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.0:01 – 0:033 turns
you Thank you. I was on mute
all.
Morning everybody, I'd like to welcome you to this meeting, September 17th meeting of the County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk can I get a roll call please?
0:03 – 0:0715 turns
Mr. Adam? Here. Mr. Williams? Here. Mr Hart? Is Mr Hart in Santa Barbara?
Wow.
Mr. Hart?
Looks like they're having some technical difficulties.
And, Mr. Hart? We could see you in Santa Barbara.
I am here, thank you.
Perfect, thank you. Ms. Hartman? Here. And Chair Lavanino?
Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of our last meeting?
So moved.
Second. Moved and seconded, I guess we're going to have to do roll calls.
Mr. Adam? Aye. Mr Williams? Aye Mr Hart? Ms. Hartman? Aye. Chair Lavinino? Aye. Motion passes.
All right, Miss Miyasato CEO's report.
Good morning Chair Lavinino and board members just a quick announcement as you know we experienced last week our first power shut down and this is something Southern California Edison and PG&E may be doing more of which are called public safety power shut offs which is when they're shutting down the power during critical fire weather and it could lead to multi-day power outages in many areas. So to learn more about the PSPS program from utility representatives, the community is invited to one or more meetings that are being scheduled across the county. At these meetings, county public safety officials will provide information as well as representatives from utilities and the first two meetings are this Thursday, September 19th in Montecito at 530 PM at the Montecito Union School at 385 San Ysidro Road.
The second one will be held in Los Olivos this Monday, September 23rd at 5.30 PM at Los Olivos Elementary School Gymnasium at 2540 Alamo Pentado Avenue. More meetings will be announced as dates are confirmed and the public can get more information about PSPS on the utilities websites. But please also remember to register for our emergency alerts at readysbc.org and County Councilor Gazzone also had a quick announcement.
Chair and supervisors, also dealing with de-energization. We had discussed at a prior board meeting the duty to mitigate that utility companies have. There is ongoing rulemaking by the Public Utilities Commission that will involve proposals, comments and hearings in the fall and late fall of this year. And I met last week with county councils from Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties And we'll be pursuing the county of Santa Barbara's opportunity to participate in the CPUC rulemaking process this fall. And we'll bring back an agendized item to discuss that in more detail. But essentially, we have to get into the line within the next two weeks on that and I will be pursuing that separately with delegated authority.
Okay, very good. Madam Clerk? Are there any changes to the agenda today?
0:07 – 0:1015 turns
Yes, Chair Lavinino and members of the board. I have three announcements this morning. First we posted an addendum to the agenda on Friday amending departmental item number four. This is previously listed as from the County Executive Office and it's amended to include Public Works Board of Directors and Water Agency. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a response that to the 2018-2019 grand jury report The Kachuma project contract and management, and we also amended adding recommendations D, E, and F. And this is posted online and it is also available in the back of the room.
My second announcement this morning is for departmental item number three. A late replacement board letter yesterday, amending the vote requirement. Changing that from a four-fifths vote to a majority vote. That is also posted online and available in the back of the room. And my last announcement this morning we have Spanish interpreters available for today's hearing mainly for departmental item number one but also available for the agenda entirely.
And I'd like to call them out to the podium at this time and they have a quick announcement
Good morning. Hello, my name is Simone Rivadeneira and this is my partner Cuca
Silva.
We will be providing simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish for today's event. A few guidelines when working with an interpreter. Please speak at a moderate pace, this is the sign to slow down.
Please speak in a loud clear voice, this is the sign to speak up and please remember to speak only one at a time. Thank you
very much for being here. So that takes care of our announcements, okay? So we are moving to our administrative agenda and we'll take our honorary resolutions to begin with. Can I get a motion to approve items A1 through A7?
So moved.
Moved and seconded, roll call please.
Mr. Adam? Aye. Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr Hart?
Aye
Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Lavenino?
Aye
Motion passes unanimous.
Okay very good
let's move to item A1 please
0:10 – 0:169 turns
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Administrative item number one is sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino and Supervisor Hartman. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming September 23rd 2019 through September 27th 2019 as Child Passenger Safety Week in Santa Barbara County. And if I can have Mari Ortega-Garcia from First Five and Jordan Richards from the CHP to the podium and I'll go ahead and read the resolution.
Whereas the number one preventable cause of death and injury of children is the automobile collision. And whereas car seat use reduces the risk for death to infants by 71%, and to toddlers aged 1 through 4 years, by 54%. And whereas the use of a booster seat for children four through eight years of age reduces the risk of serious injury by 45%. And whereas nine out of ten car seats are installed improperly. And if used correctly, car seats can dramatically reduce the risk of serious and fatal injuries making these statistics preventable. And whereas the state of California requires all occupants of a motor vehicle to be properly secured and children less than eight years of age be secured in an appropriate child safety seat remaining in the backseat until eight years of age or four foot nine inches.
And as a recommendation that children under 13 years of age remain in the backseat now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this board of supervisors proclaims September 23rd through the 27th, 2019 as Child Passenger Safety Week in Santa Barbara County and encourages all residents to support and participate in child passenger safety activities passed and adopted today.
Good morning, Chair Lavinino and members of the board. I would like on behalf of First 5 Santa Barbara County thank you all especially Supervisor Lavinino and Supervisor Hartman for making this another great year of proclamating this great safety topic. And with me today I have Lieutenant Brown that will be speaking
Good morning. Morning. Thank you for having us here. My name is Mike Brown, I'm the commander of the Santa Maria CHP office. So I'm here representing California Highway Patrol as a whole but also the men and women that serve this community as well as everyone within kind of our division. Thank you very much first of all for adopting this resolution. The fact of the matter is with all the commerce that traverses our highway system, the most precious cargo we're going to have in our vehicle at any time is going to be a child. And the nice thing is that the Highway Patrol has an expansive program that goes beyond just the red light behind you when your heart drops to your side and you get pulled over, right? So if that resonated out here.
We have a program that allows for people to come in, make an appointment, and we'll install your car seat. We'll check your car seat. We'll do everything in our power to give anybody And any child in particular that advantage before the accident happens, before the bad thing happens. So we appreciate everything you guys do and very thankful that you guys continue to support this mission and we're going to be out in full force as a department this week and this month really attacking this issue so thank you very much.
Thank you for being here.
And Mr. Chair, I just will take the liberty of reminding folks at home that it's not only at CHP offices but all local fire stations. It's a good idea to call ahead of time, but I can tell you from experience that even sometimes when you don't call ahead of time they can inspect That car seat and make sure it's installed properly, and these newfangled things. There's a thing sometimes you forget about so it's not all common sense. So I encourage you to make sure that your car seat is installed properly at a local CHP or fire station.
And you've got two car seats right?
Yep, got two car seats there. Two toddler car seats, well one baby and one toddler so yeah I've got it. They're not easy. All right
let's move to item A2.
Chair Lavinino, members of the board, administrative item number 2 is sponsored by Supervisor Williams. It is to adopt a resolution of accommodation congratulating Hayward Lumber on 100 years of business in Santa Barbara County. And if I can have Rudy Lockhart, General Manager for Haywards in Santa Maria? I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas the Homer T Hayward Lumber Company was founded on September 19th, 1919 in Salinas California. And whereas Hayward lumber has been providing building materials to communities along the California Central Coast for a century. And whereas, Hayward Lumber Company has had a lasting impact on California's economy by providing local jobs with multiple store locations added to their portfolios since the 1920s.
Including their current locations in Redwood City, Salinas, Pacific Grove, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Goleta and Santa Barbara. And whereas today there are seven lumber yards, six design centers, one truce manufacturing plant and one fast floor facility. And whereas, Hayward Lumber Company is one of the few companies in the United States that has successfully navigated 100 years of business with four generations of CEOs from the same family. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors do congratulate Hayward Lumber Company for a hundred years of business in Santa Barbara County and made this recognition serve to increase their success for many more years to come. Passed and adopted today.
0:16 – 0:208 turns
Thank you Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm Rudy Lockhart and it is an honor to represent the Hayward family and all the Hayward employees and customers that have made this possible. Not too many 100 year old family owned companies here on the Central Coast and we're proud to be part of the community. Thank you all very much.
A3 please
Chair Lavinino and members of the board, administrative item number three is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman and Supervisor Lavinino. It is to adopt a resolution of commendation honoring Catherine and Brooks Firestone and their family with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission 2019 Leadership in the Arts Award. And if I can have Catherine and Brooks Firestone, Haley Firestone Jessup, Polly Firestone Walker, and anyone else you'd like to the podium?
The Klan.
I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas Catherine and Brooks Firestone and family have been recognized by the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission with the 2019 Leadership in the Arts Award for their remarkable impact on the arts and culture of Santa Barbara County. And whereas they have provided decades of invaluable leadership to the county as stewards, producers, performers, and supporters of county-wide arts and culture programs. And whereas they help provide access to the arts for all residents of Santa Barbara County ensuring the preservation and future of Santa Barbara's unique cultural legacy. And whereas Haley Firestone Jessup, Polly Firestone Walker and Andrew Firestone have served as dedicated employees and fundraisers for arts and culture initiatives and organizations countywide including the Granada Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts and PCPA Pacific Conservatory Theater.
And whereas the Santa Ynez Valley Foundation and the Santa Ynez Valley News recently honored Catherine and Brooks Firestone with a Lifetime Achievement Award for their commitment to bettering the Santa Ynez Valley. And now, therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors honors Catherine and Brooks Firestone and family upon receiving the County Arts Commission Leadership in the Arts Award passed and adopted today.
My turn. Thank you very much on behalf of the family, my wife Kate and daughter Haley and daughter Polly. I have two messages. Firstly speaking as a former supervisor there is absolutely life after term of office. Secondly, what a wealth of arts we have in this county. The opportunities for young people to study and progress in a career and participate in all kinds of arts. And for those of us who sing or as my wife is an advisor to the ballet or as my daughter who's an executive with the Granada Theater as my other daughter is teaching at Allan Hancock And there's all kinds of opportunities to participate. And audiences, what wonderful shows and displays to see in Santa Barbara. We should be proud of this and we should support the arts. An appeal to the Board of Supervisors to always think kindly of the arts and that budget and the support that will be very rewarding.
Thank you so much.
I just wanted to mention that I've attended a number of fundraising events in the Santa Ynez Valley for tremendous causes. And the entire Firestone clan is recruited for MC, comedy, singing and you've just made such a contribution to our community after there is life after supervisor. Thank you.
Very good. Item A4.
0:20 – 0:249 turns
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Administrative item number four is sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of September 2019 as National Recovery Month in Santa Barbara County. And if I can have Dr. Alice Cleggorn to the podium please or anyone else who might- Amy Lopez? Yeah. Thank you all go
ahead and make that
solution.
And a crew come on up.
Whereas, the Santa Barbara County Behavioral Wellness Department provides in partnership with community-based organizations a continuum of care which includes the prevention intervention treatment and recovery from mental health and substance use challenges. Promoting the message that behavioral health is essential to wellness And whereas this year's Recovery Month theme, Join the Voices for Recovery Together We Are Stronger, focuses on community members, first responders, the healthcare community, youth and emerging leaders highlighting various entities that support recovery within our society. And whereas the County of Santa Barbara Behavioral Wellness Department collaborates with partner agencies and community-based organizations in all areas of the county to ensure everyone has the opportunity to achieve and sustain long term recovery by improving their health and wellness, living a self directed life and striving to reach their full potential.
And whereas we encourage continued collaboration and integration of services to ensure success for individuals and groups who are in long-term recovery. And now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors proclaim September 2019 as National Recovery Month in Santa Barbara County, and encourages all residents to support men, women, youth, and their families who are in drug and alcohol addiction treatment and mental health recovery programs throughout our community passed and adopted today.
Chairman Lavinino and honorable members of the board, my name is Amy Lopez. I'm proudly employed with Behavioral Wellness Alcohol and Drug Program. Today, I would like to thank you for recognizing Recovery Month with this resolution. This allows us to recognize those who are actively in recovery from mental health and substance abuse. Those who have achieved sobriety and sustained long-term recovery. Family and friends who have supported their loved ones during the struggles and achievements of the recovery spectrum.
And this month recognizes the hard work our providers do every day to help counsel guide and support the recovery population. They do so without judgment, with open arms and with compassion. Our treatment providers are all here today to celebrate with us and at the same time we are celebrating them Nearly 10 months ago, county alcohol and drug program implemented the Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System waiver. We have completely transformed our system of care.
This has allowed us to serve a much larger population with enhanced and expanded services. Some of those services and levels of care we have never provided before here in Santa Barbara County. The waiver although still in the early stages is a huge success for our department. I am certainly proud of the work we have all done, and we all thank you for your support.
By joining the voices of recovery, we are stronger together. Thank you for your support in fighting the stigma of recovery. Thank you for supporting family reunification and drug-free babies. And thank you for helping us to save lives.
And we have Dr. Gleghorn, I'm sorry, in Santa Barbara as well. Yes.
I'm just here to support, so thank you very much. I appreciate the recognition of this resolution and there are a number of events all month long celebrating Recovery Month. So I encourage everybody to take part in those and recognize our successes. Thank you.
All right let's do item A6. Is it A6, A5? I was trying to pass five. Yeah we're going to do item A5.
0:24 – 0:2910 turns
Chair Lavinino and members of the board. Administrative item number five is sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming September 26th 2019 as seasonal flu kickoff day in Santa Barbara County. If I can have Dr. Evando Reynoso, Paige Batson, Adriana Al Mager to the podium and anyone else you'd like to join with you. I'll go ahead and read the resolution.
Whereas, the Santa Barbara County is joining the Centers for Disease Control CDC in their seasonal flu kickoff day to highlight the importance of flu vaccination during flu season. And whereas from October 1st 2018 through May 4th 2018, CDC estimates that there have been 37.4 million through 42.9 million flu illnesses, 531,000 through 647,000 flu hospitalizations and 36,400 through 61,200 flu deaths in Santa Barbara County Public Health Department reported four flu deaths in Santa Barbara County.
And whereas, the Center for Disease Control recommends a yearly flu vaccine for everyone six months of age and older. And as the first and most important step in protecting against influenza disease. And whereas individuals who receive the flu vaccine may also protect people around them including those who are more vulnerable to serious flu illnesses like babies and young children, older people, and people with certain chronic health conditions. And whereas Santa Barbara County Public Health is sponsoring a free flu shot clinic for ages two and over October 23rd, 2018 at the Goleta Valley Community Center from 3 p.m to 7 p. m Now therefore it is hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County does hereby proclaim September 26th as Seasonal Flu Kickoff Day passed and adopted today
Good morning, thank you for this opportunity to highlight the critical nature of getting a flu shot during flu season. So CDC estimates that up to 20% of our community will get sick from the flu and of that there will be many people that suffer severe complications illness and even death Everyone is susceptible to getting the flu and there are members of our community that are especially in the high risk group. And that would be children under five, pregnant women, seniors over 65 and members of our community with immunocompromised situations or chronic disease. So the public health department joins other healthcare providers in encouraging everyone to get a flu shot. And so as such, we are here today with two people who have volunteered to kick off our flu campaign and that would be our chairman and our health officer.
So please proceed. I'm giving
it to you first. All right. Good luck.
I'm allergic to needles.
So another note is we want to make sure that anybody who wants a flu shot can get one. And so if you are insured, we encourage you to seek a shot from your provider, any clinic, any pharmacy, even big retailers and for those who are uninsured give our clinics a call, make an appointment and we will make sure that you get a flu shot.
Steve, you really look like you're having a good time there buddy.
There are two ways you
can get that shot.
Did you? Yes
I did. So
0:29 – 0:3313 turns
who's chair next year?
I want to get one! I'll go next.
Fortunately, I chose a looser shirt. They might be able to do it without taking it off.
So disrobing is typically not seen at our flu clinic, but we want to say thank you to Dr. Henning and Chairman. So
I think you have one more taker here.
Woo! All right. Any chance you'd let Peter give you that shot?
I think the animals you give shots to, you give big shots. I don't want one of those. Greg you're missing out today
man.
I was all ready but there's no nurse here with the shot
So we have 17 more shots available to anybody who would like the convenience of getting your flu shot today. We'll be right out there in the lobby. In addition, on October 23rd at the Goleta Valley Community Center from 3-7, we will be there to give our community shots as well. Last year, we were able to give 772 shots during that evening. So thank you.
You're welcome.
So one last note, the reason why we took photos is we do heavy social media campaigning and so we will be posting this on social media to encourage people to get their flu shot. Thank
you. So we're on who gets more likes? I got a feeling you're going to get there. All right. They should have put you in the child passenger seat, that's it. We're all going to have to, if you bring a resolution, you got to have to live up to it. All right, item- A dubious distinction, A7. No, that's honorary, okay. So six, let's go to six.
0:33 – 0:395 turns
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Administrative item number six is sponsored by all supervisors and this is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of September 2018 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in Santa Barbara County and if we can have Lisa Brown and anyone else you'd like to join with you today? I appreciate
the humor before we came up so thank
you. I'll go ahead and read the resolution Whereas an estimated 15,780 children 1 in 285 are diagnosed with pediatric cancer each year through the United States hugely impacting their lives and all who know and love them. And whereas currently the survival rate for children in cancer with cancer is 80%. As one out of every five children will pass away from the disease. And survivors of childhood cancer need additional care and enhanced medical surveillance for the rest of their lives as studies show that by the age of 45, 95% of survivors will have a chronic health problem and 80% will have severe or life-threatening conditions due to complications from medical treatments for their cancer. And whereas the cause of most childhood cancers are unknown While genetic and environmental factors contribute to childhood cancer, it is difficult to determine what children might have been exposed to early in their development.
That could lead to cancer making awareness for the need of continuing research crucial for finding effective prevention and treatment. And whereas local awareness and community emotional financial support are essential for families in Santa Barbara County As out-of-pocket medical costs typically exceed $10,000 annually for proper treatment while requiring frequent hospital stays and extended absences from work to care for sick children. And whereas national awareness and organizations and nonprofits provide other vital services that enhance the quality of life for those affected such as building self esteem of patients and giving them positive recognition supporting and connecting families organizing events to build cherished memories and increasing public awareness of childhood cancer overall.
Now, therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors proclaims September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in Santa Barbara County. And encourages all residents to support children and families in our community who are affected by pediatric cancer passed and adopted today.
Like I said, I really do appreciate the humor prior to coming up here. So thank you very very much Jason is going to pass out a few things that we have for you There's quite a few in there Mona so if you want to just take one First of all, I want to thank you chair Lavagnino and supervisors because the response that I received after Bringing it to your offices was overwhelming, so thank you very much.
Let me begin with some introductions. As you all know my name is Lisa Brown I work for Supervisor Peter Adam and as some may not know I also have a daughter Lexi Brown that passed away three years ago. So forgive me standing with me not behind me. I have several parents of kids who are continuing to fight cancer. I have two children and another parent who also lost her son, also grandparents etc.
