Board of Supervisors — 2025-06-24

Good morning, everybody. It's my pleasure to call to order this meeting of the Board of Supervisors for June 24th 2025 in Santa Barbara County. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

moves approval of

both.

Nelson second

Okay, we have a motion and second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. CEO anything to report? No report this morning chair. Okay sounds good. Madam Clerk do you have any announcements about today's agenda?

Chair Kaps and members of the board, I do have a few announcements this morning. An addendum was posted on Friday June 20th 2025 amending administrative item number 14 on today's agenda. Administrative item number 14 is from the Community Services Department regarding a professional service agreement with Santa Barbara Alliance for Community Transformation SB Act and fighting back Santa Maria Valley FBSMV to operate continuum of care advisory groups in the addendum amended recommendations A and B With an amendment in Recommendation A to a not-to-exceed service agreement amount of $39,750 and an amendment in Recommendation B to a not-to exceed service agreement amount of $40,000.

The changes included in this addendum have been posted and made available online to both the Board and the public. Since there are no requests to speak on this item it may be added to the balance of the administrative agenda. Additionally administrative item number one is a resolution sponsored by Supervisor Hartman's office commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Solving Shoes store. Unfortunately, the honoree is unable to attend today's meeting due to an unforeseen emergency as a result this resolution will be presented as an honorary resolution today 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 2 of the agenda.

Individuals that would like to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance via the link available on page two. If you have any questions please contact the clerk of the board's office at area code 805-568-2240 again that number is 805 568 2240 And that concludes my announcements for today.

Okay, thanks Madam Clerk. Next up is our administrative agenda. Would any board members like to pull any items? Supervisor Nelson I have you with A29. That's correct thank you. Anything

else? That's it.

And I've pulled A12. Any others from the Board and how about the public?

Chair Kaps and Members of the Board we have no requests to speak from the public on the administrative agenda today.

Okay, I'll now entertain a motion to approve the balance of the administrative agenda except for A12 and A29 So moved

Second.

Okay we have a motion and a second all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion passes okay now we will move to our resolutions to be presented Madam Clerk when you're ready will you please read administrative item number two into the record

Chair Kaps and members of the board, administrative item number two is sponsored by Supervisor Hartman. It is to adopt a resolution of accommodation honoring His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday and recognizing July 6, 2025 as Compassion Day in Santa Barbara County. And joining us in person today we have Teppo Tuku and Heidi Perez I believe Haiti is unable to join us, but Tepo if you can please make your way to the podium and I will go ahead and read the resolution.

Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has spent his life advocating for peace nonviolence compassion and human understanding. And whereas His Holiness has inspired millions around the world regardless of religion or nationality With his message that love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. And whereas compassion is a fundamental human value that advances mutual respect understanding and kindness forming the basis for a more inclusive and peaceful society.

And whereas acts of compassion both big and small supply to the mental emotional physical well-being of individuals in communities And whereas July 6, 2025 marks the 90th birthday of His Holiness providing an opportunity to honor his lifelong commitment to promoting universal values of kindness ethical responsibility and care for others. And whereas Santa Barbara County celebrates the rich diversity of its communities and believes in the power of compassion to strengthen bonds promote healing and foster a more just and peaceful world Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara hereby proclaims June 21st 2025 as Compassion Day in honor of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama's 90th birthday and calls upon residents to practice acts of compassion service and connection in their daily lives passed and adopted today.

Thank you. Making the global observance of the years of compassion and the 90th birthday of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, communities around the world come together to honor a life dedicated to peace, wisdom and universal responsibilities. This milestone celebrates His Holiness tirelessly effort to promote compassion In the faith, harmony and rights of Tibetan people offering inspiring for all embarrassed kindness and moral courage to in today's world.

Thank you for the resolution of the Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County Proclamation as Compassion Day in honor of His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama's 90th birthday. The proclamation will be handed to His Holiness on his 19th birthday, July 6, 2025 in Dharamsala in India. On behalf of Tibetans in Tibet and exile we thank you for your support for Tibet and its non-violence culture preservation.

