Board of Supervisors — 2017-06-20

We watched the clock. Ready to go? Good morning and welcome to our June, July already? No. June 20th. It's been a long month. June 20th, 2017 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in Santa Barbara County. Mr. Allen would you call the roll?

Ms. Wolfe? Aye. Mr Adams?

I am here.

Mr Lavinino? Here. Mr Williams? Here.

we need to approve the minutes of June 6, 2017. May I have a motion to approve?

So

moved. And roll call vote.

Ms. Wolfe? Aye. Mr. Adams?

Aye.

Mr Lavendino? Aye! Ms. Williams?

Aye

Ms. Hartman? Aye 5-0

And do we have a CEO's report today Ms. Miyasato?

Chair Hartman and Supervisors, I do just a couple of quick announcements. And one is just to congratulate our probation department with the support of Congressman Carbajal's office. They recently learned they were awarded a three-year grant totaling $975,000. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Also tomorrow afternoon, Caltrans will be officially dedicating 21 miles of US Highway 101 in the Gaviota area as the state scenic highway.

A ceremony being held at the Arroyo Honda Vista Point and the designation started with the Board of Supervisors supporting the nomination. They've supported the nomination since 2016 and it's been the intent of the board since our coastal land use plan was adopted in 1982 so that's finally underway.

Thank you very much. We don't have any honorary resolutions to present today so we turn directly to the largest administrative agenda in board history I think. I needed help carrying my notebooks up this morning. So do we have any items that the Board would like to pull? Supervisor Williams.

public comment. We've incorporated and done a lot of community planning, but we can bring back the results of that to go through the different types of projects. The project that you're focusing on is part of the innovations funding which are intended to be short term pilot projects if you will looking at a new practice to see if those are Things that are effective and helpful. And if so, to determine if we can incorporate those into our ongoing functioning with the department. This project has this last year of funding and then all of the innovations money cannot be spent for that any further. So I think as we're looking at the models for We have to determine what is sustainable within that project and how we will do that within the context of our regular funding.

So happy to come back and have a longer discussion about that project in particular, and the plan overall if you would like.

Yes I think it would be helpful.

And I want to express my appreciation again to Supervisor Williams for being part of the Behavioral Wellness Commission which hears all of this planning on a regular basis. Right thank you

Okay well we'll just come back to that as part of the whole. Yes I'm happy yeah we can

just approve it as part of the whole.

That brings us to A21.

Chair Hartman, members of the board item A21 from the county executive office this is to consider recommendations regarding proposed advocacy position of support for AB 1472 state lands commission oil gas mineral leases.

Okay and Supervisor Lavanino wanted to, Supervisor Adam first sorry and then Supervisor Lavanino.

I'm sorry 21?

Yes.

I just need a roll call on that one.

Okay so you would just like a roll call vote and that's what Supervisor Lavanino would like. So could I have a motion?

Move approval.

Second. And Mr. Allen, would you call the vote?

Ms. Wolfe?

Aye.

Mr. Adams?

No.

Mr Lavanino? No Mr Williams? Aye Ms. Hartman? Aye Passes 3 to 2. Chair Harbin, members of the board item A22 from the CEO is approved budget revision request.

Supervisor Adam?

Yeah you know this I'm looking at 5063 it's page 12 of 25 I'm going to assume we're getting there, if we're not already there. And I'm just going to read a couple sentences out of this justification paragraph. The purchase of Agnes Street property was initially slated to be funded by the Crisis Stabilization Unit grant but due to the fact that analysis on the CSU South Open January of 16 revealed that a CSU at this Santa Maria location was not feasible. The CSU grant slated to cover purchase price of Agnes Street property was relinquished and returned to the state.

Behavioral wellness staff determined that this location is favorable for a crisis residential treatment program and therefore it would be prudent, my emphasis to fund the purchase of the facility with this one time general fund contribution etc. Rather than requesting the site to be sold. And with all due respect to our fine folks at Behavioral Wellness, that's something for the Board of Supervisors to determine whether it's prudent to have general fund monies going towards that.

