Board of Supervisors — 2021-06-01

Good morning. Here

we go. I will call to order the June 1st 2021 special meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Chair Nelson and members of the board, just a couple quick announcements this morning. I would like to remind the public that the Board of Supervisors meetings are now being interpreted and broadcast live in Spanish. We are broadcasting our meetings in Spanish both for Cox Cable subscribers in South County as well as Comcast cable subscribers in North County.

Members of the public can now view our meetings in Spanish by turning on the secondary audio programming also known as SAP or SAP under their language settings. And I would also like to remind the public who are participating in our meeting today of the board's alternative methods of public participation. For alternative methods of public participation and to provide public comment on general public comment or on an item on the board's agenda, please see page two of our agenda today. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment you may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page 2.

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. The Clerk will call you by name. When removed from mute, you will hear a notification that the line has been unmuted. If you are using a touch-tone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself.

Again, if you're using a touchtone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself. Each person may address the board for up to three minutes and this is at the discretion of the chair. If you have any questions please contact the Clerk of the Board's Office at 805-568-2240 again that's 805 568 2240 and that concludes my announcements today

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Now is the time for members of the public to speak on today's closed session agenda. Madam Clerk are there any requests to speak on today's closed session agenda?

Chair Nelson and Members of the Board we have no request to speak on today's closed session agenda. All

right thank you. We will now recess to closed session. County Council will you please read the items for consideration today?

Chair and supervisors, today in closed session the board is agendized to consider two broad matters. The first is conference with labor negotiators concerning all bargaining units, unrepresented employees, managers and executives. And the second broadly is public employee performance evaluations for the directors of the following 12 county departments, Agricultural Commissioner, Child Support Services, Community Services, Fire General Services, Human Resources, Planning and Development, Probation, Public Defender, Public Health, Public Works and Social Services.

Thank you Mr. Gazzone. We will return from closed session at 1pm to reconvene for the regular session of our agenda today. We are now reconvening the special meeting of June 1st, 2021. Will County Council please report out from closed session?

Chair and supervisors, today in closed session the board considered two broad areas. The first was conference with labor negotiators for all bargaining units, unrepresented employees, managers and executives. And the second involved public employee performance evaluations for the directors of the following 12 county departments. Agricultural Commissioner, Child Support Services, Community Services, Fire, General Services Human Resources, Planning and Development, Probation, Public Defender, Public Health, Public Works and Social Services. There are no reportable actions.

Thank you.

The next item of business is the County Executive Officer Report. CAO Miyasato do you have anything to report today?

No report this afternoon Chair.

Thank you. Now is the time for members of the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda. Madam Clerk are there any requests to speak on items not on the agenda today?

Chair Nelson and Members of the Board we have no request to speak

Thank you. Next item up is departmental item number one, Madam Clerk will you please read that item into the record?

Chair Nelson and members of the board departmental item number one is from the County Executive Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 ARPA funding and other one-time resources for fiscal year 2021 through 2022.

Chair Nelson, members of the board. Good afternoon. Our goal today really is to share with your board some information that we have updated on ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the federal funding as follows, as well as have a conversation with your board on an item that was deferred from budget workshops with respect to the use of cannabis tax revenues.

So as we walk through that, our real objective at the end of the session is to seek your board's direction and priorities with respect to these two sources of revenues. When we talk about these revenues I really want to talk in three buckets. The first two are both from ARPA. It's what referring to in our report as restricted ARPA dollars and discretionary ARPA dollars. Let me tell you what the difference is.

On the restricted ARPA dollars, we're really talking about those uses that have to fit within the confines of the guidance provided by the county by the U.S. Treasury and they follow largely about services and we'll talk a little bit more about what those interim guidelines look like but that number is about $25.3 million. The second bucket we're referring to in the award letter is our ARPA discretionary dollars.

