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iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:03 – 0:077 turns
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We will proceed with the minutes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of May 7th? Motion's been made, seconded by three supervisors it was seconded all those in favor aye Passes unanimously. We will now move on to public comment. Mr. Clerk? Chairman Carball, we have no request to speak. No one? No public speakers?
No requests to speak and public comment.
Are there any? Well before we go into our admin agenda... Thank you very much this is almost the first I don't actually recall when we never had a public speaker oh I think I spoke too soon well that's for the admin agenda Great. Well, I think before we go to our admin agenda and see what items my colleagues would like to pull and the public would like to pull today is a new day.
And today we have some good news to report. Our CEO Waller's going to make the substantive introduction but on behalf of the Board of Supervisors I want to welcome our new social services director if you could come up Daniel Nielsen, who is from El Dorado County and he is the new director of our Social Services Department. And CEO Waller's going to tell you a little bit more about him.
Thank you chair. Well, I just want to echo your board's enthusiasm for our new social services director as many of us know Kathy Gallagher who had been with us for several years has moved on but with that comes an opportunity to bring together the social services department and an even more successful relationship. And with us today is Daniel Wilson, as you mentioned he comes to us from El Dorado County where he had a very successful career in that county just amazing when I spoke with individuals about what he's done for their county and what he might possibly be able to do for our county everything was glowing Certainly I want to welcome him today and maybe Daniel you could give us just a few brief highlights from your bio.
Okay, good morning board. Daniel Nielsen director of the Department of Social Services. I do come to you from El Dorado County where I was the Director of Mental Health Public Health. Social Services and Community Services. And I'm very happy to be here, and very thankful that you gave me this opportunity for this position. I'm also very grateful to have a narrower focus in my new assignment, and be able to focus just on social services.
Today's my second day on the job. I have about a 29 year history in the human service sector, both in public service as well as with non-profits. In a wide variety of fields dealing with homeless issues, health care, of course social services, child welfare and adult protective services and housing authorities. So I have quite a breadth of experience that I'm very happy to be able to come and share here. I've spent the day yesterday with my staff at social services, and I'm very pleased with what I see in terms of the quality of their skill set and their commitment and their dedication to the work. And so I think we'll make a very good team and will be able to give you a very good product. So thank you.
Well welcome to Santa Barbara County. Thank you.
Back to my colleagues,
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
are there any items that any of my colleagues would like to pull from the administrative agenda? Supervisor Adam. 13 please. A13. Anyone else? Okay and how many public speakers do we have Mr. Allen?
Chairman Cobalt, members of the board, we have two speaker slips on the admin agenda one for item A20 and one for item A25 Why don't we go
to those, and then we'll come back to the board.
OK, we'll start with item A20. This comes to the board from the Public Works Department. The request that the board approve and authorize the chair to execute the statement of final qualities for the construction of Ellen Barcadero Enhancement Phase 2 for work performed in materials supplied by JJ Fisher Construction. And this is in the third district. Our speaker is Miller.
Good afternoon, morning rather sorry. It's a pleasure to be back and speaking with the County Board of Supervisors my name is Linda Lee Miller formerly Manriquez we started Safe Parking Program together you and I and I am a proponent of that and I requested it Keep going in the cities and county areas because it's supposed to be a situation that will mushroom and continue. I also understand that the properties on Embarcadero had safe parking there, and we request that it come back. I also know that there are several people interested in the clinic itself.
The clinic is there serves per capita hundreds of people Both English and Spanish speaking, this is why I'm in this garb. The pastors and Holy men in the area believe that that clinic should stay there on its own regard because of the capacity of people that it serves and that the building at 976 Embarcadero could be turned into a decent community center, but also a warming center for the homeless which should be in every part of the county so that Santa Barbara City proper does not take the weight of all the issues Because issues are countywide, they should be addressed county-wide locally in each parish or part of the county. I believe in every aspect and as far as a note on here, I see also there's a recommendation for prohibiting parking of oversized vehicles.
As a former board member of a non-profit at street level called Homes on Wheels, I request that you seriously consider this Action as a hardship on some of those people. If they are very overlong or conflicting with traffic, you have laws that already enforce this. You do not need another ordinance to prohibit an already poorly house group of people that have little or no safe access to sleeping.
There are a lot of laws on our books that can pertain to all these people. The students also at UCSB wish to put more time and effort into these And I suggest maybe perhaps there be more round table discussions as to what happens at the properties at 970 and 976 Embarcadero. I do believe that there is a more need for more public and student interaction on this issue before you come to decision, thank you.
Chairman Carbaugh, members of the board. Our second public speaker is on item 825. This is from the Public Works Department. We request that the board set a hearing for your meeting on June 18 to consider recommendations regarding prohibiting parking of oversized vehicles on certain county roads. And our speaker's Greg Rose.
Who? What's the name of the speaker again? Greg Rose. Greg Rose? Mr. Rose. Mr. Rose is not here, so we'll proceed. You had an announcement to make, Mr.
Rose? Yes. Chairman Carbaugh and members of the board, this is regarding item A22. Item A22 comes to the board from the Sheriff. The recommendations are concerning the Santa Barbara Jail Electronic Security Replacement Project. This is out on Calle Real here in Santa Barbara. And at the advice and request of County Council in the Sheriff's Department, we've been asked to add a recommendation E to this item. I'd like to read that into the record.
Read as follows. Pursuant to the California Public Contract Code Sections 20134 and 22050, the Board of Supervisors finds that the nature of the security needs of the jail facility justifies a waiver of additional bid requirements for this amendment to the existing contract. And the security needs of the jail facility will not permit a delay which would result from a competitive solicitation for bids. So if we could add that recommendation on to item E and make that part of the motion on that item, that would be appreciated.
Great. Thank you Back to the board Mr.. Adam a 13 if you could read 813 into the record, mr. Clerk
Chairman Carball members of the board item a 13 is from general services The request that the board consider recommendations running the Lompoc animal shelter remodel This is project number eight five nine two construction contract amendment number one this in the fourth district Mr.. Adam
Thank you Mr. Chair, I'm just going to read the first sentence of the background out loud here and Mr. Pontus maybe you could approach the mic so I could ask you a question or two. The risk of conducting a remodel to an existing building is the amount of unknown or undisclosed conditions And the intensity of the deferred maintenance issues that may be encountered.
And I underlined in my copy, which nobody can see here, intensity of deferred maintenance. We've been talking a lot Mr. Pontius about deferred maintenance and I'm wondering if you've run into some other buildings since you've been here that have similar issues?
Good morning. Supervisor Adam, through the chair, in my short time here I have run into several buildings where we've got deferred maintenance issues and what we're hoping to do is do a project plan and hopefully reprioritize some of those deferred maintenance items so that we can bring back to your board a real list of the issues going on. What we don't want to do is throw good money after bad and want to use our money wisely and move forward. So yes.
That pretty much took care of all my other questions. Thank you very much. Thank
you. There's no more items from the public or to the board, including the additional language that was added by the clerk of the board for item A22. Is there a motion to approve the administrative calendar? So moved. Motion has been made. Seconded. Not having further discussion, all those in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. We will now proceed to our D schedule.
Or departmental items. And Mr. Clerk, if you could address number one which I believe is being continued. A request has been made for continuance.
Yes, Chairman.
Excuse me just one second.
If I could ask County Council do I need to recuse myself at this point and step out of the room?
The continuance of item number one.
Yes.
Okay thank you.
Chairman Carbaugh, members of the board. Item one is from planning and development. It's hearing to consider recommendations running the Ork Community Plan 2012 amendments. And this is in the fourth district and there's a request to continue this item to June 4, 2013. And the record will reflect that Supervisor Adam has recused himself and is not participating.
Great. We don't need a motion for this? Yeah, we need a motion. Motion's been made, seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. If somebody could... Mr. Adam if you're listening, if he could come back. I hear the boots coming. There he comes. You got all three assignments. We will now
move on to item number
two. Mr. Clerk, if you could read the item? Chairman Carpaw and members of the board, Item 2 is from the Treasurer Tax Collector. It's a hearing to adopt a resolution approving the issuance by the California Statewide Communities Development Authority of multifamily housing revenue bonds for the Heritage II apartments in an amount not to exceed $8 million dollars.
Thank you. We have our treasurer tax collector Mr
Harry Hagan here, Mr Hagan.
0:17 – 0:2420 turns
Good morning Chair Carbajal members of the board. This item before you today is a TEFRA hearing Tax Equity and Financial Responsibility Act of 1982 I believe it is a process that we've gone through many times before The TEFRA hearing allows entities access to the municipal markets. But to do that, we need to have a public hearing and so people have a chance to either approve or disapprove. The county is not a party to the issuance. We are in no way responsible financially or morally for this. We're providing the avenue according to the Internal Revenue Code so that private activity bonds can be issued According to 142D of the Internal Revenue Code.
It is a project located in Vandenberg Village. There's Heritage One apartments right there, this will be a phase two of that project and with me today is Russ Corey from Heritage Two The issuer on this project is CSCDA, California Statewide Communities Development Authority. We've partnered with them many times. This is a sponsor of the League of Cities and CSAC. It's the financing arm of that organization and they are the issuer.
We are just holding the public hearing and if there's any questions on the project Mr. Quarry here can probably answer those better than I could.
Thank you Mr. Hagan, I think we've done this a number of times before and the only question I will ask that I think I probably speak for my colleagues is are we completely indemnified through insurance or something so that we don't have any responsibility should there ever be in an unlikely default?
Chair Carbajal and forgive me. Council Marshall, if I overstep my authority here. But I don't think there's any way we could be pulled into this. The only way that we may ever get pulled into something like this is if there was a bankruptcy or default. We maybe pulled in but we would be quickly indemnified, I believe.
Mr. Chairman, the county explicitly by statute would have no liability for conducting this hearing. It's really merely a forum that's available for these types of activities to provide for public airing rather than having no public airing. So sure we could be sued but-
Perfect I think that's all we wanted to hear and I think the public probably wants that assurance. Supervisor Adam? Mr. Hagan, do you know
how they go about determining where these projects will be located?
Chair Carbajal, Supervisor Adam, when you say they, you mean the developer?
Yeah, whoever is identifying sites for these projects.
This is a private development company that would In this case, they're looking at property that's co-located already to Heritage One. So it's another phase of that project. But in this case it is a private activity bond so it's a for profit business and so be based upon land availability also I believe.
OK, so if we're not financially or morally responsible for this bond then why are we voting on
it? Chair Carbajal, Supervisor Adam. It is a public process. So the governmental entity that this project resides in and in this case it's in the unincorporated area of Vandenberg Village has to hold a public hearing so that the company Heritage II has access to municipal markets If we didn't do it, then I believe the state of California would have to do it. Generally most of these projects fall in city boundaries so it'd be the City of Santa Barbara or the City of Lompoc that would be holding these but when it does fall into unincorporated areas... Then we take the lead on the public hearing.
Yeah just sort of It seems to encumber us, and to me it just feels encumbering if you vote on something. I don't know, it is what it is and I've got to take your word for it but I'll be voting no on it.
Have you no more discussion or comment?
Supervisor Farr? Thank you. Just to give a little bit more context for it, this is the second phase of an existing project that was built a number of years ago in Vandenberg Village in the main part of Vandenberg Village. The property's adjacent to the shopping center and well located for services. The first phase has been very well maintained. It's a real asset to the community Certainly much needed, this is senior multi-family rental housing. So I think that it's a really good project and I realize that we don't really have anything to do with it other than this technicality but I just wanted to assure the board and the public that it is a great project in a great location for one. And with that I would like to go ahead and make the motion to adopt the resolution approving the issuance.
Motion has been made. Second. Discussion? Supervisor Adams?
Just one more question for Mr. Hagan, is there a way for us to extricate ourselves from a joint power authority or are we even a member of the Joint Powers Authority?
Chair Carbajal, Supervisor Adam. We are a member of the JPA. We've used CSCDA for small borrowings we have here. So like let's say hypothetically the sheriff wanted to purchase a bus and you know a project that size is too small for a COP when you have all the costs of issuance with bond counsel and your POS you have to put together for municipal borrowing so we'll use this and it's kind of almost like a pool situation And so we have used CSCDA as a member.
Okay, so this entity does both public and private loaning? I mean it's a bank. This is CSAC and League of California Cities Bank?
I don't believe it would be considered a bank. It's more like an underwriter probably would be the best way I could describe it.
Okay, so it's an investment...it's almost like private money investment
0:24 – 0:3918 turns
Yes.
They can do either or, you know they don't have some kind of a limitation in the charter that says you can only do public funding of projects. They're out there doing their financing speculative private ventures.
Chair Carver-Hall, Supervisor Adam I don't believe that's probably the case and I may not be the right person to speak to CSCDA's charter either I believe their mission would be to finance public infrastructure like that and the Internal Revenue Code allows private activity bonds for this type of project. I don't believe they would be doing financing for for-profit businesses that don't fall under this code section, but I don t know their charter.
Well this heritage too is a for profit deal, no?
It is and it falls under 142D. Certain projects are allowed access to the municipal markets and a rental housing project like this with certain income restrictions would qualify.
All right, thank you. Not having further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstention? One no. We will now
move on to item number three if you could read the item Mr. Clerk
Chairman Carball, members of the board. Item three comes to the board from planning and development and the Board of Supervisors acting as the successor agency to the former Santa Barbara County Redevelopment Agency. The request that the board receive and file a report on the long-range property management plan for the successor agency to the former Santa Barbara County Redevelopment Agency and give general direction to staff on preferred options for disposition and use of real properties for staff to research in connection with the plan preparation.
Thank you. Mr. Counsel, I had a discussion with you about my spouse's former employer and the law stipulation that requires that I have to have...I think 12 months need to go by before I could engage in decisions That are even remotely associated with the entity that she was previously employed. So as such, you're going to guide us through this hearing because there is one item that I cannot participate in. So if you could help me out?
In terms of doing what I have to do?
Mr. Chairman, yes we consulted you consulted on the Political Reform Act requirements there is a one-year look back on your spouse's prior employment and the conclusion was that Of our discussion was that you would recuse yourself. I've talked with the CEO And I believe she has a plan to bifurcate The three properties to allow you to participate in discussions on two, but not on the third which would be the clinic that had your wife's former employer as the I understand sole tenant.
Mr. Chair, what we've done with our presentation today is we have started it out with a general conversation that applies to all of the projects and then what we'll do is we'll move to the individual projects with the medical clinic being the last and so at that point will give you a heads up and you can excuse myself and
step out
right? And then when we come back, we'll take separate direction on each of the properties so that we're not loving them altogether in a single vote
OK, just help me out here. I want to make sure I do the right thing. Okay, so having said that and I appreciate your modifying your presentation. Once I've learned of this yesterday, luckily we had it with a little bit of time to be able to allow you to try to reorganize your schedule and I do apologize for the inconvenience. No problem.
Please proceed. Chairman Carbajal, members of the board my name is Aaron Briggs. I'm the program manager for the successor agency And today I would like to provide you with a presentation on the long range property management plan for the successor agency to the former Santa Barbara County Redevelopment Agency. Staff would like to get general direction on your preferences for disposition and use of the properties held by this successor agency.
Staff will return to your board at a later date with a draft plan pursuant to your direction. Today's presentation is broken into two parts, with the first part including some legislative background and then the second part getting a little bit more specific on the properties held by the successor agency. The Disillusion Bill, or ABX 126 was enacted by the state legislature on June 25th 2011 and was amended by AB 1484 on June 27 2012.
The purpose of the disillusion bill was to dissolve the states redevelopment agencies and the purpose of AB 1484 was to address the use and disposition of assets of these former RDA's. All RDA's were officially dissolved on February 1st 2012. In January of 2012, your board chose for the county to become the successor agency to the former County Redevelopment Agency in Isla Vista.
As such, the former RDA's assets and liabilities are now under the control of the county acting as a successor agency. The successor agency is required to generally wind down the affairs of the former RDA. The oversight board consists of seven members appointed by several entities, including the Board of Supervisors. The oversight board is generally intended to oversee the actions of the successor agency. Members of the oversight board have a fiduciary responsibility to the holders of enforceable obligations of the former RDA and to the affected taxing entities that would benefit from the distribution of proceeds generated by the liquidation of RDA assets.
This slide shows the various taxing entities who would receive proceeds from the liquidation of RDA assets. Note that the educational entities are the main beneficiaries of RDA disillusion. The county, through its general fund and several special districts is also a beneficiary of the disillusion. The general fund would receive approximately 16.7% of all proceeds.
This slide shows the four major milestones in the dissolution process. The first milestone was the determination of a successor agency and the formation of the oversight board. Second milestone was the distribution of the former RDA's cash balances to the affected taxing entities, and then the third milestone is where we are now development of the long range property management plan And then the final step in RDA dissolution will be the use and disposition of the properties held by this successor agency.
Within six months after receiving a finding of completion from the Department of Finance, the successor agency is required to submit for approval both to the Oversight Board and to the Department of Finance a long-range property management plan. The property management plan is required to one, include an inventory of all properties held by this successor agency The inventory shall include specific information detailing each property, including its cost and date of initial acquisition. An estimate of the current value, the purpose for which the property was acquired, parcel data and other information. And secondly, the plan shall address the use or disposition of all properties held by this agency.
Upon approval by the Oversight Board and the Department of Finance, the Long-Range Property Management Plan will govern the disposition and use of real property assets at the former RDA. Our April 26th 2013 finding of completion started a six month timeline for the county ending on October 26th 2013. The long range property management plan must be sent to the oversight board and the department of finance.
This slide outlines the process that the Long Range Property Management Plan will go through, starting with today's hearing where staff will receive direction from your board. Staff will then prepare the draft plan pursuant to your direction and return at a later date for your approval. The plan is then sent to the oversight board, the Department of Finance and the county CEO and auditor controller. Once forwarded by this successor agency, the oversight board will consider the plan and either approve it as is or modify the plan. The plan is then sent to the Department of Finance for final approval before becoming effective.
