Board of Supervisors — 2019-04-19

Good morning. Hi. Hello. Good morning. We have made it to day three so Welcome we will call to order this meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors budget workshop Madam clerk, can we get a roll call please?

Miss Hartman here. Mr. Adam Mr. Williams

here.

Mr heart

here.

Mr Lavagnino

Okay, we have now gotten to the portion of the meeting for public comment. This is for the public to weigh in on matters that are not on today's agenda. Madam Clerk do we have any requests to speak?

Chair Levenino and members of the board I had a request from Ed Kolaski but I believe he has left so no further requests this morning

Anybody, any idea what that was about? Okay. Oh there's an, okay good. All right so that moves us to our departmental agenda but before we get there let's go to Mr. Frapwell if you could give us an update please.

Thank You mr. chairman members of the board throughout the workshops this week your board has been provided a number of updates to your board workshop binder primarily those include The answers to board inquiries, what we call BIF 1 through 5. Those are in your binders. In addition, we've provided your board with an updated special issue slide deck for libraries which we'll hear a little later. We've also updated the general kind of program slide within that PowerPoint presentation And we've addressed some changes in the homelessness special issue. Again, you'll hear this morning. So those are provided to your board. They are part of the official record. They are also available on the county website so all that information is distributed both to your board and the public.

Okay very good. So we are going to head over to our departmental agenda, and we will start off with the two issues that we didn't get to on Thursday. And we'll start off with a special issue on the county efforts to address homelessness. We'll go to Terry Moss-Message.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Lavinino, members of the board. I'll be providing you with an overview this morning of the county's efforts to address homelessness. We'll take a little bit of a look back on some of our prior efforts, talk about what we're doing currently and then looking ahead to a work plan or proposed work plan for next year. The broad Santa Barbara County Homeless Care System is truly a network of agencies, organizations, jurisdictions and groups who both individually and collectively work to address homelessness. Together those stakeholders collaboratively provide outreach assessment in a diverse range of services supportive services and housing to individuals and families.

It's not moving. Got it? Okay, here we go. People in Santa Barbara County experience a wide range of housing instability. Some individuals and families are couch surfing, some may be doubled up with families and friends, and others are staying in temporary shelters or motels, and others are literally homeless living in cars, abandoned buildings, or on the streets. And a segment of our homeless population have been chronically homeless or homeless for over a year—for many years.

Homelessness is a salient and growing issue throughout Santa Barbara County, and throughout the state of California as well as our nation. In terms of what we're seeing and some trends, lack of affordable and supportive housing and lack of low barrier shelter beds continue to be one of the primary challenges for addressing homelessness in Santa Barbara County.

In addition there continues to be very high rates of violence, trauma, prior history of incarceration and mental illness and co-occurring conditions within our populations experiencing homelessness. There's also an increasing rates of homelessness among families, especially in our North County area. And increasing homelessness among unaccompanied youth and increasing numbers of children within our homeless system of care experiencing serious emotional disturbances that calls for additional services towards this population.

Not effectively addressing homelessness results in costly interventions as we've seen over the years. And I'll address some of these themes throughout the presentation, but overall our county is dedicating approximately $16 million towards this effort and I'll break that down a little bit further for you in further slides. Let's go ahead and go to the next one.

Are we working? Okay great. Okay, over the years the county's homeless strategy is certainly involved. It began with a development of the 10-year plan to end homelessness back in 2005 and in 2006 the County commissioned a study on the causes of homelessness which led to something you might recall as the bringing our community home collaboration which was a collaboration of over 100 stakeholders We then developed the Central Coast Collaborative on Homelessness, or C3H in 2014. And that has since evolved to the Home for Good project and Home for Good has assumed the regional coordination of needs and outreach responsibilities for homelessness. And Home for Good also became the lead agency for the Coordinated Entry System which is a system that links individuals with services back in 2017.

