Board of Supervisors — 2017-07-18

You.

And we're here in the county Santa Maria hearing room. Would you call the roll Mr. Allen?

Mr. Lavinino? Here. Mr. Williams? Here Ms. Wolfe? Here Mr. Adam? Here Ms. Hartman?

And turning to the minutes of July 11, 2017 may I have a motion to approve? All in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion passes and now I'd like to add an item to our agenda that was not posted and That is the discussion of the Alamo and Whittier fires. Mr. Gazzone has advised us that we can add items to the agenda in still comply with the Brown Act when it's an emergency exception and when the board votes to add the item to the agenda so may I have a motion to add this to the agenda? A second, all in favor say aye.

Any opposed? So Mr. Allen would you read that into the record?

Chair Hartman, members of the board. This is an item from the County Executive Office in the Office of Emergency Management and it's to receive an update on the Alamo and Whittier fires by our Chief Peterson to adopt a resolution ratifying the proclamation of local emergency direct OEM to return monthly for the re-ratification of the emergency until such time as the response and recovery conditions dictate otherwise and to approve the CEQA action

Petersen is in Santa Barbara and will be giving an update from there.

So we have an audio issue in Santa Barbara so the chief may not be able to hear us. So maybe give us just a second here. Okay I think we're ready to go. Chief Peterson, are you there in Santa Barbara?

Chief Peterson is here.

Good morning.

Good morning Chair Hartman and board members. Eric Peterson Fire Chief here this morning with an update on our fire activity in our county and I'm also here with our Operations Chief Woody Enos. I want to start with the Alamo Fire and are you looking at the Alamo Fire perimeter map up there?

Right now we're looking at you, but we can switch.

Okay I just want to make sure I'm referencing the right map. The Alamo fire is now 100% contained it's at 28,700 acres we had one residential structure destroyed unfortunately one damaged and 13 outbuildings destroyed by the fire last night I heard that there were 30 acres of vineyards also lost It's a remote area, as you know. There were significant values at risk. We were worried about power lines, vineyards, grazing lands were of concern on top of the obvious residential and life loss potential.

We had quite a lot of grass consumed by the fire in grazing lands which will require supplemental feed to be brought in for livestock or actual moving the livestock. Just information, we had fixed-wing tankers dropped over 250,000 gallons of retardant on the fire at a cost of just over $1 million. And helicopters dropped over 800,000 gallons of water at a total cost of one and a half million dollars. And the estimated total cost of the fire now stands at just short of 20 million dollars.

But overall, a very good firefighting effort. We had no injuries to the public. A very successful evacuation thanks to the Sheriff's Department and Search and Rescue. And 20 minor injuries to firefighters mostly heat related. There is a fire progression map of the Alamo Fire there it is. I think its just an interesting frame of reference. The light green area there shows the third night and the incredible I'm And there's the perimeter map for that.

The Whittier Fire is, Woody and I just came from their briefing, it's now just over 18,000 acres and this morning they're calling it 62% contained. We are now pretty optimistic that we've seen the worst of this fire. Temperatures are down today, humidity is up which is going to give us an opportunity to get inside the perimeter of that fire and go direct with crews and equipment. Highway 154 is open and I understand Sheriff Brown is up there with you to give you an update on evacuation progress so I'll stay away from that for now.

Yesterday you may have seen the Director of CAL FIRE Chief Ken Pimlott And United States Forest Service Regional Forester, Randy Moore and Regional Fire Director Bob Baird visited our county personally to inspect the fire and just sort of weigh in. They had a small press conference. I just want to say that our county has received incredible support from our partners at CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service. Couldn't be happier with the support that we've been getting.

So for now there's a lot of fire inside the line but the perimeters of the fire are looking significantly better. This morning, the east side of the line which was Division Bravo was shown as all black so all that red fire activity that we saw that you can still see up there that's a little bit of an older map I think that was yesterday's that's all tied in with black they've got crews that have connected Those two black areas from West Camino Cielo down to 154 so really good progress there.

