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iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:18 – 0:214 turns
All right, good morning everybody. I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors April 28th 2026. Madam Clerk can you call the roll please?
Roll call, called by Matt LaVere
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Today's moment of inspiration, agenda item number four is the 2026 graduation day career online high school at Ventura County Library. Is our library director Nancy Schramm here? Okay, Ned we'll move this item and postpone it for a few minutes or would you like to present? All right. Yeah, thank you for the update We're gonna skip to Item 5 and come back to 4. Item 5 is Gender Review and Levine Act Disclosures Any members of the Board of Supervisors have any Levine Act Disclosures to make?
And I have none either with that I can turn over to Dr. Johnson Madam CEO
Thank you Mr. Chair. Good morning Supervisors, staff and all in attendance today. The agenda review for today April 28th 2026 is as follows. Item 8 General Public Comment. Two public comment letters have been submitted. Item 36 Public Works Agency Watershed Protection District Approval of a Contract for Environmental Consulting Services Related to preparation of a marine study for the Matilija Hot Dam Ecosystem Restoration Project Dam Removal Component with Rincon Consultants Incorporated. One public comment letter has been submitted. Item 46, Supervisor Garrell.
Recommendation to direct the County Executive Officer to work with the Sheriff's Office in coordination with relevant county agencies to evaluate best practices and California pilot programs related to e-bike safety A PowerPoint presentation has been submitted. Item 47, Supervisor Parvin. Recommendation to direct the County Executive Officer to research, explore options and report back to the Board within 60 days for the potential transfer of the Simi Valley Library and adjacent property to the City of Simi Valley. A PowerPoint presentation and nine public comment letters have been submitted.
Item 49, Resource Management Agency Planning. Public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution authorizing the county to apply for and participate in The state of California's pro housing designation program to public comment letters have been submitted. And lastly item 52 County Executive Office receive a follow-up presentation on the Ventura County homelessness plan including the 2026 point in time homeless count report one public comment letter has been submitted that concludes agenda review. Thank you, Mr.
Chair. Thank you Madam CEO. I think that requires emotion in a second.
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Levier · Seconded by Vianey Lopez approve the agenda as modified
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Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
Great we're going to go back to agenda item number four which is our moment of inspiration. Ms. Schramm do you mind coming up to the podium and joining us? And anyone else that you were gonna have join us as we get started but As you make your way to the podium, I'm just going to start with a few remarks if I may. But this month we celebrate National Library Week and our moment of inspiration highlights Career Online High School through the Ventura County Library.
Our Ventura County Libraries offer fantastic resources through innovative programs like Career Online High School our libraries are expanding opportunity helping residents gain the tools to build stronger futures. We begin with a short video highlighting this program. Please go ahead and play the video if you could, Madam Clerk.
It took me a little while to get here. But with the support of my family, I was able to complete
it. I'm nervous. Pretty excited though. I am finally going to graduate high school in 2026. It's a little rough but we did it!
Thank you for that video so and I want to welcome Mary Reese as well chair of the Ventura County Library Foundation and some of your recent graduates. So Ms. Schramm do you mind kicking us off today? Thank you
Good morning. Thank you, Chair Garrell, supervisors for providing this opportunity for us today to highlight our libraries and this amazing program the Career Online High School Program last year at the Ventura County Libraries Just under 1 million items were checked out and we had over 2,500 programs at the libraries with over 48,000 people attending those programs. And just in last year over 20,500 people visited the mobile library alone So our libraries are busy hubs of community engagement. They're busier than ever, but those are just the numbers. Those are just statistics and they only tell a very small part of the story. What really inspires us I want to start by saying that what reminds us of why we do what we And so often today in our libraries, we're improving lives through non-traditional library services.
And I think a really good example of that is the Career Online High School Program. This is a program We're going to talk a little bit about what's happening in the classroom where adults have the opportunity to earn an accredited high school diploma and a career certificate all on their own time, all on their own time. So in addition to the video that you just saw, we The video that you saw was from a recent graduation ceremony where we honored 16 of our most recent graduates. So I have with me here today seven of those graduates, three of whom will say a few words about their own stories.
Really quickly we have Stephanie Singletary, Aida Cass Sanchez, Lillian Sutton, Abby Winger, Rosa Morena, Nancy Martinez and Rita Marie Haugen. So congratulations to those graduates and I'd like to invite Stephanie, Aida and Lily into the podium to say a little bit more about their own stories.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Aida. I am originally from Mexico. I started COAH program in June 2023 thanks to Nancy the library director and Judy COHS coordinator. I was able to continue my education in this country earning my high school diploma When these programs has opened new doors for me, both professionally and personally. It's a testament to how access to education can truly transform lives. Completing my diploma has given me a new sense of purpose or motivation is not just a diploma as a symbol of my determination Thank you.
Good morning. This is my second
time coming
up and
telling you guys
my story.
I kind of got a little bit lost when I was through high school and didn't really pick it back up. So, I was told that I could just go into junior college but in order to do what I actually wanted to do which was to ultimately go into medicine, I needed a diploma so when my daughter was born that was a big motivator for me to go back make sure that she knew what my standards for her were and actually like uphold those centers myself because I can't ask of her what I can't do for myself. I saw the ad for Career Online High School on a billboard on the 33 When I was kind of like mulling over all of this in my head and it felt like a sign.
So, I called the number and I spoke with Judy and I was really impressed with the curriculum, the amount of time that I could complete all of this in, the support that was offered, and all of the other things that came along with it once I graduated. A lot of which is engaging with the community, which I really enjoy like right now. I did originally have a pre-med track kind of in mind but I've transitioned into respiratory therapy.
for that program, which is at Senior Institute. I just had it yesterday so I'm waiting to hear back for my acceptance on the 8th and I wouldn't be able to do that without the support from you guys and the rest of our community and everybody at Career Online High School. Thank you.
Thank you to your board for your support of our libraries in this program. I also want to thank Judy Perkins standing behind me here, who is the coordinator for the Career Online High School Program. You heard some of the students refer to her she is really the glue that holds it all together. Thank you Judy Thank you to Ned Branch, our Deputy Library Director who's here in the audience today and to all of our amazing library workers.
And this program, the Career Online High School would not be possible. This is a program that's no cost to the students. And that would not be possible if it wasn't for state grant funds, which are matched by the Ventura County Library Foundation. So with that I would like to invite Mary Reese up to the podium she is the chair of our Ventura County Library Foundation.
Well thank you Nancy and good morning Chair Gorrell, Supervisors, CEO Johnson.
0:31 – 0:385 turns
My name is Mary Reese I have the privilege of being the Ventura County Library Foundation chair and I want to thank the board The supervisors for their continued support for the Ventura County libraries. It reflects your priorities, so thank you. The Ventura County Library Foundation is committed to continuing on your support by supporting some of these amazing programs particularly those support from the Ventura County library system including the online career high school which you have seen today the amazing impact it has.
School school mobile library which runs in conjunction with the Ventura County Office of Education is a great program as well as the mobile library which reaches out to adults and students around the county. And Nancy gave you some of the numbers that can reach out to all of the different areas. We also provide increased Wi-Fi access steam kits and many other programs.
We are also so thankful for a very large donation from the Susan Knight Trust and we'll be working with the Fillmore community to further define and implement the needs of the Fillmore library community. So I also want to leave some flyers for you all. We have our annual fundraiser, Books, Birds and Blooms which will be an inspirational garden tour June 6th 12-4 and it'll be another wonderful community event and I hope you can attend. And we want to thank you for your support of National Library Week as well so thank you.
Thank you Mary, thank you very much for everything you do Well, first of all I want to ask everyone to join us in a round of applause for the graduates. And we have some certificates for you to recognize this accomplishment. But absolutely the libraries are doing so many innovative things I'm excited to do later this week first five take five and read to kids at Somis with a mobile library there and some of the kids there from the school. So it's just everything coming together Thank you, Judy for everything you do and Mary with the foundation couldn't do it without the support of the foundation. And then Mrs. Schramm thank you for being my favorite director of libraries.
You do so much great things for this county. We do have a proclamation signed by all five supervisors we'd love to come down and present it to you and take a photograph but before we do there's probably a few things that want to be said from the dais. Supervisor Long?
Thank you so much. I just want to appreciate telling your stories. And supporting these programs really helps us that real life engagement. And I've been told that we're a little bit scary looking up here and so can understand, I mean, I've even been nervous just standing at the podium when I switch and I go oh wait. So it takes a lot to be here and to speak the truth of what your story is no matter what your story is. I just want to say thank you so much And please pass that on.
I just really appreciate it and thank you for the service, and I'm looking forward to seeing what fabulous things are going on with Fillmore without beautiful gift that we were given. And of course, just thank
you. Thank you. Anyone else? Well, with that, we'd love to come down and take a photograph and recognize this important date. Well that was fun. Moving on to agenda item number six which is our consent agenda items 9 through 45 I know that there's public comment on these but before we move to that is there any any comment from the Board of Supervisors? Okay why don't we take the public comment first before we call for a motion and second.
Thank You supervisor Garrell Our first speakers are going to be for item number 14. We're going to hear from Hallie Ford and Michelle Wilson, so Hallie Ford if you proceed to the podium you'll have three minutes to give your comment. Hallie Ford? Okay next on our list is Michelle Wilson do we have Michelle Wilson today?
0:38 – 0:4610 turns
Good morning, I believe Haley Ford is running late. She had tax so hopefully she'll be here shortly So my name is Michelle Wilson. I'm a Ventura County resident. I am also a mitigation specialist Slash forensic social worker across the state. I work with various criminal defense teams and prior to that I actually worked here locally in our own Ventura County Public Defender's office I'm here today to ask the board to delay its vote on agenda item 14 until we have a more detailed account of what is meant by services and supplies, and until the Conflict Defense Association commits to making changes in how it currently functions.
I believe the Conflict Defense Association is not operating in accordance with best standards and is outdated in some respects. For example, they are currently using a flat fee arrangement which is not best standard. Hourly compensation is best practice and incentivizes meaningful advocacy CDA also lacks social workers, mitigation specialists and case managers which is a disservice to their clients.
The good news is that the Office of the State Public Defender came out in early 2025 with what they call the California Standards for Contract and Defense Systems. Because they recognized that there were inequalities across public defender and conflict panels, they conducted an 18-month research study in collaborative project. And the outcome of this was a rubric for developing and managing appointed council systems that ensures both accountability and quality representation. And I have a copy of this if you know I can leave it for the board so everyone can review I want to provide to you that while in my work, that I've witnessed a disparity firsthand. I can tell you the story of two individuals from the same family facing similar charges.
These individuals grew up in the same environment, experienced the same hardships and faced many of the same challenges yet their resources and supports available to these two individuals drastically was different depending solely on who was representing them. The family member appointed by the public defender received mitigation support. I was actually assigned to the case, I was able to conduct an in-depth biopsychosocial history. I explored mitigating factors and looked at things like intellectual disability, mental health, early childhood trauma And this information was instrumental in humanizing the client and helping the court understand the broader context of this individual's actions.
The other family, however, was represented by the Conflict Defense Association attorney and did not have access to comparable mitigation services because of this despite facing many of the same vulnerabilities and even signs of intellectual disability. This individual story was not fully developed or presented in court. This is just one example of inequities that arise when defense and mitigation resources are available only to clients represented by the Public Defender's Office. Two individuals from
the same family... Thank you, Michelle for your comment. You've got your three minutes time. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. You can submit anything into the clerk in writing and it'll be distributed to the board if you'd like. Okay, awesome. And placed in the record as well.
Perfect. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Thank you. And I just want to call Hallie Ford one more time. Hallie Ford? Okay I don't believe that she's checked in. Next for consent item we have item number 20, we have four people signed up for this item Barbara Kennedy followed by Christina Pacheco, Kathy Smith and then Brian Akins. Barbara Kennedy you proceed to the podium you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
Madam Clerk, before they continue I do need to make a comment regarding the last public comment. For everyone's awareness the county is simply honoring a funding request made by the court. The court administers the CDA contract not the county we simply fund it that is the current arrangement through June 30th of 2027 thank you
Thank you madam CEO.
Thank you. Barbara Kennedy, please
proceed. Good morning Chair Gural and the rest of the board I wanted to make some public comments regarding the Public announcement of the transition of the management of the Oakview Park and Resource Center from a corporate management to a county Ventura County Parks Department direct management I'd like to take a moment to say thank you to our community and the supervisors for your trust and support in creating and sustaining the Oak View Park and Resource Center. At this time, the County of Ventura has made the decision to make changes in the management of the facility and operate it as a county park. While this may ultimately prove to be a positive option there are still many unknowns. Why does this matter? This is not simply an administrative change.
It may affect local voice, community programming and the independent character of the center built and sustained by the public. Oakview Park and Resource Center was not created as a traditional county park but through a community-driven special assessment district with public mandate and the understanding that local control would remain central with the county providing oversight of funds only Oak View Park was funded by a benefit assessment tax which appears on the property tax bills as the Oak View School Preservation and Maintenance District. There are more than 3,900 properties owners involved this would there are no county general funds or park funds going into the Oak View Park and Resource Center. The center is supported solely through the benefit assessment rents collected donations and community support.
I would like to recognize that since 2003 the community has raised more than $300,000 in cash and in-kind donations along with thousands of volunteer hours to help create and improve the center. In 1999 the Oakview Elementary School closed and was deemed surplus by the county by the Ventura Unified School District. The property was in prime location for developers but a brave little community came together around a kitchen table and shared a dream of creating a safe space where children and adults could gather learn and play.
Thank you for joining us today. Secure Beginnings and Art Studio and the Ventura Unified After School Program, together serving approximately 200 people per day. Oak View Park also hosts many well-attended community events such as our annual egg hunt, touch a truck, trunk retreat, community emergency response training, town hall meetings, private parties, food share, fundraisers and many other community functions. At this time we do not fully know what the management changes will mean. We do know that the Oak View Park will be placed under county parks management and the county does not currently appear to have a structure in place for continued community oversight. We are not opposing the change for the sake of change, we are asking for transparency and a continued place for community input as these decisions move forward.
We are asking for a formal request for the Oak View Park Oversight Commission to be formed And recognized by the Board of Supervisors. The committee was included in the language that was sent out in the original voting ballot in 1999 or 2000, whenever that actually went out.
Barbara, you've used your three minutes time but I would like to let the board know that Barbara did submit a public comment and that will be added to record after the meeting. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is going to be Christina Pacheco followed by Kathy Smith and Brian Aikens
0:46 – 0:536 turns
Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Gurrell and the supervisors. We stand here before you today like we did almost 25 years ago. We didn't ask for a handout. We asked for a helping hand. We took a dilapidated old elementary school and turned it into a beautiful park and thriving community center. We started with zero dollars in the bank to having almost $500,000 in funds being restricted in the Benefit Assessment District.
So as a community we would like to ask why? Why now does the county feel it would be operated better in their hands? I've been a community member in Oakview almost my entire life. I've been a Ventura County resident almost my entire life. This community park is very meaningful to our community and and I feel like The community should still run this park or have an oversight on what goes on with this park. So please take into consideration our request today, thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Kathy Smith followed by Brian Eakins
Hi good morning I am My name is Kathy Smith. I am a unified school district board member. I speak to you about the Oakview Resource Center formerly the Oakview Elementary School which was actually built by the Ojai Unified School District's predecessor, I speak to you though as a property owner. I have a property in Oakview and in Miramonte both pay the property tax for that special district bond, and we have done so for more than 20 years.
I can say with confidence that the reason the voters approved this project was because of the dedication of people like Barbara Kennedy Actions are in motion to remove this local voice and this is not what our community voted for. The item before you doesn't seem controversial on its face, in fact it's on your consent calendar but it's what's occurring in the background behind the scenes that causes great concern within our community The proposal to change designation of the property to a public park is very concerning.
These changes are being proposed without community input and frankly, without the input of your board at a public meeting. Please ask your staff to bring to you a report on this so that it can be presented at a future meeting before the fiscal year ends. Thank you for your time.
Our next speaker is going to be Brian Eakins.
Good morning. Excuse me, good morning supervisors a nod to our own supervisor live here my name is Brian Aikens I'm a 45 year resident of Oak View. Supervisor Laverne knows I'm very involved citizen attending meetings throughout the valley attending the city council regularly. 12 and a half years Historic Preservation Commission holder of a Lifetime Achievement Award in Historic Preservation, Director on the Ojai Valley Museum.
A lot of exposure to the communities within the Ojai Valley Museum. I want to go back to Go back to 1999 when we all came, many of us came together to fill the Oakview Community Center standing room only. The question was put to us that we were told that my son and daughter's Oakview school was being closed And that property was going to become open. And one of the ideas was that that property would be sold and houses would be built on that, and that was abhorrent to our community. So what our community did was they rallied around it and they decided that they wanted to tax themselves and purchase this property, property that was to be Again, community directed community serving.
I've been around and supportive of all of the different activities that have taken place at the Oak View School, serving countless numbers of child. I love to see all of the children that show up in strollers. I also attended the Ojai Unified School District meetings regularly even though my kids went to Ventura. Go Cougars! And in that meeting when they were talking about the school's closing, I always emphasize to each of them and I know each of the directors, Kathy is one of them behind me.
That they should take a trip and go down to the Oakview Park and Resource Center that they should talk to Barbara Kennedy and have Barbara Kennedy give them a tour of the facilities and show them what was being used every part of that campus being used by the rest of the community And so I'm here tonight to again, the voting. I raised this in the meeting we just had.
We don't want our school, our park, our community location, our resource center to end up like Foster Park coming in the Ojai Valley. Thank you all very much.
Thank you for your comment. It looks like we just got another public speaker request for item number 36 on consent. Looking at my queue now, we have a Paul Jenkins on Zoom. So Paul Jenkins, we received your request. We see you in your queue with your hand up please accept the prompt to be promoted and you'll have three minutes to give your comment. Hi Paul if you unmute your mic you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
0:53 – 0:5812 turns
Yeah good morning Board of Supervisors I apologize that i'm not there in person today I'm getting an echo I just wanted to follow up on the letter that I sent and just request that the item was postponed to a future date. Thank you.
And thank you for your comment.
Madam Clerk, if I may again, thank you. I would like to call up Thomas Hunt, GSA Director. I know that staff are present. Culture Chisholm, you can come up too who oversees parks to give a brief comment regarding the comments that we've heard from the board's awareness.
Good morning, Chair Garrell and Supervisors CEO Johnson. I'm happy to come down and talk about item 20. I'd ask Holter Chisholm who's my Parks Director to give full explanation of some of the comments that have been brought up regarding that item.
Good morning Chair Garrell, Board Members, CEO Dr. Johnson. Glad to respond to some of the comments briefly also glad to bring any documentation reporting to clarify any matters related first and foremost we're facing let me layer through some of the comments one there's no proposal to change designation of the park We've committed to keep all the same events, same functions and look to even expand upon those.
So that's important for acknowledgement of what the community is asking for. What are we facing that's driving a change? We have a 2008 sole source contract with Barbara Kennedy Enterprises that doesn't meet procurement requirements. I don't have authority to issue sole source contracts and perpetuate this we've discussed this with the community for a number of years, I've been in this position almost six this assessment district was moved over into my administration about five years ago and we've worked through every year understand it better and try to make the best adjustments we can. But the last several years, the procurement department has let me know that they can't keep doing the one year extensions to this contract.
So how do we offer the same services with a regulatory requirement that we have to meet with competitive sourcing? You can run a competitive source contract to run the park or you can do it with staff. Our assessment of the situation with the neighboring parks and everything. We can probably run it quite a bit more efficiently with staff
Thank you very much Anything else madam CEO, okay. Thank you very much
Yes, thank you chair if I made dr. Johnson back to item number 14 regarding the conflict defense associates contract I appreciate the information that you've shared that this is simply a request from From the court however my question is given I've had a previous meeting with miss Haley Ford and I've heard her concerns over the contract and just curious at what capacity or extent can we request a more formal report either from the court through, or from CDA through the court given the funding requests. It is a significant amount and how we can ensure that there's some accountability to the work that is being performed under this contract?
Thank you Supervisor Lopez for the question. We can have a conversation with the court we actually have a meeting scheduled out and we can definitely request information, but the court would have to agree to provide that to us. So I can definitely can find out what they're willing to share. Thank
you. And if it is at all possible to make that request as part of this agreement again, I think since it is coming from our county budget seems like a fair request to ask for information of what services and how that work is being performed
We will absolutely make the request. I just cannot determine if they're that is something that we'll be able to get Thank you. Thank you. Thank you chair
Great, thank you. I'd invite maybe a motion on agenda item 6
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Janice S. Parvin · Seconded by Vianey Lopez approve consent items 9 through 45
Show transcript
thank you. Thank you. Item 7 is the minutes from the previous meeting. Any comments from the board or corrections? Motion and a second.
0:58 – 1:057 turns
Item number seven motion to approve the minutes. Moved by Supervisor Parven seconded by Supervisor Lopez please vote and that passes unanimously thank you.
Thank you now we're going to move to agenda item number eight I understand there's 10 public comment speaker cards Madam Clerk
That is correct, Chair Grell. And as a reminder to members of the public who wish to address the board today with public comment on any agenda item please visit VenturaCounty.gov forward slash BOS comment for participation information and instructions. For in-person public comment please check in with the deputy clerk at the entrance of the boardroom if you wish to make comments you must be in the board room or if you're participating remotely You must be connected to the meeting via Zoom or telephone before the close of the public comment period for the agenda item. Request to make public comments on any agenda item will be accepted until the public comment period for each agenda item is complete. For our remote participants, please accept the prompt to be promoted and unmute your mic when it's your turn to speak.
The in-person speakers present in the boardroom will be called upon first, followed by remote participants. At the discretion of the chair, general public comment regarding county related matters that are not listed on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board may be moved to the end of the meeting and we are going to start our first speaker in person is Kirby Thomas followed by Alex Denigen and Walter Brands. Kirby if you proceed to the podium you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
Good morning Chairman Grell, other members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Kirby Thomas and I along with several other members of and Somis residents members of the Water Works District 19 am here to request your intervention your help. This is not a new subject, but we'll be covering several different topics including this my topic our request and basically out of the problems. The revenue and staffing maintenance and mismanagement the bottom line director and broken promises.
Last December, this board did a great thing. You authorized District 19 to apply for a $9 million grant for District 19 water projects. However at our recent April 24th CAC meeting we learned that the district has no intention of applying for that grant. Why? Because they claim they lack the funds to complete a reservoir design required for the application.
To be successfully approved so here's our request we're here today to ask you to take one more step. Approve if you will, a financial assistance grant whatever you want to call it but a transfer of money from the general fund to cover the required design cost. We don't know exactly what it is there's no transparency but we estimate it to be around $100,000. A small fraction of the nine million dollars we stand to lose by not even applying To understand why our District 19 is suddenly broke after having a 1.5 million dollar reserve just four years ago, we need to look at how we got here so that we may effectively move forward. I'll now turn it over to my neighbors to explain the perfect storm of weather mechanical failures and mismanagement that brought us here.
Thank you
Our next speaker is going to be Alex Dinojan, followed by Walter Brand and Naomi Fontes.
To the board staff good morning to the community good morning to you my name is Alex Dinojan I'm also a resident and a farmer of Somis and District 19 As my neighbor pointed out Kirby, we're facing significant financial challenges within Water District 19. I'm here to address primarily those factors that have contributed to the financial impacts negatively to the levels of service that we rely on for water.
Those three factors are as follows environmental factors staffing chaos And lastly, mechanical failures. The weather environmental factors that affect us routinely both benefit but provide a negative consequence to assess farmers first in 2023 we had an extraordinary amount of rainfall. That reduced the need for irrigation of our crops. And in addition, we had the mountain fire in 2024.
The consequence of that is that we had several and mostly those farms that irrigate had to reduce their irrigation because of the damage sustained to our farms. When it rains, we don't irrigate. When we have fire, we have no need to irrigate due the damages. The consequential result of that is that over that period of time, we had a revenue shortfall of 1.6 million in revenues underscoring the impact of water rates that affect the revenues to go into our finances. Second staffing chaos At the end of 2024, Water and Sanitation Director position went vacant for 18 months.
We saw a massive turnover in the shortage of engineers all of which left the department disorganized exactly when we needed leadership most. And lastly mechanical failures The capital infrastructure that we have relies heavily on wells and pipes. And unfortunately, we had two of our wells number two and four that went offline for extended periods of time to provide groundwater to our community.
Because we couldn't pump our own groundwater, we had to purchase water at four times the rate that we normally procure. This was a direct consequence of more than $900,000 in unplanned increases of expenses over that two-year period contributing again to the depletion of our funds within our budget. Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Walter Brand followed by Naomi Fontes and Walt Janowski.