As a Buddhist I pray for this uncertain world May fear turn into courage. May hatred dissolve into love. May confusion give way to wisdom. Let all beings live in peace with open hearts, in harmony and understanding. May our world heal and awaken. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Supervisor Harmon.

I was thinking you know what does compassion day mean in Santa Barbara and it was looking at a social feeling that involves sensitivity to the emotional suffering of others and a motivation to Try to relieve that suffering, and I think that's something that we want to carry with us every day. But today is a way to renew commitment to that the Dalai Lama has been an exemplar worldwide in modeling that for all of us so thank you so much for being here and bringing this to our attention

Yeah, I just wanted to add thank you Teppo. You do so much for our community. I was able to attend the celebration on Saturday with about a hundred people maybe more and I had looked up how many times has the Dalai Lama been in Santa Barbara? And it appears to be over nine maybe ten and so I asked for a show of hands in the room of folks how many had been with the Dalai Lama. I know that my father had It's an honor of having met him in the past and about a third of the room had actually been in some sort of teaching with him. And so that the reach is so profound, even so far away yet we all signed a card and had a birthday cake. And what I was really struck with with the notion of compassion is just how strong our interfaith community here is in Santa Barbara County.

Just people have all different faiths Thank you for being here. I guess that is it for our resolutions today so we will move on to general public comment.

Chair Kapsa, members of the board. Our first administrative item polled is A12 from the Community Services Department it is to consider recommendations regarding a First Amendment to the Goleta Beach restaurant concession agreement

Okay, Director Ahmers I don't know. I pulled this just because I wanted to highlight I'm very much in support of it so I didn't pull it for any reasons to ask questions but more so does just say this is a good progress of reaching a new lease and so I'm hoping that my colleagues will also have come to that conclusion. I know some of you been out to the Elwood. It's a very exciting development after years of trying to get that restaurant up and going. Like so many people, I grew up going to the beach side, that restaurant that was there and then to not have it be functioning. And so this lease is a step in the right direction to give them longer time to make up for a lot of the flooding that happened I just wanted to lend my support and shine a little light and say it's a good time to go to Goleta Beach and visit the Elwood because things are really buzzing.

It's pretty much packed when you go, and I think that this lease will help them kind of keep that progress going so that's all I really had to say unless anyone had any questions on the board. Supervisor Lee?

I just want to say I had lunch there and it was one of the best meals ever had, so encourage everybody to go out there. As someone who understands the business they do a great job. So get out there have some lunch have a drink.

Great that's it with that I will take a I will move to support staff recommendation of A12. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Great thank you motion carries 829.

Chair Kaps and members of the board administrative item number 29 is from the planning and development department it is to consider recommendations regarding approval of an agreement for services of independent contractor with RRM design group for architectural design reviews services

Yes, thank you Chair Kaps. I have some questions for staff on this. As far as there's two portions of this contract it's the ADU Plans that are going to be done in advance that people might be able to take off the shelf. And then there's also some design work that RRM would do for us on certain projects, and I don't have any issue with the design work. It sounds like it's great. I'm glad you guys are outsourcing some of those professional services to RRMs. They're quite a professional firm and well-respected.

I am kind of concerned about these pre-ADU plans. And I'm just kind of wondering, you know is there really a need for the county to get in the same space? Are we potentially limiting you know or competing with with the public here contractors that have already paid to have pre-approved plans. How many pre-approved plans do we have in the county? So the board letter was a little incomplete for me on the full package of $50,000 is not a lot of money in the scheme of things. It's still a lot of money for you and I but I just want to kind of understand this a little better and wonder if it's worth we're just duplicating services potentially here that really And the other piece of information I want to share with my colleagues is there's over 300 ADU cases that are in process right now.

So County and the unincorporated areas so it seems like it's already working, I don't know if we need to get involved in this business part of it so help me.

