Board of Supervisors — 2022-03-15

Okay.

Madam Clerk, will you call the roll? Supervisor Hart.

Here.

And next is the minutes may I have a motion to approve the March 8th 2022 minutes. So

moved.

Second. Any discussion all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed passes unanimously CEO report

Chair Hartman, there's no report this morning.

Clerk

announcements?

Chair Hartmann and members of the board I do have a couple quick announcements this morning. I would like to note for the record that we received a withdrawal request for departmental item number two. Departmental item number two on our agenda today is from the planning and development department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Steiner appeal of the Rufino tentative parcel map case numbers 21 APL 78 20 TPM 3 and this is in the 4th district, and I would just like to additionally note for the record that there were revised recommended actions Attached to this item on our agenda and we will be taking up this item around 11 a.m I would like to remind the public that the Board of Supervisors meetings are being interpreted and broadcast live in Spanish and We are broadcasting our meetings in Spanish both for Cox cable subscribers in South County as well as Comcast cable subscribers in North County.

Members of the public can now view our meetings in Spanish by turning on the secondary audio programming also known as SAP or SAP under their language settings that information is currently being provided through the TV scroll 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 public comment on general public comment or an item on the board's agenda. Please see page two of the agenda.

Members of the public can attend meetings in person both in Santa Barbara, both in the Santa Barbara Board Hearing Room Chambers as well as the Santa Maria Board Hearing Room Chambers. Please note the board is following all local and state guidelines and are no longer requiring face coverings indoors. If you attend the board meeting in person, you will no longer be required to wear a face covering but please be advised that the Public Health Department is still strongly encouraging all county staff and members of the public to mask and socially distance themselves in crowded areas.

I would also like to remind the public that if you require any special accommodations please contact the Clerk of the Board to make that request preferably on the Friday prior to the board meeting 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. You will be placed on mute until it is your turn to speak The clerk will call you by name. When removed from mute, you will hear a notification that your line has been unmuted. If you're using a touchtone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself.

Each person may address the board for up to three minutes and this is at the discretion of the chair. If you have any questions please contact the clerk of the Board's office at area code 805-568-2240 again that's 5 6 8 2 2 4 0 and that concludes my announcements for today.

Thank you madam clerk so turning to our administrative agenda are there any items that the board would like to pull for separate discussion? Any members of the public have an item to pull madam clerk?

Chair Hartman and members of the board we have one request to speak on administrative item number seven.

Would you read it out into the record please?

And for administrative item number seven, this is from Community Services Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding a grant of easement for riding and hiking trail purposes from Railway Bonada LLC 2326 Railway Avenue APN 135-360-002 and this is in the third district. As previously stated, we do have one request to speak from the public and that is Kathleen Rosenthal. And unfortunately, Kathleen Rosenthal is not available on Zoom but if you are viewing our meeting please log into Zoom now to provide your comments.

We'll wait just a moment then we'll go ahead

Chair Hartman and members of the board, it appears Kathleen is not logging into Zoom at this time.

Okay so I would like a motion then to approve the balance of the agenda?

I'll move approval of the consent calendar. Is that meaning you want to still keep that one out?

No, I think we'll move on.

Then I'll move approval of the entire consent calendar.

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Turning to administrative item number 44 would you read that into the record Madam Clerk?

Chair Hartman and members of the board Beginning with our first resolution to be presented today, we have administrative item number 44 sponsored by Supervisor Hart. It is a resolution to adopt it was to adopt a resolution proclaiming March 31st 2022 as Transgender Day of Visibility in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today We have Kathy Abad And if you can please join us at the podium and anyone else you'd like to join with you feel free And I will go ahead and read the resolution.

Whereas March 31st marks International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day to celebrate and lift up the voices and contributions of our transgender community while raising awareness of the work that still needs to be done to address anti-transgender violence and achieve lived equality. And whereas, transgender people identify with a different gender than their sex assigned at birth. And trans and transgender are inclusive terms that embrace transgender men and women as well as gender non-binary, gender nonconforming, agender, and gender fluid people.