This slide shows the four different options for disposal of the real properties of the former RDA. The first option is retention of property for governmental use. Governmental use is defined as those assets that were constructed and used for a governmental purpose, such as roads, school buildings, parks, police and fire stations, libraries, and local agency admin buildings.
The second option for disposal is the retention of property for future development. If the Long Range Property Management Plan directs the use or liquidation of the property for a project identified in an approved redevelopment plan, the property shall transfer to the county. The third option for disposal is sale of the property. Under this scenario each of the beneficiaries of disillusion would receive approximately the percentage share of proceeds of the sale as detailed in the slide shown earlier.
The fourth option for disposal is the use of property to fulfill an enforceable obligation. Examples of enforceable obligations include the fulfillment of contracts that were in place prior to the RDA's dissolution, the repayment of debt obligations, administrative fees associated with the RDA's wind down, property management expenses associated with a former RDAs real properties and so on.
Second part of our presentation provides background on each of the properties held by this successor agency. This vicinity map here shows Isla Vista's location in relation to UCSB, Santa Barbara Airport and Highway 101. Today we're going to focus mainly on the downtown area of Isla Vista here. This map shows the location of each of the three properties that is currently held by this successor agency including the parking lot, the medical clinic and the church.
The Board of Supervisors- One second CEO Waller?
I was, thank you Mr. Chair, I was just going to remind our staff since we're trying to do this a bit on the fly that we should eliminate any reference to that particular property so certainly our maps are what our maps are but let's not reference it at all. Thank you.
Fair enough. The Board of Supervisors adopted the Isla Vista Master Plan in August of 2007. The master plan is the result of years of community outreach and public input, and the development standards and policies contained within the plan reflected the values and desires of the Isla Vista community at the time the plan was developed. The plan lays out a vision for the downtown area that includes the configuration of Anesquoia Park and the surrounding commercial district which will be rezoned to encourage mixed-use development.
In order to provide visual context of what the master plan envisioned for these properties, this slide shows the existing conditions of the downtown area on the left-hand side and then the future conditions as diagrammed in the Isla Vista Master Plan on the right hand side. Note that the existing park space within Anascoyo Park is bisected by existing buildings.
Note that in the second figure, the park now provides for a larger unified space for community gathering, socialization and recreation. The former RDA had purchased the two properties located within the park in anticipation of finding a way to fulfill the vision of the plan. While the RDA did provide monies to the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District to fund the creation of a conceptual park improvement plan, that plan was never fully developed and the former RDA was never able to make any tangible progress with respect to park development.
These efforts were interrupted by the state's action to dissolve the RDA. There is no requirement as part of the RDA disillusion legislation, to implement the vision laid out in the master plan. This is a close up showing the church property which was purchased in 2008 for $1.875 million from Saint Athanasius Church. The existing 3600 square foot building is currently vacant.
And the property was appraised at $2.2 million in March of 2012. According to the board letter associated with the property purchase in 2008, the church property was acquired in order to provide flexibility to the former RDA in implementing the master plan. After the leaseback period for the church, the board letter specified the land was potentially to be used for parking to facilitate redevelopment projects and or the expansion of open space.
Here's a close-up showing the parking lot property, which was purchased in 2008 for $1.4 million from Union Oil and then developed as a parking lot for an initial $938,000. The property was appraised at $2.35 million on March 12th. I'm sorry, in March of 2012. And the purpose for the acquisition of the property was development of a parking lot to provide public parking. And there's about 45 spaces in the parking lot.
On November 1st, 2012 the Oversight Board voted unanimously to transfer the parking lot to the county under the governmental purpose provisions because it was the oversight board's view that this property was constructed and used for such governmental purposes. In August of 2008, the county adopted the Isla Vista In-Lieu Fee Parking Program. In addition to providing parking to the general public, the agency parking lot was intended to facilitate the in-lieu fee program wherein developers could pay a fee to the county rather than providing physical parking spaces on their properties similar to what is done in the downtown area of the city of Santa Barbara. This slide shows the location of the parking lot and the locations of the four privately owned mixed use buildings that have been recently constructed or are now under construction.
The county adopted the In-Lieu program as part of our redevelopment efforts to help incentivize private redevelopment on the undersized lots in downtown Isla Vista. The undersized nature of the commercially zoned parcels in this area were an impediment to private redevelopment and it was the In Lieu program through which developers could fee out of a portion of their parking requirement that made these projects economically feasible, to the point where they could be constructed. These projects are now valued at between 8 and 15 million dollars each.
Supervisor Carbajal, we're going to move into the medical clinic discussion here. Thank you. So
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here's where I recuse myself and walk up. OK, I'll be listening outside so you guys can call me back in. Thank you.
At this point, the record reflect that Supervisor Carbajal has recused himself and is not participating. And Vice Chair Lavagnino is running the meeting.
And this slide shows a close-up of the clinic property, which was purchased in 2008 for $2.6 million from the Ivy Neighborhood Clinic. The 9900 square foot building is currently partially leased to the Ivy Neighborhood Clinic for $3100 a month or $1 a square foot. The property was appraised at 1.6 million dollars in March 2012. And similar to the church property, the medical clinic property was acquired in order to provide flexibility to the former RDA in implementing the Isla Vista Master Plan. Including to provide parking to facilitate redevelopment projects and or the expansion of park space.
That concludes staff's presentation on the Long Range Property Management Plan. We would now like to answer any questions you have and receive general direction from your board so that we may return at a future date with a draft plan for your consideration. Thank you Aaron. CEO Waller?
Mr. Chair, I would suggest that in order for Mr. Carvajal or Chair Carvajal to participate in the discussion of the first two items that we do that first and then we ask him again to leave the room when we discuss specific board direction for the medical clinic.
Okay, Supervisor Farr.
Thank you Mr. Chair it's a little bit complicated because I know that there's a number of people in the audience that want to speak and I think that their comments are going to probably touch on definitely touch on the clinic and maybe the other properties as well I don't know that they can divide their comments up so I'm just wondering whether we need to hear from the public first and then bring it back to the board and take take the building separately so that supervisor Carbajal can then come back in
What's the pleasure of the board or
council? I think it's council.
Yes, I think that we're going to be in a situation where the speakers will speak on properties one and two while Supervisor Carbajal is in the chair then we would close that portion of the public comment and then speakers who wish to speak on property three would then have another opportunity to speak on property three
Even if they're the same speaker, they're going to come back and speak on another project? Unfortunately yes. Well let's figure this out. Is it that important that Supervisor Carbajal hear all the public comment? I mean can't we just... It would make a lot more sense to me that we just have the public speak with Supervisor Carbajal out.
And that is, that would be a permissible form of recusal.
All right. Anybody else have any input on that? Is that okay with you or what would you rather do?
I'm just trying to think this through, because I'd hate for Supervisor Carbajal to miss out on the comments. So I guess I...
How many
speakers do we have? It seems like we're... Looks like Mr. Marshall
wants to say something. Mr. Vice Chair, can I have just a moment to consult with Mr. Carbajal? Sure, that would be great. I think there is perhaps a solution to this. All right, let's take a one minute break.
In the meantime I will say Mr. Briggs, you took a very complicated issue and did a great job in presenting it. Appreciate it.
Mr. Chair? During this interim conversation can I ask staff about the medical clinic? I do have a question.
Mr. Gazoni is shaking his head no so we'll hold off.
No?
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Thank you. th th Okay. Here we go.
You want to put it in yours or you already got it? Yes. All right I think Supervisor Wolf you had a question you'd like to ask.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your presentation, Mr Briggs. I just have a question on the valuation of the property on The Church. It looks like they used two approaches. One was the market survey comparing it to other properties and then they also used the rental income approach. So they use both of those The conclusion was to use the market approach, which raised the amount or the value a little bit more.
But still less than what it was purchased for. And so now I'm going into the... That was the medical clinic. So now I'm going into the church. The church looked at the market value piece and in that case The market value is greater than the price that it was purchased at. So, I guess my question is why is the medical clinic appraised at a lower rate than what it was purchased at when they were both purchased at the same time? Did we, did we, well go ahead and answer that.
Well first off I want to throw out a disclaimer I'm not in real property, so I don't understand these appraisals like some of our staff and general services might. But I think that the general overriding factor is the market conditions. And in 2008, we had a much different market than we have now. And these appraisals were done in 2012. There are numerous factors that go into these appraisals. The location of the property, its frontage on a street, the parking that's associated with it, the rents that are collected in the buildings then and now. A lot of these factors have changed over the years and it's just a combination of all those factors.
These appraisals are done by independent professionals and provided to the county for our use. And the appraisals from 2008 during the property purchase reflected their value at the time, and the appraisals that we got now in 2012 reflect what the appraiser feels is the value of the property at that time also. So they're just snapshots in time.
Thank you, Mr. Briggs and I guess there is no answer. This would be a question for the appraiser who did it because it doesn't really make sense to me that the appraisal for the medical clinic is so low but I just thought you might have some more insight. Can I ask a general question or should I wait?
That's up to you. I mean we have, I think Supervisor Adam has a question and then we'll go to the public for an answer? I think I have an answer for your question.
Okay good.
And that
is...I guess I should've asked you. Well this is
my world. So what happens is that building is not completely rented out. requires $100,000 worth of work to make the rest of it rentable. And so what ends up happening is that $100,000 got deducted from value plus the fact that the cash flow rental rate on that thing was horrible and so he's basing the cash flow rental rate on the portion of the building that's rentable
Well, actually he's not. He looked at the income approach and he looked at the market value approach and he didn't look at the income, he looked at the market value so he assessed it based on comparable properties. So that's why it doesn't... And I understand actually the income approach but I don't understand if he used the market and it's still less. Anyway-
Well, that just means you paid too much for it.
Well, I don't know.
Supervisor Farr?
Thank you Mr. Chair. I just kind of have to weigh in here. I think that first of all the appraiser used the number 100,000 but I think our staff has used the number 40-50 thousand dollars to make various repairs to the building. I think what the appraiser totally misses is the fact that this kind of space is very limited in downtown Isla Vista And is in great demand. And the rest of that building could have been rented out I don't know how many times over, but the county has been waiting because first we knew that something was going to be happening with redevelopment agencies. We didn't know what and then once we knew what it was, we were precluded from entering into any other kind of contracts with it.
So I just wanted to let you know that because I hear all the time from the community about how they would like to move in to that clinic building. So, I just wanted to put that on the record. Thank you
Mr. Chair. I have one more follow up. Supervisor Wolf? So Mr. Briggs, you made a comment that there was this IV master plan that was done in 2007 and then this spreadsheet that we have I think maybe reflects the intended use for the properties. But you also said that there was no progress to make, well particularly the medical clinic and the church into a park. And that we don't necessarily have to follow that plan. So given for instance what Supervisor Farr said If we, if we feel that maybe the park is not the right use for that and that we want to maintain it as a medical clinic or community facility or community use. We can do that. Is that correct? That we don't have to follow the original plan?
Supervisor Wolf, that's generally correct. Okay. Thank
you Chair, Supervisor. Just to add on to that though, you certainly have that ability but it does affect which option you choose and whether you have to compensate the taxing entities for that if you do something that's different from what the property was intended as part of the RDA plan so just you certainly have the discretion too but it does change a little bit which option you can utilize
Mr. Chair, just also to add on to that I think it's much more complicated than that and I think that is rather misleading. I think if you look at those maps that Mr. Briggs put up it showed the whole park cleared out not just for these properties But of Embarcadero Hall that's owned by the university, of existing commercial buildings both on it shows an entranceway through I think Mr. Geyer's property somebody's property there from Pardal and you know the park property at the bottom that was used for parking so it was really a vision in a wish list The reality of whether it could have ever happened, not just whether the county was interested in doing it but whether the other property owners were interested in doing it because those other properties are very valuable I think you know was pretty speculative.
Also it's my understanding since I've been representing Isla Vista was that these properties had value they were never just going to be given away That the plan was to either sell or trade them for other property to the park district. And then if the park district wanted to knock them down and make them part of the park, because the park is their responsibility that they would do that. But we were never going to just give them away in that way. The hope was that we would get perhaps the property immediately across the street where the existing Park District office is and another piece of small park land in another area. to continue to fulfill the duties and obligations of redevelopment, which is to take these underdeveloped properties and to remodel them, sell them, and improve the tax base.
And also as a part of that because you know the church and the clinic building were providing services that would also provide an opportunity to do that and then move those services into another location. So it's my understanding again since I've been involved in representing Isla Vista That these properties were always a tool to not only perhaps fulfill the park district's master plan for the park, but to continue the work of redevelopment and to continue to find another location for those services to be provided. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Great and with that we will move to public comment. Mr. Allen?
0:57 – 1:026 turns
Chairman Labadino, members of the board, we have nine requests to speak. We'll start with Jeffrey Bessmer, followed by Pegin Sudar.
Chair Lavagnino, members of the board. My name is Jeffrey Bessmer. I am the Executive Director of Santa Barbara Student Housing Co-op. I also serve on the Recreation and Park District Board as well as the Local Food Co-Op Board in Isla Vista. I'm a permanent resident of Isla Vista. I'd like to speak to the general need in the community for services and meeting space.
Santa Barbara Student Housing Co-op, the organization that I work for recently purchased a building at 777 Camino Pescadero from the University Religious Center. For a long time this building was used to provide meeting space and services to the community. This included county meetings, community groups use this multiple times a week. We had yoga there eight times a week as well as a warming center providing services for the houseless community in Isla Vista.
When we purchased the building, however, we were told that if we wanted to continue those uses and make that space available to service providers that we would need to build 60 additional parking spots which as the most affordable student housing provider in Isla Vista was beyond our means at the time so unfortunately the community has lost this space that was a service provision location in the In the long-term plan, the park district was also discussing using one of its parks as sterile parks for a community center for service provision as well. However that is no longer an option so as we'll see in this community as the other speakers will discuss there's a great In dire need for service provision and meeting space. However, the available locations to provide this space have been shrinking over time.
And I think that one of these locations is our only chance at this time to provide these much needed community services. I would also like to point out that while we have colloquially been referring to these locations as the clinic building and the church building. That those are just the most recent tenants. The church building was once an arcade, many different folks have used the clinic building and so referring to them as those purposes just because they're being used that way right now may obfuscate the actual ownership of the building and use of the building which is a county property that gets used as determined by the board. So thank you very much.
Our next speaker is Pegin Sutar, to be followed by Randy Siordia.
Good morning.
Thank you Chair, members of the board for the opportunity to speak. Pegin Sutar, 30 year resident of Isla Vista. I've raised a family out there, I was a UCSB student. I did two terms on the Ivy Rec and Park District Board and I'm currently doing my third term. Isla Vista is really diverse and I like starting with that a lot of times when I speak. We have 9 to 10,000 UCSB students, we have 1 to 2,000 city college students but we have 22,000 people from our last census in Isla Vista. So there's many families, there's many professionals, there's many just regular folks that work in Santa Barbara County and live in Isla Vista.
And we have a need for facilities out there. Facilities for meetings, facilities for events Facilities for me most importantly is ways to bring the diverse community together. The more that we can show you know permanent residents and students that were really are a mix and the more times we can get people to You know, play together, communicate, go to meetings together. I think it will help safety issues in Isla Vista. I think it will help build community in Isla Vista. Now we understand that originally in the master plan and redevelopment plan they have that area becoming park or parking lot but as Jeff was saying there is no place for meetings right now and that cluster of buildings could be a beautiful addition to Isla Vista for what we truly need in there.
That building that the 970 building has been many things over the years. It's been the clinic, it's been a liaison office for the university, it's been a satellite office for the third district. We used to have our credit union in there so I think some combination when looking at decisions that you're as a successor board can make. Some combination of retaining the buildings and fulfilling obligations even though The obligation for community center was not slated for that spot. I think there's still an obligation for that to happen somewhere, so I really do hope that you as a successor agency consider the needs of Isla Vista and hang on to those properties and give us some kind of working with you guys some kind of control over what happens there so that we can improve.
We can just improve the life in Isla Vista. Thank you.
Thank you. Randy Ciordia to be followed by Hilary Klager
1:02 – 1:085 turns
Good morning, Chair Lombanino and members of the board. Today I'm speaking on behalf of UCSB students and the Isla Vista community. My name's Randy Ciordia. I'm this year's Vice President for Local Affairs with Associated Students. So like I said in addition to speaking on behalf of UCSB students, I'm here to also speak on behalf of the Isla Vista community as a whole.
I'm here to advocate on behalf of the retention of the 970 Embarcadero Del Mar property and the properties that included the church at St. Athanasius and the solar car park. As others have mentioned, Isla Vista is a very diverse community and in addition to the students as we know there are long term residents. And what that means is that we have a real need as a community for these services and for these properties.
It's interesting to me that it's not just students that have a need, but it's everybody that has a need. And I think that's really important to remember and to point out. In terms of effort, students have long pushed for and organized around the idea of having a community center in Isla Vista. Two years ago, the person that was in my term did a lot of organizing to make this happen and to create a community center in one of these properties.
And there's a lot of work that went into that. That all comes from the necessity for this space. There's a lot of utility that can come from a community center. As it's been mentioned, there have been social services. It could be a space for alternative programming to keep students and other community members safe at night and give them other options. And there's just a need for safe space in Isla Vista. And as Zerreen had mentioned, the spaces that are available are few and far between. So what we need to do is take advantage of this opportunity and really make sure that we're addressing the needs of the community and that everybody's voice is being heard.
And I think that's it. So thank you.
Thank you. You're starting to become a regular, Randy. It's good. Good to see ya.
Hilary Klager. Uh-oh. To be followed by Catherine Boyer.
Good morning, Vice Chair Lavanino and members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Hillary Klager and I'm the Isla Vista Community Advisor for Associated Students which is a liaison position between the students at UCSB and the members of the community of Isla Vista. I'm also the chair of the Isla Vista Community Network which is a collaboration of individuals and organizations that provide services to the residents and the community of Isla Vista.
