UnGovr Transcript
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 – 0:096 turns
We'll call this meeting to order. Can I get a roll call, please? Mr.
Lavinino?
Here.
Is there a CEO's report? Then we will begin our budget session. We are breaking this out today by functional group. I will be especially lenient by request on public comment, especially since the public comment period is also going to be used by department heads when appropriate.
Chair Williams, members of the board. Prior to getting started with the presentations we do have two requests to speak under general public comment and we're going to start with Ed Kolaski and then hear from Andy Caldwell.
Thank you. Good morning. We've been trying to remodel our house for the last four years. The Board of Architectural Review stated that our second story is solely over the garage, when you can clearly see it's over the garage, the kitchen, the dining room, the laundry room and part of the living room. But they're ruling therefore we cannot remodel our house. It's as simple as that. We have a corrupt government in the Second District and we have to deal with it.
I call my talk today, who represents me? Clearly no one here represents me. Is this what we live for so that we can come down here and complain about a corrupt government and they can't explain this and they can't tell you why? Do they need some additional money? You know, Spiro Agnew always got a little extra under the table. Is that's what required here? This is, I'm retired now. And this is what I come down here for?
I don't come down here to berate the SBAR, as pointed out by one of the supervisors here in the second district. Why would I come down here to berate SBAR? No, I come down here because SBAR and particularly Alex Pujo is doing things that are illegal. You know when I first started this, I thought geez, the supervisor's going to be embarrassed by this. It's gonna be a shame.
Isn't there something that can be done? And why is he still at SBAR, and why is he still Chairman of the Board downstairs? Isn't it about time for some change? I've listed 14 items on this page. You want to flip to the other one there? And then 14 up there are violations of California law and federal law. You're not allowed to kick someone out of an audience.
Especially if they paid for the meeting, yet we were kicked out in 15 seconds. We weren't allowed to speak. They had somebody jump up and scream at us. We weren't even allowed to show our project. I paid for that? You guys should be ashamed! Isn't there any honesty in this? I had so many things here. Janet Wolfe stated, well berate her not SBAR. Well Janet Wolfe didn't kick us out of the meeting! She didn't tell us don't show your drawings!
She didn't tell you get out of here! We don't want to see it! It was Alex downstairs and there are numerous other things they erased the recording of the meeting They changed the minutes. In that minute of meeting, it was 15 seconds. They got a write up that's yay long about things that we never did. We never changed this they said. We added 300 square feet to a 400 square foot project. That represented no changes?
This is what you requested. And all the other four meetings, we did what they ever requested and we got a five to two vote in our favor. A straw vote. All we had to do was make it so it's not solely over the garage and we did that. And what did we get? We got kicked out of the meeting. This is disgusting! And Janet Wolfe doesn't know, and yet she's on the board here. You're going to decide budget matters for four years and 44 talks? She doesn't know what I'm talking about!
Thank you.
0:09 – 0:123 turns
Mr Caldwell.
Chair Williams, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing COLAB. I want to explain to you why over the last 20 plus years we've at least attempted to read the county budget cover-to-cover. I didn't quite make it this year because I got a little bit late but I'm still glad that I got it. Years ago when we started our organization Our number one mission was to save jobs. It was to save manufacturing and industrial jobs in this region.
I'm an example of somebody that went to college but couldn't get a job, even back in 1980, a Bachelor of Arts degrees were a dime a dozen. I applied for a county job for $13,000 a year and there's 300 applicants. And I went and got a job in manufacturing working straight graveyards making more than that. And I stayed in the industry, I ended up staying there for 11 years.
In the end, I had been promoted and I was dealing with regulatory programs as well as industrial relations for Union Sugar which had been here for 90 years. And our company was hurting for a number of reasons primarily because of a shift from ag from beets to a bunch of other crops. Anyway, I was sitting there one day interviewing somebody. I didn't speak Spanish and I was interviewing somebody for a job and we had a lot of non-English speakers because we had enough people that were bilingual I realized, I'm part of the American dream here. I'm giving this guy a job. This guy's going to go from a field to a factory, from seasonal to year-round, no benefits to benefits and we've got a bazillion people out here earning middle class income with maybe a high school education or less.
And my views started to change. Then I saw this assault coming in the form of the regulatory programs and the fees for those programs, and I came across a quote. This quote is what caused me to quit that job. I was offered a promotion from Holly Sugar and I quit it to help start a non-profit. And I've shared this quote with you before, and this quote is what I'm going to be focusing on or it's going to be the thing that I'm going to be focusing on today in the budget hearings.
The cost of preserving the high quality of life in Santa Barbara County includes limiting opportunities for others. It limits economic mobility but that is a legitimate political choice. We failed in the last 28 years that I've been doing this to stave off that crushing blow to upward mobility, to what is now a permanent urban underclass. And that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today. Thank you.
That concludes public comment. This has to stay.
0:12 – 0:192 turns
We have an introduction to the budget?
Good morning, Chair Williams and board members. So we begin this year's budget hearings with hope. We have a balanced budget. We have no layoffs this year. We continue to fund your boards commitments and priorities. We've restored fully or partially all the proposed service level reductions that the departments first proposed And Measure T has passed. But we also continue with caution and prudence.
Five months ago, we experienced the worst disaster we've seen in recent history and we're still recovering from it physically and financially. But the budget presented today is balanced and it strives to do the most important things well, given your board's priorities, policies and direction as we look to next year's budget and beyond. So before we begin these hearings I just want to first acknowledge and thank all of the departments. Thank you to you and all your fiscal officers and staff for working all year round on preparing your budget.
The auditor controller staff who assisted in putting this together, Theo Filotti, Betsy Schaefer, Kyle Slattery, Robert Geis, Wyeth Jorgensen and Erica Ruiz. And of course my own budget and research team led by Jeff Frapwell and Paul Clemente with Rachel Lipman, Richard Morgantini, A.J. Kinoveva and Wesley Welch. And of course Matt, Terry Dennis, Kathy Camagena have also lent their assistance throughout the year in my office.
So let's get started. So today's hearings are going to consist of an overview by myself, Jeff Rockwell our budget director will go into more detail on the numbers with a budget summary. Department updates will be provided as needed or requested by your board. We'll have time for your boards deliberation and decision making and then taking the recommended actions to adopt the budget and the relevant other resolutions.
This is just a reminder of our timeline. As you know, we begin really the budget development for your board's review in October. We presented a five-year forecast to you at that time based on the best estimates from our departments. We go to you in December with a review of our fiscal policies and our issues and then through the budget development process we address those issues. We had workshops in April whereby departments individually presented their proposed budgets their work plans, the proposed reductions, their challenges and the request for additional funding.
And today we have the budget hearings between the workshops and today my office has taken the board's input and the public input and put together the recommended budget which was released last month. The recommended budget before you, as I said, is balanced with operating revenues of $1.1 billion and expenditures of that amount. Again we're doing this in the context of recovering from one of our largest disasters but yet the budget still provides funding for critical initiatives and new mandates while continuing your commitments and Jeff will go into more detail on that information.
As you recall, when we did the five-year forecast, we projected a gap of 17 to 23 million dollars and that was all funds. Which is about 2% of our total budget. And since that time, we've worked with departments in balancing their budgets. In the fall, we had out of balance particularly special revenue funds and some of our public safety departments. But since that time, departments have restructured, made organizational changes, efficiencies, they've reduced where they needed to Resulting in some service level reductions. We've also seen greater revenue from the state and federal governments than we had expected, as you know the state is in surplus this year.
Some departments have had to use limited use of one time fund balance and there's also been revenue increases. And that is how we got to a balanced budget before you. As in past years, we used these guiding principles to guide us as we developed the budget. This is something that we talked about at the end of the workshops and again we've stuck to these principles in developing the recommended budget.
Key considerations, overall we continue to see expenditures outpacing revenue growth overall in the budget and Jeff will talk about that. As you know this is the first year of implementing a program for cannabis regulation in the county so the recommended budget includes expenses and revenues in that regard. We continue to recover from the disasters and that will be a multi-year process working with FEMA and our partner agencies.
We're continuing to adapt to state and federal mandates, which change yearly. We're continuing to work on a challenging situation as that is addressing the mentally ill not just in the criminal justice system but outside of the criminal justice system. And trying to make sure our technology is up-to-date to meet expectations and to ensure that we are an efficient organization.
Significant updates since the publication of the recommended budget, the governor has released May revise and voters have passed the cannabis tax ballot measure. In addition not mentioned here is that we have approved now five pension sharing agreements with our bargaining units. We still have more to do but this will help contain future pension costs and share the risk of future increases with our employees.
With challenges ahead, as new revenue becomes available we should be mindful and consider our existing needs before entertaining significant new expansions. This list is just a reminder of some of the needs we've discussed with the board in the past ranging from public safety communication needs, unfunded CIP needs, our growing maintenance, changing regulations, employee costs to stay competitive As I said before, demands to keep pace with technology and continuing threat of natural disasters.
We continue also with Renew 22. Next fiscal year will be year two of Renew 22 and we'll continue to build a better organization so that we can move, we can continue to be financially sustainable in an agile organization to address any future disasters, uncertainties, and to meet your board's highest priorities. The theme for this budget is Renewal and Resilience, and it acknowledges the need for renewal with Renew 22 and the need for resilience to maintain a viable and strong organization.
This budget attempts to make trade-offs of the short and longer term needs, better align services and costs, and take opportunities to do new ways of doing business so we can consistently do the most essential important things well. With that, I'm going to hand off now to Jeff Ratwell who will give a more detailed summary of the recommended budget.
0:19 – 0:355 turns
Chair Williams, members of the board it's my pleasure to present the budget summary for the upcoming fiscal year. As we look at our hearings going forward there are the first four bullet points in the agenda are the material that I will cover initially and then we'll have time for the functional group summaries and department presentations if your board requests or there is need.
Then we'll look at the closing, the financial challenges ahead reiterate those movement Excuse me, move into board deliberations and recommended actions. Let me just summarize quickly what you have in front of you in your board hearing materials binder. And all this material is also available on the web as well. But in tabs one, you have our board letter and hearing schedule to the board inquiry forms. These are inquiries that your board has made to us with respect to the recommended budget. We've attempted to respond to those.
Incorporated in tab two are also some board inquiry forms left over from the workshops. Those have been incorporated in this binder as well. Tabs three and four really are the adjustments, as well as the different schedules prior adopted expansions, as well as the final board adjustments attachment E. Tab five is a summary of the ongoing grants and ongoing contracts for your board's consideration.
Tab six, the budget resolution, salary resolution as well as the position allocation changes that have taken place during the current fiscal year. In tab eight we have our resolutions and board letter related to the successor agency for the former Isla Vista RDA. And then finally, in tab 9 we have the budget summary and overview that we're going over currently. And tabs 10 to 32 are the departmental specific presentation materials.
Mr Chair? Mr. Frapp, we got a new addition to our binder for attachment F that was the one with all of the employees listed and it was difficult to see what the difference was in going through it can you just point out what the new information You can let us know.
Supervisor Wolf to the Chair, it was the only revision there was within the Sheriff's Department there is a need to move the pilot position and that's all the only change. There's no net budgetary impact for that.
Okay thank you very much
The recommended budget in a quick summary is, as Mona mentioned, a balanced budget. We have $1 million 101.7 and operating revenues 1103.9 as our expenses. The 2.2 is our net operating impact. These are funds that essentially received in the current year that were not spent will roll over into next fiscal year. Our staffing has increased to 4,167 positions, FTEs in the budget.
As one mentioned there are some key updates that are incorporated in the budget since workshop. We have, the governor did release his May revise and it's also been through a number of committees. Incorporated in the May revise is a backfill to the county of up to 4.4 million for property tax loss as a result of the Thomas fire and debris flow. There's also provision in the May revise to waive the county's local share up to $3.2 million of the debris flow removal cost.
In addition, we continue to work with the legislators to seek a backfill of 2.6 million in TOT tax loss. This is not currently in the budget that will be voted on although we are hopeful that there may be a last minute revision to allow this but the first two bullet points there are built into the May revise. With respect to final budget adjustments incorporated in tab A2 or schedule A2, is this 4.4? We're recommending that money be treated as one-time money and to go into the strategic reserve.
You know this partially will offset the 6.25 million that we pulled out of the strategic reserve in response to the Thomas fire and debris flow. In addition, we've made a correction within the Sheriff's Department since workshops to revise downward the revenue anticipated or received from the city contracts and have taken a corresponding reduction in the salaries and benefits object to balance their budget.
And also in A2 you'll find a variety of minor budget adjustments with no net impact to the general fund. Also since workshops Your board has taken action with respect to cannabis regulation program enforcement. And so incorporated in the recommended budget are positions for preventing and licensing. As well as enforcement at $1.7 million. The 1.6 associated costs associated with the permitting and licensing is offset by permit fees and licensing fees, so those positions are self-supporting.
The 1.7 to pay for the cost of staff associated with enforcement is assumed to be received from the recently passed cannabis tax revenue. The recommended budget continues your board's commitments on prior priorities and policies. It includes funding for Northern Branch Jail, the fire tax shift, $4.4 million in deferred maintenance in the 18% formula. It includes funding for successor bargaining unit agreements.
And it does not take money from or add money to the strategic reserve. This is consistent with your board's direction in December when we brought the policies to your board for consideration. As we look at the operating revenues by fund, you'll see here how that breaks down. The largest piece of course is the general fund. The general fund makes up 39% of the county budget, or 425 million.
As we explode that piece out to the right, you can see how that breaks down between your board's discretionary and as well as other revenues. Your discretionary revenue if you do the math quickly, that discretionary revenue only makes up about 23% of your total budget. So as we look at meeting your boards priorities and the discretionary services we provide it has to come from this relatively small piece.
As we look at discretionary revenues, here are the basic sources. The vast majority of our discretionary revenue, about 83-84%, comes from property taxes. As you can see there on the right that what we adopted for the current fiscal year and fiscal year 17-18 was $211 million in property taxes in that category. And that's growing to 216.7. Below there in the next categories, five categories are the other sources of discretionary revenue that your board has to allocate to your priorities. You can see the rate of growth and our total discretionary revenue year over year is about 3.9%.
Turning to operating expenses by fund, you'll see here again General Fund makes up 35% of the county budget, $384 million. As we look at staffing, staffing here has grown by 84 positions. The bulk of those positions are related to the Northern Branch Jail planned opening at the end of this coming fiscal year. But that's moving from 4,083 FTE in fiscal year 17-18 to 4,167 in the upcoming fiscal year. Focusing on retirement, you can see our retirement is growing by about $7.4 million. We're at 5.6%.
This is caused by a combination of two factors. One is the increased FTE that we have built into next year's budget, as well as the escalation in retirement contribution costs although not as high as we had initially anticipated due to factors within the retirement system. Not least of which is the return on investment changes. As we look at maintenance A couple things important to highlight here. This is our kind of total maintenance for the public works, general services and community services.
I would note that the first line is our baseline funding. That's what we have historically provided. The second line is the 18% by formula. This adds up to roughly 4.4 million across three departments. Public Works receiving 50%, General Services 35%. And Community Services a remaining 15%. Also incorporated in the recommended budget are some one-time funding for both general services and community services. For a total of about $1,450,000. Below that in the next section are other special revenue funds that are received by transportation, Measure A, the Highway Users Tax, HUTA, and the SB 1 funding. I would note just to clarify that the special revenue funds below are not all Directed at addressing the deferred maintenance. Some of it, especially a large part of Measure A as well as all the HUDA monies are there for corrective maintenance performed by county crews essentially and does not necessarily go and address the backlog in deferred maintenance within the road system.
Our next slide, I'm sorry for the small print to try to fit it all in one slide. Are the key general fund discretionary fund balances and I'll go through those quickly. Public Safety Proposition 172 revenues. You'll see there that the projected ending fund balance in June 30, 2019 is anticipated to be 49,004. These are earmarked funds that can only be used for specific purposes as outlined in the proposition.
In behavioral wellness we're expecting to end the current fiscal year with 686,000 in that fund. We're recommending the addition of $2 million with an ending fund balance of 2,000,686. These funds are available for the department should they need them to address IMD beds as well as out-of-county beds if that's needed within their department and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
The cannabis revenue you see there, we've only built in the $1.7 million from the cannabis tax that was recently passed and we show that as a use for enforcement. The 18% deferred maintenance money, you can see we're allocating the full 4,367 to the three departments as noted earlier. Within capital, we have a fund balance left over in the current fiscal year of 700,000. We're anticipating adding 1.4 but also using 1. 4 that will leave a balance of 700,00. This would be the initial money available for debt service should your board approve the issuance of a COP in the current fiscal year.
Within roads, that's the annual allocation to roads. Strategic reserve, no changes to that. We're anticipating that to be 23 million six. Litigation is growing by $2.5 million in the current fiscal year, recommended to grow by 2.5 million dollars for a total of 4.7 million. This is there to provide cushion and it's there to address litigation that we know is out there and we've done this in consultation with county council.
Disaster recovery, the recommended budget as we outlined during the workshop includes 6.25 million for the upcoming fiscal year to address the local share of our disaster cost. As well as provide cash flow needs for other county funds should they need that. Program stabilization is there as your board has adopted several years ago, and really provides a cushion for fluctuations in retirement contribution.
We are fortunate in the upcoming year that the retirement system had a rate of return on their investments higher than they assumed so we were able to benefit from that. But just as likely in a down investment environment, we could define ourselves short. And so this is our first line of defense to address fluctuations and retirement contributions. Facilities maintenance baseline that allocates all that money as I outlined in the slide prior to the three departments. It leaves roughly $500,000 should something occur in the middle fiscal year.
That would require that use. Assessment appeals, your board has set aside in the current fiscal year money into assessment appeals fund. This is to address a backlog or surge in assessment appeals experienced by the assessor, county council and clerk of the board's office. That was 18 month funding that your board set aside and so we anticipate ending the current year with 579,000 there. We're expecting another draw in the upcoming year 458,000 leaving an anticipated balance of 121,000.
New jail operations is being funded according to your plan. Emerging issues, there's $10,000 of one-time money that's available. We'll talk about that at the close and in contingencies is we're recommending the addition of $2 million to contingencies. This brings us to a level that's not inconsistent with prior fiscal years but also provides a backdrop for potential contingency draws related to large capital projects.
Finally, at the end we have an allocated fund balance of $376,000. So that's the summary of our discussion around fund balances. Happy to answer any questions on those or I can proceed.
0:35 – 0:4916 turns
Just one procedural question on that. That makes me, tempts me to micromanage which pot of the reserves things are in. So if a department needs an expenditure mid-year out of any of these reserves, is it four fifths vote? Or is it only if it's a reserve where it has not been budgeted for What is the particular purpose that the department is asking it for?
Chair Williams, really good question. So where you see the recommended decreases, those are built into the budget already so there would not be a four-fifths vote required for that. If your board wanted to take additional funds out of there, for instance if you wanted to take funds that are currently reflected in the far right column, that would require a four-fifths vote midyear.
If we viewed it as almost a 99% chance that there would need to be an expenditure there, that it would probably be perhaps more efficient to assign it to recommended decreases at some level. Okay? I mean, I'm not necessarily going to do that but I just am thinking about that. Okay. Supervisor Wolf.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, Mr. Frappell, I do have a number of comments about this chart and I guess to the chair, do we want to go through all of the departments first before making comments?
I think so, I think before we do that but we do have a request to speak on the overview.
Okay, so I'll wait then. Is that what you prefer?
Yeah, keep on going. I can continue here and we'll catch at the end, okay. As we look at service level reductions, there are a number of service level reductions that were initially believed to be needed during workshops. Your board has presented those and we've gone through those and addressed all those that were requested by departments to be funded, have been funded in the recommended budget with the exception of behavioral wellness. And we'll talk more about that in a moment.
The reductions are remaining about 4.4 million or 6.2 FTE. You'll recall that we So this is the remaining ones that are outstanding. This first sheet are the departments, the general fund departments. General Fund $1.8 million, 4.2 FTE. None of these service reductions have been requested for restoration by departments. If you look into the next slide we'll look at the non-general fund departments and Under Behavioral Wellness, there are two potential service level reductions. One related to the reduction of long term IMD beds and one related to out-of-county short term psych beds.
The notes there I think are important in that to address the first one, under footnote one. We have improving acute admin day client mix within the PUF. The recommended budget is built on a very conservative mix. What we've experienced so far this year And what, especially within third quarter and moving into fourth is a more positive client mix. And so there potentially will be additional revenues or resources existing in the department that can be reallocated.
If they're not needed to cover a lag in acute admin mix so that we can address the IMD beds, long-term IMD beds. That would close a portion of the 1.5 that we've identified here as a potential service level reduction. In addition, we are setting aside, as I mentioned earlier $2 million in fund balance which will be available for behavioral wellness should they need that through the year.
The second service level reduction for B-Well is related to the out of county short term psych inpatient beds. And the department has been successful, it's continuing to work hard to find more cost effective contracts for our county providers that we anticipate will be able to close that $780,000 gap. So we think we'll be able to maintain the average beds available per day of seven.
The child support service reduction is not being requested for restoration. So the recommended adjustments and restoration expansions to departments are covered in a variety of schedules that are included in the recommended budget, so I will briefly talk about those but there's much more explanation and detail in the printed recommended budget. So prior to workshops was our first category. We talked about these at length during workshops totaling 18 FTE, ongoing GFC of 1.7 million, one time GFC of about 7.6 million Post-workshops, in taking into consideration what we heard during workshops. We have worked with the departments to restore funding for a variety of sources and I won't go through these at length but you can see here and they're all outlined in pages B8 and B9 in the printed recommended budget.
But you can see here the CEO's office, total of essentially $584,000. 2.4, $2.5 million for sheriff for a variety of reasons and purposes. District attorney roughly $388,000, public defender $164,000. Probation is there noted for additional probation officer. Public works is the allocation of 18% money as well as some money to start setting aside a fund for the vintage ranch bridge project when that's needed, that'll be a multi-year funding for that project.
Within community services, there's about $1,180,000 of adjustments that are being recommended as part of the recommended budget. In general services roughly 1.3 million, county council for under $93,000 as well as the renewed 22 initiatives 815,000 that were rediscussed during workshops. Also, just wrapping up in the non-general fund departments. We did include in the recommended budget a conversion within FHIR of some seasonal employees to full time employees. There's no general fund cost for that. It's all covered within the FHIR district's budget as well as we have converted three positions within public health from extra help to permanent.
Again, these are offsetting costs within departments. No additional general fund contribution to either one of these departments. As it relates to cannabis, this captures and accumulates the actions that your board took. You can see here, there are in the permitting section, there's roughly $478,000 of positions. Three positions there within licensing. There's about $1,129,000 in positions that's broken down and within enforcement approximately $1.7 million.