And whereas in spite of progress advancing civil rights for LGBTQ plus Americans Transgender people continue to face discrimination, harassment and violence at rates much higher than cisgender community members disproportionately affecting transgender women of color. And whereas the idea for the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network, SBTAN, was sparked in 2014 by three families interested in forming a support group specifically for families of trans youth in Santa Barbara. Now SBTAN educates individuals and organizations on best practices for transgender and gender expansive clients, patients, students congregants and families. And whereas SB10 operates Lisa's Place, the only dedicated community center in Santa Barbara for our transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming communities as well as our families friends and allies.

And SB 10 hosted Santa Barbara County's first ever recognized celebration of Transgender Day of Visibility in 2016 And whereas the Santa Barbara County has many organizations that provide services to the LGBTQ plus community including SBTAN, Pacific Pride Foundation, House of Pride and Equality, UCSB Resources Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, PFLAG Santa Barbara, Great Outdoors, Prime Timers of the Central Coast, Just Communities Fighting Back Santa Maria, Healing Justice Santa Barbara and Planned Parenthood California Central Coast.

Now therefore let it be hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors celebrates and proclaims March 31st 2022 as Transgender Day of Visibility in Santa Barbara County and with this proclamation affirms commitment to support our gender expansive community passed and adopted today.

Supervisor Hart, you want to lead off?

Yes. Thank you. Thank You Chair Hartman as part of the chair's new cultural celebration program I'm very proud to introduce today's resolution proclaiming March 31st as Transgender Day of Visibility in Santa Barbara County throughout our community There are many people who identify as transgender gender binary non-binary or gender nonconforming Emmy Award winning actress and advocate Laverne Cox said It's revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen and visible in a world that tells us we should not exist.

Trans Day of Visibility provides us with an opportunity to recognize these community members while also taking a moment to increase awareness and education about the experiences of our trans community. Our country has made great strides in advancing gender equity, but there still is much work to be done to increase equity for trans people. With this resolution today, the County of Santa Barbara is affirming our support for our trans community members and recognizing the ways that trans people are making a positive impact in our community by leading with authenticity, courage and pride. Thank you all for being here today and thank you Kathy especially.

So I'd love to say a few words. Can everybody hear me? This is the first meeting I've been to in a couple of years, literally it's always on Zoom so good morning everyone. I'm Kathy Abbott and one of the co-founders of Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network from the bottom of our hearts we are so grateful that you are issuing a resolution for transgender day of visibility on behalf of our transgender and gender nonconforming communities here in town Our son came out about seven years ago at the age of 14, and we did not know what to do when we found out we had a transgender child. So within a week I went off to a PFLAG meeting—Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays here in town—went into a room of a bunch of parents. None of them had a transgender child.

About 20 minutes later in walked two parents who would change our lives forever. One of the parents was talking about wanting to form a support group for parents. I was like, hold on. I don't know. I have to wrap my head around this. I don't know what I'm doing here. And from there on out we were forming bonds with the school system, helping meet with Dr. Cash, the superintendent, doing all these wonderful trainings and stuff like that.

There are so many fantastic, flourishing transgender and gender nonconforming people in our community now. I just cannot imagine our town being not having this organization and so many of the other organizations again Pacific Pride Foundation, PFLAG, UCSB's Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, House of Pride and Equality, Just Communities, Planned Parenthood. There are so many others as well. We are also interconnected and we would not be who we are without all of these organizations. Some of the things that SVTAN has done is talk to over 500 families over the last seven years. We worked with a school district to add chosen name and pronouns to their software and help create gender-neutral restrooms at Dos Pueblos High School and so many other things.

We don't know where we would be without SVTAN and all these other wonderful organizations. If anyone is interested in attending a parent support group, please do have them reach out to me. And also for those of you on the call today on Zoom or here in the room, please do consider getting involved in one of your LGBTQ plus organizations in the community. We need everyone's support. Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I'm Eileen Randall. I'm also a board member in SB TAN. I am the mother of two young adults who were born at Cottage and raised in this community They're now in their 20s one is trans one is non-binary And I feel they're alive today just because of the support of these groups SBTAN, Civic Pride, they went to youth group meetings there and the support that I received as a mother in our family.