They're discretionary because they are received by the county to reimburse the county for revenues lost as a result of the pandemic. Once we've satisfied that test, those funds are then eligible to be used for pretty much any services your board otherwise had the discretion to provide if we had had those revenues at the time of the pandemic period. The third bucket is really the county's total discretionary which is the cannabis tax revenue. These are funds that are carried over from prior fiscal year You were discussed those with your board during workshops and we've included them here for conversation today because what we're seeking is board direction on how to incorporate those if at all in the upcoming fiscal year budget.

By way of background, the county has received a lot of federal and state funding throughout the pandemic. I've tried to capture here for your board's information the large buckets of money that we received in 2020-2020. We received $46.1 million from CARES Act You'll recall we came to your board in early last, this fiscal year I guess with respect to the buckets of categories of costs that we wanted to cover with this funding source.

Initially when this funding source came into county we had a December 31st 2020 as a spending deadline. That deadline was later extended but we had satisfied the use those funds by that earlier December's deadline Second, we received emergency rental assistance funds which we call ERA1 funds in the amount of $13.3 million directly from the Treasury. Those funds are being allocated for rental assistance and utility cost relief under our agreement with United Way.

We've also received at that same time directly from the state an earmarked estate dollars for additional $14.3 million The Public Health Department has also received about $37 million in a variety of pots of money with respect that are very earmarked, very specific in their use. ERA 2 program we just notified the last few weeks is available at $16.6 million. That money has started to come in directly from the Treasury and that brings us to one of our conversations today which is the ARPA plan worth about $86.6 million.

In addition, throughout this pandemic both from the federal government and the state there have been a lot of other direct relief provided to small businesses individuals payment deadlines tax credits grants at the low interest loans. So we're talking largely about the funds that came directly to county but I don't I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it really is much more robust with respect to funds supported by the feds in the state To all those impacted by the pandemic.

With respect to ARPA. $86.6 million received in two pieces, 50% were expect to receive by before the end of June which will then be available for your board to allocate in the 2122 budget and the remaining 58% eligible for the following which we received eligible for use in The funds must be spent or otherwise obligated by December 31st, 2024. So we have a longer lead time to spend them and we'll get them in two years but we have three years basically to spend them.

And that's important to keep in mind as we look at how we parse those out and the services we provide with the funds that we receive. In addition to the 86.6 million coming directly to the county The other cities within the county have also received money directly from the feds to the tune of about $88 million. And as I mentioned before, additional funding has come directly to businesses and individuals with respect to supporting the impact of the pandemic.

On May 10th, US Treasury released what they're referring to as their interim final rule And this really is the initial guidance. It was released on May 10th, it is out for a six day comment period at the conclusion of which they'll presumably take those comments and make modifications and finalize their rule. We do expect to receive those someplace early September and are prepared to then present your board once we've vetted those in the October timeframe.

The use of the funds are really subject to the county's single audit performed by the county's external auditors. The role of that, really is to ensure that the uses of the funds by the county meet the obligations and the guidelines provided by Treasury. And so what we're suggesting is that as we look at the final allocation of the funds We'll be reviewing those closely with the auditor controller and also with the external auditors prior to making funding commitments.

And as you see us, as we work through our day-to-day that our plan is to recommend that your board essentially provide us guidance and priorities and then we will return to your board in October for final recommendations on use of funds once we're able to clear those and vet those through both our county auditor and our external audits The interim guidelines on eligibility really outline four broad topics, four broad categories of expenses and they're listed here on the screen. I won't go through and read those are also incorporated obviously in our report but it's responding to emergencies providing governmental service to extend the revenue was lost to provide premium pay for essential workers and to make necessary investments in water sewer broadband infrastructure With respect to restricted, restricted we're suggesting there's about 25.3 million of restricted ARPA funding that's available for your board's conversation today.

Staff from our office and the departments most closely related to providing key services to the public are in the process of developing a plan. They've done a really good job in addressing what they're identifying what the needs are In the community and how we can best respond to those needs. And so they're currently working on a plan that includes these six or seven bullets here, but it's really expanding behavioral health services is simply in interim long-term solutions to housing addressing the economic impacts of the pandemic in the community improving access to Community Services Offsetting staffing operational impacts and costs incurred by the county due to the pandemic.

