you you you you Thank you. Recording in progress. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. This is our Tuesday, April 15th. Regularly, no, I'm sorry, special meeting. We have a big day today. And I'll start by asking the clerk to call us to order and to take roll call. Supervisor Mercayas, excused, supervisor Tiam, President, supervisor Miley, excused, supervisor Fortenot al-Baz, President, President Halbert, President. We have a quorum. Thank you very much. I note that our next item is public comment on closed session items. If anybody's in the audience or online now would be the time to raise your hand. I'll ask the clerk to also give brief instructions on how to participate remotely. If you're in the room, please give a speaker card to the clerk. But for online speakers, the clerk will now give brief instructions. Detail instructions are provided in the teleconferencing guidelines. A link to the document is included in today's agenda. If you're joining the meeting using a computer, use the button at the bottom of your screen to raise your hand to request to speak. When call to speak, please unmute your microphone and state your name. If you're calling in, dial star nine to raise your hand to speak. When you're call to speak, the host will enable you to speak. If you decide not to speak, notify the clerk when your call is unmuted or you may simply hang up and dial back into the meeting. When call, you will have two minutes to speak. Please limit your remarks to the time allocated. Thank you. Very good. If anybody is in the room and would like to speak on closed session or any hands raised, do we have anybody online who would like to speak on closed session? Seeing none, we'll proceed with the rest of our agenda. This is going to be a day of early budget work sessions. We'll start with remarks from our county administrators office. I believe we have a brief presentation as well. And then we'll go through department by department. I'll turn it over to our county administrator at this time. Thank you President Howard members of the board today is your early budget work session for the developing fiscal year 2025 26 county budget it's a major milestone in our annual budget development process and will provide you with an overview of the investment..00 that the county is providing services and programs to our residents. A brief update from my office on current economic factors and federal and state budgets. Each of our elected and appointed department heads will present an overview of their respective departmental preliminary maintenance of effort budgets, briefly addressing their core services, major investments, cost drivers, and financing sources. So with that I'm going to ask Melania Tundito to provide a quick overview for context before we start the hearings. Thank you Susan. Good morning board members, staff and members of the public. I'll be providing a brief overview before we proceed with the maintenance of effort, budget presentations from the agencies and departments. So just a quick overview of what we're covering in this overview. As always, I'm gonna do a brief economic context as well as federal and state updates. I'll then move on to county updates and review your board approved fiscal year 2526 budget policy as well as next steps for the budget development cycle. And then we'll do a proceed to a review of pending factors before we then move on with the preliminary maintenance of effort presentations. So in terms of the county unemployment history as of February 2025, the unemployment rate in the county is 4.4%. This is compared to the states 5.4% and the nations 4.1%. If you look back towards the pre-pandemic years, you can see that we've been consistently slightly above the historic lows that we experienced before the pandemic, but obviously well below the peak of 14% that we experienced in April of 2020. You might recall those of you who participated in the budget work group meeting, our guest speaker from the legislative analyst office noted that the state currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. California has lost 2.7 million jobs or lost 2.7 million jobs at the start of the pandemic with the pandemic state home order forcing many businesses to close job growth has also slowed significantly last year. In terms of state and regional layoffs, we're continuing to see ongoing cutbacks concentrated in the technology sector. Layoffs in the tech industry continue with major players like Google under its parent company alphabet. that Microsoft and others continuing to reduce their workforce in an effort to streamline operations and refocus on artificial intelligence and automation. So far, the serum more than 22,000 workers have lost their jobs across the tech industry with over 16,000 of those cuts taking place in February alone. Recently FedEx laid off 174 workers and announced permanent closures of shipping centers in Emoryville and Oakland that will take effect later this year in June. Just a reminder in terms of the state and federal context, the county's budget is highly reliant on state and federal aid. In the current year, as you can see, state and federal aid is nearly two-thirds of our financing in the general fund. Moving on to the state budget update. The State Department of Finance has reported personal income tax above forecast. Personal income tax receipts above forecast in March while corporate tax and sales and use tax receipts are below forecast. This is a similar update to the one we saw in February. Again, the legislative analyst office or LAO estimates that 25 25 26 state budget remains roughly balanced. It has underscored that the state would face a deficit today if not for legislative action taken last June to identify budget solutions. Revenue collections have improved since last June, but spending is higher compared to the administration and LAO forecast. In terms of the federal update, as you know, Congress approved a six-month continuing resolution to fund the government through September 30. Congress also recently passed a revised budget allowing for the extension of 5.3 trillion in tax cuts. The Senate plan directs committees to find $4 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings. So that's a particular concern for us in the safety net. As you know, we've seen layoffs across multiple federal agencies. Our departments are starting to receive notices of federal grant terminations and we continue to be significantly concerned about the impact of tariffs on global trade and the economy. Just a little bit more here on tariff and certain T. So we've seen quite a bit of stock market volatility resulting from the tariffs. Of note, this is, you know, a particular impact to our public retirement system. So CalPERS has, we've seen headlines recently that CalPERS has lost 20 billion from its investment portfolio in the days following the announcements of the tariffs. One thing to point out here is that if our retirement systems do not meet their annual targets, public agencies could essentially be forced to increase their contributions. Tariffs are pushing up the cost of building materials, which could drive up home insurance rates even higher. And we're also seeing mixed signals regarding new tariffs on tech that are having quite a bit of a whiplash effect on the market. Recently, the president announced an auto industry tariff exemption as well. In terms of additional federal impacts, health and human services layoffs have slashed the staffs of major federal aging disability and anti-parvading programs. We've seen $11 billion revoked in a COVID era federal grant funding related to addiction and mental health. The substance abuse and mental health services administration is also being merged into the administration for Health America. This restructuring of the federal health and human services agency is expected to eliminate 20,000 employees. We're also seeing staff laid off from the division of energy assistance, which runs the low income home energy assistance program or LIHEAP. And of course, deep cuts in Medicaid funding are feared and Medicaid provides the largest single source of insurance coverage for drug and alcohol treatment. Moving on to the 2526 maintenance of effort budget. This is a review of our maintenance of effort guidelines. Maintenance of effort again is the funding level needed by agencies and departments to continue existing programs, staffing and service levels. As part of your board's adopted maintenance of effort policy, departments are to include known salary benefits, operational and internal service fund adjustments. To the extent that there is program revenue that can offset those increases in cost, we expect that departments are reflecting those increases. So you're seeing that here in the second bullet point in terms of the guidance that current revenue projection should first offset eligible increase, operating costs. Your board's approved policy also includes a 5% cost of living adjustment for eligible contracts with community-based organizations as well as mid-year adjustments approved by your board. And finally, the budget submission is expected to align with your board's adopted vision 2036. In terms of next steps for budget development, we will continue our analysis of program expenditure and revenue projections. We'll analyze the other side of the equation, so to speak, the non-programmed revenue and expect and also look at expenditure projections. We will also be reviewing positions and doing an assessment of vacancy factors, identifying any remaining funding gap and balancing strategies to close that gap. And when the governor releases his May revise will be analyzing the impacts of that May revision on our budget. And finally, the county administrator will be spending a balance proposed budget to your board. In early June, we'll proceed with budget hearings at the end of June with the intent of adopting a balanced final budget by June 30th. And this is just a visual in terms of the process. And finally, as always, we have a long list of pending factors to consider that may impact the developing budget in future years. I think a couple of things to note and underscore here. In addition to uncertainty with respect to the state and federal budget, we do have to consider the rising costs of our liability and insurance costs, which are tied to pending litigation and settlements. We already talked about the potential impact on our retirement systems. We also need to contend with other employee benefit costs increases. And a number of not only long-term obligations in terms of unfunded capital, but program cost with with respect to homelessness as well as other state programs that either where the funding is not clear or we may have unfunded mandates coming from the state that we have to contend with. And finally on a macro level, we have to continue to assess the impact of global finances, the impact of climate change and its its impact on the insurance market, as well as a potential for an economic downturn. So President, how are members of the board? I think that's important context for you to consider, as you hear from the departments, and we'll continue to update you throughout the budget process. As was mentioned, the presentations that you are going to hear today are going to focus on program expenditures and revenues required to generally maintain the same level of services and staffing as next year. I do want to note that this year the department heads in their staff are in the process of reviewing all positions and analyzing required staffing as part of our larger countywide recruitment and retention initiative. This will help us more accurately identify vacancy factors and solutions. So I wanted you to be aware of that. And then finally, we have asked the departments to also touch on federal and state impacts, potential impacts, programs that may be at risk based on the information that we have to date. So we have an ambitious schedule ahead of us today. And if there are no questions on the overview, we're prepared to start with the first presentation by Health Care Services Agency. Do we have any questions for staff before we proceed? This would like one brief, I do have one brief question, which is maintenance of effort. Is that a hard and fast dollar amount? Like for example, is there a dollar amount that each department has to devote to maintenance of effort or is that more of a programmatic maintenance of effort? So there's not a fixed dollar amount but what we asked departments to bring forward and we would recommend is generally what is the cost of continuing to provide the same level of programs and services that we're providing in the current year. So you'll see what is highlighted is some of the cost drivers that will increase costs next year, cost-deliving adjustments and general operating increases, other adjustments that your board has approved mid-year. And for those level of service, it's going to be, I note that we do a lot of things that are mandated and we do some other things that are above and beyond the minimum mandates. And so, but when budgets are tough, we have less room to cut mandated services because they're mandated. Then we have to concentrate on discretionary. So departments will also be highlighting their services that are mandated as well as those that are discretionary. So until we identify what our funding gap is, after we look at our non-program expenditures and revenues, we will then have a better sense of what adjustments we need to make in order to balance the budget for next year. Very good and this this is the process that we have used for many years. It has served us well. We're going to continue to use it. We'll always evolve and continuously improve, but we're going to follow the path that's been blazed for us. With that said, and seeing no other questions, we'll move to our very first presentation, which is health care services. And I will note that we'll take a bit of a break, maybe after public assistance. Well, let's see, we'll have health, and then maybe another presentation, then we'll take a bit of a break. We're also going to take a break for lunch, and we'll also do closed session. We often go into closed session first. We're not going to do that today. We're going to save that for more of around the lunch hour. Have a bit of a working lunch with closed session. But also then get right into our departments and we're going to start with healthcare services. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Enika Chowtry, interim director for Alameda County Health. And I'm pleased to be here to present our 2526 preliminary maintenance effort budget. Before I begin, I'd like to just extend a thank you to the leadership, finance, and program teams across AC Health's departments during a time of transition for our agency as well as significant uncertainty as a backdrop, our team has developed a budget that demonstrates commitment to our core agency wide priorities. And those priorities center on health equity and include ensuring a robust health care safety net supporting community resilience collaborating with providers and partners and leveraging all four departments to better support our staff and Alameda County residents. So our recommended maintenance of effort budget includes a total appropriation of approximately $1 billion324 million. This is an increase of about 8.75% from the current years approved budget. Total revenue is just over 1.117 billion dollars, which is an increase of approximately 9.25% from the current year. This results in a total net-county cost increase of 11.94 million dollars, which is an increase of 6.13% over the current year. This results in a total net county cost increase of $11.94 million, which is an increase of 6.13% over the current year. Our count for FTEs stands at 1,928 positions and represents less than 1% increase over the current fiscal year. I'll note that the ZOME budget does not reflect the significant effort their agency continues with regard to administering ARPA funding that your board approved for COVID-19 response and resilience. This slide shows the major components of our requested net county cost increase. The most significant drivers of increased cost are the cost of living adjustments for our staff, CBOs and internal service funds. Those are all represented in the top three lines, as well as the loss of one time measure A funds that were used as a part of budget development for the current fiscal year. Following your board's adopted policy, we maximized known and projected revenue to cover as much of the operational increases as possible. And still our initial request was more than $29 million. To bring that down, we made further revenue and appropriation adjustments to decrease the NCC by $17.74 million, which is what UC reflected in the bottom two lines of the chart. These next few slides will offer some insight into our budget by different views. Looking at this one, it shows the distribution of the total appropriation across the four departments. So you can see that well over half of budgeted appropriation is with the behavioral health department shown in purple at $819.6 million. The behavioral health department administers two medical managed care plans for serious mental health and substance use disorders and contracts out a significant portion of its services. So nearly 67% of the department's appropriation is through contracts with CBOs. The next largest appropriation is within the Office of the Agency Director in blue or gray blue. And this is representing almost one-fifth of our budget. And a significant portion of the OAD budget is driven by housing and homelessness services, which has steadily grown over the past few years. And Office of the Agency Director also houses the EMS Agency as well as medical care financing where we budget money to support intergovernmental transfers for safety net hospitals. The Public Health Department is shown in red, at just about 12% of our budget. And I'll note here that they heavily leverage state and federal grants to deliver essential services and core infrastructure to support the population health. Environmental health department in green reflects about a little over 3% of our budget at 46.96 million. And it supports various regulatory and environmental protection efforts. This slide shows the agency-wide distribution of our proposed budget by a major object. You'll see that in the yellow, the largest proportion of our budget goes to discretionary services and supplies. And within this category, about 86% of these funds are funds that are contracted out to CBO providers, and I'll share more about that in a future slide. Salary and employee benefits in blue represent about one quarter of our costs and other changes which are shown in purple here represent about 7 and that, almost 8 percent of our appropriation. And this category includes many things, most notably, hospital-related expenditures related to Elmita Health System, St. Rose, and Benioff Children's Hospital. Non-discretionary services shown in the lake green represent the internal services funds that we, for services provided by other county agencies. And just lastly, intra fund transfer, other financing is less than 1% of our operating, is less than 1% of our MOE budget, and it covers operating transfers in and out, such as what measure A might cover for different departments. So to talk a little bit about the sources and revenues that we have coming in, the total is $1,117 million to support approximately 84% of our proposed MOE budget. The state age shown in red here at $533 million represents nearly half of that pie. And within that category, the largest sources of funding include the Mental Health Services Act and 1991 and 2011 realignment. The second largest portion in Blue Gray comes from charges for services that we provide. And in this category, the major source of revenue is Medi-Cal billing for serious mental health and substance use disorders at nearly $229 million. It also includes another $19 million in Medi-Cal revenue from the managed care plans for Cal-Lame services that provide. Federally, in purple is approximately 12% of revenues and includes a variety of programs including Ryan White, HIV services, health care for the homeless and HUD funding, as well as other grants that we use to support families across the county. All other sources in pink are about 6.5% of revenues and again include intergovernmental transfers, fines, forfeits and penalties. And then lastly I'll note that measure A, the county receives, we received 25% of what's available there and about $52 million of that is programmed into our budget for this next year. So due to a heavy reliance on state and federal aid and charges for services, our budget is particularly vulnerable to changes in the economy and state and federal policy. So in the next few slides I'll talk a little bit about you know what we do and why it's important. So I want me to county health and, healthy and fulfilling lives for all county residents, and our mission is rooted in health equity and our aim is to work with our departments and our partners to deliver services as seamlessly as possible. The graphic on the right shows some of the ways that we serve our communities. And while we have four departments, they often cross over and leverage each other or provide complimentary services. So, essential services provided by the department this past year essentially responded to a range of community needs for people of all ages, from all backgrounds and from the beginning of life to the end of life. This slide shows how our work fits to advance the county's vision 2036. So on the bottom left here you've got our agency-wide priorities which I talked about a little bit at the beginning. And on the right you have some major initiatives that are underway and several of them have been underway for a few years and they'll continue on for a couple more. I want to note the one, the top three in the boxes, so the Home Together Plan, Behavior Health Delivery Reforms and Community Health Improvement Plan, they each have major planning processes that are underway this year. And these are driven by major systems changes, including payment and policy reforms at the state level. And so essentially they're pushing our public health, behavioral health, and homelessness teams to really work differently together, as well as with our partners in managed care. And we anticipate there's a real focus on working towards shared outcomes and shared measurements. So with feedback from various work groups and stakeholder processes, including the cross-sector community provider advisory group that we convened for the first time last year, we expect updates within the coming year on each of these three major efforts. So the home together plan 2030 refresh is currently underway, and that guides our strategic investments to reduce homelessness. Our county's first Behavioral Health Services Act plan will replace the MHSA plan and require a comprehensive look at all behavioral health services and resources that will be due on July 1, 2026. And we're anticipating a new cycle for our community health improvement planning process. The slide is a little bit busy, but we really wanted to highlight some of the direct impacts that our agency has in the lives of Alameda County residents. And in the interest of time, I won't read them all, but I will note that the last years, biennial homelessness count showed a reduction for the first time in over a decade. And we continue to enhance services at Santa Rita Jail, while also meeting high standards of care for people with serious mental illness in the community. We supported businesses and residents with keeping our land in water clean, and we demonstrated improved health outcomes for babies, children with complex health health needs and their families through a variety of communicable and chronic disease programs. Some key investments that we have headed into the next year include $123.7 million to continue housing and homelessness services and county wide coordination. I will note that this does include money that we administer on behalf of the probation department and SSA. We're also continuing at the Health Program of Alameda County or HealthPAC, which is, it serves low income people who are not eligible for a medical and it also provides critical safety net infrastructure for its network of CBOs. We also have $18.8 million to continue implementation of CalAIM community supports and that includes asthma management for children, housing supports as well as food as medicine. There's about $55.5 million across a variety of programs in the Public Health Department to support foundational capabilities like disease surveillance, organizational competencies, and community partnership development. The Public Health Department is also investing nearly $10 million towards national reacreditation and the community health improvement plan, both of which are critically tied to meeting their foundational capabilities as a public health department. Key behavioral health investments include nearly $31 million toward the $50 million forensic behavioral health plan approved by your board, as well as $26 million to implement care courts, which includes partnership with housing and homelessness to administer behavioral health bridge housing. In the environmental health department, we're planning more than $25 million towards environmental protection, vector control, and information systems updates to replace legacy systems and increase interoperability with other county systems. This slide provides a view into the wide range of mandatory and discretionary services that we provide across the agency. While each of our departments carries regulatory obligations and service mandates, it's important to note that many of our discretionary services are also critical. And we often layer and leverage mandatory and discretionary to meet the community's full needs. So for example, public health is mandated to provide maternal and child health services. And children's dental is a discretionary service that we provide to support wellness for the whole child. We're required to implement the national opioid settlements with specific requirements. And on the discretionary side, our drug take back program is already complement to help us support the goals of that work. Similarly, we're mandated to provide Medicaid services for a range of populations and we support those mandates with discretionary programs that help us and Medicaid providers across the county draw down nearly $30 million in additional medical administrative activities. Lastly, I'll note that Section 17,000 of the State Welfare and Institution's Code obligates us to provide indigent care, which we do through a variety of discretionary programs, including health pack, hospital financing, and programs that support immigrants or people experiencing homelessness. So again, layering mandated and discretionary services allows us in many cases to provide a single standard of care regardless of ability to pay. To support accountability, we deploy a number of strategies to improve efficiency, productivity, and revenue enhancement. Our agency aggressively leverages resources wherever possible, and this includes drawing down matching state or federal funds, aligning strengths and resources across the departments, and collaborating with partners to reduce duplication. We collect, analyze, and use data wherever possible to improve our programs and measure our outcomes with results-based accountability. We work to continuously improve our contracting to ensure procurements that are consistent with GSA rules and to get funding out to partners as quickly and equitably as possible. And lastly, we focus on quality improvement remaining mindful that we need to align internally and externally so that we can better serve our communities. This slide shows demonstrate a key pillar of our work is that we don't do it alone. So more than half of our budget, our 57.5% comprises contracts through community-based organizations. And for our 2526 budget includes 359 contracts with 181 unduplicated CBOs for a total of $761.6 million. Of this amount, more than 17% is in contracts with their close safety net partner, Alameda Health System. And then I'll conclude my presentation with a review of major pending factors that we've got coming. So you've heard from the County Administrators Office about federal policy changes and funding uncertainty. We are closely monitoring anything that would impact health care access, quality of orability, or public health infrastructure. And cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, and the FDA. All have implications for programs that we administer or that are partners in the community administer. And as you know, Medicaid, which provides health coverage for more than 500,000 Alameda County residents, is under threat of funding as a part of the federal budget process. So cuts to Medicaid, whether they take the shape of reductions in eligibility, federal matching funds, or flexibility for states, would have significant impact for the health care safety net, again, which includes county programs as well as CBOs. Immigrant communities, LGBTQ plus communities, people with chronic conditions and complex health needs, and older adults and people with disabilities are all at risk for reduced services. We're also closely monitoring developments related to the Affordable Care Act, which includes significant, its own significant Medicaid expansion, and a range of consumer protections and tax credits related to health insurance. For reference, Alameda County transitioned more than 100,000 adults to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and that has greatly helped to reduced uncompetated care costs for our system. Critical ACA protections like an essential health benefits package that includes gender affirming care are also under threat. Homelessness funding and policy is at risk through health and human services departments namely SAMHSA and HRSA as well as through HUD. And additionally we're on our last round of HAP funding with the state because it was not included in the governor's budget this year, although there is a bill that we're following which may produce another round of HEPF. You've also heard our team talk about major behavioral health systems reforms. So these next three, the Behavioral Health Services Act or Prop 1, that transition again is anticipated to start in July of 2026, but require significant planning and in many cases we're still awaiting further guidance from the state. We launched care courts this past December and we're hopeful that a funding increase in the governor's proposed budget for that will make it through to the final budget. Prior boards direction SB 43 changes which govern involuntary mental health treatment will be implemented no later than January 1, 2026. However, there's no funding for local implementation at the state on this and so we're figuring that out. We're also closely following developments on the statewide data exchange framework which will have, especially in the healthcare sector, a lot of obligations to share data across systems, but this requires infrastructure and we're on the lookout for funding for that. And then lastly, I'll note that like many others, we and our partners continue to face workforce shortages and that ultimately impacts our collective service delivery. So we're supportive of statewide efforts and investments to boost the healthcare workforce and are opposed to the reduction of the federal workforce. That concludes my formal presentation, and I'm happy to take questions. I'll turn to my colleagues for any questions. I'll recognize supervisor Miley first. Yes, thank you, President Howard. Thank you for the presentation, you're first. So I've got a few questions. Can you provide us with an org chart with names? I'd like to say it because I don't know the county administrator has received that. that've talked to Susan, but an org chart, both cross your agency and in departments. It doesn't have to go too far down, but I'd like to get a sense of who is in what positions. Cross your agency, then public health. It's quite frankly, I don't know, under Kimmy, who? And under Dr. Fribble. I think I know Dr. Fribble, who's next, maybe it's James. But I'd like to, obviously, for the board, if you can give us an org chart, OK? Furthermore, with the contracts, 359 contracts, you have a sense of how many contracts, because some of these are duplicate right, an agency might have more than one contract? Okay, do you have a sense of how many contracts provide services in Oakland? Yes, we have done that for a couple of areas, notably in homelessness, and I think in behavioral health and public health as well, so we can get you a list. Yeah, because if you can do that, that would be helpful, because we're constantly being criticized about our level of services in Oakland, and I'm constantly pushing back on people, saying we deliver hundreds of millions of dollars of services to vulnerable and marginalized populations in Oakland. So if it's not too difficult, if we can get a sense of how many contracts are in Oak or let's provide services to Oakland, what that number is, that would be helpful too. And then do we have a sense because this is something to procurement and contracting. We're tracking the $760,000,000 in CBO expenditures. Do we know how many people that employees? We don't know that. And I know that for one of your questions at the Health committee, our behavioral health team is trying to figure that out because of that 760, some million, 545 million is through behavioral health. And so we can at least get some realm of how many people they employ. And so that's something else we can work on. Because with my procurement and contracting hat on as chair, I'm constantly interested in knowing of the money the county provides to CBO contracts. What economic benefit does that generate in terms of jobs, the local economy, et cetera, et cetera, and anything that you can provide that helps us with that, I think would be noteworthy to provide some transparency around because I think through the county's contracting, obviously, we can't deliver services without our CBO partners. But it's more than just delivering services, their jobs associated with those services, And there's a spin-off effect into the local economy with those jobs, et cetera. So just some more further analysis, if at all possible. Sure. And I think that's, oh, and are you at Liberty, do you say anything about where we are with the electronic rep records epic what I can share is that for your board's approval we are in contract negotiations with epic to we expect to bring the the contract to your board probably by the fall that That's our goal. And then with a contract term that's starting in 2026 with an implementation date of 2027. Supervisor Tam. Thank you, President Halburn. And thank you for that very thorough presentation. Just have a few clarifying questions. On the major component of net county cost change, the loss of one time revenue that you have listed here of $2.5 million and their revenue adjustments of 6.74. How are the grant fundings taken into account is that loss of one time are those like grant fundings we don't expect to get? Thank you for that question. Now that loss of one time funding was where we used measure A funds to balance for budget balancing in the current year. And so we were requesting that funding back but we understand that there's enough measure aid to cover that again. So grants, while we have received some notices of, the 11 billion that Melanie referenced earlier, some of our public health grants were a part of that, as well as a couple of our behavioral health grants, and some of them are passed through from the state, but they're all currently under a temporary restraining order. And so working with the state, we're trying to figure out how much of it we can draw down before the next court date, which is April 17th. And so that's not reflected here. So all of our grant funding is reflected as revenue as it's budgeted. So the potential federal, I think, cuts and withholding of grants are not reflected. That's what you're saying. Okay. And then the second question I had is we've had several sessions about the pediatric portion of measures C and the 20% that's administered by Alameda County Health. How is that reflected in our budgeting process? That's also not reflected here because for your board's direction we're following a planning process and so we anticipate bringing something to the health committee in the summer and then we would need to do budget adjustments as that gets budgeted. Okay. And then last question I had is on your mandated and discretionary services chart. I know this is something that we had asked to put down, but I have to comment that a lot of the discretionary services are needed to support the mandated services, like the Medical Administration, to try to get people signed up for the healthcare portion. But is there a way to really do a cost breakdown between the two? Because there seems to be some overlap, like for example, with social service on some of the vocational training. Yeah, and there's a lot of overlap sometimes even between mandated services, right? So we'll and sometimes like care courts or SB 43 will get a mandate without funding to support it. So we do a lot of braiding and so it's been a little bit difficult to really land on exactly how much goes toward care court for example because we might be leveraging another our total cost for care court is $26 million and that includes administrative funding that behavioral health has to do it but then also behavioral health bridge housing which came down from the state as one time things to support. So it's also where the project is underway for us to sort of figure out costs for each of those, but we found it to be a really difficult exercise. Okay, I mean that's a good example because care court is mandated, but all those services are needed to support care court but you know you listed housing and homelessness services as discretionary is that really discretionary? There well I think that's the the question right it's not given what we see but when you think about state or federal mandates there is no mandate to provide homelessness services. Okay, thank you. Supervisor, what's not a best? Thank you, President Halbert, and thank you to the administration and to all of our department directors. I wanted to just zoom out and say I appreciated hearing from both our health director as well as our county administrator and staff around just the broader vision and principles for the county, you know, really centering this process around equity and serving our most vulnerable. I think it's going to be really important as we have our decisions to make to balance this budget and then later to do adjustments as we learn more about what's happening at the federal level. And as it pertains to the federal level, I do understand we're all still waiting for more information, especially as the state budget is approved and the federal budget moves forward. However, I did want to underscore that I think it's information to be responsive and to take additional actions through Pau or through the full board as needed. So thank you in advance to all of our staff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. information to be responsive and to take additional actions through PAL or through the full board as needed. So thank you in advance to all of our staff for keeping us abreast of how we can be as proactive as possible. In terms of health care, I had just a couple questions and I understand there's still a lot in flux, but I just want to underscore that Medicaid and Medi-Cal is potentially going to be dramatically impacted. And so being mindful that we've got health pack and it does provide services to the uninsured and underinsured. If you're able to answer this today, I do want to hear how we'll be able to be responsive to emerging needs. Maybe I'll ask my questions first and then I'll take whatever answers are available. Secondly, there's already been federal impacts to the LGBTQ community in particular, the LGBTQ center, which has been supported by our county, which is in my district. They've already been impacted with a cancellation of a contract of $600,000. And that's a contract that's administered, as I understand it by Sierra Health Foundation, where 300 contracts are being impacted. So as we see that there's targeting of this particular community, there's also targeting of phrases like DEI and those type of impacts. I do want to hear how we can potentially support CBOs that serve the LGBTQ community and other vulnerable communities. question given that Prop 1 is shifting to higher acuity services, I do want to hear more about how we're going to provide preventative services and other types of services, especially to our youth. And then finally, in terms of behavioral health, what is our process to ensure the behavioral health is maximizing the allocated medical funding through our provider contracts? So again, if you have any answers to those questions, please share. Thank you for all of those questions. Maybe I'll start backwards. So with regard to behavioral health, maximizing medical revenue with providers, I know that they regularly meet with the behavioral health collaborative, which is their network of providers. And last year, we changed over to a new billing system, which is also going to be helping really reduce time and effort in doing some of that billing and making it more efficient. And then at some point, maybe some of the things might come down to contracting policy and sort of what can we do in terms of being flexible, say, with multi-year contracts or other creative ways that we could potentially leverage that funding. But then because behavioral health administrators manage care plans, they've got all these regulations that require them to report in specific ways. And so as long as things can be aligned there, I know that they work closely with the providers. Regarding Prop 1, you're right, the Behavioral Services Act is requiring us to focus a little bit more on people with the most serious needs. And then even in the housing space, right, that Prop 1 money is for people with serious mental illness. And so with regard to the PEI portion or the prevention and early intervention as it's known currently, I think behavioral health is estimating about a $26 million impact there. But they are continuing to go through those programs and working with the programs to see again where there are some who can bill for MediCal for those services because under Prop 1, you won't be able to do strictly prevention, but there is room for early intervention, there is room for outreach and engagement. And so wherever we can leverage MediCal billing, that's part of the plan. With regard to youth, some of the conversation we've also had is, you know, maybe looking at some of the measure C funding to see if there's any prevention pieces that could go there that are specifically for youth and we'll bring those ideas to you all. LGBTQ impacts. This is one where, you know, I think the conversation we just had around the mandated and discretionary services and sort of leveraging federal grants and what we can do. It'll just be really important for us to dig into how we're supporting various CBOs. So we have LGBTQ programming across our departments in different spaces, but it might be time to take a, you know, maybe a concerted look to see where that is. But unfortunately, you know, we are often reliant on the same funding sources that our CBOs are reliant on. So sometimes it's pastries to them, sometimes it's grants that we get and then, you know, we make subgrants from that. So what's happening at the federal picture is gonna affect all of us. And then lastly, health pack, you know, this is a conversation that we've been having a little bit in the community provider advisory group as well as internally where over the last decade or so, the program has really shifted because in addition to the 100,000 people we transitioned onto to Medi-Cal when the ACA first launched, we've also transitioned thousands more people on to Medi-Cal with the state-only expansion. And so this is another one on our planning plate for the summer to think about how we can leverage that network of providers and really be able to have that program continue to support our safety net with critical infrastructure. It's, yeah. Thank you if I may. Just two comments. One is in June, our Act for All Committee is planning to focus on health care and mental health care. And so I look forward to collaborating with our staff as well as our community partners to pull that session together. And then secondly, our last budget session, I requested that we hear our annual consolidated financial report from the auditor. And as it relates to understanding our fund balances and specifically any fund balances that the health department or other departments have that could help fill in some gaps. I think that would be important information for the board. Thank you. Thank you. I would defer that one to the county administrator. Very good. Thank you. First of all, come in, my colleagues, on great questions. Several of them already answered. For me, I'll start with sort of something I ask for every year, which is to say the Appropriation by Department Behavioral Health 819 million Alameda County Health Office of the Agency Director 300 and 2 million public health 155 environment $319 million Alameda County Health Office of the Agency Director, $302 million Public Health, $155 Environmental Health, $46.96 million. So which of these are they all growing at the same exact percentage or is some growing, some shrinking? What is the percent change versus year ago for pages four, five, and six if we could be provided that at any time? Yeah. And you don't have it now. I can. So our team didn't anticipate you would ask that specifically. So. I think that's okay. It's just, I get it. We have to spend these funds. It's important to know what's growing and what's shrinking if anything. And then with regard to the comment about mandated discretionary services, I'm floored. So, Roger Tam pointed it out, housing and homeless services, discretionary, health care for the homeless program discretionary all of these things are good and important and yet they're not mandated so a question I have if I take the mandated services how much money are we spending on those and the discretionary services how much money are we spending on those because we we have to be mindful of, at some point we have to be mindful of, if we have to stop doing something, what would it be? And it would seem the discretionary side would have to get cut before mandated. So, is it, are we spending the lion's share on mandated and only a small amount of discretionary? Is it half half? Do we know? I don't have that breakdown of the numbers because as I was saying, it's a little bit difficult for us to parse it out because we braid a lot of funding together to deliver a whole service. But I would say that, you know, as we think about difficult times I had maybe developing some principles and, you know, guardrails for what that looks like, because it would be very difficult to stick to just strictly mandated or discretionary. And discretionary here is a bit of a term of art in that, you know, it's not in state or federal statute that we're required to do it, but oftentimes it's the right thing to do and it's the thing we need to do for our community. Yeah, great. If we have 1924 people going to 1928 people, we spend $302 million on those people. What I think, I'm looking at page two, FTEs versus page four. How we appropriate the dollars? No, that should not be $300 million for those. So you're looking at slide four. Sorry, could you repeat your question, Supervisor? Yeah, and if I'm looking at it, make sure I'm looking at it right. If I'm on page two, I show that we have about 1924 FTEs going to 1928. increasing by 4 FTEs going to 1928. We're increasing by four FTEs. And if I look at, I think if I look at page four, the office is a $302 million budget for those people. Oh, no. The 1928 FTE is across all four departments. Okay. And we can share the breakdown of each with you. But behavioral health has the highest number of positions followed by public health and OAD and then environmental health. Okay. Then if I look at page five, discretionary services and supplies, you mentioned that $884 million. A bulk of that is CBOs. A good bit, about 62% of it goes to CBOs. Well, 62% is what $884 is. Oh, all of that is. I apologize, 86% of that yellow bit goes to CBOs, the 761 million. So maybe we have, I don't know, 80% of 84, so 720 million, that's a lot of people. So to Supervisor Miley's question about how many people we employ to do those services, I'll be interested to know the answer to that as well. I think we all should. But to your other slide, and I think this is a really good one, 12, how we're going to be more productive, and how we're going to be leveraging resources and seeking opportunities to maximize all funding sources, of course, making data-driven decisions, efficient contracting, and I think quality assurance is aligning those contracts for best practices and you to better serve our communities. If we're going to spend efficiently, I think each of these are super important. So that's great. With regard to slide 13, again, for us to know, we have 75 contracts for $404 million in mental health, a total of 359 contracts for $761 million. Is that growing or shrinking? Are we spending more, are we going to put more in mental health versus health pack clinics? Are we going to put more into housing and homeless services or less? So percent change from year ago would be important. And then one last comment, I'm back to the discretionary side. So school, health, services, and youth centers. Very important. I note that on your major accomplishments, we talk about providing service to where did it go. It's the second bullet. 15,861 children and youth received. That's an incredible amount of students. That's wonderful. Student health, school health services, youth, and all discretionary. So it's amazing to me, but we're doing that. So that particular program is a really good example of how we make a fairly small investment have a big impact. So our Center for Healthy Schools and Communities provides seed funding or just some base funding to federally qualified health centers that administer the school-based health clinics. And so we do a learning community, but then the clinics can actually build for the services. And so that's not funding. We're providing, but they're leveraging it. And we have sort of developed a single model of care that's across the county and in great partnership with the school districts. Yeah. Thank you for that. I note that you put a accomplishment here. 80% of clients in behavioral health service partnerships and service teams received an outpatient follow-up visit within 30 days. So that means we saw them, we discharged them, and we got to see 80% of them again within 30 days. Yeah. I, I, I, I, good, I guess my hope is that we continue to see them until they get better. So I mean, I guess. Full service partnerships are our highest level of behavioral health care. And so those are people that are usually getting some housing support as well as anything that they need for wrap around. But when people do get hospitalized, you know, we don't want them to go back to the hospital so they're seen in the community and so that's one of the metrics that we need to meet for state requirements as well and so it's a it's a challenging metric to perform on and our team's doing a great job. Okay thank you and naive question here the last second last bullet point around on around 6700 children receiving ECM services. What is ECM? I apologize for the acronym. It's enhanced care management. So this is a Medicaid benefit that came about as a part of CalAIM. And it's really again to provide really in support services for children. There's several ECM populations, so people who are incarcerated, people who have serious mental illness, people experiencing homelessness, and then children was one of the most recently added populations. Very good. Thank you. Seeing no other questions or follow-up questions from Supervisor Miley. Yeah, Justin. I don't know if I heard it. Um, the roughly 2000 employees. What's your vacancy rate? We hover around 20 percent, but we'll know more as we do the project with the CAO to kind of look at all of our funded and unfunded positions. Okay, all right. Good job. We have first presentation to the board, very good job. And you know your agency's one of my favorite. It's the largest in the county, and it's one of my favorites, but you did a great job. Yeah, I think the health committee has its work cut out for it. Andrea Ford has a tough act to follow. I do, and I thought social services was your favorite. I guess because I left that committee. The two biggest committees here. All right. All right. We have next up, let's see the public assistance social services and child support services Welcome Great. Thank you. Good morning President Halberd board of supervisors County Administrator and staff and community partners and stakeholders I'm Andrea Ford agency director for social services. It is an honor to present the social services agencies fiscal year 2526 maintenance of effort budget. I would like to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation to our agency's executive team and administrative staff for their dedication, patience and perseverance in ensuring the timely submission of our M.O.E. budget. I also want to recognize and thank the many staff across all of our department and offices whose collective efforts serve over 523,000 people are one in three Alameda County residents at any given time Their commitment to the work we do reflects the values we hold and service to each other and to our community and Overview of this morning's presentation will include SSA's priorities as they relate to Vision 2036 are fiscal year 2023-2024 accomplishments. An overview of this morning's presentation will include SSA's priorities as they relate to Vision 2036, our fiscal year 2023-2024 accomplishments, a brief overview of our mandated and discretionary services, a review of caseload data, a review of SSA's financial summaries, and impending factors with a focus on impacts that may affect us on the federal, state, and local levels. Our mission is to promote the economic and social well-being of individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities, and partnership with community organizations, private institutions, advocates, and other public agencies. We strive to better equip those we serve to overcome challenges on their path to self-sufficiency and family stability to ensure that individuals are successful, families are healthy, and neighborhoods thrive. It is our goal to serve our community with respect, integrity, good customer service, initiative, and responsibility. We have aligned our strategic goals with the Vision 2036 as illustrated on this slide. Under healthy environment, we provide access to equitable food systems, and that continues to be a work in progress. Under safe and livable communities we enhance the safety well-being and resiliency of underserved populations including immigrants. Under thriving and resilient population we ensure eligible populations basic needs are met and improve service delivery systems for the safety net. And finally for prosperous and vibrant economy, we increase access to employment opportunities and job training programs for displaced workers and underserved populations. Our fiscal year 2023-2024 agency accomplishments are that we support it 255 home safe clients in the Adult protective services program with housing related intensive case management and legal services and we distributed over $1.4 million in direct financial assistance to prevent imminent homelessness and we store housing stability. Emergency shelters provided 176,851 nights of shelter beds to over 7,700 unhoused individuals between July and December 2024. Our Department of Children and Family Services will field 269 requests for household items, such as car seats, creeds, and furniture to help families reunite or make sure children could stay safely in their homes. 166 children were successfully reunited with their families during this fiscal year, and 558 children were supported to stay in their homes through family maintenance. 88 families experiencing homelessness who enrolled in the CalWORKS Housing Support Program were placed into permanent housing. Our agency distributed over $5.9 million to license childcare providers in Alameda County. And through the housing emergency lodging program also known as HELP, we provided over $708,000 to 176 residents for moving calls, back rent, and utility support. and through the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund fund we distributed over 1.68 million to assist 646 households with moving calls back rent and utility support. Between July and December 2024 the emergency prepared meals program distributed an average of 10,672 meals per month to 2500 individuals and individuals and 1,600 households. In partnership with the Alameda County Public Health Department, 1,908 home visits were completed through the CalWorks Home Visiting Program to support positive health development and well-being outcomes for expectant and parenting families. This slide is a look at our fiscal year 2025-2026 for Lemonary MOE key investments. Adult protective services helps vulnerable adults who can't care for themselves or stay safely on their own. The program costs $41 million to run with $5.5 million or 13.5% coming from the county general fund. The general assistance program is a state mandated program that offers short-term financial help to low-income adults in Alameda County who have no other support. It's fully funded by the county and administered by our agency. The in-home supportive services program helps low-income seniors and people with disabilities get care at home instead of in-calls institutions. It's for agencies second and most expensive program at over $222 million, but more than half of the calls is covered by the county's realignment funds. In supplemental foster care, provide support in a residential setting for foster youth with serious mental or behavioral health needs. The program costs $3.2 million with 47% or 1.53 million coming from the county's general fund. And finally, the Alameda County Veteran Services Office helps veterans their families and survivors understand and apply for benefit programs. The program currently calls $1.4 million to run and 91% of that, about $1.3 million, comes from the county's general fund. This is a slide of our mandated and discretionary services. I'm as an agency, we operate four main departments, three operating and one administrative. Instead of rating them all, I will highlight some of the main programs for each operating department. What you might be most familiar with under Workforce and Benefits Administration, is Cal Works, Medical, CalFresh, and General Assistance, Discretionary Services, or G and CalFresh Employment Services, and Emergency Food food, housing and emergency shelters, under the Department of Children and Family Services, the largest mandated program, so emergency response, family reunification and family maintenance, independent living skills and foster care eligibility, discretionary, the child abuse prevention council, and a respite care for foster families. And under adult and aging services, the mandated services are in-home supportive services, adult protective services, area on aging are the ones that you're probably most familiar with, and discretionary would be the veteran services office. While not reflected on this slide, a few of the mandated services for agency administration and finance are a welfare fraud prevention workforce development board, application support, which is our version of information systems, budget and forecasting, facilities management. Discretionary would be office of data and evaluation, disaster preparedness and emergency management in our staff development department. To name a few. The next slide focuses on our major program update. Demand for Social Services Agency programs continue to grow in 2024, with caseloads across all major programs in January 2025 increasing relative to January 2024. Only our largest program, MediCal, saw a small decrease of 3% in case loads while our second largest program, CalFresh, grew by 5%. Approximately one in three Alameda County residents are enrolled in MediCal and one in 10 receive CalFresh benefits. Our four most populous cities being Oakland, Hayward, Freemont, and San Leandro comprise just over 64% of all of our SSA clients with Oakland being the highest at 37%. Almost 6% of SSA clients reside in the unincorporated areas of Alameda County. The remaining cities of Berkeley Union City, Alameda, Livermore and Newark combined comprised of the balance of recipients we serve throughout Alameda County. The next four slides will display more detailed case load information for these programs. This slide looks at our health and food programs. Medical is-Cal is referenced in a previous slide from January 2024 to January 2025, observed a 3% decreased in participation. This is consistent with declining statewide trends due to resumption of eligibility redeterminations after a four-year temporary suspension during the pandemic. In Cal fresh, the the same time period, we observed a 5% increase in CalFresh participation. This is consistent with increasing statewide case load trends largely due to economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The next slide is our Cache 8 programs in the Department of Workforce and Benefits Administration. And Cal works from January 2024 to January 2025. We observed a 10% increase in Cal Works participation higher than state case low trends, which remains steady from fiscal year 2425. It means this program is growing faster in Alameda County than most of the other counties in California. Then general assistance, as previously mentioned, for the same time period, we observed a 15% increase in general assistance participation. As previous reported, this program is 100% county funded. The next slide looks at our Children and Family Services Department, Child Wealth Air. From January 2024 to 2025, we observed a 1% increase and Child Wealth Air cases. From January 2024 to 25, we observed an 8% decrease in the number of immediate investigations. And for that same time period, we observed a 29.3% increase in the number of 10-day investigations. And for the in-home supportive services and our dope protect services programs which are housed in our adult and aging services department. For the last year January 2024 to 2025 we observed a 3% increase in adult protective services case loads. And for IHSS, we observed a 9% increase in IHSS participation. In January 2025, over 31,000 individuals received IHSS services. This is our financial summary and millions. This year's total appropriation is $1.84 billion, and increase the $44.6 million. Revenue is $1.9 billion, an increase of $40.5 million. A major area of concern is revenues. Our budget assumes the social services agency receives the 1991 and 2011 re-alignment base amounts. However, base funding is dependent on economic performance, specifically statewide sales tax and vehicle license fee receipts. Realignment funding accounts for over 266 million dollars in agency revenue, approximately 24.4% of our budget. Currently we are seeing flat to negative growth in realignment of revenues and we are closely watching this revenue source. Last month preliminary sales and use tax receipts were $167 million or 3.9% below forecast in February and 263 million below the fiscal year to date forecast. If these trends continue our reliance on the county general fund to maintain current program levels will increase. The next slide lets it major component of net county costs. Overall, we are budgeting a $4.1 million increase in net county costs driven by higher staffing costs. Those are negotiated salary increases, increases in the cost of health care and county retirement contribution. I'm increasing community-based organization COLA's of 2.7% for a general fund CBO contracts. And in-home supportive services cost increases that are outpacing our federal and state program revenue reimbursements. We rely on county general funds to cover these program calls ensuring we can sustain essential service despite rising expenses and limited increases in federal and state reimbursements. The next slide looks at our total revenue by source. SSA's 1.9 billion dollar budget includes $440.8 million in federal funds reflected in their turquoise slice of the donut that represent a large category of agency funding. Federal funds provide money for most agency major programs, including older Americans Act, that'll be our area agency on aging better known as AAA, and IHSS. Cal works, Cal fresh medical eligibility, and Cal fresh employment training in a Department of Workforce and Benefits Administration, Child Welfare Administration, the Title IV E, Adoptions and False to Care Assistance, Ken Gap and AB 12, and Children and Family Services. Yes, AB 12 does well down federal funds. AB 12 is a program that extend false sur care to youth ages 21. A Medi-Cal allocations are reflected in the budget as half federal and half state. The federal funds pass through the state to counties. For state funds, the gray slice of the donut, at 28% are $282.9 million are the second largest category and for the most part cover a state share of the same program so federal revenues cover. Our agency also received 1991 realignment revenue 13.5 percent and 2011 realignment revenue of 13.2 percent which are often considered state revenue and amounts to a total of 270 million dollars. Combining the state revenues and realignment revenue makes a 54.7% makes up 54.7% of the budget or 552.9 million. 