Sorry that Supervisor Carbajal had to recuse himself because this is really much more Then the building that is colloquially called is the clinic. As some of my colleagues have mentioned, there's a long history of social services being provided at 970 and Barcadillo Del Mar. I've done some history recently The library's got some great resources of the Isla Vista Community Service Center, which started in 1970. The clinic just started at that point but there were a lot of other services that were made available to the community members at that time including attendance union and the Community Affairs Board for Associated Students which still exists and provides services to the community.
I've been trying to build a community center for over 30 years, and it's in the master plan. And we're working together to really make this happen for the community. As I mentioned, there's a history of providing government and social services at the 970 Embarcadero Del Mar and the area where St Bridges and St Athanasia St. Denis is most recently occupied the property nearby we really need your assistance to make this happen and we request that you retain the properties so that we can work together on a solution to fulfill this need I think we're fully aware that this may take some partnerships with other organizations and foundations to make this happen.
And the community is willing to do the work, as was mentioned by some of my colleagues. The Ivy Master Plan included the community center to be over at Estero Park and that is not an option anymore. No more space available in Isla Vista and this is really our one shot. One of the recent developers who put in a mixed use building in Isla Vista has just, he's going to be putting in a 7-Eleven in Isla Vista and I can tell you that the students and the community members of Isla Vista do not need another place to buy a bag of chips and a soda. They need social services. They need health services. They need alcohol free venues for events.
Community celebrations and family celebrations. They need places to have meetings. The Alavista Community Network does meet in the IVRDA building at 970 Embarcadero Del Mar, and that is our space where our community gathers with our third district supervisor The Park District, the Isla Vista Community Network is the advisory to Isla Vista. And we hope that you will work with us in helping us make this happen. It's really important to our community that we continue to be able to provide the residents with medical, social housing and youth programs for everyone. Transportation is a very big challenge and we need to make them local in Isla Vista. Thank you.
Thank you. Catherine Boyer to be followed by Rodney Gould.
1:08 – 1:1410 turns
Good morning, my name is Catherine Boyer. Thank you for this opportunity for me to speak I sent an email to all the supervisors with the following content So I'm here today to express my concern regarding the County of Santa Barbara's Potential loss of redevelopment properties in Isla Vista as you know the unincorporated area in the county of Santa Barbara's third district The specific properties in question are located in the heart of Isla Vista, in the downtown area. The buildings at both 970 and 976 Embarcadero Del Mar.
Currently I'm a staff at the University of California Santa Barbara and have been so since 1990. So for nearly 20 years, I was employed as a community liaison in Isla Vista for the Division of Student Affairs at UCSB. I am one of many who support retaining these redevelopment properties for the benefit of the community. Since the 70s, these properties have been used by community organizations, human and health service non-profits, county government, UC Santa Barbara student affairs and associated students Local churches and other entities to provide programs and services, and develop initiatives to support and strengthen the community of Isla Vista.
These properties have provided the space necessary to foster community efforts to address social and safety concerns, to bring about positive social change, and to enhance the quality of life in Isla Vista. These last four decades represent a period of marked growth and change in Isla Vista guided in part by active civic participation and third district leadership. Isla Vista residents, students and non-students alike as well as members of the greater Goleta and Santa Barbara communities have a committed invested interest in improving Isla Vista and providing services to its residents Isla Vista needs community meeting and gathering places now and into the future.
These redevelopment properties fulfill that need. I am a participant in the Isla Vista Community Network, as Hillary said, a grassroots organization of 25 or so community leaders that began to meet in 1992. We work collaboratively on numerous community issues. This network meets regularly and currently uses the redevelopment properties to hold its meetings Other current and potential future users include the Thrive Isla Vista program, one of five in the County of Santa Barbara which is a cradle to career outreach program.
Campus and community drug and alcohol education programs, cultural and art organizations, student organizations there are 500 currently registered student organizations at UCSB that are potential users And the County of Santa Barbara Satellite Offices, and even more. Please choose to retain these Isla Vista redevelopment properties. Thank you.
Hello, my name is Rodney Gould. I'm the current General Manager of the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District but I'm actually here representing myself as a 30 year resident of Isla Vista and I can tell you from personal experience that everything that happens in Isla Vista happens via a collaborative effort and currently we use the building at 974, that collaborative effort And it's really the only viable option for those types of meetings that's available. And if this leaves the table, there really is no other option nowhere else to go without new construction which is going to be cost prohibitive. So anyway I just want to keep my My comments short, but I want to agree with everything that everybody has been saying and let you know that it is really important for Isla Vista to have this.
And that we as a community are all here and willing to do the work and make it happen whatever it takes. Thank you.
Arthur Kennedy followed by Ellen Anderson
Good morning, board. My name is Arthur Kennedy. I've been twice elected to the Isla Vista Park Board, have lived in Isla Vista for over 45 years, serve on a number of non-profit boards and am the only one in the room that sat on the Isla Vista pack for more than 11 years. And I have the scars to prove it. You've heard all the explanations of need for the services rendered by the three properties in Isla Vista, so I won't repeat. Thank you.
Thank you.
Ellen Anderson
followed by Brian Knowles
Good morning and thank you for this privilege. It's nice to see you all, I know how hard you work. I'm Ellen Anderson, I'm Director of Isla Vista Arts at UCSB but this morning I'm here as a member of the Isla Vista Community Network. You've heard from many of their members already. I just would like to say That I have never had the privilege of working with a more dedicated, less self-interested group of people than the Isla Vista Community Network. They are the women and men who bring services to the community, who sit at the table and work with each other.
make my hair stand on end with their dedication. And that's where we meet, is in one of the existing buildings. Isla Vista Arts got its start at 970 so our first office was there 10 years ago. We provide alcohol free entertainment to the entire community not just the students. So I'm here this morning to seriously ask you to retain ownership of the buildings in question. I know that it's not an easy decision, but I know that the people who work in Isla Vista today will do everything that you ask them to do to make these buildings and easy ownership for you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Brian Knowles be followed by Alexander Moore.
1:14 – 1:219 turns
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. My name is Brian Knowles, I'm a member of the Board of Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. We operate the Isla Vista Clinic and have done so for at least the Isla Vista Clinic has been in place for many decades. Our mission is to provide health care to the low-income population And at the moment we are serving about 1,000 visits to our clinic per month in Isla Vista. The Isla Vista Clinic alone.
We lease from the county and under the terms of the lease and some preceding agreements, we committed to operate the clinic in Isla Vista And the county committed to make available the space and if the space was not going to be available, then they also committed to assist us in finding a location that was suitable in Isla Vista. We are not aware of any alternative location in Isla Vista And so our situation right now is if the building is sold and we are not able to stay in the building, then we have no alternative to provide medical care to the low-income population of Isla Vista.
So I would like to request that you consider that as you decide on the disposition of the building Ensure that we are able to continue our mission to provide health care to the low-income population of Isla Vista. Thank you.
I believe Supervisor Wolf has a question
for you? I do, and thank you for being here. So I'm going to address the question to you but I also see Dr. Wada in the back. Either one of you can answer this. The clinic is the only medical clinic in Isla Vista correct? The only one served medical clinic? It's I guess my question is public health department does not have a clinic in Isla Vista. Is that correct?
Okay, so you what your your clinic is the only clinic that serves the mental the Public health needs of the residents in Isla Vista, correct? Okay. Thank you
Thank you. Thank you
Alexander Moore And our final speaker after Alexander is Lou Anne Miller
Good morning members of the board. First of all, I'd just like to say thank you for hearing us speak. Keeping these properties under county control for governmental use is an investment in Isla Vista and a stronger community in Isla Vista which ultimately strikes at many of the problems that we face in Isla Vista as residents and as a community. A lot of what I wanted to say has been touched on but one thing I wanted to say These buildings, you know there's a great student need for these spaces and yet there's an inability for student input. These meetings are during classes work and also transportation is a major challenge. I'm missing class to be here and I just think that if this decision really needs more student and community input Because students are over 9,000 of the residents in Isla Vista and would greatly benefit from these spaces.
And would be greatly harmed by the sale of these spaces for private use. Otherwise, I mean, I just encourage you please to keep these under governmental use. To keep these for the use of the community because they are the only spaces that are unique in that they're the only spaces that we can participate in these activities. That we can come together as a community and then we can ultimately work on solutions Good morning members of the board.
I sent an email out yesterday to each one of you personally. I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak before you today as well. The Youth Projects has a long tenure in Isla Vista, we've been there since 1971. I don't live in Isla Vista but I certainly spend most of my waking hours there. And in my 28 year tenure with the Youth Projects, I have come to learn first hand about the needs of the community and to know and love Isla Vista The Youth Projects has collaborated with other agencies and services for many, many years in order to benefit the residents who live there.
We just completed an exhaustive needs assessment and planned a long-term strategic plan for the next 10 years to guide our community's work in working with children and families to ensure academic success and the ability for children to become responsible members of our county. A couple of facts that we found while we were doing this needs assessment. For instance, transportation to county health to go to a WIC appointment or a pediatric appointment is two buses with the walking transfer in between takes about two hours round trip four hours try doing that with a toddler and an infant in hand and you can see just one of the obstacles that Isla Vista families face It has been a goal, and you've heard this from most of the speakers for the last 30 years to have a space in Isla Vista where families could access services locally.
We know from research in the culture of poverty that when a community is surrounded by blight and liquor stores and overcrowded what it does to the mentality and the presence of the people who live in that community Rather, our children need open space. Our families need access to services. I also know firsthand from the Youth Project's perspective how critical this space is. When we needed to move the Children's Center, we had to move outside of Isla Vista proper in order to be able to continue to serve 100 children a day and their families. This is the last space. And I urge you to think carefully about preserving that for use in Isla Vista.
This property is not only a social asset, but a financial asset. Families need spaces for quinceaneras. We need spaces to offer a yoga class to the community. All of these could be fee-based, could generate revenue into the community. Isla Vista deserves to have these services for their families just as much as Montecito does, just as much as any other community in our county and I urge you to retain these properties for our use. Thank you very much.
Thank you we have one more request this week.
Yeah we had one late request from Bob Handy
1:22 – 1:306 turns
Good morning. I didn't come for this particular item, but I am a property owner in Isla Vista and I would like to say I support these people 100%. I think they need the property and you guys can find some other way to raise revenue so I would support them 100%
Thank You Mr. Handy okay bring it back to the board Supervisor Farr third district
Thank you Mr. Chair, well I want to make a couple of comments here and then a motion but first of all I want to acknowledge not only the members of the public that came and spoke so well about Isla Vista and its needs in the past present and future But also to a couple of our department heads that are here, Dr. Wada who if the board has any questions about the need for medical services in the community I think can speak to that. We've heard that the neighborhood clinic serves at least 1,000 people a month and if the services are not provided in that community, Then it will certainly impact our public health clinic, but unfortunately there's going to be a lot of people that just don't have services. Because as we've heard it's low income population that they serve heavily transit dependent and extremely difficult to get to county services whether its medical or other.
outside the community. I also want to acknowledge Mr. Geis, Bob Geis our auditor controller who has a very long history of probably longer than any of us involved here with Isla Vista with the redevelopment agency and can certainly answer any questions the board might have about the properties their history their potential for development redevelopment and income producing for the county That being said, I just want to say again you know clearly Isla Vista is unique in the county.
Clearly the very largest unincorporated area that this Board of Supervisors is responsible for 20-22 thousand people. We think of it as a student community but as we know the students are probably only a little over half of the population Very densely populated pretty much entirely built out and as has been said These properties are very valuable for a lot of reasons, but one is that there just isn't any other property available very often if the board would decide in the future that They wanted to provide services in a different location There just isn't those options and certainly not at as reasonable a cost.
As I said, heavily transit dependent. A small city in many ways two-thirds the size of the City of Goleta but without all the structure of a city. The community has been underserved still is underserved for the size of the population. Many of the other smaller unincorporated communities that we have in our county have libraries, have community centers, have clinics, have other resources available to them But what you see here is what Isla Vista has and has made do with over the years as a place to provide services to the community and to have a meeting space.
Clearly, the community needs a location to continue to provide these services. There is no other location for county government. I have had office space in the clinic building, but other than that it's the foot patrol and even though they have a very small conference room, that's certainly not a suitable location to try to move any kind of community activity too.
I think it's important to remember that with the dissolution of RDA, these properties belong to us now. They belong to the county and they were paid for by tax revenue in Isla Vista and with the intended use in some way of serving the community in the present and in the future. The properties are really valuable. I think that they're in the write-up on the various properties, it talks about that not only their current value but their potential value in the future if they would be redeveloped and I think that's something this board should consider. If we sell these properties by my estimation, the county's general fund share is going to be about a million dollars.
That is, you know, not very much considering what the potential for these properties are to generate revenue in the short term and in the long term. And again, once they're gone, they're gone. I also think that we haven't really talked about some of the encumbrances on some of the properties like the solar parking lot which was designed not only to provide general parking but also to provide the in-loop parking for some of these other projects that were there and I think if that use were to go away, we would immediately become entangled in a lot of problems with a lot of the other property owners that were relying on that As a location for parking for their projects. Also, there has been some discussion and perhaps some paperwork that there was an agreement between the neighborhood clinics in the county that clinic services would continue to be provided in the clinic building for a certain period of time which is not yet expired.
So I'm not sure whether there continues to be some kind of legal encumbrance for that building on into the future. I do think that the community, the neighborhood clinics people I've heard from, various community groups I've heard from have already gone out and are looking for private funding. That if the county will retain these buildings could be brought to bear to offset any costs of continued use of the building and to make tenant improvements. And I think we have a great example of that actually in Quiama, in that there is a non-profit that has been formed. It has solicited and accepted donations for community resource center there for library, for the services for that community that I think is a really good model for something that we could do here in Isla Vista.
to again continue to provide a location for these services in the community and at little to no cost to the county while still retaining the buildings. You know, I think it's interesting in our next item we're going to be looking at our third quarter report and on one of the pages there it talks about all of the one-time RDA money that this county has already received. And of course that wouldn't just be us, that would be all of the other taxing entities as well as all of the ongoing RDA money that the county and the other taxing entities are receiving so it's not like the County General Fund and the other taxing entities are not Getting quite a windfall here with the dissolution of RDA without the sale of these buildings into it. And I'm really hoping that the board will agree with me that we can give direction to staff now, to study the pros and cons of retaining these properties as for government purpose or for future redevelopment or both.
Thank you Mr. Chair.
Supervisor Wolf?
Is that a motion? I'll second the motion.
Discussion? Mr. Adam?
1:30 – 1:375 turns
Mr Geis, maybe you could comment a little bit on whether these things can turn out anywhere near an acceptable return on investment Viewed in any reasonable business sense.
Chairman Lavinino and Supervisor Adam. I guess when you look at the properties themselves, and you look at the master plan for Isla Vista, C2, which means you could build a mixed-use project on that property. The clinic and the church are zoned C2 in the master plan, which you could just use for commercial use. However, your board could have the opportunity to change that zoning to CM and that would be more economically beneficial. And so I think the properties and the airspace above them they do have value but also hear these constituents out here loud and clear that some of the principles in Isla Vista are I don't think that we could carry through with our original vision to make that into a park. I don't think it's economically possible because we lost all the rest of the redevelopment agency money, so I think the one thing you got to say is it's not ready for park use and there is a big demand for services out there.
You can walk out there tomorrow. And, you know, there are people going to the clinic. There are homeless located on that property that You know, we're trying to address part of that with Pescadero but we still have a homeless population. To get the master plan adopted you've got to solve a parking problem so yes, we could rezone those properties but we still have a parking problem and all the vision of the redevelopment agency was Really to try and solve those big overreaching problems of parking and homeless and community services. I hear them now saying, hey we want that community center again. That's been around a long time. The problem is if we could never afford to operate the community center. And that's been the difficulty with the community center.
There is a lot of value in those properties, but there is also a lot of value in those properties I would agree with Supervisor Farr as either government use or redevelopment agencies. And so I don't know how you solve this. I was at a state controller's conference and told the state I think this is going to be the hardest part of redevelopment and that is what are you going to do with those properties? Because if you think about Isla Vista in general, what we were trying to do with those properties is make everything better so we could get a lot more mixed-use properties that would bring new revenue in. And I just have one final comment, I think, with regards to those properties.
Remember that church and clinics. They're 50 years old, they're older buildings. Can you say deferred maintenance? I would hope if we were going to redevelop those properties that part of those conditions are redevelopment is That that part of that development would provide, you know a new clinic or a different footprint for a clinic and continue to provide those services.
But the community needs and so I think they have both there is an opportunity to redevelop them and put new buildings there if that's what we chose to do or I can recognize the need for government services and if you have good government services, we're still going to get hopefully the rest of the private sector to carry out the master plan. And we keep improving the benefits for the taxing agencies. I think we need to be ready to tell the taxing agencies well if these are for government use, we're going to help rehab them or redo them and More money from the rest of the master plan if we can ever execute the master plan which we've been trying to do for a long period of time. And you know so I heard the motion and I think it's a good motion to consider continued government use and still the ability should we really redevelop that and use the zoning designations to help somehow make things better.
And I think that the one thing that we've done over a period of time from Supervisor Wallace, to Supervisor Marshall, to Supervisor Firestone now to Supervisor Farr is using redevelopment we made things better. And now redevelopment goes away. That money was going to capital and housing, and now we're shifting it back to...and it really should go back to services. And hopefully we can finish up what we started but we did lose the juice that was gonna give us everything else. Meeting the continuation of the six million dollars in increment was really given us a lot of momentum to solve the other problems. Now we kind of got to step back and say, well how did we do that in the future?
And you know Supervisor Farr and I have talked about this for a long period of time And I just sent you guys a spreadsheet today. I'm sorry, I didn't get to it but I sent it to the board and your assistants and CEO Waller about well here's how we generated the money and here's the money coming out of Isla Vista for the general fund. Do we want to rededicate that into that impacted area to provide some services there? Because they just don't have any dedicated money for their services in Isla Vista so does that help?
