UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:00 – 0:0515 turns
Good morning.
I will call to order the August 29th, 2023 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk please call the roll.
Roll call, called by Clerk of the Board
Show transcript
The next item of business is approval of the minutes from the August 22nd meeting. Can I get a motion?
Move approval.
Second. There's a motion by Hartman, second by Nelson. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? CEO's report.
Good morning, Chair Williams and board members. I do have a report this morning. This morning, I'm pleased to introduce the county's new video series called Your County, Your Heroes that features unsung heroes throughout the county who embody the spirit of selflessness and dedication to the county. The videos in this series are played on Channel 20 throughout the week or highlighted on our monthly county newsletter on the CSB TV Youth YouTube page and on our social media channels in both English and Spanish. And this morning we are honoring our very own Clarissa Ornelas, a social services worker from the county's public defender's office. And I also want to thank the person who made this all possible, and that's our communications manager PIO Kelsey Butita.
So thank you. Let's see the video.
Welcome to Santa Barbara County, where extraordinary individuals shine bright. Join us as we celebrate the unsung heroes who embody the spirit of selflessness and dedication from tireless volunteers to dedicated public servants these remarkable individuals who inspire us all your county your heroes
My name is Clarissa Arnelis and I work with the Public Defender's Office. I am a part of our Community Defender Division, and we help people that are justice-involved that are experiencing homelessness. We assist with clients that are coming out of custody. We help them get into shelters, transitional housing, sober living, and we continue to work with them until we can obtain permanent low income housing.
We are trying to do our best to assist the people that we're working with with wraparound services, mental health agencies, social service benefits, obtaining employment and getting them connected to education and permanent housing. I do serve our North County population. I was born and raised here and they are people that are my community and sometimes friends and family.
The way I came across Clarissa was through the Public Defender's Office. I was incarcerated at the time, my family wanted nothing to do with me, I was on drugs. Had gotten a daughter taken away because I was in an abusive relationship. I was on the streets, so I was in a very low place.
Kayla is one of my biggest success stories. She was a single mother when I first started working with her and as a single mother myself, I was able to help guide her and she was experiencing homelessness and justice involved. Santa Barbara County got these emergency housing vouchers. I was able to advocate for her to get one of them and she got housed shortly after she got her voucher.
So being introduced to someone That, you know, she took me in as if she were my family. She was my big sister. She really gave me that warmth, that hope.
Ever since then, Kayla has done an amazing job. Now she's an AmeriCorps member in our office and she's working side-by-side with me. I'm very proud of her and I love the passion that she has.
She was there for me, and I've seen how important that was to me at the time. I want to be that person, you know? I want to give them hope. I want to let them know it's possible because there are so many out there that don't think it's possible. This is like a dream to me, being here at the Public Defender's Office just life-changing for me.
To me it's not a job, it's something that I love to do. It's so heart rewarding when you see the transformation in them where they first started when I started working with them to the things that they were able to overcome
Clarissa is, for me she's like I want to be her. She inspires me. She goes like above and beyond. I feel like i'm not the only person she's helped. She's helped so many others. Clarissa really is a community hero.
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Supervisors Clarissa is here today as well as members of the Public Defender's Office.
Thank you for your work and thank you to the members of the department for showing up to support her. And now we have a second, Supervisor Harmon?
Thank you. I just think that's incredible, I have the opportunity at the halftime highlights at six months or so to talk to new employees and I would encourage you to show these county heroes because it's there's I can talk about what it is to have a not just a job but a calling but this really expresses it and congratulations make us all proud
Well, that was a treat and an honor to see. And we have another great, great honor. Mr. Nelson?
Yes, thank you, Chairman Williams. Eighty years ago in the community of Belfont, Normandy there was a plane crash during World War II. In the community of Belfont we were able to rescue six Americans and hide them from the Nazis. From that community, very small community 40 of them were arrested. 17 of them were taken to concentration camps and seven of them died in captivity. Every year there's an Orchid family that goes to Bellefonte to celebrate and commemorate this event, the Stockdale family, and I have them here today and we as a board Actually put together a resolution that we sponsored on June 6th of this year that the Stockton family took to France to present. And so I've asked the Stockton family to come up here for a moment, I think they have a message from the Mayor Bill Font back to the Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County.
Jennifer.
Thanks for your opportunity. So Honorable Board of Supervisors, staff and the members of the community. My name is Dave Stockdale. This is my wife Jennifer Stockdale and my sons Anthony and James. As Bob said we're here today to report on a heartwarming result of a resolution that you passed Early this summer and to thank you for your efforts. As Bob mentioned on July 4th, 4th of July 1943 almost a year before the invasion of Normandy during World War II a B-17 on a bombing run of Le Mans was shot down near the small community of Bellefonte in Lower Normandy France.
Of the 10 aviators on the plane two were killed Two were captured by the Germans, but six were collected by the local resistance and returned safely to England. However until then, the Gestapo had not known how organized the resistance was in that area and they made it their business to break it up. So a result was that 40 people were arrested Seventeen were sent to exile, to prison camps outside France and six or seven died in captivity.
So this small French community sacrificed six people to save six Americans. For many years the community has held a solemn ceremony to remember the ten Americans and remember their lost friends and family members. So this 4th of July was the 80th anniversary Of the event and the community arranged a very special ceremony. The Santa Barbara County Supervisors.
Wonderfully graciously passed a resolution actually dated by happy accident on the anniversary of D-Day, June 6th to quote thank the people of the commune of Belfont for keeping alive the memory of the American Airmen and the memory of their courageous neighbors friends and family who selflessly in at great cost Came to the aid of our fellow Americans. Jennifer and I thought you might be interested to hear some of the details.
Of how this proclamation was presented and received first, I'd like to emphasize that tremendous honor. That they pay to the American flag. During the events there are numerous French flags carried and on display, but the American flag is the largest. And finest. The community built a stone monument you can see on the screen there with the names of the victims.
And three flags on top. Two French and one American. As you can see, the American flag is in the middle and higher than the other two. The whole day's ceremonies begin with Mass at the local church. Their respect for our customs and honoring the flag is so great that during the consecration of the mass, when all French flags dip, American flag stays upright since they know the American flag never bows.
After Mass, there is a procession to the site of the monument within yards where the B-17 crashed. The ceremony took about an hour. The events were retold, wreaths of flowers were laid, local dignitaries including their representative in the French Senate spoke and the choir did a fine job of singing in English an African American spiritual entitled Freedom.
It's really quite moving. Afterward, our national anthem is played. The French national anthem is sung and like I said it's all very moving. The day ended with a very fine French meal served over the course of five hours. This is where we presented the proclamation to the mayor of Belfont in your name. The commune of Belfont is very small just 206 people A hundred people were at the dinner.
When they told the Assembly that this resolution was unanimously passed by the government officials representing nearly 500,000 people there wasn't audible gasp from the crowd. They were extremely honored. The wonderfully framed, thank you very much for that, and presented proclamation now hangs in the mayor's office in a prominent spot. So again Jennifer and I would like to thank you for your graciousness of passing the resolution and let you know it was very meaningful to the community and since Belfont is our second home it was meaningful to us as well so thank you very much for your effort We have here for you some medals that we had prepared to give to the people who were involved in the ceremony.
So my boys, my sons will hand those out too. A little anecdote is that one of the people in the community who received that, her name is Madame Collin. Her father was the head of the gendarmes at the time. The Germans thought he was their collaborator. Actually, he was the head of the resistance And they found him out, and he's one of the people that lost his life.
But Madame Callan received that, and she and her husband were very happy to receive it and wear it, and I hope that you all are happy to receive it as well. Thank you so much.
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We will be sending
this to
the mayor of Bellefonte, France.
Well, I just want to thank you for going and participating and for making sure that we remember as the people of Normandy remember that neither our republic nor their Republic would have endured free from the tyranny of kings and dictators without each other. And what a fragile and powerful experiment in humankind our form of government is And to see this celebrated in that way is an honor it's especially an honor.
Because I had an uncle in the. That whose job was to do the same and in rural Holland. And so that is especially an honor for me. Adam clerk are there any announcements or changes to our agenda today?
Chair Williams and members of the board, I do have a number of announcements this morning. First we posted an addendum to today's agenda on Friday August 25th amending administrative item number two. Administrative item number two is from the behavioral wellness department it is to consider recommendations regarding an approval to issue a request for proposals for services at the Santa Barbara County Crisis Stabilization Unit Calais Real Campus And this should be reflected for fiscal years 2023 through 2028 and not 2027.
Again, the addendum is to be reflected as fiscal years 2023 through 2028. Additionally, although not a part of the addendum and separate in the summary text I did have a quick announcement. There is a correction to the second sentence that should read this RFP will stipulate that the designation of the CSU is being converted from a unlocked to a locked unit and will operate eight crisis beds for our contract period to run through June 30th 2027. This sentence is correct throughout the document except that one line. Additionally, we did receive a withdrawal request from the department for administrative item number 26. Administrative item number 26 is from the Planning and Development Department. It is to set a hearing to consider the appeal of the County Planning Commission approval of the Clinics Inc Cannabis Cultivation Project case numbers 23 APL 30, 23 CUP 12 and 19 LUP 77 in the fifth fourth district excuse me And please note the applicant has withdrawn their appeal and as such, the department has withdrawn the item to be set for hearing.
Additionally, we received a withdrawal request from the Department for departmental item number two. Departmental item number two is from the Public Works Department and the General Services Department. It is adhering to consider recommendations regarding a resolution of necessity to acquire easements for the Toro Canyon Oil Water Separator Project APN 155020-041 and this is in the 1st District. Please note that Department has submitted a request for withdrawal of this item due to real property exchange agreement With the property
owners.
Excuse me, sorry one moment I believe we can hear someone on Zoom if you can please mute your microphones that would be greatly appreciated. And we will take up the withdrawal of departmental item 2 when we get to that item later this afternoon For the public participating in today's meeting, please note There is a closed session agenda this morning and we anticipate our departmental agenda Beginning with departmental item number one around noon. So any public participating in today's departmental agenda That will begin around noon And lastly, for the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and to provide public comment on general public comment or an item on the board's agenda, please see page two of the agenda. Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two.
If you have any questions, please contact the clerk at the board's office at area code 805-568-2240. That concludes my announcements for today.
So you need a motion for the withdrawal
of A-26 but we're going to wait to do that motion for D-2 later.
Chair Williams and members of the board if that is correct and the withdrawal of A 26 can also be added to the balance of the administrative agenda.
Great I have one item to be pulled for a separate roll call vote which is A 13 so before we do that can we get the balance of the of the administrative agenda I move the approval of the items with the addendums
0:19 – 0:259 turns
highlighted by the clerk.
Motion by Nelson second by caps All those in favor, please say aye. Aye Opposed It's unanimous and then roll a roll call vote on 813. I believe you need to read that. Yeah
Chair Williams members of the board administrative item number 13 is from the county executive office it is to consider recommendations regarding amendments the cannabis business licensing fee ordinance
Move 813. Is
there a second? Second. Motion by Nelson, seconded by Hartman. Roll call please.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–1 Motion by Nelson, seconded by Hartman. Roll call
Show transcript
Motion passes 4 to 1
Then we will go to public comment I'm sorry it's administrative item number 29
Chair Williams and members of the board, administrative item number 29 is sponsored by Supervisor Williams. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of September 2023 as National Preparedness Month in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today we have Stacy Silva. And as you make your way to the podium I'll go ahead and read the resolution.
Whereas National Preparedness Month is a dedicated opportunity for community members in Santa Barbara County to join persons across the United States and preparing for all emergencies. And whereas the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced the 2023 National Preparedness Month theme of preparing for older adults, and whereas as a community it is critical to ensure older adults are connected to trusted sources of information and resources to ensure their preparedness in the face of emergencies.
And whereas the County Office of Emergency Management and its partners are tasked with promoting and supporting emergency preparedness to educate individuals on local hazards, and how to prepare for them. Whereas the County Office of Emergency Management uplifts diversity equity and inclusion through all aspects of preparedness response in recovery including in public education and emergency information.
And whereas Santa Barbara County is home to several community-based preparedness and response teams comprised of volunteers who have selflessly undergone hours of training to help our communities be more resilient. And whereas this month the county office of emergency management urges all residents to plan for disasters by participating in neighborhood preparedness activities Registering their contact information at www.readysbc.org and receive local alerts and purchasing or refreshing their emergency kits with essential items.
And whereas while we cannot always know when the next disaster or emergency will confront us, we must remain ready together we can ensure that we have the information and resources needed to safeguard our communities from a crisis or disaster. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim the month of September 2023 as National Preparedness Month in Santa Barbara County, and calls on all government agencies, private organizations, and the people and businesses of Santa Barbara County to develop their own emergency preparedness plan and work together toward creating a stronger and more resilient community passed and adopted today.
Good morning, Chair Williams and board members. I'm joined today by my fellow emergency manager Drew Yorkey. The County Office of Emergency Management team is thankful to receive today's resolution. This resolution marks the beginning of National Preparedness Month and serves as a reminder to our entire county community to be prepared. In just this last month, Santa Barbara County has experienced fires, a tropical storm, an earthquake and heat waves.
