Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO)

On air. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will call to order the January 8th 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara Local Agency Formation Commission. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

and Commissioner Hartman is entering now so let the record reflect that Commissioner Lee and Commissioner Magana are absent

So the next item of business is the consent calendar. The approval of the consent calendar, does any Commissioner wish to pull any of these items? Is there any public comment?

Chair Patino and members of the Commission there is no public comment on this item. Okay

can I get a motion?

Nelson moves approval of the consent calendar

Hartman seconds.

I have a motion and a second, any further discussion? Madam Clerk can you please call the roll?

Motion passes unanimously

Thank you, the next item of business is item number one will the clerk please read the item into the record

Business item number one is 2026 LAFCO chairs It is a selection of chair and vice-chair for 2026 Okay

Do I have any motion? Commissioner Kariakos.

I'd like to nominate Stark for chair and Nelson for vice-chair if they're willing to accept.

Is that a yes or a maybe? I don't think

Shane has a choice. That was a yes. I could rotate with my better self but... Madam

Chair, just remind me what our general protocol has been. I know we rotate but I'm not sure with the public member how that fits.

Okay, thank you Commissioner Hartman through the chair. So each year the commission selects a chair and a vice-chair Typically it's done at our first meeting and that person is acting chair or vice-chair for the year Generally the Commission follows a rotational order in which The vice chair slides into the chair position and then the next category of agencies moves forward. In this particular year, the county member would be a representative that would slide into the vice chair position. So that is the logical order that the commission has been following and so the nominations of selecting Commissioner Stark and Nelson to hold chair and vice chair positions fits that pattern.

So again, I'm unclear. We've got special districts cities county and public member So how does the rotation work among those four?

So the rotational is Each one of those has an opportunity every four years to be chair And so the current rotation is Public member would be chair, county member would be vice-chair and then in the next order of rotation is a special district member and then a city member.

Okay thank you. And Madam Chair is there any public comment? Madam Chair, Madam Clerk any public comment?

Chair Patino members of the Commission there are no requests to speak on this item.

Mr. Director Nelson?

Yes, Chair. Thank you, Chair Patino. I'd like to thank Commissioner Kayokas for that nomination. I'm very much interested in serving as Vice-Chair next year so I think that typically we try to also rotate within those various members and I believe that Supervisor Hartman served a couple years ago so it might be good rotation to have myself this time and then And it rolls back around to the next regular member.

Thank you. OK, I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

Madam Chair? Yes. Would you please repeat who seconded that motion?

I'll

second. I don't think there was a second. Oh, there wasn't? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you did. OK. Very good. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

passes unanimously.

Thank you. Okay, Commissioner Stark then we will switch places. I

think you didn't call me but aye for Commissioner Nelson.

Oh Commissioner Nelson. Sorry about that.

Thank you. I'd like to thank Commissioner Peppettino for a fine year as chair. I hope to follow in her tradition of expeditious business And in that tradition, I'm going to waive the stirring speech that I was going to give and instead ask the clerk to read business item number two into the record.

Chair Stark and members of the Commission, Business Item Number Two is to receive and file a report on 2025 commission activities and adopt a work plan for 2026.

Thank you. Mr. Prater,

thank you. Thank you Chair Stark. We'll have a PowerPoint up. So this is the time of year where we look back on our year congratulate ourselves for the job well done and the work we've prepared And thank our outgoing chair for leading us and guiding us through all of that work of 2025. And thank a few more people in my presentation here along the way, and then really look at what's ahead for 2026, and give the commission some perspective on what that workload looks like, and then ultimately ask the commission to adopt that work plan so that we can proceed with the work for 2026.

Oftentimes in the past we've gone through this. Slideshow hasn't changed much, we kind of change a few figures and facts but essentially the Commission held 11 meetings in 2025. We only took one meeting off in the summer this past year generally some years we take both summer dates off but as you know June we had an urgent deadline to meet our SALT grant, so we had to hold a hearing in that summer period.

