BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

♪ Good morning. It's Tuesday, April the 19th 2011 and it's 9 a.m., and we're in the Board of Supervisors

For the county of Santa Barbara and welcome to each and every one of you. And Mr. Allen, could you please call the roll?

Ms. Wolfe? Here. Ms. Farr? Here! Mr. Lavagnino? Here. Mr. Carbajal? I'm here. Ms Gray?

And so, some way or another it's going to have to come back being rephrased or something because I mean, I don't know maybe Supervisor Lovanino can move on this but I'm...I have to vote no. Or something. But I understand that everyone is going to say well it's an agreement we entered into it yep that's true but I never did. That's where I'm coming from. Supervisor Carbajal.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I'm just wondering if we ought to continue this and have another closed session. It's been a long time since we've had closed sessions to reacquaint ourselves with the concepts, the issues, the reason this was reached And I will also remind us as board members that throughout our jurisdictions, there's always agreements that are made.

And what we don't want to be perceived as is a body that can't have the type of diplomacy with their municipalities that at the end is a win-win for everyone. So I would encourage us to continue this, have another closed session, bring it back and address it then but again I encourage anybody who's for it or against it to remember the issue of consistency in principled decision making as it relates to our interactions with municipalities.

And thank you, Supervisor. That's why I'm so incredibly uncomfortable with this because if the same board were here that had made all these decisions to do this, I could vote no and it wouldn't be a problem but Now it's a problem, and so I think the closed session is a great idea. And maybe we can rephrase it some way so it's just recognizing an agreement that had been made or something rather than just straight out let's give them $1 million. I think we've beat that horse to death and will continue. Is that all right with everyone? To continue for a week?

That's fine that we continue. Concerned, I want to echo Supervisor Carbajal's statement. It's fine we go back into closed session But you talk about beating a dead horse. We have been dealing with this revenue neutrality for so many years and in my opinion, this agreement again while not perfect was certainly much better than the path we were going down. And we always understood the issues that Supervisor Gray brought up but this was something that that board agreed to and I strongly believe that we have Thank you, Supervisor.

Madam Chair, members of the board. So is the direction of the board to withdraw this today and then bring it back in the closed session

agenda? We will continue this item for three weeks and hear it in closed session It may not necessarily be three weeks I'm not sure about that But we don't have a meeting next week Is that right?

Right then we would meet on the 3rd or the 10th

So let's just bring it back on the third. Is that all right with everybody? Bring it back on the third Thank you very much Mr. Allen, we're now back to the next item

Madam chair members the board our final speaker from the public on the administrative agenda is Jeff Bard. I'd like to speak on item A-17. A- 17? Correct, which is from Public Health. The request that the Board receive and file the summaries of evaluation for the 2010 annual health inspections of detention facilities by the County Health Officer regarding the compliance with environmental nutritional and medical mental health standards for detention facilities within the county of Santa Barbara.

Mr. Bard

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I want to thank your staff for the late distribution which should be before you. The letter is pretty self-explanatory and it is on the internet and will be on the internet under A17. A couple few points that are not in the written comment that I submit. Is that a recent Los Angeles Times article indicated that there had been an outbreak of what I believe is called Klebsiella pneumonia.

And I did speak to a staff person at a congregate facility in Santa Barbara who did have a very bad bout with pneumonia. Fortunately, she leveraged that into quitting smoking cigarettes so There was a silver lining, but we can't gamble with our future. I assume the noncompliance in the jail was kind of a normal lag time in updating to state mandated standards. Not sure about that, but it's important that be expedited and if the sheriff comes to you Deputy Patterson needs money to get that done. I would strongly urge you to find the money and get that money placed so that we can come into compliance with the state standards because the state standards in Section 5199 Title 8 are minimal But they could become of critical importance if we get even one inmate with a virulent infectious strain, then we're going to have 10 maybe 100 inmates going back out into the community all over the county.

And we don't know what's out there not to take even one step toward demagoguery. The fact of the matter is that we do have people from all over the world and there are multiple drug resistant you know, mycobacterial respiratory ailments out there. And as per my letter I witnessed a small little mini epidemic and I was kicking and screaming and contacting a health department in another county the whole time.