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Good morning, Chairman Gural and Supervisors. Appreciate the opportunity. My name is Walt Brand as a longtime resident of Somis in the area I live since 1971 actually. I'm here to further remark on the situation we face with our Our water district district 19 to build on Alex's remarks. The maintenance costs seem to have got completely out of control part of that is the failing infrastructure And part of that is just the fact that we've had a rather large turnover in our management of the district, it appears. So maybe there's a little lack of oversight there somewhere along the way.
In the case of overhead, the county charges overhead based on hours work because our pipes were breaking and our wells were failing. The staff worked obviously more hours which actually increased the overhead fees we had to pay the county. It's a cycle that punishes the district for having failed equipment We do believe the repair of well 2 and well 4 was inefficiently managed due to the 18 month vacancy mentioned earlier in the director position.
And this led to a 400 percent increase in purchase water costs, 65 percent increase in labor expense and a 50 percent increase in maintenance costs. In four years our reserves saw a drawdown from 1.5 million to just 400,000 so this puts us in a hole that we can't dig out of using the old methods and I would like to thank Our fearless leader Kathy Janowski for having dug up all of these facts and statistics. She's a former member of the Citizens Advisory Council, and she's quite knowledgeable on this subject. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Naomi Fontes followed by Walt Janowski and then Kathy Janowski.
Good morning. My name is Naomi Fonz. I'm a Somis resident and a small farmer. I will be speaking about our bottom line director now enters a new water and sanitation director in October 2025 while we appreciate it focus on the bottom line, he treats district 19 like every other district but we are not Wildfire risk go up and the remaining residents are left holding a bill that they can't pay our costs are tied to the energy to pump groundwater and the cost of maintaining neglected pipes in his first month. The director recommended at 15% rate increase.
He based this on a budget that assumes the unusual disasters of 2025 will happen every single year. This isn't just conservative budgeting, it's an unrealistic overstatement of costs that burden the rate payer unnecessarily. Thank you.
Our next speaker is going to be Walt Janowski followed by Kathy Janowski and Robert Moon.
Good morning Chairman, Board, staff My name is Walt Janowski and I'm a resident of Somos, a farmer and I depend solely on District 19 water to support my grove. I want to talk about broken promises. The community protested the 15% increase because we see a history of mismanagement with no improvement in sight. The county has owned this system for 40 years and yet for the last 10 they haven't applied for a single infrastructure grant. They prefer to apply band-aids that eventually fail.
Chairman Gurrell, we thank you for stopping the 15% increase that was proposed and ordering the Water and Sanitation Department to find alternate funding via grants and loans along with developing a long-term plan to improve District 19's infrastructure. These were to be completed prior to a rate increase. But we're here to tell you the department is not following that direction.
Instead of doing the work to find alternative funding, they immediately came back and asked for an 11.9% increase which was also defeated by the community. And still without a long term plan and still without applying for grants that you authorized. They are taking the path of least resistance by reaching into the pockets of Somis residents and farmers rather than doing the work of securing state funds.
Thank you.
1:11 – 1:178 turns
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Kathy Janowski followed by Robert Moon, and then Kevin White.
Mr. Chairman Board of Supervisors, my name is Kathy Janowski, Somis resident and small farmer. I'll be concluding our discussion with a shovel-ready solution. We refuse to be fooled by the Water and Sanitation Department and we protested the 11.9% rate increase. We know we need a rate increase and we're willing to pay a modest increase but we have no other recourse that we could do in order to fix a crumbling system.
If the pipes keep bursting, the maintenance costs will keep rising and we will never be able to dig ourselves out of this hole that we are in. We need that $9 million grant. At the April 24th meeting, a district employee admitted they have a strong case to make and get approved for a grant to fund the construction of a second 571 reservoir and pump station.
But they also admitted that they had no intention of applying for this grant because the project isn't shovel ready. They have the environmental work done. They have nearly completed the pump station design, but they haven't started the design for the reservoir and have no intention. Without that $100,000 for the reservoir design we lose an opportunity for a nine million dollar grant.
It's the definition of penny wise and pound foolish. We are asking the board to bridge that $100,000 gap today. Don't let the district's past mismanagement kill our future. Let us get shovel ready and bring that $9 million home to Somis. The community is prepared to accept a modest rate increase in order to receive approval for that $100,000 funding for reserve design.
We protested that last rate increase We realize again, we need one. But we can't be held solely accountable 100% for what's going on with our district. We need help. We need alternative funding to get us out of this hole. We hope you consider this. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is gonna be Robert Moon followed by Kevin White and Melissa Bumstead.
Hi board, hi again. Different subject about the Ventura Ranch project just following up with the items there. There's less than two parkings per unit so many of these individuals are going to have to park far outside the unit Our Vista Valley is on a bluff, so this is below us about I'd say at least 10 feet. The other issue is back in the 2000's we were informed that Casitas Dam was a big issue of earthquake or terrorists what have you Because it comes through the narrow valley of Foster Park, comes out right where we're at.
So then you guys install telephone poles with horns to let us know we need to leave this area. Well unfortunately we also got a map and I'm up on top of the hill and on top of the hill it says that at the bottom of my hill that would be a river so the Vista Valley Ventura Ranch is actually below that So do us as well. Is there going to be a fire watch for these people? Since you knowingly willfully are putting them in a high risk fire, as well as the death zone is if that dam was compromised.
There's nowhere to get out. That would be about 2000 or 3000 residents there and this housing projects. So I was wondering if there's going to be a fire watch for them as well as somebody that's gonna close all the windows and doors to make sure it is not caught on fire. So, I'll just leave it with that thank you.
Thank you for your comment our next speaker is going to be Kevin White followed by Melissa Bumstead and Spencer Noren
Good morning. My name is Kevin White. I came to California in 1985, rode a motorcycle from Anchorage, Alaska to San Diego for boot camp. I was then sent to Port O'odham where I met my wife Jennifer. We raised two beautiful daughters had a successful life here. In 2009 we decided to build our dream home after checking with Ventura County and doing my due diligence. I bought a lot in El Rio I've been trying since then to get permits to build on that lot.
I've done everything I possibly could. And I've been stopped at every juncture by the County of Ventura. If somebody wants to come here and build a 5,000 unit apartment building they're welcome in but if a resident wants to build a home you make it almost impossible. Well I want to
congratulate you because you won. You beat me. My wife died last month without seeing her dream home built and I'm leaving the state of California I worked hard my whole life, and I did what was right. And you betrayed me. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Sir, I just want to say I'm so sorry for your loss.
1:17 – 1:278 turns
Okay our next speaker is going to be Melissa Bumstead followed by Spencer Noren and then we're gonna transition to Zoom to hear from Mark Perryman. And if you are in zoom and would like to give general public comment please press the raised hand icon and we'll add you to the queue thank you Melissa go ahead
Good morning. My name is Melissa Bumstead with Parents Against Santa Susanna Field Lab. My first comment is for Supervisor Parvin, I hope to see you Saturday at the street fair we'll have a booth there. I would also respectfully ask for a copy of the agreement with WM in regards to SSFL if it's possible to get an email version of that would be very helpful.
I would also like to ask that the board add Parents Against Santa Susanna Field Lab and the cleanup as a point on the agenda, an opportunity to present some of the findings with you which you will not have heard from the DTSC. I've also brought you fact sheets today with some updated information and also specifically addressing clean up mitigation measures themselves.
But today, I'd like to bring up Boeing stance. It regards this specific page in Boeing's 2025 CMS document where they claim you can see right here it's kind of tiny but I highlighted it for you that zero contamination comes off the Santa Susana Field Lab according to their official documents. And there is zero potential for it to come off, according to Boeing in this official cleanup document.
We all know this isn't true and the Water Board's data consistently shows. In fact, Boeing right now is being held to a $600,000 fine. The water board heard us when we spoke to them last week and they are now working to actually impose a stronger fine up to $20 million for Boeing's contamination coming from the Santa Susana field lab, not only into the Los Angeles River watershed but into Ventura County's Cayugus Creek watershed which extends all the way down towards Port Winiemie.
So we know that contamination is coming off site. The DTSC did not contest this in Boeing's document, although we are still waiting for the final SMOU document. We brought this up to the DTSC and said it's unacceptable for them to allow Boeing to make this statement but it is unlikely that they will change that because the DTSE says this same statement all the time even though it contradicts independent and peer-reviewed even federally funded science The water board did make statements in this SMS document that allowing this contamination to remain on site as Boeing proposed will actually pollute the groundwater. But I'm here to ask the entire board to send in letters to the DTSC on the sites contamination, that it does have the potential to reach all of your districts through the rain through the wind and through wildfire events.
All of our communities are at risk, including our ecosystems and water systems because Boeing's claims are undisputed they're able to justify a cleanup that would leave as much as 95% of their toxic contamination behind after the cleanup according to independent scientific analysis. I have a lot more to say here, but I'm running out of time. Boeing's current best cleanup is based on a 1 in 10,000 people cancer risk. That's the best case scenario, Boeing's current clean up one in 10,000 people according to the EPA's highest cleanup range that would be one in a million people.
Boeing's worst case scenario right now as it stands is 96 out of 100 people could get cancer, according to Boeing's own 2015 RFI report. I have a lot to share with you and I would really like the opportunity. For now, I'm going to leave these with the clerk. There's also Ms. Beth Johnson. Thank you for hearing me today.
Okay our next speaker is Spencer Noren who's joining us here in person and then we'll hear from Mark Perryman on Zoom. And if you are on Zoom and would like to make a comment, please press the raised hand icon and we will add you to the speaker queue. Thank You Spencer. You'll have three minutes.
Thank you clerk appreciate you. Good evening Board Chair, Board of Supervisors, Mr. LeVere my representative I'm just here mostly because I heard that Sheriff Fryhall is going to be here supporting e-bikes. And I have myself implemented myself in the e-bike discussion throughout our community, mostly here at Community Park where recently the sheriff's department and other agencies held maybe a sting or a controlled environment gave out a lot of different patrolling and tickets. I just wanted to really emphasize how important e-bikes are to our community of Ventura, the county, and the state. This is a conversation that goes nationwide right now I've even took myself over the last week to ride my e-bike over a hundred miles in the city of Ventura from the Rundell Trail branch line to Santa Paula branch line just kind of see what it's like.
And I guess that's my main thought today coming in here with no agenda was just to encourage you as supervisors and decision makers and even the sheriff if I was to look at him right now and say we should be riding e-bikes also because how many decisions and how much judgment are we passing off of something maybe you've never done? And I'm telling you, they're very special. It's interesting when you have the wind in your ears how your senses kind of get thrown off and then we're also giving these to children who don't have licenses experience some are getting e-bikes before they even have pedal bikes.
So I think it's a really big conversation, important conversation that I want to support you guys on in bringing that forward. So thank you for letting me speak on that and sharing some of my experience if you ever want to meet me at community park meet the crew or the guys there might be a few hundred that show up in the area but maybe about 20 or 30 on every occasion mostly evenings so I'd encourage you to participate in the community maybe the areas that we're putting the stings to go meet those kids. I invited our mayor and our council member of the area They didn't come out and join me, which was totally cool. But the invites are there.
Also two things I might think about the county. I want to continue to bring awareness of the Valley Vista track. I do support farm worker housing but I don't support housing in high density fire areas. I believe this area has been deemed high fire zones for many years prior and even with the updated version. I would encourage you to support farm worker housing but not in this area.
And then I also have a topic of RV and recreational vehicle parking in our city, and especially on the beaches over by Salomar Emma Wood. Our community is being taken advantage of people buy free parking dumping of their materials very hazmat and also but more importantly taking away beach access. I don't think it's fair that somebody of an RV can come a park long ways along Salomar and unmarked stalled areas taking away four or five spots what could be other paying taxpayers for the Ventura County. My suggestion solution there is to make a universal way of having RVs be accessible maybe if they like that experience, but have it limited how many RVs can really be parked between Emma Wood and the Salomar Beach Colony. As one example, I would love a firm number on that and it enforced throughout the summer so we can maintain beach access.
Thank you
Spencer for your comment. You've used your three minutes. Thank you. Okay we're going to hear from our next speaker who is Mark Perryman on Zoom. We don't see any other raised hand buttons so Mark Perryman should be our last speaker uh thank you for having your camera and your speaker on please proceed.
Chair and members of the Board, I'm not here to talk about the failure of the board. I'm also not here to talk about the county's failure to effectively manage its Waterworks District 19, impacting farmers directly in Jeff Burrell's district. If the district goes bankrupt it will reflect the leadership of this board and impact this board, not the residents.
I'm here to discuss the public health and environmental health issues that exist today. On April 23rd, 2026 i spoke before the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board regarding ongoing violations by Boeing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Public health experts and environmental advocates were clear Boeing should not receive another pass after decades of violations. I'm proud to report that we were successful The L.A. RWQC heard our voices and agreed that Boeing should not receive another pass at their $20 million in fines, and ultimately they should not be reduced.
But here's what should concern this board in the community the most. No one, not one individual from the County of Ventura's government or its Watershed Protection District was there or has pursued cleanup action Not one representative, despite Ventura County being directly downstream. Despite Ventura County being responsible for protecting these watersheds. Let's be clear about what's happening. These are repeated illegal stormwater discharges carrying dioxins lead and mercury other toxic heavy metals.
These are not minor exceedances these are contaminants tied to cancer neurological damage and long-term environmental persistence And where did they go? The Gallegos Creek Watershed, Ventura County's watershed. Into our soil, our farms, our groundwater basins into the systems our residents and businesses depend on and here's the reality we cannot ignore That contamination is still there today. Not addressed, not removed, not remediated. What's being discussed at the regulatory level is not clean up its compliance. There is no downstream remediation plan, no sediment removal strategy, no groundwater protection plan. And despite hazardous discharges into Ventura County's watershed, there's been zero visible regulatory action from the county.
That is not oversight that is absence because this board through its public works and Watershed Protection District has a responsibility to these resources And right now that responsibility is not being met. No presence, no leadership, no action and this is not just environmental, this is public health. Residents in communities near and downstream the site have raised serious concerns about higher instances of rare cancers. The type associated with long-term exposure to industrial contamination like what has been documented here. This water does not stop at a boundary.
Thank you Mark for your comment. You've used your three
minutes time.
1:27 – 1:4010 turns
Thank you
Madam Clerk. Before I invite a motion, I'd like to invite up to the podium Mr. Strakoulos and Paul Chan to address some comments related to Water Works 19 if you would please. Some issues were raised and it'd be interesting to hear your update. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Turgurel
board members CEO Dr. Johnson before getting into some of the issues in response I would want to have Paul Chen director of water and sanitation come to speak on grants and the regulatory issues around our well repairs and then I'll come back and speak a little bit more about the oversight issue
thank you
Chair Grell, Supervisors, CO Johnson. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. First I'm going to talk about the grants we're talking about two separate grants application that was previously approved by the Board of Supervisors back in summer of 2025 prior to my arrival. We actually submitted a grant to Cal OES and that's the one that we talked about during the last CAC meeting where we really needed of around $400,000 to fix a water line roughly 1200 feet going under the arroyo in order for us to get it so therefore it's spill proof. So therefore in the future that won't be a contamination concern from that perspective. We got a note back from Cal OES telling us that will be placed on the wait list because it's not shovel ready And that is the project that we're talking about.
It's roughly 400K for design at this point it didn't seem prudent to initiate a design of 400 K at the financial situation that we're having today with District 19. And on the second grant application, which was approved by the board to submit back in December 26. Actually, December 16 2025 was the 571 elevation both the tank and the pump station there near completion.
The pump station in the booster pump design is roughly about 90% at this time so that one's progressing as we speak. That's the $9.2 million grants that were talking about. So that has not stopped. And on the wells, I would like to say fortunately today all three wells well two three and four are operational and prior to last discussion well two had a total chloroform issue meaning that we had to actually shut it down because of contaminants or because of biological contaminants. We have to pull out the wells Take the screen out, fully disinfect it to make sure there's no biological in there. And we were fortunate enough to get that back online about three weeks ago so well for continues to PFAS issues PFOA forever chemical that that the Board of Supervisor actually were notified in regards to the exceedances and that is currently a reporting requirement until we actually get to the point where treatment is economical where granular activated charcoal could be a path forward.
And well three is one of the wells that are an issue both in terms of color and aesthetics, and that's also going to be affected by the state regulations because manganese regulations is now changing from an aesthetic issue to a health concern. We have not gotten public notification yet so when that happens well three could be impacted in regards to filtration.
I would just like to say that we do see Somis as a unique community. 80% are cultural use of water, 20% residential and we do not treat them the same as the other communities and we do our best to hear our constituents and to make sure that we understand their concerns and we are working on the long term plan in order for us to bring another rate increase as we see fit or as the community sees fits going forward to the board.
Thank you.
And just to summarize, we did apply for the grant as the board approved back in December and we were unsuccessful in making it through the first year because we weren't shovel ready. And we do not have the financing, the funding available within the Waterworks District to progress a design to get it shovel ready at this point time. In terms of oversight, I would say and commit to this board that there has been more oversight by this staff. Our new director, myself and the entire team in Public Works not just on Waterworks District 19 but all of the water works. And we're coming to a point where there are some very difficult decisions to be made And those difficult decisions are in rate increases and we understand the conditions around the rate increases from a broad perspective right fuel prices and food prices are going up and it's very difficult time to do that.
But at the same time water costs are indeed going up. To the extent that we're trying to communicate with our rate payers, we've set up a special funding group within District 19 to get folks to the table to talk about our finances. Previously I've spoken about a five-year capital improvement plan which we do have which we cannot afford to implement because the rates cannot support a capital improvement plan They barely support an operation program to deliver water in accordance with the regulatory standards.
SOMAS does enjoy some of the lowest water rates within the state, as do many of our other WaterWorks districts And we want to keep it there, but it's getting more and more difficult to do that. I will say this the Proposition 218 process is a very unique thing for local government agencies when it comes to raising rates. Private water companies do not follow the Prop 218 process and what tends to happen with the Prop 218 process rates become negotiated regardless of what the numbers are per the financial analysis The rates eventually become negotiated because you can fail a prop 218 process in a small district such as Somos, which we have.
So it's very important for us to come to the community with the clear reasons for rate increases but also for the community to understand the challenges we're facing and the regulations and such for those rate increases. And we stay here for questions as
needed. Thank you. I know this item is not agendized so we can't get into deliberations, but I would like to ask the CEO's office CFO to engage on with a conversation with Public Works about some of the things that the county has done in the past related to bridge financing so that we can get shovel ready on some of these things. I do think that may exist We'll go into greater detail now, but I appreciate the comments from the community.
And you know understanding the prospect perspective of the residents who are ratepayers so I do appreciate that the level that you've been involved Mister Strackel is and I know that will continue to that together. Are there any other thoughts okay, thank you. Now pivoting to calling for a motion second on All right so we can move on to agenda item 48 I want to I want to thank everyone who's been so patient for waiting for agenda item number 46 rather 46. So I invite up to the podium at this time our own sheriff Jim Fryhoff I'd invite up the Chief of Police of Camarillo, Commander Eric Tennyson and Detective Bradley Borden.
And I just like to make a couple of quick comments to share before I turn it over but as was already reflected earlier today, Reese Beck passed away sadly as a result of a tragic accident in Simi Valley. He happened to have been on an e-bike at the time and I don't know or Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. Thank you. E-bikes have grown in use throughout our county exponentially. I mean just gangbusters and so much of that is positive. We've got so many older residents, seniors who are now able to get out and enjoy the outdoors because they're facilitated by the use of e-bikes.
We can do trail riding we might not have been able to do before there's a lot of great things that are enabled by e-bikes but there's been a lot of concern about some of the recent events related to youth Before I turn over, I'll just say that earlier this year in January my office teamed up with your office and other agencies including our local school districts to do an e-bike safety fair.
And I learned a lot at that fair. And what I learned is that communities throughout the state of California are struggling with this not just Ventura County e-bike safety related to youth. I know we're doing a lot on this already. There are other jurisdictions that are exploring innovative things, so this item here really asks our county collectively to reach out and find out what our best practices perhaps going up on up and down the state but with that I'll turn over to you sheriff and and ask you to kick this conversation off. Thank you, sir. All
right well thank you Chair Garrell, Board of Supervisors CEO Dr. Johnson. To answer Spencer Norton Ventura Ford I'm not against e-bikes right? As the supervisor has said they're a lot of fun get our members of the community out and about. I love seeing our community members outside enjoying the wonderful weather we have here in Ventura County. And this issue is not specific to Ventura County or even California. This is in fact a nationwide if not beyond issue that we're trying to contend with And typically with traffic issues, which I'll call this a traffic issue with some nuances. Education and education enforcement and then engineering are the three normal criteria for how we're going to address an issue. This one's going to take engagement also.
So Ventura Forward, this is where you can help for anybody that's listening that has a following There are different criteria needed for people to ride e-bikes and the age that's required, the licensing that may be required and helmets are required for anybody that's under 18 no matter what bike they're riding. And so being able to educate our community and really eliciting the help of our business owners that are selling bikes parents who may be purchasing bikes for their children to understand which one their child can ride under what circumstances and then really the understanding of the rules of the road and as you mentioned you know the young man in Simi that was killed this week It's just tragic. I don't know the circumstances, I know that he was on an e-bike and was struck by a train.
There's got to be a better way, right? We need to make sure we have a better path forward and I agree with you that this is reaching out to other communities that have found success. I believe we have found some success prior to our discussion about being able to bring this forward was I talked to Eric Tennyson the Chief of Police in Camarillo who's already planning on sending folks down to Huntington Beach where they're also going to be having a broader discussion on e-bikes, e-bike safety and how we work together as a community to make sure that they're fun And enjoyable for everybody, not just the users of the bikes but for those that are exposed to those riding the bikes too. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Eric Tennyson and his team unless anybody has any questions for me otherwise I'll hand it over to the team.
Thank you Sheriff for making this a priority and for being here this morning and kicking off this important discussion really appreciate your leadership.
Thank you very much appreciate y'all
1:40 – 1:5426 turns
Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you, Chair Gorel, Board, Dr Johnson for the opportunity to speak on this important issue. For the record, I'm Eric Tennyson, Commander with the Sheriff's Office responsible for delivering police services to Camarillo and the unincorporated area. I brought with me Detective Bradley Borden. He's a senior deputy with the sheriff's office. He is our traffic investigator in Camarillo. He is an expert in all things e-bikes and he's the person I turn to when I have questions on e-bike related information.
As you all mentioned, e-bike use has grown rapidly in our community especially among our younger riders and along with the benefits we're also seeing some new safety concerns that have emerged. I'll take just a few minutes this morning to provide an idea to you all of what we're seeing from a public safety perspective, what we're currently doing to address it, and how we continue working together to improve safety moving forward.
As the Sheriff mentioned our approach is centered on three things education, fair enforcement, and strong partnerships Let me start with why this issue matters. As you all likely know from what you see, from what you hear and even if you've experienced riding your own and owning your own e-bike they've created opportunities and challenges for all of us on the positive side they're convenient for families and provide an affordable way to get our kids to school to practices and just generally outside enjoying the amazing weather we have here This increased ridership, particularly among our youth has created some challenges. We're seeing a lot of unsafe riding behaviors that can lead to collisions more interactions and conflicts between riders and pedestrians and a lot of confusion around the rules particularly when it comes to e-bike classifications and where these e-bikes can and cannot be operated It's important to note that the last point, confusion around the rules isn't intentional misconduct.
It's a lack of awareness education and understanding. That's why our focus isn't just on enforcement it's about education and setting clear expectations so people can ride safely from here I'll walk you through what we're seeing locally and how we're responding to this issue From a public safety perspective, we're seeing a few clear trends. Obviously e-bike use is increasing most importantly among our younger riders which naturally increases the potential for risky riding behavior which I'm sure you all have seen on your own or heard about from some of your constituents.
Some of that risky riding behavior includes speeding and failure to follow traffic laws which has led to an increase in collisions We're seeing issues with modified bikes where kids are able to manipulate the motors to make them go faster, creating additional safety hazards. One really important trend is the lack of understanding the rules by youth and by parents who allow their kids to purchase devices that are not legal to be operated on a roadway in California. So taken together this isn't just an enforcement issue it's a combination of the growth in ridership, the behavior and on the need for education and that's what shaping our response.
I'm going to turn it over to Detective Borden to talk about collision trends and e-bike basics.
Hello everyone, again Deputy Bradley, Senior Deputy Bradley Borden will talk about some statistics You'll see a lot of e-bike crashes in our contract cities, almost an increase in almost all of them with the exception of Moorpark from last year. And we're on trend again to have even more. These are Q1 results. A lot of the collisions occur summertime where kids are riding more or they're out there more and not in school as much. They're going to ride more.
