UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:03 – 0:089 turns
I'll now call to order the June 9, 2020 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and budget hearings for fiscal year 2020 and 2021. Would the clerk please call the roll?
Mr. Williams?
Here.
Ms. Hartman? Here. Mr. Adam? Here! Mr. Labanino? Here
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
for members of the public to speak to items that are not on the agenda. Madam Clerk, are there any requests to speak on items that are not on today's agenda?
Chair Hart and members of the board, yes I have three requests to speak on general
public comment today. We are first going to Andy Caldwell to be followed by Tom Beckers.
Thank you.
Chairman Hart, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell. Tell you the truth we were quite... I'm going to say infuriated to see a county poster that was published demonstrate safely it is your right. We wish we would have been able to see the county acknowledge it was our right to go to church weddings funerals work recreation exercise and even haircuts Now as you well know, I've been pushing the county for months that if masks and social distancing work they should have worked under all circumstances. But unfortunately we were in a lockdown for quite some time.
And now in this past week the county announced that there were 50 cases in one day. That was the largest increase in nearly a month But now all of a sudden, Dr. Ansorg is saying we need balance and the situation is manageable. We made that argument two months ago that surge capacity had already been reached and we needed balance. And now all of a sudden they're saying what we said a couple months ago why?
Well I think the answer is in the fact that this week you're not even having an update on the COVID issue You're not having an update. You're having two meetings, there's no update today, there's no update on Thursday but you're gonna have a three hour hearing on racism. The bottom line here is that when people demonstrated or protest to reopen our economy we were shamed and scolded that we're threatening public health and safety But now on the Central Coast, there have been multiple protest rallies of two to 3,000 people or more.
And some of you participated in the rally. It just smacks of a double standard and it smacks at the fact that now that we've got a new horse to ride COVID is something that is now manageable and we don't need to be all that much concerned about it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Caldwell.
We will now go to Tom Becker to be followed by Renee O'Neill
0:08 – 0:123 turns
Okay, good. This is Tom Becker in Buellton and my comment concerns the statistical information that we are now getting about positive cases from COVID-19 since the county went into phase two. Now you folks approved the WISE document which had criteria for when The county can move into the next phase, which would be stage three or revert back into stage one, which is another lockdown.
I sent a letter to you, to County Board of Supervisors with my concerns about possibly how those numbers could be fudged and I also had a comment letter printed in Ed Hat which received 7000 views about this issue. Now in your RISE document for your statistical criteria, and you guys can look it up. The thing is that you're supposed to have fewer than I think it's 8% of positive tests out of the total number of tests. So if you conduct 1,000 tests, you can only have what? 70 positives or something like that, right? Or 80 positives.
You folks have absolutely blown that statistic right out of the water in the last couple weeks just yesterday Even though you had only nine positive tests recorded, that was out of a total of 37 total tests. Which means that you're at a 30% test positive rate out of the total number of tests. That's three to four times higher than what your criteria was for shutting down the county. And this has been going on now for last week.
11%, 30%. According to your own statistics, you're damn close to having to go back into shutdown in this county. But yet I just read a story today that you're going to allow the hotels and the salons to reopen under certain conditions where your own criteria is pointing to the fact that you probably have to go back into shut down if you held true to your own criteria Which it doesn't look like they do.
So I don't mind you guys going and opening the hotels and all that, just don't give us a bunch of BS about how you're going to monitor the number of percentages of tests because you're not doing that. And Newsome, I think has gotten so much heat that he's just basically abandoning all his positions on this. He's just gonna open it up. He knows that he can't cause anybody to go back for So I think it's a good thing we're opening these things back up, even though it's going to cause an increase in positive tests. But the thing is don't lie to us. Don't tell us that you're so concerned or you're gonna keep it at 7% and if it goes above that we're gonna go back on the shutdown and protect all of you. No you're not. You're gonna let it go back.
Thank you Mr. Becker
And we will now go to Renee O'Neill for our final speaker.
0:14 – 0:183 turns
Good morning Supervisors, this is Renee O'Neill. I really appreciate the direction the Board is taking and the concerns they have about the issues going on throughout our country and comments that were made in support of making change. And with that said, I just want to say thank you for that and to add this comment, I'm concerned about The upheaval, I'm concerned about talk about dismantling and abolishing police forces. Frankly, I don't think people have a clue what that would be like if that was the case. Granted, that does not mean to say that we don't need big changes in how we may make reforms in our police training and the attitudes with latitude that are out there in some respects but for the most part, I think the news is doing a disservice I wanted to say there's many great philosophers and inspirational leaders that I've held and hold in high esteem.
And I'm going to speak to two of them, Martin Luther King Jr., Wise words. There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right and he who passively accepts evil, immorality or corruption is as much involved in it as he who helped to perpetuate it. What happened?
Oh, sorry. I'm getting an interrupted call. Sorry, I apologize. He who passively accepts evil, immorality or corruption is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it and he who accepts evil malevolence and justice without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. And on that, I just want to say you know protesters around the world are expressing and reacting to these visions, these viewpoints that are going on to this day. So let's pray for change. Let's do everything we can to heal the deep wounds that have been not just in recent times but throughout history. Thank you for listening.
You guys have a good morning. I have a feeling my three minutes are up. Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you Ms. O'Neill. That concludes our public comment.
The next item is approval of the Administrative Item No. 1. Would the clerk please read that item into the record?
0:18 – 0:282 turns
Chair Hart and members of the Board, Administrative Item No.1 is from Planning and Development. It is to set a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the County and Montecito Planning Commission's recommendations to approve case numbers 20 ORD 4, 20 ORD 5 and 20 ORD 6 which would amend respectively the County Land Use and Development Code LUDC, the Article 2 Coastal Zoning Ordinance. And the Montecito LUDC to authorize the temporary suspension of compliance with the project description and or conditions of approval related to the following development standards if necessary to ensure social distancing and or other public health requirements can be met Setbacks, site coverage maximums, minimum open space. Parking and loading standards signs the requirement that uses shall occur within a completely enclosed building.
Restrictions on uses in the right way, limitations on food service at wineries and tasting rooms and or other developmental standards as determined by the director to be necessary for the protection of public health related to COVID-19. And this is a set hearing for June 16th 2020.
We seem to be having a technical problem. Maybe we should take a brief break and fix up the microphone, thank you. Hi. Okay, we're reconvening the Board of Supervisors meeting for June 9th 2020. And testing the microphone to see if it works. Here's gesturing. I think you can hear us, I think? It does still feel a little echoey but... Yep. Okay. Good test!
0:32 – 0:3512 turns
This is a test, test, test, one two three.
Yeah.
Okay, we'll reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting for June 9th. We are on approval of administrative item number one
Are there any members of the public who'd like to speak on this item?
Chair Hart, Members of the Board. We have no request to speak on Administrative Item Number 1.
Okay can I please get a motion to approve Administrative Item Number 1? So moved. Second. Motion's been made and seconded. Any discussion? Roll call please.
Mr. Williams? Aye. Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Lavagnino?
Aye.
Chair Hart?
Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you, we'll now move on to our scheduled agenda for fiscal year 2020-2021 budget hearings as a reminder the public has an opportunity to comment at the conclusion of the presentation of each functional group and I'll now turn it over to County CEO Mona Miyasato.
0:35 – 0:401 turns
Good morning chair Hart and board members Today marks the adoption of our recommended budget for fiscal year 2021. And before I begin, I do just want to say a round of thank yous to all the staff who participated and while the board chambers look empty obviously because we're practicing social distancing everyone is live on Zoom and if I scroll through it your staff is listening and being attentive so I just wanted to let you know that.
First I want to thank my staff Starting with Paul Clementi, our Principal Analyst who's led our team of Rachel Lipman, Richard Morgantini, A.J. Kinobeva who is here, Wesley Welch, Stephen Yee and Reese Elstead led by obviously our Assistant CEO and Budget Director Jeff Rappwell. And of course our Assistant CEOs Terry Nisich, Barney Meleckian, Nancy Anderson and our Communications Manager Gina DiPinto. I'd also like to thank our Auditor-Controller Betsy Shaper and her staff, Ed Price, Kyle Slattery, Robert Geis, Joe Boyer, Suzanne Uffelman, Danny Forner and Jeff Arthur who all were instrumental in helping put the budget together.
Before I make my formal remarks, I do want to just begin a little bit differently. So I saw this quote, and that's new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings by Lao Tzu. And today we provide an overview of the recommended budget for adoption. And like all years it's a spending plan for the coming year. And it represents projects in the making for over 20 years and initiatives developed in the last six months or less.
Largely it represents the work of your 21 departments with 21 lines of business, varying missions, varying pressures, varying mandates, varying funding sources all in the name of providing for the public's health safety and prosperity for everyone in the county. So thank you to all our department directors, all their staff and particularly their fiscal officers for working so hard this past year.
With this year the budget also represents a transition We're moving in that place that is a new beginning and an ending. And that's why there's so much uncertainty, and that's why you hear us talking about so much uncertainty. That in itself is a sign that we are in a transition. Moving through the pandemic to whatever comes next which could be more state or federal policy changes or local policy changes by your board.
Other natural or man-made disasters, social movements for greater equity Economic shifts, how we move through this and what we do next will likely set our path for the next several years to come. The economic pain we've experienced, the grief and anger over long-standing racial inequities, the restrictions we've all been placed under, and how we live our lives, we are all learning from this as an organization, as individuals, and as employees.
Another great philosopher who lives in Santa Barbara County, Oprah Winfrey said turn wounds into wisdom. And I think that's what we've done in Santa Barbara County. That's what resiliency is. That's a muscle that we all have for living here and working here. We've all learned, for example, how to work from home and how to help our employees do that. We've all learned how to work with electronic customer service better. We're all worked to help our businesses reopen quickly and easily while still protecting the public's health.
How to try new things that we haven't done before. Some have worked well and some have not. There's still a lot of uncertainty in this phase of transition, so the best we can do is prepare, be cautious, and depend on each other. And as an organization it means doing the most important things well. Prioritizing, triaging work, focusing on the most important things that we can do, and be willing to trade off those things that are desired but may not be essential at this moment.
So I again say this is about transition and change. And before I begin my formal presentation and go through my slides, I'd like to quote one more great philosopher of our time who sums it up like this. Once a pickle never a cucumber again. And that is obviously from Supervisor Adam. And I just want to note this is Supervisor Adams last budget. He's been a stalwart defender of maintenance of core county governmental functions So I just wanted to acknowledge that and thank him for helping guide the county in our discussions of doing some of the most important things well.
0:40 – 0:4518 turns
You know whether to get up and clap or stand here, look pretty.
So let me now go on to my formal presentation.
Mr Chair, Madam CEO I just want to maybe show that even though I'm really close to you when you speak really fast the echo is bad enough that I can't understand what you're saying When you speak slowly, even awkwardly slowly, I can understand.
And for me, I can understand Jacqueline because I can see her but when you turn around, personally, I don't know if people outside can understand what's going on. It's really hard to get this and I don t want to spend the whole day working on it but I also don't want to spend the whole day with feedback so I would rather take some time I don't know if there is a way to fix it, but to me that's not real workable.
Supervisors will take a break and see if we can fix it. It is fine online oddly enough and that may have to be our solution today so let's see what we can do but it is working on the Zoom session.
Let's come back at 10am.
I don't think mine's... Is mine on? Mine's 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I think mines... Yeah.
Mine is more soft than... No, I'm not off actually. It's funny how it's very light. I don't know why that is.
Because
I'm the lead singer. Echo
or does it sound straightforward?
Testing, testing. One two three.
Test test.
Test
test. Keep talking. It's echoing. Does this one? This one sounds echoey.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Testing, testing one two three. Testing, testing. Do we have an echo? Test, test.
Test, test. Can you hear an echo here? Hello, everyone. Yeah.
0:49 – 0:539 turns
This is a test.
This is a test of my microphone. We are going to give it a try again. Testing, testing, testing. Test one two.
Testing. Test one two. Test one two. Test one two. Testing. Test One Two.
Here we go again. This is trying to see if you can hear anything at all. It's not echoing, that's good. It's not super loud but...
Are they getting it on that side? On the other side? Test one two testing. Test one two testing. Yeah.
Test test, one two three. Test test, one two three. This is a test. We are testing our microphones.
I'm ready.
Test 1, 2. Testing, test 1,2.
Test, test, test one two. Is that echoey?
1:03 – 1:157 turns
Testing, testing, one two three. Testing, testing. We'll probably want it. This is a test. Test, test, one two three. Test test.
Test one two. Test
one two.
Like I said.
Test one two, test one two. Testing one two, testing one two. Test one two, test one two Testing one two testing one two
testing one
Test one two, test one two. Testing one, two. Testing one, two. Test one, two. Test one, two. Test one, two. Test one, two Testing one, two. Testing one, two. Testing one, two, testing one, too. Testing one, two. Testing one, two. Testing one, two, testing one, too. Test one, too test one, Test one, two. Test one, two. Testing one, two, testing one, too.
1:15 – 1:183 turns
Hello, does that sound any better? Can you hear me at all? It doesn't sound like it's broadcasting very loud in the room and I'm pretty loud. Hello testing 123 is this getting any better can you hear me Mona? Is this hello? Speaking up it's pretty low I mean I'm talking louder than I would naturally maybe not much louder but Okay, good. We're getting there.
Testing one two,
Okay, there we go. Testing one two three that sounds like it's where we're there I think success yay no echo you can hear me fine good Try it again here we go testing this is the dry run of what will happen in ten minutes and it's perfect
1:23 – 1:275 turns
Testing one two, testing one two. Testing one two, testing one two. Test one two test one two
Okay, testing 1-2-3. Can you hear? Is this loud enough? This sounds louder than it was before. Can you
hear me? Testing 1- 2. Testing 1 – 2. Testing 1 – 2.
The click testing 1-23 are they turning it up? Is it going up more? It sounds fine. Okay. You can live with that though. That's the problem. No.
Testing one, two. Testing one, two. Testing one, two, testing one, too. Testing one, two. Testing one, two. Testing one, two, testing one, Testing 1, 2. Testing 1 ,2. Testing 1, 2. Testing 1 ,2.
1:28 – 1:318 turns
Hi Carlos, can you hear me?
Yes Silvio, can you hear me? Can you hear me Silvio?
Yeah.
Testing one, two. Testing one, two.
Hi everyone. If someone on Zoom can please test and confirm that they can hear us? Perhaps... Shauna?
Check one-two. Test one-two.
That's North County. Perhaps someone on Zoom if you're available? Perfect great thank you.
Check, check one two. Test one two.
1:35 – 1:406 turns
Test one two, test one two, test one two. Test one, two. Can you hear me Sylvia okay?
Hey Carlos, go ahead.
Hi Silvio this is a test test test one two three test test one two three
check one two
All righty, and we are just going to test Zoom really quick. Damon if you wouldn't mind just confirming that you can hear us and then if you can also speak back please as test test 1 2 3. This is a test. Test, test. One two three.
Yes, I can. But we're not in the meeting yet right?
1:40 – 1:4516 turns
Hi everyone this is a friendly reminder we are live so if you're on zoom we are still just testing so please stay muted unless we are testing thank you yeah if um I heard somebody briefly Maria Elena, if you wouldn't mind testing just by saying test test 1 2 3 that would be great. All righty, those of you on Zoom is there somebody available that can test back to make sure that we can hear you here in the hearing room?
Great. Thank you so much.
Check, check one two. Test one two. Check, check one two.
Can you hear me, Silvio?
Can you hear us, Silvio? This is a test of the sound. Joan, could you turn it to yours?
Yes. It seems to
work. 1-2-3, 1- 2- 3.
Testing 1- two. Testing one two, testing one two.
Testing one two, testing one two. Test.
Yeah that's good. It's Doss and Jeff.
Test one, two.
I guess he was checking yours. So yeah. OK.
Test, test, test, test.
Yep. No echo. That's great.
Testing one, two. Testing one, two.
Testing one, two? Testing one two? I'm having to get pretty close.
Yeah, that's good enough for government work.
1:46 – 1:575 turns
Testing one two, testing one two. That's much better.
Testing one two, testing one two.
We'll reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting for June 9th. We are in the budget hearings for the 2021 fiscal year. CEO Miyasato is making a presentation about the budget.
Thank you, Chair Hart and board members and thank everyone who's watching we apologize for the delay So let's get into the presentation this morning. So I'm going to give a quick overview and I'm gonna hand it over to Jeff Rapwell, our Assistant CEO and Budget Director who will give a little bit more detail over the functional groups and department updates then it'll be time for board deliberations and decision making and actions So we continue to talk about this. I'm not going to keep repeating it but as everyone knows, we're in a recession and the shutdown has caused distress to our families and our community and our businesses There is light at the end of the tunnel. As we know, more businesses are being able to be reopened under the governor's roadmap plan.
So that's hopeful and we're continuing to do that and still protect the public's health for the county. And like all counties across California or the forefront of our local response in providing for public health safety net services and public safety. But those important questions still have to be answered. And that is for how long will this last? What is the real degree Of the impact on our economy and will there be federal and state assistance? And some of those questions are not able to be answered now, and they may not be able to be answered in fall.
They may not be able to be answered in December. We know that there's a concern about the virus reappearing and if there is another surge in the fall along with the flu The economy could be contracting again, which would have a devastating impact on the state economy and our local economy. Also we know the state is still discussing their budget with the governor, the assembly and the senate but the states budget both the governors version and the senate and assembly versions depend on greater federal assistance to the state. And that is not clear when that may happen even though they're fiscal year begins October that may not happen until after that time.
So as we know, this is a test of our resilience. But I have to say that we are in a better position to address this downturn than we were in the Great Recession. The board has made choices to save and put funds in reserves and has restraint on spending that allows us to be better positioned So our objectives in this budget, given the uncertainty was to do no further harm to the most vulnerable and to those in our community by trying to maintain current service levels to the greatest extent possible. Maintain your commitments to long-standing projects and initiatives and continue to invest in things that will help mitigate a recessionary impact.
We have key revenue losses from not only this current fiscal year but looking into the next fiscal year through next quarter, the first quarter. But we assume a slowing recovery over the next two fiscal years. And I have to say that when you look at us compared to cities, counties are more resilient in that regarding local economically sensitive revenues compared to cities. Most of our revenues as you know 35% come from state and federal sources. That means we are reliant on them. But our discretionary revenue from sensitive sources are only 6% of our total revenue. And again, as I noted before the state and federal budget therefore will have a big impact on us. This budget before you does not assume any additional state or federal bailout funds.