And a lot of people in the bureaucracy were trying to help me but there was a lot of inertia and a lot of apathy and I saw people get sick and I saw someone go into the hospital with pneumonia who was a person who was living in a congregate homeless shelter. And I'm just appalled that that happened in the county very close to this county. Sadly, the failure of Measure S to go through exacerbates the problem and I would concur with Sheriff Brown's comments last year that probably we're going to need revenue enhancement and sooner or later we're going to have to design and build a new facility. Thank you.

Madam Chair, members of the board just one final note on the administrative agenda. We have a request on item A18 that's from Public Works. The item is regarding the construction of the 2010-11 countywide preventive maintenance application of scrub seal and microservicing and their request is that the item be continued to meeting on May 17th.

Thank you. So that concludes the administrative agenda. Is there a motion? Actually,

Madam Chair I wanted to pull A9 as well.

Oh sorry 9 and 13. I'm sorry I thought we had those down.

I think that a 9 is

a 9 has been read into the record already in item a 13 is from fire and the request of the board adopted position designating all some of our county fire stations as safe surrender sites for safely started newborn infant program.

Thank you madam chair. Actually, my question was the same as Mr. Caldwell's about the general services amount and I see that Mr. Nesbitt is here so or was here maybe he would come to the microphone or Ms. Waller did you want to talk about that?

Yes thank you Supervisor. Through the Chair, as you may recall when we were doing union negotiations a little over a year ago they made concessions and part of that agreement was to take some of those concession dollars and put them aside to enable positions that were subject to layoff to be kept for an additional year. Those dollars were not distributed to the individual departments at the time with the hope that they'd be able to balance their budgets through savings. As we reported earlier in the mid-year report, general services because of the fact that they have those nine and a half positions that remain filled were unable to close that gap so this is merely transferring dollars from that account of concession to general services to fund those positions.

Thank you, Ms. Waller. Actually I'm glad that Dr. Stilwell is here. Dr. Stilwell can you tell us what is going to be left in the salary and benefits designation after this money's taken out?

Madam Chair and Supervisor Farr, we're estimating it to be zero at the end of this year. This will be the first release we're bringing forward for the Board's consideration and we have about five or six more that we'll bring forward as part of the estimate for this year to end the year balanced. We'll be recommending budget revisions from this source for other departments where they either were going to have Where they either had filled unfunded positions that what they weren't able to afford the costs or where they had unanticipated.

Revenue shortfalls are other needs in the middle of the year, where they would have laid people off by but by agreement we aren't laying the people off.

OK, but what is seen in the account right now?

Right now, well right now it's about four million and this is the first release.

Okay

but

you're anticipating that all four million is going to be used by the

end of this

fiscal year?

Yeah the estimate we're building for the budget shows a year-end general fund balance of $150,000 and that includes releasing all of this.

OK. And then on the page that has to do with the strategic reserve current balance, there's a number of figures there that are obligated to various departments that we did during the budget last year. Can you tell us whether those departments are still on track to need all of that money?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Farr, generally yes. I can generally tell you. We, let me see I just don't have the specific numbers in front of me but I did look at them this morning. Well I mean for example

district attorney was 1.2 million and so was

probation, sheriff

was about a million.

So probation and district attorney have saved money this year they're proposing using it next year we're going to recommend they do that to maintain their services. So instead of using their appropriation for the one-year they're extending it over the two years Probation is you had to use all of it for 1011 sheriff all for 1011 so I think from the sources of strategic reserve the only two departments that Have will request using their same appropriation next year are the district attorney and a portion of that probation And up a portion of yes Probation,

okay And then my last request is that I know during budget there are other accounts that are general fund money, capital fund, the salarying benefits one we've talked about. I think there's an audit or litigation, some of these other accounts. If we could have an accounting of what's in those as of now, I think that would be good. Thank you.

Anything else on that? Madam

Chair, I had a chance to talk with Mr. Nisbet about this because it did draw my attention as well.