The need to ensure that we're prepared for disasters has never been clearer, and we appreciate this board's continuous support of our office and the preparedness work that we do during Blue Sky with our partners throughout the county. And we'd be amiss not to mention that those partners, nonprofit organizations such as the Red Cross and the Food Bank, and our city partners are major component to our preparedness efforts.
During the month of September, OEM is working collaboratively to spread the message of preparedness for individuals older adults families workplaces and neighborhoods. We are pleased to let you know That during the month of September we are distributing 200 NOAA, which is the National Weather Service National Oceanic Atmospheric Association or administration. Thank you should have had it all written out there weather radios to seniors in rural communities who may not receive emergency messaging through traditional means During an emergency, National Weather Service forecasters will send a special tone to activate these local weather radios.
These radios emit an audible alarm followed by verbal information on the threat in both English and Spanish and what the public should do to stay safe. We are fortunate to work with a network of highly committed community partners and agencies that are invested in our community's safety year-round As always, we remind our community to ensure that they are registered for local emergency alerts at ReadySBC.org and follow the County Office of Emergency Management on Facebook and Twitter for the most up-to-date information. Thank you very much!
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Now's the time for public comment for items
not on today's agenda. We have at least one person request to speak.
Chair Williams and members of the board that is correct we have one request to speak from the public on general public comment today and we are going to remain in Santa Maria with Daryl Sheck. Darryl.
Good morning, Chair Williams and Board of Supervisors. It's good to be with you here today. My name is Daryl Scheck, Executive Director for SEIU Local 620. First of all I want to thank you for your service to the community and for your contributions to the collective goal of making this county a success story. As a labor organization with the largest number of represented employees at the county we want to make sure we're visible to you more often not just a contract negotiations time I appreciated today's county's unsung hero segment.
We look forward over the next few months to bringing you our own member stories to help showcase the value in the work that our members do. We continue to have concerns about contracting out of County services and trust you understand the value of government service and County employment, and how important it is. We look forward to working with you on the issues of our time Such as affordable workforce housing and sustainable living wages and benefits.
And partnering with you to help with recruitment and retention of county employees, in particular standing up County EMS services. And we hope that you have a pleasant Labor Day weekend! And we hope that you're able to make it to the Labor Day celebration on Friday afternoon at Pioneer Park. From three thirty to six thirty p.m.. On Foster Road and I want to thank you for your time and we do appreciate your service have a wonderful day.
And that concludes general public comment for today.
0:27 – 1:563 turns
We're now going to recess to close session. When we get our preview for closed session.
Thank you, Mr. Chair members of the board. The board is scheduled for one item in closed session public employee appointment reappointment for the human resources director and believe the time estimate is 2 hours.
Then we will return at 1130. We are
1:56 – 2:022 turns
just announcing that we're going to reconvene shortly. Giving people notice because we said we were gonna reconvene at 1130 and we are actually going to be reconvening
within the next few minutes. We are reconvening from closed
2:02 – 2:0411 turns
session. Is there any report out from closed session?
Mr. Chair, members of the board, the board met in closed session on one item public employee appointment for the human resources director and the board took no reportable action.
We will go to D2 which is a withdrawal
Chair Williams and members of the board, that is correct. As previously announced this morning, departmental item number two is from the Public Works Department and the General Services Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a resolution of necessity to acquire easements for the Toro Canyon Oil Water Separator Project APN 155020041. And this is in the first district and we did get receiver requests from the department to withdraw this item today.
Can I get a motion on the withdrawal. Well first is there any public comment on this item?
Chair Williams and members of the board we do have one request to speak from the public and we can go to them to see if their comments are related to the withdrawal itself Mary McGowan. Mary.
Mine is only to, this is Marion McEwen. My comments are related if you do not agree with the withdrawal then I do not
comment. Mr. Chair I'll make a motion to withdraw item D2
Thank you. Is
there a second?
Motion by Nelson, seconded by Hartman. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous then we will go back to D1
2:04 – 2:1012 turns
Chair Williams and members of the board, departmental item number one is from the General Services Department, the Public Works Department and the Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a resolution of necessity to acquire easements for the Lower Mission Creek Flood Control Project to reach forward Santa Barbara California by the Santa Barbara Flood Control and Water Conservation District for flood control purposes APN 037203021 0 3 7 2 0 3 0 2 0. 0 3, 7, 2, 0, 3, 0 1 9. 0,3,7 5,0,0 CA. 037203011 and this is in the first district and requires a fourth this vote.
First before Mr. Logger quests presentation just to call for X party communications and maybe we just go down the line. No communications to our office. None for me. No communications that I am aware of.
None for me.
None for me
either. Mr. Loggerquist. OK.
All right, good morning Chair and Supervisors. For Lower Mission Creek this is reach four of seven total reaches. This is a cooperative project between the Santa Barbara County Flood Control District, the City of Santa Barbara and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that has been in development since the 1960's. The city and district have worked together in order for the district to construct the project in phases as federal funding for construction has not been made available.
The district is currently working with property owners to acquire permanent and temporary easements for the portion of the project in order to construct and facilitate further flood control improvements. Negotiations with property owners has been ongoing for the past 18 months. The district has finalized two of seven necessary acquisitions for both permanent and temporary easements, with two additional property owners and a four-fifths interest in a joint property having signed agreements which have not yet been finalized.
The district's most recent offers were sent to five of the property owners in April 2023 and to one property owner in June 2023. The district received counteroffers from the property owners which were above the appraised values. This project must be completed by the latter part of 2025 in order to meet project timelines. Staff is recommending the adoption of a resolution of necessity to initiate the eminent domain process while simultaneously continuing negotiations with the remaining property owners as we endeavor to reach agreements which are mutually beneficial.
The district will halt the eminent domain process if an agreement is reached with the remaining property owners including in the resolution of necessity hearing.
Thank you, Kirk. Chair Williams, members
of the board, I'm Matt Griffin with County Flood Control. The Lower Mission Creek Flood Control Project is located in the city of Santa Barbara and has been active for decades. The project consists of seven reaches extending from Cabrillo Boulevard on the downstream end to near Canyon Bermuda Street. In construction Is proceeding from the downstream and up.
And we have, we are at currently reach four which is located between Gutierrez Street and Haley Street. All improvements downstream of Reach 4 complete. Upstream of Reach 3 the City of Santa Barbara has completed the associated bridge improvements But the channel improvements and widening between those bridge segments remain to be done.
The summary of findings
for your consideration are the public interest in necessity required, the acquisition of the real property here and after described For the public use purposes, namely for the widening of the Mission Creek Channel between Haley and Gutierrez streets in the city of Santa Barbara to increase flood conveyance capacity. The Lower Mission Creek Flood Control Project Reach Forward is planned and located in the manner that will be the most compatible with the greatest public good and the least private injury.
This exhibit shows you the limits Of the project comp contemplated in the original E I R E I S.
You can see the dashed pink
line. The currently proposed project is shown in black with triangles. And it's consistent with the EIR EIS. A minimum channel width is required for the flood conveyance capacity increase and for environmental mitigation. The alignment was established. With a straight of an alignment as feasible. By matching the bridge openings at both Kutera Street and Haley Street.
And without the removal of building structures.
2:10 – 2:1821 turns
This results in most of the property take occurring on the right bank when looking in the downstream direction.
This exhibit shows the limits of the proposed easements across the five parcels associated with this resolution of necessity. The permanent easements are shown in the squared hatch and temporary construction and access easements are shown in this with these triangles and hexagons. Other easements necessary to construct Reach 4 are not shown on this exhibit as they were acquired As part of the ongoing acquisition process and have been recorded or they were covered by pre-existing flood control easements.
I'm happy to announce that the three leftmost properties have recently signed agreements as long as well as a four fifth interest in the large property in middle of the project. And we are currently. In the process of trying to accept and record those purchase
agreements. The three recommended
actions before you today are listed here. I won't read them for you, but I'd be happy to answer any of your questions and that concludes the presentation.
Thank you Mr
Griffin. This is a public hearing to allow the owner of the property or their representatives and any persons will be impacted by the project to address the county only on the following issues. Whether the project is necessary Whether the project is planned and located in a manner that is most compatible with the greatest public good and least private injury.
Whether the property is necessary for the project. Whether the written offer has been made to the owner. And any CEQA issues. Madam Clerk are there any letters that are requested to be made part of the record?
Chair Williams and members of the board we did receive one letter regarding this item For Mark T Edwards on August 21st, 2023 at 414 and mark had requested to speak at today's hearing. And I would like to note that Mark is here in person and has signed up for public comment on this item and that has been made part of the record.
So when
we vote, we need to make sure that that is incorporated in the public record or do you want a motion right now to incorporate
it? Chair Williams and members of the board. We do not need a separate vote to incorporate that I think we're just acknowledging that it's been accepted and incorporated as a part of the record.
Thank you. I will now call for a public hearing on this item. I ask the clerk of the board to please identify the owner of the property or their representative and any person who will be impacted by the project to address the county at this time.
Chair Williams and members of the board, I will now read a list of individuals affected by this project Beginning with Alexander K. Harrison, Joan Hollis Ross and Robert David Ross trustees of the Ross family trust dated March 15th 2023 Antonio and Laura Sita Hernandez trustees the Hernandez revocable trust day Levina partners LLC Jacqueline a booed Mark T. and Catherine J. Edwards, and Francisco and Hilda Gamma. And I would just like to note for the record, Catherine Edwards has signed up on Zoom to participate in today's hearing but is not currently logged in, and Mark Edwards is here in person. All others have not joined us today.
And clerk are there any other owners of the property or the representatives that.
I wish to address the county and we have at least one.
Chair Williams and members of the board. Not that I'm aware of.
We're going to public comment.
Chair Williams and members of the board, we will begin here in Santa Maria with Mark Edwards mark.
Chair Williams
before Mr. Edward Nelson. Yeah, before Mr Edwards speaks speakers that are affected would be nice to hear which APN number is there's just so I can kind of better frame a reference for their context of their other comments.
Thank you, Mr Nelson.
Chairman Williams, member of the board. My name is Mark Edwards. My wife Catherine and I live on a historic art studio at 414 de la Vina Studio E Santa Barbara California. I've been a contractor in the town for about 45 years. In 2002, I moved the studio across town carefully placed along Mission Creek. The work was accomplished in strict accord with the development agreements agreed on with the city of Santa Barbara The city's municipal ordinances and the future improvement plans along Mission Creek that have been developed by the Corps of Engineers, namely Alternative 12 and its final EIS-EIR.
Top of the bank was surveyed and certified by the city to be top of existing slope concrete wall That the creek had been built many years before, and that wall continues to exist today. I moved into the studio in 2006. About 15 years later, I received notice from the County Flood Control that they were focused on improvements in the reach of the creek between the Haley Street Bridge and the Gutierrez Bridge, my neck of the woods.
When I inquired as to the scope of the work, I was told that it would primarily be the removal of existing concrete wall along the property. Replacement with a vertical wall since I was familiar with those plans is described in the documents of the Corps and as part of the EIS CIR the work seemed in order however As part of the flood control noticing, I was made aware that the vertical wall top of the bank which I was familiar with was to be moved closer to my studio structure and would require the complete removal of three 40-foot sycamore trees that had been provided habitat shade and privacy along the creek had been planted in conformance with alternative 12 and EISIR documents. In addition a new easement across my property would be required These seemed like substantial changes had the EIS-EIR changed.
In reviewing Alternative 12 design of the core and the final EIS EIR documents, it appears that the alignment of the specific reach of the creek has been moved to the west Further, it appears that the reason may have been to save one structure on the east side of the creek that was called for removal by the Alternative 12 design. However, the move devastates sick properties on the west.
The real tragedy regardless of the alignment is that the section of the creek between Haley Street Bridge and Gutierrez Bridge has never challenged its crankbrakes in almost 20 years that I've come to be an observer. According to my neighbor, that timeframe increases to the last 50 years Several epic storms have been challenging that creek in the last 50 years. However, it's never reached the creek that fails.
Since the current west channel is a concrete protected and reach can easily be widened to the east as the waters rise there are several alternative options Leave the existing sloped concrete walls, follow the new vertical walls of alternative 12 or raise the height of either of the walls. This has been done in several areas along the creek eliminating the need to acquire critical limited property of neighbors to the east or the west And potentially eliminating the need to remove well-performing existing concrete. With one or more of these options, the public goal is protected. Since my property is on both sides of the creek in this critical area I'm willing to help.
Thank you for your time and consideration of my concerns. I hope that we can work together for a mutual beneficial solution. Thank You Mr. Edwards
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Chair Williams and members of the board I just wanted to take a moment and confirm with Mark that Catherine is not expecting to speak today. Great thank you very much.
Any other requests to speak?
Chair Williams and members of the board we have no further request to speak on this item.
Now I'll close the public hearing portion of this item and the matters before the board. First, maybe just ask staff for any response they wish to put on the record.
