Board of Supervisors — 2019-02-12

Hello everyone. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. You. Okay,

all

right. All right I'd like to call to order this meeting of the February 12th Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Mr. Clerk can you give us a roll call please?

Mr. Hart? Here. Ms. Hartman? Here. Mr. Adam? Here. In Santa Barbara, Mr. Williams?

He's there.

And Mr. Lavinino?

I'm here. Yeah. Can you guys hear us down there? That's right. Supervisor Williams can you hear us?

I can hear you just great. Thank you.

All right, great. Before we do the pledge, Ken, can you put this picture up? This is something I'd like to just take a second and share something I came across yesterday. These two young boys have now internet sensations. This is Thomas who's seven and his cousin Derek six they were playing near a fire station in Roseboro North Carolina. Chaplain came out to raise the flag, and these two young boys without any adult nearby or any prompting both placed their hands over their heart and respectfully recited the pledge. It's been some controversy in our county recently about the pledge.

And I can honestly say for me, it's always been a unifying moment before our meetings regardless of our political ideologies. It is an honor to stand with my colleagues as we pay respect to our flag, our country and all those brave men and women who've sacrificed so much to ensure liberty and justice for all. So

Passes 5-0.

Wow, okay this is time for public comment for those items not on today's agenda Mr. Allen do we have any requests to speak from the public?

Chair Lavagnino members of the board we have two requests this morning both in Santa Barbara we're going to go there for Ed Kalaski to be followed by Ben Pitterly. Mr. Kalasky

I don't know Ken, do you have my drawing there on your computer? If you do bring it up. Thank you. I call my speech today why is Alex Peugeot still at SBAR? I think it's very naive of the supervisors here to all of a sudden think that things are going to change downstairs just because we got a new supervisor. Our new supervisor hasn't been around for the last five years when I've been here, and not for the last 12 years when Janet Wolfe was in charge. And so when you talk to Alex it's like he doesn't understand the difference between legal and illegal.

I don't know if he doesn't really understand or he just doesn't care. And that seems to be the same position as our previous supervisor, Janet Wolfe who just didn't seem to care. So why is things going to change? Is Alex now in charge of running the county scam? I would assume so. You know, I didn't know whether I was supposed to pay $1,000 at the end there to get our project passed or not. What if he took the 1,000 and didn't do anything?

You never know with these people. So anyways, you know when we came in the fifth meeting, we didn't get a chance to show our drawing. And they didn't even tell us why we were rejected. You know, if they told us that hey your second story is located solely over the garage. That's nonsense it's not located solely over the garage. It's over the garage, the kitchen, the dining room, part of the living room and the laundry room.

If they would have told us that hey we made no changes which all these are noted in minutes that we made no changes When we added 300 square feet to a 400-square foot project, that represents no changes. That's why he kicked us out. He didn't want the other members to hear what was going on. He didn't want the other members to see what we had done. And what was our option? Well, you can appeal. Appeal to what?

The PC? They didn't understand it. They couldn't figure it out. It makes no sense so they ruled whatever SBAR said is fine with them and then we show up here and we got a deal with Janet Wolfe. That's ridiculous! That's absurd! You know, you pledge allegiance and you're proud to pledge allegiance for life and justice. I said that wrong but it's for those who pay the extortion fee. It's not for everyone and that's disgusting.

Things should change. And I hope our new supervisor goes down and talks to some of the people down there, to figure out what's going on. It's not like it's really hidden or at least he can do explain to me how is our second story solely over the garage? That's a simple thing no one can okay thank you

Ben Pitterly in Santa Barbara, and we received another late slip from Dorothy Dent. So Ben Pitterley then Dorothy Dent.

Good morning. I'm Ben Peterly, I'm with Santa Barbara Channel Keeper. I wanted to say a few words this morning about the sediment disposal that's currently occurring in Carpinteria Beach. First, I just want to make a couple points first regarding the 2018 debris flows we fully understand that What happened last year was an emergency and the county was responding to a crisis. And jail keepers never taken up position of opposition against disposal at the beaches in response to debris flows, we did conduct monitoring.