That's the 800 and some

thousand? Yeah, the 836,000. I'm just curious and I know you weren't here last year Ms. Waller is this something It just seems really confusing that at the end we've got. I just want to know is this something we're planning on doing again this year or it looks like this could have been reported a little bit differently so it didn't look like Mr. Nisbet was $850,000 short this year.

Chair Supervisor. These funds will be exhausted at the end of this year, and there are no future funds available through union concessions unless those are negotiated in the next several months. But right now that will not occur next year because there is no additional concession dollars.

I understand that but my guess my question is it looks like what happened to Mr. Nisbet is that he had his budget And he was planning on getting, having to lay some employees off. At the last minute there were concessions and he kept those employees but then his budget did not reflect those employees and so then he ends up short. Am I correct?

Yes that's correct because the dollars were all kept in a single account that could be distributed to whoever needed them at the end of the year. But is

that normal? Is that something we do every year?

Well, we haven't done it every year. This is specific to the union concessions.

Correct. So we'll probably be in the same boat this year?

If we get union concessions, we may be in the same boat,

yes. Thank you.

Other questions?

Yes, I do. Mr. Stilwell when we had our last quarterly budget update there were a few departments that were in the red but in general it looked like that we were on target as our budget was progressing. In fact, I think we had a bit of a surplus so As I recall, General Services along with a couple other departments were in the red. So what I think you're talking about is that this will assist them in that regard to get them more at a balanced focus.

I want to address what Mr. Caldwell said about the IT though. Is this in direct correlation to the addition of IT into this department that was never originally budgeted or is this simply something else?

I didn't hear Mr. Caldwell's comments, but to answer your question specifically Supervisor Wolf through the chair, the General Services Department has unfunded positions in the department. There are maintenance workers, some IT folks and this release is to pay for our, to uphold our agreement to keep those people working here and not lay them off in mid-year with this being the source to fund that. Okay. All

right thank you.

Any other questions on A9? I'm sorry,

but if it does have to do with IT, I'm curious. I went back and was looking last year and I think Supervisor Wolf brought up a good point. There were some savings that were promised if we kept IT and we put in under general services so maybe Mr. Nesbitt can talk to that or I'm just curious of Where those savings were or how that all happened.

And the issue here is, or is not this related to the consolidation of IT into the General Services Department?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Lavinino, the two are somewhat related in that one or two employees in the IT department at the time were also affected by this concession agreement. So the two are interrelated. The other interrelationship is that at the time the two departments were merged there was a general fund component to the IT department and that general fund component was removed I'm Department and for the county then that don't work here now. And there's five, they were all managers or above who no longer work here. And I total their loaded salaries at about a million dollars annually. So there's no questions there are savings by merging the two departments.

The CIO position is no longer here. There was a director position that I did not elect to fill. The GIS manager position will not be filled next year and the person is currently on administrative leave. The business manager position was deleted, and then a project manager position the person left on their own after the merger kind of as the dust was settling. So those five positions all managers or executives total about $1 million, and those are clear savings to the organization going forward.

I just wanted to thank you Mr. Nesbitt for clarifying that issue for all of us and also for working this past year in bringing the two departments together so thank

you. Thank you Madam Chair. Just to Supervisor Lavagnino, I mean the main reason why we did it was to achieve this kind of savings and we knew that we would at least achieve a fully loaded department head salary which at that time was close to a quarter million dollars right there but since then we thought that there might be some more economies of scale and as we've seen its achieved some really good savings.

He answered my question completely and I really appreciate it. That's exactly what I was looking for where those savings were so thank you.

Supervisor Carbajal.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will remind us though what we did say during those deliberations and I'm glad that Chandra is here now. We had a different CEO back then and what we said was that despite the reorganization and the consolidation that was going to realize these savings, we wanted to make sure that the ball does not drop with the IT plan that was put together Making sure it's elevated that we're getting annual reports that were making sure that it's part of our CIP when it needs to be part of our strategic planning so that we don't.

There was a lot of great work that was put together by the individuals leading that department. And we wanted to make sure that we didn't lose that momentum, that we keep IT functions and our needs at the forefront. So that was the one concern we had when we did move to make the changes we did. And Chandra, the reason I'm saying this is that we wanted to make sure that function Wasn't lost as a little function in the department, but rather the CEO if I remember correctly We wanted to make sure the CEO had a clear understanding that that was a major function. We wanted to highlight and work on As a priority of this board

Thank You supervisor anything else on a 9 Okay, mr.. Allen what do we have left?

