agency. Thank you for everything and the update you always do. And it's great to hear that with all the uncertainties of H.R. 1, that you have all these contingency plans in place to make sure that the county is, the impact of the county will be mitigated as much as possible. I had our San Joaquin Valley Insurance Authority meeting. We attended on Friday. That was a, you know, we're talking about fees and services and what's coming up. And so we're doing everything we can to make sure that our staff is getting the best insurance that we can provide at the time that was happening. We had a meeting regarding Measure R. We're really doing a lot of promotional things on Measure R. There seems to be more and more misunderstandings about it. And we're gonna do, we're working on an informational campaign And what people don't understand is that, yes, we pay a portion of our sales tax comes in, but that money stays local. this is not a tax going to the state where they take most of it and they just give us a few pennies on the dollar back. That 100% stays here when we use it to leverage that money and bring in more money. And it's something like, it was like 600 million or something. We've leveraged like three million, three billion so far. So it's, Those numbers are real estimate, but that's pretty close. And it shows the impact of local, what it does here locally. And it stays here and it really helps. And so we're going to continue that, that project. And I want to thank RMA staff for showing up. I've seen some out there. And we'll continue to work with that. And last but not least, I had a meeting with a constituent last minute. We met with Resource Management Agency. I want to thank Aaron Bock. He's on vacation on his days off. And he came in for us to meet. I really appreciate that coming in. I feel bad that we had to, we called you in on that. But Again, it goes to show the dedication our staff has. Thank you very much. That's all I have.

All right. Thank you. Just a couple things I want to highlight too. piggyback off of the sjvia meeting on friday we did have our insurance rates for next year last month in a preliminary report that was reported that our increases could be 29 percent but thank you to the hard work of staff they will be still high 14.91 percent but better than 29%, so that will be coming into effect. I think we have a health fair on October 8th, and folks will be able to get all the information there. This Thursday, Supervisor McCurry and myself will be doing a state of the local government with mayor brett taylor and vice mayor liz wynn at bella vita that's sponsored by the visalia chamber of commerce and something i want to highlight also tomorrow is a soft opening i was invited to for the new la piazza restaurant in downtown visalia la piazza has been in tulare for many years and They got smart and decided to open up in Visalia also. No.

Good people. They just are opening the Visalia restaurant so they can renovate the Tulare one and they're going to open it right back up. Okay. Whatever.

All right. And like everyone else, various meetings and constituent meetings throughout the week. We will move on to item 3 which is public comment under state law matters Presented under this item cannot be discussed or acted upon by the board at this time Comments should be relevant to matters within the board subject matter jurisdiction and not repetitive of previous speakers at all times Please use the microphone and state your name for the record and a reminder. Also. We do now have Telephonic public comment if you are on the phone making public comment you have three minutes to the microphone will mute at three minutes so just fair warning so with that madam clerk do we have any public comment cards madam chair we do not have any public comment cards and we do not have any remote public comment okay do we have anybody in the audience who would like to speak all right seeing none we will move on to the consent calendar These items are routine and usually approved by one motion. Before action by the board, I will ask if any board members or the public have something they wish to remove. Do any board members have anything they would wish to remove from the consent calendar? Okay, not seeing anything, I will entertain a motion. Okay, we have a motion by Supervisor Valero and a second by, there's only two of you left, Supervisor Macari. Please cast your votes. Motion passes 4-0, Supervisor Townsend absent. All right, we will now move on to item 11, which is a non-timed item, and this is to receive a presentation from the Resource Management Agency regarding informational and technological upgrades. Is that what it said? regarding informational and technological upgrades Mr. Bach and Mr. Shanky, we're gonna take this as a group here.