We wanna do things to prevent these collisions, keep our kids safe. That's our ultimate goal and we've done all the things that commanders talked about education, done press releases, done videos. We have one here today for you. I have parents calling me all the time at my desk asking questions what e-bike is this legal? Is this not legal? There's a lot of information that people don't understand on what their kids can ride and what they can't. And we'll go into that next with some definitions.
A class one e-bike resembles a regular bicycle. It has pedals, it has handlebars, looks like a regular bike. The electric motor assists you up to 20 miles an hour. You have to pedal to get that assistance. Class two e-bike is pedal or throttle assisted. Maximum speed, 20 miles an hour. The difference with the class two is you are not required to pedal for the electric motor to provide assistance.
We'll talk about more these a little bit once I get through the definitions, but it's an important distinction in the class twos pedaling is not required for propulsion. Class 3 has a higher top speed, 28 miles an hour. Resembles a normal bicycle again and you must pedal to get the assistance from the motor. Class threes require the rider to be 16 or older. Class threes also require a speedometer so you can see how fast you're going and a helmet regardless of age.
We'll circle back to the class twos, because that's where the majority of our problems are. Their class twoes have morphed into essentially electric motorcycles and we'll get to e-motors in a second. That's a whole other thing. We're going to stay on bicycles right now. We're seeing young adults on Class 2-esque conveyances that can go 25, 30, 35, 40 miles an hour without the use of pedals at all.
And this is our biggest issue we're dealing with right now, is you have young adults who don't know the rules of the road on electric advances that can go really fast.
Detective Borden, can I ask a question here because I think it's relevant? Is that I think one of the fastest growing trend is to modify, is to make modifications to the e-bikes that make them go even faster and is that typically with the class two? Yes. Okay thank you.
The class twos are the most popular segment of e-bikes right now. Like I said it's they want to go faster they want to be the fastest in their group and they're buying bikes that are faster or modifying them into faster things and as they modify them they transition from an e-bike into what we classify with the state is classified as an eMoto which is an electric motorcycle designed for use off highway analogous to your traditional dirt bike For whatever reason, it has become commonplace for parents to allow children to ride an e-moto or a modified e-bike on public roadways and parks where they wouldn't allow them to ride that gasoline powered dirt bike.
But they're essentially the same thing, the difference being one powered by gasoline, one powered by electricity.
Thank you, Chair. Detective, how easy is it for you to spot a bike that's been illegally modified? Is that something that's kind of built into the system where it's hard for you to tell or can you when you're doing enforcement, is it easy for you to see that?
It's definitely a challenge. The market is changing very quickly and we're seeing new bikes come to market that we've never seen before. A good example of this is a new manufacturer has an Emoto with built in pedals And they did that to circumvent the California Vehicle Code definition of an e-moto. So outward appearance, it looks like an e-bike but has speeds of upwards of 40, 45 miles an hour directly out of the box. So to answer your question, it's difficult at a glance to determine if it's legal or not. Thank you, thank you Chair.
Questions on the classifications. I know it's a lot of information and delivered very quickly
If it's all right, I had I wrote down a couple questions so you said on the speed that you have 28 miles sir. I do I will put this in a Generic way. I got a regular bike. I don't have an e-bike So is there a speedometer on? The bike at all that tells the driver How fast it goes?
Most class twos come with a speedometer. They are not required to have one, most of them do come with one. Class threes the California Vehicle Code requires a speedometer on a class three.
Okay and I ask this only by experience of people zooming past me just wanting to clarify is there a rule on how many riders can be on the bike at one time?
Yes.
I've seen up to three
correct we have as well In order to have a second rider on an e-bike, the bike has to be specifically designed for that. And it has to have a second seat and foot pegs for that second rider. The majority of the bikes that we're seeing out there are not designed for more than one rider. The commander himself has stopped them in Camarillo and we've seen two and three mostly children on one e-bike design for one person. So they exist but they're not commonplace.
So there's actual proper seats or main seats?
It has to be, the California vehicle code says it has to be a separate seat. So the long banana style seats that are most common are not okay for more than one rider.
Okay so just clarity I've seen it um helmets so if there's a speed that's faster than our regular bike speed is there a special helmet set have to be used because I've seen really light helmets?
The vehicle code
Like the children helmets for they're just learning to ride a bike and being used on those.
So it's a great point, being a cyclist and a motorcyclist myself I'm also in the off-road space full face helmet great protection not required by the vehicle code but the speeds people are reaching now on ebikes and modified ebikes require motorcycle type like gear for safety
Okay, and so is there a difference between the bikes for road or trail? Because I've seen road bikes being on trails and zooming past you. And so I wanted to understand that. And I also have friends that have e-bikes so they can ride dirt trails longer not like a motorcycle but just for recreation. So I want to ask what's that?
There are bikes that are built different, but all the speed limits still apply. And on a lot of trails class threes are prohibited because they're too fast.
Okay so that was when I was yeah they were going really fast on a dirt path and then the other question in maybe you'll touch on it later is just about since there is all these different things than considered a bike What is the education for our schools and for retailers to educate the community on what the difference is between a motorbike, an e-bike and a regular bike with no
motor? So I'll speak to what we've done in Camarillo. Okay. In Camarillo, we've coordinated with our Community Resource Department and gone into our schools put PowerPoints on been there for kids, for parents explaining the differences. I've done multiple press releases to the community Defining these things, encouraging them to reach out to me before they buy things.
Through our enforcement I make an effort to talk to the parents when they come to pick up the e-bikes and we've seized them to explain to them what's legal? What isn't? Why did we seize this? What is going on? We've engaged the community a lot to try to educate them in what is legal and what isn't.
Well and I appreciate that because there's technology gaps or generation gaps where I as a kid didn't get any bike. But now you know my kids or my kids' kids might have them so I'm just trying to understand how we catch up with the technology and education for our community. So Supervisor, I really appreciate you
bringing this up. No it's a good question and I think the detective will speak a little bit more to it. What I'm learning is that there are other counties and cities, they're doing really innovative things with their school districts. They're partnering up helping them find resources the schools are requiring in some schools requiring that That the students who ride e-bikes to school have to have a sticker on that e-bike and that that sticker represents a completed safety course for that.
And then if they misbehave on that bike, either the school or law enforcement can remove the sticker which then becomes an issue for them to be able to ride their Their bike to school and the parents have to get involved. So there's a lot of innovative things going on, and I'm hoping that ultimately this board letter results in some of us finding lessons learned like you just mentioned related to getting into the schools and with retail that are selling these things so please detect a board and continue.
So you bring up the school education program that's being piloted in Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach has been the hub of the e-bike, they were the first to have a lot of these issues and they're a couple years ahead of most of the state in dealing with them. I work closely with them, I'm scheduled to go to a safety symposium with them in May to get more information but that program where the student gets education, gets a sticker and is now allowed to ride to school, that is in Huntingdon Beach and they're just getting that off the ground and it's been very successful for them.
Huntington Beach has over 200 injury e-bike collisions a year right now. They deal with it a lot, and I'm trying to garner as much information from them that I can to help implement here so we can keep our kids safe. You touched on the retailers. Most contact I've had with local bike shops have been great. They support us, they want to be part of our program, they sell legal e-bikes, they really don't like the overseas and readily available bikes that people can order get delivered to their house with no education and don't conform to the rules.
So we would like to engage the local businesses even more because they're in a very valuable asset in teaching people what bike they should have and what bike is lawful. Yes, I'm going to turn it back over to the
commander So I'd like to focus now, Bradley's already touched on some of them but some of our current efforts and our approach is one of balance and prevention before enforcement. First and foremost we're using data to guide our efforts and we've prioritized education through school outreach community engagement and public messaging. Our public messaging varies from education on the classes of e-bikes and rules of the road to more of an emotional approach, getting parents to understand the dangers of ebike riding and irresponsible riding. I've included a short public service announcement that we put together last year after a serious crash in Camarillo and I'd like to play that for you right now.
1:55 – 2:049 turns
July 30th, I had a bike accident and I was basically going just with me and my friend. We're both on electric scooters and I was on the bike and I looked behind me and I wasn't seeing where I was going and hit the pole and went straight head to the ground and I had seizure on impact and then I was unconscious for the rest of time
Yeah, so I arrived at the hospital and immediately went to the back area to the trauma center area. And I saw a bunch of doctors around him and immediately went in to try to see if I could see what condition he was in. He had a gash in the ear and they had a skull fracture. So he had some internal bleeding there as well. You know, message for parents would be be smart from the start like make sure that they're wearing that helmet
Even if your friends aren't wearing a helmet, and even if they're not wearing a helmet like it's just... It's not worth it. It's not worth being in the hospital and having injuries that can impact the long run in your life. It's not too cool for it so...
Sometimes loving our kids is tough because they don't want to hear it and we often know better because we've been through that. So although he was aware that he should be wearing a helmet Really, it's that tough love of making sure that they are wearing a helmet.
So you can see this is a different sort of public service announcement from our typical press releases. We really want parents to understand what can happen from dangerous riding for kids riding bikes that are just too fast for them. The video illustrated these young men left the house with no helmets. They didn't have the proper safety gear that they were supposed to have and they really didn't realize how important it is to ride one of these e-bikes safely. And so we use a number of different messages in communicating with the public whether it's just informative or whether it's kind of touching the emotional side for parents but it really all does start with the parents and parents holding their own children accountable In addition to the communication that you saw here, we're building strong partnerships with schools, with park and rec districts, local organizations and the communities.
And when enforcement is needed it's targeted at the behaviors that create the greatest risk. The goal for us is really simple. It's to educate, it's to collaborate and enforce in a way that improves safety for everyone. There's the backwards. They got it. Thank you chair girl. One of the things you talked about were some rules in place rules for businesses that sell there is there are a number of legislative bills that have been proposed right now that we're following some of them do talk about e-bike safety at school. So if schools provide a place where he bikes are allowed to be parked, The schools have to work with the local law enforcement officials to develop a program that kids have to go through before they're even allowed to park the bikes at the schools.
So there's a number of pieces of proposed legislation at the state level that are being considered, that focus on improving e-bike safety, clarifying classifications and giving local jurisdictions more tools to deal with the challenges that surround these bikes The efforts center on education, equipment standards, speed regulations and distinguishing e-bikes from more high powered e-motos that Deputy Detective Borden talked about.
We're continuing to monitor the legislation closely and evaluate how it's going to impact our approach here locally. And then we're also looking at local ordinances in other cities in California like Huntington Beach, like Carlsbad to see how their passage has improved roadway safety in their cities As I mentioned before we're seeing some reductions in collisions based on our current efforts but if we see other cities in California who are implementing local ordinances that are impactful, we'll absolutely consider coming back to this board and our local board or councils as well.
And last, as we move forward our focus is always going to be one of balance. That means continuing to strengthen our partnerships focusing on educating parents and kids and focusing enforcement on the behaviors that create the greatest risk for our communities at the same time will continue looking for new ways to improve safety by monitoring legislation see what success other agencies in cities have and if necessary will work with you all and with our other local elected officials to consider local options that support safety At the end of the day, our goal is simple. We want our kids and other people on the roadways and sidewalks to be safe.
Thank you for your continued support for public safety and we're happy to take any other additional questions you might have. Supervisor Parvin
My first thought is I got an email from the Department of Justice on like April 14th. I'm sure you might have gotten a copy of that too, but it had a lot of information about e-bikes, the sales of e-bikes and it also included information about a study by the University of California in San Francisco That they found that riders injuries from e-bikes nearly doubled each year from 2017 to 2022. And then they did a University of California San Diego study that showed injuries in San Diego among e-bike riders under 18 soared by 300%.
from 2019 to 2023 very serious statistics but there's also a B 2, 5, 9, 5 I'm not sure if you've been kind of watching that one. But that's the San Mateo County electric bike safety pilot program. So I'm not sure. I know you're focusing in on Huntington Beach, but I'm wondering if you're familiar with that one because this one is the first 60 days involves warnings followed by a $25 fine for violators course we don't want to find you and we want you to You know not violate the rules but liability would be on the parents and legal guardians of youth. And then it requires a report on traffic stops and safety outcomes to be submitted to the Legislature by January 1st 2030 if passed this one looks really interesting to me because it prohibits people under the age of 12 from operating class 1 or class 2 e-bike.
So I thought you if you hadn't seen it that it was interesting legislation worth looking at.
Yeah, I saw the USF study one of the things that is most glaring from that is in our partners from the fire department and EMS here will also tell you that we have higher speeds that kids are riding these bikes with the same level of protection that they're riding regular pedal bikes When you introduce those higher speeds, you're going to deal with much more significant injuries than you would deal with on just a bicycle. And so that's one of the factors that we have to take into consideration regarding AB 2595. That is specific to that county but I did read that bill and that's kind of one of those areas where we're gonna see how that plays out up there. I like some of the things I saw in the bill There's another county up there that has a bill specific to that county that's been introduced as well.
And so we'll follow those and monitor them and see what kind of impacts if it does pass, what those impacts will be. And if we can take little tidbits of that and bring it back here to Ventura County, we'll absolutely do it.
Commander Tennyson, can you talk a little bit to enforcement? And the reason why I tee this up is that I spoke with Jeremy Paris, the chief of police up in Thousand Oaks about this e-bike issue. And he said that they're really you know they are enforcing but it's a very laborious process because on occasion if there's youth misbehaving on e-bikes and they are approached by law enforcement that sometimes scatter and you don't want to go into a pursuit because that could end up in a dangerous situation for everybody involved including the youth, including the community.
And that the enforcement requires a process that is lengthy and needs detective work in terms of making identification putting together enough information going serving a warrant confiscating bicycle engaging with the parents can you describe the process of enforcement and how you're doing, how you're going about that now. Yes I can. I think
it's important though to note first that we as an agency in every one of our contract cities have focused on education first. I can say in Camarillo our traffic unit and a community resource units spoke to more than 1600 kids and educators last year alone to try and get the message about what legal lawful and responsible writing looks like so it's always important to focus on education first When we don't see that change behavior, we have to move to enforcement and it is a challenge. Detective Borden is one who's out in the field doing that enforcement so I'm actually going to let him talk to the enforcement side and what he's experienced and what a challenge it's been.
2:04 – 2:1413 turns
But e-bike enforcement is definitely a challenge. I manage four traffic investigation cars and two motor officers in the city of Camarillo You're absolutely right. What Commander Perez said is sometimes the kids specifically mostly on e-motos as soon as they see lights and sirens will run from us and the deputies minus some exigent circumstance will not chase them. The dangerous to the person riding the bike, the public is simply too high to chase someone riding any bike. And then that creates exactly what you were talking about a lot of investigative back end work to establish who they are Write the warrant, seize the bikes, engage the parents. It's definitely a challenge. We're doing our best.
We've had alternative means to do it where we use a plane wrap like a detective car to be able to observe the kids on mostly e-motos and then we will wait for them to stop at fast food restaurant or 7-Eleven and then we'll bring in marked units once they're off the bikes that way we've observed the violation And now we have marked units come in when they're off the bikes, unable to run on them. It enhances safety for everybody but it's hard to do and requires a considered effort of almost the entire unit to do operations like that. So it's definitely a challenge in day-to-days and mark units. We're doing our best and I think Commander just stopped at Emoto yesterday in his plane wrap car and was able to have marked units come in and do the appropriate enforcement.
Yeah, thank you. There may be other questions I just have one more and that is a lot of the feedback from the community to my office are residents saying hold the parents accountable. You mentioned education first that's obviously where we all want to start. We don't want to be in a position where we're doing anything draconian but what to what extent are you seeing communities ultimately creating embracing policies that hold the parents accountable if they're not engaging and being involved in dangerous behavior of youth.
So as the commander spoke on, we did months
of Education in Camarillo. We did press releases, we did education at schools and our collisions weren't decreasing. We were getting more so the decision was made to start doing more proactive enforcement and since we started doing that the engagement level I've gotten from parents has skyrocketed. They are calling me they're asking questions is this bike legal? Is it not legal? What do I do what can they do what can't they do? I've seen a market increase in parental engagement to my desk because the majority of these phone calls land on my desk. So I'm talking to a lot of parents and I'm educating a lot of them now, they seem to be much more interested in the rules now. And I think that's a great turn for us because the more educated they are, the safer the kids are going to be in the end.
Yeah, thank you. Supervisor Lopez?
Yes, thank you chair for bringing this item and very very informative just to understand all the complexities. And very unfortunate to hear of the incidents that have happened especially the one most recently this weekend. So I appreciate the work that you're doing and to that extent you sort of touched on what working with other cities and thinking of other police departments And I think we've seen how effective some of these campaigns have been when they're countywide. So just curious if you can share a little bit more about what other coordination is taking place with other police departments to ensure that this is a county-wide effort, and sometimes some of these youth may be crossing over into cities and how that enforcement or education is happening?
So I attend quarterly Office of Traffic Safety meetings. It's a state program OTS, they fund our DUI checkpoints or DUI patrols and click it or ticket all those programs we've all seen the majority of the discussion with the other agencies because those meetings are interagencies. We have all local agencies there. The majority of those discussions there are e-bike education and e-bike enforcement is at the forefront of what most of us are dealing with right now We still have DUIs and the other traffic things, but we've dealt with those problems for a long time now. And we have a lot of historical data and techniques we use, whereas the e-bike is brand new. We have new legislature this year, a new seizure order, some new definitions. We're all learning how to apply those and what is working for one agency.
Maybe that works for me, maybe not, but we're coordinating a lot with other agencies As far as the commander spoke on earlier, Huntington Beach, Carlsbad, Fountain Valley. I'm talking to traffic investigators in all these different cities and we're sharing knowledge on what works best, what doesn't work and what should we do in the coming months?
Great, thank you. Again appreciate you leading this effort here for our county and especially the engagement that is going taking place with our education systems because if anything that is probably the best place to connect with both the parents and students right to carry that message so again thank you for the work that you're doing.
Thank you
ma'am. Supervisor LaVere? Thank you, Chair. And thank you for bringing this item today. I'm really glad we're able to have this discussion as a board and kind of following up on the discussion from Camarillo. I've had many similar conversations with first Chief Jenkins and then Chief Abbott in Ojai. And I know the city of Ojai is really engaged on this as well dealing with similar issues that you were dealing with in Camarillo. But one of the things they mentioned is they too did spend a month or two doing heavy, heavy education trying to bring awareness to the issues Trying to get parents and youth engaged on safe writing, and like Camarillo they didn't had to transition into more of an enforcement mechanism. And one of the things they did when we talk about holding parents more accountable is there was some kind of fine I forget if it was if it was a fine If their child was pulled over, if it was a fee to collect a bike that had been confiscated.
But whatever that punitive measure was, that really drove parental engagement when those fines started coming in. Do you do that in Camarillo? Is that a fine or is that a fee to collect a confiscated bicycle?
So I believe what you're talking about is new for 2026. California Vehicle Code gave us a seizure order for out of class e-bikes or riders riding an out of class e-bike. An example would be like I spoke about earlier, Class 2 didn't have pedals on it anymore and was essentially now a low speed electric motorcycle or eMoto. The vehicle code allows us to seize that for 48 hours. So we tow it like it's a motorcycle, it goes to the tow yard, it stays for 48 hours and for the parent to recover that they have to come to the station pay a fine for the letter to release it from the tow yard and then they have to pay the tow yard for the tow in the storage so we started doing that recently and that I believe has driven parents to contact me because either they don't want their child to get involved in that or they now have to pay to get that e-moto or e-bike back and they want to know what the legalities are of the whole situation.
Okay,
great thank you. Thank you I know that there's some public comments Madam Clerk can we take those now?
Thank you, Chandra. We do have seven speakers signed up for this item. Our first speaker is going to be Heather Hamilton followed by Kathleen Brenn and Jocelyn Santiago. They're joining us here today in person. Heather, please proceed to the podium and you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
Hi there. I just want to say that was so informative like I came I had no idea that we were going to touch this forehand. So let me some of my comments will be irrelevant because you already covered them but my speech was already written After listening to this, actually I added something. High school kids are too hard to reach. Start when they're little and because my 12 year old is terrified of getting in trouble with this, I tell him if he comes up on the mom's group his bike is like gone forever.
And like these kids are so young and these bikes are so fast. And the helmet thing everyone needs to know you need to have the right helmet for the right bike And, but it's hard for them. It's like we blame these kids and then we blame the parents like we always do. And I think responsibility lies with both of them with everyone involved and our communities are very outdated.
Like tennis courts that no one used and we updated to pickleball courts. We need to have our systems, our laws and our infrastructures are very outdated when it comes to e-bikes but this is the reality that our kids live in. Our kids aren't gonna use rotary phones on the wall anymore they're gonna like they are updated and these e-bikes are cool, they're fun.
So Agora just passed it seems like Agora seems to be doing some good things And like our kids need freedom they need resilience, they need to learn to take risks. But if we don't put the infrastructure in we're going to have predictable You know, it's predictable. We know what's going to happen with these poor kids and it's tragic what happened in Simi. I'm sure all of us heard that and we're like oh my gosh all of us have little kids. It could be any of our children. And so I thank all of you for trying to address this because these bikes are not going away. And they actually shouldn't. They're super fun. Like my 12 year old got one and then we got one.
But they don't go that fast. So thank you for addressing this and I just think like teen centers, like the kids are always at the teen center, like go where to the kids are and it sounds like that's happening but a lot of parents aren't going to show up to your event like in Linn Ranch we couldn't get there. And I know there's another really good, I'm sure they're in here, organization that does training for the kids, like incentivize it Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Kathleen Brinn followed by Jocelyn Santiago and Elisa Nichols.
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Good morning chair, thank you for having me and council members. You stolen a heck of a lot of what I was going to say I've researched that over the past almost 2 years my name is Kathleen Graham. I'm retired nurse practitioner, retired nurse spent much of my career working with from the middle school kids and then universities. I am a victim of a reckless e-biker let me tell you The weight of these e-bikes, and it was a level 2 e-bike. It was a fellow that came around an S curve spotted me he was wide in my lane he tried to get off by swerving to his right which would have landed him in a clump of trees but landed right back into me I was impaled on his bike I have, if anybody's been watching Lindsay Vaughn and her recovery. My injury was much like hers.
This happened on a trail, beautiful trail in Aspen. There were no witnesses. I had the good fortune to have Dr. Rusbarski who is also part of the same team of the docs that shared that saved Lindsay's leg. My leg was saved by him I still have not been discharged from July 4th, 2024. Though I'm doing great or not great. I'm pleased for where I'm at part of the reason why I started researching this. I've seen the reckless behavior and it's increasing steadily. I've seen it from East Coast to here the fear that what if it were my 10 year old granddaughter who was riding in front of me when that happened?
It's just mind boggling the idea of engagement I've spoken when I was then back riding my I am writing regular bike sometimes and I'm very cautious of when and where. And I have taken the opportunity to speak with officers along the way and they are looking for direction. So you'd provide direction because this has gotten out of control and really very, very fast. The woman before me addressed as far as the middle school kids however I would say go in addressed the elementary parents as well. Because my goodness, it's hard to say no when you're all confronted with peer pressure to what they want but you know is not the best thing for them. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
Glad to hear you're doing better.
Our next speaker is going to be Dawson Santiago followed by Elisa Nichols and Kinsey Flame.
Good morning, thank you Board Chair Gorrell. My name is Jocelyn Santiago I'm the founder of Electric Bike Academy an e-bike safety course designed to teach teens how to safely navigate our roads this builds on the past eight years I've spent developing curriculum for state approved driver education and road safety programs across the country Like many of you, I become increasingly concerned about what we're seeing with our youth on e-bikes. As a mom, I love seeing kids outside connecting with their friends gaining independence and mostly off their cell phones Those are positives, but they're also real and growing safety risks that we can't ignore. At the same time I hear something else consistently from the parents of my students. E-bikes are changing their kids' lives.
They're getting to school sports and afterschool activities in ways that weren't possible before for many families especially in areas with limited transportation options and with parents returning to the office for work e-bikes provide a level of mobility and independence that is incredibly valuable to them. We've been here before For years, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death among teens. We didn't respond by banning young drivers or banning cars.
We responded by strengthening education, improving laws and preparing young drivers to be safer on the road. I believe we are at a similar moment with e-bikes. E-bikes are not toys. They're a powerful form of transportation and without proper knowledge and training they can quickly become dangerous. While I understand there are limits to what can be enforced here at the local level, there is a meaningful path forward with education. They mentioned the Huntington Beach School District, Palos Verdes School District, Redondo Beach, Vista and Carlsbad are all doing the same thing. Our course is approved by them currently. We're also partnering with Agora with their new initiative. So, there are programs available today including Electric Bike Academy that can help equip young riders with the skills they need to stay safe.
