Board of Supervisors — 2022-12-02

I'd like to call to order the December 2nd, 2022 special meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in the Santa Barbara Hearing Room. Madam Clerk would you call the roll please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board. I do have some announcements this morning. I would like to remind the public who are participating in our meeting today of the board's method of public participation for the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and to provide public comments 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 and in Santa Maria board hearing room chambers. The board is following all local and state guidelines, and are no longer requiring face covering indoors. Please be advised that the public health department is still encouraging all county staff and members of the public to mask and socially distance themselves in crowded areas.

Individuals that like to provide verbal public comment virtually may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. After registering, you 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's your turn to speak. The clerk will call you by name. When you're removed from mute, you will hear notification that your line has been unmuted. If you're using a touch-tone phone, you may need to press star six to unmute yourself. Each person may address the board for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair.

If you have any questions, please contact the Clerk of the Board's office at 805-568-2240. That concludes my announcements for today.

Thank you and the first item of business is closed session. County Council would you let us know what we're going to do and how long you expect

it'll take? Thank you, Madam Chair. The board is scheduled for one item in closed session public employee appointment under government code section five four nine five seven and it's for director of Public Health and I believe the estimate is one hour.

CEOs Miyasato is it? Is it one hour? We can estimate what our I believe yes OK so 1015 is when we would return Thank you, we're recessed to closed session. Convening after closed session the December 2nd, 2022 special meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in the Santa Barbara Hearing Room. County Council would you report out from closed session please?

Thank You Madam Chair members of the board. The board met in closed session on what item public employee appointment for Director of Public Health and took no reportable action.

Thank you and now is the time for general public comment Is there anyone who would like to speak on matters not on today's agenda but within our jurisdiction madam clerk?

Chair Hartman and members of the board we have no request to speak for general public comment.

All right then turning to departmental item number one, the only item on our agenda today Director McAulpin oh sorry clerk first so eager to get started would you read that into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, department item number one is from the County Executive Office Public Works Department Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Board of Directors Water Agency, Board of Directors Laguna Sanitation District and Board of Directors Fire Protection District. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the development of a county community workforce agreement resolution and project template.

Thank

you, CEO Misato. Chair Hartman and board members we're pleased this morning to present to you this item and as the clerk read it's a proposal before you of the countywide community workforce agreement resolution and a project template. As you know this has been a long time coming and as you know your staff has been working Diligently for some time to present to you a balanced agreement with public benefit and also that would not reduce competition And that's what we believe. We've brought to you today, but before we begin the presentation I do want to give a heart well Heartfelt thank-you to all of those on the negotiating team from the county board Johanna Hartley from the County Council's office, Chris Sneddon from Public Works and Patrick Zurofsky from General Services.

And of course the Public Works Director Scott McGolpin and from the TCBT team Martin Rodriguez, Joshua Medrano, Henry Vandernat and also two board members who helped us in the Ad Hoc Committee Supervisors Williams and Chair Hartman so with that I'll hand it over to Mr. McGolvin

Thank you CEO Miyasato. Good morning Madam Chair and board members, thank you for having us today We'll we'll start our presentation this morning by reviewing the potential benefits of a community workforce agreement or CWA that will refer to during this presentation So as your board knows the CWA is contractually binding negotiated agreement between a project owner in the building and construction trade units unions CWAs are used in the construction industry to set the terms and conditions of employment on large expensive projects of long duration and design complexity, which means multiple trade crafts involved with building the project.

CWA's allow for the expeditious resolution of disputes that may arise in the course of a big project and they also provide benefits to the local community by including jobs and training opportunities for disadvantaged workers, and really in general all workers. And on public projects, all applicable statute or state and federal bidding statutes and regulations must be followed. And as CEO Miyasato mentioned our goal from day one has been to deliver to your board a balanced agreement That maximizes bidders, which in turn increases competition and gives us the low prices that we enjoy on the projects that we build today. And I believe the draft resolution of the template CWA that's before you today meets that objective.

