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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 – 0:0914 turns
Barbara County Board of Supervisors to order. And as soon as we fix the echo from the Zoom on my laptop, we will have Madam Clerk call the roll. And I'd just like to explain that Chair Nelson is here remotely today so as Vice-Chair, I'm stepping in for him. We have a policy that whoever presides over the meeting has to be down here in Santa Barbara. So Madam Clerk, the roll.
Supervisor Hart?
Here.
Supervisor Nelson?
Here.
Supervisor Lavinino? Here. Supervisor Williams? Here and Chair Hartman? Here,
And again, just to explain we have Supervisor Lavinino in Santa Maria. We have Chair Nelson participating remotely today and the three of us are here in Santa Barbara properly distanced and all with masks on with a skeleton crew. So with that
the next item of business is our approval of minutes from February 2nd 2021. Is there any discussion? And let's see.
I'd make a motion to approve the minutes
all right we have a motion to approve
second
and a second by Supervisor Williams would you call the roll?
Roll-call vote 2–0 motion to approve second and a second by Supervisor Williams would you call the roll? · 1 under review
Show transcript
I and chair Hartman I motion passes unanimously and Madden clerk are there any announcements today. Chair Hartman and members of the board. Yes, thank you. I have a few announcements this morning. I would first like to begin announcing that we posted an addendum to our agenda today amending the county executive officer's report to include a presentation by staff on activities celebrating Black History Month in Santa Barbara County In addition, we added administrative item number 23 to the administrative agenda. This is from the County Executive Office and it is before the Board today to consider adoption of the second reading of an ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara amending Chapter 50 to the Santa Barbara County Code licensing of commercial cannabis operations.
Additionally, the clerk of the board received a memo from the department yesterday Monday February 8th requesting to withdraw department item number five from today's agenda. Departmental item number five is from the county executive office it is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the KPMG criminal justice interagency review Additionally, we received a request from the department to trail administrative item number six to after departmental item number one our COVID-19 update today.
Administrative item number six is from Community Services. It is to consider recommendations regarding the execution of an agreement with United Way of Santa Barbara County, United Way, to implement an emergency rental assistance program utilizing Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 funds. I would also like to remind the public, the Board of Supervisors meetings are now being interpreted in Spanish. Cox subscribers can turn on SAP under their language settings.
Comcast is updating its system and should be broadcasting board meetings in Spanish by March 2021. And my last announcement this morning, Chair Hartman and members of the board. I would just like to remind the public who are participating in our meeting today of the boards alternative methods of public participation for alternative methods of public participation. Please see page 2 of our agenda today individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment you may do so via zoom by clicking the available link on page two of our agenda to register in advance After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Zoom meeting.
Once the chair has announced the item you want to comment on please join the meeting with the information provided in the registration confirmation email. The clerk will call you by name or the last four digits of your phone number when removed from mute you will hear a notification that your line has been unmuted if you are using a touchtone phone you may need to press star six to unmute yourself again if you're using a touchtone phone And providing public comment you may need to press star 6 from yourself each person may address the board for up to 3 minutes and that this is at the discretion of the chair. If you have any questions please contact the clerk of the board's office area code 8 0 5, 5, 6, 8, 2, 2 4, 0, Again if you have any questions regarding this process please call the clerk of the board at 8 0 5568 2240 Thank you chair Hartman and those are all my announcements.
Roll-call vote Withdrawn 2–0 Moved by Williams · Seconded by Joan Hartmann motion by Supervisor Williams seconded by Supervisor Hart and would you call the roll? · 1 under review
Show transcript
I and chair Hartman
0:09 – 0:154 turns
And next CEO's report,
CEO Miyasato. Good morning members of the board. I have a couple of announcements one just a quick announcement and that is just about our meetings just to let the public know in February we had two regularly scheduled meetings last week and this week because the holiday is next week we don't have a meeting next week but we are planning to have a special meeting On February 23rd, and that meeting will be dedicated to the issue of homelessness and the county's phase 2 plan. So that will be announced and noticed soon but I just want to let the public know we will be having a special meeting on February 23rd on homelessness.
The second item I'm happy to discuss is a presentation by staff on activities celebrating Black History Month in Santa Barbara County. As you know, Black History Month is all month long and because this is our second regular meeting and as I said we won't be having another regular meeting we wanted to highlight some activities this month so we have with us Sarah York-Rubin who will introduce the item.
Good morning Chair, members of the Board and CEO Miyasato. Thank you for requesting to hear more about Santa Barbara County Black History Month programming. This remarkable demonstration of community-led work is produced by many local organizations as part of their year round activities. My report today is made possible by the incredible community leaders and black led organizations that have dedicated so much of their time and resources to creating programs.
The Office of Arts and Culture is honored to have any role in supporting these efforts. This year, several groups are collaborating to celebrate and honor the contributions of African Americans and Black folks in society. Community producers include, and Clark if you would go to the next slide, African American women in Santa Barbara County Black Rock Coalition, Endowment for Youth Committee, El Centro, Gateway Educational Services, Healing Justice Santa Barbara, Juneteenth Santa Barbara, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Black History Month Virtual Culture House, Santa Barbara Young Black Professionals, The NAACP, Santa Maria Lompoc chapter and more.
We are grateful to LaWanda Lyons Pruitt, Wendy Sims Moten and Jordan Sing Shingle Kilroo for sharing their wisdom with us during the county resolution last week. This year's theme is The Black Family, Representation, Identity and Diversity. As Mr. Shingle Kilroo referenced, the Santa Barbara County Black History Month event calendar is available on the Healing Justice website which is a wonderful resource for folks looking to learn more about ways to engage And as noted in the resolution, the county encourages all to participate in these opportunities. And again, Madam Clerk, next slide please.
Leticia Fournier-Resch co organizer and lead for arts and culture with Healing Justice Santa Barbara was kind enough to send over the following video to present today Madam Clerk, could you please play the video? And this is a compilation of just some of the programming that they are creating.
♪ Hi, everyone. Hi.
0:15 – 0:3014 turns
So thank you again, and please visit HJSB.org for the full calendar of upcoming events by participating organizations and groups throughout the county in honor of Black History Month.
Thank you very much for that. Yes, so we'll ultimately open this up for public comment. But do board members have anything they'd like to say? And just let me I can see Supervisor Chair Nelson and Supervisor Lavinino on Zoom. So if you want to speak, just raise your hand. Keep it there for a minute and Supervisor Hart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank CEO Miyasato and Ms York Rubin for highlighting Black History Month again this week there's really some incredible events that I hope the community takes full advantage of to celebrate this important recognition particularly this year as we is a country and community seek to confront systemic racism as a nation. I encourage all of us to be intentional in learning something new about black history this month. With this year's focus being on the black family, we have an opportunity to learn about the rich histories identities and diverse backgrounds that shape the experiences of black families. And I want to thank particularly Wendy Sims Moten, Luanda Lyons Pruitt and Jordan Killebrew who shared their personal perspectives and stories last month as we kicked off Black History Month.
And unfortunately, after last week's presentation a community member made remarks that were racist and unbecoming of the values that we share in this community. While we as a board can't control what is said during public comment I want to acknowledge that I was very disappointed that the very beautiful and celebratory moment was distorted by those cruel comments. This moment clearly demonstrated the need that we have for increasing education on issues of race and equity, and how far we have to go as a community in the country. And I want to thank all the community members who are organizing and participating in Black History Month events this year. We're really grateful for the opportunity to learn, celebrate, and advocate alongside with you.
Thank you. And Supervisor Williams?
Well one member of the public came up with, I thought, a good suggestion that we Use the some of the time that we have in February to. highlight moments or persons in black history. And so I thought that was important, so I wanted to add to my introductory comments last week by highlighting the first back black member of the US House of Representatives Joseph Rainey.
I return to reconstruction over and over in history because it is, to me, a very important lesson that is often forgotten. That we attempted as a country to confront systemic racism in the past and we backed off and 100 more years of oppression went by. And so to me it is a clear example of how though we sometimes view history as being an ultimate progression towards the happier world, that in fact it only goes that way with commitment and hard work.
Joseph Rainey represented a district in South Carolina. He participated Constitutional conventions that took place in southern states after the four Reconstruction Acts were passed by radical abolitionists in Congress who said, you got to give the vote to African-Americans. And lo and behold when the vote was extended 14 Senators and congressmen were elected in the South of African American descent.
Some of them were professionals, artisans like Mr. Rainey. He was a barber before the Civil War but he performed in Congress with dignity at a very time of a lot of fear. One of his colleagues in the
South
Carolina State Senate was gunned down in broad daylight by Suspected by the Red Shirts, which were a South Carolina version of the Klan. There was an enormous amount of intimidation and it wasn't sort of just marginal people that were doing this. It was part of a concerted effort to reestablish white supremacy that included wiping out of an entire town, Homburg South Carolina, a place where like many places during Reconstruction black culture and economic life had flourished.
This flourishing was taken away by terrorism. It was taken away by terrorism in the south and the north who had lost the will to carry out The experiment of equality that had lost the will to confront systemic racism and to confront white supremacy. And this lasted a long time. I can remember as a kid reading a history textbook that sort of glorified the ex-Confederates that took back power and looked at reconstruction construction as a failed experiment.
And maligned both white and black that had participated in reconstruction governments. And I can remember even as a kid reading that textbook and go, who wrote this? Right? And when we look at racism in America you could go up until my time in the 80s in schools we were all basically taught Confronting white supremacy and trying to create equality was a failed experiment in America. I hope that we will seize this moment in American and black history, to continue and see this through like should have been done 150 years ago.
Thank you for sharing that and your passion for history, Supervisor Williams. Supervisor Lavinino did you have anything you wanted to say or Supervisor Chair Nelson just wanted to check in? Supervisor Lavinino? Okay well first of all 11 different organizations working to present Black History Month and as Supervisor Hart noted we all have a lot to learn. I was also like all the board members here I was disturbed by the public comments and am eager to disavow those, and got a number of different suggestions from people writing by email. And one was indeed that we share black history from local people in our own counties.
In honor of Black History Month and in keeping with the theme of the black family representation, identity and diversity I'd like to highlight three local black families who played significant roles in Santa Barbara County's history. They are Mrs. Nanny Elizabeth Browning Wilkins and Mr. Smiley Edward Wilkins Sr., Dr. Gloria Willis and Mr. Clarence Willis, and Mrs. Edith Maude Hicks and Mr. Arthur Norris Hicks. Their contributions to the betterment of our county and our country merit recognition and celebration.
All three men—Mr. Wilkins, Mr. Willis, and Mr. Hicks—served careers in the U.S. military, and Mr Hicks served as a distinguished Tuskegee Airman. Each of the families settled in the Lompoc Valley and resided there for decades until the end of their lives. The Lompoc area is one of the most diverse and cosmopolitan areas in our county, due in part to the base but it hasn't always been easy.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins were members of the Valley of the Flowers United Church of Christ starting in 1974 until their passings in 2007-2019. Mrs. Wilkins volunteered for 25 years with hospice. Mr. Willis was the first African American to operate a barbershop at the Vandenberg Air Force Base and then to own and operate one in Lompoc. In her 30s, Mrs. Willis, Dr. Gloria Willis, was active in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in three marches alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., getting to know him personally. She spent much of her adult life educating youth about American history from her front row seat and perspective.
Mr. and Mrs. Hicks spent their entire careers dedicated to children as public school educators in the Lompoc Valley, but each of these couples worked in discriminatory housing practices throughout their lives both locally and in and around the military bases to which they were stationed. Mr. Willis was the first black person to purchase a home in Vandenberg Village, that was after being denied the right to purchase a home in Mission Hills on the basis of race.
Soon after he used an intermediary to purchase three homes in Mission Hills and he granted them to black families thereby integrating Vandenberg Village and Mission Hills Each of the families was actively engaged in the local NAACP. Mr. Wilkins serving as the longest tenured local chapter president and Mr. Willis serving as vice president. They'd be proud of LaWanda's efforts to continue.
Notably, these families organized to end the local Elk's Lodge black ball policy of membership discrimination which then led to the nationwide change to allow people of color to become Elks members. As many community organizers have learned good food makes good activists Mrs. Hicks, a baker and Mr. Wilkins, master at the grill were both known for their joy of cooking and feeding their friends and inspiring them with good meals so during Black History Month I'd like to recognize the exceptional lives of the Wilkins Willis and Hicks families and their tremendous contributions to their communities to civil rights and to social justice may their stories inspire us to build on their legacy And with that Madam Clerk, is there any public comment on the CEO's report?
Chair Hartman
and members of the board yes I have one request to speak on the CEO's report and that is Dale Willis.
Mr. Willis, I hope you're connected because we're eager to hear from you.
Yes I am connected can you hear me?
We can loud and clear
Okay. All right, well one I want to just say thank you for recognizing my father, Clarence Willis and his wife Gloria Willis and the other families Wilkins and the Hicks family Our family moved to Lompoc from Washington State in 1958. I think I was in fifth grade at the time and as a youngster, I really had no idea the kinds of things that dad went through.
And buying the house that we moved into in Vandenberg Village was a brand new house and or the things that he went through with getting the business, the shop, the barbershop Which is currently operating now, Oaks Barbershop in the Village. I remember Dad used to have us come inside and watch on TV the events that took place in Montgomery and the marches and things because he felt like we needed to know what was going on in the country because he felt like we didn't get proper exposure to things in Lompoc. Although in Lompoc there was, there were things that that happened that you know for instance is buying the shop the business. He had to get a white gentleman a friend to act in his stead to get the contract signed because they wouldn't they wouldn't rent it rent the building to him.
He, dad helped found the NAACP. He was a founding member. He had the shops on the base and my mother their marriage didn't endure the difficulties there in Lompoc. And so my mom ended up going back to Washington State and later dad met Ms. Gloria who he had known back in Louisiana And as a, as a kid and dad left and went into the army. And then later in life Gloria was single dad was single and they ended up getting married. I was honored to perform that wedding.
Some of the things other things that they were able to accomplish in Lompoc or the Lompoc Valley Community Youth Center The Oaks Barbershop still is in existence, the NAACP of course is still carrying on with Lawanda handling at the head. And so we just want to say thank you and we're honored that you recognize the families and this Black History Month.
Thank you very much, Mr. Willis for allowing us to share the story of your family and refining it for us. It really matters to understand kind of the local context and how civil rights movement has played out even in our own county so really appreciate that you took the time to call in today.
0:30 – 0:3712 turns
Thank you for the invitation.
Chair Hartman members of the board I believe Supervisor Nelson has a comment?
Yes, Supervisor, Chair Nelson please go ahead. There you are with your hand.
Thank you Vice Chairwoman Hartman for allowing me a chance to chime in and thank you for taking the lead today so that I could take care of some issues away from the jurisdiction. I wanted to thank you for highlighting those families as someone who formerly taught and worked in the Lompoc Valley familiar with
All
three of those families and the work that they've.
Could you repeat your sentence? So you froze for just a minute, we don't want to lose a word.
All right well again I just as someone who's worked in Wampa as a teacher and business these are really important families in that community and I really appreciate how you bring them up and honoring them. I was thinking about Pastor Wiley at The Greatest Temple We have a final request to speak and that is Mister Tom Becker. Yes, Chair Hartman and members of the board we just had a late request to speak on this item and that is from Tom Becker.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
We can, Mr Becker loud and clear.
Thank you, Supervisor. I'd like to clarify a few things my comments last week. And they have been acknowledged by the Santa Maria Times in several other newspapers. My comments last week were verbatim quotes from Malcolm X or paraphrase quotes from Malcolm X. Those are not my words They were the words of Malcolm X. And I sent you a copy of the Santa Maria Times, where it was clearly understood by the person who wrote that article that he clearly understood that I was quoting or paraphrasing Malcolm X.
So if my words were disturbing to you, be aware those are the words of Malcolm x himself now I greatly admire Malcolm X with all his flaws and he had many flaws. I greatly admire Malcolm X, he was a man of action and he encouraged the black community to stand on their own and not depend on other people including politicians for your substance in your advancement.
And I truly believe that I'd like to explain to the people listening that I have submitted requests in an environmental impact report called the Connect 2050 document, where I'm requesting that environmental studies be done of the impacts of county housing policies on the Hispanic community. And I will be requesting it also for the black community This is where this issue comes from. I'm not going to sit there and have these people blow sunshine up my skirt, and tell me that they're doing things that are good for the community.
I want them to prove that they're doing good things, and I want them to examine how their policies may be adversely impacting communities of color. So it's always dangerous to quote Malcolm X because he was such a lightning rod for criticism. But I admire Malcolm X, always have. And I grew up with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. It was Malcolm X that stuck in my mind for some reason just because he was such a firebrand.
And one of the persons he connected with was Muhammad Ali who is also that way. And I just admire people who are forceful and use that kind of language in a forceful way. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my language, but remember I'm quoting Malcolm X and there's always a danger when you're quoting someone like that. Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Becker and thank you for keeping within the time limit. I think it's important to talk a little bit more about the housing issues you raise. You know, the 1944 GI Bill was the single greatest program to promote homeownership in the U.S., and it prompted the major housing boom post-war. But black veterans were routinely denied mortgages and other benefits that were provided under the vets in the GI Bill.
In addition, the practice of redlining by real estate interests blocked out minority neighborhoods, devalued their homes making it very difficult to get mortgages and home improvement loans and to build the kind of wealth that other families could. If there weren't if that wasn't enough there were restrictive covenants and the absence of any fair housing laws and that kept black people out of neighborhoods in towns so we heard about how that worked even here in Santa Barbara County If that didn't work then there was intimidation. When I was a student in high school, I lived in a town of Glendora and there we had a black family moved in and a cross was burned on their lawn and they quickly moved out again. So that's been the experience in housing of many black people.
It's been decades of racism and in housing and lending, and it's widened racial gaps in education and wealth in our country. So it's not a partisan thing. It has really been a systemic policy thing that we all are grappling with the legacy of that today. So that is my view of the history that you recited Mr. Becker So with that, I'd like to turn to the administrative agenda.
And I have that we're going to trail item A6 and we're pulling item A3, A9 and 16. Madam Clerk are there any other items that were going to pull?
0:37 – 0:3917 turns
Chair Hartman and members of the board, those are what I have on my list as well. Thank you.
Okay so we will take these up in order and I guess vote on each of them but may I have a motion then for the balance of the agenda excluding 6, 3, 9 and 16?
Move the balance of the administrative agenda.
Okay thank you Supervisor Hart.
Second.
Supervisor Williams seconds and would you call the roll?
Roll-call vote 0–0 Move the balance of the administrative agenda. Okay thank you Supervisor Hart. Second. Supervisor Williams seconds and would you call the ro · 2 under review
Show transcript
I
supervise 11 you know. I supervisor Williams I and chair Hartman I motion passes unanimously
would you read madam clerk a three into the record.
Chair Hartman and members of the board. Administrative item number three is from behavioral wellness, it is to consider recommendations regarding a fourth amendment to the Telecare Corporation and Crestwood Behavioral Health Inc fiscal year 2018 through 2021 adult crisis residential mental health services agreements and amendment to the fiscal year 2018 through 2019 Mental Health County maximum allowable CMA rate
And which supervisor pulled this item?
And Chair Hartman, members of the board. We have one request to speak on this item from the public and that is Andy Caldwell.
And was that pulled by Mr. Caldwell? Correct. OK go ahead Mr. Caldwell are you with us?
Madam Chair I have to apologize so I must have sloppy typing skills. That was supposed to be D3 not A3.
Madam
Chair, I'll move A3. Make a motion to move A3? Second.
Okay or if we don't require a vote maybe we can take all three together. A9, A16 do we anticipate we'll need votes on those? Okay let's go forward with A9.
0:39 – 0:4313 turns
Chair Hartman and members of the board, administrative item number nine is from Community Services. It is to consider recommendations regarding Beachside Bar & Cafe termination of concession agreement and this is in the second district.
Supervisor
Hart? Madam Chair thank you I just want to take this opportunity to thank Dave and Pat Hardy and Larry Stone who've operated the beach side restaurant for nearly 40 years Unfortunately, because of the pandemic they've chosen to close their doors but they had an incredible run for nearly four decades. And it was really the Beachside has been an institution in the Goleta Valley and the entire community. And there are so many people that have fond memories celebrating milestone events of their lives graduations birthdays even just simple happy hour with friends. And I want to wish Larry and Dave and Pat the best in their retirement And whatever new things that they do, as far as the continued operation of the restaurant. The Parks Department is soliciting new restaurant operators to continue that tradition and serving people at Goleta Beach and we've had a number of responses so I think there will ultimately be a happy ending and I just want to say thank you again to Mr.
Stone and Mrs. Hardy
Thank you. I think there are a lot of family memories from that restaurant and especially coming from the airport or taking people back, stopping for a really special meal there. OK, moving then to A16 Madam Clerk
Chair Hartman and members of the board administrative item number 16 is from the sheriff. It is to consider recommendations regarding an enterprise fleet management equity lease agreement
And was that Chair Nelson who pulled that one?
Chair Hartman and members of the board, that is correct.
Chair Nelson?
Thank you. I pulled a 16 just to briefly highlight and thank Sheriff Bill Brown, Under Sheriff Saul Limber and their team for thinking outside the box embracing the redesign function of the Renew 22 And beginning what looks to be a successful public-private partnership between the Sheriff's Office and Enterprise Fleet Management. This is going to be allowing the Sheriff's Department to outsource some of the maintenance and vehicle purchase costs to enterprise, and ultimately we're a five year contract saving the county upwards of $700,000. So again I wanted to thank them for their their ability to redesign and embrace cost savings for the taxpayers of Santa Barbara County. So thank you.
Thank you, Chair Nelson and you don't need a separate vote on that so I would like a motion to approve A3, A9 and A16.
I'll move A3 ,A9 and 16.
Second. All right and Madam Clerk?
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 move A3 ,A9 and 16. Second. All right and Madam Clerk?
Show transcript
Motion passes unanimously Thank you and now it's time for members of the public to speak on items that are not on today's agenda Madam Clerk do we have any requests to speak
0:43 – 0:5317 turns
Chair Hartman and members of the board, yes we have three requests to speak on general public comment this morning. And we will begin with Andy Caldwell to be followed by Christy Stilwell.
Mr. Caldwell?
Chair Hart, Members of the Board, last night I sent to the Clerk of the Board and to each of you an email We are very, very grateful that Supervisors Nelson and Supervisor Williams both promoted an independent redistricting committee. And my goal is to keep it independent. We honor that we think that the state law which has the eight year prohibition is worthy and important But as I mentioned last week, you know that the rule says that neither a member of the commission or a consultant to the commission can have worked for, volunteered for, or served in the last eight years in a supervisor or candidate's election.
And the purpose of this was to preserve the independence of the commission from partisan political interference Well, party activists have been pressuring your board and the commission to not hire Nielsen Merksimer which is the only firm I know of in the state that actually specializes in drawing lines. They did them for Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, I think Goleta and Carp. I have no relationship to these people so they're not my dog in this fight However, these people were all pressuring including Phil Seymour and Lee Heller and San Barbara County Democratic Party Organizing Director Spencer Brant to instead hire Mr. Wutcher.
Well as it turns out Mr. Wutcher and Mr. Seymour both represented county supervisor former county supervisor Doreen Farr Clearly within the last eight years. So what I sent you is her 460 report from 2012 that covered the period that Mr. Wucher applied for this position or request for proposal without disclosing his conflict And also the 2013, which is clearly within the eight years as the commission just.
That is your time Mr. Caldwell. No I think I got
35 seconds.
Oh I'm sorry you are right. I'm rusty at this and it was the yellow light instead of the red up here go ahead.
Don't have a tricky itchy trigger finger there Supervisor Archer. Anyway I'm almost done. Anyway, I sent you the official records before 60s that clearly show that wheelchair was her legal counsel. We expect him to be dismissed from this project summarily and we're hoping that Supervisor Williams since this was your baby that you're going to lead the charge to protect this commission Independence from partisan political interference. And we trust your whole board will do so likewise, thank you.
Thank you Mr Caldwell and Christy Stilwell. Ms Stilwell is next.
Chair Hartman and members of the board yes our next speaker is Christy Stilwell to be followed by Tom Becker
And hello.
Hello, we hear you right? Hello good morning chair Hartman and members of the board I'm Christy Stillwell executive director of what is love a social profit organization here in Santa Barbara County. I'd like to make a brief statement in support of teen dating violence awareness month. Dating violence is more common than you think especially among teens and young adults One in two teens in our community experience physical, sexual, digital or emotional abuse from someone they're in a relationship with every day. And most do not ask for help or know how to help a friend.
Dating violence can have serious physical, mental and academic impacts. Young people who experience abuse are more likely to be in physical fights or bring weapons to school. They exhibit higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as high risk sexual behaviors. They are also five times more likely to attempt suicide in an effort to stop dating abuse before it starts every February what is love joins with young people schools parents educators. and community leaders across the country for a national effort to raise awareness about dating violence.
This year, our message is Know Your Worth, helping young folks to believe they are worthy of abuse-free loving relationships. At What Is Love?, we know prevention works to help prevent and end this abuse. Please continue to learn about the importance of relationship education, share this awareness and invest in prevention. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you. Those were some statistics I certainly was not aware of so that's important information and thank you for the work you're doing. And Mr Becker
Yes, Chair Hartman and members of the board. Our final speaker on general public comment is Tom Becker and before we proceed with public comment I would just like to remind those members of the public who have logged in for departmental item number four that that will be in this afternoon session and should be first up after our closed session but please stay tuned thank you.
And we will now go to Tom Becker.
Thank you can you hear me?
We can. Not as loud as usual, but we can hear
you. I'll get closer. Thank you. Chair Hartman or yes, Chairman. We're talking about history. History is very important. I gave you a bit of my family history last week abolitionists and slave owners together in my family history. I'd like to give you some more history and understand where how I develop my viewpoints in all this My grandmother Stevenson was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1939, a lady by the name of Marian Anderson who is a very well-known singer was denied entry to the Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., which is owned by the DAR to perform because she was black.