I believe that's it everybody

13

Oh that's right.

Mr. Allen. A13. You're getting me in trouble here. I know, I'm sorry we are in mourning. A 13.

That's previously been read into the record.

Okay and who wants to? Janet?

I just wanted to highlight this and I see some of our folks from the fire department here. This is the safety surrendered newborn infant program resolution, which is stating that all of our fire stations in the county will I participate in this program so that infants, I don't even know the correct way to say it because it's such a difficult situation where parents feel that they cannot care for their children and this provides them with another place where they can safely drop off their I'm Supervisor Carbajal.

Thank you, I want to echo what Supervisor Wolf just said. You know whatever leads parents and more often mothers to be in that state of mind depression mental illness whatever it might be where they feel they have no way out or they are compelled to abandon their child This is this is really a great thing. So I want to commend the fire department for their leadership in bringing this forward Having said that there are a couple of items that I think are important for us to give serious consideration To make it even better So I want to go over some of those if it's okay, they're very brief This is just the county fire department, so I think we need to send a letter to all the city fire departments Encouraging them to give some consideration To doing the same thing

at least

say

county

and cities are different well But that goes back to more of the points. I'm going to raise Some ordinary citizens sometimes don't know the difference between their government city or County they could come to A city I think we need to make sure that our protocols are the same and uniform with the cities. I think we also need to make sure that there are some state mandates and requirements, that we also provide some kind of minimal training. Of course if a parent just leaves the child there, that's one thing but they may show up and need some rights information that is given to them.

That was conveyed to me by the folks at First Five, that this is one of the things that are essential we build into this program. There's also procedures that I'm assuming the fire department is going to develop in the transfer of the child and custody to the hospital so that there's... We don't put ourselves at risk, we don't put the child at risk. And also, we have public access TV. It might be good once we get this up and running to have some exposure to make sure that the community is aware that this is a valuable function that we're providing for the community at large. So provided we give that some attention I think it's an extraordinary program and I want to thank you guys again for doing this.

Thank you, Supervisor. Those are very helpful suggestions because many people don't know the difference in the City Fire Department even though it says Santa Maria City and Santa Barbara County. It's still a fire truck is a fire truck. Supervisor Wolf?

Yeah, and I think Supervisor Carbajal brought up a good point. And I don't know about if the city fire departments do that. They do?

Oh yeah, why don't you tell us and then we'll stop guessing. We are so good at speculating up here and if there's somebody that has the answer let us know. I mean we don't care.

Thank You Madam Chair. Madam Chair members of the board in answer to Supervisor Carvajal's questions yes to all of them. We have a program in place that we will be starting out. We have kits that would be at every fire station that contain information for the site personnel as well as for the mothers or the people dropping off the infants. So it talks about their rights, there are health questionnaires for them so there is healthcare available or health history available for the baby Progresses as far as the other fire departments Our staff made a presentation of the county fire chiefs meeting all the fire agencies in the county agreed with his program Unanimously, and we'll be undertaking it as well in the future so

That's great. But the sooner they could have their bodies like ours, give the blessing we could be uniform versus us doing this and then people still being discombobulated. We

agree. We'll check back with

the next meeting. Thank

you. Supervisor Wolf?

Oh no I'm done.

I guess the freshman has to lead off okay.

Thank you.

Supervisor

Lavinino.

My major thing today was I attended the CSAC new supervisor training again. I actually graduated. Do

you have a picture and an

ad? I don't want to tell you what my grade point average was, but I did graduate. One of the things that was brought up in the supervisor training was that on supervisor reports we keep them brief. Somebody had mentioned at one of their meetings that one of their members had gone on for 40 minutes.

Oh

my goodness! Yes, we did have supervisors there representing over 30 counties, sizes of all kinds from the smallest to some of the largest. They have the same issues that we do and there are no easy answers. I also had a chance to meet with Senator Tony Strickland up there, built some relationships with a few of our other representatives and that's my report.