And we did our best to share those results with the public and county officials to keep the public informed about what some of the impacts might have been. Today, however, the situation is somewhat different for one it's been a year, the county has been planning what to do during the last year in preparation for this winter. To the action that's occurring now it's preventative more than not cleaning up To some degree, there were debris flows. Roads were closed but most of the debris, our understanding is it's coming from debris basins so it's essentially debris basin maintenance that's happening now which is somewhat different than last year and then And third, throughout the year county and other partnering agencies we've been hearing more and more in communications that the notion of what's occurring is actually it's been promoting the notion of this activity as beach nourishment.

Something that's an activity that's benefiting the coastline protecting coastlines from sea level rise and this type of thing. Beach nourishment it's a different type of activity and typically these activities are permitted through the Army Corps of Engineers through programmatic Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. But a very small few in terms of what can be placed on the beaches. We strongly believe that the county should at this point in time, we'd like to see the county moving forward taking steps to obtain a beach nourishment permit if that's really what this activity is which it appears to be. That's what we're hearing from this board and from county officials.

To a large degree. One final note just about communications, the press release went out recently last week when the county started disposing material in Carpinteria Beach and it referred to monitoring data that was being collected. It implied that results had been obtained and that the sediment was clean and that there wasn't any risk to the public when we tried To obtain those results from county officials, we discovered that they actually didn't even have those results yet. And we didn't even get some of those results until just yesterday. So I think we were hoping just to see more care in some of the communications that are being put forward maybe less sort of what was felt as to some degree is sort of a PR campaign promoting beach nourishment.

Let's just be, we support a transparent and open process moving forward that examines the potential benefits and impacts of beach nourishment. And we hope you'll consider these things moving forward. Thank you.

Good morning, supervisors. Two weeks ago you got to hear from Patricia, a beautiful senior who lives locally and who formerly was conserved. Luckily for her and extremely uncommonly she was able to remove herself from conservatorship and that was through our wonderful public guardian system here in Santa Barbara. For the last three years, we have been suffering through a very difficult illegal eviction process. I was helping another senior named Patricia try to continue living healthily happy medication free in her own home that she had had since 1962 where she raised five children one of which was in the military and Living out her days in the beautiful sunshine of Isla Vista by the coast with her family and friends. And it was a wonderful block where many of the people lived there with their families, took care of their families as they were aging.

And then retain their homes after the family member passed away. Unfortunately for Patricia, now she is being held against her will or need ten hours away in an abysmal facility where we visited. Even though there were no doctor orders, she was unfortunately put into this position by a corrupt Conservatorship system that ends up giving the wealth of the senior to a whole lot of court cronies.

And I have studied this now for three years and I investigated thoroughly to discover that the doctor, that the judge insisted that Patricia C through an attorney that the judge appointed even though my senior had her own attorney. This individual doctor took money, 195 payments actually from many different scores of different pharmaceutical companies. This is listed under the website dollars for docs and I suggest that each individual look at that to see who their doctor may be taking payments from to discover whether those drugs are actually needed or whether they would just be suggested.

Now when an individual is healthy and with no chronic conditions, Santa Barbara should be allowing that individual to live in their home. And not be taking these drugs of course under a doctor's care. And we had done so, she had done so herself through the wonderful Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics. And Dr. Kristen Pena who is California Board Licensure Doctor, But unfortunately, the judge and the appointed attorney of the judge thought that they knew better even though neither of them are doctors. And none of them had any doctor's orders to give my elder these drugs. So please investigate this. I thank you so much for having this opportunity to discuss things. And I know that we're going to get back on track with this investigation and possibly a task force for The public because I know that you supervisors care about your citizens and you don't want them removed from their home and sent away eight hours to abysmal facilities.

Thank you.

That concludes public comment. Okay,

that'll move us into our D agenda. Can you please read item D1?

Chair Lavinino and members of the board, item one is from the County Executive Office. It's a hearing to receive and file the fiscal year 2018-19 budget and financial status report as of December 31st 2018 showing the status of appropriations in financing for all departmental budgets adopted by the board.

Okay

good morning Mr. Prapwell.