E-bikes are already here and kids are already riding them. The question is not whether we allow it, it's how can we best prepare them? Thank you so much.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Eliza Nichols and then we're going to transition into Zoom and hear from Kinsey Flame, Nicole Williams, and Jennifer Sedgen.
2:20 – 2:253 turns
Good morning my name is Eliza and I'm the founder of It Needs To End a local non-profit on youth and safety prevention We've been working on e-bike safety for over a year, not just talking about the problem but building a full solution. We've already created a complete classroom based safety program that covers laws, real world scenarios, battery safety, defensive riding. It's an interactive and engaging and it's designed for both students and parents. We're not starting from scratch, we've already implemented this.
We've worked directly with schools, Bridges Middle School has already been fully educated. We presented in the city of Agoura Hills, we secured contracts throughout LA County The Conejo Middle School Liaison already has curriculum in hand. At this point, we're ready to scale. We can implement this at a district level, county level and beyond. We also offer enterprise licensing meaning it can be rolled out widely consistency and not piecemeal.
Because right now that's part of the problem. Every city is creating different rules, different ordinances and it's becoming confusing for families and children. It's even more difficult for law enforcement to enforce anything consistently. Education is a missing piece that ties all of this together. We also provide documentation students receive completion cards we maintain records that support accountability whether that's parents schools potentially DMV or PD This isn't theoretical, it's built tested and it's ready to go. We're asking for the opportunity to partner to bring this program to your schools and communities in a real scalable way because we don't need more conversation, we need implementation. Jeff Gorel is one of the only people that my business has heard from.
Thousand Oak Sheriffs and Jeff Gorel actually had us at their event This is ready to go. We live here, we're a resident. We're happy to put this in the schools and we can do it tomorrow if you guys want. So please communicate with us. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. And we are going to transition to Zoom and hear from our remote participants. We're gonna hear from Kenzie Flame, Nicole Williams and Jennifer Sugden. We're gonna need you to accept the prompt to be promoted and then unmute your mic when it's your turn to speak if you are on Zoom and want to make public comment on this item please press the raised hand button so we can make sure that you're added to the queue. And with that I do see Kenzie on camera. So if you unmute your mic Kenzie you'll have three minutes to give your comment
Good morning supervisors. My name is Kinsey Flame, I am here as a parent of business owner and someone who has been speaking about this for over a year. Why are we allowing this to continue? This problem is not improving it's escalating just this past weekend and the weekend before there was children on their e-bikes in the elevators at the mall Inside the elevators at the mall, on their bikes. This is not normal behavior. This is a clear sign that boundaries are not being forced anywhere.
It is absolutely clear that teenagers in our community feel they can do and get away with whatever they want. They post videos on their social media of them running from the sheriff. Like, what kind of adults are we creating? And now we've added e-bikes into the mix, machines that allow children to go faster and farther than ever before without judgment or brain development to handle that responsibility safely.
These are kids, and right now we're setting them up to fail. So I'm asking the county what matters most? Where are the deputies or safety officers during school drop off and pickup when we know this is happening because parents know the streets. We know the routes. Call it in. Trust me, I call it in. We report it. We are willing to help. Need a consultant? I am your lady. I can tell you where they are.
But nothing changes, we may get a day or two where we see a deputy on campus. I have personally spoke at council meetings, traffic commission meetings and now here again today. On top of doing my best to find the parents of the kids riding around with the helmets hanging from their handlebars. And still it's the same thing. Post after post, incident after incident, kids riding dangerously on e-bikes with no intervention. If this sounds like an overreaction please speak to our trauma surgeons they'll tell you.
Because this weekend in our own county, a child's life was lost on a class three e-bike. It's no longer hypothetical. This is not a what if. This is happening. How many more injuries? How many more close calls? How many more lives lost before we act? We need visible enforcement. We need presence at the school. We need real consequences and real education for both kids and parents. Please don't wait until this becomes even more tragic. Thank you for your comment. I don't see Nicole Williams on Zoom, and Nicole if you're trying to connect.
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Please accept the prompt to be promoted. But I do see Jennifer, so Jennifer please go ahead and unmute your mic and you'll have three minutes to give your comments.
Good morning, my name is Jennifer Suggman and I'm a parent of three two of which are middle schoolers right now. Every day I'm seeing these middle school age kids riding these high powered e-bikes without helmets ignoring traffic laws weaving in and out of traffic lighting two to three to a bike popping wheelies and writing in the wrong direction this isn't harmless behavior anymore it's reckless disruptive and it puts everyone at risk We wouldn't hand car keys to a 12 year old, yet these bikes can reach speeds that are equivalent of a car. Yet with no licensing, no training or accountability for insurance.
This is really simple motor level power level risk. If we're going to let kids on the road they need to have the proper training, they need to have licenses and they need to have insurance to protect the rest of us.
Thank you. Thank you for your comment and one last call for Nicole. Maybe Nicole's in the boardroom with that chair Garrell, that concludes a public comment for this item thank you.
Thank you any other questions from the board? Yeah Supervisor Long.
Hi thank you as supervisor Thank you so much. The recommendations of the thoughtfulness of Dr. Cesar Morales with VCOE working with them as a former school board member, I would as a board member love to hear the presentation or what we're going to be doing on the county side so they can also interact on the different school levels. When you're talking about elementary school, middle school, high school they have parents and it reaches out. And then also with the VCCCD Ventura County Community College District a lot of our young adults are using e-bikes so they can get to class on many spectrums. And I just think this is another item that we'll be supporting and promoting, so I appreciate our public safety team so much in just making sure that our community is doing what we need to do to protect and to serve.
No one ever wants to put a fine but if that's the way to get attention and to make sure we're following the rules and being safe, You know, it's something we'll look for. So appreciate it very much Supervisor.
Yeah, thank you. If there aren't any other questions and any of their comments then I'll just summarize by saying this board letter really empowers our CEO working with the Sheriff's Department and other agencies including public health. This could be a public health issue to identify what tools we need here locally to continue to do the great things that are already going on With education and to a certain extent, partnerships and engagement. And then ultimately with enforcement.
I know that our county always tries to do the right thing in the end and not over legislate or be duplicative of what's going on in Sacramento. I know we're not gonna jump into this and like the movie Footloose outlaw dancing and have the kids have a revolt against us led by Kevin Bacon I know that we're going to try to navigate a thoughtful approach to this that complements what state legislation is coming down, but would also allow us to have the resources and possibly the policies to support everything that's going on in our school districts, but also with the Sheriff's Department and all your great work.
It does give the county some time to bring back recommendations, policy recommendations potentially resource recommendations lessons learned in other cities and counties and bring those back to this board for us to deliberate and to determine what to do next. So with that I would just ask my colleagues to support me in this board letter thank you.
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Jeff Gorell · Seconded by Janice S. Parvin approve the recommended action
Show transcript
thanks everyone and thank you for your patience on that one
Did you go to the High Street Arts Center over the weekend where they are performing Footloose?
Oh no I didn't. Are they really? Yeah, I thought it inspired you. No, yeah I was already inspired. I didn't need any more. So I guess are we too shy? No we're not. We're past ten so we can do our 10 a.m. time certain Yeah, so our 10 a.m. time certain is number 47 recommendation by Supervisor Parvin supervisor. Thank
you chair. I would like to ask that the board direct the county executive officer to research explore options and report back to the Board of Supervisors for the potential transfer of the Simi Valley Library and adjacent property to the city of Simi Valley. And in your packet, you also received a letter from the City Manager of Simi Valley detailing the city's perspective on this and I thought we would go over a presentation real quickly. And it's a quick one not like the old days.
All right. All right we're gonna travel back in time to 1977 when the city of Simi Valley conveyed 6.74 acres for library construction at that time there was an establishment of the Civic Center Authority joint powers authority sounds weird funding 2.8 million and bonds issued by Simi Valley Civic Center Authority Then into 1980, we have the library dedication which was open to the public and it was operated by the Ventura County Library Services. But in 2011, the city transitioned to the municipal library transferring full operation maintenance responsibility to the city.
Actually remember all of these in detail. Next page. The community impact, it serves Simi Valley and the unincorporated Ventura County communities. And you can see here the annual statistics. The city support extends to surrounding unincorporated areas and that those funds are not received by the city but they go towards the library services. And it's been approximately almost a million dollars since 2012. I'm not very swift with this.
All right, the financial investment. The total financial investment since 2012 has been over $20 million. I'm not going to read all the lines here but I just wanted to show you the significant investment that the city of Simi Valley has made towards this property.
Not working.
2:33 – 2:397 turns
Nope, not working. But we can move on. All right. The city's commitment and future plans. There has been a lot of maintenance that's going to be required at the library and they desire to eliminate the lease restrictions to enable some long term investments but some of the planned facility... Oh you've got it there thank you very much Some of the plan improvements include a parking lot, paving and restriping roof replacement. And I think that the roof replacement is I think that even though they put that amount in there, I really do believe it will be significantly higher than that at this point in time. But there's a lot of ADA and earthquake compliance and they need electrical shelving and children's and teen area enhancements. They actually would like to add on to the building in one of their plans.
I'm not sure they can they can do that at this point without The transfer. They'd like to modernize the exterior main entrance, I would agree with that and continue operation as a cooling and warming center. So I'm just going to summarize real briefly. And then I know we have speakers here today from Simi and the surrounding areas. I'd like to say that we'd like to request the transfer of ownership for the full 6.74 acre site, the library and parking lot from the county to the city And to enable continued capital improvements and eliminate lease burdens. The commitments that the city will do is the operating covenant with the county to maintain library service services for a mutually agreed upon term, but I think the biggest part is the transfer of the library and associated parking lot honors the intent of the original collaboration of 1977.
I know none of us were here at that time I mean, you might not have even been born. I don't think you were. But welcome to the history of Simi Valley's library. And there is one good thing that I remember about this from years ago. I remember Peter Foy our County Supervisor for District 4 brought this item forward back in 2011 and he brought it forward for good reason.
He felt that the request was good government And I completely agree with them that it's good government and I hope that my colleagues will agree, but I did. I do have some speakers here today. I look forward to hearing their comments if you don't have any questions right now we can wait till after. Wait okay and our speakers are. I think we have a few. I'm not sure if they even want to speak, I'm just going to call them out.
Chair Bergman, we have about seven speakers signed up for public comment including Dede Cavanaugh, Elaine Lister. Are those your speakers?
Yeah
that's two of them. Would you like us to add them as public comment and time them in three minutes or would you just like to invite them up to make comments for
you? Either way come on up and make comments. Okay, I'm inviting them. Yeah, inviting them up to speak as long
as you like
I'm not Glenn, so I won't take that long. You'll know what that means. Good morning Chair Corral, Supervisor Parvin and honorary members of the board as well as CEO Dr. Johnson. Thank you. I am Mayor Dede Cavanaugh from the city of Simi Valley and I'm here to request your support on item number 47. The recommendation to direct the county CEO office to research into explore options and report back to the board within 60 days for the potential transfer of the Simi Valley Library and adjacent property back to the City of Simi Valley.
As stated in your board letter, the initial site for the library was donated by the City of Simi Valley for the multi-agency partnership between the city, county and civic center authority to build the library from 1980 to 2011. The county provided the library services to Simi Valley residents since 2012. The city has been the library operator and we have been leasing the building from the county I'm going to talk a little bit about the City of Simi Valley library. The Simi Valley library is from the county sorry left my place and we've it's we've paid over $845,000 in lease payments invested over 600,000 in facility maintenance and repairs and spent over 2 million dollars in building upgrades under the city The transfer of the building and land would allow the city to invest the funds we currently spend in lease payments back into our library services, and also into much needed building upgrades to modernize the facility.
Like you said it's old older than you Director Lopez, Supervisor Lopez. The library is due for estimated $3 million in improvements including a new roof which is over $582,000. I agree with you Supervisor Parment's probably going to go over that But we need to make that in order to ensure that the community can continue to rely on the library for materials programs and services. And as you mentioned earlier, it is also our warming and cooling center and it's used very frequently especially during PSPS outages.
Additionally, the facility needs a modernization refresh to better meet the needs for how our library patrons will use the space now and into the future. This will require a significant capital investment to address our enhanced electrical needs, flexible shelving and carpeting upgrades. And those are just a few examples of what we need to do. As the mayor and a steward of public funds, it is a challenge to justify the expenditure of city funds for our constituents on significant capital investments for a building we do not own.
Yet it's heavily relied upon by our residents and county residents. I respectfully request that you direct CEO Dr. Johnson to research, explore options and meet with our city manager to discuss the transfer of the Simi Valley Library to the City of Simi Valley. Thank you for your consideration. Sorry, the writing's really small. I had trouble reading that but thank you for your consideration.
Thank you.
2:39 – 2:469 turns
Good morning Chair Gorel, Supervisor Parvin and other supervisors, honorable members of the board and Dr. Johnson good to be here. And I actually want to thank you for the relationship that the City of Sydney Valley has had with the county and acknowledge the county for your priorities on libraries in supporting the community in so many ways. I know it happened that you have 13 libraries in your system and I'm including the mobile library van which you have.
And your support for libraries in Simi Valley has had a very long history. In fact, Ventura County landmark number 40 This is the original Simi Valley library building now housed at Strathern Park and it was the first purpose built branch library building in Ventura County. There were lots of rooms here and there but the first purpose-built branch was built at that time. It was built and added to the Ventura County Library System after local citizens raised the money for the land in 1930.
Of course, this was long before Simi Valley was even a city So I too am here today to request your support and approval of item 47 on your agenda. The recommendation to direct the county executive officer to research, explore options and report back to the board within 60 days for the potential transfer of the Simi Valley Library and adjacent property to the City of Simi Valley.
I should say this that the library is a wonderful space where books, periodicals, audio books and so much more is housed. Mayor Cavanaugh stated that the Simi Valley Library is one of our community's third spaces but I want to understand that important environments are home it's our first place Work that's our second space and the third space was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg is a place where people go to build community, reduce loneliness, enhance mental well-being and strengthen civic engagement.
The library absolutely does this and more Yes it houses programs for patrons but in Simi Valley does so much more hosting literacy and English language instruction, a youth jobs expo, arts exhibits, a thriving teen space. I could go on and on you did say I could talk forever right? I don't know no I'm kidding just a bit more the Simi Valley Library was dedicated on February 24th 1980.
I was still in high school at the time This 32,000 square foot building is 46 years old and is in serious need of a facelift. For comparison's sake, Thousand Oaks with a similar size population of about 125,000 has their Grant-Brimhall Library of 62,000 square feet and was recently expanded to 84,000 square feet. The Camarillo Library, gorgeous serves a population of 71,000 etc is over 65,000 square feet. Quite frankly the Simi Valley library is bursting at the seams Currently, community youth orchestra vocal and jazz performances lectures many other events take place in the community meeting room or Rose Garden but these events can be limited by weather and space constraints.
The Simi Valley Library has had a strong need to modernize the interior of the facility to create flexible space. And I will say there was much excitement when the city recently requested proposals for modernizing upgrades and more including repositioning of the main entrance to create a more welcoming and accessible entry into the library. But as previously stated, these upgrades will require a minimum investment of $3 million and I suspect much more.
And the city is committed to making that investment. But as a council member and steward of public funds, I would very much like this to be an investment we are making in a city-owned building. So thank you for your time, attention, appreciate your thoughtfulness in this, and look forward to further conversation. Thank you. Do
we have any other guests that you're aware of? I mean, I see someone there.
Please call your guest at your leisure.
City Manager Samantha Argybright Who wrote the letter
requesting this? I didn't want to assume you were referring to me so... Good morning Chair Garrell, Supervisor Parvin and honorable members of the board. It is a pleasure to see you all this morning. I'm Samantha Argerbright, the City Manager for the city of Simi Valley and I am here to request your support and approval of item 47 on your agenda And I'm humbled to be here today. I was a staff member at the time in that our former city manager and your former CEO came to terms regarding the City of Simi Valley's assumption of library services prior to the implementation of Assembly Bill 438 in 2012, and I was responsible for the transition from the county to the city.
And I am an avid library user, and I'm there at least once a week. Today the library is in need of many upgrades as you've heard from my mayor and my Mayor Pro Tem. And the city is prepared to make the investment so we can continue to meet the needs of our library patrons into the future. And at this time, we forecast them to be in the realm of $3 million also as you've heard. We have capital project funding set aside and a plan to continue to support these capital investments.
The city has recently rolled out the Library on the Go, a mobile library van that meets our patrons where they are, at parks, at elderly care facilities and community events. And it has been met with enthusiasm and great participation. The Simi Valley Library is a gathering space and in Simi Valley we are short of space for our non-profit and community groups to meet.
The community room at the library is an excellent space but it's consistently booked, not only with library programming but with community organization board meetings And many others future upgrades will allow us to expand the spaces available, giving these organizations a more permanent home. The library is a key part of our civic center and the city has no intention for that to change. The city is committed to continuing to operate the building as a library into the future and as we embark on the revisioning of the Civic Center master plan in the next few years The library is a cornerstone of the use of this site.
Finally, while the city has funds to set aside to begin improvements we still actively seek grants to offset the costs whenever possible and as the building owner instead of lessee we will be more strongly positioned to compete for these funds. I respectfully request that you direct CEO Johnson to research explore options and meet to discuss the transfer of the Simi Valley Library to the City of Simi Valley. Thank you for your time in consideration today.
Thank you. I'm sorry
to hear from other members of the public.
Yes, I would absolutely love to hear from members of the public.
Thank you supervisor Parvin next on our list is Rochelle Benz followed by Jennifer Frank and George and Gloria Bowman.
2:47 – 2:534 turns
Good morning. My name is Rochelle Binns and I'm a Simi Valley resident, business owner and parent. I'm here today to urge the board to support the transfer of ownership of the Simi Valley Library from the county to the city. I am also a founding board member of the Simi Valley Library Foundation. Our mission is to financially support the Simi Valley Public Library in its efforts to renovate and revitalize the library.
Over the last four years that we have dedicated our free time to fundraising efforts, our progress has been hindered by a fundamental obstacle which is that the City of Simi Valley does not own its own library. We have experienced concern from potential donors partners and stakeholders who question why changes would be made to a building that is not under city control.
Conversations that should be focused on donations and improvements quickly devolve into a discussion of the ownership of the library I'm proud of the smaller improvements we have been able to make to the library, including recently new furniture and supplies for the teen lounge. But the library needs major capital improvements. Virtually nothing in that library is up to code. The electricity, the shelves.
Should we even do as much as move a bookcase or remove a bolt? Now we're required to fix everything. Ownership of the library may not seem like an urgent issue but it is. The library is old, it's outdated and it's unsafe. We have 124,000 residents who are entitled to a safe library and we are losing momentum volunteers and potential donors every day that the city does not own its library.
Thousand Oaks is getting ready to renovate their library again. Moore Park is receiving millions of dollars for their library including 4.6 million dollars from a California infrastructure grant. We can't even attract that kind of grant so long as the building is owned by the county. The City of Simi Valley serves a population that is equivalent to the population of Thousand Oaks, almost twice the size of Camarillo and four times the size of Moorpark.
The County has owned this library for decades and the City of Simi Valley has been paying rent, financing the services, and has been responsible for its maintenance all via city tax dollars. The City of Simi Valley has more than paid for this library and they deserve to own it so that it can be made into something this county can be proud of. When we hear people talk about the County of Ventura, I don't want to hear oh the Camarillo Library is really nice. I want to hear the County of Ventura has such amazing libraries they really take care of their people.
I'm urging the county to get with the city and work together to transfer ownership of the library as soon as possible so that we can do that necessary fundraising that is contingent upon this transfer and make this into something that we can all be proud of together. And, I'll just say a couple other things but I have time so I'll say them. If you didn't know, the library employees are having to climb a ladder into the ceiling five times a day to redo their Wi-Fi router because we can't move it because we cannot do anything to the building I happened to be at the library the day of the, I believe the Pasadena fires last January.
Half of the city lost power hundreds of people flocked to the library there are like five outlets in that whole building. I mean people were running extension cords laying on the ground it's a problem and we want to fix it so we need the transfer thank you. Thank you for
your comment our next speaker is going to be Jennifer Frank followed by George Bowman and then Gloria Bowman
Good morning, my name is Jennifer Frank and I have been a resident of Simi Valley for 22 years. I'm here today to show strong support for transferring ownership of the Simi Valley Public Library including the land parcel building and parking lot from the County of Ventura to the City of Simi Valley I am a member of the Board of Directors of both the Friends of the Library and the Library Foundation, but most importantly, I'm a frequent library patron.
To say that I am supporter of our library is quite an understatement. The Simi Valley Library is so much more than a place for community members to check out books. Children visit the library for story time and singing. Teenagers utilize the library's teen center to study, collaborate on school projects, and just hang out. Adults and seniors come to the library for meetings, to hear speakers, to vote, to hear musical performances, to take classes among a myriad of other things.
Residents who do not have access to technology at home come to the library to use computers. However, the library is in desperate need of major capital renovations. The roof leaks, the windows are old, the layout is outdated and nothing in the library is up to code including earthquake safety requirements because nothing is up-to-code when one small change is made everything will have to be changed The County of Ventura has owned the Simi Valley Library for decades.
During that time, Simi Valley taxpayers have been responsible for not only paying rent for the facility but also funding library services and bearing the cost of maintaining a building that the city does not own. The lack of ownership has created long-term problems that have hindered the community's ability to make much needed long overdue capital improvements to the facility.
Since its inception four years ago, the Library Foundation has worked to secure funding for renovations. But that work has been significantly hindered by the lack of ownership of the city. It is difficult to attract large donors and grants because of understandable hesitancy to sink large sums of money into a building that the city doesn't own or control. Simi Valley is the third most populous city in Ventura County with 125,000 residents who deserve a safe clean modern library that is city owned.
Ventura's EP Foster Library is currently closed for a 13 million dollar renovation And Moorpark is going to build a brand new library for their residents, yet four times as many people live in Simi Valley when compared to Moorpark. Please I urge you strongly to transfer ownership of the library to the city of Simi Valley so that it can be transformed into the library that our community deserves. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be George Bowman followed by Gloria Bowman
2:53 – 2:5925 turns
Good morning Chairman Gorel. Supervisors, my name is George Bowman I am a resident of Simi Valley and I'm very much in favor of returning the library and property back to the city of Simi Valley so that the capital projects that have been discussed can be done. I work in construction, federal construction to be concise. And I know that it takes time to get funding in place and that the requirements for doing any sort of construction on any sort of government owned facilities is not the same as for private or residential. So I would urge you to return the property to the city of Simi Valley so that those needed capital replacement projects can in fact be done because otherwise we would like this out. The county of Ventura to provide the funding to do all of that capital work which I don't see happening.
So the best thing that could be done for both is to return the property to the city of Simi Valley. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your comment and our final speaker is going to be Gloria Bowman.
Mr Chair and board members, I'm Gloria Bowman a 33 year resident of Simi Valley and an avid user and supporter of the Simi Valley Library. For many years I've been aware of the three-pronged leadership of the facility I'm very much in favor of the County of Ventura transferring the six-plus acre facility and parking lot to the City of Simi Valley. Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter, and please vote to transition this property back to the City of Simi Valley.
Thank You Gloria, Chair Parvin excuse me and Chair Gorilla and Supervisor Parvin that concludes a public comment for this item Thank you. We
have any questions? I think I provide a lot of information there
and I really appreciated your thoroughness Supervisor Parvin and luckily we do have Brian Miller who's was with supervisor for so I'm very familiar and would love to second this
what he like to come speak too. I
think he's probably
might be a conflict, I don't know
But yes, he was
with Supervisor Foy back
then. He's a great brain trust.
He is so are there any questions? If not then I will move that we direct the CEO to research explore options and report back to the Board of Supervisors on the potential transfer of the Simi Valley Library and adjacent property to the city of Simi Valley. And there was one other thing I had to I'm supposed to say hold on Something about the check with the state.
I don't want to miss it.
Oh, one of those that's in them board letter as part of the report back and we're going to have to make sure we comply with the Surplus Lands Act any possible exemptions to it
surplus land and with that that's my motion.
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Janice S. Parvin · Seconded by Kelly Long approve recommend actions been
Show transcript
Thank you everyone for coming today. I know it was quite a drive and I appreciate you waiting very much, thank you.
Yeah, thank you for your patience. Thank you for your patience everyone we're gonna move to agenda item number 48 It is a time certain 1030 so again patient you thank you if your patients on 48 as well Open up the public hearing on a matter involving classification change second hearing following April 14th Is Anna Ford here to make Anna morning?
Good morning, members of the board, CEO Dr. Johnson. I'm Anna Ford with the Classification Compensation Labor Relations Unit. I meet for you today for the second hearing on the recommendation that your board adopt the amendment to section 1347 of the Ventura County Ordinance Code to place the Ventura County Employees Retirement Association classification a retirement chief technology officer in the unclassified service. This is the second hearing on this matter and the amendment to the ordinance will become effective 30 days from this conclusion of this second hearing or May 28th, 2026 whichever occurs later in time. This concludes a second hearing on this recommendation.