So thank you very very much for having us. I wanted to let you know that the resolution if you read it again it's not about any group or non-profit. It's really highlighting our superheroes and families While the support is fantastic because God knows there's so many out there that will help, really it's these people that go through this every single day. And I want to say a few things. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and we fight every day all year long not just the month of September. So with those buttons that we gave you You can wear those all year long. You know it doesn't have to just be during the month and I want to let you know that if you see a child out there or a family with no hair, God knows they're adorable but they they're just aware of it as much as you guys are and if you see them smile.
If you have nothing to say just smile or let them know hey you got this we're here for you because you will make their day and not only their day but their parents. Something that is very close to my heart if you guys, several of you knew Lex. And this isn't just about kids but it's about everyone with cancer and I hate the term they lost their battle. If you knew my daughter and you told her she lost something she would kick you straight in the shin.
They didn't lose anything all they did was pass the torch on to us so we could keep fighting. So even adults Educate people, don't use that. They passed away because of complications because of cancer but they didn't lose anything. And I also want to say that the ribbons that you guys got, the pins. If you'll notice the color it's not really, I know I have yellow on but the color is gold and I feel like it's gold for a reason. Gold is a precious metal and I feel like our kids are precious and they're worth every penny and everything that we put into them so remember that because all the other ones are just colors. I just thought I'd share.
And I have a poem that I would like to read We gave you one of the cards. I tried reading it to John and I didn't do so well, so I'd like to invite one of my very good friends Blair Mott whose daughter Jill is at school today but read that for me.
Absolutely thank you. And I want to also extend my appreciation to all the supervisors for having us here today. Being aware is the first step of care as well. So thank you. The gold ribbon, wear it for the kids who fight. Wear it for the kids who have PTSD. Wear it for the kids who have fought more than once. Wear it for the kids who cried themselves to sleep.
Wear if for the kids who have horrible side effects from the treatments they have to take. Wear for the kids that are no longer here. Wear for the parents who feel hopeless and lost. But wear it for a cure for our kids. Thank you.
0:40 – 0:4519 turns
Are there any items that any board members would wish to pull at this point from the agenda? A19, anything else from anybody and how about okay. And then how about the public?
Chair Lavinino and members of the board I have no request to speak on our administrative agenda from the public.
Okay let's read A19 in please.
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Administrative item 19 is a set hearing and this is from Human Resources. It is to set a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an amendment to the ordinance setting compensation and benefits for members of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. And this is a hearing for October 8th, 2019. Okay,
Supervisor Adams just wants a roll call? Can I get a motion? Move 819, set the hearing.
So moved.
Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call please.
Mr. Adam? No. Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr Hart? Aye. Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Lavenino?
Aye
Motion passes 4 to 1.
Okay so that takes care of our administrative agenda we need the balance. Move the balance for the agenda. Moved and seconded, roll call.
Mr. Adam? Aye. Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr Hart? Aye Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Lavinino?
Aye
Motion passes unanimously
Okay that takes us to our public comment portion These are for comments that are not on today's agenda so this is general public comment How many items how many speakers do we have this morning?
Chair Lavinino members of the board we have three requests to speak on general public
comment We'll go three minutes each
We are going to begin in Santa Barbara with Ed Kalaski, to be followed by Jay Johnson. And then we're going to return to Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell. Ed?
Morning. Would you put that first drawing up? This shows the second story with respect to the ground floor. The upper portion of the drawing is the upper level and the bottom part is the ground level. This is what we submitted, or my architect submitted this drawing. We did exactly what Alex Pujo requested however he decided that he was not going to show this drawing to the board members.
And he ordered us out of the meeting in 15 seconds. We have no rights. We appealed to the PC, they didn't understand what's going on here and they just agreed with whatever the board said. We appealed to the Board of Supervisors, Janet Wolf was here and we had absolutely no progress whatsoever. She didn't want to hear anything about it. So the next drawing, I put in here the overlay so you can clearly see that it's not solely over the garage. But Alex Puget ruled that it's solely over the garage therefore you cannot build it because it is in violation of guideline 4.7 even though it's not solely over the garage.
So what does it take from our government? This is what we live for. When does somebody say, okay enough is enough? That they do something so horrible that you can't have any rights. So vile that no one stands up and says no. Yeah what's the process I've been in here five and a half years with no recognition brush it aside this is illegal I will not pay an extortion payment Was I supposed to leave $1,000 or something when they ordered us out of the meeting?
Or was I supposed to leave a thousand dollars when I talked to Janet Wolfe before the meeting? Did I fail? Yes, I failed. I failed to make the extortion payment. You know our 64 page report that they wrote that they took five and a half months to write is full of errors. One it claims that the second story is solely over the garage In summary of the report, which over and over again they say is solely over the garage.
Can't anyone tell me that it's solely over the garage because it's so embarrassing? How could he possibly, possibly leave that drawing out of his 64 page report? A report stating that the second story is located solely over the garage It just takes a little money, I guess. You know normally it's done with the contractor and the homeowner doesn't know about it.
It discharges a little more to the homeowner and everybody is happy. This is our government? This is disgusting! Thank you.
0:45 – 0:5110 turns
Okay we are going to stay in Santa Barbara with Jay Johnson and then return to Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell.
Hello, good morning. I'm a homeless man but I have education, University of Arizona, Bear Down, Wildcats. But I don't understand how...I'm willing to pay rent. I am disabled with cancer. 33 years of work. I worked for the government, and I did specialized forces. And I don't understand how I have to sleep on concrete with meth heads, fentanyl heads. I speak three languages, babosels, phantasmas.
And I don't understand that. I'm willing to pay rent, all I need is a garage.
Makes me want to cry. Has anybody in the public for a roof over my head? I've worked for the government And I can show you 220815, that was my serial code. And I wanna know why I have to sleep on the sidewalk? And I ask anybody in the public for a garage, a roof and a doggie and then that's it. I serve my public, I've never been in prison. I never even do jail!
And you have wolves and hate and evil out here. At least give me a chance. I served my government and I can prove it. Thank you.
And we are going to return to Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell, who is our final speaker. Andy?
Andy Caldwell representing Colab. I'm gonna comment on that last commenter. There was a guy that used to come to the Board of Supervisors decades ago. And he commented one time when the county or maybe it was a city of Santa Barbara bulldozed a bunch of bushes and lean-to's in the area of the zoo. And the guy came in, he says you just destroyed the most affordable housing in Santa Barbara. At first I was shocked and I listened to the guy and I thought in a way he is right that people will gravitate toward what they can afford.
But the point is our land use policies don't allow people to live in garages. They don't allow them to live in places that would be a step up from where they're living right now, and you need to think about that. All government needs to think about that. Last week I spent five hours here waiting to talk three minutes but closed session went an hour overtime.
And so I'm going to tell you what I was going to tell you last week, because I know this policy is coming back. This had to do with another one of these energy ideas and there's a part where I feel like that you can't do enough. I think that you are engaged in zealotry. You have the community choice aggregation issue. You also have the state mandates, and then there's the private sector where if you can't walk through Costco without somebody trying to sell you solar panels.
And the bottom line is between what's already happened at the state level and at the county level and in the private sector nonetheless you're continuing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars Trying to reach zero GHG emissions, all the while the state is ultimately responsible for shutting down Diablo which is a major source. 10% of the state's electricity supply with zero GHG emissions and I haven't seen the Board of Supervisors do anything to say well if PG&E doesn't want to run it maybe somebody else should buy it and keep it operating. The other thing that bothers us is You glossed over, I read the entire report. You glossed over so many problems with this including the fact they don't want to put the panels on any elevation which leaves the flat land with a target on its back and you'll change zoning for solar panels and wind turbines but you wouldn't zone it if a farming or ranching family wants to build a bigger cooler or if they want to build housing for their employees or even housing for their families.
And again, we believe that it's all for the quote unquote environment but very little for the community including those families that are struggling keeping their ranches together. And then the other thing you glossed over is that there's limited line capacity. The fact that you can build something doesn't mean you can move the electricity to where it needs to be moved. And I feel like you guys are in a sensory deprivation booth, not just an echo chamber with regard to wanting to go full steam ahead and ignoring all the problems that lie in the way. Thank you.
Just CEO Miyasato.
Supervisors, I just want to let you know after the last gentleman before Mr. Caldwell we did have two members of our staff, one of our homeless team members going into the hearing room to speak to the gentlemen.
Okay very good thank you. Is there any other public comment?
Chair Lavenino and members of the board that was our final speaker.
Okay do you want to just press on everybody okay we'll move right into our departmental agenda items item 1 please.
0:51 – 1:037 turns
Chair Lavagnino and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the sheriff. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the annual truth act report and community forum.
Morning, Sheriff.
Good morning, Chair Lavagnino and members of the board. Here
you go.
All right, we are here today to have our truth act forum. Let me give you a little background to this beginning in January of 2018 per 7283.1 D of the government code. The local governing body of any county, city or city and county in which a local law enforcement agency has provided ICE access to an individual during the last year is required to hold at least one community forum on the following year.
That is open to the public, that is in an accessible location and that has had at least 30 days notice to provide information to the public about ICE's access to individuals and public comment. So today we'll be looking at what occurred in 2018. By way of background in terms of California laws that address The interaction between local law enforcement and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the US government.
There are three primary acts that have been passed, the first is the Trust Act which was passed in October of 2013 under AB 4 which went into effect January 1st of 2014. It's codified as Government Code Sections 7282 and 7282.5. The Trust Act prevents local law enforcement from detaining non-citizens pursuant to an immigration hold or detainer beyond the time that they would otherwise be released from criminal custody.
The Truth Act, on September 28th 2016 Governor Brown signed the Truth Act into law. Went into effect January 1st of 2017. The Truth Act provides know your rights information quote unquote to undocumented immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wishes to speak to while they are in custody. It also requires that local law enforcement disclose ICE access to undocumented persons who are in local custody in four different ways.
Number one, the Truth Act requires a local law enforcement agency prior to an interview between ICE and an individual in custody to provide a written consent form that explains the purpose of the interview, that the interview is voluntary, and that the individual may decline the interview. The bill requires the form be translated into multiple languages. Number two, the Truth Act requires that if a local law enforcement agency provides ICE with notification of an individual's release date and time then the local law enforcement agency must also provide the same notification to the individual and their attorney or permitted designee.
Number three, the Truth Act requires a local legislative body to hold a community forum annually if local law enforcement allows ICE access to an individual. And number four, lastly this bill ensures that records related to ICE access are subject to the Public Records Act. Then lastly, the Values Act. Which was SB 54, which is codified as sections 7282 and 7282.5 of an added chapter 17.25 commencing with section 7284 to division seven of title one of the government code.
And repealed section 11-369 of the Health and Safety Code relating to law enforcement. It curtails the use of state and local resources for engaging in immigration enforcement, and creates so called safe spaces including those at schools, health facilities, and courthouses. Now I'd like to just address our policy at the Sheriff's Office, and I've said this before but it bears repeating.
And that is that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office does not enforce any immigration law. We do not conduct any immigration enforcement. We do not ask those who we routinely contact What their immigration status is, we protect and we serve everyone regardless of their race, their creed, their color, their religion, their sexual orientation or their immigration status.
And with respect to immigration, our policy is a comprehensive document that directs the actions of our sheriff's deputies, of our custody deputies and of our records personnel as it relates to compliance with the Truth Act. Our policy outlines what forms must be provided to inmates under what circumstances and how ICE interviews are to be conducted and how ICE access requests are to be handled under the law.
ICE access means access to an inmate by ICE for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement, including when an individual is stopped with or without their consent, arrested, detained, or otherwise held under the control of the local law enforcement agency. Including all of the following one responding to an ice hold notification or transfer request Number two, providing notification to ICE in advance of the public that an individual is being or will be released at a certain date and time through data sharing or otherwise.
Number three, providing ICE non-publicly available information regarding release dates, home addresses, or work addresses whether through computer databases, jail logs, or otherwise. Number four, allowing ICE to interview an individual in the jail. And number five, providing ICE information regarding dates and times of probation or parole check-ins. This flow chart here shows the process of what occurs when there is or is not an ICE notification.
The process begins when a person is booked into jail. Following the booking of that person, they are fingerprinted to confirm their identity and to ensure that the person does not have any active wants or warrants that we were not previously aware of. Those fingerprints are transmitted electronically and ICE receives notification of fingerprint records from the US Department of Justice following their electronic submission.
If ICE is interested in obtaining information regarding a person in our custody, they will notify our Custody Records Bureau via fax of the information that they are requesting. Custody records staff will manually research the inmates criminal history And current charges to determine if there are any allowable exceptions under the law that will afford us or would they will allow us to share the person's release date with ice.
If there are noted exceptions, custody record staff will distribute written notification to the inmate advising them that they qualify for information sharing in accordance with the truth act. And the inmate's record will be flagged in our jail management system. If there are not any noted exceptions, the request is filed in the inmate's record and no response is provided to ICE.
Once an inmate is sentenced or a release date is known, if all the criteria are met then ICE will be notified via email. So the next slide shows how many times this occurred in 2018, and we have a comparison to show you what the comparison was to the year before in 2017. So from 2017 to 2018 there was a marked decrease in requests from ICE 526 down to 414, a decrease of about 21%.
There was an even more significant decrease in the number of persons that ICE picked up in 2018, a total of 98 compared to the 2017 total of 351. This number represents a drop of 72% from the previous year and represents less than 1% of the overall bookings into the Santa Barbara County Jail. This last slide shows some actual examples of current charges and qualifying prior convictions.
And also the number of times that person, that the example is taken from has been in our custody in the Santa Barbara County Jail. As you can see, they include violation of probation, lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14. Arson of an inhabited structure, assault with a deadly weapon resulting in great bodily injury. The infliction of an injury on a child, battery on a spouse, sexual battery, obstruction or resistance to an executive officer, assault with a deadly weapon.
Battery, unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under 18. Corporal injury to a spouse or cohabitant or possession of a deadly weapon. Robbery, brandishing a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and battery on a spouse. Of the 98 people that ICE picked up in 2018, they accounted for 303 separate bookings and incarcerations in the Santa Barbara County Jail. That does not account for other jail or prison incarcerations. In other words, they had a history of incarceration with our facility and represented three, 98 people represented 303 separate different bookings and incarcerations.
65 of those 98 had a past felony conviction. 60 of the 98, 61% were currently incarcerated on a felony charge. 23 of the 98 had been previously deported or had voluntarily returned to their country of origin after being detained by ICE in the past. 41 of the inmates had been incarcerated three or more times in our facility. 25 had been incarcerated five or more times in our facility, and four had been incarcerated ten or more times in the Santa Barbara County Jail.
And so that basically will conclude my presentation to you. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
All right? We have questions from board members? Supervisor Williams.
So I think what you mentioned in the presentation that, in accordance with the Truth Act, you're informing them of the communication with ICE. What method of communication is the information given to them in?
1:03 – 1:1618 turns
Supervisor Williams to the chair, typically the response would be with an email to ICE in response to their fax request for info.
I meant to the inmate and
is there
attorney also told?
The inmate is provided with a written document that explains the process and is a copy of which is placed into their inmate file as well.
And for me, the most important thing is to make sure that the public at large in the immigrant community trusts us enough to share information and trusts us enough to report crimes so that we can continue to protect the immigrant community at large. That's, to me, the biggest issue. And so I just want you to answer a question sort of, it's one of the things that's bubbled up. So that you can reassure folks that we're not doing anything outside of jail but Cooperation with ICE, so the Sheriff's Patrol patrols unincorporated areas of the county and obviously cities where we have contracts with.
In 2018 what did the sheriffs do when officers encountered someone with an immigration warrant? Did they just let them go or how does that go?
Supervisor Williams, through the chair. I'm not aware of any instances where we have encountered anyone. So-called immigration warrant, I'm sure exists but it's a very rare thing that the whole process is centered around ICE holds. This is a mixture of civil and criminal offense in the federal government. ICE has been granted some exclusive authority by Congress To detain and to take to the legal system for deportation hearings people who are suspected of being in the country illegally, and they have some extraordinary and some exclusive rights that other agencies don't have.
Processes have come into conflict with local law enforcement, and particularly as a result of the Clackamas County decision that deemed detaining someone past their local detention time to be unconstitutional. So we used to hold people for us on a detention request like that. But we're essentially told that no, this has been deemed now by the courts to not be constitutional.
We are no longer and to my knowledge, no other law enforcement agency in California continues to hold anyone that would be within the jurisdiction of the ninth district. I will say, take the opportunity to say that as I mentioned in the presentation, I share your concern that we need to have and we must have trust of the immigrant community. And we go out of our way to try to make that clear that local law enforcement does not engage in immigration enforcement, that we are not going to even ask someone what their Status is in a routine encounter that we are, you know, we need to have people call us if they witness or if they are the victims of crime.
But that has to be balanced against the realities that there are although 99% of the people who are here undocumented I think are basically good people very hardworking and and good people that just want a better life for themselves and their families. But the reality is that there is a small group, there is a part of that group that are not good people, that do prey upon members of the community And they prey disproportionately on members of the immigrant community. And I think it's important that we achieve a balance between the two concepts. We need to recognize that our job is not immigration enforcement, but we also need to recognize that our job is to protect the public and we need to do so within the legal parameters that have been set in such a way that we can See to it that those who do prey upon our community, if there is an opportunity for them to be removed from the community.
I believe that within the parameters of the law we should exercise that and I think we have struck a very good balance and I think the numbers really speak for themselves in terms of what's happening now.
And on those numbers you were repeating, you were going over what percentage of those folks were released after they had served a sentence and you were also mentioning how many might be pre-trial. Was that the numbers that you were given? I just didn't catch that.
No we wouldn't be Everybody that ICE would be notified about would be someone who has completed a sentence or has had a case adjudicated. In other words, we wouldn't be releasing anybody and allowing access by ICE to get that person if it was a pretrial situation.
So let me repeat this because that's a change over years ago, right? You would no longer be providing that information for pretrial individuals.
What we would do is to receive a request and basically flag a person if they would qualify, but we would not make the notification to ICE until the release date was set. In other words in the pretrial mode that wouldn't have occurred yet.
Got it. And then just lastly, how do you and the chief make sure that all your custody officers are trained in the procedure? That sort of thing.
Well this has been, as you are aware, it's a convoluted process and with the change in the law we had a revision of our policy. We made sure that our people were trained and there is a continuing basis. People who are in records particularly are the ones that are responsible for determining if someone meets that criteria. And they are reviewed on an ongoing basis to make sure that they're in compliance with the law.
Thank you. Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you, first I'd just like to acknowledge that you and your department have had a very difficult couple of weeks and you've represented our county with great competence and sensitivity and I really thank you and all your officers. I had two questions and then later I'd like to say something but maybe after public comment. The first is, could you talk a bit more about the database that has the release dates and why we have that? And then the second question I have is how does our policy compare to our neighbors SLO and Santa Cruz.