Good morning Mr. Chairman, members of the Board Thank you, I have an opportunity to present to you the second quarter or mid-year update on the performance of the county budget. And we have prepared a board report for you but I'll go through kind of the highlights in the PowerPoint presentation this morning. Remember this is the quarter ending December 31st, 2018. And as we look at the second quarter there in just a kind of brief recap the general fund there are six reportable variances now reportable variances for your memory is in the general fund any department that is performing plus or minus $300,000 or more is highlighted here as a reportable variance Within the special revenue and other funds, those are departments hit the variance threshold at $500,000.

This is really a measure of materiality within both those different distinct funds. So 65 of our 68 departments and funds are positive or at budget as shown in our signal chart attached in attachment A to the board letter. So here are the six reportable variances within the general fund county council So all of the departments within the general fund except for these six are tracking on or ahead of budget.

With the reportable variances, and we'll go through each department now within general fund county council's savings are primarily due to staffing vacancies. Within probation again salary savings due to vacancies and some positive news on some reimbursement from the state for state mandated costs about $147,000. Within Sheriff, this is largely driven by overtime costs exceed salary savings.

Salary savings are generated by the vacancies but the overtime cost is required to fill fixed post positions largely. In addition there are some costs related to providing mutual aid to Ventura County during the Hill Fire. We think this cost will eventually be reimbursed to the county but probably will not happen in the current fiscal year that lag time For federal reimbursement on these types of disasters can spring on for more than a year. So we do think eventually that cost will be reimbursed, but at the moment it's showing a negative for the department.

Also in the department I think they are seeing a reduction in the overtime within the custody facilities and they have I think recently gotten rid of the mandatory overtime in the main jail so that's a positive. Because of additional staffing they have in custody deputies. And then I think in Q3, we'll see some impact of the recent storm activities in the South Coast specifically and related to overtime and evacuations associated with those storms.

All in all their service supplies are fairly well on track. We are watching carefully the inmate food costs for that main jail as a potential drag on their budget. For community services parks, again this is a pretty positive news. The camping revenues largely at Kachuma are really performing above our budget levels and so that's a positive. They've had really successful use of the reservation system that is helping generate that revenue and their call centers continue to prove fruitful as well.

There are many new activities they're putting in place Kachuma which are driving attendance and gate fees. Within general services, largely this is a result of staffing vacancies. They did implement VSIP if your board recalled program that your board put in place as the Voluntary Early Separation Center Program and that has produced the expected savings within the department.

And they also have one unfilled assistant director position. Within general revenues, this is where all the discretionary dollars that your board allocates to each department comes from here in the general revenues. That's trending higher by a million dollars and we'll go kind of more in depth on this source. These are really higher than budget secured and VLF in lieu property taxes, RDA distributions and interest and earnings on our investments.

They're offset partially by some supplemental property tax coming in lower than anticipated. You'll recall supplemental property taxes are those taxes that are estimated beginning of the fiscal year, it's directly related to typically sales turnover and properties in which The property sells for a higher value than what's on the current assessed roll. And when that happens, the new owner gets a supplemental tax bill. So what we're seeing here are seen lower than estimated. We've had lower turnover of homes that have generated those supplemental taxes.

Our TOT taxes are not performing as strongly as we had anticipated. We had made an estimate in the current year budget that San Francisco Ranch would be back open, and it is nearly back open but not as early as we had anticipated when we adopted the budget. And so that has caused somewhat of a drag The Miramar, which we anticipated opening in January when we built the budget looks like they're taking reservations for March. So we're about two month lag on that so that's pulling down and kind of the reason The result is lower than anticipated TOT taxes.

Property tax backfilled from the state, the state is fulfilling their commitment they are backfilling the property taxes that we lost and so the only reason this shows up on the slide is that we have higher secured property tax because our loss related to the Thomas fire debris flow was not as great as we had originally anticipated when we adopted the budget But I do want to make sure that I'm clear the state is fulfilling their commitment to backfill all the property taxes we lost.

Here's all that information in a graphical form, it's also included in your board report and there you can kind of see the numbers property tax and VLF up 2.8 million There's the reduction in supplemental about 1.1 RDA Residual distributions is 1.2, $1.3 million. TOT you can see down 536,000 investments and investment performance at 1.9. Part of tax backfill again 3.2 negative all other revenues kind of combined is about 238 so pretty much on target really good strong performance by most of our revenue sources.