I see that I recognize we're probably Preventing you from breaking the record on the fastest board meeting That's not a record we try to break No, we appreciate the time. Good evening, Reed Schenke, your Resource Management Agency Director. With this presentation, we wanted to provide an update on a number of tools that we've been developing over the past few months and are going live with that will really help, I think, provide improved services to our customers. As we develop these tools and modify our procedures, we judge them against kind of four or three key themes here. Are we adequately responding to our customers' needs? Do we have the tools and skills that we need to do our job well? That's the internal service capability. Can we measure and demonstrate how we're doing? Do we have the metrics, the KPIs that we can show we're doing a good job and then when we have outside influences asking us or that are maybe debating how well we're doing, we're able to demonstrate that we are doing a good job or maybe that we need to be doing a better job. And are we able to adjust and prepare for changing times while maintaining a healthy workforce? We recognize that the workforce is changing, that demographics change, and we need to be able to be flexible and proactive to adjust to that. So these are questions we ask ourselves and we try to address with new initiatives. Some of the tools we'll talk about today will help us process permits faster. Some will provide self-service access to information that we frequently get requests for. One tool will help us reduce wait times for walking guests at our permit center. And one will give the public a better connection to service requests that they make. Sometimes you need an outsider's perspective. So we think we know how we're doing, but we have to accept that we have certain partialities, certain biases. Our customers certainly tell us how they think we're doing, but they oftentimes have motives behind those comments. There's generally accepted or general industry stereotypes. I think we at RMA pride ourselves in really not falling into those cliches. And so we hired a professional, an outside third party to come in. We've talked about this with you in the past, but we hired GuideHouse to come in to take a look at our services, do an assessment, and provide some recommendations. Part of those series of recommendations, they gave us some insight into some tools that we should explore and develop that would help our customers access our services more effectively and understand what we could do more accurately. So that kind of piece of the consultant assessment is what we're really focusing on here today. Some of the tools that we've developed to help provide those better services. To really do that, we had to understand our customer. And so we mapped out our typical customer's journey. This is a bit tricky because we provide a lot of different services from patching the potholes to the building permits, and one customer is never the same as the next. But you can generally kind of follow this same pathway through a typical customer's journey. They go from kind of initial finding or looking for information, asking us some questions, making an application or submitting a request, getting some updates on how the process is going, receiving the service, whether it be an actual permit being issued or maybe someone going out and patching the pothole. and then some type of feedback loop that we can connect with the customer on. There's a number of touch points or mechanisms in which we deal with or interact with those customers through the website, through telephone, email, et cetera. And so these tools here are what we're, these interactions are what we're really trying to improve with some of these tools. So given the many opportunities and offerings available to us, we have software companies reach out to us. We have internal development that we can take. There's a lot of different tools that we can try to develop. So we have to prioritize what we spend our resources on. We judge the success of a new tool against the framework that's kind of shown on this slide here. And we want to make meaningful impacts in these categories. So does the tool improve or have an impact on the customer experience? Does it make an operational impact? Does it provide us ultimately with insights or data to how well we're doing? Does it improve our resilience organizationally? I touched on staff changes. Can we maintain that institutional knowledge through some sort of a software or a tool? And then does it provide ultimately value and is it scalable? Can we increase that service that we provide within the organization? So with that that's kind of the background and then Aaron and Ahmad we're going to walk through some of these tools And give us some practical examples of how we're using them Madam chair supervisors Aaron Bach assistant director with the resource management agency And this is the exciting part of the conversation today.

This is the actual Oh, no, no, that was good. I admit it. So this is the actual software that we're invested in to change the experience for all of our customers. One of the comments we got back from GuideHouse is we really need to educate the customer, and it's often difficult to do, so we're using software to help us get there. So the first thing we looked at was a call queue. And the call queue has helped dramatically. So what would you do next? You got to look at your lobby. And our lobby at any given day has about 20 folks walk through there all the way up to 60, probably averaging around 20 all the way down to 10. but what is their journey going to look like, especially now that we have the assessor here and we also have HHSA. So we looked at WaveTech, and WaveTech is a basic lobby experience modernization. What it does map is the customer's journey. We'll be able to actually create customer data. We'll have multiple queuing channels, performance monitoring. We can custom our dashboards through time. And whether someone's actually manning the lobby or not, they'll actually have an opportunity to always digitally go through the process. And that ultimately will help us improve our services and create objectives around our key performance indicators.

Next slide, please.