And especially when it was sort of the bait and switch. It was supposed to be a CSU, and now it's gonna be something else. So my question I guess is do we have enough extra general fund to be purchasing property? And maybe that's to Mona.

Yes, CEO

Miyasato. Hi Supervisor Adam through the chair and Dr. Gluckner is here ready to speak on the project but it raised my antenna too when I saw the general fund issue and I was reminded that the general fund that's being used for this project was money that in board hearings last year The board granted $243,000 of general fund for a mental health mental health capital needs. And so that was done I think Supervisor Wolf actually made the request and the board voted for it.

So there was general fund set aside for the department to use for capital needs. And so that's what this general fund money is being used for. And I'll let Dr. Gledcorn speak to the project.

Well you know I don't even want to hear about the project frankly. It's just the idea that we're kind of getting bait and switched here it's not, you know I'm not going to argue with the beneficial nature maybe of the project at the moment because You know that's not really up for debate here. The question is do we want to take roughly half of what we stole from contingency last week and stick it in a piece of property?

And I guess my answer would be no, and I don't know how to pull this particular budget revision request procedurally out of all the rest of them and vote no on it.

So supervisor Adam to the chair just to clarify. The general fund contribution that was made and I understand your concern, the general fund that's being used by This is a budget revision request. And I don't want to discount It's just showing that monies that were spent out of one of the behavioral wellness is funds fund 43 should have been. Fund 48 should have been spent out of fund 44 so this is just a technical adjustment no new appropriation is being made.

The department can certainly come back and talk more about the use of funds for the project if that would help If you recall, on June 6th I believe the department did come with a regular board item for the consent agenda that talked about the project. But there were two actions that the department requested. One was receiving a file about the project and the second was making an appropriation of $1.1 million of grant funds they received to do the rehabilitation of this Agnes Street property.

And as you recall the item was withdrawn by the department and the reason it was withdrawn. Was because that same appropriation is being made in the recommended budget and so we didn't want to have the board double appropriate funds so that's why they withdrew that that board letter. But we can certainly come back and talk more about this project. I don't know if this particular accounting issue has to be resolved today, again this is just an accounting issue but if the larger issue is use of the property the department could certainly come back and talk about that.

And Supervisor Wolf had something to say. Supervisor Adam first though did you have any response to what CEO Miyasato had to

Well thank you for asking and I think, I have no doubt that this item would be approved or would be approved and it probably will be approved over my objection anyway. But I have no doubt that this item would be approved Had Behavioral Wellness come to us and asked us if it would be prudent to fund the purchase of a facility, yada yada. Rather than sticking it in a budget revision request. I don't like the style here and I'm sure it's probably legal.

But I don't think it's advisable because I think the department should bring the board with it or at least get direction from the board on purchases of property, particularly and maybe any other expenditure general fund before you do it. And I think the fact that we gave them money last year and they didn't spend it begs a question of don't we recapture that at some point?

And again for CEO Misato.

Mr. Gazzone had something to add.

Chair and supervisors my understanding of this item is that the authority to purchase has already provided on this item and this is actually an accounting and funding item for the board not a purchase decision which has already occurred from the board.

So may I, Supervisor Wolf?

Yeah well Ms. Glaghorn is here so if she wants to make a comment then I can say something after.

Certainly thank you. So this item has come before the board a number of times but it's come in different ways because of the way the state gave permission or denied permission for the use of funds so the original purchase of that particular building and the project itself came through as grant funding Several years ago, we went ahead and purchased the building with the idea that we were going to open a crisis stabilization unit there.

Upon purchasing that and looking further into what we were going to be able to develop on that site And the funds that would be needed to support that project on an ongoing basis, it was determined that it wasn't sustainable to open a CSU there. We requested to the state that we use the funds instead to do crisis services still but more residential services and the state at that point denied the request and rescinded the grant funding that we had received which meant we no longer could use that money to fund that purchase.