In addition, your staff attends and meets with various members of the public. All of our public agency members that are paying into our dues and our members to this LAFCO and any real local interest that the commission seeks desire to be engaged in we make ourselves available for all of those opportunities and we use that as part Our mission to engage with the community, engage with public, engage with member agencies to build long trusting relationships.

We do that largely to help us get through the workload that we put forth every year so this report highlights some of those activities and then looks forward into what's ahead As always, the county is a main resource for us. The County Auditor's Office provides financial system for us to be able to pay bills, collect revenues And then in addition to that, they provide a lot of integral workings for any applications that come forward as do many of the other county departments.

County Administrative Office, County Assessors and Elections and you'll hear more about what they do when we get into item three is the property tax exchange process. We record a lot of our documents with the clerk's office. We record a lot of our CEQA information, and so many of these county departments play an integral role on us to be able to complete the work and get all that what we want to get accomplished done.

The surveyors office does an added role in that not only do they review and approve all annexation boundaries for maps and legal descriptions, they act and serve through a contract as our mapping department. So all the maps that we produce particularly in the service reviews that we prepare all come from that department. And not least or last, the cities and the special districts themselves. As you've heard me say we can't produce the volume and the types of service reviews without their direct involvement and participation in writing those reviewing those documents and providing edits and documentation to that. And then lastly your staff itself Legal counsel both Amber and Johanna, she sat in on a few meetings as well this past year.

Natasha and now Isla has joined us so without that working group the work that we get done really can have an effect on us. Overall in 2025 the commission looked at nine applications They ran the gamut from amending spheres to annexing territory, to out-of-agency service agreements. And then lastly in December we initiated the dissolution of CSA 32 and so there's a broad breadth of projects that are there.

We still have one outstanding application, the Richards Ranch application it's still in process. We'll hear later about the status of that in business item six today. Other highlights, I won't belabor is that you missed the search review sphere update document. We did accomplish our fifth round of reviews of volumes which was a milestone for this commission to be able to cover every agency that are that is governed under us and be able to write a comprehensive report about what they do and how they operate we will be starting In on a new kind of looking back again at the next round, picking up where we left off and adding to that as we move forward in our future years.

The commission was mindful enough to recognize the work that we do and provide us an opportunity to include extra help as a part-time clerk so that we can continue to pursue all of the work that we set out in our work plan. This year, the city had made a selection of its members. They changed memberships over as members were not re-elected to their seat position at the representative cities which causes a turnover on LAFCO similarly with the special districts. Now the special districts has recently gone through a number of election rotations And we're in one still today.

We were fortunate enough that Commissioner Johnson was able to win out of runoff election, but unfortunately that was for a short term to fill just the vacancy so what we're now back into an election period which will be held for four year period. So we're hopeful to fulfill that and have that seat for the full four-year terms. But if not, there's always a process that allows them to select their representatives.

And the big one is the $500,000 grant that we were awarded so that was a lot of effort to take on a lot of Involvement with the Commission trying to understand what that would entail and us narrowing what that scope would look like. And so we're, you know this is sort of the first time that LAFCO has stepped into that role and take on quite a task quite frankly but we are doing so with partners and so we feel like the alignment of the partners that we're going to have joining us on this effort The future contracts that we'll have with them to primarily do that work will put us in a better position to make future decisions about where growth's going, how we can align our spheres of influence with those opportunities and give the cities particularly an opportunity to see where they need to plan for in the future.

The MOA component and many special reportings that we've done to inform the commission on what your role is, what kind of authorities you have was all good information pieces that has led to sort of this buildup of knowledge amongst this group of commissioners. So we're excited to be able to offer that opportunity, to sort of understand more and provide that in a public forum so that members of the public or member agencies can hear that discussion, can understand and have confidence that the decisions that the Commission's making are rooted in solid policies and understanding of what those policies are.

