BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Board of Supervisors meeting of December 8th 2011 as we're moving rapidly through this year. We are going to continue Diamond Rock but we'll talk about that in a minute just so that everybody's kind of on notice and Mr. Allen I think you want to call the roll?

Mr. Kronenholm? Here. Ms. Wolfe? Here. Ms Phan? Here! Mr. Lavagnino?

Here

Miss Gray?

public comments made at the meeting on Saturday that Carvajal sponsored, one of the comments were that five years ago, one of the members of NAACP had a reunion of over 200 people mostly from Long Polk And they wanted to return to Santa Barbara. So I am looking at some point, this county needs to look at returning African Americans back to their home and those African Americans were missing and are missing and would like to return So one of the purposes of establishing NAACP, and I will give you another comment at that meeting.

A lady, an African-American walked all along the Milpas Corridor business by business by business and could not find a job. And so this is critical to the African-American community because why are we disappearing? 1% from 30% in 1980 to 1%. Another comment made by an African American at this meeting, NAACP regeneration meeting was that persons were given Let me get this straight, persons are given bus tickets out of town.

And you know as well as I do and your county attorneys know that is illegal. If a person wants to remain here they can remain here in Santa Barbara. They don't need to have bus tickets. The Attorney General has stated that you cannot give bus tickets to people who cross the county lines. That is illegal. So no more of that. What we're looking for is a regeneration, the further regeneration of African Americans back to this community and this board is responsible for that. People in Long Polk and Santa Maria have moved there and now this board is going to be responsible for moving these people back to Santa Barbara.

The city, the center of culture, education, high school, colleges These people are missing out on the socio-economic, the viable cultural educational opportunities here in Santa Barbara. So there is a need for this county to begin to look at the regeneration of the black community and so in year 2012 budget consideration that should be The return of African-Americans back to their communities here in Santa Barbara.

Through funding, through the housing, through social services.

Thank you Dr. Johns your five minutes is up thanks so much thanks for bringing that to

us.

Mr. Allen I guess we should probably go to six now that Supervisor Wolf brought that one out

Madam Chair, members of the Board. Item number six is from the Auditor-Controller. The request is that the Board receive and file the Auditor Controller's audit reports on the Sheriff's Office California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Agreement number C06444 for the period of February 107 through June 30 2009.

Supervisor Wolf?

Thank you madam chair This particular item raised concerns for me, particularly in light of what we discussed at our last meeting regarding compliance issues and the ability for our auditor to get information from some of our folks that we have contracts with. And if Mr. Geis can just come forward I have a couple of questions. This is an audit of a program that went from 2007 to 2009. And Mr. Geis, it looks like you found quite a few irregularities and I think one of the things that is concerning to me is that the contract of over $500,000 was not met specifically, I guess you might say to the letter of the law.

In the Sheriff's comments it looks like their response was that especially in this one particular area about $280,000 being spent on case management salaries which wasn't in the original contract The response was that there was insufficient staffing to monitor the external agency and ensure the documentation requirements of the grant were met. So I appreciate the Sheriff's Office, their response to this and that they've now hired someone to ensure that we have Contract compliance, but the fact remains for me that there was a deficiency in this particular contract.

As I said before in the issue last week, we are pretty much the ultimate... We are the folks who bear the ultimate responsibility in a lot of these contracts. In the issue last week, we were dealing with HUD issues. This is other funding that's coming to the county. I want to make sure and if you can just give me some Some reassurance or some indication of what we can do in the future. Because we're handing out millions, in some cases millions of dollars and I want to make sure that our board before we move forward and approve those contracts that we know that all of the information that you have asked for that we have that information before we move forward and approve another contract because in this case It appears that you weren't getting the information yet.

Just recently we went forward and approved another contract, a little different but to the same organization. So I don't know if we need updated compliance reports, interim compliance reports on some of these contracts or what we need to do. Mr. Dice?

Madam Chair and Supervisor Wolf, so I think in terms of let's talk about this California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation grant. Here was a new program, you know, suggested by the Department of Corrections to begin to try and start these programs of reentry and rehabilitation. And so I think it's in the startup of that program, the sheriff tries to be innovative, take that in put it out to a third party.