Well it
does but you know in the larger context I just see this thing as, you know just as property manager. All of these properties are losers in that they don't make any money. I mean look at the parking lot makes fourteen hundred bucks a month. It's a two point three million dollar property makes fourteen hundred bucks a month. Excuse me that's a loser.
It's a loser in itself, but it does create the in lieu parking mitigation and it does provide the public parking that satisfies the impacted parking area. That hopefully we can have other developments that start rising the tax base so you have to look at it I think and say I'm talking about paradise. Ivy, the loop, the icon, you know, those are brand-new projects that if we go get the assessed
value
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There's a lot of people that like old school IV, and there's a mix. But from a financial perspective I think those were great projects for the other taxing agencies.
All right, well okay let's take the medical clinic is a 1.6 million dollar property in today's value and it gets 3100 bucks a month I mean that's at 10% which is unreasonable in today's world That's 373 thousand or something like that Is what that justifies the purchase price of Okay so again just a horrific tremendous loser And you're incurring risk owning all these things. Somebody can go in, slip and fall, sue the county. We get another thing in our closed session binder where we're going to pay somebody X amount of money because they slipped and fell on our property and it's obviously our fault. So there are other things out there to owning a piece of property, then everybody thinks it's just easy. The government can just own a piece of property and it's not.
There are other risks involved. And I think that this thing right here we have to look at this really hard and if we're going to make a cash flow somebody wants to do a new building on it, you know, I'd like to hear about that and maybe that's going to be in the study. Is that kind of the scope of the study?
Chair, Supervisor, the scope of the study will somewhat be outlined by what option or set of options you direct staff to pursue. Well
I thought the motion was broader than that. Supervisor Farr?
Thank you Mr. Chair, yes it was to look at option one and option two of the four options that we have and again I just want to reiterate when it comes to the clinic building this property could be generating a lot more rental income than it does but we have purposely not been able Enter into any long term rental agreements. At the same time, I think that some of the maintenance cost could also then be absorbed by increased rental and by tenant improvements. Again, I can't emphasize enough how much interest there is in these buildings. And more so all the time and their value goes up all the time. And when you look at some of these comps that the appraisal does, by far the highest per square foot value tends to be in these downtown Isla Vista buildings.
So I just want staff to have the opportunity to really vet a lot of the questions that we have. The issues that we have and really look at what the current and potential value of these properties and buildings are for us, for the community, and for the county general fund.
Supervisor Ann. Would you include option 3, sale of the property? Just to see what it would look like if somebody sold the property.
Well we have the appraised values of the property so we know about what we would get and we know from this how much of it would come back to the county and that's where I get my about a million dollars that would come back to the general fund from the sale of all three of them.
Well, I think that disposing of these things you know and they said that one of the reasons for this termination of this redevelopment agency was to dispose of these properties so or keep them. I mean you can keep them but to wind down the activities of the RDA and to move on and I think I would like to see us reduce our number of properties. You know, we're sitting here talking about service level reductions and in my district we're looking at taking off one of the most important parks and so you know to the extent that there's cost In in keeping some of these properties.
You know I think we really have to look hard at that especially if they're losers you know if they were making money if there are cash flow winners I'd say great fine but you know they're just not.
I have a couple questions. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to respond, I think that is part of the intention of my motion that staff would look to see because I really do think that in the short term we could make these properties pretty much revenue neutral. Then that gives us an opportunity to hold them and see how we might be able in the future to make more money from them and to continue to provide the services that there is no other location in the community nor really any options in the future And I think that's what we need to do right now. This is a community of you know, 20,000 plus people and this is what we have right now. And if we lose it, that's it.
Thank you. Supervisor far. I have a couple questions. First off, I guess it's for planning. I mean, Is there an ID master plan or how did we get in a position where we've got 23,000 people crammed down with zero services and no open space?
Chair Lavinino. There is just a quick answer to your question. There is an ID master plan. It was passed by this board and serves as the blueprint for addressing a lot of the issues that Isla Vista faces. However, that master plan was written in the language, the zoning portion was written in the language of the LUDC which was not certified by the Coastal Commission. It was certified actually they made many modifications and then I believe right when you came on the board the decision was made to reject those modifications So that puts us somewhat in limbo with the Ivy Master Plan. What we are now doing, and we haven't had the resources to do it until now, we are now moving the master plan forward again over the next several months through the hearing process with the Article 2 zoning code in place.
And so that will give your board an opportunity ultimately to look at the master plan again and move it forward to the Coastal Commission hopefully We're going to be looking at the general fund for a successful certification this
time. Okay? And then I guess my next question is for Mister Geiser CEO. So if we sell these properties, if we ended up selling, we would get 17% of the proceeds would come to the general fund but on ongoing revenue, if we figure out a way to somehow develop these properties or or for example, like right now in
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Chair Carbajal, I'm not quite certain that I followed the entire discussion. However if we disposed of the property, the allocations would be what you see in front of you there as far as those dollars would flow through to the taxing entities.
Maybe I'll make it a little bit simpler then. Okay so let's say we just took the medical clinic, we made some tenant improvements, we rented it out and we start generating $6000 a month. Do we get 6000 or do we get 17% of 6000?
I think that for you to be able to do that, you would have to take control of the property and you would see one of those options though that we brought up there other than perhaps disposal coming to the successor agency coming to the county. The other thing that you could choose to do is even if the property were disposed of in the county where to purchase it then the county would maintain full control over that use
Okay. One other question before I go to Supervisor Adam, and that is if we did not have the medical clinic that's there right now and Dr. Wattis says we don't have a public health clinic, we would need, I mean with the amount of people that we have down there it would make sense that if that clinics not there we would have a cost of providing a clinic at some point correct? I mean that has to be
I look to counsel. I don't know that we'd be mandated service. It would be up to your board to determine if you chose to provide that service.
Well, I would support whatever is going to generate the most revenue and And a supervisor Adam had pointed out some of these are loser properties although on the parking lot. I totally agree with Mr Geis Part of the problem though is anytime you're providing services as a government agency, you are in a losing situation. I mean it's not a money making proposition to run a neighborhood clinic especially with the clinic now that looks like we've already lost $1 million from what we paid for it from what it's worth right now so I'm not in favor of selling the properties. I would rather see us take a look at we've got a lot of smart people here how to develop these properties and turn them into Revenue generating properties. As Supervisor Farr has said, there's limited space in Isla Vista.
There's very few areas where development can occur and so these are sought after properties. I know there's inherent danger anytime we take over a property and really we should be thinning the herd at this point. But in an area like Isla Vista, I think us taking over a property makes sense because of the paucity of developable area in that region. Supervisor Adam?
Yeah, I was just wondering Dr. Russell is this study a budgeted item? Chair Lavenino, Supervisor Adam it is. Okay, perfect. Thank you.
And Supervisor Wolf and before we go to Supervisor Wolf just want to state that if we do decide to move forward then if we either need to bifurcate our motion to eliminate the... To split off the medical clinics so Supervisor Carbajal can vote or we could keep the motion the way it is and just go without Supervisor Carbajal here. So Supervisor Wolfe?
Well, thank you. Chair Levin, that was going to be my question but I also just want to state for the record that I'm very much in favor of the motion. I think the folks who spoke to us today represented a cross-section of the residents in Isla Vista although we didn't hear from some of the families who live in Isla Vista And as a past school board member in Goleta who was, we were very involved in the rebuilding of Isla Vista School.
The families who live in Isla Vista have so many needs and I remember when Healthy Families became a service. To those families going to the clinic and meeting with folks from the neighborhood clinics about the services that they're providing to the families. And to not have, I mean in my mind this is a mini city and I think just at the opposite perspective from Supervisor Adams I don't look at these properties as losers. I look at them as really our responsibility in government to provide these really important necessary services, and it's not just the medical piece.
It's mental health services, it's having an office for people to go and sign up for social services. There are so many governmental needs in Isla Vista that I think we should be providing, and I really appreciate Supervisor Farr's leadership on this. Her really strong activity in Isla Vista. I see Esther sitting out in the audience. I think the outreach to Isla Vista has been tremendous and I think that we bear a responsibility here to make sure that we do provide those services.
At the minimum of what of what we should be doing and the notion of losing these properties is something that would be. It doesn't sound like that's going to happen, so I'm really pleased that the board looks like they're gonna be moving in this direction to hang on to these. to hang on to these properties and move forward. And I thank the Isla Vista folks and the community members who are here because I think continued engagement is going to be needed, and like I said, I think we also bear—we as the board and the governmental entity that provides services bears some responsibility too. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Do we want to bifurcate or just move forward? Okay, let's just go forward. We have a motion on the floor. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? One abstention I guess or is he just recusal? Okay very good. Let's take a ten minute break we'll come back at five after and deal with item four.
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Sitting up.
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We're going to start. OK I'd like to reconvene our board meeting if.
Mr. Clerk, if you could read item number four please? Chairman Carbajal and members of the board, Item 4 is from the County Executive Office in the Auditor-Controller. It's a hearing to receive and file the Fiscal Year 2012-13 Budget and Financial Status Report as of March 31st 2013 showing the status of appropriations and financing for all departmental budgets adopted by the Board of Supervisors.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Are you okay, Mr Adam? Okay, just ready to call support there.
Mr Alvarez. Good morning Chair Carbajal and members of the board. Today's presentation is the county's third quarter financial status report and it's a joint report of the CEO's office in the audit controller's office. For members of the public, I'm Tom Alvarez, the Budget Director. And with me today is Joe Toney, one of our budget research analysts. So the purpose of today's presentation is to highlight significant positive and negative operating results versus the county's adjusted budget.
Our variance criteria for looking at variances is more than $300,000 for general fund departments and more than $500,000 for funds in these special revenue and other funds. We'll also indicate whether variances are timing differences or non-timing differences and any potential impact on the fund balance. So in the first part, a brief overview is that the board letter included two financial summaries attachment A which were the general funds so that schedule showed all the general fund departments and whether they were tracking favorably or unfavorably. And then attachment B was for all the special revenue and other funds And the general fund is the chief operating fund of the county, and these special revenue funds are typically used when revenues are provided for a specific purpose.
For example, the gasoline tax is used for road maintenance or specific funding for food stamp type programs. In summary, General Fund is projecting $5.5 million favorable results And that's comprised of two main departments, 5.4 million favorable results in the General Revenue Department and 1.2 million negative results in County Council. And then in addition to that there are several other relatively small but favorable departmental variances within the general fund.
Within the special revenue funds, they're projecting a $7.5 million favorable result and most of the special revenue funds are performing favorably when you compare them to budget if you exclude timing differences. Next we're again going to be looking at the signal chart.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but if I don't get the questions out when it comes up, I might forget. So let me just go to the special revenue fund and that's attachment B that we have in our packet. Is that correct?
That's
correct. At the end of attachment B, the net financial projected variance, it looks like it's $13 million Rather than as a, as a positive variance instead of the 7.5 million
supervisor
reading wrong
supervisor Wolf through the chair that is correct. The total there is 13.4 or $13.04 million which includes the 5.5 million of the general fund so if you look at attachment be the very first line is the general fund of $5.5 million okay?
Thank you for that explanation.
And if it's helpful to the board, we discussed this last time as we were summarizing this, maybe we'll take that out and show it separately next time and just show us two different summaries so that we avoid that confusion.
I think it would be helpful.
Okay. Very good. So we were looking at the signal chart and again similar to in prior periods you can see that most all of them are green or Green means that it's tracking favorably to the budget if it's yellow pointing up. It's Significantly favorable to the budget if its yellow facing down, it's significantly negative To the budget and if it's shown as red and there are two Reds. It projected That'll be negative by the end of the fiscal year And so with that, I'll just summarize to say that 66 of the 68 funds that we're following are showing positive results which represents 97% of the funds that we're examining.
And we'll be talking about the negatives in just a little bit. Okay, in the next part we're going to look at the general fund by department. And as we said there's, the general fund is expecting a 5.5 million dollar favorable variance and that's comprised of two departments that meet the reportable criteria. One is the General Revenue Department and once again the county has general revenues and those general revenues are booked within this department of general revenues. And so that total was 5.4 million dollars.
And then we'll be looking at some slides that kind of detail out what we've done, which accounts are running favorable and so forth. That will be on the following slide. With County Council, that's showing a negative $1.2 million and that's tied to a reduction in the overhead rate And a decrease in billing primarily for support of risk management. We had talked about that in great length at last quarter, so I'll just go ahead and summarize to say that the overhead rate is causing, primarily causing the difference for this year. Within next year's budget we think that impact is going to be about $400,000 and we've set that money aside for county council. And the overhead rate will be going up from about 6% to 23%, The final overhead rate that was just computed by the auditor controller for next year.
And then we think the year beyond that it'll get back into a normal level and this problem should go away by that point. Okay, next we're looking at the discretionary general revenues. And so this table here, we didn't have this included last time and I think some questions came up about what's driving it? So we thought this would be helpful to show. The way this works is it shows the major categories of revenue here This was the adopted budget, had a total of $202 million in general revenues.
The adjusted budget is now sitting at $206 million and the projection at this point is $211 million. So for those that just a brief overview we start with an adopted budget that was adopted last June throughout the year Budget adjustments come through, and that changes the adopted to an adjusted budget. And what we're doing now is when we look at everything and work with the departments, we're now projecting that we'll be at $211 million. And while we do work with most all departments with general revenues, it's the auditor controller that's primarily looking at these accounts and projecting out where they think we're going to land.
So the variance for the projected Supervisor Wolf
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You're just getting to the variance, and you come up with that number based upon the adjusted budget. I always wonder why it's against the adjusted budget and not against the adopted budget? Just a budgeting question.
Supervisor Wolf through the chair, as we become aware of things through the different quarters. We show the differences in those periods. Those items everything that gets into the adjusted is brought before the board so we're assuming that information has been made known to the board as well as the public. So we use that for changes that we haven't previously discussed. So with the adjusted budget items those changes from the adopted to the adjusted would have already been brought before the board and before the public So that's
I understand. But when we're looking, you know budget and adopted budget to I mean it seems to me that the adopted budget is the Is the most most formalized document that that we have in that? And that as you say every quarter Supervisor Wolf, maybe I can help you a little bit.
When we generally when our and a revenue adjustment is made as part of the adjusted budget, there is an appropriation side to that adjustment. So we might bring in more RDA revenue and say we're going to spend it on this. And so there's another side to this one sided entry When we get over to the projected, we're saying here's an additional 5.2 million that we haven't set up an appropriation side for so that would be a positive variance that would end up into the bottom line. But that's why we compared to adjust it because you already took an action to appropriate money or reserve money As part of the adjustment, does that make
sense? Yes. It does make sense. I understand it. It's just an interesting way to present this information.
From my perspective, it would be informing the board of things that we haven't previously informed you of. And so if the board would like to see it compared both ways, we could easily do that. No,
this is fine. Thank you.
Okay, so we were just talking about the last column then. These are the variances projected against the adjusted and here we're showing 5.3 million as a point of clarification when we looked at the general revenue department before we said it had a favorable variance of 5.4 million that's comprised of 5 .3 million in revenue favorable variances and $100,000 in favorable transfers out. So we didn't go into the detail of 100,000. We focused really on the revenue piece and that's the difference between the 5. 4 and the 5 . 3 that you're seeing here As we look at this, we have significant property taxes is slightly below the target. 192,000. We've got another slide after this looking specifically at the elements of that but I will say that when we got the final tax roll at the end of last year, we're anticipating a $1.5 million problem this year in tax revenues because of the final tax roll and it's turning out to be better than we had previously informed you so we're seeing some improvement in that area Then in the RDA dissolution proceeds, these are the one-time funds.
We're currently projecting $6 million. I think in the materials that Bob Guy sent out this morning it's indicating there is another million and a half or so that may come in however we believe those are going to be appealed so we're not reflecting those at this point but at this point we're now showing $6 million and I believe that has all been received And so when we had adjusted 3.2 million in previously, so we're showing 2.8 million of a positive variance here for the one-time RDA monies.
Next is the RDA ongoing. When we did the budget last year, we didn't know the amount that was going to be recorded. At that point, we estimated at 1.6 to be on the very safe side. It's now looking that that's going to be 4.2 million. That's giving us the positive variance over here of about $2.7 million. On an ongoing basis now it will be leveling off our current projection. I think that was also distributed this morning. Calls for about 4.3 million next year and about 4.4 in the following year.
And those total this 5.3 million here, down below we have the local sales tax and the transient occupancy tax. The total negative there is about $490,000. And as we spoke to you last time, when we projected the impact of the Goleta neutrality and the growth, we over-projected revenue here. It is coming in better now than we had previously thought so we picked up a little bit although it's still showing negative. If we were to exclude the element of the Goleta neutrality and the change to the incorporated Goleta area, we would have seen growth in TOT of about 4.4%.
Supervisor Lavarino has a question.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think this is more for Mr. Geist. So even with these when we show variance negative projection in property tax, sales tax and TOT are they still increases over last year?
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Chairman Carbajal, Supervisor Lavinino. Just as Tom said if we would have taken Goleta appropriately out of the base how much they were we kind of overestimated underestimated how much should come out both those accounts are growing positive and the same thing with property tax up above we're having positive growth in property taxes it's just at the last minute there were some adjustments by the assessor that made our estimate overestimate And I would say generally by the year end we'll maybe make up that
$192. Great, thank you.
Okay and then the last item is an all other category there's a large element in here is about five hundred thousand dollars of increased franchise fees. So from the prior page we saw the first line item That was a significant property taxes had $192,000 negative variance. These are some of the major components in there. So the secured property tax and VLF those are the two that we were talking about where we had previously projected that they were going to come in a million and a half negative. And we're now looking at about 800,000 so we've picked up about 700,000 in that area.