So Jeff will talk a little bit more about this, but you've seen this before that our total revenue loss is anticipated at $21.7 million and that's from not only our discretionary revenue but state funds like Prop 172 for public safety realignment for both safety net services and public safety and transportation funding for important uses like roads. The largest impact has been to social services, given our projections. And if it weren't for the backfill of revenue, it would have equated to approximately 66 full-time employees having to have impacts and potentially layoffs with the largest impact on child welfare services.
We expect that directly related cost to COVID to be about $5.6 million but it could be greater again depending on the trajectory Again, your board has maintained healthy reserves and restraint. And so for which the whole organization and community thanks you because this has allowed backfill of use of cannabis tax revenue as well as using strategic reserve and special revenue preserves another funding.
We've already begun contingency planning with our departments and we will come back to the board for potential mid year actions as we know more about the pandemic and we know more about other funding As we said, we continue your essential commitments and priorities including the Northern Branch Jail is still scheduled to be finished construction this summer and begin operations later this fiscal year.
The TRRP, the Tahegas Resource Recovery Center which is now the resource center is expected to open early 2021. The Mental Health Rehab Center in Lompoc that will be operated by Crestwood is also scheduled to open later this summer and that will provide more mental health beds And for which we're contracting for some of those. We're continuing the criminal justice partnerships and work that began with diversion efforts, and we are continuing internal process improvements including the KPMG management reviews.
Many, a couple of years ago the board had talked about doing COPs and then last year we identified potential projects and debt financing for those projects. And they're listed on the screen, radio replacement which is a large project, beginning funds for the probation department headquarters, main jail renovations, expanding the EOC and improvements to the Kachuma Lake Park And so we expect that we would do that debt financing this year and we've waited until we had better estimates of some of these project costs. And so those are in our capital budget.
We continue to have the challenges that we have every year on top of COVID, and that is just legislative changes that continue to affect our department's workload. We have continued deferred maintenance of our roads parks and Technology at the end of its useful life and as we know, increased cyber security needs. We're looking at office space reconfigurations not only to address social distancing but to address how can we be more efficient and smarter in our office configurations and whether we need as much office space? Managing the workforce continues to be a high priority looking at succession planning And continuing recruitment and retention efforts, even though we are having a what we call hiring review process right now is that all hires are being reviewed by our office in HR before they're approved.
And we know that we will have increased pension costs not in the next fiscal year but the year following We continue to follow responsible fiscal practices, and this year we've made some adjustments. So I want to go through those. We've always used one-time funds for one time uses to the extent possible. In this situation, we're not sure how long the revenue losses will continue, and they may be temporary in nature. Again, we don't know. And so we've used some one-time revenue, as I mentioned, for some backfill until there's more certainty about our state and federal revenue assistance. Cannabis revenue is being used for one time costs as well. There are some ongoing costs that we're funding this year aside from enforcement but largely it's been used for one time costs and that is to We've been doing that as a practice to ensure some consistency until the market is stable and also until we're stable, as in clear about our local regulatory structure that we're putting in place.
We have maintained strong reserves so the strategic reserve has a goal of 8% and we're at 7.6%. Some of the strategic reserve is being used to backfill. Some of these social service programs and prop in public safety programs We're continuing to put money into the street the strategic reserve. And so it's at seven point six percent We continue to fund multi-year initiatives like the CIP as I talked about for capital projects and technology improvements continuing to look at efficiencies and improved operations and seek grants and partnerships and So we talked about the next normal. That's how we phrased our budget this year, and how we get to the next normal. And I've said this before, I don't call it the new normal. The new normal almost implies it's a steady state once you get there.
For us, it's the next normal. It's what's coming next, and I mentioned some of those things in my opening remarks. Will there be another man-made or emergency or natural disaster? What will the state impose on us That they're already talking about further realignment of juvenile efforts to our local probation department. What does it mean for the criminal justice system? What is the next normal for us? We don't know, but we need to be resilient and make sure that we are in a state where we can address those things. So I keep talking about this pandemic as unfortunate as it is, to accelerate Renew22 and looking at how we redesign our practices, respond, rebalance our resources, look to what the public really needs from us and how we can retain and meet our employees' expectations.
We weren't able before the pandemic to kind of highlight these new transformative actions. Terry Mosnisch and the transformation task force that she was leading were working on this, and she brought a report on Renew22 talking about these. But I bring them up here because these are the actions and behaviors that we've already been exhibiting and exhibiting even more through this pandemic having to collaborate Aligning our purpose, taking more risks.
Looking at data to see if our experiments and risks are paying off and doing more what-if scenarios. So with that, that's just a prelude to the budget. And with that I'm going to hand it over to Jeff Rappel who will go into more details.
Thank you CEO Miyasato. Mr. Rappell?
1:57 – 2:064 turns
Thank you Mr. Chair and board members. I'd like to take you through our summary of our recommended budgets today For the balance of our hearing today, I'd like to walk through both the context that we find ourselves here as we look forward into fiscal year 2021. review the recommended budget and provide your board with a recap of adjustments that are built into the recommended budget as it stands today.
To walk through some functional group overviews, and in doing so we will pause at the end of each functional group to allow questions for your board either of our office or of the department directors who are available via technology, as well as to provide opportunity for public input. And then finally, as we'll reach board deliberations at the close of our hearing today.
Let me set the context for us. We find ourselves as our CEO opened this morning in a rather unique situation. Our normal timeline is laid out here and you can see I shared this little bit about In April at the workshops, the disruptor that was COVID. And you can see that in November we took our five year forecast and brought to your board and put on the radar screen some significant fiscal issues that we needed to be mindful of in developing this coming year's budget as well as future years. December your board adopted budget development priorities and then everything went back to departments in our office to develop the requested budget for fiscal year 2021.
And then COVID hit, and you can see here on the timeline we've put some significant events here And it brought us forward, and I shared this during workshops. But it brought us forward through workshops on May 14th the board, as the governor released his May revised budget and I'll talk a little bit about that in future slides. And here we are at hearings today.
You've certainly heard us discuss In prior board presentations, the uncertainties in COVID and I'm going to run through numbers again with you just. Refresh your memory and to set the context, but certainly there are uncertainties. Certainly there are uncertainties that this causes. And so the length is as Mona mentioned, the length and extent of the COVID impacts and whether or not we will have a contraction of business opportunities again in perhaps another stay at home order.
The federal state assistance continues to be unknown for us as well as a long term impact on our state and local economies. Obviously as we look forward to this coming November, we'll provide your board with an update of five-year forecasts as we do each year. And in that forecast, we will be modeling different scenarios with respect to long term impact on our discretionary revenues and our economically sensitive revenues.
And while we have these uncertainties there are some certainties. And those are the financial impacts. Although we don't know the extent, we certainly know we have them. And the recommended budget before today builds this in and so revenue losses as Mona mentioned roughly expected to reach 21.7 million and our cost to respond built into the recommended budget is about 5.6 million.
I've shared with your board these numbers in the past but I'll go through them quickly in the major revenue categories that The impact of the general fund discretionary revenues is roughly $3.6 million in what we refer to as our 1991 and 2000 realignment, and these are important funds that go primarily to public health, behavioral wellness, and our Department of Social Services about $10.6 million.
Our transportation revenues largely gas tax and the highway user's tax in Measure A impacting Public Works is 3.9 million estimate And finally rounding out with our Prop 172 public safety sales tax impact of about 3.6, in total $21.7 million estimated revenue loss. As we turn to the cost category of responding to this pandemic as we move forward in next fiscal year, we've identified $5.6 million roughly in these five categories.
Should the county need to activate alternative care sites? And again, these are sites that are in preparation in case our health system becomes overrun and significantly impacted by the pandemic. That estimate is 2.7 million if we need to open that facility. Our EOC operations public health department operation center And overtime and response staffing is estimated about $1 million.
Temporary shelter and accommodations, 850,000. COVID testing and contact tracing a minimum of 750,000 and paid leave to provide our employees 250,000 in the upcoming fiscal year. All in total, $27.3 million potential impact from COVID and that is built into the recommended budget before you today.
Supervisor Williams had a question I think.
Yeah on this slide I just am curious what of these categories of funding are squarely within the definition in CARES Act reimbursal? Obviously not loss of revenue. But what of the expenditures are and I was holding my tongue just because we got. Because of the technical difficulties before but just during Mona's slides, would like to have it memorialized and understand how many positions in child welfare services, the sheriff's department and elsewhere are we saving by putting cannabis revenue and other and other revenues into saving that gap. I just want to know really what that scale is, so you don't have to answer the latter but the former would be
informative for today. Sure, sure. Supervisor Williamson through the Chair. So as I'll mention in a few minutes, the May revise proposed by the Governor as well as the version of the state budget that is developed by the Assembly and the Senate Each project the sharing of the state's portion of the CARES revenue down to the county. Should that happen? There's a lot of questions about that, the question is will it happen?
If it does happen how much will be and secondly what strings will the state put on that? And not least of which is the timing when that must be spent. The CARES dollars as they came down from the feds to the state have a spending deadline of December 31st. And unless that's extended, that's the date we know today. It also was very strict with respect to its potential uses.
So of this list I would suggest that the 5.6 would be an eligible use of those monies should they come down. And so there's a lot of assumptions and ifs in that statement, so I apologize for not being more precise. But I think to your question should we receive those dollars and the state doesn't otherwise restrict them? These are the categories that I think would be eligible for those funds. And I say that carefully because it really depends on the timing And I look specifically to, and remember this is our projected cost for the fiscal year from July through next June.
The CARES Act money if it becomes available and is not otherwise extended will only cover those costs through December. So I say that because we've talked about and we've seen different models as it relates That suggests that there might be a resurgence of the pandemic and potentially impacting our healthcare system. That might trigger their alternative care sites, but it might not happen until after January.
And if that's the case then right now it's all local cost. So I think 5.6, sorry that was a long answer to your question. I think 5. 6 is eligible assuming the timing happens between now and December 31st.
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So let me talk a little bit about the... Just the follow-up to that. And, but because of that deadline the similar amount that we used in this fiscal year would also be eligible.
So Supervisory Committee Chair I believe that's correct. That's kind of how I'm looking at it right now. Right. Got
it.
In the Governor's May Revise, really I think it provided us more questions than answers and conclusions but I think that it was important. It is always important when the governor releases May Revise to get a glimpse into his thinking of spending priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. I won't go through these two slides in great detail other than to say That in the January budget originally released by the governor, he was projecting a $54 billion, I mean a 5.6 billion surplus. By the time he released the May revise it was a 54 billion dollar deficit and so that really sets context and really reshaped and made his office and his budget office really drastically look at how they provided services Obviously in the January budget, he had projected to increase services and expand services.
That was contracted obviously off the top but it still reflected a large deficit for the state. And as we talked about before, the county gets significant amount of our revenues directly from the state and to the extent that we become financially married to the state, we also bear on that risk and that reduction in revenues. The Governor's May revise included $15 billion in spending reductions that were hinged on and would be unwound if the federal government had to bail out to the state of California.
And I say that in contrast, to contrast with the version of the state budget being proposed by the Assembly and the Senate because it's flipped on its ear. It, that version assumes that they will get the federal dollars but has triggers on October 1st if they don't. And so there's a lot of negotiations still going on actively today as we speak and through the balance this week with the state's goal of adopting an estate budget by the 15th of June.
If they are successful to do that and we have a little more clarity, we won't have sufficient clarity to really know what impact that has on the county for another couple of months. Typically when the state adopts a budget especially when we're in such transition as this and disruptors such as COVID it'll take time for them to figure out what does that mean by program and then By program, what does that mean by county? So it's going to take us a while even if they adopt their budget on time for us to really understand what impact that will have on the county's budget. Helping Human Services I won't go through this but certainly CARES Act as I mentioned you know the May revise suggested that the County of Santa Barbara could get as much as $46 million again To cover costs associated with response and not to backfill revenues.
So how did we arrive at the recommended budget? And looking at the recommended budget, certainly we have the COVID impacts that are built in. We have service levels that have been preserved a large extent through the use of procedure reserve and other fund balances. Unlike other counties to have a growing revenue stream from cannabis which helped mitigate the need to take significant service level impacts in our departments.
And we granted very few expansions, some related to cannabis tax revenues for our budget to enhance the program and support your board's priorities. But that leaves about 18.1 million in expansion requests from 12 departments that are not funded in the recommended budget. And we'll go through those and discuss those as we go through the functional groups. As Mona mentioned, we adhere to your budget development policies that we adopted in December and we continue to maintain strong reserves to weather both current year and future year losses.
So how do we close the gap? So the gap is largely closed by these actions. So service level impacts reserved through cannabis, tax revenue, strategic reserve and other funds. $10.8 million specifically to backfill losses in realignment and other state funding within Department of Social Services. And this supervisor will give you a partial answer to your question.
This 10.8 represents about 66, the cost of 66 full-time employees within that department spread across a variety of programs run by DSS. To backfill that 10. 8 within social services there's 3 million of cannabis tax revenue, 3.8 million in strategic reserve, 2 million in the use of our SC settlement funds and 2 million for prior year carryover funds Within the Department of Public Works, I spoke a little bit about the loss of gas tax, HUDA and revenues. That's about $3.9 or $4 million potential loss in those sources.
We have $2.4 million transfer to mental health in order to preserve services within behavioral wellness. 3.6 million of cannabis revenue used to backfill the temporary losses in Prop 172. Prop 172, as your board recalls is our public safety sales tax. It was passed by the state and the money is collected by the state off the statewide sales tax and a portion that comes back to counties and cities in our county.
And estimated $3.6 million impact. Those funds go largely primarily to the sheriff, the district attorney, public defender And probation, a small amount to CSD. So let me provide you a little bit of an overview of the budget and then we'll get into some detail. At the highest level, the budget right now is recommended at $1.19 billion. That represents an increase from last year as you can see Our FTE staffing goes from the current year adopted of 4255 to 4304. That increase of 49 FTE has spread throughout a dozen or so departments, largely funded and actually most were added during the current fiscal year as it relates to grants or new programs.
You'll recall as just one piece of that we transferred Pre-trial services from the court to probation so that accounts for about nine or ten positions here as well. Significantly though, as I presented the preliminary budget during workshop we have made adjustments to that budget to reduce the discretionary revenue By about 20 million dollars you can see kind of where that is spread throughout so the 1.1 The one point two one billion was our kind of preliminary budget as we rolled into workshop That just what we've made to reach today and recommend a budget shows a reduction of about twenty million dollars Largely in intergovernmental businesses, which is where we all saw it. We saw our realignment dollars There's taxes and charges for services So as we look at our operating revenues, and we'll see this is how it kind of breaks down among our funds.
And you can see there on the bottom highlighted in yellow is a general fund and that makes up about 37% of the total budget largely coming from discretionary revenue. You see 300 million from discretionary revenue and other revenues within the general fund make up about 12%. Followed by our social services fund, which represents 13% of our budget or 159 million.
Next behavior wellness fire public health and then all other funds together is the 17%. Looking specifically at our county general fund discretionary revenues you'll see here that the Delta from current year adopted to the most recommended in Our property tax is the strongest growth among those, growing $13.18 million. Cost allocation services are charges between departments related to the county's cost allocation plan which is managed by the county's audit controller makes up about an increase of 6.3 million. Our local sales tax is 10.9 million.
I'm sorry, looking at the far right column. Our sales tax is projected to be 10.3 million. Our TOT is 12.4 essentially and cannabis at 10.6. So all in total we're reflecting a growth of our discretionary revenues about 24.5 million or 8.9%. So although this is healthy growth it's significantly lower than what we had anticipated. Your board will recall as If you look at the expenditure side, You'll see the general fund is about 34% of our total expenditure budget, followed obviously by social services and behavioral wellness. You'll see as it's broken down by the variety of percentages.
Retirement is always one of the key drivers of our costs and you will see here that in our current year adopted budget we had a retirement contribution of $142.9 million moving to 151.7. So about 8.8%. And I say that, obviously because they are not expected to meet their assumed earnings rate in the current fiscal year. And that will have a greater impact in the following fiscal year 21-22 and that's important as it sets context for where we sit today And as we look at how are we going to prepare for those certain impacts next year.
You can see in a normal year, our retirement contribution went up 8.8. I think perhaps and time will tell us say as the system works through their final actual earnings for the year as well as then goes through their actual study that would drive the 21-22 rates It wouldn't surprise me that just the component related to not meeting their assumed earnings rate could be four to six million dollars. That would not surprise me, and that's on top of the normal increases that we would see here. So I think that I take time today just to set that context because I think it's important as we're looking forward to keep that in mind.
So here's a breakdown of our staffing. Obviously, Health and Human Services here shows about 41% of our total FTE count followed by Public Safety makes up about 36.4 and going all the way up to the Policy Executive Group which is about 2.3% of our total FTE count. I thought that was interesting in that it helps demonstrate where we We put our resources, obviously our staffing costs are one of our largest components of cost in the county budget. And this shows kind of where that falls by functional group.
If I can turn our attention to maintenance funding over these next couple slides and run down for you. Our baseline funding by board policy is about $2.3 million. You can see it's broken down public works General services and parks. On top of that we have your board's 18% funding policy, and that's up a total of $8.1 million which is increase about 1.7 from last year our current year and for a total of 10.4 million dollars on top of that We have some projects that were identified through the annual CIP process and prioritized I Share these with your board during workshops, but they are three projects that are essential to move forward on. And that's the HVAC replacement in the county's main server room located at our EOC.
The replacement of a portion of the main jail roof that has exceeded its useful life and as well as kind of a bucket of money for roof repairs in a variety of smaller county facilities. As speaking as an old general services director, all being operative. But it's critical as we look at maintaining our county's facilities that we are focused first on structural integrity of our facilities which is key for the envelope of the building including roof and then move to the inside. So this is a priority and we recommend it as a priority to create this essentially bucket of money to focus on roofs In addition, we've created and recommended the creation of some annual kind of buckets of money that focus on specific areas.
Here we have three which is the county's implementation of our ADA plan. We completed in the current year an update to the county's ADA plan. We're required to have that under federal law That identifies efficiencies in our county facilities and sets forth a five-year plan to begin to address those. And so this $500,000 will be a step in that direction and so I think that's important as we comply with the federal regulations.