Sure, sure. Supervisor Nelson through the chair. First I will start with we have a program in the housing element that says by 2025 December we will have sets of pre-approved plans for ADUs so it was an action item that we identified when that housing element was adopted The Lompoc project sort of, I'm not exactly sure where they are but we had reached out to them to work with them on it and there just was not a lot happening in that direction.

So what we did is looked at existing pre-approved plans from other jurisdictions And we got approval from those other jurisdictions who had paid for the development of those plans to use them. And the ones that we liked happened to be designed by RRM. And so we reached out to RRM and said, what would it take for you to modify these construction documents so that they would be Santa Barbara County specific?

And so we ended up picking four different sets of plans. So we have four different sizes of ADUs and from multiple jurisdictions, we pulled them. So really we're taking advantage of the work that's already been done in those other jurisdictions were really generous in letting us use those plan sets

Sorry. Director Plummer, how many pre-approved plans do we already have on the books though? Because different companies can come in and get pre-approved plans through us and it's a special kind of certification right? There is an assembly bill that requires those then to have it on their website and whatnot so... So

yeah I don't believe we have any of those at this point. We've done some modular. So I don' t know of any that were pre-approved In our building permit process, but we as I said we have worked with the modular companies I think there was an article in the newspaper recently where we They do some construction in their manufacturing facilities And then we can view their plans and sort of pre-approve that But to my knowledge. I haven't seen any pre-approved plans these would be our first

Okay, well then that's helpful. Then I'm comfortable then moving forward. I had heard there was quite a few in our community so I get hearing that there's not. Yeah, I can check with our building official

but I'm not aware of them.

Because I just didn't want us to go compete with the private sector that's out there doing this as a something, you know, a competitive advantage. And obviously it's not necessarily hurting the market now that these aren't out there because of having 300 in the pipeline right now. That's a significant amount. It's over twice what we predicted in the housing element on an annual basis so I think that's good for us to to be seen, but this potentially helps that. And like I said it's $50,000. I was just trying to make sure that it was money well spent.

Again, I understand what you said about RRM bringing these plans over from other jurisdictions because that is probably, I think it's nine, let's see, about 12 plans altogether so 12 plans for about $50 thousand is probably a pretty good deal for government work. So I'll go ahead and be one to support this.

Thank you. I just want to since you pulled this, I did want to ask to break it down and go big picture what will this mean for someone who wants to build an ADU? How much will this simplify things versus coming up with their own plans? What would the time frame if you had to put a ballpark difference in terms of time frame and cost?

Yes, Madam Chair. Well I can tell you that it will probably save an applicant between $20,000 and maybe higher. It's maybe 25. For having a set of plans drawn up and then A few months maybe in terms of the amount of time it would take somebody to draw up plans That that's for something. That's specifically designed like if they took plans from another a friend or something like that They might be able to go faster, but if you're coming from scratch, that's probably what it's going to take And so I think it will help applicants move more quickly through the process because when it goes through our You know, it's already pre-approved. All those construction documents are already reviewed and so that will really speed things up in the permitting aspect of it too.

So it's the preplanning and the permitting. That's great. Okay good to hear. I'm

supportive as well. Thank

you. Go ahead and make a motion to approve 829.

I'll second.

Great all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay, now we're to the point of the time for general public comment. Now that we've finished the administrative agenda so it's a time for anybody in the public to speak on anything that's not on our agenda and Madam Clerk are there requests to speak at this point?

Chair Kaps and members of the board we have five requests to speak from the public on general public comment. We are going to begin on Zoom with Richard Solomon then we were going to return to Santa Barbara with Cesar Peralta. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes we can please proceed.

Please transfer me over I neglected to put the right one well I want to talk on an item on your executive session the closed session

yes this is appropriate time for you to speak during general public comment on the closed session agenda.

Well good morning

hold on just a moment Richard okay Yes, sorry I'm just looking to council for some guidance.

So my recommendation would be that you can take comment on the closed session item and then also separately take general public comment.