And as I said, there will be fire in the line we're going to continue to get calls on it but generally speaking the fires looking really good. I wanted to show you a couple of infrared maps if you can see them. There's a before that was taken about a week ago There's that. That was just a couple of days into the fire. The aircraft that takes these pictures or gets this information flies out of Boise, Idaho and it's owned by the federal government and it flies over all of the activity, fire activity in the country Every night. And so it's really a helpful tool and this technology has come really a long way in the last few years, so what this shows is how active the fire was during the first few days of the fire and if you go to the next map It shows where we are now.

So, we're still seeing the perimeter of the fire in red but it's you can show that as black but you can see that there's the really active fire activity is now behind us this is really helpful for firefighter safety because it allows us to put crews in areas and be sure that we don't have fire underneath them and unburnt fuel beneath crews with fire underneath it that can, you know, conceivably burn them out. So it's a very very helpful tool You may have seen yesterday we had a fire on Zaca Station Road. Yesterday, we were fortunate to be able to divert some aircraft off of the Whittier Fire and help ground crews put a fairly quick stop to that fire.

I think it's now at 50 acres right around there. They'll be mopping up there for a day or so, but we were able to make fairly quick work of that fire. All of our stations are fully staffed. Your county firefighters have performed extremely well on this fire and finally I think it just goes without saying but I think we all need to just buckle up for a busy fire season. We're still early in the season and you know fire activity is Is showing us that it could very well be very busy and with that either myself or Chief Enos can answer any questions you might have.

So are there any questions board members have for Chief Peterson before we have Sheriff Brown come up? Supervisor Williams

Well, first I just want to thank you Chief on behalf of all of the men and women of your organization. Want to give you thanks. I've been very impressed by the professionalism and really the passion of the people on the line. They really, really, want to prevent loss of life and property that occurs. I won't even, one of the things I've heard from people isn't even, I wouldn't even say it rises to a complaint because they're so thankful of what your folks are doing but Most people are not used to retaining information from topographical maps.

And something I heard more than once is we usually convey information on topographical maps with reference points that Thank you. You know most people could recognize and and I think that just might help people understand because there's just so many people it goes one way or another where people either are all alarmed even ones that don't need to be. People aren't alarmed enough when they see really good weather.

Maybe late last week falls into that category, and they think the fire is over and then they're surprised all of a sudden when we issue more evacuation warnings. So just a suggestion for the next go around but everything I think has been working tremendously well and just want to thank you for your work.

Supervisor Lavanino. Thank you

Madam Chair, I would echo the thank you. I think we all spent time out on the line and saw the men and women out there working hard. The question I have is You know, what I'm hearing from quite a few folks is the question about what is our policy regarding controlled burns and why do we always seem to be finding ourselves in a position that we're fighting fires and putting people in danger when we're fighting blazes that are burning fuel that hasn't been burned in 50 or 60 years.

And the question I'm getting is why aren't Actively dealing with this on our terms instead of when a fire comes along. So if you could address that and I think it's something we should discuss at a later time Policy-wise, I don't remember bringing since I've been on the board talking about it too much So it'd be interesting to have that discussion later, but um if you could talk about controlled burns that would help

Sure well as you mentioned it is it is a big subject in it and it does require I think its own Meeting and focus, but I think it's safe to say that we would love to be able to do more controlled burns. We'd love to be able to do more aggressive fuel treatments in some areas. There are a lot of moving parts to it. Some of these fuel beds are so old and so deep now that once you light them on fire, it's really difficult to put them out. So that's one concern. You want to make sure that you can actively maintain what it is that you let loose up there.

There are air quality issues that need to be taken into consideration, there are the issues of dealing with ranchers and fence lines and cattle getting loose. There are a lot of moving parts but I completely agree with you that we would be well served by a more aggressive approach to control burns in this county. It's not for lack of trying, and I think that this whole episode this year has provided ample evidence that we could probably be well served by doing more of that.

Generally speaking, I look forward to addressing that issue as we come back. There are environmental issues, of course, that we have to address before we do those things but it is It's something that we definitely need to focus on more.

Okay, well I don't know what the other board members feel like but I would appreciate bringing this back once we get through this season and start discussing what our policy is right now. How we can take a look at listening to some of the constituents' concerns and opening it up to the public and weighing in and coming up with something that's sound on both sides and balanced but puts us in a position where we're dealing with this on our terms.