With respect to security improvements, this has been our board priority in the past We've emphasized it this year in creating what we're saying is an ongoing dollar amount to focus on security. It becomes a greater and greater need as we move forward, as well as creating a bucket of money to do energy reduction upgrades. I think it's important not only to meet our ECAP goals and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but just energy reduction in our county facilities through the use of technology and systems in order to do that. Whether that is HVAC systems, cooling systems, whether that is replacement of lighting to go LED or energy reduction improvements. So we've set that up, recommend that as a priority and created this bucket for your board's consideration.
And finally you know as we look at total maintenance funding Within Public Works, we have the SB1 and road maintenance as well as other grants and TDA funds. So in total maintenance funding about 19.6 million.
2:24 – 2:364 turns
Can I just ask a question on the two slides ago? A HVAC system, you always got me at HVAC. I'm always ready to fund that because it usually reduces your ongoing expenses to have a more modern system. But can you always highlight it in cases where it's a new system as opposed to a replacement? This is obviously a replacement and you're saying it but We we look at that and in these materials and it's not clear.
And the reason why I want to highlight it is that you know long on to do list but needs I in my view needs to happen is We still don't have a universal guidance that is possible to be implemented on what the range of temperatures should be in county buildings, right? I just want you to fathom for a moment how much money we waste every month because of that.
How much carbon emissions we waste every month because of that and consider that other local governments have implemented this over 10 years ago. And so just want to take the opportunity to make a policy pot shot because it relates to the budget, that it's just an really important thing. It's a very comparably Easier way to save money on energy is just to have that and hope that we continue to work on them.
Okay, so as we move forward to our next normal as we're referring to it some key things in moving us continue to move the county forward is continuing investment in technology. And we've highlighted this for your board in previous discussions and presentations but has continued to invest in our information infrastructure so that we're able to be both resilient and be more effective In the way we do our business.
A key component of that, and we've again shared this with your board in the past, is what we refer to as BANA. And this is a project, large-scale project being led by the county's auto controller's office and I appreciate their leadership In this regard, it is the Executive Committee for the Manor Project. It's comprised of our Controller's Office, our Human Resources Department and CEO's Office and IT, General Services.
And the focus here is to really do an assessment of our needs and then develop the design of a replacement system that would take into account our financial update in our financial systems or HR systems And our budgetary systems. All with the ability to be integrated with each other, which is something we don't enjoy currently in a very clean way. In addition, Mona mentioned the moving forward I think now this coming year on our COP funder projects. We are at a point where we have good cost estimates for these projects and that will be bringing these back to your board for final approval and consideration during this year.
Specifically turning our attention to cannabis on this slide is really the use of cannabis tax revenues. And so as we look at that, enforcement costs are roughly $3 million. Tax collection and program administration is about 480,000. I mentioned the backfill of 172 revenue losses, 3.6 the backfill of losses of revenues within social services a three million and three million toward the use of our response cost for COVID.
We also have some budget expansions, which we'll talk about in a little greater detail. But that's the enhanced library funding that your board provided us direction on to fund during workshops, $658,700. We have recommendation for expansion on enhanced tax collection and program administration at a value of $190,000, essentially $200,000. And the addition of two FTEs for long-range planning positions So that's a total use of cannabis tax revenue is about $14.1 million. So let me just spend two slides on budget restorations and this really broken down into two pieces for between workshops and today, and they're developed in the recommended budget we have recommended use of ongoing general fund contribution to the Sheriff's Department To mitigate the service level impacts that were identified for your board during workshops, that amounts to about $580,000.
You'll see here it's the equivalent of three FTE for felony fugitive senior deputy alternative sentencing custody sergeant as well as IVCRD senior deputy position. Recommended to be funded from cannabis tax revenues are these four expansions, and they are enhanced library funding which your board already provided direction for. That was $658,000, an analyst position within the CEO's office to support the Cannabis Program planning development to long-range planning positions and the treasurer tax collector a financial office professional senior position The FTE there in that column looks a little odd, so let me take a moment to kind of explain those. What we're requesting and recommending within the position for the analyst is half-time funding or partial half funding for that position for 75% of the year.
So if you take .5 times .75, this is how you get .38. And what we're recommending, you can see that on the footnotes on the left, is that given our financial uncertainty that departments are recommended to hold hiring those positions until October which is the end or beginning of the second fiscal quarter unless they have other funds obviously that they can support that And so that's how we get to, although within planning it's two positions. It's funding is 1.5 or 0.75 times 2 if that makes sense. So that's the cost there, the ongoing costs.
I'm sorry, the costs being recommended for those positions there on the far right column. That's $1,053,000. So that's the end of my overview. Let me take, because unless there's questions there from your board I wouldn't go into the first functional group.
Are there any questions for Mr. Farrell at this time?
Thank you very much. Go right ahead. So our first functional group we're going to look at today is our public safety group. It's really comprised of these six departments, court special services, district attorney, fire, probation, public defender and sheriff. As we look at this functional group as a whole, they're allocated about 48% or $145 million of the total general fund contribution to departments.
They comprise 32% of our total operating expenditures and are allocated about 36% of our FTE count for the county. Updated specifically from since workshop Because our Prop 172 revenue has been lowered, as I mentioned by $3.6 million and this is backfilled through cannabis tax revenue to preserve service levels within these important public safety departments. The COVID has upended as many facets of county operations as well as community life but certainly as it relates to the criminal justice system with the courts being closed for a while and changed in the way we must do business In order to be responsible by these services.
And so it's really, you know, it's forced our hand and I think is as Mona mentioned before if there's anything positive that can be had from this pandemic is really forcing us to do things differently To look at what do we really need to do and how do we really need to do that. And certainly, that's evident within the criminal justice system as the partners have had to work together to figure out how do we do this differently? How do we deliver key protection for protection as well as justice within our system?
There was one service level reduction within this functional group which is probation they were not asking for restoration funding but Did want to note that the grant funding they received no longer supports all of the positions they had previously for that grant. And so, that leaves us to the expansion requests that have been deferred to hearing today. You'll see here on this slide, the district attorney had two requests that continued to be unfunded as the addition of a legal office professional senior position as well as the additional deputy district attorney three position And a part-time LLP position for post conviction litigation.
That totals ongoing funding requests of $460,000. Following down there the public defender has a total of six requests and I won't go through every single one but certainly they're critical to her operations as it relates to things she'd like to accomplish within the Public Defender's Department And so that totals, those six is about a 6 FTE count. Ongoing cost of $419,000 and a one-time cost of $475,000 for all those six.
If we look to the Sheriff's Department there are seven expansion requests. You can see that's totaling 37 positions, 5.5 million dollars ongoing costs and 1.7 of one time costs. With respect to requests from this functional group for cannabis tax revenues, is within the district attorney the request for purchase of a vehicle. And it's one time cost of 41,003 and ongoing cost of 5,000.
And the sheriff requests an additional cannabis enforcement team of six FTE as indicated here on the slide broken down by the sergeant detectives and For an ongoing cost of about 1.2 and a one-time cost to establish those positions at $300,000. So Mr. Chair that concludes my discussion on that functional group I would pause here and see if your board has questions for our office or any department directors within these and then take public comment.
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Thank you Mr. Frapwell are there questions for Mr. Frapwell about this functional group? We do have six requests to speak on public safety
Chair Hart, members of the board. Yes we have six requests to speak on this functional group and we will begin with Andy Caldwell to be followed by Christian Alonzo
Chair Harden, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing COLAB. As you know, I participate in these budget hearings every year and I try to read the budget book from cover to cover. Um, I typically take the day off to do this from all my other duties, but I'm not doing it that this year because over the years I've realized that an average of 36 seconds per department just isn't worth it. My time or yours?
Having said that, I always want to remind you that when you claim how broke local government is, that you guys have done virtually nothing on the state as a whole anyway in going to a defined benefit pension plan. In other words, what could you do if you had an extra $150 million each and every year? I want to bring something up that I think is particularly troubling I believe that the Public Defender's Office is actually underfunded.
I also believe they, as I've testified in years past, that it should be privatized like San Luis Obispo but I want to bring up some rhetoric that was most unfortunate. The department head Tracy Makuga was out there she first of all she her department is listed as having an official Participation in the rally protest it's on their Facebook page and she said funding decisions need to be made meaning that money.
That money instead of building larger institutions that warehouse community members what we need is funny to go to mental health treatment and drug addiction programs. Well the fact of the matter is your budget for Health and Human Services is four hundred twenty two million dollars a year Compared to all of public safety, which is $392 million. Your Sheriff's budget is $165 million. That includes patrol and jail services. This is the kind of rhetoric that's out there in the public right now that makes people think we've been ignoring the plights of the poor and the oppressed. They're ignoring Prop 57 and Prop 47. They're ignoring diversion programs and all the like. And I really think she should be challenged in public by your board again for doing this as the public defender because ultimately she's one of your staff.
I want to praise the fire department for doing control burns the sheriff for moving people out of safety positions which will save a lot of money and finally I think Mr. Frapwell since he's been here has done a phenomenal job on these budgets I just wish the board in the old days used to spend three full days going out over this budget. And as far as I can tell, you're gonna finish in one day unless you have some wrap up later this week when you're spending 1.1 million or $1.1 billion we just need more oversight. Thank you.
We will now go to Christian Alonso to be followed by Gail Long.
Hey, good morning everyone and thanks so much for your time. My name is Christian Alonso my pronouns are he they them I'm president of the Santa Barbara Young Democrats and I've lived here on the Central Coast for the last decade as many of you have been extremely dismayed by the situation that has unfolded at the Lompoc federal prison that has led to the needless deaths of four people and the suffering of nearly 1,000 inmates who continue to languish there in inhumane conditions as COVID-19 ravages that facility its staff and occupants.
Additionally it has really cost this board countless hours of critical time and energy during a global health crisis coordinating with state and federal officials to remove the number of COVID- 19 cases from our county totals I know that this board and Santa Barbara County does not have jurisdiction over the Lompoc prison, but I want to talk about jails that it does oversee.
If the failures at Lompok have taught us anything, it's that enabling mass incarceration in our community hurts families, makes us less safe and adds strain to our local economy. This is to say nothing of the fact that incarceration born out of a history of white supremacy disproportionately affects people of color, poor people and people who are narrowly diverse.
We know that there are alternatives to this system and that decarceration is ineffective policy. Sheriff Brown, to their credit has done the right thing here in reducing our jail population in Santa Barbara County to the lowest levels we've ever seen. What makes me sad about this is that it shouldn't have taken a global health crisis for us to see that incarceration hurts more than it helps our county.
We don't need the jail in North County, which is over budget causing expensive lawsuits and will just be more of the same. We should invest our county dollars and community based programs to hold folks accountable instead. So today I call on the sheriff, our district attorney and other county agencies to adopt a policy of decarceration. And I call on the board to fund community based programs like restorative justice to help us evolve. Thanks. I yield my time.
Thank you Mr Alonso.
2:43 – 2:495 turns
And we will now go to Gail Long to be followed by Danielle Day Smith.
Hi, my name is Gail Teton-Landis and I want to support the idea of efforts to reduce incarceration. The United States has 5% of the world's population but nearly 25% of the world's prisoners. This is an astounding number. Incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, poor people, and people with mental health issues. There are far better ways to treat people through community-based programs that will help set up people for future success.
We are seeing that during the novel coronavirus, that the county was able to reduce incarcerations and still keep the community safe. I hope that the sheriff and district attorney will continue to keep the jail population low. Let's be leaders in this movement. Thank you.
And we will now go to Danielle DeSmith to be followed by Spencer Brandt.
Yes I'm here. Thank you good morning. I urge the board to develop a 360 degree approach to reducing arrests and incarceration rates for three reasons first implementing alternatives to traditional incarceration is the only way Most criminal offenders have experienced trauma that is not effectively addressed in custody. Third, our incarcerated population is disproportionately comprised of people of color, poor people and people with mental illness.
In my criminal defense and civil litigation legal practice I see firsthand how economics, race, trauma and crime are interrelated. Since you can't visit a courtroom in the near future I will tell you that on any felony day in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria or Lompoc the vast majority of in-custody defendants are black or brown. It is a depressing and upsetting sight and there is no clearer visual of the inequities embedded in our bail and criminal justice systems when the attorneys, judge, bailiff and court staff are predominantly white while the accused is a person Budgets are statements of values.
And with no control over the purse strings, you have the ability to level many of these inequities. There is no reason Santa Barbara cannot lead the way on redesigning public safety to work with and empower the communities it serves. Invest the money in recruitment, retention, intervention in our kids' first five and extended educational opportunities for adults of all ages You've all read the statistics about the power of the dollar when invested early as opposed to throwing it away on somebody languishing in a jail cell.
The bulk of our money should be invested in prevention and treatment, not on prosecution and punishment. The county has an asset in Barney Melechian. Draw on Mr. Melechian's experience as Director of Community Oriented Policing for the Department of Justice under President Obama Attorney General Holder appointed him to that position in light of his leadership in Santa Monica and Pasadena law enforcement.
More importantly, Mr. Melechian has experience working inside the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department and is therefore well suited to make recommendations about where the money goes and how it can be effectively rebalanced. It would of course be nice if we lived in a crime-free world but we don't. However, our public safety system is currently comprised of not protecting or serving as effectively as it should.
Take this opportunity to reimagine a community-based public safety model that actively involves individuals and families previously disenfranchised, harassed and scared of the badge. Santa Barbara has all of the money and brainpower it needs to set up everyone for success but we need you to lead The change. Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Mr Smith.
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And we will now go to Spencer Brandt to be followed by Renee O'Neill who is our final speaker?
Good morning Chair Hart and Board of Supervisors. My name is Spencer Brandt. Mr. Crafwell put it well when he stated that there's one silver lining of this pandemic, and that's that it may force us to make changes that we have been reluctant to make over the past two weeks. We've heard loud and clear from our black brothers and sisters that we cannot return to business as usual. And for good reason institutional and structural racism in our criminal justice system has plagued our society for far too long.
It's not about one or two bad officers, quote unquote in law enforcement. It's a cycle and it begins with the over policing in black and brown and disadvantaged neighborhoods, over enforcement of minor infractions, eroded community trust, and ends with the over representation of black and brown folks in the criminal justice system. Our experience under COVID-19 proves that we can hold people accountable for minor offenses Outside of the jail system and in community-based programs. With the jail population at its lowest in decades, we are proving it right here in Santa Barbara County that we can end mass incarceration. There's no reason why we should return to a normal upon the conclusion of the pandemic. We must acknowledge that the old normal was costly, inefficient and sowed seeds of mistrust that make it harder for us to keep communities safe and administer justice.
We can use this moment to reallocate resources for investment services that provide support and rehabilitation for those who commit minor offenses rather than incarceration. I call on our sheriffs and district attorneys to lead the way in this effort, thank you.
Thank You Mr. Brandt
And now we will go to our final speaker Renee O'Neill
Thank you so much. Good afternoon Chair Hart and supervisors I want to support all the previous speakers regarding public safety and add a different tact to what I consider is needed for additional public safety. And this is in regard to what I feel is purported cannabis tax revenue that the county is relying on to get us out of this recession I disagree with that wholeheartedly.
Last month, Mr. Frapwell commented that for the pandemic we must be strategic forward-looking and resist the temptation to make short term decisions that will have long term negative ramifications. The budget overview does not it places a great deal of emphasis on cannabis revenue however The report makes no mention of the backlog of cannabis applications, unpermitted status of cannabis operators that are not paying self-reported taxes because they're not permitted to operate. And these growers are still dragging their feet through the licensing process. The numbers in your budget do not support what you're saying and telling the public.
The $14.1 million that were used in cannabis tax revenue does not connect with the 3.1 that the county generated in revenue. I'm not saying this well, I know but I think the bottom line is I'm trying to point out that the majority of growers in this county don't pay taxes they're allowed to self-report and that the all inclusive costs True costs of cannabis do not reflect what the board is putting in their budget records. For example, the professional that was hired to develop the tax laws last year in 2018 he wasn't a county employee. He's not in the budget reflecting the overall cost and many other things. The number of times different projects are coming before the planning commissioners And the board time after time after time, for example, Herbal Angel.
Then it was Avovista then it was what the heck and now I think it's being called Plush that is coming before the planning commission tomorrow. It's ludicrous. I don't understand it and so I'm saying this my point is if we're going to make decisions on generating rent revenue in this county let's be realistic about where that revenue is truly coming from Thank you for listening and I do support all efforts to keep our community safe and to make it more equitable regarding jobs and positions that are being allocated to minorities. I want those increased, thank you. Thank you, I know I went over my time.
2:55 – 3:116 turns
And that was our final speaker.
Thank you. I do think that this is really a unique opportunity, as Mr. Freper will describe for us to look very carefully and hard at how we operate our criminal justice system. We have made a lot of progress over many years in reducing the jail population and diverting people that have mental illness out of our incarceration system. But what has happened as a result of the response to COVID-19 is truly remarkable. The numbers of people who are not in our system are at historic lows and as we know from the statistics of the jail population, disproportionately people in jail are people of color and people suffering from poverty and mental illness. In 2018 2% of the adults in Santa Barbara County were black but 8% of our jail population was black In 2018, 41% of the adults in Santa Barbara County were Hispanic.
But 58% of the people in our county jail were Hispanic. These numbers are facts that can't be denied and demand a different response. We cannot do business as we have going forward. Our community is demanding a different response and at the events that have transpired That have provided us the opportunity by reducing the jail population need to be extended and continued aggressively. I know that all of the law enforcement agencies, the district attorney, the sheriff, probation public defender had been working collaboratively during this period to accomplish this goal which is truly remarkable.
And we need to empower them to take the momentum that we have today and continue it as As circumstances may change in the future with the virus, we don't want to go back to business as usual. So I think this is a really historic moment for us to consider these issues in the context of this budget. I hope we take this opportunity to be very clear about how important this is. Mr. Millikian has been doing work in this space and developing the relationships and The rapport and the coordination that is necessary to take this to the next level. But I hope we would all take this moment to respond to what the community is asking us to do, what his history is demanding us to do and no longer wait on this subject. We have an example in real life of what could be done and we need to continue to do more in this space.
Supervisor Williams.
Well, I want to strongly speak in support of that call to action and I would just offer several break it down into several parts that I think has been a kind of theme of some of our last few budget yearly budget hearings. I mean my overarching The premise that I put forward is that even though it is normal for many jails across the state to have 70% of their population awaiting trial, that that is not okay.
unjust because a percentage of those folks will be found innocent. And it's a waste of money, because a percentage of those folks will be found innocent. So I would submit that part of that is if we are to take advantage of this moment, both this moment that the coronavirus has created where the jail population is low In the moment where societal consciousness is on the subject of inequities in our criminal justice system, then we have to convince the justice partners to move faster.