Enhancing community engagement, communications and data transparency. And aiding impacted industries such as tourism, travel and hospitality. The restricted ARPA funding for response recovery directly related to public health emergencies has its effect on With respect to homeless facility acquisition, it has brought to our attention the opportunity to acquire a piece of property that will be available to address emergency sheltering.

Your board is considering that and staff are actively exploring that. and negotiating that possibility. We think that cost is roughly $7 million when you count the acquisition costs as well as the improvements that are needed on their facility. So, that 7 million should your board provide that direction would come from that 25.3 million. We've also identified In our early estimate, 18 million of discretionary ARPA funding to replace what the guidance refers to as general revenues lost as a result of pandemic.

And these may be allocated to provide general government services or to fund eligible capital or one-time projects In addition, as we just walk through our discussion today, there's about 8.85 million, 8.849 million of cannabis tax revenues that are available for one-time projects for other critical needs. Potential uses for the discretionary funds include one time capital and maintenance projects, other critical needs, as well as budget workshop maintenance expansion requests.

As a refresher from workshops, our next few slides identify in the report identifies projects that and capital needs that were identified. That is referred to as our CIP Tier 1 priority projects and I'll go through those in a moment equal to about $5 million. A CIP Tier 2 priority, which is about $6 million. Additional expansion requests from CSD of pavement improvements in parks, about a million and the public works, a pavement expansion request of about 4.3 million.

In addition or I earlier mentioned the need for homeless facility acquisition or renovation that values about $7 million. Your Board will recall in workshops we went through Tier 1. These were the Tier 1 projects, these are projects that are not included currently in the recommended budget but are identified through the CIP project process as priority needs They typically are not particularly glamorous, but they are important in the provision of service. Ultimately the provision of services that we have facilities that are functional for our staff and our public to receive services. Those would include boiler system replacements in the courthouse, elevator replacement within the main jail.

Road and bridge improvements in Tucker Grove Park, roof and window replacements in our engineering building, HVAC replacements at Cali Real and Juvenile Hall. Again totaling about $4.95 million. Also from the workshop, we provided your board at that time what we refer to here is our CIP priority projects tier 2. This was an additional $6 million of identified needs and priority projects that again have not yet been funded in the recommended budget.

Those are all 6 million for a total of Tier 1 and Tier 2 of about 11 million dollars. Also during workshops your board heard requests, expansion requests from both parks and roads with respect to pavement management. Combined that's about $5.3 million. Subsequent to workshops and in anticipation of today's presentation our office solicited and received... Excuse me

Mr. Pratt. Sorry please proceed.

Thank you. Our office solicited and received ideas for consideration for ARPA funding and or the residual cannabis carryover monies. And there are 18 bullet points here, and I apologize for making one slide with 18 bullet points. It's probably a little difficult to read but the important thing about this list is that it's very diverse and clearly there are more items on this list than funding available And so one of the things I think is important and we would ask your board today.

Is for direction with respect to the prioritization? Maybe not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 but maybe prioritization of tiers of priority groups for your boards because words direction what we want to do at the conclusion of that is to vet each one of those to develop a project description develop To the extent that they would be available for ARPA, eligible for what we refer to as restricted ARPA dollars. That we make that connection.

That we prepare that and were able then to take that once the final guidelines are provided by the Treasury and vet those with both our audit controller and our external auditors to ensure compliance and adherence to the guidelines. So let me, I'm going to go back to the slide so you can reference it. But let me just kind of talk about what we've provided as a recommendation within the board letter and this is obviously subject to change in discussion by your board and direction that we receive.

Again, going back to the three buckets. The ARPA restricted About 25.3, we believe is available there. If you subtract the 7 million they're suggesting for the homeless housing project which by the way, we will be looking for other funds. We do believe there'll be additional funding coming down from the state and the feds that this may qualify for if those funds become available then we would not suggest taking them out of the county's allocation of ARPA dollars but at the moment $7 million coming from the restricted dollars, leaving $18.3 for allocation.