My grandmother Stevenson and thousands of other people resigned their membership in the And supported Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939 when Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Marian Anderson to give a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I also lived through the Watts riots in 1965, my dad worked at City Hall and he took me through the riot area after it happened as a little kid.
And we talked about race and we talked about what is causing all of this? And that's, and I went to Catholic elementary school and Catholic high school. This is my background. And I grew up thinking that words are meaningless if they're not backed up by actions. And I'm looking at your housing policies and I don't think you've done enough. You may think you have, I don't think you have. That's the reason why I'm asking for an environmental review of your housing policies Now, I've asked specifically for Hispanic population because the Hispanic and because I'm asking for comparative analysis.
So the Hispanic and white population are very close but the black population is only about one and a half percent. And that's the reason why I didn't at this time ask for a comparative analysis of the black population cause it's such a small percentage. I don't think a comparative analysis would be accurate But you have to understand, that's how I grew up. I grew up in a family of activists and they taught me to be an activist.
That's where I'm coming from. So when I look at things we can go back in history and history is all very well and fine but I look at the present and I look at if we have done enough And I look at it from a very jaundiced eye, because I look at history and I can see that it really hasn't gone as far as it should have. I think we could do better. I want everybody to understand that's my position. It may be rough. It's not just rough around the edges. It is just, I guess all over rough but that's my family history. That's where I come from. That's how I learned to think about issues. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that Mr. Becker and I think we all agree we can do better And so turning next then to our departmental agenda. Would you read department item number one madam clerk into the record
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chair Hartman and members of the board departmental item number one is from the county executive office it is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an update on the coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19. And Dr.
Vandorenoso will lead us off today
Thank you, Madam Clerk. May I have my slides? Next. Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board with me here today is Dr. Henning Ansorg, our county health officer, and the briefing topics this morning will include the Santa Barbara County COVID-19 data Next. Over the past two weeks, From January 25th to February 8th, active cases have decreased by 51%, so going from 2085 to 1028. Deaths have increased unfortunately by 26%. So going from 267 to 337 hospitalizations have decreased by 27% going from 192 to 141. ICU rates have been decreasing approximately by 20%, going from 49 to 39, so this is what we had anticipated would happen as we come out of the winter holidays. Next?
This graph describes our weekly deaths. Unfortunately, we have lost more community members so far in 2021 than all of 2020. Deaths as I mentioned earlier have increased by 26%. Next. This graph describes the disease in our county by various regions. From January 21st through February 4th, we are happy to report that all areas are seeing a decrease and that includes throughout our region and the range of decrease low as 42% and high as 68%.
Next. This graph describes our ICU bed capacity from January 25th through February 8th, we have the Santa Barbara County actual ICU availability decreasing by eight percent. The Central Coast actual ICU availability increased though by 97%. So as a region, we have that capacity. Next. This is our anticipated blueprint metrics to be published today at noon. The date for the calculation by the state is from January 24th through January 30th. Our adjusted case rate is, I cannot see it.
Is 36.4 and that was adjusted from 40.1. Our positivity rate is at 10.2. And our health equity metric, which means the testing positivity in our 11 health equity zip code stands at 15.4%. What's noteworthy is that Santa Barbara ranks the eighth highest for the adjusted case rate and the 13th highest for testing positivity, despite being the 19th most populous county in California.
So we still have work to do next. And this is our Rainbow graph depicting the blueprint metrics, we are seeing as you can see from the trend line. Our testing positivity is decreasing by 9% and our health equity metric testing positivity is also decreasing by 8%. Next Here is the dramatic decrease in our adjusted case rate. From the last rating period to now, we are showing a decrease of 23%.
Very encouraging numbers. Next. Last Sunday in response to the Supreme Court rulings CDPH did modify Next slide, please. I'd like to turn now to vaccine distribution. Next. So this is a graph that describes the changes in how vaccine flows into Santa Barbara County, as you recall, it comes from the federal government. So the federal government allocates Directly to the pharmacies to serve the long-term care facilities that is considered or referred to as the federal partnership.
The state of California also receives directly from the federal government on a weekly basis our allocation as a state With the new framework of adopting a third party administrator to allocate vaccines, as you may have heard blue shield of California is the third party administrator. Blue Shield will be Allocating vaccines to all of our county. And what that means is that the allocation will flow into our county directly to selected vaccine providers, as well as the public health department. It is anticipated That the public health department will get some amount of vaccines to continue serving the safety net population. And the safety net population has been described as our homeless population, are hard-to-reach populations such as undocumented community members, as well as community members who are struggling with of behavioral health issues or substance abuse issues.
And so that is who the citizens, the residents of Santa Barbara County will receive vaccinations moving forward through the community providers or through the public health department and our allocation of vaccines will be done by Blue Shield. Next. This is up to date. We have received 61,000 doses in our county and with about 21% of those doses allocated by the public health department because we're still allocating right now until the switch over to the third party administrator. So 21% goes to the clinics 19%.
The public health department uses in our public vaccination sites. 4% goes to healthcare providers, so these are the physician offices. 49% is allocated to our hospital partners with 7% to our pharmacy partners. Next. This graph describes the number of people in our county that are eligible for the upcoming, the current tier as well as the upcoming eligibility groups. So we are estimating that about 26,000 in our healthcare bucket group and about Roughly 33, 32,000 in our age 75 group as well as the number. The 41,000 for the age 65 to 74 group with childcare roughly about 23,000 eligible community members to be vaccinated in that group with food and agriculture So this is a graph to demonstrate that with two doses per person, we currently don't have enough vaccines at an allocation of right under 6,000 a week.
There are many that hear or read in the news about certain groups getting vaccinated in other areas, other counties such as 65 and above. In Los Angeles, or teachers in Long Beach, Our food workers are at workers in other areas. I'd like to pause and explain to your board how this could be occurring, and why we are currently finishing up the one a which includes the healthcare workers as well as those who are 75 and own 75 and above.
So there are three primary variables that impact these decisions and our local prioritization. Each county makes decisions based on these variables. One is the number of supply, how much vaccines are we getting? And again currently We are getting right under 6,000 vaccines. And as a matter of fact typically we get our vaccination allocation late Tuesday as I'm still waiting for that letter and so we're uncertain how much supply we will be getting this week. The second variable is the number of community members who are eligible and who have declined And so when there is a greater decline rate, that means there's more vaccine available for the next tier or the next eligible group. And then of course, the number of individuals in that tier or or group and We have as a county acknowledge based upon our data that it is the healthcare workers and the 75 plus who are we need to protect our health care system and stabilize it.
And that is why we like all of the counties prioritize the health care workers. And in addition, we have a Our data shows that the 75 plus are the most vulnerable to poor outcomes, to getting severe outcomes or even death. And so given the scarcity of vaccines we as a county have prioritized the 75 plus, simply again because of the limited amount of supply.
Here in Santa Barbara County we also work in close partnership, very close partnership with our healthcare system. We have had a COVID-19 provider group. It's called the COVID- 19 Partners Vaccination Planning Work Group and we have been meeting In the beginning of the pandemic, we met to talk about lab capacity testing capacity as a county and quickly pivoted to our vaccine distribution strategies. So this work group consists of all of our hospitals.
Our outpatient clinics, first responders are residential care facilities. Our community partners are community partners who provide services higher education and this is just to name a few it is quite a big robust group that meets twice a month. To receive information about our vaccine supply and to receive information about our vulnerable populations. And to work collaboratively with the public health department leadership in implementing vaccine priorities, given again the limited number of vaccines in our county.
And so, on one more thing about our vaccine allocation. We have also heard worries from our community members is Santa Barbara County getting sufficient getting our fair share and we have done our analysis. We have charted what everybody else is receiving, and we can confidently say that we are getting our fair share of vaccine. And it's just I think this is a tough space to be in that every county is in across the nation just because as a country, we have limited number of vaccines available.
Next. This is a graph that describes the vaccine regimen in our county. Pfizer and Moderna requires two doses, and the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine will not. Since we are working with the Moderna and the Pfizer, we are following the second dose protocol and timelines. So with Pfizer, Within 21 days of the first dose and Moderna within 28 days after the first dose. Given the limited number of vaccines available, all of our partners are focusing on finishing up the second doses among community members who have received their first dose.
Next This graph is a new graph that our Epi team have created to show the race and ethnicity of vaccinated Santa Barbara County members. So we have, and again this needs to be taken within context that as of yet, we have been only vaccinating healthcare workers and those who are 75 plus. I anticipate that as we move towards the 65 plus, I just want to say that as we move towards the childcare and education, as we move towards the food and the ag workers, and as we move towards emergency services, that the pie chart will shift to reflect the diversity in our workforce.
We have black Americans at 0%. We have Hispanic Latino at 18% we have American Indian native Alaskan, at zero percent. We have Asian at 2%, we have whites at 31%. and other at 11% with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander at 1%, and multiple races at 20%. So while it is concerning for us that we have several sectors, several community groups at 0%, we will be doubling down on ensuring That these community members will have one access to vaccines as well as us working with our partners to address vaccine hesitancy and identify any barriers to our community members accessing vaccines when they become eligible.
Next. I'd like to briefly update your board on our school plans. Next. We have six schools that we are working with, with regards to their safety plans for reopening. And that continues to be Lompoc Unified School District, the Buellton Unified School District which we last Friday approved, the Santa Barbara Unified School District which we approved also last Friday, the Goleta Unified School District, the Vista Del Mar Union School District And the Orchard Union School District.
I'd like to share a pretty compelling graphic that CDPH share with Dr. Ansaric and myself, along with our colleagues regarding the Swiss cheese respiratory pandemic defense framework which recognizes that there is no single intervention that is perfect at preventing the spread of the COVID-19 disease And each intervention, each layer has holes but collectively implemented can give us a safer environment. So it starts with from your left going to your right the personal responsibilities which includes physical distancing and staying at home if sick And then moving towards a hand hygiene and have it coughing in your elbow.
Going to limiting gatherings, especially in a crowded space. With towards shared responsibilities, which is in the workplace. There's ventilation, there's outdoors time, there's air filtration and then there's quarantine and isolation as a county, as a community. And so underlying all of that Is ultimately the vaccine. So this is really the take point, the takeaway point in this is that for us to create a safer county, a safer community we have to have personal responsibilities as well as shared responsibility and the shared responsibility Taking when it's your turn, the availability of vaccine but also being patient as we work through the vaccine scarcity.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky recently came out with a statement that says there is increasing Data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely. We prioritize teachers when we have our next vaccine effort So within this context next. I'd like to share with your board that because we support teachers and we support school districts in reopening, we would like to send a letter of support to CDPH. To as endorsement of their request to reopen, we will ask in our letter that allows Santa Barbara Unified School District to reopen in 7 days after the submission of this letter. Even though. We have as a county, our case rate as I shared earlier exceeds the 25 per 100,000 and this is why.
Our rationale is that there are existing schools reopened under the waiver process in Santa Barbara or when we were in the red tier in Santa Barbara And, and with and they've been able to reopen safely. While we are wild wild coven 19 rages around in the community. The other piece is the equity through the equity lens. Disadvantaged students should have the same opportunities for in-person instruction as other schools in the same areas. And lastly, we all agree that that students need to return to in person That is the ideal and that is the ultimate goal. And so we want to be supportive of Santa Barbara Unified in their quest to reopen, and in partnership with the school district, we will have further conversations about how we can support their efforts.
I conclude my briefing and both Dr. Ansorg and I are available for questions.
1:18 – 1:2510 turns
Thank you, Dr. Vandorino. So that was...I really enjoyed the graphic and that was quite thorough. Supervisor Williams?
Well before I go into the school reopening, I wanted to address what is a disturbing trend that I've noticed in the community both in some of the emails I get and in the press which is a tendency I want to shift our public health staff from being idolized as the darlings just six weeks ago, to becoming the scapegoat of lack of vaccines. Our staff have done an exceptional job of ensuring that as a county we have the places, the locations, the people and the process in which They are ready to ramp up.
What we don't have is enough vaccines 6000 enough as I indicated last week to vaccinate 1.3% of our population weekly once when we need two vaccines for efficacy purposes, I have not just taken anybody's word for it. Gone and consulted with health experts in Sacramento. And they confirm what the department has been telling us, that supply originates as a federal issue.
It's not like the state of California or the county of Santa Barbara can go to these companies and buy more vaccines. These companies offered sovereign governments an opportunity to pre-order and the U.S. gave them a pre-order number. A lot of us wonder why it was as low as it was, but in defense of the federal response, it's still much higher than most of the world. The U. S., of comparably large countries would be second and of all countries, third in the dissemination of vaccines.
And so I think it is completely understandable given the level of fear out there to want to be frustrated, to want someone held accountable or someone to blame But I just believe that in a crisis, that is not how we as a community should behave. It is not something I've believed that in a crisis. We need to pull together as we have done so many times in the past.
I also want to speak to you know, I do want to ask the question is is you know what kind of Approximate percentage of utilization of the back of the 61,000 vaccines. I'm sure you would have had that number if you had the exact number but I'm just sort of curious. I also want to speak to the school reopening because We can, I think obviously the folks who have passed from us because of COVID and their families are the ones most proximately and deeply affected.
But in terms of numbers and in terms of the future our children are the masses that have been affected by the vaccine. We are seeing large numbers across the state. As a matter of fact, 155,000 students that have just dropped off the face of the earth and the explanations for that are not good. They are either students at the margin that aren't going to school at all or they are student in some cases, students of families that will leave the public school system and probably never return. And their energies and contribution are needed to make the public school system work. So I think we have to recognize that in this moment there The results of the pandemic is an existential threat for the future of public education and the future of our children, and that because of that it is necessary to support reopening when it can be done in a rational and safe manner.
Given all the technical assistance to make sure that Santa Barbara Unified School District reopens in a safe manner, I believe we should support that district and its children.
Supervisor Williams through vice chair Hartman, I'd like to answer your questions. So your 1st question if I am tracking this is the percent of vaccine administered are. The latest data, which is roughly a week old. And we stood at 75%. is that the state is looking at all of our data and asking us to scrub it, to make sure that it is correct. Our providers are submitting correct numbers of vaccinations to the state so we are in flux right now.
Can I clarify that real quick? So your number of last Monday was 86 percent But if you include the number of vaccines we were scheduled to receive, it would have been 75 percent. But that wouldn't be an accurate number because that would assume that we didn't vaccinate anyone last week right? So okay so it's gonna be somewhere probably similar to our 86 percent but we don't know that number until we scrub that data right?
Yes, that is correct. With regards I'm not tracking your second question it has to do with
oh I don't think it was a question. I
was trying
to
figure that one out.
It really wasn't a question. You know, fundamentally believe that you this department has led well and that the people under your supervision are working hard and that their performance should not be evaluated by the public through the lens of decisions that were made at the presidential level three and four months ago.
1:25 – 1:327 turns
Thank you Supervisor Hart
Yeah, I just also want to add my thanks and appreciation to Dr. Doronoso and Dr. Anzorg, everybody in the public health team who is working enormous hours really sustaining this since March with very few breaks. I know Dr. Doronoso works on the weekends, late into the evenings, Dr. Anzorg as well. Everybody involved in this is 100% committed You know, the CEO's office.
This is a full county response and the entire organization is doing everything it possibly can to meet this moment and doing very well and has consistently done well throughout the pandemic. We've been below our neighboring counties in terms of the incidence COVID-19 in our communities. We're ahead in terms of vaccine distribution as Supervisor Williams described, there are enormous challenges that start at the national, the international level about not having enough vaccines to give all the people that want them and that's a good problem we've got lots of people who want the vaccine And on the horizon, there's concern because there's also been a lot of people who have chosen not to get the vaccine and for this to be effective. And to achieve herd immunity we need to get very high levels of compliance with vaccination so we're going to we're going to have to be determined and persuasive and have trusted messengers engaged and doing in tremendous outreach and the infrastructure that you The task force that works on the Latinx community is going to be that much more important as we go forward because we're going to have to dispel some really incredibly atrocious and scary myths that are spreading on the Internet.
I just was reading some things last night and couldn't believe some of the things are being perpetuated, you know? And unfortunately people are vulnerable to these kinds of things they are not necessarily consumers of traditional media and you know things that appear to be true can be very convincing and And we have to we have to pierce through that and convince people That this is in all of our interests. So again, I just want to express my thank-you To everybody who's working so hard and effectively.
I am curious about the letter that we're sending to the state and In support of Santa Barbara Unified School District, and I know they have spoken directly about their sense of urgency about wanting to open as a district. But I think that there are similar feelings amongst other districts in the county. They may not have been expressed so explicitly right now. And I would hope that our letter to the state is broader than just You know, create a path for Santa Barbara Unified. I know that there are other school districts around that would also be interested in that path and you know everybody has been proceeding according to what the direction from the state was and has been. We needed to get to 25 cases and we're at 36 now. That's a remarkable change in even just a week The 23% reduction in fact if you look ahead, probably the next 10 days we could easily achieve that 25 threshold so these things are aligning.
And I appreciate that you are being supportive of Santa Barbara Unified's request, looking at the science and the data. Taking the governor up on his remarks and that he thinks schools ought to be able to open. I think it's interesting that the state regulations are what's stopping the schools from reopening. can do something about that and this letter I hope will help encourage him to do that but it ought to be broad.
I know that the Goleta Unified School District has been working really hard on exactly the issue that Supervisor Williams spoke about About keeping track of children. How they have for a long time invested in mental health professionals on school sites to a far greater degree than just about any other school district around. So they have long standing relationships between students and administration, and mental health, and health professionals on campus. And they know where all their kids are, and they know that they're part of the system. And the ones that are having trouble learning remotely are in pods in classrooms.
And they're taking a every single child matters approach and being very successful at it. So there's, there's a lot of different responses. Everybody's working hard under very difficult circumstances and I want us to recognize the breadth and complexity of that response in our letter to the
state. Yes Dr. Del Reynoso if you detected a question in that?
Yes I did. Supervisor Hart through Vice Chair Hartman To your question about the broadness of the letter, we would like to make available this letter to any school district who has an approved safety plan. We had tailored this specifically to Santa Barbara Unified because the submission is on an individual district basis. So we will tailor that letter, the template letter to accompany any other school district who has an approved Safety plan and seeks that support. So we want to make sure that we can be, we can nuance that support by citing that specific area data and the particulars.
Dr.
Dorian, oh, Supervisor Hart, follow
up. I just wanted to say thank you, Dr. Dorian.
I just had a question and then we'll go to Chair Nelson and Supervisor Lovenino if they have questions. But, I believe the governor has announced that he's developing a school reopening package and there's a deal to be announced sometime this week and there may be in that a framework for teacher vaccination. Have you heard anything about that?
1:32 – 1:4523 turns
I have not, but this is just 10.30 a.m., so there could be a call later today or tonight, so at this point I don't have that information.
Okay thank you yeah and that illustrates kind of how fluid this situation is. Chair Nelson did you have any questions?
Yes I have a few questions.
Why don't you go ahead?
First of all, I wanted to thank Dr. Dobernoso for the presentation. I also wanted to thank Supervisor Hart for bringing up the issue of making sure if we do move forward with a letter percent of our unified that it's available for all the school districts in our county. I think that we have a very diverse student population That goes north and south. And I'm looking at that list that you just had where there's six schools that are currently working, six school districts currently working on reopening plans and obviously Santa Barbara Unified and Buellton both have theirs approved so we'd like to see if that's an opportunity for those schools as well.
Sticking on schools, I asked this question to you the other day but I just wanted to ask it during this hearing. Transportation is part of these safety plans as well and there is ways for schools to safely transport kids whether that's for a sporting event or just bringing them to school that that is an option that schools and districts can take advantage of. Is that correct?
Yes, and I can start. And Dr. Ansor can add to that. So the safety plan does require addressing transportation and for schools. I know that for school safety plan part of the requirement is to post it on their website. So for schools who don't yet have that safety plan it is available publicly for them to cut and paste best practices from an approved plant if needed. And part of that is for transportation to school, as well as other extracurricular activities as well. All
right, thank you. Moving back to the, or actually Dr. Anzor do you have anything else to share there? I didn't mean to cut you off.
Yeah, I just don't want to leave out that we are really focusing on the elementary schools at this point Because the state's guidance is that elementary schools, kindergarten through sixth grade could open once our case rate goes below 26 per 100,000 versus middle school and high schools could only open once we're in a red tier which is significantly lower. It's less than seven per 100,000. And the reason for that is that there's much more virus spread in the teenagers than in the smaller kids. That is just a scientific fact and teenagers are more like young adults with regard to virus spread, then elementary school age kids.
And that's why we feel strongly plus it is really very much a fact that younger children require in-person education much more than older children. Older children, teenagers are able to do a lot you know online but smaller children have really a hard time and therefore we are really really advocating strongly for the elementary school so I just wanted to make sure that That goes on the record that we are not endorsing every school, including high school to open right away.
That would not be safe at this level of transmission however elementary school is a different situation altogether.
But just to clarify, there are safe ways to have activities with older kids. Like I understand in our high schools we are having our special needs students attending. We have some cohorts where we have students that are potentially failing or not having internet access at home that we've been doing some additional outreach to at-risk students. So it's not that it can't be safe for young adults. No,
I agree with you. It is very nuanced. Yeah. Chair Nelson, it is an absolutely nuanced approach. Now having a high school with 1500 kids open is a different cup of tea than having you know a few cohorts for children that need some extra help so that is definitely safer and has been open even through the surge but having like a high school that is a very challenging issue as you can imagine especially the big public high schools. So that is very unfortunate, but I think at least we can support our elementary schools which is really close to my heart because I see those parents and children really suffer a lot and that should not go unnoticed for so long. And yeah, I just wanted to make that clear.
Thank you, Dr. Answorth. I got a couple other questions about vaccines just to clarify so 6,000 doses to the county every week really means 3,000 people can get fully vaccinated a week. So it's much less than even Supervisor Williams 1.4 or whatever percentage is really under one percent of our population that is able to be vaccinated based on current population and A lot of vaccines being distributed, the something that I think a lot of our offices are hearing from our people concerned on why again going back to wire friends out there that are getting 65 or older better and other counties.
Again, that goes back to if I'm correct Santa Barbara County has a large population of older residents. And so we have not fully vaccinated or 75 plus that are willing to be vaccinated, and that's the main reason why we're not moving to 74 or lower. Correct?
Yes. Chair Nelson through Vice-Chair Hartman, that was a mouthful. I'd like to just pause and share with you that we have vaccinated roughly 64.2% of the 75 plus in our county. So I think that we are at the, nearing the state where we are comfortable exploring with our community healthcare providers
moving on to the next phase and that is a conversation that we ar having this week with our partners in looking at their waiting list for 75 and above and their capacity And again, it feels like we should move towards the 65 plus and the three sectors that I just mentioned. However, the reality of the 6,000, it will not go very far. So it's a very detailed conversation that we will be having with our healthcare providers and our community partners To make a good decision for the county.
Supervisor Williams is it a quick follow on?
Yeah, it's sort of a question slash request that you know look if. A person with a health condition that's either 65 to 74 or in one of these essential workforce categories is going to have to compete with you know what? 90,000 8090 thousand people for the 6000 vaccines Doesn't it make sense to sub-tier it by some kind of risk factor? And can we get enough insight into what the state's doing there to give some evaluation whether we think their sub-tiering will be adequate or if we have to think about it ourselves.
I think that a little bit of both. With regards to the 65 with comorbidities, I believe that the state's community advisory group of experts is not recommending that 65 with co-morbidities be tiered higher than the current 65 plus and the, the food and ag childcare and teachers as well as emergency services. However, Dr. Ansarik and I along with our team are thinking about that for our county what does it look like if you have 6000 And the ultimate goal is to protect lives and prevent bad outcomes. What can we do in terms of nuancing that? Who are the vulnerable populations that we can address? So, we are looking at various methods and will be in discussion with our community advisory partners on those ideas.
And chair Nelson back to you I don't know that we finished all your questions.
Chair Hartman and members of the board, I would like to note for the record unfortunately chair Nelson was kicked off so he is restarting his computer will be back with us shortly
okay well then we'll go to Supervisor Lavanino.
Thank you very much. So just so you know we do have constituents out there that pay very close attention to our website and I was I was approached by one the other day, and I don't know if we have an answer to this. But at one point, I think we had 61,000. And I think a day before we had said the number was 67,000 so there was just a question about in the allocation of do we just get the number corrected or because I don' see it up the dashboard today?
I'm so server Supervisor Levin, you know through Vice Chair Hartman. I caught that as well last Friday as I was preparing for the press conference. It was an oversight in our team a double counting. So we verified that it is still 61 thousand and we made that correction
cool. Thank you. So the question that came from that individual so there we are not At any point, I just want to make sure that like you're not ordering other vaccine right now. What what I mean is we're getting the most that we possibly can. Correct? That is not like you have to wait. OK, but that's just something I wanted to clarify. And then the other thing I wanted to ask is so do you believe now we have the structure of the physical structure in place so when we do ramp up to twenty thirty thousand a week Do we have the structure implemented to be able to go ahead and be able to handle that amount of distribution?
Supervisor Levignino through Vice Chair Hartman, I can speak for public health. We have the infrastructure that we've built since mid, since December. It was our anticipation to be able to vaccinate at least 15,000 community residents a week so that is just the public health department. Under the third party administrator framework that is going to be implemented most likely in the next few weeks, we have the hospitals as our local partners. We have allocated vaccines to Cottage, to Marion and to Lompoc and they have also demonstrated that they can produce as many vaccinations as we can And so I do believe that our county currently has the infrastructure and we are just limited by unfortunately, the scarcity of vaccines.
1:45 – 1:5111 turns
Thank you. And chair Nelson were you able to come back and do you have any further questions?
Chair Hartman and members of the board, I believe he is still logging back in and he is monitoring the meeting via another device at this time.
