Board of Supervisors — 2020-11-17

Good morning. I will call to order the November 17th, 2020 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Will a clerk please call the roll?

Mr. Williams?

Here.

Ms. Hartman? Here. Mr. Adams?

Here

Mr. Lavinino?

Here

Chair Hart?

The next

item of business is the approval of minutes from the November 10th, 2020 meeting. Is there any discussion? Is there a motion please?

Move approval.

Second. Thank you Motion has been made and seconded. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

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

Aye

Mr. Lavinino?

Aye

Chair Hart?

Aye

Motion passes unanimously

Thank You CEO Miyasato is there a CEO report today

There is Chair Hart, just really quickly. I am pleased to announce that we are now providing live Spanish interpretation of your board meetings in addition to our public health COVID-19 press conferences. The live Spanish interpretation is currently available for Cox Cable subscribers and we anticipate the launch for Comcast subscribers in 2021. In addition video recordings with Spanish interpretation will be posted to the county's YouTube channel at CSV TV 20 Cox subscribers can access secondary audio programming or known as SAP in their language, audio settings to set the alternate or SAP option. A press release is being issued today with more specific directions in English and Spanish.

And all of you know that County Board of Supervisors meetings are televised on cable TV channel 20 and streamed via the county website and on YouTube CSB TV 20 video recordings of the meetings are rebroadcast on CSB TV Cable channel 20 and post it on YouTube. So we've been working on this for quite a while, thank you to general services and CSB TV staff and the clerk of the board's office.

It wasn't as simple as we thought given the age of the structure and the audio settings and it took a lot of time in masterminding that so thank you to them and we are planning to do a larger project on the audio visual for all the board rooms and that's slowly moving ahead but we wanted to get this done so thank

Well, thank you. That is a great news and I know it's going to be really well appreciated. My mother happened to be watching a broadcast that was translated in Spanish and she said, I didn't realize that she spoke such mellifluous Spanish. And I can only thank Carlos Sarasato for making me sound good because... Your mother even loves Carlos' voice. She does. Madam Clerk are there any announcements or changes to our agenda today?

Chair Hart and members of the board, I have a couple quick announcements today. I first would like to remind the public who are participating in our board meeting today if you would like to make a public comment on our agenda today or general public comment please call area code 805-568-2240 And state your name, your phone number and which item you would like to speak on and we will call you at the appropriate time. That number is also scrolling at the top of your screen.

Please make every effort to be available and mute all streaming devices once it is your turn to speak. Again that number is area code 805-568-2240. Additionally we post in an addendum to our agenda on Friday Adding two items to today's agenda. The first item is Administrative Item number 30, this is from General Services and Community Services. It is to consider recommendations regarding approval of a sub-recipient agreement with Good Samaritan Shelters Inc for the provision of housing navigation services in operation of a temporary emergency shelter.

And the second item we added to our agenda today is departmental item number seven. This is an item from Public Works, it is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an ordinance temporarily amending chapter 28 to add chapter 28B special encroachment permits related to the COVID-19 pandemic response and both of these addendums are available to the public online as well as in the back of the room for any staff.

And our third announcement today is we will, we did receive a request from staff to trail administrative item number nine until after closed session. Administrative item number nine is from General Services Public Works Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It is to consider recommendations regarding the acquisition of 660 Randall Road Anthony 1760 East Valley Road, Flaster.

620 Randall Road, McDonald's. 650 Randall Road, Nicoletti. 680 Randall Road, Rentals, Rinskin, Rentels and 670 Randall Road, Waldroth by Flood Control and Water Conservation District for flood control purposes APN 007120034 007-120-059, 007-120-054, 007-120-035, 0071-20032 and 0071-20033 respectively. RP file number 003892 and this is in the first district and there's a four fifths vote required on this item. And again we received a request to trail this item until after closed session.

Thank you Madam Clerk.