Within the blue box there are the ARPA discretionary revenues about $18 million again that's the offset for lost revenues. $4 million of that is associated directly with a transportation fund and we're suggesting as part of our report that you take 4.95 million for the Tier 1 CIP projects Leaving just over $9 million for allocation. Our recommendation on those two numbers, the $18.3 and the $19.05 million is to refer that back to staff after hearing your priorities. We'll continue to vet those work up their justification and bring those back to your board for final allocation in October.

And that leaves the 8.85 million in campus revenues, we would suggest at the moment either leave those in fund balance or again direction today with respect to how to allocate those to priority CIP projects or other one-time uses. So let me go back well so our key recommendations are to incorporate tier 1 CIP projects roughly $5 million dollars in the recommended budget for your consideration next week During budget hearings to allocate up to $7 million of restricted ARPA dollars for funding the acquisition of a facility, homeless housing facility.

Third bullet point here is identify the potential uses, including property acquisitions or other homeless housing for incorporation of the recommended budget. And also to balance the ARPA funding, identify the highest priority uses, refer back to staff for further evaluation eligibility determination and direct us to return back to your board in fall 2021 for the direction and obviously provide other directions as appropriate. So let me stop there for a moment And ask for feedback.

Any feedback or questions from the board? Supervisor Hartman?

I think you've done a masterful job in synthesizing and distilling this. If we think about the ARPA $1.9 trillion, 65 billion comes to counties. And so REACH conducted a forum where they talked about 84 different programs, 19 agencies, 7 distribution methods 15 different policy areas. In other words, there's a lot of money outside this and my question is how do we best position the county?

Do we need to set aside money for a navigation coordinator? I think for example, we've had a lot of emails coming about child care and I think there's 39 billion in child care outside this money And how do we get that money? There's a lot of money for direct relief, as you mentioned here. But how do we set it up so that our county is competitive or that we're... So even before I get to our piece of it, that we have some discretion to allocate, my question is are we positioning ourselves or should we set some money aside to better position ourselves To work on behalf of our county and our constituents, businesses and individuals and other needs.

Supervisor Harper to share I think that's a really good idea. There are so many different streams of money, so many different pots of money that are available for very specific items. It's very difficult for us to navigate and understand and read the regulations and know what that's eligible for let alone a member of the public who frankly this is perhaps a whole new world for them.

And we do this for a living! So I appreciate how difficult it is and baffling frankly it can be to members of the public. Creating a mechanism that we can provide a resource to help folks navigate the opportunities they have under these bills would be an interesting idea. And I think it's something that we did on a very smaller scale at the debris flow as part of recovery, one of our jobs was to help the community recover and part of that was not just use of county funds but how do you access The other support and federal funding that was available during the disaster. So certainly I think that's an interesting idea should your board want to go there

And and I just might add if they may like transit funding or something There may be an opportunity To do something countywide and get others to help contribute because they there's a lot of money there that they could benefit But if we don't do it, I don't know who would

Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor

Lavinio?

Thank you Mr. Chair. Can we go to slide 9 for just a minute? So on the $18 million discretionary I'm just curious how we did that in-house of... Did you solicit from different departments what they felt was refundable or how did we go about doing it?

Supervisor Latimer, good question. So the answer is yes we did solicit from departments revenue that they believe was negatively impacted by the pandemic. We have a very long list that exceeds this amount of money. We vetted that then through the interim guidance as we understand it and I do think this would be one of the areas that will be additional clarification is needed and should be received as part of the final guidance The guidance specifically talks about general revenues, and I put that in quotes here because it defines that within the guidance.

But in general, maybe that's too many generals. In broad terms, the revenues that are eligible to be reimbursed are those revenues that were available to provide general governmental services across the organization. And so what we clearly have here is roughly $14 million in loss of county discretionary revenue and $4 million in the loss of gas tax SB1 Measure A funds. So that's really the $18 million.

That number I think is clearly within the definition in the current interim guidelines, but that could be broadened to be a much larger amount once we

see final guidance. Okay and that was going to be my next question was do you think that number will continue to grow as we get better guidance?