We've also expanded our role as the lead agency. The county has expanded its role as the lead agency for our continuum of care. HCD takes on that responsibility for us and they've also taken on additional work with our housing, our homeless management information system which is thriving at this point in time. And then most recently we had the completion of the Phase 1 Regional Homeless Action Plan, which was just posted for public comment in March.

This effort involved over 130 community stakeholders. The Phase 1 plan will be before the Board on June 4th I believe and the Phase 1 Community Action Plan ensures compliance with requirements and recommendations of funders at both the state and federal level. For example, the plan is cross-referenced against the funding requirements for No Place Like Home, for HEAP or the Homeless Emergency Aid Program as well as the California Emergency Solutions Housing Program or CESH which you'll hear more about.

And the plan overall describes the magnitude and characteristics of homelessness as well as chronic homelessness and looks at specific needs to secure no place like home funding It also inventories existing efforts to address homelessness. It identifies the challenges, and it identifies plans to address the unmet needs. I'm going to give you a little look into the point in time count. Some of you may have seen some of this information before, but the biannual point in time count is of persons experiencing homelessness as a snapshot taken at a point in time, and this instance in January 2019. Our data reflects a consistent homeless population in our county, as you can see hovering at about 1800.

The point in time count, as I mentioned is only a snapshot of a single night and it really needs to be compared and contrasted with other data sources. And part of that work is also being done as part of the phase one action plan. So during the point time count this year, where were persons found? The sleeping locations here are divided up by 37% living in emergency shelters and transitional housing programs. 36% are living on the streets and 27% are living in their vehicles.

This slide demonstrates the breakdown between our supervisorial districts for the unsheltered population, those living in vehicles and on the streets. Homelessness is a county wide issue which obviously requires a very regional approach among partners and stakeholders to address the issue. Despite its brevity, the point-in-time count captured important data on the varied characteristics of the county's homeless population. As you can see here we've broke out some of the statistics in raw numbers on the number of veterans experiencing homelessness, those that are experiencing chronic homelessness, the unaccompanied youth issue that I mentioned earlier The number of families experiencing homelessness and then the numbers that are homelessness, that are experiencing mental illness and substance abuse.

That 576 numbers is both As I mentioned, the solutions to address homelessness requires a regional collaborative approach with a diverse group of stakeholders committed to participating in the long run. Many county departments and I've listed 13 here but there may be others are very actively engaged in addressing the homeless issue in addition to the service providers listed here. Together, the county along with our stakeholders collaboratively provide outreach assessment. A diverse range of supported services by multiple departments and housing for individuals and families including emergency shelter, transitional or bridge housing, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and one time a financial assistance to prevent homelessness.

Case management in a variety of ranges of intensity and frequency is also provided as well as housing navigation, legal services, behavioral and physical health care, and employment supports. As noted the system is truly comprised of a series of overlapping networks and individual stakeholders or standalone providers and jurisdictions throughout the county work through our continuum of care to provide best practices and overall services.

A little bit about our investment in homelessness. I mentioned it's about $16 million, and that's our investment for 18-19, and that's been pretty consistent from prior years' investment as well. The majority of these funds pass through our county departments in the form of contracts to housing and service providers. To simplify this slide, I've characterized it into broad chunks of money, into five general buckets, but nearly all of those sources of funding cross back and forth between these various categories.

As an example, you see very little dedicated to the preventing homelessness. The reason for that is primarily state and federal governments don't focus a lot of their funding in this particular area. It's primarily dedicated in the other areas which I'll go through but this 100,000 reflects approximately the amount of money than 90,000. that we provide to Home for Good for our outreach services. So, that's what's listed there. The Outreach to Unsheltered Families is primarily our homeless for the mentally ill outreach teams that we recently received our grant funding for. As you might recall, we have a homeless outreach team in South County and this grant allowed us to expand to both Lompoc and North County.

