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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.0:00 – 0:044 turns
Good morning. I'd like to call to order the July 11th, 2023 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to order. Madam Clerk please call the roll.
Roll call, called by Clerk of the Board
Show transcript
The next item of business is the approval of minutes from the June 2027 meeting. So moved. Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? CEO's report.
Apologize, no staff came to talk to me so Supervisors I do have a brief report five different announcements And we'll end with our, we received awards from the California State Association of County CSAC and their Chief Operating Officer is just finding parking. We'll be here to present those awards but before she does that some announcements good news our Community Services Department in partnership with Ventura and Slope Counties has secured 155 million dollars in funding to deliver energy efficiency and electrification programs throughout the tri-county region At the end of June, the California Public Utilities Commission officially approved our Tri-County Regional Energy Network's business plan to deliver programs through 2031. The budget is roughly three times the amount that the Tri-County Regional Energy Network also known as 3CREN received for its previous business plan.
The funding will enable the Tri County Regional Energy Network to continue operating four successful existing programs that provide workforce development training and support energy efficiency and electrification in residential buildings as well as launch three new programs to fill gaps. in commercial and public sector buildings, and in the ag sector. So congratulations to CSD and thank you for applying and getting that funding.
The second announcement is that I'm pleased to announce that the Board of Supervisors submitted a letter of support for a CHIPS funding application from Teledyne Flora, a Goleta-based technology company. The U.S. Department of Commerce has a CHIPS program, and they had a funding opportunity to ensure America's long term capacity to develop and manufacture technologies that are foundational to our economic vitality. The Commerce Department was seeking applications for projects for the construction, expansion or modernization of commercial facilities for the fabrication of current generation semiconductors. Teledyne Fleur as many of you know is one of the world's leading developers and manufacturers in the premier technology manufacturing industry and has been located in Santa Barbara County for over 40 years by supporting Teledynes application the county is supporting job growth by expanding business capacity And supporting innovation through modernization of existing systems.
So we wish them luck in their application with the US Commerce Department. Thirdly, just a quick announcement on the state budget. As you know, the state budget was passed by the legislature at the end of June and signed by the governor and includes a number of funding proposals for projects in the county under legislative priorities. And a couple of them include almost $2.3 million to the county for the Lompoc Theater Project and $750,000 to the County Fire Department for our Marine Rescue There are other projects that are also funded as legislative priorities through the county for community organizations and projects funded in our cities. But we want to thank our legislative delegation, Senator LeMone and Assemblymember Hart for making this happen.
Fourthly you know we're fortunate in our county to have such high caliber employees at many times they are asked to serve on state and national boards which bring recognition to our county in the process. So today I wanna just recognize Assistant Public Defender, Lamar Kyle Griffiths has been appointed to the National Association of Public Defense Board of Directors.
This organization serves as a national professional organization for more than 30,000 public defenders and is a key voice in advocacy for public defense policy and reform so congratulations to Lamar we appreciate your participation and in recognition of this great honor for you. Lastly we have the challenge awards, and I don't know if Miss Benson is here yet But if we could wait till she comes into the chambers chair I'd appreciate it And then she can give information on the awards that we went through CSEC
We can return to that. I will ask are there any Announcements from the vice-chair or Mr..
0:04 – 0:077 turns
Vice chair I actually have one and That is July 19th at 6 p.m.. Will be holding a fifth district will be holding a Town Hall at Guadalupe City Hall. There's a lot been going on in Guadalupe due to the storms, the road to the dunes was washed out there were a number of homes that were affected because of the storms and so we're gonna have Public Works Office of Emergency Management. We're gonna be talking about the Santa Maria River levee trail.
So and anything else anybody would like to discuss at that meeting? Guadalupe City Hall next Wednesday, July 19th. The community is invited to come on out and Madam Clerk
Chair Williams and members of the board I do have a few announcements this morning We posted an addendum to today's agenda on Friday July 7th amending the closed session agenda The closed session agenda was amended to remove the closed session agenda Inevitably published on Thursday July 6 and replaced with a closed session agenda to include one item of existing existing litigation Utco versus the County of Santa Barbara, one item of labor negotiators with SEIU and one item of public employee performance evaluation with the county executive officer. This addendum was posted online and made available to the board and the public.
Lastly for the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and to provide public comment on general public comment or an item on the boards agenda please see page 2 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 2. If you have any questions, please contact the clerk of the board's office at area code 805-568-2240 again That's 8 0 5 5 6 8 2 2 4 0 and that concludes my announcements for today
So we would have to add that addendum onto the consent or its
Chair Williams and members of the board since that addendum made it on before the deadline we can move ahead. Thank you,
okay And I have a number of items that are being pulled by mr Nelson and ms caps I have a 7 a 17 a 18 a 23 a 28 and a 29 Anything? I'm I am missing
And Chair Williams, members of the board we have two items pulled by the public A7 and A28 that were previously noted.
Okay so let's go to a motion for the balance of the consent calendar I'll move the balance
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second
all those in favor please say aye opposed okay then let's go to A7
Chair Williams and members of the board, administrative item number seven is from the County Executive Office. It is to consider recommendations regarding an amendment to chapter 50 of the county code licensing of cannabis operations. And this is a second reading on today's agenda. And we do have four requests to speak on this item from the public.
Let's go to the public first. This was also pulled by Mr. Nelson but let's go to the public first.
We will begin in Santa Barbara with Kapono Curry to be followed by Emily Curry on Zoom. Kapono?
Morning. Test, test, microphone test. Cool. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming down and giving me a chance to speak I wanted to talk a little bit about Unforeseen consequences and how the interaction of three different chapters in the code is kind of kind of create a situation for smaller farms It's really problematic You've got chapter 35 which deals with land use you've got chapter 50 which deals with business license Which is the subject of today's discussion? And you've got 58 which deals with the taxation of these entities Now, let's look at the data. Last year in 2022 there were 1500 plus acres of approved LUP in the Northern County only 549 of those acres actually held a business license and of those only 382 acres were licensed at the state level.
Of those 144.79 were new acres placed into production. At the same time 47.91 acres of license holders walked away from their licenses as of 622 23 few days ago There's only 286 acres licensed at the state level in the northern county and even less in production. And out of the 52 farms in the north county, 25 of them are less than 20 acres. Now I understand we have some bad actors. We have some challenges in the current arrangement with the cannabis industry in the forms of a partnership and there may be easier ways to do it. The problem that we're seeing here is that by placing a no more than one minute late measure on renewing your licenses You're creating a cash flow whiplash for these smaller farms that are smaller than 20 acres.
In the fall, under the current code they are required to state the possible value of their crop. This does not include evidences of outbreak mold in processing it doesn't include the cost of processing or of harvest labor and so at this time for these small farms they have to pay the cost to get it harvested shipped processed outside of the county. They also have to pay taxes to the county And for some of them, they're forced to pay the taxes, pay their vendors or pay their employees.
And I think that although this is a challenging situation there's probably due for some changes to the code. Enacting a change in this way is going to hurt the small farms that have been trying the hardest they can to do things the right way in North County. And perhaps there's a different way to set up the verbiage so it doesn't hurt these small farms that are honestly just trying to survive an industry that seen its revenue get cut nearly in half due to price decreases at wholesale.
Thank you.
We will now go to Emily Curry on Zoom to be followed by Jillian Collins, Emily?
Hi can everybody hear me?
Yes we can please proceed
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, ladies and gentlemen. This is only going to hurt small farms like Kapono said every year in October the prices drop because the whole state is coming out with product and a lot of the small farms have to wait 60 to 90 days before they even see revenue on a product that they sent in October. With this new ordinance, you will see unintended consequences of the small farms going out of business creating this county to not be what it is in the cannabis industry anymore. I understand that we need to get rid of the bad actors but this is only going to hurt the good apples in the county.
And that's all I have to say about it. So, I hope that you guys take this into consideration of how a minute late could be very detrimental of how you cannot renew your business license if you're a minute late And you have to start the process over. Like we saw in 2022, the industry is rough and to have to pay taxes on something that you don't know how much it's going to be sold for or you don't know if it will be sold is going to be very un... It's going to be hard on the industry so thank you so much with that I will
conclude my time We will now go to Jillian Collins who is the final speaker on this item. Jillian.
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Hello everyone good morning my name is Jillian Collins can you hear me?
Yes we can please proceed.
Beautiful. Thank you for having me speak on this meeting and this topic. I'm actually an operator in Buellton, Santa Barbara County for a small farm. And similar to what Kapono and Emily have described, I consider the cannabis market kind of like crypto. It's very volatile. In order for us to be able to make a profit it really depends on the volatility of that market.
You know, payments are slow. There's not a lot of cash flow in the industry due to banking license fees, cost of operations, third party processors. So in order for us to maintain our business license, maintain our workflows and our cashflow leniency on timing for taxes even reporting it is important and I know currently we're reporting You know, quarterly and making sure that the county has their metric system situated. So the way that the new implementation has been worked has also caused some delays and just verifying all that information. So I'm wondering how this new ordinance will also.
You know, streamline that process. I just feel like it's challenging enough in this industry with compliance state regulations and maintaining profitability trying to be one of those good farms that has very slim margins and a very small team so I'd like to open it up to the council and understand how this ordinance Was described to put in place and what the avenue is for this ordinance.
And that concludes public comment on this item,
Mr Nelson you had questions?
Yeah, a couple questions and maybe just express concern. Maybe have further discussion up here about you know I think it highlighted in the news article after this discussion we had last time that the word death penalty or the term death penalty got a lot of people's attention and for those people in the audience that weren't here that we were concerned about licenses being revoked immediately upon missing the deadline to pay their taxes You know, our goal here is to prevent people from waiting an entire year to pay their taxes and still be good in standing. It's not the trip anybody up. And so I want to make sure that there's enough potential discretion out there if there are some mistakes on this whole one minute late concept that somebody might have that authority without having to go to court and maybe costing the county some...
Go through a very expensive process as I'm sure any cannabis Farm would probably take us to task on that and you know I don't want to spend those legal fees if there's a way for us to have some additional discretion. I've looked in chapter 58 or got some assistance from County Council and it does seem that in Chapter 50a, there's some additional discretion for the treasurer tax collector but it doesn't exist in Chapter 50 and I would like to also hear maybe from the treasurer about maybe some of the challenges that might exist with this expedited Time of where these taxes might go in. Is there going to be some challenges here to get those all received and credited within those 30 days?
Would it be helpful for you potentially to have some additional discretion? Like you have in Chapter 50A to exist in Chapter 50 as well. So those are my questions on this. I'm ready, I will be ready to move forward with it today but I think we have time before we implement this to maybe come back and make some adjustments so just show my cards.
Mr. Hagan?
Chair Williams, Supervisor Nelson. If I understand your question, you're asking me what additional tools or structure would be beneficial to the collection of taxes if that's what I'm hearing? It is. Okay great and just for the record this Rebecca Falfall she's our chief deputy tax collector in charge of cannabis collections too so If it's not apparent, I'm just getting over a bout of COVID and so I can hit the hanging curves. If you buzz me with a fastball, I may have to pass that to Rebecca just so you know.
The 30 days I think is really tight for the cannabis operators. That's my personal opinion We've talked internally for some time about stretching that to 60 and we were going to talk to council about it, but I don't want to do anything that's gonna Circumvent I'll say the wishes of the board so if the board wants to do something in 30 days That's what I'll do You know having been in public accounting for a big part of my career before coming to the county, you know I understand what small businesses need to do to come up with their financial statements at the end of a quarter like this. We would prepare these in public accounting and so really that 30 days when it becomes due day one And delinquent at the end of the collection period, right?
Which in this case is the subsequent month. I think it's a little tight for people and so you'll see the bulk of people paying the last five to seven business days, I'll call it. That's really when the money comes in because one of the challenges too Small businesses, they do their business based on cash basis right? And so the tax is collected on the accrual basis. So there's adjusting journal entries that have to occur and I mean I can go through a lot of accounting minutiae but the fact is I think it really puts a short time frame on the operators to pay. That's just my own personal opinion
0:19 – 0:2512 turns
At some point in this process is there a late fee that
is assessed? So the way the fees work, the base tax is due for the first month. Due the first, the link would have not paid by the end of that subsequent month right so in this case if June 30th was the end of the quarter The delinquency period would begin August 1. Well, the due date is July 1. Delinquency would be August 1 but there are scenarios where it could be pushed back a little bit, right? Just like when you pay your taxes if you put your taxes in the mailbox on April 10th and we receive it on April 12th it's deemed timely. In this case we treat cannabis tax the same way we do unsecured because that's how So I'm hesitant to say the end of the month, but as long as it's been remitted by the end of the month is considered timely. And we receive it and it's negotiable of course.
And to finish that thought, if you miss the first delinquency date it's a 10% penalty. If it goes delinquent another month after that it's another 10% penalty all along you're also incurring interest after that first delinquency so there is a substantial penalty if you're going to be late built into the tax code There are other questions.
Yes, I have a question for Mr. Hagan thank you what about the operators that aren't paying zero or not bothering to file at all? What would be the penalty on that if 10% of 0 is probably 0 right?
Well, if they haven't filed and we would certainly encourage them to file. And I don't want to say browbeat them but we do speak to them and once they do file there is a 10% penalty for the first month at 10% for the second month and interest at 1.5% per month is occurring after that first delinquency
Okay. And how much time and effort does it take your operation to get people to pay, to chase them down, to follow up with phone calls? In meeting with you over the last several months, it struck me that it seemed very laborious to just get people to even fill out a form that says zero.
It can be. I mean, it's kind of the 80-20 rule, right? Any kind of taxation is like that if you're paying, it's being processed by clockwork, right? So on secure taxes, I'll just say, right? If we have a delinquency and it goes on the unsecured role, it will be there for five years and then we file a power to sell and then potentially we have to do field visits and things and then it gets to a tax sale and that's when it happens. People pay right then. And so all these steps and all this time goes into making sure the role is collected.
It's not too different from any kind of taxation that, you know, the ones that are holding out for whatever reason right could be economic could be people just don't believe in taxes I guess I don't know but it is the 80-20 rule so the ones that don't pay timely are going to take more time and effort to get them to comply yeah no question about
Staff time
etc.
Oh, yeah
Well,
I I think that you know Our intent is to ensure that all cultivators are paying their taxes fully and timely and so I appreciate the change that we're talking about but the mechanics of it I think are very important and You know I think we probably missed the boat when we were talking about this and not bringing in the person that actually does the mechanics of that, which is the treasurer tax collector. So I appreciate you being here today. I understand that you had a rough week and I hope you're feeling better so really even if we pass this today it will not become effective until the October taxes.
I don't think we're in any immediate situation where we have to do something. I'd rather get this right and not have to come back and change it again. So, I would either say that if we're okay with 60 days, I think that still gets us the intent of what we're talking about is that if somebody doesn't pay... And after 60 days, if you haven't paid then you've made it very clear that you're not a good actor.
And after 60 days, if you haven't paid then we still go forward with what we were talking about. If people are comfortable with that and we can make that change today, that'd be great. If not, then my suggestion is that we kick it back to staff and have them come back with another recommendation of what does work. And that includes bringing in the treasurer tax collector because the last thing I want to do is make it more work On that office and then come back at budget time, and it's like hey this is costing us more money than what it really needs to be. So let's just do this right the first time or the third time or whatever we're on already so that we don't have to do it again.
And Brittany I'd like to hear from you as well of how you think this would affect us?
Before she does, I think staff's preference for us to get this, like you said, get it right and get it cleared out clear. So if you'd like to have a discussion on it or make a change, I think County Council is ready to make a change if your board wanted to do that and trail the item and then bring it back so that we could do first reading today if you want to do a change. And I'd like to have second reading next week just because our August agendas are getting filled.
0:25 – 0:308 turns
And Brittany and Mr. Hagan, what I would love to understand is both of your recommendations are? Do you recommend 60 days because of the logistics and accountability issues? Do you recommend additional discretion on the treasurer tax collector's part For you know, sometimes this discretion if I was at your job. I would not want it right so I Want to understand what?
Because seems to me there's two things being discussed here and want to understand what your recommendation is on both of those I
Thank you, Chair Williams and members of the board. I think hearing from the public and some of the stakeholders from the last from the first reading in June 27th, I think the 60 days is it is a suggestion that we could work with and will work for the industry and will allow more time for the Treasurer Tax Collector's Office to ensure that the operators are filing and paying I would defer to the Treasurer-Taxpayer's Office on having more discretion and let you answer that. I know in Chapter 50 this amendment, I was under the impression and directed to tighten this up. And so there are two sections in Chapter 50 that before allowed additional timeframes Established by our office and it they were they were it was a lot of discretion It's you know, if people were late we could say hey You have 14 days to pay or 30 days.
We could we were trying to be consistent amongst operators That has been removed with this amendment And so we could look at that again and establish a more specific timeframe. And then that would allow a little bit of flexibility, but not so much that you know, we would go the other direction. So I would recommend that we consider the 60 days. I think that works for everybody if I'm hearing from Rebecca and Harry correctly too.
And Mr. Hagan, is 60 days your recommendation and is additional discretion on your part or your successor's part?
I think the 60 days is a good move personally. I think that's a good number. And I have to say that, you know, I think Mona and her team when they put together the ordinance. They were pioneers so there wasn't a blueprint to follow and so the tax ordinance was written really well and so I have a lot of discretion in there as it is. There's no more discretion that I see that I need personally right now. So I think the 60 days is what I would recommend if that's what you're asking. Yes?
Mr. Nelson.
I guess this is why we have second readings, to really think this through a little further. Yeah,
I've always considered this a worthless pain in the butt frankly to have first and second reading of every ordinance.
It gives us an opportunity to have a further discussion and think about it. Just to add a little bit more to some of the comments that Brittany had, I don't want to give you additional discretion because I don t want you to necessarily have to be put in that position. One of my big concerns is getting that term death penalty. Many of these farms have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions getting their projects entitled. I expect significant litigation that will have to be done through our county council You know something goes you know there's too much discretion here. I really want to be really clear on it, I want to give an ample amount of time that we're not tripping a business up and looks like that You know, kind of making a closet veto on some projects because we're really trying to get them to lose their license.
I don't want that to seem like that and I just can see that being something that potentially a legal challenge might be sympathetic to so I want to make sure there's the right amount of time. I think there is a huge motivation for a farmer to get in their taxes within the first 30 days so they don't have to pay that 10% penalty I think that 10% penalty will hold on to them for that second month, and then after that second month, I have no problem making sure they are an operator in bad standing with us. Sorry.
Wow. First time. So that's where I'm at, and I'm also curious to hear where everybody else is at on it. And I would be fine with either trailing it or moving it to another day so we can talk about
0:31 – 0:368 turns
Supervisor Katz.
Thank you, I have a question for our CEO but just sort of a rhetorical question. I'm a little confused with this second reading why the initial recommendation wasn't 30 days and maybe there's a communication that needs to happen because again we were reacting to staff saying we can do this in 30 days and now we're getting a different narrative so I appreciate the conditions change but I'm not sure what those conditions have been other than hearing from some folks I do have some problems with that, but mostly I wanted to ask our CEO about projections because what was really I Was enlightened about was the difficulty for?
Our budget office to project cannabis revenue which again the goal of the program as I understand it is to bring in revenue to pay for parks and libraries etc So if we're now extending to 60 days of a 90-day window because these are quarterly How does that impact? Our ability to accurately project the revenue that we count on for things that many many people count on in this county
Supervisors to the chair, so we present to you quarterly updates of the budget and cannabis revenue and cannabis operations And it's usually about a month after the end of the close of the quarter. So if So as we said it one thing that would have been helpful for us is to have some certainty on that by the time We come to the board And so if it's delayed two months, that just might mean our projections are delayed and we would catch up at the next quarterly meeting or the quarterly update. So it wouldn't be as precise as we would like it but it hasn't been precise here before anyway and so it would help us if the taxes were paid timely so that we can do the update but I understand the conversation Just to let you know, when we first, I was talking to Brittany.
When we first figured out what was the date, the time of when it would... We talked about 60 days internally, 45 days but we wanted to match a date that was already in Chapter 50 which was the 30 days so that's where and how we landed on the 30 days but at your board's discretion.
Yeah, I would give a little bit of different answer which is just that they gave us something this tough because they thought we wanted something this tough. And it's once again to the Board's discretion. Mr. Labadino?
Well, I think Supervisor Kaps brought up a good point about forecasting but the other side of that too is that 90% of our revenue comes from property tax and that is really hard to forecast. And in fact, the way we have our budget cycle timed up with when the taxes come in every year where we get a surprise this year it was a good surprise you know I think we were five and a half million over what we had actually projected. We didn't know that until couple days before we're making all of these decisions so but I think this is another impetus another push for us to change the way that we do collect cannabis taxes.
And I think this is another push for us to try to look at, you know what's the alternative to go on a grocery seats? So and that's a discussion we've been having in and we're going to continue to have and I think this highlights again the problem with that particular manner in which we do it so I think my motion would be if its I'm going to look to council if it's OK for us to change it to 60 days and then do it today so that we can move forward, if that's doable. That way we're not wasting a lot of time or we could come back next week with the second reading so we get this in effect.
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Lavagnino, it sounds like Ms. Heaton has a clarification.
Thank you, Chair Williams and Board. I just want to clarify when we're talking about the 60 days that what we're saying is the taxes are still due when they're due and they're delinquent when they're delinquent. But before we would say you can you are no longer eligible for renewal, we're giving an additional 30 days for them to come in and pay With the penalties applying as they do with Chapter 58. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that was
where we were going. Mr. Chair and Supervisor Levineno, I do think it's possible if we trail this item I do think it's possible to make the change today And have this be the new first reading? I Do want to clarify There's a little bit of a distinction right now on this section for grounds for the initial denial and then grounds for renewal Denial of renewal and I'm it sounds to me like the board wants to make it consistent throughout that would be the same the 60 days would be the same for The initial denial as well as renewal.
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Can you flesh that out a little bit for me?
Sure, just the language is a little different And it's strange, right? Because initially if you're getting grounds for denial of a license this wouldn't be an issue unless you were already operating. But we do have some that are already operating and so then an initial ground for denial could be that they had failed to pay by the due date. It wouldn't be an issue if they weren't already operating.
And how would we go about matching and marrying those two up?
Well, if the board wanted that we would just make sure the language is consistent when it comes back. It's just right now it's worded a little bit differently and I wasn't sure if the board wanted a distinction between them.
That makes sense to me. Anytime we can get matching language, it's always helpful.
So let's get a motion to trail the item and bring back a redlined version of the text That's my motion.
Do you want to get a conceptual motion just so you have a sense of where everybody is?
Sure, absolutely. Would you like to make a conceptual motion? That's my
conceptual motion. What? To trail it so that
we can add 60 days and then match up the two languages. OK, that's more than a conceptual motion, but that's good. Is there a second for that motion?
I'll go ahead and second, but I also want to make a comment.
Mr. Nelson?
Yeah so I want something tough and but I also wanted to make sure that's something that works I do think Supervisor Caps brings up some really good points about having accurate forecasting, but the problem we had before is we had some of our operators waiting to 364 days before paying and that makes it very hard to do this. We're going to be extending it now maybe 60 days. It will be slightly delayed. We will have more accurate numbers, so I am comfortable with something that this would More helpful in forecasting and at the end of day, I really hope this is just temporary. Because I think we want to really move beyond the gross receipts conversation into something way more transparent for the operator so they can be consistent for their budgeting purposes and for our county budgeting purposes And for the public to trust that the right amount of taxes are being paid, so we're not having to spend all this money in audit subscriptions and other things.
So I really hope that whatever we're doing here is just something that we're doing as a stop gap until we get to a better place as a county. So, I'm gonna go ahead and be happy to make that second at this point, and then go from there.