So

because I'm assuming that the department heads that you're asking for They've gone through federal audits before. They know what is allowable, not allowable. They've had to defend things or not? No?

Well I think they're pretty seasoned as far as going through audits. What I don't think we have yet is clear guidance of what they're audited against.

Okay

so I do think and I'm looking for new batteries from our crystal ball but I do think that number will increase

Okay. So I guess then this takes me down to the bottom half of that slide, and that's the problem I have is that I don't think there's $8.8 million worth of cannabis revenue available for one-time projects. I think there's considerable more. I mean, this is one of the issues that I kind of have with... And it's no fault of anybody's. It's just the way that the timing of this is we're getting money Extensive funds and we're working on a June 8th deadline or June 15th deadline.

And you know this, we don't have to spend this money for three years. I don't know there's a lot of unknown still and I think like when we were doing the budget workshops In April, we were. We had a you know we had an even different vision of what things were so. Priorities were asked of us. We answered. But now you know there's other funding sources and I think it's really important that we match up the source with.

You know the need so that we don't end up spending what we could be doing with one time money to fund ongoing And vice versa and then find out or but could have done that or we could've got it through all these other sources Jones talking about. So I mean for me, I'm going back to you know there's 19 and a half million dollars were planning in fiscal year. This next fiscal year of cannabis dollars. There's 10.9 million in the carryover. That's 30 little over 30 million and of course we back out the 8 or 9 million dollars are doing enforcement which gets us to 21 Add in the $18 million you've got there for discretionary ARPA funding, gives us $39 million of one-time dollars that we could go after all of page 10 that you have in there. All of tier 1, tier 2, all the pavement expansion requests, all the public works pavement expansion requests, the homeless facility acquisition.

That's only 23 million. You know, and you still have another. You know? Tons of money to go after all these other one time things that are on page 14 so for me it really comes down to and I know the whole in the whole quote unquote in my theory is that that leaves $6 million of ongoing Liabilities that we talked about in this budget workshop. It isn't taken care of And I think we have to take a look at once again all those what do we feel our priorities are because The reality is we have 4,330 employees and the expansion requests we got were for 19 more employees and $7.1 million in ongoing.

I don't know anybody out in the public that thinks 19 more employees is going to make a difference in how we deliver goods and services to our constituents. You got 4330, you're going to add .0001%, but you're going to spend $7 million of ongoing doing it. I still think I don t think Mr Holland is finished Telling us how much money is coming in there. We have another pot of money that we haven't really discussed, which is $6 million of general fund overrun for this year if that's still where that number is. I know normally we just banked at and put it aside but that's another chunk of one time money.

And I just think This is a lot of good work, and they're all great projects that we need to do. But I think for me, I have to get more strategic and efficient of matching up with one-time dollars instead of moving to ongoing because the other side of this too is next year, think about this. So next year when cannabis does another 20 or 25 million And you open up that envelope, you've got that whole $25 million to spend outside of enforcement costs. As opposed to if we add on another five or six million dollars worth of ongoing into cannabis, next year you open that up it's 25 million, you take out enforcement, you take out the ongoing that you added on and you've got something that's not that great.

And then the year after that it just continues to shrink and shrink and shrink so instead of taking something that's an ever-increasing delta, we end up with something that's an ever increasing shrinking And so, you know, while I appreciate and we're going to do good work no matter what. No matter what comes out of this we're going to get way more than we ever have. We're going to do more than anything we've ever done in this county as far as taking care of business.

But I just see a lost opportunity. And I know it would really stink to go back and try to reinvent the wheel of this budget and say, hey, these shouldn't be ongoing. This should come out of this different pot. But honestly for me that's the only way I would be able to support it too to really almost start over and we don't have to start over. We already know what our priorities are but just matching up where the money is going to and where it's coming from.

I really appreciate what Supervisor Hartman and Supervisor Lavinino have said about being strategic in matching these funding sources up to the needs. This is very difficult because it requires potentially a little patience to let this come to us rather than driving it as our natural instinct to put these dollars immediately to work helping people. We want to do that, but at the same time this is not going to be repeated. This is as Supervisor Hartman and Levanino said really kind of a, not just this one year, but this moment is unique and we need to be very careful and strategic and make sure that we maximize the impact of the decisions that we're making going forward. And I appreciate you know the staff giving careful considered I want to start with you.