Thank you Ms. Ford. Madam Clerk any public comments?
Chair Greer there are no requests to speak for this item thank you.
Okay members of the board are there any questions? Invite a motion
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Vianey Lopez · Seconded by Janice S. Parvin adopt the ordinance
Show transcript
Thank you let's move to agenda item 49 also 1030 times certain also a public hearing. Chair we need just a second to get our
interpretation fired
up yeah we'll take a minute to allow our interpreters to prepare just let us know when you're ready this is again a public hearing to consider an adoption of a resolution Authorizing the county to apply for and participate in pro-housing designation from the state of California. Mr. Ward is here, Mr. Clerk just let us know when we're ready. Okay, I see the thumbs up in the back.
Yeah all right IT has confirmed our internet streams are live if the interpreter can start with her announcement.
2:59 – 3:115 turns
Good morning everyone this is going to be the live interpretation into Spanish it'll be done through the headsets that are at the entrance of this room if you would like to hear that please go to the staff person If you're listening in Zoom, please select your language of preference and you will hear simultaneous interpretation into Spanish.
Thank you Mister Ward please.
Yes, thank you good morning chair girl supervisors doctor Johnson I'm Dave Ward the planning director for the Resource Management Agency. I wanted to provide just a few introductory comments about the pro housing designation and then going to turn it over to our project planner on this project miss joy Werner this item is one of our housing element programs to implement And this pro-housing designation when we first identified it in the housing element, we had other items of ordinance changes that we needed to do to go along with it.
But the pro-housing designation actually evolved with the state. The application process became much more involved than any of us had anticipated and Ms. Werner was able really to dive in and lead this program Partnering with the CEO community development division and the planning management to move this along without her dedication. And quite frankly, managing up to get this project through through the deadline that we had targeted for April. That's why we're here today. So that's fantastic news. Secondly, I wanted to also recognize that your board's leadership years ago to create our housing team in our planning division has allowed us to main on schedule with our housing element implementation. You heard are great numbers last month on the annual report You'll hear today with Miss Werner's presentation that part of our scoring in this application, we would not have been able to achieve without having completed those other ordinance items.
And that's really due to your dedicated support and effort for the planning division and keeping our focus countywide on all things housing. With that I'll introduce you to Miss Werner. This is her first presentation to your board.
Welcome Mrs. Werner. Thank you for all your hard work on this.
Thank you. Okay, good morning Chair Gorrell, board members, CEO Dr. Johnson and members of the public. My name is Joy Werner I'm an assistant planner in the planning division and the project manager for the county's pro-housing designation application case number PL25-0035 The pro-housing designation is a state program administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD.
It recognizes jurisdictions that go above and beyond minimum state housing laws to accelerate housing production and remove barriers to development. Director Ward mentioned this effort is part of housing element program HGA implementation which directs the county to apply for and strive to receive and maintain a pro-housing designation. Receiving the pro-housing designation provides exclusive access to the Pro Housing Incentive Program grant, a competitive grant only available to jurisdictions that have received the pro-housing designation.
In addition, the county would receive priority consideration when applying for affordable housing subsidies available through HCD including but not limited to the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities and Infill Infrastructure grant programs. The immediate significance to the county is that we anticipate that the next round of Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention or HAP funding may require that jurisdictions have this designation in order to be eligible.
HCD has established a specific application process for the pro-housing designation. Since March of 2025, the county has been working with HCD to develop a draft application. This has been a lengthy and coordinated process involving collaboration between both the Planning Division and the Community Development Division. Today's hearing represents step 2 in this process bringing forward a resolution for board consideration and authorization in order to proceed with the application.
Unlike most applications, this program requires a public review period after board authorization as the adopted resolution is required in order to release a complete draft application for public review. Following the board hearing, we will conduct a diligent 30-day public participation process, consolidate and respond to public comments, and make any necessary revisions to the application prior to submitting to the state for review.
HTD's review process is anticipated to take approximately two months so that is a relatively short time frame for us to secure the designation ahead of the anticipated HAP application deadline in late August. The application itself is fairly extensive. Before HCD will even consider scoring it, we must meet a series of minimum threshold requirements. This includes having a compliant housing element and submitting annual progress reports on time.
The application includes seven required appendices. Appendix one is the formal resolution. This is the key action being brought forward to the board as part of this item. Appendix 3 is a self-scoring sheet, which is the core of the application. This is where the county will identify both enacted and proposed policies and demonstrate how they exceed state criteria.
Before I move into appendix 2, I want to acknowledge that the county already meets most of the requirements with the policies and programs that are currently in place. The proposed policies that are referenced in Appendix 3 are outlined in Appendix 2. These programs must be completed within two years from the date the application is submitted. The county's proposing three programs that are all assigned to the planning division were included in the board approved 2026-2029 work plan and are anticipated to be completed by June of 2028.
Appendix 3 is organized into four categories under which all of our policies and programs are going to be evaluated. This includes favorable zoning and land use, acceleration of housing production time frames, reduction of construction and development costs, and providing financial subsidies. Policies are awarded points and we can receive additional points when using enhancement factor arguments.
The county is currently anticipating receiving a total of 93 points, which exceeds the minimum points required 30 points to receive the designation and strengthens our competitiveness for state funding. Your board has advanced key initiatives to address encampments, positioning the county to respond in alignment with state priorities which is a requirement of the pro-housing designation.
This coordinated and comprehensive approach both addresses immediate basic needs and creates clear pathways to housing and supportive services. Through collaboration among backpack medicine behavioral health public health and the sheriff's homeless liaison unit and community-based organizations. The county delivers a strong cross sector response additional detail on how the county meets each principle along with supporting documentation is included in appendix 5 of this application.
To meet the requirements of appendix 6, the county must conduct a diligent public participation process Prior to today's hearing, we hosted a stakeholder informational session in February and noticed the hearing and provided opportunities for public comment through our county pro-housing designation webpage. We also published legal notices in both English and Spanish sent out listserv notifications once the board packet was available for review and issued a press release.
Following today's hearing, we will conduct a required 30-day public outreach period in May of 2026. This will include updating our pro housing designation web page to post the draft application for public review and allow for direct public comment through that web page. We will also seek Planning Commission input present at a continuum of care virtual meeting and host a public informational webinar In addition to conduct broader outreach, we will post flyers, post social media posts and send out listserv notifications again and consolidate all written comments received as part of the final applications submittal to the state. I also want to note that as of today, we have received two public comment letters in support of this agenda item.
The county has made significant investments of local state and federal funding to support affordable housing. To support the development and operation of affordable housing, which is a key component of achieving the pro-housing designation. Affordable housing developments shown on the map with circle icons represent I'm here today to talk about the pro housing designation. This is one of 6 developments that have received a financial reserve of reservation of financial support from the county totaling over 600 affordable homes receiving the pro housing designation will not only support the county in continuing this work but will provide priority consideration for developers who are looking to develop projects within Thank you for your time, I'm available for any questions.
Also available to answer questions are my manager Ruchita Kadakia, Planning Director Dave Ward and staff from the Community Development Division including Homelessness Solutions Director Kimberly Albers and Housing Solutions Director Tracy McCauley.
3:11 – 3:2127 turns
Thank you for that presentation. Any questions from the board? First
of all, thank you for explaining that in a easy-to-understand format. That is a very set of very complex policies and you delivered it really beautifully My question is if you have to have a 30 point minimum and we have 93 points Is it based on points that because we have 93 were way ahead or how does that work?
Thank you for your question supervisor Parvin. The program to receive the designation it is not competitive to receive the designation you just need to meet
too bad
meet the threshold requirements and have a minimum of 30 points to receive the pro housing incentive program grants, you need to have the designation to get a base amount of points how larger jurisdiction is also determines that base amount and then the additional points Determine what kind of bonus points that you will be awarded how much additional funding. Okay, that's
okay. There we go.
Thank you Thank you very much. Thank you any other questions? Yes supervisor Lavera
And thank you for that presentation was wonderful Looking to the timeline it we think we'll be able to submit the the application This summer is the state turning them around within several weeks. It looks like according to that timeline
We have Thank you, Supervisor Leir. We have been in communication with a representative from HCD and have plans as soon as we start our public outreach process to begin preliminary reviews on their end in order to try to meet the deadline for this HAP funding.
So we're hoping to get it in, I believe is in June. And then hopefully by August we'll have that the acceptance back. That's wonderful. No sometimes the state takes a little longer to review these applications but glad to see they're going to cross
our fingers.
Thank you.
Any other questions from the board or public comments?
I think you check around we currently have four speakers in the queue. Our first speaker is going to be Ricardo Torres followed by Don Dyer and then we have a couple of zoom participants. Ricardo if you proceed to the podium, you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
Good morning can everyone hear me okay? I don't know if it's morning or afternoon already but Good morning, Chair Gorel, Vice-Chair Lopez, esteemed supervisors and Madam CEO. My name is Ricardo Torres, Director of Government and Community Affairs for the Area Housing Authority of the County of Ventura. We're the largest public housing authority in the county.
We actually just celebrated our 54th birthday in February. And we have jurisdiction in Fillmore, Ojai, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo, and the unincorporated areas of the county. We manage approximately 2,400 Section 8 vouchers and we're responsible for about 1,100 doors. I'm here today on behalf of the Housing Authority to express our strong support for the county's pursuit of the pro-housing designation.
At a time when communities across the state are facing significant housing challenges, it is critical that Ventura County continues to position itself as a leader in advancing housing solutions and competing for vital state resources. Securing this designation not only reflects a commitment to increasing housing opportunities but also strengthens the county's ability to access funding that would directly benefit our residents.
We would also like to commend the county's housing team for their leadership in bringing this effort forward. Their proactive approach, strategic vision and commitment to addressing our region's housing needs are evident by this proposal. As a continuous and committed countywide collaborative partner, the Rehousing Authority values a strong working relationship we have with the county. Together we have made meaningful progress in expanding access to safe, stable and affordable housing. And we look forward to continuing this partnership to address evolving needs, evolving housing needs in our communities.
And for those reasons, we strongly support the county's per housing destination and encourage this resolution to be adopted. Thank you.
Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is going to be Don Dyer and then we're gonna transition to Zoom and hear from Barbara Macri-Ortiz and Linda Braunschweig.
Good morning. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm Dawn Dyer, president of Dyer Sheehan Group. We're land use consultants housing market analysts and investment brokers. I am also honored to be the founder of Housing Trust Fund Ventura County which is making a difference in our community as well as I currently chair the county's continuum of care board working to end homelessness I know you're going to be hearing a report today as well on our point in time count. I was hoping to stay long enough, but I may not be able to be here for that so wanted to let you know very proud of the work that the county staff has done on ending homelessness. I also want to point out that there is a correlation between the fact that we've produced A lot of housing in the last couple of years and that is a direct correlation to the reduction in homelessness.
As we know California has been under producing housing for a number of years despite all the laws that have been passed, we're still not meeting the goal of 180,000 units a year last year the state produced about 100,000 housing units countywide so well short of our goal I support the pro-housing policy and I particularly appreciate the innovative ideas and policies that your team has brought forward to help create more housing in that middle. We've got a lot of groups working on affordable housing, that missing middle particularly market rate apartments Thank you very much.
You know, the lack of housing is impacting our economic vitality in California and in the state. Fifty five thousand jobs were created statewide last year. That's down dramatically from an average of about three hundred and seventy one thousand a year between 2015 and 2019. And in fact we lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs in California since 2023. While our unemployment rate doesn't seem alarming it was at 4.7% in December ticked up to 5% in January. It should be noted that the unemployment rate among 16-19 year olds is 16%.
Many of these young people are continuing to live with their parents well into young adulthood because it's difficult for them to find jobs and more importantly, to find housing that they can afford. Housing costs have gone up much faster than incomes and based on the study that we've done this year, the overall average rents in Ventura County of $2,711 a month would require excuse me that's 317 dollars a square foot.
Thank you Don for your comment, your three minutes time.
Okay just wanted to close by saying it's very difficult for people to afford to live here and throw out that last. You would need to earn $100,000 a year to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Ventura County.
Thank you for your comment. Thank you we need to transition over to Zoom where we're going to hear from Barbara Macri-Ortiz and Linda Braunschweiger and I see that both have been promoted Barbara, if you unmute your mic, you'll have three minutes to give your
comment. Good morning Chair and Supervisors. My name is Barbara Macri-Ortiz and I've been working on housing issues for more years than I care to remember. I think it's very important this item because it may give us a leg up I don't know why I'm echoing here. Let me get rid of one of these. I have no idea what I'm doing.
You can only have one device connected at a time to avoid
the feedback. Yeah, I'm just on my laptop so I don't know why it's on here.
It doesn't sound bad to us here, so you can proceed.
I'll bear
with it. Thank you.
I want to applaud and thank the staff, and let you know you have a really good housing team working for the county. And I'm very appreciative of that. They're always on the ball and doing whatever they can to improve the condition of affordable housing in this county. You know, today it's very, very hard to make these projects pencil. The affordable housing projects have even more of a challenge because of certain rules that they have to follow and laws. So any way we can position the county to get a little leg up And competing for loans and funding for these projects is critical.
So I thank the staff for all their work, I thank you for this consideration and I trust that you will approve this and expedite it so that the staff can keep working and hopefully we can get that designation within a reasonable period of time. Thank you very much.
3:21 – 3:2611 turns
Thank you for your comment and we're going to go to our next speaker. We're gonna hear from Linda Braunschweiger. Hi Linda I can see you on Zoom and you are unmuted so you have three minutes to give your comment.
Great thank you so much this is Linda Braunschweiger I'm the Housing Trust Fund Ventura County CEO apologize for my backdrop. I want to thank the county of Ventura for taking this really important step of applying for pro housing certification Really this action shows leadership and real commitment to expanding affordable housing in our community. Pro-housing certification is really more than a designation, it signals that Ventura County is working to remove barriers, encourage smart housing development and create more opportunities for working families, seniors and young people who wanna stay in our community.
Housing affordability impacts economic stability, workforce retention and equality of life. By pursuing this certification the county is positioning itself to compete more effectively for state funding while also demonstrating that Ventura County is serious about addressing housing needs thoughtfully and proactively I truly appreciate all the hard work that the staff has put into this application. And as many have mentioned, we have a stellar staff at the county trying to solve very difficult problems. I appreciate the board for recognizing the housing solutions require collaboration planning and courage. This application reflects a willingness to lead rather than wait.
Thank you for investing in a stronger, more inclusive future for Ventura County. And I encourage continued momentum so that this certification becomes part of a broader strategy to support attainable housing and sustainable growth for all residents. Thank you so much.
Thank you for your comment. Chair Girl, that concludes the public comment for this item.
Okay, thank you. To those speakers who might have been cut off feel free to provide your remarks to the clerk and they'll make that part of the record and also give us a copy of that as well so just encourage any speakers who might not have the opportunity to make all of their comments in the three minutes provided in writing with that are there any additional questions from the board?
Okay Supervisor Lopez
Thank you to our girl. No, no questions just wanted to add my appreciation to staff and all the partners throughout the community including those who have spoken today who have been working to really advocate for housing especially affordable housing farm worker housing And appreciate the work that has been put into this as you've all been talking about this for a while and what a milestone to be at today where this is really coming to life. So I just want to thank everyone for the collaboration and the hard work to get us there and doing the good work for our community. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to everyone involved.
Yeah, well stated. Supervisor Laverde?
Thank you chair I completely agree you know this designation application didn't happen overnight this has been years of hard work primarily from our planning staff but also partners in the community and it's so great to see just what we've had envisioned coming to fruition that after all of this work were this close to submitting that application to getting that designation Because if there's one thing that really unites this board, it's our belief in more housing is necessary in Ventura County. We need to accelerate development. We need to reduce barriers. We need to implement friendly policies and this is one of those items that's going to drive that vision forward. So thank you so much for all of your work and getting us here today.
Supervisor
Long. I just want to say I completely agree with my colleagues here and I wanted to congratulate you on your first presentation, very well done. I know again we can be intimidating but it was wonderful and I think it's really important that people understand in a clear way what we are trying to do here in Ventura County to house our community. I think it's extremely important so thank you very much and I hope that the state agrees and approves this thanks Yeah.
Thank you with that, I'm going to close the public hearing and call for motion.
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Vianey Lopez · Seconded by Matt LaVere approve staff recommended actions
Show transcript
yes thank you congratulations Miss Werner on your first presentation of the unanimous outcome By all measures a pretty decent success. So we're going to move to item agenda item number 50 it's receiving file motions can be presented by our CEO and Mr. Scott Powers.
3:26 – 3:437 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this time we will have budget presentations starting with the Fire Protection District, followed by the Public Defender's Office, Public Works Agency and Resource Management Agency. Please go ahead Chief Gardner.
I had to bring my glasses with me because I do remember when Kevin Bacon danced in a Beaumont and I can't see Tom's spreadsheets. Okay good morning Board of Directors, CEO Dr. Johnson, Chair Gorel for the record my name is Dustin Gardner I'm your County Fire Chief along with our staff here our executive staff and team to answer any specific questions today is a an initial receiving file for the districts the fire district's 26-27 budget um I'm going to shoot for being brief and then being seated and leave it to questions at the end if you have it let's see here Okay, this first shot here and we can refer back to this. It's a it's a basic snapshot of our 26-27 budget and I wanted to take the opportunity with this just to remind so that the public remembers that the district is funded by property taxes and contracts with other agencies.
It is not a general fund budget. So we have our basic high level budget numbers on here. So if you look at, for example, our salaries and benefits that's $204 million or 72% of our appropriations. We have $48 million in sales and service and supplies. And then the one we get asked on a lot is fixed assets and capital improvements An advantage with the budget is we receive our revenues each year and we receive our contract fees each year, and we manage our budget like we do a household budget. We have to save, we have to prepare, and we have to plan for the future, and in doing that we're allowed to do things like build 20 million dollar fire stations one year or improve and replace 17 million dollar radio systems and continue to buy two-and-a-half million dollar fire trucks so our capital numbers are fixed assets and capital project numbers will vary throughout the years, they go up and down.
And that's where a lot of the questions come in is with whether we're staying in budget or not when we look at just our operating cost of salaries and benefits service and supplies and our other basic charges. We are well within the revenues that you'll see down below that our tax revenues or license and permitting fees are fines and then our revenues intergovernmental revenues getting that inner inner revenue Intergovernmental revenue is a big number because that's our CAL FIRE gray book funding. And as a reminder, right? CAL FIRE doesn't have to have a ranger unit here in Ventura County which would cost the state well over $60 million a year. They contract with us to provide basic wildland firefighting services and keep 95% of fires at 10 acres or less is our goal.
So that's a great partnership we have with the state. And we can come back to this slide if there are particular questions and we have Tom here who can answer or any of them but some of the next slides will tie in with it. We wanted to take an opportunity as we did this to basically give you a snapshot, talk about some future impacts look at some future challenges and then opportunities in front of us. So we'll start with our future operational changes five years ago well over five years ago we conducted a standards of cover which looks Our our business practices ensure we're doing best industry standards as we deploy and serve the citizens of this county. And we have it renewed every five years so we just had it finished. It's still in draft form and not ready to be published but a couple things came out of it and primarily due to the fact that our call volume is increasing little over 5 percent a year and more so our traffic is increasing.
Our traffic studies that we're looking at showed our traffic times and commute times and the next 20 years are anticipated to double. So as we look at having first calls in a geographic area where we have all of our fire stations set, we're now looking at having second and third and fourth calls in those areas. And when traffic times are taking a long time to get units moved, we're looking at adding additional units instead of just adding the traditional fire truck model because the majority of our calls or medical calls were looking at continuing to Support and build out our rescue ambulance system which supports the the ambulance transport system in the county and also puts more first responder units on the street at a cheaper cost than adding fire trucks.
So, the study isn't done yet we're still looking at the most efficient ways and places to assure we move all of our units first to make sure they're most efficient and then come to this board with requests to add additional units but the standard is up cover is showing we will need an additional five units just to maintain our base performance metrics over the next five years And then another big challenge ahead of us and one we're going to talk about later is in the Port of Wainimia. I'll cover that a bit.
We're going to finish up our radio infrastructure this year and the questions come up a lot of why we're doing a different radio infrastructure than the sheriff and their 700. And it's just a reminder, we have to have both in this county. The sheriff and the law enforcement partners are going to run on the 700 but because of our significant wildland threat in this county and our master mutual aid with state of California is in our state and federal partners they all still operate on BHF on 154 frequency so we have two as well. So we're building out that system to continue to support our operations in County and be able to expand.
A future, a really interesting tech initiative that Chief Sherry and his ops team have rolled out is drones for first responder. We're going to pre-deploy 11 drones throughout the county in geographical areas are going to sit in nests on top of fire stations and the goal is going to be have a drone overhead with live footage 85% of the time within five minutes to all emergencies in the county That's going to give us real time intel and feed. We'll use it for you know, we've seen in the past right? We use it for infrared mapping. We use it for fire monitoring but this will give us real-time Intel on our calls Having drones based throughout the county. So that's what I'm excited about and then unfortunately a challenge that's coming up and we've been working with Southern California Edison for years funding our private public partnership with the Colson helicopter, which is at CH 47 We all see sitting at Camarillo Airport that drops 3,000 gallons of water as an example our old Type 2 helicopters we use with the bells, those drop 360 gallons of water.
We made a big increase going to the firehawks that drop 1,000 gallons of water at CH 47 drops 3,000 gallons of water and it has the ability to tag on with the other CH47s in the area to continually drop day and night so that's gonna be a big loss myself and Chief Maroney from LA County were working with Edison We're working with some of our state legislators and our state partners at CAL FIRE trying to find funding for it.
I can't absorb the 10.4 million that we're going to lose next fiscal year from Edison out of my own budget, so we're trying to find ways to work with our state partners and Edison to continue that program because it is a fantastic program that I will hate to see Chief,
can I ask? I know you said wait till the end but I can't. I'm dying to know what Edison said when they said this reduction was going to occur and what was the response you received from Edison?
So Edison told us a number of years ago when we went into this that it wasn't a, it wasn't a forever fix. They were they were hoping we would be able to find state them as well have been lobbying to find state and federal funding to carry this on into the future um that state funding has not come through and they have continued to find they've told us this for a couple of years so this is going to be the last year and then we'd be able to get funding the next year and so on and so forth but they've told us I hard line in the sand is they are not going to fund it next year They said it's their board is just not approving the expenditures over the for the price of fire protection. So we're still working with them I have a meeting scheduled next week two weeks actually on the 11th or the 14th with the vice president of general affairs our governmental affairs reticent She's new to her position so myself and chief Moroni are going to meet with her and continue working with her trying to find ways to fund this
All right, thank you
Chief, can I? Yes sir. Again uh I know we're supposed to wait till the end but this dovetails does that CH 47 um most our most significant wind events and fire events are in those Santa Anas is that CH 47 operational during those really high wind events has it has it did it was it deployed during the initial phases and critical phases of mountain fire For example,
so the CH 47 can deploy off all rotor wing helicopters have a have a ceiling of wind gusts that they can operate in but it did deploy. I believe all three of them did, right? Two of them. Two of the three CH-47s were here on the initial arm of the mountain fire so they did deploy and because of that 3,000 gallons of water in their drop, the speed and altitude at which they can drop, they can get heavier volumes to the ground when it's windy because they don't have to fly as fast. So yes, they do deploy but all rotor wing, all aircraft actually have a limit like we saw the night of the Thomas Fire, right? We had to ground all aircraft that night because it was too windy A couple of challenges coming in front of us and we've been talking about these for quite some time with this board.
And I know this board is very aware of unfunded mandates and been supportive of us finding ways to resolve unfunded mandates from the state, but we're coming to a head here with AB 38 which is our real estate inspections Senate Bill 1205 which is the mandated annual inspections of all hazard occupancies zone zero coming to fruition with the State Board of Forestry And then Assembly Bill 367, which is the fire district. The water districts hardening and us inspecting them and what this is equating to is it's going to be about 60 to 80 thousand additional inspections per year for our staff and Joe Morelli, our Fire Marshal has worked with his staff to try and kind of map that out of what it's going to look like and they're anticipating it's gonna cause an increase of 12 to 14 additional inspectors to handle the additional workload of those increased numbers and again these are all unfunded mandates coming from the state.
We continue to work with our state legislators trying to find financing, trying to find ways to fund these but as of right now these are all unfunded mandates and we are looking at a potential for needing to hire 12-14 more people Because none of us like bad news, we'll move to opportunities. So significant opportunities we all know following COVID that the Port of Wainimi had significant growth opportunities right being the only deep water port in between LA Long Beach and Seattle and traffic continues to increase into the Port of Wainimi. The Port of Wainimi continues to look for great opportunities to expand create a greener technology platform, right? So they can be more environmentally friendly and I guess research opportunity for our county and grow.