On NPR this week, there was an article about how politicized the non-trans legislation has become. And the numbers were 108 bills, anti-trans bills especially aimed at children mostly have been introduced in 38 states in only the last three months Some are trying to make it a felony for families and doctors to provide gender affirming care for their children.

Idaho's bill could result in a life sentence for giving permission for children to have hormone therapy, and there really are no words to describe how devastating this climate is for all trans children's adults and their families to hear of these laws being passed across the country. And that's why I'm very grateful and would like to thank the Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County, to show their support for our families by recognizing Trans Day of Visibility this year. It's very much appreciated by all of us. Thank you.

Thank you, Board. My name is Barbara Parmet and I'm speaking on behalf of SURGE Santa Barbara, showing up for racial justice. We educate and organize mostly white folks on how to work for racial justice. SURGE is in total support for the resolution in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility We support our transgender and whole LGBTQ plus community because there can be no racial justice if there's no understanding of the power dynamics of white supremacy and patriarchy, the main systems of oppression and violence.

By understanding how our white culture of domination is violent at a personal level as well as in a larger cultural context we can begin to see why we need to stand up and show up for our family and friends in the queer community. The term intersectionality is a new term not everyone understands. It is a helpful way of looking at how our movement for social change is not just about race, it is about homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and misogyny as well as hatred of our earth and all the riches it provides We stand with our transgender family specifically today in order to celebrate joyfully as a whole family, working together in solidarity. We celebrate you because you are us. Thank you.

I'm Tyson Hall-Seth from Pacific Pride Foundation and I just want to congratulate SPTAN on the incredible work they've done educating, advocating for and celebrating the transgender community. And thank you to all of you!

My name is Tony Flanagan and I'm also a board member of SB10. When my very young children, first my son and then a few months later my daughter came out, I had no idea what to do or where to go. By chance I met Kathy at a school meeting and with their support I was able to really understand my children to help guide them to get the resources they needed to get them a pediatrician that would support them and just to get support for myself and my family.

Unfortunately, it is still a problem within Santa Barbara right now the harassment of trans non-binary and gender nonconforming children and adults. My children have experienced this at school And it is something that is continuing to happen. And so I am so thankful that you are standing up and standing by the trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming community because my family and many other families will benefit from this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Supervisor Williams.

Well, we know that growing up can be a gauntlet and that schools can be a cruel place. And so for me this is all about saving lives. It's all about making sure that our youth are regardless of their identity and their choices have the support from the community to be able to live when we see just a great high incidence of depression and suicide among this population. So, to me it's about something even more basic the ability for us to ensure that our young people make it to adulthood. Thank you.

Supervisor Hart did you have an additional comment?

I just want to thank everybody who spoke today. This is really an important part about raising awareness in our community for all the wonderful people who are now visible in a way that should be normal and natural, and a regular part of everybody's experience in our community. And this is an aspirational moment we want to achieve all the things that all the speakers spoke so eloquently about, and this is a small step and important It's symbolic and shows our commitment and the fact that we're speaking to this issue directly is an important day. So thank you all for coming and participating today.

Madam Clerk, turning to administrative item number 45 would you read that into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, administrative item number 45 is sponsored by Supervisor Williams and Supervisor Hart. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of March 2022 as American Red Cross Month in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today we have Eric McCurdy. And Eric if you can please join us at the podium and I'll go ahead and read the resolution into the record.

Whereas in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross turning her steadfast dedication for helping others into a bold mission of preventing and alleviating people's suffering. Today more than 140 years later we honor the kindness and generosity of Red Cross volunteers here in Santa Barbara County who continue to carry out Clara's life-saving legacy. And whereas in times of crisis people in Santa Barbara County come together to care for one another This humanitarian spirit is part of the foundation of our community and is exemplified by American Red Cross volunteers who donate their time, give blood or learn vital life-preserving skills through the Red Cross.