So we turn our attention to the special revenue funds. You can see in total, and these are kind of outlined in attachment B to your board report, a positive $3.8 million. There are four reportable variances. These are departments that are operating plus or minus $500,000 or more. And then we have the healthcare fund currently showing potential year-end negative of 548,000.

The department is optimistic that they'll be able to close this gap closer to zero, just because of some delayed revenues. But they also have fund balance available to balance the budget should they need it at year end. Court Special Services I think deserves particular discussion this morning. It is kind of an indicator what we'll see again during the upcoming budget workshop and hearings.

This is largely a reflection of two items that are pushing this negative. We'll go into those more in a moment. So Vehicle Operations, IFSF operating at a positive, projected at a positive $776,000 and the Information Technology Services are positive $705,000. Here's the health care fund. Really I do believe they will be closer to zero at the year end and they do have fund balance should they need that.

Here's Court Special Services. I do want to take a moment this morning, this is a trend for current year that is going to continue into future years and so what we're seeing here are lower than budget revenues really due to some state changes in law related to the leverage the court has to collect fines and fees that are levied by the court Before January 2018, there was a program in place that allowed the court to leverage essentially somebody's ability to renew their driver's license if they had outstanding fees to the court.

January 2018 that program was taken away and so it's had the effect of reducing the revenues. These are revenues that these and with the revenues we're talking to here are the revenue, the portion of revenues that come to the county there's also a portion of revenues to come to the state. So but this is just focused on the county counties portion of those revenues But we're seeing that continue to go down. I think we've seen a leveling off, but you'll hear this theme again during workshops as we have increased the general fund contribution to this budget.

The other significant drag or impact on this budget is really the cost for conflict attorney services. We have a number of multi-defendant cases that are really ramping up And requiring quite a bit of costs associated with hours for conflict attorneys. This is something that will continue into next year as well, as these MS-13 and Golden State Killer cases continue to have an impact on this department.

Again you'll hear more as we talk about this in the upcoming year as well. Vehicle operations and ICT are really continuing to perform positively. Some of this is delaying the timing of replacements in the vehicle operations, but also information technology services is really a function of some vacant positions. So in summary, here's the chart. It's also probably more readable in your printed board report but you can see here our reds that we talked about are those that in the general fund that are negative and you see the yellow diamonds plus or up or down which are those above or below their targeted general fund cost So our recommended action this morning for your board is to receive a file of the 2018-19 budget and fiscal financial status report as of December 31st, 2018.

I'm going to be happy to answer any questions.

All right, I just have one. Can we go to slide three for just a second? Recommend, it would be helpful for me at least in the future when we list out the departments. If you could give us what their total budget is for the year so it puts in perspective a little bit more. So if you look at the sheriff at minus 415 but I think his overall budget's over $100 million kind of allows us a little perspective there. Okay, Supervisor Adam?

Yeah, it just seems like it's always incomplete when we don't have some kind of recognition of the unfunded liabilities. When we have a financial status update.

Supervisor Adam to chair specifically related to pensions, specifically related to

OPEB or- Well my favorite three year pension is OPEB and deferred maintenance. There may be something else that I'm forgetting. But you could probably remind me.

Supervisor, we'd be happy to include those in the next quarter report. We do take these, bring these to your board on a quarterly basis and would be happy to highlight those as well.

Yeah, because you know it just seems like we're presenting the cash side and that's fine. It all seems to be working out great and I have a pretty high tolerance. I know some people get all worried when they see the brackets and I have a pretty high tolerance for brackets in the second quarter because you got half a year to make that up but We have the other side of this thing, which is the unfunded side, which only seems to grow in retrospect and maybe we're making that shrink. But I think if you're going to do a financial status, the only honest way to present the thing is in a whole picture. Okay.

CEO Miyasato?

Thank you, um just board members. Um, you do have an attachment that shows the budgets for all the Departments so it's not attachment a So although we'll put on the slide next time but for example to answer chair levinino's Comment the sheriff has 147 million dollar budget. So thank you for pointing that out And yes, and we so noted supervisor adam these reports have become um historically As a comparison to our budget, not necessarily financial status of the whole county. So it's comparing where our departments are on their budgets relative to what was approved but we can certainly add another section that talks about unfunded liabilities.