Oh,

that's right. She just she just read it right? So I don't need her to read it a second time though. I did and I understand that we're trailing it but I thought beginning the meeting. Enormous in an age where we, where the body politic tends to neglect infrastructure instead of built new infrastructure. This is this acquisition at Randall Road. It's an incredibly important milestone and proof of the county's commitment to increasing the safety of residents who have experienced great tragedy and great challenges because of the debris flow.

I also wanted to note without taking much time that there's no fewer than four items on this administrative agenda addressing homelessness and mental illness, including the beginnings of the surveying work for You know a mental health rehabilitation center. I mean this is these are huge efforts and if we weren't so busy with coronavirus and other items on today's agenda like roundabout appeals, we would take more time to present them to the public but but the county in the time of COVID is doing much more on homelessness than ever before and I want to thank my colleagues for the support A lot of attention for flood control, and so each of you have given for the past couple years a little bit of your attention for the benefit of my constituents.

And I really want to appreciate that work and the county's commitment to having Montecito and Carpinteria recover from the debris flow. Thank you Supervisor Williams. Madam Clerk could you please read item 20 into the record?

Chair Hart and members of the board. Administrative item number 20 is from Public Works Board of Directors and the Laguna County Sanitation District. It is to consider recommendations regarding flood protection project statement of final quantities, and this is in the 4th district, and we have one request to speak on this item, and that is Kurt Aman.

Hello.

Hello, Kurt. You can go ahead with your comments.

My I believe I might be on the wrong docket. My comments were directed item 20 not 28.

Mr. Aman, we are on administrative item number 20 regarding flood protection project statement of final quantities.

I apologize that's not what I wanted to speak on sorry for wasting the board's time.

What would you like to speak on Mr. Aman?

The development and expansion of programs in agricultural land, option two and three. Again kind of echoing Doss Williams comments during COVID it's become even more clear that being an agricultural business...

Mr. Aman we will move you to our departmental agenda thank you.

Okay. Could we get a motion to approve the balance administrative agenda trailing Item A-9?

So moved.

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded, any discussion? Madam Clerk could you please call the roll?

Mr. Williams?

Aye.

Ms. Hartman? Aye. Mr. Adam?

Aye

Mr. Lavinino?

Aye

Chair Hart? Aye Motion passes unanimously

And now is the time

public comment today. I believe we have a few coming in as we speak. We're going to begin with Roger Whitner to be followed by Katie Mickey.

Good morning Supervisors. My name is Roger Rittner. I wish to comment on the proposed design of the Olive Mill Road Coast Village Road roundabout. My comments do not relate to the roundabout appeal later on the agenda. However, I want the supervisor...

Mr. Rittner? I'm sorry my apologies but that item is later on our agenda today and that is going to be departmental items number four and five so that is not our general public comment period

As I mentioned this, my comment does not relate to that appeal or that agenda item.

Thank you.

May I continue? Go

ahead.

Thank you. I want the supervisors especially Supervisor Williams to be aware of the serious negative effects the Olive Mill roundabout will have on my property My wife and I own the property at 110 Olive Mill Road at the corner of Olive Mill and North Jamison Lane. Specifically, we're very concerned about the design of the exit ramp from the roundabout to northbound Olive Mill.

Based on the current design plan, the exit ramp would utilize most if not all of the right-of-way that extends onto our property. That would confiscate as much as 10 to

12 feet. This is not public comment, this is comment on the roundabout. I don't think we should be giving people two bites at the apple.

Mr. Gazzani?

Chair and supervisors when the speaker indicated he was not addressing the appeal I'd recommended hearing this in general public comment but his comments are definitely addressing the appeal and recommend hearing it in the appeal

Okay. Mr. Ritter, excuse me, that is item A or excuse me, departmental item number three? Is that right? Four. Number four and we'll be taking that up later and would very much like to hear your comments at that time so thank you very much for being here today. Next person is Ms. Mickey.

Yes Chair Hart and members of the board our next request to speak on general public comment is Katie Mickey to be followed by Sean Mortland.

Dear Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Last year December 10th the county board of supervisors passed agreements with the telecom industry to deregulate the installation of wireless telecom facilities without public input. Eleven months later 4G 5G antennas are being rolled out like popcorn all across our county with no public notice despite the fact that the non-thermal Effects of RFR have been substantiated by thousands of peer-reviewed studies which prove harms caused by nonionizing radiation.