Because except in cases of a complex murder it's just not acceptable to be having this large A number of people awaiting trial in jail. And then the second part that we've made almost no progress in, except magically once coronavirus happened it became possible is the amount of people on home monitoring right? There are low risk offenders out there. There are some lower risk offenders that an ankle bracelet You know works well and that should cost less money than having them in incarcerated.
And I think that's another component of it and I would say there is both a justice component of this that that it's it's about reform but that there is also a pragmatic part of this as is if we are ever to have the resources for proactive community-based patrol, right? And to not have people overworked on overtime and patrol. And the stats are clear that officers that are overworked understaffed are more likely to do things wrong.
I mean like all of us, right? So if we're ever to have a more community based patrol A patrol that is part embedded in the society. We've got to reduce the costs on the jail side. And so I think it's really important that we let the sheriff know that we want to support making the right investments and patrol, but In order to do that, we have to reduce the staffing costs of jail that should come from a reduced population. It's not as easy as just fewer prisoners and fewer costs but there should be an outgrowth at least in a reduction over time.
Thank you Supervisor Williams. Supervisor Lavinino? Thank you Mr. Chair. I think we also have to weigh in. Yes, we do have a lower jail population right now but I want to see how that works you know the easy part is well I guess it wasn't easy because it took a long time to happen but maybe it happened because of the coronavirus but there are more people out on the street that used to be in jail.
I'd like to see how that plays out like you know maybe it's because my area is a little bit more I have a little bit higher crime rate We just had a triple stabbing on North Railroad. We had a drive-by, I was in Costco the other day and one of the guys that works there says we're at a point now where guys are backing up their truck to our side emergency door. They're walking out with stuff and we don't really know what to do anymore because if we call the police it's kind of like well it was under a certain dollar value and We don't know what to do.
So I think before we all say that this is the answer, we've got to find out what happens in the community. And I'm all for a lower jail census and I'm all for more community-based programs. I think we failed that we, you know, For first 5 compared to what the rest of what we do in this county, you know where first 5 is. I heard somebody say once if it was a slice of pizza and what somebody would do if they won the lottery 1st 5 is the slice that says I would donate it to charity case so it's the thinnest than its smallest little tiny slice.
It's probably A mistake that, you know, has been made for decades and decades and decades that we put less into. We put way more into enforcement than we do at the beginning. So I'm all for that but I really want to see how this quote unquote kind of experiment plays out. We see that folks can go back into society and kind of maintain, and we can keep people safe.
I think that's our, we do owe the person that's there in jail. We owe them justice but we also owe that person that's at home that hasn't done anything wrong either safety. And there's a balancing act there. So I don't want us to, pendulums tend to swing and that's why we see in law enforcement it always does. Legislation always goes that way right? We go three strikes law and all these really tough on crime. And then we end up with a lot of people that end up serving too much time and everything swings back the other way.
You know me, I would kinda like to see that pendulum hang somewhere in the middle. So I'm reserving judgment. I think there's things that we can do. I'd like to hear from the sheriff of what he thinks is working and what isn't working. And I gotta say, I think Sheriff Brown has been one of the innovators statewide of trying to not so much on jail population but getting the homeless out of jail, providing more mental services in jail and I want to see from all of our justice partners, and maybe that's what we're going to hear from on Thursday. Is how do we do it differently? But I don't think we can forget there are a lot of people out there that are counting on us to protect them as well so.
Thank you Supervisor Lavinia.
Supervisor Hartman?
Thank you Mr. Chair. This is really the unrest in today, George Floyd's service. It's really brought into sharp relief I think the inequities from childhood through adult life and whether it's education or health care or criminal justice It's, we don't have equality in this country. It goes back really generations. So we're trying to deal with it in one area, the criminal justice area. I think Mr. Melecki and we're very lucky to have him and he's working on a mapping project and I would like to see that elevated and given And I think we are seeing a discussion about, so often we have armed deputies going for every kind of call.
And is that really appropriate? And even things like truancy, is that appropriate or do people react away. I think we've done a huge amount already in our county and we need to recognize what we do with the co-response and the training. The holistic defense and what's happening there. All the grants we've had on mental health and the diversion and focus in that, and working on homeless as well.
The courts that we have, the Veterans Court, the Drugs Court, in Isla Vista, the new restorative justice court. So we're making a lot of progress, and we've been moving in that direction. But I think we now have an opportunity with this mapping project to really look at the beginning of the 911 call. And it's not just our sheriff's deputies, but it's the police departments. They all funnel into our criminal justice system. So how do we work together to address that? And where are the points where we can really improve? And I don't claim to know all the answers and I agree with Supervisor Lavinino that we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have a heavily armed population, and we can't just disarm the police. We can't just defund the sheriff but we need to rebalance it.
We need to understand where we can more appropriately target What resources are needed and how do we more appropriately target the appropriate resource to that 911 call? And what's really needed on the ground. So I know we have some opportunities, but this does give us the chance to flag that putting a 990 fund in CEO's office and designating some money for that. And using that to see what we can do to more appropriately treat people and reduce the jail population, how much of this can last? But we've heard a great deal over time about how we have people for misdemeanor and very low level offenses sitting in jail.
Is that appropriate? And it's not all our sheriffs. Again, we're getting it from police, we're getting it. So I would like to see one thing that I'm very disappointed about is the kind of data and analysis that we get from the Sheriff's Department and are we really targeting resources? Our probation department does a really good job at that. And I'd like to see more of that happen. So perhaps that could be one of the outcomes from such a project. Anyway, just a little flag to come back to for a 990 allocation for this mapping project to be more focused on it and perhaps broader and deeper.
3:11 – 3:174 turns
Supervisor Williams or Supervisor Adam, did you have anything? Yeah. Yes please go
ahead. Up in the colonies we're still here. I just want to speak strongly for blind justice and against chaos. And I think that there is a tremendous amount of people in this county who will take offense at assuming that just because a certain number of, certain demographic is in the jail. That it proves that the system is endemically racist. If we're concerned that the court system can't deliver justice, then that's really a different matter and we need to go and review the way that the whole court system.
But this whole discussion is about whether there is an unreasonable level of Aggression maybe by the police. And that's not, even if that were the case, that wouldn't make people get convicted and placed in jail. So Supervisor Lavinino talked about the pendulum of the way Have gone over the years, and there's a reason for that. And that is because there's excessive chaos from time to time that people respond to and they take a much more intolerant approach for crime at some point. And then they start locking people up for longer periods and for different things.
And then in time, we get complacent because crime goes down and we spend a lot of money on jails. And then you can have some other circumstances that are unfortunate. And we'll talk more about this on Thursday, but I think as long as you have humans in the equation. You're going to have situations that disappoint everybody from time to time and upset everybody from time to time.
And until you got Robocop out there that does not have emotions and can completely remove himself from the passion of a situation. And I'm not saying that's what led to George Floyd's death at all, I'm not defending that in any way shape or form. I feel like at some point we might find out there's way more to that situation on a personal level than we know now.
We just, as a society we go back and forth between overdoing it and not doing enough. And when the chaos, we're hearing from one side right now but when the chaos comes, and it will because the pendulum will get to the other side. And then you'll be hearing from the other people that are victims of the chaos. And they will want some order, and you will give it to them because that's the history of the way things go.
Thank you Supervisor Adams.
Supervisor Williams? Well I am not about to condone chaos but Asking and supporting any effort to make the criminal justice system work faster is going to create anymore chaos. It will more rapidly discern the guilty from the innocent, and let the people who are not convicted not spend time in jail, and not ruin their lives, and not be an expense to the taxpayer.
It is one, there's a couple things that might relate to this in our expansion requests. I mean, I just wanted to speak again in support of the sentiment that we should take advantage of the fact of Mr. Mullikin's expertise in this and the fact that in the past when we've asked okay where are low level offenders coming from? Are they coming from? Our own folks, or are they coming from a city or two?
Who's sending low level offenders to the jail in the first place. We haven't ever been able to get that information and so I just think that would be the need for data is definitely there and speak in agreement to that sentiment of Jones. That is Supervisor Hartman. And, um, and also, uh, the, you know, the idea that if we don't want the population to rise again rapidly.
We need to convince our friend that's in the courts to get started again, right? Otherwise we're just gonna, the population is gonna rise. The percentage of people awaiting trial that are in our jail is going to rise and the innocent will be swept in with the guilty. And I think that's what we don't want.
3:17 – 3:278 turns
Supervisor Hartman, well actually let me throw something in real quick. I'll get back in the rotation. I'm not proposing that we don't collaborate and that we don't work with all of the different partners in this equation. I think that is what has happened over the past three months is there has been incredible collaboration and cooperation that has achieved something that was unimaginable a year ago. There were lots of talk about what we needed to do To accomplish what we have just accomplished in the last three months. And I think the important point now is, what are we going to do to learn those lessons permanently going forward? Are we going to go back reflexively to what was happening three months ago or are we gonna dig in this moment right now and figure out what we've been doing successfully and not successfully over the past three months that we can institutionalize going forward?
And that is what this opportunity presents. COVID-19 has created a grand experiment where we released 300 people into the community and provided alternative methods of monitoring them and protecting public safety. And from where I sit, and from what I've heard That has worked really well. And I just think we need to figure out a way to create a sense of urgency about expanding that conversation and that collaboration, and making sure that we learn the lessons today for the future.
Supervisor Hartman?
Well, thank you. I think that's well stated. Are we going on to the next normal or are we just gonna try to rebound to the way things were? And I think we're all calling to see the lessons that we've learned and find the silver lining in the cloud And one of the things we've learned is technology has worked pretty well. Things like video arraignment where there was a lot of discussion, can we do that?
And some trepidation, well, that we can do it and we don't need the two officers taking everybody sitting around all day then you know the court date gets postponed and they all come back again. There are better ways to do the work. And I just want to reemphasize for me, the idea is targeting the appropriate resource to what's needed and let me just give an analogy because this is not from public safety but it's from fire and in the Burton Mesa they're doing a lot of vegetation management and instead of fire crews they've hired vegetation crews out there And they're actually really going faster than expected and they're working really well as a team. We don't need fire personnel to do that work, although we've done it in the past. I just think there are many more opportunities for us to look at How we identify the needed resource and target that, and do that earlier in the process again.
So I think that's the kind of thing that comes out from the mapping study. And do we need officers for every routine traffic accident report? Do we need them for truancy? Do we need them for homelessness? Maybe there's other ways we can identify The need and people even better trained to respond to it. So that's what I'd like to see.
Supervisor Lavinino? Thank you, so is this what we're talking about? Okay, so I'm trying to figure out the difference between Tuesday and Thursday. So Thursday are we going to have the sheriff and Barney? What does Thursday look like, I guess?
I think today we're talking about the budget and I think the point of having this conversation right now is just to illuminate this issue. Thursday, you know, I expect to hear from the public about what they're thinking about these issues and I think that's the most important thing about Thursday is listening and hearing what the public wants to communicate but there is no linear process defined conversation here. This is an evolving moment that we are trying to respond to And I guess what I would hope to get out of the budget conversation today is maybe we could have a greater sense of urgency about the planning effort that needs to go into learning the lessons that have happened over the past three months and how we're going to pivot. Into the future, what's gonna happen?
We don't know how much longer the jail is going to be operated in the way that it is. But it is gonna be operated that way for a while longer. The virus isn't gone. We still have to be doing the things we've been doing for some period going forward and what is the conscious planning exercise that's gonna go forward to inform the future. How are we gonna reimagine this? How are we gonna redesign this? How are we gonna take advantage of this opportunity? And I think there needs to be some stake in this. And I'd like to see something like, we're gonna be opening the new Northern Branch Jail soon and there's a lot of money involved in doing that and The historical moments of the past, and that's gonna happen. That jail is gonna be opened. But how we operate that and how we connect these things needs a plan.
And we need perhaps the CEO's office to take charge of that. Maybe we need to create some sense of urgency in the public safety realm when the sheriff's office about withholding some of the money for operating the jail. As a way to really focus attention on this issue and to bring people to the table and say you know we're not going to just automatically reflexively go back to the way things were. Let's figure out how to do it better, and I don't have the answer to how to do that but I know the people who are in this business You know, the fact that they've been collaborating for the past three months and accomplishing this gives me great confidence that can be achieved in the future too. But we need to say, that's our goal and we mean business about achieving it.
And maybe money needs to be part of the equation to get the focus and attention this issue deserves. Supervisor
Lavenia? I don't disagree with any of that but I know it's not linear, but I got to figure out like OK. So they're going to come Thursday and they're going to have all these ideas and they're going to expect action right? But on Tuesday two days before we've already kind of done the action and that doesn't mean we couldn't do something else, but I also maybe it's that we hear from the public.
And then we have a you know something in the future says now I need to hear from all of our law enforcement team what could work, what doesn't work. This is what we're already doing. This is where we could speed up. Okay, we'll shelve this idea, we'll move on this idea but so at some point you know and maybe it's an expansion request or whatever I'm guessing that that you've got an idea of you know let's set some money aside or let's do something so that when we hear from people on Thursday we have a tool to be able to use to move forward
Yeah, I think this is just we're having a conversation right now about the functional unit of the sheriff and law enforcement public safety. And so I just wanted to put this idea into the conversation. Don't expect us to have a conclusion right now. Something to think about over the course of the day and we'll have other opportunities to hear how all these things fit together but And we will need to be responsive to what the community is telling us on Thursday, and we'll have to have resources available for that too. But these are not separate, they're connected. All of these things are blending together. The community I think clearly loudly is saying we want innovation, we want a new way of doing business in regards to law enforcement and race, and this is part of that conversation.
Well one of those things, and Corey brought me I think nine years of budget requests for body cameras for the Sheriff's Department. And I know it's been a discussion that we've been having over the last decade, and I just kind of hope that that's part of the conversation moving forward. We've talked about it for a long time and I know there are a lot of reasons why folks have said we can't do it. Isla Vista Foot Patrol does it, Guadalupe Police Department does it. And that's something I need to hear from the sheriff again so that's one of the things that I'd like to talk about in the grand scheme of things.
Are there any other
comments at this point? All right, well I think we've come to the conclusion of the functional unit for public safety. And I think this is a good time to take a break and then we'll come back for health and human services. And let's just take a half an hour break till 1 o'clock. Yeah, I think this is. the board.
3:30 – 3:531 turns
Good morning. Hi. Yeah. you the board. Hello, everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you
3:59 – 4:001 turns
you Hi, everyone.
4:04 – 4:099 turns
We'll reconvene the Board of Supervisors meeting for June 9th in our budget hearing for the 2021 fiscal year. And we are at the next functional group, which is Health and Human Services.
Thank you Mr. Chair, Board Members we'll move and discuss Health and Human Services comprising of the Departments of Behavioral Wellness, Child Support Services, First Five, Public Health and the Department of Social Services. Looking at the overall for this functional group they comprise 8% of our total general fund contribution of $24.4 million. They represent 35% of our total operating expenditures And have 1,761 FTE or 41% of the counties have total FTE.
Our updates since workshop is that behavioral wellness we are allocating $2.4 million to backfill the loss of revenues within this department From funds that we've set aside within 990, General County Programs for Behavioral Wellness. Then public health two items the Santa Maria Health Care Center is working within the local system to provide pediatric practice partnership within CENCAL in North County and secondly they are evaluating the potential of closing the Lompoc Animal services shelter due to a decreasing population of animals as well as deterioration in the facility.
And then within social services, as I've mentioned before earlier today during hearings is we've allocated $10.8 million in general fund resources to backfill the loss of realignment. Here we have the expansion request from this group as it relates to those that have been deferred to hearings today. There are two, the addition of two animal welfare specialist positions for total costs ongoing of $151,000 and one time of $5100, as well as a conversion of a part-time chief veterinarian to a full-time regular position with annualized cost of $87,800.
So with that, that concludes my comments on the Health and Human Services.
Thank you Mr. Rapoport. Are there questions for staff? Supervisor Hartman
Yes. When is the Lompoc Animal Services Shelter, when are we thinking of closing it? What kind of process will occur before that's decided and if it were closed wouldn't there be savings from those people that could fill in? I just don't have a very good picture In my mind and that's I've used that. I have three cats from that shelter.
Supervisor Hartman to the chair. My understanding for the department is they are in preliminary Evaluation of the feasibility of doing this. I know they have talked to the city of Lompoc, I know they are working with figuring out what the ramifications are. I think it'd be reallocating staffing that's there to the remaining shelters. So it might alleviate the request for two but I don't know for sure. I believe the department director is available on Zoom.
Supervisors, unfortunately just because of our timing. Dr. Day-Renoso had to jump on to another web presentation where she's a presenter and so she was not going to really be available till maybe 130 140 So if we could hold that and ask if you have any other questions You can answer that question when she jumps back on I
Would just ask you know Since you and Terry are here to communicate with her the importance of additional outreach I just want to say thank you to the board of supervisors and to stakeholders about the closing of the shelters. Typically when there's massive downturns in the economy, that usually means more abandoned pets and we've just got to think all that through.
It's not that I'm against it, I just think there needs to be more and it may have happened in the last week Obviously, there's understandable reasons given the department that's in charge of it. So I'm not casting any blame just that it should be done before we do that.
And the only thing I would add to that too is it seems to me that it would be great to have the animal services director hired and then maybe stakeholder process, you know about department priorities. That would integrate all these decisions together. I would hope that it would be that kind of a decision making process rather than Top down, when we're gonna make this decision and then the new director's gonna deal with it. I think it makes sense to have that person involved in that decision. And I know this has to be referenced in the budget to even have the authority so it wouldn't be a surprise to the board but I really hope that order is director stakeholder collaboration and then a decision that flows from that rather than the reverse.
So Supervisors, actually Suzanne Jacobson the Chief Fiscal Officer for the department is actually on Zoom and ready to respond. So Jacqueline.
4:09 – 4:1411 turns
Yes hello can you see me? Hello Chair Hart, Supervisor Hartman. Suzanne. And Supervisor Williams can you hear me?
Our apologies we can hear you but your a little faint if you could get closer to your microphone that would be great.
Okay great thank you hopefully you can see me too. So thank you for the opportunity to address this. The key word here, as Mr. Frackwell said is we are exploring what we're calling the consolidation of the two North County Shelter. So as you've been hearing on and on all morning, basically we're trying to find the silver linings and those things that present opportunities.
