UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:03 – 0:087 turns
Good morning. I will call to order the November 16th, 2021 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk please call the roll.
Roll call, called by Clerk of the Board
Show transcript
All right.
The next item of business is the approval of the minutes from the November 9th, 2021 meeting. Can I get a motion?
So
moved. Second by Supervisor Lavender. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Madam Clerk are there any announcements or changes to our agenda today?
Chair Nelson and members of the board, I do have a couple quick announcements this morning. We received a request from staff to withdraw administrative agenda item numbers 32 through 37 for appointments to the Los Alamos Planning Advisory Committee from today's agenda. Staff is not requesting these to be continued to another date rather just be withdrawn and the appointments will be brought to the board at a later date.
Additionally we received a clarification from staff in regards to administrative item number 24 Administrative item number 24 is from General Services, Public Works Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District. This is to consider recommendations regarding Santa Barbara High School resolution findings and summary order to vacate flood control easement RP file number 003830 And the record should be amended to reflect this item is in the 1st and 2nd District as it is only listed as in the 2nd District, both in the board letter and the published agenda. So again, administrative item number 24 is in the first and second district.
I would also like to remind the public that the Board of Supervisors meetings are being interpreted and broadcast live in Spanish. We're broadcasting our meetings 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 Lastly, I would like to remind the public who are participating in our meeting today of the board's updated methods of public participation. For the Board of Supervisors' methods of public participation and to provide general public comment or an item on the board's agenda please see page 2 of the agenda.
Members of the public can attend meetings in person in both the Santa Barbara Board Hearing Room Chambers as well as the Santa Maria Board Hearing Room Chambers. Please note an additional County Health Office order went into effect requiring indoor mask usage for everyone over two years of age regardless of vaccination status. If you attend the board meeting in person, you will be required to wear a face covering or mask at all times regardless of vaccination status.
Information regarding how to properly wear a mask has been posted throughout both locations As a friendly reminder, masks should cover your nose and mouth. Wear the mask from the bridge of your nose to all the way under your chin. Tighten any loops or ties so the mask is snug. If you do not have a mask that fits properly we can provide you with one. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment virtually 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 important information about joining the virtual 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. You will be placed on mute until it is your turn to speak. The clerk will call you by name and 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. You may need to press star six to unmute yourself if you're using a touchtone phone 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 regarding this process please contact the clerk of the board at area code 805-568-2240 Again, that's 805-568-2240.
And that concludes my announcements this morning and if we can include the withdrawal of administrative agenda item number 32 through 37 with the administration balance?
We'll do that. Great thank you. CO Miyasato do we have any COO's report today?
0:08 – 0:1313 turns
Chair Nelson no report this morning.
All right so there been any items pulled by the board besides those that need to be continued?
Chair Nelson and members of the board, we have requests to speak on administrative item number 12 from the public.
Right and no other items from the board? Okay at this time let's go ahead and get a motion. to approve the administrative agenda with the exception of item A-12. That would also, that motion would include the withdrawal of items A-32 through 37. So moved.
Chair Nelson? I'm sorry one second there is an item that we're just double checking some language on item 818 so we would ask that you trail that until we can have more time to talk to the department.
Let's go. The balance of administrative agenda with the exception of a twelve eighteen and the motion would also include the continuation of eight thirty two through thirty seven or removal not continuation, the removal of eight thirty two to thirty seven that is my motion is there a second
second
any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye motion passes unanimously alright let's go ahead and go directly to public comment with item a twelve before we discuss or work on A18.
Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number 12 is from the County Executive Office. It is to consider recommendations regarding an update on the coronavirus disease 2018 COVID-19. And chair Nelson members of the board my apologies we did just receive a request on administrative item number three as well if we can pull that from the balance of the administrative agenda
Let's go ahead and come back to that in a moment. Let me just take a quick look, and then we'll deal with that after this item.
And Chair Nelson, members of the Board, we have six requests to speak on Administrative Item Number 12. We will begin on Zoom with Danny Blunk.
Before we begin with the first speaker, I'm going to go ahead and close public comment on Item A-12.
Danny? Hello, I am here. Thank you. Good morning and thank you for letting me speak. I come speaking because i'm an immigrant, I came from a third world country and I moved to the U.S because I believe in freedom American dream and honesty and what I'm seeing right now it doesn't show me that the reasons I move here is they're you know being applied And my fear is that this country becomes as my country Brazil, as a third world country that our freedoms may be take away violence poverty and I have three children I became American. And I'm a proud American, which is why I come to talk because I really don't believe in the mandate. I don't believe that our choices are being considered and it's very sad for me. It's very heartbreaking because I have three Americans and I did an oath and I want to follow that oath And I'm proud to follow that road.
And that's what is my biggest concern, and I believe that they need to choose where it goes in my body. What aware, I believe that I have the right to breathe fresh air. I have the right to fight for what I think is good for me and my family. I'm very worried and sad what is happening with this at the moment. And it's why I come and talk, and I believe in honesty too. And sometimes I worry that there is a lot of corruption where that they come from, we had a lot. And when I moved here, I believe it didn't happen. And now it's coming to my knowledge that he may be happening here as well. So I just, I just want to be like our choices, our choices, be considered and also when we come in you say things And people don't believe I want to remind them a Christian, and I want to remind everyone that Jesus came to tell the truth, and he was killed for it.
And later one was proved that he was right in his message live into this day. And then when we come and bring our points, and it's called misinformation is very hurtful because we may be telling the truth. And later on maybe proven truth is sometimes takes time to show up. Takes time but it always comes up. And I just wanna make sure that I'm doing my job and fighting for my kids for their freedom, for their civil rights, for their right to choose. That's all I need to say. Thank you.
0:13 – 0:1911 turns
And we will remain on Zoom with Karen Murphy to be followed by Maria Kessner. Karen?
Welcome, Ms. Murphy.
Hello. Sorry, hello can you hear me okay?
We can.
Okay thank you. In my job if my boss or co-worker asked me for information related to my job and I said I don't know and they came back later and asked me the same question and I again said I don't know and this happened repeatedly I would be at best considered unprofessional. It has been very frustrating to hear Mr. Ranoso and Dr. Ansord repeatedly reply, I don't know to your questions on the protections against further COVID infection and spread in those with natural immunity.
The conversation needs to be started so I will give a lay person's perspective and ask for some clarification from Mr. Ranoso and Dr Ansord We have had recovered COVID patients longer than we have had the COVID vaccine, so we have a longer period of information on natural immunity. There are studies showing natural immunity to be robust after 10 plus months in terms of reinfection.
We know that COVID vaccine efficacy wanes a few short months after it is received, hence the need for boosters. We also know their efficacy in preventing infection or reinfection is low shortly after injection, particularly with the Delta variant. What is the COVID reinfection rate in Santa Barbara County amongst the naturally immune? Natural infection exposes you to the entire virus, which gives a more robust immune response than a vaccine that exposes you to only one part of the virus.
I read in the media months ago about a variant called Lambda that had a mutation on the spike protein that could make existing COVID vaccines ineffective. How was a vaccine that uses only a segment of the virus better at giving protection than exposure to the entire virus. And here I am talking about low risk people. Florida has not had a significantly more per capita COVID death than California, despite their higher at-risk aged population and their rejection of oppressive mandates. And now they have one of the lowest case rates.
Why are we continuing with what doesn't work and is damaging? I have emailed you all a link to a collection of research articles on this subject Including over 100 studies on natural immunity to COVID-19. There are more. For Ms. Duranoso and Dr. Anzorg to claim they know nothing on the topic seems to show an astonishing lack of curiosity on a topic for which they are making decisions that are harming our community, and in particular our children.
I suggest they get curious. We all should be curious. Thank you.
We will now go to Maria Kessner, to be followed by Edwin Weaver. Maria?
Good morning Board of Supervisors. I would also like to say I'm also a naturalized U.S. citizen and I also took an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. And I'm on the same page with Vanita, the former speaker. But as I've mentioned before, Dr. Unser stated the following at the October 5th County Supervisor Board meeting and I quote, natural immunity studies are controversial and the jury isn't out. And vaccines are a blockbuster, they work so well end of quote. I sent you 81 studies at a time that show natural immunity trumpeting vaccine efficacy which have increased today to 128 research studies affirming is basically contradicting Dr. Unser's claims which are never backed up by any evidence as a public records request not only go unanswered, but are not properly followed up on either.
In the meantime, the CDC has admitted that the agency does not have any examples on file of an unvaccinated American transmitting COVID-19 to another person following natural recovery in a November 5th letter from Roger Ando Chief Operating Officer of the CDC Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. In response to a September Freedom of Information Act request by Attorney Elizabeth Bream, Bream had requested documents reflecting any documented case of an individual who one never received a COVID-19 vaccine was infected with COVID-19 once recovered and then later became infected again. And three transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when we infected A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request.
Ando replied, the CDC Emergency Operations Center conveyed this information is not collected in response to attorney's FOIA requests. The CDC admits that it has no record of an unvaccinated person spreading COVID after recovering from COVID. Studies have found The vaccine-induced COVID protection wanes around six months or potentially sooner. In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was expanding emergency use authorization for booster shots at six months after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and two months after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. A Pfizer funded study published in The Lancet last month found that in six months, the Pfizer shot effectiveness against infection dropped to 47% That its effectiveness against the Delta variant drops to 53% after four months.
By contrast, a recent Yale study projected that natural immunity lasts three times longer than those benchmarks at 17 months. And in the absence of any scientific ongoing studies with regards to COVID vaccines we must halt the tyrannical policies of the Biden administration which fail to recognize that mathematical models have already determined that 80% of total populations will never even be susceptible to COVID And then a more surgical approach should have been the logical, ethical and scientific way
to battle SARS-CoV-2.
Thank you so much.
That is your time. Thank you.
We will now go to Edwin Weaver to be followed by Dr. Amy Smith. Edwin?
0:19 – 0:2522 turns
Can you hear me now? A
little louder, Edwin.
Okay, good morning everybody. Good to see everybody thank you so much for all of your support during these difficult times I want to thank our elected officials because I know this is a challenging topic that you have to face every day and I want you to know as a citizen and community leader I'm really proud of all five of you in your hard work and really appreciate a chance to talk about what we've been doing to assist I want to thank our public health department and their support as we try to educate and support vaccines in the community.
Most recently, we partnered with our public health department to do vaccination clinics in our high schools where we were able to secure state funding to support incentives to get young people to choose vaccinations. So far, we've had almost close to 1,000 vaccinations happen in North County. We're really proud of that number. Most recently, we partnered with a local church, Orchard Presbyterian Church and On Friday, and one of the one of the kiddos their mom texted us and thanked us and her. What she said was you know my son is autistic, and the idea of getting a vaccination really scared him.
And it was nice that he could go to a setting where he knows that he's loved by God. He's loved by the people at the church and in a setting where he feels very safe, that he could get his vaccination. And so we were very happy at Fighting Vaccine in Rio Valley to support that opportunity for people to get vaccinated if they want to and to help with the misinformation is out in the community.
And so I just want to thank you and thank you for your support of your public health officers as they work through this difficult time, as well. And good luck with the decisions that you have to make and let me know if there's anything we can do here to support you in your work. Thank you.
Thank you everyone.
And we will now go to our final speaker Dr Amy Smith
Welcome, Dr. Smith.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
We can.
Great. I'd just like quickly to speak to Mr. Weaver because he's a man of God. He's coming from a church that he should remember that it is evil to spread lies that endanger people especially children and so if you look carefully and make sure he's getting evidence and information from all sides and make sure he isn't being deceived by satanic deceivers To do the work of Satan to harm children. So, you know, I'm talking him on a level that maybe not everyone thinks on and maybe not everyone here is a believer and that's totally fine but for if you are a believer. Then it's very important to make sure you don't participate in evil and you don't allow your ignorance. Dr.
Smith, keep your comments not to other public commenters but to the item. I think
I can speak to the issue this is the item if people are
deceiving people. You're
violating my First Amendment rights. I have a right to speak
how I would like about this issue. I'm asking not to comment on another public commenter. I'm asking you to comment on the item. I absolutely want to hear from you. I am glad for you to hear, but I think talking and speaking about an item not on the agenda such as Mr. Weaver's comments is not what we're doing here this morning. So if we can keep it to the Item A-12. You have two more minutes here on this and there's another item that you've pulled that I'm glad to hear from you.
respectfully to please keep it to item a 12, please. Thank
you. The person peddling and deception spoke about other commenters such as myself spreading so-called misinformation and I'm responding to that and appealing to everyone who does believe in God and fighting evil to not participate in the deception that will enable the enticement with A treatment that is not necessary for an emergency that is not emergency anymore and that has a very high risk of killing more children than protecting because.
Stop Dr. Smith. Okay, Dr. Smith I think you're gone beyond what we're talking about on A6 or A12 here um we're going to go to uh once we were done with this we'll go to item A3 which you can speak on. I think the comments that you have are more appropriate for public comment which is later in the meeting. I will absolutely give you the opportunity to speak but if Which is a receiving file, it was the report on the COVID virus. I've given wide latitude to go.
beyond just the receiving file of this report on this for quite some time and I'm going to continue to do that, but I will ask you respectfully to respect this body and where we're going as a board here on this and try to focus. So I'm done with Dr. Smith on that item. She will come back on A3 in public comment likely, but that's I believe our public commenters on Item A12 is that correct?
Yes, Chair Nelson and members of the board that was our final speaker on administrative item number 12. All right
thank you all right is there so with that we don't have a presentation on this item this was a receiving file any further discussion from the board? Okay seeing none can I get a motion to approve 812?
So moved second
okay
and chair Nelson members of the board that just for clarification of the record that is to approve staff recommendations A through G
All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Alright, so we have item A3 that late speaker I'm not going to go ahead and bring it back for a new motion but I will allow for public comment and again I ask the public commenter to keep their comments specific to the item on the agenda
0:26 – 0:308 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number three is from behavioral wellness. It is to consider recommendations regarding a First Amendment to the Behavioral Wellness Staffing Contract with Jackson & Coker Locum Tenens LLC fiscal year 2021 through 2022. And we have one request to speak on this item and that is Dr. Amy Smith.
Dr. Smith welcome back.
That's kind of a disingenuous welcome, but I'll try to be polite nevertheless despite the unfair and right violating treatment. I'm receiving here and I know about the public meetings and acts and the Brown Act this looks to me like you're signing a contract about infectious disease control. And I hope that it would actually be based on evidence and science and not propaganda that I'm very concerned about The health officer saying that he would be guiding your understanding about what appropriate measures would be. Obviously, if people are working there's certain laws or actually not laws, they're illegal ordinances in effect that they would be subject to from both OSHA and our county that affect employment or being in public spaces in this county.
But they are based on misinformation and propaganda that is to serve a corporate agenda And that is very troubling to me. I point you out to an article from a professor at Harvard, S. V. Subramanian. He's from Harvard. It's from the European Journal of Epidemiology. The title says increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2,947 counties in the United States. That's almost all the counties in the United States in this comparison Showing that vaccination level does not affect the situation of the disease status. And that means when Dr. Ansorg dishonestly says that it is an epidemic of the-
Dr. Smith, I appreciate you trying to weave into this with what's going on with the COVID updates back into this item. This again First amendment to the behavioral wellness staffing contract with Jackson Coker for local tenants. If you can speak to that, that's great. Otherwise we have general public comment. You will have an opportunity to speak on general public comment. I am absolutely gonna let you have a free-for-all for your three minutes as long as you stay within a reasonable boundary but for this items and the items on administrative agenda please help me run my meeting. It's a business meeting here. We're trying to accomplish the work of the people of Santa Barbara County including Our various departments and I would really appreciate a little bit of cooperation here as we move forward this.