And then we monitor all of the state legislation, particularly primarily we do that through the Cal LAFCO arm of our association. They have a ledge committee where I attend all those ledge committee meetings so that we're appraised of what legislation would likely affect LAFCOs moving forward and then we bring that information before the commission to weigh in on whether or not you want to oppose or support any of those types of bills.

I You know, and that in itself oftentimes requires your staff to sort of be the policeman on collecting outstanding debts of the LAFCO balance. And those aren't always paid when we'd like them to be paid. And so throughout the year it requires us to constantly send out reminders and try to collect the dues that are due. Lastly, Cal LAFCO has a number of activities.

Again, we have an item on later today to appoint some delegates to be able to make votes about upcoming changes to the bylaws. They're going to look at redistricting the regional map as well so that delegate will have some responsibilities as to what that looks like. And we want to stay engaged in that. We want to stay engaged in all of the annual sessions that they offer and the workshops that they offer so that we can all stay well appraised of, of the latest things to do and things to avoid in our role.

And then lastly, as I said we get a lot of phone calls from the public about where certain projects may be or how does an annexation process work and we provide ourselves make ourselves available to any of that so that people are well aware of what that process looks like. So in addition to following up on two proposals that ultimately that we have, which is the Richard Ranch project and the dissolution of CSA 32. We'll continue processing those in 2026 and as I say every year there's a list of projects that we get phone calls from saying interest where they want Do a boundary change or have an out of agency service agreement.

And we'll show you that list, and that list is very hard to predict every year whether it's going to come forward any particular time throughout the year. But we know they're working on it. And so at some point, these applications are going to become real and that'll divert some of our attention away. But we'll always make those applications a priority. They have certain statutory deadlines that we'd like to meet in here too.

And then in the interim time, we're working on all of our municipal service reviews and then working and continuing to be engaged with the community and our members So as we indicated here, on the radar spectrum are well over 20 applications that we will likely see. They range in various complexities We're going to continue looking at our service review program. We're going to take a deeper dive look now into the police fire EMS services. It's been five years since we prepared that report this year, we're going to add mental health dispatching fuel management organization so we're gonna take that and start looking at other aspects of services that they provide that we didn't look at before And then we're going to continue on and look at the trends that were studied from the five-year report five years ago.

We'll continue those trends so that we can really understand what do things look like on the ground? We're gonna continue our discussions with the City of Santa Barbara about an island annexation agreement. There are a number of islands that's, that the city surrounds has been on the books and has been difficult to annex, and has little interest to annex either by the landowners themselves or the city themselves.

But we wanted to take this opportunity and the Commission has supported in the past that we want to continue to push that these islands ultimately get annexed in the city because the city is the best service provider. We want to look for ways to make that easier for the city to absorb those properties. So, we're going to continue our discussions on how can we get that across the goal line?

And then the commission authorized the records management policy and the opportunity to dive into our office files and start to make some sense out of that, and digitize all that information. So we're working towards that as well which is another big undertaking. And then all of the other activities are certainly still part of this process. Any elections and appointments that need to happen every year I meet with the civil grand jury and we've got all the day-to-day operations We do an audit of our budget every year, so we're starting to think of that audit as well for 25.

Now here's the list of identified 21 different applications that are on the horizon, you know that we've had communications with either the agencies themselves or landowners that have interest in pursuing some sort of application with LAFCO. And we'll go into too many details but there's one on the list make a note of it and we can come back and ask me more specifics on on that So as to conclude what 2025 look like and now what 2026 is about to embark, I often like to look at and give the Commission a sense of what the next few meetings are going to look like.

And what might be coming forward so in February 5th is our next meeting We'll be able to likely when the next couple of meetings complete the list of future agenda items. We still have two outstanding, many of them are on today's agenda. Two more that were added back in December included Isla Vista CSD and their powers and authorities and SB 499 so we think we're going to be able to address those within February and March I want to be able to bring back a preliminary draft budget that includes hopefully an opportunity look at the organizational chart and structure to consider whether or not we can add a third employee.