And whereas in Santa Barbara County the contributions of local Red Cross volunteers give hope to the most vulnerable in the darkest hours whether it's providing emergency shelter Food and comfort for families devastated by local disasters like home fires. Donating essential blood for accident and burn victims, heart surgery and organ transplant patients, and those receiving treatment for leukemia, cancer or sickle cell disease.

Supporting service members and veterans along with their families and caregivers through the unique challenges of military life. Helping to save the lives of others with first aid, CPR and other skills or delivering international humanitarian aid. And whereas we dedicate this month of March to all those who continue to advance the noble legacy of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton who lived by her words you must never think of anything except the need and how to meet it.

We ask others to join in this commitment to give back in our community. Now, therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors do hereby proclaim March 2022 as American Red Cross Month and urges residents of Santa Barbara County to become partners in preparedness with our Santa Barbara County Red Cross chapter and act as active participants in advancing the humanitarian mission of the American Red Cross passed and adopted today.

Supervisor Williams.

Well, I just think that if you look at the research done on natural disasters that you find that people basically lose interest after a certain amount of time after these disasters and that's where crucial preparedness gets dropped and so number one I want this to be an opportunity to remind folks that sometimes the most important time is when there's no disaster, in terms of what kind of efforts a community takes for resilience.

What kind of support nonprofits get to be ready to come in and help, and what we do as individuals to just prepare. Just like the basics, food, water, you know, an oversized wrench for your gas line, to shut off your gas line and so forth. These are the kinds of things that we need to pay attention to because History should show us that We don't have a natural disaster right now, but we will so we need to be prepared and We appreciate all of the incredible organizations that we see in town Helping us with this preparedness partnering with county and today. We want to honor the American Red Cross for their role

in

Supervisor hard

Yeah, and I just want to thank the Red Cross volunteers and all the people who do step up for our community the way Supervisor Williams described. And also recognize our county employees who are all disaster workers. You know when these events occur everybody's all hands on deck and we have a lot of retirements happening today there's a bunch of folks who are being recognized for many many years of County service And I do wanted to specifically mention a couple that I know, John Fry and Maureen Spencer in the Public Works Department. I've been just hand-in-hand with the American Red Cross through all the disasters that we've experienced together and they will be sorely missed as county employees but this is a great opportunity to kind of wrap them into celebration of the Red Cross too so thank you for being here today

I wanted to thank the members of the board for this opportunity to speak. I know you extended this invitation to our regional CEO, Tony Briggs who was unfortunately double booked today again and so he asked me to step in and speak on his behalf. I'm a longtime volunteer with the Red Cross here. And March is a very important month where we do take time to honor the people who make the Red Cross mission, the humanitarian mission possible.

This began nearly 80 years ago under then President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who declared Red Cross Month in March of 1943 and it has been renewed every single year under every single president since then and as a long-time resident of Santa Barbara County and a longtime Red Cross volunteer I'm very happy to see that the county of Santa Barbara is stepping up and acknowledging this as well.

So thank you very much for this opportunity.

Thank you for being here. Madam Clerk, item number 46.

Chair Hartman and members of the board our final resolution today is administrative item number 46 this is sponsored by Supervisor Lavinino it is to adopt a resolution proclaiming March 24th 2022 as word to Brooke Tuberculosis Day in Santa Barbara County and receiving this in person. Today, we have Dr. Vondo Renoso our Public Health Director, Dr. Henning Ansorg our Health Officer, Paige Batson our Deputy Director of Community Health and Karen White supervising public health nurse.

And I will go ahead and read the resolution into the record Whereas on March 24, 2022 in observance of World Tuberculosis Day the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department joins the global effort of this year's theme Invest to End TB Save Lives. And whereas TB is a preventable disease yet many in our community including infants children and pregnant women still suffer.