In the next area, the providing of health services. That money is primarily 1.6 million for our healthcare for the homeless program run out of our public health department and the big number, the 10 million is all of the funding that we have going directly to providing sheltering beds, CalWORKs services, specialty housing for seniors Those involved in domestic violence, the CCP money for sheltering and housing is in here as well. So you can see that the bulk of this money is really directly for beds and other housing subsidies.

And the coordinated entry system is specifically to provide additional funding and staffing for that service. So there's a lot of good news when it comes to funding for homelessness. And this money is in addition to the slide that you saw previously, the money that was on the prior slide was money that is actively being distributed and work within our county system. This is new money that is either currently being reviewed or being pushed out during the process of being pushed out to the community.

The first is the cash money at $914,000 for housing supports primarily. Mentioned a little bit about continuing care increase going to address our HMIS system and coordinated entry. The HEAP or Housing Emergency Aid Program of $9.3 million. I believe eight projects or nine projects were funded there and that is going out to the community currently. Many of those pass-through contracts have been to your board, and I think there's several additional coming your way No place like home money The bulk of that money is dedicated through an RFP process about 1.5 million to the Cox property in building that Building out that particular project However, in addition to these monies there are more monies coming our way.

We know that in the HEAP funds I believe there's a bill currently in appropriations which is pushing out additional monies to counties we could expect to again look at around two of about four to five million dollars for our county and we need to be prepared to receive that In addition, no place like home. This is the non-competitive amount as Dr. Gleghorn mentioned before there is the competitive amount for midsize counties and that's 250 million statewide so there's additional monies that are not yet reflected that we are working collaboratively to address.

So I want to talk a little bit about key efforts underway and what's happening in the departments. I mentioned before the expansion of the mentally ill outreach teams, those are significant in which we have both case workers and practitioners in the field working with individuals to ensure that they are ready and prepared to secure housing when housing becomes available.

We are also again mentioning working on all of the different types of funding sources, we're working on housing development funding opportunities through No Place Like Home and getting those applications ready. We are working on the increased investment to address homelessness via Cash & Heap and looking at opportunities there. We're securing 80 permanent supportive housing units, which are currently under development dedicated to formerly homeless persons in Santa Maria. And those were developed via the dedication of MHSA capital funds.

We are also continuing with our coordinated entry system for person seeking assistance. Again this is the system that links individuals directly to services and has been greatly enhanced over the last several years. In addition, our planning and development department has been working to update the housing element program. There are over 200 bills regarding housing in the legislature currently changing a number of requirements asking that individual counties and cities advance their efforts to provide affordable housing on an expedited basis. There's many bills there and we're working collectively with them to see how we can best implement all those in our county.

And then finally, the CEO's office created the Interagency Policy Council on Homelessness which is a collaborative of many of your county departments working together to coordinate our efforts. And before I talk to you a little bit about that, I want to tell you a little bit about how it came to be. So many of you might recall our efforts regarding the Wampoa Riverbed.

I put the statistics back up here just to remind folks of that specific effort But more importantly are some of the lessons learned from from the effort. One of the things that was very apparent when we were working to place individuals and work with individuals coming from the riverbed is that there was a severe lack of the low barrier shelter and detox beds immediately needed for these folks.

There was also a strong need for wraparound services delivered by multidisciplinary teams, as well as coordinated data sharing among the departments. This effort was very successful and maybe I should say it wasn't so much lessons learned but a reminder to all of us about what are the types of services that are needed to address very vulnerable populations.

As mentioned, our office has convened the Homeless Interagency Policy Council and the purpose of the council is fairly simple. It's to provide recommendations to the Board of Supervisors and the county executive regarding strategies to affect homelessness in Santa Barbara County, to build coordinated and collaborative partnerships across all departments and maximize the resources and collectively solve issues To continue to build strong collaboration with our community, our partners, our cities, CBO, healthcare. Healthcare to coordinate resources to collectively impact homelessness.