We're going to kick off and initiate the police fire EMS program officially in February, and then in March I hope to bring back part of the educational series, a look at all of the city's general plan and housing status reports that they produce. So if the commission can get a sense of where the communities are at in relation to what their general plans say and how well have they produced housing in recent years?

The commission with their adoption of the records policy has made some minor amendments to the handbook. So we're cleaning up that handbook, or adding a new membership makeup and where we've updated all of the registries of all of the cities and special districts under our authority to include all of their personnel and contact information so we hope to produce that report in March as well.

And then Cal LAFCO often holds their annual staff workshop. We'll be likely attending that. That happens to fall on our March, I mean our meeting day, I believe this year it's in Pismo Beach so it's pretty local and so I think we might be able to still hold our regular staff meetings and have staff just travel back and forth between the conference and attend our regular business agenda.

It is in Santa Barbara.

Easier to go to Pismo Beach, the meeting was in Santa Maria.

And then lastly April starts our budget draft budget proposal. Ultimately, we need to hear the final budget by May and so we'll start in with the budget series and if any application comes forward will likely hear those anticipate full here the dissolution of CSA 32 in February I'm already working towards that so we're off at a at a fast and furious pace. We're prepared to continue to Do a good job and listen to the Commission, and take whatever direction that you want us to head in.

And move forward as our usual character pace. So with that concludes the annual report and the work plan. Just a reminder we are asking for a motion and a second on adopting this work plan as presented.

Before I ask the Commission for questions, could I have a preliminary question? The fact that we adopt a work plan basically On the work that comes into the office, is that right? I mean basically giving us an inventory of the expected business items. So is it fair to say if we adopted the work plan we're essentially adopting the concepts and the main items that you've done and if it's necessary to modify something during the middle of the year we would have freedom to do it?

It is fair to say that, Chair Stark, essentially what the work plan is outlining is it sets out organizational goals. General goals of how we operate and act amongst our membership. In addition to that, it sets a priority that applications come first and that will embark on the municipal service review that we're going to now implement the SALT grant. And so it sets those as priorities. So whenever the commission throughout the year if new direction is provided or new opportunities arise We'll remind the commission that we have a set work plan and that if there's an opportunity to work in this additional work, we'll be able to do so.

If we feel that sets too much of a workload on us, we'll have to readjust those priorities.

Fair enough. Are there any commissioners have any questions and comments about either the information that's presented or Proposed work plan for the year ahead. I have a question which we may get to later on the agenda and the question is are we the lead agency for the SALT grant My assumption is that the hope is that the Salk grant will lead to some sort of deliverable product either in the form of actual memorandums between the county and various cities or some sort of model agreement, or both. Is that right?

That is correct and we are the lead agency on the grant.

Okay, so to the extent that there might be any required CEQA, I'm not saying that there is or there isn't. There's a lot of exemptions that conceivably could apply. We would be the lead agency? Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay. So we should listen carefully to this CEQA report. That's the only question. I would entertain a motion to adopt the work plan as proposed.

Chair, if I may just ask for a call for public comment?

Oh, public comment, absolutely. Madam Clerk, would you ask for some public comment.

Chair Stark and members of the Commission there are no requests to speak on this item.

Thank you. Would you please call the roll? We have a motion. I would move

that we adopt the work plan for 2026 as presented.

Nelson seconds.

We have a motion and a second, we need a roll call vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, work plan has been approved the next item is business item number three would the clerk please read that item into the record.

Chair Stark and members of the Commission business item number three is to receive a presentation from the LAFCO staff and legal counsel regarding the tax exchange process required by state law for an annexation.

Thank You Staff, Council?

Executive Officer will cover this part but we do have legal counsel here to correct me if I misstate any of the processes. So the Commission had requested that staff provide an overview of the property tax exchange process I want to characterize generally the overall tax exchange process and make sure that it's kept separate as to what Richard's Ranch process is.