Okay great public comment Supervisor Williams do you have any questions? Okay public comment

Chair Lavagnino, members of the board we have two requests. Judy Birch?

No. That's item three. No it didn't get canceled out. Oh cancel out your request.

No problem okay thank you and then we'll deal with... You will. You're good.

Mr. Caldwell.

Chair Lavagnino members of the board Andy Caldwell representing Colab. Kind of taking off on what Supervisor Adams' point is, you have this snapshot every time of how your expenditures and things are lining up with projections in the budget. And that's all fine and good. But like for instance later on you have an issue dealing with the oil industry. And the oil industry, as you know, pays property taxes for their facilities but also oil in the ground is taxed.

And we haven't really had a very good report in a long, long time of what happened since Venico went bankrupt, Exxon got shut down, Plains Pipeline got shut down on what happened to both the county finances, school finances and the like then secondly couple that with The projected finances of the projects that are in the pipeline, so to speak era ERG and. The other one Petro Rock.

And then the other issue that needs to be taken into consideration is your board. The exception of Supervisor Hart who wasn't here yet had some ginormous dollar signs in your eyes with respect to pot. I mean ginormous dollar signs. And yet what I'm seeing, what I'm reading in the news is more pot farms getting busted than revenue coming in. Now, I don't know if those guys are paying their taxes or not, if they were illegal. But nonetheless, I was thinking we're losing money on pot right now rather than making it based on how many plants are getting torn out of the ground. And then plus your board's starting to backtrack. You rolled out this green carpet For pot, you rushed P&D like I've never seen them rush before to get permits lined up and ordinances lined up.

And now you're starting to slowly backtrack because you found out people hate pot as much as they hate oil at least in some parts of this county. Where are you going to land? Now what does that do to your wish list in terms of being able to handle pension cliffs? I think we need that update sooner rather than later as these oil projects come online and as you reconfigure or renegotiate the green carpet for marijuana.

I think it would be fair because again, those to me in my opinion are the only two saviors on the horizon for your finances in the long run. And with regard to the pension update that stock market took a nasty dive in December we'd like to know what happened to your pension fund? Because as you know they has to average 7% and once you lose money that means you got to go back up to 14 for instance.

To make up the difference. Thank you.

That concludes public comment.

All right, that will move us into item 2 Mr.. Oh yes motion to receive file I'm sorry. So

moved.

Supervisor Williams?

Well, I'm going to support the motion but I did want to speak to the questions Mr. Caldwell brought up about marijuana revenue whether they are sufficient for the enforcement. The marijuana revenue has enabled us to be making those busts because it expanded our enforcement staff dramatically. And so, yes it has not been a panacea. It's not been enough to make up our pension costs but it definitely has been enough for us to increase our enforcement and we'll see there's an awful lot of folks who wanted to pay taxes that got turned away because they were not yet And so we'll see as some of these operations hopefully are seeing that accountability is out there, that some of their colleagues that are loosey-goosey are getting busted.

Hopefully they will come in and get their permits and pay their taxes and play by the rules. And if not, we have the resources to shut them down but if so then it does have a significant upside possibility in revenue. And obviously that would also be great to have them playing by the rules, like odor control. Thanks.

All right so we had a motion from Supervisor Hartman and a second from Supervisor Hart. Roll call please

Mr. Hart? Aye. Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Adams? Aye Mr. Williams? Aye Mr. Lavinino?

Aye

Passes 5-0 All

right that moves us to item 2

Chair Lavinino, members of the board, Item 2 is from the General Services Department it's a hearing to consider recommendation regarding the local vendor preference policy and this is an update on the program

Good

morning

Chair Lavinino, members of the board. With me today is Brandon Davis our Chief Procurement Officer. Brandon and the procurement team are working hard to improve the way we manage procurement and today's proposal is one of those efforts. And today we're presenting a proposed update to the local vendor preference on tangible goods. So the existing policy was initiated informally in 1994 at a 1.5% preference on tangible goods, and then in 2005 your board formalized the policy to be a 6% preference for local vendors. Today's proposed modification is a Renew 22 initiative.