Well, I think some if not many in the industry have been lax about paying taxes and I think that's in reporting. And so I think we it functioned as a gray industry unlike other industries and we're trying to really set a high bar but I'm persuaded by our own treasurer and staff saying 30 days is too tight for them, and so I'm willing to support the 60 days.
Supervisor Kaps?
Thank you and I'm not willing to support the change. I don't understand why the 30 days was put forward, tried to engage with the task collector on this front. I think that Supervisor Williams used the word tough. The public wants us to be tougher. I don't understand sort of this culture of leniency that has existed and I appreciate what we're trying to wrangle with here but what I look at is that means 60 days that Rebecca has to keep chasing People are there's opportunity costs with the time and effort that this program has has Weighted our some of our county staff down on and that's really what motivates me that we be focused on other things that impact more people it's clearly we can all agree that this discussion is a good one and a healthy one that just signals that we need to make a more structural change but in terms of changing course now after months of hearing staff recommendation for 30 days, I'm not willing to support the change.
Well I don't really understand the angst of the difference you know for our purposes we get 10% more if they're in the 30-60 day window Which, from a financial perspective for the county is a win. So I hope everybody pays in that window because that's a good thing for us and you know, I just don't appreciate throwing staff under the bus. Staff is trying to give us what they think we want which is a tough ordinance and this would remain a tough ordinance. It would remain the toughest tax measure in the state
Mister chair members of the board I have another clarification just to make sure we come back with what the board wants and that is. What we're talking about changing is the payment, the timing of the payment of the taxes. But there's also the report that needs to be submitted so they have different due dates. The report is due at the end of the month. Right? The due date for taxes is the beginning of the month and it's delinquent at the end of the month and then the report is due at the end of the month. And what I hear you saying is you want it to be 60 days for the payment but Want to check. Do you want to keep the due dates for report the same or are we extending that as well?
0:42 – 0:4916 turns
I think we would like a recommendation both from CEO staff and from the treasurer tax collector
Thank You chair Williams from from my perspective in our office keeping it the report do at the end of the month makes sense because there are there's work that needs to be done around checking that report but I would defer to Mr. Hagan and his staff on whether you would want that additional time.
Chair Williams, it's not unusual for people to file their report in advance of them paying their taxes because we check the report for accuracy and making sure that things are driving with metric so they are two independent things
And if my understanding is you could read, you could submit the report but correct it later on? Is that how that works?
Mr. Chair and members of the board in the interest of time I My suggestion would be, why don't you let us know what you'd like it to do? And if that doesn't work then we'll come back and keep it the same. I mean, if your goal is keep the report due at the end of the month, payment grounds for denial for late payment at 60 days, we could try to do that but language-wise it might make more sense to make them both 60 days so I just... We're trying to figure that out at the table but I'm not sure It's going to be resolved right now.
Mr. Nelson?
Yeah, I would prefer that the report be done at the end of 30 days is my preference if there's you're asking for one so That would be where I'm at So I think that I've heard from Mrs. Otterman There is work to be done after that 30 days for her staff and they need to get going on it. And I wouldn't want to delay that, you know getting all these decisions we make have unintended consequences right? And so we've changed something here. It changes something somewhere else.
I wanna change as little as possible here in this but I think the intention here is to really get that 60 days period. So that's something that we're not purposely tripping up An operator and but still receiving the delinquency on the actual penalty if necessary And having some additional time. So that's where I'm at
Just to supervise just to clarify because we're talking about our table Is that then if you keep the report due in the 30 days, that means it's still this issue of we can We can non renew someone if they're late on the One minute after the 30th day. So currently the ordinance before you in the second reading has the taxes have to be paid and that report has to be done, and then that 30 days.
But if you're saying you really care about the taxes being paid give them 60 days for the taxes but the 30 for the report we just want to be clear because that's not what we thought you intended but we're asking you right now.
Supervisor Hartman, you have a
suggestion. So I had a question. So if they fail to file the report timely and they have 30 days and if they don't do it by then, then they lose their license? I believe in reporting. I believe that's where we start in compact with the industry. And so I think there should be really consequences for failing to report. That's one of our issues, is that people have been blowing it off and we don't really know what's going on out there. So I'm prepared to hang tough on the reporting.
Supervisor Lavino? So Brittany can you explain what the report is?
Thank you, Supervisor Lavagnino through the Chair. The report is actually generated by the Treasurer Tax Selector's Office and they collect the report so if you would Mr. Hagan if you guys could describe the report please thank you.
So the report consists of multiple areas so you have your report it's going to cover your prior quarter of all your transfers your transfer report has to be summarized then you're also submitting a detailed itemized transfer report to us They're having to calculate out what their gross receipts would be, including valuation that's associated to certain transfer types according to our ordinance.
That report gets submitted into our office. We require that report to be submitted before we will accept payment because we review the report for completeness and accuracy. And we also do a comparison against what we're seeing in the metric data. So that report they cannot pay without reporting. So that is what is due no later than the end of that reporting month. We do have operators that will send that in and they send payment late for multiple reasons, so we do receive the report. Those figures are there. That wouldn't be obviously in the collection figures the CEO reports back but we do know that and then that's outstanding and we follow our collection methods at that point in time.
So Rebecca, how do they evaluate? Okay so let's say just in practical terms. So outdoor right now for October that's right at the end of a harvest. So they're ending a harvest. How do they evaluate that product at that point?
So it'll be different for different operators. There are operators that would sell that product at that point in time, just the way it is and then you have your other operators that are going to be sending it out for processing and then that's outside of our jurisdiction or the area. And so at that point in time they wouldn't have a receipt for it or essentially an invoice. So the way that we've instructed the operators is that they need to assign a value to that product and a reasonable value.
We've given a few examples. We have not come out administratively with this is the special formula however We are working on pricing. We're working on a contract with a third-party source to get pricing data, as well as collecting the pricing data from all operators. This would have been the first fiscal year that that was a requirement of the tax report—that transfer detail with pricing needs to be submitted to our office so we can do the data analytics on it. And so we are working on a pricing structure to where we can look at it and say, this was the value that you associated. However, this is our pricing index or our pricing table and then work on the tax compliance at that point in time.
Okay. And those can all be modified or nuanced? Correct. Okay. All right. I'm comfortable.
Roll-call vote Moved by Steve Lavagnino · Seconded by Bob Nelson
Show transcript
0:49 – 0:529 turns
No.
4-1 okay now let's go to A17 Ms. Capps
Chair Williams and members of the board, administrative item number 17 is from Information Technology Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding a second amendment to the agreement for professional services of independent contractor with Smartsheet Inc for software services.
Thank you, Chair Williams and to the clerk. I pulled this because this is the first session that we've had our new IT department there were several contracts and expenditures here and I just wanted to ask our new IT director a new department Mr. Chirwin to just speak to the process because as board members it we see a lot of software purchases IT developments in different departments. And I just want, I understand that there's a process to sort of streamline and make it easier for departments to make sure that the software and the IT support that they are bringing into their department speaks to the other departments and that desiloing effort that you're undertaking. And I just was hoping to have you explain it to just a bit to give some context all of these measures.
Thank you.
I'm going to ask you to briefly do it because we have taken an hour to do the first item and have 32 speakers on D1 already. So,
yes? Well, good morning Supervisor Caps through the chair. So to answer your question as briefly as I can there is a governance committee here at the county called the Executive Information Technology Council and it is made up of 13 different department heads or assistant department heads that meet on a monthly basis when new IT initiatives come to the county from the departments it goes through a process and part of that process is to get vetted and approved by this Governance Committee And so this specific one, Smart Sheets was originally approved two years ago. This is an annual renewal and so this is a perfect example of what we're trying to do. So two years ago multiple departments had their own individual agreements with Smart Sheets and were paying X amount per license.
So we came together and said let's have one agreement countywide agreement because we get better pricing if we buy in volume and it have one agreement rather than multiple agreements And so that in this specific case, we were able to save the county money by having that one license. And so in front of you here on A-17 is just the annual renewal for smart sheets.
Many thanks.
You're welcome.
Any other questions? Any question from members of the board? Okay let's move onto A-18. We'll vote on these as a bundle.
0:52 – 0:5410 turns
Can we get a motion? No, we'll
vote on them as a bundle.
Great. Chair Williams and members of the board, Administrative Item Number 18 is from Planning and Development Department. It is to consider recommendations regarding the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments SB CAG Airport Land Use Commission Agreement for Services.
Mr. Nelson had a
question. Yes, thank you, Chair Williams. This one caught my eye. I was curious if any of the other jurisdictions are funding this portion of SPCAG's work, or is that solely relying on the county to fund SPCAG's work on the airport land use compatibility work?
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Nelson, it's my understanding the item today is the county's contribution or support to SB CAG. My understanding is the other jurisdictions provide staff in-house to support the Airport Land Use Commission so this is the county's contribution. It's a pass through amount that comes through our department to pay for services.
Is that I guess next question what is that general fund or is that revenue that's generated by fees?
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Nielsen, my understanding is that it's a general fund pass-through.
OK. All right. I think we should take a look at this over the next year. We've just approved the Airport Compatibility Land Use Agreement at SPCAG. I don't know if there's going to be additional work ongoing. And it sounds like this could be a $50,000 annual amount to SPCAG. So as we move forward with this in future years, I would want to make sure that we're actually The work is being generated if we're going to pay the actual $50,000 for this use. So I think it's something we should monitor moving forward. I'm okay with it at this point.
I understand this last year was about 60-some thousand dollars that they spent on it which again, I'm a little confused by where we're paying up a majority of that. Most airports are actually in cities and have land use compatibilities with cities more than the undercorporated areas. I'm fine with moving forward this year on it, but I think in future years. I think we're gonna see that amount and costs go down for SPCAG and I want to make sure that we're not paying more than our fair share
Okay then let's go to a 23
0:55 – 0:5917 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board, administrative item number 23 is from the Public Works Department Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It is to consider recommendations regarding miscellaneous flood control projects in the third fourth and fifth districts.
Mr. Nelson you wanted to highlight
this? Yeah, there's an item I just wanted to highlight here And I just want to thank flood control and Public Works One of the projects that they're gonna be working on here is a Santa Maria River pilot channel and for anybody in the Guadalupe or Santa Maria Valley that know That the damage that occurred during these last storms that this is a significant project It's of huge importance to the North County. I just want to thank Mr. Rubicaldo and his staff for furthering this and it can be an uphill challenge to get it accomplished I do think we have a great team. Kelly Hubbard over at OEM is doing a great job working with them as well to work through some of the regulatory hurdles and with the state and federal government to make sure we have the funds to do this, but I'm really thankful for this moving forward.
I think it's something that...I pulled it because I want to make sure that maybe the media picks up on this because this is pretty important to Santa Maria and to Guadalupe and I'm really excited to see some movement here. Thank you. Supervisor Caps?
Thank you, thank you Supervisor Nelson for pulling it. I echo the gratitude and just the awareness that here we are in July and we're doing these preventive measures is really important for people to understand and for the staff that work so hard. Thank you.
Now I want to add my voice just flood control and OEM and their responsiveness once again impresses me and impressed that Obviously when a lot happened in my district, I was impressed with how much and how quickly they acted. But I'm equally impressed that that is uniform throughout the county. And then we'll take the last one for questions. Don't worry, I'm going to go back to A29. Chair
Williams and members of the board, administrative item number 29 is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman. It is to consider recommendations regarding a rooster ordinance.
Mr. Nelson had a question?
Yes, I had a question. I wanted to give the opportunity for Supervisor Hartman to When we have ordinances come before the board, we don't get a chance to talk about it behind the scenes because we have to talk about it in public. So I wanted to hear from Supervisor Hartman about some of the challenges that she's seen out there and so this is something that impacts a lot of my residents too. I represent a lot of the unincorporated North County and wanna hear where Supervisor Hartman's coming from so that I can add some value to the conversation as well as we go towards moving forward with an ordinance which I absolutely support.
Just wanna understand
it.
And this comes because we need County Council and Animal Services and the Ag Commissioner to work together. It's probably more than an eight-hour requirement, so when we have something more than eight hours it requires the entire board to sign off on that. I have an area that I used to represent, that I gather you represent now as well as an area that you used to represent that I represent now where roosters are being kept and it's not a preserve or rescue operation. It's a nuisance to the neighbors and we really don't have very good tools to deal with this So we have a model ordinance from Los Angeles that Animal Services identified that is one option to look at.
So, we're not bound to that but that's what we're thinking about that would give us an opportunity to the number of roosters by parcel size over in an absolute number and if you need more than that for rooster preserve then you would need a permit and be open to inspections. I should clarify that cockfighting is not legal in our county, but it does occur surreptitiously and we suspect that may be underlying some of these rooster operations.
That's very helpful background for me as well because we definitely have that problem within the district that in the areas that you're Referencing and something that our office is currently working on so it's good to hear You guys are working on it from a different direction So hopefully we can bring those things together To make sure that we're preventing that level of animal cruelty and impact and nuisance on us on the neighbors. So thank you for doing this
Okay, can I get a motion on a 17 a 18 a 23 and a 29
Move approval, staff recommendations.
Is there a second?
Second.
All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? A pass 5-0. A 28.
0:59 – 1:0412 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board administrative item number 28 is sponsored by Supervisor Williams and Supervisor Kaps. It is to consider recommendations regarding an ordinance to amend County Code Chapter 44 To revise Article 4 just cause for residential evictions and add Article 5 mandatory right of first refusal a mandatory offer of residential lease.
And we currently have nine requests to speak from the public.
Then let's go to the public first.
We will begin on Zoom with Andy Caldwell, to be followed by Nadia Abushanab.
Please put it to two minutes.
Mister Caldwell.
We can hear you Andy, please proceed. I
can't hear him.
Andy, you are actually just really far away. You might be far away from your microphone.
Is this better? There we go. Yes. I'm sorry about that. Chair Williams, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. We did believe that the board needed to do something about the rent evictions and the mass evictions from the Isla Vista property. And so we did not criticize your effort to curtail that and obfuscate that process. However, we believe in your zeal to fix a compelling government interest. You went too far with this ordinance by bringing in single family dwellings and even people renting rooms in their own home.
And at least that's our understanding of it. And what we would ask you to do is to exempt single family dwelling rentals from this ordinance, because it is technically impossible for there to be mass evictions or mass rental evictions from single-family dwellings since There's very few people that own very many of those. You've heard from people like Lanny Evenstein in the south who has been a landlord, and you heard from the largest property owner group in the North County And what I would remind you is years ago, I heard Michael Tobes give a presentation to this board for predecessors as to why he would never build apartments anymore. Apartments in the unincorporated area that fell on deaf ears and I can also tell you from my radio show that we learned more than once that in San Francisco things became so onerous for land lords That they left 30%, 30% of the residences in San Francisco were left vacant because people didn't wanna negotiate the hassles of renting and needing to evict or what have you, for just cause or whatever other purposes.
So I'd ask you to curtail this back because you have no compelling government interest to regulate single family dwellings. Thank you.
And I'm gonna close public comment on A-28.
We will now go to Nadia Abushanab, to be followed by Linda Honigman. Nadia?
Hi good morning my name is Nadia Abushanab. I am here on behalf of SBCAN, Santa Barbara County Action Network and myself as a tenant in the First District. I just want to echo what I and other tenants have been saying throughout the last few months Thank you so much for considering this ordinance and passing it a couple weeks ago, and we urge you to please pass this ordinance today.
It makes sense to have a one-year lease policy. There's many other jurisdictions including the City of Santa Barbara that have pretty much identical policy, and I do believe that people living in single family homes should continue to be protected. I live in a single family home, pretty much everyone I know there's there's a lack of like big apartment complexes in the city especially in the unincorporated part of the county so actually if you were to not have it apply to single family homes that would drastically reduce the reach and effectiveness of this kind of ordinance change So yeah, I just urge you to keep it as broad and applicable as possible.
And thank you for considering this and thank you for your time.
1:04 – 1:1215 turns
We will now go to Linda Honigman to be followed by Richard Applebaum. Linda?
Good morning Chair Williams and supervisors. I'm Linda Honickman and we'll be sharing comments from the League of Women Voters of Santa Barbara. Time is of the essence, please approve item 828 as drafted. We support the staff's recommendations to add language to the existing ordinance that requires landlords to offer tenants a one-year lease allows tenants the right of first refusal to return to their apartments And clarifies what constitutes a substantial remodel, namely one that is meant to improve compliance with health and safety laws.
Our reasons for this position are as follows. Not passing this ordinance increases the risk of losing more low income units to outside corporations. The county is losing ground in maintaining its naturally occurring affordable housing stock which is being converted into expensive market rate units. The situation in IV is not unique. According to a March 2023 report by the nonpartisan California Housing Partnership, the state's unregulated low-income housing has increasingly been the target for acquisition and conversion by for profit entities seeking to maximize rent.
Replacing lost low income units is slow going given the lack of affordable housing funding and the rate of new construction. To put this situation in perspective, only 48 units of low-income housing were built in the county's unincorporated areas between 2018 and 22. The majority of housing being built is market rate and unaffordable to most of our workforce Given inadequate public funding and how long it takes to build, the county should employ every strategy available to prohibit corporate conversions and protect the rights of our low-income workforce, elderly, and residents who are at most risk of becoming homeless.
We also encourage the county to continue to investigate ways to strengthen tenant protection laws such as an amendment that limits how much a landlord can increase the number when a tenant wants to
return.
Thank you.
We will now go to Richard Appelbaum, to be followed by Max Golding. Richard?
I'm Richard Appelbaum and I thank the board for the stand that they've taken so far on
this. Sorry, I'm going to stop you. You're very faint. Is it at all possible for you to get closer to your microphone?
I'll do my best. Can you hear me now? Is that better?
A little bit.
Not much, I'll try to speak loud. So I'm speaking on behalf of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, CLU. And I'll skip part of my letter because it says that we support the position of the League of Women Voters which you've just heard. CLU also supports one additional recommendation to the board. That it add language to the existing ordinance to the effect that under the above proposed revisions Apartments temporarily vacated for the purpose of substantial remodeling, which defined as meant to improve compliance with health and safety laws are not subject to Costa-Hawkins vacancy decontrol provision.
Since the tenant has a right to return we believe that the ordinance would now fall under sections 1954.5253 of Costa Hawkins, which makes it clear I won't read the measure completely it's in the letter that I submitted that if the tenant has a right to return I think it can be interpreted um that the unit is not vacated and therefore is not subject to vacancy decontrol I'll just conclude by saying, I know this is a bold step. I know it is controversial. I imagine that legal advisors would question it.
We have a major housing crisis and I would really urge the board to be bold at this point and to take whatever steps might possibly work. They can always be re-evaluated. They can always be challenged but we really need heroic actions at this time. Many many thanks.
We will now go to our final speaker on this item, Max Golding. Max?
Oh hi can you hear me?
Yes we can please proceed.
Hi, I'm a tenant in South County. I'm the co-founder of Santa Barbara Tenants Union and we get a ton of emails almost one a day at this point. Voicemails people coming to our weekly tenant help desk where volunteer peer tenant peers that are just tenants not lawyers. We just talk through issues with people and it is for sure it's at least a weekly basis. I don't want to say it's a daily basis but on a weekly basis there's rent evictions happening.
South County North County So I actually really applaud you guys for taking this bold action. I really hope you don't listen to people like Andy Caldwell and Lanny Ebenstein who have pretty incoherent points about this. Tenants in single-family homes don't deserve less protections just because they're in a single family home. Offering a one year lease Which the tenant can reject doesn't jeopardize any kind of like profit making capacity for the landlord. Unless they say three months, six months, eight months into the tenant-landlord relationship you know what I want to kick you out just because I feel like making more money. I want to trigger vacancy decontrol.
and get you out that way. What you've done is you've created a really great first step in saying that if a landlord wants to do that, you're actually eliminating the greed factor by saying it can't be for cosmetic reasons, you have to get permits and it has to be for safety and habitability reasons. That's just really great although I would say that having the right of return without a rent cap is actually kind of a smack in the face to tenants And you should consider amending this, maybe in the future if you can't do it today because he should just go with a second reading and say yes to it. But tenants should get a right of return at not that there's the landlord shouldn't be able to raise the rent by like 1000 bucks 2000 bucks double or triple the rent.
Because then it actually kind of like nullifies that, like the right of return is almost useless, right? Because most tenants are not going to be able Then you then you did. So thanks that's it.
And Chair Williams, members of the board my apologies we do have two additional speakers in person in Santa Barbara and that is we are going to Philip Tabianin to be followed by Stanley Zankoff.
1:12 – 1:175 turns
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. You probably remember me from the last meeting where I was the only one in the room at the end of the day, so good to see you again. It's important To talk to you about some of the things I talked to you about last time, and I put a letter on the record so it's in the agenda. I'm not going to hit all those same bullet points because I think they're just talking points from everyone in the room at this point. There are two points that I'd really like to talk to you Since we talked last time, I've heard a few things from the community. Both tenants and landlords alike, property management companies the same.
And a lot of folks have said that well, City of Santa Barbara's already doing this and I'm not speaking to the rent eviction. I understand where you're going with that. I'm speaking specifically to the mandatory lease component of the ordinance. And again, hey, City of Santa Barbara's already done it. Who cares? And that's not quite right because it's not a one size fits all for North County. It's not a one size fits all for San Ynez Valley, for Lompoc Valley, for Santa Maria, Guadalupe.
It just doesn't, we're not talking apples to apples. And so the reason I say that is because we need to take a more thoughtful approach and I would urge you to do that. The next point on the mandatory lease is I've spoken with many owners, property owners I work in property management. I work in real estate, so I have access to property owners and they've said that these types of measures uncalculated by the board are really just going to force them to reevaluate their business models and maybe just sell.
And what that does is that gets rid of inventory. That depletes the inventory. So you know there's tenants here in the room. There's owners here in the room. It doesn't work, this one size fits all approach. And I think it's impacted these types of measures the entire community, not just the city of Santa Barbara. So I would urge you to take a step back and reconsider. Reconsider the single family component of it and reconsider also just taking a more thoughtful approach. And I would ask you for that. I'd ask that you hold this item in abeyance.
Thank you Philip, that is your time. We will now go to Stanley Zankoff who is our final speaker on this item.
Hello everyone, thank you so much for the time. I'm here as a renter and as a core member of the Santa Barbara Tenants Union where on a daily basis we hear from tenants who are navigating their housing issues. And first I just want to clarify some misleading remarks by Mr. Caldwell and others by just saying that this ordinance only applies to single family homes if you're renting out three or more rooms and is literally identical to existing state law.
And more broadly, this issue is about setting more fair rules of the road that protect our community. Respectfully to the last speaker, it is actually apples-to-apples when it comes to our sense of home, right? I don't think it's very much different for a renter in Lompoc or, excuse me, in unincorporated areas of the county outside of the city. I know staff is probably really busy. Actually, contrary to the last speaker, I've seen how much work staff has been putting in and I really want to commend county staff and especially Chair Williams' staff and Supervisor Kapsa's staff. You all have been putting in so many hours on this.
And to echo a previous speaker, we are also waiting with enormous anticipation on not only passage of this which we've been talking about for I think four months or something. But also the consideration of including a cap on rent increases when someone is back in their home after renovation. In short, this ordinance says first if you need to renovate your rental unit while someone's living there and that unit isn't hospitable for more than 30 days then make sure it's primarily for reasons of safety and habitability not just an elective cosmetic whim. And it says if you need to do this while someone calls that unit their home that you offer the unit back to them. And finally it says you need offer somebody a year-long lease if they've been living there for a year.