2011 realignment revenue is used for the state's portion of SSA program, calls. Under County General Fund, other revenues contribute about 1.6% or 15.9 million of all revenue. The majority of RGA recoupment comes from SSI. $4.2 million in 28 19 5.6 million in fiscal year 2020 2021 3 million in fiscal year 2020 22 2023 4.4 million in 23 24 and we're projecting a 4.0 million dollars in fiscal year 2425 and fiscal year 2526 is projected at $5 million reimbursement. Total appropriations by major object. Client benefits represent the largest category of expenditures at 42.1 41.2% are 46 million of the budget. The agency does not issue CalFresh or MediCal benefits. Those go directly to the client without benefit payment being processed by the county. The next largest is the cost of the agency's staff, which is 34% of the budget, are $368.4 million. The third largest category of expenditures is discretionary services and supplies at 20% or 217.2 million of the budget. This includes $140.6 million in CBO contracts or about 13% of the budget. We also have smaller categories of expenditures. Those are on internal service funds at 4.8% are 51.6 million dollar costs including buildings, central information technology support, and communications as well as risk management payments. And looking at total appropriations by department, another way to view SSA's budget is by looking at its departments. This slide displays cost and the operating departments that are responsible for delivering each of SSA's programs, as well as agency administration and finance, which supports the administrative functions of our agency. The largest department in the agency is workforce and benefits administration at $441.2 million dollars. It includes over 1,270 employees and disperses nearly $164.1 million in Cal Works, General Assistance and Refugee Cash Assistance Benefits to clients. Second is our Children and Family Services Department representing a quarter of the agency at 261.8 million. CFS includes 500 nine-eight employees and is purchased about $94.2 million in false-to-care and adoptions benefits for children. A Dough-Naging Services is a third in size, costing about $254.2 million and employing over 636 people. A Dough-Naging Services disburses over 182.7 million in client IHSS benefits. However, the state only builds us for an IHSS maintenance effort. So the total cost of adult aging services appears smaller. And I'm going to make a correction. Adult aging does not employ over 636 people. They employ about 254 people. The agency administration and finance department includes government and community relations, financing human resources, and is the smallest at $126.9 million or 11.7% of our budget, employing about 120 people. fiscal year 2526 community-based organization contracts. A significant amount of the service delivered to SSA's clients are delivered through contracts. For fiscal year 2526, our agency has budgeted $140.61 million for 227 contracts with community-based organizations. The fluctuation and number of contracts is mainly due to the procurement cycle that requires an RFP every three years. And then finally, our agency's pending factors, the governor's proposed budget for fiscal year 2526, opposed the administration's commitment to food assistance and childcare programs for now. Two highlights of the governor's budget include providing a three-month supply of diapers at no cost to all California families with newborn babies as well as 75 million for immigration-related legal services. These initiatives would complement Alameda County's existing diaper distribution program and immigration work. In our agency we support access to services for all people and families living in Alameda County regardless of immigration status. To this end our agency has distributed over $90 million in contracts providing services for our local immigrant community since 2017 and we are proud to support the board's additional 2.2 million authorized funding for legal and social services for immigrant residents. The governor's proposed budget also proposes modest increases in HSS, increases the minimum wage and paid sick leave for HSS providers. Child and family teams and medical administration calls while decreasing cow-work single allocation funding. possible impacts from the federal budget. However, state budget conditions could change at any moment pending changes at the federal level. Federal policies on tariffs and international trade and immigration along with potential cuts to health and social services such as Medicaid or SNAP. May reduce state and local revenues and SNAP is California's version of... SNAP is a federal version of California's Califresh program. Public charge is also expected to be reintroduced. Current negotiations have also signaled the possibility of implementing work requirements into Medicaid. While details of this proposal are unknown at this time, we estimate that over 250,000 medical-leaves in Alameda County are at risk of losing health coverage under work requirements. Then for county sponsored legislation. Senate Bill 617 is a California Work Adjustment and Re-Training Act, and was introduced by Senator Araquin. The bill requires that employers communicate about whether and how they will offer information about available resources to dislocate at workers, and there was a minted language as of March 2025. The goal is to raise awareness about the public workforce system, public benefits programs, and free services available to laid off workers that can assist them and continuing forward in their career journeys. And to that end, stay connected. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the presentation. You're welcome. No, I really appreciate you doing this your third time, I think. You are keeping count, yes. I'll start over here if it's okay. Supervisor Tam, questions? Just a couple. Thank you, President Halbert. I just want to drill down a little bit more on the mandated and discretionary services as well. Just get some clarification on the staffing because you show no increase in the FTEs. But this assumes that there are, because when at the Social Services Committee meeting, there's always discussions about the staffing issues, and you have a very high vacancy rate. You're not adding more staff, but you're trying to fill some of the vacant positions that you currently have as we fucked in this budget, right? That's correct. And then the vacancy rate varies depending on classification. Okay. So on the workforce and benefits, it's mandated that we provide cash assistance for immigrants and refugee cash assistance. And we get some funding from the federal government and we do and we also get funding from the state. And the state is proposing in this go-around to provide $75 million in legal assistance for immigrants. But that's not necessarily the same as the cash assistance that we provided. And so when we, in social service, remember we had that situation where we had to move funding very quickly for emergency. So the refugee resettlement agencies. Exactly. That was because the federal government basically sent a cease and desist order to these agencies, right? That's correct. And how did we manage to get that $876,000? We use savings from one time funding sources to provide it? But if you can recall, we allocate that money as a loan in case the federal government eventually reimburses those agencies they are expected to reimburses. Or hopeful they'll reimburses. Yeah. The one question I had around discretionary services is around the veteran service office because we get a lot of inquiries about the one that's near the Eastmont mall and then potentially moving to the one in Hayward. Do we get any federal funding support for that office? I think there is federal funding. I don't have the amount today, but I would be happy to provide that to you all following these presentations today. Yeah, because it's listed as discretionary service, but yeah, but you would think the federal government would want to continue supporting veterans services. And that's another one of those departments that I think the federal administration is targeting for layoffs. As well, so we'll keep an eye on that moving forward. Okay. And then lastly on the Warnack enhancements that, we're sponsoring legislation. We recently received a couple of Warnack notices. One was from Goodwill, closing in Oakland. How do you think this enhancement with this legislation could address some of those issues? I'm not so sure if it will enhance or address some of those issues because we currently get Warn. This is just like inserting some additional language to go is to raise awareness about the workforce systems that are available to those dislocate our laid off workers. But I don't see where it necessarily. This Senate bill is going to enhance what's already in place. I think our workforce development board and our Oakland Private Industry Council are pretty good job and Reaching out to those individuals that are laid off Try to get them resettled in new careers. Okay, but but the employer already Provides that information right to those that are potentially Layed off because of the war now. Yes, okay. Yeah, your board office should get notified as well as our workforce development agencies. Okay. Thank you. I'll go to supervisor for tonight or bass and then supervisor mine. Thank you. And thank you director Ford for the presentation. I certainly appreciated your review of the accomplishments and just hearing very concretely how your agency is helping children, families, and so many people who are vulnerable. I have a couple specific questions, but I did want to just make sure I heard one statement accurately. Did you say when talking about the pending factors that 250,000 people who received Medi-Cal could lose their benefits if there were work requirements? You heard that correctly. 250,000 in Alameda County. Okay, that's a quarter million people. That is really significant. And we had that public charge fight during the last Trump administration so that certainly seems like something to watch for. And and and coming up with this analysis I'm sorry for interrupting you. We looked at the state of Georgia which implemented work requirements and Medicaid and we looked at Arkansas which also implemented and so we look at the impacts to those particular states and sort of applied what what that can mean for Alameda County. I see, thank you for sharing that. There was a lot of very good detail in your presentation. I definitely appreciate that. I have two particular questions. I am very concerned about food security, especially with the current need. And it seems to be as high now as it was during the pandemic. We're already aware of anticipated cuts. We're aware of food trucks that are no longer delivering literally tons of food. So my question is, what's, what's, what funding is in the budget for the food bank? Is this a decrease from last year and how can we potentially address the need in the shortfall? It's a decrease in the since the last year included ARPA funding. And so this amount is an increase over the base funding because it includes the COLA, which brings it up to 2.7 million. I think the food bank has identified a need of maybe $5 million. And right now we don't have that money available in our budget. Okay, and the baseline was 2.7 with COLA's since before the pandemic. Yes. Okay, thank you for that. I do think we should make that a priority as we're going through this process. And then I have another question. This one I think you'll be familiar with because it has become in front of the board and the social services committee. I know that we have roughly 10 providers that provide overnight shelter. And I've been hearing concerns about the shelter bed rate. Have you been able to do the study that was discussed last year in terms of proposing updated rates and would you be able to provide the board with the cost of increasing that rate in intervals of $10? So, thank you for your question, Supervisor Fortune outatown Bass. We are preparing to come to the joint health social services agency committee on May 12th. To provide an update about that proposal. Thank you. Surveys are Miley. Thank you, President Elmer. So I've got some questions commentary. First of all, my heart is always with social services. You know, President Howard put me on the health committee, but my heart always stays with social services. Yeah. I want to make that clear. Okay. Let's hear it. Okay. Now, I have some similar questions I asked of health care and some additional ones. So what's your vacancy rate? Agency-wide, it's about 21%. But as I explained to Supervisor Tam, the vacancy rate varies by positions that we focus a lot on filling and retaining. And those would be our adult protective services social worker, child welfare worker, and our social worker two and three positions, as well as our eligibility workers. Okay. And then can you give us, similar to what I asked health care, your org chart, because in terms of people who are filling certain high level positions, because I think there's been some changes in your agency. Yeah, I will make sure you get a copy of it. And in a prior maybe three to five years, we always had a copy in our presentation. Right. Not anticipating this question from you today. I asked if they remove it. So we'll make sure that you get a copy of it. Sure. Yeah, because I know in the past we've seen it, And it wasn't here in the booklet, so okay, thank you. Then... Yeah, yeah, I know in the past we've seen it and it wasn't to be here in the booklet so okay, thank you Then You read all some information about the number of clients located in various cities Can you provide us with that information? Because it's not in the booklet is Oh, no, that's just part of my I was sharing with you. But I thought it was once again fascinating because I'm very interested in knowing how many clients are like in Oakland, the Anacorpite area, etc. And I think you said most are in Oakland. 37% are in Oakland and for those combined most popular cities, it's 64%. Oakland, Hayward, San Leandro and the fourth city has escaped me right now. But yes, those statistics are correct. So can you provide us with that? We can. And for your benefit, I did add the sixth percent for unincorporated Alameda County because you did say if it was considered a city, it would be the fourth largest. Exactly. Yes, exactly. So please let us have that information. Then in addition, what portion of your budget is county general fund? Is it just the 15.9% or is it larger? I read off 15.9. Yeah, it's, no, that's other revenues contribute about 1.6%. Let's see. So what portion is general fund? Yeah. So if we don't have before my presentation ends, I'll make sure you get the information. If somebody figured it out before you leave the podium now would be helpful because I have a point to make. Then status of the assessment center. Is it open yet? Status of the new assessment center is not open yet. We're still working with the General Service Agency to finalize some of the requirements of opening it and then to get the license approved at the state level. That's taken quite a while. It is. Okay, so maybe you need to brief us on not here and now, but why it's taken so long. And then the enterprise office, that's the one out next to the DMV, right? The enterprise self-sufficiency center, yes. Yes, so that office continues to be problematic. Is there anything you're projecting to try to do with that office, that building because I know, I just really feel for the staff out there. I mean, just recently, DMV shut down because they stole the carper wires and stuff. And the DMV is near your facility and I know that facility has had a lot of challenges. Yeah, your concerns that you've expressed to me over the last month are longer, are duly noted. Recently, we've had a fence. I'm installed around the building itself and within the next 12 months we'll have the elevators replaced because they've been breaking down quite a bit as well. So we're doing some some updates but the ultimate goal you don't have to shake your head. The ultimate goal is to relocate staff from that building. Yeah. And that's what I want to hear. And so we need to come up with a plan and a timeline to make that happen. Because yeah, I just think that building, and I said that before you or the agency director, quite frankly, needs to be raised. And either we need to build a new one, or we need to just raise it and do whatever. But those people need to be moved to one or we need to just raise it and do whatever, but those people need to be moved to another location to provide services. And I know it's challenging to find that location, but we need to do that. I want to flag that with the rest of the board and the public because I think it's really, really important. Thank you and our finance director is here and he'll take note of that as well as heere our budget. Now of your 227 CBO contracts, same question as health care. Can we get a indication of how many serve Oakland? We will look to see if we can get that information for your board. And is it a total of 65 is it a hundred? That's a 65 51 million, 16 million, and 8 million. Is that the total in terms of the amount? I'm sorry I was looking for the slide can you repeat the question please. Yeah 65 million contracts from Department of Workforce and Benefit 16 from adult and aging, eight from the agency administrator and 51 million from children and family services. That's The total, and that's 140 million. 140.6 million yes. So do we, so the same question I asked healthcare, do we know how many people are employed by that number? No, not as of today. Because I'm putting on my procurement and contracting yet. And I know, I didn't say this to Enika, I know we don't ask that of the contractors, but I wish we would begin to do that. So we can kind of get a sense of the money the county is providing you to deliver these important services. How many people are employed? And what's the economic, you know, return on investment, what's the economic benefit to the locale and to the county and the city maybe that you're located in. She kind of gets some information about how our resources are helping the local economy in addition to providing the direct services. Okay. Yeah. Look at the information. I think, I mean, because if you don't do it here with the full board, I'm going to continue to ask it in procurement and contracting until I get, you know, the answers. Thank you for that reminder. You did ask. I think that question at the last procurement and contracting meeting. And I believe we have staff who are working with our contractor, our Salesforce contractors to get that information for you so we can have an update at the next pro and con committee. Yeah, because I know once again, it's not something typically you've asked, but I think we need to start doing that in your agency, in the health agency, Alameda County Health. The agencies are about more than 50% of the county's Budget budgets about four billion more than open more than four billion in your two agencies about 4.3 billion you've got more employees than health care Unless money then health care. So you're doing a great job. With a little bit of money you get, but just to point that out. So I think it's important that between your two agencies that provide most of the services to marginalized populations have most of the staff, have the biggest allocation of the county's resources. We kind of have a sense of what kind of return we're getting with the CBOs in terms of the local economy. Do we have an idea of what? In terms of net county cost. Yeah. Yeah, the net county cost for the current year is 70.4 million in the maintenance of effort that was presented to you. It's increased by 4.1 million to a total of 74.4 million, and it's a little bit less than 7% of the total budget. So which speaks to the high leveraging from social services programs, primarily federal and state funding. So I'm going to, so 74 million dollars of your budget comes from General Fund. That's an accurate statement and the need is potentially going to grow and supervisor pass putting out some of the dangers that potentially lie ahead. So I'm saying all this because I just want, well I know Supervisor Tam and I heard this from folks and we've heard it too, the measured W monies. Everybody wants measured W monies to go to homelessness. It's general fun. The board's gotta decide how we're gonna use that money. I think a healthy portion of it, if not a significant amount, needs to go to homelessness. But this agency has needs. It has needs. And so we need to make sure, and Chief of Sol are already saying, You didn't have the fun, you know, where the fun is, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, you didn't have the fun, and Chief of Solidarity saying, you didn't have the fun, you're where the fun is, you don't come from, like food insecurity. So we need to look at using, once we can tap into measure W, allocating some of the money to this agency. I just want to point that out, because it's really, really important to have my heart always. I was about to say you just restored my faith. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. And I think, I think that's all I want to desk state. Thank you. I recognize supervised for not a passport follow up. Thank you for allowing the follow up. Two things, just building off the comments from President Miley. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know why I do that. We were president at the same time, last time. Regarding the information about the contracts, in addition to the information Supervisor Miley mentioned, is it possible to also understand and get a a list of who the providers are, the amount of the contract and the services that they provide? Is that part of the procurement request? It's in the budget book, the back, appendix. Okay. All the CBOs that receive contracts under mounts. So in the budget book for the approved budget? Correct. It's in there for the approved budget and will update it again going forward for the next year's budget. Okay. We have it both by program area as well as by provider. Okay great. I will look at that. I've got that with me. And then secondly, I wanted to make sure that I also said director for that you are also in my heart. I want to recognize the work that you have done on top of everything that you normally do to run this department to respond to the act for all requests and ensure that we could be very proactive supporting our immigrant and refugee communities. So the work that you have done to help with three additional contracts and really get those services out into the community very quickly. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much for those comments. And I note we have supervisor Marquez with us. Now she has some questions. Thank you, President Howard. And thank you all for your patience as I deal with another family emergency. It's fun and a challenge to have an elderly relative. So I did have the opportunity to listen to most of the presentation. So thank you so much director Ford for you and your teams outstanding work wanted to acknowledge you for pivoting last year. there was some issues with AAA funding. I know that got resolved as well as launching in a very short period of time funding for our shelters. Can you remind me how many nonprofit agencies actually took advantage of that one time funding? And if you don't have the answer, you can get back to us. Yeah, if my memory serves me correctly, it was six that actually identified a budget gap that was for you. Okay, great. And I want to echo my support for many of the comments made by my colleagues. I'm also very interested in getting an update on looking at the shelter rate. I know that's something we've been discussing in the last year. And then also I know we'll be briefed soon about the status of the assessment center. I know your team's been working diligently and there's been some unforeseen challenges there, but just looking forward to getting an update and having that site fully operated. I wanted to know about the departments that are having a higher vacancy rates. If there's any thoughts,, in terms of barriers, what can we be doing differently to help fill those positions? So the departments with a high vacancy rates would be our adult and aging services department, our children and family services department, and our workforce and benefits administration department. The vacancy rate for adult protective services social worker is 23.81%. We have continuous and ongoing hiring. The classifications I've mentioned have been improved for the employee referral incentive program. And what that means is that for each one of these positions that are brought to the attention of applicants by our staff, the staff will get a referral fee for referring them. So those are the main positions that we're focusing on now for hiring and retention rates. And that incentive was implemented when it's relatively new, is that correct? Our HRS department implemented it maybe a year and a half or two years ago. Okay. All right. And I wanted to know, are we tracking how many veterans are eligible to receive support through Proposition 1 in terms of housing? I cannot answer in the affirmative, but I can get back to you with an answer. Okay. And then I know your office does an amazing job. If you could just give us a quick overview in terms of the type of legislation recommendations that you bring forward to Pell Committee. I know we're always looking for additional funding for in-home support services. We always make a big issue when there's these unfunded mandates coming through through the state. But can you give us a sense of what you're currently tracking in your department? I'm sorry, our policy directors here with me. Can you come up to the mic please. The most recent request that we had were for the IHSS budget request as well as the like how we're single allocation request. And so that's really important because the single allocation request is one big amount and it goes for eligibility as well as employment. The employment has stayed the same and the eligibility has decreased. Meanwhile, our caseloads have increased. So those are kind of the two items that we're tracking right now. There's many more that we have kind of in the queue and coming up. Okay. Thank you so much. And then are we tracking the issue with foster family agencies facing an insurance crisis in Elimita County? Is that also being monitored? That is on the radar. I'm not aware of any updates to that. I think several months ago, there was a big emergency around it. I think it got resolved for the time being. But if there are updates, I will circle back in my window. Okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Again, most of my questions asked and answered, but with regard to federal funds, 440 million, 440.8 million, 43.7% of your budget. How is that budgeted expected to be in this year versus last year? Because again, I'm seeing huge concerns about federal funds. What will be eliminated? So are we planning to be the same as last year, more or less for federal funds? I guess if we're expecting that we could be vulnerable on federal funds we ought to be budgeting courtingly or at least having a contingency plan. So what are we budgeting for? And what are our contingency plan if federal funds are cut? Yeah, I don't think Alameda County alone can have a contingency plan I think the state would also have to weigh in on on a contingency plan. On the largest source of federal funds will be our Medi-Cal program, which is Medicaid at the state level. And again, that's tenuous right now. We don't know what the outcome will be, but I don't have a path forward. Should that funding in for our Medi-Cal program. There are some state funded medical programs that I think I read yesterday that the governor is putting in $2.2 million of emergency funds to cover the state medical portion of it. So I'll be looking to the state partners to see how we can address this. Should it come to any cuts? I will impact the federal funds? Okay. I think I heard you say under agency administration and finance, 126.9 million. I think I heard you say that funds 120 people but I mean that would be over a million dollars per head. Maybe I was. No you you did hear me say 120. I was looking at the difference. It's 320 people. And that's across our finance department, our human resources department, our staff development department, and I'm missing one. A government commuter relations. Okay, and with regard to Department of Children and Family Services 51.4 million I note that we I think because I've spent time in With our foster care team we have like 1500 Ish or is it 3000 how many children do we have generally cycle through our foster care system in a typical year? I think it's the 1,500 ish. It's not the 3,000 for sure. But I actually think it's less than 1,500. It's a lot and it has a small amount of budget to it. So I know we're doing the best we can with the budget that we have, but of the most vulnerable people in our society besides elderly and those with severe illness, children, foster children. So I'm I thank you for what you do there and look forward to getting that assessment center up and running. I look forward to getting it open as well. Thank you. No other questions. Follow up with the supervisor Miley and then we'll head to child support services out of that. Director Ford, isn't there something significant noteworthy about the agency occurring shortly. If you want to share with all of us. Yeah, on June 3rd of 2025, the Social Services Agency has its known today as a social services agency. We'll turn 50 years old. Yeah. Thank you. Very good. Thank you so much for your presentation. Great job. We're going to now go to child support services after which we will take a quick five minute break. I note that we have roughly 30 minutes budget for each and we have questions that go for 45 minutes so that's going to be hard to budget our time efficiently. That's okay. Did we have other questions? Okay. We're going to go to child support services next. Welcome. I was going to say good morning but it is now get afternoon President President Halbert and members of the board. Billis Nance, Director of Child Support Service, says, before I begin, I wanted to thank your board for your continuing support of our agency. I also like to thank Susan and her team at the CAO's office for all of their support during this budgeting process. And finally, I'd like to thank my team who every day does the work to really make a difference in the lives of families and children in Alameda County. This afternoon, I will be sharing our vision and mission, how they align with the broader goals of vision 2036. I'll also highlight the impact of our work, provide a brief financial overview, and touch on future considerations that may shape the services moving forward. Our vision, all parents are fully engaged in supporting the well-being of their children. It's a simple, simple vision, but really one that is really impactful. Sorry about that. Our mission actually reflects our core mandated functions of locating parents establishing paternity, establishing both child support and medical support orders, and also ensuring compliance and collection on those orders. While fulfilling these mandated responsibilities, our broader goal is to promote responsible parenting, support family self-sufficiency, and ultimately enhance the well-being of children in our community. We have five operating principles that really drive our work. A focus on partnering with families, an investment in skilled and engaged workforce, a commitment to the highest standards of service delivery, embracing innovation and building strong partnerships in the community-based, with community-based organizations so that we can fulfill our mission and vision. I think I missed one. I'm sorry. Okay. Our vision, our mission, and our operational principles are aligned with the goals of vision 2036. At the heart of our work is a commitment to ensuring children receive reliable support, which is essential in building resilient and thriving communities. By expanding access to vulnerable communities, we strengthen engagement and move closer to creating safe and livable neighborhoods. Our virtual first initiative supports a healthier environment while making services more accessible and efficient for families. And through strong partnerships, we help families maintain self-sufficiency, contributing to a vibrant and prosperous local community. I'm just having a clicker issued this morning afternoon. Our agency currently serves over 26,000 children and families, reflecting the broad and diverse needs of our community. We play a vital role in the safety net for vulnerable families. Our caseload includes 17% of active Cal work families, those currently receiving public assistance, 55% of former Cal works recipients, families transitioning towards self-sufficiency, and 28% who've never received CalWORKs, families still need a need of support. This diversity highlights our agency's unique ability to support families at every stage, whether they're receiving assistance, public assistance, moving beyond it, or working on staying independent. I think this is not only our impact, but this is also what I would say the success of our agency. As I shared, our agency serves a diverse range of families in place of vital role in the community safety net programs. But the impact of our rural fiscal year, $30 million in child support with more than $69 million going directly to families. So 88% of the collections we were able to secure went directly to families. These dollars help parents maintain self-sufficiency and ensure that children have the resources they need to grow and thrive and succeed. Okay, did you guys change that? This is our financial summary. For fiscal year 2025, our departments budget increased by $2.7 million. This increase is fully offset by state and federal funding, resulting in no costs to the county, and our budgeting staffing levels remain unchanged. In looking at the major component, our majority of our increase is due to an increase in salaries and benefits attributed to the bargaining agreements reached by SEIU and ACMEA, with all small increases in the department's lease and inter-departmental costs due to a move of our department IT staff to ITD. Again, this increase is offset by federal and state funds. So our budget looks a lot different than everyone else's budget. 82% of our department's budget is human capital. The next largest proportion covers non-discretionary expenses and only 4% of our total budget is allocated to discretionary services which primarily support mandatory operational needs essential to the functioning of the child support program. And I am going, I think I just keep just, which is probably the really most important slide here, our revenue stream is primarily made up of federal and state funding with 66% coming from the federal government and 27% coming from the state with a very small percentage remaining with incentive dollars and inter-departmental revenue. As we look ahead, there are a number of things I think are important for your board to understand that we have a number of California legislation that actually improve the program, but also have some unintended consequences. We have SB 1055, which was implemented this year, and limits driver's license suspension based on income. And while that, it helps to reduce the burden to low income parents, and it supports equity, it may also reduce compliance and collections, which have an overarching effect on performance. There are performance incentives that are applied by the state, so as your collections go down and your performance goes down, there could be loss of revenue as it relates to incentive funding. We also see AB 135, which is uncollectable debt. It will be fully implemented in 2026. It clearly is something that's needed to address large arrears balances for parents who really just can't pay those balances, but again, it requires extra documentation, extra work, and no additional funding came along with that legislation. We have a major legislation that goes into effect. we call it the FIM Final Rule. I think I've talked about it at the Social Services Committee. Really it changes the way we establish orders. Again, based on that process, there is an extreme workload that is not that's not come with funding. And finally, there is an uncertainty at the federal level on lots of policy changes, conversations about redoing regulations that were put in by the prior administration. Our funding model is also something to consider. We are state and federally funded, but we have an allocation model that is related to caseload size. We've seen a consistent drop in our caseload, and while our social services director talked about a 10% increase in the cow works caseload, we have not seen that increase in our caseload, which is usually mandatory referrals from CalWORKS recipients. We haven't seen that. And so we are tracking and watching that really carefully because we know that that allocation will have an impact. So as we look ahead, we think that legislative compliance, equity focused service, and financial sustainability will be key to balancing all of those things. We remain committed to innovation and efficiency, finding ways to make it work. And I will say that our agency has actually done that and has done that very well. But we will be looking for opportunities for a lot more flexible funding from the state at the state level and any type of support that if there is introduction of legislation that that comes with some level of funding if it's going to make the work more complex. With that, although I've had a crazy thing with this clicker, I'm finished and I'm open to questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. I know you're one of the departments that makes money, make collecting money. I'll ask if there are any questions. I'll start with Supervisor Fortune out of I've asked this time, Supervisor Miley. She lay She's good. Yeah, no supervisor for not a bad said she's good Because she notes that it's Yeah, well, it's okay, but president Halbert you and the county administrator put together this schedule so Don't play a must but I did good. I did it in tune. No, you did excellent. Yeah, look, there's these two. These two, I mean, there's these two, you know, so. Can you start the clock? Please. Oh, I'm sorry, it's a surprise of mine. So thanks, fellas. And I have an opportunity to meet with you or talk with you in a while. So I apologize for that. But with your impact, 78 million, almost 80 million of child support collections, and nearly 70 million directly to families. How does that compare with the state in terms of the counties? We're kind of good, right? We're really good in total collections. We are doing really well and we're really comparable to our counterparts in the Bay area. So we are seeing increases. We understanding that our unemployment rate is a little higher than the state. I'm actually surprised by that but we are doing really well. And are you still working with probation and fatherhood and others to kind of come up with approaches to work with fathers and formerly incarcerated and others so that we can help them? We are part of the core and we are working heavily with probation. We have a partnership with the fatherhood. We are about to launch what we hope will be a database that can help fathers understand the services that are delivered here in Alameda County. Okay. Now, you've been with the county for how many years? Almost 10. Almost 10. And it's my understanding you're going to be retiring. I am. Can you share with us what that time frame is? What does that, excuse me? Can you share with us when that will occur? Well, you know, it just keeps changing. I plan on retiring in November of this year. OK can you get us an org chart too so we can kind of see I know Susan requested that of everybody last year. I don't know if you received it if she did I never saw it and it could be I just sorry for emergency purposes so we can collect them again from all the departments. Okay, so we can see, you know, who's kind of in your line of authority in your executive team. So, and I just think it's important that the board understands, historically, your department used to be part of the DA. And then state legislation moved it out of the DA's office and you're like our second director since we moved it out of DA's office. So I just want to thank you for your your services and your time, but we don't have have a bunch of time to begin looking at what we're going to be doing in terms of either you know having an or doing the search or all those things because you're pretty committed to your retirement schedule. Yes. Okay. Either having an interim or doing a search or all those things because you're pretty committed to your retirement schedule I Department was the favorite department It is the favorite of social services agency. Oh, okay, yeah. You're department, yes. Because you never cause any problems or difficulties. And place your out in Pleasanton. And we love that. Thank you. Thank you. Good. With that, we'll ask Supervisor Tamouc, yes, any questions. Thank you, President Halbert. I do have two quick questions and we value you and we do not look forward to your retirement unlike Supervisor Miley. So you were saying that the caseload has been declining and that your allocations, whether it's from the federal government in the states, also tied to your caseload, but you're also keeping, I mean, it's a good thing that your caseloads are going down, I mean, from a overall societal perspective. But do you anticipate significant reductions in funding allocations? Immediately immediately. I think it will be a gradual conversation if we continue to see the caseless go down. The allocation methodology was put in place. I'm gonna say about four years ago. It has some flaws. And so as associations are trying to come together to say, okay, so let's redo this allocation methodology and don't make the primary conversation just the caseload because there is a workload level of effort that is also part that should be calculated into that. But with that said, that hasn't changed and I think it'll be a gradual reduction if our caseloads keep going down. But we are really working. And so I do understand that the best thing that child support could do would be to work itself out of the collection and enforcement because people were just paying their child support. That would be fabulous. But we actually know that there are a number of families that need our services. So we are really trying to work on an outreach strategy that helps to bring families in, that need our services. That's good. Appreciate that. The last question I had is, what's your progress in moving out of Pleasanton? Well, I don't know. You say you have no progress? I am minimal progress at this point. Still have our lease, so we're trying to, I think I shared previously that. One of the conversations is that we know that we have a number of our families that live in that hayward area and so we're really trying to figure out how to do that level of service without necessarily creating and space space footprint. But we haven't made the progress yet. We're still working on it. Okay I mean as you mentioned your your greatest need area is around the Hayward San Lorenzo that part of the county so having a convenience service center there is good. going to be great. Supervisor Marquez. Thank you. I just want to thank you for your wonderful work and not looking for a tier return, but well deserved. So just thank you for everything and look forward to receiving updates in the future with respect to how can we ensure basically all the services that the county provides make sure that it's accessible to the individuals that need the most. So look forward to the update on that. Thank you. Thank you. Indeed. Thank you for all you do. The only question I have is around unfunded mandates. Did you just explain a little bit more deeply about any new unfunded mandates? Well, I think the mandate that came with the driver's license suspension required, requires a lot of manual work. Initially, the conversation was that it would all be automated, but it's not, and they don't have any time to know when it's gonna be automated, which means that our staff is going to have to take a lot more manual work than what they've ever done with the license suspension. And then finally, and we've been talking to the state about this one, the implementation of the final rule, which they've been working on for six years. And we will finally go into that in January of 2026. As we look at all the things that we have to look at and understand and research, we don't have any of those things in place. And so it becomes really manual. We've talked that that is additional work that the state should come up with some level of funding. And so that's what I'm calling unmannedated. Unfunded mandate. Yes. Thank you so much. Great job. It job. With that we're going to take a 10-minute break. It's 10-to-1. We'll come back at 1 o'clock. I'll note that that means we're going to push back lunch. Accordingly. So be prepared. Thank you. We're Well, back to my break rather and ask the clerk to call roll to establish quorum. Supervisor Marquez. Present. Supervisor Tam. Present. Supervisor Miley excused. Supervisor Fortinato Bass excused. Present, Albert. Present. Have a quorum. Thank you very much. We'll proceed with our next presentation from General Government. This is the General Services Agency presentation. Welcome, Ms. Kimberly. Thank you. Slides. Good afternoon, board of supervisors. My name is Kimberly Gasway, Director of the General Services Agency with our fiscal year 2526 preliminary maintenance of effort budget. So GSA's omission is to provide Alameda County with quality support through organizational innovation, responsiveness, and efficiency in service delivery. Our vision is to be valued as a world class provider of support services, and our values are to support county departments through productive relationships and lead by example with equity and integrity. We are known as the people behind the people. We have many areas where we're aligning with your board's approved vision 2036 and I'll just highlight a few of the top areas. So the first is accessible and integrated infrastructure and we are preparing an update to the county's 10-year master plan for ADA American Disabilities Act priority projects. We are, I heard some questions. We are working on the establishment of a new East County Government Center facility in alignment with your board's goals and as the population progresses and grows in the East County. We're conducting a comprehensive building power or study and performing elevator monetization analysis across various county buildings. An alignment with your vision of a prosperous and vibrant community, we are currently working with the Building Trades Commission to establish an apprenticeship pilot program for construction employment within the county. We're implementing an E Payment System that we procured for all county agencies that accept public dollars. This initiative aims to enhance and streamline service delivery by providing a single payment processing form for the public that utilize county services. It also helps us with security in the way we collect these funds. Healthy environment. We are electrifying the county's motor pool fleet per state mandates and is targeted by the your approved climate action plan of 2026 and the state mandate requires that by 2035 all new acquisitions of the fleet vehicles be electric. We're adopting an updated green building ordinance. I'll be brought before your board for approval to support the implementation of the built environment measures also within your climate action plan. To give you a general sense of GSA, I did not put the name of my staff, supervisor Miley here, but these are the areas that we provide support. So our building maintenance provides full maintenance, landscaping, janitorial services for the county's 5.6 million square feet of occupied space in over 130 owned buildings. Most of these positions are union represented. We also have our capital programs department and these are the professional staff that manage capital improvements in constructions and upgrades in all county facilities. We have our procurement department which many of you know quite well. They procure all goods and services for countywide and they manage programs to increase business opportunities for small local and emerging businesses. We have our strategic capital planning and real property division they manage the countywide facility plans and utilization of real estate assets and also all county facility leases which doesn't say there but that's there's over 40 occupied least facilities. Then we have our logistic services department they manage the county's fleet except for public works inner department mail delivery service property and salvage division and county parking facilities and our sustainability unit oversees the implementation and reporting of the county's climate action plan for government services. To speak about mandated services, it's a little bit different from our GSA. It's primarily compliance with the number of policies and acts. So at the federal government, there's the energy, bless and the national pollution discharge elimination system. And that's to ensure that all water is, we have storm water management systems in all of our sites and all of our construction projects to keep the water of the United States clean. And then we have the Energy Policy Act, which aims to address energy issues through the tax incentives and loan guarantees for various energy production methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency in our buildings. We have the American with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities and mandates employers to provide reasonable accommodation to make their facilities accessible. At the state level, we have to meet requirements of hazard is waste management, CCR Title 22, outlining procedures for safe handling and transportation, treatment and disposal of hazardous materials. The California Climate Crisis Act, AB 1279, achieved net zero greenhouse gas emission as soon as possible, but no later than 2045, that's a heavy lift. The Climate Pollution Act, SB 1383, outlined statewide organic waste disposal reduction targets to reduce landfill methane emissions. And then I'll make sure I'm on the right. And last state, advanced clean fleets, CCR Title 13, as I mentioned, fleet electrification requires fleets to adopt increasing percentage of zero-mission vehicles such as battery, electric long-range plug plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuels cells for mid and heavy-duty trucks. County has policies that GSA either facilitates or implements and procurement first are sled programs, small local emerging businesses, promotes contracts in these areas and procurements of goods and services. Environmental preferable purchasing promotes procurement of goods and services of recycled materials. For example, paper has certain levels of standards for being made with recycled material. Your board has approved a green building ordinance which we we will bring in updated ordinance to you. And this is for all new construction that has to adhere to green building standards for promoting environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. And then lastly, your board has adopted the Climate Action Plan for governments that aligns with the states to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. This plan also helps the county develop more resilient services and support more resilient neighborhoods. We have a number of initiatives. I'll just point out a few to increase productivity and revenue enhancement. So the first is a space reduction, your board approved a policy. And now all tenant improvements and new facilities. We are developing, promoting hybrid workspace environment to reduce the space in county owned and lease space, our occupancy rates. We're leveraging state and federal funding programs. We've pursued a grant through the California Energy Commission to facilitate installation of electric infrastructure and more than 100 electric vehicle charging ports throughout the county. We will be bringing more of that to your board in the near future. We're also working to install sustainable energy solar and energy storage systems and emergency generators and county facilities funded by grants for rebates and incentives from the federal IRA Act of 2023 and the PG knee self-generation incentive program to secure up to 50% of the construction costs Why reducing our portfolios energy costs? This is a little our preliminary MOE key investments. So we have the project stabilization community benefits agreement, 462,000. This program reduced, if it was reduced, would eliminate the ability to promote efficient construction and operations on county projects. This is our labor agreement with the building and trades. And it also has compliance with state public contract code for a skilled workforce in construction. The CTAB program, contractor technical assistant program, $325,000 is we have a contractor that helps us support small and disadvantaged businesses and services such as technical assistance, bond guarantee, collateral guarantee workshops and seminars for contractors and subcontractors that bid on county projects. We have a county wide security risk assessment. Your board just approved $700,000 to look at all county buildings, least and own and how we can improve safety for staff and the public who interrupt facilities. We do invest 4.5 million in our countywide security guard systems at many of our buildings throughout the portfolio for $4.5 million. We operate and maintain the veteran buildings for $1.1 million. We do have an allocated space about 1.6 million in cost in our portfolio and we need to maintain those buildings and keep certain utilities at a mothball stage. So the buildings don't deteriorate further why we're disposing of them. We do support sustainable service core fellows. This is a core heart we bring on regularly throughout the year and they work on a number of sustainability Issues for 93,000 we have parking management over a million dollars shuttle bus services 1.9 million dollars and County utilities at 20.5 million dollars for There's more key investment, but these are some of the larger ones Budget impacts so a last and this year, the state budget reductions and clean energy investments, we weren't extremely concerned about that because the federal government had investments that offset some of that risk. But now with the new administration, we're very concerned about, I'll start with two things, the tariffs, which you've heard a lot about in the news and with other department heads, we do believe they will likely impact our material prices, which in turn affects construction and lead times, our building maintenance operations, auto and auto parts, and all goods purchases for all county departments. The Inflation Reduction Act is currently still in place for our solar projects but it's uncertain and we're monitoring it very closely. So for all of our projects whether it's in the least our own building we're looking at adding a 20% risk contingency for tariffs on project costs and for I refunding as I mentioned we have a large solar project in our capital plan and we're monitoring that closely to see if that will be repealed. For our general fund departments there's a number of departments there you'll see in another slide but our appropriations were 24.2 million last year 25.7 million this year for a 1.5 million dollar increase or 6%. The revenues also increase from 11.7 million to 13.2 million for an increase nearly the same as the increase in appropriations or 13% and our net county costs is the same as last year. Our FTE's management in the General Fund is 32, no change, or non-management. There was a slight reduction for this small payment units, not an actual full time position, at 53.43 this year. Major components at net county cost up and down, which in no change. Whereas our salaries and benefits were up $600,000. Internal service fund charges $800,000. There was an increased cost related contract compliance and outreach $400,000. Increased net cost related to parking lot security and shuttle services $200,000. We receive an increase in county overhead reimbursement of $2.1 million and a slight decrease in revenues, property and salvage and vet rentals of $100,000. Our appropriations by Department for General Fund is our parking department is $5.2 million or 20% Administration 7.9 million 31% Purchasing is 8.6 million or 33% Property and salvage 1 million for that's a good deal. That's the best department in the county right supervisor Miley Oh An allocated space 1.7 7% and veterans buildings 1.3 million or 5%. We have two internal service fund departments. These are departments that provide direct services to county departments and revenues equal expenses. And the building maintenance is the largest budget of 161.5 million or 89% of our ISF budget and motor vehicles 20.3 million or 11%. The general fund has salaries and employee benefits make up 49% or 13.6 million. Interfund transfers. That's where we receive money from other general fund departments that offset expenses. Discretionary services and supplies, 5.4 million or 19% and non-discretionary services and supplies, 8.8 million or 32%. ISF, salaries and benefits are 33% or 60.4 million dollars. Discretionary services and supplies and 92 million dollars or 51% and non-discretionary services applies 10.5 million other charges for services 18.6. I'd like to point out a couple things on our when we say discretionary services and supplies our utilities are 20 million and let me see our leases are 3.8 million. County White indirect charges is 6.2 million. It's a little bit. It's a bit of a misnomer to say that we're going to shut the utilities off and stop leasing those buildings when we talk about discretionary. We could close facilities our biggest goal was to Employees in other departments reduce your fleet reduce your space and these numbers come down Our general fund revenue by source is Charges for current services. Let me catch up on my notes So this the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do with the community. We have a lot of things to do million and Vets rentals about $200,000. Our internal service fund total revenues, BMD space allocations to all county departments is $148.9 million. Motor vehicle usage by all county departments is $14.4 million Other revenues for B&D is 9.6 million. This is the project includes project management fees for our construction projects that we charge out and IDSOs a stop waste grant and 1.2 and non-county space charges and license fees for third-party releases. Motor vehicles of 5.9 million in revenue includes fuel of 5.1 million charge blacks to, for assigned vehicles, not pulled vehicles. And vehicle rental chargebacks, another half a million dollars are worth orders of 200,000. There's three million of other financing sources, which includes primarily a real property division receives money in advance for tenant improvements in least buildings. And that is my presentation. Great job. Thank you very much. I'll turn to my colleagues and see if there are any questions calling first on Supervisor Miley, Ben Marquez. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you Kimberly for the presentation. So we're not going over the capital at this point. Okay. I'll be presented later. Okay. So with this, you have a sense of the number of least properties we have. Forty least properties. Forty. And the percentage of staff that are in those least properties compared with the county workforce. I would have to ask other departments like we can see about getting that information but I know the square footage I don't know the numbers down. We are I do want to say the East County project is to look at targeting leases in East County and reducing those within the next within this next year or so. And they represent, at least space represents just under 10% of our portfolio. 