In a separate project which also came before the board, we applied for a separate fund of $1.1 million to build a crisis residential. Those funds were approved by the state and came before the board as an accept and expend and we sought to build that facility Eventually we determined that the area that we wanted to build that in, we couldn't find any appropriate properties. We worked closely with general services and the time to allocate that money to a specific project was running out so we requested to the state if we could move the project into the facility that we had already acquired and they gave permission for that. At that point we realized that since we were producing a residential property That we had funds allocated from the board last year, actually still this fiscal year for the next couple of weeks.

For that purpose that we'd been instructed to seek things that might have to go in a quicker sequence by the board during budget hearings. So we lined the dots up. I don't feel that this, as you say Supervisor Adams is a bait and switch as much as a sequential change in plans with interventions from the state. At this point we're lining these funds up and are requesting to shift them from one fund to another so we can pursue the finalization of the project but we're happy to come back and go through exactly what happened when. I think we have had consent from the board For purchase, for accept of state funds and utilization for these purposes.

But if we want to go through the exact sequence of events, we can come back in more detail at another time if you would prefer.

Supervisor Adam does that satisfy you?

Well my objection is procedural. I don't think it should be handled like this through a budget revision request. So that's my problem here, is I think you should have an A agenda item at the very least, maybe a D and I do think that this was purchased for a purpose and I don't believe that the board, and maybe I'm mistaken but I don' believe that the board approved a change of purpose And maybe I'm unclear, it's the fact that it says General Fund Contribution on it. That confuses me because if this is somebody else's money that we're applying to a purpose, I don't understand how it got to be a general fund contribution. So on that basis, I'm just going to object today and you guys can probably approve it and we'll be on down the road.

Supervisor Wolk? Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Dr. Gladcorn and Ms. Miyasato I just want to say that when that money was allocated last year in budget it was specifically for capital so in my mind the way I look at this is that this is an amazing opportunity for us to do what we have been talking about for so long And that is to provide residential behavioral wellness services. Residential, we have it in the South County and it's proved to be a great step down and sometimes not even a step up because of the treatment that's been provided. So I think to have another facility like this in Santa Maria will be great.

As Mr. Gazzone said I think a technical accounting move of money but it was definitely something that I've been aware of and very supportive of so if we need to just take this one item separately because it sounds like Mr. Adam may want to vote no on it, I would say that I will move budget revision 0005063 on page 12 of 25.

And may I have a second and then Supervisor Lavanino? I'll

second and then I had a question too is that, and I'm totally supportive of the plan and Dr. Glakehorn has been communicating with me and I appreciate being up to speed on this. The question though that Supervisor Adams raises is a good one in that why is it labeled, the only concern I have is that it's labeled as general fund when really we took it out of the general fund last year I thought and moved the 243 over to mental health capital.

Or should have been it seems in a different account.

We have a motion and a

second.

We have a motion and a second. Motion carries. Mister Lavendino. Mister Williams. Miss Hartman I asked for one

that takes us then to a 32 would you read it out into the record?

Chairman members of the board. I mean, 32 some planning and development consider recommendation during cannabis land use ordinance project amendment for services with Amy Foster Wheeler environmental

Full well that our ad hoc committee has been working on this process. But you know when I saw this on the agenda it was, it took me aback I would say because we're moving forward with an environmental review contract that It seems a bit out of sequence to me. You know, when I look back at some of our other ordinances and then subsequent EIRs it seems like it follows that pattern that we have public input. We have staff direct and look at an ordinance and then it may go to the planning commission to the board and to the public and then we have an EIR process. This seems like it's backwards, you know I think just reading from the AMEC proposal there are certain things in here that are concerning to me and things that they're going to be looking at my point is It's very, it's an unusual approach for an environmental document to study something when there is no project.