Thank you, Chair Williams in regards to the channel capacity issue. As I mentioned in the presentation, the upstream channel has not been improved And this past winter in 2023, we had breakouts at Coda Street and that water all went down the streets. So when the channel is improved upstream, all that water will reach this Reach 4 segment. And so there will be more water that reaches Reach 4, so that's why the channel may not have been exceeded in the past but it will see more water in the future.
Supervisor Hart?
So staff said that negotiations would continue with the landowners even as we, even should we pass this resolution. My question is what is the nature of those negotiations? Is it simply price or is it also the alignment and how the work would actually affect the property?
It's simply priced for all properties except for Mr. Edwards.
Before we proceed just we would just want to make sure because Catherine logged on, we want to confirm that she does or does not plan on speaking.
Thank you Chair Williams and members of the board I will now go to Catherine on Zoom. Catherine Edwards And Catherine, we have unmuted you on our end. If you can please unmute on your end to confirm or not whether you wanted to make any comments today. Chair Williams members of the board she's remaining muted so perhaps we can
proceed onward. Mr. Nelson, yes thank you Chair Williams. I
think there's another question Mr. Edwards had about the alteration to alternative 12 that had taken place that could potentially save another structure can you elaborate on that?
Supervisor Nelson yes I can if we can show the PowerPoint presentation again So in the upper left-hand corner, right where the arrow is pointing that says limits of project described in the EAR EIS and you see the pink dashed lines. In that location, the proposed wall was moved in towards the creek in an effort to save a four unit apartment building. It immediately after the apartment building shifts back in the other direction This change did not impact the proposed alignment on the opposite bank.
It simply narrowed that small section of Creek. If we went back to the original alignment, it still would not impact what's proposed on Mr. Edwards' property.
So the removal of the sycamore trees that were addressed, that's still in substantial conformance to the environmental document and Alternative 12.
Yes it is if you see here on this exhibit The current proposed project is actually in closer to the creek than what was contemplated in the
original EIR-EIS But there's going to be a loss now of those sycamore trees that were not previously Those sycamore trees do not exist
when the EIR When they The Sycamore trees when the ER area exist. Was was completed
they were newly planted OK thank you so that the baseline was significantly less than what the conditions on the ground are correct OK thank you.
2:23 – 2:288 turns
And I'll just say for my part, given that a good portion of this is in my district. That this is a longstanding effort by the city and the county to address flood control issues in the area. This project is you know has obviously taken a long time but it has been made steady progress up the watershed really crucial to continue and maybe a model for the patients required on all of our watersheds in order to improve the flood control capacity and adapt to steadily Worsening conditions in terms of the type of rainfall that we see so you know I It is always a terrible thing to have to impose a property purchase, but I have over the years seen a number of these cases and usually they do involve the parties feeling like there are alternatives that don't work.
There's a lot of things that aren't really there, and perhaps a level of optimism that we cannot have given the steadily worsening conditions The type of rainfall events that we see on a watershed that did not have great capacity to begin with. So I. Of course, encourage staff to negotiate and make any allowances that property owners that helps property owners with this process and I have the patience and sort of spirit of public service to answer questions and do analysis that some of the property owners want. But if necessary, we need to acquire the project for the benefit of the whole community's flood control capacity. And of course, this last rain event this year just only highlights the vulnerability of the Lower West Side Lower East Side and the industrial zone of Santa Barbara to flood events.
Mr. Nelson
Yes, thank you Chair Williams. You know like you I think it's unfortunate when we have to get to this place where we may have to move forth in the domain on at least be in that process of the determination necessity here but I do think staff has been prudent with moving away from that apartment complex that makes a lot of sense There's a lot of greater good questions up here that we have to grapple with. And while there are no perfect situations, our legal system has something set up so that we go through this process and that there will be just compensation and that will be either handled through the courts or through some level mediation in the future if we can come to conclusion of the parties In another fashion. So I'm satisfied that staff has done the appropriate work and my one support motion or staff recommendation.
Motion by Nelson all second.
That was a motion sorry
thank you. All those in favor please say aye. Aye Chair
Williams members of the board that is to approve staff recommended actions A through C.
That was motion yes. And as seconder I confirm that so that was all those in favor say aye and I didn't say who is a no any nos. That's unanimous thank you so much we are going to take
one more short break
2:28 – 2:374 turns
Departmental item number three.
Chair Williams and members of the board, departmental item number three is from the Planning and Development Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the allocation of the 2022 and 2023 Coastal Resources Mitigation Fund CRMF grants.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Unfortunately, I'm remote today. Apologies. But I just did want to introduce staff As Miss Alexander said, this is the two year cycle for the Coastal Resource Mitigation Fund. And today's staff will be presenting we have John Zurovich, the deputy director. We have Erin Briggs our supervising planner and we have the return of Kathy Pfeiffer who is helping us out.
So very happy to have her back in this time. We had a staff person leave that was overseeing this program so she's back to help So with that I will turn it over to staff.
Thank you Lisa. Mr. Chair and members of the board, I'm Aaron Briggs and I will be giving the presentation today for the Coastal Resources Mitigation Fund formerly and affectionately known as CREF. For today's hearing, staff will provide a brief presentation outlining the current two-year coastal resources mitigation fund cycle. Applicants will then provide their individual presentations in order of proposal number and then the board will deliberate to determine the final grant allocations. Next slide.
Staff's recommendations are that you receive and approve our recommendations for the 2022 and 23 award cycles. Direct staff to prepare non county related contracts. Defer $596,777 of acquisition monies to the fund deferral program. And then finally determine that the allocation of Cref awards are exempt from CEQA. As you know from past presentations, three oil and gas projects pay annually into CRMF.
The CRMF guidelines stipulate that half of the annual fees go toward coastal acquisitions and the other half go towards the general allocation projects such as capital improvements or educational projects. To begin the cycle, staff solicits proposals, evaluates them through the lens of the board approved CRMF criteria and then makes recommendations for CRMF awards to your board.
The board is the final decision maker on CRMFAwards. For the combined 2022-23 cycle, the county received nine proposals. We received one coastal acquisition grant request for $750,000 Of an available overall $971,000 in the coastal fund. The remaining eight proposals are considered general allocation seeking more than what is available by over $300,000. Attachment B of your board letter includes a detailed evaluation of each of the nine proposals and staff recommends funding or partially funding all nine of the proposals in this cycle.
The available coastal acquisition monies in this two year cycle is $971,771. This amount derives from $162,000 from the 2022 fees, approximately $96,000 from the 2023 fees and the current balance in the fund deferral program which is $712,800. This balance is the result of the board not spending the full balance from last fund cycle and saving some dry powder for future acquisitions.
Next slide. In this cycle, we received one grant request for coastal acquisitions. The land trust for the Santa Barbara County is requesting $750,000 of the 971,777 available in the acquisition fund balance. The purchase would add 48 acres to the Arroyo Hondo Preserve by acquiring the coastal terrace west of the preserve. The Gaviota Coast property is highly visible from Scenic Highway 101.
Staff recommends a partial award of $375,000 with the contingencies outlined on page 29 of your staff report. Those contingencies would include that the county approve any limitations proposed on public access to the site and also that the county approve any use restrictions to ensure that those restrictions align with the Arroyo Hondos Preserves Recorded Grant Deed.
Staff recommends deferring $596,777 to the Fund Deferral Program to be given out in the next cycle. The available general allocation monies in this two year cycle is $305,337. This amount includes $162,175 from the 2022 fees, $96,800 from the 2023 fees and $46,362 from two past grants that reallocated their funds back to CRMF. The next three slides summarize staff's recommendations for the general allocation proposals.
First off, staff is recommending a small grant towards proposal number one Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Networks Wild Welcome Packet. This proposal is to create and distribute a packet with the purpose of educating the public about protecting wildlife. Staff recommends a limited grant because the coastal nexus of this proposal is limited. Most of the wildlife the applicant would educate the public on would not have a coastal nexus with the exception of seabirds.
Next, staff recommends granting the full request for proposal number two which would help NatureTrack purchase beach-friendly wheelchair TRAX devices. The TRAX devices would be used during the applicant's outdoor field trips to coastal locations throughout the county. Additionally, the applicant would allow other organizations to use the TRAX devices at no cost.
The board gave the applicant a CRMF grant last cycle and NatureTracks states there is a need for more devices. Next, staff recommends granting the full request for proposal number three. The Santa Cruz Island Foundation's Channel Islands Education Center in Carpinteria. The educational center will encompass a series of collections and exhibits that portray many aspects of the Channel Islands history.
The center is almost complete and plans to open at the end of this year. Staff recommends granting $30,000 towards proposal number four. The county's community services departments lookout park improvements in Summerland. This proposal would improve both pedestrian and equestrian access at the park along with providing landscaping improvements. Next, staff is recommending a full grant request for proposal number five. The Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens Hammonds Meadow Restoration Project. This project would restore native species habitat, protect the archaeological site Shalawa and provide a long term solution to ongoing weed fire visual and erosional issues at the site.
Next, staff is recommending a partial award of $50,000 for proposal number six. The Fish Reef Projects Goleta Kelp Reef Restoration. The proposal is to monitor collect and analyze data for five year study of 16 reef units known as sea caves to be set in waters 40 feet deep off Goleta Beach. The applicants hope is that the five year study demonstrates that sea caves can restore large giant kelp forests and provide habitat for abalone lobster fish and other marine species.
If successful, the applicant would attempt to enlarge and permit a 65-acre kelp restoration site off of Goleta Beach. The applicant has obtained a lease agreement from the State Lands Commission and is actively seeking approvals from several other state and federal agencies. The grant would be contingent on the applicant securing those permits before receiving crimp funds amongst other performance based contingencies.
And finally, staff recommends a partial grant for Proposal No. 8, the City of Lompoc Stormwater System Trash Capture Project. The grant would go towards preparing a study that would help determine the best type of trash capture devices for the city's street curb storm drain inlets which would act to intercept trash before it enters the storm water system which empties into the ocean.
And last but not least, staff recommends funding the full request for proposal number nine which would help the Lompoc Unified School District design and install the Cal Coastal Wetlands exhibit which will feature estuarine habitats at the Cabrillo High School Aquarium in Lompoc. This exhibit would replace some existing outdated tanks. This concludes staff's presentation and we are available for any questions that you may have.
Following any questions, the board will receive the applicants presentations which will proceed in proposal number order.
2:37 – 2:4518 turns
Mr. Nelson
Yes, thank you Chair Williams. Quick question I understand that crimp funds come from those three different units. The San Ynez unit is down currently? My understanding because of the... Mr.
Chair and Supervisor Nelson that's correct.
What any idea what the revenue that we used to get for this project for crimp from that when it was operational?
Yes, we have that number in the packet Kathy is frantically looking it up
It's just curiosity.
It's significantly higher than what we're collecting from them now. The number most recently was 240,000 and currently it's 26,000. And
that would have been annually?
Correct
Great, thank you. Questions about the outlook next to on the Gaviota Coast? I think it's project number seven. $750,000 that was requested by the land trust. Was that the acquisition price or was that going to be cobbled together with additional donations? Do we know that the proposed purchase price on that property?
We do. Mr. Chair and Supervisor Nelson, the purchase price for that property was much higher than the $750,000 request and it stops understanding that the applicant in this case had some type of reserve fund that they used to acquire the property because it happened very quickly And that they are seeking the KREF grant to essentially partially repay that fund.
The total purchase price for the property was $2.75 million. OK.
And then I heard that the funds are contingent on working with the county on the access to that property. Can you talk a little bit more about what public access would look like on that acquisition?
Yes, so I can speak very generally about it and then maybe the applicant could be a little bit more detailed. But essentially the property would be acquired in kind of added to the existing Arroyo Hondo property and it would function as one property going forward. Arroyo Hondo has limited public access at this time. Kathy might be able to speak in a little bit more detail about how that limited public access works. But essentially the contingency that staff would place on the project would allow us to ensure that access to the newly acquired property would be identical or similar to how the main Royal Honda Preserve is used now.
The reason I'm asking that is I don't want to foreclose public access opportunities if they present themselves in the future. Part of my ignorance and probably Supervisor Hartman can educate me a little bit more on Rojo Hondo with the public access that currently exists, but I don't want us to artificially agree to a lack of public access. That might be something that we can take an opportunity in the future too.
Understood. And from our perspective staff was more concerned about The other side of that coin, which would be limited public access. So we were more looking to ensure that the property was being made available to the public rather than limiting the amount of public access there could be.
OK, we're on the same page. Thank you.
Any other questions from the board? Let's go to the presentations.
Hello, I'm Arianna. I'm the Executive Director of Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network. We appreciate the consideration but we need to challenge the assertion that many of the species we care for do not have a coastal nexus. SBWCN has rescued rehabilitated and released animals that are described by county staff as not having a coastal nexus Raccoons have been rescued at Guadalupe Dams.
Skunks are rescued at the beach. Screech owls are released back to Moore Mesa. Great horned owls live in Elwood Mesa. The list goes on and on of the non-seabird species living in coastal dune estuary and bluff habitats. Migratory species such as hummingbirds and songbirds Make significant use of our coastline. To say these animals simply have no coastal nexus lacks the information about the behavior of these animals, their migrations and I want to emphasize that coastal species are not just animals with webbed feet.