To provide a forum to strategically secure funding when grants are out there and they have limited time frames we want to be prepared to address those. And to ensure effective responses to the magnitude of needs that individuals are experiencing and then of course report to our board on progress on our work plan. So, our work plan. The work plan primarily looks at those items that we can address within the scope of control of our existing budgets or grant funding that we would pursue and then we're also working on this work plan in coordination with the other CBOs and partners as part of our continuum.

And we are ensuring that our action plan is also consistent with the phase one homeless plan that I mentioned to you. So we have several elements to the plan. The first is to increase access as mentioned earlier, the focus must be on expanding beds available of all types affordable housing low barrier shelter permanent supportive housing and treatment beds so we have set a goal to increase those beds by 15 percent that could be as much as 150 to 200 beds it's a very aggressive goal but we have set that goal for next year Also as noted, previously 27% of the homeless population identified in the 2019 point-in-time count were living in their vehicles. We have a national model for safe parking here in Santa Barbara County that's existed for years.

So there's a need to expand the number of spots to address the current waiting list for those in the Safe Parking Program so we have suggested that as a work item for next year and then also to evaluate the county land that may be available for housing projects Let me go back. In terms of best practices, we want to collaboratively identify the top 25 most vulnerable homeless individuals and devise comprehensive case plans to serve and house and maintain housing.

And this a number of departments will be working collaboratively on both through health care law enforcement etc. Wanted to develop training and implementation on trauma informed housing and establish a pilot to collect data on homeless individuals that become involved in the justice system so that we can effectively divert them into appropriate level of services Fiscally, we will evaluate the feasibility of a dedicated revenue source for homelessness. Many other counties have taken on that and we want to look at the feasibility of that within the county and present that too for consideration. We want to review all of our county contracts for homelessness and align them, align the funding for maximum impact and apply for new grants.

Also, we want to look at our legislation. I mentioned there's 200 different pieces of housing legislation or homeless legislation out there. We need to really look at those to make sure we understand what benefits that brings to us. And then finally, we want or secondly we want to improve our data sharing. We've done a very good job HCD has done a wonderful job with this with improving HMIS but we need to continue to work on that specifically and make sure that all of the various partners and our county departments are engaged in providing data into that system for it to be effective.

And then lastly, we want to complete the Phase 2 Regional Action Plan. I mentioned Phase 1. Phase 2 is coming. Phase two specifically puts dollars with the strategies so we can see the impact of need. And we want to engage, further engage frankly our elected officials and senior policy executives in countywide development of regional homeless strategies. With the amount of money that is coming down and the magnitude of this issue, we think it's imperative that jurisdictions have a very strong voice in decision making processes so we'll be looking at opportunities to further engage our electeds and senior policy executives on this issue.

So that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Okay,

do we have any questions from the board? Supervisor

Williams. My takeaway is great progress is being made in the housing first model in the county. The numbers of folks on the street is about the same in the South County, a little bit more in the North County. But that a larger and larger proportion of folks are on the street and not in shelters of the homeless population. So I think it begs the question, I definitely support Of expanding the number of safe parking spots.

I believe that there's definitely a large proportion of homeless people in their cars that are sort of targets of opportunity meaning we we they're they're folks that are in some cases easier to shelter or easier to house than some chronic homeless folks said that you know, that's that's one what do we do about The chronic homeless that now have less sheltering opportunities than ever. And I know it's not a popular thing to, because it's like, I think it's more popular with the public to go after folks who have a larger chance of reintegrating fully into society and some of the chronic homelessness, the homeless folks, that's gonna be a long road.

But this many folks with no shelter means a lot more people are gonna die slowly or more rapidly in some cases. So what's the plan to increase more sheltering opportunities, or are we past the point of no return because path has closed to shelter?

Supervisor Williams to the chair. There are a number of opportunities that are becoming available again with the additional HEAP monies coming down, I think that's one of the policy areas we need to look at is how that money might be dedicated and can it and should it be specifically dedicated to expanding The shelter beds specifically. HCD and either Kimberly or George can speak a bit more about some of the other opportunities specifically dedicated to this sheltering, but I think one of the things that we need to remember is the permanent supportive housing which is the housing that is tied to the services is what's been found to be the most effective model at reducing chronic homelessness nationwide using that model The chronic homelessness has been reduced by I believe about 22% when you team those two together.