I'm trying to be respectful to you, and I would ask for you to reciprocate that as we continue so i'm gonna go ahead and you still got another minute 22 on this item if you can focus on this I'm glad to hear from you
My understanding is I'm entitled as a member of the public to speak on my concerns about any agenda item. My understanding is this agenda item is about a particular amendment that is about contagious disease control, so I'm suspecting that has to do with the way of dealing with COVID. Am I wrong about that? I mean you can go ahead and answer if you're allowed. I don't know. I mean you're interrupting me back and forth what the heck Is this about COVID remediation strategies or prevention strategies?
It is not. It's about a behavioral wellness contract with our psychiatric health facility.
So the amendment is about contagious disease We're going to go ahead and close public comment on this item. There is no new motion on
this item considering that the board has already approved it. So that concludes our administrative agenda. We do have a couple of items that are presentations in person, so at this time we'll go to administrative item number 41. Madam Clerk will you please read? Actually we're going to come back to item A8 if I'm right. So let's do that after we do the presentations.
So at this time would you read administrative item number 41 with the record?
0:30 – 0:344 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number 41 is sponsored by Supervisor Hart. It is to adopt a resolution of commendation honoring Danielle Rifillato, excuse me, in appreciation for her service to the County of Santa Barbara. And joining us today we have Joe Holland, Santa Barbara County Clerk Recorder Assessor Melinda Green and Danielle Riffalato. And if you could please join us at the podium, and I'll go ahead and read the resolution into the record.
Whereas, Danielle has dedicated 27 years to the clerk recorder service in the counties of Riverside and Santa Barbara. And has served on statewide committees such as the chair of the recorders document reference and indexing manual, DRM, and a member of the recorders association board of directors. And whereas Danielle's fountain of recorder knowledge and expertise are second only to her lightning quick wit and corny sense of humor.
And whereas Danielle has led with compassion, professionalism and has always exhibited a kind and sincere demeanor and will be greatly missed. And whereas Danielle has boundless dedication to her team and she keeps the office feeling lively and fun, including supplying office party horns usually being the first one to toot her horn at the end of the week. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County does hereby acknowledge Danielle Rifillato for her commitment to public service passed and adopted today
Hello, Joe Holland, Clark County Clerk Recorder Assessor. We stole Danielle from Riverside County where she had worked 20 years. We've been lucky enough to have her for seven years. I don't know if you heard everything that was said right there but she has a reputation statewide. She's done a remarkable job we were lucky to have her for those seven years and she's the shining example of What a county employee can do, come in make a difference.
She's retiring at a relatively young age and we just really want to thank you sincerely so much.
I just want to say, when I left Riverside County 20 years ago it was a very emotional time for me because I had been born and raised in that county. And I actually had to leave my son behind he was finishing school and my husband behind and I moved up here and established myself in the community. I got an apartment and I traveled back and forth for seven years to Riverside County. So it was quite a trek for me, but I have no regrets. Riverside County was amazing don't get me wrong but Santa Barbara County took me in and embraced me and it was a wonderful opportunity and I felt like I really gained a family and I'm so honored to be a part of this community and I will miss it. I am going to be returning back to Riverside County back to my husband Who will be retiring in March, and we plan to go on many travels together.
So I'm very excited for this next chapter of my life But I just want to thank everybody for this wonderful opportunity to be here
Thank you Our next item is commissioner item number 42 madam clerk, please read that into the record
0:34 – 0:405 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the Board, Administrative Item number 42 is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman is to adopt a resolution recognizing River of Giving and honoring founder Maile Halmy for mobilizing to address food insecurity and other needs during the COVID-19 public health emergency. And unfortunately our recipient Maile Halmy is unable to join us this morning due to a conflict but I will go ahead and read the resolution into the record.
Thank you
Whereas the COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that has upended the lives of so many people sparring no country, government or population. And whereas the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on the mental or on the health and livelihoods of many. And whereas shelter in place, quarantines and other restrictions related to COVID- 19 disrupted people's safe access to basic services and especially people's access to food and early in the pandemic put many in the food service industry out of work. And whereas Maile Halmy and the group she formed, River of Giving, recognized the need for additional food and household paper goods distribution during the COVID-19 crisis. And many dedicated community volunteers mobilized to help her meet increased needs especially focusing on the needs of the residents of the San Ynez Valley, Los Alamos, and Lompoc.
And whereas under Ms. Halmy's leadership, River of Giving and its volunteers assisted in providing food access to the hardworking families and individuals in the restaurant and hospitality industry who were temporarily out of work due to the COVID-19 crisis. And whereas the County of Santa Barbara recognizes the importance and value of community volunteers who have supported fellow community members in need throughout the COVID- 19 pandemic Now, therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors proclaims that Molly Halmy and River of Giving be recognized for tireless and heroic efforts to serve vulnerable community members during the COVID-19 health emergency so no community member went hungry or without necessary goods passed and adopted today.
I know Ms. Halmy is not available but I believe Supervisor Hartman would like to say a few words?
I do, thank you. Miley can't be with us today because she's working with her sister, her mother and longtime employees of the Solvang Bakery getting ready for the holidays. They do magnificent gingerbread houses and it's well worth the trip to the Solvang Bakery to see this because it's something kids just are struck by It's magical, so take the trip this holiday.
In similar fashion, Miley and her family and friends banded together as a team to work to help their community when COVID struck. And many in our community were unable to work due to the shutdown. So seeing a real need for food and other household goods to be provided to families out of work in the San Ynez Valley, in Lompoc, and in Los Alamos Miley, her mother Susan, their family and friends got together to provide help to those in need through the River of Giving.
Miley is a longtime chef and her mother, Susan Holmy were struck by how the pandemic was really affecting those in the restaurant tourism visitor serving hospitality industries. In the Valley particularly, those industries are the economic and cultural center and those people were really suffering. So in Miley's own words, this all started because of a single mother who was a server at a local restaurant. She had two jobs and always managed to pay her rent on time and care for her five-year-old son but when all of this happened she lost both jobs. I was deeply concerned about her and when I got to her home she was in a state of panic and depression. She didn't even have $5.
So Miley used the experience and knowledge she gained from her many years as a chef to order and prepare large quantities of food at low prices. Her connections in the local community allowed her to obtain donations of money and food to keep the program going. Miley's program served food to those in need on the lawn of the Solvang Vets Hall, and later out of St. Mark's Church.
Her food distribution efforts were run with military precision The River of Giving began by providing food and household items to just 16 families, and at one time was serving as many as 700 families in those areas. It wasn't just a river of giving it was a deluge. And I have to say Miley was the catalyst and she really got the entire community to band together you can see in newspapers The pictures of how massive this operation really was so when she and her mother began River giving they were aided in getting the program off the ground by Carlene Jones. And Sullivan and Sullivan Lawrence Rick and Jane Chucker Soto and Patton Rubin and Pam Nico.
Guy de Mangione, the owner of the Berryman in Santa Barbara was a generous donor. Some donors wanted to focus on providing diapers for babies other donors were adamant about making sure pet food was provided it is a great privilege to honor Miley Halmy and her program Rivers of Giving and all those who've worked with her to step up and support families and individuals in need in the San Ines Valley Lompoc and Los Alamos
0:40 – 0:4723 turns
All right. Thank you for sharing that. I believe we still have one administrative item and that's Item 8, I believe?
Chair Nelson and members of the board we did trail Administrative Item 18 and if we can take public comment first and take up that item after. Is
there any public comment on 818?
Now is
the time for
members
of the public to
speak on items that are not on the agenda today. Madam Clerk, are there
any requests
to speak on general public comment? Chair Nelson and members of the board, yes we have five requests to speak on general public comment.
Okay I'm going to go ahead and close general public comment at this time and let's hear from the first speaker.
Chair Nelson and members of the board we will begin on Zoom with Danny Blunk to be followed by Maria Kessler.
Welcome back Miss Blunk.
I think actually, I spoke on the general comment that they want to do. I want to do the COVID now. I don't think it's this one is it?
You spoke on COVID earlier as what the item that you were speaking on.
Oh, I'm so sorry. I got a bit confused. Can I still speak? Can I do my requests? Sure. Okay, last time I just have a couple of simple requests. And because I believe that since we are being mandated to use masks, we should be shown the science. I could do my research if it was my choice that they could or not do the mask but since the health department is mandating us would be very simple including one of these slides The peer review science. Last time when I asked, I had people coming in citing studies but asking for a peer review science because also when I ask people say follow the science, I always ask so show me else who pays the scientists? Because as my previous comment, I cited one of my biggest worry is the corruption Because sometimes the sciences will go in favor of who is paying them.
So I would like the health department to show us the peer review science since you're mandating the masks, I believe it's the responsibility of the health department to show us the peer review science. And also as before a couple times for the ingredients of the vaccine because they are being mandated And how come I cannot see the ingredients. For me to put something in my body, I really need to know what is in it and I haven't seen it. I did some research but since the health department are being mandating them would be also their responsibility to show the ingredients that I'm putting in my body. People read labels on their food, on the supermarket to see what is in it and why you cannot see what is the ingredient? That's a big concern for me.
So that's another request that I'd like to see because you know before I decide, I really need. I believe there is chemicals in it that's not good for me and I would like you know before I really do a wise decision, I would like to see them And so I would like to request that the doctors that are showing this slide with these COVID numbers, I will show these two. The peer review science for the mask and also the ingredients for the vaccine. I think it's a very simple request because if they're being mandated, I deserve to know. I deserve to do a wise decision especially One is also related to my kids and how I can trust if I don't know what is going to happen to the future of my kids in five years.
Thank you Miss Blunt,
that's
your time.
We will now go to Maria Kester to be followed by John Oladink.
Welcome back Miss Kester.
Good morning again dear Board of Supervisors. I would like to quote directly from the Brown Act Handbook The legislative body may not prohibit the public from criticizing the policies, procedures, programs for services of the agency or of their act or omissions of the legislative body regardless of whether it implicates the performance of one or more of its employees.
And so I want to come back to last week when Supervisor William lost his composure in response to a public comment That again mentioned citizens arrest, including kidnapping. He also conflated the support of First Amendment rights by other public speakers like myself as support for, and I quote, citizens arrest which is really a threat of kidnapping by force end of quote.
Um, I do get to criticize Supervisor William I believe you not only violated the Brown Act, as one of the speakers at the time mentioned. You are also guilty of slander which means oral communication or false malicious statements that damaged your reputation over another while mentioning the name of a public speaker which you did at the time. You mentioned the name of the speaker who made again for the second time mention of a citizen's arrest which is an illegal procedure Under the law, you labeled it what is considered imminent lawless action. I have called throughout the prior week that imminent lawless action is speech that is imminent and violent and very likely to be carried out. And then none of the comments that any of the public speakers have made met those parameters, those terms of imminent lawless action Yet Supervisor Williams continues to falsely accuse public speakers that come here to speak on a weekly basis as speakers that condone violence.
This has to stop, I will take it up locally and I will CC the Attorney General in Sacramento and we will have to include all the clips where you are clearly violating I thank you for giving me that point of personal
privilege.
0:47 – 0:528 turns
I can't even believe that I have to explain that it is not lawful to do a citizen's arrest against someone for a political difference or policy difference. That is a threat of kidnapping. I don't assume that people are making idle threats when they make those threats against Bondo Oronoso and against Henning Ansorg, and against us. You know it is What I said is shameful, is the fact that none of the public speakers that agree with the political aim of the person who made that threat are willing to in any way hold that person accountable for the threat of force.
And I simply said that if I Had someone that agreed with my position and came up here and threatened someone with physical force. I would call that person out and make it very clear I think it's a poison to our democracy and poison. Our ability to function at as as an American society. Contrary to the public speaker's assertion, I did not name the public speaker by by by name because I can't pronounce his name so but I have read important for us all to push back against threats of violence and threats of citizens arrest for a political or policy difference is tantamount to violence because no one is going to get into a van willingly with someone who says I'm giving you a citizen's arrest because of your position on mask mandates.
Next speaker.
We will resume on Zoom with John Olchenek to be followed by Joshua Medrano.
Good morning Chair and Supervisors, my name is John Olenek I'm the Caltrans District 5 Planning Manager housed in San Luis Obispo of course we have five counties within our district Santa Barbara being one of them. I wanted to mention to the board today and to the public That we have initiated a technical study for wildlife habitat connectivity along Highway 101 in the Gaviota Pass area. And to that, we're establishing a stakeholder outreach group. The technical study itself will include independent from Caltrans technical experts with our consultants Jones and Stokes Incorporated. And then now this stakeholder outreach group that we're establishing is going to be a community-based group focused on the implementation The really important piece of the findings of the technical study.
So this stakeholder group, it's going to we've invited a diverse representation from adjacent property owners from the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, the Coastal Ranches Conservancy California State Parks Fish and Wildlife, the Coastal Commission Santa Barbara County staff SB CAG as well as both the San Diego Band of Chumash Indians and the coastal band of Chumash Nation We've, we've had the privilege already of inviting these core stakeholder groups to our first meeting and other representatives are going to be invited to subsequent meetings based on consensus of this group.
And the study itself and our stakeholder group is going to last over the course of this next year. And our first meeting is planned for Thursday, December 2nd at 3pm via WebEx. And we're also privileged to have Supervisor Hartman join us there at that meeting. And input from the meeting will be provided then to the technical group to proceed with the studying.
And that stakeholder group will continue to meet even beyond the technical results because as mentioned, this developing strategies for the implementation of all these recommendations is a really important piece. So thank you for the time today and the opportunity to comment on this item. Thank you Mr. Olenek. Supervisor Hartman?
I just wanted to commend Caltrans for how responsive you are and how How far you're going to reach out to stakeholders. It really means a lot to people in our community.
Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. All right, our next speaker.
We will resume on Zoom with Joshua Modrano to be followed by Dr. Amy Smith who is our final speaker.
Welcome back Mr. Modrana.
0:52 – 0:5912 turns
And Joshua, you have been unmuted on our end. If you can please unmute on your end and proceed with your comments. Already we will go to Dr. Amy Smith and then we will return to Joshua Medrano. Dr. Amy Smith?
Yes it's not what I planned to comment on but given the behavior in this meeting i'll be discussing the issue of running the county meetings And whether it interferes with our First Amendment rights and whether lawlessness is important to our elected leaders in this time of COVID. And if COVID is affecting people's behavior or the panic mindset, and making them act irresponsibly and illegally, and if people are putting up with it or thinking they should get away with it. I would just like to educate Supervisor Williams that When he makes a leap to assume that a citizen's arrest means, you know, trundling someone into a ban and then taking them away to an undisclosed location. He's exercising use of his imagination.
A citizen's arrest was carried out in the state of Illinois for the Park Service who completely shut down public comment because they were in violation of the law and the citizens asked those people to remain there Meeting unmolested without any physical contact. And they called the sheriff and the sheriff actually came and took those people into custody from my understanding of those events, no one touched anyone and no one threatened anyone. And the worst dishonesty of what or at least misunderstanding I can't say for sure it's dishonest and maybe it's a sincere misunderstanding. And I think unfortunately the supervisor might be living in the fear mode quite a bit and that might account for some of his inaccurate and arrogant statements but the fact is People who are violating the law are subject to a citizen's arrest.
There is a mechanism for it in the law, it's not my tactic, it's not something I'm particularly interested in but if you're going to lie to people and say that a citizen's arrest would be called for only for a political difference? No, that is not what that speaker said. He said you are violating the law and you're endangering people and putting people in harm not in accordance with the law and that is dangerous And that is the purpose of such a thing called a citizen's arrest. That people who are grossly violating the law can be, there is a mechanism for citizens to do something about that. It's not something I'm particularly into but it exists and it is not a threat of violence and it is not over a disagreement about politics. So I know it's fun to play the victim and to not have to take responsibility for what you're doing by blaming others for doing something wrong But as the elected officials, it is your job to guide our county through this very, very dishonest time.
Very deceptive time and once again I would like to call for people to stop participating in propaganda about the nature of COVID, the nature of the threat to justify abuse of people's rights including their right to discuss in their own way about agenda items during the public comment and it is very upsetting That people are willing to let their fear change their behavior and not feel like they have to be honorable in their dispensing of duties. And I would ask everyone to examine their conscience, and if they do actually believe in God, to be trying to work, to live ethically and honestly, and examine critically- Thank
you Dr. Smith. That is your time.