How do you make meaningful change in the long run in a sustainable way with one-time money? And that's just hard. But being smart at the beginning is the best way to make a difference in that regard, and to figure out all of the other funding sources and put these things together and collaborate and sharpen our pencil and look at the calculations twice. And that, because there's some really strategic things. But there are also critical needs things too that are tugging against that and I feel that too. The folks who've advocated for childcare. Childcare is a critical need for us to get businesses back up and rolling, to get the economy going. And I don't know exactly what the folks who have been advocating for this imagine in that money going to, to jumpstart that business.

I know a lot about that business. I was in that business for 20 years and there are things you could do but I haven't seen that in writing from the community. I've seen make a commitment, demonstrate this is important, delegate 5% of our funds for that purpose and I hear that and understand that impulse because it's right but we also have to figure out how to make sure this money does what it's intended to do too so this is the tension Thank you very much.

And then we got this letter from the Chumash yesterday about, you know, engaging in broadband and helping to bridge the digital divide. It was an extremely thoughtful letter and it was very well considered as something I knew that I did not know about the effort that had been going on in North County to bring broadband and fiber optic cable to underserved communities to that degree. I didn't realize there had been so much research And leadership in that regard. And that's something, you know, that makes a lot of sense and it's black letter law in the federal legislation about bridging the digital divide and addressing broadband needs. And before every time I'd ask somebody, what does that mean actually? No one had a good answer. Well this looks to me like this might be the beginning with good answers so but it needs a little more vetting things like that.

So those are my general comments to the staff presentation, my colleagues' comments

I think staff is on to a good track. They have also left enough for some board priorities which I think is good as well because all of us in theory should be close to our constituents needs. Want to impart something that I think you know, I can understand the Tier 1 priority projects but something that I'm hoping going forward that will do a better job of Particularly when we end up in situations where we have all a lot of money right now But we are looking towards hard harder budget times in the next couple years is when we're doing You know Projects on the CIP, especially looking at projects that save money over time. And that's why I've asked for you know the payback periods for some of these projects and you know I have a list unfunded CIP projects with potential energy savings, you know and monetary savings from it.

And most of them are not on the tier one list, you know? And I mean ones like on the tier two like a no-brainer, a four and a half year payback period. One of those tier two projects has a four and a half year payback period. It's like Someone handing you money and yet it's on the tier 2 list. So I just hope that we will kind of look at it from that perspective, I think also in the perspective of trying to get people back to being able Make a living and survive. And that's why I do think that entertaining this child care proposal is important, you know?

And that's why I think addressing housing in some fashion it is intimidating for this board to contemplate housing because of the scale of the problem but You know, when home values have risen 83% in one year in the South Coast you know that is an existential threat to our community from the perspective of having a workforce being able to run a business and having generational continuity.

And it is definitely an existential threat to people of color as they are being pushed out of this community. So I do think and hope that we will take steps, even as intimidating as it is to tackle the big things like housing and childcare because I think they have an enormous amount to do with what recovery would mean

Thank you, Supervisor Williams. Supervisor Lavagnino? Yeah

I wanted to agree with Supervisor Hart in that and Supervisor everybody but especially about the timeline it's like I know the pressure is on for people to let's access this let's get to it let's fix problems I think we're going to be able to do more if we wait longer. It just feels that way and I don't want to get committed to something, spend some money and then find out dang man we could have done X and we could have done more.

I think all these things that I'm getting emails about they're all legitimate. And we might be able to do them all, you know. This is the one time in my life when I could say hey it's not...I remember sitting here and having Supervisor Adam on one side saying we need pavement and Supervisor Wilson saying we need human services and there was this battle and now it's like we can we can do both of them you know but we just got to do it the right way and I think waiting A little bit and getting more direction is going to help that. And I'm also a supervisor Williams, you know if you use cannabis for one time you can do almost all those energy saving. I had those on my list. I think those are very important. We're gonna get paid back on these we're gonna do them and they're gonna pay for themselves so that's a priority of mine as well.