And as they grow we need to be prepared to grow with it. And right now I can say we are woefully underprepared to deal with this ship in a row you know of ship fire. We found out with the Harry Hudson down in Los Angeles last year that even the city of Los Angeles and City of Long Beach are woefully underprepared to deal with one of those big ship fires. So we're all working together actually, we're working with Cal OES and the entire state of California to increase our resources because like we respond fire trucks mutual aid will all respond fire boats mutual aid but with the increased size of the port and just the fact that we have 42 We're going to look through all the ways that other fire departments have with ports throughout the United States.
Chief Parker and his team have been traveling around America looking at all the different types of fire boats trying to find Unfortunately, we're trying to find a one-size fits best method. Something that we can use to respond our 42 miles of coastline and also fight fire in the port if we get a fire in one of those ships or more likely if we get a fire in one of our 2200 residential and light use slips in harbor so that's 2200 boats sitting in there that are all essentially paying property tax and we do have a boat in there now in partnership with the Harbor District but this what we buy next will be able to better defend the port Another great opportunity coming this year is we've started the design, Tom and his team have started the design of our backup dispatch center which is going to allow us to move our small dispatch center out of Moorpark Fire Station 42 to a new dispatch center at our new headquarters.
That was one of the reasons for buying that bigger building was so that we could put a dispatch center down there and we're gonna do it virtually. So we've got on-premise servers at our current FCC which houses and stores all of our vital information We're going to build our secondary dispatch center, both with the ability to connect to the first but also store information in the cloud which will increase our resiliency and decrease the need for on-site premise servers. So I'm excited about that because it will increase our resiliency And then a couple new technologies we're rolling out tablet command. Tablet commands an operational platform that we use it's a pretty simple operational tool for the county but exciting because we've been able to push with all of our regional partners, we're actually getting it to be a statewide shared asset so we can see one another's resources, we can see one another's comp plans call details and actually see where resources are coming from.
So that's a huge advancement in mutual aid and responding with all of our partner agencies Marvelous, you see the acronym down there for marvelous. That is a dynamic resource management tool and what that means is right as we get emergencies the great thing about this county is Oxnard Ventura and County Fire we've all dropped our borders right and we respond seamlessly. Our transport providers with AMR and Gold Coast move their rigs dynamically to be in the best position. Marvelous is going to allow us to use AI technology and historic data to predict where to put resources based on current call need. So when we have a fire in Simi Valley pulling in 20 resources and we have a fire in Ojai pulling in five resources and South Oxnard continues to be forever busy, it will give us dynamic resource deployment models based on historic call volume and AI so traffic patterns Movements and we're excited about this.
We tried another program five years ago that failed. It was big promises brought in by a vendor, and it never made it. This seems to be working. It's been deployed in other counties, and we're really excited about it. And then one last one is personal tracking tools following the Yarnell Hill fire where we lost Granite Man and housed Granite. We've been working with tech partners and we've been pushing Cal OES to really work on Dismounted firefighter tracking and they have rolled out a program in partnership with DOD that's going to allow us to do that. So myself and Chief Moore from LA City have both volunteered to use our agencies as test beds, to see if it works.
So that's exciting because I would love to know where every one of our firefighters is at all times when on fire. I think I owe it to them. And the last slide is just to reinforce what we talked about in the beginning and that's Ventura County continues to our call volumes continue to increase. We see studies that people are leaving, we see studies that our population is decreasing but when we look at our calls for service they continue to increase year after year so while I understand people may be moving out they sure aren't calling 9-1-1 less. So we watch these and we build for the future because we know it takes five years to build a fire station, it takes 18 months to you know order a rig get her rig and get staffing approved so we try to always look five to ten years out.
So as we follow that graph out, we will continue to look for ways to improve our service. And with that I've got everybody here if there are specific questions Tom and Chuck and Barry and the whole EMS team everybody's here if we need to answer any specific questions and I will give it back to you.
3:43 – 3:554 turns
Any questions from the board? Thank You Madam CEO thank you chief
okay thank you
Okay, next we'll have Claudia Bautista come as our public defender for their budget for fiscal year 26-27. Thank you Ms. Bautista.
I was going to wait one minute to wish you all good afternoon, but I'll wish I'll wish you all good morning still. It's 11 it's eleven fifty nine. So good morning. My name is Claudia Bautista. I'm the Ventura County Public Defender Chair Gorelle and members of the board CEO Dr. Johnson. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be before you, to share with you our 2026 preliminary budget.
As I've spoken to before, I continue to be a department head that is very privileged to lead an office of 139 employees. I'm in awe every day of the work that we do, the lives we transform and the impact that we have on a daily basis. And so every day, I think I'm privileged and honored to deliver on your board's strategic priority of healthy safe and resilient communities by furthering the goal of maintaining high performing public safety services making our our neighborhoods our communities are County safer by the work that we do So how does the public defender deliver on public safety?
We deliver by also supporting the board's strategic priority of fiscal responsibility and economic vitality by furthering the goal of maintaining a transparent budget while funding essential constitutional services. Our proposed budget does exactly that, it delivers on our essential services we are primarily general fund budget. As you can see, our operating budget of 33 million is primarily of our salaries and benefits for our 139 current employees.
Our services and supplies are at 12% and other charges at one. Our services and supplies are primarily for expert witnesses that we engage in litigation and in diversion as well as the daily money that we need to operate How do we offset our $33 million budget? It's through revenues. These revenues primarily are, as you can see 96% are the intergovernmental.
Our charges of services this year over year will continue to decrease as the only department in our agency that collects attorneys fees and that's our probate conservatorship department. Miscellaneous revenues at 4%. How else does the public defender us how else do we try to offset our net county cost and that's with the board support of obtaining grants. Oftentimes I think we've discussed and I'm sure and we've taken, I certainly have taken back the feedback from all of you to look for county grants and it really was in 2022 where our department was able to get its first grant from the state and that was through the public defense pilot program that began in 2022. That was exclusively to fund Public Defender Services as the state saw an opportunity to give its 58 counties money in order to implement those unfunded state mandates, those changes in the law that created a burden for our department that was mandatory to implement because if we don't Follow the laws as changed we lose our bar license and so the PDP program are private or public defense pilot program did just that did just that over that three year period it was one million over three years and the hope was that through this grant.
The county would then see the benefits of continuing to support it as it made significant inroads both in the change in the law for the Racial Justice Act, our change in the law for immigration, our changes in the law just overall. What our department tries to do is not only depend on one grant, but look for other grants to keep the work that has been started or the expansion that began to sort of lily pad onto other opportunities. And we did that through the Racial Justice Act. That funding came strictly through the Office of the State Public Defender And that allowed us to have one FTE that was strictly to allow us to continue to do the work of the Racial Justice Act. The Racial Justice Act in particular is one that looks at the prior conduct of our criminal legal system and how it was biased in its implementation of charging decisions, how it was biased in its implementation in litigation both in jury selection and its outcomes in sentencing.
Another area that we look to expand to lily pad onto those grants that offset our net county cost was in our prop 47 grant where we applied and were awarded the maximum amount into 2025. This prop 47 grant, I'm proud of all our grants but this one in particular is really highlights how we don't just do this work alone as public defenders. We must leverage all of our county partners and even you may be surprised that dogs are sleeping with cats when we partner with the sheriff And it is in our Prop 47 grant that we were partnering with the sheriff, in particular to assist us in delivery of the anti-recidivism Prop 47 grant. For example, in our first quarter, we had 17 clients safely housed directly from the jail, 90 clients participating in continuous case management, three clients successfully completed case management plans.
In the second quarter of this grant, this is in the first year. Second quarter six clients were safely housed directly from the jail and what I mean when we partner with the sheriff is that they allow us to receive specific notifications from the sheriff and their staff when they're going to be released and therefore we can then have our county based organizations of Interface and Turning Point come and pick them up from the jail get them into housing, get them into services, get them what they need. Sometimes they need a driver's license to get into the program.
What we all know to be that warm handoff that is necessary so that those individuals charged with misdemeanors are not having to once they get released from the jail wander amongst our neighborhoods or at the local gas station or amongst the businesses these warm handoffs are necessary and then the second quarter as you can as I've explained we had 114 clients already participating In that case management.
We continue to offset our county cost by the final grant also through the Office of the State Public Defender. The expanded public services, public defense services are holistic defense another lily pad upon which our staff was able to not expand but continue the immigration work that we were doing which gave us one attorney and one clerical staff This graphic I think just continues to highlight the fact that we continue to be appointed on 80% of the cases filed in the county. So for every 10 cases, the district attorney files were appointed on eight if not nine of them as you can see year over year we continue to increase our appointment in these cases And these cases not only encompass those Prop 47 filings, but they also encompass the additional cases that come with the criminal legal system of every day.
Our unfunded state mandates, if there was a theme that I had with the fire chief. Again you know dogs sleeping with cats sort of thing is the unfunded unfunding state mandates that affect our department as well right? Please don't take offense. And for us, it continues to be the representation that we deliver at a very high level where we appoint. We were very appreciative of this board funding two attorneys within Prop 36, an initiative that this board overwhelmingly supported these two attorneys as you can see was insufficient as we had to assign eight attorneys to absorb that workload The funding for our Racial Justice Act has finished, and we continue to do the work. And we must assign an attorney to continue to do that work. Habeas petitions are very specialized.
They take a lot of research. They take a lot of data mining. They take having to review years if not decades worth of documents to find the bias that exists for a racial justice act Just last week I received notification from the California Supreme Court where it issued an order to show cause for a habeas petition that was filed by our very own senior attorney Tommy Hartnett and Kelly Swanston. This California Supreme Court order requires the Attorney General to show cause for violations of the Racial Justice Act in court bias Charging and conviction disparity, and sentencing disparity based on the victim's race. This is the first merit-based ruling by the California Supreme Court on a Racial Justice Act disparity claim. And I share this with you as we continue to be trendsetters, we continue to be ahead of the curve in other public defender offices and we continue to make sure that our representation is not only effective but absolutely excellent.
The unfunded state mandates exists also amongst our most vulnerable, our mentally ill clients both in the incompetent to stand trial and also in our mental health diversion where we are diverting clients who are charged with oftentimes serious offenses. And that thankfully through our intervention, we are able to have them maybe for the first time have this interruption in their behavior, in their cycling through the criminal legal system to get the treatment that is necessary and actually getting their felony charges dismissed as we outline there.
The work that's getting done on these unfunded state mandates like I said is necessary And it must be done. And I am very proud of the work that we continue to do and being proud and being able to express it to the board, and hopefully transmitting that pride. We were recognized by the state of California in the care work that we have been doing That we again have been leaders trailblazers and where the state has come down to see what is our what is our secret sauce in care court how do we do things and what that it really exhibited for us that wish that I continue to be very proud of is that we partner. I'm happy to answer any questions but before I do, I am going to share with you one additional hopefully feel good moment.
3:56 – 4:0314 turns
I think the biggest thing that's become important to keep going is redefining success. And I think as a team with behavioral health, with county council, with his honor our judge we really embrace the idea that sometimes success means this is the longest someone's ever been sober. Success means this is the longest someone stayed out of custody. We've had multiple clients in our care court program as young as it is say this is the longest I haven't been arrested And that just gives me goosebumps.
Gives me goosebumps as well and Ms. Benteo currently has 106 care petitions in her care, and we are increasingly seeing more care petitions coming through, and right now that is state that is funded through the Judicial Council, and we're hoping that we can continue to demonstrate through the statistics that we keep to increase funding on that. So with that I am happy to answer any questions.
Yeah, thank you for that presentation. I have a question Miss Bautista when you get it when you get a grant Not knowing its sustainability How do you typically fill those positions is it with an extra help attorney? Or do you use somebody in your internally within your own team just because it's difficult sometimes too Difficult sometimes bring somebody in to fill a role where they don't know if it'll extend beyond a year or two
Right. So generally how we plan for these is depending on the subject matter of the grant that we get and we fill it with existing staff, and then that FTE can then be sort of like a fill behind where we can hire a different level of attorney if we if the need is if we have to pull a senior attorney to do a habeas habeas grant, we will then replace that attorney with either one or two or three for that fixed term period.
Supervisor LeVere.
Thank you and thank you Miss Bautista, I really appreciate the budget review and you mentioned it but More care court applications, more mental health diversions. Those are really good things but I also understand that those come with workload increases on you and your department and you have an incredible team as you mentioned and I agree with you completely. And I just want to say I'm 100% behind your budget request because I understand the demands being placed on you. There are these unfunded mandates but it's these are really good things that are taking place and I think there's we're seeing the lives being changed By moving people through this unique aspect of the court system. So thank you for everything you're doing.
Well, thank you supervisor
supervisor Lopez
Thank you, Chair. And thank you Ms. Bautista for the presentation. Very informative in a very brief time frame to understand the challenges and I think seeing that there's a lot more work and not enough staff to meet the need with more complex cases, more mandates And so just appreciate the work that you and your department are doing throughout our entire community.
So not necessarily a question, but I think that's what I'm capturing from this is is just the increasing and ever increasing workload that you're facing and not seeing a significant change in staff, especially with the two positions coming up that are being added in part due to some of the grant funding. Is that correct?
So the two FTEs that are being added was because I was thankfully able to persuade the powers that be, the fiscal gods that are Scott and his team and Dr. Johnson, that we had one staff services specialist and that staff services specialist oversaw 29 clerical staff. That simply is not sustainable and our priority was to make sure that we brought on two clerical supervisors to assist with that because what we also saw through grant funding is that our office actually became, through our chief public defenders and our managers, that if we could really hone in on what is attorney work and what is support staff work, we could actually be a lot more effective and efficient in resolving cases and getting 151 life cases resolved.
But with that it came sort of a massive expansion of clerical staff And so that got us to 29 people that needed to be supervised, grant and non-grant. And so that's why we prioritize clerical supervisors to allow us to continue to have attorneys do attorney work and support staff, clerical staff, paralegal staff do the work that helps support the litigation, the motions and getting people out of custody. And what these grants have also done have really given us insight into partnering with Interface, with Turning Point and other subject matter experts that kind of lead us to we don't have to do it all right? So these clerical supervisors moving our FTE count to 142 As permanent positions, we're very grateful for because we just don't have for years.
We've been a very lean department and not only lean in terms of the work that we do but even lean in management and supervision. And so I'm trying to build that out a little bit and hopefully not burn out and our next staff services specialist, right? And that we can actually divide the work a little bit because what we've also done in the last 10 years is expanded to other sites. So the Union Bank building that used to be, that's across the street more and more of our staff are going over there and our staff services specialists I can only, I can't clone him or him or her so I need somebody off-site to help supervise them. So that's really what it's been for And we, in some way will continue based on the panorama right of state funding and what it means for the county's budget overall is possibly just expansion of our fixed terms.
For another three years so that we can continue to bring you data, continue to bring you statistics on how we're changing people's lives transforming whether they're getting housing or whether they're getting substance use treatment or finally getting their I
think the more you explain and talk about the cases, it goes beyond the criminal justice system but beyond. And how we continue to keep our community safe and serve everyone regardless of where they came from. So again thank you for your work And seeing the challenges, it doesn't seem that these challenges are unique to Ventura County but ones that are being faced by public defenders across the state.
Yes, thank you Supervisor Lopez.
Thank you any other questions of Ms. Bautista? Thank you I think we're ready Madam CEO to go to Public Works.
Thank You Mr. Chair thank you Ms. Bautista now I'll have Director Strackels for the Public Works Agency
4:03 – 4:261 turns
Good morning Chair Gorrell, members of the Board, Dr. Johnson. To kick off the Public Works Agency fiscal year 26-27 budget I just wanted to thank our staff, our hardworking staff for the long hours they've put into this financial analysis including the financial analysts, the accountants, management assistants, directors, deputy directors and managers. To start off, what we thought we'd do is present a pie chart of the entire agency's budget broken down into its primary categories and departments. We have Roads and Transportation, Watershed Protection, Water and Sanitation but we also have Integrated Waste Management, Stormwater Services, other CEAs, CSAs and General Fund.
The proposed 2627 budget contains just over $227 million worth of projects, programs and services to be delivered by county staff consultants and contractors. The budget proposal that you see here balances with the anticipated revenue estimates that we have for next year. And for public works, those revenues are primarily derived from fees for services. Fees for products such as potable water, reclaimed water, benefit assessment fees related to watershed protection, development impact fees for water and sewer, gas taxes, state and federal grants and emergency reimbursements And a small allocation by the General Fund for real estate services, surveying services and work to maintain the county's community rating service under the National Flood Insurance Program.
I also wanted to mention gas taxes are an important part for the Roads and Transportation Department. The agency's complement of staff remains at 414 going into next fiscal year with two additional positions allocated towards the Fox Canyon GMA, which is a distinctly separate and independent agency with funding generated by the GMA. So while this slide illustrates the operational departments of the agency, Public Works Central Services and Engineering Services deliver enormous amount of work effort by serving other county agencies and public works departments. And we'll see that in the next few slides.
Beginning with engineering services. Engineering Services has a team of 38 of which 18 are in the survey and permitting and 20 in project delivery for agencies countywide I thought we'd give a little bit of metrics measurement for engineering services as it relates to some 30 there's been a 33% increase in corner records, and 30% increase in records of survey 20% increase in soils report reviews, and 8% increasing grading permit applications. While it's too soon to tell.
Whether these increases are tied to the board's directive for permit streamlining we are going to monitor this closely and hopefully as we see permits turn around more quickly will see data creep up in this area as well. The engineering services provides services to other county agencies as discussed and currently there are 16 projects valued at $269 million associated with animal services, fire department, GSA parks, health care agency library and medical examiner's office that engineering service is working on to deliver over the course of the next few years. That is not part of this slide because it's built into other agency budgets Some of the projects delivered this year for engineering services include 1000 Oaks Fire Station 34, soon to be Santa Paula Fire Station 29 and design plans for animal services facilities, nylon acres and parks.
So engineering services, key assumptions. So there is a high service expectations and we recognize there are limited resources. We have grant projects require more process so any project that receives a grant requires more process review documentation and adds more time to a project. Future project labor agreements is still on the horizon to discuss before your board.
And project implementation phasing and timing considerations, so as we see things happening in the economy and with contractors and with funding opportunities, the question is how do we best phase a project to move forward while keeping it moving forward? Some of the major challenges and uncertainties These are some uncertainties that might generate higher bids for construction projects.
We've seen what's happening with fuel costs, labor costs, material costs and tariffs all play a role in the uncertainty area for contractors when bidding on projects and of course supply chain demands, supply chain delays along a project delivery schedule. Some opportunities that we have to look forward to is of course the simplified streamlined permit review process that we're all working very hard on. Alternative project delivery methods, for example the conventional design bid build process is a process that we are very familiar with but there are alternative delivery methods such as design build or progressive design build that we are looking at considering on delivering projects in different ways quicker and hopefully under budget.
Artificial intelligence, how can we integrate artificial intelligence into engineering services? Well when we're asking for concepts on projects I think artificial intelligence can help designers and architects come up with more than one concept at a lower cost to help us all understand what the possibilities are in the options. Some potential impacts related to engineering services, increased engineering service rates and fees primarily related to labor costs. Increased construction contract bids potentially carrying forward projects if bids come in too high and delivering a welcome highly responsive and cost-effective programming process that protects and enhances safety health and quality of life in Ventura County.
Now I move on to watershed protection So watershed protection, there are 209 miles of channels that we oversee. Four pump stations, 58 debris basins as well as dams and levees all with a staff of 120 within watershed protection to give you an idea of some of the accomplishments this year in terms of our budget The Santa Clara River levee segment 3 is under construction and moving towards the finish line. That is a $25 million project primarily funded with grants.
We're looking at tens of thousands of cubic yards of sand sediment rock that have been removed from Stewart Canyon Adams Barranca debris basins We've installed about 100 devices in stormwater catch basins to catch debris before it goes into receiving water bodies. Staff's finalizing a design to finish repairs to the Barlow Branca, which is an emergency situation that occurred over the Christmas storms.
We have a dependable operations and maintenance crew who've cleared debris and growth from several miles of channels protecting against fire and making sure critical flows in those channels continue. And we're keeping the county's flood monitoring system updated with the best technology, and we've got the best people doing it. Before moving on to the slide, I do want to talk about the Matilija Dam Environmental Restoration Project or as we call it MDERP.
There's been significant progress in this area on this very important project moving it forward. The Live Oaks Acres and the Casitas Spring levee designs have advanced to 60%. We have two models being tested regarding the Robles Diversion and Fish Passage Facility. We've completed modeling on sediment transport along parcels along the river. And we're assessing the wide range of impacts to property parcels to help mitigate any impacts for them until a dam removal.
We've kept stakeholders informed. We've started developing a watershed plan so that we might receive up to $100 million in federal funding towards this project, and we're looking to secure an additional 20 million in proposition for funding. So we look forward to continuing work on the MDIRP project moving forward next year. Key assumptions, prioritizing resources to maximize public benefit and minimize risk in terms of flood protection and stormwater quality.
We want to maintain that as a fundamental challenge. Consider changes to the benefit assessment program. Currently there are four zones right now where benefit assessments are applied and the revenue generated in each zone can only be used for that zone. We think we could accomplish a lot more if we were able to pull the benefit assessment funding and apply it to some of these very, very expensive projects in specific areas of the county. So that's something we want to take a look at towards the future.
80% of our flood protection assets exceed their 50 year useful life. That's not to say they're not useful anymore, it's just to say that there are efforts that we need to make to rehabilitate some of these structures and make them more resilient for future storms. We have challenges with state environmental permitting. Seems like things change every year in that arena and tends to add dollars to some of our projects, and also changes with the disparity between revenues and the cost of operations and maintenance and compliance with those environmental regulations.
Our opportunities are grants and Prop 4 opportunities with appropriations Some of the potential impacts whenever we defer a project because we cannot fund it or Because there is an environmental condition that we are trying to achieve That's deferred maintenance Moving on to roads and transportation Here we go. Roads and Transportation is primarily funded with gas tax.
Roads and Transportation has seen a few emergencies over the course of the last three years that have cost significant dollars, and in terms of FEMA reimbursements, we have not seen any over the course of the three years but are still working to get reimbursement in those areas. Most recently, Balcombe Canyon, Reese Road and Fraser Street were emergencies that we worked on.
Some projects that are also incorporated into this year's budget that we will continue to work through next year of course is the paving program. We've worked on segments of Matilla Canyon Road, elevating that road. Our own crews have done that and we've installed overnight parking signs throughout the county. I want to get to this one. Some of the key assumptions, alternatives to gas tax. So with EV vehicles, the state is working at finding ways to help supplement the gas tax revenues.
We have not seen a formal approach to that but that is still being studied In terms of high-level service expectations, permitting payment condition index and bridge ratings traffic signal operations all need to be maintained in terms of those rating levels. Some of our challenges of course I mentioned the timely reimbursement for emergency repairs we do have aging bridge structures that that do need to be maintained more frequent emergencies that are occurring And then there's the environmental mitigation requirement. When we do go in to correct a situation or improve a situation, there is costly environmental mitigation that needs to be paid.
Some of our opportunities is continued coordination with Ventura County Transportation Commission, Caltrans and the CTC particularly for Wainimi Road widening and construction funding future construction funding hopes for that one. We do have design funding there to move that project along over the course of the next year and a half, two years. Improving multimodal transportation safety always at the top of our priorities to improve public safety with our transportation systems and then potential impacts Deferred projects until reimbursements are made for emergency repairs like I get a little bit into that part and the table below what you see our revenues expenditures and the fund balance. The fund balance is a critical condition where we have through the board to use for projects such as emergencies.
What you see in the fiscal year 2026 fund balance is a number of $20.4 million, however about 12 to 13 million dollars that is already encumbered for projects. Some emergency projects and some very other important priority projects so the true fund balance of the roads and transportation fund is less than the 20.4 you see there. So what this means is We've got to keep this in mind moving forward to keep a healthy fund balance for the roads and transportation department for future uncertainties emergencies.
And what that means is in order to We're going to need to consider what projects and priorities we currently have. For example, a paving program if we're not getting reimbursements for some of the emergencies that we're working on We're going into the fund balance to help pay for those emergencies, but do we defer some of our paving projects for the next fiscal year such that we wait for emergency reimbursements to occur and then do the paving? Or do we find another way to help support the paving program and keep our pavement condition index up in anticipation of some potential federal or state funding to reimburse for emergencies.