As the whole department sort of has made a hard right turn into our COVID response. One of the things that we found is we had to look at new ways of doing business particularly in our North County Animal Shelter And we worked very hard with our fostering partners, and we're delighted to report that many of those animals about 75% have actually been adopted. So we're faced with a much smaller number of animals than we had pre-COVID.
So taking Supervisor Williams' comments, we will certainly look at that because you're right. Kitten season is here. We do know that the economy will have a downturn but we believe we learned some valuable lessons. Also listening to Chair Hart, we are in the process of starting the recruitment for the director and we actually already have a stakeholder meeting Scheduled I think for later this week because at this point what we want to do is we want to proceed cautiously Slowly, we want to hear everyone's concerns and we want to make sure we do this in a way. That's animal centric and Also very efficient And hopefully will increase customer service
Thank You miss Jacobson now we can't see you so it's great to have you on the TV
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Chair?
Yes, Director Lawrence and Supervisors. I just had a question real practical about because we really only have one time monies left over, how would it work? Do you have a contract flexibility with the veterinarian so that if they went to full-time for one fiscal year it would be okay to put them in part time the following fiscal year? If we couldn't come up with any other money?
Yeah, what we would probably do. We do have a part-time veterinarian who's our chief veterinarian on a contract and because we have three shelters, we also have to have small contracts with other veterinarians who hold either the DEA licenses or the permits for those for those shelters. So what we were hoping to do is maybe With the hiring of a full-time person, we could become much more efficient.
And we would probably look for funds maybe through the consolidation of the North County shelters to try to keep that person on full time.
Thank you for that Ms. Jacobson. Are there any other questions for Ms. Jacobson? Okay, changing gears a little bit. Discussion about behavioral wellness. I had a question or not question but a comment. I know that Dr. Gleghorn is here and there had previously been discussion from members of the board about funding the Assisted Outreach Treatment Program to include all the elements of it and I know that Director Gleghorn has proposed Most of the elements of that, the non-court elements going forward and that would require additional resources from the board to expand AOT program. To include the court ordered processes and wanted to see if that was something that board members were still interested in doing. I'm personally interested in doing it.
I know that the local community activist organizations are interested in seeing that element included as well and There are funds in the department and reserve that potentially could be used to To augment that at least for a year, and then we'd have to look at that in the future Other thoughts or comments from other board members
Kind of like to hear from dr. Gleghorn it
okay? Dr.. Gleghorn I guess you could come too There you go thank you
4:14 – 4:174 turns
Thank you Chair Hartman, members of the board. The materials that were added last night to the available information for the community did include an amount that the board could elect to put into the budget of about $162,000 And what that represents is maintaining the intensive outreach and engagement staffing, as well as small amounts for legal and psychologist consultation.
Right sizing it to the results of this study which was essentially one person per year. It didn't fall out exactly as one person per year but three people total through the three-year pilot is what happened here. So right-sizing that, we would say that would be one person per year. And we did add some nominal costs for petitions to be carried by legal counsel and for psychologist consultation to create the petition and evaluate the individual so that is how we changed the basic program and had some cost savings on that while retaining the elements Definitely shown to provide positive outcomes.
Thank you for that
I Should say there was also a tiny bit of money in there for sort of wraparound Services, whatever it takes housing things like that for folks who continue to be involuntary because most of the costs if you looked at the report most of the Folks that were contacted through the intensive outreach voluntarily engaged in care and when that happens we're able to Bill MediCal as a client in our care. So we're including just the costs for those who continue to resist and not consent to treatment.
Supervisor Lavinia, did you have? No, I'm good. Okay. All right. Do we have public comment on this item? Yes. Thank you Dr. Glickhorn.
4:17 – 4:235 turns
Chair Hart and members of the board, we have five requests to speak on this item. And we are going to the phones with Angela Yates to be followed by Lee Heller.
Chair Hart and members of the board, preparing the annual budget for our county is always a monumental task under the best circumstances. And the past few months have certainly not been the best. We are so grateful for your leadership during this pandemic and we have such gratitude for county staff in the community that we live in. I want to offer support today for the budget request for animal services as the executive director of ASAP. I work in partnership with the dedicated Animal Services staff and the Public Health Department leadership.
Over the past 18 years of working in animal welfare, our Animal Services Department has gone through many struggles, upheavals and challenges but in recent years with your support many positive changes were brought to fruition including the addition of critical positions like a full-time veterinarian RVT second community outreach coordinator and operations manager The budget request before you today is not a true expansion request, but a restoration of these critical positions that were eroded and left vacant by previous employees.
We recognize that you have many difficult decisions to make regarding budget priorities, but I urge you not to let Animal Services lose ground at such a critical moment, not only for our community, but in the broader animal welfare industry itself with your support and visionary leadership in the Animal Services Director position Our county can move from an outdated, anachronistic model of sheltering into an innovative department that proactively supports the needs of our community both animal and human.
For the first time in decades as a result of the innovations that COVID-19 forced on the sheltering world we are preparing for a major paradigm shift in the industry. Nationally respected animal organizations and leaders are providing tremendous support and resources to those agencies who are willing and able to embrace change. With your support, our very own animal services can be at the forefront of this critical shift.
As you face these budget decisions I would remind you that this community cares about animals deeply. Most of you have experienced it firsthand because when issues arise the public is passionate and vocal. Never has the commitment to animals been demonstrated more strongly than during this recent pandemic when a flood of community members signed up to foster cats and dogs and we literally emptied our county shelters.
But it will take strong leadership, staff time and resources to build the departmental infrastructure to convert temporary emergency procedures into innovative permanent change. Animal services needs your support now more than ever because the time for change is upon us. Let's seize the moment together. Thank you.
Thank you Ms Yates and thank you for all that you're doing with ASAP to help protect animals in our community.
And now we will go to Lee Heller to be followed by Andy Caldwell.
Chair Hart and members of the board, I can't imagine trying to put together a budget in the midst of the current crisis Especially for these departments which are in the crosshairs of the pandemic response. I am grateful for all the staff efforts to continue to do these other jobs on top of emergency response regarding the budget request for animal services. The program for which I have acted as watchdog if you will for many years.
I would request your support for the expansion not because I think you should spend additional money on animal services but it appears that the additional positions you allocated several years ago Which Supervisors Labonino and Adam will remember, appear to have disappeared recently leaving the program understaffed again. Before I moved to New Zealand as some might recall this body authorized the funding of a veterinarian, registered vet tech, second community outreach coordinator and more.
When I returned I discovered that under the direction of a prior operations manager these positions came empty were never filled and were allowed to disappear from the program structure. The reassignment of the second COC position to a new health manager role would allow the return of the RVP. The veterinarian should be a full-time position as was originally intended to be and will need to be.
So think of this not as expansion, but the restoration of budget lines that were authorized after a long and expensive external review process. We were 56 out of 58 counties in spending on animal services before the AHA report. Let's not slide back to that embarrassingly long spot. I look forward to the upcoming stakeholder meeting to discuss the potential closure of the Lompoc Shelter.
It is critical that such decisions be made with an eye towards impact on services to both people and animals, however. Supervisor Williams raises important points about economic downturns and increased shelter impacts. Ms. Jacobson assumes that the momentary absence of shelter animals is a permanent situation but as lockdowns end so will the availability of foster homes.
Chair Hart has made a crucial point. It's critical that these decisions happen under the direction of a Director of Animal Services in a position that is currently empty. Please support the Public Health Department in prioritizing the filling of that position so we can move forward with clear leadership by an animal welfare professional. Thank you very much.
4:24 – 4:315 turns
Chair Hart, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. I know that you're going to be spending three hours this week looking over the Sheriff's Department who is a duly elected official but I would encourage you to spend just as much time doing a forensic audit on your public health department. As you can look on page 192, the staff listed as an accomplishment what they did vis-a-vis COVID-19 But the truth of the matter is they have 95 staff members dedicated to disease for prevention, including preventing outbreaks.
They're spending $15 million a year on this subject area and yet we're hearing now that they do not have the plan to complete nursing home patient and staff testing until the end of June This was the primary target of the virus worldwide. In fact a significant number of the deaths in Italy and New York came from cope in nursing homes and among the compromised immune elderly. And in fact about a month or so ago the staff indicated they had one hundred and fifty two positive cases in nursing homes. Why wasn't this the top priority of this department Versus telling people they could only go to church services drive in style if their cars were six feet apart.
With regard to behavioral wellness and again I hope that you will do full disclosure on Thursday of how much we're spending on alcohol drug mental health social services and public health page 202 it indicates we already have a co response team meant to reduce incarceration And on page 209, it mentions PROC 47. Again, dual diagnosis to divert people from jail. Then finally when you're doing this analysis as you've asked on Thursday, it'd be interesting to know what are the gang members and what is their ethnic background in Santa Barbara County? We've got Bloods, Crips, MS-13 and then a number of local gangs And I think you'll find out that most of them are people of color. And I don't like saying that, but for you guys to assume that there's more people of color in there because of racism, maybe it's because these gangs are organized for criminal activity and we've got over a thousand gang members in this region.
I think you need to look at that. And finally, the PC viruses. Why don't we do contract tracing for HIV Syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. If we wanna eliminate virus spread, there's over 30 million people in the world have died from AIDS. Why aren't we doing contract tracing for that? Or is it simply not politically correct? Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Caldwell.
We will now go to Renee O'Neill to be followed by a letter to be read into the record by Gene Silva.
Good afternoon Chair Hart and supervisors. I'm going to start by repeating Mr. Frapwell's comment because I really believe this is applicable. We must be strategic forward looking and resist the temptation to make short term decisions that will have long term negative ramifications regardless of what our current crisis is and that is impacting all the various projects coming before you I'm going to speak to planning and development. First, Tepeskayee and countywide teams strongly support Mr. Melekian's efforts in bringing the cannabis industry into compliance.
The budget memorandum that was added on June 6 indicates the one-time taxed cannabis revenue of $480,000—that's back in the books—and a total discretionary fund of $688,000 plus. If this money is going to be assigned today or in the next couple of days, I would request that you hire adequate staff for the planning department and also support strongly support adding another sheriff's cannabis enforcement team to oversee the problems and everything that's going on with the cannabis industry. These two critically understaffed departments have been undermanned for years in my opinion. I also want to just speak to something maybe in regard to all the conversation throughout the day.
I have always felt I'm 65 years old and I believe that one of the greatest changes that needs to occur in adjusting attitudes and beliefs in not only our nation but our world, is to begin by demanding that the media and film industry reform how they profile minorities and foreigners and have profiled them historically. These industries have profound influence on generations of all ages throughout the world.
For example if American movies and news media had presented a more positive positive portrayal of how Native Americans and all foreigners and minorities, regardless of color have positively influenced our country. And the great things they have brought to our nation just think where we might be today. And even if their practices change today it's going to take generations before these attitudes are influenced but we've got to start somewhere Albert Einstein wrote, great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
History illustrates this repeatedly. He also said the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking and I just think those words are so profound And I love Martin Luther King Jr. Okay, thanks.
Thank you Ms. O'Neill.
4:31 – 4:369 turns
And now we will go to our final speaker Jean Silva a letter to be read into the record. Testimony in support of animal services expansion request. My name is Jean Silva. I'm a member of BUNS, Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter. Since 1992, I've been one of your volunteers at the Santa Barbara County Animal Services shelter in Goleta. I asked that your board fund the animal services expansion request for a full-time veterinarian. The three county shelters take in over 6,000 animals each year. All sheltered dogs, cats and rabbits are spayed and neutered before adoption. Most of these animals require additional veterinary care. Animal Services has one half time contract veterinarian Overseeing care for all three shelters. Converting this position to full-time is the right decision.
Additionally, Animal Services staff commits in the proposed budget to the analysis and reengineering of program operations based on Renew 22 principles. I ask that your boards support extending participation in this effort beyond the staff. Reengineering program operations should directly involve the local nonprofits who are part of the community network of animal care which supports animal services. Thank you Jean Silva
Thank you, Ms. Silva.
And that concludes public comment.
Thank you Madam Clerk. Any other questions or comments on this functional group? Okay next one Mr. Frappel. Thank You Mr. Chair oh excuse me I'm sorry Mr. Gazzone you had a comment too.
Chair, just while the behavioral wellness director is here did you want to discuss any more on the potential extension of assisted outpatient treatment or did you want to save that for later?
I think we can just do it later. At that point thank you.
Thank you Mr. Chair our next functional group I'd like to discuss is the community resources and public facilities group. This functional group consists of four county departments. The Ag Commissioner, Weights and Measures, Community Services, Planning and Development, and the Public Works Department. Cumulatively these four departments take 20.3% of the general fund contribution or 7%.
They represent an operating expenditures 19% or 224 million and have 522.9523 FTE between them The updates from the Senate's workshop is that within planning and development, the public service counters remain closed but department continues to accept electronic paper submittals through this COVID process. And within Public Works, the fiscal year 2021 18% deferred allocation may be needed to backfill for gas tax revenue losses and support the department's operations.
Here are the expansion requests from the general fund for this group They're on two pages. Here first is community services, they have a total request, I'll kind of go through those, the 2030 ECAP development although they are looking to make some bring to your board for consideration next Tuesday an item that may address a portion of this. In addition they have the implementation of findings on the ad hoc library committee's benchmark and equity standards $642,000 Parktime Arts Commission Outreach Coordinator for 75 and to add LED lighting to youth sports fields in Orkut Community Park. These are fields that don't currently have lighting.
Continuing with community services, they have two others here on the slide. Parks Pavement Rehabilitation as well as to restore Human Services Commission Capacity Building Mini Grants For a total request of $941,000 in ongoing dollars and $1.98 million in one time. In addition, Public Works is requesting $3.6-$3.7 million for just additional deferred maintenance projects on their roads.
That concludes our update on this group. Be happy to answer any questions your board might
have. Thank you. Any questions of staff? Are there any requests to speak?
Chair Hart and members of the board, we have three requests to speak on this functional group. We are going to begin with Michael C to be followed by Linda Kropp Unfortunately, I could not get a hold of Michael C. So we will begin with Linda Kropp to be followed by Renee O'Neill
4:37 – 4:4615 turns
Thank you and good afternoon Chair Hart, members of the board. Thank you for this opportunity to testify remotely. I'm here today to... Thank you and good
afternoon Chair Hart, members of the board.
Hi, sorry about that. Thank you Chair Hart and members of the Board. This is Linda Kropp, Chief Counsel for the Environmental Defense Center speaking today regarding the budget for the Planning and Development Department. And I realize that these are challenging times and your board faces some serious decisions that need to be made about what projects to continue with, how to prioritize where to appropriately pivot Giving emerging issues and threats. And so I will make my comments short, we had a large laundry list of requests at the beginning of the year but we have certainly pared that down and I would like to reference a letter that we submitted on Friday in particular we want to support the work plan for the long range planning division including the ongoing work regarding the energy and climate action plan We would also like to urge the board to consider continued funding for the solar ordinance.
This is a utility grade solar ordinance and policy amendments that have already been part of the department's work for some time now, but are not included in the current recommendation before your board. But we think it's really important to continue with this effort. A lot of work has been done already It will provide many benefits to the county in terms of helping the county meet its renewable energy goals, helping implement the county's 2019 strategic energy plan, supporting a community choice program in which the county is a participant and is trying to find local projects. And this ordinance will bring new jobs and revenue to the county.
The thinking long-term and even medium term, it will have tremendous benefits to the county in terms of this ongoing budget challenge. So we're here to support for the proposal from the Planning and Development Department including the utility grade solar ordinance and policy amendments. Thank you for your time.
Thank You Ms. Krupp
And we all now go to our final speaker Renee O'Neill
Well, here I am again. And as you can tell, I'm really confused about what happened today. I didn't find out till this morning that I could actually speak to a number of issues. So I'm just going to repeat. Oh, sorry. Wait a second. I got to mute my...I didn't mute you. Hold on.
Ms. O'Neill if you don't want to speak on this particular item, you don't have to.
In any way I can planning and development staffing the sheriff's enforcement team. And I forgot to say earlier our fire Santa Barbara County Fire crews which I've supported from for many many years having served on the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council and I continue to do that so Mr. Frakwell Earlier you mentioned that you had a $14.1 million cannabis tax revenue. I'm not sure how that relates and corresponds to what the budget reports say, and if I'm not mistaken, that cannabis revenue generated $3.1 million. So if 14 million in tax revenue were used in the last year and 3.1 million is generated In my mind, I'm going to subtract and go okay so that means we're in the whole $11 million. I'm still struggling to try to understand how our county can claim that the cannabis industry is truly actually factually a benefit to this county.
And I would also like our board to look at how much for example traditional ag-like wine industry has for decades Contributed a tremendous revenue tourism all these different things that have added to her our Revenue and are a lot less costly to open That's all I'm gonna say thank you for listening.
Thank You miss
O'Neill
Thank you, mr. Mr. Chair can we just ask that question to Jeff because I Some of the confusion, I'll address this directly to our public speaker. Is because the CEO's office did budget that amount very conservatively in its first two years and the revenue has come in much higher than it was budgeted. So if you look at on some documents, you'll see the budgeted amount and on some documents you'll see the actual amount which far exceeded it but But I think Jeff knows the numbers even better than I do, so might as well ask the expert.
Supervisor William to the Chair. So let me first address the cannabis question. In the current fiscal year, as we've been discussing at each of your quarterly updates that we provide to your board. Cannabis tax revenues continues to exceed what we have budgeted. We expect by the time we close the fiscal year in the current year to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $9 million in annual revenue from cannabis tax.
Built into the recommended budget next year is a revenue estimate of $10.6 million. So, the delta I think Mrs. O'Neill was talking about between the 13-1 or 14-1, I'm not sure what number she had. And the current estimated revenue for next year of 10.6 is our carryover funds from prior year. So I think, I'm hoping that gives some clarity to that question. I would like to, for the record, make sure that I correct one other comment, clear up one other question that one of the earlier speakers had mentioned about utility-grade solar.
So should your board approve the additional positions, the two additional positions within planning part of their workload is to move that project forward. So that is included, the staffing is included for that work effort just to be clear.
Thank you for that additional clarification Mr. Rappel.
And I was just going to add that Ms. O'Neill seems to have a worry about How much it costs the county, and that is of course a big worry to me. But though apparently there were some in ordinance formation that was not able to be recovered through fee revenue. Any activities that are related to permitting can be charged to applicants. And that's an additional amount on top of this tax revenue. So it's just, and not to mention the property taxes. So that is also not included in this figure, which at least in Carpinteria has been a significant increase.
A 9%, 9% and 20% increase by the calculations that I did by going property-by-property.