The actual positions for each one of these departments is highlighted on page B10 of the recommended budget. Gives you a complete breakdown of the classifications by department. So the number of adjustments that have been deferred during- There's a question on that, Mr.
Repo? Yes. Supervisor Wolk?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to be clear on this cannabis issue. So there is an expectation that the tax will bring in $6.3 million and 1.7 of that is being accounted for for the enforcement piece. And then you're also anticipating $1.6 million will come in from fees, so if you take the 1.6 and the 1.7 that's how you get the 3.3 million essentially?
Supervisor Wolf, that's correct.
Okay, thank
you. So there are a number of adjustments that have been deferred to hearing, and so we'll talk briefly about those as well. Within the district attorney's office, there is a request to essentially convert what's currently being done with extra help staff into a permanent FTE for subpoena server. Specifically I believe in North County. Probation department had asked for two additional probation officers to address workload associated with Prop 63 and increasing supervision workload. The recommended budget only includes funding for one.
Within the chair, there's a number of items here highlighted that have been not currently recommended in the recommended budget. But would be there for your board's consideration should you so please. In public works, there are a number of requests here to maintain the current pavement condition index. The department is requesting roughly $8 million. The next two items under public works is really for the local share associated with the 2017 winter storm events, as well as the Thomas Fire and 19 debris flow.
We believe that the funds that we've asked your board to set aside, $6.25 million will be sufficient to address Approved worksheets from FEMA Cal OES for these two disasters. You recall the board in your current adoptive budget has already allocated $1 million from Stages Reserve to offset the 2017 winter storm local share. And finally on this page, Community Services has a pending request of $75,000 for the Energy and Sustainability Initiatives.
And for non-general fund departments, there we go. Non-general fund departments as I mentioned earlier, there's a request outstanding of roughly 2 million four for behavioral wellness although I think we have addressed that through both the funds within 990 and within the 990 fund balance. As well as improved performance of the acute admin day mix within So finally, potential adjustments to your recommended budget.
We captured this in a memo we sent out to your board which is also posted on the web. We have identified in our discussion on the discretionary general fund balances, there's roughly 376,200 that's yet to be allocated. There's also $10,000 of one-time monies rolling over from prior fiscal years that's available for your board's allocation as well as potentially 4.6 billion dollars of cannabis tax revenues that should be received by the county in the upcoming fiscal year.
Should your board decide to appropriate any of the 4.6, there are a number of potential uses that far outstrip available revenues but they're there for your board's consideration and to frame our discussion at the conclusion of our hearings. I have a question Mr.
Chair. Mr. Frapoil, in the strategic reserve you came up with 5.6. What is that? How did you come up with that number? Does that take us to the board policy original?
Thank you, Mr. Labineau. So yes, the 5. 6, if you recall of the current balance as I discussed is roughly 23 and a half million dollars. So if we are successful and the state passes our budget, we anticipate our recommendation is to take the 4.4 million from the state backfill at that seat of reserve so that brings that balance up. And then to bring the balance in the seat of reserve all the way to your board's policy which is 8% of your general fund expense roughly one month worth of operating revenues it needs to be about $33 million.
We'll take it, we'll close the gap to the full policy, board policy. Thank you. Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you Mr. Chair. Could you talk about the hydrology study, Mr. Fropwell if that has to come out of general fund or are there any other sources of funding for that?
Supervisor Hartman, the Chair. The 500,000 that we've identified there for hydrology study is the high end of the range that may be done. The source of those funds, although here we've identified potentially a general fund could come out of the flood district. It's not clear yet. We'll have to do a lot more work with respect at what number that really is but it is eligibly funded from flood if your board so decides.
0:49 – 0:5512 turns
In addition, I believe that if the state pays the local match there'd be about $175,000 that frees up to flood control. So that could be used to get it started too.
With that, Mr. Chairman, we'd be happy to go into functional group summaries or whatever your pleasure is.
We'll take public comment on the overview first and questions on the overview. Supervisor Wolf?
Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chair. On this page 26 there are a lot of The hydrology study is one, the cloud-based internet is another. There's a few things in here that we haven't really vetted too much. And then on the other hand there's a few things that we have so The one, I mean and this is only $10,000. It's a small tiny amount for the homeless tracking. We do have one homeless issue that we have incorporated into the budget. Obviously this is not the same thing and it would seem like this should've just given the amount could just be included into the budget.
And how was it different than what we already have?
Supervisor Wolf, the Chair. The request here for $10,000 is essentially to do some reprogramming of the software that we use to do the tracking specifically to enhance the information that we collect so they can have additional data specifically related The point of origin of our homeless. So this is really about tracking and trying to do a more robust understanding of where our homeless are coming from.
So the $10,000 is simply- And this is
requested from HCD?
Yes. Okay,
and then just finally on the cloud-based internet until I read your memo about this, I didn't know there was discussion but certainly it seems really important and something for us to pursue like a lot of these other things that are listed here. I guess just my general question about some of these is that, I think it requires more examination and review. Because they're very generic and so I would just be concerned with some of these that are listed.
And frankly during our budget workshop there might have been things that I might have mentioned. But I didn't, so it looks like whatever was mentioned during budget hearings looks like there's a placeholder in here for that. Except the cloud-based internet, I did not hear anything about that before except from your description which really does seem to be an important initiative for us to take.
Supervisor Wolk to the Chair, thank you for that. And we do apologize for the rather lateness of this issue that's been identified. It came about because we are in the process now of going and doing an after action report for the Thomas Fire and Debris Flow. As part of that discussion one of the things that we identified as being able to do better is that you recall that we did a great deal of additional mapping As part of the debris flow disaster, mapping as well as evacuations and notification. And so this became a really important tool as we communicated out to our communities with respect to potential impact.
What happened there, the unintended consequences of that is there were some delays on part of the public of being able to get the information because so many people were trying to get the information. And so as a result of it after action report this really came to kind of the forefront and highlighted as one of those things that if we made the right investment We could do an even better job communicating with our public. So we apologize for the lateness of this item, it wasn't something that we'd identified at the time of workshop, otherwise we would have brought it up then. But it is something that's really, we thought important for your board to know was out there and you're absolutely right. There's a lot more work that's going to be needed to flesh that out.
But in working with general services and ICT, this is our best estimate at the moment of what that might entail and cost.
Supervisor Hart?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Frappel, in talking to some of the criminal justice partners one of the issues there was also cloud-based internet use for discovery. Is there any connection between the two? I mean is there any foundation that would be set here that could be adapted for other purposes?
Supervisor Hartman, the Chair. I'd have to defer general service on that specific question although I will tell you that as we move forward with the master planning for or the future planning for ICT one of the things we're going to be looking at is how do we position the county in a better way to be able to deal with the high amount of data? The amount of data that we're pushing around in all of our services including the court services and between the criminal justice departments is growing exponentially.
And so being able to do that in a better fashion, more coordinated fashion and cost effectively. Cloud based solution is likely a solution to that. The key on cloud base for criminal justice partners is the insurance of security. There are measures to do that we would not be address this in a cloud solution. But a lot of work is going to have to take place in order to make sure that we understand all the issues of each of the stakeholders and be able to adequately address those.
0:55 – 1:003 turns
I also was a little bit surprised by it, but I think that's the need in the last emergencies has been If people go to the websites, figure out if they're supposed to evacuate and they can't do that. That is something that we should reckon with. Public comment?
Chair Williams, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. I specifically remember every year for the last five years and including back in April that your board asked for the gap chart. I couldn't find it and I don't know why. Last year's budget There was a lot of focus on a multi-year structural budget gap. I understand they closed that in some way, shape or form this year but I don't see the data over multiple years on the structural budget gap.
I want to turn your attention to the back of the book just like in high school math, the answers were in the back of the book. And the point here is, what you guys will spend doing for the next day or two days is talking about how you're spending your money. But you never talk about where the money comes from nor do you ever analyze the issues affecting where the money comes from. 80% of your discretionary revenues comes from property taxes.
We lost two of the top ten property tax payers in the form of Veneco and Exxon. But I've never seen a scramble from the county to get that money back, although I have seen you dealing with issues of the loss of Montecito property taxes. So this is page G7. There's something really scary here. If you look at the bottom right hand chart, Even though this is great news that we went from 12.4% unemployment to 4.6% unemployment, the bad news is our poverty rates are increasing.
So you have nearly 100% full employment in the private sector and poverty is getting worse. What does that mean? Well, turn to the next page for more specifics. First of all, I have always hated the bifurcation between north, mid and south. There is no such thing as mid. It's North County and South County. And they split off the mid to buffer the consequences of these numbers. The bottom line here is you look at Santa Maria, Lompoc and Guadalupe.
17%, almost 17%, 16% below the poverty line. Look at the numbers of the people, bottom right hand one, the number of people getting public assistance by region. You add mid county because there is no such thing as mid county to the north county 41,000 nearly double what you have in the south. So what is the difference between the South County economy and the North County economy? North County economy is blue collar.
Your policies favor STEM, high tech. You have policies that are against resource intensive and energy intensive industries. I used to work in one of those, our gas bill at Sinton Brown which was just a subsection of Union Sugar was $100,000 a month back in the 80's. And the point here is you've helped create a permanent urban underclass by the policies you've created.
Years ago, we used to have this statistic that was included in the annual budget that showed the number of Hispanic males in the Santa Maria and Lompoc Valleys engaged in STEM. It was 6%. Yet you say as a policy, we want high tech jobs. That shoe doesn't fit the North County's foot. It doesn't fit. And the bottom line here, poverty is climbing, unemployment is dropping.
And you're not analyzing that. You're not analyzing where your money's coming from and why more money isn't coming that way. That's a fatal flaw of county government in this budget process.
Let's go into the functional group, Health and Human Services.
1:01 – 1:088 turns
Stand by. Technology is a wonderful thing, and it works. There we go. So Supervisor Williams, Chair Williams and Board Members, so we'll go through the functional groups now. On our first slide here, we'll break down the functional groups that will be going through over the next several slides. And you can see here the top three, the largest three sections of the pie here make up $918 million or 83.2% of the total county budget.
So our first group is our Health and Human Services Group. You can see the five departments there on the right hand side comprised of social services, behavioral wellness, public health, child support services and down at the bottom first five. They have a total operating expense of $401.5 million and represent 1,734 FTEs. At this point we'd be happy to discuss any of those departments should your board desire.
So if we don't identify a department they're not even coming up right now? This is the budget.
If you'd like them to come up, they are all poised for your boards questions.
So we could essentially get through the budget in four slides with our different… Five or six.
And this is sort of meant for, mainly for public discourse and even more for supervisor's discourse about what changes we need to make. There aren't a huge number of differences that staff are presenting over what they presented in April.
I get that. My take was kind of, we had three days originally scheduled then two and now maybe one. And I get the desire to shorten. But I think because we have had the time and it's no giant surprise that when I was going through the budget, I kind of had a lot of the same concerns that Mr. Caldwell has expressed While things are going well financially and economically in our county, things aren't at least in my district getting better. We've got more people on assistance.
And so I don't know if this is a Renew 22 question, what are we gonna do different? And I don't know if that's inside the budget, that we discuss these items or when we do talk about that. But you know, I think most times when things are tough economically, we just think well if we get more money things will improve. You know our budgets continue to increase for some of these health and human service departments.
And I don't think, you know when I look around my district, I've got homeless people suffering from dual diagnosis all over the streets. Like I said, I think two-thirds of our kids are on some sort of social assistance. What are we going to do different? I don't I just think that there's got to be a bigger view of the entire way
we do things. I absolutely agree, though I'm not sure that a longer slide presentation addresses what you really want to get to and so I do think it's an appropriate conversation. There are a number of questions about the budget that do relate to economic development I mean, to me the questions that Mr. Caldwell brings up and of course that quote from a past planning director of our county haunts me and convicts me.
I think that there are things that we can do to address that. And we've talked a lot about this with long-term planning and later on when we get to deliberations, I would argue that a lot of our projects with long term planning have to do with opportunities that we could engage in to not limit opportunity in our county for people to make better wages. Supervisor Hartman.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to put this in context how I think about it. Renew 2022 is our effort to reduce our expenses and to reorganize in a more effective and efficient way because government over time tends to accrete and you tend to get things that need to be looked at in terms of your current goals. I think the second step after that is to look at what assets we have within county control that we can generate more revenue from. And I'm particularly interested in renewable energy and recreation and parks. Then we really do need to look at economic development throughout the county.
We did put $85,000 last year in the budget to start that process like other counties have done. It's not a county only responsibility it is the county that can help convene that process but we were confronted with The disasters that we experienced in Montecito, and that really took all hands on deck for that. But I think we can get there but it's not something the counties can do on their own.
I did an analysis once or a brief look. The average median income a couple years ago in North County was about 66%. In South County it was 86,000 and in the Santa Ynez Valley it was 118,000. So I would argue that we have many different economies throughout Santa Barbara and it really is the cities that are responsible for generating the economic revenue. They have the opportunity to, that's where urban development is supposed to go much of it so we can't have this conversation With the county in isolation, but the county can play a role as other counties have done. Sonoma, Ventura, Slow in pulling together interest for economic development. I believe CEO Miyasato has already begun thinking about that and how her staff can bring it forward.
So I don't really think that this is quite the place to do it, but I think it certainly frames how we're all thinking about where we're headed over the next couple of years.
1:09 – 1:1515 turns
Thank you Mr. Chair, I appreciate the discussion and Supervisor Hartman's reflection on the issue. I do think that we should go through each department and at least if There's not that many slides for each department head to go through. I know, for me, I have a couple of questions specifically for three departments but at least again there is only a couple slides for each department head so let's have them come up, let's have them go through the slides and we can probably move through this very quickly.
Why don't you ask the department heads that you wish to have questions, and ask that question. And they can come up and provide the answer. We're not going to ad hoc change the whole format of the meeting and we can do something different next year. But just ask your question, ask the department, they're ready to come up. And present information that you need an answer for. Okay,
I'll do that but I will say we have done this in the past asking our department heads to come forward and it's not just for us it's also for the public but I'll go ahead and do what you are requesting so my first question is to the sheriff
Good morning. Can you wait for the sheriff to the second public functional group? Our agenda today breaks out the departments in several functional groups. Right now would be the time to ask a question or highlight a slide for behavioral wellness, child support services, first five We are moving on to public safety.
Then I have a question for Public Health.
Supervisors, just as Dr. DeRinos is coming up we do apologize if there's been confusion this is the same format we had last year although in prior years we've had different formats but we followed the same as we did last year
Thank you Dr. Ben-Renoso, I have a question where it was in here about the volunteer program develop and implement well maybe we should go through the look at the slides then can we get the slide for public health And it would be page three. And if you could just explain the development and implement a new approach to volunteer program, and what you have in mind for that? And what volunteer program because I know there is one for animal services and I'm not, if that's what you're referring to so if you could clarify that.
Supervisor Wolf through the chair, thank you for bringing up that question. So we have noticed that throughout our department there are various volunteer programs that are operating within the programs like animal services within the labs. So not very coordinated, so our intention is really to have a coordinated official volunteer program. In particular we are also noticing that we have great resources in our community and so we want to partner up with the academic institutions, the high schools as well as the community colleges and UCSB to really provide educational and training opportunities.
And looking forward to building a pipeline, if you will, towards future workforce from our local communities. So it's a coordinated effort tapping into what's here already.
Okay good thank you for that. Another issue that has come up For public health that I'm aware of is the increase of STDs in our community and I'm wondering what Public Health is doing as far from an educational standpoint and outreach
Yes, so we are one not noted not noted in these slides but we are undergoing a reorganization of our community health programs. So Leveraging different staff expertise, pulling them under one coordinated health education, health promotion program. And partnering up with other community partners to leverage resources to address STDs. So we've been in communication with a variety of partners, UCSB, Planned Parenthood and our own internal staff to come up with a coordinated effort to address STD's in particular. And when do we
expect to see something coming out?
So with part of the role of the newly if approved, the new senior epidemiologist. So I anticipate in July. Okay good
and then finally my last question is and I think this really deals with cannabis in general but We have, in your department we have cannabis licensing and cannabis enforcement. But what we haven't addressed and I'm going to touch on this later is the education component which as we talked about through all of our cannabis hearings was how important that issue is. So what are your plans for that?
So, our health education promotion expert is under the enforcement category. And so I anticipate pulling together my colleagues in behavioral wellness and other community partners to again form a coordinated effort so that we can approach county and communities in a consistent manner utilizing the state resources as well as what's already here in our community.
Okay,
and I guess that would now be a question for Dr. Glycorn or maybe you can answer. We don't have as I recall allocation for behavioral wellness for cannabis education. Is that maybe Dr. Gleicorn if you could come? Thank you, Don Renoso.
1:16 – 1:2510 turns
Good morning, Supervisor Wolf through the chair. That's correct there is no allocation for behavioral wellness education at this point The requests were coming through enforcement and we didn't really have a role in the enforcement piece
okay Thank you And if I could that's all for this functional group But I will say that The allocation of the tax funds that we expect to get being used for all of these other possible programs is concerning to me. Because I don't think we really know the impact that we're going to see from cannabis, and so I'll address that in my discretionary fund balance slide.
And then finally before we leave this, This is as supervisor. Lavagnino started off talking about poverty and children. I think this functional group is probably one of the most important one that we have. Behavioral wellness, child support services first five public health and social services. And where we were last year when we had the huge cuts to social services, I'm extremely pleased that we reinstated some positions.
I think that the work that social services is doing is exemplary. And it's one of those things, being a supervisor that you just dread that there is no child that somehow slips through the cracks. And I just want to give a shout out to the folks in social services who are really looking out for our kids, our elderly. We talk about a lot of things but Thank you More and additional beds for our community. That continues to be a big issue, and one that I hope we can tackle very soon. Thank you Mr. Chair
I'm going to call on Mr. Labanino, but after that I will have a question for Mr. Nielsen that Supervisor Wolf fortunately gave me a good softball for of leaving no child behind.
Supervisor Labanino? Thank you, Mr. Chair and I just wanted to point out, I know we've kind of had the discussion before between trying This is Thank you. I don't think I need to point out who controls the state legislature, but it wasn't a priority of theirs at that point. So my biggest concern with this sector is that we do spend
$400... Your partisan swipes are so seldom. I
really didn't see that roundhouse coming.
Well, you
know, your guys' friends made all the cuts to social services. Indisputed fact. The thing that scares me about this sector is kind of what I was alluding to before, is that we spend $400 million a year. And I think if we spent $500 million a year, we'd be in the same boat that we are right now. And I think when we spent $300 million a year, we had the same problems.
So I'm really looking for Renew22 to spark some innovation. I appreciate the CEO's push on this to look for new more efficient ways to do things because Dumping another 40 or 50 or $60 million into this sector, I don't think the return on investment is there. I just think we need to figure out a different way to do things. So that's kind of my push.
And as Mr. Nielsen comes up, I'll make an editorial comment in strong support of what you say. I mean, I do think there is something wrong with how we do things in this county. But I'm not talking about county government, I mean society. And county government can be a part of the solution for it which is and unfortunately it is something totally reflective of what's happening in the rest of the country. Which is that there are more people employed but they are employed in fewer hours and they are employed at lower wages.
And a sort of deepening of that cycle, part of that is shift to service sector work. Part of that is the death of manufacturing. Part of that is that we I would argue are overly dependent upon two Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the public. We have a number of sectors in our economy here. I am big supporter of ag but we're overly dependent upon it. And of course, we're also facing challenges in retail. Part of our job I think we should engage in this but it's also part of the public's job to engage in it since every time they buy something on Amazon instead from a local business or We vote with our dollar, not just at election time. And what kind of economy we want here is very much a result of hundreds of thousands of us voting with our dollar in one form or another.
And so I do think that the budget is a good time to touch on many of the issues but I appreciate the time and carve out that we do as planning or at least economic discussion of what kind of things that we try to engage in to help foster good jobs. Or, in some cases, what are we willing to do to get out of the way of good jobs being fostered? My question for Mr. Nielsen is one I've been trying to engage a lot with resource parents and people in the foster care system and There is a lot of positive stuff out there, but a lot of resource parents seem to feel like there's not enough support out there.
And do you Do you feel that if there were funds available, particularly I understand one of the contractors that did provide resource support is no longer around. Is there a role for a position either in house or contracted out to provide more? Resource parent support that we don't have at this time.
Chair Williams, the answer to that is a definite yes. We use the resources we do have to the best possible ability and are constantly looking Contracts and the work provided by contractors as well as our own staff in meeting the needs of all parts of our system, including resource families. But with the continuum of care reform push to get children out of group homes and congregate care and back into the community, there's definitely a need for as much support as possible for those children and those families whether it's their own biological family relatives or whether it's a resource family that doesn't initially know the child.
Those are very critical situations where a child's been used to being in a congregate environment with all of that attention and those resources. And as much as we can support those families with additional social worker attention, in terms of time and quality time with those parents and with those children the better outcomes we will have.
1:25 – 1:295 turns
And I've heard that there may be some other funds to address that. Bob Park, give me your shot of getting that with non-general funds and what's your percentage? Is it a 60% chance that you would need general funds for this or 70% chance or?
Well at the current time, a large part of our revenues related to that area of our work are related to realignment funds 2011 and 1991 realignments. And so the anticipated revenues for those for the coming year are higher than were originally projected in the earlier stages of our budget. A social worker costs approximately $120,000 a year fully loaded and so it will remain to be seen in the coming fiscal year if we get additional revenues above and beyond what we've budgeted. If so, in that area, that's the sort of resource we'd be spending it on.
Thank you.
Mr. Adam? I just hadn't intended to weigh in on this stuff, but you might look at the history of the degradation of the industrial and manufacturing economy in Santa Barbara County because over the past 40 years it is undeniable that the government regulation and interference has increased these parts of our economy have suffered And along with them, their former employees and stockholders and our tax base along with it.
I think going forward we really have to consider how much government intervention has done for us You know, the more intervention we've had, the worse the results have become. So maybe we ought to back up from that a little bit instead of decrying the fact that we don't have enough money to do all this stuff we want to do because maybe if we do more it will even get worse as it has for the last 40 years.
Just saying.
I agree partially, there has been good results too. We have cleaner air but More than we had right now of impacts to our air quality, but we had 80% of the manufacturing that we once had on top. Or 180% of the manufacturing what we once had whether that would be a better balance than what we have now and I also wrestle with the fact by driving manufacturing out of places how much pollution Elsewhere in places that are far less regulated. So I wrestle with both of those questions, but I don't think it's helpful to just deny that there have been no benefits. There have been benefits, but the question is not are we worse off? But the question is Is there a better balance to strike?
