APCD Board Meeting of June 25, 2026

All right,

good afternoon everybody. I'd like to call to order the June 25th 2026 meeting in the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District Board of Directors. Clerk may please get a roll call.

Okay,

That's me in the corner. Okay, the first item of business will be the approval of the minutes of the May 21st 2026 meeting. Anybody?

Move for approval. Junior. Second.

Moved and seconded. Do we need a roll call? Yes, we do. Roll call please.

Motion passes 11-0 to 1 Okay

Oh boy, okay. I love this. You need to be an electrical engineer to figure out the agenda. Okay, I'm just gonna go with the way I know how to do it so is there anybody that would like to take any items off the administrative agenda? I would. I would like to talk about the budget for a second. So I don't know what item... That's D6

Will it need a separate vote?

Yep. Well, no I don't know yet so is there anybody from the public that would like to take any items off?

We received no request to pull any administrative item from the agenda.

Okay, so can I get a roll call for all the items save D6 please? So can I get a did I say a roll call what did I say? I just need a motion for administrative. Okay We know what we're doing here. It's our first rodeo.

I guess I would like to direct staff to look at what an appeal process might be and bring that back to us for consideration. I don't feel if we believe there are inaccuracies, just to be blinded to them doesn't seem fair. And if Gallagher can't do it, I think it might be a big burden on us at least to let staff Who think they might, that it may be inaccurate to make the case before some professional HR people who could judge that.

But I think you could talk to the county see how their process worked and maybe come back and give us an idea

Director Nelson.

Yes, thank you Chair Labadino and yeah I'm trying to recall kind of how we got here as well are we using this study to bring everybody up to a certain equity point or are we just using this to inform whether who's got Y rated? Or I mean how are we using this document? I think that's important for me to understand.

Yeah, last year when we were in negotiations with ETA one of the agreements was to conduct an equity analysis to determine the level of their members but it would be applied to all of the district. And so going forward this current year of negotiations with ETA We conducted the equity analysis. We went out with an RFP based on the results that we received back, Gallagher was selected. We did the study.

We recommended or Gallagher actually recommended we come back working with staff focusing on the median level is what Gallagher was recommending

And to get there over a certain period of time?

Well we, as our budget's limited in what was included in the MOUs on the other admin agenda items that you approved. The majority can reach the median this one year. There are the air quality specialist positions and HR technician I believe that require two years to get to median but at that point based on the study and the findings for what median meant everyone will be at median.

And the supervisors were awarded an adjustment of around 4.4%. The managers, based on this study there was they were at median currently but based on the compaction of those positions and the risk of a supervisor in our agency being paid the same as a manager we also applied the four point for whatever the equity adjustment was for median to the managers as well.

So we provided an adjustment to the supervisors and we matched that with the managers.

So I'd be open to, you know some type of process to look at that. I do think with the county we had it was partly because we were Y rating people and weren't going to be giving people raises at all. And so we wanted to give them an appeal process to say hey no maybe I should get a raise even though because we thought some people are overpaid right? And that was the factor that we were looking at but um I don't see a problem with looking at a process to evaluate this but you know at some point though we also got to figure out how that fits in negotiations And into the budget. Right, the

budget. Yeah okay so does somebody want to make a motion?

So I would be willing on D6 to move staff recommendation with the addition direction that you come back to us with a proposal for an appeal process.

Great second anybody? Director Brown all right And my suggestion would be and I, you know county doesn't we have a lot of issues. But I would think in this one I thought that we it'd be great to reach out to Christy Schmidt. I think she did an outstanding job and everybody was happy at the end of the process. Oh yeah is there any public comment on this

item? Chair Lavagnino members of the board we received no public comment on this item. Okay

so we have a motion and second can get a roll call please.

Motion passes unanimously. Cool all

right so next item is the director's report

All right, I have one item I'll bring to your attention. Later this afternoon at 2.30 p.m., the APCD Hearing Board will be holding a meeting at our Santa Barbara office to consider a 90-day variance for Sable Offshore Corporation for permit conditions related to unplanned flaring at Platform Heritage On May 22nd, the petitioner applied for an interim variance concurrently with a 90-day variance petition. The interim variance for Sable's petition was heard and decided upon on June 12th providing stopgap coverage and temporary reprieve from specific permit requirements during the time needed for Sable to wait for the 90-day variance and its associated public notifying requirements.