So whenever we talk about the sheltering piece or the capital piece or the bed piece, we always need to make sure we're looking at that secondary cost and that secondary piece which is making sure that those very critical wraparound services are tied as well. So I don't know if Kimberly if you have anything else on dollars and cents in sheltering specifically?

Just to reiterate that permanent supportive housing beds or our units are definitely the most effective strategy for the chronically homeless population. And so while it's, we're excited that we have about 120 permanent supportive housing beds coming online in this next year at least It's it there still significant need there that that's that's the hardest type of prep housing to develop. But it is probably it We have a lot of legislation in the state that affordable housing dollars that potentially could be used specifically targeted toward this population with permanent supportive housing but you would need dollars for services to match with any affordable housing monies.

Because we can't talk about some of the stuff together except in this forum I do want to say The site that he was proposing here in the first district happened to also be the same site as the probation building. Which I also strongly support so I asked general services to see if they could do a configuration where both Would be possible on the site and according to the information we got back Is that it could be?

And that I fully support that and so in the spirit of being a Yimby, please I Support the idea of us doing a Permanent supportive housing on that site in the first district.

Supervisor Hartman? Who is this? Oh, I'm new. Okay, Supervisor Hart.

That's your line. I could see why the name would confuse you but it's the shorter version of Hart. Well, I think this is really exciting. I think bringing forward the Homeless Interagency Policy Council is something really potentially transformative. There's been a lot of effort for a lot of time. Supervisor Lavinino mentioned how we've had a 10 year plan to end homelessness and I agree with him that I don't think that is the right approach but I do think having coordination amongst all the players and having strong leadership Can make a difference, particularly because for the first time in this long term effort there appears to be sustainable real funding coming from the state and other levels of government that can make a difference on the things that Supervisor Williams spoke about actually building housing units delivering wraparound services.

Increasingly I think we know what the answer is, With the proper coordination in the past. And to that point, the continuum of care and the process that was used last year for the HEAP grants needs a lot of refinements. I know that the folks on the continuum of care are interested in fixing that and making that be more effective. If that is gonna be the state's vehicle to allocate large sums of money we gotta make sure that that is coordinated and I think it would benefit from having elected leadership involved in that, and I know that they have asked for an elected official to potentially apply to serve on that. The continuum of care, I'd be interested in doing that but I know that that potentially creates conflict of interest issues with the Board of Supervisors.

Mr. Ghazani was saying that there may be a way to work that out to figure out exactly how that role will be played but I do think that's very important and Complete that circle and have that representation on the continuum of care from one of us anyway. But I do think that this is the first time that we've had this kind of money to really aim at this when we're talking $30 million plus, you can see progress on that if that's sustained in the state continues as a partner and we figure out a way to make that deliver those housing units.

We will see demonstrable results for people in a reasonable amount of time and that's what folks are looking for at every level.

I'm not sure I talked about this previously, but I just want to thank the good people of Santa Maria who with private money have decided to fund outreach to homeless veterans. We saw that there was 118 there that we're going to begin As a second phase of Stand Down Now, a casework outreach program to start identifying those 118 and casework those folks. But that's all through private money so there's also this is something that I think a lot of people when they see people on the street they're trying to figure out a way obviously people don't want their money spent wisely but I guess, expressing compassionate conservatism to bring back a term from the past.

So we're going to be spearheading that.

We have two- I used to not believe in that phrase until I hung out with you. I actually believe there's a couple people who may actually believe that and

you're one. There

are

some. All right. We have public comment. We have two speakers.

Chair Lavinino, members of the board that is correct. We have two requests to speak on this item we're going to begin in Santa Maria with Renee O'Neill and then come back here in Santa Barbara for Ben Romo. Renee?