Cases in Santa Barbara County have increased to a total of 25 cases in 2021, representing a case rate of 5.14 over California's target rate of 4.6. And whereas disease control TB staff will focus on recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and prioritize outreach to vulnerable communities whose access to health care have been most interrupted. And whereas the County of Santa Barbara is committed to eliminating TB and actively engaging with providers, healthcare agencies, local partners especially those serving at risk populations in our community to promote preventative and early diagnosis of TB.

And whereas the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department congratulates Karen E. White on her retirement and exemplary work in leading TB prevention and control efforts, and successfully managing TB outbreaks and complex drug-resistant treatments and investigations for well over two decades. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim March 24th 2022 as World Tuberculosis Day in Santa Barbara County Passed and adopted today.

Dr. Dory knows so.

Good morning, Chair Hartman and members of the board. As you are aware, the TB control program is a key mandate and function of the local health department. I have led three public health departments and have reviewed numerous TB programs throughout California and have to say that Santa Barbara County operates an outstanding TB control program. Huge kudos to Dr. Ansorg, Ms. Paige Batson and supervising public health nurse Karen White for their leadership and to our team in the community health and at our five healthcare centers and three homeless shelters clinics for their tireless work to protect the health of Santa Barbara County by containing and preventing a spread of TB.

In particular I'd like to acknowledge Ms. White's dedication to her team, her work in supporting their case investigation, case management and treatment efforts. In addition, Ms. White's innovation in managing the process has transformed how we case manage our active cases and we hope to publish the model as a best practice in the near future. Huge applause and appreciation for Karen for all her years in the TB program.

Chair Hartman and members of the board, I would like to take this opportunity of World TB Day to recognize the significant accomplishments of our tuberculosis expert supervising public health nurse Karen White. Karen has been the backbone of our local tuberculosis program for many years She has trained and mentored countless nurses, physicians, hospital infection control specialists and health educators.

And she has made sure that all TB patients in Santa Barbara County receive optimal tuberculosis care. She has been instrumental in limiting further spread of TB disease in our area. Unfortunately for us she's now going into well-deserved retirement Karen, please know you will be missed greatly. Thank you for your service to our communities and would you please remain available for those tricky questions nobody else can answer?

Thank you very much, all of you. I've been very fortunate to have had a job that I truly love those that know me very well and know my passion for the disease control program. I've also worked with many wonderful and dedicated staff and internal employees within the public health department and even our external partners in other providers and also other agencies And what really motivates me have been the patients, especially our vulnerable patients that we serve.

I hope you have time when you're after the meeting to look at our data. I've been here a long time and I've seen the many advances in TB that have just been so exciting to early diagnosis and early prevention, and we want to continue our efforts. We're able to secure a health educator who is now dedicating herself, boots on the ground, to going out to the vulnerable populations and educating them and empowering them to get screen tested and to take short term regimens to prevent active TB.

And so, I know that it's going to continue. We're already aware of other advances that are coming through and at the end of the day, I'm very grateful to have worked for the health department and my message to everyone is just to continue to make a difference to our patients in our community. Thank you.

That's wonderful advice. So we're now turning to general public comment. Madam Clerk, do we have any members of the public who'd like to speak on items not on today's agenda?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, yes, we have one request to speak on general public comment and that is Dr. Amy Smith. And we will go to Zoom for Dr. Amy Smith. Amy.

Good morning, Chair Hartman, supervisors I wanted to speak about the comment made two weeks ago by Supervisor Das Williams in response to a comment in public comment where a speaker was saying to kill Russians. He suggested people could donate to a charity, Das Williams did not the speaker that buys ammunition and things for the Ukrainian military and I'm very concerned about the level of investigation and knowledge that he has about this conflict, and taking time to advocate for this in our county meeting when we have a lot of pressing issues here in our own county. And of course, when you take action without adequate information, you have the potential to be causing more harm, and you also have the potential to be participating in evil. So it's very important to be informed, fully informed when you make decisions and advocate other people send bullets to kill people that you know what's happening in a conflict.