I can tell you by my review of the records very difficult clientele to deal with this is not an easy program to implement. The Department of Corrections was probably changing the rules a little bit during the grant terms and conditions, it wasn't until the end of the grant that we really found out there was an audit requirement and so we were going in there almost a year after the grant was completed you know the records We're deficient in terms of, you know, completion. The people running the program best intentioned but when it got to the compliance side of the business they were probably inexperienced at compliance and I would have similar concerns with you on the big new realignment program Where we're now getting 6.8 million in terms of a new realignment program to do reentry, and I think we should you know make sure and I think the board brought that up at the meeting that you know We wanted to assure performance.

We want to assure compliance And it's sometimes It's a lot easier said than done in terms of meeting those requirements and so I think with With this, you know re-entry grant we understand what happened. We didn't have enough internal staff on it. But you know in our organization while we downsize and we don't have, you know. We're really downsizing in the area of my office and the county executive office and out at the departments I wouldn't be surprised that you don't see You know, we need to do things to prevent this let me go to last week. We suggested that The auditor should look at the financial statements of every non-profit. Well, I was thinking on the way to work and I talked to the CEO or that would be you know our contracts now say we'll give us audited financial statements after the fact.

You know it's after we've executed the contract. And I was talking to the CEO and said well what we really probably should do is put together some standards that say before we execute that contract do you have recently audited financial statements? Is your company in good financial position to accept and monitor this grant? And give us a copy of your recent financial statements so the departments can at least take a preliminary look, and we either refer them to our office if they're not sure if they're in good financial condition or You know, make a judgment about whether your board should be executing that grant on the front end. And so I think a lot of our you know contracts say well I can go in and look after the fact or I can go in and audit after the fact or we have the opportunity to audit but I think it's we should make sure that happens you know before you're executing contracts not after

Mr. Geis, I appreciate your comments and you know so I'm going to address this now to Mr. Marshall because we had issues about making our contracts consistent and enforceable and I think that county council has done a really good job in helping us with that. But now I think we have another issue, and I think that's a really good suggestion is that we may want to look at modifying those contracts before the grant comes to the board so that the organization is fully vetted before it comes to us

Supervisor Wolf, I'd really like to add to that. For about five years, I served as the chairman of the State Advisory Commission on to the Department of Corrections and the things that Mr. Geis has just said about they would change the rules You know, they'd come up with some kind of program. People would apply for the programs and then they change the rules. And then they'd all of a sudden say oh and by the way we need an audit and we haven't had that. They changed the personnel. I see personnel changes as many as two times a year where the person that was at maybe the second level at the Department of Corrections that was supposed to be shepherding this program would then be moved clear off to somewhere else And then they also would have folks in that were inexperienced with compliance.

I walked into a meeting at one time with the Department of Corrections and it was a building, let's say the size of this entire building and there was nothing but vacant cubicles in that building then we met kind of in another part of it because they were preparing to fill those cubicles with people that were going to be doing the next step To me it was, I'm from a county that seems fairly well organized and if we ask for something people know what they're doing.

But it was bizarre and I am so glad that this came up because how do we as a county, as you so well pointed out, how do we protect against this? Ms. Waller, Mr. Geis, it's a crap shoe on this thing.

Chairwoman, members of the board. I think this does point back to our discussion last week and as you may recall my recommendation or suggestion was to get together an internal group of folks that included county council auditor controller CEO's office and others and really develop a good policy surrounding all of our grant applications in all of our contracts to ensure that front end we do have the information that we need That we have clear performance measures and we have absolute and certain monitoring requirements of our own staff. So I think that, that is where we need to move from this point. And it sounds like we're pretty much all in agreement that that's something that we should move forward on.

Thank you

CEO Waller. I really appreciate that. We get the money, it's our responsibility and the monitoring and the compliance from our end is so important. And it's just the responsibility of our board ultimately. So thank you for moving forward on that. Thank you Mr. Geisen I'm to the sheriff's department thank you for implementing the changes and for taking the time. To talk to us about

this is going to add one little tiny thing in supervisor Wolf thank you so much for this if anybody else but I mean we might almost want to send someone up to wherever the grant is being issued, to make sure it's not an empty shell of some sort. I mean this sounds so bizarre. I mean they're probably going what is the matter with Joni? But it was really amazing to go up to Sacramento and see the lack of direction and organization. And like I said they change personnel twice a year easy. Anybody else any comments on this?