Cell towers are highly combustible and greatly increase the risk of fire in our high fire risk areas, despite the fact that property values are devalued an average of 20% once cell towers are installed Despite the fact there is no insurance company that will cover any potential harms from this wireless technology, Swiss RE pronounced the technology potentially as problematic as Abestos which bankrupted so many firms that the Abestos Trust Fund was formed which injured parties can seek compensation. Despite the fact the Saffer Center for Ethics at Harvard University has published a scathing indictment of SEC The captured agency, how the Federal Communications Commission is dominated by the industries it presumably regulates. The report compares the wireless industry to the tobacco industry.

How many people and properties will become the casualties of the massive increase in cell tower installation being rolled out within our county? You've been told the Telecommunications Act and the FCC trump your ability to regulate the telecoms Your responsibility to our county is to protect it from litigation by the telecom industry rather than to protect your residents and the environment. Your hands are tied.

Who will be liable when residents decide to sue for their damages and they learn that the telecoms have shell companies that protect them from lawsuit? We have many precedents here at Safe Technology for Santa Barbara County to offer you that refute the mantra, your hands are tied Regulatory ordinances are a powerful tool we can use to safeguard our county.

Encinitas for example has had no applications or installations for new small cell facilities since October 2019 and no 5G small cell antenna installations that is 14 months of avoidance by the telecom industry. How did they do it? Encinita City Council and Ordinance Committee listened the recommendations and met regularly with their residents. In October 2019, they adopted 29 regulatory measures into their telecom protective ordinance.

These protective measures were enacted to keep the resident safe. Safe Technology for Santa Barbara County asked you to adopt Encinitas' measures to keep our county safe. Thank you.

We will now go to Sean Mortland to be followed by Miriam Lindbeck.

Hello, my name is Sean Mortland. Thank you for taking my call today. I just started my timer here. If you can't hear me please interrupt and let me know. I live...

Sean if you could just please make sure to speak loud and clear that would be greatly

appreciated. Will do. I'm going to speak directly through the phone. Can you hear me a little bit better now?

A little bit, but it could be louder too.

A little bit. Okay, I do have a loud voice so I'll turn it up a bit. The reason I'm calling today is that I am a member of Safe Technology for Santa Barbara and I'd like to speak on the matter that Katie just spoke to. My focus in this next few minutes will really be focused on children. Proliferation of electromagnetic frequencies that are non-native and highly invasive to their development.

There are thousands of studies and there are there is strong evidence linking Wi-Fi exposure pre and post birth to autism in children. I'm 41 years old when I was born the rate was about 1 in 2000 for autism today it's closer to one in 20 And so things are going clearly in the wrong direction. And the rate of autism is now doubling every four years and meanwhile we continue to put up antennas. We have our children at home soaked in Wi-Fi learning remotely which I understand there's not a lot you may be able to do about that but that is the situation. So their exposure to these harmful frequencies is going up and up.

The We just do the math on that for one and 20. Now you go out four years. Well, now we're at one in five, eight years, two and five or excuse me, four years. One of my maps is that four years would have been eight years, one in five, 12 years, two and five, 16 years, four out of five children. And you get 20 years out there are no more normal children And so this is more I look at it on an existential threat. It is different than secondhand smoke in that second hand smoke was not in every crib and in every nursing home and every hospital and child ward around the country whereas Wi-Fi is everywhere and they are being exposed to children all the time pre and post birth. They don't have a voice in this and so I'm asking you to be their voice Thank you Mr.

Morton

Chair Hart, members of the board. Our next request to speak is Miriam Lindbeck to be followed by Leslie Weinstock and I believe Miriam is on the same call as Sean just as a friendly reminder please do not use your speakerphone or headset and speak directly into your phone very loud and clear so we can hear you thank you. Miriam you can go ahead with your comments

This is Sean. I think we have duplicate phone numbers and that's a, I think a mistake was made on our end so I'm going to just see if Miriam is able to call back in. Thank you.