Okay, let's proceed with comment on closed session prior to then we'll go back to comment for general comment. Great please proceed Richard.

Okay thank you very much for accommodating that so I represent Jana Zimmer in litigation she was compelled to file against the county and I say compelled Because she was never allowed any appeal of any of the staff's decisions in effectively denying her SB9 application to split the lot. No one came out to look at the property and to basically see why the conditions being imposed on the lot split were illegal, not justified by the law and were physically impossible to fulfill.

She was compelled to file a tort claim to preserve her rights and to give you the opportunity to correct the staff's errors. The matter was denied, the tort claim was denied again without any hearing, without further input from us. She was then compelled to file litigation because she asked the county council for an extension of time to allow further discussions they refused. And therefore we had to file the lawsuit.

We are now pending a hearing on the SB9 claim. The board, the judge overruled the county's demur or challenge to that particular claim and that's going ahead in August. So in October, sorry. The HCD, the Housing Community Development Department has provided an opinion that under SB 9 the counties cannot require any offsite improvements. And that is the key legal issue in this case. They have required Zimmer to provide offsite improvements and to pay for them, and even worse, to have them completed before they will even consider her SB 9 application.

All three of those demands are not justified by the law. We've pointed that out, the court apparently at this point in the pleading stage agrees and therefore we're going ahead with the trial in October. We asked the court to, we've tried to settle this case without the payment of any fees, attorney's fees costs. Now it's two years later construction costs have risen substantially and that means we have been damaged.

I spent a lot of time on this case and therefore my attorney's fees should be recovered. So we put an offer in the table to the County Council which I hope she'll be, I presume she'll be discussing with you in closed session. And thank you for your consideration of a possible settlement.

And that concludes public comment on the closed session agenda today so we are going to return to general public comment and begin here in Santa Barbara with Cesar Peralta, to be followed by Leo Smith. Cesar?

Good morning everyone. My name is Cesar Peralta and I'm a born resident and citizen of Santa Barbara, California. I know that today the city leaders and representatives are here to consider recommendations regarding several items on the agenda and I am here to ask nothing different I would like the city leaders to consider re-evaluating a corrupt tyrant act done against me on August 15, 2023. I was arrested while innocent and charged with disobeying court orders then withheld from attending my civil lawsuit versus Dr. Romero. I was denied the right to introduce evidence arrested with a no bail order then charged $9000 for failing to appear at my civil trial conferences My public defender, Susan Sindler had changed my court date and time at the last minute and nobody showed up to my trial.

I was then arrested and denied the right to introduce evidence as to why couldn't pay child support. And at that time, I was suffering from a separated shoulder AC joint and winged scapula with a long thoracic nerve damage plus lower back and rib pain but the courts and representatives acted like it was in the best interest of my child to separate me from my child and arrest me for failing to pay child support My medical treatment was delayed by Dr. Romero from 2020 to 2022, and he falsified medical documents to indicate improvements in my health when there were no improvements. I stayed injured for six years because of Dr. Romero's staff and false medical reports. I was arrested because the doctors didn't want to verify my injuries through a court-ordered DCSS medical verification report The public defender was asking to be signed by a doctor.

Therefore, she didn't want to see my x-rays photos or injuries. I filed the complaint versus the public defender in 2024 and it was corruptly settled without any evidence presented to the risk management team which includes Mona Miyasato Greg Milligan and Madeline Orr. I was told that $12,500 was the max the city can do for my false arrest even though it forced me out of a disability hearing, medical treatment and a $250,000 civil lawsuit versus Dr. Romero. I explained I was still in pain and I was being charged $9,000 for failing my conference when I was arrested but I was told again that it's all the city can do for me take it or leave it And so after three years of asking for attorneys for help and then filing my own complaint, I was forced to settle my complaint for the false arrest for $12,500.