At today's hearing meeting, as is practice for 90-day variances, one member of the Hearing Board, Chair Dressler will hear the matter and make a determination. APCD staff will be present at the hearing in determining whether to grant a variance request the Hearing Board considers six elements 1. Law, rule, regulation or permit condition that has been or will be violated 2. The nature and severity of the violation and whether the situation was beyond the source's reasonable control 3. The petitioner's efforts to curtail operations and reduce emissions and to monitor emissions Four, the petitioner's increments of progress to achieve compliance. Five, impact to the public and six, the benefits and cost to the business If granted, the variance would allow SABLE a reprieve from the specific permit requirements associated with the variance for this quarter through the end of June.

So it's a short amount of time. SABLE would be required to quantify the excess emissions from the flaring and provide their calculations back to the APCD for review. Even if the variance is granted, fees will be charged for those excess emissions which are expected to be less than one ton. If the variance is not granted by the Hearing Board, APCD would issue SABLE a notice of violations and would process associated penalties that would be applied.

Appeals of the decision on a 90-day variance are heard by the full hearing board membership within 10 days of the decision. Beyond that, the matter would proceed to the court system. Due to the heightened awareness associated with this source, the hearing board action has received attention from news media and public comment from environmental organizations. And I just wanted to bring it to your boards' attentions.

That concludes my report.

Is that former APCO Terry Dressler? Yes. Awesome, Director Nelson.

Yes I was just curious on why that one specific officer was selected to do this hearing.

The chair is always asked to appoint an individual and he typically is the one who's appointed to the one hearing board hearings.

So it's just a single person that makes this decision? Yeah

And he was also the same chair for the interim variance that was approved. Okay,

great thank you

Okay. So to recap, it'd be four days they'd have the variance for?

Well they have an interim variance currently that goes through the end. The flaring requirement is a quarterly requirement and the quarter ends at the end of June. Got it. So they have an interim which provides them relief but when you go for an interim you all you must also apply for a 90-day so this is the process to get the official 90 day because with the 90 day you have public notification requirements.

Okay.

And our public notification system is working.

Good. Anything else?

I have nothing else to report. Okay,

so now it's time for members of the public to speak on items not on the agenda for public comment. Did we receive any requests to speak on any items not on today's agenda?

Chair Lavagnino and members of the board, we did receive three written public comments. The first is from Whitney Colley with Coastal Bloom The second is from Ava Lou, a Santa Maria resident. And the third is Steven Youngblood, a coach at Elling Hancock College. Those public comments have been distributed to the board and posted on the district website. Additionally I see that we have four attendees on Zoom. If any of these attendees would like to provide public comment please use the raise hand button at the bottom of the screen.

Seeing no raised hands we receive no additional public comments.

Okay, thank you. Next item up for discussion is Item G1. Will the clerk please read that item into the record?

Discussion Item G1 Overview of Voluntary Grant and Incentives Programs. Receive and file a presentation on the status of the district's grant and incentive programs. All right.

All right Mike McKay our Planning Division Supervisor will provide the presentation.

All right, Chair Labadino, members of the board. This is a brief presentation on the district's grant incentive programs. I'll go ahead and get right into it. So over the last 35 years, the district has distributed almost $65 million in state and local funds for voluntary grant incentive programs throughout the county. The mitigation funds you see in dark blue were collected from local sources that were required to mitigate excess emissions and most of those funds were expended in the 1990's.

The DMV funds in dark green and CARB funds in light have been our primary source of funding since that time. So in order to receive grant funds for new equipment, we're required to follow state guideline definitions. And this is a voluntary program and the intent is to assist in the replacement of diesel fuel equipment that's not required to be replaced by regulation.

For last fiscal year, we were able to utilize each of these sources on this slide to fund a wide variety of projects throughout the county. This information is also in Table 1 of your board letter. One challenge we do face is how to utilize each funding source. For example, Carl Moyer can be used for any number of sources throughout the entire county while community air protection has to be used within disadvantaged and low-income communities and I have a map to explain that a little bit later on in the presentation.

So for our 2025 program, we had a 40-day application window where we received 65 applications. Outreach for the program does have some challenges because people that get money love it which means they don't want to talk about it because more applications mean more competition and less funding for everybody so that is a challenge that we face but despite that we do receive first time applicants every year sometimes about half each year of the past three have been first time applicants or outreaches working in that regard We use multiple avenues like social media, presentations like this and news releases.

We have a good relationship with our local off-road dealers and they sell equipment because of our program so they promote it heartily. So that's a great outlet that we have. So each grant or I'm sorry, each box on this slide is a generalized step in the process for qualifying for and receiving funding for a project. And while the information that we required is really straightforward to us, we do understand that especially first-time applicants compiling the required information is likely outside of their normal purview.