And if you don't have the time and the resources to get up to speed then you should remain silent. And so I strongly encourage people to understand that our society is going through a transformation where voices that disagree are being suppressed through social media, through social pressure And through the mainstream media as had been happening already for a long time. But if you would like to understand more about the roots of this conflict in the Ukraine, I strongly recommend a talk that's had more than 21 million views by now by University of Chicago Professor John Mershammer called Why is the Ukraine the West's Fault? And it explains the provocative acts that the United States and NATO an organization that has invaded several countries Libya, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia.

Their actions escalated this conflict and as Spigny Brzezinski said of the conflict in Afghanistan he said we led the Soviets into an Afghan trap well once again the US and NATO have led Russia into a trap in Ukraine and so to end a conflict you need to understand the roots of the conflict And what the solution is to stop NATO expansion, it's not to arm people in a very vulnerable state who will be slaughtered. It's not nice to fight to the last Ukrainian for something that was completely preventable by our government is actually you know I say participating evil so I would encourage people to look more into this A diverse group of speakers have said that this is the predictable outcome from Henry Kissinger to Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, John Matlock.

Many many people

said-

And that concludes general public comment for today.

Supervisor Williams?

Well, since this public speaker continues to take pot shots at me for trying to convince another public speaker not to ship arms directly but instead take part in legitimate ways to give money to support the country of Ukraine's resistance. I will answer simply because I am in dismay to see public comment being used by folks of our political fringes, and frankly both political fringes not just the right but the left as well.

Who have bought into the Kremlin's line of reasoning and continue to? state historical mistruths And and seem to think that history began somewhere in the 1990s I am well aware of the history. I'm well aware of the history of subjugation by the Russian Empire, of the Cossack tribes of the area. I'm well aware of the invasion by Red Forces after the October Revolution, the brutal suppression of Ukrainian independence after the Russian Revolution and the even more brutal Human made famine of forced collectivization in which Russian Soviets caused millions to die in Ukraine.

And then fast forward to that this place then being You know, people in this country or elsewhere buying into the Kremlin's line of reasoning that these people just decided to separate from Russia recently. This is a unique place with its own identity. It has many Russian speakers but those Russian speakers have made a very sharp shift in public opinion especially since 2014 and the failed statelets that Russia helped establish in Donbass and Luhansk. And so public opinion among Russian speakers in Ukraine was divided back then, it is not divided now. They do not want to be part of Putin's rebuilding of the Russian Empire or rebuilding of the Soviet Union however you want to view it and I think it is perfectly patriotic on any American's part to want to help the Ukrainians defend our way of life.

You know, we are people that has a special history But sometimes our commitment to our own democratic ideals is not yet, I would argue is not yet proven. And so if Americans choose to support the Ukrainian government with their funds, I highly encourage it and in fact Because of this public comment, I'll repost those charities today on my Facebook because frankly those people in Keeve need our help and they don't just need our help just with humanitarian aid. They need our help to defend themselves.

Turning to departmental item number one, Madam Clerk would you read that into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a status report on criminal justice partners improvement efforts.

CEO Miyasato

Good morning Chair Hartman and board members. Today we're here with our regular update on the work of the Justice Partners. On Zoom with me is retired Judge Cheryl Ellsworth who's been working with the county to help us coordinate efforts, and I also want to thank Nicole Parmalee from my office who has been helping as our analyst overseeing this. Next slide, thank you. So just some background as you know that we've had regular criminal justice staff reports to your board and the last update was in November and I said we've been assisted by retired Judge Cheryl Ellsworth and we've developed a tracker, Criminal Justice Initiatives Tracker that she will review with your board that talks about our achievements or progress.

Today's report will talk about some of those ongoing efforts Of discussion of five initiatives that were deferred or removed from the tracker and nine initiatives that are on the tracker still. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Judge Ellsworth.

Thank you very much. I appreciate so much this opportunity to report back to you, Madam Chairman and the rest of the board. It has been quite a fun ride this last little bit before I've come back to report to you. Some important things have taken place So in terms of our work, I will have to tell you that the last time we reported we were in the throes of things. Throes trying to figure out what is the best way to go forward with getting ourselves out of silos and into some collaboration that would make a difference. So come with me on that journey that we've been going through for The background is essentially this, that our criminal justice departments constitute about 23% of your operating budget. We've had ongoing attempts to work at the core of what significant changes can be made that will alter the state of the criminal justice system to improve and to be enhanced There has been a lot of changes and struggles, and I say putting our fingers in the dike with COVID.