This to me It seems like it's a bare floor in terms of housing predictability for the tenant. And if anything, you could argue that it gives a property manager predictability in their business and actually protects local smaller landlord businesses from these out-of-area multi-billion dollar flipper companies who bought up single family homes during the pandemic, I think 60% of them. So I think this is right by the community and by tenants as well as local companies. Thank you so much for your time.
And that concludes public comment on A-28.
Before we move on to any comments or debate, I just want to make sure that since a lot of the comments have centered on applicability, ask County Council to review for us who this applies to. My understanding is it exempts buildings that are longer that are of a certain age, and it exempts units that are owner-occupied under a certain amount. Or if you were not owner-occupied but renting out one unit, it would not apply to you, but if you rented out multiple single family homes, it would. Can you clarify that for us?
1:18 – 1:2414 turns
Mr. Chair, members of the board under section 44-22 it states that chapter 44 articles 4 and 5 shall apply to all rental units but then there is a list of exceptions among those exceptions does include housing that's been issued the certificate of occupancy within the previous 15 years unless the housing is a mobile home and then there's two sections that address single family residences So it's a single family, owner-occupied residence is exempt from this ordinance as long as the owner occupant rents or leases no more than two units or bedrooms.
So they need to be occupying it and they can rent one or two bedrooms but if they rent more than that then this is going to apply to them. And then also residential real property, including a mobile home that is alienable separate from the title of any other dwelling unit. So single family homes, condos, mobile homes, those are exempt as long as the owner is not a Real Estate Investment Trust, a corporation, a limited liability company or management in a mobile home park. And there's a noticing requirement. So it's, I would say generally with single family dwellings they would be exempt but there's exceptions.
Mr. Nelson?
That's helpful. You said a certificate of occupancy within the last 15 years so that is if it's older than 15 years old they would be exempt
And the reason for that is to not disincentivize new construction of apartment buildings. And because someone, a building within 15 years probably shouldn't need to do a remodel and attempt to do a renovation.
It was exempted in the other direction. So under 15 years it's exempt. Over 15 years this applies too? All right, well my question was I was gonna ask if the board would support if I came back or to be clear on the exemption for single-family homes and whether that could get support from at least three votes. I think I'm now satisfied by the answer on this question from County Council as long as it's not an LLC or some type of corporation or investment a typical single family home would be exempt Because there was some conflicting conversation last time about that.
But you feel clear there? Okay.
Well, I want further clarification on that. So it's a single family home. It's personally owned. It's not in an LLC. Is there a requirement on how many rooms then that would be let
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Lavagnino, I believe it depends on if it's owner-occupied or not so if its owner occupied Then there's a limit on how many other rooms could be rented
out that seems counterintuitive Okay So if the owners not there he can lease he can rent out more rooms and not have it applicable
for holding
Supervisor Lavagnino, I believe the distinction is that if you're not living there and you're renting out the whole thing. I suppose it could be by the room but I don't think that's the intention.
Yeah, that's where it's going to get real sticky. Honestly whoever said that it is apples-to-apples, there is a definite difference in the way people rent in North County and South County. And I think this is a great ordinance for South County. I just don't think it really fits into the way people rent In North County. North County are single family homes, multiple rooms being rented to different people and this gets back to that it's the same old thing for me about enforcement going in and trying to figure out who's in how many rooms is the owner there? Is the owner not there like I said I think I understand why we brought this And it probably answers the questions and fixes the problems of giant corporations pushing people out of their homes, and that's what we're trying to solve.
I do think that it's going to, you know, the unintended consequences there's going to be some problems in Santa Maria but the reality is my guess is it will never be enforced so it won't matter. But I won't be able to support it for that reason. Supervisor Nielsen?
Well, I'm glad we have this discussion because I do feel better because I was looking to maybe try to get some support to bring back a more clear exemption on the single-family residences. But I think that it's there and I appreciate the clarification. Philosophically, I still struggle with this ordinance because I think it limits some people from wanting to get involved in Having more rental stock, and I think it will lead to eventually some sales there where people will get out of this business.
I also share Supervisor Lavender's concerns about the impacts in North County. You know, our rents are high as well but it's usually in comparison to the wages. But we do have what we would technically consider market rate up in the North County and that's one of the reasons why we have a lot of people fleeing the South Coast to come home at night in Santa Maria.
That job housing imbalance issue that we have. So I at this point won't be able to support this but thank you for the ongoing clarification discussion.
Supervisor Hartman?
Well I don't think there's that big a difference between South and North. When I represented Guadalupe, I had several constituents who were thrown out overnight of rooms that they rented and this ordinance would protect them so I'm very much supportive and think those renters need protection as much as they do here in the south.
1:24 – 1:285 turns
Supervisor Caps?
Thank you to our speakers. Thanks to Supervisor Lavagnino for identifying that the target of this really is these corporations that are looking and targeting our most low-income housing stock, that's the issue here at The League of Women Voters wrote a very compelling letter and had comments to that effect today so hopefully this prevents big corporations coming into North County as well as what's already happening in South County we've already experienced it we don't need It's not theoretical.
These are people's lives, so I appreciate the board's discussion and understanding even from those who might not be able to support this ordinance the true intent of what we're trying to do here is really go after a new trend in corporate America which is to take low income housing stock away from the people that need it most and impacts every single one of us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the public. You've got to kind of make a call at some point. And it was definitely our intention to not disincentivize new construction, and not disincentivize renting out units, and to make a call based on the balance between providing protections while still incentivizing people to rent. I want to reiterate that this is Not a place that I want to have to keep on pushing.
I think if we continue to see abuses by some of the entities that are attempting to essentially gentrify their units, push out people that are working class and middle class then I think it will be called for Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the Board of Supervisors. Santa Barbara County, where all the middle classes fled to the north and all the working class is squeezed out entirely.
And comes in on weekends when they can afford it. And that's where we're heading to without dramatic action on rental housing. So can I get a motion on A-28?
I move to support. Second.
All those in favor please say aye. Opposed? 3-2. We will need to return to the CEO's report before general public comments because we have a special guest.
1:28 – 1:333 turns
Thank you, Supervisors. We're returning to the CAO's report and every year our state association, the California Association of Counties or CSAC awards and recognizes outstanding programs and services. The County of Santa Barbara received recognition from CSAC for two programs in 2022. And I'm pleased to introduce Chastity Benson, CSAC's chief operating officer who will make the formal award presentation. Chastity?
So great to have you.
Thanks for having me. My name is Chastity Benson and I am the Chief Operating Officer for the California State Association of Counties. Thank you, Chair Williams for having me here today to present not one but two challenge awards to Santa Barbara County. Santa Barbara County has always played a key role within our state association and I want to thank you Supervisor Williams Serving on the Board of Directors and also your previous service as Chair of our Health and Human Services Policy Committee, the HHS team says hey to you today.
I'd also like to take a moment to mention our number one priority this year which is homelessness. Of course, California's counties have a multitude of priorities and the CSAC team is hard at work on water, housing, transportation and behavioral health issues. But our At Home initiative is a major team-wide effort this year. I want to thank this board for passing a resolution in support of At Home.
You have joined more than 35 counties and county in calling for ongoing funding and true progress on homelessness. I also wish to convey our gratitude to Supervisor Hartman for her work to bring cities and other organizations on board too. Addressing the humanitarian crisis of this time is going to take more work and more effort, and your county is a great example of that especially with your experience on the Challenge Award winning post-COVID recovery strategy.
We're doing this hard work together and I'm glad Santa Barbara County is playing a key role. As for CSAC, I'd like to take a moment to highlight a few other services we offer the counties. The association has been around since 1895 and our mission is to serve counties and advocate at the state and federal levels on their behalf never waivers. Besides advocating, CSAC also offers programs and services like our Finance Corporation's Easy Smart Pay program which allows your residents to pay property taxes electronically.
We also offer cutting-edge professional development opportunities through the California Counties Foundation and the CSAC Institute for Excellence in Government. I'll quickly mention our newest program, the CSAC Grants Initiative which provides all counties with no-cost assistance in identifying and pulling down federal and state grant funding. We are proud of the innovative CGI project, and innovation is also what brings me here today to recognize the Santa Barbara County's hard work and spirit of innovation with two CSAC Challenge Awards.
Our annual Challenge Award program was developed more than 20 years ago to spotlight the most innovative and effective county programs in California. In 2022, SESOC received more than 300 Challenge Award entries and only awarded 18. And Santa Barbara received two of those. The bar was high but our judging panel quickly identified two Santa Barbara County programs that rose above the rest.
I'd first like to present the Challenge Award for the Montecito County Trails Partnership First. Santa Barbara County has seen its fair share of emergencies, and yet instead of freeing the county's social fabric and infrastructure you buckle up and you demonstrate resiliency and innovation in the face of these challenges. Our Challenge Award judges were impressed with the partnership between the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department and the community-based Bucket Brigade to build a network of pedestrian trails to Montecito in the wake of the 2018 debris flow disaster.
Called the Mendocino Neighborhood Trails Partnership, the collaboration successfully built more than 2.2 miles of safe ADA compliant pedestrian paths along busy routes throughout the community. This work was completed in less than two years and cost approximately one-fifth the cost of other similar projects You know, I was here last night having dinner and when I was talking about this project someone mentioned that this project also saved the county from the most recent floods that you had. It would have been a lot worse if this work wasn't done several years ago so bravo to you.
The magic of this project was the community and volunteer involvement. The Bucket Brigade volunteers do community outreach and build support, raise funds to support it, and even help construct the paths. The county provided the technical expertise and funded the hard infrastructure. Now, the Bucket Brigade is well on its way to complete fundraising for an 8.5-mile trail network costing $2.5 million.
The county and the Bucket Brigade continue to collaborate leveraging each other's strengths to improve public safety in Montecito. That is why it is my honor to present a 2022 Challenge Award to Santa Barbara County for the Montecito Neighborhood Trails Partnership.
1:34 – 1:398 turns
And just to highlight, board members as you know Mr. Snedden is coming here to accept the award but we want to really thank Public Works. They continue to work with the community they continue to do excellent work so thank you again to our Public Works Department
Good morning and I also just really wanted to thank Abe Powell so he couldn't be here, but the Bucket Brigade and your board's commitment to active transportation and all the benefits that it provides to communities is really kind of the glue that brought all this together. So thank you.
And Mr. Stin, we provide the curbs and some resources and materials to the Bucket Brigade. This is also done through private donations so if folks want out in the watching on TV wanna help make trails like this happen not just in Montecito but in the San Ynez Valley and in unincorporated areas of the Goleta foothills that they can help with themselves.
And Chair Williams, I just have to say it takes a public works department that's flexible to be able to accommodate this community support and Chris Snidden has been a leader in that.
Next I will focus on the Santa Barbara County COVID-19 Health and Human Services Recovery and Resiliency Strategies Program. Santa Barbara County, like all counties was hit hard by COVID- 19 pandemic but the county again turned a crisis into an opportunity by creating an innovative three year recovery and resiliency plan. The plan was developed by the County Health and Human Services Department after convening three times in 2021 to assess the impacts of COVID- The impacts on clients were examined as well as their direct and emerging needs in the wake of the pandemic. Data was gathered by each department, and five focus areas were developed. The focus areas included behavioral health, economic revitalization and employment, community health and wellbeing, organization and technology, housing and homelessness, and disaster resiliency.
The overall goal is to help the county recover in a resilient state with improved equity, inclusion, livability, wellness and economic vitality all with measurable outcomes. Full implementation requires strategic use of funding sources and the estimated costs over three years and $46 million dollars. The county has already invested ARPA funding, SAIT programs and HomeKey funding. And as of June 30th 2022 more than 25 projects have been initiated. Also the county has developed more than 76 shelter beds, resolved 59 encampment sites and housed more than half of the individuals in those encampments.
It took a lot of cross-departmental collaboration to make this happen. Santa Barbara County's collaborative approach to creating strategies and then aligning them with various county departments and community partners is not only innovative, it is also replicable. With our current focus on the homelessness crisis other counties can now look to Santa Barbara County for successful strategies like these.
I am pleased to award the Santa Barbara County COVID-19 Health and Human Services Recovery and Resilience Strategies Project a 2022 Challenge Award.
And Supervisors, this was a multi-department effort. Most of our departments were involved in the Health and Human Strategies and the report but the person who really was the driving force behind it is no longer here and that's Terry Mosnisch. So thank you to Terry as well as the whole team.
Thank you so much for your time and have a great rest of your meeting.
Thank you. Now is the time, and thank you for making the long trip. We appreciate it. Now's the time that we take for public comment for items that are not on the agenda. I believe we have three folks to speak.
1:39 – 1:5111 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board, yes, we have three requests to speak on general public comment today. We're going to remain in Santa Barbara and begin with Brian Rosen To be followed by CJ Jackson. Brian?
Thank you.
Hi, I wanted to tell you all about my situation. I think a lot of people are having a really hard time with trustees and all that stuff and the courts and the lawyers. You know we sold our house in Montecito Basically, I'm added to the roles of the homeless right now because our trustee after two years since my mom passed away won't release the money. But I think he's a coward. I think if one of you were to ask him to release some money and I have an attorney who I owe a lot of money too by the way.
And I shouldn't have to hire an attorney but I have one. If one of you were to ask the trustee to pay us some of our money He would probably do it right away, because there's plenty of money to pay all the obligations and he just keeps delaying and delaying. And I've had a real hard time with this trustee. They wanted to sell the house for $2.5 million while all the real estate agents valued at around $4 million.
They claimed it was a teardown over and over again, including to Colleen Stern in court. But we brought in the documents from their own property inspector and their own property appraiser that it was by no means a teardown. I had been struggling with this trustee for longest over years trying to get him to repair the leaky roof. Guess what? His attorney in court said he'd never heard of a problem before. The trustees stood right next to him smiling.
Guess what? My attorney said, hey it's in the court record. Brian Rosen has contacted you numerous times. Plus I got a report from the roofing company that four years ago five years ago they had been out there and it needed replacing badly so I've been under I need some relief And they've taken a lot of money out of this estate. I need some justice and I'm going to be because my family's really being messed up when they were trying to sell the house for nothing, wouldn't fix the roof and regard it as a teardown. We went to court and we creamed them and the judge said why are we in court even? This is a waste of the estate and they continued and continued and continued And got more money for themselves and finally they had to, we had all the goods on them.
All the evidence when we brought up the issue of the referral fee of the trustee who turned out to be a real estate agent. He dropped his real estate agent like a hot potato after one year of wasting the estate. And now he's getting all his fees and he's doing everything my attorney wanted and won't pay me back for any of my expenses. And I'm running out of money. I spent my own money taking care of my mom toward the end. I fixed up the yard and the property. I know I must be out of time by now, but if any one of you wants to make a call...I'm homeless now! I run into homeless people who are a lot worse off than I am.
And I feel really bad for the situation of homelessness. Mr. Rosen,
I think you're my constituent so if you could provide my staff right across the hall with your contact information and the trustees' contact information, I'd be happy to.
Doss, I used to be your constituent. Now I'm up on Lacumbra Peak but I'll go to your staff if they will be willing to help me and I appreciate it too. Thank you very much.
We will now go to CJ Jackson to be followed by E Planet Thunderstriker. CJ?
Commissioner and Supervisors, I'm on the clock. I know that. I like to watch the three minutes frankly because I've tried to gear this into three minutes going to be tight. I am here to speak to you about Romero Creek it's in the first district it is parallel to several creeks and drainages that have received significant investment and rehabilitation however Romero Creek has not. At the end of this meeting, I'm going to ask you to please request of your CEO that they agendize at the earliest possible date to assess the following issue.
Does Romero Creek in the face of an El Nino present a threat to life and limb if it is not addressed? Now, I am representing my father. This is the eastern front of the war I'm fighting these days and two other partners. And we have had every letter of the alphabet out to the site. We've invited and thankfully First District has attended and Representative Carbajal has extended. They extended a request to the Army Corps of Engineers who told us that the only way that the Army Corps of Engineers will be involved is if They are asked by the Water Resource Board of the State of California. Those folks won't listen to CJ, but they might listen to you. So if you'll put our pictures up, 1969, the Army Corps of Engineers engaged in a rehabilitation of the creek after a consequential failure of the West Bank which resulted in Montecito's first experience with a thing called the debris flow.
I was there, I was 11. That tells you how old I am. If you look here, that waterfall and the extension there. When the Army Corps came in they did a fairly dramatic use of concrete. They grouted rock revetments from the debris basin all the way down to Feather Hill. In addition they built a series of what they called elevation stabilizers. You might call them weirs or waterfalls today. That's the last one left. If you also look up, keep advancing the picture for me please. You see that revetment there?
You see that the stream goes beneath that revetment. That revetment used to be on the floor of the creek bed. It is now 10-15 feet above it and the water goes beneath that revetment. You know about scour because A19 talks about it. You just approved something with regard to it. What my question is, what will happen if that continues to go through there? Now we are not abandoning our responsibility here. We have a plan before your department. It only protects three property owners, myself and the two immediate neighbors or my father and two immediate neighbors. What our experts have told us, experts that you have recommended, experts you've used and contractors you've used is that a systemic response is necessary to forestall or address the potential for another experience like 1969.
I was also there in 2018. and in 1969, so what I am asking as you look at this is you need to come to an understanding. In effect, I'm putting you on notice. We have been told there is a threat to life and property. If you can conclude from the experts that you listen to that indeed there is then I'm likely to expect a call from you to the California Water Resources Board that says come and satisfy yourselves on that point Because then you can contact the Army Corps.
What our experts tell us is in 1969, the Army Corps got it right and for 50 years their solution which came all the way down to the bottom was a sufficient bulwark to not replicate the experience of 1969. We have been told that's the way to go. As I've said, we are frustrated. It feels like a great big game of whack-a-mole but we're willing to put our funds which total for just protecting three over 1.5 million in order to address all of the other property owners who all sustained damage in 2018 The number is staggering. So I am asking you to please step in, do your part and assess what's going on here because we have a threat of an El Nino and I've been through it.
Thank you Mr. Jackson. That's
it! We will now go to E Planet Thunderstriker who is our final speaker on general public comment.
I'm trying to determine how to deal with this and I hope these people are actually substantially paying attention. If these facts are true, we have a really major problem. First of all everybody I've asked nobody knows that they need three children to maintain our population rate. If you don't have at least three kids your population declines. Four to increase, three to maintain. Well America is already doing less than three and the white people, the people who founded this country, who fought Mexico, they're only having one and Hispanics are having two.
Now some of these facts I'm not sure I just found out about so I'm asking for clarification. Mexico population in 1950 was 30 million. In 2020 it's about 175 So they're very good at making babies, something that we're failing at. Now 200 countries all the other countries in the world know that you need three kids so what's going on here? Well it's related to what happened in the 60s I need to go on American overall, are we at somewhere close to 2.5 with Hispanics at two and white people at one?
And have we already had one population decrease because my song is supposed to have three la-la-las it only has two. My song is hacked online and so I don't know if these facts are true or not. If people are trying to make a global holiday world music producer look like a paranoid racist, I'm not sure what's going on. Australian Aborigines. In 1950, there was an Aborigines and Homo Sapien only that died so he was maybe like 14% Aborigines and black.
So are white people part Neanderthal and part black? Like am I 5% Neanderthal and difference is a black person? I don't know this is something I've heard the last few years and I don't know if maybe I'm looking at internet and I know people are spoofing me if they're trying to affect me Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Who knows what, you know the problem clearly is they don't know that there's a need to have three and if you need money to have more than three kids well we have a really confused government.
And so because you don't know about me, Katie Perry and her feud was fake and I don't how much these people care about it but right now our whole society seems to be, if these facts are true Our media is corrupt. Clearly our president, a baby boomer commie probably, I mean his wife and kids didn't extradite that many people and somebody here knows these facts but why aren't they not talked about? If they're true that's why it would make complete sense if they're not true because it's like how is it that we don't know that we're supposed to have three kids and then in about 10 or 20 years will probably be taken over and that's not even maybe more which I'm gonna go into that And since I don't know if I am or am not banned because I get two different versions, I'm going to be here the rest of the day to find that out and hopefully we can determine these.
Because I deal with more problems than you can believe. You know when I say that the subversive activity against me
Thank you, Mr. Thunderstriker and I just since you were asking some questions, I will try to clarify some things that white parents and Hispanic parents qualify for the same levels of aid regardless of race. In fact, Hispanic parents who are non-citizens qualify for fewer amounts of aid than white parents and the replacement The repellent population requires 2.1 children per family in the United States according to investors in the U.S. Census Bureau, not three children.
1:51 – 2:066 turns
And that concludes general public comment.
That concludes public comment. And we will take a tender. Chair Williams? Yes.
Yeah, I realize Romero Creek is in your district. Mr. Jackson is my constituent and I'm trying to figure out this isn't agendized today but this is part of the issue that we've talked about with our cutting green tape initiative and how we can help people I would like to be satisfied that there's some path forward for Mr. Jackson.
Yes, when we visited the Jackson property a couple months ago Mr. Griffin and the flood control staff were with us. We provided him with the advice that a great facilitator would be a design that flood control supports. We will look at their most recent Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I mean, our advice to him at first is to have a design that the Flood Control District doesn't think is going to be detrimental to any downstream neighbors and it's gonna be functional. So we're gonna look at it. We'll be out there within the week.
Okay, thank you.
We're gonna take a 10-minute break before D1 for the translator. Where are we convening the hearing? And please, we will bring up departmental item number one. Which I think most people are here for.
2:06 – 2:163 turns
And Chair Williams, members of the board, departmental item number one is from the Public Works Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an exclusive franchise agreement for solid waste collection in zone four and five, and this is in the third, fourth, and fifth districts.
Good morning Chair Williams, members of the Board. I'm Jeanette Gonzales-Knight, Interim Deputy Director with Public Works Department Resource Recovering Waste Management Division. I'd like to introduce Leslie Robinson our Collection and Materials Management Manager and Mark Hill our Senior Program Specialist to present staff's findings and recommendations.
Good morning Chair Williams, members of the board. Thank you Jeanette. As Jeanette said we're here today to share the results of our recent RFP and staff's recommendations moving forward. As you're aware, Waste Management currently provides franchise solid waste collection services in Zones 4 and 5. The purple area on that small map shows Zone 4 which includes the unincorporated Santines Valley and Lompoc Valley.
And the lighter pinkish color shows Zone 5 which includes the unincorporated Santa Maria Valley including Orchid. In May of last year, your board approved a two-year franchise agreement with Waste Management beginning July 1st, 2022 and ending June 30th, 2024. Prior to the approval, the county and waste management participated in contract negotiations for over a year.
Also in May of 2022, your board authorized staff to issue an RFP for franchise collection services in Zones 4 and 5 with a start date of July 1st 2024. The county contracted with HF&H consultants to assist with the RFP process. The RFP was released in November of 2022. In February of 2023, the county received four proposals. EJ Harrison and Sons bid on zones four and five together and would only accept the award of both zones.
Marburg Industries bid on both zones four and five together and would accept both or either zone independently Waste Management bid on zones four and five together, and would also accept both or each zone separately. Finally, Waste Connections bid on zone five only. In March, county staff conducted interviews with each of the haulers' teams, and then evaluated and scored the proposals.
In April, the top two proposers which were Marburg and E.J. Harrison were invited to finalize agreements which entailed incorporating each hauler's proposed enhancements into the agreements and finalizing the contract language. The county accepted each company's proposed rates as is and did not negotiate pricing. In May, the board approved an update to Chapter 17 of the County Code to allow a single franchised hauler in the unincorporated area.
Information about the proposed ordinance update was included in the RFP and reviewed at a pre-proposal meeting with interested haulers in November of 2022. With Marburg scoring the highest for the RFP's evaluation criteria, in June staff selected Marburg as the recommended hauler. As described in the RFP, the evaluation criteria were divided into four categories.
