Board of Supervisors — 2023-06-20

Good morning. I'd like to call to order the June 20th, 2023 meeting of Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. We were supposed to have a very quiet day but we have our elevators down so we do have a satellite room downstairs for any other member of the public who cannot make it up the stairs and we also have a visit from one of our former ACEOs and the county family remembers its own you will see him and rejoice Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

Good morning, Chair Williams. Yes, there is a short CEO's report and it's a happy announcement. I'm pleased to announce that our county has been awarded $6 million in a grant for the state to move people out of encampments and into housing. The grant will be used to prioritize serving 250 people located in encampments along State right-of-ways and waterways. This includes the Santa Maria Riverbed, Santa Ynez Riverbed and encampments near creeks leading to South Coast beaches. The grant encompasses various critical components including funding for a specialized outreach team to provide wraparound services to help encourage people to accept available and planned interim housing. The County of Santa Barbara as you know has been proactive in this effort for the last several years and the board on August 31st 2021 approved a three year encampment resolution strategy And a camp response protocol with the goal of resolving encampments of varying size and impact.

The strategy and protocol were used to apply for this competitive grant funding, so congratulations to our community services department and all our partners for receiving this grant.

That is welcome news. Madam Clerk, is there any changes or additions to our agenda today?

Chair Williams and members of the board, we have no changes to our agenda today. I just have one brief announcement regarding public participation and 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. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. If you have any questions, please contact the clerk at the board's office at area code 805-568-2240. Again that number is 805 568 2240 and that concludes my announcements for today.

Thank you. Would any board members like to pull any items from the administrative agenda? Seeing none. Is there any being pulled by the public?

Chair Williams and members of the board, we have no requests to speak on our administrative agenda today.

Can I get a motion to approve the administrative agenda?

Hartman seconds.

There's a motion and a second. Any discussion? We will do roll call.

Yes, Chair Williams and members of the board we do have two requests to speak on general public comment today. It appears our Zoom participant is not logged in so if you have signed up for general public comment and you would like to provide your comment please do so now but we will go to Santa Barbara with Barney Melechian to be followed by Nina Beattie. Barney?

Chair Williams and members of the Board, good morning. Nice to see everyone again. My name is Barney Malecki and I'm here in my role as a board member of the P.R. Cleisen Veteran Foundation. As a way of background, I served in the United States Army from 1967-1970 and I served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve from 1984 until I retired in 2009. I had two active duty deployments including deploying to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Storm.

I'm here today to bring to your attention that two weeks ago, 18 young men and women graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara and were also commissioned as second lieutenants in the United States Army. I had the pleasure of meeting 15 of them at a dinner hosted by the Pierre Clyson's board two weeks ago. They're a varied and diverse group of people from throughout California and at least 2 of them are from out-of-state.

All are members of the Surfrider Battalion, an ROTC unit which has been on the university campus since 1947. Out of 23,000 students at UCSB less than 100 are members of the battalion. Over the course of the next few months they will be deployed to various training centers around the United States and ultimately assigned to line units. I want to bring to your attention and quite honestly to the attention of anyone watching this broadcast That the accomplishments of these young people was allowed to go unnoticed.

Their commissioning as second lieutenants was never mentioned during the graduation ceremony, and a request for them to be allowed to graduate as a group was denied. I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and its aftermath. One of the lessons that I thought we learned is that regardless of our individual feelings about politics or policies that cause the use of our armed forces, we should never denigrate the people who serve.

These 18 young people have undertaken a commitment to serve their country knowing full well that in doing so they may be putting their lives at risk. In the aftermath of Vietnam, we decided that our armed forces would be all volunteer. It seems to me as a society that we have two responsibilities. The first is to honor the people who serve and secondly to ensure that the members are of the Armed Forces are never put in harm's way unnecessarily.

The young men and women who commissioned last week should have been acknowledged for their accomplishments Not only have they graduated from one of the finest universities in the world, but they have voluntarily taken on an added workload to prepare themselves to become commissioned officers in the United States Army. This is not an insignificant accomplishment.

Each of you has influence in various sectors of our community. I'm asking you and anyone listening to use that influence to persuade the university in the years ahead, to acknowledge that the young men and women of the Surfrider Battalion are part of the university community. I am afraid that now their perception is that they are barely tolerated. I think we should all be concerned about this. Thank you very much.

We will now go to Zoom for our final speaker, Nina Meadey.

Thank you my name is Nina Beatty. I'm an investigative writer. I urge you to take two actions before your summer recess. The first is to oppose the dumping of Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean by Japan. Since 2011 TEPCO, the electric company has poured 150 tons of water per day on the melted reactor cores to keep them cool and store the wastewater in tanks on site. They now have 1.3 million tons They claim they have no more room and must dump the radioactive water into the Pacific.

Fishermen, scientists and residents of Japan, China, South Korea and the Pacific Islands have opposed this dumping but TEPCO started test dumping on June 12th. That radioactive water travels on the Kuroshio Current to the California coast. Please oppose this dumping publicly with all the means available that you have. The second action is to oppose Vandenberg's plans for more rocket launches. This month, the Coastal Commission approved SpaceX currently at six rocket launches per year to launch 36 rocket launches per year without any public notice, public hearing and no final environmental assessment by the Air Force.

And in July, the commission is set to approve a new SIP-A complex by Phantom Space Company there for up to 48 rocket launches per year. Scientists warn that rockets destroy ozone in their flight path for many kilometers wide and by their pollution and other paths. That pollution, including water vapor stays in the stratosphere for up to three years blocking the sun's rays from replenishing the ozone that has been destroyed and also trapping Earth's heat from venting into space. This accelerates climate change.

A thinning ozone layer or an ozone hole over Santa Barbara County would be devastating Thank you. We are adjourned Tuesday, June 27 in Santa Maria.