So this is kind of what it looks like. I don't know. Many of us have been to hospitals, gone to Quest, whatever. I like this a lot better. I'm there for two minutes, not 20 minutes waiting. I can, and I'll show you in a second, I can make an online appointment. But what this does is shows your ticket number, the counter, and as you can see at the bottom here, we could create three different lobbies basically for ourselves, the assessor and HHSA if they opt into this program. The assessor's been using a kiosk for years, so if we go in together on this, I think this would be a great opportunity. The real-time lobby demand analytics will also help again create key performance indicators to see how fast we are servicing the public and on top of that it'll give the public an opportunity to see how long they're going to have to wait at that moment in case they have other things to do.

Next slide please.

So this is kind of what it looks like. Whether you're online or you're at the kiosk at the counter, you'll be able to put your time you want to talk to somebody. As it sits right now, it's talking to departments. So if you want to talk to the planning department, it'll put in their planning department. You can put in notes of why you're there, and the planning department will respond at that time to make somebody available to talk to you. We'll also have a person out in front able to usher people through to our counter or back into the back offices if that's where the conversation is going to occur. We are also updating this so we can actually talk to individuals and make those individuals available ultimately, but we're just trying it out with departments at this time. The next software, next slide please, is Infila and this is knowledge management. This is a step up from FAQs and what we are doing is we are having staff answer questions right now and it goes into a centralized knowledge base. which is reusable and so we all have consistent answers moving forwards instead of various answers. We have the zoning phone right now where you'll see hundreds, thousands of answers which we hope to ultimately mine and put into the centralized database. But this will keep our answers consistent. Next slide. And so ultimately, as you could see, here's a question, here's an answer about solar, one of our most common questions we get from the public. And so we have a united understanding inside staff right now on what those answers look like. Ultimately, this will be available to the public. And as the IT department creates chat or other uh mechanisms to give these answers to the public we will be already teaching our infilla how to answer those questions next slide please um so ultimately uh infilla will be the ultimate faq and will save us a lot of time having to answer the same question over and over again and should remove our zone phone completely and we'll just be able to point people to infilla This is something I'm really excited about. This is Emulet Cities, two upstart young gentlemen who went to Oxford. We met them at the planning conference last year. They said they wanted to talk to the most difficult agency to get a project through, so they wanted to talk to TARPA, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, and they said they wanted to talk to one of the easiest. So here we are. And so what they've provided to us so far is a mechanism where the public can go online, fill out a form with all the information online, not a PDF, not a piece of paper, don't have to scan it and submit it again, fillable forms. And what they can do, as you can see on this website, Either they go building permit or land use permit. And what they'll do is they will provide us the site plan and their operational statement. And that site plan and operational statement will tell them if they have a complete application or not. So we're pre-screening applications before they get to us. Because one thing we do is we accept a lot of projects in this county. We don't deem them incomplete. uh but what that means is we have to help them get through the process till we have a complete application this will allow them to see beforehand if that's going to complete and that'll save us 20 30 on some of these projects um the next slide please As you can see, this is kind of what it looks like. Fillable forms, and you see the count. When you get to the end of it, you'll know you have a complete application, and then you would submit to the county your application. So we don't have to worry if it's complete or not. We'll be asking the question, did you go through this process? And ultimately, this will become part of our process. But for now, it's just pre-application screening. Next slide, please. Also very exciting, and the original reason we're here today, we have a new GIS zoning webpage, and this is light years away from where we were at, if you've ever used our parcel zoning webpage before. We've spent the last six years, first of all, making this accurate information, where we have the most up-to-date zoning information. This is an interactive tool, And it'll allow us for not only the spatial mapping and tracking, but ultimately, as you'll see from the Measure R program, what stems out of this, internal spatial decision support. Next slide, please. So I click on a parcel. This one's just north of the city of Tulare, Acres Project, let's say. And I see it's C3MU. Who knows what that means? two three four five maybe five people all right so c3mu is a highway commercial our most intense commercial and then also the mixed use overlay mu so i don't know what that means and then i click on view zoning ordinance and the pdfs pop up as to the sections that are included there and what that means so that's a huge step ahead before you have to go back out and then go to our zoning code to get this information you could do it in a click Next slide, please. But this is where we've really taken a step forward. Not only can you see your zoning, you can also see the building permits on that project. We get a lot of PRAs from real estate brokers knowing that they can use the PRA process as due diligence to get information from us. Now they don't necessarily have to go through that process, they can just see it online. And we are working on also doing that with code cases. So if there's a code case involved, somebody would be able to see that. And you'll see in a second here with Tulare County Connect GoGov that they'll have that opportunity to see if someone's already made a complaint. But with this program, they'll also be able to see if there's previous complaints historically made on the site. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Reid about Measure R.