And I do think that there's a better balance to strike. That's where I am in agreement with you. Other questions on this functional group, then we will move after a short bathroom break. Public comment on Health and Human Services Functional Group.
1:29 – 1:4613 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board, we have two requests on this functional group. We're going to start in Santa Maria with Charles Huffines and then come back to Santa Barbara for Mr. Caldwell. Charles?
I don't think we're here in Santa Maria. I don't think we're here in Charles. Go ahead and-
Try now.
There we got you, Charles. We're resetting your time clock. Please proceed.
Chairman Williams, members of the board and Dr. Claghorn who's sitting in the audience I'm here to ask before the entire budget is put forward on behavioral wellness that I again ask For the clients of the RLC Resource Learning Community in Santa Maria, through TEMA and Lompoc that you give us additional funding. That you give additional funding Out of, if possible, the innovations project that you had with the peers and the communications project or the money that is left over from the original WET program that went in a number of years ago.
We need this money desperately because of the closing of the Telecare's drop-in center The clients that are part of Santa Maria's ACT program have either been transferred due to the closing of this project, closing of the drop-in center through either the Foster Road Clinic or have been moved down to the RLC in Santa Maria. Or the supportive services. We do not have enough funding coming out of Sloan County that we operate under, that we can continue to keep. If we're getting at least half of the population from telecare by either the ranch or telecare themselves And we are about ready to cover the next budget, either we're going to have to close down a day or more. We're gonna have to drop some staff because of it.
And these people need the services, they need the drop-in center to aid in their recovery and wellness. This funding could be very easy. We have not received a raise in a contract in the last eight to 10 years since we had the real budget crunch when Dr. Dietrich was on board as director. This is a necessity, it needs to be done. It will help everybody in the North County In some way we need to get the funding.
I mean, this is the last chance that anybody can come to you and ask but this is a necessity it is not otherwise like I say there'll be people turned out on the streets in North County. Some of Shall we say highest risk clients coming from McMillan Ranch, coming from some of the people at Telecare. They had no place to go, no place to hang your heads. I thank you very much for your time.
Mr. Caldwell?
Chair Williams, members of the board. If you could turn to almost the very last page in your budget, page 817. They're going to put this up on the screen. This page, if I did my math right which is always a problem, represents $27 million. It's called lost time. I'm glad they finally put this in. I had to complain a long time, but they used to have this in the budget book all the time. $27 million.
One of the top questions is why are primarily paper pushers in health and human services, why do they have the highest lost time rate? That right there's a $27 million hole that represents 200 employees a day that aren't at work. 200 employees a day all year long. On page D217, And you went over this in April, and this is a chilling statistic. I'm still flabbergasted. Unfortunately it's listed under accomplishments which it's not an accomplishment, it's a disaster that the Department of Social Services serves over 145,000 county residents or 32% of the entire county population.
65,000 children or 65% of all children are clients of social services. They're not accomplishment, it'a disaster. And then if you turn to page D194, this is an example. You're not going over this. Look at number two, percentage of adults that successfully complete substance use disorder 39%. That means 61% don't finish. How is that a performance measure? Now, I'm not blaming them per se because you've got to have willing clients and you have to have a law that has consequences for not following. Look at the youth. You want to talk about the future of Santa Barbara County look at number four. Percentage of youth that successfully complete substance use disorder it's even worse. It's 62% don't finish.
62%, that gets to a point on page D-188. On D-188, behavioral wellness department description. The Department of Behavioral Wellness promotes the prevention of and recovery from Addiction and mental illness, how are you measuring your success? I loved what Carly Fiorina said one time. Activity is not an accomplishment. You're spending $400 million a year on what we would call the dysfunctional, the needy, and the broken in our society.
Year after year, after year, after year and the statistics are getting worse. We beg to plead with you throwing more money at the problem ain't going to work. It ain't going to help. It's not going to work. It doesn't work. You've already proven it doesn't work. Page 188, I'm sorry. There's another department that, actually that's in the next section. Anyway I'm finished on this but the bottom line here is if you can't measure it you can't manage it and if you're not measuring it we believe there's a reason for it.
How are they doing on prevention and recovery? Where are the numbers? Where's the proof that you're accomplishing anything? We've got a huge problem here, and again the poverty. You need upward mobility for permanent urban underclass. That's blue collar manufacturing and industry jobs. There is no other solution, there is none. I spent 40 years basically dealing with this subject in my life.
And what about the $27 million hole in your budget? Why is that never a topic of conversation here? Thank you.
That concludes public comment.
We've talked a lot about the government's share of responsibility for cycles of poverty and maybe a little bit of consumers for economic growth, but I also want to highlight that There is a share in the employer section of the economy as well. American workers are far more productive than they were in the 1970s, but they have a much lower share of wages than the 1970s.
Previous to the 1970s, as productivity rose in this country, wages rose in this country. And since the 1970s collectively our policies and employers have not shared with workers the same percentage of economic growth and that is also coming home to roost. That for the first time in the last ten years, for The Great Depression, American worker productivity is not rising as fast.
There's a certain point where you get paid 10, 11 bucks, 12 bucks an hour or 13 bucks now coming around the corner and you just don't work as hard as you do if you have a commensurate share of the economy. So I think there's a lot of blame to go around. It's a useful discussion to have. We can be a part of the solution, but we won't be the only ones involved. Mr. Labanino?
Thank you,
Mr. Chair and I wanted to kind of piggyback on that a little bit. I didn't want my comments to be construed as somehow blaming the social services department. I think they're doing an outstanding job. As Daniel said in the April workshops, Basically, they get people when they're in crisis. And we don't put enough money into prevention and those types of things so that we don't see two-thirds of our kids at their front door.
And I just wanted to make sure that that is not construed as that way. I think the folks that are doing the work are kicking butt, it's the fact that beyond their control of who they're dealing with and how many people they're dealing with. So I wanted that confusion cleared up a little bit.
Supervisor Atta. Well, I just want to make sure that people understand if there's anybody watching at home My silence doesn't mean I'm agreeing with what you're saying. And- I
don't think anyone ever makes that assumption.
Well, I'm just going to say it out loud so that if somebody watches this and they say why isn't he saying something else? Because we're not really supposed to be having a policy debate here, And we've kind of drifted off into, well no I realize it is. And I would like to get off on a lot of different policy questions and I know that you and I could team up on some policy regarding revenue but we're passing a budget here today And a lot of our instructions from different discussions over the past year are built into this budget.
And we make policy decisions that, over the whole year, that are assumptions loaded into this budget and will be in next year's budget because of what we've told our CEO and her staff. You know, I think that largely the ship has sailed and it is what it is. And we're all going to vote on it maybe later today and it will be what it will be. During the year to come, we'll be working on next year's budget So I just look at it like it's kind of a foregone conclusion. It is what it is, and let's get on with it instead of trying to go back and have the policy debates we've already had.
And maybe we can remember that these policy debates as we have them you have a ramification in the budget in the future, because I think we tend to look at these things as individual events but they really get combined in the budget to a great extent. So with that maybe we could think about things on larger scale in the future.
I will endeavor to do so. We'll move to the public safety group, since nobody up here wants to take a break. I thought I just asked you. Five minute break. ♪ Yeah. Good morning.
1:50 – 1:542 turns
Good morning, everyone. Good morning, everyone. Hi, everyone. Good morning.
We're reconvening. We're reconvening folks. We're reconvening. And we will begin with our public safety functional group. So any supervisors who have something to highlight or ask about, please prepare your questions and those that are considering public comments if you have not turned in your speaker slip please do so. Supervisor Wolf?
1:54 – 2:037 turns
Thank you Mr. Chair, I do have a few questions for the Sheriff. Good morning, Sheriff. In my BIF from the budget workshop I had asked about the CFMG contract that was supposed to come back and the response that I got was that it would be presented to the board by the end of this fiscal year And I looked at our next couple meetings and I don't see it on the agenda.
And so it was supposed to be back to us, I think in April. So I'm concerned about that. So when will it come back to us?
Supervisor Wolf through the chair my understanding is that will be presented to the board on July 3rd first meeting in July.
Thank you, Sheriff. The other question I have has to do with not just the accreditation that we're trying to achieve in the jail but also what And I think just in general, I am very concerned about the cost of opening the North County Jail. I was there to visit either last Friday or the Friday before, I can't recall and you know the date is soon upon us. I think you had noted that you were going to be talking to CFMG about costs for mental health services.
I think we're going to be looking at costs for food, laundry there's all these costs that are out there and when will this board I have an opportunity to hear from you about what the overall cost will be, not just for staffing but for running the jail. And then the second part of the question is as I always bring up when will we have the plan for the reduction of bed space at the main jail?
Supervisor Wolf, through the Chair a couple of things. One is when we did the northern branch jail operational plan there was factored into that plan an estimated cost of operation and there were escalators that were built into those projections so what's changed particularly in the medical is the level of medical service and mental health service that we contract with In this case, CFMG 4 which was greater than what was estimated at the time because as you're aware we ended up increasing our medical contract and did a fairly substantial addition to that.
So the discussions with CFM G will revolve around With respect to the The question that you have, I'm sorry the last year. About the main jail? Oh the main jail a lot of that hinges on what's going on in terms of the survey with Vanner with discussions in terms Thank you, Sheriff. I just want to ask CEO Miyasato a question because we have a line item in the fund for emerging issues and
I will say that one of our largest emerging issues that we are going to have as a board is making sure that we are adequately funding the North County Jail. I am personally really worried about that. I know we've been putting and socking money away, but we' ve also been using it for hiring and so forth which is what we should be doing. But there are I really am not starting to feel but its becoming very apparent to me that this is going to be a huge hit on our budget.
I think that is probably one of the biggest, if not the only emerging issue that we have to be ready for next year. Thank you Mr Chair
And I'll piggyback on Supervisor Wolf's questions, because number one, I appreciate your vigilance about that. Because I do think the department and its issues, and so I should give you a congratulations for last week, I think. Because I think the issues surrounding the department deserve a lot of attention from this board and obviously from you. I think staffing in particular, if we do not improve things that we become in this sort of fiscal and morale death spiral where things keep on getting worse because we don't fix that. So what I, I don't expect you to have everything ready for the solutions for the universe today but To plan on you and Mr. Mleckian coming and telling us progress report midway through this budget on staffing versus OT, on the population of the main jail, the braceleting program, civilianization in the North County Jail because I think there are some solutions that we're trying to help you address in this budget, but we want to know that they're working for you and for the department and for everyone in the department.
So I guess my ask is Well before, as soon as you start getting some good data. I hope that you would come to us especially well before there are any changes in your upper echelons of staff that come back to us with how things are going on those four issues. Supervisor Wolfe mentioned the North County Jail and I would just add to that the braceletting, the staffing versus OT and the civilianization effort.
Well, Chair Williams, I certainly appreciate your comments and certainly would be happy to come back to the board at some point mid year to give you a progress report on a formal basis. We'll be doing that on a more informal basis as we go along. I do want to take the opportunity to thank the board and the CEO's office in particular for teeing up the budget that although challenging for all concerned and Choose having to make these difficult decisions with the amount of revenue that you have versus the amount of expenditures that are asked for and arguably required. But I do think that the budget plan that we have been able to work out through the CEO's office, and it's presented to you today. And then hopefully will receive your approval today is one that does give us Some of the challenging issues that we've had, particularly with our staffing.
Obviously it's going to be contingent upon our ability to hire and retain the staff that we need but I think we do have the tools now and the mechanism to be able to do that. We have a plan in place that I think is a solid plan and I think will bear fruit. There is some certainty as you said in terms of the election that happened last week and certainly we know Working together on this problem in a foreseeable future. And I'm very optimistic that we're going to be able to address some of these difficult challenges in a way that's very meaningful and it will allow the Sheriff's Office to continue to provide the high quality service that we have been providing despite all of the challenges that we've been faced with.
2:03 – 2:088 turns
Thank you. Other questions either for this department or another in the functional public safety group? Two questions. It's good that we have a functional public safety group as opposed to a dysfunctional public safety group.
First one is to Mr. Frapwell, so I'm just curious from what I heard up here are we still on schedule for the funding plan that we've had in place for the North County Jail?
Supervisor Lafreniere to the Chair. Yes, so the funding plan and we took the opportunity this year to look at it to just kind of validate that the cost that we have assumed in the original modeling of the plan that we're still on track for. We believe we are. There's a great deal of work that continues with the Sheriff's Department and General Services, looking at going through line by line each operating costs the department is likely to incur with the opening in Northern Ranchdale. Validating kind of the assumption on that cost and also looking at the procurement methodology needed in order to put that in place so that timing meshes up with the opening of the facility. So there's a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes, you can rest assured in that regard.
And we do believe that the funding plan is still a solid funding plan.
Okay great. My other question was for District Attorney Dudley and it was about the request. One of the things that hadn't been resolved is the subpoena server and just curious if that's something that we've ever looked at of contracting out or Why is that a county employee, I guess?
Supervisor Labanino through the Chair. Well let me rewind that question a little bit if you don't mind. If it's predictable, preventable is a motto we often use in law enforcement and as of Friday both of our subpoena servicers resigned And that was very predictable, because this was an extra help job. They weren't employees of Santa Barbara County and in this economy people can't survive on extra help money. And in terms of you were asking about us getting someone else to do that job? What were you thinking?
Yeah I'm just aren't there civil subpoena servers that I thought there
This is Merely recruiting for an extra help doesn't work. So you have to find a friend of a friend, and we've been able to do that so far. But as I told you it's a very dangerous job, it's labor intensive job. It's a job where it really helps if you speak Spanish. And those kind of folks are hard to find and certainly hard to find without any kind of benefits which this kind of job is.
I can't imagine the situation where it would cost us less and we'd have as much control as we need. Supervisor Hartman.
I just want to commend the justice partners, the courts, the DA, the public defender probation sheriff for all of the work you've been doing coordinating your activities and saving the county money and also doing a better job for the people. who otherwise might be incarcerated. I just want to urge everyone to continue on this track, we've identified some additional issues. I think there's been a lot of progress on the incompetent to stand trial and that's really helped our budget but there are additional issues and I know there is an interest in continuing to look at How there can be more efficient calendaring, particularly with misdemeanors.
Our continuance policy and discovery how we can get maybe a cloud based discovery and be able to use that more efficiently. Pre-trial release or incarceration, video arraignment. These are the things on my list that I just want to ensure that we continue and perhaps mid year get a report back to us on the progress that's being made. Let me just ask CEO Miyasato this will be coordinated largely out of your office is that correct?
2:08 – 2:149 turns
Supervisor Hartman through the chair, yes we can coordinate those activities since they will involve many of our justice partners.
And so you won't have an ad hoc committee of the board or anything like that involved?
We can request that and maybe in the first meetings of the new year we can discuss that and see if that's necessary. I think it's really your boards choice how you'd like to handle that.
Supervisor Wolff then we'll go to public comment.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chief Heitman? I have a question. In one of the BIFs and this actually came from a meeting that we had at Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council which had to do with the fact that your department would be responsible for Education for those who might be, as it relates to the cannabis. And the response I got was that it was going to cost approximately $50,000 a year.
Now and that would come out of your department, that you would absorb that from your department?
Chair Williams, Supervisor Wolfe. We were hoping that there would be an opportunity to use some of the marijuana taxation or cannabis taxation funds to cover that. We've had some preliminary discussions with the CEO about that. It is as you mentioned a relatively small amount of money but it is directly coming out of that legislation and the change in how youth will be handled when they receive a citation.
Right, okay. Well first of all I appreciate you bringing this up at our committee meeting and I think just from a better understanding now of what is involved as far as implementing any type of resources for your department as it relates to cannabis is important for us to know particularly as it relates to the use of the tax funds and I think we heard from Dr. Gleghorn as well The potential use of those funds for some of these important issues. The other thing I wanted to ask you was about the sex offender DPO position, I think there was funding. You had asked for two positions, you received one and I think the suggestion was a combination using that position to also assist with the sex offender program.
Can you comment on that because I guess, I'm very concerned about what you had said at our last budget workshop. About the need for a full time DPO for sex offenders because of the increase and other matters so if you could touch on that again?
Supervisor through the Chair, it's my understanding that they recommended funding through the CEO's budget was specifically for the Prop 63 position. That's how we identified it. That's the information that we had received. So not even as a combination? Okay. That wasn't anything that we had- been Indicated the number of sex offenders under supervisions increased by about 16% since 2014. And the statute requires that we use what's called a containment model, which is a collaborative approach to supervision of these offenders. It includes a supervision officer, a treatment provider and a polygraph examiner working as a team. To ensure that sex offenders are not engaging in behavior that could put the community at risk. The model requires that staff be able to react very quickly to the information being obtained and treatment through the polygraph exams as well as through field supervision And forensic review of the offender's electronics.
Additionally, these offenders are often subject to GPS monitoring which while it's a useful supervision tool, it adds an additional layer of complexity to their supervision and it's somewhat labor intensive for the staff that oversee those offenders. So we did maintain that request as As an expansion to balance these aspects successfully so that the supervision of these offenders would be a priority. We would like to see the ratio of offenders to an officer to be reduced to 40-1, currently it's about 53-1. Okay, thank you.
Chair Williams and Supervisors, so on the thank you Supervisor Wall for pointing out that BIF. So we have just to point out to the BIF I was also at the JJCC meeting and I did speak to the fiscal CFO for probation at the time on this. Request for this mandated programs because it was brought up. And I apologize, Chief Heitman but I thought at the time he had said that this would be a minimal amount so couple hundred dollars a month at most just because people aren't being adjudicated for cannabis and that was a difficulty in that it could be absorbed by the department. So I still appreciate the department putting forth a request for up to $50,000 a year if that's still needed.
We would have considered that if we'd gotten the same information we're getting today.
2:14 – 2:217 turns
Let's go to public comment.
That's why these hearings are important.
Chair Williams, members of the board, we have five requests to speak on this group. We're going to start in Santa Maria with Joe Armendariz and come back to Santa Barbara for John Attena. Hey John, push the button there and get your mic on. Thanks.
Can you hear me now? Yes. Am I on? Okay.
Yeah we can hear you now but I think
Steve said he'd like to- Sorry about that. First time. No doubt. Anyways, as I was saying, I think Andy hacked my computer, stole my speech. I love what he had to say this morning as an opening salvo. And look, I have to say this has probably been one of the most interesting budget hearings that I've been involved in 20 plus years because for the first time frankly and for A discussion about economic development and economic vitality, which are the issues that are near and dear to my heart. I'm sure they're near and dear to many of you as well.
Look, when I turned 50, I realized a couple of things. My metabolism slowed down, I get fat, and I have to walk neighborhoods and take long walks after dinner. And it was doing that recently that I was noticing all the homes in my neighborhood. I live up in Fox and Wood, and I wonder, what does a person do to afford a home like that? And it seems to me rather obvious that you don't afford homes like that on wages.
You afford homes like that because perhaps maybe you're a doctor or you're a lawyer or maybe you're bank CEO or you own your own business. And so it occurred to me in that context that what we really want, it seems to me what we really want as a vision for Santa Barbara County is to create an opportunity society or I'd edit it to say an ownership society. How do we help more people get upward mobility as Andy suggested? So that they can afford to own a piece of the rock as the Prudential Insurance Company used to describe it.
If our fellow brothers and sisters in Santa Maria Valley and the North County don't own a piece of the rock, they are not going to have respect for other people's property. And it would occur to me and seem clear to me that we will never have enough money to address the issues that we've been discussing over With respect to social services, behavioral health services, public safety. If we can't improve our economy, if we can't get our economy growing and we can democratize our economic system so that the lower end of the economic ladder have upward mobility, On the short side of the ledger sheet, as it were. And so it really does seem to me very, very obvious that we have to look at our comparable advantages particularly in the North County and what those comparable advantages are is our resource based sectors ie oil and gas.
I'm look, I'll let Andy Caldwell defend agriculture. That's his sector. I'm here to unequivocally and unapologetically advocate for oil and gas production in the North County. Look final point and I think it's consistent with what I've said already which is the way to empower people particularly the low income families of the North County is to invest strategically in education Oil and gas projects generate substantial property tax revenues.
Most of that goes to our schools, it doesn't go to the county, it goes to our K-12 public schools. And it seems to me that's how you give these kids an opportunity to really have the kind of future that many of us frankly take for granted. And so I would encourage you as you go forward To not be this sort of a green eye shade certified public accountant body, but instead be visionaries in terms of what we want Santa Barbara County to be all about. And I believe that what that means is creating more jobs, creating more opportunity for those in the North County particularly for those in the North County because they obviously and clearly need it the most. Thank you.
Good morning, Chairman, members of the board. My name is John Tana. I'm the Vice President of the Santa Barbara Deputy Sheriff's Association. Our association represents about 430 deputy sheriffs, custody deputies, dispatchers and district attorneys investigators. The grand jury recently published a report which talked about the chronic understaffing and excessive amounts over time of custody deputies working in the jail for the last ten years.
Custody deputies in the jail have had to work mandatory overtime, where we signed up for shifts ahead of time. And then prior to this, we had standby which meant we had to sit at home and wait for the phone to ring and then come to work. Working all this overtime has taken a toll on the lives and members of the department's families. We have also faced similar Situations in our dispatch center with chronic understaffing and excessive amounts of overtime. The dispatches currently have 16 hours of overtime that's built into their schedules, The DSA supports the recommendations that they have requested. The DSA strongly supports the recommendation that the Sheriff's Office consult with a professional recruiting firm, review current recruiting practices and provide recommendations including incentive programs.
This is a copy of the monthly PORAC magazine. PORAC stands for Peace Officers Research Association of California, and they represent almost all law enforcement officers throughout California. In this magazine there's a section in the back that lists advertising from law enforcement agencies throughout California. The need to attract and retain qualified candidates is tremendous.
And most of these agencies are using financial incentives to attract new employees. Sampling of the advertising in the back would include, the Bart Police Department is offering $10,000 for lateral officers. Chula Vista Police Department is offering $10 thousand incentive based experience for officers. The Modesto Police Department is offering $15,000 incentives for laterals.
The La Habra Police Department is offering $10,000 hiring bonuses for laterals. I applaud the sheriff and the undersheriff for trying to solve this problem with the recruitment teams in both custody and the law enforcement area. This is a good step in the right direction but more is needed to attract and retain qualified candidates to join and stay with the Sheriff's Office. The residents of Santa Barbara County need a well funded Properly equipped and highly trained employee. In order to have this, you need to properly fund the Sheriff's budget and you cannot cut the budget.