The other item that I really wanted to highlight here is the property transfer tax, and that's $750,000 favorable. And that's a leading indicator so that's important to say that we're seeing activity in a positive regard to property sales. OK, next we had talked about the variances and this was the favorable variance in the general fund. And we looked at it by department and we talked about the two reportable departments being the general revenues in County Council.
Now we're looking at it just purely by line item accounts And so some of this we've already talked about the RDA one-time money and the ongoing both favorable variances 2.8 and 2.7 compared to the adjusted budget We didn't talk about the prop 172 revenues that's showing favorable 1.5 million dollars Prop 172 is the half cent sales tax for public safety, and then the negative 1.2 million from County Council billing. We've already discussed that As we look at our operating expenditures, we're showing a positive $4.5 million variance there and that's primarily salary and benefit savings of $3.5 million. So between those two We're showing a positive $9.8 million variance within the general fund. Now what's happening is because of these favorable results, departments are not having to use planned draw on existing fund balances.
So when we talk about the use of one-time funds and how difficult that is that it's not sustainable, we're seeing that departments are going to be using 2.2 million less In the draw of those one time funds than they had originally planned. And on top of that, they'll be setting aside an additional 1.8 million so the total change to fund balance is gonna be 4 million. So that's very significant. So we're seeing a really gross savings of about almost $10 million but that's gonna be offset by this $4 million in fund balance but I did wanna make sure that was explained to the board.
As we look at the special revenue funds, so special revenue funds are projected to be $7.5 million favorable and that excludes the 5.5 million dollars in the general fund as we talked about that, so if you add the two that'll be the 13 million dollars that you see on attachment B. With the roads fund they're showing 600,000 favorable variants and that's due to salary savings In the sheriff's capital projects, and this is the jail construction fund. It's a timing difference of $1.2 million favorable. It's not to say that ultimately we're not going to spend that money but we're saying it's not gonna be spent this year With mental health, we had previously reported last quarter that they would be on balance with the budget. Here we're showing that they're going to be negative $2.2 million and the driver of this is that about a year ago we had a negotiated settlement with the state that called for a reimbursement to the county of 4.8 million dollars.
We've received 1.3 million thus far There's 3.5 million that's still receivable right here and if that's not received within 180 days after the year end, we would not be able to accrue that so that would be what was driving this change.
Supervisor Farr and Supervisor Wolf?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Alvarez as long as we're talking about this I had flagged this as a question so the state is slow in paying us back but we're assuming that we are going to get it we just not going to get it by the end of this fiscal year
Yet we had reached a negotiated settlement with the state. We have received a portion of it, and this is the outstanding balance. We are quite honestly having difficulty getting any feedback from them on what's delaying this process and the mental health department The auditor controllers office have contacted them without success in getting a clear update on when we can expect money. County council has recently gotten involved to help us pursue that and so yes, we are entitled to that money based on the agreement that we mutually agreed upon and I don't know if there's any questions for county council? Okay
well actually that's fine obviously we need to pursue this make sure that we get it But you know what we don't have in the discretionary revenue list is because those are ongoing revenues. Is during budget in particular, but also throughout the year when we do budget revisions that we get an update on what's in those. discretionary revenue pots of money, so starting with the strategic reserve contingency.
There are various accounts for capital or roads or whatever but also audit exceptions litigation and it seems like I can't remember if it was for this particular ADMHS issue but sometimes Mr. Geis you put certain money aside. Because we're not really sure how it's going to true up and whether we're gonna end up owing money or whether money is going to be owed to us. So, is there any money that was set aside for these particular issues that now is not going to be needed?
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Chairman Carbajal and Supervisor Farr, I think for 4.8 million receivable from the state on the missed settlement. I would characterize the remainder of the money that's owed to us as in a different category now, where I would say that they were slow in paying. I would say they're now delinquent and when we look at that money from an accounting perspective The rules are saying, well you don't know when that's going to be available or are they really gonna pay you? Therefore we had previously recorded as revenue. We reversed it out thinking we're gonna receive it. The rules are gonna say you can't record that. And then what that's going to do is in the budget process, say now we got to take 3.5 million out of the strategic reserve to make up that deficit.
I think what we're highlighting in the third quarter report is I'm not sure how we get them or how we get their attention to pay that delinquent amount of money and hopefully You know, it's moving up the line to County Council to say you need to pay that. And it's well over a year old for when we got the initial payment and you're right. We do have other reserves and designations that are set aside for some of our other mental health contingent liabilities
Okay. Well, I guess you know, I understand for this particular issue that we're in the positive, assuming we can collect. I understand the complications with the accounting but it seems like we haven't had an update recently on those other liabilities that we have booked money for and whether we still need to hold that money or that much money if any of those have been resolved in any way or whether we have to continue to hold that money aside because my next question It's kind of related on page 4 where you're talking about other mental health monies and then you're going to have to balance them out, divide them between two funds. And one fund has money and the other fund doesn't have money, and you're gonna have to find it someplace. So I don't really know how that works either but I'm just trying to get an overall picture of what we reserve for Issues like this that may be available if we need it, you know in a different place or for general use.
I think CEO Waller wanted to respond.
Chair, Supervisor, we'll put together a memo for the board that outlines what the initial liabilities that were set aside and what we've resolved and what remains to be resolved.
Thank you. Supervisor Farr, excuse me? Go ahead. Through the chair I did want to add one element to that. The department and this office reported last May on the status of all the liabilities. And at that point we felt including this 4.8 million that was due us, we had enough revenue to offset the identified liabilities that we knew about and could measure at that time.
I believe that we're planning to come back in the near future with an update to that report. The last thing I wanted to add with mental health, and you were just referring to it in the board letter is that the state has a very long process and settlement, and we've explained that to the board before. That was compounded recently by a change in their cost report format, which delayed the process even further. And so we're now at a point where we've got three cost reports that are soon going to be settling and that's what we were referring to in the board letter. For 9-10, we think that's gonna be negative 800,000 or more. 4-10-11 about 775 negative.
And then for 1112, we're currently projecting a positive of 550. So the net of all three is about $1 million payback at this point subject to change as these reports get finalized but that's what we're currently seeing and that would work out to about 340,000 per year per cost report If we compare that to recent history, we've been paying more than three million on given years as far as cost settlements. And I think the other significant part is the 11-12 showing a positive result is the result of really a change in the practice of adopting a more conservative way of completing the cost reports and I think that's going to put
us more... Tom, I think you're stealing a little thunder from the 18th so perhaps we can allow the board to discuss what we've got before us and then we'll certainly do a full discussion when we come back on the 18.
CEO Waller, thank you. I did want to point out that one of the reasons I am highlighting this is because in discussions with the auditor controller we felt it important to advise the board that we see these liabilities out there and we may need to book a liability at the end of the fiscal year which we did want to apprise the board of.
Chairman Carbajal, members of the board, I would just say I'm a lot less bullish on mental health finances than probably the CEO is And I think they're, you know, these are important disclosures that going on. You know we had over 19 million in outstanding liabilities and not much got settled last year. And I think that there are other things in our accounting meetings that are coming out and being disclosed to me that I think we still have continued exposures In the recording of revenues for mental health. If you look at the financial records today, they have $30 million in charges for services for this year recorded as their revenue. They've only collected 15 so that less than 50% of their revenue collected and it's May 15th. So I look at that whole process and its delinquent It's behind.
It's not timely, and there's a lot of exposure there. So from my perspective when we come back on the 18th you know I'll give you my perspective that is going to be a little bit less bullish.
Thank you Supervisor Wolf
Well, gee, I don't think I have too much more to add. Because I had pretty much the same questions and issues. I guess I would like to hear from county council on this 3.5 that's due to us. We had come to an agreement with the state, and I'm not sure... Can't recall now what the terms of the payback were and how aggressive we need to be in Maybe that's an issue that you can talk about now or come back in closed session or at another time, but the fact that we have 3.5 million outstanding is really unfortunate.
Yes I think I can give you an overview of the status. At this point we entered into what's essentially a stipulated judgment approved by the administrative law judge hearing this matter The parties agreed. There was an open issue to be resolved, and I believe that has been resolved on some duplicate payments that the state was going to make in addition to the $4.9 million.
The administrative efforts, I believe have been exhausted in trying to collect the balance of the $3.5 million. We are now writing their chief attorney making a demand Failing that, then we will be back talking with your board about either pursuing a specific performance issue through the administrative law judge or going directly to superior court to compel payment. But we are entitled to that payment.
Thank you. I look forward to hearing more from you Mr. Marshall and I just want to comment on comments made by Mr. Geis Let you know that I appreciate your, your comments. I mean, I think as we move into our budget the adoption of our budget having these discussions and open discussions in areas where there might be some disagreement is really important for us and different perspectives so thank you for your input.
Supervisor
Lavanino. Thank you, Mr Chair and this three and a half millions really got me in a quandary here. What was there a difference between what did they cut us to check for one point something 1.6 or something in that neighborhood? I mean was there a difference between that and 1.3 and the difference Was it two different judgments or? No. They've just decided they didn't have the money and they weren't going to pay us, or what if we haven't heard anything?
I think essentially we've not heard anything. There's been staff has speculated on different reasons that they may be taking this action with for example, they may in their minds think they're withholding against future disallowances but they've not given us an accounting for that money so We need that accounting and we need the money. If they offset it against other money we owe them, then they need to be certain that we in fact owe them because we're now on another round of appeals for disallowances.
I will volunteer to go with the sheriff. He brings his weapons and we've got a
2:36 – 2:4121 turns
Please proceed,
Mr. Alvarez Thank you so next We have social services is showing a positive 2.3 million dollars and this was brought to your board on April 15th, and there were a number of budget revisions that were already budget revision that had a number of elements to it and largely it was increased revenues in home services are showing a positive $800,000 variance and this is primarily due to a federal refund the vehicle operations fund is showing a $600,000 favorable variance
supervisor wolf
I'd like to just go back to the social services piece. You should never be concerned when there's a positive variance, let me just say that. But I also am concerned how is it that we have such a large positive variance? Did we not hire the social service workers that we had anticipated hiring? That's one question and then the other question is it seems That for whatever reason we have this large variance that, and it says this in our staff report that in our budget we're not going to be contributing any general fund money to DSS.
So maybe you can answer both of
those. Yes, Supervisor Wolf through the chair. So with social services they get realignment funds and their realignment funds are subject to growth. They received a large amount of growth and it lags one year so we received unanticipated revenue this year of $3.6 million in growth which was for really the prior year so it's one time revenue and then 3.6 million on an ongoing basis that the department will be receiving. That's largely what's driving this.
So for that, with that one-time revenue we were able to reduce next year's general fund. It's not that we're not contributing general fund next year. We're saying for this current We had allocated $2 million roughly to the Department of Social Services because of planned use of fund balance, because they weren't going to have enough revenues. This really gave them enough revenue where that's no longer necessary so that assumption of giving them the additional funds was no longer necessary and we'll be withholding the general fund contributions or it's not necessary to make them in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year.
Okay, you're right. I see that so it's not about next year's budget. It's this fourth quarter, so we're withholding $2 million of general fund is that reflected in the information that you just presented to us as As a as expenditures that were not that we had anticipated spending that were budgeted but that
Supervisor Wolf, I believe that came up very recently and I don't believe that is yet reflected in these projections. So we could theoretically
add another $2 million to our balance?
I believe that to be correct but I'd like to get back to you and confirm that. But I believe that is the
case. And how about...and to answer the other question about the hiring, do you have any idea about that?
There there is a request for some additional positions in social services. We've had a couple of preliminary meetings and we're still reviewing that request I think they're trying to identify it by the different segments of their operations and the different funding sources for that. And I think we're getting close to wrapping that up
I remember that. As we learn more about what ACA is going to mean for the county, to determine whether or not they're going to be necessary and if so how many. And we'll be bringing that to your board in a future discussion.
So I just recall when Miss Gallagher was here, I think it was her last meeting she said that there was extra funding available and they were going to be hiring maybe 20 additional workers. Did that not happen?
Supervisor Wolf, I believe you're referring to there was a request for 39 additional positions that came to the board and was approved in a budget revision. They're in the process of hiring those people now.
Okay so that is not part of what you're saying your review?
No.
Okay and those people are not yet working they're still in the process of being hired? Miss
Nisic if you could help us please
Yes, good morning Mr. Chair and Supervisor Wolf. Those 39 positions the bulk of them have been retained in fact they're going through one of the first series of trainings you might recall that the bulk of those were eligibility workers and we bring them in through a series of training and education classes so the first grouping of those is in fact on board and we're continuing to retain them.
And when will the second group be?
I don't know that date I can certainly get back on that but the bulk of the 39 have been brought into the organization.
2:41 – 2:5421 turns
So maybe we can, going back to one of the original questions that we need to look at that additional $2 million.
I will get back to your board on that. I don't believe it's included. I think that will be incremental but I would like to confirm that and get back. It came up very late in the discussions. Okay the I think we left off at the vehicle operations fund which is showing a six hundred thousand favorable variants and that's primarily due to the budgeted fuel cost which has come down recently. I believe they budgeted closer to four dollars and 50 cents a gallon and it's running much lower than that now.
County unemployment insurance is showing an 800,000 favorable variance. And this is due to lower than expected claims and also what we're seeing is the period that you can claim it for has shortened as well. This fund is starting to accumulate a fair amount in their reserve. We'll be looking at this and we may be able to positively reduce the rate next year and reduce the cost of departments as we look at that but we haven't started that project yet.
Continuing on with the special revenue funds, the next one is the recovery and waste management showing positive $800,000 results. This is due to a combination of an insurance settlement, recycling revenue, and salary savings. The Fire District is showing a $900,000 favorable variance. This is a combination of 800,000 in RDA one-time and ongoing revenues in excess of the adjusted budget, $700,000 due to vacancies and deferred purchases, and a negative $600,000 in property tax revenue. This is very similar to what we were talking about in the general revenues where we saw the 1112 final tax roll came in lower than we thought.
The water agency is showing $500,000 favorable variance and that's primarily from unanticipated revenues. So in summary actual activity is tracking ahead of budget the general fund should end 5.5 million favorable and the note here is incorrect the PTAF actually was included in that and so my apologies on that that should be stricken The signal chart is showing that 66 of the 68 funds are favorable.
General revenue is tracking 5.3 million dollars favorable, general fund expenditures 4.5 million favorable and special revenue and other funds are continuing to generate favorable results at this presentation we showed 7.5 million for the special revenue funds and that's excluding the 3.5 million from mental health and that concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer any questions at this point
Chair, Supervisor, I just wanted to add on that as you can see it is a very positive presentation that we have for you. But I do want to highlight a couple of things for us. The principal drivers of that have been the RDA dissolution both with ongoing and one-time funds and certainly that has enabled us to put monies aside and be prepared for you for next year.
Your departments are very much aware of the fact that 14-15 will be an extremely difficult year to balance and they're already starting to continue to tighten their belts, really only fill those vacancies that they absolutely feel critical. They're looking at any opportunity to continue to keep those reserve dollars Free and available for future years. So I certainly want to thank all of our department heads for their continued efforts And I want to thank our oversight board members and I guess to some extent that's patting myself on the back as I am one Of them for their efforts in ensuring that the RDA funding is to the extent possible flowing through to the taxing entities
Thank you any public speakers,
mr.
Allen
We have one request to speak and we're going to go to Santa Maria for Joe Armendariz. Mr. Armandariz. Supervisor
Carvalho, members of the Board, I'm Joe Armandariz and we are presenting the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association today. Very disappointed, quite frankly that your CEO who I have a lot of respect for would suggest that this is a positive presentation. There's nothing positive about this presentation when you lack an inclusive You know, upwardly mobile economic vision for your community and for your economy and for your society.
Even this is what happens even the positive variances are negative. Look Supervisor Wolf I think had it exactly right in her question with respect to social services she asked well gosh you know it kind of concerns me that we have such a positive variance in social services because I think she understands inherently That when you do have a positive variance in social services, it's because most likely somebody either is not being served. You're not hiring the people who are responsible or obligated or have a heart and a vision to serve.
And so the positive variances from that department to the other departments are either because You're saving money on salaries. You're not delivering services. Unemployment claims are not being filed. So yes, I suppose from a purely accounting standpoint this is positive but it's very, very negative because you're nickel and diming your budget to death. A couple of weeks ago your planning commission had an opportunity to approve 137 new small businesses in Santa Barbara County, each of which would produce according to the UCSB economic forecast about $1.3 million a year of economic impact that would generate profits, it would generate royalties It would generate revenues, it would create jobs. In the North County as it was suggested yesterday by a local elected official, the unemployment rate is in the mid 14 to 15 percent level.
That's unacceptable! I would hope that Supervisor Wolf who I know cares deeply about You know, the lower middle class and the minorities who live in this community. It's unacceptable for families today to be going without jobs when you five policymakers have it within your power to create tens of thousands of new jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars of potential new revenue to deliver the programs and services that they're entitled to. So I take issue with your CEO I don't think this is positive. I think it's negative, and I hope that when the budget hearings come next month you'll see that as not just an accounting exercise but an opportunity to develop and devise a positive economic vision for the county. Thank you.
Thank You back to our board that was our final our only in final speaker And if we could have some wrap-up comments and perhaps a motion and move forward Supervisor Farr
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well I disagree with Mr. Armendariz. I respect Mr. Armendariz but I disagree with him. I want to make a couple comments. First of all, I think overall that this is positive for those of us who have been on the board awhile we've certainly seen a lot worse I think that our thanks go out to all of our staff and all of our departments for working so hard to stay within their budgets as well as to save money where they can, so that they can help to offset impacts next year and the year after that.
I think you know when I look at the page where we talk about the significant property taxes and the difference between what was adopted, adjusted, projected and then the variances. When you're talking about this kind of money to end up With $192,000 at the end of the day is the difference. To me that's phenomenal work of our staff to be able to do these kinds of projections as well as they do. So thank you Mr. Alvarez to you and your team and to all of our county departments.