Certainly, well first of all thank you for those comments that you made. I'm very very proud of the staff and the way our agency and indeed all the county team responded to a very difficult situation with the conception disaster With respect to your questions, the database that we have is part of our jail management system. And it is a module that allows people to go onto our website and if they have the name of a person – and it's important to recognize they have to have the name of a person They can check and see if that person is in custody, what the charges are.
And if that person is serving a sentence there will be a release date that is posted in that information. This is something that we had Planned on and had planned for well in advance of SB 54 and anything where this was connected to ice. It is public information, it's available to anyone through that process. To anyone if they called our location and it is just a.
It's an opportunity for us to provide transparent information to the public about who is in our jail that they might inquire.
May I interrupt because I have it here, and I see that you do have to have the name of the person. It's actually in part to help the families find if they don't know where someone is. So, if you have somebody in your family who might be in our jail, you can check and find out and learn more about them.
It absolutely is. And it's also another key important reason for having it is so the victims are aware that someone who may have perpetrated an offense against them is in custody or still in custody, or that they can be aware of when that person is going to be released back into the community. So that they can take steps for their own safety. It's really important to recognize that this is a system Is part of our new jail management system that was put into effect, and it was coincidentally put into effect timing wise right when SB 54 was going on.
When the legislation was being pushed through but it is something that's completely coincidental to that. With respect to what are the policy of our neighbors in San Luis Obispo and what's happening further up on the coast in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, it's my understanding that there is Essentially a complete lack of any kind of interchange between local law enforcement and ICE or local government and ICE to any degree. The county has declared itself a sanctuary county, and the sheriff has made the decision that they are not going to interact at all with ICE.
There's a belief that that is the same in San Luis Obispo County, and I can tell you through a personal discussion with the sheriff just two days ago. That is not the case. San Luis Obispo County is still adopting a posture that they will within the parameters of the law cooperate with ice their system was such that they did not locate any. cases last year that met the criteria.
They had one case that would have met it, but the person ended up being convicted and sent to prison so it didn't didn't meet it. But this is basically information that I got firsthand from the sheriff. So it's a misnomer too to indicate that San Luis is not cooperating again within the parameters of the law with ice and I think it's important understand two that are you know Ice is a law enforcement agency. It's a federal law enforcement agency and it's important for local law enforcement to have the ability to work with ICE.
This gets the spotlight oftentimes in terms of public controversy about the releases from jail, but the reality is under the umbrella of ICE is Homeland Security investigations. The people that are responsible for investigations that involve people of foreign origin that come into the United States and we have occasion on oftentimes to interface with them in criminal cases, in narcotics cases, in ponga boat cases and so forth where they are the go-to agency. We have to have the ability to work with them in those cases. So it is a fine line. It's a balancing act as I said.
1:16 – 1:2715 turns
Hi.
And this may be for CEO Miyasato, but I remember last year when we did talk about this public database. Supervisor Wolf said that this was long in the making and that again as you say it was just incidental the timing came. But I just want to emphasize why was this done in the first place or what group developed it? Give it even a broader context.
Chair Lavinia, Supervisor Hartman to the chair as the sheriff said this is long in the making to get a better data management system. This is something we've been talking about at the CCP with the Sheriff's office and I think it just coincidentally happened like he said at the same time but it was always In the making because we needed a better system.
I had one question before we go to public comment, and I appreciate the numbers. It does look like we're striking a better balance. The numbers, some of the things that kind of pop out to me though is Somebody ten times in custody. So what happened the other nine times? Was it a lesser charge or, and we finally got to this position because I think on the public this is the thing that really strikes the cord with everybody when they finally somebody acts out violently and realizes that It's kind of been a revolving door at the jail they don't understand so how does something like that happen?
Chair Lavendino, there could be multiple answers to that question. It could be that person was off the radar for most if not all those previous offenses and bookings. It could be that ICE did request and was notified but just didn't come and pick that person up at the time they were released. And that occurs in a fairly significant number of cases because of their staffing issues and whatnot. It could be that it is someone who didn't have a qualifying charge, they may have had a lot of criminal offenses but they may have just been a litany of misdemeanor charges that wouldn't qualify them for SB 54's exceptions. So there's a variety of reasons for them.
So okay, so when you and it sounds like in this report that our management system is lacking where you basically have to go through these booking paperwork by hand to kind of pull these cases out. And if that's the case, so did we see any case where we notified ICE where This doesn't seem like it really met the criteria. I mean, what is kind of like the lowest charge? because the litany of charges here, I don't think anybody's going to argue that somebody, it's got a rape charge or something like that.
From what I hear in the community though they're always pointing to cases where the person had a very small offense. Is there anything we're seeing in anything like that?
They're having cases where the current offense is relatively minor one, but the qualifying offense is one that is serious or a dangerous offense that someone has been convicted of before. So that pops up sometimes as well. It's important to remember that we don't, we in the sheriff's office, Do not seek, run or keep data on someone's immigration status. We book them in with the closest thing that would come to that would be their birthplace that we take when someone is arrested but we don't ask people if they're documented or undocumented. We book them into our system and it's all through the fingerprint system and process that ICE receives the information Nor do we want to compile that data or you know, again it gets back to that balancing act of the trust issues between the people in our community.
We don't want to be seen and we're not people who are a law enforcement agency that is determining someone's status so there obviously Appeared to have been times there may have been times where that person has had multiple bookings in our facility. And may or may not of at the time, been someone that ICE was interested in and contacted us about.
Thank you
very much. I had a couple of questions for Sheriff Brown. Sheriff, on slide 5 that you described the fingerprint process appears from the graphic that the fingerprint process happens fairly quickly after Arrest and booking and fingerprinting that ICE receives a fingerprint records from the Department of Justice. And then I guess they make requests via fax, but you mentioned that happens much later in the process after the adjudication of the crime. Can you explain the difference on this chart versus what you were describing in process?
Supervisor Hart through the chair, the notification from ICE occurs Fairly quickly, once the fingerprint data has been received by them and they make a determination that they're interested. The notification from the Sheriff's Office to ICE is what occurs contemporaneous with the establishment of a release date. So we would get the request from them, typically get the request from them pretty quickly.
But in terms of acting upon that request, we don't do it until and unless that person meets all the criteria has been vetted to see that's the case and the release date has been established.
So if someone is arrested and their fingerprint is sent to the Department of Justice and ICE requests a hold, and the person is subsequently released. That information is never communicated to their status? And the fact that they were released prior to trial never gets communicated to ICE from the Sheriff's Department?
Correct. Convey any of that information to ice. Ice is the one that establishes that information and through that establishment provides the request for a hold to us in many cases those holds are not acted upon because they do not meet the criteria Because there's a timeliness issue, perhaps that someone bails out before the ICE hold would be received. There's any number of different types of things that could happen but it's important to again I want to emphasize that we don't do any investigating or vetting to determine the immigration status of any of the inmates in the Santa Barbara County Jail.
Thank you. And on slide 6 and 7, the numbers of ICE requests as you mentioned have gone down over previous years but there are still 414 ICE requests in 2018 and 98 pickups. And then the examples of charges and qualifying prior convictions that are listed on slide 7 It's impossible to know how many of those 98 people these offenses applied to versus other offenses, or if there were multiple offenders for these various offenses. And so it's hard to get a sense of the scope of ICE pickups in relation to all of the offenses that somebody might be charged with. Is there additional information that could help us understand that?
Supervisor Hart, the example slide that is there represents 10 of the 98 inmates. So these lines all represent one person which represents 10 of the 98 so just over ten percent of the total. These are the more serious offenses that have been identified, but there are other offenses which are qualifying offenses. Which may have occurred as I say prior to someone being in jail for a specific charge.
So and again just to give you an idea, Of the 98, 65 of them or two-thirds had a past felony conviction. 60 of them, 61% were currently incarcerated on a felony charge and as I indicated we have returns and repeats as well. As a matter of fact, we have one person who's currently in our custody Right now, who was picked up by ICE in 2018. We don't know if that person was deported or not because we don't track that information but we do have people that recycle through as well.
Well, I think just for transparency in the future when we do this again it would be helpful to have a listing of all of the charges that folks are facing who are identified by ICE as a request for information and then also are picked up. It would just help us to better understand rather than having an example list of charges the full range of charges that all the individuals are facing would give more information to the public
1:27 – 1:3712 turns
Duly noted.
Yeah, and I was going to kind of ask the same thing but through, I was more interested in the ones that were picked up is like that's only 100 people and you're already kind of going through the paperwork anyway. And it'd be great to see a breakdown of what all the charges were so that we kind of got a better feel. Obviously these ten that were picked are probably the highest. It wouldn't be good to see the entire range. So Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you, that raises probably one of the major points for me in all of this discussion and that is that it's not taking place in a vacuum. It's taking place in a national context where immigrants are being vilified and scapegoated. And so I went to look, I think we all have read the research that immigrant communities have less crime than in other places.
But what the research hasn't shown until very recently is that even undocumented immigrants, there's less crime. And I got some studies. One was done by the Libertarian Cato Institute and what it says is that in Texas they found that unauthorized immigrants in Texas committed fewer crimes than their native-born counterparts Then another study done in the journal Criminology showed that undocumented immigration did not increase violent crime and was, in fact, associated with a slight decrease. There's another project that's ongoing, the Marshall Project, but early results suggest that unauthorized immigration has no effect on violent crime and is associated with lower property crime And so that I think is a really important fact because we look at this and it's the worst of the worst, but it's a very small percentage.
And so I think what people are feeling is that local government and local law enforcement is being co-opted into this larger system of vilifying immigrants and we're trying to resist. I had the experience early on as a supervisor, my Los Alamos office hours. A tutor brought in a girl, a young teenager and she was having problems studying and concerned because her parents, what if they were deported? And how is she going to take care of our little brother? And the tutor brought her in to say all government isn't against you. In fact there are people here who want to support you.
I learned recently she's now at Hancock College and that her interaction with government, with me was a positive force. And I think we all want to be that positive force for people here. So this one slide taken out of context of us and then within this broader national context was to me very disheartening.
Supervisor Hartman through the chair, you know all I can say is that I would agree with you that the vast majority of people in the immigrant community are not people that are committing crimes. The reality is that those 10 people that are highlighted in that slide are people who have committed very serious offenses. And as I said, they and others who ICE was notified about Are disproportionately preying upon people in the immigrant community. So we can't lose sight of the fact that there are many victims who are also undocumented and members of that community, and we have an obligation to protect them as well. And I think again it's all about achieving balance, and I really believe that we have done that. I think that the numbers really speak for themselves.
I just wanted to add, I think it is a matter of balance but it's also context and understanding the meaning in the larger
context. And again just to be representative and I agree with you but the number of people that we're talking about 98 people in 2018 less than 1% of all people who were booked into the Santa Barbara County Jail We're talking about a very tiny fraction of people.
If I may add, I was astonished to learn that over 100,000 people in Santa Barbara County are immigrants. That's almost one in four, almost 25% of our population so it's a tiny, tiny fraction
All right, Supervisor Williams. Yeah I was going to wait to mention this but Supervisor Hartman talking about the context that is what I just hope to share with you and I think you're aware of it because people are scared out there law abiding people, people that are honest hardworking people, people who have not committed a crime are scared and I think part of our challenge Is to protect those communities, but at the same time signal to them that we are not an appendage of this strange federal government effort. To strike fear into the hearts of our constituents and our neighbors.
And that's what I feel like we're grappling Today is how to properly signal that to the community. So, that I think is the difficulty of what we're grappling with.
All right, very good. Thank you very much Sheriff. So we will move to public comment and just to let folks know that we will now close any more acceptance of any future public comment requests. So if you have your public commenting great. You should have it in by now. So once that first speaker finishes, we will not accept any more additional new speaker slips. But if your speaker slips in you're going to have three minutes to speak so Madam Clerk
Yes, Chair Lavagnino and members of the board. And for those in the public looking for the speaker slips we do have them available in the back of the room. Thank you. We have 14 requests to speak today and we're going to begin in Santa Barbara with Frank Rodriguez to be followed by Alejandra Malgoza. Frank? Is Frank in Santa Barbara?
Correct, yes. Thank you County Supervisors and Sheriff for having this conversation of the Truth Act to really bring transparency to the issue of immigrant rights. Since ICE was created under the Homeland Security it's been a secretive organization and we don't want that to be the same with our local law enforcement and our local county governments. I'm part of 805 Immigrant, my name is Frank Rodriguez. I'm the coordinator and also with CAUSE. And back a month ago we met in Santa Maria as the Central Coast Immigrant Rights Organizations from Monterey, from Santa Cruz.
San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. And the thing that stood out to us the most was that we have sister counties that are not collaborating with ICE. We heard that Santa Cruz County is not and we appreciate that but at the same time I think it's unfortunate that we're hearing that SLO is not. That is collaborating with ICE here at this meeting. I know organizers in San Luis Obispo have been trying to communicate with their county government and their sheriff, to see if they have been collaborating. And to find that out here through a private conversation of both sheriffs just shows why it's so important to have the Truth Act, to have the California Values Act, to make sure this is transparent because this would be public information.
We should know how our local law enforcement and our local county government Is working with an agency that is separating families. Another thing I just want to elevate is that this list of crimes, thank you for the representatives elevating that we should not criminalize our communities rather empower. We're in a time where there was a 50% drop in the use of the summer meal program.
That is because there's a fear of people trying to interact in our social fabric and we don't want to rip that apart. And I want to end with saying that even that 1% is part of our community, how does our local law enforcement work Human beings that can come back into society and be part of this society. We don't want to create a division where some people are separated from us because we believe that we should respect all human beings, all people should be able to thrive here in Santa Barbara County and just want to elevate that as 805 Immigrant and countless works over the years with immigrant rights partners across the Central Coast. We wanna have a society where we don't have people That are fearful of interacting with local law enforcement, that are fearful from being part of our society.
So thank you again Sheriff and County Supervisors for holding up the year end on the Truth Act Forum and being able to have this public conversation. Lastly, and I said lastly already, making sure that this is actually a public forum and making sure this is in the evenings at times that a lot of people can attend because as you can see it's really hard for us to attend at 9 AM. Thank you.
We're going to stay in Santa Barbara with Alejandra Malgoza, to be followed by Denise Adams. Alejandra?
1:37 – 1:424 turns
Hi, good morning. My name is Alejandra Melgoza. I'm a community organizer with CAUSE as well as I'm board member for the Immigrant Legal Defense Center and in terms of the board, I'm speaking for myself. So thank you so much for hosting this Truth Act Forum. It's really important for transparency and so we really appreciate that. I just want to elevate and continue elevating that we do not want any collaboration between the Sheriff's Department and ICE. We want to make sure our communities feel safe.
Making sure that our communities feel empowered and not criminalized. And we keep repeating that because it's really important during these hard times, that our communities feel safe to interact in our community. To be able to go to a meeting, to be able to ask for a resource and the reason for that is because one meeting or one program or one resource can make a huge difference for And most importantly, as an organizer we have a lot of volunteers and a lot of our volunteers are undocumented. And a lot of them weren't able to come today because of the time that it is so we really want to make sure that this community forum is held in the evenings and we hope that can happen in the future because we want them to be able to come here and voice I'm not undocumented.
I shouldn't be talking about this. It should be them themselves who are part of this community who should be elevating these issues. So if we can make Very important note that it should be in the evening, so we would really appreciate that. So thank you so much and thank you for having us. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Denise Adams to be followed by Sula Cabrera
Good morning Supervisors and Supervisor Hart here in Santa Barbara, Denise Fangler Adams. I've been involved in population terrorism, illegal immigration for 27 years and I've been involved with ICE since the formation of 2003 as a volunteer. I want to start off with saying that when you look at me, I hope you see Marilyn Ferris of Lompoc. She was the same age as me when she was hammered, raped and left for murder in Lompoc. Sheriff Brown will recall that we requested a special Board of Supervisors hearing which was held up in Santa Maria following this incident which should never have happened.
There's a reason why we have ICE following 9-11. It was created in 2003. I wish that the Board of Supervisors in Santa Barbara County would show as much concern for the citizens of the United States of America, as you show for people who have chosen to enter our country illegally or to overstay their visas. I want to point out to Supervisor Williams and to Supervisor Hartman language is very important We do not vilify immigrants. We embrace immigrants, we encourage immigrations, we are the welcoming largest number of refugees in the world of people who need us. Language is important. There's such a thing as an immigrant, there is such a thing as an illegal migrant.
There is such a thing as visa overstays. Get the language right when you speak. I want to remind everyone on the Board of Supervisors that you took an oath of office to support the laws of the United States of America. Since Sheriff Brown held the hearing with ICE in 2013, I have gone to multiple meetings where Board of Supervisors, our District Attorney have stated that we do not uphold the laws of the United States of America.
We can change those laws. We work to change those laws. In the meantime while we have laws it's up to you to fulfill your oath of office to the citizens of the United States If in fact Santa Barbara County is not part of the United States of America, let's take a vote today that we are not going to be part of the United States. In the meantime you have an obligation to fully cooperate with ICE. You have an obligation to protect ICE when they're here doing their work and protect our law enforcement. You have an obligation to the citizens of this county and I want to remind you that when Illegals are released and they commit another crime. Sheriff Brown can underscore this, they go after people of color.
It is important for us to protect people who are in our country whether they're here legally or illegally they deserve our protection until they go through our legal system we have separation of powers so on that note I want to thank you for your time and remind you of your responsibilities as elected officials with a legal Responsibility to the citizens of our country. Thank you.
Our
next speaker is Sula Cabrera, to be followed by Jennifer Hale
1:42 – 1:5412 turns
Good morning, my name is Soyla Cabrera. We want safety places as an example from preschool to college. We ask for all the community That ICE no siga persiguiendo a las familias, no chase the families. Las perjudicados son? The ones that are- Los perjudicados son? The one that are paying the consequences are? Jovenes adolescentes? The teenagers? Que se quedaron sin sus padres? They were separated from their parents.
They are in fosters and foster care from different countries. And they are homeless because they don't have a house. They are in different countries. What we don't want? We don't want that they have a decrease in deportations. What we would like is zero deportations because the ones who are receiving the consequences are the small businesses Gracias por su tiempo. Thank you for your
time.
Our next speaker is Jennifer Hale to be followed by Jonathan Abood
Thank you Board of Supervisors for the opportunity to be here today. I'm here as a concerned community member and as a member of Surge, showing up for racial justice. I'd like to express my strong opposition to law enforcement having any collaboration with ICE. It is striking fear in our community and it's breaking down trust. This fear is very tangible and it is impacting our youth. As you heard earlier, we had a 50% drop in the use of the summer meal program because children are afraid to show up to eat. That is unacceptable in our community.