Thank you.
2:21 – 2:3110 turns
Ethan Bertrand will be followed by Spencer Brandt.
Hi, good morning Mr. Chair and honorable supervisors. My name is Ethan Bertrand and I'm the board president of the Isla Vista Community Services District. Public safety continues to be the most pressing issue in Isla Vista from alcohol and other drug mishaps to property crimes to sexual assault and quality of life issues. It's very important that we have adequate funding for our first responders to be able to work with the community.
We support the recommendations from the CEO's office for restoring funding for a 1.7 FTE for the Isla Vista foot patrol, as well as restoring funding for a sheriff special duty deputy for Isla Vista. Two positions in particular that we're very concerned about and That we're pleased with the service we've received from them thus far are the community resource deputy as well as the detective in the Isla Vista foot patrol. The community resource deputy has done an important job and effective job of working with youth and families, working with long term homeowners on property and noise issues. Working with rental property owners and management companies How we control neighborhood issues, as well as coordinating with student groups. It's really important community-based policing that we hope to continue to see.
The detectives has also been very important with making sure that crimes that have taken place are followed up upon in a reasonable time and that victims in Isla Vista receive the services that they need. I'm happy to announce this morning, as many of you know that Measure R passed in Isla Vista. Giving us over $700,000 new funding for annual services in Ivy on top of our $200,000 annual contribution from UCSB and other private grants that we've been able to receive. We will continue to be a partner in issues in Isla Vista, especially public safety. But one thing that I'll remind the county is that per state law, the Isla Vista Community Services District is allowed to contract with the County of Santa Barbara or the Regents of the University of California or both.
For additional police protection services to quote, supplement the level of police protection services already provided by the county and the UC. So we count on the county to provide the level of service that has been provided in the past so that we can work to fill in the gaps where necessary and improve the public safety in Isla Vista. So we thank the CEO for the recommendations and we hope to see this restoration. Thank you so much.
Supervisor Hartman.
Well I just wanted to congratulate you, I believe it was 85% of the vote to approve the tax? Almost unheard of.
Yes we're hopefully going to reach there by the certification.
And from my perspective in the third district having the CSD there as a partner has made all the difference in safety with UCIV, the CSOs, the rape crisis. You really are Filling in gaps to make it a fuller response to maintain public safety. And you're also doing a great deal in terms of public work, so we're going to be moving forward on town gown relations between the university and the CSD and the county, and I'm so glad now that you're a full financially fledged partner.
Yes well thank you so much, we look forward to our work together.
Spencer Brant and then Mr. Caldwell
Good morning, Chair Williams and Supervisors. I really just want to echo some of the things that my colleague Ethan said before me, especially when it comes to the detective position at Isla Vista Foot Patrol. This is so important to our community. I myself have been a victim of burglaries. Burglaries in Isla Vista are very prevalent. I think that one of the reasons maybe why is because we have such a friendly atmosphere. We are a college town, everyone's always over at each other's houses. We have a very high rate of burglaries and this has been sort of rising over the past year or so.
When it comes to following up on those things, when it comes to making sure that people feel comfortable going and reporting those things like there's going to be some follow-up and a reason for them to report. It's so important to have this detective position. And the same can be really said for when it comes to victims of sexual violence in our community, whether they're female, male or any gender.
We really owe it to victims to make sure that we grant them that follow up and that they feel like there is a process that they can go through where there is going to be some justice served. Like I said, with sexual violence and burglaries both these crimes are very under reported. And I think that having the detective is going to slowly help turn that around so thank you very much have a good
one. Mr. Caldwell
Chair Williams, members of the Board. During that last segment you guys talked a little bit about is this the time to discuss policy? I believe this is one of the only times at least historically the board has discussed policy and why. One of the things that you skip over each and every year is every segment of this doesn't just have performance measures it has objectives and priorities Therein you should win, you're supposed to be representing the public.
As do I. And you're supposed to be weighing in on how they're doing and whether you think their objectives are going to meet the goals and needs of the public. So this is a time for policy debate. It's one of the only times it's really scheduled for policy debate. With regard to the Sheriff's issue, we completely acknowledge there's a morale problem with the overtime We do believe that you can't turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the fact that other jurisdictions are out competing you. You're in a hole because of the cost of housing here, you're also in a literal fiscal hole and a different kind of hole in terms of maintenance, The old jail, the South County Jail should have been done away with 30 years ago. And that is one of the problems with retention and recruitment is nobody wants to work there.
And that's on you not the sheriff because you set that budget. We need a long term funding plan for the South County Jail. We disagree your spending too much on the North County Jail, you're spending too little too late. And you should be spending more and be starting with the South County Jail. I think one of the most honest statements in this entire budget book is on page D102, it's a public defender.
They didn't put performance measures in. They didn't rehash last year's because they said the number of cases we are appointed does not measure performance and quality, that is a true admission and most departments should be admitting the same. Activity is not an accomplishment and what they're measuring in terms of performance doesn't necessarily tell you how good of a job they're doing or what they're actually accomplishing.
Fire. What are we going to do? We're already in fire season. What are we doing to break the cycle of fires and floods? What are we going to do different? As I've mentioned numerous times, in the 1960s the board considered suing not Southern California Edison or PG&E but the federal government for fuel loading. I've not heard the board talk about that. In terms of most of the land that burns is federal land and or state responsibility areas, why aren't we going to the state and the feds? Why isn't that more of a performance measure? It's mentioned in the fire department but it's not quantifiable.
I'm Because we used to have less fires in this region in the days of primitive society, because in primitive society they used to light that thing up every so often and prevent the buildup of fuel. The fact that there was 100 years of fuel is unconscionable. Do you blame the light that came off the wire? Or the federal government that stored 100 years worth of fuel that didn't burn, it exploded.
It exploded 60,000 acres a day consumed twice. 120,000 acres in two days. Again what are the objectives priorities and accomplishments in terms of what the real mission values and priorities and needs are of this county? If you don't do it now when will you do it? Thank you.
2:31 – 2:3710 turns
That concludes public comment.
We've got Supervisor Lavenino and I'm going to also just give a brief overview of Supervisor Lavenino, Supervisor Wolfe and then I'm going to also have a follow-up for the Chair. Just to give you warning.
Thank You Mr. Chair. This is a question I had of the fire chief before when we met privately, and I just would encourage him to bring this at some point. One of the questions was asked about what we've been doing with the fire transfer tax, the shift. And first off, I also want to publicly acknowledge the CEO's office and Jeff of making sure that we continue two things in public safety, and that was stay on track on the North County Jail funding And also continue the fire transfer tax.
On the money that you've received, can we go back to and take a look at the CityGate report? And kind of give me a checkbox of what's been done and what hasn't been done. So I'm just encouraging the fire chief to bring that at some point because it is very impressive. I think that's what people are expecting of us is similar to what happened with Measure A. We gave them a list and said if you increase your tax, here's what we're gonna do with it. And you can go through each item now and you can check the box. Yes, we did the Union Valley Parkway. Yes we did the Santa Maria widening. We did the bridge. Check, check, check. And I think when you look at what we've done with that transfer tax, you can check a lot of the boxes off on the city gate report so Just kudos to the fire department there.
Supervisor Wolf.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can we go back to slide 14? And I guess I want to talk about the new jail operations and I think one of the important words that we heard from the sheriff was delta. So as much as we, I think would like to believe or think that we're funding the North County Jail adequately. Again, I'm very concerned that we're going to be seeing additional funds that are going to need to be allocated.
My question is that this year we put in almost $11 million and And then there's a recommended decrease of $12.5 million with a balance of $11 million. So I think in the last few years, and CEO Miyasato can correct me if I'm wrong, that within the last few years we've been taking the money out s been building up the balance so here we have $12.5 million that we' re taking out of this fund for operations and my assumption was it was going toward the training or hiring of new deputies custody deputies is
Supervisor Wolf to the chair those are great questions and yes so on B-21 of actually your budget we have the future jail operating funding plan that we've referred to. And it shows that we make contributions every year per our plan and there are You're right that in the next couple of years we've seen an acceleration of costs coming out of that fund as was planned to staff up. So you're right that a lot of those cost majority for 18-19 are To get ready for the staffing for the Northern Branch Jail. There's also a small construction amount that's also included, but it's on B21 of your budget.
Right so yeah we have been taking out small amounts that just began in 15-16 even though the plan started in 11-12 where we weren't taking out anything and now we do see this large amount. So I'm going to ask the sheriff If this is for custody hires, where are we on that? For the $12.5 million.
Supervisor Wolf through the Chair. As CEO Miyasato indicated, this is part of the planned drawdown of this operational account that was developed. The whole idea was that there would be an incremental I'm The piggy bank, if you will, of collected funds and those matched up with the amounts that have been partitioned out of the budget would ultimately pay for the hiring of the new deputies. And as you're aware we have already hired some tranches of new deputies and were about to hire some more new deputies as well. We had the initial draw down that was done for a relatively small number of people which Essentially, it was the transition team that was put together. So it is working according to plan. This is exactly how it was anticipated that we would be doing this.
Mike, my question though is specifically how many custody deputies have you hired? And does this $12.5 million go for those hires or is it being utilized for anything else?
Yeah I'm going to flip that question to my staff here in just a moment so they can give you an exact answer on that.
2:37 – 2:427 turns
Supervisor Wolf through the chair, yes that money is for the hiring of we have currently 30 I believe custody deputies that have been not including the five in the transition team that have been hired and then we have approximately a little over 60 that will be hired in the next fiscal year.
Okay so that is
That's including all staff there's 1528, there will be additional custody deputies specifically.
Okay, so what you're saying is with what you've hired now and what you anticipate that we'll use the $12.5 million? Correct. Okay, thank you.
Why don't you just stay up there because I got one more for ya. So I'm I'm wrestling with similar questions, though on the patrol side or how it relates to the patrol side. So in total you guys have 60 something new positions next year minus the decreases in some areas of your organization is a net increase We have 52.73 positions, so most of that's in custody, some of that is in patrol, some of that is in civilians to help with the other stuff including...
So I guess my question An ambitious program. It's partially planned for, partially augmented by our budgetary decisions that sort of we wrestled with back in April and the CEO put in the recommended budget out of our desire to decrease OT and thereby hopefully increase retention of our employees. Do you feel, give us a sense of the big picture. Is this going to get the job done?
I'm not asking is it enough because there's never enough but is this going to get the job done?
Chair Williams, I do believe that this plan has been put together and the budget that has been proposed that will support that plan is the major step in the right direction. I don't think it's going to completely solve all of our problems because we are We are understaffed, as you're aware. A couple of surveys have shown that we're understaffed in the main jail as well. So even assuming that we get everybody hired for the new jail, the jail opens up and all that goes according to Hoyle.
We still are going to have somewhat of a structural staffing deficit because we don't really have enough people. I'm Overall jail numbers in the scope of the last year as a result of some of the pretrial changes that have occurred in the court system and whatnot. So this is a very fluid situation obviously, and I don't want to stand before you and say yeah this is going to be the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems but it is we believe a major step in the right direction and Proved through the Santa Maria experiment that if we do have sufficient staffing, we are going to knock down the overtime. And we are going to inherently increase morale because we will have less of an overtime drain and strain on our existing staff. So I hope that in a roundabout way answered your question.
And then maybe from the big picture to how it might affect one particular area. We've discussed before the fact that the law enforcement needs in Montecito have been higher after the disaster just because more burglary attempts, a certain amount of traffic control issues as construction and cleanup gets done. With these 10 civilian positions and with the patrol, what kind of continuance of that presence will take place after the FEMA funding runs out?
2:42 – 2:4820 turns
Chair Williams, the reality is that we have I guess titrated down our response from a very huge high in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to the point where we are now. We certainly would like to see some additional staffing there, obviously that is dependent upon our staffing levels and our ability to provide service. We have taken that into account to some degree in this budget and You know, in the foreseeable future that we'll continue to be providing some enhanced service in Montecito. But it is obviously a challenge for us in that we have only a limited amount of staff and we have a lot of need throughout the county. But I don't know if you want to-
Maybe asking specifically on the ten civilian positions, does that give you enough One position and one shift. Sorry, not one post but one position or one shift or two? What does it-
Those civilian positions are essentially a trade off for the sworn positions that will decrease our costs and still allow us to provide service and leverage the sworn staff that we have. But they're not completely interchangeable obviously so.
Yeah, I just noted. I'm
trying
to be modest in my hopes and obviously the civilian position can take reports and can do traffic control which are the two of the biggest needs out there. I am not saying they can do everything a sworn can and it would be better to have a sworn but out of the ten positions will you be able to put one
out there? That is certainly our plan, and if you figure that roughly it takes five positions to staff an around-the-clock position. And those positions likely won't be around the clock positions. They would be more of a daytime hour type position that we would employ. So I think that we're going to be able to see some very good results with this. Do you
want
to add to that?
Supervisor Williams to the Chair. You touched on it, or you are the chair, never mind, Chair Williams. The whole idea behind the SSTs is exactly what you touched on which was taking some of that burden off of patrol but as the Sheriff indicated it is not a force multiplier for patrol or crime prevention other than giving those existing resources more availability.
Got it, okay. Supervisor Wolfe
also has another
question. Thank you. I just want to talk about MOUs. Glad to see that you've reached an MOU with courts. Thank you Daryl for that. That was brought up before so that's an accomplishment, so thank you. I also want to touch on the MOU for air support unit. As was discussed very early today, you've eliminated a pilot position. Originally the MOU as I recall had two pilots, two from your department and two from fire.
So I'm concerned about where we are with the air support unit just in general. And I don't know if this will come from you or We will need an update on this because we want to make sure that those helicopters are manned, especially I hate to say fire season because that's kind of a misnomer now. But we just had a red flag warning so I want to ensure that everyone is ready, that we have available staff ready to fly the ships that we have.
My question is, you have eliminated one pilot position and do you have the other position filled?
Chair, Supervisor Wolf through the chair. This shift came about as a result of the retirement of one of our pilots who was also a sergeant deputy sheriff. And the plan was to reduce that sergeant position in this case it was a pilot position. And then to replace it with a civilian helicopter pilot, that position is currently being recruited. So there won't be a net sum loss in terms of actual pilots once that position is filled.
So how are you doing on that recruitment? I mean, it's open, are you interviewing? Where are you on that?
Supervisor Wolf, quite honestly we are bringing one pilot back. Extra help a pilot that retired recently and we're waiting to see the outcome of this year's budget process before we begin the recruitment. The recruitment for that pilot will commence probably as soon as this budget hearing is finished.
But you do have budgeted for one pilot though?
That is correct
So it shouldn't be dependent on these budget hearings.
It is in the sense that we didn't know...
Well, unless you think that we might take that away from you?
2:48 – 2:5111 turns
We thought it prudent to wait and see.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, we're going to move on to one more functional group before taking lunch So if you're here for Sports Services or Policy and Executive, that is Auditor-Controller, Clerk-Recorder, Assessor, General Services, Treasurer, Tax Collector, Human Resources, County Council, Board of Supervisors or County Executive Office Budgets. You can leave and get some work done but if you're here for Agricultural Weights & Measures, Community Services, Planning and Development or Public Works, you are in the right place.
I'm sure there's going to be a question for P&D or for Public Works, maybe even for Community Services. And I'll just ask the board to prepare their questions and if there's none immediately then we'll get ready to go to public comment because I do know that there is some public comment on this. Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you. My question is for community services and I know the answer but I'm not sure everyone else does, and that is I would like Mr. Chapshin to talk about the ESI team project leader position and specifically how that can help generate revenues over time.
Supervisor Hartman to the chair. This is a position we feel there are monies available from the cap and trade dollars, and they're spread out over a number of state agencies. And this position would actually go and seek and find opportunities for grant opportunities and revenue sources for the county. So we think it's kind of an investment in bringing more dollars in to help both sustainability issues and also working with other departments as well.
Supervisor
Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chapman and I'm sure this was just an oversight on page 3 highlighted objectives which wasn't included was San Marcos the park that is being worked on.
I'm sorry. San Marcos?
Yes, San Marcos Foothills Park that is being worked on with funds from CSA3 and Parks. And I know our Parks Commission has looked at it so I just wanted to highlight it as an objective because it's taken a lot of work from your staff and it's another opportunity for open space and parks amenities. So I think that's it. Thank you.
We'll go to public comment.
For this functional group, we have three requests to speak. We're going to start in Santa Maria with Lori Tamura then come back to Santa Barbara for Pat Saley and Andy Caldwell. Lori Tamura please in Santa Maria?
2:52 – 3:015 turns
Hello, this is Lori Tamura, citizen of the Orchid area. And I put in a request to speak in regards to Union Valley Parkway. Had the opportunity to speak in the past. We just finished the Elks Rodeo facility where throughout the four day period of time there was 35,000 attendees and all of them going in and out at one access point. There were police, sheriffs, CHP and a number of people controlling traffic through that access point.
And it just proves again how important the extension in Union Valley Parkway is to the east side of 101. Ironically earlier today you were talking about economic development and economic vitality. Can you imagine how many more times the Elks Rodeo facility could be used for events, for tax dollars, for activities, for tourism if it had a better access point?
Union Valley Parkway is that access point and we're asking that you consider Initiating this process for the benefit of Northern Santa Barbara County and the county as a whole. The Elks are very important to this county, as well as the future high school that will be built on the east side of the freeway. This is something that you can all easily agree to and support this go around. This is the third time we've asked for it, and we're hoping that you'll move forward this year.
Thank you very much, and I'm available for any questions.
Pat Saley, then we'll hear from Andy Caldwell.
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the board. My name is Pat Saley I'm here to speak about library funding. For the record, I'm a former member of the Library Advisory Committee. I am currently president of the Friends of the Montecito Library. I'd like to make two points. The first is as I'm sure you know but I would like to remind you five of the 15 libraries in the county are in the unincorporated area. That is Kuyama, Los Alamos, Montecito Orchid and Vandenberg Village.
And I'm sure you know also that these libraries are very important to their communities. Four of them are in North County, one South County. And I think you also know that the funding for these five libraries is pretty much strictly from your board and from fundraising and that is pretty tenuous. It is difficult to raise money for operations. It's much easier to raise money for a building with naming rights and such, not operations.
And also the assigned population for each of these five libraries is pretty small. So while raising per capita, especially on an ongoing basis would be great, it doesn't bring a lot of money into these five smallish libraries and they will still have pretty significant deficits at various. The second point is something your board talked about last week, and that was the idea of taking the management partners library study and moving forward.
There is clearly a need to study the countywide library system, its organization, admin. And funding. And your board talked about forming an ad hoc committee with two board members, Mr. Williams and Ms. Hartman, the library directors. And there was some confusion on this but I would certainly advocate for having at least two Library Advisory Committee representatives on that committee and Would be to look into options and set up a system that has to be better than the status quo, so we don't have year after year of struggling to fund libraries.
So in closing, I am asking that you make the libraries with deficits. Several of which are in the unincorporated area. Make those libraries whole so they can retain their hours and services and build up their collections. And then secondly that you move forward with the library ad hoc committee to study alternative ways to organize and fund libraries in the county. Thank you.
Andy Caldwell.
Chair Williams, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing Colab. I'm glad that four of you have been to one CoLab annual dinner, and you saw the breadth and the depth of our membership. We represent literally every single sector of the economy in terms of our membership. And what I can tell you is we don't get complaints about the cost of fees. As much as we get complaints about the uncertainty of your process.
That somebody can go through a process, pay a fee, be dragged literally through hoops for three to five years and then still come out with a denial or conditions that kill the project. There's no certainty. You have land use ordinances but by the time they get interpreted and applied and mitigated Santa Maria Energy, remember that one? PCEC been doing business up there. That oil for over 100 years.
Then it goes gone. Exxon's on life support. And some of these things are, maybe it's the federal government dragging their feet on the pipeline. But what have you done to tell them to quit dragging their feet? And or what did you do to push through an emergency permit for trucking? Those are two of your top ten taxpayers, Veneco and Exxon were, and 80% of your money comes from taxes.
Do the math, connect the dots. With regard to public works, they're fudging a little bit by giving you an average on pavement index. But they told the truth on one page. Your rural roads are at 47. They're at 47, how close is that to abandonment? How close is that to requiring rebuilding at five times the cost of maintenance? Rural roads are at 47, not 50-something and the goal is 70.
One of the things that killed, and again these projects went through planning and development, EIRs all the rest. One of the things that killed the oil industry and one of the reasons it's looked down upon is this quest for greenhouse gas emission reductions. And in your next section, like the dog on a bone. The county keeps wanting to push community choice even though you've done a couple of different studies and it comes up as non-feasible.
Well you have to ask yourself how important is spending for instance a couple hundred thousand dollars a year on that versus on page D396. On page D396, actually I'm on the wrong section but it still applies to this. Is 400 emergency work orders in the county for broken water lines, HVAC failures, sewer backups, broken windows and roof leaks. Darryl Pinney in Santa Barbara gets slammed for being a slumlord?
I wonder if the county is the biggest slumlord in the county. Does that title belong to the Board of Supervisors? That's more than one a day, and again your money comes from property taxes. Your property taxes come from the private sector and the number one payer is oil and gas. Thank you.
3:01 – 3:0616 turns
Supervisor Wolff.
Thanks, Mr Chair. Mr Chaption I have just a clarifying question. First of all thanks Pat for speaking about libraries. I just wanted to clarify the committee discussion that we had because I understood that you were going to come back to the board with recommendations on the makeup and the goals of the committee. It hasn't totally been finalized, even though we want to move in that direction. Am I clear
on that? Supervisor, roll through the chair. That was my understanding and we will be coming back. All
right, thank you.
Supervisor Lavigno, I want to make one possible correction. I don't treat this as gospel because it was about six months since I looked at the figures but when I looked at the property tax figures, I actually saw a number of business entities that are creating just more property tax than oil and gas. Maybe it's how they parse it but sure look to me like if you Just the flower industry, if you took all the greenhouses and added it to the flowers that was actually more property tax than oil and gas.
But don't treat it as gospel maybe just look at those figures one more time. What kind of flowers were they growing? I think these were the old style flowers as opposed to your new style
flowers. That brings me to my question and that's, well first off I just want to say, I probably spent a number of my years up here questioning some things that happened in planning and development that I haven't always agreed with but The staff in that department that took an idea through an EIR, through an ordinance and through a ballot measure in 16 months.
Unbelievable. It was a lot of people really working hard and getting the job done, and I just wanted to appreciate that. But it does bring me to the next point which is question is are we going to do something about what I'm curious about in cannabis on the revenue that we're projecting and what we're talking about? So the tax passed but does that mean So tomorrow or today, or when does that go into effect? When somebody walks in to P&D and says I want to start working on a permit and we start handing them a bill. Or what are we doing with that? And I guess the same thing for Treasurer Tax Collector. How, when he gets done next, I guess.