Cost competitiveness had the highest weighting at 40% and included the cost of service as measured by rate revenues, costs relative to other proposals and current customer rates, and reasonableness of costs in terms of the relationship between the cost and the hauler's operational assumptions. The second criteria category weighted at 35% was experience and qualifications. This category includes experience providing similar services to other jurisdictions, experience of key personnel, jurisdiction satisfaction, performance record, proposed implementation plan, financial stability, adequacy of insurance and safety record.
The third category, Contract Exceptions was weighted at 15% and took into account the number and the nature of exceptions that the haulers took to the draft franchise agreement which was included with the RFP. The final category weighted at 10% was Proposal Enhancements in Unique Services. These are the proposed additional services above and beyond the required services.
Using these criteria, a selection committee consisting of four Resource Recovery and Waste Management Division staff members scored the proposals independently. Scores were then aggregated and the applicable weighting was applied to each category. This chart summarizes the evaluation scores. Marburg scored the highest overall with a total score of 19.25 out of 20 and was highest in all categories except for enhancements and unique services, in which EJ Harrison had a slightly higher score at 1.7 compared to Marburg's 1.6.
EJ Harrison ranked second overall with a total score of 17.35, Waste Management ranked third with a total score of 15.45 and Waste Connections scored fourth with a total score of 10.2 To provide more detail on the cost, this table shows the total rate revenue that each hauler would annually receive from customers in zones four and five. The revenues were calculated using detailed cost proposal forms that incorporated each hauler's proposed customer rates and current service levels.
The lower the overall rate revenue, the lower the total costs to customers. You'll see that Marburg had the overall lowest rate revenue at approximately 13.9 million This figure is 5.3% lower than Waste Management's current rate revenue of 14.7 million. EJ Harrison had the second lowest rate revenue at 14.2 million, which is 3 1⁄2% lower than current rate revenues.
Waste Management submitted two cost proposals, a standard proposal using existing in-county landfills and an alternative proposal using their waste management owned Kettleman Hills landfill in Kern County. Under the alternative scenario in which an out-of-county landfill would be used, waste management's rate revenue would be 2.4% lower than current revenues.
Under the standard proposal in which only in county landfills are utilized, the annual rate revenue would increase by 0.9%. Please note that Waste Connections is not included in this chart as they only bid on Zone 5. For Zone 5 only, their standard proposal was an 18.7% increase in rate revenues. Their alternative proposal which included the use of their Waste Connections-owned Cold Canyon Landfill in San Luis Obispo County would result in a rate revenue increase of 9.8%.
There's a lot of information on this table. We wanted to provide a sense of how the proposed rates compare for a typical customer. You'll see that for all the residential and commercial service levels listed, Marburg's proposed monthly rates are lower than the current rates. Harrison's and Waste Management's residential rates are very similar, if not identical to current rates.
Some of Harrison's commercial rates are lower than existing rates while others are higher and Waste Management's commercial rates for these service levels are almost identical to current rates. Please note for this comparison the rates listed are for the standard scenario using in-county landfills only. For numerous reasons, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, maintaining current municipal partnerships and managing our waste as close to home as possible. Staff recommends that only in county landfills continue to be used.
To summarize the rate impacts, if Marburg's proposal is selected, residential rates will decrease between 4 and 13 percent depending on the zone and container size. Commercial trash and recycling bin rates will decrease between 2 and 6 percent depending on zone, container size, and frequency of pickup. It should be noted that prior to July 1st of next year, the listed rates will need to be adjusted to incorporate CPI changes as well as any changes to tipping fees. So the rates you saw in that previous slide are not final.
Staff will bring the adjusted rates back to your board next year for approval The reason for bringing the agreement before your board now is to allow sufficient time for Marburg to procure trucks and other equipment, establish their North County facilities and prepare for the transition of service. In terms of service impacts, the proposed agreement with Marburg will maintain current service offerings and be consistent with those on the South Coast.
An added benefit will be the consistency of reporting countywide. Additionally staff will work with Marburg to implement enhancements for increasing diversion at the County's solid waste facilities with the goal of diverting as much material from landfill disposal as possible. One of Marburg's proposed enhancements involves processing of additional construction-related material at Marburg's C&D facility in Santa Barbara. And another enhancement involves the processing of additional material from Zones 4 and 5 at the county's Resource Center.
In closing, staff recommends that the Board approve the proposed 10-year franchise agreement with Marburg for Zones 4 and 5 with a start date of July 1st, 2024. And that the Board determine that the approval of the agreement is exempt from CEQA and direct staff to file and post a notice of exemption. That concludes our presentation. Thank you very much for your time, and we want to publicly thank each of the proposers for the considerable amount of time and hard work that they put into their proposals. Thank you.
2:17 – 2:2525 turns
There are questions from the board? Mr. Lavigny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Excellent presentation. I'm sure you're glad that this is a 10-year contract and you only have to do it once every ten years, but my question is mostly about inside the proposals what's out there protecting the employees of waste management? And how did we factor that into the process?
Supervisor Lavagnino through the chair, excellent question. I should have addressed that in the presentation. In the proposed agreement with Marburg as well as per county labor code, Marburg will be offering positions to waste management employees first those who are qualified that was built into the agreement.
Okay so it's a pretty much they get first priority or are they required? How does that what's the actual language in there?
They get first offerings, they get invited. Of course those employees would need to be qualified but yeah they'd get the first dibs.
Okay and then did we detail out at all inside the bid where Marburg would, where their yard would be? Is it going to be in North County or how is refueling and all those Little details that add up into the cost. And I know they're tied into their bid, but how is that all factored in?
Sure, Supervisor Lavagnino through the board. We did not specify where the yards or the administrative offices would need to be. We did leave that up to the discretion and creativity of the proposers. We did specify that there needs to be at least one ABOP facility in each zone and that's a recycle only hazardous waste facility, antifreeze batteries oil and paint. So they are required to have those facilities, one each in each zone.
And that's where the public shows up, correct?
Correct.
And then here's an interesting one I hadn't thought of until my staff asked me and I was like okay so what happens to the old cans? You're sitting there and you're a customer and you have your waste management can. What happens to those? And I just want to make sure that they don't end up at Tahigas.
Right, another great question. Thank you Supervisor Lavagnino through the chair. There are a few options for the older cans. One option is that Marburg could essentially purchase those from Waste Management and rebrand them and use them if that option does not occur. Those carts are recyclable they're made from recycled plastic So they will either be reused or recycled.
Okay, so I guess that's my questions for staff. I do have questions from our board if that's acceptable at this point or maybe after public comment. I'm not sure but let's do
that. Supervisor Hartman?
I think it might clarify for public comment if we could hear from Barbara now rather than later, if you would consider that.
Okay let me ask, let's finish questions from staff first. Any other questions from staff? Mr. Nelson.
Yes, thank you Chair Williams. Again great presentation Leslie. Take me back to the negotiations because I believe that the board extended Marburg's contract from zones 1 through 3 and then moved forward with extending waste management for a couple years and then there was negotiations that were going on. With the potential to renew without going out to RFP. Can you kind of walk me through that, how we got to the place where we moved forward with RFP versus a contract extension like we had given to Marburg?
Absolutely, Supervisor Nielsen through the Chair. Prior to June 30th 2022 when the former contracts were expiring we did receive authorization from the Board to negotiate with both Waste Management and Marburg And so we entered into those negotiations, we were making good progress. A lot of the negotiations centered around incorporating the new SB 1383 provisions into the new agreements and we did acknowledge that there was going to be increased costs to the haulers as a result of those regulations So we had come to an agreement with Marburg fairly early on with those, the update agreement. And then with waste management it was back in December 2021 we had reached verbal agreement on The new rates and the contract itself, and then surprisingly to many of us in January, Waste Management said that they had not received approval to move forward from their corporate level.
So we were a bit stuck. The rates that they then asked of us were about 50% higher in terms of rate revenue So we did negotiate a bit further to reduce those rates down, but essentially Waste Management wanted the Marburg Zone 2 rates for their customers. Not differentiating that Zone 2 goes to different facilities than some of the North County. It put us in a tight spot honestly because we didn't have any time to go out to RFP at that point So we agreed to the two-year agreement, which began last July in 2022. And at that time asked for the board's authorization to go out to RFP if we could not negotiate lower rates and subsequent to that, we did approach waste management again and asked if they would be willing to consider reduced rates and they were not.
And so we then went out to RFP
So what I understand is if they would have provided lower rates, we would not have gone out to RFP?
Correct.
Okay. Getting back to the different proposals, EJ Harrison had scored the highest on the enhancements and unique opportunities. What did they offer that was a little bit different that achieved that score? Just kind of curious as a consumer, what are those unique offerings that might be offered to customers in the future?
Yeah, thank you Supervisor Nielsen. Through the chair happy to address that we were really impressed with EJ Harrison's enhancements one of which was support for edible food recovery programs and organizations up to $250,000 per year to assist with growing those programs as your board is aware edible food recovery is a component of SB 1383 I'd like to start by thanking the Board of Supervisors for allowing us to have this It's an unknown territory. Not many jurisdictions have gotten into that arena so far, but we thought that was an appealing extra option.
There would be an increase in the monthly rate, so it wasn't at no additional cost, but we did think that was something worth looking into. Am I covering the main enhancements? Can
you repeat the enhancement on organics diversion, what the difference is between the different proposals.
Supervisor Williams, just to clarify your question. In terms of enhancements what the proposers offer?
Meaning all three have to adhere to the state law on organics diversion and repeat what is that which set apart the Harrison bit?
Thank you for that clarification. Supervisor Williams, they as part of their extra enhancements offered to support the local edible food recovery network of nonprofits by contributing $250,000 per year over the 10 years. Thank you Mark. Thank you. $25,000 per year.
2:25 – 2:3313 turns
And were you done? But I just wanted to mention the issue of hazardous waste did come up a lot during the debris flow. You know, a lot of people had a lot of hazardous waste in their garage as their home burned or was demolished and so it's It is an issue of people storing hazardous waste in their sink or underneath their sink or in their garage for large periods of time.
My final question for staff was the issue about exclusivity, you know we have this item come before About a month or so ago, if we were gonna open up and change our ordinance to allow exclusivity. And really that's a topic about what do we do as a county if we get into some type of maybe contract negotiations or in conflict with our current provider and having that Another avenue to provide services, and that's what I understand. And what's the benefit of having multiple providers? Can you talk about just the tools we have as a county to negotiate with the provider? Obviously, if it's exclusive or out through county has some significant leverage over the county and the rate payers. Can you talk about what other things that we have as tools to be able to balance that out?
Thank you Supervisor Nielsen, through the Chair. As you said, the franchise agreements are exclusive so once a hauler gets that zone they're committed to that zone for the life of the franchise agreement. There are provisions of course for breaches of contract, liquidated damages to hold the haulers accountable. There are provisions for assignment should a hauler want to sell that remainder of the franchise to another company.
As you said, the competition really comes into place when contracts are reaching their expiration dates. That's when we have the options to negotiate, to go out to bid. And that's where the competition really lays in that Staff felt strongly that in order to not preclude any hauler just because they provide service in another area, that's why we brought the ordinance change update.
And had we not done that, we probably would have had three proposals compared to four. I'm not sure if that fully answers your question. That
was really helpful. A question about assignment. If a provider wanted to assign, would it have to be the whole zone if they were gonna sign to maybe like a subcontractor do some of the work or would there be able to have the option to you know assign a portion of his own to another provider or some third party?
Supervisor Nelson through the chair I do believe it is that the whole zone would need to be assigned.
Supervisor Hartman.
I just had a quick question about large items like refrigerators and sofas, and how many times that creates a big problem. Especially in North County there's more vacant space where people can dump things so could you elaborate on what the Marburg contract would
do vis-a-vis that? Certainly Supervisor Hartman through the Chair. The new agreement with Marburg for Zones 4 & 5 would include up to four free bulky item pickups per year
And then Mr. Chair, could we go to Margaret?
Absolutely. I see Derek Carlson here. I don't know if you have some questions and Mr. Brian Borgatello if you come up and think there's some questions for you. We've got a shy one back there. Well, I guess you're not the shy one there. You can
come and bail me out if need
be. So I think the entire board is really concerned about employees losing their job and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you would hire, what the compensation seniority benefits
Yes, I would be happy to. So Marboard has gone through this process several times locally in this community with BFI, Allied Waste and even a waste management contract and all of those cases we had offered first opportunity of employment to all the employees that were affected by the change in contract And basically that means, you know, we're offering them employment and most likely and in all cases so far they have met the DOT requirements as far as having their driver's license in order and passing the drug test that we necessarily have to do before we can sign on the dotted line. We are really excited about having these employees come and work for us and in order to show that we've always offered to bring over their seniority from their previous employer.
And that means that there's really not going to be a lag in any of their sick pay or vacation time, you know all of that will accrue at the levels including their, you know, their previous employment levels. And, you know, right now we have employees that have more tenure at Marburg Industries than they did at their previous employer. Just because they have found a warm and welcoming family. That is on us now. We understand that and we're going to work to prove that to all of the employees and really work collaboratively Thank you. Thank you very much.
So there's a couple of things we can do with the bins. So for example, when we took over the Buellton contract from Waste Management, there was still value in those bins for them and so what we did is we collected their bins the same day that we delivered the Marborg bins and we brought them back to their yard so they could be redeployed in other areas. You know obviously they're a big company and have operations all over the United States In that case, they redeployed those bins. We also have opportunity for collaborating as we go through this process in acquiring and utilizing some of the containers that are out in the field so they don't have to go anywhere. You know, we're willing to work with them on that and we'll just have to see where that goes.
And it's also required, as mentioned before, that all of these containers are recyclable and at the end of their useful life they do all get recycled.
2:33 – 2:4019 turns
Mr. Lavinia? Thank you, I appreciate those comments. I think they were important to hear for everybody. Go back to the yard and the refueling and just the logistics of how you guys plan on doing this. And I know it's not a requirement for you to tell us how the sauce is going to get made but How is the sauce going to get made?
I'm happy to share that with you. So we provided two options, two pathways in our proposal. So the first pathway in a pathway of collaborating with waste management was an offer to utilize some of the space that they may no longer be utilizing to enable them to continue with their current operations without for their current landlord. So the other option that we are pursuing is our own property. So we have engaged with Hayes Commercial Real Estate Group, they have identified several properties in Santa Maria. We are currently in discussions on a property on Blosser And so at the end of this meeting, should we get the contract, you know, we're ready to move forward on that agreement. And we have also contracted with Clean Energy who is our CNG, our compressed natural gas infrastructure provider in order to install the necessary fueling equipment on that site once we get everything signed and can move forward.
Those are our two proposed paths forward and we can move on either, and we're ready to execute on that.
Okay, and then just as part of that I know that we got a letter from the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. And I think some of the original concern was that they felt your...and some others maybe it felt that your bid was based on using existing facilities that might not be available and then that would cause you to come back to us I saw from the letter of the Taxpayers Association after meeting with staff that they are very comfortable with the process now. I know in the contract, I believe that there's a little wiggle room in an emergency situation and I'll ask Mr. McGulpin we have a long history with Marboard or any of staff. Have they reactivated that clause? Or have you guys?
Supervisor Lavagnino through the chair. Yes, there is an extraordinary circumstances provision in the agreements. Marburg has never exercised that clause I don't believe they've done so on any of their franchise
agreements. So maybe thought out there that you know You guys were planning on using waste management, that's not available and now it's gonna cost us more down the road because you guys are gonna come back after 40 years of doing business. That's never happened in the past so I don't expect that to happen in the future. Let me see if I have any other questions real quick.
Oh there was one, doggone it. Go to Bob for a second my old brain is,
sorry.
Mr.
Nelson? Yes, thank you Chair Williams. Compost. Which facility you guys planning on using if you move forward with this contract?
So as part of collaborating with existing facilities, we have reached out to Bob Engel and our plan is to use Engel & Gray. They have a very long history of creating excellent compost in North County and we want to do our small part in participating in that so we will continue to bring all of the green waste and the food waste that is currently being collected and delivered to their facility for During our Hauling term as well. Thank
you
Steve got it And I think this is for staff Guadalupe, so It am I correct doesn't waste management still have the contract inside the city
Correct
So if they if they don't service zone four and five anymore I Guadalupe is going to become a little island, and I'm not sure how that would factor into a business plan or model for waste management. Have we looked at that? Or is that something because of the fact that it's the city that we haven't taken that into consideration? Where are we on that?
Supervisor Lamiño through the Chair, you're correct in that the City of Guadalupe as well as the City of Solvang they both currently have contracts franchise agreements with Waste Management. Waste Management also does have service contracts in San Luis Obispo County I believe Tascadero and perhaps another city so there are some areas that Waste Management is still responsible contractually for servicing beyond that I don't know what the plans will be for Guadalupe. I believe they're discussing it tonight at their City Council
meeting. Okay, so okay. Well, I guess it would be improper to talk about the city's contract but all right that is on our minds and we hope that we can make that transition as smooth as possible. Thank you.
Any other questions to staff or Mr. Carlson? I wanted to understand the scoring on contract exemptions. Explain that to me again so I get it right. Was the full points awarded to two of the contractors because they just don't have any contract exemptions? Tell me about that.
Thank you, Supervisor Williams. For the contract exceptions criteria, full points were awarded to those proposers who did not take any exception to the proposed agreement and three out of the four did not. Waste Connections did take some pretty substantial exceptions to some of the language. I
did have one more, sorry. Mr. Lavinier, thank you and this again for Mr. Carlson And this was my discussions with a waste management employee so concern was if there was a Transition So North County employees I'm just curious on the and this is it This is your business but I think there are people up in the North County that are worried that if there was a transition, they would be moved to South County.
And we as a board obviously like to have the jobs housing balance in place. I think they just need to hear from you what your plan would be.
So that makes a lot of sense, and it makes sense in a jobs housing balance. And it makes sense as an operational balancer plan as well. So we would really like to have the employees that are living in North County and in these communities to service this community. And we are not looking to relocate anyone as a reason for continued employment.
2:40 – 2:4510 turns
Okay. Any questions for any of the other responders to the RFP? Let's go to public comment. We have 30-something speakers, and our rules provide to reduce the time down to one minute once it exceeds that level. So I hope that I won't be super draconian about the first 30 seconds afterwards but please try to keep that so we can make sure everybody can speak.
Yes, Chair Williams and members of the board. That is correct we have 32 requests to speak on this item. We're going to begin on Zoom with Jessica Shealy to be followed by Tracy Beard. Jessica?
Hi there, good morning Chair Williams, Supervisor of the Board and staff. I'm here to express my strong desire to keep Waste Management as the waste management provider in Zones 4 & 5 of the county. The prospect of making a change would cause unnecessary disruption considering Waste Management's decades of excellent service. Waste management has been an integral part of our community for many years, consistently providing reliable and efficient waste management services.
Their extensive experience and expertise have proven invaluable in maintaining the cleanliness and sustainability for our county. Changing waste management providers will lead to unnecessary complications and adjustments for residents. Waste management seamless operations and familiarity with the area ensure that waste collection and disposal services run smoothly, but without interruption or inconvenience. Thank you very much. I yield my time.
We will now go to Tracy Baird to be followed by Hagen Blount.
I am here today as a private citizen to talk about waste management, the opportunities that waste management has given to Santa Barbara County. Jobs, future education, all waste management employees receive and get an education from waste management for free. I ask you to look at best practices. They are the only organization bidding that does not give money to campaigns, campaign contributions and they give money back to their community as you take this funding. I asked you look at this for your 700 best practices and let's have that waste management also help sponsor music in the park from Lompoc, Solvang, Bealton, Santa Maria, Orchid. They've given to their community beyond within New Kiama And the nonprofit supporting. When the floods came in January, Bob Nelson called they brought in several hours the rollouts for free for people to do cleanup on our community.
This is what community does choice I believe we must have a choice. I as a consumer must have a choice and allowing an organization to be within us. I deserve to have my trash picked up by who I want And I ask you to look at the contract. If you're giving a 10 year contract, there should be no rate increase for ten years on that contract. At the end of the day, choice is good for consumer. But a woman has no choice in her trash now within the county as a second hauler must be for us. I have no problem with waste management in Santa Barbara County. Thank you, Tracy. That
is your time.
And Madam Clerk, I'll close the public comment room
We will now go to Hagan Blount and then we will come to Santa Barbara with Ryan Smith. Hagan?
Chair and Supervisors, thank you so much. I am Hagen Blount. I'm recipient of a donation from Waste Management, not personally but our foundation. We run a foundation based on sustainable living in Santa Barbara County focused on sustainability in food systems and agriculture And waste management was integral in supporting our event this past year in Los Alamos. Furthermore, I do enjoy working with the team at Waste Management.
Our caring individuals, I feel that it was a very indicative of the type of community support that the last speaker mentioned. And I just wish to thank Waste Management so much for their participation in our event and their support of sustainability in Santa Barbara County. I yield my time.
We will now come to Santa Barbara with Ryan Smith, to be followed by Celine Salas. Ryan?
2:46 – 2:517 turns
Chair, board and staff, good morning. Thank you. I speak as a resident of the North County and my issue is with the exclusive zones. And that's what I want to talk about today. Both companies are great companies. I've done business with both. I think they're very reputable and provide a great service. We have framework For what we want to do with this, the trash contracts. Because we just did it with the ambulance contracts. Why did we open that up? Because it's better for the community. It's better for the service. It makes sense. You guys made an awesome decision on that.
I won't go into that because we've had extensive discussions about it and we know the benefits of that. What I do want to talk about is my concerns of exclusive zones and then being in a position with rising costs, which we're seeing consistently. And those costs are eventually going to come back to us. I think that there's room for both of these companies in our county and I think there's room for both of these companies in the North County.
And consider that and not just go exclusive, because we know what happens when we get stuck with one person and we've pushed competition out. The end user is the one that hits the brunt of that. The changing of the ordinance in the RFP process raises eyebrows, and I think when you start to look at it further, it really begins to have an appearance of impropriety whether there is one or not.
It has that appearance, and I think that at a time right now in government we need confidence in our government that decisions are being made for the best interest of us the people. So I yield back my time. I see it's done so I'm far over but I would request that you guys look at that and consider that. And the final thing that I'd have to say is that if any of the members of this board have taken a contribution from Waste Management or from our board they recuse themselves from this vote.
We will now go to Celine Solis to be followed by Susanna Garcia. Celine?
Good morning, Board of Supervisors. My name is Celine Solis. My husband is Amador Solis. We have been part of the Waste Management family for eight years. Amador started out as a waste management driver in many of California counties but Santa Maria is our favorite area. Amador was promoted to a route manager and even though he has long hours, sometimes six days a week, he is devoted to his job and his customer service is his priority. Amador is on call to all of his drivers and most business owners have his personal cell number. He makes sure all of the customers in Santa Barbara County receive excellent service and they can depend on a quick response if any problems arise.
Waste management has serviced the residents of Santa Barbara County for 45 plus years. Please reconsider your recommendations to Zone 4 and 5, thank you for your time.
We will now go to Susana Garcia to be followed by Angel Serna.
Good morning, Supervisors. I am here today to respectfully ask for you to reconsider the recommendations regarding the approval of the exclusive franchise agreement for solid waste collection in Zone 4 and Zone 5. My name is Susana Garcia. My husband and I live in Santa Maria and are both employed by Waste Management. I started my career over ten years ago in 2013 as a temporary employee on the recycling sort line. And I was hired full-time in 2015. Over the last year, I have been given the chance to escalate my career. Today, my title is Lead Scale House Operator but I do so much more assisting my manager with our entire operation. One of the reasons I love working for this company is benefits waste management provides. I never had the opportunity to go to college but waste management gives my children the opportunity to get a college education at no cost to me Thank you for listening.