I want to urge local law enforcement to uphold the law and not act as an appendage to a national organization that is striking fear in so many communities. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here today and to speak, but I urge you to consider holding these forums in the afternoon or ideally in the evening so that the people who are directly impacted will have an opportunity to voice their concerns as well.
Thank you very much.
Our next speaker is Jonathan Abood to be followed by Julia Hamilton
Hello, thank you for giving me the chance to speak today. My name is Jonathan Abood not representing any of my official capacities today but just here to speak in support of Santa Barbara following in the way of Santa Cruz and it's sad to say we need to follow in the way of another county on an issue like this others should be following us But we should be having no collaboration with ICE, but with our local law enforcement.
It just perception is reality. It could be 1%, 50%, 20%, half a percent and people will still perceive that law enforcement and ICE are co-collaborators and live in fear on daily basis. And the value of people not living in fear I think is much greater than whatever benefit we get from, I don't think there is any from collaborating with ICE. If someone commits a crime, we need to rehabilitate and help that person. Our next speaker is Julia Hamilton to be followed by Victoria Green.
Good morning, Supervisors and Sheriff. Thank you for being here today and giving us a chance to talk through this really important issue and continue this conversation. I'm here because I want to talk a little bit about the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. I am a minister here in this community and one of the things that I've learned working together with community partners is that the integrity of your partners matters.
And when I hear the sheriff talking about wanting to build a trusting relationship with the community There's a tension between the sheriff's desire to build trust in the community and collaborating with ICE, which has demonstrated itself to be an untrustworthy partner. You can't hold integrity if your community partners also don't hold integrity. You have to demonstrate a willingness to stand with people whose trust has been violated over and over again by an organization that is willing to lie, and use false pretexts to separate families. And without taking a clear stance against those tactics you can't build trust in the community. And the only way to take a clear stance against the tactics that ICE uses over and over again is to refuse to collaborate with ICE under these circumstances.
And I also want to mention a little bit about a previous speaker who said that language matters. As somebody who puts her work in language, who writes every week as part of her practice, language does matter and we can't ignore the context of our times and when people are described as predators or when we talk about people who are preying upon the community, we are fueling this rhetoric of dehumanization that is used against the immigrant community in broad strokes. So anytime we talk about people, human beings as predators, what we're actually doing is adding fuel to this fire of dehumanization.
We have to push back against any rhetoric that can be perceived as dehumanizing that actually leads to real violence in our communities and continue to remember that we're talking about human beings. Even that small 1% who act out badly in our community, they're still human beings. And we have criminal justice proceedings that address this but it shouldn't be tied into immigration enforcement. Thank you very much.
Our next speaker is Victoria Green and then we are going to return to Santa Maria for Andy Caldwell. Victoria?
Thank you. Thank you, Board of Supervisors for holding this hearing today. I very much appreciate it. I want to echo everything the last speaker said. My name is Victoria Greene. I'm a South County resident. I am also a board member of the Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center though I'm speaking here today on my own behalf. I' m here to ask that the county through the sheriff discontinue its cooperation with ICE and that the Board of Supervisors asserts its power of the purse By withholding the Sheriff's funding requests until that cooperation has ended.
As I understand it, there are at least two major ways which the Sheriff cooperates one of which I believe had discussion in the Sheriff's presentation today. That being by responding to ICE requests for information on people in custody. The other, as I understand it is that the sheriff publishes the release information of all the people in their custody which has the effect of allowing ICE to go online search by even just a first name that might be of a certain derivation and learn of the release date And be there in the parking lot at that point in time to pick somebody up.
That, I think needs to end. It's not helpful public information, it's information that can be gained We need to be out there and available to ICE. So again, I'm here asking the Board of Supervisors to do everything that you can to end this cooperation with ICE that has the effect of separating our local families and putting people into a system that is not giving them the ability to assert their basic human rights. Thank you.
We are going to return to Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell to be followed by Richard Didell
Chairman Lavinino, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell. Representing COLAB we'd be the first to admit that our immigration system is broken with regard to both the economy and crime. However, we think it is absolutely absurd that CAWS and these other immigrants are saying there's too much cooperation with ICE. Here's the context of what they're saying. They have their signs up in the room, they want ice out of Santa Barbara County but let's let the child molesters, the batterers, the arsonists and the sex offenders, let them stay.
They would have us believe that we should fear law enforcement instead of child molesters and batterers. They're saying keep families together. Are they going to tell a battered wife to stay with the guy that's been busted three to five times for abusing his spouse or his children, or sleeping with an underage minor? That's who they want to stay in this country? 64% of all federal arrests in 2018 were illegal aliens.
The bottom line, California has a don't ask, don't tell policy. Supervisor Hartman you have the nerve to ask for more information? You guys bury the information in the state of California. Texas actually produces the information. Anybody that goes into their jail they find out if they're an illegal alien or not. That doesn't mean they deport them, that's a federal issue. But we have a don't ask, don't tell policy. 64%, there's approximately 1 million people in state and federal prisons in America that didn't belong here. They've done the studies, that represents 10 million victims because most of those people just like the jerks on this list committed multiple crimes.
Think about the victims, think about the nine people that were assaulted with a deadly weapon or the kidnapping or unlawful sexual intercourse. Or inflict injury on a child. You're focusing on the criminals instead of the victims and pretending that that's compassion and justice. That's not compassion or justice, 10 million victims from people who shouldn't have been here in the first place. I'm for a guest worker program. I love the fact that our country was a nation of immigrants and I welcome that but we ought to screen the people coming through so that we're not allowing people to come here To prey on both immigrants, fellow immigrants as well as citizens such as Marilyn Ferris.
Shame on this board that they never have discussed that or outlined how that guy came back into this country to brutally murder and rape a veteran of the United States military. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Richard Didell to be followed by Linda Tunnell.
1:54 – 2:006 turns
I came to talk about illegal immigration. I came here in 1960 from Sweden after having worked there a few years and while I was there, I was able to visit a high school once and I found a different education system there. I found very small classes, 18-20 students, a lot of interaction between the teachers and the students And so I came here in 1960 and never left to work on Vandenberg, and to teach for 12 years at Cabrillo High School. I taught electronics.
I was the only part-time teacher in the Lompoc school system. I am totally in favor of maximum cooperation with ICE by the police and law enforcement. And as a substitute teacher for the Santa Maria High School District, I see the results of overcrowded classrooms. Roll sheets here that I duplicated with 40 students in an academic class. That's typical at some of the high schools here.
Nobody can call me a racist for wanting to lower class sizes because I'm married to a Central American immigrant and I speak almost fluent Spanish. Santa Maria High School has 42 plus portable classrooms. Pioneer Valley High School has 28 portable classrooms. There are seven security people on the campus of Santa Maria High School to prevent gang intimidation is number one, and they do a real good job of that.
Drug sales, vandalism and bad actors in the classrooms. And I'm looking out here at these people holding up these signs. I'd like to give them my telephone number and have them call me and tell me what the answer is to lowering class sizes here in Santa Maria. I've talked to teachers, regular teachers that have given up teaching. They're just waiting for their retirement. They don't want to teach 40 students in a class.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Linda Tunnell, to be followed by Ken Huff. Linda?
Good morning Chair, Supervisors. I'm going to be the fly in the ointment because for one, I'm pleased with our County Sheriff's Office and that they work within the county laws and with federal requirements when ICE does request notifications. The Sheriff's Department is doing a great job under the circumstances. It's unfortunate That we did not pass a live scan for the cannabis industry because I feel prior criminal action information could be very valuable to the Sheriff's Department.
You have answered several questions I had regarding what constitutes the exception in your flow chart, but from the examples in your presentation These are the people we do not want in our community. I don't want them in my neighborhood, my children's neighborhood, grandchildren and I don t want them in the immigrant community either so thank you to all our law enforcement for doing your best to keep us safe. Thank you.
Our next speaker
is Ken Huff to be followed by Pam Gates.
Thank you very much, Chair and Supervisors. I'm Ken Huff representing Santa Barbara County Action Network. For 17 years we've been promoting social and economic justice and creating sustainable communities. We have long supported immigrant rights. Immigrants are integral to maintaining sustainable communities. I agree with Supervisor Williams that the most important issue is to build trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement.
As your board letter states, the state law requires you to hold at least one community forum on this issue. Community forums that are intended to facilitate public participation are typically held in the evening and then a venue that's conducive to participation by the affected members of the community. In Santa Maria, that would suggest the Veterans Community Center. There also ought to be similar forums in South Coast and in Mid-County.
The people who are directly impacted by this subject, namely the families of people being released after having paid their debt to society, are at school or they're at work and they're not here right now. And so you can telegraph Your desire to have trust with local law enforcement by ensuring that these people are able to participate. Thank you very much.
Our next speaker is Pam Gates, to be followed by Cliff Soreman
2:00 – 2:064 turns
Good morning. My name is Pam Gates and I'm here as a representative of the Allies for Immigration Justice in the Santa Maria Valley, and I'm also here to speak for all of those members of our community who cannot be here due to the time of the meeting and its location. I spent half my working career in social services and now that I'm retired, I'm very happy to be able to volunteer my time as an ally for those people who are most often not invited to speak at forums like this.
It is true that you put out public notices there are a lot of other ways and better ways to reach people While it's true that this is a meeting, public meeting and it does meet the letter of the law again. It's not what I would define as a community meeting due to the time and its location. A true community forum as required should be held in the evening when working people can attend and there should also be multiple meetings around Santa Barbara County Also a hint, don't hold the meeting during National Hispanic Month.
A month which pays tribute as every month should to the generation of Hispanic Americans who have publicly influenced and made this a better country. While the Sheriff's Truth Act numbers seem to show that the number of ICE requests have reduced, does it really show less cooperation between the agencies? I also would like to have access to the full report that the sheriff read from ahead of this meeting. All we got were a few pages he seemed to be commenting from more narrative than that.
I understand that Santa Cruz County is a sanctuary county and does not allow collaboration. And as the speaker has said, Santa Barbara County should be leading, not following in these efforts. We have to remember that there are families behind these numbers that are impacted anytime ICE is involved. The continued criminalization of our immigrant communities only increases the fear in those communities and increases the crime in all of the communities in the county.
And anytime ICE takes an action, it's the children who seem to suffer the most as we continue to see almost every night on the news. ICE is not a humane agency. It does not treat people with basic human rights. I ask that you carefully consider the county's involvement with ICE and its impact on the communities. And I strongly request that the next time this forum is scheduled, it is scheduled at a time when our communities can be here, that it be held in multiple locations And that we do bring communities together rather than splitting them apart.
Democracy only works when everyone has a voice at the table, thank you. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Cliff Soreman to be followed by Abraham Melendrez.
Good morning. Thank you for letting me talk. My name, by the way is Cliff Solomon. My handwriting isn't very good. So my name is Cliff Solomon and I'm firmly against the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's publicizing the release dates of individuals as they are being released from the county jails. I would like to point out that despite the work of California immigrant rights advocates to pass the truth acts.
The sheriff continues to release, to push the limits of that bill's stated intent as he provides ICE with prisoner release information. I have personally seen how heartless and callous Ice can be, having watched as a valued colleague of mine in Seattle was arrested, detained and mercilessly deported from the United States to his home country where he was most certainly put to death.
I'm appalled that the County of Santa Barbara chose to build the ice facility in our city, even though several thousand people protested the construction. Santa Maria should not see ice as an industry that feeds our city coffers. ICE is a dreadful organization and runs as an industry counter to the humanitarian needs of our community. And to the governmental philosophies that make California, a great state in which to live.
I ask that we ensure that the Santa Barbara sheriffs do not work with ICE and provide prisoner release information to them. I would also ask as others have asked that the next time this topic is discussed, it be scheduled at a time in the evening when more people can attend a truly public forum. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Abraham Melendrez to be followed by Benito Camarillo
2:06 – 2:124 turns
Good morning, my name is Abraham Melendez. I'm a policy advocate with COS and I'm here to ask the county and sheriff to stop all collaboration with ICE. I am long life resident of Santa Maria and despite the work of immigrant advocates across California to pass the California Values Act in 2017. The sheriff continues to undermine state law. For example, instead of providing ICE direct access to information about immigrants in sheriff custody, the Sheriff's Office is now posting the release dates publicly online so that ICE knows when to be ready and waiting outside the building.
I wonder myself about the numbers that were reported today. Does that include the people who the sheriff released and then later were picked up by ICE because they knew about the release dates? Now more than ever, we need to empower not criminalize our immigrant community. We've seen a lot of that criminalization language in the meeting and I think it speaks to really the real terror that's happening in our communities.
Fear is hurting our community social fabric such that the county has experienced a 50% drop in the use of summer meal programs and other services. As the new Santa Barbara County Jail opens in Santa Maria later this year, it will be just down the road from the ICE facility that I remind you thousands of community members protested to stop just five years ago.
This could open up a new chapter in ICE access to our local law enforcement resources, allowing federal agents to much more easily pick up people and separate families in our community. Additionally the purpose of this public hearing under Truth Act Forum is to hold a community forum and receive public comment on ICE access to our county jail. I'm sad to say that this meeting is not very accessible for community members.
Students are at school right now, people are working in the fields right now and they don't have a chance to be here and speak for themselves. The people that are going to be affected the most Lastly, I wanted to bring up a point that was brought up last year as well. And that is the information given to the people in custody not being in other languages such as Mixteco or other indigenous languages.
That still seems like it hasn't been addressed. That was brought up last year and I would like to bring that up again as well. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Benito Camarillo to be followed by Zulema Aleman.
Hello everyone, thank you for having us. Today on behalf of the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project, Ms. Benito Camarillo, here in Santa Barbara County we have an estimated 29,000 indigenous people living in our county. And they are contributing to the $1.5 billion agricultural industry, and I'm here to say that it does not benefit our communities for ICE to collaborate with the ICE immigration.
And of course as we heard that is because the people that are negative affected our children. And besides that, we're not even arguing. I'm not here to argue about the report that you guys have here. All we want is to, can really the sheriff protect our families? And that means don't collaborate with ICE. Do you know why? Because if you collaborate with ICE, you put more fear in our community and how are families going to report that to ICE or I mean, how are families going to report that to the sheriff or law enforcement?
Don't we make America, and America by the way is the whole continent. Don't we make United States great? They said to me learn Spanish, I learned Spanish. They said to me learn English, I did. They said learn Italian, molto bene, mi piace. They said learn this and that, I did. I'm indigenous person in America. The America includes the United States and the whole continent.
I learned every word, I learned everything. Thanks to this country you know not just this country but the continent right? I have the right to go there and come back. This is my land it was always my land it will always be the land of indigenous always. You know we don't have to come here and demand these rights were indigenous right why are people looking down at us We don't need that. Thank you.
Our next speaker is Zulema Almond to be followed by Anna Rosa Rizzo Centino.
2:12 – 2:2711 turns
Good morning, I'm really thankful to be here. As it has been mentioned this forum is incredibly important to maintain transparency of our county's process. My name is Zulema Aleman and I am a community organizer with First Generation High School Youth and immigrants who work in the fields. A lot of these families who are affected by the presence of ICE were not able to attend today due to the timing of this meeting.
They cannot afford to miss a day's wage or even miss school. Their experiences and opinions are highly relevant and necessary in this discussion, to even begin to comprehend the impact of the involvement of our Sheriff's Department with ICE. I would encourage for future meetings that impact our working families to be held in the evening at a more convenient time for them.
Additionally, on behalf of the community that I work with, I encourage we follow other counties examples and stop any form of collaboration with ICE. If we want to build trust with our community, we need to make the immigrant community feel safe. How many immigrants are not reporting crimes done against them due to the fear of being detained or the fear not being taken seriously?
A strong and safe community is built by starting with our most vulnerable. Thank you.
And our next speaker is Ana Rosa Rizzo Centino, who is our final speaker.
Morning everyone, thank you for holding this forum. As a representative organizer for food and water action we see the community as being the most important part of the environment and why we fight against activities that aggravate climate change. And so with that in mind I have to say that the climate of hate is destroying our communities and this collaboration with ICE is actually And that's why when you hear people come to the microphone here spewing anti-immigrant hate, we can't be part of that. We need to be really vocal and say as a county, we will not cooperate with ICE.
We will follow the lead of Santa Cruz County. I'm actually really thankful that Andy Caldwell brought up child molestation because our border patrol, our ICE agents have actually been accused of that themselves against children in cages. Children who have not been getting adequate resources and I wonder when as a country we stopped caring about what happens to children, innocent children who have no fault for anything that's happening here?
As the mother of two daughters I want to tell those of you who have come up and spewed this anti-immigrant hate, that I'm sorry and I'm saddened that that hate prevents you from seeing the worth of our community. And what we bring to the table. The crops that we pick for you to have on your table. The children that we educate for you. The children that we take care of.
That hate is blinding you and I feel so sad for you. And we're going to fight this with love because that's what we are about. And that was our final speaker
Okay, very good. That closes the public portion. I'm coming back to the board for deliberations. Supervisor Adam?
Well, I don't know if this is deliberations or not but it's- Comments. Some comments, yeah. You know, I just want to say that I represent many in this county who disagree with the sentiments of most of the comments here today and support the rule of law. I just am really disappointed that we tried to spin respect for the rule of law into hate. It doesn't mean anybody disrespects anybody's value as a human being, that we have laws and We have laws that nobody can break in your house, nobody can steal your property. And we're not complaining about those and it's this pick and choose attitude that we seem to have developed here on this Disturbing to me, and there's a constitutional process and there's federal rules. And the sheriff is cooperating.
He's Trying to do the best he can to walk a line between sort of quasi-sanctuary state status and Federal rules that you need to comply with as well. And I think that there's an excess of hate against the sheriff, if anybody here. And I think that we should tone that down quite a bit. Further, I really find it disturbing that we're using this issue to divide these communities.
And it's a systematic strategy to breed mistrust of law enforcement in general and I think that's really dangerous and divisive and destructive. And I don't like it and Catastrophic effects on our community and our country if we keep it up. So I hope that we can turn this rhetoric down quite a bit in the future. Okay, Supervisor Williams?
Well, I think there's real issues here. I want to first put strong agreement with Supervisor Hart's assertion that we should see all, if the number is shrinking, It'd be good to see them all. I have the attention span for it. It would help me understand a little bit more who's getting the ice pickups and who is not. And I am just concerned about the possibility that this computer system, which I see the use of that has nothing to do with ICE.
But the possibility that a computer system could be used to sidestep the laws in the state of California, right? To sort of for Folks who have served their time for a misdemeanor, which we're not supposed to be coordinating with ICE on folks who are non-serious offenders. So I would just put out there asking the department to consider taking out any misdemeanor person who served their misdemeanor time for a non-domestic violence, non-sexual assault offense. Some criteria that we come up with take them off the database.