But we still are working on some pretty important things. Last time we had divided the tracker into three buckets and tried to align those improvements into those buckets transparency equal justice community solutions for public safety. Those three buckets are significant and I'm going to go ahead and turn it back over to you. Thank you so much. So we've been working on this for a long time. Charging orders if you will, but we found out discovered that each of the different initiatives or improvements parts and pieces within each of these so that one item does not lie in just equal justice that So we want to focus on some strategic opportunities for improvement. We, as you will recall had a kind of a shotgun approach the last time we reported trying to gather all the things that we thought were important and now we've been able to refine that to things that are doable and responsible and are making significant changes.

We eliminated or at least eliminated for now Five of those improvements treatment courts, the advocacy services thrive mandatory settlement conferences virtual arraignment courts. And the reason we did is that some of these issues are significant and we may look at them in the future but quite frankly some of them are no longer relevant for inclusion and they also rely on external entities. So we want to make sure that we can control what we have under our control next slide please.

So we've provided you with a tracker and these are in priority level. So what we did previously, as I indicated was to put things in buckets and instead now we have prioritized them and given you, I believe, a very good informational as to where we are how things are going and what our roadblocks and what we need to achieve still and those that we have achieved things in In our estimation, elevated now above diversion and above some other issues is that access to incarcerated clients. We are working as a team very hard on this because without access to the incarcerated clients it is near impossible to do the work that we want to do with reducing jail populations with early intervention With being able to help the courts by reducing continuances.

And so this piece is at the forefront of our minds, we are meeting actively in small groups with those that can make decisions and continue to work with and wrestle with these issues and very much appreciate the hard work of everyone. Discovery is key to that as well. We have come before, and I have to tell you, I believe there's a sea change. I want to reach out to and indicate the public defender and the district attorney have worked very, very hard that discovery is coming on board sooner and offers are being made. That's why it's so important that we get that access to the clients. And I find that Even though we wrestled a lot that we are getting a lot of cooperation with between the Public Defender's Office and the DAs. And that's no small feat because there's such a deluge of cases and backlog, that these both of these entities are burdened down with the number of cases are in your area.

Multidisciplinary teams, this is really key I'm going to go into it a little bit more in a moment shared alternative sentencing pre-trial supervised release data dashboard holistic defense diversion and resolving age cases so this to us are really set our sights on complete these things move on to other issues next slide please So access to incarcerated clients, at first we thought this was just getting laptops into the jail.

We've had multiple roadblocks with COVID breakouts in the main jail. It has been very complicated to be able to get individuals moved. The court has been wonderful about working with us in these resolutions with the sheriff and with probation. public defender and the DA's office, we need to continue working on this. We are working on things like taking a look at how many warrants are outstanding and what we can do to resolve those warrants that fall within safe parameters to look at some kind of a program to resolve them so they don't go into jail again. This access is key to being able to To work on the overall criminal justice improvements. Without it, we don't have the ability to resolve things early. We don't have the ability to resource people out to things that would be better programs for them and we are continuing to work on a coordinated transparent plan for This dependable confidential and standardized access protocols, which means some work on being able to schedule the time by themselves without having to go through individuals through a scheduler at the jail.

And also the ability to know what is available, what time and what are those Zoom rooms dedicated to? And when does the court take priority This is seems like it would be an easy fix. It is not and we are grappling with it, but it is at the forefront and it's clearly important to us for access to justice next slide. This was provided by the sheriff's department and I will say that we are working really hard on taking that 2022 and 2023 prediction, and changing that line completely and trying to reduce what is going on in the jail like I mentioned we're looking at warrants Improvement of programs and resources that will assist in that. So, that shows a trajectory that has been provided to us but we are ever at the forefront of our mind along with that access is to reduce the jail population next slide.