We will now go to Angel Serna to be followed by Jorge Fajardo. Angel?
Council members, hello. My name is Angel Serna and I'm here on behalf of my father who has worked with waste management for 25 years. My grandparents, aunts and uncles have been employed as well. He began his career at Waste Management as a sorter. He then began to climb the ladder as a sorter supervisor, then worked at the transfer station as a supervisor.
Waste Management then helped him get his CDL and became a commercial driver. Waste Management has also supported employees to do better. My mother, siblings and I are grateful for the support that Waste Management has given us to further our careers. My family and I are here to please ask you to reconsider the recommendations to Zone 4 and Zone 5. Thank you for your time.
2:51 – 2:568 turns
We will now go to Jorge Fajardo, to be followed by Pedro Laridzon. Jorge?
Good morning, Supervisors of the Board. I am here today to respectfully ask for you all to reconsider the recommendations regarding the approval of exclusive franchise agreement for solid waste collection in Zone 4 and 5. My name is Jorge Fajardo. I am the Fleet Shift Supervisor for the Maintenance Department at Santa Maria Waste Management. I moved here with my wife and my three-year-old daughter from Southern California to continue my career with waste management. The hardworking people of Waste Management Santa Maria are what make it so great to be part of the city and county, which is why I chose to be here and grow. I believe waste management was born out of a desire to serve us our community.
I know we continue with that same sentiment every day we go into work, which is why I respectfully ask you to consider recommendations regarding the approval of the Exclusive Franchise Agreement for Solid Waste Collections in Zone 5. Thank you for your time.
We will now go to Peder Laridzon to be followed by Katie Guillen. Peder?
Yes, good morning. My name is Peter Lortzen and I manage the Lortzen Farms in San Ynez Valley. Waste management has picked up the trash at our site for as long as I can remember. They've always done a really good job and had no problems with them at all. Had the same driver, I think, for 15 plus years. Got to know him really well. He's done a great job. My concern and the neighbors that I spoke to is that if you award this contract to a single trash hauler, creates a monopoly.
Monopolies take away competition. That's never good. Companies should always be looking over their shoulder to see who is chasing them down. If you do this, then that could go away. I know you addressed service and the costs and stuff but I think we all know there are loopholes in all of that so that's our concern. Thanks for your time.
We will now go to Katie Guillen to be followed by Fernando Lachu.
Hi, good afternoon. I'm Katie. I've been fortunate enough to work for Waste Management for about 12 years now which is nothing compared to the seniority of some of especially our drivers a lot of our leaders, a lot of our DMs started as drivers. WM is very passionate about promoting within the company you've heard a lot about how we get free college for our kids. I am very excited for my son to get free college it's very important Not only have I been given numerous opportunities, but like I said so many people in this room have been given the same opportunities.
I'm very nervous, I'm sorry. But I'm very passionate about WM. We really are a family and we care so deeply about each other but also about our communities. Stacey's an amazing leader He really cares about this contract. He cares about all of his employees. He's really the reason that a lot of us are here today to help end the company, obviously, but to support him. We truly believe in what we do and what we can do as a company. So I respectfully request that you direct staff to reopen negotiations with WM. Thank you so much for your time.
We will now go to Fernando Lachu to be followed by Marisol Aldana. Fernando?
All right. Good morning, Chair Williams, Supervisors of the Board and staff. I'm here to respectfully request that the board reconsider recommendations and continue negotiations with WM. My name is Fernando Lauchu, and I'm currently a pricing analyst with WM, I started actually last August right after my wedding which was actually in Solvang. And they took me in, I just had gotten let go from my previous employer without any warning, no reasoning You can imagine two months before my wedding how much stress and worry that caused is an understatement.
And so they took me in, and so even just with that they've helped me and my wife tremendously in starting a new life together, and I'm very grateful for this company. In almost a year of being here now with WM, I've seen a lot of what the company does just to help the customers. We handle the waste obviously, but I've seen and learned that we go above and beyond any other competitor in trying to help the customer and even the environment and anyone else involved as well. I had the opportunity as a newer employee to go to multiple facilities, to ride in some trucks with the guys. And it was a really cool experience. I saw the happiness in the customers and one even came over and brought the driver and I an ice cold Coke which was pretty refreshing.
It's something that I never got to experience until I was in the seat. And you see that WM cares about not only its employees, they strive for We will now go to Marisol Aldana to be followed by Amador Solis.
2:57 – 3:027 turns
Good afternoon Chairman Williams, Supervisors of the Board and staff. My name is Marisol Aldana and I began my career with WM in 2017 as an Account Representative. I was a Rent Manager for WM for the last three years and have transitioned over to the Optimization Team as WM Weight Coach. I would like to share a story about my family. When my sister started working at WM as a temporary employee, my dad had just lost his job.
Going through a divorce and raising four children on his own, 20 years of working with WM. I'm happy for him as this year he officially agreed to retire and retired 20 years of service. Dinner conversations were always about talking trash, and I've listened to them since I was eight years old. You've guessed it here I am the next generation. Working at WM for the past six years has provided many opportunities that have allowed me to grow personally and professionally.
I was recently enrolled in WM's college program, which helped fund my master's degree and I'm proud to say that I am standing here as the alumni of the University of Denver. Thank you. I completed WM's Frontline Leadership Development Program, and I am a member of the WM Women's Empowerment Network which helped build relationships among women in the workplace. What I enjoy the most about my job is the relationship that I've had built over the years.
I respectfully ask you to please vote no and direct staff to reopen negotiations so we can continue our partnership under a new agreement. Thank you.
We will now go to Amador Solis, to be followed by Paul Sell. Amador?
Good morning staff, supervisors. I saw you guys a couple weeks ago. I was really nervous. I'm going to try and keep it together this time. I ask that you please reconsider your recommendation of zones four and five. I shared with you guys that I work with, I started as a driver. I've worked with them for many years. I was promoted. I consider myself their leader right now but these guys have 10, 20, 30, 40 years of experience They're very safe, they love their customers. They're driven. They wake up every morning. They don't call out.
They go the extra mile. Earlier this year we had that hard rain and I had drivers available Saturday and Sunday. I'm asking you to just please reconsider your recommendations of Zone 4 or 5 and give us a chance. Thank you.
We will now go to Paul Sill to be followed by Catherine Cachon.
Chair Williams, Supervisors and staff. As an employee of WM I'm here to express my strong support for WM and our significant contributions to our community with aligning philosophy with the County of sustainability environmental stewardship and internally reinforced employee code of conduct that we have that calls for doing the right thing, the right way. WM has consistently demonstrated a deep commitment to Santa Barbara County going above and beyond our waste management responsibilities to actively engage with the community. One aspect that stands out to me about WM is our extensive community involvement. Our recent and annual support of the AIDS lifecycle event through the coast of California is just one example.
I came to WM in what I thought of as my twilight career, most recently being in the solar industry. I found in WM a company dedicated to improving the environment which is important to me. Conducting business with integrity by putting people first both our employees and our customers. As I said our code of conduct leads with do the right thing the right way.
And I have seen our employees live by this with our customers. I urge you to do the right thing and make decisions that uphold the best interests of our community, by continuing to support WM as we have shown sizable contributions to its well-being. Thank you.
We will now go to Catherine Chaconne to be followed by Mark Grady.
Hello, my name is Catherine. I'm new with the company like about a year now. HSS and just I guess with, sorry a little nervous. With you know first impressions right being new with the company it's incredible to work for a company that you know cares a lot about their employees gives back to the community. The job that I left before this one, it was like movie tickets and we had a lot of layoffs. And it was a pretty scary time with all COVID but going into the interview and working with very nice people and everything, one of the things that I saw was the support from everyone, the reliability and the support they give to community Yeah, I would like for you guys to give us another chance to negotiate. Thank you.
3:02 – 3:1216 turns
We will now go to Mark Grady to be followed by Steve Lee. Mark?
Good afternoon at this point. My name is Mark Grady. I was recently promoted to the Area Recycling Director position. I've had the privilege to work for Waste Management for the past 10 years In that time, I've got to see our people first culture which you're hearing a lot about today. Catherine brought up layoffs during COVID. COVID started waste management guaranteed these employees 40 hours of work no matter what nobody else can do that We've heard about the GILD program. Marisol recently completed her master's.
WM is providing funding for our kids, our families to go to school to make our communities better. Talk about our benefits. My wife works in the healthcare industry. We have my benefits. We have our health, our dental. Waste management just went years without increasing the cost of our benefits through a highly inflationary climate. It's amazing what this company is doing for our people.
But we talk about our people, let's also talk about our communities. The trucks in our communities, our trucks have cameras all over them so our drivers have the best visibility. They have over nine cameras so we know what they can see, they know what they can see and makes them safer as they drive through. We have coaching programs. We have WMWay coaches here that help drive productivity and efficiency while ensuring safety.
We also have a driver training center out in Arizona where these employees actually train on trucks in that area. We don't let them train on the truck in your community, so respectfully I do ask you to please reconsider and open the conversation with waste management for renegotiations. Thank you.
We will now go to Steve Lee to be followed by Stacey Walters. Steve?
Good afternoon, Chair Williams, Supervisors of the Board and staff. My name is Steve Lee. I have worked with WM since 1997. I started my career as a driver and through training and opportunities WM gives its employees, I work my way up and currently working as a district manager. Working for WM has given me financial stability, great health benefits to allow me to raise my family here in Southern California.
As a resident of Southern California, my entire life I have personal interest in what WM brings to the communities we serve. As you can see from the many employees behind me, we lead a large local team that works hard to provide the best service possible for our residents and businesses. Over the years our relationships and collaborative efforts with the county have developed a strong foundation that we at waste management are truly proud to be a part of We look forward to continuing to build on that foundation now and into the future.
We respectfully ask that you request that the board reconsider staff's recommendations and continue negotiations with Waste Management. I thank you for your time.
We will now go to Stacey Walters, to be followed by Luis Ramirez. Stacey?
Good afternoon. I'm Stacy Walters, District Manager for WM that services Zone 4 and 5 today. I first introduced myself to all of you last May in this very room and again I spoke two weeks ago in Santa Maria when I spoke about a few of the great things we've accomplished over the last year since awarding WM our current contract. As you look around this room you may have noticed I gathered a few folks today.
My co-workers and friends are here today to show you the commitment WM has to the County of Santa Barbara, because to me commitment is very important. I've dedicated my life to this company, 37 years as of last month. This coming Monday will be my 30-year wedding anniversary with my wife, Lana, who's sitting right over there supporting me today. I committed to you last May that W1 would be a great service provider and we are on the right path. Supervisor Nelson spoke about some of the great things we've done two weeks ago. Now I'm asking for you to commit to us and allow us to continue to service our customers as we've done for decades. Please reconsider the recommendation. Thank you.
We will now go to Luis Ramirez, to be followed by Stephanie Jamison. Luis?
Good afternoon Chair Williams, Supervisors of the Board and staff. My name is Luis Ramirez and I am the Public Education and Outreach Manager here in Santa Barbara County for WM. I'm a native of the San Ynez Valley and I love partnering with the community that I was raised in. WM provides me with the tools and resources necessary to deliver on our promises to the customers in this community.
I love this community and I love my WM team. Let's keep our momentum on the compliance requirements set by Sacramento and continue working together as we have so for many years. I respectfully request you to reconsider staffs recommendation and continue negotiations with WM, thank you for your time.
We will now go to Stephanie Jameson to be followed by David Carosa.
Good afternoon Board of Supervisors and Mr. Chair, my name is Stephanie Jameson I'm a Recycling Education Rep. Supervisor Lovino had mentioned the City of Guadalupe and it gives me great pleasure to actually read this letter from the Mayor Thank you for the many years waste management has been providing services to the residents of Guadalupe. Aside from the regular services WM provides on a weekly basis, we appreciate you all for the services your company has provided us beyond our regular agreement with WM.
During the recent floods, as we all talked about today things that we can't predict but WM has been there. In early part of this year a call from our public works and public safety officials requesting debris roll-offs to discard flood ruined household and personal belongings the immediate response that WM had to assist with these local Flood victims to clean up their homes was a tribute on how efficient and prompt your company operates. Without these roll-offs, flood victims would have no way of accessing their homes to clean up the debris and they would've created mold issues on top of losing possessions.
WM's crew immediate removal of these units and emptying these units helped to reduce a great deal. Without this timely assistance, local Pioneer Street residents would have suffered and even created financial personal loss. Finally, the City's communication with you and WM staff has been exceptional. With quick response to our requests we are confident that our working relationship with residents, the City of Guadalupe and WM will continue to be positive. Board of Supervisors I ask you on behalf of our entire team to vote no on the monopoly and allow WM to continue servicing our customers in Zone 4 and 5. I appreciate your time.
We will now go to David Carrosa, to be followed by Lauren Greenwell. Thank you, David.
Good afternoon.
And David before you start, I just want to reinforce folks have gone over but it's been pretty reasonable but it's starting to slip into whole minutes over so if you could cut it back a little bit.
Good afternoon, my name is David Carosa. I am the Area Finance Manager for WM and I worked directly on this agreement with the county staff and their consultant over the last two years. The commercial rates that staff is asking you to approve today are 50-70% higher than what we were told we would have to accept by the county's consultants. We couldn't do it and as the RFP showed there's a reason we couldn't do it. It can't be done The rates that we did offer are in line with what Marborg offered. We're within roughly 5% of what Marborg offered.
Does it make sense to throw out the only other private hauler in the county and eliminate all competition over such a minor rate difference? Neighboring San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties, along with Kings, Fresno, Tulare, Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Kern counties all have multiple haulers. Santa Barbara County would stand alone amongst its neighboring counties in having one private hauler. I respectfully request that the board reconsider staff recommendations and continue negotiations with WM. Thank you.
We will now go to Lauren Greenwell, to be followed by Brian Borgatello. Lauren?
Good afternoon Chair Williams, Supervisors of the Board, Council and staff. I feel compelled today after 35 years to really state that I've never seen a staff recommendation to have only one service provider in a county. That's the first time in over 35 years. It's very important and critical as others have said looking forward Any responder to an RFP, whether it be the county or any of your municipalities, any of those potential responders are going to be faced with extremely high startup costs. They will be in the price and that's going to actually wreck the competitive bid process for everything in the county when it comes to solid waste.
I can only point to zone one, two and three where there's really been no competition for marble. I know the landfill rates are higher but for the North County Supervisors the most common cart size for your constituents is a 96 gallon. The rates in one, two and three range from 58 to $69 a month. That's huge, huge. So what I am prepared to do today is just make sure that you understand We will now go to Brian Borgatello to be followed by Joaquin Hernandez.
3:13 – 3:2112 turns
Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Williams and members of the board. Obviously, Marburg supports the recommendation from staff and I'd like to thank staff for all their hard work in evaluating all four proposals. Marburg is very appreciative and honored to have been selected for the best proposal submitted based on price, experience, and three generations of impeccable service including much support to the entire community.
With your approval this morning, we look forward to beginning implementation immediately for solid waste services in Zone 4 and 5 beginning July of 2024. In regards to the Waste Management employees here today I just want to let you know that I started with our company 1990 at the bottom as a sorter before there's even sort lines on the ground and I can't appreciate you guys more for what you do every day six days a week All they got to do here today is give my word as the president of the company that we've got your back and will not leave you guys hanging dry. And I believe we have a very good compensation package that will match what you have now, and we look forward to meeting you guys in the near future. Thank you very much.
We will now go to Joaquin Hernandez to be followed by Scott Ramsey.
Good afternoon Supervisors, my name is Joaquin Hernandez and I work for Marble Industries. And I'm here to share my personal experience. I know that there are some waste management employees that worry about their jobs right now. I was in the same situation 12 years ago. I was an employee of Allied Ways in 2011 when they lost the city of Santa Barbara contract to Marburg.
I had worked for Allied for 11 years and I was worried about changing companies. Marburg promised to have jobs for all of us, to keep our seniority and give us full benefits and good pay. Marburg kept all their promises and has been excellent place to work. I have been working for Marburg for the last 12 years and have been very happy. Most of my co-workers from Alleyways are still working for Barbara as well.
I'm very grateful and working for the company. Thank you for your time.
We will now go to Scott Ramsey to be followed by Derek Carlson, Scott?
Good afternoon, Supervisors. I come to you today wearing a couple different hats as most of us do. The first hat I wear is, I live in San Ynez and I'm just a common guy. We take our garbage out Sunday nights. Waste management does a great job. Dumping Monday, come home from work, put the cans back in. And as a dum-dum, I've actually knocked the wheels off a couple times and they've had my cans replaced in a couple days.
Now we switch hats. I'm the founder and CEO of Ramsey Asphalt, I'm not a typical paving contractor. I'm not out at night paving roads, paving freeways. I am the guy that's out in front of all your houses in the morning fixing the holes, the emergency water leaks, the gas lines, the electrical lines and there are times where I see we show up and there is a row of 1,000 garbage cans And trash trucks are on the way.
And this has happened in all the counties we've worked in, and I have to say when it comes to working in Santa Barbara, it's just a matter of picking up a phone call, calling the owner, calling Louie, calling Allen, calling Derek. And arrangements are made for the residents, arrangements are made to these guys say Marburg says what do you need? I need three hours no problem will pick up in the afternoon.
Marboard, in my opinion is successful because they make it easy to do business with them. They make it easy for the residents and as I utilize their service as well and they do a good job in my book and really helped me to do my job and to keep the road safe. And thank you guys very much.
We will now go to Derek Carlson to be followed by Bill Camarillo.
Thank you again Derek Carlson with Marborg Industries, Chair Williams, members of the board. I just want to reiterate again thank you for allowing us to present our proposal today we are very excited to be offering discounted rates at a time where everything else is going up We are deeply committed to incorporating the new employees of these contracts into our company as seamlessly as possible. And we also think we just have a great solution here, combining these great employees that are testifying before you today with local management. You know, we think it is going to provide the optimal solution for Zones 4 and 5 service. Thank you.
We will now go to Bill Camarillo to be followed by Brian Ninesville
Good afternoon, Chair Williams and supervisors and staff. And I am representing the Harrisons, the third wheel in the program. We were second in the scoring. We're excited to be here. We would recommend that you go with EJ Harrison & Sons. 91 years in the business. We're your neighbors just south to you by 30 miles. They've actually been serving Santa Barbara County for over 30 years with Gold Coast Recycling. They are my partners. I am the CEO of Agriman. We are the largest organics waste recycler in the state of California serving 15 counties, 200 cities and doing a million tons a year of organic waste annually. And we know everything about 1383. Our price is competitive. It gives you more enhancements. The one that was missing was the SB1383 procurement option which was included in our proposal Along with the other enhancements, we bring to you a vast infrastructure just south of you as a backup program for your growth in the future and any issues you might have in Santa Barbara County.
And we are collaborative. We work well with waste management, Marburg, they're our friends. We compliment what the county's doing today especially at Tohigas. And we'd like you to consider us. We would love to serve the county and we would do a great job, and we'd offer you all of the benefits of the Harrison's 91 years serving communities where service is first for them. So thank you very much. I did that all in a minute, son of a gun. 22 seconds.
We will now go to Brian Nines to be followed by Justin Hoesinger.
Good afternoon, Chairman Williams and Supervisors. My name is Brian Nines and I work for WM. I respectfully request that the board vote no on creating unnecessary monopoly and choose not to award an exclusive franchise agreement in Zones 4 & 5. Surrounding counties have protected their constituents from this very moment and I ask that you do the same. I am proud to work for WM. We are more than just a service provider, a company cares about our customers so much that my wife now works here too. My time with WM has been spent leading a team of sustainability coordinators whose mission it is to right-size customers, achieve compliance and divert material from landfills.
WM provides me with the tools necessary and the flexibility to meet the customer's needs. In return they receive better service monthly savings and maintain compliance. For decades, the county and WM have shared a successful partnership. What's that partnership worth? Together we held strong through economic ups and downs, floods and pandemics, and all the new legislation from Sacramento. Please direct staff to reopen communications with WM as your recent ordinance change does not require you to choose just one service provider.
WM provides staff with competitive pricing prior to the RFP and those results confirm our position. We have invested a lot in this community. We know the true cost to operate in Zones 4 and 5. We have the people, the vehicles, routes and facilities already in place. This means we can stay focused on the business of meeting your constituents' needs without unnecessary disruption. Please vote no and direct staff to reopen negotiations so we can continue our partnership under a new agreement. Thank you so much for your time.
We will now go to Justin Hosinger to be followed by Sandra Pursley who is our final speaker.
3:21 – 3:2711 turns
Good morning, Chairman Williams, Supervisors and staff. I'm going to get rid of my speech today and just speak from the heart. WM is just more than a company. We're a family. So if I can have everybody step up right now for WM that's here this afternoon. These are your people that are out every single day that live and work and operate in this community. Their tax dollars go back to this community. Everything goes back to this county. It's a partnership. And for us, we've always been a partner. We demonstrated that when I received a phone call from Supervisor Nelson, we have an issue, we have a flood, people's homes are in need. I got on the phone and contacted Stacy. Within hours, we had roll-offs out there to service your constituents because it's a partnership.
Let me tell you another thing about WM. We are the leaders in hiring veterans. I'm a disabled veteran myself. If it wasn't for WM, I would not have the career that I have today. I put an oath, raised my hand, went and served our country. And ultimately played the ultimate sacrifice of being injured. WM gave me a job. They actually put me through what Marisol went through frontline leadership to be a better leader for our people.
You know there's a lot of talk about it's great I'm here I'm gonna give you my word we have a job But if they can actually say that they pay for an education, how many people have actually utilized our education here? How many people's families actually utilize our education? And by that it actually gives back to the county in future sustainable measures. So I actually encourage you guys to do the right thing and not be the only county that goes to one hauler. Everyone that put proposals in, they're great companies. Great companies. But we're already here proving ourselves. And to me, in this day and age, we've already done the hard thing with you guys. We've already worked through 1383.
We've already done the rollout of the organics working with the customers. So just do the right thing and keep a partnership that has been here for decades. We don't make contributions to keep doing different things and working places. We just give back to the community, and that is why all you guys are sitting up there this afternoon to do the same thing I did when I joined the military is to be for the people. So listen to all the letters that come through. I hope you've read all 40 of those letters that came from your constituents saying don't make this a monopoly.
WM's been great! So I hope you guys do the right thing today because that's why I joined the military to serve everyone in here and all the veterans that work at WM And all these great people behind me that are here today that hope you guys do the right decision. Thank you, guys.
We will now go to Sondra Persley who is our final speaker. Sondra? I
hate the sound this makes when I move it. Sorry. Good afternoon, I'm Sondra Persley. I'm the last speaker and I'd like to respectfully request just a smidge more time. I have two topics. I think I can keep it within three minutes. My first question Oh, go ahead.
I'd like to keep the time. I've been very lax with folks
and always reduce
time when we go over 30 speakers.
Okay so really quick I have to know who's still picking up the trash with so many people in here? I'm a little bit concerned. I want to cover negotiations. I submitted a letter at the beginning of the last meeting it's nice to see all of you again so soon and it really outlined negotiations from our perspective thank you for your questions Supervisor Nelson thank you for Your response Leslie and for all the time spent on this process that negotiations is outlined in our letter We're led primarily by a consultant at the very beginning of the process. We said hey these rates are not sustainable were underwater He said we'll talk about that later. We only want to talk about what's changing So we went along with the process for many many months several over a hundred models I think Dave mentioned and at the end of the process, we said hey if It's still underwater.