To ensure that this computer system is not being used to sidestep the intent of the Trust and the Truth Act, and the Values Act. And to make sure that we are consistent in upholding the laws of the state of California. I also want to just speak against this sort of idea which I heard and I'm sure it is not. Maliciously meant, but it repeats a falsehood that creates the wrong kind of narrative and hurts immigrants' communities and hurts our communities. Which is the idea that I heard that the number of immigrant children somehow hurts our education overall in this community. To my knowledge, Santa Maria School District is a revenue limit school district. Which means that the amount of money that they receive is by per pupil. So if you lost immigrant children from that school district, the school district would have less funding and less capability not more.
And this goes for public services and for economic growth in our county. Immigrants contribute to economic growth, they contribute to taxation revenues. And they contribute to our per pupil funding that we get in our school system and so they are an asset to our communities. And I just think it's really important that those facts are facts because the perception In the immigrant community that they are being targeted, could have dramatic negative consequences for us vis-a-vis the census.
All types of funding that this community receives for everything under the sun, everything that you want from the county and from county government is dependent upon that accurate count in the census. And if people are afraid to be counted, It will hurt all our community, it will hurt law enforcement. It will hurt the services the county provides. It will hurt immigrant communities and it will hurt communities of non-immigrants.
And so we have to encourage people To be counted, to trust both the professionalism of our law enforcement and the professionalism of the census for us to have the kind of community that we want to have.
Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you. I'm really grateful for everyone who came, who testified. I have two questions and then some comments. The first is next time can we do this in the evening? I think it's an important enough topic for our community that it would be worth it.
I'm going to speak to that so I'm going to have an opposing viewpoint so it's something we can discuss.
And the second issue has to do with language availability in the jail. I have someone who's an appointee to the Behavioral Wellness Commission, Mary Richardson Moreno. She also works in the jail and had some issues with The bulletin boards, there weren't materials in Spanish and I think she brought that to the attention and believe that has been corrected. But if Mesteco or whatever we can do to make our services more transparent to people who speak different languages, I would strongly encourage that.
Language is important and so is logic. And to take a small case or set of cases and then generalize to a whole group of people, a whole population that is the grossest logical fallacy. No doubt these crimes are horrendous but Issue is that at the national level, these are being assigned and attributed to a whole group of people. And that is antithetical to everything that we stand for in this country.
I think it is a cynical effort to divide us and it's a cynical effort to use local government To weaponize it, to use it as a tool to engender more fear. And we need to stand up against that. The Latino families I know many of them they're very, very close. So people might be indeed citizens. They might have green cards. Some of the adults may have come as children.
But the kind of fear that we see means not only do they not take advantage of the lunch programs, but in Los Alamos they had a reduced participation in the summer program. That's designed for the farm worker children who live in the mobile homes there. I talked to somebody at office hours last week who's working in the high schools with the Anti-Defamation League, and the number of bullying cases. And the kind of anxiety and depression and issues all associated with that. I don't think there is any denying that we're living in a very tumultuous, very angry, very cynical time. And I think Supervisor Williams put his finger on it. A lot of it is deliberately designed to keep people in their homes and hiding away so that they don't vote, they don't come out and take advantage of the services they're entitled to, and they don't get counted in the census.
And so the bigger issue for me isn't small procedures in the sheriff's office. It's that we stand up for a whole community. We are one county, one future and that includes everybody who is part of it and that's what I want to go on record as supporting so I like the comment about love rather than hate.
Supervisor Adam. Well, I got to throw a flag on that one. Nobody assigned blame to any group. What the sheriff is saying is there's individuals that committed serious crimes and they're illegal and ICE wants to take those people out and deport them. And I think that's perfectly legitimate and reasonable. And to cast it as if anybody, especially at the Sheriff's Department would be saying that all illegal people do these crimes is just incorrect.
Supervisor Hartman?
2:27 – 2:3924 turns
I agree with you Supervisor Adam. What my point is, is that this happens in a larger context. A larger context where we're being caught in the crosshairs and I'm trying to keep us out of it because I think there is a concerted effort to vilify certain segments of our population and we need to stand against them. Not at the local level, not our sheriff, not our county but above
Okay, we're going to go Supervisor
Adam and then Supervisor Hart. Well sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. We can create these artificial Venn diagrams if we want to but I think what the sheriff is trying to do is comply with State law, and he's telling you that these individuals did these things. And they need to be dealt with on an individual basis. Nobody is trying except for the people who have an interest in eliminating our borders.
That's a different argument, and if you want to expand this argument into that then this comes in kind of handy for that. But if you don't want to be in the crossfire all you have to do is look at this as if it's a report on a bunch of individuals and their bad conduct which I know that you wouldn't argue with me that any of these infractions of law are reprehensible.
So, I think that we have to make the intellectual Discipline to keep it in the context of what it is instead of allowing the context to be blown up, to be utilized for other purposes. Supervisor Hart?
It is tragic and unconscionable that there are thousands of people in our county who live in fear every day because of the federal government's new immigration enforcement operations. We are seeing families stay away from free summer meal programs, Businesses and Old Town Goleta and our Health and Human Services agencies have reduced participation from local community members. This is documented, this is factual, this isn't an abstract situation, this is real.
As a county, we must ensure that our immigrant communities know they can access public services especially in times of emergency without the fear of being subjected to federal immigration enforcement. Julia Hamilton spoke very eloquently to the need to build trust between our law enforcement community and our immigrant community for many years, for decades in fact. Law enforcement through community-orienting policing has been working Very carefully with the immigrant community and all residents of Santa Barbara County. And this administration's federal immigration policies is threatening that relationship at the local level, and is destroying trust with local law enforcement agencies. I strongly believe that the Sheriff's Office should restrict communication with ICE as much as possible in an effort to strengthen those relationships which are critical to community policing, all of our safety and reducing the level of fear and mistrust that has captured our country.
And as Supervisor Williams and Hartman described, threaten the census and all of the work that we have been doing for many, many years to bring people into the social safety net, improve lives of children and families. All of that work is at risk by this new aggressive enforcement action that this administration seems determined To divide our country with.
Okay, I'll close with just when we start to limit it to this administration which I am not the biggest fan of but I remember, I worked for a member of Congress and he'd been a member of Congress for over 20 years. And I asked him what were you working on 20 years ago? And he was talking about immigration reform, Social Security reform, Medicare reform. Immigration reform when we've had a Democratic president with a Democratic house and a Republican president with a Republican house has never moved forward. So everybody's got plenty of blame in this game.
It feels like the American people want immigration reform and people talk about it when they're running for office, and I never see anything happen. So that one's a little bit above my pay grade. That's why one of the reasons why I'm not running for Congress is not, Too many times our federal government get locked into partisan battles and really at the expense of the public that put them there. So this is a bigger problem than just us at the county, but I really feel like there's pretty much nothing new under the sun on this matter. As far as it goes, Locally, what we're doing is what we're required to do.
And the fact that a lot of people came forward today and said this forum isn't open enough to the public. You might be right, but we also have a lot of hearing. I mean the business that we do is affects people at the local level in their house more than any other form of government, I believe. We're involved in their transportation. We're definitely in their land use.
We are in their business as far as their local taxes go. And we have our hearings during the afternoon. And those people aren't able to come here either, they're all working or they own a business and they can't be here and we're affecting their business every time we meet. The problem is if we have our hearings at night, and I don't want to single out and say well this one's more important than everything else we do so we're going to have this one at night. That's not right, that's not fair to everybody else.
Our meetings, if we had them at night because I thought about this before. City councils have their meetings at night what about us? But what I find first off our meetings go six to eight hours at a time. If by the time you wait for people to get home from work and they have dinner and they get down and then you have a city council meeting starts at 630. The time you do three hours of work it's 930 now everybody has got to go home and we don't get our work done.
So there's no real easy way to do this. I don't think, I've seen some city council meetings that are having meetings and they're making decisions that affect the community at midnight. That's not a good way to do public policy. So while this might not be the most convenient way to do this, I think it is the fairest for everybody. I don't think singling out a single issue and saying we're going to have this one at night. Everybody else gets to have their hearing during the day is the proper way to business either.
I do appreciate the fact that our clerk made sure that we did have translation services set up early. It wasn't something we had to talk about and ask her about, it was already done. And I appreciate the sheriff being open to coming back with information on all of the people that are picked up by ICE and what those transgressions were. So with that, I think this has been a helpful meeting.
And Supervisor Hartman, I'll turn it over to you.
Thank you. I'm out in the district holding meetings with county staff often on roads or fire or we'll be doing it soon on the de-energization however I can't pronounce that. So that we can actually reach out to local communities. And if there is resistance to the recording at all, then maybe we could have an informal workshop where some of us even in ad hoc committee or some of us who are very eager to hear could have that opportunity.
Absolutely, anytime I think anybody wants to put something like that together and talk with the CEO. But this is once again a reminder that this is the sheriff's responsibility to hold this hearing and we hold it at the Board of Supervisors meeting so that would be his call I believe but Again, I won't be the chair next year either so somebody else will be able to make that decision.
So with that, Supervisor Williams?
That's what I was going to make the remark just so that people in the public know that scheduling is a matter of the chair and Fair differences of opinion that we have about scheduling. I don't think, Steve your position is apostasy. You know, I think there's good reasons for it but I'll just say that for my part If I get another shot at being chair, you know, I will definitely try to do a late afternoon or early evening meeting for that year's ICE hearing.
So- And I'll just say, and I
hope if you do that you take every request the same. Otherwise it's not going to look good and And it's a slippery path because everybody is going to say, I can't make it at two. I want to show up at six. But I appreciate where you're coming from and that will be your choosing. Supervisor Hartman?
Well, again I think we've had a number of things here. I remember the Ag Commissioner had a hearing in this room for farm workers on various rights and how to take advantage of that from different federal agencies. I think this issue does affect people who lose a day of pay if they would come. I would just like to ask the Sheriff, put you on the spot, would you be willing to attend some ad hoc Working group or forum sometime just to hear people in a less formal setting talk about some of these issues and what it means in their lives.
Supervisor Hartman through the chair, I will say that I have always had an open door policy. I have met numerous times with cause and with other immigrant rights groups my My attitude is I will always sit down and talk about this issue So if they would like to have an additional meeting in any time in the future, they're welcome to contact my office
Thank you. And that goes a long way to establishing this trust we're all trying to uphold here
Okay, very good. I see no other lights on? You're good, Supervisor Hart? Yes, thank you. Okay, very good. So can I get a motion to receive and file? So moved.
Second.
Moved and seconded. Roll call please.
Mr. Adam? Aye. Mr. Williams?
Aye.
Mr Hart?
Aye
Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Lavinino?
Aye
Motion passes unanimous.
We're in a tough spot here because our next item is scheduled for an hour. We're 15 minutes away from food being delivered.
We can always just start it at presentation and come back for comments.
2:39 – 2:4516 turns
What do you mean, in 15 minutes? If you can get it done in 15 minutes we got a problem. Yes Mr. Gazzone.
Chair, if this helps I think closed session even with lunch will be a short item today. We have two very short items so I'm thinking closed session will be a total of about 30 minutes.
Okay you seem very interested in going forward is there travel plans? We can save
the county a lot of money by going forward Productivity for our workers.
You're pushing me to want to go to lunch now, okay? So I would back off a little bit and let me handle it. We're going to move forward with the process. Go ahead, let's move forward. D2.
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Departmental item number two is from Sheriff and Probation. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding California Forensic Medical Group CFMG WellPath annual report for healthcare services at probation and sheriff detention facilities.
And as we're getting set up, this is the CEO. I just want to ask the sheriff's office if you could, there's 21 slides here and if we could understand the chair's prerogative and try to move expeditiously would be appreciated.
The vice chair is in Santa Barbara, so I think you guys can continue.
Okay.
Chair Lavendino and Board of Supervisors. My name is Sean Limer of the Sheriff's Office. Currently, I oversee Custody Division's contract management which includes the jail's healthcare services. With me today is Deputy
Chief- The microphone isn't on at the podium.
Sorry. Sorry, with me today is Deputy Chief Probation Officer Sean Small from the Santa Barbara County Probation Department. Sean oversees the Los Prietos Boys Camp, Santa Maria Juvenile Hall which includes oversight of healthcare services for both juvenile facilities. With Sean and I today is WellPath, formerly known as California Forensic Medical Group or CFMG. With us is President Kip Hallman and our Health Services Administrator Amber Nunes.
Mr. Hallman and Mrs. Nunes will be providing you with a presentation on our annual report of WellPath healthcare services for probation in the sheriff which includes our NCC HC update. Also with us today are representatives from Probation Department, Sheriff's Office and WellPath to help answer any questions you may have at the end of this presentation. I'm now pleased to have President Kip Hallman provide you with a presentation of our annual report. Thank
you. Thank you. So I'm Kip Hallman. I am the president of WellPath as mentioned. I don't know who has got this. I'll move fast that way. So real briefly, so you last year would have heard from CFMG we are still CFMG in California that's our medical group so we still contract with the county as CFMD. Walpath came together October of last year with a combination of CFMJ and a company called CCS interestingly When we were awarded the opportunity as CFMG, the second finisher was CCS. So we brought together, we think two of the best companies doing what we do. Very proud of the work we do in California. We serve 34 of the counties and have been part of California for 35 years so very proud of that work.
In July of 2018, SPSO and WellPath teamed up to create a softball fundraiser for the Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation which raised $1,200. In December of 2018, SBSO and WellPath delivered 200 care packages to the homeless in both north and south counties.
In our second year, we focused on improving our collaboration with our community partners. Our assistant HSA Joanna Gert worked closely with Christine Voss and Tracy Makuga of the Public Defender's Office to set up a meeting with WellPath and the Public Defender's Office to educate them on our release of information process, public defender requests for services for their clients which include mental health evaluations in discharge planning. WellPath attended a few meetings of the Sheriff's Office Grievance Oversight Committee to open up lines of communication to address their concerns and provide them on education on all we do. Our collaboration with Dr. Lee from the Behavioral Sciences Unit led to the creation of the Mental Health Evaluation Request Form, which is used by arresting agencies.
The form allows for them to report field observations toward intake nursing staff.
So we as a company provide staff education to all of our partners, mostly sheriff's offices. And we take that seriously because this is very collaborative work we do. Unlike a hospital where you only need health care workers for us to do our work we need very great cooperation between us and our partners and so we do provide education through the core academy. Our psychiatrist actually Dr. Hakeem does direct actually provides the The Education on Mental Health. So, you know we don't cut corners here and I think we've got great partners in this work so appreciate it.
2:45 – 2:519 turns
Service level agreement audits were done throughout the year by Behavioral Wellness and the Public Health Department. All public health department audits went very well with us consistently scoring above the required 90% threshold. Our behavioral wellness audits decreased in scores in comparison to year one This was due to WellPath following NCCHC's new standards. Beginning in April of 2018, NCCCHC standards requires once a week monitoring of all patients and segregation by a mental health professional. WellPath was still monitoring segregated patients daily but by medical professionals. We have since changed our practice back to three times a week by a mental health professional and daily by a medical professional because that's what's required of us in our contract with the county.
So we don't just wait for our partners to audit us. We have a very robust continuous quality improvement program, we have an accreditations and compliance group that works out of our corporate office. And so we actually do a lot of work on our own to make sure that we are holding ourselves as standard. And this year, we identified internally an area of improvement, and Amber you can talk about that.
Yeah, so we establish a pregnancy care coordinator and she establishes patients with Public Health Women's Clinic if they're not already established with their own obstetrician. She meets with them within the first few days of their arrival into custody. During this meeting she reiterates with them their pregnancy rights goes over their options for care depending on where they're at in their stages of pregnancy This includes their birth plan, we now offer doula services to our pregnant patients. We also provide the patients with educational materials.
Our pregnancy coordinator in collaboration with the Sheriff's Office Programs Director, they got a grant with Angel Vitamins and we're now providing all of our patients with a six month supply of prenatal vitamins upon release.
So, one of the areas that we focus intently as an organization is on off-site services because off-site services when they're necessary are necessary and we never want to hold somebody back when they need to go off site. But you know whenever you send somebody off site you increase risk to the community and risk to the officers and risk to the patients so we work very hard to optimize onsite care in order to not minimize but really optimize off-site care. And so we have programs we put in place to allow us to bring subspecialty physicians Virtually into the facilities by telemedicine and other ways. So we've done a lot of work to really try to optimize that, and I think that in this county, especially where the county is responsible for those costs, you know, we want to help the county make sure we're efficient in doing that work.
And so can talk a little about what we've done there?
So the adult facility, we had 330 outside appointments of specialists in our community. Juvenile Hall sent out 192. It's been noted that WellPath does not provide dental, optometry or x-ray services to probation. So 74% of those send outs were for these services. NCCHC standards does state that juveniles have to have a dental exam within 60 days of booking.
So we have a total of 24.05 full-time equivalents of medical professional staff between all of our facilities, this number will be increasing over the next year with the addition of our Northern Branch Jail. So roughly 16,000 sick call slip requests were submitted for medical, mental health and dental services. Medical completed approximately 11,000 of these visits. These visits were only made possible with the help of our dedicated medical escort team which is a team of four custody deputies assigned to WellPath to help facilitate getting our patients from their housing units to their appointments with our providers.
And that's actually interesting. That's an unusual thing. And I can point to many, many cases around the country where we have issues seeing our patients because the custody staff or security staff don't have adequate staffing to allow us to get to them. It's actually really important and something that Santa Barbara County does that I think helps a lot so they're to be commended for doing that, so we appreciate that.
Our medical staff at Juvenile Hall completed 3,928 sick call appointments. At Los Pridos Boys Camp 1,250 youth appointments were completed by our medical professionals. WellPASS strives to provide as many on-site services as we can. As Kip said, we bring a lot of e-consultation into the jail so we don't have to send out as much but we do provide radiology lab and dental services to our adult population.
So the adult facility had two in custody deaths in our second year. One was a suicide and the other was a medically expected death.
So this year we transitioned from stock medications to what's called patient-specific medications. So now when a new patient comes into the facility, we identify their medications, we get a supply specifically for that patient so when that patient or oftentimes gets released earlier than expected, we can return those medications to the pharmacy provider which actually saves us and the county money. It's also much better for ensuring accuracy, so the right patient gets the right medication. So it's a big improvement. We're excited about it. It actually reduced costs for the county and improved safety and accuracy, so we think that's a big win for the county.
Approximately 7,000 of our adult patients were prescribed medication with 12% of our population being prescribed psychotropics. On average 16.5 youth at Juvenile Hall were prescribed medications in a month and 6.9 at Boys Camp.
2:51 – 3:0423 turns
So mental health is an area that I think is really important. Again, I have a national perspective. We serve some 500 facilities around the country in almost 300 counties and this is the big issue in every county we serve. And I can tell you that this county, the folks who haven't met our mental health department The team are great and you are really blessed to have a full-time psychiatrist who's a rock star.