It is to consider redesigning and improving how we do things in the procurement operation. The idea was to take a look at the local vendor preference to see if that's a barrier The notion is that we should review how we operate to reduce barriers for vendors to access the county procurement process. We want to increase participation and thereby maximizing market competition, county spend value, quality of goods and overall public services.

The update today would be that the lowest local vendor within a six percent bid of a non-county vendor would have the chance to match that lowest bid. This also coincides with the update of our online bidding system, which we've rolled out and the goal of that is to increase our bids and increase awareness and vendor participation so we are also improving how many vendors are participating.

And beyond the proposal today, we're making strides in improving procurement operations with many more initiatives to come The goal is to be a streamlined and top-tier purchasing division, to maximize county spend and facilitate optimal performance for all county departments where goods services and contracts are needed. Everything falls within our vision of general services and that vision is to be the premier resource for first class service and that's what we want to do with our procurement operation is to be top tier So the requirements to be considered a local vendor must meet four criteria, which were also established by your board in 2005. The address must be within the county.

A valid business license needs to be issued within the county and the address matches that of their local facility. They must hold a valid resale license as issued from the State Franchise Tax Board and the address matches that of their local facility. And they staffed their local facility with employees during normal business hours, and they have standard business hours and utility services, and the office is fully operational.

So the local vendor preference will only be applied to tangible goods. That's how it's applied today. On this slide is a summary of our purchasing thresholds and bid categories. This is something we use to guide ourselves on what's required, so it's a good shorthand summary. There are four main categories, tangible goods, professional services, construction and federally funded projects or items.

And the modification will not apply to any federally funded efforts or conflict with any local state or federal laws or regulations. And to drill down on that, so tangible items departments have the authority to make purchases on their own up to $3500. Beyond that up to 25,000 there are no specific competitive requirements but requisition and quotes are advised for purchases and awarded via purchase order And then over $25,000 a formal bid is required. Although these are the minimum requirements, bidding can always be used and may be advised depending on the type of purchase being made and competition and ensuring best value is always the preference.

The lines may not quite show up on this slide, but we're trying to show you what this is really applying to in our overall county spend. Now admittedly our data is dependent on our systems which are old and somewhat desperate between different systems, but we were working to improve our available data and working towards improving systems which may eventually lead The data displayed today is what we pulled from FIN. Of our total spend, which is $215 million, and that's items that are touched by purchasing, is our tangible goods.

Of that, there is about 10 million that is flagged as local and about 6.6 million that is non-local. So really we're focused in on that 16.7. This policy would potentially impact that 10 million or 4.6% of our actual spend. So the proposed process would be that the lowest local vendor within six percent can match Any non-local vendors bid if the non-local vendor has the lowest responsive bid.

So we would give that opportunity, if that scenario were to happen, we would allow for 72 hours for the lowest local vendor who's within six percent to match the non-local vendor. We would notify both vendors that this scenario is taking place and then if that local vendor can match they would be awarded a contract. If not, it would go to the lowest bid. We want to look at comparable counties and other agencies to get a sense of what they're doing.

The first eight listed are considered comparable to each other, two have a match component and that is Santa Cruz and Solano. Two additional agencies have a similar match component and that is Kern and Contra Costa. Most agencies have some form of a preference which is 5%. You'll notice City of Santa Barbara, our neighbor does not have a local preference. We believe that matching in Santa Barbara County would allow for maximizing competition and leveraging spend while also encouraging and stimulating local business.

Again it's difficult to know how many non-county vendors have skipped out on bid opportunities because it's impossible to know what we haven't received. But it is a perception factor, and we want to break down any perceived barriers to access doing business with the county. The ultimate goal is to maximize competition, maximize county spend, maximize our value, receive the highest level quality of goods, and ensure county departments are providing optimal public services with the funding we already have.

So with that, our recommended actions are that your board approve the recommended update to the local vendor preference and determine that it is not a project under CEQA. Staff is available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Any questions?