Okay, well I just wanted to say a few things. We're going to turn next to OEM Kelly Hubbard and then to Mr. Chaption, George Chaption in CSD but I just wanted to say something about public health. You know people often describe local government and especially county government as where the rubber meets the road, where the policies and budgets at the state and federal level are translated into actual services for real people And in this age of COVID, it seems that the county is charged not just with driving this delivery truck but building it as we go. What's more, we're being sent parts that don't always fit together so well with new replacement parts continually being shipped. Not only that, but we're asked to keep detailed logs about conditions and the data protocols themselves are always changing.
Then we're on the phone consulting while driving, while building with the state. And we're also having to give public presentations about what's happening. So the roads are bumpy and this is all occurring in hurricane conditions where visibility is intermittent and there just isn't enough juice to drive the car and people are frantically waiting for tests for results for improved conditions.
This really describes the unbelievably difficult situation in which public health has been operating for over a year now. And the constant changes along with the heavy weight of the crisis on our healthcare workers, families, school children and small business men and women has been challenging and vexing and at times maddening And I think to Dr. Ansorg and Dr. Dorinoso and their staff most of all because they're in direct contact, and they're doing heroic work. And I really want our county residents to know that Doctors Dorinoso and Ansorg and their staff have spent each and every day for the better part of a year working deep into the night and during weekends to help us all navigate this shifting landscape and keep our community safe. It's a thankless job as people become more frustrated and frightened, and many people in your positions elsewhere have retired or quit so we're so grateful that you're still doing this work and that you're both helping us in Santa Barbara County And your work and your commitment to our public health is heroic.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Chair Hartman, members of the board, Chair Nelson has rejoined our meeting if he had any additional
comments. First did CEO Miyasato have a comment?
Vice Chair Hartman, I'm getting confused now. We'll hear from Chair Nelson but we do not have an update from OEM today that will be on 3-2 but we do still have an update from CSD on the rental assistance when you're done with this.
Thank you for that correction and Chair Nelson you're back with us live.
I am thank you. This question may have been answered and I think Dr. Doberman also was getting to it, but I guess I was looking for what's the best guess that we might be moving into additional tiers? I was hearing that we're constantly looking at that, but in the coming weeks is what I'm anticipating from your comments so far.
Yes, Chair Nelson through Vice-Chair Hartman. That is something that we received the data from our team last night. We're awaiting the state allocation letter as we speak. We don't have the allocation letter yet and then we are also in conversations with our major healthcare partners or hospitals so those are the moving pieces that we are going to take into consideration And also taking into consideration what our neighbors up in SLO and Ventura are doing as well, because we have made a commitment to be in alignment because of the joint community residence that we have in our three counties. So those are the moving pieces that we will be tackling and hope to have an answer for your board later this week if not sooner.
Okay, I think we need to be cautious. I understand that we've married ourselves to Ventura and San Luis Obispo County but if one of them are ready, it is so important to our residents below 75 that they go online as quickly as possible. And so I wouldn't feel bad if when those other counties were ready to go in, we weren't and I hope that they would return the favor as well. Just a couple last comments, I'm really excited about Churches reopening and the opportunity that presents. That doesn't mean that churches are going to go back to normal or that all churches are going to decide to open, but it does tell us that there are limits on the infringements of our fundamental rights.
And I'm glad that it's still working its way through the courts and that people are being able to see those rights restored Again, we all have the right to stay home if you want to. There are a lot of options for all of us and personal responsibility is definitely the preferred right for all of us moving through this pandemic. I just wanted to make that point and again thank you for everything you're doing.
Thank you. Back to Supervisor Lavenino.
1:51 – 2:0815 turns
Thank you. When you were going to call on Kelly it got me excited but unfortunately that's not going to be until next meeting But I did want to bring to others attention, something that was brought to my attention here in Santa Maria and I know it's probably happening throughout the county. So I want staff to be able to hear publicly and that this is something that needs to be addressed. And that is moved back to outdoor dining is meeting with some resistance.
And has to do with the fact Some of our tents, there's some either state laws or county ordinances that limit the amount of time that tents structures can be up. It's limiting the types of heaters that can be used outdoors and what I'm really worried about is that the lasting effect that this is gonna have is driving people back indoors maybe not inside the restaurant but it the effect is going to be driving people back to having dinners at home with other people. And I think it's gonna have the opposite effect of what we're trying to do.
So, I mean, I understand rules in normal times. I just really would encourage staff to try to find some way to... Find a way to yes over these next three months until we get back to warmer weather where we can have people outdoors that are still comfortable where we want them And, you know, I know that's going to take some tweaking and some maybe bending but we should be more malleable and more fluid during this time. So, you know, hate to see the beachside cafe go but there's going to be a lot more if we don't find a way to make these things make more common sense
CEO Misato. Supervisor Lavagnino, through the chair we have a larger presentation scheduled for 3-2 but maybe Ms. Hubbard can address that because the issue you raised is both a responsibility of the city in which those restaurants are located and somewhat in us but I'd like her to make that distinction so that we understand.
Yeah great go ahead Miss Hubbard.
Thank you I'm sorry, I'm going to confuse it. Chair and co-chair and board supervisors. Just for clarity there are some restrictions related to what Supervisor Lavagnino is referring to are some of the restrictions related to some safety considerations when you have some of the open source flame type heaters within tent structures. What I'd like to just state is that All of our fire agencies in the county are actively reaching out to the business community, providing them educational outreach on how to best utilize various types of heating components within some of these temporary structures and To encourage businesses to look at, we have our county winterization guidance that can help guide some of these businesses on some of those decisions.
And many of our cities have those guidances as well to help agency businesses understand some of the safety considerations with heating elements and some of the temporary structures and all of those fire agencies are ready and available to assist local businesses with those considerations.
And did you have any follow on Supervisor Lavanino?
No, thank you. I know Kelly's on top of it because I spoke to her offline and it's just the fact that we don't have a meeting for so long. I know that this is going to be an issue and I just want to make sure that the rest of the board and the rest of staff is included in it. And CEO Miyasato was correct that some of this has to do with city ordinances Code enforcement level, I think.
And I know we do have these winterization plans and guidance but whenever you have a rule there's always a way that you can look at it to come down on a decision and all I'm asking is that during these next three months while it's cold that we figure out a way to try to look at that make the interpretation fall on the side where it allows people to stay in business
Okay, important insights. We're going to hear from George Chapshin as part of this item before we go to public comment is that correct Madam Clerk? Okay I just had one comment about the 75 plus and health care worker focus. I strongly endorse the use of our county's discretion for that We're focusing on the people who are most at risk and the people who are least likely and able to compete for vaccines. Early on in the crisis, there was a study done of how you know what's the life expectancy of people who had died prematurely with COVID? And it was mostly older people but they had a life expectancy at that time of 11 years so that's cumulatively a huge impact And so I really think it is important and we as a county need to get behind that.
And I also wanted to say, you know, whenever you have government is a blunt instrument. And whenever you make a rule then everybody is there asking for exceptions to the rule and that takes an enormous amount of work to interpret and respond to all of that. And I know because we were filtering those comments to our county decision makers help people during this crisis and feeling Like it's just adding to their workload in a very difficult time. So anyway, I just really support what we're doing and how we are using our discretion so with that To Mr. Chapman and community services
Good morning, Vice Chair Hartman and I'm going to call up Diana Lockhart to help me with this. But recall last week we talked about the State Emergency Rental Assistance Program and submission of an expression of intent for their funds. We gave you three options and you chose the hybrid program But you also had some questions, and Dinah spoke with the state and has pulled some information together. So I'd like to call Dinah who I know is at the meeting to come up and talk about some of the information that she's found.
Ms. Lockhart?
Yes, good morning Vice Chair Hartman and members of the Board of Supervisors, Chair Nelson. Staff is here today to provide additional information and respond to questions posed by board members in the implementation of the state's emergency rental assistance program here in Santa Barbara County. Additionally, staff is requesting again that we are confirmed for the hybrid program delivery model in order to complete a final expression of intent form by February 12th to the State Housing and Community Development Department, State HCD.
Last Tuesday, the Board received a presentation on the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program. An initial direction from the Board was for the County to maintain local control over the federal rental assistance program and this slide is just showing again what those three options were. The option A which was the State Rental Assistance Program would allow the state to administer the county's U.S. Treasury direct allocation of federal dollars $13.3 million In addition to the county's allocation of the state block grant funds, which is 14.3Million option B, which is that block grant option is where the county requests the 14.30Million and block rent funds and conforms the administration of the counties U.S. Treasury dollars to the state rules.
If the county chooses to self administer both programs or option C, which was the recommended option is where the county does not conform its federal allocation to the state rules. Will self administer the county's allocation of federal funds. The county acknowledges the state will also serve County residents via the State Emergency Rental Program and the county will accept responsibility for deduplication of benefit monitoring between the two programs slide 3.
During last Tuesday's presentation on the State Rental Assistance Program, several concerns were raised by members of the Board of Supervisors on how the county's locally administered U.S. Treasury rental assistance program would coordinate with the state's efforts. Staff have been reaching out to local stakeholders to let them know about the U. S. Treasury and state funding and to enlist their involvement in the implementation of both the County Rental Assistance Program and the State Rental Assistance Program.
Concerns regarding reaching all of the county's various population groups and landlords will be addressed by a variety of messaging options using community outreach, public service announcements, coordinated messaging with stakeholders such as the Santa Barbara Property Managers Association 211 Tenant advocacy groups, rental housing mediation, legal aid and local media among others.
Messaging will include the availability of both the county's program and state program. Because of the different emphases placed on payment of arrears, such as under those states program or payment of ongoing rent and utilities assistance. As under the county program United way in family service agency will work with interested and eligible tenants and landlords to benefit from 1 of the 2 programs slide for.
County staff will be working with, again, stakeholder groups to ensure messaging is reaching all sectors of the rental market including community-based access points such as the family resource centers for in person and virtual support to complete applications. Family service agency and other subcontractors will assist landlords and tenant applicants Complete applications for either program as appropriate.
Details are still being released on how the state will monitor jurisdictions that choose to participate in the State's Rental Assistance Program. Staff will be responding to the state's statement of intent by the deadline of February 12, 2021. The state is scheduling meetings with each jurisdiction to discuss its choice of options and to discuss how the local jurisdiction will implement measures to ensure it is not duplicating benefits for the same eligible households or for the same period of service or the same geographic location.
This may be accomplished through the use of screening questions, which the United Ways application has already begun to include. And with that staff is available to answer any questions.
Thank you Miss Lockhart I see Supervisor Hart.
Yeah can you help me understand better the distinctions and differences between the state and federal programs? You know what does that mean for an applicant? You know I hear that the state program is more complex, you know has a different criteria But what does that actually mean in practical terms for somebody who needs help?
So the state's program provides additional deeper assistance for rent arrears. So, for tenants who have significant rental arrears they can certainly benefit from the state's program because the state program currently doesn't have a cap on the amount of rent arrears a tenant can apply for The issue with the state's program is that they would then have to have the landlord approve. And accept 80% of that rent arrears and agree to forgive the 20%. So that's a significant difference our local program currently has a cap of $6,000 per tenant rental assistance.
That can be in fact that is prioritized to rent arrears and then moving forward those counties program will allow for a Additional rental assistance for three-month increments moving forward for a total of 15 month 15 months of total Assistance as needed so the state's program does not allow for that generous benefit They have restricted that to 25% of rent due For the next three months, so that would be for February March February February March in April
And so from our experience in the past with the program that we had previously administered, do we have any information about who needed what and how these programs would match that need? So that we'd have a better sense about it's one thing to have that limitation. But as a practical matter if that isn't a controlling issue Is that a significant factor? I don't have any information about any of these things to understand the distinctions between the two programs and why it's advantageous for us to step out of the state program. What I'm really concerned about, and I think I've said it multiple times is that you know the Employment Development Department is completely broken and people can't even get phone calls returned and I don't want to duplicate a situation like that where You know, another state agency is frozen and unable to deliver the money to our local residents.
And that we're stepping out of that system because it's different than the federal program and more limiting. I get that and maybe that's really important and we need to focus the federal dollars because they're faster and they're more limber. But you know, I'm just deadly afraid that the other state dollars are just not going to get to people Not able to do this.
So help me understand what the trade-offs are here and what the choices are for the
county? So there really aren't trade-offs because both programs will be operating in Santa Barbara County, and so there's no restriction for tenants or landlords to apply to the state's program. What the state is asking the county to do is to be in continual cooperation with the state tenants and landlords applied to the county's program. We would be sharing data with the state so it's it's likely that the state will prior to issuing checks want to see if those families or landlords had already been benefited under our program, so I do envision a continual data sharing between the county and state to ensure there is no duplication of benefit but the state has also made you know a lot of They've made a lot of discussion about working with local jurisdictions to ensure that there's partnering on messaging.
United Way is certainly happy and we're willing through Family Service Agency to assist, to ensure that the state's program is also marketed but again because of the differences that we see in the benefits it will It will benefit certain tenants better in some cases with the state's program than with the local program and that is always the option. And we certainly want every family to benefit from whichever program will work best in their situation.
2:08 – 2:146 turns
Supervisor Williams. I'm sorry, go ahead Miss Lockhart.
A couple of things, I think you are right. How would a family know which program to apply for? It's a great question and the way we are structuring our agreement with United Way even though it is on our direct 13 million federal assistance is that they would be the front door and they would help the families assess which is the best program for them. Is that correct, Ms. Lockhart? Yes. And so we're—that's why it's so important for us to do all this media and outreach because we would like United Way to be the front door and they can work with the families and help them understand which is the better program that would benefit them the most.
And that makes perfect sense and I can understand how the marketing you know is most impactful if it's a single message, you need help come to us. Come to United Way. You'll get a human being who will be able to talk to you. What I'm concerned about is the handoff to the state program so when the United Way folks decide oh you would be better off with the state program are we going to just send them to a website and that's what I'm worried about Help reassure me that there will actually be state assistance in this program when the United Way folks get somebody and try to send them to the state.
And I think that is what the state is going to be sharing in upcoming calls with local jurisdictions on how exactly their phone center system will work. They have indicated they're going to have, you know, 24-7 call center availability. It will be in multiple languages. The messaging will be done in multiple languages. I think that although United Way and Family Service Agency can certainly help a family with their application To apply to the state's program, it will be through the state portal. So they are still using that electronic option for families to apply, but certainly as CEO Miyasato has said there is a one door where we're going to be providing information on both programs. We'll be providing education to stakeholders on both programs so that if families are not sure of which program to apply for they can come to United Way.
United Way can certainly give them an initial screening and say you know what? You might do better under this program Likewise, landlords who are carrying significant arrears may want to go to the state's program for payment on arrears as long as they are able to forgive 80%. Our conversations with the Santa Barbara Property Managers Association indicated that larger property owners managers are not carrying significant arrears in unpaid rent.
The concern is primarily the smaller mom-and-pop landlords who may be owning one, two or three properties. They may not be able to make mortgage payments. They may be concerned about foreclosure and so those are the families and landlords who may actually benefit with the state's program with some facilitated assistance from us.
Well I appreciate that You know I guess this is moving quickly in the state is you know gearing up and they're trying to build their system. And, you know, I just, I know you will stay fully engaged with this you know and report back to the board, you know if there are issues, but The state systems, the quality of the interactions with people on. I mean this widely varies in everything and all our lives. We all have experiences. You know you got a good customer service company that knows how to handle people and makes it human. And then there are machines that make it discouraging and frustrating at every step of the way. And I just hope we are not falling into a system like that where it appears we can help but system doesn't actually work and that's what is happening right now with the EDD.
They're on paper, you know people can get unemployment insurance benefits and it all works fine until you actually go on the website and it crashes on you every time and tells you to put the same information in multiple times. We have all gotten calls and emails. Every one of our state legislators has a giant list of people who still can't get these things resolved and you know you are describing folks who are not going Naturally, easily helped in this system and it's going to take more effort than not to be successful.
I totally agree with you, Supervisor Hart. There's not a lot of...I agree with the EDD has fallen down on the job and I don't have a whole lot of confidence in what the state can do but I think what we can do is in our discussion with them this week, I think there's a meeting that's going to be scheduled. You know, we're gonna be responsible for The coordination, making sure there's not a duplicative effort.
What we can insist on is maybe a key contact person at the state level where we can contact and if folks do find that they are running into a buzzsaw or can't get through, they can contact us and then we can, you know, we can contact the state representative for our area who can help with that process. I think that would be the only kind of I wouldn't be able to guarantee you that they would do well in this process. But I think if we can help in that, if we're gonna be the entrance and we have the door and we're gonna refer people to the state, we can at least follow up if they're having problems and helping them out in that area.
2:14 – 2:2324 turns
Thank you Mr. Chapman. Supervisor Williams?
Well, my concern was the same as Supervisor Hart's which is why I suggested last time that we might need to have a call center of our own despite the fact that this wouldn't be our authority. You know, perhaps it would just be a. Oh, you know an assess midstream if you're capable of our systems are You know, I have hope that their system will work well. But I sure wouldn't want a large portion of our constituents to financial future dependent on that variable without us being willing or able to assess midstream. I also just wanted to ask you about eligibility requirements for the on the tenant side.
My understanding is that we had looser eligibility requirements on our first program, the current program. My understanding and I might have it wrong is that there's either age eligibility or The fact that every member of the household needs to be eligible for the household to be eligible. And I would hope that if that's true of the current program, that it would not be true of the future programs.
You know this is multiple people living in a household is a sign of housing stress and exactly the kind of people that we want to reach. And so if it's true that, and I just would want you to check and make sure that one person over the threshold doesn't prevent the other tenants from getting relief, I would think that would be important. And then just a question of age.
Vice Chair Hartman, Supervisor Williams. I'm not aware of any age restriction on applying for this program so it's not age based. With regard to overcrowded households, the United Way is well acquainted with families who are doubled up, tripled up in single units. The income requirements are for the household and we understand that there may be multiple households in one unit There may be one leaseholder who is taking rent payments from other households in the unit to pay the rent.
So we're familiar with a lot of these informal arrangements, so we will be working with those families. Those families are not going to be excluded because their combined income of four families and household exceeds some federal requirements. So it is by household however that household defines itself. Chair Nelson,
did you have a question?
I do not.
Please, Supervisor Lavanino does.
And Supervisor Lavanino?
Business is open. Thank you. I guess my question just comes down to timing. We moved through with this looks like we're going to do hybrid model which, you know, I'm not sure that there's there's a right answer here, right? I mean, where are they gonna go with the state if we're gonna have more restrictions So I kind of like where we're at, but how soon is someone going to be able to access a website or make a phone call to somebody that the county and start filling out an application.
Chair Lavinino, I'm sorry Supervisor Lavinino. United Way currently has a draft website and application they are now working through those issues about bringing it online We believe that the application will be available online the week of February 15th so we're ready to go. United Way has already had experience with two of our federal programs under the CARES Act and also the Community Development Block Grant Program, so they've gone through this exercise a couple times before. They are familiar with some of the ins and outs with reporting Documentation so we think we're ready to go by February 15th or the week thereof.
Okay, excellent maybe you know just for the peace of mind of all of us if and I know it's extra work on our end but if it's a you know it's low level clerical duty but it would be nice for us to you don't have to come back and report on it every time but if we if we would like to access When people are accessing, how long is it taking? I mean kind of like the status of what are we seeing? How long has the application taken? And I know it's through the United Way. But I'm sure they have to report back to us and I'm just curious what their reporting requirements are. How are we gonna get that information so we're making a lot of noise about the state rightfully so. I wanna make sure our house is in order as well. So when somebody is applying to us they're being taken care of.
Absolutely, we can provide update reports to the board.
And if I might follow on that then would you build those performance measures into your discussions with United Way?
Yes, right. The contract will allow for reporting through their reimbursements but we've also asked for more frequent reports from the United Way periodically just to know How quickly the money was going out to household so we can do it more frequently than their invoicing would require, which is usually quarterly. Was
that
it Supervisor
Lovenino? I guess so. Back to Supervisor Hart.
Yeah, I just want to thank Supervisor Labenino for that was a really great addition and I think that reporting mechanism is really important to reassuring me about how the system's working and that you're exactly right that our half of the program is going well too. I did have a remaining question about the existing CDBG fund balance and whether that money is going to be able to be repurposed. Now that we have the state and federal dollars, you know, that are a huge infusion of money that has to go for this purpose, the CDBG funds are more flexible and could be used for other purposes that are also important. And so I want to be assured that, you know, we're protecting the CDBG funds and making those available for other purposes and not continuing with the program as it existed now that we have this other option.
Is that a CEO question? Mr. Chapton I think
is available.
Chair Hartman and Supervisor Hart, yes we've already had discussions we are setting aside the CDBG funds for economic assistance to businesses. We've had meetings internally and we have also had a meeting with the Santa Barbara Foundation who we think can distribute that money so we're working out the details with them It should be coming back soon to the board about some of the details for that program. But yes, and it's a longer term program so we've looked at the cities of Downey and some other like projects.
We want to work out, we don't want to make the A too small when they get least 25,000 help businesses but we're working through that with the
Santa Barbara Foundation. And so the money is there to make that transition. Okay,
we have I believe over $700,000 available in that so we'll make that available for economic assistance. Thank you, Mrs Johnson.
Okay with that we go to public comment I believe we have three people who would like to speak today. Madam Clerk.
Yes Chair Hartman and members of the board we have three requests to speak today. And before I begin, I would like to note for the record. For all those participating and presenting in today's meeting, that although it is rare to have both our current chair and acting chair participating in a board meeting concurrently, Supervisor Hartman is our acting chair today. And if all participants can please address Supervisor Hartman as Chair Hartman and address Chair Nelson as Supervisor Nelson hopefully that will clear up any confusion moving forward. I did get approval from our chair Bob Nelson on that as well thank you.
We will begin with Gordon Feingold to be followed by Andy Caldwell.
2:23 – 2:308 turns
Mr. Feingold?
I am here, can you hear me?
Yes loud and clear
Great, thank you. Okay, Chair Hartman and members of the board, thank you for taking my comments today. I'm a 54 year resident of Santa Barbara and I'm in the 65 to 75 age group. And that's some comments on what we're seeing out here at our perception of vaccine distribution. First of all nothing I am going to say should be taken as anything Taking away from our health care workers, both in the public and private sector.
I mean they've done a magnificent job under incredible pressure and I think when this is all over we should go back and give them all medals so again i want to thank all of them for all the great work they're doing. So those of us or at least myself in this age group, I have so many friends in other counties and other states that have received the vaccine in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Rosa, Bay Area, Arizona, North Carolina. I mean, the majority of our friends in our age group seem to have received it already and some are actually receive their second doses. So now that's anecdotal. Maybe we have very weird friends that they've gotten lucky but I'm more of a data-driven person. And if we look at the data first of all was just mentioned by one of the supervisors That we have an older population in this county, but that actually is not the case.
I mean looking at the 2017 census 13% of our County is 65 plus well as a state as a whole is actually 14.8 so if anything we have fewer of the older population. Now looking at that and then looking at the distribution of vaccines, as of today California has been shipped 4,819,000 doses of the mRNA vaccine which comprise 12.2% of the population of California And again, that's not too far from the 13% of our county population that is 65 plus. So those numbers don't seem to jive with our lack of vaccinations here in this age group. I mean if 12% of our population was represented by vaccines we're not seeing anywhere close to that in penetration of our group here so I'm just questioning that. I would ask the supervisors and our public health care professionals to really look into that, why are we not getting our allocation?
It doesn't seem like we are. And finally, I would ask that the county health update the community data dashboard more frequently It's kind of frustrating for us when we look at that and we see the number of 61,000 doses allocated. It's been kind of stuck there for about a week and a half. The perception is nothing is happening at all. We're not getting any vaccines so I think just from a perception and maybe a degree of confidence standpoint it might be advisable to update that dashboard more frequently So that's all again, thank you very much healthcare workers for all that you're doing. And again please look into this allocation it doesn't seem like we're getting what we should be get. Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Feingold, we appreciate the feedback. Mr. Caldwell?
We will now go to Andy Caldwell to be followed by Lee Heller who is our final speaker.
Chair Hart, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing Colab. You know Supervisor Hart, I think that one of the statements you just made is characteristic of the frustrations of a lot of people over the course of this last year. And you related to the fact and it is true that there are a bunch of whacked out theories about the vaccine floating around on the internet so that is true However, there's also some good science about the vaccines floating out on the internet.
And in fact I just emailed all five of you an article from NBC News which is not some right wing conspiracy theorist website that described the vaccines as experimental new technology that's never worked before And the point here is, is that from one coast to the other significant numbers of care providers are refusing the vaccine. Now instead of having a forthright discussion as to why they're being accused of following crackpot theories just like me I was never a vaccine denier but I questioned the masks and things like that And I was considered a conspiracy theorist or COVID denier, what have you.
When all is said and done, I think I sent you this website as well. California is dead last in the United States of America for reopening. It's dead last and it also has some of the worst COVID mortality numbers in the entire county. And the entire nation. And this is the question I've asked over and over and over, is what are we doing that's wrong compared to other states? You just had a frank discussion about how the state can't do anything right with these payments.
Well, a lot of people believe the state hasn't done much of anything right with regard to the COVID lockdowns And the vaccine distributions and the continually moving goalposts, purple tiers and other color tiers. And then shifting to hospitals and ICU. And we wanted your board to push back way harder. A couple of the supervisors pushed back on hair salons and church attendances But again, it took a Supreme Court case to tell the state of California that what you're doing is unconstitutional and it doesn't make sense. We need more of that rather than apologies or cheerleaders for an inept state government. Thank you.