It is unusual, it is very difficult to find qualified psychiatrists who want to work in this environment. It's almost impossible and I would tell you that across our entire company if there are vacancies that last very long that's usually what it is so we have a really great department here and you guys should be proud of that.
Yeah, Dr. Hakeem is the psychiatrist that he's talking about and he joined our staff in July of last year and our mental health program really thrives under his leadership. So currently we have seven full-time mental health professionals on staff and they have collectively completed 12,686 mental health visits with our patients So we began to track our patients who were incompetent to stand trial, or IST. And those also in the IST process towards the end of our second year.
In the few months that we tracked these patients, we were actually able to restore three to competency prior to them having to leave for competency restoration. We accomplished this without the foundation of a jail-based competency treatment program. We have continued restoration of ISTs and will see an increased number of restored ISTs at the county jail level in our third year. With the addition of a JBCT program, in the coming year we will be able to restore more people in a lesser amount of time than them having to wait in our facility for a bed at DSH.
And actually WellPath would probably do more on jail-based competency treatment than almost anybody. I think there are two of us that do that in the country and it's big for us. It's growing very rapidly. We're seeing more and more counties do this so I think you guys are wise to move in that direction for sure.
And so a takeaway from this, four years ago it wasn't uncommon that we would see 35 to 45 people on our IST list and today we're at 12.
It's a big deal I mean again you guys are doing great So medication assisted treatment, it was interesting. I did not realize that this was National Recovery Month, I think I heard, which is appropriate. This is probably the single biggest change that I'm seeing in the operation of jails across the country right now. Two years ago almost no jails provided medication assisted treatment in the jails. It just wasn't done. There was a big resistance.
We are at the cusp now where I think two years from now, most jails will be doing that. Santa Barbara County is at the leading edge of that. Santa Barbara County is at the forefront. They're ahead of the curve which is great. We are as a company probably doing more jail-based MAT than anybody. We actually as an organization are now looking to move into the community as well because we think that continuity is important but the work that the sheriff and the team here do is really remarkable so I'm really proud to be part
So the Sheriff's Office in conjunction with WellPath and about six other community partners applied for a grant. It was expanding MAT in the county criminal justice setting. We received about $185,000 in funding and with that funding we were able to start building our MAT program within the county jail. We now offer most of the MAT medications to our patient population as well as substance use disorder counseling now.
So we began a pilot program last year with the help of Dr. Lee from the BSU, and we began offering naltrexone and Vivitrol for opioid addiction. And as of August 1st of this year, we have now gone live with our full MAT program.
Supervisor
Hartman? This is just a clarification. So you said 12% of the patients need psychotropics or... Is MAT considered a psychotropic or is that...? Okay thank you.
So we are still currently in negotiations with the county on our northern branch jail contract.
And then last thing I want to talk about here is NCCHC. So WellPath, we provide services and more NCCHC facilities than anybody else. We have about 100 NCCCHC We have about 250 accreditations of some sort, either local or regional and national. And in California you may have heard the term IMQ which is sort of California's version of NCCHC. We provide services in 24 of the 28 accredited facilities across the state, so we are essentially IMQ for all practical purposes. We do provide all services even where we're not accredited under NCCHC rules and guidelines. So even though we have not yet achieved NCCCHC here in Santa Barbara, we are providing care under that set of guidelines.
So we are, I think in the process of getting accredited now and I'm not sure the timing exactly but we have done, I mentioned our accreditation compliance group that we have in our organization. We've come out and done our own audits so you see numbers up here, the survey results those are our internal We actually come in, bring people in and do a mock survey and then put together an action plan to make sure we achieve NCCHC when the real folks come in. I think we're actually tougher on ourselves than NCCHC so it's you know we have never not once not been accredited when we sought accreditation or retained it. So I think you guys are good hands
Yeah, and so these numbers were from last year in our initial site survey. Since the end of our second year we have applied for NCCHC accreditation and we're just waiting for our site survey date for them to come out and actually survey us for accreditation. That's it, any questions?
Supervisor Williams. Just a quick one. We all know that certain learning disabilities can be a risk factor for juvenile offenses. What kind of screening do you guys do for both ADA covered mental or I mean learning disabilities and dyslexia? What kind of screening do you guys do for that kind of stuff?
I'm going to invite Dr. Karek Adams, she's our Medical Director of the Juvenile Facility.
Great.
So through the four, at the receiving screening so right when they come in there is a question regarding if they're a client of the regional center, if they have any disabilities, if they have an IEP or any learning disability. So those are flagged at the beginning and WellPAP doesn't provide the mental health services The juvenile detention facility, but I think disabilities kind of go through all the agencies including the school. The school also when kids come within the first 48 hours they're getting their school records from the regular school and they're going to know if they have an IEP or any kind of learning disabilities or special needs or 504 plan something like that.
If we identify something or the psychiatrist identifies like, hey this kid might have a learning disability then we refer them to the school. Or probation can refer them for psychological testing. Or the school can do the psychological testing as well. So if they have an IEP you know obviously they follow all the... They have to follow the IEP and any of the learning plans from their regular school. It follows them to the hall.
Yeah, I understand that. I just think that some of these learning disabilities are notoriously under-diagnosed, right? Some of them don't qualify for regional center work like dyslexia and I just think there's more and more literature out there that indicates it's a risk factor Factor into how they ended up justice involved in the first place.
It's a risk factor and it's also disproportionate within the facility compared to the community.
So I just ask you to have your attention on the ability to catch some of the ones that don't have IEPs, and- And have not been flagged. Right, because of course if they had IEPs It might not, I ended up there but right. So just implore you to have particular vigilance on that issue.
Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you. So I think if I would summarize some of your key accomplishments this year have been better care for pregnant women, the specialized care that telemedication or medical care and restoring IST and that's amazing. One of the issues we had a grand jury report last meeting and suicides are always really heartbreaking. And I know that you've made some changes, I think between LVN and registered nurses but could you talk more about specifically what you do? What we do to address suicide prevention and what more we could or should do?
Yeah, so our intake process is done by a registered nurse not an LVN. And in our intake process we do do a very comprehensive mental health evaluation. We ask about past history, current history, current thoughts, medication history and that's where this, that mental health evaluation request form that we worked on with the BSU really comes into play. A lot of times patients out in the field are exhibiting behaviors that they just stop exhibiting once they come into our doors because there's more law enforcement around, they're upset that they're in jail or whatever it may be. So this form really gives our arresting agencies a chance to let us know this is what we saw on the field and we want this patient to have a mental health evaluation done.
So then we call our LMFTs right there. The minute they get in the door, they have a full evaluation and initial assessment and the patient's plan of care is started from the very second that they come into to our facility. And then on top of that most of our folks if they've identified mental health issues in the past or have any thoughts, you know currently of depression because they're in jail or anxiety because they're in jail. Then that'll flag our nurses to put them up for a mental health evaluation within 24 hours or right then and there. Our mental health is on staff from 7 AM until about 2300 so if not done immediately it will be done definitely the next day. So another thing that we did change after our unfortunate incident last year was A patient who comes in, who refuses to talk to us.
Who refuses to answer any questions about their mental health history or their medical history. We ask mental health to come see them immediately so they can do their focused mental health assessment. They're really the professionals and if mental health is not on site then the patient is placed mental health observation. So that way we know they're safe, that they don't have a way to hurt themselves and then the nurse tries again in about four hours to redo the intake assessment and if they're still uncooperative within four hours will try again the next day. Mental health will keep coming in trying to talk to them every four hours or so until... Or the next day if it's after hours that mental health isn't on site.
Thank you, that's really good to know. Do you also consult families or friends or anybody else who could give you more
information? We don't have a way to contact family unless the patient gives us a contact person and a phone number. I know that I've personally given families my cell phone number. Our assistant HSA, Joanna Gertz, she gives families her personal cell phone number. If at any time the community wants to reach out to us and let us know they just have had a loved one incarcerated, most of the public defenders have our email addresses, our phone numbers. They can reach out to them and get our contact information. They can email us, call us.
We have
3:05 – 3:0921 turns
That any county jail suicide data were provided across the country was 2014. The data are very stale, but we have seen a clear increase in suicides over the last 4-5-6 years and some people I don't know, but I think there are people who believe that some of it correlates with the opioid epidemic We're doing studies right now and we are seeing a disproportionate number of people who are committing suicide across the country in correctional facilities that are under some sort of detox protocol. So, we clearly think that moving toward a MAT protocol is actually going to help this as well.
Are there any requests to speak from the public?
Chair Lavinino, members of the board, we have no requests to speak on this item.
Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here.
Chair Lavinino, I had a question. Yes, I'm sorry. A couple of slides, slide ten. There's, I see that there's 16,000 sick call requests and about 11,000 sick calls completed. Can you tell me a little bit more about the difference between those two numbers?
Yes, so that number is the number of sickle slips submitted by our patients. That is for medical services, mental health services and dental services. So as you saw throughout the other slides, medical completed 11,000 of those, mental health completed about 12,000 of those and dental on their own completed a couple thousand as well. So that's an all-inclusive number.
We don't separate out how many sickle slips were submitted for mental health, how many for medical or how many for dental. Moving forward, if that's something that the board would like to see we can absolutely do that.
But we didn't miss those 5,000 missed calls? No.
That's exactly what it looked to be, so thank you for that clarification. And then in regards to accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, I see in your presentation that there are new standards and then there are performance metrics that you listed on the slide about 78% of essential standards, 65% of important standards for the adult facilities and 73% of essential standards and 88% important standards for the juvenile facilities. What is the benchmark for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care Standards in relation to those metrics?
So, the essential standards you have to meet 100% of them and important standards you have to meet 80% in order to achieve accreditation.
Okay so you are exceeding it in regards to the juvenile facility but you have a ways to go on the essential standards and I'm
or after our second year being over. So we didn't report those numbers and we can get you updated numbers if you would like, and our timetable we're looking at three to six months for NCCHC to come out and do our site accreditation.
Okay with that I would very much like to see the updated numbers and so you are thinking that accreditation might be achieved by April of next year? Is that a fair target date to be focused on? So it's tough,
it's tough to say but right now NCCHC's timeline and the last time I spoke to them they said they're looking about six months out for Scheduling any new site surveys, and then after that there will be a three month wait. So they'll come out, they'll do their site survey and then it will be about a three month waiting period to hear back from them. At that time if there are any deficiencies they will give us 30 days to improve those. And they'll come back out in 30 days to see if we have made improvements. And so it just depends, if we have deficiencies We do have time to do a corrective action plan. So it's really hard to say April of next year we're going to have accreditation.
Okay, well thank you for that clarification. I know this has been desired for some time and so it would be great to achieve that accreditation as soon as possible. Thank you.
Very good, thank you so much. A motion to receive and file, please. So moved. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Roll call.
Mr. Adam?
Aye.
Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr Hart? Aye Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Labonino?
Aye
Motion passes unanimous
All right we will break for closed session We'll come back no earlier than 1 but probably closer to 115
3:09 – 3:113 turns
Chair and supervisors, today in closed session the board is agendized to consider three matters. The first is a case of existing litigation, Pulver versus County of Santa Barbara. The second is also a case of existing litigation, Estate of Brian Carreño versus County of Santa Barbara. The third item that was agendized was conference with labor negotiators concerning Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association.
I am informed by human resources that they will not need that item but it is agendas so three items and approximately 30 minutes plus.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
3:15 – 4:011 turns
Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. You. Hi. 3Lz 6.49 x (-0.50?) Yeah. you Good morning. Thank you. Hello. . . . . . . Yeah. Okay. Thank you. you you Yeah. Music Yeah. Okay. You. ♪ Thank you. Hi. you You. Thank you. Hello.
4:02 – 4:186 turns
All right, welcome back. We're going to reconvene this meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Mr. Gazzone, report out of closed session please?
Chair and supervisors, today in closed session the board was agendized to consider three matters. The first a case of existing litigation, Pulver versus County of Santa Barbara. The second another case of existing litigation, Estate of Brian Carreño versus County of Santa Barbara as well as conference with labor negotiators concerning Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association. There are no reportable actions.
Okay very good. Let's go to item 3 on our departmental agenda item.
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Departmental item number three is from Human Resources. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the county clean commute program and as previously stated this morning, this is no longer a four-fifths vote, this is a majority.
Okay, very good. Good morning. Good
afternoon. Yes, good afternoon Board Chair and Supervisors. So my name is Marilena DeGuevara I'm on the County HR Director and today I'll be presenting on the county's employee commuter benefits So specifically the agenda for today's meeting, we will focus on how we will increase communication and visibility of the commuter program. We will focus on what the new program components are and that includes the associated costs And where we stand with the telework pilot.
And then upon completion of my presentation, we're seeking your approval of the Clean Commute Program as we've presented it. The budget revision request and the determination that the actions taken today are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. So before I start on the presentation, I thought it would be helpful for me to first summarize how it is that I got here this afternoon.
The first thing is that in the fall of 2018, we have the Sustainability Division in partnership with Traffic Solutions. They designed and implemented an employee commuter survey. And its purpose was to identify county employee commuter patterns, what motivators and barriers there were to commuting. A few months after that in December of 2018, the Sustainability Division presented an Energy and Climate Action Plan progress report. And as a result of that presentation, the board directed staff to return with actions that demonstrate leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from employee commutes.
In response to your directive at that time, to come back to you with these actions demonstrating leadership. The Sustainability Division and the committee went back to the Employee Commute Survey, analyzed that. They met with departmental managers, as well as several meetings with the traffic solutions. And on May 14th, the Sustainability Division Chief presented options to you that were possible to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from county employees.
And at that time, you directed us to come back and to focus on increasing communication. Analyzing those options that the sustainability division presented to you and to implementing the telework pilot program. So it's these three things that I'm going to be focusing on today as I continue my presentation. So we're going to start with increasing communication.
Both the sustainability division and the board identified increasing communication of the clean commute benefits as a top priority, and with good reason because as this table shows, this is the participation levels currently. Among the county workforce for the current benefits. And as you'll see, the participation levels are pretty low. 35% is the highest that we go and that's with the alternate work schedule.
So lots of reasons for why this participation level could be down but from my perspective, the first thing I wanted to ask is People know about these benefits. I mean, it's so low that that's where I wanted to start is to take a look at how we communicate these benefits to our employees and the stories around this as a relatively new employee myself was that we really don't communicate this And again, there's reasons behind that given that my staff at the time was 1.75 FDEs. Their focus is on the core of the benefits to keep the wheels turning on providing the core benefits to our employees and they were the nice-to-haves and certainly the commuting benefits are important but we typically go to our employees with only two touch points throughout the year or their employment and that is new employee welcome And if you're no longer a new employee, that falls down.
And the only other touch point is the annual benefits fair whereby these benefits could be presented. Clearly that gives us lots of room to play with in terms of improving the how we do communication. Research has shown that employees, to have employees be engaged, we must touch them no less than three times a year and in a variety of ways. And so I thought that we needed to go ahead and focus on definitely increasing communication as a baseline to say, let's just start with that and then see what the participation levels will be. And so, I'm recommending a communication strategy that we will implement that will have these components.
They will have the redesigning of the internet and the intranet sites to have an actual kickoff for the Clean Commute program. Create Clean Commute program material, informational material. Implement and organize special activities around this. And then you, of course, utilize social media and technology as we know that a lot The particularly new ones coming into the organization focus on the social media.
I believe that by implementing this communication strategy, we will in fact increase visibility, increase participation and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by our employees. So my staff has already started, we have already redesigned the internet in the intranet. It's a big way for employees to do their benefits already. All we're doing is now we've organized and I thought I'd show you an example of what our website looks like right now.
So on the left-hand side, that was the old website. And for purposes of this presentation and for this specific slide we actually had to pull content from various parts of the HR website and put them all in one and even that was better than what we had before. However you'll see on the right hand side that it's a very clean look All of those things are that are below like the ways to commute to work. That's a link.
Employees can just click on that everything below that is a link so employees can get to the information much quicker, so we have organized it. We have made it more user friendly, much more pleasing to the eye. It's not overwhelming as you could see with the left hand side and so One of the things we had heard is that we don't know about it because the information is so scattered everywhere, it was hard to locate. Our goal here was to make it a one-stop shop and to make sure that employees can... It's again easy to get to the information and thereby having it be more accessible.
We have already received, by the way because this is up on our new site along with the rest of my department's website. And we have already received some very supportive and appreciative comments from our employees that it's just so much nicer to read and to get the information in this way. So the next focus is the actual clean commute program. Shortly after the May presentation when I was given the directive, I had to come back with a more outlined program. I created the Clean Commute Project Team to review all those options that have been presented to you and together we organized The existing commuter benefits into an umbrella that we named the Clean Commute Program.
And one of the things we've done and I'll show you in a second here, you'll see that there are some that we retained some of the existing benefits but we also expanded some of the existing benefits and we've added a few new ones. And just quickly kind of going down this chart As I mentioned, we redesigned the intranet and the portal site. And that's going to be a continued project for us of continually improving that. Our goal is to end up with a one-stop shop where all the information if you're signed up for any of these programs.
That our employees could have like a dashboard so that they know what I'm signed up for, what my benefits are and even how many steps you might have taken on that day as you walk to work or whatever. To make it more user friendly. The other is the TDM vacation bonus. It's existing however we're saying it's all forms of commute not just transit That we have folks that walk to work or can walk to work and that alleviates congestion and parking issues.
People can bike to work, there's electric vehicles, electric bicycles. You can scooter over, skateboard over whatever it takes. Those are all forms and we should be supporting all those other forms and not just the vehicle type. The other is, of course, updating and automating all of the forms. It's ridiculous that we're asking employees to notate on a form and hang onto that form. Everything should be on what we're hoping to be our portal in the one-stop shop on the internet. The other is the pre-tax contribution. We have expanded that for this year and that is the train and carpools, and there's the asterisk because there are some parameters that the IRS has for that and we will comply with that.
The free parking, the guaranteed ride home, and alternative work schedules are all existing however Again, guaranteed ride home. We heard from the survey last time in May that a lot of folks did not want to carpool or use other clean commute options because what if they had a home emergency? So clearly it tells us that they don't know, that we're not aware of the already existing guaranteed ride home program. So with the communication strategy I think that we could get some higher participation levels because we will take care of you We won't let you not go home if there's an emergency.
And so we just have to do a much better job educating. Number eight is new, zero emission car and e-bicycle employee discounts which we hope to be part of a larger employee discount program but we have lots of local merchants and vendors that are wanting and willing to work with us It supports their mission to have a green commute. And we want that, and so we have to create those partnerships. And we already have some folks interested in helping us with the car. We're currently working on the e-bicycle employee discounts for now.
And then you asked us to do the telework pilot in two departments and I'll be talking about that more specifically later on. The last one, number 10 we're hoping to study and if possible implement. I'm not sure if we can get that done this year with the funds that we have in the time but we are partnering with General Services regarding vanpool carpool and zero emission vehicle parking in all our county parking facilities.