Can we take a look at Zone 2 rates? It was said earlier that we insisted on Zone 2 rates with no consideration for the difference in facilities. That's simply not accurate. We provided rates with the difference in rates for Zone 2, and the rates that you have today are still much lower than Zone 2. In negotiations it was also mentioned that we were given an opportunity to provide a best-in-final. We did while we did not lower rates from current. We did offer to freeze those rates, despite a 60% increase in our lease between the time of negotiation starting and that best-in-final. And it's important to note that that 5% difference in rates is really made up for in that cost of the lease that it sounds like is still up in the air for the other proposer.
So the last thing I want to say, and I'll say it quickly is that there's remaining hurt feelings from negotiations on both sides. And it was a long process. It was a hard process with a lot going on with inflation. Fuel prices went three times higher than usual. I mentioned our lease went up 60%. And yeah, it was uncomfortable. It was an uncomfortable conversation but ultimately we said in the beginning the rates weren't sustainable and going through this process that wasn't service related, it confirmed that- You're
over a minute over can you just- Okay
thank you I would like to respectfully request that you consider reopening negotiations at least for Zone 5. I can appreciate that Zone 4 there's a larger difference between the two but we would love the opportunity to continue discussing Zone 5 thank you
And that concludes public comment on this item.
It's to the board?
3:27 – 3:338 turns
Mr. Nelson.
I have one other question for staff during public comment, I asked Ms. Robinson for the comparisons on zones four and five that wasn't in the actual presentation but I believe you had a couple of slides there I wanted to make sure that the public was able to see what I saw before we deliberate.
Thank you Supervisor Nelson, through the Chair. We did create a couple slides but thought that it might confuse the issue but if we're just looking at Zone 5 rate revenues Marburg standalone for that zone would represent a 4% decrease in rate revenue compared to current rates Waste Management's alternative proposal would represent 0.5% decrease Waste management's standard proposal would represent a 4.4% increase.
For zone four, let
me stop right there just to make sure for everybody's benefit we differentiate the standard versus alternative. Standard would be keeping our trash in county. The alternate would be shipping our trash to another county. Yes,
correct.
We've kind of had a long-standing policy to handle our own trash so really apples and apples as the standard is standard?
Correct. And then for Zone 4 Marborg's proposal represented a 6.8% decrease compared to current rate revenue waste management standard proposal using existing facilities represented at 13.3% increase Their alternative proposal using out-of-county Facilities would be an eleven point seven percent increase
Thank you Mr. Lavagnino Well, thank you. Mr. Chair. I really appreciate everybody coming today and sorry that you had to sit through we had a very long extended administrative agenda so you got to hear A lot about what we do besides solid waste. So again, thank you and regardless of how this turns out today I think all of us could feel your passion and I understand that.
I also want to thank our staff. I think public works staff second to none While I did hear some people that were a little bit upset with the process, these things are not easy. And we're talking about tens of millions of dollars and a ten year contract so we want to make sure we get it right. But I also think it's rare that you have a company with track record.
First let me back up both companies all companies that responded. I have no problem with any of them. We have excellent solid waste companies here in Santa Barbara County, and I don't have a bad thing to say about any of them. But I think waste management also has to realize something. You didn't come in first, you also didn't come in second, came in third.
And I sit up here as a guardian kind of the public's tax dollars. And one of the things I have to look at is the costs associated that people are going to be paying. It would be very, very difficult for me to just put all of this aside that staff's put together and the reason why I'm not gonna do that is because I also have a company like Marburg who has a long track record here in Santa Barbara County and I appreciate The employees and some of the management that was talking about.
Some of the giving back to the community, the waste management is done. I fully anticipate that that's going to keep on because in the zones that they've already been working on Marburg has been an excellent member of our community not just picking up the trash but being involved in the community. And to the employees, I hope I tried to do my best Give you the I gave Marburg the opportunity to address you and try to make you feel a bit better about moving forward.
I'll say this in my own house, my wife just left a job with the same company she was at for 40 years and left and went I can tell you that there was a lot of trepidation, worry, sleepless nights. Change is difficult but in some cases it can lead to expanded opportunities and that's where she is now, is that she feels a lot better about the move two months, three months, four months later.
I know it's not easy. These things are never easy, but I did not hear anything today that would make me question the process and so I'll be moving in forwarding and in support of staffs recommendation.
3:33 – 3:394 turns
Well, I have a smidgen of constituents in the zones but I'll defer to Mr. Nelson if you're ready.
Yeah, I'm ready. This has been a couple year process to get to where we are today at least for my office. When maybe two years ago or so, I got a visit from Waste Management. Some of their management coming into my office to introduce themselves and talk about the process of renegotiating with the county. And it was actually the first time I'd had any action with the waste management and I had been in that office for many years as, of course, the chief of staff before becoming supervisor.
And I had some concerns. Customer service from having a distant organization that you may be headquartered in another state. And so I discussed that with the team, with Justin and Sandra, Kim and Stacey. And waste management absolutely came to the table immediately and started correcting some of the errors that had been happening on our zones for those years immediately. And almost overcompensating in some ways coming through above and beyond what was asked for them I'm a big fan of waste management, I really am. Everything that I've ever asked them to do or to participate in our community they've stepped up quickly. One of the things I asked for was to make sure that there was a local number for my constituents and they brought in Luis to start to be able to do some outreach.
They pushed into our non-profits, they donated to our rodeo, to our veterans groups. They have been a real true partner They've been engaged and supported. The third piece, though, in the part that we're really talking about here is it came down to the rates. And that's what's really hard here because you were really at the 11th hour. There was another decision point in the negotiation process.
where we needed to have movement so we didn't have this RFP process. You can ask Public Works staff, I was very nervous about a RFP process because my constituents had just experienced a significant rate increase, 40% from our residentials. Some of my commercial customers went up by over 80%. I had many, many calls to my office concerned about that but that was really waste management just really absorbing the cost of some state legislation Understand that I was very nervous that we'd have to go, you know additional increases moving forward. So it's very nervous about this You know, I knew that ultimately if we move forward the RFP that my constituents would come after me If they had a second rate increase and so went through this process And ultimately as we just talked about with Leslie, the rates came in and I was disappointed that waste management wasn't in the top two.
It really was because I was really looking forward to building on the relationship that we built at our office with Waste Management last 2 years. That was the time where we needed to make sure we had that opportunity, continue that relationship. And I know and I understand Waste Management coming here and making sure they left everything on the table. I appreciate that. You have a great story to tell and if you ever needed somebody to be a witness for ya, I would do that but at the end of the day my job up here as a taxpayer advocate and a fiduciary My constituents is to make sure that we have the best rate with a responsible provider and Marburg is absolutely a responsible provider. They have a track record, and I would've been happy with either one of them.
Thank you. There can be some discussions with Waste Management and Marburg about sharing resources and figuring out a way to make this transition easier. If there's any opportunities there that makes sense for either one of the providers, that they take advantage of that. Waste Management has a lot of resources that they bring to the table. Obviously, Marburg brings a lot to the table as a local company that was born and raised in this community and continues to serve it.
So if my vote today was on, is waste management a great company? It would definitely be voting yes. But my vote today is really where we assign this contract through our RP process and as much as it's difficult especially looking at all of you and even the young lady who's here with her dad. This is hard but this is really my job as a supervisor to make that decision even the hard ones.
So at this point, I don't say I'm comfortable but I'm ready to move forward with a decision on the allocation of this contract moving forward.
Supervisor Hart?
We have four excellent companies and by the testimony that we heard from waste management workers today, they have an excellent workforce and a very committed workforce. And I'm particularly struck by the Guild Education Program. That's a wonderful opportunity and I hope more corporations will take advantage of that. But it would take something extraordinary going wrong with the process, the RFP process for me to overturn what staff is recommending.
And I don't see that in what we've been presented. It's been carefully done. I think very transparent in the work that you've shown. And and I've had experience with Marburg. They are a superb company as well So, uh, I'm I'm prepared to move forward with staff recommendation and thank you for all your hard work on this. It's not easy
3:39 – 3:436 turns
Supervisor caps
Thank you, Chair Williams and thank you to the staff for your due diligence. I appreciate how many years have gone into this process. I want to thank each and every one of the speakers. So compelling to hear your loyalty, your dedication Just to have this time to think about the jobs that you do and how you keep the fabric of our community together And I agree with supervisor Hartman the education program. I'm just stunned to learn about it I'm appreciative that that Mark Borg is listening a company That also has a stellar reputation in town, especially in the area of sustainability so I'm going to agree with my colleagues. It's not my district, but I just want to thank all of you. I know this is challenging. I hope that the word of Marburg plays out to be as has been promised here publicly about job offers and benefits and all of the things that you rely on to keep your families strong and to keep our community strong.
So thank you. And I'm happy to support staff.
And I also support staff recommendation, though I have only a small number of constituents in the service area. The need to have both affordable rates and the environmental benefits of diversion and not only just environmental benefits of diversion but the benefits Longevity of our facilities and the sustainability of our facilities from proper diversion is Need to be foremost in our mind. And I think feel like Both EJ Harrison and Marburg's Proposals were very responsive to that You know, I know that there was constraints for waste management, but I don't you know I didn't feel particularly listened to in terms of the results of their proposal, in terms of the priorities that either staff or I had.
And I know it's nervous for the staff at all levels but I've seen this process happen twice before with some of the zones The county and some of the zones in the city were taken over by Marburg from Allied Republic BFI, whatever. At different times they had that different entities and I'm glad that one of the drivers, I think it was Joaquin came and spoke to it. He went through that process and in my experience the drivers and the linemen and other folks really got a good A good deal from Marburg.
Many of them are very happy and still employed at Marburg. I'm confident that they're a good employer, and I think that's evidenced also by the longevity of the people at Marburg So I'm confident in that leadership. I was also very impressed by the EJ Harrison proposal. You know, I feel like it had different shared benefits for commercial and residential customers At a little bit better benefits for residential customers. And of course, at this point in time that's super important as people are facing increased energy costs, increased transportation costs and everything else. So this board has as the backs of our working people and the constituents who have to pay these bills.
And so I will support the staff's recommendation on the RFP.
Is there a motion? I'll make a motion and move forward with staff recommendation.
I'll second.
All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. We will break for closed session. Please give us a preview of closed session.
3:43 – 5:422 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. In closed session today, the board will consider one item of existing litigation. UDCAL versus County of Santa Barbara. It's a Santa Barbara County Superior Court case conference with labor negotiators. Employee organization is SEIU Local 620 and Union of American Physicians and Dentists. The agency designated representatives CEO Monomi Asato and Human Resources Director Maria Elena de Guevara And the third item is the public employee performance evaluation for county executive officer.
I believe the estimate is an hour and a half.
Then we will be back in an hour and a half. We're reconvening the July 11th meeting. Will County Council please report out of closed session?
5:42 – 5:4810 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. The board met in closed session one item of existing litigation, EDCAL versus County of Santa Barbara, conference with labor negotiators for SEIU Local 620 and Union of American Physicians and Dentists, and public employee performance evaluation for a county executive officer. And the board took no reportable action.
Go on to departmental item number two.
Chair Williams and members of the board, departmental item number two is from the county executive office. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the addition of Board of Supervisors Department Chief of Staff position to the County of Santa Barbara Single Comprehensive Conflict of Interest Code for county departments, commissions, boards, committees and dependent special district single code.
Chair Williams and members of the board, good afternoon. This item was requested by members of your board to consider the addition of the Chief of Staff position to the county's conflict of interest code also known as a single code. Today I'll provide some information to consider adding the position highlight the intention of the form 700 filing provides some information on the county process for designating an employee it provides some comparable County information and then take whatever direction your board deems appropriate So to provide some context and history, the Political Reform Act prohibits public officials from participating in or using their official position to influence a governmental decision in which the official has a financial interest.
A Conflict of Interest Code designates the positions that involve the making or participation in the making of those decisions. And the persons holding the designated positions must periodically disclose certain financial information by filing a Statement of Economic Interest or Form 700. Currently, the Chief of Staff position is not a designated employee in the county's single code and therefore does not file a Form 700.
So generally there are two ways the form is intended to provide transparency and accountability. One for the public as a designated individuals or provide financial interest that are disclosed, and two it serves as a reminder to the designated employee that they need to be aware and vigilant about potential conflicts of interest. The county has a standard process for designating employees and maintaining the single code. Departments are required to review and update their list at least every two years, and the last date approved was November 29th 2022 for the county.
Department management is responsible for identifying positions that need to be designated and assigning appropriate disclosure category. And finally, the departments provide this information to the clerk recorder assessor that administers the single code and brings amendments to your board for approval. If your board decides to add the chief position, a disclosure category will need to be assigned and the clerk will need to bring a resolution to your board to facilitate that change.
As discussed once an employee is designated at a disclosure category has to be assigned these range from the broadest Category 1 to limited disclosure requirements for consultants or limited term positions under Category 7 Here are the seven categories and the descriptions. I won't go through all these, but wanted to note that Disclosure Category 1 reads the following. All investments, business positions, interests in real property, sources of income including receipts of loans, gifts and travel payments.
We did look at our comparable counties, and four of the seven are requiring that the Chief of Staff position file a Form 700. Those include Orange County, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, and Ventura. And all of these had a disclosure category of one. That brings us to the recommended actions, to consider the addition of the position and indicate a related disclosure category if approved. And provide direction to the clerk recorder assessor to bring forward a resolution amending the county single code at a future board meeting as appropriate and determine that this is not a CEQA project. With that I'm happy to answer any questions.
Any questions from the Board?
Yes, thank you Chair Williams. I guess my question is was it considered to have more than just the Chief of Staff on there? Is that part of what this discussion that we might be having here today? So there's obviously more than just a chief of staff in an office that impacts the decisions are made by policymakers
Sure, it's Supervisor Nelson through the Chair. This item specifically was to address a Chief of Staff position but certainly other positions can be considered.
In my questions I was actually talking to County Council about their office and how they go about because I believe all of their employees are having to file these or probably single code But there's another feature there that came to my attention that I wasn't aware of it. It's the Necessity of the outside employment and activity activity notification that we have in the county code where are we required to?
Have employees disclose outside activities and jobs kind like a moonlighting disclosure as well Is that something that I guess I'm still not unclear whether that's required or if that's optional for departments. Are those that are participating in the single code?
Supervisors to the Chair, so if anyone has outside employment in addition to their standard work they are required to get their department head approval. That's just standard practice in the county. If that's what you're talking about.
Okay and that includes our employees as well.
5:48 – 5:5527 turns
Supervisor Nielsen, so there's a county code section 27-7 which talks about incompatible activities of officers and employees and requires that county officers and employees comply with all the county rules and regulations and written policies. There's also a notification form where the employee would present that, explain it and it either can be approved or not by the department head. There's also government code provisions that talk about not just outside employment but employment activity or enterprise for compensation which is inconsistent and compatible with or in conflict with the officer employees duties functions responsibilities so that's where our requirements come from as the government code.
Sorry, got a little tongue tied there. What are the other outside activities besides employment? Can you give us some examples of what that might be? Is that volunteer work? Is that advocacy? What does that look like?
Supervisor Nelson, it could Service on a nonprofit board And and as an example if that board were to contract with the county Depending on the person's position. It could be an incompatible activity That's just an example, so it's not necessary It could be paid work or it could be unpaid work and both of them could be compatible or incompatible It's not necessarily whether it's paid or not
we still have the provisions till he's doing notifications So you can determine whether it's incompatible or not?
That's correct
Supervisor Caps
Thank You chair Williams and thank you to see a CEO's office, especially Nancy for working on this I just wanted to clarify because when I was a Women's Commissioner long ago We had to do all we had to do form 700s. That's currently the case that All commissioners do. Is that a state law? Just if you happen to know the context.
Yeah, I believe it's state law but we do and it's part you'll see that as part of the attachment A that several our commissions are listed as part of that as well and on the redistricting Commission as well. Okay. Thanks. Thank you
Supervisor Hartman
Well, maybe I should wait until after public comment but I brought this forward in consultation with Supervisor Capps. It just seemed that it would make sense as we're looking at...I was doing my form 700 and thought well gee maybe my chief of staff ought to be doing this too and other counties that's the case and in the greater transparency it seems like a good practice for our county
We'll go to public comment. Is there any public comment?
Joe Williams and members of the board, we have no request to speak on this item.
OK, to the board supervisor caps.
It sounds like we're moving quickly here and I'm all for that. I just want to echo what Supervisor Hartman said, it might sound very insider to talk about Form 700s and Chiefs of Staff but it really has potentially broad ramifications for public good and I am all We have to make sure that the public is aware and I believe that the reason why the commissions have this provision is because they technically advise the board.
We can all experience that there's nobody who advises us more than our Chiefs of Staff and has our ear on so many fiscal decisions that impact taxpayers, impact our constituents. So I am all in support at the broadest level that's been put forward. And I appreciate the due diligence of looking at what other counties are doing and this would catch us up with some of our neighbors.
I fully support it. My chief of staff has been doing form 700 and some of the other, at least one other has been doing form 700 so I didn't know all of them weren't doing it. So thank you for bringing it. Supervisor Nelson?
Yes. And when I was chief of staff, I did the form 700 as well. I was served as the alternate on the juvenile justice coordinating council for supervisor Adams. So I was required to do this as well. You know, I don't know what is there any appetite on expanding this too, you know, for full transparency to our entire offices or is there some concerns about that? Cause I, you know, like I said before, it's not just my chief of staff that advises me on policy.
There are different levels in my office of engagement But even those that are doing basic intake on constituent services, there's some level of influence that they have over the process. And we're trying to make sure that we instill trust in the public and our actions. The more transparency, the better. I'm glad you guys highlighted this because it really has brought it to my attention Doing everything we can, this form that we have. We've never utilized in my office the outside employment activities notification and something that sounds like they were actually required to participate in that we haven't. And I will be using it at my office moving forward as well so.
If there's any appetite to expanding it beyond Chief of Staff, I would be interested in
that. Supervisor Lavagnino. Oh, Supervisor Hartman was
first. So I was just going to ask Ms. Anderson do other counties expand it beyond Chiefs of Staff? Do you know?
You know, Supervisor Hartman through the chair we didn't ask that question specifically. I think it's really based on whether you feel that they are performing, providing or participating in any of your decision making is really it's your decision.
And if I could jump in and probably Supervisor Williams can speak to this most intimately. My understanding is that the state legislature, it's all the employees that work for the assembly are required to do a form 700. That was the feedback that I got on this?
Yeah, I can't remember.
So long ago.
I'm fine with moving with everybody. It just adds one more person in my office but this is the form First time it's beneficial to be poor is when you're filling this form out. So, because if you own a lot of stuff, you're in
trouble.
Mine takes 30 seconds to do so it's no big deal. Supervisor Kavs?
I just share the appetite to expand
it. Can you put the recommended actions back up on the slide right before that? So we're hearing from your board that on A, consider the addition of the chief of staff positions and all positions in the board offices. And you would like them to be in Category 1 which is the broadest category?
5:55 – 6:076 turns
I'll make that motion.
There is a motion and a
second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. Let's go to D3.
Chair Williams and members of the board, departmental item number three is from the County Executive Office. It has a hearing to consider recommendations regarding SB 1439 changes to campaign contribution requirements.
Please proceed.
Chair Williams and members of the board, this item includes a presentation on SB 1439 changes to campaign contribution requirements at the request of Supervisor Capps. This information is from the Fair Political Practice Commission Today I'll provide some background on SB 1439 and the Levine Act, a high-level summary of the Fair Political Practices Commission or FPPC regulation changes recently approved on June 15th. Note impacts to local government agencies and what jurisdictions are doing and take any direction your board deems appropriate.
In 2022 the California legislature passed SB 1439, a bill that amended section 84308 of the Political Reform Act also known as Labine Act. The changes took effect on January 1st 2023. The new law made significant change to campaign contribution and recusal requirements for local governing boards So what were the significant changes? The original wording of the Government Code Section 84308 prohibited an officer of an agency from accepting, soliciting or directing contributions of more than $250 from any party, participant or agent thereof while a proceeding is involving a license permit or other entitlement for use in pending before the agency and for three months following the date a final decision is rendered. An official was also prohibited from taking part in such a decision if they received a contribution exceeding $250 within the preceding 12 months.
Local government agencies whose members are directly elected by voters, for example boards of supervisors and city councils were exempt. SB 1439 amended the code in two significant ways. First, a period in which the contributions are prohibited after a final decision is rendered was changed from three months to 12 months and two local government agencies whose members are directly elected by voters so Board of Supervisors and city councils are no longer exempt In late 2022, the FBPC determined the law would be prospective and officials would not be prohibited from taking part in a decision if they received a contribution exceeding $250 within the 2022 calendar year.
Since the law was passed, the FBPC has been working on proposed regulation changes to help implement, interpret and address changes related to SB 1439. Several regulation amendments were approved by the FPPC recently at their June 15th meeting. The FPPC staff indicated they are developing educational materials and fact sheet guidance to further assist the implementation and understanding of the new law. We will continue to update your board as those materials are made available.
Attachment B of this agenda item provides the approved FPPC regulations. Over the next few slides, the left column denotes the regulation code and regulation area of focus. In the right column is a high-level summary of the changes associated to these sections. I will be just touching on a few of these that may be of interest. As mentioned, the full detail of the regulations are shown in Attachment B.
Section 18438 addresses the application of the new law which indicates provisions do not apply prior to January 1st, 2023. Section 18438.1 addresses officers and agencies, amendments removed the prior exemption for local elected officers and provided further clarification in defined officers. Section 18438.2 addresses proceedings, amendments clarify applicable proceedings and define the term pending which is different for the officer versus the party in participant.
Section 18438.3 addresses agents, amendments clarify and define the term agent as it applies to government code section 84308 where the same rules apply regarding contributions of an agent of the party or participant. 438.4 addresses participants, this section defines the term participant as applies to Government Code Section 84308. Section 18438.5 addresses aggregated contributions, this section provides clarification on provisions to the aggregation of contributions by parties participants and agents.
Section 18438.6 addresses solicitation direction and receipt of contributions. This section defines when a person makes and when an officer accepts receives solicits or directs a contribution. Section 18438.7 addresses prohibitions and disqualifications. This section specifies when the officer has reason to know of a participant's financial interest, when the officer knows or should have known about the proceeding, and when the officer knows or should have known about the contribution.
Section 18438.8 addresses disclosure. This regulation clarifies the disclosure process of note, this section was amended to address disclosure requirements in circumstances where the officer is not aware of a contribution prior to the beginning of a public meeting. Section 18705 addresses legally required participation. This regulation provides the standards in which an otherwise disqualified official is permitted to take part in a decision because the officer's participation is legally required.
A challenge for local agencies is discerning which agenda proceedings are impacted. Government Code section 84308 subsection 85 states, license permit or other entitlement for use means all business professional trade and land use licenses and permits in all other entitlements for use including all entitlements for land use, all contracts other than competitively bid labor or personal employment contracts in all franchises.
Regulation 184 83.2 further clarifies that a proceeding involving a license permit or other entitlement for use is a Proceeding involving entitlement for use that is either one applied for by the party to formally or informally requested by the party Or three a contract between the agency and the party or a franchise granted by the agency to a party except for those types of contracts exempted under section 8 4 3 0 8 So for the county proceedings, this means that applicants, appellants, contractors, agents or any financially interested party who actively supports or opposes the county's decision on the agenda item who have made campaign contributions totaling more than $250 to a board member since January 1st of 2023 are required to disclose that fact for the official record of the subject proceeding.
Members of the Board of Supervisors are disqualified and not able to participate in any agenda item involving contracts other than competitively bid, labor or portional employment contracts, franchises, discretionary land use permits and other entitlements of the board member If the board member received more than $250 in campaign contributions from the applicant or contractor, an agent of the applicant or contractor, or any financial interested party who actively supports or opposes the county's decision on the agenda item since January 1st of 2023.