Thank you. Just piggybacking on what was just said, I see this as a two-pronged issue. One is when we go into financial relationship with one of these nonprofits or state agency but this is more pertaining to nonprofits and goes back to what we were discussing last week We should be looking at, like you said, audits in advance that help us understand the solvency, the financial solvency of the organizations. That applies not so much to the state of California as it does to, as in this case, as it does to nonprofits and the discussion last week.

We know the state's not solving already. But one is, like you said Auditor Geis, it's making sure that we have audits that give us a financial bill of health of the organization's footing financially But to the other thing is anytime we're dealing with a contract, we should have a compliance component to it. Do we clearly understand what the compliance requirements are?

Who's going to monitor it? Who's responsible? What's a compliance plan? So that any grant we take on, we clearly understand what those requirements are and who's responsible for getting that information and monitoring it. What we don't want to have is a similar situation like the disallowances issues that we've been dealing with mental health. And in other circumstances. So I just, I think the committee that yourself, CEO Waller and Auditor Geis will be looking at and maybe even County Council throwing little legalese in there.

I think we'll yield a good product for us to deal with these issues in the future so...

Thank you. Supervisor Farr? Thank you, Madam Chair. Just kind of on a separate but related issue we were talking about audits to do with grants and contracts but I would like a better understanding of how your office works on auditing the dependent special districts because we've had several issues come up to do with that and it seems like sometimes it's your office that does the audits but sometimes they seem to have the option to have an outside audit do that And so because they are dependent special districts, it just seems like I would like to know better how that system works. Because sometimes things seem to go on for a couple of years and we're not able to catch it in time.

Madam Chair and Supervisor Farr, you know our office only... We used to probably audit about 10 out of 54 special districts and maybe we're down to six or so. We're really handling the small ones that almost can't afford an audit places like Los Alamos Cemetery District We do put out an annual compliance report that we send to your board that says, hey all these districts had audits done which is really good. Most counties don't get all their districts to do audits and they also have a compliance side to do that they've all submitted budgets to us and that's required by law that they submit that And then at the urging of the Grand Jury about six years ago, we started to do a financial analysis report. And so we've done two of those and they're available on our website where we're looking at the financial condition of the special districts.

But you know let me just... Those audits that are giving an opinion on the financial condition and the results of operations of the entity Don't necessarily always or are intended to always discover those things that are being found in like the Mosquito Abatement District where you know would a regular audit have uncovered those credit card charges You know, is that a special circumstance that sometimes the audit wouldn't find that? And so we can have an expectation that every single financial statement audit is going to discover some of these anomalies that turn into fraud or irregularities. And you know, fraud is sometimes pretty difficult to discover.

In the case of the most recent issue that was reported to me by the district bookkeeper who thought something was going on and we stepped in and started off that investigation so other issues You know, you go back in time to the Goleta Cemetery District. That resulted from the treasurer and I finding out that the district had their investments outside the county treasury in stocks and bonds. And we're going well you can't do that. Now we did pick that up through a financial statement audit And the Lompoc Cemetery District situation, we really picked up that situation through you know the audit. But it was a little bit after the fact in that condition that had been occurring for awhile.

I guess you know for me, I'm more concerned about the dependent special districts that we as supervisors are making appointments to. As opposed to the independent special districts which are independent in that way and their trustees are elected by the public. And so I guess maybe at some point in time you could give us a memo on The difference between the independent and the dependent because I certainly feel, I think we all probably feel much greater responsibility to the dependent.

So I was getting a little confused there because when you tell me a dependent special district, a dependent special district are those that your Supervising like the fire to our fire district. Our flood control districts are county service areas when we talk about an independent special district I'm talking about those water districts the sewer districts the cemetery districts and in some of those districts you as the Board of Supervisors Are doing some appointments, and some are elected in it And I'll try and line that out for you of where you're doing appointments and where?