GIS in my mind is a fantastic tool. Everything that we do at RMA really has a location associated with it. We patch a pothole, it's got a location. We issue a building permit, it's got a location. The tracking mechanism and the understanding of all of that information and data is geographical and GIS is the mechanism that I see in the future being the library of everything that RMA has done that's really had an impact to the county on the physical perspective. So with that, that helps us internally but also externally as we share our story. GIS is the data set for that. So one example here is Measure R. The question was asked, where has the Measure R money been spent over the past two decades now, right? So this is a tool that we're developing in conjunction with TCAG To be able to show exactly where over since the the life or the since the onset of measure are where we spent the money The little yellow highlights is everywhere within a certain time frame that measure our money was spent In a bit more I guess user friendly context or that tells a story GIS offers us a tool called a story map And this is a mechanism where you've got a live map. You can zoom in to a specific location Maybe it's the street you live on maybe it's the street you drive frequently for your commute and you can see okay did something get done there or what was done there and and was measure are a part of that so you can click on the location and then a brief description of it will pop up for some of the bigger projects you might have photos you might have a cost explanation of what it was done in timelines so that's really a storytelling device to help us present to the public what we've been doing with their tax funds we recognize that people want to know where their tax money is going and that it's being put to good use And this is a fantastic tool in which we're going to be able to help do that. So that's to come. We're going to have that live on our website. And we're filling out the information to expand really what it presents to the public here. And so then the kind of the last and final tool that we wanted to present to you today here was Tulare County Connect or it's the The sales product is gogov, but we've branded it as Tulare County Connect We like I mentioned we provide a broad range of services and we get requests for services through many pathways phone calls emails in person through the board members yourselves in the past those service requests were primarily tracked and responded to differently and based on the responding divisions procedure. So if it's a code issue, code kind of handled the process. If it was a roads or public works request, public works handled and tracked that process. This way worked, but it did leave some room for improvements for us. So we recognize that a consolidated ESR or an enterprise service request system, I think you guys are familiar with ServiceNow, so that's a service request system, and a dedicated focus on tracking and responding to our requests would help ensure that we don't drop the ball. It provides us consistently high level of communication and responsiveness. So GoGov or Tulare County Connect, as Ahmad will show you, it will help us track and monitor those service requests on the back end. We've been doing that already, and it will give the public ultimately a new pathway to interact with us through a mobile application that we're ready to go live with here. So, Ahmad. All right.