And I just have to say, especially in light of the discussion that we had in the previous item, that about 5.5 positive that we have right now that we're showing, I think is primarily due to IB tax revenue one time and ongoing and would've been more if we hadn't had the PTAF that we had to settle. So anyway, I'm really glad we're in the black and it could be better but it's been worse. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Any motions? Motion's been made to move this item. Is there a second? Second? Discussion? Supervisor Adams?
Yeah, I think that this is positive given the equation that staff was asked to figure out. I think if we ask a different question and we say what's our relative position of our entire balance sheet it's going to come up with a negative answer so you know while this equation comes up with a positive answer and that's great And that's what you're asked to produce, Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Geis.
You know the frustration that Mr. Armendariz is expressing is born of the idea that he would like to see and I think there's a number of us out there that would like to see this approached on a balance sheet basis rather than just Positive or negative variances in some of the columns. Because if we go out there and we add up all the things that, the deferred maintenance and the pensions and yada-yada then it turns the picture into a different thing so that's I think what he was talking about.
Thank you Mr. Supervisor Lavanino?
Thank you, Mr Chair. And I agree with that. I think what we're looking at right now is the third quarter snapshot and third quarter snapshot Is positive? That doesn't mean our budget is positive or fiscal outlook is positive. It's anything but But this little snapshot I've been here when the snapshots weren't so good either. So, I'll take a good snapshot. And I'm not being fooled into thinking that and I don't think that's the intent of anybody to say we're in fiscal sound water. So I appreciate where we are right now in the third quarter.
I remind my colleagues this is just a receive and file status update. It's not taking any action beyond that. A motion has been made and seconded. Further discussion? Having none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. We will now
move on to item 5 Maybe I'm gonna gauge my colleagues right now. Do you want to bring? You want to go ahead and try to get through item five and Six, or do you want to do one and go to lunch and come back or just take lunch now for our closed session meeting What is the pleasure of my colleagues Why don't we start at the end if that's okay mr. Adam
I would do five and take lunch
You would do, Supervisor Wolf? That's what I would say.
Okay, I've got. I think we're outnumbered. I'd rather do six, do lunch come back and do five.
We're going to do item number five and then we're gonna take our lunch meeting for those that are watching right here. We meet during lunch and then we'll come back and finish off item number six. I'm sorry Sheriff Brown but our calendar just a little awkward today so we're gonna do item number five. Mr. Clerk if you could read the item
please? Chairman Carpall members of the board item 5 is from general services it's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding uniform policy for management of the Lompoc Veterans Memorial Building and Civic Center this in the fourth district. Thank you very much
2:54 – 3:009 turns
Mr. Ponce am I saying your name correct? Mr. Pontus. Mr.
Pontus,
Mr. Chairman thank you. Thank you and I apologize for not getting your name right. As somebody who gets his name wrong all the people get his name wrong all the time so I apologize for that. No. Mr Pontas. Yes.
Good morning Mr. Chairman members of the board what we have before you is the Lompoc Veterans Memorial Buildings and Civic Center. Okay, first I'd like to acknowledge all the veterans here today. Here this morning for their service to our country and their support on this particular project. I'd also like to thank the veteran's groups and county staff on all of the repairs that have taken place over the facility in recent years. They've done a great job at starting some much needed repairs.
What we have before you today is the uniform policy for management of the Lompoc Veterans Building Today we're asking your board to consider partially rescinding Resolution No. 79-101, terminate any and all leases and agreements, adopt a resolution revising uniform policy for management of the Lompoc Vets Memorial Building and Civic Center. The veterans organizations are recognized as two groups, the Veterans Associations and Veterans Related Groups which total 11 total.
Certain areas of the Long Polk Veterans Building have been dedicated to the use of the Veterans Associations pursuant to the Military Veterans Code and certain areas have been assigned to the use of the Veterans Related Groups but not dedicated. Groups or associations may be added or deleted only by written approval of the county's General Services Department, or designee.
As with all parties use of the building by Veterans Associations is subject to their continued compliance with the rules. Although these affiliated veterans groups do not have any assigned areas they are affiliated with the Lompoc Veterans Building and Veterans Associations by using some common areas Conference rooms for monthly meetings and such. For those members of the public that may not have actually seen the Lawn Poke Veterans Building, I've included a few photos.
It's a nice looking building.
It's really nice. This is
a picture- I believe our colleague Supervisor Adam has his offices, part of his office is there as well.
This is a photo of the lobby itself And here are two pictures, one of the auditorium with a stage in the background. Okay each veterans organization is designated a specific area as identified on this attachment. Areas that are not designated to a veteran's organization or for county use are considered common areas. All common areas are available for use by veterans organizations, county and general public pursuant to a valid rental reservation or prior approval by the county.
As you can see, common areas consist of an auditorium, a lobby, a trophy room, a banquet hall, a kitchen, a conference room, restrooms, and a tower. This slide represents Represents the result of negotiations conducted by the veterans groups and general services staff I'd like to go over the key changes as part of this agreement with you First five free annual events per Veterans Association, and you can see on the right column. Those were previous Previous rules that guide there were guided by the ordinance in 1979 The previous Portion of the agreement included one public dance per month. Another new key change was the insurance certificates required for events, whereas before there were none. Reservations by general services and prior to that they were done by the district office.
Also annual report updating new leadership and Caltrans events. There was no previous rule on that particular item. Hours of operation for the Lompoc Veterans Building Are proposed to be Sunday through Thursday 8 a.m. to 1030 p.m.. And Friday and Saturday from eight a. m. To eleven thirty p. m.. Whereas before they were open from six a. M. To one a. Also professional janitorial services for events.
And this was done by the county as well prior to this proposed agreement professional security services for events. The old agreement required police and sheriff and private guards as well Other key changes would include that the veterans organizations acting as a vendor for private events and providing equipment and services that require insurance and proper licensing.
Veterans organizations hosting military balls, patriotic events, monthly meetings, community service events are free upon reservations. Also no veteran sponsorship of private events for the general public Prior to this, each private event was sponsored by veterans associations. I'm sorry, organizations. Veterans organizations' failure to follow rules and regulations may have occupancy and the use of the building cease, suspended, terminated or terminated for a period of time. And prior to that there was nothing in the original rules that indicated that.
So with that, we would ask your board to consider adopting the resolution. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you very much. Do we have any public speakers on this item Mr. Allen? We have two requests to speak. Supervisor Wolf?
3:00 – 3:0718 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know this is in Supervisor Adams' district but as you know we have a veteran center in Santa Barbara that's in my district and very close to Supervisor Carbajal's and I'm very intrigued by what you've put forward and may potentially be looked at for the veteran center that we have in the South County. My question is so you listed the hours of operation Who actually opens the door? Is it general services staff or is there someone, how does that actually work?
Supervisor Wolf through Chairman Carbajal. I'd like to have Ron Carlentine answer that question for me. Thank you.
Chairman Carber-Hall and Supervisor Wolf, currently at the 8 o'clock moment the facilities for the 4th District Supervisors Office is on a card reader. For the county's use of the building will have a card and they actually use that right now to to enter the facility with respect to the new rules. The veterans will be having a key for their entrance for access for the times that they want to enter the building. I
say, okay. And then another question has to do with the maintenance of the kitchen area Is that the responsibility of the county or the veterans groups? Who monitors that, the kitchen?
Supervisor Wolf through the chair. The kitchen itself is used by obviously several different groups that are reserving it for common areas or by special events. The actual operation of the kitchen is guided by the lease, or the rental agreements and when those rental agreements are concluded there's a check of the facility to make sure there was no damage to the facility.
The actual maintenance of those kitchen appliances and the actual kitchen itself would be a general services responsibility.
So is there someone from general services who's assigned to that building?
Yes, there is.
Okay,
thank you.
Mr. Adam.
Well, I would just like to thank Mr. Carl Teen and Mr. Lepone's. I think you guys did a fantastic job. And this is a great building. It's it's beautiful if you haven't seen it, you should come and see it. And it's one of the things that the county really should be proud of. It's a fine, fine building. There's a couple of problems with it and we've got to fix them but we'll get to it eventually.
It's a it's a wonderful asset for the community and for the veterans So I think I think these rules are gonna work out a lot better. What we're doing here is little Administrative housekeeping to borrow a term from last week To get things current with The current conditions, and I think it's going to work out great for everybody
Thank You supervisor wolf and then we can go to the public
Just an administrative question. So you guys are going to be in charge of the reservation system for private events? I guess you're gonna be keeping a calendar and so forth, so everything then goes through general services. You folks are now in charge of all the events or the private events? Correct.
Supervisor Wolf through the chair, we are that is correct. We will be monitoring through our system the use of the reservations making sure that we maximize the occupancy of the building that we are watching to make sure that the public has fair access to those common areas through the reservations and making sure that the portions of this agreement Are working out satisfactorily over the next 12 months. I anticipate going out there and meeting with the groups in person to make sure that we can head off any potential problems before they start becoming bigger ones.
Very good, thank you so much.
We are now gonna go to the public Mr. Allen. I believe we have two speakers?
That's correct Chairman Carbajal. We'll start with Robert Burke to be followed by Bob Handy
Mr. Chair, board members, my name is Robert Burke. I am a veteran. I have read the legislation before you. I approve of it. I propose two additions. I propose that serving veterans groups and the community is a full-time occupation for the Lompoc Veterans Building and the community. I propose that serving veterans groups and the community is a full-time occupation for the Lompoc Veterans Building, and that a veterans museum at that site would contravene and overburden the facility.
Such museum would better be served having its own special designation and place. I ask that you stipulate such. I also propose that the operations manager be mandated to exclude and prohibit entry to any person who has demonstrated pernicious intent by violating civil or criminal statutes such as defamation, breach of promise. Breach of contract, assault and battery, defacing or destroying property, drunkenness and any other threat to property on the social welfare.
Such evidence shall not be beyond a reasonable doubt, not upon a preponderance of the evidence. but upon some credible evidence. The Some Credible Standard does not require the fact finder to weigh conflicting evidence, merely requiring the investigator to present the bare minimum of material credible evidence to support the allegations against the subject or in support of the allegation.
When the time comes for the Santa Barbara Veterans Building contract to be reviewed, I ask that a similar proposal with these additions that has been offered for the Lompoc building be considered or commission five people appointed by this Board of Supervisors be installed. The current environment at the Santa Barbara Veterans Building is chaos, confusion and consternation. Such belies the intent of this board and public welfare." I appreciate your attention.
3:07 – 3:1427 turns
Supervisor Adler?
This is a question for County Council. What right do we have to be able to do that? How would we accomplish that if we wanted to or could we?
I think that when government is leasing space, that we have some constitutional provisions that we need to be mindful of. And I think the best monitoring would be in terms of contracts that are entered into that would give the county the right to take action if there are certain disruptive activities. If you like, we could look at it a little bit more carefully.
But it gets to be... It can become a very tricky constitutional issue to parse who may and may not have access based on acts that may or may not be related to the particular facility that we're involved with.
Sounded like a minefield to me.
Mr. Handy?
Good afternoon. My name is Bob Handy and I am the chair of the County Veterans Services Advisory Committee. Uh, I was surprised when I received a email saying that this was going to be on the agenda today because uh there was no input or no information provided to the Veterans Service Advisory Committee and it's our responsibility to advise you as to the Veterans buildings as well as veterans issues. Actually, I feel that we were blindsided that we should have had some sort of input into this change. I'm not saying the changes are good or the changes are bad But you have a committee, a Veteran Service Advisory Committee who is supposed to be advising you on these issues and we have had no information provided to us. I would suggest that perhaps you would refer this to the Veteran Services Advisory Committee for their input and table it until such time as you have their input.
Thank you. Thank You Mr. Henley. Supervisor
Adam? Frank Campo is on that committee right?
Yes, that's correct. Mr. Campo is the newest member on the committee.
Right and he was involved in those meetings. It may not have gone to the committee but it had a committee member on it so I don't know if that satisfies your desires but just so
you know... I have no idea if Mr. Campo was on the committee or spoke to you about it, but I believe that this is a item that should be going before the entire committee not just one individual person because you have their personal prejudices for good or for bad and I would suggest that it goes before the entire committee.
Supervisor Blavanino?
Thank you, Mr. Handy. Do you know how many members sit on the advisory committee? Six. Do you have anybody from Lompoc outside of... Mr. Campo?
Mr. Campo is from Santa Maria.
Okay but do you have anybody from Lompoc?
Currently no we did have up until two meetings ago
Okay, so I guess thank you. That's all I have for you. It said in the report that veterans groups that use the Lompoc facility have signed off on this.
Yeah, and there was I don't want to say several. I think there was a couple or a few meetings. I don't know how many exactly do you guys know how many meetings they had?
Supervisor Adam through the chair, there were at least two community meetings that were specifically at the site with the veterans groups.
With the groups that occupy the building and some that don't is my understanding.
That's our understanding as well. Okay. Because
for me, I mean I have a veterans building inside Santa Maria. I don't expect the same. I think, you know, Santa Barbara can do what Santa Barbara wants to do in their facility. Lompoc can have different rules than Santa Maria has. You know, I feel if the groups that...I know this was a bit of a problem. I mean, you've kind of minimized some of the things that were going on but We definitely needed to come up with some rules and regulations, and hours of operation, and those types of things. It's a beautiful facility, it's seen a resurgence a lot, it's drawn a lot more of the community down into that area.
And I think this is a big step forward.
I'm not saying that there's not problems with the building. You know, I don't agree or disagree but I think that since you have a Veteran Services Advisory Committee who are supposed to be advising you folks that they should have some input on it.
Thank you Mr. Handy.
Thank you sir.
If I may jump in a little bit. All that's been said, I think Mr. Handy has a point. I think you have a point, Supervisor Lavino about regional and certainly I think the Lompoc community did a great job of addressing the issues but you would all agree that if we do have veterans even if it's just for comment. We always jump up and down when we do something with ag. Oh, we have an Ag Advisory Committee. I think we have these committees because we want their input not for this one because The issues have been addressed, but I think Mr. Handy does raise a good point just to be respectful to our veterans, to apprise them of what we're doing even if they can't trump it at the end but can give input.
We do have regional differences that should be taken into consideration and they might have something constructive to opine and So in the future, I do think that Mr. Handy has a point just to have some interface with the group since they are our appointees and I think you did have your appointee participate so that's good to know as well.
And for the record, I am informed that Frank Campo does live in Lompoc.
Great. In other words everybody is right. We can make it work for everyone. Having further discussion?
3:14 – 3:166 turns
I just want to piggyback on what you said, Supervisor. And that I agree that we should move forward with this. But in the future, I do think Mr. Handy brings up a good point and as I was talking about the Santa Barbara Veterans Center maybe looking to do something like this down the road when the contract is up. I do think that it's bring in all of our local groups, But at some point have the advisory committee be involved to some degree before it comes back to the board.
Even if it's receiving file, you might get a constructive thing that comes out of them. Mr Adam. So I would
like to move that we adopt the recommended actions as written.
Motion's been made and seconded. Further discussion? Not having none, all those in favor? Aye. Passage unanimously. We are now going to recess to our closed session meeting where we also have lunch and we need what about an hour and a half? So should 145 or should we just say two? Why don't we do two o'clock? Is that okay? Two o'clock, we'll come back at two o'clock.
Mr. Marshall if you could read closed session please and somebody could maybe send a contact the sheriff and let him know we're going to be back at 2 o' clock since they left before we can give them the time.
Thank you Mr. Chair on your closed session agenda today Existing litigation, Carol B. County of Santa Barbara Workers' Comp Appeals Board. You have conference with real property negotiators. The agency negotiators are general services director and real property manager, negotiating party Mr. Shreve president of Oasis Centers under negotiation price in terms of payment.
And that is parcel number 111-231-004. You also have public employee appointment county executive officer and you're a public employee performance evaluation public defender and Public Works Director.
Thank you very much, Mr. Marshall. We could all take five minutes and then we'll see you guys in our conference room
4:11 – 4:201 turns
Okay. Okay. Poster. Okay. Thank you. you
5:07 – 5:1511 turns
I would like to reconvene our Board of Supervisors meeting. Madam Clerk, if you could read item number six?
Chairman Carbajal, members of the board, Item Number Six is from General Services. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Northern Branch Jail Project Consultant and Contractor on Payroll Agreements in the Third District.
Thank you, CEO Waller. I understand you want to kick this off?
Yes thank you Mr. Chair. I know that your board has received many briefings on the North County Jail Project and what we have for you today is just the natural next steps to that. Mr. Pontus will give us some more detail but just to give you a brief idea of what-
CEO Waller before you proceed I think we said third district right it's in the...
It's in the third district
Thank you chair. Gosh for a moment there I was thinking maybe we'd moved either the district or the jail so as your board will recall on January 15th of earlier this year
You approved two agreements with the state to enable this project to move forward. One of the items that you'll have before, or actually two of the items you'll have before you today are asking you to re-approve those. The only reason that we're coming back is that the state has asked that the effective date be modified to reflect their effective date versus our January one.
The other items that your board will see today are the consultant contracts that we told you that we would be coming back with. Again, as a reminder in February your board actually set aside dollars for these contracts at the same time you approved the matching dollars for the entire $96 million dollar jail. So you're going to have contracts for your project expert, your architect, your construction manager and a contractor on payroll that will be a county assister that will coordinate utility clearances. They will help with project policies among other assignments so with that I will turn it to Mr Pontus.
Mr Chairman members of the board As you may recall, on January 15th of this year your board approved the State Project Delivery and Construction Agreement or the PDCA. Also your board approved the Board of State and Community Corrections Construction Agreement, the BSCCCA. And approved a match funding requirement required by the state. Also, on February 19th your board allocated almost $9 million into this project from previously approved funding sources. 1.17 million of that was appropriated specifically for the early phases of the design work.
Today's actions 1, 2 and 3 are the award of the consultant agreements. In late 2012 staff issued requests for qualifications to select the best qualified consultants needed to design and manage the construction of the project. RFQs were issued for an architect engineer AE firm to design the new facility a construction management firm to review the design for constructability and perform management services during the construction A project expert, which is an expert in planning and developing detention facilities. Who was also selected to guide the county staff in all phases of the project from early planning through the start up of detention operations.