Mr Chair, Supervisor Lavinino. We opened for business for cannabis permits last Thursday. We haven't issued any yet. I don't think we've received any applications yet, but we have scheduled intake meetings.
Okay, very good. So we, I guess if somebody walks in with a check now-
We know what to do with it.
We do?
Yes.
We do?
We do.
Okay,
awesome!
Perfect, thank you. And one other thing though, not for you but on the comment that Andy made. Actually I think rural roads are at 42 and not 47 is what I saw. But the other side of that too though is arterials are at 69 and we never talk about that so when you look at it as a whole, I think we want to bring all roads up. Obviously I think that's the goal of everybody but yes rural roads are, I don't want to use What I was going to try to say, trying to take a street slang and make it sound a little more intelligent.
A lot of people are driving on arterials and connectors, which actually have a higher PCI than our average. So yes, rural roads are dragging those numbers down and it would be nice to get at some point look at how we break that down. I'm always frustrated with that we use PCI as a barometer of how we're doing but we don't. That's the only time we really talk about it and Repairs on those things based on PCI. So we're not working towards the number which in my life was always if you're judged at X, you should probably spend your money towards X if you want to manipulate that number because I think that could be done. If really what we wanted to do is make that number go up and everybody feel better there are ways things that you can do to make that number go up.
I think what's more important is to continue to use the strategic science-based I just wanted to give
3:06 – 3:1316 turns
Mr. McGaughlin, an opportunity to come up or maybe Mr. Sneddon would rather handle this? To come up and tell us why we don't use PCI to determine maintenance.
Supervisor Adam to the chair. PCI is one of the factors, we use a lot of different factors including the street saver asset management database, superintendents institutional knowledge and knowledge being out there in the field every day to maximize Of these tools, you really need to fully fund the program. So when we're working under a reduced funding regimen, we bring in other selection criteria but it's all aimed at preserving our infrastructure to the best ability we can given the funding that we have.
Okay so there's two kinds of maintenance programs. There's worst first and then there's preserve the best. So which one do you do?
Correct, so yeah we're using the pavement preservation philosophy. That's why you see a blend of the rehabs for the really bad roads and then the preventive treatments on the roads that we're trying to hold at a higher PCI.
Yeah, and the reason for that is because we're not fully funded
Well, we would be using that philosophy either way. But it does tend to, we do have to be very strategic about trying to keep as many roads at the higher level as we can when we have very limited funding to do the rehab type work.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm listening to you. I didn't realize that was the case, that we would be doing the pavement preservation model either way and is that as a result of the degradation? The state of our county roads, you're really stuck in that rather than a worst first regime.
So the blended pavement preservation philosophy is the most efficient way to maintain a whole network. The category we fall into when you have limited funding, As you have to make selections between the two and the balance of the two, and you start having to make a blended balance to try and preserve the overall network the best you can. Which limits the amount of rehab work you can do because that's the really expensive treatment so you end up kind of tilting towards the preservation aspects more.
Right, and so those places that already need rehab just continue to drain down through the PCI numbers and drag the whole system down accordingly.
Correct, and that's why Supervisor Lavinino I think was kind of mentioning is if you just aim for PCI. You can do things that will hold your PCI but your backlog may continue to grow because it's averaging together the good roads with the ones that need the rehabs.
Okay thanks a lot.
Supervisor Wolfe?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. CEO Miyasato, the issue was raised from one of our speakers about work orders in our sewer system and so forth. One thing that I'm excited about that I've seen in the budget is the allocation for the debt service. As I recall, one of the major projects that was going to be done was going to be done at the county campus. And I think, if I'm not mistaken that a lot of it had to do with the sewer system and the water system and some of the real antiquated systems that we had in the county campus. That would take care of some of those issues. Am I accurate in that assessment?
Supervisor Wolf for the chair yes you're correct. That was part of the list of projects for COP funding. Okay good
thank you. It was Miss Black, I have a question for you. Thank you. Can you explain where we are with the short term rental ordinance since it's been to the Coastal Commission? What would happen if we take no action? What recommendations do you have to make sure that we can tie up this kind of outstanding piece that's hanging out there?
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Wolf, so on May 10th, I think it was May 10th. The Coastal Commission denied certification of our LCP amendment to regulate short term rentals and homestays. So they didn't suggest modifications, they just flat out denied it. So today we're in the same position as we were yesterday which is short term rentals in the coastal zone are unregulated.
Thought about was, what options do we have moving forward? And I think we have three. Two of them take resources and one of them does not. The three would include, and there's probably way more than three but just three to kind of talk through the issue. One would be to revise the ordinance to expand the historic overlay allowing for short term rentals. So we had the really small Miramar Historic Overlay, Didn't say they would accept an expansion, but they certainly seem to be leaning that way. That a substantial expansion of the overlay may be the way to go.
So that's one option and we've done a very rough cut estimate of the cost associated with that and it's about 0.75 FTE. The second would be to revise the ordinance to allow short-term rentals throughout the coastal zone with regulations. That would be a pretty simple process to go through, we've already developed the regulations. We'd have to reprocess the ordinance through both planning commissions, your board and the Coastal Commission but we kind of know what that would look like but that would allow short term rentals. Throughout the coastal zone in all of the zone districts, and we've estimated that would be about 2.25 FTE.
And then the other option is to take no further action and the effect of that would be to allow short term rentals throughout the coastal zone without any regulations and the cost of that is zero.
3:13 – 3:2421 turns
Thank you, thanks for that. And then just a quick follow up so our ordinance for inland is still in place?
Yes Mr Chair and Supervisor Wolff, our ordinance in the inland area is in place and I believe it is operational in September, October?
Yes.
So it isn't in operation yet but Will be soon after the summer season. And just one other clarification, your board already acted on the long range planning work program back in April, April 3rd I believe and short term rentals was not incorporated because we just didn't anticipate that the Coastal Commission would reject our submittal so it's not included in our. All
right.
Long range planning work.
Yeah, I saw it somewhere as a possible expansion. Yes. Okay thank you for that explanation. Sure.
Supervisor Herman?
And farmstay when do we expect to have that ready?
Farmstay is going to be processed as part of the ag permit streamlining project and so within the next year or so.
And since you're up there, just in case you have a comment on this I will talk about. I think some of the discussion we've had today about economic development is really important and I do think that there are some substantive moves that we could make in long term planning and a little bit in community development to address it. All the issues surrounding the Goleta RFP have caused me for the past two years to be scouring for a solar developer that would be willing to do utility scale solar in county.
What's the Goleta
RFP? The Goleta RFP is the energy request for proposal that SE has in. And essentially, the danger has been that there would be a restart of a natural gas facility or a new natural gas facility if we cannot get together and develop renewable energy. Lo and behold, when I went solar company to solar company. They're like hey, their response was hey, I'm glad you want us here but it doesn't seem like the county does.
And this isn't pejorative of P&D, it's simply P& D knows that people sue so they require environmental review and I have as a policy mechanism concurred with that. But essentially, it's against the rules to do utility scale solar anywhere in the county except for Cuyama unless you're willing to do environmental review for pretty much not just your project but other projects and I think that's a big sign, that kind of is to me exhibit A of what we've been talking about today.
Obviously some of our economic development questions, there's a lot of controversy. There's a lot of consternation between people North and South but I thought this is one of the things we all want right? Is some good paying job producing clean energy and something in step with our values. And yet it's another example of something that Essentially, rules in place to prevent.
And so I feel it's very important that community development can do some of the site selection work that we've talked about and that P&D can at least towards the end of this fiscal year begin some environmental review long term planning work on On a solar ordinance, I felt it very important to be addressed as part of addressing this economic development question. And also very important in terms of just being consistent with our values.
It seems to me kind of crazy that it's something we preach about all the time and yet it's something that we don't permit. Supervisor Hartman?
I just wanted to chime in and that is, I think we've begun our clean energy roadmap here in South County through CSD. Where can we find demand response? Where can we find storage? Where can we find more generation? And we've been working on our county facilities and I think trying to identify other facilities. Our real goal is to take that to North County. And I'm particularly interested in the severe drought that we're still experiencing and what that means to cattle ranches throughout the north county in particular, and whether there would be an opportunity for solar energy in some of those range lands. But as I understand it CSD would be doing a study to overlay where are the lands?
Where our transmission capabilities and needs, and so that way the county can take on some of the environmental review instead of pushing that off onto individual ranchers. So I'm very supportive of this because I live next to a lot of range land and there are very few cows anymore because there's not much pasture there. So, I think this is a way forward, so I'm very supportive of it along with you Chair Williams.
Mr. Chair, I didn't hear a question in there but I'm going to divide one in my head so I can respond to it. We prepared both for the budget workshops and for the budget hearings today with some information for your board and this shouldn't look new. It's information that we did provide at the budget workshops following the long range planning work program item on And you can see the third line item is a utility grade solar ordinance and policy amendments.
And based upon my discussions with CSD, I would recommend that we really fund this for fiscal year 19-20 because they are doing the feasibility analysis. Now in site analysis, and until we have that there's not a whole lot of work for us to do unless you want us to replicate that work. And that doesn't seem particularly efficient so that was my recommendation on this. I think it's very important project and one that is worthy but may not be quite timely yet.
Supervisor Hartman.
Well, I did inquire a bit about this and while it may take six to nine months for CSD to do theirs we could get it launched then at least get it started through P&D and for me this is a huge priority like cannabis was. I mean, I think it's got tremendous potential for us to generate revenue so I'd like to get it started.
Yes, I think that to Ms. Black's point we may not need full funding in this fiscal year but I do think that partial funding in this fiscal year to start it whether that's in six months or in nine months I think is pretty important to do.
Yes, Ms. White? Mr Chair, so on the slide you can see that we provided both costs for doing this work in house and cost if a consultant did these projects. And just to really quickly go through the slide, the ag tier permitting project is already in our work program. So there's no need to fund that particular line item. The next two Union Valley Parkway and the utility grade solar are not. And you can see that if we were to start both of those projects this year and did those in-house, that would take 1.5 FTE that I don't have. If we were to do those outside with a consultant then the project costs are a little bit higher. And then I've added some information about short term rentals. But all of those projects, aside from the agricultural tiered permitting project are outside of the scope of the current long range planning work program
budget. The nail on the head why I feel like it needs to be budgeted this year because if it's not then You won't have it as an FTE, and then there'll be further delay caused by how long it takes to hire staff. So that to me is really quintessentially why we need to budget something so that you know that you've got the, it has a board priority in that you can hire somebody so it costs us less money than if we go out to consultants.
Supervisor Wolk?
Well, obviously the whole issue of solar has been a priority for me and I think this board. And I'm not really clear just like I mentioned about the hydrology study. I'm not totally clear what is involved in the utility grade solar ordinance and I guess I would be a little reluctant, especially given what you just said. And I don't really even know what is behind this but we just heard from you that there's a step process so I'm not sure why we would And I guess we'll get to this when we're talking about our budget priorities, why we would do that or allocate funds for that.
If just given what you said there's a process and that it can be funded in another year. I don't know why we would necessarily do it now. Plus I don' really know even what the project is so thank you.
3:24 – 3:319 turns
Well I'd just say that this is something we've talked about before. We've talked about it at least as much as Union Valley Parkway and I think that's another economic development question too.
Don't lump mine in with your controversial one, mines a slam dunk.
Supervisor Wolf, it's okay to interrupt me
for a joke but not okay to interrupt me with a counterpoint before I've made my point. I have not even made my point here. So can you wait to make your counterpoint until after I make my point?
Of course, I will wait. I wish that you would give me the same respect that you are asking me to give to you. I am trying to respond to something that I brought up and I'm telling you that I don't know what you're talking about and I'm trying to explain what I do know You know it's interesting you keep cutting me off but when you want to speak, you have the floor and you can go on for as long as you want. And I've never said you need to stop talking so please allow me the courtesy to speak when I am questioning something that is up on the board.
Supervisor Wolk, I did not know that you had additional questions. Okay, well I thought she just looked at you and asked if you had additional questions and you said no. So I am making my point now which is simply that I do think it's something we've talked about. It's not a late hit and there's a lot at stake. When the, what will happen for the South Coast is that the SC and the PUC have put out a request for proposal for preferred resources.
That is renewable projects in small amounts. There's not enough projects getting out there and getting interconnection requests for that to happen. And so I think it's really important, unless the South Coast wants to get saddled with another natural gas power plant to be refired. We need to have a plan and unless we want to allow it to continue that solar is essentially illegal in our county which I find just from a values perspective totally unacceptable.
Then we need to have a plan. And that, in my mind, that plan has got to mean utility scale solar because a lot of us on the South County kind of like to live in la-la land and like to believe that there's going to be enough cumulative on rooftops to meet the energy demand. And that has not been borne out by fact and so if we want The PUC to accept renewable as the solution here, we've got to have something that might add up to enough megawatts for them to believe that it's possible.
And thus far what is not materializing is enough. I think it' s important to have small distributed generation projects to meet the demand. So I just think there is a lot at stake here and I also think it' s about our values and whether we really consider economic development to be important. It' s impossible to tell the puc or sce
Supervisor Adam. Well, I'm just going to make an objection to this discussion because you know this is why we have D items and they come back with a nice board letter and some color glossy photos and we get to really get down in the details on this and you know what? We're talking about policy considerations Especially in light of the fact that there's specific questions about what this project is that we would be funding.
And you know, this is one of those things that you put a D item out there and you get the votes and you instruct the CEO or staff to load it into the budget and then it's there. You know? We had a pregnant idea Last time, but nobody told CEO to put it in her budget. And frankly maybe the money doesn't exist so maybe we have to have another D item and maybe it is next year. There's a lot of points on this that I would Sort of like the debate about, but in light of the fact that this is a budget hearing I just feel like it's inappropriate.
And such as what good is a solar plant if you don't have power in the evening? I think the hole in our power scheme at this point seems to be in the off-peak nighttime hours. So, I think those are considerations that we need to hear about and that should be part of the greater discussion and not just try and shoehorn this thing in at this point in the budget. I think this is an inappropriate time to be doing this.
Well, I think it's an economic development project as valid as the Union Valley Parkway. And I think we've talked a lot about this when long term planning came with their work plan. That is the bottleneck for getting things done in this county. If you guys want to do something about economic development, that means we need to get more resources into long-term planning. We need to staff up long term planning because almost everything we could do on economic development requires environmental review.
I wish it wasn't so. But that's the way it is. And I think if you guys want Union Valley Parkway, I think it's just as valid to be asking that we should start another economic development move in legalizing solar in this county. Supervisor Wolf?
No comment.
3:31 – 3:364 turns
Supervisor Adam? Economic development is, in my opinion, the problem that we've had with economic development is that we really don't want it and now we're trying to pick and choose the little pieces that we'd like to have hither and yon. And not making a concerted decision to take all of the above economic development I've long said that we just don't want economic development. Really, truly, we don't want economic development because you can't pick who you want to come to your county and do a business. What we need is business.
And if some of it's lower paying jobs and some of it's higher paying jobs, you also need to build executive housing in the North County. You know, we keep focusing all of our efforts on low-income housing and that's great but you know there has got to be some place for the people who run these businesses that you want to attract to live. And you know there just isn't that much of that type of housing up there so those are the kind of things I think we need to think about in the future and be a little more open Thank you.
I think my only point, Mr. Adam is that it was discussed along with the other long-term planning projects. It shouldn't be a late hit. And I don't disagree with your points about that we are far too selective about what kind of economic development we're willing to have and that is a conscious decision on some and some it's been an unconscious decision and I think one of the things today reexamining that.
I think part of reexamining that is not opening the floodgates in long-term planning but maybe biting off a little bit more than we are currently because that is, not a whole lot's going to happen in economic development if we don't tackle more things in our work plan and long term planning.
Okay, Supervisor Adam? Yeah just one final word on this UVP thing. Just as a side note, $155,000 I mean this is literally a line on a map and it's a really tiny short line too. I don't know how we get $155,000 on that item.
Okay, with that we're going to go to lunch for 40 minutes. We'll be back. ♪♪
3:46 – 4:121 turns
Thank you. ♪ . . ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Hi. ¶¶ ♪ Hi. ♪ Music. You. you Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good morning. ♪ Good morning. Good morning.
4:15 – 4:182 turns
Yeah.
♪ ♫ Hi. Hi, everyone. Yeah.
4:19 – 4:2518 turns
We had to assume that we'd continue to see a degradation in the revenues coming from that facility. In addition to that, I think part of the reduction also reflects a lower than anticipated TOT in the current year. And we haven't dissected exactly what the reason for that is but one of the suggestions has been that the impact from short-term rentals was greater than we had originally anticipated. So it's combination of two factors.
So what happens right now if somebody has an STR? Okay so Went to the Coastal Commission, it got rejected. So we are without any... Explain to me right now like if somebody has an STR, are we still collecting? Are we not collecting or what are we doing? Chair Williamson, Supervisor Lavagnino, we are collecting right now. Yes. Okay well we were going to collect anyway until October, right? Okay. Are we going
to collect after October? That's a good question. If I am aware of someone conducting short-term rental activities, then I will be trying to attempt to collect yes.
Okay
but that was still only somebody's part time job correct in your department? Yes we weren't given any resources for that so yeah we just fit it in where we can. Okay perfect thank you very much
Go ahead.
Chair
Williams and Supervisor Lavagnino, to add to Harry's comments regarding the strategic reserve, just as important as the actual balances in the strategic reserve and the contingencies as I agree that they look holistically is the policy that we have of funding that strategic reserve on an annual basis. And so with this second year A stopping of it or basically a temporary halting. It's understandable given the disasters that we've had, but I definitely would recommend that you get back on track to do an annual allocation or appropriation into that strategic reserve trying to maintain the policy of getting up to that 8%.
And can I ask a question on this STR thing that you bring up? So we are still collecting, but in your mind we are not doing enough enforcement or is the feeling I get from your comments?
Chair Williams, I don't know if I'd say that. If we're not doing enough for enforcement. I think planning does the enforcement piece of it. I
mean from finding people who are
not paying their TOTs. Absolutely, I think that we could be doing more, yes. One of the things we will be working with planning is there's a third party vendor that we may utilize that would give us a lead on many short-term rentals doing business in the county, depending on how it all falls out though. But yeah, there are things we could be doing differently.
Mr. Lavinia? Mr. Chair, I have something in my head like $67,000 or $70,000 is what we had talked about at some point. Maybe that was just a halftime FTE or something or maybe for some software. I don't know where that number came from in my head. Right, a consulting service?
Because we may not agree on SGR policy yet but we all agree that people should be paying their taxes so I mean you'd...I know it's a dangerous thing to ask you but you don't need funds to do this or you have... I just don't want you to wait another year.
No, Chair Williams, I'm not asking for any funds. If it looks like something we want to go forward with, we will do it. Okay. Great. Wow, he likes answers
like that. Other questions? Supervisor Hartman.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had one for general services and that has to do with the BetterAvia solar and I think we're going to go out on this and get funding through external financing. My question is, is this something that would benefit from the county putting some of its own general fund money towards it or is it something that we can get outside funding for BetterAvia solar?
It depends, I guess. Chair Hartman through you or through the chair to Supervisor Hartman. We are looking at several different options of financing that. One is it's, I won't say there's any grant money but there is low interest loans either through on bill financing should we choose that which is actually zero interest for the lighting portion of the project.
Keep in mind the total project is about four and a half million. The other is a possible CEC, California Environmental Council grant. Not a grant because we have to pay it back so it's a 1% interest loan and then the rest would be through some sort of municipal debt financing. So general funds at this point we don't know the interest rate because it's going to be a blended rate.
It's likely that the utility fund Which of course is ultimately funded in part by the general fund. We'll be able to make those debt payments, but obviously the less we have to borrow, the better. But it will be paid back in part through general funds through the utility fund.
4:25 – 4:2711 turns
I'll follow up to that just by asking, how small of an amount would we have to set aside in order to reduce that debt service? Meaning is it one of these things where we'd have to put a lot down to conceivably reduce the debt service that you have on the non-lighting portion of the project or does a relatively small amount help us to knock down the debt service.
My only experience to this is owning a home, so I don't know that it's transferable skills. So that's why I'm
asking-
Figure the down payment.
Yes, Chairman Williams obviously yes if we were to somehow reduce the amount that we borrow I don't have the figures off the top of my head. Obviously if we got a million dollars and we only have to borrow, you know overall three and a half million instead of four and a half that's a pretty big deal so I guess you look at it from that perspective you've got some debt payment money set aside But again, that's for the COPs. This would be out of our utility bill fund so I guess we'd have to do the math
I guess. And that scale is a little bit out of our ability to pay at this time but is it like a home where what's the non-lighting
portion of the project? The lighting portion is $800,000 so four and a half million so it would be three point So
is
it a
situation where 10% of that as a down payment significantly reduces the debt service?
Again, I'd have to do the math to see what the payment amount would change is basically what you're looking for. And I understand that.
So if I may add to that, we're actually going to pull this project out of the original COP discussion and actually go to the debt advisory committee beforehand. Because we don't think that the amount we need to actually complete I'm sure there will be some questions after that.
4:28 – 4:363 turns
Chairwoman's members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing Colab. If you could turn to page D338. This was in some ways one of the scariest It's one of the goals or performance measures that we saw. And it has to do with submitted a regional energy network application and regulatory finding to the CPUC, partnerships with Ventura and Sloan that would allow the counties to receive rate payer funding directly from Now as I've shared with you before, one of the things that I have learned to appreciate What previous leaders did is they created this thing called franchise models.
And what they did is so that we didn't have ten power lines going down the street or ten different telephone lines or trash trucks, they carved up communities into franchise areas. People bid on that franchise, they service that franchise and here's the important thing. With regard to energy, they were able to finance Diablo, finance a dam, finance the solar farm because they knew what their customer base was. It was locked in by way of the franchise agreement. Their ability to make a profit was built in through their agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission. So they were able to spend literally billions of dollars planning our energy infrastructure and our needs well decades into the future.
Enter community choice aggregation, we are going to dictate to PG&E in Southern California Edison where to get the power. They no longer have a captured customer base. They will no longer be able to invest long term because they won't have a guarantee that you're going to be buying power from them. You're blowing up the franchise model, cutting nose off in spite of face.
And here's the real truth about that bullet measure. All the monies you spend are utility rate payer dollars, there is no such thing as a free watt. They're taking the money either by virtue of mitigation fees, taxes or rebates. They're taking money from everybody's utility bill and recycling that to the stuff that you guys are spending as if it's free money, but you want more.