Chair Hart, members of the board, we will now go to our final speaker who is Leslie Weinstock.

Hi this is Les. Can you hear me okay?

You could be louder thank you.

Louder. Okay, this is Leslie Weinstock. I'm a physician assistant and coordinator for safe technology for Santa Barbara County. We're a volunteer citizen watchdog group and advocate for protective measures against cell tower and cell antenna radiation within Santa Barbara County. Our main message to you is that your hands are not tied. The densification of small cell towers or antennas called wireless telecommunication facilities are spreading into our residential neighborhoods throughout the county. There's cell towers and antennas popping up all over my neighborhood every several poles on East Valley Road we are being overdosed with radio frequency microwave radiation people are getting sick symptoms include cancer especially a brain cancer called glioblastoma insomnia fatigue heart palpitations arrhythmias anxieties headaches balance problems, oxidative stress and many more.

In December of 2019 the protections that residents had on the county telecom ordinance including not allowing wireless facilities in residential zones and requiring the telecom companies to show a gap in cell phone coverage were deleted or crossed out we are now left with an ordinance that deregulates The telecom industry and allows wireless facilities to be constructed anywhere unmetered and unmonitored for the amount of Wi-Fi radiation emitted. It's unregulated for fire risk and for foreseeable harmful bio effects to plants animals insects and humans.

The county basically gave carte blanche to industry and the way it's written is unacceptable to us therefore we request that you amend it again and reverse the cross out. We want back the protections that residents had including not allowing wireless facilities in residential zones, and requiring the telecom companies to show a gap in coverage. There are many cities such as Encinitas, Monterey, Petaluma, Davis & Marin that have multiple protective measures in their ordinances to protect people and the environment For example, Petaluma does not allow cell towers or antennas in residential areas. The simple answer is fiber to the premises. It's faster, safer, more secure and private. Thank you very much.

Thank you Ms. Weinstock. I think that concludes your public comment.

Chair Hart and members of the board we were able to get Miriam Lindbeck back on the line so we will go to her and that will be our final request to speak thank you.

Ms. Lindbeck, you'll have to get much closer to the microphone. We can't hear you at all.

And Miriam as a friendly reminder I hear a streaming device in your end if you could please mute that and make sure we don't hear that. That would be great. Very sorry. That

must be Safari. Okay. Hello?

Yes now we can hear you well

thank you. Okay very good okay. I'm hearing multiple voices here. I keep turning off the Safari hang on. Safari okay So

Miss Lindbeck, you're going to have to mute. You're just going to have to mute or close that so we don't hear it on. I think

that it's Safari and it will not quit because I think that this see I just lost you are there? Are we on? We were on okay. Can you hear me now?

Yes go ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning County supervisors and thank you. I would like to read this into the record. On this whole issue of the 5G cell towers that everyone is speaking about in our group, what industry does not tell the public is that at least in the beginning, the 5g business case centers on corporate and government and depends on models that give rise to significant individual privacy concerns.

For example, industry talks about streaming video but somehow omits that a very large amount will be surveillance video from wireless cameras in public areas that silently capture every move and record faces and license plates for future identification. The network will also have advanced capabilities that precisely identify and record the location of every user device, including privately owned IOT devices in refrigerators and children's toys. And they capture immense amounts of transactional data and sometimes even content from each device. So all this personal information will be available for correlation, identification and sale to third parties including the government. 5G will lead to more intrusive tracking and private data exploitation by large and mostly unseen companies and the government.

So the early money for 5G will come from surveillance and the sale of people's private information Not revenue earned from voice, text or push-to-talk capability. So 5G small cells mostly support Internet and private mobile service not personal wireless service. And we want to emphasize an important legal issue here that while a 5G small cell can be used to support traditional mobile service 5G small cells mostly exist to support services, features and functions other than those protected by state and federal preemptive provisions. So voice texting and push-to-talk are covered services. Internet, email, IOT, M2M, streaming video, real time navigation and telemedicine are not covered services. And these are all potentially interesting products for those who are willing to accept the associated privacy implications.