The electorate is electing people. Sometimes nobody wants to run and you do the appointments anyways, but I understand what your comment is.

I would appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you manager

Any other questions on this? Okay, I think we're ready to go too. And by the way Mr. Grice, I really wanted to just say how much I appreciate how you do stuff. It's easy to understand and you know what's going on and sometimes we don't get thanked enough so thanks.

Madam Chair, I'd just like to thank my audit supervisor Heather Fletcher. She does the heavy lifting and so do most of my division managers. It's not me doing all that stuff.

Must be a very interesting group of folks to work with. Ms. Waller?

Chairwoman, I was going to just suggest that possibly whether it's independent or dependent districts. I think we have some fairly good internal control policies that we could share with those individuals and then I think that they would be interested in the outcome of the committee that we were just speaking about and certainly we may not have the ability to completely control their activities but certainly I think it would be helpful for them to know how we control our own activities

You know, we might have a tutorial on this like we're getting from Harry today. We kind of... you know it's that's a good thing sometimes. Okay where do we go now? A9.

Madam Chair, members the board item A9 is from housing and community development. The request that the board consider recommendations regarding the Braddock House Home Investment Partnerships Program loan agreement that's in the second district.

Madam Chair. Yes, sir. This is one that I wanted to provide comment on. First of all, I think this is an extraordinarily good project. The only thing that caught my attention was the 30-year affordable housing period. I know that in the past, as part of our investment home funding investment, we, I believe are requiring or asking that we maintain this in affordable housing, as affordable housing for 30 years.

If I recall correctly, I thought that council in the past when we had all those housing issues that we were trying to grapple with We also looked at upgrading that 30 years to a longer period, 99, 50. And so it just caught my attention because I know that one of the challenges we saw looking back to the earlier affordable housing projects or programs that we developed Was that we only put a short window of affordability then they become market rate and it dawned on us.

That we could actually. Extend that period a little bit longer. So I just throw that out as something whether it was considered or not Whether we could ask for a longer period than 30 years, this is an investment by federal dollars and I'm not raising any negative issues about the project. It's a great project Just the longer we can keep this as affordable housing the better

Madam chair, we can look at that issue. I'm I'm not aware There's any limit on the amount of time nor that we have any authority to go beyond 30 years and it might be dependent on the particular grant but we can look at that more closely and work with the department.

Thank you, unless there is some major objection I would say it would behoove us to extend the length of keeping those units as affordable but looking into it will be great

Supervisor, so Supervisor Carbajal I appreciate that and Braddock House their programming is terrific and I understand what you're saying. So are you suggesting then that we remove this item from the admin agenda for

tonight? If there's no time constraint it might be worthwhile doing it if there is let us know and we could always just keep this in mind

Is Sharon, is anyone from that department here? Sharon, there's Sharon

Good morning board members. Just to answer some of the questions that came up, the 30 year period was recommended by the Capital Loan Committee when they reviewed this application. It is home funds so the affordability period Her head is 20 years, so but the committee did recommend an additional 10 year period If it is there is no time sensitivity With this project. It is complete so if it is the desire of the board we can I have conversations with the County Housing Authority, but again those were the recommendations put forward by the Capital Loan Committee for a 30-year time period.

And it should be noted too that the time period put on the property also triggers monitoring requirements so we will be required to monitor for the length of time of the covenant.

Madam Chair, if it's not a big deal we could postpone it a week. It would be great I think and I could be wrong but my observation is that Most jurisdictions, the city of Santa Barbara for example and even ourselves. I think we've been looking at extending the life of the affordable housing investment that is made and if it's conducive and works great and if not that's fine too. You know I'm just trying to find a way of preserving that affordable investment for us.

And as we look into that I hope everyone is cognizant of how different it is in North County The affordable requirements are causing us not to be able to sell affordable houses because once they get a restriction, a deed restriction on for being affordable then the banks won't give us loans. And I don't know if this fits into that discussion at all. Sharon does that fit in with that discussion at all? Am I getting off the horse here?