It was a highly competitive process in which we encouraged each of the firms to support local vendors on services and supplies for the project. After receiving and reviewing many proposals, and interviewing several firms, a selection panel consisting of general services, sheriff, and CEO staff selected the following. Rosser as the architect engineer, Kitchell as the construction manager, Liebert & Associates as the project expert.
The architect engineer Rosser had subcontracted to several local firms including Revat Albrecht of Santa Maria, Arcadia Studios of Santa Barbara. Kitchell the construction manager also maintains operations in San Luis Obispo. We believe the firm selected put forth an incredible amount of expertise and insight into the understanding of our project and building a quality facility with acute emphasis on adherence to timelines and controlling costs.
This slide graphically demonstrates the relative level of involvement of the three consultants over the course of the defined project phases. The Project Expert, or P.E., as depicted on the graph will be heavy during programming, stay strong through design and then pick up again for the transition planning and startup operations. The A.E. or Architect Engineer's work will be light at first, grow heavier through the course of design and stay strong through construction to resolve design intent issues.
The CM or construction manager will be light until construction starts and then be active through completion. As you may expect, most of the money spent on consultant services occurs during the construction documents preparation and in contract administration. Today's action on number four, the contractor on payroll will help coordinate the extensive number of tasks occurring simultaneously among multiple agencies, multiple consultants and multiple county departments over the five year project.
A small sample of such tasks are shown on the slide. General Services recommends the contractor on payroll method of employment given the unique and full time but temporary nature of the needed services. The intended use of a contractor on payroll is consistent with HR policy set forth in October 2006. Today's actions number five and six re-execute the state's agreements to make the effective date February 11th, 2013. This action I would consider to be housekeeping in nature and to provide some background. On January 15th, 2013 the Board of Supervisors executed the state agreements The state, however, did not execute them until February 11th 2013.
Wanting the agreements to have the same effective date of execution, the state requested that the county re-execute them with a February 11th 2013 date. Other than the date there are no changes to the agreement documents. As another ancillary benefit of having the same effective dates is that the PDCA and the BSCC agreement will later be part of the package supporting the state's issuance of lease revenue bonds pursuant to Assembly Bill AB 900, Jail Financing Program.
Today's action number seven is a CEQA determination. To review, on March 6th 2008 the Board of Supervisors certified a final EIR for acquiring the project's 50-acre site and building and operating a new jail with up to 1,520 beds. On December 6th 2011 the Board of Supervisors considered that 2008 EIR as an addendum to the present smaller project of a 376 bed northern branch jail.
The CEQA action by the Board of Supervisors in December 2011 was part of authorizing the Sheriff's Department to apply for the AB-900 Phase 2 Conditional Award that the county has now received. Since the board's action in December 2011, the Northern Branch Jail Project has had no scope changes. Staff therefore recommends the board determine that no further CEQA review is required for approval today of the PSAs, the COP and to reexecute the state's agreements.
With that I'd be happy to answer questions that you might have.
Thank you very much. We have one request to speak. Do you guys want to wait or go now? Why don't we go to public comment and have our speaker, Madam Clerk if you could read the name of the speaker please.
Chairman Carbajal members of the board we have one request to speak and it is Megan Burney
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Good afternoon. My name's Megan Bernie. I'm with the Community Environmental Council and also speaking for the environmental defense center today. First, we want to thank staff for the excellent work that they have done in particular today. We're looking at the architecture and engineering aspect We're very concerned with the energy use of this building. The staff has done a great job to outline in the contract that the architect should look at measures that go above and beyond title 24, and also include an energy report which we think are very important steps to take but we'd also like to ask the board to include a requirement for examination of solar energy both photovoltaic and thermal currently the Contract lists renewables as an alternative approach.
We'd actually like this to make a required approach. One of the first things to get cut when we build projects, anyone private or public tends to be the renewable energy aspects but those also tend to be aspects that can really help bring down our operational costs So as part of that energy report, it would be great if the architect could look at both operational costs with renewables and operational costs without renewable energy so that we have a full picture to make the best decision possible. Thank you.
Thank you. That was our only speaker and I would say I think she makes a good point for us to consider looking at that. Is that something we will be looking at? Is it reasonable what she's requesting?
Chairman Carbajal, absolutely. And I can tell you that from my review of the documents so far we intend on building a very green facility. We're going to encourage the use of green products and even the solar, the viability of using solar and other solutions out there for the site.
And you'll bring us the cost analysis so that we're able to see the benefit, obviously.
We will do that.
Great. I didn't see whose light went on first, so if you don't mind, I'll start with Supervisor Farr and then we'll go to Supervisor Wolff and then we'll go to you, Supervisor Navanillo.
Thank you, Mr Chair. I have questions about action number one and action number four. I certainly understand the contract for architectural engineering related professional design services and construction management. But what I need to better understand is the overlap here so according to your chart there The program planning, architectural review transition planning related professional services agreement. With Liebert and associates maximum at 426,000 over a six year period I'm assuming that Most of that cost comes in the first year or two, and a little bit at the very end. But what I really need to understand is what they add to this that wouldn't already be covered as part of the architect's contract?
Supervisor Farr through the chair, CEO Waller would like to answer this one.
Thank you. The reason that it's sort of been directed to me is, as you know I've sort of been the project lead not certainly the project engineer but the project lead while we were waiting for our general services director to come on board The reason that we selected or felt the need for this individual is that the jail project is probably the largest individual project that this county has ever seen and probably will see in the very near future. It's a very complex project, it has what I would consider if not done correctly a very high risk And so what we felt would be helpful to us is to have experts that had constructed similar projects, that were very familiar with detention facilities, with the needs. That could work very closely with both our general services team and with our sheriff to give us that extra bit of knowledge and technical expertise.
Okay, well I guess that still doesn't quite answer my question. So this firm has built jails before where the architectural and engineering firm of Ross International has not?
We're kind of looking at Apple's and Orange's supervisor. The architect actually will do the construction design But the project expert will sort of be like your adjunct staff to help us as the county staff know when there are particular items that our architect could benefit by doing differently. They can also help us from the standpoint of suggesting items that we may wish to ask our architect to include or consider, so it's really like having that in-house person who acts completely At the county's benefit, not the architect, not the construction manager. Not the actual contractor.
Okay well I guess I would see all of these as our benefit and I mean it's still a consultant. It's not an in-house person. But I'll just leave that for the moment. I don't know if the other board will have some other questions. Let me just go to the contractor on payroll. I kind of have a similar question here. This is supposed to be our in-house person, even though they're a contractor on payroll that does some interface. But maybe you could explain the overlap here and why one of these other agreements does not fulfill the role that this person would fulfill?
Certainly Chair, Supervisor. The contractor on payroll Is not someone who necessarily has high level expertise in constructing jail projects. What this individual does is they are for a limited period of time, their temporary and they'll be more the administrative type things such as helping schedule workshops monitoring and passing through information between the various consultants and assisting with the overall project administration, but they are not a technical person skilled in specific jail design. So they're again sort of like adjunct staff, but we brought them on because it is a temporary nature and we know that there will be work for them to do over the next three or four years and then they'll no longer be any need for their services And I would like to remind the board that all of these particular consultants we have looked at from the standpoint of their qualifications and also from the standpoint of budget because we wanted to make sure that we continue to not expend more than we had budgeted for these type services, and all of these contracts would keep us within that original budget estimate.
Okay, well CEO Waller this contract for the contractor on payroll is only for two years but you said three or four years so do we assume that this is going to need to be renewed at the end of the two-year period?
I think at the end of the two-year period we'd want to reevaluate where we're at with the project and what our needs are at that time. Certainly if we continue to have a need for more than two years, we would bring an agreement modification back to your board. But right now we think the first two years are critical and then we would reevaluate that need.
Okay, and then Mr. Chair thank you my last question for now is I guess I don't understand why this wouldn't be a consultant either and why it's a contractor on payroll where we're not only paying an hourly rate but we're paying for leave and retirement benefits?
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Supervisor, when we looked at the actual needs and the duties that were required. We didn't believe that going out for a consultant that has a lot of overhead and for the most part has technical expertise that we pay additional costs for would be as cost effective as bringing this individual on from a temporary perspective and paying an hourly rate with minimal benefits. So we've kind of done a cost analysis, we've done a time analysis of how long we would need them, and we've done what the level of expertise this individual needs.
So what would be the difference between this kind of a contract and just bringing in a county employee as a temporary employee or extra help?
That's certainly something we considered. We worked with our HR department and they believed that the contractor on payroll best met the particular practice that the county has employed in the past when bringing on contractors on payroll versus temporary individuals. Okay.
Well, you know, I mean these are obviously very large expensive contracts for the architect and the construction management and I'm just trying to figure out what these other contracts are that are value added in addition to that. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank you Supervisor Wolff and Supervisor Marillo and Supervisor Adams.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Mr Pontus for going through this and you and I did meet yesterday And You know, I think just in general as Supervisor Farr pointed out these contracts. I mean we're approving presumably approving today multi-million dollar contracts And we received this information on Thursday or Friday of last week. And so I started to go through, I mean it was like an impossible task to try and go through the contracts. But you know, so I started I know that obviously there's a lot of information on contracts that I didn't get to and may be important that I'm not bringing up.
On what? So I'm going to bring up the issues that I saw. And with the understanding that there's probably things that I missed, but I need to ask some of these questions. Okay so this one has to do with the architectural, the program planner one. That's a program planner architectural review. Which one is that up there? PE. So the first thing Is that they highlighted are representative. It was called the owner representative and we had a specific person in general services identified as that contact person, and I don't think it's ever good to do that, especially in these long term 72 month contracts.
And so I'm addressing this to county council that I would suggest. That our contact person in general services is the director of general services or his designee, rather than calling out any particular person. And in fact, in the architect engineer contract, That's how it was called out. It was called out as general services director and it included the sheriff, but there was no particular employee mentioned so that would be a suggestion and that was on page two.
On it was 4.02 This is the section that dealt with the cost that we were going to be paying for this. And I thought the contract was really straightforward. Basically, the cost is $426,000 that's it no more unless there was a material change and maybe in legal parlance you guys know what that means but it makes me nervous because the contractor can ask for an increase if there So do, and County Council can answer this. Is that a legal definition or do we have to specify it in a contract?
Chair Carpaul, Supervisor Wolf, the material change really just represents contract law. That provision would exist essentially whether it was in there or not. We're just recognizing their ability and providing a process whereby they can ask for a change. The county's not required to grant that change. And I'll digress for a moment and say that in all of these contracts, the county has built-in termination provisions. The three professional service agreements have termination for convenience So that when you're faced if you've if you had a series of material changes unexpected, you might want to reanalyze the contract at that point. But there are protections for the county built in by this termination for convenience language which is also consistent with the County Budget Act that each year we a new appropriation
Okay, well if we're going to enter into these contracts I expect that we're not going to terminate. We have to be sure that these are really good strong contractors but it's just that language that was concerning to me but it sounds like you have a handle on that. There was another section 5.03B and I think maybe this was a typo that there was in that section it said approximately currently I know I'm being really picky, but I thought someone didn't clean up that line approximately currently.
And then throughout that document there was a term that said not used It was throughout the contract and I don't know why what that means. Is there a boilerplate? Contract and in certain sections, we just said we're not Using that language because it was pretty consistent So what does that mean
chair Carbajal and supervisor wolf? Yes actually in the iterations back and forth There were terms that were negotiated and rather than renumber and confuse back and forth those became not used they have no legal significance
Okay, is there a way to Somehow note that in the contract what that means? Or do all of you attorneys understand that?
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Chair Carbajal, Supervisor Wolf. I believe that a review in court would conclude that the term not used had no significance.
All right, so sticking with that contract. And I'll get into the next one but I noticed that there was and this goes to miss Bernie's comment about well at the time I was looking for energy efficiency. Wording and issues, and there really wasn't anything except emphasizing a desire for energy efficiency which was kind of squishy. And there was a section on local labor, which is something that has been brought up on this dais before.
And in that contract I also thought that was pretty weak. But then in the next one, which now I'm going into the architect-engineer attachment B And it seemed that that contract was getting a little bit stronger. Although the language in the local labor paragraph was the same language that was used in attachment A, the first one. The energy efficiency portion was better. In fact, it talked about what Ms. Birney mentioned about the 15% more than required by Title 24 and it says an attempt to achieve lead silver.
But as I noted in that one and then in the subsequent one, everything was we will try and achieve. We will try and meet. We may do this. There was nothing that's that, and I'm talking now about the energy efficiency part, there was nothing that really stood out as being something that we will look at energy efficiency and balance it with the costs. So that is a concern, but I think there might be.
So anyway, that's what I found in those two. And I'll get to the third one. The other thing that was in this architect-engineer contract that is probably very substantive and I didn't know this, that we're going to be building the jail on a water well and I would like someone to address that because it concerns me and I just don't know about Why are we doing that? Why aren't we hooking up to the water, to the Santa Maria Water. Do we know with certainty that there's enough water there?
Is it a cost savings measure?
I'll look to staff from the perspective of the detailed answer there Chair and Supervisor but I believe that we've left that open for either way so Mr. Pontus or Mr. Williams if you could assist us please
Supervisor Wolf, Chairman Carhall. I'm going to have Grady Williams our expert answer that question for us.
Mr. Chairman, Supervisor Wolfe? Yes we did a life cycle cost analysis of all the options to bring water and sewer to the site and we looked at what would be the least cost option both from the first time construction costs as well as from the operational cost including hookup fees including annual ongoing fees both with using city water and as well as a water well And from our analysis, it shows that the least cost way of bringing water to the site is with a water well.
What we have to do though to confirm that we can Get the water amount of water that we need and that we need to treat the water or not. We'll have to do a test well now be one of the first things we do once these consultants are brought on board and we start the work so within the next few months will be performing that study, and then will have to make some revisions if necessary, but currently that's our.
Our plan for bringing about the utilities in the least cost way
Well, you know. So I guess it can always be changed, but that is what's in the contract is the water well and and the sewer line there is a connection obviously so that was good. So what? I'm hearing you say is that this is the direction we're going if the test well doesn't prove effective then we're going to have to definitely go outside
correct. Mr. Chairman, Supervisor Wolf, we state in this professional service agreement that the consultant has to perform that study, come back to us with a plan, tell us they can or they cannot provide water through a well and if that's the most feasible way and if it's not then we have to change
it. And CEO Waller I guess I would say that this seems like that might have been something that could've been done before we start entering these contracts. What if the water is not sufficient? And then I understand we can connect to Santa Maria Water. Well, how much does that cost? It just seems like that's such an essential basic part but are you feeling confident?
Chair, Supervisor. One of the reasons that we delayed the final decision on that was to maximize the ability to have our costs towards the match and towards the grant go forward so doing a lot of actual preliminary work would've increased the amount that the county's contribution would have to be and would not be necessarily available for the match. The second part of that I feel very comfortable that as a part of the well production analysis that we've asked to be performed The consultant will look at all the costs, both the availability of water from local groundwater resources and also from the standpoint of City of Santa Maria and provide us that information. So I believe that General Services did do due diligence in trying to maximize the available monies that could be put towards our match.
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Mr. Chairman, Supervisor Wolfe I'll just add also that the state AB 900 agreements will reimburse the construction of work we do on site including the wells once the project is authorized. Anything we do before that authorization they won't reimburse so it was important to wait until that period of time. Also any work off-site the state does not pay for.
Okay, that's all for now. I think I want to come back and talk a little bit more about the labor piece because again there is...I can't find in any of these agreements from what I've seen a requirement for local work or local hires. There are a lot of plans and outreach but I don't see the word a requirement and we were talking Before about the importance of making sure that in Santa Maria and in the county that we're using our local labor for so. That's really important to me if you guys can show me where it is inherent then I'll feel better. The other part is the energy efficiency part. Making sure that they look at the photovoltaic and the thermal, and do a cost analysis on that. We've seen some benefits from our sheriff's facility down here I think, and we talk a lot about it.
Here is our opportunity to do something on this huge project so I would like to make sure that that's in these contracts. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank you Mr. Chair and I basically have the same concerns Supervisor Wolf does is, you know one of the ways that we have sold this in North County is that this is going to be a major construction boom to our local guys and I just, you know, I know what happens when we As for people to do things and we request people to do things if it's not required or at least if there's not an incentive in there. It's going to be ignored. And so I mean, I would strongly urge us to move in a more directive manner than a requesting manner in that Supervisor.
Chair, Supervisor, I can share what occurred during our interview of these particular firms. And I can tell you that both the Sheriff and myself, that was one of the strongest questioning that we did was related to how we can utilize local resources. That said, I think that we've asked County Council to take a look at particular things that could be put within the contract and that we can do in the future to ensure that local participation.
Chair Carbajal, Supervisors. The agreements that you have for consideration today are actually the front-end agreements, the schematic preparation, helping us oversee the schematic preparation and the county's real opportunity for local hire or local preferences will come when the bid package goes out for construction and that's discussion we've had probably every week when we have the recurring jail meetings Looking at the case law, looking at apprenticeship programs, looking at project labor agreements or also called project stabilization agreements. And those are the things that would really have an impact on the local economy when they go out for the construction bid specification package not at this front end which is a very small number of people
As normal, Mr. Gazzone when you speak you make me feel better so okay I feel a lot better.
Supervisor if I could just add to that via the chair. I think it's also important to know that when we had our discussion with our architect engineers we specifically spoke about how they could actually design a project to take advantage of the local labor force The at masonry versus cast in place versus off site. And those are items that they agreed that as we moved through the design, we would actually give consideration of that as well. Certainly cost is a factor but that basically with costs being equal, we'd certainly want to look towards the design that would enable local participation when we talk to our construction management firms We explored some really very unique things that they're doing right now in North County as far as outreach to the labor force, outreach to anyone who has an interest in apprenticeship programs.