And you know what AMIC says is that they are going to be looking at some of the cultivators that are in the registry Maybe that was the point of the registry, is to have something to study from. But those registries, again I don't even know what the purpose of them really is other than just say that they're cultivating. But that may not be all of the cultivators.

So I have real concerns with this process, and it was something that I brought up before that I wanted a report back to the board. And I know it's coming back in July but this is already going to happen before we even have the report back from the ad hoc committee. There's also some information about taxation. Again, it seems like that should come to the board for discussion.

So this just seems like we're putting the cart before the horse and I am at a loss as to why were doing it this way. This seems something that I've never seen before. So unless someone can tell me why and convince me, I'm going to have to vote against moving forward with this contract. Thank you Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, Supervisor Wolf. Yeah this is an unconventional project in the sense that we have a couple things going on first off we have a very accelerated timeline as some of you are probably already aware the state is in the process of drafting a number of state regulations that will go into effect the first of next year so our goal is to try to get our regulations in effect as close to the time at which they're gonna roll out their regulations to the degree possible There's another thing that's interesting about this project, and that is because the state regulations are still in their draft form and they're still in flux. We don't really have a good regulatory system in place currently by the state such that we can just kind of pluck that from the state put it in an ordinance to flesh out the project description more fully.

So what we have to do is a number of tasks concurrently with one another once again to meet the timing and knowing that things are in flux so on the project description admittedly is not as We have a lot of information that we can share with you. It's not as detailed as we typically would like it to be at this point, however, Supervisor Wolf a follow-up.

Or

did you have a follow-up question? Yeah, I guess a comment and that this is an unconventional project in that we have some really tight timelines. And I understand that and appreciate you bringing it up but I recall when this, I think it was the city of Santa Barbara was moving through their process to get some of their documents in line and they were going to move forward with a tax proposal. I had contacted staff and saying, why aren't we moving forward and doing some of these things? Which we didn't do. So here we are, apparently this is very time sensitive. But just for me as far as process goes, and I'm looking at you but I know this is not your deal. Well it is your deal but there's a lot of people who are involved in this. But I just feel very uncomfortable moving forward especially in a CEQA document doing something that is really in effect being rushed and I don't know what the implications, I worry about the implications of that.

And that's really the reason why I can't support moving forward on this right now. Thank you Madam Chair.

Madam Chair?

Yes, Supervisor Adam and then Supervisor Lavanino.

Yeah, I was just going to say if this were a private project This approach wouldn't work because don't you have to have a project description?

Mr. Cassoni

Chairman and supervisors. I think the plan from planning on this is to allow the vendor If this is approved to begin the background work and then to provide that stable project description Slightly downstream, and that's the way the project proposal or project understanding is stated So that supervisor Adam is correct that you need a stable project description before completing the environmental document and circulating it But approving this today would be a policy choice to allow the background work to begin

We're one of the few counties that's even doing an EIR and we might be the only one. Most people are just moving forward without any environmental review whatsoever, so although we are in a crunched time frame I think others have taken the route Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the public. We aren't actually going also in the fact that we aren't actually going to go to what we had originally thought and I guess we'll talk about more of this on July 11th but you know, we're not going to the ballot in November. We're not gonna go until June so it does give us a little bit more time frame but I'll move 832.

Mr. Bosanich did you have anything you wanted to add?

Chair Hartman, members of the board I would just affirm what Supervisor Lavagnino just shared in terms of the practice in many other municipalities around the state of California and local governments have been taking a variety of approaches to their environmental review processes including the use of mitigated negative declarations and out-and-out exemptions from environmental review.

That just this past week, the state of California released its draft EIR on cannabis licensing activities across the state. Obviously it's an important document that's under review by our planning and development staff as well as our usual department review process. And those comments will be coming back within the 45 day time limit as allowed on that draft EIR.

While it's not a local document, I think it does show the importance and the alignment of our strategy to use the environmental review process as a critical component in forming the impacts of any cannabis regulations done in Santa Barbara County.

Supervisor Williams and then Supervisor Wolff.