Western grebes nest in Lake Kachuma and then migrate to saltwater. Protecting wildlife at Lake Kachuma directly translates to protecting animals on the coast. A narrow focus when looking at wildlife is not practical from the standpoint of education It's well known that county residents, no matter what their address, spend time at the beach. That means they need to be mindful of wildlife. If they're fishing, they should store fishing gear so that seabirds are not unintentionally harmed by hooks and lines. If someone lives near a creek that drains to the ocean, they should know that using rodenticides, herbicides and pesticides have direct impact to wildlife populations.
And really, you know what is a species with coastal nexus Bobcats personal territory spans up to 30 miles which includes the coast. A mountain lion territory can span 100 miles which includes the coast everyone within that territory should be educated not use or denticide poison those animals meals I live in the technical coastal zone personally Hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, possums, coyotes, hummingbirds, crows, rabbits and more are there. I'm sure you've seen them.
Even one of my neighbors brought in a gopher snake that was caught by a cat and we released it back to the Elwood Mesa where it belongs. A gray fox might not be an iconic coastal species but it certainly lives there. We think about countywide education to protect the monarch butterfly with the aim to increase their migratory populations. We encourage residents inland to plant milkweed, protect a species that overwinters on the coast and we have to make the connection between habitats To protect an animal that migrates thousands of miles and the work for wildlife is unpredictable.
Unpredictable last year's pelican crisis had pelicans stranded at the beach, the side of the freeway parking lots of shopping centers and as far as painted Cape on the San Marcos Pass we want people to know what to do when they find stranded wildlife. These animals have the ability and capability to not just be on the coast. So I want to urge you to expand your view of how watersheds are large, how migrations connect landscapes and how wildlife needs our community to be aware And committed to using best practices to protect them.
Greater wildlife awareness translates to individual actions in sensitive wildlife habitats, including our coasts. So I want to thank this program and the staff for their consideration and for your consideration. But I really just wanted to address that we see so much in our work that does not just lead us to believe that it's just seabirds at the coastline and we would all benefit from this kind of program.
Thank you.
2:45 – 2:5015 turns
Mr. Chair up next we have Sue Isaguirre from Nature Tracks and she'll be here in person.
With me today is Abby Pickens our program director. Thank you so much for allowing me to present. I have a short video that will show first, I have a brief talk and then we'll demonstrate the Freedom Tracks and if time permits you're welcome to even try it. Hi, I'm Sue Isaker, Founder and Executive Director of NatureTrack. I founded NatureTrack in 2011 to provide outdoor field trips for students to connect with nature and learn outdoors where learning literally comes alive.
Over the past 10 years thousands of kids have participated in our Outdoor Field Trip Program. Still until recently we did not have a way to include students teachers or volunteers with disabilities As we look for a way to include wheelchair users and others with physical disabilities, we found a device that quickly and easily converts a manual wheelchair into a battery-powered all terrain vehicle. that can easily traverse sand and trails.
Now with Freedom Tracks, our new tracks program allows everyone to independently enjoy our beautiful beaches and trails. And even though for the past 10 years our program has been only for K-12 students, the new tracks program is available for all ages. So our program has really grown over the last two years since you awarded us funding for three units. We have now 11 tracks but the additional four units that we're requesting will make it much easier for us to always have tracks available for our monthly programs which include a beach trip somewhere along the coast here in Santa Barbara as well as a trip for one of our senior living facilities. We also do monthly trips for them. We had 101 year old lady on the beach And it was it was amazing.
The other thing is we also were able to share finally students who use wheelchairs could attend their year end beach party and not just sit in the parking lot two students were down on the beach with their classmates. The gentleman was able to be on the beach at the Miramar for his sister's wedding. So it's really making an impact on all of people that live in Santa Barbara County throughout all the districts, and now we'll demonstrate how easy it is to put the chair on. This allows any manual wheelchair user to stay in their chair which is a comfort to them and then become mobile to beyond the beach and or trails.
I have a question while
she's doing it. Did you design this? Is this your?
No, this was designed by Tour Engineering and they're in Golden Colorado. I have visited the location. The son is the engineer. The dad had the idea and they are processing or building now about three per week.
Because it felt like this was almost like Shark Tank. I was getting ready to invest in the company. That is such an amazing tool.
The other thing is now that we can actually have them powder coated in any color and we could put the county's logo on there if you'd like.
I think that would be a great idea, Mr. Nelson.
Yes thank you Terry Williams and what's the cost per unit? So are you asking for one or what? I'm
asking for four now and originally when you funded the three we were not considered dealer nonprofit if you will so now our price is driven down to about $4500 per unit before they were $6300 plus shipping
What is your ultimate vision of how many of these you might have in inventory in our county? This
would give us 15. We're going to have to start cycling out the units that were with sprockets, they have improved them with cogs. We're wearing out the sprockets because we're using them so much. So between 15 right now would be ideal.
And your distribution and use is typically South County, right? There's more accessible to beaches. But can you tell me what you're doing up in the north?
Oh no we are. We were at Los Oso LAFCO which is a fabulous location to be. Orchid Hills is wonderful also so now we've been up in the North County and then with other units that we have these remain in Santa Barbara but we have been up to Pismo Beach with the units and so it's expanded just Word of mouth really. The other thing is it has given people opportunities who use wheelchairs. We now have three very active wheelchair users who are docents with us so it's that's really a plus for them.
Thank you.
2:50 – 2:5616 turns
Would anyone like to sit in it and try it?
I think we don't quite have
time
for that. Thank you for demonstrating
both on video. There's a little bit more to the demonstration. Chair
Williams? Yes, Supervisor Hartman.
I don't expect you to know this, but what does our county parks do? I believe we have something at Guadalupe Dunes. But how do they work together?
What you have are the big wheel chairs that go right to the water's edge also, but those need somebody to push them. So what this really gives people is the independence to enjoy the area and not maybe, you know, expect somebody will not expect somebody to push them.
Yeah, and it might be something for our county parks to think about in the future.
Did you
rehearse before coming. That's really impressive.
Supervisor Caps.
Yeah I just want to thank this board for having spent money on these in the past because I am incredibly inspired. I know how important access is and what you're doing so I'm thrilled to lend my support to this phase.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. And next up, we have Marla Daly with the Santa Cruz Island Foundation.
Mr. Chair, members of the board, I want to thank you for this opportunity to make a brief presentation. The Santa Cruz Island Foundation was formed in 1985 by Kerry Stanton, the last private owner of Santa Cruz Island. And I just celebrated my 50th year of research and education on the California islands, of which there are 20 Ten in Alta California, ten in Baja California. We have eight California Channel Islands and now we have one Chrisman California Island Center. We are the educational center for all things California islands. This was made possible by over 200 donors who very generously provided over five million dollars in support so that we could acquire debt free the Bank of America building in Carpinteria at the gateway to town. So we are part art gallery, part center for scholarship, art public attraction and educational displays.
And we meet the needs of anyone who would like to learn about any of the 20 California islands. Next slide. We also are forming now in Carpinteria that's Coastal Beach community, a cultural triangle where we form the apex Between the Carpinteria Arts Center, the Carpinteria Valley Historical Museum and the Christman California Island Center. So we will be readily accessible to all who come to this wonderful town next.
Within the center, we have an Islands Live wall of 20 monitors that project from islands that can be changed. We have a state-of-the-art archives In the care child's library with a lot electronic shelves and our archivist tells me we have over half a million items. He is working his way through to catalog next one of our main attractions will be the Juana Maria lone woman of San Nicolas Island exhibit not only do we have Juana Maria's original donut stone in a large diorama, we also have now life size sculpture of Juana Maria That will be placed outside in the courtyard gallery next.
Within the center we have a gallery by the noted American painter Richard Diebenkorn. This is a whole new section of art for lovers of Richard Diebenkorn, who will be coming here to learn and study from these pieces next. The three largest islands Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and Santa Catalina each have their own exhibit cases With timelines and histories of these privately owned islands.
Next, we have a rotating exhibit of a display case for invited exhibits about the various California Islands next. And we have magnificent outside courtyard gallery that even has an octopuses garden sponsored by Ringo Starr We are including life-size statues of Juana Maria Justinian Kerr, and we have two others in the pipeline. So we thank you for your this opportunity to consider us for your funding. And I'm happy to answer questions.
Oh, I forgot the last slide there. We have the Courtyard Gallery that's showing the installation which looking out the window I see going on right now Catalina tile murals were just installed, and this is where eight court and steel benches will be set in relation to each other in size and geographically oriented. So walking through the Courtyard Gallery one will be able to learn and understand how the islands lie directly offshore.
Thank you.
2:56 – 3:059 turns
Go to next presentation. And up next we have Jill Van Wee from the County Parks Department to present on the Lookout Park project.
Thank you Erin. Good morning Board of Supervisors through the chair nice to see you. I'm just glad this time that I'm not following Kobe Hill High School because it's one of my favorite presentations and no you guys have some great projects in front of you so we appreciate any consideration for funding for this particular project. A few things that I want to point out. This site used to be an oil processing facility This is what the beach in front of Lookout Park used to look like.
And they process the oil on what is now Lookout Park. So that gives you a little bit of the oil coastal nexus. Two, this is a very popular stop for right here. If you see on the picture to the right during lunchtime, you'll see a lot of cars parking there for lunch. It's so close to the freeway. You just see a lot of people stop there to enjoy the coast So what this plan does is.
It provides a little bit of seating, some picnic areas so people that park there can actually get out and enjoy post lunchtime or on their breaks. But it also ties to what Public Works is doing and allows pedestrian access into the park and then connects over to the east side of the park which was just recently finished in 2019 with a portion of what used to be CREF funds.
So it just beautifies the park. It lets pedestrians actually come to the park and walk through the park What you'll see the pavers there it provides drainage improvements. So we have a lot of flooding that happens on the lawn side ocean side of the park and that is supposed to help alleviate that. It ties again it ties into the timing of what Public Works is doing as part of the 101 Highway 101 leveraging project they're installing parking essentially I can't see the pointer Where you see the cars on either side of the railroad tracks. That is where the new Wallace Avenue parking will be going and they are providing funds to link not only that parking area but Summerland into the park as you can see where pedestrians on the left photo here are currently how they access the park.
And I think. The last thing again any kind of funding that is provided will help offset Park. Capital Park maintenance funds. So again, anything helps so we can focus our capital and maintenance projects on many other of our you know 305 million needs through parks and yes I can't wait to Check the tracks out to see how we can utilize those in our parks We currently have things that are Royal Borough Beach and they are Guadalupe and Halama then they have those floating tires But yes, they have to be pushed by folks. So look forward to trying to implement those Yeah, and thank you very much any questions All right,
no lies chill thank you so much
And next up we have David Anderson from the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden David will be presenting online
Okay, hopefully you can see me currently. David Anderson and I'm actually not with the Janet Garden but I am the pro bono legal counsel and fundraiser for this project. The Hammonds Meadow restoration project and have been for the last 13 years. The rest of our team includes Steve Windhager, the CEO of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden plus Ken Owen, the Executive Director for Channel Islands Restoration.
Jeff Lindgren, County Parks Director. Pat Saley, our Project Planning Consultant. Susan Van Atta, our Landscape Architect. And David Stone, our Archaeologist. This is a complex project and Kathy, if you could go to number two slide for the map. Shows the meadow 2.3 acres on the top of the meadow plus another almost two acres on the beach. This property is the last vestige of the Shallowa village from the early Chumash cultures in Santa Barbara. We dated it back at least as far as 1080 A.D., and it was occupied for a number of years, hundreds of years until the Spanish arrived and has been partially occupied at times since then.
It was set aside when the adjacent Cemento project was approved as an archaeological site, which it already had been designated. It became County Open Space Reserve but with no funding to maintain it and so we stepped in back in the 2013 era To begin trying to figure out a solution to the weed problems. And maybe if you could go to pathway number 4, show the condition at times when the weeds are growing sometimes as high as four or five feet before they die out and become a fire hazard.
We've been looking for solutions. One of the difficult problems with this site is it's deed restricted as an archaeological site, so we cannot penetrate the soil or the surface for any purpose. So we cannot pull the weeds out. We cannot plow. We cannot disk. It is an archaeological site to be protected. So the solution that we've come up with, and it's been used in other archaeological sites, is to cap this meadow with 8-10 inches of high quality topsoil that is placed over a barrier so that we can always be able to delineate between the archaeological site and the capping.
Then the capping surface will be irrigated for two to three years while native flower and grass seeds mature. Potentially some shrubs will be added that will be coastal natives that would have been on the site at the time of the Chumash occupation. And this is been a long standing complex project dealing with all kinds of various issues. The plans have been modified over the years to deal with questions from the Chumash descendants of this site who are very supportive of the project and we've finished our permit process just about to the end of the line with a land use permit notice that's already been issued This grant will make a huge difference because we're almost at the finish line. We have a $200,000 application pending with the State Coastal Conservancy that will be heard in the month of September and with this grant and pledges that we have that are contingent on getting this grant, we should be just about to the end of our fundraising.