And that concludes general public comment.
Were we not able to get Mr. Medrano back?
Oh, excuse me yes thank you and we will now return to Joshua Medrano.
Good morning everybody can you hear me? We
can
welcome back. Fantastic! Thank you so much for having me back here as stated my name is Joshua Medrano I am the Executive Secretary and Treasurer of the Tri-Counties Building and Construction Trades Council as your friendly neighborhood building trades. I'm here to just bring focus on what the building trades has to offer the community. I know that in the world of social media, that it is a lot better to be able to peruse through things so I wanna encourage the community to go log onto Facebook and like our page Tri-Counties Building and Construction Trades Council you can find it there on Facebook And you can also find us on our webpage and it'll take you there.
And what I'd like to encourage everybody to take a look at is our pre-apprenticeship program, and the pre-apprenticeship program right now, the SB1 MC3 Multicraft Curriculum Program is currently being held in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. And we have several cohorts going on simultaneously If you're looking for a career, not a job but ahead of household career that you can take pride in having at home to be able to not only put food on the table and a roof over your head but put money in the bank for retirement, for college get your kids involved. The whole community coming together for these pre-apprenticeship programs so that we can help each other up as opposed to just giving a hand out. Now the trades are here however we can be of assistance We are your little league coaches.
We are the scout troop master, we are embedded in the community and I encourage all of you if you know anybody that is a person of labor with the building trades talk to them see how it's been for their family what it's done for them and their life and you'll be surprised of the changes the life changes that go on by joining organized labor So with that, I will excuse myself. I appreciate everybody's time and again, I encourage you to go online and do your own research with the Tri-Counties Building and Construction Trades Council of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. And to this board we appreciate your hard work in keeping the community in focus while you maintain order of business. So good luck with the rest of your meeting.
Appreciate your time. Have a great day.
Thank you for the public comment and I added you on Facebook so we're good.
And that now concludes general public comment.
All right, so I believe that we've corrected A18 and we are able to read that item in the record and make the correction that we need to before approving that item?
0:59 – 1:0519 turns
Yes, thank you Chair Nelson and members of the board. Administrative item number 18 is from FIRE Board of Directors in the Fire Protection District. It is to consider recommendations regarding consent to the voluntary transfer of district ambulance transport responsibilities and authority to the County of Santa Barbara in New Cuyama Exclusive Operating Area 3
My understanding is there's been an amendment to the resolution that is now available online as well as in the back of the room at both of the hearing rooms and up here at the board. Is that correct?
Chair Nelson and members of the Board, that is correct. The Clerk of the Board has made available online and in the back of the room a revised resolution for the record on Administrative Item Number 18.
Okay. If there's no discussion from the board on that or any concerns, is there any public comment on this item?
Chair Nelson and members of the Board we have no request to speak on this item.
All right I'd be glad take a motion to accept the revised resolution in Item A18. So moved.
Second.
Any further discussion? Seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously All right, so that concludes our administrative agenda and public comment. We're going to go ahead and move on to departmental item number one. I believe we'll take a small break after one and then power through from there actually. Where are we at? Yeah let's go ahead and carry on with that. So we're gonna go items 1 & 2 and then take a small break. So Madam Clerk will you please read departmental item 1 into the record
Chair Nelson and members of the board, departmental item number one is brought to you by Community Services. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Commission for Women annual report.
All right welcome Mr. Chaptain.
Thank You chair Nelson and members of the board good morning once again the Commission for Women has been very busy this past year they continue to meet on a monthly basis via zoom they haven't let COVID stop any of their activities their success can be measured by the passion and determination Advocate for those in need. Today, you'll hear about the amazing work and accomplishments this past year of the Women's Commission.
With that I'd like to invite Commission for Women Chair Allison Wales, who should be there in person, to start the presentation.
Welcome.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
We can
yes now.
Actually, will you bring it down a little bit closer to?
I'm short. There we go. Can you hear me? That's much better. Thank
you.
I know you can see me because we're live so yay! Good morning Chairman Nelson and the rest of the supervisors. We are so excited to actually be here in person with a few of my fellow supervisors to talk about all that we have had accomplished in the last year or so. This is actually really exciting for me. I was a supervisor. Two meetings and the last two years I've been all Zoom. So yay, it's nice to be here in person actually.
So with that we'll get moving. Okay let's see if we can actually do this. There we go, yay. So here we have some pictures of our actual retreat that we had in this past August right before we could actually meet for a brief window and we had a few people on Zoom to really talk about everything that we had accomplished during all of the COVID time within Zoom but also to reflect a little bit upon what the commission has been And where we like to go and how to continue to impact our communities and help our supervisors serve their communities as well.
I was taken back is that, I come from the North County Rape Crisis Center up in North County, and we were established in 1974. And the Commission for Women was established in 1973. A lot of good stuff happened back then. So, it does seem like it was a world away but I have to say that is not so much so far away. While the world ebbs and flows we still have a road ahead to continue to foster equality equity and inclusion particularly for women of color who sit on that painful intersection of gender and race discrimination These are the women that we don't always see in meetings. These are the women that are hidden in many ways, but serve us a great deal and that is our goal is to hear their voice and present their voice to you.
Many of the years this was a platform that many have taken up over the years like the suffragettes that we celebrated last year. We gladly welcome others to the struggle to better our communities to make sure that all women have a voice at the tables of governance And again, I'd just like to reflect here a few pictures of where I was selected as chair and Stephanie Harrington as our vice-chair.
With that, I would like to continue with our presentation. We were able to, in January, the rest of the world was able and had to have a virtual march. And we once again partnered and helped sponsor with the Santa Maria March in Santa Barbara as well as NAACP and several other organizations to help bring forth this virtual women's marching collaboration. With that, I'd like to bring forth Tracy Baird, our Commissioner. She had a great impact on COVID this year and our PPE.
1:05 – 1:145 turns
We were very fortunate with our connections this year with 360 Good to give away masks and we gave away 5,000 masks to farm workers that Yvette was able to help us do up in North County. We were able to give away 35,000 of these that we secured for ourselves Working with the EDC and working with the Governor's Office. And we gave away 100 cases of sanitizer. So, the Women's Commission tried to get out there and do for some other organizations that could not take care of themselves and find product that they needed at the time.
Good morning. Thank you for having us, and thank you for all the work you do for women in our community. The second part of our talk on this slide is about our Women Speak Up. This year we've had the opportunity to do it online. Past her honoree Susan Rose was our first person to work with us on the gender equity issue, and we had a group of women speak from Girls Inc., Jamie, Colin, Kathy O'Dell from Women's Economic Ventures and Sharon Tepper from Decker's. We really wanted to get a viewpoint from all women in community.
Thank you very much Supervisor Williams for being on that and for We really realized at the end of the meeting and getting the information for all of you supervisors, the greatest need in our community is for child care. Women need it. They also need to really have equal pay and those were the two major gender issues. The second meeting we had was with Lois Capps.
The one who spoke on Pass the Mic, which is a nationally awarded film that one of our commissioners sitting here right now, Suzanne Peck helped to create with the county. And we are now using that as another way for the Women's Commission to enter the schools and really help in sex education. So thank you very much for your support of the Women's Commission.
As we talk about where we're at, we did our annual awards. Our awards were given out this year to five recipients. We have done our awards on what we want to say virtual film. We're the first commission two years in a row to do virtual film and I think that set us apart from other organizations of honoring Reverend Mary Richardson, Lisa Brown Ahondra Mahoney, Simone Rapskin and Megan Torres. So as you can see we were someone that we came and we honor our community very much so. We were able to do outreach on the next slide. We were able to do outreach and go to national at our own expense It was Anna Everett and myself, and to meet with Salud Carver Hall. We won the national award as Judy said we were the only commission that won an award on our programming because it was so outstanding of our video.
So we hope you are seeing that you've seen it and we want to move forward on what we're doing with our programs in the future
I'm going to back up a little bit and just say that with Anna and Tracy in Washington, D.C., it was a great representation of the county and the communities that we serve and what we're able to do. It's a small group that was able to meet at this time of COVID, and their presence was duly noted and very important as well. As well as all the COVID, you know, the first, back up a little bit.
Where am I going? Sorry, technology. The first two weeks after everyone, you know, COVID hit we were like how do we do this and what do we do? And I like to say the commission along with so many other organizations after a few weeks were like this is how we have to pivot and what we have to do And amazing presentations on Zoom were put together and a lot of information. And we've learned so much, and we look forward to the future being able to present in person as well as opportunities on Zoom.
Something that is to really be proud of, I think, is our achievements and awards. Arcelia Cincion, she...I've known Arcelia for many many years and she was awarded the Congressional Women's Year Award winner this year as Tracy was, Commissioner Beard was awarded last year. It was wonderful to see her honored this year and all of her work that she has done at STESA, which used to be the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center.
And our president of last year for the commission, Margaret Fitzwilliams was selected to run as the President of the Association of California for Women which was a huge honor for her. And of course Yvette, if anyone knows Yvette in North County wow is she a mover and a shaker right? She's amazing. It's so honored to see her honored as young professional by the Chamber of Commerce in Santa Maria. She is going places. And of course, again I mentioned the National Commission for Women with Tracy and Anna representation there.
Collaboration and outreach this was something that we continually do talk to a lot of nonprofits will bring a lot of people in and other agencies that serve the community. This is something that we recently did were actually able to have a limited March so to speak In September, and it was a lovely turnout. And I know that Commissioner Hartman was able to attend up in North County which was wonderful. And I thank my fellow commissioner Tracy Baird for speaking for me because I was actually called out on a crisis so it was exciting that she was able to step up as the team members that we are for each other.
I don't know if you can see. I don't know how to do it there. Oh, I did it there. There we go. Members of the NAACP were present there as well was great at this moment. Pass it on to Tracy to talk further about Veterans Stand Down. But something I want to take note with Veterans Stand Down is that the commission was there representing the commission and all of you, but also we had commissioners there representing actually non-profit agencies working as well.
So we have a commissioner for CHC Serrano and then I was there myself with the Rape Crisis Center so it's all a collaborative effort
I think this year, we're very proud to have been part of the stand down again for many years with Steve Lavinino and he does a great job. And we have embraced it very much and I like to say every time as it's gone on, we've brought something to the table and it's moved on its own, and we're doing filming so this year we felt it was good to film women I want to start by saying thank you to all of our veterans.
I'm very proud to say we were able to help get someone housing on that day as a woman. That's probably the best thing we can do, and we're so proud to be part of what you guys are doing with Stand Down year after year. So thank you. We're going to bring back up Allison again.
1:14 – 1:2516 turns
We included this slide just as to show just a small representation of who we actually collaborated with, attended or have promoted through our social media or actually attended or had at our meetings. Maddie's tapestry or treasury box was a wonderful item that we had at one of our meetings to hear about her and help them connect up with various school districts in places in order to promote their coloring box.
And this is all we've done, right? I think we all have these pictures of Zoom and how many that we had to attend. But it also shows our resiliency as a commission, as a community that were able to adapt and learn how to share our information to continue to grow. And here is our current commission. I'd like to thank Supervisor Nelson for appointing Jennifer Baird, yay! We have someone for the fourth district and we're excited and hopeful that we have two more from that district. I know that we have some super commissioners that will be terming out soon and so we were coming forth to you to have suggestions of who would we like to have on the board.
As the commission continues, one of the things that we're going to really focus on this year is on other commissions and boards in our communities. I've really tried to put out information to all of our commissioners about meetings in their local areas because you need to have a seat whether it be the library board or a commission in your local city. As someone once said, if a woman isn't present, the right decision may not be made at the board. And that's what we really truly believe. So we're gonna promote that confidence and building to attend and to say yes I can do this or yes I can learn. You may not know everything about a subject but that's the beautiful thing about being a woman. We figure it out, right?
Also, at this time I like to say that the women's vets is a big thing that we're going to try to figure out a way to reach out to. We're very fortunate in the North County of the North County Rape Crisis Center, we have an amazing relationship with the Well, I guess it's Space Force now. I was gonna say Air Force base and we are unique because we've traveled across the country and know that our relationship is unique. We've had several male and female come into the center for counseling and services. And so we're gonna see if we can find a way to find those hidden voices that are not speaking up in meeting services from all of us.
And also, I'd like to take this moment real quick to thank Ava. Bless you my dear. This woman right here has helped us a great deal and helps me a great deal in the commission and I thank you so much for all your assistance around. Anything else that any commissioners would like to share? Thank you. We are so happy to serve you and try to be your eyes and ears to the community that maybe we don't necessarily always hear. We're here for you, and I hope you call us as much as we call you. And thank you.
I just want to thank Commissioner Wells and all of the women commissioners who are here today. They do such outstanding work, and it's always a pleasure today when we hear the report back about the things that you're doing. You're not deterred by the challenges of the moment and the adaptation that is necessary to continue the work I particularly want to thank Commissioner Peck for her work representing the second district. She has led the charge with the video work that you have done that has gotten national recognition and is really an incredible achievement and accomplishment and I know Suzanne was the leading driving force creatively for that work. It's something that will transcend her time with the commission. I know her term is coming to an end but I've always been grateful And the collaboration that we've been able to develop over time and just want to thank her for service and really the contributions you made to our community.
Thank you.
Thank you Supervisor Hartman, Supervisor Labanino.
Yes well I just wanted to say that I always look forward to this presentation and all year long I see members of the Women's Commission out in the community whether it be at marches or various events the speak out women speak out those forums so it's not like you're sitting in a table you really are Active in the community and you really are our eyes and ears And I just really appreciate what you're doing. And now you've got state and federal national recognition for your efforts, so You're really the ideal Commission You're you're really the top commission I would say in our county you're extraordinary and I know you put a lot of work in this and so we Really appreciate it
Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lavenino and then Dept. Williams.
Supervisor Hartman just laid it out to all the other commissions out there. Let's see. I'm going to be hearing from Dan Blau like, I got that planning commission now so yes your work is...I'm glad that we do this every year too because it reminds us exactly of how busy you are and I do want to thank you for all the work that's being done and been done at Stand Down and continues to be done as well as you know I was just looking through some old things yesterday and I happened to run across I forgot maybe it was up here but I didn't see it The event that we had at Hancock College to get young women more involved in what you know, what exactly is going on in the world of You know public service and those types of things and it made me prepare for that meeting One of the things I did was looking at the county and how many women We have in in positions of leadership.
I mean starting right here with Mona as our CEO and Terry Mosnicich and Started going through and our county council started going through our entire organization. And it was just, it was amazing how many women we have leading our departments. Some in what some would consider more traditional positions and then some that are definitely crossover and it's just really interesting.
And of course, our very own Supervisor Hartman does a great job representing the view. Of women and so just thank you appreciate you. I'll put you in our top 3 so that other people don't think that maybe they're in there too. You know who knows?
Thank
you. Supervisor Williams? What I was going to say without picking favorites is the level of proactivity. You guys really make a very good effort Highlight and bring issues to the fore that are of importance to our county's women. And I know as a former organizer, I know the challenges of trying to bring in new people into that discussion. And I know that's your deepest yearning, you like seeing your colleagues that already are aware of some of these issues at Zoom forums but you want to bring in new people so you know I hope Given what we've seen of places that get colder weather earlier, there obviously seems to be a fourth wave brewing but hopefully a lesser one and one that will not stop you from planning some events next year that are in person.
I think in-person events have the ability to bring new people in And I think that's vitally needed. Your role is irreplaceable in the county, and I think the potential to bring a different demographic into the movement is vitally important. So I know that it's something you talk about a lot And I want to encourage you, despite the challenges of COVID in doing that work. Want to encourage you and thank you for doing it.
Thank you, Supervisor Williams. And on behalf of the 4th District thank you again for all the work you guys are doing out there and I've been slow to make my appointments in part because I know how important the discussion is and when you have commissioners from all five districts You're looking for diversity, sometimes a geography but sometimes of opinion and advocacy.