Thank you, Ms. Lindbeck. That concludes our public comments.

And I thank you for all joining the board meeting today.

Chair Hart and members of the Board, Departmental Item Number One is from the County Executive Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19 update.

Dr. DeRionne Pollard, welcome.

Thank you and good morning. My briefing topics for today include an overview of our local COVID-19 data, a lengthy conversation about the blueprint for a safer economy as well as updating your board on our efforts around vaccine planning and our local testing capacity. So for the period from November 2nd to November 16th, we went from 9,992 cases to 10,577 cumulative case count. So that is roughly a 6% increase during this timeframe.

Also, during this timeframe we saw we went from a hundred and three active cases to two hundred and fifty five active cases. So that denotes a one hundred and forty eight percent increase in our active cases. We went from 10 hospitalizations to 13, and we went from 129 to 133 cumulative deaths. That's roughly a 3% increase. Over the past two weeks, like the rest of the state and nation, we saw increases throughout our county.

We saw starting with South Coast Montecito and Carp, we saw a 2 going to 18 cases so that's an 800% increase. We saw Santa Barbara going from 24 to 32 cases Goleta from one to 15 cases. South County north of Goleta, we went from two cases to 15 cases. Santiagnez, we went from two to nine cases. Santa Maria, we went from 47 to 75 cases. Orchid, we went from 14 to 22 cases.

North County Unincorporated, we went from four cases to 11 cases. Noteworthy is that we only saw two areas with decreases and that would be Isla Vista from 37 cases to 13 and Lompoc from 25 to 20 cases. With regards to hospitalization for the same period As I mentioned earlier, we went from 10 to 13 cases. In ICU we went from 3 to 5 cases. This data is available on our new community dashboard via publichealthsbc.org Blueprint for a safer economy.

So I'd like to start off the update with a reminder that for widespread, the purple tier We are assigned this tier when we have more than seven daily new cases per 100,000 or our testing positivity rate is more than 8%. To maintain our previous red tier, we must have had just four to seven daily new cases per 100,000, or the five to eight percent testing positivity rate.

So yesterday Governor Newsom announced the utilization of the state's emergency break, which was built into the California blueprint for a safer economy. As you recall is a dimmer switch on Sunday CDPH noted that California increased from 6,000 daily new cases to 11,000 daily new cases in just a span of few days and more than 1,000 hospitalizations in one week.

So due to this unprecedented surge in the rate of increase of cases of COVID-19 in every region of the state, the California Department of Public Health implemented immediate changes to its tier assignment process. So what's new is this? Tier assignments may occur any day of the week and may occur more than once a week when CDPH determines immediate action is needed. And we saw that typically, we get tier assignment on Tuesday and we received it on Monday yesterday.

Counties may be moved back more than one tier if CDPH determines a need for intensive intervention. Key considerations will be the increase in new cases and or testing positivity, public health capacity and other epidemiological factors. Counties may move with one week of worsening metrics as opposed to the usual two weeks during times of stability. In light of the extreme circumstances requiring immediate action, counties will be required to implement any sector changes the day following the tier announcement.

County requests for tier adjudication will not hold the county in the current tier during the adjudication. Given the current environment of rapid escalating cases and widespread disease transmission across California, tier adjudication requests are unlikely to be approved. So our tier assignment as announced yesterday We are in the purple tier with 7.1 adjusted case rate for the tier assignment, we were adjusted down from 7.7 because of our continued testing in our county exceeding the state median.

Our testing positivity rate is at 2.7. The state did not calculate the health equity metric because no county is moving forward. I wanted to show you what a difference between last tier rating and this current tier. So on the left is the tier assignment one week ago, and our state was pretty colorful with many in red, orange, and some in purple, and some in yellow.

This week's current assignment is on your right-hand side So it's mostly purple this week. We have 40 counties that were moved backwards and 18 counties that stayed the same so statewide 41 counties are now in the purple tier 11 in the red for in the orange into in the yellow and some counties were moved back to tears Our case rate trend. So again, here we went from last rating period from a 4.3 to a 7.1. That's a pretty significant jump.