You will see on page 8 our budget, $765,000 That has grown significantly over the years as we've worked through a number of different issues and permitting process and other issues. But it is now at the point where we can begin work in September if we can get these two grants, county grant and
state
grant. We have an endowment established by several donors who felt it was necessary for this not to be just one project, but an ongoing maintenance project. We have $500,000 roughly sitting at the Santa Barbara Foundation dedicated to the Shalawa Reserve for maintenance. And so aside from any questions you might have I think we really appreciate support from the staff And we've appreciated the support from the county planning staff over the years as we've worked through all these various issues for this site.
So I'll open it up to questions if you have
any. Any questions for Mr. Anderson? Thank You, Mr. Anderson. Thank you
and up next presenting online we have Chris Goldblatt and Tony Huerta from the Fish Reef Project
3:05 – 3:1111 turns
Hello, Chair Williams and the board. And thank you to the CRMF staff for hearing us out. Can everybody hear me OK on the other side?
We sure can.
Okay, thank you very much. We have a slide deck for you just a quick history if you've been in the area more than 20 years most likely remember the robust kelp forest that we had in Goleta Bay going on down to about Hendry's Beach with the double El Ninos of 2015 and 2016 and before that that kelp bed has been severely compromised And the fishery project has built a homegrown blue technology called Sea Cave, which has been deployed in Baja to great effect to restore kelp forests in Baja. And now we're very pleased to be able to bring it back home to the Santa Barbara area. In the upper left you see the historic kelp bed that did exist there as recently as 2020. There was no kelp recorded in that area. Next slide please.
So the proposed site that we currently do have a state lands commission lease for is very small, it's just 60 feet by 60 feet. We wanted to take the smallest size that we could in order to get exemptions in order to be able to deploy this as a study and that has proven successful. And we will place 16 of the sea caves in the configuration that you see in front of you and we will monitor it thoroughly In conjunction with our partners at UCSB and report back to Fish and Wildlife three times a year with their findings. And the purpose really is to demonstrate to the public into the county that this very much is an effective means of
restoring our kelp forest. Next slide please. Oh, this is a
copy of our state lands lease which we're very happy to get and so that's active ready to go. This is a snapshot of what our production yard looks like This is an IP protected technology in about 50 different countries. And it really is the world leading technology for kelp restoration. And I'm happy to say that it can be scaled, phase two can be a much larger reef situation to where we can restore more of the historic footprint of the affiliated kelp forest. Next slide
please. Here we are pouring the concrete in Santa Barbara. Next slide, please. And this is basically what it looks like when you load onto a barge for deployment. Next slide, please.
This is in Mexico where we've deployed and also in South Carolina the government's deployed there but there's no kelp there so. In Mexico we have over 200 I believe there's a slide coming up that demonstrates how quickly the kelp does recruit on to that. Next slide, please. This is a deployment this I believe was South Carolina a couple of years ago that was a nice demonstration because it's withstood four hurricanes up to class 4 in South Carolina and then most recently in Baja we did a deployment very recently and the recent hurricane went directly over that and the sea caves proved to be very very stable in heavy surf conditions next slide please Ah, here we go. So this is after seven months on the seafloor. The Macrocystis pyrophora of the giant kelp is fully recruited over the dome of the sea cave.
That's because of the proprietary shape of it where the kelp likes to settle and also the chemistry in the marine concrete. It's also proprietary that's pH neutralized so it will not leach into the ecosystem and at the same time, it allows an attraction to very sensitive plants and animals to settle and colonize. This is a very good demonstration of what we expect to see in Goleta. Next slide please Here's another shot at it. Obviously, there's co-benefits. It's very, very good for the lobster fishery. You'll see a very high economic rate of return for our local sustainable fisheries. It's a good place to restore the red abalone population and you'll find that marine mammals use it for forage and breeding in there as well, as well as the fish population.
Next slide please. There's Gallico bass. There's a couple of pink abalone down there in Mexico Next slide. This is just a larger demonstration. On average, each sea cave can sustain about 1,000 pounds of marine life and in terms of carbon sequestration it's very effective. You end up with about three to four tons of carbon dioxide removed directly from the water column which is where 95% of mankind's CO2 currently rests in the ocean so it's a very good way to remove carbon into our park on that end
for climate change. Next slide. We'll have
very good imaging to will as part of the monitoring, we'll be able to provide exact imaging where the county and interested parties will be able to see. Physically, the CK is on the seabed year in year out for the five-year study so you'd be able to see if they shift or sink or anything of that nature. Next slide. And here's the team at Fishery Project. We're grassroots Santa Barbara nonprofit and we're what you call true believers, we're very proud of our work. We've been at this for 12 years and we'll keep going and
we look forward to restoring our kelp forest. I believe that that's the last slide. Thank you any
questions? Thank you so much. All right, and up next also presenting online we have Meredith Hendricks from the Land Trust.
3:11 – 3:193 turns
Good afternoon Chair Williams and members of the board thank you for having me my name is Meredith Hendricks I'm the Executive Director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County and i am thrilled to talk to you today about the Gaviota Overlook property it's the first new piece of conservation on the Gaviota Coast in 15 years Conservation along with public access. So the slide you're looking at right now, the property that's outlined in red but not filled in and read is our Royal Hondo preserve that is 782 acres it was preserved a little over 20 years ago.
And you'll note that it's dominated by this long, steep canyon. And it represents different kinds of habitat types such as creeks and the beautiful Chaparral environment. What it doesn't have are the rolling hills so typical in the front part of the Gaviota Coast. The property that we're seeking funding for is outlined in red. It's an additional 48 acres that shares a property boundary with our current Arroyo Hondo Preserve, and we call it the Gaviota Overlook at Arroyo Hondo Preserve. And I want to address all the questions that were raised earlier about how we deal with access and acquisition costs, et cetera. Next slide please.
So our mission at The Land Trust is to preserve natural resources, agriculture lands, local food systems, open spaces for the benefit of current and future generations. We work throughout the county to ensure this happens And we're really taking a deeper look at the relationship between the land trust and our conservation choices in the communities that we serve. Next slide.
Okay, so let's really take a look at where we are this slide is a little bit stretched out in the photo but essentially the Gaviota overlook is the grassy area directly in the middle of the slide to the east is Arroyo Hondo it's been kind of flattened out in this picture But on the West, I want to call your attention to the driveway that's on the edge of the property. The property line includes the creek that is to the west of the driveway but that egress is really important so as we are working on conservation in the Gaviota Coast and we're looking for We're looking for additional segments of the coastal trail. We're looking for what will become a mosaic of conserved lands with opportunities for public open space, things like egress are really important because they give us some flexibility around future uses.
So one of the things that attracted me to the property wasn't just the proximity to Arroyo Hondo, the addition of these rolling hills and coastal drainages, it was the addition Here we are in Gaviota as it is conserved today. So you can see to the west is Gaviota State Park in the dark green and all the way to the east, El Capitan State Park. Royal Hondo Preserve is smack dab in the middle and the Gaviota Overlook is the red property of the addition in the front. This would allow us to create a preserve that's now over 800...it's 830 acres And what we're looking at is in addition, currently we have 5.6 miles of trails within Arroyo Hondo Preserve. The addition of the Gaviota Overlook at this point we believe will add 1.6 miles of new trails which is a 30% increase in our trail network.
Next slide. So currently we have multiple programs that get people out and about in a Royal Honda. We have our school program which hosts schools for free on Mondays and Wednesday mornings and we're looking at expanding that to Monday and Wednesday afternoons as well. We seek funding from the Muthun Foundation and the Kiewit Foundation to cover the cost of busing to get students to the preserve. And at this time we serve about 3,700 school kids a year. We're looking at increasing that by about 25 percent In addition, Arroyo Hondo Preserve is open the first and third weekends of the month. Currently there's a 60 person per day limit and we're looking at expanding that to 75 per day so that brings us an additional currently 5 000 people and we're looking for that number to go up on top of that we work with a number of non-profit partners throughout the county to bring their programming out to the preserve and they range from A new program we have with Beatitude House in Guadalupe, where we're doing a series of visits and a deep partnership with the Lompoc family YMCA.
But we also have Wilderness Youth Project Nature Track part of the video that Sue showed earlier demonstrating the use of their mobility vehicle was filmed at Arroyo Hondo Preserve. I want to say that one of the conditions of funding when we created Arroyo Hondo Preserve came from the Wildlife Conservation Board. So in addition to then CREF funds We also use Wildlife Conservation Board funding to purchase a royal hondo. And that funding restricted public access to being managed public access only because of the exceptional habitat value of a royal hondo. What you're looking at is the Steelhead Creek and it has this incredible riparian corridor. We don't have that kind of restriction on the Gaviota Overlook property, we have raised all the money today privately We've gotten word that the state is going to provide some additional support and then this grant would allow us to finish the campaign, fully pay for the property and improvements.
And be able to move on and it doesn't come with the same limitations that the Arroyo Hondo Preserve did next slide. These are some kids enjoying the creek. We have a whole riparian ecology lesson where they learn about the invertebrates in the water and they get a chance to maybe get their feet wet and just be out in nature. Next slide. Here's the meadow at Arroyo Hondo that opens up, you can see how steep the canyon is in Arroyo Hondo and again the Gaviota Overlook is the rolling grasslands in the frontage. Next slide.
This is an example of one of our school groups that come out a couple times a week and they're always sold out, which is why we're looking at opening up more slots. We did add some more staff to be able to do that. We only have part-time staff right now at Arroyo Hindu. Next slide. So over time we've conserved almost 32,000 acres so that number is about to skyrocket. I'm pretty excited to tell you. We own five properties in fee and this slide is already out of date because we just closed another conservation easement. We have 56 conservation easements on the way to more.
Our dominant form of conservation lately has been through conservation easements but we do purchase strategic properties to provide the balance of access to open space and habitat preservation. Next slide. And so what we did was have the opportunity to jump and secure this property. The purchase price was $2.75 million, there are costs associated with buying properties, the diligence, the time involved, access agreements et cetera.
Then we also need to take the next step of improving it and we have funds from some of our private donors for the improvements, for the addition of the physical improvement of the trails, getting the property surveyed, putting up any fencing et cetera So what I'm really asking you for today is funding to finish the acquisition piece to fully pay for this property. And I understand that we applied for a grant of $750,000. I understand the staff recommendation is about half that. And I appreciate that there may be other opportunities in the future. However, if you were able to make a grant today of $500,000 towards the Gaviota Overlook we'd be able to finish this and begin work on our next acquisition project and so I really hope you'll consider that request.
Next slide. Because the kids love it and we all love it and I encourage you to get out there if you haven't been lately. Next slide. And last
slide.
Here's a mountain lion coming right back to Royal Hondo after the 2021 Alice All Fire, because nature does not wait. Thank you and I'll take any questions.
3:19 – 3:2818 turns
Any questions? Mr. Nelson
yes I have a question for staff going back to the original presentation about the acquisition costs and we're keeping some additional funds back in deferment is that anticipation of some other projects out there that we kind of have our eyes on are those those funds allocated or budgeted potential for future opportunities that we already have identified or are we just trying to keep our powder dry
So Mr. Chair and Supervisor Nelson, we are not aware of any imminent opportunities but there are opportunities that we see further down the line like the Gaviota Terminal Company property at the west end of Gaviota there. The property right across the street which is currently owned by Freeport-McMoran would become available at some point in the future. There's a certain level of uncertainty on when these properties may be available but we know eventually they will be You know we're always looking ahead trying to figure out you know are there other opportunities that this money could be used for.
Maybe there are other funding sources that are already attached to these properties through parks or through the county's general fund somehow but certainly the strategy of holding some money back in the fund deferral program has paid benefits in the past and we as staff like to continue that practice Thank you
Supervisor Hartman
Meredith, I'm a big believer in Opportunity and being ready to strike when the irons hot We don't always have opportunities on the Gaviota Coast. And so and it takes government a while to get things together Could you talk about what this money means to you in that regard? I
Thank you for the question, Supervisor. I did neglect to say one of the reasons we've been sort of stymied around conservation on the Gaviota Coast is because of how long it takes to do deals and because of the constraints around fair market value etc. We don't have many sources of funding that will help reimburse us. We took a chance here. We jumped out in front. We took money out of savings to say this is such an important opportunity to conserve land We've got to do something in Gaviota to show people that we're serious. And so, we went out and purchased the property without a plan for how to pay for it and our traditional funding sources like Wildlife Conservation Board and the State Coastal Conservancy they won't do reimbursement projects as a general rule.
In that way I'm often having to tell property owners we can do a deal with you but it'll be 12-24 months and a lot of times people can't wait that long and in this case actually The reason that the property was available and the sellers were willing is because of the white, the wife had just passed away. And while we were in escrow on the property, the landowner passed away. So thankfully it was in a trust but you know, we have to move at the speed of real estate and we often cannot these funds allowed us some You know, risk protection because we knew that the money would become available and would be eligible for this
project. So so if you get the 500,000 what does that mean in terms of opportunities and your ability to be nimble and taking advantage of them?