I made it. Good morning, Supervisors. Chair Lavinino, good morning. Good morning. Thank you. I just want to support the homeless shelter program. There's so many times I'm in town Seeing people who are desperately in need of shelter. Over the years instead of picking or handing out money, I have oftentimes provided food but also keep a stack of pamphlets with me that I can hand to folks that can direct them to the shelters and when in the last probably two years all I hear from them is there's no beds. There's no place for us to go.

And I agree 100% with Supervisor Williams' comments regarding, under all the circumstances these folks are homeless. The best way for them to become brought back into society hopefully Not sure the words I'm trying to come up with here, but good working citizens and people that get their lives back on track because of various unfortunate circumstances. This is an avenue to resolve those issues so I just wanted to say I support that 100% and we definitely desperately need that in North County, thank you.

Thank you. Wait, wait no trouble one second I still have time. Andy wanted to know if he could speak after me. I'm done thank you supervisors.

Ben Romo has been kind enough to let you go first. Go ahead. Ben Romo wants to counter your point. Ben wants to go after you so he can counter your

point.

Supervisor Lavinino, members of the board. I haven't exactly understood that the trend in this presentation that chronic homelessness has steadily been decreasing since 2013. Maybe the count indicates a decrease, but we're not seeing a decrease. In fact I've lived in the North County region for 50 years and I've never seen it this bad before. The South County have always seen it, but not in the North County.

And one of the issues that I wish your board would address at length Is this issue that's indicated of people living in their cars. The bottom line here is most of us, I think Supervisor Williams one time. I think I heard him say that he may have lived in a car at one time if I remember correctly. I don't want to put words in your mouth but the point here is there's a lot of people in the Bay Area that are full-time employed and they ride a city bus all night long because they can't afford to live there. There's people that live in their cars. I've known people that live in their cars.

And here's the deal. I know that your parking lot, I believe your parking lot you still may allow people to park there at night but You know, we throw tens of millions of dollars at this problem annually. But we still want to impose our standards on how these people live and we won't make room for more cars. The city of Santa Barbara won't make room in a beach parking lot at night.

The other thing that I wanted to take your board to task on is Lompoc, I believe in Guadalupe the next time we have a downturn in the economy, the stock market and subsequent pension losses is going to go belly up. And my understanding of state law as they go belly up you will be providing services for them. And I think that you need to start looking at ways that you might be able to discount services to these cities in the future, to allow them to amalgamate or consolidate services with you including share of fire and other services.

And on that point, I still feel it was reprehensible that the county didn't write a bigger check to clean up the Lompoc Riverbed. Lompoc ended up taking care of that problem by default because there were so much crime coming out of that riverbed. I believe it was your responsibility financially to clean that thing up, not them and unless I'm wrong, I think they got left with the $400,000 plus tab.

Thank you.

We will now return to Santa Barbara for Ben Romo who is our final speaker.

Mr. Chair, members of the board, thank you for giving me a few minutes to chat. I plan to be here on Monday but I wasn't able to because I actually wanted to speak about the behavioral wellness budget presentation but it's very tied in with the homeless issues so And also when I watched the hearing afterwards online, I had to experience numerous days of recovery from the trauma and shock of agreeing with almost everything Andy Caldwell said in that hearing. So I'm coming here today after that rest and recuperation.

The main point that I agreed upon with Andy is just the astounding, I think, improvements that have been implemented in the behavioral wellness department. Something that...I'm not an expert on that. I used to work for the county and didn't work for that department but Watched from it from the outside and wondered what was going on there for a long time And I just really praise dr. Gleghorn and her staff And as I've been as I've left the county and kind of gone out to explore my own Personal pursuits, I've dived into the homeless issues in our community a little bit especially in South County primarily because that's where I live and And I've learned more about the effectiveness of those programs, behavioral wellness and other county departments in that area.