And so I've been trying to find those right ladies to step up to really represent women in the fourth district well on your commission and I'm hopeful that Jennifer and a few little running mates with her are going to be a positive addition to your Your commission, as you guys advocate for the issues that are important to women and the entire community as a whole. So thank you and look forward to ongoing participation from our district.
So with that, any parting
thoughts? Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. And we are going to get out there in person as soon as we can although we've also seen the power of Zoom and being able to record it across and be able people to see and reach it so it's a new world and we're embracing it and as we go forward safely equitably across the board thank you
Thank you Commissioner Wells. Any further discussion on the board? Madam Clerk, is there any public comment?
Chair Nelson and members of the Board we have no request to speak on this item.
Okay I'd love to take a motion to receive and file as well as the CEQA exemption. Appropriately Supervisor
Hartley? I would move staff recommendation A and B
All right, thank you. Is there a second? Second. Second for Supervisor Hartman. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. All right let's go ahead and get to item, departmental item number two. Madam Clerk will you please read that item into the record.
1:25 – 1:335 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board departmental item number two is from the County Executive Office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an update on proposed certificates of participation COP financing and the adoption of a reimbursement resolution.
All right, let's go ahead and go directly to Mr. Frapple. Thank you.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'm joined here by Paul Clemente, our budget division chief. And today we're going to share with you briefly about the upcoming proposed certificates of participation issuance and the projects that were proposing to be financed by that. And ask your board to adopt a resolution that will refer to as a reimbursement resolution. I'll talk about that in a moment.
Your board may recall in 2019 we brought a report to your board that outlined nine projects that we were recommending at that point for debt finance. Since that time, we have been able to find other financing sources for free of those projects and also we have two new projects that weren't on the original list that came from the fire department. The delay in the COP has been largely related to the delay in the Northern Branch Jail completion And why that's connected to this question is that under IRC code, proceeds of a tax-exempt debt financing are required to be spent by the county within a three year period.
So it's imperative that we time the issuance of the COP so that we have time to construct the projects and complete them and spend the proceeds within that limited timeframe. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment on the reimbursement resolution So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Clemente and he'll walk through the projects, the six projects that we have for your board's consideration today.
Thank you Jeff. Good morning Chair Nelson, members of the Board. The first project we'll be walking through briefly is the Main Jail Rehabilitation Project, which your board discussed extensively last week. The project outlined here is in line with the Board's direction on that item. It's projected to cost just under $25 million. And we'll work on physical improvements to the South County Jail, including ADA compliance. Life safety structural and system improvements as well as improvements to medical and mental health areas.
There's a projected useful life of 40 years on this project with an estimated contract award date of March 23 and construction completion the following summer of 24. The final plans on this project will come back to the board for further discussion and direction prior to approval of the construction contract. And the source of funds on the debt service for this are anticipated to be the general fund.
The public safety radio network replacement will upgrade the county's existing land mobile radio and microwave radio systems. There is a projected useful life on average of 20 years for this, there are multiple components to this project but the average useful life is anticipated to be 20 years. Estimated award of the site development contract date would be June of 22 with completion of site development in June of 23.
And then system installation completion date would be September of 25. Total project cost for this would be 46 and a half million dollars, only 15 million of which is anticipated to need to be financed and the source of funds for the debt service on this project would be the general fund The Kachuma Lake RV Park Renovations Project would renovate and restructure approximately 100 RV sites with upgraded utilities and facilities including water and sewer.
It has a projected useful life of 40 years. Estimated award contract, award of contract date would be September 23rd and construction completion the following summer June 24th. This project is anticipated to be about $16.25 million and the entire project is anticipated to be financed. General fund would also be the source of this debt service. The probation headquarters project would develop approximately 35,000 square foot headquarters for probation in downtown Santa Barbara to consolidate staff from the Hollister campus and the downtown location into one location.
As well as a main goal of this is to cease using facilities that are currently over 70 years old, which have deep energy and water usage inefficiencies. The design plan for this new building would be zero net energy. It's got a projected useful life of 50 years with contract award date anticipated in June of 23. Estimated construction completion for this project would be October of 2025 And again, general fund is the estimated anticipated source of debt service.
The next project is to build an 8200 square foot regional fire communication center for fire and medical dispatch. As well as to renovate the Joint Information Center at the County EOC. This project has multiple components, but an average useful life of 40 years. The estimated award of construction contract date is November of 22 with completion in April of 24.
The source of funds for this debt service would be 80% for the fire district and then 20% coming from the general fund. This is a $13 million project with the entire amount anticipated to be financed. And the final project is replacement of the existing 70-year-old Fire Station 27 in Quiama, with an 8500 square foot fire and sheriff's substation. Useful life would average 40 years.
Construction contract date This is a project that is already underway and has broken ground, I believe earlier this summer with estimated construction completion date of May 22. The estimated source of funds for this is the fire district total project cost is about 7.65 million with 7.15 anticipated to be financed. So this leads us to the reimbursement resolution that your board is being asked to adopt today. It would declare the county's intent to reimburse project expenditures incurred prior to debt issuance, and a good example is the fire station that's currently under construction. They've broken ground. They're working on it now.
With adoption of this resolution, they'll be able to then once debt is issued reimburse themselves for costs incurred after this date. And it's important to note adoption of the resolution does not obligate the county to proceed with any other projects or incur any costs that we've discussed. So our next steps are to staff will continue finalizing solid project cost estimates.
We'll have a formal kickoff with our financial advisors that we'll be working with staff over the next year to develop the ultimate debt issuance package and we'll go to the DAC for review and approval of financing documents prior to returning to the board for final approval. And our recommended actions today are to receive and file this update on the proposed capital projects to be financed through the COP.
Adopt a resolution authorizing the reimbursement of expenses incurred in conjunction with the proposed projects from the proceeds of the COP financing, and to make the CEQA determination that the above is not a project.
All right. Thank you Mr. Clement. Questions from the board?
1:33 – 1:405 turns
When we originally talked about this, I think we were aiming in the $100 million range and then if you look at what the general fund allocation is for these projects it's more like 95-ish. So was there consideration given to using that capacity? I know interest rates are increasing so it may just all cancel out. Do you have a sense as to where we've gone from interest rates had we not had the delays with the North County Jail construction that pushed this all back? What was the interest environment that we were originally aiming for and what are we looking at now?
Thank you, Supervisor Hart. Through the Chair, so the interest rate environment continues to be at historic lows. So we're really positive in that regard. We've lost some ground, as we've seen interest rates ebb up just slightly. But within the tax-exempt market those rates don't tend to fluctuate as much and so while you're seeing interest rate environment in the taxable market—so if you ran out to borrow a home mortgage or something—you're seeing more kind of upward movement in those rates. The tax exempt rates, we haven't seen the same relative growth. So we're still in a strong IE low interest rate environment.
You know, I think we're targeting about a year out again We have to time the issuance with respect to spending the proceeds so we're probably about a year out from actually issuance you know it's hard difficult impossible to predict where we'll be in a year but I think that as I look back The first COP that I was ever involved in they fix interest rates for about 12% Now, we issued variable and we paid about 1.6 over 20 years as an average interest rate but that just kind of shows you from my perspective, we're in great rate.
Your question also related to the capacity, right? When we were first in 19 talked about the projects that were gonna be ultimately backed by the general fund it was over 100 million. That's come down some. We're still within about the right, the same amount 90 ish million dollars right that the two fire projects are paid for by the Fire District. So there's probably some capacity there. I mean we can look at, we've done a great job, your board has done a great job over the last few years in financing and paying cash for projects which is ultimately what we'd like to do.
It's the lowest cost of doing the projects but there is some room should there be another priority project that should be considered. Today so nothing precludes your board from adding a project later. Today we're really talking about what projects are we continuing to move forward on incurring some costs that will want to be reimbursed once we do the
financing? Well, that's very helpful and I appreciate your historical perspective about interest rates. You're exactly right which makes me want to think that you know what's the next project that was on below the cut list before and should we look at it because of the historically low interest rates environment despite them creeping up a little bit It might make sense to do that on an additional project now. So I'd like to see you take a look at what was just below the list in the past
All right other questions from the board I've got a few questions and comments. First of all, just want to commend Bud's staff and the county as a whole on trying to find other financing tools to accomplish some of these things back that were looked at in 2019 so I mean it's a big step forward you know it's us continuing to put A commitment as a board and as a county towards infrastructure and improvements, and I think that's a big deal. You know we're going to be opening up this jail. We've done Taheegus. I mean, we're tackling big projects in the county and then we're gonna go tackle another hundred million more which is really I'm excited about that because we have an aging infrastructure and I think this, you know, I'm hopeful in the future we look back and see that this error on this board has been to really bring about new growth and new opportunities and new buildings.
I just wanted to give you guys kudos on that. I do have a question on the Kachuma Lake RV park renovations. I see the debt service is from the general fund. Obviously, that's a revenue-generating opportunity so are we going to be able to somehow allocate some of that increased revenue towards this to help offset that so that we can keep more of our general fund revenue that we're going to have for other projects like Supervisor Hart has mentioned? Because I'm anxious to see what's next
Chair Nelson, certainly. You know a number of these projects I'll talk about Kachuma first but there are some other examples as well on this project you're absolutely right we do anticipate probably increased in revenue to the Community Services or the Parks Department by probably $800,000 a year now that increased revenue probably could cover the debt service on this project so there's no net new draw on existing resources so we do expect Now ultimately from the structuring of the debt finance, it is the general fund stands as the backstop for the debt service. But we do anticipate that the revenue will likely cover all if not most if not all of the debt service.
Consistent with that you know when we're talking about the public radio, public safety radio system and your board has set aside money in the budget to pay for largely the bulk of the project cost except for the development of new repeater sites. So putting new towers and new equipment at new sites is largely what we're considering financing, but that financing cost although will be really shared across all the users of the system which includes the fire district et cetera besides just the general fund. But again from a structure in the finance it's as general fund backed but we do think the source of ultimate debt service will be shared across multiple funds.
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So will we end up setting up some type of function again from that revenue, going back to Kachuma for a minute. Is that going to be coming from community services to fund that? I want to make sure I understand that a little bit better as we move towards that. Not that I don't mind community services having a windfall because I'm sure we'll find some exciting place to put those dollars but it does make sense You know, to do more we need to find some of these tools and this is one of them. And as Supervisor Williams has been pointing out with the solar projects and making sure the cost savings that we get from that can go towards those projects is another exciting opportunity that I think we have ahead of us. So how are we doing that? Is it internal service funds?
Is there some kind of other cost allocation that we work through with the auditor to accomplish that? I just want to get my arms around that.
Chair Nelson, thank you for that question. So from a budget development standpoint essentially mechanically what happens is that the CSD will show an increase in their revenue to the extent they show that increase directly related to this project we'll be able to reduce general fund contribution and then allocate that to the debt service if that makes sense. I mean it's just little budget mechanics there That's how that kind of will work.
So do we have some kind of budget policy? This is something that goes on and you know. beyond when you and Paul aren't there anymore? How do we set that up? I don't quite understand that. Is that a resolution when the project comes before us?
That's a really good question, and it is something we will be bringing back to your board next month, the budget development policies. I think we can probably craft should your board give us that direction, craft some language that talks about To the extent we're doing debt finance on projects that generate additional revenue, that revenue then is used essentially to offset debt service. We could probably craft that for your board's consideration.
Chair Nelson, first of all we do appreciate you thinking of it in that way. But this is just to remind the public, Kachuma is not an enterprise fund so any other revenue they generate through parks comes back to the general fund for the board's discretion. So that's why Mr. Frappel was saying we could then use the money for the debt service but I think you were looking at all Projects like we said general fund is the backstop on all of these and your board has Discretion on how you want to use the revenue in any given time for these general fund projects
Yeah, so thank you for that because I think it's important. I think that there is an idea here that it's really easy to say it's found money in the future So I really encourage that we maybe have some kind of policy that comes back with our budget You know policies that the board discussed so that we don't get in that habit. I know in my own household It's really easy to have something allocated towards something and then you know you move on and you kind of forget why Those funds were there or what? It was allocated for and and so I think the more that we can do that the better And then I think also encourages other departments To look at, hey how can we pay for this project? And so that they come to the board and say this is how we're going to save you money.
And we're going to be able make these improvements. So I think that's really something I hope that we can continue to build on. Supervisor Williams.
I just wanted to indicate, I support this. There's one item on there that I don't support but I thought it was a waste of time and effort by staff to tease it out. I don't want to increase your work or expense but I just wanted to clarify that I haven't changed my position. It
took me a second to figure that out but I got it so great. Any other questions or comments from the Board? Staff, first of all is there any public comment on this item?
Chair Nelson and members of the board we have no request to speak from the public on this item.
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Gregg Hart · Seconded by Steve Lavagnino
Show transcript
1:59 – 2:1513 turns
Next item on the agenda is departmental item number three. Madam Clerk will you please read it into the record?
Chair Nelson and members of the board departmental item number three is from FIRE, Board of Directors in the Fire Protection District. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the regional fire communications facility RFCF update.
Thank
You.
Chief Hartwig
Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the board. Before I get started on this item if I could just take a little bit of time and recognize some members of staff who have really done the heavy lifting on this. First of all Deputy Chief Rob Heckman has taken this as his responsibility over the last six months but it's really been about two-and-a-half years That I've been here and so I'll be the face of the presentation today, but he'll be able to provide any background or information that you might have questions about.
Our another assistant department head and CFO of the district is Shauna Jorgensen and she's here to answer and provide any financial clarifications we have our dispatch consultant as well Dave Festerling In the consultant business, but you might know him as a retired chief officer out of Ventura County Fire Department and who ran their dispatch center there. And as important as all of those, or maybe just a little less important is all of the fire chiefs in the room here today.
This story that we will talk about here this morning is more about cooperation, partnership and regionalization as it is about dispatch and we'll get into that. And as I start, I felt like I should start by saying this is a culmination of a year's long effort. But I realized that we're not there yet and that what I present to you here today as you deliberate on it is just really the next step. It is a big step but it is just the next step in what has been talked about in this county for a long time. The opening slide, those patches are somewhat symbolic because those patches have kind of been added to the slide over even the last six months as our partners, our fellow fire chiefs and their governing bodies have made the decision The county fire district and in fact, we will ask you to ratify agreements that they have signed here at the end of the presentation except for Lompoc.
And Lompoc has the direction to have it sign and is still working on that signature with the city manager and the fire chief and legal counsel. I'm going to read through most of these slides. There's a very short presentation and I want to make sure I don't leave anything out, and again we have plenty of time for questions. On October 1st of 2019 as you recall, you directed us to develop planning efforts to expand the existing EOC to accommodate a regional fire communications center. The RFCF is what it's referred to and will be referred When it's built Authorized staff fire district and fire department staff to enter into service level negotiations with regional partners taking that idea and commitment that I just talked about and putting it into a legal contract and Commitment, and then as you recall you directed us to examine the redundancy plan in Northern Santa Barbara County The assumptions, these are important and have been really guiding principles as we have developed this partnership were that each county chief or each chief within the county would be required to take formal action respectively with their governing bodies to agree to the partnership in terms of the RFCF.
Chief Heckman worked Over the last number of months with legal counsel, our legal counsel and fire chiefs than their legal counsels to make sure their concerns were met in the executed agreements. That partners will proportionately contribute to the cost of running the facility that nobody would pay an undue burden or shoulder and undo a burden. Two public safety answering points are PSAPs primary and secondary, that the sheriff will continue to operate the primary PSAP within the county. There would be no impact to the sheriff's ability to operate the primary PSAP The sheriff's budget would not be negatively affected and that there would be no loss of space or functionality at the existing EOC. And as you'll see, there will be an enhancement to that functionality with the proposed changes at the EOC The timeline, I want to just really quickly make a correction on this slide.