Yep. So that means that we're done paying for this project We have the money to get the trails in place and get them open soon. We'll have free guided hikes on the properties as soon as we can get the trails built, depends on what kind of winter we have. And it also means that we have a strike fund to move quickly on other properties in the Gaviota area or potentially elsewhere in the county. We really need to be able to auction properties and hold them while we put together a funding source. And the reimbursement of this allows us to do that. We simply can't move quickly without it. We miss opportunities.
Supervisor Nelson
yes, thank you chair Williams. I'm just gonna get back to that I know this is the only acquisition property really have so I mean we're kind of deliberating a little bit about this right now I think if the land trust had come to us and said hey We're half million dollars away from being able to make the purchase and we're not we haven't made the purchase yet You'd probably be supportive And it seems like my put them at a disadvantage that they were bold and went out in front of this so you know all the projects that Mr. Briggs brought up our likely products that we're going to partner with the land trust in the future too, so it's depending on what the money and which pockets gonna be in and it does seem me that the land trust might be the most nimble pocket for those funds to be in.
So I'm very sympathetic to the request by Miss Hendricks and when we make our final deliberations, I'm interested in supporting them.
Yeah, I want to say that because a lot of these are still in the hands of. You know farmers with limited means the rapid response nature of acquisitions that the land trust can perform is something that should be rewarded not punished so I you know I'm sympathetic to the proposal for 500000.
Just to put my marker out there, I agree. Thank
you. I think we got that message. That was good.
Okay let's see we still have two more presentations.
Yes Mr. Chair up next we have Kristen Worthley and Stephen Vallee from the City of Lompoc presenting on their stormwater system trash capture project
here in person. Good afternoon
Chairman Williams and board members. My name is Stephen I'm with the city of Lompoc and I'm here on the primary project applicant or the grand applicant here with me is Kristen Worthley she's our project manager and we're here to present our project to you guys so where we're requesting, we requested initially $65,000 for our or to assist with our stormwater system pool trash capture project And we're happy to dig into this, and we're happy to be a part and actually be looking at receiving funds to assist with this.
The project really does assist rate payers in Lompoc. It has a direct coastal nexus with keeping trash out of the estuary so yeah let's dig in. Sorry I'm little. So this is an overview of our stormwater system. You can see, I believe it's a little blurry but the red dots are inlets and you can kind of tell the way Really the stormwater runs through the east-west channel, so it goes northbound. Leads to right towards where our wastewater treatment plant is on the north end of town and then it travels west. So that gets directly entered into the San Miguelito Creek and San Ynez River.
Those two connect at a certain point and then towards the end there's an estuary out by Ocean Beach and that's where our storm water is directed towards So that's what we're looking at right now is phase one, two and three to have an end result of a stormwater system full trash capture implementation plan. The actual project would still need appropriations from our city council at a later date but right now is to look at the plan revise it see what are the best devices to put on our inlets? What are the highest priority inlets? And really just get a grip What's gonna be most cost effective for us to move forward with.
There's numerous key benefits, so prevention of water pollution, improved water quality, protection of aquatic life, enhanced aesthetics, reduced flooding risks, mitigation of infrastructure damage, cost savings, compliance with regulations which this is required through our stormwater permit. So this is an unfunded state mandate that we will need to comply with at a certain point I believe it's 2030. And yeah, community engagement and educational opportunities is you know people are going to see these devices out on on inlets and they're gonna want to know what what these inlets are about and you know what what it's doing what it's helping with and
Yeah
3:28 – 3:3724 turns
That's that's really our project there we're happy to field any questions about it and thank you for the time today
Supervisor Hartman has a question.
Yes, I did So you these requirements are something that the city has to meet by 2030 Will this project enable you to meet those requirements earlier?
I assume so, yes. We are already in phase two, so if we go back, oh sorry. So phase two that's where we're looking at a physical survey of all our storm drain inlets and development of the site health and safety plan and traffic control plan to implement this. So we are working on this to get it done as soon as possible. The grant funds really would help ease the burden on the rate payers because it is an unfunded state mandate Eventually, this is all going to have to come back and be budgeted for as a full implementation project. So that easing this burden right now helps us move money forward to get this project done. So short answer yes.
Thank you. Okay thank you.
And our last presentation.
Our last presentation in person, we have Joanne Cacho and Wesley Mars presenting for the Cabrillo High School Aquarium Project.
Hello Chair Williams and members of the board! My name is Joanne Cacho and I'm a Student Head Curator at the Cabrillo High School Aquarium. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to present our Coastal Gallery project for you all today. So... How do I? Okay. Okay, so a little bit about the program if you're not aware is that the Cabrillo High School Aquarium was started in 1986 by just one student. Since then the aquarium has evolved into a 6,000 square foot facility opened in 2002 with the aquarium being opened in 2002 some of our exhibits are over 20 years old making it crucial that we're really in an attempt to try and modernize them The aquarium is fully operated by six classes of about 200 aquarium students following our Aquarium Science Career Technical Education CTE pathway.
In these classes, one of the most important things that we do is host tours. Last school year, we were able to host over 7,000 visitors! Of these 7, 000, a majority of them come from historically underserved populations with many of them coming from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds or from families coming from below poverty level. The Cabrillo High School Aquarium is located on the campus of a Title I public high school and many of our visiting schools are also coming from Title I campuses. For many of these students, it's their first real experience with the ocean so we want to make sure that we're emulating everything as accurately as possible starting with our Cal Coastal Wetlands exhibit. Our Cal Coastal Wetlands exhibit emulates our San Ynez River watershed which terminates locally at Lompoc Surf Beach It's faced many disruptions over the past century such as bridges, barriers and dams.
But these wetlands are a vital natural resource so we want to make sure that we're educating everyone as accurately as possible. And now I would like to introduce Wesley Mars.
Hi everyone my name is Wesley Mars and i'm also a head curator at the Cabrillo High School Aquarium. I'm going to be teaching you guys a little bit about the project in depth. So it's actually the you can see up there It's the Coastal Gallery Expansion Project and we're going to be highlighting Phase 1 today, which is the CalCoastal Wetlands Exhibit. Phase 2 is our Aquarium Tropical Gallery Annex and Phase 3 is our CTE Education Center.
It's actually going to be the largest exhibit in aquarium history. It's gonna be holding well over 1,000 gallons in terms of volume. With that impressive size it's gonna be replacing four former exhibits that we currently have in our aquarium that we've had upwards of 20 years and I've really been experiencing a lot of wear and tear and I think it's time to upgrade.
It's going to be simulating a coastal boardwalk experience for all of our guests. Since luckily for us, we live within 10 miles from the San Yanez estuary it's a really diverse ecosystem and unfortunately a lot of people in our community don't know much about it and with this exhibit we're gonna be able to much more better educate our community and just anyone who comes into our aquarium on this really in-depth and Just extensive exhibit. That's what we really look forward to.
For the pricing, it is approximately $600,000. We've already received $425,000 from the California Natural Resources Agency, 10,000 from the Senadez Band of Chumash Indians, 10,000 from Anonymous Donor, 55,000 from Patrons and Reserves which leads $100,000 which is what we'll be requesting from you guys today. We thank you all so much for your time and if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Supervisor Hart.
This is just a question, I think it's jellyfish that you've raised at the Monterey Bay Aquarium has come to you to find out how you've got them to reproduce? You've done things that the pros come to you to learn about So I just want to make the point that your aquarium is really a jewel in Santa Barbara County and the kind of education you get, applied education.
Could you just talk a little bit about what you do as curators?
Yeah, sure. So we're both head curators all head curators have something they primarily specialize in Joanne has done an amazing job at a lot of public outreach that we do and I'm more specialized in water quality as far as like exactly just ensuring the water is up to performance and help keep the animals safe Essentially what we do and then those curators, there's jellyfish curators. There's curriculum curators. There's also feeding curators all have a very specific role and when they focus on that We're able to work in a team And when we work as a team the aquarium and everyone like individually is able to benefit it So I really like that system
and in two other questions How do you manage over this summer?
So over the summer, even though school's not in session, the aquarium still needs to be maintained. The animals don't just take a break over the summer. So over the summer on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we had students come in from about 10 to 12 to maintain regular water quality and nutrition operations.
Terrific. And then the last question is who manages the business aspect and the finances?
I would like to direct you to our wonderful advisor sitting over there. So right now we have Mr. Eisen, Mrs. Poquette and Mr. Ludwig.
Thank you, well done. Supervisor Caps
thank you awesome presentation I just it seems like a popular place to work and I'm curious how you or how other students get involved get curious about working at the aquarium what sparked that?
Well for me, I'm currently a senior but my sophomore year we were kind of just picking classes and I wrote down I was like oh aquarium well it was called tourism. It's now called Aquarium Science Far Pathway and I was like oh that sounds like a cool thing. I personally have never really seen the aquarium before that other than my fifth grade tour and I was like oh you know it's just a simple active simple thing I'll take when I first walked in like I know Mr. Eisen remembers I was barely able to say my name to the class and Kind of just like through all the experience that I've gained each it really just shows that each student like if they work hard enough they're able to fulfill and just do anything they wish and they put their mind to.
Thank you.
Supervisor Nelson
Yes thank you. First of all just thank you students for being here this amazing presentation as always I know that my predecessor Supervisor Adam and obviously Supervisor Hartman who used to represent that area has been a big supporter of all of you over the years and I'm glad to be also a big supporters of yours. Thank you for inviting me to the open houses that you guys have had let's make sure we get those invitations from my colleagues here it is probably one of the neatest Aquariums between Long Beach and Monterey. And it's really impressive on the leadership opportunities I got to give a nod also to the.
Leadership at Lompoc Unified School District for empowering the school to have this program that's very unique in the way that. Supervisor Caps probably knows that. The funding that comes into districts. There's no line item for aquariums and for them to make the sacrifices that they do allow this program to exist and the lives it changes is really impressive. It's something that it's an honor for us up here at the board to be able to support you all. Thank you staff for giving them the full amount I know that you guys probably learned your lesson when you give them less than the amount.
They still get their way anyway so thank you for doing that. Makes it easier on all of us on the board here. So again, really appreciate the presentation. It's amazing work you guys are doing.
Supervisor Lavanya.
Yes, and I also wanted to say to the other folks that have applications in it doesn't mean you need to wear a hat. And although you guys could probably hire yourselves out to make presentations for other individual groups, but it is since I've been on this board. This has been just a. It's something to look forward to every year when we every two years when the cycle presents itself so.
You guys are doing amazing work. It'd be really cool to hear some of the success stories of people that have gone through your aquarium program and where they're at now and how that's translated into, oh looks like you have a young person there that has done that but it may be in the next presentation when you do that it would be nice to hear from somebody that's gone through the program and how that's translated into success in that world.
3:38 – 3:4311 turns
Okay thank
you
so much. You guys did a great job. Okay are there any public commenters outside of the presenters?
Chair Williams and members of the board we have no further requests to speak from the public on this item.
Then I will close public comment and it's to the board Supervisor Nelson
yes thank you First of all, thank you staff for working here to try to make sure that the money was spread around appropriately. I support the recommendations of staff as far as the secondary programs. And I heard from the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network the concern about whether there's a nexus there I sympathize with them and I understand their point. I do think even if we do concede the point that all wildlife is connected to the coast, I think that the $5,000 contribution for that program is probably still in the right spot as far as allocation for that program and an effort that staff did to make sure that everybody got something So I'm comfortable with it.
The numbers that they are except on the acquisition piece, I do support the land trusts requests for the $500,000. I want to continue to have them as a partner. In the county on acquisitions such as this, I appreciate their commitment to public access which is hugely important to me. I don't want to just purchase lands to acquire them to look at them. I wanna make sure that we're able to get out there and enjoy them, the public. And so they've made a big commitment to that which has won me over and I'm happy to support the $500 amount, the $500,000 amount they requested. It is less than their initial $750,000.
And then I do also want to think, I know it may not be popular but I do want to thank Exxon and Freeport-McMahon for producing. As little as they do these days but making sure those funds available so that we can support such great programs like this. I know it's not always popular but for me in my district you know a lot of the oil is not just a global issue it's a very local issue and sometimes mean jobs and sometimes it means funding for programs such as this and so that's why I understand some of the thoughts and attitudes towards it from some of my colleagues in the public on the global issue. But for me, it's a very local issue and the impacts of, you know, in the Lompoc Valley and the Santa Maria Valley, a lot of jobs and funding for programs such as this.
And that's one of the reasons why I've generally been supportive of the industry and the ways that they've been able to do that locally. So thank you.
Supervisor Levin? Thank you Mister chair I would agree with Bob's choices on on the money and appreciate staff going through all these for us. I just didn't want this to to go by without Again, thinking nature track. I think that's just such a change in people's their whole quality of life is just something simple like that can really change a whole person's outlook on life so I think you're doing amazing work. You know, I'm glad that we got in early on it and really appreciate my colleagues all talking about how we want to continue to fund this and so you know as with all of these programs I think they're all great but for me that one really stood out and really appreciate the work you do.
Is there a motion?
Supervisor Hart
Well, I just wanted to add that I really support the strike fund for the land trust so that they're able to be quick when an opportunity presents itself. And they're all tremendous projects. I'm really interested to hear back about the cult restoration and the proprietary dome and concrete and how that works to restore Goleta, offshore Goleta Beach. So I'll support the motion.