It's following the process but I want to make sure that we're not describing that process particularly, we're just describing generally what the overall property tax exchange process looks like and what our involvement is and what the code sections say about that And so the staff report has included a number of attachments for the commission's consideration.

A number of flow charts, I'm going to show a couple of flow charts up here but essentially a tax sharing agreement is required whenever a boundary change is sought in order to so that is basically in order to complete the annexation Revenue Tax Code 99 provides a particular process that those applications have to go through. The first slide is a flowchart that is identified within a county adopted document, that essentially outlines the flow chart of when an application comes in LAFCO initiates LAFCO initiates this process through a referral project called a report back.

That report back initiates the application process for all of this and with that essentially there's a 45-day period in which the auditor's office has to send out, submit a notice of property tax estimate And that estimate is then passed on to the county CAO's office who then initiates conversations with the agency, the annexing agency, to begin the tax negotiation period.

Within that 45 days in order for the auditor's office to be able to prepare their notice they need to receive within 30 days a letter from the assessor's office So the assessor's office provides the estimates of property tax allocation. They in turn transfer that information over to the auditor's office and then sets up the estimates, those estimates are transferred over to the county CAO's office and now they have a starting point in which to work from.

And they ultimately reach out to the represented city to begin that negotiation period. Because this flowchart is a bit busy and has a number of other things, all of the county departments kind of receive that report back. They all comment on that project and they all feed into information that the county CEO's office uses to help determine whether or not they're negotiating certain aspects of the project. Some applications include a reorganization that includes a detachment from either a county service area or a county dependent district, which may or may not be ultimately part of the exchange process as it moves forward and that is all fed into the County CAO's office to be able to understand that so that they can properly begin negotiations.

So what I'll flip to outside of this busy process is a much more straightforward flowchart that looks at the exchange process in its entirety. And as I indicated, an application comes in on the left side it's pretty straightforward the application comes in, it goes through its channels ultimately the assessors and the auditors provide that information and it filters down until until we move back up and over, and we start the negotiation period.

Once the negotiation period starts there's a 60 day period in which to have that discussion between the two agencies with an opportunity to extend that an additional 30 days. The extension of that is simply a letter that needs to be written by either party to the other member Also sending it to the executive officers so that we understand that additional time is going to be needed to be able to get through the negotiation process.

Within that 60-90 day window, the process is fairly straightforward either the application An agreement can be reached by both parties, in which case the application then proceeds through the proceedings at which time we can file a certificate of filing. The certificate of filing ultimately determines that the application is fully complete and ready to take to a hearing.

Then we have the hearing and LAFCO makes a decision on that project. If an agreement can't be reached And we're more on the right-hand side of the column. No agreements reached, now we're into a process where mediation gets involved and then ultimately arbitration can get involved. The time frames for mediation and arbitration are largely dependent on agreement between the two entities.

So if there's agreement between the city and the county to continue having discussions and talks, they can continue to have discussion and talks until ultimately they can reach either some agreement or fail to reach an agreement and proceed onto the next stage. Ultimately, if the proceedings result in no agreement then the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Act kicks back in and the proceedings to move forward with the project into determination of that application.

And again there's no requirement that agreement be reached by either party So that concludes kind of the fundamental steps of how you get through the tax exchange process. The codes that are applicable, they're all up on this slide. What I'll conclude with is that in 1981 the county did adopt a master tax agreement So that is official, it's on the books. That agreement however only covers a certain subset of exchanges between certain entities and essentially it's a zero dollar exchange between CSAs sanitary and sanitary districts mosquito district and the Metropolitan Transit District, and largely because their revenues are generated through service charges.

And so that's how they collect and generate revenue for their services. And so it's a straightforward application whenever those entities are involved in an application to annex, LAFCO uses that master agreement for zero exchange and immediately gets to be able to file the certificate of filing so that we can proceed to a hearing. Outside of those specific agencies they have to follow the property tax process An agreement has to be met before LAFCO can issue that certificate of filing.