There are some nuances for board members to be aware of. If a contribution of more than $250 is received during the 12 months after the date of the final decision, the supervisor may return the contribution within 14 days of accepting, soliciting or directing the contribution whichever comes latest. And if a supervisor received a contribution that would require disqualification and returns the contribution within 30 days from the time the supervisor knows or should have known about the contribution and the proceeding, the supervisor is permitted to participate in the proceeding.
So who is responsible for compliance and enforcement? Generally, a party or participant and officers of the agency need to be aware of campaign contributions and ensure compliance. The FPPC is a regulatory agency for administration and enforcement. Local agencies are still awaiting fact sheet guidance and further clarification from FPPC on agency compliance obligations.
To date, not many jurisdictions have taken action. We believe many were waiting for FBPC approved regulations and fact sheet guidance for further guidance and clarification. There was disclosure language for public agendas that was circulating early on in the county implemented this in April of 2023 We did find that Orange County has developed policy and procedures to obtain disclosure forms for affected activities prior to putting them on their agenda.
An example of the disclosure form is included as attachment C. This slide shows the agenda disclosure language that was added to the Board of Supervisors public agenda beginning in April, and it was the verbiage that I had read on previous slides. Additionally your board may want to consider other board policy options such as directing staff to explore and develop a policy and procedures Similar to Orange County that includes disclosure forms and processes to assess agenda items We would need to work with the department's determine the fiscal and staff time impacts related to this Or your board could direct staff to explore other ways to facilitate compliance preferably once fact sheet guidance and educational materials are developed by the FPP see That brings us to the recommended action, to receive and file this presentation.
Provide other direction as appropriate and deem this item not subject to CEQA. With that I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
6:07 – 6:1313 turns
I hope that enormously clears it all up for me. Clear as mud!
Supervisor Lavagnino? Thank you. I want to go to slide 13, the impacts to local agencies And the government code section 84308A. Can you just explain the items that are inside the parentheses? So I guess these are the items that would be allowed, I mean these are the exclusions I guess.
Sorry Supervisor Levenson what slide were you looking
at? Slide 13 says page 13 impacts local agencies. Yeah, other than competitively bid. That doesn't seem I mean to me that seems like something people would want to know about too. I look at those exclusions and they seem like if we're talking about transparency there shouldn't be any exclusions. And I don't understand the personal employment contract how I don't know how that would ever come up. But the other two, I think, happen all the time and I would think people should know on compatibility bid or labor issues. That's the whole reason we're doing this.
So I don't really understand why those are exclusions. Or are they exclusions? They are. Okay. Can you help with that a little bit?
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Labadino, those are exclusions and in the original statute it wasn't exactly clear what those terms meant and part of the regulations that the FPPC adopted was to define those a little bit more clearly including what is a competitively bid contract? What is a labor contract? To your question about a personnel personal employment contract. It's a Contract for employment between an agency and an agency employee an individual it's rare that you see those but every once in a while There's one of those it comes to like a contractor on payroll for
okay, so if you had five contractors bid on a project and we are awarding the contract to team a It would seem to me that it would be in the public's interest to understand if any of those people had contributed anything to a board member, in my book. So I mean, I'm fine with all this. I just think we should... If we're gonna be, you know, in the interest of transparency and I know we're just kinda looking at this to figure out what we wanna do but I'd feel much more comfortable there just weren't any exemptions.
Supervisor Nelson or Supervisor
Hartman. Well, if I look at today's agenda there were six A items that were contracts or agreements and there was one D item that was a competitive bid process and I guess all I want to know is when does it apply? How do I know because you could get easily Even deliberately trapped and have the duty to figure this out. And I don't know who is with all the different contracting agencies, so I do think something that would come up from the department, this applies or this doesn't apply, to be really helpful Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I mean, I don't know and I don't think anybody can tell us exactly how far it goes. So until we understand these things, I'd rather not as a blanket say we want to do everything but I really would like to know what applies and what doesn't.
Supervisor Nielsen?
Yes. Yeah there's a lot of questions here so one of them was advocating for or against an item That would prohibit first supervisor to be able to vote on something, right? If so if somebody let's say somebody had given me $500 shows up to a meeting and now opposes that item. Now I need to go ahead and recuse myself in the middle of that hearing for that
item. My understanding would be only if that is the agent or the principal for that item So not just any general advocate Yeah, someone shows up for public comment and just happens to agree or disagree then that's not covered by the statute.
Can I get clarification on that? How does staff understand
that? I think I would defer to County Council for that.
6:13 – 6:198 turns
So there's definitions in the statute for party and participant. Party can be the person who files the application, including the agent. Participant means any person who is not a party but who actively supports or opposes a particular decision. And of course it has to be a qualifying license permit entitlement including a contract and who has a financial interest in the decision. So it's the two pieces. So it's not necessarily anyone that shows up, but someone that's given a contribution opposes or supports and has a financial interest.
But if something is happening next door to your house because we're like there's a lot of things that we do can have an economic impact not only on the applicant but a neighbor. And that's one reason why we have to recuse ourselves from things that are in general areas Applying their potentially there too. That's where I'm trying to, I'm trying to dig in and try to that's why this does seem like there's a lot of traps potentially in here for electives and therefore having to either recuse ourselves or I guess at that point if we realize that after the fact we'd have to return the funds within 14 days is that what I'm understanding as well?
Supervisor Nelson, so quite a few questions there and I actually want to go back to one of the questions you said earlier. So what does it start by saying? So this is enforced by the Fair Political Practice Commission. So if you have questions or doubts, you can call their hotline if you have If you think there's an ambiguity, you can get a letter and that's something that our office can assist with. So that's the way that you really know if you're safe.
As to your question about a neighbor, if a person is participating and they are opposing or supporting and they've given you a contribution And they live next door. I would think it could potentially impact them financially, so I do think it would probably apply We had a question earlier about What does it mean The definition of competitively bid contract. So, in the statute it just says competitively bid contract. In the regulations it goes a step further and defines it means a contract required by law to be awarded to the lowest responsible bidder with a responsive bid. So it's a little bit more limiting so sometimes we do competitive bidding but it's not necessarily a responsible bidder So I would encourage you to look at the definitions.
They're not in place yet, they've been adopted by the FPPC but they're not yet filed and in effect. It also defines labor contract and that was another question we have which is collective bargaining agreements.
And Supervisors, this is the County Council referring to Attachment B that talks about some of the implementing regulations listed out there. It is confusing. We agree it is confusing and the difficulty as County Council said is the FPPC sets the rules and they still haven't come out with their fact sheets yet.
Supervisor Katz?
Thank you. I appreciate these two items kind of coming together with, because this is super messy and complicated and we're trying to figure it out with this FPCC language but fundamentally this is about trying to eliminate and get at conflicts of interest and what we're I think struggling with is how do we know when there's a conflict? And what I appreciate about what Orange County has done Well, I should stop first and say thank you to staff for at least start. First step is to put it on our own agendas so that the public is aware, folks are aware we're reminded of the new law that we have to abide by.
And I very much believe in the spirit of the law and now we're trying to figure out how to make it into reality but I thank you also too to Ms. Anderson including what Orange County has done because we may not know who agents are with all these various contracts, but people know when they've donated to us. And so I appreciated at that point of the process when something is going to be on the agenda that the applicant has that fairly straightforward form. I thought that was at least a good thing to try. Maybe we encounter problems along the way later, That puts some onus on those who do business before the board to disclose donations, which would then make us aware if we aren't already. So I thought—I'm very much in support of giving that a shot to see if that helps clear up and provide us the access to the information because Our County Council saying is it's not really on them to enforce this.
It's up to us, but our the rub is for us How do we even know if there's all these intricate contracts who's involved? We often just see the name of a vendor We don't know who the people are so how you know I'm trying You know We all want to clear this up so that we abide by the spirit of eliminating conflicts of interest and I think that the Orange County Disclosure form is an excellent step to try
Supervisor Hartman
Well, it seems to me that that's one of the issues is did the person give or not somebody in that entity. But the other question is does this particular agreement require disclosure? So, I mean the agent for example may not know whether it fits in the exception or whether it fits that we have to disclose. So it seems to me that ideally on our A agenda we would know these are ones where you've got to be careful this is where it applies but that would require our staff to be able to know and at this point I don't think anybody even knows the D item that we did today whether that applies or not
6:19 – 6:2410 turns
Thank
you.
I'm looking at the Orange County one and I'm just trying to figure out that practical application so if I understand that somebody's coming in and asking for a permit from P&D, I could see them filling this out but then when it comes on to the agenda for approval at some point or a change in some point how would you know I mean, unless you every day you're running through your form 460 and you're running through the agenda and you're trying to marry up all of these things.
I don't know how that works. I guess I could talk to one of their supervisors but trying to figure out how that information because you're not going be able to send the agenda to all of your donors every week and say hey is anybody on this sheet? I want to get there, I'm just trying to figure out how it really works because I could see this happening. This one's good at the beginning of the process but at the end when you're getting ready to vote or you're getting ready to listen to it, I don't know how this piece of paper comes into play.
I thought you had an answer to that question that I raised with you about the agenda review.
Supervisor Capps and Supervisor Lavagnino through the chair, so you're seeing this disclosure form they have a lot of very in-depth policy that they spend a lot of time on clearly And the intent of it was that as part of their agenda review process That County Council was taking someone to the lead and in reviewing these that are submitted and Then there they are notifying the respective board offices. So it sounds like a very involved process That certainly we can get more educated on
Supervisor Hartman
So taking the simplest, a land use permit, a discretionary land use permit that goes to the Planning Commission. If it goes to the Planning Commission but it's not appealed to the Board do we still have to not take money or recuse? How do we track these things? know whether it'll be appealed. We're not necessarily the decision, is it when the application is filed? I mean could you walk us through that just for the most obvious discretionary land use what how it works?
I'm gonna see if the County Council has thoughts towards that process Supervisor Hartman, I'm sorry can you repeat that question
Yes, there's a project that comes into planning and development. And when it comes in, it's not always clear exactly what the permit path will be. It may be decided by staff. It may be appealed to the PC. It maybe appealed to the board. So at what point are board members required to disclose, not take money, give money back? You have this period of time. A lot of time could elapse so that's the most obvious where we don't want to run afoul but even that to me is confusing
Supervisor Hartman through the chair in that attachment that I mentioned earlier. That's in your board letter the regulations now part of what we didn't know before was what does it mean to have a pending application and The regulations do lay out what it means to be pending And then you also have to look at the time frame before and after the action so It talks about License permit entitlement for use is commenced or considered pending only under the following circumstances, and then has quite a few circumstances. But for an officer, it's when the decision is before the officer for the officer's consideration if the officer's a member of the governing body. This includes any item placed on agenda for discussion or decision at a public meeting Or the officer knows or has reason to know a proceeding involving a license, permit or other entitlement for use is before the jurisdiction of the agency.
It has reasonably foreseeable that the decision will become before the officer. So for instance I would say if it's appealable so if it's a decision that's eventually appealable to your board some are and some are not. If it's eventually appealable to your board it's likely foreseeable that it could come before you. And a party or agent or participant A proceeding involving antlicing is pending when it's before the jurisdiction of the agency for its decision or other action.
So, it does have to do with who is the decision maker and also the timing of the contribution and when the item comes to hearing.
6:25 – 6:3016 turns
So
it's really the date of the vote, right? It's a year before the vote and a year after the vote. And it's whether you get to vote or not. Not that you can't take it but if you take it within that two-year window.
And your window is incorrect in statute. It's larger. A
year before and a year after. The vote so it's a two-year window. No, and I was clear as mud but to your window and you just don't get you don't get the vote You can take the money, but you're not allowed to vote or else you have to return the vote for true return the donation
Mr. Chair and Supervisor Nelson, I don't believe that's the case. Okay, I believe that Give me a minute and I'll get you the language. I believe there are some circumstances where it is prohibited to accept the contribution, but if for instance you took the contribution but it wasn't pending yet, but then it became pending and came to your board and you realized that you can recuse or you can give the money back with a certain period of time, I think that's how it works. There are some circumstances we're actually not supposed to take the contribution.
Supervisor Hartman. I do want to just though caution everyone we still have three items
One of our items, you know any member of the Coral Casino That donated to any of us within this year or a year in the future probably is somebody that therefore one of us couldn't vote. And I have no idea, I don't know their membership list.
Do you have an economic history? We could ask that for the county council. Is a member of the Coral Casino a principal under or an agent under these definitions? Financial interest. Because I don't know who it is, but I'm sure there's a member. Mr.
Chair, members of the board, it's possible that a member would be a participant if they are actively opposing or supporting and they have a financial interest. I don't know if it would impact a financial
interest or not. Then you may need to figure that out very quickly because It may be that none of us can vote because we don't even know who the members of the Coral Casino are.
Mr. Chair, Members of the Board, so it's not necessarily... Participants are people who are actively opposing or supporting. So that's how you know who it is. It's not necessarily anyone out there that has a financial interest. As far as advising in general, I could give you our interpretation which is what I'm doing but ultimately it's up to the FPPC and they're the ones that are going to enforce it. So that's why I started with, you know, I have been actively trying to guide but for instance we had a number of questions when this first came out That now some of which have been resolved by the regulations. But before that, for instance, competitively bid or what is a labor contract? That wasn't clear.
We thought it could be very broad or it could be very narrow. So the regulations that PPC put out are an attempt to help guide on those questions but there's still going to be some open questions.
But so your interpretation would be that a Coral Casino member for example that is not here and has not sent us an email wouldn't disqualify us, but a Coral Casino member that did advocate would disqualify us. That provided a contribution in this calendar year
Mr. Chair and members of the board, I'm trying to go back to the definition of participant but I haven't been able to find it yet because I think that answers your question.
Chair Williams?
On that note just really quickly, a participant does talk about they have to be someone who's in person that lobbies the board. A person who actively supports or opposes a particular decision in a proceeding, if that person lobbies in-person, the officers or employees of the agency testifies in person before the agency. Or otherwise acts to influence officers of the agency.
Chair Williams, I think this is too complicated for us to come to a quick decision. I think we need to get staff advice about not about how to interpret this but how we know which decisions qualify that we need to start doing our own research about who's and we don't feel like we have a very good handle on that right now
6:30 – 6:349 turns
Supervisor cap
you had a question. I believe at one point during this process when I raised this before Maybe I'm making this up, but that there was a potential for an FPCC Representative to do like an open session briefing with us is that possible? I mean I I It seems as though we're directing questions about a state law in the wrong direction and this is of public interest. If we could do something, I'm just putting out a suggestion if we could do like a study session and be able to ask questions to the people who are actually enforcing this.
I think it would be helpful. Ms. Anderson?
Yeah, Supervisor Capps through the chair so they were not able we actually asked you to be available but I could reach back with them and see if maybe there's something around their time frame that we can have some type of learning session that way Because there's so many questions and the questions that you're all bringing up are very relevant in most of the discussion that we're hearing when we listen through on to the FQPC meeting. So it's a lot to clarify, and I'm hoping that their fact sheets that they're obviously spending a lot of time on are going to help with that process.
Thank you. If I might add, this is absolutely critical that we get it right because we can in our best good faith efforts try to comply and if we make a mistake it'll be on the front page of a newspaper and can be very devastating so we don't want to be in that position. It really matters
And Supervisors, I think from Nancy's listening to the different hearings and my reading of it and as far as County Council. I think they like we said the intent of it but they also have issues or not issues but they try to give some grace that the elected official may not know And once they do know, then they have to take certain actions. But they understand that and they also have in the Q&A, the question was does an official have a duty to proactively determine whether a participant has a financial interest in a decision?
No Section 840308 and Regulation 18438.7 require an official to recuse when the official knows or has reason to know of a participant's financial interest in proceeding, but neither the statute nor regulation establishes a proactive duty to investigate a potential financial interest such as reviewing other public records or questioning the individual. But as County Council said there are two things.
Supporting or opposing and do they have a financial interest? And it seems the Q&A from FPP seeing so you don't have a proactive duty to investigate the potential financial interest
Supervisor Lavinia. Do you is
there essentially we're coming to an end here? I think I agree with supervisor Hartman that this is super sensitive and I understand that the FPPC may say that they are gonna handle it, you know kindly but the perception is going to be for whoever violates it by accident There's no coming back from that so That's why I think right now the rules that we deal with are very hard and specific and they're very detailed and And we all are very aware of what those are. And so yeah, I'm not comfortable and I think peppering our county council with more questions isn't gonna get us anywhere because she's not the one responsible for this. So I think we all put a little pressure on FVPC to get, if they want compliance, best way to get it is to get somebody here and explain to us exactly what is acceptable, what isn't acceptable, You know exemption whatever we need to hear from the horses now.
And if I might add case studies this is what we're dealing with, what happens?
So might I suggest a motion to receive and file and to return with more information from the FVPC. Can I get a motion to that effect? That's my motion. Okay, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. Sorry to announce we are on item 4 not 5 but hopefully it is very with us soon so Mr. Wilson.
6:35 – 6:474 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board departmental item number four is from the planning And Development Department, it is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the Montecito Planning Commission's and the County Planning Commission's recommendation to adopt a comprehensive plan amendment case number 22 GPA 5 amending the wildfire hazard information and policies in the seismic safety and safety element.
Please proceed.
Mr. Chair, members of the board, we're here to present wildfire amendments to the safety element of the comprehensive plan. With me today is Whitney Wilkinson, the project planner. She'll be doing the presentation. We also have David Lackey, the supervising planner and as well as members of the fire department. Next to me is Rob Hazard and then we also have Fred Tan in the audience as well to answer any questions. So I'll turn it over to Whitney to give a presentation.
Good afternoon, Chair Williams and Board of Supervisors. Again my name for the record is Whitney Wilkinson I'm a planner in long-range planning and the project manager for the Safety Element Update Project. I'm here today to present amendments to the safety element on wildfire information and policies And again, I just want to reiterate if there are in-depth questions. Our County Fire Marshal Rob Hazard is here and also our OEM Director Kelly Hubbard is here if there are any questions on fire or emergency management.
Throughout my presentation today, I may refer to the other concurrent phases of the Safety Element Update Project. So I wanted to briefly mention what those are. The amendments you'll receive today comprise phase one on wildfire and the other two are currently in development and include our evacuation modeling and planning project And the third is our climate change adaptation plan, and both address additional legislative requirements and are projected to be completed in the summer or fall of next year.
The timing of welfare amendments before you today aligns with the board's recent adoption of the county's 2022 multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan and the benefits of adopting by reference into the safety element. The purpose of the amendments before you today are to meet some of the legislative requirements pertaining to the safety element. Again, incorporate the 2022 Hazard Mitigation Plan and meet some of the recommendations found in CAL FIRE's Safety Element Assessment which covers some of the legislative requirements.
The legislative updates we are specifically addressing include SB 1241. The last update to the safety element in 2015 aimed to address this legislation, however the board at the time elected to leave some of their requirements for a future update and that update is now. This legislation requires addressing fire risk in the state responsibility areas and in the very high fire hazard severity zones It also required the county to make certain findings when approving subdivision maps, and these were addressed through previous amendments to Chapter 21 of the County Code back in 2015.
SB 1035 requires the county to review and update the safety element as necessary at least every eight years with any new information relating to fire hazards and climate adaptation and resilience strategies. And as I mentioned at the beginning, our team is also currently working on our phase three updates that will incorporate our work on our climate change vulnerability assessment and the Climate Adaptation Plan which will address that legislation.
The third update we will address is SB 99 which requires the safety element to identify residential developments with only one emergency evacuation route On April 4th of this year, your board adopted the 2022 Hazard Mitigation Plan. And as part of the findings for this approval, your board directed staff to incorporate it. The updated hazard mitigation plan into the safety element doing so allows a county to be eligible for greater portion of state disaster relief funding and has been done for previous versions of the hazard mitigation plan.
Our third driver behind this update is the tool that was used to guide the amendment process, the Safety Element Assessment. This is CAL FIRE's tool to help them determine if our safety element is meeting various requirements and how they offer recommendations to add information or strengthen policies that mitigate or reduce fire risk. This slide is a high-level look at the Safety Elements Table of Contents and is highlighting where in the safety element you can find our proposed amendments.
There are numerous updates to the fire hazard and fire services section, as you might expect, and a few minor updates to the abstract and citations related to wildfire. We've also updated the language and hyperlink in section eight where the hazard mitigation plan is discussed. And finally, we wanted to add some minor additions to each hazard section where evacuation is discussed.
These changes reflect the evacuation planning work required of the county in the second phase of the safety element update project to map and evaluate evacuation routes. You can find all Track Change Amendments to the Safety Element text in Attachment C, Exhibit 1 of the Board Letter. This is a list of specific updates made and include text amendments to tables and maps, hyperlinks to a new online interactive map, and necessary updates to other resources and information.
I will get into some of these in more detail Single Egress Neighborhoods is the name we assigned to the areas we mapped to comply with SB 99. Again, SB 99 requires the county to identify residential developments and hazard areas that have only one emergency evacuation route. In our mapping, we defined a neighborhood as containing at least 30 lots. So our team worked with P&D GIS and a team of representatives from the fire districts, OEM, sheriff and public works to develop mapping criteria and then to vet the maps once they were completed.
The legislative requirements to do the mapping are not specific to wildfire, so we map these neighborhoods in various hazard zones including tsunami and dam inundation zones, FEMA flood hazard zones in addition to the fire hazard severity zones. This work also dovetails and supports the work in our other phases of our project where Evaluating and mapping evacuation routes, and developing our climate adaptation plan.
The wildfire policies and actions in the safety element underwent a pretty comprehensive update, by which I mean policies were renumbered and given titles. Some policies were carried forward from the current 2015 version sometimes with minor edits. The 2015 version contained implementation measures and we've renamed these to actions. And these actions now more directly tie to the policies And the main point is that many of these policies and actions largely reflect standards and regulations with which the county already chooses to or must comply, including the state and county building code, state and county fire code, and state firesafe regulations.
Attachment D of the board letter provides a table with each policy in action and describes whether it's a new or ongoing practice for the county. This slide gives you an idea of the project and review timeline. We began our initial safety element assessment review in May of 2022. Staff worked on drafting amendments from June through January, In February of this year, we submitted our draft safety element update to the State Board of Forestry.
On March 7th was our hearing at the Board of Forestry's Resource Protection Committee where CAL FIRE presented our safety element to the Board of Forestry for final review. At the conclusion of the presentation, the board of forestry had no further official comments or recommendations on changes to the safety elements. Per state regulations, staff also provided the safety element amendments to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Cal OES and the State Geological Survey with minimal comments received and addressed.
The safety element amendments were reviewed by the Montecito and County Planning Commissions in May and their recommendations are summarized in action letters that are attachment E and F to the board letter. To expand a bit on staff's work on the completed amendments, long-range planning staff reviewed the Office of Planning and Research fire hazard planning document part of its general plan technical advice series.
Some of our amended policies are from this document as you will see in attachment D of the board letter. LRPE staff also met with County Fire to understand existing county regulations and policies, present research and policy examples, and to coordinate policy development and to fulfill the Board of Forestry recommendations. The Safety Element team corresponded with staff from Montecito Fire and Carpinteria-Summerlin Fire to solicit any comments or feedback as well.
Staff also asked for comments on proposed amendments from the county's Development Review Division, County OEM and County Parks to make sure that they were okay with any policy language changes. The proposed safety element amendments are exempt from CEQA under CEQA guideline section 15061B3 since the proposed amendments have no possibility of significant effect on the environment.