Yes so could we get a motion and I personally, I just want to say that these are great proposals. Wish we had more to allocate to all of them. Me too. Maybe I would also just say that you know one of the trends I've seen is sometimes that we don't always give our own departments much. I'm okay with going along but I just want to make sure that people know that last time we didn't fund Santa Claus Lane And we still don't have that bathroom funded because of that. So let's just keep on putting a marker in some of the things that are still yet to be done, but I can support a motion particularly if the motioner says that we will be listed instead of as CREMF as County of Santa Barbara CREMF.
I think this is really important.
3:43 – 4:1715 turns
That's not our money. I mean, where? I understand that why are we taking credit for
something we're not doing well if you want to get my issue is that we always do this way when we do stuff where we do it as department or we do it as fund and nobody knows that the county's involved at all so I just think it's an important aware of where there is well and
I I agree with you when it's like social services or mental health we don't ever get credit out in the community everybody thinks that somebody else does it And so that's important. But I think in this one, we're basically the pass-through and all we're really doing is evaluating the applications and signing off on them. So I get where you're going.
Isn't that a little bit like taxes? Where we're the pass through and we're just the ones that allocate what...where those taxes go?
No, this is private money from for a permit. I mean if you're gonna name it anything which I don't want to do but if you'r gonna name it anything it would be like Exxon offshore mitigation fund or something where they I'll just, I don't want to vote against this because I want to support all these projects. But I think naming it Santa Barbara County something is
whether it's listed as an origin of what
it's not going to matter but I think it's just the optics of it but that's fine.
Let me try to split the baby here. I think it'd be helpful for organizations that receive these funds to acknowledge the relationship that they have with the county moving forward. I don't think it needs to be in a motion, but I think that you know we're working together to accomplish these things. I wouldn't be supportive of having to, if I can put my two cents in there, I'm gonna go with Steve's idea of throwing in some of these oil operators and I don't know that's not gonna be popular either so I think we should probably just stay out of that.
The waters in that and try to, but just you know the message is out there too. Some of our constituents out there that are requesting funds a little bit of an acknowledgement there with with that relationship that we have would be would be good and so I'll make the motion that we adopt staff recommendations with the alteration from the $375,000 that was originally allocated towards the land trust to $500,000
I have a motion by Nelson. Is there a second? Second. Second by Hartman. All those in favor, please say it.
I just had one other comment and I feel compelled to say it. I really support the Lompoc stormwater but as a general rule I'm not sure that I would support that from other communities coming forward. I think Lompoc is in this particular economic situation right now and that this will be extremely helpful to them and perhaps get it online Earlier, which would be beneficial to the environment. But as a general rule, I don't think this is the sort of thing we should fund for everyone.
That's good point, and I would agree. Make a motion
to agree with that as
well.
OK, I have a motion and a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. We're going to take a break 30
minute break and we'll reconvene for item four. We're reconvening.
4:17 – 4:275 turns
Departmental item number four.
Chair Williams and members of the board, departmental item number four is from the County Executive Office. The Auditor Controller's office, the General Services Department and the Human Resources Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a county enterprise resource planning ERP project update and the workday implementation in ongoing support. And there is a fourth this vote required on this item.
Please proceed, Nancy.
Good afternoon board members and Chair Williams. We are pleased to provide your board with an update on the Workday Enterprise Resource Planning System project or ERP that has been well underway for the past year. The system replaces our current finance human resources and payroll software systems as we embarked upon this project, the team developed a vision of how Workday will be of benefit to the county and ultimately the public The vision is we use Workday to continually improve what we do and how we do it.
More specifically, we use Workday as a platform to continually improve our internal processes, promote ease of sharing information and remain agile to adapting to changing needs so that we can achieve the county's mission of delivering exceptional services. We will do this by promoting consistent processes across the departments to meet the needs of the county as a whole, reinforcing a culture of innovation that attracts creative individuals who are dedicated to continuously pursuing opportunities to improve how we work. Increasing the speed of routine tasks to free up time for more meaningful work that challenges the status quo and improves the customer's experience.
Making data transparent for strategic decision making and accountability. Enhancing the tools employees use to deliver exceptional public service. And overall the system will help us promote efficiency accountability enable us to be more compliant and reduce risk. This project is a significant undertaking by not only many county staff, but by your board as planned as a planned budgetary investment.
This funding for this project has been incorporated into the county's budget for the past several years as staff estimated one time and ongoing costs That are now coming to fruition. I will be covering the fiscal and staffing cost information towards the end of the presentation, but wanted to let your board know up front that the funding budgeted today is holding as planned and the request today is to release funds set aside in reserves for this anticipated purpose.
I will now turn it over to cattle Kyle Slattery, the project manager to kick off the presentation.
Thank you, Nancy and good afternoon Chair Williams and members of the board. Thank you very much for this opportunity to be here to give this update on not only our workday implementation but also our ongoing support throughout the life of the system. I'm Kyle Slattery, Chief Deputy Controller in the County Auto Controllers Office and the County Project Manager for the implementation effort.
So let's get started just by showing. Well real quick this is on the agenda simply to provide this update to the board on the project but also augment our staffing not only for the implementation effort which we're midway through that ongoing support throughout the life of the system included within our recommended actions is a resolution to add positions as well as some funding for them so that we have these resources in place now and into the future to properly support this county's investment in the new workday system.
And before I get into the specifics of today's presentation, just want to stop to acknowledge and appreciate all the individuals listed on this slide here. So our seven-member steering committee which includes two assistant CEOs as well as five department directors, our project management and ongoing support, as well as the 25 county leads from five county departments who are supported in working in coordination with over a hundred subject matter experts from nearly all county departments This undertaking, this implementation would not be possible without all the individuals listed on this slide.
Okay, so today's presentation is broken up into three main parts. First as your County Project Manager I'll provide an update on the implementation effort. Next I'll turn it over to our Chief Information Officer Chris Sherwin as well as Mark Garcia our appointed Workday Support Manager who will give an update on ongoing support of the new system and then as Nancy Anderson mentioned we'll close it out with a fiscal and staffing update So I start every presentation with this slide, not just what we are doing but most importantly why we are doing it. So yes the county is implementing the new workday system and by doing so we will unify our finance our human capital and our payroll software into one fully integrated system as a result of that we're going to retire the existing systems that we currently use in the county And this ultimately will provide that new countywide platform, the new heart and soul of how we do business here to help advance us into the future.
So the four boxes at the bottom are really the pillars of why that I like to emphasize and that we emphasize whenever we can in front of any of our key stakeholders. We're going to standardize and further automate our business processes. We'll simplify our county software landscape. We did a study, we had over 99 applications currently in use. We're going to cut that in half over time through the implementation of this new workday system and then be able to meet the expectations of our county workforce. We all have advanced technology at home and in our personal lives it's time to bring that into the workplace And then final facilitate the modernization of county business operations. Ultimately this is what we're trying to do be efficient and effective at doing what we need to do in the back office and in our business operations so our departments can do what they do best which is deliver exceptional services to the public.
And so this new core this new heart is going to improve the system as a whole so that our departments can do what they do best. Our project is divided into three main phases with phase one and phase two being the biggest of the three. So phase one financials is underway we have a scheduled go live date just about two months from now in November. Phase 2 which is human capital on payroll is also under way and that's scheduled to go live next spring. We have a third phase which is smaller which is simply leveraging some of Workday's analytical tools in order to use all of the data in our new common core effectively to assist with decision making.
Now inherent in any project of this size and length and complexity there are going to be some changes. We've had a couple change orders to our scope with the center. The first two were simply changing the timing of scheduled deliverables certain things that we thought when we entered the contract we would do in one month ended up occurring in another so that's just some cleanup to the paperwork. The third change order was more significant. So this revised our phase one go live date by three months from a August go live to November simply because we needed more time to fully implement the software for Phase 1.
By doing so we also refine the scope based on some things we'd learned after working on the project for nearly a year. To offset the cost of that extension in phase one, we also removed the workday adaptive planning software from the statement of work for a center to assist the county in implementing. This is simply because we've found a better budget solution which the county will pursue so the net cost to all of these changes is zero but just do want to highlight that we will be pursuing a separate budget solution at some time in the near future.
Let's talk about a different kind of change. Change to how we do things at the county, change to our business operations and the impacts of those on our county departments. Change isn't easy and replacing the systems that we use is also going to be a big undertaking. So this transition to the new ERP system is full of various types of changes. Some that only the people directly doing the work will notice and observe and experience, others that will elevate even up to the public in the Board of Supervisors and changes in the way the county does things. So we have a few examples here. First, we'll have earlier budget checks if I want to buy something and I only have $100. If I commit to pay 80 to Chris and 40 to Nancy, I won't have enough so it's not just when the bills are paid.
It's also when I commit to spend the resources and that will be a change for our departments will provide better accountability over our resources. There also will be different ways of rolling forward budget for multi-year projects, and so we'll learn a lot more as an organization about the concept of encumbrances and what that means for how we budget for things over multiple periods. We'll also have new components of the system that we never had before.
One highlighted here is we'll have a new capital project system directly within workday. So now project managers that never touched our finance system or human capital systems will be in there working within the system with their peers and in their departments. And then finally I just want to set some context for where we are in the life of this thing. This is a 15 year contract with Workday, we're all in and our subscription covers all the way through 2037 and we're on the far left there before deployment So we endeavor to deploy the software this fiscal year and it will take some time to stabilize. This isn't something that just immediately works perfectly overnight, and really the software will never be done. It will always be improved and continue to be implemented to meet the county's business requirements.
So while we'll deploy, we'll take a period of time to really stabilize our usage of the system. Then once we get our rhythm going, we'll be able to manage the system and then most importantly optimize our use above the system make sure we are leveraging this significant investment of the county to its fullest potential to again get back to supporting County business operations so departments can do their job which is deliver exceptional services So with that, I'll turn it over to Chris Sherwin to take us to our next part.
4:28 – 4:353 turns
All right, thank you Kyle. Good afternoon Chair Williams and members of the board. I'm here this afternoon to provide a brief overview of the county's need for ongoing workday support. Work day touches every department in the county. Once fully deployed all 4,000 plus county staff will use workday to varying levels. A system of this magnitude requires a dedicated and trained team to provide system administration, technical support and functional support.
This team is called the Workday Support Organization or WSO for short. The majority of the WSO team will reside in ITD, the new IT department with Mark Garcia as the newly selected WSO manager The Workday Support Organization will include functional analysts from the Auditor-Controller's Office and Human Resources. WSO will provide technical support, integrations with dozens of other software applications, testing, report development, system security, change management and overall communication.
There is also a critically important need for governance to ensure fair representation and the decision-making body to provide direction. The current plan is for the existing Workday Steering Committee representing six different county departments, to continue on as the Executive Governance Committee for work day support. At this point I'm gonna turn it over to Mark Garcia who will provide more details about the new WSO.
Good afternoon Chair Williams and members of the board. My name is Mark Garcia I've just taken on the position of workday sport manager a little over a month ago. So to discuss what the Workday Support Organization came about, it was a team effort led by the auditor controller, the director of HR or chief information officer and members of the CEO office. This team is going to work to support both the technical and functional needs which include supporting issues training testing for process changes both wanted in the county and from releases of new software updates that Workday does on a periodic basis The size of the support organization came about from conversations with multiple counties in California. Counties outside of the state.
Working with our implementer Accenture. Verifying with Workday and their tool to assess according to our FTEs functions that we are implementing and other items how many people should be there. And then multiple discussions amongst the steering committee to come to our conclusion. And we plan in the future to reevaluate. We know that early on taking on such a monumental task requires a strong support structure to be successful but as time passes and things change will reevaluate to see if our structure is still as efficient as we think it will be to start with.
And as Chris mentioned we're going to continue with governance to ensure that there is a high level understanding of what we're doing what we're prioritizing and what may need to be focused on that we may not all see. So currently the steps on the left are what we have completed. And so. We started just about a year ago on researching the best way to do a support model.
Then we worked with different subcommittees to get recommendations this year we brought those recommendations together to create the model you saw in the last screen and then put it forward for approval. Then over the summer, they was the search for the Workday Support Manager and I was fortunate enough to be selected in that position. And from there we've worked to determine the positions and build out the org chart that you see on the previous slides. Continuing forward brings us to today where we're here looking for your support and approval to add to our positions and get ready to fund the staff to begin We're going to start our recruitments in the next few weeks. We are already coordinating with departments and HR for position descriptions so that we're ready to start moving as soon as we can.
We are building out a ticketing system and a phone system to make sure that there's a very clear line of support so that the first day everybody knows how to be helped if they need it. We're also looking to get additional support from a managed services contract to help us for our first few weeks and months to make sure that Go Live is successful and make sure we have a road map for implementing again the workday changes and other things that will be coming up very soon.
And then in the next few weeks we plan to hire appoint and train support staff to be ready for our go live. Thank you.