Supervisor Williams.

I did want to say, I think that's what, I think what Supervisor Labadino is suggesting is the staff recommendation. My interpretation of the staff recommendation is not to spend this money now it's for us to designate things to be vetted for October and so I think The staff recommendation is closer to what Supervisor Lavagnino is suggesting and I think that's okay. I think the point is maybe we want to like, you know, that list that Jeff put up there is like half the things that we would We have a lot of things that we need to pray about at night to solve the world's problems and we might not be able to do all those. We should vet it. We should say the things that we definitely want to emphasize and maybe put some perspective dollar figures for that.

And then like the addition is that staff says there's 2 things that we want the money for now 7 million I guess the 5.34 roads and if we agree with that, I suppose we can just allocate that but I also think it's important to indicate that most of the other ones we would be funding in October not Not now, unless there's something that has to happen right now. And if it's something that has to happen right now, it would probably be better to use cannabis money for it or at least have some sort of amorphousness in case it falls out of favor when the final guidelines are put out.

Thank you Supervisor Williams. Supervisor Hartman then back to CEO Miyasato and then I have a few questions.

Well, Supervisor Williams just gave me the perfect segue to talk about something that does need to happen right now and I'm sure as all of you know there's a project Here in the South Coast, the Foothills Forever Project.

I think all of us knew we were going

to bring this up. At some point this was going to come up and it's really an extraordinary success story is remarkable what the community has done. There are 4500 people who have given money not just support but literally money to acquire you know the hundred acres remaining in that project that was proposed to be developed with only 90 days to achieve that. And you know this is absolutely unprecedented. It's never Something like this has never even been attempted, let alone almost gotten to the point of success. And as of just a few minutes ago looking at the website there had been raised almost 17 plus million dollars toward the 18.6 goal but that doesn't completely tell the story. There's an outstanding loan, a short-term loan that came very generously from an underwriter and with Montecito Bank & Trust And then there's another $3.6 million, I think from the Alamo Foundation that was a loan to get to the point to be able to acquire the property on the deadline and the property owner has very generously extended the deadline you know to June 9th but there's our loudly ticking clock to make this thing happen and I think there's a place for one-time cannabis funding to have the county assist in that effort, to specifically buy a couple of parcels that would need to be appraised and all of the things that are going to be required to make that happen.

You know, a $2 million allocation would really cement the momentum that's underway in this project and make this thing a reality. And I think this is exactly what the cannabis money is intended to do—to support a broad-based community effort to permanently preserve open space and public access to this property forever. That is a great return on investment. The public are contributing 17 plus million dollars and the county is adding $2 million to acquire 100 acres in South County. That was the paradigm we would use to apply to return on investment and projects. That's a pretty high bar.

Yes, I have three different issues I'd like to address and the first is foothills forever. I am supportive of that. This could provide a huge fire buffer And that is very, very significant with the Sundowner Winds and Goleta. And so I think that's very important. I've asked to get information but I think it is also an important watershed recharge area. And so that is significant. And I suspect there will be more money in the future for those kinds of acquisitions related to fire and drought I don't know, once we pay we probably can't get it back. But I do think it is a worthwhile in fact a stellar project and others have stepped up. It does raise a couple of issues that I'd like to put on the table and the first if it were cannabis money then you know the cannabis burden is born in certain areas and the benefit isn't necessarily, so we have to deal with that issue at some point.

But I think we have to fund this now. The second thing I really think needs funding is this navigation center and whether it's $200,000 or I think that's an immediate... We must have expertise. It's going to make all the difference for our county and that has to be sooner rather than later And then what I'd like to do is develop a set of principles so that we could evaluate the projects in terms of something and how many boxes are checked. I've come up with a few, and they're not necessarily in the right order but I think addressing inequities and equity lens between north and south racial justice educational opportunities those are really important Opportunities where we have the potential for match funding so we can leverage.