If you look at phase one it says June 24th of 2022 that should have been December of 2021 and that happened as we were kind of combining different timelines with General Services and our consultants, as well as our architects. I failed to mention General Services and they're here in the room today as you know we work closely with them and will in the building of this center so thank you to Jeanette and General Services for being here as well.
I want to get a little bit into the costs and the building itself. It's an 8,500 square foot facility. The communication facility will be about 6,300 square feet of that again finalizing drawings right now with RRM. The call center and JIC will be roughly 20% of the new building. Roughly 1700 square feet, about 500 square feet of shared areas and then there will be a proportionate cost share between the county and our FCF partners for construction and operations in the new building.
And just to point out it is a design bid build project. Just some highlights of the building as well. The new building and then the additions to the EOC, it will be an essential facility of course. A net zero energy facility. It is LEED Silver certified as intended in again finalizing those documents construction documents now with RRM. The key features, it's a state-of-the-art. It's sustainable by design and with redundant mission critical systems to include redundant CADs, servers, telephone switches, radio switches and a dedicated and secure data center that we intend would be helpful in other uses there at the Center And we have dedicated a secure data center, efficient and comfortable people systems and excited about a lot of what RRM is introducing in that to the project.
The EOC as we talked about there will be an expansion of the JIC, the Joint Information Center and the Call Center There will be no impact to EOC operations and the integrated design, the technological and physical connection to the EOC. Again trying as best we can share common space. The financial impact, the estimated annual operating cost for the RFCF is estimated to be $4.9 million. This amount also captures the capital set aside to build up reserves for large ticket items For the building, technology infrastructure, furniture and fixtures.
And technological improvements as well. The auditor's office completed a comprehensive review of the estimated operating costs and the cost share allocation and concurred with our estimates and allocation. The operational costs will be funded by the following sources, $3.3 million from the participating agencies and 1.6 million from the ambulance service provider whoever that may be and we'll ask for that determination to be made by you later in the presentation There's the commitment and the assumptions, and has been important all along is to really address that the budget gap that is left with the departure from the sheriff's dispatch center by the fire department.
And we're working on that even as we speak with KPMG and the CEO's office. We've committed to making sure that we fill that gap with efficiencies between the district and the county, and the Sheriff's Department The General Fund Gap Analysis is currently being done and performed by KPMG. We do have a draft report that we are talking with the CEO's office about. The analysis identified several varying staffing models, even different than what they have today at the Sheriff's Dispatch Center with three optimized staffing models and that in association With the loss of revenue would be roughly about $1.5 million, and I say roughly because we're still working that out with the CEO's office and KPMG.
As determined by the CEO's office, a general fund gap will be funded by the fire district through RFCF revenues or other district sources and efficiencies, and that's a commitment we've made to you and the CEO's office from Recommended actions, we just have two quick slides left and we're going to ask you to take some action as the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara County Fire Protection District.
First, and that is to approve, ratify and authorize the fire chief to execute cooperative dispatch agreements with partner fire agencies. Montecito Fire Protection District, Carpinteria-Summerlin Fire Protection District, City of Santa Barbara and City of Santa Maria as well as since this slide the city of Lompoc. Authorize the fire chief to enter into On behalf of the Santa Barbara County Fire Protection District and MOU with a local emergency medical services agency that defines dispatch.
processes for ambulance services and EMD or emergency medical dispatch procedure, and provide other direction as appropriate. And determine this action is exempt from California Environmental Quality Act CEQA pursuant to section 1537 8b5 which are organizational or administrative activities of governments that will not result in direct or indirect physical damage to the environment Mr. Chair, we'll also be asking you as the Board of Supervisors to receive and file the redundant public safety answering point conceptual plan and direct staff to focus planning efforts on the development of a backup PSAP with the City of Santa Maria.
And to designate the RFCF, effective when it commences operation, to be the point of dispatch for the contract ambulance provider as permitted in the County of Santa Barbara Emergency Ambulance Agreement section 4 paragraph 4.2 under dispatch requirements. require budget neutral impact to the county's general fund for RFCF operations and provide other direction as appropriate, and also determine that these actions are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.
Mr. Chair and members of the board, that's all I have for the presentation, and I'm open to any questions.
All right, thank you. Any questions from the board? Supervisor Hart?
I
don't have a
question, I just want to acknowledge all of the partners that are in the room. This is a really impressive turnout. I think we have almost every fire chief in the county. I know that Chief Cash from Guadalupe has multiple hats and he's probably busy right now but other than that I think we have everybody so the fact that Chief Hart, we talked about cooperation and regionalism is really significant. And it is the most important part of this project I think you know the idea that we're all working together and that there isn't going to be any worry for residents about what assets gonna get dispatched most quickly to an incident that is the foremost most important thing that is gonna be achieved by this project is that we're gonna really have the best response to any kind of medical emergency or fire emergency or anything that needs assistance from the fire departments dispatched immediately through this new process and collaboratively.
And you know all of us who've lived here for a long time know Exactly how capable and efficient the fire services are working together. Every time we have a wildfire, you know you folks flex and adapt and bring in the resources you need not just here locally first here locally but then you know around the whole state of California and the rest of country and we all have benefited with that we've seen it time and time again and this moment When you're all here to collaborate on this project, just another example of how well this works and the public knows it and understands it and appreciates it. And I just want to say thank you.
Thank you. Supervisor Hart. Supervisor Lavinio?
Thank you Mr. Chair. So just a question on couple questions ones on the construction portion at the EOC. I just want to make sure we've planned to expand the JIC And the call center anyway, right? I mean so when we talk about 11 and a half million dollars worth of construction. was still going to be done regardless if we continue on with this project or not.
Supervisor Lanvinino through the Chair, I think I'd defer to the CEO on that. I'm not sure what the plans were at the EOC. We did see this as a great opportunity to partner but as far as what the plans were I'd defer to CEO Miyasato.
2:15 – 2:4421 turns
Supervisors to the Chair, yes one of the findings from our after action reports that we need to expand the JIC.
Okay and then one thing that wasn't touched on I'm just curious what effect will this have on response times?
Well we believe it's going to have a net overall positive effect and I say net overall because currently as the call is received at the PSAP it is then transferred It is either handled there in the PSAP or transferred to another console within the current PSAP. After it finds the right fire EMS and rescue service provider, and as you know we have six of those in the county today, we will be moving to two. And only two because Vandenberg, because of their Department of Defense requirements will not allow them to join.
But our ability to get it to the right center the first time will be significantly improved from what it is today, which is often a cell phone 911 call coming in and jumping around to multiple centers before it finds the right fire rescue and EMS center. And then as Supervisor Hart was talking about and with
A response coming from the nearest resource as opposed to a jurisdictional boundary. I'm sure that that'll show in the response time as well What I have comments later, but before we go to public comment? I just also wanted to point out one of the things that I appreciated was the fact that the capital replacement set aside is budgeted in the annual operating costs and We're not going to notice that, but somebody sitting up here 15-20 years from now will realize that because we've realized that 20 years ago somebody else didn't do that for us. So I like to see that in all of our operating costs. I really appreciate the fact that that's in there.
Thank you Supervisor Labadino. Supervisor Hartman and Supervisor Williams?
So my first question is if you look as a whole to the dispatch across the partners, are we realizing economies of scale financially?
That's a good question, and we've talked a lot about the increased cost. But the economies of scale that our current fire providers including us at the County Fire Department enjoy with our law colleagues, we then shift to sharing with each other which then leaves that gap. So yes, instead of each one of us having our own separate centers, we're coming together and appreciating that economy of scale even though As we leave our law partners, it does create an increase or a gap if you will wherever we leave.
And then could you talk a little bit more about our backup PSAP in Santa Maria? At this point we don't really know the cost but that's going to be a huge benefit in my mind to have both north and south in case we have an earthquake or something that disables us here so just would like to understand a little more about that
So we have a handshake agreement with Santa Maria. I'm going to kick it over to Chief Heckman on that because he's been working closely with Chief Tuggle and the city too, to make that a reality.
Good morning Supervisors, Supervisor Hartman through the chair. So we met with the city of Santa Maria over several meetings probably about four or five facilitated through Chief Tuttle who's here today and we found there was a mutual benefit of having a redundant center in the North County. We've talked about that several times over the years and so we determined that It's a project that's worth pursuing. That's why it's one of the requested items today is that you we've had a conceptual study done and to answer your question of cost they anticipate about $1,000,000. That's very early in the negotiation phases. We still have to discuss how we're going to construct it so we would like to make a formal project today as one of the action items requests for action from from the board.
We're actually inside the Santa Maria's PD. They have a space that's unoccupied and pretty much bare walls as a bare canvas. The benefit is that we're going to be able to leverage their existing essential facilities facility, where they'll use their parking, their tower, their data center room. We'll be able to use a lot of the infrastructure that's already there so we can just essentially become a tenant if you will and have some kind of lease arrangement where when we have to close out center for whatever reason, some catastrophic event in the South Coast, we can move up there. There will be almost a carbon copy of what we have in the South but a scaled down version so we can occupy it for what we feel would be a very short duration where we could continue operations.
So it's mutually beneficial for the city of San Maria as well as us. So we think is a win-win all around.
And I know you have different models. You're still exploring for the dispatchers, but could you just talk in general terms? How many are fire EMS currently and also for the partner agencies and just what you expect to see it's a very difficult profession as I understand it there's different training for law enforcement as opposed fire EMS and so I would just like to understand how this is going to change the dispatch job and recruitment and how many
That's a great question, Supervisor Hartman through the chair. It's in many areas a very common practice to have a secondary PSAP in which the dispatchers and call takers focus on fire rescue and EMS as opposed to law and fire rescue and EMS there are plenty of PSAPs in the state that do that But when it comes to that as a discipline, people choose one or the other based on the discipline.
From post-dispatch EMD instructions, post-dispatch and pre-arrival instructions even the support of field units fire and rescue units as opposed to law enforcement often vary different in their needs and disciplines. We're going to end working with our consultant Dave Festerling create within the county infrastructure a very competitive and attractive schedule as well as work environment. And so we do believe it's possible, as we put it out that there will be existing dispatchers that might want to do fire rescue in EMS and many of course chose the law dispatching profession and would stay there but Once we get the approval, I think and believe the start of the recruitment and working closely with HR to develop this position and schedule will commence in earnest.
And let's see, we have a letter from the Sheriff asking us to consider separating EMS from FIRE. Could you comment on that?
Yes, and the sheriff has maintained that for as long as I've been working with him is his position. I would tell you specifically because roughly 70%, 7 out of 10 calls at the public dials 911 for our help is related to emergency medical care and EMS. That it really would not make any sense for us to separate those two functions. Currently together in the existing dispatch center and as fire moves to the secondary PSAP bringing that in for a myriad of reasons but primarily The ability for us to communicate directly. Currently we're on two different frequencies, we're using two different CADs. We are in the same center but improving that and also the EMD capability working closely through an MOU with a local EMS agency to I would say better incorporate some of their needs into the medical control aspect of the local EMS agency and the county responsibility.
One of the things that's always interested me about this is that we may, through this have a more appropriate response by highly trained dispatchers being able to figure out really what is needed on the ground and not have to send every resource to every call but instead target it. And could you comment on that?
Yes, I'd love to actually. Supervisor Hartman through the chair you know EMD allows for really a differentiation from the most critical call what we would call an echo or omega call all the way down to the least acute problem and even a non-medical emergency which would be some alpha calls alpha through omega and then some calls that are I'm One of the things we envisioned, and it is happening in other centers in the state, is that we can work with some of these medical care providers including the county quite frankly and get them something other than an ambulance with lights and siren and a fire engine with lights and siren. Maybe two fire engines and maybe even a law enforcement officer or so on scene When they really simply just might need a referral to some other service.
Those processes are out there and we have every intention of incorporating that into our center when we flip the switch within now about two and a half years.
So I just want to underscore, I think that is very important especially to me. I think that does it for the moment. I just wanted to echo what Supervisor Lavinino said about incorporating costs. If you go to our current dispatch, the equipment is really old and to be planning ahead how to maintain state-of-the-art equipment is absolutely critical.
Thank You Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Williams?
I had a real reminder of what's at stake this morning in my email box from a constituent whose child had had a hard time breathing and had called 911, and the call got dropped because of a transfer. And to me, that's what this is really about. That was a flaw in essentially a bordered dispatch. You know, that transfer was probably in an ideal system unnecessary because if we had borderless dispatch we'd just send out the closest available resource and fortunately the kid is okay but you know It underscores really what's at stake. To me this is much bigger than a turf battle, right? This is about how we can get there.
with the closest available resource as rapidly as possible, appropriate for the scale of the emergency. And I really want to thank the chiefs and the union for both highlighting this issue for many years and before that Chief McElroy and Dr. Angelo Salvucci You know, kind of lifting the veil on the very scandalous flaws in the system. Whether it is that in this dispatch system or in cell receptor problems and all the associated issues with that.
And so I think this will have concrete real benefit to the people of Santa Barbara County
Thank you, Supervisor Williams. And before we go to public comment, we're going to go ahead and hear from the sheriff who's asked for an opportunity to speak on this item. Sheriff Brown?
Thank you Chair Nelson and members of the board. This morning I want to provide a different view than the presentation that you have just heard. I want to preface my remarks with the fact that I hold our brothers and sisters in the fire service in the highest regard I consider County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig a personal friend as well as a valued and respected public safety colleague.
But sometimes friends and colleagues disagree, and this is one of those times. It is important for them, for you, and for the members of the public to hear the reasons for our opposition to separating the county's emergency dispatch functions. The Sheriff's Office strongly opposes the splitting of 911 dispatch services by creating a regional fire dispatch center to which 911 calls would have to be transferred.
All 911 calls related to fire and medical emergencies would have to be transferred. Since today is likely the last off ramp available to you as the county's chief law enforcement officer and sheriff, I ask you to reconsider doing so. There are some very compelling reasons against the separation of our county's 911 dispatch functions. Please stay with me as I explain this.
The first is our proven history. As you know, the women and men assigned to our current multidisciplinary public safety dispatch center have proven themselves time and time again in handling day-to-day as well as major critical incidents. Over the past 44 years, the current Public Safety Dispatch Center has handled multiple brush fires and other disastrous incidents including the recent Al-Asal fire. The Thomas Fire and related debris flow, the Refugio oil spill, the Isla Vista mass murders, and the Delltopia civil disturbance incident.
All of these occurrences required coordinated dispatching, communications and status management between each of our public safety disciplines. Law enforcement, fire services and emergency medical services. Time and again having dispatchers for all three disciplines in the same room and able to communicate with each other directly face-to-face and in real time Proved to be beneficial and proved to be life saving.
Having a consolidated dispatch center was a key ingredient to the exemplary handling of these calamitous events. History has proven there is no need for separate dispatch services given the extraordinary skills, talents and track record of our current dispatch staff. The second reason is that consolidated dispatch means substantial cost savings to taxpayers.
One of the most compelling reasons for multidisciplinary dispatch consolidation is cost savings. Significant capital funding will be necessary for the construction and equipping of a secondary regional fire dispatch center, and significantly increased in ongoing annual costs to operate two separate county centers. And three city-based PSAPs will be a byproduct of such a center.
These expenses will place a significant burden on the counties and the cities' limited public safety budgets during uncertain and volatile economic times. Rather than create efficiencies, the move duplicates services and it increases costs unnecessarily. Under the proposed plan, the minimum costs to create a regional fire dispatch center are as follows for the construction and equipping of the center and $11 million capital cost.
For the ongoing annual expenses, costs to the county of Santa Barbara just for the operation of the center $1,136,000. To the city of Santa Barbara, $756,000. To the city of Santa Maria, $713,000, to the city of Lompoc, $316,000 to the Carpinteria Summerland Fire District $168,000 To the Montecito Fire Department $113,000 to the city of Guadalupe $77,000. That's a total of $3,279,699 estimated in additional annual expenses for those jurisdictions.