10% And then can you also get us at high level org chart that has names? I don't want you talking to me. OK. And then on your presentation, you also talked about vacant spaces. So how many vacant properties do we have? So we are. And we'll put this in a memo to your board and also part of the capital plan. But right now we have to, well, let me just say we have the Broadway property which is currently in a development exclusive negotiating agreement. So those are the Broadway properties. We have their renaissance in our buildings which has been surplus and we've been working through dispositions for just how to handle that property and we're bringing on a consultant. We're working on RFP right now to help us look at the failing market well the challenging market in Oakland and how we can what we can do regarding that facility when dire is I wouldn't call it completely vacant. It's underutilized and we're talking to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about the city. We're going to be talking about negotiations with the city almost to close and no longer on that property. So that's just five. Yes. And what's it costing us? All in. It's about two million. It's about 1.6. Harbor Bay. We share those costs. So it's about to close to $2 million. $2 million. And that's an annual cost, right? Correct. That's an budget for. And then I always ask this question to the fact that these properties have stood vacant for a while. Do you have a sense of the loss opportunity over the course of time? The fact that either we haven't utilized the properties and they remained vacant or we haven't gotten rid of them so that you know I do want to mention so each building has its own set of circumstances for instance harbor bay is Currently a surplus property we're in negotiation with city But it is but being being used by the root soccer team. We do have a lease, so it's not completely vacant. Glendire Jail is under utilized. The sheriff does do their inmate transport in that building, so again, it's a different set of circumstances. When you say loss opportunity, Broadway we're in a longstanding negotiations for a housing development project there. So I think we have some opportunities. Arena Center is probably the biggest challenge for us and how we're going to dispose of that in the current market. Right, right. Because we just see these properties, at least I have over the course of time, just sitting there the Broadway, arena center, et cetera. And the thing is, the market fluctuates, things don't stay steady. It's time right now, it's not good. Yeah, no. This is kind of frustrating, that's all. And I know the time, it's not good at at this point, but I'm gonna just keep raising it because just to see those properties sitting there not used, unutilized. I mean, drove down Broadway the other day when I was in Jack London, and the person was with me asked me, why is the county set up this property vacant here? And I gave that person the best answer I could, but I just think it's kind of challenging when we have properties that just continue to remain vacant. And I know we're not on the capital improvement plan at the moment. So I'm not going to talk about a couple other us properties that I want to bring up. But is your office dealing with the disparity study? Or is that the auditor? Okay, so I shouldn't ask you about the disparity study. Okay, all right. I think those are my questions then. Thank you. Zubai Zemarquez. Thank you, President Haber. Hello, Director Gasway. Wanted to ask you are you still holding the title for the department with the lowest vacancy rate? I'm sure we're in the running. We're currently 11%, but some of that was we added a number of positions for Santa Rita Jail that we're working on recruiting. Great, thank you. And great work on the community benefit program and the apprenticeship really excited to see that. Our sheriff just walked in, I know she's been doing an amazing job as well. Santa Rita also offering apprenticeship opportunities. So excited to see that investment and ensuring people can work and continue to live in our community. With respect to the Federal Inflation Reduction Act, is it anticipated if the solar projects go live that that's going to bring down our over $20 million utilities? Yes, that is the plan. Okay. And then if I heard correctly, we have 40 leases which equates to about 3.5 million. Do we know what we're bringing in in the buildings that we are leasing out? Like you mentioned Malibu roots is training there. Do you know what the revenue is for? The third party leases? I can get you that answer. Okay. Perfect. And can you remind me, I'm sorry, didn't catch what you said about the CIP budget. When will we receive that? The capital improvement plan as well as the capital budget will be presented as part of our non-program expenditures and revenues. So it's the other side of the equation that will be developing soon to identify what our funding gap is. That will be presented to you with the recommended budget. Okay. Fantastic. And then will we have an update on all the category one projects at that time? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Fortinon Abbas. My question was actually about the CIP budget. I'll ask it and we can answer it or now or later. In terms of the CIP budget, do you have a sense of what the contribution will be from the general purpose fund and the FMR? Looking at- You should wait. I will be coming with- The CIP is in development for next year so we'll see the progression and you're looking at overall what the funding is for those projects. Okay yeah that makes sense that we would finish more fiscal year to have a sense of what that would be. Thank you. Supervisor Tim? My colleagues asked all my questions but the one that I did want to fall up on is The unallocated vacant space at the 1.6 million that includes basic maintenance But not the utilities, right? It does include utilities security services also So we have an a mothball stage you can't completely turn off a water and HVAC systems or the way they start to fail. So there are some running of those systems. How long has the Oakland arena building been vacant? I want to say close to nine years? Nine years? Yes. During that period, obviously COVID was a big part of that period. Has there been times when the market was better than it was now for commercial real estate? Well a couple things about that building. Yes, there were times when the market was better, but we were also on two different cycles looking at putting departments into that building so it was not the original intent to dispose of it. When we bought it there were plans and then we had subsequent plans and looking at it. The fits seem fairly cost prohibitive and we could come up with different strategies. So that took place during an up market then during right before the market dropped we put out for auction, and so we were not able to get any beds on the property. We've also had discussions with a couple different developers who've been interested in it. So it isn't without effort that's still vacant. I will say during COVID, I'm glad that you mentioned that. So we were using it during COVID for a number. We'll also the registrar voters used it during elections. And during COVID, we had food distribution sites taking place there as well as during the wild fires. The government came out, the federal government and did a whole presentations to the community or during the floods. I'm sorry the fires. So when we can we do utilize portions of that facility. We also use it as EMS warehouse when we procure all the PPE for countywide for distributions to all the hospitals and clinics. So there were times it's under utilized. It's's currently vacant. Okay, thank you for that background. Follow up from Supervisor Marquez. Thank you, I'll be quick. The 100 EV charging stations is that accessible for the public or solely county employees. I believe some of them are both. Yeah, my questions have been asked and answered. I think you're doing a great job. Thank you for all you do and Appreciate it. But that said we're going to move to the next presentation. This is from the public works agency I believe that our agency director is hard at work off site and Has taken time from his day to join us remotely mr. Will Wildeson, bet welcome. Thank you very much. I apologize for not being there in person. Pre-planned events. Kept me out. So it's my pleasure to present the Public Corsagency's preliminary budget for 2526. And thank you. Somebody's helping me with the slides. So, next slide please. Yes, the overview is basically I'm going to go through all these items here really fast. As you know, we in public works, primarily action oriented organizations. So a lot of my presentation will be utilizing photos and pictures so that they can actually you can actually feel the kind of work that we do next. So the vision of the agency has remained the same as well as its mission. And primarily to enhance the county's quality of life of Alameda County residents by providing safe, well-maintained and lasting infrastructure through accessible and responsive and effective services. Next, the mandated and discretionary services, these are, you know, generally speaking most of the services that we provide are considered mandated services, including building inspection, county, surveyor function, flood control as well as transportation, generally guided by, you know, street and highway and vehicular code, subdivision, my packs and various other legal frameworks that actually provide the mandates. Discretionary services, we do provide like school crossing guard, annual rate of speech survey, free program, street sweeping, various other things that we consider discretionary at very crucial to the community. Thank you. The agency is fully aligned with the vision 2026. Our primary 10x goal in the public works agency is accessible in an integrated infrastructure and that has kind of spread out to the core for vision statements of the county accessibility and mobility that addresses the driving resilient population, maintenance and preservation of our infrastructure, including implementation of smart infrastructure, advances healthy environment, and we have safety and security, ensuring infrastructure meets the highest safety standards, advances safe and livable communities, as well as the promoting development of infrastructure that enables future technology, which is fairly adapted infrastructure that promotes prosperous and vibrant economy. Next piece. The organization structure here is in front of you. As you can see, I did not add names into it, but most of these positions are currently filled with the exception of one key leadership position, which is the deputy director for construction and development. We've been attempting to recruit for that position for a while, and we are continuing to do so. And hopefully we'll have some success in the near future. Otherwise, most of the leadership positions had been filled with the exception of, like I said, a couple of positions in the organization. So as you can see, we have about five distinct departments and they are each related by a deputy director as well as a management administrator that manages our budget human resource and other support services. Next. The next following slide will be basically our accomplishments and like I said, they will be followed basically using photos that as you can see the first one here. This is is a so by the Harvard and you district that's Tesla mile market 9.5 under construction next place. Mentment and operation services we rehabilitated about 9.8 miles of Coney Roadways repaired over 600 linear feet of guard rails filled a lot of power holes as well as three swept over 80 hundred curved miles of county roadways. These are highlights like I said, there's a lot of stuff that we do in maintenance and operation, but just to give you the basic highlights of some of the thing that we do and show you at the same time, you know, the workforce in operation would do these critical maintenance services. Next. Community services are, well, we consider community services are generally picking up a lot of illegal dumping, debris, you know, 57 hundred cubic feet of debris from County Roadway, them flood control facilities. We removed over 37,000 square feet of graffiti and we do a lot more picking up shopping carts and you name it. So this is just to highlight and at the same time show you what exactly the functions look like in photos. Next. Traffic signal we currently operate traffic about 96 traffic signals as well as 8200 street lights. A lot of times these signals are critical as you know for making sure that the operations on the streets are efficient and safe. They get hit by cars and our folks respond very fast, to ensure that there is safe operation of these traffic signals. We continuously upgrade these facilities also trying to make them kind of catch up with the technological advances. As you know, these days there was autonomous vehicles and various vehicles to infrastructure communication. We're trying to look for ways to kind of adapt some new technologies and making sure that his facilities operate in a most efficient and safe manner. Next. We also have a pump stations. We have about 25 pump stations with about 90 pump units that ensure that they're in floods and various operations that the community is safe from flooding and these are large infrastructure, the large investment and assets that the county has made through its flood control districts and we continue to maintain this and lately one of our objective has been try to replace some of these gas or gas generating or gas consuming pump stations into electrical so that we can actually advance, produce at least a greenhouse effect of these these operations next. We have you know, community outreach and educational services as you can see we've done with Castro Valley cleanup on April of last year, San Lorenzo, Creek Shortline cleanup, as well as Alameda Creek cleanup. And we do this through the community, our Clean Water Program, and engage the community in ensuring that they participate in community service and educational outreach to ensure our environmental, our environmentally sustainable practices are also shared by the broader community in these facilities. Our flood control facilities, creeks and various other assets are have become an attraction to a lot of schools and various volunteer organizations where we are actually participating in ensuring that they participate in cleanup efforts. Next. Our building inspection department has done over 8700 permits. One good news is that all permits right now are issued using the online portal. Another success story is that the same day while we call instantaneous permit that used to require people to come to offices over 1,300 of those are done instantaneously. And as you can see, we've done a lot of solar permits, solar, a residential solar permits performed over 1,600 inspections and did about 500 plus actual plan reviews. I think this is one of the areas where we have adapted some technology to make sure that we provide a very transparent and efficient and very beneficial service to the community and reducing the cost associated with the development process. Next. In terms of capital project delivery during the past year, we've delivered about 51 million dollars of capital improvement projects. And following subsequent slides, we'll show you some of the highlights of some of these capital improvement projects. Next, yes. So here is a before and after pictures. This is our flood control effort in the city of Newark. As you can see, some of the erosions and the washouts are mitigated by the kind of work that we do and once the vegetation gets a hold and this will become a very attractive as well as a very environmentally beneficial project that reduces the amount of silk that goes downhill, downstream in this creek next. Another one that's this one is in Fremont, Lion G, It's a restoration project. These are projects what we call bioengineered projects. They are very much sensitive to the environment. Ensure that the environmental stability of these cricks are maintained while not impacting any of these bioengineering aspect of these channels. As you can see, there's no concrete. It's generally speaking some rock repripes, as well as some grassy type of stabilization that actually we implement. And the before and after, as you can see, is a very effective outcome next. Another project that we recently did, as you can see, is the helicopter flying. A lot of our creeks are burning a lot of homes. This is in San Leandro, San Leandro Creek. I'm sure a supply of time is aware of this one. We get a lot of requests. People are nervous about this. you can look to the streets and access is very difficult. And we're on a regulatory people to not allow you to work in the creeks very frequently. So we deployed somewhat of an innovative approach of managing these creeks, these trees using a hardcopter system. And I believe it was a very successful project at the end. Next. Here's another respiration project that recently received an award from American Public Works Association for Environmental Award. This is an only Creek respiration project. This project was just recently completed. I believe once it's done, it's going to be one of the very attractive creek for people who go out there and walk and enjoy nature when it's all done. Next. In the transportation area, here's the Tesla 9.5 and a little more. As you can see, the damages of the slides are created in the before picture. And the other two are just to show you the process of construction. But at the end, the after picture shows you a very small street that isn't now open to the public for use. And the East County area, you know, generally experienced a lot of challenges with slides and various kind of movements of the earth. So this is one challenging project we were able to actually implement in a very efficient manner and now open to the public for public use. Here's another one in Howard Echers, West Sands of Boulevard. As you can see the before and after, one of the common complaints that we receive is that people do not have a safe space for walking, cars are parking on pedestrian ways. So we have implemented, as you can see, a very nice sidewalk walking area. It enhances the community It actually is a revitalization effort using Kaplan-Pulman projects of short. So I would say this is what I consider to be a successful project for the Heward-Acker area. And we continue to enhance and implement similar projects in the community. Next. Here's an Casto Valley, Crocanion, very busy, very highly utilized roadway, in a very deteriorating pavement, as you can see, has been completed and now connects a Castovali with San Ramon and throughout that, you know, Cainian road is a very extremely highly utilized road, but right now done in a way that it is now safe and preserved very well. Next. Overall, we also do about 17.9 miles of roadway rehabilitation using overlays, larry seal, or as far rubber ceiling in our ongoing payment management program. This is about a 10 million dollars annual investment in the county that we do ensuring that the investment that the county has made in its infrastructure primary roadways are preserved for a foreseeable future. So this is another big accomplishment of the agency. Next. We also go through various communities who are speeding and various other behaviors that are not necessarily conducive to the communities well-being are witness. So we adapt a neighborhood traffic calming program where we install speed homes. We provide you know speed feedback science to let people know among other things. So this is just one of the efforts that we do to make sure that traffic is mitigated. And unfortunately we get a lot of complaints with people living in the neighborhood behaving badly so we can have to implement some physical barriers to ensure that they behave at least in a the safe manner next. So. and physical barriers to ensure that they behave at least in a safe manner. Next. So those are the accomplishments, hopefully, they give you a test of some of the highlights of what we do. In terms of 25, 26 initiative, like I said, the core business of the agency remains the same. We provide transportation and capital improvement projects. We develop flood control, you know, capital improvement projects to ensure that community has safe and you know, not in and data was flooding and properties are protected and we do that through the Second Initiative. We advance the flood to schools and bridges and road safety, mitigate illegal dumping and graffiti abitments as well as issue building permits inspection. These are like I said, core businesses that has not chained over the years and will continue to do so. And each one of them as you can see are aligned with our shared vision of 2036. Next. I'm finishing up. We do have enhanced road and flood control facility maintenance program. County owns a lot of roadways and flood control assets that have invested billions of dollars and this ongoing maintenance preserve that investment as well as we're always ready to integrate new technologies and enhanced services through and performance by adapting ongoing technologies right now. Actually one of the reason I'm here in a conference is AI is a discussion to leverage AI in order to ensure that we provide highest level of services in the public works environment. So I think it's going to be inevitable that that we need to be adapting this kind of technologies as we move forward to enhance the services that we provide to the community next week. So financial summary, we have an appropriation request of $193.5 million was a revenue of $91.9 million. As you can see, both the revenue and the differences are fairly minor. Our net county cost is only about $57,000, but 4% increase from the previous year. As you can see, we have about 367 FTEs with a spread between 72 and full of management and 281, not management for a total position of 367 and FTE 353. Next, please. Our major county, basically general fund activity, as as you can see the survey program that has an increase of about $2,500.5% or crossing guard which has a 5% increase of about 54,900. So the crossing guard even though considered discretionary service is highly sought out by elementary schools and that's why I say discretionary might be sometime more important than the mandated services because they do protect elementary kids crossing streets and very busy time of people dropping their kids. So we consider that to be a very good program is managed by a consultant, a contractor that is providing the services and I think an increase of 54,000 dollars or 5% is what represents the net county cost for the agency next. So, the series of graphs to show you the financial picture appropriation by major object. As you can see, our core businesses wrote fund and flood control represent most of our expenditures. And the others such as County bridges and service area are contributing small pieces. But by object as you can see, most of the majority of our expenditures and activities are in the road fund and flood control next. This one is again, a proportion by major object as you can see services supplies. Most of our expenditures on contract cost construction contract and southern contracts. So they represent the substantial portion of our activities and salaries and benefits represent the remaining 17% with ISF and operating transfers and other capital equipment representing the remaining small pieces. But the majority, the substantial majority of our expenditures are in services and supply, which translates into construction contracts basically. Next. Revenue by source. Our primary revenue source, we have several of them. The balance transfer has shown. And big number there is 49% is basically the utilization of fund balance. you you all know that we're going to have to set aside certain amount of money in order to be able to deliver some of these projects. So these those funds are considered budget balance transfers or fund balances. The remaining, as you can see, gas tax RMRA represents our transportation. We have property taxes that goes to the flood control activity in addition to the benefit assessments. We have measure Bs and federal state Aids that represent the remaining amount of funds next. In terms of key investments, we have approximately when I add up this number, they come out to be about $136 million and $25.26. As you can see, Floor Control Restoration Project represents $23.3 million and Floor Control Capacity Enhancement at $29 and a series of sidewalk and transportation corridor improvement projects represent the remaining for a total of about approximately $136 million in investments in the community that ensures both flood protection as well as enhanced transportation and pedestrian and bikeways provided to the community. Next. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the next page. I'm going to go to the community next. In terms of major services and revenue by source, as you can see building permits have about five million dollars and really this just gives you a breakdown of how the money is distributed. We do not get a lot of money other than, like I said, that small amounts for a surveyor as well as the crossing guard. Otherwise, all the remaining activities are self-supporting, basically non-general fund activities. And this table just shows you exactly what that is. Next. So in terms of challenges, currently we are doing assessment increases for flood control zone two, four and nine and we should be going through some type of a balloting process in the next couple of months. And I hope maybe we can succeed in securing those funds. We just recently had a meeting at the Catholic CSA in terms of going through the two-a-team process to get the debt service for the $1.4 million that the county advanced to the community. And both of these things are basically subject to the approval of the respective communities. So hopefully if we succeed, this would be a good accomplishment from the agency's point of view. Regulatory challenges remain a challenge for our agency. Environmental permitting is very time consuming and increasingly becoming cumbersome and costly. And yet, we continue to work with the various entities in accommodating these requirements. Emergency response, as you have witnessed in the last couple of years, unusual amount of rain events and various activities are coding a lot of damages to our infrastructure. We have been successful in replacing and repairing most of them. And we will continue to be prepared in case of emergencies to be responsive to the community's need. And funded mandates from the states as well as the feds remain a challenge. So I think that has become the nature of our business and government in general. So we'll continue to be monitoring and operating within those constraints. Staffing and recruitment obviously accelerated staffing turnovers and retirements have continued to be a challenge. The good news is the vacancies generally have been declining. Most importantly, the amount of vacancy that used to be associated with some of the critical positions is declining while we are still anticipating a lot of turnover and movement. Hopefully we will be able to stabilize within the next few years to be able to say we have an operation that's not as impact that has been in the past. The terms of recent announcements, for example, from the Fed's FEMA seems to be backtracking almost on all of our grant application that we have applied for and received. Probably one that would be of interest to supply time will be the SDO Canal and Neptune Drive effort that we had community meetings on. We just recently received a letter from FEMA saying the federal government considered that wasted effort, I guess, on their part. So we probably will not be able to get funding. So we're going to have to really push hard to make sure these benefits assessments go through. So we can have some enough funding to go through some of these projects. Next, please. I think that's the last slide. Thank you, Jan. I'm Daniel. So I'll be happy to answer any question you may have. Thank you, Daniel. I'll ask you a resolution, Miley, to start the questions. Sure. Thank you for that long 15 minute presentation. Daniel, so, yes, you provided the org chart that's something nobody else did. But like you said, you failed to put in the names because I think because there's been turnover in various counties, agencies and departments. We're particularly interested in seeing the org chart and seeing the names of people who are filling these important organizational positions, particularly at the higher executive level. So please provide that. Next thing I was going to ask you about it and you hit on it is the flight control zones 249. Where are we in the process? So we should be coming to your board to have a set the public hearing date and accept the engineering report within the next week or two. I think either the next meeting or meeting after that. So that would provide most of the details and also kickstart the very much aggressive or approach to community education as well as sharing information. So you will be hearing about that in more detail and about a week or two. OK, because I think you know, I've been very eager to see this get underway for the past, you know, I don't know, I'm 10 years. I think the timing, I mean, we've got to look at it and evaluate it, and evaluate it. But the timing with people feeling tax burden, I just don't know, but we still need to get the information and see whether or not we can move forward with any assessment, enhancement. I know this will be a vote of the property owners, right? Yes, that's correct. Yeah, okay. When we came up fingers crossed, see what comes up when you bring that back to us. What's your vacancy rate in your agency? We're about 20 percent but like I said before, I think, you know, the over allancy ratings kind of misnomer I would say once we go through the process of what the kind of administrator mentioned in terms of looking at each position I think we get a better feel as to why would be a good reflection of the vacancy rate so it'd be good to see the vacancy rates by positions rather than overall because there are some positions, for example, internship positions, and these are all counted in into the total. So when you look at those things and add them into the vacancy, that kind of makes it look like you have a large vacancy rate. But from my agency's point of view, I consider our effective vacancy rate to be about 13%. Yet the general average is about an excess of 20. Okay because I think all agencies other than the child support department if they can see right if around 20 or so and I was going on that putting a value on whether that that's good or bad, but hopefully we'll get more information about that from the county administrator to time. Then what's the status of the San Lorenzo Creek trail as an initiative? Or capital sound arrangements of Creek, you talking to the project where we received funding from. Yeah, from MTC. Yeah, so we're going through right now working with hard. As you know, hard is taking the lead in doing some of the design work. So we are right now putting together an agreement with hard to kind of advance some of the work to be done. We finally, as you know, got housing element done. So it was recently that the MTC has given us a green light as to the availability of the funding. So we should be fully engaging now on that project working with heart. With that becoming Dylan corporate services or TMP for an update because I know heart's asking about it? At some point we will have to come to both bodies most likely but at this time I don't think we have the agreements in place yet. Okay, all right, thanks. Very good supervisor, Tam. Thank you, President Halbert. And thank you, Daniel, for anticipating my questions. My district covers a lot of the projects that you were mentioning. And the Mayor of San Leandro wanted media, especially convey that he appreciated the good work you did and the innovation with the San Leandro Creek tree management But the question I had is the one that you spotted on the SDO canal tide gate So I'm assuming that the FY 2025 26 maintenance of ever for flood control capacity improvements of 29 million does not include Funding to make those repairs at the tight gate I will have to validate that for you because we will do that during the capital budget presentation however We were in a state of flux. I think it does include those projects, but with some caveat, probably an asterisk that says subject to female approval. So I'll have to verify and get you that number. Okay, I appreciate that similarly with the assessment because we're trying to obviously emphasize that the flood control districts' assessments are going to be helpful to making some of those needed repairs. Can you just clarify FEMA's or the federal government's rationale for not funding this project? Well, the letter they wrote sounds more of a typical general rhetoric about this was a political Western decision at some time in the past. So they did not give any project specific evaluation, but the letter which I will forward to your office as well as the city of San Leandro is really basically saying that FEMA rejected the previous decisions and not just specific to this project. All project associated with what they call building resiliency and infrastructure and community threats. So they are considering them to be more of a political pork battle project that was done in the past. So I would say they are not making any technical analysis on a project by project basis. Yeah, I mean, basically it seems arbitrary because they approved that they were giving us indications that this is appropriate and then there's an about face without any real explanation. But you know, that's kind of the state we're in right now. In terms of like looking at the searching gears, Lake Shabal Road. Do we, I know part of it's owned by the county and we did some maintenance repairs, but I keep getting the sense that the repairs that we did are not as robust as what the portion that's in the city of San Leandro's part is is that true? Well, there's a different location different kind of failures, but it's Would have closed down our portion of the roadway so the magnitude might be different and I Honestly speaking, I don't understand why the city of San Leandro is not really pursuing and getting at least a geotechnical engineering group to kind of look at it and give them a sense as to why they would take to fix it. So they have been very much not, I mean, I don't think they're operating on a data driven fashion at this time. So Okay, so our project if we hadn't done ours, it would have shut down the county's portion also, but we Manning to fix it faster and better. I appreciate that because I was told our portion was around 400,000 but Speaking to President Halbert in his capacity as president of ACTC, as chair of ACTC, perhaps we should look at an engineering cost study just for that portion of debts that's in need of repair because it's almost as bad as Tesla road and devil slide in terms of some of the failure areas. We'll put that on the to-do list. Thank you. Questions I have, Daniel. If we could go to the slide, Plumber Creek Bank Restoration. And before I go here, I just want to say thank you for the road repairs that you've done around the flooding where we had repairs to the road where I think several roads actually collapsed into the creek. I know you worked with CalTrans on that. Mine's road, a landslide. We have a slide on that. The tree trimming along Foothill Road in Pleasanton. You've done a great job. But a couple of questions that I have. And if we could go to the slide, Plumber Creek Bank Restoration. Yes. No, I don't know who's over there monitoring, but I'm looking at that if you have the staff might bring it up. Who on our staff is running the slides? Oh, okay, thank you. We'll get there real quick. There are no page numbers on here so I can't tell you what page it is. It note the before shows the bank and is that a railway above it? Yes. Okay. And clearly the after shows much more fortified bank further away from the rail line. That's a great preventative maintenance project. I look at the next slide, line G bank restoration downstream. That's the next slide. I see that Carol rather line G bank. Carol Cree, is he out? The Cree, is he out? About ready to go into the Carol Avenue in Fremont. And the appter shows a very similar bank fortification that clearly protects Carol Avenue. And if I go to, that's a great preventative maintenance project. If I go two slides down to Tesla Road, mile marker 9.5. Now here's a picture of a project where the before has the road collapse. The after looks like it's probably not going to collapse anytime soon. Great job, but we have to get ahead of these so that we are preventing that because people couldn't get in and out of their homes for months. Well, I don't know, this one might have had a lane one way each way, but at any rate, really good work. I'm just, we got to get ahead of these. And with regard to the canal, I note that we've had a lot of discussion in unincorporated county, those other bank restoration projects are in the city of Fremont, city of New York, but in our own unincorporated county, Niles Canyon Road, the Arroyo, and the other creeks that go through Sanol have a lot more trees, a lot more, well we've had slides where the roads fall into the creek. I just want to make sure, and I note we have $134 million in a budget for flood control, which is our remaining budget. If I look at that slide on page, I don't know where the slide is, but I note that we have 134 estimated available fund balance for flood control. I'm just going to call out that I think we have a ways to go in regard to that creek. And so if we could spend time spending those funds if we can in a preventative way, I think ounce of prevention's worth a pound of cure and rather than have roads fall into the creek again. Let's please try to clean the vegetation out the dead trees if we can. But the pictures that I show before and after of the creeks, clearly we were able to clean some of that stuff out. And if you look at before and if you look at after, and I just note that we've had a lot of issues with residents feeling that the creeks in an unincorporated part of our county are not being looked at well enough. So if I may, you know, Senor is in zone seven. So zone seven is responsible for the creek maintenance and operations. And as you know, fluck control district is countywide does not necessarily do unincorporated versus incorporated and recent as the last several storm events. We've done a lot of work on our studio canal and I think I've shared with you board various Similar type of presentations where where the things have fallen in and we've gone out there and fixed the problem So so we will continue to do this bioengineered solutions. So whatever see, this cricks failing. And as you know, each district, each zone in flood control is independent of each other. So funding is associated with each zone. So that's why we coming with zone 29 and four for additional funding because those zones specifically lack the necessary funds to do the work. However, I think some of the ones you raised are primarily in zone seven jurisdiction. The other thing I want to highlight is not all creeks are, even though they are within the district, they're not part of the district system because a substantial portion of these cricks are privately owned and private property. So there's a lot of room for discussions as we move forward but public work is always prepared to jump in and do what it takes to ensure that we are responsible for our managed and fixed appropriately. Well, we're going to get to the bottom of who's responsible for which square foot of creek is responsible for each one. Yes. I promise you that. All right. Thank you. With that said, one last follow-up question from supervisor May. Yes. Two things. Daniel, of your nearly $400 million budget, do you know what percentage is allocated towards the unincorporated area? Well, as you know, primarily all of our transportation expenditure is in an incorporated area. We don't do any transportation work within incorporated cities. So we are municipal service provider for the unincorporated area when it comes to transportation, which means sidewalk roads and all those things. In terms of flood control, I think as you know, zone two primarily includes Castro Valley and the San Lorenzo area. So that can be simply identified. However, if you, you know, when you look at zone 12, it's entirely Auckland and Amreville. If you go to zone five and six, there's free-man, no work and all those areas. So, but when it comes to transportation, 100% of the services that we provide, when it comes to building permits, 100% of the services we provide are all unincorporated services. All right, so if you could provide us with just the percentage of that 391 million or 393 million, the percentage that for unincorporated area, that would be, you know, East County and urban. I just I just we're just curious then we can get a breakdown later on and then back on Lake Shippo Road and I spoke with Supervisor Tam about this believe it was last week in our office knows as well. I think you know to Daniel we're going to be setting up a meeting with ACTC to talk about what we can do relative to the portion of Lake Shiboh Road. That's in the jurisdiction of San Leandro. So just wanted to stay that because since we provided a damn race, I wanted to make sure it was transparency around that. Very good. Thank you. Seeing no other questions, we'll move on to the next presentation. Thank you, Daniel. Great job. Appreciate you. Thank you. One is a community development agency, followed by the assessor, followed by the sheriff, after which time we will take a lunch break. Thank you. Welcome. Good afternoon supervisors. I can get some help. We're only an hour and a half behind. Only an hour and a half. That's not too bad. I think relative to other other be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a person who is not going to be a Before I get started, I do want to thank your Board, of course, for supporting CDA programs and as well as our finance and administrative department and our department heads for putting together the budget for this year for your board's consideration. And I'd like to start with a few slides that note some of our programs over the last year. And as you know, CDA has many distinct departments that do a variety of services. And I'll as quickly as I can give you some highlights and note that they're not as exhaustive in any way. Next slide. So. Okay. Thanks. I think when I pushed the button, it goes too fast. So I'll let you do that. Thanks. So, our mission is to enhance the quality of life of our residents and plan for the future well-being of the county's diverse community. And of course, we accomplished this in a variety of ways and it's reflected in each of our department's programs. Next slide. So some of our mandated programs, it's long list here, but just as a few highlights, we prepare and update and implement the county's general plan. We ensure and enforce required land use permits. We enforce the California's food and agricultural codes and the California Business and Professions Code. And we we administer the measure A when affordable housing general obligation bond program, as well as provide case management and environmental investigation of lead exposed children. Next, we also under discretionary, and it's been a lot of discussion this time, is our discretionary services. There's quite a few here too. We enforce ordinances, including zoning, neighborhood preservation, junk vehicle, as well as tobacco retailing and other ordinances. We also provide case management of lead poison children. We manage unincorporated areas housing programs. We carry out local economic and civic development activities, including support for unincorporated small-area businesses. We also help open space land managers minimize fire risk through a statement of not just weeds and pests next. So starting with our planning department, we have a couple of violence that speak to general plant updates. Our general plan has many different components, as you know, and it's always being updated. Here we have the housing element. Of course, it's a very important part of the general plan. And it serves as a blueprint for housing development in the unincorporated area. And it addresses the state requirements to meet the regional housing needs. And that's for all housing at all different income levels. So your board had approved it and it was certified by the state in last year and implementation is underway. We also have the environmental justice element also part of the general plan. And in this plan, it identifies disadvantaged communities in an unincorporated area and provides the roadmap to facilitate transparency and public engagement as well as as pro-access the Healthy Food Options, Housing, and Public Facilities and Recreation. The element was adopted by the board and then implementation is beginning as well. As you know, the Code Enforcement Division is in our planning department, and these photos show enforcement in the neighborhood preservation ordinance in San Lorenzo. They also enforce the junk vehicle and zoning ordinance and support various programs including tobacco retail license and group homes task force as well as a complaint-based rental inspection program. The department also updates plans the general plan and zoning ordinance with amendments to address community needs and they do that that all the time and as well as for reasons of changes in state legislation and regulation. So one proposed amendment in the East County area plan allows the clustering of parcels and development envelopes to incentivize agriculture tourism. And that's in the south of Livermore area. And the public process and environmental review were completed and your board would be considering for adoption next month. Next. Housing Community Development Department is the one you know very well. You've probably seen this department and most in the past few years as the Housing Crisis made their services, particularly critical. We have a couple of many of the programs noted here. You see in the upper right hand corner we have the Alamed County Housing Secure Program that provides legal and social services throughout the county to prevent the displace of low income tenants and as well as for closures for low income house homeowners. This program began in 2018, served over 4,000 clients to date, and over 90% of the clients who receive representation are able to reach a more stable housing situation and avoid homelessness. We also want to note in the lower left-hand corner as part of HID's programs that serves unsheltered community, we have a great partner, and it's the first press material inian church and they're located in Grove Wayne, Castro Valley. They work directly with unhoused community or at risk of experiencing homelessness. They provide shelter services drop in resource center, safe parking as well as tiny homes. So they serve as a major entry point for unhoused residents into the homeless care system in the unaccompanied area. Of course, we are getting new affordable housing projects online throughout the county on a continual basis. And so here we show two multifamily rental projects. We upper Lafayette Encourers Barana Hills apartments, and that's an Albany. And that provides 62 new apartments serving low income households. serving low income. On the lower right hand is a depot community apartments located in Hayward. It's also a new permanent supportive housing. And they'll provide 125 units, 63 units, will target households that are experiencing homelessness and 45 of those units will be for extremely low income households. And these units for those households are referred to the coordinator entry system. And so not pictured here, but we'd like to note there's several other affordable rental housing developments that are in construction this year as well, during Castro Valley, Fremont, Oakland, and Dublin. Next, we also have our Healthy Homes Department. Formally our Lead Poison Prevention Program steal the main program of what they do. So you see classic work where they facilitate and support the removal of hazardous and loose peeling lead paint to get it stabilized. Top right, you see a photo of community members. They participate in the chairland Easter egg hunt and they provide families with resources and promoted how important it is to keep children to keep lead poisoning and what prevention and what what they can do to harm children. And of the many other programs they do, they also have four public health nurses in the department to provide case management. I'd also like to note that departments in the process of selecting a consultant to analyze the feasibility and options to increase the assessment amount of the $10 per assessedcess parcel and expansion of jurisdictional boundaries of the Joint Powers Authority. We expect to have the analysis completed late summer early fall and we'll coordinate that with the county administrator to schedule a presentation of that analysis to the board. Next, we also have the Economic and Civic Development Department and it's for our former redevelopment agency. They play an important role in supporting development of our budding entrepreneurs to build wealth in our unincorporated county through their small business assistance as well as the training programs and that builds capacity, technical and financial support for qualified small businesses. So we have graduates from our Food Entrepreneurship Training Academy shown there and the top left. You also have updates from our Historic Lorenzo Theatre, which we purchased in the under redevelopment many years ago. There you have an interior photo of the theatre in the 1940s when it was still operating as a film theater and as well as the photo of the current interior rehabilitation. The lower left corner is the facade improvement program. It's been running for a while and that's where unincorporated businesses can receive grants for designing the destruction of exterior building improvements. They can get grants from anywhere from 40 to 80,000 per grant. And then the departments, Eden, area, wayfinding signage programs, one of the many community improvement projects they have, you can see the design of the proposed wayfinding gateway signage on the lower right, the design of the wayfinding signs and community public processes complete, and they affected community groups, municipal advisory councils, as well as the Unaccompanied Services Committee have shown support for the program. And so we'll bring that to the full board for approval in the coming months. Next. For our agricultural weights and measures department, they have some classic programs that they do here. One of the most essential things they do, they don't get much attention, is the pest detection program, and it surveys the county for invasive pests that can be destructive to the agricultural community. One of the components of the pest detection program is the dog team, and we're one of nine counties in the state that are selected to participate in the program. So that's a picture of Sheila or dog handle and her detection dog Draco and they're both new teams. So now we have two dog teams and the program is fully funded by the CDFA contract. So the department has also the weights and measures division and they inspect all types of scales and devices throughout the county, make sure they're working properly to protect consumers. And this photo, the department is inspecting and registering retail gas fueling pumps. And in this case, there is a credit card skimming device at the gas pump in the team coordinated with the Sheriff's Department. Also for our Pest Society Use use enforcement program, they regulate all PESSA side use. And so PESSA dealers are routinely inspected for compliance. The Department provides training as well on PES management practices and on top right, Cornice staff monitoring, communication, and a flower mill. And the department also works with local farmers markets to ensure compliance with state regulations and that produce must be grown by the seller and properly labeled and use scales that verify accuracy. So farmers markets located in our Medfly quarantine zone, which is currently in southern parts of Hayward, Fremont, Newark, and Yeehan City. They ensure that safety measures are in place to prevent the spread of that pest while still allowing markets to operate. Next. Our final slide with respect to the highlights of our agency activities is the University of California Cooperative Extension. It's sort of an adjunct to the Ag Department. It's a partnership program. It's primarily run through the UC Extension and or happy the part of the CD18. They deliver a range of locally relevant programs focusing on farm environment nutrition or age development, science literacy and urban agriculture and horticulture. Next. We have some key investments for our maintenance of effort budget and just some height there's a lot of tax here. It's 1.5 million in economic and civic development programs, 3.3 million in community development program programs and that fund's support for meals on wheels, accessibility improvements, minor home repair, housing counseling, and food distribution programs. We also have six million in home funding and that supports affordable housing development, tenant rental assistance, and that's partnerships with cities. We have 4.3 million from shelter crisis affordable housing fund, that supports county housing AC housing Secure our housing capacity program as well as transitional housing and safe parking sites We also have 13 million from permit local housing allocation funding and that supports housing related projects and that's along with the city of Oakland for PLHA funding. That's 1 million for general plan maintenance, 6.1 million in HUD letter batement, CSA assessment and state health programs and that supports lead poisoning prevention. We have 5.5 million to protect agriculture and 1.6 million to support inspections of weighing and measuring devices. Next. So with that, we'll dive into the financial budget slides and note that measure A1 in surplus property authority is not part of the MLE budget. And our first slide is appropriations by department. And you'll see that our appropriated citizens are nearly 81 million. and the chart shows the typical pattern for CDA where the largest percentage of the pie is by far HCD at 45%. Those funds are most entirely by a federal pass through and state funds. They typically come from an array of programs that are constant like community development blank block grants, home and hopper or housing for opportunities for persons with AIDS funding, and more recently is the permanent local housing allocation. We also have healthy homes, department at 15% share of the appropriations, and that customers see from their lead testing and abatement and their training capacity building programs. And it's followed by the planning department and agricultural weights and measures departments at 13% each in their share of appropriation that comes primarily from salary and employee benefits. Next. Total appropriations are the same, of course, as the previous slide, but this slide is breaking down appropriations by major object. You see discretionary service and supplies are by far the biggest component next to salaries and employee benefits at 37%, but 55% goes to discretionary services and supplies. And again, that's dominated by a few departments mostly HCD. and it's the progress I mentioned earlier, home, CDBG, permanent local housing. Contracts make up 79% of discretionary service and supplies. The other departments contribute less to that lesser extent to that percentage. So the planning department has consultants that they use for general plan maintenance, Our economic civic development department has contractors for civic events, signage programs, marketing promotion, as well as dealings with the Lorenzo Theatre. And Healthy Homes has contracts for testing and abatement services for lead hazards. Next. The total revenue projected is 61.3 million. So when you look at revenue by source, the federal and state make up the largest share at 23 and 33% respectively. We have a range of other revenue sources that come in. And CDA agency has a lot of different funding streams in our diverse departments next. So our summary slide, as you can see, the change in appropriations has for 2425 from 2425, is the net decrease of 7.9 million or decrease of 8.9%. And it's a primarily attributed to HCD's reduction in home and MTC one-time funding. And for revenue, the decrease is 8.9 million or 12.7%. And that aligns of course with the appropriations and it again primarily attributed to Hd's one-time funding of home and MTC funds CDs maintenance of effort requests for additional net county costs is increased of 5.1 percent and this increases primarily from salary and employee benefits cola and ISF or internal service funds. And 24% of the appropriations in that county cost. We also have no change in total FTEs, though we do have a minor change from non-management FTE to a management FTE. Next. This is a quick reference slide to measure a general obligation bond, which of course supports affordable housing countywide. Allocations of measure is not part of the financial presentation, but it is part of the work that we do. So 504 million or 87% has been committed to the housing program, such as the Affordable Rental Housing Development, Down Payment Assistance Program. We administer the program and projects are preyed directly through measure A1. So as funds in the program are winding down, we're analyzing possible funding options to continue addressing the critical housing challenges. And so at the health committee yesterday, affordable housing funding options were presented. The committee approved staff moving forward with a qualified polling firm to evaluate possible options for future ballot measures. And for affordable housing revenue source. So the details of the program, so we presented at the health and Social Services Committee meeting in May. Next. So, CDA programs aligned with Vision 236 goals and operating principles. Next, couple slides show an extract of the CDA programs for fiscal year 2526 and for your reference. So, in an interest of time, I'll leave that for your reference. Next, next, and move into potential impacts. So our final slide is on potential impacts and at the federal level, we're hearing from our contacts at HUD that there are potential threats, of course, to funding due to shifting priorities and budget cuts. Our key agencies like HUD and EPA and CDC, which support light hazard control, mold and remediation, are at risk of reduced allocations. And so these cuts could limit services and interventions that protect families from unsafe housing conditions. Another HUD program, of course, is community development block grant. And if these funds are eliminated, it would have reduced effects of our minor home repair program. And that's administered by our Healthy Homes Department. And if Urban County Cities also lose Community Development Block Grant funds, our Urban County Cities Albany, Dublin, and Reveal and Newark and Piedmont, they could lose some program funds for Meals on Wheels, some homeless programs, as well as accessibility projects. Another home project, which is a larger funding source is the home partnerships program. And that would impact low income families that receive tenant-based rental assistance from the home consortium cities. And that loss of assistance, of course, could lead to increased homelessness. And home funds are also used to assist affordable housing developers to build affordable units for extremely low and low income families. At the state level, a Cal Fire awarded the county nearly a $700,000 grant, but we've received a request from Cal Fire that we put the implementation of the project on hold of the Urban Forest, Urban Forest Greening Plan, and that's for the unincorporated area, to put that project on hold until the status of the funds become clear. We also have at the state level the agricultural programs. We haven't heard anything definitive on these programs, but with regard to our pest detection program, the state's asking departments, we understand that the state is asking their departments to prepare a budget with an 8% reduction. And so how those reduction will affect the Farm Bill programs is uncertain at this point, but the programs do have federal funds and it is channeled through the state and comes to the counties. And next, so to conclude, I would like to reiterate the pre-shoot for your board support of CDA programs. And again, thank the CDA team and all the work that they do to improve the quality of life of our residents in the county and as well as the businesses. And so thank you for your time and if you have any questions be happy to come. Thank you for your presentation. I thank you for your situational awareness also knowing that we didn't have to read every word on slides we can read them. Great job job. We're going to go for questions with supervisor Tam, then Marquez, then Fortinato Vast and Miley. Thank you, President Halbert. Just a couple of quick questions. First, wanted to come in you for the work that you did your team did with the Environmental Justice element. That was very while we see at the unincorporated service community. And then I know the housing element was a challenge, but getting that done was really critical to Daniel getting his funding from other cities, which is important. The question I had around your budget is, you know, HCD housing and community development along with shelter and crisis and affordable housing, that makes up like almost half of your budget, right? But when you look at the appropriations, you were moving about $7.9 million in reductions, about 8.9% reductions in appropriations from 2024, 25 to 25, 26, when essentially the homeless care and coordination moved to Alameda County Health was funding proportionately moved over as well. Yes, and it's not reflected this fiscal year last fiscal year it showed the larger move. So the contracts that were associated with the homeless division that was in our HCD formally in our HCD department. That move, their funding sources as well as staff and it was about 12 staff that moved along with, I want to say 65 contracts that went with it. So okay, 65 contracts but they're looking at staffing up and using $4.5 million initially and then they're contemplating the use of measure W funding. So that's in addition to what was moved over from HCD. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Supervisor Marquez. Thank you, President Hubbard. I just wanted to commend your team. I got some really positive feedback about the egg hunt at Meek Manchin this past weekend. Your staff was there and engaging with the community and there was a lot of positive interactions. And I see that noted the engagement throughout the year. So thank you for that presence. I also wanted to commend. I know we had some challenges around the housing element. And last week at Planning Commission, we got an update. So just want to reiterate how important it is to me that we have this updated work session item. I think we're shooting for July to look at next steps with respect to tenant protections. This is alignment with our 2030 Circs goals to end homelessness and we want to make sure that we're doing everything possible to prevent displacement in this community. So just think your team around those efforts and was excited to hear about the update at Health Committee yesterday. I know we need to figure out next steps with respect to measure a one housing bond. So really commend your staff for getting ahead of that and being proactive. And I know we've got some major decisions to make, but I think a lot of us here in support of, we saw the benefits of that investment. So we want to see more people have the opportunity to continue to live in our community. So thank your team for the great work around that. Thanks. Supervisor Forza, not a bad. Thank you, President Habert. And thank you, Sandy, for your very thorough report. I also wanted to reiterate my thanks for yesterday's or Monday's presentation at the Health Committee so that we can start thinking about housing funding and appreciate you highlighting the potential impacts from the Federal Administration. There's clearly a number of programs that are very critical to keep people housed and to help homeowners as well as renters remain secure. I do have one question which is what is the amount of investment currently to Alameda Housing Secure? The current contracting that we have for Alameda County Housing Secure. I'm sorry I couldn't look it up in the budget bucket. Yeah I'll have to take a quick take. But let's see if I can I have it really quickly but if you don't I'll look it up I have the budget book here. I'm largely asking because given potential inflation costs of goods and other instability I do want to sort of monitor what the need might be in terms of keeping people housed. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Miley. Yes, thanks. So what is your vacancy rate? Pardon? What is your vacancy rate? It's at 12 percent but if you we reconcile it with a field, fill our analysis about it's at 6 percent. Okay very nice okay and then I've been asking all the county agencies or departments depending to provide their work chart your one organization or agency that I know it's streaming well because I meet with you and your executive folks from all your departments monthly. So I don't necessarily need it but you might want to furnish it just for continuity because I know all your people extremely well. In terms of the JPA for the lead. So I'm glad you mentioned that because you know that's something that I've been Trying to have the county move forward on for a decade. You know going for as far back as supervisor Alice like Bicker so the unfortunate thing is By the time we queue that up we might depending on the housing bond, depending on the flood control assessment, depending on all of those competing needs. We might have to hold off, but we'll see. We're just going to keep advancing. You see where everything lands in the mix because we do have a number of things. Hopefully we'll be looking at in 2026, but if we can do the JPA at that point in time, then I'll be a little disappointed, but we'll just see how it all plays out. The other thing is, very much appreciate the work that the agency's done, but I think it's like Supervisor Bass pointing out about the housing and Supervisor Mark kids, about keeping people housed, you know, that measured W of funds, we can use parental assistance in child subsidies. So once again, that's a need, this agency has, but also this agency has a need for at least one additional code inspector because we need, where we had redevelopment, we had additional code inspectors. In fact, we assigned staff to code inspection from redevelopment, but we no longer have that any longer. And there's that's there's a lot of concern in that in corporate area around code inspection. You know, I live in Oakland with Super Raj Bass, and we don't want things to get out of hand. They don't know not to respect the surprise of bass, but you know, because we both lived in Oakland. But the point is, we want to make sure we have ample code inspection taking place out there in code inspection. And if we're looking at, for instance, a proactive code inspection when it comes to rental units, we need that additional person too. So I just wanted to flag that for the board because once again, those are might might be resources we can utilize with measure W. Thank you supervisor Miley I agree head count is super important I'll note that we've also talked for a long time about a permit coordinator whether it sits in CDA or another department or reports directly to the board remains to be seen, but we need a body there. With regard to the appropriation slide that talks about going from 88.8 million to 80.9 million, I don't know if we can put that slide back up, but appropriations went down by 7.9 million. Revenue went down by 8.9 million. So, I mean, if we're going to reduce revenue, I think it was a program that either ended one time funding from MTC. It was one time funding. So we received funding for MTC as well as from home home and that was one time funding and it was 7.7 million from home and another 2 million from MTC. So you're seeing that large drop and those are primarily the reasons why we have that reduction. I guess if revenues going to go down by 8 million I would think that appropriations should go down by eight point eight million. They're in line. There's a few other reductions. But add up, you know, there's many different departments. But then the net is a little bit more than those two. Following slide, thank you. The following slide measure A1 funding by program. How much of that I see homeowner development, housing preservation, down payment assistance, innovation, acquisition and opportunity? This is... We slide it in. We just slide that one. Yep. How much of that, if any, is shallow subsidies? Is that housing preservation? 34 million? For, this is only for capital, for measure A1. All right. How much have we been able to put into shallow subsidies? We do have a program so the down payment we have two programs. One is for I guess they we call it eight. They're either AC a boost or HPLP and And so, whichever program, then you wanna call it. One is for assisting in terms of rehabilitation of home ownership, their home properties, and then the other is to help for down payment assistance to get people started in home ownership. Okay, very good. Well, I'll just echo Supervisor Miley's comments that measure W can be used for rental assistance. I'm gonna be looking for that to be the case. I note that there's sort of a domino effect. If you can keep people out of homelessness, then Anika doesn't have to worry about them being homeless. Absolutely. And we have food assistance in CDA. We have food assistance in social services. We have food assistance in healthcare. And so, I mean, at some point, it's all interrelated. And we, you know, with budgets being tight, we have to just really be. And we do work closely with our colleagues in the other agencies. Sometimes it's dependent on the funding source. And of course, for CDA, we also act as a housing department for the unincorporated area. So there might be some other progress that we might implement just as a city's implement programs for their community. Very good. Thank you again for the presentation. Seeing no other questions, Supervisor Mindy-Following. Yeah. Can you also provide what portion of your budget of the $80 million goes towards the unincorporated area? Just what portion? That amount, at least that we, of course, there are some programs that are county-wide. So it's a little bit harder to parse out, but at least from the net county cost, we were looking at maybe 61%. 61%? OK. And then I just wanted with President Howard, he mentioned the permitting person. And I just wanted to surprise here, President Howard, to know that I've committed to talk to the county administrator about that. And I have talked with her and I said we would bring come back to your translation planning committee with the report on that. on that because it's part of the whole Exploration around an office of unincorporated services. Yeah, very good. Thank you appreciate that Thank you again for the presentation great job. We'll move now to our county assessor who's been allocated 15 minutes presentation just Case you don't know who I am, does my name tag? And I was told that one of you asked for an organization chart with name. So thank you very much Dave for handing that out. I got great staff. They're listening all day. You're now supervisor Miley's favorite department, I think. I was his favorite when I made that bad joke. He laughed. He was the only one in the room that laughed. All right, good afternoon everyone. My name is Phon Law. I was told many years ago not to speak with government my mouth. I am your county assessor. This is my maintenance of effort budget. I want to start off by scaring you like a do-ever-year and this is the first scare. So we have a pretty bad economy right now in terms of what's happening with our office market or some of our multifamily market and industrial market. We have over 600 million dollars of tax money, not assessed value, actual tax dollars are in dispute right now. We have more appeals this year and expecting more next year than I have seen since I've been a assessor for the last six years. The only other time we had this many appeals is during the great recession. But during that time, it was almost all residential property. This is large office complexes, large multi-family buildings, large industrial properties. We're going to need some help. This is just the beginning. I want to start by thanking County Council and the Clerk of the Board We work greatly we work very well with them and they have done a lot to help us. We're gonna need more We started the process of having County Council more involved in these very large high-value appeals Typically the appellant the taxpayer has a lawyer representing them historically in the past our office did not Now we do thank you to County Council for helping us with that. We're working with the County Administrators Office to figure out how we get more resources to our office in this coming year as well in terms of helping us with these appeals. All right, the good news. The assessment role, the property tax role continues to increase. We are not seeing as big of an increase as we did in years past. This year we're projecting about a 3.5% increase, which is the lowest increase I've seen in six years, but it is still an increase. What's happening in our office? Employee count is the same. Our net carrying cost is going up in a large part of it is the salary and benefits that have gone up dramatically. And we have more internal service fund costs to ITD and other agencies that help us do what we need to do. Same slide here showing the increase in our budget of about low under 5% and large part because of the increase in salaries. Our full time employee account is the same. And I was told there was a question about our vacancy rate. So we have an untrue vacancy rate of 11%. And I say untrue because we have positions are open but we use those funds to pay for other positions that we need at this time. For instance, when I first became the assessor, we needed more people to help us with exemptions, churches, schools, affordable housing. We have a lot more affordable housing applicants now than we did six years ago. So I moved that money unofficially to hire more people to help with that area. This coming year, we're going to have to hire more people to help with our appeals. So we're going to shift some of that back. So although there are vacant positions, those monies for those vacant positions are used to fund other positions that are unfunded. So in actuality, assessor's office is not, doesn't have any vacancies because of that. Because we're always very good about shifting our resources to where it's needed. Yeah, you don't need to know about that. You don't need to know about that either. All right. Any questions? Supervisor Miley, then, fortune out of that. Okay. And then, then, then, then, I appreciate the Godfather, Godfather, Fung Law. You don't know. He's like a mafia boss having this for us in a good way, Sheriff, good way I think the sheriff the a understand what I'm talking about so I appreciate you having this Godfather von law and Whatever we can do to continue to support you and your endeavors. We're here for you. Thank you so much sir I'm gonna put this over here because I told the sheriff. I'm gonna share that table Clearly supervising my life your enthusiasm Comes out when we're a little late for lunch. Maybe those sugar Well, well quickly who's mecha which one's mecha? Great okay, all right great cuz my granddaughter, her name is Mika too. Supervisor Forza and Abastani questions. I would love to say no, but I am new. So I do want to just underscore your role is really important And you helped is the largest sources of general fund revenue correct and you help to bring that in. Would you say that your department is largely sort of self-sustaining or are their general fund revenues or other revenues that you rely on even though property taxes are generally going up? So we don't get so we don't get full reimbursements for our services from all the agencies. The State of California does not allow us to get back our costs from the school districts, for instance. So we do recover some of our costs from the cities and special districts, but the remaining bulk, as you know, is schools. And so the county has to fund our office for that portion to cover the schools and the county's own chair. So more than half, let's say close to two thirds is not covered, so the county has to cover us. And I'm going to give you a little bit of bad news supervisor. The two cities that have the lowest increase are Emoryville and Oakland. And we're projecting about 2% for Emoryville and about 2.5 for Oakland. I'm going to have to have a hard discussion with whoever's the next mayor after it's night. Thank you. Suvazier Marquez. Thank you, President. Thank you for always keeping your presentation light and humorous. It's always good to see you. I'm very concerned about the number of appeals. I see that it says year to date. So how many understand, even though we're in 2025, what's the deadline to appeal for 24? So when someone appealed in 2012, where it was the deadline was September 15th, 2024, they filed with the clerk of the board. And the clerk of the board over the next six months to a year shifts, once it input into the system, they send it to us. So we can get them anywhere from September 16, 2024, through this summer and into the fall. So they still are coming downstairs. I say downstairs, the click of the boards on the fifth floor or on the first floor. So it comes down to us over that period of time. So we don't know the exact count yet, but our projection is gonna be pretty correct. And then this coming year, the assessment notices go out in July. We'll finish them June. They get printed, sent out in July. And then the taxpayer has until September 15th of this year to file for this coming tax bill. And that's where we're projecting the biggest amount to come in, because we see this economy changing dramatically. We've already started giving some proactive reductions. That was one of the things that I I committed to the taxpayers of the county that once I see this we're gonna start early but there's gonna be a lot that we're gonna miss. There are 500,000 parcels in the Alameda County. We have a system that is very important. We have a system little chip of the book of the board and we are on top of it. Okay, we do not let those slip this trend of this high appeal rate is this common in surrounding counties or we this is San Francisco is seeing the worst of it right now. I saw as the Bay Area region. San Francisco has over 8,000 peels this last year. I just had a conversation with their assessor and they are big time. So are we talking to our state legislators? This is extremely problematic and unacceptable. There's gotta be something that can be done like minimum because that'd pay at least something like this is crazy to me. I think conversations that we've had with the state and the state has been very supportive of us and I give them credit for understanding what we do and being supportive. But I think if you talk to most members of the state legislature, they see this as a county issue that making sure that the assessors get the support they need is a county responsibility. They have in the last three years given us money for IT improvements so that we have statewide systems because we all do the same work and our belief is the state should help us pay for some of that so they gave us $30 million and we are building out an IT system for exemptions, nonprofit organizations, churches, affordable housing to file their forms online so we can track it right now every kind does it manually with paper. So the state has stepped in in those areas and given us support. I can't see them stepping in and saying, we're gonna give you a million dollars to help you pay for your attorneys to help us. Okay, do we have to take the pills in order or became we take the actors that we know are profiting money off our community? We can take them in whatever order, the clerk of the board decides to move forward. They do it in consultation with the assessor's office, But we typically take the ones that we know are gonna be able to resolve real quickly. Someone, someone. move forward. They do it in consultation with the assessor's office, but we typically take the ones that we know are going to be able to resolve real quickly. Some of them we know deserve a reduction. We're seeing it downtown Oakland right now, for instance. We're seeing a lot of transactions where properties are now being sold. There was just one building that initially was assessed at about 30 million dollars. It was just sold for five million. So we're beginning to see that coming through. Our data is always lagging because we have to wait until it goes through and then we can see whether there's a legitimate sale or not. So we're beginning to see that data. So we're proactively making a lot of these reductions now. And with the appeals, we're pulling the ones that we think are valid and that we're We're trying to negotiate with them and come to a stipulated agreement to say, hey, this we're at. So that way the city is also, and school districts also know what they're going to get. We're actually meeting with the heads of all the finance departments for each city and a special district tomorrow to give them these numbers. So we just emailed them the numbers on Monday. We meet with them on Wednesday, and we're gonna walk through any questions they have. So they know what to put into their local budgets. Okay. I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. This is very unfortunate to hear. I am gonna ask that we get a status update in six months where we currently are. Thank you. Absolutely. Supervisor Tam. Thank you, President Howard. Thank you, Mr. Sessor, for your presentation. Following up on Supervisor Marquez's question, the trending is from year to year. So from 2022 to 2023, you saw a 72% increase. But then you're seeing about like a 13% and 15% increase between the subsequent years, but you're expecting the trend to increase significantly beyond the 13%? So, so 2022 was the peak of the real estate market. 2022 is where we saw it just kind of just, there's amazing how much people were paying for some of these properties. 2023 was the start of the fall. Twenty four, it hit more interest rates started going up. This year we're seeing interest rates continuous at a high level. We're seeing properties going to receive a ship from foreclosure. We saw the downtown Marriott default on their loan. For those of you who are familiar with San Francisco, the biggest default and it just entered receivership was Parkmer said, which is a $2 billion property. It just went into receivership. So we're seeing that here in Alameda County now too. San Francisco sneezes and we get a cold, right?? Oakland's office market was propped up by the fact that San Francisco was filled and they were demanding high prices so people started shifting over to Oakland. All of a sudden, COVID happened, the economy changed, interest rates went up, we're now going to see people go into distress mode and Lenders were going to take back their property property owners are beginning to not pay their mortgage It's a cycle So we expect that in 25 26 this this cycle isn't gonna end anytime soon and I hate to be doom and gloom But my if I was gonna if I had a crystal ball I would project that you're gonna see it it tend to be bad for at least two to four more years before things get better. So we expect these appeals increase for a while. What proportion of the property taxes from commercial and office? That's a great question. I'm going to have to, I don't want to give you the wrong answer. So I'll double check that and I'll get back to you. Okay. I just wanted to get a sense of how much of a hit. When you were talking about your practically zero vacancy rate because you moved staff. Because I'm a great department head. Different skills. I mean, do you need specific skill skills or are they interchangeable between the skill sets? They do need to have certain skill sets and certificates and requirements, but there is a base level of work. We call them assessor technicians and senior assessor technicians, where they can move around different units within the office. The specific skill sets that we need, which still struggle into hire are the auditor positions, which you have to have an accounting background. And those are the ones that go into the various companies and audit their numbers to make sure that they're paying their appropriate share. So that you have to have a couple of different requirements to meet. We're struggling to hire those positions. So if you know any accountants out there, I want to work at the county, send them our way. But the other part where we're talking about staff that oversees the exemption request from churches, schools, That job, that person can also do the front counter work, can also do the deed work, processing the deeds and reviewing deeds to make sure there's a transfer or a change of ownership. All that is the same job classification so we can move those people around. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I'll echo the comments that I would like to keep tabs on the year-to-date Appeals numbers so we can see where it lands where we have the potential refund of $636 million That's a high end. That's how much they're applying for If you could provide some Guest emit as to where you think that might come in at in total between now and the next couple of months, whenever they're decided and adjudicated, we'll know. I'm reluctant to do that because I don't want anyone to use that as a basis for negotiating with our office. Yeah. Well, whenever that number comes in at being an actual number, then you can report it back to us. We would have happy to do that. The answer is right before us, you mentioned commercial real estate owners are coming in and making up a lot of that amount. It seems to me that they are more sophisticated, more savvy, a lot more at risk, and therefore much more likely to make an appeal, than say a typical homeowner who might not be savvy enough or have it much at stake in their property value, their home going down a little bit. These are large institutional investors. Very savvy will take advantage of the market drop. And people leave cities for whatever reason. They can see somewhere else. Crime. market drop. When people leave cities for whatever reason, they can see somewhere else, crime, other reasons for leaving a city. This is the exact direct result. Property values go down, tax revenues go down. It's a downward spiral. When institutional investors stop investing in the community, again, for whatever reason. And we have to realize we're in a system. And every piece of the system affects the other piece, the rest of the system. And this is no different than what we should expect given the data points that are before us. So I think you're right. We have two to four years of this. I think you're right. We haven't seen the end of this. I think the best we can do is manage it the best we can. That's your job and keep us informed. Thank you guys. Do you want to hear a joke? One more follow up. Mr. President. It's too rise and forth to not have asked. Just one more clarification of the potential refund of $636 million. What portion would be due to the county versus, say, a special district or a city? So I think there's a, I should put it in there. There's a dollar bill that we break up into how much percent. The $15 sense of every dollar is the amount that goes to the county. There's a significant over 40% goes to schools and then it's a person that goes to cities. The schools are going to get... Well actually since the assessor opened the door I just want to also show you. I mean we have been tracking this for some time and I just want to remind the board as the assessor well knows you look at our assess valuation. It dropped only once. That was since what over the last 50 years. Well, as 50 years we had that decline that you see where the bars go below and then you've seen it continue to increase but as the assessor just mentioned you know we had initially thought we were close to 5%. You know, during the good days, we were at 8% and even double digit AB growth. So I think, you know, what he's just suggested is that now his current estimate is 3.5%. So I think we just need to acknowledge that we know we're on a decline again. And that impacts, you know, our property tax collections, which is the large part of your board's discretionary revenue. And I guess the other two, takeaways are the large potential refunds, which as you pointed out, only 15% would come to the county, but it's still 15% of a very large number. The decline in assessed valuation, and then lastly, while the assessment appeals are going up, I think the assessor also mentioned it's largely commercial which means the value is going to be much higher than for single family homes. Yeah so it spurs another question. Our assessed valuation growing and it's absolutely incredible. 2014, little over $200 million. Now we're up much past that. How much of that is due to growth, new buildings? How much of that is due to turnover? How much of that is due to natural appreciation of a per square foot valuation going up? Again, as people invest in new building, you have more buildings to collect taxes on and goes up. As each building becomes more valuable because the economy is growing, we have more to collect because the valuations go up. When people stop building, when the value of what's in the ground goes down, that's when we are going to lose twice. And so, indeed, our valuation has gone up. I just don't know how much of it's gone up due to new building, new growth. So I'm going to say it depends. So for instance, the last couple of years on the highest growing assessment value cities were a series of Newark. And Newark had a lot of housing development. They built thousands of homes. And that's what triggered their increases. City of Alameda, Berkeley, it was less new construction. It was more the types of businesses that were bringing in. A lot of biotech companies that have very high assessments for their equipment. And then also because of California's Prop 13, we see automatic 2% increases to all homes. The other than a small blip in 2022, that 2% increase was in full effect since 2012. That automatically gives us a big bump. And then Prop 13 also figures home sales. When a home is sold or a property is sold, they have been left sales the last four years. I'm going to give you an example of how that was in 1980 as a $200,000 assessment today was sold for a million and a half. That's $1.3 million a jump in just one house. Now imagine all those homes flipping over. We got maybe, you know, that those are kind of one some of the reasons why the assessment role increases. The county commissioner said my projection was three and a half this year. I'm going to warn you that next year it'll probably be a little bit lower as well. Last year was almost five. This year's three and a half, roughly. Next year you're going to probably see a little bit smaller than that even. Thank you for the presentation. Again, great job. Thank you, my job. Our next presentation is the sheriff, public protection. I note that we're now two hours behind. We have 30 minutes allocated for the sheriff public protection I note that we're now two hours behind we have 30 minutes allocated for the sheriff wow I immediately regret going after you, man. All right. So I have one of these to you. Hey, we know everybody on the agency now. That's a great presentation by our assessor. I got to say that there's absolutely no way that I can beat his time. And it's simply just because I work harder. He didn't get that, but I'll share with him later. All right, I'm gonna pick this snappy. Good afternoon, President Hobbert, members of the board, before I begin, I just wanna make sure that I thank the team who built this budget presentation for me, as well as the undershared, put a lot of time and hard work into this. I'll start off by presenting our preliminary maintenance of effort. Here we have our mission statement. It hasn't changed since I've taken office. It demonstrates our dedication and commitment to the community, increasing transparency and accountability and instituting equitable and legitimate police practices. We also have our core values, respect, service, trust and community, which represents how we carry out our mission. And then on the next slide we have the duties of the sheriff. We won't go all of them, but we have the authority to keep the county jail, arrest persons who attempt or commit public offenses and serve all process and notices in a manner described by law. So here's our preliminary maintenance of effort. For fiscal year 26, it includes appropriations of 660 million anticipated revenue of 148 million which brings our net county cost to 511 million, which is an increase of 6.8%. We have an increase of four management FTEs and a decrease of three non-management FTEs, which is cumulative of all position transactions this fiscal year. The areas which make up our fiscal year 26 net that county costs increase include 16.1 million for salary and employee benefits, a 6.7 million increase in discretionary services and supplies which is attributed to our food service contract airmark. An increase in our ISFs of almost 6.9 million largely attributed to increases in building maintenance mostly of the jail. This year, GSA had to add a few positions for the jail because we have a number of projects that are going on and the overhead increase by $1.58 per square foot. A decrease in inter-fund transfers of about 3.4 million which is attributed to trial court security and reducing staff at social services. Overall change to revenue is about 826,000 and includes reduction in revenue due to the federal incarceration population decreasing and reduction in our IWF revenue due to newly implemented caps on phone and video calls. So moving on. The graph here shows our appropriations by major division. As you can see, our attention and corrections is where most of our appropriation is allocated. It basically costs a lot of money to run a city. And here is our appropriation by major object. The majority of our appropriation is allocated for salary and employee benefits at 73.7%. About 13.9% of our budget is allocated for discretionary services and supplies, which includes cost for food and medical services at Santa Rita Jail. It also includes funding for our emergency services dispatch center as well as our contractual pathology services, our contract with axon for body worn cameras and tasers, and county council as well as our Dublin fire calls for service. Our intra fund transfer is 44.4 million which are credits from other county sources for services we provide such as court security and law enforcement services. Our capital equipment budget is 328,000 which is barely a fraction of a percent of our total budget without Without adequate funding and our capital equipment budget, we rely heavily on grant funds and trust funds to make these critical purchases at the and the funding that we do receive from grants. Doesn't always cover the entire cost. Oftentimes, doesn't cover the annual maintenance necessary to maintain the equipment we acquire. And with the uncertainty, of course, of our federal funding, this may become very challenging in the very near future. Under revenue by service or by source, more than half of our revenue comes from charges for services. This includes roughly 63 million in revenue from our law enforcement contracts and another 16 million for housing federally incarcerated individuals. 29% comes from tax revenue from the county service area, which pays for services in an incorporated area. Roughly 6% of our revenue comes from government aid, which includes funding from our federal and state grants, as well as the state apportionment for booking. Moving on to our next slide. It just shows a list of our community-based organizations that we work with. We continue to build partnerships with. About 3 million of our budget is used in support of our CBOs with a limited budget. We still have built many partnerships over the last few years, and we will continue to do so. Next slide. Sheriff's Office currently has 37 federally funded grants. We did receive a letter from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security dated February 19th of this year informing us that they will cease federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions. Specifically listed grant programs were the ones that are under the emergency management performance grant, state Homeland Security Grant, urban area security initiative grant and port security grant. These four grants are the only ones that have specifically been called out so far, but there could be more. This funding is critical to maintain the support our operations at the crime lab, Office of Emergency Services, Traffic Enforcement, our wellness initiatives, and our reentry services. If federal grant funding were to cease, these are some of the projects that would delay for a year or two, but there are annual costs that will require continuous funding, which is our bio-che, our virtual emergency operations software, or the AC alert mass notification system. These systems in software have annual costs to maintain these platforms. It's critical that we find the funding for continuity of operations. In addition to federal grant funding on hold, there were congressional funds that were earmarked for our wellness and initiatives unit and crime lab that are on hold as well. And that's the in the amount of 1.6 million. It is inconclusive at the moment what the status will be for open and upcoming federal grants. What we do know is that the loss of, we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. And if we're not in the same position as the federal government. This includes developing strategies to maximize our revenues and ensure fiscal health of our agency. Through our continuous assessment of job functions, developing strategies to increase employee retention and seeking out grant opportunities and assessing all contracts. We retain highly qualified employees and sure full cost recovery for all the services that we provide. And you'll see that we have four major divisions within our agency. You have this beautiful, very small, fonted organizational chart in front of you that will show you all the people that are assigned there. Some of our mandated services we perform include managing the jail, patrolling unincorporated areas, investigating all reported crimes, court security, internal affairs, and our Office of Emergency Services. It's just a name and few. Approximately 506 million of our total budget is used to perform mandated functions. There's also a great number of discretionary services that our agency performs as well. Programs that are offered through our reentry services and support unit. Community oriented response and engagement team. We have a number of law enforcement service contracts, which are a significant source of revenue, such as AC Transit, the Oakland Airport, double police services and law enforcement contracts that we still have with our county partners, including social services and healthcare services. These discretionary services also include a number of specialized units, which have been extremely critical and their functions. That includes our crime lab, our regional training center, Alameda County Narcotics Task Force, and Special Operations Groups. You'll see that the regional training center in the crime lab list as discretionary, but these are regional services that benefit the entire county and other outside agencies. About 153 million of our total budget is used to perform these discretionary services. And so moving on here are some of our major accomplishments from fiscal year 2025. In alignment with County Vision Employment, for all we have successfully restarted our Explorer program, which gives our youth in the unincorporated area and opportunity to learn about law enforcement and serve as a pipeline for them to eventually enter the law enforcement profession. I'm excited to share that our recruitment efforts have made significant strides with over 80 recruits graduating from economies in this last year of 2024. This achievement and our continued recruiting efforts underscore our commitment to eliminating our mandatory overtime program. Moving on with our vision of crime free county, our airport services, police services unit continues to do great work and partnership with OPD, CHP in the port of Oakland to reduce crime in and around the Oakland International Airport. In 2024, our Eton Township Substation recovered 473 firearms. 473 firearms. We continue to pull more and more illegal firearms off the street through traffic stops, DUI enforcement and other operations continuing to keep the community we serve safe. And that is off of our patrol. That does not include our narcotics task force that pulls a number of weapons off of their operations as well. So continuing with the vision of crime free county, here we have some of the great accomplishments out of the narcotics task force, which is comprised of members from several law enforcement agencies in our area, as well as the district attorney's office. It is organized to interdict and disrupt the flow and distribution of illegal substances in Alameda County. Last year, the narcotics task force conducted a long term investigation into a drug trafficking organization suspected of selling large quantities of fentanyl throughout the Bay Area. The investigation resulted in a multi-location search warrant conducted in East Oakland with the assistance of several units within the Sheriff's Office and the California DOJ. In total, 28 kilograms of fentanyl with a street value of over 700,000 and 155,000 in US currency were seized. Three adult males and one adult female were arrested and booked into the Santa Rita jail for conspiracy possession of for sale and a new 2025 fentanyl weight enhancement. Arnarchotics Task Force does an amazing job with resources that they have to work with. They have been recognized across the nation for their large halls of illegal substances that they have seized during these operations. In 2012, Bart PD, OPD, and Alameda County Behavioral Healthcare created the Alameda County version of a multi-disciplinary forensic team. It is referred to as the MDFT. The MDFT is a voluntary coalition of Alameda County law enforcement agencies. Behavioral health care and allied service providers who agree to meet for the purpose of assisting those with individuals with mental illness, substance use disorder and co-occurring disorders who are at high risk of frequent welfare checks, involuntary hospitalization, or who are arrested for behaviors and activity related to their disabilities. The MDFT is committed to assisting these individuals in obtaining evaluation, treatment, and ongoing services leading towards recovery and reducing recidivism for the benefit of both the individual and our community. Our community oriented response and engagement unit also organized and assisted with over 100 encampment cleanups within unincorporated Alamana County. In doing so, we provide resource assistance to all unsheltered individuals and direct them to organizations that can help them find housing and treatment. And moving on at this time, I would like to give a quick update on our consent decree and where we're at now. To date, we have achieved 35.9% substantial compliance and 59.6% partial compliance. Although there are a number of areas that have achieved substantial compliance, they're also no longer monitored. There are still areas for progress and completion such as continuing to fill vacancies at the jail and ongoing facility improvements. I have to point out that many agencies who are under consent to career federal oversight take years to get to the progress level that we're right now and we done it in two years. With the County vision of crime fruit county and reentry support, I want to point out that we have been in partnership with Leona vocational like a pre-printed program, pre-apprenticeship program at Santa Rita, jail. The reentry services and support unit establish partnership with them to begin facilitation of in custody pre-apprenticeship training for our reentry population. It's a 12-week program, and they provide the same curriculum in our facility that they do at their local Bay Area Training Center. So we've had 63 individuals graduate from Leunum, with another 20 scheduled to graduate this May. This pre-apprenticeship training program provides graduates with 20 specific union certifications. Training in the construction industry provides living wages for people to live and stay here in the community that they grew up in. But also I want to update everybody too that we just met with the building and trades construction team this morning and did a presentation so that we can expand that program and invite other trades into the facility to be able to provide training in their fields of work. All right, so as you can see, we continue to be proactive and build trust in our community. Here's a number of events that our team has been a part of and you will see us out there at almost everything and anything that we can go to. Moving on, there's a few highlighted goals that we've set for the upcoming fiscal year. I already talked about meeting with building and construction trades. Another goal out of the jail is to upgrade our jail management system, Atoms. It's our software database for jail management. It's no longer the version that we have right now is no longer supported by ATEM. So it's kind of a need for us to move on to the elevated level of ATEMs 2.0. This will introduce additional data fields and robust data mining capabilities are passing the version that we're currently using. This will also allow us to be able to provide more information through our public information portal as far as what our jail demographics are. This technology will also connect disparate systems, departments, vendors, and hardware. ATIM's automated workflows are expected to transform multitudes of manual paper-based processes into an integrated paperless system that removes duplicate entries, provides cleaner data, and increases efficiency and transparency. This will also allow for us to upgrade our grievance and pre-attracting system, which is required by the federal consent decree. This upgrade was recommended by Wendy Still and the reimagined adult justice project, which will enhance our capability significantly. Another software platform that we're looking to partner with our Alameda Healthcare Services on is the Epic software. This will enable for health data exchange and improve accessibility visibility and management of electronic medical records. It'll greatly improve the communication between our jail medical provider as well as our Alameda Health Systems and John George providers. They'll have all the information readily at hand to be able to provide treatment in a timely manner. And with the county vision of innovation, I want to talk about some new projects that our agency has recently introduced. It is our real-time information center. It uses technological advancements and modernized policing methods to assist patrol units and increase officer safety. The Arctic, as we refer to it, utilizes high-speed computers, capable of reading large quantities of video, analyzing data from our automated license plate readers, it then passes on critical information along to responding units to assist in formulating tactical responses to maximize the potential for safe suspect apprehension. Our real time information center is located at our Eden Township substation and it's my hope that we continue to build out its capabilities. Another goal that we have is entering into a new agreement with axon axon officer safety plan offers many new features, including use of force reporting software that will replace our current outdated difficult to use program. It will streamline the use of force reporting process and create a better level of accountability among sworn staff. It also provides for dash cams, which would augment our body-worn camera platform. It also allows us to capture video from both the front of the vehicle, as well as during pursuits and video from the rear passenger compartment which is vital for the transportation of our resties. These videos will show the treatment of people in our custody during the transport process, ensuring our commitment to professionalism and reducing liability. All right, so since 2022, the Sheriff's Office has implemented the County Vision of Healthy Environment by developing a wellness initiatives unit, promoting wellness helps Sheriff's Office members cope with challenges of the job, but also reduces burnout, enhances decision-making and strengthens community relations. The health and well-being of our employees is of utmost importance to me. Peace officers experience heart attacks at a significantly higher rate than your general population. And our life expectancy is 22 years shorter than the average American. You can believe that. These figures underscore the urgent need for targeted preventative measures that address the unique health risks, law enforcement professionals face. We have contracted the Sigma Tactical Wellness, which offers a comprehensive cardiac screening program that includes advanced cardiometabolic testing to identify early signs of coronary artery disease. We recently rolled out the first round for 200 of our employees, and there has been a high demand for further people having interest, and so we're hoping to expand and this program out to the next fiscal year. So not only are we addressing the physical health of our employees, but the mental health as well. Sheriff's Office recognizes the vital importance of optimizing law enforcement personnel's performance and mental health, particularly given the demanding nature of the profession. We've contracted with a sharp performance to provide a comprehensive coaching and decision-making mental health performance platform specifically designed to enhance the skills and resilience of our deputies. And then on to our pending capital projects. One of the projects that we're working with GSA on is the expansion of our emergency vehicle operations course training pad. It is a post mandated training requirement for us to be able to perform and train on emergency vehicle operations. So, that is one of our major projects. Another project that we're working with is developing a joint emergency service dispatch center with our Alameda County Fire Partners. There was a proposal by Alameda County Fire to join with us to do a joint dispatch center to enhance efficiency, coordination, and response times of emergency services, which ultimately benefits the community safety and in well being. This consolidation in operations and co-location will facilitate seamless communication between fire and law enforcement units, ensuring better coordination during emergencies that require multi-disciplinary response. By pulling resources, redundancies can be eliminated, and personnel and equipment allocation will be more efficient. And last but not least, Supervisor Miley, I think this one's for you. Thank you for your support. We are endeavoring to have a new Eden Township substation here within the next few years, right? Our current substation built in 1953 has exceeded its life expectancy and no longer meets the needs of our current staffing levels. ETS must engage with the community and the new substation should be the center of that effort. Current substation is in disrepair and the only true solution is to find another facility that will meet our needs. So thank you for that. That concludes my presentation. I hope it was wrapped up very quickly. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Sheriff, thank you very much. We're going to start with the chair of our Public Protection Committee and then go to Supervisor Miley, Fort Sonata Bass and Tam. Thank you, President Helbert and I feel like I could talk for 20 minutes because you deserve a huge round of applause your entire team. This was an incredible presentation. Just thank you for your commitment. This is significant progress in a short period of time and almost feel like I'm listening to a health committee presentation. Just thank you for your commitment. This is significant progress in a short period of time. And almost feel like I'm listening to a health committee presentation because it's really addressing the individuals in your care, holistically, as well as your staff. I think it's amazing to see the beginning and the end of your presentation with nearly probably every person on your team. I recognize many of these faces. I think one of the ways that you are so successful, there's many reasons, but I think some of the secret sauce is your staff and I know many of them are from the community and deeply care and I know that is a priority of you as well to hire more local people to do the jobs and just incredible work with I Luna and getting people employed. So you told us the graduation rates. Do we know how many of those individuals have actually transitioned to successful employment? I know I saw a footage from a media outlet where there was someone that actually asked the judge in court to extend their time at Centaurita so they can finish the apprenticeship program. So do you have any statistics on how many people have been released in our gainfully employed? Excuse me. So there's been 16 people that have been able to get jobs with the union. Still are employed. There's one that actually actually went out to Hawaii and got a job out there. And no recidivism? Where are we tracking that? This point, no.. That's fantastic. So 16 graduated, or well, we've had more than that graduate, but 16 were able to change jobs. But we have a number of them that are still in custody. So once they go out, they'll be connected. We'll see what those outreach efforts come for them. But one thing I want to point out too is that when we have graduations, we invite their family. So I encourage anybody who, if you have time to come out and see graduation because the family, it's very emotional. They see that their parents loved ones whoever are making that effort. And then that is really where that pride comes in and continues on with them actually wanting to come back and mentor those who are in the program or going to be in a program. For your work around that, I know my district director had the chance to attend graduation. Women that graduated through the M Mark, the what's the name of the company. Truly art. No, but it was the food program. Oh, that was into work for airmark. Airmark, there we go. And just very impressed with that presentation. We had a public protection back in February. Sergeant Silva's doing an amazing job with programming for the women in custody. So thank you for your work around that. Really excited to see that we're moving towards securing epic. Also the jail analysis, which I believe will be getting a report to public protection. Maybe I don't remember if we landed on August or September, but it's coming back to public protection. Wanted to know if there's any updates with respect to Prop 1 or Cal A and making sure that we're offsetting in custody health care services or reentry coordination. So we have path-refunding that we are just getting, I believe that we are supposed to be getting that funding here relatively soon. It's already been earmarked for basically the stuff that we are onboarding, which is having well-path doing the billing services. I think that, you know, one of the things that, I don't know whose hand it falls in, but the actual collection of billing for reimbursement was something that we had to work through because it's not something the state like developed. We had to develop it ourselves. So working through that and make sure we have funding to do that service is what we're contracting with well path right now to be able to do. But at this point, we haven't heard that those fundings or that funding will be impacted. But we are definitely keeping our ears open. Okay, and then in regard to the real time information center, is that specifically just for the Sheriff Department, or is that for regional use, with other long-forced been agencies? So we host it, but it is utilized for regional use. We definitely partner with our other agencies, and other agencies have like mechanisms, the same software platforms that we are able to share information with, but it is kind of our own home base, but we share the information out. Okay, and then I will just ask if I know you've already received one letter with potential threats in losing grant funding, but if anything materializes, please coordinate with the chair of the Act Committee to bring that to our attention as soon as possible. But again, thank you to your entire staff. This is incredible work and I do see you out in the community everywhere engaging and I think it's shifted the narrative. It's really important that we all have public safety as a priority and really respect your humanity and the way you're approaching it. So you're doing it right. Thank you. Supervisor Miley. Yes, thank you. So with the impact of the loss of federal funding, is that we, is that a reality at the point, or is that just something that's being contemplated by the feds? So none of our, we have not gotten noticed that any of our money has been lost. Some of them, some grants are placed on hold while they're waiting for us to submit a survey, basically, for us to complete. And there is potential, like once that assessment or survey is reviewed by the funding team, that we may get cut. At this point, nothing has been cut. Yeah, like Supervisor Marquez said, we really need to understand the status of that because we can't afford to lose these services. I mean, that would, you know, public safety is kind of like my forte. And if we lose these services. I mean, that would, you know, public safety. It's kind of like my forte. And if we lose these services, that's gonna be horrible. Yeah, yeah. And we just can't afford that. Yeah, we can't afford that. Pardon me? We cannot go backwards with some of the services we've been able to implement. And some of the technology we've been able to onboard, it definitely would going backwards if if that funding was cut. Yeah yeah yeah and I know if necessary I mean we'll challenge some of this legally but the point is that could be held up for a while and in the meantime we wouldn't have the funding for these services so we really need to have you working with with the county administrator in the board around contingency planning because we I mean this would be just devastating if we lost these services. Okay enough said on that. I just want to also commend the Sheriff's Department because the mental health piece. Is that the part that retired deputy Swahwal introduces to? Yes. Okay because the law enforcement first responders around you know the post-traumatic stress that you and you encounter I think that's extremely extremely important so I'm glad we're supporting that in providing funding or proof funding for that. Also, you didn't mention Josh was gift. I'm very very delighted that we're supporting Josh's gift. That's where the Sheriff's Department and Freemond and others are being trained on how to respond to the development intellectually and developmentally disabled youngsters, you know, face an autism and other things. So they respond in an appropriate manner and it doesn't end up being a bad encounter. That's another cutting edge. The reset program. I mean, people just don't know between your staff, CHP, highway patrol, like I said, highway patrol, Hayward, San Leandro, how that has been tremendous in stopping side-cho activity in the unaccompanied area. It's non-existent since we started that. I know. Yeah, I know. We did that. We did that. So, yeah, non-existent. And, you know, they follow them in Oakland now, but they'll follow them. You have to helicopter and stuff. Yeah, I'm trying to catch them. But the point is, we started that. And I really appreciate that. So there's a lot of things your department, your office is doing, Then I know you couldn't talk about it all. It's in the presentation but it just is no worthy. You and your staff are doing an exceptional job. I want to talk with you about the org chart because there's I'm not talking about someone who's related to me that name but there's another person's name and I didn't see here and I just want to check on that. And then the vehicle, the driver's course, I think that's important because if the board gets behind that, that can be an entrepreneurial opportunity. You can receive funding from other agencies coming in, right? Yes, absolutely. I mean, we host over 100 outside agencies at our training center. And so they utilized our emergency vehicle operation course because we are the only one that's really around in this area. They have to travel out. I can't remember where the closest one is. It might be Country of Costa County, but I don't believe they're utilizing or it's not developed or formatted the way that ours is. Yeah, so I'm not sure the board, but the point is, we just need to bring that forward, because I recognize that it's not just something that's gonna train officers and others, but we'll generate revenue for your office. The, and obviously we wanna have you get the tasers and other equipment that you need in order for your officers for their safety When they're undertaking their responsibilities With the academies 80 people graduated. How many academies are you having a year? We run three academies here What's your vacancy rate now? I'm sorry vacancy. What's your vacancy rate? We are about 25% vacancies. Is that sworn? Sworn is about 280 plus? 200. You're down 280 officers sworn? I have gosh. Okay, I was hoping it wasn't that many. Okay, in the 80 who graduated some of them went to other law enforcement entities. Say that again. Of the 80 that graduated that some of them go to other law enforcement. Those are just for us. Just for you, I guess. Okay. I think that's everything, but I do wanna just co-sign with Supervisor Mark Kesson. Yeah, fantastic. You and your, you know, staff, sworn, unsworn, are just doing great work. And work. You know, we stand behind you and thank you for everything. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Fordonautobass. Thank you, Sheriff. And as a new supervisor, I definitely appreciate you taking the time with your team to have myself and my staff tour the jail. I really appreciated that. I have a few questions and they're more related to the ongoing implementation of Care First Jail's last, which I know are public protection chair, Supervisor Mark Hezz is very much engaged in. In terms of the funded vacancies, do you happen to know what the vacancies are in the jail? So we are probably about 140 sworn positions and our non-sworn, and you know, this is from our consent decree. I'm going to say we're probably about 40 non-sworn. Maybe, maybe maybe give or take for the jail. So the rest of our forward law enforcement services and our other divisions. Okay. Thank you. And what's the current jail capacity versus the rated capacity? So our previous rated capacity and we haven't been rated by the board of state community corrections recently because we've had a lot of renovations and we've turned some of our housing units into office space for our not only our behavior health team but our our staff as well. So we've taken down a housing unit to do so, which I think covers 300 plus of incarcerated individuals. We haven't been rated since that has been taken down. We also have an ADA project where we're converting some of our pods, and which are taking, you know, we'll take two cells and make it into one. So that hasn't been rated yet. Previous rating for capacity, little roughly over 3,400. I don't know what that's going to be. It's definitely going to be below 3,000. Come this next review by the Port Board of State Community Corrections. Once renovations are complete. Okay, thank you. And one of the recommendations from Care First Jail's last was identifying the cost specific to the Babu settlement in sort of a uniform place. Is that something that you might be able to work on going forward? So the programmatic staffing in capital costs and sort of helping the public in the board understand a little bit more of those costs in relation to the settlement. I know that we work with the CAO's office to build that out originally, but as we move forward, obviously those costs increase, so we could definitely take a look to see where we're at on any given year, start building that out. Okay. And again, being a new supervisor, it might be helpful for me to get sort of a status update on where we are with that consent decree. And in addition, hearing that you've got a hundred or 280 sworn vacancies, does that mean that you're using overtime to sort of fill in the gap? And is there a specific overtime budget that you have? So we always go over overtime budget and we staff our jail predominantly with overtime and we have a mandatory overtime program that's been in effect since 2019. So a lot of our overtime is based off that vacancy, right? But we also have, you know, we are pushing all of our new bodies that we hire to the jail. So now the other divisions are having to have their overtime filled because of the vacancies that they are carrying now. It used to be where the jail was the hub for all the vacancies. Now we're spreading that out so that there's vacancies throughout the agency and not just at the jail. We need to build those numbers up at the jail because we know that by having more staffing, it helps with making sure that we're providing the level of care that we're supposed to be. Okay, thank you. And then my last question is related to capital improvements. So this might come later when the board hears that plan. But I do have a specific question about Glen Dyer because I think I heard that it's not seismically safe. And so I am curious about whether there's future plans in terms of potentially closing and relocating those programs. So I care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to take care of the city's planning to Okay, so it's not used for intake either? No, no, okay, thank you for that clarification. All right, thank you so much. And yes, in a short period of time, solid improvements, and you have been a very good partner as, act for all, and we are trying to understand how to make sure our immigrant communities are informed and prepared and feel secure. So thank you for your partnership in that regard. Absolutely. Thank you. Supervisor Tam. Thank you, President Halpert. I want to also echo the accommodations from my colleagues about your presence in the community. I have heard extremely positive feedback from people in the community, community leaders about your presence. And I especially had that opportunity when we were dealing with the Office of Emergency Services. So it's really troublesome when you see that as a potential funding cut that might happen. So in following up on Supervisor Miley's questions, do you have sort of like a outside estimate of the federal funding cuts that we might have to backfill? In total, we rely on grant funding for about $30 million. 