And we do understand that the difficulty is to find the time to gather and submit everything especially for sole proprietors and really small applicants. So it's our goal to make sure everyone receives a high level of customer service and walks away with the same good experience. So for our 2025 program we were able to fund 29 projects, 8 infrastructure, 2 school bus, 1 marine and then 18 off-road which I'll show on the next slide.

Each project here has its own set of nuances. For example when marine projects are funded the owner needs to remove their boat from the water And for an extended period of time for the work to be performed and a new engine to be installed. So we work closely with them to make sure that their downtime doesn't interfere with their ability to earn a living depending on what they're fishing for. Then since we started funding infrastructure projects, we typically do anywhere from 8-10 projects each year With multiple parties involved from local jurisdictions to different contractors, they're relatively slow going. So for example the ones you see picture on this slide are from our 2023 program and the post-inspection photos were taken only a couple months ago so they are slow going but in the end they do work out.

And we have the off-road category, which is historically our most popular. And this fiscal year was no different with a large portion of our grant funds obligated to off-road equipment. This equipment is high usage and tends to have the greatest emission benefits. So typically there'll be a three year project life so the 50 tons you see there on the slide is only representative of those three years. So long term the emission reduction number's actually quite a bit higher.

And we perform three separate inspections for every project. A pre-inspection where we confirm the existing equipment is operational and matches what was on the application, a post inspection where we confirm that the new equipment matches what is on the grant agreement and then we have a salvage inspection where we confirm destruction of the existing equipment.

And there's a fourth inspection type where we audit active projects these are requirements by the state to include 5% of active or 20 active projects whichever is less All of these vary on both difficulty and length, and the audit inspection is the only one that's not required for every project. So the next slide is a short video showing a salvage inspection.

So as you can see this tractor is no longer going to be operable. We are required to document this with pictures and video we have to confirm the engine in frame or rendered unusable, and this must be completed prior to the grantees receiving reimbursement for their project. So here's the map I spoke of earlier overlaid are all the grant project locations for our 2025 program there are two green areas that were defined by the state as disadvantaged communities which are census tracts in Guadalupe and Goleta The area, the orange area in the middle is a disadvantaged community designated as tribal land.

And then the bands around those are half-mile buffer zones that are considered low income household eligible areas. Then we have the blue areas which are designated by the state as low income communities. The upper right portion you see is where a few county lines come together, so that green area is just outside of our jurisdiction. And while the Santa Maria Valley typically has the largest number of off-road projects, our goal is to try to provide funds for applicants throughout our entire district and I think this map shows our effort to do that.

So with changes that the board took action on last year, the old car buyback program had incentive boosts during this last fiscal year. From model-year extension to higher incentives per vehicle, the participation increased substantially so in fiscal year 24-25 we destroyed only 37 cars with this program. Fiscal year 25-26 today we've destroyed 376 cars so quite a bit of interest Then we have the Heat Clean Program, which opened on May 8th in 2025 with approximately $400,000 available for projects. This program is funded by CARB's Wood Smoke Reduction Program and we expended the remaining balance of those funds in May of this year.

And then as your board approved earlier in this meeting, the district will be executing an MOU with the San Luis Obispo APCD to receive just over $123,000 of their unspent wood smoke reduction funds which will then be added to bolster our existing program for this next fiscal year. And the program is first come first serve and the district plans to accept applications until all funds are expended.

So moving ahead to next fiscal year, this slide is the same data that you see in Table 3 of your board letter And with the new funding source CHRP, which I'll discuss on a later slide. And then $2 DMV being budgeted mostly for old car buyback we are going to continue working towards funding multiple project types throughout the county Our 26 program opens on July 27th and we're utilizing the same window where the final day for applications to be submitted will be Friday September 4th.

We found this window along with plenty of outreach is enough time for people to gather and submit everything needed for a complete application so our outreach list has about 1,200 contacts and we send multiple notifications leading up to this July 27th opening. Updated applications are also soon to be available on our website so people can start preparing for the window And earlier this month, I presented our program to the County of Santa Barbara Agricultural Advisory Committee.

Presenting to committees like this does allow us to receive really good feedback to improve our program for future years. And here we have CHIRP. So in March of this year your board approved the district's participation in this new program Backup diesel generators that qualify to be replaced must be permitted with our districts and either uncontrolled engines, Tier 1 or Tier 2 while the replacement equipment is required to be Tier 4 final or zero emission.