But I remember telling the risk management team of Santa Barbara that if that's the max they can do for me then there's nothing I can do but accept the settlement. I later found out it was a lie because just recently the city leaders approved a $50,000 pay increase for themselves just to be at medium pay. My life and ability to work has been altered by the doctors, city reps and courts of Santa Barbara for no real law of reason. I have been punished and forced out of benefits and assistance, and my daughter to this day has not received any funding or help from the child services.

All the child services have been able to do or has the power to do is revoke my license which they did. I was forced to stop driving, forced to stop working door dash all because my daughter needed money. To this day I cannot work as I once could because I'm a permanent weak right shoulder For the last three years I've been averaging $5,500 per year doing DoorDash due to my injuries that went untreated for six years.

So i'm here today asking for the corrupt actors and representatives to be held accountable and or ask the city leaders alongside the risk management team of Santa Barbara to re-evaluate my complaint versus public defender Susan Sindelar, a case that forced me out of a due process violated my civil rights plus forced me out of a civil trial and disability hearing. I was lied to and forced to accept the city leader's month paycheck of $12,500 for all six years of pain and suffering and for my false arrest.

Thank you Cesar, that is your time.

Okay.

We will now go to Leo Smith to be followed by Cindy Cardenas in Santa Maria.

Good morning. Good morning Chair Kapsen, Board of Supervisors. Good day to you all. Good day and blessings to you all this day June 24th 2025 which marks the 111th birthday, the ninth heavenly birthday for my grandmother, the esteemed Sybil Pastora Paisley Bryan Hamilton. Who birthed nine children and mother thousands by whose prayers, her love and care I am here standing before you today.

She gave birth to immigrants from the island of Jamaica, and I being a naturalized citizen am grateful to them for all the sacrifices and dutiful toil my forefathers have endured to give me these opportunities. My daughter who is of Jamaican ancestry and also Native Americans currently residing on the reservation here in California makes her a very unique individual being of the first generation American emigrating here to this country and also of the very first Americans.

The original peoples here of this land, it's our endeavor to see that all persons can be saved and that all people may live their best life. Eternal Life Organization LLC is a do-good company. We see the unfortunate reality of a disillusionment among people and among young individuals in particular we know that many people are hurting these days. We see the necessity in the numbers found in the suicide rates for all people and especially young individuals as quite alarming and truthfully as unacceptable We believe and know that it's time to change the narrative that plays in the hearts and minds of the people today. That is why Eternal Life Organization, LLC, to become global. Eternal Life Music, Foods, Builds, Health, and Schools are designed to fulfill these initiatives.

Initiatives to feed, house, provide health care and education here in Tanner Barbara, this country, and all across the globe. The endeavors are driven by one, branding and merchandising company signatures. Two, music that has already reached number one status in its genre even prior to promotion or marketing. And three, appearances such as concerts and gatherings that are geared to create instill and maintain the spirit of life and dignity throughout for all attendees and for those in favor.

Free classes that we look forward to offering regarding literacy training, self-esteem and self image, life skills, English Spanish benefits of sobriety, sexual and moral integrity, neighborhood restorative justice program. And many more classes that we look forward to offering free to the public. Paid events such as success training, motivational speakers, financial advancement training, legitimate stock market training, concerts and much more. All ages are a demographic group. The vision is to imagine clothes, shoes, posters, anthems promoting self-esteem and self successful living. Imagine schools, skateboards, formal wear, athletic wear designed by those who truly desire our people to have long and beautiful healthy lives. What I'm asking for is the Thank you, Mr.

Chairman and members of the board. People, persons. Imagine the truth that you have a network of sincere and dedicated persons providing somewhere fun respectful and where there are no drugs violence or promiscuity permitted. Please Senator Barbara County members of Board of Supervisors do agendize and Lord willing approve adequate funding to get things moving prosperously and always successfully at Eternal Life Organization.

Thank you for your consideration

We will now go to Santa Maria to begin with Cindy Cardenas, to be followed by Denise Tell. Cindy? Hold on unfortunately we are having trouble understanding Santa Maria. Bill if you're there Can we do another test to see? We are not hearing you. I thought I heard Bill. Can we do another test? Chair, perhaps we could take a break and our IT experts in Santa Maria can pull up a laptop and we can return for public comment after we take departmental item number one.