Staff prepared a notice of exemption for this reason, which is included as attachment B to your board letter. The State Board of Forestry and CAL FIRE are completing updates to the fire hazard severity zone maps for the state responsibility areas, and we anticipate that these maps will be approved and adopted later this year. Recommended action D in your board letter is to incorporate these maps into the safety element once they're adopted by the Board of Forestry.
Staff recommends the Board of Supervisors approve the recommended actions listed on page one of today's board letter. And that concludes my presentation, I'm happy to take any questions you might have.
6:47 – 6:529 turns
Thank you Ms. Wilkinson. Any questions? Seeing none is there a public comment?
Chair Williams and members of the board, yes we have one request to speak from the public on this item. And we are going to Zoom with Kendra Duncan O'Connor. Kendra?
Hi Chair Williams and Supervisors I just have a few concerns about the proposed element update and I just wanted to comment firstly on the language of policy 1.2 in the update as well as the statement by staff regarding the change after the Board of Forestry approval The former proposed language of policy 1.2 states discourage high risk uses in the hazard zones. The county shall discourage land uses that could put people at unreasonable risk in high or very high fire hazard severity zones, but the current proposed language is minimize risk in hazard zones. The county will consider risks from hazards when reviewing plans for development I would like to start by saying that we are committed to reducing the number of residents and occupancies in high or very high fire hazard severity zones.
And take action to minimize risks to occupants to the greatest extent feasible. This language change seems minor, but it is not. Changing shall to will and adding to the greatest extent feasible opens Our Santa Barbara County Fire Department has an unbelievable wealth of local knowledge, years of experience fighting fires. And I have every confidence in Rob and Fred and the whole department with their ability to protect our community and create policy to assist the department carrying out that mission. I don't have as much confidence in our county planning department when it comes to new housing development. I'm not sure why the language has changed after the Board of Forestry approval and catastrophic fires in our community have been devastating.
History and local knowledge dictate future policy, and the specific language in this policy is critical due to the thousands of additional housing units mandated by the state and proposed in the current Housing Element Update. Neighborhoods in designated high-fire hazard severity zones are already at risk, and lack of evacuation routes in these areas cannot be mitigated if new development continues to be approved. The term to greatest extent feasible is vague and inadequate when life safety is at risk. I urge you to re-evaluate the new proposed language of policy 1.2 and revise it to reflect the previously proposed language. My last quick comment is compliance with Senate Bill 99 and 2911 regarding identification of single egress neighborhoods, I noticed some discrepancies between the Cal Fire subdivision survey reports and the county's draft map.
And I just would like you to update the county draft map to include all the foothill areas outlined in the Cal Fire survey. Thanks.
And that concludes public comment on this item.
It's to the board? Is there a motion?
Just a question, I would ask staff if they would respond to the public comment
Sure, Supervisor Hartman through the chair. So the language of policy 1.2 was changed because The potential to conflict with part of the government code in which the policy could be interpreted to be in conflict or burden or reduce the number of housing opportunity sites. Require the need to make findings if that were the case and we didn't want to have that potential conflict so We believe the policy language in 1.2 still achieves the end goal we were trying to meet but doesn't create that potential conflict with that particular government code section
If I might follow up, so is that a unanimous opinion including fire department?
Supervisor Hartman through the chair. Yes fire concurs we go through the same exercise as planning does when it comes to balancing projects that are developed around housing opportunities and then also projects have to incorporate wildfire mitigation strategies. So FIRE believes that the current fire code, the Santa Barbara County Fire Code when combined with the state fire safe regulations and our development standards gives us a large tool chest to make sure that these mitigation strategies are incorporated into planning and still allow opportunities for housing where it's appropriate.
6:52 – 6:587 turns
Mr. Nelson?
I want to ask staff about the public comment letter from Ms. Zimmer about whether approval of this would precede some of these ministerial actions that are now made possible from the state, do we have any clarification on that?
Yeah, Supervisor Nelson through the chair. We just wanted to clarify that the proposed safety element Policy 8.1 that is referenced by Ms. Zimmer doesn't change the county's development standards, it doesn't change our fire code or the fire safe regulations And the language in policy 8.1 really reflects existing practice by the county, it just states that new development will comply with applicable ingress egress requirements and the new policy wouldn't change the current authority of the fire marshals to make a finding of same practical effect to grant a variance.
And Rob I don't know if you have anything to add?
Yeah, I'll just reiterate that. I have before me an excerpt from fire safe regulations and also from the California Fire Code. And in both of these regulatory documents in both of these codes it specifically calls out the authority of the fire agency having jurisdiction being able to offer what we call same practical effect alternatives when strict adherence to the code is not practical. Examples of this would be access through very steep topography where you just physically cannot create a wide enough road, even some of our public county roads as we all know through our mountainous areas are not in compliance with the minimum standard And so the way that fire agencies deal with these issues, to make sure that we're not essentially denying development or doing what we call a land taking is we find alternative strategies that would provide a similar effect.
If a project is outside of the water purveyor and therefore is required to have stored water, we can ask that the project increase or double the amount of stored water. Sometimes for example, we have projects that are ADUs that are being constructed adjacent to the primary home that is not sprinklered and therefore the ADU is not required to be sprinklered but we can make that requirement in lieu with something else and gives us the same practical effect.
Policy 8.1 will not change that, policy 8. 1 says that we shall follow these documents both the fire safe regulations and the California Fire Code and built into those regulations is this ability to create alternative strategies to achieve the same effect.
And I appreciate that. I guess maybe it's a legal question, you know where does it stack? Do you have to make these findings or does FHIR have to approve some of these ministerial or by-right actions that the state is allowing? So that's I think where the question I have comes from like she references SB 9 there's other things coming down the pipe And I know that these things are going to cause problems at the state level, that it's not one size fits all and we're starting to see that problem here. But I guess I'm asking a legal question more than how you approach it because I do know the good job that your department does on trying to find workable solutions for property owners.
I was just curious on whether this, the fire codes or at least the safety element supersedes ability for something like a lot split.
Mr Chair and Supervisor Nelson, so SB 9 for lot splits sets out a number of standards for development located in certain state designated fire areas and there's a little bit of room in there even if a development is in a designated area. If they can adopt fire hazard mitigation measures Essentially to meet this same practical effect that the fire marshal can determine There's some discretion there for the fire marshal to determine what is acceptable or not if that was your question Okay, it doesn't get into specific details in the state law itself but leave some discretion to the local Fire marshal.
Thank you
6:58 – 7:036 turns
Okay. Is there a motion from the board?
Move staff recommendation.
Is there a second? There's a motion by Hartman, a second by Lavinia. All those in favor please say aye.
Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. We will take up A7 which we have trailed before our final item D5.
And chair Williams members of the board if I could just read that reread that item into the record administrative item number seven is from the county executive office. It is to consider recommendations regarding an amendment to chapter 50 of the County Code licensing of cannabis operations and I do believe yes my staff is passing out Updated revised copies of Administrative 7, which includes a memo and a couple attachments. And that is available online as well as in the back of the room. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chair Williams and members of the board. The documents you were just provided include a memo and three attachments. The memo updates our recommendations for this item A7 that was trailed in order to revise the recommendation to now have a first reading of changes to Chapter 50 I would like to walk you through those changes that we discussed earlier today and were directed by the board.
So starting with grounds for denial of a license, the changes we made today are highlighted in red. We have updated the language to read that tax reports are due at the end of the month, the reporting month and taxes The penalty or I'm sorry, the consequence to an operator of not being able to have a license issued or renewed becomes effective 60 days from the due date of when the taxes are due.
This change reflects that this will become operative after August 17th because of the week delay in the first reading and second reading. Move down here. Sorry, let's just move down There are several sections of the ordinance that address changes of when tax reports are due and when taxes are due. And so we made these changes consistent throughout the document, so again in section 5019 unless the treasurer-tax collector has informed our office of any payments that have not been submitted within 60 days of the due date then we would not process a renewal application if an operator was beyond 60 days of payment for any of the quarters in that reporting year.
In addition, in section 5019, Again, we restate that due date of 60 days is when the consequence kicks in.
7:03 – 7:1719 turns
And it says in Section 1L failure to make the reports pursuant to Chapter 50 by the due dates defined in Section 50A-7 where is that due date?
So that due date is outlined in 50A, and what that due date is at the end of the reporting month. So the last day of the reporting month is when the reports are due. That was the case before it is still the case. That gives an operator approximately 30 days but the reporting month may have 31 days so it gives them the entirety of the reporting month to file a tax report So they must file by the end of the reporting month.
The taxes are due 60 days from the due date. Taxes are due on the first of the reporting month, so they have 60 days to pay 30 days. I'm rounding because months have 30 or 31 days but they have a month to report, they have 60 days to pay. And that's consistent throughout all the changes in the document. So when we saw the first reading on June 27th, this language only changes to revise due date or timely payment of taxes to now 60 days from the due date and that's consistent throughout all of these changes.
And so How this affects your recommendations today is we're taking the first reading today of these proposed revisions. The second reading will be on July 18th. The CEQA recommendations remain the same.
Supervisor Nelson?
Yes, something that occurred to me you know when it read through this Was you know the question about predictability of budgeting, you know this requirement now to make sure that we have the reports within 30 days. We should be able to predict I think more consistently because we will have that will know the number we may not have been paid the number yet will have an additional 30 days but I think for budgeting purposes on a quarterly basis we may not have collected the full amount but we should know that number at the end of each month is is that can I understand that correctly?
Supervisor Nelson through the chair, that is correct. Their report should be filed and we would have that number that they reported
Well, I'm really glad we had this discussion up here because I think that dialing it in on that reporting date keeping that 30 days. I think is really important for some of the goals of this board to make sure that we have more timely and consistent information but I still think that the extra 30 days is probably makes it more defensible for us as a board if there is potentially problems in the future also gives the treasurer tax collector some additional time and that's one reason why I'm okay with these changes and will support the motion to do
Supervisor Gaps.
Yeah, I appreciate that reporting distinction is still set at 30 days and ultimately I'm all for a push for this to be moved forward to strengthen our enforcement and to go after the bad actors of which there are too many still unfortunately so I believe this does achieve that and I'm happy to second the motion.
Supervisors Nelson?
I think we had a motion, I will go ahead and make the motion to adopt.
Just one second I want to call for public comment just in case there's someone out there wanting to comment on this.
Chair Williams and members of the board I don't believe we have any other members logging in on zoom or still in our room from this morning who would like to provide public comments so no further requests to speak.
Thank you Madam Clerk, Supervisor Nielsen.
Yes so officially making motion that we adopt the recommended actions and the memorandum dated July 11th from Brittney Utterman to make the changes and revise this and make this the first reading and bring it back on 18th for a second reading.
Is there a second?
Second.
All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous County Council, do you need five minutes or can we proceed?
Mr. Chair yes that would be helpful. Five minutes.
You can take a leisurely transition there which I know you guys never do when I'm chair but We are reconvening the hearing to D5.
7:17 – 7:2411 turns
Of the Coral Casino Amendment Project case numbers 23 APL 15 through 23 APL 18, 23 APL 20, 22 AMD 5 and 22 CDP 79. And this is in the first district and prior to going to staff's presentation on this item we do have one This is a public comment letter from Chris Saldo received Monday, July 10th 2023 at 4.06 PM and if we can get a motion to approve that item into the record I'll make a motion to receive that second
All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous of the Rump Parliament.
Thank you.
I will call for just ex-party communications and I'll start myself. I met with Douglas Large and Kim Seafield on March 9th, 2023 via Zoom. Met with Mr. Medell and Mr. Warner last Thursday, I believe.
Go ahead. Mr. Nelson? Yes, thank you Chair Williams. I received a text message from John Wilsack and had a phone conversation with him yesterday also drove by the location this morning just to reorient myself and that's
it.
And Mr. Labnina? I've had numerous public emails have not had any one-on-one conversations on this matter
Please proceed, staff.
Mr. Chair, members of the board, staff is here to present on the amendments to the Coral Casino. We have the staff planner, Aliyah Vosburg here, supervisor, planner, Quinn Baylor, sorry. And Travis Seward is the Deputy Director. Just to expedite the hearing, on July 6th a memorandum was submitted to the Board of Supervisors that outlined actions that occurred subsequent to the Montecito Planning Commission's hearing which were changes to the project description that staff can highlight in their presentation It is our understanding that the appellants have agreed to the changes the project description and Have reached a resolution to the appeals. So we do have a brief presentation that we can Review these changes with the board supervisors today and then move to the appellants and applicants on this
Good afternoon. My name is Aliyah Vosburg and I'll be presenting on the appeals of the Montecito Planning Commission's approval of the Coral Casino Amendment Project. So to start with a quick background, the project involves the existing Biltmore Hotel and Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club which were originally established in 1927 and 37 respectively. Various permits have been approved over the years for various improvements and today the facilities are operated in compliance with their revised development plan number 03-DBB2 So this is a vicinity map of the project site with the Biltmore and Cora Casino property outlined in white, and consisting of four parcels. The northwestern parcel is used solely for parking. The northeastern parcel includes parking and tennis courts.
The central parcel includes the Biltmore Hotel complex, and the southern parcel includes the Cora casino facilities. So the project before you today is a request for an amendment of the site's previously approved development plan, 03-DBV2. And the code allows for such amendments when the original findings for approval remain valid and the environmental impacts are substantially the same or reduced.
So specifically, the proposed project is a request for an amendment of the approved development plan to modify existing condition numbers 3 and 22. Condition 22 will be modified to allow limited public use of the existing second floor Coral Casino restaurant to reduce the Coral Casino membership allowances, and to eliminate the Coral Casino regular use allowance by Biltmore Hotel guests.
And then condition number three will be modified to reduce the maximum number of permitted Biltmore Hotel guest rooms or keys from 229 to 192. This project was approved by the Montecito Planning Commission at the hearing of April 5th following a detailed discussion and deliberation on the project. Subsequent to the MPC's approval, five appeals were filed by interested parties that collectively cited a lack of protection for the private status of the club and cited issues with how the Montecito Planning Commission hearing was conducted.
Staff reviewed the appeals and found they are without merit. Each of the appeal issues and staff's response is discussed in detail in the board agenda letter, but after the board agenda letter was docketed, the applicant and appellants reached an agreement on a proposed resolution. The resolution is provided in full and the staff memo dated July 7th, but generally the resolution includes proposed edits to the project description to define or further restrict the club privileges afforded to the general manager to specify that the first floor poolside restaurant and bar will remain limited to club members, to limit the general public's access to the second-floor restaurant to a specific door, and to specify certain doors that shall remain locked to prevent public access to the remainder of the club.
All appellants have indicated support for the project if these agreed upon edits to the project description are made. Staff reviewed the proposed project, including these recent resolution edits and found that the project was appropriately reviewed under CEQA and is consistent with all applicable policies and standards of the Coastal Zoning Ordinance and Comprehensive Plan.
So with that, staff recommends that your board take the actions recommended in the staff memorandum to deny the appeals and grant de novo approval of the project as revised. And that concludes staff presentation. Thank you.
Any questions from the board? And we will go on to the appellants. Ms. Seefeldt.
7:24 – 7:308 turns
Good afternoon, board members. I am Kim Seefeldt. My family members and I have been members of the Coral Casino since the 1950s I speak on behalf of myself as a member, and Ms. Suzanne Duca and Lucinda Owen and Mark Trilling also members. You received the July 6th memo that outlines the settlement that was arranged between, among Mr. Warner, the appellants and the county.
And I just for the sake of accuracy of the record, I want to note that the settlement terms are not just in the project description but they're also in condition 22. So I just want and you'll see that by looking at the memo at the end of page one, page two and page three. You'll see each of the settlement terms that we were all able to arrive at also staff is saying asking you to deny the appeals The arrangement is upon your approval, which I hope you do of the application as amended that the appellants will withdraw their appeals. Which is maybe highly technical but that was what the arrangement was.
This whole negotiation took 46 days from the time of the Montecito Planning Commission where the application had to be presented until today I would really like to thank County Council, Callie Kim and the P&D Director Lisa Plowman and her staff. And Mr. Warner and his representatives for the county suggesting the facilitation process and encouraging it and all of us for participating.
That's what led to this resolution. This would, and I like to think we learned something from everything we do. Had the Montecito Planning Commission hearing been a more thorough and informed hearing, I don't think this would have ever come to this board. All the appellants asked for was some reasonable protections if there was going to be a highly unusual public use in a private club Nobody's been able to find another example of that. We wanted some reasonable protections that were enforceable to preserve the private nature of this long and historic family club, that's an asset to our community.
Contrary to Mr. Warner's representations to other members of the club, the five appellants have not kept this club from reopening. This 46-day process has not kept the club from reopening for three years. Mr. Warner has undertaken extensive construction at the club over the last two years that have absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant. And so whenever he decides he's done with his construction, we hope that the club will reopen.
I thank you for your time. If you have any questions please let me know.
Any questions for Ms. Seafield? Ask staff procedurally in order for us to accept the amended application. That is the subject of the agreement We do need to deny the appeal at the same time, correct? Just said that I want you to understand we can't accept that Amended application without denying the appeal as one action
Thank You sir
Okay, mr. Larch three minutes
Good afternoon members of the board, staff. I have nothing to add to what Ms. Seefeld said you'll be glad to hear. I've always been in support in general of this project and the amendment my only concern was that there were certain issues that I think needed clarification to ensure protection Membership and privacy of the club. Those have been achieved in the resolution that we've negotiated and with that I'm happy to report up and nothing to add unless you have questions for me
Any questions for Mr. Larch
Thank
You, thank you, mr. Lurch And there's three more appellants that have all all chosen to not present and then to the applicant mr. Medel You have up to six minutes, though you don't need to use them all.
7:30 – 7:3511 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board, thank you. My name is Bill Medell. I'm representing the owner of the Cora Casino Taiwaner Hotels & Resorts. I'd like to thank county staff and county council as well for their assistance in the facilitation between the parties to come to a resolution as described in memorandum to the board. We prepared a presentation for you today but in interest of time we're not going to do that So in the interest of time we'll forego that presentation, but we'll be available to answer any questions as well.
There's many members of our club here in support of our project, the amendment to our coastal development permit. I don't know if any of them wish to speak and public comment, but I don't think it's necessary to keep you here any longer than you have to be. But what we'd like to do is have you again approve and accept the memorandum in the findings for the coastal development and deny the appeals. We came to a really good resolution with the appellants, took some time, and I think we both are going to walk away from this very satisfied of where we ended up.
And other than that, I think we're ready. We wanna get the club open. This allows us now to finalize our operations program to get the club open and hire former Four Seasons employees to come back to the club as well as reaching out to the community and hire other staff begin the training and get the club open. So that's all I need to say to you today and we'll be around here for any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Medell. Questions from the board? We will go to public comment. I know there are many who await both club members who want to use the facility and employees that want to return to jobs so we all look towards that day.
And the county that would like to collect the TOT. That's
right! You know, this isn't all about naked self-interest Mr. Labanino. Yes, public comment.
Chair Williams and members of the board we have nine requests to speak from the public and we are going to begin with Jack Thimer to be followed by Ed Brown. Jack?
Mr. Chairman I have
nothing to add so now that it's resolved I didn't know that when I submitted my slip thank you
We will now go to Ed Brown to be followed by John Wilczak. Ed?
Yes, hi. My name is Ed Brown and I am not in favor of this. In fact, I'm somewhat offended by this. It's first off it's so vague they talked about 34 seats for members and where does anybody has anyone asked where they may be? There's the dining, the reservations that's so unclear that does anybody know what it actually means? Really, I don't. Maybe I should but they talk about the they can get a really nice chef now okay well has anyone seen the financials? They say it's gonna make it you can make them more profitable or But has anyone seen it? It's awfully, awfully vague.
There was one more thing what was up and I have to be say I'm offended by the email I got that's telling me I need to be here to support this to make the club happen or is it never going to happen if we don't support it? Are you being told you're not gonna get your tax if you don't support this? So I'm a little frustrated but thank you for your time.
We will now go to John Wilczak, to be followed by David Peterson. John?
I apologize for my voice. I'm not used to being blown away with air conditioning. You guys have a, I saw you put all your jackets on and I realized I made a mistake not coming here long sleeve with a sweater or something. Um, I'm firmly in support of the project and just a little background. I came to Santa Barbara in 94 and then 96. I joined the Coral Casino. Luckily, it was owned unfortunately by Marriott Corporation at that point which was a disaster in terms of the upkeep of the club and how it was run.
And fortunately we landed Tye Warner to buy the property and make substantial improvements over several years when I was involved with that project. Since then, the club's been on and off because we had the fires, the Thomas Fires, The virus came along and shut it down for more time, but I'm really pleased with the efforts that Ty Warner's team has made to improve the facility and improve the actual operation of it by eliminating hotel guests from using the facility. That was a big bugaboo especially during holiday times so With that, I firmly entrenched in the thought of you guys approving this and let's get people back to work and back to their life here in Santa Barbara. Thank you.
7:35 – 7:4114 turns
We will now go to David Peterson to be followed by Jim McFarling. David?
Hi good afternoon. I just want to say hallelujah! Let's go. I got my bathing suit in the car we're ready to swim this afternoon so I'm really excited that it's going forward so thank you very much.
We will now go to Jim McFarlane to be followed by Penelope Bianchi. Jim?
Chair and the board, thank you for your time and consideration. Like Dave I'm very excited about the opportunity to see the club reopen. I've been a member with my wife since 1997 and over the years We've attended several charitable functions at the club. Girls Inc., Catholic Charities, Scholarship Foundation to name a few and it's been a great venue for charities and I'll look forward to that happening again as well as adding new jobs to our community so thank you for your time and consideration.
We will now go to Penelope Bianchi to be followed by Amanda Lee.
Hi, we've belonged to the Coral Casino since 1997 also. And I'm just so grateful to Ty Warner and I'm grateful to all of you for working out this wonderful thing and I'm so sorry that it had to be delayed but now the delays will be over and we're all looking forward to our club again. Thank you very much. Bye.
We will now go to Amanda Lee to be followed by Victoria Frost who is our final speaker.
Hello, my name is Amanda Lee. My family and I are newer members of the Coral Casino. In fact we joined just before the shutdown for COVID so we are 100% behind Mr. Warner and his team and feel they've done an amazing job managing the coral and we are just really excited to have it open. So we firmly are in support of all the changes and hope that we're ready to move forward.
Thank you
We will now go to Victoria Frost who is our final speaker on this item.
Hi, thank you so much for your consideration and time today. I think Bill Medell said it all for a lot of us. I've been a member since 1986 and I've been on the Coral Casino Member Committee. For the since 9 2017 and more than a 150 members have come to me and supported this. The Ty Warner and thank you are supporting this for loose resolution and let's just move on and get back into the swimming pool, thank you.
And that concludes public comment on this item.
I'll just say that for my part, it is gratifying that the mediation worked out. I appreciate both parties for their understanding to make an agreement requires listening and requires a little bit of flexibility and I really appreciate that because I think that fundamentally your interests are bridgeable in this matter and of course the greater good of being able to actually reopen both the Biltmore and the Coral Casinos very much in the community's interest. So I want to appreciate that because I know the feelings were very intense, and I understand why they would be intense for folks on both sides with how long things have been closed.
Mr. Nelson?
Yes, thank you Chair Williams. I'm going to go ahead and support the recommended actions. I do have to note though that taking a look at this I do think it's somewhat of an overreach for us to be disinvolved in the operations of this private club. You know, I think these are memberships they need to decide if they want to be members or not so as long as the applicant wasn't proposing something that would impact the surrounding community in a negative way I was willing to support what they had offer up and what they could satisfy their members. I do think it's a really bad precedent for the county using our police powers to determine I will move staff recommend actions a through D.
So that means that the amended application is approved. The appeal is denied, but preserves the agreement and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. We are adjourned to Tuesday July 18th in Santa Barbara.