In addition to that there is this gap that has been mentioned that is estimated at 1.5 million but it's not certain that that's the exact amount. That will have to be provided to make the general fund and the Sheriff's Dispatch Center whole. Most of the cities within the county have passed additional sales taxes, to at least partially fund public safety needs.
The county has no such prospect for revenue enhancement in the near future and thus has been placed in a financially disadvantageous position. Now is simply not the time to commit to the spending of millions of dollars in capital and ongoing expenses that are not necessary. The Delta Works report submitted to Santa Barbara County identified a 25% increase in collective staffing if the current dispatch operation is separated.
In contrast, a report by the same company for Chittenden County, Vermont, identified a 15% decrease in staff that were required to consolidate at Dispatch Center Another major consideration is that our dispatch center is already competing for qualified staff with five other dispatch centers within Santa Barbara County alone. Thus, approval of the Regional Fire Center will add yet another center competing for both call takers and dispatchers.
A third reason is that closest resource dispatching does not require regional fire dispatch Borderless dispatching has been mentioned as a primary reason for dispatch separation. It was just mentioned by Supervisor Williams, that is a myth. Our existing Dispatch Center is fully capable of borderless dispatching and plans are currently underway to incorporate closest resource dispatching into our current computer-aided dispatch system.
This concept is in no way dependent upon a regional fire dispatch center. The fourth reason is that the national trend is to consolidate, not to deconsolidate. For many reasons, the current trend is for dispatch centers across the nation to combine law enforcement fire and emergency medical service functions, not to deconsolidated. No one else is doing this.
I've challenged the fire agencies, and I challenge anyone to look and see who is doing this at the present moment. The exact opposite is being done. We in the Sheriff's Office do not believe that you have been provided enough facts about the benefits of consolidation and the liabilities of dispatch separation. At the same time Delta Works was working on the report that you relied upon They were preparing another report for Chittenden County, Vermont titled Dispatch Consolidation Roadmap.
That report articulated many advantages of consolidation that were not included in the report that you relied upon in providing direction to explore the separation of our dispatch services. In the Chittenden County report, Delta Works wrote that and I quote, consolidated public safety dispatching services improves the efficiency with which resources are dispatched to life threatening emergencies.
That report also indicated that emergency call times could be cut by up to 71 seconds based on a survey of 16,000 calls if consolidation occurred. The report further identified other important benefits of consolidation that included facilitation of interagency communication, cross-trained staff to ease the burden of providing round the clock shift coverage, sharing of capital costs and an improved likelihood of obtaining grants and federal funding that supports interoperability.
A fifth reason to not separate is that there will be Life-threatening delays when seconds count. Now despite our great respect for our colleagues in the fire service, we strongly disagree with the notion that separation will provide a better level of public safety service for members of the public and that it will decrease response times. In reality, the exact opposite is true.
The delay and inefficiency that will be built into the delivery of service by adding a secondary public safety answering point will require precious additional time to interview the caller, extract information and dispatch appropriate resources. As mentioned above one community believed that they would decrease their call time by 71 seconds as a result of consolidated dispatch services.
And that was under ideal circumstances. Please remember that there are frequent occasions where callers are upset, confused or so excited by the underlying circumstances of the 911 call. The dispatchers are unable to initially decipher what is happening or where it is happening. Time must be spent calming the dispatcher I'm sorry calming the caller and extracting the vital information Transferring such callers to another dispatch center, sometimes twice if the California Highway Patrol Dispatch Center is initially called will further increase their anxiety and extend the amount of time it takes to determine and dispatch the appropriate emergency resources in some cases by several minutes.
The county's current dispatch centers average time from when a 911 call is picked up to when it is placed in the dispatcher queue is 38 seconds, 90% of the time. Currently fire and EMS calls are generally dispatched within 60 seconds. It will take roughly another 58 seconds for a transfer call to be answered by the proposed regional fire center from the time a caller dialed 911.
This is calculated as it takes on average 10 seconds to answer the call, plus 38 seconds to obtain the correct address and the nature of the problem. And another ten seconds for the next center to answer the transferred call. Thus it will take approximately twice as long 118 seconds to dispatch the services to the emergency under the regional fire dispatch model.
Such delays in dispatching emergency resources are especially troublesome given the stellar record of cardiac arrest survival rates in our county. The 2020 County of Santa Barbara EMS Agency year-in-review document lists the cardiac arrest survival rates for our county as outperforming the national average over the past three years by an average of 7% each year.
Do we really want to build a system that will inevitably impact such achievements negatively, thereby diminishing public safety? A sixth reason or a six consideration rather is that I would like to you as mentioned by Supervisor Hartman to consider separating only fire dispatch and not emergency medical services. If despite our grave concerns the board still wishes to move forward with dispatch separation, I ask you to consider that.
The reason is that it would still allow us to complete timely and uninterrupted emergency medical dispatching at the county's primary public safety answering point without transferring the call It would not increase the amount of call time before emergency medical dispatching is initiated and emergency medical services are dispatched. It provides for no delays or premature call transfers in the dispatching of multidisciplinary calls, such as traffic accidents, assaults with injuries, shootings and stabbings etc.
This model has been used successfully in our adjacent county of San Luis Obispo for over 30 years. Lastly, I'd like you to consider that the studies are really not yet complete. It's important to note that the KPMG cost analysis report that is referenced in the FHIR presentation is a draft. It was only recently released and it is clearly marked confidential draft for internal discussion purposes only.
My staff have already identified several significant errors in the draft report, which we will work to reconcile with KPMG after a validation session with them, which has yet to be scheduled. It would be premature to move forward when the full financial impact to the sheriff's dispatch budget, the county's general fund and the county fire and the participating agencies and fire districts are not yet known.
In conclusion let me say this When compared with the siloed services that existed prior to its creation in the late 1970s, Santa Barbara County's current Consolidated Public Safety Dispatch Center represents a significant modernization of our county's ability to efficiently and effectively provide critical emergency services to the people of Santa Barbara County.
We feel separating sheriff fire and EMS dispatching would be a step backward We are currently blessed to have such an outstanding group of women and men currently serving as our public safety dispatchers and call takers. They're not perfect, and like any operation that employs people from the human race a few errors and mistakes are made on occasion but such errors will also be made in a regional fire dispatch center if one is developed.
The vast majority of the time, the performance of our present Dispatch Center employees is superb and exceeds all county state and national standards. Despite being understaffed and under resourced for years, the women and men who work in our dispatch center have consistently provided exemplary service to our communities often under the most challenging of circumstances.
They and I believe strongly that our dispatch services should remain together. I urge you to reconsider dispatch separation, and instead for a fraction of the cost provide some additional staff and technology resources to our proven operation. This would save millions of taxpayer dollars and make an already excellent dispatch system even better. I thank you for your attention. And I and my staff are available for any questions you may have.
2:44 – 2:493 turns
Thank you, Sheriff Brown. Go to Supervisor Lavinio then I have a question. Supervisor Lavinio?
Thank you Mr. Chair. You know, I'm glad you started with friends and colleagues can disagree because for me when the number one concern that you laid out is financial Just like I don't think you appreciate when we get involved in talking to you about how to run the jail, and I know sometimes we cross boundary lines and we overstep. I have to answer as do my colleagues, I have to answer for the county budget. I'm held accountable by my voters on how I handle taxpayer dollars.
And so talking about the fact that significant costs are gonna be, that we're gonna run into these If we didn't take that into consideration and still have to make those tough decisions, we would've never built the North County Jail. That's $100 million. We just decided to spend another $24 million rehabbing a very small portion of the South County Jail so when we talk about the financial impact here I mean, I want to take that completely off the table. That's something we have to deal with and maybe in the future I'm going to come back and say you know well we always go back and look at how we could have done something better but I just want to take the finances off the top.
The other thing is when you listed out all those well another thing I wanted to state was when you brought up quote life-threatening delays That carries with it a lot of weight. And I'm sure you know that and that's why you use those terms, but I'm looking around this room and there are a lot of public safety professionals in this room that if... I believe that if they had that same belief that you do, they wouldn't have their name inked on this contract or on this MOU So I think change is good.
You know, I don't think this is an indictment at all on our call takers and dispatchers. I think this is a benefit for them. And actually when we talk about decisions that this board makes, I want to go back to 2012, and I want to thank my colleagues that were on in 2012 along with me that voted for the property transfer tax That allowed the fire department in the Fire District to set long-term priorities that allow us to have more strategic business decisions. This isn't coming out of the General Fund, this is coming out of Fire District money and I think this vindicates that decision back then that you know best how to run your Department. I think the Sheriff knows best how to run his Department And I see this as a benefit.
Sheriff Brown, I know you believe strongly and you definitely have a passion to defend the historic mission that you've had but I just see this is a different way I guess, I just take it personal sometimes when we disagree and then we bring it back as you know that this is going to destroy our budget or the costs are gonna kill us. When we've had to make huge investments in the Sheriff's Department that have really hindered a lot of other departments but we made those decisions even though sometimes they weren't publicly popular We knew what the right thing to do was.
And we went ahead and made those decisions, so I mean, I support this and I'm sorry if there was other public comment. I just felt the need to speak.
Thank you for having me know and I just had some questions got or at least maybe some comments maybe a question for the sheriff. You know, I think sure if you make it compelling argument But the question is where are we consolidating it at? I think that's the point here. We're in this room today, we have many different fire chiefs and we're going to consolidate fire across the board.
I'm absolutely interested in the Board's response for law enforcement and the consolidation of that. I don't know if the Sheriff would be willing to give up that authority to maybe some kind of regional law enforcement dispatch and then maybe a future marriage there. I am very interested in regionalization In consolidation, and I don't know if that if you have any comments on that sheriff or if you'd like to maybe offer up Your dispatch in the future to be consolidated with other law enforcement and it may be a general some kind of mutual group across the board. I Don't think that's something that you're interested in doing but I I'd be interested to hear if that's something that You would do in the efforts to for consolidation
2:49 – 3:0011 turns
Chair Nelson, I would never say to you that I wouldn't consider it under any circumstances. But the reality is consolidation of law enforcement services particularly in a county like ours where we are spread out so much there's not even the same argument to be made frankly for consolidating fire resources because we typically do not have as much A need to respond to each other. And when we do, we have a mechanism that allows us to get there pretty quickly. There's some exceptions to that But there are also some some liabilities and some challenges to regionalization particularly from the point of staffing from the point of Recruitment, retention and so forth. A lot of struggles that occur in that area as well. Again I wouldn't say that I'm completely opposed to it but I don't think that it has the same sense of urgency for myself or for the police chiefs that this obviously has had with fire chiefs in our community.
But I think that really you know the reason This is really, it doesn't take into consideration the fact that by law there's a primary public safety answering point. And no matter what we do with a regional system, we'd have to transfer a caller someone who's calling for arguably the most important call that they've ever made on a telephone. And we would have to transfer that in every circumstance where it's a fire or emergency medical phase to a different center.
The potential is there for the technological problems that Supervisor Williams brought up about the call that I'm not familiar with the details about from apparently from out of the area, from another dispatch center, I don't know. But that is always a possibility that could happen But again, I ask you to just take a look at if this is really the reason to do it.
There's a great idea and there's a real compelling reason to do that in our county. Why aren't other similarly sized counties doing this? The regional fire dispatch centers are primarily in very large counties significantly larger than Santa Barbara County And they have typically been in existence for many, many, many years. And all of our chiefs that have come in from out of the county have worked in systems like that.
That's all they've been used to. But the reality is our county, the size of our county lends itself to a dispatch function, a combined multidisciplinary dispatch function That works and that has resulted in life saving responses, I've told this before but i'll say it again. In the Isla Vista mass murders if we had not had our dispatchers in the same room with each other from the different disciplines.
And able to get ambulances moved in to pick up that young lady that was shot along with two others that were so sadly killed in front of that sorority. There's no question in my mind, that woman would not have survived. We were able to, by literally shouting across the dispatch center, get the message to the EMS dispatcher to tell the ambulance to move in at that point. The deputies were on scene and had secured the scene. It wasn't a phone call, it wasn't a ring down line, it was an instantaneous message that was sent. And I believe that woman is alive today because of the system that we have now.
Yeah so you know I think some of the comments yeah I'm gonna go to Supervisor Hart he's got a comment then I'll go to you Supervisor Williams and I want to follow up on my
questions. I think this is really important to address.
I will let you address
it. The Sheriff keeps on citing the Isla
Vista massacre. Supervisor Williams respectfully, I will absolutely let you Rebut that and bring it up. I think it's appropriate for you to I support you in that I do. I just really want to I want to Do this in somewhat of an order if you wouldn't mind let me So, you know, I think sure I respect the whole Of where you're coming from, you know, I think you know even the point were you made where we're heading towards Borderless response and having the software within your dispatch to do that You know Why did it take so long? I think that's one of the reasons why we're where we are today. We've had that opportunity for years and years but we're not there yet, and I think it has been said by my colleagues but nobody cares about the colour of their fire truck when they are in crisis.
And I also don't think they care what sheriff or police vehicle shows up to their house in a crisis as well. I mean you are the police service, sheriff's services for many of our cities. Goleta even a big city like Goleta, fuel tin solving and we have that same thing going on with fire here. I think this is something, this is a logical conclusion. I think there was a void in the vacuum and I think there was a need for consolidation and relationships to be built and I think that's why we're seeing fire step to the plate and I think that's why we are here today.
With that Supervisor Hart.
Well, I think that Chair Nelson and Supervisor Lavagnino have it exactly right. I think that there have been opportunities to do things differently to collaborate and those opportunities weren't taken by the Sheriff's Department and they were taken by the fire agencies. And that's why every single Fire Chief is here today in this room in solidarity with this plan people whose profession is to be the fastest people to an incident, to protect people are here in the room united regionally across the entire county saying this is the right thing to do. And I gotta say, I was hesitating trying to stop myself but it is not ironic. It is too often the case that we hear from Sheriff Brown about cost savings that are available when things are threatening his budget But we are later in the day, we're going to have the general fund quarterly report that will demonstrate that once again, the Sheriff's Department is $1.2 million over budget with overtime.
Thank you Supervisor Hart and thank you Supervisor Williams for waiting on this but please.
Well, you know I think it's really important to address this issue. I highly praise the response the Sheriff's Department to the Isla Vista massacre. I was your state legislator at the time and highly praised the response of the fire service and our EMS service at that event But it is also quintessentially an example of an event on a flawed 911 system. It has been admitted on tape by the head of Cal OES at the time that all of the dispatch calls for Isla Vista are at the Stork Tower cell receptor, and the Stork Tower cell receptor At the time, we're all routed to CHP in Ventura as the primary call. And so this is another example of that we have to be urgent about improving the system.
That we can have events where the men and women that are Fighting on our behalf in those events are doing it with all the passion and love that they bring. And yet, the system That they are trying to support is flawed. It is our job to look at those flaws in the system and it is the fire service that brought that flaw and has brought this flaw. I don't, you know, I'm too old to, I mean, I am not old enough to be good at patronizing folks who have more experience than me but I also know Pick between your public safety personnel. Right? You know, I don't pick between our deputy sheriffs and our firefighters.
That's why now almost four years ago, I said to the sheriff when he first brought objections for this, I'm just for borderless dispatch, right? That's what I'm for. I'm for borderless dispatch and closest available resource. If you can do it then I'm And the sheriff has had four years at least to do that. To respond to our desire to move in that direction and you know, I hope he's still working that way because I don't think it's too late to improve the system but I got seven agencies here ready to consolidate right now willing to go to borderless dispatch right now and I'm not going
Thank you Supervisor Williams. Supervisor Hartman and then I'd like to actually get to general public comment we have a few waiting.