Sure. Or we could

take a break. Yeah let's take a five minute break. Great!

Let's take a five-minute break and Bill if you can get up a laptop for us for the members in Santa Maria to use that would be wonderful.

Will do. Thanks. Okay, we're back from that technical break and we'll see if we got connection with Santa Maria.

Yes thank you Chair Kaps and members of the board. We are going again to Santa Maria to begin with Cindy Cardenas to be followed by Denise Tell. Cindy?

Okay good morning chair and members of the board my name is Cindy Cardenas I'm here representing UPW United Domestic Workers. We are a union of home care providers. We represent over 170,000 home care providers all along the state of California including here in Santa Barbara County. Our members are caregivers who make it possible for low income seniors and people with disabilities to live safely and with dignity within their homes, while also saving the state and the county billions of dollars in long term care costs. But we're here because we recently began negotiations with the county.

And also we're here to uplift all our homecare providers and our members And making sure that they, you know are treated with respect and also given the recognition that they deserve for the work that they do every single day. So we're looking forward to partnering with you all in ensuring that our caregivers are supported and also maintaining IHSS a strong program for our community and the vulnerable community that we also help.

Thank you.

And we will now go to Denise Tell, who is our final speaker on general public comment. Denise?

Good morning Board of Supervisors. Just wanted to take this opportunity... I'm going to start from the back what I wanted to say at the end and say that first. First of all my name is Denise Tell. I'm retired from behavioral wellness. I come in from a psychiatry background.

My apologies, I'm going to stop you. We just we had the beginning portion of your comments and then we just lost the feed for the audio feed. It might have come back. Can we can we do another test? Test 123 If you're speaking we are unable to understand.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can Bill thank you. Denise, my apologies again. We did hear you introduce yourself but if you would like to begin your comments. Yes and we can hear you so you can address the laptop too because that's the camera being used as well.

So you got my name?

We did, yes. And Bill you might need to mute the room because we did just get a little bit of feedback so if you just want to leave it on the laptop and mute the room or I can mute you as well. They're both labeled the same so i'm not sure which one's which

Okay so we'll be using Bill's laptop.

Fabulous, all righty my apologies again Denise if you can please proceed I got you back at three minutes thank you okay thank you

i just wanted to say that i'm retired from behavioral wellness and i've been doing that for 32 years i'm so grateful to say that i'm retired it was a wonderful experience and i've been retired now for three years um i wanted just to say this the end first just So I won't run out of room, run out of time. Here we go. I'm here to say that in-home support services is a human service profession and it cannot be replaced with AI. Therefore the wages and medical benefits should be made attractive to those individuals that are interested in this kind of profession.

How I got involved is I had a coworker that retired And I had another coworker said to go and visit her. And sure enough, I did. Little did I know that she only had six months to live and her family lived far away. So oftentimes they would call and when they would come down to visit, they got a chance to meet me. And they graciously asked me what I'd be so kind to assist their mother that was passing away. So by me working with her, I knew her and my medical background and knowing what it took to advocate for someone she was my first experience. And when she had passed away, I got a call from her social worker And he had asked me, he said Denise we have a client that's 89 years old and her desire is to stay in her home. So sure enough I told him the kind of clients that I'm passionate about and of course it was senior citizens and we know in in-home support services there's a gambit of individual various types of needs so I took the job.

I've been with her now three years And I just want you to know that there's been so many success stories, just because this particular lady she's coming from a medical background. So everything us as in-home support workers do for her she understands even though she may not want to do it. She understands the why when I first started working with her we were in ER at least three times a month. Many times it was something simple as a UTI, and if you know anything about a UTI, it can affect other areas of your body. But once we got on board as a team, we know how important nutrition is, drinking water, and I can successfully and happily say that this lady has not been in ER in the last two and a half years, and that's a success story. So I just want you to know if Shirley was here who's 89 she would literally say she is so happy for in-home support services because she wants to stay in her home.