So again, if agencies fail to adopt a resolution for that tax exchange agreement then the proceedings are terminated. And ultimately what that means is that application goes away. A new application that looks very similar can be filed, they can make another run at an application, they can modify the project, they can bring back a similar project and retry to engage with the county on a tax exchange agreement. It doesn't preclude an applicant from having to file a new application with LAFCO when it's terminated.

So I'll conclude there, so I don't try to confuse the process. It's a pretty straightforward linear process that needs to be followed. And at the end of the day, we either reach agreement or we don't reach agreement which triggers LAFCO to continue the proceedings accordingly for the Cortese-Notz-Hertzberg Act. So if there are any specific questions about the process and the codes, my staff's here to help you.

Let me, if I might Mr. Prater, let me clarify the we in question does not include the LAFCO. The we in question is this county Thank you. Once an application is filed, it stays in our file until one way or another the property tax exchange agreement has either been concluded in which case we can file the annexation position and LAFCO takes over. Or if it's not concluded then under the Cortese-Knox Act once there has been a final determination that there is no property tax exchange agreement Then it disappears as a matter of law.

We lose jurisdiction over it as a matter of law at that point, is that right?

That is correct. We are the entity that terminates ultimately that application so we do have to file a formal termination letter with the applicant at that point.

But it's

a form. That is on us but as far as the negotiation of tax exchange process LAFCO has no role other than to initiate that and monitor the timeline and check back in to see that either an agreement has been reached or has not been

reached. Thank you. Commissioner Kiriakou appears to have a question. I have a

question, possibly two questions. The bubble chart that had the process flow, the right end of that chart Where it talks about when agencies do not reach agreement. The blue bubble talks about LAFCO deems application incomplete and then it cites government code and revenue taxation. So my first question is, is there anything in either code that provides a specific time frame for which LAFCO to deem that application incomplete? Does LAFCO need to do that within 30 days, 60 days, 90 days? Is it supposed to be like literally instantaneous once you reach the conclusion of the 60-90 day process.

Commissioner Carriaco to the chair, there is no specific time frame for which us to declare that. Outside of the point of that 90 day period we automatically need to determine it to be incomplete because we don't have an agreement beyond that The time frames are really negotiated between the two entities. At some point, an agency can declare that they no longer want to proceed in any good faith to proceed forward at which time we'd be notified of that and we would proceed to the termination clause.

Okay I actually only have one question then thank you

I believe I recognize Commissioner Sevis.

Thank you. After the two entities have gone through the process and there is no agreement, is there in the law an appeal process for either entity outside of LAFCO?

Ultimately, Commissioner Cervezu, the Chair. If agreement is reached to go through both mediation and arbitration, there is no appeal decision ultimately to the concluding of that decision. So the answer is no, there is no appeal of that decision. There is an obligation of the entity that does not want to agree to the terms of the arbitration to make certain findings, and then that decision could be subject to litigation. That's the ultimate caveat that would occur.

So then the only appeal would be through litigation? Correct. Okay, thank you.

Are there any other questions from commissioners? Are there any questions from the public

Commissioner Stark and members of the commission, there are no requests to speak on this item.

I would entertain a motion. Do we need a motion for this? It's an it essentially is an information item right?

It is essentially, we made it a business item in case the Commission wanted to dive deeper into the process and provide any direction to staff on anything further. But otherwise it's receiving

file. To be clear there's nothing for us to do at this point right? The process whatever it is ongoing and we just were waiting

In reference to the be clear, I think you're referring to the later item of an actual application that's going through this process. And we can address that when we get to that item but yeah essentially we're waiting to follow the proceedings.

Fair enough. Thank you. I will take the liberty of deeming this received and filed. We don't, I don't think we need a vote on it And we can proceed to business item number four and ask the clerk to please read that item into the record.

Commissioner Stark and members of the commission, business item number four is to receive an update report regarding Brown Act changes to take effect January 1st 2026.