So the disadvantage of doing an EIR at all and the reason why all these counties are moving forward is because they're experiencing some of the same challenges we are, which is that it is unclear who to enforce against and who not to. And the purpose of an ordinance as it was articulated and as we voted on was I want to start by saying thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Also able to extract revenue from the ones who are. And both of those are really important and the reason why this process is being done the way it is, is to make sure that this process goes as fast as possible Given our recognized need to protect ourselves legally by doing an EIR. And you know I can tell you the people of Carpinteria don't want to wait for things to change they they want it to happen as soon as possible and and I think that's where some of the biggest I think conflicts are happening between neighbors and marijuana. And they want there to be rules, and they want us to be able to require odor control devices. We can't do that until we have a permitting structure done. So this is meaning that we can move with alacrity, and it's important that we do so.

Supervisor Wolf? Thank you Madam Chair and I understand the community concerns. I would imagine that even doing a negative deck, that is part of the CEQA review process is it not Mr. Dennis?

Chair Hartman, Supervisor Wolf I would defer to my planning or my legal counsel in terms of. I believe that's true but I am certainly not

a CEQA expert. And it is probably based on some type of ordinance that is already in place. My point is this feels backwards. And I understand again neighborhood concerns because certainly they've been expressed in my district as well. I just want to make sure that this process is done correctly and That's basically my bottom line and I'm concerned that we're in. We're moving in such lightning speed that we're not we're not following the proper process but that's my opinion. But it seems like from staff at this I think the words were that this is unconventional which I would definitely agree with.

I had a question for someone and that is do we have any sense of when we would have a project description.

Yes Madam Chair, our anticipation is roughly within the month of July we'll have a much more solidified project description. Once again we need to let the state get far enough along such that we feel confident that there aren't going to be any dramatic changes in what they're proposing that would have an effect on whatever we're evaluating at that point in time but we're looking at sometime in July

Good so it's not that far down and from my perspective there is a great deal of background work no matter what the ultimate project description turns out to be. So I would be in favor. So can we have a motion?

I'll move a 32

roll call vote Ms. Wolfe No Mr. Adam

No

Mr Lavinino Mr. Williams Ms. Harp Aye Passes 3-2

Did we have a public request to pull item 41?

I had requests from the public on A-77.

Thank you. Yeah thank you Madam Chair I just get my notes together the reason I pulled this is that I just wanted to hear confirmation from staff that this doesn't conflict with the earlier item. I think it was a 44 on Tahequis so I have a feeling that we're OK. We just like verbal confirmation.

Chair Hartman, Supervisor Wolf. These are two completely separate items the Barone Restoration Project had to do with the impacts that were created during the Tahecus landfill expansion of 2002 and so these are these are requirements of that project.

Thank You Mr.

Slate thank you madam chair okay turning to a 77

Chair Harvey members of word item a 77 from planning and development this is the Senate hearing for July 11th 2017 to consider the appeal filed by the Rancho La Laguna LLC and La Laguna ranch company with Planning Commission's May 31 2017 denial of the Rancho la Laguna track map in state small water system project.

And we had a public speaker on this one, right?

Ms. Petrovich? Yes. We have Susan Petrovic

Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Susan Petrovich with the law firm of Brownstein High at Farber-Schreck and I'm here representing the applicants for this project. You probably have my letter June 16th. One of the applicants cannot attend the hearing on July 11 so we oppose that date and object to it. There is a due process issue here I think. This has been in the process for over 10 years, so another month doesn't seem like an unreasonable request. Both of the applicants obviously want to be present. This is also a North County item but not a single hearing so far has been in North County and they would like to have it in Santa Maria. It's much easier for both of them to get to Santa Maria.

And then finally As I mentioned, there was an offer of a waiver. Of course that's solely for this continuance but more particularly the government code section. This is where we're baffled as to why we are even here. The government code section says the time limit specified in the chapter apply to all We're going to open the hearing and close it again you still have to be prepared for eventualities.