Chair Gray It's a similar issue. Those are the affordable units that usually don't have the federal funding of HOME, but they are the units that developers often build as part of the development agreement and you are correct in the northern part of the county because of the change Market price there are issues where the affordable units are Priced higher than what the market may bear and also have restrictions this particular property is again not the county's part of our affordable housing In terms of the development agreements and the inclusionary policies, but a project funded with federal home funds in partnership with the City of Goleta. This is the city of Goleta also has allocated its home dollars to this project and it's a project in cooperation with the County Housing Authority and Surf Development Company

Okay. I think, I just wanted to be certain that if in fact it was a North County, if it was a county-wide thing we needed to really spend some time talking about the difference. We have not necessarily, there are virtually vacant homes in North County that cannot get loans on them because of the fact that they have an affordability element and the banks don't want that. So it's just an issue that we need to consider when we roll into this

situation. I think the issue would be is to come back to us in a week. I certainly don't want to hold this up and if you could just do an investigation on that, I think it's also important for folks to understand this project is completed. It houses four affordability units but it's also specific for developmentally disabled adults which is one of the few in our community if not the county. It's an amazing project So I take to heart Supervisor Carbajal's comments, but we don't want to hold up anything.

So if we can just check it within the next week and bring it back to us in a week. So I'll make that motion that we remove...

Item A-9. All in favor? Aye. Continue, thank you very much for bringing that up Supervisor. We're ready now to go to A-20 and that's brought to us by Supervisor Lavinino. Mr. Allen

Madam Chair, members of the board. Item A-20 from Supervisor Labagnino is an appointment... Do

you want to put 20 and 21 together?

Let's put 20 and 21 together. And while I'm talking about 20 if I could get Louis Escobar to come forward, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah. The A-21 is an appointment of Trent Benedetti to the Assessment Appeals Board. And item A-201 is to appoint Louis Escobar for the Riding and Hiking Trails Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Mr. Benedetti is not here today. He's a CPA. Hopefully he's getting ahead in his... He's CPA-ing. But I do want to thank him for taking on that task of the Assessment Appeals Board but we talk about all the time in the county we've been highlighting volunteers this year And Mr. Escobar here is not only a successful businessman in town, he's also an avid runner and I'm not talking about the kind of running I do or you do generally where we run a couple miles.

He's an ultra-marathoner. He also takes time to coach local high school cross country team. I thought he'd be a perfect person to help us try to find some open space and try to help us on our riding and hiking trails committee. So Louis, I just wanted to highlight you and thank you for your service.

Thank you. Thank you for the appointment. I'm honored and I'm flattered and I take it seriously with a lot of enthusiasm and we're ready to go. I am standing here really representing not just myself but the five high school cross country teams in the city that have no place that's safe and legal to run. The people from Orchid and Santa Maria that are also looking for an open space recreational trail, we see value in it. And that's why we're here. We thank you for the opportunity.

All right?

Thank you. Great to have you. A22?

Madam Chair, members of the board, item A22 is from the fire department. It requests that the board set a hearing for December 6th to consider recommendations regarding the hazardous materials program fee ordinance.

Mr. Caldwell?

Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing COLAB. On this item we feel it's been a long time since there's been kind of a comprehensive report and overview on this program so we would ask if the fire department when they come back would give you more information in what were specifically looking for your decision making process Is the budget details of this program as a whole, plus the budget by function or by program. The number of businesses that are in each section of the program and even within subgroups like for instance the California Business Plan or the Hazardous Waste Generator How many businesses are in each one of those categories? What are the typical chemicals they have? How often are they inspected? If it's a business in Santa Maria, does the city fire department get the inspection money or does the county?

What happens in the years when there is no inspection? They get charged. In some cases they get charged every year, but the inspections once every three years. What's the money used in the off-years? The typical inventory. One of things we've always been concerned about is that for instance if you have a gas station, they're going to typically obviously have gasoline in their storage tanks. They may have oil, they may have waste oil, they may have transmission fluid. How long does it take to inspect? How often do they get inspected And how much do they pay for that inspection?