Supervisor Hartman

Well, I really appreciate the chart that you've given us on comparable counties and it does however raise questions. The first one being why do we focus mainly on tangible goods and not also on services? And why the 6% say all the others seem to be 5%.

That is a good question. Chair Lavinino, Supervisor Hartman and it was voted by your board in 2005 the exact motivation behind that isn't 100% clear to us now but it was to try to help stimulate local business have local vendors be participatory in the process your board focused on tangible goods so that's where our policy is now and that's why we're focused on that today

Mr. Gazzani? Chair and supervisors, that would also be because at the time this rolled out some years ago not too long before that the California Attorney General in a 1989 attorney general opinion had given the green light to a vendor preference program based on supplies did not address services. And the government code provision that actually supports this speaks in terms of counties with a purchasing agent not being required to follow a standard bidding process for county supplies. So if the board wanted to expand to services, we could take a deeper look at that but the law in this area previously has been focused on supplies.

Okay is that something you're interested in Supervisor Hartman or?

If we did reduce from 6 to 5, maybe we could expand that. That's my thinking.

I've got a couple questions so and I think this is what my confusion was the first time around. So when we talk about Kind of changing the local vendor preference, what we're really doing in this step is actually trying to get more competitive bids from outside and not local vendors. Because people have just basically failed to see the value in it of bidding on projects here because we end up giving it to a local vendor.

Chair Lavenino, in so many words yes. We want both. We want local vendors and as many vendors participating as possible.

Okay, so when we talk about that we're going to do this 6% available match if you're within 6%. So is that on just bids which would be over $25,000 or is it also any quotes that are 3,500 to 25,000?

Chairman Labadino, most of these items would be items that are bid more than $25,000 but there's nothing that precludes us from bidding an item below $25k. It would mostly encompass items that were bid by the Purchasing Department but its not just for items that would be more than $25K because there could be a circumstance and has been where we bid items below that threshold

Okay, but on the average you got a $15,000 order for toilet paper or whatever. You're not going to go out and you have a local vendor comes in, he's within 4%. He doesn't have the opportunity to go back and match under these rules, right? It would only be if it was a formal bid?

Yes,

this

would be if an item was formally bid, that's correct.

Okay, Supervisor Hart.

The other thing that you mentioned in the staff report was the 60% performance goal to meet for awarding contracts to local vendors. So it's not a 100% local environment now, it's a 60-40 and this proposal attempts I think to shift that to some degree. You're not wanting to eliminate local vendors but Provide a more even playing field for non-local vendors increase the participation of non local vendors Theoretically lower the cost to the county and that's going to reflect on this performance value, right?

Chair Labanino and Supervisor Hart so for clarification That is all purchasing. So that preference for 60% is all factors This is really zeroed in on just those tangible goods or that 4.6 percent or the 10 million or so though that we were Referring to So will it impact that overall spend? It would it would probably be very small impact

on because this is a relatively small percentage of the overall Correct, but the breakdown that you have within. This is 10 million local 6 million non-locals That's pretty close to the 60% all by itself too, right?

Supervisor Hart, of tangible

goods. Correct? Correct. That is

about 60% of tangible goods.

So you would not imagine that that percentage would stay the same, that 60%, or whatever it is within this tangible goods with this new

policy? Again for clarification, that's 60 percent performance measure that we have as a department. That would be the whole 215 million spend and roughly speaking Okay,

and so well I understand what you're trying to do and it makes sense. It disadvantages local businesses and the purpose of the local vendor preference was to give an advantage to local businesses. And I think the premise of that is that it's more expensive to do business in Santa Barbara County for a variety of different reasons. And this is an attempt to kind of rebalance the field and give a benefit to local businesses.

The match provision that you're proposing, it's going to eliminate that essentially. You're just going to be able to match the price and so I would expect that that would go down dramatically and there would be some kind of savings to the county but it would be at the cost of having local vendors recirculating that money in the local community and the benefit of that multiplier effect in the community. And I don't have a sense as to what that means in the overall economic scheme of things but I think that's the trade off. So I could see doing this for a while to take a look and see what the actual data is and what the result is. I can kind of imagine what the result's going to be, but if you came back in six months and had a report and said this has been the effect of that we conceivably could revisit it and readjust it.