First of all, I would like to hear from Chief Hartwig how he responds to what he heard from Sheriff Brown and I'm particularly interested in hope you will address chief the PSAP to the secondary PSAP and the timing
3:00 – 3:079 turns
Thank you, Supervisor Hartman and through the chair. So the only delay that occurs is the delay that it takes to transfer that call to the secondary PSAP. We estimate that to be about eight seconds, the sheriff is talking about 58 seconds, 58 seconds and the things that are included in that 58 seconds are going to have to happen anywhere. The only delay is the transfer so then we as professionals, the ones in the room here had to say is that potential eight second delay gonna be more harmful for the patient than Discombobulated, non-integrated, non-regionalized multiple agencies being notified for calls outside of their jurisdiction fairly regularly.
What's best? I wish I could tell you that there would be no delay, but I will tell you this. And let me read because a list of secondary PSAPs. This is a very common practice for fire agencies that have said we want to do it better together Is there a way for us to do it better together? We are not cutting edge. We are not bleeding edge on this concept. Secondary PSAPs are numerous within the state of California, specifically for fire rescue and EMS providers.
The sheriff mentioned large agencies. LA City Fire Department is a secondary PSAP to the LA City Police PSAP. LA County Fire Department is a secondary PSAP Verdugo, which is the northwest San Gabriel Valley, 13 agencies, secondary PSAP. Confire in San Bernardino County covering 19,000 square miles of the 20,000 square miles, 13 agencies. is a secondary PSAP. North San Diego, North County Dispatch, 16 agencies in the secondary PSAP. Heartland which is East San Diego County, 11 agencies. San Diego City Fire Department, a secondary PSAP from the San Diego City PSAP for other agencies with San Diego City. Ventura County Fire of course You're well aware of four agencies, Kern County Fire separate secondary PSAP. Phoenix Fire Department a secondary PSAP with 26 agencies.
My own experience is that large progressive professional departments the city of Rancho Cucamonga the cities of Chino Hills and Chino the cities of San Bernardino said am I better serving my community by staying with my law partner as good as that might be? Or am I better joining my fire rescue and EMS partners and pooling our resources? And those, in my previous experience made the decision to join that regional center as a secondary PSAP. So very familiar with the process with the concept and quite frankly wanted to make sure I address that. I do think it's important. It's in your PowerPoint and it's in your board packet We're our share right now in our current arrangement for county fire is roughly $1.8 million with true up costs from the current center, it's about 2.1 we're budgeting to point one next year for our costs and our current center, In our current arrangement, as we move forward with the regional center will be $1.1 million would be our share.
So we talked about economies of scale earlier. We do get an immense increase in economies of scale and in our mind and in the minds of our fire colleagues and labor unions is a Supervisor Williams mentioned it's a better system as well.
Thank you, Chief Hartwig. Okay we're going to go ahead and go to public comment this time I believe we have six public speakers here.
Chair Nelson and members of the board yes uh we have seven requests to speak on this item. And we will begin on Zoom with Susan Farley to be followed by Neil Gowing.
Welcome Miss Farley.
Hello can you hear me?
Yes we can
okay perfect um Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Susan Farley, I'm the Communications Manager at the Santa Barbara County Public Safety Dispatch Center. I am strongly opposed to the creation of the Fire Regional Dispatch Center because it will be less effective, will create redundant costs and create unnecessary competition for staffing. The consolidation of 9-1-1 centers is a national trend as it is a mechanism for realizing greater efficiency and cost effectiveness, as well as provide a higher level of interagency coordination and services ultimately resulting in higher services to the community. It forms a faster response time fewer errors consistency and call interrogation handling and less competition for staffing.
Santa Barbara County recognizes strengths of consolidation level for the rest of the nation and in 1977 consolidated our dispatching services. Our Center provides dispatching services for the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office, Santa Barbara County Fire Department and AMR. Our current center dispatches ambulances countywide except from Vandenberg Space Force Base. We provide emergency medical dispatching for all medical calls in the unincorporated areas of the county, cities of Carpinteria, Goleta, Hilton, Solving and all areas owned by the University of California.
Additionally, we provide EMD for critical calls including choking, childbirth and CPR for the cities of Santa Maria and Lompoc. Since our existing center provides ambulance services countywide, we can easily incorporate all the city fire departments in special districts into our dispatch center structure. Currently for medical calls, the ambulance and fire equipment are dispatched on two separate radio frequencies.
Since our center is already sending an ambulance on medical calls in the county We can redesign how we work and rebalance our resources so that the fire and medic are dispatched simultaneously on the same frequency. This will allow the second existing dispatcher to be utilized for more involved incidents such as vegetation fires and rescues with utilization of CAD to CAD closest resource borderless dispatching will be available in real time at our existing center, at a fraction of the price of the proposed fire centers with less call transferring If we were to add additional call taking positions to the existing center, we could provide EMD for all medical calls countywide creating consistency for the citizens.
Keeping all dispatch services within the same center adding CAD to CAD with incorporated cities and providing EMD county wide will benefit both the community and our responders. Currently, the Regional Fire Dispatch Centers are primarily used by larger counties Our current proposal is modeled after Ventura County which is twice the size of ours, both in population and number of fire stations.
At our size a second center is simply not necessary. There are no public safety answering points in the nation that are moving away from consolidation. We're one county with a common vision missions and values remaining as one consolidated county dispatch center will benefit the community, county employees and county agencies.
Thank you. Thank you, Miss Farley and thank you for your service to our community.
We will now go to Neil Gowing to be followed by Matthew Payne.
3:07 – 3:147 turns
Good morning Chair Nelson and members of the board can you guys hear me? OK, my name is Neil Gowing. I'm the president of the Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association. I represent all of the county communication dispatchers. I've come in before you today in opposition to the proposed display dispatch split. And over the last year or more, the county has been in discussions with county fire and the construction of a regional fire dispatch center. But the reality is you currently have a consolidated county public safety dispatch center that represents law, fire and medics.
Our current facility has the ability to be a consolidated dispatch center with borderless dispatching capabilities, which is ultimately the most efficient way to save time and save lives. It's a discussion that should be had by all agencies involved. What we don't have and we have not ever been afforded is the appropriate funds to update our equipment or technology or to increase the training for dedicated dispatch professionals that represent all three public safety practices.
Over the last several months, I know that you've heard a ton of people speak on this issue from the sheriff to fire chiefs to comments made by each of you to each other. But I sincerely feel that what you have not heard is the people that are doing this job, the dispatchers. The reality is the construction of a new dispatch facility is going to be an expensive venture that is irresponsible on behalf of this board. A fraction of that money could be used upgrade our equipment Technology and training to accomplish the creation of a consolidated dispatch center with borderless dispatching capabilities that will increase response times by all county public safety, and will ultimately save lives of our community members.
I would ask you consider this is it quicker for you to pick up your cell phone and text or call me to tell me this is a bad idea versus all of us standing in the same room and telling me face-to-face? The answer is unequivocally no. Splitting the center will create the same delays, delays that put the public at risk when they are facing life or death situations.
I can't stress enough being in the same room saves time and saves lives. You're going to hear a great example of this from our dispatch supervisor that's going to speak after me that was on duty when two deputies saved the life of an unconscious woman trapped in her burning home last week in Goleta prior to the arrival of fire. Another point that I wanna bring to the board's attention is the splitting of the dispatch center would absolutely create a change in working conditions and schedules for our members, and potentially eliminate or change the job classifications that we represent. And no one from the county or the fire department has reached out and requested to meet and confer with the DSA in compliance with the law.
If this is a decision you are leaning towards, I remind the board and the fire chief that the meet and confer process absolutely needs to be completed with the union at our law firm before decisions are actually being made. In closing, I again want to stress that spending the taxpayers money on construction of a new dispatch center is irresponsible and will delay efficiency.
I urge you to put that money into upgrading the center we have, upgrading the equipment we have, updating the technology we have and increasing the training of our dispatch professionals. It will save time, save money, and it'll ultimately save lives. Thank you.
Thank You Sergeant Gowing.
We will now go to Matthew Payne to be followed by Ben Johnson. Matthew?
Good morning. My name is Matthew Payne, I've been a dispatcher with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office for eight and a half years with the Lompoc Police Department for almost 19 years currently classified as a dispatcher to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office in which I dispatch law enforcement emergency medical services through AMR and for Santa Barbara County Fire Department, the Lompoc Police Department on the dispatcher and jailor.
The board has been repeatedly told that a new regional dispatch center will solve all the issues that the board has been presented with by both the fire department and EMSA is frankly an extreme exaggeration. You were just told that calls are transferred between consoles, possibly delaying response. A call is entered in and handled by the dispatcher that answers the call and is entered into the system from that console and is able to be both entered for information for all fire EMS and law into one call and shared across the system to which all dispatchers have access to. The new proposal would remove this The current center and computer dispatched system are more than adequate to handle the current needs of the county, even if consolidating all the fire agencies to dispatch from our current center.
That County Fire and EMSA believe that the lives of the public are in danger due to the current center shows how little thought was put into this proposal while consolidating the different fire departments into one regional entity can solve some issues with making sure that the closest engine is always dispatched to a call for service. Separating them from our current center will just delay the response of these units being dispatched to the public. Often calls do not just need law enforcement, an ambulance or a fire engine. They require multiple agencies to respond by separating these resources call for services may go to the incorrect call center and it will now require someone to pick up a phone and transfer a call or caller to another agency wait for that other agency to have someone available to pick it up and make the transfer of the call or pass on the information depending on the call volume that either agency is currently experiencing.
That could add as little as 15 to 20 seconds to getting any resources dispatched To up to over a minute for dispatcher that comes available to answer that ring down line because there's no one to answer that call. Working in the Lompoc Police Department, I've experienced both ends of working an active shooter structure fire and vegetation fire responses while waiting for someone on the other end to be able to pick up that ring down line to answer my request for resources. County Fire appears to have a misconception of what a dispatch center needs or requires to operate efficiently. The current setup allows me no matter what console I'm working at to quickly ask for assign or create a call for service without that added step. This ability requires Excuse me.
Disability was key during both the Isla Vista shooting incident and during the Montecito debris flows. Dispatchers were able to simply call out where law, EMS or fire was needed and those dispatchers were able to quickly adjust in real time without delay. The proposed system will not improve times as the county fire seems to think. I believe the board could be shown this if our center was given the opportunity. You ask any dispatcher in the most efficient manner to get this done and it's not going to be by picking up a ring down line to contact another agency or center.
As an 18 year dispatchers worked with and for multiple agencies over the years, I cannot stress enough how fortunate the county of Santa Barbara is to have this setup that has done and wholeheartedly oppose the division of our resources. Listening to the testimonies today makes me realize how misinformed the board is about the benefits of a separation. I would hope and encourage the board, County Fire and EMSA to come to the dispatch center not only observe but also learn how the system is set up and how it works. It all flows together. Consolidating fire is all well and good but keeping our resource together not only saves the county millions of dollars but will help us keep our resources responding as quickly as possible in doing what they do best which is saving lives.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank You Mr.
Pan thank you for your
service.
We will now go to Ben Johnson to be followed by Jasmine DeForest.
3:14 – 3:2110 turns
Good morning. Can you hear me? You can. All right, good morning my name is Ben Johnson I am a Dispatch Supervisor with the County Emergency Communications Center. I've been employed there for over 20 years the last six as this floor supervisor. I want to bring to your attention a great and perfect example of why being together is the best course of action. As my colleague Sergeant Gowing has already alluded to, we had a residential fire just last week in Old Town Goleta.
I was the fire dispatcher at the time. I took one of the first calls while on the phone with the RP who is still trying to determine an exact address for where the fire was occurring. He ran across the street and informed me he thought somebody was trapped inside. If I had waited to transfer that call Sent it to the appropriate agency. I would have never known about that person being trapped inside to inform my deputies from across the room while the fire department was still being toned out for multiple engines respond, I was verbally communicating with my primary sheriff's dispatcher about the nature of it and to start emergency personnel Two deputies arrived within moments of that call and rescued that lady.
You want to talk about saving a life? That's saving a life, that call being transferred. That outcome is completely different. The other thing I want to bring to your attention is there is so much lack of information that's being given to you or giving you a sugar-coated version of how things are going to be while listening Fire Chief speak about the eight seconds.
I timed myself doing our standard recording of answering a call, 911 what is the address for your emergency? Now waiting for somebody to respond in that course amount of time is well greater than eight seconds. So I'm not sure where they're getting these numbers from but that's not correct and you need to know that Response times will go down, they will not improve. We do not pass off calls as my colleague Matt just informed you the person who answers the phone keeps the phone. They don't pass it off they start inputting information immediately that then gets dispensed to the appropriate agency.
The borderless dispatching that you're hearing about that's going to be the cure-all for all this Guess what? It's currently happening. It may not be in real time, but it's currently happening. There is automated agreements that the fire department is well aware of that they have in place. Every call for service that's in a boundary area of where it could be Santa Maria City versus the county, Santa Barbara City versus the county, Lompoc City versus the county has an automatic plan in place as it stands now that we dispatch that equipment to. So when we have a call on a border area where Lompoc City Engine is going to be closer, we start them and they go. And then oftentimes they beat the county equipment to that call.
That's borderless dispatching. I would love to see it in a capacity where it's in real time, where I can see where that equipment is coming from. But it is currently happening so I don't want that to be confused that this new center being built is going to create that. It exists. It's happening. It can be better but it doesn't cost $11 million dollars a new center to do it.
I do agree with the backup center plan. I think that's a great idea and it has been long overdue, um, I hope and I didn't hear it in their discussion but I'm hoping that includes not just fire having that as the backup but as a countywide backup plan center. Thank you Mr. Johnson.
Is that my time? It is thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank You Mr. Johnson thank you for your service.
We will now go to Jasmine DeForest be followed by Joe Aiea
And just, we're going to go ahead and close public comment on this item. Just want to make sure I did that. I've seen there's been a couple more that jumped on.
Jasmine?
Good afternoon can you hear me?
We can.
Okay good afternoon Chair Nelson and members of the board my name is Jasmine DeForest. I've been a dispatcher with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office for 18 years I'm currently the Dispatch Training Supervisor and I serve as the first Vice President of the Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association. Over the past several years, I've listened to and attended numerous meetings, read multiple news articles, and engaged in countless conversations in regard to the proposed dispatch split.
It's been disheartening to say the least, to hear our center and our dispatchers being painted as inadequate by the Fire Department due to circumstances beyond our control and misinformation. Tens of thousands of dollars have already been spent just researching a new Dispatch Center. No additional money or resources from the Fire Department or EMSA have been spent on updating, outfitting, recruiting, or training our current center and staff.
What's also disappointing is that the board has been encouraged on multiple occasions to come to our center, observe the workflow to better understand how we operate. To the best of my knowledge a simple tour of the facilities was the only engagement by the board. Walking through our center is not watching our dispatchers hard at work and witnessing firsthand the communication that occurs amongst the dispatchers during both routine and critical incidents.
The narrative being fed to the board and the public is that lives are constantly in danger because of the current setup of our Dispatch Center, and at the Regional Center is the magic cure. The reality is that the Regional Center is a secondary dispatch center. They will only be answering 911 calls that are transferred to them by another dispatch center and that is going to delay help without a doubt.
When your car needs an oil change, entire rotation you don't go out and buy a brand new car putting time money and TLC into what you already own is what keeps your car running smoothly efficiently and is the financially responsible thing to do As an 18-year dispatch veteran and first vice president of DSA, I oppose the split and I encourage county fire. The MSA and the Board of Supervisors put money into the facility and staff we currently have which will not only save time and money but ultimately save lives. Thank you.
Thank you for your service.
We will now go to Joe Ayala to be followed by Augustin Arias. And Joe, I have unmuted you on our end. You may need to unmute yourself on your end.
3:21 – 3:3416 turns
Thank you can hear me OK now?
Yes we can
thank you great between the different methodologies so good morning chair Nelson members of the board thank you for your time. I'm Joe Ayala 23 year veteran of the County Emergency Communication Center and I've been asked to speak to how the split could have an impact on public safety A lot of this you've been heard, you've been hearing before with previous speakers.