Testing positivity trend. We went from 1.8 last rating period to current 2.7, so we're seeing the upward trend here as well. I want to pause. Earlier in the presentation, I showed the areas where the cases are occurring. This is another perspective on the occupation of our COVID-19 cases during this same rating period from November 1st to November 7th and we call this our week 45.

So our clerical...

Excuse me Mr. Chair?

Yes Supervisor Adam

Yeah, yesterday Dr. Dorenoso you told us that the agricultural tier went down because you had engaged in a lot of outreach out there?

I believe that it is a result of a combination of things. A result of collaboration between growers, between public health, between Ag Commissioner and between all the community support, community partnerships.

Why is it that we haven't had those kind of partnerships with clerical and management?

So clerical management includes everyone who works in an office. And we have done our sector outreach to the businesses, to the essential businesses that have come back. We will be re-looping and doubling down Reaching out to all of our sectors across the board on that. There was a recent CDC report that showed that it is better to telecommute and to that returning to work in an office may increase the likelihood of exposure.

So you think everybody's returned to the office already?

I think what we're seeing in our contact investigation is that as people return to work, they are quite comfortable with their colleagues. And some may forget that some may identify their colleagues as a stable cohort and take off their mask and I'm sorry and so we we clean that from our contact tracing. I think the retired and unemployed is a group of people. And that we can only say that they have discretionary time on their hands, and that it is a group that we need to reach out to and make sure that they are hearing the messages that we are putting to all the other sectors.

OK.

Thank you Supervisor Adams. Supervisor Williams? Well, I think this gleaning as much information out of this is really important and it seems to me As someone who studies very closely how many people are commuting from Ventura County to Santa Barbara County with my scientific research on the freeway every day, that there definitely has in the last two months been a return to normal traffic patterns.

which corroborates the idea that more people are in the many office and knowledge-based jobs in Santa Barbara and Goleta. Either that or there's a lot more people traveling than ever before, so I do think that's combined with that number which is different than what you've presented before meaning this is a new number and I guess what's most dismaying about the increased rates that we have is that we haven't made any relaxation of our policies. And we haven't even gotten to the holiday weekend yet, right? So that's what especially is, I would say, dismaying. So I do think it's incumbent upon us to figure out as much patterns from this as we might I also don't want people to figure out false patterns. You mentioned yesterday that the majority of the folks who are under 18 are teenagers, not small children is that?

I know you're not allowed to give us the exact numbers but is that correct?

That is correct.

And any other differences between this and the previous chart? I seem to remember again adding to your point that in the last cohort Of contact traces, the number for labor or unskilled worker was much higher. So we've made progress there. Is there anything else that has come out either anecdotally that isn't represented on the chart about the contact trace?

Yes. So let me take you to a new slide. I apologize this is a late addition so it may be out of sequence in your packet So this is the previous slide, but within context of the whole pandemic. In context of the numbers that we have since March. So I'll start with the college and university students. So during this week 45, and again that's the period from November 1st to November 7th, it was 16.5% Our 241 cases, but if you look at the whole pandemic they accounted only 6.1% so they far exceeded. So this graph shows you in context what is happening currently within context of the whole pandemic?

The restaurant bar food preparation throughout our whole cumulative number is at the 6.5% but during the week 45 it accounted for 2.6%. The clerical management as Supervisor Adam noted Was 10.4 or is 10.4% during the whole pandemic, but accounts for 19.1%. During this week 45 and we see that in health care. The under 18 we saw that at 15.5%, which exceeds the overall 13.1% and here is So through from March until now we can account for that it is 18.7% but currently in week 45, we saw only a 4.1%. And I do say that this is as a result of our partnerships with the sector, the growers, as well as the farm workers, as well as the community partners.