And so partially what I want to share today is just appreciation for the board for supporting and continuing to support making this a top priority for you. I'm not working for anyone on these issues. Not getting paid to be here. I am just a private citizen who grew up in Santa Barbara and watched our homeless population And wondered why we were neglecting them so much.

Not really understanding the systems and as I kind of entered those systems as an employee, and learned a little bit more, I came to understand the complexity. And your staff is doing an excellent job on all levels from CEO through numerous departments that you're hearing from today. Those departments are doing excellent work. I hope that you'll support them, and I think two points that I want to make.

A lot of the government funding that comes on down the pike into the county system is really restricted and structured, and it doesn't allow for a lot of flexibility. I ask that the board continue to support departments in leveraging the philanthropic support in our community and the non-profit sector to help augment the government services. Those dollars in the philanthropic sector are your innovation funds Venture capital that can help address and fill the gaps that sometimes are created by government programs. So continue to look for that Also, I ask you please We pride ourselves in South County for being a progressive community until something controversial actually is proposed in our neighborhood And then you hear from people coming out of the woodworks because they don't want a housing project in their community They don't want a housing project for homeless people in their neighborhood reject that Just reject it because it's self-interest.

It's not interest for the entire community and for those who are weakest, most in need of support. I didn't mean that in a negative way, weakest but those who are most in support and this board and other elected bodies have got to stand up and say it's time to take care of our population and overcome that anti growth mentality that rests so much in nimbyism And self-protection as opposed to doing what we should be doing as human beings, which is helping to take care of others. Thank you.

So that wraps up our Anything else Terry for good

just sound like you're learning and supervisor just to close a loop on the C.O.C.. We'll work with the county council but we'll bring an item back in May where we will add an item to appoint Supervisor Hart as your nominee to this year see unless we hear differently from you.

Be happy to be happy to support you right on OK. Okay so we will now

is. Greg I'm glad he's

just not messing with

me today.

We'll share the abuse.

Library update.

Let's have a little seat. Mr. Chaplain? Thank you, good morning Chair Lavagnino and members of the board. So today we're going to be presenting the Countywide Library System update to you. I really do want to thank Ryder. Ryder stepped up and has transitioned as a lead in this process. And as such, you know, I want to turn this over to Ryder so that he can do the presentation and give you an update on the various issues that we're facing with the Countywide Library System.

Thank you, George. Good morning Supervisors. Today I'll be presenting a brief update on the Countywide Library System. Our system is comprised of 14 libraries. Of those 14, 5 are city municipal libraries. Then there are 9 county branch libraries, some within city limits – Carpentria, Solvang, Buellton and Guadalupe. Others are located within unincorporated areas – Montecito, Vandenberg, Cuyama, Los Alamos and Orcutt. The total operating budget for our library system is $13.5 million, with most funding coming from the cities.

With continued increased usage through circulation, electronic materials and valuable programming, our libraries are relevant and treasured by their communities, and they serve a multitude of core community functions beyond just books. I will now present a brief update on the work of the Library Ad Hoc Committee. Back on October 9th, 2018 your board voted to establish an ad hoc library committee with the aim to establish a long-term sustainable model for libraries.

The committee has met five times and our four library directors are working together to define base services by branch size and population served. The status quo deficit is approximately $400,000 for our nine county branch libraries. Now this is being driven by the following factors. The expiration of one time funding by the board, the exhaustion of reserves held by branches and increased staffing and black gold cooperative costs.

So what's driving the library deficits? There are many service delivery models in the state. Our partnership and reliance on city libraries to administer library services to the smaller communities in an effort to maximize local resources is unique. We are also different in that unlike many other library systems throughout the state, we do not have a dedicated source of funding for libraries.

Except for Measure L which services the Gilead Library. This means that most of the system's funding comes from the counties and city's discretionary revenues. The result of that is that libraries have to compete with all the other service needs in the county. California State has eliminated funding for local libraries, putting additional pressure on local jurisdictions.