So let's spend a few minutes looking at the legislative history for this round of CWA negotiations. In April 2019, your board directed staff to draft an ordinance governing the use of CWAs on public projects. In August 2021, your board directed our staff to utilize the CWA that the City of Santa Barbara had successfully negotiated with TCBT as the county's base CWA.

You also directed us to negotiate agreement terms within that document to maximize the number of bidders on county projects in the future, whereby maximizing competition and local labor participation. Earlier this year in February your board directed staff to negotiate a CWA with TCBT with direction to use option one of the four options we provided that day.

Fast forward to today, your negotiating team at TCBT are delivering a draft balance CWA for your consideration today. So as I mentioned in February staff provided four options for consideration by your board option one was chosen and option one specifically included all the staff's agreement point enhancements clarification of exclusions both in the maintenance and the emergency areas Include a rebid provision if the bids came in too high, and to apply a potential CWA in our county to projects over $10 million. So with that direction your negotiations team based on that focus direction continued our negotiations with TCBT And primarily over the timeframe since then, we focused on conceptual approval of about a half dozen critical agreement points where typically CWA development breaks down.

And this slide on the screen right now if you look at the left side that shows the critical agreement points I'm talking about and on the right side are what we negotiated with TCBT so I'll just take a moment and hit those high points. On core workforce, that's the number of workers that a non-union contractor could bring to the job when they are low bidder. And we essentially mirrored the city of Santa Barbara's core worker formula. They had two formulas in there. We took the local contractor formula and what that does is it allows the non-union contractor to bring three employees and then they go on a one-to-one ratio up to nine total employees And then once they get to 10 employees, all those employees are dispatched to the job from the union halls.

And the one-to-one ratio would be one from the union hall and another nonunion contractor. All off-site fabrication in our CWA is exempt. So when we need concrete, asphalt or any other types of material that would be exempt from the conditions included in the CWA. Professional services if the County of Santa Barbara hires professional services they would be exempt from the CWA but if the contractor building the job were to hire professional services like a surveyor or materials tester or construction inspector then that would be considered a covered craft It would be part of the CWA.

This document will exclusively use the Union Apprenticeship Programs, they have some fabulous training programs and we want to take advantage of that through this agreement. There would be no union dues required by non-union contractors when they bid on this job utilizing the CWA. And then if you recall from our past discussions here at the Board This next item is a big item, union benefits for non-union contractors and employees. We spent a lot of time with TCBT discussing that issue and last week TCBT made a big concession which really allowed us to be here today They accepted the county's terms for this particular agreement point. So, there'll be three options as far as benefits are concerned for non-union employees. They could take union benefits if they like.

They can continue taking non-union benefits if they have those today or they could continue taking cash benefits in lieu of actual benefits so we thank TCBT for moving on that particular item. And the master labor agreements, those will be included in this CWA. However we do have language in there that the CWA will supersede any potential conflicts that may exist between an MLA and the County of Santa Barbara's agreement.

Other items just as important as the critical agreement points and making a balanced CWA for For our county's use are shown on this slide. I'll spend a couple minutes Just going through that so in the exclusions category Clarifications to work types for repair maintenance and replacement of existing infrastructure Needed to be made recall we're using the city of Santa Barbara's agreements, so The public infrastructure between the City of Santa Barbara and the County of Santa Barbara is a little bit different.

They have harbors, we don't so we had to take that type of language out. So we modified the agreement to match our specific public infrastructure. Disaster response and emergency work will be excluded as your board knows. Emergency opening work and debris removal work needs to happen immediately and we really can't slow that process down. That's excluded from the CWA.

As directed by your board in February, we did include a rebid provision and that's included in the resolution before you today. And what it says is exactly I believe what we have on the screen. If the project needs to be rebid due to bid results being an excess of the engineer's estimate, it is in the department's discretion to rebid the project without the template CWA.