Supervisor

Adams.

Go ahead Chief Peterson.

Oh I just, I was sent a picture to this issue. I was sent a picture by one of our division supervisors, the battalion chief up in the Fufio area that shows this fire, the Whittier Fire burning into what was the Sherpa Fire and it almost serves as an advertisement for controlled burns because you know as you might expect the fire as it burns into that old burn scar essentially just goes out so to that point

Supervisor Adam.

Yeah and as I recall the Ray fire hit the Zaka fire put that out right?

That's correct

yeah so

it was a major factor in putting that fire out

Yeah

so

you know I've been talking about this with you for a long time and I look forward to working on it in the future. And I hope that you guys will bring a D item back because the right time of year to do this is in the fall and after you get a couple inches of rain, and so if we get on it right now we might be able to get some good done before it rains too much and then stuff won't burn. But then it doesn't get out of control and gets so hot that it just burns everything all the way into the ground and kills all the seed in the top layer. When it burns as hot as it's burning out there right now, you're killing a lot of the seed. Stuff will come back. There's stuff down deeper.

But it's not the same as if you have kind of a cool burn on top of it and then you get a little bit of rain on top of that. And you've got everything set up to just grow back right away. So I look forward to getting something done this fall, if we can.

Chief Peterson what happens now? We tend to think that once the fires are out that you're done but there's quite a bit of follow-up am I correct?

That's correct, there will be a lot of rehab after this fires out. We'll be working with the federal government and US Forest Service to address obviously spots inside the line but we are going to be concerned about I'm with the federal government on what we do about that slope. If we get significant rain next year, you can imagine the impact that might have on Highway 154 but you can also imagine the huge amount of silt that potentially could wash into Cochuma Lake and lessen the containment capacity of that lake.

There's a lot of work ahead of us well after this fire is out.

Supervisor Wolf and then Supervisor Adam. Thank you Madam Chair, Chief Peterson I want to express my appreciation to you and all the other firefighters who worked on this you know other local firefighters state and national folks one of the things that I had an opportunity to speak with you yesterday was After seeing everything that we've gone through from Zaka to where we are today the fire science that's being used by you and the other professionals on the line I think is stunning. And now also seeing these infrared maps, I don't recall that those were maybe they weren't I just don't remember but I think they were available back with Zaka but I can see how you know with technology and like I said fire science it's so important on the actions that you take.

And I think that goes a long way having pros on the line, so I just want to thank you for that. It seems to me that we also were, you know luck had something to do with how where we are right now with the Whittier fire and that we didn't see extensive sundown or winds. And we had that cool onshore flow coming on. So you know it seems like it could have been much worse. Sometimes when those sundowners come there is nothing that can necessarily prevent it from moving down slope so I think everything combined, your talent and weather and everything we've seen a positive outcome and I appreciate you also talking about the future that Just starting fire season. But as we learned from the T fire it's almost year round is fire season and but I think everyone everyone is on alert and I guess the other just my final point before we hear from Sheriff Brown, I think the evacuations was a really important part of the success of Making sure that we didn't have injuries or loss of life.

And to all of our community members who heeded the warnings and the orders I want to express appreciation to all of them because it made your job easier. So anyway with that Madam Chair my sincere appreciation to all the pros out there. Supervisor Adam.

Thank you. Yeah I was just going to ask you if you recall that there was a group of ranchers that were trying to have a control burn on the west side of the Tepeskay area for the last couple of years and they couldn't get that done. Do you know anything about that?

I not enough to speak to it right now, but I will definitely circle back with my vegetation management people. I'm sure they're well aware of whatever effort was underway

because that would have helped significantly in terms of having a place to stop that fire when it got to the backside of the tip skate area and threatened all those homes and whatnot

I see no more questions. Chief Peterson, but I just would like to add my gratitude and I had an opportunity you got me on the helicopter to overfly the area and had an opportunity to see it as I've never seen it before and how fire behaves How many contractors come from throughout California and throughout the country. That was also something very interesting to me that the bulldozer operators in the helicopter operators and how everybody joins as a team that to me is incredible.