Thank you. Supervisor Carbajal?

Thank you Madam Chair. Two items, this past weekend I was at Earth Day celebrating all the wonderful strides that our country and our world and our community is making to address the issue of fossil fuels being reduced or the use of fossil fuels. Really focusing on alternative energies and all the things that make us more sustainable communities, and I was really glad to participate. I was there with some of my colleagues, Supervisor Wolf and Farr were there. Supervisor Farr's family even came to the booth.

It was just a great event both days. The other one, last week I had mentioned in the past that the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency appointed me to a government advisory committee and I was in Washington D.C. with about 12 other elected officials Providing advice and comment to the administrator on a number of environmental issues facing the United States relating to the environmental issues regarding the compact on the North American free trade with Canada and Mexico.

It's interesting, there are two committees that's one of the committees I'm on and that's what I was doing last week.

Thank you. I attended the CAC championship dinner, it was fabulous they recognized Jim Herman and Denise DeBelfry both judges for the work they've done with children. The CAC also recognized Hugo Lara who is retiring as a superintendent of Guadalupe School and then also Al Walker who basically you can describe as I also visited with all of the superintendents in the Santa Maria area that were their schools serve the fourth district.

And I started with the Orcutt School District where there's around 7,000 students. Orcutts school is experiencing declining enrollment one of the schools is being switched into something else they're trying to avoid closing neighborhood schools They've had to switch neighborhood schools around and they're experiencing declining enrollment. I then met with the superintendent of Santa Maria Schools, they have right around 13,000 students in their school district and the interesting part about that was that 91% of the students below the 6th grade are Hispanic Barbara County Board of Supervisors But five years ago, the high school in Santa Maria was looking for a fourth site. There are three high school sites in Santa Maria and they were looking for a fourth site.

They have now just said we aren't going to even do that at all. It's just not necessary. We don't have the increase in the enrollment. And what they're doing and I thought was incredibly interesting, they are looking at small schools like continuation schools where there is maybe 400 students in this school and it will be a specialty school And that will take care of what small enrollment they have. It'd be a specialty school, things like the second continuation high school would emphasize careers for first responders or for construction workers Or for farm marketing, they haven't yet solidified that. But it was interesting to visit with those superintendents. I have to go now to Lompoc and visit with the Lompoc school superintendent because it's kind of like needing to keep your fingers on the pulse of the community.

Supervisor Farr?

Thank you Madam Chair. Well, I also attended the Community Action Commission dinner Along with Supervisor Gray, and it was a wonderful event as she described. And also I was at Earth Day with Supervisor Carbajal and enjoyed not only being at the booth and having people come up and getting to meet and chat with them about county government but also to walk around and look at all of the other booths and talk to so many people there And I was particularly proud that the County of Santa Barbara was represented there. We had a wonderful booth for planning and development, many of the exhibits you can see downstairs and people really enjoyed coming up and looking at all of the aerial photographs. I understand that Public Works was also there as well.

I was at a groundbreaking last week in Los Alamos for an affordable housing project that's going to be built by I'm launching of canoes and kayaks at Lake Kachuma on Friday. It was a beautiful day, the lake is very full as you know and it was a wonderful event and if you would like to see what we did there is a YouTube video that's up. It's also going to be running on county television.

Mr. Farrum, the interim parks director was there and went out in his kayak And we had a lot of news media there. I've heard from so many people that said, in fact one person said, you know, I've been waiting 30 years to be able to canoe on Lake Kachuma. So certainly long overdue and very exciting. This week tomorrow I'll be part of the monthly Heritage Trail events that the City of Solvang is doing for the centennial. Tomorrow each month they pick something in particular to honor and this month it's Cultural resources, so we'll be honoring the Vets Hall, the library and some other institutions in the community.

And then on also that afternoon I like to go out in the community and do what I call sidewalk office hours. Last week I was in Isla Vista on Pardal and tomorrow afternoon I'll be at the Solving Farmers Market And then on Friday, I'll be at the Vandenberg Village Library. And so that's a chance for people to just kind of come and not necessarily have to have an appointment and get to chat.