Exploration date staff recommends mirroring the city of Santa Barbara's for a five-year term And we also included language in there since this is the very first time. We're going to roll out a CWA In the resolution that says that staff will come back on an annual basis during this five year term to report on the effectiveness of the CWA we're bringing before your board today. So on an annual basis, we can talk about some of the high points and how we're doing as far as meeting local labor criteria or what have you on these jobs. And we can make adjustments. We can adjust course at those annual updates as far as the agreement is concerned so we can get the CWA exactly the way we need it here in Santa Barbara County to be successful. And quite frankly, it can end up being another tool in our toolbox when it comes to putting projects on the street.

The administration of the CWA is the responsibility of the County of Santa Barbara and we will do that through a new position called the Community Workforce Coordinator so we'll have to hire a position for that. And then as far as the effective date is concerned, if everything is approved today we're setting the effective date as April 1st 2023 and the reason we're doing that is because a few things have to happen between now and then.

So TCBT would have to take the CWA back and it needs to be fully executed by 100% of their affiliates right? Because Everyone under that TCBT umbrella doesn't approve of this agreement Then the language in the CWA to avoid labor strife slowdowns things like that That won't happen. So that was kind of what happened in 2014 if you remember The board conceptually approved a PSA, but TCBT was able to get all of the affiliates except for one to sign it. So we never really got the implementation on that PSA and I know TCBT is here today and they can report on their thoughts are getting 100% of their affiliates to sign this agreement while that's occurring At the same time, the county will need to create specifications that include the language and the conditions from the CWA in our bid documents.

We'll also need to onboard a community workforce coordinator for administration of the CWA. And then we'll actually include it in bid documents for projects that meet the criteria For the CWA and our hope is we'll be back here around this time next year Reporting on a few projects with the use of a CWA Next next screen is simply a copy of all the recommendations that are in your board package today for the sake of time this morning I will not reread it I'd like to reiterate the thanks that CEO Miyasato put out there. You know, TCBT team's been great to work with always available for us and very productive team to put this agreement together. County team has been fabulous. Johanna, Chris and Patrick you know we all have full-time jobs so most of this work was done in the evenings and weekends and I thank them for that effort and to our board temporary ad hoc committee thank you for your participation as well.

Think at this point that concludes our presentation and we're all available to your board for questions

Okay, so it's back to the board any questions at this time Supervisor Lavinino

Thank You madam chair you talked about the on-board coordinator, and I'm just curious Cost of the county on that is there any discussion about cost sharing? And how that I mean we're gonna be hiring a new employee I Or a team of employees?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Labnido, that's correct. We'd probably need to hire an FTE like a project team leader or enterprise leader or somebody along those lines. Somebody with experience in the construction industry for both vertical and flat construction because we do have projects on the horizon that are both buildings and transportation flood control type projects so yes.

And then, you know I know there's people we've been dealing with this for years and years. There's people that are probably watching this for the first time if you can just kind of explain on that thank-you slide there. We're including three of the four folks that are kind of involved in this it's us TCBT and the ad hoc committee but the other folks 80% of the contractors being nonunion were they part of this discussion? And how did how do we you know What kind of conversations did you have and how are you bringing their points of view into your ad hoc subcommittee meetings?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Lavanino. In 2014 we had a robust stakeholder participation process so we did not this time but the lessons we learned in 2014 we brought to this document as well as we went through the process. We're close to where we were in 2014. We didn't get everything we got in 2014 But we're pretty close to the conceptual PSA that That we were able to bring to you then so

and if I might add that a number of contractors Approached me, and I did indeed go conduct site visits and speak with them. I'm sure the same is true with Supervisor Williams

It is, and obviously the biggest issue that has been brought up in the past was the payment by non-union workers of union benefits which this document makes a significant concession on.

Supervisor Nelson?

Yes thank you Chair Harmon. A question going back to the FTE when did do you say that was gonna be onboarded or when would that have to because that position be created is that next budget cycle

Madam Chair, Supervisor Nelson yes that's correct. So we'll have to kind of work through the CEO's office and set some money aside for that position long term.