The next and last one is the telework pilot status I believe at that meeting there was a voluntold that the Community Services Department would be participating in that. We decided that it'd be probably good for the program to add another department as well. And general services with the leadership of Jeanette, she raised her hand and we've been working together and she's part of the project team.
We're very excited and a total of approximately 30 employees will be in the program. And part of the criteria that we established is the two departments, we wanted to have a pre and post survey. So that we learn from the employees what their motivations were for participating. And then they get to go through, and they had to go through all the components of our current telework policy. We thought it was a little laborious and cumbersome. But we wanted to hear from them and what their suggestions might be. And by the way, the pre-imposed surveys is both employees and managers because we needed to hear from them what's the impact of the work environment?
And then it's going to run for six months so that we have good quality time frame. And then at the end of that time with the feedback that we've received from these individuals, we hope to improve the overall telework policy and program.
4:18 – 4:3326 turns
Supervisor Adam, question? Do these people know they've been conscripted yet?
Yes, did you want to speak to a little bit of what you're doing?
Yeah, I had a question too. Just general services just popped in my mind it would almost be the last department that would work from home so explain how these folks are going to be able to pull this off?
So Supervisor Lavagnino, we have a very diverse workforce. Our maintenance staff won't be able to participate but we have office staff, we have IT staff so we are able to allow people to work from home and basically I ask for volunteers. So no voluntolds and we have up to, I think it was close to 12. And there's still some interest out there. We want to make sure that we can manage our staff as well.
That's why it's important that we survey both the employees and the management staff at the beginning of this pilot and at the end.
So this is truly voluntary, not voluntary?
Correct. It's voluntary.
Okay because I can't imagine you getting very good results from instructing people to participate in something they don't want to participate in.
You're right, I mean you have to have the right job and you have to have the right work habits. And so it's not conducive to everybody.
Right. Supervisor Hartman?
So is it up to the employee then to provide their workspace in their home that's appropriate?
Yes, and with the current policy there are some guidelines and check-offs that have to be complied with to participate. And so they may volunteer at the front end but once they get into it they might say they're not interested. We don't know we'll find out.
And I think we talked about this previously, but this is an area that is ripe for fraud. If you don't have somebody at work and they're working at home like you said the person has to have the right work ethic so the employees know it's only going to take one employee Not be working, not doing what they're saying they're doing to finish the program for me. I mean we probably have enough of that just in the offices we do have but if a neighbor or somebody sees somebody out doing something it's not going to be a good situation so.
I like the clean commuting program, this part I'm going to have to get sold on. There's something about teleworking for me that just, I have a hard time with it. Well, I think some of it has to do with the fact that I ran a business out of my own home and I know at the beginning that I got up every day and I took a shower and I put a suit on and I went into my office and I dealt with things.
Mixing, I was babysitting a little bit and doing my job. And then I was running to the store and doing my job. And then pretty soon you're not really doing your job too much anymore. Going to the gym with my phone still connected to my other phone, yeah. So it gets a little hairy. Yeah, it just takes a certain individual, I guess so.
Well, we'll find out.
That's
why we're doing the
pilot. Supervisor Hartman?
Well I was on the other side. I was with the federal government at one point and I was able to work from home or I worked as a consultant and once you close the door and you say here I'm at work, I worked harder because I didn't have to spend so much time on the road and wasn't so tired from the commute. So, I really do think individuals vary by how they work and those who like to work at home should be allowed that if it helps the county. And I think it is important for people to not do it all the time. That is, it's important to have a work community where people talk to each other face-to-face But a lot of what's happening at work is you're sending email messages to the person whose office is next door. So, a lot I think today can be done and I know some companies even track when people are on the computer and all that.
That's all very true and so one of the criteria that we have That the telework is not like for all week. We've seen that in the research, that even though we have seen that having the telework option or benefit is a draw, it's an attraction issue for applicants. We also have seen research on the other end that say but we lose something if it's 100% telework because we're not creating those bonds and team environments In the office, and so we just said let's just do the two to three days and see how it goes.
So again, we'll get more feedback.
I
always like how you know the latest research. Do we know younger people, millennials? Are they attracted
by this as a
benefit?
Absolutely, that's a big draw because for a lot of that particular group, Millennials in the Younger Group, They actually don't have work hours the way we normally would see the eight to five. So they're accessible, sorry, for the whole time and because of the mobile technology in that, we can stay connected as you know. And so for them the hours of work is there's no real timeframe for that and so telework really works but we're going to learn and hear more from our and I'm hoping will be doing the demographics of who's in this pool So we'll know the age, the type of position so on and so forth. And the distances that will be interesting too.
So we'll track that and again it will run for six months. And speaking of tracking, the next slide is I really believe that you can't improve what you can or won't measure. And so for us, measuring this program will be very important. We're committed to increasing the participation levels and increasing customer satisfaction which is something that we've not typically tracked but I feel it's important so that we can hear from our employees and managers what their needs are around this. And so we've identified the following metrics.
So we have the benefit on the left-hand side there that I presented to you, the components of the program. We have the percent participation as of December 2018 because that's when we tracked this and then where it says NA is we've never measured that. We've not ever looked at that as an evaluation so I have no data. However, we have the targets or the goals that we hope to achieve by December 2020 And that is that we have the overall satisfaction rating of at least 4 out of 5 from 90% of those that take the survey. Currently, right now you can give us feedback on our website.
That's for not just this program but my entire department website. And then you'll see as we go on down that where it says 11% participation in the TDM, our goal would be 22%. Where we have now 2% for the pre-tax. We're shooting for 10%. Free parking, five. We're growing it to 10 from 35 on the alternate work week schedule to 40 and then for the telework we only have five so we're shooting for eight to ten. I don't know these are just some targets that we're going to shoot for trying to be realistic in some of these and reasonable there's no way we're gonna get like you know a hundred percent on some of these Nor should that be the goal for us. So we'll grow it incrementally and slowly so we know what works and what doesn't.
So, what does a program like this cost? 50,000 was approved for this program. So we've taken that one time funding and allocated it out to achieve the program that I presented. So the first one up is the pre-tax contribution. Again, we're not sure that we're going to get a huge spike but we anticipate that the cost for the remainder of this fiscal year is 18.9 and that's just with the communication and the possible increase in folks The second is that in order to manage this program, to oversee it and to be tasked with the implementation of the communication strategy. Establishing the necessary partnerships to get the program up and going. And more importantly, to track its progress.
We've included a part-time extra help position at 28, 100. And then finally there's just some additional miscellaneous costs that could be associated with the printing of informational materials and whatnot and we are put that at 3,000. And that we believe meets the obligation under the directive that you provided to us. And because this money is just for this fiscal year, with the remaining time that we have of the year.
For next year if the board is still interested in continued efforts to reduce the greenhouse emissions then I'm recommending the following next bold steps and that would be That we improve the pre-tax participation process, we've already heard it is very cumbersome for our employees. And that may be one of the reasons why they don't participate in it. There's a lot of hoops. It just has to be streamlined and we have to partner with Traffic Solutions on making that happen. The other is to increase the county's contribution to the pretax. Currently it's at $10.
We believe that we have some room to increase that and make it meaningful for our employees. Number three is a big one, we've heard a lot from our employees when we had our open house, we started to do a soft rollout of informing people of the Clean Commute Program. And this is the one that we heard the most about. Implement the last mile solution. So they come up on the train, but their office is in Calle Real and how do I get from the train station to Calle Real?
How do I manage that? And so folks just say then forget it because I have no way of actually getting to my work office. But I wouldn't mind taking the train if there was some solution for that. Again, we've got to sit down with Traffic Solutions and figure out bus routes. Can they help us with that? What's the volume around that? So we need to do a little bit more work but I think that we can gain a lot by focusing on that. The next one is establishing employee dedicated charging stations.
In talking with Jeanette, she's committed to looking at the e-vehicles for parking facilities but of course her charge is the fleet and so whereas there may be charging stations how is it that the employees can get access to those if they're dedicated to the fleet? And so we may work some things out this year. For next year, we're going to want to focus on establishing employee-dedicated charging stations and at the same time increasing the number of van and carpool parking spaces if we can't achieve that this year what can we do for next year? What should the goals be around that? We still have to do some work And then the last one is implement cycling solutions. There's a very big cycling community, and we just have to tap into that and again partner with them to see what kind of solutions we can bring to the county.
Again, if you're interested we will be coming back to you and presenting a budget that would support these kind of bold steps. And that concludes my presentation and I just want to remind you that these are the recommended actions that were looking for today. To approve the Clean Commute Program as I presented it, approve the budget revision requests, and determine that the actions today are exempt. From the California Environmental Quality Act. Any questions?
Supervisor Hartman
Thank you. I think you've done a terrific first phase and looking forward to the second phase. Had a question about other businesses in the county and whether we in any way coordinate or get best practices, or will share what we learn with them? Is there any process in place to do that?
There isn't a process that we thought of right now. We were just building ours however, we did do some research with Marin County, Santa Cruz County. So we did look at some other and we have their contact information and We got lots of ideas from them But there really isn't so far that I'm aware but something we could try to do is Bring together the counties that are focusing on this And then we could have probably lots of answers around the telework and how it's working for them That'd be kind of a good thing
4:33 – 4:3919 turns
And and just one more comment. This is a shout out to our public works who for their scooter program are being recognized for an innovative by CSACA Innovative Reward Award, and I think They're going to be doing a presentation to SBCAG because one of the issues is cross-jurisdiction. You have to have similar rules if you're going from the train station in Goleta to the university and county jurisdiction, so we need to get more coherence in our strategies if we think scooters might be a way to go for the last mile.
Aha, I like
that.
Thank you.
So I had a question about so when Supervisor Hartman kind of touched on something I was thinking about as well but you were looking at other counties. I'm looking at other businesses what do we see here locally of other people participating? Other local businesses not joining our program but there's got to be other businesses out there that are Kind of studying the same thing or have, what I'm curious is if other people have the same problem with their participation rates that we do.
And then we offer a program and 5% of the employees are interested. I don't really want to spend money on projects that people don't want. So have we looked at UCSB or the hospital? No,
to be honest. However, to answer your question about and that's fair that you don't want to implement something that people don't want. The survey that we did in the fall of 2018. We actually did get a lot of Some of the barriers as to why but again my sense was Yes, we could increase this and increase the hat But if people don't know about what's there and that was the biggest thing right is just raising the awareness which is I As Supervisor Hartman indicated, that's why for me it is phase one. Because we have to first do that as a baseline and then-
And for me, I think that the barriers are bigger than what this county can deal with. I mean when I look at it and we're going to find out, I guess. But I think people just value their convenience so much that we're going to find out whether our employees buy in or they're not buying into what everybody talks about. So one of the other problems I have with it though is it seems like and I don't want to spend any more money on it. But we allocated $50,000 and 60% of it's gone already because we hire a coordinator or we have somebody doing it. There's no way that anybody else can pick this up as other assigned duty? Is it that much work that
It is in terms of because it's a completely new program and as I indicated there were no metrics. We have to start establishing the metrics, we don't have the relationships so I couldn't answer your question in terms of what other organization just locally because I don't have the staff that can establish those and we have to reach our Entire workforce because we're not currently and so I do understand that.
And it was one time monies, and so-
No, that's why, yeah, I'm okay with that. So one of the other questions I had was in a board letter under the fiscal analysis. It talks about the two days of vacation for any type of clean commuting of at least 80%. The person would get two days of vacation, but it says that the cruel maximums aren't being increased. And so I'm trying to figure out how somebody would actually get any more vacation.
How does that whole thing work without costing us any money? because it seems like if you get extra vacation days, it costs somebody some money.
Well, the caps are not moving so that in that year you can get the additional two days. We don't know what the balances are for everyone. Yeah we know but I mean in terms of this program. So you would get the two days and then it's implied that you would take the two days. Okay? So
I'm just trying to get it in my head. So let's say I am a new employee or whatever. I've been here two years. I have two weeks of vacation. So, I sign up for this clean commuting program. Do I then get 12 days of vacation or not?
You would get two additional days. I'd get
two additional
days. If you meet the criteria it
has to
be 80% and all that. Right.
So if you get two additional days of vacation though that costs the county something. Yeah, we lose two days of productivity. It's not-
Okay.
So when we do a fiscal analysis like that, is that how we normally track it and we just say it doesn't cost us? I mean, we can't put a dollar value on it, I guess. Is that what you're saying?
4:39 – 4:477 turns
I guess it's a yes and no. One is that because we pay out people's vacation at the end of their time with us, so it's a question of whether they would have accumulated those days or not when we pay them out for vacation. It's a vacation and liability we have for all our employees. What Marty Elena is saying, HR Director, is that for most people they're going to either use it or we have a lot of employees already at their cap and so that's the evaluation that they were doing.
Supervisor Williams.
I just wanted to reopen the topic first of all, I think it's great that you guys are taking the spirit of the mandate that the board gave you and going farther trying to get another department in trying to look at what would be some more effective ways to take this farther But one of the things that it seems to be obvious that we didn't do, I think was part of our motion. Was the prorating the TDM incentive, right? The vacation accrual incentive.
For people who commute by alternative means less than 80%. And I'm not saying that we should be just doing it for people who do it one day a week. But, I suppose you could put the threshold two days a week or three days a week or something like that. And the reason why I bring this up is particularly for trying to get participation up to a high level. I do think it helps when you put the barriers to entry low.
Commuting by alternative means one or two or three days a week is very helpful to the county, right? It may not be as helpful as four days a week but it's still very helpful. So my hope is that we put that back in there, at least on a sort of basis this year or to get people in the door or something like that. We could always reevaluate it if we're creating too much vacation time but Given we're starting with a pretty low participation rate, that there's really not a downside to success here. Meaning if we get a lot of people participating, that's kind of the problem that we'd like to have right?
The problem we don't want to have is Is that we continue to have traffic, we continue to have mobility issues. The problem that we'd like to have is that we run out of incentive money because it's too successful, right? And I wouldn't mind you guys coming back and saying hey! We were so good at this that we're running out of incentives. We need a little more, right?
That's the problem I want to have. So I just wonder my colleagues if they would be comfortable prorating the TDM incentive, vacation day incentive for anybody who's commuting by alternative means at least two days a week or at least three days a week. But at least bringing it down from four days a week which 80% time in order to Maximize the number of people that are taking part.
The other thing is I just wanted to put in there, and I'm happy to go to Mona afterwards. It's just the other, I think there's an advantage to all this stuff that goes beyond just the environmental. My primary reason is environmental leadership and reduction of greenhouse emissions. But traffic is the principal issue that people complain about in life, and reduction of traffic is an important one. And there's a reason why a lot New Wave businesses, a lot of technology-based businesses encourage this kind of stuff. And it's because of the productivity bonus that you see in studies that some of this stuff is counterintuitive. You have a little bit of working from home, you can actually see a boost in productivity instead of reduction of productivity.
Particularly if you couple it with a technology solution, because there really are software solutions that track your time of activity logged in. And I'm comfortable with that. It's just a little bit. Creepy, but it's I think part of the agreement from working from home is you deal with a little creepiness in exchange for less time on the road. But I don't think we need the level that call centers have or Which is amazing and maybe extreme, but at very least the software solutions that track productive time on your computer.
Sorry.
So there's a creepy quotient
thing you could fill in? I trust their judgment on how far to go down the creepy quotient.
On the proration, I just wanted to hear from our HR director and our benefits manager. So because there may be some magic formula proration but we wouldn't want to get to a level of it's two hours of vacation for our, because I think it's harder to track and we also have to do this, I think payroll has to track vacation as well. So I just wanted to hear from you what makes sense as far as proration?
Well, thank you for raising that because we did think about that and certainly will take the direction from the board. But just so that you know the reason we didn't change it is because We are wanting to create a culture, so I agree with you. It's just not about the productivity or the emissions part of it. We are wanting to create a culture that supports green commuting because it helps the employee.
And we want engaged employees, not stressed out, freaked out employees or creeped out I guess. So it's a values call that if we're wanting to create and to have our employees find other green ways to get to work by lowering the percent Then we're sort of saying, but not you know it's so it's how you want to see it. But we decided we were going to leave it at the 80% to say that that's our stance. That that's what we're wanting. That here's this benefit additional time off.
But we want people to actually do the clean commute and not just a day here or a day there, but to actually have the commitment. So that was the rationale, but I can see how by lowering it, yes it would bring more participation. So was it participation or creating a culture where we value the clean commute?
4:47 – 4:5212 turns
Chair LaVanina? Supervisor Hart? Yes, we are fortunate to have in the audience here in Santa Barbara representatives from SBCAG Traffic Solutions. Lori Lariva is here and she may be able to answer some of the questions board members asked about other programs that other employers have offered as well as the other programs that the local governments offer and I guess I would ask our HR director if traffic solutions was consulted as part of the development of our program
Yes, I actually met with them and Lori has been wonderful and supportive. So yes.
Okay good. I think she put in a speaker slip so she's ready to talk.
Alright we'll be getting there in just a minute. We got Supervisor Adam.
Supervisor Adam. Yeah, as you might expect I think this whole thing's ridiculous but the biggest barrier in my opinion to this whole thing is people's freedom and flexibility and this is why you don't have the participation and frankly I'm looking at...I had something ready and then I turned the page a while ago but I'm looking at some of these 5% Standards here.
You're saying that's our participation as of December 2018? And particularly this telework arrangement, 5%, you got 200 people doing that?
We have 5% right now, yeah.
Can you document that? Can you tell me who they are?
Yes, we can, right?
Okay, well I find it a little bit hard to believe that that's what we actually have. And so I'd like to see the documentation on that. That all being said, I would go for this thing if you don't make the new standards. We stop talking about it because we sit here and pontificate and virtue signal about this whole things as far as I'm concerned is a virtue signaling exercise.
I just wish that if we didn't make the standard again, we'd stop talking about it. Supervisor
Williams? I think that if we can make progress, that's why we talk about it. Just the savings on Our transportation network, it makes this little piddly amount of money worth it alone. So I just think that this makes sense and it makes sense beyond the virtue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions though I consider that very important too. And so I understand the HR's logic on the TDM, on the vacation incentive. In my experience at the city and at this, and I'm happy to be corrected if Traffic Solutions thinks it'll work better to have a high threshold. My experience is that it's hard to get people like, I have a toddler.
A lot of toddlers have their nap buddy or their little security blanket. Well, as much as we think we've gotten over that, we really haven't, right? Our security blanket just weighs a lot more. Depending on who we are, it varies from a compact to a large four by four. But that's our security blanket and people really have this weird nervousness that comes from any separation from it like my God what if X happened? What if, why happened? And I think we need to get people over that.
And to sometimes get people over that means not setting the threshold for participation too high. So I'd at least encourage us to go to anything more than three days a week gets to participate. Not set the bar so high that only four days a week and above participates.