And you want more control. Why isn't a 50% renewable portfolio balance? Why isn't that the definition of balance? 50% renewable, 50% hydro, nuclear or gas. Why isn't that balanced? But instead, despite the fact that you want the PUC stuff and all the rest. There's a bullet point here on page 387. This is the county's goal, 100% of county electricity from solar. 100% by 2030.
Now maybe by 2030 we have the technology to store for nights, cloudy days and things like that. Right now you know what we're doing with our solar? We're paying Arizona to take it. We're creating excess solar in the middle of the day, because that's when it really does. It doesn't do it all day in the light. It's the middle of the day. We're producing more than we can use. We're having to pay Arizona to take our solar energy. But you guys want more!
California wants more and Arizona says well bring it. We'll let you pay us for more. Why is it a 50% balanced portfolio? And last point, one of the reasons I bring some of this stuff up is I wish you'd give feedback to the State Assembly, State Senate and Congress on what their mandates are doing and what the money is being used for that they send you via those mandated programs. In other words, you need to do a performance report back to the source of the funds. Thank you.
That concludes public comment.
Well, I feel like that deserves a little bit of response so first of all it's pretty important to indicate that in energy procurement its very common especially in the jurisdiction of the California ISO For over procurement, the ISO because they desire to have maximal redundancy and minimal downtime for any power system. They over procure on a routine basis so California You know, you could say this is fortunately it keeps the lights on all the time but you could also say it's unfortunate because we pay more than we should.
Over procures gas fired electricity and also over procures solar generated energy so It's more of a question of what level of reliability do you want? Because if you want perfect reliability, then you always over picture. And it's just as common in the fossil fuel sector as it is in the renewable sector. That being said, the good news is that in California we have lower bills than most places in the country because of energy efficiency.
So Title 24 is a two-edged sword, I suppose you could say. To me the discussion of a regional energy network or a CCA to me the end is not one of those things. They're just a means to an end. And there is a jurisdiction that just, for instance was set on going forward with a CCA and then decided at the last minute not to because their utility. This is down in San Diego and this was I believe the city of San Diego. Their utility decided to denegotiate with them about some terms.
The city of San Diego wanted to have more renewable energy and SDG&E said okay, if you agree not to do the CCA we'll give you more renewable energy. And so to me these discussions are a means to an end and not an end. The end in itself would be more local jobs through more local generation of renewables. That's what I want, and whether it's through CCA or whether it's because SCE or PG&E decide to let us net meter more or something else then I'd be okay with any of those routes.
Any other questions on global statewide or parochial issues? Then we'll move to our last functional group, which is County Council Board of Supervisors and the CEO's office. Folks have questions on that or should we go to public comment to allow some warming up? Supervisor Wolfe.
4:36 – 4:437 turns
This is a question either for Mr. Gazzone or our CEO, which has to do with the increased allocation to the litigation fund and I had brought it up during the board workshop and Right now we have a balance of $2.6 million from last year and the plan is to add another 2.5. And I'm wondering what the rationale is that's almost $5 million in additional litigation, and then the recommended decrease is only 380.
So there's a very large projected balance so Remind me of the rationale for this.
Chair and supervisors, we've talked with the board before and during our April budget workshop session we discussed some significant litigation including disability rights California litigation. And this is designed to ensure that we have some funding to take care of what are potential costs during the next 18-24 months?
Okay, that's what I thought. It just seems like quite a bit of money knowing that you're going to have a huge balance even without being known so but I appreciate that thank you Mr. Gazzani.
Let's go to public comment.
If you could turn to page D57. Now I know county council, this is not a criticism of county council, although it may sound like one. You have on this page an issue of litigating property tax appeals $3.8 billion. Now we would agree everybody needs to pay their fair share taxes. And we agree that county council is charged to get as much of that assessed value out of Joe Holland's office as they can, so we understand that.
But the context of this is shooting ourselves in the foot because these companies have other places they can do business and one of the issues is taxes and regulations plus like I said the certainty of being able to do business here. And one time way back when, when I was a kid, Vandenberg Air Force Base was it for polar launches. It was it! That was the only place in the United States and even in the world you could do that polar launch.
We had the technology, the facilities and the know-how. Well those days are gone. And so, you know we see United Launch on here. We see SpaceX and then we see two oil companies Exxon and ERG. God knows what's happening to Veneco in terms of the state being left with a bag for decommissioning that thing but the bottom line here is California's got some of the highest tax rates in the nation.
We are now competing with the world, and the question is when there is a tax dispute do we go for the juggler so to speak wanting them to pay the absolute maximum? When in reality that may lead to a business decision that you know what California's too expensive. It's just too expensive to do business, and companies come to that conclusion every day. We had a presentation a couple years ago with the Chamber of Commerce brought these guys in from Texas. Texas has gotten literally billions of dollars of investment not just from California but from China and other places because their taxes are low, their regulations are reasonable, and there's certainty in their permitting process.
And again, to what degree do you bring this up? You don't set tax rates. The state does. But to what degree do you give feedback to the state saying hey we're losing business here on CEQA. We need CEQA reform. I don't blame planning and development for the lack of certainty. I blame CEQa, the Planning Commission and the Board. They're just enforcing the rules. The rules need to be changed. CEQAs needs to be changed.
Again, that's something we never, I don't remember the last time the board talked about the need to reform CEQA and maybe support legislation in Sacramento to reform CEQA. Supervisor Williams, we're a little bit disturbed on D12. You have with us first we heard about this you have an item here. Developed an ordinance that would allow for cost recovery for use of law enforcement officers and false alarm activation in response.
That in a certain way is insult to injury because for instance rural crime, we spend less on rural crime than most other counties but then what happens if somebody puts in their own alarm system it gets and they're going to get charged. We have a lot of problems in the North County as you do in the South with homeless people ripping off businesses, and nobody's getting prosecuted.
So here somebody is going to try to take measures to protect their own property and false alarms are just part of the business. We don't want to see them penalized for that. And then finally on D30, I used to manage work comp, we were self-insured. I took advantage of the fact that the losses for the first 30 days, the injured workers are mine in terms of their medical care. My commitment to my workforce is I will get you the absolute best doctor available but you're coming back to work tomorrow on light duty and I don't care if that doctor says you gotta sit for eight hours, you're coming back to work.
Because then they're not at home watching television commercials about how they can get rich suing us with a work comp claim. You lowered my incident rates, the guys got better, we were all happy. You control that mandatory light duty. Thank you.
I have a question because I just want you to make sure you clarify yourself. You're not advocating that we not go after Somebody owes us a property tax
bill.
4:43 – 4:496 turns
Chair and supervisors, yes thank you for this opportunity. The assessor has got a constitutional duty to collect at full market value and when we litigate these cases we tend to prevail on that. At page D53 in the D pages we discuss concerning ULA, United Launch Alliance. Obtaining a ruling of concealment and failure to provide required information that resulted in a settlement of those cases.
Where again, as we look at where does that money go? 80% or so of that money goes to school districts. We feel really good about that case. And overall when you look at the assessor's rate of prevailing on these cases, it's indicative that they're being properly assessed. We've been on a run of hotel cases where several of them we prevailed in the case, others have dismissed and we really think that the work we've been doing over the last year and into next year will help people have some deterrent value on appealing, unless they have a really good case. And that's one of the things that we're trying to do. So when we look at this with United Launch Alliance and then again this year with ERG, we had motion practice with ERG that allowed us access to taxpayer records that'll support the case.
So we're prevailing on those motions across the street in Superior Court. We're prevailing at the Assessment Appeals Board, and we're bringing about settlements. And again, the money goes to the general fund, to the fire department, to special districts but primarily schools.
And you're not trying to collect any more, right? We're not trying to be any more aggressive than what they actually owe.
Right, starting with the assessor's constitutional duty to assess at full market value and then to collect that money which is really a service to the other taxpayers who are paying.
I totally get what you're saying about that. On a number of other issues, I think we might be driving companies out but on property tax it's like hey this is what the bill is.
Yeah but see my point is not that they're not doing their job. I said they're doing their job. My point is taxes are too high in California so we're shooting ourselves in the foot and for instance with Vandenberg now that they've got all this competition And here's the point, if the Board of Supervisors wants to keep Vandenberg and they want to keep that tax money coming. And if they want to keep the oil company money coming, they've got to do what they can to lighten up on county regs and get the state to lighten up on things including the tax rate.
Because they have options now that they used to not have, especially at Vandenberg. I got a call from Boeing a few years ago on an APCD. It was either Boeing or one of the other companies. They were bringing in a satellite by barge and they said the APCD wants us to mitigate the air emissions from the barge. And that kind of stuff, when people hear that kind of stuff they think I don't want to do business there.
And again this is not all you it's mostly state driving this stuff but again your supposed to be the voice for the community and the economy back to the state because it matters in the end as far as business decisions go. Thank you
Questions from the board? I'll just give the opportunity to just talk about the beginning of that line on D12. The problem that we identified in going A visit at dispatch, I just asked them randomly what's your most common call for service? And I thought it would be a healthcare emergency call but it's false alarms. And the least anecdotal information I got and we'll get some more comprehensive information is that The high flyers are not in rural areas, but that there is a huge cost of many calls coming from a small number of residences.
And it's a cost that the consumers already pay, but None of the revenue they receive from false alarms when we bear all the cost. So, the alarm companies don't send people out when there's an alarm. Our officers go out when there's an alarm call and yet they charge their consumers for it which is kind of a really amazing thing that when you think about it that alarm companies can somehow get away with charging consumers for something that we pay for and they don't.
So I don't necessarily have it all worked out, but I do think that's something that we need to talk about. Because if we don't want the system to be abused and we want at least some cost recovery here then it's something that we should probably do something about. Any other questions? Before we get to budget summary and wrap up, I thank you. Mr. Frapwell, you're back up.
4:49 – 4:594 turns
Mr. Chair and members of the board, that does bring us to a complete circle. So we'll go to just to reiterate our financial challenges ahead that we talked about earlier this morning. And these are the six bullet points here that we're mindful of as we look forward into our future that have to be, the decisions we make short term are kind of within this context of knowing where our biggest challenges are moving forward.
And these are important issues, the public safety communication system. General services together with the Public Safety Partner Departments are starting this process to look at what is our long term solution? How do we place the county to best meet new and emerging technology in this important arena? And how do we keep our first responders informed and safe?
Our deferred maintenance needs, needs no other comment from me. It's been well documented. Change of legislation and regulations, employer related cost increases. We think the new MOUs being negotiated and some have already been approved by your board are key in sharing the long term pension liabilities and the risk that we have moving forward. Technology is one of those things that really will help us reshape how we provide key services to our customers and constituents that rely on our services every day.
And then certainly the cannabis tax, although we're pleased with the tax and we're pleased that the voters have passed that, it's going to be something that has to be monitored carefully as we move into How that performs and whether the more global market has any kind of impact on the long-term revenues. So this is something that we're pleased to see and cautiously optimistic, but we'll have to watch carefully. So these are kinda the challenges as I said that we're looking forward on and making sure we're mindful of as we make these immediate budget decisions.
With that Let me take you back to this slide. These are, again, same slides earlier today. These are the potential adjustments to your recommended budget as you guys begin your deliberations and discussion of what you'd like to include in the adopted budget for next fiscal year. So the sources we've recommended or identified here are 376,200 that is currently unallocated discretionary ongoing revenues Potentially 4.6 million in cannabis tax revenue, which our recommendation is to treat as one time for one time purposes if your board decides to appropriate this.
And then there's $10,000 left over in a one-time emerging issues fund balance. And below that and potential uses these are some of the uses that have been identified Since workshop, these in addition to the restoration expansion request that have not been funded recommended budget that rolled over to hearings as we discussed earlier this morning would all be things that your board may want to consider in your deliberation process.
With that Mr. Chairman, we refer back to your board or be happy to answer any questions your board might have.
Supervisor Wolf?
Mr. Frapwell, thank you for getting us this latest information. I just have a couple of questions and maybe some concerns with this chart and that has to do with the cannabis tax revenue. What I believe we should do is put the total cannabis tax anticipated revenue of $6,300,000 with the recommended decreases of $1,700,000 with this projected balance and put it in as a fund balance on that page 14.
And the reason I'm suggesting that is because, well for two reasons. First we don't know, this is an unknown how much tax we're going to be getting and because it's unknown and if it's going to be spent, we may be spending money that we don t have. That's the first reason. The second reason is that what we heard today, is that there could be other uses for this tax. One was noted from probation and the other was from behavioral wellness.
So I think that this Measure T cannabis tax should be put away as a separate fund and then as we want to use it, it comes back to the board or the CEO makes a determination on the use of that balance assuming its $4,600,000. So then the question remains, is there any other ongoing source of money? And I would suggest that another one-time source of money would be the property tax, I want to say refund.
Because my sense is that when we got that from the legislature, it was to literally backfill some of the uses that we need to back fill in our community. And so that seems to be a better source for one time money. And then I would suggest, because the strategic fund was mentioned. And I think that, sorry Mr. Gazzone you gave a good push there for your litigation fund. But I think we could take $1 million from the litigation fund, $1 million from program stabilization and $1 million from contingency. By the way leaving contingency with $3 million.
And put that money into strategic reserve. So basically, It's just reformulating or reformatting the source of money. Again, I feel really strongly that for us to depend right now on the cannabis tax revenue when we don't have it would be a mistake. And likewise, I think we have the money from the backfill that if people want to use that, that to me makes more sense.
And would be very cautious in using this one time money. I think, and it would be under emerging issues. I think we have not only the emerging issues that you mentioned Mr. Frapwell but I go back to the North County Jail. I think that that is going to be a big hit on the county and we have to always keep that in the back of our minds so For me, when we get to the point of looking at that attachment E. I know for me, I'm going to be very conservative in spending the allocation whether it be this 4.6 or the 4.4 as I'm suggesting. I really do believe that we need to be very prudent this year and keep some money available for those items that you've mentioned.
And then just finally, one other thought that I have is for the ongoing 376,000. You know, we've talked about Renew 22 and I think it's shown some really good results but we've got $800,000 in the budget ongoing money. And I know that most of it would be used for audit expenses and I think from the BIF it would be 600,000 would be used for that so I'm suggesting that we add for the ongoing another 200,000.
I don't know how it's going to be spent, but maybe it'll go to libraries or other things. But I think to keep $800,000 for Renew 22, I think we can take out a little bit to keep it into ongoing and maybe fund some of the positions that were mentioned here today. From the district attorney's office, the probation department and any others. But I think maybe having a little bit more money to work with.
So those are my thoughts but again, I really feel very strongly that we should not be depending on cannabis tax. Put it in a separate fund and let a committee or the CEO's office determine how that money is being used.
So we will put up the Excel spreadsheet after a break and go around so that people can specifically put that up. But I think Supervisor Wolf's comments maybe look to us to put up not just these, but put up the property tax backfill in case there is some need there. Mr. Guzzone?
4:59 – 5:047 turns
Chair and Supervisors, either now or when more convenient for the board. The Auditor, Budget Director, CEO and I have discussed this concept of cannabis funds and where should they go? And I could give a quick summary now if that would be helpful. So as you know, every year in balancing the budget sources must equal the uses. And then through three sections of the Budget Act actually anticipate situations where The county may receive amounts that are in excess of anticipated revenues in some category, and basically flow charts out where should those funds go. So as you're coming up with how much, as Supervisor Wolfe said, how much cannabis revenue is reliable at this point? That's a number that was worked on by CEO's office and auditor in formulating the budget.
And one way to do this per the Budget Act would be to look at revenues that come in above And those would go into some form of identified fund balance which we can discuss in more detail. And that money would be essentially fenced off, it would go into that account and then would be subject to future appropriation by the board through a forfeits vote.
Can I name the account? Yes, I think you can. Supervisor Adam already has the Bank of
Unicorns and Rainbows. That's right. I think that should be the official name of it. I'm not sure I will vote for a budget that doesn't have that as the official name. Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you Mr. Chair, I just have a question for either CEO Miyasato or Mr. Frapwell about Supervisor Wolf's suggestion. It was my understanding that with the cannabis money we wouldn't really spend it until we actually had it come in and so I guess I'd like some of your thoughts about the switch and how we anticipate Supervisor
Hartman to the Chair. I do think it's the appropriate sensitivity to have about cautionary note of spending money before we have it. I will tell you overarching that we have done in concert with our comptroller's office, a detailed analysis of the potential revenue we may receive from the cannabis tax. We have been very cautious in that estimation and calculation.
We have essentially stress tested the assumptions on each of those potential revenue sources. Specifically to your question. If your board chooses to appropriate the 4.6 or some number even beyond the 1.7 it would be helpful to tie that revenue to expenses that can be initiated in As the year progresses, so that we know that we're receiving that revenue stream. And so whether that's something that we come back to you after Q2 and saying here is our revenue and our updated projection for the balance of the year. So that gives your board additional comfort that those revenues really are there to pay for those expenses. That would be an option.
We certainly would recommend they are utilized for one time purposes. Understanding there's a backdrop, understanding that the backdrop if that expense was incurred and the revenue does not materialize to the extent we would project. Understanding that would have to come from some other sources within the county.
Supervisor Labadino? Thank you Mr. Chair. So you've got to give them the answer you gave me so I was the one that We had a pregame and I was like, man there's no way I'm spending money I don't have. And you reminded me that we don't have the TOT yet and we don't have our property tax yet. So we are making educated guesses that these are projections and they're done with the best intentions and the facts that we have at the time.
And you know, I was all for just taking out the cannabis tax revenue and putting it in the strategic reserve. That works for me but I'm not really sure that's why people voted for the tax to start with wasn't to just put in the strategic reserve so But I think the main point is, we don't have the TOT and we're all willing to spend that. And we don't have the property tax yet and we're all willing to spend that so if you could comment on that.
I think we are saying the same thing. Just a cautionary note is, we've stress tested it. We think that we understand the revenues. We think we understand what amount we're able to get and which is why we've arrived today with your board of a total 6.3 coming from cannabis tax. First 1.7 allocated to enforcement and we do think that 4.6 is available for your boards appropriation should you desire to do so.
5:04 – 5:127 turns
Chair Williams? Yes. And Supervisor Lavenino, that is an option and what we did discuss was that treat it as one time money and if you did appropriate anything on this list that also is one time money so that should that revenue not materialize then we could strip out that appropriation along with the reduction in revenue. I would submit that Supervisor Lavinino, the difference with the cannabis tax is that we have no history.
Of course with all the other taxes we have history and were able to do regression analysis and projections. This is all based on a large number of assumptions. And so then I think we are just advocating for some conservative approach to this. And this is one way to do it. I mean, literally another way to do it is to not appropriate any of it and then that money when collected would come into the county and let's just use an example if some of the other tax revenues do not show up. If this money is not appropriated and this could actually backfill in Any shortfalls that would come in, in other revenues and the general revenues. This revenue could backfill that without any kind of budgetary action. And then in addition to that towards the end of the year if you do collect and you will need to have a four-fifths vote to appropriate the revenue.
If you didn't appropriate now during the budget with a three-fifths vote then during the year you would have a four-fifths vote To appropriate any of the revenue that does come in during the year. And actually, that might give you potentially more flexibility in the backfill of any revenues that might not show up. And then in addition to that if it falls to fund balance at the end of this next fiscal year then that could be appropriated with a three-fifths vote in the subsequent year during the budget process as opposed to requiring the four-fifths vote.
There are other options for flexibility purposes, but of course the ultimate budget decision is yours.
And I don't think anybody's saying we have to spend all 4.6 million, this is just one time money if we want to put it into any type of fund balance we could or a portion of that. I mean, I don' see $4.6 million worth of things that I wanna spend money on anyway so I would just as soon be putting a big chunk of it when we get to our schedule E into some sort of reserve because the last thing I wanna do is get to the point where I see the state of California is And they have anticipated revenue from it and because it takes a while to get things started, for example. I don't think we're going to be able to do any retail at least until the beginning of next year.
And so you know, I would much rather have something that was golden than us hoping some money came in but I appreciate the fact that it's been stress tested and everything. When we get to schedule E, I won't be spending it all up. I'm going to be trying to save as much of it as I can so for next year, we're able to do what we would really want to do with it.
And I think that the only thing to counterbalance that with in thought, I mean, I'm okay to think well we need to have some of that in reserves in case there's further action or some of that in different priorities. But in my view putting revenue that we And I think the response that we've gotten even by this conservative of a crowd, We sure bet that we know some of that money is going to come in.
And if we just have it allocated into a fund balance, it's tantamount to already deciding that we're going to spend it on deferred maintenance because we know that's just about the only thing we can get a four-fifths vote for. So I mean, if that's what your long term game is then maybe that's smart long term game. So that I guess would be my counterpoint to that. Mr. Adam, speaking of deferred maintenance- Well
the term sure bet is kind of like famous last words. You know, I think the only prudent thing to do since this thing's so untested is put whatever comes in this year away And then in a reserve, and then pull it back out after it really comes true. And I don't see why it would hurt to defer spending it for a year and just make sure that it really comes true.
Supervisor Wolf?
Yeah, as it is we're already pretty much committed to the million seven. A part of that is from this tax and people are probably going to be going out hopefully in hiring for the processing and enforcement. And so we're committed to that right now. And I see nothing wrong with us holding off and waiting to see what comes in rather than making any commitment on these other things. And again, I go back if people do want to look at one time sources, look at our property tax backfill.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the public. This is a strategic part of our strategic reserve and there still may be and I thought Mr. Frappel you had mentioned this that aside from the property tax backfill for emergency operations during the debris flow that we're going to be getting back?
Supervisor Wolf with the Chair. The Governor's budget as it currently exists today does assume a waiver of the local share of the debris removal cost, so this is really a cost avoidance on our behalf. It does not generate I don't believe new revenue to us but it is a cost avoidance.
I think it's just transparency and budgeting. It's not spending money we don't have, even though we're hearing from our folks although a little bit of a disagreement on how much or how confident we can be. And it's also taking the money for property taxes and putting it And not even putting it for ongoing, but at least the one time. I'm going to go back to the $200,000 for ongoing so that we can fund some of the positions that are needed.
5:12 – 5:187 turns
I would just argue that the cannabis tax at this point is more likely to come through than the state budget. The property tax backfill, I think will come through in the state budget but the state budget has not passed yet and Measure T has passed. We're both talking about stuff we think are going to happen not things that have definitely happened. And I view this as a tough It's a tough balance because the two big ticket items that are needs is strategic reserve and deferred maintenance.