And that would be paid for by county general fund dollars? Correct. Do we have an estimate on what that dollar amount might be?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Nielsen as I mentioned project team leader enterprise leader we haven't worked with HR on that yet but we want to get an experienced project manager.

Part presentation The term is contract. This is actually binding I guess maybe this question for County Council when we enter the CWA are there outs during that? Contract period for the county if at some point we determine that it's not You know, it's no longer satisfying the goals of the CWA Is that you know We often have a termination for convenience and a lot of the contracts in agreements we do in the county

Madam Chair and Supervisor Nielsen the term of the agreement is five years, so it doesn't include the typical termination cost But there is the re-bid option that was included that Mr. McGulpin went over

So as far as a CWA It'd be locked in once it was agreed upon for five years no matter what there's finding the hands of future boards

Madam Chair and Supervisor Nielsen, yes. I mean you can always amend a contract and then your board's also considering a resolution today and that resolution could be amended so there are some options during the time period.

Could that be unilaterally amended?

No no it would be a two-party amendment to a contract.

Going back to slide The exclusions, the other considerations, if we can get that slide up there for a moment. Mr. McAulpin? Could you expand on the exclusions, the clarifications to work types for repair maintenance and replacement of existing infrastructure?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Nielsen. Sure I mean if we were going to go out and overlay a road not at any capacity that would be considered a maintenance project. If you're gonna put a new roof on the building that's a that's a maintenance project that type of thing so you're building a new building then that would be a CWA eligible type project. So does that answer your question?

I think that's it for right now. I might have some other questions later.

Okay, Supervisor Labanino?

Just one more question this one's for County Council and it's about the MLAs so there was some concern in the past regarding we don't really know what's in those but I did notice that there's something in the resolution that basically says that anything that's in that MLA that is doesn't meet state or federal law I just want to make sure that you're comfortable with that language, that you feel that covers us.

And what's our liability at that point?

Members of the Board, Supervisor Lavendino. Yes we did add language to mitigate that concern. We were concerned because we don't have all of the terms of the Master Labor Agreements and those could change over time so we just wanted to make sure that we were very clear that we would continue to comply with all state and federal laws. And

you're comfortable with that language then protects us? Okay yes thank you.

Madam Clerk how many public comments do we have?

Chair Hartman, members of the board we have 12 requests to speak for this item.

All right well let's start public comment then.

We will start with on zoom with Andy Caldwell to follow by Nicole Goring.

Mr. Caldwell?

Madam chair, members of the board, Andy Caldlell representing Colab. Over our 30 years we've had pretty much every construction union on our board So we support unions, we think their apprentice programs are great. We have the member companies are in collab so we're not anti-union in any way shape or form. I first off want to say thank you because we know this could have been a lot worse.

So we do think the Public Works Director, his staff And the Building Trades Council for being willing to negotiate on many of these issues or absolute deal killers for the private sector, non-union that is. However this still is a solution in search of a problem. We believe that your number one priority fiduciary and others wise is local hire. That should be your number one priority.

If a union company can't fill the jobs with local residents, then that should ameliorate the requirements here. It should be local hire. Should be your number one goal here. And then obviously we hope that you keep the rebid provision that it would be open to anybody, all comers. We wish the dollar amount was higher And we wish there was more leniency on some of the other apprentice programs such as that, like with the National Black Contractors.

Again, we also acknowledge that some of the larger buildings and larger construction projects are done by out-of-area contractors. And so a CDWA works and makes sense in those situations. But again, we want local hire And we wish that the construction industry, the non-union would have been able to sit at this table. But we thank the staff for what they've done. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Caldwell.

Next we have Nicole Goring followed by Eric Christian.