Thank you Mr Caldwell. And we will now go to Lee Heller our final speaker
2:30 – 2:379 turns
Ms. Heller, Dr. Heller. Chair Hartman thank you and members for that acknowledgement sorry it takes a moment to unmute yourself you're tagged Despite what Mr. Caldwell just said, I am going to offer thanks to the staff of the Public Health Department and to all of you for dealing with what I'm calling resource anxiety. It's this understandable feeling that the vaccine is there so we ought to be able to have access particularly to people who are getting older And feeling that anxiety and hearing about friends in other jurisdictions that are getting vaccinated. There was an article Washington Post thing about the challenges with vaccine rollout on the East Coast, and it makes us look very good by comparison. So this is a national problem, and it really does come down to a lack of supply.
And it's important as Dara Reynoso did this morning To make it clear that that's what that is about, that our county is lacking for infrastructure to be ready for logistical planning. We just don't have vaccines. I hope that people listening, and I hope the media will continue to get that message out. That you all don't have to all day field phone calls and emails from people expressing this saying that they can't, they feel they need.
The flip side of this of course is vaccine hesitancy. And because of the bizarre volunteer act as I end up engaging in, I've been helping community health centers of the Central Coast to write a They have great material development to help address vaccine hesitancy in communities that tend to get less direct messaging from us. So I know the county partnering with them, and I also wanted to say another bizarre volunteer activity I do is I've been surveying landlords who are recipients of the rental assistance being administered by United And that concludes our public comment back to the board are there any
Well, I just wanted to address the fears expressed by Mr. Feinberg and other others. You know, I have not maintained that we have more than the rest of the state, but we do. But I have repeatedly maintained that we have more older individuals than L.A. County. 32,000 plus 41,000 is about 16.5% of our population whereas in LA County it's less than 13%. So there is definitely a numbers difference but I think the biggest difference is the moral choice that That the public health officer supported by the Public Health Director made and I fully support it. The moral choice was saying that these 32,000 folks 75 plus shouldn't have to run a hungers game fight for vaccines with a much larger population as is happening in other counties.
In LA County, for example, according to my sources they're getting 150,000 vaccines a week. The pool of people over 65 plus the number of health care workers that were still not vaccinated when that began meant that 1.8 million people were each struggling over 150, 000 vaccines So it might be Mr. Feinberg's friends that are getting it, but somebody is not getting it because mathematically it is not possible that they are getting through that population in a timely manner with that large of a pool and so I think Dr. Ansorg and Vaughn made the right call.
It is a moral call considering the increased mortality of folks that are 75 plus And I mean, just to give you a kind of idea why this works. If you add healthcare professionals plus 75-plus individuals at the rate that we're getting vaccines it would take 10 weeks to get through them all if everybody accepts them. So we are definitely hoping for larger supplies. I am optimistic that we're started, we're definitely past 50% with the it looks like with the number of people who are 75 plus who have gotten it. It's hard to assess because we don't have the numbers from the assisted living establishments but you know We opening up this next year is a very large tier and we don't want people who have a higher mortality to be left behind by opening that up prematurely.
And final call for Supervisor Lavinino or Supervisor Nelson. So I
was just going to make a motion.
I just had a question about the motion does it need to include the letter receive and file the report and then the letter from public health to schools or that's occurring so it's just receiving pile?
Well, I mean, I
think CEO Miyasato is gonna explain
I think public health will be just writing that letter. It doesn't seem like there's any dissent among the board for that, so we will be doing that but we would ask you then also to remind you A6 is also... Yes, that'll be a separate item.
Well, I would make a motion that does include that because I think we should concur and support the department's direction. That would be under C and I would move A through D and C, including the concurrence in the letter to the state regarding Santa Barbara Unified School District. Moving forward with the letter of intent on the hybrid program but with the data gathering that Mr. Labanino asked for and maybe At least some sort of thought and preparation to us having to get it.
The message out more forcefully if it does not come together, and then adding a six also to the mission.
2:37 – 2:398 turns
Chair and supervisors, I think going along the board has tried to maintain some separation between what is within the authority of the health officer and what's what the board is doing. And I think a great way to maintain that still would be to have the motion as to the letter just make that part of receiving and filing report including public health plan to submit the letter rather than directing that letter And I think I heard words like that, but I'm just recommending keeping some separation between the authority of the health officer and what the board does in this arena. Sure.
And then feedback on the rent support programs. May I have a second?
Second.
Would you call the roll Madam Clerk?
Chair Hartman and members of the board, I did hear in Supervisor Williams motion to include administrative item number six. If we could take that item up after this vote? Yes, I was intending great thank you.
I will take that out of the motion
perfect and I Mr. Gazzone. We're clear on the motion receive and file the report.
Roll-call vote 0–0 motion receive and file the report. I'll go ahead and proceed with roll call · 4 under review
Show transcript
I motion passes unanimously so turning to a 6 that we trailed. Chair Hartman and members of the board, although this was previously read into the record I would like to remind the public administrative item number six is from community services. It is to consider recommendations regarding the execution of an agreement with United Way of Santa Barbara County, United Way, to implement an emergency rental assistance program utilizing Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 funds. And I would like to note for the record that we do have Steve Ortiz from the United Way available for any questions via Zoom.
2:39 – 2:5926 turns
Are there any questions among the board members? Supervisor Hart,
no. I don't have a question.
And Supervisor Lavinino or Supervisor Nelson? Okay motion from Supervisor
Hart. Move approval of A-6.
Second from Supervisor Williams and please call the roll.
Supervisor Hart
Aye.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 Move approval of A-6. Second from Supervisor Williams and please call the roll.
Show transcript
Motion passes
unanimously so what I'd like to do is move on to department item number two it's a short item and then my inclination unless somebody has a strong feeling otherwise is to take a short break and then come back and take departmental item number three, then we'll have closed session and come back for four after that So read departmental number two into the record. Madam
Clerk? Chair Hartman and members of the board, departmental item number two is from the Treasurer Tax Collector. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the housing authority of the County of Santa Barbara financing of tax-exempt private activity bonds for Central Plaza apartments And I would like to note for the public who are participating in this item today and using the toll-free number associated with this item, and we'd like to provide public comment to please dial star nine to initiate the raised hand feature to indicate you would like to speak. That is star nine, and that feature is only for departmental item number two on today's agenda. Thank you.
And we have Mr. Hagan our County Treasurer making the report today.
Thank you Chair Hartman. So this item today is a TEFRA hearing for the Housing Authority of Santa Barbara County. It is for the Central Plaza Apartments located in Santa Maria. So federal law provides a process, it's actually 147 of the Internal Revenue Code that provides this process that allows Entities such as the Housing Authority, the ability to access municipal market rates. So in other words tax exempt private activity bonds can be issued for this. The caveat is that the legislative body that where the project is located must hold a public hearing and that's what this is today is the public hearing. And so members from the housing authority Darcy and John Polanski are available As with the Council from Jones Hall is available to answer any questions.
Quickly, the proposed financing is not to exceed $35 million. It is private activity taxes and debt. And so one of the important things I do want to point out is that this financing in no way obligates the county for repayment doesn't affect our credit rating. We have no liability Moral or legal with this financing. This item was heard by the Debt Advisory Committee back in July of 2020, and it was approved at that time to forward it on to the Board for its recommendation.
With that, hopefully John and Darcy are here if you have any questions on the project itself. And then also Ron Lee from Jones Hall is here to talk about the structure if you have any questions on that. That concludes my introduction.
Thank you very much Mr. Hagan. Supervisor Williams, you had a question?
Sorry light's still on.
Okay. Supervisor Hart.
I would move approval.
Let me just check we need public comment and we also I just wanted to check with Supervisor Lovenino and Supervisor Nelson Not hearing anything, are there any public comments on this
item? Chair Hartman and members of the board we have no request to speak on this item.
Thank you now your motion.
Thank you I move approval of this item.
Second.
And Madam Clerk would you call the roll?
Supervisor Hart?
Aye.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 move approval of this item. Second. And Madam Clerk would you call the roll?
Show transcript
Motion passes unanimously
so we'll take a break until noon and then we'll come back for department item number three. Good afternoon, and we're resuming the February meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. And we're moving on to departmental item number three. Madam Clerk would you read that into the record please?
2:59 – 3:1020 turns
Chair Hartman and members of the board, departmental item number three is from planning and development. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the applicant's appeal of the Decker Greenhouse Project case number 20 APL 28, and this is in the third district. And Chair Hartman, members of the board. I would also like to note for the record we did receive one letter after our Friday noon deadline that was over a page. This is a public comment letter from Tom and Karen Lacks. This was received on Sunday, February 7th at 9.04 AM.
And if the board wishes to include this as part of the record, if they could please make a motion to add that to the records?
And I'll make that motion and can I get a second
second?
And would you call the roll? Supervisor
Hart,
aye.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 motion and can I get a second second? And would you call the roll?
Show transcript
Motion passes unanimously
So with that What ex parte communications does anyone have to report? Supervisor Williams
Last week I communicated with both the neighbors and with Mr. Decker on Friday it was with the neighbors and on Wednesday, I believe it was a Wednesday or Thursday it was Mr. Decker and I also communicated with Chair Hartman who's my brand eye partner
Supervisor Hart
yes on Monday February 1st. I had a zoom meeting with mr. Decker where he described his project and his is Frustration with the decision of the Planning Commission and on Wednesday the 3rd I had a phone call with mr. Sovernok who's a neighbor expressing concerns about the project in the neighborhood
Thank you and supervisor Nelson
Yes, thank you Chair Hart for the opportunity. I have not actually spoken to either of the parties about this specific project. That said, I did have a meeting when I was the Chief of Staff for Supervisor Adam with Mr. Decker, I believe it was August 2019 when he was potentially proposing a cannabis project at this location. So I do know the general layout of the project that was being thought of at that time and We'll help inform my decision.
Thank you, Supervisor Lavinino?
No Ex
Partita report.
And for myself, with the earlier proposal for the cannabis operation I met with neighbors many neighbors several times in my solving office. I had a site visit from two homes overlooking the area. I also met several times with Mr. Decker when he shared his extensive business plans for that operation that previous operation More recently, I had a site visit at Mr. Decker's property and a Zoom call with representatives of the neighbors.
I was contacted by an Ag Advisory Commissioner not my appointee who called me about the project and I also spoke with the former chair of the San Ynez Valley Community Planning Process, Lansing Duncan. So let me just explain for people who will be participating in public comment, this is an appeal so it has a somewhat more formal process. We will hear a staff presentation then Mr. Decker the applicant the appellant from the Planning Commission decision has 10 minutes to make his presentation then we'll go into public comment and I would encourage everyone to get your speaker slips or however that is done in now. Then Mr. Decker will have five minutes rebuttal, we'll have staff comments and then it'll come back to the board for deliberations.
So with that I think it's Mr. Siewerts and Mr. Singer who will be making staff presentation. Madam Chair? Oh Miss Plowman, Director Plowman you're not on my list
Oh, I'm sorry. Madam Chair and members of the board good afternoon today we do have the appeal of the Planning Commission decision to deny the request for a greenhouse by Mr. Decker We do have Mr. Singer who's the planner on the case to make the presentation today. We have Holly Owen, the supervising planner available and Travis Seward, Deputy Director available for any questions. Thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Singer
Thank you, Director Plowman and good afternoon now Chair Hartman and Supervisor of the Board. My name is Ben Singer. I'm a County Planner and I am today presenting you with the appeal of the Planning Commission's denial of the Decker Greenhouse Project by Mr. Decker. This slide you see here is a vicinity map of the project and area around. The purple area is the City of Sullivan. The white square is the project site And then Freidensburg Canyon Road and Highway 246 are both marked just to give you an overall layout. Next slide, please.
The proposed project is a land use permit for a 15,648 square foot greenhouse for vegetable cultivation. It'll include grading consisting of approximately 3,200 cubic yards of cut and 3,106 cubic yards of fill. Additionally it will have 3930 square feet of new landscaping 11 new parking spots, and a new well and septic system associated with it. The operation will have six full-time employees. The site is accessed via an easement off of Freidensburg Canyon Road. And the subject property is a 5.24 acre parcel zone Ag 1-5. Next slide please.
The image seen here is a site plan of the proposal. The darker gray area you see on your right hand side of it is the area that the proposed greenhouse will, is proposed in. Next slide please. The images seen here are elevations and simulations and pictures of the proposed greenhouse and should give a good understanding of what it will look like on this site. Next slide please.
And first bullet point please. This is a timeline of the project. The land use permit was submitted November 1st 2019 Project was approved June 8th, 2020. An appeal of the land use permit was filed on June 16th, 2020. The project, the appeal went to the Planning Commission on August 5th and then was continued to return findings for denial on October 7th. And after the Planning Commission's denial an appeal was filed on October 14th. Next slide please.
The appeal issues raised are as follows. First, the appellant contends that the Planning Commission erred in its application of the San Ynez Valley Community Plan policies. Second, the appellant contends that the Planning Commission did not fully consider his statements regarding the inconsistency of those policies cited or his willingness to further condition the project.
And third, the appellant contends that the Planning Commission was biased against him and he did not have a fair and impartial hearing. Next slide please. And first point please. The first issues listed is that the planning commission cited policy do not apply to the project. The planning commission cited policy LUASYV3, which requires new development to be compatible with adjacent agricultural lands and policy VISSYV 3, which requires the night sky be protected to the maximum extent feasible.
The appellant asserts that the project is agricultural based and thus cannot be incompatible with neighboring agricultural lands And the appellant also asserts that the greenhouse lighting should be exempt from this policy, but it's since offered to condition the project to require the use of blackout curtains. Staff's response is that the project is significantly larger in scale than anything in the vicinity and would not be consistent with existing surrounding development.
In response to the second policy, the implementation of effective blackout curtains would bring the project into consistency with policy VIS-SYV3 But would not bring the project completely into conformity with the San Ynez Valley Community Plan. Next slide, please. And first point, please. Secondly, the applicant or appellant contends that the planning commission did not fully discuss the policy inconsistencies in the appellants response for his willingness to condition the project. Staff's response, please.
Or next point, please? Staff's response is that the appellants record Response letter was accepted by a vote into the record. So the commission was fully aware of its contents without the necessity of fully discussing it at the hearing. Additionally, as mentioned, the implementation of blackout curtains as condition does not fully bring the project into conformity with the land use and development code. So further discussion on that was not required by the planning commission. Next slide please.
And first point please. Thank you. The third appeal issue raised Is the appellant asserts that a commissioner was biased against him and the project, and that deprived him of a fair and impartial hearing. This claim is due to a previous business relationship between the appellate and the commissioner as well as a commissioners comments about their own property.
Staff's response is that the project was denied based on inconsistency with the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan and the Commission's inability to make the required findings as was discussed at the hearing. Next slide please. Denial of this project can be found exempt from CEQA under CEQA Guidelines Section 15270a, which states that projects rejected or disapproved by an agency are exempt. Next slide please.
And as outlined in the board agenda letter for this project your board can take the following action to deny the appeal case number 20 APL 28 make the required findings for denial including CEQA findings Determined that denial of the project is exempt from CEQA and denied to no vote of the project. Case number 19, LUP469 in agreement with the Planning Commission's decision.
That concludes staff presentation on this matter but I will be available for questions. Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Singer and we're ready then to go to Mr. Decker.
3:10 – 3:228 turns
Good afternoon Chair. Good afternoon. Members of the department and members of the board. I due to the time constraints, I'm going to start with a page four of my presentation, but I have an opening statement to make. I am Steve Decker owner of the agricultural zone land subject to this appeal. The basis for the Planning Commission's denial of the properly approved land use permit for our greenhouse is not found in the law.
It was conjured up by the misuse of a San Ynez Valley Community Plan agricultural land use policy that was established to regulate residential or non-agricultural development adjacent to agriculturally zoned properties. The finding for denial by the Planning Commission is not legally defendable. Zoning for agriculture, County Land Use Development Code, LUDC, Section 35.21.020 Purposes of Agricultural Zones.
The purposes of the individual agricultural zones and the manner in which they are applied are as follows. Ag 1, which is what I'm in. The Ag 1 zone is applied to areas appropriate for agricultural use within urban Inter-rural, which is where I am. I'm in inter-rural and existing developed residential... I'm sorry. Existing developed rural neighborhood areas as designated on the comprehensive plan maps. The intent is to provide standards that will support agricultural as a viable land use and encourage maximum agricultural productivity.
The interpretation of Santa Anaz Valley Community Plan LUA SYV-3 by the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission Contravenes the intent of the county to zone appropriate lands for agricultural use, to encourage maximum agricultural productivity. Greenhouses are an allowable land use on agriculturally zoned lands. LUDC 35.21.030A Agricultural Zone Allowable Land Uses Table 2.1 Comprehensive plan, agricultural element goals and policies Goal one, Santa Barbara County shall and I emphasize shall assure an enhanced continuation of agriculture as a major viable production industry in Santa Barbara County. Agriculture shall be encouraged.
Policy 1B and here's the big one. Policy one B the county shall recognize the rights of operation freedom of choice as to the methods of cultivation I choose greenhouse cultivation, choice of crop types or types of livestock rotation of crops and all other functions within the traditional scope of agricultural management decisions. These rights and freedoms shall be conducted in a manner which is consistent with one sound agricultural practices that promote the long-term viability of agriculture and two applicable resource protection policies and regulations Applicant's greenhouse project is a sound, modern state-of-the-art cultivation system that promotes long term agricultural viability as the goals and policies require.
Two, today's technologically advanced greenhouses along with solar generated electricity and year round cultivation on far less space protects environmental resources Next please. Yes, thank you. Community plan must include or reference each of the general plans seven mandatory elements and must be internally consistent with the overall general plan. It will be my contention that the finding is not consistent with the overall general plan.
The Santa Ana Valley community plan augments these various elements of the comprehensive general plan to provide region specific policy direction however countywide policies remain in effect Seven, Santa Ana Valley Community Plan. The valley blueprint goals regarding agriculture encourage and enhance the diversity growth and evolution of agricultural enterprises.
I contend that I'm an evolutionary agricultural enterprise using modern state-of-the-art greenhouse technology. And to keep agricultural zones lands agriculture That's the goal, the valley blueprint for agriculture. The basis for the planning commission's denial of appellants agricultural project otherwise permitted and previously approved under the county's land use ordinance contravenes these community plan goals.
Goal L-U-A S-Y-V this is the agricultural section of the Santa Anas Valley Community Plan Protect and support agricultural land use and encourage appropriate agricultural expansion. A UASYB1 policy, the county shall develop and promote programs to preserve agriculture in the San Jose Valley planning area. AUSYB2, land designated for agriculture within a San Jose Valley shall be preserved and protected for agricultural use.
And here comes the rub that the Planning Commission decided to misinterpret it in my view. Policy LUASYV3, new development shall be compatible with adjacent agricultural lands. And then immediately it goes to development standard LUASYB 3.1. It doesn't talk about other agricultural lands affecting adjacent agricultural lands. It speaks of new non-agricultural development adjacent to agriculturally zoned property shall include buffers Such as trees, shrubs, walls and fences to protect the adjacent agricultural operations from potential conflicts and claims of nuisance. The size and character of the buffer shall be determined through parcel specific review on a case-by-case basis.
I have added to my project fencing and landscape screening that otherwise an adjacent residential user would have to provide to protect my property. And here is the area that I live in. All the red parcels that you see are zoned AG-1, and so I'm totally surrounded by agricultural use land designations. Go to 12 please. No where in the Santa Barbara County Comprehensive Plan is it required that agricultural structure projects be compatible with the scale and nature of structure The county LUDC sets what is allowed. Therefore, that is the standard of compatibility not comparing the proposed project with what exists particularly when with the extensive existence of residential uses on adjacent agriculturally zoned lands. If that were the measure of approving projects nothing could be built ever again beyond the scale and nature of what is already in the surrounding area That would end the encouragement and enhancement of the diversity and evolution of agricultural enterprises in the Santa Ana's Valley, which are the stated goals and mandates of the community plan.
13 please. Notwithstanding all that, the proposed greenhouse will be remarkably unobtrusive. The tallest of the greenhouse structures is the 20 foot head house. And I want to remind the board that a 20 foot hoop houses Our level up to 4,000 square feet without a permit. The eight greenhouses are 16 feet at their highest point that is the height of virtually all single story and related structures in the area regardless of their use.
The LUDC places no high limitations on agricultural structures. The structure will not be seen from any public street. The nearest residential structures will be 50 and 80 feet away from the greenhouse respectively The greenhouse structure setbacks were increased by me from 25 to 50% greater than required. There will be 684 linear feet of fast growing Carolina cherry planted along the common proper line of the two nearest contiguous properties mentioned above, and it's not required by the OUDC that I do that.
At 15,640 square feet or 0.36 acre the structure will occupy only 6.8% of my entire 5.24 acre parcels. Neither staff nor the planning commission argued that project would generate too much noise, too much traffic dust odor or any other potential nuisance without any objective evidence presented the scale and nature Agricultural is the number one contributor to Santa Barbara County's economy.
There is a total of 185,940,000 acres zoned for agriculture in the Santa Ana Valley. This decision today is gonna affect most of them. It is a glaring omission to the project review process that neither staff nor the planning commission have provided even a passing acknowledgement of the overwhelming policy support and the agricultural element and the Santa Ana Valley community plan for agricultural projects like this.
Denial of this appeal based on the Planning Commission's misinterpretation of policy LUA SYV-3 sets a precedent that threatens every agricultural landowner from developing an agricultural structure operation for any and all agricultural uses in the future, that the intent of the policy LUA SYV 3 is to regulate new non-agricultural development adjacent to agriculturally zoned lands Is confirmed by Brian Tetley, former senior planner, Santa Barbara County Office of Long Range Planning in his letter to your board dated January 22nd, 2020. In extensive conversations with him he told me that yes it was absolutely the intent of the San Jose community plan to protect agricultural zone lands from adjacent residential uses not the other way around.
Also you have the County of Santa Barbara Agricultural Advisory Committee letter dated December 9th, 2020 in which the committee states the importance of the comprehensive plans agricultural element policy 1B setting out the rights and freedoms of agricultural land users in their choice of cultivation methods. For the foregone reasons my appeal of the denial of my project by the planning commission should be upheld and the projects land use permit as revised approved I thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you Mr. Decker. So as not to interrupt you we let you continue speaking almost a minute 55 seconds beyond your allotted time so we'll take that from your rebuttal if that's alright with you. You'll have...
I understand madam chair.
Thank you. So do we have any questions for staff for Mr. Singer or for Mr. Decker from the board? And Supervisor Lavinino or Nelson, any questions up there?
Nothing yet. I'll wait till I hear the entire.
Okay
let's go to public comment. Chair Hartman and members of the board we have six requests to speak on this item today and we are going to begin with Stephen Jacobs to be followed by Jeff Jacobson.
And if I might say, we'll close public comment now. So we're six speakers and Mr. Jacobs.
3:22 – 3:289 turns
And is Mr. Jacobs with us? If you can please unmute yourself.
Sorry about that.
We hear you loud and
clear, let's go.
Thank you. I want to thank the board for their time in this matter as well as the Planning Commission staff for their assistance. My name is Stephen Jacobs. I live at 1690 Fredensburg Way in Solvang and my home is about 200 yards from Mr. Deckers. Myself and three of the next speakers are representing over 100 neighbors in nearly affected parcel to request the board deny Mr. Decker's appeal. There are only four speakers that we bring today summarizing the issues but there could have been many more Fredensburg Canyon has been developed over the decades as a rural residential neighborhood with ranchettes and hobby farms. There are currently no commercial facilities, agricultural or other within the canyon and the size of the proposed greenhouse would dwarf any structure that now exists.
The Canyon Road is a narrow 19 foot wide arterial roadway. The lower point of the road is controlled by the City of Solvang and is the only point of egress or ingress for the entire canyon. The roadway is a safe place to take long walks while enjoying the peace, quiet and lovely canyon views in neighborhood children use it to safely ride their bikes and scooters.
The approval of Mr. Decker's appeal and subsequent construction of the greenhouse would dramatically change the current makeup of the neighborhood The size of the structure and the fact it would be the only commercial facility in and of themselves makes this project inconsistent and incompatible. But when you add in the increase in traffic noise and light pollution from a commercial facility, the facts overwhelmingly lead one to conclude that their proposed greenhouse would be incompatible.
Added to this is that the construction will lower property values not just for the immediate surrounding properties but for the entire neighborhood. As stated in 2018, Mr. Decker applied to build the same exact facility for the cultivation of cannabis. He withdrew this application following appeal by the same group of neighbors. The day he withdrew the application, he put in this application just changing cannabis to vegetables.
Since 2018, over 100 neighbors have come together to oppose Mr. Decker's applications. Additionally the City of Solvang in correspondence opposed the original construction voicing the same concerns as the neighbors. This was brought up during the Planning Commission meetings when Commissioner Park indicated he had discussed this with Mayor Toussaint who said the objections remained.
During two Planning Commission meetings, Mr. Decker has been unable to produce one resident in the neighborhood to support this construction. Instead over 100 residents, the City of Solvang, We Watch, Outer Dag Village with 300 residents and most importantly, the Planning Commission all oppose it and believe it is inconsistent and incompatible with the current neighborhood. Thank you.
We will now go to Jeff Jacobson to be followed by John Padfield.
Very good, can you hear me?
Yes we can
very good thank you chair Harmon and supervisors thank you for your time and attention to our neighborhood my name is Jeff Jacobson and I along with my wife and three boys live next door to the appellant and today is hopefully the final act of what has been a nearly two-and-a-half year nuisance to our neighborhood and for the hundreds of people represented in public comment.
As the Planning Commission unanimously ruled, the commercial greenhouse project proposed is incompatible with adjacent properties. There was lengthy discussion at the Planning Commission hearing on two separate occasions regarding this portion of the San Ynez Community Plan. The plan states that the county should support appropriate agricultural expansion. It's impossible to argue that appropriate agricultural expansion could allow for a 16,000 square foot glowing greenhouse with daily employee traffic mere feet from a neighbor's primary residence roughly one sixth the size The Agricultural Advisory Committee also followed up in public comment to clarify that their initial letter did not have the benefit of having heard all the public comment and deliberation that has taken place related to this project, and the hundreds of impacted neighbors thanked them for that clarification.