Our reserves are depleted and we can no longer rely on branch reserves to balance the budgets. In the past few years our libraries have been reliant on one-time funding from the board as a stopgap measure to prevent closures. And as for next steps, the goal of the ad hoc committee is to develop a path to address the structural deficiencies and provide the board with recommendations.

Okay before I get started on this slide it has a lot of numbers at the table and as Jeff Fratwell said, I'm an accountant so I'm very comfortable living in these. So there are some handouts in the back that will help you see this also I will display these funding sources graphically in later slides. Now, for each library I have highlighted their main funding source. The county is the primary funder of five branch libraries while cities are the main funders of six libraries.

Friends groups round out the other two. On average and inclusive of county, city and friends funding, the per capita funding for our county wide system is nearly $30. However, the state average is $38. You'll notice one outlier, that's Santa Barbara City funding at nearly $62 a person. Now if we were to remove that outlier the per capita funding for all of libraries would be $21 just barely over half the state average As mentioned earlier, the structural imbalance for our nine county branch libraries is almost $400,000.

Supervisors and county staff have been working hard with cities and stakeholders in partnership to close this gap. Recently, Builton increased their contribution by $50,000 to balance their budget. And Carpentria, thanks to the recent passing of Measure X has also significantly increased their contribution. We have been and will continue to work with our partners so that the city doesn't bear the full burden of these deficits.

I'd also like to briefly highlight the small library fund your board established in the prior year. This funding plays a critical role for small libraries that do not have city funding available to them. This $113,800 of ongoing funding in addition to the $7.80 per capita in the current year has helped seven of the nine small county branch libraries avoid reductions.

And as you can see on this chart, seven county branch libraries still project deficits for 19-20. Community services staff, along with the four library directors helped to determine where this funding is most needed. We would like to see the small library fund continue and be expanded to address small county branch deficits. I also briefly state while I haven't touched city libraries they also show some deficits. Santa Maria City Library has about a quarter million dollar deficit. They're working with their council and Lompoc's deficit is about $60,000.

Librarians are working hard to outline what services each community would receive with the existing funding. However, with these significant deficits, especially the smaller branches, the likely result will be major reduction in hours and programming with a potential of one or more library closures. I will now detail sources and deficits by branch and the potential impacts in the following slides.

Within Zone 1, well here are the two branches within Zone 1. Montecito has the largest funding gap of all branch libraries at $136,000. This is nearly a third of their budget. If unfunded this library will close. As I mentioned before Carpinteria recently closed their deficit by significantly increasing their city contribution. And just one quick aside on these pie charts.

What you'll see is that includes the value that the building is in. Now this is for apples to apples comparison as some libraries, Guadalupe and Orcut pay rent out of their funding putting them at a slight disadvantage to a library that doesn't have rent expense. The sole branch in Zone 2 is Vandenberg Village. The village's budget deficit is $34,000. If unfunded the branch will cut it Saturday and evening hours.

Every branch in Zone 3 is currently showing deficit. If they go unfunded, Cuyama and Guadalupe branches would likely have to close. Los Alamos hours would be cut by a third to eight hours a week and Orchid hours will be cut in half to 16 hours a week. While partial funding could help keep the libraries open with reduced hours but because they pay rent in Guadalupe and Orchard it may not make, may not be cost effective to have them open just a few days a week And lastly, in Zone 4, Builton City Council recently closed their deficit with an extra $50,000 while Solvang Branch Library is currently showing a $63,000 deficit which would result in reduced hours.

This concludes our presentation and we'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

So when did funding get cut off from the state? Is this something that happened 10 years ago, two years ago?

Supervisor, Chair Lavendino. Yeah the last time I saw they funded libraries was 2012 but I think they were cutting well before then.

So and maybe you can weigh in on this Doss but I mean shame on the legislature. I would have to say the state's in better financial shape than it's been in the last 20 years. Everybody talks a big game. This is an area that hits really close to home for For the folks that most vulnerable in our community and the least economically advantaged are using these facilities.