Good morning Chair Hartman and members of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Nicole Gehring with Associated Builders and Contractors Northern California Chapter and Central Coast We've been advocating for our apprentices and our workforce to be able to work on project labor agreements for 17 years now. And I thank you for the work that you've done on this, I think you can go a little bit further to increase the threshold to 20 million because like the previous speaker said it is imperative that your local community be building these projects. That's who you need to prop up, that's who needs to get the experience I think it's important to understand that there are so many people into the industry. And when you put the restrictions on, on the apprenticeship, for programs such as ours, you can't bring anybody into construction.

You're restricting them to just one pipeline and those pipelines aren't always open. So there needs to be options and pipelines for people to go because people have different needs I still believe that, I think that all of the people located in Santa Barbara County should be able to work. All qualified workers should be able to work on these projects not just three of them or six of them I'm going to go ahead and turn it back over to you.

If there's a threshold on the projects going to affect the subcontractors and even the union generals are going to lose some of their contract reliable contractors who happen to be both Union and non-union. So those are some suggestions to make it better and to include your entire community, thank you for your time. Thank you

next we have Eric Christians followed by Pamela Shaw.

Thank you. My name is Eric Kristen on the executive director of the Coalition for fair employment and construction were statewide organization that was formed by Union and non-union construction companies 24 years ago solely to oppose project labor agreements. First and foremost, I want to thank all the supervisors that took time to meet with the local non-union construction industry to hear their concerns. That will be all the supervisors except Supervisor Hart which is quite telling, I would say being the chief proponent of this wasn't even willing to meet with people who were opposed to including those whose businesses reside within his district. I also want to thank staff for doing away with some of the most egregious provisions union dues, the union contributions The rebid, I can't emphasize enough how important that is.

The city of Santa Ana down in Orange County just had a project go out to bid and the results were so poor that they are rebidding it without a project labor agreement. The only project that's been bid under Santa Barbara's PLA was 10% over the engineer's estimate and the winning bidder was from Orange County. So that's what you can look forward to should this go forward in its current form.

This was supposed to be about local hire, but the PLA says in Section 3.5.2 that the goal of local hire is at least 50% of all construction labor hours worked on the project shall be from local area residents. But staff says you're already getting 80%. So you're reducing the amount of local hire which is admitted in your own PLA. Why is that? Because you're limiting what you're allowing the contractors who granted don't have to pay into the union pension plans now, but you're only allowing of Vince Lopez and Sons or a Cushman contract to hire a few of their own workers, which doesn't make any sense. You're thereby inviting people from Los Angeles and San Francisco and Fresno to come in and take their place.

All that would be required to get all these people to bid your project, which they've told you they won't even this PLA that's been made more fair, they won't because it limits who can work for them. You're taking them and robbing them of their workforce except for a few employees. If you simply change section 3.3 To include language, it just said if you are a core worker that resides within this local hire area, you can work.

You would have all these companies bidding this. That's all it would require you to do. So I appreciate your time. I appreciate the hard work that's been put into this. It is still a solution in search of a problem at the end of the day. But you've definitely come a long way and I would just ask that you consider making that change because it will save you a lot of heartache down Next we have Pamela Shaw to be followed by Manly McNish.

Michelle.

Michelle, we have a muted it you on our end. Can you please unmute yourself on your end? OK, will go to Manly McNich and go back to Pamela Shaw afterwards.

Good morning, thank you for your time. I want to thank the board and everyone involved for all the hard work they put in getting this project to a point of finality where everyone can sign off and agree on it. been a lot of hard work put into getting to this point and putting the CWA into effect is going to be, as we all know one of the best and surest ways of assuring that all people get an opportunity to work.

And especially female and various Different races and everything that don't, so they don't get shunned. Everyone's having an equal opportunity to work on projects you got on the majority of these construction projects and you see very few women on the job because they get closed out because there's no mechanisms in place to make sure they're gonna be on the job. And with the CWA that's gonna help remove a lot of those obstacles so everyone can participate.

Thank you very much for your time.

Next we have Pamela Shaw to be followed by Danny Devereux.