Appropriate agricultural expansion should also be somewhat financially feasible for the stated crop The appellant in testimony to the Planning Commission struggled to discuss a potential crop as he's never farmed a vegetable crop, to my knowledge and at one point mentioned tilapia. This would also not entail a costly cannabis air scrubber that will reduce 85% of the cannabis odor per his existing plan set.
Denying this permit would not set any countywide agricultural precedent as the appellant alleges. This application itself is unprecedented The next goal to preserve agriculture would have been arguable in 1988 when the appellant's already small ag parcel was granted a lot split by the county and reduced in size by 75% to create four single family residences.
Shoehorning in a commercial operation at this stage would upend more than 30 years of residential use on all surrounding properties, and severely damage the fair economic expectations of hundreds of neighbors. The earlier mentioned neighbor closest to the proposed facility at 994 Friedensburg was an escrow last week to sell his home and had an offer rescinded upon the buyer's discovery of Mr. Decker's appeal, and the uncertainty of outcome our neighborhood is facing.
That homeowner submitted public comment as well. The economic damage posed by this application is real, and it's fundamentally unfair to ask the residents to bear that burden when your planning commission has laid out clear grounds to deny this project. The summarizing point of the Planning Commission is that new development shall be compatible with adjacent agricultural lands.
Mr. Decker's application glaringly fails in this regard, and we ask that you deny his appeal and concur with your planning commission to deny this project outright. Thank you.
3:28 – 3:349 turns
We will now go to John Padfield to be followed by John Savernach.
Can you hear me? Great. Thank you, Supervisors for your time today and the consideration of our neighborhood concerns. My name is John Padfield. My wife Julie and I have lived on College Canyon Road in the city of Solvang for 36 years. We're going on our 37th. College Canyon is a residential bucolic neighborhood with no commercial activity. However, our neighborhood is threatened by the proposed commercial project at 988 Friedensburg Canyon Road.
College Canyon, along with the adjacent residential neighborhood of Sunrise Village lies immediately south of the appellant site. Given that our new morning sunrise should this project be approved will not be to the north, will be to the north rather than the east which it has been forever. Why? Because a 16,000 square foot greenhouse with translucent panels facing directly into our neighborhood placed on an upward slope is an unacceptable light trespass issue. I will also mention the appellant, the applicant was previously unable to contain light from a much smaller facility The appellate has now proposed curtains, but this is not new and was brought up directly to the planning commissioners at both hearings. The effectiveness of these curtains and short service life coupled with a complete lack of ability to enforce their use led the Planning Commission to dismiss this option and not place the well-being of hundreds Homes and families at risk.
This is also consistent with the visual development goals of ascending as valley community plan pointed out by the planning commission. Please be aware that the planning commission chair brightly visited our neighborhood sunrise village and Mr. Decker still looking down onto our homes on college Canyon, where the greenhouse would be positioned their vote to deny this project reflects her thorough in person review.
Julie, my wife and I ask that you follow your planning commission's lead and not place the financial interests of one neighbor over and above the interest of hundreds of residential homes. And to also help maintain our dark sky at night in our special corner of Solvang. Thank you for listening to my concerns regarding our quiet country neighborhood.
Go
ahead.
We will now go to John Savernach to be followed by Brian Tetzely.
Madam Clerk, can you hear me?
Yes we can.
Thank you, Chair Hartman and members of the board. My name is John Savernach, and I am a resident of Freedonsport Canyon Road. Freedomsport Canyon Road is a throwback to a time when neighbors cared about each other and cared about where they live. It's a meeting place. It's a place where you go outside and enjoy the sounds of nature in dark night skies, it's a place for every weekend people come to exercise and walk their dogs free from traffic.
It's a place where young families come to take advantage of the excellent Ballard School District and establish resident stay because it's a quiet, friendly place with no traffic or commercial development. It is exclusively a residential neighborhood. But Freensborg Canyon Road is more than that. It's actually a county created success story 3040 years ago when the county began dividing larger agricultural parcels into five acre parcels to build single family homes, they divided the lots into a size that would not support Substantial commercial agriculture. That combined with the Sandy and as valley community plan, where projects had to be consistent in terms of use and scope and size and character to protect neighborhoods.
What developed was a marvelous neighborhood that was purely residential, and that was created by the county government. Now we all bought in stay in the area because it's quiet and friendly and exclusively residential. And into this exclusive residential neighborhood comes a project that is completely out of character, completely different use and grotesquely out of scope bringing with it light noise and traffic.
Now, you're forced to acknowledge the inherent unfairness of one project to have the ability to diminish our enjoyment of our properties in area. To bring traffic, to bring noise, to bring visual blight and to diminish our property values when the county was an active partner in establishing this purely residential neighborhood And that is why the opposition to this project has been so unanimous amongst those of us who live in this neighborhood and call it home.
But I look at this as an opportunity for the Board of Supervisors, this is an opportunity to fulfill your greatest goal as a public servant, and that is protecting and supporting your citizens.
Thank you. We will now go to Brian Tetley, to be followed by Andy Caldwell who is our final speaker.
3:34 – 3:418 turns
Thank you. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Good afternoon Chair Hartman and Supervisors. I'm Brian Tetley with Rural Planning Services of Santa Maria. My firm has served the land use and permitting needs for rural and agricultural landowners for over 10 years. In the past, I was a senior planner with the long range planning division of planning and development and served for 18 years. During my tenure there, I co-authored some of the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan and was part of the team that worked for plan adoption in 2009. And I trust you've received my letter concerning the Decker Greenhouse Project.
After review of the documents in the record, I have concluded that the Planning Commission and staff's interpretation of the county's relevant agricultural and community plan policies is flawed. As stated by Director Plowman to the Planning Commission during their hearing last week, and I'm paraphrasing. The comprehensive plan agricultural element policies cannot be interpreted to provide protections of one type of agriculture from another or to protect urban uses or neighborhoods from perceived impacts from agricultural operations.
In fact, to the contrary, the ag element policies are written to encourage the intensification of agricultural activities on land zoned for agriculture and to protect agriculture Impacts from encroaching urban influence. In staff's board letter, the policy basis for denial is limited to a single policy, St. Neves Valley Community Plant Agricultural Land Use Policy 3.
The policy states that new development shall be compatible with agricultural lands. The Planning Commission and staff has somehow interpreted this policy to mean that agricultural operations and structures must be similar in size to surrounding agricultural structures and residences. This interpretation fails to consider the related development standard that implements the policy.
Development Standard 3.1 clearly lays out measures to minimize potential impacts to agricultural uses from non-agricultural uses, not the reverse. The policy analysis also ignores the overarching agricultural land use goal in which the policies and development standards are meant to implement in the community plan which is to protect and support agricultural land use and encourage agricultural expansion.
Moreover, it should be pointed out that the county's visual resources policies are designed to protect public view sheds not private views. The county typically only regulates private views in cases of extreme privacy intrusion or overlooming structures since the proposed greenhouses are the height of a typical residence that's not the case here. With that I encourage the board to consider the proposed project in this policy light Thank you and I'm available for any questions.
We will now go to our final speaker, Andy Caldwell.
Chair Hartman, members of the board, I'm Andy Caldwell representing Colab. I don't know if you've ever noticed that I may come once every three to five years to speak on an individual development project because Colab just doesn't do that unless it's precedent setting And that is what you've got here today. I believe that part of the problem here is Mr. Decker was going to build a marijuana greenhouse, and that got everybody riled up and I think some people are still fighting that proxy war.
We're sympathetic to the neighborhood but the inescapable, the absolutely incontrovertible inescapable fact is this is ag zone land You can't ignore that it's AG zone land. You have three pieces of evidence in your record that are also incontrovertible number one, the original LUP was approved. Why? Because this is AG zoned land. Brian Tetley, who helped write the Sandiness Community Plan says interpretation commission is wrong. Why? Because it's ag zone land and this is not non-ag development, it's ag development. Finally the Ag Advisory Committee even though they said hey we can't you know hear all the other comments blah blah blah they cite the fact that the overall comprehensive land use of agriculture is to be able to grow things in a way that is, you know acceptable practices and tools and structures et cetera.
They cite that policy and it that too is incontrovertible what I have seen. I grew up here as you well know I got married in the San Ynez Valley. I've seen the San Ynez Valley change from agriculture to estate living If you want to put the final nail in that coffin, then deny Decker's appeal because that's what's really at stake here. The San Dines community plan sought to preserve ag in ag zoned areas but what these neighbors are asking for you it to do is to scrap back and officially declare this area a state Living.
You can't do it unless you change the standing this community plan if you want to do it, do it as far as changing the plan but don't try to pretend that you could deny this project without changing that plan thank you.
Thank you and that was our final public speaker madam clerk.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you chair Hartman and members of the board yes that was our final speaker
all right then we go back to Mister Decker for your
3:41 – 3:488 turns
I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're doing here. And the reasons for that are impinging on my rights. I bought my property in 2005, because it was zoned for agriculture specifically because it was zoned for agriculture. Yes. I would like to ask Mr. Decker if he has any comment on the fact that others in the neighborhood have moved in and decided to use their ag zone land for residential purposes only is certainly they're right, but they don't have Regardless of what the zoning says it can be used for.
This is rezoning by fiat, by neighborhood consensus, by people just not realizing maybe when they bought the property that it was zoned agriculture. That is something that I will criticize maybe some of the brokers in my field for not bringing up that it's zoned for agriculture. I see many listings that say zoning other instead of putting in what it's actually zoned for. So this is a problem with people coming in and not realizing what they're getting themselves into. And then somebody wants to assert their rights to do what the property is zoned for, and suddenly they're upset.
This project is very benign. It is not a big deal, it's not a lot of traffic there's more traffic from all the delivery trucks bringing all the packages being delivered for online purchases than anything else. There's trucks zooming all over the place up and down the street here every day for that purpose We have other commercial agricultural uses in the neighborhood we have a farm that sells mushroom to the local restaurants, we have a horse farm that raises and breeds Peruvian horses we have vineyard up the street that creates wine and so forth. We have a company that is a concrete contractor. His trucks are all up and down this street every day, and they're big trucks too. So this notion that we can't use our public streets for the use of our houses or operations is just ridiculous.
They're asking you to rezone my property to residential use only. And that violates my rights and it will not be the end of it if you folks decide to deny my appeal, I'm sorry to say Many of my neighbors that object to my project moved in after I purchased my property, or moved in from other parts of the state. And now they want to turn around and tell others what they can do or not do with their property. It's not fair! Just not fair. And it's caused me and my family tremendous financial loss. And it's up to me what I want to do in my greenhouse whether it's viable crop or not is not anybody's concern. I don't have to prove to anybody whether my project is viable or not. It's my freedom of choice, of pursuit in this country that I have the right to pursue my livelihood and my family's livelihood so we do have a house it was a neighbor that sold their house recently over a couple months ago.
It sold for full acting price and the buyers knew that there was an application for a greenhouse project on the adjacent property So that this other folks withdrew their offer on a house adjacent to me is they're right. If they're concerned about it, maybe they haven't had a chance to look at the project or really discuss with me what it's gonna be done how their interests are gonna be protected by what I'm proposing but I do have another neighbor continuous neighbor that sold their property without any problem full acting price boom, it was done and the people that have moved in know about the project and I've not voiced any concern whatsoever so There's always two sides to these stories.
So that's my take on all this, Madam Chair and I hope the board sees that this is legally the right thing to do to allow my project to proceed. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you Mr. Decker and now back to staff. Are there any comments corrections elaborations
Madam Chair, at this time I do not have any comments or corrections. I'm not sure if Director Plowman or Deputy Director Sewards does but I am happy to answer any questions that the board may have.
Okay that brings it back to the board for questions and we'll do the questions and then deliberations
Thank you very much. I'd like to know more about the installation of the blackout system to prevent light pollution. It's obviously an extremely important issue and I think it is fundamental to this application, and it doesn't seem very detailed in its explanation so Looking for help from staff to better clarify, you know how we can be confident that this system is going to work. How has it been evaluated adequately? Seems like we need more review of that element of the
project. Chair Hartman and Supervisor Hart In theory, if the project were to be approved, the blackout curtains would be included as a condition of approval for the project. It would require effective use of blackout curtains from sunset to sunrise when extra light is going to be used in the greenhouse. Any misuse of this failing to use it or It being ineffective and continuing to produce significant amounts of light pollution would be in violation of the granted permit. And could be submitted to the county, I believe as a zoning violation.
And that puts the burden on the neighbors to be constantly monitoring the application of that and You know, I really think that it is not the letter from we watch. I think very clearly described you know what needs to be done operationally technically installation of that system and there just isn't anything in the record here that describes that in any detail. It just seems like we need additional environmental review of the operation of that implications of that It is a significant issue for the entire San Bernardino Valley. Dark skies are a major quality of life element that has to be addressed properly when considering this
project. Madam Chair, Supervisor Hart. Of course. I just add into what Mr. Singer said is that blackout curtains are commonly used in greenhouses And I believe they're used in this county as well. So it's not a new technology to use them when they use them for nurseries or growing in the nighttime, they have to install them so I just wanted to add that in.
3:48 – 3:5415 turns
Thank you. Do any other supervisors have questions? Supervisor Lavinino or Supervisor Nelson?
Go ahead Bob.
Right, thank you Chair Hartman. I just want to confirm that in AgZone properties on is AG for AG 1-5 is that right? If our greenhouses are those are those legally allowed to be built on that zoning? I mean is that an allowable use?
Chair Hartman, Supervisor Nelson, greenhouses are allowed generally they require a land use permit which is what was applied for in this instance Depending on the size of them, they may require a development plan but that was not required for the proposed project.
Okay and then I was just trying to do my math here it's 15,648 square feet is that what i'm seeing the greenhouse to be? Yes. And that's 5.24 acres which is 228,000 square feet more or less so like the lot coverage is about 6.9 percent of the parcel is that correct do I understand that?
That is correct, I believe Mr Decker gave the specific number in his presentation but it is something around that.
All right. And then to the concern from the neighbors that this is mostly residential neighborhood. You know, during the sending that sending his value community plan was it considered changing the zoning on these parcels to reflect that I mean was that something that was discussed. You know we're going back in history a little bit here but I want to try to understand you know it seems to be a residential neighborhood by all parts but you know also is zoned.
Adam L. Santuccia, V.O.: : Agricultural so was I considered is that consider in the future seems it has like it has a lot of political will within the neighborhood to go down that route, I know other counties have rural residential zoning. Adam L. Santuccia, V.O.) ): I don't know if we do I don'r know what if we had considered that and having certain limitations to help prevent this type of activity in the future, so was up thought about previously and why did that not happen.
Lisa Smith PB's iPhone 2.0 Supervisor Nelson, I will respond to that question. It was an issue that was discussed during the preparation of the Santa Nus Community Plan. I was working at the county when that plan was being developed and there was a pretty strong desire on the community to maintain the agricultural zoning despite the fact that there had been some discussion that when parcels got to be five acres they seemed like they were no longer really They were more like residential ranchettes and less like agricultural operations. But there was a strong preference to maintain that agricultural zoning at the
time. Chair Hartman, Supervisors Nelson, I would also add on that residential ranchette is a zone within this county. I believe that's what it's called. It's RR and can have either five or 10 minimum acres per lot set as part of that zoning.
Thank you Ben. That's correct.
And then my last question is on enforcement. Supervisor Hart brought it up that maybe some additional studies need to be undertaken The blackout screens, but I mean where would we get to at the end of that? At the end of the day. I mean what additional studies or evaluation how would that help us because at the end he has to comply with that ordinance or that condition or else he's in a violation and so it's already prohibited for him to have light pollution. So what more could we obtain through additional review
Madam Chair, Supervisor Nelson. I was going to ask Deputy Director Sewards to respond to that question.
Sure. Good afternoon supervisors so the way that our enforcement process works is it is complaint based. So if our enforcement receives a complaint or call that the blackout curtains are not being used Staff would go out there to inspect the property to see if the blackout curtains are in fact being used or not being used. If they're not, they would write up some sort of notice of violation that needs to be abated and I believe it's a 30 day timeline.
And there is regular permit compliance activities that go when a permit is approved. To answer the question directly, he's required to implement this as part of his project. He would put it on the site plan and then staff would verify that he in fact implements the blackout curtains in the greenhouse.
Madam Chair, Supervisor Nielsen, there was another part to that question which is what will an additional study do? And essentially, Mr. Seawards do you want to respond to that part of the question as well?
Additional study for the blackout curtains. I mean, I think staff could we could get details on the type of the curtain and where would exactly go on the site plan. I know for cannabis projects we make notes on site plans about the type of blackout curtain used and the parameters for which they are to be used such as the time of day but hopefully that answers.
If you had a more specific question I can also try and answer that.
3:54 – 4:0017 turns
Well, I think maybe I will hope to hear from my colleagues and deliberations on what we hope to get with that. But that's it for me right now. Okay,
thank you.
So that concludes your questions Supervisor Nelson and we're on to Supervisor Lovenino.
Thank you Madam Chair. I just have a question to staff about the whole idea of compatibility Seems a little nebulous, a little vague. How do you say something's compatible or incompatible? I mean if and where what other ag I mean if he let's say he wanted to I guess on that property he could raise pigs or grow vines. He could do a lot of different things would also be incompatible so how do we that he'd be allowed to do without a permit actually but how do we determine
Yep, so I think you know everything is project specific for each project we look at what they're proposing. Staff definitely takes into account the development pattern in the surrounding area and we look to see if development is compatible with existing in the area. We look at the allowed uses in the zone and in this case a greenhouse is an agricultural use on agriculturally zoned property And we're really looking at things in terms of scale and existing development patterns when we're looking at neighborhood compatibility.
Compatibility, so basically like in a situation like this if your neighbors decide not to develop to a certain level you're basically restricted by what your neighbor does
I don't know if I would quite say that exactly. I think the existing pattern is important, but we also look at what the allowable uses are in a zone so potentially any zone Zoned agriculture could come in and that property owner could ask for any number of uses. It could be animals, it could be horse keeping. They could also come in and ask for other greenhouses on adjacent ag parcels.
So we're taking into account the zoning pattern of the area and existing development and using our best judgment as to whether the project meets all the findings for the zone and the permit that they need for that project. Okay thank you.
And then Madam Chair I have a question for Mr. Decker and I don't know if that's appropriate at this time.
Sure, now would be a good time. Mr. Decker are you still there?
Yes, I am
Madam Chair. Okay go ahead with your questions Supervisor Lavanito.
So Mr. Decker, so Mr. Decker. Yes. Thank you right when my internet connection says it's unstable okay hold on all right so I guess one of the elephant in the room for me is that you had this as a cannabis. Can you hear me?
Yes,
my apologies. This was originally a cannabis project. Is that better?
Yes.
Okay kind of goes in and out here. I'm in this old county building you know so One of the things I have a little issue with too is that this, I guess the elephant in the rooms. This was originally a cannabis project and I just want you to understand that if the idea is that you would build this and somehow you're gonna grow cannabis in there, that you're aware that we have a very strong enforcement team that acts based on neighborhood concerns.
And so I just want you to understand However this goes down, that's just not gonna happen in that greenhouse. So I don't want you to have any kind of idea that you'd start growing vegetables, you'd switch to cannabis something like that. So, I just want you to know that that's not where we're going with this.
All right, thank you Supervisor Lavinia. My response is simply this. I would not jeopardize my investment nor my family involvement in this or my involvement in this to do something that's illegal. I designed the greenhouse in the first place to make sure that I had a viable cultivation system in place on my property that could do anything Uh, we were not allowed to cultivate anything that was allowed.
And if cannabis suddenly became a crop that was no longer economically viable, we could switch to something else. With other cultivation pursuits and we felt that there was a long list of things that we could do with this machine, this device of cultivating plants to have a viable business. So now we have no interest in breaking the law. We don't have a state license to do it nor do we have a land use permit to do it So end of story as far as we're concerned and we're happy to move on.
As to the visual issue, if I may take a moment. As I understand my conditions of approval is revised. It requires that the county permitting process come in and certify that they light depth curtains are functioning before my certificate of occupancy is issued. This is not a wait-and-see situation. It'll be proved before we can actually start doing business. As to the viability and the functionality of the curtains.
4:01 – 4:1815 turns
Was that your final question? So, Madam Chair, I
don't have any more questions. I just have deliberation but
yeah hold just 1 2nd Supervisor Williams did you have any questions?
Well, I was just going to ask if staff or have any evidence that when you know one of the neighborhood residents stated that it was a purposeful act of zoning in order to block out agricultural operations for zoning at this size. Is there anything in the public record that we know of that indicates
Madam Chair, Supervisor Williams I'm sorry. I don't I didn't understand your question.
I'm sorry I'm pulling from the public comment one of the residents said that it was a purposeful act of the county to establish this neighborhood zoning and at such a size that commercial agricultural operations were not viable is there anything in the record that reflects
Madam Chair, Supervisor Williams. I don't believe so and I don't agree with that statement. I don't think it was purposeful. The goal was to keep it in agriculture and allow agricultural operations because that's part of the heritage of the valley. So I would disagree with that statement.
That's it. That's your only question? Okay, I have no questions. I've been involved with this for a long time. We will go to deliberations normally as chair sitting in the role of chair I would go last but given that it's my district and that I have been deeply involved in this project as well as being an active participant in the development at the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan I would like to at least set My sense about this out first. And what I can tell you about the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan, it has lots of goals but the overarching and number one listed goal was to protect the rural and scenic character of the Santa Ynez Valley and for residents and visitors alike.
The goal of the Ag and Rural Lands portion, as was mentioned earlier is to protect and support agricultural land use and encourage appropriate agricultural expansion. So the term appropriate implies discretion. Not all agricultural expansion would be appropriate. Policy 3 in that section, the Ag and Rural Land Section of the Valley Plan The policy to implement the goal says new development shall be compatible with adjacent agricultural lands.
So how do you know what's appropriate? So, you ask what is compatible with surrounding agricultural lands. The applicant asserts that new development in policy three is synonymous with the term new non-agricultural development in policy 3.1, asserting that the policy on new non-agricultural development seeks to reduce potential conflicts only between ag and other developments such as urban development.
That is too narrow a reading and certainly doesn't capture the intent Different phrases have different meanings. We well know that there can be conflicts among different agricultural uses. In the Santa Ynez Valley, we've had a history of intra-agricultural conflicts and incompatibilities. Livestock near lettuce and truck crops, ostrich ranches near equestrian facilities, now cannabis and wine grapes or cannabis and hemp.
The conflict between commercial agriculture and rural residential neighborhoods was anticipated and addressed in the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan. This project proposed by Mr. Decker would be situated one lot over from the City of Solvang near the inner rural area that marks the shift between urban and larger scale commercial agricultural uses According to the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan, inner rural areas are gradual transition zones that serve as a buffer between urban and commercial agricultural uses. Growing from smaller urban to mid-size urban rural to larger agricultural parcels It offers more rural activities than urban areas and less commercial agriculture than larger Ag-2 parcels or even Ag-1 parcels not in this transition area.
When you visit Regensburg Canyon, you'll see a beautiful, beautiful area. And you immediately see the denser housing to the west and the surrounding housing that ranges from mostly two-to-five acre parcels that is rural residential. The community plan anticipated that larger parcels might be subdivided to provide more residential housing. And I'm quoting from page 62 of the plan. It expressly states, and I quote, The land use pattern within the interrural area has changed over time. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, many subdivisions of larger agricultural parcels into smaller parcels occurred. Smaller orchards, equestrian facilities and vineyards became more common in these areas than the large-scale commercial agricultural operations.
The subdivision of interrural AG-1 parcels is resulting in more estate ranchettes and associated hobby farms and less commercial agriculture." In fact, the Decker property was part of a 20 acre lot that was split into lots in 1988. It is part of this transition zone and the inter-rural Ag 2 parcels and ranchettes and hobby farms. It's not industrialized commercial agriculture.
The 16 1⁄2 square foot greenhouse is really out of scale in this neighborhood, I have not met one neighbor who supports this project or feels that it's consistent with their investment-backed expectations when they looked around and saw what is this. It's like bringing an industrial facility next door, and this isn't what people signed up for in this rural residential area. And I have the letter from Mr. Lugli who has two parcels adjacent to the Decker property and when he had to make his disclosures as was mentioned, the property fell out of escrow and reported and I'm quoting The buyer promptly canceled the purchase with this notice and their broker cited the reason to be the overwhelming size of the structure that would be positioned just 20 feet away from the property line.
I think that was a full offer of 1.8 million dollars that just fell through So this area does have agriculture, but it's not commercial agriculture. We actually do have commercial agricultural zoning in the county. This agriculture is small personal orchards and vineyards and gardens and 4-H and horse properties. It's legitimate agriculture, and it is incompatible with industrial agriculture. The proposed greenhouse is unlike anything else in the neighborhood.
It's as I said 20 feet from its southern neighbor. It's situated in a bowl that can be seen from any of the neighboring homes. It will become a dominant feature in the view scape of these homes looking down The proposed project is really unlike anything else in the Santa Ynez Valley. It tends to be outdoor grows or hoops because that's all that's really needed for bountiful crops year-round there.
Many farmers locate there because they can get three to four crops a year with fewer capital and energy inputs. So it is not appropriate, it's not compatible with the rural small non-commercial agriculture that's in this inner rural area. And so I will not be supporting the application, I will be supporting the unanimous planning commission decision. So thank you for allowing me to go first and with that who would like to go next?
Supervisor Nelson or Supervisor Lavinino.
I can go, I can go.
Okay
so um i want to start off by saying I don't like it at all. Um I really think there's something to being about being a good neighbor you know? It sounds like I mean when I heard from some of the residents there if I had the means be a great place to live But here's the problem. We can quote community plans all day, but you can't take away somebody's personal property right on land that zoned agriculture.