And whether or not there's a tie to what the department indicates as their hourly billing rate versus how long it actually takes for them to inspect. Because in reality, the people in the program are doing most of the paperwork and the county is just checking it. And then, you know also one of our complaints and we know that this has been addressed. UCSB that has a gazillion labs and maintenance department all this used to get charged one single fee as if they were like the neighborhood garage or gas station. But that's been in Vandenberg Air Force Base similarly but I think that's been addressed there was some inequity in it. If I could give you an example. You know we all pay a registration fee on our car If for some reason we get pulled over and we've got taillights not working, headlights not working and bald tires.

We can get a fix-it ticket and that should be the case. However how would you like it if you were in compliance with all the rules? And you had to pay a fee to be inspected to verify you are in compliance when you're already in compliance to begin with. You have the cost of the compliance, but then you have the cost for verification of the compliance. And that's what's happening with these businesses. They're just storing their waste, they're storing their chemicals, they're training their employees, they're filling out the information. They're doing everything by the book, but to prove it, they've got to pay a fee.

Thank you Mr. Caldwell. Mr. Lavinino?

Thank you Madam Chair. Is Mr. Todd... Can I just ask you a couple of questions? I'm sorry. I probably should have done this before, but it's nothing to... I'm just curious. I know being in my first year going through this and I was getting my breaks done yesterday on my car and actually the gentleman started talking to me about it so I figured I'd better ask you.

How does it work inside the city because I'm almost entirely in the incorporated area. So inside the city who is inspecting the business? Is it the city or the county? And then how do the dollars flow through?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Labagnino. In the city of Santa Maria within the actual town they have an individual I believe his last name is Cormerford who is responsible for the business plan element of the unified program in their city. The county fire department has the rest of the programs underground storage tanks above ground storage tanks has waste generation programs and that so Typically, there's been a couple surcharges over the last several years. One is handling the electronic reporting system that will come into effect in January of 2013 and I believe the city is one of the agencies within the county. There's two of them that charges a surcharge on top of the CUPA fees that we typically charge and I can't tell you exactly what that is.

I believe it's $25 to $50 on top of... That offsets the cost of that person monitoring the business plan and then we do the rest of the program.

One of the questions I just had is, and I know this is going to be going to a hearing. And in the report it said that the proposed fee schedule increase has been presented to CTAC for discussion and comment. Are we gonna have their comments before we decide whether or not to increase the fees?

We met with CTAC a week-and-a-half ago It was a productive meeting. Jan Evans ran the meeting for CTAC. We asked them if they would like to make a recommendation at the time, we basically left it up to them if they wanted to forward a letter to the supervisors come and speak at the hearings or you know if they want to present their comments and we would enclose it in our staff report. And to this date I haven't heard back from Jen but I'm sure she'll let all of you know. All right thank you.

Thank you that concludes the questions on the administrative agenda do have a motion to approve as modified? All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you, Mr. Allen. How many folks would like to speak to us today?

Madam Chair and members of the board we have six requests to speak on public comment.

Okay let's start with Dr. Johns. Dr. Johns your public comment please.

We'll begin with Dr. Johns and Santa Barbara followed by Patty Close

That's irritating, huh? Mr. Chair... Good morning

again Dr. Johns. Good morning Madam Chair I'd like to again, I'd like to support

Presidio Cruz for City Council. I think he's worked very hard in his community, and I think he is a good man. And I think he's going to make a very good city council person. I would like to continue along the lines of my earlier statements about the NAACP and its regeneration in this community. They're gonna hold elections in January Coming up this year, 2012.

And I foresee a regeneration of the black community and again I'd like to thank Carver Hall, Supervisor Carver Hall for his attention to this and for his interest. I'd like to thank him for that. Now I'd like to go back now To what is needed in this community. The black people in this community, the African-Americans and as I'm walking along State Street there are some African Americans who are employed and have been employed here for over 20 years but you have to remember there is a concerted conspiratorial effort to remove African Americans from this community.

And I'd like to say this In any case where we see this is going to be happening, we're gonna make note of it. The regeneration process has to begin with number one bringing African Americans from the 80s back to their community. What is really necessary is jobs. We need jobs for people who are going to be here and this community knows that very well. The downtown Association and Memphis Corridor, these are all groups.