So, good afternoon chair and commissioners. I'm Deputy County Counsel Johanna Hartley and I will be presenting a brief overview of SB 707 which primarily became effective on January 1st of this year and made some significant changes to the Brown Act.

Could I ask you to speak a little closer to the microphone please?

Thanks Okay, hopefully this helps. So a background of SB 707 which are the modernization amendments to the Brown Act to primarily address technology and how it impacts meetings especially teleconferencing. The updates from SB 707 that are applicable to your commission include first some changes to the teleconferencing options that are available for your commission including required use of audio and visual technology Second, two new teleconferencing options including reasonable accommodations for commissioners with disabilities and for eligible multi-jurisdictional bodies. And we'll go through each of the requirements and how these work in a few minutes. And third are there some miscellaneous changes such as limits on the use of social media and requirements to provide commissioners with a copy of the Brown Act that will also go through?

And I'll kindly ask the clerk if she wouldn't mind Passing out, we do have copies of the Brown Act physical copies here available for you. They are also posted online if you're interested. So one of the first and foremost changes that SB 707 initiated was creating a new definition of eligible legislative bodies. And for these eligible legislative bodies, it imposes several new requirements including special noticing, public participation, interpretation and translation requirements. So these are really the bulk of the changes in SB 707. So who is an eligible legislative body? Well, these are defined as a city council with a city of a population of 30,000 or more, a county board of supervisors of a county with a population of 30 thousand or more A city council of a city located in a county with a population of 600,000 or more.

Or a board of directors of a special district that meets some of the following requirements which include that they have employees over 200 full-time equivalent employees etc. So accordingly, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is an eligible legislative body and must comply with these new requirements starting on July 1st of this year. However LAFCO does not currently meet the definition of an eligible legislative body and is not required to comply with these requirements.

Due to that, I will not bore you with all of these requirements. But I will note that there are some significant changes in there especially in regards to translation of agendas and providing those services. So the next set of major changes in SB 707 are to the teleconferencing provisions. There are now five different teleconferencing options, one traditional, two emergency, three reasonable accommodation, four just cause and five eligible multi-jurisdictional body teleconference options that are provincially available to you depending on the circumstances that you find yourself in specifically for this commission.

So let's start by looking at traditional teleconferencing rules to the Brown Act, which remain the same and are available for your commissioners to use. Under these rules a commissioner may appear from a remote location as long as the agenda identifies the remote location and the location is open to the public to attend. The agenda is posted at all meeting locations, including the remote location.

And at least a quorum of the commissioners participate from within the commission's jurisdiction, in this case from within the boundaries of Santa Barbara County. The remote commissioner must also disclose whether or not any individuals 18 years or older are present with them And their general relation to this individual. And then all votes must be taken by roll call.

There was also a clarifying provision added in SB 707 that says if there's a disruption in service when you're engaged in a teleconference meeting, then you must basically put the meeting on hold until you're allowed to reestablish service so that you still have the opportunity for public comment and engagement in the meetings. So now let's look at one of the new teleconferencing provisions that's available for your commission's use.

One of the new teleconferencing provisions is for reasonable accommodations. This is for if a commissioner has a mental or physical disability that would preclude them from attending a meeting at a notice location. In that case, a commissioner may attend remotely as long as you follow the following requirements. So first, you must participate through both audio and visual technology. However, there is an exception that if you have a physical condition that would preclude you from using video, you can participate through audio only.

The next requirement is that you must disclose anyone who is with you in the remote location that's over 18 years and your relationship to this person. And finally, because this is a reasonable accommodation to deal with a disability, This is treated different than the other teleconferencing rules, so those rules don't apply. So you do not have to post the location that you're meeting from.

You do not have to take votes by roll call although we would still recommend that because it's easier to have a record of what's happening and you would count towards the quorum of the commission. So the next type of teleconferencing that's available to your commission are three that we'll go through. So we have proclaimed states of emergency, both state or local. We have just cause exceptions and we have eligible multi-jurisdictional bodies.