Okay, I think we've had input. We're going to go to public comment. Thank you.
Yes, Chair Lavinino, members of the board, we have two requests to speak on this item. We're going to begin in Santa Barbara with Miss Lori Lariva, to be followed by Andy Caldwell back here in Santa Maria.
4:52 – 4:583 turns
All right. Good afternoon, Chair Lavagnino and Supervisors. My name is Lori Lariva and as some of you know I am also one of your staff members at the other agency you govern, SPCAG. So I work in the Traffic Solutions Division which has been referenced by Marina Elena and by others throughout this item. I came here today on behalf of Traffic Solutions and our Director of Traffic Solutions Kent Epperson to express our support of this item and the recommendations brought forth to you.
One of the key components of it is increasing the staff time. And based on my work at SBCAG the last 12 years or so, one of the challenges in implementing programs that already exist For county employees or sharing promotions that we're having and other type of benefits and resources for employees. One of the challenges has been that there's not enough HR staff time available to help with that. Through the years, we've worked in bits and pieces with public works or over the last two years with the new sustainability committee.
But now that it's trying to transition to HR, we've seen this opportunity to have more staff time allocated to it. And as Maria Elena was saying, really get the information out there to employees about what's currently available not only in the form of the benefits that the county is offering but just all the transportation options that are out there as well.
South Coast location in particular served very well by bus transit and train transit However, not a lot of people are aware of that. In addition in the North County there could be really strong uptake on carpooling and vanpooling if there were educational programs and opportunities shared with them that previously there hasn't been staff time to do so we think these are some great initial first steps And on top of that, just to comment on a couple of questions I think that came up from you all on the board in regards to telework and telecommuting. That is definitely something that's been documented for decades now to be quite successful especially for certain types of work and I think Supervisor Williams mentioned there are even very detailed technological ways to track how people are working, not to mention normal ways where you just tell that people are getting their work and their projects done and are turning in all of the reports and such on time.
So we are definitely in support of this telework pilot. Our division also was in support of it when there was a pilot with the Sheriff's Department in the early 2000s, maybe 2003-2005 or so and there is documentation about how that worked for the Sheriff's Department and policy that was created around then. To speak to some other things, I'd like to emphasize that in regards to kind of freedom and flexibility and security kind of brought up by Supervisor Adams and Supervisor Williams.
By having a whole suite of transportation options available to employees that does give them more freedom whether you're talking about our millennial workers or even someone from Gen X like myself the flexibility in work schedules are really appealing In providing, I think great morale in the workplace and we're great for retention and for recruitment. When it comes to the guaranteed ride home program that Maria Elena mentioned, and also the supplemental emergency ride home program that our division manages for anyone in the county, in the community.
Anyone who takes the bus or train or carpools would never be stranded at work if they have an emergency. They could take a Lyft, or an Uber, or a taxi, or rent a car, or use one of the county fleet vehicles and have that support to know that for the most part they could use transit if they want but when they need it they're going to have that support and flexibility there. So these are just some of the programs that are in place that I think employees don't know about yet.
And by having a new staff person, I think that will really help. We are committed at Traffic Solutions at SPCAG to being a resource to HR department and to the county as we are with any employer in the community. And that brings up one last point I wanted to mention. I think Supervisor Lavagnino was asking about what other businesses and government agencies are doing, and if you'd like that information we did work with A couple years ago with the Sustainability Division to compare what our other agencies are doing like the City of Goleta, City of Santa Barbara, Cottage Hospital, UCSB as well as some private sector employers. To show what their benefits were but that was a couple years ago and that was before HR was involved so if you'd like that information again we'd be happy to provide it and I'm happy to answer any other questions now or in the future as well as it relates to commuter programs
Okay, thank you very much.
And we are going to return here in Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell who is our final speaker
4:58 – 5:045 turns
General Avenino, members of the board. You've heard me give you this quote before that a leader with no one following him is just a man on a walk. And the county wants to position itself and the greater Santa Barbara area wants to position itself as one of the leaders in the free world of reducing greenhouse gases and pollution and this, that, and the other. But the bottom line is there's very few people Walking the walk and that includes your own staff.
And as I brought up last year, there's a horrible double standard going on here. You're all carrot when it comes to your own employees and you're all stick when it comes to the private sector. When was the last time you offered a private sector company, for instance an oil industry, an incentive for every ton of greenhouse gases they're reducing? You're demanding zero from them or less than zero.
But with your own employees it's like hey we're going to throw money at you and they're still not taking you up on the offer. I've never understood, I know that we did this at one time. I've never understood why for instance when UCSB adds thousands of students and hundreds of employees. Why an institution like that or some of the companies in Goleta can't have a staggered start and work time starting at 6, 7, 8 and 9 o'clock given their employees that option? You could take up to a quarter of the traffic off the freeway at any one time.
And I know that California did that at one time, encouraging private sector employees to just stagger work times for their workforce. It doesn't cost anything. I go back to the shoemash. If you want an example of a huge organization that has eliminated employee traffic to and from their facility with single occupant vehicles, they did it. You could do it. You could actually charge employees to park in your parking lot, to discourage people from driving to work. But again use carrots for your staff, the stick for the private sector.
I'm on the oversight committee for the 101 and measure A and all that sort of stuff. It's been really difficult getting numbers on the train. Here's another thing, an abysmal failure throwing literally committing tens of millions of dollars for this train that's got about 100 people using it. How come we don't have those things in these reports? It's not just your county employees that aren't doing it. It's the entire South County community that's not making use of it. And finally, what I keep bringing up, you're trying to figure out how to get workers to the job, move the job to the workers, open up a satellite campus in Ventura and more offices in Lompoc and Santa Maria.
You don't need to be in the highest priced real estate area in the entire Central Coast. Thank
you. All right, I'll bring it back for discussion. Supervisor Williams?
Chair Lavenino?
Supervisor Hart?
Yeah, just I think that the department is on the right track. We're starting from a very low base and this program is very modestly funded by the board direction. I'm concerned that the $28,000 for staffing is inadequate but it's a place to start and we did limit the total amount of money to $50,000. I guess I would ask the question of what is the full-time equivalent of that $28 thousand? I understand it's part time employee maybe Ms. Day-Weber could answer that, but in terms to the philosophical questions that folks have been asking, this is an employee retention recruitment tool. One of the biggest challenges we have is the long distance commutes as Mr. Caldwell described trying to get people from Ventura and north Santa Barbara County there are very effective long distance bus services, the Clean Air Express and the Coastal Express that operate The biggest challenge I think we have is that people don't know enough about those programs and increasing the information flow from the Human Resources Department directly to the employees is an absolutely critical first step.
It does take a fair amount of work to do that on a one-on-one basis with individual employees and commuters for them to understand how their specific commute needs I'm not sure pushing this stuff out passively on websites and providing links is going to be the most effective way to do that. But frankly, the metrics in this first year are pretty modest in their intent. Going from 5% of telecommuting to 8%, not even 10%.
You know, is a pretty low bar and I think we will find out after the first year of implementation just what the weakness is. And I think we're going to find that it is the staffing level. Clearly people save a lot of money particularly on long distance commutes if they are not driving alone, if they're using buses or carpools and making that case to them and explaining to them the real dollar values involved is a very persuasive thing. Other employers do it, Traffic Solutions has a great database of examples of what is effective in other jurisdictions and other businesses and we don't have to reinvent the wheel we just have to take advantage that information
5:04 – 5:109 turns
Thank you, Supervisor Williams.
I want to agree with Supervisor Hart that the department's on the right track and that I'm excited to see if some of these can lead to greater participation. But I want to speak to, first of all we already have some good tools out there if people know about them. One is that we have a great bus transit system in the South Coast. South County's headways with MTD are really good, especially in the sort of Goleta to Santa Barbara or Isla Vista to Santa Barbara and vice versa traffic.
And our supplementary transit systems are amazing too. I mean, our ridership on the Clean Air Express is really good. Our ridership on the Coastal Express is really good. These are services where you could start working when you get on the bus, right? You got internet. You don't have to deal with the stress of crazy people trying to run you off the road, and you can get to work for the minute you get on it. And so I think there's a great incentive there as long as people know about it and as long as maybe we give them a little bit of the carrot to try that, The routine that they're living, and in general it's a miserable routine that most of our employees are living, commuting.
And so if we can get them to break that routine then their lives will be better. Our employment will be better because we don't have to train their replacement and the institution will provide better services. I want to agree with the point that was made about sometimes the best solution will be relocalizing an office to North County. This is something that, On board with, because we have a jobs housing imbalance between north and south. And sometimes that's what will make sense. I think while we want to look at it though is where are the current employees?
Living right now, and this is something that both my staff and Supervisor Lavinio's staff have tried to look at. And it's not easy to figure out. So I don't know if it's something that in the long run, if we really want to figure this out well, Per function where the majority of our folks are, meaning the majority of folks that work at the downtown campus. The majority of folks who work on the county campus. The majority of folks segmented by department, that sort of thing I think. If some level of analysis with that would be in the long run help us plan, especially before we start to entrench some things with the county campus master plan or some of our other decisions. We should probably have some deeper analysis on that. But for now, great direction.
I would just make the motion of approving staff recommendation but lowering the pro rate able to take advantage of the TDM vacation incentive down to 60%.
Supervisor Hartman?
Second.
So Clean Air Express, they brought up a good point. That's a very successful program and I think Andy brought up a really good point about how we do, all we're talking about is incentivizing and the Chumash are a really good example of a green company. Well, I'm not exactly sure how many employees they have but I know they're the largest employer in the 5th district. So it's not like it's a small company.
And I'm willing to, this is such a small paltry amount that I'd like to see what we're able to do. But I think at the end of the day, it's going to take something like telling people you got to ride the Clean Air Express two times a month. What better way to find out how it works than you gotta get on it? You know, then people see if it's something that they like. They don't like. I don't know what the capacity is of that or how something like that would work but it's true. If it was an outside company this is exactly what we would be telling people to do.
So anyway, I'm okay with moving this just to see how it works. But my patience for it is going to be about as long as most people's sitting in traffic and so I'll support this but I really want to see how we do and if the employees respond. Because really, next year I'm not going to listen to the excuse that the employees don't know about it. At that point, I'm going to say look, the employees know about it, they don't. And I didn't have any excuse in that people don't know about it because I don't think they do.
But next year if our numbers don't go up, it's not because the employees aren't going to know about it. It's because they don' want to use it. So anyways, so we'll call for a vote.
Mr. Adam? No. Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr. Hart?
Aye.
Ms. Hartman? Aye, Chair Levine no. Aye. Motion passes 4 to 1.
Okay we have one last item and that is departmental item number four
5:10 – 5:2421 turns
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. Departmental item number four is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a response to the 2018 through 2019 grand jury report. The Kachuma project contract and management
Morning, Mr. Fairramp. I believe it's afternoon, Mr. Chair. Thank you. You got me. We're staying here all day. It goes by so quickly, you know? Yes. So much fun. Yes.
Mr. Chair and members of the board, staff is here to offer responses to the grand jury's report on Kachuma project and management. And again, the findings and the recommendations in the responses that I will outline here are staff's recommendations that your board to approve. Just in reference, this report was published on June 26th and the required vote is from or the required response is from the Board of Supervisors acting as the county and yourselves acting as the board directors of the water agency. And so when I say the board we use that as both entities here moving forward. So with that, I'll move into the grand jury's findings and our recommended responses.
With finding number one relating to the Kachuma contract, the current contract does not fully address future water management problems such as will arise from climate and other rapid environmental changes. We recommend that we agree with that finding and in fact, we've seen that play out over the last eight years up at Lake Kachuma. With that recommendation, one is that the directors of the member units and the Santa Barbara County Board and Water Agency pursue upcoming 2020 contract negotiations as an opportunity to create a completely new contract.
Our response to that is that it basically has been implemented we will have A new contract, the current contract expires on September 30th of next year. I would with the caveat that if we do not have a contract in place you could expect an extension of the old contract until the new contract is in place. Finding number two from the grand jury is public understanding and effective operation of the Kachuma project would be enhanced if key terms of the contract were defined and used more precisely. We recommend we agree with that finding.
And the recommendation is that the directors of the member units and your board require that key terms in a new contract are defined clearly, and used in a consistent manner. Our recommended response is that does require further analysis and will be raised by your staff during the formal contract negotiations with the Bureau of Reclamation.
I recommend
that we disagree with that finding and while the current contract is silent to some of the issues of responsibility, it's pointed out that the contract is between the Water Agency and the Bureau of Reclamation. And that there are separate agreements between each of the member units and the County Water Agency. Recommendation number three is that the directors of the member units in your board acting as the Board Directors of Water Agency ensure their roles are clearly defined a new contract.
Our response would be that it has not been implemented, but certainly when we start the negotiations that we would seek to clarify those roles and responsibilities. Finding number four, the current water year that's for the operation of the reservoir for allocations of water is from October 1st to September 30th which makes diversion recommendations and decisions difficult because it comes just after the rainy season when the quantity of water of Kachuma for the next few months is highly unpredictable.
And our recommendation is that we agree with that finding. Moving in the beginning of October, we do not know what the winner is going to show and that if we were to change that there might be some better information available. So the grand jury's recommendation is that the member units and your boards strongly urge negotiations for the Kachuma project contract have a water year from May 1st to April 30th or similar period to allow diversion requests to be made sooner After the of the rainy period this is an item that has been discussed between your staff and the member units.
Our recommendation would be that we requires further analysis establishing the water year will be analyzed during the contract negotiations which is expected to begin shortly, and I would say on this that we would look to our member units. It has worked in the current October 1st to September 30th, it has worked since the project was built. If there's benefits by moving that as seen by the memory units then we would support that as well.
Finding number five is provisions of the 2020 contract will need more frequent updating than those in previous contracts due to rapid climate change, altering natural conditions affecting water supply. We recommend that we agree with that finding. Again over the last eight years we've seen a more significant drought than we've ever experienced. We've also seen changes in allocations for downstream releases have impacted the amount of water available by diversion.
So the recommendations is that the directors of the member units in your board propose to the Bureau reclamation that a new project contract require a meeting between them and the Bureau every five years with the public agenda to consider changes. Our recommendation would be it requires further analysis, we plan to raise that matter during the negotiations with the Bureau.
And this is something that has been discussed in the past, that by having a periodic review of say the allocation and the yield of the Kachuma project. It's extremely important to retain a stable water supply. Finding six under the 1995 contract, the required five year meeting cannot result in increased diversion to the member units. We would recommend we agree with that finding. The contract does not allow for increased diversions.
Recommendation six is that the directors and the member units in your board propose to the Bureau that the required five-year meetings allow changes to the operations of the new contract, including increased diversions provided they are consistent with federal law, state law, project water rights, and do not negatively affect the environment, groundwater quality downstream of Bradbury Dam.
Our response would be that it requires further analysis. A five-year cycle of reevaluation of the reservoir conditions would allow for allocation schedule changes both up or down. For example, the State Board is currently meeting on water rights decisions for the Kachuma Project They may curtail how much water is available for the Kachuma project, but have clearly stated that in the future if they have not achieved the changes by increased releases for downstream. That then they would change that and allow more water to the memory units. So I think it could go either way so we recommend That we have to re-look at this every so often to make sure that we are not only meeting the needs of providing water, which the project was intended for. But also to ensure that we have a reliable and sustainable water supply through the consumer project.
Finding number seven, member units in the water agency have expressed support for formal quantitative methods of decision making under uncertainty which can identify sources of a disagreement and thus facilitate compromise solutions. We recommend that we agree with that finding. Recommendation 7, that the directors of the member units in your board establish a format for quantitative decision making under uncertainty and seek to narrow their differences on such components as probabilities of future rainfall patterns and criteria for desirable outcomes.
Our response would be that it has not been implemented but would be implemented during the negotiations part of that. And again what we would like to have is Science-based Yield analysis that could be updated every every five years or so. That would be a Technically based Based on what our predicted drought period would be and what the existing reservoir release schedules are Finding number eight The water agency and the member units agree that meetings of the technical staffs are valuable but disagree over the organization concerns of past meetings such as claims of infrequency, non-attendance, nonresponse and cancellation without notice. We recommend that we would agree with that finding.
And recommendation eight, that each year the directors of the member units and the Board of Supervisors acting as the directors of the water agency determine a schedule for multiple meetings of key technical staff to discuss Kachuma project operations including upcoming diversions. And to report major points of potential agreement or disagreement to their boards.
Our recommended response is that that will not be implemented because it's not warranted. Scheduling should remain at the discretion of the staff and having the directors do so would be overly cumbersome. Staff has the authority to convene and adjust the time frequency of these meetings. Staff updates the directors as appropriate on any policy direction given by the directors as carried to the meetings.
We actually started these meetings, your staff and the water agency when this last drought was in its early stages. I think around 2013 or 2014 we actually convened a meeting with the member units that had not been done for quite some time. And lastly finding number nine, the website of the member units and the water agency lack clarity and detail on the Kachuma project. We recommend that we agree with that finding.
And recommendation nine, that the directors of the member units in your board set up and maintain a specific website for detailed information on the Kachuma Project's history, structure, governance and operations with links to additional historic documents and records. And our response would be it has not been implemented but will be implemented when upcoming contract negotiations are scheduled this year. And I would actually comment on that and just talking with my staff yesterday, they've actually already started implementing that we've been redesigning our Kachuma website and will meet this recommendation as well.
So Mr. Chair and members of the board, our recommendations are A through, Is it C or did we change that? A through E.
For the water agency and the board. Yes.
Chair Levinino, members of the board as previously stated this morning this was our addendum we posted on Friday and it will be recommendations A through
F.
So that includes DE in F.
And with that I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Do we have any questions from the Board? Do we have any public comment on the matter?
Chair Lavinino, members of the board. We have no request to speak on this item.
Okay can I get a motion?
I'll move staff recommendation. Second. Moved and seconded, roll guess. I just wanted to comment that reading this, sometimes I struggle with these grand jury ones. There are obviously a collection like us supervisors of non-technical meaning not technical experts always but they're trying very hard to analyze. This and try to offer something that is a public service to sometimes critique what we're up to.
I feel like this response is both thoughtful, but it's respectful of the grand jury's role in a way Exhibits your can-do spirit, so I really kind of like this as a good example of how to respond to the grand jury's reports.
Mr. Fairam is a warm and fuzzy person, so that's great. Supervisor Hartman?
I just wanted to add this is an extremely complex area for the Grand Jury to master. And this is a very timely report looking forward, so it's, I really appreciate that about it as well.
All right, so we have a motion and a second. Roll call please.
Mr. Adam? Aye. Mr. Williams? Aye. Mr Hart?
Aye
Ms. Hartman? Aye Chair Levine no. Aye Motion passes unanimous.
5:24 – 5:252 turns
All right very good that brings us to the conclusion of our meeting We are going to adjourn and we will be back October 1st in Santa Barbara
All right. Music