30 million more. Okay. When you look at the discretionary services slide, a lot of those services like for AC transit or Alameda County Health at the Wilma Chan Highland Hospital and certainly Dublin's police services and Oakland Airport. We get reimbursed for some of those costs because there's contracts of the $153 million in discretionary service. How much is it that doesn't get reimbursed? I'd have to get that figure to you. And you're talking about all of our contracts, correct? For law enforcement services. I'm talking about this chart here. The discretionary services. Yes. So let me see if I can find that slide. You think it's half of the 153 or less? I'm pretty sure it's less. Okay. Oh here we go. Okay. This is the slide you're talking about. No. I hope you on that slide. I hope you make money on most of those contracts. We do make money on those contracts, but we've had to reduce our contract with social services. And with the courts, we don't get rumors as much as we would like. So we do have that issue. So when you speak of like the fact that we have an increase to our net county cost based up those the contracts. Are you speaking about the 3.3 million? No, under your discretionary services chart, you totaled all of the costs of services at 153 million and the law enforcement services, a bulk of it, I see are reimbursable or we have contracts. Obviously, you're taking money from one agency and giving it to another, but still that is part of the budgeting process. So I'm just trying to understand whether or not the bulk of your discretionary services are reimbursed by the agencies that are benefiting, whether it's the city of Dublin from Yesley services and Oakland airport. Yes, we do our we are positive in that revenue. That's by about 93 million. 93 million out of the one 53 million. Yes, okay. Thank you. That's helpful. That's all I have. Follow up questions to President Mark S. Yes, thank you. I'll be brief. I'm sure if I wanted to check in on the status, I know last year we approved 14 emergency services positions. Have those all been filled? No. We're still hiring. I know that we just had interviews for our supervising emergency services supervisor position. But we're still. We're looking at filling five, hopefully by the end of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of about 100. Okay and what's the current census for the federal and general population? Our current what? Census at Santerita, Jill. So they're all pretrial? Yeah, mostly. I know we have a few Bureau of prisons that we do hold but we try to get them out of custody as soon as they do get sentenced. So they're mostly all pretrial. I think we have roughly 140 federal inmates right now. Okay, and then the general population? General population? At Santa Rita. So they're spread out. I know that we don't hold any individuals from federal custody that are supposed to be going to restrictive housing or any kind of special, you know, needs, I guess, behavioral issues. What's the current non-federal population? The federal population? Non-federal. It's not federal. It's for no, it's not 14. So our total from Monday is 1480. So just minus the 140. Okay. Understood. And then thank you, Supervisor Miley for flagging Joshua's gift. That's really important training. Is this, has the program already launched or has the sheriffs just gone through the training? Oh, so we've gone through a training and it's been ongoing training at multiple duty stations within the sheriff's office. So we're trying to cover as many people as possible. And then obviously we did a pre or Joshua's gift at a presentation to our local chiefs and hopefully they're going to be onboarding their training as well. Wonderful. Good to hear and then just for the public to know that there will be two joint meetings in May. So the first joint public protection meeting and health committee this is a follow-up to the presentation we had last month with respect to well-path services at Santa Rita jail. That is going to be on Friday May 16th at 1.30 and then we're going to be reviewing CARES First Jails last as well as CARE courts on May 22nd at 10 a.m. Both of those are joint health and public protection committee meetings. I just want to make sure the public is aware of that. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. I'll also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . health and public protection committee meetings. I just want to make sure the public is aware of that. Thank you. Very good. Thank you. I'll also offer great kudos to you and your team knowing that it's the best trained law enforcement agency in the country. And they do a great job. Every time I visited the EOC, driven on the EVAC, EVAC track, seen the Launa program in action, met people that have gone out of it, and gotten jobs, some still waiting for jobs. Great work. Thank you. I'm concerned about the number of hours. I think at one point it was half the hours, maybe more than that at San Maria Jail are overtime, half the hours on staff at any given day or more. It could be overtime hours, mandatory overtime since 2019. And we have 280 vacancies. There's got to be a correlation there. And it's got to be resolved, I think, part of the answer is going to be, and I've advocated for this. If we have to pay double over time to people, because they're spending their lives in the jail, then I'll advocate for that. And I'll continue to advocate for that. If we have to increase our retention bonus or our sign-on bonuses to attract new people and to keep people, we need to think about doing that. That said, we also are faced with potential federal cuts. And I'm not going to mince words about it. There's, I don't know, a word. They call it a sanctuary program. There's also a welcoming community that we could be. They're all vernacular. They're all words. Whatever you want to say, I don't care about it as much as what are the actions that we might take that will lose funding. I'm reiterating and channeling my colleague Supervisor Miley. We can't afford to lose money. I would like to see if you can tell us the actual practices, the motions we go through, the things that we do, forget about the words that we use to describe it. Do we have an audit of what those practices are that would run us afoul of what the federal government is threatening to take money away? Or is it the case that we might call ourselves this that or the other thing, but what we do, what we do, is compliant with federal law. I don't know where that is, but I need to understand step by step, practice by practice, protocol by protocol. What are we doing that the federal government would take money away from us for? And what are those things we still want to do? And if so, fine, we just have to be very clear about it and not get caught up in the semantics of what we're called versus what we do. And by the way, they may be wrong to do that. And if we stand our ground, fine, but we need to understand that, I think. And I don't know that I have a clear understanding of that. So at some point, maybe today or maybe through public protection or whatever, are we doing things that we think would run us a foul of losing money? And are we being smart about that? Well, I can answer that question now as far as any obligation that we are applying for grant funding for we follow those obligations and we do it in a way that is making sure that we are following what those requirements are and we can answer to them either by practice by policy whatever we say when we're applying for that grant. And so just like any other time, if you're doing that, there's no threat to your funding if you're following what the grant requirements are. You deviate from that, then you risk losing that grant funding. So we've been really good. We have a great grants team that makes sure that even for our subrecipients, they're on top of those people who are receiving those funds to make sure that they're following the requirements by each grant. So we do that. Anything else? It's out of our hands. So we'll see what happens with the survey results that we're currently in. Thank you. Again, I'll just reiterate great job. Thank you for this. No other question? Seeing us say follow up from supervising my link. Yeah, I would be remiss if I didn't thank the sheriff, Edentownship's substation. We need to get that done. Kimberly, we need to get that done because that Sheriff's Department deserves the unaccompanied area deserves state of the art. Please law enforcement's substation. Yeah, and we also need to get the dispatch done. That's out in David's area, but that's important to Yes, so we're gonna get a bolt done super. Yes. We're gonna get them both done with that said we've exhausted our Presentation from the Sheriff's Department. I know that we're even more late than we were before, but that's okay We are going to take a break. We're going to we're going to recess to close session for which we will have a working lunch and then we will come back when we do For those that are keeping track we only have yet to go district attorney Attorney, probation, public defender, fire, registrar of voters, information technology, auditor control. keeping track, we only have yet to go. District Attorney, probation, public defender, fire, registrar of voters, information technology, auditor controller, treasurer tax collector, human resource services, and the library. We will take that all up after our scheduled for 40 minutes lunch, and I'm guessing because we have closed session along with it We'll take the full 40 minutes which would bring us to 445 Plus five minutes for supervisor Marquez 450 you want another five minutes no 4 450 four four four four four fifty. Our closed session and I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll. Supervisor Marquez. President. Supervisor Tam. President. Supervisor Miley. excused. Supervisor Fortenotel Bass. Excused. President Halbert. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you very much. Apologies for the delay. Supervisor Miley kept asking questions in closed session. And that's why we're so late. But we can now proceed. Our next budget presentation is from the district attorney. Her very first budget presentation. Welcome. Thank you. All right. All right. So thanks. I'm going to get through this as quickly as possible. Yes, you are. I am. You have no idea. So again, almost two months on the job. So I'm going to give you what I have for the last two months. I'm Ursula Jones-Dixon, Alameda County District Attorney. I'm going to start with our mission statement. And I'm just going to read through this very quickly to ethically prosecute those who commit crimes, uphold the rights of victims, and also provide compassionate support and protect the communities we serve. Of course, you've read the rest of that. The mandate for us is that we represent the people of the state of California, ethically, professionally and with integrity and criminal civil and juvenile matters. And then also that we will pursue the truth, demonstrate commitment to fair and equitable justice for all and ensure the victims of crime are treated with respect, dignity and empathy. So I'm just going to go through these very quickly. I wanted to just bring to your attention specifically the increase in revenue as previously stated since we're late in the day. You all have looked at all the other numbers, but we did increase our revenue last year by 5.5%. That includes grants and I think we've had some conversations earlier about concerns about what grants are going to look like in the future. Three of those grants were federal grants so we're watching those very closely and the expansion of the Prop 47 CARES grant, which is the cohort 4. All right, as it relates to major components of our neck county cost, the biggest piece for us is, of course, always salary and employee benefits. We did have increased revenue in the Family Justice Center, AB 2010 and DA, re-alignment, and then also Calico revenues, but overwhelmingly our concerns are around employee benefits. So just taking a look at appropriation by department, you all have had an opportunity to take a look at that as well. Looking specifically at the grant amount, district attorney grants add approximately 10,629,000 and then of course the reenlimit money is static. The one point to our operations are huge. It's a big organization, 92 million dollars and I always look to the family just to center that is such a beacon in the community, but also $3.2 million as well. Our total appropriation by major object, salary and benefits as everyone knows, it's actually impressive. That's a lot of money, $100 million. But we have such skilled people in the office. So the expectation is we continue to build the office, of course, is that we're going to have to balance getting folks back. Just so you all know, we've already hired back 10 lawyers with institutional knowledge. And then one expert in a subject matter area, consumer, and environmental. So we're working really hard to make sure we can get folks back so we can do the best work we possibly can for the county. Total revenue by source will just kind of go over that really briefly. Our state aid is generally our state grants which which include the California Department of Insurance Grant. The Prop 47 cares also Cal OES. And then as previously stated, we do have some federal grants, Gun Relinquishment, Post DNA, Conviction Grant, and Hate Crimes Grant. We get a little money from the rent from the Family Justice Center. Of course, the DMV license fees and other revenue as well. So I wanted to speak briefly about our mandated services. Of course, we're prosecutors. We criminally prosecute. We also have civil prosecution and litigation, which includes our consumer and environmental protection unit as well as mental health unit and victim services to provide to victims in the county as well as grand jury. Our discretionary services include Family Justice Center which all of you here know lots about. There's lots going on there. We also have CARES Navigation Center and the Trauma Recovery Center. So as it relates to the needs, they're higher than ever. And I'm just going to take a look at the first 30 days because I only have a little over 30 days to compare. But this next slide is about the referrals we received in the first 30 days. So just taking a look at the change between 2022 and now, referrals are basically police reports, investigations that come to us for review. And so this time for me, for this short period of time, 30 days, the 18th of February through March 18th, we have 1900 referrals from law enforcement and that's higher than it's been in quite some time. But I would have you take a look at right below that, specifically as it relates to charge level, the misdemeanors, felonies, etc. And alternative actions. I think it's important to take a look at the alternative actions. We'll talk a little bit about that for us For this period of time February 18th to March 18th the alternative actions are about 16% for misdemeanors and 17% for felonies for the period 30 days February 18th through March 18th 2024 alternative actions were 7% for misdemeanors and felonies 13%. So we're working really hard to divert people away from the criminal justice system just as we are charging and making sure that people are accountable for their actions. I feel like the referrals have gone up because we're building trust with law enforcement and they are trusting us to evaluate those cases. This includes statistics about the cases that we decline as well, so it's not as if we charge every case that's brought to us. The next slide is around the cases that we filed. And so as we see more cases coming to us for review, we also are seeing higher numbers and filing for this period of time as well. For us during February 18th through 2025 through March 18th, 458 felonies and 807 misdemeanors. I think some of that has to do with the restructuring of the office. Before my tenure here, there was a bit of a bottleneck with charging. There were backlogs and charging because you had to go through so many levels of supervision to make decisions on charging. We removed that bottleneck and so it is, has put us in a position where we have worked our way out of that backlog and we are allowing the attorneys to use their discretion to actually charge cases. Now safe and livable communities I want to bring to your attention as well. Of course the CARES Navigation Center is here. These are all victim services and specialized units that we have to support victims in the community. Collaborative Courts is a big piece of that and we'll talk about that in a moment. There for the Cares Navigation Center, we're working on new CBL relationships and restructuring. We have a new project coordinator so we're beefing up the staff there. In addition to that, we're back to a heat unit. I know that the previous administration had called it something else, but we're rebuilding our heat unit and relationships to make sure we support and bolster that. We also have a special prosecution unit which includes an organized crime unit that we just started that is looking at some of our more serious homicides and cease fire cases. So we're looking very much to assist OPD as much as possible in moving those cease fire cases. And we also are building up our worker protection and labor trafficking cases. And we're no longer the consumer justice bureau, work consumer environmental worker protection. And so as a result of that, we have someone who's specifically working on labor trafficking that will be his expertise as well as worker protection cases. We do believe in a rehabilitation model and I think this is evidenced by the fact that we have all of these either collaborative courts or alternatives. Only three of these collaborative courts are mandated by way of statute, but we have a lot of collaborative options and I've looked at other counties, some neighboring counties that just don't have that we have a robust behavioral health court early intervention court, specific education services and misdemeanor pre-charging diversion veterans treatment court drug court, reentry court when I was a judge I sat in the reentry court and loved that court almost in caring court meant toward diversion, clean slate and cares, all of these are what we consider a rehabilitation model and alternatives to incarceration. I want to have you take a look really quickly at this testimonial. My name is Delano Seymour. I'm from Chicago, Illinois. I'm just about 75 years old. I got drafted in the military in 1967 right in the midst of the Vietnam War. I became a helicopter medic, evacuation medic. We all went through an indoctrination period when we enlisted or got drafted that's permanent. The things we learned in our basic training and our orientations are permanent. You can't take that away from our nature, our rationale, and our behavior pattern. It all kind of, for me, I felt my erratic behavior policy, part of me, started in the military. They spent three months making your soldier. And tenths must, 60, 70 hour a week, making your soldier. On your last day, they spent ten minutes making your citizen. I don't know any of that. I have not met a veteran that has not been affected by their time in the service. Nature of the Beast. I'm 75 years old. My brain is what it is. I have probably lived in my life easily 25 to 30 places. And someone called me yesterday, delivery service, and says, what is your address? And I said, 50, 20, 50, 26th out park. And then I realized, this is just yesterday, I realized I was seven years over when I lived there. Why am I telling this lady that I lived at 50, 20, 6, a farm, a brain? A brain yesterday took me back 60 some years, which gives me insight of how this brain works, how these things come up, how they affect my behavior, my decisions. So getting a court to understand that, or a day to understand that, it's phenomenal. And that collaborative court, they understand that. So the collaborative court shows me that this county, Alameda County cares about its veterans, not just coming up saying have a good day, not just coming up bringing us some donuts on Veterans Day, which we appreciate, but actually putting in money where their mouth is, saying that we do appreciate your effort, and we're gonna show you how we appreciate your effort. We're gonna take you into a special place where we can understand your mental situation, your behavior situation, your addictive situation, which probably develop sometime in the military. And we're going to do everything we can to make you all make you whole. So I just I show that because I think it's really important for us to put a face to an experience. We talk about collaborative courts, we talk about alternatives to incarceration and I think we always want to look at the statistics. But you know the proof is in the pudding. And I think the collaborative courts are a way that we can serve our community. All of us, DAs, public defenders, anybody who wants to give energy to people who need to be lifted up and to understand how they got there. I think it's really important to do that. This office supports collaborative courts and we do so robustly. Moving on to new victims served by Alameda County, I'm just wanting to take a look at this. This is looking at the first quarter of 2022, 23, 24, and 25. And of course, the period of time that I've been here has been a portion of that quarter. But we look at the number and the types of services that victims receive in 2022. And then we look at where we are now in this quarter. for short period of the quarter, we're almost back where we started. I think it's really important to remember that victims felt like over the last couple of years they were not receiving the services that they required and desired. And so I wanted to make sure that we lift that up as well. Human impacts of funding reductions. I mean we'll talk a little bit about the changes in state law that substantially increased workload as you all have already been told by us before, Racial Justice Act and Resentencing has created a need for a lot more lawyers, a lot more experience, and a lot more resources in addition to that, the 1437 cases are felony murder cases along with juvenile petitions that have been filed. And what is coming, and which really should already be here as of January 2025, is the requirement for race blind charging. And we have not yet been able to get the finances together to provide us with an opportunity to do that work. We to do it by mandate and so of course we'll be looking at that over the next few months as well. I just want to list for you a lot of our community-based partners. There are others but this is what we could fit on. The slide here, the DA's office is partner with many organizations across the county for us to find ways to assist individuals with their needs, of course, lifting up Missy, which is an old organization that I did a lot of work with. In the past, Calico is one of the best in the state for forensic interviews, for young people who have suffered specifically abuse, but also sexual abuse, and there are many more. So I just wanted you all to take a look at the people that we're partnering with. And then move to significant cost saving efforts that the office is undertaking specifically. I wanted to talk about reorganization. We've made a real huge effort at reorganizing our agency such that we can be more efficient and also serve the needs of victims. And so that has helped us, for example, with our charging as previously discussed. We don't want to duplicate services or duplicate layers of supervision that are unnecessary. We've already hired back some institutional knowledge that helps us do that. And that makes it smoother to evaluate and charge the cases. In addition to that, we identified and created some new cost saving measures. We came into a situation where we had $7,000 worth of cell phone bills. I can't imagine how we could have $7,000 per month of cell phone bills. So we re-evaluated that. Everybody had a phone. Everybody doesn't need a phone. And so we're re-evaluating that to see if there are better ways for us to communicate so we can save money. In addition to that, the inspectors, our inspectors use a program if they are looking for witnesses to find witnesses and we found one that is much less expensive and just as efficient as the one we had before. So we're making that move as well. We've looked at oversight and coordination of internal processes including our travel and witness transportation, trying to streamline those costs, and just got back to the work of being prosecutors. Honestly, I think sometimes we get too far out of our lane, and that causes us a lot of money, because we can't do everything. We can't be everything to everyone. So I just want to thank you guys for this time and let you know that we are on a great trajectory. We're doing the best we possibly can to put the pieces back together. I have a wonderful team and I want to thank them for in the short period of time. They weren't here for most of the period of time. We were planning for the budget but they came in and hit the ground running to provide this information to you. My expectation is next year we'll have even more information but I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you I'll ask my colleagues if they have any questions I'll recognize your advisor Miley. I guess thank you Dix and I always keep wanting to call you a judge. just our soul or even call you judge just I know but I can't get that out of my mind and yes, it's good that We have the team back together the band back together up the seven of you that were the finalists You've got two of them over here plus yourself. So it it's just, I just feel overjoyed. You know, I didn't take a public position on the recall, but trust me, to have you here representing the DA's office and being the, you know, the long enforcement officer in our county just gives me a lot of confidence and know the people working with you gives me a lot of confidence as well. A couple of things when it comes to environmental protection, one of my real big projects is illegal because because I really feel that some people describe it as a crime against our communities. It's a broken window theory. I mean, you let dumping just to accumulate some of its huge environmental type waste and hazardous. Others is just is just habitual people taking advantage of other people's communities. So are you looking at having the DA's office join us once again in our quest to address the illegal dumping? So our goal is to build up our environmental division such that we can get back to that. I think within the last two months, as I said, we've hired a bunch of people in environmental. We brought back in a new attempt who's an expert in the area. We've hired someone to run the division and now they are doing the looking into who can come in and do this work because we really don't have enough trained lawyers to try the cases that we need to try. So we have the ability to try to train people up and then we also have the obligation to hire people in specific areas. So one of the individuals in our consumer division because that would be in our consumer division that we just brought in, or he's been here for quite some time, but he was hired before the last administration to come to consumer. We don't generally do that at the DA's office. We have DAs learned to do that work. We may not have the time to do that. So we are actively, as we speak, I think we have interviews this week with individuals who can come in and do the consumer and environmental work, so that we can hire up to get that, that even the big cases and even the smaller cases handle. So yes, that is on our radar and the expectation is, we will be looking for individuals to charge and to try for that behavior. Oh, great, thank you. Because a lot of times, if people feel they can get away with it, they just, you know, they just, there's no accountability, and if there's no accountability, then you can't expect people to stop and add behaviors and that accountability can just be requiring people to go pick up the trash and clean up the communities and others that they've added disgrace to, let's put it that way. Another thing I wanted to ask you about, and this has nothing to do with collaborative courts because I definitely support those. I'm more interested in hearing about, are you looking to pursue collaborations with other DAs? Because you know I'm a particular fan of DA, Diana Bechton, and DA Brooks Jenkins. So I'm very eager to hear because the criminal behavior doesn't just stop at Alameda County. It's throughout the Bay Area. So I think our D.A.'s office, Alameda County, I mean I don't know what happened the last two years but I can speak to our offices have always been collaborative. We've had collaboration with the A.G.'s office. We've been doing that even during the last administration and other counties. I've had the opportunity both, as you know, to sit down with a DA Bechton, and I speak often enough to Brook Jenkins. And we are just trying to get our footing here in this office around being staffed up to do the work, but they have made themselves available to me in any way, shape or form. And I have an event soon where I'm going, there are several elected DAs who are going to go to San Quentin and have some conversations about the work that we're doing across the state. So that is a start to that. But yes, I mean, that's always been the case and I think we're always open to that. And sometimes we're led by our law enforcement officers because they're doing investigations and they have task force that will allow us to reach across the Bay or, you know, reach across, you know, town to have those communications and those collaborations. So yes, I just think that's the way of law enforcement it always has been. It will continue to be. Okay, in your presentation today, the way you it was presented with the the graphs or charts that show where we were certain quarters in the past and where we are with you during this you know your short tenure I mean it's just kind of excellent to see how things are improving so we did look forward to the presentation next year and you know anything I can do to be supportive you know I'm here for you in your office so Thank you you. Absolutely. I'll reach out if we need anything. Close mouth never gets fit. Supervisor Fortune out of pass. Thank you so much. DA. This was quite an impressive presentation and just what two months has it been? Almost two months. OK, almost two months in a great team. Just some brief comments. It was very positive to hear that diversion rates are increased over prior periods, you know, I think having that comprehensive approach to accountability as well as diversion is really important and good to see that's happening. Also heard you say that you're improving the backlog of cases. Could you speak a little bit more to what that backlog was and now is? It was significant. The only reason I haven't said that we've totally completed it is because the last administration did not realize there was also a backlog in juvenile. So we're working on that. From the adult cases, at some point in the last administration, they assigned, I want to say it was three lawyers to just charge backlog cases. We've gotten through all of those four adults. And I believe that was over. I don't remember. I'll get back to you on the number, but it was it was fairly significant. They were assigned to that project. It was over six months, just to clear through the backlog. And now we have enough chargers at Wiley Manual, so charging for Oakland, as well as EchoJ, so that we should not see ourselves in that deficit. We also are checking in on a monthly basis to see where we are, to see if we need to reassign people to charge. I'm charging is something you do when you've had a lot of experience. And so we are making sure that we are putting people there who know how to charge because we've also had some charging that's come back to us where we've had to dismiss cases because we couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So right now it's about staffing, staying on top of it, running the numbers and making sure that we don't get back in a situation where we're dismissing cases because the statute of limitations have run. Thank you. And I think this is my last point. I was, I appreciated hearing that you mentioned working well with OPD. Obviously Oakland is our largest city here in the county with significant community safety issues. while I'm just wondering if you're hearing that you mentioned working well with OPD. Obviously, Oakland is our largest city here in the county with significant community safety issues. While I was still on the Oakland City Council, I really thought it would be important to have one or two DAs embedded in OPD to help with building up cases and I'm curious if you've had an opportunity yet to get to that point of thinking through how you're collaborating with OPD and during the, you know, all of the questioning that we had, I asked about potential reinstatement of vertical prosecution of human trafficking cases, for example, you know, just really working with OPD through those cases from start to finish to make sure that they were strong So for human trafficking and for ceasefire in particular are there ways that you're collaborating with OPD? So that's why we started the organized crime unit specifically I mean it serving the entire county but one piece of the organized crime unit instead of a gang unit, because that's what we used to have, is that we were trying to pay some specific attention to the ceasefire cases. And I don't necessarily think we used to have someone sitting at OPD charging cases. That's a little different than being involved in the investigations. I think that the DA's job should really be to advise once that case comes to you for charging unless this is an operation, like a DA is involved in an operation, maybe a wire top operation or something of that nature, but to advise as to if there's anything else they need because they can't charge it or they don't feel like it's a strong case because of this that or the other. I want to keep some lines or demarcations between the DA's office and the police department, but they know that the organized crime unit is there. We don't have anyone sitting at OPD now, but the person who's running or a Wiley Manual Division was sitting at OPD before in their space. He has a great relationship with them. He's an amazing charger, and he charges all of our heavy like the homicides and attempt murders, etc. So they know they come right over to his office and can sit in and have a conversation. Sometimes those conversations are hard. There's not enough to charge. Sometimes there, this is a great job as saw us recently on the news with just that information about a shooting of recent. So our goal is to try to make sure that we're moving in the right direction so that when these cases get to us, if they can be charged, they're worked up in such a way that we can take them to trial if necessary. We don't always get there, but we want to make sure we can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt and that is our ethical obligation to only move forward on those cases. So those relationships are there. We have people in place charging the cases or running those divisions that have a relationship with the police department so that there's the free flow of information as well as they feel comfortable in our space to come over and talk about those cases. As it relates to human trafficking cases, I think if I'm being honest, my biggest fear about those and using the resources of the feds right now are immigration consequences. I don't know that I trust everything that I'm being told. So we used to have when I was here as a DA a task force that involved the feds, the state, the county, everybody was at the table. I'm at a wait and see. I've been at a cops' meetings, the chief's meetings, and the federal officers are there, and they talk about the fact that they're not going to invoke. And the immigration consequences, as it relates to human trafficking, but I don't want to be the one that finds out the hard way. So I'm doing my research, looking at that very closely before we start to partner in that way again. Thank you. And last question, I mean, you just alluded to this. I know when we asked about it, you couldn't speak to it as a sitting judge, now that you're in this role, how are you viewing immigration consequences under this administration? I mean, we have always had the obligation to consider them. I mean, and that's what we will do as it doesn't mean, for example, that if there are immigration consequences, that's going to change how we move forward. We are not going to be calling ICE, and we are required to consider immigration consequences with every case. We'll continue to do that. And the office has always done that.. I mean I kind of feel like sometimes we consider what is happening across the state. I'm like maybe in Southern California but Alameda County has always been cognizant of that we will continue to be at this office. So we'll consider them in every case that we have if we're aware that there are immigration consequences. Thank you supervisor Marquez. Thank you. Welcome and congratulations on a heavy lift in less than 60 days. I'm really excited to see the updates specifically under safe and livable communities. Excited to see the alternative options, the diversion. We want to minimize the number of individuals going to center Rita Jail. So thank you for your work around that. A lot of my questions were already asked, but I do have some specific ones and if you don't have the answers to them, you could send us a follow up email and I know we'll be meeting soon for one-on-one meeting. But I wanted to know if the civil rights and public accountability units are being continued expanded or restructured. So we had a civil rights division. That is not the snow longer in place. What we went to is a public integrity unit, which we've always had. Under public integrity includes grand jury, officer involved shooting or officer incidents and Brady Bank, et etc. That is basically what a public integrity unit should be. And that's what we've always had and that's what we will have now. We have two people assigned to that at this point. They're doing great work. I can say that the day we walked into the office, there were calls to us from police departments asking for the individuals in their departments who were on a Brady list, which means they need to have information that might be ex-culpatory to someone else that had not been given to them in the last two years. So our last at Copson meeting, we went directly to that meeting and we came marrying gifts, not that that's a gift to any chief, but they need that information. So we're trying to figure out what was done before there are things that have been worked on, but like letters didn't go out to officers to make sure that they knew what happened or letters didn't go out to chief so that they knew we're cleaning that up. And Casey Bates is the individual that is handling that division. He's great at it, he's digging in, and we're doing the best we can to clean up the best we can. But the public integrity unit is where we are now. You know, I'm not really sure I looked at, and this is the restructuring of the office, I looked at the org chart when I walked into the office and it was confusing to me. There were people supervising like multiple layers of supervision for divisions that didn't really make sense. I need to get straight to the point, the way I work. I don't like that level of confusion. So even the civil rights bureau, there were things under the civil rights bureau that didn't make sense and maybe it should have been under consumer. So what we did is just restructure as any DA would just as the prior DA did. So the work is still being done. What they're being called is different. And then with respect to AB-109 funds, are those being fully utilized and are we evaluating them for their impact? Oh, they're fully utilized and Ms. Lewis is here. I'm surprised she didn't jump out of her seat to say that we're looking to find more of those funds so that we can fully utilize them. Ms. Lewis and she's been here has been looking really closely and I can feel behind me. Mr. Woods burning a hole in my back when I said that but I would just say that we're looking very closely at the amount of AB 109 funds that we're using and what we need, but we'll be coming to you with that as well. Okay, and do you anticipate staffing up in the elder and dependent adult unit giving our growing aging population? So we have one individual who is kind of a subject matter expert in that area. As soon as we can get the lawyers in the door to train people up, we can move them to those specialty positions. But he actually has been doing this now. I want to say it's been over six years. It's really good at it. And he's, you know, we can have him train someone up, but we just need people who have gotten past misdemeanors, preliminary hearings and felonies to be able to move to a vertical position like that. So can do all of those things in a vertical position. So the expectation is that we will because that's my sweet spot is elderly and the elders in the community. So the hope is to do that. We used to have two people in that unit and so the hope is to at least get up to two people. Okay. Can you share with us your prosecutorial priorities with respect to juveniles in our county? Priorities? I mean I think that we need to make sure that cases are charged appropriately and I think that that has been a concern over the last two years. Also think that we need to have a real conversation about whether or not we are in a position to ask the court because this is the court's call, what they think about whether or not a case should be elevated to a dull court. And so I'm happy to have those conversations. What happens when you file a juvenile petition as you can file an intent to ask probation, Mr. Ford's department, to write a report and tell us what their opinion is whether or not a child is meeting these five criteria. And so then we make a decision as to how we move from there. I want that information. So my goal is to ask probation to do that and I was going to have that conversation with Mr. Ford away from here, maybe a little more work for them, ask them to provide those reports to us so we can make an informed decision as to how we move after that. It's not a petition to lift someone up to a adult core, but just to get information to determine whether or not we should make that request. Okay. And then last question, are there any diversion or victim services programs supported by federal funding that are at risk that you're aware of. That's a good question. So, I'm not sure, but I can get back to you. The ones that I mean, I was thinking about, for example, I thought veterans court got some federal funding. Is that right from as low as, you know? Do you want to come to the my air cream? Briefly. But the ones that I see here, I'm not sure that there's anything that would die on the vine with no federal funding but I'll let Ms. Lewis speak to the veterans treatment for it. Yeah so the it's the funding is on the back end so Meaning the veterans bureau they supply a number of the services behind veterans treatment court So to the extent that those services may be cut at the federal level that will impact the service provision to Individuals like mr. Seymour that you saw in the video But we're trying to work collaboratively with our core partners surrounding that space. Okay. Those are all my questions and comments for now. Thank you so much. To the President's hand. Thank you, President Halberton. Thank you for your presentation. As my colleagues mentioned, you're definitely off to a good start. You're focused on the mission driven and being responsive and finding the efficiencies in the department. Just had a couple questions because I had been focused a lot on mental health care and the collaborative course, you said that there's three that are mandated. My recollection was I thought there was ten collaborative courts altogether that are mandated. No, that exists, but some are not as well utilized as others. So the ones that I'm aware of on this side of the House are listed here. And then clean slate is not a collaborative court, although it's listed there. And of course, cares is not technically a collaborative court. But what I, these are the ones that I'm aware of. I don't think we have any others. Okay, so it's just the three that are mandated. No, no, no, no. Three that are legally mandated, but on slide 14, we have, I wanna say, eight diversion courts that are listed there, and then the clean slate and cares after that. So the ones that are legally mandated are Veterans Treatment Court, our drug courts, and the reentry court. And that is just by statute, right? We are required to do those, but we choose to involve ourselves in the other ones because I think this is important work. And that was the point that I was making just that, you know, this office has always been a fan, honestly, of collaborative work, collaborative courts, trying to find alternatives to incarceration, trying to support people as they move through the system. But these three we have to do. We have to do reentry for the park's cases, at least drug court veterans treatment court. All the others we choose. Okay, that's very helpful. There was a discussion in the prior administration about staffing issues and so the AG's office and the prime justice had offered up attorneys but but it sounds like you in your restructuring, you're looking at fairly specialized people with experience and help get some of that vertical communication going, is that offer still available or is it something you can use? So I think we could, I think the AG has been gracious in allowing the us or the last administration to use those services. I also think that we have the people to do most of that work. The question for me, and this was a big deal as we were building up some of the programs and consumer and continue to is, for example, the labor trafficking. I mean, that's an issue that everybody's concerned about. We just didn't have people really doing that work. Now we do. So my expectation is that the AG won't need to come in for those things. Our big need is going to be the basics, people who can learn to try misdemeanors, preliminary hearings and felonies. That takes, if we're hitting on all cylinders, that takes a good six years to train someone up to do that. And so my biggest concern around just growing the talent, you have to grow the talent because the youth in the office is the lifeblood of the office, right? But you also, now we're gonna have to look a little bit to people who have that institutional knowledge or who are lateral hires to come in and fill the gap for us as well. And so I am happy that we've been able to bring at this point 10 lawyers back and then some anew a tense back to help us bridge the gap and then some subject matter experts to do that and we're still interviewing. So people have been more than willing to come back to the office and we're doing that a little bit at a time so that we can, you know, make sure that we're within our budget but we are desperate to do that. We have to because we're not going to have six years to pull it together. Okay, thank you. So the primary administration also formed their own mental health advisory committee, even though the county overall as a mental health commission. And so what is the status of that committee and where I'm going with this is to the degree that we as a board can help bring county resources to your office and increase that interagency collaboration. Let us know how we can best do that. So my CEO, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. This team of women sitting right here are pretty amazing. And they're very collaborative. And we have everybody here has over 25 years of experience. And this is my, this is my command staff. So I just want to say my expectation is that we're working with the county not against the county. That just I don't like to swim upstream. So if there are in specifically with I mean this is LD's will house for sure. I'm sure she'll be at every meeting in your ear about everything that she can as it relates to behavioral health and all of these pieces. But again, our goal is to work with the county not against the county and I don't think that we need those types of we'll always have inter office communications about how we want to move but we want to be a part of those groups not outside of those groups so I don't have anyone still running L.D. would know more than anyone else some mental health advisory board that we have within the office and only in the office we still have it. Oh boy come on up LD. someone else, some mental health, advisory board that we have within the office and only in the office, we still have it. Oh boy, come on up, Eldie. Can we get rid of it? Okay. So it is a commission. It's been super helpful in part because of the Care First Gel last initiative. There are oversight provisions. And so a part of that team and the data work. We re-instituted that meeting. We've had a kickoff meeting. We have follow-up meetings coming together making sure we're bringing the stakeholders from across the county from CareFirst Jail Last and other like NAMI and community groups that have been impacted into that room so that we make sure we're on point with our care for gel lasts compliance. Also we have for instance the chair of the mental health advisory board that works within that body which is a long time collaborator. So we did continue that work because of the county wide obligation and I will be happy to follow up with whatever like county work at the mental health level that supervisor Tam you're interested in learning more about from us. Yeah so I serve on the health committee for the last three years and the mental health care advisory commission had specifically asked to get input on care for Australia's last and all the efforts that were going on on and it seemed to be siloed with the prior DA's office informing their own committee, but it sounds like it's not necessarily a mental health care committee that's duplicative of the commission's work. No, okay. Thank you. Very good. Most of my questions have been asked and answered. Great job. I know that there are some slides in here that you did on your own. They weren't part of the typical presentation. The quarter by quarter, your first 60 days on the job. Great job. I just do like to see on pages like page six, change versus year ago. You know. I don't know, I see your overall budget is going by 5.0%, but I don't know, is that affecting grants or welfare? Did it just straight line across the board? I just don't know. Not a huge issue, it is what it is but I don't know sticking to this budget with all the things you have going on, I just will probably see adjustments at some point. You mentioned cost savings on page 19. Tell me more about that. So where do you think you might find cost savings? So a couple of things. One, the first thing we tried to do is take a look at our grants and how we're utilizing and drawing down on the grants to make sure we're doing that effectively. I'm an efficiently. There have been some problems in the last several years not using money that was given us so that won't happen going forward. We're also looking at a more paperless process so that we can get away from using some of that, discretionary funds that we have to use for supplies. We had some significant cell phone bills. I've never, yeah, I don't know where that came from, but we dug into it and we're finding ways that people can have better communication without everybody having a cell phone. And so we're pulling cell phones back for people who don't need them. It's like everybody had a cell phone. In addition to that, we're trying to not duplicate like supervision levels. So our org chart is almost done because we're done now hiring the first tranche of people we wanted to hire. So I wanted actual org chart with names of individuals in it and then just organization the name for us. But you know the bigger piece, for example, like the sheriffs for you all. So when we looked at the organization structure, it was convoluted. It didn't make sense. And so you had people who were supervising something, but didn't know anything about it, or weren't really doing any real supervision. So we've kind of reorganized such that we have people in positions they should be in, and we're hiring into positions where we need someone. So those were concerns as well. We had travel like I've never seen. Everybody was traveling. And so we had to pull back on that as well because we just don't have the money to do that right now. Now we wanna keep in mind we want people to be able to go to trainings. And so we're trying to figure out how to best kind of balance that because as people are year enough to learn more so they can be better lawyers. We wanna support the training piece, but we found that our cost for travel was over the top and we're trying to tamp down on the witness transportation, as well as other things like expert witnesses corner costs things of that nature. There was a time where I think the sheriff was in a contract with a corner that was out of the state and so those costs were significant to us, but I think they've hired someone now. So, I mean, just little things like that. Just looking at our budget, our personal budget, our day-to-day, when I'm signing off on, to pay for every day and determining how we can do that a little different. And Mrs. Esposito, Annie, is great at that. She's all over it. Everything that's coming through, she wants we look at it, we evaluate it to see if this is something we have to do the next time we're sending out emails, we're ceasing travel for this period of time unless it's an emergency situation until we can get our budget under control. Very good. Great job again. Last thing I'll just say before I recognize Supervisor Miley is if you want to get a hunt as a team list you have to provide an org chart with names. I know. I know it will change but when you get a chance. Well, Jim. Yes, I was going to ask can we get the org chart with names? Yes, I'll get a point. You know, as of whatever date and titles. Yes. Okay. And then I've been meaning to ask you this was rewards test still there. Yes. It was still there. Or it's back. It's back. It wasn't there when you got there. It got back before I got there. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you again. Great job. First time out of the gate. We'll see you next year if not sooner We'll now move to the probation department for which we've allocated 20 minutes just so you know All I've timed it's about five times. It's about eight minutes long And I also have provided a work chart for your review. It's setting before you, starting off. I'm a good note. There is names on it and it's very tiny though. Names and titles. Got it. So are you ready? All right, well good afternoon, President Halbert, members of the board, County Administrator and colleagues. I'm Brian Ford, honored to serve as the Chief Probation Officer of Fallon, Middek County. Before I began, I do want to extend my sincere gratitude to our dedicated staff, not only for their contribution for today's presentation, but for their commitment to serving our clients and supporting our communities every day. This afternoon, I'll be presenting our MOE budget for fiscal year 2526. So our mission is simple. We're committed to revolutionizing probation, setting a standard of excellence through innovation, bold partnerships and an unwavering pursuit of safety and well-being. Our mission is to empower individuals, strengthen communities, and advance justice by providing evidence-based and effective prevention, intervention, and healing- centered services. This slide summarizes our fiscal year 2526 MOE budget. For the upcoming year, our appropriation is approximately 235 million, which is a 7.1 million dollar increase from the previous year. Primarily due to cost of living increases, with revenue of approximately 73 million, to offset a portion of the appropriation. And this results in a net county cost of approximately 162 million, which is a 4.6% increase from the previous year with no changes and FTEs. So this slide outlines our key components of our net county cost change, which reflects $35 million in salary and employee benefits in Colis, 1.7 million in ISF adjustments, which account mostly for office space and ITD cost, reductions of one time revenue of 3.8 million, which was used to help balance fiscal year 2425 budget and a revenue enhancement of $2 million. Our agency is divided into five primary divisions of which juvenile facilities, which is JJC and Camp Swinney, make up about 30% of our appropriation at almost 68 million followed by the positive youth development division at 23% and that's the division responsible for supervising young people in the community. Adult field services at 20%, AB 109, reflecting 40 million, which is used to cover programs and services for the adult population at 17% and finally, our administration division is 11%. In the breakout by major object, salary and employee benefits are the largest budget item and observed roughly 60% of the appropriation, DSNS, 34% and nondiscretionary services and supplies at 8%. So state aid makes up roughly 70% of our revenue, which is various block grants like JJCPA AB 109 and SB823. Federal 8 makes up 24%, and that comes from Title IVE, Targeted Case Management, and a few small competitive grants we receive from the DOJ, and then the other is .4. So our goal is to ensure that our appropriation aligns with the vision, values priorities of the county and this board. To accomplish this, we have initiated the development of our new five-year strategic plan, entitled Vision 2030, which includes the six goals out loud on this slide that tie in with the county's Vision 2036 plan. We're currently in the process of engaging staff and stakeholders to build out the specific task and objectives, and we hope to have our plan finished and published by the end of this summer. So as we reflect on a few of our accomplished midst, we are proud to share that some of the, we're proud to share some of the meaningful outcomes our dedicated staff have achieved on behalf of the county and summary Both the do and juvenile clients have continued to be connected to a wide variety of prevention and intervention programs and services which Results and successfully completing probation and reintegrating back into the community as responsible citizens and so while we acknowledge these accomplishments's always more we can do, and our commitment to continuous improvement remains strong as we strive to better serve our community. These are a few of our key investments for the upcoming year. Despite ongoing fiscal uncertainty, we remain intentional about how we allocate resources ensuring that every dollar supports outcomes aligned with our mission. Each of these investments reflect a service or program provided by community-based organizations and align with the needs of our clients and community. It's important to note that these funding priorities are shaped collaboratively through the community corrections partnership and the Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council. So together, justice and community stakeholders have worked to ensure that these investments are both responsive to community needs and grounded in evidence-based practices. This slide reflects our mandated versus discretionary services. elements include programs like JJ like JJCPA, SPA-23, which is doing a justice re-alignment, which shifted the responsibility of long-term detention to the local level. The same for AB 109, which is post-release community supervision. With all of these programs, we spend more than $170 million a year, which account for the cost of both CBO contracts, as well as department FTEs, to provide these services. When we examine our discretionary services like pre-trial, community supervision, and various specialized caseloads, we note that while these services are optional, they are generally industry standard practices and often rooted in evidence-based practices. Similar to preventative maintenance on a car, these investments may not be required, but neglecting or eliminating them often comes at a far greater cost in the long term. And the costs for the services reflected here are approximately $30 million a year. This slide offers a high levellevel look at the potential impact of the Governor's proposed state budget and anticipated federal reductions. Through the County Administrator's Office and the Budget Workgroup, we've been exposed to the broader economic outlook which remains both uncertain and somewhat concerning. At the state level, proposed reductions to the AB1 on I allocation and changes to the SB678 formula could impact reentry programming and disrupt essential services in vulnerable communities, including housing, mental health, and substance abuse programs. On the federal side, cuts to programs like community violence interventions and other justice-related funding streams could further strain our capacity to provide services that support public safety and community well-being. We will continue to monitor the economic outlook through the County Administrators Office, C-POC and key partners, and remain engaged and ready to pivot as needed. As your board knows, economic downturns increase demand for safety net services. And in these times, our role as careful stewards of public funds becomes even more critical. And inside of that, your board has reaffirmed its commitment by approving $228 million this fiscal year in community-based programs. $119 million for youth and families, and 85 billions for adults through our department. And this reflects a strong commitment to supporting our most vulnerable populations. So this slide reflects a snapshot of the many community-based organizations we partner with in pursuit of our mission. Reflected here are large, medium, and small small organizations We value the principle of equity and our intentional about creating opportunities for smaller organizations to partner with the county through our department in support of the counties strategic goals And so with that that concludes my presentation and Consider and I have eight colleagues that are eager to go behind me. I'd be happy to take whatever questions you have. Thank you. Thank you. Very good presentation. Timely and brief and to the point, much appreciated. Thank you. I'll start with the chair of our polling protection committee, which is supervisor Marquez. And then the other member of that committee, which is supervisor Miley. Thank you so much, Chief Ford, for the excellent work you and your team do. Had an opportunity to spend time at JJC and to see the positive impact you guys are making on young people in our community. Just a couple questions. Are there metrics in place to track the effectiveness of AB 109 funded community provider contracts? Yeah, so we have had a number of evaluations for AB 109. We actually have a pending RFP that we're going to be releasing for evaluation to take a look at the programs and services. When we do put out the RFPs, we haven't had an evaluation that tells us specifically which program is effective to our reducing recidivism specifically, but we do in those reports get the overall recidivism rate. What we know right now is that the recidivism rate for our county is 29%, which is well below the state average of about 40 to 45%. Okay, that's good to hear. And then is probation partnering with behavioral health services and AC health to look at how we can support youth with respect to CalAIM opportunities? Yes, so lipid ongoing conversations related to CalAIM and partnered with behavioral health to make sure that we have actually a full time FTE station dead, juvenile justice center to help coordinate with all the Cal-Cal-Aim efforts. Okay and then are there prop 1 funds available to look at facility updates for mental health services at juvenile hall? Are there I didn't hear that. Prop 1 funding available have we explored that? I'd have to look into that and have a conversation. We'll be here. Okay. And then I wanted to ask, I know you may not be able to answer this, but just wanted to see if you have any updates or been part of any conversations with respect to pre-trial, my office and former supervisor Keith Carson's office presented a board letter back in December. Do you know if those discussions have started to look at what we could do here within Elimit County? Yes, we've convened two meetings so far with the public safety partners as well as the County Administrators Office, and we are continuing to have those discussions and we will have some appropriate follow-up with your office. Okay, thank you. Mr. Vajramayali. Yeah, thanks for the, the, the, the brevity of your presentation. I mean, you did it even better than the assessor. Thank you. Excellent. And what's the, census out of the hall now? How many? Yeah, we have 58 young people at the hall of the 58, I think six are our female and then we have eight at Camp Swainey. Okay, very good and how are we? Coming with our reimagining Camp Swainey, reimagining Yeah, so yeah, so we have we're we're pending a date for, to get on the calendar for public protection to provide you with an update on the SB 81 funds to talk about how we plan to revitalize, use those funds to revitalize Camp Swinney. So that presentation is pending. how we plan to revitalize, use those funds to revitalize Camp Swinney, so that presentation is pending. Okay. Um... And then, let's see... and to revitalize, use those funds to revitalize Camp Swinney, so that presentation is pending. Okay. And then let's see, and I looked at your initiatives, it may be to enlist them all, which I'm assuming you didn't, but is the department still supporting midnight basketball? We are supporting midnight basketball still, yes. Okay. Are there other similar programs that you're supporting for young people in the community like Midnight Basketball? Yes. There's a variety. So we on average probably allocate anywhere between eight to 10 million dollars every year for a bunch of preventative services Midnight Basketball. We have a program called the Camp Program. I can list them all, but there's a variety of services available to young people through JJ CPA dollars. Are you participating in the Chiefs meetings throughout Alameda County with law enforcement? Yes, to a Copsa. I'm at that meeting every month. Okay, very good, very good. And in your relationship with OPD. Strong. Strong. Yes. We just took a trip to New Zealand with supervisor Mark has in a group of stakeholders and as a result of New Zealand. Oh, I agree with that. With a group of stakeholders and OPD was a part of that trip. And as a result of that trap, I've have even more engagement over the last month or so. Just sort of debriefing about what next steps are as a result of what we learned in New Zealand. Give us a highlight to what was some of the nerd takeaways. Take away, you know, real high level takeaways. High level takeaways. They really believe in diversion. They really believe in centering the family, which is called the Fanno. And so they really believe in instilling indigenous practices. And we are aligned to do the same. Okay. And then what's the status of use of OC spray and other restraints? Yeah. So we are almost at the tail end of negotiations with respect to OC spray. It's been a long, long negotiation, but we're just about done. Will you be giving an update to public protection? Yes, at some point. Absolutely. OK, great. Supervisor Forza, not a bass, and then Supervisor Tam. Any questions? I'll just say thank you for the presentation. I found it very thorough and Just very well organized so I don't have any questions. I do want to note because I believe we first met I was still in Oakland and we were Convenient by the ceasefire program. I do appreciate that collaboration and Investment and violence Thank you super brother Tim. Thank you. I also appreciate the updates that you provide to our office on all the various programs and giving us heads up. The time's almost seven and so my mind automatically goes to numbers because I'm kind of a numbers person. So I'm trying to figure out, you said the mandated program was 170 million between the CBOs in the department and the discretionary was 30 million, so that's 200 million. But then when you have the total youth programs and the total adult programs, 119 plus 85 is 203, but then your total program is 228. Those numbers are adding up. Yeah, I knew somebody would ask me that question. So the difference in those numbers really is our administrative costs, like I didn't factor in. 24 million vision, your footnote. Yeah, and it's the administrative, our administrative costs, our administrative division to run the organization, those weren't factored into either mandated or discretionary services. But you're still 4 million short, even after county for the 24 million and admin and other costs. How about I follow up with you on R101 and I break it down for you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, great presentation. It's following up on Supervisor Marquez's question about AB 109. You have metrics of success or if you could send me a copy of what those are, I would appreciate it. Certainly. Also, AB 109, I know we have a lot of CBOs. Can you provide a list of funds that are spent by each CBO? Yes, we can provide it again. I believe we've provided that as a well. Satisfied their requests through the County Administrators Office, but we'll make sure we get that to you. I guess I'll get it soon. Thank you. Not sure I have it. And I see a lot of logos on the sheet. That's great. Some are better than others. Absolutely. I see a picture with CORE, which is great. They do a good job. But I don't see their logo on here. So maybe that's just a partial listing of. Yeah, that's partial. Yeah, there's so many more. So many more. Very good. Great job. Thank you thank you for sharing well now move on to the public defender who I notice is given an extra five minutes beyond the public probation department okay so you have 25 minutes. Good try. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to present this year's budget for, and we budget for the Public Friends Office. I want to thank my finance staff, who's here. I want to give a special thank you to the County Administrator and their staff. We were extremely short staff this year and our budget team and without their guidance and support, I'm not sure we'd have gotten this done so thank you. I also want to give one thank you to our staff, our public defenders, immigration lawyers, our social workers, our investigators who fight daily on behalf of our clients. This is my 13th budget presentation. I got the grace to show it. And the picture you have on the screen right now is one that I've used in presentations but I've never used it here. As a picture that that was taken in 2014 at about 8.14 a.m. on the courthouse steps, our office letter protest of public defenders around the Bay Area. They were protesting the killing of unarmed black men. I thought it was appropriate to use this picture here because these sort of actions are needed now more than ever. Never have I seen at least not in my lifetime, that's throughout democracy, our human rights, that's to what make our nation great as we've seen the last thing in half months. Our immigrant community members are under a contemplative fear. People are being disappeared for certain their free rights, their rights free speech. Law firms are being punished. DEI initiatives are being dismantled at our corporations, businesses and institutions of higher learning. The Defense Department removed the webpage, recognizing Jackie Robinson as they purged the E.I. content, Jackie Robinson. The Naval Academy's library has removed, I know, why the Cagebird sings by Maya Angelo. Angelo, they've removed, had to be anti-racist by Embram X-Kindy while keeping Hitler's fine-kimp. And a book called The Bell Curve that argues that women and black men are genetically less intelligent than whites. These attacks are not abstract. They're felt daily in our courts. They're felt in our jails. They're felt in our neighbors. They are felt in our communities. They are felt by black and brown people. They are felt by our immigrant communities. They are felt by our unhoused and our poor. So I say all that to say the need for robust, well-resourced, zealous public defense, has never been greater. Our office stands, so do other public and also the state. They stand as the one last line of defense against government overreach, against systemic injustice, against racism. We are not just legal advocates, we are not just attorneys, we are freedom fighters, we are social workers, we are activists, we are investigators, we are change makers, we are community protectors, we are public defenders and now it's a time to invest in public defense not only to meet our constitutional obligations but to uphold the values that define us as Alavira County. Thank you, but I could not stand here in front of you today about without commenting on the urgency of this moment. Commission of the Public Defenseenders Office is to ZLC protect and defend the rights of our clients through compassion and inspired legal representation of the highest quality and pursuit of a fair and unbiased system of justice for all. We represent all those accused of crime in Alameda County when they cannot afford to pay for council. There's a conflict of interest, the case gets referred to the court appointed attorney's program. You've seen this chart before or this image before. This is our protest defense model. It comes from the Bronx defenders. When we first started, we had a criminal team and investigator. We've now been able to add these other pieces. This is what's left. And the way we approach this is we try to attack all of the issues our clients face when they come to contact with the criminal legal system where to be housing employment loss of property Whether they have mental health or substance abuse right to attack all those problems or don't come back in the contact with the system This is our financial summary For MOE 25 2526. Our appropriations are 67.7 million that has changed in about 6.4 million. Our revenues are increased by 3.2 to increase net kind of cost by 3.2 million. We've added three FTEs. This slide here shows a breakdown of a net county cost. As you can see, it's primarily driven by salivian employee benefits, about 5.8 million, and increasing non-discresciting services, about 336,000, increasing services and applies, but changing that kind of cost a 3.2 million. This slide here shows that our appropriation by major object. As you can see we're heavily salivating employee benefits but 85% and 14% service and applies. This is our total revenue. About 5.3 in revenue. About 4.6 comes from state aid, a little over almost 700,000 other revenue. This slide here shows our combined budget for engine defense. It shows our budget end cap. So it's a total M-O-E of 70.6, at 8.6, that kind of cost of 73, an increase of 3.1. So our listed defense model really goes to the heart of the county's vision 2036. In County Year 2024, we opened over 26,000 files. We served over 25,000 individuals. Our model supports the 2036 vision and goals by eliminating poverty and hunger, providing employment for all, limiting homelessness, creating a crime for the county, and creating a prosperous and vibrant economy. Economy. One of the most important pieces of our model is our social workers. This is our team here. We have 12 social workers and one educational advocate. As you can see, they are extremely diverse. We're very proud of that. And they do amazing work. They're massive level professionals that create range plans, social histories. They provide alternatives to incarceration to our clients. And 24 days, just assess needs of 366 clients. 70% of the treatment recognition plans were accepted by the courts. Historically, about 85% of our clients received the dimension did not recidivate. This is one of our client stories here at Mr. T. Our social workers helped get him into a mental health diversion program. He's doing great because he had some mental health crisis at the first time when he was 40 years old And self-crustration he can treat it a pre-program. He's now working full-time He tends to age back classes at night. He loves his jobs. I'm trying to graduate from the version this year Another story here is Mr. U I'm trying to go to his little bit faster you guys can read them He's a retired Air Force veteran who served 22 years. He's also an Abbott 49er fan, but we want to hold that against him. He left the military early and expected due to unforeseen trauma. He had a lot of PTSD. He began to commit some crimes. We got him into diversion. And he's doing great. And you can see his quote here. So unlike or maybe different than our mitigation unit which talks to our clients and meets them when they first get involved in the criminal legal system, our Cleansestate Unit comes in at the back end. Once someone has completed their court requirements and now they're dealing with the aftermath of a criminal conviction, they help get their records cleaned. Last year, they filed about 1800 petitions that had 94% success rate. Our clean slate unit is better than most, or unlike any in the state, where they don't just focus on the criminal conviction, they also focus on the barriers that were created by that conviction. So Mr. P here is a great example. He served 11 years in prison and when he was released he was referred to one of our clean state clinics through about community partners. While he was at Folsom Prison he was actually on their fire department. Not fire camp at fire department. He assisted with fires in their prison and fires close by. When he got released we were able to get his convictions dismissed and He then applied for his guard card when he applied for his guard card It was denied because it was very convictions that we got dismissed Now this is why we're different in other units instead of letting it be go by and having him just not get a job We then appealed his denial of his guard card. We won that. He was able to get his guard card. He became security guard and now it's been recently promoted as a lead security officer. If that didn't occur in our county, he would not have been helped like that. So unfortunately, there are going to be some challenges next year when it comes to the Cleanstate Unit and And it's happening right now. East Bay Community Law Center has been providing Cleanstate services for over 25 years. They're open doors in 2005. They are no longer going to be provided Cleanstate services. We've been doing joint clinics for four times a month for the last few years. It's going to greatly increase our workload. Our clean slate attorneys right now have about 735 cases each. It's just going to get worse. Currently, there are limited course plots available. So on average, in best case, we can get through about 2000 clean slate cases a year through the court. We accept about 3000 cases a year. So there's no way to rectify that based on the volume of cases we're getting. One issue we're seeing is limited clean slate staffing from the DA's office. You're never going to hear me advocate for staff for the DA, but they need more staff and clean slate. And we've had to temporarily pause clinic and referrals because the intake is so high. So what that means is that people who hopefully can get their convictions off their records, get housing, to get a job, it's not happening. Let's start immigration defense, and we've discussed them a lot lately. You are aware that in 2013, we became their first office outside of New York to begin to, first public defense office outside of New York to begin the rep's and outside of the removal proceedings. We currently have 142 cases, and we conducted over 1300 PDA councils last year. On this slide here, it looks a little chaotic and that's by design because it's been absolutely chaotic and harmful and destructive regardless of what's been happening to our immigrant community the last three months. We represented a client that was the LPR from Belize. This person went to visit their father that was diagnosed with cancer in Belize. On the way back, they were replaced in removal proceedings due to a 2005 misdemeanor conviction. Misdemeanor, possession of marijuana for sale. We worked to get that person's conviction vacated, we then moved and successfully terminated the immigration proceedings, that client was able to retain their green card and now they're eligible for naturalization. But without the resources provided by our office, that person would be in a completely different state. Now, I'm always proud to be the public defender of Alameda County. Always proud. This one at a moment, especially proud. Since January, our office has participated in 10 no-your-rights events, actually now 11 since this weekend, around immigration. Our immigration attorney appeared on TeleMundo to talk to residents about immigration information, and this board approved funding for us to expand our immigration unit. And I want to extend my sincerest thank you and my gratitude. Special thank you to supervise and mark has to supervise a pass for leading that effort. But each one of you, you've shown tremendous courage and bravery by doing that. Each one of you, and thank you. You know this, you probably don't need to have me to tell you this, but you are on the right side of history. You are on the right side of history and they will never ever be a doubt as to where you stood in this moment. So thank you. This program here is our Partners for Justice Program. Now we're getting to more of the discretionary service that we provide. These are about eight young recent college graduates that work with us for about two years, and they provide services about their client's treatment, housing, benefits, employment, and so forth. They served over 845 clients in 2024. There we go. And the results are amazing. 66% of the clients who they helped, mental service, I'm sorry, mental health support, completed a treatment program. 56% of the clients that received employment are now employed. 60 is of clients that received housing support now have stable housing. These results are tremendous. Okay. In 2024, we did our annual block party. We did it in West Oakland this year. This is the first time we did it since COVID. We've served over 500 committee members and about 49 service providers there. We also did our voice program where we registered over 500 people in custody to vote. We continued to lyric when you're right in California. This was done about things six weeks ago at Oakland High, one of the larger classes we've ever done, but four classes came together. We did an auditory and it was a really great event. And finally, we conducted our second annual holiday gift giveaway, collaborated with Campaign Zero. We gave over 175 gifts out to over 52 families. There were all gifts given to people or kids who had incarcerated parents. So what happens if we're not funded? We lose our staff, increase time and custody for people who are in jail, people have convicted or not convicted, results in separation of families, reduce access to clean-fate services, increase deportations, wrongful convictions, and reduce the to get people's resettments. So there have been some legislative changes that have impacted our budget that are coming up. I'll talk about four of them. One is the end of the public defense pilot program. We've used that to fund our post-conviction unit. Number two is the Racial Justice Act. You've heard about that already. Number three is Prop 36. Number four is National Public Defense Funded Workload Study. It's reflected in two assembly bills right now, AB625 and AB690. So the post-conviction unit. There was a grant that funded our unit for three years that was put in place by legislation that program has now ended. In 2024, we sent to 120 people. We have 70 cases pending. We're sentencing with regards to felony murder and discretionary sentencing. We have 140 clients with open and frank full youthful offended parole cases and we're constantly getting lists from either CDCR, or Office of State Public Defendee, about people who also held able to resent us. We got a list of a 905 people recently. Now you've heard me talk about this unit before but when in the first year and a half of this unit being up and running, we saved over 908 years of incarceration. We saved the state $13.6 million. So we're not only saving the state money, but we're also bringing people home successfully. This is Mr. H. He was sentenced 17 years to life. He served over 28 years to prison. We got him resendants. He's now home. This is Mr. B. Same thing. It was sentenced to 18 years to life. He served over 28 years in prison. He's now home. He has a job. He's graduated from ARCH job ratings program. He has full-time employment. This is Mr. R. He was sentenced to LWAP, life without the possibility of parole when he was 18 years old. 18. We got him, he sentenced to 15 years to life. He was immediately eligible for parole. This was pictured about a team with his family and his released. He now works at a community health worker and that works as a community health worker at St. John's Health and LA. Rachel Justice Act, I'm not going to go into detail about this. You already are aware of the law but it prohibits racial discrimination and convictions and sentences. It creates a process with the challenge racial discrimination and trial order following conviction. Last year, the bill became retroactive for anyone who was serving time in prison. This year, it became retroactive for anyone who's in prison or not. So that population keeps continuing to grow. We have one attorney assigned to the RJA. She also mentors or consults attorneys on their active cases. She did 98 councils last year. She filed 10 motions for relevant data for discovery. She had nine cases dismissed. And she also has received 48 new RJA case referrals last year. RJA cases are tremendously heavy. They're very labor intensive and I can't describe the amount of work that goes into them. By comparison, contra costa, they have six attorneys assigned to their RJA unit. So I'm just going to put up a friend there's four, Santa Clara has three. Prop 36, I think the DA alluded to this sum up, but not quite a point, in regards to the increase in filings. From January of 2024 to January of 2025, that inflated cases on our office that we see are up 50%. In the first three months compared to last year, we have 64 new felony cases. On the court's data shows it to be hired in that. And what prop 026 on the racial disparity in charging is still alarming. If we're looking at North County, which is widely manual in RCD, the court houses here, 78% of our prop 046 felony cases that people have been black. 83% of the charges that we see county wide have been people of color. Consistent what you've seen in the A slide you've seen an increase in workload the increase for us really started in 2024 actually under the prior administration we opened our office and additional 2000 cases. The first three months of this year, as compared to 2025, we received 231 more felonies. I mentioned the National Public Federal Workload Study. I talked about this in more detail a last year's budget. I'm going to give you the highlights right now. It pretty much was a study that came out and talked about the equivalent hours needed for public defense to handle certain case types. Applying this study to our office, we will need 68 additional attorneys. So the reason this is becoming important right now is because the first time we have seen this workload study reference legislation in California. Currently AB690, which is going through the process right now, refers to court appointed contracts if people do a contract work. So if example, our CAP program, it references that all contracts with appointed defense services should be based on the National Apartment of Fentil Workload Study. There's a number of cases handled over the contract period which I'll be informed by case limits from the National Apartment of Fentil Workload Study. I am not sure if this will pass, but it has to be on our radar, because lesards are now paying attention to this workload study. AB 625 is legislation that has passed. California will be coming out with a separate workload study around public defense, it should be released next four to five weeks. And it's going to discuss staffing ratios. I might have heard that we based on the National Associates of Public Defense Staffing Ratios, which they talk about here. One, investigate if every three lawyers. When social work for every three lawyers, when paralegal and when administrative assistant for every four lawyers, I think we've got two paralegals, this for reference. If you look at our comparison with regards to investigators to attorney, we have one investigated every 6.5. So I want to turn it to every 6.5 investigators. We have one social worker advocate to every six attorneys. If you compare our staffing, especially when it comes to inspectors versus investigators, the day's office crushes us, if you compare operation staff to our other staff, they crush us. So we have to try to get to a point where we don't have these large, huge disparity resources. And you've heard me discuss this before, but in order to have a just and equitable system, we have to correct this imbalance. There has to be a parity of resources. Currently, the PDS budget from last year is about 60.9 million supporting 188 FTEs. The DA is $15 million supporting 363 FTEs. In the backdrop of this, our jail, this is a 45% black, 35% Latinx, 87% people of color. In vision 2036, we talk about our goals of our crime-free county. We talk about the need to implement equitable and transparent criminal justice strategies that eliminate racial disparities. We talk about providing equitable and effective crime that can strategy. We talk about justice strategies that eliminate mass incarceration through investment in evidence-based justice alternatives. If you want these scales to be balanced, if you want to accomplish the goals we set forth, there has to be balanced funding. So I'm going to conclude with this letter we received from one of our clients. This client was facing very serious charges. He had a private counsel that really believed in his case and then he got referred to us. He sent this letter after his case and went to trial and before the jury had reached the verdict. And it was to our office, not just to his attorney but to our office. And it was a very long letter. I'm only going to be certain in portions of it. the Alameda County Public Defender's Office, I want you to just start by saying thank you from the bottom of my soul to Olivia for defending me. She's brilliant and insightful, compassionate, unique, funny, and beautiful human being. I hope you all understand how important a work you do really is. I hope none of you are ever discouraged by those who cannot see your talent and service. You provide a service to the community that many people will never know or understand. Whatever happens, I know I'll be paying it forward and back. In a way that's different due to having the honor of being defended by the Alameda County Public Funds Office. Had a very bad experience for the pay lawyer to get banished my family. I never did I think I would get lucky enough to have been supported by such a kind smart and supportive individuals as Olivia Sauer-Rena. I used to think the off-use of the most in terms of minimizing suffering, but I now believe is you, what you do is you're making more compassionate and thoughtful. I will speak of your office till the day I die. My family feels the same way. You all had an outsized impact not just on me but in my personal world and the people I know. They all speak how we have you. Thank you again for all the work all of you do as a word to explain how lucky I am to have been supported by your office. I wish I could have met you more of you, but you always live inside my heart and my brain. The jury did not convict their client. This case hung and ended up in mistrial, eight for guilty for sorry eight for not guilty for for guilty on the DA dismissed the person's case last week. So thank you again for allowing me to present the budget this year. I hope you still see that I love my job. I love what I do. And the greatest honor of my life has been being the public dependent on the county. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. We'll start with questions if we have them from supervisor Miley. Nope, supervisor of 4200 bass. I I'm actually really moved. I'm really moved that we have such a strong public defender's office. This may be perhaps the strongest office in the entire nation. And I think so much of it is obviously your leadership and the leadership of your team, the zealousness that you bring, the fervor you bring to public defense, and righteousness, and defending people who have no or very little resources. And I've had an opportunity over the short time I've been here to be in some of those know your rights trainings with Rahe and other members of your team. And I am almost beyond words because I think I'm not gonna say that you're my favorite, cause I don't think that's a good idea, especially if you're a mom, you don't want to pick favorites. Just teasing Mr. Miley over here, but I think we should be really proud that we have such a great public defenders unit, and it was so great to see the information about the successes, including the Clean Slate program, which I believe I heard you say because EBCLC is closing their program that there is a dire need for that program. Perhaps you could just speak to what parity could look like, knowing that it's a hard budget year and there is so much that is unknown. Yeah, parity and I did put some slides in there in regards to what it would take to get there. I think it has to be a gradual plan. I understand that there's not going to be 27 million dropped into the budget overnight for public defense. But if there could could be a gradual of X amount of attorneys and X amount of staff over the next few years, that would be a plan to get there. I think I mentioned in the presentation, just even complying with the public defense to workload study would be about 27.1 million. The DA's budget would still be... The presentation just even complying with the public differential workload study would be about 27.1 million The DA's budget would still be 19.8% larger than ours based on last year It will take some will to get the parity and it will take a lot of hard work and and priority-based. And I'm not trying to say that the A's by the G'd be cut in any way, but in order to provide assessment that's fear, that that's truly fear. There's got to be some sort of resources that are equal. Now when our attorneys are in trial right now, the investigators, one of the most glaring examples because on investigators in trial one attorney is covering like 25 other cases at the same time and they get they're in there and they're out kind of witnesses and they got to go to different court. It is almost impossible for me to work as compared to the DA's that have 75 inspectors. So they will have a inspector in and throughout the entirety of the trial to respond to any requests that lawyer has. We don't have that. So it will take some time to get there, but the need is urgent. And I wish there could be some sort of funder to in in some ways, pilot that here, because the results you would see would be revolutionary. If you could have social workers touching, let's say 50% of our clients, getting them access to treatment, talking to them about their trauma, they would not be coming back. Now if we could be doing really Zell's bail pitches in every case and in litigating cases taking more cases to trial, it would change the system. Now throughout the nation 98% of cases plea bargain right now. So that's people getting on probation, that's people then have to go through clean faith to get their jobs or housing. The system as it's designed fails low-income communities. It fails black and brown people. That's why we saw this cycle. I appreciate the question now, I'm going on, but it really is about the way the system was created. It was built for law enforcement into incarceration. I did delete my section about how we refocus priorities in the interest of time about how we view public safety. Public safety isn't just about funding law enforcement or prosecutors or incarceration, it's about recognizing the needs of community. Public safety cannot be achieved without talking and funding community groups without funding public funds without having community, that's all a hassle part of the equation. So I've gone on a tangent there, but just if a PD's office could obtain parity, it would be revolutionary, and it would change the system. Supervisor Marquez. Thank you, President Halber. Thank you for the amazing work you and your team do. It's really inspiring and remarkable to just kind of piggyback on some of the comments made by my colleague. Have you explored or been in discussions with AC Health to see how we could possibly bill CalAIM for the social work that your staff is doing? We have not discussed it directly with Health. We've discussed it with a different organization and we're looking into that right now. Okay, fantastic. And I would certainly I know there is a huge disparity in terms of the operating budget for your department comparison to the DA, but do want to focus on the significant investment that was just made with the 1.3 million for the immigration unit, the expansion of that. So we're moving in the right direction. That's a long way to go, but there's progress being made there. But I wanted clarity because I only see in the budget three additional FTE so can you clarify that for me? Yes, so those three FTEs, I just check my staff are for care court., the three have not been reflected for the immigration to the SINGE yet. That will be next budget. It's just not reflected in this budget yet. That's reflected yet, but it will be. It will be, got it. Okay, and then, sorry, it's late. I'm losing my train of thought. So I am very much interested in looking at some recommendations with respect to grant funding. We heard earlier today from the Excessor how much tax money is outstanding and it's being held up in the pills. I definitely would like to have us start with possibly a work session to look at what does a five year plan look like to start scaling your department. So I don't obviously have any answers now, but just want you to know that I'm committed to having that discussion and trying to figure out how we can make a commitment that every year the budget is going to increase. So thank you for the wonderful work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for using those funds. So immediately with the 10 know your rights and now the 11th. The work that you do is obviously very critical to the most vulnerable in our system. And I wanted to find a way, at least to zero in on one program that might be helpful in the long run. You said that the staffing from the DA's office for the clean slate program has been limited. And so you've temporarily paused the clean slate clinics. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so it's not just related to DA's office staffing. It's multiple issues at once. So, you know, what I'm going to be meeting with the courts in the DA, hopefully we can get to a process where we don't have to bring as many cases to court. If we can agree on a substantial number of cases outside the court, we can move the process on a lot quicker. There's only one DA assigned to clean slate right now, and that's just a lot for one person to review. How many cases do you typically get? We take in 3,000 a year. 3000? Yes. How many attorneys are you gonna need? So, we're staffing clean slate with three attorneys right now. Okay. That's one of the weird cases where we actually have more staffing now you and the DA's office does. So we have three attorneys right now. That's one of the weird cases where we actually have more staffing now. You know, you know, the DA's office does. So we have three attorneys right now in clean slate. And then we get assistance from East Bay Community Law Center and then we've got a point. We've got a post-bark that we've got people work on it, but just there's a bottle neck with regards to the need, which is this big, court filing for this big, and then one DA. So it's really bottleneck in certain places. I'm hopeful that we can find a solution where if we can take some cases in mass and say we can agree on these four other cases, we can move things on quicker, but takes the DA's agreement and the court's agreement and then the court staff agreement. Okay. So I noticed that on your inageant defense combined budget. Yes. There's a slight decrease in the cap and the contract services. Can you explain the reason for that decrease and is there any opportunity to like provide some more attorneys for the clean slate program? I am not honestly sure why there's a decrease in the cap. I'd have to defer to the County Administration to answer that question. I do know that their appropriations went up, but there was a decrease in that county costs. So I'm not sure exactly why that occurred. I don't manage that budget. So I can come back to you with a different, I can answer later if you'd like. We can respond. Yeah, I can respond to that question. I'm Mark Lipkin with the CEO's office. So there's actually no decrease to cap. The appropriations are going up by about 100,000. But you're seeing is that the cost of the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the property is that the Is there any opportunity to contract some of the services that you could use for clean slate? There might be I have to talk to county minister about that in a cap Well, I had asked the DA about the offer from the AG's office. I don't know whether there are some opportunities there or... So I think Supervisor Halbert maybe hidden the on the head with money will buy anything. We just met what Court appointed and the bench yesterday, regards to cap having a real difficult time finding attorneys to cover the case load right now. And I wasn't aware of the problem to our meeting yesterday, where there's sometimes people waiting in jail for three to four to five days to get council. so that problem has to be kind of fixed immediately. I'm not sure a cap has the additional bandwidth to take on clean slate at this time. Last time we tried that we can talk about what happened to so money doesn't buy everything. Well, you get what you pay for too. Is it better? Not better? Okay, great. Thank you. I'm not sure of your bandwidth to take on this in a cleanly cases or if there's any stretch there at all. I understand the priority has to be those are that an immediate need. Yeah, and I think cap may need more resources also. I'm not sure exactly how they're going to get more attorneys to cover their deficit right now. Okay. Supervisor Mike, follow up. Yeah, you know, I Understand the DA Because I think a supervisor mark has Asked the question about how we could support five year plan being bringing it to other detection would be good But in the context since Brendan has been the DA, the DA's office has grown over time. The board has consistently supported by the DA in terms of holistic defense doing a lot of stuff that the former DA, Diane Bellas, wasn't doing. So if you kind of, he's smiling, if you kind of look he started from where we are now, there's been, there's been substantial improvement. And he is probably one of the, what I, the DA, I'm sorry, that's why he smiled. That's why I was smiling. I was a defender. Yeah, I didn't want to touch the correct you now when you done. Right, right. The public defender. Thank We'll just be right here. Yeah. So when Diane and Bellas, he is definitely taking the office to leaps and bounds from when Diane Bellas was the public defender. I mean, significant. And a lot of the stuff that he's doing here, I don't think is mandated. But we've been consistently supportive of the stuff that he's doing here. I don't think he's mandated, but we've been consistently supportive of the public defender growing his operation so that the scales of justice can be balanced. He said, more, he can be done. Yes, and he's pointed that out. And it'll be interesting to see around the study that he mentioned as well as that is it 365? Which legislation? Yes. AB690 is one. AB695. AB625. 25. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. If that becomes law, but the point is, I just think it'd be interesting to have those conversations in the committee and kind of see from whence he started to where we are presently, to where we might go. Because clearly, it's gonna take, obviously we're at budget constraints now. I don't know if we'll always have budget constraints. I know when I first got on the board, the budget gap was only about 5 million. One year was 170 some million. And now we'll see what it is this year. We'll see what all these other impacts have. But he's been a consistent advocate for holistic defense and kind of trying to balance the scales of justice. So I just, um, would suggest that we ask him to come to public protection and kind of lay out a plan and see what we can do over the course of time to continue that, that projectory. So, President Halbert, can I also just add as you know, you pointed out in the maintenance to effort budget it shows an addition of three positions, which were approved by your board for the care court. Just on April 1st, your board approved with our support, the addition of six positions for the immigration unit, which are not reflected here yet, but we'll be reflected in the recommended budget. We're going forward. What's the source of funds for the care court three extra FTE? That's state funding and for the immigration unit it's one time public safety funding. Which we're gonna try to get reimbursement from the state if we can? If we can. Not likely. If we can, but with your board's direction. Always try. The public defender came forward with a request with regard to immigration. So as he indicated, our office is working with them to identify some one time resources to support that. Follow up. So it will in total the difference will show an increase of nine positions. Yeah. I think it's important that we are clear that we not ignore trauma in our community. And when we do have this discussion I think it's really important that we bring in AC health, as well as social services. As you mentioned, if we focus and invest in people and preventive and getting people housed, employed, medical therapy, that will bring down the cost to the D8, Sanerita, so no, it's a larger discussion, but I think we need to start having that focus. So I look forward to that ongoing conversation, but I'm happy that it's been a very robust today. So thank you. No great presentation, and I want to echo comments that perhaps there are synergies with the mental health services that we provide others and the mental health services that your department provides. We don't need to duplicate efforts. Maybe you can steal some of their body count, even if they're not on your budget. I don't know how you do that because it seems to me that maybe you have some confidentiality issues with your clients. But indeed, it is all intertwined. Today's defendant maybe tomorrow's homeless may become the next day's defendant again back in jail. It's a circular economy that we don't need to have. I agree with many of the values that you talked about earlier. But what I hear people often talk about also is their value and their frustration. Their frustration, I'm not saying they're right, their frustration. I don't know what was it, 70% or 65% or something like that. Voted for Prop 36. People are frustrated, they value being able to park their street, the car on the street, and I have a smashing grab. And so until we have a balance, it's never gonna go away. And the balance isn't in the courts. It's as Supervisor Marquez mentioned, it's much bigger than that. It's the social determinants that cause people to get into the system. I'm all for the expungement program. I have known people, referred people, helped people have the records expunished in their lives and back on track. Your success stories are great. I know it also goes the other way. It also goes the other way where they can expunge the record and read right back into the system. So it's never surefire. With regard to parity staffing, parity funding with the DA's office, I guess the data point I'm going to need to see is where else does that have? Maybe in other states that have nowhere. So again, so I guess it could be the first. Okay, good. Okay, that's good. But it's good to be first and it's also good to steal good ideas that have been proofing to work elsewhere. And it is also very, I'd like to hear the other side of that. What I do here is that, well, it's a bigger discussion than that. Let's start with Public Safety Committee and talk about that. 9 plus a plus 9 additional bodies this year is a pretty good way. People. Thank you. Supervisor Miley. Yeah, because I think what the public fender saying is if he gets the resources over the time, we'll see the results. I mean, that's what he's saying. And I think it's proven out with the resources he's received in the past. The question is, can we, you know, how can we find those additional resources? I mean, maybe maybe 109. I don't know, but the point is, that's what he's saying. And it's not something that's gonna happen. Even if he got the additional resources, I don't know if we'd see immediate results, we'd still have to invest in it, to see if it pans out, let's say, over a decade or something. Yeah, and I get it. By the time they're in court, others would argue that we need to go upstream before they even commit a crime to be in court and help them there so that their level playing field from grade one or from birth. And that's how we have to, that's what I think we talk about when we talk about equity. That's what love and playing field. And I've got so many ideas, supervisor. But I want to dive into though, we've opened this Pandora's box. The district attorney has a lot of diversion programs. Are you, is your team working with their team to the point where you feel diversion programs are working are they denying diversion where you think it should happen are you feeling like if what if you had more of control over diversion where is there the disconnect because I hear both of you say things that sound so similar and And so where's... That there's always gonna be disagreement with regards to, I think, the pool for people who should be diverted. I'm gonna say a lot more people should go in the version. The DA is gonna say less people should go into the version. This is a new administration, so we're gonna figure out what she's gonna prioritize with regards to to diversion. But this from people who have been DAs for quite some time, they might be more restrictive with regards to diversion and then we fight it out in court. This is an adversarial system. There are some diversion programs that we have right now that the court gets to decide independently of what the DA wants. There's mental health diversion where the court decides that, which is a great program. Do we want more people in the version? Absolutely. Can it be more in my mind? Yes, but it also needs to have more funding for the version programs. I mean, just because you have someone go into the version, there should be some resources there also. Okay. I guess your public protection meetings will be robust. Thank you. Thank you. With that, we're going to stand. Two minute, two minute break. Thank you. Before we go to Fire, ROV, IT, Auditor Controller, Tax Collector, HR, and Library. the President Halpert. President. Okay. With that, we're going to have our fire department present. And I note that we have 20 minutes. Chief but you can do it. That's wonderful. The floor is yours sir. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors, I'm Willie McDonald. Thank you very much for this opportunity to be able to present the fiscal year 2526 maintenance of effort a budget for Alameda County Fire. Want to thank the Board for your leadership and support that you always provide to Alameda County Fire, as well as the County Administrator and her staff and our staff for putting this budget together and the way that they serve our community. Our mission is that we will provide the highest level of services to our community by valuing our members, promoting positive leadership and dedicating ourselves to service excellence. Our core values include our members. We promote an inclusive atmosphere, our organization. We support an organization that's built on a foundation of initiative, a customer service and regional cooperation. We're a dependent district, a dependent special district. We have oversight from the County Administrators Office and the Auditor of The Board of Supervisors is our Board of Directors and we also have a 12 member Fire Advisory Commission. We provide services through contracts to five contract cities here in Alameda County as well as two national laboratories. And the city managers and the contract administrators of those agencies are make up our executive management oversight committee. Our service levels are determined by the board supervisors, the board directors as well as our individual contract agencies and we have performance-based fire emergency services contract which we use to measure our performance. We do participate in each one of our cities, each one of our cities budgeting processes all the way through to adoption. This is how we're organized. We have four operational branches within Alameda County Fire. Each of one of them is provided oversight by Deputy Chief for a Deputy Director. We have the Operations Division, our communications and support services, fire and life safety services and our administrative services branch. Here's the areas that we serve. We're organized into four battalions. We serve Castro Valley and Eden in our battalion two. Battalion three is east Valley, including Dublin and areas east of Livermore, battalion 4, San Leandro, Inreville, and Lawrence Berkeley Lab in battalion 7, at Union City and Newark. We have 547 very hardworking, very dedicated employees that really appreciate the opportunity to serve our community. They consider an honor and a privilege to be able to serve our residents and our citizens in Alameda County. We have 27 fire stations that we operate out of 25 engines and seven trucks. They're all advanced life support, capable and they have paramedics on all of them. We have a world class, I think, Alameda County Regional Mersey Communications Center that we provide services not only for the cities that we serve, but also for several other cities here in the county, including Livermore, Pleasanton, City of Alameda, a Fremont. We dispatch all the amyluses in the county, and we also provide priority medical dispatch for the EMS agency. We have also a world-class fleet maintenance and repair facility that we not only provide services to our own folks, but also over 60 fire departments here in Northern California. Special operations include a new program that we stood up this past fiscal year, our fuel mitigation crew crew eight. They are really successful in lowering the hazards that we have here in the county and some of our very high fire severity areas. They also have training that has allowed them to be deployed on many of the large mutual aid fires that we've had across the state over this past year. We have a Type 1 Hazard's Materials Team, a heavy rescue team. We support the Urban Search and Rescue Team here in Oakland. We have bulldozers and we have water tenders and we have OIS engines as well. Our funding comes from assessment tax as well as a service contracts and grants that we receive and apply for. We do not receive any general fund funding, no prop 172, no user utility tax, no business license fees. In terms of our MOE budget for the fiscal year 2526, we're proposing a budget of 211,794,596,996. It's an 18,600,613,000 increase over fiscal year 2425, or a 9.6% increase. Most of that is in terms of salary and benefit increases about $10.7 million in salary and benefit increases. As well as an increase of 3.45 million for discretionary supplies and services. And have available fund balance in the amount of $6.88 million. There's no additional county cost. I did not mention FTEs. We did have FTE changes within our proposed budget. We reclass to Deputy Fire Marshal's out of our management groups and we added a planch checker to and a planch checker and a planchak supervisor for an increase in four in our non-management FTEs. Total FTE increases too. I do need to mention that we'll be asking your board to authorize the issuance of $90 million of Measure X bonds this year, hopefully in June. We are ready to launch into construction of a number of facilities that the community has been waiting for. Appropriations by department, largely our fire operation, it's about 90% of our appropriation $191 million. Our dispatch operation is about $16 million. Our CIP replacement zone 1, $3.78 million. We have some pass-through funding that we use. The fund, some of the unincorporated islands. The unincorporated islands out in the valley. Properations by major object. I must jump over it. Properations by major object about 80% of our appropriation is salary and benefits. In additionally, discretionary services and supplies about 13% 28.87 million. And that includes our professional contracts and services that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that we're going to make sure that $9 million and number three is the two national laboratories that we provide services for 21 million dollars a year. In terms of mandated and discretionary services, fire protection, fire prevention, and arts and investigation are mandated services that we provide. I did not list an amount that we spend on those because the level of services that you provide of fire protection, fire prevention, and arts and investigation is discretionary. So the amount that we provide is discretionary, but they are mandated services. Also on a discretionary basis, we provide medical and advanced life support services, hazardous materials, water rescue, heavy rescue, mutual aid and contractual emergency medical services and the administration of our regional dispense center. Some pending factors things that we're thinking about. We have been awarded a $1.2 million FEMA assistance to firefighters grant that has not been removed from us, but there has been some concern that funding may be frozen. We've also submitted an application for assistance to firefighters grant for paramedic training and as I'll mention in other pending factors. We are having very difficult time recruiting and staffing or paramedic training in, as I'll mention, in other pending factors. We are having very difficult time recruiting and staffing our paramedic ranks. So it's one of our concerns that we're having going forward. We're also concerned about the cost of our capital projects being impacted by tariffs or other kinds of activities that are being seen right now, tariff impacts on our IT services and our capital projects as well. In terms of Alameda County vision 2036, in terms of thriving in a resilient population, we have been actually like to just mention that we started an alternative response unit program that provides services on a first responder basis, mental health patients and behavioral health patients. And so it is in support of thriving and resilient populations vision. our community safe and livable. As I mentioned, we had implemented our fuels management program. Those folks are doing some incredible work on making in reducing hazards and increasing the safety in our high and very high fire severity zones. In healthy environment, incorporating our environmental and sustained designs elements in all all of our capital and building projects. And lastly, in support of a prosperous environment economy, building positive relations with labor and stakeholders as well as reviewing our service agreements in a very timely way, both in pursuit of fiscal sustainability. I had a video that I was gonna show, but in thinking about the amount of time, I'll just list some of the accomplishments we had in fiscal year 2425 and those include, we have responded to about 48,000 calls for service in our community, our dispatchers have processed over 400,000 calls for service in the last year. We have been able to complete thousands of plan checks and new construction, intended and improvement inspections and all of those at more than a 90% success rate in terms of turnaround time and our posted turnaround. We were effective in collaborating with all the Alameda County Fire Departments here in the county and priority ambulance and developing what I consider to be a very comprehensive, fully integrated, seamless pre-hospital care system of programs and services and available resources that I think we put into a very responsive proposal in response to Alameda County Health RFP for emergency ambulance services. Very proud of the program and the proposal that we put together and very proud of the collaboration between all the fire departments and the stakeholders. We added staffing on truck 25. We added relief firefighters to help out our staffing. We hosted our first ever lateral firefighter academy. We did complete new contracts for the city of Inverville. In 2024 and we have two contracts coming forward, two contract extensions coming forward for your consideration in this next month, for newer communion city, implemented our strategic plan and we purchased two one acre parcels for fire stations construction. we had groundbreaking for our training center. So very active year, very successful year. That's the end of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Chief, is there a video? Is there a video? There's a video that's there. Let's do it. Come on. Let's do it. Did I turn it on or what did I do? Maybe I went the wrong way. Let's see. If your team went through the trouble to prepare it, we're gonna watch it. Only if I could make it come on, but it doesn't seem to want to work. That's the pointer. Okay. Oh, there it is. Did it actually start? Yeah. Can you do that? 24, 23, 22, 24, 25, 24, and just their clean Italian food. Oh, the clean Italian food. And they're going to work. I'm sorry. 24 inches, 13-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion-thillion I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I keep on running! I keep on running I keep on running I keep on searching From the light From the light I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm alive, I'm alive I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive Move to the past, I'm alive I'm alive, I'm alive Whispers now I'm small, I'm alive I'm alive, I'm alive This time, it's falling down I'm gonna do what I want, it's all alone It's all alone I keep on fighting I keep on running I keep on searching For the light For the light Bring it on, I'm not lost, I'm not ready to start'm gonna take a scene where I'm in the dark I'm not lost on the rest of the scene I'm not lost on the rest of the scene I'm not lost on the rest of the scene I'm not lost on the rest of the scene I'm not lost on the rest of the scene I'm not lost on the rest of on loving I keep on searching For the lady For the lady I'm gonna set you up For the life For the life We got an all clear on the fire unit Nothing give it! Anything else? Anything else? Anything else? HCFD! HCFD! Go! Go! ACFD! ACFD! GO! GO! GO! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah everything breaks with every day I'm getting older, I feel the weight Up on my shoulder, I'm strong enough I'll rise up, I'm so I'm gonna be okay If I can be anything, I think I'm gonna be me I know I I gotta feel you Where else I want to go? All you'll see are ready I think I'm gonna be, I think I'm gonna be La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la I think I'm gonna be, I think I'm lonely, I think I'm lonely. Thank you for letting us play that. We are a diverse and inclusive department and I'm honored and proud to be the fire chief. Thank you. Thank you and please thank Firefighter Sin Tony for his great editing for questions, comments. Surprise Miley. Yes, thanks, Chief. You have that video's an excellent recruitment video. I don't know if you're using it for that purpose, but that would be an excellent recruitment video. And did Cheryl put it together because I saw it? Cheryl and Captain Brian Santoni. Yeah. Yeah, it was excellent. Excellent. And then, I wanted to ask, I would appreciate the I appreciate the fact that finally after five years you're going to start getting the bonds for measure X so you can build some fire stations. I know some professor Tam and I have been waiting, Albert's getting a dispatch out in his area, but we've been waiting for some fire stations. And everybody loves Alameda County fire fighters, so some new fire stations will just bring a lot of joy to a lot of us. And I know you're your staff. We'll definitely appreciate this. We're very excited and we're going to see construction start. I've said this before, but we're actually going to see construction start this year. Excellent. Excellent. Can't wait. Can you, I don't know if you can, can you put up that slide, the one that I staffing in operations? Refast. relations, real fast. And you know, you're, we can't say much about your budget because it's great. Thank you. I mean, you don't have any general fund money. Yes. Yes. You're dependent, special district, and you take care of business. But I didn do want to ask whether slides coming up how are we with the retirement fund are we underfunded there Our retirement fund we're we contribute every year at the end of the year to our retirement fund We I think we're about 75% funded on our pension retirement. Okay. Is that across all of our entire department? Yes. Excellent. Excellent. Very good. And we're about 45% funded on our OPEB funds. 