The other stuff is a relatively small amount of money, the math makes it difficult to both fund strategic reserves to the tune that the CEO would prefer and I think some of you would like to fund. So, I think that's the hard part is both of those items are so large there's, you gotta use the money on the table for one or both of those unless you're going to abandon both.
Mr. Lavenino?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just totally have a completely different view of the backfill money. We wrote a check out of the Strategic Reserve of $6.2 million to cover those costs and we got back a check for 4.4 million so we're not even paying back what we took out of the Strategic Reserve and You know I think any time you take money out of the strategic reserve for a specific purpose, that was a huge chunk. We only had $30 million in there and we took out six. We've got to put that money back in there. And I know you're saying it's cannabis tax but at the same time we're also saying we're not sure if we're going to get the cannabis tax.
That money came out of the strategic reserve. For me, it's got to go back into the strategic reserve and there are other ways that we can find to fund some of these smaller things that we need to do or want to do but I just think that would be irresponsible to take the money out and then not put it back in when we get the check back.
We're going to go to Supervisor Hartman at just a note. Remember, we're going to take a break and then we're going to do the Schedule E, the Excel spreadsheet where we start putting the math together. Supervisor Hartman?
I agree with Supervisor Lavinino. I think that we need to restore the strategic reserve as soon as we can. I also believe that you're correct, he's correct in that when people voted for the tax, the marijuana tax, We put on the narrative what it was gonna be spent for, and we didn't say strategic reserve. So I would feel disingenuous not by switching those monies around.
I think now we are looking at the budget as a whole so I think what we wanna do is allocate the funding my question and with a three-fifths vote if that's what it takes. I think trying to deal with things One by one in the future as they come up is not a responsible way to do it. These are the hearings where we look at relationships among things and make a decision, so I guess the question though is can we hold off on, I mean can we wait until the money comes in till we actually spend it? That's the concern.
Supervisor Hartman to the chair, your board could certainly do that. You could appropriate the funds but under my direction working with the departments not to spend anything until end of first quarter and a second quarter until we have more experience with actually what is coming in. The only item on there that I think we really would need to fund I think is for libraries if your board wants to do that because they would need some certainty. I think at the beginning of the year these other things are Really one time funding projects and you could hold off, you could appropriate now and hold off on actually spending until sometime in midyear.
Supervisor Wolk?
Thank you Mr. Chair, so the bottom line is and just given the comments is that we're not certain of two things now. We're not certain of the cannabis tax and we're not certain of the backfill. And I'm okay if we take the backfill money and put it back into strategic reserve. I just, I feel then that the one time money, the source of funds similar to what CEO Miyasato said should probably be taken off the table.
And the libraries we can move up to the ongoing which will be doing in the next session. But I think to be responsive and responsible that we take those two big ticket items off of the spending schedule for now, and look at it later once we have the money in hand. And I might add, just given everything I said, we're actually still funding some of the enforcement and licensing positions so there is still an assumption It is very, very conservative that we' re going to have some cannabis money to pay for that which obviously it' s where we need to start. I' m okay let' s just put into strategic reserve and no one time.
5:18 – 5:222 turns
Ten minutes, five minutes?
♪ Good morning, everyone. Good morning. ♪
5:26 – 5:322 turns
♪
¶¶ ♪ Hi, everyone. Yeah. ♪♪ Yeah. Yeah. You.
5:36 – 5:435 turns
We're ready to reconvene. Were
we convening folks?
So I'm going to tell you now, Paul over here is good but he's not superhuman. So when we go through our requests, I would appreciate everyone going slow so we do not have clerical errors and assuming we can get close to a consensus, we will take a further break to be able to make sure everything is vetted before a final vote So I see a light. Supervisor Hartman?
Well, I'm ready to be the guinea pig in this. I'd like to say that my guiding principles are, I want to be conservative and I hear that up here among my colleagues. And to refund the strategic reserve and get it up to full funding as soon as possible. So I'm very pleased with the CEO's recommendation of $4.4 million, and I would like to add additional money back into the reserve.
And if I think some can come from cannabis just not all, I think that would be irresponsible. As I look to expansions and restorations it's really those that can generate savings or revenue for the future are my priorities. So for ongoing, I would start first with the ESI team project leader for $75,000. And that is because that can generate a lot of grant opportunities and additional funding. In addition, I think 150 for libraries And I would like to see that prioritized as Ms. Saley suggested for those unincorporated libraries.
And then, that's it for the ongoing for me. And then for the one time, I would like to see 50,000 as the CEO recommended to support libraries with a consultant so that we can deal with this issue in an ongoing way. Rather than having each year coming back what are we going to do about library funding? And I'd just like to say, our county departments all had to reduce by 5%.
So for the libraries within cities to not have to cut back, to me doesn't seem fair. The cities need to step up. So for Deferred Maintenance, $1.1 million. For Strategic Reserve, $ 1.5 million. And then I want to talk about the Parks Master Plan. As many of you know, the Park Bond Prop 68 did indeed pass $4.1 billion for parks in California. And to situate the county like we were situated for SB1, to pull more than our weight. We need to develop not just a list of projects but a set of relationships and how they connect and reinforce one another and demonstrate a vision and support our policy goals.
So just in the third district, south to north, we have Walter Caps Park. We have Barone Ranch with a plan underway. We have Gaviota Marine Terminal. We have Halema Beach Park where we just have a new updated master plan. We're going to get some funding, we hope from the Coastal Commission. We've got Guadalupe Dunes, we've got Point Sal, we've got Kachuma and Hoey. And these link to other opportunities in the state parks, the national forest and land trust properties such as Arroyo Hondo and Midland.
So instead of just saying, we'll put some new RV spaces at Kachuma or we'll build something more at Halama. Or we may put something at Nahoe. I want us instead to look at the whole and determine things like this. Where do we want accommodations? What kind and what price points? Where do we want paid and unpaid parking? In North County, we have a real lack of unpaid parking.
Trails and connectivity, it's really important to have a destination and connectivity. The distribution of parks and trails across the county. North County is tremendously underserved compared to both national standards and also compared to what we have in Santa Barbara South County. Different kinds of recreational opportunities, disc golf, Water features, pools, play structures, tennis courts, ball fields, picnic areas, interpretive and signage that is linked and coherent.
Possibly a visitor center, birding, wildlife watching, historic and Chumash sites. These are all the kinds of things that a bigger plan, a bigger look would take into account. Concessionaire opportunities, other revenue generating opportunities. There is a big movement afoot in public health. In our county, the Trails Council has been working with the National Park Service and they have partnered up with SenCal Sansum and the Cottage Hospital with a Healthy People Healthy Parks and Trails. There's also an initiative in our county healthy eating active living and that many cities are taking on so these are Policy goals that can be met and bring in additional funding through a strategic park plan.
In addition, upscale tourism so that people don't just pass through Santa Barbara County but they're looking more and more not to buy stuff but to have meaningful experiences and we need to package it up. So I am eager to put $350,000 into a park master plan so that we're in a position where we can take advantage and pull more than our county's weight because we're centrally located between the two big metropolitan areas in our state. And so we have a real opportunity here.
I believe the hydrology study is significant, but we heard that we can probably get that funded from another source. Can
I just interrupt you for a second? He's good but not infallible. $50,000 is not what you just said with libraries. Thank you.
5:43 – 5:486 turns
So he is invaluable.
Our county employees are very good at their jobs.
Cloud-based internet, 500,000, I think we absolutely must do that. First job of the county is being ready for emergencies. Homeless tracking, I believe 10,000. That is absolutely required. I would like the utility-grade solar ordinance to get started at the fourth quarter of this year. I'd like to put $180,000 there because I think it's going to generate revenue over time. Short term rental split the difference, $70,000. Clean energy roadmap, I think this is very significant at $150,000 and that does it for me.
Supervisor
Wolf.
Well, thank you everyone for all your input. We didn't hear a lot from the public today but we certainly have over these last few months as we've started the budget workshop and here we are now at the budget hearing. I appreciate all the input from our department heads and your staff. As this is my last year through 12 budget sessions, I've always tried to be a realist and I'm not going to spend money that we don't have.
I know that there's so many needs and I'm never shy about spending it in places that I think are most appropriate. But I think today's budget situation, there are a lot of unknowns and I'm not willing to take a chance even though we have some of our experts who are giving us pretty much the same but I guess, sense of confidence. And my job is to make sure that we have a confident and stable budget going forward. And that doesn't mean that when money comes into the county it can't be spent by this board.
So I'm going to start with the ongoing. And my selections here are really to keep our, there's not enough for every request from our departments but I feel strongly that, and I did during the budget hearings for all three of these. And that is the DA subpoena server for 67,600. The probation DPO for sex offenders and the library per capita for 180,000. And that still leaves a little extra.
I don't on the one time funding sources, I would normally stick with a $10,000 that was noted for us. But I do think that because there's a couple of things I do believe are important and I certainly don't discount anything that Supervisor Hartman said. I just can't allocate funding for so many of these things that I think are important, and hopefully they could be funded at a later time. But for right now, I do believe that we could add $200,000 from the 990 Renew 22. And again, that leaves over 600,000. So with that, that would leave us with 210 and Regardless, I'm not spending all that. I think we should as was recommended allocate $30,000 for libraries.
And that will come back to us, however it's going to be spent for the committee. And also for the short term rental zone amendment, the 102, that was for the 0.25. Again this is something that is outstanding. It's not a new program but it is something I believe we need to complete. We need to complete the projects that we have. I'm not right now, as I sit here. I'm not in favor of starting new programs as worthy as they are.
So that's where I am. Thank you.
5:48 – 6:0115 turns
Seeing no lights, I'll go ahead on the ongoing.
Excuse me, sorry, Supervisor Wolfe? What was the probation amount, the DPO on your ongoing?
Thank you. The DPO amount that I have is 120,000 and did you add, yes, the 200. Okay, thank you.
Supervisor Wolf, just for clarity's sake on your column then for cannabis tax revenue. I'm assuming that 4.6 would be zero and you're saying not to spend it on these expenditures?
Correct, I'm taking, just remove the 4. 6. Thank you.
So I agree on the ongoing, I agree with the ESI team project leader. With libraries, but with Joan's suggestion that it should be spent on small libraries. I think it's hard to differentiate just unincorporated areas even though that would help me substantially. But I would say 180 is we should try to strive for that because that's the amount that we did last year.
I am not okay with using this revenue for it, but I guess I could be convinced that we could find something to get the probation started. Maybe you can put a question mark there and I'll explain that. Yeah, I wouldn't put the actual amount yet because I think that ongoing we could use that or use marijuana revenue ongoing. But for the first year, because I can't see how everything will balance out yet, I might be persuaded I would even suggest that there I'm going to put in something new. I asked Mr. Nielsen about it Resource parents, we've discussed this many times before when we talked about foster care. We have this little list this long of how many resource parents we have in this county so we're exporting kids out of county and we're exporting kids from the south coast to the north county which I think doesn't say good things about us.
And part of the problem could be recruitment, but part of the problem is retaining and providing support for the resource parents, foster parents that we do have. For a year long position that would be 120,000 if that's too much I think at least starting the position midway through And or giving Mr. Nielsen a chance to leverage some other funds for it, so I would say that at least put $60,000 there.
Let's move on to the second section. I agree 1.1 for the deferred maintenance. Thank you Madam Chair. air on trying to put a little bit more in the deferred maintenance because we get so little when our money sits in our bank account. But of course this last winter proved how useful having money in the strategic reserve has been, so I'm very torn on that. To me those are the two big ticket items and it's impossible to fund them both to the level that we should, but we should make an attempt on both.
I'm with the $50,000 for the library for us to try to keep on searching for the perfect solution that seems to elude us and with the 350 for the Parks Master Plan. I agree that the hydrology study should come out of flood control but that we should fund it. and the homeless tracking. I think, I definitely believe that we need the utility scale solar ordinance. I don't know how grade got in there but it's utility scale or grade whatever we want to call it. I wanted 250 but I'd be happy with 180 But I feel like I would be not consistent, and along with it a necessary part of that is the 150 for the clean energy roadmap because that's identifying the target sites.
But I do not feel like I would be consistent with what I have said about economic development if I funded the utility scale solar ordinance environmental review and didn't fund the Union Valley. So you can put me down for the Union Valley one as well which is $155,800. You're not
going to extract anything for
that? I think I'm just trying to be consistent and sometimes negotiation can mean holding back and sometimes negotiation can mean putting your cards on the table. I guess that's what I'm trying to do. I don't think I'm leaving anything out. I mean, I came in today just so that I'm putting all my cards on the table thinking that maybe we needed to put some money for the short term rentals.
I believe that what we should be trying to do is find a compromise and extend the historical overlay. You may be using some more inclusive criteria for historical. I don't know that we need to budget 102,000 but 70 sounds good to me. I guess what I think is it's time that we try to have a good compromise on the measure, and I think there's a way to do that.
But I think that will take some staffing to achieve. I was planning on asking for some other things but We need so much in deferred maintenance and strategic reserve, then maybe it's prudent for me to stop there. And you guys probably were following things I was trying to make sure that we have enough unsworn officers for the civilianization initiative of the Sheriff's Department but That's a noble experiment and something that I'll continue to support. But looks like they have at least enough to get going on that.
I don't think I'm forgetting anything. Mr. Labanino?
Thank you, Mr. Chairs.
And did I say homeless tracking?
Yeah.
Okay good.
So based on whatever we do up here the 4.4 million that's coming back Before we get started, there's a group of people I wanted to thank. This has been a year where every meeting it seemed like we were talking about cannabis. I want to thank constituents, especially those up in Tepeskay that continue to hold my feet and our feet to the fire and fully fund a enforcement team. And I'm very pleased with the $1.7 million for a very robust, I think, enforcement team that's going to help us level the playing field. And the messages to those folks out there who don't want to be part of our regulatory environment It's the days of sliding under the radar are over, so I will move on now to my attachment E. So for ongoing, I think the DA's subpoena server for 67,000, probation DPO and I think 120,000 libraries.
I'm not sure what number yet so let's go with 150 for right now and that takes care of my, I'll take the, what was it? The 39,000 in a gift certificate. So we're done there. Yeah, far western place. Libraries so $50,000 to figure out exactly what we're doing. Let's drop down to Union Valley Parkway Extension for $155,000 and I guess to be fair and consistent I'll go the $180,000 for the solar ordinance so I can See that we maintain something there.
Homeless tracking 10,000 and then the rest for me would go into strategic reserve but well I guess we split it up so I can go with the 1.1 million into deferred and I'm not against a parks master plan, but for me $350,000 the way we usually take the amount of time. I'm worried that by the time we've figured out what to do with our parks master plan that Prop 68 will be a distant memory.
So I think we have to do, we almost have to do this on the ground on the fly and I know Supervisor Hartman's already been leading the charge on this so That might be something in the hydrology study, in the cloud-based internet. All things I'd be interested in once we determine how much is flowing in through the cannabis tax.
Other questions? Mr. Lavignot, the clean energy roadmap has to get done before the solar ordinance can get started. Is that included or not included in your mind? So
this is the extraction he was talking about? Yeah, we'll do the clean energy roadmap which will give us the solar ordinance and Union Valley Parkway extension.
6:01 – 6:0617 turns
Supervisor
Harker?
No, your light's on. Supervisor Wolfe?
Yeah, thank you. Just to clarify a couple things, the probation DPO if you could just clarify it's for sex offender? And then CEO Miyasato asked me about everyone's including the cannabis tax so why don't you put that back up for me? And then I don't know, I guess what I would say is that my balance should go into a, I gave what I called it. It should go into the measure, what I believe should be called the Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund to be allocated later.
And Supervisors, just if you go up on the ongoing. Just so that we're not short changing people what they ask for. I believe for the probation officer it was 124, is that correct?
That's all change mind to that. Thank you.
Supervisor Adam.
Well you guys are going to cause me to throw my three-page speech away. Is that good or bad? He's in shock. Yeah, I worked hard on that speech. You wrote it last year. Yeah no, I've been giving it for the last five. That's one of the lines in mine. Can't we just air the tape from last year? Let's say we did not do it. Okay, no I feel like you guys are being very responsible here and I want to support you which is just shocking.
I don't know how the hell that's going to do. So I'm going to make this easy and I'm just going to use Supervisor Lavinino's list So cut and paste, that'll be easy.
Mr Chair?
Supervisor Wolk?
I think we need to clarify the library. If it's ongoing to small libraries, I was thinking it was ongoing for all libraries and that... So I'm talking about the top part?
Yeah, I think the issue of course is that That won't stop four, five small libraries from closing hours. 180 grand put into per cap basically just helps the large libraries doesn't help the small ones and so-
I just want to know where it's going. Are those the five unincorporated libraries that were mentioned? I
think the ones we went over last week were Guadalupe, Solvang, Carpinteria, Montecito and Los Alamos, maybe Cuyama. So five or six ones that are operating in heavy deficits.
Can I just ask Mr. Chamchin to verify that, that I don't believe you Mr. Chair Williams, just to clarify?
Chair Williams and members of the board, I believe they are the ones. Carpenter is one of them. Montecito is also another one. Solvang with a slight budget deficit. And then Guadalupe is in big trouble.
But the smaller deficit in dollar figure but decent in size of their library would be Los Alamos and Kuyama.
6:06 – 6:1112 turns
Supervisor Labnino? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well on strategic reserve I think we are not lined up so if we go down to that because we have two at 1.5 and two at 2.9. And then we have a Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund. So I don't know if it's okay with Supervisor Adam, but I would go ahead and change my strategic reserve to 1.5 and put the balance in a Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund or whatever we want to call it if we are going to have a different fund for it.
It's the same thing to me in my mind, but it's just basically saving the money. You wouldn't go for a little bit in cloud-based, right? If I knew what it was, I might spend money on it.
It's three magic beans.
Supervisor Hartman.
I guess this is a question. This is the budget hearing. This is the opportunity to look at the whole. Could we put asterisks by what we don't want to spend the money for until it comes in, but nonetheless get it on this chart now?
I think staff are prepared to do that if we really want to go there. I think that's opening up a huge can of worms in terms of workflow for staff, especially considering that we are setting aside the majority of the money into deferred maintenance strategic reserve and potentially the Measure T cannabis tax fund. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. I would like to make a comment on this item also known as the bank of unicorns and rainbows.
I would question, why don't we go through a couple of the items that there seems to be some support for but is not overwhelming and to see if there is political will on some of those. Can we just go item by item so that we can see if people speak now or forever hold their peace? And the ESI team project leader, Joan, can you talk about that? Yeah.
I think this is a very small outlay and would double, triple, quadruple this expenditure but we need to have this in place to be able to access those outside funds so this is leverage and I would really plea, this would be my outstanding plea to fund
I think the staff report was that it leverages an equal amount in outside funding. And it is to get grant opportunities for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
Supervisor Wolk, you wouldn't consider it?
So this is where I am. I actually liked your idea about the asterisks, because my problem is it's not that I disagree with any of these things that you all have your votes for. I just can't in good conscience say yes this is what we're going to do and we don't know that we have the money. There were asterisks there I think a unanimous vote would obviously be very helpful for me and I could probably vote for the whole thing.
We' d have a unanimous vote I just can' t do it right now not that you need a unanimous vote you have your four votes. I can'
on the ongoing ones we' re not dependent on marijuana?
That' s correct although I' m not real pleased about the library per capita but that' s neither here nor there because you have the votes for that. I'
Could I trade you up the library in exchange for my $75,000? So
6:11 – 6:1622 turns
you do the $180,000 ongoing per capita.
I'll never refer to it as per capita but...
I understand this. So you would be still funding small libraries, but you're calling it per capita? What's the...
You're asking me? That we would have an additional $180,000 to help libraries that are in trouble make it this year until we can put something better in place that's more reliable over time. Is
that agreeable to you, Jennifer?
No I'd rather just keep it the way it is and then add your asterisks.
So Supervisors just to be clear on the asterisk that Supervisor Wolff and Supervisor Hartman spoke about So everything below the list is basically funded through projected cannabis revenue. I think all of that would be asterisked. For Supervisor Wolf's caution, because we're saying all of that would be one time and we would ask your board not to start any of these projects or release these funds until the second quarter. We have more experience with the revenue.
Yes. And all you have to do is put an asterisk by that amount and say exactly what you said. Now why wouldn't anyone go with that?
Well, I'll tell you why. Because first off it's not going to be unanimous anymore and then we are going to get the three page speech anyway right? Pretty close. Yeah I think so.
My light's on but I haven't been called on so I couldn't tell you that I was getting ready to jump
in. I didn't need you to tell me, I already knew. So that's the thing is like the cannabis tax we all know what our needs are and what the staff recommendation is to spend it on when it comes in We will be able to take it up and vote on it then. I mean, if what you're wanting to do is have a unanimous vote here then I don't think that's the way to get it done. I'm fine voting no. I just not
going to vote yes the way it is. Because even though it says where the money is, it can always, it says the cannabis tax revenue. But you've got a list of all these projects that you want and yeah.
Yes, Supervisor Adam.
Can you guys tell me again what this cannabis tax... This is sort of an imaginary account at this point right? I mean this isn't an actual account, this is just something that we're talking about here.
We have a bank account. There's just no money in it yet.
Supervisor Adam to the chair. So knowing that it's going to be important going forward, at some point your board or a future board will ask where have we spent all of that money that has come in? So knowing that is important to plan for, we've established a separate fund if you will or account to track these revenues separately. And so it would also track the expenses, where those monies are allocated by your board. And so we have established a fund with a 990 that is the Cannabis Fund.
We named it something different as part of our spreadsheet but Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund is as fine name as any. So it would be segregated. So it would be clear, the source of the monies and then where you allocate them.
I like this one on can we put that in strategic reserve or we can't even put that in strategic reserve because you want to keep
that segregated? You can, you can allocate it. That's fine. It's just going to flow through. What we need to do is just create this path that's very clear and transparent but where the money came in and then where your board allocated so if you wanted to allocate it at a strategic fund that's fine.
So the purpose behind keeping it segregated was what?
It's just simply a tracking.
Okay, well are we going to take four-fifths vote to move it out like we would a strategic
reserve? It would require four-fifths, unless we allocate what it would be spent on right now. That's what it would take.
6:16 – 6:1812 turns
So where did we put the balance of Supervisor Lavanino's 2.9 from the strategic reserve? I'm not seeing where he put that. In the Bank of Unicorns and Rainbows.
Is there any items that, any individual items that any board member wishes to drill in upon and make one more pitch on? Supervisor Hartman.
I'm still trying to figure this out if there's anyway that Supervisor Wolf could put library money below the line and help me out with my ESI team project leader.