Thank you very much. So with that I think we'll have Chief Sheriff Brown come up

He's been a chief before, so he answers to

that too. Thank you Madam Chair and members of the board for the opportunity to brief you on the evacuation situation. As you're aware, the Whittier Fire broke out on Saturday the 8th at about 142 in the afternoon at the same time that the Alamo fire was burning and this fast-moving fire caused the immediate closure of Highway 154 From Armor Ranch Road in the San Ynez Valley to Foothill Road along the Santa Barbara Front Country.

And due to the fast moving nature of the fire, the West Camino Cielo road community was also placed under a mandatory evacuation order status. And the Sheriff's Office, along with members of the Sheriff's Search and Rescue Team conducted evacuations of those areas that were placed under mandatory evacuation orders. And as you heard previously participated in the rescue of 83 children and camp counselors that were trapped at the Circle V Camp.

Throughout the following days, the Sheriff's Office was asked to have roaming fire patrols to patrol the evacuated areas of the fire zone. To staff the EOC on a 24-hour basis and to staff the law enforcement liaison position at the incident command post also 24 hours a day. Also due to staffing issues with the highway patrol, the Sheriff's Office was asked to provide security at several of the road closure points as well.

On the 14th of July, in conjunction with the incident command and due to expected fire behavior a large area in the front country was placed under an additional mandatory evacuation order status. This new area included the area of Winchester Canyon Road west to El Capitan Ranch Road excluding the Winchester Commons and the enclave of Wagon Wheel and Langlow Ranch Road Expanding this area of responsibility for the Sheriff's Office required additional staffing and patrols to secure this new area.

On Monday, the 17th, the areas west of Highway 154 were removed from mandatory evacuation orders and residents were allowed to return to their homes. While Lake Kachuma Park is still closed to the public that status is currently being evaluated To date, there have been approximately 100 sheriff's personnel utilized in the various positions relating to this incident and approximately 60 search-and-rescue personnel. And that includes 20 personnel who came to us from Ventura County who responded on a mutual aid request.

It's anticipated that all of the remaining evacuation orders are going to be lifted shortly, with the exception of the West Camino Cielo area west of the Winchester Gun Club. As a result of our evacuation orders we contacted approximately 663 different phone numbers with our reverse 911 system and we evacuated approximately 5,000 people The vast majority of those who were evacuated were campers and visitors to the Lake Kachuma and Paradise Road campgrounds.

Our air support unit flew multiple sorties, both an initial attack and a firefighting role, and then they switched to a 24-hour rescue airship role that they currently continue to do. We did receive some complaints from some of the homeowners who were concerned about not having enough roadblocks and enough roving patrols in the fire areas. They feared that the staffing wasn't sufficient to secure their residences, we did provide to the extent that we could based on our staffing levels and also Other demands are regular patrol coverage and the fact that we had two fires going simultaneously, a very unusual occurrence obviously.

And then we also had two other large events, the St. Joseph's Festival in Carpinteria and the Santa Maria County Fair going on at the same time. I do want to single out several people for the tremendous job that they've done. The three in particular I'd like to mention are Commander Kelly Moore, Lieutenant Sean O'Grady and Sergeant Jeff Green. They have been people who have been detailed to work more or less continuously on these fires since they have occurred. And in addition to that obviously there's the large number of deputy sheriffs, our search and rescue personnel and our dispatchers. All of them have done a magnificent job as have all of the first responders who have worked on this fire and it's really a pleasure to be able to see the teamwork come into play and to see our mutual aid system in California which really is the best in the world Really come together and see all of the resources that we were able to get from outside of our county to come and assist us.

One, and I also wanted to shout out to not only the fire service but also to the contractors as you mentioned as well who are putting their lives on the line as well in attacking these fires. And I'll leave you with this thought, I don't know how I got so lucky but during the terms of my two predecessors which totaled 16 years there was one major fire in Santa Barbara County.

In the ten and a half years that I've been here during that time we've had 11 major fires that I've been able to count plus a host of other smaller vegetation fires. So is it your

fault? Is

it your fault? I don't know how I got so lucky but I do want to say this obviously The more we have the better I think we get at working together with fire authorities and again just want to say a great job to everybody that was concerned.