Because

I just wanted to know, this is an enormously useful slide shows where we were making progress and where we're losing ground. And obviously, we're losing ground among office jobs. So is there more that the department can do to reach out to, I mean typically these operations are between 20 and 300 employees. There's a discrete number of them out there. Is it possible to step up outreach efforts in an effort to return to our previous level Telecommuting or at least to some happy medium in telecommuting because I would warrant this This means that people are telecommuting less.

So two things, we also find this slide very useful and given the uptick in our cases we will be tracking moving forward this type of data and presenting it to your board with regards to outreach to the clerical management I think one is telecommuting but too I also think that it is really reminding everyone to wear their face covering and maintaining their distance even though they have been working with colleagues since March. I think the reiterating of what the tools that we do have at our hands will go far.

Supervisor Hartman?

I was just puzzled by the college university students. In the previous slide, I think they at least in Isla Vista the numbers had gone down almost 56 percent which is again speaks to the power of partnerships and really intensive outreach to communities but here it's 16.5

So this is also, we're seeing the earlier slide is over a longer period and we saw an increase, decrease in Isla Vista but not all college and university students reside as well in ID. And so what does it mean by moving back to Purple Tier? It's been eight weeks more Since we've been in the purple tier. So I'd like to just remind your board what it means to us so for critical infrastructure, nothing changes for gathering This is the state blueprint here, but I Xed it out because small gatherings are not permitted in Santa Barbara County per Health Officer Order 2020-12.4.

And I do want to say here that the state acknowledges that the spike in cases can and probably most likely due to small gatherings that are occurring throughout the state. So here we will stay steadfast and mitigate our increasing cases by continuing to not permit private gatherings The two significant change on this page is that all retail will need to reduce capacity. So we will need to reduce from 50% back down to the 25%.

And museums, zoos and aquariums will have to maintain outdoor operations only. They will have to cease indoor operations. On this page, the three significant changes. Places of worship can now only happen outdoors. Movie theaters can only happen outdoors and gym and fitness centers can only happen outdoors. These would be- Question?

Mr Chair?

Supervisor Lavinino?

Thank you. Can we go back? Yeah. So what I've heard most from constituents of, because purple's different than when we were in purple last time. But the burr under the saddle which I totally understand is places of worship and everybody struggling to figure out what is the justification that allows you to be able to go into retail with 25% but you can't go to your place of worship, you have to be outside.

And my response to them has been, well you're going to need to do what the nail salons did and barber shops and the folks that do hair. And that is they pressured the governor into reducing that and bringing those back online. So I'm curious what you're hearing from California Department of Health, what's the justification for not allowing people to be able to do the same thing you're going to do in a different building? Instead of shopping for something, you're going to church. It doesn't seem to make sense.

So places of worship since the beginning of the pandemic has always been a hot topic for the field. And what I have heard is unease with the context how people gather in an indoor church. So you have church events, church services that may take longer than a 15 minute encounter it could be two hours And within a church, indoor church event or church service you have familiarity with one another. And so quite possible the social distancing is not possible nor the face covering is adhered to. So those are some of the concerns I've heard in addition to that There have been published outbreaks, large-scale outbreaks from church events, church gatherings in our state as well as in our country. And here in Santa Barbara I recall our first set of cluster cases was due to an inside church event.

So those are some of the concerns that I've heard

Okay, so I guess this question for Mr. Gazzone, I know that gyms have actually filed lawsuits against the governor. I'm curious if we know if there are any cases of churches moving in that direction?

Chair and Supervisors, there have been several cases litigated in farther south in Southern California. And in each of those the county and state regulations were upheld. Those have occurred over going back maybe four months ago three months ago two months ago I'm part of a work group that meets Weekly on this and we keep tied in with that. The most recent litigation that's going on, that you may have seen involves Sutter County not with churches but with executive order there. But the church restraints in farther south as well as Ventura County have been upheld.

Thank you.

With the sectors listed on this page, the two significant changes in the sector's restaurants can only operate now in an outdoor setting. And bars, breweries and distilleries are closed unless they provide meals at the same time as the alcohol sale. And they must follow the restaurant guidance which is again outdoors only. No change in these sectors And no change in among amusement parks.