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Ahmed Al-Kayat, Assistant Army Director of Public Works. May I ask you to go forward one more slide? Let's start here. So we had an opportunity to improve our service request format in general. So I start briefly by outlining how it used to be, how we operated, and then why modernization was needed. Previously, residents had several disconnected ways to submit a service request. We could call the RMA directly or contact your road yard directly or submit a form through the county website. In each case, there's more work to be done. Clerical staff had to manually enter the information into the system. ESR is what it used to be. Because the process wasn't centralized, the public-facing experience wasn't as intuitive or as customer-friendly as needed to be. From an operational standpoint, we also lacked a strong tool to support responsiveness, visibility, and proactive planning. Some features were designed more for internal work order management, just for our sake only, not taking into consideration what's best for the customer. Of course, customers are always on our mind, but we could serve them better. So public engagement was not as we hoped it would be. And importantly, our reporting and trend analysis capabilities were limited, making it harder to identify patterns, hotspots, or emerging needs across the county. These challenges ultimately drove our efforts to modernize and strengthen the entire service request experience. Here, with all that in mind, we're introducing, we're pleased to introduce the Larry County Connect, or TCC, as we're going to get used to that term, TCC, hopefully, our new citizen engagement app. TCC provides a single unified place where residents can submit service requests, access county information, and connect directly with our services. The platform enhances two-way communication, improves how requests are tracked and followed up on, and allows us to deliver services more efficiently. From the county's perspective, TCC gives us far better visibility into service needs and trend occurring across the community. Instead of fragmented information coming from different locations, everything is centralized, structured, and trackable. So this slide here shows how the new workflow operates from start to finish. So residents initiate a mobile app request, and we will show you how tonight. which gives them a much more intuitive and user friendly experience. Those requests are then automatically routed, which gives them a much more intuitive, which eliminating delays and reducing manual handling. Throughout the process, it's always real-time tracking. Keeps both staff and the requester informed of the status and progress. Of course, the requester will have the option to be informed or opt out. It's up to them. Once the issue is addressed, we move to resolution, closing our requests with complete documentation. And finally, residents can provide customer feedback, which helps us evaluate the quality of our response and identify areas for further improvements. Overall, this workflow streamlines our operations. So TCC also is a powerful tool for reporting and continuous improvement. We can now generate customizable reports, and we do discuss them at our directors' meetings every week so we see where we stand, where we're lacking, what we need to improve on. These are delivered to us weekly or per our request. so we can analyze occurring recurring issues and pinpoint hotspots across the county these metrics help inform staffing decisions equipment allocation and service response strategies they also support stronger quality control and performance evaluation this modernization helps us become more accessible more transparent and more responsive to our community

So we passed out on your desk there there's flyers there's a QR code you can scan that you can link it and you can download TCC directly it's available on the App Store There's a link on our website, too We've run this in the background When people would call in we were entering the say I got a pothole request. We've been entering that in directly into our TCC and using that for a few months just to make sure that when we do go live with it here that it will be functional we've tested it with our own staff so we sent out the link to RMA folks let them use it and submit requests for a while and we're pretty confident that we're ready to go live with this now so that's available for you to distribute the information to your constituents and pass that out By no means are we saying we're not gonna answer the phone. We're not gonna take emails. That's still an option But this is just another tool so that people when they're driving and they see a stop sign down They can take the picture click it and send it So I'm not doing it kind of walk through and show what it looks like on the phone If you would download the app, this is the main page, right?

Okay, so this is what you will see So it's very, just if you'd like to submit a request, so just this big green button, start request. And of course, this is not just public works. This is also planning issues, and it's capable of, huh?

Code issues.

Code issues, of course, yes. Code and violations, and anything you'd like to report. You choose your issue. Let's say, what's our most common? Pothole. You click it. Now it gives you an option, camera. skip or type whatever you want. We'd like you to just go over the hall and take a photo of it. That's it. It's already registered, location is done, sent to the proper road yard, and it's in the, the resolution's on the way. And you will automatically receive, if you opt to register, you'll automatically receive a notification, thank you for your service request, it's been, and we'll keep you updated. There are some optimized responses for typical requests of how long it will take. They will be communication, and once it's closed, they know it's closed. And you can always go back and check on the status updates. Now, one thing, sorry. Let's say you saw that pothole in Visalia. You go, oh, ouch. I'm going to send it to Johnny, right? So you take a photo of it. That app will tell you you're out of your jurisdiction. But if Visalia uses GoGov, it may forward the request to them. So we are not pioneers in this effort, actually. We're catching up. I mean, we're doing very impressive things, I think, the directory. But most counties and cities and agencies do use the GoGov app, and it's all geographical. So you will sometimes see it as 311. Some counties use it. Or many counties use their own, like our TCC, our Tulare County Connect.

And this is a scalable tool. We've paid the service fee, but if other departments are interested in using this, it's flexible, it's modular, so they can add to it. Maybe, just off the top of my head, I'm thinking maybe make a park reservation for an arbor or something. That's an opportunity as well, and we're happy to work with other departments on that front as well. So yeah, like Ahmad said, we've been using this on the back end for request tracking and for ensuring that we are able to address those requests as they come in. And I think it's improved our service. I'm pretty proud that we've had good service responses generally, but we do drop the ball every once in a while and miss something. And this has even taken us up to the next level there. So we're pretty excited about TCC.

the few who are using it.