Mr. Decker whether we like it or not can go on his property today and grow hemp or broccoli or any other ag crop without a permit. He could raise animals He could plant vines, he could have loud water pumps. He could bring in a wind machine, he could have bird cannons. He could operate night harvesting and he could bring in whatever traffic he needs to keep his farm going.
Those are a lot of things that his neighbors wouldn't like. I wouldn't like them either if I lived there. And this is why to me Ag 1-5 is the worst zoning that we have in the county As everybody said, it's hobby farms. It's rural residential. The problem is it's not zoned rural residential. That's nobody's fault at the county right now and it's not the neighbor's fault. I totally get it but that's not what my job is to do is not to say what I'd like it to be.
I got a look at it and say what is he legally allowed to do? And unfortunately Got a side with Mr. Decker on this. I wish it wasn't that way and honestly, even if he got the approval, I would wish Mr. Decker would rethink this project, reach back out to his neighbors, figure out a way to do this the right way. That's not my...I don't have the ability to do that today and so unfortunately I understand all the reasons why Supervisor Hartman laid this out, the way that she did. I totally agree with 99% of what she said it's just for me. I think we would be it's not I don't know about precedent setting but I just don't think we I personally don't have the ability to tell somebody that they can't do with their loans with their land is zoned
Supervisor Lavinino, that raises a question perhaps for Mr. Ghisoni if you won't mind my following up and that is what is the relationship of community plan policies to zoning regulations? At least when I was on the Planning Commission we had to find consistency with community plan policies and interpret them
Chair and supervisors, the shorthand in the case law refers to the community plan or general plan is the Constitution of land use for a county. So that's at the top of the pyramid and everything else must be compared to that. And this is an area where although staff provides input, much like CEQA, staff provides input and it's a board decision when you look at consistency for the general plan, slant community plan. And also whether you can make the findings for CEQA on a project approval.
Thank you. So did that conclude your comments Supervisor Lavinino? Okay, Jacqueline is here nodding as well. Supervisor Nelson did you want to go next?
Yeah I'd like to that's okay. So this is my first appeal that I've been a part of on the board and I'm taking a little bit different approach maybe than even my predecessor did to these types of appeals One of the neat things about this job is that we wear a lot of different hats. We have an administrative function, we help hire and work with staff on administering and executing the role of county government.
We have a policymaking hat that we wear where we approve and suggest and modify ordinances. And then there's the judicial hat, where we're the judge. And that's what's one of the most unique things about county government is that we get to wear all three hats. It's not like any other form of government and that's one thing I love about it and enjoy it. So I'm with Supervisor Labanino that it may not be the project I'd want as a policy in this place but that's not the hat I'm wearing today.
And I'm wearing the judicial hat again. It's also what we're gonna see over and over, and we have in the past already with cannabis projects. I'm not a big fan of cannabis, never used the product myself but I expect to see cannabis projects come before me that while I may not have supported the ordinance that got approved doesn't mean I can't approve the project if it was legally put together and filed.
And there should be a reasonable expectation For an applicant to be able to get their project approved if they are checking all the boxes, especially within LUP. It doesn't have the same burden as a CUP where neighborhood compatibility is one of the top requirements. I understand the LUP role is that we need to determine that Ms. Plowman, as director and her staff made a mistake in their determination of the original approval of this LUP. And I don't think that's where the mistake was. I think the mistake was ultimately in the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan not rezoning these properties, rural residential or some other kind of zoning, maybe a specific zoning to Santa Ynez. We have specific zoning in our community plan to Orchid. And so I really think that was probably where the mistake was made, and I understand where the community is coming from.
One of the speakers talked about protecting our citizens. And you know that means a lot to me but one of the biggest protections we have for citizens equal protection and property rights. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. Here would be to deny this project make a lot of friends in the valley right I ultimately feel that I would have to uphold the appeal. And approve the project because I think that ultimately in the end, that actually protects all of us in the county. Because it allows us to upheld constitutional rights that Mr. Decker has and rights that he has from our LUDC zoning code.
It should not be something where you come in there and you have to hope that we don't get a bunch of neighbors mad at you. You should be able to have certainty in this process, and so I want to put my personal feelings about the project aside, and we want to support the law and work my judicial hat. And so I'm going to join Scrazzle Avenue at this point, and if it is 1 3rd and voting to uphold the appeal.
4:18 – 4:2412 turns
And Supervisor Hart?
Yeah, I think. That my colleagues, everyone's spoken very eloquently to this issue. And it brings me back to the technical point, the narrow specific technical point that I don't think there is adequate information to evaluate this project in light of its potential precedent-setting nature regarding night sky pollution. Technical environmental issues that need to be examined in greater detail to fully understand what the implications are of a greenhouse with nighttime operations in this neighborhood.
And I think that there we watch is described very well in its letter that there are in addition to the design parameters of it. There are the operational issues and they in the longevity of the system and the commitment of the applicant through conditions that can be enforced. To maintain the effectiveness of that system. It's one thing, you know, to design it on paper. It's another thing to adequately install it. It is another thing to maintain it and make sure that it's being effective. And introducing that kind of a use in this neighborhood without having that very fine-grained Um, sequel analysis is is an invitation to a mistake. That'll be very difficult to correct it will put the burden on the neighborhood and I'm hearing very clearly from Supervisor Lavinino, Supervisor Nelson that they're concerned about these issues too, and that they want to understand.
You know, how to protect the property rights of this applicant and also protect the neighborhood. And the best way to do that in my mind is to measure twice and cut once and be careful and methodical and make sure we have the right fact base to proceed.
Thank you and Supervisor...
Oh yes. I did want to agree with Supervisor Hart. I think that's the smart thing to And I would support a motion that he would make in that regard when the time comes.
So just to understand, are you suggesting approval of the project with additional targeted CEQA analysis on the blackout curtains and the impact on night sky? And that being a condition.
I believe Mr. Gazzone has to give us parameters here.
Yeah,
yeah,
I'm not suggesting approval of the project. I'm suggesting it needs additional CEQA analysis.
And at 10,000 feet I think those are the three options for the board. Deny the appeal, approve the appeal or direct further CEQA review and if the board was going in the direction of further CEQAs review we have worked with staff and could present a motion for your consideration of that.
Supervisor Williams?
Well, this is one more example of how different legislating can be from a quasi-judicial role that you're in an appeal. A lot of people in this neighborhood, they deserve advocacy. But in my view you got to go with the law and in my view the community plan does have power Um, but all of the plans in a general plan are part of that. It's not just the Santa Ynez community plan, it's also all of the other elements of our general plan and so So in the world of competing snippets, there is some discretion as Supervisor Hartman pointed out which is why there is a role of a planning commission.
But there's also, in my view, a real consequence if we get this wrong Ag one in my district and across the county has been gobbled up increasingly for residential uses. And that is something that our policies are supposed to protect against, in my view so I And you know, I sided with the neighborhood in this initial fight. And so I do also want to indicate that if indeed as some residents believe that Mr. Decker is going to grow marijuana he must be insane because it's there's so much going to be so much scrutiny on that site and I got to tell you our cannabis enforcement team is Super active that it would defy all levels of rationality to engage in that. I don't put it beyond possibilities, but I think if somebody did that in likelihood with how active the neighborhood is and how active our cannabis enforcement team is they're going to get caught.
I do, however, believe that additional CEQA review is defensible and that given my desire to want to protect the neighborhood from unintended consequences is something that I would agree with.
4:24 – 4:298 turns
I know that Supervisor Nelson has his hand up, but I did feel compelled to state something. That we all are wearing quasi-judicial hats and we understand that role. I believe I also understand that role having studied the law at some point and practiced a bit. What I am arguing is not that this is an egg I'm going to That it is distinguishable, and it is legal. And it is possible and justifiable to deny this appeal. So it's important for me to state that on the record. And Supervisor Nelson?
Yes, Chair Hartman thank you. So I need to better understand what we're hoping to get from additional environmental review. Right now I can't support that because I just don't know what that gets us in the end Further than where we are at now. I think even after additional environmental review, if we approve this project and that's what we're saying, I'm hearing there might be three votes up for that. Where are we at two or three months from now when the project comes back to us? What will we know then that we don't know now? I think whatever comes out of that study Is gonna end up with needing to rely on our current zoning complaint process. That's what we have, it's not unique to this neighborhood that's county wide and there is a lot of scrutiny on this project diligently.
And I'm sure they're gonna let us know very quickly if Mr. Decker doesn't comply with the condition to have blackout screens and go through and out that light. So I can't currently support a motion that would lead to additional study unless I better understand what we hope to learn from that, and how that would change.
You've frozen but we got the question. Where are you at today? I think Supervisor Hart has his light on and is ready to respond.
Well, I think what we would learn is how complicated this is and that it needs to be carefully evaluated so that we might have conditions of approval that would better protect the neighborhood. That there might be other mitigation measures that we can't think of here on the dais to do a better job, make a better project and make it more compatible with the neighborhood. And I think that's exactly the point of additional CEQA analysis is to have that information to inform you know a future decision and to make it more effective. That's that's the that's the purpose of it, and I think that's what we're all struggling with is you know how can we protect the neighborhood?
And let me ask uh I don't know if Director Plowman would like to weigh in or Mr. Gazzone either of you to help answer this question of what we would get with additional environmental review.
Madam Chair um members of the board What we would do is get additional information about the system that was being used, assess whether or not it effectively reduced potential lighting impacts to a less than significant level. That is what we would get from additional environmental review.
So can we just condition it with that today? That it needs to have a system installed that would produce less than a significant volume of light. I mean, doesn't that... Again, I don't understand why we need to do additional studies. What I'm worried about is for everybody's knowledge is sometimes the county has a reputation that even though we may not deny projects that is death by 1000 cuts That, you know, Mr. Decker may not be willing to go and spend additional funds in planner time and keep going with this project because he may find that to be futile. And I think the sound potentially sends a wrong message to future applicants. You know, so that's kind of what I'm worried about. Yeah, I think we have enough information to uphold the appeal right now.
I think everything we would get from From additional studies, we can condition the project now and today. And then we don't have to see this item again in the future. And so that's why I would support a motion to move forward today.
And I have a question, and that is would any additional? I mean, I guess what we're doing is calling into question the exemption. The CEQA exemption for such a large scale project and is it is the sequel review limited simply then to the lighting aspect? Would it get into their reflectivity? Would it get into traffic other aspects of the project Mr. Casoni?
4:29 – 4:3513 turns
Chair and supervisors, I think what we're talking about is that the some of the issues we've talked about today or what what the board would look at is saying that the categorical exemption for small structure is not applicable. And then planning would look at the whole project lighting might be part of it reflectivity could be part of it everything else can be part of They would need to touch every aspect or they could go thin on some aspects of environmental review. But I think what you would be concluding is discomfort with using the categorical exemption for small structure, and then kicking it into further CEQA review which is what... And I think the board today if you wanted to go down that road would really be directing planning and development to simply conduct additional Sequel review because the square footage of the project exceeds the examples in the sequel exemption and leaving it then within the discretion of planning to tee up that sequel review.
And if we did that, we would have to trail this item and get the language to vote on it. Are we ready? If there were a motion could we do that now?
My recommendation would be briefly trail it and show the motion and although not legally required I would offer that you might consider hearing from Mr. Decker on that
also. Absolutely. Supervisor Hart and then Mr. Decker on deck
Yeah, I'd like to see that direction. I think Mr. Ghazani described it perfectly well and I think that would be the best course.
Mr. Decker?
Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board. Light deprivation curtains. They work both ways, their purpose is to not allow light into the greenhouse and they have to be very effective to be useful to the cultivator. It has to do with the photo period available to the plant to have the plant determine whether it wants to go to seed or stay in the flower or whatever we're cultivating. The same thing applies to all plants And depending on the time of year, you need to light deprive the plants to have them be growing in a certain manner. So the light deprivation curtain technology out there today with a lot of greenhouse growing around the world is very critical that it be effective in keeping light out as well as not allowing light to go out.
Companies that I've dealt with in developing this project over the last three years, they all have their guarantees that their systems work. And because if it doesn't, I've wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars and investing in a product from them that doesn't do what I needed to do. So yes, the neighbors can are concerned about light coming out of the greenhouse and that that's fair.
I'm glad to condition my project to have the light deprivation curtains because that was my intent in the first place when it was first submitted to planning and development. And that going into a secret review as to its efficaciousness and so forth. I can bring in all the testimonies and all the reports, and so forth from these various light deprivation curtain companies that will be bidding for my work.
And that's, I guess how it can be proved that they work. Well, I can tell you that the industry makes sure that they work. This is how free enterprise works in our country it produces a product that is efficacious for its purpose. I want them to work just as much as the neighbors do. And it's my understanding, going back to what I said earlier speaking to Supervisor Lavanino, I believe it's in the project conditions that I have to prove to the county that they do work before I get my occupancy permit.
So there is the evidence we will have lights on inside the greenhouse and county staff will be out checking out how they work. And so there you are, there's your proof. So I can't use my project and correct me if I'm wrong Mr. Singer, I believe that's what the conditions say. So I think that should assuage Supervisor Hart and anyone else's concern but yes they will work.
Thank you, Mr. Decker. By my what I'm hearing is that we have one vote probably to approve, one to deny and perhaps three for additional environmental review. And we would need to trail that so I guess what I'd like is a conceptual motion? Is that what we need to get a read on where how to direct staff to get ready?
Chair and Supervisors, we've worked with planning on several options. And if the directing additional CEQA review is the option, I believe that planning is ready to put that motion on the screen and you could see it now and maybe consider that for a few moments. Okay, that would be helpful. We would not need to trail it for more than a minute or so.
Chair Hartman? I have a question.
Yes,
Supervisor Levin. So when this additional CEQUA review's done Do we bring it back to the Board of Supervisors or does it have to go back through the entire system
again? Chair and Supervisers, the motion in two parts would be to direct Planning and Development to conduct that additional CEQA review. And then Part B after the additional CEQUA review is conducted to return to the board for consideration of the appeal. So I think the short answer is not going back to the Planning Commission comes right back to the board.
4:35 – 4:4423 turns
So we're waiting now to see it projected.
I've got a question.
Oh, of course. Go ahead.
So for Mr. Gazzone so when it comes back to the board is that going to be another de novo hearing on this or is it kind of a continuation of this hearing? How does that work?
It's not a continuation of the hearing because you're not taking it to a date certain year, you would be directing the secret review and directing to return to the board. It would be de novo in the sense that your decision is de novo with respect to the planning commission's decision.
So I think it also might be helpful for the public. If the intention, and maybe they can read the tea leaves from some of the discussions that's happened on the board is that we will be looking to approve or deny that project at time. It's good for Mr. Deckert to know whether he wants to make an additional investment. I think it's good for the public to right-size their expectations of another hearing that we all go through. And we've been doing this for about an hour and 40 minutes now. And you know, I would like to help the community along because, you know, and move on at some point here.
Those are my thoughts.
Director Plowman. Madam Chair, members of the board I actually don't have a slide prepared to present at this moment in time. I have language that I could read to you but we didn't get a chance to put the slide together thinking that we would trail it if the board chose to go this path.
I think it's fairly short Yeah I'm happy to read it. What do you think Mr. Gazzone?
Chair, my recommendation would be to actually wait the few minutes for the slide so we had great comfort in the language you're choosing in this quasi-judicial role and maybe just hearing from the director how long she needs for that.
Sure yeah Director Plowman that was my question how long until your staff can produce a slide
Madam Chair, I think that we could send something up to Ms. Alexander here pretty quickly so maybe five minutes and
okay I know there are a lot of members of the public watching this so let's stick it out for the five minutes and bring it to resolution before we go to closed session.
I guess I have another question while we wait.
Of course and then I think Supervisor Williams so you first Supervisor Nelson
Thank you, Chair Hartman. So I also want to make sure that I've seen this happen before where we go back for additional study and that can have its life of its own. Maybe the best way to help this project or move us forward would be to be kind of targeted on what we want to have studied so it's not opening up the whole world to study every piece of Mr. Decker's property You know, it turns into a full EIR which we all know cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think that's what I'm hearing from my colleagues but they want to go through that level of environmental review on it sounds like we want to be fairly targeted towards the light so even though I can't support the motion to continue because I am ready to approve maybe my colleagues can help the project by being specific on what they want to have studied
I think it's broader than the light. I think Mr. Gazzone can weigh in, he addressed this a bit already.
Chair and Supervisors, I think the help from the Board if you had particular concern areas would to emphasize those concern areas but really be sending it back to the Planning Director for do their normal process for further CEQA review. You would essentially be determining that this had failed out of the fairly narrow CEQAs exemption and required CEQa review maybe with an emphasis on A B & C
And again, it fell out of review because or may not qualify for the exemption because of the size or scale of the greenhouse itself.
Yes below initially the CEQA exemption and there are several used but the primary exemption for this would be the small structure exemption.
Supervisor Williams and then Supervisor Hart
Well, my primary intention for supporting this is to sort of I suppose add belt and suspenders for the neighborhood to make sure that impacts are studied. But primarily it's to verify that the mitigation and condition of approval of light blackout curtains will work in this case in the circumstances that I have seen In the Carpinteria Valley, it does work. There is a difference in our area between greenhouses that are subjected to the ordinance and ones that existed before the ordinance so it's not all greenhouses that have to do it but the ones that do have to do it when they don't I call you know I usually get get told and I call planning and they take care of it. But, uh, I do think it's important because of the level of mistrust between Mr.
Decker and the neighborhood in particular to make sure that impacts are studied and mitigated from the project Because I am being asked this question by my colleague, I will ask it to me. It would have to be a high bar because You know issues while I do believe the community plan. Hold strong weight, I don't believe the language is definitive and I also don't believe that means other elements of the general plan are obviated they are thought to be have Unless we have evidence that the zoning was meant to block out commercial agriculture, the zoning surely seems to invite agriculture. And I don't really know and I'm not comfortable with the idea of differentiating one type of agriculture that runs a business and saying that's household local agriculture piece of agriculture that runs a business and say no, that's industrial agriculture.
That kind of differentiation doesn't take into account The changes that agriculture inevitably has to do to survive. So I guess I have issues with trying to create that dividing line, why the mushroom farm or the vineyard is good agriculture and the horse operation is good agriculture but But this greenhouse is bad. So, you know that's something I'm uncomfortable with because I don't know that we have a basis to judge that one is small scale and one is industrial.
I see we have the language but I can't resist responding to that nobody saying good or bad what we're saying is what's compatible with the surrounding agriculture so here's the language
Chair and supervisors, and that represents the language that we had discussed previously with P and D planning and development if the board was going down this road. And it essentially concludes that the CEQA exemption does not fit the 15303 is in quotes, the small structure exemption. And that would be determination sending it back to planning and then returns to the board.
4:44 – 4:4713 turns
Just add one thing Madam chair I think we need to inquire from Mr. Decker about his willingness to pay for the initial study and additional environmental review at this point in time.
Mr. Decker?
Madam Chair, members of the board, why should I? I've actually been approved twice for this project And only to have it appealed and what happens if I don't want to pay for it?
Mr. Gazzone
Chair and supervisors. Bear with me for one second. The short answer is that if it comes back to planning for review and that review is not completed, then you would not have a CEQA compliant project to approve. So I think Mr. Decker in planning can talk offline on this.
All right. Supervisor Hart, would you like to make a motion?
Yes, I would move the language that is presented to us on the slide directing staff to conduct additional CEQA review Because the proposed greenhouse greatly exceeds the examples provided in CEQA exemption section 15-03 and thus there's not substantial evidence in the record supporting that the project fits within the CEQAs exemption. And after the review is conducted, return to the board.
Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk.
Other discussion?
Oh, sorry. Thank you and thank you very much. I
just wanted an opportunity to say a few things before I think my opinion are well known at this point that I'm going to vote against the motion because I do believe that we have enough evidence in the record to approve this project. I don't see enough evidence that Ms. Plowman and her staff erred in approving the project, and I think if this was something that was not approvable, we should have never accepted the application.
Again, this would probably mean the death of this project which is unfortunate. That would've been six newly created jobs. I believe that's an equity issue in our county that we're concerned about, so with those comments I will actually be voting no on the motion, but I want to make sure everybody understands that's because I would like to see the project move forward today.
Thank you.
And any other comments? OK, Madam Clerk.
Roll-call vote Passed 3–1 move forward today. Thank you. And any other comments? OK, Madam Clerk.
Show transcript
Motion passes 4-1
4:47 – 4:487 turns
Okay, with that we're going to prepare for closed session. Mr. Gazzone what do you have in store for us?
Chair and Supervisors, first a thank you to Deputy County Counsel Jenna Richardson who was with me electronically throughout today. And in closed session today the board is agendized to consider four separate items. The first is a case of existing litigation Keller versus County of Santa Barbara. The second another case of existing litigation Rancho La Laguna versus County of Santa Barbara then conference with real property negotiators And this involves the Straus Wind Energy Project southwest of the city of Lompoc. And finally, the fourth item is conference with labor negotiators involving the Service Employees International Union Local 620. My estimate for a closed session is about one and a half hours.
So we would be back here about 330?
Maybe just a little earlier but not, about 3.30.
Okay and Madam Clerk did you have something to add? So really quick lunch try to be in where we often have lunch with closed session for people in the public but to protect against COVID and the new variants were all separately eating alone. And so 10 minutes eat fast, and then to the close session.
I never get it done in ten, so you can do five if you want because we got a long schedule.
We'll get there at two how about but everybody be prompt and we'll get hooked up with our remote participants
5:00 – 5:001 turns
What does it mean to you to get the vaccine?
6:00 – 6:1613 turns
Bill, good afternoon. Hi Jeff I saw you were just calling me. Yeah perfect okay
that's
what Alex should be on as well. He is right now just showed up. Perfect thank you. Okay you got it bye-bye
We're reconvening the February 9th, 2021 Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting. Three of us here in Santa Barbara and Supervisor Lavinino remotely in Santa Maria and Supervisor Nelson is also remote but not in Santa Maria. So Mr. Gazzone would you report out from closed session?
Chair and supervisors today, the board in closed session considered four matters. The first a case of existing litigation Keller versus County of Santa Barbara. The second another case of existing litigation Rancho La Laguna versus County of Santa Barbara then conference with real property negotiators concerning easements with the Strauss Wind Energy Project southwest of the city of Lompoc.
And finally, conference with labor negotiators concerning Service Employees International Union Local 620. There are no reportable actions.
Thank you. So we're on to departmental item number four, we are not hearing departmental item number five so this is our last item would you read that into the record Madam Clerk? Chair
Hartman and members of the board departmental item number four is from the sheriff and the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the KPMG operational performance review of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office
And CEO Miss Otto you're going to kick us off.
Yes, thank you. Thank you board members as you know we've been working on these for over a year these KPMG reports and Natasha if you could forward that please this is a review of the sheriff's office and today will be talking about that and we have Bill Zizek from the Managing Director, from KPMG and Alex Rothman with us. Next slide. As you know this is the context we've been doing these reports for over a year now. The Sheriff's Office completes all our public safety departments and this year we're working on fire be well and social services and will be coming to the board later in the year with those reports.
Next slide. As you know, again we this is not a financial audit. If this is really an review of best practices these recommendations should result in savings efficiencies and better performance and outcomes. And these were done in conjunction with our departments, and it was a significant amount of time for each of our departments. So I thank them for spending that time. Next slide.
And again this is the Sheriff's Office. This is just a brief overview 737 FTE and $155 million budget. And another sheriff is also online with his executive staff to discuss the report. Next slide. And with that I'm going to hand it over to Bill Zizek from KPMG.
Thank you CEO Miyasato and good afternoon Chair Hartman, members of the board. Again Bill Zizek Managing Director with me today is Alex Rothman a delivery manager from our KPMG team and it's our pleasure to be here with you today. Depicted on the screen is our year one timeline with the review of the Sheriff's Office beginning in early 2020 concluding in mid to late summer We were impacted by a pause during that time due to the initial surge of COVID. And so we definitely appreciate the department's help and the CEO's office help in continuing the review when those events subsided initially.
Previously mentioned your board, we at the midpoint of our review with fire department and we are soon mobilizing this, the initial steps for behavioral wellness. Next slide please. So briefly on our methodology, we begin with engaging staff and interviews focus groups. We analyze available data on departmental operations and look at benchmarking and leading practices to identify opportunities for efficiency and improvement.
We provide a midpoint update to office leadership and the CEO team on emerging themes to help ensure alignment. And then we share working drafts of our final reports to be validated and commented on by office leadership. With that, let me turn it over to Alex to briefly touch on our commendations for the Sheriff's Office.
Alex? Thanks Bill. As with all of our reviews we'll start with these commendations you see on your screen. To start the Sheriff's Office should be commended for its work to shift eligible job responsibilities from law enforcement deputies to civilian staff. To achieve this the office has created a sheriff service technician position termed SST Our report details recommendations to further expand the use of this position with its lower cost profile, to deliver cost savings for the department without compromising quality of service.
Additionally, we want to commend three important efforts by the Sheriff's Office to manage the county's incarcerated population in a safe, humane and cost efficient manner. First, the office has created the sheriff's treatment program which provides rehabilitative programming to inmates in the jail in an effort to reduce recidivism. Second, the office operates an alternative sentencing bureau which allows low risk individuals to avoid jail time and complete their sentence through community supervision.
Finally, the Sheriff's Office is preparing for the opening of the North County Jail. The design of this facility is intended to enable the more efficient delivery of in-custody supervisory healthcare and rehabilitative services. Could I get the next slide please? Moving forward from our commendations, you may recognize this maturity model from our past presentations.
The model looks across key elements of the department's operations. The purple boxes indicate the department's capabilities at the time of our review. The gold boxes indicate where we think the department can work towards. On this first slide I want to draw your attention to the process line at the bottom of your screen in the third row. Processes for data entry and analysis of the Sheriff's Office are highly manual For example, staff must separately input data into the three core software systems used by the office due to a lack of interoperability.