Supervisor Wolf. Thank you Madam Chair, interesting that you said that because our terms have been the same so I too have experienced just what you mentioned. You know I see our probation department staff here interim chief. Taylor and I want to make a shout out to probation for ensuring that our kids from Los Prados were safely evacuated. And as I understand they have returned back to camp yesterday so kudos to all of you And of course the work that Sheriff that you and the others did at the other campsite. You know we listened to the heroics of all the individuals who saved those children and camp counselors. It was an amazing story and I just want to express my appreciation for all that you and your staff and associated agencies have done.

Thank you. Supervisor Williams.

I just wanted to thank you and your men and women of the force. I know that it's long hours and of course it should provide us in the undersheriff and you with even more urgency to try to overhire some more folks but just want to thank you and your folks for their work

I don't see any more lights up here. I did want to add one more thank you and that is to Matt Pontus our assistant CEO who has been acting manager of our office of emergency management, he's a former federal firefighter and every time I was there he was there day and night and I think CEO Miyasato has more to add here.

And if you wouldn't mind, I'd actually like Matt to come up. So as you know Rob Lewin is our Office of Emergency Manager and he had to leave in the middle of this event. Matt Pontus served as the emergency, the EOC director which is actually the CEO's role or delegate. Matt was there the whole week And not able to see his family for a whole week. And I just want to remind the board there's a whole contingent of your departments and your staff who actually are working in the EOC during an emergency, who come in at night, who come in during weekends, who aren't able to see their families, who gave up birthday parties and other things to be there to support the incident. And I wanted Matt just to say a few words if he could about that effort.

And think Sheriff Brown had something he wanted to add first.

Before I relinquish the podium here to Matt Uh, Mona actually beat me to the punch on part of what I wanted to say was to thank the other county departments as well for the tremendous work. But I also want to thank the board for the great support that you provided. Chair Hartman out and show her the fire area. I know Supervisor Adam was out looking at the fire area in the Alamo Fire, Supervisor Wolf. All the supervisors have been tremendous in terms of showing that they're they have a tremendous amount of not only interest but support for the people that are on the front line it means a lot to us and we appreciate it thank you

Madam Chairman, thank you for bringing me up today as well, CEO Miyasato. So coming into this incident it was really Director Lewin that set us up, set us on the right path and got the OEM team engaged. We have Elsa and Jeff and Brian Ryan and Casey that kind of gelled together and pulled the team together. Our Gina DiPinto. Ran the JIC out there and really through staff training with all the county departments.

And partnerships we work together to make things happen, and it really was under the auspices of the Orfalea Foundation. That really helped us fund the EOC, that it be a community EOC. And that includes all of our partnerships out there with universities, the utilities, Red Cross and everyone that we had out there working together. We had a big effort on this incident to translate into Spanish for our Spanish speaking members of the community and just a really good well run event out there with everybody working together.

So I just want to say also a special thanks to CAL FIRE team and the federal team that managed the incidents and kept information coming back and forth to us so that we could do what we needed to do out there. And that's it, thank you.

Thank you were there any questions for Mr. Pontus? CEO Miyasato

Just one quick shout-out now to the City of Goleta they actually helped us and they had staff in there the whole time Ann Wells was incredible she probably lived at the EOC during the whole event so thank you to the city of Goleta

And CEO Miyasato did you want to add any more about the proclamation.

Thank you for reminding me so as you know we proclaim the local emergency on Sunday evening. The governor proclaimed shortly afterwards that afternoon, so what's on the agenda today is your board's ratification of that proclamation or else it expires in seven days and its direction for us to come back every 30 days until we believe it's no longer needed. We believe that with the Governor's proclamation there will be more opportunity for resources so we'll continue to look at that as we look at recovery.

Okay with that I see no more lights so we'll go to public comment.

Chair Hartman, members of the board we have one request to speak from Mr. Caldwell.

Chair Hartman members of the board I'm Andy Caldwell representing Colab. I want to pick up with the comments I made last week and in to try to create a paradigm shift in your mindset outlook and values you know when we had the pipeline burst at Refufio we had press conferences ordinance changes and lawsuits why because A perceived lack of management oversight and maintenance created a what some people characterized as a disaster.