So those were discussions that we had and I think that those were some of the main reasons why we helped select the firms that we did. Both of them are very committed to those concepts And had experience in actually doing them and sort of gave us additional. Additional consideration of how we could design and how we can actually do outreach to enhance that local participation.
OK, another question I haven't and I understand this is a $95 million project so I know looking at the contractor on payroll and you know it's less than $150,000 for 2 years. But I guess I'm kind of on board with Supervisor Farr. It's like, I just hate paying somebody's vacation and days off and those types of things when the person is not even an employee. It just seems like a bad precedent. And I guess we use this other places. I'd rather see us instead of saying well let's copy what we're doing in those other places. I want to know where else we do this in the county because I just really don't like the practice.
There's the consultants are I just don't know how many times do we use this. How many people do we have right now that are contractors on payroll?
Chair and Supervisor, I can't off the top of my head tell you how many. I can tell you that it's not infrequently that we use contractors on payroll and those agreements always come to your Board of Supervisors for approval. Again in this particular case we looked at the temporary nature, we looked at the job duties, we looked at the costs and we truly felt that this was the most Effective and efficient way of providing that services. And all of these are within the budget that was allocated for these services.
CEO, while I'm wondering if a better question is how many contractors on payroll do we have where we pay all these ancillary services like vacation? And all these other things because most of them I don't believe we do.
Chair, Supervisor, contractors on payroll if they work a certain number of hours are paid benefits and things like that. And I can certainly get you the detailed information. I can tell you that it is done in various locations throughout our county.
I'm just wondering because I once was a contractor on payroll for Santa Barbara County and no vacation sick leave nothing was paid to state law might've changed that change things but Mr Geis You've been around doing this for a long time so.
Chairman Carbajal, members of the board I think we have between 80 and 90 contractors on payroll and where they really originate from and you're right over the period of time we have state law that says if you are going to have an employee there either gonna be a civil service position And sometimes we don't want to make those permanent positions. We ended up with contractors on payroll that from an IRS perspective, you've got to treat them like county employees. Employment law says you have to give them some vacation and then so we work those packages up over a period of time but we have some specialized doctors in that category.
Some specialized I think employees in mental health that fit that category And once in a while, some engineers or those professional classes. So I think we have a detailed report that we can get back of all the various contractors on payroll but I seem to remember in the budget book it's about 80-90.
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And I understand that this is going to be a large facility and we want to talk about energy efficiency. I want that place to be as energy efficient as we can, however, I want to remind everybody that safety is why that facility's getting built and that needs to be the number one. I want to make sure we've got reliability and backup and those types of things. I mean, I'd hate to know that the electrical fence on the outside was being run by solar so just want to make sure safety's number one.
Mr. Adams and Supervisor Wolfe, but before you go Mr. Adam I just There's been a number of jails that NACO and CSAC have highlighted How they have achieved their safety but achieved major, major innovation in energy efficiency. I highly recommend we look at those examples that we have through CSAT and NACO. Recently they highlighted a few specifically for those achievements so Supervisor Adam then Supervisor Wolf?
I want to echo Supervisor Farr and Lavinino's concern about these contractors on payroll. If there is a way to get a contractor that is not on payroll where we aren't liable for all of these benefits, including retirement, it seems ridiculous to me. It may be what the law is and if that is what the law is then we will have to work within It seems ridiculous to have somebody that comes on basically part-time if you look at the chart for a few years end up with retirement.
You know, I'm just saying.
Chair, Supervisor, I was just going to clarify that on that particular retirement piece we don't anticipate that this individual would be with us long enough to actually be able to collect on a retirement.
So they wouldn't bust?
That's my understanding that's
correct. Well, that makes me feel a little better. On the water, you know that's something I know well in that area. There are farms that operate on wells all the way around this property. Absolutely guarantee there is water underneath this property and I give you a 99% chance that you're going to get something that's drinkable right out of the ground or with absolutely minimal treatment.
That's a very good water area. It's a very good quality area. Is this thing going to be constructed with prevailing wage?
It has to. Yeah. Yes, it's a requirement for public work is the construction be at prevailing wage.
OK. Well so that's I don't know what the incentive gets to be then for local labor because if somebody is coming in and people are bidding on the job you have to be competitive And we should strive to take the best, lowest bidder. Not trying to tell you to use somebody that's a substandard contractor but all things being equal I'd take the cheapest Good contractor, a reasonable contractor because I think we have a responsibility to husband the resource and that's the money.
So no matter where they're from, I think the contractors have to be competitive.
Thank you Supervisor Wolf and Supervisor Farr and if we could try to wrap things up that'd be great.
So I just wanted to address Supervisor Lavagnino's comment about the solar and safety, and I think that goes without saying. But as Supervisor Carbajal mentioned there are facilities that have been well able to integrate both. We look at our EOC we have the generator outside us as a backup And it's not all solely solar, but so that's one thing. I'm glad that the farms have enough water and that may indeed not be an issue. I hope it's not an issue, but definitely and obviously something you still need to look into.
The local labor, I did find the part that I think needs to be addressed before we move forward and sign this. And this is in the construction management contract. Where it says that the consultants work products in all work phases where applicable shall provide owner with alternatives that provide opportunity to increase use of local labor for owners consideration.
And and the words were applicable I think just give anyone an out That it so they might say, well, it's not applicable. So we're not going to move in that direction and to address supervisor Adams comments about. about the financial incentive in using local labor. I know that Sheriff Brown, when he talks about the benefits of the jail, one of the benefits has been that we would be able to have local hires so that the money they earn can be returned back into our local economy. So local labor is very important.
That's it's just again. It's not it's not tight enough and Mr goes only I just You know, I don't know why? I'm really not here right now to nitpick certain things. Is really important and it just seems like, like an out. And then the
whole supervisor wolf?
Yes,
I can. Maybe if I can respond to that. But whatever the board's direction is within the construction manager contract. At page 16, numbered paragraph 7. There's a statement or requirement that the consultant shall prepare a written plan for owner to maximize use of local vendors and local labor conforming to the California public contract code and other applicable codes. We think that that's a strong statement And it also goes on to state that the owner may present this plan to the Board of Supervisors early in the schematic design phase, which is where the real impact would be of a local hire.
It's interesting though because I have
that
on page 16 number 7. That's under the Local Vendor Outreach Plan but On page 10 is local labor, which is specific to local labor. So I question why that is not noted under local labor? What you just read is under the local vendor outreach even though there is a subset of local labor. The other thing it says is that the owner may present this plan to the County Board of Supervisors early in the schematic design and I would change that to shall.
And I would, but I agree Mr. Gazzone that the part that you read about the local labor should go in the local labor section. Do you understand what I'm referring to? I
understand.
But are you saying then that what is here is enough?
Supervisor Carpahal, excuse me Chair Carpahal, Supervisor Wolf. I'm saying that the vendor, the contractor on this would be bound to present the county with a written plan to maximize local vendors and local labor. The reservation at the owner meaning us, the county may present this to the Board of Supervisors making that mandatory is just telling your staff to do what you can already tell them to do. So yes, I believe it is
adequate. All right. Mr. Gazzone thank you for clarifying that. And so with those two concerns being taken care of, the water issue being taken care of. I think the only thing that I would and the other thing about not EVERS, I guess we can just leave that. But I do think we should change the language about the contact person to the general services director or designee. Can we do that?
Yes, I don't think that's any issue at all. We can adjust that language to say general services director or their designee. OK. Thank you.
Supervisor Farr and Supervisor Adam, if we can wrap it up, that'd be great.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well I certainly would like to totally agree with the comments that the other supervisors have made about the importance of local labor and whatever language changes we need to make in the contracts to emphasize that. I'm in total support of...I'm also in support of all of the discussion about energy efficiency but not just that sustainability. I know in the past we've talked about Looking at the building of the jail in a way that even if it costs in some areas, a little bit more up front. That can be measured in long term savings overall and I think this also gets to the well issue. Thank you for bringing that up.
Supervisor Wolf, clearly I would think that well water is going to be a lot cheaper in the long run for the jail than buying it from the city of Santa Maria or any place else. So I think that long-term sustainability in all ways is really critical. And then last, I kind of want to go back to the contractor on payroll issue. I don't know whether Supervisor Carball and Supervisor Wolf remember, but when I first came on the board and we were hitting this real downturn in the economy in the county budget. We really took a hard look at the contractor on payroll issue because there were so many departments that were needing to lay people off. And yet there seemed to be a lot of contractors on payroll. And so between individual department budgets needing to be trimmed, Contractor on payroll jobs went away, but also unless they really provided a specialized service that our own staff couldn't provide.
That work should go to our existing county staff try to save some of those positions and then save the cost of the contractor on payroll. contract. And so the examples that Mr. Geis gave about the contractors on payroll that we currently have all seem to be those specialized kind of types of jobs, and I guess I need to know more about this person we're hiring because it doesn't sound like this is specialized of a job, and yet they say that I guess this person is already working for the county. So in what capacity were they hired? And what is their status now? Have they really actually already been hired as a contractor on payroll?
Chair, Supervisor, no they have not been hired as a contractor on payroll. That would require your board's authority. I believe that we have brought them on as a part-time temporary. What we're finding is that we need to utilize their services in excess of what you would typically have as a part-time temporary employee. However, as I mentioned, we have worked with HR and this does in their opinion fit the contractor on payroll practice that your board has looked at in the past.
OK, well I guess Mr. Chair, I still have kind of some issues with this. I don't understand why they can't continue their status as a temporary employee and why we're getting into contractors on payroll? I mean, I think if this person is a psychologist or some specialized person then that's different than this category, I think. Thank you.
So I may have missed this. What department is this person housed?
This person is housed in the General Services Department They work directly for the project manager. And just to give some additional information Chair and Supervisor, if we were to bring on a part-time temporary employee at the number of hours that we need to utilize this individual That would create some additional concerns as far as what we need to do to make that person a permanent employee. It would bring up pension, it would bring up a host of other requirements with it. That was one of the things that we considered. Initially we had hoped to be able to have less than 20 hours a week but it does not appear that we're able to have less than 24 or 20 hours a week and still accomplish what we need to accomplish
5:58 – 6:0726 turns
Mr. Adams and Supervisor Wolk, before you go I have one question. You know for me I have a not to digress here but I have a larger concern for our general services department. I may be wrong but it's my understanding that you're very light on some of your supportive executives. You don't have a finance person on board. We're hiring all these consultants and we don't have in my understanding the support team that you need to have so that you could be On top of all this stuff. So unless you're a financial whiz, I don't know how we're going to be able to monitor all these contractors.
So if you could answer that?
Perhaps I can help you Matt there because as you know those particular positions that the chair is referring to have been recruited. We didn't want to make a hire until we had our new general services director because we wanted to allow that individual to make the final decision but both of those are queued up and ready for his decisions.
Well that's encouraging. You wanted to add something Mr. Ponce?
Mr. Chairman, we are reviewing applications at this point and we hope to have a selection in both of those positions filled by the end of the fiscal.
That's encouraging thank you very much. Mr. Adam and then I'm going to try to wrap it up.
Thank you Mr. Chair, the only thing I wanted to do is remind us why we're building a new jail. You know we're not building a new jail because we need a work project in the North County. We're building a new jail because we have prisoners that should be incarcerated that were having to release And we have custody deputies that are not as safe as they should be.
And we have potential to injure less dangerous prisoners by more dangerous prisoners, so we're building something that's safe for the prisoners and safe for the deputies. And it's gonna adequately incarcerate the people in our community who need to be incarcerated. So local labor is important. But we need to get this job done and we should not even entertain the thought, I don't think of going beyond the 96 million. Unless it's something that is beyond our control.
Mr. Adam, unless you're in a different hearing? I didn't hear that. Going beyond the 96.
Well Supervisor Farr said if it costs a little more to do something and I thought that was what she was talking about. That would maybe worth it to pay a little more at the front end. And maybe that was not what she was talking about.
I did say that, but I just assumed that we could do it within this enormous budget already. Just wanted the architect, the designer to be keeping that in mind when we do this and we had talked about this before because sometimes some small changes up front even if they cost a little bit more at the time result in a whole lot of cumulative savings on a month-to-month basis once the prison is up and running.
Okay, well I just want to go on record as saying this. If this doesn't come in over budget to some degree or another it will be the first construction project I've ever been involved in that did not come in over budget to some degree or another.
Well, actually we've had a few that have come in under budget. Yeah, we've done pretty well here actually. Keeping our eye on the
objective of the JO I think we could accomplish a lot of what is being said. Supervisor, if you'd just let me throw in a few things since I haven't spoken and then I'll come back to you as a concluding. To
conclude? Is
that
okay? Can I just conclude my remarks? Sure go ahead. Go ahead. I just want to say that I think it's always important for us as a board to look at these things very carefully for the reasons that you state, Mr. Adam. We don't want to go over budget. We want to be intelligent in how we move forward. I just wish that the board had more time to look over these huge contracts. I mean, we usually get contracts much earlier. Maybe it's because we don't have the hearings anymore. But here we have $5 million contracts and we don't have the time to look them over.
And I almost feel that, you know, the comments...I mean, I believe that they're taken seriously and it looks like we're going to have one change in the contract. But really as a board we're responsible for this huge project and I don't want to get stuck with anyone saying that we were not prepared, we were not knowledgeable about what we were getting into And so I would just suggest that this type of information come to us much sooner, maybe that we have two hearings on some of these big contracts.
I haven't decided yet on the contractor on payroll. I'll see how you guys all feel about that. Thank you Mr.
Chair. We're pretty much ready for a motion but before we do that is there a motion? I'll let you finish, and then
I'd like to make the
motion. Okay. I too have the concerns about the contractor. If there's a way we don't have to pay vacation or retirement unless it's required by law, I agree with the same concerns that I think we've all raised. It just seems a little ludicrous to do that. I've been advocating for the local higher labor hire for a long time. As a matter of fact, before this hearing, I had my assistant follow up with council and a number of you to find out where it is because I've been saying where is it?
I haven't seen anything, and I was assured that moving this forward it's going to be looking at those issues. But I do like what Supervisor Wolf mentioned and I suggest it as well is that Shell is better than May. May's, well we thought of it but we didn't. You know, I like the word shell in terms of making it clear that's what we'd like to hear or see. I'd like the energy analysis and options to come back as well because I'm sure you're going to be able to convince my colleague From the 4th district that there's some good cost benefit analysis to do many of these features.
And I'm optimistic because at the end of the day it's all about the numbers, what they say, what they represent and you will find that is really oftentimes folks are concerned about the costs but when you look at the full analysis you're usually convinced that a lot of these measures are worth implementing So I do hope that it comes back with a robust energy efficiency analysis of options so that we could consider that as well.
And other than that, I really appreciate everybody that worked on this. In the future, a staff report, Mr. Pontes, and I know you're new and I'm not going to blame you for it, but a staff report could be a little bit This was a lot and it just seemed like a very data rich report that didn't give us a little bit more streamlined. It just wasn't presented in the way that streamlined the information for us, so that's the only thing I would add. It would be more helpful.
Having said that is there motion? Yes there is but he wants more pictures and less text. I didn't say that, he did! He's the one who advocates for the pictures. I'd like to move items 1 through 7 but 4 contingent upon a very small and concise cost benefit analysis that comes back from our CEO that just says this does save us money and shows us that using the contractor on payroll is better than hiring an employee We have a motion to adjourn the meeting.
Motion has been made.
Second.
Does
that
work? I understood at the discussion there would be an amendment or change to the PE professional services agreement at section 4.01A to reflect the owner's representative as That's included in the motion.
Great.
And shall.
6:07 – 6:1015 turns
As the owner to this Board of Supervisors, that's yes.
Chair and supervisor I would recommend that I would tell you that even without that change you have a binding contract and we understand your direction
great. Excellent. Further discussion?
And I have to say, as far as the presentation went what he's trying to present to us is a $96 million. You took a big bite out of the bear on the first time around so we all understand that.
Mr. Pontes, what I said earlier was nothing on your first staff report.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Board.
Mr. Chair, I just want a clarification on the motion. I'm just wondering Supervisor Lavagnino if because I agree with you, I would kind of like to see the cost benefit analysis on the contractor on payroll whether we need to exclude that from our approval of the others and have that brought back separately with that analysis and then approve that one at that time?
Are we on time clock here, Grady? Yeah. I mean, I'm confident the CEO has stated that she's done the cost-benefit analysis. It pencils out. I just would like to see it personally so that I can show it to whoever asked me and so if that works...
Okay, I just wanted clarification. So you do want to go ahead and go forward with that?
I want to go forward and just make sure that that's presented to us. There's a seconder of the motion?
That's fine. Can we, the question that I have is can we pull it back? I mean if you come back with a report that says this is horribly inconsistent with what we wanted then can we pull that back and rejigger it?
Council can you help us with that termination line.
You're correct that the contractor on payroll has a 30 day termination provision by the county for any reason.
Can I just comment on the contractor on payroll because they haven't really weighed in, I'll go along with with emotion but I actually didn't. That was the one part that I actually didn't see a problem with. I thought it made a lot of sense. It gave me a little bit of security to know that we have someone, although maybe they're not really part of our team.
But someone who's been here, who's been monitoring the project and can monitor it from the inside. I thought that was actually good, and a good use of some of our money when we're spending so much. But I do understand the concerns and I'm fine that we'll bring this back. We'll look at it more.
Okay, I think we're ready. Let's move on before we start sounding like Orange County. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Wait, wait, wait. Mr. D'Avenino, County Council is going to report closed session. Report out.
6:10 – 6:111 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are you ready? Yes. Your board held all noticed closed session items and all items were completed. One matter to be reported out and that's in the matter of Donald Carroll v. County of Santa Barbara Workers Comp Appeals Board. Your board unanimously authorized Settlement in the amount of $218,312.46 to settle all medical permanent disability and all other related claims associated with a workers comp claim filed by Mr. Carroll. Thank you Mr. Chair.