It's important to note that the Sheriff's Office recognizes this and is moving to implement a new record management system which will create opportunities to automate or restructure these processes. So you'll see from our ratings it is on the lower end of the scale now but we expect significant opportunities for improvement in this area This ties into data and reporting, which will be on the following slide if we could click through to that.
For data and reporting, the Sheriff's Office leadership describes the department as quote, data rich and information poor. That is while a large amount of data is recorded by staff processes to analyze and operationalize this data are inefficient and or insufficient to meet the office's needs. This hinders the effectiveness of the offices data tracking and performance management efforts And limits leadership visibility into department operations, resulting in the lower data and reporting score you see on your screen.
Office leadership recognizes this issue and has expressed a desire for additional staffing, specifically a data analyst position to support the office's analytics and reporting capabilities. As we detail later in this presentation, the report outlines steps to strengthen the office's capabilities to analyze data, to develop low burden reports and visualizations and to utilize these reports to drive decision making and problem solving.
And with that, we can go to the next slide and I'll hand back to you Bill.
Thank you Alex. So there are four main areas of recommendation that we would highlight today for your board's consideration of our over 150 page report. The first is around demand driven staffing. The second is around data-driven decisions The third around expanded diversion for both 911 calls and within the jails, and the fourth is improved tracking of overtime.
At the office wide level we first recommend adoption and expansion of demand driven and workload based staffing approaches in both the law enforcement and custody operations branches. Demand drivers for law enforcement include both 911 calls from the public, as well as deputy initiated and other proactive patrol activities. And must be considered along with the county's vast geographical territory and importantly officer backup in safety coverage requirements.
In the custody setting demand is driven by the daily peaks and troughs of activity due to the movement of inmates and related activities from meals and medical to programming and recreation, transportation to and from court and visits from attorneys and family. In both cases understanding and quantifying the drivers of demand and converting those into workload hourly workload can help the office utilize the right resources in the right place at the right time while improving overall cost effectiveness and maintaining appropriate levels of service This is underscored by the scale of annual overtime spending, which has ranged between six and $10 million across the office for the last several fiscal years knowing that more than one significant disaster event was addressed in that period of time.
We recognize and commend the offices efforts to utilize these concepts in select branches and locations as well as through its use of critical minimum staffing approaches and encourage adoption of these practices office-wide. The varied geographies and communities of the county require a specific understanding of demand tailored to their needs. I'll now turn the next slide to Alex for more on staffing, Alex?
Thanks Bill. The Sheriff's Office's Law Enforcement Operations Branch provides patrol and detective services to County residents The graphic on your screen illustrates calls for service, overtime and staffing at the law enforcement branch from 2017 to 2019. You'll notice that calls for service fell by 6% during this period for approximately 76,000 calls in 2017 to approximately 72,000 calls in 2019.
During the same period, the number of full-time employees or FTEs grew by 3%, or eight staff Overtime usage peaked in 2018 due to the debris flow experienced by the county. However, when we exclude that year, we still see a 30% increase in overtime usage from 2017-2019 with overtime hours growing from approximately 18,000 in 2017 to approximately 23,000 in 2019. Next slide please. This next graph allows us to look more closely at calls for service. The figure on the left of your screen illustrates calls for service by priority each year from 2017 to 2019.
The definitions for each of these call types are as follows, Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls are for crimes that are in progress against persons and property respectively. And these require the most urgent response The MISC, RPT and Type 7 call types refer to low risk reporting informational or administrative calls where a crime is not in progress. Finally the T call type refers to traffic stops.
The report outlines recommendations to simplify these call types to enable clear data analysis. Additionally An analysis of current CAD data demonstrates that a majority of calls for service are low-priority calls or for crimes that are no longer in progress, a circumstance we commonly witness in law enforcement agencies across the United States. For example, as illustrated by the graph at right, traffic stops and phone requests are the two most common call types.
Later in this presentation, we will discuss online reporting, telephone reporting, and other low burden processes to manage low priority calls. Next slide, please. Deploying a demand-based workload driven approach to allocating patrol staffing and overtime hours will allow the Sheriff's Office to best align its staffing to calls for service resulting in a more efficient use of staff hours and of overtime.
The graph at the bottom of your screen illustrates trends in demand for calls for service by hour of day and it shows clear peaks and valleys in demand It's based on Sheriff's Office CAD data. The graphic at the top of your screen illustrates how a previous KPMG project optimized shift start times and overtime usage to align available staff to peaks in demand.
The Sheriff's Office should be commended for its work to begin implementation of demand-driven staffing at select stations. However, we recommend these techniques be expanded across stations to help ensure the most cost efficient use of staff hours and overtime. Next slide, please. Moving to the Custody Operations Branch. The Sheriff's Office's Custody Operations Branch is responsible for the supervision and care of jail inmates in Santa Barbara County.
The graphic on your screen illustrates the average daily population of Santa Barbara's jail. This ADP is shown in purple as well as overtime usage which is shown in dark blue and staffing which is shown in gold At the custody operations branch from 2017 to 2019. The jail's average daily population fell from approximately 1100 in 2017 to approximately 1000 and 2019 a 9% decrease during this same period custody operations branch staffing grew by 9%. As the office hired to prepare for the opening of the Northern Branch Jail Overtime usage within the custody operations branch fell by 12% during this period as staffing increased and ADP declined.
It's important to note that the zero bail emergency rule implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in further decreases in the jail population in 2020, as will be discussed later in this presentation. In correctional facilities demand for staff time varies by hour of day and by day of week Due to activities such as court transportation, attorney visits, family visits and pill call. To cite a few examples given sharp declines in the county jail population in response to the COVID-19 pandemic there is an opportunity for the Sheriff's Office to reevaluate jail staffing at the unit and the shift levels.
The department should utilize activity driven staffing to help ensure this realignment is done in a cost efficient manner. Next slide, please. And with that I will hand back to you Bill.
6:16 – 6:223 turns
Thank you Alex. Our second office level recommendation centers around leveraging existing tools and data sources to enhance the granularity and timeliness of operational data for branch and bureau leaders and managers. This will require prioritization of critical data collection and analysis efforts automating routine data extraction and visualizations And reviewing the necessary skills and staffing for the office in collaboration with the CEO's team.
Today, the office has only one crime analyst role that fulfills all state and federal crime reporting and serves as the point person for data extraction and reporting needs from the offices main operational systems. As part of our review we compiled two example interactive data dashboards one for custody and one for law enforcement With the right resources and tools, data from existing systems can provide insight into various aspects of jail utilization as depicted on the screen such as inmate releases by reason, by hour of day, day of week, month of year.
And monitoring for changes in average length of stay a key driver in population levels and operational costs. Next slide please. On the law enforcement side, we show call volumes by station, by call type and priority. And elements of response time and call crewing or the number of responding units per call. All of these elements can be manipulated or isolated to facilitate monitoring of performance, analysis of issues, and design of solutions to improve operations.
Next slide. Turning now specifically to the law enforcement branch, we recommend improved monitoring of response times against office goals at station and shift levels. Expansion of existing 911 call diversion pathways to include online telephone and civilian report taking options and leveraging data-driven policies to govern the use of overtime. For more on these topics I'll turn it back to Alex.
Thanks, Bill. Could we
move to the next slide? Thank you. The graph on your screen illustrates caller wait times by call priority and whether the call occurred in a contract city or in the unincorporated area. As you might expect, the unincorporated area typically experiences longer wait times likely due to its more rural geography. This underscores the need for alternative means for handling low-priority calls to prevent long and avoidable drive times by deputies, and long wait times for citizens for lower priority calls.
Additionally, it should be noted that the office sets a goal of responding to 90% of all Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls within eight minutes. In the past three fiscal years, the Sheriff's Office has met its response time target approximately 70% of the time. Next slide please. Diving into alternative means for call resolution, it's recommended that the Sheriff's Office determine if there are any additional call types that may be eligible for telephone reporting or online reporting.
Current data suggests that less than 2% of calls each year are handled through online reporting. Given that a significant percentage of the office's calls for service are non-emergency calls, there may be an opportunity to expand this use of online reporting. Additionally The use of telephone reporting was not tracked at the time of our review. Beginning to track the use of telephone reporting will help determine whether the office is using this tool to its full potential.
Finally, the office should assess whether there are call types that can be diverted to civilian sheriff service technicians. For example, report writing for vehicular collisions with no injuries as illustrated by the graphic at the bottom right of your screen SSTs can be deployed to free up deputy capacity to respond to the highest priority calls, especially during peak times.
Next slide please. Turning to overtime, the graphic at the left of your screen illustrates overtime hours utilized by law enforcement deputies. 85% of these hours are charged in the law enforcement branch while 15% of hours are charged to other branches. The overtime hours charged within the law enforcement branch equate to approximately 11 full-time employees worth of staff time.
As illustrated by the graphic at right, overtime hours grew from 2017 to 2019 even as total staffing increased and the total number of calls for service fell. The report recommends the department expand its tracking of overtime usage in order to develop a better understanding of the drivers of this overtime. In particular The office should record the reasons for which overtime is approved with increased granularity so drivers and solutions can be identified.
This data will enhance department leadership's ability to problem solve and to reduce overtime usage. Next slide please, and I'll hand back to you Bill.
6:22 – 6:295 turns
Thanks Alex. So turning now to the custody branch recommendations we recommend expanded diversion programs to reduce jail utilization Especially for pretrial felony offenses, an initiative that we know is larger than just the sheriff's office but was discussion about an item of discussion at our previous board meeting. The second is around examining the drivers of overtime in custody against demands for service and lastly will highlight the building on existing efforts to expand utilization of non sworn staffing within the jails For more on these topics, I'll turn it back to Alex. Next slide please.
Thanks Bill. As noted in the graph on your screen, the jail's average daily population declined steadily from 2016-2019 from a total population of approximately 1200 to approximately 1000. While this decline is an important accomplishment, it is also important to note that the jail's rated capacity is approximately 800 beds As a result, even with this decline the jail was operating at over 120% of rated capacity as of 2019.
Next slide please. In 2020 the Santa Barbara Superior Court implemented a zero bail emergency rule in response to COVID-19 pandemic. This rule has drastically reduced the size of the county's jail population As shown in the graphic on your screen, the jail's ADP has fallen from approximately 1,000 in 2019 to approximately 570 inmates as of June 2020. The most recent data available at the time this analysis was completed.
As of June 2020, the number of felony sentenced, misdemeanor sentenced and misdemeanor unsentenced inmates in the jail had declined by at least 60% from their 2019 levels. During the same period, the number of felony unsentenced inmates also declined but by a reduced magnitude of just 20%. As of June 2020, these felony unsentenced inmates comprise 70% of the jail population.
This emphasizes the potential benefits of developing a felony diversion program as referenced previously in the district attorney's office review and board presentation. which has the potential to connect this population to alternatives to incarceration when possible. The report includes a series of recommendations related to expanding diversion programs in the county. This includes maximizing the impact of existing programs and collaborating with partner agencies to develop additional diversion pathways at the pre-arrest, post arrest, presentence and post sentence intervention points.
Next slide please. This graph shows the number of bookings by arresting agency. You'll see that the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office is responsible for the largest number of jail bookings, followed by the Santa Barbara Police Department, Santa Maria Police Department and California Highway Patrol. The report highlights the need for upstream management in collaboration with these law enforcement agencies to leverage diversion options and manage the demand facing the sheriff's office.
Next slide, and I'll turn it back to you Bill
Thanks, Alex. We do want to highlight some positive trends in terms of increased site and release by the jail after booking and a significant decline in revocations of probation from 2017-2019. Both of these trends demonstrate action on the part of the Sheriff's Office and Probation Department in reducing demands on jail utilization. Next slide and back to you, Alex, to finish up.
I'm sorry, I was still muted. Thank you Bill turning to custody operations over time. Given reductions in the jails ADP as well as the forthcoming opening of the northern branch jail. The sheriff's office has an opportunity to reassess staffing and overtime in the custody operation branch. The report outlines a three step process to guide this review of overtime use First, the office should deploy a workload-driven correctional staffing model to align staffing to trends and demand including at the unit and shift levels given the variation in activities across those aspects.
Second, the office should enhance overtime tracking to include a more detailed justification for overtime used thereby allowing office leadership to analyze the drivers of overtime. Finally, the office should analyze this more granular overtime data On a recurring basis to inform and revise its staffing model, leveraging the office's existing staffing and overtime meeting cadence.
Next slide please. Turning to the custody operations division branches staffing mix. The Sheriff's Office primarily utilizes custody deputies to operate the county jail. The office may be able to achieve cost savings without reducing service levels by increasing the use of SSTs in jail operations. As of FY19, the Custody Operations Branch listed 10 SSTs as compared to 193 custody deputies.
The SST job description lists corrections-related responsibilities that are not currently performed by SST's including monitoring inmates and work assignments, supervising inmates during meal periods and overseeing inmate behavior for compliance with rules and regulations. The graphic at the right of your screen shows that converting 25% of current custody deputy positions to SSTs could enable annual savings of $765,000 while converting 50% could net an estimated annual savings of $1.5 million.
It is important to note that this transition would need to occur gradually and may benefit from pilot testing and phased implementation. Next slide, next slide please. And I'll hand back to you Bill to wrap up.
Thank you Alex so to summarize the key takeaways for the Sheriff's Office review are number one to significantly expand the demand driven staffing approaches across the office. Number two leveraging those existing data and tool sets to improve operational monitoring and improvement Third, to expand the diversionary pathways for both 911 callers and especially pretrial felony offenses.
And lastly improve tracking of overtime drivers and solutions there too. We would like to close with our sincere thanks to the Sheriff and his leadership team as well as the CEO and her team for their high degree of engagement in this review. And with that I'll now hand it back to CEO Miyasato
6:29 – 6:3811 turns
Supervisors, we also have the sheriff online but if you have any questions for KPMG you could ask them now or you can hold off until the end.
Why don't we ask them now while they're fresh and then the sheriff could respond to both from his perspective. Do we have any questions? Supervisor Nelson?
No questions for me at this time.
Supervisor Lavinino?
Good thank you.
Sheriff Brown?
Well, thank you Chair Hartman and members of the board. Good afternoon. I'd like to begin by thanking the KPMG people for their work Bill, Alex, Kiva, their entire team that worked quite diligently to review our operations and to come up with the recommended report and present them to you today. I also wanna thank my team My executive staff in particular for their hard work and contributing to evaluating and responding thoughtfully to KPMG's recommendations.
Collectively, we spent dozens of hours on these tasks. We formulated and delivered the KPMG a comprehensive 25 page response to their draft report. And we met with them for several hours to reconcile, to amend and to strengthen certain parts of the report. The final report from KPMG contains some excellent suggestions for improvement and for efficiencies. And these dovetail nicely into our continuing quest for excellence and improvement in all that we do.
Having taken KPMGs recommendations seriously, we are in agreement with the vast majority of them We disagree with certain aspects of a few of them. We have implemented already some of them, we plan to implement some of them with our existing resources and some we believe will require additional resources to implement. As committed as we are to efficiencies, we recognize that all of us the board, the CEO and the Sheriff's office must balance efficiencies with public safety requirements and with community expectations.
Now I'd like to turn it over to my executive staff who will walk you through an overview of our responses to each of these recommendations in sections in the KPMG report, and we'll start with Under Sheriff Saul Lindner.
Good afternoon Chair Hartman and supervisors, the executive staff members of the Sheriff's Office will be providing brief statements on the KPMG recommendations to augment the response document you have received. I will start with the overall Sheriff's Office recommendations, section 1.0. In relation to Section 1.1, the Sheriff's Office generally agrees with the recommendations.
The Sheriff's Office has a history of using this type of analysis. It was used to develop the Isla Vista Schedule and the current countywide critical minimum staffing schedule as mentioned by KPMG. Another example is a recent management internal review of workload in the Sheriff's Office Criminal Records Bureau, which led to the reorganization of some of the tasks completed by record staff.
This change has realized the benefit of more timely entries into the various data systems. The Sheriff's Office is currently in the process of capturing statistics for the unincorporated areas and analyzing the patrol needs. This data will help us conduct a workload analysis and show us the call-for-service workload, allowing us to understand and adjust staffing.
As mentioned, substantial consideration must be given to officer safety and geographic considerations. As outlined in the KPMG report, the Sheriff's Office would benefit from a data specialist who could aid in gathering and analysis of data to help identify drivers of overtime among other tasks. Looking at section 1.2, the Sheriff's Office partially agrees with the recommendation.
As one of its Renew 22 initiatives, the Sheriff's Office has reviewed positions within the organization that could be civilianized Over the past several years, 10 previously sworn positions have been replaced by civilian staff. The Sheriff's Office continues to review civilianization opportunities. The Sheriff's Office identified certain tasks that could be handled by civilian staff.
More cost effective sheriff service technicians assume these duties at a reduced cost. The Sheriff's Office also created five call taker positions to relieve some of the workload from and reduce the need for additional and more costly dispatchers. These positions have also served as stepping stones or pipelines into other positions within the organization. The Sheriff's Office increased the frequency of hiring steps. In 2018, 84 new employees were hired as we're 107 in 2019 and 77 in 2020.
We have identified and overcome various barriers to hiring and retention of employees. The sheriff's office will continuously evaluate changes in its hiring and retention practices and those in our profession. I will now turn the mic and camera to Commander Fotheringham to address Section 2.0.
Good afternoon Supervisors through the Chair, I'm Commander Darren Fotheringham. The Sheriff's Office agrees with the recommendations outlined in Section 2. 0 to implement data-driven decision making to enhance the operation. As has been discussed, 1 of the challenges to the sheriff's office use of data is the antiquated records management system or RMS system currently in use. I'm happy to report that the replacing of that system with a new system is currently in process.
As of the date of this meeting, the upgrade is in progress and on schedule. The project has included the identification of subject matter experts throughout the organization. These teams are identifying workflow and data needs for their operational areas. This will ensure the system captures the data necessary for operational decision making, efficiency of the operation and the required reporting of the criminal justice system. This new system will be compliant with the recently implemented requirements for the federal crime data reporting model referred to as NIBRS.
In addition to enabling routine and regular data reporting, the system will also interface with existing computer aided dispatch system and the jail records management system further enhancing the efficiencies across multiple branches of the sheriff's office. The system is scheduled to be fully functional in less than a year January of twenty two. As Sheriff Brown has discussed, one of the challenges the sheriff's office is has been the data specialists that the organization needs. And we look forward to working with the CEO's office in filling that need. The new data system combined with especially trained data personnel will enable the sheriff's office to further enhance operations throughout the use of regular reporting and dashboards as outlined in the KPMG report.
This concludes my report for Section 2.0 of the KPJM report.
Thank you, Commander Fotheringham. Our Sheriff's Office Chief Financial Officer Hope Vasquez will now comment on Section 3.0.
Good afternoon Chair Hartman and Supervisors with regard to Recommendation Three the Sheriff's Office generally agrees with the recommendation of KPMG as documented the Sheriff's Office does have an internal strategic document that includes infrastructure maintenance and system upgrades this document has been recently shared with the County Executive Office and County ICT In addition, we are active participants in the County Executive Information Technology Committee, the County IT Policy Group and the County IT Security Audit Group among others.
An example of the use of the strategic document is our current project to upgrade our records management system as noted by Commander Fotheringham to meet the national incident based reporting system that will soon be a mandated reporting function. As a department, we are actively keeping We are actively working on keeping our technology up to date and in compliance with the criminal justice information services.
With regard to vendor management and compliance, we intend to follow all county guidelines ensure vendor accountability. With that I return to under Sheriff Lindberg.
6:38 – 6:544 turns
Thank you CFO Vasquez. I will now comment on section 4.0. The sheriff's office agrees with some aspects of this recommendation and will evaluate others. The sheriff's office currently has budget related performance measures that track various bureaus and divisions within the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office is in the process of updating its budget performance measures to include among other things addressing average daily population in our jail.
The upgraded RMS system you have heard about will afford the Sheriff's Office management and executive staff with enhanced ability to pull and evaluate information that will assist in making data driven decisions, and ensuring relevant information for other interested parties. The upgraded RMS will allow the development of data reports and dashboards considering the sample measures as outlined by KPMG.
Once reports and dashboards are created, supervisors and managers will be trained in the use of the data for performance tracking. I will now turn it over to Chief Deputy Craig Bonner for Section 5.0.
Good afternoon Chair Harkman and members of the board. We'll jump right into Section 5.1 which we generally agree with. This recommendation calls for the realignment of call type descriptions and call prioritization naming within our computer aided dispatch system, both of which should allow for a greater understanding of the nature of our calls for service and to facilitate a deeper analysis of those calls.
We are absolutely not opposed to realigning our CAD call types We certainly see the potential benefits in doing so. However, while this may seem like a relatively simple suggestion that can be quickly implemented, the unfortunate reality is that it would be a significant project and it would entail substantial reprogramming of our CAD system. It realistically could not be accomplished without the provision of significant one-time resources to facilitate its completion.
Because of that, before pursuing this recommendation we would need to work with the CEO's office and carefully evaluate the potential benefits versus the cost. And work within the budgeting process to ensure that appropriate resources are dedicated to successfully accomplish the project. On a side note, we previously recognized the need to capture additional data that would allow us to evaluate the types of calls for service were receiving We did this by using more detailed disposition codes that are provided by the deputy at the end of the call.
This option did not require extensive reprogramming of the CAD system, nor the dedication of significant resources. You've heard it a time or two already but as with many aspects of the Sheriff's Office, this project even if it were to be successfully implemented in the future would become one of the many areas in which we are rich with raw data But quite frankly, we are working poor when it comes to usable information.
We desperately need data analysis resources to build reports that automatically collect and transform our raw data into usable information which can then be pushed to our staff and our managers who can use the information to drive decision making and resource allocation Moving on to Recommendation 5.2, we generally agree with this recommendation which calls for enhanced tracking of patrol response times again in order to better evaluate our timeliness and providing policing services within our communities.
We currently have the capability to capture and evaluate response times but it is a highly manual process and it makes it a time consuming and resource intensive endeavor We've previously captured point in time snapshots for past projects, including our critical minimum staffing policy and procedures that the undersheriff referred to as well as for the Isla Vista staffing project.
There are many challenges and pitfalls when evaluating response times. For instance, the need to segregate ultra low priority calls which was mentioned by our KPMG team which would otherwise greatly skew response times. We are hopeful that our transition to the updated RMS system that Commander Fotheringham referred to will better integrate with our existing CAD system And may provide additional ability to turn our CAD data into actionable information in the future.
With respect to 5.3, the Sheriff's Office appreciates KPMG recommendation 5. 3 which calls for an expansion of call diversion telephone reporting and online reporting again in order to allow for enhanced prioritization of resources However, we would like to flesh this out a bit and further point out existing levels of call diversion that are already occurring within our organization.
But we're not able to be fully encapsulated within the report calculations. In pointing this out, we recognize that one of the significant challenges in evaluating this topic is the complexity and degree of work that is required to accurately capture the true number of calls for service that are currently being diverted within the sheriff's office. The first level of diversion occurs within our dispatch center and on our general office business lines, whenever possible and appropriate. Our dispatchers and administrative office professionals attempt to connect community members with the services they need or want without sending a patrol deputy out there to handle their concern.
Additionally in instances that a community member wants or needs a police report And the crime or problem type is appropriate. The community member is provided with information about and offered online reporting, allowing them to submit the report without requiring the response or involvement of a patrol deputy. We implemented online reporting in 2017 and have repeatedly reevaluated the program and expanded the number of reports that can be filled out online.
In comparing the number and type of reports that we allow community members to fill out online today with our comparable law enforcement agencies, we are pretty much at the forefront and pushing right to the limit of what should be done online versus involving a trained investigator. In 2020 8% of the almost 17,000 sheriff reports were completed through the online reporting system.
We also use our sheriff service technicians to handle appropriate calls for service and reporting within our communities. And finally, when appropriate, our patrol deputies will handle calls for service and reports over the telephone, thereby minimizing the amount of time that is required to handle the call. All told we absolutely agree that call diversion is an important means of conserving resources while still providing our communities with timely services.
We will continue to improve upon and refine our call diversion efforts. However, this must be carefully balanced with our responsibility to provide community members with the level and quality of service they expect and deserve from the Sheriff's Office. With regard to recommendation 5.4 which calls for the development and codification of consistent data-driven policies that govern the use of overtime We partially agree with the recommendation.
We are very much aware of our duty to monitor, track and control the use of overtime. And we have clear policies for the use of overtime. Those policies balance the fiscal responsibilities and operational needs while ensuring compliance with the MOUs between the county and the applicable employee organizations. We also consistently work to educate our managers and supervisors in the importance of documenting the use of overtime and its causes within the county's existing time card system.
Each of our divisions prepares a bi-weekly overtime report that evaluates overtime use throughout the pay period, along with the causes or drivers of that overtime. These reports are reviewed by our command and executive teams In order to monitor that overtime usage and compliance with our policies. We previously attempted to leverage a scheduling software to automate and track scheduling throughout our operations.
Unfortunately, the system did not meet our needs for a low threshold system it wasted in inordinate amount of frontline supervisor and employee time and it realistically would have required hiring several full-time schedulers to properly manage the system. And ultimately, the amount of juice that we were going to get wasn't worth the squeeze whereupon we canceled that contract.
Again all told, we are absolutely open to ways of improving our ability to track and monitor over time. Finally with regard to recommendation 5.5, we agree with KPMG in calling for enhanced time tracking for our patrol function To better evaluate the productivity and utilization of our patrol resources. This is something we absolutely see the value in, and it is something we have been working on well before the county retained KPMG.
Our CAD system currently captures the amount of time a deputy spends handling calls for service. But did not generally account for the time when a deputy was writing reports, making phone calls or otherwise engaged in administrative work that is not specifically occurring while assigned to a call for service. As part of our effort to build out and better support the Deputy Sheriff Service Unit methodology within our contractivity services we look for a means of providing compliance and utilization data's to the cities Toward that end, we implemented a low-threshold means by which our patrol deputies are expected to log when they are out of service due to the type of administrative duties I mentioned a moment ago.