Right now we're a one-stop shop with a single 911 call multiple agencies needs can be addressed at the same time because each agency is represented in the same room and has direct access to the person taking the call who is trained to serve all the disciplines any agency dispatcher can ask for and get clarifying information as they need it Post split, we expect caller frustration to increase each time they are passed between the centers. We will hear from them. I've already explained this to the other dispatcher and being split between both centers callers could experience both centers competing to ask for what their agency needs.
Right now is a one stop shop urgent safety or life saving information can then be verbally passed and heard across the room immediately before it could be entered in CAD. Such as Ben's example, such as there was a person trapped in the building or mentions of weapons. Post split? That would count on that dispatcher watching updates for that incident which may not happen because it would be mixed in with all the other incidents that they're managing.
Urgent information would have to be backed up with phone calls between the two centers to redirect needed attention back to the incident. Now what about field responder safety? In New York in 2012, a gunman lured firefighters through a structure fire to ambush them killing 2. Now, let's hope this never happens here. But if something like this did and other incidents have before being in the same room we could hear and react to developments like this as they were being presented or requested.
Post split as Matthew had mentioned passing critical information as it was happening wouldn't occur unless the other PSAP called down to catch the others up and for them to start monitoring radio channels for these updates. Now if it were my decision I would concentrate on consolidating to and advancing the current center, making the best it could be with staffing training at technologies. And that does include a full sized combined and redundant Center in North County for all our stakeholders because 75% of our workforce commute from outside of the area.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
We will now go to Augustin Arias who is our final speaker.
Hello, can you hear me? We can't. Hi my name is Augustin Arias I'm the president of the Lompoc Police Office Association who also represents the dispatchers and the jailors here at the Lompoc in the city of Lompoc. Concerned with this item and moving forward is that it was never shared with anybody. The first we knew about is when they presented to our City Council Last week or two weeks ago when they did so.
Also a concern is some of the language inside of their proposal has to do with employees that are outside of their union and their abilities, so they're kind of bypassing the meet-and-confer process. A big concern for Lompoc is the amount of call volume in the past five years they've handled about 1100 calls out of Out of county or out of the city limits and they go out into they go out into the county to handle these calls.
They got equipment issues, they got things of that nature and I don't think the whole picture is being painted for everybody real truthfully. I don't see a benefit to this in the fact that I understand the nearest resource and things of that nature but the citizens of Lompoc pay taxes that fire department here in their city The nearest resource on any of your guys' county properties to Lompoc is a Lompoc engine. You have one engine up at Burton Mesa, so that means that Lompoc engines will be handling majority of your call volume out to surf, out to Halama Beach. Just imagine two incidents, Lompok Fire going out to Surf Beach, going out to Halama Beach and with the amount of call volume and the amount of activity that goes on in the city of Lompoc I don't think that's really that good a move The ability to communicate with our fire department is crucial.
Oftentimes, more times than not we'll be at a call before the fire department gets there. So there's a lot of issues being presented that had we had more information and more information up front, Come to a better opinion, but the fact is that we were blindsided and this was presented to City Council here in the city of Lompoc without consulting with us at any point. To talk about the meet and confer issues with trying to implement policy over dispatches if they have no business or no right to implement policy based on law and labor laws and things of that nature. So there's still a lot of things going on that I don't think you're being communicated with 100%.
And I just want to put on the record, I understand you guys. It sounds like you guys are pretty high up on this thing and put forth that type of investment and not being provided all the information. Sounds like the majority of their dispatch center there has really, I haven't heard one person in support of this. Maybe that's a cause for concern regardless of politics and money and things of that nature. Your employees don't want this and yeah you can recruit from the outside but there will be a delay in calls we experienced that now when Dispatch Medical because oftentimes we have to go to the county for it.
So I don't see how every dispatch center transferring calls to another dispatch center, county wide is gonna provide more efficient or effective service for the citizens of this county. Thank you for your time and have a great day.
Thank you Officer Arias. And that
was our final speaker.
Okay back to the board. Supervisor Lavinia?
I appreciate all of our employees speaking up. I just took pause with one thing that was said and I just want to clear this up. Not once have I heard anyone ever in fire disparage our dispatchers over the four years that we've been talking about this. So everybody up here, I think appreciates the job that they do and I can't even imagine the daily struggles that you have to go through.
And for me, I look at this as not any type of indictment on anything that's existing right now. We're trying to improve the system And we might disagree about how to do that, but. I at least personally and I think I can speak for the board and every meeting I've ever had with fire over the last three, four years. Not once has anybody said that you know you're incapable or you're not the best that you could be so I just want that stated because I found that to be very disheartening comment.
Yeah let me piggyback on that for a second just because I think I want to be clear as well that I don't believe that our Law enforcement dispatchers are inadequate. They have a very tough job, and I think this is about shouldering the burden with them. I can speak for myself that and I think probably the board that we're committed to continue to invest in our law enforcement dispatch if there is a need that needs to be filled. We like to see it from the Sheriff's Department, and Inadequacies that might exist among our technology or building or whatnot. This isn't a zero sum game, you know it's not the fire.
That means that we're going to take that away from our law enforcement dispatchers. And so I just want to make sure that that's very clear this is about expanding our emergency response and you know, I am committed to doing that and so that's one of the reasons why that I'm a big supporter on this so other supervisors and then We'll get to vote here supervisor Williams.
Well, first
of all I want to add my voice appreciating the work of our law enforcement dispatchers. I particularly want to thank Ben and Jasmine for having me come down and seeing how you work. I know it was a couple years ago and for the work that you did to try to educate me more about dispatch It definitely made me more ardent for borderless dispatch and for first resource, but it made me open to a system where public safety would lead that effort.
Unfortunately in the last four years no movement has happened on that and I just don't believe the public should wait for borderless dispatch any longer And that's why I'm ready to move forward. First available resource, borderless dispatch has a potential public safety benefit for our citizenry particularly those in the first district because we have a bunch of different agencies right?
And we have a bunch of different borders and sometimes the residents of, you know. Of parts of the upper east are closer to. The county fire station in Michigan and they are to another city resource and sometimes some of the residents of mission can are closer to the unit out of the city unit out it in the Riviera than they are so you know examples like that, That collective energy and the times now to do it.
Thank you, Supervisor Williams, Supervisor Hartman.
Thank you. Today what we're talking about really is do we take a next step to implement a decision that we actually debated and decided some time ago. And the question was, the contention was that County Fire could get other departments throughout the county to step up and take part. There was a big question mark would they really put money on the table? Would they really be committed? And so today's decision is really focused around that, and people are here and numbers are clear. And so I think it's beyond dispute that this is a partnership across the county among fire departments And that was the big outstanding question in my mind, and that's been answered today. And I guess I don't really feel like I need to go back to all the issues that we've already talked about several times in the past.
So I'm supportive of this.
Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lavinino and Supervisor Hart?
Yeah, one thing I just wanted to add real quick. And I wanted to give a shout out to Rob Heckman as well as former Chiefs Dyer and Peterson too. I remember going down to Ventura four years ago maybe so it's been awhile in the making but you know it's been a heavy lift for fire through all of this and the fact that they've got all these men and women in this room together singing from the same page is pretty shocking.
Supervisor Hart. Yeah, I just want to add my support for the current sheriff's dispatchers the hard work that they do and respect for them and that this has nothing to do with their job performance. This is an opportunity to grasp a regional solution that will deliver borderless dispatch in the fastest way possible and I think it is worth noting that the City Council's That are involved here representing the districts that have councils as well as the fire district boards elected members of those boards have also weighed in on this too. So, this is in addition to the professional men and women that are the fire chiefs of Santa Barbara County there's the elected officials You know that hired them and support them and financially bring the dollars to the table to make them have the resources that they need.
They're also supporting this effort so there's a broad cross-section of elected and fire agency leadership here in this room in support of this because they firmly believe that this is the best way to provide EMS and fire dispatch to the residents of Santa Barbara County, and I agree with them.
3:34 – 6:1214 turns
I think we have to break this into a couple. Acting as the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara County Fire Protection District, I'd like to move recommended actions A through D.
Is there going to be multiple motions here? Does that knock this one out?
Yeah, then we have to act as the Board of Supervisors. But I would imagine we probably have to do that separately.
All right? Yeah, so there's a motion in a second. I just really last discussion your comments is I also want to take the opportunity as the chair to just again think Chief Hartwig and Deputy Chief Heckman and I think it is a lot from former chief Peterson that we're here today. And I wanted to make sure I also echoed that when he told me he was going to retire, I said you can't yet because you don't have this done yet. And so there's something that he brought the table that was really important for me.
Thank you Deputy Chief and former acting chief of Lompoc Fire, Fetterman for walking me through this and making sure that the constituents in the Lompoc Valley are going to be able to be a partner here. I'm glad to see the Lompoc City Council even though they were last in I think that they're gonna be a great partner I'm moving forward. Lompoc is the most isolated city in our county and definitely this is a big part of making sure that we serve those communities well so looking forward to this and so we have a motion and a second any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
And
then acting as a Board of Supervisors I'd like to move A through E.
Second.
All right. All in favor signify by saying
aye.
Aye. That motion passes unanimously. All right, thank you everybody for being here and Madam Council can you please we're going to now break for closed session. Can you please read the items for closed session that we have today?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Board will meet in closed session on existing litigation under Government Code Section 54956.9. The cases are County Santa Barbara v. Purdue Pharma. It's a United States District Court case for the Northern District of Ohio. It's multi-district litigation. In re Purdue Pharma it's bankruptcy litigation in the Southern District of New York And in Ray Mellencroft, also bankruptcy litigation in the District of Delaware.
County of Santa Barbara versus Rosser International. It's a superior court case in Orange County We also have anticipated litigation under government code section five four nine five six point nine its decision whether to initiate civil litigation two cases and Conference with labor negotiators government code section five four nine five seven point six the employee organizations are the Santa Barbara County Deputy Sheriff's Association Santa Barbara County firefighters SEIU local 620 and unrepresented employees, managers and executives. The agency representatives are CEO Mona Miyasato and HR Director Maria Elena de Guevara.
And the time estimate is two hours but I'm going to say that maybe we can do it in an hour and 45 minutes just in case we get done early
Yeah let's try to shoot for that. I think
the next item is just mostly staff that would be a part of that but let's shoot for 2 30 to come back from closed session thank you All right. Okay, welcome back. We are now reconvening the meeting of November 16th 2021 will County Council please report out from closed session?
6:12 – 6:217 turns
Mr. Chair members of the board the board met in closed session on existing litigation a county of Santa Barbara versus Purdue Pharma to bankruptcy cases in Ray Purdue Pharma and in Ray Malincroft And County of Santa Barbara versus Rosser International. Also two cases of anticipated litigation deciding to whether initiate civil litigation and labor negotiations under Government Code Section 54957.6, and the board took one reportable action a decision to initiate litigation but because we're not ready to file yet it's too early to disclose the parties or the timing of the litigation.
Thank you Mr. Mullen
the next item is departmental item number four, Madam Clerk will you please read that item into the record?
Chair Nelson and members of the board departmental item number four is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the fiscal year 2021 through 2022 first quarter budget update.
All right I think we have Ms. Anderson thank you
Good afternoon Chair Nelson and members of the board. As noted, this is our first quarter budget status update for July through September. It's kind of our preliminary look at the budget status for fiscal year 21-22. Our Budget Division Chief Paul Clemente will be going over a few slides and then we're happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you Ms. Anderson, good afternoon Chair Nelson, members of the Board. Just a brief reminder on the background to this item we take these updates every quarter and what departments do is they look at their projections for the end of the fiscal year based on for this quarter the three months of actuals and then nine months of projections remaining And they compare that to their adjusted budget and we look at if there's variances there between the projections in the budget. If there is $300,000 or more in variances in the general fund or 500,000 or more in the special revenue funds but we do a write up on the report and we present it today to your board So the overall picture in the general fund right now is a projection of $3.1 million positive variance at year-end.
This is driven almost entirely by probation, projecting a $1.8 million positive variance as well as general revenues at 1.6 million. The vast majority of the rest of the general fund departments are below reportable thresholds mostly at or above slightly the budgeted levels And then on the other end of the spectrum, we've got the Sheriff's Department projecting a negative $1.2 million variance and we'll discuss these three departments on the next slides.
So the sheriff's $1.2 million negative variance is about 0.6% of their total budget, and it's driven mostly by revenue shortfalls. About 560,000 is a loss due to the state recouping what they say was overpayments made during the 2021 fiscal year for state inmates that stayed at the county jail during COVID. The state was paying a daily rate for those inmates that couldn't be transferred to the state prisons.
And now they're saying that the payments they made were, it was an overpayment and so they've held back 560,000 that the Sheriff's Department was anticipating at year end last year which puts them in a negative position for this fiscal year. Staff is still following up on this issue with the state, but at the moment we have assumed that $560,000 is a loss in this projection.
There's another $230,000 due to lost revenue from the passage of AB 1869 which repealed the ability of the sheriff to charge fees related to alternative sentencing. There is state backfill available. We just received notification last week of the backfill, probation's a piece of that as well. They actually lost far more revenue than the Sheriff's Department did due to this passage. The 21-22 budget was built assuming some losses but the backfill we are still working out so Of that $260,000 loss that Sheriff experienced in this budget year. We may be able to backfill some of that with the state revenue and we're looking at that right now.
The remaining shortfall of the 1.2 is close to $400,000 and that's due to overtime costs not being completely offset by salary savings. Almost half of this about 190,000 was due to mutual aid provided to other jurisdictions during this fiscal year There is a possibility of some of that coming back as well. That's just unknown at the moment if that's going to come back this fiscal year or next, or sometimes it doesn't if there wasn't a declaration in the area where they provided mutual aid. It's not always reimbursable.
The remaining $200,000 is due to issues we're familiar with. The time required to train new staff due to vacancies when they come on. They have significant academy and then field training time. They are drawing a salary at that point but they're not yet covering post positions. Sheriff often has to backfill with overtime for those. They've had numerous sworn staff out on workers' compensation. They've had extended illnesses and leave of absences, so to provide the minimum level of staffing at post positions often requires them to pull in staff on overtime.
The probation department is projecting $1.8 million positive variance, 2.4% of their total budget. This is mostly driven by anticipated salary savings which is a perennial issue for the department. They've often struggled to fill vacancies and it has in past years often led to a surplus at year end for them. They've also received 344,000 in unanticipated growth in 2011 realignment revenue for their juvenile programs That is a restricted revenue source. If they don't spend it this year on the requisite programs, they have to fund balance that in a restricted fund balance for use in future years towards those eligible programs.
And they've also seen lower service levels at some community-based organizations that provide services on their behalf which results in a savings to probation department as they're not paying out those costs and fees to the CBO's General Revenues Department projecting $1.6 million positive variance, that's half percent of that total budget. It's driven by unanticipated revenues higher than budgeted sales and use taxes and property transfer taxes offset slightly by lower-than-budgeted interest income.
Cannabis cultivation retail taxes are also projected to come in three million dollars lower than budgeted And the cannabis team is bringing their quarter one report next month. They're working right now and they'll provide a lot more granular detail on the projections that, or the data they're seeing that's driving this projection right now. But $3 million at the moment if it comes in $3 million under revenue there is a $3 million carryover from last fiscal year I want to start by saying thank you to the Board of Supervisors for Our special revenue funds have no reportable variances this quarter.
And as a reminder, special revenue funds are required to end the year balanced. Our recommended action today is to receive and file the 21-22 first quarter budget and financial status report provide other direction as appropriate and make the CEQA determination that this is not a project.
6:21 – 6:225 turns
All right thank you Mr. Clement any questions from the board? Okay, any public comment on this item?
Chair Nelson members of the board we have no request to speak on this item.
All right back to the board so it's a receiving file Anybody's got anything here? Supervisor Lavagnino. I'll make a move to receiving file and the A B & C right?
Second
All right. Any further discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. All right well thank you budget team Paul Nancy Jeff this concludes our meeting for today we are now adjourned to Tuesday December 7th 2021 in Santa Maria thank you