And since this is a new category for our program we understand outreach is important so we're currently working on independent outreach materials for facilities that have permitted diesel backup generators in our county. And then one last slide as I wrap up, so I don't have intention of reading these to you but I did want to share them as part of the presentation.

They're a great example of how grant incentive programs are a positive impact to both business and personal lives within our community and we like to keep good relationships with our grantees and the positive feedback is a nice confirmation that our program is doing well.

Any questions from the board? Director Hartman

Well, this is a great program. I think one of the measures of success for at least the farm equipment off-road equipment is not just that somebody gets it or that they say how great APCD is but that they promote the equipment to others because clearly we can't buy enough for everybody but we hope that somehow people will say this is less money to maintain, it's better to use Is there any way that we're encouraging recipients of the grants to do that and trying to catalog or measure performance in that way, sort of amplifying knowledge about the benefits of these.

Yeah, there it's a the farming community is really tight knit and I'm kind of tongue in cheek a little bit about nobody talks about it because they don't want people to apply more they do talk about it and the dealers are the ones who probably do more of our promotion than us So they actually are promoting our program on a regular basis to anybody that comes in and the farmer says, hey Farmer Bob just got a tractor. What can we do to get a tractor? And the dealer will call me or us and then we'll work with them.

So that's where the first time applicants come in as well because they're all just nose-to-the-ground just doing their job and not really aware of all these things going on. They see their neighbor with a new tractor and kind of comes from fruition that way

And we've also worked closely with the grant recipients and put spotlights on them for a lot of our outreach materials. And when we held the off-road event last year, I know we had some new signs made that had the operator of the equipment in quotes with what benefits they were providing so we incorporate that not only in this presentation here but our ongoing communication efforts.

Director Brown. Yeah, thank you Chair. You said it like in the video and maybe got some feedback from the agricultural community I don't know but you said it had to be destroyed before the funding was allowed for the acquisition right where's that gap funding and equipment come from because they're parked The timing has logistics and yeah, so they

get so they're allowed to purchase the new equipment and they have 60 days to destroy the old one. So there is a there is an overlap where they have actually two pieces of equipment operate train up on the new stuff before they have to destroy the old ones. So we make sure that That their business isn't impacted negatively, that they're up and running. And if there's issues with the new equipment and they have to get wider tires or bigger tires or something that something didn't work out for the manufacturer then we can extend that time to allow them to get the new equipment in place before the old one is destroyed. We're upfront that it's a reimbursement program. They know they have to buy the new tractor and once we have executed ground agreement it's promised that they'll get the money once all of the check boxes are done.

So that's the process there. Yeah, so they're allowed to operate the new and if it's new electric equipment. It's a much longer. It's a six month window that they have to get the new electric equipment operating before destroying the old one.

The dealerships would actually provide that gap financing as well for flooring or...

Oh, that's between them and the customer. Yeah, there are some that do that, there are some that don't. It's not a requirement of us and we don't really meddle with that. All they know is that we're promising X number of dollars after everything is done. And if the dealer wants to work with them on only financing everything minus X then there would be the gap coverage. Right.

Director Mosby?

I appreciate what you guys doing at some of the, I can see some of the tractors people go out they buy one at an auction and come back. Hey, I've been using this one and trade it in. I could see some of that happening in some of the pictures you got but it meets your narrative. But I just want to get another perspective being one of the few people up here who ever bought a tractor or multiple tractors but just thinking about the first one that I ever bought which was One of the first ones, like a 1942 Super C. You know when you're starting out, you can't afford $100,000 tractors. You're buying a lot of these that you're crushing and I was just thinking watching that tractor crush. When I first started, I'd sure like to have that one. You're just breaking up but there's plenty equipment out there.

I get it but if it ever gets to the point where you're destroying all What somebody who's got new tractors and the money is destroying all the older ones with the new people coming into the block. They can't afford a $200,000 tractor they're trying to find that 10 or 20 thousand dollar tractor you know it's just a little different perspective to understand I don't think you'll ever get to that point where you get rid of all the old stuff but You know, there's a lot of people that start off with those tractors that you're crushing that they'd be crying.

Yeah, there are actually some districts that have a trade-up program where that actually happens, where the big farmer will want to destroy a Tier 2 to get a Tier 4 final and the small farmer with the Tier 0 that's breaking down can buy that Tier 2 from them and then the Tier zero gets destroyed or passed down but the tracking in the emission reductions and the admin time to that program we've looked into it and it's excessive. It's a lot of time but it's a great idea and you're right because sometimes I go there This tractor could go another like 20,000 hours. But it's a function of the program and it's how it works.