So now that brings us to how are we paying for this? So as noted previously, this has been planned for several years and it's been noted in the five year forecast with funding being set aside annually until it was needed. Last fiscal year, we began paying towards the project for software and mobile agent services. The total cost were $5.2 million as shown on the slide for fiscal year 22-23 For the current year and the set aside reserve balance was nine point eight one million. And then we balanced we budgeted six point nine two of that for current year in anticipated expenses.
The request today is for an additional one point eight two million from the funds that are set aside currently. That will cover the costs as indicated for the positions that were just discussed so that leaves us about a million dollars then in the reserve The total ongoing workday costs between both the software and services, and the staffing is about $4.8 million.
We have been as to build towards that reserve what we've been doing is 2.75 million dollars of GFC ongoing has been accumulating for the reserve, and that's what's been used to pay the one-time costs And that $2.75 million will continue for ongoing needs as needed. In addition to that, the auditor controller will be taking the implementation costs and amortizing that in addition to the staffing costs And applying that to the countywide cost allocation plan.
And that will generate approximately $2.9 million ongoing. So between the 2.75 and GFC, that we already have, plus a $2 .9 million ongoing that'll be part of the countywide cost allocation plan reimbursement to the general fund. There'll be sufficient costs without any additional funding for the ongoing costs of the project. With that next slide. So over the past two years, the board has added nine positions for the project.
The request today is for an additional 13. Nine of those associated to the HR and ITD department and four are funding for the auditor controllers office that are currently vacant and unfunded. So that totals 17 positions for the workforce, for the Workday Support Organization. And as indicated that's about a $3 million cost that's included in the 4.8 on the previous slide.
So that is the total of the costs to date and the anticipated ongoing costs of the project. And with that, that takes us to the recommended actions that lists out the positions and the budgetary transaction. And with that we're happy to answer any questions you may have.
4:35 – 4:4110 turns
Questions from the board? Supervisor Hart?
Well I'm a big supporter of this effort. I think it's kind of a deferred maintenance that we're getting back to but all told where it's going to be 26 FTEs, 26 new FTEs is
that? So there's 22 total there's gonna be five temporary positions of that 22 that brings us down to the 17 that are our prospective positions correct
And despite the slide six, that's the benefits. I'm having trouble in my own mind getting a handle on how this is gonna be different and better especially given the investment. I believe it will be but I'm asking you to help me imagine how our workplace is gonna function in a better more efficient effective way Given this investment in FTEs, because it's clunky now but it works we get it done.
Supervisor Hartman through the chair thank you for that question and I was hoping that perhaps our ITD director would answer that because there's some a lot of behind-the-scene good answers to that that I think will be helpful
Supervisor Hartman through the chair. You said a key word and that is inefficiency or the opposite efficiency, right? Right now as Kyle mentioned there are over 100 different systems That are legacy systems in the county today so you can imagine each one of those systems has its own database It's hosted either on premise or in the cloud. It's it's a Systems are spread everywhere and they're not talking, they're not sharing, they're not collaborating. And so by doing this we're gonna reduce those number of systems as Kyle mentioned in half and we're gonna now have one database that's going to be shared by HR, by Auditor-Controller, by all the departments that are involved so that we can be a lot more efficient at how we run the internal operations of the county And so efficiency is one key piece that we will see significant improvements on because right now, things are spread there.
They're all over and it's very difficult to get data, we don't have visibility into all the data that we want to see. So that's a you know that's a big piece right now. Over time as we integrate other applications into Workday, we will start to see even further efficiencies. And that's one of the benefits of having a modern day platform that we can tie in other applications into Workday and so over the long run we will start to see significant improvements in how we operate internally within the county Which then will result in us being able to deliver better services to our constituents. We're gonna be able to have better data to share, that data's gonna be much more transparent to the constituents as well.
We are reducing risks by having a modern system that's not in the system that's over 20 years old today and so there's just a lot of benefits that we'll see over time.
Can you give specific examples? I mean, I was surprised when we have an emergency one of the things we have to do is just catalog all the expenses. That's the first thing you do in an emergency. Will this help in that? Can you give me examples where this is going to make a huge difference in some way?
Yeah so there are numerous examples, one of which Supervisor Hartman through the chair is our simple travel reimbursement process. If you go on a vacation there's a form that needs to be filled out and if you don't not vacation sorry on a business trip excuse me there and I I don't travel that often for work, but when I do it can take me almost an hour to complete that form. Get all the slips together, scan it into the system, make sure it's signed right, route it through approvals. We're getting away with that paper form through Workday so Workday will have a modern interface for us to input that information directly into the system It will take a fraction of the time going forward. And that's just one example of paper-based processes or disconnected processes that will now be integrated into one workflow within a single system.
So, that's one good example. And there are a lot that come to just being able to, as a worker in the office, see something from start to finish and know where it is in the process. Be able to get triggered an alert to know that it's your turn to do something and see it all the way through the final approval step. We're going to be emailing each other a lot less. We're gonna have to be reaching out and contacting a lot less because all of that workflow will now be in the system And so that's one way that employees are just going to spend less time running around figuring out where things are in the process, calling emailing or otherwise just trying to figure out who's up next. Who's on second base? How do we get this thing home?
Supervisor Fleming I'm going to give you some applications that affect us on the budget side because of things that affect you. So Supervisor Lavanino asked us this past year at Budget Workshops, what positions have been vacant in departments? Because they should be looking at their vacancies before we give them funding. So Nancy how long did it take for Paul to run that report? I
think it was about two days.
4:41 – 4:4921 turns
Yeah and of my budget director spending all his time trying to collect that data because it's in different places. It's not correlated and even what he gave you was a shot in time. It wasn't really a full picture so I asked him where can we get some more information said this is all I can do in the amount of time that we have. So as real world impacts on us.
How many and when you say we say we want a vacancy report. Sometimes it could take a week for us to actually having an analyst full time dedicated to getting that information. We have issues with the sheriff's overtime. It's hard for us to see. We can't actually see and make those correlations. And so I think Kyle and everyone is talking about just day to day it'll be easier but there are things that we cannot see in our system right now or it takes us a lot of time to pull that together. And it's a little embarrassing that we can't but that's what we need to go to a more modern system.
Looks like we've got lots of questions. Should we try questions first? Anybody? Yeah, all these are questions. OK, Supervisor Katz.
Well, you just answered one of my questions was just how does this help the public and that example of travel reimbursement means that people are spending more time serving the public rather than those types of systems. So thank you for answering that question. But my second question is kind of stuck on the new positions. I'm just curious What's happening to the people that are currently working on these kinds of systems?
Is that an addition, is those 17 in addition to those folks? If you could break that down a little bit more for me. Thank you.
And we could probably all add value to that but so those are in addition right now. All the positions that are within the departments it's kind of all hands on deck to get through the implementation process And then the Workday Support Organization is really the ongoing component of it. So part of the process after the implementation will be really evaluating, okay once we're stabilized what are the positions that are currently working because they're all working on the project right now that could be evaluated for different use or through attrition Be reduced or eliminated
Supervisor Lavinia.
Thank you Chris if you could remind me where did you come at in the? In this selection of workday were you hired after before how did that all
I was hired after
okay, so I What's your level of comfort with Workday? And is this the right, I mean it's late now but I want to know are we going down the right path here.
Absolutely yes in fact I was at a CIO conference not too long ago and I started asking other CIOs from around the country what are you doing and by and large what I heard was Workday. A lot of people are moving for a lot of counties are moving from other applications, even some modern applications to Workday. So that helped me feel even more confident that we chose the right platform.
Great.
Honestly I've seen a lot of commercials for Workday had no clue what it was and commercials don't help a lot either so this is good to know exactly what we're doing
Supervisor Nielsen.
Yes, thank you Chair Williams I think it's important for our board to understand that some of these programs are we've actually written ourselves in this county so we have very specific tools that are often antiquated and don't fit other Products out there. So I'm really excited about this You know, I've been really impressed on where we've moved with teams I mean, I don't know how that you know It's really impacted the way we do work in my office and I see Workday is one a piece of that as well But a question I have about Workday Yeah the public's going to have a benefit by. Making you know. Towels doughnuts form faster so you can work on other things that might benefit the public. What tools are in Workday that the public might see? I understand the city of Santa Barbara I heard something recently about they have some transparency tools with their budgeting that the public can see also what kind of services that we can plug in there.
I know that we got obviously we're trying to integrate a cell a little bit more into our permitting side does that plug in how does this all kind of fit moving forward.
Supervisor Nielsen through the chair, a core component of Workday is the modern platform or the modern database that it has and the integration capabilities of other software applications into that database. And so whether its Excel, ServiceNow, Microsoft products You go down the list, there are hundreds of mainstream software applications that now we can tie into Workday and have much better visibility integration capabilities that we don't have today. And so this is creating a foundation or a platform now that we can really build off of and I see this just over the next several years just continuing to Improve how we provide services, how we deliver. Reports data all of that you know we didn't haven't really touched on analytics but our ability now to really start using some business intelligence to get meaningful reports things that we struggle with today and so this will help.
So my new hobby is AI. Are you guys looking at some AI components here? Is that starting to be added in? I'm sure there's some add-ons with Workday where that's being fed in.
Yeah, I can just briefly touch on that and then Kyle can go into it. So yeah, Workday is definitely leveraging AI and we'll continue to even further leverage that in the future.
Yeah that's a great component of going to this type of system is workdays delivering updates every six months. So within those updates are gonna be modern features and functionalities so as the world gets ready for advanced A.I. capabilities within our business software Workday will be towards the forefront of delivering that out to customers such as the county.
So you know I share Supervisor Hartman's concern about new positions but what happened in the old positions but I think What I see here is these efficiencies will eventually be cost avoidance and I think in the future we are gonna be looking at positions going okay wait a second maybe we don't need to have three people do that job anymore. And it's a really dynamic time in county governance especially with AI and now systems like this that really operate like businesses out there. It's something I think we need to all keep an eye on you know not just the deployment of the technology but what does that mean for our workforce?
And the way that we deliver services so I think is very exciting Kyle I really appreciate your passion. In this presentation. It really comes through your knowledge on this is really impressive. And this is a good presentation for me to send back to my constituents who really expect me. To fight for you know the county operating more and more like a business and I think that that's what we're gonna be doing here and not only acting.
Operating like a business but actually being on the cutting edge where many businesses aren't aware of the county is going to be here in the future and that's a rare thing for government to be in that place. But I do think that's in part because of. Commitment this board and our leadership team has made in technology so I'm excited about this.
Any public comment?
Chair Williams and members of the board we have no request to speak on this item.
OK then can I get a motion?
4:49 – 4:5112 turns
Move staff recommendation
second.
Motion by Hartman second by Nelson all those in favor, please say aye. Aye Opposed thank you all for your work We should be done but we're I'm gonna be asking for reconsideration for a 25 The whole consent calendar And one of our member needs to recuse themselves.
Do I need to state the reason for recusal?
Yes chair Williams and members of the board before we adjourn today, we do have a request to recall the vote on the administrative agenda. To further clarify I would like to further clarify the record by noting that Supervisor Hartman has identified a potential conflict of interest with Administrative Item Number 25. Administrative item number 25 is a hearing request from the Planning and Development Department For an appeal on the Planning Commission approval of the change of ownership for the lost florist pipeline system. Formally Plains All American Lines 901 and 903, and this is in the 1st 3rd and 4th districts. This is a hearing request for the September 19th board meeting.
We are requesting to rescind the boards prior action improving the balance of the administrative agenda. And before we proceed, I would just like to reopen public comment on the administrative agenda and note for the record. I am unaware of any further requests to speak on the administrative agenda, but if there are any please log into zoom now. I have not seen any in our hearing room so if we could please proceed first. We just need to get a separate motion on the approval of administrative item number 25.
So Mr. Chair and members of the board, actually what I'd recommend doing in the opposite order since we need to redo the whole administrative agenda except item 25 perhaps Supervisor Hartman wants to participate in that one and then she can announce her recusal then you can take up item 25.
But don't we need a vote procedurally to bring it all back first?
A vote
to rescind. I guess because this is the same meeting, it would be a rescind
correct.
If it was a different meeting, it would be reconsideration. So can I get a motion to rescind as the
maker. I think it was the maker of the motion originally so I'll go ahead and make a motion to rescind my initial motion here to rescind the approval of the agenda with exception of A 13. I think that was the one that was previously pulled out. And A 26.
4:51 – 4:5314 turns
OK
so I'll second that all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. It's
unanimous. Supervisor Harbin is recusing on that one too, just since it included that and I did want to note for the record that since it's a consent calendar item when you recuse you're not required to leave the room so she is allowed to stay
We should call that the.
SPK. OK, I'll make a motion to approve the administrative agenda with the exception of A13. 825 and 826.
And for further clarification, that's the withdrawal of a sorry
and it
drove a 26. All those that's emotion can I get a second?
Second.
Second by caps all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed.
I'll make a motion to approve item A 25. Is
there a second? I will second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you and abstention for recusal.
That was already done. We didn't we didn't resend that one,
OK? So I hope that's clear as mud for all of you out there watching. We are adjourned to Tuesday September 12th 2023 in Santa Maria.