Thank you for all of that. Are there any other comments or questions on this functional group? If not, we'll go to the next one. Mr. Favreau?
4:46 – 4:492 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our second-to-last group is the General Government and Support Services function area. This is comprised of seven departments here on this screen. The Audit Controller, the Clerk Recorder Assessor, the General Services Department, the Human Services Department, Treasurer Tax Collector, and the two Ancillary Budgets being the Northern Branch Jail Project and Debt Service.
Together these budgets make up 13% of the county's general fund contribution, 9% of our operating expenses and 8% of our full-time equivalent positions. Updates since hearing is that the auto controller It has what we call an FBA or Final Budget Adjustment, including your package this afternoon for the Business Application Needs Assessment, the Banner Project which I spoke about earlier.
Using $990,000 of the department's fund balance to move this project forward. In addition, general services and the coordination of management of additional janitorial services supplies space planning technology needed to implement social distancing protocols per the county's health officer. So those are two things that are updates from workshops We have a number of expansion requests represented from these departments I'll go through these two slides the clerk recorder is asking for a DBS position entry-level programmer To begin succession planning within their operations that has ongoing costs of 114,000.
General Services has two requests for expansion the addition of a contract compliance position for 140,000 in the addition of an internal HR manager position to manage the activities within the department together as 2 FTE and ongoing funding request of $325,000 And finally on this slide, expansion requests from HR, Human Resources and the Treasurer Tax Collector Public Administrator.
For HR is additional DBS for the Administration and Operations Division. And then within the Treasurer's Office, an additional financial office professional expert to lead the Treasury and property tax operations at the Santa Maria location. You'll see the dollars associated with those requests here on the screen. That concludes my update for this group. I'd be happy to answer any questions your board might have.
Thank you Mr. Aprol, any questions for staff? Any comments, any public comments?
4:49 – 5:0219 turns
Chair Hart, members of the board we have no request to speak on this functional group.
Okay great.
We'll go to the next one then thank you. Thank You Mr. chair rounding out the conclusion of our functional group discussions is the policy and executive group You can see here on this slide that make up 24% of our general fund contribution, 5% of our operating expenses and 2% of our total FTE count. With respect to updates within this group Obviously the focus right now from this group is leading the county's efforts through the COVID process, but also to lead in the efforts on the readiness criteria to move through the state's resiliency roadmap and for reopening.
That is both the response to the COVID as well as moving the economy forward and reopening businesses. And we're engaged with cities, businesses, and community stakeholders on economic development and recovery. The revised expansion request for this functional area is on this slide, and it is an additional deputy director to provide OEM greater capacity to support departments and partner agencies. Ongoing cost of $187,000.
And secondly within the CEO's office to engage a consultant to update our Op Area Joint Powers Agreement and Emergency Management Ordinance for $75,000 From county council, expansion request to add a legal office professional to support the managing attorneys, one FTE at a cost of $134,000. That concludes my comments on this functional group.
Thank you. Are there any questions for Mr. Frappel? Mr. Gazzani?
Chair, when convenient for the board I'd ask to speak to this group. Yes please,
go right ahead.
And I'm moving to make clear that I'm speaking here as an advocate and not as your legal advisor. So the slides that we had worked up for this, starting on slide one please. I'll just tell you in the public a little bit about what the Office of County Council does. By statute, the office is the legal advisor to the board. We do this and I mean we, the attorneys and paralegals in the office work with you to look ahead frequently years ahead. We also provide you with defensible options including recently with fast options throughout the COVID-19 response and reopening.
And we do this by litigating. By the way, new litigation cases are not staying at home despite Governor Newsom's order. We've had a steady stream of new litigation throughout the past few months. Our typical litigation positions by the county include litigating to protect your decision making discretion for example with land use decisions like the Straus Wind Energy Project.
Litigating to recover money that the county is owed such as recovering more than $30 million from Southern California Edison. Some of which you're planning to spend today. Litigating against unwarranted or excessive claims against the county and litigating one of the invisible portfolios for the board from here, litigating to support the important work by Department of Social Services when they place vulnerable children into safe and stable homes.
We have a work group of four attorneys doing that work. We do all of this by recruiting, developing and retaining top people. In other words we succeed through a remarkable workforce that has also been remarkably stable. We have a 97% retention rate over the past three years, excluding people who retire after 20 or 25 years. I don't feel bad about those. I wish them well.
But we should not take this 97% retention rate for granted, especially when our heavy lift of COVID-19 work mostly has been in addition to and not instead of any other work that we do. Could you go to slide two please? So this is the basic budget snapshot and I would ask you to think of it as a great return on investment. We recovered more than 30 million dollars last year from Southern California Edison through litigation after the Thomas fire we also initiated close coordination with FEMA And Cal Office of Emergency Services, so that the settlement with Southern California Edison also held harmless the county for any repayments from another $110 million of direct federal assistance for sediment removal and debris removal. We also recovered $677,000 so far in bankruptcy litigation against HVI Canyon previously known as Greca.
And we did that after, I think a very successful venue shift. HVICat Canyon had filed their bankruptcy in New York where we did not think we would get a good bounce and then we moved it to Santa Barbara. Not shown on the budget D pages but also part of the county's return on investment are all of the emergency rules, urgency ordinances and follow-on ordinances for COVID-19 reopenings that our attorneys crafted working closely with CEO's office and other county departments That work by our attorneys frequently occurred literally overnight and generally over weekends to support the fastest possible reopening of county businesses and institutions.
Something we haven't talked much of after the CEO's initial comments was the world of teleworking, I think it all the more remarkable for what we've gotten done in the past few months that most of this work occurred when most of our workforce was teleworking so that we would not all get sick on the same day. Throughout the past few months, I've seen the high quality and high quantity of legal work that our people have created largely while teleworking in handling hearings through court call remotely. And all of this with their own challenges with COVID-19.
Slide three please. So this is the highlighted objectives for the department which is a pretty daunting list There in our April budget slot slides we told you that we could do all of this work with triage. At the top of this is COVID-19 response and I think that we will have many more months of time critical legal support for the county's heavy lift a real route reopening after COVID- 19 When we look at triage, what I'm telling you is that our present attorney staffing is adequate for all of this work. In our slides we had requested one more paralegal. I accept during these uncertain budget times that the recommended budget does not include that paralegal and done with that but I am still asking that later you work with me and the CEO to take a hard look at triage for some of the county's upcoming discretionary projects If they are not truly time critical.
Delaying any of those items would help us focus our legal support on your highest priorities, especially time critical COVID-19 reopening. Delaying items that are not really time critical also would help dig us out of the hole of doing so much of our work through excessive overtime which is causing a real burnout among the top performers that we all of us including the board need to retain long term.
Right now, a lot of our superb results as you know occur through an excessive amount of overtime during weird hours. Day and night, seven days a week. I'm talking with the CEO at 10 at night so she's working weird hours also. We have staff attorneys that I'm talking with at 6 in the morning and then again at 10 at night. For three months, I think that's helped us to quickly reopen the county. It's not sustainable.
I know I have two equestrians in the crowd, so I'll play to you with this. If we were to think of the Pony Express, the key would be to consider a weight limit soon on the extra mail that most of our departments have been carrying. And I'm not talking just about County Council but throughout the COVID-19 response. That extra weight has occurred because absolutely necessary and time critical COVID- 19 work has occurred in addition to and not instead of any of our other Thank you for hearing my concerns. We look forward to providing you with whatever it takes to move all of these things forward, but I am asking to talk with you soon about triage.
Thank you. Take any questions
that's very well timed advice and you are exactly right the responsiveness of your department has been extraordinary during this time many other departments have also dug in as well but your legal advice is a critical linchpin to making these things happen on time and the pace that the public is looking for so I think your request is very Mr.
Chair
yes Supervisor Adam
Just want to make my annual comment that one of the cheapest things you can do is think about doing things before you do them and try and shape the The events if possible and Mr. Gazzone shop does a really good job doing that and I think they're a great investment
Thank You supervisor Adams Are there other comments? Supervisor Williams,
I just wanted to say, you know, I spend a lot of my life Life and effort trying to get the county to take risks because sometimes that's necessary to get things done. But sure, I want to be really clear how important and how valued to me personally it is how hard your staff works to make sure we don't take unnecessary risks. And the fact that your people, and particularly you are accessible pretty much at any hour of the day or night. In my experience it just says a lot about your work ethic and your dedication to this institution so thank you.
Thank you Supervisor
Williams. Supervisor Lavinino? We needed to have the graphic well done,
I think I got me another job young skinny wiry fellows. I might not be young So
the recruitment for the Pony Express is good until you get two orphans preferred so that's not really
our recruiting line Yeah You know, I think he brought up a good point Mike and and and you know I didn't know if somebody else was gonna bring it up but But having this budget in the middle of this coronavirus, and I know we've mentioned this a couple times during the updates. But our staff's from CEO's office all the way down like totally unbelievable job of being able to deal with this with county council Jeff Terry Barney Nancy. I know I'm gonna leave people out so I don't really want to go too right?
Remarkable effort and it does take unfortunately, these jobs sometimes are 24-7 round the clock jobs. And because people are counting on us to be there at 6 o'clock in the morning when they send an email or 10 o'clock at night when they need an answer in the morning because they're trying to open a business so I know it's not sustainable and I don't think anybody expects it to be sustainable but This has been probably county government at its finest for the last few months. Yeah, well it's been a while but I'm actually really proud to be able to go out in the community and say hey if you're having a problem this is where you go we have the answers.
And I know not everybody agrees with the answers. I got half the people telling me, I'm trying to kill everybody and the other half are trying to figure out why they're forced to wear a mask. So obviously we're probably doing something right then if both sides are not happy. But thank you Mike and thank all that staff that's been working so hard. Unfortunately there was really no other alternative at this point but we do get the message.
Thank you very much again. Any other comments on this functional group? We have any public comments on this group?
Chair Hart, members of the board we have no request to speak on this function.
5:02 – 5:083 turns
Matters back to the board I'm just curious Mike you still had that up it said $25 a week I wasn't sure if he wanted to negotiate that or not
well that brings us to the budget summary and wrap-up. Mr. Frappel
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before we move there I do want to respond if you might allow me to, to a question Supervisor Williams brought up with respect to these one-time measures we have taken using strategic reserve cannabis and other one time fund balances to preserve services. If I got your question right, Supervisor Williams. It really was is there an equivalent to an FTE? Is there equivalent to the number of positions saved if you will or continue to provide these critical services it might be a better way to look at it because of these measures and I would say there's yes and staff has worked diligently behind-the-scenes to put a number together for you so let me share that with you.
I mentioned specifically the 10.8 million going DSS is equivalent about 66 FTE The amount of money that's coming from cannabis to backfill the loss of 172 probably has an equivalent value of about 25 FTE. Within public works, the use of fund balance and the potential use of the 18% to support operations to the extent necessary Accounts for 20 to 25 FTE. And finally, rounding out the 2.4 million coming from general kind of programs to backfill partially backfill the loss within behavioral wellness has an FTE equivalent approximately 20.
If you add those four numbers up or five numbers with one's a range it equates 131 to 136 FTE And again, I don't think the important thing is that we save the FTE. The important thing is I guess we save the services, protect the services those people provide. So if that responds to your question with that Mr. Chair let me just kind of paint the picture beyond today.
I began my comments this morning about the context that we found ourselves in. I like to kind of paint the picture of what's next What's next is this. So we have engaged, as our CEO mentioned earlier in her opening comments, we've engaged departments to develop contingency planning for a reduction should the recession be longer, deeper or we have an additional shutdown because of COVID.
We've asked departments to provide us the impacts, potential impacts should their budgets be reduced The general fund contribution be reduced by 2, 4 and 6%. So what do we do with this information? The information is important for two reasons. One is what we know is that if we are in a position where we have to reduce the county's budget it is less painful to do it sooner in the fiscal year than later So it's important that we do this planning now. So if we find ourselves in a position to reduce budgets at Q1 or when we come back to your board, I'll talk about that in a moment, we want to be able to bring options to your board sooner rather than later.
And so you could think about it, if you have to cut $1 from the budget but you're gonna do it mid-year, you really have to cut two in order to achieve that dollar ongoing. So our goal is to work with departments now. We've asked departments to provide us that information by the end of the month, we'll be pouring through that and working through that with each department so that we're prepared should that be necessary.
The long-term benefit also is should as we are looking forward to the following fiscal year, should reductions be necessary? Will at least have a starting point of what those impacts might look like My second point here is that we will be updating, as I mentioned before, we'll be updating our five-year forecast. And we're doing some additional stress tests to that forecast so that we understand the potential impact on our revenues and our services should this recession be deeper or longer lasting.
As we're currently looking at the impact of COVID, we are kind of modeling kind of a two-year recovery of revenues to get back to current state. I can't tell you today whether that's too optimistic or too pessimistic but as we look at the forecasting going forward will be modeling a variety of scenarios so that we have a sense what is our bookmark for their bookends of that range And finally, it's our intent to come back to your board in the fall if the budget requires revisions or for seeking policy guidance with respect to the full impacts of COVID-19 as that pandemic plays out. So I wanted – that's our beyond today. That's beyond the adoption, the things we'll be working on to make sure your board has the right information and can consider the right questions as it relates to our financial position.
With that, it really is now an opportunity for your board to continue your deliberations, identify your priorities for the budget. We've laid out for you and communicated to you in a separate memo which is on file publicly record and as part of online as well. And have identified a total of 688,200 of available one-time sources that have not yet allocated within the recommended budget.
The important note here is we have allocated all of the ongoing revenue that we're aware of and that we can reasonably assume and count on for the upcoming fiscal year, so these are considered one-time dollars and with that Mr. Chair I would welcome your deliberation.
5:08 – 5:249 turns
Thank you for doing this incredible work in a very dynamic situation. It's really difficult to project ahead, but I think the course that the CEO and your team have all put together that gets us going into the fiscal year Positions us to adapt as necessary. Hopefully, with good news from our state and federal partners rather than bad news is really wise and a solid course of action.
Are there comments? Supervisor Lavenino.
Thank you Mr. Chair. Well, as your SB CSRS rep I will just kind of give you an idea. Mr. Frapple did kind of mention it as possibilities. I just kind of want to give you a flavor We base all of our statistical stuff. We're looking at a rate of return, we're expecting a 7% return to just give you an idea what happened this year. On February 1st, we were up to the point where we were already at a 5% return well on our way to 7%.
By April 1st which is two months later, We were at a negative 7% return, which was an almost $400 million swing from where we were in the positive to then to a severe negative. So the reason I look at this as a long term investment cycle is that if the fiscal year had ended at the end of April, we would have been up a severe creek. I'm happy to report that over the last two months, there's been a significant rebound.
We don't really know what that number is yet. We get our reports about a month behind so we have not even received the May report yet and it does end at the fiscal year Is that the end of June? Just based on what we saw in May, I would say right now we're probably and I'm probably way out of school on even mentioning this because the last report was we were at a negative 3% at the end of April.
May was really good. I'm guessing we're probably somewhere around zero right now and then we have the month of June still to go which has been a pretty decent month but I just want to kind of put into perspective Of what we're going to be looking at next year for retirement contribution costs. So with that, for me my druthers is in this and I know it was mentioned that we're only in a one day budget and it's really only 215 at this point but I think the public needs to be aware of. And I think we've mentioned it a number of times but A point in time, and there's so much unknown of what's going to happen in the fall that I think what we're doing right now is very prudent. Is we are passing a status quo no frills hold us over budget until we get to the fall and then we can make some determinations there from when we hear from the state and federal government.
So for me my hope is that initially what I would like to do is take my 688,000 put it into Some sort of contingency or strategic reserve for possible future retirement costs that are going to be coming to us next year. But at the end of my deliberations too, I just want to say that a lot of times, many times, I've asked myself during a lot of these hearings is it worth taking the abuse to support the cannabis industry?
And a lot of times I have to go home and What am I doing? There's a lot of negative press that goes along with supporting the cannabis industry, loss of political support. But when I look at the budget this year, I say the answer is yes, it is worth it. I think we heard the services are going to be saved. It's been controversial, it's been messy but this budget without cannabis revenue Would have been an unmitigated disaster.
Now this revenue may not last forever, I get that, I understand that but I just thank our lucky stars it was in place this year. $14.1 million of direct relief. Everything from public safety departments with Prop 172 to social services another 3 million. Our response to COVID libraries enhanced tax collection more for planning positions. And I'm assuming that out of that 688, we're probably going to be spending that on some very innovative ideas that my board members will come up with here as we move forward. So you know, as far as cannabis goes, we still have a lot of work to do to limit the impacts of new industry but this budget is the reason I will continue to help get it right so there's not much money to spend up there but for me Just as soon until I hear something better, put it in reserve.
And I appreciate
that and I think that kind of reflects my view as well that spending this money at this point in time is very challenging. But there is one giant issue that is brought forward by events of the past couple of weeks. The killing of George Floyd has galvanized this country, and people in our community are demanding government respond to the significant systemic racist issues that exist in our communities across the country. And we are just beginning the dialogue about how best to do that and I'm A great way that we could respond immediately is to dedicate $500,000 of that money to an equity fund. That we would have available to respond to concerns and issues that the community brings forward over time. We don't know how we would spend that money but I would hate for us to be in a position to where you know we look to our budget and say we don't have a way to respond to legitimate important requests from the community.
And I think it would send a strong message that we are ready and prepared to engage seriously on addressing the issues that are roiling our country today. Supervisor Lavenino?
Yeah, so just kind of explain that to me. So that would be under the CEO's guidance and based on what we hear on Thursday that this is kind of a contingency fund that would be set aside that she would then, I mean, would you flesh that out for me? So you owe me a sucker.
Supervisor said we would put it in the 990 which is a non-departmental line item account so it wouldn't necessarily be some kind of fund but it would be a set aside services and supplies set aside. And so at 990 my office controls that and to be really there for you to direct me how do I want to spend it throughout the year.
Yeah, I definitely can live with something like that. As long as it's under the CEO's discretion and we hear what we hear Thursday. Yep. Mr. Gazzani?
Chair, not to be the glass half empty but I'll be the glass half empty. I think it would just be good to have a discussion on the votes required to move that money so that everyone has an understanding whether that's majority vote or forfeits vote later.
Supervisor Williams?