There's a lot of small guys. I put a few of them back up and they're not... They'd love to have that thing you just broke up, you know. I mean they'll be crying watching that.

It's a

different perspective. You give Director Mosby some

tools to get that sucker back on the ground? I can

fix it. Even after it was destroyed, I bet you could fix it. I got some bailing wire

man we got

that thing running. I just wanted to say these are guidelines that the state establishes and when we take the money unfortunately we are obligated to follow those guidelines and were audited on those guidelines there's other types of programs though like the CORE program which CARB is hearing today which provides grant funding for the purchase of a clean piece of equipment without destroying your existing. So there are other programs out there and in conversations with Director Silva and CARB staff realizing that we might not be the large district where a lot of those state core dollars go, we're going to make sure we get the word out and work with all of our local grantees to know it's a first-come first-served program where they should get their application in now So we could hopefully secure more of those core dollars here.

And the state is listening because they created a new trade option without destruction in the Carl Moyer Guidelines for this 2026 guidelines that are being updated.

Or even maybe tax credits going to the third world or something like that, there's a lot of places I'd love to have some of those things. And also that one tractor you showed being traded off for a skid-skier, that really wasn't like to like.

Right it does the same work and how far do we dig into doing the same work? Yeah not really but yeah. It has a bucket then moves stuff.

Any other comments? Yeah, just to Director Mosey's point. I wanted to mention our school bus program actually is an expansion model so we fund electric school buses and then the school districts don't have to scrap an existing bus and so that provides a lot of redundancy for those fleets.

Do you know what happened to a lot of those old natural gas school buses they brought in that they tend to be white elephants and nobody doing anything with? Remember that program about 10-15 years ago? Yeah, that was quite the boondoggle on those. They were paying people to get rid of those things because they just didn't work. Didn't fit the model, couldn't fill them up, couldn't take them somewhere. So I mean there's a lot of good ideas that come down the pipe but that one was really a mess.

Is there any public comment on this matter?

We did not receive any public comment on this item but I do see we have two attendees still on Zoom if you would like to provide public comment on Seeing no raised hands on Zoom, we receive no public comment.

All right thank you very much Mike appreciate it this is just receiving file no votes necessary great that takes us to our next item which is discussion item G2 clerk can you please read that item into the record?

Discussion item G 2 2025 annual air quality report receiving file a presentation on the 2025 annual air quality report for Santa Barbara County

All right, Sage Swain will be giving a presentation. He's a planner, air quality specialist in the planning division.

All right my name is Sage Swain as mentioned I'm part of the monitoring section. I'm just going to give a few highlights of our 2025 annual air quality report and just kind of a few updates of what the monitoring section has been up to today. So this is the map of our network here. Nothing has changed much over the last year. We have 12 stations total, six industrial sites which are up there in green, five state and local air monitoring stations which we call SLAMS which are up there in red and one special purpose monitor down there in Carpinteria.

The industrial stations are mandated by certain permits, mostly that are associated with large oil and gas projects. Our SLAMS monitors are compared to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and our one special purpose monitor as I mentioned before is in CARP. It's a beta attenuation monitor which monitors PM 2.5 it's a standalone unit and later in the year we're going Request through a petition to EPA to turn this into a permanent slams monitor.

We run all of the sites except for Lompoc Odor, Lompoc HS&P and the Paradise Stations and those are run by SCS Tracer. So here is a table of our sites and what instruments and what we measure at each site. The SLAMS monitors, which are in white, are the ones that are compared to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards or NAAQS. The industrial monitors and special purpose monitors are up there in gray.

Both SLAMS stations and industrial stations can house either type of monitor. The SLAMS monitors which are compared to the NACs are what determine our attainment status, which drives whether our air pollution rules are more or less stringent within the district. And as you can see most of our monitors focus around particulate matter and ozone, which are the pollutants that our district tends to see the highest levels number of exceedances for.

So here you can see we had 15 p.m. exceedances of our state 24-hour PM10 standard, 50 micrograms per meters cubed. That's a 24 hour average of hourly data which starts at midnight and ends at 1159 p. m. All of the exceedances were from high winds in the Santa Maria Valley and they were all recorded at our Santa Maria Station. And when you look at the data, it looks like since 2021 we've really increased our exceedances. However that's kind of misleading.