And I've seen looking at the Board of Supervisors and I know everybody's there over the age of 20. If you're not please forgive me but the point that I'm trying to say you know how important it is stay in your surroundings as long as you can. And so I am just so grateful that I'm a part of something, that I feel good about going to work every day. And on this last note, I'm at Allan Hancock College on a regular basis and I meet college students if they're undeclared, they literally don't quite know what they want to do but I share with them how important in home support services is because if they're going to school to be a doctor or nurse, physical therapist. These are the skills that they can come in and actually use. And I just know that when I share with them how much money they made, right away they'll look at me and say oh my God, I make more than that at a fast food restaurant.

So I just know that making these kinds of jobs attractive for our community would be well worth looking into. So thank you for your time. Thank you,

Denise. And that concludes general public comment for today. Yes, we are indeed over 20 up here. But thank you and thanks to all of our members of the public that have come to speak. Appreciate it. So with that conclusion, we will move on to departmental item number one flood benefit assessment program

chair caps and members of the board. Departmental Item Number One is from the Public Works Department Board of Directors Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the flood benefit assessment program for fiscal year 2025 through 2026.

Good morning Chair Kaps, members of the board. I'm Walter Rubicaba with the Flood Control and Water Conservation District and this morning Andrew Roth our Environmental Manager will be providing an update on the proposed benefit assessment program for fiscal year 25-26

Thank you Walter, good morning Chair Kaps and members of the board. As Walter mentioned I'm Andrew Roth with the Flood Control District. As a refresher on the flood control benefit assessment program this voter approved program began in 1980 in response to the approximate 60% reduction in revenues due to Prop 13. The benefit assessment program is a fixed fee attached to parcels based on the land use type and geographic location with that revenue used to fund the flood control district.

In 1996, the county went back to the voters with a proposed increase to the benefit assessment rate and only the South Coast zone voted in favor of that increase. Here on bullet two fortunately ordinance 3150 was adopted which allows for an annual increase up to the consumer price index or CPI which has helped funding keep pace with inflation. The proposed action today is to enact the CPI adjustment for the next fiscal year As you can see in the last bullet, the proposed CPI increase for this cycle is 3.02%.

This next table has a data summary which shows the various rates for different parcels, which are separated by land use type or group across the top and the regional location or flood zone in the left column. Column C here is highlighted as an example. Group C are residential parcels and Group C serves as the baseline for the other groups meaning that the rates for the other land use types are factored either up or down from Group C based on that land use type and the size of the parcel.

Using two of the outlined items as samples, for example a residential home in Group C in the Orchid Flood Zone. The new benefit assessment would be $5 and 72 cents per year which is a 17 cent increase compared to last year. And the other highlighted example in the South Coast zone, the proposed assessment would increase to $32 and six cents which is a 94 cent increase compared to last year.

This table indicates the ongoing reimbursements that flood control is pursuing after storm response operations in 2023 and 2024 across the different regions in the county. We are working hard to secure approximately $21 million through emergency FEMA reimbursements, and we're working closely with our federal contacts. But these reimbursements are not guaranteed.

There are always uncertainties with emergency reimbursements and even more uncertainties now with FEMA funding in 2025 so these reimbursements are considered at risk. The Benefit Assessment Program is a key source of funds that supports Flood Control's mission and operations, and it's important that the assessment is adjusted as proposed today in order to keep pace with inflation and rising costs.

This is even more important given the uncertainties with the emergency reimbursements currently. These images show two of the major capital projects completed last fiscal year, the debris basin improvements and fish passage projects at San Ysidro and Cold Springs basins as further examples of the work supported in part by the benefit assessment funds. Today we are requesting approval of actions A through D listed on the board letter related to the annual increase in the benefit assessment rates.

If approved today, the item would return to your board on July 15th for a second reading and final adoption on the administrative agenda. Thank you. All