Well, I definitely think there should be an investment along those lines. Though I want to point out that there are some things in these expansion requests that have a direct nexus to what we're talking about and I would say would have a concrete result. If we don't want our jail population to be higher than what it needs to be then doing the things that our justice partners In some cases, you know, arrive to that they can get done to move the process faster is pretty important. And there's one of those items on this expansion requests which is turning the public defender office into a paperless office. It's a one time request of $120,000 for four interns to do that so I want to just Put that out there as a very concrete use along the lines that we have discussed.
And if the public defender and the other justice partners can do their work faster, that is going to address head on the criminal justice reform issue that has such a strong nexus with what we're talking about. And I would say that it is one of the biggest and most conspicuous things about this budget, is how the understandable decision has been made not to budget any of the federal aid.
Even though that federal aid is in the governor's budget. It's in the Senate's budget and it's in the Assembly's budget. It is very rare, I can tell you from six years of voting on these budgets for something to be in the Senate budget, the Assembly budget and the Governor's budget, and not end up in the final budget. And the dialogue that Mr. Frapwell and Makes it pretty clear that at minimum, even without the discussion that's been happening at a federal level to open up the criteria.
There has been a lot of discussion about opening up criteria. But even if we discount that, even if we play to the current level of criteria, even if the December deadline does not extend, that means we've got about $5 million from this last fiscal year that's reimbursable. And at least two and a half from this coming fiscal year. If we venture to guess that, you know, half of our expenses will be in half of the year.
You could say it's, you know, you could play real conservative and say the worst case scenario is five or though, you know, the worst case scenario is 7.5 or something like that. But I do think that it's important for us to talk about that a little bit. Because frankly, I went through a lot of forums in this last election, right? And when you try to tell constituents that we preside over a billion dollar budget but that on the budget day, we usually only allocate about million bucks, right?
They look at you like you must be lying, right? It's just there. It's incredulous, right? And so I think that we should be guiding and putting some input on what we should use that money for. And I would even say that we should make a motion for staff to return to us for a spending plan, for some of those priorities. And so on this grid I would say that I would support 160 for the AOT, 90 for the vet, 120 for the public defender paperless 162 for one of the cannabis enforcement deputies and 150 for a CEO racial justice goals immediately but that's not all.
And you know I would ask staff to come back to us when we have gotten the federal aid for a spending plan that addresses pension costs The equity fund that Mr. Hart was talking about, deferred maintenance, a library benchmarking. Look, we're infamous for you guys have commissioned monies for studies but then the recommendations don't happen right? I think that when we have a study, we spent more money than that on the study.
Two studies almost right? And to avoid further cuts so I would just say If I was gonna advise the board on what we should split it on, I would say 30% to pension costs. 30% to deferred maintenance. 30% to avoid further cuts in the institution. 6% to libraries and 4% to add on top of 150 to the equity fund administered by the CEO's office. That would be my advice but I'm not even necessarily asking for that precise of a thing but us to give those five priorities to the CEO's office, to return with a recommendation once the federal aid comes through.
Supervisor
5:24 – 5:299 turns
Lavenito? So thank you I'm just confused about we don't have it yet right and you can guarantee it but I don't think you want to guarantee it things change all the time I mean I don't understand what's wrong with Let's wait until we get it once we get it. We're going to get so what you're saying is just want to plan ahead of time but what it is, but we don't know how much it is and I think we've all decided and I don't know if what you're worried about is a 3 vote versus a 4 vote.
Well, I mean a couple things as I obviously don't like that we shackle ourselves sort To the decision making in a one billion budget to haggling with each other over $500,000. But we don't. So we have to realize that- You asked me a question I'm trying to give you a response. The second thing is, I just am philosophically against governing by super majorities. That's like in my view profoundly undemocratic way to operate an institution And so typically how this works every year is we play it super, super close to the vest. Super conservative.
We have some money to allocate later on to other things and it's always done by super majority. I just think that's fundamentally not the way we should be governing. And it works not terribly here because of our level of collegiality, but as a thing to role model, as a system of government, it's profoundly wrong. I do think that we should give some direction.
Given that, I'm not pretending that I have the level of expertise that our budget director does or our CEO. I'm trying to make allowances by either we subscribe a percentage to it Or we just ask for them to return with direction on those five priorities, with the money that materializes. CEO Sato?
So supervisors if it would help there's a bunch of different questions in there and I think our issues at Supervisor Williams brought up but one was can we budget money that is projected to be in the governor's budget because there's consensus with the state assembly and senate. And I did discuss this with our auditor controller, and our auditor controller has to agree whether the revenue is available for us to appropriate at this time with their budget. And she is on now.
Is that correct, Jacqueline? So if you'd like to hear from her directly, I think that might help and then we can get to the other issues.
And so I'll just ask the question, can we designate a percentage of money that could come in to a purpose?
Can you hear me
yes, we can but if you could get closer to the microphone it would be better. Thank you
So I think there's a couple questions the first question was Can Can we recognize the revenue and appropriate it? If it's not If it's not available and not measurable. And the question, the answer that is would be no. We want to be conservative and we don't have the criteria yet in order to recognize that revenue. Does that make sense?
That is not my question. My question is can we designate a percentage of incoming Revenue from a source like federal aid to a purpose. Can we ask staff to come back with a recommendation for revenue that may come in? There are two different questions.
So I'll take that and Supervisor Williams through the chair, you can always ask us to come back and as you said and as a direction to staff put forward your priorities that you'd like us to evaluate to see how we could fund those things. You can always provide direction for staff to come back If you'd like to designate that, we'd have to say what is that word? To designate it. Typically we're talking about designating specific funds for specific purposes. I think that's what the auditor is discussing.
I think that to designate it would just be to give us your policy priority for spending and you can do that now or you can do that when we come back. It doesn't mean the same as appropriating the funds to particular purposes.
5:29 – 5:345 turns
Yes, Supervisor
Adam. The County Budget Act as I understand it makes the CEO propose a budget and then enables the Board of Supervisors to be able to pull money out of any pile that she puts it in and put it in another pile? So the idea that we only are splitting up 688,000 today is nuts. We could go back in there if there was agreement on a three-fifths basis today. We could go back in there and take it out of anywhere and put it anywhere else.
So that's on us.
Supervisor Lavinino. Yeah, and I'll just say that super conservative close to the vest strategy has put us in the position that we're in right now. That I would venture to say there are probably a handful of counties right now that are dealing with the impact of COVID, that aren't laying off any employees, that aren't reducing any services. And we're actually looking at increasing some services.
So I'm okay with the way we're doing it, and I think as Supervisor Adams said if we wanted to. We also remember that we've put in which I think is very prudent and really good government. We've put in formulas that take a certain amount of the budget. We already made our large scale priorities. Whether it's road maintenance or it's building the jail, putting money aside for that. Or the fire department diverting part of the general fund to go there. We've already made large scale decisions and so I don't think it is good government to get involved in these very small low dollar We spend a lot of time just haggling over whether we need another veterinarian. And in a billion dollar company, I don't think the board of directors probably does that too often and we'll do it today but it used to be a lot In my opinion worse than this where we were sitting here giving out five and $10,000 to every agency.
Every CBO that would come up had zero Accountability in my mind and I don't think you got the job done. So, I think this is much better It's not a perfect system but you know, I'd much rather have it the way it is then and like Peter said if you get three votes he can go back in and Take a couple million dollars at a contingency or the litigation fund Sorry Mike or any other fund and you can do whatever you want with it If you can get if you can get the votes But I I'm I like it the way it is, and I think you're going to be happy when it comes back. And we've got this windfall in the fall that we're going to be able to go back and take a second and third bite out of the apple.
Supervisor Hartman?
We are very lucky to be in the position we are because we have made policies and multi-year, we've stuck to it. And that has yielded real accomplishments over time and we funded our strategic reserve and we've had fund balances in the different departments but a lot of those were now drawing on because of this financial situation we find ourselves in. I just want to point out one thing looking back, and that is when we realized we had some cannabis money more than what we thought.
I was the first one to say we should save it for the budget. Because I want to look at the whole, and I don't want to create a feeding frenzy in different departments. And whoever has the relationship with a board member gets that. I want to look at it as a whole. So I appreciate Supervisor Williams and his perspective because he's waited and now he wants to articulate in the context of the whole what the priorities are.
More from Mr. Frapwell or from CEO Miyasato is whether if we do put this money in a reserve, how do we avoid the feeding frenzy? If we don't give you direction now, how do we get a sense of the relative priorities?
5:34 – 5:417 turns
Supervisor to the Chair, when you talk about putting this money... So I think we're waiting for your direction to see a couple of things and I'm going to start big and get to your specific question if you don't mind. That's how I'm thinking of it This is the only county I've been in. I've been doing 17 budgets, I counted, or was directly involved in the budget as a CEO. This is my seventh budget here. I've been doing budgets in Marin County and did budgets for a city I was in.
We never had a process like this. And so I can see Supervisor Williams being frustrated and I'm sure the city did the same thing. You didn't... The CEO, as Mr Adams always said, can allocate the full budget to the needs of the organization So that 688, because I'm conservative in how I budget, I would have put it to a reserve. A pension reserve or if there was a pressing need that we identified that just came up, I'd put it to that one time use.
So we've continued this practice because it's been a long standing tradition before me. I think maybe even before CEO Waller and CEO Brown. To do this is there's an additional quote-unquote one time funding because there are so many needs in the county. So I'm just saying that. In general, so they're defeating frenzy quote that you're seeing are based on these Additional needs that the departments are bringing forth and I want to remind you the department's put this for as expansion requests when we thought We potentially would have additional money, and I would bet you very few of these would still be on the list If the departments if we had began the budget process in March So a lot of the things were on the list because they submitted them in February You know as we're developing our budget so we start very early.
We asked apartments Is there anything else they want to add or change? But I want to appreciate that the departments have been very mindful of the situation where they're in and are glad that we're doing a status quo at a minimum, you know. That we are doing a status quo budget so that they aren't having to deal with service reductions and layoffs. So having said that, I don't know if there's going to be a quote unquote feeding frenzy. I think if you allocate it to any other things that are mentioned anything that your colleagues are saying that's fine my only Request is that you really do allocate it to one time needs and I get it. There are a lot of ongoing needs that we have and my request to you is For right now while the country in the state is in one of the deepest recessions We've seen to fund things you feel really have to get done now Versus things that have been long-standing that we know we need to get to This may just not be the year to do it And so is it an urgent and pressing need of a one-time nature?
And that's what my request would be. Because when, as Mr. Frapwell said if we put in the ongoing needs first it's only one time money but the department may just put this back on their list for a cut. Just to be honest with you that's kind of how it goes. So you may give it to them and it might reduce their cut list next year but it doesn't mean that object or that thing that your funding is going to stick.
Not this year.
Supervisor Hartman, Mr. Chair? Excuse me, Supervisor Adam?
Let's go ahead, go back to Supervisor Hartman.
Okay, thank you. Supervisor Hartman?
Well I just wanted to emphasize that you are asking right now for the next quarter 2%, 4% and 6% cuts of the departments. And so we want to be clear about the message that we're sending with the choices today that we're not offering something and then taking it away in a quarter. So I hear that.
Supervisor Adam.
Thank you. Yeah, my office when we came here we used to call that last, if you want a feeding frenzy. That used to be a feeding frenzy at the end there and we used to call it the candy store. And the candy store was open, and then the candy store got closed after there was three votes to allocate that whatever amount of money we just saved out for the supervisors to have fun with.
And I never participated in that ever. I always tried to throw all the money back into deferred maintenance which is what I'm going to do today. You know. We have choices, and to debate Mona a little bit here. Putting it into deferred maintenance gives you a yield that's high in my opinion because we know that everything we work on is going to be way more expensive down the road than it is today because there's going to be inflation in theory.
Maybe it'll be deflation and it will get cheaper, I don't know. But at the same time even if that happens, it's going to get more expensive because it's going to be more extensive. We know the damage accumulates over time and then it's more expensive almost without exception to fix. So you're going to get a high yield and you already have a significant reserve, which is good.
We have the contingency, we have the strategic reserve and I'm not sure how much cash you want to actually hoard when you can put that money to work in a defensive way. And I'm going to talk more about That and priorities in my speech, but I think One of the things that we have managed the cash flow very conservatively, I think in this county. But what we have not done is face the fact that we've financed a lot of our apparent prosperity by deferring maintenance and I wish that we hadn't done that, and I'd like to see us fix that before it gets so bad that you can't possibly even touch it.
And we'll go into if number three here in a little
5:41 – 5:5311 turns
while. Maybe just a little detail before we get to the bigger policy questions. There is this question about AOT and fully funding the full program, and my understanding is that there are reserves within the department that provide that so that would be outside of what we're talking about. I just wanted to make sure that that is accurate and I think Mr. Gazzone has some specific language for Make that happen, but maybe we need to decide whether that's a policy decision the board wants to do first.
Mr. Guzzoni?
Chair and Supervisors in either order, but there are two pieces. There is a funding component which CO can respond to then there is also an authorization component which I can address. The board previously in 2016 through the budget process set forth a three year Authorization of assisted outpatient treatment. And if the board wanted to continue that program, the board can do it in one of two ways either through a resolution outside of the budget process or through action within the county budget process. Our recommendation is to do it within the county budget process because frankly that's the surest way to know how much you would be obligated to pay down And we have draft language that would extend that program for, we'll call it three years.
But this is a fairly dynamic environment where the enabling state statute is set to expire in January. Half years unless that statute is extended, which it may be. And there's also another Assembly Bill 1976. I can't predict what will happen to that but that might also impact AOT or what's known as Laura's Law. So if the board was interested in keeping the option of Laura's law in play for another three year period or whatever period you would like, we had drafted language to accomplish that and we can put that up on the screen at your convenience.
And then if the board wanted to do that, that authority could be reflected in the budget resolution as a further resolved paragraph. It would be easy to do and then the board would have the option three years from now if you wanted to not continue that program to stop it at that point. So that's the authority component and then the CEO could address the funding component.
Supervisors to the chair, correct? So we have a fund balance that we keep in 990 which is the general fund for Overdraws for puff additional beds. We need to buy out of County IMD bids etc. So there's Funding in that fun balance that could cover this it wouldn't come out of though 688
Thank You supervisor Williams well then I didn't know how that was gonna be a freebie so that's awesome and then would happy to I'm going to move a little bit more your way, especially since you guys don't seem to want to do the designate incoming funds. So I would put 38, well 122 more in the equity set aside and 38 to pay for the entire deed of the officer.
What the issue is, as I understand it with the cannabis enforcement is that they don't feel like they've got enough quite enough to be able to do all the permitting and the enforcement at the same time. We definitely need them to do the permitting. It's unclear of how much permitting they will get done in order to make the position sustainable but it's very conceivable That it's possible to be achieved as a one-time expenditure because of the recovery of permit revenue down the road.
I guess my view is that we're not done today. This is just a moment in time, as Supervisor Labadino said and that all of these worthy important things are going to get their day when we know more specifically what the state federal government are doing with budgets and that this is making a decision today isn't Not making a decision today and funding those things isn't the end of those requests. And whether viability, and whether they're good ideas, and whether we're going to fund them. I think it's just matter of the timing of when we make that decision. And I think it's not even that far in advance. We're talking about two or three months. And so to me, you know, I think the message I would like to leave today to express to the community is that we're being really careful and we're trying to manage very difficult fiscal situation in the moment.
Described a process that can adapt to circumstances down the road positive or negative. However, they go and And at the same time we have this screaming Need to be decisive and tell the community We are hearing what people are demonstrating in the streets about and we are being responsive to that and we are going to put money in a reserve fund to address You know, stakeholders and everybody that wants to participate in that to begin. I don't think that will define what this conversation is on Thursday. It'll just be the beginning and the most important posture for us is to listen carefully to that.
And so that's my view and I do think you know we talked about earlier in regards to the public safety functional unit of the budget Is also important that we have this moment where we have a dramatically reduced jail population, which is a policy issue that this board and previous boards have grappled with for a very long time. That is 100% in the space that the country is talking about. And we have an opportunity to capitalize on the circumstances that we have in front of us, and we don't want to miss that. We need to have direction from this board. To continue the collaborative dialogue that's been going on between all the public safety elements to keep the jail population as low as possible. It may not be, this isn't necessarily the finish line but this is an amazing starting place and that we should capitalize on the gains that have been made and And I would hope that all of our elected official public safety partners would be part of this dialogue.
And if we can incentivize that in some way and make that a serious conversation through the CEO's office, I think we need to do that. It may not require withholding money from You know, the sheriff's budget. I know he has been absolutely leading in this space and there have been significant improvements and there has been diversion from the jail and there has been commitment to providing mental health services. And those things happened before COVID-19 but there has been a dramatic change as a result of that.
Facts on the ground that need to be emphasized and to get everyone to look at differently. And I hope we take this moment, you know, to create a process that requires everybody to get to the table with Mr. Malikian and be serious in every single part of this from the public defender to the probation department, to the sheriff, to the district attorney all collaborating saying what can we do differently going forward to address this challenge?
Supervisor Hartman.
Well, I'm trying to understand exactly what my colleagues want. I think Supervisor Adam would like all the money to go to our deferred maintenance. If if I understood Supervisor Lavinino you would like the money to go into a contingency?
You know I'm just not for spending on one time Positions so you know, I mean And I know you know, and I think this is something else that has to be said Is it and I think maybe supervisor Adam did say it Was that we do still have a very healthy reserve You know We're gonna we're gonna come out of this thing with still I think seven and a half percent And I want to have.
When I hear what the community has to say, and I don't know what that's going to be or what that looks like of what some changes are. I want to have some tools to be able to say okay maybe it is the scanning project or maybe it is something else that needs to get done.
It
could be body cams, it could be a lot of different things. I want to be able to have a little pool of money to be able to say yes we can do that, yes we can do that. So to me it would be in some sort of holding pattern until we get there.
And I'm trying to figure out where I fit by knowing where everybody else is. So Supervisor Williams, your bottom line? Well
my bottom line is that our sentiments and intentions are really important but if our sentiments and intentions are really important we got a screaming concrete project that has everything to do with justice equity right in front of us I don't understand why we wouldn't fund that now, the scanning project. That's what the public defender has been talking about this whole long before it was news headlines and that this is a fundamental injustice. We can't move the justice system fast enough to provide equity And that, you know I mean she's kind of like got a little flack by because she's been willing to tell everybody that things aren't okay. That things aren't going well and but I think it's good that she also recognizes that her department doesn't always go fast enough and has attempted to do it so I'm all for the equity money We got a project right there that I think meets all the kind of things that we would want in order to make that real.