Again, better allowing us to track their time and activity. Now while those initial steps were taken, we are absolutely interested in being able to go further and more accurately capture and better evaluate personnel time and activity across our organization Not only for our patrol deputies, but also for our investigative and administrative staff. Again this is one of the many examples of the need for data analysis resources we need assistance in building low threshold reports that automatically extract and evaluate our raw data and turn it into usable actionable information that can be automatically pushed to appropriate staff and management personnel.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Under-Sheriff Lindbergh.
Thank you Chief Bonner. I'll now turn it over to Chief Deputy Vincent Wasilewski who will comment on Section 6.0.
Thank you Under-Sheriff, Chair Hartman and Supervisors. As the Section 6.1 which focuses on studying jail utilization and drivers of incarceration, Sheriff's Office agrees with this recommendation This is an ongoing effort, including identifying data to analyze data entry quality assurance and report development. There are also numerous committees such as the criminal justice planning group CCP and stepping up just to name a few that they're studying this as well.
We will continue to work with ATEMS our jail management system provider to develop reports to help in this effort. Sheriff's Office also agrees with Recommendation 6.2, involving expanding diversion programs. We plan on completing these efforts by June 2021. To assist us in this effort we have brought a software product called ACTS which stands for Applied Correctional Transition Strategy Online. This product draws data from numerous sources and combines it to track recidivism program efficacy and reentry outcomes to help in decision making. It was purchased using funds other than the GFC.
The Custody Branch maintains strong relationships with our criminal justice partners and community-based organizations through stepping up, CCP, Forensic Action Team, Reentry Steering Committee, Criminal Justice Planning Group and others. And we will continue to look for more opportunities as they present themselves. Section 6.3 recommends assessing drivers of overtime in the custody branch and aligning staffing with a demand for service model, and the Sheriff's Office generally agrees.
This is an ongoing process also. The bulk of custody operations is a post-driven organization. And although population numbers may be reduced enough to close housing areas now, the net gain is extremely hard to predict. Sheriff's Office will explore recommendation 6.4, which suggests expanding the responsibilities for sheriff service technician civil service class employees using the included tear sheet from KPMG we've already begun the project and should complete the exploration by January 2022 section 6.5 recommends increasing the alternative sentencing Bureau and the sheriff's office generally agrees with KPMG on this An evaluation is anticipated by June 2021.
Global Telelink, our inmate telephone system provider, is in the process of developing a kiosk and tablet program that will allow us to automate many of the paperwork tasks that we currently have, including applying for early release on electronic monitoring. And again, the ACT system will be used to track and report data from these efforts. In addition, as the board directed in December of last year, Sheriff's office and probation have begun an assessment of our current processes in ASB.
And aimed at looking for efficiencies and eliminating duplication of efforts. Finally, the sheriff agrees with a recommendation contained in section 6.6 which calls for adding more support to the sheriff's treatment program This too is an ongoing process. We currently have the need for additional discharge planning staff, which we will be bringing to the CEO to discuss. The other tasks mentioned are completed.
An example of our efforts is the access line. It is administered by behavioral wellness and has been an integral part of our efforts to address housing and program placement for those with behavioral health and drug addiction issues. We will continue to look for ways to find appropriate housing and program placement for inmates being released back to the community.
Turn it back over to under Sheriff Lindbergh.
6:54 – 7:047 turns
All right, thank you Chief Wasilewski I will now turn the microphone and camera over to Sheriff Brown
Thank you, Under Sheriff Lindbergh, Chief Swaszewski and Bonner, CFO Vasquez and Commander Fotheringham. I also want to thank every other member of our organization who individually and collectively have been so dedicated during some of the most challenging and dynamic times that we've ever seen in law enforcement and corrections. And again, I want to thank the entire KPMG team It has been very productive to have some people from outside our organization who are bright, talented and skillful in the efficiency arena. Take a look at what we're doing to acknowledge some of the good things that we've accomplished during these difficult times, but also to constructively point out areas that may help us do even better.
And we have been committed to efficiency for many years in the sheriff's office And we've already taken numerous steps in both the technology and human resource arenas to make our organization more efficient and more effective. Some examples of that in the technology area include obtaining a computer-aided dispatch system upgrade from a server based system to a network based system, Obtaining a similar records management system upgrade as you heard, and I might point out that we obtained that by using $660,000 in asset forfeiture money. Not a budgeted item but used asset forfeiture money to obtain that resource.
We've obtained first CopLink and then Accurint, LexisNexis regional crime fighting software as well as software that helps us track our professional standards unit investigations. And as you've heard we've utilized online reporting for several years now with increasing effect. We've also taken steps to become more efficient and more effective in the human resource area as well.
We've civilianized numerous manager, supervisor and line positions in dispatch, in records, in custody records, in custody operations and in patrol. Which have allowed us to replace or leverage more expensive sworn positions with civilian positions. I'm sorry we've had a civilian public information officer in the organization since 2007. And we have developed critical minimum staffing levels to better manage our patrol and our custody resources.
Let me close it with this thought, this process has been good groundwork for what we have to do to continue moving forward. It's a point of renewed commitment To use data to seek efficiencies and to make more and better informed decisions as a result of that data. And to make better use of the public dollars, and the resources that have been entrusted to us.
We have or will incorporate much of what has been recommended and intend to build upon these recommendations to better serve our community and our constituents. And with that, myself and my staff are available for any questions that you might have.
CEO Miyasato did you have anything to add?
Supervisors through the chair. No, I just want to thank the sheriff's office there is a lot of KPMG is bringing up for all our departments and I think one of the lessons to all of us is they're telling us you're doing a good job but there's more that you can do and I think that's the value of KPMG. But I do want to just note to everyone That the sheriff's office has been one of the most engaged departments in this process that I've seen so far.
And you can tell from the expertise and discussion, they know the recommendations inside and out. You could hear it from Chief Wazluski, Chief Bonner, Under Sheriff Lindbergh and the sheriff himself. It was actually a five hour meeting, I believe with KPMG where the sheriff was there himself going through the recommendations. So I just want to acknowledge that and appreciate their level of engagement in taking this seriously.
Thank you. And we all appreciate that. Supervisor Hart?
Yeah, I want to echo that too. This is really impressive. I really appreciate Sheriff Brown under Sheriff Linver Commander Farthingham chief financial officer Vasquez Chief Bonner and Chief Wazowski's very detailed response to you know what is a really excellent report from KPMG again? I want to appreciate Mr. Zizek and Mr. Rothman for their work too. You know, I don't think any of us Could have imagined when this KPMG process originally started that and as part of Renew 22, the implementation of Renew 22.
We wouldn't be having this moment coincide with really a national movement to transform the criminal justice system, advance equity. And so there is a real opportunity here to use data and science to enhance our efforts and institute the changes that our community members are asking for. And so equitably improving the health and safety of all Santa Barbara County residents is the most important responsibility that the county has.
That the sheriff's office agrees with most of the recommendations from KPMG and that they are working actively to implement many of those recommendations. These recommendations are excellent, and they are building blocks for the change that we want to see. These won't occur overnight as the sheriff's executive team explained in great detail because they are substantive and detailed And complex and we're going to all have to continue to work together the board on the sheriff's office CEO's office. To maintain the commitment to advance systemic change there's a couple specific things you know I'd like to highlight their there was a little bit of a disagreement about call diversion and what we ought to be able to do about that and I understand you know this is complex and fraught in there is a balance between efficiency and service and I get that My experience coming from the city of Santa Barbara was that there were significant advantages to providing community service officers and downtown ambassadors.
to both enhance safety and responsiveness, you know, and provide the time and resources for officers to be doing other work. And I do think there are communities in the county that could look really carefully at those kind of services as well. Obviously, Isla Vista is a great place to think about that in regards to non-serious offenses. We could potentially increase the deployment of nonsworn officers and allow the deputies to focus on more serious calls for service.
And overarching all of this conversation I think is the critical need to understand the driving factors for incarceration and trying to do everything we can to reduce jail utilization. I think that, you know, the experience that we're going through right now is demonstrating in real time that there are new ways we can do things and new ways we can look at how we're doing law enforcement and incarceration And I just want us to always keep trying to push and develop for lasting changes. The sheriff knows that I'm very supportive of finding the resources necessary to conduct a comprehensive data study of the people that have been diverted out of the jail in this moment in time, you know we can't We can't be making decisions without accurate information, and there is nothing that is a higher priority to me than getting that information and working collaboratively through the Community Corrections Partnership process to make sure that we're in agreement about those facts and that we have the data for policymakers and community members to understand.
You know, how many people are in jail and why they're there. And I want to recommend that a data dashboard be developed to help provide some transparency to that. There's information that we've been recently getting you know in the board offices and then the other community law enforcement partners about jail populations some of the information you know that needs to be expanded upon And shared more broadly so that we can see and the public can understand what's going on right now.
I really want to commend the Sheriff's Office for the really innovative programs that Sheriff Brown has led, most notably the co-response mental health program That is a tremendous success and it points at a model that should be expanded on. Just last, I think Friday we had a Community Corrections Partnership meeting and one of the public members was so impressed with that there. One of the representatives from Freedom for Youth was saying well you know can't we use that model for other types of intervention? You know maybe there's a co-response youth violence program where we can bring specialized trained officers with social service providers You know, at that first point of contact to to make more impact and have greater traction with those instances.
So there's just a lot of things we can do together and I just am really pleased to see the sheriff's department took this report very seriously dug in deeply shared information with KPMG and the CEO's office And you know, that kind of collaboration is exactly what we need to do to make, to provide evidence-based strategies for improving public safety. And I am a big advocate for that and want to thank everybody involved.
And let me ask Supervisor Nelson.
7:04 – 7:102 turns
Yes, thank you Chair Hartman. Just a few comments. First of all wanted to think Sheriff Bill Brown as elected department head For your participation, I recognize that you within your role retain independence. That you're ultimately accountable directly to the voters. And for you to participate in this process, I think speaks well of you and your team and I wanted to express my thanks there.
And also wanted to recognize that Deputy Sheriff's Association. I think some organizations may be resistant to the civilianization of their department in these ways. And I think it says a lot about our men and women. Within that association that they were willing to work with the sheriff's department to allow those positions be created for the long term sustainability of the department, basically. So I think that they need to be recognized as well.
We're seeing over and over with KPMG the need to invest in technology and the Sheriff's Department is It's not unique in that way. I would definitely support a budget allocation once we get to this year's budget towards that end and some analysis as well. I believe the sheriff has come to the board multiple years asking for that, and I think this should be the year that we invest in that if we can.
Just one other small thought I had in regards to the one section 5.3 where the Sheriff's Department disagreed with KPMG about the rollout and you know, the internet based reports whatnot. I think what we're suffering from is it from a generation or we were all taught to dial 911? And I think that we just have not been able to break beyond that. And so, I think it's more of a PR issue and getting the word out even though I know that.
Sheriff's Department has a PIO. I do think we need to be able to, you know and that's focused on the issues that are facing the department. I do think there's some work that we can all do to help get the word out that there is alternative ways to reach the sheriff's department. A lot of people don't know the civilian numbers that you can call. You know, that's something that maybe we as supervisors can do to get out on our social media. Maybe we can do maybe something quarterly at the county to make sure people understand that those are options for you because we really do have quite a long History of focus on 911.
I also know that there's certain apps out there that other jurisdictions are using and I don't know if that's something that we would want to look at, I know there's something like see click fix that they have within the public works side or within other jurisdictions to have something that people you know constituents can do some immediate reporting on app based Supervisor Labanino.
Well, thank you. I just want to echo both of those and after our eighth, I think it's our eighth KPMG report. I'm going to plan on using some of this language when I get home when my wife tells me to do something until I substantially agree with you but not sure I'm gonna be able to implement it now. But you know and I think both of my colleagues really hit it on the head when as an elected official if you as I read Through statewide newspapers, many boards of supervisors are really struggling with their sheriffs right now in their sheriff's department. And there's a lot of bickering, a lot of fighting going on with a lot of these changes that are being demanded by the public.
And it's really a breath of fresh air to see our sheriff's department embrace it. I guess that's no big surprise since you're a statewide leader and Stepping up initiative. And as we go through each one of these KPMG reports, I think the message that I get back basically is better data gives you better decision making. At the end of the day though all those things cost money and while we've been reviewing all of these departments as they come before us it's kind of like well I'm glad they're not doing the Board of Supervisors because nobody likes to see this scab yield back but Our day in the barrel is coming because these ways that they could get better data, at the end of the day it's gonna be how many dollars exist to be able to get the data that we need to make the better decisions to become more efficient.
So I don't think that's lost on anybody on the board and when I think from what I hear from everybody, we're all committed to doing our part to like I said, become more efficient. That's the bottom line is better efficiency provides better service And again, thanks for the very thorough presentation.
7:10 – 7:165 turns
Supervisor Williams and then Supervisor Hart.
Well, this amount of scrutiny is something that I would say would never be fun. And I really appreciate Sheriff Brown and his lieutenants and chiefs Thank you. I think the stakes are really high. If we don't adapt and reinvent public safety from a community and a fiscal perspective, then we will not adequately serve the public together as partners. And so I am hearing The sounds of partnership and and I pledge myself willing to work with the department to try. To implement some of these efficiencies because I think what people want is a public safety force that is closer And so in my mind, really the most likely suspect for those resources is in operational efficiencies if they are able to be implemented.
Supervisor Hart?
Yeah I did want to comment specifically on that because I think this conversation does lead to a conversation about resources and you know are we going to invest more money to get the data that we need to be more efficient And I would offer a challenge to say that in an organization, in a department that has 737 full-time equivalent employees and $155 million budget that we ought to be able to find dollars to have a data analyst. Separate from the board adding money to the pot there have to be ways to restructure and prioritize investments within the department To deliver that because it's you know, that's just good management. If you need to reinvest in having the data to make your operation as efficient as he possibly can and other departments have come to the board and made that commitment and made those decisions and made those hard choices to get that data without coming and asking for extra money.
So I appreciate the work. I appreciate the commitment. I appreciate You know the detailed response, but I also you know I'm looking for offering a challenge to say you know. I think we can do this without additional resources because there are there are ways to save an obvious one is that you know we have nearly 400 fewer prisoners in jail Just simply the meals that they would have needed alone is $150,000 or more.
And I think that money ought to be able to be available to getting us the data that we need to make informed decisions.
Thank you. Well, I just wanted to echo my appreciation for KPMG's very thorough report and for the professionalism, Sheriff Brown of you and your team. There's one issue, I'll try not to repeat what everybody else has said. Often we hear from KPMG that there is an issue of overarching goals and how are those integrated? And how do you measure what those are? We didn't hear so much of that perhaps it's because it's obvious we want to reduce crime, we want to reduce recidivism, we wanna have diversion programs and reduce the jail population That for me, and I certainly respect your independently elected and some of this is certainly within your discretion.
But for me, Equity right now looms large and how we are addressing that through law enforcement is extremely important. And what kind of data and how we respond to our community in that way, I hope that as data gets gathered and the systems put in place that that is a high priority. I'm also very much committed myself in other areas to the idea of shared safety and that the community itself can step up and take responsibility.
And we're seeing this evolve in Isla Vista, and with the support of your office that's been tremendously valued. And I think Supervisor Williams alluded to this, we want law enforcement that's closer to the people. And I think one of the things that struck me in the report was the discretionary time officers are often cruising and that's important and a lot of traffic violations and then other things that are revealed so...and in rural county indeed you know there's a lot of justification for that But in my mind, community policing is extremely important in the townships and in the communities where that's possible. It builds the relationships that create the trust that really is kind of diminished in this area. And so I just wanted to get that on the table.
I don't know. I guess Sheriff Brown, are there any responses to the things you've heard or KPMG to the things you've heard from the board? I'll give you that opportunity and then we'll go to public comment.
7:16 – 7:223 turns
Thank You chair Hartman yes I would like to respond to just a handful of things that were brought up first of all thank you and thank the other members of the board for your generous comments Again, it's reflective I think of the fact that our organization is committed to excellence and is committed to it in everything that we do. And that we recognize that to achieve that one has to continue to improve.
And many of the things that you've brought up individually are things that we've had Discussions about in the past and we've had, as you're well aware of some challenges a significant number of challenges with the Great Recession and. The impact that it's had on our organization and on our resources, we've had to reinvent how we do some things. I would say with respect to your last comment about community policing that community policing is really at the core of what we do in the Sheriff's office.
And it's probably highlighted more in the Isla Vista foot patrol than anywhere else because that is a unique community. It is a community that we have worked in partnership with the university and with the California Highway Patrol at the beginnings to establish that, and it is the longest running community policing initiative in the nation We just celebrated our 50th anniversary at the Isla Vista Foot Patrol.
I did not know that!
Yeah, it's a pretty amazing accomplishment really and unfortunately with COVID-19 and the fact that we couldn't have a great big celebration maybe we'll have a big 51st anniversary instead but That's a credit to the men and women who work out there now, and who have worked out there individually. But our efforts are really not limited to Isla Vista. Really the core of what we do is trying to engage and treat people in a way that is respectful, and that is understanding. And not only do we want to protect them but we wanna serve them.
And that is not something that happens just out in the law enforcement side of it, on the outside. It happens within the confines of the jail as well. Recently I shared some letters that were sent to me some very poignant and touching letters that were sent to me by two inmates about how their lives have been changed as a result of being incarcerated in our jail.
We're looking to do even greater things when the Northern Branch Jail opens up in many areas that involve programming and giving people the tools to be able to do that as well. We definitely agree with you that community policing is incredibly important. It is also, the reality is that good community policing is also more labor intensive and it requires more human resources to do it right.
And we've struggled over the past few years with staffing that has kept us at minimum levels of safety. And we've looked for ways to improve efficiencies, to be able to retain and make the best use of some of the more high touch parts of the organization, the community resource deputies, the school resource deputies teaching the DARE program in the schools Keeping connected with communities through the Explorer program.
The chaplain program in the jail, things that I could go on these are just parts of the community that we bring into our organization and our operation. And we connect with people in those different areas. The Citizens Academy is another example and again many of these things unfortunately have fallen victim to COVID-19 that To do them or continue them in the way that we traditionally have. But I think they all pay handsome dividends in creating this trust and this bond between those who we serve and who we protect in this community.
With respect to the data analyst, I didn't mention it directly but You know, a possibility I think here of doing exactly what Supervisor Hart mentioned in terms of maybe being able to fill that data analyst position without having to come to you and ask for a line. A funded line out of the general fund and that is as a result of our projected revenues on our projected budget this year is significantly better than it will have been for the last several years And one of the things, and again we're in the very early stages of the budget process. So I don't wanna count the chicken before it hatches here but we're hoping that that will allow us to not only have a data specialist but our plan is to combine that position with several others and on a full time and a part-time basis put resources together to establish a data team, a data unit if you will Years ago, we had a research and planning unit for the Sheriff's Office.
It was a victim of the Great Recession. We're looking to try to reestablish part of that in terms of the data element and using data to best help us drive decisions. And our hope is that will become a reality with this new budget. So I think those are the two things in particular that I just wanted to address. I would ask my staff if they have anything that they'd like to add or any thoughts that they'd like to add before moving to public comment?
7:22 – 7:3417 turns
All right. I don't hear anybody chiming in, so with that we'll go to public comment
Chair Hartman and members of the board, we have two requests to speak on this item. And we are going to begin with Maureen Earls to be followed by Spencer Brandt.
Can you hear me? Yes. I'm good. Thank you. Well, good afternoon. It's been a long day for you. Uh, watching from home and you must be exhausted. So I'll try and make this short. Um, our criminal justice work group has reviewed the KM uh, KPMG report for both the Sheriff's office department and the interagency collaboration. And first we commend the board for choosing this excellent outside agency that KPMG to Review and provide recommendations at all the Santa Barbara Criminal Justice Departments. And using staff interviews and evidence to identify the current practices that are going on, and then transformational recommendations for more effective and more efficient operations.
And as a former administrator I know there's always opportunity for improvement and this kind of report is invaluable for leadership CLU has provided written recommendations for the realignment plan, which closely aligned with these KPMG recommendations. Secondly a key finding in the Sheriff's Department review is a graph on page one of the executive summary and it compares the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department with other similar counties And it shows Santa Barbara County spends over 26 million more on our Sheriff's Department than the average of the comparable counties and hires 165 more full-time equivalent positions, which also have additional very extensive overtime costs.
So we would expect this year that reductions in our county budget for the Sheriff's Department when these KPMG recommendations for efficiency are followed. And thirdly, the KPMG recommends that the Sheriff's Department use current available resources to work with a CEO to help train current staff together and analyze specific data regarding positions needed technology updates and operations And KPMG places the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department in the low range of overall on the continuum of performance standards in this area.
It also means that department respond to very specific recommendations with the help of the county CEO, which she has agreed to provide. So this is really encouraging this kind of collaboration And fourth, we also support fully the KPMG recommendations for specific improved interagency collaboration actions with the important leadership of the CEO for gathering the much needed data on criminal justice performance for our county.
We eagerly await the progress reports from the CEO this year And we believe that if the KPMG recommendations are followed, that we can all reimagine a transformed criminal justice system in Santa Barbara County. Thank you
very much Mrs. Earle for your
comments. We will now go to our final speaker Spencer Brandt
Hello, Chair Hartman and members of the board. I'm Spencer Brandt. Thanks for allowing me to speak and thank you for holding this hearing. Although this report may seem really technical, I think that it's opportunities like this for transparency and public participation that really promote an increased sense of trust in public safety and law enforcement and can spark important community conversations. For example, it was only today that I learned that there is a specific staffing model for my community of Isla Vista and I hope to learn more about that in the future.
I hope that there can be more opportunities like this in the future where the public can participate in the public safety process. First, I just really want to support the recommendations that relate to expanding diversion programs to reduce the jail utilization and improve treatment for those who are incarcerated. I think those are really important. I wanted to speak today particularly about attention to the call data that's in the report which does not disaggregate the calls for service that are initiated by officers and those that are initiated by members of the public who actually call for law enforcement help. When I walk around my community on a weekend night, I see a lot of officer-initiated contact and most of it is for minor alcohol related crimes.
These are victimless crimes Unfortunately, I think the over enforcement of some of these minor crimes erodes community trust in law enforcement. And reading this report, I think about those emergency responses and the goal that I know the sheriff has and we all have in order to improve those response times particularly for priority one and two calls members of the public who are in distress And wondering if we can reallocate resources to better serve those in emergency needs. I really appreciate the comments from Supervisor Hart about utilizing non sworn officers for those minor calls. While I'm not speaking on behalf of the IVCSD, I do want to note that I think our board is very supportive of this approach. We've partnered with the UCSB Police Department to deploy community service officers on Friday and Saturday nights They provide escorts to community members who need a safe walk home and help provide a non enforcement arm of the public safety branch.
These are student personnel, so there's some limitations on what they can do. And our board has made it a goal to work with law enforcement agency to develop a new type of position that can respond to these minor calls in alternative ways that promote diversion and promote community accountability. Thank you
Thank you so with that I close public comment. Any final remarks by any member of the board? Supervisor Williams and then Supervisor Hart
Again, I would say that I appreciate the stats that the public speakers put out. And I think what we are hoping for is the type of community policing, the type of mental health professionals, the type of non-sworn officers mixed in with the You know, tough guys and gals ready to protect us from danger. But those do take resources so I to me I would scale back the expectation. I don't necessarily ultimately expect a You know the department to cost a lot less.
I that history doesn't really bear that out what I would expect is for the department to maybe level off its growth and hopefully with the efficiencies that we're discussing have That seemed to be really what the community is hoping for. And so I just want to that's my hope and my expectation is not necessarily for The sheriff to come up with a windfall back to the county. It's to be able to take the efficiencies that we're talking about and use that for us to adapt and to better serve the public.
Last call Supervisor Nelson.
Yes, thank you Chair Hartman. I just want to make a comment about the community policing and that if anybody in the public has ever got a chance to do right along with our sheriff deputies, you would see that patrol is community policing. Our deputies are out there. Yes they are looking for people that are doing the wrong thing but that goes with all their training that they've had for years and years. And so I don't think it's the old model of The cops, you know, waiting at the donut shop for a call from dispatch.
Our deputies are out there in our communities on up on leads. They're looking at areas of our community that are little hotspots and they know them best. And so I really want to commend them and also just make sure I can be a voice of support out there in the community. I think they've done a great job Now, could there be more on community level? Could some of our communities have a community resource officer potentially in the future. I know I'm interested for that in my own community but I do feel like that we're getting good service as far as community policing is going with our deputies and on patrol so thank you.
And I just wanted to echo what you're saying about community resource deputies. I think they are invaluable for the kind of work we're talking about. Supervisor Lavinino Hearing no comment, we will close with Supervisor Hart who started us off. You get the last word.
All right and my words are just to say thank you. I want to say thanks to Sheriff Brown for his offer to be working within his budget constraints to develop a data team that is exactly what I'd love to hear. I think that recognizes the importance of this task and I want to thank Maureen Earls from CLU for her You know diligent committed work in this space and I mean all the folks include that are there constantly watching and contributing to this conversation. I want to thank Mr. Brandt because I think his basic message that transparency and public participation increases trust and mutual respect is a great way to end our board meeting today.
All right, I need a motion
I'll move the staff recommendation.
And may I have a second?
Second.
And Madam Clerk.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 move the staff recommendation. And may I have a second? Second. And Madam Clerk.
Show transcript
7:34 – 7:352 turns
Motion passes
unanimously. Thank you, so our next regular meeting of the board is Tuesday March 2nd and we do have a special meeting on February 23rd where we'll be talking about issues of our unsheltered population here in Santa Barbara County. So thank you very much and especially Mrs. Earls who was the entire time she said all day that is dedication thank you