45%. Been contributions though have been made, you know, really significantly. A couple of our cities are overfunded. We have one city that is 80, maybe 85% funded. So it's really, we've seen a lot of great contributions. Okay, good. So that's getting better. Okay, great. Yes. Because I know that's been a concern. That one picture in the lower right-hand corner with all the firefighters in the bridge in the background you see what picture I'm talking about. Yes sir. It's nowhere that picture is taken. It's taken right at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's San Francisco days, it's a team building opportunity that we have for our firefighters that are in the Recruit Academy to really learn how to work together and depend on each other and really. So it wasn't just out to me to County Fire, it was other fire. No, that was, that's just our Recruit classroom. Yeah. San Francisco. We take them there so we can get them in the bay and we can do some training and Exercising with them and help build a real strong cohesive team. We do it right at the beginning. All right Okay, why could you notice that it's it that is the bait and it's the golden gate bridge That's that kind of what what's our folks doing over there? Okay, all right. It is an incredible team building Okay, you answer my question Supervisor fortune out of bass Yes, all right. It is an incredible team building. Okay, you answer my question. Okay, supervisor fortune out of bass. Yes, thank you so much chief for the presentation and coming from Oakland, it's excited to see that you've got your dedicated funds and you know, you've got that strong infrastructure. I certainly appreciate the work that you do and tomorrow I I'm going to my second meeting of the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments. So certainly, I want to make sure that we have some opportunity to talk about how I can best represent our board at that space. And it's probably a proposal of this discussion. Tomorrow we're going to be looking at an updated fee structure for dues updated from September of last fall and the proposal for Alameda County is 25,000 for this coming fiscal year and 30,000 for next fiscal year if I'm reading this correctly and just from my my last meeting, it seems like we're kind of getting into our groove and really kind of coalescing around how we can work together with Berkeley Fire introducing a very strong prevention plan. We had a presentation from East Bay mud last time at my request we're going to hear from PG&E tomorrow. So I am open to your feedback in terms of the due structure and certainly from the County Administrator as well. A minute time in the chief and I talked about this and I was so happy to hear he's very proactive and he's already on it. I used to represent it on the screen. We put it into our budget. Professor Marquez. Thank you, Chief, for the excellent work. Your staff does an amazing job with community engagement. You have many events. So just thank you for that. And I look forward to reviewing the contracts with the cities of Union City and New York. So looking forward to that engagement, but I've heard nothing but positive feedback from the residents in those two cities. So thank you. Thank you very much, Supervisor. Supervisor Tam. Thank you, President Halbert, and really appreciate your presentation. And I mean, you guys go in when everybody else is evacuating, right? So just to pull up the slide on the mandated and discretionary services, I know you only have three, but honestly, I consider your discretionary services absolutely essential when you talk about medical and advanced life support on our paramedic program, the hazmat, and then definitely with mutual aid and contractual emergency services because you saw what happened in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, right. You had to send people, there were station closures in Oakland where we had to interchangeably send people and definitely the Office of Emergency Services and Communications. So one of the things that I had heard from some of your staff is on the fire prevention and fuel mitigation component. And this is something that maybe supervisor Fortune out of BAS can help just promote. They were talking about like a nonprofit where they do get some grant funding and they can help either the disabled or the elderly with fuel management around their homes and you know obviously they need some funding for that on a sustained basis and then their their biggest ambition is basically the Hayward hillside, the ridge, and the Castel Valley valleys, and then doing some fuel management and mitigation. Is that something that is accommodated for separately in your budget, or There's just something that goes to the nonprofit that some of your firefighters were talking about? So far all the funding for our fuel mitigation program has been through grants. I mean we've been actively searching for and seeking grants to help continue to fund the program. We do not have a sustained funding source yet built into our budget. So we've been really funding it all with grants and contracts that we can have with different communities. We have one at UC Berkeley to do fuel mitigation there. We have some with school districts to do fuel mitigation. But it hasn't been sustained yet. Yeah, I was thinking it might be helpful to look at that and maybe consider that on a regional basis because obviously, you know, the Berkeley Oakland Hills does affect our bridge lines. And so have that conversation for sustained funding sources for fuel mitigation. Absolutely. And contra costifier does have fuel mitigation program as well. And we have done training with them and we've been working with them on doing things collaboratively. And so it's an excellent opportunity for us to do something recently. Thank you. Chief on this slide mandated fire prevention fire protection discretionary fire protection fire prevention. Are they both mandated and discretionary? We are mandated to provide fire protection fire prevention and arson investigation but the level at which we do it is discretionary. So the amount, the staffing, the programs that we put forward, those are all discretionary. Well, you and your team go above and beyond, and thank you for all that you do. And the best green pancakes that's in Patrick's Day. Ever. Thank you. Oh, follow up from Sue Reiss from our cast. Sorry, I meant to bring you. Just really thank you. Yeah, sorry, I'll be brief. But Chief, if you could please just briefly describe the investment you've made in the last year too with respect to mental health, wellness, just ensuring that our firefighters are equipped with as many resources as possible. Yes, so that is part of the grant that we received, but we have, I think we're bringing forward contract for sharp performance for to provide some counseling and mental health services for our folks and we also have a contract with first responder restoration network that provides a support and counseling for all of our folks. We also have a peer support team that's made up of our firefighters that have received some additional training to be able to provide counseling services to all of our members. And we're seeking others. Thank you. Follow up, follow up from Supervisor Miley. But don't do you have also a program? Do you also have a program that deals with alternative response? With first responders going into the community. We have a program alternative response unit program that we just stood up this year. It's been a partnership with the city of San Leandro. We have on it, we have a clinician, she's a nurse practitioner. And we have a firefighter engineer and EMT. And we also have community members that respond to calls for mental health behavioral health services. And we just started launched on November 4th, I believe it is. Okay, all right, because I thought you put something else in place, because I think we're gonna be very interested to see how that works. It's been well received, it's very busy. Lots of contacts that we're making in the community and we get called out by police officers Dispatched by the police department communications center We have callouts from our paramedics that are at the scene that you know have determined that Someones have in a mental health or a behavioral health issue that they need the response and they also Drive through the community and look for folks that might need their assistance. Very positive. Thank you chief. Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Okay, 12 down and 6 more to go. Register our voters. and then IT, followed by the auditor controller. And how the registrar can sit here in this room and somehow still post-election results is amazing at the same time. Well, good evening supervisors. I'm Tim Dupuis. I'm the registrar of voters and the chief information officer. I'm able to do that because I have a very qualified team downstairs and they're able to send me those results so that I can approve them to be posted. I'm going to present the registrar of voters preliminary maintenance of effort budget and then I'm joined by the assistant chief information officer, civil gurney, to my right, who's going to assist with the presentation of the ITD budget. So, the registrar voters' mission is to seek better ways to provide services, to encourage all eligible residents to exercise the right to vote, to conduct elections in a fair, accurate, and efficient manner, then inspire public confidence in the county election process, maintain a continuous professional level of service to the public and develop new techniques to improve outreach services, which acknowledge the diversity of Alameda County. We are a mandated service. Our mandated services include voter registration, vote by mail, voter outreach, candidate services and election services. This is our fiscal 2526 preliminary maintenance of effort request for budget. The appropriations changes by 0.31%. We're asking for 32.6 million to run the operation. That's a change of 422,000 from the previous year, primarily due to Colas. I will take a look at that in a different slide. Our revenues are decreased, and I've discussed this before. We have a very cyclical budget in the registrar's office during the general election. Our local partners choose to consolidate their elections with the general election, for example, in the November election, and that's where we get our revenues. So that's a high revenue year, which we experienced in 2425. Our next major election is going to be June 2026. That's a primary and we'll have very few jurisdictions locally that will participate in that election. So our revenue drops significantly. Our revenue drops by 15.9 million. So our net county cost in a low revenue year increases. So we see our net county cost increasing by 16.3 million. Our FTEs are unchanged. We have a very small staff of permanent staff, but we are also when we do staff up for a countywide election, we are one of the largest departments for hiring temp staff to run those major elections. So this is a breakdown of those costs, the cost differences. Again, primarily our co-las in the salary and employee benefits. We did see a decrease in our discretionary service and supplies. We again see a significant decrease in revenue called out here. And again, all that adds up to net county cost increase of 16.3 million because of it being a low revenue year for us. Here's the 32.6 million broken down by major category. In ROV our major expense is our discretionary services and supplies. That's 67% of our budget followed by our salaries and employee benefits at 20% and our non-discretionary is at 13%. Again another break here's the breakdown of our revenue for the next year. We expect 250,000 in Missilania State, a 30,000 in sales of goods over the counter. Our election services at 5.6 million and other revenues, these are our equipment replacement, our equipment funds that we pull in at 1.4 million. So a total of 7.3 million. Again, our major investment for next year is going to be the June primary. We have this in this slide at $5.6 million as part of the investment. So I'd like to move on to our accomplishments. So we have invested in enhanced security. Our camera system, we have invested significantly in a robust camera system. The system has also allowed us to improve some of our monitoring in terms of security coverage. As you've probably seen in the news, security around elections is extremely important, and we've been investing quite a bit in making sure that all of our folks and the work that they do are secure. Additionally, we conducted the first youth voting election for two of our cities. As I understand it, it's the largest youth voting exercise or implementation in the country. Other implementations have been much smaller. Also, we've been working with our Election Commission on transparency and voter confidence. We've increased our observation space. And we're working to optimize our rank choice voting material. We've been continuing to work with the Election Commission on voter instructions, increasing the information material at vote centers, and we implemented an online practice ballot that people can practice ranked choice voting online. We conducted several elections. If you can believe it in the last 13 months, including the election today, we've conducted six elections in 13 months. It's the most elections in a short period of time during my tenure as the Registrar of voters. So we have had a very busy and robust election cycle for the last 13 months. So goals for the coming year, the big goal is to conduct a successful countywide, it's for the state, the state direct primary election, and June, on June 2nd, 2026. And we will continue to invest in our security measures, our warehouse. We're going to continue to invest in the camera system that's been successful. We're going to install a fence and gate around the warehouse. We do need some more security at the warehouse. And then we're going to continue to invest in our outreach to promote voter participation and enhance the voter experience. And as always, we're going to be expanding our outreach and education with the community to help with low voter participation. We have tied our goals and our strategies to Vision 2036, and we're just calling out a few areas here, continuing to invest in multilingual messaging, continuing to invest in physical and digital access to the voter information, working with our community to make sure that we have our election, our vote centers and our drop boxes in the appropriate place for the community where it can be found easily. We have tech that travels. You'll see it on the next slide, I believe, where we have a van that will go out to where people need assistance for voting. And we continue to use our community feedback loops. These are our voters with disabilities, our language groups, and our election commission So listen to the community to continue to improve the voting experience for our community and to continue to invest in transparency. And this is the AC vote on the GO van. It's out on a this this is a picture in front of a mural. I believe Oak and Fourth Street, the team loved this and they wanted to have this be our finishing slide, showing that they're out there in the community and bringing every means to our voters to allow them to vote. That's the presentation. Thank you very much questions. I'll start with supervisor Tam and then supervisor Marquez. Thank you for that presentation. And I've seen a lot of the advertisements, especially around the Coliseum, the billboards. I'm just curious in terms of like voter turnout, how much is there a correlation between that kind of outreach and turnout because you know like tonight's election, you're not anticipating a very high voter turnout, but there was a lot of advertisement and outreach. And it's a good question. It's very hard to measure the investment in the advertisement versus the turnout. It's one component, I think, to that turnout. We have a number of engagements. It's the billboards. It's messaging over radio, it's social media. But then it's also that outreach to the community throughout the year. And we participate in over 200 community events to make sure that we get people registered, we answer questions, and we continue to want a partner with the community to help with that. Why special elections have a lower turnout than the generals? It just has been historically that way. And again, we have to continue to try to work, especially with our partners at those cities, with the city clerks and with the folks in those communities to say what will work best. It is a partnership between what our office can do and what the jurisdiction that really knows their community can do. So it really is a strong partnership there. But it's a tough one to answer. We'd like to see the turnouts for these special elections to be much higher. Yeah, I appreciate that. Switching topics, my treasure tells me this. In terms of candidate services and filings of financial statements and forms, why is it difficult for Alameda County to receive that online versus the Secretary of State? So that's something that has come up. We do have the technology and we have the staff. We're just going to have to do some research into it this year to see where we can make improvements. Do you have an idea when that might happen? Don't. Well, let's get out of this election and then we can start focusing on improvements. Okay, I appreciate that. And I know that there's been a lot of interactions with the Election Commission. And I know that there's been some people that want to make sure that we learned from some of our past election accounting when it comes to accounting when it comes to I'm choice voting especially with like tonight's elections can you help offer some of those assurances on what we're doing and what we might be doing differently? So with the Election Commission, they did bring in a consultant that has worked with Ranked Choice Voting across the nation. They sat down with us before we put this ballot together and before we put the voting material together. So they helped us to rework the language on the ballot, rework the description within the voter information guide. And then they had suggested that we take a look at San Francisco who had an online ranked choice voting application. So the voters could try that out. So I reached out to the registrar over at San Francisco and they gladly provided us with that code and we were able to work with the information technology department to have that put on our website for this election. So it'll be interesting to see between the November election and this special election if we see a difference in the way that people were able to vote with Rank Choice voting. Let's see if these changes improve people's understanding on how to vote Rank Choice voting. That's good to know. I saw the sample on the website on how you go about piloting or testing out the rank choice voting. So thank you so much. Supervisor Marquez. Thank you. I just wanted to congratulate you on the successful implementation of youth vote in Oakland and Berkeley. and then I'm just looking at the notification for the election results and agency significant improvements in terms of transparency, letting people know how to request a cast vote voter record report, the fact that updates will be every Friday. I just feel like you're continuing to take the feedback from the election commission. So just thank you for the work so far. Appreciate it. So if I was important on a pass. Thank you for the report. I'll just share that personally as a candidate, I've always had great interactions with your staff. So I appreciate how hard working the entire staff are. It takes so much to run our elections and it really puts it into context to know that in a short number of months there have been multiple elections and things that the ROV has had to do for the first time like youth vote into of our cities. So I look forward to when the board gets a chance to hear the report from the elections commission and to hear more about what that feedback is. I think the main feedback I've heard is from cities who've asked if it's possible to have a bit more certainty around how to budget for elections. So I know we're talking about the county's budget, but obviously we want our cities to pay the cost when we administer the elections. Is there anything you can share about budgeting and billing? So we we post on our website what the cost per voter is that the agencies should budget. And that's been on our website for a long time. We have adjusted that based upon our most recent elections. Election costs do continue to climb. The cost of paper, the cost of labor, the mandated services that we have to provide. It does continue to drive costs. And we try to work very closely, especially with the city clerks, when they tell us that they have a special election coming up to really help them to see what to budget for. We will be continuing to work with them to see where they need more help with this. But that has been our practice. We have our rates posted on our website so they can look at that for budgeting. Thank you. Supervisor Milo. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, let me think here. Back to Supervisor Tam, because with the Rank Choice Voting, I particularly want to point that out. I'm not a fan of Rank Choice Voting. And a lot of us aren't quite frankly. And I know that it's nothing to do with you. But I did notice, my guy, my ballot this time, it was easier, the guidebook was easier, it was much more explanation and easier to follow. And I made a no, a mental notation of that as well. So I didn't know where that came about, but hearing the explanation, you work with election commission and you brought in a consultant, talked San Francisco Francisco. That's how all that happened. Yes. Okay, because yeah, I just want to say excellent because I think it was much, much better. That's what I've seen in the past. Thank you. But still, another fan of Frank Choi's body. Yeah. You know, if we have a chance to revisit that in Oakland, I mean, I'm going to definitely be on the side of revisiting that. And then I noticed in one of your slides, you said the Alameda County Sheriff is assisting with a vote by mail retrieval. Is that because of security reasons? I know there was a ballot box or whatever blown up in Portland or whatever. That's right. Is that the reason? Well, that's where it started. We partnered. The sheriff has been a fantastic partner with us throughout these elections. And we did have them help us with the ballot drop boxes and the picking up of the ballot drop boxes. were, they were joining us as we were picking up the drop boxes. They were joining us as we were picking up the drop boxes, and then they offered to actually do the drop box pickups for us. And so we've worked with them for the last two elections, including this one, and it's been a successful partnership. They do a fantastic job. Great, great, That's good to know. And I think I had one other question, but it's skipping my memory at the moment. If it comes up, before you leave, I'll come back to it. Thank you. Yeah, so we've had discussions often on, especially since the last election, and you've been very good at explaining how we've migrated from many, many, many voting locations, counting votes before they even leave the garage and coming to this building to be consolidated and how that can be counted in the same night, whereas the way we do it today is very, very, very different. And I witnessed the people in the basement frantically and expeditiously opening envelopes, striking signatures, putting stacks of ballots all in one location. And we talked about how we're never going to be able to count votes faster that way unless we get more space, more equipment, more people to alleviate that bottleneck. Yet that's the expectation of people. So does this budget reflect the ability to do that and how are we going to do things differently in the next general election which is the primary June of 26 and again November of 26. So this budget is a maintenance of effort budget. It does not account for adding any more equipment or space. I do want to address the concern for speed. There's actually, I I want to point out two dimensions of that. One dimension is the communities desire to see results early as fast as possible. So there's that aspect of it, but then there's the aspect of it that the election code impacts, which is when we get races that are extremely close, we have to wait for votes that haven't been cured yet, meaning the votes where people haven't signed their envelopes properly. And so when a close race happens, we have to wait for all of those votes to come in, and that can take up to the 30 days I have to certify. And we saw some of the counties like Orange County who have more equipment and more space than we have who were able to in the first week jump out in front of us in terms of how many ballots they counted, but when we got into the midpoint of the election, we were actually ahead of them. And then there were federal races that were held up because they were waiting for votes to come in in Orange County and LA. So it's a question of how quickly do we want to get results in the beginning of the election, that we still have the election code that says we have to wait. We have to wait for cured votes to come in. We have to wait for the mail to come in. And there's nothing equipment's going to do about that. So I want to make sure expectations are set correctly. If we invest in more equipment and more space, that might help us in the first week or two to get more votes counted. But that doesn't help us when the election code is saying, you know, we have to wait for these votes to come in, we have to wait for these votes to be cured. That nothing is going to help us make that happen faster. Yeah, so I guess you'll work on that with your election commission. I don't know that people are going to be very thrilled about having results on election night and then not having results until Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then having to wait another week to the following Friday. That's something we're doing this election. Is that planned to be every election or just this one? Well, that's what we're doing this election. Again, it addresses what we can do to increase the speed. Every time we do an update, and if we go back to the November election, you may remember that we posted on Tuesday night and then we posted on Thursday night and then we posted on Friday. Because we posted on that Thursday, we had a very, very low posting, and that made national news that we were the slowest in the nation. We alamed a county. Well, the next day, and we posted about 2,000 votes, because that's all we could have processed after doing all the sorting. And as I know, Supervisor, how about you know the process between the signatures and the openings and the sortings and so on. There's a lot of work that we have to do with vote by males. And that Thursday we just weren't able to post very much because we hadn't gotten it through the process. But by Friday we posted over 90,000 votes because we were able to get through much more. So we know that the logistics for Wednesday and Thursday, we're just not going to have much to post because it takes time to get it to the point of opening and signature checking and so on that we can actually post something significant. So we've had that experience, we've had the bad press because we've tried to post more often because that's people's desire and as a result we don't get significant updates and it actually slows us down. If we are allowed to wait for the Friday updates we we are gonna have a significant update on those Fridays. And we don't have these intermediate ones where people are saying, well, why didn't you post more? The other challenge we have is in a very large countywide election, if we post more often, we don't end up covering the entire county with that city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. We have a lot of things to do with the city. or that race, when we have 200 races going on to try to get a significant update as often as everybody desires that covers every single race, we're going to fail and people are going to complain. I guess we'll see if not posting on Thursday doesn't get national attention for being not everyone else posting something in between. But we'll see. I think what it comes down to is indeed you have the most complex voting system in the country. If people want to stop complaining, then stop adding underage voting and adding rank choice voting, adding different variations of rank choice voting for one city versus another city. San Francisco is only one city, one county. They don't have 200 different races to run. And so you have the most complex, and I don't think if you were to ask anybody in the country who has the most complex election system in the country, none of them would say Alameda County unless they were somebody that knew you personally, I guess, but that would be a great trivia question somewhere. But and with $7 million on an off year and $32 million, I mean, if we wanna talk about adding resources to alleviate national news, we can talk about that, but we do a great job. Thank you. One last thing that was around the cast vote records. Yes. How often are those gonna be available? Is that also on a weekly? It's when we post the results. So they'll be available after tonight's results at the end of the night and then they'll be available on Friday. Okay as well. Thank you. Supervisor Minerally follow up. Yes, Supervisor or President Howard kind of asked the question I was interested in knowing about and I appreciate your response. The only thing is I just need to understand when we're talking about a countywide of, you know, general election, November. Yeah, there's a lot of... The only thing is I just need to understand when we're talking about a countywide of you know General election November Yeah, there's a lot going on this election We only have the mayor City Council and a ballot measure and so people are wondering why are you gonna be waiting until Friday? Yeah. So let's tonight is going to be the posting that's going to happen at 8 o'clock is all the early voting that we were able to process. Voters were able to get their vote by males in 29 days ago. right? For the last 29 days, people were allowed to vote. And we've processed as much of that as we could for tonight. So when you see the eight o'clock posting, that is the early voting. We have nine vote centers that have in-person voting going on. When those polls closed, we're waiting for those votes to come in tonight. And those are what will be posted. The in-person voting will be posted by the end of tonight. Tomorrow, we have to finish up the accounting on the in-person voting and shift the entire shop back over to processing vote by mail. Now, the voters, and I'm going to guess that this this election's not going to be any different, we'll get a large number. We probably have gotten a large number of vote by mail today. I mean, a very significant number of vote by mail today. And those have to start the process from assorting them, signature checking them, opening them, extracting the ballot. All of that takes time. So that gets us into Thursday to Friday to get a significant update, even with a small election. I don't have the same staff size that I had or a major election either. So then remember that we still have to receive the mail for a week. So we will be continuing into next week receiving ballots from the post office. And if those ballots are postmarked election night election day or earlier, they have to count. So we'll still have more ballots coming in even next week that have to be validated. So even if I had an earlier posting, I still have mail coming in. And so that's where we get to the next Friday is to say our desire is to get through all of that, all of the vote by mail, the mail that we get, and get us to a significant Friday update to where hopefully this week from Friday we're saying, you know, we got it all done and we're now down to the uncured ballots. And those are where people made a mistake in how they signed the ballot. Maybe they didn't sign it. We do see households with multiple voters where they signed the wrong envelope within the household. And so then we have to reach out to all of those voters to have those cured and those come into play. The election is very close and we did see in November a couple of the races at the last update switch because of the uncured that got cured. So I don't know if that answers your question. It's the logistics of how these votes come into us. I know what the desire is, but when we do the postings, everything's still in flight. And if I stop the shop to make that posting, it may not be as significant as people hope it will be, and then they're gonna say, well, how come you only got that far? So it's kind of a, kind of a quandary for us because if we are allowed that time, we can really press it hard and not have to stop each time and not have to make sure that we have a significant update. It is a very challenging. All right, well thanks for the explanation. Hopefully the public heard it. Yeah, okay, thanks. And yeah, I just have one here though. The vote centers that are receiving people that voted and got a ballot and put it in the system, those are all gonna be counted by the voting centers. It's just the ones that bring an envelope in or turn a envelope into the post office that take time to be counted. Two things can happen at the vote center. The voter can come in and sign the poll pad and they can vote in person. Like either get a ballot or they're going to go to the touchscreen voting system and vote, that vote will get counted tonight. If they go to the vote center with their vote-by-mail ballot and they drop it and the vote-by-mail trolley, that will be processed in the next several days. It's all about the envelope. Yes, what I'm hearing and I understand that. Everything else that's been mailed in the last 29 days, that's had time to be processed. Anything that's at the envelope that comes in day of is and through the mail the next few days. It's all about the envelope. It is. And our voters have been predominantly voting in the last couple days of the election by mail. So we do see a very large number of votes come in at the last minute. Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Fortune out of the bus. Follow up. Yes. A follow up regarding the uncured ballots. What's the process for notifying voters? Is that ongoing or is it sort of sporadic? It's ongoing. So if we have have their phone number in their registration, if we have an email, we have their address, we send a mailer, we call their phone number, we send email, if we have it, we have to notify by election code, all the voters who haven't cured their votes, we have to notify them eight days before I'm going to certify that they have until two days before I certified to have their ballot cured. So they get multiple notifications that they need to cure their ballot. So first of all, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. election code says is that the campaigns are also allowed to get those the list of uncured so between us reaching out to them and the campaigns reaching out try and encourage them to cure It really all depends upon all that outreach and how much public notification there is of how close the races and how much their vote counts. So that does make a difference. Thank you for the report. We'll move now to information technology. of which we have 15 minutes allocated. I were just getting set up. I'm civil gurney, the assistant CIO, and I'm going to be presenting, and Tim will be hear if I need a lifeline. All right, I'm going to talk a little bit about ITD then our financial summary and then our 2526 goals. Our vision, our vision is a secure digital government accessible anytime, anywhere. Our mission is to partner with county agencies to support the delivery of services through secure, effective, and innovative technology solutions. Our services we'd like to be a one-stop shop for technology, starting with cybersecurity, dropping down to radio and telephony and dropping down to digital transformation, technology procurement, and we to have technology for any time, anywhere and on any device. All of our services are discretionary but we support departments in carrying out their mandated services. Our financial summary, we are at internal services funds so our appropriations must equal our revenue. For our 2024-25 approved budget it was 103 million. Our 25-26 preliminary maintenance of effort is forecast at 112 million, 112.8 million and that's an increase of 9.8 million or 9.54%. We had one reclass of a non-management to to management FTE and our total FTE did not change. On our major objects, our salary employee benefits are about 50.4%. We are very much about salary and benefits, but over the last couple of years, our discretionary services have increased to 42.4%. They continue to rise as we consolidate commodity services and other technology for curements into ITD. The 9.8 million increase is really split between two areas. We have an increase in COLA for 4.1 million and then an increase in department projects and infrastructure modernization. I'd also add cybersecurity to that for 4.6 million. Our departmental projects include our property tax migration, technical migration, which is a very large project that's scheduled for this year. We have an increase in our various ISF charges for 209,000 and an increase in our auditors indirect cost allocation for 906,000 bringing us to 9.8 million. For the revenue side we have an increase in our telephony billing. This is for our contact center. We have an increase in our radio billing for our maintenance in our fees for $14 a radio for the total of 188,000 and then we have an increase in our ITD services to cover for our costs. We also have another budget. We have two budgets in ITD, one for ITD, and one for our criminal justice system, which is called the Consolidated Records Information Management System. It's a general fund. The budget for 2425 was 4.1 million. This year, 4.3 million for a $109,000 increase. That's a 2.6% increase and no other changes. The increase is due to $4,400 in COLA and then an increase it says ITD services but it's really ISF services, it includes GSA, risk and ITD for a net county cost of $109,000. Now we're going to jump over to our goals. We have four major components, our cybersecurity, our modernization, digital transformation and workforce. I'll try and go through these quickly. Cyber security is always our primary focus and has been for the last couple of years and continues to be now. We'd like to say that our people are the most important, early we also have to focus on cybersecurity. The first thing we want to do is we do the email threats that we have today. We still have a large number of fish fish that make it through our filters. So we're going to look at better methods to decrease that amount of fish. We're going to also continue improving our user awareness. We do cybersecurity mandatory cybersecurity training. We do cybersecurity awareness month. We do fish testing. Everything we can to make sure that the end user knows how to help keep us safe. We need to make sure our security teams expertise is staying current because it changes all the times. The bad guys get smarter and smarter. So we do a conferences, tabletop exercises, vendor education. We need to enhance our threat visibility. We're looking at vulnerability assessment utilities and this will allow us to find that one server or that one laptop that didn't get patched and leaves us vulnerable. We're going to look at auditing our county agencies to make sure that they're using complex passwords that they are being secure and safe and whatever we can do to help them. We're going to research security measures to protect artificial intelligence. As you know, that is the hot topic. We have more and more systems entering our environment and all systems have to come through ITD before so that we can make sure they're safe and secure before we roll them out. Next is modernization. It doesn't matter whether a system was written 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Modernization is consistent. We're starting with our radios. We're going to develop radio to cell phone communications plus provide GPS capability to allow dispatchers to locate police and fire personnel in the field. We're going to upgrade and refresh our commute storage and network architecture. Next up is our PeopleSoft HRMS system. We just finished our financials. We're going to develop a comprehensive network replacement strategy. Our network infrastructure or our architecture was developed over 20 years ago. It's time for a full refresh. We'll be doing a competitive RFP later this year. We are going to complete the migration to our new telephone system using Microsoft Teams. We're going to support the county's cloud-first strategy through ongoing data center consolidation efforts. And then we're going to partner with county departments and modernizing their applications. I should have mentioned that under Vision 2026, most of what we do comes under accessible and integrated infrastructure. Under digital transformation, we're going to deliver virtual first services using automation, low-code tools, chat bots, and hybrid cloud. We're fortunate that we have these skills on-site and we can support departments in their development needs. We're going to prepare and empower our staff to navigate through evolving technologies. And again, this year it's all about AI. Shortly we'll be rolling out some AI employee guidelines and a share point site with best practices to share with all of our employees. Plus, our internal staff needs to be trained on how to develop new AI and GI applications. This year is very important with digital accessibility. The DOJ wants all websites, PDFs, and customer facing applications to be ADA compliant by April of next year, so ITD will lead an effort working with the departments to help them get there. And then we continue to educate staff on collaboration tools such as teams and SharePoint working with the TEC. My favorite is our workforce and it's our primary focus. We want to attract and hire a talented, high-performing team. We advertise on Indeed and LinkedIn. We keep our website updated with our strategic plan. We keep our activities out there and show what we do because we need to compete with Silicon Valley. So we do, we put a lot of effort into that. We create employee recognition and engagement strategies. Next month will be our employee appreciation event. It's an annual event. It's a barbecue on top of the roof of our ITD HQ. Our radio department actually does the barbecue and then we do games for all the staff. It could be a video games, it could be a scavenger hunt, it could be ping pong, just to keep them engaged and then we recognized years of service. We're going to develop leadership training and opportunities for our managers and leads. If we see they have a desire to move forward. We actually create an individual plan for them to develop. We want to increase our staff satisfaction and connection to our communities every month through our ITD CARES program. We do something for the community. In February, we did valentines for our seniors. In January, we did the food bank in this month with Earth Day coming up actually tomorrow. We're going to be doing cleaning up Lake Merit, helping to clean up Lake Merit. And then we're going to continue participation in the countywide human resources recruitment enhancement project in any way we can through technology. Every year we update our strategic plan. This year with Vision 2036 we included Vision 2036 in our strategic plan. Every year at the beginning of the year we come up with our CIO goals which this year is focused on change given that we have a new board and a new president. We want to make sure that we're agile and adaptable and our strategic plan is on our website. And for our accomplishments I'm not going to go through through all of them. I'm going to pick a couple. The first one we're the most proud of through modernizing our voice system for 7,000 users and 1300 phone lines. We've already saved 1.8 million. The migration of our criminal justice system to the cloud improved our query speed by 20% and cut storage by 15% but more importantly it got off the mainframe. That was a long project that we're very very proud of. I'm going to drop down to our staff. We promoted 33 staff internally last year and maintained a 4% turnover rate half the national average for our industry which we're very proud of but I couldn't leave this page without calling out our final item. We were ranked number one by Digital Counties for large counties. That's against all the large counties in the United States, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Cook County, what's Seattle, Kings County. Oh, we were so proud. We've been bouncing around between four and five for years and we hit number one and we are very, very happy. And I always say this, it isn't just technology. This award looks at the entire county. It starts with our vision 2036. It looks at our budget process and then it looks at how technology and our business partners work together to meet those goals. So, had to bring that in. Our key investments in millions are technical migration from TTAX, my technical migration for TTAX and auditor about 2.9 million digital accessibility for ITD is 320,000. Our infrastructure modernization 2.45 million, cybersecurity all in about 6.8 million, a cloud migration 2 migration to 0.2? Alcohol, Link, Financials, and HRMS, 4.2, and Mainframe is a service 3.3. Are pending factors if our budget is reduced? Well, there'll be no technology, so we don't want our budget to be reduced. We would put up the county at risk for cyber attacks. Our hybrid workspace and virtual first would not be meant for vision 2026, and it would just impact our ability to support our departments. And with that, any questions? We'll start with questions from supervisor Miley. Oh wait, I'm sorry, supervisor, fortune out of basket, any questions? This is a great report. Congratulations on being on that number one honor and also seeing that there's only four percent turnover. That's terrific. Yeah, I'm very proud. Coming from another jurisdiction, I really have appreciated the staff that I have worked with as well as all of the added layers of security and the authentication and the sort of ways that we've thought through how to protect our data. You may or may not know that at our act for all committee meeting we did talk about data and privacy, information, collection and retention in particular. And so some of those nonprofits who are leading best practices, especially during this time under Trump, are taking a scan to see what our systems are. So if there are any suggestions for improvements, I'll make sure that we let you know. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? No questions. Just thank you for the great work and want to give a huge shout out to Jeff and your team. He's extremely responsive and patient and he's just the best. So thank you. President Tam. Thank you. I also want to echo that your IT team is very impressive, especially Jeff. Hopefully. President Tam. Thank you. I also want to echo that your IT team is very impressive, especially Jeff. Hopefully it's not because we're supervisors that is responsive to everyone, but that's OK. The question I had, I mean, we made some significant investments in our infrastructure, and that has probably put us at that number one ranking that your team should be very proud of, that we all should be proud of. I've had some recurring, I guess, inquiries from our county council over our responsiveness to public records at request that rely a lot on our IT database. Have we, is there ways in which we need to improve on the responsiveness to some of those? Because we're getting in and dated with them and I am sure you're affected as well Yeah, I'd have to look at into that the most PRA requests we get are really around emails and You know looking at that type of information. I'm not really familiar with other requests So if you're talking about the emails that typically I send, ITD has been very responsive and they usually process those immediately. The work and the labor is, and then someone reading those. But they're the relationship that we have with ITD to get them to actually retrieve the data, they do that very efficiently and timely. I thought we had received a legal complaint that we had not been responsive within a certain timeframe. V, I think what you're talking about, is that?'s a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I guess your office had like, I don't know, over 30 in a very a period of time when I guess your office had like on over 30 and very short period of time and it was very difficult for us to respond to it. Is it tied to our information technology infrastructure? So no, it's not. ITD for ROV to address that issue built a PRA system for us and we're doing a much better job tracking the inflow of PRAs into ROV. The system went in place in September last year and it actually sends messages. The people can come to the website. They can put their PRA in. It sends them an email with a ticket number essentially for that PRA so that it can be tracked. Since that system went in place, we've received 110 PRAs. That's a lot of PRAs in very short time and we continue to work those PRAs and track them. It is a difficult process for us. We are getting inundated with PRAs, but we're not the only department. I know the sheriff has much higher count than that to the point that they've had to dedicate an entire team to just doing PRAs. So we haven't gotten to that point, but it isn't an ITD issue. ITD has produced the technology that we need. It's a matter of how do we work the PRAs to make sure that we stay on top of it. They have a very short time period with which we have to respond. So it's basically ITD produces it, but somebody still has to review and go through and make sure it's responsive, even though there may be 30,000 records. Yes. That's correct. I mean, one of, you know, even when we do email searches and we look, we use keywords to look for things. Somebody still has to read them. Their laws regarding the content of things that may be retrieved that we are not permitted to release. So it's just doing a search and saying, okay, this is what we retrieved. Here you go, that we can't do that because there are things like social security numbers and personal, certain personal information. There's HIPAA information. And depending on where the request is coming, a simple word search may retrieve things that we still are not allowed to release publicly. So I think that a lot of where we get bogged down in public records responses across the county is it takes people power to actually read the records. And then some records are not kept or organized in a way that's easily digitally. It's not as simple as an ITD search to retrieve the records. There are hard copy records that are out there. We have many different platforms at times where records might be and they have to be searched. So I think a lot of our, you know, there certainly there have been some mistakes made and getting responses timely, but a lot of this is volume and people power intensive and that impacts how quickly we can move these responses. And on the people power side of it, it's not just a clerical individual who to do the work in many of these. It's a subject matter expert that has to be freed up to really do some of this research for the complexity of these PRAs. So I'm just echoing what Donna is saying. It is really a burden, but it is a requirement. And we need to have free up staff to be able to answer some of these. Thank you. Any other questions? No, I just want to thank you, your staff, Tim, civil, your excellent job of responding when we need help. Sometimes they help I need. It's not even complicated and they figured it out right away. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the work that we do to stay on top of cyber security. I just really appreciate that we're constantly on that, the trainings, et cetera, et cetera. So thank you. Thank you. We're very proud of the team. I think of IT every time we take one of those online exams. Thank you for all you do. With that said, we're going to move to our next 15-minute allocations presentation for the auditor control. auditor com total recorder. recorder. recorder. recorder. you have three. I do not want to and I'm going to go ahead. Good evening. My name is Melissa Wilk. I am the Alameda County auditor controller clerk recorder. And I'm here to present the auditor controller clerk recorder agency maintenance of effort budget for fiscal year 2025-26. I'm going to run this, I guess. Okay. So the mission of our agency is to support Alameda County's vision through the efforts of its employees by providing the highest degree of fiscal stewardship, transparency, accessibility and service when administering public funds and in the protection of official public records. Our vision is to provide superior protection and accessibility at public resources and records through advancements in technology and through the optimization of our employees and as such we'd like to be a model for other public organizations. All of our services are mandated whether through government code, the county charter, admin code, or board action. The auditor controller services include accounting and fiscal oversight, budget monitoring, payroll administration, contracting compliance monitoring, vendor payment, and disbursement, comprehensive financial reporting, internal audit, and risk assessment, tax revenue analysis and distribution. Our Central Collections Office is responsible for court order fines and restitution recovery, environmental violation fee collection, victim restitution and collection of other governmental debt. The clerk's office is the custodian of official public records for the county. It's responsible for a recordation of property transactions, issuance of vital records, and marriage licenses and ceremonies. So our financial summary for fiscal year 2025-26. We're asking for $47.5 million in appropriations. We're estimating our revenue to be approximately $54 million. We carry a negative net county cost of $6.7 million. We have approximately $52 full-time management employees and $158 non-management for a total of 210 employees. I also brought copies of my org chart that I'll share with you at the end and we have about a 27% vacancy right right now. We do have an open recruitment for our auditor associate which we're hoping to be able to fill at least 10 positions by the end of the summer. So we're working on our vacancies. So the major components of our net county cost change include $1.4 million of an increase in salary and employed benefits due to negotiated increases, a small reduction in discretionary services and supplies, a million dollar increase in our Intervenal Service Fund departments, IT, BMD, and then we're estimating a decrease in our transfer tax and recording fees of about 2 million dollars due to the uncertainty and the decline in the housing market. Our total net county cost changed about 4.6 million, but I do want to emphasize again We have a negative net counting cost of about 6.6 million. So we bring in more revenue than we spend that additional revenue is used to help offset any potential budget gaps. So total appropriation by department, the majority is made up by the auditor. Controller side, about 65.9%, and the clerk recorder makes up about 34% of our overall $47 million budget. By major object, our largest of course is our salaries and benefits at about 70%. Our next largest is non-discretionary services and supplies, or internal service funds at about 10 million and discretionary services and supplies at about 4.2 million. Total revenue by source or largest revenue is property transfer tax at 23.4 million, assessment and tax administration at 15 million and that's related to collection of fees related to property tax allocation and apportionment. We have about $6 million in recording fees each year and then our other revenue sources are overhead reimbursement, other revenue auditing and accounting fees that we provide for other departments, vital records fees related to birth depth marriage certificates, collection service fees, and then marriage license revenue. So some of our accomplishments from the prior year include earning our certificate of achievement for excellence and financial reporting for the 41st consecutive year. We also earned the award for county's financial transaction reporting for fiscal year ending June 30, 2023. We served about 200,000 community members, 150,000 of those were actually in person at the Oakland office or our Tri-Valley office. In partnership with the California Secretary of State's office, we hosted two Apostle pop-up shops at the double library where we served about 1,100 customers and issued nearly 2,500 Apostile certificates in those two days. Those certificates help authenticate vital records for those who are traveling abroad and they're recognized as valid in other countries. We received the counties where we think AC best of the best award for innovations regarding enhancements of our SLEB certification process. And we did work closely with ITD in improving the functionality and accessibility of our tax analysis, special assessment portal that's used by over 60 jurisdictions to submit their annual levied taxes. Few more accomplishments. We implemented the governmental accounting standards board, 100, which is accounting changes in air corrections. We worked with ITD to update and enhance our alkaline financials and HRMS systems. And we continued to engage with the community to conduct public outreach and work with other departments and local jurisdictions. We also worked up and down the state with various organizations so we can stay up to date on best practices for the auditor controller and clerk recorder. This is my last slide. Our agency supports Vision 2036, the strategic priorities of fostering a prosperous and vibrant economy and a resilient population through a strong commitment to fiscal stewardship, collaboration, innovation, accessibility and sustainability. The strategies we're going to employ this year to help achieve those priorities include improving and enhancing transparency and accessibility by moving more, some of our more frequently asked questions online, providing updates on our property tax system, online in the restoration preservation of our historical records, implementing technology driven solutions, including AI and other digital tools to improve response times, streamline customer inquiries and enhance the overall customer service experience. We're actually working with an intern from the Goldman School at UC Berkeley who's using AI to help develop some chat functions for us at the clerk recorder's office. We're hoping to expand in-person on-demand marriage services at the clerk recorder's office. We're continuing to look for satellite office locations and partner with other departments or agencies outside of the O'Cland area to expand accessibility of our services. We're also looking at implementing another GASB standard and then we will implement the SLEB Connect program to help streamline our certification process for SLEBs. And lastly, we will continue to foster collaboration with not only community organizations, but other county departments and industry stakeholders to bring the information about the county and our services to members of the public. And that is my last slide and I'm available for questions. Great job. Any questions, I'll start with Supervisor Miley. Thanks, Melissa, for the presentation and continuing to provide resources back to the county, help with our budget balancing. Could you talk a little bit about the DEED Redaction Project? AB 1466. Yes. So AB 1466 became effective in January 2022. It requires all county recorders to identify and redact any unlawful or discriminatory language or restrictive covenants from California real property documents. So it's about a four-year project. $5 million. We are about 30% through our 76 million images in reviewing those for the restricted or restrictive language. We've spent about half of the budget. We look to spend the next half and the next year to two years. And again, we're about 30% through. We've found and some of our older documents some that are not easily OCR or optical character recognized scanned we're going through those manually and we actually have not found any language that needs to be redacted but as we continue to go into the older documents, we expect that it'll be a much more manual process. Okay, because you know, that's a project that I have a lot of interest in both through reparations. And then recently we had to deal with a in San Lorenzo historical preservation of two homes. Yeah, and so I just want to continue to kind of keep track of that. That comes pretty awesome. Yeah. It's just unfortunate. It was a mandate without funding. Right. It allowed for a $2 collection of fee of $2. But there's been some legal questions about whether that's a tax or an actual fee. I think only about five counties up and down the state of California have actually implemented the $2 fee per document. So most are just moving forward and redacting the documents in paying as they go. And we haven't it? We haven't done that. We have not. Yeah, we've been using our FMR in the savings within the department. Okay. Is that something we want to because at one point, we're contemplating it. Do we want to consider that? We yeah, we contemplated taking it out to the voters. And we're sort of a monitoring up and down the state and nobody has moved forward with it yet. So it is something we could consider for the remainder of the budget in the funding. Okay. And then are you going to report on the disparity study, where's that something I should ask county council Donna is saying to ask county council. So yeah, it is with county council. All right. So vice your more cast. Thank you for the tremendous work and the accomplishments. I just wanted to also thank you. You're in your office. And I want to state this before I forget because I wish I would have flagged this earlier. But just want to ask all department heads if they're watching this, if there is anything they feel we need to be proactive and get ahead of with respect to charter amendments that we have that conversation early. I can't remember was it last primary we had was it to charter amendments on the ballot with respect to civil service process but just want to flag that so that's all thank you. No and I appreciate that we've actually gone through the charter to to make sure that we have reviewed anything related to us that may need to be updated so So we're trying to stand up in that as well. Supervisor Tam. Yeah, thank you for that presentation as well. I just need some educating about all the various measures like we pass measures, A, A1, C, W, X, and there are in various stages of disbursement. Can you just kind of walk me through? Like, we collect the funds, you put it in some sort of a categorical repository. And how does it get dispersed? And especially with the ones that requires issuance of bonds, for example, like A1 or X. So the revenue comes into the auditor controller's office and then if it's an internal department like healthcare or social services, we transfer the funds directly to them via journal. So for example, for measure C, we just on Friday did do a wire transfer for the portion that goes to children's hospital. So the revenue comes in from the state to us and then we work with the receiving agent on how they wanted to be transferred to them. Measure A, we do it in measure C, we plan to do it monthly. As we receive the revenue, we plan to to disperse it immediately so there's no interest calculations required and we found that that has worked really well for measure a in H. This is your office charge and administrative fee. We do not and we have talked about that, but we do not. Because it wasn't call for on the ballot measure? Is that the reason? I think historically we haven't charged an administrative fee. I don't think anything precludes us in some of the more recent measures from charging an administrative fee. So it is something that we've looked at. Okay, because clearly I know that, for example, with measure W, there's like over $550 million collected and there's interest that accrue hopefully, but those also have to get dispersed, right? Correct. Yeah. So we do the allocation like for measures that you will do the calculation of how much goes to children's, to health care. So we do do those calculations. And once it comes in on a monthly basis, it's fairly easy once the staff is prepared and has worked with the receiving agent, so. Thank you. No, my questions have been asked and answered. I want to just commend you on your professionalism and a great job with the presentation. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to the TREASURE ATTACKS Collector. the treasure tax collector. You look as tired as I feel. In eight years, this has been the longest. It's ever gone as far as I know. And I'm always towards the end. So I'm always with you at the end. Bring us home, Hank. Wake us up, Rick. Okay, all right. I will. All right, all right. Here we go. I'm not gonna'm always with you at the end bring us home Hank wake us up. Okay. All right All right, all right here we go. Okay, I'm not I'm not gonna read up earlier. I'm not gonna read it was only here for five minutes You got done. I'm not gonna read anything First of all our mission is on page two. You can read that for yourself Page 11. I want to thank my team We shall factor my CIO and Assistant Treasurer, LVR Coroga, my Deputy Chief Tax Collector. Anyway, Elna Eskabella, Finance Manager, couldn't do this without my team. First of all, our budget on page 12, we're pretty boring. We hardly ever move much where, you know, we're a small department, 55 people altogether, 55 FTEs. We are revenues and our expenses really never change. Except this year there is actually a significant change. Ratio, not a large, a $2 million. And that's mostly because we're going ahead with some changes to the tax system. We're doing a rep, what's called a replication, where we're having ITD is, we've hired a vendor to rewrite the code to our tax system. It's not a full scale change to the tax system. It's not going to change functionality, but it's necessary to do it. So we can change it over the next 10 to 20 years in a slow and thoughtful way. Okay. The way that we're asked to give this to you is by, through the division, division 2036. But it's not really the way that I think about it. So let me give you the things that are most exciting to me about what we're doing in my department. So number one, the tax processing and call center, the taxpayer outreach, which LV a Corroga kind of oversees. So, and I'm here, I'm going to repeat some things that are on page 10 and page 6, but let me just talk it through with you. So we're introducing, we're just in February, we introduced a new accessible property tax portal to brand new, I don't know if you've heard about it. It's very clean, it's very neat, and it's accessible. As I said, we're going to start the replication of the old tax system, which has began last month. Our office in Hayward is going to start to accept all tax payments starting next year, where I've got at a Goldman School intern who's going to be doing a report on tax delinquency and why that that happens and I can bring that to you if you'd like. This year, one of my priorities, you probably know that I've been pushing a lot about, since I've been treasurer, Flex Collector on paying online, which is really had a huge impact. Very few people are coming to the office, our checks are declining. So I'm very proud of that. This year, one of my priorities is going to be to really educate people about their options to pay monthly. Especially property taxes are, for new taxpayers, are a huge bill. I'm trying to really be aware of that. There's some good systems out there. Not internally, we really can't do it, but there's some external systems. So you'll see this year, I'll be pushing that. Something very important to us this year is I'm trying to work with mostly supervisor Myley with the CAO's office and other departments on a coordinated effort to improve the entire process of collecting our business license taxes, the unaccorporated county, which also includes a consideration of a ballot measure. Okay, that's tax processing. Second investments because of market, not so much because of what I've done, but maybe some because of what I've done, you know, the income that we're generating to the pool is up to $380 million. Where about 45% of that, so I can stand here and say, I've helped collect, you know, $200 million for us. It's way higher. One thing that I am doing, and I don't know, if you know, you might ever notice, is that trying to be more proactive, being selling our investments as interest rates go up, which means that the bonds actually go lower. I don't know if you know that. I won't go into bond math here. But so we're starting to, we're working with Melissa. It's okay to realize losses, actually. And I don't know if you ever, I mean, you know, that I think, you know, I have to make sure that everybody knows. Sometimes realized losses are a good thing, not a bad thing. Because it means interest rates are going up. And we are reinvesting the proceeds into higher interest-bearing fixed instruments. I've talked, I've come before you or told you about our impact funds. We now have deployed over $220 million into local banks and financial institutions. And later this year, we can give you a report. We're working very hard on measuring the benefits of that and then the less the investment of course which in I'll take questions at the end is our ethical investment policy and I'll explain the process towards the end of this. Accounting tax to sharing which is run by Elna Eskabal. Oh, by the way, the investments is run by Schellfacher. He's my assistant treasurer and chief investment officer. Accounting is done by Elna Eskabal. As I said, our tax payers are decreasing, our checks are decreasing, our online payments are going up. We're working very hard on working with a new vendor grant street on trying to get a new payment system, merchant processing system. The third compensation, this is something I want to come to you later in the year about. We have an interim manager doing a great job, Darnel Williams. We're gonna last summer, we introduced, something called Managed Accounts, which is sort of where we're trying to, we've less summer, we introduced, something called managed accounts, which is sort of high, you know, where we, where we're trying to place people, we're trying to do, we're using managed accounts, it's a higher level, there's some more fees involved. We're trying to keep people in the plan, so they don't take the money and roll out, as they retire. We're working with Melissa's office to introduce new demographic data into our record keeper so we can do better plan analytics and know who's doing what so we can increase the marketing. Also another thing that concerns me and I would like I will save this you can ask me here if you want, but a lot of employees are not eligible for the deferred compensation plan. Our taps and our sands are not eligible for the deferred compensation plan. I think that's wrong. They are not eligible for a Sarah, and if they're not eligible for deferred comp, they have no way of saving for retirement. And some work here a very long time, and I think that's wrong. So I want you to change that. Finally, tax-deformative properties, where I'm working with an outside vendor, a woman, you may know, KC farmer, and some interns from Goldman School, I'm working with other departments, I'm working with Michelle Starratt, OCDA, and Dylan Roe, the health department, working on tax-deformative properties, trying to market them. I've worked with some of you on this. And it's a slow, that's a slow haul. And I can't say we've been successful in it. Done. Questions? Supervisor Miley? He always looks over here first. Okay, so thanks Hank. Yeah, so what? I was talking to Hank and he said he wants to be in the queue earlier like the assessor in the future. He says he's the duly elected treasurer of Alameda County and he should be respected. Mr. President. And I'm getting older. If he had a child that he had to pick up from daycare he can figure he can figure something out I got a I got a grandchild I like to work on this now so he knows I'm asking this question so what's going on with our ethical investment policy I know that many of of you have probably been getting emails and postcards, I have two. I feel good about the process. It's my held office hours. So I hired a consultant. I had office hours and Friday afternoon. So people could sign up and talk to me. I've had probably 20 consultations with community groups. And that's over. We have a draft policy. It's published. It's on our website. We gave people 10 days to comment. So comment is through April 29th. It'll give us the consultant and I about a week to go through these comments. We'll start to go through them before. We may change them. May 6th in the afternoon. We don't know where. It's going to be a treasury oversight committee meeting. It might be a wild ride a little bit. So we might have it. We're seeing it's going to be a big room or even here in the board chambers. I feel really good about it. I feel I've been telling people this, very transparent. There's some things that, you know, I mean, it's all, a lot of it is about the Middle East stuff. And even though that's the policy is way broader than that. That's what people care about. So I've been told that pro-divment people they're not getting what they want. I'm telling the anti-divestment people they're not getting what they want. So hopefully everybody hates me equally. I feel comfortable with the in that place. Okay. So anyway, that's happening. That's going to happen on May 6th. Thank you. And let's see. And then it'll come to you at some point. At some point, okay. In terms of the business license tax, we're reviewing with you the business license tax and county administration's office. I don't know if we want to move ahead with a ballot measure, but we definitely want to look at changing the ordinance and doing some improvements there. Because my office has gotten a lot of complaints. I don't know if Lena's office has gotten that, that you're only requesting tack five years of tax returns and other things. So we need to look at that as well as other aspects related to the rental registry that we're very interested in setting up. So, you know, we want to get those meetings underway so we can move forward with that. Yeah, I'll review this tax policy. I mean, for a lot of the, we request tax returns to sort of do, sort of audits of people. And unfortunately, a lot of times the tax returns don't agree with what they're telling us. So, but I'll review that. I know that's become sort of a sticky point. Yeah, it definitely has. Because people have been calling my office and screaming at my staff. I'm sorry. They have been telling five years of tax returns for business license tax. Permit. Yeah. Yeah. You turn them on us. I'm sorry they're bothering you. Okay. And the math lesson. But I will check. I mean, if there's been discrepancies with what the tax insurance does, what they're telling us then, I think we should keep doing it. Thank you. Supervisor Tam. Thank you, President Halbert. Falling up on Supervisor Miley's point, if we plan on using the business tax information to get the rent registry Developed because you know there's no use in trying to Develop something when we already can utilize in the existing database The the question I had is probably because I don't understand What idle funds mean in the county registry and How much is there and what can it be used for? Okay, I just want to say something about one thing you have to think about Is that if you want to have a real registry? You're gonna have to change the law You're gonna have to do it in ordinance because it's only for three or more units and the rental registry You know that you know this okay you're gonna have to do it in order. It's because it's only for three or more units. And the rental registry, you know that. You know this, okay. You're gonna have to make it one. We've been talking about it during 10 and a half years. You're gonna have to make it one and more. Okay, idle fund simply means just what's in the bank before it's spent. That's all it means. It just means money that's sitting around. It's money that's sitting around. How much are we talking about that sitting around? 11 billion at the moment. 11 billion? Yeah, it's not all ours. Some belong to the school. Some, some is like bond money. That's not yet spent The schools have been issuing a lot of bonds What do you call it idle then? That's I'm sorry. It's a term. It's a term of pool and it's invested Well, I understand it's invested, but there's other funds that we also invest that we don't call idle, right? I don't know. That's a term I think it's a state law that uses that term. I mean, we're active. We're getting good money. That's what I started with. Well, yeah, if you're generating record income with $380 million, that's impressive. The last question I had is, I couldn't tell from the accessibility and integrated infrastructure explanation, what proportion of our tax payments are still in-person versus some sort of electronic means? When I began, when I took this job, we had a lot of checks. We were getting tons of checks in the mail, which we then put to something called the lock box to help process it, which is a big machine at the bank. And then we were getting a lot of people into us. And then I kept pushing for online payments. At first when I came into office, there was a $3 charge for just doing a bank transfer and I cut that out. So there's no fee for that anymore. Some people still have an old memory that there is. Credit card is a fee, but not for what's called ACH. Then COVID hit, and of course people couldn't come in, so they had to find other means. So now we're post COVID. The only people who come into the office, some people who have cash, who pay with cash, there are some. And during COVID, I think they were doing postal orders. Sometimes I'll go and I'll ask them, why are you here? And they'll say, well, I have cash. Some people still they'd like coming in, but it's way down. The lines are very small. Very few people come in. It's almost less than 10%. And the increase of online is increasing, I think, either because of publicity about it. People now, after eight years of running, there's no fee, constant publicity. I don't know. I put on the outside of the envelope, free, you know, paying online, easy. Get to receipt right away. There's no bad thing about paying online. So when you say you just have a handful, is it less than 10% now? I would say it's 2%. Oh good. It's tiny. It's tiny. You come to the office, you're doing the height of taxis and there's no, there's hardly anybody there. Okay, thank you. It used to be at the door. The lines used to be at the door. It's totally changed. Hey, just to confirm you haven't decided or made any moves to divest of any other investments since we last brought the meeting today. We have. I've not, except for this sort of, you know, the difference between selling a divestment is really sort of like who's making a big deal of it. Because we are selling. I mean, we are selling, we're trying to be more like, more like, oh, same, we're more proactive and we are looking at things to sell. So it's not, it's if we're not selling, But we're not divesting. No one is asked me to do anything who are political. No one's not selling. But we're not divesting. No one, no one is asked me to do anything who are political. No one's asked me and I have no intention to do it. And one thing we're going to do when we, when we, after we create this policy, we're, and we've really kind of started to, we're doing kind of a reverse audit of ourselves. You know, we're kind of looking, once we create more sort of standards and criteria. We're going to go back and look at what we own now and see whether we could stand up to our own policies and criteria. I guess good point you always need to sell and be wise about what you do in managing. It's only when you use a lens that you would perhaps interpret that as divestment. Yeah, and I've taken up your idea, which is that if a divestment request, and like I said, it's, you know, if a divestment request should occur, then I will come to the board and ask for your approval. I will not do it myself. Okay. There was a situation where somebody had a property. It was in default. It was about to go to sale, and they had a few months left to go, maybe six months. They wanted to pay partially each month because every time you pay down a percentage of penalty, which is pretty stiff, I think it's a point and a half a month or something like that. But they weren't able to do that because, and I think the answer was, our systems can't accommodate that. Is that going to be fixed with some of the IT? No, we're still so explain to me. Well, the law why it why can't be fixed? Which one? No, no, the law says you absolutely can. You you guys may have to approve it. No, the law says you totally can. Once it's default and this is what I'm going to be pushing for like people to pay, like I said, people to pay monthly because I think the semi-annual bills are too high. The law allows that our technical systems don't and this money that we're putting into the so-called replication, it's not changing any of the functionality. We won't be able to do it for years and years. I mean, I'll talk to Tim, but it's way on the back burner to ever fix it. I mean, the law allows him to pay in advance. Our technology doesn't allow us to do it. It seems to me that a citizen would have some claim to say, figure a way to do it manually if you do. Right. Well, there is one difference. I mean, there are methods to do it that can be done if they're not to link with. If they're not to fault it. I mean, there are solutions, but it depends where they are, how bad off it's gotten. That they can have payment plans. We can set up a payment plan, which allows them to pay monthly. And during the, if they're still current, but if they're having trouble affording it, there's other ways to do it. But once they're defaulted, they can't do a payment plan. That's state law. You can't do a payment plan. Once you're linked with, it's a state law that says you can't do a payment. Right, the default. That's the situation you're in. I mean, at that point, they're the most vulnerable because they're about to be a big problem. Being one thing being the link went facing the tax. Default it. Default it. Yeah. So, okay. State law. You can't. You can't fix it. No. no, no, we can't offer that we can't offer them a payment plan. There's nothing we can do. Okay. The only thing I can do is to take it off the auction. To give them, I have, you know, if it's in the best interest of the county, I can pull things off the auction. And if someone can come to me and says, I'm really working on it and they're believable, then I can pull it off the auction. I don't have to sell it. You put it off the auction until they can cure entirely. Yeah. Then they're novable, then I can pull it off the auction. I don't have to sell it. You put it off the auction till they can cure entirely. Then they're no longer in default. They don't have to go to the courthouse. Right, and I do that a lot. Okay. You know, at some point people, people's stories run out of, you know, credibility. And then I say, you've had enough time. All right. Yeah. It's late, so I'm not going to ask if you take Bitcoin. But I know some people do. Thank you. With that said, we'll move to our next presentation. Bitcoin, but a blockchain, I think, may be the thing for us. I'll just say, Lou, he wants to take Bitcoin. Yes. Human resources. Another 15- budgeted. Oh, I talk fast. I'll only stop and slow down when I'm going to thank my staff for all their hard work. So let me start out. Good evening. When I'm not just Margarita Zamora, Director of Human Resource Services. Thank you so much to the CAO, the staff, Melanie. Thank you for your patience in your staff for answering all our questions. Director of Human Resource Services. First, thank you so much to the CAO, the staff, Melanie. Thank you for your patience in your staff for answering all our questions. And to my human resources team, they are truly amazing. I am blessed to work with them. And I am honored to really, to walk behind them because really they do tons of work with limited resources that you're gonna to hear throughout but I'm going to talk really quick I promise. I can figure this out. There you go. Quickly HRS has brought the county's vision 2036 schools of safe and liberal communities, thriving in a resilient population, healthy environment and proper environment. Can't read. Oh, here. I'm sorry. Vibrant, vibrant economy. Apologies, it's late. My mouth is shutting down. More specifically, there are key areas where HRS is prepared to assist, including modeling excellence, expanding opportunities, preparing for the future. We have six key divisions in human resource services. Employee and labor relations headed by Michiochi. That's contract negotiations, meet and confer, changes to the admin code, salary ordinance and so on. Train Education Center headed by James Overse, countywide training programs, personnel services, SAMG, recruitment, classification, compensation, a lot of our bread and butter in HRS. Administrative Services headed by Jessica Cherry, HRS for HRS, for the CAIO and for your board. We are your HR employee benefit center headed by Avala Lavender, countywide employee benefits and the medical leave and accommodation services headed by Elinda, Murales Chacón, amazing team, lots of work. Our mandated Services Civil Service Commission exams, class comp, appointment verification disciplinary, layoff administration, labor negotiation, unemployment insurance administration, HRSIT, which is our People's Soft validation unit, countywide policy development, employee medical leave, disability services, andfits Administration. Our Discussionary Services, our TAF Program, Temperature Agency Pool, Re-And Tree and Step Up Programs, Training and Workforce Development, are accomplishments. He accomplishments continue to be our Recruitment Enhancement Project initiatives most notably during this past fiscal year is the reengineering. Reengineering includes a lot of the efficiencies that we're building into our recruitment, including the automated departmental interviewing hiring process, including self-scheduling, disposition letters, automating the minimum qualifications screening process, implementing text messages, resume parsing, and I can go on and on and on, but I'm not going to do it because it's late. In 2024, however, we did receive in process over 17,000 employment applications. That's an 8% increase above 2023. For 280 exams, over 20% increase above the prior year. We also have had 3.9 million page views on our beautiful new website. Thank you IT, everybody's left, but thank you IT for our new website. We did implement a long-term care program for our employees. It is one of the ways we're trying to attract new employees to come in. We offer amazing benefits. This is part of that cadre of benefits that we're offering. We've also reduced the delta between UHC and Kaiser Kaiser. That's the 800-pound gorilla. But so we have an employee benefit that is cheaper than Kaiser UHC. We've also increased our SLEB participation in our vendors, our training programs. We're now about half of our SLEB of our vendors that we use for training programs, our SLEB providers. We are expanding our training program to include our organizational development, the technical training, strategic planning that our departments and agencies are really taking advantage of, and not only maximizing, but we're using that as a recruitment tool, also the county being a great place to work on, devoting and my brain is no longer functioning. And let me skip that for now. and our employees grow in our own organization by empowering them and training them and giving them the skills they need to move up our organization rather than out. So it's a way to keep them to the retention tool that we continue to use for our employees. Our collaboration with our employee organizations remain healthy. We managed, we conducted and received over 300 mean confer offers at the same time that our very small labor relations team is also conducting concurrent negotiations on successor MOUs. And we process over 28,000 track transactions involving various federally and state protected leaves, CFRA, FMLA, ADA, Modified Duty, basically the in-elf of its soup of leave. We also have some critical challenges, right? I skipped. Oh, geez. Critical challenges. Primary and at the top of where we are is significant demand on HR services. Of course, the number of recruitment that we have, not just recruitment, but labor relations, employee benefits, all of those services. There's a greater demand with limited resources. Getting to one of their questions that you will ask the supervisor,ly, we actually only have two vacancies. So it's all hands on deck every day working at maximum capacity. But do you have an org chart? I do not have one ready for you, but I will. But so although we have a low vacancy, the demand for our services, specifically, there will be a lot of work from the Office of the DA for classification work, but we're already maxed out. So there's a capacity issue with the work that we're doing. We are working on expanding our marketing. We are an employer of choice and we should be able to recruit and get the number of candidates to come in, even in those hard to recruit classifications, including behavioral health, or other classifications in AC health as well as the sheriff department. We, let me just go on, preliminary, our preliminary meetings of effort budget, appropriation line item slower by 0.6% or 4%, we're just better aligning our costs or revenue reflexes, significant increase of 11.78% thank you very much. Net County costs is reduced by 6.44%, no change in our FTE, same number but we need more. The major object chart shows that our SNEB is a little over 6% and cola-driven. SNS is increased by 5.7%, but I think it's better aligned with our true cost and our IFTs increased by 17.56%. That's associated with the services we provide our TAP program. Let me keep you up, surprise or how, but expanded disability programs and targeted recruitment services for our client departments. Appropriations by major object, when looking at this slide, SNe were human driven, 70% of our budget, with services implies and supplies company at 28.74 appropriations total of 12.4 million. Looking at the revenue, again, primarily we have 80% is made up of the fees associated with the TAF program. Revenue from the Disability Program charged to our client departments. Revenue is for the examinations, bilingual testing, job postings, and services provided to the fire department, which charged them for our service, some services. Employee benefits takes up 11.3% that subgroup administrative fees and performance penalty checks associated with that administrative net program. TEC, we're at 6.7%, that reflects chargebacks to client departments, the rental of our facility and training programs that we provide and unemployment insurance comes in at 2%. Key investments, our key investment is on our people, our employees. The recruitment strategies that we've undertaken, one, I've talked a little bit about our critical challenges is developing new recruitment strategies that will keep us actually put us in the cutting edge of HR. The only way we can do that is by investing in some of the programs that we have the intro infrastructure that we have so that we can stay on top of managing the human resource for the county of Alameda. We are looking at some of those critical vacancies in partnering with our employees with our agencies and departments to see how we can help them get those applicants at the source, whether it's at the schools or wherever to try to get them into our county employment. Labor leave, oh sorry, Labor and see one more slide. Labor leave management, that program is growing. Currently we have 12 clients. we're going to increase that by two additional clients. The DA and public works are going to be part of our program. So that means we'll have a total of 14 clients where we're handling all of the leave administration for that department. And our meeting confers after after one of our, I'm sorry, the meet and confers associate with employee relations, those are critical to implementing change at the department level. So any change that impacts wages, hours, or terms, and conditions of employment, we have to first meet and confer with the impacted employee organizations before they can implement. So there's there's eight FTEs associated with that function, but there we are a large county. So some of those policies, procedures may take a little bit longer to implement and depends on not only the union availability, but availability of our to be able to stand top of all the meet and confers as well as the contract negotiations, especially since we have 15 successor MOUs that are coming up. 15. Any questions? We'll start with questions at Sue Resortam. Thank you for that very rapid response presentation. I wanted to commend you and your team for labor piece because we should never underestimate that and with the was it 23 bargaining units that we've had and the number of success, success or MOUs that you and your team have successfully negotiated have been a testament to the hard work and the negotiations and appreciate all that. The part that I still am not clear on when you talk about clients and and 14 agencies at the county. Some people have their own HR or some people of central HR. How do you make that distinction and the interfund transfers are from those departments when you service them? Is that how it works? We're robbing Peter to pay Paul. So what ends up happening is we have a centralized disability program. Some departments manage their own disability program. So it's not centralized. Other departments, all county departments have their own HR. But for disability, it's a very specialized expertise. You have to really know all the rules and regulations related to the administration of all these benefits and sometimes they overlap each other. And there's some great liability in not administering those benefits correctly. And so what ends up happening is because of the expertise required, which is in our office, they will ask HR, central HR, to handle their disability program. And it's a service we offer, but services don't come cheap or free because we don't have the staff. So the disability program is 99.9% funded by our client departments or an agency and department that don't want to perform that function. The first two departments that centralized with Central HRS was AC Health and Social Services. So in those are massive organizations that where we handle all of their leave administration. And slowly departments are coming on board, really understanding the benefit of having centralized program that looks at how all of these leave benefits intersect and how to keep them out of trouble. with recruitment and hiring the like the Sheriff Department they do their own and keep them out of trouble. But with recruitment and hiring, like the Sheriff Department, they do their own and the Public Works Department do their own. So that we also have for recruitment decentralized, some departments are decentralized for recruitment, not classification, classification is all centralized, but recruitment, there's some departments that are decentralized, including the auditor. IT is also decentralized, meaning they determine how best to recruit for their positions. They will seek some information from us. They will ask us, we do partner because they use our job apps process to post their vacancies, but they, if they want to advertise on a billboard, they have their own budget for that. HRS doesn't have their budget for that, so they make that determination. So we do have some county agencies and departments that are decentralized. AC Health is centralized. Like I said, auditors and others, IT are decentralized, public works is also decentralized. So they make a determination of how they want to recruit. Where they see, they do come to us to get our opinion, but they ultimately make that decision. And they have the staff for that service as well. Okay, so if we hear about the vacancy rate in social service being like 25% or in the auditor controller, it's their responsibility to hire and recruit, right? So often, again, a position gets posted for recruitment and we've done a really good job on shortening the recruitment period last fiscal year. We passed the charter amendment to reduce the posting from 25 to 14 days. So we work really hard to shorten the recruitment period. So we move heaven and earth to have eligibility list posted and certified by the Civil Service Commission and then it's available. Departments can start selecting from that eligibility list. The filling of the position is a totally different animal. It's the department controls it. If I'm the hiring manager, I may or may not want to fill that position. So the hiring manager controls that. We Central HR published that and certified that eligibility list and we make it available for departments to fill their vacancies whenever they want, meaning if there's an eligibility list and a department is ready to fill, they submit a requisition to hire to fill that position. And we don't control that. The department's control that. I'm not sure I completely understand that. The hired manager doesn't want to hire. Why are we letting anybody know that there's an opening? So oftentimes there's a recruitment for a countywide classification. For example, specialists clerk two. Specialist clerk twos are throughout the county and departments may have vacants. Every department may or may not have a vacancy for that, but maybe a department is not ready to fill so they're not going to submit a requisition to hire but other departments do when they have a vacancy and then they can submit a requisition to fill that position. So it all depends on who wants to fill their position and HRS doesn't dictate when someone fills their position. We just make the list available. I feel like we've had comments that once I want to fill, then it still takes a long time. Is that not the case? It all depends on I want to find out the specifics because if there's an eligibility list and they've submitted a requisition to hire, then it's a matter of they get the five because we're limited to five. They get their five to consider an interview for their vacancy. We have the rule of five in the County of Alameda in my prior employer, for example, if a department wanted to or a manager wanted to hire someone, there was a rule of the list. You can select anybody in the list from the top to the bottom. The county of Alameda, we have the rule of five. So you get the top five individuals in a rank. And you can interview for that. The top five scores. Top five scores, I'm sorry, the top five scores. So they've taken a civil service test that you get the top five scores. Top five scores. You don't like any of them, you can go to the sixth, the tenth or not. No, you, top five. Oh, better study for that test. All right. Very good. Is's a civil service process. Yeah, great. You guys are, Mark, has any questions? Thank you for the great work. Not to get into detail tonight, but if you could please provide me with an update on the reentry program, how we're doing with employee individuals. So we're still partnered with probation. Probation, they start there and then they refer the individuals to HRS for placement in reaching out to the departments. So as of right now, there are some reentry, I believe, social services, has some individuals and they reentry program. about, I don't remember the exact months, they actually regularize some individuals from the reentry program. So I don't have any new numbers for you, I can get that. Okay, thank you. And then if you could please just for public knowledge, share with us which bargaining groups are undergoing the meet and confer process with respect to AB 1185. We have the first reading, understand they're going through meet and confer, but what are those four groups? So it is the Alameda County Management Employees Association, Sworn, non-sworn service employees, international union, Deputy Sheriff's Association. association, sworn, non-sworn service employees, international union, deputy sheriffs association. I think I'm missing one for the physicians. Physicians. Physicians, it is, yes, physician, yes, UAPD. You know, physician and dentists, they're in, yes, UAPD. Okay, thank you. So we have 22 people faced up against recruitment strategies and we spent $3 million on their salaries. Is that what I'm getting from their second to last slide? Recruitment Strategies Component. MOE-32021. So those? 22 people? 22, that's my recruitment and classification unit. What do they do? So all the recruitment. So from creating the job bulletin, posting, handling all the exams related to any position, any exam that is forthcoming, working with the Civil Service Commission on the eligibility list, it's all the front end of filling the position. So it's actually doing the recruiting not just coming up with strategies? Oh no, it's the entire team is responsible for the, putting together the recruitment process for the county of Elimita, looking at that entire process and where are their opportunities to streamline that process? Where can we eliminate duplicate effort? Where can we move things faster? Is that that's your core HR staff that providing services countywide except for those departments that may do some of their own recruitment but that's the core central HR staff. That is correct. When was the last time if we've done it where we would go out and say contract maybe with somebody to say build us a brand. Brand. out and say contract maybe with somebody to say build us a brand. Brand Alameda County, be an employee of Alameda County. Talk about how wonderful it is to be an employee of Alameda County. We can say we're an employer of choice but until we start having people beat down our doors to work for us. We're doing that now. We're doing that now. We're doing that now. We're doing that now. And in fact, right now nothing. Because we're looking at proposals on building that brand. It's not cheap. It's not free. So we have a committee who is looking at marketing options for the county of Marketing options for the County of Elimedia, and I'll be approaching the CAO with those options. So yes, we're working on that right now. I would just suggest that it's worth it. Our people are our organization. Nothing beats good people, nothing beats good people. And so to the extent that we can recruit the best people, to the extent that we can retain the best people and motivate the best people, any organization is dependent on that. So with all the discretionary things that we spend discretionary funds on, marketing ourselves is one of the things that I would be so proud of. So I there. Any other questions? Supervisor Miloak? Yes. In your budget, it's a 12.4 million. And then under major object, the numbers are different. This is trying to figure out 15.1 at 6.1. the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the number of the employee benefits under major object. 70. 7. 7. In your looking at slide 14, correct? The slides don't have numbers on them, but one slide is preliminary preliminary and all you overview and then the others preliminary. I agree. You made your object. Major object. So we have here the 15.1 million with 71% uh SNAB. I think if you have on on a major object slide, if you total all those components, salaries and benefits, services and supplies and the Interference transfers, you would get to the 12.5, which is the appropriations. So it's yeah, it's not total and the Interference transfers are credits, so you need to subtract that. Okay, and that would give us 12.4. So that we can tie into the 12.5, the 12.4, and the change of 80. Okay, because I was just trying to, got it. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, we're going to thank you for your presentation and for your Stamina and diligence and staying with us until this late hour and we'll move on to we save the best for last Yep, it's the gold star and 15 minutes for our librarian All right, let's see. Let's get going. Thank you so much. We made it good evening supervisors. I'm Deb Sica. I'm the acting County Librarian. Just want to say thank you for the opportunity to present our maintenance of effort budget. And also just to the CAO and her staff, I really appreciate all of the help and support that you've given me in the last year. Let alone the budget process. So the library has incredible leadership. My staff and I have are made of caring civil servants that really want to put good in our world. And so to help give context though to the budget presentation, the library is a special assessment district funded primarily through property tax and other specific revenue sources. It's not part of the general fund. There is no net county cost for the library, however, being a special assessment district, the library has dependencies on our available fund balance. This allows us to uphold service standards during fiscally challenging years like the one ahead of us. All right, that worked. The county library was actually established in 1910. We were service-minded people driven department. Our mission is to grow learners, break barriers, and build futures. Our vision is kind connected humans. Simple as that. We see an urgency in our vision more and more each day, and we believe that libraries are places to foster our community connection. Our values inform programmatic services and service of framework and alignment for both Vision 2036 and our four areas of exploration. And before I get to the localized specifics, I wanna like to share the impacts of the closure of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which is our federal loss for our profession. In fiscal year 2024, California received 15.9 million from Library Service Technology Act grants, otherwise known as Lista funds that come through the IMLS to the States. That support amounted 40 cents per Californian. Those funds will use in a variety of ways from providing veterans resources, pooling funds and other library systems to purchase shared materials as well. So we'll have an impact from federal loss. They also supplemented essential adult literacy programs and provided support for job seekers. List of funds also fill the gap in library budgets and freed up local funding. We already know that we have a loss of our countywide access to the New York Times, disruption of services for a book program called The Palace Project, which has 300,000 digital items that we circulate across different county library systems. We won't also have some grant funded staff to policy map, and the other part of the federal impact will be the FCC funding that California receives approximately 10.8 million, which helps to make broad affordable for libraries and schools across the state. The impact just specifically to our library is could be up to $100,000 a year in rebate for our e-rate services from that money. So those are just the known impacts. I think about what are the future grant impacts that we would have jumped on to see enhanced services and do other work that's important to our community. So that's, you know, can't be anticipated at this time, but getting that said, I still feel like we'll be able to uphold our service standards and because of our available fund balance. you see there's about 3.82 increase in our maintenance of effort and is projected to be 48.9 million in appropriations. So there's no increase in full-time equivalents. As with all of my colleagues, we're balancing the increase in salaries and employment benefits as well as the increasing indirect cost and internal service fund charges. The library will need to offset using 2.8 million of our available fund balance. There's our revenue by source. It illustrates that the majority of our source of revenue and property tax is 38.8 million. It makes over 79% of our total revenue followed by the user utility tax business licensing and hotel lodging tax supplement. We also have contracts with our cities and MOUs with other county departments to contribute to a revenue of 2.5 million. And in this year we budgeted 2.8 million from our available fund balance to fill in the gap. So our appropriations, expenditures are salary and staff of course is 63.7% it's allocated to that which is approximately 31.2 million. 24.6% is allocated to our discretionary budget for services and supplies, so that's approximately 12 million. 8.18% is allocated to our internal service funds and 2.46 to the countywide indirect costs. We also budget about 500,000 in capital assessments for anticipated projects. The second half of the slide shows our two funds, apart from our library funds, we have a special test district that contributes to 1.5% of our total budget. So this is our map here. We have libraries in all of your districts, Albany and Supervisor Fortinato-Bosses, Cherry Land Community Center, Castro Valley for Supervisor Miley, Stanley Runsville Library and Supervisor Tam's District, as well as Dublin and Fremont and President Halvort's District, along with parts of the Fremont Service area as included in Supervisor Marqueses, including in addition to Union City and our beautiful New York Library. So you're part of the free month, the free month service area, but definitely Super, definitely Senate Bill and Miles. And actually, as of yesterday, you have two more library-launched sites in your district. There is library lockers that are for available for pick-up. So one is at the Wallypon Community Center and the other one is at the Warm Springs because we really need some more services down south. But I also wanted to take this map. This is a really important map for me to share. So something new that we've really been doing in our equitable libraries division and just thinking about what is library outside of brick and mortar. And so you'll see a concentration in the unincorporated areas of attention, of new services. We've developed 11 home daycares and we've installed fully outfitted book nooks inside the home home daycare services and just seeing the children there light up with those the services and having that in that really enhances the daycare and supports early childhood literacy. So we've also set up 12 outreach libraries with our CBO partners and added three libraries to existing homeless shelters. One is fully outfitted with computer, internet, and printing, support in addition to programs and library materials. So we're getting into new and interesting spaces and actually meeting the community where they're at. And if they can't come to the library, the library will come to them. So, statistics. So lots of numbers here. So I'll try to be round them up or down, but our sharing, we have a sharing economy model that's inherent in what we do in libraries. Our collection size is over 1 million physical items with over 100,000 new items that were added this year. 2.4 million items were checked out with 1.9 million renewals, resulting in 4.3 million circulation of physical items. It's a lot of labor and repetitive activities for our staff, but they're determined to get these materials out and about. So we've hand pulled and routed and made available over 386,000 requested individual items for people and have another 1.3 million checked out of our largest growing demand, which is E materials and those cost are increasing and the demand is increasing as well. We provided over 190,000 PC sessions and 422,000 Wi-Fi sessions for our community. So you can see our big technology footprint, also 430 prints, and we hosted 1,375,643 library visits to be exact. We also worked with 3,474 volunteers, both youth and adult volunteers, and they provided us with 22,276 hours of service back to the library, which is quite incredible. That's through our friends, that's through the high schools, through all kinds of different service organizations, and we provide a place for them to come and serve, and it's mutually beneficial to all of us. Safe and livable communities, our library is so many things to so many people. We fulfill all the usual expectations of the county library's services, but also our opportunity creators, service ambassadors, and a literacy safety net. We are a citizenship and immigration support, food distributors, voting and tax support centers, early childhood educators, entertainers, and cultural curators. For a healthy environment, the notion of sustainability is in the essence of libraries. Reuse is our operational model. We work closely with GSA to align and support the GOCAP that was recently put out. We also participate in coastal cleanups, restoration of native plant programs, and repair workshops, and also community clothing exchanges. So just trying to fulfill our sustainable pieces to the county work. We also curate our collections and plan our programs to be both this notion of a window where you can look through and see other counties and other cultures and a mirror where you can see yourself reflected back. So we're a window's to the other worlds and make sure that our cultural programming is inclusive and it resonates with our people. Some of the programs that are unique to us are to bet an Arabic, ASL, and sensory story time. So we've really expanded that this year and trying to make a place for all, a safe place for all in our communities. We also celebrate the diversity of all of our cultural months and indigenous nation education and specific programs designed to support LGBTQIA families. And let's see. Previously I mentioned there's an, the issuance of our traditional cards. That was a great day. So previously I mentioned we had an increase in the issuance of our traditional cards. Those are the library cards where people come to the library and get a library card. But we also have seen with our partnership with the Golden State Warriors and increase in those cards. So that worked. We're very happy about that. And the partnership actually ended up supporting, gave the Golden State Warriors volunteers came out to support DeVita Scots Thanksgiving distribution too. So we tried to extend the partnership throughout other agencies in the county. So she was presented with the impact warrior as part of that relationship. And then we've been invited back to be part of the Chase Center Bay Area-wide Family Literacy Night. So it's just a nice growing relationship that has had direct impact on access to libraries. But we also have had an increase in our welcome cards. So we have three other types of cards, welcome cards where there's no residency requirements. So our unhoused are able to equally use the library. We also have mail cards for those who are homebound and we have an increase in our e-cards access so you can get on-demand e-card and access e-materials right away. We finalized a large-scale departmental reorganization with our labor partners. We now have something called the equitable, and I have my rec visit org charts here. So. We now have something called the equitable, and I have my requisite org charts here. So, but so we had a large gear developmental reorganization with our labor partners and now includes the equitable libraries division, and we hired a new equitable library service coordinator and met many of the goals in our initial gear or racial equity action plan. So I'll leave it there. It's been a long day for everyone, but I appreciate your time and attention and open to questions. I'll start with Supervisor Miley. Yes. Thank you for the presentation, him. Lasting so long. One of your slides, under safe and livable communities. There's a third bullet crime in the space. That. One of your slides, under safe and livable communities, there's a third bullet crime in the space, back versus fiction versus feelings. What was that all about? Well, the part of the, our reality now is that fact is no longer something that's provable and that this comes into question, you know, what is fact, what is what is fiction, what is what is what is real anymore and is information professionals, we feel like it's our responsibility to make sure that we have accurate information that we share with our community. So that's really, you know, part, part for that, the attempt to do that programming. What, what, so I don't understand, did you have a seminar? What, what was it? Yeah, yeah, we had, we actually had the public defender come out and we had representation from the DA's office and we had community activists, both youth and other leaders in the community come and talk about crime and crime prevention and just try to weave those dissonant narratives together so that we could have really a robust conversation that complicates, you know, we feel like in libraries it's our job to complicate the narrative and have people connect in with each other and have gentile debate and so that was one of our attempts to do that. Where did this take place? Hmm. Where? It was an Albany. Albany? Mm-hmm. Okay. And so that was one of our attempts to do that. And where did this take place? Where? It was in Albany. Albany? Mm-hmm. Do you inform the board offices about these events? We're going to do a better job at that. I've been talking to my staff and my marketing team about making sure that you all have some information. I know we've sent stuff to Supervisor Marquez's office and Supervisor Tam as well. And so, and also you have courses to our president. So we do send those information out, but we're going to do it more intentionally in the upcoming year. We've got a lot of great free events that tackle some of our counties, complicated problems. And we want to be part of the solution in that. OK, very good. And then I also want to thank Deb and the library for stepping up. She's been the primary county department that's been staffing the reparations commission. And she's been doing an excellent job with that. So I just want to acknowledge that. I wasn't one of the presentation but it's work that's taking place. That's been really good and I'm often at the meetings with her and things are moving forward slowly but they are moving forward so I just want to acknowledge that work. So thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. It means a lot that the library is doing that. Supervisor Tam. I also want to thank you for that presentation and more importantly for creating events that make the library a place of community building and belonging, especially. And I know, um, Surphyser Miley and I go there at least twice a month sometimes for our unincorporated service meeting and other meetings. The question I had was on the slide that you had on the 11 day care facilities and your specific outreach to them. And I know that the library is a great disseminator of factual and accurate information. When it comes to like the first five and the measure C funding, and then the portal that we had earlier for daycare providers, do they have access to that or some of these daycare facilities able to get some of that funding or prospectively? That might be, I know that we've been talking with First Five just to represent libraries in that, and actually we had. So I'm not sure about the daycare part of it because we're just supplementing book nooks in those spaces, but we have been talking to First Five. In fact, we pulled all of the area libraries, including all of the city libraries together, to talk with our county First Five about distribution of fund plans. So we had a really robust meeting and gave them ideas about how to connect into the libraries with that funding. So it's a growing thing. We actually have a deodailous ninos story times plan throughout all of the libraries and we're going to have first five come out and read and have conversations with the parents that are there for the story time too. That's excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for asking. I didn't see the mobile bus truck anymore. But it is we have Redwood, our large bus and Poppy, our small agile bus too. And they're going strong. They're going strong. I think I don't know if enough people know that you can check out national parks. Remember should card and you know national park without a buy one you can check out tools. The national parks is the one thing that got funded in the state budget for the library so keep checking them out. Thank you for the presentation. More supervisor Mark S. Thank you. I just want to congratulate all the amazing work you and your team are doing. Your libraries are amazing spaces that are just full of joy activation and people just really feeling a sense of community belonging and safe. So thank you for that tremendous work. You also have an amazing and consistent footprint on social media. So thank you for that. And thank you for, I know you have a strong partnership with raising leaders and providing many internship opportunities. I've just seen so many young people flourish and grow through the programming you're doing so thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. With that we've concluded our budget presentations. We have public comment to take. Is there anybody here that would like to speak? Let me guess. Two minutes. Jane Kramer. Jane, you're up. Anybody online? All right, very good. Jane Kramer, I wanna draw out a comment that Supervisor Howard made, which is there seems to be one for any given topic is spread across multiple agencies. I going to use one of my pet peeves as an illustration of that that and that it can be used to advantage. Okay. The Health Department, he leabals some persons as indigent. And some homeless persons will fall into that category also because of degraded environments that they're living in. So, the problem is misdiagnosis of indigent. It's not because they were born that way, it's not because they were raised that way. It's not because somebody harmed them. It's because they have an autoimmune system that doesn't work. The body, the auto immune system recognizes what we call food as an enemy and it attacks it. And the physiology and the chemistry of it says that the body ends up attacking itself. So you get all kinds of the symptoms. Now the health department won't deal with that. They must know that. Okay. So there's no realistic treatment for it. But the health department also lists environmental complaints and environmental education outreach as one of its topics of interest. Well, if you go through presentations by agencies tonight, you find a maintenance report. Those guys know everything that you would want to know about environmental pollution and how to deal with it. The Player Department. Members will promote an inclusive atmosphere of trust and respect that encourages individual growth, participation, and creativity which acknowledges the achievement of our members. And later on, takes that internal culture and uses that in the community to get its jump done effectively. You want to be talking to those people because they know how to talk to the public. Okay. Do you do you have a ride home? Pardon me. Do you have a ride home tonight? I can't hear you. It's really late and I'm wondering if you have a ride home tonight. No, I don't. I'm just going to take the bus. Can we get you a ride home? Pardon me? Can we get you a ride home? Yes, you may, but I want to finish this. We've finished our two minutes and your public comment time is over. Pardon me. I have trouble hearing. We've reached the two-minute mark and the time for public comment is finished. So if you could summarize. Okay, the summary is summary is you should take a look very carefully at what services each agency provides and begin to reinterpret them in terms of a general need. You might come up with alternatives that work a lot better. Thank you for that. I'm going to ask the county administrator if we have anything. Well, first supervisor Miley, did you have any closing comments? Yeah as well. I just had a few closing remarks after an extraordinarily long day and evening I wanted to really thank the board for your engagement and attentiveness I hope it gave you an opportunity to really get a better Perspective on the foreign half billion dollars that Alameda County is spending and an opportunity to see the day-to-day Programs and services that are being administered and delivered by our department. I want to thank the department Hits and their staff for the work they did on the MLE budgets and their presentations and I really want to give a huge thank you to The CAO team who worked hard to scrub the maintenance of effort budgets and worked on the presentations. I had indicated to you that if we had taken all of the submissions from the department, our funding gap just for the program areas alone would be over $200 million. We were able to work with the departments to look at additional revenue, reduce some of the expenses to get that down to close to about $100 million. We still have work to do. We're going to look at our non-programming expenditures, non-programmed revenues, what financing is available to offset $100 million, knowing that we've got an extraordinary year in terms of state and federal budget as well. But we will continue on that path with the goal of bringing the Board of Balance budget in early June for adoption by the end of the year. So thank you again. I thought for sure, Supervisor Miley was going to ask you to bring a list of all reserve accounts and break and capture. We will have an update on the Supervisor Miley. I also want to thank everybody for sticking around all the work that went into this. I will say if you enjoyed a 12 hour marathon, thank Susan. If you do not like it at all, blame me. That's what I always say. It's my fault if it goes bad, but if you really, we got it done in a day, which is good. We don't have to come back next week and do it. So thank you for putting this together. Does this mean we're really going to have 10 items on next week's agenda. I want to thank the clerk of the board. Lane me if you don't like it. Thank you. With that said, we are adjourned. Recording stopped. And thanks to our wonderful clerks. Thank you. Yes, I appreciate it.