Good morning, Chairperson and Board of Supervisors. My name is Pamela Shaw. I am the Engagement Officer First Issue Billers and Contractors in the Northern California Chapter. ABC represents nearly 500 companies both small and large, minority business enterprises, veterans and disabled veterans, business enterprises and women owned businesses across California and the Central Coast. We are the construction professionals that live right here in your community and that are helping to build your community.

We operate state and federally approved apprenticeship programs in painting, plumbing, carpentry, electrical and construction craft labor. We also oversee the training for California American Fire Sprinkler Association. The Project Labor Agreement and Community Workforce Agreement before you this morning is a For years you've operated with a construction bidding policy that ensures fair playing field regardless of labor affiliation and delivered quality workmanship Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting is a joint board meeting with the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meetings are not signatory to the union. For the Santa Barbara County to remain competitive on its projects, it must diversify its workforce and attract significantly more members of minority communities into the industry.

Santa Barbara County benefits will diverse participants including Please do not limit the opportunity for local skilled and trained construction professionals who want to build your communities. Please do not pass this CWA. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

We will now return to Santa Barbara with Danny Devereux, to be followed by Anthony Ventura.

Chair Hartman and board members I'm Danny Devereaux with Cal Portland Construction First, let me thank the county team and the Trades Council for all of the work they've put into the negotiations. I do appreciate addressing some of the concerns that we brought up in I just received this late last Wednesday, a draft of it and it's actually had some minor changes since then.

But from what I see this will still limit participation greatly of merit shop contractors which employ 85 percent of the construction workforce in the county It's unlikely that our company would participate in bidding with this CWA for many reasons including working under union rules such as craft jurisdiction, providing employee names to trades council, taking on pension liabilities mostly due to the safety and efficiency issues of not being able to use our entire team.

Union contractors will still be able to do that which is a huge advantage in bidding work We would risk having some of our dedicated employees sitting at home while union members possibly outside the county working in their place. CWA, as I said, has a huge advantage for union contractors. Let history speak for itself. Any jurisdiction that has incorporated a CWA or PLA has rarely awarded a bid to a non-union Which again, employs 85% of the workforce.

A proposal today sets aside a third of a billion dollars of construction projects over the next five years to be completed under the CWA. This will hurt good standing local merit shop contractors and their employees, decrease competition which is well documented will increase costs. I know you've previously directed staff to negotiate and develop this CWA, and your board has the votes to move ahead. But I urge you to consider some changes on the recommendations you see before you today.

One, increase the affected contract amount to $20 million. This still provides $264 million of the identified projects to be set aside for the CWA. But also provides the opportunity for merit shop contractors to fairly compete against union contractors for the other 96 million. Two, start with a pilot project or two and provide a vehicle for the board to opt out of the remaining projects if problems are seen with the CWA.

Three, incorporate an automatic rebid provision without a CWA if the engineer's estimate is exceeded If there's less than three bidders on a project. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Chairwoman, I just had a question. Sure.

Mr. Devereux, can you come back up? Sorry. Hi. I had a quick question for you. I too was frustrated with the fact that I didn't have much time to digest everything that's going on. A lot of work that Cal Portland does at least in my community is maintenance work. Can you, just for my benefit, explain to me what projects that you guys now bid on that you would not be able to bid on?

Looking at this list and I don't know exactly what some of this entails. Not going to

hold

you

to it. I just want to kind of understand a little bit better. And I

apologize for not reaching

back out

to you ahead of time. Yeah we've built new roads in the community so if it's a new road that exceeds the 10 million proposed We would be excluded from being able to, not excluded from bidding it but we would have a significant disadvantage and most likely would not bid it. Earthwork, the levee projects, bridge projects, these type of projects which are included in the identified projects we would have a huge disadvantage in bidding that work.

Okay

thank you.

Next we have Anthony Ventura to be followed by Joshua Majorano.