So, that's my only head scratcher. Necessarily, I wouldn't dig in my heels. I would support a motion to put most of this into the equity set aside but I would just say that okay if we really wanna do something then we gotta make the criminal justice system work faster so we don't have 70-80% of people in jail not convicted of any crime. That's a recipe for injustice and racial injustice as we have just talked ad nauseum about.
5:53 – 5:5913 turns
Mr. Chair?
Yes, Supervisor
Adam? I'm just wondering if a set aside account is Is not trying to, appears to try to thwart the County Budget Act where we budget on budget day and You're not putting it in a contingency. You're sort of identifying some issue area that it would go to, but it's so amorphous we couldn't possibly tell what we could spend that on and I guess it would be a three or four-fifths vote to get it out of that contingency fund?
Mr. Gazzone?
Supervisor Adam, let me see if I'll take a first stab at that through the chair. At least how I've understood the discussion with your board this afternoon is to when we talk about a set aside, I would suggest that the most appropriate way to handle that is to put that allocation, that appropriation within general county programs. It will fall in what referred to as a services supplies object It is then appropriated.
That is, as we mentioned, a department or fund that's managed by the CEO's office. We would be seeking your board direction after you have had public input and been able to formulate your priorities on how you would see those funds being most effectively used and spent accordingly. To the extent that your board does that and appropriates those funds today or as part of the budget adoption, there isn't a further board vote required. Obviously we would be seeking your boards input and be responsive to the priorities that you set on how you would allocate the money But barring a contract threshold of $200,000 or more is not likely to take further formal board action if that helps clarify.
Yeah I think that does actually help clarify. You know, the point is as Supervisor Williams said to meet the moment in a concrete way. And I think this is a concrete way here we are appropriating the funding $500,000. The CEO's office is going to come back with direction on how they would propose To engage the community and all of the partners in how we're going to spend this money. And I think it fits in with what we're talking about, about the overall budget because we're talking about a dynamic process that's gonna be iterative. We're gonna have changing circumstances with state and federal funding We're going to be engaged in that process regularly. I think it's appropriate for us to resume having quarterly reports from the departments that are not meeting their budget expectations, to hear back in real time what is going wrong in terms of spending and so that we can recalibrate that rather than waiting for the end of the fiscal year and seeing that departments have overspent their budget.
I think this all fits together. In the way we are proposing to deal with this year's budget moving forward. And Mr. Gazzone, you have a point? This is Supervisor Adam.
Was Mr. Gazzone going to go first?
He's pointing to you.
Okay, well I'm just going to say that I think Fraught with danger. Because can you imagine if there was a board majority that wanted to put 500,000 into let's say subsidizing somebody's property taxes to get a business to come here or I can't imagine what else at this point but something that the current board majority would disagree with? And I think that's a bad precedent to set, in my opinion.
Well, I'm supportive of it. I just don't want the intentions to outweigh concrete results on what we want to have intentions about. I don't care if 9,000 people showed up on Thursday and told us to spend it on one thing. And Tracy Mukuga shows up and says actually we won't be able to have the justice system move fast enough to provide racial justice. I'm going to believe Tracy Mukuga because I think people elect us to make judgment calls.
And I know that the justice system isn't moving fast enough to provide equity and justice, and that's what we gotta do. So even though it's not a very sexy sounding thing of funding for interns to scan a bunch documents if it means that more innocent people get out of jail faster then it's a good idea.
Supervisor
Lavenino?
Yes. And Doss, she did turn this in February and I know she's been talking about it but if she comes Thursday and says that's her number one priority and that's it, I'm on board with it. She just might have a different perspective now today than she did So I'm with you and I think everybody up here thinks it's a really good idea. It's 48 hours. I don't think we're not going to do it so but okay, I want to make sure that
are then I am I'm ready to
6:00 – 6:027 turns
Supervisor Hartman, do you want to make
a motion? I'm willing to support that for the interns as well. And and I believe that if we do park this money That there will be a very public process in how it gets allocated And I have confidence that the majority of the board will be supportive of that. It's not going to be squirreled away and spent by the CEO's office in secret, so I'm confident about that this will be a very visible open process.
So I'm supportive of putting it into an 990 account for equity and criminal justice with as Doss says measurable outcomes or real progress.
Well, it sounds like we are really close. Mr. Ghazani did you want to? Yeah I think Supervisor Adam wants to say something. Mr Ghazani did you want to put that language up or what were you?
I was going to ask just if you wanted to move forward with the assisted outpatient treatment. And if so, the language on the screen would be the insert for the prior budget resolution of VA and other further resolved clause which would give the board The opportunity in three years to revisit this So it would not be an open-ended commitment and it's got some funding caps associated with it. And this actually is the authority for the process to work
Thank you for that. Supervisor Adam, did you have something you wanted to add?
Well, I have learned through my evolution here that what I'd like to do is wait for the motion because I'm going to say some stuff here that's not going to be universally accepted. And it's not going to change anything so it works best if we make the motion get the second of the motion go to discussion and then you come back to me.
Thank you, that's a very clear path. I understand that completely. Supervisor
6:02 – 6:0827 turns
Lavenino? All right, I'll make a motion to, well shoot, I don't have my book in front of me but to accept staff recommendation on the budget resolution. You know what, you might as well Why don't you give me the sheet of paper, can you?
So I think you may have a couple things going and one is just the conceptual on this money. And
then- Do we want to even just do that? Does that have to be part of the whole budget or can we just do that.
Yes because it's an attachment to your budget action so if you could help Mr. Clemente he's trying to understand what was just said.
Okay so I think what was just said was well I don't think he has years in Joan. So, oh you want it all in the equity set aside? Okay. I think
there's four votes now for all of it in this equities set aside. I'll go 500,000. Yeah so
if you see down his chart...
okay. One other clarification if I might Mr. Chair and board members. I'd like to get clarity from your board on 162 for the expanded AOT program. If we had consensus here, then Mr. Clemente could fill in the top line which says using existing reserves to fund that 162 and then also have that below the chart in the uses if I could get some consensus on That issue from your board. That'd be helpful
Supervisor Lavinia. I think I'm ready for a motion and so we're going to work on this first, right? Yeah, so if the one six so that oh, so the 162 out of
Yes, the 990 mental health fund balance So I think mr Clemente just wants to know do each of you want to use the 160 162 thousand out of the 990 mental health fund balance for the AOT program So I'm seeing a yes from
yes more than three
and I don't know if Supervisor Adam does or not? He's-.
Supervisor Adam, do you have a view on that
discreetly? Well here's my feelings on that. The last time we looked and I'm not really up to speed on this for about up to the moment but the last time we looked we weren't really treating anybody through that. Is that just wrong?
It's a modest number of people involved. I think Director Glegghorn said three people over the three years, but I think that probably speaks to if we don't have folks that require this, we won't spend the money either.
Well and that doesn't count the number of people who have received services that's reimbursable because it started with the outreach team. Right. So that doesn't completely accurately Discuss the value. It just means that it didn't cost us as much as we thought it might
Well, yeah like I say I think dr. Leghorn is getting to the mic
you
don't need me What you think supervisor Adam we have dr. Glegg corn just to answer that question for you I
Thank you. The question was how many people are being served really through the AOT program? The number was an average of one per year going through the full process of AOT. The majority of costs in the 162 is for the intensive outreach and engagement because those costs aren't covered under any other funding source. And so those are the folks that go out, make the initial contacts, make sure the person is qualified for the program and then attempt to engage them voluntarily. So as a result, most of the people are engaged voluntarily. There's no additional cost when they agree to treatment and so the cost of the program really is that outreach team and then the costs associated with one person per year needing to go through the court petition process.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, I'm not really comfortable debating it with you in public. You and I have had conversations about this before and I'm good. I'm gonna leave my money where it's at.
Okay thank you Supervisor Adam. I think Supervisor Lavinino- I'm ready to make a motion.
Okay so let's see if I do this right. So I'm willing to move, looking to move. Is this a slide number or what do we call
it? Supervisors, this is your attachment E so can we just make sure this is correct? So there's still a little bit of money left over that would just sit in- I was going to
let that go and you didn't have to tell everybody there was money left over. I was doing you a
favor. Thank you, have to be transparent so I just want to make sure you know the yellow he's showing and it's hard for Supervisor Adam to see but he put all his funding into preferences for deferred maintenance. So there's $500,000 in the equity set aside in 990 as an appropriation, $162,000 to the AOT which is funded from the 990 mental health set-aside so that means there's $188,200 If the board does not want to allocate it at this time, we just fall back into fund balance.
I just want to mention that it's more than enough for the scanning project. More than enough for the veterinarian and almost enough for a cannabis enforcement deputy that's needed in permitting. Cannabis, let me address that the scanning project is not ongoing it's one year. The vet we just heard they couldn't go back and forth between part time and full time with the vet and the cannabis enforcement deputy They're supposed to at some point get a recoup from the permitting revenue, which they have not yet ever budgeted because they haven't gotten it because they're not far enough down the permitting line.
6:08 – 6:1816 turns
Okay, well I will move attachment E as $500,000 to the equity set aside. Paying for the moving the money from that 990 for mental health fund balance, the 162,000, to fully fund the AOT and then also move recommended actions A through H of the recommended budget.
And Chair and Supervisor Leveneau, did I understand that the motion would be that the budget resolution which is at recommended action C Would include the language providing a further three-year extension of Laura's law. The language that we'd shown on the screen
it
does
Thank you
Motion has been made. Is there a second? I'll second it Any discussion
I'll support it but I will Do a supplementary motion afterwards on the veterinarian or something? I mean, these are needs and we should address them. And frankly with how little money it is leaving that last money on the table isn't really going to help anything.
And I'd be with you, except that I kind of hearing what the CEO said is these were things that were brought up in February. And if they are important again, if they're still at the top of our list, I'll be happy to support them but I'm not sure that these are exactly the top priorities in
the county right now. If they're not important anymore then we shouldn't have been debating them today?
Supervisors also as Suzanne, the Chief Fiscal Officer said they're going to look to see if there could be savings from combining the animal shelters. She said to look to pay for that cost and we can be working with them to see if it's a fee issue. If you have to increase fees to do that what do they need to do to cover that cost?
Well and the problem with that is I don't know yet whether I support closing down the Lompoc shelter. That binds us into closing down the Lompoc Shelter to meet these, and so I'd love to have a little more flexibility in that.
And I guess my view is that I'd love to have an animal services director work with the stakeholders to figure out all of these things in the context and have it be, you know, a consensus driven community based decision about the vet too. You know what is the best use of the dollars? And what is the best system for the folks that are concerned about that?
We could allocate the balance to Animal Services for that purpose. Yes we could.
I would support that.
OK, so we have a motion on the floor. Let's have a roll call or actually I think Supervisor Adam wants to speak to the motion yes.
Yeah, you got to get to me. Are you ready? Yes. So I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Maesato for earlier kind words and the obation from my colleagues. It may have looked as if I was angry when the camera focused on me. Instead, I was confused as to what was going on down there. And it really goes to show how valuable it is to be in the room where things are taking place.
Human communications are complex under the best of conditions, and we miss a lot by being apart. So this is my final budget hearing. I'm not going to candy coat this, nobody expects me to. A status quo budget is disappointing given the magnitude and severity of the consequences of the pandemic. I was hoping for a more aggressive and robust approach to budgeting.
We are to prepare for the next normal. What does that mean? If it means that we expect worse to come, why not be bold and take more meaningful actions that would benefit our future selves. Our government has asked our citizens to endure horrific and unprecedented hardships. Our latest unemployment rate is 13.7%, and it was 5.7% in March. We all understand intellectually that people are hurting.
But we're not really acting as if we understand that. A show of solidarity by enduring some privations of our own would be a good sign of faith and empathy with county residents. Surely, there must be some non-essential employees that the county could spare instead of adding almost 50 FTEs and increasing our salaries and benefits by 2.6%. That to me is tone deaf.
Are we incapable of doing anything but relentlessly expanding government? Should we let them eat cake if we decline to control ourselves the slightest amount even under these circumstances, then what will it take to induce us to do so. Frankly I'm afraid for the future. As I have advised many times over my two terms, we would find ourselves in better condition to weather the inevitable economic downturn or other black swan event if we got our pension liabilities and our deferred maintenance under control.
As we know these events happen sometimes I wonder when the locusts will arrive. We are spending nearly $170 million on pension payments. I realize that some of this comes from state and federal sources, but it's still tax money removed from the pockets of citizens. And additionally we from our general fund are ultimately responsible for any pension funds shortfalls resulting from market decline.
Please if AJ could bring up the BIF number one please? During the last seven budget cycles, we've gone from 292 million to 463 million in deferred maintenance. These are very large numbers. This should be shocking to everyone. It is foolish and naive to expect the state and federal governments to save us from our fiscal mismanagement. If that ever was a possibility, I doubt any higher power is coming now to solve our problems.
It is clear to me that we're going to have to make a plan and have the discipline to execute it. This problem is of our own creation. We, ourselves must fix it. The longer we procrastinate the longer it will take to finish. In any event you can't really say you have a balanced budget unless your fully funding maintenance. Looking forward, I would hope that this board and its executive staff will not succumb to the temptation to go on financing their programs by further deferring maintenance or extending pension debts.
These are clearly costs that we have irresponsibly allowed to accumulate. Now we must respond, rebalance, redesign and revision our way out of this mess. As CEO Miyasato has said many times, we can do a lot but we can't do it all. When the new board convenes in January I suggest that my colleagues and successor go through the exercise of actual numerical prioritization of spending items.
It will take courage to engage in that discussion and it will be awkward and uncomfortable to be sure. But the benefits would soon become apparent. We have decided to attempt to become all things, to all people. And there's just not enough money for that. My problem with this and all past budgets is a philosophical one. It is the choice between a philosophy of ensuring a prosperous future for every present and future resident of our county by protecting and preserving past investments that the community has made And making sure that we apply the limited funds that we have to projects that we can afford to build and maintain, that will add equity to our community long into the future.
Or a cynical philosophy of the division of the spoils of taxation in which nobody gets everything they want but everybody gets something. Dissipation has never been a successful strategy. Finally, on a personal note I am very disappointed after serving these seven and half years that I haven't been able to have a more profound effect in this area. It has been almost a singular mission for me to focus attention on the centers of equity paid for by generations past for the benefit of those who succeed us.
I apologize to my grandchildren born and unborn, and all future residents and taxpayers for having failed to articulate these ideas more gracefully. And failing to convince my colleagues of their merit and resulting in different choices.
6:19 – 6:2439 turns
Thank you Supervisor Adam. Any other comments before we do a roll call?
Mr. Chair, yes if I might just from a sequencing standpoint I think the motion on the table does not spend that remaining amount of money and but it does do all the other adoption if your board what I want to try to avoid is adoption of a budget and then a revision to that adopted budget
So I will make a. Amendment of either a friendly or unfriendly amendment that we would have to vote on previously to add in the remaining balance for animal services for the next director to designate to one of those purposes as part of the plan that allow the department to go forward either the vet or The two others staff, whatever is needed by that department to transition.
I would second that.
Would the maker of the motion incorporate that direction?
No, I'll let it be DAS's motion. Yeah, I can't just have a giveaway. It's a little tiny bit of money but it's just so It's just so weird. Animal services all of a sudden gets the pat on the back and I love animal services too, and I know I've got Dr. Heller is going to give me a phone call after this and get on my case but the deal is...
I hope she does it if she wins.
Every other department head is gonna be like how did animal services come out of this thing with that? You know but yeah I guess we're talking a little bit of money and you can't make it all work out just perfectly So you're going to withdraw? I'll withdraw my motion and let us have the whole motion.
Okay, then I will move Mr. Lavinia's motion with the addition of the remaining balance to animal services. Second.
Okay, the motion has been seconded, made and seconded. And Mr. Gazzone wants
to clarify that it includes- I just want to ensure that Supervisor Williams' motion is still including the language concerning assisted outpatient treatment.
That's right.
AOT
and to include the movement of funds necessary for AOT's continuation. The equity fund of 500,000 proposed by Chair Hart and the balance to animal services.
And can you just make sure Mr. Clemente gets it on because this is our record as well attachment E so just making sure he gets that all squared away?
And chair while they're doing that I'd just like to say, I'm not going to not vote for the budget because of $80,000 or whatever. It's a 1.1 billion dollar budget so I am still going to support the motion.
As will I. So are all of our ducks in a row and i's dotted and t's crossed?
Typically what we've done which you've kind of appended our process if that's okay is Approval of attachment a first and then you typically approve the rest of the budget actions which approves the rest of the budget So that's why we just want to make sure there's it could be a motion on this attachment e That would be great. And then you can approve the rest of the budget actions
Okay, if somebody wanted
to two motions is the preference but so I will first move attachment E as shown right here
Motion has been made in seconded Let's have a roll call
Mr. Williams
I
miss Hartman. Mr. Adam
no
Mr. Lavagnino
I
chair heart
I
motion passes 4 to 1
now move adoption of the fiscal year 2020 21 budget second
And again, I understand that to include the language in the budget resolution extending AOT, assisted outpatient treatment for a further three year period.
That's correct. Okay, I think everybody is clear. Any more discussion? Roll call please.
Mr. Williams? Aye. Ms. Harmon? Aye. Mr Adam? No. Mr Lavinino? Aye Chair Hart?
Aye
Motion passes 4-1
Well, thank you all for your attention and focus through a lot of material. And Mr. Gazzone has another
comment? We have the remaining item on the successor agency.
Okay, I need to follow the script. Are we on departmental item two? Yes, okay. Would the clerk please read departmental item two into the record?
6:24 – 6:2515 turns
Chair Hart and members of the board, departmental item number two is from It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding fiscal year 2020-2021 recommended budget for the County of Santa Barbara as successor agency to the former County of Santa Barbara Redevelopment Agency.
Okay, and do we have any public comment on this item?
Chair Hart, members of the board, we do not.
Could I get a motion? Everybody's wondering what are we talking about here? This is yeah
I move staff's recommendation.
Thank you Supervisor Hartman, appreciate that. And is there a second? Motion has been made and seconded.
Mr. Williams? Aye. Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Adams?
No.
Mr Lavinino? Aye Chair Hart?
Aye
Motion passes 4-1
We will now adjourn to Thursday, June 11th at 2020. Mr. Guzzone you did have one more
thing? Just a quick thank you to the clerk's office as well as Kathy Seisak and CEO's office who are responsible for bringing you the alternate budget resolution and having it available this afternoon.
Thank you and we look forward to having conversation about triaging of the county council's workload. Thank you.
All right