Water and sanitation. So Public Works and CEO's office are planning to come with a more comprehensive review of waterworks districts and community service areas in June because there are some isolated challenges in some districts where rates for water and sewer haven't been keeping pace with increasing costs of unfunded state mandates, the cost of materials equipment, the cost of labor power So while projects are being deferred for lack of funding, infrastructure continues to age beyond its useful life. And in June we will dig in deeper into the details of that.
This pie chart shows colors in blue for water and brown for sewer. We have 71 full-time staff members in water and sanitation. Because there's such a variety in the waterworks districts regarding their financial position, we're preparing to come back to the board in June to talk about some of the challenges in specific waterworks districts. A little bit more detail on water operations in terms of connections. You'll see that most of our districts have don't have the types of parcels or connections that maybe some of the incorporated cities do in terms of the tens of thousands, Our water works districts are smaller and our revenue hence is smaller.
We've broken down expenses into operations maintenance as well as capital, and for each one of the individual waterworks districts you see some of the challenges there in terms Old Wells and Moorpark, Casitas rates that affect Bell Canyon and Lake Sherwood. And then of course old infrastructure and expensive treatment processes for the groundwater that's extracted there.
And the challenges related to Prop 218 that enable the rate payers to either pass or stop a rate increase. In terms of wastewater districts. Again, we show some of the expenses and here what will see some expenses that exceed revenue another red flag in terms of what's happening in terms of waterworks district one. We do know that we are working on a we have a grant for UV treatment system and we've been working on repair for the A royal crossing that was damaged as part of the Christmas storms.
And we had a 2023 sewer overflow issue that we're still working through the L.A. Regional Board on and refurbishing infrastructure. The infrastructure there does have old pipe, and there are ways to refurbish that. Piru state discharge requirements are requiring us to discharge our wastewater to achieve a salt content that is actually less than drinking water standards.
It's a difficult challenge to achieve and we've been in violation for not achieving it to this point. In terms of the North Coast. We have a very old system, a very complicated system of network of sewer collection and conveyance in that that district is reliant on the city of interest wastewater treatment plant operation to treat its The last three you see there are breaking even with revenue and expenses. But of course, two are subject to the City of Oxnard sewer rate chargers and one is the Camarillo sewer rate charger.
So again I spoke about it this morning continue to speak about the prop 218 process as a way that is applicable to local government entities but not applicable to private companies. So private companies do have a different way by which they pass water rate increases through the California Public Utility Commission. Local government entities work to with the communities through the Citizens Advisory Committee and work to pass rates that the communities can support.
So we will continue public involvement through the Citizens Advisory Committee and any subcommittees that occur regarding that, whether they're funding financial. We do operate by a very stringent regulatory framework that sets very specific standards that are very difficult to meet. Major challenges. Cost to produce and deliver potable water to state and federal standards, and this is changing with manganese and PFAS.
Cost to collect and treat wastewater to the state and federal standards. Timely reimbursement by state and federal agencies for grants so when we do get grants, we don't usually get the reimbursement in a timely fashion. Other economic pressures to rate payers, right? You know I talked about that this morning where fuel costs and food costs are just adding pressure.
Violations we are under violation up in Piru and again in Waterworks District 1. And then we do have aging infrastructure. Some opportunities public information involvement We're going to continue to be strong there and opportunities may come in form of a consolidation with other districts or service privatization. So potential impacts with water and sanitation, deferred projects until reimbursements are made for emergency repairs and increased asset deterioration and risk of infrastructure failure without rate increases.
Before concluding, I just wanted to outline May next month we'll have the capital projects presentation which is comprehensive consistency with the comprehensive or general plan. In June as I mentioned the water and sanitation detailed review and of course the June budget hearings. With that I am staff ready for any questions you may have.
4:26 – 4:4211 turns
Thank you any questions from the board? I do. Well, just maybe it's a comment and that is There there is grant money out there. I know that that it does exist and I do think that our waterworks Our water works departments would be good candidates to receive some of those some of those grant funds I do understand the challenge of needing them to be shovel ready which requires some front-loading of work which costs money that the water works and Departments themselves may not have flush and ready to go. And I want to, I think we need to think through that. I hate for us to be in this position where our cart is always going to be before our horse and never fully getting to a point where we could take advantage of broader infrastructure grants that exists in Prop 1 And other sources.
So I look forward to hearing back on that and any recommendations that you and the CEO, Scott Powers and others might have so we can better position ourselves to pull down state grants. Absolutely,
we are a big advocate for grants. Competition is getting heated.
Thank you. Supervisor Parvin, I think you have a
question? Yeah, I do not really a question more of a when I have a question I always reach out to you and you always give me the answer whether I like the answer or I don't like the answer but I look forward to next month when you're coming back to us kind of backfill on what we're doing for the Somos Waterworks District and then the Moorpark Waterworks District. That's very concerning when you look at the numbers, but thank you for taking this job because all of the things that are kind of falling apart right now happened prior to you coming on board so thank you for not running the other way
Well, and I just piggyback on the comment of looking forward to the corporate capital expenditures. And I know that we have projects in every district but a deep appreciation for District 3 with all the storm damage and all the repairs I know that was not planned on, and so having to deal with that is an added stress for our staff. And I acknowledge that and really do appreciate the information that my office is continually getting in and the work that all of your team is doing on all the different departments. So just wanted to say thank
you. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. Madam CEO? I think we're ready for RMA.
Thank you Mr. Chair and our last budget presentation for this meeting will be RMA and Director Rob Mullane is already on his way up, thank you.
Thank You Mr. Chair and good afternoon board members CEO Dr. Johnson, Mr. Berg For the record, I'm Rob Mullane, Director of the Resource Management Agency. And I also want to thank the board for the opportunity and the CEO's office for the opportunity to present our budget for this fiscal year. So the resource management agency is composed of five divisions building and safety code compliance environmental health operations and planning We have both a regulatory role and a permitting role. And through the approvals of permits and development applications, we support economic development in the county.
Key permitting roles include the review and issuance of planning entitlements, building permits, septic system permits, temporary rental unit permits, and food facility permits. Our regulatory functions include code compliance, hazardous materials related to compliance food facility safety inspections and in addition some of our lesser known services we ensure the safety of public pools medical waste disposal and body art facilities.
Throughout our five divisions there's a total staffing of 204 full-time equivalent positions and that is a number that has been largely static these last few years We're proposing a budget of $45.9 million this year and we operate out of 3 offices here in the Hall of Administration and then in the Newbury Park at the Fire Department headquarters, and also in Simi Valley at our East County office that provides some environmental health and code compliance services.
For this fiscal year, we are requesting a similar level of service. There are no new full-time equivalent positions requested and no reductions in positions. A key new component of this fiscal year's budget is the inclusion of funds to support our master contracting for CEQA and related services. The master contracts item will be coming back before your board next month for consideration.
This would be almost entirely passed through funds, through accounts paid by applicants that have active planning development applications. And it is a key component of our permit streamlining effort and will cut approximately three to six months out of the overall review project timeline for planning applications that require CEQA documents. We do not anticipate spending that $5 million on an annual basis. It really is a ceiling, and it's to allow for maximum flexibility to adjust to our volume of planning applications that do require CEQA review.
Other assumptions include that our permitting activity remains similar to the last couple years. We're not anticipating a big drop off in revenue. Major emphasis for the agency this fiscal year and really the next 2 or 3 years will be implementing the various improvements related to permit streamlining and reform. Our proposed budget reflects certain impacts from these activities in these initiatives, and that includes a projected loss about $432,000 in revenues from the automatic extension of CUPs that are expiring this year Some of the permit streamlining efforts may require outside consulting services and we're estimating about $200,000 for this fiscal year. That's a rough estimate but that's what we're plugging into the budget for assistance with such services.
And then there will also continue to be an impact on our revenues from the permit fee waivers for the mountain fire rebuild applications. And for RMA permits, this has totaled about almost a million dollars to date for fee waivers. This slide depicts our fiscal year 2026 to 2027 proposed budget in comparison to the last two years. Expenditures, revenues and net county costs have all increased for this fiscal year although we are holding our staffing levels the same.
The two main factors in these increases are the salary adjustments that have been negotiated and the $5 million provision for our master contracts for CEQA and related technical assistance. And again, this is expected to be largely a pass-through about 92% of that as what we're estimating is going to be passed through paid by project applicants. And again it's not going to be five million dollars every year that's a ceiling to provide flexibility.
One thing to note regarding the fiscal year 2024-2025 lower numbers is we had a much higher vacancy rate then, about double what our current vacancy rate is and obviously that results in salary savings. Today's lower vacancy rate is good in terms of delivery of our services and ensuring more prompt permitting turnarounds however a lower vacancy rate also means higher expenditures So breaking down the fiscal year expenditures by the main categories.
We have $31.8 million for staffing costs and $14.1 million for services and supplies. Primary services and supplies include internal service funds such as office space, insurance, and IT services as well as our contracts such as our SELA permit workflow management system and our CEQA consultants. The right side of the slide shows the salary expenditures by division with a range from 3 million dollars for our code compliance division and it's 17 positions to 12.4 million dollars for environmental health division in its 81 positions.
We have proposed relatively modest increases in our fees this year and those fee increases range from generally from three to 5%. This is largely due to the need to absorb the negotiated salary increases and other inflation or inflation related cost increases. And these fee updates will be reflected in our updated fee schedule presented to the board as part of the budget.
The slide also depicts some representative fee changes, for example, in building and safety we have a 4% increase in our demolition permits In environmental health, we're proposing a 5% increase for our restaurant permit review for medium to large-sized restaurant. And in code compliance, we're proposing a 3% increase in the fees for temporary rental unit permit.
This slide also depicts a proposed change in our fees that are assessed for appeals. The appeals fee has not been adjusted for several years. It is heavily subsidized by the County General Fund and is substantially lower than what is charged by other nearby jurisdictions. We're proposing a set fee of $4,000 which would allow for partial cost recovery while still being in keeping with the fees collected by other area jurisdictions.
We are also discontinuing the current process of holding the applicant responsible for all appeal costs beyond the initial appeal fee for those that are, those appeals that are filed by project opponents. However we are retaining the opportunity for either an appellant or an applicant to request a refund of the appeal fee in the event that their appeal is granted.
This next slide represents a This is a graph of our hourly planning staff rates through time, which is used in many of our planning division fees. This is a fully loaded rate meaning it includes salary costs and all overhead charges. We are proposing an increase from about $214 an hour to about 230 an hour for this fiscal year. The rate over the last 10 years has increased 35%. That sounds like a lot but in reality that corresponds to about 3% annual increase.
The rate was artificially held low in the late 2010s and early 2020s, and the more recent steeper increases have been implemented to better ensure cost recovery. Essentially we're catching up on this fee. The existing and proposed planner rates are highlighted in the table on the right side of the slide with a proposed rate falling near the midpoint of the rates charged by other nearby jurisdictions.
So looking ahead, we have several components that will be monitoring and adjusting in the coming year. Certainly we'll continue to prioritize the implementation of several permit streamlining and process improvement efforts. We will be monitoring the fiscal effects of extending out or eliminating certain CUP terms as well as other permit downshifting measures.
You also anticipate some staff time savings through efficiencies a better across agency coordination We are in early discussions on the potential reorganization of the planning division, which would allow for more flexibility and staffing roles and assignments. And there are also tightened permit review timelines resulting from new state legislation which may require adjustments to our staffing to meet those assignments.
We also want to note the importance of maintaining certain on call contracts for assistance to respond and peaks in our workflow or work or workload. Especially with respect to permit review as well as temporary staffing shortages these on-call arrangements are critical to prevent our staff from being overloaded with the associated impacts on morale and retention. They are also important in maintaining prompt review turnarounds, which is a key objective of our permit reform efforts.
So I went through things relatively quickly. There's a lot of information there. I do have the leadership team here to help answer any questions and I want to thank all of them for their contributions in putting together this year's proposed budget. I particularly want to recognize our fiscal manager Teresa Barron who really did much of the hefty heavy lifting and preparing the budget with that I'm available for questions. Thank you very much
Thank you. Any questions from the board? Seeing none, Madam Clerk I presume there's no public comments but are there on this agenda item 50?
Chair Gorrell we do have one public comment Barbara Macriorty signed up to give a public comment from Zoom. Barbara I do see that you're in zoom we're gonna have IT send you a prompt to be promoted and then you'll be able to give your public comment. Hi Barbara, I see you've been promoted. If you unmute your mic, you'll have three minutes to give your comment.
Okay thank you. I actually wanted to comment on the presentation of the public defender and I guess I got my hand up too late and if it's okay with the board I might as well just say those comments now. You know Back when Claudia Bautista was appointed, there were some doubters. She was the first woman and the first Latina to ever be appointed as a public defender.
And I think her presentation today really shows how...
4:42 – 4:434 turns
Hi Barbara we've lost audio with you. Barbara, unfortunately your audio is cutting in and out. I don't know if... Barbara your audio feed is cutting in and out and so the board is missing your public comment. If it's possible could you please email that to clerkoftheboard at VenturaCounty.gov and then we'll share that with the board for you? It looks like we've lost our public speaker, Chair Garrell.
Yeah thank you for trying Madam Clerk I want to say thank you to all of the presenters today this presentation this was an idea from Supervisor Lopez to make these presentations and I think it was very helpful for not just us but for the public and I don't think there's any other comments so I think it's just a receive-and-file so I'd entertain a motion receiving file at this time
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Vianey Lopez · Seconded by Janice S. Parvin receive and file
Show transcript
We're going to take some items out of sequence here and this board of supervisors is going to take a quick break and go into closed session. And then we'll be back to it to take items 51 through 56 in just a few minutes, I would say 15 to 20. Madam County Council
that's fine.
5:22 – 5:3122 turns
Not a problem. So we're back, we're back on the record here and and we're gonna jump to item 51 Healthcare Agency presenting is CEO Dr. Johnson and Scott Powers
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As your board recall item 51 is continued from the previous board meeting staff has revised the agreement to remove the three optional one year extensions so it is now a single one-year contract for each of the seven exclusive operating areas in Ventura County The current agreements expire at the end of June, approximately two months from now. Staff have also updated the language to modernize outdated terms, improve clarity and more clearly describe service expectations and operational responsibilities.
If there are additional questions pertaining to these specific questions CEO Scott Powers is here to address them. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam CEO. Are there any other questions from the Board of Supervisors? Anyone? This is a receiving file item of the report and we just then are there any public comments, Madam
Clerk? Chair Gerald, there are no requests to speak for this item. Thank you.
All right, thank you. So just call for motion.
Roll-call vote Moved by Janice S. Parvin · Seconded by Levier approve staff recommended actions
Show transcript
Standby do you want to okay I think we're all set
and that passes unanimously thank you
Thank You moving on to item 52 this is also receiving file from the CEO's office presenting today Miss Albers come on up this is a good news item of the day I'm very excited
We've waited and waited for that
I
know news item chair. If I may sorry miss Alvarez before just to clarify on item 51 you are proving it staffs recommendation with everything and not just the receiving file the approval of the
amendment should have been a motion and if not all clarified for the right yeah, thank you.
All right, Chair Garrell, Supervisors Dr. Johnson and members of the public today's update represents the fourth report back to the board on our collective efforts to address homelessness since the board approved implementation of the Ventura County Homelessness Plan During that time, the county has taken strategic steps across each action area and we continue to make measurable progress toward reducing homelessness. This presentation provides an overview of that progress including the most recent point in time count results and key initiatives underway.
As required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, every community through their continuum of care conducts a count of individuals experiencing homelessness in order to track trends guide federal funding and help measure the impact of local strip strategies to address homelessness. In January of 2026, the Ventura County continuum of care and many of our staff that support that effort are here today We conducted the countywide count with the support of more than 400 volunteers who canvassed every community across the region. These volunteers along with our city's community based partners and County departments helped ensure that we gathered the most complete and accurate data possible.
The results of the 2026 count provide a snapshot of homelessness in Ventura County on a single day So I'm very excited to announce the overall count decreased by 11.8% between 2526 but follows other decreases for a 28% decrease since 2023 and We show this heat map just to This slide provides insight into why Ventura County is making such significant progress. 297 new permanent supportive housing units have come online over the past two years, expanding long-term housing options for people with the highest needs.
The homelessness prevention efforts are keeping individuals and families stably housed and targeted resources for veterans and youth when we say youth, we're talking about folks ages 18 to 24 are producing measurable results which I will review later in the presentation. We also have expanded encampment resolution efforts which you already heard a little bit more about this morning with the pro housing designation presentation So wanted to highlight 2 demographics here chronic homelessness by looking at unsheltered adults by age. Chronic homelessness is defined as long-term or repeated episodes of homelessness combined with a disabling condition individuals experiencing chronic homelessness often require high levels of support and the reduction we're seeing aligns nearly directly with the addition of those new permanent supportive housing units We are also seeing progress across every age group in Ventura County, from youth to adults to older adults.
Reductions are occurring because of our coordinated strategies, expanded housing options and targeted outreach. These improvements show that our system of care is benefiting people at all stages of life moving the entire community forward. When we with dedicated resources and a collaboration of the partners you see on the screen. We continue to see very significant results in ending veteran homelessness 69% decrease in the number of unsheltered veterans between that same period 2023 to 2026 and just shout out all those providers who work diligently meet regularly going over by name every veteran in our community trying to find those housing and We have Alicia Morales-McKinney here today that facilitates that Veterans One Team Collaborative.
Same type of strategy when we're looking,
yes? Yes. On veterans, it's so exciting and we're so close to functional zero with veteran homelessness and it looks like the big gap is just we're building a lot of veteran housing but not that level, there's kind of that last 30, are they, is the acuity so high that we just don't have that level of care bed And
that several of those veterans are waiting for those higher level of care support beds.
And are those beds that are typically built in the projects which we typically approve or is that like hospital level care?
Yeah, why don't Alicia do you want to come up and share? I think it's important to hear directly from her since she's working directly with those names on that list and knows those cases
Hi, thank you for the question. Yes so we have several I would say between 12 and 17 that require and we are working hand in hand with our VA partners to get them beds at the VA campus. So we're talking either skilled nursing facility or our CalVet homes that would be better suited to help support them
Okay, so like the two veteran housing projects we have on the east end of Ventura. Would they typically be able to house those veterans or do they need a higher level of care than that?
Higher level of care than that, yeah. Like skilled nursing facility as well. All
right thank you and amazing work.
Thank you. Can you state your name for the record before you go away? Yes Alicia Morales McKinney.
5:31 – 5:402 turns
For so many veterans though those Ventura Springs Dolores Huerta gardens are making such a difference. So same kind of strategy and youth homelessness right we have those dedicated resources, a collaboration of partners using a by name list and we see a 65% decrease in unsheltered transitional age youth between 2023 and 2026. We might be out of order. Nope, go back.
All right it looks like we're missing the city slide but I did want to note that where we've seen those significant investments along with the county that Ventura and Oxnard are showing those large reductions 36% in Oxnard Ventura 28% over that three-year period and that's you know with the county investing in housing shelter capacity and supportive services. And really want to give a shout out to Thousand Oaks who demonstrated a 46% decrease in the number of people experiencing homelessness between 2025 and 2026, and they of course opened their first year round Navigation Center in mid 2025 so really seeing the impact of having those services available and somewhere to to shelter folks So, this is the along with the point in time count. The continuum of care submits an annual housing inventory chart and that tracks all the beds and units dedicated to people experiencing homelessness permanent housing capacity in Ventura County has grown substantially.
The green line shows the increase from 791 units in 2022 to 1523 in 2026 nearly doubling The interim housing shown by the red line peaked and then began to decline as funding sources that were available during the pandemic for hotel room voucher programs like room key ended as the short-term. Programs ended in term an interim bed capacity decrease so overall you see this shift in the system more toward more permanent sustainable housing solutions and this data reflects that transition.
That does make it that it it does feel like available shelter beds are more limited. The blue line represents rapid rehousing, the short and medium-term rental assistance which fluctuates based on available funding So now we're going to have our partners and others come up and share specific progress on the different action areas of the plan. And so first up, I want to invite Tracy McCauley your housing solutions director.
Thank you, Kimberly. Good afternoon Board of Supervisors and Dr. Johnson. For the record I'm Tracy McCauley. I'm your Housing Solutions Director and I am here today to talk about key progress and updates on housing in our housing pipeline. So key progress. I just want to acknowledge your board's approval of our pro-housing application designation is another area of progress that this county is taking towards creating housing.
Since we brought this update to your board six months ago, we have 688 new units completed since the plan was adopted in 2024 And I'm going to highlight some of the recent projects that were completed since we've seen you last. We have the Rancho Sierra Apartments developed by Mini Mansions, which is 49 units of permanent housing for senior citizens and of those 49 units 24 were dedicated to people experiencing homelessness Casa de Carmen in the city of Oxnard which was a joint venture between community development partners and Mercy House, was also completed last fall and leased and occupied. And it's worth noting as well that on the ground floor of that development is the Oxnard Navigation Center which is providing 110 beds of permanent shelter excuse me not permanent housing.
And finally the Ballinger Road which has been occupied in phases but the final phase completed and we have 134 units occupying So you saw a preview of this map this morning, but I want to talk a little bit more about it. The pipeline of affordable housing is really still strong here in Ventura County. We have more than 1,000 affordable housing units underway across 15 developments representing 758 affordable rental units 226 permanent supportive housing units for people experiencing homelessness and 83 new construction for sale homeownership homes The county is still a significant investor into housing and 10 of the 15 projects on this map are funded by the county.
We did make some changes to what's being represented in this map that I wanted to highlight for you today. In previous maps, we only included projects that had direct county support so either financial subsidies from the county or they were partnering with us to fill through the coordinated entry system. So those projects are still on the map and they are designated in a circle icon blue circles are projects that are in pre development and yellow circles are projects there in construction And then to that we broadened the scope of the map to really give you a more holistic view of what's happening countywide. So the icons that are squares are affordable housing developments that are moving forward without any county support, so no financial subsidy from the county and they're not necessarily filling units through coordinated entry either because they don't have units for people experiencing homelessness or their encampment So I did want to just point that out that it's a little different from the previous maps you've seen of note.
This map still excludes managers units in each of those developments and really notably, it does not capture inclusionary housing units which might be going forward and affordable in different cities across the county. After the after several years of really record new units coming online for people experiencing homelessness. I really want to note that we're going to have a little bit of a lull here in 2026, we occupied the last phase of Valentine Road and we don't expect any new units to come online this year it's going to be a little slower so I think it's just really important for our partners working with people trying to exit homelessness to really look at all of the potential opportunities for housing aside from new units things like reunification shared housing landlord engagement all of these other strategies of finding housing for people until we get some new units coming online.
The good news is, we really do expect to see new units in 2027 with a strong pipeline of both permanent supportive housing units and affordable units that we expect to see begin leasing in 2027 So this next slide I wanted to provide you with an update on our Homekey Plus Lewis Road development. Just about a year ago, your board approved an application to the state of California for Homekey Plus funding to create 88 units of permanent supportive housing plus a manager's unit on unincorporated county-owned land This is going to provide housing for people who are either at risk of or experiencing homelessness with a mental health or substance use disorder.
In partnership with Dignity Moves as our developer, Many Mansions is our owner and supportive services provider, LifeArk is our prefabricated modular builder and Angeles Contractors is a general contractor We're really pleased to share that in January of this year. Our units began construction in the factory and there's a photo some of our team they got to go out into or the factory and just yesterday and today, the first batch of modulus were actually delivered to the site so we're really really excited about this development And then alongside all of the efforts to create new housing, I think that homelessness prevention is just a critical component of addressing homelessness really keeping people stable before they lose their housing. So we wanted to highlight the work that's going on there.
There are significant grant funding from the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Fund funding through the United Way of Ventura County and Ventura County Human Services Agency to help prevent people from becoming homeless. An additional investment about $1 million was made to unite away for this homelessness prevention services over the next three years And then really excitingly, we are just now working with the Ventura County legal aid. Sorry, Ventura County Legal Aid to stand up an eviction prevention program here in the county with interest accrued on the homeless housing and assistance prevention funding.
And I did want to share that this program is separate distinct from we still have our contract with the Housing Rights Center for Fair Housing Services and Discrimination Services And finally, we did include on the slide. I'm not going to read through them all but we get asked a lot and I'm sure you get asked a lot what are the how do people come be homeless? What happens to cause people to lose their housing so we have the top 10 causes of homelessness is reported to us by The United Way.
And with that, I'm going to turn the presentation back over to Kimberly. Thank you.
5:40 – 5:484 turns
All right, so some big updates there for Action Area 1 and we're going to go on to Action Area 2 which is Regional Coordination and Leadership. As you know creating the positions that Tracy and I now hold as well as Captain Hajduko, the captain with the Ventura County Sheriff's Office were all part of the initiative as well as creating the Homelessness Coordinating Committee which again is an internal all of the county directors and agencies that We've had a number of meetings over the last couple of weeks where we've been working on homelessness, sitting down together as well as a task force on homelessness that includes our city law enforcement partners as well as county departments.