Good morning, County Supervisors. My name is Anthony Ventura. I'm a Special Representative with the Southwest Mountain States Council of Carpenters and work out of Carpenter's Local 805 that covers Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. We have over 2,000 members locally and 700 members that we have that live and reside in Santa Barbara and shop in Santa Barbara County.

with 62,000 members councilwide. I come before you on behalf of these members in support of this community workforce agreement. We know we know these agreements are good for our communities by bringing good paying jobs opportunities for community residents and helps our local economy with revenue generated from this agreement. I just want to touch on something that the gentleman said before i do the dispatching for the Oxnard PLA And I know I've dealt with at least a half a dozen major contractors from the LA area, Santa Barbara or actually Ventura County area that are non-union and they have done it and they were happy. I can name a few one is Arland Construction. The other one is K&Z Construction, Viola Construction. These are just some of the contractors that I know that I've dealt with personally because I do dispatching And I know how it works as far as the local hire agreements work.

So we are in strong support of it. Thank you for your time.

Next, we have Joshua Medrano to followed by Les Cushman.

Well good morning supervisors What a great day to be up here. My name is Joshua Medrano and I am the Executive Secretary, Treasurer of the Tri-Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. And I'd like to extend my thanks to county staff as well, as well as the watch committee and you supervisors out there for getting us to this point. Now we've all in this room have heard everybody's concerns, really have.

That's why it's taken so long to get to this point. Because we have to weigh everything, not just for a few but for everybody. We feel collectively with the county staffers that although it has taken us close to 14 months that what's in front of you is what's most equitable for the entire community Non-union, union doesn't matter. We like to think that the concessions that were made are evident of a new time and new opportunity.

We understand that this process has not been proven true here but we know that elsewhere other locations, other entities, other organizations, other communities Have all implemented PLAs and CWAs, and have found success. Over the last year of knowing that we were going to get to this point at some time, all that outreach was available to all so that you could hear it from the horse's mouth and not just from the trades.

We appreciate those contractors reaching out in favor and not in favor because let's face it, we need to hear both sides Now, we have to take this back as the building trades. It's now on us. I'd like to tell everybody out there right now that everything in front of you has been vetted, has been looked at and we collectively are standing together in favor of moving forward with the CWA.

The concerns that are out there, we look forward to proving with our actions instead of just our words and asking you to look elsewhere for that information. And instead be able to look here at home, stand back and say this agreement should have been done a long time ago. We look forward to continuing to work together, for this agreement. Appreciate everybody's time, staffers, board members. Thank you.

Next we have Les Cushman to be followed by Lee Cushman.

Morning supervisors. My name is Les Cushman. I work for Cushmann Contracting which started here in 1969.

Would you speak in the mic so we can hear you? We don't want to miss a word. Good morning

Supervisors, my name is Les Cushman. I've worked for Cushman Contracting Corporation which was started in Santa Barbara in 1969. I would ask the supervisors to read the words on your elevator, on the door of your elevator right outside the door here. We value equity and inclusion. Just read it on the way out the door and try to really understand what those words mean. We've all talked about them, look at them a little closer.

You as our local county supervisors are talking about complete discrimination against non-union construction tradesmen Your proposed CWA would only allow for us to bring 10 at the most of our 40 or 50 employees onto a county construction project. Only 10, so what do the other 40 do? They've got to basically go home and they've got wives and children. What did they do? They've been working for us for 10, 15, 20, 30 years some of these people What do they do? They're not gonna join the union.

They've gotta go someplace else. They pay taxes here, but they can't work here. This is completely wrong. Keep in mind these people that I'm talking about have built many of the facilities in this county that you all use from Stearns Wharf to your water sewer plants all over the place. They've done all this work in your county and now they're gonna get shut down Yeah, we hear they can have 10 people. Well what do we do with the other ones like I said?

All these employees came and spoke to you several months ago at one of your meetings and spoke to you why they chose not to be in the union. They simply wanted to be in control of their own pension and their health care plan. That's it no problem. Cushman hires union contractors all the time. We hire union contractors, rebar, electrical, paving, et cetera. We hire them.