Yeah.

So we'll provide updates as this hopefully expands out and people start using it and interacting with RMA in that front. So looping back on the themes, these are the themes that we really try to focus on with the tools. The aspects of our service processes that we're trying to strengthen. As these new technologies emerge, we have to adapt and evolve our staff to take on these new roles. As a department head, I feel very privileged to work with the staff that has the skills and the resourcefulness to take on these challenges. I really think we have a stronger team with systems and procedures, the GIS tools, implementing new technology than we've ever had. And so it's really impressive what these folks can do. So just a quick thank you to all of you. Thank you for showing up tonight. And thank you for the efforts, yeah. This is a good selection of the group. There's many more that, you know, they've got evenings and other plans, but definitely want to express appreciation to that. So thank you there. As a bit of a postscript, so we're familiar with the ADA rules, the federal ADA standards that require digital content online to be accessible format. So all of these tools are online tools. So we're working through that process. It's now an April 27 deadline to meet that, but that is no small feat too. So we're working through to make sure that all of these tools are compliant with the ADA rules as well. With that, a big thank you to you, the board. You've been very supportive to us. You've been patient. You've told us kind of where we need to address issues, and hopefully we're doing that. Big thank you to TCICT. A couple of them maybe are here, but they've been very helpful in integrating some of these softwares with us. There's always security issues. There's concerns. So they've been very helpful and a good team member working with that. And again, then thank you to the RMA staff and the assistant directors who have been involved in this. So with that, happy to answer any questions.

right you have a question yeah just more a comment i just want to say thank you to you guys i mean this is really responding to requests of our constituents and of the board in response to constituents requests and needs and you haven't just taken that and sat on it you've developed this system and went out and found the best customer service software that can help meet these needs and you've got it in front of us and it's ready to hit the ground running so Thank you to all of the RMA team. Thank you to the executive team for responding in the way that you have. I think this is a real modernization of RMA that's going to help well into the future. And it really seems very user friendly. You may have some constituents like Supervisor McCarty that don't know what QR codes are yet. I think that having this flyer and having information at your fingertips and at the website's fingertips, so to speak, so people can see it, it's really going to help you. And I see this really spreading. And I like Ahmad's highlight of the app on his phone and showing how he wants the potholes photographed. I think you can probably have millions of potholes sent to you very soon as this catches fire because uh I think people really do want to see the accountability of road work being addressed after they've submitted the claim or the request so I really appreciate this and I'm excited to get out there and see this function well into the future great job okay any other comments or questions supervisor Valero

So just a quick question and then some comments. On the interior space of the government plaza, I noticed in a video recently about there's going to be an outside kind of reception area in front of RMA. Is that correct?

So with the remodel, we've obviously got the assessor moving in, so we have three different departments and then I guess four if you're including IT, but that's not so much public facing. So we'll have kind of the main front desk, which is still there, the center point, and then we will have an RMA um kind of a permanent counter reception working there so that'll do some of the intake working through the wave tech tool helping people kind of sign in and get a better upfront understanding of what they're there for is really the key so that we can serve them with the right person rather than making them wait for the next available person they get up to the front of the line can ask their question and then we go oh you know we got to get somebody else down here to direct it to you so we can maybe cut out that step in the process so we will have somebody sitting there so we're not intending this to remove the human interaction from it, but hopefully it can help us streamline that.

Awesome. And then going back to the application itself, and again, just reiterating for people, how user-friendly is the application for people having to submit? And I say this because you also have applications from, say, like PG&E and Southern California Edison, where I've had to do some of these projects for my parents, and it's just... It's so intensive, so rigorous, and there's just so much information that I don't really know as well. So can you, like, how would I say, is it very user-friendly for the public?