All of those things continue to be ongoing but some new things that happened since October is our continuum of care board expanded to include law enforcement representatives, Also, we will be as part of this year's budget process community development will be renamed the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Division to better reflect its mission and the meaningful work being done by this dedicated team.
And we will be expanding to include staff administering the homeless management information system and coordinated entry system. And moving on to Action Area 3, we're going to hear from some of the departments directly briefly. So we're going to start with Sarah Sanchez from Ventura County Behavioral Health Division Chief of Critical Care and Navigation Services.
Good afternoon thank you very much. Very much excited and honored to come back once again to provide an update of what we're doing within our department in behavioral health. I do need a note that we've brought a total of 191 bridge housing beds to the continuum of care. And since we came in October 10 now, we've increased 47 so that's truly increasing not only the permanent supportive housing opportunities but as well interim settings And this is all possible through our behavioral health bridge housing grant that has allowed us to establish contracts with our housing partners to establish different beds and availabilities.
Exciting as well is we've established some footprint over in our East County side, One of our contracted providers Kepra House has expanded over to East County allowing for 10 recovery housing beds for individuals that are unhoused and being able to support them up to 12 months as they're finding a more permanent housing option so very much excited that we're expanding across the county to ensure that there are Those beds for interim settings as we're working with them to find a more permanent housing options. We as well are ensuring that we're delivering care to our rural and underserved communities by having our mobile behavioral health van it is a retrofitted van that goes out to the community throughout the county to ensure that They're delivering services from outreach engagement.
Clinical services on the spot as they're getting linked to an outpatient services or a more wraparound support so very much dedicated specifically that van goes out as well with our backpack medicine partners and ensuring that that linkage and services are provided on the spot and ensuring We as well are increasing our footprint for those that are unhoused with a multidisciplinary team.
That once they are connected to behavioral health, that they're receiving the clinical treatment and services by a multidisciplinary team that includes clinicians, case managers, peer support specialists and again supporting with the focus of finding them a more permanent housing solutions And then finally, as well working very closely with our managed care plan.
We're ensuring that we're leveraging the resources that are available through our managed care plan through our housing community supports and ensuring that we're working hand in hand so that we're leveraging an expanding the resources to make it go further along for all the individuals that we serve those with a behavioral health condition and how so very much excited about the collaboration and the leveraging of the different resources. Thank you.
All right next up I'm going to invite Deanna Handel director of the complex care coordination and systems integration for the Ventura County Health Care Agency to give a brief update
Thank you, Supervisors. So our ambulatory care division within the Health Care Agency has several programs that address the needs of our unsheltered homeless population within Ventura County first of which is our county community supports housing navigation program which basically addresses the needs of Gold Coast Medi-Cal members who are unsheltered by providing housing navigation services. Also Caling enhanced case management provides care coordination for people most at risk who are Medi-Cal members.
We also have a recuperative care program that provides us a safe place for hospital discharge, for unsheltered individuals who are too well to stay in the hospital but too sick to return to unstable housing locations. We also have partnered with two cities, the city of Oxnard and the city of Camarillo on the state funded encampment resolution fund where we provide a partner with those cities to directly identified unsheltered individuals in specific encampments and then provide extensive outreach and case management while individuals are waiting placement for permanent supportive housing in interim shelter. So they receive extensive case management that help them in the interim while they're awaiting placement Many of you are familiar with our backpack medicine program that is a joint effort with ambulatory care, but also many of the partners you're hearing from today.
Many of you have gone out to participate in our backpack medicine programs most recently Supervisor Parvin who joined us this year. And then also many of you are familiar with our one stop program that is a community based access point for services and multiple geographic locations across the county where individuals can get all of their service needs met in one location.
Let's see, of note the impacts that we've had over the past year is our backpack medicine program has expanded substantially increasing from 114 events in 2024 to 172 events in 2025. That's more than a 50% increase that has largely been due to the efforts Dr. Caitlin Ike, she's our new physician lead for backpack medicine. We've also standardized many of our processes through Backpack Medicine really increasing the impact of that program.
In that program since between September 25 and February 2026 there were 572 backpack medicine encounters so really Reaching a lot of individuals out directly in the community. Our Cal Am Community Supports Housing Navigation Program also had a significant increase in the impact over the last year, they were able to expand from more than 80 people being housed in 2024 to 158 people being housed in 2025.
5:48 – 6:0316 turns
I am especially excited to bring up the Human Services Agency. During our previous updates, we have not brought them up and so they are really going to, Leanne Mestrella is going to share a little bit more about the impact they've been having since the plan was adopted in 2024 and share a story.
Thank you. Thank you Chair Garrell, members of the board and CEO Dr. Johnson. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this collaborative presentation today and to share our progress and outcomes. Our agency provides a continuum of services from street outreach, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, homeless prevention, permanent supportive housing and supportive services. Our team of 23 staff with 12 dedicated social workers provides trauma-informed client centered case management supporting individuals and families for an average of 9 to 12 months.
Clients can receive direct financial assistance, case management, housing navigation and landlord mediation advocacy and other housing related services. As Kimberly noted this is HSA's first presentation as part of our team. Our data is reflective from the time frame back to January of 2024 to present. I'm excited to share our program has helped 308 households, 863 people find permanent housing and 91% of those households have retained permanent housing.
Rapid rehousing and homeless prevention programs are the foundation of our work. We served 242 households, 591 people through rapid rehousing and 245 households in 739 people through homeless prevention. All with intensive support services creating sustainable pathways and maintaining permanent housing. Our deepest impact is with families and children in an area of expertise I'd like to share an inspiring story about a family we served, and I'd like to note that we did get permission to use their images as well as their name today.
Francisco is a single father to 15-year-old Andre, who is on the autism spectrum and 13-year-old Callie who has complex medical needs requiring a high level of assistance with daily living. The family experienced homelessness after being evicted from their home due to instances of domestic violence. Francisco separated from his wife and began staying with his children in motels. He began struggling with substance abuse, and the domestic violence continued, ending in his children entering foster care.
But Francisco was determined to reunite with his children. He stopped using substances, began therapy, and entered a men's shelter but was still experiencing homelessness. Our program helped and placed him in a local motel so he could have a safe place to visit with his children, ultimately leading to the reunification of the family. Then they moved to a temporary apartment through our partnership with the River Community Church. This provided the family with more accessible space that better met their needs.
Francisco applied for Medi-Cal, CalFresh, CalWORKs, Social Security disability benefits and became an IHSS provider for his daughter. Through our agency, he established a relationship with the local landlord. The family secured their own apartment over time. Francisco was able to afford rent on his own and the family successfully graduated from our program with stable housing.
He's remained in contact with the social worker sharing life updates and milestones. He has established positive relationships. He is active in his community and the children are thriving. This story highlights the resiliency and determination of the family and success of multiple systems working together to support the family.
Thank you.
All right, we are going to move on to Captain John Hajduko our new captain with the Ventura County Sheriff's Office Homeless Liaison Unit.
Good afternoon Chair Gorel, County Supervisors and CEO Dr. Johnson. First off I just want to say thank you from our team for your continued support and your interest in the mission that we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to do. You know anytime law enforcement is brought into a non-traditional enforcement role there's always a concern that how is that going to manage and are we going to work to try to arrest our way out of this? And I can tell you 100% we are dedicated to the service aspects of this team and I think that's why it's been so successful.
So I'd like to highlight a couple issues here with the successes and the outcomes that we've had. This covers two years of the time that the actual HLU has been in existence, so these are bigger numbers here but over those two years we participate in 156 outreach events primarily through Backpack Medicine teamed up with other county agencies as have appeared here today. Those areas have covered all sorts of the unincorporated areas and we've also assisted many of the cities with issues that they are having specific to them We've offered services to 2,294 contacts throughout the county and with that number what we want to highlight is that a lot of those are the same contacts but as we all understand it takes multiple times to reach out to people.
They're never gonna well some will but for the most part majority are never going to go ahead and accept services or homes based off that first contact. We really have to go out there and establish that trust so those are multiple contacts that we made with many of the same people Our unit's been responsible for relocating 71 individuals to various interim housings and permanent housing options.
We've assisted in the noticing and or removal of 787 encampments throughout the county. January 1st, 2026 Ventura County Ordinance 4653 was enacted came into service where we actively started working towards the removal of RVs along the agricultural areas within the county. And I want to report back that that has been a tremendous success. The county was very quick at posting those signs and prior to that our unit did go out there and made contact with these people in the RVs to provide them the education that this was going to be coming about and to try to work with them to get them relocated. Since January 1st, there's been no actual enforcement as far as arrests related to this. We've got voluntary compliance almost exclusively throughout and there's only been the towing of two RVs In the county area and both of those were abandoned vehicles.
So I would say as progress continues, it's definitely been supportive in our mission. We're using technology more and more essentially in the use of the UAS program that has helped us be able to conduct operations with fire prevention, especially during the winter months when we notice that campfires and warming fires cooking fires can get out of control. That's obviously a concern for people who live adjacent to these areas that with some of the fires that we've seen the devastation across California wanting to get a handle on that so leveraging that drone technologies been essential and also working with our partners in County Fire And then using the drones to conduct site assessments after the rains in December, it was a huge help for us to take those drones out and then be able to review the encampments to see what kind of damage was done and to be able to reach people.
Last but not least countywide enforcement and crime reduction efforts. We put the number there 409 subjects. Now what I want to highlight is over two years, not that that's a lot of arrests but that's an incredibly low amount of arrests and as I spoke about before we've always understood that we are not going to arrest our way out of problems but as a law enforcement agency involved in this we do recognize that this is an extremely vulnerable population these people cannot go ahead and lock their doors at night like the rest of the community crime that occurs within these areas it's often unreported under reported and there's usually no people that are there To call out to 911 when these things are happening. So we do want to make sure that we emphasize that we are there to make discretionary arrests, that we are there to support victims, that we are there to conduct investigations and that we want to eliminate predatory behavior that sometimes occurs in this.
And among those arrests We've made arrests for arsons, trespassing, weapons possessions, narcotics violations, possession of stolen property and then crimes such as domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon, sexual assaults and assisted with homicide investigations. So all key components I want to thank you for your continued support again and again know where to find me if there's any questions Supervisor LaVera's question.
Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Captain Ajuka. You told me something recently which I thought really spoke to the character of the deputies we have in the department and it was about HLU and it's a new department. It's really a unique form of law enforcement. But can you talk about the level of interest and excitement about applying to be on your team?
Yes, absolutely supervisor. Just as you stated, it is an interesting assignment. It's something where you have to have a good balance of care, compassion and service. And what we really want our deputies to go in there is an understanding the mission that This is not your typical of a gang enforcement unit or typical of a narcotics enforcement unit where you're proactively seeking out arrests to do this. We understand that this is a service based assignment, so we want people to come in with enthusiasm for the community realizing and recognizing that their primary mission is one protection for the other county agencies are going to go out there but two really getting involved in establishing trust And so we've had a tremendous amount since I came in.
I know that we posted for some recent assignment and we had, I think 17 people put in for this. So people are recognizing what the value of this assignment is, the contacts that are being made and the fact that with enthusiasm, with that energy you're doing kind of again, the non-traditional service but really doing something good for the community that feels good.
Supervisor Lopez?
Thank you, thank you for the information. All these numbers just from everyone but in particular what you're sharing is really great progress so appreciate how quickly the team has come together and engaging and working with the community. I have a question about the overnight parking ordinance and how if any what the coordination is like with the cities because as they move from the unincorporated areas, are they moving into city jurisdiction and how is that working out with our other partners?
We made the cities aware in regards to the ordinance that it would be coming up. And so the city partners were aware of that. We don't specifically track where people go after they leave. We all know they go somewhere but in talking to some of the other agencies specifically like Oxnard Police Department And Ventura Police Department, since a lot of this agricultural area affects the western side of the county.
They haven't seen anything that has led them to say that hey specifically as to this ordinance being enacted it has caused a considerable amount of problems within their jurisdictions. They do have their issues that they're dealing with and we're there to assist them on that but again nothing saying that this was a specific cause to anything where they're seeing anything.
Thank you. And not sure if this question either to you or to Kimberly, but I think at one point there was a discussion about a shared system to track the interactions are the points of contact. Is there an update on that? Or how that might be working
out? I believe it's probably the HMIS, but Kimberly, I can tell it like I can let you know that law enforcement is a portion of that, but Kimberly could probably better explain it. So thank you Supervisor.
Thank you. And we can bring anybody back up for questions, but maybe I'll take on two things. We definitely we went to actually the city managers meeting and talked about the ordinance so that they would be prepared and we've shared the ordinance. So it's something that they could replicate with the cities and we've been going the ongoing updates when we do our task force on homelessness which includes the city partners and law enforcement just to gauge how they feel like it's going are they seeing any impacts?
And then yes, there
was a couple more slides there that I think they have that one right there.
So that's the one that Captain Hiduko went over that I just don't think it had advanced talking about the arrests but I'm going to quick go one more and talk about that we are still using this mapping software so grateful we were able to respond to people living in unsheltered situations through this accurate mapping and the use of all available resources to help them move to indoors. That is our key priority, so having this kind of tool and more law enforcement coming on to use it is just really helpful in us knowing the status of encampments for us to truly understand the scope of the problem and to coordinate efforts to bring people safely indoors.
And with that, this amazing team that you all heard from. We are all available here to answer questions and we are just again so grateful for your support how you continue to engage with us and provide the resources for us to address this problem. Thank you so much.
phenomenal team effort all hands on deck. I think it's the first time in Ventura County history we've seen a downward trend three years in a row, I'm just guessing and I asked last year and I'm hoping to continue to find more and more information as we do this with the correct trend line is what does the data suggest that's working right? What are the efforts and pressure points that are making the biggest success. Is it the HLU? Is it the HLUN Backpack Medicine? Is it HLUBackpack Medicine plus just developing relationships that they make and have with individuals who are unhoused, and ultimately is it Thrive Grove and other places that are coming online with beds that allow HLUU and other teams to have a place People when they're ready and they're no longer, you know prepared to take advantage of Services.
I'm curious as to because I get asked every day Congratulations on 28% over three over three years but why or how and I have my own answer But I feel like it'd be nice to have some data to support that at some point when you have a chance
You know, Chair Gurrell I still really feel like again going back to those having those housing solutions because back those services like backpack medicine and HLU. And they need a place to put when they're out talking to people and offering them services they need a place for them to go. So, like we talked about the housing pipeline today because it is so much a part of the solution. We saw that downward trend in people experiencing chronically homeless that almost exactly matches the number of units that we brought on for permanent supportive housing. So I think if we still go back to right you to move someone from homelessness to housing you always still will need a key whether it's interim or permanent, but absolutely the service component to get people engaged and build that trust that so many of the partners talked about today to where they'll take that step and reenter housing.
I truly believe that the amount of resources we've had for housing along with those service-enriched engagements is why you're seeing this success.
6:04 – 6:0916 turns
Yeah, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate and how impressed I am. Just across the board from law enforcement to health care to human services, behavioral health, CEO housing, everybody collaborating And achieving these results. It's so impressive and you know what the one thing that in the slides stood out to me was historically the opponents of homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing is, you know build it and they will come. And I think the numbers show the opposite absolutely it's the communities that are truly investing in shelters in transitional housing and permanent housing. They're seeing the biggest drops and I hope we can use that To show that some of the other cities that maybe aren't quite as invested yet, that if you commit to this, you are going to see similar results.
And I'm so glad we have the stats to back that up now. So thank you everyone.
Yeah, it's a good point. The cities that have been the strongest and earliest partners are succeeding at the highest level and that's good news. Supervisor Parvin?
Yes, we had a public safety forum last week. I think it was just last week and she was present. We had a moment to bring her up and just recognize all of her work in front of the residents of Moorpark and Simi Valley so she's doing a very difficult job but she always has a smile on her face. That's what I appreciate most. Thank you. You make us look good. Thank you
all just it's truly a pleasure to do this work as alongside you
Madam Board Clerk, are there public comments on this item?
Chair Groh, we do have one person sign up for public comment. Jeffrey Lambert who's supposed to be here in person. Jeffrey?
I believe Jeff had to leave as the day got later but
okay yeah I didn't see him in the boardroom but I just wanted to call his name and case and we don't have anybody on zoom so uh we do not have public comment for this item thank you. Okay
thank you with that it's a receiving file entertain a motion
Roll-call vote Passed Moved by Vianey Lopez · Seconded by Janice S. Parvin receive and file
Show transcript
Thank you for that. It's my intention now to skip over to item 55 and 56 which we can take as a group so I'm now calling agenda items 55 and 56 is correspondence agenda. Are there any questions on the correspondence agenda? If not, I'd invite a motion.
And number 55 and 50 is the same problem.
Any
opposed? No. Thank you. First and second, Supervisor LaVere first, Chair Garrell second. 4-0-1 absent.
And we're going to move on to 53's comments from our CEO.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have three brief comments last week. We had our third annual bring your kid to work day and I just want to thank everyone every year. I'm amazed by the things that they do to make it different and fun for the kids and really experience a day in the life of the county. The lot was filled with all kinds of trucks and demonstrations and games engaging the young children that were here A huge thank you to every single agency that participated, to every employee or volunteer that brought in a child or youth and especially to Natalie Hernandez and Diana Guevara out of my office. who have passion and drive and just excitement for this day. And really bring everyone together, all the agencies to make it a great success.
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who took part. Two quick upcoming events. The California Strawberry Festival is going to be May 16th and 17th in the Vittoria County Fairgrounds. That is just a great event here in our county that brings a lot of people and definitely want to make sure everyone's aware of that. And then the 22nd Annual Robozo Festival is gonna be May 17th at Camarillo Ranch This is a cultural event, it supports many non-profits to date. I think they've awarded over 60 different individuals or organizations this year. One of the focus is gonna be the Friends of Farm Workers and so great event, huge cultural event and lots of good food fun entertainment. So just wanted to bring that to everyone's attention. That's gonna be May 17th at the Camarillo Ranch.
Thank you Mr.
Chair. Thank you Supervisor Lopez?
6:09 – 6:163 turns
Thank you, Chair. Reporting on a few items I attended the Gold Coast Health Plan Medi-Cal Managed Care Commission meeting yesterday we welcomed new members including Mark Sewell, Dr. Loretta Dennering and We're going to be looking at a recommendation from the executive finance committee. Blanking on the third member from a private hospital, from dignity health and one of the items that was briefly discussed and was continued is a consideration of the commission to approve an advance payment of $30 million to brought back to the commission on May 18th. So just wanted to provide that update and Dr. Penkhauser was there to speak on the item as well.
I also want to share that I submitted, as an individual supervisor a public comment letter on rule being proposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which is a proposal that would impact mixed status families and public housing. And I would change the policy that even if one member of the household lacks a qualifying immigration status, the household would become ineligible for housing assistance so I did submit a letter advocating for reconsideration of that rule.
Last week, the eighth annual publication of the Latino GDP report was presented at Oxnard College and the report is now available through the Cal Lutheran website. And there was a presentation and panel that included our very own county office Gloria Martinez from the economic development team who participated on the panel. So I was unable to attend myself, but I heard it was a great presentation when I thank Gloria for being a part of that discussion.
I did attend the, I think along with most of you, these state of law enforcement annual breakfast hosted by Sheriff Fryhoff. So it's good to hear some good updates about the status of our county as being The largest safe county in the state. I also attended the Latino caucus of California counties we had our annual board retreat and San Mateo and as part of that went to tour the Genentech facility it's in South San Francisco so learned about some of the technology in producing and preparing cancer medication. So it was a very informative event up there And I want to thank the Gold Coast Health Plan Community Relations team member, Alex Fernandez who attended my Youth Advisory Council meeting yesterday to share with the youth about how the Medi-Cal system and the plan works here in the county.
And upcoming this week, there will be a committee meeting at Hollywood Beach Elementary School that will be presented by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers providing an update on the Hollywood Beach Mitigation and Dredging Project which has been a very popular topic in my district And so really looking forward to hearing from the Army Corps about the mitigation project, the dune restoration on Hollywood Beach which is no longer being proposed and what the next dredging cycle is going to look like scheduled for the fall winter later this year. So I expect a lot of engagement at this meeting and lastly I have submitted names that I request we adjourn in memory of. That concludes my comments thank you Chair.
Thank you, Supervisor Parvin.
Thank you Chair. I participated in a LAFCO meeting where we approved the 1.7 acre portion of a 25-acre property annexation to the Ojai Valley Sanitation District for Camp Ramah. It's still going. I participated in the Treasury Oversight Committee meeting, attended the State of Law Enforcement briefing with all of you. With Sheriff Fryhoff that was really great talking about the relationship that the county has with the cities and it's great. Participated in EDC Executive Committee meeting and an EDC Board meeting Participated in the Magdaleno Community Farm one-year anniversary where a great deal of progress has been made since last year. Really enjoyed it, we planted a tree last year and it's actually survived so I'm thrilled.
Also participated in the Simi Valley Chambers Local Advocacy Forum where we discuss legislation at the state and federal level and participate in the Moorpark Chamber networking meeting. Interviewed candidates for the Cemetery Board you'll be seeing a candidate coming forward soon Last Wednesday I hosted the City, County and Safety Forum where close to 100 people were there and wanted to thank the interactive panel that included both CME and Moorpark city managers and the police chiefs from those cities. And a special shout out to Kimberly Albers our Homeless Solutions Director. I also want to congratulate Brian McGrath A former PIO here the fire department now in Simi Valley on his 50 15th year recognition with Ventura County Fire Department.
I also presented certificates of appreciation to the county fire award ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Congratulations to all those recipients volunteer for registration at the Battle of the Badges golf tournament not sure who won yet but we'll see Attended the annual Lou Roth Awards hosted by the Simi Valley Education Foundation where recipients were honored for their extraordinary service to the students of Simi Valley Unified School District.
And we had two ribbon cuttings in our district over the past two weeks, Premier America and PC Bar & Grill. We presented certificates of recognition for Officer of the Year Ventura County Sheriff Deputy Andrew Powell and California Highway Patrol Officer Andrew Rios at the Rotary Club of Moorpark. Also attended the Take Five and Read kickoff meeting with my colleagues. That was fun, a fun way to start the day.
I had a meeting with Kaneho Simi Moorpark Association of Realtors. And just a reminder we still have our ongoing pet adoption kit drive in partnership with the Ventura County Animal Services. Last year we collected quite a few items and we keep getting calls from different people that are that have our boxes there calling us going it's overflowing you need to come get it which is a good problem really like that. We will collect the items through May 15th. For more information, it can be found on my website. Thank you.
6:16 – 6:192 turns
Thank you, Chair. And I just want to thank Dr. Johnson that bring your kids to work day is so cool. I mean, just the energy in the HOA on that day compared to other it's just it's the best feeling showing up and seeing all those kids around. And as I think it's so great for our morale and I know there's a lot of work for you and your team and I love that you keep doing that because it's just I love that day.
And I want to thank all of you who are reading on Friday for first five. I know they really rely on people showing up and helping and reading in those classrooms, so I think most of us are reading, so thank you for volunteering this Friday. I would just ask that we adjourn in honor of those on the list. I provided some veterans I want to mention Jeffrey Martin who was a an Air Force veteran served during the Vietnam War Marvin Lee Hanson Who was a in the US Marines and then went on to work many years with the county of Ventura as a hydrographer, and then also served public service both on the on the boards of casitas the Ventura River water district the White Valley Sand District. So just a wonderful man, very involved in the community and former county employee.
Bob Sayre who served both in the US Navy and the US Army. And then lastly, Brenda Lee McCormick who was a longtime lawyer and then went on to serve as the general counsel actually for the Ventura County Superior Courts for many, many years until she retired last year but she passed away last week and so we're thinking of her family as well. Thank you.
Yeah thank you I'm going to just skip right to the adjourns in memory. Just this past weekend Robert Taylor passed he was a Camarillo resident 102 years old veteran of D-Day and the storming of the beaches in Normandy. Interestingly, two weeks before he passed, he was doing really well. Doing pretty well and we went and videotaped him in his living room to capture his story because we're honoring him and recognizing Robert as part of the May 7th Supervisorial Leadership and Excellence Awards and we're recognizing Robert for Lifetime Achievement.
And so we have his history on video and are going to be recognizing at that May 7 event Along with other community leaders in different categories of education environment job creation public safety. So so we're looking forward to honoring Robert posthumously and I'd like to also he's been included in the adjourning memories to the clerk and asked to adjourn in his memory and so many great years doing seeing so much history and making it So with that, I think we're adjourned for this meeting unless somebody corrects me and thank you.