Well we believe that your policies and your lack of maintenance and oversight creates these fire hazards. We believe the reason we're getting more and more fires is we're moving farther and farther away from common sense management of wild lands Your hillside policies, resource protection policies, environmental sensitive habitat overlays. Prohibitions against mechanized equipment in the forest service. The lawsuit there was a recent lawsuit when the state and the feds were talking about doing a fire break a local environmental organization sued them and stopped it.

How many animals how come we haven't done a calculation of how many animals died from the fire? Why don't we have a calculation on how much damage is going to come about as result of sediment into the watershed and damage to infrastructure including Highway 154. You have a double standard when there's an oil company to kick around, you jump all over it but when your own policies your own priorities in your own values Create widespread destruction in the ecosystem. All that you do is wring your hands in public, pat yourselves on the back saying good job putting out the fire.

I think if you were to add the number of fires and the number of acreage that's burned as Sheriff Brown said in the last 10 years we are a fire capital of the United States of America. And again your policies and those that you support at the state and federal level, why not protest outside of Supervisor Carbo, I mean Congressman Carbajal's office about forest policies?

Why not outside of Senator Hanabeth Jackson's? Why is it that the oil industry if they have a spill or do damage to the ecosystem they're considered a villain. But all these eco policies resource protection policies are still considered sancrosanct despite the tremendous damage that's happening we believe you can't have it both ways. Thank you.

That concludes public comment.

Okay Supervisor Williams.

I just would note that the state of California in the last couple years including when I was on the The budget subcommittee on natural resources has allocated increasingly more funds towards CAL FIRE for controlled burns as part of comprehensive watershed restoration, meaning they go in and do controlled burns and do larger restoration work at the same time which has much more benefits for stop-and-fire than just doing one or the other.

at once so this is definitely something that the state is moving on more often. Of course that doesn't help us necessarily because we don't have massive forests compared to the Sierra Nevada but it is a shift in policy and budgeting on the state level.

And we have one more public comment that slipped in, is that true Mr. Allen?

Yes, Chair Hartman we have one additional request from Bruce Wales to speak on this item.

Madam Chair, Board of Supervisors. Good morning my name is Bruce Wales going to speak on behalf of the Santa Nez River Water Conservation District a little later I'm going to address the matter pertaining to water wells and groundwater. I'd like to focus right now on the fact that the real problem here is surface water and fires and when reservoir capacity is gone it's gone And Gibraltar Reservoir is for the most part gone.

And what people don't realize is that it really isn't gone because there's an agreement between water agencies to give the city a virtual reservoir of 8700 acre feet, much of that water being delivered through Kachoma so Kachoma becomes even more important And I want to support the board. I want to support Supervisor Labanino's comments about control burns. We need a systematic program working with the county and water districts for control burns to protect the capacity of Kachuma.

You know we have short stream high slope south coast burned out essentially completely If the fire had covered the San Rafael's with the big tributaries in the Kachuma we would have had a real problem. And again when it's gone it's gone so I think it's very well served that this board productively and progressively face that issue thanks very much.

So that was our final public comment and so I bring this back to the board and we need a motion to receive and file the report and ratify the declaration. I

will move that we ratify the declaration of emergency and receive and file the report.

And is there any further discussion? Supervisor Lavanino.

I think with what we've heard today and I'm not sure if there's a consensus on the board but I think it would be wise to schedule a D item in the near future so that we can get to this sometime in the fall to discuss our policies regarding control burns.

And if I might just ask that it be broadened to vegetation fuel management

as well. Sure, whole thing.

And Supervisor Wolf. No I was

just going to vote on the motion.

Oh OK so we have a motion is second and some direction to staff. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. So we're turning now to our administrative agenda. We have just one honorary resolution to be presented today that is A23 may I have a motion to approve.

So moved.

A second all in favor say aye.

Aye.

No opposed Mr. Allen would you read that into the record?