Yeah, I'll try to address that concern, and then if you have anything to add. I think the first thing is we recognize that we have different levels of sophisticated customers. Some are in the office every day. They're doing this as their profession. They know how to handle it, and they're going to just roll right through this. There's others that they may pull one building permit in their life and they're confused. And so we want to be able to walk them through the process. And that's part of what we're trying to be cognizant of. The tool itself should be fairly straightforward. It's not asking in depth Questions, but there is an expectation that if you're coming in for a building permit You have a site plan and that's kind of this pre-check. So as we roll it out, it's not going to be a mandatory It's going to be a recommended tool that people sort of learn through the process and then we'll learn through the process, too Is this a hurdle or is it helping them out because in that pre-check kind of like TSA pre-check You can get pre-screened so that your permit can be approved faster. And if the tool will show you, you know what, your setback is at five feet and it should be at 10 feet, then you can make that change before ever coming to us. And it's going to be an instantaneous response rather than waiting for a plan checker to review it for the week or so that it'll take to get them and then get back. So hopefully it speeds up the time. But to your point of being simple enough for the general public, I think we're trying to be aware of that.

So yes, it's very simplified. It's setbacks. So it will tell you if you need five more feet on the setback or you need to move your building, et cetera. As far as the operational statements, this is the intelligent part of it. break down your operational statement and tell you what works and what does not work. So if you don't meet the setbacks for assemblage of persons, it'll tell you you don't have a complete application because you don't meet those setbacks.

And generally, it's the contractor, someone with already the knowledge. But I'm just saying for those that may not have that additional support, I'm hoping that, again, as they enter the office, there will be that human touch as opposed to, well, just go to the portal or just go to the application.

Yeah, I think definitely. Having the relief valve of just, I'm stuck, I'm confused, help. We want to still be able to provide that service and not just have them hit a wall.

awesome and yeah so i i completely um am fascinated by the idea the the the ways in which you're working to really get your department closer to the public and so with all of this um at hand i think it's going to be uh great and do you all justice for moving forward with your department so thank you supervisor makari

Well, thank you very much for this. I know that, I mean, ma'am, when I first came in, officers' discussion about this, about a type of a program, I know it's being worked on, nothing simple, but you guys have done an amazing job putting this out. I just have a couple questions regarding, you commented about taking a picture of a pothole in the information. So will it be off your, I know that I have an app that RMA uses currently that gives, gives a geolocation that I can send off to you guys. So the app on my, if I use this app and use it on my phone, that information will be, the location will be picked up? Yes. Okay. So they don't have to reenter it. They can just take a picture and it'll come up? Yeah.

So we take out the middle person.

OK. And then I know some cities, Exeter is one of them, and there are a couple others that we contract with. Are they going to go to this too? I mean, will they have access to go? I mean, obviously, they go through the city of Exeter, but we contract with them. So I'm just curious, will this affect them too?

at this point in time i think they're kind of mapped out so if you have a code enforcement for city of exeter for example that'll have to go back through our our are currently standing process. So the way the three sort of submission methods work is one, you can type in an address and it'll tell you this is, sorry, this is outside of county jurisdiction. The other is you can drop, zoom in on a map, drop a pin or take the photo. And so to the point of, yeah, if you're in Exeter, it's gonna tell you, sorry, you're in Exeter, but it'll say you need to call so-and-so and in the case of exeter it'll say call us and we'll handle that separately but i think that that's a conversation that we could have with those cities if they're interested my understanding with this tool is that we've kind of paid for the service now and there's an annual fee it's not a substantial fee but it's expandable so we can add or subtract to it as they would see fit

As I just figure out to get questions on so right now it's the unincorporated areas of the county We have our contracts. They will have to see if they want to come on and join them We could add them at a later time. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Thank you All right, see no more questions. I too want to thank you This is something as supervisor Macari said I've been you know, hoping for asking for for quite some time So I appreciate that and also you're working with IT to get it done. So There are no more questions here. Is there any public comment on this item? I Okay, not seeing any I'll bring it back and this is an informational item. So thank you gentlemen for all your work and with that We've already done closed session. So meeting adjourned. We will be back in chambers next Tuesday morning. Thank you folks. I

Bye.