I put my
library money below the line? That is, it would be one time instead of ongoing for this budget year.
Or you could split it, I suppose.
Yeah, split it.
Well, I would consider that. As long as you would consider the subpoena server and the probation position. We already have three votes for that.
Supervisors, I'd ask Paul to go ahead and put in the first column where there is three votes so that you have a clear sense of what there is already a majority so it can help you make your decisions on what's available.
Chair Williams, could I ask for a short five minute break please? Sure.
And can we get this printed?
I'd like Paul to do it maybe you can come back and look at it and then we'll print it out for you for sure.
6:21 – 6:221 turns
Hi. Music.
6:29 – 6:3417 turns
Yeah, so you're going to talk and discuss.
And there may be more cannabis money coming in.
Right. Chair Williams and Supervisors, so this is where we left off. You have a hard copy in front of you. And this is where there was a majority of board members within the different threshold for the ongoing then. There was not three votes for the ESI team project leader. For libraries, ongoing amount of $150,000. For the subpoena server, ongoing of 67,000 and for the DPO to supervise sex offenders it was 120,400 for a total of 337,400. At this time we'd ask your board if you want us to continue if there's any more deliberation by your board?
Supervisor Hartman.
Thank you, I just want to go on record that I do support the probation and the subpoena server so it's not important but it is another vote. I am still seeking support for the $75,000 and I wonder if this might not work? We have $38,800 left If we reduced the library 150 by 36,200 and then brought it that would get the 75,000. Then we would in one time funding below the line for libraries go up to 125,000 could I get any support for that proposal?
So it's the same amount of dollars. You're just adding the ESI team project leader position, reducing the ongoing library funding and calling it one time?
Right.
Yeah I can do that so that will get us... Bless you! But you mentioned something about extraction earlier. No, I'm just kidding. So the Union Valley Parkway is going to have
two... I vote for Union Valley
Parkway! Two off-ramps at Union Valley.
Mr. Chair?
Supervisor Wolff?
Thank you, I just wanted
to make sure first
that he's still working on this and he's trying to figure out what the new increase is to libraries is. You probably have that number down in the...
Oh, I think it's $125,000.
Sorry are you asking to add $36,200 to the one-time libraries piece so it would be $86,200?
6:34 – 6:407 turns
Yes, I could do that or I could make it even more if that would generate more support.
I think the issue is that between the two should either add up to 200 or should add up to 230 between the two?
That's $200,000 between the two.
Great, that looks right and Supervisor Hartman were you done or did you have another?
I'm done with this, I have one more plea to make but I think
Supervisor Wolf
had it. Yeah, I just wanted to note that I added the $10,000 not that it makes any difference to the vote for the homeless piece Just also took out the whole cannabis tax revenue. I just want to, I'm very disappointed about the library funding and how This board is going about doing this because really, I understand the small library issue and I understand that we want to have a committee come back and look at per capita.
But the fact is that this is, I think it's blatantly unfair to some of the libraries. You know you talk about the city library of Goleta But I think you're forgetting that there is a whole unincorporated area that is not getting any benefit from this county budget. And you have the library in two different places, it's going to five libraries. So you're forgetting the unincorporated area of Goleta. You're forgetting the unincorporated area of Lompoc.
You've got some of it covered in Santa Maria, presumably by including Guadalupe. But there is no county funding that's going to a whole class of people, a whole group of people and that's only my recommendation was only to get them back to where they are or where they were this year. It's not even giving anyone any more money and so I'm I just want to throw it out there that there should at least be some allocation of per capita. For me, there's no more money but everyone seems to be able to find extra money. I'm the only one who wants to try and play fairly in my opinion to give it to everyone and And it's not just my district, it's other districts that aren't getting the benefit of this budget cycle.
Then I also want to talk about the cannabis which you're using and yet there is no allocation What we heard from behavioral wellness and what we heard from probation. And I find it ironic that if you are going to look at this allocation of funds, that you're not even considering giving it to the two departments and there's more who will probably be most impacted by cannabis. And that was part of our discussions, as Supervisor Labagnino said from the beginning. Part of our discussions about cannabis which would seem like we had every meeting and yet there's not one penny that's actually going to fund the impact of cannabis in our community when we know that there is going to be a public health need.
I can only hope that these items will come to the board and The board members will decide that that is indeed important, because we know it is. We've heard it from a number of experts and if you look down at the bottom there's, if you're going to believe that you're going to get all that cannabis tax then put it where I believe it should be put. Otherwise, on a happy note, the good thing about this budget is that we had our budget workshop. And there are so many great additions to the budget because of the budget workshop. I think CEO Miyasato and Mr. Frapwell did a great job listening to us. They listened to the department heads. There's a lot of new, well I shouldn't say new but there's a lot of reinstatement of positions. I can't recall what the first word was when you talked about the budget, Mona.
Maybe it was stable static? I can't remember. You know for me that's what is really important is to leave this board in a stable position and I think that was what we had presented to us in the budget book based on On the workshop, I said to Mr. Adam maybe I should get his speech and read it. But I'm really feeling today that this is kind of a wish list and I would love to add my little marker by each one of these things because I think they're all important but we don't know that we have the money.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
6:40 – 6:4510 turns
Supervisor Lavenino? Thank you. You called on me right when I lost my place. So, I think it's B-21. No, I got it. I got it. So the Cannabis Enforcement Team, who's got that? Yeah put that slide up. It shows that one of the cannabis enforcement is public health and their title position is Health Educator to the tune of $100,000.
I said behavioral wellness and I said probation and I do believe that public health will need more but you're right, I remember that discussion. And we had it actually today she said that person would also do education. So I
know that. And I'm sure that after, you know like you said this is the first go round and when we see what comes in I'm sure there's probably going to be every department lining up of the things they'd like to do and I'm confident with a $100,000 health educator they will get the message out in this county. I'm not sure I want to spend more than $100,000 right at the get-go so I don't want people Impression that we aren't dealing with the public health aspect of it. There's also in the licensing department, a Public Health Environmental Health Specialist to the tune of $127,000. So public health is well represented. I do understand that probation and behavioral wellness.
And I think there was a miscommunication between probation department that did not basically communicate effectively with the CEO. We'll put it that way.
And Supervisors, through the Chair just to correct that Chief Heitman did talk to me or communicate with me since that question was raised and she's looking at doing health at some cannabis education that is required more than in one location. Supervisor Adam. And you know, I just wanted to say that if it makes you feel any better, Janet,
Behavioral wellness and public health are not without funding. You know, already and some of these problems are going to get caught up with the net that's already out there. And you know if you look at the Colorado experiment they had a 9% increase in the amount of usage I believe and this is not going to result if we have 9% increase in usage. I don't think it's going to result in a problem like this year that we're going to wind up having to deal with immediately. So I don't think that it's something that we're not already well prepared to handle.
Supervisor
Hartman?
Yes, I had a couple of questions the first is If the Cannabis Tax Fund money comes in as projected with our conservative assumptions, what happens when? And then what if more money comes in for cannabis given that they were very conservative assumptions. Can you walk me through the process this next year?
Supervisor Hartman to the Chair. As with all revenues that we make predictions, to the extent they over perform they typically will fall to a fund balance that rolls over into the following fiscal year. If your board wanted to give a specific direction on in that situation what to do with those funds, we're happy to take that. Your board could designate where you'd like that deposited.
It doesn't create appropriation though even if you and councils here can help us navigate the County Budget Act. And so that would be a possibility if your board chose to do that. Otherwise, it'd fall into fund balance. We would essentially segregate it anyway into fund balance and you'd have it available for your board to allocate the following fiscal year.
Mr. Chair and Supervisors, I absolutely agree with the Auditor, Budget Director and I had worked through this in advance of that discussion to make sure we were on the same page as to where this money would cascade to. And you can designate a particular committed fund balance otherwise it will default into the fund balance that the budget director was just discussing.
Supervisor
Hartman.
6:45 – 6:5114 turns
So back to my pet issue which is the park bond and the master plan for parks that situates us to secure more funding, if we do have cannabis money coming in is there any way that could be this next year for the park plan, rather than just defaulting to the fund balance for the next year? I
think that's a great idea. This is an economic development effort and I guess wonder whether there would be interest in funding that if the balance comes in higher Supervisor Wolf.
You know, I just want to go back and remind everyone about the North County Jail. And you know, we're building this over a hundred million dollar building and I know, we heard from Sheriff Brown the word delta. And I am over 100% certain that we are not going to have enough money and I just implore my colleagues to be prudent with the money that we might be getting from cannabis. To me it's just not this It's not the savior for the county. And I just think this is the time for us to watch what we do, watch what we spend and know that we have aside from the North County Jail all the other issues, the emerging issues that our staff brought up.
Supervisor Adam. I want to talk about this parks deal for a minute. This is going to be a bridge too far for me, so you got me on for all of this stuff now some which I don't like. So keep kicking the rattlesnake and it's going to run away.
It's part of the 18% infrastructure. Those are some of your priorities, in other words.
Well my priorities are maintaining what we have not necessarily trying to populate the North County with trails etc., etc., and so forth
Some of this money would be for Waller Park and better, it's water conservation, better irrigation systems to upgrade.
Okay well we can discuss those on an ad hoc basis but you know for right here right now I'm getting to the end of my
rope there. Supervisor Latimer. Thank you Mr. Chair. Somebody thinks they're going to change somebody else's mind up here. I think we pretty much beat on this.
Can I make one pitch? And it might be too far for you guys, but I think one of the issues is that we're also talking about and I don't want to leave the Parks Master Plan because I really think we should do that at some point. One of the things that would be, I think a little bit weird is to be putting and it's understandable. It's putting money into a lot of money in strategic reserve in case we have another disaster but then we don't fix the problem by which people who are notified with the WEA system that may not need to be evacuated then try to go to our website to see if they need to be evacuated and our website crashes.
And I know most of this was in my district, but next time it could be in any one of the districts to have thousands of people unable to consult the county's website as to whether they're supposed to evacuate. Is pretty gnarly. And so I just wonder if there wouldn't be an interest, if not 500 but to allocate some figure to get that work started at some point in this fiscal year?
I'll tell you what, if you bring that back outside of the budget hearing and we see what cannabis revenues are, that would be a priority for me at that point. But I gotta hear more about it and know what the technology is. And it's just not something that's up in my wheelhouse. Fair enough
Mr. Adam? Well, my thought was let's see how much money comes in from the cannabis and we can do that at the end of the year or some other time. I mean if it comes in great guns and we're going to have more money than we thought we were going to have, great. We can bring it back as a D item at that time and do it then.
Fair enough. Appreciate your guys' openness. Is there any other item that a board member wishes to speak about or make a last plea on? Then essentially what I would need.
Chair Williams, just a point of clarification. Because there is no third vote for the million four going into the cannabis fund at the bottom I believe we need to reduce the one time resource of 4.6 to be so we have a balanced budget reduced that by 1.464.
6:51 – 7:0119 turns
Well, if there's no third vote for that. Unless we put it all back in strategic reserve.
So the question is whether it goes into the Measure T Cannabis Fund or whether it goes into where?
Supervisors, I believe the auditor is pointing out. So we have an estimated of that available cannabis revenue and if you're not going to be allocating the full amount, you would just reduce that total available amount by that amount. That's one way of doing it.
Well, I have 508 left so why don't you put 508 down at the Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund? And so at least get halfway to balance. Supervisor
Hartman.
I think this gets back to the earlier question I had about process and how we would allocate Measure T, cannabis tax fund. And I think what I heard is it could go back for next year's funding or we could reconsider somewhere down the line this year for the 500 say for the cloud-based internet or possibly other things. Am I correct in that?
Supervisors, really there's a couple of ways. Right now if you look at the column that is labeled amount which we have consensus on so far, you'll see in the remaining one time about $850,000. As our CEO mentioned, one option is to reduce your estimated cannabis tax revenue by that amount. Or potentially increase your measure T or the Cannabis Committed Fund Balance, the last line, to make up that difference. So if you wanted, it's your board's option of course.
Either one of those solutions gives us a balance.
Supervisor Leibniz. I like just lowering the, of what the anticipated revenue is and then whatever it is is excess at that point. Works for me.
Now we still have a fund balance of the Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund and my one condition is that if you change it from Measure T to be the BUR tax fund.
The B-O-U-R Bauer account. Chair Williams, just for again clarification on that line. We already have a fund balance component set up in our financial statement and it is simply called Prop 64-115 Cannabis and so that would be the actual name of the fund balance account as opposed to a Measure T Cannabis Tax Fund. I wasn't completely serious but
I was. And that's why you're the auditor.
Okay.
So does the auditor or our staff need to review these? Usually at this time we would take a quick break to make sure you're all accounting. So Mr. Filotti and Mr.
Fravo. Paul, if you'd roll up to the ongoing. Are we balanced there? We are balanced there. Okay yes, we would appreciate a short break. I have
a question if you don't mind.
Supervisor,
Supervisor Wolff.
Thank you. So did you just reduce what we expected for cannabis by a million dollars from 4.6 to 3.7? Yes. That's better. We're going to take a five minute break. Is that
enough time for you guys to verify ♪ ♪ Yeah. Yeah. you
7:08 – 7:141 turns
You. You. Yes.
7:14 – 7:229 turns
For clarification, the suggestion has been made so that it doesn't look like we are spending in the red for me to take some stuff off my list here.
To Chair Williams and Supervisors, you're right. Our staff felt uncomfortable doing that without your permission so obviously you'd be adopting just what is in the first column but given your preferences with your permission we could reduce some of your requests.
So can we just start with striking the things that we don't have three votes on? Correct. From me and Joan, is that okay? That's right.
And then for Supervisors, Adam Lavinia of the bottom
number yes. The bank needs to change to 508 even though I wanted a little more in there but...
You, how does your brain work that fast Steve? How does it work that fast and if you just applied it to useful information how brilliant would you be.
So Supervisors, so we have your attachment E. And just to walk through it so there's finality to it on the ongoing funding $75,000 for the ESI team project leader and CSD. 113 800 an ongoing funding for libraries. The intent is for the small libraries who are in deficit but this is an ongoing amount. 67,000 for the subpoena server for the District Attorney's Office and 120,400 for the Deputy Probation Officer for sex offenders. And that's your ongoing funding.
On the one time we've reduced the cannabis tax revenue expectation to 3.75 million. We had $10,000 in emerging issues fund balance for a total of 3.76 million in one-time sources. Of that, you've allocated 1.1 towards deferred maintenance to be divided to Public Works General Services and CSD and I would recommend using the same formula we used for the 18%. The strategic reserve of $1.5 million, libraries $86,200.
With the intent of $50,000 would be going towards CSD for a staff person to help us work on an appropriate funding formula and the rest for the purposes mentioned above for the small library deficit. $10,000 for homeless tracking to improve our data systems. $155,800 for UVP. $180,000 for utility solar ordinance. $70,000 P&D for short-term rental amendment, zone amendment.
$150,000 for the Clean Energy Roadmap and putting $508,000 towards the committed account for Measure T revenues. For a total of $3.76 million in one time funding. And if that is okay we would ask for your approval of attachment E.
So if I could get a motion, it would be approval of attachment E and A through H as it appears on item 1 today. Can I get a motion? So moved. Can I get a second? Second. Supervisor Wolf.
Thank you Mr. Chair. So this is voting on the final budget, which is my final budget. And I'm just going to make a couple comments again. Incredibly disappointed, even though you've reduced the cannabis amount and I know I sound like a broken record. $3,750,000. I think that if we wanted to have honesty in budgeting or integrity in budgeting, we could have taken as I said at the very beginning, at least $3 million from litigation program stabilization and contingencies. There's so much money in this chart.
That we haven't even touched and yet. We are moving forward with an allocation of money that we don't even know that we have. So I don't know how we got to this place, because I've never seen a process like this. I've never seen us with all of these potential uses that really may have been mentioned one time or two times by one or two board members. And yet there's a huge allocation of funds.
On the bright side, I think that when this budget came to us during the workshop, I think that the fact that we didn't see any service level reductions, we didn't see staff cuts or significant staff cuts. In fact, we saw some enhancements so that was a good thing. But I almost wish that we could separate what we did today from the budget that was presented to us.
So anyway, with that, I'm going to vote no on the budget and just another final word is I look forward to the library issue coming back to the Board of Supervisors, so that we can have a full discussion. Because now there's an allocation To five small libraries, which I always thought was going to be a one time expense. And it's not anymore so we're going to need a lot of discussion about our libraries and I really hope that we get a handle and I'm going to be interested to see these next few months how the cannabis tax comes in.
And hopefully you will all be right and I will be wrong. Usually, I'm an optimist and again, I voted for every budget because I'm an optimist but today I am pessimistic. And I'm really sorry that this is how it ended because again, I just going to say one more time we have so many issues in front of us. And I'm looking at the sheriff and this jail is going to cost us a lot of money.
And if we want it to work, we have to put the money in there and right now we've just, to me, we don't have the money and it feels like a lot of fluff. And I apologize to my constituents and to the county as a whole, because I really feel like today we failed in being good stewards of your money or lack of money. Thank you.
7:22 – 7:272 turns
But I disagree. I feel that it is not easy to balance different needs in a fiscally limited time, and there's almost no difference between spending reserves and then putting cannabis money in reserves versus spending cannabis money and leaving reserves untouched. It would be tantamount to the same thing, but I think this is a good way to account for it, to show that there's an actual difference being made Look, this is different needs. This is needs of economic development, needs of the environment, needs of our libraries, needs of our roads and infrastructure.
And no-one's running the table. Everyone here has gotten one of their priorities taken care of, and that's not easy to do. Fiscally prudent budget, but one that balances the very different needs that different parts of this county has. Supervisor
Adam? Well I'm in a very strange position here switching with Supervisor Wolf. You know what did you say? We were all screw ups. I wanted to tell you that being the lone vote is not that bad, and you know what? You have always stood for your principles and I think it's really healthy when somebody doesn't vote for a budget. I think it's a good thing that we don't all agree every time.
If everybody agrees all the time, I think it's less interesting for sure and somebody not voting for a budget makes it interesting. That said, I'm glad to be on this side for once. It's hard to not vote for the budget. And I think we should all give Supervisor Wolf a big pat on the back, and I will. I'll give you a big hug when we get done because you're performing the function of this body deliberating the way we do.
Coming up with something that's just not everybody can agree on and we fight over this stuff, that means it's better. If we were all in here and everybody just agreed I don't think it would be as good. So anyway intellectually you know I just have to vote for this. There has been too much movement. Did you think it was going to be 3-2 or what? There's been too much movement in my direction here, and I gotta be intellectually honest and go with it.
It's still not perfect. We still haven't funded adequately our maintenance because any time we're gonna continue to go down with our PCI and our FCIs, I think it's irresponsible. I still think it's irresponsible but I'm gonna vote for it anyway. I don't like pay raises being baked into the cake. Our negotiating position on those things is just horrible. going forward when you bake it into the cake, because then everybody just thinks they're gonna pick up their 3%, so what can we get besides the 3%? That's what the negotiation becomes. And I don't think that's any way to negotiate.
In retrospect, I've always supported the majority of the things that we've done You know, I've done this for or voted against the budget each and every time. Largely for rhetorical purposes and it's not that I don't support these things that we're doing but I think It's important that we always think about what we're doing and not just accept it because there was a motion made. That all said, I could go back next year so let's be responsible.
7:27 – 7:313 turns
Supervisor Lavenino. Thank you, Mr Chair. Well I want to thank you know I'm always one to say if I if I if I'm wrong so I was wrong today that this was this process worked out very well yeah I didn't think we could do this in one day but then I realized it's because you have streamlined this process to where Our BIFs are answered like board inquiry forms. I barely get done writing the thing and I've got an answer back already.
And so, I just want to congratulate your staff, everybody that worked on the budget. You made it so that we can get through this efficiently in one day. It helps that we didn't have any service level reductions or anything. We weren't laying people off. That makes it a little more palatable to do in one day. But, and I also want to thank my colleagues because I think this is our first real budget together.
You know, I kind of disagree with what's been said that I think this to me felt like our best budget. More money was probably put away. Than at any other time that I've been on the board. Our strategic reserve is getting close to $30 million again, we restocked that. And I think we're being very prudent with the cannabis tax dollars that you know, I think the estimate was somewhere which I don't know why we paid a consultant to tell us it would be somewhere between 5 and 25 million. I could have, I think I might have been able to guess that.
But you know, obviously the money for enforcement is a no-brainer that we have to do right away and to only put $3.5 million into it I don't think is asking too much so... I also agree with Peter that it is cool to have somebody disagree because I watch a lot of the Santa Maria City Council and for a long time it's 5-0, 5-O, 5 0, 5 O. And it's boring man you know? It's just boring so you keep me on my toes but I do want to thank all the department heads, I think staff everybody did such a great job and I think we ended up with a great product.
Supervisor Hartman
Thank you, well I'm just left in a position of echoing pretty much what everyone said. I think the department heads in preparing the budget, I think particularly Mr. Frapwell and all the behind-the-scenes work bringing it to us and our wonderful amazing CEO how much goes on just pulling all this together and trying to reconcile these numbers and these positions so I really appreciate that.
I believe it's a very responsible budget. It's not like we're spending money up, we're socking money away. It is a very conservative budget and I think that's the way to go. We've experienced a huge disaster and we are trying to position ourselves in case we have other ramifications in the future. I want to thank our Chair, Williams, who took a risk on changing this process. I think where we were at the workshops and where we are today in terms of how much money we had then and how much money we think we have now And how much airing we did there and how much really we were able to focus on just a few issues left over today. I think that was very productive, so I'm grateful to our chair for risking something new. So that's all I want to say.
So we have a motion and a second, but don't go anywhere because there is a second item on our agenda. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? The second item, please read it.
7:31 – 7:3410 turns
Our second matter to clean up here today is the recommendations during the fiscal year 2018-19 recommended budget for the County of Santa Barbara as successor agency to the former County of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency.
And do you have a slide or is it pretty much there's no money there? So in summary, there's no money there. Can I get a motion to accept item 2, A and B? Move staff recommendation A and B.
Second.
We'll have a vote here in a second, but I thought that it's appropriate given that one among us now has gone through 12 of these cycles. And that's an accomplishment both in terms of patience and everything else. So I think Supervisor Wolf deserves a round of applause for going through 12 of these things.
And I also, since we're giving me applause. It was me who started the
workshops.
That's what makes these budget hearings so efficient. Thank you everybody, thank you.
There is a motion. I know, there's got to be
a cartoon for that.
There is a motion, there is a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you so much. Thank you to staff for your hard work. We are adjourning to Tuesday, June 19th at the Joe Centeno Building in Santa Maria.