Chair Hartman members of the board we have one resolution to present today this is a resolution proclaiming July 16th through 22nd 2017 as pretrial probation and parole supervision week and Beverly Taylor is here I think Some of her hard-working staff and they'll come on up to the podium and I will read the resolution into the record. Whereas during the week of July 16 through 22, 2017 probation parole community supervision officers criminal justice and juvenile justice professionals in communities across America will join to celebrate pretrial probation and parole supervision week Whereas the probation department today consists of over 320 dedicated professionals working collaboratively with other agencies and community partners to deliver evidence-based programs to adult and juvenile offenders while focusing on the enhancement of safety, reduction of recidivism, protection of and compensation of victims And the promotion of crime prevention services, intervention, rehabilitation and restorative justice principles.

And whereas probation officers and juvenile institution officers provide an efficient and cost effective use of public resources by supervising nearly 3.8 million adult probationers and approximately 350,000 juvenile offenders nationally. And within Santa Barbara County locally supervising approximately 4400 adult offenders And about 630 juvenile offenders managing approximately 800 cases in the intake process at any given time.

And whereas during the department's 108 years of service, probation's role has evolved dramatically and the department serves as an integral partner in law enforcement and criminal justice in our local law enforcement and criminal justice system. The Probation Department staff possesses and displays a high degree of professionalism, commitment and pride in the work they perform for And the institutions and the communities served in each regional location while striving to guide and direct offenders to become productive and successful citizens.

Whereas, Santa Barbara County Probation Officers and Juvenile Institution Officers dedicate their lives to offender rehabilitation and community safety in order to improve the quality of life for all our citizens. Now, therefore it be hereby ordered and resolved that the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara and the State of California hereby proclaims the week of July 16 through 22nd 2017 as Pre-Trial Probation and Parole Supervision Week and recognizes those officers for their significant contributions to making Santa Barbara County a safer place to live. Passed and adopted today.

Good morning Chair Hartman supervisors CEO Miyasato. I want to thank you for your recognizing our officers for pretrial probation parole supervision week and additionally we appreciate your ongoing support for operations and our personnel to highlight both. I've invited three officers Ashley Cabral Patrick Kiesling and Rose Zamora to briefly share with you a day in their life

Oh I'm sorry.

It happens a lot.

Thank you. Good morning Chair Hartman and Board of Supervisors, I am Senior Deputy Probation Officer Ashley Cabral and I am currently assigned to the Los Prietos Boys Camp. There are 75 juvenile institutions officers assigned to the juvenile hall in camp. Although their primary assignment is the care and custody of the youth, the officers often assume the role of counselor and mentor and they do so with dedication and pride.

The goal for the hall and camp is to provide youth with life skills and resources that will help them make better life choices. Recently, the juvenile hall has adopted incentive-based programming. This focus offers youth incentives for displaying appropriate and expected behaviors. Overall the environment is more positive and there has been a reduction in negative behavior.

At camp, the youth are provided with unique incentives. Most recently 12 youth attended a Dodger game and were seated in a catered suite. Community members often request work crews for various community events during the 2016-2017 fiscal year The youth performed 4,252 community service hours including maintaining defensible space with US Forestry. Additionally with our focus on education we are proud to report that five youth graduated from high school while in custody at the Santa Maria Juvenile Hall and six graduated while completing camp commitments during the 2016-2017 fiscal year Many of the youth also participate in regional occupational program courses including culinary arts, small engine repair and paint and auto body to help them learn valuable job skills while earning high school credits.

We work diligently to provide the youth guidance and accountability to assist them as they transition out of our custody. I am thankful to be a part of such a dedicated team and it was an honor to share some highlights with you today.

Good morning Chair Hartman and Board Members. My name is Patrick Kiesling, Juvenile Institutions Officer. I'm one of the three JOs to have a unique opportunity of Community Transition Officer. We split our time working in the community at the Los Perros Boys Camp. We are assigned certain youth at camp and we work with their families in their homes. It is unique because JO's work with youth either in the juvenile hall or at camp but We get a window into their lives at home.

Knowing their families and home environment helps to better understand, engage and motivate these young men while they're at camp. It helps to more successfully assist in their transition back home. Another powerful connection is the regular contact with the youth assigned probation officer. I can offer real-time information on the youth's progress at camp and provide family updates which assists the PO in developing a more meaningful community transition plan.